ML20134K109

Transcript of 961107 Stakeholders Public Meetings in Rosemont,Il Supporting NRC Domestic Mission & Natl Objectives in Intl Area Re DSI-G-3.Pp 1-29

ML20134K109
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Issue date:	11/07/1996
From:	NRC
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References
DSI-G-3-00012, DSI-G-3-12, NUDOCS 9611180247
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PSI' ' 3 Official Transcript of Proceedings i NUCLEAR REGULATOkY COMMISSION

Title:

Stakeholders Public Meetings Supporting NRC Domestic Mission and National Objectives in the International Area 1 2 3 N

4 <

o RECEIVED s

Docket Number

(not applicable) j NOV 141996 5 othee of the e g, secretary '

k I Location: Rosemont, Illinois 3 Q

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27 Date: Thursday, November 7,1996 Q D .. . ,

i Work Order No.: NRC-902 Pages 1-29 STAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.

Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. 1 Washington, D.C. 20005 1S0057 (202) 234-4433 c i 9611180247 961107 g acs^ t eoa m vsa

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1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 +++++

3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 +++++

5 STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT REBASELINING INITIATIVE 6 AND 7 STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETINGS 8 +++++

9 STRATEGIC ARENA:

10 SUPPORTING NRC DOMESTIC MISSION AND 11 NATIONAL OBJECTIVES IN THE 12 INTERNATIONAL AREA 13 +++++

14 THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER 7, 1996 16 +++++

17 ROSEMONT, ILLINOIS 18 +++++

19 The Supporting NRC Domestic Mission and 20 National Objectives in the International Area Session met 21 at The Ramada Hotel-O' Hare, 6600 North Mannhei:n Road, at 22 2:20 p.m., Doug Brookman presiding.

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1 A.G.E-N-D-A 2 Acenda Item Page l

3 A Strategic Arena: l l

4 Supporting NRC Domestic Mission and 5 National Objectives in the International Area 3 1

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3 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2- (2:20 p.m.)

3 MR. BROOKMAN: Good afternoon once again. My 4 name is Doug Brookman. I'll be facilitating this session.

5 This segment of the afternoon, this breakout is to discuss 6 direction setting issue number 20, International 7 Activities. The sponsor for this paper is Jim Shea, and 8 Jim will also be presenting this afternoon.

9 MR. SHEA: Thank you, Doug. I'm going to I 10 cover DSI-20, covering NRC's international activities,  !

11 with the focus on areas other than research which you just 12 heard covered by Themis Speis, including in that DSI the ,

13 international research that NRC engages in. So I will 14 focus on other areas of our activities. .

15 In addition to my being the sponsor, we had 16 two key writers for this DSI, Howard Faulkner of my office ]

17 and Steve Crockett of the office of general counsel whose 18 name doesn't appear up there but he did a great deal of l lL9 the work. He's the fellow that did public communication 20 initiatives this morning, DSI-14.

21 The next slide lists the DSI; what is the j 1

22 appropriate role of'the NRC in developing and implementing 23 policies on international nuclear matters. Broadly l

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4 1 and broad U.S. national objectives. .This question is 2 basically asking what should NRC's role be in the 3 international area within that broad frame work, should 4 that continue to be our focus, supporting those two areas.

5 The next slide, just to give us a good idea of 6 what our international activities consist of, the next two 7 slides will describe the four functions that make up our -f 8 international program. i 9 The first is international policy and priority 10 formulation, basically a high level activity within the -

l 11 Commission involving the Commissioners themselves and l 12' senior staff to help support U.S. government policies i

13 across the board through NRC's expertise and to develop  :

I 14 priorities to carry out NRC's international activities.

l 15 With our limitati.ons on resources we have to prioritize l l

l 16 and decide which comes first, second, so on and how much  !

1 17 effort to devote to each. So that's what's involved in

];

18 the first function.  !

l 19 The second is export-import licensing, part of j 20 what you see on this page and continues on to the next j 21 slide. The first activity involves our direct export-22 import licensing function in which NRC issues export 23 licenses for items such as reactors, reactor fuels, bare 24 parts, so on, directly nuclear related items. The second 25 item under that star indicates that we, in addition, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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5 1 consult on export related actions of other agencies.

2 These would be, for example, Department of Energy requests j l

3 to transfer technology to other countries. They have the 4 lead in that area but we provide advice to them. By 5 statute we have to do this and other agencies as well, 6 such as State Department, Defense, so on, would provide i

7 input to their decision.

8 The Commerce Department handles dual use l 9 items, those designed or potentially useful for both

)

10 peaceful and military purposes and we consult on those as 11 well. And in doing our export-import function, we obtain  !

12 comments from the State Department and other agencies as 13 well. So it's a very interactive process in which just 14 about everybody is able to comment on any proposed export  ;

15 action of significance.

16 But continuing on, there's two sub-functions I 17 that we included under the export area because they relate 1 18 closely to it, since they're part of U.S. non-19 proliferation efforts and do involve export control. One 20 of these is the implementation of agreement between the 21 United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency 22 in Vienna to apply safeguards to nuclear facilities in the 23 U.S.

24 This was a commitment made by President 25 Johnson to enable other countries to feel that the U.S.

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• 6 I was accepting the burdens og safeguards just as we were 2 asking countries that had not developed nuclear explosives 3 to accept the burden of safeguards. So.it was intended to

'4 eliminate' commercial disadvantage and to services spurred 5 to the international safeguards. NRC implements this by 6 helping select facilities at.which safeguards are applied 7 and also to see that'they're carried out and the reporting t 8 of information is sent in to the IAEA promptly and 9 completely.  :

10 The last item under the export function is 11 NRC's program of assistance to strengthen the safeguards

-12 of the IAEA. The Department of Energy is closely involved 13 here, too. We provide the. expertise that we have in 14 domestic safeguards and physical protection to assist in 15 strengthening the safeguards applied by the IAEA to items 16 throughout the world, some of which are commodities which i

17 the U.S. has exported. The U.S. and other countries ]

i 18 turned over their bi-lateral safeguards arrangements when l l

19 they export to another country, turn that over to the IAEA 20 and they take care of applying those throughout the world, ,

1 21 so we want to be sure they're as effective as possible.

22 The third function we've labeled mutually I 23 beneficial international regulatory exchanges. These are 24 exchanges that we need to do to carry out our regulatory 25 job effectively. There were references made to this in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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7 1 the earlier sessions today, obtaining information from 4

2 abroad that we need in order to apply best practices to 3 our work and to find out, for example, about reactor l

4 4 operating incidents abroad that can have direct 5 ramifications for our reactor regulation in this country.

j.

6 A lot of the reactors abroad, of course, were built by

. 7- U.S. vendors and are very close in design to ones in the 8 U.S. So we're interested in operational data, acquired 9 from those design data on reactors abroad. Also not to

'10 limit this just to reactors, but in the materials area, i

11 waste area, what's happening there. There's an active

-12 program of exchanges.

L 13 Emergency operation across international

14. boundaries and even collaborative activities to develop  ;

15 common international approaches to problems like 16 formulating international safeguards. This would all fit l

17 under this rubric in which both parties benefit.

l 18 The last area, international safety and 19 security assistance, describes our role in helping other 20 countries to improve their safety or safeguards. Here we 21 may obtain_some benefit in response, but our main goal is 22 to assist in strengthening the regulatory organizations in 23 other countries, the NRC's abroad one might say, and that 24 is something done in support of broad U.S. national 25 interest, not really designed for obtaining information to NEAL R. GROSS I

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8 1 help us do our job more effectively as we do with 2 exchanges.

3 The next slide, and continuing on for two more 4 after, describes the key factors that we see in the future 5 effecting these-four international functions. The first, 6 the participation in U.S. policy and priority formulation 7 in the international area could be affected by changes 8 that occur in U.S. foreign policy and national security 9 objectives. We're directly influenced by these.

10 Secondly, by NRC interest of our own that we 11 wish to pursue, that could cause us, as often happens, to 12 initiate activities with usually the State Department to 13 propose certain policies and to argue for their 14 institution, and at the same time we do get requests often 15 from the Executive Branch, usually from the State 16 Department, but sometimes'from the White House. There may 17 be subjects of very high national interest, and these, 18 changing over time, could affect our involvement in this 19 particular function.

20 The third, of course, reminds one of 21 Chernobol, an occurrence of a significant foreign reactor 22 incident. It can have a direct effect on us. We have a 23 major program of nuclear safety assistance to the former 24 Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe which didn't 25 exist a few years ago and it was a direct outcome of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 weaknesses that were seen in regulation and safety in ,.

2 these countries after the Chernobol accident.

3 The last factor, diversion of strategic

! i 4 nuclear' material or even the fear that that might happen

! 5 can affect us and cause, as has indeed happened, request l

6 to come ta) us for stronger support of U.S. efforts, for 7 example right now, focused on Russia to strengthen their 8 control over nuclear materials, particularly those of 9 weapons capability that could be stolen or misused for 10 terrorist purposes.

11 The next slide looks at the third function,.

i 12 export-import. We really don't see much change coming up  !

13 in that area. The exports case work load tends to be I

14 pretty steady year to year. It may go up or down a little  ;

15 bit, may change in character. Now we have a program based )

16 on a new rule that went into effect a few months ago to j 17 require licenses for export or import radioactive waste, 18 but at the same time, there are fewer reactor export 19 operation. So all in all, we don't think there's much 20 change likely there, even on the consultation cases with 21' other agencies. While there may be some big ones that can 22 take a lot of resources, the numbers tend to be the same 23 over the years. It only involves a few people in NRC l

24 ~ doing this so it's a low resource user.

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1 affected by, of course, safety issues that come up either j 2 in the U.S. or abroad. That could change what exchanges 3 take place and which countries we do them with or l 4 international agencies. With tightening of the State 5 Department budget, there has been currently an intense 6 scrutiny of U.S. support for the nuclear energy agency 7 located in Paris through which a lot of our regulatory 8 exchanges take place, and also our international research 9 is coordinated 1.here as well. So we're trying hard to 10 maintain that support for the NEA but it is under active 11 review at the moment.

12 And the last bullet notes that the chairman of f 13 NRC just about a year ago proposed an international  !

14 nuclear regulators' forum that would involve heads of 15 regulatory bodies in various countries coming together to 16 discuss current issues and to plan on approaches to deal 17 with them. A stronger and more high level of regulatory 18 activities is what's envisioned here, possibly writing 19 * =ven an overview or over-coordination of research 20 activities. The agenda of exactly what they would take up 21 has not been specifically formulated yet. The concept is -

22 still being developed and I would think it would be 23 implemented probably within the next year and would be not

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11 I waste areas as well'. So that's a factor we see 2 influencing what we do in exchanges.

l 3 .The fourth function, the last of the key

! And 4 factors slides is our assistance to other countries.

l 5 of course, that could be affected by changes in U.S.

6 foreign policy goals and our national security objectives.

7 If the U.S. wants to have a stronger role in foreign 8 policy with certain countries, they could come to NRC and l 9 ask for further program of assistance to be developed that c 10 would enhance safety and also enlarge U.S. influence 11 abroad. Availability of external funding certainly is a 12 factor of our enlarged program of assistance. With the  ;

.13 former Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe was 14 only possible because of the availability of funding from t 15 the U.S. Agency for International Development provided 16 from U.S.. central budgets, as a supplement to our own 17 budget. We did not get reimbursed for our full time i 18- equivalence, our staff but we are able to use this money 19 which runs several million dollars a year roughly for the 20 travel.of our staff, the travel of people from these l

21 countries to come.to the U.S. and be trained, the training i 22 itself, some equipment that we purchase and so on. So as l

23 that funding goes up or down, that can affect what we do.

.24 One item not mentioned here but seems to fit I

i 25 in this area is the availability of NRC resources which

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1 can affect the effort that we can apply to this area.

Of course, as the next bullet indicates, the

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3. willingness and ability.of countries to-accept the  !

4 assistance, that could be a significant factor. The 5 degree of the success of assistance, as we evaluate it 6 over time, if we feel we're getting somewhere, perhaps  ;

e 1 l 7 continue it, but if we're not being successful, need to l

1 8 adjust it, maybe shift the focus to different countries I

9 and in general, doing an evaluation of its effectiveness. 1 1

10 The last bullet indicates that increased 11 energy needs abroad, as is happening now in the Far East, 12 can bring about an increased interest in nuclear power to 13 meet those needs and therefore, a need for strengthened or 14 maybe even the establishment of regulatory bodies and NRC 15 can provide such help to these countries. Of course, 16 we're not the only organization that can do this or even.

17 the only country. The U.S. is part of an international 18 network of countries assisting, for example, the Russian 1

=;

i 19 Ukraine nuclear safety. International organizations and j

-20 the' private sector has a role and we really can't or I 1

21 shouldn't do it all. We rely on contractors to a fair-22- degree as well.

23 That leads me to the next slide in which, as 24 we' worked on the DSI and looked over our program, we 25 concluded that the key issue is this assistance area that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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13 1 I've just been discussing, we thought as using almost half l 2 of the approximately 60 FTE's used for all of NRC's 3 international activities and most of that is for the ,

4 former Soviet Union and central European countries, post 5 Chernobol. .

6 We see the' external funding generally  ;

7 declining. NRC FTE allocations also dropping. Across the 8 board our grand total for NRC, therefore, there are fewer 9 available for this type of activity which is not central ~  !

10 to our domestic responsibilities and it's influenced by

.l 11 U.S. national objectives.

12 The third bullet indicates that while we've 13 made some progress, we really had some notable 14 disappointments in the effectiveness of the assistance in, 15 for example, Russia'and been reasons for that, but that is 16 causing us to take another look at what we're doing. As a j 1

17 result we thought, as indicated in the last bullet, that l

18 it's timely.and important to evaluate the future of 19 assistance to these countries and to consider new 20 approaches to make it more effective and efficient. For 21 example, we might focus on fewer countries and identify 22 their key regulatory needs, maybe work with organizations-23 in addition to the regulator. We're experimenting a 24 little bit here to see how to make that assistance more 25 effective. That will be treated in the follow on papers.

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i4 1 At this point the DSI is addressing a broad policy -

2 approach and questions of implementation is where we will 3 see this assistance area explored more as to improvements l 4 and effectiveness and efficiency.

5 The next slide identifies the five options 6 that we considered in this study. They cover a wide range 7 and are distinct, with each one reflecting an approach or 8 philosophy that might be taken toward international 1

9 matters, and certainly one could add variations to them.

]

10 The best choi~ce might be a combination, but we did look at  ;

11 a range from a bare minimum type of international role, 12 cutting way back, even seek to get out of the export 13 function, see if we could extract NRC from its i

14 responsibilities to implement treaties. Both of those are 15 problematic as to success but would be an aggressive

-16 attempt to cut back our international rcile. We would stop 17 assisting other countries and focus our-exchange 18 activities on just the countries that would benefit, our 19 domestic program most effectively.

20 Then we moved up to the next option which 21 involves accepting our statutory role in exports and in 4 l

22 treaty implementation, but we'd limit other international I 23 activity to a minimum. Assistance would be wound down and 24 eliminated, for example.

25 The next would take an approach that our )

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15 1 philosophy ~would be that under this option we should only 2 conduct activities of benefit to NRC's domestic mission.

3 Remember I said earlier that we right now support both 4 domestic mission and broad U.S. national interest. So we 5 would say, sorry, we're not going to support U.S. national 6 interest any longer, just carry out our domestic mission.

7 Of course, that would eliminate assistance, except where 8 it might produce benefits for our domestic mission and it 9 would enhance our exchanges with the focus just on our 10 domestic role. And we'd accept the export function and 11 the treaty implementation role. We wouldn't try to' change 12 that.

13 The next is an option that is essentially what 14 we're doing now, conducting activities that benefit both 15 our domestic mission or U.S. interest activities, and we 16 would do our policy support, as we do now, for the State 17 Department, initiate activities. We would prioritize 18 activities pretty much as at present, carry out our export 19 role, support improvements in IAEA safeguards, implement 20 the U.S./IAEA safeguards agreement, carry out regulatory 21 exchanges that are pretty broad in character, although 22 they're targeted to the ones that we think would be the 23 most productive, and on assistance we would try to provide 24 a wide but carefully. selected set of assistance 25 activities, not everything that might be done. So that's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 pretty close to the present situation, although it's 2 adjusting over time. For example, we're going now, as I 3 mentioned, to the greater use of contractors for 4 deliverir g asistance because of our reductions in NRC 5 staff.

6 The last option is at the other end of the 7 spectrum from the first, an all out effort to expand our 8 current level of activities, doing as much as-we could, 9 seeking additional funding for assistance, try to deliver .

1 10 that wherever we could around the world, have an even 11 broader program of international exchanges of mutual 12 benefit, of course, continue with export activities and 13 perhaps try to do more in IAEA safeguards support than we 14 do now and-in enhancing the controls over nuclear 15 materials worldwide.

16 The Commission, looking over these options we 17 proposed, developed their preliminary views that are on 18 the next three slides. And basically they said it's 19 desireable for NRC to conduct international activities 20 that are of importance and benefit to our domestic mission 21 or U.S. national interest. So as elaborating further and 22 continuing, the agency would participate in international 23 policy and priority formulation; perform its current role 24 in export-import licensing and related' safeguards matters; 25 perform current and prospective role in treaty NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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17 1 implementation. That is, if new treaties came along we 2 would carry out our roles if we were the best group to do 3 that. And participate in exchange activities that would 4 benefit the two broad areas; and have a wide but carefully 5 selected range of safety and safeguard assistance.

6 So that's pretty close to option four, that 7 they have selected the current approach. On the last 8 slide, while accepting and agreeing to that option, they 9 also had a caveat that we are, as a follow on effort, to 10 examine the budget and priority of individual activities 11 in which we are engaged, and there are quite a few of 12 them. We categorized all the individual activities as g 13 part of our strategic assessment in all areas of 14 Commission work and found quite a few in the international 15 area, so we'll have to look at each of these as to their 16 priority and develop a plan, including criteria, to 17 prioritize our activities.

18 And note here, the insert including research, 19 to assist the Commission in determining appropriate 20 expansions or reductions of programs depending on future 21 budget constraints. So this plan would take a look at not 22 just the activities described in DSI-20, but also those 23 described in DSI-22 that Themis Speis just described, and 24 look at that comprehensively to see where we might go in 25 the future and recommend that to the Commission for their i

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1 consideration as a follow on effort.

2 The Commission is also sensitive to the fact, 3 as noted in the last bullet, that we're a licensee-fee 4 based agency, and so the primacy of international 5 activities to our mission would be an important 6 consideration in this study. And in that we would look at 7 identifying efficiencies for consideration and the 8 Commission wanted us to develop criteria for sunseting 9 certain activities. So that would be a rather complete 10 look at all those areas.

11 That completes my presentation. I welcome 12 comments, views on what's been presented with regard to 13 international activities for the Commission.

14 MR. BROOKMAN: Questions, comments, thoughts 15 on this presentation? In particular, questions or 16 comments on the Commission's preliminary view that is 17 selecting option number four.

18 James, I notice, though, in selecting item I

19 number four, they've kind of added a bunch of additional 20 things to item number four. Can you comment on that a l 1

21 little bit briefly?

l 22 MR. SHEA: The last slide in particular? l I

23 MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, yes. l I

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1 and the fact that we really are not able to do everything 2 that we'd like to do, even under the current. approach. I 3 think it's a caveat that they want us to look over 4- activities and look at the priority of each within some 5 sort of an' organized frame work to see which are the most 6 important, the next most and so on'down the line, so that l

7 we can have the sense of what we can do and can't do-if j 8 our budget restrictions become greater.and greater, and 9 even at the present. time, to look at whether some 1

I 10 activities might be concluded that we've been engaged in' 11 because they're no longer effective or we find a better 12 way to handle them. I think they want a comprehensive 13 look at'this as part of the follow on effort and not just

. 14 stay status quo and continue on. I think that's what-I 15 see there,-with certain sensitivity to the fee based 16 character of our' effort.

17. MR. BROOKMAN: I see. Thank you. Follow up 18- comments, questions? l I

19 MR. SWANK: Dave Swank, Washington Public 20 Power. I agree with the Commission's concern that'you are i

2 11 licensee-fee based. I guess I don't understand we can 2:0 justify.taking a limited subset of the American public. l 23 which is the rate payers for the; power reactors who fund i 24 the majority of the staff's fees and asking them to carry 25 national interest. overseas, when that's not of direct --

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1 1 obviously it's of some benefit to them, but it's also a l 2 benefit to other people who are not being asked to fund 3 it. I guess I will ask the question. Is there an effort l- 4 underway or have you considered that perhaps Congress l 5 should be paying for a portion of the NRC fees to cover 6 these type of activities if the staff is going to continue l

7 in that vein?

l 8 MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you.

4 9- MR. SHEA: I might just say generally we are ]

10 interested and have .tried to obt.ain funding for these j 11 activities, such as international activities and other ,

l 12 parts of NRC work that involves respom ibilities of this i 13 sort, but have been unsuccessful in doing so. Congress l

14 keeps turning us back to, do it and recover as much as 1

15 possible from fees.  !

16 MR. MIRAGLIA: Frank Miraglia, NRC staff.

i 17 Tomorrow Jesse-will indicate that the Commission has l l

18 actively pursued, and in a number of instances, provided a l 19 report to Congress that essentially asked for about a ten l 20 percent reduction from the fee base to cover activities, l

j. 21 not only this one, but other activities that would be l

l 22 marginally in that category. Congress asked for the 23 report; the Commission provided the report, provided 24 testimony on the report but there was no action nor 1

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1 speak to this more -- has extended the 100' percent fee l 2 recovery to the year 2002 or 2003.

3 With respect to a broader issue that you 4 raised, there's a question of importance to NRC's mission.

5 There's that aspect out there that an accident anywhere.in 6 the world impacts our program and mission. So it's kind 7 of hard to draw the line sometimes. I think we learned 8 some lessons in that regard with respect to Chernobol. So 9 that's another issue that's there. It's a thorny one, 10 it's one that's on the plate and table, and any views that 11 anyone cares to offer on how to go through that, would be 12 appreciated.

13 MR. SWANK: I didn't mean to imply that the 14 staff had the only responsibility in this area. Clearly 15 all of us, the industry in particular, has an equal 16 obligation or stronger obligation to go back to Congress 17 and use our input to Congress to get the right thing to 18 happen.

19 MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you for putting that on 20 the' record. We would encourage you to have a more 21 detailed discussion, participate in that tomorrow on fees.

22 We will cover that in depth, t 23 MR. KAUSHAL: Just as a comment on anything 24 happening internationally like Chernobol affects.the ,

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1 didn't exist in the United States, a Chernobol in Russia l

2 will still affect the United States. So it's really not 3 an industry issue, it's a national issue and it should be 4 handled nationally with national taxpayers' money.

5 MR. BROOKMAN: I believe that comment confirms 6 the preliminary view that these efforts are important for l

7 U.S. national interests.

8 Additional comments on the Commission's

.9 preliminary view, number four? I note, for example, on l

-10 page 21 of this issue paper, where under option number 11 four, which is to benefit NRC's domestic mission and U.S.

12 interest, it lists a series of priorities. I think 13 perhaps I'll just read those; they're brief, and see if 1

14 those in the room subscribe to those priorities, think 15 those are the ones that should be at the top of the list.

16 They are: to meet U.S. treaty obligations; to 17 actively participate in the development of U.S. government i

18 policies related to nuclear safety and security matters; 19 to perform export-import licensing and associated.

20 safeguards functions; to operate in exchanging regulatory 21 information; to assist the FSU and CEE countries to

-22 upgrade their safety and security; and to help build a 23 solid regulatory safety infrastructure in countries with 1

1 24 emerging nuclear power programs.

25 Jim, it strikes me that many of these, most of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.

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23 1 these are the principal focus of what you're doing now.

2 MR SHEA: Yes, that's right. Those are 3 really a specific formulation. That describes what we are 4 doing currently, as I outlined in the presentation. This 5 is an attempt to formulate those function by function, a

6. reasonably good captu2ing of those functions.

7 MR. BROOKMAN: What about those criteria? Do 8 you think those are the criteria that the Commission 9 should be using to guide its efforts? I see a head or two 10 beginning to nod but no one is leaping up to make a 11 comment for us.

12 MS. JOHNSON: Irene Johnson, Commonwealth 13 Edison. I think the criteria is something the industry 14 can buy into. It's obviously all. inclusive.

15 However, on a different' question, perhaps you 16 can speak a little bit as to how the scope of the NRC's 17 mission in the international community differs from, say, 18 the activities of IAEA to insure there isn't a duplication 19 of effort?

20 MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you.

21 MR. SHEA: The activities involve cooperative 22 programs between U.S. utilities, mainly reactor operators l

[ 23 and counterpart groups in other countries, particularly in l 24 former Soviet Union, central and eastern Europe, to l

l 25 exchange information on good practices, focus on safety I f

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^

1 believe and that is an activity which I think is pretty 2 distinct and certainly a very good one, very much 1

3 encouraged by the U.S. government and involves the people  ;

l 4 who are actually operating the nuclear plants and the I l

1 5 operating organizations, utilities in those countries. Of I l

l 6 course, they have different structures than we do. In i 7 NRC, what we focus on is the regulator. So we usually 8 don't work very directly with plant operators. We work 9 with the regulators trying to train the people there in 10 western approaches to safety, in developing the standards I 11 that we use and so on. There's a good complemental work 12 there and it's not duplicative.

13 The Department of Energy is also heavily 14 involved in providing assistance to there countries and 15 they are involved much more with the operators and the 16 plants in those countries. They provide assistance, 17 though, in things like emergency operating instructions at 18 plants. That's been a main focus of DOE's work for the 19 last few years. It turns out they had few instructions 20 there on what to do in an emergency at these plants and i

21 they needed to be developed. To show the relationship, 22 DOE spurred those on while -- worked the plants on day to 23 day operating experiences and approaches within the plants 24 and NRC worked with the regulator and when these operating 25 instructions were drafted, the interface then was made NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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, 25 l 1 with the regulator in Russia to be sure that they were

, 2 comfortable with what was being developed for use at the 3 power plants. That's roughly the relationship there.

4 With regard to the IAEA, the IAEA has a i 5 program of assistance to other countries and we've worked 6 with'them for many years in that area. They have a 7 certain level of funding, part of which comes from'the 8 U.S. The U.S. provides about 25 percent of the budget of 9 the IAEA. They develop assistance programs based on the 10 capabilities that they have or that they could marshal 11 through contractors or consultants that they bring in, 12 providing training programs and so on. And we keep a 13 close watch on what they're doing to be sure that it-14 doesn't duplicate what we're doing. There's so much to be 15 done that there's room enough for a lot of groups.

16 I'd like to give just one little example. We 17 recently started a program with Armenia, to help them 18 strengthen the safety there as they started up that .

19 nuclear power plant. And we found that the IAEA had some  !

I 20 money to devote to this effort and we worked out a program 21 in which they handled, for example, emergency cooperation j 22 and emergency plan development and emergency operating i 23 center, while we focused on areas like fire protection and l 24 regulations. So that's roughly.the relationship.

25 MR. BROOKMAN: Additional follow on questions, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1. 26 .

1 comments? One question I had as I looked at this list of 2 priorities was whether any kind of declining budget, 3 whether you're going to be able to do all this.

4 MR. SHEA: Well, there's I guess a difference l  !

5 between doing it with a big D and doing it with a little 6 D,-so to speak. The activities can be carried out in all l 7 of these categories, but the level of effort that you l

8 apply to them depends on the resources that you have 9 available.

10 For example, the money, the FTE's, and as I  :

11 indicated, that's changing over time and will be certainly 12 a factor that will greatly influence the program. It has 13 already,-as we've moved to put a lot of the work with  !

14 Russia and Ukraine out onto contract and which our staff 15 is managing the contracts now more, rather than delivering I i

16 the assistance as we did before, due to resource 17 restrictions. So that's the approach we've taken, tried  !

18 to do something in each of these areas to the extent we ,

l 19 can and yet prioritize the activities that we engage in so 20 that they're all important ones and we keep the basic 21 thrust going.

22 MR. BROOKMAN: And'among these activities do i

23 you see a significant spike in the demand for your 24 services among any of them?

25 MR. SHEA: The big spike I guess came a few NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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, 27 1 years ago, after the Chernobol accident. In some of the >

2 countries enough progress has been made fortunately to be '

3 able to come close to declaring victory and eliminating 4 further work in that area. For example, with Hungary and 5 now pretty close on the Czech Republic, we feel we've made '

6 enough progress to be able to reduce or even eventually 7 eliminate our effort there with some tapering down with 8 the Czech Republic because the nuclear power plant that 9 the."re bringing on line and need to regulate, we've been 10 trLating them in that area. But Hungary is basically 11 finished. We have little involvement there now because 12 they have a good solid regulatory group.

13 The work is Russia is still needed and that's ,

14 a continuing one that they still plan to retain nuclear l

15 power and even to expand it. But there have been a lot of 16 problems, and Ukraine has a continuing need.and Bulgaria.

17 They're probably the three top countries I think in need 18 and so the general sense I get is there's a continuing 19 steady need for safety assistance. Here again, I'm 20 focusing on safety rather than safeguards, and safeguards 21 is on its own track and there's a continuing need there as 22 well. Not so much a spike, but maybe over time, a gradual 23 tapering down.unless some new problems develop. Of 24 course, Indonesia, for example, is building several 25 nuclear power plants, so they are in need of developing NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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28 1 regulatory body and we're helping train some Indonesians 2 right now. They're with NRC staff.

3 And the Far East, with the expansion of the 4 Chinese program, that's going to continue. So I don't see 5 any really big spikes, kind of a continuing effort with 6 emphasis-in those two parts of the world.

7 MR. SWANK: You mentioned Indonesia and China.

8 They're buying their plants from other countries. Why 9 aren't the other countries providing them with the 10 regulatory assistance as opposed to the U.S. taking on l

11 that task when we're not getting the business? l l

12 MR. SHEA: Well, I think with Indonesia it 13 isn't 100 percent decided yet that the U.S. is out of the 14 running there, so I think that's still a possibility. And 15 in the case of China, it's true that they have built 16 plants provided by other suppliers and are planning to do 17 more but they very much want to buy from the U.S. and the 18 U.S. government is trying to establish the conditions _to l

19 be able to make those sales. As you know, there are 20 problems involving non-proliferation concerns that 21 prevented the U.S. from exporting there.

22 But the'U.S. has been assisting both of them, 23 but we do look at the level of effort in terms of the 24 value of our assistance. That is, if it's a reactor that 25 they are buying from the U.S. we have the most knowledge NEAL R. GROSS I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l

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0 29 1 about it and can provide the most effective regulatory ,

i 2 assistance or something similar. If it's, for example, a 3 Westinghouse design from France, well, that's pretty l 4 similar as well. So we look at all of those factors and i 5 mostly can we provide the assistance effectively, if it's j 6 a can-do. If we're not the right people, we don't even 1-7 try. But in answer to your broad question, these other

8 countries are providing assistance. It isn't that they're 9 not doing anything. The French, with China, provided a J

10 good deal of help and others as well, that they are now 4

{ 11 building or planning to build, that Canadians may sell 12 thera some can-do's and they will provide assistance. The 13 U.S. is in a supplemental mode in these-areas, but we

14 probably would do more if the U.S. were to make a reactor 15 sale there.

i 16 MR. BROOKMAN: Additional comments or l

17 questions at this point? Do you think there's anything

18 else?

i i

19 MR. SHEA: No , I don't think so, Doug. I 20 think we covered it pretty well.

21 MR. BROOKMAN: Then let me thank all of you.

22 I appreciate your coming. I appreciate your comments and 1

7 23 your questions. This session will be ending now. Thank

, 24 you.

I 25 (Session concluded at 3:05 p.m.)

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• '=

i 1

1 j CERTIFICATE I  ;

1 j This is to certify that the attached  ;

proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:

1 i l

Name of Proceeding: STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETINGS 1

, SUPPORTING NRC DOMESTIC MISSION AND l

] NATIONAL OBJECTIVES IN THE

{

INTERNATIONAL AREA l Docket Number

N/A Place of Proceeding: ROSEMONT, ILLINOIS s

i l were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to '

typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.

N7L -

[RONLeGRAND" Official Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.

I l

l I

l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRBERS '

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