<DOC>
[108 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:94607.wais]
S. Hrg. 108-507
OVERSIGHT OF THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CLEAN AIR, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND NUCLEAR SAFETY
of the
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
----------
MAY 20, 2004
----------
Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works
OVERSIGHT OF THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
S. Hrg. 108-507
OVERSIGHT OF THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CLEAN AIR, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND NUCLEAR SAFETY
of the
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 20, 2004
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON: 2006
94-607 pdf
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COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma, Chairman
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia JAMES M. JEFFORDS, Vermont
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri MAX BAUCUS, Montana
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio HARRY REID, Nevada
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho BOB GRAHAM, Florida
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
JOHN CORNYN, Texas BARBARA BOXER, California
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska RON WYDEN, Oregon
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
Andrew Wheeler, Majority Staff Director
Ken Connolly, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear Safety
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio, Chairman
MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
JOHN CORNYN, Texas HARRY REID, Nevada
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
C O N T E N T S
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Page
MAY 20, 2004
OPENING STATEMENTS
Carper, Hon. Thomas R., U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware.. 9
Clinton, Hon. Hillary Rodham, U.S. Senator from the State of New
York........................................................... 29
Inhofe, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma... 4
Jeffords, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont.. 20
Reid, Hon. Harry, U.S. Senator from the State of Nevada.......... 22
Voinovich, Hon. George V., U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio... 1
WITNESSES
Diaz, Nils J., Chairman, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission...... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 49
Responses to additional questions from:
Senator Inhofe........................................... 57
Senator Jeffords......................................... 58
Senator Lieberman........................................ 71
Senator Voinovich........................................ 63
Fertel, Marvin, senior vice president of Nuclear Generation,
Nuclear Energy Institute....................................... 36
Prepared statement........................................... 209
Responses to additional questions from:
Senator Inhofe........................................... 218
Senator Jeffords......................................... 219
Senator Voinovich........................................ 220
Jones, Barclay, professor, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and
Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign...................................................... 42
Prepared statement........................................... 313
Kray, Marilyn, vice president for project development, Exelon
Generation..................................................... 40
Prepared statement........................................... 307
Responses to additional questions from Senator Jeffords...... 312
Lochbaum, David, nuclear safety engineer, Union of Concerned
Scientist...................................................... 39
Prepared statement........................................... 299
Responses to additional questions from Senator Jeffords...... 306
McGaffigan, Edward., Jr. Commissioner, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission..................................................... 9
Merrifield, Jeffrey S., Commissioner, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission..................................................... 9
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Letter, Nils J. Diaz, NRC, dated June 2, 2004.................... 17
Reports:
GAO, Nuclear Regulation, NRC Needs to More Aggressively and
Comprehensively Resolve Issues Related to the Davis-Besse
Nuclear Power Plant's Shutdown, May 2004...................73-208
Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, Principles for a
Strong Nuclear Safety Culture.............................224-238
National Academy for Nuclear Training Educational Assistance
Program, April 2003.......................................320-335
Nuclear Energy Institute, NEI Work Force Survey, May 2004...239-298
Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee, Nuclear Power
Engineering Curriculum Task Force.........................314-319
Text, Amendment to the Energy bill, S. 14........................ 15
OVERSIGHT OF THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Environment and Public Works,
Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change, and Nuclear
Safety,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:33 a.m. in
room 406, Senate Dirksen Building, the Hon. George V.
Voinovich, (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Voinovich, Carper, Reid, Clinton,
Jeffords [ex officio] and Inhofe [ex officio].
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, U.S. SENATOR
FROM THE STATE OF OHIO
Senator Voinovich. The subcommittee will come to order. I
would like to thank the witnesses for being here today.
I apologize for the delay in starting the hearing today. We
had the pleasure of spending 45 minutes with the President of
the United States where he did an outstanding job of laying out
where we have been and where we are going with our domestic
policy, and also in foreign relations.
Today's hearing continues our ongoing oversight of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is the sixth in a series of
oversight hearings that began in 1998 when Senator Inhofe was
Chairman of this subcommittee. I thank Chairman Inhofe for his
leadership on this issue as strong oversight of the NRC is
critical to the welfare of the American people.
Nuclear power is necessary and a sound part of our energy
future. It makes sense for our environment and for our economy.
It is a reliable and stable source of energy, providing 20
percent of the country's electricity with zero harmful air
emissions. In my State it provides about 12 percent of the
energy that is produced.
In order to harmonize our economic, energy, and
environmental needs, nuclear power must continue to grow. The
NRC plays a vital role in its future. The three basic
components of NRC's mission are to regulate the Nation's
civilian use of nuclear materials in order to promote the
common defense and security, protect the environment, and
ensure fail safe protection of public health and safety.
While we so often talk about the goals of our Agencies, we
need to also talk about whether they have the work force and
the budget to get the job done. We have goals that we set. Too
often, my observation has been, that we do not spend enough
time on the human resources and the budget we need to get the
job done.
As I have done in the two previous oversight hearings that
I have chaired, I want to make myself perfectly clear.
The No. 1 issue for the NRC is safety. Period. There is no
greater issue. It is critical that the NRC be a credible Agency
that can guarantee the safety of the Nation's 103 operating
nuclear plants.
Unfortunately, the NRC's credibility is in serious
questions these days due to the March 2, 2002, shutdown of the
Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, which is located in my home
State in Oak Harbor. The discovery of a pineapple-sized cavity
in the plant's vessel head forced the shutdown of the plant for
2 years. This incident has been referred to as: ``The most
serious safety issue confronting the Nation's commercial
nuclear power industry since the accident at Three Mile Island
in 1979.''
While I am pleased that the plant has been restarted, is
running at 100 percent, and has had no additional problems,
many questions remain about the NRC's actions before and after
this incident. I asked the General Accounting Office: ``The NRC
needs to more aggressively and comprehensively resolve issues
related at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant shutdown.'' The
report was released this week to be put into the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
[The referenced document follows on page 73.]
Senator Voinovich. This report looked at three questions:
No. 1, why did not the NRC identify and prevent the vessel head
corrosion at Davis-Besse? No. 2, was NRC's process for deciding
to allow the plant to delay shut down credible? No. 3, is
sufficient action being taken to prevent similar future
problems?
I have serious concerns about the answers GAO found to
these three questions. I want to hear from the Commissioners
today on the following issues: Communication failures,
questionable risk analysis, and the NRC's refusal to assess
licensee safety culture, or to develop specific guidelines for
when to shut down a plant.
Let me be clear. I do not want these issues addressed in
the context of what happened, but what is going to be done to
make sure that nothing like this happens again. Since this is
my main concern, the following from the GAO report is even more
appalling:
``The underlying causes of the Davis-Besse incident underscore the
potential for another incident to occur. This potential is reinforced
by the fact that both prior NRC Lessons Learned Task Forces and we,
GAO, have found similar weakness in many of the same NRC programs that
led to the Davis-Besse incident. NRC has not followed up on prior Task
Force recommendations to assess whether the lessons learned were
institutionalized.''
They are talking about not only the lessons learned from
this investigation that was made, but other investigations that
have been made in the past. They have said that the lessons
learned from those other incidents have not been followed
through by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Basically, the GAO found that many of the same problems
identified in this investigation were also identified in
incidents before Davis-Besse but never have been fully
addressed. This is unacceptable. I am not going to let the
Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force recommendations fall by
the wayside.
Unfortunately, the GAO claims that this may happen because
of resource constraints at the NRC which gets back to their
budget and the number and quality of individuals that are
working for the Commission.
At this point, I want to state for the record that this is
not a Davis-Besse hearing. This incident basically serves as
the model to what can happen when we lose focus on the main
issue--safety. The NRC and the industry must hold themselves to
a higher standard. In fairness to the Commission, I was
impressed by their fastidiousness in deciding when Davis-Besse
was ready to be restarted. This is the kind of scrutiny that I
want to see for all the facilities of our country.
As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management in the Federal Work Force, and the Governmental
Affairs Committee, I know that this level of oversight is
dependent upon the human capital needs of the NRC, which I have
long been concerned about. I am convinced that if both the NRC
and FirstEnergy had the right people with the right knowledge
and skills and the right place at the right time, the Davis-
Besse incident would never have happened.
Moreover, if the NRC is going to be able to move forward
and credibly guarantee the safety of our nuclear facilities,
they need to make sure they have enough people with the
necessary level of knowledge and experience. I was shocked when
I first reviewed the NRC and found that they had six times as
many employees over the age of 60 than under 30. I know, Mr.
Diaz, you have been working on that. But I want to hear more
about it today. I know the Commission has been working hard, as
I said, on this issue. I am interested to know what progress is
being made in that regard.
In addition to the implementation of the Lessons Learned
Task Force recommendations, several important licensing issues
are all occurring at the same time--relicensing for existing
plants, which is an enormous responsibility, potential
applications to build new facilities, and Yucca Mountain.
Everybody should understand this.
I am interested in hearing from all the witnesses today
about the human capital situation throughout the industry. I am
glad we have representatives here from academia on what is
being done out there to address this issue.
I welcome all the witnesses here today and look forward to
a good and thorough discussion about how the NRC and the
industry will move forward with credibility with the right
people and with safety at the forefront of all actions to
ensure that nuclear power continues to be an important part of
meeting our economic energy and environment needs.
That being said, the most important thing we need to do is
to give complete assurance to the people of this country that
our nuclear facilities are fail safe. This is very important
because many people have come to me over the last 2 years and
expressed concerns about being safe.
I will never forget the telephone calls I got from friends
of mine after the Davis-Besse incident that are in the area and
said, ``George, what is going on? I thought things were fine.
People of this country have to know when they go to bed at
night that these are fail safe. They have nothing to worry
about. Our stress level is enough as it is to be worrying about
nuclear power in this country.'' Simply put, people ought not
to go to bed, as I said, worrying about the safety of our
nuclear power plants.
I notice that our distinguished Chairman is here, who was
the Chairman of this subcommittee. Before you came in, I
acknowledged to our witnesses and to those here that you
started this in 1998 to review the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. INHOFE, U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA
Senator Inhofe. That is right; we did. Mr. Chairman, I
appreciate your carrying this on. That is right; in 1998 we had
an oversight hearing when I became Chairman of this
subcommittee. It was the first oversight hearing in over 10
years. That is not right. We corrected it. Many good things
have happened since that time. We have made progress. Each one
of you has been a part of that. You are aware of this progress.
The relicensing program, which no one thought would work in
1998, has become almost routine. Major reforms have taken place
on the enforcement side. We have seen real progress with the
NRC moving toward risk-based approaches.
Recent events have tested the NRC and thus far I am
generally pleased with how the Commission has responded. We
need to learn from these challenges, implementing solutions,
and moving forward. Backsliding into the inefficient and
ineffective days of the past is not an option. We are just not
going to do it.
Acting Chairman Diaz, Commissioners Merrifield and
McGaffigan--the three of you and the staff of the NRC should be
commended for the work that you have done. Of course, no job is
ever finished. I believe that you have as many challenges
facing you today as we did in 1998, if not more.
Unfortunately, unless the White House can find a
replacement for Admiral Grossenbacher, whose nomination
languished over 7 months before he withdrew in pursuit of other
opportunities--in frustration, I might add--I fear that you
will be the three-person Commission for a while.
During today's hearing and over the coming months, I would
like to hear your thoughts and views from the second panel on
this issues. There have been a few safety issues in the last
few years, such as: No. 1, some recent events at Vermont
Yankee. No. 2, how well is the risk-based approach working? As
an Agency are you able to identify the real risks and address
them in a safe manner?
No. 3, the NRC and the nuclear industry has a large number
of employees, close to retirement age, as was stated by the
Chairman, do you and will you have a staff to replace them in
order to address the major problems that are coming up, such as
the continuing relicensing process, the permit application for
Yucca Mountain, and the potential permits from the different
consortiums who are interested in building new nuclear
facilities? All three of these events will be occurring at
roughly the same time. Do you have the resources that you need
to address these?
In addition to the employees that the NRC headquarters and
the Resident Inspectors, we also have four NRC regions which
have been in place since the 1970's. Would the NRC function
more effectively if we consolidated all of the staff to the
headquarters keeping the Resident Inspectors in place?
This could eliminate some redundancy and overhead and help
provide the headquarters with the experienced staff they need.
How is the interaction between the EPA and the NRC on the
setting of radiation standards? I have long thought the EPA
does not do an adequate job assessing the real risks involved
in radiation. Now that the politics of the standards set by the
EPA for Yucca Mountain are over, perhaps it is time to address
EPA's performance also.
I would just like to say both Senator Voinovich and I are
very concerned with the crisis we have in this country. It is
an energy crisis. I cannot think of any group, any Commission,
that is going to have to be more proactive in helping to
resolve this. We often say that we had a good Energy bill that
passed the House. It just did not pass the Senate. But it
addressed nuclear energy as well as all the other forms. I
think Senator Voinovich and I are together in saying that we
need all of them. We need fossil fuel. We need coal. We need
nuclear. We need renewables. You folks will be playing a very
active part in that as we pursue new opportunities in nuclear
energy.
I look forward to hearing my three good friends who are
witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Senator Inhofe follows.]
Statement of Hon. James M. Inhofe, U.S. Senator from the
State of Oklahoma
First, I would like to thank Chairman Voinovich for holding today's
annual oversight hearing which continues the process I started in 1998
when I was the Chairman of this subcommittee. Since 1998 the NRC has
made tremendous progress.
The relicensing program, which no one thought would work in 1998,
has become almost routine. Major reforms have taken place on the
enforcement side, and we have seen real progress with the NRC moving
toward risk-based approaches.
Recent events have tested the NRC--and thus far I am generally
pleased with how the Commission has responded. We need to learn from
these challenges, implement solutions and move forward. Backsliding
into the inefficient and ineffective days of the past is not an option.
Acting Chairman Diaz, and Commissioner's Merrifield and McGaffigan;
the three of you and the staff at the NRC should be commended for the
work you have done. Of course no job is ever finished and I believe you
have as many challenges facing you today as we did in 1998, if not
more. Unfortunately, unless the White House can find a replacement for
Admiral Grossenbacher, whose nomination languished for over 7 months
before he withdrew to pursue other opportunities, I fear you will be a
three-person Commission for awhile.
During today's hearing and over the coming months, I would like to
hear your thoughts, and the views from the second panel, on several
issues.
(1) There have been a few safety issues in the last few years, such
as some recent events at Vermont Yankee. How well is the risk-based
approach working. As an Agency, are you able to identify the real risks
and address them in a safe manner?
(2) The NRC, and the nuclear industry, has a large number of
employees close to the retirement age. Do you and will you have the
staff in place to address the major upcoming issues such as:
the continuing relicensing process,
the permit application for Yucca Mountain, and
the potential permits from the different consortiums, who
are interested in building new nuclear facilities.
All three of these events will be occurring at roughly the same
time, do you have the resources that you need?
(3) In addition to the employees at the NRC headquarters and the
resident inspectors, we also have four NRC Regions, which have been in
place since the 70's. Would the NRC function more efficiently if we
consolidated all of the staff to the headquarters, keeping the resident
inspectors in place? This could eliminate some redundancy in overhead
and help provide the Headquarters with the experienced staff they need.
(4) How is the interaction between the EPA and the NRC on the
setting of radiation standards? I have long thought that the EPA does
not do an adequate job assessing the real risks involved in radiation.
Now that the politics of the standards set by EPA for Yucca Mountain
are over, perhaps it is time to address EPA's performance.
With these issues in mind, I am interested in today's testimony and
the views of the witnesses from both panels. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Senator Inhofe.
Due to the late start of the hearing, I am going to ask my
colleagues and the witnesses to limit their remarks to 5
minutes.
Mr. Diaz, I think we made it clear that we expect you to
lead off. We are expecting 2-minute summaries from Mr.
McGaffigan and Mr. Merrifield. We welcome you. You have a heavy
responsibility. We know that. We are anxious to hear from you.
Mr. Diaz.
STATEMENT OF NILS J. DIAZ, CHAIRMAN, U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY
COMMISSION
Mr. Diaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Inhofe, and
members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to
appear before you today with Commissioner McGaffigan and
Commissioner Merrifield. We are, of course, here to discuss the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's activities, to protect the
public health and safety, to protect the common defense and
security, and to protect the environment. We also appreciate
the past support that we have received from the subcommittee
and the committee as a whole, and we look forward to continuing
working with you.
In recent years we have seen significant changes in the
oversight exercised by the NRC in the areas of safety,
security, and emergency preparedness. Perhaps, like Senator
Inhofe said, we have seen significant changes since 1998. We
are pleased to be working with the subcommittee since that
time, and the committee as a whole.
Overall, the industry has performed well in these three
areas of safety, security, and preparedness. The NRC has become
increasingly focused on those matters that are most important
to safety and continues to increase the use of risked-informed
decisionmaking.
From a regulator's viewpoint, there are grounds for
cautious optimism about the state of nuclear safety today.
The level of reactor safety has increased steadily. From
the standpoint of American public protection, the record is
indeed admirable with not a single member of the public ever
exposed to a harmful level of radiation from a U.S. nuclear
power plant. We intend to keep it that way.
The revised Reactor Oversight Process, which we established
over 3 years ago, continues to provide to the Agency a
disciplined approach to the determinations of licensees'
performance. At the end of the 2003 calendar year, there were
two plants designated for the highest level of scrutiny under
the Reactor Oversight Process--the Cooper Plant in Nebraska,
and the Point Beach Plant in Wisconsin.
The Cooper and Point Beach Plants have received significant
attention from our regional and headquarters office. We are
confident that these plants are on the path to resolving long--
standing problems.
Over the past 2 years, the NRC staff has also devoted
significant resources for enhanced regulatory oversight of the
Davis-Besse Plant following the discovery of extensive
degradation of the reactor vessel head, including the in-depth
assessment of the startup oversight process.
The existence, undetected for so long, of a hole in the
head of the reactor was an unacceptable failure on the part of
the licensee and of the NRC. Specifically, it was a failure to
conduct the activities necessary to minimize the potential for
degradation of the primary coolant pressure boundary. In other
words, process execution, including communications, broke down.
On March 8, 2004, after an extensive plant recovery program
and comprehensive corrective actions by the licensee,
FirstEnergy, and after considerable NRC inspection and
assessment, the staff gave approval for the restart of Davis-
Besse. Our full statement discusses the critical review and
actions the NRC has taken to address the Davis-Besse Lessons
Learned Task Force and the Inspector General's recommendations.
We have already provided our comments on the GAO's draft
report on Davis-Besse. We are reviewing the GAO's recently
finalized report.
Let me turn for a minute to other significant achievements,
specifically in our reactor licensing programs.
A significant type of reactor licensing action, called a
power uprate, is a request to raise the maximum power level at
which a plant may be operated. Power uprates range from
requests for small increases of less than 2 percent based on
the recapture of power measurement uncertainty, to large
increases in the range of 15 percent to 20 percent of full
power that require substantial hardware modification to the
plants.
To date, the NRC has approved 101 power uprates which have
added safely approximately 4,175 megawatts electric to the
nation's electric general capacity, and this is the equivalent
of about four large nuclear power plants.
Currently, the NRC has four power uprate applications under
review and expects to receive an additional 25 applications
through calendar year 2005. This would add approximately 1,760
megawatts electric to the Nation's electric generating
capacity. The focus of our review of this application has been,
and will continue to be on safety.
License renewals are another significant type of licensing
action. In 2003, 13 units had their licensees renewed for an
additional 20 years. We expect that almost all of the 104
reactors licensed to operate will apply for renewal of their
licenses. The NRC also is ready to accept applications for new
power plants. In September and October of last year, we
received three early site permit applications for sites in
Virginia, Illinois, and Mississippi where operating reactors
already exist.
We have already certified three new reactor designs. In
addition, the NRC is currently reviewing the Westinghouse AP--
1000 design certification application. The staff has met all
scheduled milestones for the AP-1000 design review and is on
track to issue a recommendation to the Commission this fall on
final design approval. The NRC staff is also actively reviewing
pre-application issues on two additional designs and has four
other designs in various stages of pre-application review.
The Commission has continued to enhance security of
licensed nuclear facilities and materials through close
communication and coordination with other Agencies in the
intelligence and law enforcement communities, and with the
Department of Homeland Security. We have established an
enhanced set of security requirements for power reactors that
are appropriate in the post-9/11 threat environment.
In treating emergency preparedness as another level of
defense in-depth, we are recognizing it as an integral part of
our approach to protecting the public. Reactor fuel, reactor
coolant system, containment, emergency preparedness--these are
four barriers, each one complementing the others and each one
designed, tested, and inspected to provide reasonable assurance
of protecting the public and the environment from radiological
releases.
In the area of material security, we have coordinated
closely with other Federal Agencies, State, and affected
licensee groups to develop additional security requirements for
two classes of materials licensees who possess high-risk
radioactive materials. Our full statement discusses our
activities and comprehensive programs for ensuring the safety
of importing, exporting, and transportation of nuclear
materials.
The Commission's activities also extend to the front end of
the fuel cycle and they continue to increase. The first
proposed new enrichment facility will be located in New Mexico
and the second in Ohio. Louisiana Energy Services submitted an
application for its facility in Eunice, New Mexico, to the NRC
in December 2003. U.S. Enrichment Corporation is expected to
submit its application to the NRC for its site in Piketon, OH,
in August 2004.
The Commission has directed its staff to conduct reviews of
the applications for the two proposed enrichment facilities in
a timely manner. The staff continues to review a request to
authorize construction of a mixed oxide fuel fabrication
facility at the Savannah River site in South Carolina as part
of the Department of Energy's program to dispose of excess
weapons grade plutonium.
The NRC has also made progress on a wide array of programs
relating to the safe disposal of nuclear waste. A central focus
on these programs is to ensure that the Agency is prepared to
review an application by the Department of Energy to construct
a high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain,
NV. The application is expected to be submitted to NRC in
December 2004, and we are prepared to fulfill our role.
We continue to develop the programs and dedicate resources
to ensure that the human capital of the Agency is adequate to
meet the needs of the Agency and, in this respect, we also are
adding significant resources to develop the critical thinking
skills of our work force.
Mr. Chairman, I can assure you that the Commission will
continue to be very active in directing and managing the staff
efforts in ensuring adequate protection of public health and
safety, promoting the common defense and security, and
protecting the environment in the application of nuclear
technology for civilian use.
We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today.
We welcome your questions. I would ask that my written
statement be placed in the record in its entirety.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Diaz.
I appreciate your testimony this morning. I notice you went
over the 5 minutes, but I wanted to give you more of an
opportunity to get your statement out in front of us.
Mr. Diaz. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Merrifield.
STATEMENT OF JEFFREY S. MERRIFIELD, COMMISSIONER, U.S. NUCLEAR
REGULATORY COMMISSION
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, in light of the time, I would
just want to say thank you for the opportunity and the
challenges you have presented for us, the opportunity to show
off what we do, a challenge to do better in terms of our effort
to make sure that safety remains our No. 1 issue, as you
outlined it.
I think also today we want to thank you for the strong
interest that the committee as a whole has shown in issues of
human capital and your particular interest. Again, I think that
is something that we would be prepared to discuss in our
testimony and questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Merrifield.
Mr. McGaffigan.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., COMMISSIONER, U.S. NUCLEAR
REGULATORY COMMISSION
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, I concur in Chairman Diaz's
statement. I look forward to your questions. I want to maximize
the amount of time to answer your questions.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, very much, Mr. McGaffigan.
The Ranking Member of the subcommittee is here. Senator
Carper, would you like to share with us an opening statement?
Senator Carper. I have a statement for the record that I
would like to insert into the record.
Senator Voinovich. Without objection, so ordered.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS R. CARPER, U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF DELAWARE
Senator Carper. Thank you. I would just like to jump right
into questions. I thank our witnesses. We are delighted that
you are here. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. We have had six NRC oversight hearings,
as I mentioned, since 1998. Before this time, it is my
understanding that not many of these hearings were held, and
that the Commission basically had a free reign.
Over the past 2 years, I have watched the NRC disagree with
just about anyone who has analyzed the Commission's actions
surrounding the Davis-Besse incident, including the Inspector
General, and now the GAO. I am concerned about that. I feel
strongly, and I know my fellow colleagues agree with me that
this committee must provide strong oversight.
Based on some of your recent actions, what kind of
assurances can you give us and the American public that you
take our oversight seriously? We have talked at past hearings
about the human capital needs in the NRC and the industry as a
large number of employees are close to retirement age. There
are several important licensing. You have gone into them.
The list of things that you have to do is just
overwhelming. It must be unique in the history of the NRC to
have so much work that is on your plate that you need to deal
with. The GAO claims that you have been slow in implementing
lessons learned because of resource constraints. They
specifically cite too few staff and experience levels among
existing staff.
What I want to know is: Is that true? What are some of the
constraints? How can we fix this? I want you to be candid with
me. If you do not have the budget, or if there is something
wrong that you need that you do not have that you cannot get
the job done, we want to know about it today.
Mr. Diaz, we will start with you. If the other
Commissioners want to chime in, we would welcome that.
Mr. Diaz. Mr. Chairman, I want to say that we welcome the
oversight. I believe that it has actually helped the Agency to
become more focused on the issues that are of concern to the
Congress and to the Nation. In no way do we see this as
anything but actually helping us do our job better.
We do disagree with some of the criticism from outside, and
probably it is because we are always looking forward at what we
are going to do, and not only going back. Some of the
criticisms are probably past their time. Some of them have a
significant basis and we have taken the necessary actions to
correct them.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Diaz, one of the things I like to do
is this. Let us zero in on your budget and the human resources
that you have. Are they adequate to get the job done? That is
what I want to hear. Where are you on this?
Mr. Diaz. Our budget is adequate. Our human resources are
getting systematically upgraded. We have established a program
to improve the capabilities of our inspectors and our staff to
deal with issues. We are working in a very disciplined manner
to address the issues of communications.
We want everybody in the Agency that needs information to
have that information. We want that information to go up the
ladder.
Senator Voinovich. Let me ask you this. How much retirement
have you had in the last years? How many new people have you
brought in? What is the level of the number of employees that
you have versus what you had before?
Mr. Diaz. We are increasing our staffing to over 3,100
FTEs. We were around 2,850 in fiscal year 2002. So we actually
have an increase of about 250. I do not know the exact number.
We continue to bring in not only people that are young that we
can train, but we bring in mature people with the right skills.
We have been able to develop a data base that allows us to
match skills with the needs. We continue to work these issues
in a very systematic manner.
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, one of the things you
mentioned and pointed out before is the concern about the age
of our work force. That is one that we have worked very hard on
in the last few years. You mentioned the statistic that at one
time we had six times as many people over the age of 60 as we
did under the age of 30. I do not know the exact ratio at this
point. I think it is somewhere in the nature of about 1\1/2\-
to-1 or 2-to-1. We have dramatically reduced that number by a
significant effort to reach out to a wide diversity of
universities and colleges. We have brought in a lot of very
exciting, new, well educated, members of our work force that
are really going to allow us to grow in the future and maintain
that high level of expertise we have had in the past.
Senator Voinovich. My past recollection is that some of the
universities where they have some of these reactors at the
universities, that they were closing those down. I recall for
example, the University of Michigan. What is the status out
there in terms of the availability of people?
Mr. Diaz. The level of the decline has stabilized. In fact,
many of the large programs have actually experienced some
increases. We continue to be concerned with the capability of
the infrastructure to give us the right person.
I think it is a problem across the industry.
But I do believe that right now we are getting the talent
that we need. It might be more difficult in the years to come
as more people retire and we lack the experienced personnel to
fill their places. That is why one of the things that we have
asked, Mr. Chairman, is the ability to retain some of our
senior people that are retiring without a penalty. In other
words, when they retire from the Federal work force, if they
come to work for us, they lose some of their benefits.
Senator Voinovich. I understand that. One of the things
that I am trying to do with the legislation that we introduced
would deal with that problem. But right now you are being
restricted because if you bring them back, they lose their
retirement. Would you like to be able to bring them back to
work part-time to help you with the transition?
Mr. Diaz. We have had exceptions made, but we certainly
will welcome your support in that area.
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, I would also say that you
have championed in the Energy bill legislation that would
enhance the training programs for our Agency and provide an
additional $1 million in training. That is Section 622 of the
Energy bill on the House side and a similar provision on the
Senate side. We would certainly appreciate your support of that
legislation. It would certainly help us as well.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I would respond
to your question on resources. Chairman Diaz is absolutely
correct. We have the resources if we got our budget to do what
we need to do in the year ahead. All of you know better than we
do what the prospects of our getting our budget this year are.
If we are in a continuing resolution situation with a flat
budget, we basically are flat in all areas except for preparing
for the Yucca Mountain application and in advanced reactors.
There could be significant instability in those two areas. But
in areas such as following up on the Davis-Besse lessons
learned, we are absolutely committed to dedicating the
resources necessary there.
I have been at all six of these hearings. Chairman Diaz has
as well. Agencies over their lifetimes go through ups and
downs. When Chairman Diaz and I came on the Commission in 1996,
we were in a sustained down period. There had been significant
erosion in staff. There had been no promotions, essentially. We
had not had an SES development class for many years. Our first
SES development class was chosen in 1999.
We have had a second, and we are about to have a third. But
for many years, with declining budgets and the need to manage
an Agency in decline, things were postponed.
We, over the last 5 years, have been actively trying to
recover from that period. Will the recovery be complete?
We are going to face challenges in the years ahead because
there was that period where we had to manage a very significant
decline in resources, anticipating an industry in decline,
which turned out not to be true.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.
Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I know we have a couple of panels here. Is the expectation
that we would have one round of questions for each panel?
Senator Voinovich. Well, I anticipated two rounds for the
Commission of 5 minutes each.
Senator Carper. Thank you. I think I want to start with a
more general question and then maybe come to something more
specific to a part of the country in which I live and
represent. A couple of months ago I took a bunch of Boy Scouts
from Wilmington, DE down to the Norfolk Naval Station, as I do
every few years. Both our boys are active in scouting. I took
Troop 67 back to the Norfolk Naval Station.
We visited submarines and nuclear powered submarines and
ships, and an aircraft carrier in port.
The aircraft carrier itself is about 1,000 feet long. It is
at least 20 stories high. There are roughly 5,000 sailors
aboard the ship. When the airplane is on board, I think it
brings a lot more people and maybe 75 or so aircraft. The
interesting thing for me about the nuclear-powered carrier is
that it stops to refuel about once every 25 years, unlike the
other ships that were on either side of it which need to refuel
about every week. For me, that is always a good reminder that
nuclear energy is not just an important part of our military
and our naval forces, but it is also an important part of our
energy.
Looking over the briefing materials, I was reminded again
of the amount of CO<INF>2</INF>, carbon dioxide, that the
nuclear power plants do not put into the air. I was reminded of
the amount of dollars that reliance on nuclear energy does not
add to our trade deficit. I was reminded of the reduction in
imported oil that a reliance on nuclear power for the
generation of electricity affords us.
I sit here today as one who believes that it is important
that we continue to maintain and strengthen going forward our
reliance on nuclear energy as part of, not all of, but part of
our energy needs in this country.
I was going to get into some of the questioning that our
Chairman got into with respect to qualified personnel. I think
he has covered that about as much as I would want to. I would
to focus instead on the future of nuclear energy in our country
and a little bit about the transportation of nuclear waste.
Then I have a couple of specific questions that deal with the
nuclear power plant on the other side of the Delaware River
from us in Salem, NJ.
I would just start off with a couple of questions about
nuclear energy. I am going to ask you to be fairly brief in
responding to these questions. I will direct them, Chairman
Diaz, to you and ask you to defer to your colleagues and your
fellow Commissioners to jump in whenever you feel the need.
I think today about 22 percent of our electricity supply
comes from nuclear energy. I guess my first question is: Twenty
years from now, do you think we will still be getting 22
percent of our electricity from nuclear power? Do you think it
will be more? Do you think it will be less?
Mr. Diaz. I believe that that question probably should be
answered by the next panel. We are ready to do our job of
regulating the industry. The industry is considering additions
to the fleet. We believe that we have done what we needed to do
which was to ensure that anyone that wanted a license to be
renewed for an extra period of time of 20 years would have a
fair, equitable, and disciplined approach to renewing that
license. I think the process that is in place is working well.
So in many respects, one of the things that has happened is
that we have been able to have the existing fleet working. We
have also been able to certify new designs that if the industry
wants to, they will be able to use those certified designs to
add new plants to the fleet. But it is the industry which needs
to make that decision.
I believe that the best that they can do under the present
circumstances is to maintain over the next 15 years the 20
percent to 21 percent that they are presently generating. That
would include a few new nuclear power plants because the
overall capacity is increasing.
Senator Carper. Thank you. You alluded to this. Maybe
somebody is going to be proposing to build a new nuclear plant
or two. Just sketch for me very briefly the approval process
that they go through with respect to your Agency.
Mr. Diaz. Very quickly, we have two processes--an old
process and a new process, that we believe is better, which the
Congress actually established. These new processes combine an
operating license, which allows the industry to apply
simultaneously for the construction license and the operating
permit. We already have three applications for early site
permits to clear the environmental concerns of a site. We also
have certified the designs, which means that the industry or
the utility can actually apply to put that certified design on
a pre-approved site, making the period of the license for their
construction and operation shorter, something the industry is
very much in favor of. The Congress approved that process in
1992.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Could we talk a little bit about
the transportation of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain? I seem
to recall that there is some full-scale testing of these casks
that were to carry the nuclear waste that was either scheduled
to take place or has taken place. Can you just bring us up to
speed on that? What is involved in these tests? What kind of
schedule do you have for them? Is there some kind of system for
double-checking the results from those tests?
Mr. Diaz. We have conducted what is called one-quarter
scale testing. The science and technology for such a test is
sufficient to scale this one-quarter scale to full size. We
have had one railroad cask built under these conditions. But I
think 2 years ago precisely in the Senate, the Commission
concurred that we were going to do full-scale testing, meaning
that we were going to take a cask and actually in its full size
we are going to conduct all the necessary testing to ensure
that it will be protective of public health and safety, as it
is used to transport spent fuel.
We have not done the tests. They are scheduled. The
Commission just approved the purchase of a full-scale rail
cask. We have now published and we have received comments on
the testing procedures. We expect that this will be done
probably in the next 3 to 4 years.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Without objection, I would like to enter
into the record the amendment to the Energy bill, S. 14, which
was an amendment that was part of the bill that passed in 2003
and to bring to the committee's attention that these very
important amendments are in the Energy bill, which we have not
passed. I think that the public should understand that this
Energy bill, in addition to dealing with natural gas, oil, and
so many other areas, including another issue that was before
this committee, and that in terms of the reliability of
standards that we need in order to avoid a black out as we had
last year, are all in this Energy bill.
If this Congress goes home without passing an Energy bill,
we are doing a great disservice to the people of this country.
So I just want to enter these into the record so that it
appears why it is so important that we get that legislation
passed.
Without objection, so ordered.
[The referenced document follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Senator Voinovich. One other thing, before I forget it.
We had a big hearing here on the issue of the security of
our nuclear facilities. I believe Senator Jeffords was the one
who instigated that. As a result of that hearing, there were
some questions asked, and you were kind enough to come and meet
with us in closed session. I want to compliment Senator
Jeffords because he, at that time, said that he thought it was
a good idea.
I want you to know that in the near future, after talking
with the members of this committee, we may again ask you to
come into a closed session to update us on where you are in
terms of the security of those facilities from terrorist
actions.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, if I could, I would make one
comment on the legislation. In 1998, when Senator Inhofe had
the first hearing, we also had not had a lot of legislation
passed in many years. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 was the
last significant piece of legislation that affected the NRC.
Chairman Diaz just referred to one of its provisions.
In the intervening 6 years, aside from Senator Inhofe's
provision with regard to the fee base, we are still anxiously
waiting for the legislation. There are a whole series of
provisions in the Energy bill that we believe are
noncontroversial. We appreciate both Houses' support in the
safety, security, and budgeting area. We would dearly
appreciate this being passed.
Some provisions involve safety, some security, others
budgeting matters, such as our ability to have fees for other
Agencies. There are a whole host of provisions that you,
Senator Inhofe, Senator Jeffords, and others have supported,
which we would very much like to see enacted, if at all
possible.
Senator Voinovich. There is one other thing that I would
like would be a memo from the Commission about the harm that is
done to you with a continuing budget resolution. We have, in
the last couple of years, had this continuing resolution. I do
not think my colleagues in the Senate and the House of
Representatives understand how negative and how bad that has
been for our Agencies. We just kind of take it for granted.
``Well, we were not able to get the job done, so we are going
to have a continuing resolution.''
But they do not understand what a terrible impact that has
on your ability to plan and get things done in your respective
Agencies. It is not only yours, it is right across the board.
We do not talk about it enough. So I would like you to prepare
something that maybe I can share with our colleagues and let
them know why we need to get our appropriations passed on time
around this place.
Mr. Diaz. We will be pleased to do so.
Senator Voinovich. Without objection, so ordered.
[The referenced document follows.]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
Senator Voinovich. Senator Inhofe.
Senator Inhofe. I think you ought to get it to him today.
[Laughter.]
Senator Inhofe. We talked about this back in 1998. We want
action now. I have to say, Commissioner Diaz, I was
disappointed in your answer to Senator Carper's question on
what you see in the future. I cannot imagine with the serious,
serious energy crisis that we have today that we would not be
looking out there saying, ``Yes, we are going to have more.''
I am looking at a chart right now--France, 77 percent;
Ukraine, 44 percent; South Korea, 37 percent. I just cannot
imagine that we would be looking in the future and not saying,
``This is probably singularly the most available one that we
can go to, to resolve this crisis.''
It is a crisis right now. Finally, the prices have gone up
to the point where people realize it is. We have held two
hearings in our full committee on natural gas prices, on
gasoline, and all this. We know we have to get out there and go
after all forms of energy which means exploring in places we
have not explored. Yesterday on the Senate floor I reminded the
Senators that in my State of Oklahoma, which is a big State in
terms of marginal production, that is 15 barrels a day or less.
If we had all the marginal wells flowing today that have
been closed in the last 10 years, it would produce more oil
than we are currently importing from Saudi Arabia. Then you get
into nuclear. I was surprised. I did not know about all these
new tests coming up, Senator Carper. I just wonder why you need
new tests. I can remember the old tests when they dropped a
container a quarter of a mile on concrete and it is sustained
it. It went through fire. They put in on the railroad tracks
and a train coming along at a hundred miles an hour.
We have progressed to the point where I hope we do not just
keep replowing those fields over and over again. Then you look
at some of the ways that some of the extreme environmentalist's
community look at nuclear. It is kind of interesting that same
Green Party that has shut down nuclear in Germany is
encouraging it in France, and France is the beneficiary because
they are selling the electricity or the power to Germany.
I just hope that you become aggressive and recognize that
we have a great need in this country to resolve our energy
crisis, and nuclear has to be a major part of it. Are there any
comments from any of the Commissioners?
Mr. Diaz. Senator, we are aggressive in doing our role. My
response is based on what the industry estimates their plan is,
which is called ``2020.'' My response is based on what the
Department of Energy, which is actually actively trying to
develop nuclear power, indicates. The electrical capacity of
the Nation is growing. Therefore, the 20 percent that nuclear
power generates now, 15 years from now, will be less, and maybe
will be 15 percent or 16 percent. The industry has proposed a
plan to build additional capacity. The Commission is ready to
do its role of licensing.
Senator Inhofe. OK. That is the other thing I want to get
before my time expires here. In 1999, Chairman Jackson said
that the relicensing they are anticipating would take from 30
months to 36 months.
Mr. Diaz. We are down, sir, to about 25 months.
Senator Inhofe. That is good. I like to hear that. But the
concern is with the process slowed down on relicensing when you
start preparing for Yucca Mountain. Can you keep the progress
going?
Mr. Diaz. We can keep the progress going. We have to manage
our resources because the resources are limited. But we do not
believe that there will be a significant impact on the
relicensing process. We are going to manage it this year to
about 12. We have said that we can manage eight per year. We
are working with the industry to make sure they have a
disciplined approach in providing us with the applications. So
I do not think there is going to be any significant impact.
Mr. Merrifield. In fact, Mr. Chairman, our staff had come
to the Commission last year and said, ``We want to budget and
be prepared to deal with ten license renewals a year.'' The
Commission said that was not good enough. We wanted them to do
12 a year. We recognize, as you do, we want to deal with this
in a disciplined process, but deal with it in a timely way. I
agree with the Chairman. We are going to make sure we do both.
Senator Inhofe. Thank you. My time has expired.
You talked about when the Chairman in his opening remarks
referred to 60 percent of the employees are over 60. I thought
you were describing the U.S. Senate at that time. I thought
that we might be having some serious problems in the NRC if
that is the case.
[Laughter.]
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Jeffords, I know that you wanted
to have a statement made. Do you want to do that now or do you
want to continue the questioning of these witnesses and perhaps
give your statement before the second panel of witnesses are
called up? I will let you decide that.
Senator Jeffords. I think I would like to do that now if I
can. I have another engagement I have to get to.
Senator Voinovich. All right.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. JEFFORDS, U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF VERMONT
Senator Jeffords. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today's hearing
continues our ongoing oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. I believe this is the sixth oversight hearing the
subcommittee has had in the last 7 years.
Chairman Voinovich, you and Ranking Member Carper deserve
credit for continuing to commitment to hold these hearings
regularly.
Today I want to discuss both the NRC's handling of extended
power uprates and a recent incident involving missing pieces of
fuel rods at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in my
State. I appreciate that Chairman Diaz and Commissioner
Merrifield have been willing to discuss my concerns about the
recent events in Vermont Yankee with me directly.
I also want to say to the Chairman and all the
Commissioners that I am pleased that you are all here today.
The mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is one of
the most vital missions carried on by the Federal Government.
Regulating the Nation's civilian use of nuclear materials,
ensuring adequate protection of public health and safety when
these materials are used or disposed of, and protecting the
environment are all critical.
I want to make myself perfectly clear, and I know the
Chairman and the Ranking Member of the subcommittee share my
views, that the top priority for the NRC is safety. There is no
greater issue than safety. I want the people of Vermont and
across the country to be safe. It is NRC's job to guarantee
that.
As you are well aware, there has been serious problems at
Vermont Yankee since this panel's last oversight hearing.
Vermont Yankee operated by Entergy, discovered that two pieces
of radioactive fuel rods were missing from the plant's storage
facilities last month. Officials with Energy Nuclear have said
that they could not find the two rods--one 7 inches and one 17
inches long. Either is capable of quickly giving a lethal dose
of radiation to an unshielded handler.
The NRC has been involved in Vermont Yankee inspections
using a remote control camera to see if they have misplaced the
rods among the 2,787 spent fuel rods in the plant's spent fuel
pool. The NRC is also working with the utility to review
records to see if the two missing fuel rods from the plant are
in the waste facilities at South Carolina or Washington.
Company officials speculate that the rods may have been
confused with low-level waste and shipped out to out-of-State
storage sites. So far, efforts to locate the rods at the
Vermont Yankee facility have failed. This is an outrageous and
frightening situation for Vermont families. The Commission must
commit its resources to ensure that the material is accounted
for immediately.
I stand ready to assist the NRC in any way possible to make
sure that these materials are found and secured. But I note
that this is the second incident of missing nuclear fuels at
Northeast nuclear plants in 5 years. When the Millstone
incident occurred, NRC said that fuel rods had never before
gone missing in the history of the commercial nuclear plants in
the United States.
I know that the materials at the Vermont Yankee were found
to be missing due, in part, to the new inspection procedures
the NRC instituted after Millstone. The sad fact is that the
fuel is again missing. I do not want missing fuel to become the
norm. It is not enough to tell the public that we think it is
likely that highly radioactive material went into storage.
We must improve our nuclear materials accounting system and
we must do so now. I want to know what the NRC is going to do
to prevent this from ever happening again in Vermont Yankee or
anywhere.
Keeping with my view that the safety is job one at the NRC,
I would also like to know what the NRC is doing to ensure that
any boost in Vermont Yankee's power will be reviewed in a
thorough manner. Entergy has asked the NRC to approve its
proposal to boost the power from Vermont Yankee by 20 percent.
As you know, the NRC must determine whether or not such an
extended power uprate will jeopardize the plant's ability to
operate safely.
I expect the NRC to explain, design, and conduct a review
that will allow Vermonters to have confidence when the uprate
is approved for Vermont Yankee. In the long term, I am pleased
that the NRC agreed with Senator Leahy and my request to hold a
public meeting in Vermont in March to explain the uprate review
process.
Many constituents have told me that this was a helpful
meeting, but more needs to be done to inform and assure
Vermonters. The review of the Vermont Yankee uprate will be the
first time that the NRC will conduct such a review using the
new extended power rate guidelines issued in December 2003.
I am also pleased that the NRC has agreed to conduct a
pilot inspection and collection of additional information as
requested by the Vermont Public Service Board. The purpose of
this additional inspection will be to collect data about the
plant's operations under the proposed boosted power conduction.
This is the information Vermonters want. I am pleased that
my State will be doing a service to the country as they work
with the NRC through the use of the new guidelines and
implementation of the new pilot inspection program.
The NRC has an opportunity to assure this subcommittee that
they will make their new site guidelines and inspections work,
that they will implement them in a thoroughly transparent way,
and that they will strive to address the concerns of the
public.
If we are going to be serious about protecting our
environment while providing safe, reliable, and affordable
electricity for all Americans, we need to increase our use of
renewables, improve how to burn fossil fuels, promote energy
efficiency, and make sure that nuclear plants operate well and
safely.
Thank you, Chairman Diaz and the rest of the Commissioners.
I look forward to your response.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Reid. Mr. Chairman?
Senator Voinovich. Senator Reid?
Senator Reid. I apologize to you and the Ranking Member for
being late. I have a relatively short statement I would like to
give.
Senator Voinovich. Without objection, certainly.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HARRY REID, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF NEVADA
Senator Reid. Thank you very much.
First of all, let me say to Chairman Diaz, Commissioner
McGaffigan, and Commissioner Merrifield, I think you have one
of the most responsible jobs we have in our entire Government.
There is no way that I can adequately portray the importance, I
think, of the work that you have to do. You have such a long
list of critical duties. All of these duties have been made
more important as a result of what happened on 9/11. Of course,
we know you license, inspect, and oversee nuclear facilities.
This is done to assure their safety and make sure that the
operations go well at overseas decommissioning of facilities
and enforce the laws that we write in conjunction with the
President.
The NRC cannot perform these critical functions properly,
though, when it is not operating with its full compliment of
five Commissioners. But that is the situation we have today.
The NRC is operating with only three Commissioners.
For example, the distinguished Chair of the full committee,
Senator Inhofe, my friend, indicated earlier today that he
thinks that there has been enough testing done on casks. I
think if the Commission goes forward on the information,
scientific in nature that we now have on these casks, it would
be a terrible disservice, not only to our country, but to the
world.
In February, the President sent to the Senate a member of
my staff to fill one of the two vacancies that now exist with
this very short-bodied Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The
President's willingness to do this says more about Dr. Jaczko's
qualifications than any testimonials that I could offer on his
behalf. He has met with every member of this committee that has
wanted to discuss his experience, his background, and his
views. The committee's view of that role of the NRC has also
been something that he has discussed with Senators I thank my
colleagues for taking this time to meet with Dr. Jaczko.
But despite these meetings and the fact that several other
nominees have had hearings and have been marked up by this
committee, his nomination has languished. While I would like to
fill the remaining fifth slot at the NRC, there is simply is a
nominee with clear paperwork and other items in order to do
that. In that way, we could have a Democrat and a Republican.
But I do not think that waiting is an option. The President
of the United States felt the same way. I have pledged to work
against the committee completing other business here on the
floor until this nominee gets a markup. I have served on this
committee for 18 years now, and have done so because I really
like the work on this committee. I have had opportunities to go
elsewhere, but I like what we do. I like our jurisdiction.
I do not take the action of blocking the committee's other
business lightly. But I do so here because the Commission is
charged with ensuring the safety of the Nation's nuclear power
plants. That is very important, as I have already indicated. I
do not think you can do your job when you do not have the
adequate staff.
I believe not having a hearing is abdication of this
committee's duty. At least one of the three Commissioners who
has already testified before this committee to date,
Commissioner McGaffigan, agrees with me. I think the other two
would also acknowledge that it would be better if you had a
full complement of Commissioners. In 2003, Commissioner
McGaffigan commented, ``I personally do not like vacancies. I
think we would best when there are five.''
I acknowledge that. I would hope that my colleagues here on
the subcommittee would do whatever they could to get this
committee to move forward and put Dr. Greg Jaczko on the Senate
floor. Then we will take whatever chances we have there. But to
hold this up in committee is not going to be good for the work
of this committee.
Again, Chairman Voinovich and Ranking Member Carper, I
appreciate very much your allowing me to speak, me coming in
late and leaving early. I appreciate it very much. The work
that is being done here, the oversight of this subcommittee, is
extremely important.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Reid. I, too, am
concerned about the lack of two individuals on the committee.
Perhaps we can spend some time working on it. But I would
like to remind you from what my staff tells me that your side
of the aisle blocked a hearing on Admiral Grossenbacher for 7
months.
Senator Reid. That is really not quite true. They gave you
some bad information, Senator Voinovich. What happened is that
there was an agreement that we would do both of these together.
By the time the togetherness came, he had found another job,
which was really too bad, because I thought he had some
extremely good qualifications to serve on this Commission. I
think these gentlemen here would have been better for having
had the Admiral on this Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
I would also say this, Senator Voinovich. Up here there is
a lot of blame to go around. ``He did it; I did it; you did
it.'' But the fact of the matter is that we now have a
Commission and we have a man who has a Ph.D., in physics who
has had experienced administratively. He has had it in the
Legislative Branch of Government. He would do an outstanding
job working with these three gentlemen.
I have said a long time ago, but the Admiral withdrew not
because of anything I did, I wish the Administration would come
forward with someone else. For reasons I do not understand they
have not. I am willing to work any way that I can to make sure
that there are five and not four.
Thank you very much.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. I have a story that relates to the Admiral
before you got here, Senator Reid, I shared with my colleagues
that every couple of years I take a bunch of Boy Scouts down to
the Norfolk Naval Station to spend a weekend and sleep in the
barracks, eat in the galleys, and climb all over the
submarines, ships, and aircraft carriers.
You and I are runners. We like to exercise. One morning, 2
years ago when I was down there, I got up real early and went
out and ran on a Sunday morning. As I was running around the
base, it was just about daybreak, I ran by this one house.
There are some beautiful homes on the Norfolk Naval Station
where some of the senior officers live. I went by this one home
and I looked. There was a flag in front of the home. It looked
just like the Delaware flag. Just like it. It was about half
dark. I stopped my run. I went over there and I held the flag
in my hands. By golly, it was the Delaware flag.
It turned out that the house was the Delaware House. They
have like 20 or 25 houses on bases that are named after various
States. The person who lives in the Delaware House is the head
of U.S. Submarine Forces around the world. That person was the
Admiral. He lived there at the time.
We went back after breakfast that Sunday morning and
knocked on his door and got him up to let him know that there
were some people there from Delaware. Later on he came back for
a hearing to be nominated. He seemed like a good guy. I am
sorry it did not work out.
Senator Reid. Yes, he is the best. I would just say that
anytime we talk about submarines, my being from Searchlight,
NV, I hope you understand that we are responsible for the
submarines communicating with each around the world. We have a
huge Lorenz Station there in Searchlight. Those very
interesting lights are flashing at night all the time. They
have all kinds of ghost stories and everything. But the Lorenz
Station makes our submarine fleet as successful as it, and that
is in Searchlight. Well, a little out of Searchlight.
Senator Carper. Would that be the suburbs of Searchlight?
Senator Reid. Yes.
[Laughter.]
Senator Voinovich. We will be continuing with the
questioning.
NRC's concern about safety culture was one of the last
issues resolved before Davis-Besse was allowed to restart. As a
condition of the restart, you required FirstEnergy to conduct
an independent assessment of the safety culture at Davis-Besse
annually for the next 5 years. I remember that part of the
reason why you did not do it was that you came in and you said,
``The safety culture has not changed. Get it right.'' You came
back. It may have been three times that you did that before you
let it open up.
Additionally, NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor
Safeguards recommended that the NRC pursue the development of a
methodology for assessing safety culture. This assessment is
performed widely in other countries.
With all that being said, why do you disagree with everyone
that you should put in place a regulation to monitor safety
culture? Why do we not have a regulation in terms of safety
culture? It seems to me that if the internal people that are
running these operations, if there is not a high safety
culture, that is something that we should be very concerned
about it. You were concerned about it.
The issue is: Why are you not doing something about it?
Why have you looked at the GAO report and said, ``We are
not going to do that.''?
Mr. Diaz. Sir, obviously the Commission is very concerned
with the safety culture at each and every one of our
facilities. However, we believe that the safety culture as a
whole becomes sometimes ambiguous. We are not in the business
of managing these utilities or these reactors.
Senator Voinovich. The question I have is this. Why do the
Europeans do it? They have a lot of nuclear facilities in
Europe. It is my understanding that they do go in and they do
monitor the safety culture. You are going to be going into
Davis-Besse for the next 5 years. You certainly are going to
have to have some standard that you used to assess the safety
culture during that period.
You had a standard to use because you said you were not
going to let them open because they did not have the safety
culture. Why do not we make that applicable to all the
facilities?
Mr. Diaz. Because it will get into an area that the
Commission believes that we should not be, which in managing
the facility.
Senator Voinovich. But you are doing it at Davis-Besse. You
are going to go in there for the next 5 years.
Mr. Diaz. But what we are going to do is that we are going
to assess what the safety culture is and then we are going to
assess how the management of the facility deals with the safety
issues. That is our responsibility. We will deal with how they
manage safety. We have indicators. We have many ways of
actually addressing that issue. The safety culture issue
becomes imbedded inside of the relationships between the
employees and the management. We do not believe that is the
role of the Commission.
Senator Voinovich. We have another 102 of these facilities
around the country. The Commission does not have, as part of
their regulatory responsibilities, some appraisal to come back?
Somebody says, ``Hey, we talked to some of the employees. It
appears that they are not really that cognizant of safety. They
are not concerned about it.''
Mr. Merrifield. We are concerned with safety.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, we do deal with safety
culture issues as they arise, but they tend to manifest
themselves somewhere else in our system. We can get our hands
around it that way. We have an allegations process. We take
allegations that we get from individuals at nuclear power
plants very, very seriously.
Senator Voinovich. Do you have a survey of employees about
certain questions you ask about safety?
Mr. McGaffigan. We do not ourselves survey, but if we
detect that there is a problem at a facility--and we have done
this on more than one occasion--we require the licensee to do
surveys. I believe we did this at South Texas.
Senator Voinovich. I have to tell you there is a
disagreement here. I think you should do it. I want to talk to
you about it. I do not think you are giving a good enough
reason. If they do it in Europe, you are doing it at Davis-
Besse, you ought to have the same kind of thing. An independent
survey. You might have disgruntled employees. But there are
certain questions that you can ask. There are certain
observations that you can make in terms of whether or not you
have that kind of safety consciousness there. That is very
important because it deals with the internal people that are
there every day. If they do not have safety utmost in their
mind, they are not going to get the job done.
Mr. Merrifield. Senator, there is something that we do that
some of the Europeans do not. We have onsite inspectors every
day who talk to plant personnel in the control room, in the
engineering spaces, to line staffs, the mechanics who are doing
the piping work--we have an opportunity first hand----
Senator Voinovich. You did not find it out at Davis-Besse.
You had somebody there. That is the next question I am asking
is about the communication. GAO and the Inspector General
identified communications as one of the major factors that led
to the NRC not to prevent the Davis-Besse incident. Perhaps
most concerning is the statement in the GAO report, ``The
Resident Inspector at the Davis-Besse Plant never saw generic
bulletins and letters issued by NRC on boric acid and
corrosion, although only a few are generated each year.''
That is communication. So you had somebody on board and
they did not know that the safety culture there was not there
because of some reason that it was not part of their job.
Second of all, you get into the issue of communications.
Mr. Diaz. We do agree that communications were faulty. We
have taken every necessary step to address the issue of
communications. I believe that it was more than communications.
It was lack of the technical know-how that this issue could
really result in a significant corrosion of the head.
We have addressed both the communication issues and the
technical issues and how to deal with them.
Senator Voinovich. Do you have people on board on all 103
other facilities?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, sir.
Mr. Merrifield. Yes, sir.
Mr. McGaffigan. Yes, sir.
Senator Voinovich. And probably the company pays for it, I
would suspect.
Mr. Merrifield. Yes, they do.
Mr. Diaz. Through fees.
Senator Voinovich. I have to tell you something. If I were
running a show, those would be the most important people that I
would have in my organization. They are onsite. I would have
them really trained. I would have them being watchdogs, to know
the technical aspects of it, to be able to look at the
management, to look at the attitudes of the employees, and to
be able to get back to you. How much training do you give these
people?
Mr. Diaz. We totally agree. We give significant training,
but if you look at the directives and what the staff has been
asked to do during the last year and a half, we are going to
increase the training, both the technical capabilities and the
communication capabilities.
I believe we have been responsive to the issues. I assure
you that we have taken this very seriously. Corrections are
being put in place.
Senator Voinovich. I am going to tell you. I am going to
visit a couple of facilities and I am going to check up for
myself. I want to know what you are doing on those individuals.
I would like some further discourse with you about this issue
of safety. I think the attitude of people, in terms of safety,
is paramount. They are the ones that are doing the work.
Mr. Diaz. Absolutely. I will work on the opportunity
Senator.
Mr. Merrifield. Senator, I was going to say that obviously
you have gotten into some areas we can give additional detail
through your staff, through briefings. Obviously this is
something you have a great interest in. We will make sure that
we get you the information.
Senator Voinovich. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, I would just mention that we
have been following Resident Inspector demographics. You are
interested in our demographics as a whole Agency. But we
require an annual report from our staff on Resident Inspector
demographics. We discuss Resident Inspector demographics at an
annual meeting that we have with the staff. We have had
problems. Clearly Davis-Besse was our worst hour. We have
challenged our regional administrators to bring in additional
people. In some instances, they are double encumbering these
positions now so that you will have a trainee there while the
person who is rotating out is still there.
We are dedicated to having at least two individuals at
every site. At some sites like Indian Point we have a lot more,
but at least two individuals. We have three, I believe, at the
moment, at Davis-Besse. We have turnover. About the time that
Chairman Diaz and I came on the Commission, we mandated instead
of a 5-year rotation for Residents, that it be a 7-year
rotation. Well, we are coming up on the 7th year. At the
moment, there is a tremendous amount of movement from one site
to another.
We do that because we do not want people to homestead and
get too comfortable. We want new eyes coming into the site and
a new perspective, a different engineering background, perhaps,
so they will see different things. But we have a lot of
turnover at the moment in our Resident Inspector corps. They
move from one site to another. But we have been monitoring it
and we have been challenging our regional administrators to do
a good job in managing it. We pay attention to it. We have all
the data we can share with your staff.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Senator Jeffords.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have several questions about our little problem in
Vermont. I would like to try a couple here and then will submit
others in writing.
At the briefing in preparation for this hearing, your staff
indicated that the remote camera search of the spent fuel pool
in Vermont Yankee is complete and the missing fuel rod pieces
have not been found. This information was repeated in a May 19,
2004 story, in the Rutland Herald.
Is it the case that the search pool is complete? What are
the next steps that will be taken to locate the missing fuel?
Mr. Diaz. The licensee, with oversight from the NRC, has
completed the search of the spent fuel pool. They have not
found the missing fragments of the spent fuel. That does not
mean that the issue is closed. We will continue to work with
the licensee to ascertain whether these pieces of fuel were
shipped outside of the facility with other waste. We are going
to try to make sure that we find out where it ended. We are not
sure that we can really find these pieces. I am going to be
perfectly honest with you.
In the case of Millstone, we conducted with the licensee a
major year-and-a-half process. The possibility is that this was
packaged with other radioactive waste and it did not alarm.
Therefore, it did not show up as a significantly radioactive
piece. It ended up probably in one of the low--level waste
disposal sites.
Mr. Merrifield. But just to clarify, too, we are still
doing our investigation. But as we found with Millstone, it is
plausible that those activities may be a legacy issue for us
and the licensee and may have been activities that dated back
to the early 1980's.
Mr. Diaz. It was a 1980 piece of fuel; yes.
Senator Jeffords. On May 4, 2004, NRC responded to the
Vermont Public Service Board's request for additional
independent reviews of Vermont Yankee. Your letter stated that
``A pilot engineering assessment would be conducted. The
assessment team will be comprised of NRC staff, State
officials, and at least two independent contractors.''
What will the NRC do to ensure that the independence of the
independent contractors? What will be the process for selecting
them? What qualifications will they need to have?
Mr. Diaz. Our staff has very defined procedures for
selecting contractors. This is a new type of risk-informed
inspection that we believe that would become a mainstay of the
way we do things with facilities. As an engineering assessment,
we are going to ensure that there is absolutely no connection
between the contractors or even the staff that is going to be
dedicated to this activity. They will have a certain amount of
separation from the Vermont facility.
We, of course, are an independent Agency. We are going to
ensure that this work is done independently. You can have our
complete assurances of that.
Senator Jeffords. I have additional questions, Mr. Chairman
which I will submit to you in writing for answers in writing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Without objection, so ordered. Thank
you, Senator Jeffords.
Senator Clinton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, U.S. SENATOR
FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK
Senator Clinton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman I
thank you for holding this hearing. I appreciate your statement
with respect to Davis-Besse. I would like to associate myself
with the concerns in this GAO report. It is clearly a finding
that we need additional resources and support for the safety
mission that the NRC is responsible for implementing.
I am concerned, as the Commissioners know, about the
overall safety of these aging plants and, in particular, the
situation at Indian Point. In March of this year the NRC
upgraded the Indian Point safety rating to green. It is my
understanding that this change in rating reflected work that
had been done to conduct training, modify electrical systems,
fix a firewall, and take other steps to improve safety. These
are all welcome steps.
But I am concerned that one consequence of this green
rating is less frequent inspections by the NRC. I am concerned
for three reasons: First, NRC's year-end inspection report for
Indian Point lists a range of tasks that have yet to be done,
including a repair backlog and improving staff performance.
Second, Indian Point is unique among nuclear facilities in
that about 20 million people live within a 50-mile radius of
the plant. Third, the documented oversight failures by the NRC
at Davis-Besse call into question the effectiveness of the
NRC's business-as-usual oversight.
My question is this: How does the NRC justify less frequent
inspections at Indian Point? Would you not agree that the
unique setting, and certainly the public concern about Indian
Point argue for continued NRC oversight at the highest possible
levels?
Mr. Diaz. Senator, we are continuing to increase oversight
at Indian Point. You are correct that we found that the
licensee has made progress in addressing a series of issues.
That does not mean that we are satisfied or that we are going
to actually do much less than what is required.
We intend to maintain oversight at a level that is
commensurate to the findings that we have. We believe that we
have sufficient oversight to maintain the facility in the safe
condition that it should be. We have an extra inspector.
Yesterday I was at the plant. I was assured by the Regional
Administrator that we are maintaining the level of oversight
that is commensurate with the needs of Indian Point.
Mr. McGaffigan. I might add that our Regional
Administrator, Mr. Miller, has asked for a deviation from our
normal oversight process for heightened oversight at Indian
Point. Similarly, our Regional Administrator in Region IV has
asked for continued maintenance of heightened oversight at the
Cooper Station in Nebraska.
Both of those plants got themselves into Column 4 of our
so-called ``action matrix'' which is the multiple degraded
cornerstone column. In both cases, our Regional Administrators
are saying, ``We are going to be extra careful and do extra
inspections until such time as we are really satisfied that
everything is OK.''
They are in Column 2 of our action matrix at the moment,
but they are being treated as if they are in a higher column.
Mr. Miller has maintained the inspection resources, I believe,
at Indian Point, that are unprecedented at any other plant.
Mr. Diaz. Absolutely. So it is recognizing that the
licensee has made progress and it should be so indicated. But
we are continuing to increase the oversight at Indian Point.
Senator Clinton. Thank you. As you know, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency is scheduled to conduct a drill at
Indian Point during the week of June 7th to gauge the
effectiveness of the emergency plans for the surrounding
counties. This whole issue of evacuation in the event of an
emergency has been one of my highest priorities.
Now I know that FEMA has the primary responsibility to
evaluate emergency planning at nuclear power plants, but
ultimately an effective emergency plan is a condition of an
operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It
just impractical and not believable that a 10-mile radius, as
currently envisioned in the emergency plan, in an area as
densely populated as metro New York City, represents a fair and
realistic emergency evaluation plan.
Let me ask you this. To what extent is the NRC involved in
the planning of the June 7th drill? Would it not make sense to
be realistic and broaden the geographic scope of the exercise
to get a clearer idea of what our real challenges are?
Mr. Diaz. Senator, the NRC is directly, intensely, and
aggressively participating in the issue of the exercise. The
fact is that was the reason for my visit yesterday. It was
exclusively dedicated to the exercise. I did this at the plant,
but it was all emergency planning.
I believe that from yesterday we had very fruitful
meetings, including meeting with the county executives. Out of
the meeting, even a more realistic plan that we have devised is
now taking place.
Senator Clinton. Good.
Mr. Diaz. We actually addressed some of the issues of
concern directly with those who have the responsibility of
carrying out those responsibilities. We did not resolve all the
issues, as you can imagine. We still have some questions to
answer. But I believe we went a long way toward planning and
eventually executing an exercise that is realistic. I believe
the exercise calls for a series of measures that will be
testing the capability of the counties to evacuate people. I
believe that many of those things are now being put in a better
perspective. I really appreciate the opportunity to have been
there and to listen directly to what their concerns were. They
are being addressed.
Senator Clinton. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Voinovich. Senator Carper, you have one last round,
and then we are going to go to the next panel.
Senator Carper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think it was last year it was revealed that a small
amount of a substance called tritium was discovered in the
ground water either next to or beneath the ground on part of
the Salem One Nuclear Reactor. Over the last year or so,
efforts have been underway to try to understand and to respond
to the contamination that had been ongoing.
I have a couple of questions. Let me just sort of run
through them and then we can go back and pick them up, if you
will. What is the role of the NRC in a case like this? Could we
start when the reactor's owner, which is PSEG, notified your
Agency of the elevated readings in the ground water. What steps
does the NRC take in order to protect workers and to protect
public safety? How do you go about identifying the scope of the
problem? How do you ensure that the response plan is adequate?
If we could start there, that would be helpful.
Mr. Diaz. Sure. The NRC is directly involved, not only in
the oversight of the protection of the workers and of the
people, but in any release of radioactivity from the side
boundary. That is one of our major areas of responsibilities.
In the case of tritium, tritium is not a very hazardous
radioactive material. If we put them on a scale, it probably
comes, I would call, at the very bottom. However, that does not
mean that we are not concerned with it. We, of course, do
things in a risk-informed manner. Tritium is a very insidious
material. You think you have got it, and it will escape. It
mixes with water. It mixes with steam. It really has many ways
of flowing where it should not be.
In the case of the Salem Hope Creek, tritium was found
outside leaking from the spent fuel pool in a very small
concentration. We have been working with the licensee. We have
ascertained that there has been no further contamination of the
water which is our main concern. The dilutions are still
relatively low, but we are trying to make sure that the
licensee addresses why this escaped. They think they know where
the issue is. It is a liner error of the spent fuel pool.
We have taken this issue very seriously and continue to
work with them to make sure the issue is addressed and
satisfied.
Mr. Merrifield. Senator, just to put a little of a boundary
around this, this leak was identified as a result of a well
that is very close in proximity to the plant. The water that
had come from the pool containing the tritium has not gone
across the boundaries of the plant property. It does not
present any danger to the wildlife or people who live around
the plant.
So we are very much on top of it in terms of monitoring
that release. We are working very closely with the State of New
Jersey to make sure that we monitor that and have the licensee
deal with it in the appropriate way.
Senator Carper. What is the responsibility, if you will, of
the owner of the plant, PSEG in this particular case? Do you
believe that they have met their responsibilities to the NRC
and to the community?
Mr. Diaz. Yes, presently they are meeting those
responsibilities in this particular operation.
Senator Carper. The second question also relates to the
Salem Hope Creek Plant. It deals with the culture of safety
that exists at the plant. I understand that over the past year
or so that the NRC has been engaged in a special review of the
safety culture of the Salem Hope Creek reactors in New Jersey.
This is a couple of plants that are about 15 miles away
from my house on the other side of the Delaware River. You can
see it on a pretty clear day. Apparently this review that was
launched in response to questions about the ability of the
plant management and the operators to maintain an environment
where questions, including those about the operation and the
safety of the place could be freely raised by the employees and
would be fully addressed by the management.
I just want to know what is the status of this review by
the NRC. Are you satisfied that the plant operator, PSEG, has
addressed any areas that need improvement? Are there any
additional steps that need to be required of the plant and the
plant operator?
Finally, is the safety culture a concern at other reactors
and at other plants?
Mr. Diaz. Safety culture is an issue that we gauge from my
viewpoint from how the managers of the plant manage safety.
In the case of the Salem Hope Creek, our Regional
Administrator saw signs that there could be a degradation of
the safety culture. He aggressively addressed it even before
there were really any major issues that were identified. He
used the processes that we have to call it to the attention of
the licensees. The licensees have been responding.
We are not satisfied yet that everything that needs to be
done has been done, but a process has begun. We believe they
are doing the right thing. We are going to be watching
carefully to make sure that they actually take the entire
matter not only very seriously, but take it into a completion
that we can say, ``Yes, you have satisfied what we wanted you
to do.'' It is ongoing.
Mr. Merrifield. One thing, also, both Senator Carper and
Mr. Chairman, that we did not mention when we were answering
the Chairman's questions on safety culture. We, in fact, are
sponsoring as an Agency a workshop in which we bring licensees
in to meet with our staff to try to identify best practices in
safety culture. So we do have a direct engagement on this issue
in terms of trying to enhance and identify better ways for
licensees to enhance the culture of their own plants.
The Institute for Nuclear Power Operations, which is a
separate industry-funded organization in Atlanta has 300 or 400
people who work for it. They have a separate initiative
underway in which they are intensively looking at this very
same issue, again to try to enhance the overall level of the
safety culture at the plants. We are collaborating with them to
the extent that they are keeping us informed of their
activities. We are very interested in the work that they are
doing. We want to assess where they are in relation to where we
are.
I did want to fill that in to give you a little bit better
understanding that we do take the issue of safety culture quite
seriously. We recognize what other of our international
partners are doing. We want to make sure that we are doing it
in the right way for the licensees that we oversee.
Mr. Diaz. If I may add, on the issue of Davis-Besse, on
safety culture, the licensee did not meet its own standards of
safety culture. We do hold them accountable for those
standards. We want every licensee to have very high standards.
Senator Voinovich. You should set the standards for them.
Mr. Diaz. Well, that is an issue that is a very difficult
issue. Again, we might be getting into the prerogative of the
management of this facility. The Commission has been discussing
this for many years. We actually do much more than our European
colleagues in the area of oversight, much more intrusive, much
more in there, much more looking over what happened.
I do not think there is a match in the world for the way
that the NRC conducts oversight of nuclear facilities anywhere.
I will stand by that statement.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, I might just add that you are
citing the European example. The main European example that I
am aware of is that our UK counterparts have a license
condition that they have imposed on their reactors that
basically gets the regulator, the Nuclear Installations
Directorate involved in any staff change at the plant. So if
you want to decrease the number of people in Department ``X''
by ``y,'' you have to come in to the regulator and talk to him
about it.
I remember Chairman Inhofe got wind of that a few hearings
ago and asked us about whether we thought that that was our
role. We said very firmly that that was not our role. I am not
sure that gets at safety culture.
Senator Voinovich. The thing is that is not the role I am
asking you to make.
Mr. McGaffigan. No, no; I understand. But that is a
European precedent. The European precedent that is often--times
cited is the UK license condition that gets them involved in
essentially labor management issues and having a regulator
trying to determine what number of people are needed in each
department.
We have respectfully said no to that. There are other
approaches to safety culture. I think our approach, which is
when we find a problem, whether it is at Hope Creek Salem, or
South Texas, or Davis-Besse, we then ask the licensee to do a
lot of the surveying that you do. But do you do that for all
103 plants where, for the most part, we do not have any other
symptom coming up? That could be quite burdensome. Then in
judging the results, it gets to be very, very subjective. So
that has been the problem that we have faced.
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would add two
quick things. When I worked as a counsel on this committee, it
was quite popular to look at what are the Europeans doing
versus what we are doing. I think those translations are not
always made correctly. There is an issue of what does the
regulation or law look like on paper versus where are you in
terms of the enforcement of those regulations. There are quite
stark differences between the Europeans and between this
country.
Senator Voinovich. In the GAO report, ``The International
Atomic Energy and its member nations have developed guidance
and procedures for addressing safety culture at nuclear power
plants. Today, several countries, such as Brazil, Canada,
Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom assess plant safety
culture or licensee's own assessments of their safety
culture.''
I am just saying that we are going to have to spend a
little more time on this issue of safety. I want to know just
exactly what you are doing. Why did not the person who was on
board at Davis-Besse understand that they did not have a
culture of safety in the place? Where were the standards? Do
you negotiate the standards?
There are a lot of questions here in terms of management. I
am not asking you to micro-manage these outfits. We should set
some standards that are agreed upon, and then make sure that
they are being upheld.
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, one of the very important
things that we do as an Agency is benchmark. We meet
collaboratively with our international partners and try to
identify best practices. Members of the Commission do as well.
I have been to most of the major European partners, as have
others. These are most of our counterparts internationally.
I could tell you in private my observations about some of
them. I think we do a pretty damn good job in this country. I
am not going to back away from that statement. Now, the heart
of your matter is that we missed an issue of safety culture at
Davis-Besse. It led to an identifiable problem. I think there
is complete agreement with you that we need to get to the heart
of the issue.
Senator Voinovich. Well, there is the other facility that
Senator Carper mentioned where they missed a safety culture.
Mr. McGaffigan. Mr. Chairman, one of the issues
Commissioner Merrifield mentioned is INPO's involvement. INPO
has a lot more credibility, frankly, than Federal bureaucrats
do going in and talking frankly with their industry peers, ``We
do not like your incentive system for your executives here.''
But to legislate a rule that says that you will have a
safety gate for executive incentive payments is another issue.
The South Texas project last year did absolutely wonderfully in
dealing with a problem that showed up in March of last year. We
have commended them for it. The industry has commended them for
it. They took an absolutely first-rate approach to dealing with
the issue.
But their incentive structure, they once told me, is that
they have a safety gate in their executive incentives. Should
that be a rule that you first have to meet all your safety
goals before you get paid other incentive payments?
Senator Voinovich. You let them decide how they achieve it.
If they want to put a safety rule in, and that is the way they
get high performance evaluation of their people to meet the
standard, if they want to do it that way, fine. They can do it
anyway they want to. The main thing is to make sure that we
have the highest standards of safety and the people working in
the plant get it.
Mr. McGaffigan. We agree. That is the benchmarking that
Commissioner Merrifield talks about. We think we are going to
get to a point where people adopt very good practices in areas
that are very hard to regulate through the processes that the
industry itself regulates.
I think this industry, through the Institute of Nuclear
Power Operations established after Three Mile Island, is
absolutely committed to what the late Bill Lee, the Duke
executive said, ``They are only as good as the weakest
member.'' They are trying to learn the lessons of Davis-Besse
every bit as much as we are trying to learn the lessons of
Davis-Besse. Davis-Besse was on their good guy list, too, just
like they were on ours. They are committed to not letting that
happen again. They are looking at these issues that executives
peer reviewing each other----
Senator Voinovich. I want to know if you are dedicated to
making sure that it does not happen again.
Mr. Diaz. Of course, we are.
Mr. Merrifield. Yes, sir; yes, sir.
Senator Voinovich. You are a regulatory Agency.
Mr. McGaffigan. Yes, sir. And we are going to do everything
that we can do within the bounds of what a Federal regulator
should do to make sure that Davis-Besse do not happen. We are
absolutely dedicated to that. We wake up every day. Our staff
wakes up every day dedicated to that purpose.
Mr. Merrifield. Mr. Chairman, you have shown great
leadership in holding our feet to the fire on the safety issues
arising from Davis-Besse. We fully appreciate and recognize the
concern that you have and the concerns raised by GAO. The
issues of the safety culture are tough issues. They are not
easily discussed or resolved.
I think that you are pointing out that we need to have
further dialog with you and others on this matter. I think that
is a reasonable request and one that we can certainly say that
we will continue in the future.
Mr. Diaz. But I would like to reassure you that we are
totally dedicated to making sure that every aspect of the
safety of these plants, including how the managers manage
safety culture, is not only important, but we are committed to
making sure that happens.
Senator Voinovich. We are going to talk about setting
standards. If you will not do it, I will get legislation passed
to get it done. But we are going to talk about it. I would
rather do by regulation and by working with the industry. But
this is a big issue. I have run some operations. It is the
mentality of the people who work there that make the
difference. If they slough it off and they do not care about
it, and it is not high on the list--performance evaluations are
very important. That is one of the ways that you get people's
attention.
They ought not to be mandated, but if I were a business and
safety was very important, I would give that some consideration
in terms of performance evaluations so everybody knew this was
important and if you did not do your job in that area, then you
are not doing your job.
Mr. McGaffigan. Sir, I could not agree with you more that
that is exactly what we would like all of our licensees to do--
to make sure that the incentive system puts safety first. I do
not think that necessarily was the case at Davis-Besse. I think
the industry is learning that lesson, but it is very, very
hard. We have gotten reports from GAO, as they have said
before, that we should regulate in this area. No one has given
us an existence proof of a regulation that can be implemented.
That is what we are looking for.
Senator Voinovich. We can talk about that.
We should get onto to the next panel. Thank you very much.
We look forward to spending some time with you about this issue
and a couple of others.
Mr. Diaz. Thank you.
Mr. McGaffigan. Thank you.
Mr. Merrifield. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. The record is going to be held open for
questions from Members of the committee.
Without objection, so ordered.
Senator Inhofe asked that this be submitted in the record
in response to Senator Reid.
``I understand in my absence that Senator Reid said there was an
agreement to hold Admiral Grossenbacher until a Democrat had been
nominated, thereby linking the two nominees. I want to state for the
record that we never had such an agreement. We tried to hold a hearing
on Admiral Grossenbacher several times. Each time we were blocked by
the minority.''
Without objection, we will put this in the record.
Senator Voinovich. I apologize to the second panel for the
delay. I hope it has not inconvenienced you too much. We are
going to ask that you limit your statements to 5 minutes. We
want to assure you that your full statements will be in the
record before this committee.
We are pleased to have Marvin Fertel, senior vice president
of Nuclear Generation; David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer,
Union of Concerned Scientists; Marilyn Kray, vice president for
project development, Exelon Generation; and Barkley Jones,
professor, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological
Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana--Champaign.
Thank you all for being here today with us. We will start
with Mr. Fertel.
STATEMENT OF MARVIN FERTEL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF NUCLEAR
GENERATION, NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE
Mr. Fertel. Thank you, Chairman Voinovich, and Ranking
Member Carper.
I appreciate the opportunity to represent NEI's member
companies before this subcommittee today. While my written
testimony is much broader, my comments today will briefly
discuss three key points.
No. 1, our country's 103 nuclear power plants are critical
to our economy, energy security, and environmental goals, and
currently produce electricity for one in every five homes and
businesses.
No. 2, an effective, credible, stable, and efficient NRC is
vital to both assuring protection of public health and safety,
and to providing an environment that allows for positive
business decisions concerning our existing plants and those of
tomorrow.
No. 3, I will comment on industry actions to address the
issue of the degradation of materials used in nuclear plant
components and systems.
Over the past decade, our 103 nuclear plants have achieved
record levels of production and efficiency while maintaining
the highest levels of safety. As our second largest source of
electricity, U.S. nuclear power plants produced 767 billion
kilowatt hours in 2003, which represents a 25 percent increase
compared to 10 years ago.
Nuclear power plants are also the most affordable baseload
source of electricity today, with costs lower than those for
coal and natural gas and oil. In an economy that is seeing
great volatility in the course of oil, gas, and coal,
electricity from nuclear plants provides consumers and
businesses with a high degree of price stability.
As this subcommittee is responsible for Federal clean air
policy, I am sure that you are aware that nuclear power
generates three-fourths of all emission-free electricity in the
United States. This Monday, Exxon-Mobile ran a full-page ad in
the Washington Post, talking about its efforts to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. The company was rightfully proud to
advertise that its 80 co-generation facilities reduced
emissions by an amount equivalent to taking a million cars off
the road, a rather impressive feat.
But to put nuclear's clean air value to our Nation in
perspective, annually the nuclear energy industry impact on
greenhouse gas emissions is over 100 times greater, the
equivalent of eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions from 138
million cars, or about 9 out of every 10 U.S. passenger cars.
Nuclear is indeed our largest source of emission-free
electricity. To enjoy this benefit, our existing plants must
continue to operate and new plants must be built in the coming
years. This depends on the NRC's effectiveness as a safety
regulator as well as its efficiency.
As others on this panel will emphasize, regulatory
uncertainty is the largest perceived risk with new nuclear
plant construction. Providing certainty, predictability, and
stability will be essential to attract investment in our new
advanced design reactors.
We now have 4 years of experience with the NRC's revised
oversight process. This new oversight process is a major
success for safety and for improved regulatory stability. The
new process focuses on those areas of the plant that are most
important to safety. It has improved transparency to all
stakeholders, as well as enhanced objectivity and regulatory
stability.
The industry fully supports the NRC's efforts to make the
regulatory process more safety focused. We believe it work is
far from complete. The Agency must move forward systematically
and aggressively to incorporate its safety focused approach
into the rules themselves.
We also acknowledge the Agency for its progress in
reviewing applications for license renewal of existing plants.
Four years ago the process was anything but certain. Today the
Agency's businesslike approach to the reviews has resulted in a
renewal of the licenses for about one-quarter of the Nation's
plants. We expect almost all plants will go for license
renewal.
The lessons learned from the license renewal process and
the discipline inherent in it must be applied as the Agency
faces new challenges in the licensing process for the Yucca
Mountain project, and the licensing of new facilities such as
the new uranium enrichment facilities.
We urge this committee to systematically monitor NRC's
progress on changing the regulations to be more risk--informed,
on their continued activities to review license renewable
applications, and on all of their new facility licensing
reviews.
As you are aware, the nuclear industry fully pays for all
the costs associated with NRC regulation. In fact, nuclear
power plant owners pay for all costs associated with their
operation, including all externalities. We are the only
industrial facilities to do so.
Four years ago this committee supported, and Congress
passed, a law that reduced the fees paid by the industry as a
share of the NRC budget by up to 10 percent. The industry urges
this committee to renew carefully the NRC's fee structure and
its budget which has grown significantly over the past few
years. Industry fees should not be used for services that do
not directly support regulation of the industry.
As discussed in my written testimony, industry also
believes that the NRC could operate more efficiently at reduced
costs to licensees. To achieve this would require a systematic
review of NRC resources, their priorities, and a holistic view
of the NRC work force and attrition issues.
Finally, I would like to mention the industry's response to
the issue of material degradation at the Davis-Besse plant.
While significant materials management programs were in place
for decades, the industry aggressively responded and has acted
on the Davis-Besse experience. We have expanded our programs in
this area, and more importantly, through NEI have developed an
integrated, coordinated, and much more proactive material
management program. The industry will invest at least $65
million annually in this effort.
I can assure you that along with the NRC we are fully
committed to detecting and resolving material issues well
before they pose any challenge of safe operations of our
plants.
Mr. Chairman, no one values the safe operation of our
plants more than the people that work at the plants and the
owners of those plants. Sound business practice is not just
regulations that require the owners to maintain and operate the
plants with safety as the top priority. Your concern about
safety culture is fully appreciated and shared by us. I would
welcome the opportunity to discuss with you and your colleagues
the bases for achieving the type of safety culture we all would
strive for.
The continued oversight of the NRC by this committee to
ensure a credible, effective, efficient, and stable regulatory
process is both appreciated and needed. Furthermore, a
disciplined focus on NRC resources and budget issues has never
been more appropriate than now.
We thank this committee for its past actions. We welcome
your continued focus on achieving greater efficiencies in the
future. Thank you. I would ask that my written statement be
placed in the record in its entirety.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Fertel.
Mr. Lochbaum.
STATEMENT OF DAVID LOCHBAUM, NUCLEAR SAFETY ENGINEER, UNION OF
CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
Mr. Lochbaum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Senator Carper.
Twenty-five years ago, a Three Mile Island reactor outside
Harrisburg, PA experienced the worst nuclear power plant
accident in U.S. history. That accident was not caused by
uniquely bad conditions. It resulted from broad-based problems
at many reactors that eventually produced a meltdown at one of
them. The post-accident inquiries resulted in extensive changes
at both the nuclear industry and the NRC.
This history is relevant to today's hearing because
compelling evidence suggests that extensive degraded conditions
at many reactor sites are again being tolerated. The NRC's
response to these warning signs have amounted to little more
than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Fortunately, there is still time for the NRC to plot a
different course so as to avoid the icebergs looming on the
horizon. Earlier this week, GAO released a report on the NRC's
mishandling of safety issues at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant.
GAO identified several problems NRC should correct. The GAO and
the media made much of the fact that the NRC rejected many of
the findings.
The larger concern is that the NRC has seldom fixed
findings made by its internal and external auditors, even those
findings to which it agreed. I reviewed reports issued by the
NRC's Lessons Learned Task Forces, the NRC Inspector General
and the GAO over the past 8 years and saw the same regulatory
problems contributing to unacceptable safety levels at plant
after plant.
Earlier this week the GAO reported that the NRC is not
addressing three systemic problems underscored by the Davis-
Besse incident. The first problem is that the NRC's process for
assessing safety at nuclear power plants is not adequate for
detecting early indications of deteriorating safety. GAO
reported this very same finding in January 1999, July 1998, May
1997, and January 1996.
The second problem identified by GAO was NRC's decision--
making guidance does not specifically address shutdown
discussions or explain how different safety considerations,
such as quantitative estimates of risk should be weighed. The
NRC Inspector General reported virtually identical findings in
May 2003, December 2002, and August 2002. The GAO reported this
very same problem in February 1999.
The third problem identified by GAO was that the NRC does
not have adequate management controls for systematically
tracking actions that it has taken in response to incidents at
plants to determine if the actions were sufficient. GAO
reported a virtually identical problem in September 2003,
involving security. The NRC Lessons Learned Task Force reported
this problem in September 2002. The NRC's Inspector General
reported this problem in August 2000. GAO reported this problem
more broadly in May 1997.
Thus, the NRC is much like Bill Murray in the movie,
Groundhog Day. They keep relieving the same problems over and
over instead of fixing them. Bill Murray's movie lasted about
90 minutes. The NRC's rut dates back two decades and continues
today.
Davis-Besse is the 28th reactor in the past 20 years to be
shut down for a year or longer to fix safety problems. The NRC
must fix its chronic problems to end its ``Groundhog Day.''
The 28 reactors that endured these lengthy outages brought
in new management to direct the recovery efforts. New managers
can assess policies and practices unencumbered by tradition.
New managers can strike out new paths without implicitly
conceding that it led workers down the wrong roads in the past.
New management is a tried-and-true method for bringing about
timely reforms, yet it is an untried method at NRC.
A few of NRC's managers are new to the Agency. Most worked
their way up through the ranks. Consequently, they all come
from the same mold and have the same habits. Retirements and
reorganizations merely put different faces on the same
management styles. Reform efforts fail because repackaging and
reapplying that management style cannot yield meaningful
changes.
UCS is not advocating a massive infusion of new managers at
the NRC. That would be unfair. That would be the fastest and
surest fix, but it would be unfair to oust many fine public
servants.
Instead, we urge changes to the NRC's hiring and promotion
practices. Retirements and voluntary departures should become
opportunities for finding the most qualified replacement, not
just the most qualified replacement within NRC.
One of the NRC's strengths is talented, capable, and
dedicated employees. Properly led, they can make sure that
nuclear power's costs are not too high and nuclear power safety
levels are not too low.
On behalf of UCS, I wish to thank this subcommittee for
conducting this hearing and inviting our views on this subject.
Thank you. I would ask that my written statement be placed in
the record in its entirety.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Lochbaum.
Ms. Kray.
STATEMENT OF MARILYN KRAY, VICE PRESIDENT FOR PROJECT
DEVELOPMENT, EXELON GENERATION
Ms. Kray. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Senator Carper.
I am with Exelon Nuclear. I am also here in the capacity as a
lead representative for NuStart Energy Development.
I preface my remarks today with an observation of the
opportune timing of this hearing. There are a number of factors
converging to establish a platform requiring not only our
attention but also our action. These factors are: the
heightened concern with the stability of our electricity
supply, the recognized need for fuel diversity, and less
dependence on foreign energy sources, the increased concern
with the environment, and increasing demand for electricity,
both domestically and globally.
These factors suggest the need to revisit each component of
our generation mix. I will be here to discuss only the nuclear
power component which provides, as stated, approximately 20
percent of our electricity needs. In response to an earlier
question, it is my opinion that our current fleet of operating
reactors cannot uphold the current 20 percent contribution.
As with any form of energy, nuclear power has both its
risks as well as its benefits. We must be forever vigilant of
the need to continuously assess the operational safety of our
plants, internalizing the lessons learned from TMI, and more
recently, Davis-Besse. We must also identify a long-term
solution to our nuclear waste problem.
It is fair also to acknowledge the benefits of nuclear
power--being clean, reliable, and currently economic. I assert
that the benefits outweigh the risks, implying that this
generation alternative, along with the others, needs to be
preserved.
Preserving the nuclear power option, may sound like a
passive strategy, but the reality is that it requires
coordinated actions by both the Government and the nuclear
industry. I was pleased when the DoE announced the Nuclear
Power 2010 Initiative. It was established to confront some of
the challenges which are unique to nuclear investments. As part
of this program, the DoE issued a solicitation inviting power
companies to submit proposals to address two of the significant
investment challenges, these being regulatory predictability
and completion of designs.
The NuStart Energy Development, LLC, was formed solely for
the purpose of responding to this solicitation. It was one of
three industry consortia to submit a proposal. Since submitting
my written testimony only a few days ago, I am pleased to
announce that Florida Power and Light has also joined the
consortium, making it now eight power companies and two reactor
vendors.
Our proposal to the DoE spans a 7-year-period from 2004 to
2010. The total cost is $800 million, with the industry
committed to providing one-half, or $400 million. The end
result of this project will be a full demonstration of the NRC
licensing process, and the completion of the design engineering
work for the two selected U.S. reactors. Together these will
significantly reduce the time to market for new plants and also
alleviate some major areas of uncertainty.
Beyond the Nuclear Power 2010 program, however, is a need
to financially incent first mover investors. Possible incentive
mechanisms include those modeled after other energy and public
works projects.
In summary, preserving the nuclear power option requires
action. In the near term, we must fund the Nuclear Power 2010
Initiative, specifically $80 million for fiscal year 2005, to
cover all three consortia proposals. In the long term, we must
adopt energy policy that establishes methods to promote large
capital investments into our energy sector while presenting
reasonable risks to shareholders.
Thank you for the privilege to share these thoughts with
you. I would ask that my written statement be placed in the
record in its entirety.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Ms. Kray.
Mr. Jones.
STATEMENT OF BARCLAY JONES, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF NUCLEAR,
PLASMA, AND RADIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT
URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Mr. Jones. Chairman Voinovich and Senator Carper, I am
pleased to be here as representative of the nuclear engineering
educational community. My background is listed in the front end
of the material that I have submitted for the record.
What I would like to do is highlight a few issues that I
brought up in the testimony, but would like to expand briefly
upon. I listed four of the timely jobs that the NRC has before
it. Those have been brought forward this morning.
There is discussion about whether there is sufficient
manpower available to meet job demand. From the production of
manpower point of view and where the universities fit in, it is
unclear that the present shortfall in the production of nuclear
engineers will satisfy the demand. The difference currently is
in the order of hundreds per year.
We are increasing our number of undergraduates in the
programs, but you must realize that as you add freshmen to
programs, it is 4 years, at least, before they graduate and
arrive on the work force scene. It is several year beyond that
before you would say they are experienced to the point where
they would be trusted to handle significant positions within
the power companies, NRC and other positions into which they
go.
So my urging to you is to keep track of the demographics
and look where resources can be spent in order to ensure that
the production of nuclear engineers will be there when needed.
The current work force demographic is very skewed to upper
age levels. We have heard this morning of the shortfall of
experienced people as retirements are occurring. We think that
the universities can and will play a pivotal role, but their
resource base is one that is limited by what the universities
can afford to put into small programs which nuclear engineering
programs typically are.
Nuclear engineering programs tend to be much smaller than
those in mechanical, electrical, computer sciences, et cetera.
Therefore, a demand for new faculty and for increased
expenditures is hard fought by other departments within the
university organization.
I indicated in my statement that it takes an enlightened
administration to respond favorably to the nuclear engineering
national needs. My institution has just gone through a 1-year
review of whether our nuclear engineering program should be
retained or dismantled. This is in a State with 11 operating
reactors and over 50 percent of the electrical power supplied
from nuclear power. We are the only university in the State
with a nuclear engineering program. I am happy to report that
the outcome was positive and we are now in a position of being
able to recruit for new faculty.
It is worth noting that Illinois has a similar demographic
in its work force with other nuclear engineering educational
programs. Three of us are at or past retirement age. That is
out of nine faculty, currently. To replace us and to have
overlap requires immediate hiring. The internal competitive
pressures are such that is difficult to gain in numbers. The
future at Illinois and at sister institutions requires that
Government aid, which has been coming from the Office of
Nuclear Energy part of DoE, and other government and industry
sources is very helpful. It supports fellowships, research and
more recently infrastructure for the programs.
It has basically saved the day in a lot of cases for
nuclear engineering departments.
But the number of departments has continued to shrink. So
our ability to be able to produce the output required is still
limited. Fortunately, the young people coming into universities
are signing up in nuclear engineering departments in larger
numbers. We think that, overall we will be able to supply an
increased number of graduates and to sustain the discipline.
I would be happy to respond to other points that I have
raised, if you have questions. I appreciate the opportunity to
speak with you. I would ask that my written statement be placed
in the record in its entirety.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much, Mr. Jones.
I really am interested, Dr. Jones, in this issue of where
we are going to get the people to get the job done. Is it the
Department of Energy that is providing you some help right now?
Mr. Jones. Yes, they have instituted various research
programs which basically support the graduate side of the
house, but these supply the grist, if you will, to sustain
undergraduate programs as well. They have the Nuclear
Engineering Education Research (NEER) program, which recently
has had increased funding level. They also have had a Nuclear
Energy Research Initiative (NERI) program in conjunction with
National Laboratories and Industry. Unfortunately, that one has
shrunk dramatically in funding. They also have introduced an
International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative I-NERI which
provides resources for the Federal role in International
Cooperation on Energy Innovation. The Innovations in Nuclear
Infrastructure and Education (INIE) program, which was
established in FY 2002, strengthens the Nation's university
nuclear engineering education programs through innovative use
of the university research and training reactors and
encouraging strategic partnerships between the universities,
the DOE national laboratories, and U.S. industry. These are
restricted to being run through universities. These programs
are very helpful.
The fellowships and scholarships that DoE provides and that
INPO provides, and that NRC, to a limited extent provides, are
also very helpful. If you look back at the beginning of nuclear
engineering in the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's and
into the 1970's, the traineeships and fellowships that were
provided at that time basically attracted the interest and
talent that made the robust programs that initiated the
discipline. I think we need to go back into that mode, where we
have larger numbers of them to attract the quality people that
are needed to sustain the industry, to sustain the security and
oversight levels that we need for the plants, and to provide
the needed continuing manpower.
Senator Voinovich. Do you have a national organization that
you belong to?
Mr. Jones. Yes, it is an ad hoc one. It is called NEDHO,
the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization. I
chaired it 10 or 12 years ago. It interacts and works closely
with the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Energy Institute,
the National Academy for Nuclear Training (Educational
Assistance Program) of the Institute for Nuclear Power
Operations (INPO) and with the American Nuclear Society, as
well as other nuclear related entities.
Senator Voinovich. I would be very interested if you could
get your organization to provide me with a memorandum or
whatever that would lay out what you really think needs to be
done in terms of the Federal Government's role in providing the
people that we are going to need for this industry in this
country.
I understand that some of the schools have closed down
their nuclear engineering departments; is that correct?
Mr. Jones. That is correct. We are down to less than 30
now.
Senator Voinovich. How many were there before?
Mr. Jones. It started out in the 1970's and 1980's with
about 60.
Senator Voinovich. Well, I would welcome that from you.
Mr. Jones. Absolutely.
Senator Voinovich. Without objection, so ordered.
[The referenced document follows on page 224.]
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Fertel, what is the industry doing
about this also? You have to be as much concerned as the people
in the NRC. You need them in the industry.
Mr. Fertel. Actually, from NEI's perspective, we are
actually very much involved with the program. We work very
closely with NEDO, and actually with the American Nuclear
Society and then with NRC and DoE looking at the manpower and
womanpower the work force needs going out over the next 20
years and have identified where the real needs are.
For instance, Dr. Jones mentioned the fact that DoE
supports the program. They are now going to support program for
health physics schools because we are seeing that we are really
shorted in health physicists going out over the next 10 years.
That has been very useful.
We will provide you, Mr. Chairman, the results of the work
that we have been doing which is an effort to be much more
integrated across the entire community, not just the industry
side, but really what Government thinks they will need, what
the industry thinks it will need, and where we see the
resources coming.
I was at a DoE Advisory Committee meeting in the last two
days and they talked about the program that was just mentioned.
Their program is doing pretty well there. It is run by Bill
Magwashot. They are spending about $21 million supporting
everything from fellowships and scholarships to research
reactors at the universities.
While we have lost a number of schools and, in fact, lost
three research reactors in recent years, the trends are all
much better now. School programs are growing. One of the things
that DoE has been able to facilitate the universities working
together rather than competing with each other to try to use
resources. That has actually turned out to be a positive for
everybody.
We will share with you, Mr. Chairman, the work that NEI has
done with the others. It is not just us.
Senator Voinovich. I would like to see it just to see where
you are and where you think you need to go and what role you
should be playing because you are interested in it and the
university should be in it, as well as DoE.
Without objection, so ordered.
[The referenced document follows on page 239.]
Mr. Fertel. We just completed a survey that will be very
insightful as to where the resource needs really are.
Senator Voinovich. Are you familiar with the Partnership
for Public Service?
Mr. Fertel. Just vaguely.
Senator Voinovich. Well, there is a guy named Sam Heyman
that contributed $25 million to set up this Partnership for
Public Service. The whole aim of the organization is to make
universities knowledgeable of the needs that we have in the
Federal Government for the best and brightest people. Many of
the industries in this country are participating in that
program.
Dr. Jones, are you familiar with the Partnership for Public
Service?
Mr. Jones. No, I am not.
Senator Voinovich. I will get you information on it.
They are out talking to universities about the
opportunities that are available and how they can help them
advertise those opportunities.
What do you attribute the fact that you are getting more
students than you did before, more interest?
Mr. Jones. I think partly with the support that has come in
from the several programs mentioned earlier. The job market is
good, the salaries are high. There is an enhanced recruiting
program that goes into the high schools to make the discipline
more visible to the incoming student. I think there are a
variety of these activities that are occurring and making the
difference. In addition, we are working much harder at
attracting students than we have previously.
Senator Voinovich. Good. Dr. Jones, do not retire. We need
you.
In this Energy bill, we do have some really good provisions
that will help to deal with that. I am trying to get some
flexibility through. This specifically deals with this
retirement and bringing people back on a part-time basis to
take care of the transition and move along. There is other
legislation that we have that bring in people from outside on a
contract basis to come in and help them out. There is just a
lot more flexibility for them.
There are little simple things like if they go out and hire
somebody that is maybe in the middle of their career, that when
they come to work for the Federal Government they do not have
to wait 15 years before they get a month's vacation. There are
a lot of little simple things that we could be done to make it
a lot easier.
But I am very interested in that. I have another hat and
that is the Oversight of Government Management in the Federal
Work Force. So that is why I am so interested in this whole
issue of human capital.
The other question I would like all of you to comment on,
if you feel that you have something constructive to say about
it is this whole little debate I had with the members of the
Commission in regard to safety and the safety culture.
Mr. Fertel, I think if I heard you right, you said we are
not there yet. I am not asking for micro-managing, but it seems
to me that there are certain kinds of standards that the NRC
can recommend through regulation or what have you, and then
have people that are onsite that are aware of the standards.
They said 7 years, but I am not sure it should be 7 years. That
may be too long for people to be at a place. I think maybe
after three or 4 years it is time to go because you do, after a
while, get kind of used to the ``Old Boy'' network and stuff.
It seems to me that if you had some really competent people
that were paid competitively, they could be looking after a lot
of stuff. It is a no-brainer, I think, to find out that people
are pretty sloppily about safety.
Mr. Fertel. First of all, on Davis-Besse, there is no
excuse for the licensee, for the NRC, or actually even for the
industry overall because SAMPO had gone into Davis-Besse on
evaluations and not identified the problem. So it was a total
breakdown of every aspect of what you should look for to make
sure that those things do not happen.
David mentioned Three Mile Island 25 years ago. He is
concerned that we are maybe on the crest of another situation
like that. After Three Mile Island, as he said, INPO was
formed, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, an awful lot
of other things happened, too, as an industry and as regulators
at NRC.
As an industry, we changed the whole way we look at
training. We got into a systematic approach to training. We put
simulators at every site. There is a whole different regime for
training.
We looked at procedures, the way our operators react to
events. They went from basically thinking we could figure out
every event and you could just take Event ``A'' and I will
react to it, to a process that is more symptom based, almost
like doctors treat patients when they come in. What are the
symptoms? How do I stabilize the patient? How do I stabilize
the reactor? It was a massive culture change.
I think when I look at the Davis-Besse event, and when I
look at it, I am saying, as a sort of collective group of
people in the industry, what we felt was that it was a
breakdown in safety. Now, NRC has a role to play in helping
learn from that. The industry has a role to play in the
aggregate, which is INPO, NEI, and others. Then the licensees
have a role to play. I think that the struggle you are hearing
when you spoke to the Commissioners, and the struggle that we
would have is figuring out the right roles for each of those.
You are exactly right. The NRC should set standards. They
should set regulatory standards on safety that if you are
meeting, it is clear that you are focused on the right things.
Beyond that, the industry, and what was alluded to by the
Chairman was the industry is responsible for management. What
we do not want to ever do is take that accountability away. You
want to maintain the accountability of safety as job one from
the top CEO on down through the people on the floor doing the
work.
INPO has now gone out and basically did a self--assessment
on why they did not find a safety culture people. They are out
talking to people at the plants as part of their evaluations
regularly. The type of safety culture that allowed Davis-Besse
to occur should have been identified. So they have now
reassessed how they do their evaluations because there was a
failure there.
They have also developed a safety culture program that we
are now going to out to share with the rest of the industry.
How would you know good safety culture when you saw it? How
would you know it when it was not there? Some of the easy
things that people say is: If you walk around the plant,
basically cleanliness is an indication. Well, if you look at
what was going on at Davis-Besse, changing filters every week
rather than monthly, is an indication of a problem.
It should have been picked up. Some of this is not rocket
science. It is a breakdown. I think that figuring out where you
regulate and where you make sure things are visible, and I
think using a resident much more effectively is important. You
commented that those are your really important people. Get them
trained the right way. I think the Commission has heard that. I
think it is hard for a resident to look at everything.
Coming over here in a car, I was talking with Dr. Jones and
he said, ``Well, what does the resident look for?'' I said,
``Well, maybe that is one of the things that NRC has to
reassess. Rather than checking every little thing, they should
be looking for bigger and broader indications of problems.''
I would encourage right now at this point this. We are very
seriously looking, from an industry standpoint, what do you do
about the Davis-Besse experience? Complacency is the worst
thing that can happen in our industry. Everybody knows it.
Everybody says it. It has been said repeatedly by NRC
Commissioners.
Senator Voinovich. I want to tell you something. The reason
I am interested in this is because I support nuclear power.
Mr. Fertel. I understand that, sir. You want it to succeed.
Senator Voinovich. But the fact of the matter is that you
are not going to have more nuclear power until you resolve some
issues. One of the big issues over the years has been, and it
has prevented us from moving power, is? What do we do with
nuclear waste? We think that problem has been solved with Yucca
Mountain and so forth. We still have a long way to go with
that.
But the fact of the matter is that if the public feels that
these are fail-safe, that we have a responsible way of dealing
with nuclear waste, you will be able to get the support that we
need to move in that direction. So we agree. We should have
coal. We should have nuclear. We should have all of it and be
working toward renewables; the whole thing.
But if you do not have the regulation, if you do not have
the environment, then in terms of support for that, it is
difficult. The same thing is even with investors. You are going
to go out and try to find investors to put it in. If you have a
problem of: ``Where do you put this stuff? I have these
problems with safety things. The public is not for it.'' Then I
do not want to invest in one of these deals.
That is what we are trying to do here. It seems to me that
the industry itself should be way out in front on everything
you do.
Mr. Fertel. Well, it certainly is. David's comment about
what he have seen on the industry side when we change people
around when there is a problem, I think is true. I think maybe
that is a lesson that NRC could look at. It may not be
standards that have to be changed, even though there probably
are some. It may be the way people look at things when they are
there. Your comment that if you are there for a long time, it
all blends together.
It may not even be an ``Old Boy'' network as much as I have
always seen it look like this. I am not seeing a difference. It
is not the kind of eyes you want looking at stuff.
What I would like to do is probably share with you what we
are doing in the industry, and share with you what INPO is
doing and maybe offer some suggestions on what we think NRC
could do. I am not sure that there is a silver bullet stand
that they could issue. I think it is more of a menu of things
that we all need to do to assure that safety culture is correct
and that safety is always on everybody's mind.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Mr. Lochbaum, do you want to comment on that?
Then we are going to have to wrap it up. First it was the
President, and now it is the Secretary of Defense who is going
to meeting with the members of the Senate. I want to make sure
I get over there and hear what he has to say.
Mr. Lochbaum. Just very briefly. I just wanted to say that
the NRC has a safety culture problem of its own. Surveys
conducted by the Inspector General and the GAO have shown that,
for example, that the NRC workers who have raised safety
issues, one-third of them feel that they have been retaliated
against for having done so. Those kinds of problems that Davis-
Besse had to fix, we feel the NRC needs to fix internally so it
has a good safety culture, as well as all the plants in the
country. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. I would be interested in working with
the GAO and maybe getting input from you folks is: What is the
standard is that we use to make sure that these things that
have been long standing are taken care of?
I think that is the problem. I think we should lay this
out, work with some people, get the standards, and then just
basically say, ``Here are the problems.'' Then when we come
back for the next hearing, we want to do some things in the
office beyond the hearings. But I am just saying that you have
some measuring device to know whether or not you actually have
made an improvement in the area.
Mr. Lochbaum. One thing the NRC has incorporated into its
reactor oversight program is a formal feedback mechanism every
year where they go out and see: ``Have we achieved the
expectation we set out for this?'' I think broadening that and
continuing that is a good way to see if whatever fixes you
implement, did you achieve what you were trying to do, and not
cause some unintended consequences somewhere else.
So I think that NRC initiative was a good thing to do. I
think they should continue that.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Fertel, Mr. Lochbaum, or anybody,
maybe one of the nicest things that we could do for the NRC
would be to maybe find the best program in the country that
monitors those kinds of things from a business point of view,
and institute it there. It seems to me that that is missing.
Maybe we could get a little public/private partnership going
here and come in and help them out with that. It seems that
they have had an ongoing problem with that.
Like Mr. Diaz, they are all conscientious people that want
to do the right thing. I do not mean hiring a consultant, but
maybe the industry should think about that. This is an Agency
that is very important to you.
Dr. Lochbaum, it is important to you. I challenge you.
Could we sit down with them and say: ``Here is what you should
do. Find the best outfit in the country and say: `Would you be
willing to come in and spend some time over there?' ''
When I was Governor, I had private sector people to come in
and spend 6 months and some of them for a year pro bono to help
shape up some of the operations that we had in city and State
government. It is very frustrating to me that we have these
lessons learned but from Mr. Lochbaum's point, we have had
lessons learned and lessons learned. We have had GAO reports,
and we have had inspectors generals. I do not think that these
are people who do not care. But maybe they need some help.
Mr. Lochbaum. We did send a letter to the Commission on
February 2nd volunteering to help on the safety culture issues.
We thought they did a good job in addressing the Hope Creek and
Salem issues. We volunteered to help work with the industry and
with the NRC to figure out what is the right answer.
Senator Voinovich. I am going to suggest that to Mr. Diaz
that maybe we could get a little group together in my office
and talk about it and see where we can go.
Mr. Lochbaum. We would be glad to.
Senator Voinovich. That would be very good.
I want to thank you very much. You have been very patient.
I appreciate your conscientiousness. We have a challenge ahead
of us.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to
reconvene at the call of the chair.]
[Additional statements submitted for record follow:]
Statement of Chairman Nils Diaz, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, it is a pleasure to
appear before you today with my fellow Commissioners to discuss the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's programs. We appreciate the past
support that we have received from the subcommittee and the committee
as a whole, and we look forward to continue working with you.
As you know, the NRC's mission is to license and regulate the
Nation's civilian use of byproduct, source, and special nuclear
materials to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety,
promote the common defense and security, and protect the environment.
The Commission does not have a promotional role--rather, the agency
seeks to ensure the safe application of nuclear technology if society
elects to pursue the nuclear energy option. The Commission recognizes,
however, that its regulatory system should not establish inappropriate
impediments to the application of nuclear technology. Many of the
Commission's initiatives over the past several years have focused on
maintaining or enhancing safety and security while simultaneously
improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our regulatory system.
With your permission Mr. Chairman, I will highlight a few of our
ongoing initiatives and achievements.
reactor safety programs
The past 3 years have seen the maturing of the reactor oversight
process. We believe that this program is a significant improvement over
the former inspection, enforcement, and assessment processes. We
received external recognition of the effectiveness of our Reactor
Inspection and Performance Assessment program when the Office of
Management and Budget evaluated it using its Performance Assessment
Rating Tool (PART) and awarded the top rating, ``effective,'' a rating
achieved by only 11 percent of the Federal programs assessed. One of
its strongest attributes is its transparency and accessibility to
members of the public. You will find performance indicators and
inspection findings for every power reactor on NRC's public web site
page, as well as our current assessment of each reactor's overall
performance. The transition to the reactor oversight process has gone
well, and we will strive to make further improvements.
Overall, the industry has performed well. As of the end of CY 2003,
there were two plants designated for the highest level of scrutiny
under the reactor oversight process, the Cooper plant in Nebraska and
the Point Beach plant in Wisconsin. In addition, the Davis-Besse plant
in Ohio has been treated under our Manual Chapter 0350 Startup
Oversight Process. The Cooper and Point Beach plants have received
significant attention from our regional and headquarters offices, and
we are confident that these plants are on a path to resolving long-
standing problems.
Over the past 2 years, the NRC staff has devoted significant
resources for enhanced regulatory oversight of the Davis-Besse plant
following the discovery of extensive degradation of the reactor vessel
head. After an extgensive plant recovery program and comprehensive
corrective actions by the licensee, FirstEnergy, and considerable NRC
inspection and assessment, the staff determined that there was
reasonable assurance that the plant could be safely restarted and
operated. This decision was made in a deliberate manner, based on sound
regulatory and technical findings, and in accordance with the
requirements of Federal statutes and NRC regulations. On March 8, 2004,
the NRC staff gave approval for the restart of Davis-Besse. In
addition, the staff issued a confirmatory Order requiring independent
assessments and inspections at Davis-Besse to assure that long-term
corrective actions remain effective. The NRC's oversight panel will
continue to coordinate the inspection and regulatory activities for
Davis-Besse until plant performance warrants resumption of the normal
reactor oversight process.
We acknowledge the extensive interest in, and concerns about, the
restart of Davis-Besse by area residents; public interest groups;
Federal, State, and local officials; and others. We have conducted our
regulatory responsibilities in an open and candid manner, keeping the
public informed to the maximum extent possible at each step of the
process. We have not been able to share the results of our Office of
Investigations' reports because those have been referred to the
Department of Justice for its consideration. Those reports have,
however, been fully considered by NRC staff prior to restart. We have
had extensive communication with our stakeholders, including
establishing a web site and issuing monthly newsletters. Also during
the past 2 years, the NRC staff conducted 75 public meetings on Davis-
Besse most of these meetings were held in the vicinity of the plant and
held 50 briefings for Federal, State, and local government officials.
The oversight panel will continue to hold periodic public meetings near
Davis-Besse with FirstEnergy officials to review the status of ongoing
activities at the plant.
Concurrently, we have undertaken a significant and critical review
of our programmatic and oversight activities to evaluate our own
actions associated with the reactor vessel head degradation at Davis-
Besse. These actions have considered the Davis-Besse Lessons Learned
Task Force Report. The Task Force completed its review in September
2002 and issued a report that contained a number of recommendations for
improvements to the reactor research, oversight, and licensing
programs. These recommendations are being implemented as part of four
action plans, encompassing: (1) stress corrosion cracking, (2)
operating experience program effectiveness, (3) inspection, assessment
and project management guidance, and (4) barrier integrity
requirements. Of the 49 recommendations, 16 were completed in 2003,
including all seven high priority items scheduled to be completed that
year. Inspection program guidance was revised to address the high-
priority recommendations regarding followup to long-standing equipment
issues and oversight of plants in extended shutdowns. Enhancements to
inspector training programs were initiated. Guidance was issued
regarding the adequate documentation of certain decisions. We continue
to work on addressing the remaining recommendations and are making
significant progress. Except for three items, all other high-priority
recommendations will be completed by the end of 2004. The remaining
high priority items will be completed during 2005.
In April 2004, we completed an examination of reactor vessel
cladding and structural analyses. Based on these efforts, the staff
concluded that near-term vessel failure was unlikely and that it was
highly likely the vessel could have operated safely for at least
several more months following the February 2002 Davis-Besse shutdown.
As you are aware, the plant restarted with a new reactor vessel head;
thus, the degraded condition no longer exists.
The NRC's Office of the Inspector General conducted an inquiry into
our oversight of the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head degradation. The
issues identified in the IG's report are similar to a subset of those
identified by the Lessons Learned Task Force; and as such, corrective
actions have either been completed or are in progress for each of the
IG's findings. The IG was particularly concerned with the flow of
information within the agency--communication between headquarters, the
regional offices, and the resident inspector staff. We are committed to
improving this communication and have already witnessed a lowering
threshold for raising issues. For example, there has been a significant
increase in the scope and level of detail discussed during daily status
meetings among NRC regional, headquarters, and site offices, as well as
improvements in internal communications. We have also placed renewed
emphasis on improving communication with the international nuclear
community to ensure that new issues are promptly communicated as they
arise. Going forward, we are dedicated to improving our inspection and
assessment programs to prevent recurrence of this or similar
significant challenges to safety.
reactor licensing programs
Let me now turn to significant achievements in our reactor
licensing programs. The reactor licensing program ensures that
operating nuclear power plants maintain adequate protection of public
health and safety throughout the plant's operating life. NRC licensing
activities include reviewing license applications and changes to
existing licenses, reviewing reactor events for safety significance,
and improving safety regulations and guidance. In fiscal year 2003, the
NRC met or exceeded all established measures for the timeliness and
quantity of completed nuclear power plant licensing-related actions.
The reactor licensing program's timeliness in responding to
licensee requests has improved dramatically since 1997. At the end of
fiscal year 2003, 96 percent of licensing actions in the working
inventory were less than 1 year old and 100 percent of licensing
actions in the working inventory were less than 2 years old. We also
completed 500 other licensing activities, most of which were associated
with identification and resolution of emerging technical issues. For
example, we issued generic communications to the industry alerting them
to emerging issues such as leakage from reactor pressure vessel lower
head penetrations, the potential impact of debris blockage on emergency
sump recirculation at pressurized-water reactors, and control room
habitability. We will not be able to sustain this level of timeliness
in fiscal year 2004 because of a very large volume of security
licensing actions which we are giving the highest priority. We are
managing our licensing action inventory to ensure that appropriate
timeliness goals are being established for each action, and that no
safety-significant issue is left untreated.
A significant type of reactor licensing action, called a power
uprate, is a request to raise the maximum power level at which a plant
may be operated. Improvement of instrument accuracy and plant hardware
modifications have allowed licensees to submit power uprate
applications for NRC review and approval. The focus of our review of
these applications has been and will continue to be on safety. In
addition, we continue to monitor operating experience closely to
identify issues that may affect power uprate implementation.
Power uprates range from requests for small increases of less than
2 percent based on the recapture of power measurement uncertainty, to
large increases in the range of 15 to 20 percent that require
substantial hardware modifications to the plants. In all instances, the
NRC must be satisfied that appropriate safety margins remain. To date,
the NRC has approved 101 power uprates which have safely added
approximately 4175 megawatts electric to the nation's electric
generating capacity and is the equivalent of about four large nuclear
power plants.
Currently, the NRC has four power uprate applications under review
and expects to receive an additional 25 applications through calendar
year 2005. This would add approximately 1760 megawatts electric to the
nation's electric generating capacity. The NRC recently issued a Review
Standard for Extended Power Uprates (i.e., uprates that increase the
current power by 7 percent or more), which is available publicly, that
enhances the NRC's focus on safety and improves consistency,
predictability, and efficiency of these reviews.
As stated earlier, the NRC monitors operating experience at plants
that have implemented power uprates. Cases of steam dryer cracking and
flow-induced vibration damage affecting components and supports for the
main steam and feedwater lines have been observed at some of these
plants. We conducted inspections to identify the causes of several of
these issues and evaluated many of the repairs performed by the
licensees. We continue to monitor the industry's generic response to
these issues and will consider additional regulatory action, as
appropriate.
License renewals are another significant type of licensing action.
In 2003, thirteen units--North Anna Units 1 and 2 and Surry Units 1 and
2 in Virginia, Peach Bottom Units 2 and 3 in Pennsylvania, Saint Lucie
Units 1 and 2 in Florida, Fort Calhoun in Nebraska, McGuire Units 1 and
2 in North Carolina, and Catawba Units 1 and 2 in South Carolina--had
their licenses extended for an additional 20 years. Thus far in 2004, 2
units--H.B. Robinson, Unit 2 and V.C. Summer, Unit 1 in South
Carolina--have had their licenses renewed. That brings the total of
renewed reactor licenses to twenty-five. The staff currently has
license renewal applications under review for seventeen additional
units. In every instance, the staff has met its timeliness goals in
carrying out the safety and environmental reviews required by our
regulations. If all of the applications currently under review are
approved, approximately 40 percent of the nuclear power plants in the
U.S. will have extended their operating licenses. We expect that almost
all of the 104 reactors licensed to operate will apply for renewal of
their licenses. The staff will continue to face a significant workload
in this area with the sustained strong interest in license renewal by
nuclear power plant operators due to many benefits of license renewal.
While improved performance of operating nuclear power plants has
resulted in significant increases in their electrical output, it is
expected that continuing increased demands for electricity will need to
be addressed by construction of new generating capacity. As a result,
industry interest in new construction of nuclear power plants in the
U.S. has recently emerged. The NRC is ready to accept applications for
new power plants. New nuclear power plants will likely utilize 10 CFR
Part 52, which provides a stable and predictable licensing process.
This process ensures that all safety and environmental issues,
including emergency preparedness and security, are resolved prior to
the construction of a new nuclear power plant. The design certification
part of the process resolves the safety issues related to the plant
design, while the early site permit process resolves safety and
environmental issues related to a potential site. The issues resolved
in these two parts can then be referenced in an application which would
lead to a combined construction permit and operating license, referred
to as a combined license. This license contains inspections, tests,
analyses, and acceptance criteria that must be attained before the
facility can commence operation.
As you know, the NRC has already certified three new reactor
designs. These designs include General Electric's Advanced Boiling
Water Reactor and Westinghouse's AP600 and System 80+ designs. In
addition to the three advanced reactor designs already certified, there
are new nuclear power plant technologies which some believe can provide
enhanced safety, improved efficiency, and lower costs. The NRC staff is
currently reviewing the Westinghouse AP1000 design certification
application. The staff has met all scheduled milestones for the AP1000
design review and is on track to issue its recommendations to the
Commission this fall on whether the final design should be certified.
This recommendation would be followed by the design certification rule
in 2005. The NRC staff is also actively reviewing pre-application
issues on two additional designs and has four other designs in various
stages of pre-application review.
In September and October of last year, we received three early site
permit applications for sites in Virginia, Illinois, and Mississippi
where operating reactors already exist. The staff has established
schedules to complete the safety reviews and environmental impact
statements in approximately 2 years. The mandatory adjudicatory
hearings associated with the early site permits will be concluded after
completion of the NRC staff's technical review. As with design
certification rulemaking, issues resolved in the early site permit
proceedings will not be revisited during a combined license proceeding
absent new and compelling information.
security
During the past year, the Commission has continued to enhance
security of licensed nuclear facilities and materials through close
communication and coordination with other agencies in the intelligence
and law enforcement communities and with the Department of Homeland
Security. For commercial nuclear power reactors, we issued Orders in
April 2003 to impose a revised design basis threat (DBT) and enhanced
requirements for security officer work hour limits (to ensure officers
remained fit for duty) and standards for their training and
qualification. With these requirements, we have established an enhanced
set of security requirements for power reactors that is appropriate in
the post-9/11 threat environment. The work-hour limits and the
previously imposed access authorization enhancements have been fully
implemented. Revisions to site security plans (including training and
qualification) and site modifications to provide protection against the
revised DBT have been submitted to the NRC for review and
implementation. The review is in progress with full implementation
scheduled for October 2004. We have redefined our baseline inspection
program for security and are phasing in the new inspection program
consistent with the new requirements. As a complement to licensee
security measures, NRC is working with the Department of Homeland
Security and the Homeland Security Council, and other partners to
enhance the integrated Federal, State, and local response to threats.
We continue to conduct force-on-force exercises to evaluate
licensees' defensive capabilities and identify areas for improvement.
During 2003, we implemented a pilot force-on-force exercise program and
conducted exercises at 15 power plants to evaluate the significance and
impact of enhanced adversary characteristics and associated
compensatory measures and to develop program improvements to enhance
the realism and effectiveness of the exercises. In 2004, we are
conducting exercises roughly twice a month to evaluate the
effectiveness of program enhancements including the use of Multiple
Integrated Laser Enhancement System (MILES) equipment, adversary force
standards, improved controller training, and other enhancements to
improve the realism of the exercises while maintaining safety of both
the plant and personnel. In November of this year, we will begin full
implementation of the triennial force-on-force exercise program for
power reactors.
In the area of materials security, we have coordinated closely with
State agencies and affected licensee groups to develop additional
security requirements for two classes of materials licensees who
possess high-risk radioactive materials (irradiator licensees and
manufacturers and distributors of radioactive materials). We are
preparing proposed Orders for other materials users. We are developing
enhanced import and export controls for high-risk sources. In addition,
we have developed an interim data base for high-risk sources and, with
the assistance of other Federal agencies as well as the States, we are
laying the foundations for the national source tracking system. We are
also engaged with other Federal agencies to increase security involving
transportation of large quantities of radioactive materials and are
conducting a comprehensive review of material control and accounting
requirements and practices.
The NRC has completed most of its work on vulnerability assessments
and identification of mitigation strategies for a broad range of
threats to NRC-licensed activities involving radioactive materials and
nuclear facilities. Thus far, the results of these studies have
validated the actions NRC has taken to enhance security. These efforts
have continued to affirm the robustness of these facilities, the
effectiveness of redundant systems and defense-in-depth design
principles, and the value of effective programs for operator training
and emergency preparedness. Our vulnerability studies confirm that the
likelihood of damaging the reactor core and releasing radioactivity
that could affect public health and safety is low. Further, the studies
confirm that even in the unlikely event of a radiological release due
to terrorist use of a large aircraft, NRC's emergency planning basis
remains valid. The aircraft vulnerability studies also indicate that
significant damage to a spent fuel pool is improbable, that it is
highly unlikely that the impact on a dry spent fuel storage cask would
cause a significant release of radioactivity, and that the impact of a
large aircraft on a transportation cask would not result in a release
of radioactive material. Thus, we believe that nuclear power plant
safety, security, and emergency planning programs continue to provide
reasonable assurance of adequate protection of the public health and
safety.
In summary, NRC licensees had robust private sector security
programs long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, and those
programs have been further enhanced over the past 30 months. We
continue to ensure that our licensees implement effective security
programs for the current threat environment. In addition, we continue
to work closely with our Federal, State, and local partners and with
the private sector to ensure an appropriate integrated response to
threats to licensed nuclear facilities and materials.
emergency preparedness program
The events of September 11, 2001, highlighted the need to examine
the way the NRC is organized to carry out its safeguards, security, and
incident response functions. Consequently, the NRC has taken several
actions in response to the new environment, including the issuance of
compensatory measures and Orders to licensees, re-examination of the
emergency planning basis, creation of the Office of Nuclear Security
and Incident Response, and evaluation of reactor integrity to new
threats. In addition, the NRC as well as our stakeholders have become
increasingly aware of the importance of emergency preparedness to
mitigating the effects of potential security threats. Along with this
increased awareness, the NRC recognizes the need for increased
communication of our emergency preparedness activities with internal
and external stakeholders, including the public; industry; the
international nuclear community; and Federal, state, and local
government agencies. As a result, the NRC established the Nuclear
Emergency Preparedness Project Office. The Project Office is
responsible for the continuing development and refinement of emergency
preparedness policies, regulations, programs, and guidelines for both
currently licensed nuclear reactors and potential new nuclear reactors.
The Project Office provides technical expertise regarding emergency
preparedness issues to other NRC offices and also coordinates and
manages emergency preparedness communications with internal and
external stakeholders including the public, industry, the international
nuclear community, and Federal, State, and local government agencies.
materials program
The NRC, in partnership with the 33 Agreement States, conducts a
comprehensive program to ensure the safe use of radiological materials
in a variety of medical and industrial settings. As some of NRC's
responsibilities, including inspection and licensing actions, have been
assumed by Agreement States, our success depends in part on their
success, and we closely coordinate our activities with the States.
Recently, the Commission has completed a complex rulemaking on the
medical uses of byproduct material--a rulemaking in which there was
significant interaction with Congress. We are now implementing that
rule and assuring that compatible regulations are adopted by the
Agreement States.
The NRC is developing a web-based materials licensing system. The
system is expected to provide a secure method for licensees to request
licensing actions and to view the status of licensing actions on the
Web. In addition, the NRC, with assistance from other Federal agencies
and the States, is creating a National Source Tracking System that will
be used to monitor radioactive sources in quantities of concern with
respect to a radiological dispersal device (RDD) threat. The
development of the National Source Tracking System will remain a high
priority effort.
The Commission has also implemented a major rule change related to
large fuel cycle facilities. This rule requires licensees and
applicants to perform an integrated safety analysis that applies risk-
based insights to the regulation of their facilities. Major licensing
reviews currently underway, or soon to be submitted, will test the new
rule. These licensing reviews include two new gas centrifuge enrichment
facilities.
The first proposed enrichment facility would be located in New
Mexico and the second in Ohio. Louisiana Energy Services submitted an
application for its facility in Eunice, New Mexico, to the NRC in
December 2003. U.S. Enrichment Corporation is expected to submit its
application to the NRC for its site in Piketon, Ohio, in August 2004.
The Commission has directed its staff to conduct reviews of the
applications for the two proposed enrichment facilities in a timely
manner. The Commission will endeavor to identify efficiencies and
provide the necessary resources to reduce the time the agency needs to
complete these reviews.
The staff is currently reviewing a request to authorize
construction of a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility at the
Savannah River site in South Carolina as part of the Department of
Energy's program to dispose of excess weapons grade plutonium. The
staff is also providing support to its Russian counterparts regarding
the licensing of a Russian MOX facility that will have a design similar
to the U.S. facility.
In addition to the new facilities discussed above, the NRC
regulates several other existing fuel facilities. NRC's oversight of
these facilities includes licensing actions, inspection, enforcement,
and assessment of licensee performance. Our Fuel Facilities Licensing
and Inspection program was the second of our regulatory programs
assessed under the Office of Management and Budget's Performance
Assessment Rating Tool (PART) and awarded the top rating,
``effective,'' a rating achieved by only 11 percent of the Federal
programs evaluated.
nuclear waste program
The NRC staff has made progress on a wide array of programs
relating to the safe disposal of nuclear waste. A central focus of
these programs is to ensure that the agency is prepared to review an
application by the Department of Energy to construct a high-level
radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Progress has
been made in our pre-application interactions with DOE in addressing
technical issues that are significant to repository performance. The
application is expected to be submitted to NRC in December 2004. The
NRC would make a docketing decision on the license application, and, if
docketed, review the license application and make a determination
regarding to what extent the Yucca Mountain Final Environmental Impact
Statement can be adopted.
We are also preparing to conduct a related licensing proceeding.
Our preparations include the creation of an information technology
system to handle the large number of complex documents that will be
involved and the leasing of a hearing facility near Las Vegas, Nevada.
This licensing proceeding will present the NRC with a formidable
challenge and the technical issues involved will be substantial.
Moreover, no single NRC decision or set of decisions, since the Three
Mile Island accident, is likely to be scrutinized as closely as those
concerning this one-of-a-kind facility.
In our waste program, the NRC staff also has a substantial effort
underway in the area of dry cask storage of spent reactor fuel. Storage
and transport cask designs continue to be reviewed and certified.
Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSIs) continue to be
licensed and inspected. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board currently
is expected to issue its final decision on the proposed Private Fuel
Storage ISFSI in Utah early in 2005. The Surry ISFSI in Virginia is the
lead facility for license renewal. Indeed, our workload related to
ISFSIs and dry cask storage in general will increase substantially in
the years ahead. This projection is based on licensees' plans to adopt
dry cask storage at their sites. We are currently formulating a major
research program, the Package Performance Study, which will include a
demonstration test of the robustness of NRC-certified spent fuel
transportation casks.
The NRC staff is also continuing to make significant progress in
ensuring the decommissioning of contaminated sites. The staff
identified several policy issues requiring Commission direction that
will help expedite decommissioning under NRC's License Termination
Rule, and the Commission has provided the necessary guidance.
Complicated decommissioning sites that pose technical challenges
include the Safety Light site near Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. We are
currently working with the Environmental Protection Agency to have this
site included on the National Priority List to make other Federal
resources available for the cleanup of this site.
human capital
The NRC is very dependent on a highly skilled and experienced work
force for the effective execution of its activities. The Commission's
human capital planning integrates strategies for finding and attracting
new staff, and for promoting employee development, succession planning,
and retention. The Commission has developed and implemented a strategic
work force planning system to identify and monitor its human capital
assets and needs and to address critical skills shortages. This
includes the use of an agency-wide online skills and competency system
to identify gaps in needed skills; the ongoing review of NRC's
organizational structure to align with its mission and goals; and the
development of a web-based staffing system that includes online
application, rating, ranking, and referral features. The agency has
also implemented two leadership competency development programs to
select high-performing individuals and train them for future mid-level
and senior-level leadership positions. In addition, the agency has
continued to support its fellowship and scholarship programs and
identified a significant number of diverse, highly qualified entry-
level candidates through participation in recruitment events and career
fairs.
NRC is utilizing a variety of recruitment and retention incentives
to remain competitive with the private sector. So far we have been
successful in attracting and retaining new staff, particularly at entry
levels. Nonetheless, it is likely to become more difficult for NRC to
hire and retain personnel with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to
conduct the safety reviews, licensing, research, and oversight actions
that are essential to our safety mission. Moreover, the number of
individuals with the technical skills critical to the achievement of
the Commission's safety mission is rapidly declining in the Nation, and
the educational system is not replacing them. The maintenance of
technically competent staff will continue to challenge governmental,
academic, and industry entities associated with nuclear technology for
some time to come.
budget
The NRC has proposed a Fiscal Year 2005 budget of $670.3 million.
In developing the budget, the Commission has ensured that we continue
only those programs that are effective in meeting our mission and
goals. Even with our efforts to be more efficient in our utilization of
resources, we must still request a Fiscal Year 2005 budget increase of
approximately 7 percent ($44 million) over the Fiscal Year 2004 budget
for essential activities. This budget proposal will allow the NRC to
continue to protect the public health and safety, promote the common
defense and security, and protect the environment, while providing
sufficient resources to address increasing personnel costs and new
work. Approximately 32 percent ($14 million) of the budget growth is
for personnel costs, primarily the pay raise that the President has
authorized for Federal employees. The remaining increase supports our
High-Level Waste and Nuclear Reactor Safety programs. We are requesting
an increase of approximately $30 million for our High-Level Waste
program to initiate the review of the anticipated DOE application to
construct a high-level waste repository at Yucca Mountain and to
conduct a Package Performance Study, which will confirm that our
regulations provide for the safe transportation of spent nuclear fuel
even under accident scenarios. We are also requesting an increase of
approximately $10 million for our Nuclear Reactor Safety programs
primarily to keep pace with industry interest in new reactor
initiatives and to strengthen our reactor inspection and performance
assessment activities. These increases are offset by a decrease of
approximately $10 million in our Homeland Security programs for
completed homeland security activities.
legislative needs
Over the years, the NRC has repeatedly expressed its support of
enactment of legislation needed to strengthen the security of
facilities regulated by the Commission. Although we did not support all
the provisions contained in bills that addressed nuclear security in
the first session of this Congress, we were encouraged by Congressional
action on the subject. Although, the Commission has used existing
authority to ensure robust security for nuclear power plants and high
risk radioactive materials, provisions that the Commission supports
would provide the statutory authority for steps that we believe should
be taken to further enhance the protection of the country's nuclear
infrastructure and prevent malevolent use of radioactive material. In
particular, the Commission supports enactment of the nuclear security-
related provisions contained in H.R. 6, as approved by the conferees on
that bill in the last session of this Congress, and S. 2095, which has
been introduced in this session.
The proposals that the Commission believes to be most important
are: (1) authorization of security officers at NRC-regulated facilities
and activities to receive, possess, and, in appropriate circumstances,
use more powerful weapons against terrorist attacks, (2) enlargement of
the classes of NRC-regulated entities and activities whose employees
are subject to fingerprinting and criminal history background checks,
(3) Federal criminalization of unauthorized introduction of dangerous
weapons into nuclear facilities, (4) Federal criminalization of
sabotage of additional classes of nuclear facilities, fuel, and
material, (5) authorization for NRC to carry out a training and
fellowship program to address shortages of individuals with critical
nuclear regulatory skills, and (6) extension of NRC's regulatory
oversight to discrete sources of accelerator-produced radioactive
material and radium-226. All but the last of these are included in H.R.
6 and S. 2095.
In addition, enactment of the following proposals would enhance the
NRC's ability to protect the public health and safety:
(1) long-term extension of the Price-Anderson Act;
(2) authorization to charge Federal agencies fees for licensing and
inspections, rather than recouping the costs of these activities
through charges to other licensees;
(3) authorization for costs of security-related activities to be
covered from the general fund (except for fingerprinting, criminal
background checks, and security inspections);
(4) elimination of NRC's antitrust review authority over new power
reactor license applications;
(5) clarification of the length of combined construction permits
and operating licenses for new reactors;
(6) allowing rehired annuitants to receive full pay from the NRC
for their services without reduction in pension payments;
(7) authorization to compensate individuals with critical skills at
rates competitive with rates paid to persons with similar skills in the
private sector;
(8) modification of the organizational conflict of interest
provisions in the Atomic Energy Act to allow the agency to engage
valuable expertise at a national laboratory that also performs work for
the nuclear industry; and
(9) authorization to establish and participate in science,
engineering, and law partnership outreach programs to increase the
participation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic
Serving Institutions, and Tribes.
All but the last three proposals are included in H.R. 6 and S.
2095. We look forward to working with you on the enactment of these
proposals by this Congress.
conclusion
Mr. Chairman, I can assure you that the Commission will continue to
be very active in managing the staff's efforts on ensuring the adequate
protection of public health and safety, promoting common defense and
security, and protecting the environment in the application of nuclear
technology for civilian use.
We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. My
colleagues and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your questions.
______
Responses by Nils J. Dias to Additional Questions from Senator Inhofe
Question 1. Have you considered the possibility of consolidating
the employees at the four Regions to headquarters? Since every nuclear
reactor has full-time NRC resident inspectors located at each facility,
is it really necessary to have four regional offices? Please provide a
breakdown as to the functions performed solely at the Regional Offices,
and those functions which are performed at both headquarters and in the
regions.
Response. The NRC reviewed regional consolidation as recently as
last year. Reviews were also conducted during the 1994-1995 timeframe,
which resulted in the closure of NRC's Region V office in California,
and in 1998 and 2002. The most recent review was in response to the
fiscal year 2003 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act,
(House Report 108-10 and Senate Report 107-220), which directed the NRC
to report to the Congress on regulatory efficiencies that would be
gained by consolidating or eliminating regional offices. The Commission
provided a response on June 26, 2003. The report noted that the
Commission believes that in the context of its fundamental mission, a
strong regional presence is essential for the effective implementation
of the agency's health, safety, and security programs.
Public health and safety are better served with critical NRC
expertise located close to the geographical area of our licensed
activities. Whether overseeing routine licensed activities or reacting
to unforseen circumstances, a regional office can rapidly muster
critical resources to a facility when a situation needs immediate
attention and time is of the essence.
The regional staff have unique expertise in the area of field
inspections and are familiar with the licensee location, procedures,
strengths, and weaknesses. The four regional offices each oversee 21 to
32 operating reactors, which enables the NRC to deploy first responders
to incidents and emergencies in four different geographical locations.
Homeland security initiatives and objectives provide additional
compelling reasons for the agency's current regional structure. All the
regional offices are involved in heightened security, safeguards, and
emergency preparedness activities in light of the current threat
environment.
The NRC's regional structure aligns well with the Administration's
emphasis on close coordination with constituents and stakeholders.
Regional offices bring NRC closer to the public it serves, giving
stakeholders access to NRC officials in their own region of the
country, thereby enhancing relationships with local and state officials
and increasing public confidence in the NRC.
With regard to the functions carried out by the regions and
headquarters, the regional offices execute established NRC policies and
assigned programs relating to inspection, licensing, incident response,
governmental liaison, resource management and human resources. Each of
the regional offices implement inspection and public interface
activities in the following nine areas: investigations, public affairs,
legal affairs, allegations/enforcement, State liaison, resource
management, nuclear materials safety, reactor projects, and reactor
safety. NRC headquarters develops policy and inspection guidance for
programs assigned to the regional offices and assesses the
effectiveness and uniformity of the regions' implementation of those
programs.
The Commission does look for efficiencies in the operation of its
regional offices. For example, the Commission recently consolidated
responsibility for all major fuel cycle facilities in its Atlanta
office. Additionally, in 2000 the Commission attempted to close the NRC
Technical Training Center, which is located in Chattanooga, Tennessee
and move the approximately 27 personnel to our Rockville, Maryland
headquarters. We had based the decision on justifiable training
efficiencies to be gained from such a move. Nevertheless, the NRC was
precluded from making the change by language included in Public Law
106-246, The Military Construction Appropriations Act.
Question 2. How is the interaction between the EPA and the NRC on
the setting of radiation standards? Now that the standards for Yucca
Mountain have been set, I think we should give serious consideration to
consolidating the process at the NRC. Is it feasible/possible for the
EPA's functions to be consolidated at the NRC?
Response. EPA derives its responsibility to set generally
applicable radiation standards from the statutory Reorganization Plan
No. 3 of 1970. This plan gives EPA authority to set generally
applicable standards for the protection of the general environment from
radioactive material. As noted in the OMB Memorandum dated December 7,
1973, known as the Ash Memorandum, EPA initially construed its
responsibilities too broadly. The memorandum directed that EPA should
continue setting standards for the total amount of radiation in the
general environment from all facilities combined in the uranium fuel
cycle. Facility specific standards would be set by the NRC (formerly
the AEC) with EPA review and comment. Since that time the two agencies
have continued to interact to avoid overlap and duplication regarding
standards that apply to NRC regulated facilities. However, these
interactions have generally been difficult and largely unsuccessful.
Interface has occurred in a number of venues, and on a variety of
topics under the Atomic Energy Act. NRC's interactions with EPA have
consistently focused upon achieving an effective regulatory environment
that protects public health and safety and minimizes duplication. NRC
has worked to achieve this coordination through the Interagency
Steering Committee on Radiation Standards (ISCORS), and through a
Memorandum of Understanding. Overlap in legislative mandates continues
to result in differences between the agencies.
As to EPA's Yucca Mountain standards (the authority for which
derives from the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the Energy Policy Act of
1992), we would note that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit
issued a decision on July 9, 2004, in NEI v. EPA that vacated a part of
EPA's Yucca Mountain standards in 40 CFR Part 197 (and NRC's identical
standards in 10 CFR Part 63). Thus, at this time, we cannot say that
the ``standards for Yucca Mountain have been set.''
EPA's Yucca Mountain standard setting function aside, it would be
possible, with legislation, to transfer EPA's radiation standard
setting functions established by Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970 to
the NRC as well as related standard setting for accelerator-produced
radioactive material and certain discrete sources not currently covered
by the Atomic Energy Act. If such a step were taken, roles and
responsibilities would need to be carefully defined to clarify multiple
legislative mandates from which each agency's authority derives. In
addition, this consolidation would require adjustment of resources.
______
Responses by Nils J. Dias to Additional Questions from Senator Jeffords
Question 1. I have a question regarding record keeping related to
nuclear fuel. It is my understanding that the NRC used to have a more
direct role in keeping records on the location of nuclear fuel and
waste at power plants, but that it changed its policy in the 1980's.
Now the license holders are primarily responsible for this task. In
light of what has happened at Vermont Yankee, and with the increase in
buying and selling of nuclear plants to new owners, is the NRC
reconsidering taking a more active role? Would you need additional
authority from Congress to do so.
Response. In general, the NRC Material Control And Accounting
(MC&A) inspection program verifies whether licensees have limited their
possession and use of Special Nuclear Material (SNM), including spent
fuel, to the locations and purposes authorized by their operating
licenses. In addition, during these inspections, the NRC determines
whether licensees have implemented adequate and effective programs to
account for and control the SNM in their possession. Prior to 1988, the
NRC routinely inspected MC&A programs at nuclear power plants including
the location of spent fuel. This inspection process focused on fuel rod
assemblies but not individual components, such as fuel rods. However,
the NRC has never had an active or direct role in the creation or
maintenance of records for the licensee. This has always been the
licensee's responsibility.
Findings from MC&A inspections at power reactors prior to 1988 did
not indicate that there were major deficiencies in power reactor
licensees' MC&A programs. At that time, the NRC considered there was
low risk of improper storage of spent fuel at a power reactor since
physical and radiological characteristics of spent fuel made it highly
unlikely that spent fuel could be safely removed from the fuel pool
without proper equipment and procedures. Therefore, In 1988 the NRC
chose to allocate inspection resources to other more risk-significant
areas.
In 2001, the NRC staff conducted a re-examination of MC&A
vulnerabilities as part of the comprehensive review of the NRC's
Safeguards and Security Program which was conducted in response to a
November 2000 event at Millstone Unit 1, in which two irradiated fuel
rods were reported missing from the spent fuel pool. The Millstone
events as well as subsequent equivalent events at other facilities
involved individual fuel rods which were removed from fuel assemblies
and the disassembly occurred well before 1988.
As part of the lessons learned from the Millstone Unit 1 event, the
NRC staff developed Temporary Instruction (TI) 2515/154, ``Spent Fuel
Material Control and Accounting at Nuclear Plants,'' dated November 26,
2003, to enhance the NRC's inspection of licensees' MC&A programs. The
TI provides specific inspection guidance to NRC inspectors and consists
of three phases. The first phase requires the NRC resident inspector at
the reactor to determine through interviews if a licensee has ever
removed irradiated fuel rods from a fuel assembly. If the answer is
yes, Phase II of the TI is then implemented. Phase II of the TI
determines, through detailed questions and review of records and
physical inspection, if a licensee's MC&A program is adequate to
account for items located in the spent fuel pool. At a minimum, Phase
III of the TI will be implemented at plants where it has been
determined that a licensee's MC&A program has potential deficiencies.
Phase III is a much more detailed inspection of the MC&A program, which
will be conducted by experienced MC&A inspectors and includes
verification of records and the location in the spent fuel pool of all
spent fuel rods that have been separated from their parent fuel
assemblies. The NRC is developing a Bulletin which will be issued to
power reactor licensees and requests information from licensees about
their MC&A programs. The responses to this Bulletin will further inform
the conduct of the Phase III inspections. A longer term decision
regarding NRC inspection activities will be completed after the results
of Phase III inspections have been evaluated. No additional authority
is needed to conduct inspection activities in this area.
Question 2. The discovery of missing fuel rods at Vermont Yankee
resulted from NRC inspections required of all plants as a followup to
the loss of fuel at the Millstone plant. Have other plants reported
missing fuel? And when will the inspection of other plants be
completed?
Response. Yes, Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant has reported
missing fuel rod segments. Pacific Gas and Electric, the licensee, was
unable to locate the missing segments in most likely and accessible
locations. The NRC continues to provide oversight of key search
activities and will conduct a management meeting in late September
2004.
MC&A inspections are being conducted under Temporary Instruction
2515/154. Phases I and II of the temporary instruction, which are
inspections conducted by the Resident Inspectors, have been completed
at all plants. NRC is currently evaluating the information gathered
during Phases I and II and plans to conduct additional inspections at
some plants under Phase III. The temporary instruction calls for the
Phase III inspections to be completed by November 2005.
Question 3a. On May 4, 2004, the NRC responded to the Vermont
Public Service Board's request for additional independent review at
Vermont Yankee. Your letter stated that a pilot engineering assessment
would be conducted. The assessment team will be comprised of NRC staff,
state officials, and at least two independent contractors. When will
these inspections start?
Response. The inspection team was onsite at the Vermont Yankee
facility during the weeks of August 9 and 16 and is scheduled to be
onsite the week of August 30.
Question 3b. On May 4, 2004, the NRC responded to the Vermont
Public Service Board's request for additional independent review at
Vermont Yankee. Your letter stated that a pilot engineering assessment
would be conducted. The assessment team will be comprised of NRC staff,
state officials, and at least two independent contractors. Will you
commit to having an independent observer in addition to the independent
contractor on the team?
Response. The Vermont Yankee team will consist of a team leader,
three NRC inspectors, three contractors, and a member from the NRC
nuclear safety professional development program. The team leader will
come from our program office in headquarters and is currently
responsible for the overall engineering pilot program effort. He has
extensive experience leading engineering team inspections and no
previous involvement or inspection experience at Vermont Yankee. The
three contractors have diverse backgrounds in the electrical,
mechanical, and instrumentation areas, and have never been directly
employed by Vermont Yankee or its owner, Entergy, and have not
performed contract work for Vermont Yankee or Entergy for at least the
last 2 years. The other NRC inspection team members will not have
served or participated on engineering inspections at Vermont Yankee in
the past 2 years. In accordance with our Memorandum of Understanding
with Vermont, there also will be an observer from the State of Vermont
who will be able to provide an independent perspective on the
inspection. There were no plans for additional observers. Additional
observers who do not have unescorted access could impede the
effectiveness of the inspection effort as they would need to be
continuously escorted while onsite.
Question 4. There have been on-going allegations from nuclear
advocacy groups in New England that NRC staff ``misled'' Senator Leahy
and me regarding the extent to which the NRC's new power uprate
guidelines were related to the Independent Safety Assessment conducted
at Maine Yankee. These allegations have been made to the Commission in
writing.
Will you clarify this issue and provide a summary to the
subcommittee of the provisions of the extended power uprate guidelines
that were explicitly drawn from Maine Yankee Independent Safety
Assessment?
Response. The NRC received a letter from Mr. Ray Shadis on March
24, 2004, regarding the NRC communications with yourself and Senator
Leahy. He expressed concerns that you were misinformed about the nature
and the evolution of the NRC's newly adopted Review Standard for
extended power uprates (EPUs) and the scope of the EPU review process.
In a letter to the NRC on February 27, 2004, you accurately stated
that the NRC Review Standard for EPUs incorporates lessons learned from
an independent assessment conducted at Maine Yankee. On March 29, 2004,
the NRC responded to your letter and further reiterated that the Maine
Yankee lessons learned was one input, along with others, into the
development of the Review Standard. Our letter of March 29, 2004,
provides a broader discussion of the NRC's review process and
inspections related to the proposed power uprate.
The development of the Review Standard for EPUs included a review
of past experience, a part of which was a review of various reports
related to the Maine Yankee Lessons Learned such as:
<bullet> Memorandum from the Office of the Inspector General to the
Chairman and Commissioners, ``Event Inquiry--Maine Yankee Atomic Power
Station (Case 96-04S),'' dated May 8, 1996.
<bullet> Letter to C. Frizzle, Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company,
from S. Jackson, (former) Chairman, NRC, forwarding the ``Independent
Safety Assessment (ISA) of Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company,'' dated
October 7, 1996.
<bullet> Report of the Maine Yankee Lessons Learned Task Group,
dated December 1996.
<bullet> Memorandum to W. Travers from S. Collins, ``Status of NRR
Staff Actions Resulting from the Independent Assessment of Maine Yankee
Atomic Power Company,'' dated January 11, 2001.
<bullet> Power Uprate Amendment for Surry Units 1 and 2--License
Amendment Nos. 203 and 203, dated August 3, 1995.
<bullet> Power Uprate Amendment for Fermi 2--License Amendment No.
87, dated September 9, 1992.
The Maine Yankee Lessons Learned Task Group had identified ``Review
Areas Not Addressed'' by comparing twenty-two previous power uprate
safety evaluations to the most recent pressurized-water reactor and
boiling-water reactor safety evaluations (i.e., for Surry Units 1 and 2
and Fermi 2) and noting inconsistencies in the review scope. These
areas were: human factors, station blackout, standby liquid control
system, reactor vessel/internal stresses, control rod drive mechanisms,
steam generator tube integrity, reactor coolant pumps, pressurizer,
piping, equipment qualification, fire protection, control room
habitability, loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA)/main steam line break
containment performance, safety-related pumps net positive suction
head, post-LOCA combustible gas control, service water, component
cooling water, spent fuel pool cooling, heating ventilation air
conditioning, radwaste, circulating water system, main steam, main
turbine, instrumentation and control setpoints, reactor coolant system
flow, auxiliary feedwater, residual heat removal, and general design
criteria (GDC)-17 electric power systems.
In the Review Standard for EPUs, the staff included the ``Review
Areas Not Addressed'' identified by the Maine Yankee Lessons Learned
Task Group, along with information developed from other past experience
reviews. The staff also reviewed the Maine Yankee Lessons Learned Task
Group recommendations for improving the overall power uprate review
process and this information was used in the development of the process
guidance portion of the Review Standard for EPUs.
Specific to the issue of what experience from the Maine Yankee
Independent Safety Assessment was incorporated into the EPU review
guidance, the letter to C. Frizzle, Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company,
from S. Jackson, (former) Chairman, NRC, forwarding the ``Independent
Safety Assessment of Maine Yankee Atomic Power Company,'' dated October
7, 1996, contained five issues in Section 6.0, ``Regulatory Issues.''
These areas were: (1) analytical code validation, (2) compliance with
Safety Evaluation Reports, (3) Licensing Reviews for Power Uprates, (4)
Regulatory Guide 1.1, ``Net positive Suction Head for Emergency Core
Cooling and Containment Heat Removal System Pumps (Safety Guide 1),''
and (5) Inspection Program.
The staff broke these issues into 33 actions in the following
action categories: (1) Adequacy of Analytical Code Validation, (2)
Adequacy of NRC Review of Analysis Codes, (3) Compliance with Safety
Evaluation Reports, (4) Adequacy of Licensing Reviews for Power
Uprates, (5) Clarity and Intent of NRC Regulatory Guide 1.1 (Safety
Guide 1), (6) Adequacy of the NRC Inspection Program, (7) Agency
Expectations regarding Licensee Performance, (8) Cumulative Effect of
Operator Workarounds, (9) Agency Policy regarding Licensee Design Basis
Recovery Efforts, (10) Public Involvement in the Assessment Process,
and (11) Licensee Response to the ISA Report.
The staff has completed 30 of the 33 actions. Three actions are on-
going. These three actions are related to adequacy of analytical code
validation. The staff's interim action is the issuance of the Draft
Regulatory Guide DG-1096, ``Transient and Accident Analysis Methods,''
and Draft Standard Review Plan (SRP) 15.0.2, ``Review of Analytical
Computer Codes.'' The staff is resolving the public comments for these
documents. The staff's actions will be complete when the final
Regulatory Guide and SRP are issued. However, the staff placed guidance
in the Review Standard for EPUs (RS-001) for the staff to confirm that
licensees used codes and methods approved for the plant-specific
application and the licensee's use of the codes and methods complies
with any limitations, restrictions, and conditions specified in the
approving safety evaluation.
Question 5a. Constituents have raised concerns with me regarding
the process for requesting a public hearing on the Vermont Yankee power
uprate. I request that you clarify two issues:
First, my constituents believe that the time in which they need to
request a hearing begins when the notice of the application appears on
the Commission's web site rather than in the Federal Register. Isn't
the Federal Register notice, when one is submitted, the official start
of the clock for hearing requests? Will that be the case for Vermont
Yankee?
Response. The publication date of the Federal Register notice on
the Vermont Yankee power uprate amendment begins the period for
requesting a hearing. A notice of opportunity to request a hearing for
the Vermont Yankee power uprate was published in the Federal Register
on July 1, 2004 (69 FR 39976), with a 60 day period for hearing
requests.
Question 5b. Constituents have raised concerns with me regarding
the process for requesting a public hearing on the Vermont Yankee power
uprate. I request that you clarify two issues:
Second, my constituents are concerned about both the evidentiary
and standing requirements contained in the new NRC hearing regulations.
In response to a request for a hearing, does the NRC have the
discretion to decide whether or not to use its current or former
regulations to govern the hearing process?
Response. The Commission does have considerable discretion to
modify by order, in individual cases, the adjudicatory procedures to be
applied in a particular proceeding. However, the new 10 CFR Part 2 rule
(69 FR 2182, January 14, 2004), applies (by its terms) to proceedings
noticed after February 13, 2004, which includes the Vermont Yankee
power uprate proceeding. The new Part 2 is the product of a long and
comprehensive rulemaking effort concerning the rules of practice. It
does not change the evidentiary or standing requirements that were in
the old Part 2. The new Part 2 does include new requirements regarding
the submission of admissible contentions in informal proceedings, but
these contention requirements are essentially the same as the
contention requirements that applied under the old Part 2 proceedings
involving power reactor license amendment requests. The new Part 2
requires that contentions be submitted as part of the petition to
intervene/request for hearing.
Question 6a. On May 18, 2004, Senator Inhofe and I received a
letter from you regarding the Commission's views on nuclear waste that
is incidental to reprocessing at Department of Defense facilities.
(NOTE: The NRC letter was in reference to DOE facilities, not DOD
facilities). I noted with some dismay that while the Vermont Public
Service Board waited 7 weeks for a reply to its questions regarding the
proposed power uprate at Vermont Yankee, this response was obtained the
same day questions were submitted to the NRC. I have a few questions
regarding this letter, and I have written to you regarding this matter.
In the letter you write that the NRC ``does not have regulatory
authority or jurisdiction'' over the Savannah River, Hanford, or Idaho
facilities. Isn't that because the high-level waste storage tanks at
these locations were authorized only for short-term, temporary storage,
and not for permanent disposal?
Response. Section 202(4) of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974
gives NRC licensing and related regulatory authority over DOE
facilities ``authorized for the express purpose of subsequent long-term
storage of high-level radioactive waste generated by [DOE], which are
not used for, or are part of, research and development activities.''
There are three important elements in this jurisdictional grant: (1)
Congress must have expressly authorized the facility for its purpose;
(2) that purpose must be long-term storage; and (3) the radioactive
wastes to be stored must be high-level radioactive waste (HLW). All
three elements must be present for NRC's jurisdiction to attach to a
particular DOE facility. NRC currently does not have regulatory
authority over the Savannah River Site (SRS), Hanford, and Idaho
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) radioactive
waste storage tanks because Congress has not expressly authorized use
of these tanks for the purpose of long-term storage of DOE's HLW. NRC's
view that it does not have regulatory authority over the DOE
radioactive waste storage tanks has been upheld by the courts. See
Natural Resources Defense Council v. NRC, 606 F.2d 1261, 1266-1268
(D.C. Cir. 1979).
Question 6b. On May 18, 2004, Senator Inhofe and I received a
letter from you regarding the Commission's views on nuclear waste that
is incidental to reprocessing at Department of Defense facilities.
(NOTE: The NRC letter was in reference to DOE facilities, not DOD
facilities). I noted with some dismay that while the Vermont Public
Service Board waited 7 weeks for a reply to its questions regarding the
proposed power uprate at Vermont Yankee, this response was obtained the
same day questions were submitted to the NRC. I have a few questions
regarding this letter, and I have written to you regarding this matter.
Isn't it the case that under Section 202 of the Energy
Reorganization Act, the NRC has regulatory authority and jurisdiction
over any ``facilities authorized for the express purpose of . . . long-
term storage of high-level radioactive waste generated by'' the
Department of Energy?
Response. Yes. As stated above, under Section 202(4) of the Energy
Reorganization Act of 1974, NRC has regulatory authority and
jurisdiction over any facilities authorized for the express purpose of
subsequent long-term storage of HLW generated by DOE, which are not
used for, or are part of, research and development activities.
Question 6c. On May 18, 2004, Senator Inhofe and I received a
letter from you regarding the Commission's views on nuclear waste that
is incidental to reprocessing at Department of Defense facilities.
(NOTE: The NRC letter was in reference to DOE facilities, not DOD
facilities). I noted with some dismay that while the Vermont Public
Service Board waited 7 weeks for a reply to its questions regarding the
proposed power uprate at Vermont Yankee, this response was obtained the
same day questions were submitted to the NRC. I have a few questions
regarding this letter, and I have written to you regarding this matter.
Wouldn't legislation allowing DOE to say that high-level waste
isn't high-level anymore circumvent the NRC's responsibility for
licensing and regulating the facility in which permanent disposal is to
take place? Have you actually reviewed and taken a position on Section
3116 of the DOD Authorization bill that is presently on the Senate
floor?
Response. Legislation allowing DOE to exclude radioactive material
meeting certain criteria from the definition of HLW would not
necessarily affect the scope of NRC's jurisdiction under the Energy
Reorganization Act of 1974. NRC does not currently have jurisdiction
nor responsibility for licensing and regulating the radioactive waste
storage tanks at SRS, Hanford and INEEL because Congress has not
expressly authorized use of these tanks for the purpose of long-term
storage of DOE's HLW. Unless Congress expressly authorizes use of the
tanks for disposal of DOE's HLW, NRC would not have jurisdiction
irrespective of whether the waste remaining in the tanks is considered
to be HLW or waste-incidental-to-reprocessing (WIR). NRC has expressed
its general views on WIR in the Commission's letter of May 18, 2004 to
you and Senator Inhofe. NRC also responded to your June 2, 2004, letter
regarding NRC's jurisdiction over HLW tanks at SRS and possible effects
of the proposed Section 3116 in a letter to you dated July 15, 2004.
______
Responses by Nils J. Dias to Additional Questions from Senator
Voinovich
Question 1. GAO claims that the recommendations are being
implemented slowly because of resource constraints at the NRC. What are
some of these constraints and what needs to be done to address them?
Response. After the Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force (task
force) published its final report in October 2002, the NRC convened a
Senior Management Review Team to prioritize the task force's
recommendations as high, medium, and low priority and provide guidance
on an overall plan to implement the recommendations. An overall plan to
put the recommendations in place was provided to the Commission in
March 2003. In this plan, four specific action plans were developed to
address the high-priority recommendations in the following areas: (1)
stress corrosion cracking; (2) operating experience; (3) inspection,
assessment, and project management; and (4) barrier integrity
requirements. Two medium-priority and 3 low-priority items were
included in the action plans because they were closely tied to high-
priority items. Resource implications of these action plans were
specifically provided in the overall plan, and agency resources were
reallocated to carry out the high-priority recommendations effectively.
In subsequent reviews as work progressed, additional resources have
been allocated.
The overall plan called for implementation of the medium and low-
priority recommendations that were not captured by the action plans in
accordance with the NRC's Planning, Budgeting, and Performance
Management (PBPM) process. The PBPM process is an established process
which prioritizes work in accordance with safety benefits. All of the
medium and low priority recommendations were reviewed through the PBPM
process prior to the first semiannual report (August 2003).
Implementation schedules and resource allocation were established
commensurate with the perceived safety benefit relative to other NRC
activities. These schedules have been periodically revised in
accordance with the PBPM process, but are being tracked to completion.
Status information is reviewed semi-annually by the Commission. The
Commission believes that resources have been appropriately allocated to
this program. See the answer to question No. 2 for status of task force
recommendations.
The NRC is committed to the effective implementation of the task
force's recommendations. In addition to completing the implementation
of recommended actions, the NRC will complete effectiveness reviews to
ensure implementation meets the intended purposes and to ensure that
certain changes are ``institutionalized.''
Question 2. What progress are you making in implementing the Davis-
Besse lessons-learned task force (DBLLTF) recommendations?
Response. There were 49 DBLLTF recommendations that were
recommended for implementation after the senior management review. The
21 high-priority, 2 medium priority, and 3 low priority recommendations
were captured in four action plans and the remaining 23 recommendations
(14 medium-priority and 9 low-priority) were to be completed in
accordance with priorities established through the PBPM process, as
described in the answer to question No. 1. The status of implementation
is reviewed frequently and schedules are adjusted as needed to reflect
new information or conditions.
Since my testimony on May 20, 2004, some additional items have been
completed and the schedules for others have been changed. The status of
the 49 recommendations as of August 19, 2004, is as follows:
<bullet> Sixteen were completed in 2003. This included all 7 high-
priority items scheduled for completion during 2003, plus 9 lower
priority recommendations. Seven lower priority items were rescheduled.
<bullet> Eight additional items (4 high-priority and 4 lower
priority) have been completed to date in 2004.
<bullet> Fifteen additional items (3 high-priority, 10 medium-
priority, and 2 low-priority) are planned for completion by December
2004.
<bullet> Six additional items (5 high-priority and 1 low-priority)
are planned for completion by May 2005.
<bullet> The remaining 4 items (2 high-priority, 1 medium-priority,
and 1 low-priority) do not have a current completion schedule,
primarily because the scope of work depends on the outcome of other
recommendations, actions by industry, or completion of research
activities. However, work on these items should be substantially
complete in 2005.
In summary, as of June 30, 2004, 11 of the 21 high-priority
recommendations and 13 of the lower priority items have been completed
and work is in progress on the remaining items. In fact, seventy
percent of all the recommendations will be in place by the end of
calendar year 2004, with the expectation that all will be substantially
complete in 2005. The activities that will extend beyond 2005 include
rulemaking activities for Reactor Vessel Head inspection, which are
expected to be completed in 2006, and other potential regulatory
requirement revisions regarding Reactor Coolant System leakage, which
will be identified in 2005 following review of a research report on
leakage detection and monitoring technologies.
Question 3. GAO claims that several of the issues that led NRC to
not prevent the Davis-Besse incident were identified in past GAO
reports, Commission lessons-learned task force recommendations, and
Inspector General reports. The GAO also states that the NRC is
reviewing ``the effectiveness of its response to past NRC lessons-
learned task force reports.'' What is the progress of the review you
are performing on your effectiveness to fully implement past
recommendations?
Response. The charter of the Davis-Besse lessons learned task force
included a direction to look back at previous task force reports to
determine whether they suggested any recurring or similar problems. The
task force's review uncovered potentially recurring programmatic issues
and these issues were discussed in Appendix F of the task force report.
As a result of this effort, one of the task force's recommendations was
to conduct a more detailed effectiveness review of the actions taken in
response to past lessons-learned reviews. This recommended action has
been completed. The results of the review are being considered by NRC
senior management and the Commission to identify and take corrective
actions, as necessary.
Question 4. How are you addressing NRC's major communication
failures that GAO identified as playing a significant role in the
Davis-Besse incident?
Response. The NRC recognize that communications failures were an
underlying cause for issues discovered at Davis-Besse (DB). The
corrective actions outlined in the lessons-learned task force (LLTF)
action plans address communications beyond the topic of boric acid
corrosion control. For example, corrective actions in the area of
operating experience development and use are focused on enhancing
communications. The recommendations to strengthen inspection guidance,
institute training to reinforce a questioning attitude on the part of
management and staff, and change the Inspection Manual to provide
guidance for the staff to pursue issues identified during plant status
reviews are intended to establish more definitive expectations for
improved communications of operating experience. Developing the most
effective and efficient communications channels will be key to the
successful implementation of a more effective operating experience
program.
Beyond the DBLLTF Action Plan, the agency has several ongoing
initiatives that provide examples of efforts to more broadly improve
intra-agency communications. These examples include establishment of a
Communication Council reporting to the Executive Director for
Operations and the creation of a communications specialist position
reporting to the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) Deputy
Director. NRR also continues to improve and enhance its Web site as a
focused means of communicating with both internal and external
stakeholders. From a regional perspective, examples of communication
enhancements include lowering the threshold for communication of plant
issues on morning status calls, devoting additional time to discussing
lessons learned from plant events and inspection findings during
counterpart meetings, and developing enhanced guidance for documenting
significant operational event followup decisions. In another example,
NRC has recently revised guidance for NRC project managers for
operating reactor sites to enhance the expectation for communication
with NRC resident inspectors at the sites with regard to linkage
between licensing actions and relevant operating experience at the
sites. Collectively, these examples provide a strong indication that
NRC headquarters and regional staff have understood and sought to
address two of the most important lessons from the Davis-Besse event.
These two issues are (1) that on occasion, information initially
considered to have low significance by the first NRC recipient is later
found to be of greater significance once the information is shared and
evaluated more collegially; and (2) with regard to the complex nature
of commercial nuclear power operations, no one person can be aware of
all aspects of an issue. As a result, the more information that is
shared, the more likely significant problems will be identified and
appropriate action(s) taken.
Question 5. What is NRC's human capital situation? What are the top
things Congress can do to support NRC's human capital development?
Response. Although NRC continues to make progress in acquiring,
developing, deploying and retaining the human capital critical to the
accomplishment of its safety, security, and emergency preparedness
mission, the agency continues to be challenged by aging work force
issues and by new work requiring hard-to-find skills. The agency's
systematic strategic work force planning system is identifying
potential skill gaps and the agency is devoting resources to address
them. The following additional authorities would greatly help the
agency meet these challenges quickly and successfully:
<bullet> Provide the agency $5M ($1M in fiscal year 2004 through
fiscal year 2008) for training to address knowledge transfer and close
critical nuclear safety/security/emergency preparedness skills gaps
through employee training, and to fund the grant programs described
below.
<bullet> Allow the agency to establish a fellowship program at
institutions of higher learning to pay the tuition of undergraduate
students in disciplines of interest to NRC in return for an obligation
for the individual to accept employment with the NRC upon graduation.
These programs support the development of a supply of graduates with
technical skills needed for NRC's future work force.
<bullet> Allow the agency to establish a partnership program with
historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic serving
institutions and tribal colleges. Such a program would broaden the
recruiting base from which NRC draws new employees.
<bullet> Broaden the authority under Section 31a. and b. of the AEA
to provide grants, loans, cooperative agreements, contracts, and
equipment to academic institutions in support of courses, studies,
training, curriculum, and disciplines important to nuclear safety. The
agency would use this authority to support academic research and
analysis in disciplines important to nuclear safety. This activity
fosters the maintenance of centers of excellence at universities in
fields of interest to the NRC. Enhancing such excellence at academic
institutions generates a pool of expert faculty members on whom NRC
might draw for consultant, advisory board, or administrative judge
assignments.
<bullet> Provide the agency independent authority to waive the
pension offset when hiring retired Federal employees. The agency
already has limited authority from OPM to waive the pension offset, but
it is time-limited, expiring in fiscal year 2006, and it applies only
to engineers and scientists. It does not cover intelligence analysts,
security specialists, or others whose knowledge and skill may be
critical to the agency and who would decline re-employment absent the
waiver. More flexible authority to waive the pension offset would, for
example, enable the agency to deal with emergency needs and accomplish
knowledge transfer in critical skill areas.
<bullet> Provide the agency direct-hire authority where expedited
action to meet critical needs is required, for example, in engineering
and scientific areas, intelligence analysis, and security to work on
high priority safety, security, and emergency preparedness projects,
and authority to compensate experts in these areas at higher pay rates.
Under very restrictive circumstances, some direct-hire authority may be
obtained from OPM, but we believe that independent NRC legislative
authority would permit the agency to develop a direct-hire program that
best meets its needs. Independent NRC legislative authority to pay
salaries and/or additional compensation at a higher rate than the
current EX-III cap, $145,600 (e.g., up to the Vice President's salary)
would enable the agency to hire critically needed experts for whom the
current salary range is inadequate. This would be similar to DOD's
unique legislative authority which permits higher salaries to experts,
or to NASA's, which permits higher compensation for critical positions.
Question 6. What is required of onsite inspectors in terms of their
daily responsibilities? What are their weekly hours, salary, other
benefits, etc.? How much do the inspectors move around the country? How
are they recruited and what are the basic qualifications? How are they
trained?
Response. NRC resident inspectors perform a basic mission in
determining whether a licensee operates the plant safely and meets
current regulatory requirements and commitments, including in the area
of security. Their main focus is on performing in-depth evaluations of
materials, systems, incidents, and abnormal conditions. Resident
inspectors assist in determining the safety significance of events and
findings, recommend enforcement action, and prepare reports of findings
and licensee performance. More recently, resident inspectors have taken
on an increasing role in security. All resident offices now have secure
telephone and fax capability. Additionally, resident inspectors
represent the NRC to the licensee, state and local officials, and the
news media. Resident inspectors attend daily plant status meetings and
review plant status reports. Major daily activities include control
room and plant area walkdowns. They also communicate with regional
offices on a daily basis to discuss plant status. Reactor resident
inspectors are required to relocate from their site no later than at
the end of a 7-year assignment. Very rarely are exceptions granted
beyond the 7-year maximum tour length. Inspectors also relocate for
promotions, voluntary reassignments, or at management's discretion. It
is common for resident inspectors to occasionally participate in
inspections at other sites.
To recruit and retain qualified resident inspectors, the NRC
established a special salary schedule in 1981 for inspectors at nuclear
power plants. The special salary schedule provides a 3 additional step
increase. Resident inspector pay levels are in the GG-11 ($55,904 for
2004) through GG-14 ($104,071 for 2004) pay range. In addition to this
special salary schedule, inspectors receive locality pay. Inspectors
typically work 40 hours a week, some of which may be on weekends or
backshifts. The inspector policy regarding backshift coverage is
described in NRC Inspection Manual Chapter, IMC 2515, ``Light-water
Reactor Inspection Program Operations Phase.'' The inspectors are
compensated with premium pay for backshift coverages. Additionally,
inspectors are offered the same benefits that most other Federal
employees are offered, including leave, health benefits, life
insurance, retirement benefits, and paid moving expenses.
Resident inspectors are mostly recruited from within the agency,
usually from the inspection staff at the regional offices. The goal is
to have inspectors who are technically proficient and well-versed in
NRC policy, structure, and procedures. In rare cases, a position is
advertised outside the agency and any candidate would have to have
substantial relevant experience and undertake extensive training and
qualification before being qualified as an inspector. The basic
qualification for inspectors typically include a bachelor's degree in
an engineering, scientific, or technical field. Areas of study include
electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering,
fire protection, metallurgy, and health physics. In many cases,
inspectors have substantial relevant experience outside of the NRC,
either in the nuclear industry or the Nuclear Navy.
NRC has specific guidance that governs inspector training and
qualifications for reactor inspectors. New hires are typically assigned
to a regional office as an inspector trainee. The training and
qualification program is designed to ensure the development of
competency in the four general areas of: (1) legal basis and regulatory
processes; (2) technical expertise; (3) regulatory practices; and (4)
personal and interpersonal effectiveness. The inspector qualification
process begins with the Basic-Level Program, designed to allow
individuals to begin their training the first day they start work at
the NRC. The emphasis in the Basic-Level Program is mainly on
structured, self-paced and self-directed individual study and on-the-
job activities. As a competency-based program, the emphasis is on
practicing specific activities until the individual can meet the
evaluation criteria. Therefore, completion of the Basic-Level Training
Program can take several months.
Upon completion of the Basic-Level Training Program, the inspector
completes the Proficiency-Level Training Program, which consists of two
aspects of inspector performance: General Proficiency and Technical
Proficiency. General Proficiency focuses on developing the Inspection,
Teamwork and Interpersonal Skills needed by an inspector to function
either independently or as part of a team to implement the inspection
and oversight program. Technical Proficiency develops the appropriate
depth of knowledge in one of the seven specific technical inspection
areas, such as Operations and Engineering. The final qualification
activity is an oral examination before a Board, designed to evaluate
the ability of an individual to integrate and apply the acquired
knowledge, skill, and attitudes in field situations. Upon passing the
Qualification Board, the inspector is fully qualified and can be
assigned the full scope of inspection-related activities to be
independently performed.
Question 7. Why specifically do you disagree with GAO's
recommendation that you develop a set process and guidance for deciding
whether to shutdown a plant?
Response. As stated in NRC's response to the draft report entitled
``Nuclear Regulation: NRC Needs to More Aggressively and
Comprehensively Resolve Issues Related to the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power
Plant's Shutdown'' (GAO-04-415) dated May 5, 2004, we disagreed with
the GAO's finding that the NRC does not have specific guidance for
deciding on plant shutdowns and with the report's related
recommendation identifying the need for NRC to develop specific
guidance and a well-defined process to determine when to shut down a
nuclear power plant. We believe our regulations, guidance, and
processes on plant shutdown provide sufficient guidance in the vast
majority of situations. Plant technical specifications, as well as many
other NRC requirements and processes, provide a spectrum of conditions
under which plant shutdown would be required. Plants have been shut
down numerous times in the past in accordance with NRC requirements,
and these shutdowns do not require explicit actions by NRC (i.e.,
Orders). From time to time, however, a unique situation may present
itself in which sufficient information may not exist or the information
available may not be sufficiently clear to apply existing rules and
regulations definitively. In these unique instances, the NRC's most
senior managers, after consultation with staff experts and given all of
the information available at the time, will decide whether to require a
plant shutdown. Risk information is used consistent with Regulatory
Guide (RG) 1.174, ``An Approach for Using Probabilistic Risk Assessment
in Risk-Informed Decisions on Plant-Specific Changes to the Licensing
Basis.'' This process considers deterministic factors as well as
probabilistic factors (i.e., risk information) to evaluate whether a
proposed plant configuration is acceptable for operation. We regard the
combined use of deterministic and probabilistic factors to be a
strength of our decisionmaking process.
With respect to the recommendation to develop specific guidance for
deciding when to shut down a nuclear power plant, we acknowledge that
the decisionmaking guidance we used in the Davis-Besse situation, RG
1.174, is guidance for approving license change requests. Although we
continue to believe that the risk-informed decisionmaking process in RG
1.174 is generally applicable to a wide range of NRC decisionmaking, we
agree that it would be useful to develop additional risk-informed
guidance on how to address emergent issues.
The NRC agrees with the GAO that NRC staff lacked sufficient and
appropriate documentation of its decision on Davis-Besse. Effective
communication, including proper documentation of our decisions, will be
the key to improving the accountability and credibility of our
decisions in the future. This was one of the task force's findings and
a number of recommendations were made to correct this deficiency. The
agency is committed to making sure future decisions are documented in a
proper and timely manner.
Question 8. Does NRC have the tools needed to quickly license such
applications as the gas centrifuge plant that USEC has decided to build
in Piketon, Ohio?
Response. The NRC has the tools and resources to conduct gas
centrifuge plant license application reviews expeditiously, if we
receive our budget request from Congress. The NRC is committed to
conducting such reviews in a manner that ensures that the plant would
be safe and secure and would not be detrimental to the environment.
After the application for USEC Inc.'s commercial gas centrifuge plant
in Piketon, Ohio, is submitted, the NRC staff will conduct its safety,
security and environmental reviews on a timeframe similar to that
established for Louisiana Energy Services' gas centrifuge enrichment
plant license application submitted in December 2003. Through
identifying efficiencies in the review process and reprogramming
resources, we have been able to reduce the projected time needed to
complete such reviews. In January 2004, the NRC completed its review
for USEC Inc.'s license application for its gas centrifuge
demonstration and test ``Lead Cascade'' facility. This was slightly
ahead of the 1-year review schedule that the NRC had projected at the
time USEC Inc. had submitted its Lead Cascade license application in
February 2003.
However, as I noted in my June 2, 2004, letter to you, a continuing
resolution in fiscal year 2005 would likely delay our review of various
new license applications, including the enrichment plants in New Mexico
and Ohio.
Question 9. Why specifically do you disagree with GAO's
recommendation that you develop a methodology to assess early
indications of deteriorating safety at nuclear power plants?
Response. GAO's specific recommendation was to develop a
methodology to assess licensees' safety culture that includes
indicators of and inspection information on patterns of licensee
performance as well as on licensees' organization and processes. GAO
recommended that NRC should collect and analyze this data, either
during the course of the agency's routine inspection program or during
separate targeted assessments, or during both routine and targeted
inspections and assessments. The GAO maintained this would provide an
early warning of deteriorating or declining performance and future
safety problems.
Some context would be helpful in addressing this question. When
some of the current Commissioners started with the Commission in the
1996-97 timeframe, the NRC staff was using a process for assessing and
identifying plants with degraded performance that involved a subjective
assessment of licensee performance, the so-called ``systematic
assessment of licensee performance (SALP).'' Plants were given
subjective SALP scores in four areas. Performance indicators data,
while collected, were not systematically utilized. Indeed, which inputs
were most important in a SALP assessment often varied from region to
region, even from plant to plant within a region. These subjective SALP
assessments then fed into a senior management meeting process,
conducted every 6 months, the output of which was a so-called ``watch
list.''
In 1997, the Commission unanimously charged the staff with
replacing the SALP/watch list process with a process that was far more
uniform (in its use of performance indicators and inspection findings,
more systematic, more visible to the public, and more timely. In doing
this the Commission had the benefit of an excellent study, done in a
very short time period, by a contractor, Arthur Andersen. That study
looked at significant deviations in licensee performance based on nine
NRC performance indicators, and identified plant trends going back 10
years using the composite performance indicators. The obvious question
that arose from that study was whether the NRC staff would have made
better decisions on allocating inspection resources and assessing
licensee performance if they had simply used the Arthur Andersen
methodology rather than the highly subjective SALP/watch list process.
There is a very good discussion of the Arthur Andersen report and the
NRC staff's and Commission's response to that report in the transcripts
(available on our web page) of the February 18, 1997 and the April 24,
1997 Commission meetings.
At the very outset of the design of what we call today the reactor
oversight process (ROP), the Commission was interested in trying to get
leading indicators of licensee performance. Today, 7 years later, we
have an enormously improved assessment process for power reactor
licensees, the ROP. It systematically and objectively uses inspection
findings and performance indicators to place plants in categories
(columns of a so-called action matrix) and assigns inspection
resources. It is transparent. It is uniform. It is timely. It was
piloted in 1999 at 13 plants at 9 sites and went into full force at all
plants on April 1, 2000.
While it is an enormous improvement over the old SALP/watch list
process, the Commission recognizes that the ROP must be constantly
improved and we have established a process for developing, testing and
making improvements, such as improved performance indicators. The ROP
process did identify early problems at the Cooper power plant in
Nebraska and resulted in NRC and licensee actions to arrest a decline
in performance before any significant safety issues arose. However, the
ROP process, like the SALP/watch list process before it (and the
parallel Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) assessment
process) missed the declining performance at Davis-Besse that
contributed so clearly in hindsight to the February 2002 vessel head
degradation event.
That all said, the Commission continues to encourage the early
identification of declining performance and safety problems. The NRC is
committed to licensees' developing and maintaining a strong safety
culture, including commitment to safety, technical expertise, and good
management. Through the years, the Commission has taken a number of
actions in the area of safety culture, including the issuance of the
Policy Statement entitled ``Conduct of Nuclear Power Operations'' (54
FR 3424, 01/24/89). The Commission issued the Policy Statement to help
foster the development and maintenance of a safety culture at every
facility licensed by the NRC. It also stated that ``. . . management
has the duty and obligation to foster the development of a 'safety
culture' at each facility and to provide a professional working
environment, in the control room and throughout the facility, that
assures safe operations. Management must provide the leadership that
nurtures and perpetuates the safety culture.''
In a 1996 Policy Statement, entitled ``Freedom of Employees in the
Nuclear Industry to Raise Safety Concerns Without Fear of
Retaliation,'' the Commission stated ``. . . licensees and other
employers subject to NRC authority will establish and maintain safety-
conscious environments in which employees feel free to raise safety
concerns, both to their management and to the NRC without fear of
retaliation.'' If issues are noted in the maintenance of a safety-
conscious work environment, the NRC calls this to the attention of the
licensee and states the problem in the NRC's semiannual assessment
letters to the licensee.
The Commission recognizes the difficulty in objectively assessing
certain aspects of safety culture. As noted in the Commission comments
on the draft GAO report, the NRC ROP currently assesses some underlying
elements of safety culture such as identification and resolution of
problems. NRC will continue to assess, based on objective parameters
and direct observations of performance, how effectively licensees are
managing safety at each facility. NRC's assessments and actions
include:
<bullet> direct, daily observation of licensee operation of the
facilities.
<bullet> problem identification and resolution (PI&R) inspections.
<bullet> followup of individual allegations and trending.
<bullet> enforcement of employee protection regulations.
<bullet> safety-conscious work environment assessments.
<bullet> early and aggressive action where safety performance or
safety culture issues are confirmed (e.g., recent actions taken to
address safety culture issues at the Salem and Hope Creek plants).
In March 2003, the Commission directed the NRC staff to develop
guidance that would identify to our licensees the best practices to
encourage a safety-conscious work environment. The Commission also
directed the staff to monitor efforts by foreign regulators to develop
objective measures that serve as indicators of possible problems with
safety culture. Following the Congressional hearing on May 20, 2004, I
directed the NRC staff to provide options and recommendations in this
area. The staff provided information to the Commission on July 1, 2004.
The Commission has decided to proceed with public notice of a draft
generic communication on establishing and maintaining a safety-
conscious work environment. The Commission also decided to enhance the
ROP treatment of cross-cutting issues to more fully address safety
culture and ensure NRC inspectors are properly trained in the area of
safety culture. This is in addition to the evaluations of the
licensees' safety-conscious work environment, the problem
identification and resolution process, and human performance already
included in the ROP. The NRC notifies licensees of degraded performance
in these areas in the semiannual assessment letters which are issued to
all power reactor licensees and are publicly available.
In summary, the existing regulatory infrastructure previously
outlined provides a framework for monitoring the impact of licensee
safety culture on performance, and NRC oversight will be enhanced over
the next 2 years by:
<bullet> revising the ROP to more fully address safety culture.
<bullet> taking followup actions in response to the Davis-Besse
Lessons Learned Task Force recommendations.
<bullet> developing enhanced guidance to our licensees by
identifying best practices to encourage a safety-conscious work
environment and to promote the NRC's expectations.
<bullet> closely monitoring efforts by foreign regulators to
measure and regulate safety culture.
Therefore, we believe that we are continuing to make substantial
progress on developing and refining an assessment process to assess
early indications of deteriorating safety at nuclear power plants. What
we can not promise is that the result of these efforts will be a
validated methodology in the area of safety culture of declining
licensee performance. That is clearly our goal, as it was in 1997, and
as it was for our predecessors on the Commission in 1986. A lot of
excellent research has been carried out for many years here and abroad
without defining such a leading indicator or set of indicators. By
carrying out a program of constant improvement in our ROP, the
Commission believes that we are moving toward that ideal as rapidly as
our knowledge will allow.
Question 10. What steps have you required at Davis-Besse but not at
other plants around the country? Why have these steps not been required
at other plants? Additionally, you have required that Davis-Besse
conduct independent assessments of safety culture over the next 5
years. Why have you not required the same types of assessments, such as
surveys, at other plants?
Response. The requirements imposed on the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power
Station that are beyond those at other operating reactors in the United
States are annual independent assessments for 5 years in the areas of
operations, engineering, corrective actions, and safety culture, and
inspections of the reactor coolant system pressure boundary during a
midcycle outage. These additional requirements are contained in the
Confirmatory Order issued to Davis-Besse on March 8, 2004, modifying
the Davis-Besse license. These plant-specific actions were designed to
ensure sustained safe performance of the facility.
One fundamental regulation applicable to all operating reactors
requires that significant conditions adverse to quality be corrected,
the cause determined, and actions taken to preclude repetition (10
C.F.R. 50, Appendix B, Criterion XVI). The licensee program in place to
implement these requirements is commonly referred to as the corrective
action program. The reactor pressure vessel head degradation identified
at Davis-Besse in early 2002 was a significant condition adverse to
quality. Davis-Besse was required to correct the degradation,
understand the cause(s), both from a hardware and organizational
perspective, and take actions to address those cause(s) to prevent
recurrence as required by NRC regulations.
Since early 2002, following the discovery of the reactor pressure
vessel head degradation, Davis-Besse has been removed from the routine
reactor oversight process (ROP) applicable to operating reactors and
placed under a special oversight process in accordance with the NRC's
Inspection Manual Chapter 0350, ``Oversight of Operating Reactor
Facilities in an Extended Shutdown as a Result of Significant
Performance Problems.'' Pursuant to that manual chapter, the NRC
established a special Oversight Panel and issued a Restart Checklist
listing those actions that had to be completed prior to restart of the
plant. The items on the Restart Checklist captured the critical actions
necessary for the facility to comply with the corrective action program
requirements applicable to all operating reactors.
Included in the Restart Checklist is the completion of
comprehensive root cause assessments. As part of these assessments,
Davis-Besse identified equipment problems, organizational and human
performance issues, and program and procedure deficiencies. The
organizational and human performance issues Davis-Besse identified
included safety culture concerns. Consequently, in addition to the
inspection and repair of equipment, and improvement in programs and
procedures, enhancements to human performance, organizational
effectiveness and safety culture were also included in the Restart
Checklist. Pursuant to the corrective action program requirements in 10
C.F.R. 50, Appendix B, similar actions would be required to be
accomplished at any operating reactor with equivalent performance
deficiencies as Davis-Besse.
One aspect of the performance problems at Davis-Besse was the
ineffectiveness of licensee self-assessments and audits to identify
degrading performance over time. The additional requirements for
independent assessments imposed on Davis-Besse through the Confirmatory
Order are unique to Davis-Besse. They are intended to assure lasting
improvement in the effectiveness of the licensee's own internal
assessments of performance and to ensure sustained safe performance of
the facility. The Confirmatory Order requires the results of these
independent assessments be provided to the NRC in publicly available
documents.
Question 11. What have you changed since the Davis-Besse incident
to address the lessons-learned task force (LLTF) recommendations about
safety? How do these changes interact with other initiatives that you
are doing or have done?
Response. All of the lessons-learned task force recommendations are
tied to safety in either a direct or indirect manner. The items
considered by the senior management review team to have direct linkage
with corrective actions for Davis-Besse root causes were assigned the
highest priority. The NRC staff has been focused on completing actions
related to these recommendations in the most expeditious and efficient
manner possible. Some examples of changes at the NRC related to the
Davis-Besse lessons learned activity include: (1) An enhanced focus on
communications, particularly regarding communications between the plant
sites, regions, and NRC headquarters; (2) completion of a comprehensive
evaluation of the operating experience assessment function with
associated organizational changes that are being implemented; and (3)
focused enhancements to NRC inspection guidance that relate to
maintaining a questioning attitude in all aspects of inspection and
assessment activities.
In the communications area, actions taken in response to the LLTF
recommendations complement the broader agency initiative on enhancing
communications both within the NRC and with external stakeholders.
Actions taken in response to LLTF recommendations have also
complemented the broader agency initiative on risk-informing agency
decisionmaking processes through focusing resources on areas most
critical to safety.
Question 12. In the past, have you considered regulating safety
culture? If so, what conclusions have been reached and why? What
changes (if any) have you made in response to these considerations?
Response. In 1989, the NRC first set forth its expectation that
licensees establish a strong safety culture in its ``Policy Statement
on the Conduct of Operations.'' The NRC continues to place a high value
on the importance of establishing and maintaining a strong safety
culture at licensed facilities. The Commission has considered various
staff proposals for directly regulating the area of safety-conscious
work environment (SCWE), one attribute of safety culture, and approved
assessment of SCWE by the NRC staff on a case-by-case basis. The
Commission has also directed the staff to: (1) develop further guidance
that would identify for the industry practices to encourage a SCWE; and
(2) monitor efforts by foreign countries to develop objective measures
that may serve as indicators of possible problems with safety culture.
The Commission is taking additional measures as discussed in the
response to Question 9.
Question 13a. What are other countries doing to regulate safety
culture at their nuclear plants?
Response. Currently, only one country, Finland, has a specific
regulation that directly addresses safety culture. Several other
countries, including England, Spain, Canada, Sweden and France, inspect
for safety culture problems even though they do not have specific
regulations in the area of safety culture.
Question 13b. How is this different from what is done in the U.S.?
Response. The United States has no specific regulation for safety
culture, but NRC conducts safety culture evaluations on a case-by-case
basis. A subset of underlying elements of safety culture, such as
identification and resolution of problems and maintenance of a safety
conscious work environment, currently are assessed through the Reactor
Oversight Process (ROP). Please see the response to part (A) above.
Question 13c. Are there any foreign regulations and/or practices
that should be replicated in the U.S.?
Response. The NRC staff continues to monitor activities in other
countries to determine how foreign regulators measure and regulate
safety culture, but has not identified any regulations or practices in
other countries to be considered for implementation in the United
States.
Responses by Nils J. Dias to Additional Questions from Senator
Lieberman
OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Question 1. Chairman Diaz, should there [be] a no-fly zone around
the Indian Point power plant? It is my understanding that we have
established no-fly zones around Disney theme parks, for security
concerns. Why do we have no fly zones around theme parks, but not our
nuclear facilities?
Response. A publicly available map details the three nautical mile,
3000 foot altitude no-fly zone around the Walt Disney theme parks.
Commercial air traffic, however, is allowed to transit through the
zone. Pursuant to Federal Aviation Administration regulations (14 CFR
Section 99.7), a published flight restriction is in place for nuclear
power plants, which, in part, states ``. . . pilots . . . are advised
to avoid the airspace above or in proximity to all nuclear power
plants. Pilots should not circle or loiter in the vicinity of such
facilities. Pilots who do so can expect to be interviewed by law
enforcement personnel . . .''
official use only
May be exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information
Act (5 U.S.C. 552)
Exemption Number, 5, Nuclear Regulatory Commission review required
before public release.
Name and organization of person making determination, John E.
Tomlinson, NSIR/DO
Date of Determination, July 12, 2004
official use only
The Indian Point facility is located in proximity to two major
airports and within miles of a third airport. Instituting a broad ``no-
fly'' zone for the Indian Point facility would be problematic and have
substantial repercussions for each of those airports and for area
transportation. The protection of nuclear plants, including the Indian
Point facility, is dependent on multiple measures, which in the
aggregate result in the ability to maintain public health and safety.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace
Defense Command (NORAD); and the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) manage programs that are intended to prevent assaults by air. For
example, the TSA continues to oversee the implementation of multiple
countermeasures such as the Federal Air Marshal program, enhanced
passenger and baggage screening, and hardened flight decks. The FAA and
NORAD have much improved ability to detect deviations from flight paths
today than on 09/11/01. NORAD has the ability to communicate with every
nuclear power plant control room, either directly or through the NRC
Incident Response Center, upon detection of a possible threat. This
allows the plant operator to place the plant in a safe condition while
NORAD attempts to intercept this threat. These programs, combined with
the response capabilities of local authorities provide a significant
defense-in-depth to address such threats.
OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Question 2. I am concerned about the Evacuation Plans for the area
around Indian Point. My constituents have first-hand experience with
the fact that our roads are already carrying nearly twice as much
traffic as they were designed for. I-95 and I-84 are reduced to stop-
and-go speeds on a daily basis. It will require very careful planning
based on realistic assumptions to be sure that our roads aren't reduced
to a standstill in the event of an evacuation. Is it realistic to
assume, for example, that families will be willing to separate to
facilitate the evacuation, or would it be more realistic to assume that
families will gather together first, and that each family will stay
together, to evacuate as a family? Have we done the best demographic
studies possible to facilitate evacuation plans?
Response. The NRC is responsible for evaluating the adequacy of
onsite emergency plans developed by the nuclear power plant licensee.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for
assessing the adequacy of offsite (state and local) radiological
emergency planning and preparedness activities. FEMA informed the NRC
and Governor Pataki of New York, on July 25, 2003, that, ``after
carefully considering all available information, we have reasonable
assurance that appropriate protective measures to protect the health
and safety of surrounding communities can be taken and are capable of
being implemented in the event of a radiological incident at the Indian
Point facility.''
FEMA's finding recognized that the affected counties had received
an updated ``evacuation time estimate `` (ETE) study (incorporating
2000 census data and shadow evacuation estimates) for the 10 mile
emergency planning zone. The counties had specifically included the
updated ETE study in their Radiological Emergency Preparedness Plans.
The ETE revisions included the latest census data, consideration that
some family units will reunite prior to evacuation, an expanded
geographic area of analysis, and an analysis of shadow evacuation.
Shadow evacuation refers to people outside the evacuation zone who also
decide to evacuate. In addition, the evacuation estimates required for
nuclear evacuation plans must examine the sensitivity of evacuation
times to key variables, including the nature and limits of
transportation facilities in the affected area and other factors that
may affect evacuation time, such as the public's use of public
transportation or need for special transportation. The New York State
and affected county plans provide for an active response to traffic
obstructions in the event of a radiological emergency at Indian Point.
Alternate evacuation routes are pre-designated. Responsibilities are
assigned and resources identified for detecting and responding to
traffic bottlenecks using law enforcement and public works personnel
and equipment.
Considering those FEMA findings and determinations in conjunction
with the NRC onsite assessments, the NRC did not alter its
determination that the overall state of emergency preparedness at
Indian Point 2 and 3 provides reasonable assurance that adequate
protective measures can and will be taken in the event of a
radiological emergency.
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Statement of Marvin Fertel, Senior Vice President of Nuclear
Generation, Nuclear Energy Institute
Chairman Voinovich, Ranking Member Carper and distinguished members
of the subcommittee, I am Marvin Fertel, senior vice president and
chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). I am
honored to represent NEI's member companies before this subcommittee
today. Nuclear energy is vitally important to our environment,
particularly in meeting the nation's clean air goals, and to our
nation's energy security. It is also necessary that the nuclear
industry has a Federal regulatory agency that is stable, effective and
efficient.
NEI is responsible for developing policy for the United States
nuclear industry. NEI's 270 corporate and other members include every
United States energy company that operates a nuclear plant, as well as
a wide variety of organizations and businesses involved in the use of
radioisotopes for beneficial purposes. NEI's membership also includes
nuclear fuel cycle companies, suppliers, engineering and consulting
firms, national research laboratories, and manufacturers of
radiopharmaceuticals, universities, labor unions and law firms.
The 103 reactors in the United States are among the world's most
efficient and reliable. Nuclear energy is the largest source of
emission-free electricity in the United States and the nation's second-
largest source of electricity after coal. The U.S. nuclear energy
sector is also the world's largest, generating more electricity than
the nuclear sectors of France and Japan-the next two largest-combined.
On a percentage basis, nuclear energy provides electricity for 20
percent of American homes and businesses. Globally, 18 nations generate
a higher percentage of electricity from nuclear energy that the United
States, including France at 78 percent, Japan at 35 percent. Nuclear
energy is growing rapidly in the burgeoning economics like China and
India.
This testimony addresses:
(1) actions needed to preserve this vital energy resource
(2) essential steps needed to enhance progress toward a long-term,
stable regulatory approach in the United States
(3) essential Nuclear Regulatory Commission funding issues
(4) changes needed in the Atomic Energy Act
(5) industry initiatives toward preserving the integrity of
materials, including metals that comprise components and equipment used
in nuclear power plants
(6) the need for resolution of conflicting radiation protection
policies
(7) advances in nuclear power plant security.
nuclear power plants continue to operate at record safety and
performance levels
During the past decade, U.S. nuclear power plants have achieved
record levels of production and efficiency while maintaining the
highest levels of safety in the electricity sector. U.S. nuclear power
plants produced 767 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2003, a 25
percent increase compared to 1993 output and the third best production
year ever. Although no new U.S. plants have been built during this
period, this increased production is equivalent to adding 19 new 1,000-
megawatt (MW) plants over the 10-year period.
U.S. nuclear plants achieved a capacity factor of about 90 percent
in 2003. This average is approximately double the capacity factors of
20 years ago and is the highest of any generating source in the United
States. In 2002, coal-fired power plants had a capacity factor of about
69 percent; combined-cycle natural gas power plants, 40 percent;
hydropower, 35 percent; and wind, 29 percent. Overall nuclear plant
performance has been increasing steadily over the past decade as
measured by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.
Nuclear energy continues to be the most affordable baseload source
of electricity for businesses and consumers. Average production costs
in 2002 of 1.71 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) were lower than those for
coal (1.85 cents per kWh), natural gas (4.06 cents per kWh) and oil
(4.41 cents per kWh). Preliminary production costs for 2003 show that
low-cost trend continuing.
Throughout this period of record production and efficiency, the
industry has maintained a steadfast commitment to safety. The level of
significant events equipment malfunctions or operational anomalies is
30 times lower than it was at the end of the 1980's. The industry
average is currently 0.03 annual events per reactor, which is
equivalent to three reportable events per year.
With productivity and reliability on the rise and production costs
falling, the profitability of nuclear plants also is improving. The
industry expects incremental gains in profitability to continue for
several more years. In addition to improving profitability, companies
plan to increase revenue through power uprates. With these uprates and
the restart of the Browns Ferry reactor in Alabama, the industry
expects to add approximately 10,000 megawatts to the U.S. electricity
system over the next decade.
The efficiency and competitiveness of nuclear power plants are
driving factors in the decision by U.S. energy companies to seek
renewal of operating licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
One-quarter of U.S. reactors already have been approved by the NRC to
extend their reactor operating licenses from 40 to 60 years. Seventeen
other reactors are in the queue for NRC review of their license renewal
applications, and the industry expects that nearly all reactors will
pursue license extensions. The Department of Energy's Energy
Information Agency is recognizing this trend in its most recent energy
forecast.
nuclear energy: an essential component of our nation's clean air goals
Nuclear energy plays a vital role in U.S. energy security and
diversity, producing electricity safely and cleanly for one of every
five U.S. homes and businesses. Before the oil shocks of the early
1970's, nuclear power provided just 4 percent of our electricity
supply, and oil provided about 20 percent. The situation is now
reversed, as nuclear energy essentially has phased out oil use in the
electricity sector.
This steady growth of nuclear power over the past three decades has
produced enormous environmental and clean air benefits. Nuclear energy
now generates three-fourths of all emission-free electricity generation
in the United States and is making significant reductions in harmful
emissions into the atmosphere from the industrial sector. Between 1973
and 2001, U.S. nuclear power plants avoided the emission of 70.3
million tons of sulfur dioxide (SO<INF>2</INF>) and 35.6 million tons
of nitrogen oxide (NOx), compared to fuels that otherwise would have
produced electricity.
The value of the emissions prevented by using nuclear power is
essential in meeting clean air regulations. In 2002, U.S. nuclear power
plants avoided the emission of about 3.4 million tons of sulfur dioxide
and about 1.4 million tons of nitrogen oxide. The requirements imposed
by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments reduced SO<INF>2</INF> emissions
from the electric power sector between 1990 and 2002 by 5.5 million
tons per year and NOx emissions by 2.3 million tons per year. Thus, in
a single year, using nuclear power plants to generate electricity has
eliminated nearly as much in emissions than has been achieved over a
12-year period by all other sources combined.
To put these numbers into perspective further, the NOx emissions
prevented by U.S. nuclear power plants are the equivalent of
eliminating the NOx emissions from 6 of every 10 passenger cars on our
roads today. The carbon emissions prevented by U.S. nuclear power
plants are equivalent to eliminating the carbon emissions from nine of
every 10 passenger cars on our roads.
According to a report issued last year by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and the Ozone Transport Commission, nuclear energy
was one of the most significant compliance tools for reducing NOx
emissions in Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states. The EPA assessment
found that energy companies have been shifting electricity production
from fossil-fueled power plants to emission-free nuclear power plants
to help comply with Federal air pollution laws.
Nuclear energy also is an environmental imperative for reducing
greenhouse gases. New York is a good example of this phenomenon. New
York's greenhouse gas emissions from fuel combustion have decreased 1
percent from 1990 to 2002, despite a growth in population and the
number of automobiles on the road. The increased production from the
state's six nuclear power plants offset the need for electricity
production at other power plants and therefore reduced greenhouse gas
emissions during that period.
In 1990, the FitzPatrick, Ginna, Indian Point and Nine Mile Point
nuclear power plants generated more than 24 billion kilowatt-hours of
electricity in New York. By 2000, nuclear energy production increased
by 60 percent to more than 40,000 billion kilowatt-hours. This increase
in nuclear production allowed for a decrease in the use of other fuels
and offset an increase in emissions from the rising use of natural gas.
The result is an overall 23 percent reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions from the electricity sector.
Two reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center near New York City
produced 15.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2003,
approximately 11 percent of New York's power and enough for 1.5 million
households. Some are recommending closure of the Indian Point Energy
Center because of security concerns, but such a move would sacrifice a
critical source of power for the state and needlessly reverse progress
that New York has made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. EPA has
determined that all five counties that surround Indian Point already do
not comply with Federal air rules. Taking Indian Point off the New York
electricity grid would worsen air quality and unnecessarily drive up
the cost of electricity to consumers and businesses.
As the New York example shows, nuclear energy is vital to our
nation's clean air programs. Expanding nuclear energy production
through continued efficiency gains and building new nuclear plants
would further enhance the role of nuclear energy in our environmental
goals. Recent studies by the Earth Institute at Columbia University and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology underscore the importance of
nuclear energy and renewable energy sources in meeting energy and
environmental goals that are inextricably linked.
a stable, effective, efficient nrc is vital to the operation of
existing reactors and the future expansion of nuclear power
Nuclear power plants are a strategic national asset that contribute
the fuel and technology diversity that is the foundation of our
electric supply system. Together, large coal and nuclear power plants
produce 70 percent of our nation's electricity, with a mix of
hydroelectric, natural gas and renewables providing the balance. But
this energy diversity is at risk because today's business and market
conditions hamper investment in new large capital-intensive
technologies, such as advanced design nuclear power plants and clean
coal power plants. Although the industry expects that most reactors
will be relicensed, the nuclear industry's potential obviously is
severely limited if new nuclear plants cannot be financed.
The United States faces a critical need for investment in energy
infrastructure, including advanced nuclear designs. Nuclear plants are
the most reliable of our sources of electricity and offer the greatest
degree of price stability. Yet, since the passage of the Energy Policy
Act of 1992, our Nation has built approximately 284,000 megawatts (MW)
of natural gas-fired generating capacity more than 90 percent of the
new capacity added during this period. Only 4,355 MW of new nuclear
capacity and 9,500 MW of new coal-fired capacity have been added to the
electricity grid during that same period.
The nuclear energy industry is committed to the construction of new
nuclear plants when the business conditions are appropriate. However,
most of the factors involved in building new reactors the structure of
the industry and markets, the technology itself and the Federal
licensing process have changed since the last nuclear power plants were
built.
The industry has been working for several years on regulatory,
financial and legislative initiatives that encourage investment in new
nuclear plants. For example, recognizing that the construction of large
power plants has a high degree of business risk, the industry proposed
legislative initiatives that provide Federal financial support for the
first few new nuclear plant designs. In addition, the industry supports
the DOE's Nuclear Power 2010 program aimed at developing, in
partnership with companies, detailed design and engineering on advanced
reactor designs and demonstrate the early site permit and combined
construction and operating license process.
More pertinent to the jurisdiction of this subcommittee is the
prospect that companies would pursue new nuclear plants would be
greatly enhanced by continuity and stability in the regulatory
processes and regulatory environment at the NRC. Regulatory uncertainty
is the largest perceived risk with new nuclear plant construction, so
any reduction in stability of the regulatory process will damage
industry and financial community prospects for new nuclear plants.
Regulatory stability and continuity also are vital for the
continued success of current nuclear plants. As I have previously
noted, that fleet continues to operate at high levels of safety and
efficiency, and the NRC should regulate the industry commensurate to
this excellent record of performance.
the nrc reactor oversight process has proven successful
The NRC now has 4 years of experience with its revised reactor
oversight process, first launched in April 2000. The new oversight
process focuses on those areas of the plant that are most important to
safety. The new approach is successful in improving the transparency,
objectivity and efficiency of regulatory oversight. It is an enormous
improvement over the agency's previous approach to evaluating nuclear
plant safety.
The revised oversight process combines the results of performance
indicators in 18 key areas and findings from an average of 2,500 hours
of inspections per reactor to determine the appropriate allocation of
inspection resources across the fleet of operating plants. The results
among the nations 103 operating reactors after the first quarter of
2004 were as follows:
<bullet> Seventy-seven reactors had all green performance
indicators and inspection findings and will receive the baseline level
of NRC inspection (approximately 2,500 hours per year).
<bullet> Twenty reactors had a single white performance indicator
or inspection finding and will receive supplemental inspection beyond
the baseline effort.
<bullet> Five reactors had more than one single white indicator or
finding in a performance area or had white indicators or findings in
different performance areas and will receive more in-depth
inspection.\1\
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\1\ The Davis-Besse plant is receiving special inspection outside
of the normal regulatory framework.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the past 4 years, there have been 83 performance indicators
and 114 inspection findings across the industry that are less than the
highest NRC level. Given that the 4-years encompass about 400 reactor
operating years and over 1 million hours of NRC inspection, these
results demonstrate that the industry continues to operate at excellent
levels of safety. Although an internal NRC report expressed concern
about the declining number of ``non-green'' performance indicators, the
industry views this trend as achieving success and a strong example of
the soundness of performance-based regulation.
the need for continued regulatory change
The NRC, however, has struggled to implement safety-focused
insights into Federal regulation fully. The agency has made admirable
progress in employing safety-focused principles that properly apply
probabilistic risk assessment to apply regulation where it is needed.
Although the NRC has applied the safety-focused approach to the reactor
oversight process, it has yet to incorporate this into the actual
regulations. This would result in a vastly more effective and efficient
regulatory process, but much work remains to codify the safety-focused
principles as part of the rules themselves.
Rulemaking initiatives have been under way for several years to
apply the safety-focused principles to 10 CFR Part 50, which deals with
regulation of nuclear facilities. Successful promulgation of these
rules is critical to the effective and efficient regulation of nuclear
facilities. These rules also could aid in establishing a more stable
and predictable regulatory process that supports both current and
future nuclear plants.
This approach is particularly necessary to address issues such as
the integrity of plant materials--metals and alloys used in plant
components and equipment. In addition, the application of the safety-
focused principles is essential to the regulation of programs related
to the structural integrity of reactor systems and components.
The NRC also has undertaken other projects of concern to the
industry. With congressional approval of Yucca Mountain as the site of
a national repository for used nuclear fuel, DOE in December is
scheduled to submit a license application to the NRC for the
construction of that facility. Having one Federal agency review and
approve the actions of another is relatively unique and represents a
major challenge for both agencies. The NRC has been actively engaged
with DOE in prelicensing activities. The industry supports the efforts
of the NRC to date and believes that it is providing sound oversight of
the project. It is in the interest of all parties that the repository
be built and operated safely.
In reviewing the Yucca Mountain license application, the NRC will
create multiple licensing boards. Creating and coordinating these
various bodies will test the agency's management. The industry strongly
urges continued oversight by this and other congressional committees to
assure efficient management of resources and to hold the NRC to its
timetable of acting on the license application within 3 years of
receipt.
The NRC also is active in licensing new nuclear facilities.
Louisiana Energy Services (LES) submitted an application for the
licensing of a new enrichment facility in January, and a similar
license application is expected from the U.S. Enrichment Company within
the next few months. The NRC responded to the LES application with an
order that the application review be completed within 30 months, and
the NRC appears to be keeping to that schedule.
The industry is following the management of the LES applications
closely, given that prior efforts by the NRC to review applications for
new facilities have taken many years to resolve. Unnecessary delays in
the licensing process for nuclear facilities add significant business
risk and hamper the development of the nuclear industry. The industry
encourages congressional oversight of these license applications to
ensure that they are processed in a timely and thorough manner.
nrc budget and staffing levels require review
The NRC's budget has increased significantly over the past 5 years.
The NRC's proposed fiscal 2005 budget totals $670.3 million, an
increase of $44.2 from the fiscal 2004 budget, and the highest ever for
this agency. This is, in large part, due to expanded security programs
and staffing for those programs. However, the industry believes that
the NRC has failed to leverage opportunities to become more efficient.
Just as consolidation within the industry resulted in more nuclear
plants being operated by a smaller number of companies, the NRC should
review its regional structure and determine if changes are needed to
respond to the new industry structure. In addition to the
implementation of the revised reactor oversight process, the natural
consolidation of the industry provides an opportunity for the NRC to
reallocate existing resources.
About 4 years ago, the Environment and Public Works Committee
approved legislation that renewed the NRC's authority to collect user
fees to offset its budget. That proposal was eventually passed into law
in a slightly modified form. As a result, general revenues will be used
to fund 10 percent of the NRC's budget in the coming fiscal year. That
legislation expires at the end of the fiscal year 2005, and the NRC's
budget again will be fully funded by user fees despite many programs
that do not benefit the industry.
As some form of reauthorization of the user fee is likely to be
passed next year, the industry urges the committee to review the
current fee structure and to identify improvements for the NRC. The
industry believes that the NRC should tie activities and fees together.
We believe it is inappropriate to categorize about 75 percent of the
agency's budget in one ``general'' account (part 171). In addition, the
committee's action 4 years ago that resulted in 10 percent of the
agency's budget coming from general revenues was based upon a
calculation of those services that do not directly benefit NRC
licensees. The percentage of these services that do not benefit
licensees should be reviewed, particularly in light of increased
national security expenses that should be funded through general
revenues. The industry supports legislative efforts that call for much
of the security program at the NRC to be funded from general revenues
and appreciates the committee's support of that proposal.
the industry recommends changes to the atomic energy act
The industry continues to support several proposed changes to the
Atomic Energy Act. These proposals will facilitate reform of the NRC
and its regulatory processes to ensure the effective and efficient
regulation of the industry.
<bullet> In order to provide the commission with the flexibility
and discretion to manage and organize the NRC in the most appropriate
manner, Sections 203, 204 and 205 of the Atomic Energy Act should be
repealed.
<bullet> Congress should remove the restriction on foreign
ownership of commercial nuclear facilities.
<bullet> When a combined construction and operating license is
issued by the NRC for a new nuclear power plant, Congress should
clarify that the license term begins when the plant commences operation
rather than when the license is issued.
<bullet> Congress should remove the requirement that the NRC
conduct antitrust reviews as other Federal agencies, notably the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the
Justice Department, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
conduct such reviews.
The industry is aware of and appreciates the efforts of the
committee to pass several of these proposals into law. In addition, the
industry strongly supports, and also appreciates, efforts of this
committee to ensure that Price-Anderson Act coverage will be available
to companies that are considering building new nuclear power plants and
other nuclear facilities. The industry supports the Price-Anderson Act
reauthorization language included in the energy bill conference report.
radiation protection policy must be science-based and consistent
As the industry works to increase energy production, it remains
committed to maintaining the highest priority on safety. Achieving this
goal depends in large part on the Federal Government's setting a
uniform radiation protection policy. The policy should be based on the
best available science and should be applied equitably and consistently
by every Federal agency across all programs.
Duplicative and conflicting regulation by different agencies, using
different criteria, must be eliminated. In this area, Federal radiation
protection policy falls short. Senator Pete Domenici requested in 2000
that the General Accounting Office (GAO) produce a report on this
issue. The report--``Radiation Standards: Scientific Basis
Inconclusive, and the EPA and NRC Disagreement Continues'' (GAO/RCED00-
152)--concluded that U.S. radiation protection standards ``lack a
conclusively verified scientific basis,'' involve ``differing exposure
limits'' due to policy disagreements between Federal agencies, and
``raise questions of inefficient, conflicting dual regulation.'' A
troubling conclusion of the GAO report is that the costs related to
complying with such standards ``will be immense, likely in the hundreds
of billions of dollars'' of private and public funds.
This situation has persisted for years, without any substantial
resolution. For example, Senator John Glenn, as chairman of the Senate
Committee on Governmental Affairs, asked the GAO to report on this
issue in 1994. The GAO report, ``Nuclear Health and Safety: Consensus
on Acceptable Radiation Risk to the Public is Lacking'' (GAO/RCED-94-
190), concluded that ``differences exist in the limits on human
exposure to radiation set by Federal agencies, raising questions about
the precision, credibility, and overall effectiveness of Federal
radiation standards and guidelines affecting public health.''
What is particularly troubling is that the 2000 report requested by
Senator Domenici, issued 6 years after the report requested by Senator
Glenn, reflected that the situation was essentially unchanged. Now 4
years later, the nuclear energy industry still notes little substantive
progress in resolving the issue of duplicative and conflicting
radiation standards.
Although Federal regulatory agencies contend this protects public
health, it discourages enhancements to public health protection and the
cost-effectiveness of doing so. In addition, this situation undermines
public confidence in regulatory activities and, in the end, inhibits
the availability the vast health and quality-of-life benefits from
commercial applications of nuclear technology. This situation also
creates significant uncertainties in projecting costs and schedules of
licensing and building of new plants, the decommissioning of facilities
that are no longer operational, and the disposal of radioactive waste.
Federal radiation protection policy must provide a foundation to
protect public health and safety, make the best use of public funding
and resources, and help build public trust and confidence in Federal
decisions. The current conflicting radiation standards and duplicative
regulation work against those principles.
Recently, the NRC and EPA have pursued initiatives to resolve
duplication and conflict in their regulatory programs for radiation
safety. The NRC and EPA have agreed on a communication process that
addresses their conflicting standards for decommissioning site
cleanups. Also, the agencies are coordinating efforts to create a more
integrated framework for regulating the safe disposition of low-
activity radioactive material and mixed (radiological and chemical)
waste.
However, the greatest impediment to resolving issues of duplicative
authority and conflicting standards are the various laws that mandate
the respective agencies' regulatory programs. Congress should resolve
the policy issues that the agencies cannot resolve on their own. We
encourage this committee to provide appropriate, continued oversight to
ensure that consistent radiation policy is established through
legislation.
industry has launched a proactive, comprehensive materials
management program
The nuclear industry has long known that radiation could have
effects on metals and other structural materials previously unknown to
scientists or engineers. Because commercial nuclear reactors operate at
high temperatures and pressures, it had to find materials able to
withstand radiation, stress, wear and corrosion. Through experience, it
has.
Some of the initial materials used to fabricate reactor and power
generation components did not perform as well as predicted. In
response, the industry, over the past 20 years, has formed four major
programs related to boiling water reactor vessel internals, steam
generator management, pressurized water reactor materials reliability,
and robust fuels. Working with EPRI and the Institute of Nuclear Power
Operators (INPO), these efforts have been successful in addressing many
materials issues.
Despite these efforts, an inspection at the Davis-Besse nuclear
plant in 2002 identified component damage stemming from two issues:
reactor vessel nozzle cracking and boric acid leakage. Since 1988, all
U.S. pressurized water reactors have had programs for preventing boric
acid leakage. In the early 1990's, the NRC and the industry began
examining the potential for reactor vessel nozzle cracking, after tiny
cracks were found in nozzles at a French reactor.
Nozzle cracking and boric acid leakage at Davis-Besse combined to
create a problem that the nuclear industry had not experienced before:
significant corrosion on a reactor vessel head. The corrosion was
caused by water that contains boric acid. The cracks developed over
several years, ultimately permitting a small amount of water containing
boric acid to leak and come into contact with the reactor vessel head.
As a result of this corrosion, the Davis-Besse plant was shut down
for corrective measures. In March, the NRC approved FirstEnergy's
corrective actions and ongoing plant maintenance changes and permitted
Davis-Besse to restart. FirstEnergy replaced the reactor vessel head at
Davis-Besse and the NRC conducted a thorough inspection of the reactor.
In addition, the company implemented, with NRC oversight, an overhaul
of its management and management practices at the site.
The nuclear industry and the NRC have responded quickly and
responsibly to the Davis-Besse event. As the NRC has also been invited
to testify, the commissioners can best detail actions taken by the
agency. However two of these actions merit special attention:
additional inspections of all U.S. pressurized water reactors and
changes in the agency's oversight process to facilitate early detection
of the type of corrosion that occurred at Davis-Besse.
The nuclear industry has also responded to the event. INPO
investigated the event and issued a report with recommendations aimed
at preventing a similar event. EPRI, the industry's research
organization, had previously developed a technical document on boric-
acid corrosion inspection and leakage detection. The owners of
pressurized water reactors have completed inspections recommended by
the NRC. There are no indications at any other plant of corrosion on
reactor vessel heads similar to that found on Davis-Besse. Small cracks
were found on the nozzles at several plants and reactor owners have
scheduled replacement of 30 vessel heads by 2007. To date, vessel heads
have been replaced at eleven nuclear plants. In the meantime, all of
these reactors will continue to operate safely.
Perhaps more importantly, the nuclear industry has also developed a
integrated, coordinated, and proactive nuclear plant materials program.
In 2003, a task force composed of senior industry executives with broad
experience in materials issues, working with materials experts,
completed a broad assessment of industry programs. Although materials
integrity has long been a part of the industry's research and
maintenance programs, companies are now replacing more equipment and
components more rapidly than expected. The task force found that the
industry would benefit from a proactive program to assess and, when
needed, replace plant components and materials.
Among the findings of the industry assessment is the recognition
that when significant materials issues become known, they quickly
consume all the attention, personnel and funding of diverse current
materials groups. Current programs differ in levels of funding, scope,
assessment processes, executive involvement, personnel resources and
other areas. No industry group had looked holistically at the
management of nuclear materials issues.
The recent industry assessment stressed the importance of funding
and organizational commitment to oversee materials issues. The
assessment concluded that consistent funding at the level required to
resolve current materials issues is a prerequisite to remaining an
effective nuclear plant operator. As a result, the industry will spend
nearly $65 million annually on this effort. We have put new inspection
protocols in place and have developed techniques to anticipate and
detect potential problems.
NEI also has taken proactive action to address materials
degradation at our nation's nuclear power plants. With the unanimous
support of the chief nuclear officer of each company that operates a
nuclear power plant, NEI has established an industry wide initiative to
integrate materials programs and to establish ongoing, comprehensive
management of materials issues. This approach integrates existing
activities by INPO, EPRI and reactor owners' groups and refocuses them
for future efforts. An executive-level oversight structure is in place
to ensure appropriate resources and attention is given to ensure
effective management of materials issues.
The Davis-Besse event prompted the NRC and the nuclear industry to
reexamine its programs for materials management issues. The industry is
committed to detecting and resolving materials issues before they
challenge the safe operation of our facilities. The industry believes
that the NRC has taken appropriate steps to address these issues.
Additionally, the industry believes that a proactive industry-led
program, supported with appropriate resources, is the preferred
approach.
u.s. nuclear power plants are the most secure industrial facilities
before 9/11 and even more secure today
NEI has not had the opportunity, since the tragic attack of Sept.
11, 2001, to review with this subcommittee the actions that the
industry has taken in response to increased security concerns created
by that event. The nuclear industry fully recognizes that the health,
economic and national security benefits from nuclear energy easily
could be overruled if our plants cannot be operated safely, even in the
current environment of concern over terrorism.
Even prior to Sept. 11, 2001, our nuclear power plants were the
most secure industrial facilities in the United States. They were built
to withstand extreme natural events, such as earthquakes and
hurricanes, and the NRC has for more than 20 years required that
private security forces defend against an attacking force of saboteurs
intent on causing a release of radiation. The facilities are even more
secure today, with voluntary and NRC-required security and emergency
response implemented since 2001.
In analyzing this changing global environment, the nuclear industry
started with the firm knowledge that nuclear power plants although
robust and difficult targets to penetrate nonetheless are considered by
some to be potential terrorist targets. However, as stated by former
NRC Chairman Richard Meserve:
It should be recognized that nuclear power plants are massive
structures with thick exterior walls and interior barriers of
reinforced concrete. The plants are designed to withstand
tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, floods, and earthquakes. As a
result, the structures inherently afford a measure of
protection against deliberate aircraft impacts. In addition,
the defense-in-depth philosophy used in nuclear facility design
means that plants have redundant and separated systems in order
to ensure safety. That is, active components, such as pumps,
have backups as part of the basic design philosophy. This
provides a capability to respond to a variety of events
including aircraft attack.
As former Chairman Meserve noted, the industry's ``defense-in-
depth'' philosophy includes protection by well-trained, heavily armed
security officers, fortified perimeters and sophisticated detection
systems. The industry also assumes that potential attackers may attempt
to achieve the help of a sympathetic insider, so the companies that
operate nuclear plants conduct extensive background checks before
hiring employees. Even then, to be conservative, our security plans
assume that attackers are successful in obtaining insider help.
security at nuclear facilities has increased significantly since sept.
11, 2001
Nuclear power plants were our nation's most secure industrial
facilities before Sept. 11, 2001, but new threats required the industry
to take action to bolster security even more. The industry has
increased well-trained, paramilitary security forces at the plants by
one-third, to some 7,000 officers at 67 sites. The industry also has
worked with the NRC to implement the security improvements mandated
both in 2002 and 2003. Overall, the industry has invested more than
$500 million in security-related improvements since September 2001, and
the industry will invest another $500 million in security enhancements
by the end of this year.
The industry's security has been recognized as excellent in
independent assessments conducted by the Progressive Policy Institute,
a panel of security and infrastructure experts for The Washington Post
and by current and former law enforcement officials. The Progressive
Policy Institute, in a report issued last summer, gave nuclear plant
security its only A rating. When The Washington Post reviewed security
in several U.S. private and government sectors a year after Sept. 11, a
panel of experts gave the nuclear industry a rating of ``A-/B+'' the
second-highest rating in the survey. More recently, the National
Journal, in a bipartisan survey, gave nuclear plant security its third-
highest ranking.
A copy of an NEI publication entitled ``Post-Sept. 11 Improvements
in Nuclear Plant Security Set U.S. Industry Standard'' is attached. It
provides additional detail regarding the many security changes that
have been made at our plants since September 2001.
The nuclear industry has cooperated and worked with the NRC to
review nuclear plant security completely, and many improvements have
been implemented as a result. Changes include measures to provide
additional protection against vehicle bombs, as well as additional
protective measures against water- and land-based assaults. The
industry has increased security patrols, augmented security forces,
added more security posts, increased vehicle standoff distances,
tightened access controls, and enhanced coordination with state and
local law enforcement.
In April 2003, the NRC issued new security requirements that
effectively revised the agency's ``design basis threat,'' which defines
the characteristics of the threat against which a plant must defend and
is the foundation for the industry's security programs. Since then, the
nuclear industry has been working in cooperation with the NRC to
resolve issues related to the new orders and in late April of this
year, every company that operates a nuclear power plant submitted
revised security plans to the NRC. These plans determine how each plant
will be able to meet the new standards by the NRC-imposed deadline of
October 29.
Regarding an issue that received a considerable amount of
congressional concern, the industry has worked with the NRC to develop
a revised program to constantly test the security at our facilities.
This program includes ``force-on-force'' drills using advanced
equipment. Although the tests were suspended for several months after
Sept. 11, they are being conducted at plants throughout the nation.
Every plant will conduct NRC-evaluated force-on-force exercises at
least once every 3 years, in addition to exercises conducted by energy
companies on a more frequent basis.
It is highly unlikely that attackers could successfully breach
security at a nuclear power plant and produce a release of radiation
that would endanger the residents near the plant. NRC Chairman Nils
Diaz on May 15 said that facilities that shield reactor fuel the
containment building, spent fuel pools or dry storage containers are
protected from scenarios as extreme as an aircraft crashing into a
nuclear power plant. ``The NRC has conducted an extensive analysis of
the potential vulnerability of nuclear power plants to aircraft
attacks,'' Diaz said. ``While the analysis is classified, the NRC
remains convinced that nuclear power plants are the most heavily
protected civilian facilities in the United States.'' Diaz noted that
the possibility that such an attack would result in a radiological
release is low.
Even so, we recognize that the security programs at our nuclear
power plants must not be static. We are constantly reviewing and
reevaluating our security programs. In that regard, the industry is
ready to work with this subcommittee to help you and the American
public better understand our industry's strong commitment to security
and protecting public safety.
Mr. Chairman, the nuclear energy industry is proud of our efforts
in security and emergency preparedness. We believe that no other
industry can match or even approach the level of sophistication and
commitment that the nuclear industry has exhibited in operating safe
and secure power plants.
We have enhanced security significantly since the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks and we continue to work with Federal, state and local
officials to ensure there is a seamless shield of protection at our
facilities both for our workers and for residents who live near our
facilities. The industry also needs regulatory stability during this
period of complying with the most recent NRC security requirements and
thereafter. The industry's plans to meet the new NRC requirements
include costly physical improvements that will bolster plant security.
Constantly changing the security requirements could delay current
improvements or could result in the improvements being outdated even as
they are being built.
nei supports nrc-endorsed legislative proposals and urges the
subcommittee to support comprehensive energy legislation
The nuclear energy industry has followed the legislative proposals
of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee closely over the
past 2 years. The industry appreciates the cooperation that members and
staff, on a bipartisan basis, have provided.
In general, the industry has supported several NRC proposals on
security, and we appreciate the committee's efforts in including those
initiatives in legislation approved last year and in agreeing to
include those proposals as part of the comprehensive energy bill
conference report still be considered by the Senate. We were
disappointed that language was not agreed upon to resolve the issue
regarding when our security personnel may use deadly force. We continue
to support efforts to assure that they can use deadly force under
appropriate circumstances. Although the industry still has concerns
regarding the proposals in the energy bill conference report, it
supports passage of the legislation, along with those proposals
included in a broad energy package for America.
Mr. Chairman, the nuclear energy industry has responded to many of
the concerns that the full committee voiced regarding security at our
plants over the past 2 years. The NRC has created a new security
division. The industry's security is being tested with force-on-force
drills on a more frequent basis. The design basis threat has been
increased to reflect today's potential security threats after the NRC
conducted a review of the requirements with other Federal agencies. Our
emergency response plans, already the gold standard for emergency
planning, have been improved.
The industry remains hopeful that an energy bill, including nuclear
security provisions, can be passed this year. Yet, we urge this
subcommittee and the full committee to consider that this industry has
maintained its long-standing commitment to security, is making the
changes required to defend against new threats and is re-examining its
emergency preparedness programs to ensure that our facilities continue
to be the most secure in the nation.
By October 29, we will have spent approximately $1 billion industry
wide on security enhancements, working with the NRC and Department of
Homeland Security. The industry will continue its long-standing
practice of re-examining security based on emerging global events. We
take that initiative as an industry and we must do so in a climate of
regulatory stability and certainty so that there is time to comply with
the new requirements imposed by the NRC and bring stability to the
programs that make America's nuclear power plants the most secure
industrial facilities in the country.
conclusion
America's 103 nuclear power plants comprise a critical element of
our energy portfolio. Nuclear power is vital not only to our nation's
energy security and economic future but also to our environmental and
clean air goals. The industry continues to operate nuclear plants
safely and efficiently. During the past decade, performance and safety
have been consistently at, or near, record levels. In addition, nuclear
power plants also are the most secure industrial facilities in the
country.
The nuclear industry has significantly increased the amount of
electricity that it generates over the past two decades. But for the
nuclear industry to continue generating three-quarters of our nation's
emission-free electricity, new nuclear plants must be built. The
industry has made great strides toward its goal of constructing new
nuclear plants and is committed to achieving this objective in the near
term.
The NRC plays an important role in the nuclear energy sector.
Achieving the goal of new plant construction depends on a stable
regulatory environment, one that assures the safe operation of our
plants. The NRC has made significant progress toward this end, yet more
must be done. The NRC must continue to modernize its regulatory
environment to incorporate safety-focused principles. For the nuclear
industry to continue to play an important role in our nation's energy
and environmental future, the NRC must be more effective and more
efficient.
______
Responses by Marvin Fertel to Additional Questions from Senator Inhofe
Question 1. In your opinion, with the resident inspectors, is it
necessary today to continue having four NRC regions as well?
Response. We believe it is likely that the NRC could gain
additional efficiencies and effectiveness by further consolidation of
its regional offices. As noted in my testimony, the NRC's budget and
overall staffing levels have increased significantly over the past
several years. According to its budget request for fiscal year 2000,
the NRC was to have 2,810 full time equivalent employees. But, by
fiscal year 2005, that number had increased to 3,109. Most of this
increase reflects efforts to address uprates, relicensing, new plant
licensing, emergency preparedness and security. While these are areas
the industry recognizes as priority activities requiring NRC resources,
we believe the NRC has other areas where resource commitments could be
decreased or reassigned to address the priority areas and where
efficiencies could be gained-both improving NRC regulatory
effectiveness and also decreasing licensee costs. Specifically,
recognizing the extremely high level of plant performance in the
industry, the more effective and safety-focused reactor oversight
process, and the changes in ownership and management of operating
plants in the industry, the NRC should be able to decrease resources
committed to inspections and should seriously consider further
consolidation of their regional offices.
With specific regard to the regional offices, a key factor that
should be considered in evaluating the structure of the regional
offices is the amount of industry consolidation that has taken place.
When the regional offices were created, all of the operating units
owned by an individual utility were located in the same NRC region and
one regional office would interface with the utility management team.
Today, we have individual utilities that own operating units in
multiple regions, creating a situation where multiple regions are
interacting with one utility management group. We don't believe this is
necessarily the most effective way for the NRC to oversee company
performance, or for licensees to effectively interact with the
regulator.
The industry also believes that the NRC could become more efficient
by eliminating, or consolidating its regional offices. Each regional
office has approximately 65 positions that do not have any direct
inspection responsibility. The functions of these individuals include
management positions, administrative staff, public affairs offices,
travel offices, etc. There are also considerable facility-related
costs.
In assessing its overall organizational staffing levels, the NRC
should also avoid creating large new permanent staff positions to
handle short-term resource requirements. A specific example where this
appears to be the case is in the area of security. With the changes to
the regulatory requirements and to licensee plans and strategies, the
NRC has faced a ``bow-wave'' of activities over the past 3 years.
However, going forward, the industry, not the NRC, has the bulk of
implementation requirements. NRC should assess their staffing needs,
everywhere and particularly in the area of security, based upon a
longer-term perspective of fulfilling their responsibilities and be
careful to not establish large organizations that do not have relevant
longer-term activities to fulfill.
In summary, the industry believes that the changing regulatory
environment as well as the changing nature of the industry has provided
opportunities for the NRC to review and evaluate its staffing levels
and that the NRC has significant opportunities to increase both
efficiency and effectiveness by both structural organizational changes
and more focused staff assignments. Consolidating its regional offices
is but one example of how legitimate increases in staffing levels in
some areas could be offset by decreases elsewhere without diminishing
NRC's effectiveness.
Question 2. Has NEI noticed a difference in the way the NRC
conducts their enforcement actions since they have been moving toward
risk-based decisionmaking?
Response. The enforcement program changes that were put in place
coincident with the revised Reactor Oversight Process have resulted in
enforcement actions that are much more closely tied to the significance
of the performance issue. This is a much improved process and has led
to a better safety focus on performance issues. However, further
enhancements can be made.
In our view, there remain compliance requirements that have little
or no safety significance. For example, over 98 percent of the NRC's
inspection findings are determined to have little or no safety
significance. The new enforcement policy appropriately defers these
issues to licensee management for resolution as part of the plant's
corrective action program, with follow-up from the resident inspector
to ensure the issues are properly addressed. In many cases, these
issues had already been identified by the licensee. What this result
says is that significant NRC inspection resources are being committed
to issues of low, or no safety significance.
While the output from the Reactor Oversight Process is successfully
focusing NRC resources on safety-related issues, the fact that 98
percent of the inspection findings have little or no safety
significance, is indictive of a situation where the inspectors are
inspecting existing codified regulations which are not safety focused.
In essence, while the oversight process and its enforcement process
have been made safety-focused, many of the existing codified
regulations are not safety-focused. This is a primary area where the
NRC's inspection/enforcement requirements can be more risk-informed.
While the Commission is committed to addressing this issue, and
while some progress is being made in revising outdated and ineffective
regulatory requirements, the pace of change is far too slow to provide
any significant improvement in the foreseeable future. The Commission
should set a goal of eliminating or modifying those regulations that
have little safety value within 5 years. In an attempt to facilitate
such changes, the industry has provided the NRC with a white paper
describing a new, risk-informed regulatory framework, which includes
sample regulation language that is risk-informed and performance-based
where appropriate. The new framework is technology neutral and could be
applied to both current and future plants.
______
Response by Marvin Fertel to an Additional Question from
Senator Jeffords
Question. Mr. Fertel, in light of the consolidation in the nuclear
industry you describe in your testimony, do you think the NRC should be
doing more to track wastes and fuels?
Response. The industry fully recognizes and accepts its
responsibility to safely and securely control and manage fresh nuclear
fuel and all byproducts, including spent nuclear fuel generated at the
plants. We find the recent, though very limited, incidents unacceptable
from a credibility and public confidence perspective, though they posed
no threat to public health and safety.
The NRC currently has strict regulatory requirements regarding the
control and recordkeeping associated with special nuclear material,
including new fuel, spent nuclear fuel, high-level wastes and low-level
wastes. To meet these requirements, every commercial nuclear power
plant utilizes computerized systems to track the movements and storage
locations of all nuclear materials. Every delivery to the site and
transports away from the site are tracked and recorded.
The industry recognizes that there have been three recent problems
identified that raise questions regarding the effectiveness of the
current regulations. However, events contributing to the recently
identified concerns occurred decades ago. At the Vermont Yankee plant,
the used fuel pieces that could not be properly accounted were
subsequently found at the plant in the used fuel storage pool. In the
Millstone event, fuel rods that were also unaccounted for were
determined by the NRC to not be a public safety hazard and that they
were most likely disposed of in a low-level waste facility and thus
properly sequestered away from the public. The most recent problem is
expected to result in finding the material in the pool.
The industry and the NRC have proactively investigated these
circumstances to develop lessons learned and initiate corrective
actions. In addition, the NRC has informed all licensees about these
circumstances and expects the licensees to review the effectiveness of
their individual material control and accounting programs in order to
avoid similar problems at their facilities.
The consolidation of the industry, as described in my testimony,
has little or no impact upon the NRC's ability to control and track
nuclear materials at the sites owned by those companies. Regardless of
the owner, the requirements are clear and the recordkeeping should be
accurate. Also, with respect to consolidation, a valid argument could
be made, for example, that the consolidation and thus shared management
of several facilities will result in better and more uniform management
practices.
In our view, these few incidents, while undesirable, did not pose a
threat to health and safety. On the positive side, they demonstrated
the value of the inspection and reporting requirements imposed by the
NRC, illustrated the transparency of the NRC process to the public,
resulted in a very systematic resolution of the identified problem, and
provided lessons-learned to the NRC and he industry. As such, we
believe the existing regulatory requirements are both adequate and
effective. The strength of these tracking systems and the utilities
commitment to safety have resulted in what in an excellent overall
record of controlling and tracking nuclear material by the NRC.
__________
Responses by Marvin Fertel to Additional Questions from
Senator Voinovich
Question 1a. What are the human capital needs in the nuclear
industry?
Response. The nuclear energy industry recognizes that it faces a
human resource challenge. It has an aging work force, which will
require careful evaluation and comprehensive planning in order for the
industry to meet its human resources needs over the next decade.
In 2003, NEI completed a comprehensive staffing study which
indicated that nearly 28 percent of workers at generating stations and
35 percent of workers at key suppliers will be eligible to retire
within the next 5 years. (A copy of the study is attached.) Further,
significant skills shortages were identified in the 2001 NEI Staffing
Study. Absent some proactive industry and government initiatives, we
project that demand will exceed supply for nuclear engineers by 56
percent and health physicists by 63 percent. It is important to keep in
mind that all of these assessments were based on the continued
operation of the current fleet and have not considered the work force
demands for the construction and operation of new plants, which could
add thousands to the work force need in the latter part of the next
decade.
We are particularly concerned that there are very few education and
training programs available at universities or community colleges for
health physicists, radiation protection technicians, chemistry
technicians, instrumentation and control technicians (analogue) and
non-destructive examination professionals.
Question 1b. What can be done to help human capital development in
the industry?
Response. As result of our concerns in this area, NEI recommends
continued support for University Programs in the Department of Energy's
Office of Nuclear Energy at the $27.5 million level and expansion of
these programs to include funding support for Health Physics programs.
In addition, support for the development of e-learning and community
college initiatives in a variety of fields including radiation
protection, instrumentation and control, and non-destructive
examination would greatly assist the industry to successfully tackle
its work force challenges. In this area, NEI urges support for the
Department of Labor's High Growth Job Training Initiative at the
administration requested funding level of $250 million specifically for
community college programs. Finally, NEI recommends that all of the
agencies whose mandates encompass supporting education and training in
this area, including the National Science Foundation, the Departments
of Energy, Labor and Education work collaboratively with the industry
in new program design and development to ensure that appropriate,
seamless and adequate programs are supported and to avoid needless
duplication of programs.
In addition to the broad-based industry activities, the Federal
Government can play a large role in assisting the industry and the
American worker in gaining the education and job skills necessary for
employment in the nuclear industry. Furthermore, programs that build a
competency in this area will also help ensure a pool of qualified
candidates with nuclear and radiological skills for the Departments of
Energy, Defense and Homeland Security, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission and the national laboratory system.
Question 2. Do you agree or disagree with GAO's recommendation that
the NRC should develop a methodology to assess early indications of
deteriorating safety at nuclear power plants? Why? What do you think
the NRC should do to address safety culture at nuclear plants around
the country?
Response. The NRC certainly has the responsibility to assess
indications of deteriorating safety at nuclear plants and to take
appropriate regulatory actions. They had that responsibility prior to
Davis-Besse and the responsibility remains.
There is, however, single metric the NRC can use to effectively
evaluate safety culture. Therefore, when the GAO says the NRC should
develop a ``methodology'' to assess safety culture, I believe that the
best manner for the NRC to achieve that goal is for the NRC to ensure
that it is effectively integrating safety culture insights from all its
activities. My following comments explain how I would implement such a
``methodology''.
The NRC has been very systematic in reviewing the Davis-Besse event
to identify improvements in their assessment process. A lessons-learned
task force (LLTF) was established by the NRC to develop recommendations
from the Davis-Besse event to improve the NRC's regulatory process. I
believe the actions taken are consistent with the industry's view of
the event.
While the creation and maintenance of the desired safety culture is
the responsibility of corporate and plant management, the NRC does have
an important role to ensure that the desired safety culture exists. In
1989 the Commission issued a policy statement that outlined the
expectation that the management of a nuclear plant has the duty and
obligation to foster the development of a ``safety culture'' at each
facility and provide a professional working environment that assures
safe operations.
The NRC currently has many tools to assure that result. As there
are generally two full time inspectors at every nuclear plant site, the
NRC has a real-time view of the performance of every nuclear plant. The
NRC also performs inspections of systems and components during
operation and shutdown conditions. These inspections give the NRC the
ability to make continuous observations of performance, including
safety culture.
Following the Davis-Besse incident, the NRC through the LLTF,
recognized several areas for improvement in observation training and
questioning attitude of the resident inspectors regarding the
maintenance of a safety culture at the plant and has improved its
oversight by enhancing the recognition of safety culture concerns by
the resident inspectors.
The reactor oversight process (ROP), through the performance
indicators and cross-cutting issue inspections, provides a view of unit
performance, material condition and culture at the plants.
Complimentary to the ROP is the corrective action program at every
nuclear plant. Not only does the NRC have real time access to the daily
review of corrective action documents but they also perform periodic
inspections of the performance indicators, corrective action programs
and work activities. These inspections provide valuable insight into
the way safety issues are identified, trended and resolved, all
providing good indications of the safety culture at the plants.
The NRC should use all the program reviews, inspections and direct
oversight by resident inspectors discussed above plus the allegation
and employee concerns programs, which is a component of a safety
conscious work environment, to review safety culture at nuclear plants.
In addition, the NRC has a memorandum of agreement with the
Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) to allow them to place
observers on the evaluation teams that perform the every 2 year plant
evaluations for the industry. These teams specifically look at the
safety culture of the plant and review the results of the evaluation
directly with the company's chief executive officer. INPO has increased
its focus on safety culture since the Davis-Besse incident.
The strength of safety culture can best be determined by a
combination of direct contact with station personnel and management,
reviewing results of plant performance, trending allegations resulting
from the safety conscious work environment, routine inspections, and
inspections of the corrective action process. The onsite resident
inspectors along with the various visiting inspectors provide
continuous, as well as, periodic sampling of the safety culture at a
nuclear plant. The inspectors observe behavior during routine
operation, refueling outages and special evolutions. They can
determine, if properly trained, when there is a major shift in culture
at a plant. This concept was recently demonstrated by the
identification of a problem and the significant actions taken by the
NRC at the Salem-Hope Creek nuclear plants.
Taking into consideration the changes the NRC has made based upon
their Davis-Besse LLTF plus all the activities and opportunities to
observe and evaluate safety culture, the NRC currently has the ability
to effectively assure that every site maintains a safety culture. As
part of its ``methodology'', the NRC should continue to integrate, and
look for ways to improve, the input from its systematic oversight,
inspections and safety conscious work environment related allegations
to gather the complete picture of safety culture at a plant.
Question 3a. What has the industry learned from the Davis-Besse
incident? What changes have been made across the industry?
Response. The industry recognizes that the Davis Besse incident was
the result of a significant failure on the part of the company, the
industry, as well as the NRC. As such, it has taken many actions to not
only identify lessons-learned but also to assure that every plant has
acted to implement changes and recommendations as a result.
The industry participated on many of the teams that were sent to
Davis-Besse to help determine root cause and corrective actions. Due to
this direct participation, several changes have occurred throughout the
industry. As discussed, subsequently in this answer, INPO has been the
major driver in changing its processes and in driving change in the
industry.
One of the major lessons-learned was a heightened awareness of
plant material condition and degradation mechanisms. To address this
issue, senior industry leadership through NEI developed an initiative
to address the material condition and degradation at nuclear plants.
This initiative is more fully explained in my written testimony already
submitted to the subcommittee. Because of this increased focus on
materials, the industry has taken a very aggressive stance on
inspections and repair/replacement of components susceptible to
material degradation, e.g. steam generators and reactor vessel heads.
Question 3b. Please detail the work that Nuclear Energy Institute
(NEI) and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) has done on
safety culture and safety-conscious work environment.
Response. With respect to safety culture, NEI has played a role in
activities relating to safety culture and safety conscious work
environment (SCWE). NEI has sponsored forums and formed working groups
to address safety culture and SCWE issues. NEI has assisted in the
development of guidelines for principles associated with safety culture
and guidelines for developing robust employee concerns programs which
is an important aspect of SCWE. The latter guideline has been shared on
our public web site so that all nuclear related industries can share
our collective expertise and lessons learned.
Following the Davis-Besse event, major systematic changes were made
to INPO's programs. From an industry perspective, the assessment and
oversight of safety culture for the industry, falls directly within the
domain of the INPO. INPO has significantly changed its oversight of
nuclear plants, particularly in the area of safety culture, as a result
of the Davis-Besse incident.
INPO established a very aggressive internal program review related
to safety culture following the Davis-Besse incident in the fall 2002.
This review developed recommendations that were acted upon by the INPO
executives resulting in comprehensive and broad-based corrective
actions that touched every cornerstone and technical employee. Many of
the corrective actions were focused on the plant evaluation process and
how INPO evaluates safety culture. Safety culture ``touch points'' were
adopted from pre-evaluation analysis to preexit meeting to exit meeting
with the utility CEO. Safety culture is now discussed with each utility
CEO as part of the evaluation process.
INPO also conducted a series of workshops for the industry to cover
the lessons learned from Davis-Besse and INPO. These work shops were
regional throughout the United States and included participation by the
Davis-Besse management team.
Along with the internal review and workshops, INPO also issued a
Significant Operating Experience Report (SOER) in November 2002 to be
implemented by every U.S. nuclear utility. The SOER contained three
specific recommendations summarized as follows: (1) to discuss the
Davis-Besse case study outline (provided with the SOER) with all
nuclear organization managers and supervisors. Continue this effort
periodically with all new managers and supervisors. Include a
discussion of the technical and non-technical contributors to the
event; (2) to conduct a self-assessment to determine to what degree
your organization has a healthy respect for nuclear safety and that
nuclear safety is not compromised by production priorities. The self-
assessment should emphasize the leadership skills and approaches
necessary to achieve and maintain the proper focus on nuclear safety.
The components of this self-assessment should be included in the plants
on-going self-assessment program; and (3) to identify and document
abnormal plant conditions or indications at your station that cannot be
readily explained. Pay particular attention to long-term unexplained
conditions. Thoroughly investigate and evaluate each condition
individually and in an aggregate to determine the causes and potential
consequences and to ensure timely and effective resolution.
INPO members were asked to provide a copy of their internal self-
assessment required by the SOER to be reviewed by INPO mangers and
executives. The aggregate findings of the self-assessments were shared
with the utility CEOs at the November 2003 CEO Conference. The
discussion highlighted some of the industry's safety culture best
practices, including how some CEOs were personally communicating their
safety culture expectations.
In addition, INPO developed a principles document with the
assistance of several prominent current and retired nuclear industry
executives and a smaller number of culture experts. The document is
titled, ``Principles for a Strong Nuclear Safety Culture''. (A copy is
attached.)
The document was introduced at the November CEO Conference with the
expectation that the CEOs will use the principles during discussions
with utility senior management and that each utility will incorporate
the principles into their nuclear program. As part of INPO's systematic
evaluations of individual plants, the implementation of the principles
will be assessed.
Safety culture discussions have been incorporated into the
appropriate leadership courses and seminars offered through INPO. These
seminars cover all levels of the nuclear plant management structure.
Safety culture will also continue to be a primary theme at the Annual
INPO-CEO Conferences.
In conclusion, the lessons-learned from the Davis-Besse event have
resulted in major changes to almost all of the ongoing INPO programs,
most prominently the evaluations program and its leadership training
programs. Of equal significance, the importance of safety culture and
its characteristics are now a fundamental theme in all interactions
with CEO's, NEI, INPO and the leadership in the industry are committed
to prevent events like what occurred at Davis-Besse. The increased
focus on and to substantive programmatic changes made to address safety
culture should result in success on that commitment.
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Statement of David Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Engineer, on behalf of
Union of Concerned Scientists
On behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), it is my
pleasure to appear before this subcommittee. My name is David Lochbaum.
After obtaining a degree in nuclear engineering from The University of
Tennessee in 1979, I spent more than 17 years in the nuclear industry,
mostly at operating power reactors in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,
Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Connecticut,
before joining UCS in October 1996 as their nuclear safety engineer.
UCS, established in 1969 as a non-profit, public interest group, seeks
to ensure that people have clean air, energy and transportation, as
well as food that are produced in a safe and sustainable manner. UCS
has monitored nuclear plant safety issues for over 30 years.
lessons from the past
Twenty five years ago this past March, the Three Mile Island Unit 2
reactor outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania experienced the worst nuclear
plant accident in U.S. history. The 25th anniversary of that meltdown
got considerable media attention. One reporter asked me how the nuclear
industry would be different today had the Three Mile Island accident
not happened. ``There would be no difference,'' I answered him,
``because that accident was bound to happen--if not at Three Mile
Island, then at some other reactor.'' One-of-a-kind design flaws,
isolated operator training deficiencies, or unique equipment failures
did not cause the accident. Degraded conditions prevalent at and
tolerated on all reactor sites ultimately produced a meltdown at one
site--Three Mile Island. The many post-mortem inquiries into that
accident resulted in extensive changes in the organization and
management of the nuclear industry and its regulator, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC).
This history is relevant to today's hearing because compelling
evidence suggests that extensive, degraded conditions at reactor sites
are once again being tolerated. The NRC's response to these warning
signs have amounted to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on
the Titanic. Fortunately, there is still time for the NRC to plot a
different course so as to avoid the icebergs looming on the horizon.
warning signs in the present
The Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio recently restarted after
being shut down more than 2 years for repairs to emergency equipment.
The NRC concluded that deteriorating conditions at Davis-Besse had,
over a period of nearly 6 years, reduced safety margins to the point
where the reactor was within two to 13 months of having an accident
like Three Mile Island. The NRC identified more than four-dozen flaws
in its regulatory oversight processes that allowed Davis-Besse to flirt
with disaster. Many of those regulatory flaws remain uncorrected and
are not even scheduled for correction.
Davis-Besse is not an isolated case. It is the twenty-eighth (28th)
nuclear power reactor to be shut down for a year or longer for safety
repairs since September 1984. In fact, there has not been a single
minute in the past two decades without at least one reactor mired in a
year-plus outage.
A year-plus outage adversely affects the reliability of the
electrical power grid. It adversely affects the costs paid by
ratepayers for electricity and the returns received by stockholders. It
adversely affects safety levels exposing workers and the public to
undue hazards. Twenty-eight year-plus outages in 20 years is an
extremely poor report card for both the nuclear industry and its
regulator. Nuclear safety problems must be found and fixed before they
grow to epidemic proportions.
The NRC's report cards from internal and external auditors are
equally bad, especially since so many of yesterday's problems still
factor into today's problems. Very little is getting fixed. A review of
reports issued by NRC Lessons Learned Task Forces, the NRC Office of
the Inspector General (OIG), and the U.S. General Accounting Office
(GAO) over the past 8 years shows the same regulatory problems
contributing again and again to unacceptable safety levels. Examples of
these recurring, uncorrected findings are:
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The NRC attempted to remedy the shortcomings identified by its
auditors. However, these efforts failed to achieve the necessary
outcome of preventing recurrence. The NRC's current regulatory
processes rated Davis-Besse in 2002 as one of the best performing
reactors in the U.S.--it now appears that Davis-Besse was the worst
performer. Obviously, the NRC failed to correct enough of its many
shortcomings. If the agency corrected its regulatory impairments, it
would be able to detect declining safety levels sooner and intervene
long before year-plus outages are needed to restore the necessary
safety margins.
roadblocks to nrc reforms
The NRC has many talented and capable employees committed to the
agency's vital mission of protecting public health and safety. But as
NASA learned with the Challenger tragedy and re-learned with the
Columbia tragedy, technologies where risk is dominated by high-
consequence, low-probability events require much more than the
commitment of talented, capable workers. They require an unrelenting,
uncompromising approach to safety.
The NRC strives to provide that level of oversight, but falls short
too often as demonstrated by the 28 year-plus reactor outages in the
past 20 years. The agency's efforts are stymied by its hiring and
promotion policies. Very few of the NRC's senior technical managers are
new to the agency. The majority worked their way up through the ranks.
Consequently, NRC's managers come from the same mold and have the same
habits. Retirements and reorganizations at NRC merely put new faces on
the same management style. Reform efforts fail because merely re-
packaging and re-applying that management style cannot yield
substantive changes.
The aforementioned 28 reactors that endured lengthy outages shared
the common trait of bringing in new--really new--management to direct
the restart and recovery efforts. New management is the fastest way to
meaningful and lasting reforms. New managers can assess policies and
practices unencumbered by ``traditions.'' New managers can stake out a
new path with implicitly conceding it led troops down old paths. New
management is a tried and true method for bringing about needed reforms
in a timely manner. Yet it is an untried method at NRC, which
desperately needs reform at any pace.
UCS is not advocating a massive infusion of new managers at NRC.
This would be the fastest and surest way to the much-needed reforms,
but it would be unfair to many fine public servants who have devoted
many years of hard work on nuclear safety issues. Instead, we urge
Congress to work with the NRC to revamp the agency's hiring and
promotion policies. Retirements and other voluntary departures should
provide opportunities for finding the most qualified replacements--not
just the most qualified replacements from within the NRC. The salaries
and benefits for NRC managers must be sufficient to attract and retain
qualified candidates from inside and outside the agency.
nuclear crossroads
The future of nuclear power in the United States depends on
decisions made now. The NRC's regulatory impairments make nuclear
power's cost and risks higher than is necessary. Left unchecked, the
only question is whether economics or disaster will bring down the
curtain on nuclear power in America.
Whatever role nuclear power plays in our energy future, the NRC
must become an effective regulator. To hasten that transformation, the
agency needs fresh perspectives from outside managers. One of the NRC's
strengths is its work force of talented, capable, and dedicated
employees. Properly led, they can make sure that nuclear power's costs
are not too high or its safety levels too low.
The NRC is like NASA in that both agencies struggle with complex
technologies where risk is dominated by low probability, high
consequence events. We hope NRC is unlike NASA in not needing a tragic
reminder to trigger the reform efforts that are so desperately needed.
The time for NRC to reform is running out. The Three Mile Island
meltdown and other nuclear accidents at Chernobyl, Browns Ferry, St.
Laurent, Fermi Unit 1, SL-1, and Sodium Reactor Experiment occurred in
the first year or two of the plant's lifetime--during the break-in
phase. As indicated in the figure of what is called the ``bathtub
curve'' due to its distinctive shape, risk of failure is highest early
and late in life. The 104 nuclear power reactors in the U.S. are
heading toward, if not already within, the wear-out phase of life where
risk once again rises. The NRC recurring, chronic problems must be
fixed if the American public is to be adequately protected from the
hazards of aging nuclear power plants.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED]
On behalf of UCS, I wish to thank the subcommittee for conducting
this hearing on nuclear plant security and for considering our views on
the matter.
Responses by David Lochbaum to Additional Questions from
Senator Jeffords
Question 1. How can NRC enhance its enforcement efforts? In your
view, is the issue a lack of personnel, or is additional training
needed?
Response. The two major problems with the NRC's enforcement efforts
are timeliness and clarity of communications. Based on the NRC's
ability to meet schedule goals in other areas--such as reviewing
license amendment requests--we believe that timeliness in enforcement
actions can be achieved without additional staffing. The clarity of
NRC's communications about enforcement actions can be improved by a
combination of training and process refinements.
The NRC's enforcement actions on nuclear plant safety issues since
spring of 2000 fall into two categories: willful violations and non-
willful violations. Willful violations involve determinations by the
NRC that plant personnel and/or management knowingly and deliberately
violated regulations. Such determinations can prompt the NRC into
enforcement actions such as fines against the individuals involved and
the company. Non-willful violations involve determinations by the NRC
that companies unknowingly or inadvertently failed to comply with
regulations. Both categories suffer from lack of timely NRC decisions
that harm plant owners and the public. When the NRC ultimately
determines that no violations occurred, clouds of suspicion hung longer
than necessary over suspected individuals and companies. On the other
hand, when the NRC ultimately determines that violations occurred,
individuals and companies remained at the controls of nuclear power
plants unaccountable longer than necessary.
The fix is simple--the NRC must establish schedule goals for
enforcement decisions and abide by them. The NRC established goals for
decisions involving license renewal requests and has met every single
deadline to date despite some involving intervenor action. Likewise,
the NRC established goals for decisions involving other licensing
requests by plant owners and it meets those deadlines over 95 percent
of the time. By applying this proven management control to its
enforcement decisions, the NRC should be able to achieve the similar
on-time performance.
Regarding clarity of communications about enforcement actions, I
began engaging the NRC in 1997 in a continuing series of discussions
and correspondence about inconsistent enforcement actions. Many of
those discussions occurred during public meetings conducted by NRC
where representatives of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the
nuclear industry's trade group, expressed similar comments about the
vagueness of NRC's communications. By procedure, the NRC's
communications about enforcement actions use templates where blanks for
specific information (i.e., who, when, where) are filled in. This
`boilerplate' approach to communications force-fits varying reasons
into the same messages. When queried by me or NEI, the NRC promptly
reveals the true reasons why enforcement actions were or were not
taken. Obviously, the true reasons had not been withheld for privacy or
legal reasons or the NRC could not have divulged them so freely during
public meetings and in public correspondence.
Again, the fix is simple--the NRC must publicly divulge the true
reasons for its enforcement decisions. The current procedure that makes
the NRC issue trite communications must be revised. Training on the
revised procedure should be given to NRC staffers.
Question 2. Nuclear plants that are seeking license renewal may not
always conform to current safety standards, but to a number of
regulations dating back 40 years with exemptions, deviations, and
waivers granted along the way. While each individual exemption or
waiver may be justified and not reducing safety margins, the cumulative
effective of so many exceptions can adversely affect safety. What
should NRC be doing to properly manage the risk at aging reactors? Is
having all plants meet current standards the appropriate solution?
Response. Having all nuclear plants conform to current standards
before being granted permission to operate for up to 20 additional
years would solve the problem. But that solution poses an undue burden
on plant owners, their ratepayers and stockholders. Therefore, UCS
advocates that the NRC adopt a more practical and reasonable solution.
The NRC's license renewal process assumes that nuclear power plants
have adequate safety margins today and focuses the license renewal
review efforts on aging mechanisms with the potential for eroding those
safety margins. UCS feels strongly that this license renewal process
must also include the NRC's verification that today's safety margins
are indeed adequate.
The adequacy of safety margins is established by the NRC's
regulations. UCS is not aware of a single U.S. nuclear power plant that
meets today's regulations. Instead, U.S. nuclear power plants are
supposed to meet (a) the regulations in effect when the NRC initially
licensed them to operate, and (b) regulations subsequently adopted by
the NRC that the agency specifically applied to existing plants
(otherwise, the new regulations only applied to reactors licensed
thereafter by the NRC). In addition, the NRC approved literally
thousands of waivers, deviations, and exemptions to the regulations.
A prime purpose of the NRC's reactor oversight process is to
determine if the reactors meet their applicable regulations (not
today's regulations, but the hodge-podge of old regulations, new
regulations, and hundreds of approved waivers, deviations, and
exemptions).
Collectively, the NRC's reactor oversight process and its license
renewal process seek to assure that a reactor has the safety margins
provided by applicable regulations and that aging of structures and
equipment throughout two more decades of operation will not erode those
safety margins. The vital missing link is a verification that the
reactor's safety margins provide the public with protection comparable
to that afforded by today's regulations.
Before the NRC grants a license renewal, the NRC should verify the
adequacy of today's safety margins by formally reviewing the
regulations applicable to a reactor and all the approved waivers,
deviations, and exemptions from those applicable regulations against
the agency's current regulations. [NOTE: Wherever possible, the NRC's
review should be streamlined by limiting its scope to only a comparison
of regulations having a safety nexus. For example, regulations
involving merely the frequency and content of reports to be submitted
to the NRC by licensees could be excluded.]
UCS believes that it is necessary, practical, and prudent for the
NRC to verify the adequacy of today's safety margins before granting a
20-year extension to the original 40-year license. After all, an option
to extending the life of the 40-year old reactor would be to construct
a brand new reactor at the same site to use the same transmission lines
and infrastructure. There is no question that a new reactor would have
to meet today's regulations and the safety margins they require.
Prudent protection of public health dictates there should be no
unanswered questions about whether ancient reactors have comparable
safety margins.
__________
Statement of Marilyn Kray, Vice President for Project Development,
Exelon Generation, on Behalf of NuStart Energy Development LLC
Chairman Voinovich, Senator Carper, and Members of the
Subcommittee:
I am Marilyn Kray, Vice President of Project Development for Exelon
Nuclear, a subsidiary of Exelon Corporation. I am appearing today in my
capacity as the lead representative of NuStart Energy Development, a
recently formed consortium of power companies and reactor vendors.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
Congress has an important role in providing oversight of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and this oversight will be particularly
important as the Commission proceeds with a new process for licensing
nuclear power plants. My testimony today will focus on the benefits of
nuclear power, the Department of Energy's Nuclear Power 2010
Initiative, the formation of NuStart Energy Development, and the
prerequisites for the construction of new nuclear power plants.
benefits of nuclear power
Nuclear power is a safe, clean, reliable and economic method of
generating electricity. Indeed, the nation's 103 operating reactors
provided over 20 percent of the electricity generated in the United
States last year.
Nuclear plants are safe, both from an operational and a homeland
security perspective. Despite concerns expressed by some that nuclear
plants would become less safe as plant operators focused improving
operational efficiency, data has shown that plant performance and
safety go hand-in-hand. The best performing plants in terms of capacity
factor also have the fewest safety-related incidents. Operational
excellence not only increases plant output, it also enhances safety. In
fact, commercial nuclear plants have an exceptional record of worker
safety.
From a security perspective, independent reviews of commercial
nuclear power plants have shown these plants to be perhaps the most
secure industrial facilities in the United States. The same plant
features that are used to isolate the public from radiation also serve
to fortify the plants against outside intruders. Nuclear security,
already robust prior to September 11, 2001, has been significantly
enhanced since that time. Plants have made significant capital
investments to upgrade security and have roughly doubled the size of
their security forces.
Nuclear power is also one of the cleanest sources of electric
generation. Since nuclear power is not based on combustion, nuclear
plants emit none of the air pollutants associated with climate change,
acid rain, or smog. Since the electricity produced by nuclear plants
displaces electricity that would otherwise be supplied by fossil-fired
power plants, it is estimated that U.S. nuclear plants avoided 3.38
million short tons of sulfur dioxide, 1.39 million short tons of
nitrogen oxides, and 189.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide during
2002.\1\
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\1\ Calculated by the Nuclear Energy Institute using regional fuel
emission rates from EPA CEMS data and individual plant generation data
from the Energy Information Administration. Last updated September
2003.
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Nuclear plants do not discharge pollutants into the water, though
they do discharge warm water into the environment. These discharges are
carefully regulated and monitored to protect aquatic life. And while
nuclear plants do generate radioactive waste materials, these wastes
are carefully managed and are isolated from the environment.
From a reliability perspective, nuclear plants are an ideal source
of baseload generation. Demand for electricity is expected to grow by
50 percent by 2025, according to the Department of Energy. Nuclear
power will be necessary to ensure that the U.S. maintains a balanced,
diverse and reliable electricity supply while protecting the
environment.
In 2003, the U.S. reactor fleet produced 766.5 billion kWh of
electricity at an average capacity factor of nearly 90 percent. In
part, this is due to the inherent design philosophy to run for extended
periods of time between scheduled refueling outages. Most nuclear
plants now run on a 2-year cycle between refueling outages. Because of
these long run cycles, nuclear plants are not subject to fuel delivery
issues that can affect some generation sources. In addition, unlike
other generation sources, nuclear plants are generally not affected by
weather conditions.
Finally, nuclear generation has proven to be an extremely cost
competitive form of electricity generation. For 2002, nuclear plant
production costs, which encompass fuel and operation and maintenance
costs, were 1.71 cents/kWh. These productions costs were lower than
comparable costs for coal, which were 1.85 cents/kWh, and significantly
lower than natural gas and oil, whose production costs were 4.06 cents/
kWh and 4.41 cents/kWh, respectively.\2\
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\2\ U.S. DOE/Nuclear Power Industry, Strategic Plan for Light Water
Reactors Research and Development, First Edition, February 2004.
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doe's nuclear power 2010 initiative
Despite the nuclear industry's impressive performance in recent
years, companies have been reluctant to consider investing in new
nuclear plants. Uncertainty regarding the NRC's new licensing process,
new advanced reactor designs, the future regulatory environment, the
existence of a repository for used nuclear fuel, and the future of
electricity markets in the U.S. all represent risks that give investors
pause when it comes to nuclear power.
Recognizing the valuable role of nuclear energy in meeting the
nation's current and future energy needs, Energy Secretary Spencer
Abraham unveiled the Department of Energy's Nuclear Power 2010
initiative in February of 2002. The program seeks to partner with the
private sector to achieve three goals: (1) to evaluate potential sites
to host new reactors; (2) to demonstrate the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's licensing process for new plants; and (3) to conduct
research to promote safer and more efficient nuclear plant technologies
in the United States.
In June 2002, the Department awarded grants to Dominion, Entergy,
and Exelon in support of their proposals to develop and submit Early
Site Permit applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Each
company submitted their application to the NRC for review in the Fall
of 2003. Final NRC action on the applications is expected in 2006.
In November 2003, the Department issued a formal solicitation
inviting cooperative agreement applications to demonstrate the NRC's
combined operating license (COL) process. The solicitation encouraged a
consortium approach among power generation companies, plant owners and
operators, reactor vendors, architect engineers and construction
companies and proposed a 50 percent minimum industry cost share over
the life of the project.
In 1989, the NRC introduced 10 CFR Part 52, an improved and more
efficient licensing process for new nuclear plants. However, this
process has not been demonstrated, and the prolonged regulatory
interactions on previously licensed plants only serves to increase the
financial community's uneasiness over the NRC's licensing process. This
is why DOE's Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative is essential.
The Part 52 process has three subparts: Early Site Permits, Design
Certification, and Combined Construction Permits and Operating
Licenses. These subparts have common concepts and common principles. It
is important for these common concepts and principles to be maintained
during the reviews, issuance and implementation of the Part 52
subparts. For example, one of these common concepts, the Inspections,
Tests, Analyses, and Acceptance Criteria (ITAAC), is applicable in
design certification and in the combined license element. The
principles for the design certification ITAAC are the same as for the
combined license ITAAC, though the regulatory reviews may be years
apart. If these concepts and principles--which include implementation--
are not maintained, the reviews will become prolonged. Every effort
should be made to maintain personnel stability within a project for the
duration of the combined license review and plant construction.
The majority of the existing 103 reactors in the U.S. are unique
design. Standardization was not a consideration in the early plants,
where incorporating lessons learned as previous plants were built took
priority. In the 1990's, the industry made a commitment to standardize
new plants to the fullest extent possible. As a result, once the first
plant receives its license, subsequent licensing activities for future
plants of the same design should be easier and take less time. The only
issues to review would be associated with site-specific differences and
design compatibility with the site.
The industry commends the NRC for moving forward with improvements
to 10 CFR Part 2, Rules of Practice for Domestic Licensing Proceedings
and Issuance of Orders. These improvements will make the licensing
process more objective and efficient, while maintaining full public
involvement on issues that are relevant and germane to the proceedings.
When coupled with the new Part 52 process, these regulatory and process
improvements should assure that a combined construction and operating
license for a completely new design can be issued in 24 months of the
application being filed. For subsequent application of the same design,
the licensing review and process should take no more than 18 months.
This timeframe assumes that that all the elements of the Part 52
process are being used (an approved early site permit, and a certified
design) and that there is no need for a formal adjudicatory hearing.
In response to the COL solicitation, three consortia applied for
assistance from DOE. The three consortia include a team composed of
Dominion, AECL of Canada, Bechtel and Hitachi; a team composed of the
Tennessee Valley Authority, General Electric, Bechtel and USEC; and
NuStart Energy Development, which includes Constellation Energy, Duke
Energy, EDF International North America, Entergy Corporation, Exelon
Corporation, Southern Company and the Tennessee Valley Authority, as
well as General Electric and Westinghouse.
nustart energy development
As noted above, NuStart includes nine participating companies. Of
these companies, TVA is a limited participant, providing in-kind
services only, while GE and Westinghouse serve as subcontractors to the
formal LLC.
The total cost of the project is just over $800 million over a 7-
year period. We are requesting that DOE provide one-half the cost. Each
of the six power companies will provide $1 million cash annually for 5
years from 2004 through 2008, and reduced amounts in 2009 and 2010. In
addition, each of the six power companies will provide inkind services
throughout the 7-year duration of the project, for a total project
share of $6.2 million of cash and in-kind services from each of the six
power companies. The reactor vendors will provide significantly greater
funding--Westinghouse approximately $208.3 million and GE approximately
$157.2 million--over the course of the project.
The NuStart Energy Development proposal is divided into three
overlapping phases: Planning, Evaluation and Licensing. The significant
activities of each phase are outlined below:
Planning Phase (2004-2005)
<bullet> Finalize consortium organization
<bullet> Finalize contractual relationships
<bullet> Prepare for design selection
<bullet> Identify candidate sites
<bullet> Develop general licensing strategy
Evaluation Phase (2004-2005)
<bullet> Develop design selection criteria
<bullet> Select site
<bullet> Finalize licensing strategy
<bullet> Reevaluate economic evaluation for nuclear investments
Licensing Phase (2004-2010)
<bullet> Receive from NRC Design Certification for selected designs
<bullet> Westinghouse AP1000
<bullet> General Electric ESBWR
<bullet> Issue Request for Proposal to reactor vendors
<bullet> Select reactor design for submittal
<bullet> Submit COL application to NRC
<bullet> COL granted by NRC
prerequisites to new plant construction
As defined by DOE, the scope of the NuStart Energy Development
proposal is limited to the pursuit of a combined operating license. The
consortium has made no commitment beyond obtaining the operating
license. While the consortium, or members of the consortium, would be
able to use the COL to pursue construction of a new plant, there is no
commitment to build a plant once the COL is obtained.
Successful completion of the proposed COL project will address two
of the main areas of risk associated with new nuclear investments--lack
of regulatory predictability and lack of completed designs to allow for
accurate estimates of construction and operation cost. The industry
expects to develop significant information regarding cost estimates of
new plant construction and operation through the COL process. However,
the issue of regulatory uncertainty remains a concern for those
companies interested in pursuing new plant opportunities. The financial
community has stated that it considers regulatory predictability and
stability to be prerequisites to obtaining funding for a new nuclear
power plant, and continued Congressional attention toward future
regulatory stability and the licensing of new plants will help build
confidence among investors and within the industry.
In addition to mitigating the risks of regulatory predictability
and design completion, other pre-conditions are necessary before new
nuclear investments can be made:
(1) Congress and the Administration must fully fund the
Nuclear Power 2010 program at $80 million for fiscal year 2005,
and DOE must commit to fund the program at levels that will
sustain it to meet the above mentioned targets by 2010.
(2) The industry must continue to ensure outstanding
performance of the current fleet of operating reactors. Recent
trends indicate that the industry is succeeding: performance
and safety indicators are at record levels. For instance,
nuclear plant capacity factors averaged 90 percent, the highest
of any source of electricity generation. Public perception of
new nuclear power is based, in part, on the performance of the
current fleet of operating plants. Thus, continued solid
industry performance is essential to maintain the confidence of
the regulators, the financial community and the general public.
(3) Congress and the Administration must continue to support
a clear path forward to resolve the issue of spent fuel
disposal. Particular milestones that will signal progress
include adequate funding levels for the Yucca Mountain program,
the submittal of the Yucca Mountain license application by DOE
to the NRC--which is scheduled to occur in December 2004, and
the NRC's timely review of the application.
(4) Power companies must have confidence that open and
competitive wholesale markets for electricity exist. Many power
companies are operating in a deregulated environment. Although
they no longer need to demonstrate that their investment in new
generation is ``used and useful,'' these companies must have
confidence that there will be a consistent market for the
power. The ideal solution to this issue is to have a power
purchase agreement in place for the sale of the proposed
project's output, at least for the early years of production.
In addition to alleviating the uncertainty regarding the need
for the additional power, the power purchase agreement would
remove the risk associated with price fluctuations by
establishing a price schedule for the output. The power
purchase model is used extensively in the wind generation
business. In the absence of a power purchase agreement, very
high confidence in the projections for demand growth and market
prices will be needed for companies to consider investing in
new nuclear plants.
(5) Congress and the Administration must support incentives
to alleviate concerns by the financial community concerning the
risks associated with being a ``first mover'' in the
construction of new plants. These incentives are particularly
important given the significant capital investment required for
nuclear construction. A number of financial incentives have
been identified by the industry New Plant Task Force in
conjunction with the Department of Energy. Some of the
incentives being considered include:
<bullet> Insurance against substantial cost increases
or cancellation resulting from the regulatory process
<bullet> Low interest government loans or loan
guarantees
<bullet> Seven year depreciation schedule
<bullet> Investment tax credits
<bullet> Production tax credits
<bullet> Protection against electricity price
fluctuations, especially for the early years of plant
operation
A successful and sustainable program to build new nuclear plants in
the United States does not require all of the above incentives. Various
combinations or even a portfolio approach which caps the value of the
incentive could be used.
It is important to emphasize that the industry is not seeking a
totally risk-free business environment. Rather, it is seeking
government assistance to contain those risks that are beyond the
private sector's control. The goal is to ensure that the level of risk
associated with the next nuclear plants built in the United States
generally approaches what the electricity industry would consider
normal for a commercial project.
There is ample precedent in other areas for this type of government
support for critical infrastructure. The Transportation Department's
Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) is
just one example. The TIFIA was developed to address a similar scenario
where major investments in bridges and tunnels were needed for the
common public benefit, but the construction projects were not
attractive enough for individual entities to pursue. The incentives
within the TIFIA framework were developed to stimulate private capital
investments using limited government funds.
summary
Nuclear power will play a critical role in allowing the Nation to
meet its future energy needs while preserving a sound environment. Not
only is nuclear power a safe, reliable and economic source of
electricity--allowing it to meet the nation's future need for baseload
power generation, it is also the only major emissions-free source of
generation currently in operation. While aggressive efforts must be
made to explore and expand other forms of environmentally responsible
generation, including wind, solar, biomass, natural gas and clean coal,
the U.S. must also take steps today to ensure that the Nation will
enjoy the benefits of a new generation of nuclear plants in the future.
Congress and the Administration should fully fund the Department of
Energy's Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative, take steps to assure a stable
regulatory environment, continue to support work on the Yucca Mountain
project, and provide financial incentives for the construction of the
first series of new nuclear plants that are built.
______
Response by Marilyn C. Kray to an Additional Question from
Senator Jeffords
Question. Nuclear plants that are seeking license renewal may not
always conform to current safety standards, but to a number of
regulations dating back nearly 40 years with exemptions, deviations,
and waivers granted along the way. While each individual exemption or
waiver may be justified and not reducing safety margins, the cumulative
effect of so many exceptions can adversely affect safety. Is your
consortium concerned that the new reactor you are proposing will have
to meet standards that older plants do not, and does that present a
competitive disadvantage?
Response. The most important aspect of this response is to clarify
the misperception that the existing nuclear plants have defaulted to a
relaxed set of safety standards. The suggestion is that this relaxed
safety environment is the result of the vintage of the plants and the
cumulative effect of the various exemptions or waivers granted over the
life of a plant.
The activities or tools in place to prevent this relaxed safety
environment from occurring can be categorized into three areas:
continuous plant upgrades, reassessment against new regulations and
maintenance of a ``living'' Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA).
With respect to the first area, the components and systems of the
existing fleet of plants are continuously tested and monitored to
ensure that they are capable of performing their required safety
functions. Based on results of this continuous monitoring as well as
pre-emptive actions by the plant owners, equipment and components are
periodically upgraded or replaced. Examples of this range from the
replacement of small devices such as piping, fittings and valve
packings to the replacement of large components such as reactor vessel
heads, steam generators and turbine rotors. Current plant licensees
have also installed new, more modern systems to replace or supplement
original systems that may become obsolete or no longer considered
adequate. Examples of this include replacement of various analog
control systems with digital control systems. In addition to the owner-
initiated upgrades, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) also has
required licensees to correct design deficiencies that could impact
plant safety.
Regarding the second category of new regulations, the NRC
frequently updates its regulations as a result of improvements to
technology and operating experience. When NRC requirements are changed,
the NRC applies a rigorous evaluation standard to determine if the
safety benefit of the new requirement justifies imposing the changes on
existing licensees. Examples where licensees have been required to
``backfit'' new requirements include the many hardware and program
changes that resulted from the accident at Three Mile Island as well as
the security enhancement changes resulting from the September 11
attacks. While later plants may need to demonstrate compliance with
certain requirements beyond those of the existing plants, cost
effective solutions have generally been established which are not
onerous when incorporated into the initial plant design engineering
prior to construction.
The last area that upholds the safety standards of existing plants
is the maintenance of a PRA individualized for each plant. The PRA is a
sophisticated computer model of the entire plant that accounts for each
of the risks and mitigators that contribute to potential core damage.
The PRA calculates the probability of core damage based on inputs from
all of the modeled systems and components along with their status. It
is this important tool that allows the cumulative effects to be
evaluated including any plant equipment that might be degraded or out
of service as a result of a waiver, exemption or routine maintenance.
This allows an ongoing and comprehensive assessment of plant risk to be
made as opposed to a ``compartmentalized'' approach where each
condition was evaluated exclusively.
Aside from attempting to characterize the vigilance associated with
upholding the safety standards of existing plants, it is necessary to
discuss briefly the design philosophy of the next generation of
Advanced Light Water Reactors. The nine power companies comprising the
NuStart consortium deliberately selected two reactor designs based on
their optimization of passive safety systems. The two designs selected
are the Westinghouse AP1000 and the General Electric ESBWR. The
incorporation of ``passive safety systems'' refers to the design
principle wherein laws of nature such as gravity feed, convective heat
transfer and natural circulation are used in place of complex systems
comprised of numerous pumps, valves and actuation devices. This passive
safety system approach translates into very tangible results. For
example, when comparing the AP1000 against current light water
reactors, the Westinghouse AP1000 requires:
<bullet> 50 percent fewer safety-related valves
<bullet> 80 percent less safety-related piping
<bullet> 35 percent fewer pumps
<bullet> 85 percent less cable
<bullet> 45 percent less seismic building volume
For the General Electric ESBWR, similar improvements are realized.
Most notably, the ESBWR does not require any safety related diesel
generators or safety system pumps, including reactor recirculation
pumps. For both of the selected reactor technologies, this passive
safety system approach makes the operation of the plant safer in that
it is less prone to equipment malfunction or human error, and more
economical since there are fewer components to design, construct and
maintain.
In summary, the NuStart consortium is not concerned that the new
reactors will be competitively disadvantaged as compared to the
existing plants as a result from any differences in safety standards.
The existing plants are continuously upgraded and re-evaluated. NuStart
Energy Development sees that one of the critical elements to the
success of a future generation of nuclear plants is the continued
strong performance of the current fleet. Excellent safety performance
is needed to establish and sustain the confidence of the public,
regulators, financial community as well as any future power company
investors.
__________
Statement of Barclay G. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Nuclear,
Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign
Chairman Voinovich, Mr. Carper and members of the Committee, thank
you for the opportunity to provide your committee with some information
and perspectives about the roll that nuclear engineering programs have
in providing a supply of educated professionals to the required work
force in the nuclear field. This topic is a central concern of the
Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization (NEDHO), which I
chaired several years ago. This organization includes the Heads and
Chairs of all nuclear engineering departments/programs in the US and is
broadly representative of our common interests. I am speaking this
morning from my personal interests as a long time faculty member and
former Head of the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological
Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is
the sole department of nuclear engineering in Illinois, the birthplace
of the first man-made nuclear reactor and currently the state with the
most operating nuclear power plants, eleven at six sites.
Last year testimony was presented before the Energy Subcommittee of
the House Committee on Science by my colleague Professor James Stubbins
at the Hearing on University Resources for the ``Future of Nuclear
Science and Engineering Programs.'' That presentation delineated the
interacting forces that were bringing attention to the need for support
and growth of university programs in nuclear science and engineering to
address the manpower needs facing the field. These forces are equally
active today and point to the continued need to nurture and support
these educational programs. In particular, several activities impact
directly on the workload of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its
need for human resources to address them in a timely manner. I will
list only four:
<bullet> licensing of the Yucca Mountain high level waste
repository;
<bullet> evaluation of early site permits and combined
construction license applications for new nuclear power plant
construction;
<bullet> continued evaluation of existing nuclear plant life
extension requests: and
<bullet> evaluation for licensing of Generation IV reactor designs;
To meet the demands of this increased workload, the Commission will
be faced with strong competition for educated and experienced
professionals in the field. The emerging graduates from nuclear
engineering programs generally are not highly experienced, but they are
well educated. The experienced workers in the field will continue to be
in high demand, but are shrinking in numbers due to the
disproportionate distribution of mature persons in the demographic
making up the work force. This will be a continuing and increasing
challenge, at least over the next decade.
The work force demographic, thus, becomes a significant issue. It
cannot be transformed to meet demand in a short timeframe because of
the inherent 4-year BS educational timeframe, and even longer if MS and
PhD degrees are involved. In addition, there is a period immediately
following graduation in which experience is an important aspect to
fully integrate the graduates into being productive employees. But all
is not bad news.
Over the past 2 or 3 years there have been increases in
undergraduate enrollments in nuclear science and engineering programs.
This increase will also work its way into graduate degree programs.
However, graduate programs are driven, not so much by the workplace
demand conditions, but by limitations imposed by the availability of
funded research contracts to support graduate study. It is important to
note that much of the fundamental research funding is from government
sources. Thus, it is no surprising to observe that there is a strong
correlation between such funding and enrollments. Funding remains a
vitally important necessity to retain viable nuclear science and
engineering programs within leading universities.
Focusing more directly on the manpower needs side in the nuclear
engineering field, a common issue emerges, the aging of the experienced
work force. In the nuclear power sector, many of the experienced
employees will reach normal retirement age within the present decade.
Although there has been downsizing of operating and support staff at
power stations since deregulation of the electric utility industry,
there is projected to remain a shortfall in vital experienced and
certified staff. Similar conditions exist in the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission technical staff, in government nuclear laboratories and in
university nuclear engineering faculties.
These shortages cut across BS, MS and PhD degree levels. The supply
of a decade ago of operational and support staff from US Navy personnel
entering the civilian work force has also diminished. Estimates of the
shortfall between BS and MS Annual Employment Needs and students
graduated range from 350 in 1999 to more than 450 in 2003. This has
been exacerbated by the rapid and precipitous decline of enrollments in
BS nuclear engineering programs from 1500 in 1992 to less than 500 in
2000. A steady growth has occurred to where there are about 1000
currently enrolled. Continued growth is projected as next year's
applications and admissions are remaining steady and strong. Thus, the
supply side is currently strong, but well below the earlier mentioned
short fall in graduating numbers of nuclear engineers.
Can the remaining nuclear engineering programs handle the increased
enrollments? The answer is generally yes, presently. But the teaching
staff are also aging and replacements need to be immediately acquired
to make the transition smooth and effective. A study in which the
distributed age of nuclear engineering faculty by the Nuclear Energy
Institute is incorporated in the bar graph included here. This clearly
shows a skewed distribution with the expected significant retirements
in the next 5 to 10 years. Working against the earlier replacement is
the relatively small size of nuclear engineering departments and
enrollments, compared to electrical, mechanical and computer science
units. It requires enlightened administrations to respond favorably to
the nuclear engineering national needs.
In conclusion the educational programs in US universities have much
of the necessary infrastructure but will need to replace and add
faculty in a timely manner in order to continue the increased
enrollments to meet the discussed personnel demands. Clearly continued
and expanded government is essential to retain present trends and meet
projected nuclear engineering staffing needs in the nuclear field.
I would be pleased to respond to your questions.
______
Report of The Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee
Nuclear Power Engineering Curriculum Task Force
andrew c. klein, chair, oregon state university; james f. stubbins,
university of illinois, champaign-urbana; gilbert brown, university of
massachusetts, lowell; harold ray, southern california edison; eugene
s. grecheck, dominion energy
april 7, 2004
I. Introduction and Charge to the Task Force
In October 2002 the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of
Nuclear Energy Science and Technology asked the Nuclear Energy Research
Advisory Committee (NERAC) to form a Nuclear Power Engineering
Curriculum Task Force to investigate the assertion that university
nuclear engineering departments and educational programs are not
currently producing engineers with education optimal to the needs of
industry.
The specific DOE charge to the Task Force was:
<bullet> In the course of our efforts to support nuclear energy
educational infrastructure in the United States, we have heard from
various industry sources that university nuclear engineering
departments are not producing engineers with training optimal to the
needs of industry.
<bullet> We request that NERAC form a task force composed of
current and former nuclear utility executives and university nuclear
engineering professors to discuss and assess this concern.
<bullet> If the concern is found to have merit, we request that
this task force evaluate the need for a new curriculum optimized to the
needs of industry. If such a need is identified, we request that this
task force work with expert consultants to outline an optimal
curriculum as a model for the use of university nuclear engineering
departments.
<bullet> Before any products are finalized, we request that NERAC
review its draft conclusions with the broader nuclear industry and
university community.
<bullet> We defer to the judgment of the task force regarding the
time required for this effort.
During the 2002-03 academic year the Task Force asked all of the
universities that offer undergraduate degree programs in nuclear
engineering to voluntarily provide a copy of their current curriculum
and their curriculum from sometime in the second half of the 1980's.
This request was made through an email solicitation to the Nuclear
Engineering Department Heads Organization (NEDHO). In all, 14 schools
provided curricula to the Task Force for evaluation. Responses were
received from an excellent distribution of schools both geographically
and by size of program. Information was received from small and large
programs and from all corners of the U.S. It is important to note that
all of the programs that responded have maintained accreditation of
their undergraduate nuclear engineering programs through the ABET,
Inc., the cognizant organization for engineering accreditation in the
United States.
The list of schools contributing curricula for evaluation includes:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
North Carolina State University
Oregon State University
Rensselear Polytechnic Institute
Texas A&M University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Florida
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
University of Michigan
University of Missouri, Rolla
University of New Mexico
University of Tennessee
University of Wisconsin
The Task Force members conducted the initial analysis of the
curricula independently and then the Task Force met on November 4, 2003
to discuss their individual findings and directions for further
analysis.
The curricula from the 14 universities reviewed by the Task Force
included courses and content beginning at general and basic
fundamentals that continued through general engineering science and
finished up with specific nuclear engineering discipline subjects. All
curricula reviewed include general and basic fundamental content in
advanced mathematics through differential equations, physical sciences
in chemistry and physics and some include additional content in areas
such as computer programming, numerical methods and analysis. All
curricula also included education in the fundamental engineering
science areas of statics, dynamics, mechanics, materials, economics,
thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer and many curricula
include additional content in areas such as electrical fundamentals,
control systems and engineering graphics.
Finally, all curricula included content with specialization in the
nuclear engineering discipline. The topics covered by all of the
curricula include--atomic and nuclear physics, laboratory classes to
measure radiation and radioactivity, the interactions of radiation with
matter, radiation protection, reactor physics and theory, reactor
thermal hydraulics, and nuclear engineering design. Most of the
curricula also include material related to nuclear reactor
laboratories. Because of the variety of faculty interests from
university to university some of the curricula also include more depth
of coverage in topics such as reactor engineering, systems engineering,
fuel management, reactor safety, fuel cycles, nuclear materials,
nuclear waste management, risk assessment, applied radiation
protection, radiation transport, fusion and other diverse topics.
II. Overview of the Evolution in Nuclear Engineering at Universities
The curricula in all engineering and science majors can be expected
to evolve over time as areas of focus become increasingly and
decreasingly important to the industries and enterprises that utilize
the graduates from the country's higher education system. The
educational programs in nuclear engineering have also seen these
evolutionary developments. When one examines the history of nuclear
engineering education during the past half-century in this country,
they recognize a variety of changes from the early days to present. In
the 1950's as the country emerged from World War II with the
realization that there would be a need for nuclear trained and educated
engineers, there were numerous efforts to increase the number of
nuclear-trained and--educated engineers and scientists, most notably
through the USAEC fellowship programs and the Reactor School at ORNL.
These programs gave high visibility to the nuclear engineering
profession, attracted many outstanding students, and developed a large
cadre of highly educated people. University programs in nuclear
engineering also started developing in the late 1950's, predominantly
growing out of departments of physics, mechanical and chemical
engineering. In the 1960's and 1970's as commercial nuclear power began
to develop, many universities started nuclear engineering programs and
extended the educational enterprise in this area from the B.S. to the
Ph.D. degree. Many of these same schools also added research reactors
to give their graduates significant hands-on experiences as part of
their education. There were also many research opportunities for
students and faculty in the broad nuclear engineering discipline around
this time, some of which directly or indirectly utilized the on-campus
nuclear research reactors. In 1973 there were 48 schools that offered
undergraduate and graduate education in nuclear engineering and more
than 60 research reactors on campuses around the country. The changes
in the power industry (no new plant orders, de-regulation, and
consolidation of the industry) from the mid-1970's through the end of
the 1990's were reflected on the nation's campuses through declining
university enrollments in nuclear engineering, the closing of
university nuclear engineering degree programs and the closing of
university research reactors. In response to these declines, the
remaining nuclear engineering programs were forced to restructure with
results that ranged from mergers with other, larger departments to
broadening of their education and research foci. Currently 26 schools
that offer one kind of nuclear engineering degree or another remain.
There are also 26 on-campus university research reactors remaining, but
not all on campuses with nuclear engineering degree programs.
In 1998 the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization
(NEDHO) conducted a study and developed a report that discussed ``the
current status and future directions of the nuclear engineering
profession in the United States as viewed by the nuclear academic
community''. This report also surveyed ``the contributions of nuclear
engineering to enhancing the well being of society, now and in the
future'' and laid out the ``steps that the university community and the
U.S. Government can take to ensure that our national needs are met''.
The report goes on to state that:
``The main conclusion of this report is that the nuclear
engineering profession is essential to the well being of the
country since it brings great benefits to society in terms of
energy security, national defense, medical health, and
industrial competitiveness. We further recognize that the
nuclear engineering profession is in a period of transition to
one encompassing a much broader range of applications of
nuclear science and radiation technologies. The country has a
persistent demand for nuclear engineers that will almost
certainly increase in the future, notably in nontraditional
areas of nuclear engineering.
The report concludes by making the following recommendations:
<bullet> The university community needs to make a major
cultural shift in its thinking about nuclear engineering
education. In essence it has to make a transition from a
curriculum dominated by a single technology, nuclear power, to
a unified curriculum characterized by a common educational core
from which flows a multitude of diverse applications. This core
is to be centered on applied nuclear sciences and encompasses
low energy nuclear physics, the interaction of ionizing
radiation with matter, and plasma science and technology.
<bullet> In order to satisfy increasing societal demands for
nuclear engineers with training in radiation science and
technology it is recommended that the DOE establish a
separately designated, clearly distinguished, program for
bionuclear and radiological research similar to basic energy
sciences or high energy physics. Bionuclear technology and
radiological engineering are applications of nuclear
engineering of particular importance to the medical health of
the country. Currently, governmental funding of such research
is dispersed in many small segments over many different
programs.
Changes in direction for nuclear engineering departments were
reflected in this NEDHO report which was written during a time when
industry was consolidating and it appeared to many observers that most
of the existing plants might not pursue re-licensing and would
terminate operation at the end of their design life. This meant that
most of the existing power reactor fleet in the U.S. would be retired
in the first quarter of the 21st century. It was also perceived by many
that no new reactors were likely to be in the planning process for more
than a decade or beyond. This perception signaled further declines in
university enrollments in nuclear related disciplines with no hope of
recovery in the fission power area.
During this time, schools were seen to be moving their research
programs away from power engineering into other varying research
directions. This was to be expected since the power industry was not
directly supporting the research programs at the universities. Also
during this time nuclear engineering faculty, in order to meet the
demands of their universities for greater research support, began
looking for other applications of their capabilities, some completely
outside the nuclear field. Additionally, when universities were able to
replace faculty who left or retired, schools often replaced them with
someone with a research focus away from the power industry.
Since 1998 much has changed in the nuclear power industry. Most of
the currently operating power plants appear to be headed toward re-
licensing and upgrade, new plants are under consideration for
construction and operation as early as this decade, Generation IV
reactor concepts are being seriously considered for development and
appear to be very competitive with other means of energy generation,
USDOE is developing new research programs on advanced fuel cycles and
the direct production of hydrogen using high temperature heat from a
reactor as a new energy carrier to replace petroleum based
transportation fuels. All of these developments have also spurred
significant increases in nuclear-related university enrollments across
the country principally in the nuclear power area.
With current and future changes to the nuclear power industry,
perhaps the charge to the Task Force was too narrowly defined to just
including nuclear utilities. There is a spectrum of needs within the
industry, ranging from technician level individuals who can succeed
with a high school or community college education and specialized
training through the B.S. or M.S. educated engineers and scientists
covering a wide set of disciplines, including what has traditionally
been called nuclear engineering, to PhD educated scientists and
engineers needed for the development of the next generation of nuclear
reactors, systems and fuel cycles. The solutions and types of personnel
to provide the solutions that are chosen by each of the entities within
the industry will no doubt be different. This indicates that
educational opportunities in the nuclear discipline should be available
at all levels.
III. Analysis of NE Curricula and Nuclear Power Industry Needs
The first step in the Task Force's process was a review of the
curricula submitted by the universities with an eye toward determining
whether the curricula of university nuclear engineering departments had
changed to such a degree over the past 15 years that they are not
producing engineers with ``education optimal to the needs of
industry''.
It appears from the Task Force's review that for the most part, the
curricula at the 14 universities who submitted information have not
changed considerably over the past 15 years and are adequate and
appropriate to support the needs of the broad nuclear industry and the
power industry in particular. In fact, several programs have
strengthened their nuclear engineering course offerings by adding
courses at the Junior and Senior level. This is possible due to the
improved math background of incoming students, which also allows some
introductory courses to be moved into the Freshman and Sophomore years.
There is one area that could be improved in the education of
nuclear engineers, however. That is the development of a practical
understanding of the workplace and the individual practical skills that
are needed to be successful. This can be best accomplished by providing
a practical work experience for all students interested in nuclear
power engineering. These experiences can be best provided either
through co-op programs throughout the academic year or through summer
internships. The Task Force encourages the university nuclear
engineering programs to include at least one practical work experience
opportunity in all of their undergraduate programs. It also encourages
the nuclear industry to make numerous opportunities available for
undergraduates studying nuclear engineering in the country. To work,
this approach must be supported by both the universities and industry.
This could be a required part of each university's curriculum, and
industry would need to make these opportunities available for all
students. To help make internships possible for students, the Nuclear
Energy Institute has recently established an internship clearinghouse
on their web site.
The Task Force was also asked to evaluate the need for a new
curriculum optimized to the needs of industry. The Task Force's
analysis and discussion led to the conclusion that a new curriculum was
not needed and that the development of a common, or model, curriculum
for use by all academic departments offering the nuclear engineering
discipline was not in the best interests of either the schools or the
broad nuclear industry. In general the current nuclear engineering
curricula currently are already similar in nature with minor
differences between curricula determined by faculty expertise and
research interests. The Task Force also believes it is better to have a
mix of curricula with different focus areas in order to stimulate high
quality education and research across the country.
The Task Force also feels that there really is no need for a direct
role for the U.S. Department of Energy in formulating undergraduate
nuclear engineering curricula.
Adapting the universities nuclear engineering curricula to meet the
needs of the broad nuclear industry can best be accomplished through
following established ABET accreditation procedures since all schools
now are working in a ``continuous improvement process'' regime which
relies on stakeholders to help them tailor their curricula to the needs
of their constituents. Thus, all ABET accredited programs have self-
correcting, self-regulating processes in place which help them develop
curricula suitable to those aspects of the nuclear industry that they
are aiming to serve and that are consistent with the input that they
receive from the constituents they serve.
As a part of the current ABET accreditation process each program
must consider who their clients and constituents are and this is to be
used to guide each institution in the design of their curricula. For
example, most programs consider their constituents to be the companies
in the nuclear power industry (including the operating companies and
utilities, reactor manufacturers, and fuel vendors), the national
laboratories, government and regulatory agencies (including DOE), and
graduate schools. A typical university departmental advisory committee
is made up of a diverse membership including members from power
producers, vendors, utilities, national laboratories and others. The
Task Force feels that over the long run, this process will support the
evolution of the best curricula to meet the needs of the broad nuclear
industry. Thus, the Task Force recommends that all sectors of the
broadly based nuclear industry become active with the university
nuclear engineering programs across the country to ensure a strong
educational environment that produces graduates who will meet their
future staffing needs.
The Task Force's recommendation for industry involvement in
development and support undergraduate curricula extends to support
faculty. The development of professors in the universities is driven by
the need for faculty to build and maintain strong research programs.
This has led many young faculty members to develop research programs in
areas that are not of direct interest or applicability to the nuclear
power industry. To change this, industry must work more directly with
university faculty to develop appropriate research programs. This will
enable these faculty members to bring currency to their classes and
work on research issues that will move the industry forward.
Finally, prior to completion of this report a draft was made
available for review and comment to the nuclear energy community
through the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization, the
American Nuclear Society's Education and Training Division and Special
Task Force on Work Force Issues, the Institute for Nuclear Power
Operations, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and the Electric Power
Research Institute. This final report contains certain additions and
changes to reflect the comments that were received as a part of this
review.
IV. Conclusions and Recommendations
Conclusion #1: The nuclear engineering curricula at the U.S.
universities have not changed considerably over the past 15 years and
are adequate and appropriate to support the needs of the broad nuclear
industry. It is the observation of the Task Force that the curricula
are now stronger, even in the power area, since students are doing more
in their first 2 years of study based on their better math skills, and
because faculty are connecting with students early in their programs in
order to keep them involved in the nuclear engineering degree programs.
Furthermore, the ABET accreditation process supports continuous
improvement with input from various constituencies, including the
nuclear power sector, and has had a positive effect on strengthening
these programs.
Conclusion #2: It is impractical to attempt to establish an
``optimal'' educational curriculum for all ``nuclear engineers'' since
there is a wide range of needs within the nuclear industry.
Conclusion #3: There is no need for a direct role for the U.S.
Department of Energy in formulating undergraduate nuclear engineering
curricula.
Conclusion #4: The one area that could be improved in the education
of nuclear engineers is the development of practical engineering work
experience and the individual practical skills appropriate nuclear
power venues.
Recommendation #1: The Task Force recommends that the university
nuclear engineering programs consider including at least one practical
work experience opportunity in all of their undergraduate programs. It
also encourages the nuclear industry to make numerous opportunities
available for all undergraduates studying nuclear engineering in the
country.
Recommendation #2: All components of the nuclear industry should
become closely involved in the undergraduate curricula development at
universities through their active participation on departmental
advisory committees and boards. This also supports the ABET
``continuous improvement'' requirements.
Recommendation #3: All components of the nuclear industry are
encouraged to directly support the research programs at universities to
develop faculty who will work on industry specific research problems
and involve students with industrial interests.
Recommendation #4: All components of the nuclear industry are
encouraged to support faculty members with research projects, including
summer and internship work experiences and sabbatical opportunities for
faculty.
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