ML21145A452
| ML21145A452 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/22/2021 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| Widmayer, D. ACRS | |
| References | |
| NRC-1491 | |
| Download: ML21145A452 (325) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Future Plant Designs Subcommittee Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: teleconference Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 Work Order No.: NRC-1491 Pages 1-241 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
2 3
4 DISCLAIMER 5
6 7 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONS 8 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 9
10 11 The contents of this transcript of the 12 proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 13 Commission Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, 14 as reported herein, is a record of the discussions 15 recorded at the meeting.
16 17 This transcript has not been reviewed, 18 corrected, and edited, and it may contain 19 inaccuracies.
20 21 22 23 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + +
4 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 5 (ACRS) 6 + + + + +
7 FUTURE PLANT DESIGNS SUBCOMMITTEE 8 + + + + +
9 THURSDAY 10 APRIL 22, 2021 11 + + + + +
12 The Subcommittee met via Teleconference, 13 at 9:31 a.m. EDT, Dennis Bley, Chairman, presiding.
14 COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
15 DENNIS BLEY, Chairman 16 RONALD G. BALLINGER, Member 17 VICKI M. BIER, Member 18 CHARLES H. BROWN, JR. Member 19 VESNA B. DIMITRIJEVIC, Member 20 GREGORY H. HALNON, Member 21 WALTER L. KIRCHNER, Member 22 JOSE MARCH-LEUBA, Member 23 DAVID A. PETTI, Member 24 JOY L. REMPE, Member 25 MATTHEW W. SUNSERI, Member NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 ACRS CONSULTANTS:
2 MICHAEL L. CORRADINI 3 STEPHEN SCHULTZ 4
5 DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL:
6 DEREK WIDMAYER 7
8 9
10 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 Opening Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3 10 CFR Part 53 - Subpart B - Technology-Inclusive 4 Safety Requirements - 2nd iteration . . . . . . . 10 5 10 CFR Part 53 - Subpart C - Design and Analysis 6 Requirements - 2nd iteration . . . . . . . . . . 89 7 Break 8 10 CFR Part 53 - Subpart C - Design and Analysis 9 Requirements - 2nd iteration (cont) . . . . . . 120 10 10 CFR Part 53 - Subpart E - Construction and 11 Manufacturing Requirements (continued from March 12 SC meeting) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 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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4 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 (9:31 a.m. EDT) 3 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Good morning. The meeting 4 will now come to order.
5 This is a meeting of the Advisory 6 Committee on Reactor Safeguard's Subcommittee on 7 Future Plant Designs.
8 I'm Dennis Bley, Chairman of the 9 subcommittee. ACRS members in attendance are Joy 10 Rempe, Ron Ballinger, Charlie Brown, Walt Kirchner, 11 Dave Petti, Vesna Dimitrijevic, Jose March-Leuba, and 12 Matt Sunseri.
13 I am pleased to welcome and introduce two 14 new members of the committee, Professor Vicky Bier 15 from the University of Wisconsin. I know she's coming 16 but I don't think she's here yet. And Mr. Greg 17 Halnon, who plays a (inaudible) experience, most 18 recently as President and Chief Nuclear Officer at GPU 19 Nuclear at FirstEnergy. Our consultant Mike Corradini 20 is also in attendance.
21 Derek Widmayer of the ACRS staff is the 22 designated federal official for this meeting. Ken 23 Power of the ACRS acts as the backup designated 24 federal official.
25 The purpose of today's meeting is to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 continue our discussions with the staff on preliminary 2 rule language for 10 CFR Part 53, Licensing and 3 Regulation of Advanced Nuclear Reactors. We will 4 discuss the staff's second iteration of Subpart B, 5 Technology-Inclusive Safety Requirements; and Subpart 6 C, Design and Analysis Requirements.
7 We will also continue our discussion of 8 Subpart E, Construction and Manufacturing 9 Requirements, that was begun at the March subcommittee 10 meeting.
11 The subcommittee will gather information, 12 analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate 13 proposed positions and actions, as appropriate.
14 This subcommittee meeting is the fourth of 15 several scheduled to discuss preliminary proposed rule 16 language of Part 53. The subcommittee will meet next 17 week, April 28th, to discuss possible topics for a 18 letter report, an interim letter report on the 19 proposed rulemaking language presented to the 20 subcommittee in its first four meetings.
21 We have scheduled a session for the 22 upcoming May full committee meeting to write an 23 interim report.
24 The ACRS was established by statute, and 25 it's governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 1 FACA. The NRC implements FACA in accordance with its 2 regulations found in Title 10 of the Code of Federal 3 Regulations, Part 7. The committee can only speak 4 through its published letter reports. We hold these 5 meetings to gather information and perform preparatory 6 work that will support our deliberations at full 7 committee meetings.
8 The rules for participation in all ACRS 9 meetings, including today's, were announced in the 10 Federal Register on June 13th of 2019. The ACRS 11 section of the USNRC public website provides our 12 charter, bylaws, agendas, letter reports, and 13 transcripts of all full and subcommittee meetings, 14 including the slide presentations.
15 The meeting notice and agenda for this 16 meeting were posted there.
17 As stated in the Federal Register notice 18 and in the public meeting notice posted to the 19 website, members of the public who desire to provide 20 written or oral input to the subcommittee may do so, 21 and should contact the designated federal official 22 five days prior to the meeting we talked about.
23 Today's meeting is open to public 24 attendance. And we have received one request to 25 provide an oral statement on the rulemaking language NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 from the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council. We have also 2 set aside time in the agenda for spontaneous comments 3 from members of the public attending or listening to 4 our meetings.
5 Attendees can provide comments to the NRC 6 staff at the stakeholders meetings convened by the 7 staff for that purpose, as well as through the 8 rulemaking docket, and are encouraged to continue to 9 use those avenues.
10 Due to the COVID pandemic, today's meeting 11 is being held over Microsoft Teams for ACRS and NRC 12 staff attendees. There is also a telephone bridge 13 line for participation of the public over the phone.
14 A transcript of today's meetings is being 15 kept, therefore, we request that meeting participants 16 on the bridge line identify themselves when they are 17 asked to speak, and speak with sufficient clarity and 18 volume so that they can be readily heard.
19 At this time I ask that attendees on Teams 20 and on the bridge line keep their devices on mute to 21 minimize disruptions, and unmute only when speaking.
22 We will now proceed with the meeting. And 23 I call on John Segala, Chief of the Advanced Reactor 24 Policy Branch of NRR to make introductory remarks.
25 John, you may go ahead.
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8 1 MR. SEGALA: Thank you and good morning.
2 Consistent with the Nuclear Energy 3 Innovation and Modernization Act, or NEIMA, we are 4 committed to developing a technology-inclusive, risk-5 informed, and performance-based regulatory framework 6 for a wide range of advanced reactor designs, and 7 publishing the final Part 53 rule by October of 2024, 8 in accordance with the Commission's directive 9 schedule. We are committed to a regulatory framework 10 for advanced reactors that achieves the goals of the 11 Commission's Advanced Reactor Policy Statement and the 12 NRC's Principles of Good Regulation.
13 We are having extensive stakeholder 14 engagement where we release preliminary rule language 15 to solicit feedback to better inform the staff's 16 proposals, and to ensure a shared understanding of 17 what will be included in the final rule.
18 As we are considering changes to the 19 previously-released preliminary rule language, we want 20 to ensure that we have appropriately considered the 21 feedback we have received from all stakeholders, 22 including the public, industry, standards development 23 organizations, trade groups, non-governmental 24 organizations, and the Advisory Committee on Reactor 25 Safeguards. Since we are at the early stages of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 rulemaking process, the draft preliminary rule 2 language will remain open for discussion as the staff 3 works towards providing the Commission a proposed 4 rule.
5 We are here today in the fourth of many 6 ACRS meetings we will be having this year to seek ACRS 7 feedback on NRC's development of Part 53 preliminary 8 proposed rule language for advanced reactors. We 9 previously briefed the ACRS subcommittee in January on 10 the first set of preliminary rule language in Subparts 11 B and F; in February on Subparts C and D; and in March 12 where stakeholders shared their insights and we 13 discussed the structure and logic of Part 53, key 14 guidance needed for Part 53, and Subpart E on 15 construction and manufacturing.
16 Today we plan to spend the majority of the 17 meeting focusing on initial changes we have made in a 18 second iteration of the preliminary rule language in 19 Subparts B and C, considering the wide range of 20 feedback we have received, and revisiting the key 21 elements of the Part 53 framework in order to help set 22 the stage for the ACRS full committee meeting 23 scheduled on May 5th.
24 Since we understand that the ACRS plans to 25 develop a letter after the May 5th meeting to inform NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 the Commission of their initial views on Part 53 rule 2 language, we plan to share our thoughts during our 3 presentation today on some areas of focus for the 4 committee's consideration as they draft their letter.
5 We are looking forward to hearing any 6 insights and feedback from the ACRS today.
7 And that completes my opening remarks.
8 Thanks.
9 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thank you, John.
10 With this, I will now turn it over to Bill 11 Reckley. I think he's ready to go. Is that right?
12 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, that's right, Dennis.
13 Thanks.
14 This is Bill Reckley of the staff. Liz, 15 we can go to slide 2.
16 So, as has been talked about already, what 17 our plans are for today is to go through some 18 revisions to the language on Subpart B, which is the 19 safety requirements, the high level objectives and 20 specific safety criteria; and Subpart C on design and 21 analysis.
22 And we will also talk this afternoon about 23 Subpart E, construction and manufacturing.
24 Derek, there's a fair amount of feedback.
25 I'm not sure if --
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11 1 MR. WIDMAYER: Yes, I got it. I don't see 2 anybody who has a mike open.
3 MR. RECKLEY: So, it's the telephone, I 4 believe.
5 Okay. So, if we can go to slide 3, this 6 is just our slide that we try to summarize the scope 7 and our working schedule. And so, again, you can see 8 the items that we plan to talk about today are our 9 second iteration of the safety criterion design and 10 analysis subparts. And then we'll revisit 11 construction and manufacturing that we touched on last 12 time but, given the time pressures, we thought we 13 would revisit again today.
14 And then on the schedule part, as you go 15 down the rows you can see that we are really shooting 16 for by this summer to have the consolidated technical 17 sections, which would be Subparts A through G, 18 together so that people can get kind of the big 19 picture and see how the different subparts interact 20 and how, for example, operations is reflecting the 21 safety criteria and how the design and analysis flows 22 through the other subparts, siting, construction, 23 operations, et cetera.
24 Then in the summer time frame --
25 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill.
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12 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, Dennis.
2 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I wanted to ask you about 3 one of those because I know some of our members have 4 raised this issue.
5 We haven't really done the operations yet 6 with you, but there was some concern with QA it might 7 only be showing up under construction. Will it also 8 be under operations? Or will you be talking about 9 that now or sometime later?
10 MR. RECKLEY: We'll talk, yes, when we get 11 -- I'll brief in the summary of operations, but yes, 12 the way we have, as a first iteration -- and we have 13 this under discussion internally -- but the way we've 14 done it as a first iteration, we've taken QA and 15 distributed it throughout each subpart. So, design 16 has a QA element, construction obviously has a big QA 17 element, and operations has a QA element.
18 We're talking now just as a matter of 19 efficiency. Maybe it makes more sense to go back and 20 put it all together as it is under Part 50. But 21 that's really just a, largely a formatting issue. The 22 applicable quality assurance requirements are being 23 reflected in each subpart.
24 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks. That's what the 25 concern had been, so.
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13 1 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes, thanks. Thanks, 2 Dennis -- this is Walt -- for bringing that up.
3 That, yeah, I was going to ask that, Bill, 4 whether or not with the input you've had from 5 stakeholders and also your own work whether pulling 6 that up into Part B wouldn't make sense. Because it 7 needs to carry through, you know, the entire life 8 cycle as you've laid this out.
9 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, right. I a hundred 10 percent agree. And I think we're just looking at now 11 what is -- what makes the most sense in terms of 12 largely formatting. Repeating it in the different 13 sections introduces a fair amount of the language 14 showing up in multiple places.
15 So, we are looking at it, but from a big 16 picture standpoint. We basically see, as it does now, 17 quality assurance being an important element in every 18 stage of design, operations, and so forth.
19 So, what I was going to add is in the 20 summer time frame we will also start to introduce the 21 licensing areas, Subparts H and I, and also the 22 miscellaneous requirements that we're putting into 23 Subpart J.
24 But I think one of the issues that we've 25 had with stakeholders, and it was perhaps unavoidable NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 1 the way we did this, by introducing individual 2 subparts and then basically just having a trailer 3 saying you're going to have to wait to see how this 4 carries through, we're getting to the point when we 5 release the operations section in a week or so where 6 I think it will be a little more evident how the 7 pieces tie together.
8 So, if we can go on, Liz, to slide -- the 9 next slide.
10 As John mentioned, and obviously this is, 11 you know, up to the committee, and as Dennis 12 mentioned, it's an interim because everything remains 13 in flux here as we're changing language and getting 14 feedback from both the ACRS and stakeholders, and 15 internal discussions, but we thought that a possible 16 focus for the full committee discussion and the 17 interim letter would be the overall structure. And 18 we'll talk about that a little more.
19 And the second iteration language for 20 Subparts B and C, and then, obviously, any 21 observations, challenges, recommendations that the 22 ACRS full committee would like to offer.
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15 1 letter.
2 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks, Bill. And when you 3 come in May, I think those would be the right things 4 to emphasize with the --
5 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
6 CHAIRMAN BLEY: -- full committee.
7 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. And that will be also 8 reflected to some degree in what we're going to 9 present today, obviously.
10 So, Liz, we can go down to the next slide.
11 This is the slide we've used in the past 12 to show the structure. And I'm going to go through it 13 again since we were thinking that this could be a 14 focus are for the full committee.
15 So, number one is just the overall 16 structure, how we put this together in terms of 17 organizing the subparts.
18 And then the second item would be the 19 second iteration language on Subparts B and C.
20 And then this afternoon we'll talk about 21 Subpart E, the construction and manufacturing as just 22 a continuation of the discussion on the subparts that 23 we're releasing. And that would be the first 24 iteration on Subpart E.
25 So, the next few slides -- and we used NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 1 these in the past -- is just going to quickly go 2 through the subparts.
3 And, so Subpart A is the general 4 provisions. And the most -- I don't want to say the 5 most important thing -- the area that has the most 6 interest is the definitions. Because as we go through 7 the development of all of the subparts and try to use 8 a common terminology, the sometimes similarity but 9 slight differences to common usage or even historical 10 usage under Part 50 has been an issue. And so it's 11 pretty important for us to start to collect and use 12 the definitions section of Subpart A to tie together 13 all of the subparts. So, we'll be releasing that in 14 a week or so, again, as a first iteration.
15 The rest of Subpart A has a lot of the 16 material that is generally the same in Parts 50 and 17 Part 52, and it would be proposed to be largely the 18 same in Part 53 in terms of legal requirements on 19 things like employee protection, completeness and 20 accuracy of information, and so forth.
21 So, if we can go to slide 7, Liz.
22 Then what we will be talking about today 23 is the second iteration of Subpart B, the safety 24 criteria. And that, that is laid out, as the bullets 25 indicate, into safety objectives, first and second NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 1 tier safety criteria, then safety functions, license 2 basis events, and defense in depth, and occupational 3 exposures.
4 The chevrons on the right are trying to 5 lay out as we go through the subparts the general 6 structure and hierarchy of the terminology, since we 7 don't have the definition sections released yet. So, 8 so the safety criteria are the highest element.
9 And as we get into the specifics, when we 10 get into the second iteration this may become more 11 clear. But, for example, the safety criteria for the 12 first tier is the traditional siting reference values, 13 the 25 rem number at the exclusionary boundary. And 14 then from that the structure is set up that a 15 designer, an applicant, needs to identify what safety 16 functions are needed to meet that, that criteria.
17 And then the next chevron down would be 18 once you've identified the safety functions, then you 19 need to make decisions on the design features, so the 20 actual hardware.
21 And then once you've decided on the 22 hardware you need to put the specifications or the 23 functional design criteria to those design features.
24 And so, kind of quickly going down, the 25 safety criteria again is the 25 rem for all plants.
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18 1 Cooling is going to be a safety function. From 2 cooling you might then say I'm going to do it through 3 a, let's say, a pump and a heat exchanger. And then 4 the functional design criteria would start to get down 5 to here's the kind of heat removal, the kind of flows, 6 the kind of specifications on the heat exchangers.
7 And then the same thing holds true then 8 for the second tier. The safety criteria would be, 9 as were proposed and as we'll get into in the 10 discussion, the health objectives and the NRC safety 11 goals. So that, that introduces into the second tier 12 not only the capabilities of equipment but also the 13 reliability of equipment because you have a 14 probabilistic element.
15 But you can then go down and say what 16 safety functions are needed to meet the QHOs. And 17 they're going to largely be the same in terms of 18 engineering speak, they're going to be the same type 19 of things: I need barriers, I need cooling, I need 20 reactivity control, and et cetera. Then you can go 21 down and say what are the design features that I'm 22 going to select to do that.
23 And then the functional design criteria 24 are introduced as to how that system specifically 25 needs to perform. And, again, since there's a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 probabilistic element, this is also where you start to 2 introduce what the reliability of the equipment is.
3 So, I just wanted to kind of quickly go 4 through this because we'll be talking about it as we 5 go through not only the other subparts but when we get 6 into the second iteration language.
7 So, if we can go to slide 8.
8 The next subpart in the structure is 9 Subpart C, the Design and Analysis.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, Dennis?
12 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I know it's not part of 13 your presentation today, and I know we've asked about 14 it before, but some of this becomes more specific, at 15 least in the vision we've heard, through guidance.
16 And I know you're not, or I don't think you're doing 17 that yet.
18 Are you envisioning that in many areas you 19 will have to come out with type of reactor-specific 20 guidance on issues, or do you see guidance documents 21 that will cover all technologies?
22 MR. RECKLEY: I think there will be both.
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20 1 to implement the rule on a generic basis.
2 But we also foresee that there will be 3 technology-specific guidance because the way the 4 different reactor types are going to fulfill 5 functions, there might also be technical guidance on 6 the specifics like we have now for light-water 7 reactors on limits and the behavior of materials.
8 Well, you're familiar.
9 There's over 200 regulatory guides for 10 light-water reactors, and so a lot of that same 11 technical guidance and an agreement between the staff 12 and industry or individual designers will re-envision, 13 will be necessary. But that will come later.
14 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay. And on the -- I know 15 the general policy on developing new rules is to have 16 the guidance ready when the rules come out. With the 17 accelerated schedule you've been given, I expect 18 that's not going to be possible.
19 But are there specific either technology-20 inclusive guidance documents, or even technology-21 specific guidance documents that you think will be in 22 place at the time of the rule?
23 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, and we're working on 24 that now.
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21 1 last meeting, the advanced reactor content of 2 application guidance is considered to be key guidance.
3 And we're trying to do that on a schedule such that at 4 least the drafts would be ready at the proposed rule 5 stage, and we could have the final guidance by the 6 final rule stage.
7 Another area that we'll talk, I think, at 8 the next ACRS meeting, we'll touch on it today, is in 9 the area of staffing. And that, I think, will be 10 another -- it's a complicated topic, and so we're 11 talking that we will have it well underway by the time 12 the proposed rule goes up, but even the draft guidance 13 we may not have ready. But, it's so important that we 14 would expect to have the final guidance done by the 15 final rule, again because it's such a key element.
16 So, we're going through now and looking at 17 the guidance documents, trying to come up with 18 realistic schedules, establishing the normal goals 19 that you mentioned, that at least the key guidance 20 would be in draft form by the time of the proposed 21 rule. That may not in all cases be practical, given 22 the schedule.
23 And so, we'll have to explain where we are 24 and how we think that guidance would be available by 25 the final rule.
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22 1 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks. And one last 2 question in this area for me.
3 As you're going to be under the same 4 situation that the folks developing the computer codes 5 to support design-specific work are under, and that is 6 you can't have it all ready at the same time. So, 7 have you been giving any thought to how you'll set 8 priorities on design-specific kinds of guidance?
9 MR. RECKLEY: For now, the design specific 10 guidance is largely being driven by the lead 11 developers for the technologies and their submittal of 12 topical reports.
13 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay. So that, anyway, I 14 don't see you have a choice, but it's who's in line.
15 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. Basically, yes. And so 16 that is -- and one obvious factor there is the DOE 17 advanced reactor demonstration program and those two 18 designs. But then there's also other designers 19 submitting topical reports to support either the 20 second element of the DOE program or, on their own, 21 independent of DOE.
22 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks.
23 MEMBER HALNON: Hey, Bill. This is Greg 24 Halnon. Just a real quick question.
25 You mentioned the draft guidance and that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 1 all that may be available is the draft rule language.
2 Do you at think that we'll at least have a projection, 3 or index, or something that shows us what is at least 4 in the pipeline for draft guidance relative to -- I 5 know that some of the technology-specific stuff may 6 not be there, but it would be nice to at least see 7 what's forecasted as guidance versus rule language.
8 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. And we're working, 9 we're working on that now, but from internally at just 10 our own resource management needs to look at what 11 groups are available and, therefore, what guidance we 12 might be able to prepare on what schedule and so 13 forth.
14 So, yeah, we're actually working on that 15 as we speak.
16 MEMBER HALNON: Okay. That might help us 17 not ask questions that we know is coming, as opposed 18 to going into something that's just not developed yet.
19 So, that would help. Thank you.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. So, within, within 21 Subpart C, again this is we're going to talk in 22 detail, so I won't spend too much time on this 23 particular slide. Again, these first slides we're 24 just trying to reinforce the structure because that 25 was one of the areas we thought the full committee NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 1 might look at.
2 So, it basically goes through the 3 requirements and the filling out of those chevrons in 4 terms of how do you define the functional design 5 criteria. And goes into the analysis part and the 6 analysis of the licensing basis events, the 7 categorization of equipment, and assignment of special 8 treatment and so forth.
9 And then the QA and interfaces.
10 And the third bullet there we'll talk 11 about in more detail, is the application of margins to 12 gain flexibilities in areas like emergency 13 preparedness, siting, staffing, and so forth.
14 So, slide 9, Liz.
15 So, we talked about Subpart D with the 16 committee. We're still on the first iteration and 17 engaging stakeholders on this subpart. But it's the 18 general siting, the evaluation of a particular site to 19 either identify hazards and assign hazard levels, or 20 to look at a site and say the hazard levels selected 21 for a design are bounding; the population-related 22 siting considerations; and the environmental 23 considerations.
24 Slide 10, Liz.
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25 1 about construction and manufacturing. As Dennis and 2 Walt mentioned, this is, as one might expect, this is 3 quality assurance heavy in both of these areas.
4 And one of the things that we talked about 5 last time and we'll talk about again today is the 6 manufacturing provisions because we really expect that 7 there will be at least the potential for a shift and 8 a higher focus on the factory setting and the likely 9 use of the manufacturing license provision, which 10 hasn't been exercised by the NRC in a long time.
11 And then the added topics of the potential 12 and even likelihood that the factor setting would 13 include the actual loading of fuel into the reactor 14 and the transportation of the reactor fueled to a site 15 for deployment. So we'll, and we'll talk about that 16 this afternoon.
17 Slide 11.
18 So, Subpart F is operations. And we're 19 going to probably talk next month to the committee 20 about these, this subpart. We've broken Subpart F 21 into three segments, if you will.
22 The first one is being tied to the 23 hardware. So, this is the structure systems and 24 components. And you can look down and see 25 configuration control and the use of technical NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 1 specifications for the safety-related equipment; 2 configuration management for the safety-significant 3 but not safety-related things that would come in 4 through special treatment and reliability assurance 5 programs; maintenance and repair; QA again; design 6 control for the hardware.
7 The second segment, if we go to slide 12, 8 within Subpart F is related to staffing. And we did 9 provide the committee with a White Paper that kind of 10 lays out just some of the background and some of the 11 proposals that we're hearing that we will likely need 12 to address within this, these sections of Subpart F.
13 One of the proposals is to move into a 14 concept of operations philosophy where each design or 15 application would need to prepare a concept of 16 operations. And this starts to be somewhat similar to 17 looking at staffing, somewhat similar to the way you 18 look at the hardware, and really identify what are --
19 what is the role of the personnel in terms of 20 preventing or mitigating events. And, therefore, how 21 are they contributing to the first tier safety 22 criteria, how are they contributing to meeting the 23 second tier safety criteria?
24 And from that -- and, again, we don't have 25 the details -- as the White Paper laid out, we, that's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 1 kind of we're recognizing what the problems are, what 2 the challenges are. We haven't worked quite yet to 3 fill in exactly how this will work.
4 But from that concept of operations, then 5 define what are the requirements for licensed 6 personnel, what are the requirements for non-licensed 7 personnel? Is it practical to take this all the way 8 to autonomous operation with no licensed personnel 9 and, in theory, totally unstaffed?
10 So, those proposals are out there. Again, 11 it's a little early to say how far we think this can 12 go. But the foundation for it will have to be a 13 detailed assessment by the applicants on exactly what 14 is the role of personnel in meeting the safety 15 objectives and the first and second tier safety 16 criteria.
17 So, I think we'll talk about that White 18 Paper at the next meeting that we have set up with the 19 ACRS, the May meeting, the subcommittee meeting. And, 20 or maybe June, I forget offhand.
21 But, one of the upcoming meetings we'll 22 talk about that White Paper. And by then we may have 23 given a little more thought on the actual rule 24 language that would provide that flexibility. But and 25 then maybe lay out the requirements in terms of what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 1 would be needed to justify those different 2 possibilities. But then, as has been mentioned, this 3 is an area where the guidance will be key in terms of 4 how to prepare that concept of operations, and how to 5 use its results to make these determinations.
6 So this is, again, a little preview of 7 what's going to be coming up. But this is a, this is 8 a major, major area for both the industry and for the 9 staff.
10 So, Liz, if we can go to the next slide.
11 The --
12 MEMBER BROWN: Bill.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Yes?
14 MEMBER BROWN: Going through the summary, 15 can I -- you don't have to go back to the slide, back 16 under I would guess it would be under Subpart C, or 17 even -- my guess would be under C. Where do we get 18 around to generating under this new Part 53, general 19 design criteria similar to what we have in Part 50 and 20 52, in Appendix A?
21 Is that going to be absent from this in 22 this new technology-inclusive world?
23 MR. RECKLEY: Well, we'll get into it when 24 we talk about the language in Subpart B.
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29 1 that the safety functions -- and, Liz, if you want to 2 go back to slide 7 -- the way you get there is that 3 you go through this exercise. So, and this will be 4 different in that, at least under the current 5 proposal, you won't have the equivalent of the NRC 6 establishing the general design criteria or design 7 criteria per se, like is in Appendix A of Part 50, but 8 what you'll have is the requirement for the designer 9 to define the needed safety functions for every major 10 inventory of radioactive materials that has the 11 potential to lead to a release.
12 And so, under the first tier if there's an 13 inventory that could give you 25 rem at the 14 exclusionary boundary, be it the reactor, which is the 15 traditional source, or a waste gas system, or 16 something else, then they would need to say what 17 safety functions are needed in order to prevent that 18 or to control that release.
19 For the reactor we give as examples the 20 fundamental safety functions, reactivity, heat 21 removal, and then the ability to have a barrier to the 22 actual release of radionuclides.
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30 1 they would define the safety functions for that 2 inventory.
3 And then form a technology- or design-4 specific approach they would move from those safety 5 functions into what design features they're selecting.
6 And so, for cooling you're going to have things like 7 reactor cavity cooling systems or reactor vessel 8 cooling systems, or more traditional heat removal 9 systems. And then from that selection down to the 10 functional design criteria on more specifically what 11 that design features needs.
12 So, the concept is very similar. And as 13 Appendix A, Part 50, the general design criteria are 14 laid out and organized largely by those fundamental 15 safety functions, we would expect that those same 16 fundamental safety functions are going to apply. And 17 all the history is at least for any reactor of size --
18 and this is every one we've seen that's in the, for 19 instance, hundreds of megawatts, that the fundamental 20 safety functions are the same.
21 One area that we're looking at, and this 22 leaves some flexibility, is if the microreactors are 23 able to show that some of the -- that they have less 24 reliance on a particular safety function, this may, 25 this may leave open that they could say cooling, for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 1 example, is provided by natural processes that don't 2 even need an engineered system. But we haven't -- it 3 has the potential, and we've heard people say that 4 that might be possible. I'm not sure we've seen one 5 yet where we would say that was possible.
6 But --
7 MEMBER BROWN: Bill.
8 MR. RECKLEY: -- so it gets to Charlie's 9 point though, we think this gets you there. This is 10 the equivalent, but we at this point are not 11 envisioning the equivalent of an Appendix A.
12 Go ahead, Dennis.
13 MEMBER PETTI: Bill, there's a reg guide 14 though, right? I mean, does advanced reactor design 15 --
16 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
17 MEMBER PETTI: -- and there was a tier 18 that was technology-independent and then they broke 19 into their own technology-dependent criteria.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
21 MEMBER PETTI: Those parallel what's in 22 Appendix A.
23 MR. RECKLEY: They both parallel what's in 24 Appendix A. And we also think that for many -- and, 25 for example, the gas-cooled reactor in that reg guide, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 1 Reg Guide 1.232, was largely based on the hundreds of 2 megawatt sizes, as was the sodium-cooled fast reactor.
3 And so, what you would see if you look at 4 Reg Guide 1.232, the advance reactor design criteria, 5 is this -- you would see that you get to the same 6 place as we think you get to here, although that was 7 laid out under the format of Appendix A, the general 8 design criteria, so it took that more structuralist 9 approach that, hey, the designer can start here.
10 But we -- so, I guess the short answer is 11 yes. And we don't really see the disconnect in that 12 we think you end up in the same place.
13 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill, let me -- I'm sorry, 14 Dave, I didn't mean to interrupt you if you wanted to 15 follow up.
16 This is Dennis. But, yeah, there's some 17 of the different areas, you know, you said it's new 18 that the designer has to have these criteria, but we 19 currently require the designer to come up with 20 principal design criteria. But Appendix A says these 21 will be the ones, unless you have something additional 22 that you need to consider, or you make a great 23 argument why one of these doesn't apply.
24 The argument you went through, if it's all 25 in guidance, that is not a requirement.
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33 1 MEMBER PETTI: Right.
2 CHAIRMAN BLEY: The process that you 3 described somehow, in my opinion, ought to be 4 somewhere in the rule so that the process is laid out 5 and you really can't avoid going through that, that 6 all. If it's all in guidance you might get anything 7 back.
8 Is it anywhere in the rules that it will 9 kind of lay out the argument you just made?
10 MEMBER PETTI: Bill, can I just amplify 11 Dennis' comment for a minute?
12 MR. RECKLEY: Please.
13 MEMBER PETTI: I'll just use my area as an 14 example.
15 When you start around general criteria --
16 and I think it's 21, 20 I guess, talks about 17 protection systems -- and I'm not trying to be saying 18 they've all got to look like what they are in the 19 light-water reactors, that's not the point of the 20 comment. But the upper level criteria are in the 21 rules, that you've got to define the function, you've 22 got to define the reliability and testability, and 23 they have to be testable. They have to be 24 independent. That's not, you know, technology 25 exclusive. And you've got to be able to identify the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 1 failure mode.
2 So this is, like Dennis said, these are, 3 these are in the rule. Guidance, I don't know how 4 many times we've fought this issue in various meetings 5 on some subjects, where you bring up an issue and they 6 say, well, gee, that's just guidance, so we can kind 7 of go where we want to go.
8 And the NRC then is kind of strapped for 9 figuring out how do we make sure that we have 10 separation of protection and control systems? Maybe 11 they say, well, we want to combine them all into one 12 integrated system.
13 The things they should be able to address, 14 these are kind of time honored and true, and not just 15 in my area, but I went through the rest of the general 16 design criteria also before this, that they can be 17 evaluated and then the principal design criteria that 18 says that's why we don't need this.
19 And I think that was Dennis' point:
20 they're in the rule as opposed to just in a set of 21 regulatory guides.
22 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Not quite my point.
23 MEMBER PETTI: Well, maybe I'm a little 24 off, but that's my point.
25 MEMBER KIRCHNER: May I jump in, Charlie?
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35 1 This is Walt.
2 MEMBER PETTI: Go, Walt.
3 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I think so, too, Bill, 4 that somehow the essence to the framework, so to 5 speak, of the GDCs should be reflected in the rule.
6 Otherwise all we have is guidance in that reg guide.
7 It's good guidance but it's guidance, it's not a 8 regulation requirement.
9 And to just pick out an example, natural 10 hazards. All reactors, no matter what the technology, 11 should be designed for the natural hazards. So, I 12 don't have the GDCs open in front of me right now.
13 Number 4, or whatever, I mean, that's a high level, 14 cross-cut kind of requirement that in my mind should 15 apply across the board to any advanced reactor.
16 And that should be reflected, in my own 17 opinion, in the rule. Whereas the GDCs that are 18 derived from the reg guide is, as you described, it 19 creates a parallel system but it doesn't create the 20 requirement that exists for these.
21 One of the things I've been doing is I've 22 been stepping back and testing what you have versus 23 what exists. And one of the objectives -- I guess 24 we've got feedback from the mike -- seems to be, you 25 know, the policy statements from the Commission and so NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 1 on say that any advanced reactor should provide a 2 level of safety equivalent or above the existing 3 current fleet. And so that's why I keep bringing up 4 things like QA.
5 How would you convince the public that 6 you've got a design that provides an equivalent level 7 of protection when you don't have these kind of GDC 8 requirements for the reactor?
9 I mean, even if on paper they inherently 10 have all these inherent safety characteristics, that 11 doesn't mean when it's designed and built it actually 12 provides a safer reactor.
13 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I'd like to take you back 14 to my question, Bill. And that was you talked us 15 through a process that you believe gets us to the 16 right point. And I'd be happy to agree with that.
17 But that's what I was getting at, shouldn't that 18 process somehow be enshrined in the rule?
19 MR. RECKLEY: And when we get to the 20 language of Subparts B and C I'll revisit this. And 21 then I think the discussion can be is it clear enough 22 that we've done that? Or, so I think we can try to 23 address that when we get to Subparts B and C.
24 Again, we think we, we think we've done 25 that because all of these things are in Part 53 as NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 1 requirements. And, yes, there will be guidance on how 2 to do it. But we think the requirements are there.
3 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay.
4 MR. RECKLEY: But whether that's clear and 5 whether it's sufficient we can discuss once we get 6 into, in particular, Subpart C, I think.
7 CHAIRMAN BLEY: That helps. Thanks.
8 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. All right. So, the 9 third element or the sections under Subpart F in 10 operations is related to programs. And these are the 11 traditional radiation protection, emergency 12 preparedness, security, quality assurance, programs 13 for fire protection, and in-service testing and 14 inspection, maintaining procedures, the facility 15 safety program we talked about a couple months ago, 16 and then a program to look at ageing, fatigue. That's 17 the traditional cyclic limits, for example, that show 18 up in requirements. And environmental effects.
19 So, and we'll talk next month. We're 20 getting ready to release language on these.
21 And, again, I think it helps once we get 22 into Subpart F to see how these things carry through 23 from the design all the way through operations.
24 So, if we can go to 14.
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38 1 we thought it would -- is important because through 2 all the life cycle, and so the decommissioning section 3 would include the transition from operation down to 4 possession-only license. It would include the 5 financial assurance for decommissioning, and so forth.
6 We've not really started on this section yet, so I 7 don't have too much detail.
8 But there is a proposed rule on 9 decommissioning that was recently developed. And so 10 we would be looking to that to bring in the most 11 recent thoughts on decommissioning.
12 Then slide 15 gets into the licensing 13 areas. And basically we're going to address all of 14 the avenues and combinations that are allowed under 15 the current structures in Part 50 and 52. So, we 16 would be looking at the potential for early site 17 permits, limited work authorizations.
18 Related to the design of the reactor 19 itself we'd maintain standard design approvals, design 20 certifications under Part 52.
21 I've talked a little bit, and we'll talk 22 more this afternoon, on manufacturing licenses.
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39 1 a combined license.
2 Then under slide 16, another aspect of the 3 licensing basis information is maintaining it over the 4 life of the facility. So, we'll address things like 5 amendments to licenses. Currently that's done under 6 59(e) or the equivalent under Part 52.
7 Updating the final safety analysis report, 8 updating the probabilistic risk assessment.
9 And then currently-existing requirements 10 that will carry into this section on things like 11 backfitting, revocation of a license or modification 12 of a license, and so forth.
13 Then Subpart J is the kind of 14 miscellaneous section. Some of the more, some of the 15 sections that we're really looking to see how we can 16 come up with this integrated approach. One of the 17 areas is reporting, for example, and how reporting can 18 be not an administrative burden solely, but also how 19 it can be built into the overall structure of how we 20 do licensing, how we do oversight and monitoring. And 21 so that that's an area we're looking at.
22 There will be other areas like the 23 financial qualifications, property insurance. A lot 24 of the elements that show up under 50-54. The 25 conditions of licenses would show up in this section, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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40 1 for example.
2 And then some of the more specific 3 requirements that are currently in 50 and 52.
4 So, with that, let's go on then to the 5 next slide.
6 That's --
7 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill.
8 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, Dennis?
9 CHAIRMAN BLEY: You've got three natural 10 break point in the presentation, and this is one. I 11 think this would be a good place for us to take a 12 break, even though it's fairly early.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, I think that's, that's 14 a good idea.
15 So, this was the first topic we wanted to 16 go over. And, again, the primary reason to go through 17 these chapters -- we'll get into the specific 18 discussions later -- was the notion of this structure 19 that we currently have broken apart into these 20 subparts.
21 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay, thank you.
22 And, well, let me sneak one last question 23 in before I declare a break.
24 Will the description of this structure be 25 in Subpart A? It seems that would be helpful if it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 1 were.
2 But you don't have to answer that now.
3 MR. RECKLEY: It's not currently, but it's 4 a good suggestion. And we'll, we'll -- it definitely 5 will be talked about, for example, in the statement of 6 considerations that would go with the rulemaking 7 package.
8 I'll have to, I'll have to think about 9 where else the structure would be explained. But --
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay.
11 MR. RECKLEY: -- we'll make a note.
12 CHAIRMAN BLEY: We're going to take a break 13 now for 20 minutes. Please come back at -- before I 14 say the wrong time zone -- in the East Coast 10:50.
15 Back in 20 minutes.
16 And we're recessed until that time.
17 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 18 off the record at 10:30 a.m. and resumed at 10:50 19 a.m.)
20 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay. I'm calling the 21 session back in order. And I want to mention that in 22 the opening remarks I forgot to introduce our 23 consultant, Stephen Schultz, who is with us today as 24 well. Thank you.
25 Bill, you can go ahead.
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42 1 MR. RECKLEY: Thank you, Dennis. So, if 2 there's no additional questions or discussion on the 3 overall structure or organization of the Part 53, we 4 can go to slide 19.
5 So what I'm going to walk through is the 6 second iteration of Subpart B. And I'll just give a 7 little history of the changes and then try to focus on 8 the language we arrived at for the second iteration.
9 So slide 20, just some background and 10 observations, I guess. And I mentioned at the onset 11 that we're having a little bit of a challenge because 12 of the way we're doing this and both the iterative 13 nature of trying to develop these subparts as we 14 developed a total package, the release of those, and 15 the discussions of the language.
16 So this is really kind of a novel approach 17 that we're trying for this rulemaking. And it's been 18 a challenge. But we thought it was needed in order to 19 try to meet the schedule.
20 And I think we're getting into a rhythm 21 now. It was hard to get it started. But I think the 22 engagement with the stakeholders is getting to a point 23 where the rhythm is understood. More of the package 24 is available so people can start to see how the pieces 25 of the puzzle fit together.
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43 1 But just did want to mention, we know it's 2 been a challenge for us. It's been a challenge for 3 the ACRS. And it's been a challenge for the public 4 stakeholders.
5 So we are facing that we're getting a lot 6 of comments from both internal and external 7 stakeholders. We are looking at those. We did try to 8 focus on maybe the more fundamental ones in coming up 9 with the second iteration. But we know that there 10 will be additional iterations as we go forward.
11 And part of that, we can talk about things 12 like we were just talking about with the concept and 13 the potential benefits of putting in something closer 14 to general design criteria. And we can talk about 15 where that would fit now that we have some more of the 16 subparts available for people to look at. We've set 17 up management systems for briefings and approval of 18 the release of the language.
19 As I mentioned early on, it's a moving 20 target, because as we develop subparts and as we get 21 into the licensing arena and Subparts H and I, we're 22 likely need to go back and make other changes to the 23 technical requirements in the subparts we're talking 24 about now, feedback and insight.
25 So we are continuing to assess the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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44 1 comments and mature our own thinking, to be honest.
2 And so, although this is the second iteration, we 3 expect many more even on Subparts B and C.
4 The last one is, one of the things we 5 wanted to make sure people understand is the package 6 that we're preparing now is a proposed rule to the 7 Commission.
8 And part of that process is also to flag 9 to the Commission, who's the ultimate decision maker 10 on whether to proceed with the proposed rule and the 11 language that we're proposing, is to put questions for 12 possible comment from stakeholders and to identify to 13 the Commission themselves what are some of the 14 challenges and some of the decisions we made so they 15 can take that into consideration and proceed or revise 16 or tell the staff to revise the proposed rule before 17 its publication.
18 So we're at that stage. It's a relatively 19 early stage still of developing this rulemaking.
20 So, if we can, go on to 21, Liz. We used 21 this slide last time. I thought I would just revisit 22 and take a couple minutes to show it again.
23 And the, what we're trying to communicate 24 somewhat is a comparison of the licensing frameworks 25 between Part 50, the current one, and Part 53 that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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45 1 we're proposing and show some of the places where 2 they're similar and some of the places where the 3 approach that we're taking is a little different. And 4 there's a reason. And in this slide we'll try to say 5 why it's different.
6 So the highest level, the first bullet, 7 the safety criteria themselves are the same. We are 8 using the same reference values, the 25 rem over 2 9 hours1.041667e-4 days <br />0.0025 hours <br />1.488095e-5 weeks <br />3.4245e-6 months <br /> at the exclusionary boundary or over the course 10 of the event at the low population's own boundary.
11 We're using the same NRC safety goals.
12 Albeit, in Part 50, the safety goals don't show up as 13 a specific technical requirement. Under 52, they 14 don't show up as a specific technical requirement, but 15 because of the requirement to have the PRA, they are 16 looked at as part of the licensing process.
17 And although they may not be in Part 50 as 18 a technical requirement, they are used in guidance 19 associated with regulatory processes, like doing a 20 regulatory analysis. They are used in the reactor 21 oversight program.
22 And they are used in risk informed 23 licensing decisions under Reg Guide 1.174 and to some 24 degree under 50.69, if you're taking that option in 25 terms of treatment of structures, systems, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 1 components. So, but they are the same underlying 2 safety criteria.
3 In the design and analysis area, the 4 evolution of the design-basis accident in Part 50 is 5 a fairly prescriptive, conservative analysis of 6 primarily the large break LOCA, or there is other 7 assessments that are also included that reflect the 8 technology of light water reactors, the need for a 9 very quick insertion reactivity, for example. And 10 those analyses tend to be fairly prescriptive and 11 conservative.
12 In Part 53, the DBA is reached through a 13 systematic assessment. It's not predefined as it was 14 for light water reactors through either the standard 15 review plan or ANS design standards 51.1 and 52.1, 16 which was a large basis for most light water reactors.
17 But given it's a technology inclusive 18 approach, we couldn't predefine them. So we lay out 19 a methodology that uses either the, and we'll get into 20 this, either the probabilistic risk assessment or 21 another systematic approach to look at and identify a 22 DBA.
23 And it has some of the same things that 24 Part 50 has done, for example, only safety-related 25 structures, systems, and components. But the, some of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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47 1 the conservatisms have been reduced.
2 And that is because the next bullet, Part 3 53, increases the requirements on the assessment of 4 beyond design-basis events, where in Part 50, that was 5 done on a case-by-case basis.
6 And some things imposed for things like 7 anticipated transient without scram or station 8 blackout, there was not necessarily a, from the 9 licensing perspective, a systematic assessment of 10 beyond design-basis events. And the history of that 11 going all the way back to the Atomic Energy Commission 12 is available.
13 But under Part 53, again, the proposal is 14 that the beyond design-basis events are systematically 15 looked at. And those event scenarios are explicitly 16 considered. And an applicant needs to address those 17 event scenarios with plans, including special 18 treatment for non-safety related but risk significant 19 SSCs, identification of human actions, and so forth.
20 So that's a little bit of the difference 21 in the structures and how one reaches the safety 22 conclusions under Part 50 and Part 53, again some 23 similarities and some differences, especially when one 24 looks at the treatment of the beyond design-basis 25 event category.
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48 1 So, going on to slide 22, the first tier, 2 and as a note --
3 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Hey, Bill --
4 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
5 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: -- go back please.
6 Jose. Go back to 21. Why do you require 7 uncertainties for beyond design actions and not for 8 DBAs?
9 MR. RECKLEY: Well, the assumption under 10 the DBA is that it would use much of the guidance 11 that's available. And so there are conservatisms 12 built in for the DBA that, and address the 13 uncertainties through things like the validation of 14 the codes, for example. And so --
15 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: But they're not 16 reflected on the rule. Those are things that you 17 expect we'll inherit from Part --
18 MR. RECKLEY: No, we would expect -- if 19 the wording is not clear, then we'll have to tweak it.
20 But, yeah, we would expect the same certainty in the 21 assessment of the design-basis accident in terms of 22 the confidence in the computer models and so forth and 23 the comparison of it against the design criteria that 24 exists in Part 50.
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49 1 what my colleague said earlier this morning, 2 expectations that are hidden, it would be much better 3 if the rule language was explicit to what I need to do 4 as a reactor designer.
5 MR. RECKLEY: Okay --
6 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Let's not revisit 7 that. We've gone through that the whole morning.
8 But in my opinion, again talking with, 9 broad before, analyzing the DBAs or even the beyond 10 design-basis is not the difficult part. We know how 11 to do it. It may cost money, may cost time, but we 12 know how to do it. The difficult part is identifying 13 which events are the design-basis events.
14 Do you have a complete set, because you 15 have an intellectually satisfying statement. You pick 16 all the events that have a frequency greater than, say 17 ten to the minus 4. But how do you know that's a 18 complete set?
19 So there needs to be some at least 20 guidance that identify in the design-basis events. It 21 is crucial. And you cannot just do it by taking the 22 existing SRP and removing the things that don't apply 23 to you.
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50 1 review the light water reactors over the last 50 2 years. And we have a very complete set of events.
3 Because through crowdsourcing, I mean, graduate 4 students in Lithuania and professors in Thailand have 5 been assigned this problem. And it would be hard to 6 figure out an event that we have not considered.
7 But with these new advanced reactors, we 8 don't have any operating experience. We haven't even 9 been thinking about them that much. So identifying 10 everything that could possibly go wrong is crucial.
11 And that part I don't see it anywhere in the rule.
12 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. When we get to the 13 language, we can talk about whether we've captured 14 that. We think we have. But again, it will get down 15 to the wording I guess. So we'll have to make sure 16 the wording is perfectly clear.
17 So, if we can then go on to slide 22. So 18 the first tier, and what I was going to mention is we 19 are looking at the language. One of the comments we 20 got was just on the terminology and calling it tiers 21 and the possible confusion with the way that language 22 is used within Part 52 licensing and also the possible 23 perception that the first tier implies importance in 24 comparison to the second tier.
25 And so we're looking at considering the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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51 1 language. So please don't read too much into our tier 2 language. It might end up being criteria A and 3 criteria B, as opposed to first tier and second tier.
4 But for what we currently call the first 5 tier, we're looking at that as establishing a way to 6 provide a minimally acceptable level of safety. And 7 it would be met by the traditional comparison against 8 the siting criteria, the 25 rem number I've mentioned 9 at the exclusionary boundary.
10 It provides the basis for the 11 classification of structures, systems, and components 12 in terms of the safety related equipment if it were 13 needed to keep the dose below 25 rem.
14 It would be used to demonstrate meeting 15 the higher level safety criteria through the 16 performance of the design-basis accident. And we'll 17 get into that in Subpart C.
18 It goes to Walt's comment earlier. And 19 hopefully we can show exactly where the requirement is 20 for the equipment in this category to be protected up 21 to design-basis external hazard levels. So that 22 brings in the equivalent of GDC 2 in terms of the 23 protection of equipment from external hazards.
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52 1 law associated with the appropriate content, the 2 technical specifications. And that, the language from 3 those cases used the terminology such as it's reserved 4 for the most safety significant requirements.
5 And it addresses those things that are 6 necessary to obviate the possibility of events giving 7 rise to an immediate threat to public health and 8 safety. So we'll get into this in the next slide or 9 two.
10 And then the last bullets, we are looking 11 at these safety criteria, the design-basis accident, 12 and the role that it would play in making decisions in 13 other areas such as for staffing.
14 So, if we go to slide 23, it's the same 15 general list except it's now associated with the 16 second tier or the second grouping. And we're using 17 it in this two-pronged approach, that in combination 18 with the first tier, it ensures an appropriate level 19 of safety for long-term, risk informed operations.
20 And the criteria, as we talked about last 21 time, that we're using is the health objectives from 22 the NRC safety goal. The demonstration of this is, 23 needs to be through a systematic assessment. And 24 again, we'll talk about that under Subpart C, the 25 analysis section, and how that also carries over to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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53 1 the design-basis accident.
2 It provides the basis for identifying 3 other risk informed requirements. This is going to be 4 the requirements on structures, systems, and 5 components that are helping to control the risk but 6 are not necessarily the first line systems for keeping 7 the dose below 25 rem.
8 Again, it identifies, it will support the 9 identification of special treatment requirements. And 10 it really provides the basis for a risk management 11 approach to operations.
12 And this goes to being able to split, for 13 example, the safety related equipment and the tight 14 controls of that equipment through technical 15 specifications, and then the most likely larger set of 16 structures, systems, and components that play into 17 showing you meet the risk metrics, the QHO.
18 But you would have, a licensee would have 19 more flexibility in that area as they're provided by 20 50.69, the regulatory treatment of non-safety systems 21 in similar things that have been introduced but not 22 necessarily introduced in a, as structured a way as 23 what we're proposing to do under Part 53.
24 And then the last couple bullets --
25 MEMBER PETTI: So Bill --
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54 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
2 MEMBER PETTI: -- just a question on the 3 QHOs. If they're in the rule, does that not imply 4 that one needs to do a quantitative risk assessment to 5 get actual numerical values to compare against the 6 QHOs? Whereas the language on PRA, the changed 7 language implied that you could do, use other 8 techniques. But it was never clear to me whether you 9 had to go all the way to, you know, definitive 10 numerical calculations.
11 MR. RECKLEY: The current language, and 12 we'll get to it in a slide or two, but the current 13 language on the second iteration is you still need to 14 do the quantitative assessment. So, and if you don't 15 mind, Dave, I'll just --
16 MEMBER PETTI: Sure.
17 MR. RECKLEY: We'll get to that in a 18 couple slides.
19 MEMBER PETTI: Sure. That's fine.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
21 MEMBER PETTI: Yeah, no, that's good.
22 Okay, okay.
23 MR. RECKLEY: So, okay. We can go on then 24 to slide 24.
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55 1 I just back you up to 22?
2 MR. RECKLEY: Sure.
3 MEMBER KIRCHNER: And, yeah, I misspoke I 4 think this morning when I talked about GDC number 4 5 instead of 2.
6 But you've got, so you -- by implication 7 in that middle bullet, external hazards, that's 8 essentially GDC number 2. Why would you not include 9 internal hazards, which is GDC number 3 and 4, 3 being 10 fire protection and 4 being things like, you know, a 11 pipe break and other internal hazards that would 12 jeopardize safety related systems?
13 MR. RECKLEY: And again, when we get into 14 the language -- and maybe we'll have to actually pull 15 up the language, because I'm not sure I have it 16 captured on the slides. But we do think we capture 17 those things in the requirements.
18 For example, fire protection we call out 19 specifically and give the option for it to be -- I'll 20 acknowledge we don't talk enough about fire protection 21 in this iteration, but we have a placeholder and 22 basically state how it can be done either through the 23 PRA, if you want to do a fire PRA, or if not done by 24 the PRA, you need to do it another way. But all we 25 have is a placeholder for that. And that --
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56 1 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yeah, well, it shows up 2 in your framework and operational.
3 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
4 MEMBER KIRCHNER: It's highlighted --
5 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
6 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- as separate bullets.
7 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah.
8 MEMBER KIRCHNER: But I'm thinking --
9 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
10 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- more of the design --
11 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
12 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- and the safety 13 related systems, SSCs that are needed to meet the 25 14 rem.
15 MR. RECKLEY: Right. And so, again, we 16 know under the design we mention it and it's a 17 placeholder. And others have said that it may be not 18 addressed through a PRA, for example. And so we need 19 to beef that up.
20 We probably should have made a note or 21 something in the rule language that said, you know, we 22 know a bullet saying fire protection is not enough.
23 But we'll get to that language.
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57 1 where we think we capture that. And we can pull up 2 the actual language and look to see that it's either 3 clear, and if it's not clear, that would be an area we 4 need to beef up.
5 But the language in the design section 6 says you need to evaluate the environments that we 7 capture in part, the harsh environments. And then 8 there's another provision that talks about things like 9 the equivalent to 2 over 1, for example.
10 So, but maybe we can get to that --
11 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Okay. Thank you. I'll 12 wait. Yeah.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. And it may be 14 appropriate at some point to actually pull up the 15 language instead of the slides, but, especially when 16 we get to the design section. The Subpart B we 17 basically have the language here because it's such a 18 high level. So the --
19 MEMBER BROWN: Bill?
20 MR. RECKLEY: Go ahead.
21 MEMBER BROWN: Yeah, this is Charlie.
22 Safety functions in the original versions was the 23 lead-in, in other words, primary functions, safety 24 function is limiting the radioactive, et cetera, et 25 cetera.
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58 1 And now it's been moved multiple sections 2 down as if it's got, the criteria don't have a 3 reference within which they're developed. I'm just 4 curious why you moved it. And I've forgotten. I've 5 got it, page, the pages in here somewhere.
6 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, the logic there -- and 7 it's how one's brain works. And so I organized it the 8 first way where I put functions first. But under 9 internal discussions, largely we thought it made more 10 sense to put the criteria first and then say the 11 functions are how you meet the criteria.
12 And so we just moved it from 210, where it 13 was the second element, to 230 where now it's the 14 fourth element. And we talk about the safety criteria 15 first and then talk about the functions needed to meet 16 the safety criteria.
17 But otherwise the language is the same.
18 I wouldn't read too much into the fact that we just 19 moved it. We thought it read better coming after the 20 safety criteria.
21 MEMBER BROWN: Well, you can see how my 22 brain works. I was exactly the opposite. The 23 limiting the release is obviously the top level type 24 thing. And then the criteria would help establish how 25 you, kind of how you do that and what they are.
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59 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah.
2 MEMBER BROWN: So that's the way my brain 3 functions. So --
4 MR. RECKLEY: Well, maybe it's the same as 5 mine, because I organized it that way first but then 6 was, but we --
7 MEMBER BROWN: You had another comment in 8 there also about -- and I'm not sure I understand this 9 as well, if I can find the right place. I clicked the 10 page at one point. Crud.
11 It was a comment relative to, it's under 12 -- oh, no, that's the wrong one. It was the AEA, 13 there was a comment or a, in the discussion part about 14 how the stuff in the AEA was not going to be --
15 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
16 MEMBER BROWN: -- incorporated into this 17 rule.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Well, yeah, let's --
19 actually, that's the slide we're on. So let me, let 20 me try --
21 MEMBER BROWN: Oh, it is?
22 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, let me try to --
23 MEMBER BROWN: Okay.
24 MR. RECKLEY: Let me try to answer that 25 and explain why we changed what we changed.
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60 1 So the first iteration of the safety 2 objectives, the first technical requirement, if you 3 will, was that the objectives were to show reasonable 4 assurance of adequate protection of public health and 5 safety, common defense and security. And in addition, 6 each advanced plant would take such additional 7 measures to protect public health and safety and 8 minimize danger to life and property.
9 So that language was largely taken out of 10 the Atomic Energy Act in the traditional findings that 11 the NRC makes and the authorities given to the NRC 12 under the Atomic Energy Act.
13 That proved, and those that have been 14 around a while understand that the way this was 15 interpreted by many -- and it was, really what we had 16 in mind was to define in technical terms adequate 17 protection and define a standard, and then say in 18 addition to that standard, the NRC is able and has 19 historically exercised the other sections of the Act 20 that enable us to put requirements on above and beyond 21 the adequate protection standard.
22 But that history, for those that have been 23 around, it's a very controversial notion to actually 24 define adequate protection. And so we, this proposal 25 in the first iteration just got wrapped up into that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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61 1 history and the controversies.
2 People, some stakeholders didn't like the 3 language out of the Act referring to minimized danger, 4 fearing that a word like minimized would not 5 necessarily reflect the cost-benefit nature that NRC 6 uses when it exercises that authority through the 7 backfit provisions. And so, and most of you know the 8 history of backfit and all the controversies 9 associated with that over the years.
10 There were questions and challenges of 11 exactly how this fits into the actual safety criteria 12 that we have in the next sections and some concerns 13 about pulling the language directly from the Atomic 14 Energy Act.
15 And so, hearing all of those, we changed 16 the objectives. And if we go to slide 25, you can see 17 what we are proposing for the second iteration is that 18 the objectives are to limit the possibility of an 19 immediate threat to public health and safety, and 20 secondarily or in addition, that the requirements are 21 to take such additional measures as may be appropriate 22 when considering potential risks, and then explains 23 further these objectives are met by the following two 24 safety criteria.
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62 1 keeps the alignment technically, because when we get 2 to the next section you can see we didn't change the 3 actual safety criteria, because the original thinking 4 was that when you went across all of the subparts, 5 when you got to the technical specifications, they 6 were going to align with the first tier safety 7 criteria, which was, as it was originally explained, 8 aligned with the adequate protection finding.
9 But that became -- so we were able to make 10 this change to the objectives thinking it makes more 11 sense. It actually is actually more understandable I 12 think to most people that you have two safety 13 objectives.
14 The first is to make sure that 15 continuously and constantly the plant as it's being 16 operated poses no immediate threat to the public 17 health and safety. And then, but that's not in and 18 itself sufficient. And so additional risk reduction 19 measures are needed. And we'll get into that when we 20 talk about the first and second tier safety 21 objectives. So this is the second iteration of the 22 objectives, just moving it from the language of the 23 Act.
24 Now, I think, Charlie, and we've had this 25 observation that we're removing the connection. The NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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63 1 underlying authority to the NRC, the underlying 2 legislation for us remains the Atomic Energy Act.
3 We still, when we do a review, we'll be 4 making a finding, as we traditionally have done, of 5 reasonable assurance of adequate protection. We still 6 will use the authorities in Section 161 to go beyond 7 the adequate protection standard if it's appropriate 8 to do so.
9 We just aren't incorporating that language 10 and associating that language directly with the safety 11 criteria that we're going to talk about on the next 12 two slides.
13 So it's not separating us. What we found 14 was when we tried to integrate, fully integrate the 15 rules with the Act, it became too complicated, too 16 controversial.
17 And so we're just taking a step back, 18 basically not changing, as you'll see, not changing 19 the technical approach we're taking, but, and in the 20 end, from a legislation and legal construct, not 21 changing any of that either.
22 Again, we'll still make the findings and 23 follow the Atomic Energy Act and reference it where 24 appropriate. But anyway, I think I'm starting to 25 repeat myself. So that's the second iteration on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 1 objectives.
2 MEMBER HALNON: Hey, Bill, this is Greg.
3 Just a couple suggestions. When you're taking this 4 around and critiquing it internally, there's a couple 5 of words, obviously, that have variable opinions on 6 what it could mean when maybe a significant change in 7 design and/or cost of design could be, and that's the 8 word "immediate" and the word "threat." It could mean 9 different timeframes to different people. Threat 10 could mean different things to people depending on how 11 severe it is.
12 The other test I would ask you to take a 13 look at is the back-fit, potential back-fits down the 14 road and how that language may be used for any 15 argument that could be a back-fit so we'd guard 16 against any of these long-term confusing discussions 17 that we had relative to back-fit issues down the road.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. And that'll be -- when 19 we get to Subpart I, we'll talk about the back-fit, 20 and we'll get to the first question, I think, on the 21 next slide. And the last bullet here is, "These 22 objectives shall be carried out while meeting the 23 safety criteria below." So if we can go to the slide 24 26 -
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65 1 that, if I could interject? I had a question about 2 the word changes, too. I understand why you did it 3 and it does make sense with the subsequent material 4 and your explanation helped today, but I'm just 5 wondering if a person had an advanced non-LWR, could 6 they have the option still to do other Parts, 50 and 7 52, or Part 53, or is there a different criterion to 8 get into Part 53 because you've had embedded in your 9 idea in generating this Part 53 that the reactors 10 would be safer and if the new hypothetical reactor 11 design is not really safer but they see an easier path 12 by going through this because of the embedded 13 assumption it is? Do you see where I'm going, because 14 of the way the words have been changed? Does that 15 make sense what I'm trying to convey?
16 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. And we'll -- the 17 minimum scope for the rule was set out by the -- by 18 Nuclear Innovation and Modernization Act, NEMA, and it 19 basically says in any plant that has some attributes, 20 improved attributes in a variety of areas compared to 21 anything under construction in January 2019. And so 22 that's the minimum set. We're talking internally and 23 with stakeholders about whether there would be any 24 expansion of that to include even the Generation III-25 plus designs. Our initial in the rulemaking plan, we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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66 1 said we weren't including Gen III-plus but anything 2 else basically, so anything beyond.
3 MEMBER REMPE: Let me give a different 4 example. What if they came in with the Clinch River 5 Breeder Reactor, and it's such a large monster, sodium 6 fast reactor, it doesn't have the enhanced safety.
7 Could they go to Part 53? What I'm trying to see if 8 we've embedded in our rulemaking language something 9 that is a gate in for the non-LWRs or some reactor 10 designs that are not really safer but they got into 11 this pathway because of the language, and they have an 12 easier path. Does that -- that's where I'm kind of 13 coming from.
14 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. And we'll talk about 15 this somewhat when we talk about the analytical 16 margins provision in Subpart C. So --
17 MEMBER REMPE: Okay.
18 MR. RECKLEY: -- the thinking is that more 19 or less, given the attributes defined by NEMA include 20 fuel utilization, economic and safety, that they could 21 -- almost anybody could make a rationale that they 22 make some -- one of those attributes. The term they 23 are safer, the way we are looking at it is the safety 24 is provided by the whole integrated set of 25 requirements. And part of that for large light-water NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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67 1 reactors is, for example, emergency preparedness and 2 the ability to evacuate people. It is provided by the 3 need to have severe accident management guidelines and 4 training and -- of the personnel to handle those kind 5 of severe accidents. It's handled any number of ways 6 such that an existing light water reactor meets 7 basically the same criteria that we're laying out 8 here.
9 For an advanced reactor, under the 10 advanced reactor policy statement, the thinking has 11 been when looked at as an integrated set of 12 requirements, the safety is comparable. How you get 13 to that is different in that you put more focus on the 14 design and less reliance on human actions, less 15 reliance on emergency planning provisions, less --
16 perhaps less on severe accident management provisions 17 and so forth.
18 So overall, the safety is the same. How 19 you achieve it is different. And so the quick answer 20 is if a non-light came in and had some advantages in 21 economics, fuel, whatever some of the NEMA attributes 22 are defined other than safety, yes, they would be 23 allowed to do this. But they may need to have 24 emergency planning similar to large light-water 25 reactors. They may need to have severe accident NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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68 1 management guidelines. They may need to have a large 2 operations staffing contingent. They may -- so they 3 may look, from the outside, much more like how we're 4 regulating large light-water reactors, and all of 5 those things would still be needed. But we'll get to 6 --
7 MEMBER REMPE: So it sounds like in your 8 mind, you've got a risk-based criterion on which the 9 -- you know, a level they've got to meet somehow or 10 other and how that's implemented will yet to be 11 determined as we see some examples. But I hope it's 12 documented somewhere what you're saying, that they're 13 going to have to do this.
14 MR. RECKLEY: Right, okay. And again, 15 this is what we're thinking and I'm sure the language 16 will need to be improved to make sure all of these 17 things are probably more clear than they are now. But 18 that's we have the rest of the year to refine the 19 language.
20 MEMBER REMPE: Thank you.
21 MR. RECKLEY: So on the second -- let me 22 see, that's 25. Yes, if we can go to 26. So the way 23 the first tier was changed, again, the -- this is the 24 first iteration language. We had a normal operations 25 provision at 100 millirem from Part 20. We had the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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69 1 reference values traditionally used, the 2-hour dose, 2 the exclusionary boundary being less than 25 or the 3 duration, dose below 25 rem at the low population zone 4 boundary. And then we added in the first language a 5 statement that the Commission could put in additional 6 criteria if it felt it was needed for reasonable 7 assurance of adequate protection. And that's the only 8 -- the reason we had that there was because this first 9 tier was tied to the adequate protection standard.
10 So if we go to the next slide and the 11 second iteration, you can see that the only change we 12 really made was to delete C because that's no longer 13 needed. We're no longer tying the safety criteria, 14 the first tier safety criteria to reasonable assurance 15 of adequate protection. It's now tied to the 16 immediate threat to public health and safety which we 17 are saying -- for this rule, we're saying that is the 18 reference values of 25 rem over 2 hours2.314815e-5 days <br />5.555556e-4 hours <br />3.306878e-6 weeks <br />7.61e-7 months <br /> at the EAB or 19 over the duration at the low population zone. So --
20 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay.
21 MR. RECKLEY: Go ahead.
22 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes, it's Dennis. You 23 mentioned the Commission several times this morning, 24 and I didn't want details but are -- given this new 25 approach where you're interacting with us at least NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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70 1 monthly and with the public the same way, are you 2 having interactions with the Commission, or are they 3 waiting until this gets pulled together before they 4 really look at it?
5 MR. RECKLEY: There's some communications 6 and if you listened to the Advanced Reactor Commission 7 Meeting last week, you can tell that it's on their 8 radar.
9 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes, I saw that.
10 MR. RECKLEY: So there are some 11 discussions through management channels and so forth.
12 We're not putting up any interim products directly to 13 the Commission. They're -- but basically, they're 14 watching, as are all the other stakeholders, what 15 we're putting out in these iterations. And so yes, 16 they're paying attention, but we don't have the formal 17 interactions if that's what you're asking.
18 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes, thank you.
19 MR. RECKLEY: So that really is the 20 interaction on the first tier that really, the only 21 change was associated with the adequate protection 22 standard. We also did add the -- an existing 23 footnote. We might refine it over time but it's the 24 same footnote that you'll see in Parts 50 and 52 25 trying to explain the use of the 25 rem as a reference NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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71 1 value, you know, basically trying to make sure no one 2 interprets that as we think 25 rem is, you know, a 3 fine number for people to get. It is just a reference 4 value used in this context for the criteria associated 5 with no immediate threat to public health and safety.
6 So if we go on then to slide 28, the 7 second tier was originally put out as the normal ops 8 were -- the criteria was as low as reasonably 9 achievable, and we had words as a placeholder from 10 Appendix I of Part 50, which is an old requirement 11 establishing performance goals to meet ALARA for large 12 light-water reactors. And the unplanned events were 13 addressed by saying that design features and 14 programmatic controls needed to address the licensing 15 basis events and defense-in-depth, which are 16 provisions or sections coming up and also to maintain 17 the overall cumulative risk below the QHOs.
18 And comments we got ranged from there was 19 no need for the second tier. A lot of comments from 20 industry organizations saying we shouldn't include 21 ALARA requirements within the second tier, and a fair 22 amount of discussions on whether to use the QHOs, 23 whether to represent the QHOs in words as opposed to 24 actually including the quantified objectives 25 themselves in terms of the numerical values, and some NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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72 1 proposals for alternatives in the second tier.
2 Our -- go to 29. Our second iteration in 3 terms of the comment on ALARA was to maintain it.
4 What we think is part of the issue is some of the 5 history associated with including ALARA within the 6 initial design reviews for either design 7 certifications or combined license applications more 8 recently. But the concern actually even goes back 9 further than that in how it was done under Part 50 10 licensing. So it's a longstanding concern of how 11 we've looked at ALARA at the design stage and how much 12 work has been put into those activities to support the 13 staff's review.
14 And so one thing that we've done is in a 15 parallel activity associated with the Advanced Reactor 16 Content of Applications Project is to develop guidance 17 where we try to point the staff, in large part, to 18 take more credit for programs and kind of a 19 performance-based approach for things that can be done 20 under normal operations that basically would say do 21 less detail of your ALARA provisions in the design 22 documents, NRC staff do less of a review of the design 23 in terms of ALARA and put more focus on the fact that 24 this will be a monitored area, and we can put more 25 focus and credit those monitoring programs. And if NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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73 1 the releases to the public through normal operations 2 are increasing, then, you know, an alarm can go off.
3 If the staff feels that during operations, they're not 4 taking a good faith effort to keep the doses as low as 5 reasonably achievable, we can do it through the 6 program as opposed to looking at the design.
7 So we're trying to accommodate the concern 8 about ALARA and design by shifting, in part, the focus 9 over to monitoring in a performance-based approach.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Have you presented this 11 revision and discussion to the stakeholders yet or is 12 it first coming out today 13 MR. RECKLEY: No, they've seen it.
14 CHAIRMAN BLEY: With comments from them 15 about --
16 MR. RECKLEY: They still don't like ALARA 17 in the rule. They -- I shouldn't say that -- they 18 want ALARA to be a policy, a philosophy, but the 19 feedback was they still are not in favor of it being 20 incorporated into the rule.
21 CHAIRMAN BLEY: You don't have any past 22 guidance or information on (audio interference), I 23 don't think, do you?
24 MR. RECKLEY: Well, to some degree, our 25 view is the ALARA requirements, and they're largely NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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74 1 contained in Part 20, are applicable to every NRC 2 licensee, byproduct material, source material, special 3 nuclear material, and as a subset of that, the 4 utilization facilities using special nuclear material.
5 So we would basically see no rationale, to be honest, 6 as to why this class of licensees would be the only 7 class of licensees to which ALARA wasn't applied.
8 CHAIRMAN BLEY: And some of this stuff we 9 heard from some of the stakeholders in this area.
10 They pointed to having it in Part 20 should be good 11 enough, and I guess a concern I would have is if we 12 replicate anything from Part 20 in the new Part 53, 13 then you got to keep things in parallel in a way that 14 you could avoid if you just refer to Part 2, but --
15 MR. RECKLEY: And yes, actually, most of 16 the places where we -- where it's associated with 17 normal operations -- that's a good point, Dennis -- we 18 have made the editorial change to point to Part 20 as 19 opposed to paraphrasing or repeating Part 20. So that 20 is a change we made, but it doesn't change the 21 underlying technical requirements, but it does, as you 22 said, makes more clear and avoids a future issue by 23 having a requirement worded slightly differently in 24 two different places.
25 MEMBER HALNON: One of the problems is the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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75 1 subjectivity of the word "reasonable." That's 2 probably where the industry is coming from relative to 3 putting I in the design. If you put it in the design 4 criteria or design requirements that you've designed 5 your plant ALARA, which is a noble thing to do, 6 however, you're basically now defining what's 7 reasonable by signing up off on the design. So then 8 how does that relieve the responsibility down the road 9 in the operations portion to continue to look at ALARA 10 if you already signed off that you've met it through 11 your design?
12 So that may be a complicated question, but 13 I guess my point is the subjectivity of it is going to 14 always be a point of contention whether you're in 15 inspection program oversight, otherwise even in 16 performance indicators. But it'll be another point 17 during design reviews if you don't have it -- or if 18 you do have it in the rule like it is here. So, you 19 know, we'll just have to face that, I guess --
20 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
21 MEMBER HALNON: -- moving forward.
22 MR. RECKLEY: And again, one of the ways 23 we were trying to do that is to say ALARA is one of 24 those things that you accomplish not just by design or 25 not just by programs but by the combination of them.
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76 1 And so this language in the guidance was trying to 2 increase everyone's acknowledgment that we're looking 3 at the design and operations and even in operations, 4 a fix to ALARA could include the design or 5 consideration of the design.
6 And so yes, I agree with you. That was 7 the concern. That's why we're trying to point out 8 here in the green, that that's what we heard form 9 industry was the concern. We're trying to do it 10 through this guidance as well as the discussions we're 11 having as part of the rulemaking.
12 CHAIRMAN BLEY: In response to what Greg 13 said, if I were submitting an application for a 14 construction permit or an older license, I suppose I 15 could lay out my plan for how I coordinate design 16 aspects with future operations to meet the goals 17 you're trying to put into the rule here; is that 18 right?
19 MR. RECKLEY: Right. And that's the way 20 it was traditionally done that the performance goals 21 that were in Appendix I and used as goals -- they 22 weren't as stringent a requirement as some of the 23 others in Part 50 -- but those goals were then 24 reflected in 50.36(a), the environmental tech specs, 25 and action would be taken if those performance metrics NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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77 1 weren't being met. And so that's all we're trying to 2 do here as well is tie the operations, say the design 3 contributes ultimately to keeping doses to the public 4 as low as reasonably achievable but trying to 5 acknowledge that it's the combination of the program, 6 the maintenance of the program, the maintenance of the 7 equipment as well as the original design that all 8 contributes to that. And one way to do it would be to 9 say at the design stage, we are setting -- we can meet 10 the following performance goal. And I'll just make a 11 number up and say -- let's say it's 3 millirems a 12 year, all right, some low number. And we will be able 13 to do that through our design and we're putting the 14 monitoring equipment in the right places to make sure 15 it's maintained. The staff should be able to say 3 16 millirems is a reasonable performance goal, and we can 17 tell whether they were effective in their design 18 because it's going to be monitored and look less at 19 the design and convincing ourselves that they can meet 20 that 3 millirem number. So that's really kind of what 21 we're trying to do here.
22 MEMBER HALNON: Yes. One of the things 23 I'm looking forward to is how it translates through 24 the licensing documents and to either licensing 25 conditions -- license conditions or tech specs or some NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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78 1 other way that we couple up things, then --
2 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
3 MEMBER HALNON: -- we'll have a design 4 based on operations. You're going to have to have 5 some hook in there to --
6 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
7 MEMBER HALNON: -- the inspectors, the 8 oversight, something to look at.
9 MR. RECKLEY: And again, it's not totally 10 unlike what we have in 50.36(a) now --
11 MEMBER HALNON: Right.
12 MR. RECKLEY: -- so. Okay. So that's the 13 iteration on ALARA. Basically, we're proposing to 14 keep it but we're trying to say that the guidance 15 should help alleviate some of the concerns about ALARA 16 at the design stage.
17 Slide 30 goes to the second feedback that 18 we got on the second tier, and that's the use of the 19 QHOs. I talked about this already. Some concerns --
20 MEMBER BROWN: Bill?
21 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, Charlie.
22 MEMBER BROWN: Can you back up just a 23 second?
24 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
25 MEMBER BROWN: Since I come from the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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79 1 nuclear program, I want to get a better -- a little --
2 I've listened to Greg's comments and Dennis's -- a 3 little better understanding when I talk -- when I 4 think of the ALARA relative to design. And I guess my 5 perception is during the design of the plant, you have 6 some design basis that you would like to achieve in 7 terms of operators, maintenance people wandering 8 around maintaining various pieces of equipment, and 9 their closeness or non-closeness to the reactor plant 10 itself, and so you don't want them to achieve dose 11 limits or doses that are too high over the period of 12 whatever they are, a year or what have you.
13 But I mean once you've done that 14 monitoring programs, if they detect that you're not 15 meeting those, you have to have a better -- bigger 16 exclusion zone for people to wander around doing work 17 or control it more via programs. Is that -- that's 18 from an internal operations standpoint.
19 I mean the ones at the boundary questions 20 of 25 rem, etcetera, and all that type of stuff of the 21 site, those are fixed for the emergency conditions, 22 but the ALARA, seems to me, is largely based on 23 operations and maintenance and making sure your staff 24 is not over-exposed. And that's a battle that you go 25 through to try to make sure you can maintain stuff but NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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80 1 not exceed some limit. You said 3 millirem, and I 2 don't know where you pulled that number out of.
3 MR. RECKLEY: But this particular one is 4 public ALARA. We'll get to worker protections --
5 MEMBER BROWN: Okay.
6 MR. RECKLEY: -- in a minute.
7 MEMBER KIRCHNER: This would include 8 normal effluents, right, Bill?
9 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
10 MEMBER BROWN: Yes. So that's a design 11 issue really and then one that you monitor downstream 12 during operations.
13 MR. RECKLEY: And traditionally, this 14 looks -- for large light-water reactors, this 15 traditionally looks at things like waste gas systems, 16 because --
17 MEMBER BROWN: Exactly, yes.
18 MR. RECKLEY: -- by and large, the bulk of 19 the radioactive material is confined and concentrated 20 in the core. Then you have -- so -- but as you get to 21 some of these other designs, it may differ somewhat in 22 terms of how the radionuclides are distributed through 23 the plant. So yes, we will get to occupational in a 24 second, Charlie, but the same -- a lot of the same 25 basic argument holds, although the -- to my knowledge, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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81 1 the NRC hasn't had performance goals equivalent to 2 Appendix I for the occupational dose at the design 3 stage, but certainly when we look at a design -- I'll 4 just make something silly up -- if you had a pipe that 5 contained radio -- concentrations of radionuclides 6 going through an area where people were, that was 7 going to show up a red flag that hey, why are you 8 doing this, what shielding are you going to provide, 9 or can't you redirect that pipe, right? I mean 10 that's, I hate to say, too much, but it's kind of 11 common sense, right, of the need to address 12 occupational dose. And designers do it. I don't want 13 to imply they don't do it, but when we get to the --
14 down to the occupational, protection of plant workers, 15 we also kept ALARA. So it's somewhat the same 16 comment, although we haven't traditionally had the 17 performance goals that we have for external effluents.
18 MEMBER BROWN: Okay. Thanks, Bill.
19 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Slide 30 is the 20 feedback we got, again, on the second tier still, but 21 related primarily to the use of the QHOs. And again, 22 some stakeholders, we had a mix. Some were 23 comfortable with, even promoting, the use of the QHOs 24 as a metric, but others not wanting to use the QHOs 25 because they have not previously been actually NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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82 1 incorporated into technical requirements.
2 Some concern over the use of QHOs goes to 3 Dave's earlier question that in order to show you meet 4 them, you need to use a tool like the PRA, because you 5 need to quantify the results in order to compare them 6 to the QHOs. So those who didn't want to do a PRA 7 also didn't want to use the QHOs because it's 8 basically the same comment. Some did propose some 9 alternative to the QHO either in language or in 10 approach.
11 Our iteration, as you'll see, is that we 12 maintain the use of the QHO. Although they haven't 13 been explicitly in the regulations before, they are 14 very well-established in terms of their use for 15 decisions and licensing, be it Reg. Guide 1174, be it 16 the consideration of regulatory treatment of non-17 safety systems, a finding in accordance with Chapter 18 19 of the SRP for plants under Part 52, and back-fit 19 assessments and so forth. So they are a widely-used 20 tool, a well-established measure, and so we use that 21 in our thinking to keep it.
22 And the second note, if -- the concern 23 that if you go more vague in terms of a metric, it's 24 hard then to have what we'll talk about -- what we 25 talked about earlier and also when we talk about the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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83 1 other Subparts, a common thread that goes all the way 2 across. And so for example, in operations, when we 3 get into the reliability assurance programs for non-4 safety-related equipment, how would you use or how 5 would you define those reliability targets if you 6 weren't using a tool like PRA and didn't have a 7 defined metric like the QHOs.
8 And so if you onto 31, you can see what we 9 did for the second tier in the underlined text there.
10 You can see basically for unplanned events, we keep 11 the QHOs. For the normal operations, we keep ALARA, 12 as I mentioned, but we did take out -- we had put in 13 the Appendix I working as a placeholder. We took it 14 out and say we're going to do an alignment with Part 15 20 discussions of ALARA and also the need to meet the 16 EPA regulations in Title 40 Part 190 that defines 17 design goals for nuclear reactors. So that's the 18 proposed second iteration of the second tier.
19 Go on to slide 32. I think I've gone over 20 this. We maintain ALARA. It's a longstanding 21 element. It's applicable to every other NRC licensee.
22 We maintain the QHOs in the second interaction because 23 it's, again, we think is -- it's a well-established 24 policy. It's a well-established metric to use in 25 risk-informed decision-making.
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84 1 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt. Is 2 there -- are you using a surrogate there in addition 3 to the frequency of a dose in your -- in implementing 4 the QHO?
5 MR. RECKLEY: No. What the language that 6 we use is basically the immediate health effects or 7 prompt fatalities below 5 and 10 million, which is the 8 QHO right out of the policy statement --
9 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Right.
10 MR. RECKLEY: -- and for latent health 11 effects, below 2 and a million, which again is the 12 number right out of the safety goal policy statement.
13 So we are putting it in terms of the health effects 14 and not in terms of dose, if that was the question.
15 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes, that was because 16 don't you need a surrogate? Don't you need to define 17 what's immediate and latent? And that implies a dose.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. All this is dose-19 related and we would, as we go forward -- you know, 20 again, these numbers have existed for a long time.
21 They're the numbers in the safety goal. The use of 22 those numbers and how they're reflected in large 23 light-water reactors and level three PRAs, that 24 conversation has been made in codes like MAX. You're 25 going to go beyond my level of expertise.
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85 1 And so one of the questions that we have 2 had is whether this would be better put in terms of 3 doses. Our thinking is that it-- because there's a 4 probabilistic element, it's not a dose, right? It's 5 a distribution. And we think the guidance can fill 6 that gap and define how you meet these metrics, and 7 the use of established models in the existing PRA 8 methodologies, we think, would be an example. But 9 we're open to people saying we might need additional 10 guidance in this area.
11 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, I just think it 12 would be simpler for you, the staff, and simpler for 13 the applicants to have a little more guidance, you 14 know, a certainty as to what's the definition of 15 "immediate" and "latent" in terms -- and that -- I 16 think in addition to the PRA aspect, the frequency 17 aspect, at some point, you've got to have an agreement 18 about how much exposure actually is needed to meet 19 either or. You see where I'm coming from? And that 20 would provide --
21 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
22 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- more certainty.
23 MR. RECKLEY: And this is -- you know, 24 we've talked internally. When we started out in the 25 rulemaking plan and in the licensing modernization NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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86 1 SECY paper where we said we were going to use that as 2 we move forward into this rulemaking, what you're 3 suggesting is largely provided, for example, in the 4 frequency consequence curve with then a secondary 5 check or confirmatory check to show that you meet the 6 cumulative goals of the QHOs. But in response to a 7 general observation that we didn't want to or some 8 stakeholders didn't want us to, paraphrase, codify the 9 licensing modernization project, we tried to provide 10 the words here such that NEI 1804 and Reg. Guide 1.233 11 would be one acceptable way to do this. And so 1.233 12 and NEI 1804 has the frequency consequence curve that 13 would do what you --
14 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes.
15 MR. RECKLEY: -- are suggesting. But in 16 our attempt not to codify it, we tried to leave it 17 open for other approaches. And so that's one of the 18 reasons that we'd done -- you know, there are some 19 stakeholders that say you -- we should put the 20 frequency consequence curve from LMP into the rule and 21 it would be more clear. And, you know, we -- that's 22 one comment. And then others who say they don't want 23 it to be used at all. So we're trying to walk the 24 muddy middle and --
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87 1 challenge. I was just thinking that taking that next 2 step might make for a little more certainty and 3 predictability in the actual implementation of the 4 rule from both sides, both the staff and the 5 applicants.
6 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes. So I think those 7 using NEI 1804 will have -- we're trying to make sure 8 that it stays as an acceptable way, and so as we craft 9 it, we're trying to make sure that that does fit.
10 There are some tweaks that people have shown we may 11 need to make just to make sure there's not a 12 disconnect. But by and large, we think we can -- that 13 that's one acceptable way to do this, and we're going 14 to try to make sure that remains. And then -- so in 15 that methodology, it would be fairly clear-cut. In 16 others, either the staff or some other party may come 17 up with alterative guidance on how to meet this, but 18 we'll see. So that's one of the reasons why it's not 19 maybe as clear as it would be if we just, for example, 20 used the frequency consequence curve from NEI 1804.
21 Charlie, I think you had a --
22 MEMBER BROWN: Yes. It's -- I was reading 23 your discussion paragraph and you talked about 24 unplanned events, and you -- and definitely the 25 numbers 5 and 10 million and 2 and 1 million are in, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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88 1 I guess, (b)(2), but you never used the words "those 2 are the objectives from the QHOs." QHO doesn't exist 3 in the document. I didn't see --
4 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
5 MEMBER BROWN: -- words anywhere; is that 6 correct? Am I --
7 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. We took the numbers 8 but we didn't cite the safety goal policy statement as 9 the source of the numbers. You're right.
10 MEMBER BROWN: Is there a reason for that 11 as opposed to just tossing the numbers in? I guess I 12 would have said, hey, we're using the QHOs, the 13 following QHOs, blah, blah, blah, and that way it 14 covers the source, but you didn't and I guess you had 15 a reason.
16 MR. RECKLEY: I mean we always said in the 17 discussions that's where they were coming from. We 18 didn't cite it in the rule language itself.
19 MEMBER BROWN: I got --
20 MR. RECKLEY: So it's a good --
21 MEMBER BROWN: Yes. I got that --
22 MR. RECKLEY: -- it's a good observation.
23 You know, that's another thing we'll take back and say 24 would it be more clear to say even within the rule 25 where they came from.
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89 1 MEMBER BROWN: Yes. And it doesn't have 2 to be extensive, just that --
3 MR. RECKLEY: Oh, no.
4 MEMBER BROWN: -- they're below the QHO 5 limits of 5 and --
6 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
7 MEMBER BROWN: -- such and such and 2 and 8 whatever and that's it. You don't need anymore.
9 MR. RECKLEY: Right -- right.
10 MEMBER BROWN: That's just the thought 11 process. Okay. Thank you.
12 MR. RECKLEY: Sure. Okay. If we can go 13 to 33, the -- this goes to some of the discussion --
14 and we'll continue this in Subpart C on design and 15 analysis, but -- so the safety functions -- and we 16 talked about this in terms of the GDC kind of comments 17 -- was the first iteration we laid out that the 18 primary safety functions, the retention of 19 radionuclides, and put in the requirement that any 20 designer or applicant needed to identify what other 21 safety functions were needed and gave the example of 22 heat generation or reactivity, heat removal, chemical 23 interactions, and then set design features and 24 programmatic --
25 MEMBER BROWN: (audio interference) --
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90 1 MR. RECKLEY: -- controls needed to be put 2 in place to fulfill that, those safety functions. So 3 again, we got some comments, including from ACRS 4 members, to cite the fundamental safety functions. If 5 we go to 34, you can see what we ended up doing, which 6 is to maintain A and B basically the same and then to 7 try to clarify that the primary and additional safety 8 functions required to meet the first and second tier 9 are fulfilled by the design features and programmatic 10 controls.
11 Then when we get into Section C on design, 12 you'll see the connection to the design features.
13 Part of the rationale for doing it this way was to --
14 a couple of them are that when you're looking at some 15 advanced reactor designs, the inventories of 16 radionuclides are somewhat different and significant 17 inventories can be outside of the primary system. And 18 so the safety functions associated with those 19 inventories might be different, and I gave earlier the 20 example you may not need a reactivity control in a 21 waste gas system. But they would need to define 22 safety functions for those systems.
23 Then the other one is in our 24 communications with the Commission, we extended 25 technology inclusiveness all the way to saying we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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91 1 would develop Part 53 as much as we can to even 2 accommodate fusion energy systems, because fusion 3 reactors were included in NEIMA as an example of an 4 advanced nuclear reactor. And so we decided in the 5 second iteration to keep it more or less the same and 6 clarify that when we get to the next section, Subpart 7 C, the design features, you should see how this 8 carries through.
9 And so one of the discussions -- and maybe 10 if I can ask to hold off that -- one of the questions 11 -- Liz, can we go all the way back up to slide 7?
12 One of the questions would be to, as we go 13 forward in the discussions, of how this basically can 14 equate to making sure we didn't lose anything that's 15 provided by the GDC.
16 And so going to Charlie's point about, for 17 example, within I&C, the independence and the 18 separation of protection and control and things like 19 that, of trying to decide where in this hierarchy the 20 most appropriate place for that kind of additional 21 requirement might be. And what I'm going to suggest 22 is in my opinion, it's the last chevron, functional 23 design criteria, and we can talk about it when we get 24 to that point, which will be right after lunch when 25 we're talking about Subpart C on design. But we can NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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92 1 come back to this slide and if there's a general 2 discussion that it should be, let's say, under safety 3 functions, that's a little harder for the reasons I 4 just said, that we're trying to make it not only 5 technology-inclusive but also to make sure that the 6 requirement addresses all the inventories and not just 7 the reactor system.
8 So sorry, Liz. Now can I get you to go 9 all the way back down to where we were? So you'll see 10 that's the only change we really made to the safety 11 functions requirement under Subpart B.
12 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt. I 13 like what you're doing but I would just say -- this is 14 just one member -- I object. I don't think you've 15 defined the safety functions properly. Controlling 16 heat generation, heat removal, and chemical 17 interactions, yes, that's a design -- in your 18 terminology, what would that be, a design -- what's 19 the third chevron? I'll look at my notes. A design 20 --
21 MR. RECKLEY: Design --
22 MEMBER KIRCHNER: But for me, the safety 23 functions are -- and the one that's absent that just 24 disturbs me greatly is maintain control of reactivity 25 and the capability to shut down the reactor and put it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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93 1 in a safe, stable condition. To me, that's primary.
2 That's the primary safety function.
3 The second one is to maintain control of 4 the integrity of the as designed configuration of the 5 plant's fuel and radionuclide inventories. So that's 6 second.
7 And then third fits in with your overall 8 objective, which is not A in the -- and so the order 9 to me is not so important. But I don't think this 10 gets at the essential safety functions. B looks too 11 much like design detail. And leaving reactivity 12 control and the capability to safely shut down the 13 reactor, I just think that's a glaring omission. And 14 again, this is just one member's opinion.
15 MEMBER BROWN: I agree with you, Walt.
16 MEMBER REMPE: So this is Joy. I guess 17 I'm not so offended by putting controlling the release 18 of -- or limiting the release of radioactive materials 19 as the primary, but I do strongly support that you 20 need to add control reactivity under Item B. Since 21 you've listed these other ones and there's so much in 22 the regulations today that include controlling 23 reactivity, I don't understand why that was omitted in 24 Item B.
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94 1 interpreted controlling heat generation as controlling 2 reactivity.
3 MEMBER REMPE: Well, we've had a plant 4 that could continue going for a long period of time 5 still critical. I think that we need -- you know, 6 yes, that's often the excuse given, but I think that 7 because we're talking about shipping plants that have 8 run to another place to remove the follow-up el and a 9 lot of things like that, I think I would control 10 reactivity as a function that needs to be thought 11 about.
12 MEMBER HALNON: Yes. I agree because 13 there have been transients that prior to the point of 14 adding heat that you can argue had nothing to do with 15 heat generation but certainly had a lot of reactivity 16 implications.
17 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes. For example, you 18 have so much excess reactivity at beginning of life in 19 some of these designs that you may not even have any 20 decay heat removal issues, but you could have a 21 reactivity insertion accident that could just be a 22 threat to the general public and to that primary 23 safety function of limiting release of radioactive 24 materials.
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95 1 can put it in. To be honest, it was not so much a 2 conscious decision to exclude as it was, as Dave 3 suggested, that it was considered within the 4 controlling heat generation. But certainly, I think 5 we'll take this observation and putting reactivity 6 within additional safety functions to be considered, 7 I don't think anyone would take issue with it, to be 8 honest. And we didn't -- I'd just ask not to over 9 read that it's not there, because we were thinking it 10 was under controlling heat generation, as Dave said.
11 But if -- but -- so point taken and certainly 12 something for us to do on the third iteration.
13 MEMBER KIRCHNER: But Bill, at risk of 14 belaboring my point, let me pick on one of these in B, 15 chemical interactions. Certainly, that's a design 16 consideration, something that needs to be controlled, 17 but that's not primary. What's primary is to maintain 18 that, whatever the design is, is to maintain the 19 integrity of the boundary that contains the fuel and 20 the radionuclide inventory. And I pick my words 21 carefully because yes, as you point out, there can be 22 designs where they're stripping fission gasses or 23 products or both. And then they're relocating those 24 in some storage vessel or something, so the integrity 25 of that boundary obviously needs to be protected as NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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96 1 well. But that's the primary safety function, and the 2 heat removal and the chemical interactions, these are 3 design -- kind of design details, in my opinion.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. I think there's 5 probably more agreement than disagreement with what 6 we're trying to do. Liz, I'll ask you to jump around.
7 Can you go to 77?
8 So in agreeing with what you're saying, 9 when we looked -- or I'll use first person -- when I 10 look at it, the first function that we identify is the 11 retention of radionuclides, which you do by having the 12 barriers in place just like you said. And then in my 13 mind, the supporting safety functions, the reactivity, 14 heat generation, heat removal, even chemical 15 interactions are those supporting safety functions you 16 need to maintain the barriers. And yes, in our 17 terminology, we're calling those safety functions, but 18 they are tied directly to, in any particular design, 19 maintaining the barriers that you see in this figure, 20 which are the barriers sued for the primary objective 21 of the retention of radionuclides. So I think we're 22 in general agreement, whether you call those -- the 23 exact terminology, how you want to phrase it, but we 24 would call those "the other safety functions" but 25 agree with 100 percent they're safety functions NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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97 1 because they're needed to maintain the barriers needed 2 for the first function, the primary function, which is 3 the retention of radionuclides. So --
4 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I want to jump in just a 5 second. As we try to help you rewrite this thing on 6 the fly, we need to be careful because -- and I'm just 7 going to pick on Walt, so the chemical stuff isn't 8 important here -- if something happens to one of these 9 others, it can blow apart what you're counting on and 10 what you think is the primary safety function. So I 11 like -- I think many of us like this figure you've 12 used here --
13 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
14 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Dennis, I like this 15 figure. That's where I would start from as well. I 16 didn't mean to diminish chemical attack of barriers or 17 anything, but this figure, I think, is very good, very 18 -- I would lead from this figure actually.
19 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. So anyway, Liz, if you 20 can go back. So --
21 MEMBER PETTI: Let me just -- Bill --
22 MR. RECKLEY: You go --
23 MEMBER PETTI: -- from a technology 24 perspective, I think we all agree that the roles of 25 the barriers are very different in different NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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98 1 technologies. The chemical interaction issue is huge 2 in a sodium fast reactor. You got to have integrity 3 of that boundary or else you're going to have a sodium 4 fire. In a gas reactor, it really doesn't matter too 5 much if you lose the reactive coolant boundary, if you 6 will. In a salt system, it doesn't really matter 7 except for the gasses because other fission products 8 are in the salt.
9 And so I actually liked what was there, 10 because I thought it just tied better to a more 11 technology-inclusive approach; whereas if we start 12 talking about barriers, how this gets implemented will 13 be very different across the advanced reactor 14 spectrum.
15 CHAIRMAN BLEY: It's not just across 16 reactor types. It's actually across the accidents 17 that can occur within a reactor type. Those barriers 18 are conditional on what the challenges are.
19 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
20 CHAIRMAN BLEY: That's a great figure if 21 you can get the idea of this organization, well, 22 across, that's (audio interference).
23 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. So Liz, sorry. If we 24 can go back? So again, it is -- I -- that's why I 25 said I think there's more agreement than disagreement.
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99 1 It's maybe just how it's worded, and we were thinking, 2 again, to that figure.
3 And so if we can go on then to 35, the 4 licensing basis events, this was the first iteration, 5 and it didn't change very much. So we can just go on 6 to the slide 36, that we tried to be a little more 7 specific in the language and saying that they needed 8 to cover basically a spectrum of events from 9 anticipated operational occurrences to very unlikely 10 event sequences. But the underlying thought, the 11 underlying requirement remained the same. We didn't 12 really have a change of thought. We just thought that 13 there was maybe some clarifying language by basically 14 reinforcing that the licensing basis events are the 15 spectrum in SECY 19.117. We called it the spectrum 16 from benign to severe, and that's what we wanted to 17 reinforce, that it's the whole range that need to be 18 considered within the licensing basis events.
19 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Yes. The problem I 20 have with this is that for light-water reactors, we 21 know the spectrum quite well. We have 50 years of 22 experience. For some of these new crazy advanced 23 super safe reactors, I don't think we have that 24 experience to know what can possibly happen. So it 25 has to be emphasized that this is not a minor step on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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100 1 the design. This has to be a significant effort to 2 try to figure out exactly everything that will happen.
3 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. I hope there's no 4 disagreement with that. The nature of the licensing 5 of any plant, the unplanned events are critical to the 6 design, and they're fundamental to the licensing 7 process. And so to do that, you need to try to 8 develop the understanding and that's why when we get 9 down, we'll talk about systematic approaches to try to 10 make sure that everything is identified.
11 MEMBER PETTI: Well, what's happening --
12 and you see it on body language -- is if it's not done 13 for light-water reactors, it doesn't need to be done 14 for my plant either. I'll leave it in there but it --
15 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I'd turn that one around 16 Jose. And Bill, I look forward to when you get to the 17 systematic discussion, but two things that concern 18 some of us here, and the first is you often see people 19 start with this set for light-water reactors and just 20 start striking lines through the things that don't 21 apply to them rather than starting from scratch and 22 saying what are the things that can happen in my 23 design.
24 And the other part that bothers me is I 25 don't know anywhere in conventional guidance or in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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101 1 PRA guidance, including the LMP stuff, that really 2 tells people how to do a search from scratch to find 3 these things. And, you know, we're embedded in 4 history and it came about by a bunch of people sitting 5 around who knew their designs dreaming up what could 6 go wrong, and we're living with a list that were 7 dreamed up and a few things that have happened since 8 then that have added to it. And we need a structured 9 way to dream these up, and if you've got that worked 10 out, I look forward to seeing it. What section will 11 that be in?
12 MR. RECKLEY: The next section, Subpart --
13 well, as soon as we get into Subpart C, which is the 14 next Subpart. We got a couple more slides on Subpart 15 B, but they're areas, to be honest, we didn't change 16 very much. I just wanted to go through. So this is 17 the licensing basis event.
18 MEMBER PETTI: So Bill --
19 MR. RECKLEY: Yes?
20 MEMBER PETTI: Bill, just a question on 21 the -- now, I, kind of, like the idea of not putting 22 numerical values to what is a very unlikely event 23 sequence.
24 But, is there not an inconsistency with, 25 with going with these more qualitative terms, here, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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102 1 but then having the QHOs with, and, and some of the 2 numerical criteria, elsewhere?
3 Or, is it, you're just going to handle, 4 what you mean, by very unlikely event sequence, in 5 some guidance, so they know, so everyone's using the 6 same cutoff?
7 MR. RECKLEY: Well, at -- and, again, for 8 keeping in mind that we've already, kind of, decided 9 that that NAI 1804 is an acceptable way to do this, we 10 would, we would say, very unlikely event sequences are 11 within, or, or for the guidance that would equate to 12 the LMP, beyond assigned basis events and the 13 frequency range, between ten and a minus four, and 14 five times ten and a minus seven.
15 So we, we, as an Agency, have already 16 felt comfortable with that, with all the caveats that 17 that includes, the need to, to address uncertainties 18 and to look for cliff edge effects and some things 19 like that, but, but, basically, we're accepting that, 20 as the very unlikely event frequency.
21 But, again, we left open, by just using 22 the words that, if somebody wants to make another 23 proposal that they can do so.
24 And there have been other proposals in, in 25 past practice and, and the treatment of, for example, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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103 1 frequencies below ten to the minus six all the way 2 down to ten to minus eight, as a different category of 3 events and treating them differently.
4 So we were trying to leave it open, but, 5 at the same time, you know, for those of us most 6 familiar with LMP that that would be one way to 7 accommodate this category.
8 So if we can go to 37 that's defense in 9 depth. Again, the first iteration had the language 10 here on the slide, the feedback that we got, some, 11 again, mixed -- everything was mixed feedback.
12 But, some stakeholders did not want 13 defense in depth incorporated into Subpart B, 14 preferring, instead that it would be a philosophy, 15 sort of, as it was done in Part 50 and 52.
16 There was some issue taken with the last 17 sentence, in particular, no single design, or 18 operational feature, no matter how robust, should be 19 exclusively relied upon. Some thought that was too 20 stringent, too prescriptive.
21 And, between the staff and stakeholders, 22 and I even brought up, I think, in the last couple of 23 meetings with this Subcommittee, some consideration of 24 whether we needed to distinguish between passive 25 engineered features, something that we'd use, for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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104 1 example, natural circulation and an inherent 2 characteristic that is based on the laws of physics 3 and not an engineered barrier.
4 So that thinking went into the change we 5 made, if we go to slide 38, which is -- the primary 6 change we made, this is some editorial changes, but 7 the primary change was to change that one sentence and 8 say, no single engineered design feature of human 9 action or programmatic control, no matter how robust.
10 And the reason for that was to consider 11 the possibility that, if an inherent feature is 12 credited that, that that may not warrant having a 13 backup, because it's based on a law of physics.
14 And, therefore, there should be no 15 uncertainty associated with its behavior and, 16 therefore, you wouldn't need to have defense in depth, 17 as a, as a measure to, basically, support the failure 18 of the law of physics.
19 That -- so we changed the language. I 20 don't want to oversimplify how that, you know, an 21 inherent feature is provided by having a very good 22 understanding of what you have in place and its 23 behavior.
24 So that may not -- that that's going to be 25 a challenge. But, to the degree you can say it's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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105 1 based on the law of physics that's, that's the reason 2 for the change.
3 Otherwise, we are proposing to keep it, as 4 a requirement, in Subpart B, and have it considered, 5 as one of the higher-level requirements that will 6 carry through all to the other subparts.
7 So I think, with that --
8 MEMBER REMPE: So this is Joy. And, 9 again, I'm just trying to kick the wheels of the car, 10 or the tires of the car. I -- I'm just wondering, if 11 an inherent feature could be disabled, because of a 12 size, a large, beyond design basis, seismic event, 13 where, for example, the configuration of the core were 14 damaged, or -- is, is that -- I, I know this is a 15 discussion about passive versus inherent and that 16 inherent was given more credibility, but is there --
17 I don't have a good example to give you, really, but 18 is there a way that an inherent feature could be 19 disabled?
20 MR. RECKLEY: I, I, I would -- I would 21 tend to argue, if you can disable it, you may not want 22 to call it an inherent feature. And so let's take 23 your example and say, I have conduction of heat and I 24 want to say that's an inherent feature.
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106 1 disrupted, it, at least, would not be an inherent 2 feature, from a seismic event, if that's the event 3 that can cause it to be separated, as a heath path.
4 Maybe, it's an inherent feature for some other 5 transient, but not for the seismic event.
6 Likewise, if I'm going to say that heath 7 path and the, and the behavior of steel is, is, and 8 the conduction of heat and steel, I'm going to have to 9 make sure that the steel is what I think it is, that 10 the steel doesn't change, over time, as a function of, 11 of its environment and all of that.
12 That's why I, I think we're open to 13 discuss more use of inherent features, but, but 14 there's a lot of questions on the use and the 15 assurances that, what is treated, as inherent, truly 16 is inherent that that it can't be interrupted, and if 17 it can, then it would be better to be treated, as an 18 engineered feature.
19 MEMBER REMPE: Okay. I'll think about it 20 some more. Again, I'm thinking about reactors flying 21 through the sky to be transported to and from sites.
22 And so just thinking about ways that that assumption 23 could be contradicted. But, anyway, go ahead.
24 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. And, again, as we 25 looked at, you know, one of the things, one of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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107 1 things that we were thinking about is, and we had 2 brought up to the Subcommittee and to the stakeholders 3 is, is whether, the use of something like unmitigated 4 consequence assessments can be used and, and that 5 might be a place, where an inherent feature, because 6 that language is used in the seismic design standard 7 ANS 2.26.
8 And so that's when we started to explore 9 that, a little bit. And, actually, the way that's 10 used, within the DOE complex, it's more 11 event-specific.
12 So maybe, that's why I was saying, it 13 might get, as complicated, as to say it's inherent for 14 one accident, but not inherent for another accident.
15 So -- but, we haven't had much discussion with 16 stakeholders, or individual designers, about trying to 17 use that distinction, at this point. So the last 18 slide --
19 MEMBER BROWN: Bill.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Yes? Charlie.
21 MEMBER BROWN: I want to go back to 38?
22 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
23 MEMBER BROWN: I'm a defense in depth guy, 24 as you've probably listened to me, many times. And 25 what -- as I read this, the last sentence, which says, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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108 1 no single engineered design feature, no matter how 2 robust, should be exclusive, or ride on, and that's 3 last.
4 As opposed to that, we go through 5 uncertainties and all this other hand waving. And, 6 you can deal with uncertainties, all you want to, but 7 the critical feature of defense in depth is more than 8 one and that's not emphasized that way, in this 9 paragraph. That's my personal opinion.
10 MR. RECKLEY: Just --
11 MEMBER BROWN: I --
12 MR. RECKLEY: -- just --
13 MEMBER BROWN: I would invert --
14 MR. RECKLEY: -- just --
15 MEMBER BROWN: -- all that.
16 MEMBER BROWN: Oh, okay, and have that be 17 the first sentence?
18 (Simultaneous speaking.)
19 MEMBER BROWN: Yes. We ought to talk 20 about no single thing. That's -- you want multiple 21 systems, instead of backups. And all the rest is just 22 details underneath how you come up with what those 23 systems may require.
24 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
25 MEMBER BROWN: That's -- I mean, but NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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109 1 that's my thought.
2 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Noted.
3 MEMBER BROWN: Thank you.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, if we can go, then, to 5 39. This, we had talked about, the production of 6 plant workers. Again, this is an area we got the same 7 general comment that, some stakeholders, thought we 8 shouldn't include this in Subpart B, and, and also, 9 the ALARA provisions, some people thought we shouldn't 10 have.
11 If you go on to the next one, in the 12 second iteration, you can see, here, this is an 13 example, you can see, in the language, where we --
14 Dennis, you brought up, we point to Part 20, as 15 opposed to paraphrasing.
16 And -- but, technically, we kept it, 17 basically, the same that, that, that you need to have 18 design features, to keep dose to plant workers below 19 the limits, in Part 20, the firm limits, like the five 20 rem, per year, number.
21 And then, also, the second, Paragraph B, 22 that it should be kept, as low, as reasonably 23 achievable, but we just changed the wording to part, 24 to point to Part 20.
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110 1 I guess, a continuing reinforcement of, why we think 2 ALARA is important is, is it's not only a longstanding 3 practice of the Atomic Energy Commission and the NRC, 4 to include it in our requirements, it's also 5 recommended, by the EPA and their federal guidance for 6 radiation protection. So 41, so that's the, the 7 discussion and --
8 CHAIRMAN BLEY: And this ends the second 9 major of --
10 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
11 CHAIRMAN BLEY: -- it, for almost equal 20 12 slide sections, so I think this is a good point, to 13 break for lunch. It's a little early, for those of 14 us, out West, but it's a good stop --
15 MEMBER BIER: Dennis?
16 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes?
17 MEMBER BIER: I have a couple of questions 18 that are relevant to this morning's discussion, so 19 maybe, we should take those quickly, now?
20 CHAIRMAN BLEY: We can take them, now, and 21 if other Members have some questions, we can do those 22 before we break for lunch, as well.
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111 1 than I do.
2 The two questions that I have, one of them 3 pertains to the safety goals, our quantitative health 4 objectives, and it -- I used to have them memorized, 5 but I don't anymore.
6 But, it occurs to me that, some of the 7 language in those, like, you know, no greater than .1 8 percent of whatever, may be, kind of, assuming a 9 certain range of reactor size.
10 And so I don't know, whether it's relevant 11 to Part 53, or relevant to, you know, the revision of 12 the safety goals, themselves, or whatever, but it 13 occurs to me that, if you have small modular reactors, 14 with large numbers of reactors, at a given site, 15 somebody should look at, does the safety goal apply to 16 each individual reactor, in which case the site, as a 17 whole, could potentially pose a large risk, so has 18 anybody looked at that?
19 MR. RECKLEY: Yes -- in terms of our Part 20 53 effort, it's been looked at, in terms of, the 21 operating fleet and, even, Part 50s and 52, through 22 even policy papers, as to whether it applies to single 23 units.
24 And then, out of Fukushima, there was a 25 discussion and a look to see multi units and, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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112 1 decisions were made.
2 Within Part 53, we're more clear that, 3 this -- all of the criteria are being applied to the 4 plant, where the plant includes every reactor unit, or 5 module, and every major radioactive inventory, be it 6 waste gas, spent fuel storage, or whatever.
7 MEMBER BIER: Okay. Thinking a little bit 8 speculatively, kind of, similar to some of the 9 questions Joy raised. Could you imagine a site where, 10 you know, you have 40 reactors, but technically, each 11 one is owned by a different company and claims to be 12 a unique facility, or whatever.
13 MR. RECKLEY: I think we would -- during 14 the next generation nuclear plant, some of those 15 questions came up. And so I think, if they're at a --
16 that that's an area, where if, if multiple licensees, 17 multiple nuclear, advanced nuclear plants, meaning, 18 multiple modules, multiple sources.
19 But, different licensees are at the same 20 site, we would have to take that under consideration.
21 But, the Rule doesn't, specifically, address how that 22 -- how we would do that.
23 MEMBER BIER: The other thing I wanted to 24 come back to is, similar concerns to what Greg raised, 25 about the terminology of no immediate threat. And, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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113 1 again, I apologize, if this has, you know, kind of, an 2 understood meaning, within the jargon.
3 But, to me, if I say that, the plant is 4 responsible, or the licensee is responsible for 5 ensuring that no immediate threat can ever occur, 6 then, to me, there's no room for any other cost 7 benefit risk reduction, because any future threat 8 will, at some point, be an immediate threat.
9 So if they don't prevent future immediate 10 threats, then they violate the immediate threat part 11 of it. And -- so to me, the language just seems, 12 again, a little bit odd.
13 And, I can understand, for instance, if 14 it's no immediate threat, during normal operation, or 15 something like that, but, you know, any off-normal 16 occurrence would, at some point, in the future, pose 17 an immediate threat, it seems to me. So again, I 18 apologize, if that's off topic, but I just wanted to 19 raise it, quickly.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Again, in our, in our 21 logic, we're equating immediate threat to the 25-rem 22 over two hours, at the exclusionary boundary, or 23 25-rem, over the course of the event, at the low 24 population zone boundary. And that would be, 25 primarily, done through the assessment of the design NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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114 1 bases accident. And then --
2 MEMBER BIER: Okay.
3 (Simultaneous speaking.)
4 MR. RECKLEY: And then, when we get into 5 operations, basically, we would be showing that, the 6 way the licensee meets that, is to make sure all the 7 equipment that's needed, basically, all the 8 safety-related equipment is always available to deal 9 with that transit.
10 MEMBER BIER: Yes. So I guess, maybe, 11 what I was missing was the design basis part of it 12 that, I don't know, I --
13 (Simultaneous speaking.)
14 MEMBER BIER: -- would have to go back and 15 look at the slide, again, I don't think it's worth 16 going back right now, but make sure that, no immediate 17 threat is tied, clearly, to design basis.
18 (Simultaneous speaking.)
19 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. We'll look. Thank 20 you.
21 MEMBER BIER: Okay. Sure thing.
22 MEMBER HALNON: So, Bill, have you reached 23 a debate on, whether or not, you're going to license 24 individual modules, or reactors, versus the entire 25 site, have you reached that debate, yet?
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115 1 MR. RECKLEY: I mean, the standing thought 2 is that, every reactor unit will have a license, or a 3 docket and, just like we do, now, Palo Verde 123, each 4 has a license, but it's a, it's a plant.
5 So the difference here is, although, every 6 module will have a license, the safety analysis will 7 be done for the plant and, and this is, I think, the 8 same as we had proposed under the next generation 9 nuclear plant and the general NAI 1804, or before 10 that, the MHGTR-type-of-analysis methodology.
11 MEMBER HALNON: Okay. So down the road, 12 if you have multiple licensees then that'll be in 13 discussion, like you mentioned, down the road?
14 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, and we can handle that, 15 as long as they're part of the same plant.
16 MEMBER HALNON: Right, understanding.
17 MR. RECKLEY: But, if you had multiple 18 plants, at a site, I -- that's an area we haven't, we 19 haven't thought of.
20 MEMBER HALNON: Okay. Yes. That's a --
21 CHAIRMAN BLEY: It's one you probably 22 might consider, because that happened --
23 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
24 CHAIRMAN BLEY: -- in other parts of the 25 world.
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116 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
2 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Vesna would like to get in 3 here. Vesna, please.
4 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Yes. I was saving 5 this, to make a comment, to understand, when we have 6 a discussion, but since we are discussing this part, 7 I'd like to make a comment on the using the content at 8 the health objective.
9 Because, in this discussion, we say that 10 they are well-established and used all the time and I 11 always had that in me, strong opinion that, 12 particularly health objectives, have not been 13 well-established, even in the current regulation, 14 which is a well-established -- is how we use 15 substitute measures, you know, like, core damage 16 frequency and large early release frequency to 17 reference then, what was the tenth of the core 18 objective health objectives.
19 Basically, if we go back to that, how this 20 -- and this is what I was checking, so I can 21 contribute, you know, by checking how the connections 22 were made.
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117 1 which are crucial for this, one of those that, in 2 which, you know, Barjo (phonetic) said they don't have 3 a good basis for it.
4 One of the assumptions for example, if you 5 look in the Latin and Contra (phonetic) facilities is 6 that, condition approvability of the Latin facility, 7 given the false accident is four to E minus 3.
8 There's absolutely no basis for that number, and there 9 was some really good basis of connected that could 10 core damage frequency.
11 So in addition, there was also this point 12 one percent of the connection to the Contra 13 facilities from all other causes, which was done, 14 like, 30 years ago, and who know what that number is, 15 now.
16 So there is a lot of numbers there, 17 however, the event moved from the -- presenting less 18 than point one percent of the risk of all other causes 19 to dose objectives.
20 So if we had to establish -- if we're 21 going to use that quantitative health objectives, 22 again, as the goal, we have to deal with the 23 controversy of those numbers. So I will not say that 24 quantitative health objectives are well-established 25 goal. So that's my comment.
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118 1 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. And I, I understand 2 what you're saying, and, and yes, for the light water 3 reactor fleet, the surrogate measures, core damage 4 frequency, large early release frequency, yes, are 5 more commonly used.
6 There's -- and you mentioned, I think, 7 there's some derivations available, to show where 8 those numbers came from and I remember, off-hand, 9 there's an appendix to NUREG 1860 that has such a 10 derivation.
11 As you get into other reaction designs, if 12 they're going to propose a surrogate, then they would 13 have to do such an exercise and show how their 14 approach, basically, meets the health objectives. But 15 --
16 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: That point would be 17 that, you also face, like, the new definition is that, 18 you're using the same number and so it's couldn't use 19 five in, like, you know, five, ten to minus seven, for 20 the immediate health effect.
21 But that has to define, you know, what 22 dose results in this immediate health -- they're all 23 the same controversial questions, which come here, in 24 this, and that may not be easy to establish, you know?
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119 1 and ten to minus seven, what does this number 2 measures? It is supposed to measure immediate health 3 effect.
4 How do we define this immediate health 5 effect? You know, there is so many and how are they 6 related to the radiation releases?
7 So this is a -- so I just want to say, if 8 we say we are keeping QHO, because they're 9 well-established measures, then a lot of controversy's 10 connected with QHO, using QHO. That's my comment.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Thank you.
12 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks, Vesna. Any other 13 Members have questions, before we take our lunch 14 break?
15 (No audible response.)
16 CHAIRMAN BLEY: No more. We're going to 17 break, now, for lunch, and it's 11 o'clock, no, 12 18 o'clock, back East, no, it's not, it's 1 o'clock, back 19 East, right?
20 We'll break for one hour -- well, we'll 21 take a little more than an hour. Come back, on the 22 hour2.546296e-4 days <br />0.00611 hours <br />3.637566e-5 weeks <br />8.371e-6 months <br />, at 2 o'clock, back East, I guess, it is, yes, 2 23 o'clock. We are now recessed, until 2.
24 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 25 off the record at 12:53 p.m. and resumed at 2:01 p.m.)
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120 1 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Let's bring the meeting 2 back into session. Bill Reckley, if you're ready, 3 please, go ahead.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Thank you, Dennis.
5 And, and just in regards to the schedule, we'll 6 probably take this subpart past 3 o'clock, but we 7 don't need as much time, as allotted, for Subpart E, 8 on construction.
9 So we'll get out on-time, I'm just warning 10 you, Subpart C, might go a little past 3:00 p.m.
11 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes, I would (audio 12 interference) to take longer. We might hope for 13 break, in the middle of that, but, if that seems 14 appropriate.
15 (Audio interference.)
16 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. So -- yes. So now, 17 we're going to get into the preliminary proposed 18 language, for Subpart C, for design and analysis. So 19 if we go to Slide 43.
20 So -- and I'm going to, actually, have Liz 21 pull up the Rule language, here in a second, the 22 table, so we can take a -- look. Because, just in 23 terms of the feedback, we didn't get much feedback and 24 we didn't make many changes to these sections, but 25 they're important to what we were talking about, this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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121 1 morning, so I want to talk about them a little more 2 than just in regards to what we changed, which again, 3 was not very much.
4 So this -- these are the sections that get 5 into the design and they talk about, when I showed the 6 chevrons this morning that that the safety criteria, 7 then the safety functions.
8 And then it -- that rolls into Subpart C, 9 with the requirement under 53.400, to identify design 10 features, and then, for those design features, to 11 identify the functional design criteria, to meet, 12 both, the first and the second tier.
13 And then, under 53.430, we do plant 14 workers. Again, the comments were, largely, if you 15 didn't favor having the requirement in, to address 16 occupational exposures, then you didn't favor keeping 17 in functional design criteria, for that purpose.
18 And -- and then, lastly, design 19 requirements. So you can go to, to the next slide, 20 Liz. And then, like I said, we didn't really maintain 21 these -- we didn't really -- I'm sorry. We didn't 22 really change these.
23 But, if you can call up the discussion 24 table, Liz, and go down to, like, Page 8. So this is 25 the actual discussion table that that that we had NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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122 1 released, to support the discussions. Yes, one --
2 yes, this page. And so here, you can see the language 3 that basically says, design features must be provided, 4 such that, when combined with programs and human 5 actions, the plant will satisfy the safety criteria 6 and that the design features provide the safety 7 functions.
8 And, and that's the safety functions of 9 both, the way we have it characterized, the primary 10 retention of radionuclides and then, the supporting 11 safety functions, as they're identified, by the 12 designer, for the source, for the reactor design and 13 for potential other inventories, to supporting safety 14 functions, such as we talked about, this morning, 15 reactivity, heat generation, heat removal, and, 16 possibly, chemical interactions.
17 And then, the next section of 53.410, 18 proposes that, going down to Paragraph B, on planned 19 events, keeping the focus on the unplanned events 20 that, functional design criteria must be defined, for 21 each of those design features relied upon to 22 demonstrate compliance with the first year safety 23 criteria.
24 And then, if you go to the next page, it 25 basically, it says the same thing, for the second NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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123 1 tier, the edits were just, we had some repetition, 2 back to Subpart B, so it -- editorial, we took that 3 out.
4 So if you go down to the bottom of the 5 page, you can see, it's basically the same language, 6 functional design criteria must be defined, for each 7 design feature relied on, to meet the second tier 8 safety considerations and, considering licensing basis 9 events and defense in depth.
10 So yes, if we go to the next page. And --
11 so skipping over the functional design criteria, for 12 plant workers. Again that just, basically, lays out 13 that the designer does have a role in the design 14 process, in terms of, occupational exposure.
15 But then, going down to 53.440, we 16 establish some additional design requirements, such as 17 using generally-recognized consensus codes and 18 standards, making sure you qualify the materials, to 19 their service conditions, consideration of safety and 20 security.
21 And then, the last Subparagraph D, is the 22 equivalent of what we currently have in 50.43(e) that 23 is, design features have to be shown to work, through 24 accommodations and test programs analysis, if 25 appropriate prototype testing, operating experience, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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124 1 or a combination of those things.
2 So those are laying out the design 3 aspects, the assignment of design features and then, 4 the functional design criteria. Given the discussion, 5 this morning, I'm even thinking we may beef up, 6 either, the criteria, the functional design criteria 7 sections, or maybe, this design requirement section, 8 just to clarify matters.
9 Because, for example, fire protection, we 10 do address fire protection, in the analysis sections 11 that we'll be talking about, coming up, but that's a 12 confirmation that the design measures addressed fire.
13 We thought that covered it, but maybe, 14 there should be, in this design requirement section, 15 fire protections, specifically, mentioned and then, it 16 can be repeated, again, in the analysis section, to 17 say analysis should verify the measures, incorporated 18 into the design for, for fire protection.
19 That might also go to, I think, maybe, 20 some of Charlie's comments that, this might be an 21 area, where, if you look at the general design 22 criteria and think there are important things that 23 we're not mentioning, this might be a place we could 24 mention.
25 And so for safety-related design features, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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125 1 if it's appropriate, we could, we could talk about the 2 independence and separation, or something like that, 3 in order to make sure we don't lose anything.
4 We do have -- within, without getting too 5 philosophical, Part 53, if you look back, decades ago, 6 when the ACRS generated a number of papers and 7 discussions on the difference between a structuralist 8 approach, where design requirements are defined ahead 9 of time, like, design specifications.
10 And I don't want to overstate it, but --
11 so design specifications defined, with the thought 12 that, if you meet those design specifications, you're, 13 you have a safe reactor, and that was called the 14 structuralist approach.
15 And Dennis, or those, who were around, 16 please correct me, if I, if I mess this up too badly.
17 And, again, I don't want to overstate it, there were 18 other analysis and things to make sure that that was 19 true, but generally, you'd laid out the design specs, 20 a designer meets those specs, then you're good to go.
21 And the other approach that was talked 22 about, was the rationalist approach, as it was called, 23 which, basically, said you go through design 24 iterations and analysis.
25 And, and it's the analysis and the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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126 1 determination, through the PRA and other similar 2 tools, that you actually define what is appropriate to 3 put in. So you're actively managing the risk.
4 You're using risk metrics and you're 5 managing the risk in the process. And so under Part 6 53, we are moving in that, in that direction. So 7 again, I, I probably messed that up, pretty badly.
8 But -- but, we are moving more to the 9 approach, where the designer is being asked to, to 10 look at the design, include PRA insights and, and 11 design to the metrics, as opposed to designing to an 12 established standard, where there's a basic 13 assumption, or presumption that, if you meet those 14 standards, you have a safe design. I see somebody's 15 hand up, let me --
16 MEMBER BALLINGER: Yes, this is -- this is 17 Ron Ballinger. I'm looking at that Part D, and 18 there's a, kind of, a subtly there that, I guess, I 19 don't -- maybe, it's a different context.
20 But, you've eliminated, must be, through 21 analysis, consistent with 53.450, dah-dah-dah, and in 22 the replacement, analysis is not mentioned.
23 MR. RECKLEY: That -- if, if that's true 24 that's a mistake in the editing.
25 MEMBER BALLINGER: Okay.
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127 1 MR. RECKLEY: I'm sorry --
2 MEMBER BALLINGER: All right, well --
3 MR. RECKLEY: -- sorry --
4 MEMBER BALLINGER: -- it's, it's not a --
5 it's a -- for me, it's a not-so-subtle --
6 MR. RECKLEY: No, it -- yes, analysis has 7 to be, has to be a part of that thing. I -- I'll --
8 I didn't notice that, when I called it up.
9 (Simultaneous speaking.)
10 MR. WIDMAYER: It's -- hey, Bill, it's 11 Derek Widmayer. It's still there.
12 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes --
13 MR. WIDMAYER: So --
14 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- it's there. It's --
15 MEMBER BALLINGER: I told the --
16 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- it's, it's there, 17 it's just in blue.
18 MEMBER BALLINGER: It's C.
19 (Simultaneous speaking.)
20 MEMBER BALLINGER: Oh, okay. I'm just, 21 can't think in three dimensions, I guess.
22 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Yes. But, yes, 23 obviously that is -- that remains an important part of 24 that combination of things you can consider, analysis 25 testing, operating experience and, if needed, the use NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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128 1 of a prototype, and this is where we bring in that 2 prototype concept, from 50.43 (e).
3 MEMBER BROWN: Bill?
4 MR. RECKLEY: Yes?
5 MEMBER BROWN: Why are we fulfilling, as 6 opposed to accomplishing, now, is there something --
7 the previous words said, must be demonstrated capable 8 of accomplishing.
9 Then you, now, change it to a fulfilling 10 functional design criteria. I -- that -- fulfilling 11 just doesn't feel very fulfilling. No pun --
12 MR. RECKLEY: I --
13 MEMBER BROWN: -- intended.
14 (Simultaneous speaking.)
15 MR. RECKLEY: No, I -- I'll go back as --
16 you guys can imagine that, when we're doing this, it's 17 somewhat analogous to your letter writing. So --
18 (Laughter.)
19 MR. RECKLEY: -- sometimes words --
20 sometimes words could change, then I, I'll be honest, 21 I don't remember, why we changed it. It may have been 22 late in the day.
23 (Simultaneous speaking.)
24 MEMBER HALNON: Hey, Bill, this is Greg.
25 I -- I wanted to walk through a couple of terms, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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129 1 if they've already been discussed, in previous 2 meetings, we don't need to go into it.
3 But, in part, or a portion of Paragraph A, 4 generally-accepted consensus codes, is that precise 5 enough, for me, as a designer, to, to know what a 6 generally-accepted code is, is that meant to be 7 approved by the NRC, endorsed by the NRC and Reg 8 Guide, or just an ASME, or ANS Code?
9 MR. RECKLEY: We were intentionally vague 10 and thought that this could be picked up in guidance.
11 In that, there is a way that it would be done, which 12 is endorsed by the NRC, or, or accepted by the NRC, 13 and that would be the most clean cut.
14 But there are other general -- there are 15 other consensus codes and standards that, that we may 16 have not have looked at, before the application, and 17 we would look at it, in term -- in, in the context of 18 that particular application.
19 And then, there are other places, where we 20 just, depending on the analysis, sometimes, we just 21 generally accept -- and this would, probably, be more 22 oriented towards the best estimate calculations, under 23 the second tier, where we accept generally-accepted 24 consensus codes and standards, general industry 25 practice, if you will.
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130 1 MEMBER HALNON: Okay, so that was 2 intentional. The next one was, in B, qualified for 3 the service conditions, over plant lifetime and, 4 during the operating reactors just, just reminded me 5 of the mission and time argument that we're having and 6 will it not, you know, plant lifetime is, is 7 well-defined, you know, so you got licensed period, 8 you got life time, other things that are there, is 9 that -- was that intentional, as well, to keep it in 10 the --
11 MR. RECKLEY: Well -- well -- yes. And, 12 generally, we will define a plant lifetime, as being 13 the license term. But, all we were trying to capture, 14 here, is that you had to include things, not only 15 service conditions that might arise from an event, but 16 also radiation and normal service, you know, time and 17 temperature effects some things and things like that.
18 MEMBER HALNON: Okay. Go ahead, was there 19 a follow up?
20 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes. This is Dennis. I 21 want to follow up on Greg's first one, on codes and 22 standards. The language was generally accepted -- I 23 mean, it -- consensus code is accepted, at least, by 24 the group that puts it forward.
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131 1 has hung up, in the past, because they'd endorsed a 2 particular revision of a standard, it gets out of 3 date, new ones come along.
4 And, yet, it, for some reason, was very 5 hard to change the endorsement to the newer version 6 and we've gotten, kind of, out of sync, with the 7 standards. Is this, to some extent, an attempt to get 8 around that kind of problem?
9 MR. RECKLEY: Well, it -- it --
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Maybe it should be.
11 (Simultaneous speaking.)
12 MR. RECKLEY: Well, it should, it should 13 be easier, insofar as, at least, up to this point, in 14 the iterations, we're not incorporating anything into 15 Part 53, in terms of, consensus codes and standards 16 that would take a rulemaking to change, as we do, now, 17 for ASME pressure vessel code, in Part 50.
18 So the thought would be, most of this 19 would be through guidance and, and that should be 20 easier to keep up to date, than, than actually having 21 to go in and make rule changes.
22 The other reason we're using, generally, 23 this language, was un-attempt to be open to other 24 approaches and, for example, we use this same language 25 in the QA area, because there is some interest in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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132 1 seeing, if the ISO standards, or even, IAEA standard, 2 I forget the number, GSR1, I think, might be used as 3 the guidance and, thereby, help in the international 4 marketing.
5 And our normal references have been to 6 things, like, ANS and ASME standards. So it was also 7 just an attempt to be more open to other standards, 8 other standard development organizations, like, ISO, 9 for example, if it can be -- if they're shown to be 10 okay. So.
11 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks. Ron's got 12 something.
13 MEMBER BALLINGER: Yes, again, with 14 respect to these generally-accepted codes, isn't it a 15 point of fact that, by the time the review is 16 finished, all of the codes and standards that have 17 been used, have been accepted, by the, by the staff.
18 And so you wonder, whether or not, you 19 should reword it, a little bit, to account for the 20 fact that, yes, they can start out with accepted codes 21 and then, those that are, have not been accepted, by 22 the NRC, would be accepted, as part of the review 23 process.
24 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. We'll -- we'll --
25 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I -- is this --
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133 1 MR. RECKLEY: -- make --
2 CHAIRMAN BLEY: -- I mean, I think that's 3 what, actually, has to happen, right?
4 (Simultaneous speaking.)
5 MR. RECKLEY: If -- if we haven't done it, 6 as a generic measure, one way to do it would be 7 through the application, as you're describing.
8 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay. So -- so --
9 MR. RECKLEY: You know --
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: -- in the end, everything 11 has been accepted, once the license is issued?
12 (Simultaneous speaking.)
13 MR. RECKLEY: Right. Yes.
14 MEMBER HALNON: And I had one -- I have 15 one other issue, if you can --
16 MR. RECKLEY: Sure.
17 MEMBER HALNON: -- can handle it? In --
18 in Part C, there, security issues, more possible 19 security issues are resolved. But I -- that leaves me 20 wide open on what a security issue is, is that going 21 to be defined, in guidance, as well?
22 (Simultaneous speaking.)
23 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, we are -- you know, 24 there is existing guidance, on the safety security 25 interface, and, and that's what we mean, here. There NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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134 1 -- there was some comments, on this particular item, 2 and, and, in including it in the design.
3 When we get the integrated package 4 together and look at the security requirements that 5 will be in Subpart F, we might come back and look.
6 One of the reasons we included it was, 7 after 9/11, the advanced reactor policy statement was 8 changed, to include words, pretty much, like this 9 that, we wanted, or expected, or were encouraging 10 designers to look at, both, safety and security, as, 11 as part of the design process.
12 MEMBER HALNON: Yes, okay. I -- I --
13 we'll wait for --
14 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
15 MEMBER HALNON: -- the security, the word, 16 issues, really leaves me wide open on that, that's the 17 reason I was, kind of --
18 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
19 MEMBER HALNON: -- hiding it, so. Okay.
20 (Simultaneous speaking.)
21 MEMBER BROWN: Bill?
22 MR. RECKLEY: Yes?
23 MEMBER BROWN: Just spring-boarding off of 24 -- that was Greg, I think, that made the last comment, 25 wasn't it?
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135 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
2 MEMBER HALNON: Yes.
3 MEMBER BROWN: All right. Okay, thank 4 you. Safety and security must be considered together, 5 in the design process, such that, security issues.
6 When you're talking about security, what is the nature 7 of the security you're talking -- you're talking about 8 people getting into the plant?
9 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, I --
10 MEMBER BROWN: Is it physical security?
11 (Simultaneous speaking.)
12 MR. RECKLEY: Well, it would be physical 13 and cyber.
14 MEMBER BROWN: Well, it doesn't say that.
15 In Number --
16 MR. RECKLEY: Yes -- okay.
17 MEMBER BROWN: -- 2, right now, you're 18 well-aware of, we've been trying to address control 19 off access, outside. That's a design process, within 20 the plant, relative to how data gets into, or out of, 21 the plant.
22 Didn't know you were aware of that 23 particular circumstance, right now, but the design 24 process is separate, where I would -- how, how do I 25 phrase this?
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136 1 Cyber security, with viruses and 2 everything else stops, when the Internet lines get 3 into admin buildings and places that don't -- are not 4 inside the plant boundaries.
5 Once you're inside the plant boundaries, 6 you can't put virus software into a control system, a 7 protection system, a safeguard system, a reactivity 8 control system, or in your main, main control room, of 9 those systems.
10 Your systems will just stop working.
11 You'll be constantly updating them. So the design 12 process needs, needs, somehow, to ensure that the, the 13 staff, sans cyber can make sure that the in-plant 14 design, inside those boundaries, is within the design 15 purview.
16 I -- somehow, we ought to beef that up, a 17 little bit, is all I'm saying, to make it clear, 18 relative to -- that cyber is not inside the plant 19 boundary.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. I -- and, and --
21 (Simultaneous speaking.)
22 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. We are -- we are just 23 crafting, as the, as the first, even, internal draft, 24 the requirements for, both, physical and, and cyber 25 security.
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137 1 And -- and, for now, we're, we're linking 2 to that, through Subpart F, the operations, because 3 it's a security program.
4 But, one of the things that we will look 5 at, and, and again, sometimes, we're putting things in 6 here, knowing we need to go back, in the iterations, 7 once we see how things fit together, that, if there 8 are things that are design-oriented, they should go 9 here, and if they are post-operation, they, they would 10 go in Subpart F.
11 MEMBER BROWN: Yes, there are, there's 12 very definitely a delineation, it, it's the -- once 13 you hit the plant boundary, it's a control of access.
14 You -- in the old days, with all analog systems, you 15 had physical control of the access, was all you had to 16 deal with.
17 Make sure the guys were cleared, they had 18 the right stuff with them, and they had to get 19 approval, from the main control room supervisors, in 20 order to get into cabinets.
21 But, now, with the electronic access, 22 there's this marvelous idea that, you know, you 23 connect the Internet into everything. And, now, we 24 can, we can do all kinds of stuff and send new 25 software down and --
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138 1 So it's a control of access -- it's a 2 whole new world from control of access. So that part 3 of it has to be within the design part, not 4 programmatic, is what I'm --
5 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
6 MEMBER BROWN: -- saying, in Subpart --
7 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
8 MEMBER BROWN: -- F.
9 (Simultaneous speaking.)
10 MR. RECKLEY: Right. And --
11 MEMBER BROWN: But we've got to try to 12 separate that, somehow. I know that'll create a --
13 some more discussions for you guys, because we're 14 going through that, now, but --
15 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
16 MEMBER BROWN: -- just, to make you aware 17 of it.
18 (Simultaneous speaking.)
19 MR. RECKLEY: Good. Thank you.
20 MEMBER BROWN: Okay.
21 MR. RECKLEY: So -- so this is, like, I 22 just wanted to pull the language up. And, again, 23 suggest that, if -- that, that I thought this would be 24 an area.
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139 1 up that that fire protection, even based on this 2 morning's discussion, we should probably mention, in 3 the design area, as well as, support it in the 4 analysis area and, currently, we only address it in 5 the analysis.
6 So if there's other areas, or other things 7 that we should build in that people think we're 8 missing, I, I think, if you look in this area, it 9 would probably be the most likely place to put 10 additional detail.
11 It -- it -- so I'll -- I'll leave it, 12 there. Ron, did you have another question, or is your 13 hand up, from before?
14 MEMBER BALLINGER: Sorry, it must be up --
15 MR. RECKLEY: No?
16 MEMBER BALLINGER: -- from before.
17 MR. RECKLEY: So with that, Liz, if we 18 can, go back to the slides. That was the design 19 section, again, from a second iteration, we didn't 20 change it, very much.
21 But, this might be an area, per the 22 discussion, this morning, that, that we could look at, 23 and make some additions, if people think there are 24 areas that we're, that we're missing. So if we can 25 down to --
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140 1 (Simultaneous speaking.)
2 MEMBER KIRCHNER: I would just like to 3 reiterate -- this is -- Bill, this is Walt. Yes, the 4 theme, from GDC-2, 3, and 4, probably, should show up, 5 here. That would include fire protection, as GDC 6 Number 3.
7 So you're designing for it, and not just 8 trying to analyze your way out of it, or use undue 9 reliance on operating measures, to mitigate the fire 10 issues. It -- it should be up-front in the, in the 11 design --
12 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
13 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- features. As well 14 as, things like, you know, of course -- of course, 15 every new plant will tell you, Number 4 doesn't apply, 16 because I don't have a large brake LOCA, but, what 17 you'll, if you look at most of these designs, they do 18 have potential for interfering energetically, or in an 19 -- in some way, with a failure, with the safety 20 functions, achieving the safety functions.
21 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
22 MEMBER KIRCHNER: An -- and then, of 23 course, the, you know, designing for both, internal 24 and external hazards. It -- it seems, to me, that's 25 -- that could be pulled up, here, and --
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141 1 MR. RECKLEY: And that's a --
2 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- provides coverage.
3 (Simultaneous speaking.)
4 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, thank you, Walt. I --
5 I think that, we'll, we'll take that back and, and 6 look at it.
7 Again, we -- the, the concept, I think, 8 we've covered and -- but, sometimes, it's covered in 9 the analysis part and, perhaps, it should be showing 10 up in both places, with the analysis being, what 11 analysis is, which is, which is usually a 12 verification, but the design having to, at least, 13 mention that you need to incorporate those things into 14 the design.
15 So we, we will look and, probably, include 16 some things, like fire protection. External events, 17 though, you know, we talk about them, we define them 18 to be within the licensing basis events, and then we 19 mention them, again, under the analysis section.
20 But, you're right, they do show up, also, 21 in the design, because there's usually something 22 physical that you, that you need --
23 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes, I know --
24 MR. RECKLEY: -- to do.
25 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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142 1 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yes, exactly, it's 2 usually design and the analysis confirms that the 3 design will provide that function --
4 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
5 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- that safety function, 6 or protect --
7 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
8 MEMBER KIRCHNER: -- another system, from 9 one of those hazards.
10 (Simultaneous speaking.)
11 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
12 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Hopefully, you're doing 13 it, by design and not undue reliance on analysis, or, 14 or programmatic operational --
15 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
16 (Simultaneous speaking.)
17 MR. RECKLEY: Again, this is the kind of 18 improvement, as we go through the iterations, just to 19 make sure it's complete. The, the thinking was that, 20 it wasn't just analysis, right, because we're thinking 21 of the design process, as iterative, too.
22 So you do the analysis, then you change 23 the design, you do the analysis, until you get where 24 you need to be, but, but it only being under the 25 analysis section, I, I'm agreeing, maybe, is not NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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143 1 capturing it, fully, the way it should be captured.
2 And we have, we have the space, here, 3 between the functional design criteria and the 4 additional design requirements, to just make mention 5 of all of those things, to make sure that they are, 6 actually, within the design requirements, not just the 7 analysis requirements.
8 So I -- that's a good catch and I think, 9 I, I think we'll look forward to that, as we develop 10 the next iteration. From a -- from a big picture, of 11 where we were sitting, I don't think it changes 12 anything, it just provides that the rule is more 13 clear, in that regard.
14 So if we go down, to the analysis section, 15 this is an area we changed a little more, in regards 16 to feedback and so Paragraph A, under 53.450, the 17 analysis, in the first iteration, basically, said you 18 need, you need to do a PRA and it needs to address 19 internal and external events and, and other things 20 that may challenge the safety functions.
21 And, some of the feedback was that, they 22 were looking for, some stakeholders were looking for 23 other risk assessments, other than, probabilistic risk 24 assessments.
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144 1 approach to design and analysis, and we'll get to 2 that, in Paragraph B. So we heard that and the change 3 we made to this one, on the next slide, Page 46.
4 And, we didn't change much, in that, our 5 iteration still requires, or still proposing to 6 require, under the second iteration that a PRA be 7 done.
8 And we did add -- I think, Dave, this goes 9 to your comment, earlier. One of the reasons, now 10 that we maintained it, was to support showing that you 11 meet the second tier safety criteria, which is the, 12 the QHOs. So -- Vicky, I see your --
13 MEMBER BIER: Yes. Again, being new to 14 some of these discussions, I just have a quick 15 question, about, do we, or does the NRC, believe that 16 there is, kind of, a demonstrated accepted approach, 17 for PRA of passively safe designs?
18 (Simultaneous speaking.)
19 MR. RECKLEY: So well currently and --
20 currently, for, for light water reactors, including 21 the, the passive designs, we have an ASME, ANS 22 standard that the NRC has endorsed, under Reg Guide 23 1.200.
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145 1 development organizations, a non-light water reactor, 2 excuse me, PRA standard.
3 And the staff is currently reviewing that, 4 with the hope of endorsing that standard. And so we 5 would have PRA standards available for light water and 6 non-light water reactor designs.
7 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Well -- this is Dennis I 8 just want to inject something, for Vicki. In a couple 9 of the more recent design certs, and even, in some of 10 the earlier ones, for passive plants, we had 11 recommended that, not recommended, but we had 12 suggested, as well, yes, recommended.
13 But, they, ensuring their PRAs, to examine 14 the possibilities of some kinds of upsets, to the 15 expected conditions that would allow the passive 16 systems to work.
17 Most of those PRAs included, at least, a 18 factor, to account for that, getting it refined to the 19 point that, you believe it, or it has a small amount 20 of uncertainty, is something for the future, but, 21 they've all been trying to, at least, account for it, 22 in some ways.
23 And I wanted to toss something in, on my 24 own, Bill. And it's something, about my background 25 being different, from those people, who have lived at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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146 1 NRC, for a long time.
2 The staff, through the guidance documents, 3 is pretty well-defined, what is a PRA, and it is a 4 fairly, a very complex, large-scale analysis.
5 Another approach that I've been involved 6 in, for a long time, and has been used more 7 extensively in non-nuclear kinds of facilities, but 8 also, in some PRAs, for nuclear facilities, in a 9 phased approach, to start with a simplified PRA and 10 use that, to help focus the work, you know, the final 11 one.
12 And there are techniques one can use to 13 simplify the PRA, but, but, you know, back to 14 something Jose said, the one part, you can't really 15 simplify, without getting into big trouble, is to 16 search for what it turns out to be design basis 17 events.
18 But, in the PRA, it's the initiating 19 events and the scenarios, you, you have to identify 20 that, fairly completely, but you can simplify other 21 parts and bound some parts.
22 I'd be more comfortable, and this is 23 personal, with that kind of clear definition of what 24 is a PRA, rather than saying, and other kind's 25 problematic approaches, or whatever the language says, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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147 1 now, it's something like that.
2 But that's just a comment and, maybe, I 3 can supply some papers and things that, that would 4 clarify that, a little bit, but I wanted to get that 5 in the record. All right, somebody else was trying to 6 talk?
7 (No audible response.)
8 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I guess not. Go ahead, 9 Bill.
10 MR. RECKLEY: Thank you, Dennis. And we 11 do have a working group, looking at this particular 12 topic and you're well-familiar with Marty Stutzke, 13 he's, he's, kind of, leading that, so if you wanted to 14 send him any of those references, he, I'm sure, he 15 would appreciate it.
16 But -- but, we're looking at the 17 perception that, when we say PRA and people see these, 18 you know, 800-page standards that, that it might be 19 too much.
20 But, on the other hand, and, and this goes 21 to what you're saying, it needs to be complete enough.
22 And, one of the things that we'll talk about, in a 23 month or so when you, when you see Subpart F, on 24 operations is, what are the things that we carried 25 forward from NAI 1804?
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148 1 Is that -- the PRA would be done and it is 2 supporting the assessment of what you just mentioned, 3 the various scenarios and, also, the required 4 reliability of the structure systems and components 5 going into those scenarios, to show you meet the 6 metric.
7 The QHO, in this case, under LMP, it would 8 be the combination of, both, the frequency consequence 9 curve and the, and the QHOs.
10 But the importance of that was, under the 11 Commission, under an older Commission finding, from 12 the early 2000s, and incorporated into, into NAI 1804, 13 is that, the PRA and the reliability programs support, 14 not including the single failure criterion, in the 15 design.
16 And, you know, I'm cautious, because I 17 might, you know, hit a nerve here, but if you went 18 through the design, you'll not see the single failure 19 criterion show up.
20 That's because, the assumption is, the PRA 21 is being performed and reliability measures will be 22 assigned to the, in particular, the 23 non-safety-related, but safety-significant SSCs, to, 24 to support the metric.
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149 1 -- if you push too far and, and it becomes that we 2 can't define such a reliability, a system, then the --
3 it would come into question the, the basis for not 4 requiring, for example, the single failure criterion.
5 And so we were looking at this, as an 6 integrated approach and that's why -- that's one of 7 the reasons we've kept Paragraph A, even though, if 8 you go on, now -- if we go on to the second paragraph, 9 Paragraph B, we, we made a change to this one.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill?
11 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, go ahead, Dennis.
12 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Two things and then, I'd 13 like to get to Vesna and Jose. Are -- and I'll save 14 the answer to this question, until they speak. But, 15 will the discussion you just provided, be written 16 down, somewhere, for all of us to see, at some point?
17 And the other is, I don't know, if it will 18 be available outside of NRC, but in the middle of next 19 month, Nathan Siu will be giving a seminar that, at 20 least, from the title, it sounds like it'll be getting 21 at some of these issues and, you folks, might be 22 interested in seeing that. Vesna, are you're -- you 23 were up, first.
24 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: I just wanted to say 25 that my position on using the PRA is strongly NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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150 1 dependent, can we define to what degree they use the 2 PRA results with improved regulation? And I just 3 heard that they're staying on the single-failure 4 criterion, and that's where the PRA can help.
5 But you don't need the full-blown PRA to 6 help with the single failure criterion. You don't 7 need the full-blown PRA to help you even with the 8 selection of design-basis events.
9 So, to what degree the PRA makes the 10 existing regulatory requirements better, is something 11 that would be well to define, so that we can define is 12 it really full-blown PRA needed, or different degrees 13 of the PRA.
14 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks, Vesna. Unless 15 Bill wants to jump in right there, I'd go to Jose now.
16 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Okay, this is Jose.
17 Yes, you do raise a concern with the single-failure 18 criteria. My understanding is only those systems that 19 are safety-grade are assumed to work.
20 Every other single system that is not 21 safety-grade during the analysis, is assumed to be 22 failed in the most damaging condition. Is that 23 correct?
24 MR. RECKLEY: For the design-basis 25 accident -- for the DBA -- yes.
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151 1 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: So, you're talking to 2 the joint design-basis event. You're going to give 3 credit for the non-safety register, but no single-4 failure criteria.
5 MR. RECKLEY: That's currently what is in 6 the Reg. Guide 1233. Yes.
7 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: The wisdom of our 8 elders when they designed all these things, is there 9 are failures that go undetected.
10 And therefore, unless you do a really, 11 really, really good, sophisticated analysis on your 12 priority, which I don't give credit to these guys, 13 you're not going to know that one of your counter 14 rolls is bound by the guys, because you don't know.
15 I'm extremely uncomfortable with that.
16 Okay? You have failures that go undetected always.
17 I mean, that happens on your car every time you try to 18 start it on a cold morning.
19 I don't know how probabilistic the PRA 20 guys are going to put probabilities into the 21 probability of my car going to start tomorrow.
22 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. And to some degree, 23 we hope that that particular issue is addressed 24 through the requirement to have defense-in-depth. It 25 may very well be a non-safety-related system that's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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152 1 providing defense-in-depth for the safety-related 2 system within the PRA analysis --
3 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Okay, we have 4 established that for design-basis events there are no 5 non-safety-grade equipment. They fail in the most 6 damaging condition. You only take use of safety-grade 7 equipment. Is that correct?
8 MR. RECKLEY: For the DBA. For the DBA.
9 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: For DBAs. For 10 beyond-design-basis events, you are going to take 11 credit for everything for everything that you 12 installed.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Correct.
14 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: And that there are 15 failures that go undetected. That happens everywhere.
16 MR. RECKLEY: And that's part of --
17 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: And that's our elders 18 put the single-failure criteria. I'll leave that for 19 the record and you think about it. But it is not very 20 comforting. Your position.
21 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Well, Jose, this is 22 Walt. I kind of agree with you. I think the way to 23 test what you're suggesting, a different way to 24 evaluate defense-in-depth is to just go through, with 25 or without a PRA -- PRA is a very sophisticated way of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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153 1 doing it -- but just old-fashioned engineering 2 analysis.
3 Just go through your systems and assume a 4 single failure. And then, evaluate the consequences 5 of that.
6 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Which is exactly what 7 we've been doing for the last 50 years.
8 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yeah. But I think Bill 9 and his staff have made an improvement. At least now, 10 they seem to have elevated defense-in-depth into the 11 integral part of the design process, rather than some 12 kind of bookend, where after you've done everything, 13 you see if it's okay.
14 So, personally, I believe in defense-in-15 depth as part of the design process, not some after-16 the-fact check.
17 But I think your issue, Jose, could 18 probably be best addressed in that manner, with or 19 without the PRA, by just looking at your -- especially 20 starting with the DBAs, and then going on to the 21 beyond-design-basis events.
22 MR. RECKLEY: And there's some degree that 23 that's done if you look at the IAEA-5 levels and the 24 way it's assessed by just looking at what SSCs are, 25 for example, keeping you from going from one layer to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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154 1 the next, under that scheme, from AAOs to DBAs, to 2 design extension, and then, ultimately, to level-5 for 3 the offsite response.
4 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill?
5 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah.
6 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I've got to jump in with 7 just a comment, after the last couple. When the 8 analysis is done in a PRA, when you look at a 9 particular combine, you look at the chance it's failed 10 before the event starts.
11 You look at the chance it fails when it 12 tries to actuate when the event starts, and you look 13 at the chance it fails during the continuation of that 14 event. All of that is included.
15 When we did the first PRAs, we found that 16 there are some double failures that are more likely 17 than single failures in other places.
18 And some of the places where we can't 19 tolerate single failures, we assume they won't happen 20 too, in the standard way of thinking of things, where 21 in the other analysis, you look at the chance it might 22 happen. So, go ahead. I just wanted to --
23 MR. RECKLEY: No, no, thank you, Dennis.
24 That's a good clarification in correcting my 25 shorthand.
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155 1 The PRA and the beyond-design-basis events 2 take into account all the equipment at the plant, but 3 what's going into the sequences is various 4 combinations of what works, what doesn't work, as you 5 just said.
6 So, on slide 47 in paragraph B, this is 7 the first iteration. We basically took and said 8 paragraph A of PRA is required. Paragraph B, you 9 shall use the PRA to determine your licensing basis 10 event to support your safety classification of 11 equipment and evaluate defense-in-depth.
12 And this was consistent within NEI 18-04 13 and the LMP approach. But one of the comments that 14 came back was, some designers, some stakeholders, were 15 interested in a more deterministic approach.
16 Sometimes examples are brought up of 17 either the CNSC -- the Canadian Nuclear Safety 18 Commission -- or IAEA guidance in specific safety 19 requirements 2/1, that looks a little more like the 20 NRC's more traditional approach of assessing 21 initiating events, and then assessing them through the 22 event categories and anticipated operational 23 occurrences, and design-basis accidents and design 24 extension conditions.
25 And so, if you go, Liz, to slide 48, in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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156 1 response to that we basically changed the language to 2 say that the PRA or other generally accepted risk-3 informed approach to systematically evaluate 4 engineered systems -- it's a lot of words -- but 5 basically, another systematic approach, or a 6 combination of the PRA and a systematic approach, such 7 as -- a potential example would be the IAEA SSR 2/1 8 approach.
9 You could use those approaches to 10 determine your events and to classify your SSCs and 11 evaluate defense-in-depth.
12 But as we said, we would still expect a 13 PRA to be performed, because we were carrying the 14 reliability data that you get out of the PRA into the 15 operations area to support other assumptions within 16 this part 53 structure.
17 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Well, I just want to 18 add, continuing with my comment, I think that these 19 definitions how PRA should be used are very good for 20 design-basis events, support safety classification, 21 defense-in-depth.
22 However, if we want to use the PRA to 23 support that you are meeting safety goal, or 24 quantitatively you have objecting, then you need the 25 full-blown PRA to do those things. These three things NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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157 1 that are listed here, you definitely don't need the 2 full-blown PRA. You can both support the license-3 basing events, termination of system classification, 4 defense-in-depth, without doing full-blown PRA. Level 5 three PRA.
6 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Yeah, I think we 7 would agree with that, but I'll --
8 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: But then, if you 9 want them to demonstrate that they meet safety goals, 10 then they need the totally full-blown PRA.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
12 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: I mean, so those are 13 to these different steps. The missteps. Do we need 14 the full-blown PRA, or we can just use PRA to support 15 these inputs.
16 MR. RECKLEY: Right. And so, this 17 approach is similar to, but maybe a little beyond, 18 what we currently do in part 52. In part 52, for the 19 Gen III designs that we looked at, they were using 20 this kind of approach.
21 They were using more traditional ways to 22 assign their licensing-basis events, some variation of 23 the old PWR or BWR design criteria, they were using 24 fairly traditional approaches to safety 25 classification, etc.
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158 1 And then, they did the PRA as a 2 verification tool. And we would look at it in 3 chapter 19 to see that it met QHOs and so forth. But 4 it wasn't a first-line regulatory requirement, if you 5 will.
6 It wasn't establishing, per se, 7 requirements. It might introduce a rationale for 8 regulatory treatment in non-safety systems, but by and 9 large, it was a confirmatory-type analysis.
10 This lets the designer design the plant 11 the same way. But we do elevate the use of the PRA, 12 again because we're looking forward and saying, we 13 want an even stronger reliability assurance program 14 for the non-safety-related, but safety-significant, 15 structure systems and components when we get over into 16 the operations area.
17 And again, it was part of the rationale 18 under Reg. Guide 1.233, for other things, like an 19 alternative to the single-failure criteria.
20 Let me see, are there hands up, or were 21 they previously?
22 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: I didn't bother to 23 raise my hand, but I wanted to make -- my brain is 24 having a siesta. It's after lunch, so you don't think 25 very -- but do explain to me, I believe PRA is used to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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159 1 identify the frequencies of AOOs, DBAs, and the on-2 design-basis events.
3 Okay, once you run your PRA and you figure 4 out that this particular event is beyond design basis, 5 what role does PRA play after that? I'm think back 6 again to the single-failure criteria.
7 When you're analyzing these beyond-design-8 basis event -- the PRA told you it was beyond design 9 basis -- what role does PRA play? How will you 10 consider the single-failure that we used to consider, 11 properly so? Read the transcript and think about it.
12 You don't need to give me an answer.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
14 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: But replacing single-15 failure criteria with a PRA analysis makes absolutely 16 no sense whatsoever.
17 MEMBER PETTI: I have to disagree with 18 you, Jose. I think you don't understand what PRA 19 does. In fact, PRA allows you to figure out what are 20 the important failures in a system that consists of a 21 number of components, so that you don't just 22 arbitrarily pick the wrong one to be the one that 23 you're going to fail. It allows you to do a more 24 balanced approach to managing the risk in --
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160 1 I understand it pretty well.
2 (Simultaneous speaking.)
3 MEMBER PETTI: That's how we -- we've look 4 at, we've reviewed it. I don't know what more to say 5 there.
6 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: No. Dave, what 7 you're saying is there are multiple beyond-design-8 basis events. There are some with component A fail, 9 with component B fail, with component C fail. Those 10 are three different beyond-design-basis events.
11 And they're all beyond-design-basis 12 events. And you have to analyze them with the 13 component fail to know what the consequences are.
14 They all have been determined to be 15 beyond-design-basis by the PRA. Now, you have a class 16 of beyond-design-basis events with component A fail, 17 B fail, C fail, D fail.
18 And typically, what we've done is to pick 19 the worst if you don't want to do them all. But if 20 you want to do a PRA, you'd run them all. But you 21 still pick the worst.
22 MEMBER PETTI: The one thing the PRA will 23 do -- and Marty or somebody can weigh in, and this is 24 one of those discussions we could go on -- but it also 25 looks at the combinations of A and B failing, and B NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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161 1 and C, and A and C, and that's a little different than 2 the single-failure criterion did.
3 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: And if you're telling 4 me that you're going to analyze all of them and pick 5 the worst, I'd be very happy.
6 MEMBER PETTI: Well, they'll be all 7 analyzed and considered in the comparison to the 8 metric, which, in that case for the beyond-design-9 basis event, is playing into the metric of the QHO.
10 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Correct. So, you 11 will pick the worst from the QHO point?
12 MEMBER PETTI: No, they're all considered.
13 I mean, they're all analyzed, they're all considered, 14 they're all thrown into the mix, to contribute to the 15 overall risk that then is fed into the comparison to 16 the QHO, down to the point where the frequencies are 17 so low that they're screened out. But any of those --
18 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: So, you're telling me 19 that therefore the BDV -- the beyond-basis-events --
20 you not going to do one calculation with a single 21 failure, but you're going to do a hundred, because 22 you're going to consider multiple failures, multiple 23 combinations of failures, and you're going to do them 24 all and pick the worst.
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162 1 Dennis. I mean, yes, there are many, many scenarios.
2 I don't know what the numbers are, but I'll either 3 defer to Marty to chime in, or Dennis, or somebody who 4 does PRAs. But yeah, you're basically assessing many, 5 many different scenarios.
6 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: So, you're not doing 7 single-failure criteria. You're doing multiple 8 single-failure criteria.
9 MEMBER PETTI: Well, you're doing multiple 10 failures. Right. Right.
11 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: And 10 CFR 53 says 12 thou shalt do this.
13 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, because for us, and 14 this is the importance of having the PRA standard 15 available, that's what the PRA standard guides people 16 to do, and that's the hundreds of pages of the 17 guidance in the standard to identify the scenarios, to 18 go through that logic of doing the analysis, and then 19 modeling them to see what the actual plant behavior 20 is. But again, I'm getting dangerously into beyond 21 my --
22 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Yes. Speaking of the 23 horse again, I mean, you're not doing single-failure 24 criteria. You're doing many more single-failure 25 analyses.
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163 1 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, you're analyzing many 2 failures and many combinations of failures. Yes.
3 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: And you have to 4 analyze them all and pick the worst. That is now 5 completely ridiculous from the frequency point of 6 view.
7 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I think where people are 8 hanging up, Jose, is not knowing quite what you mean 9 by picking the worst. You're looking at them all and 10 the results of each one.
11 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Well, I assume Jose 12 means picking for the chapter 15 analysis. You know, 13 we analyze those sequences, but each ones will be 14 rounding the deterministic part. That's where the 15 signal failure comes in.
16 CHAIRMAN BLEY: We can talk about this 17 more next week at our certification session.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. Okay.
19 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Joy has been waiting 20 patiently.
21 MR. RECKLEY: Okay.
22 MEMBER REMPE: It's a different topic, so 23 I was happy to wait patiently. So, if I understand 24 this, which I did not understand until this meeting, 25 you are allowing other risk-informed approaches for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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164 1 the three items shown in this slide, but then they 2 still have to have a PRA for the comparison with the 3 QHOs.
4 What if the PRA shows their other 5 generally accepted risk-informed approach didn't quite 6 pick what should have been picked for the LBEs or the 7 SSCs? Is that a possibility?
8 MR. RECKLEY: If it were to show up that 9 they actually didn't meet the QHO because whatever 10 methodology they used didn't pick the right LBEs, then 11 they would have to go back and make a change.
12 Likely, they'd have to include a design 13 change, and then evaluate a new LBE, because what we 14 would get out of that is whatever systematic approach 15 they used missed something.
16 MEMBER REMPE: Right. And I'm just 17 wondering. I guess I'll have to see some examples, to 18 see if that can occur. But hopefully, they're 19 thinking about that as they go with this other 20 approach that they prefer.
21 MR. RECKLEY: And realistically, if you 22 look at the history of -- for example, doing the 23 designs, and then doing the severe-accident-management 24 alternatives -- the SAMA -- you can do a design under 25 a systematic approach and the PRA would confirm that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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165 1 that design meets the QHOs.
2 I think that would be the expectation.
3 And I think that's the feedback from stakeholders, is 4 if you look at the history, the PRA has confirmed 5 their other systematic approach, so why not let us use 6 it in the first place, and then do the PRA as the 7 confirmatory tool. And under this iteration, we're 8 saying that's okay.
9 MEMBER REMPE: Yeah. I guess they're 10 going with the maximum credible event, is where I'm 11 thinking they might get into trouble later on, because 12 I don't know what risk-informed approach they used to 13 select that event.
14 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. And we would have to 15 look at that. And our thinking on that has somewhat 16 been that, again, to the degree that you do the 17 assessment, and going back to the barrier approach, 18 that you have a large number of your events that don't 19 challenge even your first barrier.
20 The assessment doesn't need to go all the 21 way out and run a max run if there were no radio 22 nuclides that made it past the first barrier. Right?
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166 1 because they're able to show that all of the events 2 that maybe are more likely to occur, the whole other 3 spectrum of events can be bounded, and that all the 4 radio nuclides stay in, for example, the fuel form, we 5 don't see that as necessarily a big gap in terms of 6 the PRA. They could do the PRA and show that.
7 They don't have to run out and show what 8 the performance of the fourth barrier is if the radio 9 nuclides don't make it past the first barrier.
10 So, again, we're looking at this question 11 of the PRA and whether simple designs can in fact have 12 simple PRAs, either under the standard, or under some 13 alternative approach.
14 We're currently looking at that. We don't 15 want to make people do more analysis than they need to 16 do, but we certainly want a systematic assessment to 17 show that the reactors are safe. And that is in large 18 part -- because we're going to get to this tradeoff of 19 analytical margins -- many of these designs are also 20 the ones that don't want staffing, or want much, much 21 reduced staffing.
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167 1 boundary.
2 And so, they're going to be trading off 3 these margins for what we're calling operating 4 flexibilities, and you have to be very certain that 5 that margin actually exists, before saying that they 6 can trade it for these other alternative approaches, 7 in terms of emergency planning, siting, staffing, etc.
8 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill?
9 MR. RECKLEY: Go ahead, Dennis.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I want to try something.
11 And I think I see where you folks are. I'm very 12 pleased that you've opened the door to doing a 13 simplified analysis of the design that supports that.
14 I think you need to do more work on 15 getting the words right about what that could be and 16 what could be the factors that lead to it and how one 17 simplifies it without sacrificing confidence. And it 18 sounds as if you're headed that way. So, I expect 19 this is going to change over time. And whatever your 20 working groups come up with, we'll be really 21 interested in seeing.
22 And we've been talking about some related 23 issues. And we may have a whitepaper that we will --
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168 1 for a little while. So, I think you're on the right 2 track but it's still kind of vague (audio 3 interference) and I suspect in yours too.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thank you, Dennis.
5 And then, it's not only our internal working groups, 6 but the industry has some working groups and we're 7 looking to them as well, because they're the ones that 8 have an alternative in mind.
9 And so, as they're able to more clearly 10 explain to us what those alternatives are, I think 11 that'll be a great help to us and our own working 12 group. So, with that, that -- go ahead, Dennis. I'm 13 sorry.
14 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I would use the acronyms.
15 But is that primarily the ARCAP folks?
16 MR. RECKLEY: No, this is actually just 17 working groups on part 53.
18 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Oh, okay.
19 MR. RECKLEY: So, this is a different 20 group, Basically, the collections of designers under 21 either Nuclear Energy Institute, or US Nuclear 22 Industry Council, have like working groups and they 23 are discussing and planning to provide us some more 24 information on possible alternatives.
25 So, let me see. We can go down to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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169 1 next slide, I think.
2 MEMBER PETTI: Bill, hold on. Just let me 3 share if I can understand everything that you've said 4 about this. Let me just think about, it's a micro-5 reactor. They do a search, like we've talked about, 6 to come up with events to do the three bullets there 7 on slide 48, and they come up with sort of three to 8 five classes of events that look like the worst from 9 a dose perspective.
10 They do the calculations. And in all 11 cases, every scenario there is under one of them. So, 12 you think about putting it on the frequency 13 consequence curve and it's all the way to the left.
14 Can they just say, okay, we meet the QHOs 15 now, because sort of by inspection these cases --
16 look, we're not challenging anything? Can it be that 17 simple, in terms of getting there?
18 MR. RECKLEY: It may be that if -- and 19 we've done a little work to say, what kind of results 20 would you need to basically show that you meet the 21 QHOs with a simplified analysis, and it's possible.
22 MEMBER PETTI: I'm just wondering if 23 there's a simplified metric. Because I know on the 24 large LWIs we have metrics, but those aren't really 25 going to work for some of the advanced reactors. And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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170 1 so, if there were a simplified metric that could be 2 developed, that might help too.
3 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah. And we'll look into 4 that some more, and would expect hopefully that some 5 of the designers are able to do that as well.
6 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Dave, this is Walt.
7 That's what I was hinting at this morning with my 8 comments. For example, the 25 REM is the surrogate 9 for adequate protection. At least that's a simplistic 10 way to look at it.
11 And for the QHOs, it would seem to me that 12 some ghost level would be a surrogate, and then that 13 might relieve them from investing an enormous amount 14 in a full-blown little three PRA that is perhaps 15 questionable, depending on the security of the design 16 to begin with.
17 MEMBER PETTI: Right. Yeah, I mean, I'm 18 very supportive of the three bullets on 48, because 19 that, in my mind at least, my simple mind, is that's 20 the risk insights that you really need to make a 21 better design.
22 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yeah, exactly.
23 MEMBER PETTI: Because if you make a 24 really good design, then a lot of this stuff should 25 just not be a problem. And then, if they can do NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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171 1 simplistic calculations and show that everything's 2 okay, is that good enough? I think that what some of 3 the questions are. Thanks, Bill.
4 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. We've done a little 5 thinking. We'll think some more. I mean, basically 6 in the end that's like taking a contamination level, 7 if you will, and making some assumptions, and then 8 backing it up -- right? -- reverse engineering from 9 the dose to say, what release results in a challenge 10 to the QHOs?
11 And so, we'll look. It's a little more 12 complicated than that, but we'll look. We've been 13 given some thinking, and again the industry's been 14 giving some thinking to it as well.
15 The other analysis requirements, in terms 16 of the maintenance and upgrading of analysis, the 17 qualification of codes, the analysis of the DBAs, will 18 go on. We did get some comments on those and I'll go 19 through the second iteration on these other 20 requirements.
21 So, in terms of the second iteration --
22 which one do I have? So, for some of these, C and D 23 in particular, we need some tweaks, especially in 24 terms of upgrading analysis. Now, we refer to the 25 consensus code in standard for upgrading, as opposed NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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172 1 to our first iteration, where we said it should be 2 upgraded on -- I forget, every two or four years --
3 and we maintain what I call a placeholder, for some 4 things like fire protection.
5 And then, this goes to what we talked 6 about earlier, that fire protection currently shows up 7 in analysis, and maybe we need something under the 8 earlier design requirements as well.
9 But we did add paragraph E, if we go to 10 the next slide, slide 51. So, this was just an 11 addition to try to clarify that the analysis of 12 licensing-basis events needs to be performed, and that 13 it would be used to show that the design criteria were 14 basically sufficient to show that you meet the QHOs, 15 and to show you meet the defense-in-depth 16 requirements.
17 And so, this is basically, if you look 18 back at NEI 18-04, this is the anticipated operational 19 occurrences, the design-basis events, and the beyond-20 design-basis events. One of the things, again, we're 21 using slightly different terms, just to avoid the 22 perception that we're codifying NEI 18-04. And so, we 23 say things like, very unlikely events, versus beyond-24 design-basis events. But they correspond to each 25 other.
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173 1 So, this was just basically we had added 2 this because we thought it was not clear that, where 3 it was a potential void in terms of actually 4 describing that you needed to analyze the licensing-5 basis events.
6 It may have been clear given other 7 language but we were afraid it wasn't, so we added 8 this section. Technically, we don't think we added 9 anything but clarity. So, if we go on then to the 10 next one, it's paragraph F, which is the analysis of 11 the design-basis accidents.
12 And one of the things that we did add 13 here -- and this was in part to address the comments 14 during an ACRS subcommittee meeting -- was that the 15 design should go at least out to safe, stable in-state 16 and showing that you meet the criteria.
17 We'll continue to look at this in the 18 language. Even safe, stable in-state is -- a lot of 19 discussion over the years as to what that means. So, 20 there might be guidance that would come out to further 21 clarify how the design-basis accident analysis would 22 be done.
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174 1 where additional guidance would be useful. We'll talk 2 to stakeholders and make that determination.
3 So, if we want to go down to the next one, 4 Safety Categorization and Special Treatment, we, under 5 this construct, keep the traditional safety-related 6 designation more or less as it's defined now, in terms 7 of the way we subsequently talk about it, in terms of 8 bringing in Appendix B for design, for procurement, 9 for maintenance, how it would be addressed in 10 technical specifications, and so forth.
11 And then, we introduced the non-safety-12 related but safety-significant, which again is largely 13 the process described in NEI 18-04 or earlier 14 concepts, even somewhat analogous to 5069 for the 15 risk-significant SSCs.
16 But we use these terms and we're including 17 in the requirements that this is the safety 18 classification system for part 53, safety-related, 19 non-safety-related but safety-significant, and not-20 safety-significant.
21 There are some comments that again maybe 22 could be more flexible. The IAEA has slightly 23 different terminology for the safety categories and 24 related classification, but we didn't change it.
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175 1 change it in this iteration 54. These are editorial.
2 We think we will define some of these terms, so we 3 didn't need to do it here. They'll show up in 4 definitions. That's the editorial change.
5 But otherwise, we keep the designations.
6 So, that'll be a continuing dialogue, I believe, with 7 stakeholders, with us having a defined system, and 8 some stakeholders maybe wanting more flexibility, or 9 even somewhat undefined requirement to have a 10 classification system, but leave it open as to whether 11 it's one such as we're proposing, or maybe one under 12 a different scheme, like the IAEA standard.
13 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, before you go on, 14 this is Walt. You know, over the years, we, the 15 committee, have had many presentations from NRR. And 16 different parts of the organization use 17 different -- how should I say it -- categorization 18 approaches.
19 Often, we have charts that have like four 20 boxes. They will have safety-related; not-safety-21 related; important-to-safety; important-to-safety, but 22 not safety-related.
23 And then, you have terminology like 24 important-to-safety, which I don't think has shown up 25 yet in CFR 53 --
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176 1 MR. RECKLEY: Quite on purpose.
2 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Yeah, good. Thank you.
3 So, again, it's just one member's opinion. But in the 4 interests of regulatory stability, certainty, etc.,
5 etc., making this three-part definition I think is 6 very important.
7 Well, that's probably enough said. But I 8 found in the past at least confusion on my part.
9 Maybe it's just mine. When I get these different sets 10 of terminology, and then in different approaches to 11 doing reviews, so to the extent that 10 CFR 53 is 12 fairly straightforward on what this terminology means, 13 I think it actually helps regulatory predictability 14 and certainty.
15 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thank you. I mean, 16 from the stakeholders' view, what it might complicate 17 is, in an international market, the need to crosswalk 18 between ours and IAEA's, or something like that, for 19 example. So, we'll listen.
20 MEMBER KIRCHNER: But that's the 21 applicant's problem. That's not your issue. You're 22 the NRC. You're the authority. I think you should do 23 what you think is best for the interests of the agency 24 and the public, and whether someone wants to export a 25 reactor, is a secondary consideration at most. Again, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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177 1 one person's opinion.
2 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Well, we did keep it 3 the same in the second iteration. So, we've not 4 changed it yet. And our proposal is to keep it. And 5 again, I think to the degree there's an ability to 6 crosswalk between systems, they're not that 7 dramatically different. But we'll see what further 8 comments stakeholders have.
9 So, if we go then to slide 55, this is an 10 important area. But we didn't get many comments yet 11 on it. And so, I think a lot of people are waiting to 12 see the release of Subpart F and start to see how the 13 operational flexibilities come into play.
14 But basically, this requirement, it says 15 that if an applicant is going to adopt a more 16 restrictive measure -- and this is somewhat similar to 17 what Dr. Petti was mentioning -- that instead of 18 saying we're going to worry about the QHOs, that they 19 basically say, we're going to have a design goal for 20 emergency planning less than one rem, over 96 hours0.00111 days <br />0.0267 hours <br />1.587302e-4 weeks <br />3.6528e-5 months <br /> at 21 the boundary, or for siting, one rem over the month.
22 The staffing, we haven't determined yet 23 what kind of criteria we're going to set up for 24 various proposals for licensed, non-licensed, and 25 potentially autonomous, operations.
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178 1 But you can imagine there might be 2 different alternative metrics set up for those various 3 proposals.
4 But once you do that, you have to maintain 5 it. And you have to build that in as if that's your 6 new acceptance criteria, and you have to maintain it 7 through your operational programs. You have to set 8 your reliability targets for your equipment based on 9 this new alternative metric.
10 You basically have introduced something 11 that you now have to incorporate throughout the 12 analysis, throughout the design, and throughout the 13 operations, to maintain it.
14 Because it's not just come in on day one 15 of your application and say, my emergency planning 16 zone can be a defense because it's less than one rem 17 and a one-time decision, and then, ten years later, do 18 a power-up rate or some other change, and undermine 19 that underlying analysis that said you don't need an 20 offsite emergency planning zone.
21 So, that is basically what this 22 requirement sets up, is you have the ability to trade 23 it off for operating flexibilities.
24 But the requirement now is you have to 25 build it into the design, you have to build it into NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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179 1 the maintenance and operations, to make sure you don't 2 undermine the operating flexibility that you justified 3 through the analysis.
4 So, that's the importance of this section.
5 But, again, we didn't get much feedback, so we didn't 6 change it. But people are waiting to see some aspects 7 of Subpart F before they weigh in, I believe.
8 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill?
9 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: You talked about this with 11 us before. I'm curious about how this maintenance 12 gets built in. This becomes part of your licensing 13 basis? Would you have to get a change in the license 14 later, to change this? Nothing's really clear in the 15 words here, other than you have to maintain it. And 16 what do you guys at NRC track it later on, to make 17 sure they're not cutting into it?
18 MR. RECKLEY: Yeah, we haven't written it 19 yet, but my vision is that yes, it has to be 20 maintained through all the licensees' programs. And 21 if there is any undermining, that that's where I 22 mentioned before, reporting requirements, or 23 Subpart I, on maintaining the licensing basis, would 24 come in, and that they would need to address it.
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180 1 entail is, somebody considers something, they do an 2 analysis and say, oh, we can't -- if the results 3 showed this, they'd say, oh, we can't do this because 4 it would increase our offsite dose and we're using the 5 decreased dose to justify XYZ. But if they wanted to 6 proceed with that change, then decisions would have to 7 be made.
8 Are you going to -- again, I don't think 9 this would happen very often, but do you want to 10 introduce an emergency planning zone outside your 11 fence because your dose went up?
12 Again, bad example perhaps, but I'll say 13 power-up rate? It's a business decision, right? I 14 want to operate the power. Now, I get to trade it off 15 against -- what I originally said was, I want the cost 16 savings in not having an emergency planning zone.
17 But maybe years later, they say I want to 18 do the power upright and I'm going to introduce an 19 emergency planning zone. That would be their ability 20 to do that.
21 Yes, it would take a licensing action in 22 order to make that kind of change. And again, I don't 23 think it's a good example, because it's unlikely to 24 happen. But this system has to be in place to make 25 sure that they don't undermine the operating NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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181 1 flexibilities that's been granted.
2 We just want to get away from any notion 3 that you do an analysis on day one, get your license, 4 and then it's now good to go, that you don't need an 5 emergency planning zone. That's only true if you 6 maintain all the assumptions that went into that 7 decision.
8 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Well, Bill, actually 9 it's a good example, although maybe it's not the EPZ.
10 But uprights are just -- I mean, I know everyone says 11 small, modular is -- smaller is better, and all the 12 rest.
13 But I can guarantee you economics is a 14 factor. And they'll be back to try and upright the 15 power. So, whether it's the EPZ that's traded off, or 16 just re-analyzing whether you still meet your 25 rem 17 criterion, but yeah, there needs to be a system to 18 track that if they've made that prior trade, and then 19 come back to you and say we want to upright the power 20 by 20 percent, what's the implications there?
21 And it might not be EPZ, but it could be 22 things like where the exclusionary boundary is.
23 MR. RECKLEY: Right. And again, so yeah, 24 that's really what we're trying to do here is both 25 enable the tradeoff, but then also to reflect that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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182 1 once that tradeoff is made, you need to maintain all 2 of the assumptions, all the design and stuff, that 3 went into it.
4 MEMBER KIRCHNER: A couple of related 5 questions, because you've got me thinking as you've 6 answered all this stuff. Some of these aren't exactly 7 related.
8 Do these end up as license conditions if 9 part 53 allows design certs and part 52 -- I'm not 10 sure why this happens. In part 52, for every design 11 cert we have an amendment to the rule. It's added at 12 the end.
13 We don't do that for licenses in part 50.
14 Have you thought about that kind of stuff? Does that 15 belong in here? And is it going to be better, or is 16 there some other way to do that?
17 MR. RECKLEY: We haven't exactly worked 18 out how this will get reflected in the licensing 19 documents, per se. But along with this requiring the 20 licensee to maintain it, when we do Subparts H and I, 21 we will be building in what is the appropriate way to 22 make sure that the licensing basis for the plant is 23 maintained as well.
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183 1 exactly where this would go. But it would have to be 2 something to basically accomplish the same task from 3 the NRC's perspective.
4 When do we need to get involved? And 5 again, I don't want to overuse it here, but something 6 like the emergency planning zone would require us to 7 come back in, because it's also going to bring in 8 FEMA.
9 It would be a big deal to go from having 10 none to requiring one. So, that would need to get us 11 back involved, along with other federal agencies.
12 There may be other areas, as Walt was 13 saying, that maybe the tradeoffs would have a less 14 need for either a license amendment or a role change, 15 if it's done through design certification.
16 But we'll see. We're just starting to 17 write those sections. This is something we'll need to 18 address, but I can't specifically say how we're going 19 to do it yet.
20 MEMBER HALNON: Hey Bill, this is Greg.
21 Just is sort of the point I was making earlier about 22 the things that transcend through the design and into 23 the licensing basis, licensing document, textpack, 24 whatever.
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184 1 group to come up with some ideas on -- especially the 2 ones that have been operating reactors -- tracking 3 commitments, tracking the licensing basis.
4 Because this really gets into the shift 5 manager and the control room during operability calls 6 and other things that may occur, that the ability to 7 go put your fingers on right criteria, right design, 8 right information, is critical, sometimes in a pinch.
9 So, it might be a good idea to get 10 somebody to do this from the industry, on how 11 different plants do it today. And maybe take the best 12 of the best and incorporate that into some guidance 13 for practice and/or how this thing transcends through 14 the licensing basis.
15 MR. RECKLEY: That's a good idea. Thank 16 you. And yeah, again, as we get into these 17 sections F, H and I, I think that'll be an 18 opportunity.
19 And we may very well identify either 20 additional guidance, or maybe, like you mentioned, 21 maybe there's existing guidance that could be just 22 tweaked to serve this purpose. But we'll look at 23 that.
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185 1 mentioned. We didn't really change this, but we 2 expect the discussions on this requirement to continue 3 into the future, so it might get revisited in a future 4 iteration. So, if we go to 57.
5 Likewise, we didn't get too many comments 6 on either design interfaces or design-related quality 7 assurance, and therefore, we didn't make any changes 8 to those sections.
9 But as with everything, as we go forward 10 and people start to see the whole package, we might 11 revisit some of this.
12 And we talked about QA earlier. We took 13 out -- I'm going to forget what criterion it is -- the 14 design criterion 6, I think, and put it here in the 15 design section out of Appendix B.
16 And then, we have a bunch of other QA 17 requirements and construction. And then, we have some 18 in operations.
19 But to the degree that starts to be 20 repetitive, we've even talked internally; if it makes 21 more sense to put it back together as an appendix, 22 like Appendix B is now, we can do it.
23 We don't really see that as changing the 24 requirements. We just basically see that as kind of 25 a format change, given the expectation is that all the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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186 1 quality assurance is being performed for the right 2 activities.
3 So, if we go down then to 58, this is 4 basically the last slide under this section, in terms 5 of design and analysis.
6 This came out of our interaction with this 7 subcommittee and the need to think about, and possibly 8 develop, both regulatory requirements and guidance 9 related to non-radiological hazards, like exist for 10 UF-6 and fuel cycle facilities, where it's not just a 11 radiological hazard, it's also a toxicity question 12 that we need to think about, especially given some of 13 the reactor designs, including the use of toxic 14 chemicals that might be released, along with a 15 radiological release.
16 So, the staff is looking at that, looking 17 at what we do for fuel cycle and other licensees. But 18 we haven't made any changes to part 53 and we're still 19 in the investigating phase.
20 And so, I guess the last one is turning it 21 around and say, if the ACRS has any additional 22 suggestions or references, we're always amenable to 23 hearing about suggestions, because we're just 24 beginning that investigation.
25 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt.
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187 1 Yeah, on that last bullet, I'm thinking -- I'm not 2 sure this is the correct clinical term, but mixed 3 waste, where you have chemicals, and especially toxic 4 chemicals, mixed with radioactive materials.
5 I'm trying to think. I'm going to turn to 6 my colleague, Dave Petti, who probably has a handle on 7 this. But I'm trying to think within the DOE system, 8 whether there's guidance that would at least help 9 inform your thinking, if not necessarily be directly 10 applicable.
11 MEMBER PETTI: There is, but I just can't 12 remember which -- there are a bunch of standards that 13 you could just cite that chemical facilities have to 14 meet for public safety. I just can't remember what 15 the acronym name is right now.
16 But there's quite a few because of the 17 hazardous stuff that's used in the DOE complex.
18 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. And we are looking at 19 the DOE standards for a number of areas currently.
20 So, we'll mine that particular body of work to look 21 for it.
22 Again, I do want to be -- our thinking at 23 this point is, where it's only a chemical hazard, the 24 NRC would not be the lead. But when you're looking at 25 the chemical hazard contributing to a radiological NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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188 1 release -- and there's some analogy historically. For 2 example, when chlorine was used for service water 3 systems and so forth, then everybody had analyzed for 4 potential chlorine releases.
5 So, we'll look at it that way as a hazard 6 to plant operations. And then, we'll also look at it 7 in combination with the radiological risk. So, where 8 maybe the release would involve both the toxicity and 9 the radiological concern.
10 Since it already involves the radiological 11 that brings us into play, then we would look at the 12 toxicity as well. But I don't want to overstate that 13 the NRC is going to get into the regulation of 14 chemical hazards for the sake of chemical hazards.
15 So, with that, I guess this last slide is 16 discussion. And I don't know, Dennis, if you wanted 17 to consider this a breakpoint and we'll come back and 18 finish up on the construction and manufacturing.
19 Again, I think that relatively 20 straightforward.
21 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay. This is a break 22 point. That works perfectly. I'm going to organize 23 these slides in such a way that fits our schedule 24 nicely. Do any members have any further questions on 25 part C on design? Or should we take the break?
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189 1 We will take a 20 minute break, come back 2 at five after the hour. We are now in recess.
3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 4 went off the record at 3:43 p.m. and 5 resumed at 4:05 p.m.)
6 CHAIRMAN BLEY: It's 1405 here, 1605 back 7 east. We are ready to continue with today's meeting.
8 We're back in session. Mr. Reckley, if you would take 9 over we'd appreciate it.
10 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, thank you, Dennis.
11 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thank you.
12 MR. RECKLEY: So the last topic to go 13 through today, and we touched on this at our last 14 interaction but were a little pressed for time so we 15 thought, we said then that we would revisit it today, 16 and so that's what we would like to do is walkthrough, 17 if we can go to Slide 61.
18 Subpart E, which is construction and 19 manufacturing. And just kind of going through our 20 typical layout here. If we go to Slide 62 you can see 21 how this fits in.
22 Again, the overall structure for Part 53 23 that we were trying to use is the lifecycle that would 24 address, basically, Subparts C through G, with each 25 subpart kind of focusing on how it supports meeting NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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190 1 the safety objectives laid out in Subpart B. And so 2 this would the construction and manufacturing phase of 3 the lifecycle.
4 And if you can go, Liz, down to 63. The 5 subpart is laid out, basically, in two parts. The 6 construction, which is addressing the activities under 7 a construction permit, or a combined license, and is 8 controlling in activity.
9 The traditional construction of a unit, 10 like has been done for all of the operating plants.
11 And Vogtle 3 and 4 currently under construction.
12 And Part 2 lays out the manufacturing 13 option. And for this purpose we're calling that the 14 activities that would be done under a manufacturing 15 license.
16 The NRC has, for many years, had that 17 provision within, first, Part 50 and then Part 52.
18 It's currently Subpart F of Part 52 for manufacturing 19 license. But not exercised it since the initial try 20 for offshore power systems many years ago.
21 So that's basically the difference.
22 Construction basically being the site activities, 23 including the total construction of a nuclear power 24 station at a site, and manufacturing being the 25 process, kind of a factory setting, for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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191 1 manufacturing under a manufacturing license.
2 So if we could go, we'll kind of walk 3 through the whole subpart. 53.600 just sets out the 4 scope. And again, that is those items under a 5 construction permit, combined license, manufacturing 6 license or limited work authorization.
7 And Slide 65 starts to talk about the 8 construction activities. And we tried in the 9 discussion table, that we released for Subpart E, to 10 say where these activities were coming from or where 11 these requirements were coming from.
12 By and large, this was an exercise to 13 capture existing requirements. Some of it might have 14 been pulled from specific licenses or guidance, but 15 again, most of it existed. And the discussion table 16 provides a, kind of a roadmap, from where any 17 individual requirement came.
18 So, 53.610 lays out that before starting 19 construction, an organization has to be established 20 with management and controls setup. Kind of command 21 and control authority assigned, procedures 22 established, a requirement to go and evaluate previous 23 construction experience.
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192 1 performing the work that's covered by Part 26, for 2 those doing certain construction activities related to 3 safety significant systems. Making sure that the QA 4 program is in place.
5 And that radiation protection, information 6 and security, cybersecurity, are all in place, as 7 applicable, before you start construction.
8 MEMBER BROWN: Bill?
9 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
10 MEMBER BROWN: This is Charlie. Like you 11 said, we hadn't finished this the last time. I take 12 it there has been no second iteration, isn't that 13 right?
14 This is just --
15 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
16 MEMBER BROWN: -- what we started looking 17 at before?
18 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, sir. Yes.
19 MEMBER BROWN: Okay.
20 MR. RECKLEY: This is still the first 21 iteration. And actually, even the same discussion 22 table. We have not made any changes to anything 23 related to Subpart E.
24 MEMBER BROWN: Yes. I pulled it back up 25 from the earlier Subcommittee meeting.
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193 1 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
2 MEMBER BROWN: And I don't know whether I 3 asked this question before, but why is construction 4 different for an advanced reactor or all this new 5 stuff as opposed to building anything else?
6 Isn't Part 50 applicable for the most 7 part?
8 MR. RECKLEY: Well, and again, what I was 9 trying to say is, when you looking at the mapping of 10 these requirements it basically is the same. We were 11 trying, to date anyway, to make Part 53 self-contained 12 and separate from Part 50 and 52.
13 MEMBER BROWN: That's --
14 MR. RECKLEY: We do --
15 MEMBER BROWN: Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm 16 sorry.
17 MR. RECKLEY: No. We are referring to 18 some parts that, for instance, Part 20. And we, as we 19 go forward, we will be referring to Part 73 for 20 security.
21 But we didn't want, at least on this first 22 iteration, to be bouncing back and forth between Parts 23 50 and 53 or 52 and 53. And so, we brought stuff in, 24 even if it was basically the same. And so --
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194 1 copying and pasting it is fine, that's --
2 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
3 MEMBER BROWN: -- that's all I was looking 4 for.
5 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
6 MEMBER BROWN: And you build stuff in one 7 way, you build it before, you build it the same today, 8 it's just a matter of where you're located.
9 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I'd like to follow on what 11 Charlie just said. And I appreciate that you're 12 putting it there.
13 Same as with over the last 15 years as we 14 did various design cert meetings, had great trouble 15 reconciling the things that were included in Part 52 16 and the things that the Staff ended up having to pick 17 up from Part 50. But that wasn't really laid out 18 anywhere so it could be clearly followed, so I think 19 this is a good approach.
20 And the other rulemaking on reconciling 50 21 and 52 should make those, should eliminate that 22 problem again.
23 MEMBER BROWN: Yes, thanks for, I agree 24 with that. I just thought this was the right way to 25 go instead of being confusing. That hit the nail on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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195 1 the head. Thanks for clarifying even more of it, 2 Dennis.
3 MR. RECKLEY: And it will, I think, is 4 another advantage, is it will be easier to find.
5 Everything related, hopefully everything related to 6 construction will be here.
7 If we missed anything, as we go through, 8 we'll add it. But it will be here as opposed to kind 9 of needing to look through various requirements for 10 where a construction oriented requirement resides.
11 So, we can go on to 66, I think. So, 12 management controls, construction activities is the 13 next section. And basically it just is requiring that 14 procedures be in place. It brings in requirements for 15 fresh fuel and fire protection.
16 Again, citing from where they came.
17 Either from 50.52, or in some cases, from established 18 guidance. The inspection and acceptance of SSCs, just 19 kind of a quality assurance, quality control measure.
20 And then the requirements that we pulled 21 in relation to communications. With one key element 22 to that being coordination with the NRC, as well as 23 coordination internally within the licensee's 24 organization.
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196 1 sections, the initial ones, are much the same. It's 2 management and control, the need to have the design 3 and analysis conform with Subpart C.
4 For those that haven't looked for a while, 5 basically a manufacturing license combines under one, 6 if you go back to the efforts to improve 7 standardization of nuclear units, and this goes back 8 into the '70s and '80s, led to things like the 9 development, ultimately, of Part 52.
10 But the way I look at it is that the tools 11 that were laid out kind of go in a hierarchy of 12 standardization. And design certification is, at one 13 point, in that it gets you to the standard design that 14 would be copied from site-to-site.
15 And a manufacturing license just includes 16 an additional measure of standardization where you go 17 from a design. And you basically introduce that 18 manufacturing technics are also standardized and 19 captured in the license.
20 And so you would reduce variability, not 21 only in the design, but in the actual putting together 22 of the machine and the way that it is put together.
23 And so, that is why the first bullet is 24 kind of important, that under a manufacturing license 25 you need to make sure that going forward you have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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197 1 things in place to make sure that the design and 2 analysis conform with Subpart C, which is the design 3 section. And then going forward, that you have 4 organization and procedures and qualifications.
5 And again, with the distinction being that 6 under a manufacturing license, some of those 7 procedures, if their key aspects of the manufacturing 8 might actually get picked up in the license.
9 And so, if there is a way to assemble the 10 machine, let's say a particular welding technic and 11 the NRC is going to say, we're going to acknowledge 12 ahead of time that if you do it that way it's 13 acceptable, then that becomes a license condition.
14 And as part of the manufacturing process, part of the 15 manufacturing license that we've pre-approved, the 16 notion is we wouldn't have to continue to look, we can 17 look at the quality control, quality assurance aspects 18 to make sure the welding is done right, but we 19 shouldn't need to revisit whether that welding technic 20 is an acceptable way to do it.
21 So I see a hand raised?
22 MEMBER HALNON: Yes, this is Greg. I'm 23 not sure the right place to ask this but if you kind 24 of, through the years we've always had trouble going 25 back into records and finding problems and issues in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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198 1 both manufacturing and construction from the operating 2 perspective.
3 Is there any special or added emphasis 4 given to the corrective action programs that would 5 transcend through manufacturing, through construction 6 into operations such that it's much easier to trend 7 and find problems that could have been latent, you 8 know, put in there during the processes that we can't 9 see until we actually try to operate this thing?
10 MR. RECKLEY: That's a good question. I 11 hadn't really thought about what the tools might be.
12 In theory, it should work.
13 For example, given that this is the 14 highest level of standardization, and basically a 15 factory setting, that should a problem be identified, 16 it's applicability, the scope of the problem, is now 17 easier to track because you basically know that that 18 same process was used for all of the manufactured 19 reactors.
20 But in terms of, for example, how we would 21 capture this in the equivalent of Part 21, in the 22 reporting requirements and in the need to do 23 corrective actions and so forth, we hadn't written 24 those yet. But there would be something similar to 25 how that would have to work.
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199 1 And so, hopefully that helps. It's --
2 MEMBER HALNON: Yes. Future discussion I 3 can see. What I'd like to hold, I guess when we look 4 at the QA requirements, if we just refer to kind of 5 the Part 50, I'm not sure it's going to be adequate 6 for the expectations we put on licensee operating, now 7 I would think construction and manufacturing 8 corrective action programs.
9 I think the higher emphasis we put use of 10 that and the reliance we put on there for safety it 11 might be a good discussion to talk about what kind of 12 language we may need to ensure that when we get into 13 the operating we can look back as far as we need to 14 find any potentially latent problems that are in the, 15 or active problems that maybe just weren't fixed 16 properly. Given the fact that there is probably 17 dozens and dozens of manufacturers that would be out 18 there building components.
19 So, maybe a future discussion. I'll keep 20 a note and we can talk about it maybe at a more 21 appropriate time.
22 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Yes, that would be 23 great. Thank you.
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200 1 introduced, can help in that regard. In comparison 2 to, you know, I'm old enough to say, to go back to 3 design reconstitution days.
4 You know, hopefully we should never have 5 to do something like that again given the improvements 6 and records management. But --
7 MEMBER HALNON: Right. Right along with 8 the software systems and whatnot we have.
9 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
10 MEMBER HALNON: Clearly in a different 11 era.
12 MR. RECKLEY: And I'm not following it 13 much more, but this is another area where people are 14 talking about the use of digital twins and things like 15 that, that is a combination of design, operations, 16 information technology that I think people are looking 17 at to try to address, at least in part, the issues you 18 identified.
19 But there is, there will probably be 20 opportunities for this Subcommittee, or other 21 subcommittees in the ACRS, to hear about those kind of 22 activities from those directly involved on the Staff 23 side.
24 So, again, many of this would just mirror 25 what we talked about on the construction side. Having NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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201 1 an organization and procedures.
2 We'll have to decide, at some point, to 3 capture in the license itself. And again, we haven't 4 exercised this since offshore power systems, which was 5 a totally different animal.
6 So we're looking at this kind of with 7 fresh eyes to say, how can manufacturing license 8 really be revised and optimized. But certain things 9 would have to come into play.
10 Again, fitness for duty. There will be 11 workers doing activities that directly affect the 12 safety of the unit once it's deployed. And so fitness 13 for duty would apply.
14 Quality assurance would apply. And 15 information security. Cybersecurity might very well.
16 We'll have to see the scope of the manufacturing 17 license, what it is going to entail.
18 Radiation protection. Especially if it's 19 going to involve fueled reactors, as we're going to 20 talk about in a minute.
21 Yes, Dennis.
22 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes. This kind of clicked 23 something. By the way, offshore floating plant stuff 24 was almost 50 years ago. It's been a while.
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202 1 that discussion you had about automating the records 2 and having good records. In almost every, really 3 significant event we've had in LWRs in the last 20 4 years, maybe longer, probably longer, deficiencies in 5 the corrective action programs at plants, things that 6 fell off the table and got lost and didn't get 7 corrected, ended being major factors in those events.
8 There's a safe issue, a really effective 9 corrective action program is kind of crucial. And we 10 see that because it does show up when things go bad or 11 wrong.
12 I don't know how much NRC is involved in 13 overseeing corrective action programs. I'm not real 14 sure of how the Industry has shared information to 15 help everyone have good ones, but I suspect there has 16 been a lot of work in that area.
17 If you or somebody else could comment on 18 it, I would be interested.
19 MR. RECKLEY: Well, I'll defer to anybody 20 on the Staff, or actually even on the Subcommittee 21 that might have more experience because it's been a 22 long time, but I know is actually a key area within 23 the inspection program.
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203 1 action programs. Their ability to identify and 2 rectify condition reports that are raised by the 3 Staff.
4 There is likewise areas related to things 5 even like the safety environment and the willingness 6 of people to bring forth problems. That's an area 7 that gets special attention.
8 Part of the inspection program. And it's 9 taken very seriously if there is any impediments to an 10 employee's willingness to bring forth an issue.
11 And so, yes, I think it is a major part of 12 the reactor oversight process. You know, at the 13 licensing side we look and make sure the procedures 14 and the things are in place. But then once it goes 15 into operations I think it's a major focus.
16 But if there is any other staff on the 17 line that has more experience they can certainly weigh 18 in.
19 CHAIRMAN BLEY: But before they do, I 20 appreciate what you just said. And I guess I knew 21 part of that, but not all of it.
22 But if we go back a few years to that 23 Robinson fire, one of the problems there was, you 24 didn't have the most knowledgeable people doing the 25 entry work into the corrective action program. So NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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204 1 people didn't, the people who entered the action 2 events, and there were several that were related, 3 didn't know the electrical system well enough to 4 understand what they were looking at.
5 So things got assigned very low priority 6 when they really should have been extremely high 7 priority. And that's the kind of thing I see more 8 often than not.
9 Or that just people aren't exercising 10 (audio interference) there is a lot of effort, both on 11 the utility side and the inspection side to address 12 that.
13 The first part of that, I'm not sure.
14 Because if you don't have the right people putting 15 data in you don't get it relayed right.
16 And maybe somebody from the Industry or 17 somebody on the Committee knows more about that and 18 can say something. But otherwise, I think you should 19 go on.
20 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, sir. All right. So I 21 think we can go on to 668. Then once you get into 22 manufacturing, Dennis, did you have something else?
23 No, okay.
24 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I forgot to turn my mic 25 off, sorry.
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205 1 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. Just the requirements 2 in this subpart to adhere, not only to the applicable 3 codes and standards that might be referenced but to 4 adhere to the manufacturing license itself.
5 And then we start to get into one of the 6 areas that is different, and different even than our 7 first four 4A into manufacturing license. And you 8 might be right, Dennis, that might have been as long 9 as 50 years ago with offshore power systems.
10 But that's the notion of loading fuel in 11 a factory setting and then transporting. So to the 12 degree you're going to introduce special nuclear 13 material, you would have to have in place then the 14 security, procedures for the receipt of fuel, 15 additional fire protection measures, emergency 16 planning perhaps. Radiation protection and other 17 procedures that come along with having special nuclear 18 material.
19 So, since the last discussion with the 20 Subcommittee, we did bring this up at a public 21 meeting, and we also talked to counterparts at the 22 Department of Energy, and field this as, that we've 23 gotten enough feedback that we need to develop this 24 into the scope of activities that would be covered 25 under Part 53. This loading of fuel at the factory.
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206 1 So, as Charlie mentioned, we had some 2 placeholders and some discussions related to this, but 3 I have a slide coming up where we're going to increase 4 our focus.
5 So if we can go to Slide 69. The rest of 6 620, relating to manufacturing, communication, the 7 same as we had before, largely.
8 Then transportation, and we currently are 9 looking at the interface with Part 71, our 10 transportation regulations. The thing we are 11 continuing, for now anyway, on the first iterate, 12 well, this might be the second iteration of this 13 subpart, but our first real jump into defining the 14 interfaces for transportation.
15 But what we're keeping from the existing 16 Part 52, Subpart F manufacturing license, is that you 17 would only be able to transfer a manufactured reactor, 18 and this would be true if it's fueled or not, but you 19 would only be able to transport it to a site that has 20 an existing construction permit or combined license.
21 And we would only be looking at fixed 22 citing. In other words, the next bullet. We're not 23 currently planning for Part 53 to address anything 24 like mobile reactors.
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207 1 actually be available to the Department of Defense for 2 example. But at this time, as we're developing Part 3 53, we're going to be looking at the manufacturer and 4 the deployment to a fixed site.
5 The next part is just the requirements 6 that we have for manufacturing license actually. So, 7 it has to have the procedures for acceptance and 8 installation of the manufactured reactor at the site.
9 And it has to, perhaps obviously it has to be 10 inspected and accepted prior to installation.
11 We are looking now at not only the 12 transport with the fuel from the factory to the site 13 for operation, but also considering possible plans for 14 the transport and the disposal post-operation. And 15 we're looking at how to do that and in what subpart 16 that might be.
17 We might put it in Subpart G, for 18 decommissioning. Or we could, we'll find a place to 19 put it, but it might depend on the feedback we get 20 from stakeholders as to what models they want us to 21 use as to where we have to put it. And it might show 22 up in multiple subparts.
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208 1 under operations. I mentioned it might be in Subpart 2 G, for decommissioning, depending on the model that 3 people want us to reflect.
4 So we're still somewhat in a data 5 gathering mode.
6 And looking at the regulations. It's not 7 clear, all of this can be done without changing Part 8 71. And so, that's currently being assessed. And we 9 would have to make a decision as to whether we can do 10 that as a corresponding change or a future change.
11 So, all of that is being evaluated.
12 So, if we can go on to Slide 70. It's 13 talking about the issue of loading fuel in the factory 14 setting. And so, we would likely need to revise the 15 manufacturing license provisions.
16 And we're going to need to do that anyway 17 because, again, they were developed to support that 18 model of offshore power systems and haven't really 19 been updated, significantly, since that time. And 20 that was a different model than a factory kind of 21 setting that we currently envisioned.
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209 1 off the coast. So quite a different model than 2 putting together a micro-reactor in a factory and 3 shipping it for deployment.
4 So, we'll be updating those provisions and 5 seeking input from the potential, especially the 6 micro-reactor designers, as to how those provisions 7 might be developed.
8 As I mentioned, the manufacturing license 9 can be referenced in construction permit or combined 10 license.
11 And one, going back to the statement on 12 standardization, the design cert and the manufacturing 13 license was largely standardization of operating 14 units. And the role of those vehicles, design certs 15 or a manufacturing license, to make all the operating 16 units similar or the same.
17 And to thereby allow safety assessments to 18 be done for multiple plants by looking at one design.
19 That's going to continue to be a key role for the 20 manufacturing license, in terms of, and that's why the 21 bullet is, it will be referenced in construction 22 permit or combined license applications.
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210 1 then it can be deployed. And we've already looked at 2 the safety in terms of the manufacturing license.
3 So, that's those couple of bullets. That 4 the manufacturing license focus remains to support the 5 operating unit once that manufactured unit is 6 deployed.
7 However, the next bullet is the twist, 8 which is, when you talk about loading fuel at the 9 factory, for its possible deployment, now within the 10 manufacturing process, the design and the 11 manufacturing process, you are introducing 12 requirements related to safety within the factory.
13 If you're going to load fuel you need to 14 make sure it does not go inadvertently critical in the 15 factory. Likewise, and the next slide talks about 16 transportation, it includes that wrinkle as well.
17 So, we're looking that Part 70, for 18 special nuclear material, already includes a fair 19 number of provisions for the handling of special 20 nuclear material and safety that needs to be done, for 21 example, to ensure that you don't have an inadvertent 22 criticality.
23 But we're looking at assessing how the 24 combination of the manufacturing license, which would 25 maintain a focus for supporting operations, but also NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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211 1 goes into the assembly of the reactor in the factory, 2 would be combined with Part 70 to address, again, not 3 only the deployed reactor but the safety of the 4 nuclear reactor in the factory. So, that's a little 5 long-winded but that's the challenge that we're 6 facing.
7 So a lot of it might be addressed within 8 Part 70 but we'll look to see how much is within Part 9 70, how much is, maybe we can make up the difference 10 with provisions within the manufacturing license and 11 so forth.
12 This would also, this may very well --
13 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Hey, Bill?
14 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, go ahead.
15 MEMBER KIRCHNER: This is Walt. Yes, not 16 to make your job more difficult, but one wrinkle I see 17 is that, and I'm not sure that 70 really covers this, 18 70 certainly addresses criticality prevention and 19 those aspects of the manufacturing facility, but it 20 doesn't address a fully loaded core.
21 If you look at 10 CFR 50.54 on the 22 requirements for licensed operators, it almost would 23 suggest that when you put that reactor together in the 24 manufacturing plant and load it with fuel, you now 25 essentially have the equivalency of a refueling NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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212 1 operation at a commercial operating plant, which 2 requires an SRO qualified licensed operator to be the 3 shift supervisor on the floor for that operation.
4 So not trying to make it more difficult, 5 but it does beg the question of what, you had earlier 6 things like fitness for duty, but this goes beyond 7 just fitness for duty. This says, do you need a 8 licensed operator, so to speak, or the equivalent when 9 you actually load the fuel in the reactor, seal it up 10 and send it on its way.
11 Not trying to make things more difficult.
12 MR. RECKLEY: No, no, no. It's a good 13 observation, and just an extension of what we were 14 thinking. And it's a good point.
15 And the thinking is, that might be exactly 16 what you have to address within the manufacturing 17 license because it has, it's what's available to you, 18 and it might be the easiest way to do it would be to 19 say, as part of the manufacturing license this is the 20 requirements on the staffing at these stages of the 21 manufacturing.
22 And if you're loading fuel then the 23 requirements for, not only the monitoring and so forth 24 that might be addressed by Part 70, but also the 25 personnel involved goes up a notch. So whether it's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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213 1 licensed or not we can decide.
2 But yes, that's exactly what we're talking 3 about in terms of what might we need to add to the 4 manufacturing license and can we do it. I mean, we're 5 still assessing all of this.
6 Very early discussions, when this notion 7 first came up was, whether the factory would need, 8 basically a construction permit operating license. So 9 we're thinking right now, but a lot of assessment to 10 be done, that we can do that within the provisions of 11 the manufacturing license.
12 But a lot of thought needs to be done 13 because it's a new, for us reactor people it's fairly 14 new. For people involved in the Military side it may 15 not be as new, but that goes beyond my experience.
16 So that's the factory conditions. And 17 then on 71 you also introduce challenges in the 18 transportation because now you have a loaded reactor.
19 And in combination with the reactor design and 20 whatever over pack or other shipping container is 21 going to be provided, it needs to meet the 22 requirements of Part 71.
23 It will be from both the safety and the 24 security side. As I had mentioned, we're at both the 25 front end shipment from the factory to the site.
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214 1 To the degree that includes fresh fuel, 2 that might be simpler. But there are even proposals 3 down the road maybe that wouldn't be first units, but 4 down the road and therefore maybe something we need to 5 address in the rule that it wouldn't be fresh fuel it 6 would be recycled fuel. And whether that makes a 7 difference or not we haven't thought through.
8 And then also, as I mentioned, questions 9 related to the transport of the fueled reactor, from 10 the site to either the factory for processing, to a 11 recycling facility or to a waste facility. So all of 12 that has to be thought about. And right now we just 13 kind of have a placeholder in here for how those 14 interactions would go.
15 And we need to talk more with counterparts 16 and NMSS to see what the current regulations would 17 address and what potential changes might be necessary, 18 to even Part 71, to support either end of that 19 shipment. From factory to site or from site to the 20 ultimate destination of the reactor once it's gone 21 through its operating cycle.
22 MEMBER REMPE: So, Bill, in thinking about 23 that, and what's happen with our current operating 24 fleet, what happens if there is no place to ship it 25 back to, are we going to have ISFSIs on the site, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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215 1 discarded units?
2 I mean, it might be good to explore that 3 with DOE and the folks who are proposing to do this 4 since we still don't even have a waste facility for 5 our current fleets fuel. Did I disconnect or can 6 people hear me?
7 CHAIRMAN BLEY: No, but I don't hear Bill 8 though.
9 MR. RECKLEY: Oh, sorry.
10 MEMBER REMPE: It's okay.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Sorry, I pushed the mute 12 button. Excellent point, Joy.
13 Yes, we'll have to add storage, potential 14 storage, to the equation. So we will add that. And 15 talk to both the community, as to how they see that 16 going, DOE. And also to our folks in NMSS about how 17 that would go in terms of, like you say, whether they 18 need a provision for an ISFSI license or how that 19 might work.
20 Some of the designers are giving this at 21 least a little bit of thought because some of them 22 already have, like the molten salts, they already have 23 hold times built in for taking out a module, setting 24 it aside for years to let the activity go down. But 25 we'll certainly bring this up.
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216 1 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Yes, Bill?
2 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, Dennis.
3 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Many years ago, like at 4 the time of the TMI accident, the Navy was not willing 5 to share their experiences with the NRC and the 6 Industry. Has that changed?
7 Is there any interaction with the Navy's 8 nuclear programming now or is it still, they don't 9 really share? Except for in approving a new design.
10 MR. RECKLEY: That's, go ahead. If 11 somebody else is going to answer please do.
12 I know we're working in terms of the 13 development with DoD on the development of the micro-14 reactors. I don't have any experience with the Navy 15 designs or other interactions, to be honest, Dennis.
16 If any other Staff do, feel free to unmute 17 and weigh in.
18 CHAIRMAN BLEY: My thought was, they may 19 have some experience on the transportation issues that 20 could be helpful.
21 MR. RECKLEY: Well --
22 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I don't think they're 23 sharing.
24 MR. RECKLEY: I will say that at the last 25 public meeting that we had on this topic, and a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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217 1 discussion related to this, that one of the 2 presentations was given by BWXT, which is doing some 3 of that work for the Navy, right, and so we did at 4 least hear from the vendor side of that on their 5 experience and their thought.
6 And they are also related, or involved, 7 with the broader DoD micro-reactor project. And so I 8 think that will be an opportunity to bring in that 9 experience, which I think will be very valuable to us.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay, thanks.
11 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. So I think we can go 12 on then to Slide 72, which is the discussion.
13 If any on construction and manufacturing, 14 again, largely taking from existing requirements 15 related to those activities, consolidating it into 16 those subpart. And really, the only new areas we see 17 are updating the manufacturing license provisions that 18 are currently in Subpart F of Part 52.
19 And this challenge that we've been talking 20 about for the last few minutes of when you start to 21 talk about loading fuel in the factory and doing 22 possible transportation that that's basically a new 23 area for us that we would need to look at in terms of 24 the manufacturing license and the regulations in Part 25 70 and 71. And others. But primarily Part 70 and 71.
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218 1 So, with that I'll open it up and see if 2 we have any questions.
3 MEMBER PETTI: Bill, my only thought on 4 some of this is, HEU is shipped around the country for 5 a variety of reasons, including a couple of the test 6 reactors that we have out there. And so, criticality 7 control and some of those things there, there may be 8 some useful information there on how those things are 9 managed from a regulatory perspective.
10 MR. RECKLEY: Okay, yes, thank you. And 11 that was the observation from the BWXT down there as 12 well.
13 MEMBER PETTI: Yes. And just a question 14 in terms of this manufacturing license. How much of 15 the licenses that the fuel vendors have currently is 16 applicable or useful as sort of a starting point? Do 17 you know?
18 MR. RECKLEY: I mean, we're looking at 19 Part 70 in the fuel cycle facilities, in the safety 20 program, for example, that they have. And some of 21 that may be, well, I think it is likely useful.
22 And maybe it makes more sense to adopt 23 that kind of system then what the reactor side would 24 be more oriented towards.
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219 1 look at that and to make the judgments as to which way 2 to go. So it's a good --
3 MEMBER PETTI: Yes.
4 MR. RECKLEY: -- good suggestion. Since 5 they're already licensed under Part 70.
6 MEMBER PETTI: Right.
7 MR. RECKLEY: Right.
8 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Bill, I think you're 9 planning to share us Slide 74, which we'll want to 10 see. And I also suggest moving towards Slide 79 11 before you wrap things up.
12 MR. RECKLEY: Okay. So, yes, if there is 13 nothing else on the manufacturing.
14 So this does get into our schedule in 15 where we are currently. Our goal is to send, to have 16 this wrapped up by basically a year from now. So if 17 you go back to the slide we showed earlier on the 18 different subparts and when we plan to come before the 19 ACRS and public stakeholders and so forth. We were 20 trying to do a staircase where we're introducing these 21 and having the package together by the summer.
22 We would still be looking to have that 23 wrapped up, largely, by the end of the year so we 24 could meet with the ACRS and you could assess and make 25 your recommendations to the Commission based on a full NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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220 1 committee meeting in early 2022. And so, so that we 2 can support getting the proposed rule package to the 3 Commission by May of 2022.
4 And all of this, following that, is the 5 comment periods and the resolution to comments and the 6 going back up with a final rule package to the 7 Commission in March of 2024 to meet the scheduled goal 8 established by the Commission, to have this done by 9 October of 2024.
10 But just looking at the next steps and 11 focusing on those, that was that staircase figure 12 where, again, we would hope to have most of the 13 preliminary language prepared by the summer time.
14 There might be areas like staffing that go into the 15 fall, but to have all of that together, basically by 16 late summer, early fall, to also work in the licensing 17 part, Subparts H and I.
18 And we have to write all of the other 19 parts of the rulemaking package. The statement of 20 consideration and all of that. To have all of that 21 done by basically the end of the year to support the 22 subcommittee meetings and a full committee meeting in 23 early 2022.
24 CHAIRMAN BLEY: All right. I know you 25 can't say you won't meet that schedule. It's a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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221 1 massive amount of work you have to get done.
2 The law itself gave you another two or 3 three years, right? But you have direction to finish 4 by that time.
5 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. And NEIMA's schedule 6 was 2027. And the Commission set forth a goal for us 7 to have it done earlier than that. And that's what 8 we're working towards.
9 There is both external, internal and 10 internal discussions on the schedule, our ability to 11 meet it. Personally I think the Commission's wisdom 12 in this was, if we laid out a schedule for 2027 we 13 would be done in 2030.
14 So, if we lay out a schedule by 2024 we at 15 least have some margin. We can do our best to meet 16 that schedule, but we have an ability to maybe a slip 17 a schedule a bit and still meet the law. But you're 18 right, it's an aggressive schedule.
19 (Laughter.)
20 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay.
21 MR. RECKLEY: So, yes, if we want to then 22 go on. Some abbreviations. Which was the other one 23 that you thought, Dennis? Oh.
24 CHAIRMAN BLEY: That one.
25 MR. RECKLEY: Yes.
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222 1 (Laughter.)
2 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. We are here. And you 3 can see we're still developing it. This just goes to 4 what I was saying that we hope to finalize the drafted 5 proposed rule and have it to the Commission. So the 6 first right turn there would be that May 2022 date.
7 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I think the part that, 8 well, there is lots of parts that are hard to see, 9 hard to get there, but you're making great progress in 10 this last round. At least to me help a lot in two or 11 three areas. Subpart D, I understand it for the first 12 time.
13 And the approach to allowing something, 14 unless we'll kind of pull down BRA, I think is really 15 kind of important to (audio interference) I was 16 leading to a question.
17 I guess the part I'm really uncertain 18 about is, how much of the guidance you can get pulled 19 together by the end date?
20 And for me, that's really important 21 because having a real kind of general gives you a lot 22 of flexibility, but without enough guidance to clearly 23 understand where you are headed it's kind of hard to 24 be fully onboard.
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223 1 of the, will end up in statements of consideration or 2 is that still later down the road?
3 MR. RECKLEY: We're thinking about it. I 4 don't think we've put pen to paper yet.
5 I mean, as we go through this process 6 we're, I can't point to a document that says statement 7 of consideration, but we have a lot of text, a lot of 8 discussion that we have captured. We have a lot of 9 the comments and what we've thought about them that 10 will roll into that document.
11 So, I don't want to say we're absolutely 12 not started, but to be quite honest, I don't have a 13 document yet that says statement of considerations.
14 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I get that. The status, 15 and I think you said we'll talk about next month on 16 the human system considerations, simply that that 17 might be part of such. Or at least, some of that 18 might be part of such a document eventually.
19 Am I misleading that a new document will 20 come out next month?
21 MR. RECKLEY: No. Yes, I forget whether 22 that's next month or June, the meeting, but that's a 23 critical part of Part 53.
24 As you know I guess, you know, one of the 25 goals of the Advanced Reactor Program, and this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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224 1 doesn't affect NRC directly, it's not our job, but as 2 the designers and Department of Energy and others look 3 at the feasibility of nuclear feeding into the future 4 energy supply mix, you know, cost is a factor and a 5 significant cost in the O&M space is staffing, and so 6 that's the push from the design, the industry side.
7 And, by the way, that's also, you know, 8 that was a goal of the Advanced Reactor Policy 9 Statement that basically says part of the desire is 10 for the strength of the design to lessen the reliance 11 on the human interaction and thereby let the staffing 12 levels go down.
13 That wasn't part of the policy statement, 14 but reading between the lines. And so, you know, we 15 will need to do it, and I am agreeing with you, that 16 is a key part because the safety, ultimate safety of 17 the unit is the combination of the machine, the 18 people, and the programs that are put in place.
19 And so we have talked a lot about the 20 hardware. This next discussion is going to talk about 21 the people. The White Paper laid out kind of what the 22 issues are and talked about some of the possible 23 directions we would go, but didn't really -- I mean it 24 just kind of identified the challenge.
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225 1 coming to conclusions. So that is the challenge that 2 we will need to do and that is a key guidance document 3 to prepare. It will also be one of the biggest 4 challenges to try to have anything complete by May of 5 2022, but I think we can be well along by May of 2022.
6 Whether we have a draft regulatory guide 7 to accompany the rule or not, or the proposed rule, I 8 am not sure, but we will be able to describe where we 9 are with interactions with stakeholders and where the 10 guidance document is and where it is headed.
11 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Bill, this is Walt.
12 Your comments prompted me to remember, I don't have it 13 in front of me, unfortunately, the Advanced Reactor 14 Policy Statement, but one of the things that feeds 15 into your comments just now is the emphasis on 16 prevention rather than mitigation.
17 The implication being mitigation whether 18 it's programmatic or operational requires people and 19 such. So I am trying to think now. I will go back 20 and look at this section that you have shared with us 21 today whether that prevention emphasis actually comes 22 through in the design safety criteria and functions.
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226 1 controls.
2 MR. RECKLEY: Yes. And it may be subtle, 3 but for example it goes back to the importance of the 4 one section on trading analytical margin for operating 5 flexibility, right, because that is where the designer 6 is able to say this is what we have accomplished in 7 the design, this is how we have kept the doses, the 8 consequences low, this is how we have controlled the 9 frequency of such events within the design, and, 10 therefore, these are the operating flexibilities we 11 think we have justified, and that can be programmatic 12 areas like emergency planning. We also expect it to 13 be in areas like staffing.
14 And other places where it is, by the way, 15 is also the design choices they make, for example 16 using Passive, that is also encouraged in the policy 17 statement and thereby gets you out of reliance on 18 diesel generators and then cooling systems for the 19 diesel generators and the kind of cascading of the 20 technical requirements and then all that goes along 21 with that by using the traditional active systems.
22 So it's all, you know, it's all an 23 integrated one big goal within the policy statement to 24 move to more Passive, to simpler designs, with the 25 attributes that are identified in the policy statement NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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227 1 and from that to get the benefits that we have been 2 talking about.
3 So, but it goes I guess to reinforce the 4 importance of that one section within the design and 5 analysis subpart on how to take the design attributes 6 and trade it for what we are calling operational 7 flexibilities. That's all.
8 MEMBER KIRCHNER: Well a different 9 approach as someone who would think of this as a 10 designer is that I wouldn't relax the quality 11 assurance requirements one bit, but I would try and 12 design my system that such that the number of 13 structure systems and components that are classified 14 as safety related are substantially reduced and there 15 is a huge economic benefit to be reaped in that.
16 And so that's a different take on that 17 section that you have on trading it just for 18 operational considerations.
19 MR. RECKLEY: Right. And if you have in 20 interest in that particular exercise the White Papers 21 that are associated, these aren't the, they aren't 22 directly related to NEI 18-04. I am saying it wrong.
23 They weren't reviewed and endorsed by the NRC, but 24 they were the White Papers that led to NEI 18-04.
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228 1 that were prepared for NGNP, but it lays out how that 2 process, and this is, again, this is from the 3 designer's standpoint so it's not an area where the 4 NRC focused, but from the designer's perspective how 5 that process that they laid out for NGNP and then got 6 reflected in the White Papers related to NEI 18-04, 7 specifically go through that exercise to say how can 8 we pick the safety-related systems to minimize their 9 number while also delivering the safety results.
10 And so that is something that those sets 11 of designers and the Department of Energy gave a fair 12 amount of thought to to achieve exactly what you are 13 saying, Walt.
14 Any other questions?
15 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Members?
16 (No audible response.)
17 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Well, I think this is the 18 end of what you have to present, right, Bill?
19 MR. RECKLEY: Yes, it is.
20 CHAIRMAN BLEY: You've done such a good 21 job. We have missed hearing from Nan and we regret 22 that, but thanks.
23 Now at this point we had a request from 24 U.S. Nuclear Industry Council, the NIC, to make some 25 comments and I will turn to Cyril Draffin again. Mr.
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229 1 Draffin, you were with us last month I think and 2 please go ahead.
3 MR. DRAFFIN: Thank you very much. Yes, 4 it's Cyril Draffin. I am the Senior Fellow for 5 Advanced Nuclear at the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council.
6 Although it is difficult for us to 7 evaluate the rule absent all the language, which we 8 know will be forthcoming by the end of the summer, our 9 comments will address some of the key issues strictly 10 for Subpart B and C.
11 We have a number of them. First, on the 12 Adequate Protection Standard we disagree with the 13 second revision of the strategic objectives that 14 dropped the reasonable assurance of Adequate 15 Protection Standard.
16 USNIC thinks that the adequate protection 17 of public health and safety is important and changing 18 the objectives primarily to justify the preliminary 19 language seems questionable.
20 Regarding Tier 1 and Tier 2, we think they 21 are still confusing with opportunities for unintended 22 consequences. The second revision of the strategic 23 objective drops the language from the Atomic Energy 24 Act, so a Tier 1 and Tier 2 distinction seems less 25 relevant and maybe a single tier should be considered NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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230 1 unless the operations language, which we haven't seen 2 yet, shows real benefits.
3 Third point, flexible and predictable. We 4 think Part 53 rule can have predictability as well as 5 flexibility. Predictability is having specific 6 performance criteria that must be demonstrated and 7 every applicant must show they meet those criteria 8 that forms the basis for the staff findings of safety.
9 Flexibility is the means to do so, the 10 means of demonstrating the safety criteria met, and 11 needs to be a function of the technology.
12 Establishing a prescriptive process in the rule, such 13 as just trying to implement LNP, does not recognize a 14 diversity within the advanced reactor community nor 15 the innovation that can occur.
16 Regarding including deterministic and 17 probabilistic approaches USNIC believes that Part 53 18 should be to be technology inclusive needs to allow 19 both risk-based and deterministic-based analyses.
20 To be transformative and technology 21 inclusive Part 53 should not be limited to 22 applications that use the probabilistic risk analysis 23 tool with the idea that microreactors should use Part 24 50 because 53 won't be appropriate for them.
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231 1 restrictive in requiring a PRA, and that has been 2 discussed today. It does not allow other analyses 3 even if PRA was used just for confirmation.
4 A more risk-inclusive language that is 5 found in the second iteration of 53.450(b) is more 6 appropriate. It allows IAEA, the Canadian Nuclear 7 Safety Commission, and other risk-informed approaches, 8 so I think that language is appropriate and ought to 9 be considered for (a) as well as (b).
10 In terms of PRAs we think they should 11 apply for a range of licensing paths and technologies.
12 PRA insights are what are important, not the specific 13 numerical results.
14 We don't believe the PRA should be 15 elevated to a compliance tool as part of the 16 application, especially for a construction permit.
17 It's not that clear that the approaches used by Oklo 18 or NuScale would comport with the prescriptive use of 19 PRA as a compliance tool.
20 If requirement for PRA is included in Part 21 53 exemptions will be required for some technologies 22 which seems inconsistent with the objectives of Part 23 53.
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232 1 of licensing paths and technologies merits further 2 discussion.
3 I will touch on a few other points and 4 then a concluding remark. You have heard earlier 5 today that stakeholders still believe that ALARA is an 6 important concept and certainly a good practice that 7 we expect to continue, but we do not believe ALARA 8 should now be included in Part 53 for a regulation in 9 part because of the subjectivity and complexity to 10 ALARA particularly in the design phase. ALARA was 11 more of a practice for worker protection rather than 12 design in a regulation.
13 Normal operations, we think they should be 14 for protection of plant workers and not include it in 15 safety criteria. And for Defense in Depth we think 16 it's important as a design philosophy and in 17 supporting adequate safety case, but the Defense in 18 Depth details should be described in guidance not 19 regulation.
20 So as a final comment, the NRC has 21 stressed in current meetings, including today, that 22 the Part 53 preliminary language will remain open to 23 change until all Part 53 subparts have been provided 24 and stakeholder comments have been received and we do 25 not agree with the second iteration of Subpart B and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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233 1 C.
2 Therefore, it may be premature and have 3 negative impacts for the ACRS to submit a definitive 4 letter to support the current drafts of the rule 5 recognizing only a portion of the Part 53 language 6 that's available and the current language is likely to 7 change.
8 Thank you for the opportunity to provide 9 that perspective.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thanks very much. The 11 last time I think you forwarded us a copy, a written 12 copy of your comments. Are you planning to do that 13 again?
14 MR. DRAFFIN: I can do so, yes.
15 CHAIRMAN BLEY: That would be helpful 16 because we will be talking about this next week and 17 I'm not sure we'll get the transcript back in time.
18 Thank you.
19 Are there any other comments from people 20 on the line or in the meeting? If so please state 21 your name and affiliation. I guess I should have 22 asked Derek to get the phone line open, but --
23 MR. WIDMAYER: The phone bridge is open 24 for public comment.
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234 1 who would like to make a comment please identify 2 yourself and make your comment.
3 MS. FIELDS: Yes, I have comments. This 4 is Sarah Fields. I am with Uranium Watch in 5 Southeastern Utah.
6 A couple of things, regarding the 7 manufacturing license the regulations do not consider 8 foreign manufacturing of advanced reactors and 9 shipment to the U.S.
10 I know that NuScale, which plans to 11 manufacture small modular reactor units, plans to have 12 some of those units manufactured in foreign nations, 13 so the NRC is going to have to explain how they are 14 going to assure that foreign manufacturing meets the 15 same standards as domestic manufacturing.
16 Also, the NRC, ACRS, Department of Energy, 17 and industry do not seem to consider the fact that 18 additional irradiated fuel will be produced and there 19 is still no permanent repository for the long-term 20 care and control of that fuel.
21 There are currently no plans for such a 22 repository. Apparently this is something that the 23 NRC, DOE, and the industry is going to let future 24 generations solve. I know in my lifetime and probably 25 in your lifetimes there will be no permanent NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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235 1 repository for spent nuclear fuel.
2 I also believe that there will never be a 3 deep geological repository in the U.S. and the NRC, 4 Department of Energy, and industry and communities are 5 going to have to develop another plan. I think any 6 community where a deep geologic repository is to be 7 sited will oppose that.
8 So continuing to create irradiated nuclear 9 fuel that must be put in permanent long-term care and 10 storage without such a site is ridiculous and 11 irresponsible. This is despite all the assurances by 12 the Department of Energy and the NRC that such will be 13 created in the future.
14 I think that is stupid and I think you all 15 know that is stupid. So continuing to create this, 16 expand the nuclear industry by you so call advanced 17 reactors is not a very wise decision. Thank you for 18 this opportunity to comment.
19 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thank you for your 20 comments. Anyone else care to make a comment?
21 (No audible response.)
22 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I think we can close the 23 public line. We are going to have a meeting next week 24 to deliberate on whether we will have a letter and 25 what it will say in July, I'm sorry, in May.
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236 1 Most of our conversations among the 2 Members can probably wait until that time, but if any 3 Members have anything you would like to get on the 4 record today, please, I'll be looking for that in just 5 a second.
6 I would also ask all the Members and our 7 consultants if they can send me at least a bulleted 8 list of things you would like to see discussed in the 9 letter that would be helpful.
10 I have already sent something out to you 11 about the structure of that meeting and how we are 12 going to work and I'll be sending a catalog of issues 13 from the transcripts and from any notes that you send 14 me as discussion points for the meeting.
15 So at this time, Members, anything any of 16 you would like to say today? Oh, Vesna. Vicki, I see 17 some hands --
18 (Simultaneous speaking.)
19 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Yes. Well, I don't 20 know whether I go first or Vicki who I was --
21 (Simultaneous speaking.)
22 MEMBER BIER: You can go first, Vesna.
23 (Simultaneous speaking.)
24 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: First, all right.
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237 1 I didn't bring before. I wanted to summarize 2 something which I tried to say through the discussion.
3 One of the very important thing for me 4 around with the finding use of PRA is that we should 5 be fine. What is the -- What do we gain by using the 6 PRA in the regulation?
7 So that would actually use of the PRA or 8 what PRA improved the current regulation. And this is 9 how I visualized, this is just my opinion, is we 10 define all the elements and everything the PRA inputs 11 will add the value, for example, design selection 12 license basis events.
13 Same thing for specification, inputs to 14 DRAP, the staffing, exclusions on, you know, the 15 emergency planning zone, Defense in Depth 16 illustration.
17 And then for each of these and maybe a few 18 more, so I had like ten or something, so for each of 19 those PRA insights we can just define what type of the 20 PRA input is necessary for that and in my opinion for 21 all of those we can get the partial PRA inputs which 22 combines the PRA designs and qualitative insights and 23 models and we can provide the inputs to those 24 applications.
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238 1 look like when we had to define how much the PRA, what 2 the level of the PRA we need for the application. The 3 other thing which I already commented, the QHOs and 4 the how, it is my opinion that QHOs shouldn't be used.
5 You already have the safety goals defined 6 as a Tier 1 safety goals which are based on the, you 7 know, the 45 rem and, you know, the exclusionary 8 boundary on the low population zones.
9 So they can be modified but those two 10 safety objectives or safety goals are good enough.
11 There is no need really to extend them to QHOs 12 because, well, we already know how much uncertainty we 13 will have in the Level 1 because, you know, we have a 14 totally new design, we don't have experience, we don't 15 a have the data, we don't have too much about the 16 Passive system that we could point out.
17 The thing is that when we move from Level 18 1 to Level 2 PRA the uncertainties just grow. When we 19 come to the Level 3 PRA uncertainties are so big, you 20 know, because of what the health impacts would be or 21 the number of fatalities we will have with the 22 different zones dependent on so many factors, you 23 know, where the wind blows, action, what is the 24 population, all the uncertainties there.
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239 1 mean value. It cannot be point estimate. So just 2 even with the distribution coming with this mean value 3 coming with Level 3 PRA I cannot imagine that.
4 So this is why I think that the safety 5 goal that is there should be simple and limited to 6 something which can be reasonably estimated. This is 7 basically what I wanted to add.
8 MEMBER BIER: Okay. I guess I can go 9 next.
10 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I'm sorry, my mic just 11 turned off when I was talking.
12 MEMBER BIER: Oh.
13 CHAIRMAN BLEY: First I wanted to say 14 something to Vesna.
15 MEMBER BIER: Yes, right.
16 CHAIRMAN BLEY: I'm not sure we're going 17 to get the transcript back in time for me to go 18 through it before our discussion session, so if you 19 can send me a kind of bullet list of the points you 20 made that would be very helpful because my notetaking 21 isn't --
22 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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240 1 just proposed some form today, so I will just look, 2 you know, how I can put all these comments in the form 3 which will be easier for use.
4 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Okay. Vicki, why don't 5 you go ahead.
6 MEMBER BIER: Yes. Your line for next 7 week that talks about kind of pluses and minuses, what 8 we liked and what we didn't like, you know, I am 9 coming late into this process but one thing that we 10 should probably say we like if we haven't already, or 11 at least that I like, the whole theory of regulation 12 kind of talks about how being more flexible and more 13 performance based in how you meet the regulation can 14 really encourage innovation.
15 And here I mean I think the innovation is 16 coming first and the regulation is kind of lagging 17 behind a little bit, but I think, you know, when you 18 look at the enormous range of different possible 19 designs that people have been talking about it seems 20 pretty clear that we are going to have, you know, a 21 lot of innovation coming forward in the future and 22 that it's great that the agency is getting ready for 23 that.
24 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Thank you. Any other 25 Members?
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241 1 (No audible response.)
2 CHAIRMAN BLEY: Well, at this time I would 3 really like to thank Bill Reckley. Your knowledge of 4 what is going into Part 53 is encyclopedic, including 5 the knowledge of what went into developing regulations 6 many years ago and, you know, I think we all 7 appreciate that and your willingness to listen and to 8 make modifications is very good, so our compliments to 9 you and to the Staff for all the work that has been 10 done.
11 We look forward to seeing how this 12 progresses and we'll see what kind of ideas we have 13 that we want to share with you eventually. So, thanks 14 very much.
15 At this point I will adjourn this meeting.
16 We are adjourned.
17 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 18 off the record at 5:31 p.m.)
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U.S. Nuclear Industry Council (USNIC) Comments NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS)
Future Plant Designs Subcommittee Meeting Preliminary Rule 10 CFR Part 53 22 April 2021 I am Cyril Draffin, Senior Fellow for Advanced Nuclear at the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council (USNIC).
Although it is difficult for USNIC to evaluate the rule absent all the language, which we understand will available by the end of the summer, our comments will address some key issues for Subparts B & C.
Adequate Protection Standard We disagree with the 2nd revision of the Strategic Objectives that dropped the reasonable assurance of adequate protection standard. USNIC thinks adequate protection of public health and safety is important, and changing objectives primarily to justify preliminary language seems questionable.
Tier 1 and 2 We still think Tier 1 and Tier 2 is confusing, with opportunities for unintended consequences. The 2nd revision of the Strategic Objective drops language from the Atomic Energy Act, so the Tier 1 and Tier 2 distinction seems less relevant. A single tier should be considered unless operations language shows real benefits.
Flexible and Predictable Part 53 rule can have predictability, as well as flexibility.
Predictability is having specific performance criteria that must be demonstrated, and every applicant must show that they meet the criteria that forms the basis for the staff findings of safety.
Flexibility is in the means of demonstrating the safety criteria are met, and needs to be a function of the technology. Establishing a prescriptive process in the rule (such as focusing on implementing just LMP) does not recognize the diversity within the advanced reactor community, or innovation that can occur.
Inclusion of options for both deterministic and probabilistic approaches USNIC believes that for Part 53 to be technology-inclusive, it needs to allow both risk-based and deterministic based analysis. To be transformative and technology-inclusive, Part 53 should not be limited to applications that use the Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) tool, with an idea that microreactors should use Part 50 because Part 53 will not be appropriate for them.
The second iteration of 53.450 (a) is too restrictive in requiring a PRA. It does not allow another analyses, even if PRA was used for confirmation. The more inclusive risk-informed language in second iteration of 53.450 (b), [The PRA, other generally accepted risk-informed approach for systematically 1
evaluating engineered systems, or combination thereof must be used] is more appropriate in allowing IAEA, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, or other risk-informed approaches and should be used in 53.450 (a).
PRA for a range of licensing paths and technologies PRA insights are what are important, not specific numerical results. We dont believe the PRA should be elevated to a compliance tool as part of the application, especially for a construction permit.
Its not clear that the approaches used by Oklo and NuScale would comport with a prescriptive use of PRA as a compliance tool. If requirement for PRA is included in Part 53, exemptions will be required for some technologies-- which seems inconsistent with objectives for Part 53.
Timing for, use of phased or simplified approach, and quality of PRA for a range of licensing paths and technologies merits further discussion.
ALARA Many stakeholders believe ALARA is an important concept and certainly good practice that we expect to continue. But we do not believe ALARA should be included in Part 53 formal regulation, in part because of the subjectivity and complexity to ALARA in the design phase. ALARA is more a practice for worker protection.
Normal Operations Normal operations should be like protection of plant workers and not be in included in safety criteria.
Defense in Depth (DID)
Defense in Depth is important as a design philosophy in supporting an adequate safety case. But DID details should be described in guidance, not regulation.
Premature to make definitive comments As a final comment, NRC has stressed in current meetings (at ACRS meeting today and 8 April 2021 Part 53 public meeting) that Part 53 preliminary language will remain open to change until all Part 53 Subparts have been provided and Stakeholder comments have been received. And we do not agree with 2nd iteration of Subpart B & C.
Therefore it may be premature, and have negative impacts, for ACRS to submit a definitive letter to support current drafts of the rule, recognizing only a portion of Part 53 language is available and current language is likely to change.
2
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS)
Future Plant Designs Subcommittee 10 CFR Part 53 Licensing and Regulation of Advanced Nuclear Reactors Revisions to Previously Released Preliminary Proposed Rule Language & Subpart E Preliminary Proposed Rule Language April 22, 2021 1
Agenda 9:30 am - 9:35 am Opening Remarks 9:35 am - 9:40 am Staff Introduction 9:40 am - 11:30 am Subpart B - Technology-Inclusive Safety Requirements - 2nd Iteration 11:30 am - 1:00 pm Subpart C - Design and Analysis Requirements - 2nd Iteration 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Lunch 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Subpart C - Design and Analysis Requirements - 2nd Iteration (continued) 3:00 pm - 5:30 pm Subpart E - Construction and Manufacturing Requirements 5:30 pm - 6:00 pm Discussion 2
NRC Staff Engagement Plan ACRS Interactions Framework Safety Criteria Design Siting Construction Operations Decommissioning Licensing General/Admin Sept 20 Nov 20 Dec 20 Jan 21 Feb 21 Mar 21 Apr 21 May 21 Jun 21 Jul 21 Consolidated Technical Sections Aug 21 Sept 21 Consolidated Technical Sections Oct 21 Nov 21 Consolidated Rulemaking Package Dec 21 Jan 22 ACRS Full Committee Feb 22 Mar 22 Apr 22 May 22 Draft Proposed Rulemaking Package to the Commission Jun 22 Jul 22 Aug 22 Sept 22 Oct 22 Concept/Introduction Discussion Interim Staff Resolution 3
Proposed Focus (Full Committee/Letter)
- Overall Structure (Framework)
- 2nd Iteration Preliminary Proposed Rule Language - Subpart B (Safety Criteria)
- 2nd Iteration Preliminary Proposed Rule Language - Subpart C (Design and Analysis)
- Challenges and Recommendations 4
NRC Staff Plan to Develop Part 53 Subpart B Subpart C Subpart D Subpart E Subpart F Subpart G 2 Project Life Cycle Design and Siting Construction Operation Retirement Requirements Definition Analysis
- Safety Objectives External Facility Safety
- Safety Criteria System Hazards Construction/ Program
- Safety Functions & Component Manufacturing Design Site Surveillance Characteristics Ensuring Maintenance Analysis Capabilities/
Requirements Environmental Reliabilities Configuration Control 1 Safety Categorization Considerations Change Control Staffing &
& Special Environmental Human Factors Treatment Considerations Programs Security, EP Plant/Site (Design, Construction, Configuration Control)
Clarify Controls Analyses (Prevention, Mitigation, Compare to Criteria) and Distinctions Between Plant Documents (Systems, Procedures, etc.)
LB Documents (Applications, SAR, TS, etc.) Subparts H & I 5
Subpart A - General Provisions
- Scope
- Definitions
- Interpretations
- Written Communications
- Employee Protection
- Completeness and Accuracy of Information
- Specific Exemptions
- Deliberate Misconduct
- Combining licenses; elimination of repetition
- Jurisdictional Limits
- Attacks and Destructive Acts
- Information Collection Requirements: Office of Management and Budget Approval 6
Subpart B - Safety Criteria
- Safety Objectives
- First Tier Safety Criteria Safety Criteria What function(s)
- Second Tier Safety Criteria (e.g., a barrier, cooling) are needed to satisfy
- Safety Functions safety criteria
- Licensing Basis Events Safety Functions (LBEs) What design features (e.g., a structure, system) are provided to fulfill the
- Defense in Depth safety function(s)
- Protection of Plant Workers Design Features (and Human Actions) What design criteria (e.g., leak rate, cooling capacity) are needed for design feature Functional Design Criteria (Personnel; Concept of Operations) 7
Subpart C - Design and Analysis
- Design Features
- Functional Design Criteria for First Tier Safety Criteria
- Functional Design Criteria for Second Tier Safety Criteria
- Functional Design Criteria for Protection of Plant Workers
- Design Requirements
- Analysis Requirements
- Safety Categorization and Special Treatment
- Application of Analytical Safety Margins to Operational Flexibilities
- Design Control Quality Assurance
- Design and Analyses Interfaces 8
Subpart D - Siting
- General Siting
- External Hazards
- Site Characteristics
- Population-Related Considerations
- Siting Interfaces
- Environmental Considerations 9
Subpart E - Construction and Manufacturing
- Scope and Purpose
- Part 1 - Construction
- (a) Management and Control
- (b) Construction Activities
- (c) Inspection and Acceptance
- (d) Communication
- Part 2 - Manufacturing
- (a) Management and Control
- (b) Manufacturing Activities
- (c) Fuel Loading
- (d) Communication
- (e) Transportation
- (f) Acceptance and Installation at the Site 10
Subpart F - Operations
- (1) Maintaining Capabilities/Reliabilities of Safety Related and Safety Significant Equipment o Operational Objectives o Transition from Construction/Manufacturing to Operation o Configuration Management for Safety-Related Design Functions Technical Specifications o Configuration Management for Safety-Significant Design Functions Special Treatment (e.g., Reliability Assurance) o Maintenance, Repair and Inspection Programs o Quality Assurance (QA) o Design Control 11
Subpart F - Operations, Contd.
- (2) Establishing and Maintaining Appropriate Staffing o Concept for Operations Identifying Role of Personnel in Meeting First Tier Safety Criteria Identifying Role of Personnel in Meeting Second Tier Safety Criteria o Requirements for Licensed Personnel Staffing Training Medical Requirements Licensing (Applications, Examinations, Licenses) o Requirements for Non-Licensed Personnel (Graded based on roles)
Staffing Training Other Requirements
- See NRC staff white paper Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Human-System Considerations for Advanced Reactors, (ADAMS accession no. ML21069A003; March 2021) for background information on this topic.
12
Subpart F - Operations, Contd.
- (3) Programs o General Requirement to Develop Needed Programs o Radiation Protection o Emergency Preparedness o Security (Physical, Cyber, etc.)
o QA o Integrity Assessment (Aging, Fatigue, Environmental) o Fire Protection o Inservice Inspection/Inservice Testing o Criticality Safety o Facility Safety Program o Procedures and Guidelines 13
Subpart G - Decommissioning
- Termination of power reactor licenses o Transition from operation to possession-only license
- Financial assurance for decommissioning
- Transition to unrestricted use 14
Subpart H - Licensing
- General
- Siting o Site Suitability Reviews o Limited Work Authorizations o Early Site Permits
- Design o Conceptual Design Reviews?
o Standard Design Approvals o Design Certifications o Manufacturing Licenses (MLs)
Manufacturing, Transportation, Deployment
- Appendix A (Content Table) 15
Subpart I - Maintaining Licensing Basis
- Amendments to a license o Application (review?)
o Public notice and consultations o Issuance
- Updating Final Safety Analysis Report o Including probabilistic risk assessment (PRA)
- Revocation, suspension, modification of license for cause
- Retaking special nuclear material (SNM)
- Commission order for operation after revocation
- Suspension and operation in war or national emergency,
(§ 50.54(d))
- Backfitting and Issue Finality
- Information requests (§ 50.54(f))
16
Subpart J - Administrative and Reporting
- Common standards
- Water pollution control act (§ 50.54(aa))
- Selective implementation
- National emergency, can deviate from (relationship to Parts 50, 52) technical specifications (TS) (§ 50.54(dd))
- Reporting
- Share SNM and byproduct material between units (§ 50.54(ee))
- Notifications (§§ 50.72, 50.73)
- Need to address Federal Emergency
- Financial Qualifications Management Agency deficiencies
- Creditor Regulations (§ 50.54(gg))
- Enforcement
- Receipt of aircraft threat (§ 50.54(hh))
- US/International Atomic Energy
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers Agency (IAEA) (§ 50.55(a)) & quality standards (§ 50.54(jj))
- SNM (§ 50.54(b)-(d))
- Bankruptcy (§ 50.54(cc))
- Antitrust (§ 50.54(g))
- Property insurance (§ 50.54(w))
- Subject to laws & regulations - (§ 50.54(h))
- Liability / Price Anderson 17
NRC Staff Plan to Develop Part 53 Subpart B Subpart C Subpart D Subpart E Subpart F Subpart G 2 Project Life Cycle Design and Siting Construction Operation Retirement Requirements Definition Analysis
- Safety Objectives External Facility Safety
- Safety Criteria System Hazards Construction/ Program
- Safety Functions & Component Manufacturing Design Site Surveillance Characteristics Ensuring Maintenance Analysis Capabilities/
Requirements Environmental Reliabilities Configuration Control 1 Safety Categorization Considerations Change Control Staffing &
& Special Environmental Human Factors Treatment Considerations Programs Security, EP Plant/Site (Design, Construction, Configuration Control)
Clarify Controls Analyses (Prevention, Mitigation, Compare to Criteria) and Distinctions Between Plant Documents (Systems, Procedures, etc.)
LB Documents (Applications, SAR, TS, etc.) Subparts H & I 18
2nd Iteration on Previously Released Preliminary Proposed Rule Language -
Subpart B 19
Feedback & Iterations
- This iterative rulemaking approach is novel and unprecedented at NRC.
- The Part 53 working group has received numerous internal and external comments on preliminary proposed rule text.
- We are continuing to assess those comments and may reflect assessment in future iterations of rule text.
- The NRC staff has developed internal management review processes for iterations of rule text.
- The preliminary proposed rule language will remain open for discussion as the staff works toward providing the Commission with the draft proposed rule package.
- The NRC staff may discuss some comments not reflected in rule text in the Commission paper transmitting draft proposed rule or in questions for comment in draft proposed rule Federal Register Notice.
20
Part 50 and Part 53 Comparing Licensing Frameworks
- Safety criteria o Same safety criteria in Parts 50 and 53 o Quantitative health objectives (QHOs) used in guidance under Part 50
- Design and Analyses o Design Basis Accidents (DBAs)
Part 50: Assessed using prescriptive, highly conservative analyses Part 53: Assessed methodically considering event frequencies and assuming only safety-related structures, systems, and components (SSCs) are available o Beyond Design Basis Events (BDBEs)
Part 50: Identified & assessed by largely ad-hoc, prescriptive approach with uncertainties addressed through conservatisms Part 53: Derived methodically using event frequencies with explicit consideration for uncertainties
- Special Treatment for Non-Safety-Related but Risk-Significant SSCs o Part 50: Ad-hoc (e.g., § 50.69 programs, Reliability Assurance Programs) o Part 53: Systematic approach to control frequencies and consequences of the LBEs in relation to safety criteria 21
Additional Discussion - First Tier
- Possible Applications of First Tier Safety Criteria o Minimally acceptable level of safety o Met by satisfying the safety functions needed for dose < 25 rem o Provides basis for safety classification of SSCs o Demonstration of meeting the first tier safety criteria supported by analyses (DBA) o Provides basis for identifying SSCs needing protection against external events up to the design basis external hazard levels o Provides basis for identifying appropriate content of TS Reserved for the most significant safety requirements Necessary to obviate the possibility of an abnormal situation or event giving rise to an immediate threat to the public health and safety o May provide basis for staffing and operator licensing decisions o Greatest level of detail for information in licensing documents 22
Additional Discussion - Second Tier
- Possible Applications of Second Tier Safety Criteria o With first tier, ensures appropriate level of safety for long-term, risk-informed operations o Met by satisfying the safety functions for meeting QHOs o Demonstration of meeting the second tier safety criteria supported by systematic analyses o Provides basis for identifying additional risk-informed requirements o Provides basis for identifying appropriate special treatment for non-safety related SSCs o Provides basis for enabling risk management approach to operations o May provide basis for staffing and operator licensing decisions o Enables appropriate level of detail in licensing basis documentation based on a risk-informed, function-oriented and performance-based approach 23
Feedback - Safety Objectives FIRST ITERATION
§ 53.200 Safety Objectives.
Each advanced nuclear plant must be designed, constructed, operated, and decommissioned such that there is reasonable assurance of adequate protection of the public health and safety and the common defense and security. In addition, each advanced nuclear plant must take such additional measures to protect public health and minimize danger to life or property as may be reasonable when considering technology changes, economic costs, operating experience, or other factors identified in the assessments performed under the facility safety program required by § 53.800.
- Questions/comments on Safety Objectives o Need for and wording of objective to minimize danger o Alignment of objectives with first and second tier safety criteria o Incorporation of wording from Atomic Energy Act (AEA) 24
Second Iteration - Objectives
§ 53.200 Safety Objectives.
Each advanced nuclear plant must be designed, constructed, operated, and decommissioned to limit the possibility of an immediate threat to the public health and safety. In addition, each advanced nuclear plant must take such additional measures as may be appropriate when considering potential risks to public health and safety. These safety objectives shall be carried out by meeting the safety criteria identified in this subpart.
- Discussion o Generally aligns with requirements for content of technical specifications and regulatory treatment of non-safety systems o Addresses concerns related to tying tiers to authorities provided in the AEA 25
Feedback - First Tier FIRST ITERATION
§ 53.210 First Tier Safety Objectives.
(a) Public dose does not exceed 0.1 rem from normal plant operation (b) Provide design features and programmatic controls such that events with frequencies greater than once per 10,000 years meet the following (1) 2-hour dose below 25 rem at exclusion area boundary (EAB)
(2) Duration dose below 25 rem at low population zone (LPZ) boundary (c) Additional requirements established by NRC to ensure reasonable assurance of adequate protection
- Questions/comments on First Tier Safety Criteria o Inclusion of normal operations o Open-endedness of Paragraph (c) o Concerns that connection to adequate protection standard was leading to perception that additional requirements not needed 26
Second Iteration - First Tier
§ 53.210 First Tier Safety Criteria.
(a) Public dose does not exceed Part 20 limit (0.1 rem) from normal plant operation (b) Provide design features and programmatic controls such that events with frequencies greater than once per 10,000 years meet the following (1) 2-hour dose below 25 rem at EAB (2) Duration dose below 25 rem at LPZ boundary (c) Additional requirements established by NRC to ensure reasonable assurance of adequate protection
- Discussion o Maintains technical criteria from first iteration o Generally aligns with requirements for content of technical specifications and regulatory treatment of non-safety systems o Deleted paragraph (c) since the first tier criteria are no longer tied to adequate protection standard o Added existing footnote on 25 rem as reference value o General note that staff assessing terminology (tiers) 27
Feedback - Second Tier FIRST ITERATION
§ 53.220 Second Tier Safety Criteria a) Normal Operations - Public dose as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) with performance goals from Appendix I to 10 CFR Part 50 (b) Design features and programmatic controls provided to:
(1) Address LBEs and defense in depth (2) Maintain overall cumulative plant risks below QHOs
- Questions/comments on Second Tier Safety Criteria o Overall need for the second tier o Inclusion of normal operations ALARA requirement o Use of QHOs as codified safety criteria 28
Feedback - 2nd Tier, ALARA
- NRC Iteration: Maintained requirements for normal operations and occupational exposures to be ALARA Note that concerns related to ALARA and NRC reviews of design-related applications are also being addressed through the Advanced Reactor Content of Application Project with current drafts of Chapter 9 released to support stakeholder interactions:
... in lieu of providing detailed system descriptions and analysis of estimated effluent releases as required by 10 CFR 50.34, 50.34a, 52.47, and 52.79, an application may demonstrate compliance with the applicable regulations by describing a radiation protection program and an effluent release monitoring program that will ensure that effluent release limits will be met during normal operations for the life of the plant.
Information related to physical systems can be limited to general descriptions of layout and technologies used to limit the release of the various inventories of radioactive materials within the plant.
29
Feedback - 2nd Tier, QHOs
- QHOs o Proposal by some stakeholders to maintain QHOs as policy but exclude from rule Some concern over use of QHOs related to inclusion of requirement to perform PRA o Proposal by some stakeholders to use a metric other than QHOs as second tier Range of stakeholder views, from use of QHOs to use of cost-benefit assessment for second tier, which in NRC practice includes assessment against QHOs
- NRC Iteration: Maintained QHOs within the second tier safety criteria o The QHOs are a well-established measure used in NRC risk-informed decision making and are a logical performance metric to support the risk management approaches to operations that will be reflected in Subpart F, Operations.
o Note that using less defined criteria for the second tier would decrease the predictability of the regulations in terms of the desired graded approach (e.g., differentiation between SSCs that are safety related and non-safety related with special treatment) 30
Second Iteration - Second Tier
- Second Tier Safety Criteria FIRST ITERATION/SECOND ITERATION
§ 53.220 Second Tier Safety Criteria.
(a) Normal operations. Design features and programmatic controls must be provided for each advanced nuclear plant to ensure the estimated total effective dose equivalent to individual members of the public from effluents resulting from normal plant operation are as low as is reasonably achievable taking into account the state of technology, the economics of improvements in relation to the state of technology, operating experience, and the benefits to the public health and safety. Design features and programmatic controls must be established such that [to be reworded for consistency with 10 CFR part 20 and 40 CFR part 190].
(b) Unplanned events. Design features and programmatic controls must be provided to:
(1) Ensure plant SSCs, personnel, and programs provide the necessary capabilities and maintain the necessary reliability to address licensing basis events in accordance with
§ 53.240 and provide measures for defense-in-depth in accordance with § 53.250; and (2) Maintain overall cumulative plant risk from licensing basis events such that the risk to an average individual within the vicinity of the plant receiving a radiation dose with the potential for immediate health effects remains below five in 10 million years, and the risk to such an individual receiving a radiation dose with the potential to cause latent health effects remains below two in one million years.
31
Proposed Second Iteration
- Discussion (Second Tier Safety Criteria) o Maintains second tier to ensure appropriate level of safety for long-term, risk-informed operations o Maintains ALARA for normal operations as longstanding element of NRC regulations o Maintains QHOs for unplanned events as well established policy and measure for risk-informed decisionmaking 32
Feedback - Safety Functions FIRST ITERATION
§ 53.230 Safety Functions (a) The primary safety function is limiting the release of radioactive materials from the facility and must be maintained during routine operation and for licensing basis events over the life of the plant.
(b) Additional safety functions supporting the retention of radioactive materials during routine operation and licensing basis eventssuch as controlling heat generation, heat removal, and chemical interactions--must be defined.
(c) Design features and programmatic controls serve to fulfill the primary safety function and additional safety functions and must be maintained over the life of the plant.
- Questions/comments on Safety Functions o Proposal by some stakeholders to explicitly cite fundamental safety functions.
33
Second Iteration - Safety Functions
§ 53.230 Safety Functions (a) The primary safety function is limiting the release of radioactive materials from the facility and must be maintained during routine operation and for licensing basis events over the life of the plant.
(b) Additional safety functions supporting the retention of radioactive materials during routine operation and licensing basis eventssuch as controlling heat generation, heat removal, and chemical interactions--must be defined.
(c)Design features and programmatic controls serve to fulfill the primary safety function and additional safety functions and must be maintained over the life of the plant. The primary and additional safety functions are required to meet the first and second tier safety criteria and are fulfilled by the design features and programmatic controls specified throughout this part.
- Discussion (Safety Functions) o Maintains mention of fundamental safety functions as examples to maintain technology-inclusive framework (with potential use for multiple inventories of radionuclides within plants and possibly technologies such as fusion energy systems) o Reinforces general hierarchy of safety criteria, safety function, design feature, and functional design criteria.
34
Feedback - Licensing Basis Events FIRST ITERATION
§ 53.240 Licensing Basis Events Licensing basis events must be identified for each advanced nuclear plant and analyzed in accordance with § 53.[3x] to support assessments of the safety requirements of this subpart B. The licensing basis events must address combinations of malfunctions of plant SSCs, human errors, and the effects of external hazards ranging from anticipated operational occurrences to highly unlikely event sequences that are not expected to occur in the life of the advanced nuclear plant. The evaluation of licensing basis events must be used to confirm the adequacy of design features and programmatic controls needed to satisfy first and second tier safety criteria of this subpart and to establish related functional requirements for plant SSCs, personnel, and programs.
- Questions/comments on LBEs:
o Comments generally associated with other areas such as the first and second tier safety criteria o Some discussion on use of alternative paths such as the use of a maximum hypothetical accident concept 35
Second Iteration - Licensing Basis Events
§ 53.240 Licensing Basis Events Licensing basis events must be identified for each advanced nuclear plant and analyzed in accordance with § 53.450 to support assessments of the safety requirements in this subpart B. The licensing basis events must address combinations of malfunctions of plant SSCs, human errors, and the effects of external hazards ranging from anticipated operational occurrences to highly very unlikely event sequences that are not with estimated frequencies well below the frequency of events expected to occur in the life of the advanced nuclear plant. The evaluation of licensing basis events must be used to confirm the adequacy of design features and programmatic controls needed to satisfy first and second tier safety criteria of this subpart and to establish related functional requirements for plant SSCs, personnel, and programs.
Feedback - Defense in Depth FIRST ITERATION
§ 53.250 Defense in Depth Measures must be taken for each advanced nuclear plant to ensure appropriate defense in depth is provided to compensate for epistemic and aleatory uncertainties such that there is high confidence that the safety criteria in this subpart B are met over the life of the plant. The epistemic and aleatory uncertainties to be considered include those related to the ability of barriers to limit the release of radioactive materials from the facility during routine operation and for licensing basis events and those related to the reliability and performance of plant SSCs and personnel, and programmatic controls. Measures to compensate for these uncertainties can include increased safety margins in the design of SSCs and providing alternate means to accomplish safety functions. No single design or operational feature, no matter how robust, should be exclusively relied upon to meet the safety criteria of 10 CFR part 53.
- Questions/comments on Defense in Depth:
o Treat as a design philosophy similar to Parts 50 and 52 o Unnecessary as a requirement and would create unintended consequences o Prescriptive no single feature requirement is unnecessary and not risk informed o Clarify what is required when prevention or mitigation is related to inherent characteristics 37
Second Iteration - Defense in Depth
§ 53.250 Defense in Depth Measures must be taken for each advanced nuclear plant to ensure appropriate defense in depth is provided to compensate for uncertainties such that there is high confidence that the safety criteria in this subpart are met over the life of the plant. The uncertainties to be considered include those related to the state of knowledge and modeling capabilities, the ability of barriers to limit the release of radioactive materials from the facility during routine operation and for licensing basis events, and those related to the reliability and performance of plant SSCs, personnel, and programmatic controls. No single engineered design feature, human action, or programmatic control, no matter how robust, should be exclusively relied upon to meet the safety criteria of § 53.220(b) or the safety functions defined in accordance with § 53.230.
- Discussion (Defense in Depth) o Maintains defense in depth within Subpart B because of historical and continued importance of its role in addressing risk o Parts 50/52 do not include a similar section because the defense-in-depth philosophy is incorporated into prescriptive technical requirements for light-water reactors o Possibility that this section could be addressed within Subpart C can be considered as part of the later review of the technical requirements o Reflects possible crediting of inherent characteristics within the design and analysis for advanced reactors and the reduced uncertainties associated with such characteristics 38
Feedback - Protection of Plant Workers FIRST ITERATION
§ 53.260 Protection of Plant Workers (a) Design features and programmatic controls must exist for each advanced nuclear plant to ensure that radiological dose to plant workers does not exceed the occupational dose limits provided in subpart C to 10 CFR part 20.
(b) The licensee must use, to the extent practical, procedures and engineering controls based upon sound radiation protection principles to achieve occupational doses and doses to members of the public that are as low as is reasonably achievable.
- Questions/comments on Protection of Plant workers:
o Exclude occupational dose from Part 53 or confine to reference to Part 20.
o Some stakeholders favored retaining these requirements in light of relative importance of potential occupational exposures for some advanced reactor technologies 39
Second Iteration - Protection of Plant Workers
§ 53.260 Protection of Plant Workers (a) Design features and programmatic controls must exist for each advanced nuclear plant to ensure that radiological dose to plant workers does not exceed the occupational dose limits provided in subpart C to 10 CFR part 20.
(b) The licensee As required by Subpart B to 10 CFR part 20, design features and programmatic controls must use, to the extent practical, procedures and engineering controls be based upon sound radiation protection principles to achieve occupational doses and doses to members of the public that are as low as is reasonably achievable.
- Discussion (Protection of Plant Workers) o Maintains the protection of plant workers within Subpart B to capture occupational exposures within the high-level safety requirements o Changed to refer to part 20, as suggested by stakeholders Note that ALARA is not only a long-standing requirement by Atomic Energy Commission/NRC (including maintaining in Part 20 rulemaking) but also is addressed in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Federal Guidance for Radiation Protection 40
2nd Iteration on Previously Released Preliminary Proposed Rule Language- Subpart B Discussion 41
2nd Iteration on Previously Released Preliminary Proposed Rule Language -
Subpart C 42
Feedback - Design
§ 53.400 Design Objectives and Design Features
§ 53.410 Functional Design Criteria for First Tier Safety Criteria
§ 53.420 Functional Design Criteria for Second Tier Safety Criteria
§ 53.430 Functional Design Criteria for Protection of Plant Workers
§ 53.440 Design Requirements
- Questions/comments on Design Requirements o Comments generally associated with other areas such as the first and second tier safety criteria, occupational exposures, etc.
43
Second Iteration - Design
§ 53.400 Design Objectives and Design Features
§ 53.410 Functional Design Criteria for First Tier Safety Criteria
§ 53.420 Functional Design Criteria for Second Tier Safety Criteria
§ 53.430 Functional Design Criteria for Protection of Plant Workers
§ 53.440 Design Requirements
- Discussion (Design) o Maintains these sections and their role in helping to establish the general hierarchy of safety criteria, safety function, design feature, and functional design criteria.
44
Feedback - Analysis (PRA)
First Iteration
§ 53.450 Analysis Requirements (a) A probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) of each advanced nuclear plant
[reminder - plant definition to include multi-module and multi-source]
must be performed to identify potential failures, degradation mechanisms, susceptibility to internal and external hazards, and other contributing factors to unplanned events that might challenge the safety functions identified in § 53.230.
- Questions/comments on Analysis Requirements o Dont require PRA or require a risk-informed assessment instead o Support more deterministic approaches to design and analysis 45
Second Iteration - Analysis (PRA)
§ 53.450 Analysis Requirements (a) Requirement to have a probabilistic risk assessment. A probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) of each advanced nuclear plant [reminder - plant definition to include multi-module and multi-source] must be performed to identify potential failures, degradation mechanisms, susceptibility to internal and external hazards, and other contributing factors to unplanned events that might challenge the safety functions identified in § 53.230 and to support demonstrating that each advanced nuclear plant meets the second tier safety criteria of § 53.220(b).
- Discussion (PRA) o Maintains requirement in Part 53 for PRA consistent with evolution of risk-informed approaches but provide alternatives to PRA for design and analysis processes (paragraph (b)) and to support the licensing and regulatory programs being developed in subsequent subparts o Staff is engaged in ongoing discussions on how to ensure the level of effort required for a PRA is commensurate with the complexity of the subject reactor design while also ensuring possible deployment of advanced reactors poses no undue risk to public health and safety.
46
Feedback - Analysis (Use of PRA)
First Iteration
§ 53.450 Analysis Requirements (b) Requirement to use PRA to:
- Determine licensing basis events
- Support safety classification of SSCs
- Evaluate defense in depth
- Questions/comments on Use of PRA o Support more deterministic approaches to design and analysis o Support international regulatory frameworks (e.g., IAEA SSR-2/1) o Extensive PRA with application submittal may not be feasible for all application types, especially for plants in early phases of application o Concerns about connection to PRA standards and capability categories 47
Second Iteration - Analysis (Use of PRA)
§ 53.450 Analysis Requirements (b) Requirement to use PRA, other generally accepted risk-informed approach for systematically evaluating engineered systems, or combination thereof to:
- Determine LBEs
- Support safety classification of SSCs
- Evaluate defense in depth
- Discussion (Use of PRA) o Change intended to support alternative approaches to a PRA o Worded in terms of generally accepted to support possible standards or other guidance documents o The use of guidance, Part 53 rule language, or revisions to Part 50 are being explored as possible ways to accommodate deterministic approaches for performing design and analysis 48
Feedback - Analysis (Other)
§ 53.450 Analysis Requirements
- Maintenance and upgrade of analyses
- Qualification of analytical codes
- Analysis of DBAs
- Other required analyses
- Questions/comments on Analysis Requirements o How should requirements for analysis of fires, aircraft impact, and specific BDBEs be addressed?
49
Second Iteration - Analysis Requirements (c - g)
§ 53.450 Analysis Requirements (c) Maintenance and upgrade of analyses (d) Qualification of analytical codes (e) Analyses of LBEs (added)
(f) Analysis of DBAs (g) Other required analyses
- Discussion (Analysis Requirements) o Clarification of maintenance and upgrading of analyses (referring to codes and standards) o Maintain placeholder for other required analyses to address fire protection, aircraft impact, and specific beyond design basis accidents.
50
Second Iteration - Analysis Requirements (c - g)
§ 53.450(e) Analyses of licensing basis events [New sub-paragraph]
(e) Analyses of licensing basis events. Analyses must be performed for licensing basis events ranging from anticipated operational occurrences to very unlikely event sequences with estimated frequencies well below the frequency of events expected to occur in the life of the advanced nuclear plant. The licensing basis events must be identified using insights from a PRA, other generally accepted risk-informed approach for systematically evaluating engineered systems, or combination thereof to systematically identify and analyze equipment failures and human errors. The analyses must address event sequences from initiation to a defined end state and demonstrate that the functional design criteria required by § 53.420 provide sufficient barriers to the unplanned release of radionuclides to satisfy the second tier safety criteria of § 53.220(b) and provide defense in depth as required by § 53.250.
- Discussion (Analyses of LBEs) o Section added to clarify requirements for LBEs, including analysis from initiation to a defined end state o Staff considering further clarification for anticipated operational occurrences in terms of acceptance criteria beyond QHOs and defense in depth 51
Second Iteration - Analysis Requirements (c - g)
§ 53.450 (f) Analysis of design basis accidents (f) Analysis of design basis accidents. The analysis of licensing basis events required by
§ 53.240 and § 53.450(e) must include analysis of a set of design basis accidents that address possible challenges to the safety functions identified in accordance with § 53.230.
Design basis accidents must be selected from those unanticipated event sequences with an upper bound frequency of less than one in 10,000 years as identified using insights from a PRA, other generally accepted risk-informed approach for systematically evaluating engineered systems, or combination thereof to systematically identify and analyze equipment failures and human errors. The events selected as design basis accidents should be those that, if not terminated, have the potential for exceeding the safety criteria in
§ 53.210(b). The design-basis accidents selected must be analyzed using deterministic methods that address event sequences from initiation to a safe stable end state and assume only the safety-related SSCs identified in § 53.460 and human actions addressed by § 53.8xx (reference to concept of operations sections of Subpart F) are available to perform the safety functions identified in accordance with § 53.230.
The analysis must conservatively demonstrate compliance with the safety criteria in
§ 53.210(b).
- Discussion (DBAs) o Revised to clarify that analysis is to address sequences from initiation to a safe stable end state.
52
Feedback - Safety Classification First Iteration
§ 53.460 Safety Categorization and Special Treatment (a) SSCs and human actions must be classified according to their safety significance. The categories must include Safety Related (SR), which are those SSCs and human actions relied upon to function in response to design basis accidents to meet the safety criteria in § 53.220(b); Non-Safety Related but Safety Significant (NSRSS), which are those SSCs and human actions that perform a function that is necessary to achieve adequate defense-in-depth or are classified as risk significant (i.e., whose failure contributes 1% or more to cumulative plant risk, as defined in § 53.230, or would cause a licensing basis event to exceed the safety criteria in § 53.220(b)); and Non-Safety Significant (NSS), which are those SSCs not warranting special treatment.
- Questions/comments on Safety Classification
- Some proposing more generic/undefined safety classification (possibly supporting international practices) 53
Second Iteration - Safety Classification
§ 53.460 Safety Categorization and Special Treatment (a) SSCs and human actions must be classified according to their safety significance. The categories must include Safety Related (SR), which are those SSCs and human actions relied upon to function in response to design basis accidents to meet the safety criteria in § 53.220(b); Non-Safety Related but Safety Significant (NSRSS), which are those SSCs and human actions that perform a function that is necessary to achieve adequate defense-in-depth or are classified as risk significant (i.e., whose failure contributes 1% or more to cumulative plant risk, as defined in § 53.230, or would cause a licensing basis event to exceed the safety criteria in § 53.220(b)); and Non-Safety Significant (NSS), which are those SSCs not warranting special treatmentNon-Safety Related but Safety Significant (NSRSS), and Non-Safety Significant (NSS), as defined in subpart A of this part.
- Discussion o Editorial changes to remove material duplicating preliminary rule language in other sections o Maintaining for now the specific categories of safety related, non-safety related but safety significant, and non-safety significant 54
Feedback - Analytical Margins and Operating Flexibilities First Iteration
§ 53.470 Application of Safety Margins to Operational Flexibilities Where an applicant or licensee so chooses, design criteria more restrictive than those defined in § 53.220(b) may be adopted to support operational flexibilities (e.g., emergency planning requirements under Subpart F of this part). In such cases, applicants and licensees must ensure that the functional design criteria of
§ 53.420(b), the analysis requirements of § 53.450, and identification of special treatment of SSCs and human actions under § 53.460 reflect and support the use of alternative design criteria to obtain additional analytical safety margins.
Licensees must ensure that measures taken to provide the analytical margins supporting operational flexibilities are incorporated into design features and programmatic controls and are maintained within programs required in other Subparts.
- Questions/comments on application of safety margins o General questions on how process would work and integrate with operational requirements o Many stakeholders reserving comments pending release of requirements for operation (Subpart F) 55
Second Iteration - Analytical Margins and Operating Flexibilities
§ 53.470 Application of Safety Margins to Operational Flexibilities (No Change) Where an applicant or licensee so chooses, design criteria more restrictive than those defined in § 53.220(b) may be adopted to support operational flexibilities (e.g., emergency planning requirements under Subpart F of this part). In such cases, applicants and licensees must ensure that the functional design criteria of § 53.420(b), the analysis requirements of § 53.450, and identification of special treatment of SSCs and human actions under
§ 53.460 reflect and support the use of alternative design criteria to obtain additional analytical safety margins. Licensees must ensure that measures taken to provide the analytical margins supporting operational flexibilities are incorporated into design features and programmatic controls and are maintained within programs required in other Subparts.
- Discussion o No change. Release of related requirements in Subpart F expected to support public meeting on May 6th 56
Feedback - Design Control QA and Design Interfaces First Iteration
§ 53.480 Design Control Quality Assurance
§ 53.490 Design Interfaces
- Questions/comments on QA and design interfaces o Many stakeholders reserving comments pending release of other subparts
- Discussion o No change. Release of related requirements in Subpart F expected to support public meeting on May 6th 57
Feedback - Non-Radiological Hazards
- Non-Radiological Hazards o Some ACRS members noted inclusion of non-radiological hazards should be considered in Part 53, such as chemical releases.
Staff has this issue under consideration and recognizes existing frameworks for addressing this multi-jurisdictional topic Does ACRS have feedback on this topic that could inform the Staffs ongoing considerations?
58
2nd Iteration on Previously Released Preliminary Proposed Rule Language - Subpart C Discussion 59
Subpart E - Construction and Manufacturing 60
NRC Staff Plan to Develop Part 53 Subpart B Subpart C Subpart D Subpart E Subpart F Subpart G Project Life Cycle Design and Siting Construction Operation Retirement Requirements Definition Analysis
- Safety Objectives External Facility Safety
- Safety Criteria System Hazards Construction/ Program
- Safety Functions & Component Manufacturing Design Site Surveillance Characteristics Ensuring Maintenance Analysis Capabilities/
Requirements Environmental Reliabilities Configuration Considerations Control Safety Change Control Categorization Staffing &
& Special Environmental Human Factors Treatment Considerations Programs Security, EP Plant/Site (Design, Construction, Configuration Control)
Clarify Controls Analyses (Prevention, Mitigation, Compare to Criteria) and Distinctions Between Plant Documents (Systems, Procedures, etc.)
LB Documents (Applications, SAR, TS, etc.) Subparts H & I 61
Part 53 General Layout
- Subpart A, General Provisions
- Subpart B, Technology-Inclusive Safety Objectives
- Subpart C, Design and Analysis
- Subpart D, Siting Requirements
- Subpart E, Construction and Manufacturing
- Subpart F, Requirements for Operation
- Facility Safety Program
- Subpart G, Decommissioning Requirements
- Subpart H, Applications for Licenses, Certifications and Approvals
- Subpart I, Maintaining and Revising Licensing Basis Information
- Subpart J, Reporting and Administrative Requirements 62
Subpart E - Construction and Manufacturing
- Scope and Purpose
- Part 1 - Construction
- (a) Management and Control
- (b) Construction Activities
- (c) Inspection and Acceptance
- (d) Communication
- Part 2 - Manufacturing
- (a) Management and Control
- (b) Manufacturing Activities
- (c) Fuel Loading
- (d) Communication
- (e) Transportation
- (f) Acceptance and Installation at the Site 63
§ 53.600 - Scope and Purpose
- Subpart applicable to construction and manufacturing activities authorized by CP, COL, ML, or a Limited Work Authorization 64
§ 53.610 - Construction
- Management and Control o Design and analyses conform with subpart C o Organization and procedures describing qualifications, responsibilities, and interfaces o Program to evaluate construction experience o Preliminary emergency plan for site, fitness-for-duty program o QA conforms to generally accepted codes and standards o Radiation protection, information security, and cyber security programs, as applicable 65
§ 53.610 - Construction
- Construction Activities o Procedures in place to appropriately handle special nuclear material, multi-unit site hazards, control of design, redress plan o Requirements for fresh fuel storage, fire protection
- Inspection and Acceptance o Inspect and test SSCs prior to acceptance
- Communication o Procedures for coordinating with other units and NRC 66
§ 53.620 - Manufacturing
- Management and Control o Design and analyses conform with subpart C o Organization and, procedures describing qualifications, responsibilities, and interfaces o Program to evaluate manufacturing experience o Fitness-for-duty program o QA conforms to generally accepted codes and standards o Radiation protection, information security, and cyber security programs, as applicable 67
§ 53.620 - Manufacturing
- Manufacturing Activities o Adhere to manufacturing license, conform to generally accepted codes and standards o Procedures in place to appropriately handle SNM, fresh fuel, fire protection, emergency planning (EP), radiation protection, minimizing contamination
- Fuel Loading - Develop further, if pursued 68
§ 53.620 - Manufacturing
- Communication - Stay in contact with NRC
- Transportation o Interface with 10 CFR Part 71 o Procedures for movement, transfer only to accepted license holders o Supports fixed siting of manufactured reactors o Not currently planning to address mobile reactors
- Acceptance and Installation o Reactor must be certified in compliance with ML prior to installation
- Consideration of transport and disposal post operation in subsequent subparts 69
§ 53.620 - Manufacturing Factory Fuel Loading
- Revising ML provisions (currently in Subpart F of 10 CFR Part 52) seems logical way to address microreactor strategies (factory assembly)
- ML can be referenced in applications for construction permit or combined license o Key role of ML will continue to be supporting the safety case for construction and operation of specific reactors
- Loading fuel at factory is a potential deployment strategy for some microreactors
- Staff evaluating the safety implications within the factory setting and possible roles of ML and requirements within 10 CFR Part 70 70
§ 53.620 - Manufacturing Transportation
- Staff evaluating the safety and licensing implications of transporting fueled reactors
- Review of safety and security requirements and possible changes to 10 CFR Part 71
- Questions related to transport of fueled reactors from factory to operating site with fresh or recycled fuel
- Questions related to transport of fueled reactor from operating site to factory, recycle facility, or waste facility 71
Subpart E: Construction and Manufacturing Discussion 72
Final Discussion and Questions 73
Part 53 Rulemaking Schedule Milestone Schedule Major Rulemaking Activities/Milestones Schedule Public Outreach, ACRS Interactions and Present to April 2022 Generation of Proposed Rule Package (12 months)
Submit Draft Proposed Rule Package to May 2022 Commission Publish Proposed Rule and Draft Key Guidance October 2022 Public Comment Period - 60 days November and December 2022 Public Outreach and Generation of Final Rule January 2023 to February 2024 Package (14 months)
Submit Draft Final Rule Package to Commission March 2024 Office of Management and Budget and Office of July 2024 to September 2024 the Federal Register Processing Publish Final Rule and Key Guidance October 2024 74
Acronyms and Abbreviations ACRS Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards LBE Licensing basis event ADAMS Agencywide Document Access LPZ Low population zone Management System ML Manufacturing license AEA Atomic Energy Act ALARA As low as reasonably achievable NRC U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission BDBEs Beyond design basis events NSRSS Non-safety related but safety significant CFR Code of Federal Regulations NSS Non-safety significant CP Construction permit PRA Probabilistic risk assessment QA Quality assurance COL Combined operating license DBAs Design basis accidents QHO Quantitative health objective EAB Exclusion area boundary SAR Safety analysis report EP Emergency planning SNM Special nuclear material IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency SSCs Structures, systems, and components SR Safety related TS Technical specifications 75
Background Slides 76
First Principles See: SECY-18-0096, Functional Containment Performance Criteria for Non-Light-Water-Reactors, and INL/EXT-20-58717, Technology-Inclusive Determination of Mechanistic Source Terms for Offsite Dose-Related Assessments for Advanced Nuclear Reactor Facilities 77
Integrated Approach Siting near densely populated Functional areas EP for SMRs Containment and ONTs Licensing Modernization Project Insurance and Liability Environmental Reviews Consequence Based Security 78
Part 53 Rulemaking The Part 53 Rulemaking Process*
- The process depicted in this schematic is unique to the Part 53 rulemaking and varies in some ways compared to a similar A Typical Rulemaking Process schematic available on the NRCs public website.
79
Background
- Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA; Public Law 115-439) signed into law in January 2019 requires the NRC to complete a rulemaking to establish a technology-inclusive, regulatory framework for optional use for commercial advanced nuclear reactors no later than December 2027 o (1) ADVANCED NUCLEAR REACTORThe term advanced nuclear reactor means a nuclear fission or fusion reactor, including a prototype plant with significant improvements compared to commercial nuclear reactors under construction as of the date of enactment of this Act, 80