ML21039A741
| ML21039A741 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 01/07/2021 |
| From: | NRC/NMSS/DREFS/RRPB |
| To: | |
| Beall, Robert | |
| References | |
| 10 CFR Part 53, NRC-1334, NRC-2019-0062, RIN 3150-AK31 | |
| Download: ML21039A741 (171) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Licensing and Regulation of Advanced Nuclear Reactors Docket Number: N/A Location: Videoconference Date: January 7, 2021 Work Order No.: NRC-1334 Pages 1-169 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + +
4 10 CFR PART 53 5 "LICENSING AND REGULATION OF ADVANCED 6 NUCLEAR REACTORS" 7 SUBPARTS C AND F PRELIMINARY PROPOSED RULE LANGUAGE 8 + + + + +
9 THURSDAY 10 JANUARY 7, 2021 11 + + + + +
12 The Category 3 public meeting was held by 13 videoconference at 12:00 p.m., Robert Beall, 14 Rulemaking Project Manager, presiding.
15 16 NRC STAFF PRESENT 17 ROBERT BEALL, Office of Nuclear Material Safety 18 and Safeguards 19 BILL RECKLEY, Office of Nuclear Reactor 20 Regulation 21 JOHN SEGALA, Office of Nuclear Reactor 22 Regulation 23 NANETTE VALLIERE, Office of Nuclear Reactor 24 Regulation 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 ALSO PRESENT 2 FRANK AKSTULEWICZ, Terrestrial Technology 3 TRAVIS CHAPMAN, X-Energy 4 CYRIL DRAFFIN, U.S. Nuclear Industry Council 5 DENNIS HENNEKE, GE-Hitachi 6 JEFF MERRIFIELD, U.S. Nuclear Industry Council 7 ROSS MOORE, Oklo 8 STEVE NESBIT, LMNT Consulting 9 MARC NICHOL, Nuclear Energy Institute 10 REBECCA NORRIS, NuScale 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 1 CONTENTS 2 Page 3 Welcome, Meeting Logistics and Introductions.......5 4 Welcome, Opening Remarks 5 John Segala..................................8 6 Subpart C, Requirements for Design and Analysis 7 Nanette Valliere............................12 8 Bill Reckley................................15 9 Public Comments/Questions.........................35 10 USNIC Presentation-Introductory Comments 11 Part 53 and Subpart C 12 Jeff Merrifield.............................47 13 Cyril Draffin...............................54 14 Steve Nesbit................................57 15 Cyril Draffin...............................59 16 Response to USNIC Presentation 17 Bill Reckley................................61 18 Public Comments/Questions ........................65 19 Facility Safety Program Section in Subpart F, 20 Requirements for Operation 21 Bill Reckley................................78 22 Public Comments/Questions.........................86 23 NIC Presentation 24 Jeff Merrifield.............................87 25 Public Comments/Questions ........................91 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 1 Recap of Nov 18, 2020 Public Meeting on Subpart B 2 Nanette Valliere ................................104 3
4 Presentations on Subpart B 5 Cyril Draffin ...................................107 6 Frank Akstulewicz ...............................108 7 Dennis Henneke ..................................113 8 Rebecca Norris .................................116 9 Cyril Draffin ..................................118 10 Travis Chapman...................................121 11 Ross Moore.......................................124 12 Public Comments/Questions .......................128 13 14 NEI Presentation 15 Marc Nichol......................................129 16 Public Comments/Questions .......................151 17 18 Adjourn..........................................170 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 12:04 p.m.
3 MR. BEALL: All right. Good afternoon, 4 everyone. I want to welcome everyone and thank you 5 for participating in today's public meeting to discuss 6 the risk-informed, technology-inclusive regulatory 7 framework for advanced reactors or the Part 53 8 rulemaking. My name is Bob Beall and I'm from the 9 NRC's Office of Nuclear Material Safety and 10 Safeguards. I'm the project manager for the Part 53 11 rulemaking and will be serving as the facilitator for 12 today's meeting. My role is to help insure that 13 today's meeting is informative and productive.
14 This is a Category 3 public meeting to 15 encourage active participation and information 16 exchange with the public to help facilitate the 17 development of the Part 53 rulemaking. The feedback 18 that the NRC receives today is not considered a formal 19 public comment so there will be no formal response to 20 any of today's discussions. For today's public 21 meeting we are using Microsoft Teams to support the 22 discussion of the Part 53 rulemaking instead of an 23 operator-assisted bridge line that has been used in 24 the past.
25 We hope that the use of Microsoft Teams NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 1 will allow stakeholders to participate more freely 2 during the meeting but this will require all of us to 3 continuously assure that our phones are muted when we 4 are not speaking and to do our best not to speak over 5 each other. To help facilitate the question and 6 answer portions of the meeting, we request that you 7 utilize the raised hand feature in Teams so we can 8 identify who has a question or comment.
9 The staff will call on the individual to 10 ask their question. The raised hand button, which is 11 shaped like a small hand, is along the top row of the 12 Team display area. You can also use the chat window 13 to alert us that you have a question. Please do not 14 use the chat window to ask or address any technical 15 issues related to Part 53. The chat window is not 16 part of the official meeting record and is reserved to 17 identify when someone has a question or for handling 18 any meeting logistic issues.
19 To minimize interruptions, the staff will 20 call on participants who have used the raised hand 21 feature or the chat window to identify when they have 22 a question or comment. If you join the meeting using 23 the Microsoft Teams bridge line, you will not have 24 access to these features. If you joined using the 25 bridge line and would like to ask a question or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 comment, you need to press the star 6 button on your 2 phone to unmute it. The staff will pause at the end 3 of each topic to ensure that all participants have an 4 opportunity to ask questions before moving onto the 5 next topic.
6 After your comment has been discussed, 7 your phone line will be muted again. If you want to 8 ask questions on a future topic, you will have to 9 press star 6 to unmute your phone once again. Slide 10 2, please.
11 The agenda for today includes NRC staff 12 and stakeholder presentations on three topics related 13 to the Part 53 rulemaking. Topic 1 will be discussion 14 of preliminary proposed rule language for Part 53, 15 Subpart C, Requirements for Design and Analysis.
16 Topic 2 will be a discussion of the preliminary 17 proposed rule language related to the facility safety 18 program section of Subpart F, Requirements for 19 Operation.
20 And the third topic will be a review of 21 stakeholder comments on Subpart B to acknowledge the 22 inclusive safety requirements submitted via 23 regulations.gov and from the November 18th, 2020, 24 public meeting. Questions from the public and further 25 discussions will follow each topic presentations NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 1 today. We will also have one 15 minute break during 2 today's meeting. Slide 3, please.
3 I would now like to introduce John Segala.
4 John is the branch chief of the Advance Reactor 5 Policy Branch in the Office of Nuclear Reactor 6 Regulation. John will be giving the opening remarks 7 for the days meeting. John?
8 MR. SEGALA: Thank you, Bob. Good 9 afternoon. Consistent with the Nuclear Energy 10 Innovation and Modernization Act we are developing a 11 new alternative regulatory framework for advanced 12 reactors that embraces risk-informed approaches and 13 performance-based criteria that will be technology 14 inclusive to a wide range of new technologies.
15 Key to the development of this rulemaking 16 is the establishment of high level technology-17 inclusive performance criteria and leveraging recently 18 developed staff guidance in Regulatory Guide 1.233 19 which endorses the Licensing Modernization Project, or 20 LMP, methodology described in the NEI 18-04 document 21 as one acceptable method to use for establishing key 22 parts of the licensing basis and content of 23 applications. LMP focuses on identifying the licensing 24 basis events, classifying the structure systems and 25 components and ensuring adequate defense and depth.
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9 1 We also plan to leverage the Southern-led 2 NEI coordinated and Department of Energy cost-shared 3 Technology-Inclusive Content of Application Project, 4 or TICAP, and the NRC led Advance Reactor Content of 5 Application Project, or ARCAP, which will provide 6 technology- inclusive risk-informed and performance-7 based application content guidance. We are targeting 8 late February for our next public meeting on TICAP and 9 ARCAP.
10 In order to meet the Commission's directed 11 schedule to publish the final Part 53 rule by October 12 of 2024, we are having extensive stakeholder 13 engagement to solicit feedback to better inform the 14 staff's proposals and to ensure a shared understanding 15 of what will be included in the final rule. As Bob 16 Beall mentioned, today's meeting is the second of many 17 webinars the NRC will be having every four to six 18 weeks over the next year to provide an opportunity for 19 external stakeholders to provide feedback on the NRC's 20 development of Part 53 preliminary proposed rule 21 language for advanced reactors.
22 Today we will be seeking input on 23 preliminary rule language for Subpart C Requirements 24 for Design and Analysis and Subpart F, Requirements 25 for Operations Regarding the Facility Safety Program.
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10 1 We will also be discussing stakeholder comments on 2 the preliminary rule language for Subpart B 3 Technology-Inclusive Safety Requirements that was 4 discussed during the November 18th, 2020, public 5 meeting.
6 Some of the preliminary rule text being 7 discussed today is new and quite different from the 8 current regulations in 10CFR Parts 50 and 52. So I 9 would encourage stakeholders to keep an open mind as 10 you listen to the staff's rationale for suggesting 11 innovative approaches. We're looking forward to 12 having discussions today and hearing any feedback you 13 all may have. That completes my opening remarks.
14 Thanks, Bob.
15 MR. BEALL: Okay. Thank you, John. I 16 would now like to introduce the NRC staff who will be 17 making presentations during today's public meeting, 18 myself as the rulemaking project manager and meeting 19 facilitator, and then Nan Valliere and Bill Reckley 20 from NRR. Bill and Nan are the Part 53 technical 21 leads for this rulemaking. In addition, we have 22 members of the public who have requested time to make 23 presentations on one or more of the topics from the 24 Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. Nuclear Industry 25 Council, and Hybrid Power Technologies.
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11 1 If you're not using Microsoft Teams to 2 attend this meeting and you would like to view the 3 presentation slides, they are located in the NRC ADAMS 4 Document Database and on regulations.gov. The 5 accession number for today's slides is ML21006A as in 6 alpha, 000. Slide 4, please.
7 The purpose of today's meeting is to 8 exchange information, answer questions, and discuss 9 the Part 53 rulemaking. This is the third in a series 10 of public meetings that the NRC staff will be 11 discussing the Part 53 preliminary proposed rule 12 language. Today's meetings will focus on Subpart C 13 and the Facility Safety Program section of Subpart F.
14 This is a Category 3 public meeting which means that 15 the public participation is actively sought as we 16 discuss the regulatory issues.
17 Because of the number attendees, we may 18 need to limit the time for an individual question or 19 discussion on a topic to make sure everyone has a 20 chance to participate. After everyone has had a 21 chance to ask their question, we can circle back and 22 allow people to ask additional questions if we have 23 time. If there is a particular topic you would like 24 to discuss, please send me an email after the meeting 25 and we'll try to include it in a future public NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 1 meeting.
2 Today's meeting is being transcribed so in 3 order to get a clean transcription and to minimize 4 distractions during the meeting, we ask everyone to 5 please mute their phones when they're not speaking. A 6 summary of today's transcript of today's meeting will 7 be publicly available on or before February 6, 2021.
8 Finally, this meeting is not designed nor intend to 9 solicit or receive comments on topics other than this 10 rulemaking activity. Also, no regulatory decisions 11 will be made at today's meeting.
12 Please note that towards the end of the 13 presentation there are two slides containing acronyms 14 and abbreviations that may be used during this meeting 15 and a set of back up slides that contain additional 16 information about the Part 53 rulemaking. And with 17 that, I'd like to turn the meeting over to Nan 18 Valliere who will continue the discussions of the Part 19 53 rulemaking; Nan?
20 MS. VALLIERE: Thank you, Bob. Next 21 slide, please? Good afternoon. As Bob mentioned, my 22 name is Nan Valliere and I'm a senior project manager 23 in the NRC's Advanced Reactor Policy Branch.
24 On Slide 5 we have a slide that we have 25 used in most of our past public meetings on Part 53 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 1 and we'll continue to use. This slide lays out the 2 plan to build an entire regulatory framework in Part 3 53 from design through construction and operation, and 4 eventually to decommissioning. In November we 5 discussed the highest level safety or risk metrics as 6 described in the purple box. But as both John and Bob 7 mentioned, today we will be discussing rule text in 8 Subpart C on design and analysis and a portion of 9 Subpart F on operations that would address 10 requirements for a facility safety program. Next 11 slide, please.
12 Slide 6 is a slide that the staff first 13 presented in November and that we intend to use at 14 each of our Part 53 public meetings. This slide is a 15 graphical representation of how the staff plans to 16 work through stakeholder interactions on each subpart 17 of Part 53, support the submittal of the proposed rule 18 package on the milestone schedule that the staff has 19 provided to the Commission. As the note on this slide 20 indicates, this is a living picture of where we are 21 today and we have made some adjustments from the 22 version presented in November to reflect our current 23 thinking.
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14 1 of preliminary rule language will include a variety of 2 topics that have historically involved specific 3 technical and programmatic specialties. We wanted to 4 encourage stakeholders to ensure that appropriate 5 subject matter experts are involved in future 6 discussions of rule language for these technical areas 7 to improve our chances of having efficient and 8 effective meetings.
9 An example of an area where such subject 10 matter experts will be needed are concepts and 11 discussion within Subpart F on operations that 12 involves staffing levels and operator licensing.
13 Those discussion will take place later this year. We 14 will do our best to specify in future meeting notices 15 which topics we intend to cover in any given meeting.
16 As we mentioned at the last meeting, the 17 staff recognizes that there will be instances where 18 developments in one subpart of the rule will have an 19 impact on the subpart that was closed out earlier and 20 where revisiting previously closed out subparts will 21 be unavoidable. Nevertheless, the goal is to reach 22 closure on each topic to the greatest extent possible 23 on the timeline depicted in this matrix.
24 And now I'd like to pause here to ask if 25 there are any comments or questions before we move on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 1 to the discussion of Subpart C on design and analysis.
2 All right, hearing none, I will turn the meeting over 3 to Bill Reckley now. Next slide, please.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thank you, Nan. So as 5 Nan said, we're going to talk first through Subpart C.
6 We did publish and it's available on the public 7 meeting notice, our discussion table where we tried to 8 give some thoughts that we had as we developed this 9 subpart as we had previously so hopefully people find 10 that useful. If we go to the next slide, please, 11 Slide 8.
12 This is the outline. I won't spend a lot 13 of time going through this because we're going to talk 14 about each of these sections as we go forward. It 15 does lay out just as we go forward, the general 16 structure if it helps as we have the discussion, that 17 we have the safety criteria that we talked about in 18 Subpart B at the last meeting, both the First and 19 Second Tier safety criteria. And we have the safety 20 functions that are needed in order to meet those 21 safety criteria. In this section we then go down a 22 level and talk about the design features that will be 23 supporting those safety functions.
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16 1 for a particular design feature. So one might think 2 of it in a general term that if the safety function is 3 cooling, a designed feature might be a cooling loop 4 and the functional design criteria would actually be 5 like a heat removal rate. And so you can just go down 6 levels of detail and that's the way this subpart is 7 laid out, starting from the higher safety functions 8 down to specific functional design criteria for 9 specific design features.
10 So if we go on then to, this is just a 11 continuation of the logic or the layout of this 12 subpart. I'll touch on this just so people have time 13 to think about it if you haven't looked through the 14 material in detail. One feature or provision that's 15 been put into this subpart is the 53.470 at the top of 16 this page which is Application of Analytical Safety 17 Margins to Operations Flexibilities.
18 This is the notion of trying to actually 19 get the benefit of the attributes of advance reactors 20 as they were laid out in the Advance Reactor Policy 21 Statement. And the Commission's direction in 22 subsequent guidance which I, personal opinion think is 23 one of the most important ones, is the Commission 24 direction and the staff requirements memorandum for 25 SECY 10-121 where the staff was trying to establish NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 1 what the risk metrics for advance reactors should be 2 and that SRM is where the Commission basically 3 specified and clarified what had been ongoing 4 discussions on the meaning of the advanced reactor 5 policy statement for decades and clarified that the 6 safety goals and general performance measures 7 established for the existing reactors at that time 8 were also good enough for advance reactors.
9 And that the attributes of advance 10 reactors were however expected to provide safety 11 margins in comparison to the older generations. But 12 that safety margin was then expected to be applied to 13 provide operational flexibilities. And so with that 14 kind of a bit of a history you can see I think why we 15 added this into this subpart. Then we'll talk about 16 quality assurance and design interfaces. So with that 17 if we can go to Slide 10.
18 The first higher level section within this 19 subpart is just the design objectives and this is 20 intended to be consistent with the objectives laid out 21 in Subpart B, meeting the overall safety criteria and 22 as we proposed in Subpart B, the two tier structure.
23 Again, as Nan said, we know all of this is still being 24 discussed and I have faith that as we go forward we 25 can kind of manage to have discussions. But as Nan NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 1 said, we're going to have to sometimes be looking 2 forward while also looking in the rearview mirror and 3 making adjustments to what we've already talked about.
4 But again, 400 is just a, the objectives for the 5 subpart.
6 One just note, the second bullet here.
7 And you see this phrase repeated a lot and it just 8 reflects the integrated nature that we're trying to 9 build into Part 53, which is you achieve the safety 10 goals, the safety criteria through a combination of 11 design features, hardware, people, and programs. And 12 so those three things keep coming up, thats because 13 we're trying to look at it as an integrated package 14 and there will be the ability to address in choices 15 the designers can make to address particular safety 16 functions using combinations of hardware, people, and 17 programs.
18 That gives a great deal of flexibility.
19 It also makes kind of the development of this rule a 20 little more complicated because all of the parts 21 interface and interplay with each other.
22 So if we go onto Slide 11, this talks 23 about the two sections, 410 and 420 which are laying 24 out the functional design criteria related to both the 25 first and second tier safety criteria from Subpart B.
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19 1 I know it's a matter of ongoing discussion 2 about how normal operations are included in these 3 discussions. This subpart again was developed based 4 on Subpart B as we talked about it in December. I 5 think some of the issues with normal operations, both 6 the first bullet under the first tier meeting the 100 7 millirem, that's usually not been too controversial.
8 The normal operations under the second 9 tier and referring to the as low as reasonably 10 achievable, of course we know that's a matter of 11 discussion and we'll discuss that later in the day 12 when we go back to revisit Subpart B. Both of those 13 bullets under normal operations are also under 14 discussion in terms of the content of applications 15 through the TICAP and ARCAP programs projects that 16 John Segala mentioned.
17 And so again, there's a lot of balls in 18 the air as we're doing Part 53. If you visit the 19 advanced reactor website at the NRC's website, there's 20 basically an integrated schedule that tries to show 21 all of the things that are going on or at least many 22 of the things that are going on in regards to 23 preparing guidance and other activities to support 24 advance reactors. Many of those come back and play 25 into the development of Part 53, either in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 1 specific proposals or in what we're looking ahead 2 might be guidance.
3 And so when we look at the content to 4 applications related to normal operations and the 5 ALARA's reasonably achievable goal, we would be 6 looking over also at ARCAP as supporting that 7 activity. I bring this up because we all need to look 8 at this broader, broader landscape. And if, if part 9 of the concern in addressing ALARA within Part 53 has 10 been traditional issues we've had in that area during 11 licensing reviews associated with Generation III and 12 Generation III plus reactor designs, one of the ways 13 we were trying to address that was through the ARCAP.
14 So you do have a problem being recognized 15 and trying to be resolved through a couple different 16 ways. So again, I only mention that to say there's 17 many balls in the air and you have to kind of pick the 18 ones out that are related to a particular problem and 19 not necessarily think that Part 53 is the only avenue 20 to address some concern. Then so that addresses the 21 normal operations in terms of the functional design 22 criteria.
23 In terms of the unplanned events, those 24 are of course the events that are not, we're not able 25 to address exactly through the performance-based NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 1 programs as you're able to do normal operations. But 2 there is a performance-based element but because the 3 unplanned events are being accessed through analysis 4 versus actual monitoring of releases, for example, the 5 performance-based elements will be, will come under 6 things like the reliability assurance configuration 7 control and some other things that will likely be in 8 Subpart F under related to operations.
9 So if that's 410 and 420, if we can go to 10 Slide 12. I'll just reiterate, we developed this 11 subpart based on our existing structure, Subpart B.
12 We know that there are some comments on the inclusion 13 of protection of plant workers within Part 53. But 14 this part was constructed on the premise that there is 15 a criterion under the safety criteria for workers. It 16 still, even in this context, largely refers to Part 20 17 in terms of both the 100 millirem type number and, I'm 18 sorry, for the occupational dose would be like the 19 five rem number to plant workers and then the low as 20 reasonably achievable for our performance goal.
21 So if we go on to Slide 13, we put in a 22 440 which goes to the actual, or some actual design 23 requirements and in particular the NRC goal, the U.S.
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22 1 of 440 points out that to the degree possible, the 2 design process and design features should be done in 3 accordance with generally accepted consensus codes and 4 standards.
5 And then as the note points out, this 6 leaves some latitude when we say generally accepted 7 and it also goes to the second bullet on materials 8 being qualified, that there will likely need to be a 9 discussion on that terminology whether those kind of 10 broad terms could be put into the rule and then 11 guidance could be developed to actually support the 12 use of specific consensus codes and standards is kind 13 of what we were hoping and how we would word this, as 14 opposed to pointing out specific codes and standards 15 as is done to some limited degree in Part 50 now, in 16 particular in regards to ASME and IEEE and maybe even 17 a couple ANS, American Nuclear Society Standards.
18 So I know there's some feedback that we 19 already expect to get on this so I'll just, I'll wait 20 for that discussion after I run through this. The 21 last bullet, safety and security considered together 22 is coming out of the Advance Reactor Policy Statement 23 and just the general goal that security be looked at 24 as the rest of the plant is being designed, as opposed 25 to designing the plant for traditional safety NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 1 functions and then doing security as an overlay.
2 If that were to be done you miss 3 opportunities to actually meet the goals and security 4 in terms of also reducing the need to address that 5 particular area primarily through armed personnel, for 6 example. And then the last bullet is largely our 7 capturing of the idea in 10 CFR currently in 10 CFR 8 50.43(e) which was put in to address advance reactors 9 and novel design features and basically just 10 reinforcing that as you introduce things that may not 11 have a lot of operating experience to support, that 12 those features would have to be demonstrated through 13 some combination of analysis test programs and the 14 possible use of prototype testing.
15 And that just is kind of supportive of the 16 general notion that, and we use the language in 17 subsequent sections, that there has to be things done 18 in those spaces, analysis testing and operational 19 experience, to provide the needed assurance that 20 design features are going to perform. So if we go to 21 Slide 14.
22 This moves us then from the design area, 23 or traditional design area over to the analysis 24 portions. And the first thing and we expect to have 25 some discussion about it, is that we start off with a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 1 requirement to have probabilistic risk assessment 2 prepared to support either the certification or 3 issuance of an operating license for a facility.
4 We've had some discussions internally and 5 do see this as a logical extension or evolution of the 6 NRC's risk-informed activities over a fairly long 7 period of time, going back to the reactor safety 8 study, then the PRA policy statement, the risk-9 informed initiatives since that time, the inclusion of 10 a requirement within Part 52, to have a PRA prepared.
11 This analytical requirement under 53.450, 12 the preliminary language, is to take it the next step 13 and say not only do you do the PRA and gain insights 14 from it, but it becomes an important element of the 15 analysis, the design, and the licensing of a plant.
16 What we'll acknowledge, there are other 17 assessment tools and other industries might use 18 process hazards analysis or even nuclear plants 19 traditionally using failure modes and effects analysis 20 and combinations of these tools, we picked PRA and 21 actually said we would require it, largely because as 22 I mentioned, we have a history of developing that.
23 We also have the infrastructure in terms 24 of the safety goals and other things that we can build 25 off of this requirement. So that's why we chose in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 1 the preliminary language to include the requirement 2 for a PRA. And then as I mentioned, the sub bullets 3 under that are not only do you need to do it but you 4 need to use it and it will become a basis for things 5 like identifying licensing basis events, classifying 6 equipment, and assessing defense-in-depth, all of 7 those elements being carried forward from Subpart B.
8 Also conforming to generally accepted 9 codes and standards. You know, we have PRA standards 10 available for light-water reactors and endorsement 11 through Regulatory Guide 1.200.
12 And we have a current activity underway 13 looking at the PRA standard for non-light water 14 reactors that is expected to go through the standards 15 process and be issued in the relatively near future.
16 We also have a requirement not only to 17 perform it, but similar to Part 52, a requirement to 18 maintain and upgrade it every two years.
19 As I mentioned, sort of like in the design 20 process, the analytical codes would be expected to be 21 qualified for the range that they are using.
22 We include a provision to address some 23 specific analyses that have been incorporated into the 24 existing regulations, fire protection, aircraft impact 25 under 51.50 and mitigating strategies under 51.55.
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26 1 And then the last bullet is the 2 requirement to have at least one set of your licensing 3 basis events, one element of the licensing basis 4 events, to include a fairly traditional category 5 design basis accidents that would rely only on safety 6 related equipment, have perhaps some other 7 conservatism as opposed to the best estimate analysis 8 approaches that are usually associated with the PRA.
9 So we want to go to Slide 15. Out of the 10 PRA, and to some degree out of the assessment of the 11 design basis accidents, we have the safety 12 categorization and identification of needs to have 13 special treatment for equipment or personnel actions.
14 We've used somewhat the existing terminology as it's 15 been developed in for the operating fleet, the 16 traditional safety related terminology somewhat 17 looking at 10 CFR 50.69, the risk-informed 18 categorization of equipment.
19 And then also more recently, the licensing 20 modernization project that John Segala mentioned. The 21 second category is the non-safety related but safety 22 significant. Under the licensing modernization it's 23 referred to as non-safety related with special 24 treatment and has some criteria proposed for that 25 category, and then non-safety significant, which would NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 1 be that equipment not warranting additional special 2 treatment beyond commercial grade equipment.
3 So again, this is, we look at this along 4 with the other analytical requirements under 450 I 5 just mentioned and believe that one way to meet these 6 requirements would be through NEI 18-04 for the 7 licensing modernization project and its associated 8 endorsement through Regulatory Guide 1.233.
9 So I think we can move on to Slide 16.
10 Just a kind of continuation of that discussion, in 11 particular what do we mean by special treatment. And 12 just to, largely special treatment is those things 13 that would need to be done, again, beyond just 14 procuring this commercial grade equipment, to ensure 15 that the equipment is able to perform under its 16 service condition.
17 So this could be things like the radiation 18 environments, the temperature, humidity conditions 19 that might be associated with a particular event and 20 so forth, and with the reliability that's assumed in 21 terms of the probabilistic risk assessment. And so 22 that might result for example in its inclusion in a 23 reliability assurance program that would likely get 24 captured under Subpart F in operations.
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28 1 of configuration and reliability controls, tech specs 2 to address at least the safety-related equipment and 3 reliability assurance programs that would pick up the 4 special treatment requirements for those, that 5 equipment that's designated as non-safety related but 6 safety significant.
7 We also include discussions of human 8 actions and kind of looking at them in a way that is 9 similar to equipment in terms of if human actions are 10 needed to perform an operation, a change in state of a 11 valve, or whatever, then the assessment would have to 12 look at the ability of the people to perform that 13 function.
14 So with that I think we can go onto Slide 15 17. So this is the provision 53.470 that I previously 16 mentioned, and this is the application of the 17 analytical safety margins to operational 18 flexibilities. And the analytical safety margins can 19 support other things. They should hopefully support 20 the ability to put together a simpler analysis or a 21 simpler licensing application if the analytical 22 margins want to be applied for that purpose.
23 In addition to that, and we've used this 24 so-called bow tie figure in a number of previous 25 discussions. In the far, and I didn't want to focus NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 1 on the figure, but just for those who have, are not 2 familiar, on the left side of the figure it has 3 threats or events, internal, external, or malicious.
4 You have a series of barriers which can be equipment 5 programs, operator actions that are meant to prevent a 6 plant damage state. And that's usually, for large 7 light water reactors, the plant damage state that's 8 normally used is core damage. We can use either core 9 damage or fission product migration, whatever the term 10 you want to use, but that's the traditional case where 11 you're losing control of the hazard and in our case 12 the hazard is the radiological materials.
13 And in the case you lose control of the 14 hazard, on the right side or the mitigating measures 15 that you put in place. And so those include for newer 16 designs, severe accident design features that have 17 been put in for the Gen III+ plants. Another barrier 18 is the, or provision in the mitigation area could be 19 the siting away from population centers. Certainly, 20 emergency planning is usually considered to be a 21 mitigation measure to be applied as necessary.
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30 1 from the plant damage state.
2 So all of that talked about, what we're 3 trying to set up under 53.470 is what we've seen as 4 the most likely applications of safety margins to 5 operational flexibilities.
6 And we have two that we're currently 7 working on, and more that we're beginning to work on 8 in areas such as staffing that might also be a case 9 where we would apply safety margins to gain 10 flexibilities. And we'll talk about that in future 11 meetings. But let's pick one that we, or two, one or 12 two that we've already have underway and we've 13 previously discussed in various forums.
14 One major one is in the area of emergency 15 planning. So we have a proposed rule out that 16 basically lays out that if one can demonstrate through 17 the analysis portions we previously discussed that the 18 offsite consequence is less than a certain threshold 19 with the current proposal being one rem over 96 hours0.00111 days <br />0.0267 hours <br />1.587302e-4 weeks <br />3.6528e-5 months <br />, 20 then you can take that into consideration in defining 21 the emergency planning zone, in theory taking the 22 emergency planning zone all the way to the site 23 boundary, if you can show you meet that threshold at 24 the boundary.
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31 1 achieves that by having attributes that either prevent 2 the core damage state or at least prevent the release 3 through another barrier like a structure. And so this 4 provision is simply laying out in the analysis space 5 the provisions for how that could be applied to other 6 areas.
7 For example, emergency planning will 8 likely be in Subpart F for operations and if you're 9 going to demonstrate that the offsite consequences are 10 below a certain threshold in order to gain flexibility 11 in emergency planning, that has to be incorporated 12 into both plant design and the analysis and then 13 maintained over the life of the facility to make sure 14 that you're always meeting those thresholds that were 15 used to justify something like a reduced emergency 16 planning zone or an alternate approach to population 17 density in the siting arena.
18 So this is the way we're proposing to lay 19 this out. I, you know, there have been some comments.
20 And one we'll talk about today from some stakeholders 21 would probably negate the need for this, if for 22 example you simply said all advance reactors have to 23 have margins, and then we will use the margins that 24 are required to kind of generically say, now we can 25 justify alternatives to areas like emergency planning, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 1 siting, staffing, et cetera, because by definition all 2 plants meet this requirement by having the appropriate 3 analytical margins. That's a possible approach. You 4 know, that was talked about in previous discussions 5 and our thought was, the agreement was, to keep it 6 broad and to allow the trading of safety margins for 7 flexibilities but not to require the safety margins.
8 And so that's a point of discussion, and we'll have 9 it, I know, through at least one of the comments we're 10 going to get later in the day.
11 So I think we can go to Slide 18. The 12 design control quality assurance requirements, this 13 should look familiar to most. It's largely derived 14 from Criterion III in the existing Appendix B to Part 15 50. It has the same note in terms of the QA referring 16 to generally accepted consensus codes and standards 17 with the thought that if possible and if pursued, if 18 there were other codes and standards, for example, 19 other than ASME and QA 1 that could be proposed, then 20 this language would allow that to be. For example, if 21 someone wanted to say that ISO standards related to 22 design control provided an acceptable level of quality 23 assurance.
24 So going on to Slide 19; this is the last 25 section within 53.490 within Subpart C, and it talks NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 1 about the need to have design and analysis interfaces 2 with other areas.
3 One example is given, is the configuration 4 controls in Subpart F, and this has traditionally been 5 the case that design activities lay out particular 6 systems and trains. And then within configuration 7 control like tech specs or technical requirements 8 manual, you might get more specificity in terms of 9 configuration control, allowed outage times, and so 10 forth.
11 So it's really the same concept here.
12 You're expected to get the design out of this subpart.
13 The analysis performed here would then also support 14 the establishment of configuration control, be it tech 15 specs, reliability assurance programs, or some other 16 measures, to maintain that during operations over the 17 life of the facility.
18 So I think we can go on then to 20, which 19 was just one last area. We didn't specifically 20 address this within the discussions, but I lay it out 21 as an area for us to possibly talk about and try to 22 elaborate if there is a distinction between an 23 inherent design feature and our kind of historical 24 approaches to both active and passive safety features.
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34 1 sometimes looked at as a variation of passive and 2 sometimes it's looked at as going beyond passive and 3 being even superior to a passive system, in that it's 4 simply relying on a natural process.
5 So a passive system may use something like 6 the convection of air to provide cooling to reactor 7 vessel or to a reactor cavity and that could be a 8 passive in that it doesn't need electrical power, 9 doesn't necessarily even need for a component such as 10 a valve to change position. Whereas inherent would be 11 something built in and you wouldn't even need to 12 ensure that you could develop something like a pathway 13 for convection to be established. So it might be a 14 material property, a reactivity feedback coefficient 15 or something that is even, you have a higher level of 16 confidence in its performance even above a passive 17 system.
18 And so the thought was, should we develop 19 some guidance for further discussion on how inherent 20 design features are possibly credited within the 21 analysis and within the design? It's kind of an open 22 question. I'll just leave it as a topic for 23 discussion.
24 So I think that was my last slide. We, 25 Bob, I'll turn it back to you. Did we want to just go NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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35 1 into the presentations and then open it up to general 2 discussion?
3 MR. BEALL: Well, we have three raised 4 hands, so let's go out and address those, okay? Is 5 that okay with you?
6 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. That's fine.
7 MR. BEALL: Okay. I think the first one, 8 Dennis from GE Power, you can unmute and ask your 9 question or comment, please?
10 MR. HENNEKE: That's fine. Thanks, yeah, 11 Dennis Henneke with GE-Hitachi; I am the vice chair 12 for the JCNRM [Joint Committee on Nuclear Risk 13 Management], which develops and maintains PRA 14 standards for light water and non-light water 15 reactors.
16 On Slide 14 you mention when we start to 17 use the PRA, a number of things to unpack here. Let's 18 talk about the fourth bullet under the first bullet, 19 maintained and upgraded every two years.
20 So a PRA is developed per the standard and 21 maintained per the standard and then the standard is 22 endorsed by NRC and right now it's right down around 23 1.200 and for a non-LWR to be through a different 24 document.
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36 1 meaning in the standard language and should not be 2 used. It's updated. Upgrade means it requires a peer 3 review to be redone in standard language, and so they 4 can't force somebody to upgrade something every two 5 years. An upgrade is a specific change that is a 6 novel change that requires new peer review, so it's 7 updated.
8 Second, the cycle of updates is determined 9 by the change. So the standard has a change process 10 and if a plant finds that there is significant change 11 in insights, they may have to perform an immediate 12 update, whereas otherwise they set up a cycle within 13 their process, which is typically every two cycles, 14 but every utility in existing has their own process, 15 and then they update the PRA and the associated 16 analysis on a regular basis. So I would not regulate 17 the cycle. I would let the standard let you do that 18 and just to say it's maintained and updated per the 19 standard requirements.
20 On the second to the last bullet, PRAs, 21 firstly PRAs do not assess fire protection, they 22 assess fire hazards. Fire protection is a part of the 23 fire hazard analysis and the PRA can do fire, no, fire 24 PRA can be performed. We don't assess fire 25 protection.
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37 1 We also do not assess aircraft impacts.
2 PRAs can be used to inform the aircraft and impact 3 analysis or you can do it deterministically. There's 4 no requirement to conflate to do any aircraft impact 5 using PRA.
6 Some folks find it advantageous to do so 7 and the methodology of it is there to do it but we 8 would not assess, in the PRA, aircraft impacts. So 9 there's a lot to be corrected on this.
10 As far as use of PRA for some of the 11 following slides, for safety classification and so on, 12 it seems to me that what you're, you're requiring an 13 LMP type evaluation under Part 53 and it doesn't, if 14 you're requiring PRA to be used for safety 15 classification, I see no other way than LMP to do 16 that.
17 You know, now the plants have been, some 18 plants are going in the LMP type evaluation, but 19 others have preferred not to and to go in with a more 20 deterministic approach, with a PRA supporting it, but 21 with a deterministic basis for safety classification 22 and license-based events and so on.
23 So the requirement to use the PRA to do a 24 safety classification is really a back door way to 25 require LMP, and I think you should rethink what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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38 1 you're trying to do there with regard to safety 2 classification and the requirement to use PRA to do 3 so. Thanks.
4 MR. BEALL: All right, thank you, Dennis.
5 Do you have anything to add, Bill?
6 MR. RECKLEY: No, great comments. We'll 7 look at those. Under the, for example under aircraft 8 impact, that does show up under the provisions. It 9 says, if not addressed by the PRA, you have to do it.
10 Otherwise, and you know, we have to keep in mind that 11 this rule is going be in place for a long time. And 12 so, who knows 20 years from now what the PR -- what 13 would be within the scope of a PRA? But, we'll, yeah, 14 great comments. We'll look at the language and think 15 about what you said.
16 MR. BEALL: Okay, Ed Lyman, Union of 17 Concerned Scientists, you have your hands up. You'll 18 have to please unmute your mic, and please ask your 19 question.
20 MR. LYMAN: Hi, can you hear me?
21 MR. BEALL: Yes, we can, Ed. Go ahead.
22 MR. LYMAN: Great, sorry. Yeah, so a few 23 comments or questions. So, on the safety, security 24 interface section that Bill flagged, which I think is 25 important, but I think it raises questions about how NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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39 1 you would actually implement the security aspects.
2 So, I see that the language says something about 3 resolving security issues, which is pretty vague. But 4 my question is, do you think you would need to 5 actually reference or incorporate the design basis 6 threat into this world to ensure that security issues, 7 quote, unquote, are being identified and addressed 8 through the design and mapped? So it raises the 9 question of, as you say, that PRA potentially evolving 10 over decades.
11 Certainly the design basis threat and the 12 adversary characteristics will. And that could render 13 a judgment that you make at the design approval phase 14 incorrect later on, which you would have to address 15 through compensatory measures.
16 So, have you thought through all the 17 complexities of what I'm asking, is my first question?
18 MR. RECKLEY: Probably not. But you have 19 to look at Part 53 in how it would work with Part 73.
20 At this point, our initial thought was not to roll 21 security altogether into Part 53.
22 But, so this would only be part of the 23 picture. There may be changes to security either 24 coming out of this, or coming out of related efforts, 25 or future efforts. And they would probably go to more NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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40 1 your specific questions as it relates to security.
2 For example, we would not undertake, under this 3 assessment, to redefine the design basis threat. That 4 will continue to be a security aspect that's done in 5 that realm.
6 MR. LYMAN: Right, but I'm just saying 7 there may be, you know, there are design aspects that 8 may, the DBT and the adversary characteristics would 9 have a bearing on whether it's a security issue or 10 not.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
12 MR. LYMAN: For instance, there's just the 13 thickness and reinforcement of the structural walls, 14 so.
15 MR. RECKLEY: Right, and that's what 16 we're, that's what we traditionally try to encourage 17 people to look at, as you're doing the design for the 18 safety aspects, to also consider how it might help or 19 introduce a weakness in security, so, right.
20 MR. LYMAN: Okay, my second comment is, I 21 haven't been following these discussions as closely 22 maybe as I should. So I was pretty shocked when I 23 heard Courtney say in December, before the other NAS 24 committee that's looking at advanced reactors, that 25 some stakeholders are questioning the role of PRA, or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 1 the nature of PRA as part of this rule.
2 And that seems, you know, absurd to me 3 given all the emphasis that's been put in on risk 4 controlling it. But I guess I'd like to point out 5 that NEIMA doesn't require you to have a risk-informed 6 rule. They just thought that it should be technology 7 inclusive. The language is, doesn't say risk-8 informed.
9 So, you're free not to make this 10 deterministic rule where it's to allow, you know, 11 applicant to continue with Part 50 if they choose with 12 exemptions, in its deterministic analysis. But to 13 question the need for a high quality and accurate, as 14 accurate as possible, stated in the PRA as part of 15 this is ridiculous from looking at the history.
16 My last point on the operational 17 flexibilities issues, which I have issues with, but I 18 think that what you're talking about does violate the 19 intent of NEIMA, that reactors that qualify for use of 20 this rule would have substantial improvements compared 21 to the current generation of reactors. And this, 22 incorporating this operational flexibility option, 23 would seem to undercut that.
24 And but, I'm also wondering hypothetically 25 if the Commission were to modify its Advanced Reactor NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 1 Policy Statement to now require the reactors, let's 2 say that qualify under this rule, to have clear and 3 consistent increased safety margin for the public.
4 And that has to be maintained.
5 And we just caution you that maybe, you 6 know, anything is possible and that may be something 7 you're looking at for the future, because that makes a 8 whole lot more sense than the framework that you have 9 now, and would be consistent with the intent of NEIMA.
10 Thanks.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thank you, Ed.
12 MR. SEGALA: Hey Bill, this is John 13 Segala. I just wanted to add, in NEIMA when it 14 defined -- it has a definition section. And when it 15 defines what technology inclusive regulatory framework 16 is, it says it, means a regulatory framework developed 17 using methods of evaluation that are flexible and 18 practical for application to a variety of reactor 19 technologies, including, where appropriate, the use of 20 risk-informed and performance-based techniques or 21 other tools and methods.
22 MR. LYMAN: Right, and where appropriate 23 it the key language there.
24 MR. SEGALA: Yes.
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43 1 discretion.
2 MR. RECKLEY: I think we would agree with 3 you, Ed. I think this is a conscious choice on our 4 part that, as I mentioned earlier, it's an evolution 5 of the use of probabilistic risk assessment. And if 6 you look back over the decades, we just think this is 7 the next step on its application.
8 But I'd agree with you that it would be 9 over reading NEIMA to say we needed to do this.
10 MR. LYMAN: Risk-informed without a PRA is 11 meaningless, that's my --
12 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, additional hands?
13 MR. BEALL: Yes, we have one, Mr. Kee, 14 Ernest Kee.
15 DR. KEE: Hi, thank you, Bill. It's a 16 very informative presentation. I have a very, I made 17 this comment on the federal rulemaking website, but 18 you know, NEIMA says innovation. And what I'm afraid 19 of, and from what I'm hearing, in the last, this one 20 and the previous public meeting, is the innovation 21 part might not be emphasized, in my view, enough.
22 I feel like we're going down the same path 23 that we followed in 50, in Part 50. And I would like 24 just for people to think about this as a possibility 25 to allow actual commercial operation of these advanced NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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44 1 reactors.
2 And that's this, if focused on 3 containment, that's risk-informed. So, there's been a 4 lot of work in containment analysis for various kinds 5 of accidents. And I think, my thinking is 6 containments can be designed to accept a full on core 7 damage event, what we used to call 'core-on-the-floor' 8 event.
9 And they can be designed with high 10 probability of success against release. And the 11 reason I'm going here is because I feel like the 12 Commission -- well, risk-informed, so risk-informed.
13 Where's the risk, from the Commission's point of view, 14 is exposure to the public, right. And so, you'd have 15 to contain an event.
16 And what I've seen, even in the Gen II and 17 reactor experience now, is every one of them has 18 resulted in some level of radioactive release, above 19 what you have pointed out as being a normal release 20 level. So, in order for every reactor, for all the 21 different designs to be able to be licensed under this 22 new regulatory framework, I feel like it would be 23 proper to focus on containment.
24 And allow -- so we'd have two levels.
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45 1 basically the same kind of requirements that we have 2 now, like in Appendix A. But the rest of the process 3 part, these vendors are doing a lot of work in 4 analysis to ensure these things don't break down, 5 don't have a core damage event.
6 And I think those should be relegated, all 7 that process internal, what you call internal hazards.
8 The core damage events should be relegated to 9 commercial standards. And so there would be two 10 levels. And containment would be the focus of the 11 NRC.
12 This would allow different technologies to 13 be built under the same kind of a standard without 14 having to focus on their various different, you know, 15 types of technology they employ. And the performance 16 part, performance based part I think could be -- this 17 is my opinion -- could be the NRC's oversight and 18 enforcement that the commercial standards committed to 19 would be properly maintained.
20 So, that's my comment. Thank you for the 21 presentation and listening.
22 MR. RECKLEY: Just a quick question back 23 to you, Dr. Kee. What I have for you is, would that 24 apply -- in the advanced reactor realm we've shifted 25 over to some degree to talk about functional NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 1 containment, because that function may not be served 2 by a traditional structure.
3 Would your argument equally apply to a 4 functional containment where that attenuation or 5 preventing the release is served by something other 6 than a structure?
7 DR. KEE: Yes, but I think the key --
8 there's other things too, I point out in my comment 9 that need to be looked at. But the point I'm trying 10 to -- I think the inherent design feature that you all 11 have pointed out is probably operative here. And I 12 think that's what you're hinting at.
13 That generally, the expectation would be, 14 you could walk away from this. This is very similar 15 to something I got involved in before. You know, we 16 talk about 96 hours0.00111 days <br />0.0267 hours <br />1.587302e-4 weeks <br />3.6528e-5 months <br /> in one rem. I don't think that's 17 the right attitude.
18 The right attitude is the containment 19 following an accident has to be there in place. How 20 long has it been since Fukushima, I mean it's years, 21 right? So this thing has to be very well built, but 22 by focusing on the containment end. And it has to 23 have defense-in-depth, it has to have safety more. I 24 think it has to be safe for the public to have 25 confidence in this kind of new technology. We have to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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47 1 be safe, but I think we can do that.
2 And I think the best way to think of 3 outages is what you said, is these inherent safe 4 design features are, I'm sorry, yeah, inherent design 5 features as you refer to them. Yeah, I think that's 6 what I have in mind.
7 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thanks. Bob, or maybe 8 we can go over to Cyril's presentation.
9 MR. BEALL: Yes, we can move on now. That 10 was the last hand.
11 MR. DRAFFIN: Okay, thank you. This is 12 Cyril Draffin with the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council.
13 We'd like to start with some opening comments from 14 Jeff Merrifield.
15 MR. MERRIFIELD: Thank you very much, 16 Cyril. I'd like to thank NRC staff for providing an 17 opportunity for us to give our comments on parts C and 18 F. Can I go to the next slide, please?
19 One of the things I just wanted to say up 20 front, given the timing of when these materials were 21 made available. And I think that was around, oh, I'd 22 say December 18th, we have been limited in our ability 23 to take a detailed look at this, more as a function of 24 the holidays. And now we still got, we did get 25 together on a variety of occasions and have worked to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 1 provide some comments.
2 We have detailed comments on our feed.
3 We'll be providing those later in the meeting. But we 4 feel it's going to take us a little bit more time, 5 particularly having had an opportunity to hear the 6 presentation this afternoon, to give you a more 7 detailed assessment.
8 One of the elements I think is important 9 in that analysis is really going to the Bullet Number 10 4 is in order to understand how this all works 11 together, we're really going to need to get a better 12 understanding of other elements that are being 13 prepared by the NRC and its contractors. Some of 14 which you've telegraphed your intentions, others of 15 which I think it will be necessary to take a look at 16 it in more detail to see how all of thing hangs 17 together.
18 Really there's the sense of understanding 19 the totality of what you're trying to do. And 20 obviously that will help put the subparts in context 21 and be able to make a more detailed response.
22 Next slide, please. I think, you know, we 23 certainly appreciate the extraordinary work that the 24 staff has put into these efforts. I think the 25 explanation that Bill provided, provides some NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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49 1 additional insights into the direction you all are 2 going. I think we would certainly like to have 3 opportunities to engage today and elsewhere to get a 4 better sense of that.
5 One example that I think is the issue of 6 Subpart F. We're attempting to create a Facility 7 Safety Program. In our initial review, it was unclear 8 to us what you were intending to address by this and 9 what would be included. And I think having a dialogue 10 today to understand that is going to be helpful.
11 I will admit up front, I think based on 12 our initial review, there was significant doubts on 13 the part of the advanced reactor community as to the 14 utility of Subpart F.
15 Now, this may be of greater interest, 16 given its operational nature, to future users. But I 17 think in order for us to provide a more detailed 18 understanding, we're going to have to certainly get 19 into that in greater depth.
20 There have been some comments previously 21 relative to Subpart C and the elements that were 22 included on Page 14. I think we've got some members 23 of our group that believe if you have a very small 24 reactor, a microreactor, and perhaps others, having a 25 full blown, full scope PRA doesn't make a whole lot of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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50 1 sense. There may be some more deterministic ways of 2 meeting adequate protection. And as is pointed out, 3 NEIMA does not require a PRA. And so for that reason, 4 we've got some questions on that issue. And certainly 5 we'll raise that more.
6 We do want to be constructive today, and 7 so part of our testimony -- and we've got a variety of 8 people who will be talking today -- part of it will be 9 to raise what we think are some questions regarding 10 how you all want to implement the draft rule. Getting 11 a better understanding of that intention will 12 certainly put us in a position to provide more 13 detailed comments in the upcoming weeks.
14 Next slide: one of the things we would 15 like to suggest, there's a format that we have gotten 16 ourselves into where the staff prepares certain 17 elements of what you want to have in the rule. And 18 then you send that our direction, and we prepare 19 comments, we send that back.
20 And we think that there is a utility in 21 trying to create more of a workshop format, where we 22 could have a discussion and really try to garner the 23 total picture of what the proposed rule is intending 24 to do. And really go beyond commenting just on the 25 individual subparts.
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51 1 We would certainly suggest after we've had 2 an opportunity to give additional comments on Subparts 3 C and F, perhaps reconvening at some point within the 4 next three to four weeks and have a more open-ended 5 dialogue about the expectations for Part 53, and how 6 things should be going forward.
7 It would also as part of that, be helpful 8 for us to understand, you know, what part or parts of 9 10 CFR that the staff intends to incorporate by 10 reference or otherwise in Part 53, because that 11 obviously plays into the total picture.
12 A couple of things I want to mention that 13 were raised in the meeting earlier. There was 14 references to Slide 6. One of the elements, that is a 15 chart that I understand where it comes from. The 16 Agency is trying to work through, or the staff is 17 trying to work through these various elements on an 18 aggressive agenda in order to meet the focus of the 19 Commission.
20 A couple of things I'd say in that regard.
21 Number 1, at the end of the day, I think we all need 22 to be mindful that we need to get this right and we 23 need to put the time into it that's needed to get a 24 rule that's going to be used and useful. While 25 certainly meeting the Commission deadline is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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52 1 important, I think we need to make sure we use 2 sufficient time to make sure that we can understand 3 what is being intended, and get it in a function that 4 people will be able to use.
5 As it relates to the individual elements 6 of that chart, on Slide 6, for example it notes that 7 the safety criteria will be closed on February 21st.
8 Now, as was noted by Nanette and by Bill, there is an 9 opportunity for some look-back, but I think there's an 10 effort to sort of drive this toward a date in the 11 future, 2024.
12 From my personal standpoint, I don't think 13 this is a discussion about trees. This is a 14 discussion about the forest. And so, you know, my 15 view and I think it would reflect many of our members, 16 any of those issues remain open until the totality of 17 the package is complete.
18 Because this is a, it is a living 19 document, it is a living rule. And until we get a 20 complete picture of what it's going look like, I don't 21 think you can really effectively say that anything is 22 fully closed out.
23 In terms of staffing and timing, I do want 24 to make a note. You know, in earlier days and I'm 25 going back to a decade or more ago when we were doing, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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53 1 preparing rules like this. And we had large 2 integrated companies that design these reactors, I 3 mean there would be leagues of experts that would be 4 brought into, in various elements of these rules.
5 With the advanced reactor community, these 6 staffs are a lot smaller. And so, I think we do need 7 to be mindful in how we approach all this. There are 8 stresses in terms of staffing. Again, we want to make 9 sure we get it right.
10 The final bullet I have here really goes 11 to the notion of a phased licensing approach. This is 12 one that we've talked about in the past. It is one 13 that is reflected in NEIMA. We certainly would like 14 to understand as it relates to the staff's plans 15 relative to Part 53, how that would come about, and 16 how that would be incorporated in the rule?
17 The final notion, there were some comments 18 made earlier regarding what was intended within NEIMA 19 relative to advanced reactors, in the definition of 20 what is meant by significant improvements compared to 21 commercial nuclear reactors.
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54 1 yields, greater fuel utilization, (E) enhanced 2 reliability, (F) increased proliferation resistance 3 (G) increased thermal efficiency; or, and I underline 4 the word or, which from a legal standpoint is quite 5 noticeable, (H) the ability to integrate into electric 6 and nonelectric applications.
7 So, as you read that definition in its 8 totality, there is no driver toward requiring enhanced 9 safety features. As long as the designs that you are 10 to review meet the adequate protection standards, that 11 is perfectly fine.
12 If there is a reactor design that comes in 13 front of you, and has an enhanced ability to integrate 14 into electric and nonelectric applications as 15 indicated in H, that would be perfectly consistent 16 with NEIMA. So, just wanted to clarify for that 17 record, that for the record, because there was an 18 inaccurate representation of that. Thank you very 19 much. Cyril.
20 MR. DRAFFIN: Thanks. On the next slide 21 our goal for today is, the NRC and the industries, is 22 to both have a better understanding of Part 53 by the 23 end of this meeting. We're providing a response to 24 the topics NRC raised. And we are also going to 25 provide additional comments.
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55 1 So we'll start on design analysis for the 2 topics that the NRC raised in their materials that 3 they provided in December.
4 For Part 53.420, and these are preliminary 5 responses as Jeff indicated, they're talking about the 6 approach for specific event categories. And we think 7 this is useful. It's an accepted structure provided 8 that there's a use for those specific categories in 9 the rule structure. And those would be beneficial to 10 put in.
11 Regarding 53.430 which deals with 12 occupational dose, we recommend that occupational 13 safety not be included in Part 53. That was one of 14 the questions that you'd raised. We don't think it's 15 appropriate to regulate occupational dose one way for 16 advanced reactors and another way for the current 17 fleet. And just rely upon Part 20, which already 18 exists.
19 As far as 440, you raised the question of 20 generally accepted. Now, generally accepted is 21 currently used in Part 50 and 52. But it's an 22 uncertain phrase and, you know, it provides latitude.
23 But as, we think this might be addressed in review 24 guidance and Bill alluded to that in terms of the use 25 of consensus standards and codes, and how that would NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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56 1 be done. But not as a requirement, as a license 2 requirement to -- so we think it follows a little bit 3 of thinking it through in terms of how this would 4 actually be done.
5 On the next slide, to continue with 6 comments that the NRC had raised, they asked whether 7 qualified was okay. We think it is. In talking about 8 the identification and treatment of human actions, 9 we're not quite sure what information the NRC needs, 10 and so clarification would be helpful.
11 And the topic that Bill raised at the end 12 regarding inherent design features, we do think that 13 advanced reactors offer that as a capability. But 14 it's vitally important to understand how these 15 inherent features would be credited within the context 16 of satisfying the proposed regulation.
17 In other words, it's not just thinking 18 through how, what the inherent features are in the 19 advanced reactors, and then make sure they come out 20 reliable. But how is it going to be used? How would 21 it be credited? And whether that's really a question 22 for regulation or something could be used in terms of 23 supporting the analysis.
24 So those are some initial reactions to the 25 questions the NRC had raised. But we wanted to go on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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57 1 and provide some additional detail. So on the next 2 slide, on discussion of safety and security, Steve 3 Nesbit, could you provide a little background on this 4 one?
5 MR. NESBIT: Sure, thanks, Cyril.
6 We, first of all, we just wanted to point 7 out that, you know, we don't think that we're 8 ultimately going to need to address security in the 9 safety analysis report. That it's better to deal with 10 it the way that it is currently being dealt with in 11 light-water reactor space, which is to put that 12 safeguards type information in the security plan.
13 Getting to the proposed requirement, the 14 Part 53 requirement, which I'm repeating here, safety 15 and security must be considered together in the design 16 process such that, where possible, security issues are 17 effectively resolved through design and engineered 18 security features. I think we agree that that's the 19 right way to, or the optimal way to address security 20 in your design, but we don't agree with the statement 21 as a regulatory requirement. And the reason is that 22 it addresses the design process, not the resulting 23 facility.
24 Like I said, we agree with the sentiment.
25 In fact I went back to the NRC Policy Statement and, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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58 1 you know, the Policy Statement notes that the NRC 2 believes it's in the interest of the public, vendors 3 and license applicants to address security issues 4 early in the design stage to achieve more robust and 5 effective security posture for future nuclear power 6 reactors.
7 So that is what the Commission had to say, 8 but translating that into a security requirement in 9 Part 53 is potentially problematical. We think that 10 you need to assess the adequacy of security against 11 performance requirements.
12 Now, we'd like to see the current 13 requirement structure for security maybe addressed a 14 little bit, so that it's more performance based. It's 15 rather prescriptive right now. At any rate, you need 16 to make that assessment against what the requirements 17 are, not how you got to your ultimate security design.
18 So that kind of leads to a question, and 19 the question is, suppose you've got an advanced 20 reactor applicant and the facility meets all the 21 safety and security requirements. However, when you 22 delve into it, you determine that safety and security 23 weren't actually considered together in the design 24 process, which is the requirement.
25 Would you refuse to grant a license at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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59 1 that point, even though the facility has been safe and 2 secure? Would you require a licensee to get an 3 exemption because they didn't do it exactly the way 4 you wanted them to? So, that's the perspective we're 5 coming from. And we think that that requirement might 6 be problematical for that reason; back to you, Cyril.
7 MR. DRAFFIN: Thanks.
8 On the next slide, we have some additional 9 comments regarding design analysis in 450. There's a 10 term of contributing factors to unplanned events.
11 It's unclear, so perhaps you could clarify, 12 contributing to what, the probability, the 13 consequences? And indicate whether that's referring 14 to prevention, or mitigation, or both, so just a 15 clarification would be helpful.
16 And then on 450(b)(5) there's a discussion 17 of plant control. And it would be helpful if NRC 18 could clarify what is meant by plant control. And 19 what was the goal of that section?
20 On the following page, still staying with 21 the 450, there was discussion earlier today regarding 22 the PRA. And we certainly see the benefits, industry 23 sees the benefits of doing a PRA, but and while it is 24 consistent with the LMP, the PRA insights should 25 complement and inform the safety review, but the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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60 1 submittal of a complete PRA should not be required.
2 In other words, doing one would be beneficial, where 3 you could pull out the insights, the analysis. It 4 helps you in your design, but putting in the whole PRA 5 should be a choice and not a requirement.
6 And we also raised a couple specific 7 questions such as, how does the Agency intend to 8 address microreactors and other designs that want to 9 pursue a deterministic approach for selected portions 10 of its application, such as seismic events? And, you 11 know, just explicitly, is a PRA needed for 12 microreactors? So it's, we've had some of that 13 discussion today, but I think we need, you know, 14 probably more robust discussion of how we would 15 actually, the actual language that would be used and 16 the intent and the flexibility that would be allowed.
17 Under 53.490, there is a discussion of 18 control of interfaces, but it may be referring to 19 change management or configuration management. And 20 we've included the last sentence there, but it's not 21 clear what the intent of that requirement is.
22 And then even more specifically, there is 23 discussions of what's the state of technology and 24 economics of improvements? Is that something that's 25 done once or continuously? What does it mean to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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61 1 consider risk reduction measures?
2 Does NRC plan to provide guidance for the 3 economics of improvement after defining it? And what 4 does this imply for licensees? Must backfit if 5 someone can identify an enhancement? So flushing that 6 out with more detail would be helpful.
7 So that's our comments on the Subpart C 8 and again as Jeff indicated, this is preliminary and 9 we will be happy to work with NRC on more details and 10 provide more analysis and insights later. Thank you.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Thanks, thanks Cyril.
12 Just to kind of quickly go through some of 13 those and again, appreciate the comments, coming up 14 with the right language is always a challenge. And 15 maybe a word or phrase that we use is, could be better 16 developed.
17 But kind of quickly going through your 18 short list of specific questions, contributing factors 19 to unplanned events, we meant that in the broadest 20 sense. And that was just because we gave a couple of 21 examples, but they're not all inclusive of things that 22 can contribute to an event sequence, in that what we 23 meant, would apply to both those things that would 24 address both consequence and frequency. Because 25 that, we see both of those variables as being NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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62 1 important in how we were laying this out.
2 The same with plant control and safety 3 system failures and maybe there's better language.
4 But we just meant that you need to look beyond the 5 performance of actual safety systems, since other 6 systems, normal operating systems, control systems, 7 could contribute to initiating events that then are 8 part of the sequence that needs to be assessed.
9 But again, maybe there's better language 10 that we could use. You've already talked about the 11 PRA. As it's written, microreactors would be required 12 to do a PRA. We had numerous discussions during LMP, 13 the licensing modernization.
14 And we're generally hoping, I'm not a PRA 15 guy, but we were generally hoping that microreactors 16 or other designs that are simpler by nature, fewer 17 components, fewer parts overall, would be able to 18 still do a PRA. And by nature the PRA would be 19 simpler, because the plant is simpler.
20 If that is not thought to be the case, 21 then we can -- again this, the whole reason to put out 22 the preliminary language and have these discussions is 23 to make sure there's a common understanding. And that 24 we don't need, we don't end up being overly burdensome 25 if it's not required.
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63 1 We are looking at guidance and the 2 development of guidance perhaps as a supplement to 3 this. If you go, and maybe we can quickly go, Liz, if 4 you could go to the first backup slide. I hate to ask 5 you do that, because it's at the long end of a line 6 here.
7 But this, this slide -- and we've used 8 this in previous discussions as well. And it goes 9 somewhat to Dr. Kee's point that in the end, what 10 we're interested in is the risk to the public, which 11 is decided upon or determined by how much radioactive 12 material is actually released.
13 And so we are looking to the degree that 14 reactors -- and this is a simplified model of a 15 mechanistic source term and it's reflected in some --
16 again, previous presentations. Also some reports that 17 you'll find on the reference list within the advanced 18 reactor's webpage. Both reports prepared by Sandia 19 and Idaho on mechanistic source term, to see if 20 there's a way that we could simplify the overall 21 process.
22 Because in the end, if you are able to 23 successfully contain the material, which is reflected 24 in the inventory black box there, you should be able 25 to kind of stop the process as soon as you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 1 successfully prevented the release.
2 And so to the degree that we can start to, 3 through either the mechanistic source term model, 4 which is inherent within the PRA model, or somehow 5 come up with either an alternative or perhaps guidance 6 that says this is effectively the same. You still 7 have to do an assessment of all of the initiating 8 events. But in terms of how far you carry the 9 sequence, maybe only carrying it -- and I think this 10 was what we were thinking, but maybe it's not 11 reflected in the PRA standard, you only need to take 12 it as far from a regulatory perspective as the first 13 success criteria in terms of retaining the material.
14 But anyway, we can go back now. I'm just, 15 this is an opportunity and a discussion point that if 16 the fear is that the cost of doing PRA is unwarranted 17 and there's a cheaper way, a simpler way to do the 18 assessments, that would be perfectly consistent with 19 the Advanced Reactor Policy Statement and where we 20 want to go, in that simpler designs, those with 21 attributes that are identified in the Advanced Reactor 22 Policy Statement, can get by with simpler analyses and 23 simpler licensing, so long as they can demonstrate 24 that you end up in the same safety space.
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65 1 certainly talk about this internally. And we can talk 2 about it, as you say, as you've had more chance to 3 talk about it at the -- and we can bring it up at the 4 February meeting.
5 And then the last part about state of 6 technology, economic improvements, we'll actually talk 7 about that under the Facility Safety Program in the 8 next discussion. But the general interface here as 9 you mentioned was just to make sure that whatever you 10 do in the design and the analysis phase, the other 11 subparts related to construction and operations needs 12 to maintain the validity of those analyses and the 13 functional performance of the plant features that have 14 been incorporated into the design.
15 So, but on the last bullet, we'll get to 16 that in the next segment on the Facility Safety 17 Program.
18 So, I think with that I see it's ten till 19 2:00, so we're kind of running out of time on this.
20 We have Marc Nichol, I think, has his hand up.
21 MR. BEALL: That's correct. Marc, you can 22 unmute and ask your question or provide any comments 23 please.
24 MR. NICHOL: Yeah, thanks Bill, can you 25 hear me.
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66 1 MR. BEALL: Yes, we can.
2 MR. NICHOL: All right, great. Thanks, 3 this is Marc Nichol, Nuclear Energy Institute. I have 4 very similar comments to USNIC's so I won't repeat 5 ones that they may have. But I will start off with 6 one that Jeff Merrifield made.
7 And just note that because this 8 information was released on the 18th, before most 9 people went on vacation, I haven't had a chance to 10 really convene with our members on it, or even 11 internally within my organization. So, I preface 12 everything I'm about to say as my personal views and 13 not representative of an industry position.
14 I would start out based on the whole risk-15 informed PRA conversation since it's been buzzing 16 about. And I think it merits its own topic of 17 discussion at a future meeting. The reason I say that 18 is because I think everybody has a different 19 perspective on what risk-informed means, and 20 specifically what it should be in Part 53.
21 And so getting on the same page in terms 22 of first, what does risk-informed mean, and then two, 23 what do we want it to be in Part 53, is important. I 24 will say, even within Part 50 and 52, a PRA is 25 required. I don't imagine that we'll be able to get NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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67 1 away from, you know, not having any requirements for a 2 PRA.
3 And I think generally most of industry is 4 planning to have PRAs, even if somebody is looking at 5 a very deterministic approach. They may have a 6 rudimentary PRA. So I don't think the risk is in 7 having, is in one, an industry wanting no PRAs.
8 But now that said, we should make sure the 9 rule is flexible and within that, especially within 10 this risk-informed approach. I sort of view what the 11 NRC has been proposing is more of risk-based approach 12 rather than what I would consider a risk-informed 13 approach. And like I said, others may have different 14 views on what those terms mean.
15 And I take that the proposals for QHOs in 16 the rule, these very strict and prescriptive 17 requirements on PRA, and I'm not saying that's a bad 18 thing. It's just a different way to write the rule.
19 And I think if we do that, we want to be intentional 20 about it. I do think risk-based does tend to limit 21 flexibility in what can be done. But that's just, you 22 know, one thing to consider.
23 The other thing I'd like to say is that, 24 just taking the totality of Subpart B, C and F, it 25 seems to me, and I could be reading more into it than NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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68 1 what's there, or misunderstanding what's being 2 proposed, but it really appears to me that the 3 requirements that are being proposed for Part 53 are 4 more burdensome and prescriptive than what's in Part 5 50 and 52. And it's a little bit counterintuitive for 6 me, because advanced reactors are going to be simpler, 7 have higher levels of safety, and rely more on 8 inherent safety features, less on human actions. So 9 you think that it would tend to go the other way.
10 And, you know, we, you know, another 11 metric to that is there seems to be information being 12 proposed in Part 53 rule text that to me would 13 historically, or should, be in guidance. And so the 14 increasing prescriptiveness is a little bit concerning 15 to me. So, I just say that as another sort of broad 16 comment to think though.
17 We did, in our comments on Subpart B, try 18 to propose an alternative, which we think is aligned 19 with the NRC's original proposal. But what we believe 20 would be much more performance based, flexible, and 21 easier to read.
22 The other thing I wanted to mention, I'm 23 still trying to get through this information on 24 Subpart C. It's complex and I'm trying to figure out 25 how all the terms work. Some of them seem to be used NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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69 1 in a different way than Part 50 and 52. And I'll just 2 take design criteria.
3 So, in Part 50, 52 those are general 4 design criteria. They're in my mind, I sort of call 5 them safety functions. They're not the fundamental 6 safety functions, but they're, you know, they define 7 safety functions for the plant.
8 But design criteria in Part 53 seems to be 9 criteria for a particular design feature. And so that 10 seems to be a lower level item within that design-flow 11 process. And it's, you know, to me it didn't appear 12 to be the same type of use of the term.
13 It's even not clear to me what design 14 features mean. Are we talking about system structures 15 and components that provide safety functions? It 16 didn't appear to be the case, but, you know, that 17 would be the more traditional use of that.
18 And then even the safety functions, they 19 appear to be the fundamental safety functions, which 20 is fine if that's how we want to structure it. But, 21 you know, there may be this missing gap of what are 22 the functions that the plant needs to provide to be 23 able to assure safety?
24 And then within that whole construct, the 25 way it's written up seems to be that design features, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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70 1 and so this would SECs, are the only ways to 2 accomplish a safety function. That's there's no --
3 that programmatic controls obviously support the --
4 you know, enable to do that with confidence.
5 But it didn't seem to allow for human 6 actions to be able to fulfill safety functions. And I 7 don't believe that's the intent, but that the way I 8 read the rule. So I wanted to make sure you knew 9 about that.
10 There was one slide in there that talked 11 about the requirement to analyze fire, aircraft, a 12 couple of other things, and my question is, well what 13 if, for a given design a fire and aircraft impact 14 aren't actually important? You know, why should we 15 require these in a very prescriptive way? If we do it 16 more performance based and, you know, those would be 17 to me, those would events that you would need to 18 analyze.
19 And so within the design process, an 20 applicant would determine is a fire, is an aircraft 21 impact, are those events that are important for me to 22 consider in my design? Or are they consequences such 23 that, you know, there's no potential harm to the 24 public, so that I don't even have to design against 25 them?
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71 1 I was interested, and maybe we'll get to 2 this in Subpart B, but you had a requirement in there 3 for mitigation beyond design basis events. But if you 4 already required the quantitative health objectives, I 5 wasn't sure why we also need to mitigate beyond design 6 basis events, that if mitigation is necessary, it 7 would have been caught up in compliance with that QHO, 8 so, that may be a topic for later discussion.
9 You had a question about safety related 10 versus special treatment, and non-safety related. I 11 tend to think we don't have to specify those terms, 12 that we could allow different approaches by not 13 specifying them in the requirements, and some may use 14 those terms exactly the way you define them. Some may 15 use different terms, or use them in different ways 16 based on their approach.
17 But the reason I say I don't think it's 18 necessary to use those terms in the requirement is 19 based on our alternative proposal of the safety 20 criteria where we talked about adequate protection, 21 and extra-adequate protection. And if you then start 22 to align various requirements around that, you can do 23 it without having to actually use those terms, I 24 believe.
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72 1 features. I think these definitely merit further 2 consideration. You know, whether they should be 3 included or I guess addressed in the regulations, 4 specially or not is a good question. I think it is 5 possible to address them in guidance.
6 And in my mind, the difference between an 7 inherent safety function, and I'll just say an active 8 safety function, is in what types of programs do you 9 need to be able to assure that that component will be 10 able to satisfy its given function at the time 11 necessary, at the time it needs to be relied upon?
12 And what additional defense-in-depth, or 13 what defense-in-depth may you not need since it's 14 inherent, that you might otherwise need for an active 15 component?
16 There was some good discussion about 17 security. I liked Steve Nesbit's discussion. I 18 agreed with him. I wrote a note off to the side, is 19 that the requirements for design should be focusing on 20 the resulting design, or the design that is the 21 product of this whole design process and the adequacy 22 of the design itself as an outcome.
23 Certainly there is going to be a need for 24 the NRC to have some assurance over the process 25 itself. But we should really focus in on that minimum NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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73 1 amount of the process, the design process that the NRC 2 needs to assure in order to have confidence that the 3 resulting design is adequate. So, for example QA or 4 design control, if designs change over time.
5 I was really curious about the requirement 6 at the very end, I think of the PRA section, where you 7 now require a deterministic evaluation of the design 8 basis accident. And I was really curious why we would 9 need that if you've already gone through a very 10 probabilistic approach?
11 It didn't seem to be necessary. And this 12 actually ties back to the conversation about, are we 13 headed in a risk-based approach, or a risk-informed 14 approach? And how do you allow flexibility?
15 In the way that it's been written up, I 16 would think, you know, you've got the QHOs. You've 17 got these prescriptive requirements for PRAs. They 18 wouldn't need to do a deterministic, you call it 19 complementary analysis.
20 But perhaps somebody that didn't utilize 21 the PRA in such an extensive manner, perhaps they do 22 need to have some deterministic analysis to give 23 greater confidence, but there was a thought there.
24 So with that, I do also agree with Jeff 25 Merrifield's comment about, we're diving deep into NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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74 1 different topics and not really seeing how it relates 2 back to the big picture. This was one of the things 3 we had flagged in our October letter and why we 4 recommended a systematic approach.
5 I think we're starting to see the friction 6 of not having that picture put together at the 7 beginning of the project. We also provided in our 8 last letter, project requirements, or success criteria 9 which I helped, I think helped put together that 10 bigger picture.
11 But I would also encourage, as Jeff did, 12 having a discussion on how do these things fit 13 together, you know, so that there's a much better 14 understanding of where we're headed. That's the end 15 of my comments. Thank you.
16 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thanks, Marc; yeah, a 17 lot of material there. We'll go back and look at 18 those. And some of them we'll be talking about later 19 when we get to the Subpart B discussions, so anyone 20 else, Bob?
21 MR. BEALL: Yes, Peter Hastings, you have 22 your hands up. Please unmute your mic.
23 MR. HASTINGS: Thank you, can you hear me?
24 MR. BEALL: Yes, we can.
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75 1 Hastings with Kairos Power, and just a couple of 2 complimentary comments to NEI's and USNIC's comments, 3 but to emphasis a couple of points. And I'll be as 4 brief as I can.
5 When there's two terminologies, and one of 6 the slides, I forget which number, mentioned -- it was 7 in the discussion of the evaluation of design basis 8 accidents and the expectation that a limited set of 9 events would be evaluated as design basis accidents 10 under the traditional construct of using conservative 11 assumptions, only crediting items that are safety 12 related. And of course that typically also includes 13 other provisions, such as applicability of the QA 14 program, historically at least, single failure 15 criteria applicability, and so forth.
16 So, when we're looking in other parts of 17 the rule to expand the definition of safety, we need 18 to be really careful. Because pulling things like 19 occupational exposure in normal op, effluent release 20 doses into the, unwittingly, I believe, into the 21 definition of safety also risks increasing the 22 regulatory burden dramatically.
23 I don't think the staff's intent, but I 24 think paying special attention to the language that we 25 use and the use of the label safety, safety criteria, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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76 1 safety related and so forth, needs to be done very, 2 very cautiously. That's my first comment.
3 Second comment on the language referring 4 to the mandatory, those are my words, use of 5 standards. By virtue of the language that at least 6 was in the slides about standards must be used. I 7 want to be similarly cautious. First of all, and I 8 speak with a lot of experience here in the standards 9 development community, consensus standards are not 10 things that happen quickly. NRC endorsement of 11 consensus standards also is not, typically not timely 12 for things that are trying to evolve quickly and 13 innovatively. And requiring the use of the standard, 14 of a consensus standard that may have been developed 15 five or ten years ago, actually directly discourages 16 innovation, which I don't think is the intent either.
17 So, I'd recommend looking for different 18 language that encourages the use of standards where 19 they're available and applicable, but certainly not 20 requiring them. And I think, or better yet, take that 21 provision out of the rule and have it exist in policy 22 and guidance space.
23 And then finally, my third comment, and 24 this reiterates some of the comments you've heard, the 25 mandatory use of PRA. We all recognize that today NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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77 1 many designs will use PRA. The language in 50 and 52 2 varies between strongly urging it and requiring it.
3 But we, this is an opportunity to take a 4 step back. And again, this is mainly about language.
5 Having language, having requirements in the rule for 6 which PRA today is a logical implementation step 7 certainly makes sense.
8 But I would hesitate to try to look ten 9 years in the future and conclude that what we call a 10 PRA today is a sufficiently, sufficiently stable and 11 sort of bedrock implementation method that it makes 12 sense to mandate it as a tool.
13 Let the PRA be the tool that implements 14 what the regulatory requirement is around risk-15 informed solutions, not call out a specific analytical 16 tool today as a regulatory requirement. That concludes 17 my comments, thank you.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Thank you, Peter; anybody 19 else, Bob?
20 MR. BEALL: Nobody has their hands raised.
21 If there's somebody on the bridge line that would like 22 to ask a question, or have a comment, please hit *6 on 23 your phone, unmute your phone, and then introduce 24 yourself, please.
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78 1 line. That concludes our discussions of Subpart C; I 2 would like to take a break right now. We're a little 3 bit over schedule, so let's take a ten-minute break 4 and come back, or a little bit over ten minutes and 5 come back at how about 2:20? Okay. So, we can get a 6 little bit of time back.
7 So, we'll take a break now and reconvene 8 the public meeting at 20 minutes after 2:00.
9 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 10 off the record at 2:08 p.m. and resumed at 2:20 p.m.)
11 MR. BEALL: So next slide, please. All 12 right, so we're starting the second half of our public 13 meeting, in which we'll be discussing the Facility 14 Safety Program Section in Subpart F, Requirements for 15 Operation.
16 Bill, can you lead us through the 17 discussion, please?
18 MR. RECKLEY: Thanks, Bob. Yeah, we'll 19 probably circle back before I start, circle back to 20 this at the end of the meeting and follow on, but it's 21 probably useful to mention it here, as we look forward 22 to the February meeting, I think what we're thinking 23 is that we'll give more time. It's probably going to 24 be a full day meeting, and I think we can use that as 25 an opportunity to have some of the more generic NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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79 1 discussions that both Jeff Merrifield and Marc Nichol 2 mentioned.
3 That said, I think by both schedule, and 4 maybe as it works out on purpose or by accident, this 5 has probably been a useful approach because my 6 experience has been until stuff gets put down on paper 7 and people can assess it, without an initial draft of 8 a document, we would probably just spend a lot of time 9 talking philosophy. So I think this could still work 10 out. At the same time, be open as Marc and Jeff 11 mentioned, and we can talk at the end of the meeting 12 about doing that at our February meeting.
13 So let's go to slide 33, and we'll talk 14 about one element of Subpart F. For the February 15 meeting, the other thing that we can say, we had said 16 at the December meeting we would try to work out a 17 more complete outline than what we've provided with 18 the, kind of, simple text boxes on what the various 19 subparts would address. We could do that by the 20 February meeting.
21 Subpart F is the Operations part, Subpart, 22 and the thinking is that this would have basically 23 everything that addresses the operations phase. And 24 so this is going to have requirements on technical 25 specifications, other configuration control, elements NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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80 1 like Reliability Assurance Program. Also address 2 staffing, and as Nan pointed out on the one slide, one 3 concern that we have is, as we go forward on this 4 schedule, we're going to be addressing topics that in 5 and of themselves would usually take years to resolve, 6 and we're going to have to come up with preliminary 7 language and then follow that up with what the 8 Commission and its staff requirements memorandum 9 called at least a rudimentary proposed rule by the 10 schedule that was on Nan's slide.
11 So areas like staffing and various 12 proposals to reassess the role of operator licensing 13 and staffing levels, with some proposals perhaps going 14 all the way to unmanned micro-reactors. Those kind of 15 things, like I say, would normally take a long time in 16 a regulatory discussion to come to an approach. And 17 we are going to have to introduce such topics and 18 resolve them in months, not years, at least to the 19 point of developing the proposed rule.
20 So as Nan was mentioning, on our side, 21 that's a challenge to bring in all the staff, but we 22 probably -- our task is probably easy in comparison to 23 yours, to bring in the right expertise, the right 24 staff, to get volunteers from various designers, 25 various organizations, or whatever. So the February NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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81 1 meeting we can talk about that a little bit more too.
2 So all that is background, and maybe I'm just trying 3 to delay this discussion because I've already seen the 4 comments.
5 So the part of Subpart F that we're 6 looking to introduce is the concept of a facility 7 safety program. And the notion for introducing that 8 is us trying to look at the overall regulatory 9 program, not just licensing, but start to think about 10 what the overall program looks like.
11 The inspection program, our continuing 12 assessment of things like generic safety issues, 13 operating experience, and all of the infrastructure 14 that the NRC has in place to support the number of 15 reactor sites that number in the tens. And the number 16 of reactor technologies that number two. And so you 17 then have to look at what the landscape might look 18 like ten or 15 years from now when there are many 19 sites of smaller reactors and of a wide range of 20 technologies.
21 And so if the mindset remains that upon 22 licensing, the reactor is deemed safe and is static 23 for the next 40 years, unless the NRC makes you do 24 something different, then the NRC will have to develop 25 that infrastructure to make sure that, where NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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82 1 appropriate, we can challenge and impose additional 2 requirements. And so one alternative, and we looked 3 at other agencies that regulate larger number of 4 smaller facilities or smaller hazards, and said how do 5 other agencies do this?
6 And one concept is the concept of a 7 facility safety program, which in -- I'm not trying to 8 beat around the bush, it puts a burden on the licensee 9 to do more active, dynamic risk-management of the 10 facility, and to, where appropriate, take measures to 11 address new information. So that's the rationale.
12 Again, looking at the bigger picture of not just 13 licensing, but also into operations and how we might 14 do things a little different.
15 So if you go to slide 34, this basically 16 lays out that, the first 53.800 current preliminary 17 number, would establish a requirement to have such a 18 program, and put it on the licensee to periodically 19 assess, periodically look for and assess new 20 information in regards to hazards, or operating 21 experience, or new technologies. The second bullet, 22 to routinely evaluate such identified hazards, and 23 consider measures to mitigate or eliminate the 24 resulting risks associated with the new information.
25 Other sections of Subpart F under NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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83 1 operations, will address the actual, kind of, more 2 traditional compliance-oriented configuration 3 management of equipment. Tech specs would still 4 include provisions for having the safety-related 5 equipment available, and have actions to take if that 6 equipment becomes inoperable, for example.
7 The reliability assurance program will, as 8 we envision, would have provisions to monitor the 9 reliability of equipment assumed to address event 10 sequences and deemed to be non-safety related, but 11 safety significant. So those things would still 12 exist. This program's only looking at new information 13 that would potentially contribute to risk.
14 So if we go to slide 35, and what we were 15 saying in the notes, is we first talk about the 16 general concept here and then we can talk about the 17 actual criteria, although we did include some, at 18 least, starting points in the preliminary language.
19 But again, the goal is really to look at this as not 20 those things that would be contributing to ensuring 21 adequate protection, those are going to be in the 22 compliance-oriented, things like tech specs, but to 23 look more for measures that would be, under current 24 language, cost-effective safety enhancements.
25 So the criteria, again, we can get into NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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84 1 specifics. They may need to be tweaked or just 2 rethought, but the challenge is to try to come up --
3 in such a program, the challenge is to try to come up 4 with criteria that have you enter the process 5 appropriately, and that's where you have -- you want 6 to make sure the bar is low enough, such that you're 7 actually identifying new information to assess, but 8 you also want to make sure that it's not so low that 9 you are challenging and wasting people's time in 10 assessing measures that you know won't be cost-11 effective.
12 So that's what we were trying to reach in 13 the very preliminary criteria that we put in this 14 first cut, which is for more frequent events, normal 15 operations, that you have a fairly low threshold. And 16 that was, again, in the proposal 2.5 millirem, and --
17 to an individual, and, collectively, a 5 person-rem to 18 the population.
19 And the reason to -- and the 5 person-rem, 20 it might not be the right number, but, again, the idea 21 here is it has to be of sufficient value to even enter 22 into the assessment. So 5 person-rem, roughly, at 23 $6,000 a person-rem, that's $30,000, the thinking 24 being if the added consequence doesn't add up to at 25 least a number like $30,000, you can't even initiate NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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85 1 the process to consider a risk-reduction measure. So 2 it's not worth the effort.
3 So that's what those criteria are trying 4 to aim at. And the other ones related to those times 5 where you take advantage of your safety margins to get 6 operating flexibility, the criterion is set at 10, a 7 reduction in margin at 10 percent. So that's 8 basically what we were laying out.
9 If you go to slide 36, I know this looked 10 ominous and resulted in some of the comments because 11 this is the section that identifies the need to 12 identify staff and have training and so forth. So we 13 did use as a model the program from the Federal 14 Railroad Administration, but I think if you look past 15 the fact that it's a couple pages of requirements, 16 most of it comes around, basically, to you have to 17 identify your staff, you have to have training for 18 them, and you have to do a periodic assessment of the 19 program.
20 So if we go to 37, this was starting to 21 get into the licensing part. This would interface 22 with the licensing subpart, Subpart H, in terms of 23 including a facility safety program as part of the 24 application, the NRC approving the plan, and then we 25 would have to work out, like any change control NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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86 1 process, the processes for evaluating changes and 2 providing updates. So in a nutshell, that was the 3 proposal.
4 The reason we thought we would introduce 5 it, in my mind it's a little bit analogous to the tech 6 spec improvement initiatives, at least in my mind, 7 that we've been evaluating and implementing over the 8 last couple decades, which took, basically, 9 prescriptive requirements that had been previously in 10 the technical specifications, and moved them over 11 into a risk management approach that took advantage of 12 the maintenance rule and the availability of PRAs and 13 other tools.
14 And so, to me again, this is just an 15 ability to take those similar tools and build it in to 16 hopefully improve the overall regulatory program, in 17 comparison to having a fairly prescriptive and static 18 set of requirements, and then basically saying the 19 process is those static things change only when the 20 NRC goes through the process of doing a backfit 21 analysis and imposing it.
22 So 38, I think, we can either open it up 23 real quick for questions to me on the specifics, or we 24 can just delve into the presentation, Bob. It's up to 25 you.
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87 1 MR. BEALL: Yeah, we have one hand raised, 2 from former Commissioner Merrifield. You can unmute.
3 MR. MERRIFIELD: Yeah, thanks so much.
4 Actually, I'm going to be presenting the next two 5 slides on behalf of NIC, so I've lowered my hand and 6 can certainly address that in the context of those 7 comments.
8 MR. BEALL: Okay, so you're the only one 9 that had their hand raised, so let's go ahead and go 10 right into USNIC, please.
11 MR. MERRIFIELD: Thank you very much. And 12 I want to -- I'm going to preface our slides by some 13 comments and reactions of my own relative to the 14 presentation that Bill just gave. And so before I 15 turn to the official slides, I do want to make a 16 couple of up-front comments.
17 I appreciate the thoughtfulness that the 18 staff has undertaken in thinking about this exercise 19 and incorporating these elements in the context of a 20 Part 53. I think as we evaluate that, and as NIC is 21 going to be responding, and others respond, I think it 22 is important to go back to look at the basis upon 23 which Congress passed NEIMA and its intention. And I 24 think that general intention of Congress was to have 25 the NRC prepare a risk-informed licensing program to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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88 1 facilitate the licensing of advanced reactors and 2 enable the deployment of these technologies.
3 And you can go back, you look at the 4 testimony, you look at the legislative history, you 5 look at the language, all is consistent with that 6 program. While I appreciate it's the desire of the 7 staff to have an ability for the licensing of these 8 reactors not to be static, and while I appreciate the 9 notion that by putting these operational issues in 10 it's going to make things more efficient for the NRC, 11 I would say several things in regards to that.
12 The first one is, historically, we have 13 lived with the fact that, and the NRC has regulated 14 the notion that once a reactor gets its license, that 15 is the licensing basis of the reactor, and where the 16 agency feels it's appropriate to make changes, it has 17 to do work and it has to take actions to change that, 18 including an appropriate analysis of the backfit rule.
19 And the notion that we're simply going to take, and 20 contrary to the Agency's efforts to reduce unnecessary 21 burden, in this case we're going the opposite 22 direction where we're putting more burden on the 23 ability of the individuals trying to license a reactor 24 technology, to meet these new proposed requirements, 25 which are not there now.
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89 1 Having that level of detail in a 2 rulemaking which is intended to license these reactor 3 technologies, certainly adds commensurately to that 4 burden and will make it more difficult for the 5 advanced reactor developers to get through that 6 wicket. I think that is contrary to the intention of 7 Congress, and further, given the expedited time line 8 that has been outlined by the Commission, I think a 9 considerable amount of time and effort could be 10 avoided on behalf of both the agency and the 11 applicants and commenters on this Part 53 effort, if 12 this were not to be included. And so my personal gut 13 reaction is that this is taking things in the wrong 14 way, well intended, but I don't think this is 15 consistent with where Congress was intending the 16 Agency to go in crafting a new Part 53.
17 With that, let me go to the NIC comments.
18 Next page, please. The first comments on this is 19 certainly intended to get a better understanding of 20 what you all are attempting to accomplish. I think 21 Bill Reckley outlined a bit of that, and I think as a 22 group, NIC and its advanced reactor developer members 23 is going to have to go back and assess in more detail 24 our reaction to all of this. I don't want to speak 25 for the group as a whole. That may -- it's certainly NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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90 1 possible they may have a different reaction than I 2 gave you for my own personal comments, but certainly 3 we will endeavor to go ahead and try to craft more 4 detailed comments for you.
5 In terms of the specific comment below, we 6 do not believe this is a performance-based program, 7 and we do believe it's prescriptive. And I think this 8 is consistent with my comments prior. We are 9 concerned about the potential for increased regulatory 10 uncertainty and regulatory burden, and we are quite 11 concerned about the potential adverse impacts to the 12 backfit rule.
13 Next slide, please. Can I have the next 14 slide, please? In terms of the safety program 15 performance criteria, we just see no prior precedent 16 for this program, and I don't think Bill's comments 17 indicated that. I think you were looking at other 18 programs including some from the rail industry. We 19 think it could create a number of problems, 20 duplicative paperwork, including the regulatory 21 updated -- burden -- updating this document, as well 22 as the FSAR.
23 We think it brings into question the issue 24 of reasonable assurance when the license is granted, 25 and we don't think it's feasible to continue to be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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91 1 revisiting these issues on decisions that were made 2 back in the design process. As indicated, as I said 3 before, we think this is inconsistent with 4 streamlining regulations. We would certainly like to 5 get additional understanding of where you're coming 6 from. We got some of that today.
7 Again, this may be a topic that would be 8 helpful in a workshop-like program. Better 9 understanding of the scope for maintenance and how 10 this applies to current fleet, I think Bill did go 11 into that somewhat. That may be an area that we need 12 to poke a little bit more. And, you know, we 13 certainly need to have a better understanding of what 14 the mechanism would be where licensees would assess 15 new information and be required to make plant changes 16 to address them. And, again, Bill outlined some of 17 that today, but I think having a better understanding 18 would be helpful.
19 With that, I believe NIC's comments are 20 complete. Thank you very much.
21 MR. BEALL: Okay, thank you. Does anybody 22 have any questions for the staff? Please raise your 23 hand.
24 Okay, Marc, go ahead. Unmute yourself, 25 please. Marc Nichol?
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92 1 MR. NICHOL: Okay, can you hear me now?
2 MR. BEALL: Yes, we can, thank you.
3 MR. NICHOL: Okay, great, thanks. Marc 4 Nichol, Nuclear Energy Institute. Yeah, I, again, 5 similar to my earlier comments, these are only my 6 thoughts because we really haven't had a chance to 7 talk about them.
8 But I would start, it's a novel new idea, 9 and despite the fact that it appears to put a lot of 10 burden programmatic-wise on the licensee, I want to be 11 open-minded to understand this approach. So I'm not 12 trying to shoot it down, although, as Jeff mentioned, 13 as we deliberate, we may come back and say we don't 14 like this for some reasons. But I wanted to start 15 with questions because I have a lot more questions 16 than actual opinions, and two main questions.
17 The first one is what problem is being 18 solved? I know, Bill, you went into it a little bit 19 by saying the difference is having essentially one 20 type of reactor, a large light water reactor, and even 21 though we have 100 reactors, the number of facilities 22 are relatively small, in the dozens, versus where 23 we're going, which could be, you know, a dozen or more 24 different types of designs, and if we're really 25 successful, and especially if they're smaller, then we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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93 1 may have hundreds and hundreds of these facilities.
2 So I do get that, but -- and I see the 3 benefit to the NRC by relying more on a licensee to do 4 some of this work in terms of evaluating new 5 information, but I'm not seeing the value or the 6 benefit to the licensee. So that's the second 7 question, is, you know, not only what problem are you 8 solving for them, if any, but what's the overall 9 benefit, especially to the licensee?
10 So, for example, are you able to eliminate 11 event reporting, which is under 50.72 or 50.73? Are 12 you able to eliminate the need for the NRC to operate 13 a generic issues program? What types of things there 14 is going to be an offsetting benefit? Because without 15 a benefit, not just to the NRC, but also to the 16 licensees, there's not going to be an interest to 17 change because what we do currently under Part 50.52 18 already is adequate.
19 So there's already the licensees under 20 Part 50 have to review operating experience. The NRC 21 already has a process for imposing new rules, orders, 22 and rules on licensees for different things. So it's 23 not that we don't have this in place already, it's 24 just a different way of trying to do it. So it would 25 be interesting to know what's the potential benefit NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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94 1 there, especially if we're able to eliminate things 2 that are doing.
3 And what might help there, actually, is to 4 run through how it would, how things would be handled 5 under 50.52's process, which could be carried forward 6 to 53, or under what you're proposing for this 7 facility safety program, so we can better visualize 8 what the differences are. So, for example, generic 9 case issues like Fukushima or the central eastern 10 earthquake. Generic issue, I think it's 191, that's 11 the suction material stuff. How would those be 12 handled differently, and so we can better visualize 13 the benefits.
14 The other comment I want to make, and it's 15 really designed to -- or it's really focused on the 16 regulatory philosophy, and you'll see it again as I 17 talk about ALARA later, but I'll focus it here on the 18 facility safety program. It appears to me to be 19 driving to ever lower risk and ever increasing safety.
20 And that's not what I think the regulatory philosophy 21 should be. I think the regulatory philosophy should 22 be focused on what is safe and making sure that things 23 are safe according to what safe is.
24 And so if we look back at Section B, 25 Subpart B, the safety criteria, we have the 25 rem for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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95 1 accident conditions, we have those criteria 100 2 millirems to the public for normal operations, those 3 sorts of things. That's defining safe, so why do we 4 have to be safer than safe? I agree that it's a good 5 thing to do, but from a regulatory perspective, isn't 6 safe, safe?
7 And so isn't it enough to just make sure 8 that the plants are meeting what is safe, and, you 9 know, you could encourage them to be safer, but to 10 actually require them to be safer, even with these 11 economic checks in place to be able to screen some out 12 that aren't economical. There is the overall 13 cumulative effect of regulation, and so as you go 14 through these individual situations where, okay, I'm 15 driving to levels of safety that are way below what's 16 already been determined as safe, and there's a cost 17 that was justified based on that, but when you 18 aggregate all of them together, there's largely an 19 increase in cost.
20 And I know that the NRC may not consider 21 this very much, I do believe you should, but the 22 industry is in business, and so these have to be cost 23 effective. Now if the costs increased just to be able 24 to reach what's safe, okay, I'm not going to complain 25 about that. We have to be safe; I agree.
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96 1 But if the costs are increasing to be more 2 than safe, then that's where I think there's a 3 disadvantage, and actually, for nuclear, you're 4 actually pricing nuclear out of the market, which is 5 not just being a nuclear enthusiast is a bad thing, 6 but recognizing that the world needs nuclear power to 7 reduce carbon emissions, it actually has a negative 8 societal impact. So I just want to, from a regulatory 9 philosophy, I do want to get that across, and I'm 10 hoping that others can agree with me on that. But I 11 do think it's an important point to talk about.
12 That's the end of my comments. Thanks.
13 MR. BEALL: Okay, thank you, Marc. Bill, 14 do you have anything?
15 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, I'll give a little 16 feedback to that, and this is a little bit 17 speculation. Obviously, I can't say that the NRC 18 will, down the road, be smaller and do everything that 19 you mentioned in order to reduce the annual fee. And 20 in the end, that's how a payback for this program 21 would come about.
22 Is that, the way I was looking at it, and 23 I'll talk first-person here, was that this is an 24 enabling requirement. And I'm not trying to dance 25 around, it's a requirement, it is. It's putting a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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97 1 burden on the licensee, on a prospective licensee.
2 But the enabling part is if this were in 3 place, as we then develop reporting requirements and 4 other parts of our inspection and oversight program, 5 as we look at even natural hazards, this stuff gets 6 subtle. And I know it's kind of hard to talk about, 7 but keep in mind when the NRC staff is looking at a 8 hazard, if you basically are telling the staff 9 identify the hazard, and it's fixed in place for the 10 next 60 years unless you're able to do a backfit 11 justification. And we all know what a challenge that 12 is.
13 Is it a wonder then, how much time, effort 14 and discussion goes into agreeing to the hazard?
15 Because the staff has one shot for 60 or 80 years to 16 identify the hazard for a facility. So just, again, 17 that's a subtle point. But just keep in mind the 18 unintended consequences of a static approach.
19 But going to your specific point, Marc, 20 again, I was looking at this as an enabling 21 requirement because if it's not in place, then as we 22 go forward out of Part 53, and also start to develop 23 the other infrastructure, we're going to have to 24 assume that it does not exist. And, therefore, we 25 will need the same generic safety issue program, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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98 1 similar reporting requirements, and so forth.
2 And so we'll have to start to build that, 3 whereas, perhaps, and I don't want to over-commit or 4 over-promise, and it needs work, I know, if we had 5 such a program, could it serve part of that purpose?
6 So that was the thinking. But I see Peter's hand is 7 up, so we can move on so we can stay on schedule.
8 MR. BEALL: Okay. Actually, the next --
9 Ed raised his hand first, so, Ed, can you go ahead?
10 MR. LYMAN: Hi, yes, can you hear me?
11 MR. BEALL: Yes, we can, Ed. Go ahead.
12 MR. LYMAN: Great, okay. So I was 13 wondering if the licensee is going to like this idea 14 so much. You know, France has gone to a regulatory 15 regime, I believe, where the reactors have to undergo 16 a review every ten years of, I guess, their design 17 basis, and implement safety upgrades at that time.
18 So I think if the problem you're trying to 19 solve is to address the temporal changes and that it 20 could affect safety risk, that you might consider that 21 as an alternative to this, simply having a ten-year 22 review of the hazards and the design basis, and then 23 require implementation of all cost-justified safety 24 significant enhancements. That's my suggestion.
25 Thank you.
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99 1 MR. BEALL: Okay, thank you, Ed. Bill, 2 you ready to move on to Peter?
3 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, or I'll let you 4 control the order.
5 MR. BEALL: Okay. Yeah, I'm keeping a 6 running list. So okay, Peter Hastings, go ahead, sir.
7 MR. HASTINGS: Thank you, Peter Hastings, 8 Kairos Power. And I'll try not to be too repetitive.
9 I echo Jeff's and Marc's comments. And, Bill, I will 10 say that, like Jeff, we appreciate the explanation and 11 acknowledge the good intentions here. And like Marc, 12 I don't want to dismiss the idea out of hand. It's 13 frankly something that we just haven't had a chance to 14 think about a little bit.
15 I'll be honest that at first blush it 16 looked like a solution looking for a problem. The 17 notion of requiring a constant revisiting, or a 18 constant search for additional risk reduction, seems 19 to constitute an erosion of regulatory stability.
20 I'll also observe it seems to, rather conspicuously, 21 not refer to the opportunity to relax requirements 22 based on this kind of a, sort of, ongoing program.
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100 1 because I think what you're trying to get to could be 2 helpful. I'm frankly a little skeptical that all of 3 the infrastructure elements you were talking about 4 doing away with would actually go away, but maybe, and 5 I think there's some merit in looking at those kinds 6 of things.
7 As we do this though, I think one of them, 8 and Marc touched on this, I think, really eloquently, 9 it's an important consideration, sometimes these 10 discussions can send the message that a reactor can 11 never be safe enough. This kind of approach can 12 easily be perceived to increase regulatory 13 instability. And despite advanced reactors expecting 14 to increase safety margins compared to the existing 15 fleet, in some cases by orders of magnitude, when by 16 any objective measure, the existing fleet is already 17 among the safest form of electricity production that 18 exists.
19 So again, a little bit of balanced 20 comments back and forth. I do think some additional 21 discussion on this is warranted. Thank you.
22 MR. BEALL: Okay, thank you, sir. Bill, 23 you have anything to say?
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101 1 look at the criteria. The first objective is to 2 identify and address new information. When you get 3 into the second step of actually saying when do you 4 need to do a risk-reduction measure to address the new 5 information, that's, I think, where you get into the 6 criteria and where we can have a lot of discussion, 7 even if the program remains in the preliminary 8 language. So I'll leave it there so people can look 9 at that aspect as well, whoever is next, Bob.
10 MR. BEALL: Okay. Commissioner 11 Merrifield. You can open your mic, please.
12 MR. MERRIFIELD: Yeah, I just want to make 13 one comment. Luis Reyes, who is the former Executive 14 Director of Operations, and I presented on behalf of 15 the NRC at the third Nuclear Safety Convention in 16 Vienna a while back. And an area that has been a 17 long-standing difference is between the French and the 18 United States approaches to regulating reactors.
19 And as was noted earlier, the French do have a 20 program which requires a ten-year periodic safety 21 review which can result in additional requirements for 22 operating reactors. That is an approach that the 23 Nuclear Regulatory Commission has systematically 24 rejected. And the Commission has systematically gone 25 the other direction on that approach.
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102 1 And so I think in context of long-standing 2 Commission policy, I think this particular proposal 3 needs to be evaluated very carefully because of the 4 impacts that it could have on long-standing policy 5 views, of which Luis and I had to robustly defend in 6 that particular convention. Thank you.
7 MR. BEALL: Okay, Thank you very much.
8 Marc, I see you're next, so please unmute your phone 9 and go ahead. Marc Nichol?
10 MR. NICHOL: This is Marc. Sorry, I 11 muted. I didn't know I was unmuted, so I muted and 12 then unmuted.
13 I was just following up on Bill's last 14 comment in terms of taking a look at this and there's 15 the requirement to assess, and then there's a 16 requirement to take an action based on that. And part 17 of my comment on this regulatory philosophy of making 18 sure that we're safe, but not regulating ever lower 19 levels of safe because safe is safe, in part it 20 relates to that criteria. So I think there's a 21 criteria of 2.5 millirem to an individual, or 5 22 person-rem is sort of the threshold, and if it's above 23 that then you need to -- you might need to take an 24 action.
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103 1 well. I could understand if it's a matter of this new 2 information is now you're violating one of those 3 safety criteria, so now you're over, just pick one, 4 you're over 100 millrem dose to the public, then I can 5 see you need to take an action there. But if you're 6 down at, let's just say your normal operations is down 7 at 10 millirem, and now you're exceeding, you know, 8 going up just a little bit from that, it really seems 9 punitive for a plant that's so low already, or below 10 the level of safety, to have to take extra actions to 11 be safer than safe.
12 I think, you know, I just wanted to 13 reiterate again. I think the focus needs to be on 14 safe, not safer than safe, and always safer than safe, 15 what we were before then. Thank you.
16 MR. BEALL: Okay, thank you, Marc. Bill, 17 do you have any other comments?
18 MR. RECKLEY: No, just again, I appreciate 19 people giving it some thought. And we will, I'm sure, 20 talk about it in future meetings.
21 MR. BEALL: Okay, great. If there's 22 anybody on the bridge line who would like to have a 23 comment or say something, please send us a quick chat 24 in the chat window.
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104 1 next slide, please. Okay, so this will be recap of 2 our November 18, 2020, public meeting on Subpart B, 3 and Nan Valliere will be leading this session of the 4 public meeting. Nan?
5 MS. VALLIERE: Thank you, Bob. Starting 6 on this slide, slide 42, I'm going to briefly go 7 through a summary of key comments that resulted from 8 the November public meeting, which focused on the 9 safety criteria in Subpart B.
10 I want to note that these slides do not 11 include all of the written comments we have received 12 to date on Subpart B. They focus on the comments from 13 the public meeting. And I know we will be hearing 14 more on many of these comments in the presentations 15 that follow this one, so I will very quickly step 16 through these few slides.
17 This first slide just lays out the various 18 sections of Subpart B that were discussed at the last 19 meeting. Next slide, please.
20 On slide 43, we have the first of three 21 slides highlighting the comments that we heard. The 22 key topics of interest included the adequate 23 protection standard, where commenters indicated, 24 first, that the NRC should avoid regulations that are 25 not needed to provide reasonable assurance of adequate NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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105 1 protection of public health and safety. Second, that 2 using the qualifier of reasonable assurance can erode 3 public confidence, and, third, that addition of some 4 text to the rule language to help clarify exactly what 5 reasonable assurance of adequate protection means 6 would be helpful.
7 We heard comments that flexibility is 8 important to allow applicants to use different 9 approaches to define their safety case. Some 10 commenters suggested that the NRC consider using site 11 boundary as the location for assessing dose in the 12 first safety criteria, as was done in the emergency 13 preparedness rule, instead of using the exclusion area 14 boundary.
15 Some commenters were concerned about the 16 use of numerical probabilities in the rule language 17 and suggested that the NRC consider replacing them 18 with qualitative probabilities. There were also 19 suggestions that the NRC clarify how the rule 20 addresses specific licensing basis event categories.
21 Next slide, please.
22 In November, we heard several suggestions 23 related to the treatment of beyond design basis 24 events, including that the NRC consider focusing such 25 requirements on mitigation, as is being done for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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106 1 operating reactors. We also heard many comments 2 questioning whether inclusion of the quantitative 3 health objectives from the NRC safety goals was 4 necessary.
5 Several commenters questioned whether the 6 inclusion of a provision to address additional 7 requirements established by the NRC for ensuring 8 reasonable assurance of adequate protection was 9 necessary. Some commenters found the two tier concept 10 to be overly complex. Certain commenters questioned 11 the need to include requirements to maintain doses as 12 low as reasonably achievable, or to include a 13 requirement for limitations on effluent releases 14 during normal operations. Some stakeholders asked if 15 Subpart B could be less prescriptive. Next slide, 16 please.
17 Some stakeholders expressed concern that 18 use of certain terminology might make understanding 19 the rule more difficult for the general public.
20 Plainer language was encouraged. Some expressed 21 concern with the perceived deterministic nature of the 22 requirements for defense-in-depth. Certain 23 stakeholders stated that the NRC should avoid use of 24 the term high confidence in the rule language.
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107 1 requirements for occupational dose from the safety 2 criteria. And finally, some stakeholders did not 3 believe Part 53 should include reference to Part 50 4 Appendix I, but should instead, pull out and copy over 5 any needed criteria from that appendix.
6 So that concludes the summary of the 7 Subpart B comments from the November meeting. And at 8 this point we're going to turn the meeting over to the 9 U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, which will have several 10 presenters provide some of their thoughts on Subpart 11 B.
12 Cyril, are you prepared to begin the U.S.
13 NIC presentation of Subpart B?
14 MR. DRAFFIN: I am. Yes, thank you very 15 much, Nan. So the plan is to cover five issues that 16 we think are particularly important that you covered.
17 The first one was on the top of slide 43, and that 18 deals, if you go on to the next, with adequate 19 protection standard, defense-in-depth, qualitative 20 health assessments objectives, quality assurance and 21 performance-based risk regulations.
22 So we're going to have five presenters 23 from industry to give you, kind of, in-depth 24 assessment of each of these things. So if you go on 25 to the next slide, which is slide 48, Frank NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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108 1 Akstulewicz will elaborate on adequate protection and 2 our perspectives on that. And this is based on a 3 discussion we had with multiple developers. We met 4 two times over the holidays, and so this is not just 5 one person representing it, but a variety of inputs 6 from our developers.
7 So, Frank, over to you.
8 MR. AKSTULEWICZ: Sure, thanks, Cyril.
9 First of all, I want to appreciate the 10 efforts that the staff has underway to try to 11 integrate all of these comments into one meaningful 12 regulation. I know it's particularly challenging.
13 The subject that I'm here to talk about, and I know 14 Nan has gone through some of the comments, and some of 15 these key points are repetitive to the comments that 16 were made previously.
17 And so we don't know the direction that 18 the staff has gone with respect to modifying Subpart 19 B, but I will note that getting the adequate 20 protection standard right for Part 53 has to be the 21 central focus for this particular rulemaking. And if 22 we don't have a clear standard for what is safe, 23 you've heard some of the ongoing discussions about how 24 much more is safe enough, or why are we doing what 25 we're doing. You know, how does it integrate into a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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109 1 general program for assuring overall safe operations?
2 So just a couple of key thoughts. Again, 3 having a clear standard for what constitutes adequate 4 protection is essential. The rule starts out by 5 predicating that the standards have to be focused on 6 assuring certain fundamental safety functions. We 7 think that that's a great thing, but then again, how 8 the other requirements establish or relate to a nexus 9 to that adequate protection standard, is part of the 10 question that we have.
11 And we hope that as part of the ongoing 12 discussion, we talk about how this adequate protection 13 standard is independent of the technology selected, 14 the reactor size, or the selected licensing process.
15 And, you know, we're still not sure in terms of how 16 this is going to integrate or be separate from the 17 licensing processes of Part 50 or Part 53, in terms of 18 whether or not a decision about licensing will be only 19 predicated on information provided under Part 53.
20 And my -- this is my opinion, based on 21 some of the discussion today, I'm getting this picture 22 that the staff is trying to translate much of the 23 necessary requirements from Part 50 and Part 20 and 24 Part 52 into a process that will be unique to Part 53, 25 and therefore will be stand-alone. And I don't think NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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110 1 that that clarity has been really discussed up to this 2 particular point in time. And maybe I even have it 3 wrong.
4 Just another major point, and we've heard 5 a lot of this discussion today. This is not the 6 opportunity to try to add requirements to reactors 7 that are already safer than the current fleet of 8 reactors. Now, we need to have a common standard for 9 what is considered safe, and if that standard is met, 10 that should be sufficient.
11 There's this discussion about whether 12 beyond-design basis or not is necessary, or should we 13 expand the rule, I meant, you know, to include 14 minimizing danger and protecting property to that 15 particular provision of paragraph 200. It's still not 16 clear why that is necessary, and why the QHO criteria 17 are absolutely necessary to establish, or to be 18 requirements for establishing adequate protection, or 19 a safety construction. So we are concerned about 20 challenges to the backfit rule and backfit process 21 that some of these processes could portend. I know 22 Jeff talked about it a little bit when we were talking 23 about the Section 800 concerns.
24 But I want to go and specifically point 25 out something that may not be apparent, and it gets to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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111 1 some of the first standard. And that is, under 2 Section 220, if you look at paragraph B, right, it 3 defines having a consequence of less than or 4 approximately equal to one in 10,000 years, right? So 5 that would mean that licensing basis events above 10 6 to the minus 4 would be subject to the following dose 7 criteria, right? And that is 25 rem.
8 So what that means is that from an 9 adequate protection standpoint, AOOs could -- have 10 those consequences up to 25 rem, and still meet this 11 provision. So, again, I want to make sure that you 12 understand and appreciate the significance of the 13 construction of the language and how you define 14 licensing basis, and how that licensing basis 15 definition is applied throughout the set of 16 regulations.
17 The last thing that is on the slide here 18 is Part 53 should establish the minimum. And that is, 19 going in, essentially what Part 50 established when it 20 was structured back in 1979, I believe is when it was 21 originally set up, or maybe even earlier than that, 22 60-something. The idea was to not pile on a whole 23 bunch of criteria at one time, but to establish what 24 the minimum regulatory load would be, and then to ask 25 for the information that was appropriate in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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112 1 establishing the criteria -- that the criteria are 2 being met.
3 So we don't want to suggest that it's a 4 bad thing to have regulatory standards. It's a good 5 thing, but it should be established at the minimum 6 requirements, not anything more.
7 And the last thing, and it's kind of an 8 over-arching comment about the rule going forward, and 9 that is the process for demonstrating that the 10 requirements are met should not be defined in a 11 rulemaking. This gets to the flexibility question, 12 which is if a licensee can demonstrate that the 13 standards for adequate protection are being met using 14 some process other than PRA, just to pick one, or some 15 other facility safety program for another, then that 16 should be good enough.
17 And so I think that's kind of where we'll 18 stop. And I think those are the high level 19 considerations that we wanted to kind of bring forward 20 again and repeat the urgency of making sure that the 21 staff is listening to what we're trying to bring 22 forward.
23 MR. DRAFFIN: Thank you, Frank, appreciate 24 that. The next topic on the next page is defense-in-25 depth, and that was referred to on, I guess, slide 45, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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113 1 the second comment. And we're going to have two 2 slides on this, and it will be presented by Dennis 3 Henneke.
4 So, Dennis?
5 MR. HENNEKE: Okay. Thanks. Again, 6 Dennis Henneke with GE-Hitachi. I did want to give a 7 little bit of background on the defense-in-depth.
8 GE-Hitachi has been involved in the licensing 9 modernization project and we have performed LMP 10 evaluation for several plants and have done the 11 defense-in-depth evaluation for LMP.
12 And as far as defense-in-depth, we 13 understand, under LMP, what that looks like for an LMP 14 application. Although, I would say, for an 15 application itself, it may look slightly different, 16 and we are currently applying that to the TICAP 17 program. And it is an important aspect to any 18 risk-informed, performance-based application. I 19 understand there were comments earlier about being 20 risk-based, but there are several aspects of 21 risk-informed and performance-based, and one of them 22 is demonstrating adequate defense-in-depth.
23 And so we think, with regard to a safety 24 case, that it really needs to be looked at a little 25 bit further and not rely entirely on NEI 18-04 under NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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114 1 LMP. So I think we need to have further conversations 2 about that to understand what it means to have an 3 adequate defense-in-depth and areas of prevention and 4 mitigation.
5 I saw that slide earlier on the defense 6 levels and barriers. That's just a diagram that shows 7 -- Bill presented one aspect of defense-in-depth, and 8 I don't think that -- I think you'd rather have 9 something that defines what defense-in-depth is versus 10 requiring something very deterministic with regard to 11 defense-in-depth, such as showing barriers and 12 containment and so on.
13 But, in regard to this, what we are 14 talking about -- and Bill mentioned to it earlier --
15 that the reactors have unique designs and they may be 16 presenting defense-in-depth, or have a defense-in-17 depth that is unique, either due to the use of passive 18 reliability or design features, such as the fuel type, 19 that give you a different viewpoint of what defense-20 in-depth is. It wouldn't always be, you know, the 21 fuel, the vessel containment, and the safety system.
22 So, it may look slightly different.
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115 1 that looks -- what adequate defense-in-depth is, and 2 may need to develop some guidance on that.
3 So, on the next slide we open up the 4 question -- the types of questions that you may want 5 to look at as, you know, is defense-in-depth multiple 6 barriers or, for design basis events, do we really --
7 do we need to look at beyond design basis events? I 8 heard a question about that. How does that apply?
9 You know, what are we trying to accomplish 10 with defense-in-depth if we're really going with 11 risk-informed performance-based? Is it really to show 12 the adequate risk-informed, you know, PRA results and 13 meeting the QHOs and so on?
14 And so we're looking for a little bit of 15 clarity in starting the conversation about what the 16 NRC is really trying to accomplish, and then how does 17 a licensee translate what's trying to be accomplished 18 into an application. Of course, we recommend, you 19 know, following on what we're doing in TICAP because 20 we'll have something on that shortly, but that TICAP 21 application we're presenting is really just one 22 plant's approach to it, and another, different type of 23 design may have a different type of argument for 24 defense-in-depth.
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116 1 you know, on the inherent features of a reactor, I 2 think Bill mentioned that earlier, that may give you a 3 different defense-in-depth argument. But what if you 4 had reactors that do not have a large amount of 5 radioactivity that could be released offsite? What 6 does defense-in-depth look like?
7 So, it's a challenge for us, but we'd like 8 to start the conversation with trying to understand it 9 better and maybe move this into a workshop discussion 10 at some point. So, I appreciate it. Thanks.
11 MR. DRAFFIN: Great. Thank you, Dennis.
12 And NRC had asked us to cover all five topics at once, 13 and then NRC can, you know, provide comments if you 14 wish. The next one is on quantitative health 15 objectives. That's, I guess, mentioned on Slide 44, 16 the first comment. And we're going to hear from 17 Rebecca Norris from NuScale.
18 MS. NORRIS: Hi. Yes. Good afternoon.
19 This is Rebecca Norris. Can everyone hear me?
20 MR. DRAFFIN: Yes.
21 MS. NORRIS: Awesome. Thank you. So, Nan 22 summarized her concern in her introduction, and I 23 understand, as Marc mentioned, that NEI is also 24 considering recommendations for 53.230. So, this is 25 compiled with USNIC separate from that.
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117 1 So, we noted in the draft 53.230(b)(2) 2 that there is a codification of the quantitative 3 health objectives. I was not lucky enough to have 4 been around for the history of this topic, so I had to 5 look it up. I found the IAEA reference in that middle 6 bullet very enlightening.
7 For the benefit of anyone else who's in my 8 shoes, the term "QHO" is not to say that the rest of 9 53.230, CDF, the core damage frequency, or large early 10 release frequency, are not quantitative. It was just 11 the original term coined in the 1986 safety goals.
12 The 1986 safety goals have been in 13 practice for quite a while, but they actually have not 14 been codified explicitly yet. So, if this draft were 15 codified, that would be the first time it was done for 16 these safety goals.
17 The rest of the dose limits in 53.230 18 parallel the requirements of Part 50 and 52 and those 19 in 10 CFR 20.1301. So, our concern really centers 20 around the fact that this would add a large burden 21 associated with this approach, especially compared to 22 the expected very low releases from advanced reactors; 23 i.e., the lower risk with advanced reactors.
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118 1 over time as population changes, with how it's worded 2 right now.
3 So, we have two specific questions. Our 4 first question is general. We would be interested in 5 the reasoning behind the addition of the QHO 6 requirement on top of the, quote/unquote, normal 7 requirements in 53.230, as there might be a less 8 restrictive way to meet the same goals.
9 In the spirit of not presenting a problem 10 without a possible solution, we believe that 53.230 11 gives adequate public protection without paragraph 12 (b)(2), which is the QHO requirement.
13 Additionally, I understand the NRC's 14 Office of Regulatory Research has conducted studies 15 similar to what would be required by (b)(2) for each 16 existing LWR generically, and this could, and should, 17 be continued for new applicants.
18 Our second question is: if the QHO 19 codification is retained, what is the objective in the 20 slightly modified wording from the original 1986 21 safety goals? I believe the original goals were 0.1 22 percent increase in the risk above the existing risk 23 to the population, and that's been slightly modified 24 to that listed in my first paragraph there.
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119 1 that's all I have for you today. Thank you.
2 MR. DRAFFIN: Thank you, Rebecca.
3 The next topic is QA. And we think that 4 Part 53 provides an opportunity for the NRC to take a 5 fresh look at Appendix B, NQA-1 program, the ASME 6 standards, and consider alternatives.
7 Since that was adopted, the level of 8 quality of commercially available components may meet 9 and/or exceed the nuclear standards without the need 10 for burdensome reporting requirements. We recommend 11 the rules should state that quality control is 12 necessary, but not provide directions on which 13 approach to use.
14 Now, the guidance, which we think is 15 necessary, could then indicate some of the alternative 16 approaches, such as the ISO 9000 series, IAEA, the 17 commercial dedication programs, and other approaches 18 presented by industry. And that would have a number 19 of advantages.
20 One, it moves toward an international 21 acceptance. We hope that these reactors will be sold, 22 the U.S. reactors and others, internationally to 23 reduce climate change worldwide, not just in our 24 country. And if you have some consistency among the 25 approvals of the requirements for quality assurance, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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120 1 that would be helpful in getting it done, getting it 2 certified, and then certified and used in multiple 3 parts of the world.
4 If you go down that path, you could also, 5 you know, extend and broaden the scope and maybe get 6 universal acceptance of codes and standards to 7 mechanical or electrical, other things other than just 8 QA.
9 And as you do, this should be deployed to 10 show how these standards for ISO or IAEA can meet 11 whatever requirements there are in Part 53, and 12 potentially other NRC parts as well. So, that's our 13 comments on quality assurance.
14 I did, since you had mentioned protection 15 of workers, I did want to just reiterate what we had 16 said before, that we recommend occupational safety not 17 be included in Part 53. And we've had dialogue on 18 that earlier today.
19 Our last topic for Subpart B is 20 risk-informed, performance-based regulations. And we 21 have two slides on that and we have a tag team of 22 people form two different companies: Travis Chapman 23 from X-Energy and Ross Moore from Oklo. So I turn it 24 over to both of you for discussing this broad and 25 important issue.
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121 1 MR. CHAPMAN: Thank you, Cyril. Could you 2 nod your head if you can hear me?
3 MR. DRAFFIN: I can.
4 MR. CHAPMAN: Excellent. Alright. I was 5 asked to carry the message on the use of probabilistic 6 risk assessment in the risk-informed language that was 7 in Part 53 that we reviewed. I have a variety of 8 developers and other applicants that have a differing 9 range of design maturity, of the safety cases that 10 they're following, of the licensing pathways that 11 they're considering. And so we -- we elicit a lot of 12 responses in this particular area.
13 I would say, personally, when I read 14 through the language, I viewed it from the perspective 15 of meaning what is required and how can I demonstrate 16 compliance or that the requirement is met, and trying 17 to think through what are the implications of the 18 language as proposed.
19 So, a takeaway we had is that, in reading 20 the Subpart B language, we certainly want our 21 regulatory framework to be risk-informed. We don't 22 want to lose the benefit that that has provided to 23 this industry. But, at the same time, we're also 24 concerned that it not become purely risk-based, making 25 it challenging to meet requirements at differing NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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122 1 levels of design.
2 In the reading of the language in Subpart 3 B as it is, it's certainly apparent that NEI 18-04 4 could be used as a mechanism to meet that. It's hard 5 to understand is there a method of meeting the 6 language as is without using NEI 18-04, just given how 7 much of that language and that framework is already 8 kind of seeded into the languages there.
9 We think that, depending on the design 10 stage and the developer, the type of design, and its 11 safety case, there's certainly deterministic 12 approaches that could be appropriate for them to use, 13 certainly in the areas of external hazards assessment, 14 some of the seismic analyses, providing bounding 15 analyses; in some cases, maybe early on, it may be 16 appropriate for that licensee or that applicant to 17 approach the NRC to get feedback on safety findings.
18 Given the size of hazard that may be perfectly 19 appropriate. And the effort of going through detailed 20 PRA analysis at those early stages may not provide as 21 much value to the reviewer to risk-inform the review.
22 The advanced non-light water PRA standard 23 exists right now. That was on my mind as I read this, 24 thinking the standard is providing me a mechanism of 25 developing that PRA. But I would say that standard NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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123 1 and its use is still maturing. There are limited 2 examples right now of acceptable cases across the 3 different designs, the application types, the level of 4 maturity, to really think through the implications of 5 using that PRA standard to develop the risk 6 information necessary to comply with the proposed Part 7 53 language.
8 So, I don't have them listed here as 9 questions, necessarily, but some things that the 10 developers were discussing just trying to get an idea 11 of initial thinking about how the NRC view PRA 12 development through a design cycle, including the 13 capability of the PRA and how it would be delivered in 14 terms of the license application.
15 Would it simply be insights? Would it be 16 full PRA? Fault or event trees, event sequences, 17 different information that may be required that maybe 18 hasn't been before, and how does that relate to past 19 precedent from Part 52 for expectations of PRA in 20 applications?
21 If, as has been discussed kind of earlier, 22 the idea that LMP wouldn't be required to comply with 23 Part 53, how would an applicant meet those 24 risk-related requirements, things like licensing basis 25 event, frequency bins, especially in maybe a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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124 1 preliminary stage of design information that may have 2 significant uncertainty, thinking about how would you 3 be able to show compliance with that requirement 4 without having that framework in place.
5 And, lastly, and it's a bullet at the end, 6 many applicants are considering international markets.
7 There are other regulatory frameworks that we're 8 trying to make sure that the designs can fit within, 9 the IAEA-specific safety requirements or markets that 10 have dual requirements for deterministic and 11 probabilistic safety assessments.
12 And we're trying to think through, in 13 complying with Part 53 as it's developed, how are we 14 making sure that we're preparing to reduce the 15 additional effort of meeting some of those other 16 market requirements? And to what degree is the 17 language, is that the thing that's going to be 18 produced, or the way that we go about demonstrating 19 compliance maybe compatible with multiple market 20 regulatory frameworks?
21 And I will pass it off to Ross to talk 22 about the performance-based elements.
23 MR. MOORE: Hello. So, in addition to 24 risk-informing the regulations, I think it's also 25 important that the requirements also be appropriately NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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125 1 performance-based and ensure clear interpretation of 2 those requirements. And our review of Part 53 Subpart 3 B proposed language offers several examples where 4 requirements could lead to uncertainty.
5 Clear performance-based criteria can allow 6 designers to be flexible in how they implement design 7 features, programmatic controls, or other approaches 8 while improving predictability in the review process.
9 Determining those performance-based criteria should 10 also be specifically based on those requirements 11 necessary to ensure adequate protection without 12 escalating the quantity and scope of criteria beyond 13 that protection. And that goes back to what Frank had 14 previously mentioned about not ratcheting up 15 requirements.
16 Performance-based requirements should 17 specifically set measurable outcomes, such as dose 18 goals, that allow an applicant to establish design 19 criteria for a subsequent material or system testing 20 that demonstrates a system or component as performing 21 the way it was committed to perform, without 22 prescribing the methods required to get there.
23 A good example of clear and measurable 24 outcomes could be that proposed language in 53.220(a),
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126 1 previously determined safety requirement.
2 An example that is markedly less clear 3 would be 53.220(c), which uses the phrase, and I 4 quote, "additional requirements established by the NRC 5 for ensuring reasonable assurance of adequate 6 protection of the public's health and safety 7 maintaining common defense and security."
8 This language is open-ended, difficult to 9 interpret, uses terminology that isn't formally 10 defined, and that could ultimately result in a moving 11 target for an applicant to meet, especially depending 12 upon, you know, a reviewer or technology.
13 So, that's for performance-based. And 14 then some other considerations: tangentially, the Part 15 53 performance-based requirements, as written, Part 53 16 draft language -- and this has obviously been 17 previously mentioned -- appears to rely heavily on NEI 18 18-04, making it almost an implicit requirement.
19 While efforts of the LMP should not be ignored, Part 20 53 should accommodate the implementation of LMP rather 21 than requiring it.
22 Performance-based, risk-informed 23 regulations offer an opportunity to utilize risk to 24 right-size the regulations using risk insights and 25 determining appropriate level of requirements that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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127 1 should apply based on the safety case of a design.
2 And then using performance-based language 3 should offer an applicant flexibility in how to 4 demonstrate that compliance.
5 Additionally, a properly implemented 6 risk-informed, performance-based regulation should be 7 technology- and design-neutral, minimizing the need 8 for exemptions.
9 And then, lastly, the development of Part 10 53 should consider the overall impact and level of 11 detail requirements for perspective applicant types.
12 Specifically, not all applicants will be coming in 13 with the same purpose or with the same level with the 14 design review maturity, depending upon the 15 application. And that expectation should not be 16 limiting in the language and requirements of Part 53.
17 I know the content of applications has not yet been 18 specified, but that would be the concern there.
19 Additionally, Part 53 is an opportunity to 20 reconsider the language and framework and how it 21 impacts applicants coming in under those variety of 22 pre-established application approaches, like Part 50 23 or Part 52, or potentially innovative approaches 24 should they consider it.
25 That's all I have there, Cyril.
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128 1 MR. DRAFFIN: Okay, Ross and Travis, thank 2 you very much. So, that concludes Nuclear Industry 3 Council's comments on Subpart B.
4 MS. VALLIERE: Thank you. Thank you.
5 Yeah, thank you to all the USNIC presenters. You've 6 certainly given us a lot to think about and we 7 appreciate your insights.
8 I guess I'll just pause for a minute here.
9 Bill, do you have any high-level comments you want to 10 make before we move on to the next presentation from 11 NEI? And I note that NEI will touch on some of the 12 same issues.
13 MR. RECKLEY: I guess I'll just -- the one 14 that was maybe a recurring theme, at least mentioned 15 in a couple of the areas, our intent, and I think 16 we've been straightforward on this, has always been 17 that NEI 18-04, licensing modernization, would be one 18 way to meet the Part 53 requirements. And so I'll 19 acknowledge we had that in mind as we were developing 20 the language. We were not trying to require it, but 21 having in mind that NEI 18-04 was one way to meet it 22 definitely influenced how it was written.
23 So, your comments will give us some things 24 to think about and maybe go back and look at the 25 specific language if it got too specific.
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129 1 On the other hand, and this is an issue 2 that we've always had, that when we've worked with NEI 3 or we've worked with owner's groups or any group of 4 applicants to come up with guidance like, in this 5 case, NEI 18-04, it's one acceptable way and we'll 6 acknowledge it's only one acceptable way. If 7 individual designers or if groups, if there's a 8 technology or other consideration, would want to 9 develop, let's say, an alternate approach to defense-10 in-depth than that presented in NEI 18-04, or 11 alternate risk criteria to the QHOs, which is also 12 included in NEI 18-04, then we would certainly -- we'd 13 be able to work with and cooperate with any other 14 entity or organization that wanted to maybe step up 15 and develop alternative guidance to that.
16 So, I'll just leave it at that and we can 17 get into the next presentation.
18 MS. VALLIERE: Okay. Thanks, Bill. And 19 now we're going to turn the floor over to NEI to 20 present their thoughts.
21 Marc, are you ready to present your slides 22 on Subpart B?
23 MR. NICHOL: Yeah. This is Marc. Can you 24 hear me?
25 MS. VALLIERE: Yes, we can. Go ahead.
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130 1 MR. NICHOL: Okay. Excellent. Thank you.
2 So, thank you for the opportunity to present on this 3 topic. We actually benefitted greatly from your 4 explanation in the last meeting. And, with that, we 5 had put together what I think were some pretty 6 well-though-out ideas and alternatives, you know, 7 building on what you all had proposed in Subpart B and 8 trying to improve upon that, while still being 9 consistent, especially in the areas where we agreed 10 with you. So this presentation will go into more 11 depth and background on the letter we sent with those 12 formal comments.
13 We can go to the next slide. And, I 14 think, actually forward on to the next one.
15 So, I'm going to start talking about the 16 safety criteria. This is the Subpart B. Your Subpart 17 B had more than just the safety criteria, I'll address 18 those other requirements as well, but I want to talk 19 about the safety criteria. And you started out with 20 safety objectives -- I'll skip safety functions --
21 safety objectives, and then two tiers of criteria.
22 And, from your explanation, we really got 23 the understanding that there was a tier that was 24 dedicated toward reasonable assurance of adequate 25 protection, and then there was a tier dedicated toward NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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131 1 what we call extra-adequate protection. I know you 2 called it minimized danger, which is the term used in 3 the Atomic Energy Act. I'm told by my lawyers that 4 extra-adequate protection is actually the preferred 5 term of art in the legal world because it has a 6 greater meaning to it.
7 So, we recognize -- or we understood that 8 that's what you were trying to do. And so, within 9 that, we agree and we believe that the primary focus 10 really should be on a reasonable assurance of adequate 11 protection since that's really the legal standard for 12 licensing.
13 And, along the lines of some of the 14 feedback you got in terms of clarifying what 15 reasonable assurance of adequate protection means, we 16 included that into all our alternative-proposed draft 17 rule text, really basing a lot of it on the NRO 2018 18 memorandum that went toward clarifying some of that, 19 and especially making sure that it's clear that it 20 doesn't mean elimination of all risk. And that's very 21 key there, back to the regulatory philosophy comment I 22 had made earlier in the meeting.
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132 1 that's referenced here that sort of clarifies that.
2 But we also know that the NRC has clarified that the 3 focus of this extra-adequate protection really needs 4 to be on substantial safety benefits that are 5 justified by economic costs. And so that's an 6 important element to capture in the regulations, which 7 wasn't there before. And so you'll see from our 8 alternative proposed draft rule text that we also 9 provide that context.
10 And so, within that, we also recognize the 11 NRC's proposal for two tiers was a little bit complex, 12 or maybe overly complex, and it was really difficult 13 to figure out how those work. That was actually part 14 of -- I think that is a root of part of my challenge 15 with understanding Subpart C, is that's where you 16 really start to see how it becomes complex to 17 implement two tiers.
18 And so in our proposed change or 19 alternative it's still separated. And so we propose a 20 requirement for reasonable assurance of adequate 21 protection, and we proposed another requirement for 22 extra-adequate protection. The criteria under -- we 23 believe this is largely consistent with what the NRC 24 was proposing. Under the reasonable assurance of 25 adequate protection requirement, the criteria of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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133 1 rem for what we call infrequent events would be there.
2 Infrequent events is the term for what would capture 3 design basis accidents. And so part of my comment 4 earlier today is we could structure the requirements 5 without defining classifications, and that would be 6 the way to do it, term it as an infrequent event 7 rather than a design basis accident.
8 And then the other requirement for 9 extra-adequate protection, this is where you get your 10 normal operating conditions, including, you know, if 11 somebody had an AOO, that would be a normal operating 12 condition.
13 And then you have another criteria for 14 rare events. And this would be, presumably, design 15 basis events, but, again, not having to use that term.
16 And so for those very rare events.
17 And so we think by setting it up that way 18 that, once we start to develop these other safety 19 construct requirements, it will be much cleaner to tie 20 them to these two requirements and be able to specify 21 what additional requirements apply to things that are 22 being provided to meet adequate protection versus 23 what's needed to meet extra-adequate protection.
24 So, we do think that it's consistent. You 25 know, and we tried to simplify the language as well.
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134 1 I'll get into a little bit of clarity of language 2 later within that.
3 There was a difference, one major 4 difference -- and if you can go to the next slide now 5 -- one major difference between what the alternative 6 group proposed and what you had. And it really gets 7 into the area of ALARA. And, you know, I didn't 8 mention it specifically; there was the effluent dose 9 releases that you had in there, as well. So, I sort 10 of consider that as a type of ALARA, a more 11 prescriptive ALARA requirement. And we didn't see 12 that the ALARA really is needed for Part 53 13 requirements.
14 Now, there is a cost for regulatory 15 compliance. We don't really think there's a 16 substantial safety benefit. Part of my comment 17 earlier today is regulating to safe and not trying to 18 regulate ever-increasing levels of safety. Safe is 19 safe. So let's be safe. But, beyond that, let that 20 be to the discretion of the licensee.
21 And we do plan to implement ALARA 22 practices. They make sense. They're wise practices.
23 And, you know, even the Commission had noted a while 24 back that the concept is intended to be an operating 25 principle, not an absolute. And so I really take that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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135 1 to mean that, hey, it's a guiding principle. If you 2 can do it, you know, implement it the way it makes 3 sense to you. I don't really think that it's 4 something the NRC has to require.
5 For either of those, you know, it's 6 certainly not adequate protection, and I don't think 7 it's really necessary for extra-adequate protection 8 because you've already got the criteria for normal 9 operating conditions, 100 millirem to the public, or, 10 for the rare events, which the NRC proposed QHOs.
11 We'll talk about alternatives for that a little bit 12 later here.
13 So that really would be the argument about 14 why ALARA is not really needed. It's not that it's 15 not a good idea. It's not that industry won't 16 implement it at the plant. It's just a matter of not 17 really needing to fall within the NRC's regulatory 18 footprint.
19 We do know that this would be a difference 20 and a change. We don't think that there would be any 21 negative impact to safety. As I mentioned, safety is 22 focused on those safety criteria, not how you can 23 cost-justify it going down to lower levels of safety.
24 And we did mention in our letter that if, 25 you know, the NRC wanted some greater assurance that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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136 1 industry actually is going to look at doing ALARA 2 programs, that you could issue a policy statement 3 encouraging industry to do ALARA, similar to the 4 advanced reactor policy statement, which encouraged 5 industry to develop advanced reactor designs that have 6 improved safety levels. And we follow that. We 7 believe in that policy statement. And I think you see 8 the advanced reactor designs that are coming about do 9 have increased levels of safety.
10 So, next slide, please. Now I'll talk 11 about the quantitative health objectives. And we've 12 talked for more than two months with our members about 13 this. It's been a topic of great conversation and 14 great insight. I would say that there are people that 15 do like quantitative health objectives in the rules, 16 and there are people that don't like the QHOs in the 17 rules.
18 NEI has not yet taken a position on it as 19 an industry position. We do plan to do so at the 20 right time, but we think that, more than that, it 21 deserves some more detailed discussion. It's not a 22 light topic to just pop the QHOs into the requirements 23 and move forward. We think that needs to be really 24 well-thought-out and it really needs to be a 25 deliberate decision.
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137 1 The reason is: this would be the first 2 time the QHOs are in the rules. And the Commission 3 always intended the QHOs to be as a policy statement, 4 not in the rules. So this would be something to 5 really do with a lot of forethought.
6 I do want to make sure that we all 7 understand that whether the QHO is in a policy 8 statement or whether it's in the rules, the level of 9 safety of the plant is the same. The design, the 10 analysis, the NRC scope of review, they are the same.
11 The QHOs will have to be met regardless of being a 12 policy statement or a regulation.
13 So, that's not the consideration. The 14 difference is in legal compliance with the 15 requirements. And so, if the QHOs are in the policy 16 statement, there's no legal compliance because, you 17 know, there's no requirement to legally comply with.
18 And so, if it is in the rules, then there is.
19 So, let's go to the next slide. There are 20 two options here that we've discussed and come up 21 with. One is the QHOs in the rule language. And if 22 it were in the rule language, we would propose framing 23 it differently. We think that this framing is more 24 precise, accurate, and leads to less confusion, but is 25 otherwise largely the same as what the NRC proposed.
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138 1 And the other is, if the QHO is in the 2 policy statement, the question is, well, what is the 3 criteria for -- under extra-adequate protection, what 4 is the criteria for these rare events, or what we 5 typically call beyond design basis events? Well, we 6 think that the alternative there could be similar to 7 what's done under Part 50/52 and equivalent to 50.155, 8 which is the mitigation of beyond design basis events.
9 And if we did that, then we could write more 10 technology-inclusive performance-based language for 11 Part 53. This is the language that we had come up 12 with.
13 So, that's how we see it. And I really 14 would like to understand from the NRC -- so this is a 15 question I hope you will respond to in this meeting, 16 because it came up in Subpart C where it appeared that 17 even if the -- you know, the NRC is requiring 18 mitigation of beyond design basis events even if the 19 QHOs are in the rule. So, we see it as an either/or.
20 I don't know if the NRC sees it as, regardless of 21 where the QHOs are, you're still going to have a 22 requirement for mitigation, or if you also see it as 23 an either/or. So, hopefully at the end of my 24 presentation you might be able to shed some light on 25 that.
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139 1 Next slide, please. This is looking at 2 the advantages of the QHOs in the rule versus the 3 disadvantages. This doesn't look at the opposite, 4 which is what are advantages of QHO in the policy 5 statement. It's not exactly an inverse of that, but 6 it's close enough.
7 So, I will talk through this a little bit.
8 And on the advantages side, we do recognize that 9 there is enhancements to the regulatory stability, 10 because if the QHOs are in the regulations, then it's 11 harder for these limits to change or for arbitrary 12 judgments to be made on the QHO. So there is some 13 regulatory stability.
14 Likewise, there's some additional clarity 15 that's provided by having specific limits of 16 acceptable risk to the public for these beyond design 17 basis events, specifically, you know, in the risk 18 areas that are presented in there.
19 Having the QHOs in the rule ensures that 20 the regulations are explicitly -- that the regulations 21 explicitly result in the risk levels that comply with 22 the QHOs. And the QHOs -- I'm going to combine a 23 couple -- the QHOs are also the maximum acceptable 24 consequences, and, therefore, avoid more conservative 25 surrogate requirements. And so there is a lot of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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140 1 benefit in that in terms of not being overly 2 conservative in that area.
3 And the QHOs are understandable to the 4 public because they're expressed in terms of public 5 health effects. That's latent cancers and immediate 6 health effects. And we believe that if the QHOs are 7 in the rule, then they could eliminate the need for 8 mitigation on beyond design basis events.
9 Now, on the disadvantages side, including 10 that QHOs can increase regulatory uncertainty because 11 it would establish the requirements without specifying 12 the consequence limits. So, if you look at the other 13 criteria, 25 rem for adequate protection, 100 millirem 14 for normal operations, this would not specify the 15 consequence limits.
16 So the question is: what are the doses for 17 immediate fatalities and latent cancers that would be 18 acceptable? The answer is: it's fairly complex. And, 19 you know, to the best of my understanding, the only 20 place it's documented currently is in computer codes, 21 analytical codes, like MACCS.
22 Now, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be 23 specified in guidance. And certainly, if QHOs were in 24 the rules, then we would push for these consequence 25 limits being in guidance. But not having them in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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141 1 rule, they could be subject to change. That reduces 2 some regulatory stability if they were.
3 The other thing, I did mention earlier 4 that the Commission's intent was not to have the QHOs 5 as limits, but rather as goals. So including them in 6 the regulations would make them limits.
7 And then there is increasing licensing 8 risks. The complexity of demonstrating QHOs are met 9 are high. Now, that complexity is not eliminated by 10 keeping them in a policy statement, but the complexity 11 or the difficulty in demonstrating it in the legal 12 compliance space increases. There's also some 13 subjectivity to changes and some societal risks that 14 could force changes to the facility design if they're 15 in the rules. I think there's less flexibility in 16 that area. And I mentioned how these analyses would 17 be used for legal compliance.
18 The last one here is an unknown. We 19 looked at the history of the QHOs. The NRC 20 discontinued its efforts, back in 2000, to update the 21 safety goals. And it was really the staff was 22 pursuing it, the Commission said don't do it, let's 23 get more insights from risk decision-making and then 24 do it. So the question would be, if we're putting 25 QHOs in the rules, would it necessitate a need to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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142 1 update the QHOs at that time? So, that would be a key 2 uncertainty.
3 And the purpose of putting these 4 advantages and disadvantages up here is to create 5 discussion. As I said, we haven't taken a position on 6 it. We'd invite the NRC's reflection on these 7 advantages and disadvantages. And it's not to say 8 that, you know, putting it in the rule is all for the 9 best or putting it in the rule is all for the worst.
10 There's arguments on both sides. And so I just want 11 to make sure we collectively make our decisions with 12 full information.
13 Next slide, please. Somewhat related to 14 the QHOs is this topic of quantitative frequencies.
15 Even in the 25 rem, the NRC had put in there 16 frequencies greater than once in 10,000 years. And, 17 again, some people like to have quantitative 18 frequencies in the rules. Others prefer to have the 19 quantitative frequencies in guidance and then use 20 qualitative frequencies in the rule.
21 So I did want to, again, stimulate 22 conversation and make sure we're making a 23 well-informed decision. And, again, whether the 24 quantitative frequencies are in the rule or whether 25 they're in guidance, the level of safety is the same.
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143 1 The applicant's design, analysis, and scope of review 2 are the same. It's just a matter of what are the 3 additional benefits or disadvantages of putting them 4 in the rule.
5 And so, here, the third sub-bullet under 6 the first bullet is really a comparison of what it 7 would look with qualitative versus quantitative 8 frequencies. The first italicized brackets is the 9 qualitative frequencies. So, here, where we're 10 talking about infrequent events, this is for adequate 11 protection of 25 rem. And frequent events would be 12 ones that are not expected to occur in the lifetime of 13 a nuclear power plant. That's a qualitative. And 14 then in guidance we would say not have expected 15 frequency greater than once in 10,000 years. Or, if 16 the quantitative were in the rule, you would say that 17 infrequent events are those that have expected 18 frequencies greater than once in 10,000 years.
19 The other thing I'll point out, just in 20 terms of what we think is better clarity of rule text, 21 we eliminated some extraneous words. And so it does 22 read slightly different than the NRC's, but from a 23 technical perspective it comes to the same conclusion.
24 Again, including quantitative frequencies 25 in the rule would be a first of the kind, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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144 1 certainly there would be more stability from that 2 because the values are more difficult to change in the 3 future. But we do need to consider potential for 4 unforeseen complications. There's been expressed a 5 concern that the role of the PRA in demonstrating 6 legal compliance would increase.
7 I think we see that reflected in Subpart C 8 where you have many more prescriptive requirements on 9 PRA and what we would do. And I note that, you know, 10 Peter Hastings had made a cautionary comment about 11 that. And then also what happens is the state of the 12 art of the PRA continues to change over time.
13 Next slide, please. I mentioned the 14 related requirements. And in our letter we did not 15 propose alternatives for those because I think they 16 fit better with what's been put into Subpart C, you 17 know, the design features and those sorts of things.
18 The licensing basis events, the 19 defense-in-depth, the safety functions, those all sort 20 of fit together in what we're calling the safety 21 construct.
22 And so we wanted to focus now on just the 23 safety criteria, and we intend to come back and 24 address those safety functions, LBEs, defense-in-25 depth, when we make comments on Subpart C. So I want NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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145 1 to make sure you're aware of that.
2 Similar to USNIC, we think that for 3 occupational exposure the NRC proposal wouldn't be 4 consistent with Part 50/52. It really -- and similar 5 to NRC's proposal for ALARA -- moves it from a 6 radiation protection program into design constraints.
7 And that would be new and we don't think it is really 8 justified. So we would propose to address 9 occupational exposure similar to Part 20. You know, 10 our proposal that would not have requirements in Part 11 53 for ALARA would need to figure out how to address 12 those Part 20 requirements that are related to ALARA 13 that would not apply to Part 53. But that could 14 easily be done.
15 Administrative requirements. There will 16 be a whole bunch of these that I think we'll need to 17 put together as we go forward. One is the NRC's 18 authority for new requirements. That was in one of 19 your criteria. I think the comments back at the last 20 meeting, we took it to mean that, oh my gosh, every 21 application you're going to come up with new 22 requirements here. Your comment was, no, this is 23 really the NRC's authority to do that. And we agreed.
24 And we do also acknowledge it has some limitations, 25 like a backfitting. So, those could be rolled up NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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146 1 together somewhere in an administrative subpart.
2 I touched mostly on some specific areas 3 for performance-based language. And, really, when we 4 write these, we want to avoid unnecessary language.
5 So, wherever we don't need a word, don't include the 6 word; wherever a word or term or phrase is ambiguous, 7 don't use it in that way. Make sure it's clear and 8 precise. That will avoid complications.
9 So, some of the terms that were used, 10 "high confidence," "upper bound," I think those were 11 mainly used for quantitative frequencies. And, you 12 know, we may have some technical comments about 13 whether those are the right things or not, but they're 14 better included in guidance rather than rule language.
15 And I think you'll see our alternatives to 16 quantitative requirements show how you could eliminate 17 them.
18 And then there were a lot of repeating of 19 similar information which every time it's in there --
20 and I'll just pick on the term "design features and 21 programs will be included to demonstrate" -- or every 22 time you include the same thing over and over and over 23 again, that's a new requirement that has to be 24 demonstrated. And especially if it's phrased 25 differently, then that's going to come up with all NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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147 1 kinds of complications.
2 So, the idea here would be simple, not 3 repetitive, in that regard. That was part of the 4 thinking we tried to put into our alternative proposed 5 draft language, which we think it accomplishes the 6 exact same thing you did in your safety criteria. And 7 so we look forward to your feedback on that.
8 Next slide. I'll go through quickly here.
9 I know the meeting is coming close to an end. Also in 10 our letter we proposed success criteria, or you could 11 also call them project requirements. And this is 12 success criteria for what does a successful Part 53 13 look like?
14 And this follows up from our October 15 letter with a systematic approach where you start by 16 defining the -- having the end in mind and defining 17 what the end product needs to look like. In this 18 case, it's the final Part 53 rule. And then you can 19 work toward those requirements. And it gives a lot of 20 benefits.
21 One is you can make sure that you're 22 working towards success the entire time, because you 23 already know what it looks like. You could use that 24 to plan discussions for these meetings with 25 stakeholders and also guide the development.
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148 1 What the success criteria did not do is 2 define, you know, how to do it or the process to do 3 it. That's really not the intent. And so you'll see 4 things within our success criteria like, you know, 5 defining the safety construct or the safety criteria, 6 things we're talking about now, but also things like 7 defining the types of licenses to be approved, what is 8 the application process. We also identified in there 9 operations, construction, that sort of thing.
10 So, having that all laid out together I 11 think actually helps facilitate what was discussed 12 earlier today, which is alignment on the grand vision 13 of Part 53 and how everything fits together. That's 14 one of the benefits of the success criteria, is it 15 shows how everything is fitting together. So we 16 encourage NRC feedback on that.
17 And when we developed these project 18 requirements, we aligned them with both the NEIMA and 19 the vision and goals that we proposed in our October 20 letter. So we think that there's great alignment 21 there. And while we intended to be exhaustive, we do 22 expect additional criteria to be identified, just as 23 further clarification of the scope or as we start to 24 realize we forgot things.
25 Next slide. This is just a listing of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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149 1 some of the higher level ones. I mentioned a couple 2 of these. But, even in terms of defining, well, what 3 are the licenses, you know, starting to talk about how 4 is this going to fit back with 50 and 52 is going to 5 help, because if the NRC has a vision of how 53 fits 6 with 50 and 52 and it's different than what 7 stakeholders are thinking in 50, 52, and 53 working 8 together, then that's going to lead to a lot of 9 differences in perspectives on how the details within 10 each of these requirements work.
11 And I'll just take the Part 20 as an 12 example. That's probably the first one that came up.
13 You know, is the intent to have radiation protection 14 all in Part 53? Is it to reference completely to Part 15 20? Is it to, you know, somehow recognize that not 16 all of Part 20, specifically ALARA requirements, don't 17 need to apply, and that's what needs to be worked out?
18 Or even there was an earlier discussion about 19 security. How is security going to fit in?
20 I think that we really should discuss an 21 integrated approach to safety and security. Whether 22 at the end of the day that makes sense to put into 23 Part 53 or not needs to really come out of a 24 discussion. I think that there's a lot of potential 25 benefit to doing that, but, anyway, that's what this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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150 1 type of document can drive.
2 Next slide, please. We need some feedback 3 on some ACRS recommendations. The first is addressing 4 uncertainties. We didn't really agree with their 5 assessment on this. We think, first, we did agree 6 that a systematic approach needs to be done to address 7 uncertainties. We really think that this can be done 8 with modern tools. Specifically, NEI 18-04, we think, 9 does this. And so we disagreed with their presumption 10 that you have to use deterministic postulated worst 11 case approaches for all designs.
12 We think a better approach would be to 13 focus on these more risk-informed things that's being 14 developed, but also allow flexibility for 15 deterministic if that's the approach that works best, 16 but that not be, you know, the primary focus. Similar 17 prototype licensing should be an option, but it 18 shouldn't be required.
19 And then the GDC, the ACRS seem to imply 20 that the GDC from Part 50 should be included in Part 21 53. Maybe a technology-inclusive adopted -- or 22 adapted, I should say. We really -- based on our 23 experience with the ARDC and trying to be 24 technology-inclusive, it seems really difficult to 25 come up with a set of design criteria for Part 53 that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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151 1 would be applicable to all designs.
2 So, while we think design criteria need to 3 be addressed in Part 53, we don't think a set of it 4 that applies to all reactors is the best way to do it.
5 So we're looking at proposing an alternative approach 6 when we make comments to Subpart C and the other 7 requirements from Subpart B that we didn't comment on 8 yet.
9 I think that's all I had, if there's any 10 questions or feedback.
11 MS. VALLIERE: Thank you, Marc. We 12 appreciate NEI's comments on Subpart B and the other 13 topics you covered.
14 Bill, do you have any comments you'd like 15 to make before we move on to our final stakeholder 16 presentation?
17 MR. RECKLEY: No, not specifically. Was 18 there something, Marc, that you were looking 19 specifically for feedback from us?
20 MR. NICHOL: Yeah. There was one specific 21 question, if you're able to answer it now. And that 22 is: you proposed the QHOs in the requirements, and 23 then today we saw there was a potential requirement 24 for mitigation of beyond design basis events. We 25 would see that if QHOs are in the rule, then there's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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152 1 no need for a mitigation of beyond design basis event 2 requirement. That it's one or the other.
3 And I was wondering if you saw it as one 4 or the other, or if you see it as, regardless of where 5 QHOs go, you are also going to need a mitigation of 6 beyond design basis event requirement.
7 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. I mean, we were 8 trying to capture things to make sure we didn't lose 9 anything, and where that showed up is if not covered 10 in the PRA. So, my own personal thought is that, for 11 example, if you were using NEI 18-04, you would 12 probably disposition that as being covered. It would 13 require a little bit of additional guidance, because 14 keep in mind that 51.55 is not for beyond design basis 15 events. It's for a specific beyond design basis event 16 that's actually defined within the rule. But we did 17 want to make sure we didn't lose that thought, and 18 gave it some further consideration.
19 So, I know we had -- even as we were 20 writing it, we knew there were more work to be done in 21 that area, but -- so I generally agree with you that, 22 as we matured this, if you followed a probabilistic 23 approach and had a metric like QHOs, that you could 24 probably not need to do anything in addition to 25 satisfy the mitigation part of 51.55.
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153 1 We also have to look at the loss of large 2 area part of 51.55, and that's going to be an area of 3 additional discussion. So, we know this is a work in 4 progress. And, you know, I'll be honest, we haven't 5 thought all of this all the way through.
6 MR. NICHOL: Yeah. And you'll see that --
7 and they're on the slide now at 60 there. So, if you 8 look at the bottom bullet, that also addresses loss of 9 large area. So, we try to take that entire thing and 10 say, well, you know, adequate protection comes from 11 assuring that the -- and I'll just use the design 12 basis accident even though that's not the terms we're 13 using -- design basis accident, so less than 25 rem.
14 But there are accidents with, you know, that are 15 beyond that, and we need to have a cutoff for that as 16 well, that are beyond that that we need to have a 17 little bit of extra-adequate protection.
18 And so we said, well, if we didn't use 19 QHO, then how would you do that extra-adequate 20 protection for these beyond design basis events? And 21 the conclusion was, well, you could mitigate them, 22 because the mitigation is a very good approach. And 23 you can see here that the types of mitigation you need 24 to be able to -- the capability to maintain or restore 25 the fundamental safety functions, you know, access and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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154 1 use of offsite. And that could apply to anything 2 that's a beyond design basis event.
3 So, anyway, we --
4 MR. RECKLEY: No, this is very useful and 5 it gives us some things to think about. Again, you 6 know, you have to be careful as you're bringing things 7 -- and you cautioned us, and then I'll return the 8 caution of bringing things over back and forth between 9 50, especially Part 50, and what we're proposing here.
10 You know, 51.55 was added to a set of 11 plants that had pretty much well-defined requirements 12 already, including compliance with station blackout 13 rule and things like that. And so we added this in 14 that context.
15 If we went to your proposed language, you 16 know, we would end up still having to discuss, in my 17 opinion, having to discuss a probabilistic element to 18 this, which is: would your wording, the proposed 19 wording on the slide, simply require one success path?
20 And is it clear that one success path is always okay?
21 For 51.55, we were able to evaluate that 22 in the context of it was being added onto a set of 23 requirements in terms of the existing accident 24 analysis, as well as things like the emergency 25 procedures and the requirements that were added for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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155 1 the 9/11 orders and all of that. So, it was added on 2 in that context.
3 And so, as we look to come back, it may 4 very well be a proposal, but there would still be then 5 questions we'd have to answer that, in my own opinion, 6 are resolved, actually, by referring to the QHOs.
7 So, anyway, we'll look at your wording, 8 and it's a good point of discussion.
9 MR. NICHOL: Yeah. And just to provide 10 clarity as you think through it -- and we'll just take 11 station blackout as one. So, let's say a plant 12 identifies a station blackout as a beyond design basis 13 event. So it would fall under this requirement.
14 Well, the requirement would be to maintain or restore 15 the fundamental safety function. So, let's just say 16 that plant's fundamental safety function is core 17 cooling.
18 Well, if it can provide core cooling 19 without electric power, then a station blackout is not 20 really an issue. So, boom, that whole issue goes away 21 for them. Or, if it is an issue for them, well, they 22 may need to have some ability to address the station 23 blackout.
24 So I think it does give that flexibility 25 to think through it without adding in a lot of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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156 1 complexity and prescription. So I think it's fairly 2 flexible from a technology-inclusive approach, but --
3 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. It may be. We'll 4 look at it. Thank you.
5 I guess it is approaching 4:30. So, Nan 6 or Bob, if we want to go on to --
7 MS. VALLIERE: Yeah. So, I think next 8 we're going to turn the floor over to Michael Keller 9 from Hybrid Power Technologies.
10 Michael, are you on the line and prepared 11 to present your slides on Subpart B?
12 (Pause.)
13 MS. VALLIERE: So, perhaps Michael was not 14 able to join us today. So, Michael's slides are in --
15 go ahead, Bob. Were you going to say something?
16 MR. BEALL: Yes. Mike, can you unmute 17 your phone if you're on the line? Or put something in 18 the chat window if you are.
19 (Pause.)
20 MS. VALLIERE: So, Bob, it appears, as I 21 was saying, that he was not able to join us today.
22 MR. BEALL: Yes.
23 MS. VALLIERE: So, perhaps we can just 24 alert the other attendees to the fact that his slides 25 are included in the slide package that you referenced NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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157 1 early in today's meeting. And that can be found in 2 the public meeting page on the NRC's public website.
3 And so I guess at this point I'll ask --
4 we have had some raised. Is that correct?
5 MR. BEALL: Yes, we have two.
6 MS. VALLIERE: Yes. Mr. Kee first?
7 MR. BEALL: Yes, ma'am. So, Ernest, if 8 you could unmute your phone?
9 DR. KEE: Hi. I promise to leave after 10 this comment, but I did go back and look at the AEA as 11 amended, and I think Congress has it right that 12 reasonable assurance with adequate protection is 13 called out in two places there with regard to 14 temporary or interim use. And that's Section 189 and 15 192.
16 But Section 189 and 192 -- and Section 17 182, which is, I think, what we're up against here --
18 it, in my opinion, purposely leaves off the reasonable 19 assurance. So I'll just leave it at that.
20 And with regard to the discussion around 21 probabilistic risk assessments and, most recently, 22 quantitative health objectives, I want to warn y'all 23 that we don't have the law of large -- this isn't like 24 automobile accidents where you can find frequencies of 25 different kinds of consequences. We don't have that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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158 1 here. And so it's very valuable in probabilistic risk 2 assessment to look at the scenarios, like I think 3 people have said earlier, what will take you to a 4 problem?
5 But when you go to assigned probabilities, 6 this becomes kind of, I think, a bridge too far, 7 especially -- I mean, we don't have enough data even 8 in the existing reactor fleet. One hundred reactors, 9 we don't have the law of large numbers even close on 10 our side, especially domestically.
11 Now, if we now go to advanced reactors 12 where nothing exists, they haven't even been built 13 yet, then I just think this indicates caution on 14 trying to assign probabilities, and I would go back to 15 saying let's be careful with that. That's all I have 16 to say.
17 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Thank you. I'll use 18 this as an opportunity to plug an effort the NRC 19 didn't do, this was a DOE initiative working with EPRI 20 and Vanderbilt and some others, to look at basically 21 going to -- from process hazard analysis, or other 22 tools, and using those assessments that are not as 23 focused on the probabilities to then inform and build 24 the PRA.
25 The other aspect is I think we will all NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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159 1 have to be comfortable with large uncertainties as 2 PRAs are used.
3 And that might be a little different than 4 what we were accustomed to, but that actually can be a 5 good thing to use the PRA, acknowledge that there's 6 large uncertainties in -- but continue to use it as a 7 tool.
8 But anyway, I'll leave it there. We have 9 more hands raised. So, Nan or Bob?
10 MR. BEALL: Yeah. I think the next one is 11 Ed Lyman. So, you can unmute, please.
12 MR. LYMAN: Hi. Can you hear me?
13 MR. BEALL: Yes, sir.
14 MR. LYMAN: Hi. Thanks. A few comments.
15 So, I had to laugh when the NIC presentation suggested 16 that you define "adequate protection" in the context 17 of this rule. And just looking at the schedule you 18 have, the idea that you can actually do that and 19 resolve an issue, which I think has been discussed for 20 -- since the Atomic Energy Act was originally passed, 21 that you can do that by the end of this year is -- I 22 assume you understand how absurd that is.
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160 1 periodically that that isn't necessary.
2 On the QHOs, we certainly don't support 3 the use of the current numerical values for the QHOs 4 in any kind of new rule.
5 As you know, the QHOs do not even -- they 6 are -- greatly exceed the risk profile for the current 7 fleet looking at SECY -- let us see,97-208, where the 8 staff pointed out that a core damage frequency of ten 9 to the minus 4th per year is more stringent than the 10 QHOs.
11 So, given the CDF of the fleet average is 12 less than that, that means the QHOs are much less 13 protective than even the current fleet. So, including 14 them in a rule for advanced reactors, which arguably, 15 you know, are not supposed to be safer than the 16 current fleet, but certainly not less safe, so I think 17 without revising them and updating them they should 18 not be included.
19 And certainly without an additional 20 societal risk QHO that would address the issue of land 21 contamination and non-individual risk end points.
22 The other aspect of the QHOs and trying to 23 -- because they're explicitly in terms of cancer risk 24 and (audio interference) cancer risk, the linkage of 25 those to actual fatality risk is not a uniform linkage NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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161 1 across the population.
2 In fact, as the NRC or in all other 3 federal agencies are going to have to grapple with the 4 issue of racial equity and discrimination in their 5 regulatory processes, I think you're going to have to 6 take a hard look at whether using these uniform risk 7 metrics that don't take into account the pathway 8 between being exposed to a carcinogen, you're actually 9 dying of cancer, which is rooted in discrimination and 10 racial inequity in access to healthcare and all those 11 other factors. You're going to have to grapple with 12 that. We're going to make sure that you grapple with 13 that.
14 My final point -- well, actually I had a 15 question and it was to Mr. Nichol. He compared two 16 numbers which I think are not direct comparisons and I 17 just want to make sure I understood that.
18 So, could the NRC clarify when he put 19 events -- this is slide 59 of the slide deck. He 20 compared events between 1 in 10,000 years and 5 in 10 21 million years where the first was the reference to the 22 -- sounds like a reference to core damage frequency, 23 but the second is the QHO. And that isn't core damage 24 frequency. That's individual latent fatality risk.
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162 1 going on there? Thank you.
2 MR. RECKLEY: I think, and since it's not 3 my slide, but I think the 1 in 10,000 to 5 in 10 4 million are relating to basically back to the 5 licensing modernization. That is the band that we 6 refer to in Reg Guide 1.233 and referencing NEI 18-04 7 as the beyond design basis event category.
8 And so, as we were developing this 9 language in Part 53, we used the 1 in 10,000 --
10 MR. LYMAN: But those are apples to 11 oranges. Isn't 5 in 10 million, isn't that the QHO --
12 (Simultaneous speaking.)
13 MR. RECKLEY: It actually does and it's 14 where the numbers correspond. It's also in -- and I 15 don't know. Maybe I can ask Marc to come in since I'm 16 trying to interpret his slide.
17 MR. NICHOL: Am I still through or do I 18 need to unmute?
19 MR. BEALL: No, Marc, you're still good.
20 MR. NICHOL: Okay. Yeah. No, that was 21 shorthand. So, the events to a frequency of 1 in 22 10,000 years is the adequate protection. That's 23 design basis events. And then events up to 5 in 10 24 million years, that's the cutoff for beyond design 25 basis events. So, that was just to reflect that.
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163 1 Those numbers aren't being compared there.
2 So, it's just basically saying beyond design basis 3 events are those that have a frequency between 1 in 4 10,000 years and 5 in 10 million years. And that's 5 consistent with LMP, NEI 18-04 and NRC-established 6 policy.
7 MR. LYMAN: So, let me ask what's the 8 physical origin for 5 in 10 million year core damage 9 frequency?
10 MR. NICHOL: That's not a core damage 11 frequency. That's --
12 MR. LYMAN: Then it's apples to oranges.
13 Those aren't the same units.
14 MR. NICHOL: Well, the 1 in 10 million 15 years is also events. They're both events. We don't 16 use core damage frequency for advanced reactors.
17 MR. LYMAN: No, the -- well, actually we 18 do, but it -- by saying 1 in 10,000 years in the rule 19 refers to a frequency of initiating event, right?
20 MR. RECKLEY: No, an event sequence. So, 21 it's not just the initiating event.
22 MR. LYMAN: Okay. The sequence. That's 23 the -- an event sequence. 5 in 10 million is what the 24 QHO -- that is likely in cancer fatality risk.
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164 1 a coincidence, but sort of a coincidence. It's also 2 within licensing modernization. The bottom frequency 3 --
4 MR. LYMAN: Okay. But what --
5 (Simultaneous speaking.)
6 MR. LYMAN: All right, but I wasn't aware 7 of that, but what is the technical rationale for that?
8 That's kind of odd.
9 MR. NICHOL: I'm not the expert on the LMP 10 approach. So, I can't answer.
11 MR. LYMAN: Possible the LMP screwed up.
12 I have to go back and look at it now.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Well, yeah. Well, and look 14 at the Reg Guide. I mean, we did give a fair amount 15 of consideration to how far down in the frequency 16 ranges you needed to look at events.
17 The proposal in NEI 18-04 was -- it was 18 the 5 in 10 million years. We thought that was a 19 reasonable number with the caveat, as we pointed out 20 in the regulatory guide, that it's not an absolute 21 floor.
22 That the PRA is going to be looking at 23 sequences at lower frequencies and you do need to go 24 down to lower frequencies to look for things like 25 cliff edge effects and other factors and uncertainty NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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165 1 to make sure there's no uncertainties that are going 2 to push the 5th or 95th percentile above that 3 frequency range.
4 MR. SEGALA: And, Bill, they also do 5 cumulative risk measure looking at all the event 6 sequences to compare against the QHOs in LMP as well.
7 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
8 MS. VALLIERE: Okay. I don't think we 9 have any other hands raised, do we, Bob?
10 MR. BEALL: No. I don't see anything 11 else.
12 Is there anybody on the bridge line that 13 would like to ask a question or make a comment? If 14 you do, please put something in the chat window or 15 unmute your phone with *6, please. Say something.
16 (Pause.)
17 MR. BEALL: Okay. Let's go to the next 18 slide. I think USNIC would like to make some closing 19 remarks.
20 Cyril?
21 MR. DRAFFIN: Thanks. This is Cyril 22 Draffin for the US Nuclear Industry Council. Go to 23 the next slide.
24 We certainly appreciate the opportunity to 25 have a dialog with the NRC staff regarding a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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166 1 streamlined Part 53 that meets the adequate protection 2 standard. It might be a challenge, but we think the 3 group is up to it and we can provide more comments on 4 the proposed Subparts C and F in the next couple 5 weeks.
6 And as Jeff Merrifield mentioned, we 7 suggest a more interactive workshop on Part 53 to 8 enable -- facilitate more dialog, raise some of the 9 issues that we've raised, and NEI has raised today, 10 and kind of go through some more of the details than 11 just long presentations and some response.
12 Bill had indicated that there might be an 13 all-day meeting. I know you had indicated earlier on 14 it might be in early February and we're happy to work 15 with the NRC to make that as constructive as possible.
16 On the last slide, we had just a reminder 17 that advanced reactors can be used for more than just 18 power generation and so we need to think through 19 nonpower applications as well.
20 And that every element of the licensing 21 process needs to be considered, and that includes 22 technical, administrative and procedural lines and the 23 Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, how they 24 interact with applicants, questions they ask, how they 25 overload in terms of duration of comments.
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167 1 So, it's not just what they recommend, but 2 also how much time it takes to work with them, what 3 their role is, as well as the Atomic Safety and 4 Licensing Board.
5 And then, finally, internationally we 6 refer to the Danishes for having some approaches that 7 could be applied in multiple countries and some 8 regulatory standards for quality assurance and others 9 so that Part 53 moves the entire world forward in 10 terms of licensing advanced reactors.
11 So, I'll return it to NRC for final 12 schedules.
13 MR. BEALL: Okay. Thank you, Cyril.
14 Are there any last questions or comments?
15 Please raise your hand using the Teams button.
16 (Pause.)
17 MR. BEALL: Okay. Well, on this slide it 18 provides an overview of the current Part 53 rulemaking 19 schedule. As you can see from this slide, we are 20 still on the first milestone where the staff is 21 performing public outreach, meeting with ACRS and 22 working on the draft final proposed rule package.
23 The staff has 16 months to complete these 24 activities before the draft proposed -- excuse me --
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168 1 to the Commission for review and approval. The staff 2 is still projecting that the Part 53 proposed rule be 3 published for public comment in October 2022.
4 Next slide, please. Slide 81. The staff 5 will be hosting additional public meetings every four 6 to six weeks. These public meetings will cover 7 additional topics and will include the release of 8 additional Part 53 preliminary proposed rule language.
9 The staff will continue to post all 10 preliminary proposed rule language and any comment 11 submittals received on the preliminary proposed rule 12 language on regulations.gov under docket ID NRC-2019-13 0062 prior to the public meeting.
14 The next Part 53 public meeting is 15 tentatively scheduled for early February 2021. And, 16 as Bill has mentioned, we're looking at making that a 17 full-day meeting.
18 The staff would also like to remind 19 everyone of the importance of receiving both 20 functional and technical feedback from stakeholders on 21 the preliminary proposed rule language. In the 22 upcoming months, stakeholders may need to determine if 23 they have the right level of support to review the 24 technical areas related to advanced nuclear reactors.
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169 1 proposed rule language will be more technical than 2 previous releases. And, as such, may require 3 technical experts to address and provide feedback.
4 Slide 82, please. The NRC staff will also 5 be hosting a meeting with the NRC Future Plant 6 Subcommittee to receive feedback on the Part 53 7 rulemaking. The first meeting will be on January 8 14th, 2021, to discuss Subparts B and F. Additional 9 ACRS meetings will be held every one to two months.
10 In addition, separate from the current 11 Part 53 public meetings, the NRC staff will have a 12 series of public meetings to discuss and receive 13 feedback on the regulatory framework for fusion energy 14 systems. The first of these public meetings will be 15 on January 26th, 2021.
16 Slide 83, please. In addition to have --
17 if you have additional input or suggestions for future 18 topics related to the Part 53 rulemaking, please send 19 an email to Bill and I at the email addresses on this 20 slide. Your interest and comments will provide --
21 will improve our rulemaking effort.
22 I also encourage you to monitor the Part 23 53 rulemaking docket ID -- again, that's NRC-2019-0062 24 -- on the regulations.gov website for updates and 25 important documents related to this rulemaking.
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170 1 Finally, we are always looking for ways to 2 improve our public meetings and your feedback is 3 important to us. At the end of this meeting, please 4 go to the NRC public meeting webpage, click on the 5 "Recently Held Meeting" button and look for this 6 meeting. The meeting feedback form will be at the 7 bottom of the meeting announcement.
8 I'd like to thank everyone for 9 participating in today's meeting and I hope everyone 10 has a good evening. Thank you very much for your 11 attendance. This will close the meeting for the day.
12 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 13 off the record at 4:45 p.m.)
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