ML19085A484
| ML19085A484 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/14/2018 |
| From: | Joe Golla NRC/NRR/DLP/PLPB |
| To: | |
| Golla J A, NRR/DLP, 415-1002 | |
| References | |
| NRC-3769 | |
| Download: ML19085A484 (136) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONTitle:Tabletop Exercise of Interim Staff Guidance (ISG)-06, Draft Rev. 2, "Licensing Process"Docket Number:(n/a)
Location:Rockville, Maryland Date:Thursday, June 14, 2018Work Order No.:NRC-3769Pages 1-136 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2+ + + + +3 TABLETOP EXERCISE OF INTERIM STAFF GUIDANCE 4 (ISG)-06, DRAFT REV. 2, "LICENSING PROCESS" 5+ + + + +6 THURSDAY 7 JUNE 14, 2018 8+ + + + +9 The meeting convened in Room 1C03/1C05 of 10 Three White Flint North, 11601 Landsdown Street, 11 Rockville, Maryland, at 8:00 a.m., Joe Golla 12 presiding.
13 INDUSTRY MEMBERS PRESENT 14 JANA BERGMAN, Curtis-Wright 15 MARK BURZYNSKI, NewClear Day, Inc.
16 STEVE DRAGOVICH, Exelon 17 PAREEZ GOLUB, Excel 18 JERUD HANSON, NEI 19 DAVE HARRELL, MPR Associates 20 RAYMOND HERB, Southern Nuclear 21 DAVID HOOTEN, Imperia Engineering Partners 22 FRANK NOVAK, GE Hitachi 23 WARREN ODESS-GILLETT, NEI 24 JOHN SCHRAGE, Entergy 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 2 NRC STAFF PRESENT 1 JOSEPH GOLLA, NRR 2 ROSSNYEV ALVARADO, NRR 3 AARON ARMSTRONG, NRO 4 SHELDON CLARK, OGC*
5 SAMIR DARBALI, NRR 6 JOHN HUGHEY, NRR 7 RICHARD STATTEL, NRR 8 BOOMA VENKATARAMAN, NRR 9 MICHAEL WATERS, NRR 10 DEANNA ZHANG, NRO*
11 12*Present via telephone 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.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 3 C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 1 Welcome and Introductions............3 2Alternate Review Process SER Inspection Items..7 3 Appropriate license commitments in consideration 4 of early license amendment issuance......51 5 Break......................81 6 Vendor Oversight Plan..............83 7Summary, Action Items, Stakeholder Feedback..125 8 Adjourn....................136 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.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 4 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 1 (7:58 a.m.)
2MR. GOLLA: Okay, folks, good morning.
3 This is Joe Golla speaking, Project Manager for the 4ISG-06. This is the second day of our tabletop 5exercise. Why don't we just quickly go around the 6 room again and also on the phone just to announce name 7and association. We don't need to pass this, just 8 shout.9 MS. VENKATARAMAN: Just shout?
10 MR. GOLLA: Okay, all right.
11MS. VENKATARAMAN: Okay. My name is Booma 12Venkataraman. I am Acting Chief in the Division of 13Operator and Reactor Licensing. Here I am helping as 14 Project Manager.
15 MR. ARMSTRONG: Hello. My name is Aaron 16 Armstrong and I work in NRO in the Vendor Inspection 17 Branch and I got involved in this when 35.710 was 18 issued.19MR. DARBALI: Samir Darbali, 20 Instrumentation and Controls Branch, Technical 21 Reviewer.22 MR. HERB: Ray Herb, Southern Nuclear.
23 MR. NOVAK: Frank Novak, GE Hitachi.
24MR. HARRELL: Dave Harrell, MPR and 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 5 Associates.
1MS. GOLUB: Pareez Golub, Excel Services.
2MR. ODESS-GILLERT: Warren Odess-Gillert, 3 NEI.4MR. BURZYNSKI: Mark Burzynski, Rolls-5 Royce.6 MR. DRAGOVICH: Steve Dragovich, Exelon.
7MS. ALVARADO: Rossnyev Alvarado. I am 8 the Branch Chief for I&C Branch.
9 MR. HANSON: Jerud Hanson, NEI.
10MR. HOOTEN: Dave Hooten, Imperia 11 Engineering Partners.
12MS. BERGMAN: Jana Bergman, Curtis-Wright.
13MR. STATTEL: Hi, I'm Richard Stattel, NRC 14 I&C Branch.
15MR. GOLLA: Okay. And how about the 16 people on the phone, would you like to announce your 17name and affiliation? Do we have anyone on the phone?
18MS. ZHANG: Deanna Zhang, NRC in the 19 Office of New Reactors, I&C.
20MR. GOLLA: Okay, Deanna. Okay, so first 21 on the agenda this morning we've got -- The topic is 22 vendor inspection, and I will turn it over to whomever 23 on the staff is prepared to speak to that.
24MR. DARBALI: Thank you, Joe, I want to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 6 apologize, I lost my voice so I'll do the best I can 1today. This is Samir Darbali. So the first topic is 2 the Vendor Oversight Plan and I will turn it over to 3 Pareez to describe the sample LAR text that you 4 provided.5MS. GOLUB: Thank you, Samir. All right, 6 so I am actually going to ask Ray and Steve to speak 7to this a little bit. As you know in ISG-06 one of 8 the prerequisites is to provide a summary of the 9 licensee's vendor oversight plan.
10 And so what we wanted to provide to you 11 guys was what we thought that summary would look like, 12 what would be submitted in the LAR so what was 13 submitted was actual LAR language.
14 And I guess, Ray or Steve, did you guys 15 want to say anything more or did you just want to open 16it up for the staff to provide feedback. I leave that 17 up to you guys.
18MR. HERB: I can just start out by saying 19 that this is something that was added in the revision 20to ISG-06. It's always been under the responsibility 21 of the licensees, but it's been something that we 22 haven't really done that well in the past.
23 And so we welcome the opportunity to step 24up our vendor oversight process. It is key to an 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 7 efficient and effective and correct design, so it's 1 part of what we committed to do underneath of our new 2 standard design process and the digital process as 3 well.4So this is just a sample or this is --
5 This is a different thing.
6MS. GOLUB: Oh, wait. This is a different 7--8MR. HERB: Summary of vendor oversight 9planning activities. Yes, so this is just, was 10 written to --
11 (Simultaneous speaking.)
12MR. HERB: Yes, at a high level to 13indicate the requirements of C.2.2.1. And so if we 14 have any -- Steve, do you have anything you want to 15 say?16MR. DRAGOVICH: Just to say that at Exelon 17 we would propose to --
18 MR. GOLLA: Closer.
19MR. DRAGOVICH: Oh, it's not on, okay. At 20 Exelon we would propose to have both process and 21 technical oversight during each of the visits. This 22 kind of outlines what we are going to have in our 23 standard, you know, digital engineering guide so we're 24 trying to follow industry standard.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 8 And, of course, we would be project 1 specific so we would have to at the beginning of a 2 project determine, you know, what the strategic vendor 3 oversight timeframe would be and then who the 4 stakeholders would be to attend those oversight 5visits. So it's kind of a case-by-case project-6 specific basis.
7MR. DARBALI: So thank you for that 8description. I kind of made a mistake in the 9 beginning and we are in the wrong section. So we'll 10 keep that in mind when we come back to the vendor 11 inspection plan, but actually the first item is the 12 sample inspection items.
13 And we'll do the turnover just because we 14 have Booma here in the room. So what we'll do is 15 we'll come back to --
16 MR. HERB: Okay.
17MR. DARBALI: -- the vendor oversight 18 program.19MR. HERB: Yes, forget everything I said.
20 MR. DARBALI: No, no it's on the record.
21 (Laughter.)
22MR. DARBALI: Okay. So we got on the 23 screen the sample recommended inspection items, and 24these were provided by the staff. The idea is -- And 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 9 we typically, we've done these in the past, we did it 1 for Diablo, we did it for Oconee, where we -- And we 2 have the guidance now in the SRP that kind of tells us 3 this is a good idea, the region likes to have this.
4 We draft these items and we kind of get 5 the regions involved as we do our license amendment 6 request review and this just kind of guides them on 7 activities to perform after the license amendment is 8 issued.9 In the past with the tier process these 10 activities just focus on site activities, so site 11 acceptance testing, operations, installations, startup 12 testing.13 With the alternate review process we have 14 added some sample activities that would apply to those 15 implementation and test activities that would occur at 16 the vendor.
17 It is true that, yes, those activities do 18tie back to the vendor oversight plan. Those 19 activities used to be reviewed, audited, by the staff.
20 We will get a chance to do that and the licensee will 21 take the oversight role, even though you actually 22 always had that oversight role as part of your 23 contract with a vendor.
24So the list of items, let's see, we 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 10 separated them between what we considered to be 1 alternate review process-specific and then I think 2 it's on Page 4 that we have those specific, those that 3 wouldn't apply to either process at this site.
4 The ones that came from, that are site 5 inspection items actually came from the Diablo Canyon 6 Safety Evaluation Report. We just changed the 7 language where it said the platform, we just, it would 8 say Tricon, we just changed it to the platform where 9 it said Diablo Canyon on it.
10 PG&E we just changed it to the licensee.
11 And maybe we changed some of the language to make it 12more generic, but those should be the same. So I will 13 turn it over to the industry if you have questions on 14 those alternate review process items.
15MS. GOLUB: All right, so we provided a 16 version of this with our questions list.
17 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
18MS. GOLUB: I don't know if that would be 19 helpful to put up. We can speak to them, that's not 20 a problem.
21 MR. DARBALI: So --
22MR. STATTEL: Yes, let me add a few words.
23 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
24MR. STATTEL: Hi, this is Rich Stattel 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 11again. So I just wanted to cover the origin of these 1 inspection items.
2 So with the Oconee review you have to 3 understand we were following our branch technical 4 position standard review plan guidance and we 5 encountered several guidance criteria that we weren't 6 able to accomplish for whatever reasons, the 7 procedures for the plant had not been written.
8 There were several associated with the 9 cybersecurity evaluation, because this preceded the 10 development of ESSO guidance and so we troubled with 11 how to deal with them.
12 Originally they were proposed to be 13conditions. We proposed to include them as conditions 14 of the issuance of the license amendment, and that 15 would push back to us, we weren't allowed to do that.
16 So our only alternative was to make them 17 recommend it, right, so that it's, in other words, 18 fulfillment of these actions was not, did not have any 19 bearing on the safety conclusions in our license 20 amendment.
21 So they were recommended for inspection, 22 for inspection only, because that's essentially after 23the license amendment was issued. That's our 24 opportunity to basically follow up with them.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 12 Most of them are confirmatory in nature, 1 right, and that's why we were able to basically reduce 2them to recommended items. If the inspectors chose 3 not to inspect these items that was okay, right, and 4 not 100 percent of them were actually inspected at the 5 level at the recommendation.
6 Okay, so that was kind of the origin of 7them. With Oconee the inspectors basically when they 8 prepared their inspection plan they used them pretty 9 extensively.
10 They contacted Samir and I and the 11 reviewers and we participated and we were members of 12the inspection team. So we were able to provide, you 13know, what did we mean by that, you know, answering 14 those types of questions.
15 There were several of those items that the 16licensee for one reason or another was not able to 17 fulfill and we encountered that during the 18 inspections.
19 We wrote those into the inspection reports 20 and we basically provided them, basically we approved 21not meeting those items, okay. Some of them had to do 22 with testing methods, the testability of the system 23 that they installed.
24 It was things that we really had just not 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 13anticipated during the license review. Now it's 1 interesting because that has come up over and over 2 again since that time, so it's been like ten years 3 since that started.
4 One of the things we have noticed is 5 common among these upgrades is that the licensees will 6specify the system, the vendors will design the 7 system.8 We think we have a pretty good 9 understanding of how the system works and we think we 10 know how the operators are going to operate, but we 11 don't write the procedures for operating it or update 12 the OIs until the very end.
13 We don't update the emergency procedures 14 until the very end. We don't update the key control 15 logs and those types of things. Those are typically 16 last minute activities.
17 And at Oconee during the inspection they 18 had written a procedure and they were validating the 19 procedures in their simulator, so they were basically 20-- They had the system simulated and they were having 21 the operating crews go through the procedures for 22 operating the system and it kind of goes to our HFE 23 discussion yesterday.
24 So even though they really didn't change 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 14 any of their HFE they kind of did because the way they 1 operate the system did change and it was impacted by 2 the system modification.
3 In the case of Oconee they had installed 4 a diverse actuation system, which did not exist in the 5 past, and some of their emergency response procedures 6 failed to work because the diverse actuation -- They 7 hadn't anticipated that the diverse actuation system 8 would prevent the operator from being able to operate 9 certain equipment.
10And it wasn't a big deal. I mean they had 11 to revise the procedures and overcome that, but it's 12 things that we had not anticipated during their 13 license review.
14 And that's where I think a lot of these 15inspection items actually do have a lot of value. So 16 we were able to work through that and approve all of 17 that and that's all documented in the Oconee 18 inspections.
19 Diablo Canyon never made it to that point 20because they chose not to install the system. And we 21 don't always do the inspections, so for Hope Creek, 22 for example, there was no follow-up inspection.
23 Okay, so now what we are seeing here is 24 basically we took that as a starting point, what are 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 15 the recommended inspection items for Diablo, I realize 1 Samir just mentioned, but we also looked at this and 2 I had identified several -- So basically I was kind of 3 putting a lens on and looking at the Diablo Canyon 4 application as if we had issued this license amendment 5 prior to implementation of the design and prior to 6 installation, right, or testing.
7 So we added some additional activities 8 that we thought, well, we're not going to be able to 9complete these review activities that are in the 10 review plan, therefore, I am anticipating we would 11 have to include these as recommended inspection items, 12 right.13 So that's essentially what we have in 14front of us here. I did read through your comments 15 and a lot of them are very good comments and we have 16 actually noticed this ourselves, there is some 17 repetition, right, and that's kind of an outcropping 18 of the way we perform our evaluations.
19 So these are, you know, we don't write 20 these evaluations sequentially, right, we perform 21different activities and we parse them out. So we 22 will have one reviewer assigned to perform the SDO 23 evaluation, another reviewer perform D3, you know, so 24 we basically parse them out by section.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 16 And as you know there is a lot of overlap, 1 particularly when you get into the IEEE 603 and 7432 2sections. They have criteria that covers all aspects 3 of the design.
4 So, therefore, you know, these are being 5 generated as we perform our evaluation and that's why 6you see the overlap and the repetition. We have 7 actually recognized this in more recent reviews and we 8 have actually done the same thing as what you are 9 recommending here.
10So, you know, I have notes here. You 11 know, I agree with pretty much all of your 12 recommendations and these are things that, you know, 13 these are subjective and we understand that, and we 14 can choose not to cover them, right.
15 So, in other words, the SRP, it's 16 basically an all things and all people type guidance 17 document and it covers all aspects, all phases of 18 development processes.
19 So it is intended to be comprehensive in 20 that manner and, you know, being diligent and trying 21 to be organized evaluators we tried as best as we can 22 to follow all of that guidance.
23 So when we encounter something that we are 24 unable to review for whatever the reason is typically 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 17 that gets, it's -- Think of it as like a parking lot 1 board, right, so we put that out in the parking lot 2 and then when we have finished our evaluations we look 3 through that board and see which ones of these we want 4 to retain as inspection items and, again, just 5 recommended inspection.
6And some of them we just that's not 7 important, you know, it doesn't matter that much, and 8we leave them off. So we are not really holding 9 ourselves to 100 percent of the criteria within the 10 Standard Review Plan.
11 So these are, I don't want to use the word 12 negotiable, but they are very subjective and it is up 13 to the evaluator, so the evaluator decides what 14 recommendations to make to the inspectors.
15 And Samir mentioned, we did have very 16 positive feedback from the inspectors from both Region 17 II and Region IV and they help us, right, they 18 actually have gotten involved with our licensing 19 evaluations and they come along with us.
20 We invite them and they typically will 21 come with us when we perform our audits. So --
22MS. GOLUB: Oh, so they are involved 23 early.24MR. STATTEL: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 18 Shiattin Makor was involved with the Diablo Canyon 1audits. She was present at every one of those audits 2 and she would be the one, you know, hadn't Diablo 3 Canyon gone through with installation, she would have 4 been the one performing and leading those inspections, 5 right. And the same was true at Oconee, right.
6 So the inspectors really like them 7 because, you know, they are not familiar with the 8 system, they don't know the system as well as the 9 evaluators do, so they like having us on the team and 10 they like basically us to explain those 11 recommendations to them.
12 So they actually had provided us feedback 13 to update the Standard Review Plan, which we did, and 14 we actually have guidance within our Standard Review 15 Plan, Chapter 7, it's basically telling us to include 16 these recommended items, but it is still very 17 subjective.
18MS. GOLUB: The inspection items. You 19 know, as I told you yesterday, you know, Steve had 20 actually compiled them all, we read them all.
21Now so you said that you concurred with 22the comments that we made. I would like to talk about 23 the first comment if we could because that's the one 24 for us is a sticky one.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 19 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
1 MS. GOLUB: And I want to make sure that 2 we are all on the same page.
3 MR. DARBALI: So I want to say where the 4 alternate review process items came from.
5 MS. GOLUB: Mm-hmm.
6MR. DARBALI: So we didn't, because we 7 didn't have a LAR in front of us, I took Inspection 8 Procedure 35.710, which is the one Aaron worked on, 9 which is specific to NRO-type new reactor reviews, but 10 because they cover some of the development activities 11 that we typically review or audit I felt it was 12 appropriate to identify those generically as some of 13the activities an inspection can cover. So that would 14 be Items 1 through 6.
15 And then Item 7 is for secure development 16and operational environment. The 7a and 7b are, it's 17 language that was described in the LAR an SDOE example 18 as activities that would be performed.
19 So I figured those would be some good 20 activities to inspect and those are related to the 21vulnerability assessment. And 7c and 7d are the 22 implementation and testing of regulatory precision 23 from Reg Guide 1152.
24 So I felt that being those the late stage 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 20 life cycle activities those would be good activities 1to inspect. So with that, yes, we can go to your 2 first overall comment and --
3MR. STATTEL: And 8 through 20, the 4 remaining ones were derived from the Diablo Canyon 5 application.
6 MR. DARBALI: Right.
7 MS. GOLUB: So I think the comments that 8 we provided on 8 through 20, you know, for your 9 consideration we can certainly go through those today 10--11 MR. STATTEL: Right.
12MS. GOLUB: -- but that I think what 13 struck us when we looked at this was the way these 14 inspection items were phrased, verify licensee and 15 vendor activities related to application design, so 16 based on the vendor oversight plan, based on at least 17 how we saw the framework of the alternative review 18 process, we thought that that activity would be a 19 licensee activity to do those audits, inspections, 20 oversight of their vendor, and that the staff would be 21 inspecting how well the licensee performed their 22 oversight activities relative to what they had put 23 into their license amendment.
24 So whatever their licensing obligation was 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 21 in the LAR and then, you know, reflected in the SER 1 license amendment, that that is where, you know, the 2 staff would be.
3 So when we read this we almost felt like 4 it was saying, okay, that's not the framework, in 5 fact, you know, the NRC is going to be performing the 6 inspections they performed previously and the licensee 7 would also be doing vendor oversight.
8 You know, so the efficiencies we thought 9 we were gaining maybe we were not.
10MR. DARBALI: Right. And so we're talking 11 about vendor oversight, and we'll get to that later, 12 but, yes, both topics apply.
13 I think from the very beginning when we 14 were considering an early approval we were saying, 15 well, the purpose of the vendor oversight plan is for 16 the staff to have reasonable activities that those 17 activities that the staff would have reviewed before 18 a license amendment is issued that we will have 19 reasonable assurance that they would be performed.
20 So the licensee is describing in their 21 oversight plan how they make sure those are covered.
22 That doesn't -- But we always said, and we included 23 the vendor inspection team from the very beginning 24 because we were saying, yes, we are getting that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 22 information that you will do these activities, 1 however, we will still, and especially for these very 2 early plants we still want to inspect how the vendor 3 is doing those activities and make sure that those 4 implementation activities are performed and it is 5 within the purview of the NRC and the vendor 6 inspection team to perform those activities.
7 So I would like to turn that over to Aaron 8 to provide some background on that.
9MR. ARMSTRONG: Yes. What happened was we 10 were aware of a thing called ISG-06 in NRO, but that's 11 NRR, we were busy doing our own things.
12 So what happened was during an inspection 13 we started looking at software, because we do have the 14 commercial grade dedication of design and analysis 15 software.16 So after doing an inspection on that for 17 Enercon we identified that some design things were not 18 turned over to the licensee TVA for an evaluation of 19 flooding, and that was an inspection that was 20 requested from the licensing staff.
21So that kind of got the ball rolling. We 22 came up with what, really the birth of this came out 23 of the review that we performed for NRO where there 24 were a lot of hours burned up and we wanted to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 23 streamline it.
1 So in the evolution of the developing this 2 we took all the Reg Guides, the IEEE standards that 3 were endorsed, 2.7, the guidance for dedication of 4 design and analysis software, and we rolled it up and 5 together to come up with kind of a hit list of things 6 inspectors should be aware of in the life cycle for 7 quality assurance for software that they should be 8 asking or looking at.
9 I think that's why it says "verify," 10 because it was really written for an inspector at a 11 vendor inspection plant or doing some kind of 12 licensing inspection for software.
13 So I'm sorry it caught you guys off guard 14 that it said "verify" but I wrote it in intention for 15 the inspectors to utilize it as an inspection guidance 16 activity.17 Now it just so happens that all of the 18 IEEE guidance and NQA-1 2.7 and the design and 19 analysis dedication and they are all interconnected, 20 so when I issued that that's how we got involved in 21 this.22 So I think as a vendor group you are aware 23 that most all licensees have to meet 10 C.F.R. Part 24 50, Appendix B, that's a requirement of the license.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 24 Also, Part 21 is also applicable.
1 And I know that you contractually passed 2that down to your vendors and you do have NUPIC 3 observations or audits that you do.
4 MS. GOLUB: Yes, that's right.
5MR. ARMSTRONG: We do oversee the NUPIC 6 observations as well, as you have seen our site. So 7where we are kind of is when Mike Waters's group 8 contacted me, you know, we take the stance that we 9 would do what they requested as part of the licensing.
10 It is not our intention to go out and 11 routinely inspect every vendor that you have but if 12 there is things that we need to look at, you know, we 13 do have the right to go out to look and we will look 14 according to Mike's group.
15 So that's kind of where we were coming 16from. I just wanted to clarify that how it came 17 about. So I guess if there are any questions --
18 MS. GOLUB: Yes, so I was --
19MR. STATTEL: Actually, I want to say a 20couple words. If you have an impression that somehow 21in the past we were vendor oversight instead of the 22licensee performing that activity I want to dispel 23 that right now.
24We don't do that, right. Where this comes 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 25from is we were thinking about the audits, okay. And, 1 you know, we've had a lot discussion over this, 2 because we did read your comment and we are definitely 3 taking it to heart.
4 Now we looked back at some of the audit 5 reports from the audits we have performed and what is 6 apparent to us is that we won't have the opportunity 7 perform those audit activities in an alternate review 8 process because a lot of those audit activities are 9 really dependent on having applications implemented, 10 design implemented, and that's not going to be the 11 case here.
12 So I really -- We have done audits in the 13early stage and they are not really productive. So in 14 Diablo Canyon we went out at the early stage with ALS 15 down to Scottsdale and we tried to perform an audit 16 and essentially when you start pulling requirements 17 threads they don't go anywhere because they have an 18 implemented design. There is nothing to verify.
19 So we are trying to think of ways, well, 20 how can we perform that activity that we would 21 traditionally perform during an audit, you know, what 22 would be the alternative here, because we do still 23 have that guidance to do those, you know, basically do 24 those confirmation activities.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 26 So I think we are talking past each other 1a little bit here. We are not implying that we are 2 going to go perform the vendor oversight instead of 3the licensee. You still have that responsibility.
4 That's in Appendix B, Responsibility.
5 We're really just confirming, and, again, 6 this would be, I think this is recommended inspection, 7right, or -- Yes, this is recommended inspection. So, 8 again, it's at the discretion of the evaluator of what 9 recommendations he makes.
10 And now those recommendations in this case 11 are kind of going over to Aaron's group and they would 12 be putting those inspection plans together.
13 MR. ARMSTRONG: Well we would be working 14 with NRR to put the plans together because we are more 15quality assurance and oversight of QA programs. I 16 mean as you aware that your NUPIC audits is really to 17 keep people on your ASLs for Appendix B supplies or 18 maybe even dedication activities that the licensees --
19 I guess I would ask a question, a NUPIC audit is 20 really geared for a QA program to be put on an ASL.
21 I guess I would impose the question, is 22 that going to be, is the audit the way it is now 23 sufficient for the licensing activities that you plan 24 to have an oversight?
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 27 MS. GOLUB: No, it is not.
1 MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay.
2MS. GOLUB: And fundamentally a NUPIC 3audit occurs every three years, it's not project 4 specific.5 MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay.
6 MS. GOLUB: The vendor oversight plan is 7 project specific.
8 MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay, all right, great.
9MS. GOLUB: So it's going to be in the LAR 10 for only this project.
11 MR. ARMSTRONG: Yes, okay.
12MS. GOLUB: So NUPIC would have nothing to 13 do with it. Now I know one thing that the licensees 14 have talked about, because I have heard Ray and Steve 15 talk about this, is that, of course, they would pull 16 those NUPIC audits, you know, when they are preparing 17 to go in and do their audit, their inspections of 18 their vendors, they are going to look at all of that 19material and they are going to, you know, see what 20 they looked at, what the deficiencies were, and take 21 that into account when they go in.
22 So I don't want to say that they are going 23 to be ignored, but that's not at all what this is 24 about. This is very project specific.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 28 MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay, thank you.
1 MS. GOLUB: Yes.
2MR. ARMSTRONG: That's awesome, thank you.
3MS. GOLUB: Yes, no worries. So I do have 4 a question for you, and maybe this is just my 5 fundamental misunderstanding of how the agency 6 operates, but I guess in our minds we thought after 7 the SER was issued, the license amendment was issued, 8 that it fell over into the regional inspection space, 9 and so the regional inspectors would be coming in to 10 the licensees facility and doing their inspection.
11 So they would be looking at these items 12 and saying, okay, licensee, how well did you perform 13 these activities, how well did you do this oversight.
14 You committed to something, you know, you committed to 15 this in your LAR.
16 Maybe you guys took a look at the actual 17 vendor oversight plan, there's just a summary in the 18 LAR, you know, as part of your review activities, how 19 well did you perform to what you committed to?
20 And in our minds because that is done at 21 the licensees' facilities, you know, either in their 22 corporate or the site, that that was a regional 23 inspection activity and we viewed the vendor 24 oversight, the vendor quality branch, activities as 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 29 being done on an as-needed basis, when requested 1 basis, but not necessarily project specific, and I am 2 only talking operating plants, okay, I want to leave 3the new plant world out of this, but that those 4 activities were done at the vendor's facilities on an 5 as-needed, non-project-specific quality process basis.
6That was our impression. Does anybody 7 disagree with that impression? Warren?
8 MR. HERB: No, that was it.
9 MS. GOLUB: Or want to supplement it?
10MR. ODESS-GILLERT: I would like to 11 supplement it if I can because if the regional 12 inspector finds gaps in the vendor oversight process 13 and says, well, you know, well I don't see in your 14 documentation where you verified that you verified the 15 implementation activities, okay, you don't have any 16 documentation, then somehow the licensee would have to 17 address that gap and maybe the region inspector will 18 say, you know what, maybe I'll deploy my vendor QA 19 branch to look at that gap in addition to maybe the 20 licensing being responsible for filling that gap at 21 the same time.
22 So I could see that, but the premise is 23 that the starting point for the recommended inspection 24 items would be the efficacy of the vendor oversight.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 30 MS. GOLUB: done by the licensee?
1MR. STATTEL: Right. I mean if we can 2 talk about, you know, were they an appropriate 3 location for the audit or inspection activities, 4 typically we do the audits at the vendor facilities 5 because that's where all the documentation is, that's 6 where we can speak to the people who are doing the 7 development activities.
8 It's very, actually I think pretty much 9 all of the time that the licensee is with us on those 10 audits. So they are performing their oversight, you 11 know, as we are performing our audit, in parallel.
12 Now in Oconee I will mention, Oconee 13 performed some vendor oversight activities that we 14 were not present for, right, they did that 15 independently.
16 They audited and they spent time at the 17vendor facilities, they prepared an audit report. We 18 did credit that audit report in our safety evaluation.
19 So, you know, this kind of, I think this is a little 20 bit what you are saying, so if the licensee is 21 performing those oversight activities there would be 22 documentation associated with those oversight 23 activities and it's quite possible that our inspection 24 might be a review of the reports for that.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 31 It doesn't necessarily have to be at the 1vendor facilities but sometimes that is a more 2 convenient place to perform those activities.
3MS. GOLUB: Okay. So I don't want to get 4 too caught up on the where, I guess it was more is my 5 description of your agency's activities, was that 6 accurate?7 MR. DARBALI: Well I will let Aaron talk 8 about it, but he said that their inspections are not 9 project specific, I'll let you talk about that, but 10 when you described the region inspection of the vendor 11 oversight activity that is true, so you might have a 12 case where after a license amendment is issued you 13 have a regional or site inspector looking at the 14 licensee's vendor oversight planning implementation 15 activities and you also have a vendor inspection on 16the vendor because they are different things. So I'll 17 let --18 (Simultaneous speaking.)
19 MR. ODESS-GILLERT: Well that was just a 20 different position I think because from our point of 21 view, you know, the role of the vendor, I'm sorry, the 22 role of the licensee is going to dramatically change 23 as a result, that this is industry's position and this 24is what they are going to put in their industry 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 32 guidance is that the role of vendor oversight is going 1 to be significantly augmented as part of supporting 2 the alternate review process.
3 MR. STATTEL: I would hope not. I would 4 hope you are performing your oversight activity, I 5 mean you've always had that responsibility, the 6 licensees have always had that responsibility.
7MR. ODESS-GILLERT: But in reality, Rich, 8 even if you look at the Diablo Canyon work the audits 9 that the licensee performed were not nearly the same 10 level of audit as the NRC.
11 And what we are proposing is that the 12 licensee would be informed by the audits and reports 13 and plans that the NRC has done in the past, put that 14in industry guidance as the role of the licensee to 15 conduct the same level of inspection on the vendor as 16 it has been done in the past by the NRC staff.
17 And that's why we are proposing that if 18 that is the case and we can show you the industry 19 guidance that tells the licensees to do that that the 20 role of inspection, or the focus of inspection would 21then turn from the vendor to the licensee, did you 22 conduct your oversight to the extent that we would 23 have done it in the old process, and if you find that 24 the results are inadequate then additional inspection 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 33 would be required plus the licensee would address why 1 the licensee did not meet the expectations of the NRC 2 inspection staff in their inspection of the vendor.
3MR. STATTEL: Okay. I would point out 4 that vendor oversight goes way beyond just performing 5 inspections and performing audits. So, for example, 6 one of the vendor oversight activities that I have 7 seen at both Diablo Canyon and Oconee and other plants 8 is it's typical for a licensee to send a QA inspector 9 to witness and participate in the factory test 10 activities and they will typically verify results and 11 they are there basically the entire time, right.
12 It's not just a spot check audit, they are 13verifying it. Also, vendor documents, they are 14 typically sent to the licensee, the licensee reviews 15 them, you now, performs detailed reviews of those.
16We don't do that. We don't do those 17activities. We look at the reports that are generated 18 by the licensee, we verify that the licensee is 19 performing those appropriate activities.
20 But, you know, we're not duplicating that, 21 we're not going behind and, you know, we don't have 22the resources to do those kind of things. So, yes, I 23 guess I kind of see what you are saying maybe 24 documentation wise, but I would certainly expect, you 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 34 know, maybe not equivalent but some level of the 1 licensee performing those types, those same activities 2 that we would do during those audits.
3 I mean our audits are typically one week, 4right. So we'll go one week, we'll perform an audit, 5 you know, and usually it's only three or four days of 6 that week, and that's it, that's the extent of it.
7We write a report. Basically there are 8spot checks. We are not going any kind of 100 percent 9review of anything. We might review three or four 10 requirements out of thousands typically.
11 You know, we have interviews with the 12 people performing the activities because we find that 13 useful in understanding the processes so that we can 14 write our, you know, evaluations accurately, but they 15 are really not that extensive.
16 Those audits are really not that extensive 17efforts. You know, we're not talking thousands of 18 hours2.083333e-4 days <br />0.005 hours <br />2.97619e-5 weeks <br />6.849e-6 months <br /> of commitment, nowhere near what I would expect 19 an actual licensee to, the level of effort the 20 licensee would expend to perform oversight because the 21 licensees should be involved basically throughout the 22 development.
23MS. GOLUB: Yes. But I just wanted to say 24 that I guess what Warren described that was not 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 35 intended to be the extent of the vendor oversight, I 1 mean licensees. They are involved in all the stages 2 of the process.
3 But Warren's description, we're really 4 looking for a response on Warren's description of how 5 we view who is doing what because I feel like we have 6 a fundamental misunderstanding and I am hoping we do 7 not.8 But if you could speak to what Warren said 9 that would be very helpful.
10 MR. STATTEL: All right.
11 MS. GOLUB: Please, go ahead.
12MR. ODESS-GILLERT: Before you speak to 13 what I said maybe I could just confirm what Rich said 14 and that when I said "augmented" it would be the type 15 of audit that the NRC staff has done for LAR reviews 16 for digital I&C has not normally been something that 17 the licensee did, because the licensee knew that the 18 NRC was going to do it, right.
19 MR. STATTEL: Okay.
20MR. ODESS-GILLERT: So now that the 21 licensing is expecting, is not expecting the NRC to do 22 it, it's not going to be part of the normal process, 23 but that's the augmented activities of vendor 24 oversight in addition to what they have done in the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 36 past for making sure we meet QA requirements and 1 meeting technical requirements.
2 MR. STATTEL: And it really shouldn't be 3unique to digital I&C.
I mean vendor oversight is 4 something that's a lot broader than digital I&C.
5 MR. ODESS-GILLERT: Right.
6MR. STATTEL:
And digital I&C is not 7special. There are many cases and many examples where 8 vendors, basically by proxy the vendors are performing 9 development activities for whatever that may be, 10design, development. I&C is not unique in that area.
11 (Simultaneous speaking.)
12 MR. WATERS: I have a question as well.
13 MR. DARBALI: I want Aaron to talk about 14 your role as far as, you know, getting all the project 15 specific.16MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay. There is the 17inspection staff at the regions, or residents, and 18 then there is the inventor inspection branch.
19 Now the difference is the resident 20inspectors look at everything at the licensee. The 21 licensee will cut a purchase order and invoke the Part 22 21 and Appendix B.
23 When that purchase order is accepted by an 24 Appendix B holder, you've an audit, you've verified 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 37their program, that's where my job would start. So if 1 you have a technical specification that you issued we 2 would evaluate your purchase order, and I am going to 3 say "you" is licensee, licensees purchase order 4 downstream.
5 That would include sub-suppliers, your 6 supplier and their sub-suppliers as well if they are 7procuring materials or doing anything. So that's 8 probably the line between the two.
9 There are exceptions. Licensees do have 10 labs where they do dedication, and, as you are aware, 11 there was an Allen Bradley issue with the dedication 12 of a relay.
13 I am a vendor person. We own dedication 14 pretty much, all the reg guidance for dedication as 15 the vendor group, I was actually at the plant looking 16 at the relay.
17 So to say that I would never be in a plant 18 is not correct because we would send whoever has the 19 expertise to wherever they needed to go and to 20 evaluate the issue.
21 So that's kind of how we are set up to 22 regulate, or how we do our oversight now is downstream 23 from the purchase order for vendors, but there are 24 other opportunities where we would be involved at the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 38 licensee.1 MS. GOLUB: Okay, so that's good.
2 MR. ARMSTRONG: So does that answer your 3 question?4MS. GOLUB: That clears up one 5misconception, yes. But I guess, so when you say a 6 purchase order to a vendor, so like the purchasing of 7 relays or those kind of components, but are you saying 8 that for all -- I'm trying to differentiate between 9 like a purchasing --
10MR. ARMSTRONG: An RPS, purchasing an RPS?
11MS. GOLUB: Yes. Right, purchasing an RPS 12 or that kind of a platform versus a component type of.
13 MR. ARMSTRONG: Right.
14 MS. GOLUB: But so I mean --
15MR. ARMSTRONG: If it meets -- All right, 1650.2 has a definition of safety-related. A basic 17component is a subset of that. So if you are 18 purchasing a basic component and as it is defined as 19 a basic component I think in Part 21 with the four or 20 five subparts, if you are procuring that, and it could 21 be a service, I think it was NUREG 0302 that actually 22 has services and software being identified as a basic 23 component.
24 So if you are procuring it under those 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 39 definitions you would have to invoke Part 21 in 1 Appendix B and then I would be responsible from that 2 purchase order down.
3MS. GOLUB: Okay. So but for an 4 organization like let's say, you know, Westinghouse or 5 GE, I mean you are, I would assume, doing periodic 6 inspections of their --
7MR. ARMSTRONG: Right now we are in a very 8 lengthy review of Westinghouse and our inspection 9 reports are publicly available and you can see where 10 Greg Galletti has been going to Westinghouse and 11 looking at the MPS system and the architecture of the 12 control equipment there and it has been routine.
13 I think he does two or three a year on the 14oversight in the development of that program. My 15 branch chief thinks that that's a very useful way to 16do things. You know, I'm not going to say it is or 17 isn't, I mean that's still something that I think we 18 need to discuss.
19 But I mean if there if value added and it 20does the job then maybe it should be an alternative 21 that would be looked at. So I don't I guess -- Does 22 that make sense? Are you clear -- Am I clear?
23MS. GOLUB: Mike, were you about to ask a 24 question?25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 40MR. WATERS: This is Mike. The first 1 point is you have a September timeframe for a workshop 2 and, obviously, we need to talk more about the 3 programmatically the inspection from licensing to 4 vendor to region.
5 And I applaud the idea of industry having, 6 you know, a higher focus on its oversight process. One 7 issue I have is I don't, we haven't seen that process, 8 I mean will that be shared with us.
9 And I still believe as Rich had described 10 and Aaron described I think part of verifying that 11 would be at the vendor site pulling those few threads 12 to verify the vendor is doing it correctly and, in 13 fact, the licensee is correctly overseeing it as well 14 as well as any regional inspections.
15 Another question I am trying to 16 understand, because we view that our footprint is 17significantly shrinking here. We're not doing the 18paper review of a lot of details here, all their 19 implementation details, all the -- We're not -- It's 20 significantly -- The footprint of doing that paper 21 review, do that, plus a few audits that Rich 22 mentioned, that paper is significantly shrinking what 23 we traditionally do with audit during licensing.
24 You know, you wouldn't get a license till 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 41 an audit was satisfied, we may do now vendor 1 inspection items. I am just trying to understand is 2 that a misunderstanding or is there a concern with 3that. That's just what we are trying to understand 4 here.5MS. GOLUB: Okay, so I'll -- Should I keep 6going? So I'll just, I'll be very blunt about what 7our concern is.
So we are, of course, you know, we 8 went through this entire process because we are trying 9 to find deficiencies, we're trying to find -- Safety 10 is, of course, the number one focus, but after safety 11 there is, you know, we're hoping for cost savings, 12 efficiencies, frankly, we're trying to keep the 13 operating fleet operating.
14 That's, you know, the highest purpose 15 here. From that perspective we are really concerned 16 that now our vendors, like we're stepping up, right, 17 the industry, the licensees, they are stepping up to 18 take a closer look at the vendors, do much better 19 audits, inspections, all of that, and our thought had 20 been that we would be stepping up to do that and, 21 therefore, the NRC could step back in that role from 22 doing as much of that and would instead be making sure 23 the licensees are doing adequate inspection of their 24 vendors.25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 42 And our fear was that instead of that 1 happening what is happening is instead it is just the 2 vendors are going to be inspected by everybody more.
3 I mean it's like double the inspections, triple the --
4 I don't know, you know, some amount of additional 5 inspection.
6 So I think that may be the 7misunderstanding that we are having. So in our mind, 8 you know, licensees are stepping up, the NRC could 9 step -- I don't want to say step back, but step over 10 into observing inspecting the licensees, how they are 11 doing what they are supposed to be doing, but instead 12 what it sounds like is you will be doing that but in 13 addition you will be also auditing the vendors, 14 continuing to --
15 (Simultaneous speaking.)
16 MS. GOLUB: Yes, inspecting the vendors.
17 Well, I don't know, is it auditing and inspecting 18because I'm not sure? I am kind of hearing both here.
19 MR. DARBALI: Well, the --
20MS. GOLUB: And so that's the part that we 21 would like verification on because that's, this is on 22 the inspection side.
23MR. DARBALI: Like Rich said when the 24 Diablo Canyon review was performed I think we did, I 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 43 think we did two vendor audits at the early stages and 1two vendor audits, and, again, two because two 2 different vendors, in the late stages.
3 There wasn't a lot of value in those early 4 audits. The way the alternate review process is set 5 up that's where we would be doing our audits, if we do 6 the audits.
7 We wouldn't be doing audits at the 8 implementation and I think the late audits were during 9the fact. So those were the audits where we got a lot 10of value. But as of recently we had to come back for 11 a second audit because the very first audits didn't 12 get a lot of value.
13So there is a possibility that in the 14 alternate review process if an audit is performed the 15 scope is a lot less because there is not a lot to see.
16MR. STATTEL: Actually, I anticipate -- We 17 have kind of talked about this in the last couple of 18 weeks amongst ourselves, I actually don't think we 19would perform well during the license review. So I 20 believe we would be stepping back in that manner and 21 I think the inspections would be, you know, it 22wouldn't be performing the same activities that we 23 have in the past performed during audit.
24 Now with that said I believe the audits, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 44 the activities we performed at audits were very 1 instructive for both sides. It's not like we went, 2 we were wasting our time, we go on these audits, we 3 never find anything wrong and there's no value, right.
4Well they are valuable. That's why we 5continue to perform them. They identify problems, 6 they identify shortcomings, they increase awareness of 7 the vendor personnel.
8 It helps -- In the past -- One of the main 9 benefits of the audit for us when we perform it during 10 a license evaluation is being able to sit down and 11 talk with the actual people who are performing the 12 development.
13 It helps us immensely to understand what 14 it is we are approving and it gives us a lot of 15 confidence in when we write our safety conclusions.
16 You know, we have a whole lot of confidence in those 17 safety conclusions.
18 We are not just, yes, what the vendor 19said, we're not just taking someone's word for it. We 20 actually do understand these processes and we 21 understand these systems pretty well.
22 So I don't think -- You know, I think we 23 are backing off on that and we're going to have to 24 figure out how to fill that gap, right, without -- I 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 45 don't think audits are the answer, right.
1 I am just trying to project this for you, 2 audits are optional. We don't always perform audits 3 during license reviews and if we don't get to 4implementation and design and testing there is very 5 limited value in performing those audits.
6So I think what you said is correct. I 7 think we are backing off on what our role would be in 8 an alternate process, so it seems to me like we are in 9 agreement on this.
10 I'm not sure if the words are right in the 11documentation. And if someone on the staff disagrees 12 with anything I said please speak up.
13MR. DARBALI: I would say that what the 14 vendor oversight plan -- The licensee always performs 15 vendor oversight, but because the staff reviews those 16 implementation and testing activities we don't need to 17 see your vendor oversight plans because we are not 18 going to be looking at those activities.
19That's where the plan comes from. The 20 plan gives us reasonable assurance that what we can't 21 see will be performed, but that doesn't mean that we 22 don't need to inspect it or that we don't have the 23 option to inspect it.
24 The ISG itself relies on that plan for the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 46 alternate review process but it doesn't change our 1 inspection activities, it doesn't change the way we 2 treat commitments or conditions, it just changes how 3 and when we give you that license amendment.
4 It doesn't affect all the other oversight 5activities that the NRC has the purview of. So we 6don't control that of which is outside licensing. We 7 can inform it but we can't -- I mean we can, the ISG 8 can't say we won't do that because that's outside of 9 what an ISG can do, and we can verbally even tell you 10 we are not going to do it, but that's within the 11 purview of the inspection oversight activities.
12 So in a sense, and, right, we're trying to 13 get to an agreement and that is the purpose of the 14 tabletop and we'll have that September workshop, but 15 there is a lot more going on outside of the digital 16 licensing process.
17MS. GOLUB: Yes, and the reason we are 18 going down this path is not to have the whole workshop 19 here, you know, today.
20 MR. DARBALI: Right.
21MS. GOLUB: That's not at all the purpose.
22 But, you know, I think yesterday when we went over one 23 of the outcomes for this meeting was we want to make 24 sure that when we come in September that on our side 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 47 we have a good sense of what to expect, you know, what 1 your position is, it kind of helps us be better 2 prepared.3 So all of these questions are really 4 towards making sure we understand how the agency 5 conducts its business so that we can be better 6prepared. So just to be clear that's where this is 7 coming from.
8 But I guess I think I heard Rich say --
9 Did somebody --
10MR. DRAGOVICH: I just was going to add 11 something.
12 MS. GOLUB: You go ahead.
13 MR. DRAGOVICH: I was just going to say, 14 and we're not suggesting either that we want to 15 guarantee that there wouldn't be inspections, I think 16 we're just saying that we want the licensee to have 17 the first crack at doing the inspection and then if 18 there is any gaps then we would expect that either we 19 would be challenged to go back and get more 20 information or there would be a potential inspection.
21 MR. DARBALI: Right.
22MR. DRAGOVICH: But any time we do 23something at the vendor it's a lot more costly. We 24 have the type of vendor resources that could have an 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 48 impact to schedule so it would be a lot easier for the 1 licensee to have that auditor inspection, you know, 2 our house and try to go through what we were supposed 3 to address and then identify any gaps.
4MR. STATTEL: I would also point out that 5 I think there is an opportunity for improvement here 6 because frankly the licensees are a lot better 7 equipped to provide this oversight than we are.
8 So as an example during one audit that I 9 participated we did a sampling, we sampled like 2 10 percent of like condition reports or issue reports, 11 and we found, you know, we found a list of problems, 12 right.13 So let's say we found, you know, five 14 issues where procedures weren't followed or there was 15 a problem and a typical response we would get from a 16 licensee is, okay, we fixed those five problems.
17 Now given the fact that we only sampled 2 18 percent of the condition reports it obviously leaves 19 us open-ended here because we are thinking well what 20 is the true extent of that condition.
21So we will typically write a RAI please 22 perform a extent of condition and please tell us what 23 actions you are putting in place programmatically to 24 prevent these types of errors from occurring, right.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 49 That's just an example.
1 And honestly, you know, we're just doing 2 this really small sampling. I think, and correct me 3 if I am wrong, but I know at the plant that I work at 4 there was a vendor oversight group that had like seven 5 or eight people in that group, you know, here, you 6 know, we had one week and it's one or two people, 7 staff members, who are not familiar with the processes 8 of the licensee, so I think honestly it's -- These 9 same activities that we have performing I think that 10 the licensee should be a lot better equipped to 11 perform those and perform them more efficiently.
12MR. DARBALI: And I would like to stop the 13conversation. We do have from 10:00 to 11:00 the 14 vendor oversight plan, so I imagine that we are going 15 to continue this.
16MS. VENKATARAMAN: Samir, may I add a 17 comment?18 MR. DARBALI: Oh, go ahead.
19MS. VENKATARAMAN: I just thought I would 20 piggyback on what he said yesterday and because the 21 alternate review processes count in licensing space I 22 think we had the conversation and probably the ISG-06 23 talks about the vendor oversight could potentially 24 become a license condition, so there is that.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 50 And that also goes to what Rich said that, 1 you know, the licensee is more equipped and, you know, 2so that's something to keep in mind. That's the 3 alternate review process.
4 The conventional process is a longer 5 process so you probably didn't have anything, but I 6 think this is something that ISG-06 alludes to so I 7 just thought I would bring that here.
8 MR. WATERS: Yes, and I agree, too, and, 9 again, I mean to summarize I personally applaud the 10 idea of what was explained is a transition.
11 We don't want to go and inspect at a 12 vendor site or a regional site if an inspection is not 13 warranted. We want to completely trust the licensee 14 to do that job under Appendix B and we believe they 15 are doing that, but part of the inspections confirm 16 that, but it seems like we are in a state of 17 transition.
18 From a license standpoint we are looking 19 at this oversight plan, but we have not seen the 20 detailed execution, all your plans you would do as a 21 licensee, and that's not our previous prior licensing, 22 so maybe down the road, you're right, we'll just be at 23 the site and granted the licensee is correctly doing 24 the oversight, but we're not there yet.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 51 I think we need to work this out more 1internally. I do want to mention one thing, Rich 2 asked if he was wrong. He is not wrong.
3 I do want to say during licensing, am I 4 completely clear there will not be any licensing 5 audits at all? Yesterday we talked about electronic 6 audits as well, the electronic portal, maybe they are 7 an option, so I don't want to completely preclude that 8 right now unless we need to.
9MR. DARBALI: Okay, so we'll come back to 10 this conversation in 25 or one hour.
11MS. GOLUB: I guess the only thing I want 12 to say is that, you know, we had made a comment on the 13 word "verify" and how that beginning part was phrased.
14MR. ARMSTRONG: It was written for an 15 inspector and it was --
16MS. GOLUB: Yes, and so is it just 17 possible to get a little feedback on our proposed 18 wording?19 MR. ARMSTRONG: I would have to leave it 20 up to -- I'm not going to change an inspection 21 procedure because I am an NRO and we are using this 22 inspection procedure.
23 I would leave that up to Rich and Samir 24 and his group how they wanted to connect the two or 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 52 use the guidance in the inspection procedure. So --
1MS. GOLUB: Okay. So maybe this could be 2 a topic for our inspection workshop because that part 3 I think would be important for us to understand.
4MR. STATTEL: I had actually taken some 5 notes and I agree with some of your wording on their 6comments. Yes, so I wrote down "review documentation 7 related to the licensee oversight activity." 8 So I think we can work with you on this.
9 I think we can come up with some acceptable middle-of-10 the-ground here.
11 MS. GOLUB: Okay. Very good, thank you.
12MR. DARBALI: Okay. So the next topic is 13the Sample Commitments. We've got John Hughey here in 14 the room, we've got Booma Venkataraman from DORL, and 15 Aaron Armstrong from the Vendor Inspection Branch.
16 Do we have any other folks on the phone 17 who just chimed in? Sheldon, are you on the phone?
18 MR. CLARK: Yes.
19MR. DARBALI: Hi, Sheldon. Can you 20 introduce yourself?
21MR. CLARK: Yes. My name is Sheldon 22Clark. I am with the NRC Office of the General 23 Counsel.24 MR. DARBALI: Thank you. And do we have 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 53 Bob Weisman on the phone?
1 (No audible response.)
2 MR. DARBALI: I think Bob is going to be 3calling in later. So we provided also a list of 4sample regulatory commitments. This is typically 5 something that the licensee would provide, and we took 6 the list that Diablo Canyon provided.
7If you look at the Diablo Canyon safety 8 evaluation there is a section at the end that points 9 to the letters where the commitments came from but it 10 doesn't list them because the safety evaluation didn't 11 rely on them.
12 So Rich pulled those commitments and we 13 changed the language, where it said Tricon we put 14 platform, where it said PG&E we put licensee, and we 15 kind of tried to make them more generic.
16 MS. GOLUB: Oh, but these are the actual 17 formal regulatory commitments from the Diablo Canyon 18 LAR? I don't think I realized that.
19MR. STATTEL: Yes, they are. So just a 20 couple notes on those, so for Diablo's Canyon case so 21 we performed our evaluation being aware of what these 22 commitments were so they were part of the application, 23 right.24We did not reference them, we did not 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 54evaluate the commitments. When I went back and looked 1 at them to prepare for this exercise I actually noted 2 that many of those commitments were actually fulfilled 3 by the time we had issued the license amendment.
4 So that was kind of interesting, I really 5wasn't aware of that. But, again, we don't rely on 6 those commitments, we don't anchor our safety 7 conclusions on those commitments at all, we don't 8 reference them.
9 They are there, the licensee prepared 10 them, they didn't talk to us about them in advance.
11 I don't even recall having a lot of discussion about 12 commitments during the Phase 0 meeting honestly.
13 I guess we could, but I do recognize that 14several of these commitments were issues that were 15 discussed at that Phase 0 meeting so I think there was 16 kind of a connection there.
17 So they are quite a bit different than the 18inspection items. We don't use them going forward.
19 We don't -- I don't think there is really any ties 20 between our recommended inspection items and those 21 commitments.
22 Okay, so if you think about this it could 23have been. You know, we could have put recommended 24 inspection items and make sure they make that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 55 commitment but we didn't do that, you know, we didn't 1 consciously do that.
2MS. GOLUB: So I guess is it possible, and 3 I know Joe is not here, but it would be great if we 4 could see the section of ISG-06 C.2.2.2, or C.2.2.1.
5 MR. STATTEL: C.2.2.1.
6 MR. DARBALI: Okay, I'll try --
7 (Simultaneous speaking.)
8MS. GOLUB: Because -- Yes. So I mean the 9 purpose of asking you to provide these to us was that 10 we have this new section in the alternate review 11 process for prerequisites and one of them was for 12 licensees to propose this set of commitments.
13 So we are really looking for in this 14 guidance document what are the kinds of commitments 15 that you think meet the criteria that is in C.2.2.1.
16 That's really, you know, that's really what we were 17 looking for.
18 And I understand you took these out of 19 Diablo Canyon, so is this, I mean is -- So Diablo 20 Canyon, for whatever reason, they made these 21 commitments, and I don't know why they made these 22 commitments because I am not familiar with the process 23--24 MR. STATTEL: Yes, it's unfortunate that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 56 PG&E is not here.
1 MS. GOLUB: I know.
2 MR. STATTEL: Because I know they --
3 (Simultaneous speaking.)
4MS. GOLUB: I agree with you, Rich. We'll 5 go back and -- We're still in touch with those folks.
6 You know, they --
7 MR. STATTEL: Honestly, we did not drive 8any of these commitments. PG&E -- They came with the 9 license amendment.
10MS. GOLUB: But I guess the question --
11 But the question I am asking for the purpose of the 12 tabletop exercise and understanding that, you know, 13 we're trying to write an industry guidance document 14 for especially these unique aspects of the alternate 15 review process what is the NRC's intent for that 022.
16 Yes, so I think it's Item 3, Samir.
17 MR. DARBALI: So I want to point out --
18 MS. GOLUB: Okay.
19MR. DARBALI: -- Commitment 13 and 14 I 20 added those based on, so they are SDOE related based 21 on the Reg Guide, and Commitment 15 that just will be 22 Tricon and ASAIs, and I do realize it kind of ties it 23 to an existing commitment, but that kind of gets you 24 an idea of where I would pull, if I was license where 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 57 I would pull I would pull a commitment from.
1 MS. GOLUB: Okay.
2MR. STATTEL: Yes, and I also recognize 3 some of these commitments are, they get down into some 4details, right, some design details. One has to do 5 with isolation and I do have some understanding of why 6 Diablo Canyon made those commitments.
7 So, for example, in the Diablo Canyon 8 design there were several connection points to non-9 safety-related meters, instruments, and they were 10 really not within the scope of the modification, of 11 the vendor modification, the vendor system.
12 They were actually -- The licensee was 13 actually adding isolators in and they were basically 14 handling that separately and they hadn't completed 15 that design so they recognized that, they recognized 16 that it would have to meet certain criteria and they 17 put that down as a commitment because they had 18 fulfilled that at the time they submitted the license 19 amendment.
20 And there was some like, there were some 21 that were specific and when I read them I do 22 understand why Diablo Canyon would make that 23 commitment at the time of the license amendment 24 because they hadn't, they didn't have the information 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 58 to put right in the license amendment, okay.
1 I think there was some other ones 2 related,, and I discussed this yesterday, power 3supply, so they had actually some commitments that 4 were related to that as well.
5MS. GOLUB: Thanks. So I am looking at 6 the guidance in ISG-06, so this is what licensees 7 would use to try to determine what do I need to make 8 as commitments.
9 So the Item A I understand that's related 10 to, you know, the PSAIs, and we talked about that 11 yesterday --
12 MR. STATTEL: Is this in ISG-06?
13 MS. GOLUB: It is, yes.
14 (Simultaneous speaking.)
15MS. GOLUB: So the request we had asked 16 for you guys was if you looked at 3B, 3B under the 17 C.2.2 licensing prerequisites for the alternate review 18 process -- Joe, can you --
19MR. ODESS-GILLERT: Joe, can you scroll 20 down to the next page, to three.
21 MS. GOLUB: Can you scroll down to 3?
22MR. ODESS-GILLERT: Thank you. Right 23 there.24 MS. GOLUB: Yes, right there is perfect.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 59 Thank you.
1 But if you look at 3B we were really 2 looking for your feedback, and I heard Samir say that 3 13 and 14 sound like they met the 3B item, that they 4 were commitments from later life cycle activities 5 under a licensee's purview when he was talking about 6 SDOE later life cycle stuff.
7 But I guess we were looking for from the 8 staff for this exercise what do you think meets that 93B? So the reasons that Diablo did what they did 10 maybe is a little bit different because, you know, 11 they made regulatory commitments to complete 12 activities that would be within the licensing review 13 scope of a Tier 1/Tier 2 review.
14 In our case, you know, we are, the plan is 15 especially understanding some of the risks associated 16 with, you know, with saying we have a completed system 17 level design.
18We probably would not do that. You know, 19 the licensees would make sure their system level 20design was complete. Samir, I was just saying that 21 the purpose for this for us for this exercise was to 22 understand what the NRC would consider meets the 23 prerequisites of 3B.
24 MR. DARBALI: Oh.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 60MS. GOLUB: And, you know, I understand 1 from what you said for your SDOE ones that maybe that 2 does meet 3B because they are later life cycle 3 activities.
4 But that was kind of the framework we had 5in mind when we made the request. It just, you know, 6 reading the words you're never quite sure what they 7 mean so we wanted to have a sense of, you know, what 8 was your perspective on that new guidance for us?
9MR. STATTEL: Well when I read it now this 10 is certainly not comprehensive guidance on preparing 11commitments, right. I don't know if that exists.
12 Actually, the licensees prepare them, so is there any 13 industry guidance out there for preparing --
14MS. GOLUB: There is industry guidance, 15 yes. It's 9904 I think on doing that.
16 MR. STATTEL: I am honestly not familiar 17 with that.
18 MS. GOLUB: Yes, and so, again, this is, 19 it was more, the intent was just more around what, you 20 know, in your minds like if you had to judge are the 21 appropriate commitments included, right, if you were 22 looking at that and saying are the ap propriate 23 commitments included.
24 We just wanted your perspective on what 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 61 would those appropriate commitments be so we have some 1sense of whether we are hitting the mark when we 2 submit the LAR.
3MR. STATTEL: Yes, we could probably make 4some improvements to that. We saw the commitments as 5 a venue or a way to address those activities, 6 implementation, that basically wouldn't be in our 7 purview for the license amendment review.
8So we just saw that as the venue. We are 9no experts on creating commitments. We don't do that, 10 right, and we don't really evaluate them either.
11MS. GOLUB: Okay, so that's good feedback 12 for us.13MR. STATTEL: So I would actually look at 14 industry for what they would --
15MS. GOLUB: Yes, thank you. Yes, and 16 that's good feedback for us because I guess I didn't 17 understand that part about that you don't evaluate 18 them.19So maybe, you know, that's something for, 20 you know, a future discussion. We could take that 21 task and maybe take the next cut at this understanding 22everything, and especially, Samir, what you put in, 23 which I think is along the lines we were thinking.
24 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 62MR. WATERS: So I think there is multiple 1 angles here and we probably need to get back to you on 2 the exact definition and regulatory, you know, 3 legalistic regulatory connotation of "commitment," but 4 I think there is two things here.
5 You mentioned that a lot of this may be 6 artifacts of what Diablo did. You know, I think our 7 focus is, you know in the past we traditionally made 8 the licensing decision, that FAT, right, and we write 9 the paperwork on that, somebody has also done the 10 audits, there were significant amounts of regulatory 11 assurance, and we issued a license.
12 So the real question to us and to staff is 13 if we should write this amendment early what happens 14 between that point and I guess traditionally FAT, 15 because there are some things here that would still 16 happen before that.
17 You know, as a regulator I don't know what 18 the difference is between a commitment to do a process 19 or a test in future versus getting a diagram of the 20 architecture. Both are important to me in making my 21 regulatory decision.
22 The ultimate question are significant 23 commitments or actions you guys have committed to 24 talk, or if you call it a commitment or not, that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 63 could require inspection focus and/or a license 1 condition and/or something that is put into FSAR or 2 not at all or if it's something that you develop in 3 50.59.4 So I think that's the real test that we, 5 you know, need to sit down and hypothetically play 6 this out. I think as Rich has also noted we are not 7 going to have guidance in ISG-06 of this and I think 8 it will be very, very application-specific as well.
9 MS. GOLUB: Yes, so typically, you know, 10 we're not looking for more guidance in ISG-06, it was 11 more a case of we don't want it to turn into bring me 12 another rock, right.
13 So if we have some idea of what that rock 14 looks like we can try our best to bring it to you the 15first time in the LAR. But I guess hearing that, you 16 know, this is really on the licensees side, I mean the 17 licensees are going to follow their processes to the 18 best of their abilities.
19 So, you know, for the licensees to make a 20 commitment to follow their own processes or to follow 21 what they laid out in the LAR, right, if they laid out 22 a process in the LAR they are going to follow it, they 23 are going to treat it as a "commitment" to the staff.
24 The commitments typically, and, Booma, you 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 64 can I am sure speak to this better than me, but 1 commitments are typically are activities which are not 2 something open-ended like follow your process, but 3 they are more do this by a certain date and that's why 4 the Diablo Canyon commitments are pretty specific on, 5 you know, they are going to include this in their 6 design or they are going to implement this in their 7 procedures.
8 I just -- I want to make sure that we are 9 all on the same page with the intent of 3B, because I 10 don't think the licensees are going to propose 11 something that says, you know, we are going to commit 12 to following the process we put in the LAR unless that 13 is required to be done for your review.
14 They are just going to follow their 15 process and treat it as an obligation because they 16 wrote it in their license amendment.
17MR. HARRELL: So that makes sense, but 18 look at Number 5.
19MS. GOLUB: Yes, so that -- Yes, so that's 20what -- And maybe we could go through our comments, 21 too, that -- You're right, Dave, we should also sort 22 of -- Maybe you can respond to what I said and then we 23 can --24 (Simultaneous speaking.)
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 65MS. VENKATARAMAN: Yes. I just wanted to 1 have a comment. First of all, again, we have to put 2the alternate review process in perspective. It is a 3LAR process but it is again it's a very kind of a 4 reduced more efficient process.
5 So, therefore, it appears that the 6 licensee may put in more commitments and commitments 7are not requirements, right. So only the licensee can 8 come up with those and they are right, you're right, 9 they are very specific.
10 They may not be open-ended but they could 11 not, they may not be very, sometimes they may say we 12 will follow our procedures or, you know, by a certain 13 date, or we will change our procedures.
14 And sometimes here we are talking that 15 they may be elevated to a license condition or an 16 implementation statement in the UFSAR, or a mandated 17 licensing, depending on how important it is to safety 18 and that we will know as the review progresses.
19 So but when you submit the application you 20 may have some commitments in place and I think, you 21 know, there are some examples that I believe, you 22 know, I think maybe, Samir, you can put to that, this 23 is my understanding based on this, like an 24 implementation of high quality software or with 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 66 respect to the vendor oversight.
1 But they may not describe everything of it 2 but you may have something in there with knowing that 3it may become a license condition in the future. Does 4 that make sense?
5 MS. GOLUB: It does, yes.
6MS. VENKATARAMAN: Yes. Yes, the basic 7process, the overall process doesn't change. Our 8 license amendment, 50.90 regulation, that doesn't 9 change, but there is just nuance because it is a very 10 crunch process.
11MS. GOLUB: Okay. And I think that makes 12sense. I mean it sounds to me like you don't have lie 13 a preconceived expectation, maybe aside from some of 14 the examples given, of what would meet 3B and the 15 licensee should just propose what they believe are the 16 right commitments, which we could certainly do.
17 MS. VENKATARAMAN: Yes.
18 MR. WATERS: I think a challenge here if 19 we look at part of it is commitments are not 20conditions of a license and so we kind of start 21 backwards and we're trying to define that and in a 22 normal discussion what is a commitment, right.
23 I mean I'll author a question back to you 24 based on these slices of what are called commitments, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 67 forget about the title commitments and the numerical 1-- Is there any things in here in detail that you 2 would not provide in some form of the LAR, and even an 3 architecture description or when describing your 4 plans, do you guys see something here that, hey, 5 that's, you know, we're not going to even obligate 6 ourselves to that in a LAR in some form?
7That's the question I would have to get 8 the conversation started I guess.
9MS. GOLUB: Yes. No, so I don't think 10 there is material here, and, you know, I am going to 11 look to my colleagues because I am not looking at all 12 of our comments, but it's not that there is items here 13 that we would say, no, we're not looking at set 14 points, forget it, that's out. It's not at all like 15 that.16 We just wanted to make sure that if you 17 had specific expectations for 3B we understood what 18 they are and what I am taking from this discussion is 19 that you don't have something specific in mind, you 20 want the licensees to evaluate it and propose 21 regulatory commitments on a project-specific basis?
22MR. WATERS: You're right, and all we have 23 is a limited history of what we have done for a few 24 sites and that's what Samir had pulled as --
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 68 (Simultaneous speaking.)
1MS. GOLUB: Absolutely, so that's a 2starting point, and that's fine. So we understand 3 it's a starting point and --
4MR. WATERS: Obviously, again, part of 5 this will be hopefully a module in an application 6 meeting of, you know, what to expect as far as 7 content.8MR. DARBALI: You know, I'm thinking about 9 the acceptance review process. If we get a LAR 10 requesting to use the alternate review process and it 11 doesn't include certain commitments to do FAT testing, 12 implementation and test activities, I don't know if we 13 would reject the LAR because it doesn't have those 14 commitments because we don't need those commitments.
15 However, if we say, well, you didn't 16 commit to that but I want that to be a condition then 17 that's something we will work with our project manager 18 and for the licensee during the review process.
19 So I think it helps the NRC and the 20 licensee to be on the same page and it's very helpful 21 for the staff to understand that licensee expects to 22 do those activities and is willing to do that. It's 23 always very helpful.
24 But if we need it for our regulatory 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 69 evaluation then we'll make it a condition.
1MS. GOLUB: Yes. So, okay, so, again, and 2I think we're okay here. Okay, I am just going to say 3that fundamentally I think we are okay here. The part 4 is that I don't want to wait until we get to the 5 acceptance review and then find out that we didn't 6 meet your, you know, we didn't meet the mark with the 7 regulatory commitments that were proposed and then, 8 you know, and then you're kind of scrambling.
9 So I thinking that from a pre-application 10 coordination meeting standpoint this is probably a 11 good topic, you know, like we're given this specific 12 application that we're going to be proposing the LAR 13 for, you know, here are the types of commitments that 14 we think meet this prerequisite.
15 I mean maybe that's a good, you know, a 16good way to make sure that before we hit that 17 acceptance review we understand what the expectations 18 are and we can meet them.
19 MR. WATERS: Right.
20MR. DARBALI: So even if you don't have a 21 commitment talking about those future activities I 22 would expect the LAR to say these are the things we 23 are going to be doing.
24 MS. GOLUB: Yes.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 70MR. DARBALI: So that should be there.
1 And if the LAR is silent then, assuming it gets 2accepted for review, would write a request for 3 additional information asking what activities are you 4 going to be doing past this date or you didn't cover 5 this implementation activity.
6 So those are the things we would ask you, 7that you provide that information. And, again, we 8 have a process for making that a condition.
9MS. GOLUB: Absolutely. It's just, you 10 know, part of this is, of course, informing our 11 industry guidance document so we would love to be able 12 to, you know, provide some guidance so an RAI may not 13be needed. You know what I mean? That's the purpose 14 of doing this exercise, but understanding there is 15 always a mechanism for you to get more information, 16 but I am trying to make sure we understand the 17 expectation so we can provide some appropriate 18 guidance for it.
19 MR. DARBALI: Right.
20MR. HUGHEY: So as I listen to the 21 conversation what I hear both from fellow staff and 22 from industry is a real grappling and a struggle to 23 understand the value of regulatory commitments and to 24 me that is very encouraging.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 71 I think that your comment is well taken 1 about well why would we write a regulatory commitment 2 to do something that is part of our plant process 3 already, why would we not just say in the LAR this is 4 what we're doing, this is our normal plant process, 5this is the way we do things. I think that's exactly 6 right on.7 And I think that, you know, of course, we 8 reference LIC-101, NRC has a checkered past with 9 regulatory commitments and that is detailed in LIC-10 101, which is publically available.
11 And so there has been a lot of confusion 12in the past on our side about what a regulatory 13 commitment is, how it is used, and so back several 14 years ago there was an OIG report and a big 15 undertaking, new training within the NRC to help us 16 all get on the same page.
17 So the reason I wanted to say something is 18 that I think it's good that we are struggling with, 19 hey, what's the value of having these regulatory 20 commitments, and I would suggest that we may all be 21 better off for them to not see the light of day again 22 anywhere because they really cause confusion and don't 23 have a lot of, they have no legal value, you know.
24 However, at the same time what is really 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 72 important is the concept of a license condition, 1especially for this alternative review process. So 2 the limited time I was here yesterday for human 3 factors, I feel that everything we talked about in 4 that time period was applicable to the normal review 5 process not just the alternate review process.
6 All those discussions I think were 7 applicable, valuable, in our normal review process 8now. And the human factors team as we have gotten 9 together and we thought about just the mechanics of 10 how we would make this work in a license amendment 11 review under the alternate review process we realized, 12 as we said yesterday, it's all the same technical 13 review.14What's different is how do we apply the 15 right licensing mechanics to make us able to give a 16 reasonable assurance review and keep the right 17 regulatory footprint on our approval of that review, 18 and that's where license condit ions are going to 19 become really important.
20And I will just --
In a limited I just 21 want to say the way we see that is that we would need 22 to have license conditions, when necessary a license 23 condition would talk about something that is going to 24 happen in the design future and would be something 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 73 that would draw an envelope with very clear boundaries 1 and would say something like if something changes that 2 is outside of this boundary then there is no approval 3 for that, it's to be addressed.
4 I am not exactly sure how that would play 5 out, I think we have to see, and every application is 6 going to be different, every configuration is a little 7 different, but I would also say that in the case of 8 Diablo Canyon, you know, their human factors elements, 9 if it was an application similar to Diablo Canyon 10 where there is no change in human actions, there is no 11 change in operator manual actions, and that is a 12 definitive statement, that is the design, then we 13 don't need any license conditions, we are able to 14 review what the design is going to be and there is 15 nothing in the future.
16 But even in that case where that would 17 change is in the example amendment yesterday, so there 18 is the second sentence that says "If the digital I&C 19 modification adds or changes important human actions 20 then appropriate evaluations would be performed.
21 So if there is a caveat like that in the 22 LAR well then even though we can say everything you 23 told us good, we're good with that, no further review 24 is needed, if there is a caveat like that we would 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 74 need a license condition that has very stringent 1 envelopes.
2 And the last thing I will say about that 3 is just our policy per LIC-101 is that we would be 4 looking for -- it's a collaborative process to know 5 what the license conditions are, which means there 6 would necessarily need to be some public meetings.
7 In the course of the review of the audit 8 there would need to be public meetings between staff 9and licensees to really determine what those are, 10 unless it was straightforward enough that it could be 11 done just with the public RAI process.
12 And so, anyway, those are just a few 13 comments I wanted to make about that. Thank you.
14MS. GOLUB: And I appreciate what you 15said, and very much so. So that, you know, part of 16 this exercise for these sample regulatory commitments 17 is that when we had talked about that 3B above there 18 was an understanding that some of those commitments 19 could turn into conditions.
20 And so that was one of the reasons that we 21 were interested in understanding what the NRC's view 22 of the commitments were because that would obviously 23 inform us what you are considering to be conditions.
24 And a license condition is a, you know, a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 75 license condition is a serious item, right, we want to 1 make sure that we had some understanding of what that 2 looks like.
3 (Simultaneous speaking.)
4MS. VENKATARAMAN: Can I add a comment?
5 Yes, so what we are saying is the regulatory 6commitments are part of the licensing basis. They 7 will -- But if when you propose them, maybe in the 8 application or later, they have to be put in the 9 docket.10 But if they are not used to make the 11 regulatory finding or the safety they will just be 12listed in a section in the license amendment. So the 13 good thing is because you are making, you know, it 14 known to us that this is what you are doing, but just 15 like Samir said, to summarize, you don't have to, 16 later on the reviewer may find and they ask questions 17in an RAI or it could be a public meeting and if 18 necessary they will be elevated to a license condition 19 or the other way is to make an implementation 20 statement in the USFAR, then they become obligations 21as opposed to just not obligations, like a -- Yes, 22 that's how it is. Thank you.
23MS. GOLUB: Thank you. Thank you for that 24clarification. So we've had specific questions on 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 76 these commitments do we want to go through those 1 questions?
2MR. STATTEL: Yes, I was just going to 3 offer that up because I can't respond to any 4individual. Some of them are little bit, you know, 5 very project-specific, but I do have an answer for 6 them.7 MS. GOLUB: Yes, and I don't want to get 8 into some of the, you know, like the technical details 9 of that project because I know that was a very 10 specific project.
11MR. STATTEL: I will mention though there 12 is -- I don't want to downplay the value of the 13 licensee making commitments because I think it's a 14 communication avenue and so, for example, I look at 15 Commitment Number 7, Number 7 has to do with the 16 licensee's, that they really didn't make any changes 17 to the set points in the license amendment.
18 However, they recognized that there were 19 going to be changes to calculations and they wanted us 20 to know, they wanted to communicate to us that we are 21 going to be using approved set point methodologies 22 and, you know, I mean you can read it, right.
23 So your comment was why did we need to 24 create a commitment to do work that is normal plant 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 77practice, well that was really good for me to know 1 that.2 So this didn't get elevated into a 3condition, but it was very important for me to know 4 that the licensee was aware that even though they 5 weren't making a change to their license basis set 6 point they still had that obligation to re-perform the 7 calculations, consider the new uncertainties with the 8 new equipment, and use their approved methodology.
9 So I feel that is valuable for me to be 10 aware of that.
11MS. GOLUB: So, Rich, if that was written 12 into the LAR would that have been sufficient or would 13 you have wanted it --
14MR. STATTEL: Well it essentially was 15 because it was an appendix to the LAR, so it was part 16of the LAR. Conditions sometimes, I mean different 17 licensees format it differently, but this was part of 18 the LAR.19MS. GOLUB: Correct. But this was a 20formal regulatory commitment. What I am saying if the 21 licensee had written it in that sort of the 22 description of how they are going to be conducting --
23 (Simultaneous speaking.)
24MR. STATTEL: That would be acceptable, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 78 too.1 MS. GOLUB: If that works. I just think 2--3MR. STATTEL: And I think the list of 4 commitments Oconee had was a lot shorter, so Diablo 5Canyon chose to elaborate a lot more. And, you know, 6 going to your comments, you know, you are asking well 7 why would they have to make a commitment to do this, 8 you know, why is this necessary, well, you know, the 9 plant chose to do this as a way of letting us, the 10 NRC, know that they intend to follow through with 11 this, this is what they intend to do.
12 It didn't factor -- It didn't weigh or 13 factor into their safety conclusion. We didn't 14 identify these as being required for issuing a license 15 amendment, but, again, we were aware of all of these 16 issues.17 So, you know, I mean we can talk about 18 individual one you would like to, you know, but one 19 had to do with time response, one had to do with some 20 isolation testing, I believe it was Commitment Number 21 9, and in that case they hadn't performed all of the 22 EQ testing for the equipment at the time they prepared 23 the license amendment and they hadn't done all of 24 their Class 1E isolation testing, but they recognized 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 79 that they were going to have to do that before they 1 installed this system.
2 So they identified that, they committed, 3yes, we are going to follow through with that. So 4 that is why they chose to include that.
5 MR. WATERS: I guess, Rich, the question 6 is was that before or after we issued the license and 7 was that something you ultimately looked at or 8 considered in some other form of that LAR approval?
9MR. STATTEL: Well that's a good question.
10 So in that particular case they completed that test 11before we issued the license amendment. So that 12 commitment was fulfilled.
13 That was one of many of these commitments 14 that had been fulfilled at the time we issued the 15 license amendment. We didn't make that -- You know, 16 I think actually we probably would have held off on 17 the license amendment if that one hadn't been 18fulfilled, but several of these they actually did 19 complete during the course of our evaluation.
20MS. GOLUB: Yes, this is good feedback 21though because the feedback is there for you. Diablo 22 Canyon, they made the decisions they made based on 23 their reasoning.
24They are not here, so I am not going to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 80 speak for them, but it sounds, you know, that that's 1 going to be a licensee decision not a project-specific 2 basis to choose which commitments to make.
3MR. STATTEL: Yes, I would say Diablo 4 Canyon used these commitments more liberally than what 5--6 (Simultaneous speaking.)
7MS. GOLUB: Right, that's my 8 interpretation as well.
9MR. STATTEL: But I think that's okay, 10 too.11MS. GOLUB: Right, absolutely, that's a 12 choice that they made and, yes, there's nothing.
13MR. HOOTEN: But at the same time we 14 shouldn't interpret what they did as a model for 15everyone else to follow either, right, you know, 16 that's what I am hearing you say.
17MR. STATTEL: Well that is your decision, 18 that's your choice.
19 MR. HOOTEN: I understand.
20MR. STATTEL: You could. I don't see any 21 problem with it because, again, they are not asking us 22 to base our conclusions off of what they are 23committing to do and we still have -- If we see a 24 commitment that we feel basically would prevent us 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 81 from being able to have a safety conclusion like that 1 one, if they hadn't completed their isolation testing 2 that might have been a show stopper.
3 We might not have been able to issue their 4license amendment. We would certainly identify that, 5you know, we can do that, and we would do that. So 6 having it as a commitment up front because they hadn't 7 completed that activity and then closing it out during 8 the process of our evaluation I think that's perfectly 9 fine. It gets everything out in the open.
10MS. GOLUB: Yes, that's right, and that's 11 the choice that's being made, and, yes, absolutely.
12 So I don't think from our perspective we need to go 13 through all of the questions.
14 I think we have kind of the general basis 15 for, yes, for what you guys had in mind, so I 16 appreciate that.
17 MR. STATTEL: Okay.
18 MS. GOLUB: And I am thinking that maybe 19 we could add something to our pre-application.
20MR. DARBALI: And I am going to ask Booma 21 and industry, but I don't how long the concept of 22 commitments has existed in licensing, but --
23 MR. STATTEL: A long time.
24 MR. DARBALI: -- would imagine there would 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 82 be some NRC or industry guidance document on --
1 MS. GOLUB: There is. Yes, there is.
2MR. DARBALI: Okay. So I would refer back 3 to those.4 MS. GOLUB: Yes, absolutely. Yes, we're 5 doing that. That's no problem.
6 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
7MR. STATTEL: I would imagine it predates 8 Three Mile Island, but my first experience with 9 dealing with commitments, license commitments, was 10 there were a lot of them after Three Mile Island for 11 implementing Reg Guide 197 requirements, things like 12 that.13 And so in the early '80s there was a big 14 effort to -- The NRC came out and did inspections at 15 the plants to verify that the commitments have been 16 fulfilled and in a lot of cases they found that they 17 weren't.18 So that was a big issue back in the early 19'80s, but they may have actually just prior to Three 20 Mile Island.
21MS. GOLUB: Well there is an industry 22 guidance document, NEI 9904 which is adopted by all of 23 the licensees and it gives very specific directions on 24 how to craft commitments and when they are necessary.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 83 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
1MS. GOLUB: So we are not looking for the 2NRC to provide us information on that. This was only, 3this was really just specific to the ISG. So I think 4we got what we needed from the discussion. Thank you.
5 MR. HUGHEY: And not to belabor it, LIC-6 105 is what is --
7 MS. GOLUB: Is the NRC's --
8MR. HUGHEY: --
the NRC's policy on 9regulatory commitments. LIC-105, I believe it is.
10Yes, it is. We wanted it to be public for industry 11 when we issued it.
12 MR. WATERS: Yes, so obviously you don't 13 want to revisit or challenge the regulatory policy 14commitments. What I would ask though is I think 15 what's more important when we get to the September 16workshop is what content in the LAR that we call 17 commitments or just text description could be subject 18 to further inspection and/or license condition both in 19 vendor, you know, the vendor development site or site 20 installation site, I think that's part of that ongoing 21 conversation we're going to have in September.
22 MS. GOLUB: Yes, agreed.
23MR. DARBALI: Okay. So I think we are 24 done with that topic. We are up for a break. Do we 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 84 have any questions or comments from the folks on the 1 phone?2 (No audible response.)
3MR. DARBALI: Okay. I want to thank 4 Sheldon and Booma and John for helping us in this 5section, and Bob if he called in. We are going to be 6 taking a break.
7 Since Aaron is going to be helping us in 8 the vendor oversight plan portion I think we can take 9 a break of ten minutes and come back at 9:50. Okay, 10 thank you.
11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 12 off the record at 9:40 a.m. and resumed at 9:53 a.m.)
13MR. GOLLA: We're back. And, vendor 14 oversight plan. Are we looking at it now?
15MR. DARBALI: So, Ray, I'm going to ask 16 you to provide that. A brief summary of the summary 17 you provided earlier today.
18 (Laughter.)
19MR. HERB: Okay. I actually refined it a 20little bit, based on the previous discussion. I wish 21 I had heard that before I opened my mouth earlier this 22 morning, but this section right here is the summary of 23 the vendor oversight activities and planning.
24 And as Rich and Samir have said, we're 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 85 getting an early issuance of the license and so we're, 1 essentially, we're promising, we're committing, we're 2 obligating ourselves to follow those things in the 3 LAR.4 And so, we've always done vendor 5 oversight, but to the degree that we have documented 6 that and provided assurance that those activities were 7 done on paper so they can be inspected and reviewed 8 has been less so. Okay.
9 Primarily we have always looked at the end 10products like, you know, like Rich says. We've looked 11 at, we've witnessed testing, we've been there for 12specific milestones in the design. We've always been 13 there from the beginning to the end for those 14 activities.
15But usually we show up. We may do a trip 16 report and we may have a plan. We review the test 17 plans ahead of time, we do all this stuff.
18 So, there's things that was formally done, 19 but this oversight activity, since you guys are, we're 20 going to commit to doing it in the future and you're 21 going to base your licensing designs on those 22 activities, we thought we would formalize a little 23 more.24 Now this, a lot of this guidance comes out 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 86 of the EPRI, the digital engineering guide, and also 1 the guide for commercial grade dedication. A lot of 2 these things are very similar.
3 And like I said, we've done these 4activities. A lot of plants have done critical 5 digital reviews which involves a lot of this stuff up 6 front where you make sure they have a quality process 7 that meets the expectations and that they follow their 8 process.9 Kind of a mini audit type of activity.
10 Audit-like activity. And then we've done acceptance 11 reviews of a lot of these documents.
12 And so, so we thought because of C.2.2, 13 Item 1, that's primarily, to the QA program, we felt 14 the direction of this change is a little bit from just 15 checking the outputs to also checking the process to 16 make sure that the vendor is following a process that 17 they've obligated themselves to in our purchase order, 18for the system. And, what we have obligated our self 19 to as well in the LAR.
20 And so, if you look at the wording there, 21 we expanded it beyond just the quality piece to 22 include all the stuff of the V&V requirements 23 traceability configuration management testing, 24 software QA.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 87 And then we even added SDOE and applicable 1 PSAIs as well, because our oversight activities 2 include more than just the processes for software 3development. And it includes all those aspects to 4 make sure that what we ask for is what we're going to 5 get.6 We, in the Industry, typically like to say 7 we trust but verify. And so, the whole part of this 8 plan, this plan probably will be updated and refined 9 as we go along.
10 It's designed, it's really a living plan.
11 And it's designed to react to things that we find when 12we go to a vendor facility. And so we would do that.
13 And every time we would change it would be available 14 for continuous inspection.
15 I said in the past, we've always, like I 16 say, as Rich said, they had a vendor oversight when he 17was there, and we've always had one too. But we're 18 stepping up our game.
19 Primarily because the new standard design 20process for standardized across the industry. We see 21 this activity as very important to getting a quality 22output. So, we want to do that to ourselves to 23satisfy our own expectations and make sure we get a 24 good thing.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 88 And, again, the documentation activities 1 in the past have been somewhat lacking and so this is 2 going to formalize that to give you something to 3 inspect when you come to the sites.
4 And then the rigor of activities really 5 should be commensurate to safety. So we do a lot of 6 this stuff now but now we're going into that alternate 7review process where the impacts are much more 8significant than they were in the past. In the past, 9 we were saying 50.59, as long as we stay within our 10 licensing basis we're good, we can make those 11 decisions.
12 But now, we have to stay within our 13 licensing basis as approved in the LAR. And so, the 14 significance of any of those changes and impacts are 15 a lot more. So we have to do a better job.
16 And then, again, and then finally we want 17 to, this is a transactional agreement between us and 18 the NRC and we want you to feel comfortable that we 19 know what we're doing and that we can document that 20 and demonstrate that to you ahead of time so that you 21 feel good that we know what we're doing, how we're 22 going to do it.
23 And so, pretty much that's, that's the, 24 and it's all written here. You can see, there's the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 89elements of it. It's kind of thin, but the plan 1 itself, which is a living document, would be available 2 for inspection and review as part of the licensing 3 process. Just to make sure we get all the parts.
4MR. DARBALI: Thank you, Ray. You brought 5 up a point that the v endor oversight plan would be 6available for inspection or audit. I would imagine 7 that if we needed to look at it during our review, 8 they would ask you to put it in the portal.
9 And a site, a regional inspector, would do 10during inspections, would reference that. Post-11 license amendment issues.
12I do have a few questions. One is, I 13 would expect that the plan itself would have already 14 been developed or, the first revision of it or an 15 existing revision, would be in place by the time the 16 LAR is submitted?
17 MR. HERB: Yes, certainly.
18MR. DARBALI: Okay. So, how big do you 19 think that document would be, length-wise?
20MR. HERB: Typically we've see them maybe, 21it just really just depends. Because it's going to 22 setup a framework, who is responsible, reporting 23activities. And it would have schedule, it would have 24 a scope and so maybe ten, 20 pages total.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 90 MR. DARBALI: Oh, okay.
1 MR. HARRELL: For a system, yes.
2 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
3 MR. HERB: For a system, yes.
4 MR. DARBALI: Okay. Because, looking at 5 this, I think this is very, I know the first three 6 words are, the project specific. The language of it 7 is not project specific.
8MR. HERB: Well, we had to, when we would 9 put this in our LAR it would be --
10 MR. DARBALI: Right.
11MR. HERB: -- we would mention the 12 platform --
13 MR. DARBALI: Right.
14MR. HERB: -- and the application, the 15 scope --16 MR. DARBALI: That would be helpful.
17MR. HERB: We tried to keep it at a high-18 level because we didn't --
19 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
20 MR. HERB: -- platform at high-level.
21 MR. DARBALI: Right. Right.
22MR. STATTEL: Would you expect this to be 23 included in the LAR?
24 MS. GOLUB: Yes.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 91 MR. HERB: This oversight --
1MR. STATTEL: And the reason I ask is, I'm 2 looking at ISG-06 and I don't see a specific item in 3 the Enclosure B.
4MR. HERB: There is not. Yes, there not.
5 MR. STATTEL: Should there be?
6 MR. HERB: No.
7MS. GOLUB: The C.2.2.1 is the 8 prerequisite that's being fulfilled by the item.
9MR. DARBALI: Right. The prerequisite is 10 for use in the alternate --
11MS. GOLUB: Would you mind pulling up 12 C.2.2.1 --
13MR. DARBALI: -- review process. But 14 right, there is no section.
15MR. STATTEL: There is nothing in 16 Enclosure B?
17 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
18 MR. STATTEL: Good point.
19 MR. HERB: You're right.
20MR. HARRELL: It sh ould have been in 21 Enclosure B.
22MR. STATTEL: Yes, that's what I'm 23 thinking.24 MS. GOLUB: So, there is C.2.2.1 --
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 92 MR. HARRELL: Item 3.
1 MR. DARBALI: Right.
2 MR. HERB: I see it.
3MS. GOLUB: Item 1 is the prerequisite for 4 the vendor oversight plan.
5MR. HERB: Right. And I guess he is 6 asking is, is this in a section in the LAR? I guess 7 it would be in prerequisite section, right?
8MS. GOLUB: Right. So there would be a 9 section --
10 MR. HERB: Yes.
11MS. GOLUB: -- in the LAR that is for the 12 prerequisites, and we would address each of these 13 items that are on the list.
14MR. DARBALI: Because maybe, to Richard's 15 point, maybe we do need a section of information to be 16 provided in vendor oversight plan and detail more 17 specifics of what you expect to see. Right.
18MR. STATTEL: I don't remember the 19 conversation. I mean, did we consciously decide not 20 to choose not to include it in Enclosure B because --
21 MS. GOLUB: No.
22 MR. DARBALI: No.
23MS. GOLUB: No, there was no conscious 24decision. I think, what we did in Enclosure B we just 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 93 kind of went down the D, the D list.
1MR. STATTEL: I mean, I don't know what 2it's going to like. If it's going to be a 500 page 3 document.4 MR. HERB: Oh, no, no, no.
5 MR. STATTEL: And that's --
6MR. HERB: In the LAR, it would be a 7 couple of pages. It would be like this.
8 MR. DARBALI: So that's the --
9MR. HERB: This is the description, pretty 10 much, that would go in the LAR with maybe a little 11 additional stuff about the system names and the 12 vendors names and stuff like that.
13 Now, the plan itself is probably ten to 20 14pages long. And it would have attachments and reports 15 and outputs.
16 But it's a plan. A plan, you know, just 17 what we're looking at, what are the things we want to 18do, what are the business, when is the timing. It 19 would be a schedule. And it would be there.
20 And it would also be a planning tool that 21 if you, I mean, I heard that if you guys felt like you 22 had to go to the vendor you could maybe pick a time 23 when we were going.
24 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 94MR. BURZYNSKI: Ray, you intend this plan 1 to be a living document, right?
2MR. HERB: Yes, and that's what I said.
3 Yes, it's a living document. That's where you don't 4 want to submit it on the docket and it be available 5 for you.6 MR. DARBALI: Right.
7MR. HERB: Because the plan will have, it 8 will have, you know, you look down here it says, 9 initial audits and reviews, periodic audits. On the 10second page it says, periodic meetings to resolve 11 issues, additional technical resource surveillances, 12 management interventions, stop work order and recovery 13 plans.14 And so, we won't put those in the plan 15 unless we have a problem.
16 MR. DARBALI: Right.
17 MR. HERB: But if we have a problem, the 18 plan will be revised to include those things. Those 19 additional.
20 MR. DARBALI: See, when I asked how long 21 it was I was hoping you could tell me, oh, it's 58 22 pages, and I can say, okay, then provide me a five 23 page summary.
24MR. HERB: I was thinking it would be a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 95 two page.1 MR. DARBALI: Right.
2MR. HARRELL: So, one previous experience 3 with this, my company and I did the one min complete 4 ABWR vendor oversight plan, it was 50 pages of techs 5and templates for reports.
So, it's not a huge 6 activity.7 And that one --
8MS. GOLUB: That was for the whole plant.
9MR. HARRELL:
That was for the whole 10plant. So that included everything from reactor trip 11 systems to less important reactivity controls.
12 MR. DARBALI: Right. And, the point I'm 13 getting at is, basically you're describing what you 14 will do, I guess for, and we are relying on the vendor 15 oversight plan to cover those implementation 16activities we won't be able to review. So I guess 17 what would be very useful to the Staff is the how 18 you're going to be doing those activities.
19MR. HARRELL: And that would be in the 20 detailed report.
21 MR. DARBALI: Right.
22 MR. HARRELL: The plan itself.
23 MR. DARBALI: Okay. So, it does --
24MR. HERB: Samir, the how you mean on 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 96vendor site with what forms, with thought process 1 procedures --
2MR. DARBALI: Yes. Well, not to data 3 about detail but --
4 MR. HERB: I mean, be like thread audits 5--6 MR. DARBALI: Well, right.
7MR. HERB: -- inspection of documents, 8 requirements --
9 MR. DARBALI: So you mentioned --
10 MR. HERB: -- tracing?
11MR. DARBALI: No, no. You mentioned, 12 well, you mentioned SDOE but you only mentioned it, 13 you don't say what is the other activities you're 14 going to be doing.
15 MR. HERB: Oh.
16MR. DARBALI: And again, I know it's hard 17 to bring a three page summary of a ten page document, 18 it doesn't add value.
19 MR. HERB: Right.
20 MR. DARBALI: So, maybe --
21MR. HERB: Well, you know, as part of the 22 SDOE, we put that in there because we're committing to 23 certain activities in D.8.
24 MR. DARBALI: Right.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 97MR. HERB: And so, this is the vehicle 1that we would do those activities. How we would 2 oversight the implementation of the secured 3 development environment at the vendor and SDOE.
4MR. DARBALI: Because your D.8 would point 5 to this document?
6 MR. HERB: Well --
7 MR. DARBALI: But as I --
8MR. HERB: -- I don't know that a D.8 9would point to this document. It might. I think, 10 didn't we say, we did say in our summary of D.8 that 11 it was vendor oversight activities.
12 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
13 MR. HERB: So, yes.
14 MR. DARBALI: You could point to, what I 15 want to say is, you point to the vendor oversight plan 16 and the vendor oversight plan pulls back to D.8.
17MR. HERB: No. Yes, no. Those activities 18-- the way vendor oversight works is you sit down at 19 the very beginning --
20 MR. DARBALI: Right.
21MR. HERB: -- in the negotiation stage 22 with the vendor and you say, these are the activities 23 that I need to see, that I need to look at.
24 And then you get that contractually put 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 98 into the purchase order, the hooks for those things.
1 And then generally there's a high-level schedule.
2 And there's whole points, there is points 3 where they have to call you, you have to make things 4 available. We show up at the vendor, we do that.
5 So those things, those activities for all 6aspects would have to be covered in there. So we 7 would pull, the vendor oversight plan would pull from 8D.8, they would pull from the D.2, the D.4. All those 9 sections. Even D.3, equipment qualification.
10 We would pull all those things in here and 11 it would say, those are all the requirements that we 12 want to make sure that the vendor has done properly, 13 and we would put those hooks in our plan.
14So, what do we do? We made point to other 15criteria in our plan. And that criteria may be in our 16 LAR or those may be in our internal documents.
17 MR. ODESS-GILLETT: And, Samir, maybe --
18 MR. HERB: Our systems requirements --
19MR. ODESS-GILLETT: -- I could add a 20little bit, Ray, if you don't mind. Is, you were 21 asking, well, for instance, for SDOE, what's the how, 22 on how the licensee would review that.
23 And I think what the LAR could describe 24 are like, what are the critical characteristics in 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 99 SDOE.1 MR. DARBALI: Right.
2 MR. ODESS-GILLETT: And what would we be 3looking for when we do that. And that would probably 4 be the extent of the how.
5MR. DARBALI: Okay. I think what I'm, I'm 6 kind of thinking into the f uture because this is a 7 very important document to make our safety 8 determination on.
9 It seems like this is, for us, a mandatory 10audit item. We're trying, so we can look at the 11 actual document.
12 Again, if you had told me it's a 200 page 13 document but you're going to provide me a ten, 20 page 14summary, that should be enough. If it's a 20 to 30 15 page document, then we can audit that.
16MR. DRAGOVICH: Yes, I just wanted to add, 17 in light of what we talked about this morning is that, 18 one of our objectives with adding this was to try to 19 take the place of what the Staff would normally do in 20 our inspections.
21 So, I think what one crucial thing is, we 22 mentioned the guidance document where we wanted to 23 detail a lot of those requirements, and so I think a 24 lot of the success of this is to make sure that we'll 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 100 work with you to make sure we cover what you would 1 expect to see in those vendor oversights so that when 2 we say project specific at the beginning, that's where 3 we would get into what would normally be looked at in 4 a typical audit.
5 MR. DARBALI: Okay. So, we're trying to 6 avoid having audit guidance in our, in the ISG.
7 Anything is up for audit.
8 But mainly, would you think it's 9 reasonable to add a little more detail on the what and 10 reference sections that provide more context to that?
11 Because, I mean, if I get this right now it's like, in 12 my safety evaluation, although the licensee provided 13 this summary, and the Staff went and audited it.
14MS. GOLUB: Just so I'm clear, Samir. So 15 are you saying, when you said, could you provide more 16 detail, do you mean in the summary that's --
17 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
18MS. GOLUB: -- submitted as part of the 19 LAR?20 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
21 MS. GOLUB: Okay.
22MR. DARBALI: I mean, Rich, I mean, do you 23 think this -- the thing is, if we need to bank, if we 24 need to rely on the full vendor oversight plan, safety 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 101 determination we need on the docket.
1MS. GOLUB: Right. No, I understand what 2you're saying. So, what you're saying is, if you 3 provide some material here in the summary, then we 4 don't have to put the whole VOP on the docket.
5 MR. DARBALI: Right.
6 MR. HERB: I see.
7MS. GOLUB: Yes. Okay. So, I think 8that's good feedback for us. Maybe we can take 9 another cut at this --
10 MR. HERB: Yes.
11 MS. GOLUB: -- and then when we have the 12 inspection workshops and vendor oversight and all 13 those activities --
14 MR. DARBALI: Right.
15MS. GOLUB: -- there all kind of tied 16 together, maybe we can bring, maybe bring a version of 17 this that has a little more meat to it.
18MR. DARBALI: Right. And if you can 19tailor it to the Diablo sample or even Hope Creek, 20 just so that we can see --
21MR. HERB: Okay, so actually use a real 22 example?23 MR. DARBALI: Yes, that would --
24 MR. HERB: Okay.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 102MR. DARBALI: -- I think it would be more 1 helpful than a generic one.
2 MR. HERB: Okay.
3MR. WATERS: For a hypothetical sake, 4 would it be a showstopper to put the 20 to 30 page 5 document on the docket, recognize this is a living 6 document?7 Because it seems to be, as Samir said, a 8 crucial piece of information for a decision and the 9 confidence of the approved system early on.
10MR. HERB: You know, it's not a problem to 11 put a 20 to 30 page document on the docket, but it is 12 a living document and so --
13 MR. WATERS: Understood.
14MR. HERB: -- I'm a little reluctant to 15put a living document that's on there. I would rather 16have, if you can make a decision on a high-level 17 summary and then make sure that the document is 18available for inspection at any time. Just to make 19 sure that it's still within those high-level --
20MR. STATTEL: I think we can work through 21that. I'm just looking at ISG-06 and looking for a 22consistency here. And I look at the next item on the 23 list, which is the approved topical report.
24 Which literally is a yes/no question, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 103 right?1 MR. HERB: Right.
2MR. STATTEL: But that, it just says Item 3 1.4 in Enclosure B. And it has a Section D.5 that 4 talks about ASAIs.
5 MR. HERB: Right.
6MR. STATTEL: So, for consistency, I would 7think this would kind of be the same level. There 8 almost seems to me like there should be an item in 9 Enclosure B and it should point, not to C, but we 10 should have a D section or a D subsection to point to 11 which would have a paragraph or two describing, even 12 if it's a summary.
13 MR. HERB: Right.
14MR. STATTEL: Even if it's a summary. To 15 me, just logistically, I think that would, it would be 16 consistent. Because it's kind of a similar --
17 MR. HERB: Well, we do have those words, 18 vendor oversight, I think several times through the D 19 sections and so maybe --
20 MR. STATTEL: Maybe we can find a --
21MR. HERB: -- just part of the scope would 22 be --23MS. GOLUB: I think Mark has something he 24 would like to say.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 104 MR. BURZYNSKI: Yes, I wanted to follow-1up, just on Mike's thought. About the idea of putting 2 it on the docket.
3 Maybe we should hold open the idea that we 4 start with the summary in the LAR.
5 MR. HERB: Yes.
6MR. BURZYNSKI: I will suspect that you 7 will have some feedback on it, after you audit what 8might be on the SharePoint. And the changes that 9 might result from it are really what you would be 10 importing, or interested in.
11 And it could be a document that is put on 12 the docket, later in the process, after you've done 13 any auditing through the Sh arePoint so that it 14 reflects the content that's finally negotiated as 15 opposed to starting with it and then having to add it 16 again later to capture the things you really wanted.
17 MS. ALVARADO: This is Rossnyev. First, 18 I think it would be really helpful on, I think it 19 would be good to talk to some of the DORL people about 20 these because I don't know how we can handle 21 performing audits in the SharePoint.
22 I know we are allowed to see them and 23 stuff like that, but I don't think we have crossed 24 that line yet of the reporting and audit of documents 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 105 in the SharePoint.
1 Because there's always the concern of 2grabbing too much information and stuff like that. So 3 we might want to check with DORL about it, what we are 4 allowed or not to do regarding that.
5MR. DARBALI: So, the ISG has some 6 language as to making the documents available in a 7 portal or an electronic document repository. And it 8 does say the staff should not download or anything 9 like that.
10 And DORL looked at the language --
11MS. ALVARADO:
That is not what I'm 12 talking about.
13 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
14MS. ALVARADO: When we do the analysis we 15 are required to perform, to write a inventory audit 16 plan.17 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
18MS. ALVARADO: And you just need to 19 include all these mechanisms and be part of it 20 because, when you are using that information as 21 evidence, we need to write an audit plan and we need 22 to write an audit report.
23 So, with the portal, you need to talk to 24DORL about how to treat these so it's with final 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 106 regulatory framework.
1 I understand the whole thing about same 2 documents and not using it and all that, I'm not talk 3 about it, it's more about making it part of a records 4--5 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
6MS. ALVARADO: -- as in the regulatory 7 framework that we have.
8 MR. DARBALI: That's a good point, Ross.
9 I think in the past we have had open items and vendors 10 or licensees would put the documents and we would 11 review them to determine if we needed them on the 12 docket, bring preparation for an audit.
13 But we don't formalize an audit plan 14 saying, right, we can work with DORL, we can have an 15audit plant that is open ended just one week or 16something. But we can work with DORL to make sure 17this is the type of information we want them to 18 docket. We would end up with a lot of audits.
19 MS. GOLUB: Yes.
20MR. DARBALI: But yes, we do need to check 21 with DORL on that.
22MR. STATTEL: So, some real-world 23examples. We, Gush and I have performed several 24 audits on set point calculations.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 107 And it's not, typically we don't require 1those to be docketed. We do require, we have required 2 summaries of the calculation results to be part of the 3 license amendment. We're doing one right now.
4 But, we choose to audit the actual reports 5 in order to get the understanding of where the results 6 came from. But we base our safety conclusion on the 7 results.8 And we do write formal audit plans and we 9write audit reports. So, we are able to do that, 10 we've done it by visiting the facilities, we've done 11 it using SharePoint documents.
12 So, I mean, we have several precedence 13that we can go through that activity. But, the point 14 is taken.15MR. HERB: And I may be speaking out of 16 line here, but I suspect that this plan, at least the 17 Rev 0, this plan, we may not have a schedule yet, but 18 it would certainly have activities and areas that are 19 being covered in scope, would be available at the time 20 of pre-application meeting.
21 Because that is, and again, we welcome, at 22 Southern we would welcome NRC as a stakeholder input 23 to that plan. Okay.
24MS. GOLUB: Yes, so I wanted to speak 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 108 briefly to the idea because we weren't really prepared 1 to answer the question about whether or not it should 2 be put on the docket.
3 I guess from our perspective, I want to be 4 a little bit careful about committing to submitting 5something on the docket like that. Number one, to 6 Mark's point, it's a living document, it's going to 7 change as the project evolves.
8 Number two, if we submit it on the docket, 9 we need to understand the regulatory basis, why we're 10submitting it, how it's going to be evaluated. That's 11 a whole complicated, a complicated item that ISG-06, 12 that was not one of the intents was to put something 13 like that on the docket and then come up with some 14 basis for the review and whatnot.
15 So for us, the summary, we can beef up the 16summary and submit that on the docket. Of course, you 17 have the vendor oversight plan for your review in the 18 portal or SharePoint site or whatever the right 19 mechanism is for doing that.
20 And if there are select portions that you 21 feel are critical, you know, for you to draw your 22 safety conclusions, those can be submitted on the 23 docket. Those portions of it.
24 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 109 MS. GOLUB: But I think for right now, I 1 think we should leave it, leave it at that and see if 2 we can make that work without having to put the whole 3 plan on the docket.
4 MR. DARBALI: Sure. I agree.
5MR. ARMSTRONG: Yes, this is Aaron 6 Armstrong. I did look at the oversight plan.
7 I just want to make sure, like, in the 8 plan, one of our functions is to look at vendors and 9 the sub-suppliers of vendors, which is supplying 10 licensees as well.
11 Would you, would the licensees be taking 12 on that auditing or the inspection activity at the 13 sub-suppliers or sub-suppliers of those people as 14well? They're supplying materials, parts, services 15 and components.
16MR. NOVAK: From my experience, that they 17 have, actually have done that in the past, we've had 18several entities who have gone to our suppliers. I 19 can speak from GE experience.
20 MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay.
21MR. NOVAK: I guess it isn't clear if this 22 oversight plan, if the scope is meant to just cover 23 what they're doing and move what would have been Phase 24 2 activities or if this is the whole comprehensive 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 110oversight plan. So, and we talked about that a little 1 bit during our pre-meeting.
2 Did we ever come to a final decision on 3 that?4MS. GOLUB: Yes. And this is just the, 5 this is the overall --
6 MR. NOVAK: The overall plan, okay.
7MS. GOLUB: Yes, vendor oversight plan.
8 And there is going, we have C.2.2.1 up here but we 9already know that C.2.2.3b is commitments that are 10 going to be made to performing later life cycle 11activities per the licensee's QA program. And I know 12 there is talk of those being license conditions.
13 So, I think that kind of covers those 14 later life cycle activities and what the utilities are 15going to be doing. And I don't know if we need to 16make this specific to that. I think this is just, 17 this is the overall licensee vendor oversight plan.
18And I want to go back to one thing Ray 19 said which is, and I don't know if, Ray, you want to 20 speak to this a little is, is that this sort of more 21 larger scope vendor oversight plan, this is not just 22 because of ISG-06, the ultimate review process and the 23 EPRI, or actually Dave Hooten is here and can speak to 24 it as well, but the EPRI digital engineering guide 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 111 that's currently under works, it's going to be the 1 basis for the standard design process for the 2 licensees.
3 I mean, that has also expanded the vendor 4 oversight plan section, to add more information. So 5 this is not just something the licensees are doing to 6 make you happy in an ultimate review space.
7MR. ARMSTRONG: I guess on the second 8 question I had is, obviously with inspection activity 9 objective evidence of activities affecting quality is 10what we looked at. How readily available, in our 11 current setup, how readily available would that 12 objective evidence be, roughly?
13 I mean, would that be something that's 14 only really, something that Rich would have to look at 15 or would be made available to the vendor group as part 16 of like developing plans to go inspect, I mean, I 17 guess this is kind of a big picture question of --
18MS. GOLUB: Well, under Tier 1 what do you 19 guys do? Under Tier 1.
20 I mean, I thought under Tier 1 that there 21 was an obligation for, during the licensing process, 22 that the I&C branch staff would do their audits, and 23 then after the SER was issued, the regional inspection 24 folks would use the I&C branch as proposed inspection 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 112 items, and their own items, and do their inspections.
1 I mean, I don't think under that scenario, 2do you play role in the project LAR or licensing 3 action?4 In my mind, I thought you guys were more, 5 you would go and do your vendor work separate from the 6 specific licensee --
7MR. ARMSTRONG: We would take direction --
8 MS. GOLUB: -- licensing action?
9 MR. ARMSTRONG: -- by them. And in this 10 fashion, not all the fashions of a vendor group, but 11we would take action as they deem fit. I mean, as 12 they decide to do.
13 If they scope out an inspection for A, B 14 and C because those are areas of interests, we would 15 go do what NRR requests.
16 MS. GOLUB: Absolutely. But I guess the 17question is, in the past, for Oconee and for Diablo 18 Canyon did you, I don't remember any inspection items 19 that looked like they were allocated to the vendor 20 quality branch to go do, in those previous ones.
21 MR. DARBALI: Right. So, for developing 22 life cycle activities on the vendor side, when we do 23 our tier review, typically we don't involve the vendor 24 group.25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 113 However, when we'd have issues with, and 1 this applies more to typical reports, but when we've 2 had issues with the vendor's QA program, we engage the 3 quality group for guidance that somehow participated 4 in our reviews.
5MS. GOLUB: And this is our understanding 6 as well.7 MR. DARBALI: Right.
8 MS. GOLUB: What cause you would --
9MR. DARBALI: Several issues can occur on 10 vendor side that the NRC staff aren't prepared to 11 handle. So the vendor group would help with that.
12 With the alternate review process, the 13 vendor inspection group is the vehicle that allows the 14 staff to confirm that those activities are performed.
15 So, there is several roles that the vendor inspection 16 group performs.
17One is, a vehicle for the staff. For both 18licenses and amendment inspection activities. Another 19 is, and that might the bulk of their work is handling 20 specific issues that might be generic, maybe not 21 applicable to all licensee, it could be applicable to 22 all licensee.
23But, issues at the vendor side that the 24staff, the technical staff, is not prepared to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 114 address.1 MS. GOLUB: And so I guess, and I'm just 2 going to throw out a scenario and you can tell me if 3 this, and I want to make sure I'm hearing what you 4 guys are saying appropriately.
5 So, if the licensee conducts one of their 6 audits inspections, one of their oversight activities, 7 they write up their report, you take a look at what 8 they've put together and you see that there are some 9 quality issues that the licensee has identified, and 10 they're significant enough to you that you think, you 11 know what, we need to take another look at what the 12 vendor is doing, that seems like the type of trigger 13 that you would use to ask your vendor quality branch, 14 versus building that into the process from the 15beginning for every single project. I'm struggling a 16 little bit with which path we're on.
17 MR. DARBALI: I would say both paths.
18MR. ARMSTRONG: You're correct on this.
19 Another observation was --
20MS. GOLUB: Wait, I'm sorry, so the answer 21 was?22MR. DARBALI: Yes and yes. So none of 23 our, one or two, both are within the purview.
24 MS. GOLUB: So that's a change then from 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 115 the previous tiered processes. And for the previous 1 process, when we described it, it sounded like it was 2 only the one case where there was a quality issue and 3 you wanted your vendor quality branch folks to go in 4 and investigate.
5MR. DARBALI: Yes, there is change, but 6 understand that the ultimate review process, by 7 itself, is a change. And, yes.
8 MR. ODESS-GILLETT: Samir, so, Aaron had 9 said, habitual question was, would the vendor 10 documentation be available, readily available --
11 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
12MR. ODESS-GILLETT: If you are doing this 13 inspection, let's say that looking at the licensees' 14 rigor and you question something about the inspection, 15 would the vendor documentation be readily available to 16support that inspection? And I think the answer is 17 yes.18 Because the licensee has reviewed most of 19 the documentation that comes with the deliverables of 20the system. And if there isn't, it can be with 21today's portals. These things can be provided fairly 22 immediately.
23MR. ARMSTRONG: Yes, I agree. Thank you.
24MS. GOLUB: Thank you, Warren. My 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 116 apologies for not answering that.
1MR. HERB: Right. And when you say 2 objective quality evidence, that means something 3specific to me. It means like, it means documentation 4 of my reports, traceability back to the documents I 5 looked at, the activities that I did, maybe threads 6 that I pulled and then signatures that we all did.
7 But are you actually talking about the 8 actual source documents we looked at to do those 9 conclusions?
10MR. ARMSTRONG: Well, the objective 11evidence would be if you established thresholds or 12 limits or envelopes, you tested them, where are the 13 values.14 MR. HERB: Okay.
15MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay. If NRTE is required 16 to report those values, it was an NRTE operation.
17 MR. HERB: Oh, okay.
18 MR. ARMSTRONG: And all these things are 19--20 MR. HERB: You're right.
21MR. ARMSTRONG: -- in which you weren't 22going to basically be not responsible for. So, all 23 those records, when you get to looking at them --
24 MR. HERB: Right.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 117MR. ARMSTRONG: -- wherever they're at --
1 MR. HERB: Right.
2MR. ARMSTRONG: -- should be available for 3 our inspection.
4MR. HERB: Okay. Yes, that wouldn't be in 5 our report, that would be --
6 MR. ARMSTRONG: Okay.
7MR. HERB: -- yes, that would be at the 8 vendor's site, for the most part.
9MR. ARMSTRONG: The last one, is there any 10 more questions or comments? Okay.
11In reference to the plan, I did notice 12 that in NAQ-1 2015, which is the guidance we're 13 quoting, there is approximately, there's 117 shalls.
14 Now, not all these shalls would be a mechanism for 15 instruction, but I would assume that when you guys are 16invoking this on a vendor, there should be at least 17 117 mechanisms that you would be overseeing if they 18 were applicable to the vendor.
19 Is that an adequate assumption or are you 20 just going to say, follow 2.1.7?
21 I mean, there should be, if you have to 22 have configuration control, they should have a 23 mechanism that you verify that there is configuration 24 control.25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 118 MS. GOLUB: Isn't 115 in Subpart 2.7?
1MR. ARMSTRONG: One hundred seventeen 2 shalls --3 MS. GOLUB: In 2.7.
4MR. ARMSTRONG: -- in 2.7 alone. But 2.7 5 also bounces you back to --
6 MR. HERB: Yes, all the other ones.
7MR. ARMSTRONG: -- design control and 8 procurement, which also probably have as many or more 9 shalls. So, I mean --
10MR. HERB: If you look at the actual worry 11 from the, I actually don't have it in front of me, I 12 think it says, consistent with, doesn't it?
13 MS. GOLUB: It does.
14 MR. DARBALI: It does.
15 MS. GOLUB: Yes.
16MR. HERB: And so we're not, we're not 17 inspecting the NQA-1 2015 --
18 MS. GOLUB: Every single --
19MR. HERB: -- all those shall statements.
20MR. DARBALI: But I think Aaron's point 21 is, how do we determine that it is consistent with --
22 MR. HERB: Well, again, our NUPIC audit, 23 the QA process is compliant, is our primary means for 24 determining whether their process is compliant with 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 119 NQA-1 2015. Okay.
1 And so, once they have a process that's 2 complainant, we just look at their processes and make 3sure that they're living within their process. We 4 don't necessarily have to bounce that back.
5 I think we're relying on our NUPIC to make 6sure that they have an acceptable process. And we put 7 NQA-1 2015 because that's what NRC, you guys use, for 8 an acceptable QA like process.
9MS. GOLUB: And the vendors are compliant 10too in NQA-1 2015. I mean, this was not something new 11 for the vendors.
12Okay, yes. Okay, so, Warren is saying we 13 can take a look at 117 shalls and see which ones would 14 be applicable here.
15 But, I mean, to be clear, you're not going 16 to see like 117 separate activities in the licensee's 17 vendor oversight plan for each and everyone one of 18 those, that's not at all --
19MR. DARBALI: You're not going to see 20 that.21 MS. GOLUB: Yes, that's not --
22 MR. ARMSTRONG: I was just wondering --
23MS. GOLUB: That's not. And there's 24 other, as Ray said, there is new NUPIC audits, there's 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 120 other mechanisms that the licensing community uses.
1 Yes, the licensee community uses to make sure that the 2 vendors are, the vendor processes, quality processes 3 are up to snuff.
4 It's not going to be just on a project 5 specific basis --
6 MR. HERB: Right. And we're using --
7 MS. GOLUB: -- it's --
8MR. HERB: Yes. And we're also using a 9 NRC approved topical report --
10 MS. GOLUB: Right, it is.
11 MR. HERB: And so we are also relying on 12 the fact that you guys are good with it.
13MS. GOLUB: And that you do your own 14 inspections, right?
15 MR. HERB: Yes.
16MS. GOLUB: Your vendor quality branch 17does inspections. This is part of a bigger framework 18 that we're operating in.
19 MR. HERB: Yes.
20MR. ODESS-GILLETT: Yes, really, if you 21 think about it, the, really the, sort of like the 22 tradeoff of what the NRC Staff used to do with the 23 tier reviews, we're now moving that to the licensees.
24 And certainly the NRC Staff, when they did their 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 121 review, did not do the whole 117 shalls of NQS-1 or 1 stuff like --
2MS. GOLUB: Yes, thank you, Warren. I 3think that's a really important point. So I mean, 4 part of the idea here is we're trying, the licensees 5 are trying to step up and take on that part.
6And, I mean, I'll be frank. At some of 7 our team meetings, some of our vendors have provided 8 NRC audit plans, audit reports. We've actually gone 9 through those in detail at Diablo Canyon.
10 You know, you mentioned there was two of 11them. And we actually looked through those in detail, 12 in our meetings, with the idea that when we put 13 together guidance for the, the Industry guidance 14 companion document, that we're going to put templates 15 that are based on your templates for audit plans and 16 reports with the idea being that if Industry documents 17 those the way you would have documented them when you 18 come in to take a look at what Industry did, you're 19 going to see something that hopefully looks familiar 20 to you.21 That you would view as adequate as the 22work that you had done previously. So I don't want to 23 overstate what Industry is committing to do here.
24MR. DARBALI: Do you have access to the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 122 proprietary attachments to some of those audit 1 reports?2MS. GOLUB: I mean, we're not sharing 3 proprietary --
4MR. ODESS-GILLETT: But it's certainly --
5 MS. GOLUB: -- material.
6MR. ODESS-GILLETT: But what has public 7 clearly identified as the scope and how.
8MR. DARBALI: Right. It's just, sometimes 9 we have done audit reports where what's public is very 10 high-level but the detailed audit evaluations are in 11proprietary attachment. And it just, just a comment.
12MS. GOLUB: Yes, no, good. That's good 13 feedback on this.
14 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
15 MS. GOLUB: Yes. Because, you're right, 16 if we're looking, we can --
17MR. DARBALI: To the level of detail of 18what we have done. The proprietary attachments might 19 give you more information.
20MS. GOLUB: Give you more information, 21 yes.22 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
23MS. GOLUB: So hopefully somebody here 24 will have access to them. Thank you.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 123 MR. DARBALI: So, I'm thinking there are 1more ISG-06 development. It seems like a section 2 vendor oversight plan summary description needs to be 3 added.4 And then we'll have information to be 5provided and an application. And we'll take what 6 we've discussed here as equal to that.
7 What I'm thinking of is we're past the 8draft sessions. We are in the concurrence process.
9 Obviously we're going to take notes from this tabletop 10and the ACRS full committee recommendations and the 11 concurrence comments.
12 I'm thinking I would not want to spring 13 new language in a new section to Industry.
14MS. GOLUB: We certainly appreciate that.
15 Yes, thank you.
16MR. DARBALI: But if our process allows us 17 to do otherwise.
18MS. GOLUB: Well, is it? I mean, we can't 19 do what we've done in the past in terms of OneDrive 20 and whatnot, because you guys are in the more formal 21 part of your process, but, I mean, is it possible to 22 not maybe share the exact language but to give us some 23 ideas on what you're putting in there? I think that 24 would be very helpful.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 124 MR. DARBALI: Right.
1 MS. GOLUB: Because otherwise we're just 2 going to end having to make public comments and I feel 3 like it drags out the process.
4 MR. DARBALI: Right. So, we'll consider 5 that internal --
6 MS. GOLUB: Okay.
7 MR. DARBALI: -- see where our processes 8allows this. But, being sensitive to how we've worked 9 in the past and then being it was a good process that 10 we've had in how to continue that, but I added that as 11 one of the actions coming out this meeting, to add 12 that section. So we'll work through that.
13MR. WATERS: Yes, I want to add, I concur 14with what Samir said. To the extent that we can be 15 transparent with what's changing, we want to do that.
16 But the fuse is getting short to meet the 17July 24th date. But at some point, really becomes 18 frozen to get at the final version of the C for final 19legal review, things like that. And there is 20 administrative procedure as well.
21 So, at some point we need to make the 22 final tweaks to it, somehow communicate what those are 23 and essentially freeze that they get it actually 24 published for formal public comment.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 125 MR. DARBALI: Right.
1 MS. GOLUB: Yes. I mean, smaller tweaks 2 that's, you know, and we were at the ACRS meeting so 3 we did hear some of the feedback, but I don't think we 4 had any fundamental concerns with the feedback that 5 was given, it was mostly on the Tier 1, 2, 3 processes 6 anyway.7 MR. DARBALI: Right.
8MS. GOLUB: But adding a section for 9 vendor oversight, for example, it's a bit more than a 10 tweak and that, we would love to have at least some of 11 your thoughts on that.
12MR. WATERS: Yes, I agree. I didn't mean 13 to give that connotation --
14 MS. GOLUB: Okay.
15 MR. WATERS: You're right there.
16 MS. GOLUB: Because there is going to be 17an evaluation basis that's included there. And we 18 would just like to have some understanding as to what 19 that is. For your consideration.
20MR. DARBALI: So, I guess we're done with 21our last session tabletop. The next item is really to 22 go over summary action items or any stakeholder 23 feedback.24I'll just point out the note. I mean, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 126 we're lucky to have a transcript so we can go back and 1 look at that.
2 MS. GOLUB: Yes, thank you guys.
3MR. DARBALI: I'll just list the major 4 items that I took from yesterday and today.
5 I think on Section ISG-06, Section 6 D.5.1.2, I think the second to the last paragraph on 7 the application specific action items, in the 8 information to be provided it says, a license 9condition should be established. We're going to move 10 that to the evaluation portion.
11 And I had a separate conversation with 12Booma. And she pointed to somewhere else in the LAR, 13 I think Section B.
14 And the ISG Section B said, the Staff may 15 convert a commitment to a condition. So, here we'll 16 say a license condition should be.
17 So, we'll work internally to get some 18agreement. Whether the work should be, should or may.
19 That's one.
20 Another item is, when we're talking about 21 human factors in engineering, I think we had discussed 22 having a future call on a HFE example.
23 And then --
24MS. GOLUB: I'm contemplating two 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 127 examples.1 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
2 MS. GOLUB: One was, one of them was the 3 situation where the HFE changes were, or the human 4 factors changes were, were minor changes and evaluated 5 under a separate design change package, a separate 6 50.59 and documented in the LAR and then a second 7 where, and somebody can jump in if I'm off track here, 8 and a second one where we justified how it meet Level 9 3 from the NUREG-1764 that was listed. Is that what 10 we agreed to, Dave?
11 MR. HARRELL: Yes, that's what we agreed 12 to.13MS. GOLUB: I think we were looking at 14 providing both of those examples.
15MR. DARBALI: Okay. And I think the other 16 major item is, what we just talked about, adding a, 17 the vendor oversight plan description to the ISG in 18 Enclosure B.
19 MR. HERB: And did you want us to update 20 that, and also the document, right, to have more, you 21 said more section on scope?
22MS. GOLUB: The vendor oversight plan 23 summary.24 (Simultaneous speaking.)
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 128 MR. HERB: Yes. The actual description.
1MR. DARBALI: So, I think that's something 2 that we'll cover in the September workshop yes. But 3 I can maybe write that --
4 MR. HERB: Right.
5 MR. DARBALI: I guess I'm --
6MR. HERB: That's your, that's not your 7 actions.8MR. DARBALI: There's no action there.
9 I'm not only thinking about the discussion items we're 10 talking, but one of the major items in the tabletop is 11 how we can perform our updates, the ISG.
12 MS. GOLUB: Yes.
13MR. DARBALI: So, those were my items. I 14 don't know if anybody else had any other items.
15MS. GOLUB: No, I mean we, I think the 16 part that I'd like to talk about just a little since 17 we have a few moments is the September inspection 18workshop. When the time is right. I don't know if we 19 have to do public comments yet or if we have an 20 opportunity to talk about that?
21MR. DARBALI: Did you want to talk 22 specifically about the workshop or the dates?
23 MS. GOLUB: No, the workshop.
24 MR. DARBALI: Okay, go ahead. Yes.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 129MS. GOLUB: Yes, because we have a few 1 minutes 2 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
3 MS. GOLUB: And I guess what I wanted to 4 talk about was that, and I think this tabletop was a 5 very successful exercise.
6MR. DARBALI: I would actually, I would 7 call this a workshop.
8MS. GOLUB: Yes. Right, this workshop was 9--10 MR. DARBALI: Good.
11MS. GOLUB: -- I think this was very 12successful. And I think it, in large part, because we 13 had planned this out for months ahead of time, so we 14 all, we kind of knew what the outcomes were that we 15 wanted, we knew what our goals were, objectives, all 16 that good stuff months ago.
17 And so I'd like to do the same thing for 18 the September workshop. Make sure we understand who 19 are the participants in the workshop.
20 And we spent a little time at our industry 21 meeting yesterday putting together a list of outcomes 22we were looking for. We would love if maybe you guys 23 could do the same activity, we could compare them.
24 Just like we did for this table top 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 130exercise. To make sure that if we're going to 1 dedicate time and resources to that workshop, that we 2 all get what we want out of it.
3 And so, like I heard, one of the things I 4 heard was, okay, the vendor oversight plan summary, 5 that's going to be a document we'll bring to the 6 workshop.7 MR. DARBALI: Right.
8MS. GOLUB: I think our discussions on the 9 alternate review process, specific inspection items 10 and how these are phrased, that's another good topic 11 for the workshop.
12 And then just getting more clarity on 13 whose doing what, when.
14 MR. DARBALI: Yes.
15MS. GOLUB: And making sure that, because 16 I don't think we still have a line, and I still think 17 we have some preconceived notions of how this is going 18to play out. And I think you guys have different 19 ones.20 And then it sounds like, from that 21 regulatory transformation, I don't know what the t 22 was, team --
23 MR. DARBALI: The SECY document.
24MS. GOLUB: -- the SECY document. That 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 131 also had some, sounded like some changes for vendor 1 quality, maybe some expansion of scope or change in 2 scope. That wasn't clear to me either.
3 I did talk to Bernie about that a little 4 bit but I'm still not clear. So I thought this, the 5 inspection workshop would be another opportunity for 6 us to just get some clarity on if there are changes 7 occurring, they are certainly going to affect the 8 first adopters of the alternate review process and 9 we'd like to understand that.
10 MR. DARBALI: Sure.
11 MS. GOLUB: So, I guess this is a long-12 winded appeal for, we'd really like to plan this out 13 for you.14 Of course we would like you to be 15 involved. Aaron, if you're representing your branch 16we'd like you. And we would like someone from the 17 regional inspection group to also be involved in the 18 planning, just so we're all on the same page.
19 MR. DARBALI: Right.
20MS. GOLUB: And then we can setup, we can 21 work on some schedule of planning meetings or public 22 meetings or whatever the right mechanism is to do 23 that.24 MR. DARBALI: Sure.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 132 MR. WATERS: Yes, I agree.
1MS. GOLUB: And the date would be helpful 2 too because we do need a date for that. We proposed 3 two weeks.
4MR. WATERS: I agree. And I clearly heard 5 what you said, you want to focus on ISG-06 and 6 subsequent inspections.
7 Just one point of clarity. I don't know 8 if we'll be prepared, able to talk about the 9 independent recommendations in that transformation 10 SECY, that's a future activity so I'm not going to 11 commit, and we can talk about that in September.
12 MS. GOLUB: Understood.
13MR. DARBALI: Did you feel there was a 14need, understood on the inspection side and the 15 workshop, do you feel there was a need to have a joint 16 discussion on that same workshop or a separate 17 discussion on conditions?
18 MS. GOLUB: Yes, that's a good question.
19 Today's, the conversation today, I mean, it was a good 20discussion but it, I'm not sure we have clarity on 21 that, on that C.2.2.3b item.
22 And licensees can certainly propose 23 things, but the part that I'm struggling with is, 24 making regulatory commitments frankly is not that big 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 133 of deal.1 MR. DARBALI: Right.
2MS. GOLUB: There's guidance on how to do 3it and it's very much in the licensee's purview to 4 make those decisions. That's fine.
5 The catch is that condition part.
6 MR. DARBALI: Right.
7 MS. GOLUB: Right. What qualified then, 8 what will the NRC take and turn into license 9conditions. And from today's discussion, it wasn't 10 clear maybe if you guys already had that in mind.
11 So I think your question is a good one and 12 I think we should follow-up on that.
13 MR. DARBALI: Okay.
14 MS. GOLUB: Yes. I don't know, it could 15 be in that workshop, but maybe that's not relevant to 16 the workshop. Maybe we could just do it on a public 17 meeting phone call as well.
18 MR. DARBALI: Sure.
19 MS. GOLUB: Yes. Thank you for bringing 20 that up, I appreciate that.
21MR. DARBALI: So, I guess, Pete, before we 22 turn it over to Joe and go for public comments, I want 23 to thank Industry for not only being here but all the 24 preparation effort you put into this.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 134 I know it's sometimes it seems like you 1spent a lot of times creating one document and you 2 might get the impression that we just take a couple of 3 minutes to look at them, but we did look at them and 4 we appreciate the work that you're doing.
5 And we appreciate you're taking this 6seriously. We'd like to see a licensee coming in, but 7 we understand that the MPR industry team is working 8 really hard on this.
9 And as we've said many times before, we're 10 making a lot of effort in this ISG. There are some 11 areas where we're not on the same page, especially in 12the inspection activity. Hopefully we can solve or 13 get to common ground soon.
14 But, I want to thank you all for all 15 listening.
16MS. GOLUB: Thank you, Samir. I'm going to 17echo that. We really thank the NRC as well for 18 supporting this activity, going through all the 19planning with us over the last day and a half. Thank 20 you.21 It really, having examples is just, it 22 makes a huge difference. You know, reading words on 23 a page, it's difficult to understand what the intent 24 was.25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 135 If all of us retired tomorrow, for some 1 reason we all simultaneously win the lottery, we 2 really want the people that try to use all of this, 3 use these documents to have a good understanding of 4 what we had in mind.
5 And just to your point about not having a 6 lot of comments back, because I know, I guess what it 7 says to me is that the process we used to get here was 8 a good process because it turns out that as we work 9 together to craft those sections, and then we 10 interpreted those sections and produced documents to 11 them, and most of the feedback we got was, it was 12 pretty close.
13 And so I, I mean, I kind of take that as 14 a positive that we had, we did have the same things in 15mind. And so, yes, it's a positive. So thank you 16 very much.
17 MR. DARBALI: And I also thank Aaron and 18 Booma and John Hughey, Brian Green --
20MR. DARBALI: -- OGC, Sheldon Clark and 21 Bob Weisman who have supported us throughout this 22whole process. And we catch some of their viable 23 time, but their input is very valid, so thank you.
24MR. HANSON: I'm Jerud Hanson with NEI, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433 136just one quick comment. I want to, just again, 1 complement all the hard work that's being done on this 2 effort and understand the desire to get applications 3 in for digital mods and upgrades, but also need to 4 understand we need good, effective guidance in place 5 as well as inspector criteria, and that's what we're 6 working on, that's why we're here.
7And I think this is moving very well. And 8 if we keep going this direction we will see 9 applications and we'll see our plants upgrading and 10 modifying their equipment.
11 So, thank you very much to everyone, I 12 thought this was a very productive meeting.
13 MR. DARBALI: Thank you.
14MR. GOLLA: Okay, thanks, Jerud. So, just 15 one more thing. This is Joe Golla by the way.
16 Folks on the phone, in particular any 17 members of the public that may be on the line, do you 18have any questions or any comments? Members of the 19 public?20 Okay, hearing none, so, everyone, thanks 21 for a very good productive meeting and we'll see you 22 again real soon.
23 (Whereupon, the abo ve-entitled matter went 24 off the record at 10:52 a.m.)
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701(202) 234-4433