ML20247B640
| ML20247B640 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/17/1988 |
| From: | NRC - NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH REVIEW COMMITTEE |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNSRRC, NUDOCS 8907240166 | |
| Download: ML20247B640 (312) | |
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a \A_ UINITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION --m==... -================================================ IN THE MATTER OF:' DOCKET NO. NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH LOCATION: Bethesda, Maryland PAGES: 1 through 307 DATE: February 17, 1988 ===========-----...-------------------.......- ---...---. HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION
.OficialReporten 1220 L Street, N.W., Suke 600 8907240166 080217 Washington, D.C. 20005 PDR ADVCN NACN C ,
I certify that this trcnscript is cn occurate account of the minutes of the Nuclear Safety Research Review Committee (NSRRC) rneeting .
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1 Signatu.3: // Chairman, NSRRC " ' /
</ hkf Date:
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1- UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION q 2 COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH REVIEW 3 4 In the Matter of 5 NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH 6 7 Wednesday, February 17, 1988 8 Room P-ll8 9 Phillips Building 7920 Norfolk Avenue 10 Bethesda, Maryland
" The above-entitled matter came on for hearing, 12 pursuant to notice, at 8:40 a.m.
13 BEFORE: DR. NEIL E. TODREAS Chairman Massachusetts Institute of Technology. uclear Engineedng Depamen 15 Cambridge, Massachusetts a l 16 NSRRC MEMBERS PRESENT: . ,/ g f g, j p a.~bh , 37 . 18
/[DR. ROBERT Technical AssistantL. SHEPARD 's 4'<
%,,W Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research l U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission - /
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- i DR. SPENCER H. BUSH Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory {
21 P.O. Box 999 Richland, Washington 1 DR. EARNEST F. GLOYNA 23 Department of Civil Engineering College of Engineering 24 University of Texas at Austin l { Austin, Texas i' 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation
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j l 2-I- NSRRC MEMBERS PRESENT i 2 DR. SALOMON LEVY S. Levy, Inc. 3 3425 S. Bascom Avenye
. Campbell, California 4 j DR. WARREN F. MILLER, JR, 5 Los Alamos National Laboratory P. O. Box 1663 )
6 Los Alamos, New Mexico 7 DR. DAVID MORRISON ITT Research Institute 8 10 West 35 Street 1 Chicago, Illinois i 9 DR. THOMAS B. SHE.RIDAN 10 3:2 Sewall Street Newten, Massachusetts DR. MARY L. SHOAF 12 Assistan,t Director Plasma Physics Laboratory ( 13 Princeton University. James Forrestal Campus 14 Princeton, New Jersey 15 DR. RICHARD WILSON Harvard University 16 Department of Physics Cambridge, Massachusetts 17 NRR STAFF PRESENT 18 MR. ERIC S. BECKJORD 19 Director, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research 20 DR. JAMES SNI.".ZEK Deputy Director 21 Office 'of Nuclear Reactor Regulation 22 DR. THEMIS SPEIS Deputy Director for Generic Issues 23 Office of Nuclear Regulatory Researcy 24 DR. DENWOOD F. ROSS, JR. ( Deputy Director for Research 25 Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research Heritoge Reporting Corporation a c~x:a ___ ______________ _ _ _
3 I NRR STAFF PRESENT 2 GUY A. ARLOTTE Director of Engineering, RES 3
. DR. BRIAN . SHERON 4 Director, Division of Reactor & Plant Systems, RES 5 MR. ROBERT BERNERO Office of Nuclear Materials, Safety and Safeguards 6
DR. WAYNE HOUSTON 7 MR. FRANK CONSTANZZI 8 9 10 11 12 ( 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
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i 4 i l I EEEEEEE1EEE 2 DR. TODREAS: I'd like to call the meeting to order. 3 I've got a few formal things to do that Eric has 4 identified for me, since this meeting is being conducted in 5 accordance with provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee 6 Act and the Government in the Sunshine Act. That requires 7 a few things. 8 The first thing to do is to say the meeting is 9 officially convened. It's the first day of the first meeting 10 of the Nuclear Safety Research Review Committee. 11 Bob Shepard, who you met and who is sitting behind 12 me, is the Designated Federal Official for the meeting. A 13 transcript of the meeting is being kept. 14 Speak loudly and make sure you identify yourself 15 so they'll be able to take the transcript. 16 We had no written statements or requests to make 17 oral statements from the public, so we can basically start 18 with the prepared agenda. 19 Relative to the agenda, do you have the revised 20 agenda? If not, we can hand it out. 21 Okay. Basically when you get the revised agenda, 22 there are a few points on it I wanted to make. There's c.nly l 23 fifteen minutes officially listed for Denny Ross tulking 24 about NUREG-ll50 and we'll extend that to at least a half an 25 hour. That's a key topic and requires that as a bare-boned Har tage Reporting Corporation
a . _ . _ 3 5 l 1 minimum. 2 The second day we'll start at 8:30 instead of 8:45. ! l That will permit us to adjourn by 3:00 p.m., which was a pro-3
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mise that was made early on relative to plane and travel 4 I l 5 reservations, 1 6 The other thing is the agenda is organized around 7 the five elements of the NRC Program. One of the elements ] 8 That's" Resolving Safety Issues ) isn't listed specifically. 9 and Developing Regulations.* That Eric tells me will be 10 covered to some extent by Dr. Speis, who is listed for 11:00 ! I 11 this morning under " generic Safety Issues and the MAkK I 12 Containment Study." 13 These five elements that I speak of, the top listed l
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14 budget items, those five sum together equal the Office's ) l 15 budget, so I think it'll be important for us to listen and 16 address that area sometime during our discussions. 17 I think it's also useful just for me to make sure 18 that everybody on the Committee knows each other. And so I 19 let me just be sure. 20 Down at that end, Pete Miller. Next to him is 21 Tom Sheridan. And then Mary--is it Shoaf? 22 DR. SHOAF: Shoaf. . I 23 DR. TODREAS. I just met Mary this morning. 24 Dave Morrison, Spence Bush, Sol Levy, Ed Gloyna. 25 DR. GLOYNA. Earnest Gloyna. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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i 6 l l 1 DR. TODREAS: Earnest Gloyna. Okay. And you ! 2 mentioned that Joe Hendrie will be here tomorrow. No? Joe 1 3 Hendrie won't be here, but Cordell Reed will be here tomor-4 row. Okay. ! 1 5 Are there any other comments on the agenda? 6 DR. SHOAF: Will the Committee have an opportunity 7 to meet in Executive Session today or tomorrow? 8 MR. BECKJORD: An Executive Session of the meeting ; 9 for discussion of several subjects, certain administrative 10 m a t t e r s a n d p e r s o n a l q u e s t i o n s i s p e r m i s s i b l e , b u t .v na d o h a v e 11 to give notice of it in the Federal Register, so we will 12 make that arrangement at future meetings. We did not propose i ( 13 to do that this time because, as I'll be saying shortly, our 14 purpose was to give you a picture of the program as a whole. 15 DR. TCDREAS: Okay. That means we couldn't get 16 a session tomorrow because it has not been prelisted? 17 MR. BECKJORD: That's right. , l 18 DR. TODREAS: Okay. I've got some other general 19 points to make relative to the Committee and its goal and 20 its role, but we'll pick those up after we hear first from 21 Eric following the schedule, so let's roll right on to that 22 area. l 23 MR. BECKJORD: Okay, thank you, Neil. 24 Well, I'm very happy to welcome each of you here k. 25 as members of this Nuclear Safety Research Review Committee. l Heritage Repor!!ng Corporation (ser) ase.mos
i ._ -_._____.2____. _n_2..u 7 I And I wanted to open this morning by explaining to you some-2 thing of the background and purpose which brings you all to- , 3 gether here today. 4 I believe that you've received certain documents 5 by mail, including a copy of the report of the National Aca-6 demy of Science on the Research Program. It's entitled "Re-7 vitalizing Nuclear Safety Research." 8 You will be receiving lots of other documents in 9 the course of 11r meetings, but we didn't want to burden too 10 much initially. 11 There is also, you will note, in the blue folder a 12 document which I should note is pre-decisional. It is a paper 13 which has gone to the Commission which'in sum is the response 14 to the National Academy. I say that it's pre-decisional be-15 cause the Commission has not yet acted on that document. As 16 soon as they, which I suspect will be sometime in the next l 17 week or so, it will become a'public document and be in the 18 public reading room, but until then, it's not available, so 19 until that time, it's for your own use only. 20 To get back to the National Academy Report on 21 Research, this report was requested in 1985 in the spring, 22 and it was--I'll tell you more about this in a minute. The 23 purpose of requesting that report, and it was the NRC who 24 made the request, and especially Chairman Paladino at the 25 time, who gave his views to the National Academy, and the Heritoge Reporting Corporation o.a - - - _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ . _ - -
8 g reason at that time was that there had been a number of years 2 about three years, of declining budnets and declining support 3 for the research effort and there was a concern about that, 4 and that was the principal reason for asking the National 5 Academy to undertake the study. 6 The report's conclusions mention a number of things, 7 It talks in the very front about the principles of nuclear a safety research. That is to say, who should pay for the re-9 Learch, who should carry it out and who should set the agenda. 10 And it also--the second point that it makes, it 11 appears to make a very strong statement that the research in 12 this area should continue to be performed. 13 It also notes that sey.ious management issues affect 14 the research program and it goes into some detail on exactly 15 what it means by that comment. 16 In my view, this is an excellent study which the National Academy's Committee prepared. It is apparently 17 gg critical of the Research Office, but I think more broadly it is critical of the NRC in its decisionmaking, its decision-19 20 making on research policy and research policy on the budget. 21 There are a number of very positive proposals in the report for correcting the situation. And the document 22 which I referred to, the response to the National Academy, 23 is the result of a lot of discussion and effort over the past 24 25 year in the Office of Research, with other offices in the Heritage Reporting Corporation
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9 i NRC, with the Executive Director, and with the Commission, j 2 and that response has gone through several iterations and i 3 it is intende] now that that be a final disposition of the 4 actions on the National Academy report and it essentially 5 tells everyone in there what it is that we are doing and 6 it is my opinion that that is a full and complete response. 1 7 It accepts almost all c?. the recommendations of the National 1 8 Academy with one exception. And it takes action on all of ; l 9 the things that were suggested, and so I think it is full i 10 and complete ir. that respect. And I'm very optimistic that j 1 11 we're going to in time see a favorable outcome, both on the l 12 National Academy's recommendations and we have actions which j 13 are being taken to follow up on it. j l 14 DR. MILLER: Excuse me. 15 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 16 DR. MILLER: How important is this fan to this 17 room? 18 MR. BECKJORD: It's not important to me. 19 DR. ROSS: It's cIsly relevant to people who smoke. 20 If you turn it off-- 21 MR. BECKJORD: Let's try it off and see how it 22 goes. 23 DR. MILLER: Thank you. 24 MR. BECKJORD: Well, I said something earlier about 25 the reasons for requesting this report originally. I think
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10 1 that I mentioned the decline in the budget and also I think-- 2 we have to face it--that there was a loss o' confidence on 3 the part of the budget decisionmakers in their review of the 4 program, the Research Program goals and applicabil:.ty. And 5 certainly there was a failure to communicate the substance 6 of the program effectively to that constituency. 7 Well, turning to the recommendations and the reason 8 for the committee, and I'm quoting from the report now. "T he 9 NRC should impanel an independent advisory group reporting 10 to the Director of Research with expertise in the range of 11 disciplines relevant to nuclear safety research. NRC needs
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12 a formal mechanism for acquiring external advice on the phi-13 losophy, the management, and the contents of the Research 14 Program." 15 There are five questions that are addressed in the 16 report, or I should say " posed," by the Committee relating 17 to the review of the Program, and these are what I think the 18 National Academy viewed as among the questions that you 19 would consider in your deliberations, and I will mention just 20 briefly. 21 First, does the Safety Research Program carry out 22 the charge of the research philosophy? Is it likely that 23 the program will meet the needs of the users within the NRC? l 24 Third, are the best people and the best laboratories in-l 25 volved in doing the work? Fourth, by inference--I don't know l Heritage R9 porting Corporation a (2c2) 42saaes
11 i I that it states this as a numbered question, but it's there l 2 in the text. It asks about effective planning, implementa- l 3 tion and management for the Research Program. And finally, j i is there an appropriate balance between short-range and long-4 l l 1 5 range research? ! 6 So these are the questions that the Committee posed 7 and I think they are the appropriate questions. In addi-8 tion to that, I have, which I'll cover it--I'm going to speak 9 again after a bit on the--to give you an introduction and to overview, and I do have in mind a couple of specific ques-11 tions relating to where we are right now that I would ask 12 the Committee to consider at your second meetLig. I believe ( 13 the Chairman is going to be talking about that later. 14 Our purpose at this meeting, as I said, was to give 15 you a general introduction to what our mission is and to 16 what the program consists of at this point, and at our second 17 meeting, I believe what we have discussed is going into some 18 detail in the proposed budget for fiscal year 1990, which is 19 the budget that we will be preparing very shortly for sub-20 mission to the NRC itself at the beginning of June and it's 21 that budget which is the first thing that we want to go over 22 with you specifically at the second meeting and get your re-23 view and comment on it. i 24 And I think I've said what I wanted to say now in 25 explaining the background and the purpose of the Committee. Heritogo Reporting Corporation (2c2) ans.asas
12 I And so I will stop now,. 2 DR. TODREAS* Let's entertain any questions though 3 first, Eric, to you. Okay. I guess there's nothing speci-4 fic at this point. 5 If you'll just take one of these. 6 What I've done is put together three sheets to hit 7 some of the specific things that I think are the overview 8 that we should focus on. The cover sheet is a statement of 9 basically the purpose and the activities. This is taken from 10 the Charter for the Committee and from the draft NRC Response 11 to the NAS Recommendations. 12 Eric, these are slightly different than the ones 13 you quoted. And I guess I'll have a question as soon as I 14 finish whether these are the five or t.here's modification to 15 the-- 16 MR. BECKJORD: No, I was loose 2y quoting. 17 DR. TODREAS: Okay. These then are what were 18 written in the Charter and reflected from the NAS. So as we 19 go through things, these are the five points that I think you 20 ought to keep up front. 21 Then in terms of overall apnroach to responding to 22 these objectives. If you turn to the second page, prior to 23 the meeting in working out a plan with Eric, we evolved a 1 1 24 scheme shown on the second page. There's a typo on the bot-( 25 tom. It should be " Spring 1989." The logic was to meet fall Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 62sm
2 ____ ___ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ . 13 1 and' spring. The meeting in the' spring--and now I'm jumping 2 to, say, May of '88, is timed to coincide wit'n the fact that 3 the Office has prepared a budget, submitted it to the Com-4 mission and within the NRC there are discussions ongoing, 5 but there is time and willingness for us to review in paral-6 lel, offer comments and get those comments debated, and re-7 solve within the final submission that Eric makes. 8 We can talk about the detailed timing with him. 9 The date of May was acceptable to Eric's office and was set to basically on the academie schedule to let us get through 11 final exams and get a little free before we met again. Meet-12 ing the end of April or early May is difficult relative to 13 the direct academic schedule. 14 The fall meeting and the report associated with the 15 fall '88 meeting to me is really key because independent of 16 the specific directions of the budget, there are an awful 17 lot of initiatives that the NRC, this Office, has proposed 18 in response to the NAS Committee report. .There are things 19 on philosophy, on management of the research, on programs 20 for staff. So independent of grappling with the budget, 21 which will swamp us in some detail, there are important 22 directions that need to be reviewed and assessed, so that 23 was what was sec up for the fall. And then we carry on in .. 24 the subsequent spring. k l 25 And with that scheme, then you can see that Heritage Reporting Corporation
4 14-1 February, which is our meeting today and tomorrow is to' 2 basically launch us, but without.a requirement coming'out-of 3 this meeting for us to issue a report. l 4 However, what I would like from everybody subse-- 5 quent to this meeting is a letter directed to me which gives 6 me your impressions, your comments, of the Program, of our 7 Charter, and directions so that I can take that and get us 8 directly on track as we go into the spring and the fall. 9 And I'd request that letter within two weeks. If that's a 10 hardship for anybody, let me know, but I think that's a good' 11 timing. The third page, I've' extracted the major program
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12 13 areas which I mentioned earlier. There are five. To me 14 they are interesting because they.are no't discipline oriented 15 directly. They are really functionally oriented, and.we've 16 got individual disciplines worked basically through the five 17 items. I think that will be healthy for us, because although 18 we're drawn in part because we represent knowledge in speci-19 fic disciplines, I think tur biggest value is taking that 20 basic knowledge, but looking at the Program as a whole and 21 commenting on the overall balance, the overall direction as 22 a whole without. focusing unduly in just the spcific area of 23 disciplines and maybe overemphasizing or underemphasizing 24 that. 5 25 So that we, I think, should organize and focus Heritogn % porting Corporation
15 3 along these five programmatic areas which is how the office 2 is organized. We will be writing a response to the Office-3 based on the budget in May and as part of that process at 4 the end of tomorrow, I'd like to see if we can identify for 5 each member of the Committee one of these five areas that 6 suits your interest, your background, for you to focus on 7 Particularly, and that would include, although it doesn't s necessarily have to include, a vioit to one or more of the 9 major contractor facilities doing that work in the spring as a 10 kind of background for you relative to the May meeting. 11 I think that would depend on everybody's specific 12 interest and background and knowledge. But the idea of 13 lining up on these five areas in a structural way before we g4 break up tomorrow is something I have in mind. 15 I think these three overall points which I wanted 16 you to bear in mind before we basically heard Eric's overall 17 summary which is really the key initial statement. I'd pro-18 Pose we move to that and then consider the "soints that I've 19 made together after we hear from Eric unless you have spe-20 cific questions now. 21 Okay, why don't we move along, and I think your 22 talk on that will feed together. 23 DR. MILLER: Pete Miller. At' some ? Jint we've _ 24 going to fix a particular date in May? 25 DR. TODREAS: Yes.
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3 DR. MILLER:- Later on I guess. j 2 DR. TODitEAS: Yes, And that will be between the I 3~ 20th and the 30th. J Would you'rather 4 MR. BECKJORD: Can you see that?
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5 have the light on? 6 DR. TODREAS: It can be dimmed.in the back. ; 7 MR. BECKJORD: Well, this is the outline of what J a 8 I intend to say in giving you this overview of the Research , l 9 Prog::am. j 10 DR. BUSH: Are these available, Eric? l l 11 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 12 DR. BUSH: Are they in the package? 13 MR. BECKJORD: Bob, is this in the-- 14 DR. SHEPARD: No. I 15 MR. BECKJORD: First, on the research mission. I ! j 16 want to emphasize that in the legislation, the enabling le-17 gislation for the Commission, there is a brief. comment on 18 the nature of the research, which is the NRC can carry out 19 by law. And that is made very clear and very briefly that ; 20 NRC's research shall be of a confirmatory nature relating 21 to the needs of safety regulation and not development. In 22 other words, we do not engage in--we may not engage in the 23 development of new systems for the use of the technology 24 that the Commission regulates. 1 25 What I wanted to mention now is turn to the Heritage Reporting Corporation I (***) **** _ _ - _ _ . _ - - _ _ _ - _ _ - -
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' Philosophy Statement. The National Academy report strongly-2 urges the Commission to develop a philosophy of safety 3 research, and we.have attempted to do that. .That statement ]
4 of philosophy was prepared initially in March of 1987 by the 5 Office Directors and several other--a small group of people 6 who were knowledgeable in the matter that we were discussing - i 7 and it evolved over a period of about a mcnth. It went
-l 8 through a number of drafts. It was, I would say,.quite I It was a very controversial statement and controversial.
to it was difficult to develop, the first. draft, the document,
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11 because of the wide diversity of views within the Commission i 12 of what it is that research ought to be doing. 33 But in the course of long discussions, we finally I 14 centered on what--I think there was a consensus of what the ) 15 important elements were, and those were incorporated in the 16 Philosophy Statement. l 17 Now, I think you have two versions of that. The i 1 18 version of last March is essentially the one that you,would i 19 receive in the draft response to the National Academy Report 1 20 dated in October. And it has been modified somewhat since 21 that time, and the final--what 'I expect will be the final 22 version for now is in the document that I've already re-- l 23 ferred to as the February response to the National Academy. 24 And I won't say a lot about that but the philo-j. l 25 sophy talks about the needs and the uses of research in the Heritoge Reporting Corporation 2m) == _ _ _
18 1 NRC. It sets forth the purposes which are two. Research in 2 order to make timely regulatory judgements, and this relates 3 to the confirmatory nature of the research that I've already 4 referred to. And a second purpose was to anticipate problems 5 of safety significance. And then it goes on to talk about 6 the structure of the proggam, the categories of knowledge 7 that are required, the scope of the Research Program. How 8 the scope is determined and how the priorities are deter-9 , mined. f 10 And then finally it has something to say about the 11 implementation of the program and about the closure of re-12 search efforts. What the consider 7tions should be when re-13 search work is closed out. 14 DR. MILLER: May I interrupt a second? 15 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 16 DR. MILLER: In this Research Philosophy Statement, 17 in reaching the consensus that you described, was a consen-18 sus only reached within the Commission or within your Office 19 or across-- 20 MR. BECKJORD: There were a number of meetings at 21 which consensus was obtained. I would say before we began 22 this process, we had discussions and did some work within 23 the Research Office. When we got to the meeting involving 24 the Office Directors and others--it was a drafting group of 25 about eight people--what became apparent was that the other Heritage Reporting Corporation L_ . . omyy
19 1 offices were really focused on the. user needs. I mean all-2 of their attention was on the user needs, and so these dis-3 cussions didn't go very well at the beginning because there 4 is also the question of longer-range research and user needs 5 and. longer objectives are not always entirely compatible, 6 so this is really what made it--that took some time to evolve 7 the statement. 8 The statement that came out from this working group 9 of eight people, including the Office Directors, was a con-10 sensus. Everyone agreed at the end that that was the right 11 statement. And we gave that statement to the Commission.. . 12 Well, we reviewed it first with the Executive Director for 13 Operations and then we took it to the Commission and got j4 their comments on it. And then we went to a group--I should 15 have said that this was done under a strategic planning 16 effort. And there were very many more people involved in 17 the strategic planning. So there was discussion with this 18 strategic planning group and there was some modifications at
' that time, relatively minor. And at the end of that there 19 was agreement that that statement would go forwa 1.
20 21 And then there was one more session involving a 22 meeting of the senior managers from all over the Agency and 23 there were perhaps a half a dozen items on the agenda that 24 required a lot of discussion including the research philo-25 sophy, so it did go through--it's been through a pretty Heritage Reporting Corporofion L . - - _ . - - - - - _ - - .
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20 l- thorough scrubbing process within the Commission. And then l 2 it received another review by the Commissioners. .I would say l
- I 3 an official review because the Commission approved the stra- ]
I 4 tegic plan last fall and then there were some comments, some 5 additional suggestions that-were made and.those are,the ones 6 that are incorporated in this' final statement now. 7 So I think it's fair to say that it does have agree-8 ment all around now. That that is the right statement. 9 DR. MILLER: I think my real question was at the 10 Department of Energy, at the OMB, and other important federal 11 agencies that interface, have they seen and/or agreed with 12 this Philosophy Statement? I' 13 MR. BECKJORD: Well, it has not been presented to
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14 them as a formal question. 15 DR. MILLER: No, I understand that, but in the 16 formative stages-- l Il 17 MR. BECKJORD: I think that the visibility that 18 it's going to get now will be as a consequence of this re- ! 19 sponse to the National Academy, because that will be pub- .) 20 lished and sent out widely.
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21 Yes? 1 22 DR. HOUSTON: You might want to tell them that it 23 was exposed to the senior managers in the laboratories. 24 MR. BECKJORD: Yes, that's another point. And so 25 if there is external comment, I would'say that's yet to come, Heritage Reporting Corporation naa.
21 -! I and it may come up in the budget hearings. In the budget , 2 cycle last year, there were questions raised about the--you l l 3 know, what are you doing about the National Academy's report? ) 4 And a brief answer was given at that time. I think if that 5 question comes up again, which I think it will, I think what 6 we would do is give them the response document and so there a
'l 7 probably will be comment on it. I 8 Well, I was going to give an example to try and q u
9 make it a little more concrete the idea of what the difference l 10 or what defines confirmatory research. And I think that the 11 best example is on the question is on the loss of coolant 12 accidents and emergency core cooling systems for the light-13 water reactors. That's a subject that goes back many years 14 and the question raised that led to significant modification 15 of the charging and emergency cooling systems for water re-16 actors was raised about twenty-two years ago in 1966 at the 17 time when the first of the large reactors, the latest re-18 actors, were coming in to the AEC for licensing, and there _ 19 was a committee at that time, the Agency Core Cooling Com- -) 20 mittee, which Dave Morrison sat on. And that committee con-21 sidered the question that was posed about what the conse-22 quences of the break of large pipes would be. And it made 23 some recommendations at the time, both on what ought to be 24 done with regard to the immediate licensing question, and 25- also what ought to be done with regard to the research. Heritage Reporting Corporation (302) 6mmes
22 1 l 1 1 Well, since, that time an enormous effort was 1 marshaled en the question of emergency core cooling, and I. 2 3 think that the total expenditure in the U.S. alone, and there .. were very significant expenditures outside of the U S., was 4 5 in the order of a billion dollars or something like that, 6 with federal funds to a considerable extent, but also funding l 7 from industry, from the reactor manufacturers. And that re-8 search effort was I think both confirmatory because at the
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9 time in this time period of 1966 to 1968 the major decisions 10 were made with regard to emergency core cooling. That is to 11 say, what actions should be taken and what would constitute 12 a sufficient core cooling system. But those decisions were. 13 made with considerable uncertainties because there was little ) l 14 engineering experience which would relate to answering the i 15 total system for the question of how these systems.would per- ) 16 form. Although there was a considerable--there was a lot of 17- knowledge that was available and it was possible to make 18 some very good predictions--some reasonable predictions, of j 19 what might happen. ! 1 20 So the Research Procram was established in order 21 to answer these questions finally, and essentially that has 1 22 taken place. There is a document called--it's Appendix K, l 23 which relates to the emergency core cooling system technology 24 and Appendix K goes back to about, what, 19727 A revision 25 has been--it's public now. It's received public comment, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 6M-dess
23 i 1 I and it's.about to go final and that revision essentially in-2 corporates the knowledge which has been gainad since the 3 1970 period on all of the experiments and all of the codes 1 4 and the validation that has been done. So it was a very . 5 thorough job of confirmatory research, but I think it's j 6 fair to say that it was also--it was not just confirmatory. 7 There is a very considerable extent of new knowledge that 8 came out of that program on heat transfer--heat transfer 9 fluid flow, two-phase flow, in these systems which has--it's to a very impression piece of work. There are people sitting i 11 with you you are better able than I to comaent on that. 12 But I think that was a very important program, and I think ) I ( 13 it serves as an example of both what I think of when I say 14 confirmatory research and also the development of new know-15 ledge which is useful and applicable to reactor safety. 4 16 Well, so the mission is I think explained in the 17 Research Philosophy. 18 I want to turn now to the planning of the Research 19 Program. I believe you also have a document'which is called 20 the Five-Year Plan for Research. Did you all receive that?. 21 The Five-Year Plan is essentially what.it says. It's a basic 22 planning document. It sets forth my view based on the advice
.l 23 and input from the'Research Office Deputies, D'rs. Ross and 24 SPeis and from the Division Directors of Research, and you
(- 25 will hearing from each of them later today and tomorrow. l i Heritage Reporting Corporation , nm . j
i 24 ! i 1 And it's, as I said, based on their advice for the budget i 1 2 proposals, the fiscal 1989 budget proposals, which were as ; 3 they were of last summer. That is, the Five-Year Plan re-4 flects what our view was as of last summer. i 5 The Five-Year Plan document is out of date at this !, 6 point. The program elements are there, but the funding does 7 not correspond to the situation today, and I'm going to cover j { 8 that in the next section. Ill show you a Vu-Graph of what 9 the budget situation now is. 10 But the main thrust of the Five-Year Plan was to 11 show that there was a modest increase to the budget over the J 12 next couple of years arriving at an equilibrium level of i 13 about $126 million annually in fiscal 1991 and '92. It did 14 not go out beyond that period. But that was a significant 15 statement. 16 The other point I'd like to make about that--I'm 17 going to be talking later about the severe accident program, 18 which is a very significant part of our Research effort. The 19 budget shown in the Five-Year Plan arriving at this level of 20 $126 million did not fully accommodate the needs, as'the l 21 Office saw them, for the resolution of severe accident re-22 search questions. We have had an outstanding proposal on the 23 table since last spring about the additional effort that in 24 the Office's view would be required to complete the research 25 to resolve that issue. So that is still future business. Heritage Reporting Corporation . (202) 428-4000
_1 25 1 That is to say, the needs-- ofgetting an agreement on what the 1 2 needs are to resolve severe accident questions--it was not 3 fully accommodated in that Five-Year Plan. ]
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4 With regard to the--of course, what's happened ; i 5 since then is.that we've got a significant budget cut in fis-6 cal 1988 and a reduction in fiscal 1989, and that I think 7 puts us--in the question of severe accident research, we're ; 1 8 going to be playing--we're either going to be playing catch-1 9 up ball and we're going to have to convince the people in / 10 the budget decisionmaking process of the needs for more re- 1 11 search, or we're going to have to find a way to--we're going 12 to have to find an alternate solution, some new approach to 13 the problem, which might involve cooperation with industry 14 or perhaps a key funding type of effort. 15 But I'll say more about that later. 16 I want to show you budget figures now. 17 DR. BUSH: Eric, could I ask one question? I 18 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. ; I assame if you look at earlier Five- I 19 DR. BUSH: 1 l 20 Year Plans there are profound differences between this one, 21 which is already out of date, the one that you cited-- : 1 22 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. l 23 DR. BUSH: I assume we're going to start at ground 24 zero and look ahead and not look backward? 25 MR. BECKJORD: Yes, yes. The only point of looking
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a j a 26 .l i I I back is just to give you the history of it, to establish l 2 where we've come from. ; This is the history from fiscal82 through fiscal l 3 4 '89, and-the point of showing that is simply to--we'll see 5 that in fiscal '82 the budget was just over $200 million j i 6 annually and it had fallen to just under $100 million in j 7 fiscal 87., and this was the point at which the Commission i 8 requested the National Academy review of the Research Program 9 when it was evident that the' budget was falling-rather pre-l 10 cipitiously. 11 Now, there are a couple of comments on it. The 12 costs in this period do reflect the expensive reactor tests 13 in Idaho, the PBF, the Power Burst Facility fuel damage tests 14 and the loss of the loft testing program which was an'expen-15 sive program, so there were reasons for this reduction in 16 here, but I think it's evident to most of us that the' reduc-17 tions which were taking place were more than would be the 18 case if it was just the phasing out of those reactor experi-1 19 ments, so it does reflect what we say here, this loss of j l 20 support for the Research Program. l l 21 One other comment I should make about this. In ~j 22 looking at these figures, there is a reorganization-that took i 23 place last spring which transferred the people from the Of- ! 24 fice of Nuclear Reactor Regulation to Research, the people f I 25 who were working on the resolution of generic issues, so I Heritage Reporting Corporation
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27 I there are both some people in scope additions in this period 2 and the dollar figures are also impacted, because of the re-3 solution of generic issues costs some resources and so the 4 research is somewhat less than indicated. In other words, 5 I'm saying you are not getting a completely direct compari-6 sion of research dollars because out here we are also solv-7 ing generic issues. 6 So that's the budget history. And the budget to-9 day, which Dr. Bush pointed out, is what we should be start-10 ing from going forward. 11 This is the fiscal 1987 budget. This is the fis-12 cal 1988 budget consisting of $89 million after the reduc-13 tions that took place last fall, after the Gramm-Rudman issue . 14 And this is now the expectation of the fiscal ' 88 budget, ; i l 15 but I should say that this was an actual budget. This is 16 the budget we are working to now in fiscal '88 and this bud-17 get has yet to go through the Congressional hearings cycle 18 and so based on past history, leaving out the Gramm-Rudman 19 question, the budgets rarely stand--the final budget rarely 20 stands at the figure, and it would be reasonable--I certainly ' 21 expect a further reduction before it's finally approved. 22 DR. SHOAF: What dollars--FY 88 dollars? FY 89 23 escalated dollars? 24 MR. BECKJORD: No. These are all--this is the 25 actual budget. It's not directed in any way. Heritage Reporting Corporation j m n.4m
i 28 t I DR. MILLER: Eric, not to belabor the past, I 2 agree with that. But basically when I look at those trends i 3 and you made the comment and the National Academy made the 4 comment of support, lack of support--not being one of the 5 people who followed this closely, I don't know whether if I i 6 were to look at the President's submission, the Administra-7 tion's submission, whether that is the reason of its decline, 8 whether Congress has reduced the President's request.. What 9 has been the trend? Has the President's request gone down? l 10 Or has Congress reduced the President's request or both? 11 MR. BECKJORD: Well, I think that both--I can't 12 give you all of the history, but'I think it's a fact that l 13 both the Office of Management and Budget and Congress.have 14 made these redu.tions. And one other thing I can say about l 15 it. The Chairman of the National Academy Committee that I've 16 been talking about told me that in his view the major pro- ! 17 blem was communication, that the needs of the program have 18 not--for whatever reason, the program has not been sold. l 19 And we have been trying to overcome that and it is not an 20 easy job because it's not simply--it doesn't have to do with 21 just organizing it and turning out better documents. It's. 22 And we're going to have to make a bigger ! more than that. 23 effort on selling the budget than we have in the.past. 1 24 So this is where we are this year, recognized a 25 big reduction due to the problems throughout the government. l-Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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29 I This is the expectation as of 'oday, but I think a further 2 reduction could be expected for funding. 3 Well, what I would like to say is whatever comes 4 out of the budget process, this Office is going to get full 5 value for the expenditures, whether the budget is high, low 6 or somewhere in between. But the real question is what is 7 the extent and the depth of the' work that is needed to pro-8 vide the data and the knowledge for carrying out the NRC's 9 mandate on safety. That's the real question. 10 Another point is that adequate funding for this 11 research effort is, in my view, an absolute necessity. It's 12 necessary for doing the work that is needed now. But it's 13 also necessary to have a stable funding level to attract and 14 keep the people who can best do this work interested in it. i IS Because without the budget, the people will go off and do 16 something else. We need people who understand the science I 17 and technology that we're dealing with and we need to have 18 a continuing availability of those people for working on and i 19 solving the problems that will arise. And there will be new 20 problems come up. That's been the case for a long time. ; l 21 And it's my expectation for the future. 22 So I wanted then to turn to the organization and J 23 say a few about that. 24 The NRC Organization is on your--you have the pass-25 out. This is the complete NRC organization. There was a Heritoge Reporting Corporation wm
30 1 reorganization in April of 1987. Com. Zack's purpose in carry-7 ing out that reorganization was to have the entire Agency 3 focus on the safety of operating plants of which there are 4 about 109 now and a few more to go. 5 The era of new construction is almost over. And 6 the consideration of license applications is finished. So 7 the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation is getting out of 8 the application review business, and this was the main or-9 ganizing principle for the reorganization. 10 Now, what did this mean for Research? Well, out 11 of this change, the Research Office continues to have the 12 obvious assignment, previous assignment, for the Research 13 Program. But it is also--it has two new responsibilities 14 which were shifted to it. One on the resolution of generic 15 safety issues and unresolved safety issues, and Dr. Speis is i i 16 j going to talk about this. These are the issues that relate i 17 to a class of plants. This is a problem that would be common 18 to a number of plants rather than just plant specific. So 19 that was one assignment. 20 And the second one is the rule making for the en-21 tire Agency. The Research Office now performs rule making 22 for all of the other offices in the Agency. That is to say, 23 it drafts the rules, it gathers the technical basis for it, 24 drafts the rule, and takes it through the public comment and l 25 final approval process. Heritage Reporting Corporation m .a
31 i 3 Now, these things sound simple, but they have a 2 profound effect on Research in several ways. First of all, l 3 with regard to generic issues, which you are going to hear 4 more about. There's a lot of pressure on the Agency to re-5 solve the generic safety issues. There have been quite a 6 number of them that have accumulated since Three Mile Island. 7 There have been a number that are resolved, but there's 8 still a large inventory, and there is a lot of pressure by 9 many quarters on the Agency to resolve these questions. 10 So that's a big job and it means that the Research Office 11 has to focus both on the research and on the application of j 12 research that the resolution of these generic issues repre-13 sent. 14 There's another aspect of this which I want to men-15 tion. Because of this responsibility, Research is. developing 16 the technical basis for resolving these issues, but the Of-17 fice of Nuclear Reactor Regulation is the one that implements 18 these at specific plants. So there's a very important inter- ) 19 face between the Research Office and the-NRR, Office of Nu- , 1 20 clear Reactor Regulation. l 21 We have been working out that relationship since I 22 the reorganization. I think it's on a reasonable course i now. What we have attempted to do is to have the people in j 23 l 24 both offices work the issues from the beginning on through ; l 25 the resolution process so that there will be no discontinuity j Heritoge Reporting Corporation --__-_-_L__:_-_--------_-___--_-_-_______ _==~' _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ __ __ _j
.- 1 32' I when a resolution is passed on to NRR for implementation.
1 2 That is to say, there is an agreement'on both sides that the 1 3 solution is the right one and the necessary technical basis-4 has been prepared. I 5 .That takes a lot of time and a lot of effort so 6 it's a very important interface. 7 And I've asked Jim Sniezek, who is Deputy Director 8 of NRR, to join us.a little bit later this morning.to give 9 you his view on what the job.is and how it's going with.that to interface. 11 Let's see. With regard-to the--I wanted to say a 12 word about user needs, because what'I've said so far implies 13 that the user needs are just from the NRR Office, Nuclear 14 Reactor Regulation. But I don't want to leave that impres-15 sion becaure we have important interfaces with other offices 16 and the user needs from other offices as well. 17 The AEOD Office, that's the Analysis and Evalua-18 tion of Operating Data, on the operating light-water reactor 19 Pl ants, is a very important component'and the user needs on 20 reactors are established by discussion between ourselves and 21 these two offices. The AEOD if, of course, more interested i 22 in the actual operating performance today and the performance ] 23 indicators are their responsibility and we're carrying out some research efforts on those performance indicators. So 24 25 that's an important interface. l l i Heritage Reporting Corporation ! _" _ _ __.___ _ _______.___,__ _ __________.____________ _ __ _ _ ___ _ ___..___ _ _ _ _ (302) _ _ _ _ _ _M_ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ __
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1 Also, the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and 2 Safeguards, which among other things is concerned with.high-3 level and low-level waste management, and we do a small but 4 very significant--we run a.very significant waste research 5 management program for that office. They have other in-6 terests, of course. One thing which we're 7oing to be talk- j 1 7 ing about is human factors, and the NMSS Office, I should-8 say, has not only responsibilities in waste, but they are 9 responsible for licensing all of the applications of radio-10 isotopes in hospitals and universities and elsewhere. And 11 so they have considerable interest in the question of human i 12 factors and how the impact of human factors on all of the 13 activities that they are rseponsible for regulating. So I 14 think that over this next year we're going to be considering 15 not only the human factors questions that relate to reactor 16 operation, but also we will be considering some of the needs 1 17 for this other kind of regulatory activity. 18 DR. TODREAS: Eric, are you moving off of what I 19 you call user needs? 20 MR. RECKJORD: Yes. Well, what I wanted to say 21 was the user needs that we work on are' defined essentially 22 by these three offices. 23 DR. TODREAS: Okay, by the three? l 24 MR. BECKJORD: Yes, yes. j i 25 Also, I should say that, I think when you think l 1
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I when you think about it, that it's clear that the Research i 2 Office itself has user needs now because of the resolution l l 3 of generic issues, which you'll be hearing more about. So ; 1 1 4 we generate our own as well. 5 This is our office here. Two Deputy Directors, 6 Dr. Ross for Research, and Dr. Speis for Generic Issues. 1
? There are four divisions. You'll be hearing from each of j l
l 8 the Division Directors. Guy Arlotto, Division of Engineering , l 9 Division of Reactor Accident Analysis, Wayne Houston, Dr. 10 Houston. Division of Reactor and Plant System, Dr. Brian 11 Sheron. And Division of Regulatory T. applications, Dr. Bill 12 Morrison. 1 13 And as Professor Todreas has pointed out, we do l 14 describe our program in functional terms now, so the five 15 functions which our budget has addressed, there is some 16 overlap among these offices. The Primary System Integrity l 17 is entirely within the Division of Engineering. The Divi-18 sion of Engineering has also the considerations of contain-19 ment performance from the point of view of the capability ;d 20 containments, the engineering capability. 21 Division of Reactor Accident. Analysis a what it 22 says, but it's concerned with the loadings on ..e containment. 23 That is to say, that the generation of energy and the things 24 which can threaten containments. 25 The Division of Reactor and Plant Systems is Heritoge Reporting Corporation 1----------------- - - - - - - - - - - - --
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35 , I concerned with systems performance, the very considerable 2 thermal-hydraulics effort that's been underway. The active 3 managsment which we're going to be talking about, and human 4 factors is now in that division. l i I 5 So I'm going to move on now to the major activities 6 in 1988, and there are four of them. I'm just going to men-7 tion them because you're going to be hearing in more detail 8 about them later, but I wanted to state them to indicate my 9 view on how important they are. First of all, MARK I containment. We have a study 10 11 under way now with the objective of procuring some prelimi-12 nary recommendations on MARK I containments which will be 13 presented to the Commission in April of this year and then a final recommendation which will be cade in August. And the 34 15 reason for undertaking this study is that--our best view is 16 that these containments are vulnerable to an extreme severe 17 accident. The extreme case of a core meltdown. And more 18 SPecifically, that there is a significant probability of 19 early failure of some sort in these containments if there 20 were a core-on-the-floor, so to speak. 21 Now, this is not really new. This was one of the 22 things that was pointed out in Professor Rasmussen's study, WASH-1400 of thirteen years ago. You are going to be hearing l 23 l l 24 later about 1150. I think the conclusion from the latest ( 25 reactor risk study, which is NUREG-1150, gives essentially Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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36 1 l i 1 I the same kind of conclusion, that there's a significant 1 ( ) 2 failure probability. And more specifically, that in such i 3 an accident, either through over pressure or through exces- l j 4 sive temperatures within the containment structure, that 5 a leak would develop. And one way in which that might hap-
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6 pen, for example, would be if there was a complete meltdown of the core, that the linur in the MARK I containments would { j 8 be subject to attack by a material which would cause the )1 l 9 leak. l l 1 10 So that's a very important question which is get- l l 11 ting very careful consideration now, consideration of not l 1 12 only what the consequences might be, but of what some of the ( 13 fixes might be and what the value of these fixes would be. 14 Dr. Speis is going to cover that in more detail. 15 The second thing that he's also going to cover is 16 the generic safety issue resolution question. 17 As I mentioned before, there'3 a lot of pressure 18 on the Agency to resolve this inventory of generic issues, 19 and there are some very important onas relating to hydrogen. 20 He's going to be talking about that. Relating to decay heat 21 removal systems. So these are the issues that get right to 22 the heart of the reactor safety. l l l 23 DR. TODREAS: Do you have a schedule, basically 24 internal commitments on dif ferent of L.ese issues to resolve 25 it and put them to bed? Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 428 4488
~ 37 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. . We can give you that, and Dr.
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'SPeis has given a presentation which we can get you a copy.of
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l 3 which sets all that forth.
;l 4 A third' item which is related to severe accidents.-
5 I've said that that's a major. issue on our own research 6 agenda now. And there is a Commission policy-on severe acci-l 1 7 dents and it's in the implementation of that policy that.the o i g Commission has called for what is. referred to as the Inde-i 9 pendent Plan Examination. Dr. Speis is'also going to talk to about that. And that's n' program which is about to begin. 11 In two months' time we will be sending out what's called'a 12 Generic Letter to each of the operating. plan licensees-~which [ 33 will call for an examination of that pl' ant to uncover if g4 there are any vulnerabilities-of that plant which could ; 15 either lead to or exacerbate an accident. That program will J 16 be going on over the next'several years. The Generic Let-17 ter contains quite a lot of information on the kind of.ana-l 18 lysis that is to be done by the licensee in making an evalua- .] l 39 tion. O That is going to be a major focus of our activity 21 I would say not only this year but in the next two or three ) 22 years. j 23 The fourth thing I want to point out is this study, , the Reactor Risk document, NUREG-ll50. Dr. Ross is going to ' 24 I l 25 give you a detailed presentation on that. That is essentiall / j Heritoge Reporting Corporation imumm ;
[ 38-1- in a way it's an update of the WASH-1400 report, but'it in-2 corporates all of the new thinking on risk analysis.which
'3 has been developed since then and it-incorporates not only 4 what is known as the public domain, but also there are some-5 further advances which have been initiated by the contractors 6 working on that report. .Sandia, Batelle in Columbus, Idah'o 7 and some others. And it's a very important document. It was 8 issued in draft form just a year ago and it's been through 9 public comment, some critical as some of you may be aware of to it. We also established a Peer Review Group under Profes .
11 sor Cassenburg, at the University of Southern California, 12 and he has assembled a group.of experts, including one from 13 overseas, to help him review the document. We've had a-draft 14 si of comments from the Cassenburg Committee, and we will 15 be obtaining their final comments on NUREG-1150 iraft in i 16 March, next month. J 17 And Dr. Ross is going to tell you more about that. 18 There are two other things I'd like to say about 19 NUREG-ll50. It's going to be important--it's important not 20 only--it's a milestone, it's an update of WASH-1400, but it's 1 21 going to be a tool that will be used in risk judgements on ! 22 reactor. regulation for years to come until a time comes for l 23 a new one, which might come--it seems to happen--there's , 24 about a ten or eleven-year cycle on that. I haven't re-( - 1 25 searched that further, but that is a fact, at least going Heritoge Reporting Corporation 3 nen .mme ;
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39: ;j l I back.now thirty years, let's say, and that's what happened. H p 2 And it's going to be used not only for regulatory purposes-3 butLit is going to be used for 'the purpose of guiding the 4 Research Program. 5 We're in a situation--there are a lot of things :{ 1 6 that we could br working on. We think we're working on the 7 important questions. But there aren't enough resources to
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8 work on all-of the; questions, and so it's' essential to-work 1 9 on the really essential questions. And the NUREG-1150 is-
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10 going to help us focus on those questions, and it's also
!! going to help focus on the specific questions. That is to 12 say, which experiment is the most important to run, and.that 13 type of thing. And-so it's going to be a very important
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14 document to'this effort. And that's a top priority effort. i 15 We've been through a very difficult period over 'l 16 the budget, as you can gather by just considering what hap-17 pens when you take a 20 pcreent cut in the budget. But 1150 18 hasn't been touched by that so far.and it won't be touched, ! 19 whatever else happens.this year, because we have to finish 20 that document. And finish it in a way that it will' receive i 21 a consensus externally. That it is a proper and scientific 22 effort. i
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23 Research Program Structure, I was going to say 24 more about that, but.I think it's important to move ahead 25 now. The Research Program Structure is the one that'is . Heritoge Reporting Corporation I (son) ese.ases
( 40-1 outlined in the Five-Year Plan. It's the one that Professor I 2 Todreas referred to. 'It's the prima. , system integrity, pre-3 venting core damage, integrity of containment, the nuclear 1 4 waste--establishing the technical basis for nuclear waste 1 l 5 management, and finally the generic issues. I
. .. l 6 Those five categories' comprise all of'the work that 1
7 we do. We've spent a lot of time in the last year developing - j i 8 not only that categorization, but developing the explann-9 tions. I think it's been important to us.. It's helped to J
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10 . improve our own thinking on the subject of what's important i 11 and my expectation is that it will be a very useful way of
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12 cxplaining what we are working on and why it's tmportant tx) l 13 the budget decisionmakers. i i 14 So I would appreciate'any comment or suggestions 15 that you would have with regard to this structure and also 16 to the explanations. I thiss; we can give you a. version which j l 17 has improved somewhat since the Five-Year Plan. I'll look 18 into that. And then we also have a short version which we 19 will make available to you. ; 20 With that, I would like to turn to the Research 21 Initiatives,-the new departures this year. And there are l l 1 22 several of these. 23 Let's see, I left one of them out. I think they l 24 are self evident. 25 The Research Initiatives--accidents this year, Heritage Reporting Corporation nan =*= ,
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41 I fiscal '88, accident management', the Three Mile Island,' Unit (' 2 2, reactor vessel bottom head examination, human factors' 3 and the thermal-hydraulics work out. Just to say a word-on 4 each of the three of these. 5- Accident management--it's important for us to work 6 on. I think if you look back at the history of. reactor'ac-7 cidents, at least in my accounting of them, that in.some way 8 the response to the' accident on the part'of operators.and j 9 other people who came to the scene afterwards, that the 10 actions of these groups taken together was important in the 11 recovery in every case but one. And also'.it's a fact that
- 12 in respect to. causing accidents, that operators have been
$ 13 involved, either to cause an accident in a couple of cases. 14 or to make it worse, but I think'what's more important'is 15 that they were also involved in the recovery, in the satis-l 16 factory recovery. This was certainly true at Three Mile 17 Island, and it was true in another sense, .I.think, Chernobyl 18 because the consequences of the accident at Chernobyl could 19 have been considerably more, considerably. greater than they 20 in fact were, but for the important actions which were taken 21 in the days and week following that accident. 22 So the problem now is to do the systematic studies l 23 that identify the strategies of success in coping with.se-l 24 vere accidents in the light-water reactors that we are in- ,( 25 terested in. i Heritoge Reporting Corporation non a..a
42 1 Also to utilize the knowledge which has been de-( 2 veloPed over the past ten years of severe accident phenomena. I 3 Knowledge which is increasing every year. 4 And finally to develop the technical base for im-5 Proving the Emergency Operating Procedures, and that has to 6 do with a number of things. It has to do with the training 7 and qualification of operators, with the procedures and 8 finally with emergency response measures. 9 I note that in the probabilistic risk assessments 10 that are traditionally made, that there is no credit taken 11 for reactor cpera tor actions. And in fact, in both WASH-1400 12 and in NUEEG-ll50, the assumption is made that there are im- !( 13 portant errors made by the operators and these are factored 14 in to the risk studies. 15 So what I'm saying is that I think there's an im-16 Portant potential for risk reduction through the developments 17 which we can foresee in an Accident Management Program. And 18 we have been working on that program for the last year. It's 19 really getting in gear now and I think it is going to be 20 making important progress over the next year. 21 Dr. Sheron will be telling you more about that. 22 The second thing I want to rention is the TMI II 23 reactor vessel bottom head. As you are probably aware, the a ys Department of Energy has had a program for the last nine 25 y'ars to uncover what actually happened in the Three Mile Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) ste-4sas
43 l I Island vessel during the accident. And what we know now -
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2 from about a year and a half ago or so is.that there is some- g i 3 thing in excess of twenty tons of molten materinl, molten 4 fuel, that went to the bottom of the vessel. Somewhere be- _l 4 5 ' tween twenty and twenty-five tons.- Now,-I think if you had l
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6 asked the knowledgeable people on the morning of the accident 7 at Three Mile Island, if you had said to them, "There's 8 twenty tons or more of molten material on the bottom of the 9 vessel. Is the vessel going to maintain integrity?" I 10 think the answer that you would have gotten at the time,1was-11 "No, the vessel will not." But, in fact, the vessel did 12 maintain its integrity. And so that's very.important in the i 13 consideration of this accident management that I've been 14 talking about. 15 And what we want to find out now and it's-essen-16 tial to find out is, in fact, Mhat is the condition of the 17 TMI II reactor vessel bottom head. 18 DOE, the Department of Energy, has essentially
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'19 handed its program short of finding out that information.
20 And so the Research effort is undertaking that as of now. 21 We moved on that last fall. We let a contract in January .]
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22 to get the samples from the. bottom head for laboratory 23 examination. We are on a very tight schedule. We've got 24 a window of next October of about a month when we can go in 25 and take these samples without interfering with the other Heritage Reporting Corporation m.
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J 44 l' things that are underway by the general public utilities at-2 -the site. , ' And that's important because if Tne were not then j 3 able to1 complete the work-at that time we will be holding-4 them up, and that would add very. considerably.to the cost 5 of.getting those samples. So that's a crash program which 6 we are funding from our budget. It in effect was another-- 7 it had an impact on'the budget because there was no' money in . J 8 the budget to do this, and so.we'had to stop other things.in 9 order to take up this activity. 10 We're not passing the hat on this work. I've been i 11 to the OECD in November and I was in~ Japan.in December to 12 get some funds to support that effort. I'm going to be going L 13 back to the OECD in March to see if we can tie that down. , 14 And then I think our intention after that is to go.back again 15 to DOE and discuss that subject with them again. 16 And I've discussed it with the Nuclear Utilities 17 Management Group which has newly been established in Washing-78 ton New Mark. I've gone to them and I've asked them to 19 consider gathering support from industry, from the utility 20 industry, on this project because'of its obvious importance. l 21 Finally, on human factors--not finally. ' Human l 22 factors you will be hearing about from Brian Sheron. There 23 is another National Academy report committee under way which 24 Professor Sheron'can tell us a lot about because he's the -f ( 25 chairman of the National Academy's committee on that subject. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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IL He's not the-chairman of the'groupLthat's.doing'the study, 2 but he's the chairman of the group that' sits over the study.- 3 We have.some idea of--we.have an informal idea'of 4 what that report is going to say. The report will-be issued 5 at the end of February. We have in the'meantime,~since last 6 summer and fall, we've undertaken to put our own program to-7 gether, which is getting underway now. We'will receive the 8 National Academy's recommendations on human factors, and we 9 will respond to that to the best.of our ability. I say that 10 because I am quite sure that the National Academy is. going; , 11 to--that their report will suggest that-we do a lot of 12 things and while I certainly agree with what- I Lknow about re-L 13 ports what they are suggesting is very good. I just don't 14 know that we'll be able to fund all of it. 15 So human factors--I note that thermal-hydraulic 16 research is tapering off. I believe it should taper off. l 17 And, as I said, earlier there's been an enormous' amount of i 18 work underway on the emergency core cooling problem. That , 19 has been a very successful effort and.I think'for the needs. ,
.. I 20 of this regulatory agency in that area, we have accomplished !
1 21 almost the complete agenda. There are still problems to l 22 - solve. As one person has put it, important pockets of ther-i 23 mal-hydraulic problems to' solve. And there is also an on- i 24 _ going need for that knowledge and that technology and a'need 25 for maintaining the capability in that area.. And so what we Heritoge Reporting Corporo+ ion i l nann.
F' U l 46 I are doing now is thinking.about the question of what are the-I 2 pockets, the problem that remains to be ' solved and what is the ,j 3 . ongoing' level of effort that-is appropriate now? And in any 4 . event,.that means some tapering off of-research in the' area 5 if for no other reason to make room for other more urgent-6 research activities. s I 7 DR. TODREAS: Just one thing._ I interpret that to 8 be LOCA related. U 9 ' MR. BECKJORD: Yes. I 10 DR. TODREAS: Because in the severe. accident, 11 there's several hydraulic'research which;is'very-- 1 1 1 12 MR. BECKJORD: Yes, that's a very good point. . { 13 That's exactly what I mean. That the tapering off relates 14 to the design basis accident or the loss of coolant accident 15 and this is one of the--we are developing our views on that 16 and by our next meeting we will be telling you what those 17 are in some detail, and that's one' thing that we'd like you 18 to comment on at that time. i 19 Well, just a few words in closing. The prospect 20 of your committee's review. I.think we've' talked enough for l 21 now in the introductory matter about the questions'which we 22 would like.you to consider. ' And I would just . reiterate that: 23 we have also considering it may take a while for the commit-l t 24 tee to come to grips with all of those questions, but we do 25 have in mind thic interim goal of the comment on the budget
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l I which we will_be submitting at thelheginning of' June this (' 2 year for Cc.4 mission consideration. ; 3 1.-d I think that covers what I'need to say'at this 4 point. Are there any questions? 5 DR. MILLER: On this transparency here, allt of
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6 these Research initiatives, one could map into your five ] i 7 program elements, is that not true? I 8 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 9 DR. MORRISON: . Eric, a question on calibration. 10 In the Five-Year Plan you;were working up to about $126 11 million as kind of a steady. number. Is that number good in 12 your mind as an absolute and what you are' dealing with then-( 13 is the relative distribution among the' baggage that you carry 14 over from the past versus the fire drills that you are 15 called upon to do on a day-to-day basis? Or should one even 16 question the $126 million? 17 MR. BECKJORD: I guess the way I'd answer _that. 18 When we were working over the budget last summer,.we were -l 19 given a mark to work to and there was a. lot of discussion 20 over that. And we sat down one' day and'said, "Okay, what. I 21 is it that we really need?. Surely it's more than this mark. 22 And the figure that we came out with1was about $130 million ; 23 in round numbers. A little over that. I think it was $132' ! 24 million in dollars at that time to cover the essential re-r 25 search needs but that did not cover what we were regarding as l i Heritage Reporting Corporation , i (282) 628 4884
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48< ! l 1- .a one-time adder on the resolution of the severe accident 2 question. That is, the~ effort that would be needed to. carry 1 3 .out the special experiments that would settle questions of j 4 the progression of core melting, of the generation of hydro-5 I gen during the time of core melt, and some other things re-6 lating to interactions of molten core material ~.with struc-1 7 tures. I think that-there is an important one-time matter 8 there. 9 We had a number earlier this year--we're1 going to 10 be thinking about that again very carefully. The. number, as 11 I recall, was if you take the level of, say, $130 million a 12 year over a five-year period, the estimate last' summer on ( 13 this adder was about $40 million over the five years. We 14 are going to take another look at that'and I guess what I'd 15 say, that was our past view and we will be coming up with 16 another view of that now. There are a lot of things that 17 we'vi, learned since that time which.may affect the estimate. 18 DR. BUSH: Eric, let me ask if you have something-- Do you.have I 19 not for today, but looking ahead at the meeting. 20 the inverse or the interaction between your major elements, l 21 such as integrity of reactor components to the divisions to j l
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22 see where the overlaps are? Because that sometimes can be- 1 l i 23 a substantial factor as to how well a program operates or l 24 doesn't operate? l 25 In other words, integrity of reactor components Heritoge Reaorting Corporation. l 202) 620 4000
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! is pretty much under the Division of Engineering.
2 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 3 DR. BUSH:- Preventing damage-to reactor. core is i 4 conceivably covered in at least two divisions, I suspect. 5 MR. BECKJORD: It could. It's mostly.'in the Plant 'I l 1 6 and Systems Division. That's a fairly clear demarcation. 7 The one that is somewhat less clear is the third one, which 8 is the reactor containment integrity because the structural 9 part of it is in Guy Arlotto's division. And the loading 10 questions are in Wayne Houston's division. Also there's f Il another element which you'll be hearing something about from 12 Dr. Morris, which is a. health protection--radiation and' r . d < 13 health protection. Also, that category, radiation and health 14 protection, was put into that third category. I don't have. 15 any special probl :m with it. .It'does mean that.we have to ;
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16 be a little more articulate in describing that activity. 17 I guess from an organizational point of view, what 18 is on my mind right now is the matter of the response to the l 19 generic safety issues and whether we are best organized to 20 deal with those questions. We have had--you may have no- l ! 21 ticed on those charts, the people power associated with this j 22 effort has declined significantly over the last three years. ) i 23 The plant personnel reductions. And I think we are hard-24 pressed right now just peoplewise to cover. It may be that ; ( , 25 we can develop--you know, improve our response and interfaces i Heritage Reporting Corporation. (son) ass.4ess .l
50-I ' s'o that we can regain some of'that'. 2 DR..TODREAS: If I could, I.had a similar question 3 about that. I guess I'd-like to just advance'this and'just-4 ask youlto give it to us.after lunch. What I see is aL five 5 by four matrix with checks 1in it.. And particularly where 6 waste disposal fits and where the resolving safety issue
? fits within these four divisions, and then if you want to do 8 it, you can put two checks--you.know, one lead,'one contri--
9 buting--I mean I thin'k somebody can do that in ten or fifteen 10 minutes. 11 MR. BECKJORD: Okay, we'll do'that. 12 DR. LEVY: A similar question. When I look at. your- { 13 major activities in 1988, they are all oriented towards solv-14 ing or putting something out that you need in the very-near i 15 short term. And it raises a question of how much money is l 1 16 going on these major activities versus what I would call 17 much longer-term research, like experiments, core melt pro-18 gression, and these kinds of things. 19 MR. BECKJORD: We'l'1 give you the homber-- 20 DR. LEVY: And I think I would like to understand 21 how that splits, because I'm a little concerning having_ moved 22 these activities to the Research Department, it's not very 23 clear to me they'll not swallowing up a.large portion of the 24 budget. !( 25 MR. BECKJORD: Yes, that thought occurred to-some Heritage Reporting Corporation
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51-1 of us. The generic issue resolution this year amounts to [ 2 I think about $6 million of the budget. The 1150 is--expli-L 3 citly earmarked for 1150 is about $4 million, but it's going 4 to cost somewhat more than that and there are some.other 5 activities. I think--Dennie, what do you figure? What's a 6 true total cost of 1150 this year? More.than $4? 7 DR. ROSS: I would say not much more than that 8 this year. There will be some lingering charges next year' 9 for task work. 10 MR. BECKJORD: There is.a valid concern about the 11 impact on the Research of these near-term activities. 12 DR. TODREAS: Another similar question. While 1 { 13 you have your hat out for the TMI II bottom vessel head 14 examination, do you have any idea of how many dollars might 15 be involved in that program? 16 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. $6 to $7 million. 17 DR. TODREAS: Without any help, it's another major 18 cutback someplace. 19 MR. SECKJORD: Yes, that's right. That's right. 20 It's about half.this year. The cost-this year, the best 21 estimate is abont $2.5 million this year. I think that I 22 essentirf'ly the front-end money i.=
. sing to come--that NRC
?? i is going to have to supply the front-end money on that. I 24 We've asked the foreign partners'for half, which is the-25 traditional split. And I think we'll get an answer--I Heritoge Reporting Corporation cww.
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5 SNl l ' expect.to get an answer on that.- ~OECD now includes Japan. [' If the European partners.of OECD-don't come in-suff'iciently,I
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2 3 - think we can get all of it from Japan. And then'if we can-4 pick up some more from DOE or New Mark, then we can approach-
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'l 5 getting even again.
6 DR. BUSH: That one though is kind of fraught with 7 peril because.you can make an estimate, and all you have to 8 have is about two things go wrong and your estimate goes'down I l 1 9 the tubes, for the first'part of it,.getting the samples, ! 10 because if you break a few tools, you bring out a few extra i 11 people, and so forth, and suddently your numbers are up. ]
- 12. MR. BECKJORD: It's a'high risk measure.
[ 13 DR. BUSH: It's a very high-risk measure from the f 1 34 dollar point of view. 15 MR. BECKJORD: I have never thought that we really 16 had an alternative but to go forward with it.
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17 DR. BUSH: I'm not arguing. I'm just saying--and 18 your dollar is highly at risk, and it is not minus anything, ) 39 it may be plus quite a bit. 20 MR. BECKJORD: Well, the budget problem there, if 21 there is a problem, it's in '89, not in '88.- 22 DR. BUSH: .You've only got such a short window,. ) 23 it's either got it done or not. s 24 MR. BECKJORD:- That's right. 25 DR. TODREAS: Just before we let Eric sit down j Heritage Reporting Corporation .]
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I though, let me just focus you back to the big picture and I 2 just to make sure we've got everything on the table. 3 From this talk, you see-the general directions of-4 the division and from what1those three Vu-Graphs I laid out 5 for you basically are activities. The way I see it they are 6 activities which take us through next fall. The point I'm 7 making is that if we--or when we meet again in May, we will ] l 8 put out a letter report which is in response to the Direc- ) 9 tor's request that we comment about his budget structure. 10 It involves us in the program, but-it still is the budget, 11 the money, for next year. -We can also have another section i 12 of the report with broader issues, but basically thLt is d [ 13 deferred to the fall so that we focus each time on something 14 different and thereby just marshall our resources that way. 15 I thought about it. To me there's some perils with 16 doing that in that we get swallowed up with.near-term things 17 and miss the big picture by putting it off. On the other 18 hand, since the budget does drive things, if we go after the l 19 review of the budget with a broad view and we can make com- ) l i l- 20 ments on near term versus short term as part of that. And ] 21 then finally just listening to the Director's request, it j 22 seems reasonable that that's the type of comment that is 23 most helpful than at least a perstat in principle. I was
.4 willing to say let's deliver, that way. But I think that's
[ 1 i 25 the major direction which the talks that come after this ! i Heritage Reporting Corporation ! wm mm. l
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starts down-the road into details and going over the speci-t 2 fics,-so at this point 7-think it's-important that I hammer-3 this home to you and r... vare that if anybody--well, if you 4 .have feelings, opinions, misgivings, we bring them up at this 5 point'before we launch the ship in a certain direction. 6 DR. SHERIDAN: Neil, sort of.an administrative 7 thing. As we think about preparing our comments to you'about 8 the plan that you' requested within two weeks or whatever,
' is it your intent to share those among the committee?
10 D R'. TODREAS: Yes. 11 DR. SHERIDAN: Or not. And, you know, we might I2 if we have comments that we want to be private to you'that k I3 might be separated out'from the ones'that are expected to be 14 shared. I don't know. But I think we ought to know which 15 you intend to do with them. If you intend to share those. 16 DR. TODREAS: I intend to share those with the 17 committee but not necessarily beyond the committee. If 18 that's permitted by the regulations. I view this first as 19 making sure each of us really puts down their views while 20 they are fresh so we don't move into May.without doing that. i 21 And also as a way of exchanging thoughts among us and getting 22 us organized. So, yes, the letter will be shared among the 23 committee only if you have more private thoughts then.do 24 that. { 25 And also break up--I would ask you to. break up Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 6lem
55 3 your responses by kind of headings. In the two-headings [ 2 we're dealing with now are programs and making new-term budget 3 issues, and then the other issue is longer-term strategy 4 philosophy. management initiatives. 5 DR. LEVY: I think you had five major program areas 6 But then I listened to the 'aummary' presentation and I see 7 some other areas like human factors. It Will probably be a 8 new program added to that when the Academy report.comes out. 9 Then I hear accident management. So I think we need to make 10 sure there aren't some other major program areas besides 11 these five. I think eventual 37 it needs to.have a tie up 12 to the dollars in all of these areas.- Like, you know, the [ 13 loss of coolant accident. Is that going to eat up any more 14 money in the next few years? If it's'several millions, it 15 has to appear here. I'm just trying to make sure we're get-16 ting the totality of the R&D programs. 17 DR. TODREAS: I think of this in terms of another (_ 18 matrix. I think they are organized into these five areas. 19 But then there are specific programs.which you are talking , 20 about. Each one of them fits--I think it's got to fit in 21 one of these five areas. ; i
.22 MR. BECKJORD: Do you think we'have enough iden- l 23 tification--
l 24 DR. LEVY: Well, I'm not too sure that you have. 25 LIke the TMI II examination. Like the human factors. Heritoge Reporting Corporation (202) us mos
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I 1 1 1 You know, maybe you can fit them in, but I like to make sure J [ 2 we're capturing their R&D program-- , 3 DR. TODREAS: Well, the way I would resolve this 4 is to ask you tomorrow by the afternoon is to set up another l 5 matrix five by however many key program elements there are 4 i 6 and just show where those fit and I think what the dollars l l 7 tied to those are and you can start with the--basically with ! l 8 the nine items on your two graphs. Research Initiatives j l 9 and Major Activities for '88. That's where I think you've I J go picked up your examples. I l 13 DR. MILLER: Let me see if I can carry on the part l 12 of what we are doing. What do you see in May of 1988 coming l ( 33 out as a written report? In other words, do you see us-- l 14 for example, am I to picture in my mind RES having a particu- ) 15 lar budget of perhaps these program elements on it, and let's l 16 say you ought to increase this, you ought to increase that, i
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what comments are you talking about in the written report? 17 18 Because the degree to which we want to be commenting on our 39 opinion of what ought to be increased or decreased in my 20 mind should be driven more by the following meeting. So I'm 21 back here again wondering what are we going to be saying in 22 May of 1988? 23 DR. TODREAS: Let me first say yes to the example 24 that you gave to get you on a track. It's a response to a 25 budget proposal. So the answer has got to bo yes. But the ,. Heritage Reporting Corporation m usa.
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1 details and the specifics that we get into, at least the f L 2 .way your example came to me--I guess my feeling is we ought l 3 to stand on a little higher ' ground- than that. And talk about j
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4 near term versus short term. Talk about major technical 5 areas whether they are initiated, deferred or not.- I'm not 6 sure how much detail down on the.line' items we ought to go ) 7 into and get enmeshed in the detailed specifics that your J 8 office really has the function t'o do. 9 I've got a little trepidation about going too deep to and getting enmeshed in-- 11 DR. MILLER: Well, I didn't mention that, but those 12 five program elements go down to seventy-two activities, and 13 that's the next level down.' And the activities go into.about 14 six hundred so-called fins which.are essentially the indivi-15 dual contracts. i 16 DR. BUSH: I was going to make a comment. That 0 17 as soon as you get below the first order on the thing, even i 18 if you do your homework, you are talking about two or three j 19 days of meetings just going-through that stuff. 20 DR. MILLER: Well, let me drive at what I was get-21 ting at. I would feel more comfortable perconally if we 22 were to comment in May of '88 on a budget before we had 23 gone through the hierarchy that starts with-the philosophy, I 24 the objectives, how does the program and the fins and activi-25 ties map into those objectives? What are the criteria.you q I Heritage Reporting Corporation j
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58 I use'to cut things-off? What it, the criteria.you use to start ? {
- f. I 2 In other words, more of a discussion- of what the Research 3 Program is'and what drives it which won't begin until the 1
4 fall. So getting back into May, I wouldJfeel much more.com-5 fortable giving a much'more global. view that we feel from-6 what we know now that the-budgets'need to increase for.the-
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- 7. following reasons. In other words, very' generic statements 8 in May, if so much is preceding getting into the real guts 1
9 of what the Research Program is all about. That's what I i 10 meant to say. 11 DR. TODREAS: My'only question is that we're doing 12 in May at all at that level and to me.that's a question of J r- l
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L 13 really back to you, Eric. I<think you've got to realize;that 14 when we get into this in May and decide what we can.and will 15 do, that's basically a discussion and a negotiation among 16 us and it may be that Pete's--some.-variant basically of 17 what Pete is suggesting is what's involved in. 18 DR. BUSH: Can I make a comment? I've been work-19 ing for a few years on another program at the University of 20 Chicago where we found that by indicating the value of cer-21 tain areas, that tends to do a very good selling job'from'the 22 money aspect. So you don't have to get specific and you 23 don't have to go through it line item by line item. But you 24 can bring out examples of the value and the need for certain 25 things and I think that your money is potentially a selling
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1 59 i 1 mechanism for the budget per se. ~And'that's a. lot. easier 1 ( 2 to write than it is'to.try'to go through it-- d l 1 3 DR. MILLER Without.trying to be all. encompass-4 ing. ) 5 DR. BUSH: Yes. Without trying to be all encom-6 passing. 7 DR. MILLER: That certainly is perfectly raasonable 8- to pick out examples. 9 DR. TODREAS: Well, I can hit it another way. 10 Maybe this--it sounds nuts and bolts, but I think it's-really 11 what will happen. 12 It seems to me the most we can get is a two-day ( 13 meeting from people. And in the'way I've done this before, 14 we take the afternoon, where we probably have three, three- ) i 15 and-a-half hours, and have people come into that afternoon' 16 session, either having worked the night-before or over lunch- q 17 time, having written a paragraph or two paragraphs.that high-18 light their concerns, their opinions. And we sit around and ; j 19 discuss those and agree in general directions, principles, l 1 20 comments, and then I'd take that back and compose a report.. ] 21 And if you think of it in that level, I think that's appro- l 22 priate to the kind of level that I think we need to go after' , l 23 and comment, which I think is consistent. j i l 24 DR. MILLER: Right. But I would hate to have-- i i 25 what I guess I am atraid of is that I would. hate to have us !
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60' I box ourselves in by May making comments that are budgetary 2 in nature that imply vectors and then later on learn in the 3 fall things that in fact dramatically change what we said. 4 DR. TODREAS: Yes, but I think we'll be implying 5 vectors-- 6 DR. MILLER: 'Sure. 7 DR. TODREAS: --in May. 8 DR. MILLER: But we have to be careful'with the 9 granularity of the -- 10 DR. LEVY I think though you cannot avoid in May 11 to at least give, you know, an opinion on the total budget 12 and its adequacy. , 13 DR. MILLER: Oh, yeah, I agree. 14 DR. LEVY: I don't think--the question becomes how 15 far in detail do you go into it, but I don't think we're do-16 ing us a job you're looking for without at least an opinion 17 on the total budget he's proposing, i 18 DR. TODREAS: As a matter of fact, Sol,.your 19 suggestion, if I could pick up--when you people just write l 20 your comments subsaquent to this meeting, one of the para- ! 21 graph areas you could pick up is maybe even make an identi-22 fication by point of what you think our May objective should - 23 encompass. For example, total budget adequacy. Then you
/ 24 might go to long-range versus short-range balance. You may-l 25 do something about program relevance--well, slightly into Heritoge Reporting Corporation (ses} 6se.mse
61 I the five areas. Something between the five and the seventy-2 two as examples. But as we sit here through the next day, 3 I think if that's one area, one paragraph area of your letter 4 you could get the thoughts and develop those. 5 MR. BECKJORD: You might want to discuss this again 6 tomorrow. 7 DR. SHERIDAN: Well, I'm sure you appreciate this 8 point, Neil, but let me say it anyway. For a committee that 9 is not going to meet before May, if we're expected to render 10 judgements at that time, there's always the tendency to have 11 more and more presentations and so on, but I think we're go-12 ing to have to very jealously guard some executive session h ( 13 time. You know, the afternoon of the'second day for the 14 first time the committee really talks to itself scares _me 15 as a--if that's the only. time we're going to have to come to 16 any consensus that might be there-- 17 DR. SHOAF: Perhaps it's more important to have 18 the executive session on the first morning of the first day .i 19 with another one at the end. i 20 DR. TODREAS: I think that's self evident. We've j 21 got to get something in the first day. Maybe after we get a 22 little warmed up, Mary, for the first day, but that's--I' l 23 sgrea. 24 DR. LEVY: Eut I think a lot of it will also depend 25 on the kind of information we get before that meeting. Ifwe Heritoge Reporting Corporation o.a..
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I could get'the charts ahead-of the meeting. If we can get.'an
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idea of what the budget is all about and some of the details, 2 3 it could maybe gut us into the executive session a lot 4 earl.ier. 5 DR. TODREAS: Right. 6 MR. BECKJORD: Yes, if we get some~ feedback, some 7 comment from you tomorrow on the kinds of things.you'd like 8 to see and then after you've have your letter reports, then l J 9 we can respond to your wishes. 10 DR. TODREAS: Yes. I'll write you a letter sub-II sequent to my receipt of the letters. That will be the l
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12 public letter. , 13 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 14 DR. TODREAS: Charlie? < 15 DR. KELBER: I'd like to remind the Committee--the 16 purpose of executive sessions or for which executive ses- 1 J 17 sions may be called, they are specifically limited within 18 the law. When you decide that you need to have one--I just 19 checked with the Office of General Counsel to make sure-- 20 when you decide that you need to have an executive session, j 21 you should let us know. There are a variety of purposes 22 for which you need to have it. We will explore it with i I 23 General Counsel and see what kind of accommodations'can be i 24 reached. And that will have to be put in the Federal Regis-l 25 ter Notice and then someone--presumably Mr. Shepard, will . j Heritage Reporting Corporation pen m n
63 I make a summary of what actually has happened at that session, (' 2 which is put in the public record. 3 DR. TODREA2- Let me just make a point to the
'4 Committee, because I'm not sure we've got things clear. I
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5 use executive session generically because I haven't been in-6 volved with this law business. What I think we need is 7 basically not presentations and ability to discuss things. 8 Now, whether those are in private or not is another level.
'l 9 We probably need some time in private,.but we need a lot 10 more time for discussion. That's how I see it. Is that j 11 consistent, Mary, with what you are thinking? Or do you 12 think of the discussion and private discussion as more synon- 1
. (- 13 ymous? l 1 14 DR. SHOAF: This is my first experience dealing ] 15 with operations in this context. So perhaps I'll wait.and ] 16 let you know tomorrow. l i 17 DR. BUSH: Maybe they've changed their procedures 18 but ACRS always started off in executive session for about ; 4 i 19 an hour to establish policy, of where you are going to go and 20 where-- , 21 DR. KELBER: Yes. Whether the permissible reasons. E i L 22 It just has to be noted-- 23 DR. BUSH: That's right. And then what they would , 24 do is they would go back into executive session on Saturday i ( 25 and effectively they booted everybody else out because now
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J l you've got into the nitty-gritty business of trying to put l 1 C 2 words down and not make them too nasty in the process. .In l 3 other words-- 4 DR. ROSS: .It's a terminology problem now. ; I 5 DR. BUSH: It's under the Sunshine Act. 6 DR. ROSS: 'You are talking closed session. 7 DR. BUSH: I'm talking closed session. 8 DR. ROSS: They now use executive session, which 9 means no presentations, but the meeting is open and there's ' 10 a transcript. 11 DR. BUSH: Well, I'm thinking of a closed session. 12 DR. ROSS: Now they are using two different termi-( 13 nologies. I think you'll find, according to present law, 14 is there's an opportunity for having a closed session is very 15 rare and if all you want to do is sit around and mark up a l 16 letter or a report, you can.have a very difficult _ time clos-17 ing a session for that purpose. 18 DR. WILSON: You can't close a session with a 19 q"estion-of choosing the right words. j i 20 DR. ROSS: You can close it if you're in the black-21 out period of a budget, where the budget is affected for ; 22 about two months out of the year. When the President sub-
- i 23 mits the budget until he gives his budget message is usually ;
, 24 two or three months. That's a black-out period. And you ! (' 25 can close sessions. You can close it for personnel, like if Heritoge Reporting Corporation ! , n=u . 1
65 l 1 l 1 you wanted to discuss appointments for the next people. If , ( 2 it's classified like security safeguards.and terrorists, g i' 3 you can close it. But it's very rare. I don't think you'll 4 find many--except for the future people to be on the'comit- , 5 tee and your views on that,-I don't think you'll find any-6 thing. The best thing we can io is, if Neil wants to pursue .j 7 it, all of you if you want, but the best thing probably for , i 8 our expert lawyer to have a telephone conversation with Neil 9 and explain all this to him. 10 Maybe I can write you a page or two on what the
!! law is, and we can do that too. Because I think it'll be 12 much as I just said.
( 13 DR. TODREAS: Why don't we leave this. I'll ex-14 plore it to some extent. 15 MR. BECKJORD: I'll say yes if you explore it-16 orally. I'll try to get us some area, if I can, of closed , 17 session because personnel certainly is a valid point to dis-18 cuss. But we'll have some combination between closed and l l 19 a new definition of executive session. We will undertake 20 to figure but a way to get what you need. , 21 DR. TODREAS: Yes. I would rather talk to somebody l l 22 other than the expert lawyer, in your office who has dealt i 23 with them so I can get-- 24 MR. BECKJORD: Maybe we can save you some frustra-25 tion. I Heritage Reporting Corporation
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.1 1 DR. TODREAS: Let's consider this executive / closed i 1
2 thing shelved. I'll take care of thac. Let's.go.back to the 1 l 3 broader point that Pete and I had discussed. I 4 Is there anything further on that?' .j
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5 Okay. What that says is we'll adopt the sugges- 1 6 tion I made then that we'll meet May/ October and'have a dif-
- 7. ferent focus each time and then what's left up to us and most 8 important though is the' level of detail that~we approach the 9 May budget response at.
DR. MORRISON: 10 Neil,Ljust before fou-leave that.
!! Is the intent of having this written report in the May meet-12 ing something that Eric or someone else from NRC can take to
( 13 the Hill and say, "This is what the Advisory Committee said"? H I4 MR. BECKJORD: I think my extrapolation on what 15 will happen is that--well, first of all, if I get a letter 16 from you, I will present it-with the budget to.the ExecL.ive i 17 Director for Operations. I would expect'probably not long 18 after that that the Commission would like to. speak with the 19 Committee and get your views directly, and since everyone is J 20 aware that this Committee has been formed, there may be oc-21 casions when the Congressional committees would like;to hear i 22 also from the Committee. I mean they would handle that 23 Separately. They would address their request to you for that 24 purpose. ; ( ' 25 DR. TODREAS: Just one thing. The Commission to i Heritage Reporting Corporation m
i 67 ) I speak with us-- 2 MR. BECKJORD: It's a hearing. What they did with 3 the National Academy was they sit aside--they'had a session 1 4 about a year ago and the Chairman of the committee and about a 5 five members sat up at the table and they made a presentation 6 and then they.had a. discussion, about a.two-hour discussion, 7 on the committee's report. And I would assume that something i 8 like that would take place. I don't know that it would take 1 9 place every time, but I'm sure after--I think it's a virtual 10 certainty they'll want to hear from you after the first l 11 meeting. I mean after the May meeting, excuse me. 12 DR. TODREAS: To me, we ought to put that up. It ( 13 may be more productive to hear after the October meeting. -) 14 Because the May--I still feel the May is'a peace. 15 MR. BECKJORD: You can certainly have some in-16 fluence on that. Because you can tell the Commission what it 17 is you would--what you or what the Committee would like to'do i i 18 on that. And I'm sure they will consider that. 19 DR. TODREAS: Yes, I feel that way because the i 20 major point of the Academy's study was the direction of the ,
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21 whole Office which includes far more than the spcific budget. j l 22 for next year. 23 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 24 DR. TODREAS: I suggest we take a short break. 25 Is Jim here? Heritage Reporting Corporation u.a.
68 I MR. BECKJORD: Yes. Jim is here. 2 DR. TODREAS: Okay. Let us take a ten-minute break 3 and then we'll convene at five of eleven and we'll be five 4 minutes behind schedule. 5 (Whereupon,.there was a ten-minute break.) 6 DR. TODREAS: Okay, this-is JiE Sniezek. We'll 7 just turn it right over ta him. 8 Eric is still out, but I think we can proceed. 9 I've only got a two-page handout, because on the 10 schedule Eric only gave me five minutes'for a presentation, 11 so I figured two and a half minutes per page, that's it. 12 And I guess another five minutes for Q and A's if you have ( 13 any. 14 What I want to emphasize is one of the thrusts, 15 when we went in the Headquarters NRC reorganization this 16 past April, was we wanted to bring more regulatory needs, 17 k the operational bent into the Research Program, to really 18 get the link between the regulatory process, the licensing 19 inspection pr~ cess, and the Research Program. So that is 20 one of the objective we had going in. That's'one of the
- 21 reasonn why Themis Speis' shop was put inco the Research 22 organization.
l 23 From the NRR side going into the reorganization, 24 we said if the Research NRR interface is going to work with 25 NRR as one of the big user offices in the NRC, we have to Heritage Reporting Corporation - g m =a
69 l 1 have an organization NRR that that's their full-time job,. 2 a structure to make it work, to. permeate through the other 3' six hundred people that we have in NRR. If you leave it up' 4 to the individual divisions and branches it just won't hang i 5 together as a focal point into the Research. So we created 6 what was called the Inspection Licensing and Research Inte- ; 7 gration Branch. And it wasn't by accident that it's got the j 8 licensing, the inspection, and the research all in that one ) 9 branch as far as the overall program and how they tie to- f J 10 gether. 11 The results of research have to feed into our i l 12 licensing program, they have to feti into our inspection ( 13 program. Our insper.tian program is especially lacking--be-14 fore the reorganization, as far as using the research results 15 in our inspection program. So we have a big push on to get 16 more research results into our inspection program and the 17 effective use of those inspection resources out in the field. 18 Also we decided that we ought to formalize the proces s 19 to some degree between NRR and Research to restructure the 20 Memorandum of Understanding. That's just to guide the 21 staffs in who has the decision authority, the management l l 22 authority on various issues. 23 Although that's a formal document, we recognize' 24 you have to have a 3ot more interaction on the week-by-week, 25 month-by-month management level. So we formed several Heritage E ' ating Corp. oration 1282) M
l 70 1 steering groups with joint membership between Research senior i
\ 2 managers and NRR senior managers, for the various major areas 3 of research and operational interface. In areas such as-the 4 seismic research progra.a, human factors, severe accident 5 source term, and a couple of others. We have actually.re-i 6 view groups, senior management review groups, established to i 7 look at th'em. Here's the thrust of the program in this '
8 area, the research program, here is how we really expect to i 9 use the results to make sure that the research is tailored J 10 towards the needs of the regulatory process. 11 Also as an additional advantage, in the new Five-12 Year Plan, the strategic planning of the. Commission, is the ( 13 opportunity for NRR to present the user need in Research and j I 14 s ya' , here's how we're going to fulfill the user need if
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15 Commission blessing ultimately, but there is a high-level 16 nanagement document that says, here's our program and here's i j 17 what we're going to do over the next five years to try to 18 bring the research into the operational role. 19 Also we have the opportunity in NRR. We work with 20 Research Eric always sends over. Here is our' allocation of l 21 resources in the year-by-year budget process, does this fit 22 into the NRR needs? These are areas where you really still 23 t'hink we ought to put emphasis. Again, that's a fornal pr5- l 24 cese but we get our input in to help Research determine where (. 25 they want to allocate their Research dollars. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 71 1 1 Then we go into obviously the~ daily staff inter- l ( 1 2 actions with the Inspection, Licensing and Research Inte-3 gration Branch with all the branches in Research and the j 4 feedback of our technical branches within NRR, all the func-- a i 5 tional branches within NRR, the day-to-day: relationship that 6 is set up on the technical it;nes. 7 Finally we end up with a Safety Issue Management 8 System. A way of keeping track of what's really happening l 1 9 on our regulatory issues from the time Research gets involved i 10 on the generic issue and the solution process right until i 11 the time it's imple.mented in the plan and verified by our 1 12 inspection program that it's been implemented in the plan. ) ( 13 That's new. It's something that is still coming 14 off the ground. We're filling in a lot of the data in that 15 system, because we've found a lot of generic issues that we 16 thought were resolved weren't implemented in the plans, and i i 17 we had no management system to keep track of that. Research 18 Pad done good work the thought with the technical resolu- i 19 tion, but somehow it got lost in the process. It never. 20 got implemented in the plants. So we've got that process
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21 underway to make it happen now and-look at hard spots where 22 it hasn't happened and we can take aggressive regulatory 23 action to get the results of the Research Programs imple-24 mented in the plant when it's appropriate. i 25 That's an overview of our interfaces with the Heritage Reporting Corporation (ses) 6ss.4ess
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-( 2 DR. WILSONr Is that just an interface with the 3 Research and NRR?. I mean I'd have thought that people in L 4 industry ought to be hearing directly from Research what-l' f the things are. Do they-have to go through NRR?
6 DR. SNIEZEK: Well, they do. But the imposition 3
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7 authority in the Agency is NRR as the licensing body. But 8 Research publishes the NUREG documents which has the.results 9 of the research and that goes directly out to' industry, pro- l I 10 mulgated to industry, so they.know what's going on, but they l 11 don't know what shoe is going to drop from the regulatory 12 imposition stage.yet. And that's an area that we're really ( 13 working on beefing up. So that the research that is done, 14 you don't end up with a report that says one thing and im-15 position that isn't consistent with the results of research. 1 16 DR. WILSON: Okay. ) 17 DR. SNIEZEK: That's an-where you're got to have a 18 lot of interface to make sure--that's the reason for those l i 19 steering groups up front to decide are we going down the i 20 right path, to solve the regulatory.need. 4 21 DR. BUSH: Jim, before you go on to the next page, 22 can I ask a quickie? 23 DR. SNIEZEK: Sure thing. 24 DR. BUSH: The first item there, where did you put 25 it, the branch, and who-- Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 626 4000
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I i I DR'. SNIEZEK: That branch is up in the front office j 2 The overall Director of that branch is Frank Gillespie, who 3 used to be in Research. + 4 DR. BUTH : ' So you have a rapport at tl.e office 5 level rather than at the Division level. ) 6 DR. SNIEZEK: It is separate from all the techni- l 7 cal divisions. 8 DR.-BUSH: That's the way it should'be. 9 DR. SNIEZEK: A separate group. We have our Policy 10 Branch in that area. We've got this Inspection, Licensing 33 and Research Integration Branch in that area. It's a total-- l 12 'it's an Associate Director, the three Associate Directors in 33 NRR, at the Associate Director level, one of the members of 34 the Executive team, Frank Gillespie is the head of that. I 15 And he's in daily interface with Themis and Dennie and Eric. , J 16 DR.TODREAS:Who does he report to? Merley? I 17 DR. SNIEZEK: He reports to Merley. 18 DR. BUSH: That's the way it should be. I was 19 just wondering because it didn't seem to be logic-- [ 20 DR. SNIEZEK: Now, the branch works for Gillespie 21 but Gillespie is our senior manager responsible for research 22 and, as you know, he brings his experience in Research and' 25 operational bent to it also. We get choices on purpLse to 24 get certain people in the right slots. 25 Now, the important thing that we're finding today-- Heritage Reporting Corporation (tet) 654e0s 1
74 .] I We're not there yet, it's getting better all the time. You 2 know, there is frustration at the staff level often times, 3 because the operational need today, the time scale of the 1 4 schedule may be different than a conventional research 5 schedule might be. So there is s me interface friction some-6 times that evolves, but that's why the senior managers work 7 it out to get' things done at the time we need it. 8 We have a lot of insights and the second page, 9 here's some examples of what we're getting from the Research 10 Program. A lot of new things going on. In the last several 11 years after TMI, we were converting from event-oriented i 12 emergency operating procedures to symptom-oriented emergency ( 13 operating procedures. So we get a lot of insights from the
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14 research that's been from various scenarios and what will 15 work and what won't work, where should the emphasis be, and 16 where should we be concerned as far as an emergency operating I' 17 procedures. We're talking at the design basis level. We're i 1 18 not talking the beyond design basis level when we talk EOPs. 19 But what's important to try from exceeding the j 20 design basis. How those good emergency operating procedures. 21 The Research Program is feeded into that in our review pro - l 22 cess. 23 The real insights into the developing of the - 24 severe accident management procedures. Tom Early has identi-25 fied this as one of the areas that we need emphasis on. Heritage Reporting Corporation (ses) ass.4ees
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i 75 i Going beyond the design basis accident. What will 2 work? What won't work? What we're cencerned about is 3 start pushing industry in a direction were wrong. We caused 4 something worse to happen than if we had kept >ur hands off. i 5 Some good insights. We're looking at research to give us 1 6 more insights in that area. That's a big push we have'under-7 way now. 8 And pitfalls of potential containment improvements. j 9 There's been a lot of notoriety on that. Overall is it bet-10 ter to vent or not to vent? Under what conditions? Re-11 search got several answers in that area for us now before 12 the final regulatory decisions are made. (- 13 What other modifications can we make for contain- )4 14 ment that are really useful? That won't cause problems. 15 That will really help solve problems and increase safety. j 16 The-PRA insights. The generic PRA insights into j 1 17 the inspection program, the licensing program. 'Like I said, i 18 inspection basically wasn't tied to any research results at , 1 19 all in the years past. But what are we getting out of the . l 20 PRAs? How do we orient odr inspectors to look at the most 21 important things out there? The risk significant things, 22 the things that will really impact safety. So that's what 23 I see as a new big benefit from research that wasn't tappe'd 24 before now. And there's resistance in some people's minds 25 because it changed. It's a new we.y of doing business. But Heritage Reporting Corporation cm> m-mm
76' ; I I I think there's a lot we' gain on that. And use our 450 ( 2 inspector resources much more like wisely than we do today. l 3 The basis for implementation of Severe Accident !
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4 Policy Statement. Getting to the individual plant examina- I 5 tions. What-should be the scope and depth? What should we 6 really be focusing on? That's what research has given us.
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7 Insights in that area. So when we go out with our letter 1 )
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8 requiring utilities to do something, we're requiring them to I 9 do the right thing, the thing that's most cost beneficial as. 10 to give us the biggest bang for the dollar that's spent in ; 11 that area. 12 Human factors area. A lot of effort going in that 1 ( 13 area. A lot of concern from the NRR standpoint. I know we 14 have asked Research and they're doing research in this area. 15 Just simple things. It's just' schedule rotation. Overtime 16 and impact. Performance under stress. The control room I 17 configuration. How does it aid the operator or hinder the j 18 - e,perator? Things like that that we're getting out of the j 19 Research Program.
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20 DR. TODREAS: Just take control room orientation ! l 21 or the layout. In terms of regulation, actually what.can 22 you do or do you do about it? 23 DR. SNIEZEK: Well, for example, right now there's l 24 an effort going on, control room design reviews. It came 25 out of Three Mile Island. It's been dragging too long. Heritage Reporting Corporation ;
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77 i Where they are looking at the design. Are they mere image l C 2 plants? What's that do to the operator on the control board? 1 Just simple human factors that we hadn't con-
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3 Confuse him. 4 sidered before. I 5 DR. TODREAS: So it's a design review which you 6 can come out of requiring changes?' 7 DR. SNIEZEK: Exactly, exactly.- 8 DR. TODREAS: Okay. 9 DR. SNIEZEK: Now, most of the-utilities are doing 8 10 it voluntarily. You don't have to make them do it. They've j J 11 seen the wisdom of--you know, and there's a balance. If 12 I've got ten years of plant life left in.these operators, (' 13 do I want to make them--how many changes do I want to make 14 now versus-- 15 DR. TODREAS: I can see that. But hitherto the 16 people in regulation who are doing this basically weren't 17 over talking to the people in Research who-- 18 DR. SNIEZEK: Well, we.didn't have a human factors 19 bent to what we were doing ten years ago. 20 DR. BUSH: Well, you started it but~it never got 21 off the ground. 22 DR. SNIEZEK: It never got off the ground. Every- ; 23 ' body poo-poohed it, and-- ] 24 DR. TODREAS: Three or four years ago there was .
.l 25 something though in Research.
1 Heritoge Meporting Corporation ; inimum i
o78 't i 1 -DR. SNIEZEK: Yeah, but nobody listened to it. 1 (. 2 You know, you've got to get a culture change to make things ; 3 happen. l
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4 DR. TODREAS: You sound convincing that the link's 5 been made. I just want to make sure-- !
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6 DR. SNIEZEK: The link's been made, but I'm not-1 f 7 going to tell you that all.six hundred members of the NRR 8 staff support it. Some say it's crazy. But there's a com- I i. 9 mitment. We're going.to use it. Now, I'm not going to say I 10 we're going to do everything-that human factors experts want 11 you to do. 12 DR. TODREAS: Good. ( 13 DR. SNIEZEK: But, you know, there has to be the 14 right balance. And those are the insights that--you know, 15 it's like the safety safeguards interface. There's the right 16 link, the right balance. { l ' 17 It's a very important one. Ongoing today. ' Modi-
.I 18 fication of the plant tech specs. We have a lot of surveil-19 lance requirements in there. I'm not sure that they are 20 all increasing safety. We've just gone through. Based on j 1
21 Research work. We've changed surveillance internals. Or ; i 22 allowed them to be changed for reactor protection systems ; i 23 'because the manner and the frequency of testing was causing ' 24 more system down nime than any benefit you we:e getting. So k' 25 it's those types of insights today we can use right in our Heritage Reporting Corporation me n.. 1
79 I q l regulatory programs to make it better, to enhance safety. r 2 The aging license extension. Well, it won't be 1 3 too many years and we're going to have quite a few--we expect 4 tens of requests for license extension. What are the impor- ] l 5 tant issues? What do we have to get ready to deal with when 6 those requests for license extensions come in? That's work j l 7 Research is doing. Helping us sort it out. What do we have l 8 to worry about from existing research programs? What's being 9 found regarding life of components? What are the critical 10 areas that we have to focus on? 11 And as you are aware of, the generic safety issues, 12 the unresolved safety issues. That's the work being done ( 13 by Research. Just recent things coming out, The PTS area. 14 And doing more work than even the calculations, where you 1 15 find maybe originally we weren't quite as smart as we thought ' i 16 we were. We got new data that shows we should be doing I 17 something differently. So it's a refinement of that process. l 18 Station blackout. Just coming out with changes in the regu-19 latory posture on station blackout. Coming ~out.of the Re-i 20 search Program. 21 Just those areas that everyday in NRR, we can't l 22 survive with the research to tell us what's the newest stuff 23 that's developed. What are we finding out there? How shbuld 24 we change our programs? 25 So that in a nutshell is how I see NRR as a user Heritage Reporting Corporation (ses) smases
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l interfacing with Research on.the front. side and there are r 2 some frustrations obviously. Because'not everybody. agrees. 3 But the products. When I sat down and just thought of it. 4 Just some of the products that we're getting out of Research. 5 They are very beneficial. Right in our day-to-day programs, 6 as well as future programs, 1.ike licensing expansion, that' 7 are coming down the pike.
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8 So that's what I vanted to share with you'just in 9 a five to ten-minute capsule here. I 10 Are there any questions that you have? I*d be 11 pleased to answer them. 12 DR. LEVY: Have you tried to' define'for Research ( 13 what you people considered the top three or the top five 14 safety problems? Nobody is Ordering new plants, so'you can 15 practically stop worrying about new features.. Do you intend 16 to identify what are those^3reas they should focus on? 17 DR. SNIEZEK: Yes.- The areas that we did, and what 18 we said is we and NRR are not too concerned with continued 19 work on reducing uncertainties. That's not a big issue from 20 the NRR side. What we are concerned about is, where should 21 we be going in the accident management arena? That's an 22 issue. Where should we be going on^ containment? A lot of 23 controversy. We want to get that -behj.nd us. Solve the 24 issue and get on to the next one. So we identify those as 25 probably 3.he stop two, plus as generic issues develop on a Heutoge Reporting Corporation cn
l 81 ) I day-to-day basis,'nomething we never thought of before, they 2 get prioritized in there also. J 3 I'd say from Tcm Early's perspective those first l 4 two on the accident management and containment performance 5 are two of the big ones. 6 Eric, that's as I recall what Tom said in the' memo l
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7 that those were the two big ones. 8 MR. BECKJORD: Yes. 9 DR. LEVY: And the generic issues. l 10 DR. SNIEZEK: Yes, the generic issues as they come-11 up. DR. TODREAS: I've got one personnel question. Is 12 there anything structurally set up about rotating people ( 13 14 between the two divisions X percent per year? 15 DR. SNIEZEK: No. 16 DR. TODREAS: Has that effectively stopped because 17 the reorganization gave it a big slug? 18 DR. SNIEZEK: Well, I think that in the reorgani- ! 19 zation that Research took all our good people in this area 20 out of NRR, more than they should have gotten. I want to get 21 some of them back. 22 Philosophy. There's'nothing formal in the Agency 23 of Percent rotation per year. But in the Agency--Merley's 24 philosophy, my philosophy, is Themis or Eric, you identify 25 someone in NRR you want, okay. If they are quote "willing" l Heritoge Reporting Corporation (302) 636-4006
82 1- -to go, you've got him. 2 DR. TODREAS: How about the other way? Would you 3 take people back the other way? 4 . DR. SNIEZEK: It depends upon who they are. 5 DR. TODREAS: Of course. 6 DR. SNIEZEK: Yes, no question. No question.. I'd 7 love to get'them. Love to get them. But it depends who they 8 are. And most of the time--in fact, we were fighting over 9 the same people as we went into the reorganization a year 10 ago, and Themis stole several of my people. No, thereLis 11 no prohibition between the offices. I'm even talking--not 12 the promotions, on lateral. I think you've heard in NRC ( 13 so many people won't let somebody go if it's a latertd , not 14 promotional. That's garbage. We're trying to promote the 15 operational /Research interface. We're trying to promote the 16 field headquarters. So we've got to do that. 17 DR. TODREAS: Let me ask you one other question. 18 The management at the top of both divisions is -- 19 That's a big plus. You people are working together and 20 pushing it. What's the incentive'at the working level that 21 makes this go now? 22 DR. SNIEZEK: The people at the top. 23 DR. TODREAS: That's a stick approach. Is there 24 a carrot approach? 25 DR. SNIEZEK: Yes, they get a good performance Heritage Reporting Corporation (sot) sasasse
83 1 appraisal. No. But I'm very serious. I only believe that 2 if the staff understands what management wants done, 99 per-3 cent of the staff tries to do it. I am convinced of that. 4 In individual meeting you'll argue about an issue. But then 5 you make a decision, and take off and implement it. You 6 know, and the carrot is the award system. If the people are 7 really doing it aggressively, there's an award for them. But 8 it's not just applied to Research interface. It's doing the 9 total job. What are the needs of the Agency versus the per-10 sonal needs, because we cannot operate--NRR, as an example, 11 is six hundred entities. It's one voice that NRR speaks. 12 And whether every staff member agrees with that, I'd be ( 13 foolish if I thought they did. 14 DR. MORRISON: Let me expand that question a little 15 bit more. Obviously the top is together, but if I'm in NRR 16 do I have to work up the chain and back down the other side 17 if I wanted anything in Research or vice versa? 18 DR. SNIEZEK: Yes, on that question. Because I 19 don't want three hundred people--Eric's people saying, "We 20 want you to do this." And that's why we have the Inspection, 21 Licensing and Research Integration Branch with Frank Gilles-22 P i e at the top. Any formal request for research goes 23 through that chain. So that way we are prioritizing what 24 we want Research to do, not every individual with their own 25 ideas. Heritage Reporting Corporation (se2) 626-4ess
84 1 The same way.I'm assuming'that I know that Eric r ' 2' prioritizes when he.gets the' work and says, "This is an NRR 3 .need." If you have a staffer that wants to work on something 4 else, the staffer may be told, "No, here's wP..c you're going 5 to work on. This is the Agency priority." 6 But once that's established, we establish the tech-7 nical link between the individual functional branches. 'inen 8 Gillespie's shop up on'the top, the Coordination Branch, 9 makes sure that technical link is happening. It's the con-10 science, to make sure it's working the way that management 11 wants it to work throughout the whole organization. 12 1 did.n't give you a direct answer to your question, ( 13 did I? But it's the best answer I can give because it's 14 the t.:uth. 15 DR. BUSH: Incidentally, how much salt do-I have l 16 to shake on that business of speaking with one voice? I've ; 17 seen quite a few cases where--shall I say-there are differ- ) 18 ences of opinion at the lower levels that tend to subvert-- 19 DR. SNIEZEK: Oh, sure. That happens. That hap-20 pens, you know. 21 DR. BUSH: Has that been improving? 22 DR. SNIEZEK: It's been improving. Considerably 23 since the reorganization. 24 DR. BUSH: Well, that's a plus, because that was a 25 real pain. Heritage Reporting Corporation (ses) ass dess
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.l 1 DR. SNIEZEK: I understand that. And you can't 2 function that way. The Agency looks bad. Now, we do have.a 1 1
3 process if somebody disagrees, we have the DPO process and q 4 there's nothing wrong with using that process. But the key-- i 5 I find if you meet with the staff, you tell them what's ex-6 pected of them, why you are doing things,.and you don't get 7 into a lot of those problems. 8 DR. SHOAF: What's DPO? 9 DR. SNIEZEK: Differing professional opinion pro-10 cess. It's a formal process where once something is going a 11 certain way and the staff member really feels strongly that ] I 12 it shouldn't go that way, there is an appeal process that we j 4 ( 13 use. You get heard all the way up through the Commission if 14 you so desire. 15 DR. TODREAS: Here's a question. 16 DR. GLOYNA: Being relatively new to the organiza-17 tional structure here, are you going to identify two areas 18 of research. One is the containment and one is management. i 19 DR. SNIEZEK: Accident management. 20 DR. GLOYNA: Accident management. Would you mind 21 expanding a little bit more on what specifics you are talk-22 ing about? 23 DR. SNIEZEK: Accident management is--let's say 24 you got to the point where you've reached the reactor vessel. 25 What can you do? Once you start the melting in the vessel, Heritage Reporting Corporation (392) 625 4000
l 86 { l I- what can you do to arrest it, to stop it, so the' accident- ) 2 doesn't promulgato anymore. You are way.beyond the_ design 3- basis now. What are some logical steps that you can take? 4 It's that type of thing. Again,fto minimize any potential 5 radiation release to the public. That's what I'm talking. 6 about in that' area. I 7 DR. TODREAS: Okay. I'm ready to move on unless 8 there's a question. 9 We certainly appreciate your comments, and we will 10 be in touch with NRR through this Committee I'm sure relative 11 to this interface. It's crucial. 12 DR. SNIEZEK: Super. ( 13 DR. TODREAS: So don't look on this ten minutes I 14 as a lack of any interest, okay. 15 DR. SNIEZEK: I just wanted to whet your appetite 16 a little bit. 17 DR. TODREAS: All right, fine. i 18 Themis, are you ready? > 19 DR. SPE1S: I have kind of a' semi-formal presenta-20 tion. I'm going to talk about two issues. One of them is 21 the issue of generic issues. What are they? What do we'do L 22 about them? Where do they come from? Describe the process 1 23 of the outcome of the process. The other issue that I will talk about is the issue ! 24-25 of MARK I containment, the question that Professor Gloyna Heritage Reporting Corporation
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87 I asked us, what's the containment performance program? It's 2 part of that. 3 Because it gets into another. arena, the balance of 4 our regulatory approach, where you asked the question if you 5 have a core melt, what does this'do to increase or enhance 6 containment performance, I would like to start the presenta-7 tion by giving you a very brief overview of the current li-8 censing and regulatory processes. How it started. How it 9 has evolved as a result of TMI, PRA and in what direction 10 we are going to further enhance reduction risk to the public. 11 Also this will give you some indication of the sum 12 of the activities that will be discussed.this afternoon and ( 13 tomorrow. Where do they fit? What kind of questions to they try to address in the regulatory framework? j 14 15 I.would like to start with the defense-in-depth, 16 which is the normal way of reviewing-- I think some of you 17 are probably familiar with this. Some of you are not. I ( 18 know Professor Bush is very familiar with this. He probably 19 helped invent it. 20 'The main focus of our efforts in licensing, in [ 21 regulating reactors, is accident prevention. It is embodied 22 in the defense-in-depth concept where it involves' multiple, 23 successive barriers to the retention of radioactivity. I am j 24 talking about the fuel rod, the vessel and primary system 25 and the coolant boundary, and then the containment itself. , Heritage Reporting Corporation , (Set) 638 4tes
08-1 Theffocus of the review and,:of course, the de- q 2 signers, the design for normalloperation, and in addition,- 3 design to detect failures and shut the-plant down. And also 4 going beyond that, a design to. control the consequences of-5 more damaging accidents. Here we're talking about additional 6 safety margins to account for.the consequences'of hypothe-7 tical accidents. 8 These are the events that--they are~ called design
-l 9 basis events. The most limiting one being large breaks and 10 loss of coolant accidents, for example. )
l 11 Now, the third-level of defense, where you provide 12 additional margins, involves the containment. The contain-- ( 13 ment has been designed, is designed,.for the more limiting ] 14 design basis accidents, the so-called large.LOCAs or steam-15 line breaks or whichever is limiting. Also for external 16 events, and for some extent, it is~also designed for severe 17 accidents. An arbitrary source term of radioactivity is , l 18 to containment and then the containment has to'be-19 designed that it doesn't leak. The leakage is very small i t 20 and limited. Something like .1 percent per day. J 21 I want to make the point when I said that severe i i 22 accident consideration has been provided, but via this source 1 23 term. But only the radioactivity part of severe. accident is . 24 considered. The pressures and temperatures associated with l ( ! severe accidents has not been considered in the design basis j 25 1 Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 of the containment. 2 Now, if you go'to the next'page, we come into the 3 TMI experience where before in our categorization of acci-4 dents we put them into the-credible and incredible categcry. ' 5 For example, the large break LOCAs were the limiting credible > 6 accidents. Somehow there was a notion, especially before 7 the WASH-1400 came out, that there was kind of a, sharp thresh-- 8 hold betwen credible and incredible and the consequences were 1 9 extremely harsh as a result of incredible events and more
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10 mild as a result of credible events. But then we found'out I 1
.11 that the probability and consequences are really kind of 12 continuing and there are no sharp threshholds. So TMI and,
[ 13 of course, the WASH-1400 study of 1975, which I guess we 14 didn't pay as much attention as we should have, told us that 15 those things have to be given some consideration. 16 Following the TMI accident, we enriched the regu- ] 17 latory process by going in some directions, but not all the .
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18 way. For example, in our procedures, we considered multi- ! l 19 failure events considerations. Also we took into account ) l r 20 the effect on the containment on the production of hydrogen- j' i' 21 from partially degraded situations.
- 22. For example, at TMI you had a very severe accident. !
23 But everything was retained in the vessel. Yet a substan- i 24 tial amount of hydrogen got into the containment and there -l ( l 25 was--a pressure spike was formed, but because of the Heritoge Reporting Corporation j nnau. ;
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't. capability of the containment, there wasn't any. threat to the t
containment, but we took those ideas and we made some' changes 2 3 in'the regulatory process affecting other containments'that-4 were not as robust and strong las the TMI-type containments, i 5 Another' thing that is'an important part'of our
- 6. . process and that's,where our generic issues ~I will discuss 7 . shortly come from. Is the. continuing operating experience J
as well as PRA' insights. 8 And'also we' revised our regulations , 9 For example,-we have new regulations on the books dealing 10 with anticipated transients. Jim Sniezek mentioned earlier q J 11 the sta+ ion blackout issues came out'of operational expe-12 11ence. It is one of the generic issues I'll ' talk about. J ( 13 So this is a continuing process and I would say that in this 14 area here this is 90 percent of the work of Tom Early's
!! organization, riuclear Regulatory organization is involved 16 with. The daily activities.
Now, this last item, severe accident considera- l 17 18 tions. The Commission promulgated a policy a few lears ago 19 dealing with severe accidents. They reached a conclusion at 20 that time that the risk.from severe accidents'are acceptable. 21 But with one proviso. That operational experience and also l 22 plant specific examination have always identified areas. 23 where . substantial improvements could be made. Therefore,- 24 they decided at that time to pursue an examination of every 25 P l ant to see if. vulnerability of severe accidents can be Heritage Reporting Corporation j y m ana o
l 91 I uncovered both for vulnerabilities to core damage as well 2 as the containment performance and to see if any cost effec-3 tive ways can be found to further reduce those -- 4 And this is the area that I want to talk about the 5 MARK I containment program. It fits into this category here. 6 When I talk about generic issues, it fits into this category 7 as well as here. 8 Mr. Arlotto and Brian Sheron will talk later in 9 the afternoon on containment integrity and prevention of to accidents.- So it's mostly in this category that I dis-11 cussed earlier. 12 With this brief background into the licensing ( 13 process and how it has been changing as a result of insights 14 from the TMI accident and from experience, I am going to 15 generic issues and give you a short description of the pro-16 gram itself. 17 I have given you here a definition of what a 18 generic issue is. I want to read from the Vu-Graph that I 19 ' rave here. A safety concern that may affect the design, 20 construction or operation of all, several, or a class of 21 nuclear power plants and may have a potential for safety 22 improvements and promulgation of new or revised requirements 23 or guidance. 24 We have another class of generic issues that are !( 25 called unresolved safety issues. They have a history of Heritage Reporting Corporat'on cman. w_______
92 I .their own. There are Congressional requirements that we re-j- 2 port on them, on the status, how they result, and so on. But 3 in general,1the way the program is evolving.now, I would' 4 characterize all of this as generic' safety issues-and the 5' ones that'are of importance and'the'ones that we e given '; 6 resources to work are the high priority ones'that - will talk 7 about shortly. 8' The generic issues.are identified again by opera-9 tional experience. If something goes wrong, that was not 10 anticipated in the design or operation or.in reviewing a 11 probabilistic risk assessment, if we find a sequence that is I 12 more important than was thought earlier, the risk work has -( 13 been done in a number of areas, identifies some of these 14 issues. Also the public itself sometimes can send us their 15 issues. The ACRS is a party to this identification process 16 and so on. 17 The problem itself has a number of elements and I 18 want to go through them very briefly. One of them is the 19 identification which I just talked about. When we take l 20 these issues, we get many--quite a few of them. In-fact, I 21 have some numbers that will give you an indication of the 22 extent of the problem. We try to understand how important 23 they are-in terms of contributing to safety _ improvements. 24 So we have developed a prioritization process which involves 25 both--it'c a kind of a bifurcated process. You look_at the Heritage Reporting Corporation m.
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I issue from'a probabilistic. safety standpoint, that is, from p 2 a qualitative risk reduction contribution, as well as from 3 a deterministic engineering judgement. It's a process that- l 4 goes through a review. It involves our Office of Research'. 5 It is sent to the Office of NRR for their review. . Every 6- issue that' occurs also goes to the ACRS. And to'us a deci-7 sion has been made on what that category receives and we have i 8 two or three categories, high, medium.and. drop. Then depend-9 ing on the resources.that we have, we'll put all our efforts - to in resolving'the high priority ones. 11 Then the issue is assigned. It is mostly'the Of-12 fice of Research for resolution where the issue is' assessed ( 13 technically in great detail. Options for resolving it are 14 identified, and an important part of this process is whether-15 it meets cost benefit guidelines.. The Commission, in one 16 of its rules, the so-called backfit rule, the safety improve-17 ments that we'll pursue have to be somehow commensurate with ] 18 the cost. 19 The other point I want~to make is the process of 20 resolving an issue'sometimes takes a number of years. Three, 21 four or five years, j 22 Another point'that I should have made earlier. .; I 23 When an issue has been identified, we don't put it through j 24 it~the books and wait for the four or five years to come and i
'25 then they can take us out of it. We make an assessment I
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I .immediately.whether there's a need.for immediate action. { Sometimes an issue, we take some immediate-action, but then 2 3 we'll pursue the study of its more generic aspect, and that 4 takes much longer. 5 Again, out of the resolution of this issue comes 6 changes to our regulations, changes in staff positions. For 7- example, we have--go to.the.next'Vu-Graph. I want'to talk a-8 little bit about--I give two' examples of two of the-important 9 issues that we have underway. One we're.in the process of 10 resolving is the. issue of station blackout. The issne of 11 station blackout came to us, not only from probabilistic 12 safety assessment but from' experience itself. It involves .(~ 13 the loss of AC power to both off-site and on-site emergency-14 sources. 15 Operational experience shows to us that there.are- l J 16 limits to the reliability of the power sources and all of us i 17 know that you need power to shut the plant down. You also 18 need power to be able to remove the decay heat ~and also the 19 consequences are se*/ere because you could lose coolant to the 20 containment itself. 21 So out of experience itself and what I.mean by 22 experience, how many times we have lost'off-site power in 23 a number of plants throughout the country, how many' times 24 the vehicles, either one or two,or out of that process we 25 came to the conclusion that improvements.were needed in this-Heritoge Reporting Corporation m m.m.
95-I area and as I said,Lthe resolution would-be a' rule. We just 2 send it to the Commission which requires that.every plant , I 3 should be able to cope with a' station blackout'for some dura-i 4 tion of time, depending on how good their' existing systems . 1 a 5 are right now or where they are: located. For' example,;there ) 6 are plants that are in the eye'of.a storm. And those plants 7 dre moie susceptible to loss of off-site power than some 8 other plants located somewhere else. 9 Next I will-give you another example. It is the to hydrogen issue. I have some Vu-Graphs of that. Again, the. 11 issue that came out of the TMI accident. It.was designated. 12 as safety issue back in 1980. Again, it was based on the [ 13 evaluation of what happened at TMI where something like 1,000 14 pounds of hydrogen were generated. The containment itself 15 reached 7 to 9 volume percent. If you recall, as I said 16 earlier, it ignited ten or so hours after the incident of the 17 accident and pressure in the neighborhood'of.30 pounds was 18 measured. Again, the containment itself is very robust. 19 Not only is it designed for safety of 55 pounds per. square 20 inch, but it can take loads much higher than that. So 21 there was no problem. The only problem that happened as'the l 22 result of this accident'was the damage to plastics, rubber l I 23 and paint. But as-I said earlier, we have some other' con-24 tainments that are not as well designed as the TMI contain-25 ment. And therefore we pursued this. issue for its Heritage Reporting Corporation maa
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I implications for other reactions. 2 One of th'e' cbjectives of the issue was. to ' provide hy-
-3 drogen control following degraded core accidents:and also 4 make sure that the important. equipment'was able to survive I
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5 following a hygrogen burn. And again, the outcome here was
- 6 the promulgation of a hydrogen control rule, the elements of I
7 which are described in the next Vu-Graph. The~PWR MARK-1 8 and MARK-II containments were required to-be inerted. Two 9 other classer of containments to PWR MARK-IIIs and pressu-10 rized water reactor ice condenser containments required to1 11 have hydrogen ignitors so the hydrogen'could burn in a con-12 trolled manner and there was no chance to1 accumulate and~ { 13 give rise to a conflagration.
- 14. For example, the pounds per square inch. The 15 capability of this containment is much less than the. larger I 1
16 containment which had the'TMI core.
- 17. Also, one of the rules required to demonstrate 18 the equipment is important to bring in the plant--to shut I
19 down to provide for the conflagration 20 We're pursuing some issues for large dry contain-21 ments. Mostly because of their.effect on equipment surviva-22 bility and also some of these issues have been raised lately ; 23 whether it is possible to have high pockets of hydrogen may-24 be in some parts of the containment as a result of conden-25 sation or other processes like~a poor. mixing. But we were Heritage. Reporting Corporation canaum , i
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'l not forced to do something on large drys because of their
{. 2 capability and the dillutions capability that they have. 3 We're writing a report right now because of this 4 issue. g 5 DR. TOpl.EAS : Why when the rule was published in 1 6 January of '85, why wasn't the report written and the issue. l ! 7 closed at that point? What prolongs it? 8 DR. SPEIS: I guess--in this case it should'have l 9 closed at that time, but it didn't. It should have closed. 10 But for some reason it vicn't.close and I think here'that 11 the demonstration is being done by our review of two plants 12 which had to implement.this rule. But you are right. In ( 13 this case it should have closed-at that time. { 14
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DR. TO REAS: But the other thing I was wondering. 15 To close an issue, does it have to be implemented or can-- 16 DR. SPEIS: You know, this-- 17 DR. TO REAS: By definition. 18 DR. SPEIS: By definition, it has to do with some-19 thing that had happened at the plant. The way we describe 20 closure--if I go back to this program. In the past, we de-u 21 fined closure when we came up with a resolution.and we is-22 sued a generic letter. You know, Morley is.the only one who 23 can sign something to the licensees. Either write a generic ( 24 letter or some other vehicle and to tell them Research has 25 decided what to do, and this is what you are supposed to do. Heritoge Reporting Corporation imna.
98-l' In the old days, we defined closed at-that ptint in time. f' 2 Now people are concerned that if something doesn't happen 3' in a plant, you know,-like Congress, for example. .GAO gives-4 a notice of this process and says, "You guys are playing 5 games.with us. An issue ~shouldn't be considered closed un-
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6 'less something has happened at thefplant whereuit counts." 7 I mean doing all these manipulations, and writing. reports, 8 and solving equations and putting rules out, if something 9 hasn't happened out there, you know, don't tell me this is' JO closed. 11 DR. BUSH: Before you take that off, I had one.I' 12 was going to ask later on but I-might as well now. Having ( 13 looked at a number of these, quite often in the past they j I4 had what I would call paper resolutions. In other words, .! d 15 there was a piece of paper and that's about as far as it l 16 went. Presumably that's being changed. And so-- ; 17 DR. SPEIS: Well, many issues don't live through - 18 requirement. As I said earlier, once we research it and 19 once we apply the Commission's rules and regulations, we 20 find out that there isn't a need to do anything, and we l 21 still have to write a report. l 22 DR. BUSH: Well, the one I'm thinking about did. l 1 23 That has to do--and I think we'll be looking at it again. l 24 That has to do with the water hammer aspect, which.is still 25 kind of a device-- i Heritage Reporting Corporation mn m.a
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'l D R .. SPEIS: We resolved this issue. We're doing l(
2 some resources. . But, for example, you and I and everybody 3 , else knows that as long as you have-water and steam and pipes 4 always have water hammers, you know. How well they im-f .1 5 plement them--for example, we have-looked.at some of the 6 events'that took placefthe last year and a half and in .0 8 7 percent of the cases they didn't follow the procedures that l What do you do about that?' 8 were part of'the resolution. l 9 I just have to keep pursuing it. j 10 DR.' BUSH: Let me ask the other question, because
!! there was a judicial decision regarding cost benefit as it-12 impacted or didn't impact on safety. My understanding was
( 13 that you had to give precedence to safety and not worry about t l 14 the cost benefit. Now, you made the statement--and I'm 1 15 trying to understand the process now, recognizing that indeed 16 that was the major basis for making sure thac you didn't 17 arbitrarily establish backfits, but has that been changed i 18 again? 19 DR. SPEIS: Well, there is an envelope, okay, 20 where these are basic safety. Where costs are not a conside-21 ration, but safety enhancement goes beyond that envelope--
.i 22 MR. BECKJORD: Adequate assurance. l 23 DR. SPEIS: Yes. If you. define that envelope by 24 adequate assurance, then there is no cost involved, but if 25 you go beyond that envelope and you find out that there are Heritage Reporting Corporation (ses) ns 4ees
d 100 I things <that you can do in a cost beneficial ~way and most of- [. I would say 2 .these generic issues fall.into that category.
-l 3 about 95 percent of them.
1 4 DR. BUSH: I didn't quite understand.- That's why 5 I was having a little bit of trouble-- , 6 DR. SPEIS: Denny, did I say it right? Dennie:is-I 7 our in-house lawyer on this. 8 DR. ROSS: If you're interested in more. details 9 ve can provide it. But the court said beyond adequate as-10 strance the NRC may consider the cost. 11 DR. BUSH: Okay. i 12 DR. ROSS: The NRC independently says we will con-( 13 sider the cost. 14 DR. WILSON: I read the court opinion. And so the i 15 NRC, are they following that exactly or are they-going beyond l l 16 that? j 17 DR. ROSS: Well, all the court did was give us the 1 18 option for the safety enhancement. IfTna wanted to consider j 19 cost, that was our option and we elected to-- 20 DR. WILSON: But you also have an option, don't 21 you, not to consider safety enhancement at all, isn't that-- 27 DR. ROSS: That's true, that's right. 23 DR. WILSON: You have the option to stop at ade-24 quate assurance completely? 25 DR. ROSS: That's correct, that's correct. i Heritage Reporting Corporation ; m u..
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101 1 DR. WILSON: According to the court. I 2 DR. ROSS: That's right. 3 DR. WILSON: But you decided not to go with safety 4 enhancement with the court, right? l 5 DR. ROSS: That's right. And that's the thrust of 6 the revised rewritten backfit rule. 7 DR. WILSON: Can we get a copy of that? 8 DR. ROSS: Yes. I don't know where it is, but 9 we'll get it for you. 10 DR. WILSON: Thank you. 11 DR. SPEIS: Okay. I just want to show here the 12 tie up between resource and resolved generic issues. In k 13 most instances--well, in many instances the resource needed 14 has been done in the past. For example, when all of us were 15 sensitized of the importance of pressurized thermal -, 16 we found out that a body of resource information was already 17 available. It was a matter of putting our hands around it 18 and maybe doing of additional calculations. In other cases, l 19 it's mostly application. l 20 In many other cases, resolving generic issues ( 21 involves doing research. And here, for example, is some of 22 the work that has been done in support of the hydrogen issue. 23 That's what I've got right here. This work was taken over 24 the last five, six or seven years. In fact, the Academy of 25 Science has made a special effort to review that body of Heritage Reporting Corporation om u.4
i i 102 l -] 1 l I work. I don't know if'any of you were a member of that re- 'j F 2 view committee. It was very extensive ~. It-involved analysis , 3 experiments, evaluating.somebody else's work by developing : I 4 codes, et cetera. For example, by applying this last code j 5 here into large dry containments, we found'out that there j 6 are scenarios that we'could get condensation driven regimes 7 where you could concentrate hydrogen in some places in the j 8 containment. I I 9 I would like now to say something about the MARK-I. 10 issue and before I do that I want to say a little bit more 11 about severe accidents, because if you remember in my second j 1 1 Vu-Graph, when I went through the regulatory. process that [ 13 -- -- was the severe accident considerations. Here 14 we're going beyond even TMI. The hydrogen issue that I 15 discussed was the molten core was retained in the core but 1 16 then there were consequences as.a result of the hydrogen ) i 17 evolution and you would get something for smaller contain- ) i 18 ment. _i i 19 Here in the severe accident area we're going beyond 20 that, you know. If the accident progresses to the point-21 that you melt through the vessel and you go to the floor.and 22 you are really challenging the containment in more ways than 23 one, okay. You could have processes like the core interact-24 ing with water and producing pressures that way. You could 25 have the core interacting with the basement concrete, i Heritage Reporting Corporation j nana j
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i 1 : producing uncondensable gases and raising the pressures up. I l F. 2 You could have the core racing to the bottom of the contain- q l 3 ment itself for some small containments like the MARK-I. So-5 4 the question is what are you doing? Are there anyLthings' 5 that we want to do? And we've already gone:through that 6 process at this point in time right now. ; i 7 So the question again in that arena that goesLbe- j I 8 yond the present design basis, beyond the TMI experience, j 9 is again one of prevention versus mitigation, because even 10 _ there, you know, because of expensive features, where can ; 11 you get most of safety? 'By doing more in the prevention! 12 arena, or you should do something to enhar.ce containment I ( 13 given a severe accident.
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1 14 DR. MILLER: Excuse me. l 15 DR. SPEIS: Yes 'i 16 PR. MILLER: I'm a little lost where you are in 17 your train of thought now. You are not talking about generic 18 issues any more? l s 19 DR' SPEIS:
. I have left generic issues and I went -
20 through the process and I gave two examples. 21 DR. MILLER: Right. 22 DR. SPEIS: And now I want to talk'about MARK-I l 23 containment. 24 DR. MILLER: Okay. So you've left generic issues. 25 DR. SPEIS: It was on the agenda, but the issue of l 1 Heritage Reporting Co'rporation j
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1 ' MARK-I'containmentsLis whether,-given'a severe accident lin J ( 2 a MARK-I containment, we should do'something to enhance the 3 containment. And I want to give-you the background. , 4 DR. MILLER: I understand. J 5 DR. SPEIS: Now, let me. talk about the HARK-I it-4
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6 self, what the issue is. 7 Again, cc I said already, this is defense-in-depth ] 8 issue. Given a core melt, the-likelihood of a large' release. 9 could be high. Then we'll also. talk-later on based on a-
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1 I It indeed the MARK-I containm'ents could fail early.in the. pro-12 cess and thus give rise to a large source term, so the ques-
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( 13 tion, so the question is should we do something'about it. 14 The objective of this effort is the reasonable 15 assurance of mitigation capability for dominant-threats to 16 containment. No undue risk, or safety enhancement. 17 I want to point out that this is.the first contain-18 ment where we're assessing in a very detailed.and formal way 19 as a result of severe accident, but the other containments-20 we'll follow in a more orderly fashion. The program that we.- I 21 have submitted to the Commission through all these contain-22 ments--but we're starting with MARK-I. Again, because we. 23 were sensitized by the Draft 1150, where it indicated that 24 the conditional property of containment failure was high 25 given the -- --- even though there are still-differe: Heritage Reporting Corporation (so2) 6E4ws
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views on that. For example, the industry thinks that the $ It is low. Maybe 1 to 10 percent, 2 containment -- 3 and'some of our resources could be as high as 90 percent. 4 So what we're going to be doing in the next few months is 5 to take another look at this issue, take a look at the~chal- , 6 lenges, you know. Some of the challenges have been postu-
'l 7 lated, that the core, when it leaves the vessel, it races'to 8 the containment itself and it contacts the liner itself and 9 leaks that way, i
10 Another way of failing this containment would be i i 11 by the gasec that are generated from interaction of the hot: 1 12 corium on the concrete. This could be either an early ( 13 failure or a late failure. It could either be a pressure or j l 14 one of temperature. Also you could bypassEthe containment. 1 15 So before one can go ahead in a kind of a confident way to j 16 decide that, yeah, there is something that I can do' to enhance 17 containment, to delay failure, or to avoid failure altogether , i 18 one has to have a very good feeling of the failure modes 19 themselves and which ones are more probable than others. 20 So we're taking a closer look at this and we'll be making L l 21 some decisions the next three or four months based on some g i 1 22 of the information we.have. l 1 23 In some of these areas the program will have to-24 continue as we learn more information'then we'll decide.what 25 to do with it. Heritage Reporting Corporation ;
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i i DR. WILSON: How generic are those questions? - Are' l 2- they plant specific? 3 DR. SPEIS: Well, most of-them are generic. But 4 there are some plant specific. For example, it's possible 1
'S that some plants, and I don't know the. answer, there are 6 sore curves that the corium is not'able to raise-straight 7 into the liner'itself. 'I think there's.one or two contain-8 ments, MARK-I, that are concrete instead of steel contain-9 ments. Most of the MARK-I containments are steel contain-I ments and I think the design pressure is'something like 60.
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!! pounds per square inch, both the dry tell and the wet well.
12 I.think in general though these things are generic. ( 13 Now, the type of improvements that we are evaluat-14 ing, and this is by no means all of them--enhancing hydrogen 15 control, and this is really a small issue. It shouldn't be 16 here. This is during the operation of MARK-I, you de-inert 17 the containment for twenty-four to forty-six hours so the 18 question is, you know, it's possible that you can have some-l 19 thing happening during that part of the operation where'you i 20 are de-inerting, so whether you can tighten out the specifi-l t 21 cations to reduce the time that the MARK-I is de-inerted. l 22 Another thing that we're looking at is diverse-- 23 the ability of diverse sources of water. .If you lose power, 24 can you enhance the containment sprays or can you increase 25 their reliability so they can continue functioning. Heritage Reporting Corporation aman q
107 I It's also possible that they might help in a number ( 2 of ways by the radioactivity itself and maybe possibly by 3 retarding the flow of the corium into the liner. Now, all 4 these are questions that are historic. Most of.you have 5 heard of the venting issue. The-venting' issue involves-- 6 there are two aspects to it. You vent the wet well during 7 the early stages of the accident and possibly prevent more 8 severe accident. -Also you can vent the dry well and' avoid 9 a LOCA or catastrophic failure of the dry well itself. 10 Core debris control I mentioned already. 11 Automatic depressurization reliability. 'To make 12 sure that if this thing doesn't work you have a difficulty ( 13 getting all the diverse water sources-- 14 So it's kind of a menu that we're looking very 15 carefully to see which ones could be utilized that would en-16 hance the performance of the containment and. prevent some of 17 the threats I mentioned here. 18 DR. BLSH: Themis,.there were questions you men-19 tioned that I think you probably covered, but as I recall-J 20 there were a number of open questions on the MARK-IIs and 21 MARK-IIIs. It would appear to me that some of'the things 22 that you're talking.about, when they aren't geometrically 23 specific, are in essence would apply across the board. Are 24 you thinking along these lines? Because obviously from'a 3 25 dollar point of view, if you could take advantage of them-- Heritage Reporting Corporation (102) ess.mos
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'I DR. SPEIS: For example, the issue of corium con-2 crete interaction, it's the'same for MARK-I as'for MARK-II,-
3 okay. For MARK-III you.have a slightly different problem. t 4 You have the standing-flames that could challenge contain-5- ment, so for example when we' structure.the issues program, 6 we want to make sure that it provides answers that are appli-7 cable to both MARK-I and MARK-II. i 8 But, you're right. We are looking at this in en 9 integral way, yes. 10 So after we do this we just formulate our positions 11 with considerations for potential outcomes. Again, you know, i 12 the cost effectiveness of the improvements is always.an im-( 13 portant' consideration. j I4 We have been struggling for many years how to 15 implement and make useful a safety goal. We're going through 16 that process right now. We'll'see whether a safety goal-17 policy implementation will help or provide insights or how 18 to measure some of these improvements. , 19 Next week, for example, on this issue we'll be
.1 20 having a very extensive workshop where we'll try to address i 21 some of the technical issues and based on that and some of '
,i 22 the information that we have already from our resource 23 activities and additional calculations, we'll be putting in 24 some preliminary positions and make some recommendations to i
- d. 1 25 the Commission, and in April or May the final recommendations )
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I 2 Again, this is part of the'overall program of 3 what to do in this phase of severe accidents._ The other 4 element of that, in addition to specifically focusing on 5 containments, is this individual plant examination where 6 we'll be telling the industry to undertake that' examination,. 7 to look for vulnerabilities and utilize those' insights that. ; I 8 come from that examination process'to develop accident manage -
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9 ment procedures that can go farther in enhancing'both the 10 prevention as well as the mitigation of some of the' severe 11 accidents. ) 12 So This is a very important. area'and you'll hear a ( 13 more about it I guess tomorrow. ) 14 DR. TODREAS: Themis, I've got one question. I 15 lost track on the safety goal.. Is that a responsibility of 16 the Research Office or the regulation or-- 17 DR. SPEIS: It's the Research Office. It has.been 18 assigned to the Office of Research. 19 DR. TODREAS: 'It has been assigned. So that's'a 1 1 20 task. ) 21 DR. SPEIS: .The only-safety goal that has been (. 22 out officially is the health effects part. There is~another 23 eleinent that may be-- 24 Wayne, are you going to talk about it? Maybe you 25 can say a little bit more about it. i i Heritoge Reporting Corporation nasa ;
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-110 ,, DR.' HOUSTON: _I had planned to mention it,:but 2
not spend much time on it. 3 DR. SPEIS: _Yes. But it is in our office. DR. HOUSTON: It's basically a policy question. 4 DR.LTODREAS:. But if it's assigned to this office, 5 6 then what's the job you've got to do and what's the.schedsle 7 you're on? That's what I'd like to know. 8 DR. HOUSTON: We'll1 talk about it tomorrow. DR. SPEIS: We'll talk about it tomorrow. When 9 , 3g he talks about. He has the responsibility of. implementing the. safety goal and we'll talk to.you abou't.it. 3, Some of these activities are very_ interrelated with 12 13 ther activities. I'll just give you'a kind of example. I In the area of containment performance, the issue.characteri-14 15 zation and evaluations which I described earlier, 1150 in- ] 16 sights. Containment structural research, Mr. Arlotto will ]
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17 talk this afternoon about that. Analysis and experiments 18 done at Sandia and other places where we tried'to evaluate g, what is the capability of some of these containments, which 20 go beyond the design basis, you know. The design basis'was 21 based on very conservative quotes. On external events. And there is much more capability than that. And.we'll try to . 22 take advantage of the severe accident area. 23 One f the key things in the severe accident area 24 ( is to find out, to assess what are the margins on the design 25 4 Heritoge Reporting Corporation (202) 628 4000 1
111 1 and see what you can do about those margins. What strategies 2 you can possible take advantage of. And that's an important 3 part of this interaction program. And an important part is 4 understanding this structure margins. So you see a number 5 of problems fade into this. In fact, we're on the hook from 6 our Executive Director of Operations to come up with a very 7 detailed commission paper putting all the severe accident 8 programs into one place within the next two months, before 9 we proceed with the issuance of the IPE, the individual 10 plant examination letter. 11 The last Vu-Graph is something that I guess a lot 12 of you have talked about it, but based on the work on under-( 13 standing the capability of MARK-I, you see here that the 14 estimated failure pressure can go somewhere between 130 and 15 180 PSIG depending on how it is challenged. If you are deal-16 ing with higher temperatures, you see that the capability 17 is somehow reduced. But this is the type of effort that we 18 have underway for all containments basically. In some cases 19 there is some experiments, in some cases, someone else's. 20 And as I will tell you later in the afternoon some of the 21 money that we thought we had available to pursue some of 22 this more aggressively, no, it's not available anymore. 23 So with that very, very brief overview, I think 24 I'll bring this discussion to an end, unless you have any 25 questions. Heritage Reporting Corporation um a..a.,
112' I DR. SHERIDAN: Yes,.I have one. Maybe it's not the 2 time for it. Let me bring it up because I see it as.an is-3 sue. 4 Regarding the defense-in-depth idea, and I'm par-5 ticularly concerned with the management of defense-in-depth.
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6 Does the designer design layers of things that take-care of 7 problems as you break out of one layer into_another layer 8 and so on, and the designer has assumptions about those 9 things working the way'he sort of intended--he or she in-10 tended them to work, when they are' called upon? Now, unlike 11 a lot of equipments in a power plant,.those things are tested 12 from time to time,.but they are not operated regularly, so ( 13 you don't have--if something doesn't end up working the way 14 it was intended to work, and if the assumptions of the de - 15 signer aren't implemented, for example, in terms of some-16 thing being maintained, you don't know-that. The PRA guy 17 can make some assumptions about, you know, the chance of 18 something not being maintained, but you never know it. 1 19 Is there some way that the compliance of these ) i 20 layers of equipment in terms of their being maintained or ] 1 21 otherwise operating according to the assumptions of the de- l 22 signer is continually checked and fed back 4,to the process? 23 Is there some way of closing that loop? ; f 24 DR. SPEIS: I think you've hit a very important i ( 25 point that regardless of how well you design something, i f. Heritage Reporting Corporation j
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113 1 you don't attend it eventually _it's going to fail, okay. 2 And we see that happening all over the place. Merley's or-3 ganization is again spending considerable effort. They are 4 focusing on this area. In fact, the Commission just got a-5 policy on maintenance where much more effort is being put 6 into this area. This is a whole area that will need sub-7 stantial discussion, but you are absolutely right. 8 DR. SHERIDAN: It may be more than maintenance, 9 but the defense-in-depth thing is kind of operating open l 10 loop, and what you'd like to do is get in there and, you 11 know, you don't have the fast generations of redesign,evalua-12 tion, redesign, evaluation. You are talking about something 13 that might never work in practice. l 14 DR. ROSS: At a future meeting of the committee, ( 15 we'll probably have another office come over and discuss 16 its work. We have a separate office called the Analysis 17 and Evaluation of Operational Data. It's got about one hund-l 18 red people in it. And they do the kinds of things you're l l 19 talking about. And-- 20 DR. SHERIDAN: It's more than just PRA. ; 21 DR. ROSS: Oh, yes. For example, there's a Na-
.l 22 tional Data Network that collects unusual events and failures "
23 of systems in all the operating plants into a central loca- i i 24 tion and people draw out of it current failure rate informa-(. 25 -tion. Heritage Reporting Corporation m u..
114 ] 1 More importantly, if something goes wrong with ] 2 plant A and all plants'that might have that same disease 1 3 it will process an immediate information on this. You know, j 4 check your plant. You may have this disease. And a whole I i 5 bunch of things this office does that's relevant and you ~j 6 probably ought to get a complete rundown on what they,do. 7 DR. BUSH: Yes, but you won't get the basic issue 8 there I think, because if you read the language, for example, i 9 on ECCS which is a good for instance, you will never come ] t 10 with the idea that they are or are not tested in what I'll 11 call their true mold. The answer is they aren't. After the 12 one time. In other words, what you do is you test them ( 13 against a closed valve or something like that, but literally 14 you don't test your ECCS in a true operational mold. 'I 15 found that out the hard way because I had a question on it i 16 and had to call and find out that indeed when you read the 17 tech specs, they don't test. And even if you do preventive-18 maintenance, you don't know if the system would operate the 19 way it is said to-operate. You have a very important issue.. 20 DR. SHERIDAN: Well, it's not easy. I realize 21 there's no easy answer to that. i 22 DR. SPEIS: I was going to say that this area is ; 23 management. Management capability or, you know, the day-to-24 day follow up of operating experience which involves mainte- I 25 nance, management, operational events, and so on and so forth . i Heritage Reporting Co poration (set) ammes a
115' 1 It's a big part of the Commission's efforts right now. 2 DR. TOBREAS: Tom, why-don't you hang on to that 3 Point and reask it relative to when you write something, 4 - how can the Research Program contribute.to a structure and 5 effectively the maintenance of a scheme to ensure this?' 6 I don't think you got a comprehensive answer either. I think l l 7 tech specs are one point. Irspection is another. l l 8 DR. SPEIS: I can give you a very short answer to l 9 a--maybe I'll formulate my own question. We are providing E&D 10 support to the office that Denny mentioned, tha , in l 11 coming up with the guidelines of performance indicators, 12 which involves a number of things, maintenance, management, ( 13 and how do you take all that information and get some in-14 sights of how the plant performs or maybe can you extrapolate 15 from that into the future, and so on.and so forth. And 16 that's not a very well defined area but'we're attempting to l 17 see if we can make some sense out of all the different ex-l 18 periences which involves going all the way from -- to I 19 the systems themselves. . 1 20 DR. WILSON: ~About one structural failure mode ! 21 you listed. They are claiming different things of contain-22 ment. failures of which you can go from the chamber of one 23 but the whole look came off and you've got a 15 meter by 15 24 meter open space, and one with a small flap. Are you clas-25 sifying them in terms of--I mean the question is what they Heritoge Reporting Corporation (ses) eas.ases
116 l' do with the stuff coming out, with a small hole in there. 2 .DR. SPEIS: Well, if you recall, you mentioned 3 Chernobyl. It was a confinement. 4 DR. WILSON: -I understand that.. 5 DR. SPEIS: You can have a -- probability. 6 DR. WILSON: But nonetheless, it would end up not 7 being wide open. 8 DR. SPEIS: Well, yes. We are trying to assess 9 and Guy will say something where there's a global failure 10 that the whole thing bursts or there's a' lift before break, 11 some penetration which is weak or some other part of the 12 containment fails in a way that you are able to depressurize ( 13 in a non-catastrophic way and we are attempting to categorize 14 this type of failure. 15 DR. TODREAS: I'd like to ask you to provide us 16 with one thing. In your backup Vu-Graphs, there are nine j 17 issues listed as USIs. Can you give us, say, tomorrow just ! 18 an identification of those and the schedule for resolution. 19 DR. SPEIS: Sure. 20 DR. TODREAS: Okay. And can you extract that if l 21 you have to from some big thick document that has a bunch of l 22 other stuff in it. Let's just focus on the nine. l 23 DR. SPEIS: Sure. ; i 24 DR. TODREAS: Okay. 25 DR. SPEIS: I'll give you one page, a half a page. ] l Heritage Reporting Corporation naa ;
'~ l1 117 i i DR. BUSH: Did they discontinue the generic issues 1 ( 2 document, it's a NUREG, you know, that used to come out every 3 quarter-- 4 - DR. SPEIS: No. We have it. Every quarter we put 5 out a status report which describes every issue, what is the 6 status of the resolution, the ones that have been resolved, 7 whatever the outcome. We also have one document which is 8 continuously updated. It's called 0933. It's not the one 9 you referred:.to. 10 DR. BUSH: I. haven't seen it in four years. . 11 DR. SPEIS: The history of everything that has 12 happened. All the issues that have been resolved-- ( 13 DR. BUSH: Resolved, unresolved-- 14 DR. SPEIS: Right. 15 DR. BUSH: I haven't seen that for about four years . 16 DR. SPEIS: In the backup slides,fI also provide 17 the number of issues that have.been identified since TMI and 18 what has happened as far as the resolutions. l 19 DR. TODREAS: Just the one sheet. If you want the l l 20 other things, Spence-- l 21- DR. BUSH: I haven't seen it. I didn't know if
.22 they discontinued it.
23 DR. SPEIS: No. 24 DR. TODREAS: I don't want to swamp the committee 25 with-a lot of paper, so I don't want to ask for that. Heritoge Reporting Corporation on
j 118 I DR. SPEIS: Charlie, did you have something? {. ' 2 DR. KELBER:~ In addition, the Research. News, which-3 is our newletter that comes out quarterly, has since the l 4 last issus'a' list of work on issues, rules and regulations 5 that is near term. In other words, publications that'have 6 come out the last quarter, publications that are imminent. 7 'And they give the title of the publication, the applicat".on, l 8 and the person who is in charge, and the phone number. So l 9 if you are interested in specific topics, you can get in i 10 touch with the individual, i 11 DR. TODREAS: Okay. Thank you very much. j 12 DR. SPEIS: Thank you. DR. TODREAS: 'I think we'll carry on now with Denny ! ( 13 14 Ross, miss the lunch peak at the restaurants, and probably l 15 break sometime just a little bit before one. If you had an l 16 early breakfast I apoloyize. ; 17 But, Denny, try to structure it for a half hour. 18 DR. ROSS: I' L1 have to drag it out. .! 19 DR. TODREAS: No, no. Structure it for about a 20 half an hour and then Bob Shepard needs about five minutes l l 21 and then we can finish maybe just a little bit before one. , 22 DR. ROSS: As I have noted, this is a discusson l l 23 on NUREG 1150. I have a few pieces of plastic here with some l 24 words on it and then about a half a dozen figures to finish 25 up with. l j- Heritage Reporting Corporation j
'119 1 Charlie, dim the lights down a little bit, would
( 2 you? 3 I'll discuss first the purpose and the scope of 4 the report. Just to give you an idea of the dimensions, l 5 this is Volume I, the main report, and there hre two appendi-l ! 6 ces about this size. The report is about'two and half:to 7 three inches thick. There are some key backup reports'from F the contractors which stood, if you sit them vertically, 9 were about a meter high. Fairly extensive thing. ( 10 I'll have a little bit more'on the objectives of Il the report, but the same purpose of the report is just like 12 anything we do in.Research. We are supposed to be an audit '( 13 agency. We don't review everything licensees do. And this 14 was a series of audit calculations. We pick five plants 15 that represented broad differences in containment. And we ! 16 tried to do an update risk assessment on these'fivel plants. l 17 In addition--so the main purpose was to audit the 18 current assessment of risk around the country. We had hoped i 19 that we could use these as a surrogate, but we quickly found 20 that we didn't want to make any claim that these five plants-l 21 could be extrapolated and directly and numerically represent i 22 the risk around the country.
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23 So it is an audit effort. 24 The scope included the updated core melt frequency, k' 25 the calculation of the back end, the containment response,
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120" I the source term for these sequences for these'five plants, f (' 2 and an integral uncertainty analysis for each of the five 3- plants. And we closed.this.with what we call our Risk'Re-4 duction' Program. We imagined a series of backfits, both in 5 the front end and the'back end for each of the plants. We 6 calculated what these would do in' terms of reducing risk. 7 We calculated the cost. We compared the cost. benefit' ratios 8 for a large number of backfits. So that's roughly the pur-9 pose and the scope. 10 As of February of '87 we published the draft and 11 it took roughly about five years of research to get to that 12 point. And the research if you divide it in two parts is ( 13 a lot of phenomenological research which had been going on 14 for a number of years and then following TMI took an upuarge 15 and these are the typical things you'd look for in a severe 16 accident, like a number of experiments in how the core melt 17 progression takes place, what happens when the hot .corium 18 interacts with such things as fissure vessel, steel, concrete 19 and containment walls. 20 And since you can't use the results directly, we 21 had to build a large number of models. A lot of this' work 22 was described in an earlier NRC report, NUREG-0956, which had 23 its own external peer review, two members of which are here 24 at the front table. 25 The technology of what we call the source term Heritage Reporting Corporation (sos) ass.4 ass
t 121 1 code package, which is a compilation of the five years of 2 phenomena we've used to calculate most of the dominant se-3 quences described in NUREG-1150. 4 So the' front cover says Draft for Comment.- And 5 this is what we do-to a lot of our big reports, highly vola-6 tile and highly political reports. Put it out for public~ 7 comment and we got a lot. Some of it favorable, but not much. 8 You know, only the mother can love the ugly child, and maybe
' that's the way we look at this.
10 ' Anyway, a lot of the public comment-we got was Il extraordinarily useful. And I'll talk a little bit later 12 about how we used the public comments. '( 13 We have two external reviews that are going on at 34 present. We have a peer review panel that is chaired by Bill 15 Castenberger of UCLA. In fact, I'll have to leave in the 16 morning to go out to meet with them. They are going to do 17 their work in two parts. They are going to issue an interim 18 repcrt late next month on the draft, and then they'll follow 19 the technology and when we publish the final report, they 20 will review it and then put out subsequently their final 21 report. 22 In addition, ANS has a special committee that's in 23 the middle or perhaps near the end. Again, they are looking 24 at the draft only, and whether they look at the final report 25 has not yet been decided because that will b_ decided by next Heritoge Reporting Corporation (ses) mmes _ . ~- - - _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ . _-- __- -___ _ __ _ -
ll 122-I' . year's officers in the ANS. (- ' 2 What we.think will happen is late this year we'll 3 publish the draft, and as I said, in that case the peer re-4 view will continue. 5 A word about the objectives. We want to assess the 6 frequencies of . sequences , of risk to these1 sequences for 1 7 'this set of five plants. In parallel, but running a little- i 8 bit behind, we're doing a boiling water reactor MARK-II~ con- q 9 tainment to the LaSalle plant, but it'll be probably 1989 , i 10 before it comes out. We may get the frequencies cht this j i 11 year, but we won't get the back end just because everybody's 12 busy and we just don't have the time to work on all six ( 13 plants. 14 We try to put out a perspective, and this points i 15 out one of the comments we had is the same thing. people'said 16 about WASH-1400. The document wasn't scrutible,whatever that 17 is. So I think we are going to try to do a better job in j i 18 writing it, especially in the first few chapters, perspec- l I' 19 tive, both qualitative and quantitative, to people who are p 20 not experts in PRAs. ! 1 21 And now when we get the rssdjusteds of the final'
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22 report, we step back and say, what does this mean for regula-23 tion. l
-l 24 Themis a.1 ready pointed out that the lack of congru-(
t 25 ence in severe accident regulations between the design i Heritage Reporting Corporation n=n=== , i
123 I pressure of a containment which is based on one accident and (- 2 the fission product loading, which is based more or less on 3 an arbitrary posture. 4 DR. BUSH: Denny, could I ask a question?- On that 5 first item there, when I looked at 1150 I had very strong 6 reservations about what'I call this frequency risk values 7 in the PRA statement in there. Do you know if there's any-8 thing being changed in that or are they still being cast in 9 concrete as they were? 10 DR. ROSS: On which part, Spence? I 11 DR. BUSH: This would be the value that would lead j 12 to what I call the frequency risk core melt accident. That ( 13 front end value, the initiators. 14 DR. ROSS: Well, how we characterize the-- 15 DR. BUSH: What I'm really asking is is Casten-16 berger's committee looking at them as to validity? 17 DR. ROSS: Castenberger has spent a lot of time 18 looking at the front end and they were moderttely'to severely i 19 critical on some of the ways that we displayed the results j i 20 Their main point was som, thing that I think was more of a 21 scrutibility terminology issue, but what we did was we did i 22 Point estimates of core melt frequency. Then we said--and l 23 there's a lot'of input to that. For example, a failure rate j 24 of a system or a component in a system. We said what if we (- 25 changed the common cause factor? Or what if we changed the' l l Heritage Reporting Corporation (2es) 6ss mes _- ..__---_____ __ _ _-_- - _ m
w _ 124 i i unreliability of the diesel generator? What.would this do 2 to the point estimate of the core melt frequency? Would it. 1 3 raise it up or move it down? j 4 If you 'did sensitivity studies, what you did was 5 you generated a band not a point and then we characterized i 6 .the band as somewhere in which was the raise of the means. 7 Then for each point in the sensitivity study we did a 5 and 8 95 percent whisker, and then we put the whole thing together 9 on one graph and they complained, rightly so, because we were 10 mixing apples and oranges. We were mixing the upper 5 per- I k 11 cent of one number with the lower'95 percent of another num-12 ber and so what we said was we'd make sure that we didn't And ( 13 confuse sensitivity studies with uncertainty depiction. 14 I think that was the biggest sin that we committed. 15 This is sort of another way of looking at the Table 16 of Contents, but let me point out--with five different re-i 17 actors, three different boiling water reactor containments, 18 and the other two--one was an ice condenser, pardon me-- ! 19 two BWR containments. The third one comes later. We had a - 20 low-pressure ice condenser plant. We had a-four-loop Westing - 21 house plant with what we call a large dry containment. And ! 22 then the old favorite, Surrey, which is a Westinghouse plant ; r 23 in a sub-atmospheric containment. So we had five different 24 types of reactor containment combinations. 25 We characterized the sequences, the fission-product Heritoge Reporting Corporation (set) ne.asse __ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ - _ - _ . - _ _ _ _ _ _ - L
125~ I i I 1 I behavior, the transpou off sites. And at'this. point right
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(. 2' here we said we had done the Level 3 PRA, which picks up off-3 sight consequences, and as I.said, we calculated the risk j 4 reduction potential.. By alternate systems, I'mean such: 5 things as a third additional diesel generator, an additional j a 6 feedwater system, a core catcher, a. filter vent,-a large num-7 ber of postulated alternate cystems. , j 8 We did an integral uncertainty analysis which un - 9 fortunately nobody liked,.and we're completely redoing it to and then lastly we discussed a broad range of regulatory- .;
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i 12 Now, I'm going to speak a little bit to what's. ( 13 going to change between the draft and'the-final report. 14 Well, the draft report was essentially frozen in mid'to late ; 15 1985. There's been a lot of technology since mid '85. We're
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16 going to incorporate as much as we can in-the final report. q 17 The technology in the area of melt progression - 18 experiments and models--we've run a large number of experi-
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19 ments in various reactors on how fuel rods behave in a de-- l 20 ficient cooling regime. Ex-vessel phenomena which includes 21 the interaction of how pressure molten core material with 22 a containment atmosphere, core concrete interactionsLin j 23 aerosol models. 24 We've run some structural tests on the concrete-25 containment response and verified some codes. We've-Heritoge Reporting Corporation (ser) assa _.____..__..__.___ _ __ _ __.__ _ _ a
126 1 drastically we think improved--we've certainly altered, how 2 we elicit expert opinion. We will still need to use expert 3 opinion to do the uncertainty work in the final report. 4 ' And we revisited the plants, and the plants have 5 changed. They've added systems. They've run tests. So'we 6 are getting better data from the plants. 7 And this is just another list in a little more 8 detail of the improvement in the phenomena. 9 I believe the cut-off date for the final report l to is roughly January of this year. So we had to stop, freeze, 11 and rerun our models. 12 Now, the comments that we got on NUREG-ll50 can ( l 13 roughly be grouped into four parts. The completeness of the ! 14 understanding of the phenomena, which I just mentioned. A 15 lot of comments that we were out of date, and if we were, 16 and that's something that if we publish the final report at 17 the end of the year, then you can still make this comment. I 18 We won't be able to discuss the tests that we're going to i 19 run this July. Because we had to freeze the technology. 20 Some of our computer models were not described as' 21 well as some of the others, especially the ones that were 22 generated to process the back end, so we just take that--we 23 agree to do the better depiction of the models. 1 We had a lot of comments on use of expert opinion. 24 ( ! 25 We're treating it more as of--let's say, engineering Heritage Reporting Corporation
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127 > 1 I psychology science this time than we did last tine. We are-r ' 2 being much broader in the' selection of experts. All of the 1 i 3 experts are being trained in special training sessions on 4 ' how to reduce their judgement to a distribution. We're not 5 coming in with predetermined statements that would bias the 6 panel. The panel can add or subtract issues. It can dis -
< h 7 qualify itself if it thinks its in an area that it doesn't ;
8 want to testify, and so on. We think we'll have this pretty l 9 well settled. 10 And for scrutibility, we're just going to sort of ; l 11 start over and try to see--take another look at who the l 12 audience is. We have such a variable audience that I'think ; ( 13 by the time we get through someone could still say it's not 14 scrutible. We can't write AcWh to every level. But we are 15 collecting all of these comments and we hope that by the end 16 of this year we'll be able to publish a document that satis-4 i 17 fies most of us. i I 18 Just a comment on resources. The Severe Accident I 19 Research Program, since about 1981, has probably totaled ! 20 several hundred million. $400 million is the number usually
'I 21 used. A lot of this went to impile tests which are very 22 expensive. PBF alone costs about $20 to'$22 million a year i i
23 to operate, to do impile tests and they could only do one 24 test a year. So tests are expensive. 25 The PRA, which is somewhat manpower intensive, Heritage Reporting Corporation 8 imo .. _-.__-_-____.___a
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.128 8 iT the last twa to tro.2nd a half years probably easte aba6L -(- 2 $10 million.
3 Eric mentioned that even if we publish the final' i { 4 4 1150, there is going-to be' sort of a mortage, and'we think 5- full confirmation of what we're doing. completing our model 1 6 development, may.take another-five years and may take another 4 7 $100'million. That's something I'd expect.to spend a lot of. ! 1 8 time on in the next year or so. 9 Let me illustrate some results. I have-five se-10 lected graphs from the Draft NUREG-ll50 concerning safety 11 goals, large release, containment failure, and then I wanted 12 to make one thing on use of expert opinion. (. 13 Now, this is the information flow and you can see-- 14 if you don't have this report and you want it we'll certainly 15 be able to get it. . But the flow is from Chapter 3, Core 16 Damage Frequency; Chapter 4, Containment Analysis; Source I 17 Term in Chapter 5; Off-sight Consequences in' Chapter 6; i 18 Risk in 7; Risk Reduction -Totential--this is your so-called
'l 19 backfit or safety enhancements in 8. Some speculation on I
- 20 extrapolation results in 9. And then regulatory views in 1 ,
21 10.
-22 We had some notion of improving the thing in Chap-ter 11, but we certainly added to that.
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23 4 24 Let me show you some of these examples and try to 25 guess where we'll do better in the. final report. What we Heritage Reporting Corporation j mom == ,
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3 have.nere is the five piants that were in the 1150 study. 2 The phenomena known as direct containment heating where'you 1 l 3 postulate the molten core at the bottom of the pressure ves- l 4 sel at high pressure burns a hole in the vessel, high pres-5 sure ejects it in the containment and then it produces direct j
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6 containment heating. 7 So we have the five plants and we have individual 8 early fatality risk per' year and we got this from doing the 9 consequence analysis, and what we show here is not a point 10 but a range. Now, the Commission safety goal was it shouldn't 11 be more than .1 percent which is the accident fatality risk, 12 and this translate to 5 times 10-7 So a horizontal line there is the Commission's safety goal for early fatalities. ( 13 14 And in our uncertainty work, for each of the 15 plants we sampled, the various things for which we had dis-16 tributions we did one hundred samples in sort of a con-1 17 strained analysis, and then these samples that are shown ! 18 here, there should be--the density is too much to read, but 19 then we said this is roughly a 5 and 95 percent rectangle. l l 20 And then the mean value was somewhere in here, and 21 if you look at this we're covering two to three decades 22 sometimes and one of the comments was, "Can't you do a better 23 job? Can't you give me a mean value -- on a distribution?' 24 And after looking at it, we think, yes, in the final report 25 we can. Heritoge Reporting Corporation (2e2) ass mes
130 1 Even so, looking at the'five plants we studied, 2 they tend to meet the safety goal. Maybe a few little points 3 up here, but I wouldn't feel uncomfortable to say, "These 4 five plants met the'early fatality safety goal." 5 When:you look at latents, it's even more obvious. 6 .We still have the rectangles where.the uncertainty study is 7 there, but look at all the white space up to the : safety goal. 8 This is latent fatality and the Commission's goal here is 9 .1 percent again of the background. So there's an incredible 10 amount of white space there, 11 DR. SHERIDAN: Would you say again what the goal is? 12 DR. ROSS: .1 percent of the risk you would have ( 13 if there were no nuclear plants. 14 DR. SHERIDAN: Fine, okay. 15 DR. ROSS: In both cases, latent and earlies. 16 DR. WILSON: You mean one thousandth?- 17 DR. ROSS: One part in a thousand. 18 DR. WILSON: Of the cancer risk-- 19 DR. ROSS: Of the latents, it's cancer, yes. 20 DR. WILSON: It's cancer, it's entirely cancer. 21 DR. ROSS: Now, the Commission suggested when it 22 put out the latest Safety Goal Policy that we consider--
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23 meaning.the staff consider the possible use of a larger re-24 lease number as an addition to the Safety Goal Policy and 25 they said would we please look at the usefulness of a 10-6 Heritage Reporting Corporation
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v , 131-I value for a large release. ~ That would be for each-reactor k 2 a 10-6 probability per year that it would suffer a large re-1 3 lease. 'And they specifically said mean.value. But they 4 did not define a large release,-leaving that to us, and they ., i 5 didn't issue this as policy. They suggested that we look at j 6 it. So when we published Draft 1150 we did two things. 7 First, we defined a large release. And said, here's a sug- )
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8 gestion. A release that resulted in one or more early fa-l 9 talities. Then we compare) the five plants with 10-6 Now l
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10 you can see some trends. Look at the ice condenser sticks ] 11 up above it. And you'd have a hard time seeing it met this 12 tentative goal. ( 13 Now, if you look at it in a little more detail, i 14 the Sequoia plant, which is a four-loop Westinghouse plant, 15 it's in a ice condenser with only a twelve-reund d'esign pres-s 16 sure and core melt frequency was markedly above the debark 17 I BWR. If you put these two at the same core .T.91t frequency
'l 18 they probably would be pretty much alike.
i 19 Now, it is not decided as of today whether.this 20 goal will be enforced and if so to what degree. That's a i 21 policy matter that's still under development. 22 If you enforced it for an existing reactor, about 23 the only way you can move these down is to work on the front i 24 end. There is not much you can do about backfitting more , ( 25 steel-- I He'rltoge Reporting Corporation , (ses) 6as-dess
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J l DR. WILSON: When you say one or more early fa-2 talities that means outside the plant? 3 DR. ROSS: Ob. yes. Occupational-- ] 4 - DR. WILSON: Chernobyl meets that requirement. . 5 DR. ROSS: Well, it does--you know, with such an
.i 6 energy--what's an elevated release? A Chernobyl.releaseHat )
7 30 meters, I don't know what it would be. Ac 4,000 meters 8 you get a different answer. 9 DR. WILSON: Yes. 10 DR. ROSS: In fact, probably the closer you got l 11 to the plant the better off you were. According to Sutton j 1 12 or whoever does the latest-- l And ( 13 Let's look at a sub-set of the previous thing. 14 Themis mentioned the conditional containment failure proba-15 bility. This is a type of information that would come.out. 16 of expert opinion assessment, and I'll show you how it was i 17 done on the next slide. 18 Again, these are from 100 runs from the uncertainty 19 study and you notice that, for example, the boiler has a 20 bunch of points up here and a bunch of points down here and 21 maybe a few in here and when we look at this closer it al-l 22 most looks like a tri-model distribution, but there's no 23 general trend, and it's things like this that leads the 24 headlines in the Boston Globe, "90 percent chance the Pil-25 grim will fail." Or the Philadelphia Inquirer or whatever Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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e . _ - _ _ 133 3 journal one is reading. 2 With direct hearing, you do see a fairly broad 3 distribution here, but when you look at it closer, most of-4 the points are not at the 20 percent reading. 5 Again, this is an area where we are going to try 6 to produce a mean value and a distribution. 7 DR. TODREAS: Are thosc numbers that are reported-8 on here, are these from a calculation or-- 9 DR. ROSS: Yes. I am going to describe the cal-10 culation right now. 11 DR. TODREAS: You said something about expert 12 opinion. ( 13 DR. ROSS: Yes. That's what I'm going to describe. 14 What we did is we had panels of experts and I'm 15 going to show in this case two different panels. The first 16 panel is represented by the open rectangle. There's a con- 3 l 17 tainment load panel. And we had a collection of experts 18 that for every containment pressure shown on here for'one, 19 two, three, four and five open rectangles. axperts were ) 20 asked to give their weighting factor, a degree of belief, 21 the sum of these adding up to one, that the containment load l 22 would be at this value. For example, that's about 155 pounds . 23 This shows a weighted average of about 10 percent. And I. l 24 forget however experts we had, but we took the numerical , ( 25 average. The arithmetic average of the experts. l Heritage Reporting Corporation
134 1 And so if you fitted this toia continuous curve,
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2 you'd have a probability of -- of the load. 3- Get'another group of. experts who are structural 4- engineers and do the same thing to_the' containment response, l 5' and when will this concrete fail? The-concrete contain-6 ment, when will it fail? All right. You have weighting 7 factors again that add up to.one.- You get another.PDF of 8 the containment response, called a failure pressure. This 9 was illustrated in Chapter 2 of the German Risk Study a num-10 ber of years ago. 11 Okay. And then you go in and you sample.one event 12 for the--in one particular pase through you get.one sampling ( 13 for the load and another one for the pressure and on that 14 particular sample, and while open rectangle goes to the 15 right of the' shaded failure pre' ure, you'd say for that 16 sample the containment failed. 17 And, of course, if you did this-to the continuous 18 distribution, then it would be the intersection of the areas. 19 DR. TODREAS: I've got a more fundamental question. 20 I'm not sure why you're doing this. 21 DR. ROSS: Well, sure. 22 DR. TODREAS: I can see using expert opinion to 23 identify phenomena to then build models to make calculations, 24 but what you're doing is using expert opinion to generate 25 the total answers sort of. Heritage Reporting Corporation m u..
135 1 DR. ROSS: Well,.the.best answer, Neil, is if we ( go back in licensing space to about 1980, and we were trying 2 i 3 to license Sequoia, its operating license, and this is when 4- we first required hydrogen--the first case for hydrogen 5 ignitors. And the question came up, what's the. containment 6 pressure if we get certain amounts of hydrogen.in there and. 7 ignitors work. And you burn the hydrogen and you get a' low. 8 So the question was would the containment fail or wouldn't 9 it? And-we had about four or five. people calculate it and to they got numbers anywhere from 20-- one guy got even less 11 than the test pressure-- up to about 80 pounds. It was a 12 very wide spectrum. But since that time, there's been a .( 13 number of scale model tests done. There's been more calcu-14 lations and better calculations done, but you're still not 15 going to get a point estimate of the containment ultimate 16 pressure. You are going to get different people--good people 17 doing valid reasonable calculations and they are going to 18 get a little bit more, a little bit less. If you want to 19 build in an uncertainty analysis, what else can you do but-20 take into account the fact that this phenomena has a distri-21 bution. l 22 All the experts are.doing is constructing a distri-23 bution based on everything they know. They see all the. cal-24 culations. All the experiments. 25 DR. MILLER: Are you saying--I guess I didn't Heritage Reporting Corporation
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!= follow that. Following Neil's question. Are you saying the k
2 distribution from the codes was greater than the distribution 3 from the witnesses? 4 DR. ROSS: No. I'm saying that once you construct 1 5 the curve, is.the intersection of the two curves, the area 6 determines the probability of failure. 7 DR. MILLER: Let me say my question again.- You l 8 have this set of--I think this is your question,-Neil. You 1 l 9- have a set of ten people that have ten different codes. And 10 you ask them to run this set of problems. Il DR. ROSS: No, no. Once the experts are in the 12 room, what you ask the experts-- ( 13 DR. MILLER: I'm not talking about the experts. 14 I'm talking about--you said that you tried to computer-- l 15 DR. ROSS: Oh, a number of years ago, this was just 16 in the infancy, there was a lot of dispute on how to calcu-17 late this. 18 DR. MILLER: Is there now? i 19 DR. ROSS: There's less. There's not unanimity. 20 You will not get a point value. j i 21 DR. MILLER: But you won't from the experts either. -) 1 22 DR. ROSS: No, that's right. 23 DR. MILLER: I guess I was just trying to get a-24 feeling for why you think this approach is so much better 25 than the approach of having someone or some set of people do Heritage Reporting Corporation non m.
137 I the calculations. ( That's the 2 DR. ROSS: Oh, they do' calculations. 3 input to the experts. They don't get off in a corner without 4 any data. These people come, .but all of'the calculat ions 5 have been done. But like in structural response,-there's 6 different theories on how horizontal stiffeners on a steel 7 containment can be smeared into an equivalent. wall, fitness. . 8 DR. MILLER: Do they all see the same data? Or 9 do they all come with whatever data they knew about? 10 DR. ROSS: Well, they all shared data. 11 DR. MILLER: They shared data. 12 DR. ROSS: Oh, yes. They didn't have secrets. 13 DR. MILLER: So it's really the interpretation.of ( l4 the data. 15 DR. ROSS: Yes. 16 DR. WILSON: There's another thing. I:sometimes 17 wonder about this. You take an. average' number of expert 18 gentlemen on their best estimate. You have_the experts for 19 their best estimate. And then take the average of their 20 judgements. Is that right? 21 DR. ROSS: What we did in the past was the arith-22 metic average. 23 DR. WILSON: Right. 24 DR. ROSS: Now, we may go to geometic mean this 25 time. I don't know. We. haven't decided.
, He'ritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628 4006
r 138 l- Another' possibility. Suppose you ask one expert p 2 a hundred times or ask him his distribution. Would it come 3 to about.the same? I-mean, I can imagine if you. asked me 4 the questions I can pretty well give you that range. I.can 5 give you a b'igger range. But I wouldn't be' satisfied with 6 giving my best estimate if someone. thought it would be-- 7 I would want to give'you a distribution. 8 DR. ROSS: That's exactly what we're doing.- The 9 next time. Everything I showed you is what's in the draft-20 report. Il DR. WILSON: Okay. 12 DR. BUSH: . But, Denny, that won't be a -- ( 13 That'll be biased towards the upper scale. 14 DR. ROSS: What's coming out of--I'm not smart 15 enough to raise the string. If this is frequency, right
.16 now it doesn't matter whether it's log or linear scale.
17 And this is zero to one and let me put a CDF on here. Very 18 idealized. What's being asked the-expert is the zero-- 19 0, .05, 5, .95 and 1. We're asking--now,Lthis may be Expert ! 20 No. 1, and another one, he may have--this is' a very symmetric , 21 Maybe another'one will have a funny shape, as experts do.. 22 And Expert 3 and so on. And this stuff--the new results'are 23 only days and weeks old. NRC just hasn't had a chance to 24 respond to it yet. But one suggestion for processing is to 25 take the nth root if we have-N values, geometric means. Heritage Reporting Corporation m
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139'- 1 And another one is to take.the arithmetic.mean. . And we've (._ 2 seen'what it looks like both~ ways. The advantage of pro-3 cessing these with the geometric mean, if the wild expert' 4 is way over here from everybody else, we. intend to filter out 5 the wild man. So I don't know what we're going to do. 6 It's a fascinating study. 7 DR. LEVY: I don't want to enter into this,' but~ 8 there's a major--~ 9 DR. ROSS: I'm through. 10 DR. LEVY: There's a major problem ~with this whole-11 process. I think if these curves are not very'similar.that 12 tells you that there are some things we don't. understand ( 13 and that's what Research should. address and it should.not 14 spend time trying to combine these guesses that are'so 15 different from each other. 16 DR. ROSS: Well, the thing is-- 17 DR. LEVY: I think youfare kidding yourself by 18 applying a lot of arithmetic to solve a problem that really 19 required some kind of information. 20 DR. ROSS: If'you want an' uncertainty 1 study,1what 21 else can you do?- If you don't want an uncertainty study, 22 we'll use point estimates-- 23 DR. LEVY: All-this tells you.is that you don't 24 know enough about the phenomena to give an uncertainty 25 study. That is my view of it. Heritage Reporting Corporation u.n us.a., _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ = _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ - ._ - . _ _ . - ._ - - - _ _ _ - -- _ . _ - . _ _ - . - . _ _ _
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- 140 1 DR. ROSS: It could be.
( But they are being honest about 2 DR. SHERIDAN:
.3 their--they are being open about their--they arelbeing-honest 4 about their uncertainty, which to me is'a great stepLforward 5 as long as they can hide their uncertainty under some point.
6 estimate or something. 7 Dh. ROSS: The previous reactor safety study l 8 was criticized for not having the integral uncertainty. We. 9 are just trying to do the best we can this time. 10 DR. LEVY: I wouldn't give it a lot of weight 11 though because the experts are so far apart. 12 DR. WILSON: I disagree with Sol. You've got to ( 13 do the best you can on this job. And if the experts disagree 14 then you can pick who you like. So then you have tu -the 15 other way, you don't get the input on it. 16 DR. LEVY: See, we're doing the same thing with 17 our LOCA, but there the phenomena is.so well understood that 18 you can actually exercise the model and find your uncertain-19 ties. And you can actually put them on the pot and show L 20 they're not that bad. You can get experts and you won't ! be 21 that far apart. And I'd say when you do that that says you 1 22 understand what's going on. 23 DR. BUSH: Well, I don't even agree with that, Sol, ! i 24 because even if the initiators for that--we did a study on 25 the initiators for LOCA, and we had six orders of magnitude . 1 Heritage Reporting Corporation-a.n . _._.___...____.____u_
141 1 dif ference between the expert.s. l 2 DR. LEVY: I didn't deal with the initiators. I ' 3 just dealt with having the accident, how well can you predict ~ 4- the-- 5 DR. ROSS: Well, it's just like--we're talking-- l l 6 do you know Everett Rodenbach? 7 DR. LEVY: Oh, yes, I know Ev. We worked-on.some 8 of these. things. l 9 DR. ROSS: 'Well, he says if you can get on pipe 10 break probabilities experts within six orders of magnitude 11 shake their hands-- l 12 DR. BUSH: . That's what we did. We got six orders 13 of magnitude. l( 14 DR. ROSS: That's good. j 15 DR. BUSH: Well, that isn't good. l ! 16 .DR. ROSS: No, no. For him. He says you don't 17 think you can do much better with today's science. 'I was 18 concerned because some our curves were one or two orders of 19 magnitude off.
- 2. What I'm going to point out--one potential use I 21 think of interest to the committee--when we do all these -4 22 things, this technique has the capability by rank regression. q 23 to say, which issues, like containment failure mode or direct 24 heating, or all the other phenomena, are contributing most 1 r(
25 to the uncertainty. Heritage' Reporting Corporation im>.a. -
w i 142 s l 1 Now, if you believe the technique, you are going to i 2 research these more than you are these. I 3 DR.. BUSH: You see,.Denny, the thing I have against 4 1150 is that it's addressing the tail end'and I quite frankly 5 think that the priors may control what happens in the tail 1 6 end to a major degree. And I think there was an inherent 7 bias of these studies that isn't handled in 1150. 8 DR. ROSS: The Monte Carlo was stratified and i 9 called Latin hypercube or limited Latin hypercube, but it
.I 10 may be forcing tails. But one thing we can do when we look l
11 at these events that produce high risk, you can go back and 12 look at what happened and you can say, ah, I forced a sample ( 13 at the very low end of this tail, this tail, this tail,-and . 14 this tail, and you can find out what made that thing so high. 1 15 I'm through. 16 DR. TODREAS: Before you close out, I guess I'd i 17 just like to alert the committee to something 'n this whole 18 area. Because we've got a tremendous spectrum of people
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19 here who've been into these things at the working level and j 20 people who are just approaching them. 21 This study on 1150 and the use of experts and un- , 1 22 certainties and what you are trying to accomplish. And then j 23 there's another one which Sol mentioned which has to do with 24 the large break LOCA, quantifying certainty there. Experts 25 are used in that study in a completely different way because Heritage Reporting Corporation i uann-an
143 1 of the basis at least of the phenomena. ( 2 So it seems to me the 1150 and that large break-3 LOCA are examples of studies'and activities that we are going 4 to want to take up when we really review the management of 5 this program and what they are trying to accomplish. They-6 are not really budgetary issues. 'They really go to the 7 . heart of.taking research results, turning them around, put-l 8 ting them to use down toward regulation and identifying what 9 research needs to be done. l l 10 DR. ROSS: The same way with Arlotta with the 1 11 seismic hazard. 12 DR. TODREAS: Well, okay, I don't even know about ( 13 that one. So there's more than two examples. 14 DR. ROSS: Yes. l 15 DR. TODREAS: But let's hope we can keep it to 16 three examples or less so we can get our arms around them, 17 chew on them, and-then draw some conclusions out of them. l P 18 But I'm just speaking now to alert everybody to the fact ; 1 19 that at least two examples have been talked about.. They are i 20 worth going into to understand them so we can make comments l l 21 and the kind of comments we'll lx) making are'more the Octo-22 ber type comments than the budgetary comments. 23 ' And the use of experts and the methodology is-24 completely different in both because of the nature of the 25 issue so don't get locked on one-way they use experts. (Whereupon, there was a break for lunch at 1:45 p.m. )
, Heritoge' Reporting Corporation (ses) sasasse
I 14h I' AFTERNOON SESSION ( 2- (1:50 p.m.) 3 DR. TODREAS:' All right, Guy, we're ready. 4 MR. ARLOTTO: Mr. Chairman, we're here to talk about 5 shatwe call our Engineer Research program, although it's 6 called Primary System Integrity on this slide and there's going. 7 to have be a significant change in the thinking that has been-8 created earlier today because we're going to.be talking, not 9 so much about such esoteric subjects as severe accidents, 10 large uncertainties, although we will have uncertainties, 11 we'll be talking much more about hardware and cracks and how 12 to stop cracks and why to make valves work and why we think ( 13 that in order to keep these plants operating safety, you're I4 going to have to continue with a. vigorous engineering 15 research program, 16 I'll make a couple of points. The-first one is, 17 all the work that we are doing is directed at keeping'operat-18 ing plants continuing to operate safely and. keeping those few 19 that are coming on line operate safely when they do. We have 20 no work directed toward advanced or new reactors. All it is 21 based on, in essence, the present population of reactors. 22 I quickly will say that obviously a lot of the work 23 we are doing and have done will feed back into things.like 24 standardization, if that becomes a reality. We work, 25 obviously, very closely-with the people in NRR, as you will Heritage Reporting Corporation cman.
.y id5 i see. k 2 The key thing to remember is hat the majority of our 3 program, except for containment, is directed at. preventing 4 accidents, different from mitigating accidents, of course, 5 which containment is'there for. 6 As I present my program, I will try to do this, 7 because there is a wide variability of the people associated 8 with our regulatory activities. I'll to put up what we think 9 the safety issues sre in research. We will then try to show to how it's being used in regulatory process and what programs
!! we have to feed into that process.
12 These are are the areas if you're looking gor another ( 13 matrix, these are the areas I will discuss today: vessels, 14 piping, steam generators, non destructive examination, aging 15 life extension, which I hope will bear some fruit for the 16 question raised by Dr. Sheridan this morning, seismic and 17 containment. 18 In the vessel area, vessels obviously are needed 19 for both prevention and mitigation. It is the one component 20 which we specifically do not back up.with concerns of assum-21 ing its failure and it's needed for mitigation simply be-22 cause it holds the core and is the part in which water will 23 have to get into in order to cool the core in case of acci-24 dent. 25 The key. goal, obviously, is Number 2 which is what Heritoge Reporting Corporation m
3-140 makes our concerns in:the nuclear business unique because of
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1- .i (- 2 the fact that we can't'have--vessels do become. brittle due to 3 the-fission process, thereby reducing.a great deal of the 1 4 .tuffness and thereby putting them in greater jeopardy of i 5 crack propagation. 6 Continued operation, the key question'which will 7 come up'in many of my slides is what I will call responsible 8 decision _ making. This is sort of hinted at at the third j l 9 bullet which says "Given.a condition, what.is the' decision )
'1 10 makers?" How- are the decision makers going to make. a decision -
1 11 on what to do? I 12 Next slide, please. Here is, again, a specific-- 1 ( 13 this is a more specific way to~ state'it. 14 If we are assigned through some non destructive j 15 examination or some other mechanism,.we'have a crack in a
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16 vessel, what is the--how do decision makers make a decision 17 whether to shut down reactor, all it to continue to cperate, ; i 18 of if it's shut down, to allow it to go up again and the 19 information that we.have evolving'and have evolved and are ! 20 evolving in the vessel program addresses this issue' head on. ; 21 We have had problems in the past on on hatch, where
,s 22 we cound a weld, a nozzle--a weld an- a nozzle that had a 'j 23 crack and it was decided that it ceuld be ground out and a i 24 vessel ses allowed to continue to operate and we have had-- .i L( l 25 in the past, we had a problem, similarly.at Pilgrim where we Heritoge Reporting Corporation (302) esem
9 w I had a 6 inch crack and because of the information that had A 2 evolved over the years, resulting from our vessel program 3 decisions could be~made in a responsible way rather that 4 making. decisions based on minimum information. We don't 5 have it all, but in these cases, it was sufficient informa-6 tion .where the Commission felt they could make a decision 7 to allow continued operation and feel comfortable that we had 8 sufficient margin for safety.- 9 Obviously some things you might want to keep in 10 mind that we have. Basically our approach in vessels, as you 11 will find out, also in piping, is to develope methodology 12 and then validate that methodology so it could be applied ( 13 on a broad spectrum of conditions. 14 We have PWR vessels are about 8 1/2 inches thick 15 and because of the fact that the neutron bombardment.is in-16 side surface, the effects of that bombardment ie~ variable 17 through the walls thereby giving severe impact to the material 18 which means that a crack could start in a brittle region and 19 end up arresting in the ductile region, so we have to.under-l L 20 stand the behavior both from elastic--from linear elastic 21 all the way to full plastic understanding and that is part 22 of what our problems are.. 23 In addition chemical composition, we have found. t 24 particularly things like copper or nickel have a profound 25 effect on the effects of neutron on a brittlement and we have f Herifoge Reporting Corporation m u.
i . j 14G 1 to understand better how the chemical compositions,can affect (- . 2 the toughness of these materials. 3 A key element in our program has been what we 4 call the pressurized thermal shock exper'iments. Pressurized
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5 thermal shock was a condition that raised it's head to some-6 where about 6 or 7 years ago in which there was grave con-7 cern, given a particular kind of a scenario, where a vessel 8 could be shot w n cold wate2 bit yet stay at high pressure, 9 we could have a conditir!. where a crach would propagate 10 through, based on the thermal shock and then the pressure 11 itself could drive-the crack through the wall becasue of. 12 the pressure and this became a very vry important issue that ( 13 the Commission had to face and this is one place where I.can 14 say that probably the research program and I can't take full 15 credit for this because it started before I was in this 16 position. 17 Probably the ability to make responsible decisions 18 when that particular issue raised its head, probably has 19 saved the taxpayers money, as rate payers,-to pay for the 20 entire research program probably since the NRC.has started 21 because that issue, when it raised, there was a lot of clamor 22 to shut down the plants and because, at that time, we had a 23 great deal of data of what the effects of the radiation were 24 on materials. We knew P. Considerable amount about the effect 25 of copper and based on that, we have had an approach whereby Heritoge Reporting Corporation m m.a
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't 149 4 I we looked at the worst plant, which'was H. B. Robinson, 2 decided that that plant was okay for about'a year which gave .]
l 3 us time to sort out the problem and we ended up going to rule ; i 4 making, never having to shut down plants unnecessarily and 5 yet assuring ourselves we had adequate safety. 6 PTSE-1, which was a Pressurized Thermal, I,am 7 going to.show you a picture of a vessel soon, but PTSE-1, 8 basically dealt with good material in:the' main part of the 9 vessel. T 10 r/SE-2 which we just completed a year ago used low j 11 upper shelf material. -That is material.that had been, in 12 essence, degraded due to what would be radiation, although ( 13 we didn't actually use radiation material. I 14 The other issue we have-inf ront.of us, what is 15 the effect of cladding and I'll talk.a little bit more 16 about that on another slide.- 17 This is just a picture of the vessel that we used 18 for pressurized thermal shock. We do these experiments at Oak 19 Ridge. The diameter is 39 inches, 6 feet high and 6; inches 20 thick, a PWR, basically, for matter of comparison, is probably l 21 about a diameter of 15 feet. It's length is about 45 feet and l (- 22 it's about 8 1/2 or 9 inches thick and the BWR 20--approxi- l 23 mately a diameter of 20 feet, about 70 feet high and.6 and a 24 quarter inches thick. ; 25 This just gives you an idea that these are no toys Heritage Reporting Corporation ! m _ - - _ - - _ _ _ _ _ _ - - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ = -_ _ .. _-. _ - __ _ _ . . . - - . _ .
q-150 I when we're doing these experiments. ( 2 Going on, we have a. condition before us which I-said 3 that we were not involved which new revamped reactors inLthis 4 program, but the real problem or the real place where I.think
-3 that the industry will rise or fall certainly, in the interim ;
6 period, is on the issue of life extension or license exten-7 sion, we may call it. 8 In this area is the key to whether or not the indus-9 try will be able to, in essence, buy time, hopefully.to re-10 juvenate a new industry and the key--obviously the key and' 1 11 most important single component in making a' decision whether-12 you would go to a life extension condition or a9 ply for a 3 ( 13 license extension is to react the vessel. It is expensive 14 and very often it will be a determining factor based on 15 studies done by the industry, it will be the determining factor 16 of whether or not license extnesion is economically worthwhile , 17 so the key to understand the effects of the radiation effects, 18 fatigue on vessels and what that may do in terms of. going 19 beyond 40 years is clearly an issue that has to be faced and 1 20 becomes aggravated when we really don't have all the answers 21 to what happens in the first 40 years. 22 Now the other issue is that given a situation where 23 a vessel has seen damage that becomes of concern, the next is-24 sue is whether or not it's feasible or whether or'not it's ( 25 economically wise to anneal the vessel. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 620 6
6 151 1 ' Annealing is justfsimply heating the vessel up to ( .
.2 a particular temperature,.usually about 850 degrees, thereby 3 recovering part of the properties that is lost due to this 4 radiation abrittlement. We have done some work only.on separat e 5 effects of materials to show that, yes, indeed, you can.get 6 recovery and we even have shown that the reimbrittlement 7 rate is no faster, in fact, somewhat slower than the initial 8 embrittlement rate, but the question that we are not. address-9 ing and must be addressed by the industry is.more of the 10 engineering question is,.can you anneal a vessel in place and 11 be reasonably sure that the engineering conditions will be 12 satisfactory, that is: will the nozzle distort so there will 13 not be a mismatch? dill the. head not distort? .And so, that's
( 14 an engineering question. That, I believe, is a question. 15 that the industry will.have to answer itself, it faces the 16 question of whether or not to anneal. 17 But, we had done sufficient work in separate effects 18 to say that, as far as materials itself goes, the recovery of 19 the properties and the fact of the rate of reimbrittlement, 20 we feel we have, in hand, at least some idea that annealing 21 is a viable alternative to vessel replacement or plant shut-22 down. 23 Just to make a couple of comments about the. 24 right side of the slide, I would like to simply say that 25 one of the things that life expansion and the' work we are Heritoge Reporting Corporation cman.
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- doing here and and when'I-talk about'my aging' program, isJwe-(
2 must have an idea of . trending data.- That.is going to be the i 3 key, in my judgment, to the technical-issues of life exten-4 sion. 5 Two things, one is inspection, we need a snapshot 6 at sometime. Two, what are the trends by which we are going'
-l 7 to have an idea, this.is what happens at 10 years, this is. l l
8 what happens at 20, this happens at 30, then maybe we could i 9 predict what's going to happen at 60 and that trending data -j go is going to be key, in my judgment, both to.the decision of' 11 a licensee saying he wants to apply for a license extension- 1 I 12 and the acceptability by the regulatory staff. j The third bullet is just--a specific oneLI would ( 13 g4 like to point out, we had some. joint programs with Germany, 15 with the Gondrumigan reactor, we were taking out samples, so 16 that we can validate the material that has seen 12 years, 12 17 years of operation and determine the effects of radiation on 18 that material and compare it with some of the work that we 19 do by irrating material for test purposes at the Oak Ridge 20 Research Reactor, where we have to do it at a different rate 21 and the question is, is the accelerated aging equivalent to 22 the real aging and the kind of benchmark, we doing both at 23 Condrumigan, and hopefully at Shippingport, which has a.20 24 year operating experience, we will get some idea of wheather 25 or not our methodology can be validated.
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l? iS3 1- Next slide. This is again some of the work we have 2 done, Pressurized Thermal Shock Rule came out, it dealt.with 3 this issue, as I said, without any necessary plant shutdowns 4 and that. thing is in place and.the research program had a-5 major input into getting that thing where it is. So direct 6 regulatory application, there it is. REG GUIDE 199 which sort 7 of puts a little more meat on the bones of' Pressurized. Thermal 8 Shock, as well as suefulness in the normal heat up and shut l 9 down as required by Appendix G of our regulation, also very' 10 important in terms of what are the effects of these tramp 11 elements. 12 We have understood a lot about copper. We are well
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( 13 on our way to understanding how copper affects their 14 irradiation and embrittlement rates. We now have learned l 15 that, in some cases, when you have a metting of. copper at 16 high nickel, you can also get very high embrittlement races 17 and there are even some people that thing that perhaps plos-18 phorous or sulphur may have an effect, but 'the point is that l 19 these very small amounts .03 percent copper could have a , 20 significant effect and we have to understand this by.doing !
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21 some separate effects tests. I 22 Regarding the cladding, this is something that we 23 are doing only in a very small program but if we had it really 24 our way, we would probably have another one of these vessels 25 as clad because the cladding has to'be addressed in'a very Heritage Reporting Corporation
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'( l 2 First of all, we don't know much about the' effects j
l of irradiation on cladding. It's a stanless~ steel and we-3
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4 basica11y' deal with carbon steel. 5 The second thing is that if you have a crack under 6' the cladding,.the cladding itself, could hold the materials' a! 7 together, thereby-preventing that crack from propagating, but 8 the question is: Will the clad hold together and what do we 9 know about it to give us that kind of. confidence. q 10 on the other hand, if the crack goes through the-in cladding, it could actually go the other way because of the' 12 ' differentiation of co-efficients of expansion between stainless 13- and the carbon steel.
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14 So, we are looking at* separate effects on cladding 15 snd hopefully we won't have to go to a full scale test and if 16 we did, I'm not too sure we're going to have the money to do 17 it anyhow. But that is a question that is open, the effects ; 18 of cladding and whether or not it can be mitigating or 39 whether we could get credit for it. 1 20 The next item on the vessels, I just want to point l 21 out--this is the last itea on'the vessels actually, is that , s 22 Appendix G, which is a regulation we have in place, basically 23 deals with how do you control heat up and cool down of the 24 vessel in terms'of start up of it and shut down of a nuclear 25 power plan and it limits thoat rates. Heritage Reporting Corporation m u. ________._________C
l "h 155 1 The key question here that we're addressing is 2 one of anticipation. Within that. regulation, we say that' 3 no material shall operate below a certain'effect, in. essence 4 a certain toughness, which we call it, would be signify itias 5 50 foot pound. 6 We anticipate that as these vessels get old,.that 7 .we are going to get application, that is the NRR people are 8 going to get applications.for exemptions to that 50 foot 9 pounds and it may very well bt that 35 foot pounds is also 10 safe, but we are trying to anticipate those kinds of applica-11 tions so that we can again act responsibly in trying to under-12 stand what does it mean when we go below the threshhold'of ( 13 50 foot pounds which is~in.our regulation and should we or 14 should we not entertain material that has a toughness 15 characteristics that go below that particular level-and it 16 may very well be it's okay as part of our program is address-17 ing what we call low upper shelf materials. In fact, it's a 18 key part of our program right now. 19 DR. TODREAS: Could I just ask you a question i 20- about that? l 21 MR. ARLOTTO: Sure. 22 DR. TODREAS: If-you get an application that, say , 23 below 50, is it supported with data from the industry? 24 MR. ARLOTTO:They will come in with data, but usually 25 it's more paper. i Heritage Reporting Corporation no m. , a______________-____--_____-_-_-_____--_____
jiE 15 G - 1- DR.I TODREAS: -More what? ( 2 MR. ARLOTTO: Paper.- 3 DR. TODREAS: . Analysis. 4 MR. ARLOTTO:- Analysis. It usually will come in' s and'say we have'done.this and we have-looked at'this' work 6 and'we have doneithisl analysis and we say'that even if it's-7 down at 40 foot pounds, it's okay. 8 And the question.is - may be or-it may not'so what' 9 we do is we try to give information to our(associates.in-10 NRR to ask the right probing! questions and hopefully to
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11 actually help the industry or help.the people in trying to,1 12 perhaps, sort o,ut a research program-or come in with some. idea ( 13 about whether'or not what they are' proposing makes any sense. 14 DR. TODREAS: Wht I am sort of interested in is d 1 1 15 osrt of the ambience of the direction in this area. This is I 16 a longer term area coming off, everybody has got access if ] 17 they want to pay for it, if the Oak Ridge.research reactor 18 starts up again. 1 Is there a move to have the applicant provide j 19 20 data? o i 1 a l 21 MR. ARLOTTO: No, no. The applicants have never ! I l 22 been very forward looking in that way. .I mean, I' don't-- l l 23 DR.-TODREAS: But they got a real incentive now l
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24 that they can see in terms of dollars. ) ( 25 MR. ARLOTTO: Well, yeah, I.think that's part:of it Heritage Reporting Corporation
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lY - i i 157 I in terms.of life life extension, yes. I think that that is ( real. 2 l 3 DR. TODREAS: That's what we're talking about. ' i 4 MR. ARLOTTO: That's real, that's.both--we're look-5 ing at both. We may actually have, within the first 40 years, 6 it's a potential that if they don't control those flux 7 properly by proper distribution of fuel elements, they may g end.up running into a problem in the first 40. years. 9 DR. TODREAS: I guess it just seems to me, on the 10 surface, that-that is a fruitful area for shifting some of~
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your resources. 11 ] J 12 MR. ARLOTTO: Another thing, in fairness, Dr. Todreas, one-thing is that. generally, in fairness to the -l 13 ( g4 vessel program, as really, almost from the beginning, going i 15 back to the Atomic Energy. Commission days when it was initiated ~ ' 16 up at RDT, really been a national program. There-has not 17 been a great deal of effort by anyone, even some of the 18 more aggressive venders like General-Electric Company or. l g, Westinghouse, in the earlier days, where they,.you know, where 20 they marked up flow for emergency core cooling and things like 21 that, the vessel program is really, I consider it more of a 22 national program where it was big stuf f, it was-a heavy sec-23 tion steel program pushed by the ACRS'and it evolved and 24 they're really not set up to do much more than analysis and j 25 some separate effects tests. I don't really expect much. Heritage Reporting Corporation omsnau a
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1 DR. WILSON: When did the' program come to NRC'rather (- 2' than go to DOE 7 13 DR. BUSH:'It started'in AEC days. In fact, Appendix 4 G, when I was on the'ACRS, I said ;I thought it could be 35' 5 foot pounds.- That's aLguy feeling more than anything else, 6 not backed by a lot of data and it.was compromised potentially, 7 which is a valid one and I think that what Guy says is very, 8- true, and it may not be a. problem, but we don't know~it. 1 9 That's part of-the problem and'the~ difficulty.is 10 that you can do a limit load analysis, you'get 6.peopleito do l II it and you can get 6. answers. 12 DR. TODREAS: But-his question is why did the ( 13 funding base shift and that's because, you know, almost every 14 program left DOE. 15 DR. WILSON: Yeah, but why shouldn't this one go ( 16 back? 17 DR. TODREAS: That's another question. 18 MR. ARLOTTO: Be my guest. : 19 DR. BUSH: Well one reason is that they will--DOE ! 20 will argue that with the advance grafters and control of'the 21 copper and the control of the nickel, that you won't have an 22 upper shelf problem and therefore they don't want to invest:
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23 any money in it. That's the answer to that question. 24 DR. SHOAF: What is " upper shelf"? 25 DR. BUSH: .YOu want to draw two two curves, one
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') N 159 I of them against a 150 foot pounds and u.e against 30 foot ( 2 pounds. Temperature versus stress. 3 DR. BUSH: Stress on the left. 4 Now, anything to the left when you get down there. 5 In other words, it might be a piece of glass and you_put a 6 little notch in it for breaking it. The upper--where you get 7 up to the top there, where it levels off there, it will be 8 like pulling a piece of taffy. The guestion is, how much 9 resistence is the pulled piece of taffy going to have. As you 10 move up, it has a lot and the big question is, can you get a 11 low corresponding to say 35 foot pounds there where say there 12 was a flaw in there where it would simply fail the vessel. ( 13 MR. ARLOTTO: Let's go on. 14 DR. BUSH: It shouldn't cost you more than about 15 $10 or $20 million dollars to find out.. 16 MR. ARLOTTO: Oh yeah--$10-$20 million dollars. 17 This is a new issue, absolutely new within the last 18 year. The Hypher Reactor, high flux intensity reactor, at Oak 19 Ridge, they had a vessel that operated at relative low tempera-20 ture and relatively fluence, much lower than we see in our 21 PWRs where we're concerned. 22 And that vessel showed, when they took out this-
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23 specimen which they had in there to practice and tested them 24 and they found out that the rate effects, that is that the 25 ability of the materi'la to resist brittle fracture, had been Heritage Reporting Corporation cmm..
1 r7; 18U 1 reduced at a much greater rate than had been anticipated by.
-2 analysis. .]
3 This caused people to think in terms of well, if-o 4 that's happening to a' vessel, what about things outside a 5 vessel that might see these kind of fluences atLthese kinds 6 of temperatures, and that is why we have now become concerned, 1 7 at least to look at, I don't.think most of us, on judgment, i 8 believe that it is not going to be a major safety problem, 9 but we have to confirm it. l 10 We are now concerned that perhaps some of the 11 support structure that's outside the vessel, that's made of a material that we don't have as good' control over as we have j 12 13 in the material vessel. ( 14 We might see low fluxes and low temperatures that 15 simulate the kinds of conditions that obtain the hypher and 16 therefore we now have to take a look at whether or not those 17 structures can become brittle enough where we would be losing 18 safety marging, where we would be. concerned.that, indeed, the < 19 structure itself would fail. 20 Now, we have actually done some. boundary. calculation s , i 21 at Livermore would show that even if the structure failed, in l 22 most case, the pipes themselves would hold the vessel and the3 I 23 will not break,.the big.one.- l 24 But, we still are concerned about reduction of mar-25 gin, something about defense which was talked about before. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) no.mos
[.D 181 1 So this is a problem that we are now~beginning.to ( .. 2 look at, in fact we have a briefing with the ACRS tomorrow-3- directly on this issue. - 4 Next slide. I got so much to cover. I'll have to 5 move out. i 6 The next issue is piping. ' Piping is, obviously, ,l
.i 7 the thing that we have focuse'd on a great deal in'our regula-8 tory approach, cracks'cantpr'opagate. 'We know that piping-is 9 different from vessels in the sense that we do have to; deal 10 with bending and the seismic loads can be much moreLdemanding.
11 The second bullet shows that the reevaluation'of 12 . what we have done in the past, on balance may have been ( 13 improper and now looking'at it, perhaps we can say' safety 14 can be, maybe, overall better by not doing what we thought i 15 was so conservative', that is: a aling the pipe- br<edc which I ' 1 16 will talk about on a slide. ] l 17 The third thing I want to talk about is that there 18 have been proposed fixes to certain kinds-of cracks-we see', 1 l 19 particularly in BWRs. We have'had an input.for a research' l l 20 program in helping to resolve over the last year or'so. 21 Obviously a big decision--this is again one'of j a i 22 those decision makers given, certain cracks or edification of ll i 23 cracks, the piping. What action do you take? Do you.tell' i 24 people you must replace the pipe?' .IX) you tell people you're l 25 allowed to repair it? Or do you tell people you're going to _ Heritoge Reporting Corporation l cmi m.
l 182 i shut thcir plant down? Those are'the kinds of decisions 2 and the information that we bring to bear through our re-3 search program helps more responsible decisions to be.made 4 in that area. 5 The last bullet here is one that is something that 6 is at least worthwhile mentioning and that is the fact that 7 we have seen cast stainless steel actually lose some of its 8 touchness through normal operations, normal operating 9 temperatures and pressures that it works at through the 10 years actually loses some of its toughness and that is an 11 area where, I think'wehre the ACRS has pushed us into 12 investigating and we'have a program looking into exactly how . 13 much toughness is lost and is it really important. 'This, of ( 34 course, would affect a certain amount of Westinghouse piping 15 and many pump cases of valve bodies. 16 Okay, let's go on, I got several slides on piping. 17 The top bullet is that key regulatory action was 18 taken over the last two years. General design criteria 19 is 4 which is part of the regulations, in essence says: 20 "You have to design for dynamic effects of a double' ended 21 pipe break due to the potential for pipe rips." 22 And the question that we were trying to address 23 was: Is this really in. the best interest! of safety? And, 24 we had some work done at L:,vermore in which they developed a 25 computer code. They looked at a great deal of data and they Heritage Reporting Corporation (to2) ne 4ees
W w / 3 developed a non linear material behavior methodology taking ( ( l 2 into account flaws, stress, when it would reach critical flaw j 3 size and based on that, they evolved the probabilities for 4 . doubling the pipe breaks and the main coolant pipes of the . 5 key pressurized' water reactors were down in the nords, 6 down around 10 (-9) except for places where we didn't have 7 good information such as stress corrosion cracking or 8 water hammer, however, based on this, we are able to evolve 9 a modification to our regulations which, in essence permits 10 the plants to be designed for. I'm sorry, they not be de-11 signed for doubling the pipe breaks for dynamic effects and 12 this, on balance, we believe, is a major step toward probably 13 increasing safety and from an industry viewpoint, , reduce ( 14 costs. It was a win win situation. 15 The increased safety comes from the point of view 16 that it's very very difficult to inspect these pipes, the 17 occupational exposure is high because of these massive pipe 18 with rest raints. 19 Another thing I would like to point out on this 20 slide is the last bullet, we have a major international pro-2] gram right now, in effect, the UK, France, Japan,-the Swiss, j l
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22 the Swedes, Taiwanese, the Canadia's, n EPRI and we are all ! i 23 involved in a program called IPIRG, International Piping 24 Integrity Research Group. l 25 And, this program is trying to address the issue o:- Heritage Reporting Corporation .1 l
m pt 164 1 very big pipes with combined dynamic and static loads which ( 2 we have never really addressed before and hopefully, our hope . 3 is that with this program, we may be able'to. evolve more 4 responsible criteria for design basis. 5 Given the fact that we have eliminated the double 6 of the pipe break for dynamic effects, the' question comes 7 to mind, what do you replace it with, zero break, a leak and 8 that is the question, hopefully, we'll be able to try to 9 address. 10 I would like to make.one more point about the 11 idea of doubling the pipe breaks, thisHis strictly for 12 dynamic effects. Right.now the regulations do not permit ( 13 the use of leak before break, as it is called, for anything 14 other than dynamic affects. 15 Things such as sizing of emergency core cooling. 16 Containment for cooking qualification are still-based on 17 the old discharges from the main breaks. 18 Put the next slide on. This is.just an idea. It 19 gives you an idea of these massive pipes with restraints 20 just protect these pipes from whipping and l[ would like to 21 point--this happens to be a steamline, but some of my people 22 looked into it and thse pipe'with restraints could.be equiva-l 23 lent to 30 tons to restrain one pipe, the lig pipe and 1 24 question went out, what kind of clutter in the containment, 25 whether or not that's advantageous to safety given the
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g/s 165-I difficulties of inspection and given the difficulties of ] ( . . 2 actually making less accessible.to inspect places in diffi-3- cult areas.
.i 4 The next thing I said I would address is the 5 fixes. We.have rece3ved, we have hadLproblems with BWR pip- ;i l
6 ing in several plants in which' intra' stress corrosion crack-7 ing, the piping has--there's some auestion about whether or 8 not it had to be replaced or.certain repairs;would be 3- acceptable. We have looked--one of the repairs hastbeen 10 a weld overlay in which'they actually rebuild. v's of weld p 11 on top of a-crack and thereby build up'a certain amount of 12 thickness on top of the. pipe. The question was: How good 13 is this? ( 14 The key here was that we knew that.with this kind,cf 15 a weld, all the way, there woul'd be significant increase 16 in difficulty of inspection. 17 We have been pretty sure that the crack would not 18 Propagate through the weld overlay so we did some testing-- 19 I'll show you a picture of it. We did some testing at'Patel 20 Columbus and we bent that pipe to put bending moments on it i j 21 much greater.than we~would ever see and the weld overlay 22 stood, so we feel rather confident to feed--we fed,this in-23 formation into'our NRR associates so that while. weld overlay 0 24 were submitted as a fix for certain PWR pipe cracks, they 25 have been accepted, at least for a couple of' cycles. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) ess.4ess
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.160 1 The other thing that we have looked into andLwe C
2- believe is a very fruitful approach is induction heating, 3 stress improvement,Lthis is a method I think.that evolved 4 in Japan in which they'actually drilled heat, the induction 5 even changed the stress patterns within the pipe keeping the 6 pipe in compression, thereby limiting the potention.for 7 crack propagation. 8 The third thing that we have. looked into and this 9 has been done with a joing program between General Electric 10 Company, EPRI and Commonwealth Edison of Dressden'where they-11 set up a little injection of hydrogen into the BEW loop there - 12 by hydrogen didn't get gether of the oxygen reducing the (. 13 oxygen, cutting the probability that the oxygen, which is the 14 real bad activist, stress core as in cracking , can be j 15 controlled. 16 We do not have a specific peofeam, but what we have . 17 done is that we have looked over the shoulder to make an j i 18 evaluation of whether or not the work being done can stand 19 the test of independent evaluation so that we can then, per-20 haps feed back again into our NRR people that if this is l 21 given, as a potential fix, the BWR cracking, we know where 22 we're coming from. , 23 The last bullet I do want to mention is that-- 24 I'm sorry, not the last--this third bullet is one of the 25 ways in which we do control stress corrosion and cracking ; Heritage Reporting Corporation . naim !
&Y 167 i 1 is to put.in better material and these two materials, 316
( 2 NG and 347, nuclear energy, just means nuclear grade , have 3 been very very successful in controlling stres's corrosion and j 4 cracking, however, in looking into this problem, we did some j 5 work at Aragon, and found out that, yes, indeed, these are j 6 very good for stress corrosion and cracking. 7 I went over there. They have a little more propen-8 city, under certain conditions, where sulphur might be a bad 9 actor and for transgranular cracking, so again, we feel le comfortable that we have got our arms.around'this problem,- 11 but again, sometimes we have'to' look at many different 12 avenues and research in one area sometimes raises a question
-( 13 in another, however we we think that that particular trans-14 granular cracking can be controlled.just through better 15 holding down and better water chemistry within the-BWR-16 loops. !
1 1 17 The other two areas are relatively new and we have 18 just begun our stress corrosion, the radiation systems 19 stress corrosion cracking, we'are particularly concerned i 20 about that, particularly for internals and we really havent ? 21 formulated a program but it is one-that we really should be 22 looking at. 1 23 The last one is one that Dr. Bush could give you a l 24 long history on. This has evolved from two specific in-25 stances where we saw erosion, corrosion have a major effect Heritage Reporting Corporation mm
q y)' l 'i 16S on piping and the_ question'now we have to addr'ess.'is: (l 2 What are we going to do about this? And'right now wetthink 3 .we have'the proper techniques to detect' it. I think we:know-4 enough about the mechanism. The key question that we are.
'5 trying to address, through'the ASME' Codes and in particular 1 6' is: Where do we inspect? There are miles and miles and 7 miles.of piping. We can't. inspect it all. Where do we 8 inspect which has the highest probability where this kind of 9 phenomena can come about. That's a relativey new problem.
10 This is just to show you this weld overlay and how 13 much_of a bending moment was.able to be taken and why we 12 feelprf(tyconfidentthatthisisawayinwhichwecan 13 accept as a fix for some piping. ( 14 Now, I'll start going a little faster. 15 The steam generators,we have seen many different 16 forms of degradation. We have-seen_ wastage, denting, i 17 stress corrosion cracking, threading, pitting, you name it, 18 it's beein in the steam generators and as we change water 19 chemistry from one kind to another, we see the kinds of 20 degradation mechanisms change, so therefore, steam i 21 generat rs have been a key issue. l 22 our ma3or program w.ith steam generators, which is-I s ! -l 23 about finished now revolved about taking the Surry steam 1 24 generator, which was a steam generator that had to be re-25 placed because it had been so badly degraded, put it on a Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 644e00 q
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ci 168 ) l l g- barge and moved it through the Panama Canal and up the ; 1 f, 2 Pacific Ocean to a palce in Richmond, Washington, where we 3 Performed many tests over a 5 year period. It was an , i 4 international program. 3 We had four entities in.the program.- We had the 6 French, we had the Italians, we had the Japanese,-ourselves 7 and EPRI, all contributed, each a million dollars each to f 3 this program in which we looked at this steam generator 9 from start to finish. Right now it's actually been de-10 commissioned, it's actually'been buried, but we still haven't 11 reduced all the data. I 12 This program, basically--you can put on the next 13 slide. This program basically took the approach that the ( 14 first thing that we did was to perform a baseline eddy i 15 current. That means we' inspected all the tubes , where we 16 could get through them. 17 Some of them were so badly dent that'we couldn't t I 18 Push the probe through'thereby giving us an idea that this 19 is what we saw. Then after we knew we had'a good idea about 20 what we saw, we had certain round robbins done, the Japanese
- 21 the Italians, the Germans came in and they used their.
l 22 techniques so that we could have a. comparison and to be i 23 frank, we didn't get too good a comparison. 24 The reliability or the re,liance that could be 25 Placed on one system or another is somewhat in question. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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L L'1 - . 170 3 The next thing we did, we took out something like -( 500 tubes, statistically based, that is we had the statistic-2 3- ian's actually go in there and look into th is--and select 4 the tubes and then what we did was we. burst those tubes by-
. double chronomologies and then we related it back to the 5 -(
6 eddy current testing so they could relate the NVE to the 7 margins in the tubes that were left because the: key--again 8 the key regulatory decision maker is going to be, what does 1 9 our inspection show and what decisions do we make based on l 10 the inspection and the only way we could understand that:is 11 to have the inspection and then try to find out what kind of' 12' margins we have left and how well that these inspections 13 can predict or state what the conditions of the tube are l( 14 after we--which can determined from destructive examination. 15 Right now the feed back is' basically.into some 16 of our regulatory documents on inspection which is REG GUIDE 17 183, tells us to sample a certain number of tubes in certain 18 areas. 39 And, the second one is 121 which says that when you j 20 get the load--when you have a degradation below 40 percent : 21 of loss of thickness of the tube, you have got to plug'it. 22 They were based on judgment. We hope to'put some better meat 23 on'the bones of that particular criteria. 24 Non destruction examination is another area, 25 obviously, that's needed to give us a snapshot. We cannot Heritage Reporting Corporation m..
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i go through a whole 40 years without taking a look to see,. l ( -l 2 do we have cracks and what is the condition of the plant j
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3 throughout the life of the plant and if we take--if we im-l 4 properly detect or characterize these particular flaws, we 5 obviously can make the wrong decision and could compromise I 1 4 6 safety or can over react to a situation that is not really 7 affecting' safety. 8 Let's go on. ) ! 9 I would like to just say that this one, we have had l 10 a program in place to look at samples'from pipes and vessels 11 in which we actually used the ultra sonic examination and 12 then take the same pieces and destructively examine them to ) l( 13 insure what the feedback is between the inspection and the 14 actual condition of the particular pipes and vessels, pieces 15 of the vessel. 16 I would like to focus particularly on two items. I 17 One is the work we have done on acoustic emission, hopefully 18 that we cna get a real time related condition of whether or- 3 I 19 not a crack is growing a crack is growing in certain high -j i 20 stress areas and we're hoping that we can' develope proficient ; j 21 data that will be considered by the ASME Code to include it , 22 as a reasonable. technique for crack propagation. ! 23 The other thing is that we are heavily involved' l 24 and I'm very optimistic that this will be the most fruitful 25 thing we do and that is the PISC program'which is an ,j i Hsritage Reporting Corporation pan. , l
v 1?2 3 international. program under the sponsorship.of the European-( 2 community--PISC stands for a Program for Inspection of Steel 3 Components. It's on its third stage. It was initiated back 4 in the mid '70's or early '80's, PISC I, and itlshowed, in. 5 essence, that there were many short comings, particularly in 6 the ASME procedures for inspection. PISC II examined in-7 detail some of these techniques and recommended up grade, 8 which the ASME is considering incorporating if they haven't 9 already done so, and PISC III will really be to see whether 10 or not these techniques cab work in a real environment, 11 We sponsor--Dr. Bush, as the Vice Chairman.of PISC I L 12 III, and we sponsor one of our own people, Dr. Mascara and 13 we sponsor Dr. Steve Doctor from PNL who have done most of the ( 34 work and we have had a major input into that program for a 15 very nominal amount of money, something like a million 16 dollars of samples which we had in our hands anyhow. 17 The next area is aging and life extension. Questior,s 18 were raised this morning about what we're;doing about concerns. l 19 about defense in depth. 20 The question of aging of safety systems and com- l 21 ponents obviously, if aging continues in a uniform manner I 22 and attacks several components or systems uniformly, you can 23 set yourself up for whax is called the " common mode failure". 24 The obvious example would be steam generator tubes 25 where due to wasteage or denting, we could have a situation
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g.) . yry9 e' h .? I where many tubes ~are in a state.whereby they have wasted or ( 2 eroded to where they are less than 10 percent of their thick-3 ness and a purdabation comes along, like a transient or a-4 seismic event and breaks many tubes at one time thereby 5 causing an interchange of secondary and primary system water 6 and leading to a potential for a discharge of contaminated 7 water that by-passes containment through relief valves.. So-8 the idea of common mode failure.can come about through aging. 9 The second thing is againg of safety systems can i 10 reduce defense in depth and you not even know it. I 11 If, for example, you had an emergency, core cooling 12 system and you had problems with crud build up on check j( 13 valves and the check valves were stuck closed and you didn't-i 1 14 know it, you could be reducing your defense in depth. 15 If one of the two or one in a loop was closed, you 16 didn't know it, you would have a condition where a random : 17 failure could put you out of business and, of course, aging l l ,
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[ is degradation, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of trending, in ( 39 my judgment, is absolutely essential if you're going to make l l 20 judgments on a technical basis for life extension, i 2: In the area of aging, our program is basically afvery_ j 1 22 aggressive program in terms of actually looking at components, j 23 We have--we based the selection of components on operating , 24 experience that.we have seen from degradation and replacement 25 and risk significance. Heritoge Reporting Corporation m um
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17G I Then we actually have identifica components that we ( 2 believe require, that'could be mostly affected by aging. 3 degradation ~and select them. 1 l 4 We have an agreement with the Navy at Shippingport i l 5 -where we'have identified 81 components which were gathel.d at j 6 Shippingport for. examination and we'will look at those com- j i 7 ponents in detail in terms of their degradation, in terms of 8 their structure as well as degradation in terms of their 1 9 function. - 10 Right now, there is a very limited amount of work 11 being done in terms of the actual technical work being done 12- by the industry in aging, however, they.have looked at the 13 life extension problem, particularly from an economic view point ( 14 because their concern is basically economics and make a deci-15 sion whether or not life extension is worthwhile.- But, with-16 out the trending of that coming from. aging, it's going to be 17 very difficult for somebody:to make a case;that, indeed, we _ j 18 could go well beyond 40 years to 60 years without.having'an s 1 19 idea where.we're going--how these things'are going to age and 'j l 20 - when they'should be replaced or repaired or maintained;and l
- i 21 our program, which very.strongly addresses all these particu-22 lar issues.
23 I would make a coupit more comments about this- j 24 bullet, this bullet and this bullet. i ( l 1 25 Th qualification of equipment is a key issue and i I
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47 175 , i i one of the reasons why it may not be'as' effective as it should 2 be is because of the.very great difficulty in how you factor 3 in the aging effects when you're making your qualification 4 tests or making your qualification demonstrations and 5 obviously, if the information we get from'our aging program a 6 and feed back to make.that more' meaningful. i 7 The second thing we have a program which has already ) 8 started on risk assessment. One of.the key weaknesses of j 9 probable risk assessment is.that.it doesn't account for aging. go We have a program now, at least we have--taking a 11 hard look at whether or not we, at least, can develope a 12 methodology by which we can factor in the aging effects into 13 PR .s . ( 14 But more important or as important certainly is 15 the factor of the real data which we will get from our aging i 16 program. l 1 J The last one is and-this again is anticipatory. It j 37 18 concerns that we now have a. plant sitting out-there at j 19 Richland, Washington,. WHOOPS I, 60 percent complete, just , 20 sitting there. There is a possibility that given a situation 21 of a significant increase in energy demands, that somebody 22 might say, this mothballed plant, you might want to consider 23 for reactivation and our aging work will again help factor back 24 into that. ( Hopefully, as we go further--if.we really get to it ! 25 l Heritage Reporting Corporation- I
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1?G 1 and say, what should you be doing with'a mothballed plant.if 2 you have any idea later on that you might want to reactivate-
.3 that. application.
4 The next one'is seismic. The seismic, program 5 principally addresses some of the issues that welhave been
~1 6 trying to face similar to the double of the pipe break. 1We ;j 7 have put extremely stringent requirements on nuclear'powerf
.I 8 plants, particularly piping in terms of designing for very 9 large earthquakes. This has put us in a position where we're 10 making our piping systems very stiff which may be, in essence, 11 detracting from safety because of public conditions-like 12 normal operation,we're seeing thermal. stresses increased.be-cause of the stiffiness'and in addition.we have-had. great l ,
13 [ 14 trouble with snubbers locking up or going. limp ~which even puts 15 a greater uncertainty on'these, so we are.looking much harder 16 at a balance of the input from seismic: events into design and ] L 17 what we might do in that area. ! i 18 We can just simply say; the other thing is that we j
, o 19 are concerned that the issue,.that the potential for the chang j 20 ing requirements of inpub3 may put us into a position where we 21 do not know whether or not the plants meet the new require-ments. I 22 23 In particular the U. S. Geologic surveyLhas made. i 24 noises from time to time that the Charleston earthquake which !
25 was a large earthquake that occurred.in the 1880's might : j i Heritoge Reporting Corporation i (mo s=== ,
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J 1 actually have a much greater zone about workability than the -( specific locale at Charleston, and we don't know whether or 2 3 not if they do do that, then many of_our East Coast plants j
~j 4 would come under a condition whereby they would be subjected 5' to_a potential earthquake much greater than what they were 6 designed for and although, in our guts we feel these plants 7 are much more robust than their deisgn conditions, we would a i
8 have to make a decision on whether or not each of these plants 9 shojld have to be shut down or major modifications could be 10 made. 1 11 We have a major seismic program on going now which l 12 will address this issue and hopefully put us in a position 1 13 where we can make responsible decisions regarding what the ( 14 conditions and what the margins of the plants are, as built, 15 and not for what they were designed. 16 The other thing I would like to_ point out is that 17 many of the PRAs have shown that seismic risk isEthe major-18 contributor to total risk and that is another reason why
.l 19 we have an obligation, I think, to look into.the seismic ;
1 J 20 area.
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21 The last bullet,I just want to point"out is this 22 one and this represents a major international joint program 1 23 among EPRI and us and the Japanese. We're.actually going l 1 24 to shake a PWR loop and shake it to oc from elastic to plas- ! 25 tic so that we can benchmark some of our elastic - plastic Heritage Reporting Corporation (mumm
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. ry n 1.u 3 seismic codes. This is on a shaker table'in Tadatsu which is
- (' 2 a larger shaker table and to give you an idea, it has 3,000 3 tons of force. It can apply 3;000 tons of force. The. largest 4 one we have been able to identify in the United States is at 5 the University of Illinois which can apply between 200 and 400 6 tons of force.
7 So, it is a very larbe test in which we will try.to 8 again benchmark some of the models developed by Livermore 9 in developing the various methodology seismic response. 10 This just indicates--I don't want.to say very much, jg I will point out that we also have a program with'EPRI where 12 this element will actually have a slab built in a high seis-( 13 mic area in Taiwan with a simple box structure waiting for an 14 earthquake to occur and we actually have seen a .3 egrthquake 15 and thereby get direct input from a real earthquake and it's 16 effect on this structure, again to help us understand and 37 benchmark some of our methodology. l 18 To make a comment about the idea about over design, p, this is one where again some.of our has resulted in a success i 20 through factoring some of the work we did.into the Pressure 21 Vessel Research Committee. We are:now getting to where we 22 are getting more realistic damping values which again helps 1 l 23 our problem of not over designing for ea'rthquakes. ! 24 Let's go on, I'm taking too much time. The last 25 area I'll talk about is containment. Obviously if containment ' Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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0 17.v< 1 fails, we got a major problem. My risk people tell me that j ( whether it fails early or late is very important.. Whether 2 1 3 it fails catastrophicly or would' leak can have major effects 4 on total risk. l i 5 We consider our containment program as consisting of ) 6 4 elements. In tens of response, the first'one is Electrical 7 Penetrations; the second one is Mechanical Penetrations; 8 the third one is valves and the fourth one is structure. 9 We feel we have to have a good insight into all 4 to phases if we're going to have any confidence in making any 11 judgments regarding responsive containment, particularly as 12 it sees conditions beyond design, so we have a program that 13 addresses each of these areas. ( 14 The key part of our program is to perform integral 15 tests on large scale containment models. We perform one on. 16 a 1/8th scah steel containments. Prior to that we did 3 1/32nd
~i 17 scale steel containments to get an idea of response. From that 1 18 we learned a great deal about stiffners and we learned a great 19 deal about penetrations, but then we did our big test onLthe 20 steel containment which was--show the next slide--which was 1
21 done at Sandia. This shows where it is and just to give you 'j l 22 an idea how far away from anything it was. Go ahead with.the I 23 next slide. ; 24 This was the steel containment, it was a 1?8th 25 scale steel model. It was 14 1/2 feet in diameter. It was Heritage Reporting Corporation naa. 3 _____j
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1 about 14' feet high compared to a typical steel which was i $ ~ 2 about a 120 feet in didameter and 160 feet high. 1 3 And we did a test on'this model and it blew apart . 4 at nearly 4 1/2 tons design pressure, something like a 195 5 psi, it . blew - apar'; with . pieces all over the desert. l 6' Again at 4 1/2 times design pressure, for whatever-7 that is worth, somebody will factor;that into some th' inking 8 whereby it.will give some insights into the fact that steel 9 containment 4 one - it puts a very high level confidence that 10 the way we treat penetration is okay. Basically'the way the 11 cold treats penetrations is that the area replacement rule. 12 which says that the amoutn of steam that you take out of ( 13 where you putting the hole and your put around the penetration 14 itself, sort of like a filet and that strength should'give 15 you the added strength to the stress rate obtained in that 16 area. { l 17 And the fact that this particular containment did f 1 18 not leak or did not crack at a penetration, but indeed flew 19 apart, gives us a pretty' good confidence'that the way we are .I 20 dealing with penetration, in terms of structure, is probably 9 21 good because they are not weak--they don't appear to be any 22 weaker than the rest of the containment. ) 23 However, the fact that it flew ~ apart gives some of 24 the PRA guys come concerns because it shows that catastrophic 25 failure could occur and that is a problem.
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However the fact that it stayed together for 2 nearly 4 1/2 times the design pressure means that you would 3 have to have significant . loading (nr that before you would 4 even begin to be concerned. 3 Put on the next slide. 6 This is the concrete container. The concrete con-7 tainer behaved entirely differently. It'was a 1/6th scale 8 model and the concrete containment actually, rather than 9 blowing apart, it actually-leaked. i 10 Put the next one on. l At the liner, it cracked--a crack occurred lat the 12 liner and we figure that it failed when the system we had could ( 13 not keep up with the leak, so'in the case of the. concrete con-4 14 tahment, at something a little over two times design pressure, j 15 we actually had a crack and this made a--Tom Murley says this ; 16 gvies him a warm feeling, for whatever that's worth, that this 17 thing would leak before it broke thereby giving.him some-ideas .
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18 In addition, recognize the potential benefits from j
-19 a filtering viewpoint. A crack like that, just picture the !
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I 20 tortuous path getting through many feet of concrete to get 21 through the cracks of the concrete to get out.- The decon-22 tamination factors, I haven't figure what they would be,-but 23 I would guess they would be extremely high and maybe,.if we-24 can really feel comfortable, that concret containment would 25 really ferrule this way, it may put a little different
. I' Heritage Reporting Corporation (tes) esem
1 Ib l 182 1 burden on whether or not damping is really necessary'. ( 2 DR. WILSON: This is a concrete containment'with
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I j 3 a steel liner?- 4 MR. ARLOTTO: Yes, sir. . 5 DR. WILSON: And what's.gone is the steel. Now, 6 that might depend on the ratio of the concrete' strength to the 7 steel strength and you might have another ratio and the-- 8 MR.'ARLOTTO: Absolutely. 9 DR. WILSON: --concrete' 10 MR. ARLOTTO: We're look at--we don't know the 11 answers to this, Dr. Wilson. We have done this and this stuff 12 has not been reduced. One of the key questions we are looking 13 at and we want to look at all the concrete around there, ( 14 was it getting_close to where we may have had a failure of l 15 the concrete. 16 Basically this obtains because of the rebar in the 17 concrete yielding and as it yields, it allows the line to 18 stretch and that's why we get this kind of a crack. 19 DR. BUSH: You have another factor. You have aL 1 20 quasi crease spanding liner in here and with that-crack, you j 21 have a very severe restraint, so you have an extremely high ; 22 risk concentration problem. , 1 23 MR. ARLOTTO: Right. That's true too because it ! 24 did crack near our penetration. ; 25 I think that I have said more than I want to say i i Heritage Reporting Corporation l n3
183 I about everything. The only other thing I would like to make ( 2 a comment on is that in view of the penetrations, we are look-3 ing at separate effects penetrations, particularly on the 4 large ones because there could be distortion resulting from 5 twisting. We're looking at that. We are also looking at the 6 aging of non metalic seals which is going to be a key element 7 of whether or not some of these penetrations will leak. 8 And, I think I want to stop here. It took me a little 9 over an hour. 10 DR. ROSS: Let me have 20 seconds to give Guy a
!! little bit of help.
12 The last thing he showed on that concrete contain-( 13 ment, there were a number countries and I think the number is 14 8, they did pre-test predictions of that experiment as to what 15 pressure they thought it would fail at, where it would fail, 16 all the results were printed and made available to everybody 17 before the test. 18 One of the things they're doing after the test is 19 they sourcing whose calculational theory did the best job 20 of predicting the results. 21 DR. BUSH: Or did any of them. 22 DR. ROSS: I think EPRI did the best job, didn't they, 23 Guy? 24 MR. ARLOTTO: Yes, as far as-- 25 DR. ROSS: The main thing was the international Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 62s.4ase
l{I 184 3 theme, the open theme, the pre-test predictions, the wide I 2 publication in~ advance and that sort of. thing, it was'very 3 open. 4 MR. ARLOTTO: That-experiment, most of,the pre-1 5 dictions predict #d that the failure would probably occur'at ') J 6 the intersection of the cylindrical portion of the'contain-
- 7. ment and the base mat and'that is what EPRI did too, so they.
g predicted about the right pressure and then predicted the I 9 proper location, and also Professor Shuzuko, from Columbia, 1 I 10 who was one of our consultants, he also thought that it would l gj fail in that general area because of the uncertainty of the i 12 finite element analysis. 13 DR. TODREAS: I'm not sure I want to go through it ( 14 all. 15 I'm not sure exactly-- l 16 MR. ARLOTTO: We did have a. slide. 17 DR. TODREAS: --exactly what this--what the test jg means to you or where you're going with this or what impact ; 3, it's going to have on the rest of your program. 20 Maybe you can answer the back pack relative to the 21 program and subsequently we cc- talk about this technically, . , 22 the issue that Sepncer raised. 23 You finsih the test, you're going through the 24 methods, what do you do subsequent to that? 25 MR. ARLOTTO: What do I do? I don't do very much Heritage Reporting Corporation m za
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AuO I DR. TODREAS: Is the program-- ( 2 MR. ARLOTTO: Well, what we want to do now is, we 3 want to look at--the most important' thing we haven't-done 4 was we have a significant number of pre-stress concrete con-- 5 tainments and what we want to do is hopefully, through doing 6 some separate effects, perhaps on tendons,. tendon connectors 7 and some other unique features of pre-stress, see if we can g use the designs in the reinforced concrete to see.if that 9 together with some separate ef fects test we can get an . insight 10 into how a pre-stress concrete containment would behave. Il DR. BUSH: They don't scale very well.. I 12 MR. ARLOTTO: No, that's right. The British., of 1 13 course, conttinirant at Plysmal B,. is going to be pre-stress ( 14 concrete and we were hoping that they would~do some work in is this area, but the last that we heard is thatleven if they do 16 any work, they want to do it without a liner and we were 17 actually going to put up some money, but without a liner, 18 it isn't going to do us much good, particularly_given the 19 experience on the reinforced concrete where the liner became 20 the critical element. 21 DR. TODREAS: I'll tell you, what I am thinking of 22 this kind of-- I i 23 MR. ARLOTTO: You're probably asking the. wrong guy. i 24 DR. TODREAS: Well, okay. Let me-ask.this-- 25 MR. ARLOTTO: Sure. ! Heritage Reporting Corporation i=> .. ;
t[h - 1,80 j 1 DR. TODREAS: --maybe as we can carry this on in
]
( 2 May.
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- Sure. You can'ask me.
i 4 DR. TODREAS: Here is where you built up a pr', gram, 5 and you did a big test and now'it's got to be interpreted,. 6 the results have.got to have some kind of feed to. practice 7 and I guess I, for one, don't understand even the general 8 directions. or interpretation or what you're going to'do 9 once you got the interpretation which results to applications ) 10 of this. 11 MR. ARLOTTO: Well, I think, my answer, if I may 12 forward it. This is information, that is hard. data that we 13 hard data that we are going to give to people who are'try-( 14 ing to make these balances. Dr. Speis talked about the in- , 15 sights that you get-- I 16 MR. BECKJORD: Non catastrophic failures. 17 MR. ARLOTTO: Yes. 18 MR. BECKJORD: I think, on.it's face, that's clear. I i~ 19 T0e margin to failure is another point which may.come into 20 ger eral interest in the . case of containment . venting, if that , i 21 ever comes to pass. 22 DR. BUSH: Neil, another example of something that- i 23 Guy funded, it's a classic case of just the point that you're 24 making. ' 25 There have been a series of tests simulating seismic i
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1 loads at ETEC and I think at other places, using different ( 2 size pipes. There has been a lotHof analysis made predicting _ 3 failure. The most conservative' analysis predicted failure at 4 around 2 g's. What I would say, the most optimistic failure 5 at about 6 g's and then the system went to 30 g's and it 6 hasn't failed.yet. What happened is.that the shaker table
-7 . failed under the circumstances.
8 That's the example of the fact.t at our models may 9 not exactly tell us what they are, but now if you benchmark 10 against what I would call experimental data, you can now go 11 back and look at your models and perhapsisee where. 12 One of the reasons is the inherent assuption that ( 13 has been that all of these things fail for' buckling, and they 14 don't. We've already proven that. 15 They don't fail by buckling, but that's inherent. 16 The cold fact is you design your systems that they will fail. 17 by buckling. Section 3 of the Code says'that, it's a bunch of 18 baloney. 39 So what is going.to happen is they're going to have
. 20- change the code. I think you would have never got that out of 21 your analytetical studies. You had to do the experiments 22 to establish what really happened before.you can do it.
23 DR. TODREAS: Well, I guess all I'm saying, first, 24 it sort of intrigues me that maybe this 10 a good one to take 25 as an example of follow you for 6. months and see what happens Heritage Reporting Corporation _ mv am
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V 185 I with it. It's a fair example. I don't want to lock on to an ( 2 unfair example. 3 MR. ARLOTTO: Well, I think it's going to be as fair 4 as the inputs. I think that the key is going to be, how good 5 are people going to describe the loads on the containment 6 and tell us whether or not the bench marking that we have 7 done can give us how the containment may respond. 8 DR. TODREAS: I'm not talking about how representa-9 tive are these tests of the actual plants. Can you comment 10 on that. These are premium line stats, are they very expen-11 sive, tell me can you do it with one test or does it take five? I 12 MR. ARLOTTO: Now you're getting into statistics, ( 13 I can't deal with that, but I will tell you a few things 14 To answer your first cuestion. Both these models 15 were built with explicitly--with explicit instructions to 16 build them as ASME code models, code vessels. 17 The idea is they were built by CB&I in one case 18 and built by United Engineers in the other case and in each l l 1 19 case these are people that actually build these containers 20 and one of the key things that was part of the strategy was q l i 21 we did not want these to be built as laboratory models. We 22 did not want anything special done. we wanted them to be i I 23 built as code models. 24 As far as the kinds of construction, the kinds of l( 25 qualit*j control, quality assurance, to the degree that we Heritage Reporting Corporation
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189' I could, we anticipated that and gave' instructions and they were 2 built that way in the selection of contractors who actually 3 built these things, being the same people who build the real 4 containments, we anticipated that and did the best we could. 5 As far as how many we do, you can really only do 6 "ne. That's the reason why we talked about we did 3 separate, 7 very small models of a 32nd to get an idea o'f putting'~aside 8 or at least getting insight into certain issuis regarding 9 Ftiffening, and,regarding penetrations, and w+t're doing a 10 great deal more, separate effects models as I told you on the gg aging of seals, the electrical penetrations are about finished. 12 We have shown that they will withstand, even waen subjected ( 13 to very high temperatures and pressures, will maintain their 14 integrity and we have also shown that they mny not be func-15 tionally capable after that, that is electrically functional. 16 The mechanical mode; we are in the process because 17 we are concerned that there could be a twisting or a distor-18 tion and we think that the combination--and the valves, we 19 are looking at, in terms of leak tightness.under severe'acci-20 -dent condition and we feel that with insight into the simple 21 effects test, combined with the integrated tests, will give 22 us a pretty good handle on whether or not we have properly 23 benchmarked the methodology and that's the best--but no, I don t 24 think they'll leave. Certainly we can't afford to put up 25 $3 million or so to test very many of these. Heritage Reporting Corporation m m.a
g 1 W l 1 DR. BUSH: Guy, there's one other problem and that 2 is the only one you'll ever get the' pressure. drop without an i 3 accident, is at a much higher temperature and you didn't l i 4 evaluate' temperatures-- 1 5 MR. ARLOTTO: No. l 6 DR. BUSH: --which is a very critical issue. ! 7 MR. ARLOTTO: That's right. But we are going to 8 evaluate that key to perfect this. It's a matter of we don't. j 9 know. It may not, but our idea is that the combination of ( l 10 separate effects test combined with these big interval tests l 11 will give us a handle on whether or not we have properly vali- l l 12 dated our codes and also give us an idea about how these con- ) tainments do behave when subjected to loads much greater than ( 13 14 for which they were designed 15 DR. TODREAS: What is yhe rough date when all of 16 this will be pulled together? Is this more than a year off? l 17 MR. ARLOTTO: I would say that the concrete--the 18 penetrations work goes beyond this year. I think that we j 19 will reduce the concrete--the reinforced concrete data work l 20 sometime within the calendar year and that combined with the 1 21 steel work will give us a pretty good handle on what we have 22 learned from the big tests, if we could feel comfortable with 23 the electrical penetrations. The bid concern is the mechanical 24 penetrations, but they could get nuite big, yes, sir. 25 DR. MILLER: When you spoke about validating "our" Heritoge Reporting Corporation ; (tst 62smas i
i ,M . 9 191 1 codes. I take that to mean that you.didn't mean "our" codes? 2 MR. ARLOTTO: No.
)
3 DR. MILLER: So the codes you are referring to are . R 4 their codes? 5 MR. ARLOTTO:- All codes, we were trying as Dr. Ross- (
'l 6 Pointed out, we are trying to validate whatever the best i 7 codes are. l 8
DR. MILLER: Let me ask the question differently.
.y 9
Is there a code effort that's NRC funding? In fact'a code a 10 effort that's NRC funded? A code that you call--you say f I gj EPRI has one and--
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1 12 MR. ARLOTTO: No, no. Sandia has a code which is our contractor. I aon't know that we specifically funded that ( 13 14 code. 15 DR, MILLER: So consequently, this integral test r 16 was made to validate a particular-- 17 MR. ARLOTTO: No. 18 DR. MILLER: --code of the NRC's code? MR. ARLOTTO: No, it was to calidats--I'm sorry. 19 DR. MILLER: So then following again,-the cuestion l L 20 i 23
.that-Neil was asking: Do you follow up on the impact of this ]
1 interval test on those codes that you are referring to? So 22 i 23 do you have meetings or something like that where people get : 24 together and they redo the' calculations and-- ' ( MR. ARLOTTO: We h.ad a meeting prior to the test. ; 25 Heritoge Reporting Corpoietion m e= = ;
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19ue ; 1 They had a meeting after the_ test. These people are invited 2 to come and look at the data and one of the things, I haven't, 3 said it expidcitly and I don't know anybody has said that one 4 of the things that is going to come out of this is what 5 modifications would the Italians make in their code based on ; 6 this, if they want to make any? 7 DR. MILLER: Are many of these codes proprietary, i 8 so that people won't speak to each other or'are some of these 9 basically-- 10 MR. ARLOTTO: I think some of the A&E codes, I think i l 11 Stone and Webster have a proprietary code. Certainly the San-I 12 dia code is not proprietary. DR. MILLER: No,'no, I understand that but you ( 13 14 mentioned EPRI. l$ MR. ARLOTTO: EPRI, I.just can't answer that cues- i l 16 tion, I just don't know. 17 DR. MILLER: So consequently when I have a kind of 18 an image that after this is done there might be a workshop 19 where people get together and say, here is how this integral 20 test impacted our code and they share information,'is that a i 21 correct image? 22 MR. ARLOTTO: Yes, they go further. We will have ar. 23 international, we have an international meeting every other 24 year on containm?nt integrity. We're going to have one in i 25 June right here, I think it's in Alexandria, Virginia or some-Heritage Reporting Corporation
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4 9 193 l I 1 place like that where this wil be one of the key topics be-2 cause all the people who participated in our pre prediction 3- will be at that and probably give papers, but we certainly will be exposing all that we know at that time. J 4 5 We have it open and we have it more closed in a 6 sense that they gather in Albuaueraue. , 7 DR. MILLER: But the entirs interval tent, +l nose two i 8 tests were NRC funded? j 9 MR. ARLOTTO: Yes, sir, absolutely, completely. 10 DR. WILSON: I'm particularly interested.in this 11 question of the the reading of these papers meeting. Are thes a 12 published papers, articles and literature so I can find them in the library-- ( 13 14 MR. ARLOTTO: Sure. You could get this book that ! 15 says, this is what we thought was going to happen. 16 MR. WILSON: Right. It's not necessary--I mean 17 when we went through the ACS Report, we were very much dis- l 18 turbed at.almost every m'eting, e by the fact, that most.of the 39 stuff was NRC documents or National Lab documents which are l 20 even less meaningful that NRC documents and they put it out i 21 in the literature where somebody takes a great deal of effort and edited and reviewed, effort to make it describable and 22 23 we summarized some of our concerns in that report and said it 24 was absolutely vital because this exercise was not just for th e 25 industry or NRC presentations to the general public eventually , Heritage Reporting Corporation unammu ; _ _ - _ _ _ = _ _ _
IG\ 194 I and to the general scientific community and I was, for i 2- example, when we heard the thermal hydraulic program, had - 3 been a great success, but I haven't seen it described.Where's I 4 the review paper, where's the' list of annotated references.on , 1 5 that-subject, I mean, maybe it exists, but I don't see it.
-l 6 That is what I would like to see discussed.
7 'MR. ARLOTTO: I'll say this. This. test, was , I 8 reported in Popular Mechanics, but that's pretty low brow ; I 9 stuff. 10 MR. WILSON: That's right, but you need the graded i 11 series of papers, that for some reason the New York Times has i 12 it fully described in Amerus, but of course, it's not, when I ( 13 you try to find it in America, for other things that we did 14 and that is the sort of thing we want the home field, as this 15 so tragically identifies and it is absolutely vital in our 16 review of these matters. 17 MR. ARLOTTO: I guess for an answer, I think it goes 18 way beyond this area. 19 DR. ROSS: I think what we would like to do is to 20 give an overall progress report, across the board, in terms 21 of the publications. I think there have been a lot of 22 changes since the APS was last published. 23 MR. ARLOTTO: Right. Very good. 24 DR. ROSS: We're twisting arms at'tha laboratories. 25 The last thing we want to do is drop.last y nperiment Heritage Reporting Corporation om a..
~ 195 3 and write up the results. It will take a certain amount of 2 bullying and cajoling and I think we are having some success. 3 DR. WILSON: I'm on the Brookhaven Nuclear Engineer-4 ing Energy Committee and when I raised these questions back. 5 then in the committee, they said that we want to do this, but 6 the NRC won't let us because they think it's a waste of money. 7 MR. TODREAS: Have you talked to them=lately about s that? 9 DR. WILSON: Not since last year 10 MR. TODREAS: Okay, I think the point is registered. 11 It's certainly written in that privileged document you gave 12 us about the response to the NAS. I would like.to proceed, I think we'll proceed with our schedule. { 13 34 We'll let you sit down, Guy. Dick, you mentioned 15 that you had a few points you wanted to raise. 16 DR. WILSON: I think it's primarily that poinc, 17 and associated with that, I personally get worried when we 18 get, I mean, some tendency for one reference-today so, for 19 example, when I wanted reference work--attendance at1these 20 meetings are fine, but unless there is something for me to go 21 back and read or a reference--with graded reference, I can 22 go to any degree of detail I might feel like, but I get no 23 where. 24 If this is the way the meetings are goina, you'll. 25 get no comments whatsoever from me except that it's ineffec-Heritoge' Reporting Corporation (set) ass.4ees
p 196 1 tive. ! 2 DR. TODREAS: Let us then have Eric make a-- I DR. WILSON: . Maybe'he needs about as much time for
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L 3 4 . private-discussions--not private discussions, we're told we 5 can't have private discussions, but as I was saying earlier, 6 it's somewhat like talking politics Sacarov's apartment, you 7 know it's being recorded. 8 But nonetheless, he needs a lot of time.for that 9 because that's where the real. work is done. This stuff 10 should be gotten, in a large part by reading well written 11 materials. 12 DR. TODREAS: Could I make a reauest then that relative to each of the presentations of.the technical ( 13 material covered, send us individually, subsequently,:a few 14 15 days, a week or so, a bibliography'and. split it, one - NRC 16 reports for contractor reports but preferentially, if they 17 exist, reports in the referee literature. DR. BUSH: With all due regard, you're not going to 18 19 accomplish very much Neil because if you g.o to even the major 20 laboratories, you will not find the NUREG documents. 21 You will have lovely list of references, but you won't have the documents. I know that because I asked my 22 23 wife, who is a reference librarian-- DR. TODREAS: Wait a minute, what's the difference 24 25 between a NUREG document and the reports? q l l Heritage Reporting Corporation 4 i
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u - . - . .. . ..f4 197 , That's what we're talking about, those are J g DR. BUSH: the reports. NUREGS are NUREGS, CRs are the. reports. The 2 1 3 libraries don't get them. You have nice little references 1 4 now. . DR. TODREAS: Let's get the list, the stat list. 5 6 If they don't'get them and you want them, I'm sure Eric can. .
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7 help us to get the ones you need. DR. WILSON: Let me state my real problem. This g 9 containment, these tests on containment, you asked the 10 questions. What is the role of that test in the whole scheme 11 f things? 12 That's the question that not-only you're asking, but 3 1 I'm asking. Everyone in the general public who is sitting next ( 13 14 to Seabrook is asking it and the questions is, somehow the 15 answer to that question has not only to get to you, to me, ] l
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t 16 but to the people ii-the general public a's 'it re'l'ates to 17 Seabrook and in a way we should convince people, but first 18 convince the people in a new engineering business that' people ! 19 on the fringes, like me, who is in one sense basic physics 20 and not nuclear engineering and then'we have got to be able tc . 21 explain it to people around Seabrook where we're concerned , 22 with and that means we need these reports. 4 23 So essentially a description of the report, to my. 24 mind, is complete enough to be' useless it has a procedure 25 for getting the understanding to the pe6ple'who need to'. aMd Heritage Reporting Corporation cman.ma
e- -. (6 19s ]_ ( 1 3 want to know. C 2 DR. TODREAS: Well they got the procedures set up 1 q 3 and that will-- I 4 DR. WILSON: That's what I would like to hear about, 5 DR. TODREAS: Well, okay. You can read about it j 6 tonight in the NSC document in response to the NAS. It's 7 written in what was given you and we can follow up tomorrow. 8 DR. WILSON: That's what I would like to discuss. 9 DR. TODREAS: I would still like to take a first to cut at references. Let's go on because this will keep coming 11_ up. 12 DR. SHERON: I'm Brian Sheron and I am the Director of Division of Reactor and Plant Systems and I will be giving ( 13 34 you about an hours talk here on the area of preventing 15 damage to reactor cores, research that is going on. 16 What I have tried to do here is there are 4 major 17 areas in this category and yesterday we tried to phrase a 18 question which I guess really describes what the--in neneral 19 what the research we're doing is the question it's trying to 20 answer. 21 In the area of plant performance, I'm really saying 22 it's one of the major unknowns in thermal hydraulic perfor-23 mance, and how do they-contribute to risk and what research in 24 needed in order to answer those questions. 25 Reliability-research, the question -we think best
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- describes it is: Bow can reliability methods be used to assess
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-2 and improve systems performance?
3 Accident-management, which is a new initiative in the 4 Office of Research this year and I should characterize that as 5 severe accident management, not what I would call more de-6 sign basis events. 7 It is'what actions can be taken by.a plant operator 8 or the management team to gain control of the outcome of an 9 abnormal event? 10 The design basis. events. At the earliest possible in time and with the minimun' adverse consequences. 12 And into the area of human performance or human 13 factors, however, you--whatever your preference is on that,
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14 What human errors contribute.to risk and what research I 15 of human performance requirements and capability is needed. 16 This is also an area that has'been, I would call 17 it rejuvenated this year. 18 Let me talk briefly about what-I see is the research approach to these areas, at least from what I'have been 39 _] 20 following. l 21 There-are two basic areas, two basic categories of j i 22 research as I perceive it. One is what I call'" Applied : 23 Research," and this-is where I have~a definite user need or an 24 end product that I am trying to obtain and then I have 2' " Exploratory Research," which a better way to put it is-
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4' ? 20:; I looking under rocks. We're trying to find out if there is in-
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\ 2 deed a problem. We may have a general' area that we want to 3 explore. We don't know if there is'a safety problem. :We may 4- have.some' hint that there might be one, so either trying to 5
confirm that'there is not a safety problem there or to see
- 6. if there is one and if we do find .one, then we would, perhaps 7 tailor a research program, what I call the " applied.research" 8 which is now that we know what the problem is, how'do we go 9 about solving it.
10 Customers of research, I think that's worth 31 explaining and that is that we have used our offices within th e i 12 NRC, these are the Office of Regulation, the Office of Analysis 13 and Evaluation of Operational Data or AEOD and NMSS, Nuclear , (. l 14 Material Safety and Safeguards and then the Commission, for )i example, could ask the staff to get answers to questions the ) 15 i 16 ACRS might ask us, you might ask us. 17 But basically, our. customers are--is the Commission 1 I 18 itself. We're not really doing research'to solve industry 19- problems, you might see. 20 With' regard to the applied research that.we do, I. 21 feel that I should have exclusive endorsement from the user 22 offices for this type of research and I h' ave gone out and I'l: 23 tell you a little bit what we have done in that area. 24 But basically I want the user offices to basically l
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J( ' endorse the research I'am doing, you know, explain to me J 25 Heritoge Reporting Corporation . -l 1 pos) us.mes .
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what their need is for that research, how they're going to. 2 use it and I'll go about getting the answers that they need. 3 The exploratory research research which basically 4 is discretionary to some extent in the Office of Fesearch, 5 does not really require a user need letter or a user need from 6 an office. I don't need to have NLR explicitly say.do this 7 research or something. I need this answer. 8 But in the same sense, I usually-try to interface 9 with them or whatever other office-might be involved to make 10 sure that they have basic agreement that this is a good area 33 to explore. 12 DR. MILLER: Excuse me, Brian, but before you take that transperancy off. First of all, is this Brian's philoso- [ 13 14 phy or is this the Commission's philosophy, is this the Beck- ) 15 jord philosophy, whose philosophy are you putting up here? ; 16 DR. SHERON: V7 ell, I-- (
'i 17 DR. MILLER: You division?
18 DR. SHERON: I guess it's my division. DR. MILLER: 'That's fine. The next question is: 39
;9 Can you map the words " applied" and " exploratory", so I I 21 understand the language we're'using, into the words, 22
" confirmatory" and " anticipatory." I heard those as two 23 w rds to categorize research earlier today.
24 Are you saying that " applied" is " confirmatory," (. 25 and "explatory" is " anticipatory" or how does that relate? Heritage Reporting Corporation
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203 1 DR. .SHERON: I don't'know'if there is a' direct one L' 2 to'one relationship there. 3 DR. MILLER: . 1.re you only doing' confirmatory cn 4- do you do.both' confirmatory or anticipatory? l
$ DR. SHERON: I do both. l 6 DR. MILLER: Does everything fall into either one of 7 those two categories, conf 3rmatory or anticipatory?
8 DR.'SHERON: Yes.- i- 9 DR. MTLLER:' And I think you could also" equally l 10 take them and divide them into1these'two events? 1 11 I'm not trying to be overly bureaucratic,.it's l 12 just when you use'those words, they're different:words than ( 13 what I am used to using and I would likeito. learn the lingo. l 14 DR. SHERON: " Confirmatory', at.least in my' mind, j
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i 15 is where we are-- the Commission has made a decision, okay. :
- 1 16 And we are now doing research which essentially = confirms the i 17 appropriateness of that decision. ;
18 DR. MILLER: I didn't consider that interval 1 L 19 experiment--maybe I don't understand, but the interval ! 20 experiment that Guy talked about, I didn't consider that-i 21 confirmatory. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. i i 22 Would that'be what'you would call confirmatory-- l 23 the pressure vessels? 24 DR. SHERON: Our regulations' implicitly assume that 25 you know, that these vessels don't fail, say. in a catasbxphic Heritage Reporting Corporation naan ;
204 1 fashio7'or whatever and this research is confirming that cur-f 2 rent regulations, on these prot ~tems, are still there. l 3 DR. MILLER: Thev'do fail', but you mean fail'in a 4 certain reoime of circumstances? 5 DR. SHERON: Yeah. For example, we have calcula-6 tions that I know we've been using for some time now that if' 7 one over pressurizes a containment, it would fail at some-8 thing like two to two-and-a-half times-the design pressure.- 9 And I think Guy's experiment was confirmed, that to be the l 10 case. 11 DR. MILLER: Okay. 12 DR. SHERON: Before I get into the details, I just l( 13 want to run through these areas.- Under " Plant Performance," 14 the thermal-hydraulic research that's going on, and we'll 15 see in a little bit that it. eats up a majority of the budget 16 in the area of prevention here, that we have worked exten- 1 17 sively with our user offices. These are.primarily the Re-jg actor Systems Branch in NRR and more recently AEOD, which l i i 19 right now has responsibility,for the instant. response singer l 20 which is right across the street in the bank building here. 'l 21 We've interfaced with them rather frequently. . As a matter of j 22 fact we meet with them about once a month. We've gone through 23 our. programs. We've prioritized the programs within the. plant
, 24 Performance area, the thermal-hydraulics area, in terns of'
( 25 what we think is the most important, what should have our i Heritage Reporting Corporation , (302) 62. 4000
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.1 1: priority and.if in event'the budget'is cut,.-what goes first l I
2 and what doesn't. i
~3 Your U-N performance, which is a relatively l i
4 new area, we have actively solicited' user-needs, since this~ 5 is'a new research area'right now. We've actually gone out to l 6 user offices and' asked them to provide user'needs in this area 7 and we've worked with them.,n the development of user needs. 8 We've received needs so far from-NRR, from AEODr.and'from 9 within the Office of'Research itself. And we have also.been. 10 Working with NMSS and they are preparing their user needs 11 right now and we should be getting them I' hope within a month 12 or'so.
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( 13 As I've said, we've had extensive interactions. 14 We've gone over, for example, and met with NRR a number of 15 times since they developed their user-need letter-to make 16 sure we understood what they were asking for-, what they 17 wanted, what they intended to use it for, so that we could 18 delivery them a product that would be useful to'them. 19 We are also developing Human Factor Research Prograr 20 Plan, which right now is in the concurrence chain'and.should l 21 be hopefully signed out-tor comment within the Agency hope-- 22 ' fully within a couple of weeks. 23 DR. SHERIDAN: Could I ask you--on the user.needs 24 in that area, did you find that you were getting buckshot 25 across the landscape or was there relative focus to the needs He'ritoge Reporting Corporation - (302) 636-dest ,
L 206 L. I as. expressed by the users? l (' L 2 DR. SHERON: -I think because'we were asking.them L 3 to write their user needs'down, that it forced the user needs 4' to be focused. I worked in Regulations for eleven. years here 5 and I wrote many user-need letters in the thermal-hydraulic 6 area and I know from experience that trying to put'what you 7 want in~the way of research down on. paper really forces you 8 to focus. It's not' buckshot, okay. And'we asked them if we 9 could see drafts.of their user needs for that.very purpose 10 also. In other words, we did not understand ~what they were is asking for. And we said "We're not going to accept this." 12 So it was an iterative process until we got to the point ( 13 where we understood what they. wanted andLthey understood what 14 we were capable of-delivering and in what time frame, j
'l" 15 So I think that by the time the letter comes over 16 and is officially signed out by Tom Early, everyone was al-17 ready in agreement on exactly what had to be-done, and we 18 already had the programs in place at that time. ,
19 DR. MILLER: Another. point of clarification to 20 follow that up. When you get user-needs letters, are we. ;
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21 supposed to have the picture of this happening annually or I 22 weekly or-- j 1 23 DR. SHERON: No. I would say occasionally. I 24 DR. MILLER: Okay, occasionally is what we should 25 be doing. l Heritage Reporting Corporation. g- cman-am -
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'I DR. SHERON: Yes. Sometimes the User.needsEcome
~(- 1 2 over just verbally through a meeting. Sometimes.they'come 3 over as a formal- letter.
'4 DR. MILLER: The reason I'm asking'the question is 5 it would be difficult, I could imagine, to run.a Research q i
6 Program that you ended up an avalanche of need statements:all 7 the time. ' You'd- have tx> jerk everything around, you know, in 8 order to try to meet those need statements. So I was trying' 1 1 9 to get a feeling for what your normal interaction might be j l
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k 11 DR. SHERON: Okay. The mechanism we.have:in place 12 right now to I guess answer.the.very question.you raisdd, 13 which is how do you juggle all these different needs'and ( 14
'l stuff and put priorities is-we have the Research; Review jl i
15 Groups and there's two levels of groups One is there's a J J 16 Management Group which I guess like myself the Division 17 Directors are on. And then there's the Technica1' Group, 18 which is typically chaired and attended at'the Branch Chief 19' level. And what they are supposed to.-is they basically.are t 20 doing the technical review of the programs. They would make 21 recommendations, for example, if.they saw misplaced ~ priori- ' 22 ties or whether--within a funding constraint, certain pro-23 grams, say, had to be deferred or something. They would i 24 recommend to the senior group and then we would collectively. i b ' 25 decide if that made sense. And then I would implement that Heritoge Reporting Corporation no m. o
0 208' i 1- decision, for example, 2 Okay. So there's this whole system of reviewing. oj 3 DR. MILLER: I understand. I guess I was more'ask-4 ing, do you meet every fifteen minutes or every year? Pre-5 sumably somewhere in between. i 6 DR. SHERON: For example, in the thermal-hydraulic j
'l 7 area, which right now has the majority of the budget in this i
8 area, I've asked them to meet roughly 'once a monthwith the 9 Technical Group, to get together, whether they'need to or, ) J 10 not. Okay, If they don't need to get together to decide 11 something what they do is, for. example, one time my. branch and 12 the Research Branch will give a presentation to t!# ~ gula-(' 13 tors on a Research Program, what the' status is, what we've 14 learned from it, what the key information coming out is, get 15 feedback. Is there anything we should do to this program to 16 change it? Okay. Basically it's an educhtion' process'. 17 And then maybe the next month the regulators.will 18 come over and give a presentation to the researchers to say, 19 "Here's what our regulatory problems are right now. 'Here's 20 the stuff that's bothering us." And that way we get to under--
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l 21 stand what their problems are. We'can make sure our Research l 22 Programs are. formulated to hopefully dovetail and help them. 23 And vice versa. 24 And so I've been trying to, you know promote that 25 down at the branch level. Heritage Reporting Corporation m .n. .
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.209 o l' DR. MILLER: I understand. j 2 DR. BUSH: Could I ask, on the human performance. 1 l
l 3 I've watched this yo-yo up and down off and on'for the last' 4 ten years. Do you know it's' going on the up trend? It's 1 5 going to continue? I l 6 DR. SHERON: Right now:it's on the up trend.. } 7 DR BUSH: I'll tell'you why the question.. I've' s been trying to interest the NRC in'the fact that-there's an-9 OECD EC program, whereas it covers only one aspect. It's so 10 broad and it's generating so much information and yet con-- i
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!! spicuous for its absence is any participation for the U.S.
12 DR. SHERON: This is a human factors program-- ( 13 DR. BUSH: This-is a human factors program. 14 DR. SHERON: In ECD? OECD? 15 DR. BUSH: It's part of PISC 3. 16 DR. TODREAS: That's a' European-- ! I 17 DR. BUSH: Yeah, but here's.the Japanese partici-
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18 page. The Scandinavians, who have sister programs in. 39 DR. TODREAS: OECD. Is this under the committee j i 20 for the safety--CS&I? 1 21 DR. BUSH: CS&I, that's right. 22 DR.-SHERON: Well, there are five major working 23 groups and we're represented on each group. 24 DR. BUSH: No, you're not. Well, in PISC-3, which 25 is where it is, and it's chaired by the CEGB. man, who is an. l Heritage Reporting Corporation in .. , _ . _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - - _ _ _ - _ - _ _ _ _ - - _ _ - _ - _ _ -_ _ ._ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - . _ - - . _ - _----_____-_.n
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-i 1 expert in this. area and has representation--the U.S. is con-( 2 spicuous for its absence.
3 DR. SHERON: Do you know which working group it is-4 under? , 5 DR. BUSH: It isn't under a working group. PISC 6 is an independent entity that sits there. 7 DR. SHERON: Okay. I am not familiar with that 8 then. I'll find'out. 9 ? Is it NDE. stuff? 10 DR. BUSH: It's much broader _than NDE, because_ 11 obviously there are human factors-- . - 12 DR. TODREAS: Okay, excuse me. Can I getfback'in? ( 13 Brian, why don't you carry on. Spence has made his point 14 and we've got to look into it, okay? Let's go. 15 DR. SHERON: Accident Management. This is a.new 16 initiative this year. Severe Accident Management. The thing 17 that really prompted it I think is twofold. One is that I f 18 think everybody looked at it and said there's potentially a 19 great benefit'to be gained in terms of risk reduction in al 20 very pragmatic way through Severe Accident Management. 21 The other is that--Themis talked to you before. 22 about this, the_ Severe Accident Policy, whichLwe're imple-I I 23 menting right now. We.think that Accident Management would 24 be a natural outcome or an outgrowth of an IPE, individual l (, 25 Plant examination, that would be done under the Sevare Heritage Reporting Corporation.
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211' l' Accident Policy. 2 So in order to prepare ourselves for.both submit-3' tals from the industry, the base of your Accident Management 4 Programs as well as to adjust to the research,l to en-5 courage the' industry to show them what the benefits-are of 6 ,this, we've embarked on a pretty extensive program, and I'll 7 'get into-that in a little more detail. 8 NRR has endorsed our approach in this area.. We 9 discussed this with industry. Industry agrees.that. Accident to Management is an important. area and should be looked at and
!! worked on and they are forming a group through New Mark that 12 will be interfacing with us and. working in=the area. .( 13 Right now we have again'an Accident Management Re-11 search Program Plan which is being developed. It's not quite 15 as far along as the Human Factors Plan.
16 I should also point out there's a Thermal-Hydraulic 17 Research Plan too. There's a Research Plan for each of these 18 areas right now. 19 DR. MILLER: And this is different than the Five-1 20 Year Plan? This is a program-- 21' DR. SHERON: This has a lot more detail and it 22 describes exactly what is expected to be accomplished, what ' 23 are the key issues-- 24 DR. MILLER: I see. (' 25 DR. SHERON: There's a lot more detail.
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212 1 DR. MILLER: Is there a program plan for each of-2 the five major areas in Research? 3 DR. SHERON: I don't think we've written any ex-4 plicitly for each of the five areas. 5 DR. BECKJORD: There's a lot more than that. 6 DR. MILLER: Yeah, but I didn't want a lot more 7 than that. That's why I asked the question. I wanted to 8 know if there is an integrated plan for each of the five 9 areas. There is not? 10 DR. SHERON: Yes. It's in the Five-Year Plan. 11 DR. MILLER: Okay. That's why I asked. In addi-12 tion to the Five-Year Plan is what I asked. ( 13 DR. SHERON: Okay. There is none. 14 DR. GLOYNA: I have a little question. Almost 15 everything we've heard so far has dealt with the present, 16 in support of the present regulations. When you talk about 17 the Five-Year Plan, is this in anticipation of future regu-18 lations or is this in anticipation of what ought to be done 19 irrespective of the regulations? 20 MR. BECKJORD: Bill, are you going to talk about 21 the evaluation of existing regulations at all in your pre-22 sentation? 23 DR. SHERON: I wasn't planning on covering that. 24 DR. SPEIS: But I think it's fair to say that most 25 of the work that we're doing is focused on the present, is Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 213.- t-I that your position? 2 DR. GLOYNA: But every once in a while the Five-l l 3 Year Plan pops up. l 4 DR. .SPEIS: Well, it's'still' focused on present 5 regulations. We have some work for our advanced reacters 6 to. deal with what we want to know about them. I i 7 DR. TODREAS: Is future regulations synonymous ] l 8 with new designs or is future regulations prior to existing 4 4 9 operating reactors a cate gory which is not explored, which to is what you are asking? l 11 MR. BECKJORD: Well, there are two Commission' papers j 12 which are prospective right now. They'are' going forward. ( 13 One is on advanced. light-water reactors. Let's see. 'When 14 will that be going to the. Commission? 15 DR. SPEIS: It's going to be part of this integrated. ; I 16 -- that I talked about. 17 MR. BECKJORD: But it's this spring? l 18 DR. SPEIS: Yes. But, you know, most of the regu-19 lations that we have in place, moat of those are in LWRs. l l 20 In addition we are looking at creating some additional regu-1 l L 21 lations to address future reactors or the advanced type, j l 22 like element prs or type-- l l l l 23 MR. BECKJORD: Two categories. 24 DR. SPEIS: What Eric is talking about is formulat- -{ (' 25 ing policy for advanced LWRs to decide how you treat severe Heritage Reporting Corporation , om -
1 214-I accidents. But as for the -present framework, but don't anti-i
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-2 cipate any changes. Maybe minor. We are trying to add to 3 them, how to consider' severe accidents'for future reactors 4 because right now, as I diccussed earlier, it's in an ad hoc 5 way'of sorts and we're.trying to give designers some early 6- warning, you know, aboutLsevere accidents in future LWRs.-
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7 DR. TODREAS: I would interpret _the answer for 8 future regulations for existing operating plants is-that sort - 9 of evolves out of the elements of the_Research Program'as 10 the research is accomplished..
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Il DR. MILLER: Or another-way of saying'it is the 12 program has an anticipatory and a progratory' component', and ( 13 the anticipatory must-be.to address future' regulations I 14 would guess. 15 DR. SHOAF: Or future reactors. 16 DR. SHERON: In our Human Factors Program we do 17 have some antirip-tcry type research in the sense of looking 18 at new--for example, expert systems is one, and advanc.ed 19 control room design. As this equipment wears'out, utilities 20 we think are going to turn to digital controls in their con-21 trol rooms. We're doing some research.in that area to say l 22 are there any safety problems we need'to be aware of when and ( 23 if they do this. l
' DR. TODREAS: That's a good point.
24. ( 25 DR. SHERIDAN: The point, Neil, is it's not simply
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I ~- new designs'for reactors:orfexisting raactors, because the . 1' : 2 existing reactors are going to evolve in certain circumstances .
'l 3 And that's what he's talking about. .
4 DR.'TODREAS: Well, why don't we ' let him continue. .
;j 5 If there's more discussion on this point, we've got to. catchJ j l
1 6 all discussion time. Make your notes there and we'll get 1 7 back to.it. Usually when'we get there1we'11 all out of i 8 steam tomorrow, but if you make some notes now we can bring 9 them back up again, j J 10 DR. SHERON: The last area is Reliability Research. 1 11 That right now is really a supporting--has a supporting : role 12 in the overall Research Program. It assists.us in improving-( 13 our ability to develop and prepare PRAs. .They help us'in j i 14 the aging license renewal irea. ' Performance indicators'. 'And 15 we have to coordinate with many users around the Agency. I 16 Just quickly let me just show you what the money 17 is and the way it's. allocated among the four areas. You can' 18 see Plant Performance. It's taking roughly about 60 per- h 19 cent of the budget in FY 88. And the-rest are around'$2 to 20 R$3 million in there. 'l J 21 You'll1 note that FY 89 Plant Performance goes ! up.
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22 You'll see a little bit later that we're.trying to--that 1 23 the whole thermal-hydraulic area is winding down. Thetrea- 1 24 son it jumps up in FY 89 primarily.is that we're anticipat- .)
. (' i 25 ing there may be some experimental work that will be started Heritoge Reporting Corporation m u..
a < q s 216 , I on B&W reactors.- Most-of the thermal-hydraulic work--you 2 reme-ber loft and' semi-scale,.and all of those, those faci- 3
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3- lities are closed down right now. We have some money we're 4 spending on international programs such as the.UPTF facility-5 in Germany and.some of the other large facilities in Japan. ] 6 But that's. going to be winding down.also. 7 One area that is sticking'out though is the-B&W. 8 And right now we're negotiating'with the owners'to-see if 9' more research is needed in this area. So this is just-anti-cipating that we'll need some'in'that area in'FY 89 but.then
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10 11 it goes down again in FY 90. 12 I'm' not -going to--just in the area of Plant Per-( 13 formance, I'll talk about four. areas.real quick. We'll
- 14. go through these. The first one is, what are the issues?
15 I'm not going to go into each of these in any detail.. Let i, 16 me just hit on some of the important ones. .One is the ECCS 17 Division. Neil is familiar with that. ; 18 This is something which is basically applying.the 19 - culmination of fifteen years of thermal-hydraul'ic research j 20 in the ECCS area. And this is just about out the' door right f 21 now. It's been out for public comment, et cetera. 22 PTS, there was a lot of thermal-hydraulic work done i 23 for A-49. As I told you before about B&W-i 1 24 Chernobyl implications for regulatory requirements 25 for radioactivity type accidents, so this resesarch.is-a Hertoge Reporting Corporation l
21'7-g ? direct outgrowth of the Chernoby1Laccident. ) 2 And I think the rest of them--you'know, I can ex-3' plain in detail some . other time' or we can 'get you more ' infor-1 4 mation on it. 5 With regard to the users, NRR,uses the. computer 6 codes for audits, but in the' low level. 'I think;the big-7 .one I told you about before is'AEOD. They are trying to use 8 the codes for their' technical. training. center down in Chatta-9 nooga for the inspectors. Possible link up these codes-with 10 the simulators to provide improved, simulators for training 11 and use of the codes in the response center drills. 12 DR. BUSH: That's an abbreviation-I. don't know,. a-
-IRC.
( 13 14 DR. SHERON: Incident Response Center. 15 And then we may start using the codes to do some 16 of the front-end calculations'in Severe Accident Management. 17 In other words, prior to core damage. Or we may use.them q j 18 linked up with some of the core damage codes, like the Re- l 1 19 lapse -- Package. 20 As I said before, most of the major-programs in ] 21 this area will be finished up in. calendar year 81. These j ( 1 22 are just some of the programs. 23 DR. SHOAF: 91. . 24 DR. SHERON: What? :] 25 DR. SHOAF: You said 81. j 1 Heritage Reporting Corporation -
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218 1 DR. SHERON: 91. i 2 One thing of. note is that we did take a look at - n l L
.3 whether there's a need for continued experimental capability J 4 in'this country. In other words, an integral system facility i
7 5 such as longer--like a size scale maybe. 6 The answer was, no. We didn't identify any regula-7 tory issues that were so burning that we had to have experi- . I 8 mental facilities co the facility was deferred. What we did I 9 say'is we will come back and reexamine the need about every two years. If there's anything that comes up then we'll l 10 l' 11 reevaluate whether we need one at that' time. 12 DR. MILLER: There'.s no anticipatory research going on in this area and you won't keep some at low-level' effort-- ( 13 1 14 DR. SHERON: Oh, there will be a low-level. effort, 15 yes. It won't be experimental. It won't be with large ex-l 16 perimental facilities though. 17 DR. MILLER: No, no, I understand that some analy-18 tic--more. analytic. j
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19 DR. SHERON: Yes. The areas will be continuing as i 20 the nuclear plant analyzer which is basically--hopefully will 21 evolve into the point where you can run these' codes on a 22 PC at a desktop rather than-on a large mainframe and you can- ;
.i 23 operate on an interactive mode. Where you can sit there and-24 run a transient and if you wanted to say. trip a reactor I
25 coolant. pump, you could intervene-in the calculation, type Heritoge Reporting Corporation m u. '
219 1 in "To trip-a pump," and..the' thing would tr'ip and you could 2 watch it go. 3 -For:the longer term,1.there is going'to be declining 4- emphasis and resources on the code d'evelopment and-assessment 5 ' effort. We think' the codes are pre' tty mucli .there. . To coin
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6 a phrase, they are probably good'enough for government work. 7 But we do want to maintain-the solid base program in this 8 thermal-hydra'ulic area. We are not going to give up the ex . 9 pertise. We'll be making necessary code improvements'as'new 10 information may come about, say, from foreign sources or-11 whatever, if we deem it's appropriate, to.put it in the code, 12 so we'll be doing that. We will'make sure we retain a cadre-13 of experts, either at the laboratories or perhaps in private ( 14 industry that will be able to run'these codes for us and have 15 this analytical capability in the event that we need it to 16 do calculation for, say, an accident or something. And we 17 would be prepared to address new issues as they came up. 18 DR. TODREAS: What is T&H Technical Support Center'- 19 for? What does that mean? 20 DR. SHERON: It's et Idaho National Engineering 21 Lab. And basically--I guess the simplest way .to describe it-- 22 it's a chunk of money we put there which. keeps a cadre of. 23 experts available at the Lab. We have a series of tasks
' 24 which we give them to work on during the year.'of assorted 25 Priorities. But really what it does is that we get--I would Heritage Reporting Corporation (m) ess mos L_-____________-_-.__-------___L___-__-__ . _ _ . _ _ .
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-1 l call it the routine work done. But if something comes up.
(' 2 where we need to call upon them.to work a. problem very fast, 3 we can bump a program and just turn-them loose'on it imme-
- 4 diately.
5 New Programmatic Initiatives. Right now.there's a 6 program called'ICAP, International Code Assessment' Program. 7 Basically what it is is we have a lot of foreign users of. 8 our-codes which in return for the computer codes are'provid-- 9 ing us with assessment of the codes. Where they run the- . 10 codes against their experiments, give us the results and then 11 we determine where we might want-to improve the codes. . What 12 we are looking for,now is not only do-we'want assessment ( 13 from the foreigners, we want money. 14 In other words, if they want the codes improved-l 15 further, we don't just want assessment. We want them to pro- l 16 vide either money for the improvements. We.want them to i 17 provide the improvements themselves. They can do the coding 18 over there. Send it over to us and'we'll put it in the code, j 19 Or they can send their people to our national labs to spend 20 a year or two working at'the. labs, getting the experience in: L 21 doing this kind of work. j 1 But basically, we're not going to be doing any- j 22
.3 23 major' improvement work on the codes.. There will be no new- /
24 major versions comicg out right in the immediate future. l ( 25 So we said if the foreigners feel that that's something they- q 3.
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221 o l 1 have got to have, then.they.are going to have-to pay a.little q o 2 bit more for it. , 3 Accident Management I talked about. Simulator j 4 Performance I had mentioned. B&W facilities. These.are the H J 5 basic areas we're going to be looking into in this. area.
.i 6 Human Performance.- I guess the four areas of.
7 research are characterizing human errors, estimating human ) i 8 reliability--three areas, I'm.sorry. And' evaluating the need { i 9 and criteria for improved operator aids to enhance the ef-10 festiveness of the operators. 11 You have in your slide package just a chronology j f 12 of the major human factorLmilestones. I guess this would ] 13' answer Dr. Bush's questions about what the Agency has done ( 14 in this area over the past ten or fifteen years. You can 15 see that it was started up. It declined. And'then we re-16 started it again, and right now we are intending.to continue Lj 17 it. i l 4 18 DR. SHERIDAN: Nothing in maintenance in the Human
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19 Factors area? l 20 DR. SHERON: Yes, there is. There is a Maintenance l l 21 Program in here somewhere. 22 DR. SHERIDAN: It doesn't show up here. 'l 23 DR. SHERON: Okay. I don't have it down in'that 24 detail, but there is a substantial Maintenance Program. It's 25 basically on reliability and risk associated with maintenance. I Heritage Reporting Corporation mn m.au 1
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222: 1 Not with regard to, you know, how often should I change that -( 2 pump or something like that. 3- Again, this is,justLa ' list of user needs that we-4 .got in-this, area. I won't go through them in detail since. 5 I just dis:ussed them before. 6 This next slide here just summarizes the typefofJ 7 research'that was requested by the various' offices,.NRR. 'An 8 interesting one is they.want us to look into the organization 9 and management influences on safety, which'is really kind.of to a " scratch your head" area because the question is, you k'now,
!! what do you do about it once you get the answers. -Are we-12 going to go in and change management organizations at a
( 13 utility or what? 14 This gives you approach for the human factors re-15 search. Our approach is to evaluate human: performance.re-16 quirements under normal and accident-conditions. ' Basically 17 we're trying to compare human capabilities to identify con-18 cerns related to plant t 'ety, which is basically what are 19 .the human requirements at a nuclear plant and how does that 20 compare with the capabilities of the operators. 21 We want to improve human performance.: For example, 22 look at training and' job aids.- And trying to see if there 23 are ways we can reduce the human performance requirem'e nts 24 at the plant. You know, giving the operators.more tools'to 25 work with, for example. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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223-1 So the research areas--one is you see Halda down k .{' 2 here. What that is, that's a reactor in Norway that was used 1 Right now it is b'eing run under a consor- N
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3- for fuels testing. 4 tium agreement with the CSNI, which is under the Nuclear 5 Energy Agency over in Paris. We are in it for something on. 6 ~the order of $760,000 for three. years, per year for three 7 years. Not only are they doing fuels'research but they are d. 8 doing a lot of human factor research in advanced control'
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9 room techniques-and so forth. 10 Human Reliability'research. The purpose is to 11 collect and analyze human error data and measure andLestimate q 12 human performance during normal, transient, and' emergency ; situations. For use in a PRA. That's the whole intent. To f ( 13 14 say, how can I characterize the human in the PRA? 'How can I ; l 15 factor in the human error element:of a PRA when I do them? 16 Is it strictly just components fail or'should I say what does 17 the operator do? What's the probability that-an operator l i 18 is going to make a mistake? 19 As you can see, the elements kind of fall right l l 20 out and one is to collect the data on human performance. l. 21 Establish the data base. Third is, okay, now that we've got: 22 the data base, let's try to develop a model. And then once l 23 we've checked out the model to make sure that it works, we-i 24 'would integrate it into a PRA. 25 DR. BUSH: Is that--just stop there for a. moment'. Heritoge Reporting Corporation cm
~224 1 DR. SHERON: Sure.
2 DR.TODREAS:Is that model, a model like that been 3 .done in.other fields?~ Is that a doable--can you getia ra-
-4 tional--
5 DR. SHERON: I haven't personally looked into it, 6 Neil, but I was told that it is. It's something that.is do-7 able. 8 MR. ? : 'The'ACRS.just had a presentation 9 by Dr. Pugh and that very question was asked of them and he. 10 said yes, but I.think he qualified it by saying the models 11 were only applied to the specific application. You.can't 12 get a. general human factors model, but.again'a specific thing. DR. BUSH: It's not generic. ( 13 14 DR. SHERIDAN: I would say at the edge of where 15 research is. 16 DR. BUSH: Well, you need very good-- 17 DR. TODREAS: But worth trying? 18 DR. BUSH: Psychologists with the right background. 19 DR. SHERIDAN: Provided you'can focus it, yeah.. 20 Yes, I guess it's worth trying. 21 DR. SHEFUN:. Dr. Speis this morning talked about 22 generic' issues. Not to be outdone, we have our own set'of 23 human factor generic issues which we're working on. These 24 actually came about prior to the NRC reorganization last ( 25 year. These were. sort of an outgrowth of TMIland were being-Heritage Reporting Corporation. (ros) ass.4ess
225 I worked on in the Agency.= They'were transferred to'the Office 2 of Research'last April at the reorganization. And we are 3 working on these issues. I don't have a. lot of detail for 4 you right now on what they are. 5 DR. BUSH: That first one is a fast example of 6 Northeast Utilities and Boston Edison. The differences-you 7 can get into that in your human factors. 8 'DR. SHERON: Yes. Winding up very quickly, this 9 is.not a very hard science. 10 DR. WILSON: When you said about TMI, were there 11 any specific things that you did, you_just TMI said you 12 should look at those things? Was there any specific thing ( 13 about TMI-- 14 DR. SHERON: I don't know for'sure. 'I haven't 15 looked at these issues to see their genesis in so long. I l l 16 imagine somewhere they are buried in TMI though. l ! 17 DR. WILSON: Okay. 18 ? : Well, most of the TMI issues have 19 been done, so these are kind of left over and--TP7 generated-- 20 DR. WILSON: It stimulated-it but didn't speci - 21 fically stimulate it. 22 ? : Well, TMI stimulated the emergency 23 operating procedure,.and we did a job on that. And after 24 doing a job on that, the question.was raised, how about pro-25 cedures other than emergency operating procedures? Do they Heritage Reporting Corporation (302) ase-mes
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f- 11 l 226' I need to be upgraded?
- ( 21 DR. WILSON: Yes. j l
3 DR. SHERON: You may be aware that the National' 4 Academy of Sciences have been asked by the Commission through 5 a grant to prepare a report recommending what type of-work ) i 6 should be done in the area of human' factors research. -The. 7 report is expected to be received at the-end of this month. a 8 So that's really all I'can say about it now. This is a' lit-9 tle history on it. Once we.get the report, we'll be review-10 ing it and looking-at the recommendations to see how best we 11 can include them in our program. 12 As I said before, we have~a Human Factors Research I ( 13 Program Plan under development. As'I said, we have input 14 from all the program offices. In. essence, we'have a draft l { 15 that's about ready to go out the door for comment and we're 16 planning to go down and talk to the Commission about this in 17 April or May of this year. i I 18 This is just an outline of the Human Factors-Pro- j l 19 gram Plan so it's sort of a table of contents. ' i 20 And just to give you an idea of what our budget'is ] : 21 :in the area of human factors research, in '87 you can.see it 22 was almost all--it was all in reliability research. Starting 23 in '88, it took a substantial increase to about!$3 million , 24 and we're proposing in '89 that it be increased to about 1 (' 25 $4.1 million. l
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227 1 DR. MILLER: And where is this research being con-2 ducted? 3 DR. SHERON: It's in a variety of places. I think 4 I have--I'm sorry. I don't have a slide with all the details 5 of where it's being conducted. I know we have some at--for 6 example, Westinghouse is doing sone work for us. We have 7 some at the National Laboratories, several national labs. 8 Livermore has got some. Brookhaven has some. And I thought 9 there was one other--it either does or it doesn't. It's 10 I&EL. And they have some also. Il DR. MILLER: Is there any university work being 12 done? ( 13 DR. ROSS: George Mason has a big grant, doesn't 14 it? $300 and some odd thousand? 15 DR. MILLER: George Mason University? 16 DR. ROSS: Yes. 17 DR. MORRISON: Brian, before you leave Human Fac-18 tors, I think on your page 20 of your outline was the only 19 . place I saw on the Human Factors area on genetic coordination 20 with industry. Could you elaborate a little bit on that, 21 the coordination--I sort of have a feeling industry might be 22 doir.g more in this area. l l 23 DR. SHERON: As a matter of fact, yes, we have 4 24 coordinated. Eric and myself and my branch chief in this l (' l t 25 area took a trip down to the Institute for Nuclear Power Heritage Reporting Corporation
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.c 228 1 Operations in Atlanta. This was last fall. And discussed
~ 2 with them what programs they had ongoing. We had a meeting 3 with EPRI here several weeksfago and'one outgrowth of that 4 meeting is that I'm going to go out'to EPRI with some people 5 probably within a month or two to get a detailed presentation 6 on their Human-Factors programs, for the purpose of-making, 7 sure that our programs don't overlap. And that what they're s .doing with us is a complementary program. 9 I'm not sure if there's--you know, usually those-10 areas between New Mark,.EPRI and IN O would be the essence 11 of learning what the industry is doing. And we are interfac-12 ing with those three organizations. ( 13- DR. BUSH: There is a fair amount of the non-nuclear 14 area--you might be able to get access to it also. 15 DR. SHERON: Yes, we are.trying to'do that. You 16 know, through--I guess our contractors are out looking, okay, i 17 We don't really have I would say the staff to personally go j l 18 checking into all of these.- But we are asking our contrac-19 tors to look at the non-nuclear data. !
.I 20 DR. BUSil: The reason I say that is we have a bet j 21 whole group of human factors experts in Seattle who work for 22 the military and other areas, and conceivably some of that 23 information might be made available. I.wouldn't want to 24 on it, but it's a possibility.
25 ? : We needed those people in our performance Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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229 3 indicator programs, so I hope their knowledge'got paid-for 2 .by somebody else. 3 DR. BUSH: .I would hope so. 4 ? : There's been a series of meetings--IL 5- think there have been three orEfour of them. The first two
.6 were at. Myrtle Beach; EPRI has run.the'last one. There'is.
t 7 one coming up. EPRI ran the'last one. To'get-the nuclear
'8 .and the aircraft and military people together to run some; 9' programs. Many of them are very competent.
10 DR. SHERON: Severe Accident Management Research' 11 Plan. I mentioned before the genesis ~of it. We'll skip.the 12 basis for the'research right now.. As I~said before,-it's ( 13 independently assessed accident management' strategies and 14 structures to evaluate industry proposals, demonstrate bene-15 fits of accident management toU the~' industry. Right now 16 there's.a mix out there. I think some utilities think it is 17 really worthwhile and others ar.e vor'; skeptical. 18 Just to give you a little bit of perspective of 19 where severe accident management.probably fits in this'whole 20 scheme of things, this is a very simple diagram that shows 21 the basic elements that make up risk management.' I-like:tol 22 think of it as very akin to the three levels of. safety. 23 The first being reliability management, which is akin to,
'4 you know, saying I want a reliable design that operates
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25 smoothly and doesn't have failures. Typically our second Heritage Reporting Corporation
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3 ' level'of safety is'that given that' things go' wrong, we speci- ! 2 fically design to accommodate that in the plant by putting-si 3 in protection systems and so forth. This is akin to saying, _ ti
.you know, things will.go wrong so we will plan to handle an
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4 3 accident if it does happen and.try to mitigate the conse- ; 6 quences where.we can minimize them. I 7 And~then the third level is you try'to design 8 against' unforeseen events, which is why you have these big l 9 containments around-a-reactor and so forth.
.i 10 The same thing with emergency management.- It's 13 a matter of, you know,.if all else fails and stuff does get 12 out of the containment building, then we should plan for 13 evacuating, et cetera.
( p Way over here in this area, which is what happens 15 when you do get a core melt. accident, how can I best handle 16 it?- 17 The Severe Accident Management Research Plan. Very 18 quickly, we want to identify margins for operator action. f 19 I'm sorry. Let me back up a minute. We basically have it 20 broken down in four areas of.research. The first one1 relates 21 to prevent core damage by recovery from inadequate core 1 22 coolant. Which means what could I do to stop the core from 23 melting and becoming a damaged core?- 'And.the first thing I t want to do is say, how much time do operators have to act to t 24
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I What-are citernative means of. injecting water in the core? I ( 2 Can I use the fire protection' system to hook.it up? If'I 3 put a T on a certain line in the feedwater system,.can I put .l 4 fire water irc:o the feedwater system and get water .into .the - 5 steam generators somehow? What are cost beneficial improve- ! J 6 ments that.can be made in'this area? Provided I can't stop' 7 .the core from being damaged, then I want to know if I do - 8 damage the core what can I do to keep it in the. vessel? I l 9 Again, what are alternative means of' injecting-water in the 10 core? What are the effects of putting water on this molten , 11 core that's melting down? Do you get steam explosions or j a 12 what? Is it good or bad to put water in? What should you
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( 13 tall an operator? ] 14 Direct containment heating, which you heard about 15 before, should or shouldn't an operator open the PORV to i 16 depressurize? If he should, how long does he have? What ! l l 17 are the symptoms he should key his actions off of? _ 18 I'm missing a slide here. There should be one of-19 No. 3. I hope it's in your package. 20 DR. TODREAS: Yes, it is. 21 DR. SHERON: I apologize. The third area is if I 22 you can't keep it.in the--it's related to control of contain-23 ment damage, which basically says if youLcan't keep it in the
/ 24 vessel, if it's going to get out through the vessel into the 25 containment, how should I manage the containment? What Heritage Reporting Corporation (sor) usass
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'232-1 I should an' operator do? There s a host of questions that an 8
2 operator might be faced with if he has a'corc that's on the ; l 3 floor and a containment full of radioactivity. What if he 4 gets electric power back? Should he turn on the containment: ) j If he lets out all the' steam in the containment,:he ! 5 sprays? 6 is left with a11otiof hydrogen. .Does it blow.up?- What should ,
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i 7 he know about that? There's a lot of associated questions 8 so what we're looking at there is how do I keep it in the 9 containment once it's there. 10 And then the last area is sort of a mish-mash of j 11 different things which are plant features, organization pro - )
'12 cedures, operato.; actions. Like, for example, what instru-( 13 mentation does an operator need to manage a severe accident?
14 What instrumentation is available? Will:it work? Is it 15 qualified for the environment? Will it give him. false indi-16 cations? Will he take a wrong action based on it? Can he 17 use other than safety grade systems in a reliable manner? 1 18 Organizational aspects. Who makes the decisions a i 19 if I have a severe accident? Who is going to ven't.the con-
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20 tainment? Who~makes the decision? is it the vice president 1 of the company? Is it.the operator? Is it plant manager?- 21 ] 22 Is it the governor? 23 You know, I'm not saying we're going to research j l 24 who should make the decision, but it's a matter of, is'there j
.(t 25 an organizational structure in' place.so that everyone in the j Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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1 Pl ant knows who is supposed to do that and'-does that person - - 2 have all the information he needs to make a competent'deci-J 3 sion? i 4 DR. WILSON: Why can't you research who should
.i; 5 make the decision? What implications different: people.make j 6 in the decision? You shouldn't decide-who should'make'the J decisions, but you might research what the" implicatiorts are'
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7 8 of who makes the decisions.
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I DR. SHERON: Well, we could look into~it. I'm not 1 1 I sure what that's-- j 11 DR. WILSON: I thought that sort of thing gets 12 discussed. If someone'says, "I want to make the decision," -) 13 but maybe he's not competent to actually do it. And I think ( 34 that becomes rather complex. I was thinking about the person 15 who might have to find.him to make decisions. Maybe he 16 doesn't have the competence. l l 17 DR. SHERON: Well, I certainly don't think my ; i 18 research is going to change his mind. j 19 DR WILSON: Find out what the implications of j 1 ! 20 the different' people being put in the position of making l l 21 those decisions. . l. 22 DR. SHERON: I think it's something we'can look ; 23 into and see if it's a fruitful area.
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24 DR. WILSON: I mean it's certainly not a' thing you-25 want to decide--this person will make the decision. But Heritage Reporting Corporation ! 2
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i 1 when he makes the decision, these are the problems. If he . 1 2 doesn't make the decision, these are the problems.
<1 3 DR. SHERON: Well, I think that would be part of ;
4 the research, which is, you know, when you are saying is. 1 5 there an' organization'in place.to make the decisions?- Do .) 6 'the people know who is supposed to do it? Obviously, I think 7 a decision is critical if, say, something.like venting or- q 8 evacuating is going to be made with someone who is going to y 9 bear that responsibility, which is going to be commensurate 10 with their position in the organization. 11 And the real question is, it's nct so much,s that 12 person competent to make the decisions, but does he have'all ( 13 the technical information and supportinc information that he 14 needs to make that' decision? You know, is the information . 15 there? In other words, if he's going to vent, does he know 1
-1 16 what is the ub.imate pressure to' containment before it's go- )
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17 ing to fail? What's the uncertainty with that? Once he 18 vents, when should he reclose? At what pressure shoul,d he j pp reclose the vent? Will'it reclose? What's he-going to do ) 20 if it doesn't reclose? What's the contingency? i l 21 Those are the kinds of things he should;have. , i 4 22 DR. LEVY: But the point he makes is a valid,one. j i 23 though, Brian. It will'probably'take very different time- !
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( i 25 saying is if you've got a guy r_ght at the plant doing it,_ ; I
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235 I he can probably do it pretty fast. If you have.to get up'to -I' 2 the' governor of a state, I'm not too sure how fast you can 3 do it. So your whole accident _ management, depending on who 4 makes the decision, has to be different. 5 DR. SHERON: Okay. 6 DR. BUSH: Incidentally, if you can get access.to 7 it, as a result of the NAS study on the production reactors,- 8 DOE spent quite a lot of money, both analytically and'experi- ! I 9 mentally on venting. I have a very biased opinion,.which I a 10 won't express, aus to the pros and cons of that, but there 11 are quite a few studies out there. Their concern was about i J 12 the same. The concern, of course,.was the hydrogen explosion 13 aspect.
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14 DR. ROSS: Spence, wasn't that for theiconfinement 15 system? j f 16 DR. BUSH: That's right,.but it's still a' venting ~ 17 problem and you still have the same basic problems on the , 18 release of radioactive . nuclei. 19 DR.-ROSS: You are venting alluthe time though. 20 DR. BUSH: Not necessarily. No, this,is a delibe- :l i l 21 rate venting. This isn't one where you make a pulse release. 22 DR. ROSS: Okay.- True confinement vents all the 23 time. 24 DP. BUSH: But it does dhrough a series of -- 25 This one is a bypass type of operation-where you.are'not Heritoge Reporting Corporation l
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~236 1 releasing efficient products to the environment, which is 2 what you'll be doing here.
3 DR. SHERIDAN: One more question before you leave 4 this. What about the whole issue of communicating with out-5- side agencies and with the public? Is that specifically not within the domain of our research? j 6 1 7 DR. SHERON: That would be the domain of our Inci-1 8 dent Response Center.
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9 DR. SHERIDAN: Okay, okay. 1 I i 10 DR. SHERON: And that type of stuff has already' 11 been pretty well established. 12 DR. SHERIDAN: Okay. 13 DR. SHERON: You know, there's a lot of informa-( ! I 14 tion on how this agency interacts and stuff, and I think that 15 work was not specifically done by Research, but it was done 16 in the old INE organization. And there'is a whole structure 1 17 in place right now. 1 18 I'll just go quick. On Reliability Reactor Systems. 19 We have a number _of programs in_the_ area of reliability re-20 search. To improve reliability methods in tools. To look 21 I at dependent failures. To look at what you heard about.be- ) 22 fore, performance indicators, to help monitor plant' safety i 23 trends. These are things like, you know, is the number of 24 trips a reactor has indicative of poor performance? Is the l 25 maintenance backlog indicative? How indicative is it? 'What Heritage Reporting Corporation m n..
q i' L I 237 l l 1 l I is it telling'us?- 2- So we have two programs, both.in risk base perfor-
- 3. mance indicators and programmatic. performance indicators-to l
i 4- help monitor plant. safety. And then we have reliability ap-5 plications to. help _ prevent failures,.and'I think this is 6 where the_ area, the. maintenance,-is being looked at._ INL l I' 7 other'words, how does it improve' maintenance programs and
'8 can prove the-reliability of a p; ant? ;
*i 9 I don't think it's necessary, for the sake of 1 1
10 time--these are just descriptions'of someaof the. programs I j just described--to gofthrough these. So unless there'soany 11 12' other. questions, that concludes my. presentation. ( 13 DR. TODREAS: Why don't you wait up there just a. ; 14 few minutes for us to flip through these things'just to see s 15 if there's anything anynody-wants to bring up? 16' DR. LEVY: Maybe this is a' question that should be
- 17. addressed to Eric. But it.looks to me like there the dif- i
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18 ferent groups.you have are probably doing their planning and i their approach' in different ways. You know, he seems to' 19 20 write a' program plan where he starts on a new area, and 3'm- 1 21 trying to find out if consistency among the divisions is de-22 sirable, or maybe should not. You know, I'm a great 1 believer - 23 in research. You don't try to get over consistent.~ ButLI'm ; 24 trying to understand whether there is a drive from the top l (- 25 to get these various programs-- , l Heritage Reporting Corporation
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238 I MR. BECKJORD: I think the Human Factors and the { 2 Accident Management are unique in this respect. First of all, I I i they are new programs getting underway. 3 The genesis of them 4 last late winter / spring. And most of the other programs have 5 been ongoing so that a change in plan or a provision to the 6 Five-Year Plan is an add on to something that's already been 7 done, and I think that the Human Factors effort has taken the 8 advantage of work that was done a few years ago. I know we l talked to Bill Russell who was running that program. But I 9 10 think in this context it is a new effort, and certainly with 11 the expectation of the National Academy's report it is going 12 to be a significant effort and some new departures. I think 13 the scope is expanding. I think the National Academy is re-( 14 commending certainly a broader range of the program than I 15 was thinking of. 16 In the case of Accident Management, that seems to , be an idea whose time has come. I meur., it's not a new idea. 17 gg It's been around. But then all of a sudden there's a lot of 19 interest in it all over the place and New Mark is interested 20 in it, INPO is interested in it, EPRI is, interested in it, l 21 the Germans. We already have a cooperative program which is 22 shaping up now with the Germans. I thin't there will be some-thing with the French. So there is ? greit deal happening 23 and I think both those efforts are somewhat unique in the 24 25 intensity of the planning effort going on now. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 62saaes
239 1 You are going to hear about the severe accident 2 research. There is more of a continuity going back.over the 3 past ten years in that effort. I guess that would be'my: 4 , response. I think you are right. It is not completely uni-5 form, but on the other hand, we have frequent staff meetings' 6 and these issues are discussed so that I.think averyone'on 7 the staff is reasonably well. aware of what is going'on in'the 8 other areas outside of their own. 9 ? : Guy's got a senies of' programs. I.know' 10 he's got Aging, Steam Generators. Yoa are pretty well Il covered. 12 DR. LEVY: What is the p'rocessfthat you carry your 13 work through--in a little more detail? ( 14 DR. ROSS: We started basically--we have all the 15 plans we submitted-- 16 DR. TODREAS: .If you give us a. list, give it to us 17 as a tree branched out-- 18 MR. BECKJORD: It'll come from Program Elements 19 or from divisions. 20 DR. TODREAS: Any more questions for Brian? 21 DR. LEVY: I've got a question. As a thermal-hy au-22 lic guy I shouldn't raise it. But what I see, your plant l 23 Performance is nothing but thermal-hydraulics. I can't be-24 lieve that those are the only things in plant performance I ( that deserve study. I 25 i Heritage Reporting Corporation !
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240-1 DR. SHERON: Right now'the' majority of itLis thermal- - {' 2 hydraulics, but.two areas.that.we're?looking into right:now, 3 for example, isLon--three areas--one is. balanced' plant. We 4 are starting to look a little bit in there and see what kind-5 of'research might be needed on balance of plant. I'm'not 6 'sure that there's anything that onelmight call performance 7 research. The B&W is really geared'in that area. The' big-8 question we're asking.in B&W is the flow distribution in the 9 auxiliary feedwater into the steam generator. Because those' 10 generators--that auxiliary feedwater seems to be a major cul-11 Prit with regard'to how fast you can pressurize that system. 12 And how well they can calculate it. One of the things about-the B&W plant was-they put ( 13 14 in the auxiliary feedwater. It would'overcool it. It would 15 kick on the ECCS. They would have the-HPI coming onfand the; 16 Operator has got to go turn it off before it pumps-the plant 17 up and opens the PORV. So everytime they had a trip, the 18 thing would be all over the map and pressure and temperature. 19 And if we trace-it back and it looked'like'it was minor-per-20 turbations in that. steam generator. -So we're looking there. 23 As thermal-hydraulics' winds-down, whis whole group.is moving. 22 into the Accident Management area,.the in-vessel management. 23 They are going to be responsible for that area. I 24 DR. TODREAS: Yes, but that'sEin a differentiate-
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25 gory.- Is your umbrella area plant. performance? And tr..refore
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241 1 you are looking for things under plant perfc rmance and it { 2 turns out now thermal-hydraulics is it, or is it really a 3 misnomer? 4 DR. SHERON: I think it's plant performance. Right 5 now it happens to be the majority of the stuff we're looking 6 at is in thermal-hydraulics primarily because it was ongoing 7 research. But as new areas in-- 8 DR. LEVU: I was going to raise that. Brian, I was 9 going to raise issues like radioactivity. Any possibility of 10 positive temperature cool fission? Is anybody looking at 11 those kinds of things? 12 DR. SHERON: Yes, we are. ( 13 ! DR. LEVY: It doesn't appear anyplace.
;4 DR. SHERON: Well, I'm looking at thermal-hydrau-15 lics.
d 1 16 j PR. TEVY: Like rod ejections, you know. I know b' 17 we did some work, but-- 18 DR. SHERON: We have a whole program at Brookhaven 19 which is designed to look at-- 20 DR. LEVY: --control instrumentation. Are you do-21 ing any work in control instrumentation? 22 DR. SHERON: Yes. 23 DR. LEVY: Research in control instrumentation;
' 24 DR. SHERON: Yas. It's in i.he Reliability Section 25 of the Reliability and Human Factors Branch. It's on Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 620 4888
-242 1 advanced instrumentation, and then I think, Guy, you head-2 up a' branch that is electrical. I don't know what they are 3 doing--
4 MR. ARLOTTO: We're not doing any work on.that 5 except for the generic issue. 6 DR. LEVY: You know, like on instrumentation. I 7 would feel that there is some merit. .You know, a lot'of the 8 instruments are found not to perform as well, or the' calli-9 bration gets out of order. I'm just raising some other 10 areas that somehow--I'm just giving you some examples that. 11 somehow don't appear. And I'm not pur,hing for you to enlarge 12 but I just-- ( 13 DR. SilERON : It may be--what we call Flant Per-14 formance--the instrumentation work, for example, is being 15 done under what I would call the Reliability area. Okay. i 16 And it's just a matter of finding a'home for.it. We.are .] 1 17 doing work in radioactivity accidents. So if you read the 18 Chernobyl implications report, you'llinote that'we intended j 19 to take a hard look at all different kinds of way you can. ; p
- 20. insert radioactivity to see if we should do anything about
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-l 21 our regulations. There's a program which is'just' initiated l
i 22 at Brookhaven which is designed to do this both1from a de-23 terministic fashion. In other words, running the' codes, ; 3 24 doing the calculations. We have a physicist looking at it. 1 (.
- 25. Positive temperature coefficients. And then from a ')
j Heritage Reporting Corporation ! i (202) us.4ses ; .
i 243-I probabilistic. standpoint as.well. 2 DR. LEVY: That's why.I would have. expected to see i 3 it there at least to get a' iittle more balance, but-- 1 4' DR. SHERON: ToLget down at that level in'such a-1 5 short time--~ l I 6- DR. LEVY: Yes,-but I.think'there's a fundamental 7 issue relative to the names and'Iabels you'are giving your 8 program. I think you have a whole bunch of thermal-hydrau-9 lics research. You didn't want to call it thermal-Lydraulics 10 so you came up with an umbrella name. The umbrella name is 11 Plant Performance, and yet it doesn't fit what's underneath 12 the way the progrnm is organized and if somebody just comes
.1 13 right on it, it gives you the wrong impression. l
( 14 I think.it's worth looking at and maybe fixing l 15 up somehow. 16 DR. SHERON: Well, we'll try.' j i 17 ? Well, I think Dr. Levy's suggestion 18 about instruments may be an area that we missed in Plant' 19 Performance, but I think that we,like those. things' pointed' :j i 20 out. But I think Plant Performance is the right name. 21 DR. LEVY: Yes, Plant Performance is the right U -l l 22 name-- , l 23 DR. SHERON: The question is should I do the work 24 under the area of Reliability or should I do it under'the l
.'( l 25 -area of Plant Performance? That's all.
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I I DR. BUSH: Could1[ ask--I guess-this would'probably 2' be in the Severe Accident category. Have you taken advantage 3 of the ',7ork this was done/in the Systen tic Evaluation. Pro-4 gram and in the Integrated Safety Assessment Program to look 5 in there, because' effectively, as far as I can tell, some , o 6 of.the very things you'll be asking utilities would be to go 7 through the . same type of exercise that they have or mill-8- stone = accidents? 9 DR. SHERON: When you say "asking utilities," 10 what-- I 11 DR. BUSH: Well, I am thinking of the next step. 12 In other words, what you do is you look at mitigating as- ] 13 pects. You now saying, "Go back and look at your plant, ( t la and consider what changes could be made." 15 MR. BECKJORD: I think he's talking about the 1 16 IPEs. 1 1 17- DR. BUSH: 'I am'. But I'm thinking of it in the. 18 context of a minimization of a severe accident. ] 19 DR. SHERON: Yes. The IPEs, the individual plant l 20 examinations, okay. For example, the. guidelines'and cri-21 teria that the staff developed, which is basically = guidance t 22 to the utilities, derived--the insights I would guess, from I- 23 PRAs, from the ISAP Program, from the SEPs, et cetera. ! l I L 24 DR. BUSH: That's what I-wanted to know. 25 DF. SHERON: There's a whole series of books on f Heritoge Reporting Corporation - ; mm m . l
245 1 it. 4 (' 2 DR. WILSON: One thing about much of what:you were 3 saying, I was wondering, is what is the division of rescarch 4' between_what NRC is doing and'what. industry is doing,. parti-5 cularly when we talk about plant performance. .I.would have-6 thought _that industry would have immense' incentive to do 7 good research'in plant performance. And that leaves NRC's. 8 primary duty to make sure things'like radioactivity accidents 9 and extreme things get properly looked at. And I wondered 10 if--I haven"t heard that any time today within industry, 11 and I'd be interested to know what that is. 12 DR. SHERON: Well, we.are not looking at research 13 from the standpoint of what I would' call developmental re-( 14 search. .Our research is designed to say, as I see it, basi-15 cally are the plants out there operating or the plants that 16 we intend to license in the future, are they' safe enough, 17 okay? And to do that, we do confirmatory research and the 18 like. And then the'other thing we do is we do research 19 that says, are there ways that we can make cost effective 20 improvements to these plants to make them safer,_ if we 21 think there is a potential deficiency somewhere. 22 And, for example, take the MARK-1 issue. 23 DP. WILSON: Well, that's--
/ 24 DR. SHERON: People are saying there's a potential-25 deficiency in the sense of the way a' MARK-1 containment Heritage Reporting Corporation m u..
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1 1 performs under~ severe accident. And as such, you can call l l {- 2 what we're doing research which is looking at, are. there. 1 3 cost beneficial. ways to improvo.the MARK-1 containments. 4' And at the same time, we're doing research'that says, can 5 *e
.- confirm that they'are either safe enough'as they are or q 6 whether we should do more.
7 MR. BECKJORD: I think your meeting at EPRI, your 8 forthcoming meeting with EPRI, would relate to what Profes . 9 sor Wilson ~ raised. 10 DR. TODREAS: But he's talking about plant perfor- l 1 11 mance, not MARK-1 and not EPRI, which is-- 12 MR. BECKJORD: Well, you are going to be talking , I 13 about human factors. ( 14 D R .' TODREAS: Human factors. 13 DR. SHERON: But we have a meeting on Accident' 16 Management with the industry at the end of March. -1 l 37 DR. TODREAS: But'that's our third item. He asked about Plant Performance. j 18 1 19 DR. SHERON: Right. 20 DR. ROSS: Historically, if you look at what the 21 industry has done-in-plant performance, they've supported: l 22 expensive thermal-hydraulic rigs and we've participated 23 maybe twenty-five cents on the dollar and they've paid most
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of the cost because they can see' product line improvements. 24 25 We were sharing the safety, and then they were funding on
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247-I their own product line improvements, and this is.true'for-2 both Westinghouse'and General Electric spent.many millions 3 of dollarsoon.their plant performance. 4, DR. SHERON: It might be. worthwhile to say that-5 we've had this problem about what does industry fund versus 6 what does the NPC fund. 7 DR. .ILSON: W Right.
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8 DR. SHERON: And a case in point-is the old-B&W 9 Mist Program, okay. Where if you get in there and the NRC' 10 says you have to do this research because there's a safety 11 problem and you have to~get the information, then all the 12 interveners come out of the woodwork and say, "See, there's 13 a safety problem. You have to shut those plants down until ( 14 you get the answer to that problem." And if we say, "Well, 15 no, it's not really a safety problem. It's confirmatory.. 16 We think they are safe." And then the industry stands.up
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17 and says, "Oh, hell, if they're safe, we don't have toipay 18 for this." And there we are on the fence. And so, you 19 know, we have to decide which way we're-going to fall. 20 DR. WILSON: Right. 21 DR. SHERON: And this has happened time and time 22 again. 23 DR. WILSON: I have no grief for the common sense i 24 cf industry in actually doing research. I mean, don't mis-25 understand me. I thin'k they should do a lot more of it. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 They should think more clearly about what they are doing. l- q But it does seem that something should be--
- 2 than they do.
3 I'm was-just'.trying to see what the boundary was.that you -]
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4 .were trying to' leave. They are obviously doing something.
.s' And.you are doing something. I hope they'll' overlap 2slightly . j
.i 6 MR. BECKJORD: It my' impression that they'are'doing j 1
1 7 a lot more on plant performance than.we are.- { 8 DR. SHERON: It's designed to improve performance, 9 you know, like improved capacity factors and so'forth. I 10 mean, let's face it. They.are going to go after where the
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11 bucks are. 12 DR. WILSON: Sure. DR. TODREAS: Okay. Is it--okay, last question. ( 13 14 DR. SHERIDAN: One more thought here. 15 DR. TODREAS: Go ahead. 16 DR. SHERIDAN: To change the. subject just a little. l 17 Back ta the Severe Accident Management' issue.- -It occurs.to :j 18 me that here is an area where there are hooks into.other- .]
-j 19 Research activities that might be-fruitful.- I'm. thinking i 'I 20 particularlyLof the recent research initiatives;in the mili-l 21 tary where severe--well, put it the other way. :Where design .
22' basis wars, realizing that design basis wars probably are not 23 going to occur, and there's another term--well, there are two f l
' 24 terms, I guess. One is " command and control," which.has been !
[ 25 around for a long-time, but a new one is " distributed j i Heritage Reporting Corporation (292) 428 4006
-249 1 decisionmaking." Where they are realizing that'when;you-(' 2 have people in different places geographically with lousy.
3- communications under stress, each of whom doesn't have all 4 of the picture, and they've got to get together and make 5 'some decisions, there are some interesting' problems and we 6 don't have the understanding of how that works or could work. 7 .The other is in the air traffic control world where NASA, 8 a certain arm of NASA that'. worries about that, has.done simi-9 lar kinds of things in similar' kinds of models. 10 It seems to me in this industry, the Severe Acci-11 dent Management problems, could be very similar. And so'I 12 don't know how your discussions with EPRI and the industry ( 13 are going to go, but you might want~to draw in some people-- 14 DR. SHERON: I think.right now there's.already 15 been established legal lines of authority of who is respon-16 sible for decisionmaking in~the event of an accident. And 17 right now it's not the NRC. And there's a whole' philosophy 18 behind what our role is during an accident and I would 19 really have to defer you to a presentation,'let's say, from 20 our Incident Response Center people, 21 As a matter of fact, they gave me a handout-today. 22 I can give it to you. 23 DR. SHERIDAN: I'm not thinking of the legalities
/ 24 so much. Just an understanding of what the constraints and
( 25 the capabilities-- Heritoge Reporting Corporation (202) 62s.4ees
1 I 250' i DR. SHERON: 'Well, I think that's an interesting i
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2 point that we want to look at, because right now we are not- { a 1 3 sure-- j i 4 DR. SHERIDAN: Because you've got computers that-are saying some things'. You are. going to have more with ex -
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5 6 pert systems and all this jazz. You are going tohave people 0 7 running around saying different things. You are going t.o 8 have communication constraints. And all these. sorts of' 9 things. , i 10 DR. SHERON: We're not in the decision chain. 11 DR. TODREAS: You are not in the chain, but you 12 are doing the research, and his suggestion-- 13 DR. SHERON: That's up to the utility, you are q ( l 14 saying? The NRC provides an advisory role to the state l 15 government and to the utility, okay. .We can also-- , 16 DR. SHERIDAN: . Who does research in that? Some-t 17 body ought to be doing research in that. , 18 DR. SHERON: We will be looking into, for example, .; 19 in terms of Accident Management, what kind of decision pro-
'20 cesses would be'made and what the type of structure is, I i
1 21 think, that is appropriate for making those. decisions. How 22 much we can influence that utility, for example, is a dif-23 ferent story. But basically what.it's going to' be is that ; i
- 24. we will be doing research in'this area such that when-.a 25 utility sends in their Accident Management Program and tells i
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1251' i i me'that the janitor is going to make a decision, we'111have
.{ 2 enough information tol say,. "No, that's not right." Or if 3 the Vice President is the one that makes the decision, then 4 we would know the question--fine, he may not be technically i 5 capable.of making that decision from the standpoint of.his. j 6 background, but is the structure in. place that provides him 7 all the information he needs to know to make a competent' 8 decision.
9 DR. TODREAS: Brian,. excuse me.- Let ne just bring 10 the gavel down and close this'out. I took this.as a sug-11 gestion to you relative to how to structure and look into 12 your Research Program. Relative to how things are done in 13 an actual eventuality, that's a different subject. ( I 14 DR. SHERON: Yes, and we will certainly take a j i 15 look at it. ;
'l 16 DR. TODREAS: Let's take a ten-minute break and 17 then start with Bob Bernero. Okay?. l 18 (Whereupon, there was a short break.)
19 DR. TODREAS: Okay. Bob-Bernero'is now in front 20 of us. If you read from the Agenda, he like Jim Sniezek is ! 21 from a different office and is basically here to talk about l 22 the interface and the respective of that interface. ; 23 Bob. 24 MR. BERNERO: For those of you who don't appre-25 ciate how the NRC is organized to regulate nuclear affairs, Heritage Reporting Corporation ; cmn _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ ._.._t
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I it's very simple. There are reactors and everything else. ]
'2 And the Office of Reactor Regulation regulates reactors.
3 .The Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards regu-4 lates everything else. And that rangesuall"over.the ballpark. 1 l 5 Our current hotest interest is not Seabrook and the governor ] 6 of Massachusetts' attitude on it. But the Polonium 210 l 7 microspears that are blowing all over the Moto-Photo shop 8 in a Boston mall. So we regulate a broad variety of things. 9 Source material, byproduct material, and waste disposal as 10 well. 11 Now, we also have a great-deal of rulemaking or 12 standard setting activities that we look to the-Office of 13 Research for. Current item of interest. What is a true (. 14 di minimis level for radiation exposure? You may not know ) 15 it, but if you ever go in a jewelry store and see blue topaz, 16 which is very lovely and very popular today and gems that 17 sell for $150 to $300 in a nice setting are made by taking 18 water white topaz, which has very little market value., lower-19 ing it into the. glory- -- reactor for awhile and it comes ] 1 20 out beautiful London blue. And-the longer you keep it there 1 21 the bluer it gets. And the trace elements in it will give l ' l 22 you things--you know, tantalum 182, zirconium 95, and you 23 have a radioactive gemstone. 24 And so we get into issues like that and that is 25 a current one of great interest to the' Commission and to us,-
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i 253 I and we are collaborating with the Office of Research to have L 2 .a. coherent policy across the board for at what point do'you 3 -just walk ~away.and say, "For practical purposes that's not 4 radioactive material." That is beneath regulatory concern. 5 Or it is. di minimis. or whatever . definition you prefer. 6 I won't dwell on' that. I'd like to dwell on our Now, 7 needs with the Office of Research for research as such. 8 we have a need ourselves in NMSS to better define our re-9 search needs. Tradition in this Agency, especially the 10 thermal-hydraulic burden, the. legacy of the oid ECCS hearing, 11 has made the Research Frogram something of a captive to NRR. 12 To the reactor regulation side of the house. ( 13 Our research user needs'are not that well defined. i 14 And our present office director and myself have both talked- i 15 extensively about the need to better define these and to 16 obtain the support of the Office of Research-in doing it. 17 If we talk about research right now, related-to -3 18 NMSS activities, for all practical purposes we're talking 19 about waste disposal research, some low-level waste l disposal, ! 20 but principally high-level waste disposal. And Frank Con- ! 21 stanzzi is going to talk to'you about'the Waste Disposal- ) i 22 Research Program in an integral way. 23 But let me give you what I think is our perspec-l 24 tive of it and I have some handouts here so that I think 25 you can just use these as notes. The only things I wanted ; Heritoge Reporting Corporation (202) 6:saces
I 25d I to mention--the high-level waste disposal.is the principal focus of the Research Program and of a major part of our 2 1 1 3 Regulatory Program and DOE is the licensee.or is to be the 4 licensee. Technically they won't be the licensee or appli-
~1 5 cant until they file an application. That's some years 'j j
i 6 hence. i NRC has to license the high-level. waste repository 7 8 but in doing so, we are required by law to follow environ-9 mental standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. 10 And the EPA--now-that standard, by the way, is under court ( i 11 test right now and has-been remanded to the EPA by the 12 court on a single issue, but they remanded the whole stan-l ( 13 dard so the thing is sort of in limbo right now, but none-14 theless, it's a probabilistic standard. And'it says that 15 over a 10,000-year period you should have a likelihood of 16 so-and-so for this many curies of any given nuclide--it's go: 17 a table--that that shouldn't get to the. biosphere. 10,000-18 year time frame. It is a probabilistic measurement standard. 19 Now, our own regulations, we have NRC rules that' 20 translate that into performance requirements, and those per- R l 21 formance requirements affect the waste form, its engineered 22 emplacement, and out into the--I'll call it the geosphere. 23 You know: hew'it migrates'in groundwater either normally or l 24 under upset ; 25 DR; WILSON: Who is doing it? I mean, in which I Heritage Reporting Corporation ; e < man. ;
255 1 direction is it being viewed? .( -2 MR. BERNERO:' Pardon?- 3 DR. WILSON: In which direction.is that? 4 MR. BERNERO: 'You mean why was it remanded? 5 DRl WILSON: Yes,.why.was it remanded? 6- 'MR..BERNERO: Oh. Gee, I'm'trying to think; I'm' 7 .sorry, I can't-- 8 DR. WILSON: It should be 1,000 times more or 9 something-- 10 MR. BERNERO: Oh, no, no. It's a technicality in 11 the development of the standard. It was a legal-challenge. 12 The court found a legal flaw in it. 13 But we have performance standards in our regula-( 14 tions and presuming that the EPA standard is preserved, we 15 need research as a basis to be able to say that we under-16- stand the performance elements of a repository to be licensed 17 and that includes the waste form, whether you need to line 18 everything with betanite clay around it, what kind of can 19 it's in, and what kind.of geo-setting.it's in.- .We need re-20 search for that and we especial'ly need research to under-21 stand what we don't know, what are the uncertainties with, 22 that. 23 Yes. 24 DR. MILLER: Are you implying that there isn't a 25 research program going on now to address those issues? Heritage Reporting Corporation (tos) sts-mes
256 1 .MR. BERNERO:- Yes, there is, but'what I would like ] ( 2 to elaphasize is the . relative role.- Basically all power re-3 actors are taxed 1 mil'per kilowatt hour and that adds'up.
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4 to big bucks very shortly, and that's the nuclear waste fund. 1 l
- 5. DOE is the. housekeeper of it. They are spending the lion's 6 share of the funds on research and development and investi- 1 1
J 7 gations-for high-level waste. repository. We obtain some. i 1 8 funds to do an appropriately selective fraction of research 9 to corroborate what they do, to do independent performance 10 analysis. In other words, to explore the fringes of the 11 problem and have a sufficiently independent basis of saying 12 yes or no to a licensee application. That is the. essential
.( 13 character of what the High-Level-Waste Research Program is- ,
14 and obviously if you look to. low-level waste, you would have I 4 15 the same sort of character. Only in the low-level waste 16 arena, you don't have a big DOE doing all sorts ofLcalcula-17 tions for low-level repository or burial ground or vault-18 performance.- And the burden falls more to us-and the states' q l 19 to do that performance estimate'and measurement. ] 20 Now, we'have management' oversight of the technical j l 21 program with properly named Waste Management Review Group. I 22 It serves a unique purpose and it's slightly different from l 23 the review groups that the Office of Research'has in all the I 24 other areas. For a variety of-reasons here--I'm going to 25 talk shortly labout a federally funded research and Heritoge Reporting Corporation j
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257 I development center, that we have here. In this unique area 2 we have a mandate because of a unique contractual arrange-3 ment for a captive research organization working for the NRC 4 that this group provides oversight of that captive organiza-S tion and acting on that oversight, advises the Director of 6 NMSS whether he should pay them and what sort of fee. And 7 the same research group or a variety on it also reviews all 8 research, not just high-level waste research, but all re-9 search in high-level, low-level, uranium mill tailings and 10 everything else, and advises Eric Beckjord, as Director of 11 Research, that the Research Program should go this way or 12 that way or this is a good project and this is not a good l ( 13 project. i 14 So that's the unique character of it. This is l i 15 a unique Research Review Group and as such serves two func-16 tions. 17 Lastly on this note sheet, I wanted to call your 18 attention to the fact that after many years of talking about 19 it, the Commission is in the midst right now of spinning off 20 a second advisory committee, a Waste Management Advisory 21 Committee, which looks like it will be a piece of the ACRS. 22 It's the old Waste Management Subcommittee will become some 23 sort of a committee in parallel with the Advisory Committee
' 24 On Reactor Safeguards. And the Commission at this very 25 time is deliberating with the ACRS on exactly how they want Heritage Reporting Corporation cman .
- '258 I to do it, and who would. staff it and' things of that. nature. I k' 2 Now, if I look at this Center for Waste Analysis, l
3 this is'an important thing to appreciate that the NRC per-4 ceived a long time ago a need to.have someone that we 3 5 wouldn't lose in the waste management business and as a- 1 6 practical matter DOE having the lion's share of the money l 7 and also the direct' administrative control of the' National 8 Laboratories was chronically going in to every expert we had
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9 and saying, "Why do you want to work for NRC for ten cents. 10 I am going to give'you $10. worth of work." And so as fast
!! as we would begin to develop a little center of expertise.in 1 I
12 one area or another, DOE would take them back. So the under-( 13 taking was to go separately:and go create a captive. We 1 14 just signed a contract in October of last year with the 15 Southwest Research Institute. And you might ask, what do
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I 16 they know about high-level waste? And I'm sure, Spence, j
- 1 17 you've heard of them in materials testing and in other things 18 and they used to be the home of the NPRDS, Reliability Data j 19 System for nuclear plants. But'they put together azsuffi- l l
20 ciently strong package that either with their'own resources l 21 or with outside contract resources, they can serve as an' . .! L 22 appropriate waste--high-level waste only--research center. 1 23 They are right now getting up to speed and our waste.re-24 search projects, high-level waste research projects, will . H 25 go through a phase--in the next two to three years they will He'ritoge Reporting Corporation
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I gradually phase out of centers where they are now and phase l I Lh l 2 into the control or conduct by this FFRDC, which we call the j 1 3 Center for Nuclear, Waste Regulatory Analyses. Of course, 4 the real name of the place you know is Southwest Research p 5 Institute. 6 DR. TODREAS: Bob, on this, when you use the "wo." 7 .I'm always trying to listen between your office-'and Eric's- i 8 office. i l
~9 MR. BERNERO: "We" means both. j 10 DR. TODREAS: Okay. But'this center, since they.
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.i 11 are doing research, I would assume that the Research Office ]
12 directs them. But since you are talking.about it so strongly ( 13 I'm not sure. 14 MR. BERNERO: No, no. Technically the-center is 15 under the administration and is responsible _to the Director 16 of NMSS, Hugh Thompson. And he's the one that signs the 17 checks and says, "Here's your money." The funds and the 18 projects within them run the complete gamut of research 19 contracts with technical direction by the Office of Research 20 and technical assistant contracts with technical direction 21 by the Office NMSS. That unique Waste Management Review 22 Group is--I'm the Chairman and Guy Arlotto is the Co-Chair-23 man--and the result is that when we're talking about whether i 24 you should pay or further fund or adjust the fee of the ( 25 Center, the Waste Management Review Group, talks to Thompson Heritage Reporting Corporation um . A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ n. _]
260' 3 I- and when it's talking about.research it talks to Eric Beck-
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(- .2 jord. l 3 DR. TODREAS: Okay. ;But without making a value 4 judgement, the way this' Center is being run through'Thomp-5 son-- ll 6 MR. BERNERO: Yes, administratively.. 7 DR. TODREAS: Administratively--is different than i 8 the way the Research and the Merley Regulatory Office work I I 9 on their research needs. 10 MR. BERNERO: Oh, yes.. It's.quite different, . quite I 1 11 different. ! l 12 DR. TODREAS: Quite different? ( 13 MR. BERNERO: Yes. In a'way, you can look'at it-14 this way. It's almost ^.ike a miniature captive National 15 Lab. The National Labs, when they do research or tech assis-16 tance for us, DOE runs them and we've got a deal through 17 the Operations Office of. signing 189s or whatever--the 173s, 18 and all the work gets done. 19 MR. BECKJORD: Bob, by definition, it is a National 20 Lab. 21 MR. BERNERO: Yes. And.FFRCC,is a ca'ptive crea-22 ture, and we're talking money scale here and-getting up to 23 or trying to build up to the scale:of almost $10 million a
! 24 year. We are talking about a miniature versionLof a National
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2 261 j l i I all that DOE would otherwise do of that, we do. But nonethe-2 less, there's the coordination with the Office NMSS and Re- j i i 3 search to agree on the needs and the technical direction, j
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4 You know, Constanzzi's bianch would clearly handle their ! I l 5 projects. { l 6 Now, the only other thing I'd like to--this is ! T ^:ry important to our program. I did these slightly out of i 8 rder because I wanted to end up with the impacts here. { l 9 The Congress just did a major thing in high-level j i 10 waste disposal late last year. In the closing days of the j l 11 year, McClure-Johnston initiative came to fruit and the i 12 Congress selected a repository site. Yucca Mountain. If j l ( 13 you were here this morning, the Washington Post had a great 14 big article on it. And a lovely picture of Yucca Mountain j i 15 which is really a <1dge. And they have selected that as the 16 first repository, Properly stated, the first candidate for 17 a repository. And they said, "Stop work on all this other 18 stuff and just focus all your attention on this one reposi-19 tory." But it still has to be licensed and it may not be 20 acceptable. 21 What Congress really did is they made a value 22 judgement that that was the most likely site of the three i i 23 to be successful and therefore could be chosen. And they 24 terminated the other work, postponed the second repository ( 25 until the 21st Century or thereafter, and then they Heritage Reporting Corporation om u .. .
l 262 i i l l j I established the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board which 2 is going to be nominees from the National Academy of Sciences { 1 3 selected by the Secretary of Energy and reporting to the 4 Albanian government or I don't who else, and then the Nuclear ] i 5 Waste negotiator to take some of t;' - nuclear waste fund and l 6 spread it around for affected states and Indian trices. 7 DR. WILSON: Does that Review Board review, for 8 example, the EPA requirements? l 9 MR. BERNERO: I don't see why not. They will re- fi 10 view the DOE program in its entirety and 1 could think they I 11 would review the standards associated with it too. 12 DR. WILSON: They've been under criticism by some ( 13 people, 14 MR. BERNERO: Yes. Yes, indeed. 15 Now, the NRC actions, of course, we told our resi-16 dent engineer or scientist at Hanford, "You'd better find l< i 17 another job." You know, we're going to close our operation 18 down there and we're terminating work on those other faci-19 lities just as well as POE. 20 But I'd like to emphasize a very important point. 21 Our need is to share with Research and have a program that 22 maintains a proper focus on generic needs and doesn't say 1 23 that " tough" is the only forra of soil in which you would
/ 24 ever dispose of high-level waste. Because the Nevada site 25 may be found to be unsatisfactory and we may have to turn to Heritage Reporting Corporation m .n on
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I sepething else like a bedded salt site or basalt or something
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3 So that's a very'important thing for us to.have !
.. ll 4 that need and that interaction with Research and I'm confi-5 . dent that with the close liaison we have with.them, espe-6 cially through'this Research Review Group that we can main-- l 7 tain that. ,
q b For the long range 'then, our interfaceLwithLthe-9 Office of Research will be, a, that we need to better define 1 j 10 .our research needs in other areas.- Like we've done'it'ad 11 hoc. Arlotta's division recently did a piece of work fur. 1 12 us. Is nodular cast iron a~ credible material for transporta-( 13 tion casks? You know, what with its different yield charac- l 14 teristics than stainless steel? 15 Ara we need to look in a broader range, what are 16 our research needs and have a more coherent agenda rather. j 17 than these little piecemeal things and once that's presented 3
-1 18 then we can have research plans that can more adequately.
I 19 fulfill NMSS needs. l
.l 20 So if there 's any questions I'll be' happy ' to answer 21 them, but that's the basic perspective I'd like to offer.
22 DR.-TODREAS: Let me just shoot one question. j l 23 On a timing basis, why do'you think you've got to . j
.4 initiate a broader research program than " tough" because'the ;
.(- : i 25 time that you'll have to look into candidates will b3 j Heritage Reporting Corporation. ] cm> m . i _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __u_ w
i 364' I dictated by however fast DOE is moving and DOE won't: move 2 that fast because they're locked in to the Yucca site-- 3 MR. BERNERO: 'One of the most troubling aspects 4 of the narrowing of sites--remember, the Nuclear Waste Policy 5 Act as originally presented said, "Take some sites, narrow 6 it down to three." A tough, a basalt and a bedded salt. I' 7 And it'took those three sites and basically'the objective"is 8 not to find the best site. It's to find an acceptable site.
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9 The presumption being that those are the most l'ikely choices 10 and one can go in and develop the sites and find an accept-11 able alternative, with the odds more or less in your favor. 12 - A carefully selected set of'three and careful development of ( 13 three. 14 What we have now is by narrowing it to one site 15 you have a. situation where--I'll give you an example. The 16 tough site in Nevada. Yucca Mountain is an elevated site. 17 It's an unsaturated site and the question is, is it going 18 to stay unsaturated? 19 There is a gentleman namedLSamanski who has just 20 released a raport. He's a DOE employee. And he has done 2: some correlation of the water'tableito the bomb blasts. And 22 he's got some correlation, a model, an' integral model as 23 yet unproven, a theory, that when you set off a bomb it 24 makes the water table do something in such a way that you
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25 cati extrapolate unsatisfactory performance of that hydrology
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r 265-I ground system for long-range high-level waste dispoFal. f 2 Now, the Site Characterization Program needs to 3 explore that and " tough" laay be 'a perfectly good medium but ; 4 not.that tough. You'may have to go to some other site. 4 l 5 DR.-WILSON: It depends on how often you set a 6 bomb ~off. l I 7 MR. BERNERO: No, no. Earthquakes and volcanism 8 are what he's looking for. -) l l 9 DR. TODREAS: No, but my point had nothing to: do j 10 again with the technical judgements that will come out. 'All 11 I'm saying is that all you had to do is follow DOE relative 12 to the right timing and when they. move away from that, then l( 13 you'll have plenty of time to move into the next-alternative. 14 I don't see your logic as to why you think the.NRC is-- 15 MR. BERNERO: Should be more capable of generic-16 activities. l 1 17 DR. TODREAS: Yes, if the applicant--I'm: talking l 18 about a time frame and I'm saying the applicant isn't going 1 19 to be ready to give you anything. Why are you worried about 1 l 1 20 being ready to receive it? l 1 i 21 MR. BERNERO:- Well, we'do and.are required to com-1 22 ment on what the applicant is.doing or is preparing to do, 1 23 and when I say generic, I don't mean deep research program ,/ 24 into basalt. Even though they've terminated the basalt' site. I 1 25 I'm talking about characteristics, general characteristics, , i Heritage Reporting Corporation l (302) ass.4ess _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _J-.
l 266- I I that might'not be explored in a tough site'as much as they l 2 might in another site, so that we could provide meaningful'
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3 comment on alternatives that DOE might ' consider. It's basi-4 cally.a fallback position if there is a change to another; { i 5 site, and a properly generic basis of accepting or reject-6 ing.the Nevada site. 7 DR. TODREAS: Let me just close it off. You've j 8 backed off from what 'I thought you would say, and now:you're 9 in an area where I'd have'to discuss.it with you a half'an 10 hour'to understand it. Bu' I'm satisfied at least'at this: I 11 point. 12 DR. GLOYNA: 'In the' development'of a new thrust, 13 and I think this 1s what you are talking about, for your
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14 own operations, it would certainly be desirab?.e not to re-15 invent all the wheels that have been.aitempten in the past 16 because as we'vc gone through this the last forty years, 17 everyone that has started something new.has come up with { 18 several new truckloads c f reports. None have ever gone back 19 to reexamine the old territory. 20 A classic 1e:cample is wb'en we went back to-look at 21 the transport'models. twenty years after we had done a lot
- 22. of work, we found out that only one set of; validations had 23 been carried out during that intermediate twenty years.
24 Maybe one of the things that you could do is goi 25 back and look at all of the huge pile of. data and information L.
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.267 1 and'see how you might validate:some=of'the raw data that has 2 been' reinvented periodically. Because it's. validation that 3 .is missing.
l 4- MR. BERNERO: One of the most controversial tasks 5 that is applied to this Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory. 6~ ' Analyses is to take an integral look at 3ist--where we get
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7 an independent fresh integral look at what wheels do we need 8' to invent. And they are' developing that plan aEd'I think' 9 that's one-of the fundamental elements of it, is'to look l 10 back at~the enormous volume of work that has been done. 11 DR. GLOYNA: And the second. question, the.second j 12 point, you have the responsibility of-looking insidelthe t { 13 fence--I'm quoting others now--EPA has responsibility:of 14 looking outside the fence. How do you define that?- i 15 MR. BERNERO: Not really. You know, I think what j 16 you are referring to is much more applicable to.one of our f 17 fuel cycle facilities, like a fuel" fabrication plant or a' t 18 UF 6 plant than it is to a repository. 19 The high-level waste repository or any repository, 20 for that matter, has certain operational safety questions, j 21 like will you drop the spec fuel or have-too high a dose. . i 22 rate on the crane operator or things like that. Those are i 23 relatively trivial aspects of inside the fencefthat we will 24 take care of, but we've been doing that for years, handling 25 spent fuel and things like that. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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268 ] s-' I The nature here recognizes no fence. The EPA f \ l 7 standard is the Lccessible environment. And whether it's 3 an underground passageway or aquifer that leads across four 4 states and a thousand miles or it only goes'one hundred 5 yards to the boundary of the property, the EPA standard 6 applies and our licensing evaluation applies. It doesn't 1 1 7 have that sharp dichotomy that we have in the reactor or 8 fuel cycle. 9 DR. GLOYNA: Well, having sat on the other side of 10 the fence, I can tell you that's the way it is presented 11 though. 12 DR. MILLER: Since.we won't hear often from your 13 office I presume since we're.an RES advisory group, I am 14 i really curious about your answer'to the following question. 15 It's clear from historical reasons and for other reasons why 16 the Commission i. s organized from a reactor. point of view 17 along regulatory lines and then along research lines. You-18 know, it could have been going another way, but that's the j i 19 way it's organized. 20 Now, when you start getting away from' reactors 21 to waste management, it isn't obvious to me why you would 22 split research out and put it under another organization 23 and why you just wouldn't have an office way from manageraent 24 that includes research. So it seems to me--it sounds ~like 25 you are just doing something because the organization'said i Heritage Reporting Corporation
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269' I to do that. When the NRC was formed from the 2 MR. BERNERO: 3 Atomic Energy Commission and the statute' formed Nuclear.. 4' Material Safety and Safeguards,. Reactor Regulation and'Re-5 search, those are the only statutory offices, you know, the 6 operational offices. The first Director of'NMSS felt very 7 strongly in'that directionLand he wanted'to do his own re . 8 search program and his own standards development program 9 and Guy Arlotto and I remember that vividly, because I used to to be in the' Standards Office working for Guy, and the whole
!! idea was, I've got the responsibility to. regulate this. stuff.
52 I'm going to do everything. ( 13 The Commission chose to have--I'll call it a Cen-1 14 tralized Office of Research. But the difficulty was the 15 Centralized Office of Research freshly formed out of the 16 womb of the AEC had huge amounts of money.and resources for 17 ECCS research. LOFT. What was it? $40 million a year we , 18 were spending on LOFT. And had this great big budget on , 19 one basic problem. It had a heavy section steel' budget that i 20 was also a carryover from the AEC. And itfwas de facto 21 reactor safety research and confirmative. That's where the 22 word " confirmatory" became so holy. Because it'was proved. l 1 l
- 23. that the ECCS hearing was right in its judgement.
24 Ever since that time, the Office NMSS has been torr 25 in this tension that either the Office Director says, "I l Heritage Reporting Corporation uen m. [ _-.-_-=._2-
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270 I want to go play in my own sandbox and do my own.research and 2 standards," or he comes up_and says, " Director of Research, 3 help me," and the Director of Research is off spending money 4 on LOFT and other boondoggles-- 5 DR. MILLER: But that was before. 6 MR. BERNERO: Well, now it's severe accident. 7 That's LOFT East. But that's basically--we.really ought to 8 have the Office of Research serving the regulatory needs of 9 the Agency. Now, it's a fair question to say, do you really-l need research in some areas. Now, a lot of our stuff is l 10 11 geared toward what I would call standards development or 12 policy development. Like this de'minimis thing I mentioned. ( 13 But when it comes to nodular cast iron, that to me is an 14 ideal exploratory regulatory research issue. We tradi-15 tionally license spec fuel shipping tasks that are very ro-16 bust and stretch like mad before they bleak. And the Germans 17 come up and they want to make the big castor thing. You l 18 stretch it about 4 percent and then it breaks open like a ; 19 watermelon hitting the pavement. Or might. 20- DR. BUSH: In fact, I thought that's what you were i 21 doing, picking out the chestnuts for the Germans for the l' 22 fire. ) 1 23 MR. BERNERO: No, no. You haven't seen the-latest I 24 report. Arlotto wrote it holding his nose. 25 DR. MILLER: Thank you. I think you've answered Heritage Reporting Corporation cmna
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- 271 4 I my. question. 1
..L 2 DR. BUSH: Bob,'I had one. I'm a little intrigued, 3 and'of course it isn't your control, but that'10,000 figure--
4 you know, if you realize that we had.glaciation only 30,000-5 years ago. We're trying to set up a probabilistic model i 6 that tells you what you'll be'doing. What will happen 10,000 :lr 7 years from now.is ridiculous. That was banned at the court 8 trial I am sure. a i 9 MR. BERNERO: That was one of the things hotly ]
.i 16 delsated in setting that standard, in trying to develop it, 11 and just recently there's a whole bout of correspondence 12 where someone got the. bright idea that plutonium was.ori-( 13 ginally going to be removed by fuel reprocessing, and now it's in there and the standard is patently wrong because j 14 15 it's only 10,000 years and plutonium is 24,000 or whatever 16 years and--no, that was explicitly considered and really 17 what you are saying, if you stop and just look at it from 18 a detached way. You say, "I'm looking for a natural. setting 19 and a combination of engineered features to embed waste'in .
l 20 that natural setting, so that I can say with confidence,_'I. i 21 am reasonably sure it is unlikely that this. waste will ever l 22 impinge on. humanity in a significant way.'" 23 . Now, you can't guarantee that some lunatic'isn't
, 24 going to drill back down the very hole that.you plughed up. ]
( 25 and take it out and say, "I wonder what this stuff is." He : Heritage Reporting Corporation
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272 - 3 "! I might even go down there to mine the plutonium. 2 DR. GLOYNA: -- number one policy when.they attach 3- the word " retrievable" on to it. 4 MR. BERNERO: Well, the " retrievable" only_ applies 5 in the short term. 'You know, like a lifetime or two. One 6 or two generations. 7 DR. LEVY: Just as a matter of interest. The funds 8 .for research for like high-level waste compete for'fundsLfor, ) j 9 research for other areas, or do the funds for the high-level 10 waste come from this' big pot and-- 11 MR. BERNERO: No, no. This is a sticky thing. 12 We are just getting to the point-where we can get our share ' j 1 l at the trough. And to be blunt--when you see an Indian { 13 14 tribe representative come in and lower his glasset and call 15 all his lawyers and consultants up, you know:whers that money 16 is coming from. 17- No. We are getting--and my understanding of it so 18 far is we are getting high level waste funds for our review ) 19 in NMSS. For our High-Level Waste Program inLNMSS. I'm -l i a 20 not sure that we have successfully identified any high-level j I 21 waste monies for the Research Program, but there's a trick ) d i 22 to this-- ;; i 23 MR. BECKJORD: Up to this point it's one fund, 24 our Research budget is. j ( ! 25 MR. BERNERO: Yes, it's one fund., But the trick ~I 1 l
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i i 273 ( is, just like fee recovery--you know, we can charge Common-I 1 l 2 wealth Edison a lot of money to review their reactor licen- j I 3 ses and that money goes right to the Treasury. We can't ; { 4 spend it. And it's just something that the Congress recog- ! S nizes when they authorize our budget. He still has to go 6 down there and get a Research budget that's one big package, J I 1 7 and we go down and get an NMSS budget that's one big package. 8 Even though the bookkeeping is such that the federal govern-9 ment can tap into those funds. ! 10 But I would say this. That it is only a second 11 order effect on the availability of funds. It's not a first 12 order effect. 13 DR. LEVY: Yes, but the issue will grow with time. [ 14 That's why I'm raising it. 15 MR. BERNERO: One would hope so. 16 DR. LEVY: When you finally build a $30 billon 17 facility, I can just see a Research budget that is quite 18 large, and I thought the idea of collecting this so much per 19 kilowatt hour which is to cover the cost of doing everything. 20 MR. BERNERO: But it covers DOE primarily and then 21 DOE meters the funds out to uses which in many cases are 22 state or Indian tribe uses, but in our case it is just put-23 ting it into the Federal Treasury. And it does not in any 24 significant way--this is my perception--Eric can comment 25 separately. In my perception, it does not in any significant Heritogo Reporting Corporation m us.a.,
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274 H t I way make the OMB more likely.to jack up the NMSS'High-Level l I k 2 Waste Program. In fact, their initial' reaction when the ' 3 Congress did what they did, take all numbers and divide by ; 4 three. You know, I just don't see-that access.to the Waste- , I 5 Fund--it does the taxpayer some good. In1 fact, for the bene-6 fit of the taxpayer, it's probably good that we don't get a 7 free ride that'way. But for our fund defense, for defending ! 8 the High-Level' Waste Program versus the Low-Level Waste 9 Program,.I don't think Eric is a nickel better off having. 10 federal fund accessibility through the High-Level Waste. Fund. 11 DR. TODREAS: ' Okay. I'd like to move on. 12 DR. GLOYNA: May I ask one other, question?. 13 DR. TODREAS: Sure. ( 14 DR. GLOYNA: Now that you've told me that there's. 15 no such thing as defense line, aren't_you concerned >about 16 the ultimate outcome of the important case? i 17 MR. BERNERO: Oh, yes, yes. H 18 DR. GLOYNA: Isn't that your major problem? 19 MR. BERNERO: Yes, right now-- 20 DR. GLOYNA: What are you going to do if they ; I 21 don't have that 10,000 year-- t 22 .MR. BERNERO:. That's going to be very tough. EPA , 23 is mulling over what they were going to do. They had a 24 choice to go after the single legal--I can't remember.what ; .b i 25 it was. In my mind.it wasn't that significant. I Heritage Reporting Corporation l
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275 1 They have not yet made a-firm' decision on what f 2 course of action they will pursue in addressing the matter 3 with the court. In effect, wh't a they've-done is suspended 4 the standards and we're working on the presumption that'that 5 standard'or something awfully close to it will prevail and 6 will be reinstated. We'd have a very serious problem if.it' 7 came out~otherwise. You know, .if suddenly they had a dras-8 tically different standard, then we would have.to develop a 9 drastically different eet of rules. . We have a rtgulation. 10 that was actually' developed and promulgated on the basis of 11 that EPA standard being the parent environmental standard. 12 DR. TODREAS: Okay. Let's shift over into the ( 13 last presentation. 14 MR. CONSTANZZI: I'm Frank Constan221. I'm Chief 15 of the Waste Management Branch in the Division of Engineer- ; 16 ing, Office of Research. 17 I'm going to be talking to you about the Waste-18 Management Research. Program in the NRC and before I'get into 19 the specifics of the program, a couple of things I'd'like 20 you to bear in mind as you hear my presentation. i 21 One, what you are going to be hearing about is the i 22 full Safety Research Program. That is to say, that the i 23 waste issue is an issue unto itself and needs to be viewed 24 in that context. You are not hearing'a piece of a larger-25 program as you have heard pieces of the Reactor Safety a Heritage Reporting Corporation j w__-___--- _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _- _ ("*"** .
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1 Research Program earlier today. ( 2 The second point is that unlike the problems in-I 3 volved in safely constructing.and operating a nuclear power 4 plant, the engineering has a cold rule with the properties 5 of the sight in providing the' functions of the facility.
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6 Or to put it another way, the site is an integral safe part 7 of the safety system,'an-integral part of.the operating 8 system, if you will. The site has responsibility.in the l 9 long term and the ultimate-responsibility for isolating the 10 waste from the environment, whether we're talking abcut 11 low-level waste.or high-level waste disposal. 12 So the engineering is not simply something that's 13 put into the site or you' design your engineering around the (
'l 14 conditions of the site, perhaps to compensate for some less ]
15 than ideal conditions of the site, rather the site has to 16 be selected in the first place to meet the kinds of condi-17 tions, mainly the properties of isolation, which are ulti- ; 1 18 mately after. ; 19 What I'm going to be talking about, the way I'm 20 going to be presenting the Research Programs, talking about 21 why we're doing the research, what are the high-level and ; 22 low-level waste safety issues,.what research we'll be'doing- ; 23 that addresses those issues, and specifically what-are the 24 regulatory applications? What are the questions that are / i i 25 going to come up in the licensing and regulatory process Heritage Reporting Corporation eman
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l j i which.this research'is addressing. 2 The' safety. issues for.high-level waste basically can'be put into three. sorts of' questions. This'is kind of l 4 a characterization of them. Obviously since.we're' talking 5 about a very detailed. regulation'and a very detailed standard 6 that.will be promu'lgated into'a' final by'the EPA, that there i 7 are a lot more questions than this, but this kind of captures 8 what the flavor or the safety. issues are.
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9 First, in the geologic system, in this case Yucca-10 Mountain, since we're reflecting the Nuclear Waste Policy 11' Amendments Act we relied upon to isolate tNe high-level 4 12 waste from the-environment. 13 Ultimately it's the site that has to do the job. 14 Secondly,-can the waste packages, in which the 15 waste is contained, in this case for the most part'it's 16 spent fuel, to be designed and fabricated-compatible with 17 the environment beneath Yucca Mountain. 18 The Commission Regulations 10CFR Part 60 have a 19 specific requirement for. containment over the-short term, L 20 three hundred to a thousand years, for the waste packages L 21- to fulfill. This is kind of a safety net. It helps evalu-22 ate the goodness of the geology, since it's containing the 23 waste you don't perturb too much'the. geology by the waste i 24 during the time that the wastes are contained. Also it is ( 25 kind of. consequence limiting and it turns out that the site Heritage Reporting Corporation mu= _ _ . - - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _
i 278 l l 1 is--something happens, an untoward event.
- 2 The last one, hydrologic and geotechnical inves-3 tigation, the repository performance evaluation techniques i 4 meet the demands for reasonable assurance imposed by the i
5 regulatory process. 6 This is really the s<icking point in this whole ! 7 business. Congress has given the NRC the responsibility of { I 8 licensing DOE's disposal of high-level waste. It means that 9 DOE has to make a demonstration that it meets the EPA stan-l J 10 dard. As Bob Bernero mentioned, that's a probabilistic 11 standard and requires projections of what is going to happen l { l 12 over the next 10,000 years. There's a whole question of l 13 what that means, what is reasonable assurance, and in that j [ l 14 case when we're dealing with something which we don't en- I l 15 gineer in its entirety but we have a site that's given to us l 16 by nature, how do you characterize that site, how do you 17 demonstrate, how do you obtain confidence that it's going 18 to do what it's supposed to do. 19 I might mention that the total Research budget 20 for high-level waste in this fiscal year is on the order of 21 a little over $3.5 million. Literally for every $100 that 22 DOE spends we're spending $1. That's not much leverage. 23 The program is divided up roughly in these three 24 parts, although there's a bit more of our resources that are 25 going into the last question. He'ritage Reporting Corporation ona n.e
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l 1 DR. MILLER: You said $3.5 million. We were given F c' 2 a different number this morning. 3 MR. CONSTANZZI: For high-level 1 waste, it's $3.6 4 millon'for high-level waste. 3
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5 DR. MILLER: I see. So the rest of this, it says, -j 6 " Confirming safety of nuclear waste disposal, $5.7 million." 7 You are saying that the. rest of it is--
$5.7 is small and high-level-- I 8 MR. CONSTANZZI:
l 9 DR.. MILLER: It's the total? ] 10 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes. I 11 DR. MILLER: Fine. . 12 MR. CONSTANZZI: I'm going to review again with ( 13 you--just getting a flavor of what the low-level waste issues le are, this is about $2.1 million of our budget. Then what 15 we m looking at in terms of low-level waste is focusing right now on so-called' alternatives to shallow-land burial.
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16 17 The Congress has told the NRC that they have to provide that 18 kind of information to the states. So we're1 focusing on ; 19 the designs, how they work, how long will they last, how 20 can you test them to make sure that they are going to ful-21 fill their safety function,.once you figure out what that 22 is. , 23 And, of course, again, as in the case of high-24 level waste, eventually the engineering is no longer going 25 to lua there. You can't rely on it forever. 'You can't rely Heritage Reporting Corporation l can uum j
280 1 on it for more than one hundred fifty to two hundred years, 2 maybe three hundred in the case of low-level, at the most. 3 How do you determine what's going to happen after 4 that? Because wastes are still going to be isolated from 5 the environment. 6 And also given the fact that low-level waste, un-7 like high-level waste, which is pretty homogeneous stuff, 8 there's a pretty tremendous mix of stuff that goes into a 9 low-level waste disposal facility. What do you use for a 10 source term? You know, all these performance evaluations 11 you were talking about, radions -lides going out into the en-12 vironment, the question is you can't do that kind of a cal- [ 13 culation until you have some idea of what's in the facility 14 itself. Moreover, you have to know the way its chemicals 15 forms, its concentration and species in order to make some 16 sort of a calculation of how it behaves. 17 The relevant legislation bringing up here because 18 not only do we have these particular safety questions, and 19 they are safety questions even though perhaps the conse-20 quence of making bad decisions is not immediate, it's still 21 going to be just as definite. The waste gets out into the 22 environment and people are going to die. It may not be this l 23 generation or the next generation or several generations i l hence, but it's going to affect them just the same. e 24 So the ( 25 immediacy of the question perhaps isn't there, but the Heritage Reporting Corporation nm .n. .
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I definiteness'of it is. 1 2 The Energy Reorganization.Act, that's where.it 3 kind of begins. It charges' DOE to' dispose of the waste. ltt j
-l a 4 charges NRC to license and regulate.
5 The Nuclear Waste Policy Act authorizes geologic 1 6 disposal of high-level waste, and also sets schedules for 7 DOE to construct and operate a repository and'for NRC to 8 do its licensing job. 9 The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which.has i 10 .just recently passed, directs DOE to-focus on the Yucca 1 11 Mcantain site exclusively and, of course, we have accommo- 1 12 dated that change in our Research Program, although you will
.q 13 see later on that'some of the stuff we areidoing is directed I
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towards "topgh." 15 Our Research Program in general is pretty generic 16 and I'll gel into that a bit later. But there are some 17 medium specific things that we're doing. Most of it applies 18 regardless of the kind of medium because it's related to 19 how you do the measurements in the field,-how you do the 20 geologic and hydraulic measurements,, and that's more towards 21 investigating nature and these particular kinds of: formation 22 than it has to do with a particular mechanical'or chemical ~ 23 Properties of the materials itself, l le 24 Pertinent regulations, 10CFR Part'60, which lays k 25 down the NRC's requirements and 40CFR Part 191, which is the. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 62sasse
282 1 EPA'High-Level Waste-Standards. 2 Back to the High-Level Waste Research Program. 3 This is-the geologic system we talked about. This addresses 4' the first question,'what the geologic system is doing.to 5 isolate the-waste in the period in which it is supposed to.. 6 do that. 7 Regulatory applications. That's what essentially L l 8 the licensing' office is going to be doing.. They are going 9 to be ev.aluating DOE's efforts to characterize the-hydraulic-10 and radionuclides transport properties. Now in this particu-l 11 lar case of the Yucca Mountain site. l 12 We're doing two things that address this issue. ( 13 Provide technical support to the licensing office, NMSS, 14 assisting them to do that review. 15 We're looking at the utility of various hydraulic l 16 testing techniques, to see if they work basically.- Deep 17 fractured height lock, both saturated and unsaturated, is 18 not something that's been investigated very well.- The rea-19 son is that there's no economic value in it. There's no i 20 water to speak of. So.you need no resources.- Nobody.knows 21 very much abcut it. Nobody knows how to characterize it. l 22 DOE has got a program. They are, of course,~ drilling wells, i 23 doing pump tests-and tracer tests, and the like, but'it's a 24 new field. We-- 25 DR. MILLER: Not to contradict you, but there are Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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283 1 an awful lot of people in_the. nuclear'weaponsfprogram that 2 would disagree with you. 3 MR. CONSTANZZI: At the Nevada site there's been 4 a lot of monitoring of what went on with the tests, and as 5 a matter of fact a fellow that Bob Bernero mentioned earlier, 6- Samansky, has this report and they looked at wells and the 7 like. But the monitoring that was done on.the Nevada' site 8 was to watch the reaction of what happened. It was not to. 9 understand the basic hydrology of the site,.which in terms. 10 of radionuclides transport, it was to look at what happened
!! after the fact.
12 When we had done the underground tests, it general-( 13 ly produced a ventrified cavity in Nevada where the test went i l l-4 on. Essentially it made a glass bubble in which the debris 15 from the weapons was pretty much contained. It's' impervious, f 1 16 it's not like the native tuck. The changes in low-water j i 1 17 level that resulted from the mechanical shock for the most 1 18 part went down. There were a couple of places where there 19 was permanent deformation of the rock. And that was cer-20 tainly observed. ! l l 21 But that's not the same thing as understanding ! l ! 22 hvdraulic systems to be able to make a competent prediction i 23 that you know how radionuclides are going to be transported ; t 24 or not going to be transported over the kinds of periods of 25 time that are talked about in nuclear standards. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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'284 I So.the tests for characterizing the hydrologic 2 system are things which really have not'been developed.
3 DR. MILLER: I won't argue with you. Because we
'4 don't have enough time.
5 MR. CONSTANZZI: I suggest that you--I refer you 6 to a recent Geological Society.of America monograph, No. 42, 7 which.was just recently published. It was on a workshop 8 study of about a year ago. Saying what is known about' 9 essentially the unsaturated zone of which the Yucca Moun-10 tain is an example. .And I think you will find in there a 11 lot more questions than you will answers. 12 Evaluate DOE efforts to assess long-term stability' 13 of the site. And this has to do with the' seismic activities (. 14 at the site. What effect both the seismic events would 15 have on the underground facility'where'the waste'is stored, 16 as well as would it would have on the hydrologic regime. 17 The Yucca Mountain site in particular is faulted as most 18- sites. Certainly the Hanford site was the same way. And-19 seismic events could very well change the hydrologic regime. 20 The water table could go up or down. Flow pass the change 21 head. Gradients could change. Travel times land fluxes of 22 -groundwater could change. 23 Another question, of course, comes up as to the t 24 climates. Ten thousand years ago there was no--we had a (v 25 different climate. . Ten thousand years ago there was no
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a 1 Cheasapeake Bay, for example. What are'the capabilities of 2 climatological models to predict climates in the future when 3 we know that the Yucca Mountain will recharge for some'rea- 1 4 son, the water level comes up because of increased-precipi-5 tation. Will.the repository rise and saturate. If so,'how. 6 and when? .Those are things-that need to-be addressed. 3 7 Lastly, the question of sealing.. There's a re- l 8 quirement in the NRC regulations that say that the bore holes 9 in the shafts can't provide a preferential path. You don't to want to short circuit the geology. You are going to spend 11 a lot of. money to make sure that the geology is going to i j 12 isolate the waste and you want-to make sure you are not ., 13 short circuiting by leaving an unsealed bore-hole in an un-( 14 sealed shaft. 15 There's certainly been a lot of experience with 16 sealing wells, water wells, oil wells, gas wells and the 17 like. Generally those are in rocks which have permeabilities I 18 on the order of four or five order of magnitude, higher than 19 the permeabilities we're talking about at any of the sites. 20 Yucca Mountain, for example, being one. 21 It's quite a bit different if you are sealing some-22 thing which is very porous with a fairly porous seal. As long 23 as.it's somewhere in that neighborhood, you don't care be-24 cause it's not preferentic.l. You use the same kind of. seal-25 ing techniques on something which is very tight which is l Heritoge Reporting Corporation mm aam <
286 I two or three orders of magnitude more permeable than native 2 rock. You've got a short circuit. 3 Waste Packages.Iimagine that there is certainly ; i 4 a role for the engineering. Definitely'it's relied upon to ( 5 contain the waste. Certainly over the initial period where j 6 you have the greatest concentration of fission prcducts {s 1 7 shortly radionuclides -- the greatest amount of' heat is: 8 being produced. Between three hundred and'a'thousand years 9 is what is in the regulations and that range of numbers is_ 10 thick because depending on whether.it was processed waste j
'l 11 that have been detrified or spent fuel, the heat output and- l 12 the quantity of fission products would vary. And it was left 13 to DOE to make the argument of what period of time is most 1 44 appropriate.
15 There are two things we would be asking DOE when i 16 they come in with their license application.. One of them .l 17 is to be looking at how they characterize the environment. ! 18 Or is the design of the waste package compatible with where l 19 they are going to put it. And secondly, how have.they de-20 signed the waste package? How did they test it? How did 21 they extrapolate it from -- . Obviously it's going to be a 22 very short-term laboratory test to a long-term performance. 23 In order to be'able to address those uestions 24 we're conducting experiments now focusing on " gh" al-25 though we had been doing some work--doing equal work in the Heritage Reporting Corporation
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7-287 1 salt. On the impact of water'and' heat, on the -- , i 2 to see how it changes the-chemistry. Verifying the ability 3- of instrumentation to measure the key geochemical parameters,
, J 4 Eh and Ph. ;
5 We're also looking at the waste package failure 6 mechanisms, how the waste package is going to fail, because ;
'l 7 whether the failure is very very gradual'over a long period j l
8 of time or whether it's a long period of time meaning con- 1 i 0 9 tainment is gradually lost by small degrees over a period to of five hundred to a thousand years or whether the contain-1 11 ment is lost over a period of a few years as might be the 12 case, for example, if the failure mechanism was stressed 13 because of a crack. Changes in the source -
. And 14 hence changes how you evaluate thn overall performance-of l l
15 the repository against the -- 16 So we're looking at the failure mechanisms. Trying 17 to verify methods that would be usable for extrapolating i i 38 short-term lab tests and it'.g-term performance. How good j l : i 19 are they considering the kind of environments that the waste 20 packages are going to be in? What kind of designs? ; 21 Aid lastly, the sensitivity of the waste package 1 1 , l 22 design, the manufacturer specification to the long-term l 23 performance. DOE can certainly design a waste package and 24 their waste package design will be to meet the three hundred 25 to a thousand-year requirement. The question here is the. Heritcge Reporting Corporation (102) 6 4008
288 l 1 I I as built going to be as good as the as design, f 2 The last area of high-level waste research is l 3 compliance demonstration. And to this point we've been 4 talking about looking at DOE's program to investigate the 5 Eite, looking at DOE's program to design anG testLthe waste 6 package. Now we're looking at the results. 7 This research is.to support the licensing office-8 in looking at DOE's demonstration of compliance. To this 9 point we've been looking at their program as to how they are 10 going about gathering the information. Now we're looking 11 at what the information that they got says. Hence, we'll 12 report any conducting confirmatory hydrology and geochemistry 13 research in --- tough to get an idea of what kind of 1 14 parameters you would expect in geochemical and hydraulic. 15 Perform field observation and-map of systems 16 relative to the waste isolation process. This is a question 67 of model validation. We have been heavily involved in an 18 international program called--two programs. One called l 19 Intracoin and the other Hydrocoin. Which have been looking , 20 at the question of how good are the geochemical transport 21 models, how good are the hydrologic models, which are avail-l 22 able to describe these kinds of systems. Again, we're talk-23 ing about fairly low water flux, deep fractured systems. 24 It turns out, in fact, that the amount of data-25 around-for validating models is pretty scarce. There are. Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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4: 289 1 lots of models around but none of them have been really 1 A; 2 validated. By validated I mean that the physical parameters 3 of a hydrologic system have been used as.an input to a model 4 which has then predicted things like flow properties, heads, 5 contaminate transport. That just hasn't been done. 6- We hope that by looking'at some natural hydro - 7- thermal systems,. heat, rock and waterr.just basic to what 8 a repository is all about, we'll be able to develop some data 9 against where some of these models can be tested. 10 We're also developing an independent performance 11 assessment methodology which does involve a model. And in 12 this particular case for the unsaturated zone, the model is 13 called a t,' ugh code, which is T-O-U-G-H, which is developed , by Carson Pr$est Go out at LDO. OL 14 ] 15 We have also been'looking-for saturated. zones a 2 16 code called the swift code r which was developed by Sandia 17 National Labs. And Sandia is adopting a tough code to that I 18 same methodology. 19 Testing of that code is one of the things on our ) i i 20 agenda and it's.certainly part of this program which is go-1 21 ing to be done -- , a test performance assessment metho- 4 22 dology -- mockups and field observations. ! 23 I should mention in here that the Center for Nuclear j 5 24 Waste Regulatory Analysis that Bob Bernero mentioned is be-25 ing cut in very heavily into this area. In particular, we
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i- - J , . ::2. ::::: 290 ; 4 3 . plan to have them get up to speed-in running some of these-1 %- 2 ' models and essentially going'along with the field investiga-l 3 .tions, taking field data, taking;some laboratory experiments 4 on physical mockups of a repository system and r'unning that ' 1 5 against the codes. 6 I might mention that the physical mockups we're 7 talking about-are things that we've been investigating.with 8 Coloraco Ocate University usir , principle dynamic similarity. 9 You can characterize a thermal-hydraulic system in terms of 10 dimensions, parameters. And it doesn't matter V.At the scale II of the thing is at that point. And if you can run your 12 hydraulic codes in that kind of a system', when you have a ; 13 fluid, when you have a heat source,'and an imposed hydraulic 14 head, you get good correspondence between what the model 15 predicts and what you observed. And you know that when you 16 apply that model to the repository that you'll have good 17 correspondence between what's actually going to happen in 18 the repository and what the model would say. We're doing 19 that. That's not done yet. 20 DR. TODREAS: I don't want to get in a big dis-21 cussion on this, but you said if you have a model prediction l
- 22 and then you run a test?
23 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes. You actually do--you make
/ 24 a laboratory mockup which is characterized by the same kind 25 of dimensionless numbers--
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i i DR. TODREAS: Yeah, okay. But what that requires 1 2 fundamentally is knowing the governing equations for the j I 3 whole system so you can get the right dimensionless numbers-- i 4 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes. 1 5 DR. TODREAS: That means you've got to know what j l 6 all the phenomena add that are important and how to mathe-l 7 matically represent them. 8 MR. CONSTANZZI: That's right. 9 DR. TODREAS: That's the condition and you think j i 10 you .inow that? 11 MR. CONSTANZZI: No. I said we're doing that, j 12 DR. TODREAS: Oh. j 13 MR. CONSTANZZI: We haven't done it. That's what 14 I said. I wish we had done it. We're not there yet. We're 15 not even sure this is going to work, but we think it will. 16 What we've done so far seems to work. But we've done it 17 with very simple systems. We certainly haven't done it in 18 the twt-phase system which is going to be Yucca Mountain. 19 Where you have both vapor and fluid. 20 DR. TODREAS: Okay. I misunderstood you. I 21 MR. CONSTANZZI: But we feel that that is an im- ! ll 22 Portant area to investigate because it does have a tremendous j i 4 23 Potential payoff. It's a tremendous licensing tool. You ; l 24 can go in a laboratory and make a mockup of DOE's repository. j k' i 2.c You can turn on the switch and watch what happens. I Heritage Reporting Corporation ("'""" ]
N 2 . --we..,, 292 1 DR. TODREAS: Absolutely. If you can do it. 7 A 2 MR. CONSTANZZI: If you can do it. 3 DR. LEVY: Has DOE done it? 4 MR. CONSTANZZI': No. 5 DR. LEVY: They've got ten times the budget-- 6 MR.;CONSTANZZI: That's true. 7 DR. LEVY: Have tl.ey tried? 8 MR. CONSTANZZI: No. Not as far as I'm' aware of. 9 You know, DOE has a different measurement than we 10 do. You know, DOE's measurement is to build the airplane il and it's really more of our mission to find out what's going 12 to make it not fly. DOE doesn't have the depth to explore 13 all the avenues of what can go wrong. They come in with 14 the best case, saying, you know, " Hey, this is going to work 15 fine." And it's our mission to ask the "what if" questions. 16 We're doing this research so we don't-go off on 17 a wild goose chase. . We don't want to tell DOE to walk down 18 a lot of blind alleys. But we have.done. selective research l 19 that we have been able to go back to DOE and say, " Hey,
- 20 you know, you really ought to do some of.your geochemical i
21 . experiments a little bit differently because you are biased i 22 .in your results. If you found that out- " because we did i 23 some of the geochemical' experts. DOE wasn't examining'that. 24 They are looking in a different direction. That's their job. 25 'Our' job as the regulator is to ask them "what if" questions. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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293 l 1 But obviously we have to ask in a prudent way. We' don't Y' 2' have the resources and we certainly can't afford to.tell 3 DOE to go chase windmills either. 4 Mell, that pretty much concludes the High-level 5 Waste Program. 6 Now, the Low-Level Waste Program is a little bit 7 different. In high-level waste our philosophy of research I J is to look at the kinds of--following DOE's lead in what ' 9 kinds of materials, what kinds of sites.they are going to, . 10 what kinds of techniques are they using to characterize the 11 sites, to characterize their materials, to design the waste 12 packages and the like. And do some selective' tests, programs [ 13 mostly experimental, to try and say, well, you know, has L I4 DOE tested all the assumptions? Have they overlooked some-15 thing? And we feed that back to DOE. And there have been 16 a number of things that have turned up that have-caused DOE 17 to rethink and redo some of their stuff. 18 But we're not trying to tell DOE how to build a 19 repository. We're not trying to even-provide them detailed' 20 guidance as to what kind of tests they ought to run, how 21 they ought to design the waste packages. Rather we are 22 testing to make sure that how they are proceeding makes 23 good technical sense. 24 For low-level waste, we have a different kind of 25 responsibility. Congress has given the NRC the responsibility Heritage Reporting Corporation
294 1 to provide technical information to the states since they 2 don't have the resources for the developing and. operating 3 and doing the technical work to develop and operate the low-I. 4 level waste disposal sites. 5 Consequently, our work ends up being a lot more 6 prescriptive'and a lot more oriented'towards use by~the 7 states. We carry the research one step farther than we would 8 looking at the 'ligh-level waste questions. l 9 DR. TODREAS: Do you license those facilities 10 though? 11 MR. CONSTANZZI: The legislation that the Congress 12 has passed, the Low-Level Waste Policy Act and the Low-Level 13 War'~ Policy Amendments Act which encourages the states to 14 set up compacts. Many of the compacts would have agreement 15 states as members and presumably the agreement state would 16 do the licensing. But we would still provide technical 17 input for the state, technical backup. (- t 18 DR. TODREAS: Yes. I had a simpler.quescion. Is l 19 it licensed at a state level and not through a federal level? 20 MR. CONSTANZZI: It depends. That's part of the-21 problem. 22 DR. TODREAS: Okay. I don't understand the-- 23 MR COISTANZZI: The Atomic Energy Act.provides for ,
> 24 agreement states, in which the agrement state would take the k
25 licensing regulatory authority and apply that to a licensee
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- .' 2 that's covered in the Agreement State Program. So the state 3 could do the licensing.
4 On the other hand, if the state.is not an agreement 5 state, it would be NRC that would do the licensing. 6 DR. TODREAS: Is it an agreement state when two-7 states get together? 8 DR. CONSTANZZI: No, that's a compact. 9 DR. TODREAS: Okay. What's an agreement state' l 40 mean? J l ll DR. CONSTANZZI: An agreement state is an arrange-12 ment between the state and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 1
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[ 13 DR. TODREAS: Oh, okay. { k 14 DR. CONSTANZZI: The state takes certain--the NRC 15 delegates certain regulatory and licensing authorities to 16 the state, and the state agrees to have compatible regula-17 tions and set up a program. l l 18 Well, the Low-Level Waste Policy Act originally 19 set up schedules, performing state compacts, set up schedules I i 20 and penalties for the states a? ? compacts developing new l 21 disposal facilities. The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy l i 22 Amendment Act revised the schedules. States were not setting 23 up the compacts as needed.
/ 24 It also charged the NRC to develop the technical 25 information on so-called alternatives to shallow-land burial.
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l 1 The NRC's position has been that shallow-land burial, done , l [' ' 2 in accordance with provisions of Part 61, NRC's pertinent ] 3 regulations for the disposal of low-level waste, was okay. 4 There's nothing wrong with it. There's no safety problem. J 5 The states had shied away from shallow-land burial. Shallow-6 land burial has a bad name. And have chosen to do something I 7 more. They want a lot of engineering, basically a lot of { f 8 concrete around the disposal site. And they persuaded the 9 Congress to charge the NRC to give them specific information, 10 technical information, on alternatives. ) l
!! Also what the Amendments Act did is it told DOE 12 that they have the responsibility for disposing of so-called l
13 above Class C waste, and moreover told the NRC that they have 14 to license that disposal by DOE. 15 Right now we have no regulations governing the dis-16 posal of the Class C specifically and we're not performing 17 any research in that area simply because we don't know what 18 DOE is going to do with it. 19 We have been talking with DOE and expressed to 20 them our feeling that indeed what they ought to do is just 21 Put it into the geologic repository since there's not very 22 much of it and that's probably the easiest and quickest way 23 of disposing of it and it would be a very small perturbation 24 to the repository itself. (' The first question is engineered enhancements to 25 1 i Heritage Reporting Corporation
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l 297 1 1 shallow-land burial. . It's one area that we're focusing on. 2 Our program--this is about $3.2 million this fiscal year. 3 In the case of Applicants here, we could be talking ) l 4 about an applicant to an NRC license or an. applicant to an l 5 agreement state or compact. In any case, the. question.will 6 be asked. And whoever does the licensing, whether.it's NRC. l 1 7 or an agreement state, would be evaluating the' applicant's 8 design of these engineered enhancements. 9 Our programs can identify key safety functions of-10 the engineering. What makes it work?. What are you really 11 getting in pouring all this concrete around a low-level waste ? 12 Assess- reliability of the designs. How long are they go-l 13 ing to last? Are they really going to do what you think they 14 are going to do? 15 And lastly, we have found, and so we are focusing 16 on this particular, and the problem is pretty obvious when- )
'l 17 1 you think about it. Water is a bad actor. That's what you j 18 have to worry about. If you can keep the waste out!of the-19 water, the water away from the waste, you've gotLthe problem, 20 not the 80 percent salt. So we assess methodrs to control .
21 the effect of water. As a matter of fact, we have a demon-22 stration project.right out here in Beltsville. It's a joint MCL$ 23 effort between the University of Maryland ~and ggoA.g Looking i, 24 at the various ways of controlling water from--keeping it out 25 of a. disposal unit, be they in connection with' shallow-Heritage Reporting Corporation ("' * ""
398 1 land burial or some engineered enhancement underground bolt-- P' b 2 or something of that sort. 3 We're also looking at the way these engineered com-4 ponents would degrade over time, and it's one thing to put it 5 in and your pour the concrete or whatever and it looks all 6 fine and well', but when you cover it up and you walk away 7 and in fifty years, a hundred years, the thing is going to 8 degrade. Well, how is it going to degrade? Is it going to 9 degrade in a way that fifty years or a hundred years after 10 closure you no 3'nger have isolation? No longer have a dis-11 Posal facility that's working where you think it is the way 12 you wanted it to. So we're looking at the mechanisms for 7 13 degradation. L 14 We're also developing a wide testing protocol for 15 waste packages. One of the requirements of Part 61 is on 16 the stability of waste packages. Also waste packages are 17 eating and meeting the intruder performance requirements of 18 Part 61 and also the long-term performance requirement for 19 Class C which is the most radioactive of low-level waste. 20 Again, how do you know these things are going to 21 last for the three hundred to five hundred years that is 22 Prescribed by the regulation? 23 The last thing, developing protocol--inferring the 24 Ph ysical state of low-level waste disposal facility at'the 25 time of closure. The disposal facility to be opened and to Herifoge Reporting Corporation
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i l I be filled up in thirty to-fifty years, you've got a bunch . 2 of engineering in there already. The question is how do you 3 know that it's in the state that you think it's going to be 4 in or that you want it to be in and how do you infer-that 5 it's going to stay that way? And so we have a research pro-6 gram trying to look at some sort of performance indicators , 1 I 7 for the engineering that would not require things like exhum-8 ing all the waste to take a look at them and then putting 9 them back in. That's obviously prohibitively expensive. And 10 not very practical. 11 And the last Vu-Graph I have--this is about $1' . 12 million this' year in research. And that's a question of, ! 13 okay, what happens after the engineering goes away? You { 14 still have the waste. Hcw do you know that it's still not j 15 going to get out into the environment? And that's to look j 16 at the site. And we're basically doing field testing to ; 17 assess how well can you characterize low-level. waste disposal 18 site in your service and how can you delevep some models? 19 Do the models which are available really meet what'sfob- l 20 served? Here we're going places like Chalk River Facility 21 up in Canada where they have been observing migration of 22 radionuclides in the facility for.some thirty years, and 23 we've done some comparisons looking at the various techniques 24 for characterizing the site. That is to say, are you getting 25 the hydrographic and stratigraphic data, soil Heritag'e Reporting Corporation cm> mm
300 I i I characteristics, chemical characteristics, regional characte- ? \ k 2 ristics.of'the soil? And making predictions where the plumes ! l 3 ought to be and comparing that with where the plumes actually J
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4 are. 4 l 5 And the last thing is development of working source ] s 6 term. And as I mentioned earlier, one of the things that 7 you are going to have to have in any kind of performance-8 assessment, when you are looking at release to the geosphere 9 of the radionuclides, is what chemical form are the radio- i 1
.I 10 nuclides in? What are the species and how do those species 11 behave in the environment? That's going to be based ob-12 viously on what you put into the disposal facility, the I 13 nature of the engineering that may or may not_be in connec- 3 L
I4 tion with the disposal facility. And the immediate effect 15 of the site on the waste as they might be released from y i 16 whatever containment, their package, or engineering that's i t t 17 at the site. i 18 You know, I think that's all I had to say in terms 19 of prepared remarks. 20 DR. WILSON: The sort of detail you are doing 21 for low-level waste facilities is far more than the detail 22 that EPA is putting into their toxic waste disposal facili-23 ties. I hope you are providing more information to them. 24 MR. CONSTANZZI: Oh, yes. You know,-we do meet 25 with EPA fairly regularly. Heritage Reporting Corporation
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S 301- 1 1 DR. WILSON: But that toxic raste' facility is far x 4' 2 more dangerous than any low-level waste. q 3 DR. BUSH: .I guess there's a semantics problem of 4 what's low-level. waste. 'The definitions are sometimes rather ; 1 j 5 interesting on that. J 6 MR '. CONSTANZZI: Well, low-level waste, Class A, B 7 and C low-level wastes are pretty well defined. What has 3 8 been a prcblem is what is above Class C waste, because in the j 9 pertinent legislation, high-level waste was pretty much de-10 fined as spent fuel or in the first cycle silo extraction. I 11 And that's pretty well taken care of. 12 Below Class A, B and.C low-level waste is pretty 13 much defined by Part 61. There was a big gap as to what is 14 between the two. The Commission has prepared an advance i I 15 notice for -- rulemaking on the definition of high-level j 16 waste, which would address this question-of what's in between I 17 Class A, B and C-low-level waste and high-level waste. 'And 18 a paper is being prepared to get the Commission to go,out l 1 19 with a proposed rule on that. 20 DR. GLOYNA: Will this address the chemical form I I' 21 as well as the species? 22 MR. CONSTANZZI: No. No, it will not. 23 DR. BUSH: A good example is that obviously the ! 24 activity per unit of volume can be quite low, but the acti-k' 25 vity in a given portion of a volume can be quite high.
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L 302 I Plutonium is a classic example. When you buy'240, you bury A 2 And you put it in a fairly large con-this low-level waste. 3 tainer. .But it's still plutonium. I 4 MR. CONSTANZZI: In tarms of Class A, B and C waste, S. that's pretty well defined. That's already in Part 61. It's 6 only the above Class C which is presenting problems. Pre-7 senting problems not only from the point of view of defining 8 it, but also presents a problem from.the point of view of 9 what happens to it. Because of the Low-Level Waste Policy. 10 Amendments Act, which told DOE that they had to dispose of 31 it, that problem has gone away. It's clear now that whatever 12 is not Class C, DOE is responsible. 13 So now the only question is what is the proper 14 means of disposal of above Class C low-level. waste. And'we 15 have indicated to DOE that we think that perhaps the most 16 prudent thing to do is to just put it in a geological repo-17 sitory because that's clearly good enough. 18 DR. GLOYNA: The source of this waste is what? The 19 reactor-- 20 MR. CONSTANZZI: Reactor internals, activated 21 stuff, pipes,. stuff in decommissioning-- 22 DR. GLOYNA: Decommissioning stuff, right? l 23 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes. By and large. There's some 24 stuff--even that isn't very much in terms of volume. k'- 25 DR. TODREAS : I just wanted to just ask you Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 1 generally. This business you mentioned about Chalk River J r A 2 sounds really_like a useful thing to do to go after the mo-3 dels againsttthe data and see how weI.1 they're doing. Are' 4 -there big gaps in the models in terms of-- 5 MR. CONSTANZZI: Geochemist ry is a nightmare. 6 Soil does funny thing to the radionuclides. The plants,. l 7 roots, for example, will selectively. mobilize certain radio- j 8 nuclides. 9 DR. TODREAS: So there's a lot to learn through 1 10 that kind of exercise. 11 MR. CONSTANZZI: There is a lot to learn. What' 12 we've learned on the positive side is that in terms of' 13 characterizing the hydrology of the site, you don't need to 14 Perforate the site like a piece of Swiss cheese. If the site 15 is not terribly complex, on'the order of maybe a< dozen and' 16 a half to two dozen -- , where you've taken cores and ! 17 looked at the stratigraphy as well as the head, the flow 18 regime. You can pretty well characterize the hydrologic 19 Properties of the site. I 20 The models which are available, if you use models j 1 21 which are essentially particle tracking models, we've had l 22 the greatest success with. Almost anything will tend to re-23 Produce heads. But in terms of reproducing fluxes, that's 24 a bit harder. Particle tracking models seem to do best on ! 25 that. But it's a doable thing.' It's not impossible. And U Heritage Reporting Corporation !
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i 304 l l 1 there is a requirement, of course, Part 61, that applicant- l 2 model the site. So we're not asking people to do something ) 3 impossible provided the site is not too complex. If the 4 site is so complex, maybe they shouldn't be there anyway. I 5 But the geochemistry is still a problem. 6 What we've found is based on some experience and i i i 7 educated guesses we were able to pretty well characterize l l 8 the geochemical properties in terms of retardation of stron- J l 9 tium and cesium in particular at Chalk River. But it was )l 1 10 not something that we were technically satisfied with. So j l 11 we're going back and we're looking at are there ways of 12 developing a more systematic protocol for doing laboratory 13 experiments that will reflect actual field behavior. 14 We're doing this in the high-level waste area as 1 1 15 well thro 1gh some of our work in an international prcject i( 16 in which we are participating. The Allogato Rivers uranium 4 l 17 ore body in the northwest territories in Australia. 18 There is a very nice feature to look at both in 19 hydrology and the geochemistry because one company that owns 20 the site has been investigating it very thoroughly for eco-21 nomic development, but they have been very generous in put-22 ting a lot of work--what to them would be unnecessary but l l 23 useful to us--exploratory wells. So we have a pretty good 24 idea of what the hydrology in the system. And the water ((' 25 changes and redocks. It goes from oxydizing to reducing to Heritage Reporting Corporation cman . . - _ _ _ _ _ -
m 305 4 i 1 oxydizing. So you have mobilization, deposition, and re-7~ k~ 2 mobilization of radionuclides. And things.like uranium, 3 thorium, platinium, and some-plutonium even have been ob-4 served. We've getting all kinds of really good information i 5 about how things actually behave in the field and going back ] 6 and looking at the-experiments that are technically.done and 7 trying to correlate the results that you get from doing 8 batch experiments in the. laboratory to what you actually see i . 9 in terms of movement in radionuclides in the field. .l
. 'I 10 DR. SHOAF: .There are no analogous long-term pro-11 grams at U. S. sites like at Oak Ridge or Los Alamos.or 1 12 the Hanford site? No one has been characterizing the--
13 MR. CONSTANZZI: We had a program going on at.the 14 i Hanford site looking at the long-term migration of r@dio- f 15 nuclides. But because of the possible defensive locations, ] 16 we have not been able to pursue that any further. , i 17 DR. BUSH: -Well, there's work there that isn't I u A 18 funded by NRC in DF factors, where you are looking at the j 1 1 19 different radionuclides and you are looking at the transfer 20 times. . What you are doing is you are essentially developing 21 a series of concentration of gradients as a function of each i 22 type of material and not too surprisingly, things like tri-23 tium are rather highly mobile and--
/ 24 DR. SHOAF: There must be ducks' around that have k 1
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25 been around since the forties. Are they being characterized Heritage Reporting Corporation :
- _ . . . _ 1 306 1 as something to do with time?
A 2 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes. 3 DR, BUSH: With greater emphasis now than in the 4 past though. 5 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes, that's right. .Our first 6 success, the first place--and quite frankly the most accessi-7 ble place to us was Chalk River. And so we did that at Chalk 8 River and we found out, gee,-you can'do this. This is a 9 reasonable thing to do. And what we're doing now is trying 10 to expand that work and to look at other places. Not just J1 radioactive waste sites. But also chemical disposal sites. 12 One of the problems with the sites in the U.S. 13 is that there isn't a very good idea of what knew of the 14 sites in the first place. They were literally dumps. And 15 without a source term it's very difficult to make any sense 16 of the geochemistry. Fortunately, the' Canadians had kept 17 very good records and we knew exactly what wentLin, what~ 18 the species were that went in, when it'went in, and we were 19 able to reconstruct a pretty good source term, hence that's 20 why we did.so well. l 21 DR. GLOYNA: Are they still following the migration 22- from the buried glass? 23 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes. It just hasn't moved very [ 24 much. And that's a very nice. saturated zone, with lots of' ( 25 flux with waters moving past those blocks pretty well. f Heritoge Reporting Corporation
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! l 307 1 DR. GLOYNA: That someday ought to be the classical j 7 Y
- 2 example of what really happens in acres environment. l l
MR. CONSTANZZI: We are aware of that work. We l 3 l 1 4 have been keeping track of it. 1 5 DR. BUSH: We probably don't have access to the 1 6 Savannah River data on that, do you? 7 MR. CONSTANZZI: No. 8 DR. GLOYNA: they buried blocks of glass, different ) 9 types of glass. 10 MR. CONSTANZZI: Yes. It was a particular kind 11 of glass. I don't recall the exact chemical composition of 1 i 12 it. 13 DR. GLOYNA: Some of it was borocilicated. 14 MR. CONSTANZZI: I don't think any of it was boro-15 cilicated. i 16 DR. GLOYNA: In the early days it was just plain 17 glass and different kinds of glass that had some phosphate 18 type glass. 19 MR. CONSTANZZI: Phosphate, yeah. 20 DR. TODREAS: Okay. Are there any more questions 21 at this point? We'll adjourn then until tomorrow. 22 (Whereupon, the meeting was~ adjourned at 6:15 p.m.) l 23
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( 24 25
- He'ritage Reporting Corporation (202) 62 0 4858
g, . - _ -- . . . . - - - . - . . . - . 1 CERTIFICATE h 2 3 This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the 4 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: 5 Name NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH REVIEW COMMITTEE 6 ,
; )
7 Docket Numbers Bethesda, Maryland 1 - 8 Place: 9 Date February 17, 1988 l 0 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 true arid accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
( 15 16 /S/ WO Y.0h, #du 17 (Signature typed): IRMIN L. C ENBERRY - 18 Official. Reporter 19 Heritage Reporting Corporation 20 21 I 22 23 24 25 i Heritage Reporting- Corporation (202) 628-4888 ,
.'e's'*g%
a _ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ . _ ___..______.______.-_________.____._.____.m __ . . _ _ - . - . _ _ _ ______.____._.________m_ _ _ . _ _ _ ___---__m_. _ _ _ _ -_ _ . _ . _ ..____________._J
3 Lt - NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMISSION CHARTER NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH REVIEW COMITTEE Committee's Official Designation /- 1. NRC Nuclear Safety'Research. Review Comittee (NSRRC)' ,
- 2. Comittee's Objectives, Scope of At iivities, and Duties
.On- a continuing basis, NSRRC will provide advice to: the-Director.of-the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research and' through him the .
Commission, on matters of overall management importance in .the - direction of the NRC's . program'of. nuclear safety research. Matters , requiring NSRRC's attention will be posed by the' Director of the l Research Office, or as an outcome of prior NSRRC deliberations. - Nuclear safety.re' search is understood to encompass technical . investigations of the implications for public health and safety of the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the' reduction of those . 1.westigations to regulatory practice. : I
-4 NSRRC activities will include. assessment of and recommendations concerning:
- a. Conformance of the NRC nuclear safety research program to the NRC Philosophy of Nuclear Regulatory Research,Js st.atid in the Comission's Strategic Plan, and to specific Comission directions.
- b. Likelihood of the program meeting the needs of the users of -
research.
- c. Appropriateness of the longer range research programs and the '
correctness of their direction.
- d. .Whether the best people are doing the work at the best places; whether there are other options, including cooperative programs, that would yield higher quality work, or othenvise improve.
program efficiency.
- e. Whether the program is free of obvious bias, and whether the research products have been given adequate, unbiased peer review. {
In addition, NSRRC will conduct specialized studies when requested by the Comission or the Director of. the Office of-Nuclear Regulatory Research. If appropriate, these studies will be published as reports.
t, 3.- Time Period Necessary for the Committee to Carry Out Its
Purpose:
In vipw of the' goals and purposes of the Committee, it is expected to be continuing in nature.
- 4. Official to Whom this Comittee Reports:
The Director of the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research and,; as appropriate through the Director to the Comission.
- 5. Agency Responsible for Providing Necessary Support for this Comitteei i
Nuclear Regulatory Comission. : Within the Comission, support will' be furnished by the Offico of. Nuclear Regulatory Research.. 6.- Description of Duties for Which the Committee is' Responsible: The duties of the NSRRC are solely advisory and arc stated in
- paragraph 2 above,
- 7. Estimated Annual Operating' Costs' in Dollars and Mdn-Years:
$100,000; i person-year.
- 8. Estimated Number and Frequency of Comittee Meetings: '
The Committee will meet at such times and necestary, but not less than once a year. places as it deems Subcommittees . may meet as deemed necessary to achieve their assigned tasks.
- 9. Comittee's Temination Date: I' s
Two years from the filing date, subject to renewal by the Commission. See also, paragraph.3 above. '}
- 10. Members:
- a. Comittee members, including the Chairperson, shall be appointed
by the Commission following nomination by the Director of _the Office of. Nuclear Regulatory Research,
- b. Approximate number of Comittee members: 9-to 12.
- c. The members will be chosen to ensure an appropriately balanced:
l representation of the research management comunity, taking into account: (1) Demonstrated experience. in high-level management. of programs in applied research; (2) Demonstrated ~ expertise. in one or more disciplines of applied science and engineering; (3) Broad acquaintance wi.th'the public health and 'safet associated with the peaceful uses of atomic energy,y issuesand.(4) A balance of experience in _the academic, industrial, and national and not-for-profit laboratory environments.
' February 9, 1988
- 11. Date of Filing:
Joh Hoyle / Adv Comittee Management Officer la l l t _ _ _ _ _ -}}