ML20247P299
| ML20247P299 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 05/13/1998 |
| From: | Martin T NRC OFFICE FOR ANALYSIS & EVALUATION OF OPERATIONAL DATA (AEOD) |
| To: | Jordan B, Weber M MCGRAW-HILL PUBLICATIONS CO. |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9805270396 | |
| Download: ML20247P299 (5) | |
Text
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May 13, 1998 Mr. Brian Jordan, Chief Editor Ms. Maya Weber, Associate Editor Electricity Alert The McGraw-Hill Companies 1200 G Street, NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20005-3802 Dear Mr. Jordan and Ms. Weber.
I am responding to your letter dated March 5,1998, to Chairman Jackson regarding the daily plant status report. My responsibilities include the NRC's Headquarters Operations Center, which creates these reports.
The plant status report is a summary of telephone calls made to the control rooms of each commercial nuclear power plant every day between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. by the Headquarters Operations Officer. When provided, the report also includes, in addition to other information, the power level (or operational mode, if shutdown) of each power reactor unit at the time of the call, the shutdown date of off-line units, and brief comments for each unit that is operating at less than 96% of rated power. The information provided by the licensees is not verified for accuracy or completeness before inclusion in the report. The status report is used by NRC staff to coordinate regulatory activities and maintain a general awareness of the operational status of power reactor facilities.
There is no regulatory requirement for licensees to provide this information to the Operations Center. In this regard, as you are aware, we have received comments from licensees and industry representatives indicating concem with providing information in the status report. We have reminded licensees that providing information in the status report is voluntary. Under the O
provisions of 10 CFR 2.790, licensees may seek to protect from disclosure commercial or financial information they have provided to the NRC that they believe is privileged or confidential. Therefore, when a licensee chooses not to provide restart dates or other schedule l
data during the moming call, the operations officer simply goes on to the next question.
y3l Regardless, we recognize the public's right to " relevant safety and operational information". To this end, the results of our intensive inspection efforts at power reactor facilities, which encompass design, maintenance and operational issues, are available to the general public.
Also readily available is each reactor licensee's monthly operating report to the NRC, which includes the number of hours of plant operation and total electricity produced, as well as information regarding unit shutdowns. These documents when combined with Licensee Event ~
Reports, Preliminary Notification of operations reports, and NRC media releases, all available to l
the public, provide abundant sources of information on the safety of operations of power reactor facilities.
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Mr. B. Jordan, et al - Given the present level of detailed information on power plant activities and NRC performance assessments made available to the public, we do not believe that a lack of a daily status of restart or pending outage information negatively impacts the ability of the public to adequa'ely
- assess the overall performance and safety of a commercial nuclear power plant. Furthermore, we understand that public release of this non-safety information, for which there is no regulatory requirement, may have adverse economic impact on both licensees and their customers once deregulation is in place. It could make it more costly for such licensees to buy replacement i
power on the spot market. The NRC's concem, of course, is safe operations, not profitability of I
its licensees. But we do not want to cause the unintended effect of unnecessarily burdening licensee resources which otherwise would be available for maintaining safe plant and equipment. However, we continue to believe this information is useful to the NRC in facilitating effective regulatory activities. Therefore, it is our intention to continue soliciting schedule information and to record that which is voluntarily provided. As to the future, I intend to modify the Plant Status Report software to enable the removal of scheduling information from the report that is made publicly available, thereby removing a utility's disincentive for providing such information.
Sincerel,
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Thomas T. Martin, Director Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data
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- See previous concurrence:
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Mr. B. Jordan, et al l l
Given the present level of detailed information on power plant activities and NRC performance assessments made available to the public, we do not believe that a lack of a daily status of restart or pending outage information negatively impacts the ability of the public to adequately assess the overall performance and safety of a commercial nuclear power plant. Furthermore, we understand that public release of this non-safety information, for which there is no regulatory requirement, may have adverse economic impact on both licensees and their customers once deregulation is in place. It could make it more costly for such licensees to buy replacement power on the spot market. The NRC's concem, of course, is safe operations, not profitability of its licensees. But we do not want to cause the unintended effect of unnecessarily burdening licensee resources which otherwise would b0 available for maintaining safe plant and equipment. However, we continue to believe this information is useful to the NRC in facilitating effective regulatory activities. Therefore, it is our intention to continue soliciting schedule information and to record that which is voluntarily provided. As to the future, I intend to modify the Plant Status Report software to enable the removal of scheduling information from the report that is made publicly available, thereby removing a utility's disincentive for providing such
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j Sincerely, Thomas T. Martin, Director Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data Distribution:
JCallan EDO Control G980145 ATaadani CRC-98-0220 HThompson AEOD R/F PNorry SMcKelvin (#98-35)
JBlaha IRD R/F SBurns JCrutchley (#98-14)
File Center Public DISK / DOCUMENT NAME: a:\\ bailey \\mcgraw.hil
- See previous concurrence:
Ts receive a cop r, indcate: 'C's Copy w/o attachment / enclosure: *A*
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Mr. B. Jordan, et al Given the present level of detailed information on power plant activities and NRC performance assessments made available to the public, we do not believe that the lack of restart or pending outage information negatively impacts the ability of the public to appropriately assess the performance and safety of a nuclear power plant. Further, we believe that the public release of this scheduling (not safety) information, for which there is no regulatory requirement, may in some instances, provide competitive advantage to one or more companies over another.
However, we continue to believe this information is important to the NRC to facilitate effective regulatory activities. Therefore, we intend to continue our practice to solicit schedule information and record that which is voluntarily provided. Further, we intend to proceed to modify the Plant Status Report software to facilitate removal of scheduling information from the public releasable version; thereby removing a utilityh disincentive for providing this information.
Sincerely, Thomas T. Martin, Director Office for Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data Distribution:
JCallan EDO Control G980145 l
AThadani CRC-98-0220 HThompson AEOD R/F PNorry SMcKelvin (#98-35)
JBlaha IRD R/F SBurns JCrutchley (#98-14)
File Center SRubin Public RBarrett
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DISK / DOCUMENT NAME: a:\\ bailey \\mcgraw.hil Ta receive a copt indicate *C' = Copy w/o attachment / enclosure;"A's Copy wtth attachment /endoeure; *N= m NO copy. NO MARK e WO COPYI l
OFC IRD:AEOD D:lRD:AEOD D:AEOV OD:N Q D:OPA NA1'.'E HABailey FJCongel h TThin hJddinE WMBeecher DATE 04/[(/98 04/8/98 04//3 /98 M M /98 04/
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9 B. Jordan, et al Given the present level of detailed information on power plant activities and NRC performance assessments made available to the public, we do not believe that a lack of a daily status of restart or pending outage information negatively impacts the ability of the public to adequately assess the overall performance and safety of a commercial nuclear power plant. Furthermore, we understand that public release of this non-safety information, for which there is no regulatory requirement, may have adverse economic impact on both licensees and their customers once deregulation is in place. It could make it more costly for such licensees to buy replacement power on the spot market. The NRC's concern, of course, is safe operations, not profitability of its licensees. But we do not want to cause the unintended effect of unnecessarily burdening licensee resources which otherwise would be available for maintaining safe plant and equipment. However, we continue to believe this information is useful to the NRC in facilitating effective regulatory activities. Therefore, it is our intention to continue soliciting schedule information and to record that which is voluntarily provided. As to the future, I intend to modify the Plant Status Report software to enable the removal of scheduling information from the report that is made publicly available, thereby removing a utility's disincentive for providing such information.
Sincerely,
,4. _-
Thomas T. Martin, Director Office 'ar Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data l
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- _ _ _______________________