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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
- - -
MEETING WITH CHAIRMAN OF NUCLEAR
SAFETY RESEARCH REVIEW COMMITTEE (NSRRC)
- - -
PUBLIC MEETING
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
One White Flint North
Rockville, Maryland
Wednesday, March 27, 1996
The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
notice, at 10:30 a.m., Shirley A. Jackson, Chairman,
presiding.
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission
KENNETH C. ROGERS, Commissioner
GRETA J. DICUS, Commissioner
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STAFF PRESENT:
JOHN C. HOYLE, Secretary of the Commission
KAREN D. CYR, General Counsel
PRESENTERS:
E. THOMAS BOULETTE, Chairman, Nuclear Safety
Research Review Committee
DAVID L. MORRISON, Director, Office of Nuclear
Regulatory Research
JAMES MILHOAN, Deputy Executive Director for
Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Regional Operations
and Research
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P R O C E E D I N G S
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good morning, ladies and
gentlemen. I am pleased to welcome Dr. E. Thomas Boulette,
Chairman of the Nuclear Safety Research Review Committee,
Mr. Jim Milhoan, and Dr. David L. Morrison, Director of the
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
The Nuclear Safety Research Review Committee
advises the Director of Nuclear Regulatory Research and
through him the Commission on the quality and conduct of NRC
research activities and gives recommendations concerning the
overall management and direction of the nuclear safety
research program.
Today's meeting will focus on the recent
activities of the committee and the staff's response to the
NSRRC review and comments.
The Commission appreciates the efforts made by
this committee and its reviews of research programs that
support important safety issues. Today's briefing will
provide a broad overview of many of the programmatic
activities of the Office of Research. These activities, as
I understand it, include radionuclide transport in the
environment, aging, human factors, and instrumentation and
control, severe accidents, and thermal hydraulics.
I understand that copies of the committee's report
to the Office of Director of Research are available at the
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entrances to this room.
Do other Commissioners have any opening comments?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: No, thank you.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: No.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Dr. Morrison, you may proceed,
or Mr. Milhoan.
MR. MILHOAN: That's fine. I think you stated the
purpose of the meeting, Madam Chairman. So I will ask Dave
to go ahead and start our discussion.
MR. MORRISON: We are certainly pleased to meet
with the Commission today. The previous meeting that the
NSRRC had with the Commission was back in July. Ed Kintner
was then Chairman of the NSRRC. He retired from the
committee as well as the chairmanship. So Dr. Boulette has
taken over.
Due to scheduling conflicts, we weren't able to
schedule a meeting with you after our September meeting, but
since the subject of both the September and the January
meeting were so similar, this seemed to be a reasonable time
to have a discussion with the Commission.
[Slide.]
MR. MORRISON: I have on the first viewgraph, or
the second page in your handout, a brief overview of the
NSRRC. Since this is your first time meeting with us,
Commissioner Dicus, I thought you might like a little
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background. I won't go into it too much.
The committee was established in 1987. That was
based upon a report that the National Academy of Sciences
published in 1986. The broad subject of that report was
revitalizing nuclear safety research. Robert Frosh from
General Motors was the chairman of that committee and it was
a rather distinguished committee.
The study had been requested at that time by the
then Chairman Joe Palladino to take a look at the NRC
research program and what is the future role of NRC's
research program in the agency. So going back about ten
years is the history of the committee.
Prior to the establishment of the NSRRC, the only
oversight of the research activities was done by a
subcommittee of the ACRS. Since the NSRRC has been formed,
the ACRS has only been meeting with me and other people at
the office occasionally. So it hasn't been a thorough
review that they have been doing. They have more or less
turned all the responsibilities over to the NSRRC.
The committee can have up to 12 members. We are
one or two below that number now. These are individuals
that have expertise in all the disciplines that are
important to our program. It is generally a good balance
between representatives from academia and representatives
from industry. I think we are roughly half and half right
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now on the committee.
The committee generally schedules two full
committee meetings per year, but to get into the details of
the research program there are a number of subcommittees
that are established on the various topical areas. The
subcommittees meet perhaps once or twice a year to dig into
the issues in more detail.
According to the regulations that the committee
has put on itself, the subcommittee reports do not stand on
their own until they are discussed and reviewed and accepted
by the full committee. So there is sort of a check and
balance in there.
I would like to turn to the two meetings in
question, the September and January meetings. Both of these
meetings were set up to respond to a letter that Mr. Sol
Burstein sent to Dr. Boulette. When Sol retired from the
committee he had a lot of good questions that needed to be
answered, and in his own inimitable manner, he posed these
rather forcefully to Dr. Boulette. We set up at least a
September meeting to respond to those questions.
Also at the September meeting it was an
opportunity to introduce three new members of the committee,
Professor Bankoff, Mr. John Taylor, and Professor Christine
Mitchell, to the research programs. We tried to provide a
broad overview of the program at that meeting, addressing a
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number of the topics at a fairly high level. The result of
that meeting was a greater interest on the committee of
getting into the details of the research program.
At the September meeting we did not have the
FY-1996 budget. It happened to be an open meeting, so
everything that we were talking about was against the
FY-1995 program that we had underway and the general changes
that we were going to make in the current fiscal year.
At that meeting I raised the key issues that were
facing not only the agency but the Office of Research as
well as the declining budgets, how we were going to plan and
prioritize within these declining budgets, and the overall
staff reduction goals that we had to meet over a five-year
period. Those were sort of the general criteria that were
laid out for the committee to take a view of our research
program.
At the January meeting we had a closed meeting
where we could get into the details on the plans for 1996
against the 1996 budget at that time as well as to look at
some of the out years of where we would go. I think this
was quite useful from the committee's standpoint as well as
the staff's standpoint.
We also got into a greater detailed discussion of
the research. Prior to that meeting we had broken down the
eight areas which you mentioned, Chairman Jackson, in the
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introduction into 50 research topics and addressed the
topics in quite a bit of detail within the staff.
At the meeting there were in each of these eight
areas two to four of these topics presented. So the
committee had the opportunity to look at the details and the
procedures that we were following and attempt to set
priorities and look out into the future.
We also had the opportunity at the January meeting
for Mr. Jim Taylor to address the committee and give his
views of what directions he saw the agency would be going
and how he viewed the research program within the agency's
mission.
That is the general background of the two
meetings. I was trying to, from my perspective, get the
insights and recommendations from the people that are
representative on the committee, and I think they have given
us some sound advice. So I will turn it over to Tom
Boulette to discuss the recommendations that the committee
has made.
Tom
MR. BOULETTE: I should preamble my comments by
saying most of the committee is new in membership. I was
trying to reflect as Dave was talking in terms of who has
been there more than a couple of years. There are only a
couple of us. One of the issues, and we will probably
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allude to it as we go through our comments, is a general
understanding of what the role of the committee is. In
fact, in Sol Burstein's letter to me six to nine months ago
that was one of the leading questions: Should this
committee exist? What's its role?
You may hear some confusing remarks relative to
that because the membership is new. In fact, Dr. Morrison
and myself have spoken a couple of times as to the views
expressed by the some of the committee members in terms of
are they talking about research and its role, or are they
talking about the nuclear industry itself and who they are
representing. Those things will come through my comments, I
believe.
[Slide.]
MR. BOULETTE: We have enumerated the major
comments on the last slide in the package, and I can walk
through those rather briefly and invite questions or
comments as we go.
One of the concerns that was expressed by many of
the members, and it is focused principally because of the
budgetary constraints that the agency is facing now, is the
need for a long-term view in research. There is a concern
that as we continue to squeeze the budgets and the resources
available that will be the first thing to go. The members
have expressed some real concern about that and in fact have
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identified some examples of why they are concerned.
The steam generator tube degradation process at
Maine Yankee was a good example of the need to continue to
try to anticipate some issues that may be coming down and
depending on the staff to identify those areas that may not
have direct applicability right now but in the long-term
view may serve the agency very well. We did debate that at
some length, and in fact some of us even tried to quantify
what we mean by a certain portion of the research should be
focused on long-term views. Dr. Morrison has responded to
that.
There is a question on exactly what is meant by
risk-informed, performance-based regulation and how that
might impact the research program. We have in fact made, I
think, some sort of a commitment to the committee members to
have a fairly detailed presentation on that in the June
meeting coming up on the 27th or 28th of June.
I am convinced that the membership around the
table has very different opinions and definitions of that
term. I happen to be the only member on the committee that
is utility based at this point in time. My views are
probably at odds with some of the professors. I don't know.
At odds may be a strong statement, but clearly I think I may
be seeing the world a bit differently than some of the
others. On the other hand, I think there is very little
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unanimity on what that really means.
So I think it is important that we hear more about
that and what the NRC means by that in some detail, and then
we will be able to, I think, more formally and more
deliberately try to address the research needs in that area.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Excuse me. Didn't one of
you say today that the committee was roughly half and half
something and something else? What is this balance that you
referred to a little earlier if you are the only one that
comes from the industry?
MR. MORRISON: I raised the point. Dr. Boulette
is right. He is the only one that is active in one of the
utilities that is operating nuclear power plants. We have
John Taylor, for example, who just retired from EPRI, and I
kind of put him in industry. We have Sumio Yukawa, who
basically came from General Electric. Those are the people
I put in the "industry" category.
MR. BOULETTE: Sol Burstein, for example, was a
retired exec from the utility business. But there is
nothing like being intimately involved on a day to day basis
to color your view of what research ought to be and what the
NRC should be about. That was the only point I was making.
And many of the other members are from academia and
laboratories.
Another issue that we did spend some time talking
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about, and I think I speak for the committee at large,
probably unanimously, is a concern that we have in terms of
the reduction of emphasis on high level waste, trying to
separate my views as a utility person and trying to remain a
bit objective about this. This is viewed on the part of
many members of the committee as the issue facing the
nuclear power industry, and clearly if there is to be some
sort of solution to this, the NRC will more than likely have
a major role in that whole process. So anything that
impacts on the ongoing efforts in that area concerns the
committee significantly.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: We do have the Center for
Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analysis in San Antonio. So I'm
not sure I understand what you mean when you speak of
reduction of high level waste.
MR. BOULETTE: I think we are talking principally
of the in-house capabilities and the budgetary resources
committed to that effort. It's our sense that some of those
numbers are going to be decreasing this year and the next
couple of years.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Resources devoted in research
or resources devoted overall?
MR. BOULETTE: In research. We understand the
commitment to the center, but we are concerned as to whether
that is adequate or not.
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CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You are concerned as to its
adequacy from the point of view of whether the Center is
adequate or the support for the center is adequate?
MR. BOULETTE: Support for the center.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
MR. BOULETTE: The next item is one that has been
raised for a couple of meetings and in fact predates
yourself, Dr. Jackson, and that is an issue that Ed Kintner
was quite vocal about, the need as we see it to look at the
human factors and I&C in a more integrated fashion. Ed was
a champion of that. I know Commissioner Rogers has some
interest in that whole area. We understand that there is a
lot of research being done in both areas separately, and we
are concerned as to whether there shouldn't be a more
integrated approach to that.
There have been some changes in the program in the
last several years that address our specific concern, but we
will continue to delve into that to make sure that we are
comfortable with where that is going.
Finally, some of the more traditional areas that
have been on the plate for many years warrant some
additional attention because of where the industry is going.
Increasingly the industry is looking at longer and longer
fuel cycles. We at Boston Edison, for example, have a
program going with MIT right now looking at four-year cycles
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and longer, which calls for longer burnup, et cetera, and
then some different phenomena occurring between fuel and
cladding, et cetera. There is a need to maintain the
expertise to be able to respond to some of those changes in
the operating practices of the nuclear power plants.
We do share a concern, and we have expressed it a
couple of times, as to the maintenance of the computer codes
and the modeling that traditionally has been done by
contractors at laboratories which will be shared by the
staff at this point in time. That, in our view, requires a
training program, a refocusing of the staff and its skills
and competencies in a slightly different direction.
Although that is clearly doable, it does pose another
problem for Dr. Morrison to manage. We have expressed that
concern also.
That pretty much summarizes where the committee is
at. We do acknowledge that the subcommittees as they get
into these various areas may raise more issues. We expect
that to happen. We are very sensitive to the budgetary
constraints and want to make sure that we serve Dr. Morrison
appropriately by helping him to prioritize all of the task
forces and task groups and task areas that he is trying to
manage given the fact that like everybody else the dollars
are going down.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you a couple of
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questions. With respect to human factors and I&C, can you
provide a little more specificity with what aspects or what
areas you feel need more integration, what may be missing?
MR. BOULETTE: I think it was in our report. One
of the suggestions we made to Dr. Morrison is probably a
more deliberate approach to actually looking at a control
room or a work station in a plant and looking at not only
the hardware and the software present in that facility
separate from the operators who interface that facility, but
looking at the combination of the two. It is our view that
some other industries do that very deliberately. The
aviation industry, for example, does a lot of human factors
and controls and instrumentation kinds of assessments. That
is kind of the focus of our concern: Should there be a more
deliberate focus on the actual interfacing of these two
functional areas?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you feel that has
implication for some of the backfitting that certain plants
are doing with digital control systems?
MR. BOULETTE: That is part of the issue. I think
another larger issue is implications on safety specifically,
and there are probably quite a few questions that will come
out of that endeavor, if we go down that road, that should
be focused on and may shape the research program.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Down the road of?
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MR. BOULETTE: Of integration of these two
functions and looking at them holistically.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: The staff is working on a
standard review plan having to do with digital controls. Do
you feel that your concerns have implications for the
development of that?
MR. BOULETTE: I think so, yes. Again, it's in
the lines of the aging issue. You don't really know quite
what you are going to get into until you really start to
open those doors. We are concerned that the two doors have
been opened separately and probably there should be a bit
more focus on opening them together and seeing what issues
may come out of that.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Is the committee giving any
thought to how it might help define what some of the broad
range of issues are, where that kind of integration is
really necessary?
One can talk broadly about it, but in terms of
designing an actual research program or creating priorities
as well as having it inform other aspects of our regulatory
program, such as the development of the standard review plan
in this area, it is important to have a better sense of the
whole human factors area, human-machine interaction, et
cetera. It's a huge area. The question is, what are the
critical aspects of it from a safety and a regulatory
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viewpoint?
MR. BOULETTE: I will ask Steve to add to this,
but one of the principal reasons that we got Christine on
board on this committee is her strong expertise in that
area. She has already expressed some concerns that, let
alone the NRC and the research arm of the NRC, the nuclear
industry itself, in her view, has not paid nearly as much
attention to this integrated approach as other industries
have. She has a broad based experience. That certainly
makes her uncomfortable with the fact that there is not
enough activity there.
I think they have appointed her as chairman of the
Human Factors and I&C subcommittee. I suspect that is what
she will be driving at over the next couple of months, to
try to define more what those concerns are and what the
possibilities are and the potentials are for how it may
impact on the research program of the NRC.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Rogers.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I have so many things I am
interested in I don't think we have time to delve into them
all. Just a couple of questions to begin with.
In your report on the September 25th and 26th
meeting -- I think that is it -- there is a statement.
Let's see if I can give you a page. I guess it is page 2,
if you have that handy. Near the bottom. "Tom King
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provided a brief discussion on several areas within the PRA
program. The Committee expressed some concerns as to the
probability for adequately-defined key parameters for input
to the process of methods developments. In addition,
several sub-areas (organizational factors, equipment aging,
and digital I&C) were viewed as having relatively low
success probabilities given the projected monetary and
timing budgets."
I wonder what the thinking there was about the
relatively low success probabilities comment. I'm not sure
where that came from, whether that is a committee view or
whatever, but it is in your report. I think at the
Commission level over the years we have had a great deal of
uncertainty with respect to how valuable research in
organizational factors might be. That has always been a big
question, how to deal with that. That is a very big area.
Lots of difficulties in measuring things, and so on and so
forth.
On the other hand, equipment aging and digital I&C
are prime areas, I would think, for research success
probabilities. Maybe I&C has got some difficulties in
reliability measurements and things of this sort because of
the different nature of digital systems, but equipment aging
certainly doesn't.
I was wondering if you could explain a little bit
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the thinking behind that paragraph.
MR. BOULETTE: Let me try, and again I will invite
Dave to add to that since he is president of all of our
meetings. I think we lumped these areas together for the
same reason, and that is that there is a sense of vagueness
to all the three areas in terms of what exactly are we
focusing on. It relates to your question, Chairman Jackson,
that until you really can define the problem, it gets very
difficult to try to address a solution. In the area of
digital I&C, I think one of the issues there is, relating
back to our previous discussion, do you look at digital I&C
in and of itself? Do you look at its interface with human
factors?
There is a vagueness, it is my sense -- I think I
am reflecting the committee's view -- to all three of those
programs. For example, thermal hydraulics. I think there
is a real good sense of what the issues are and what is
going on. You have all of the equations, and what have you.
So you have a sense of what you are doing. In these three
areas it is sort of like roping some new baskets and some
new research areas. That is a concern.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Is the vagueness there because
the expertise is not there or there hasn't been sufficient
time to formulate coherent programs? Or is it money? Those
are different questions.
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MR. BOULETTE: I think it's the latter. I think
it's the newness of the issues. It hasn't been too long
that we have been talking about aging issues. It probably
started in the realm of Yankee Rowe, for example, as we got
into licensing. I think that is really the issue. Many of
the other research efforts that are underway are 20 and 25
and 30 years old. These are all relatively new.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: How does money impact it? That
is really what I am trying to understand.
MR. BOULETTE: I think the money part or the
budgetary part forces you to try to focus quickly, to get to
the more important issues, and when you do that, because the
scope is so broad and so vague, you might focus in a
slightly wrong direction. With unlimited funds you tackle
them all. You hire up and off you go. That is the concern
I think that has been reflected here. In the areas of
aging, what subsets of the aging issue should you focus on?
Because you can't tackle it all.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Dr. Morrison looks like he
wants to say something.
MR. MORRISON: I would comment that there were
three items mentioned, as you identified there, Commissioner
Rogers, the organizational factors, equipment aging and
digital I&C. Unfortunately that is kind of a mix of apples
and oranges.
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COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Is it ever.
MR. MORRISON: I think one of the concerns that we
have had in the past, and that probably goes back several
years now, is in the organizational factors area. Several
approaches we have tried from a research standpoint to get
our hands around the organizational factors have not yielded
us anything.
The other side of the coin there is how far should
NRC go looking into the organizational issues, which are
really the purview of the industry. They are the ones that
are staffing and managing the plants. So there is a dilemma
that we kind of face. We haven't been terribly successful
in the research to date, but I think we have a few things
coming down the path now that look a little brighter than
they did a couple years ago.
Timing is more the issue than money. I think we
could find the money available. If there were a good idea
out there to fund, we would reprogram money.
The equipment aging is more tied to, is the
database really adequate? We know a lot about the equipment
that is being replaced, and we assume that if you replace an
active component that you almost go back to square one with
regard to the reliability.
On the other hand, if you have an active component
that has been there 30 years, do you still have the same
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performance expectations?
I don't think we have a good handle on that. This
is showing up now in what we are taking a look at, just
beginning to talk about, structuring a program that looks at
the aging of structures per se. They were built with
quality design criteria in mind. Obviously they had good
margins when they were originally built, but 30 or 40 years
later, if you are subject to a different kind of stress or
subject to a stress, say a seismic loading, do you still
have that margin available? There is a database lacking
there that you can really factor in, especially to an IPEEE,
what the likely response would be.
The digital I&C area. The environment in which
some of these systems have to operate is different in a
nuclear power plant than you find in many of the other
applications of digital I&C. Perhaps some in the chemical
industry process controls have the same harsh environments
of temperature, pressure, humidity, and that sort of thing,
but in a nuclear power plant you have a lot different
environments, plus the radiation and other effects in there
that you don't normally have. The general reliability data
is a good indicator of what is likely to happen, but I think
we would feel more comfortable if we had additional data,
and there just isn't enough information out there yet.
There aren't enough of these digital backfits put into
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plants to give us a warm feeling.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: That is my understanding of
the characterization of these areas that you have made, but
I have a little trouble with the statement "having
relatively low success probabilities." I would certainly
accept a view that organizational factor research has a
relatively low success probability under any circumstances,
money or no money.
On the other hand, equipment aging is clearly very
much on our plates and very important. It seems to me that
it has got to have a relatively high success probability.
We can't accept it as something having relatively low
success probability, because that would tell us then that we
shouldn't do anything in that area, and it seems to me we
have to do something in that area.
It is just a question of what actions one should
take based on the characterization of these three areas as
having relatively low success probabilities. Even with
limited funding one then has to focus, as you have said.
There are important issues. I think that we have to be able
to defend what we are doing as having some relatively good
success probability. Otherwise I think we are really in
trouble in devoting very scarce resources to anything that
has a relatively low success probability.
I am just taking the words very literally. I
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think that maybe some elaboration on your thinking there and
what you pointed out, Dr. Morrison, that we really have to
start to learn how to characterize these areas in some way
that we can begin to make some progress, that is all part of
the RES activities here at NRC.
MR. MORRISON: On the top of page 3 of my response
to the committee's letter I address many of those same
comments that you have just made. I think it says that we
need to have considerably more discussion with the
committee. That will probably happen through the
subcommittee. I think there are some meetings scheduled in
May for the various subcommittees. The Human Factors and
I&C Subcommittee will get together and that is a good time
to discuss this in more detail.
MR. BOULETTE: If I could add a comment. I don't
believe that the subcommittee was implying that the
initiatives in research in those areas would not be
fruitful. It's a question of whether it addresses the
entire scope of the problem. I think we are satisfied that
the actions taken by Research in the defined areas, in these
three areas are well done and well managed, and what have
you. The question is, because of issues that are relatively
new, and the timing, and what have you, is that scope broad
enough to catch all of the issues?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I would hope in the future
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maybe you will be able to clarify exactly what your concerns
were there. I think that can be very helpful as we go back
and look at these comments: What are we doing with them?
How are we following them?
It does seem to me that the integration of human
factors and digital I&C research is very important, but it
suffers from the fact that classically these are not
academically linked together. The folks that do human
factors research and the people that do I&C digital research
usually are in different parts of the university; they don't
talk to each other. Yet we know this is where they have to
come together. So there is that problem of bringing
together human factors people and hardware people, if you
want, in this area. Unfortunately, that is hampered, I
think, by a kind of mindset of academic classification of
areas of interest that doesn't link these two together.
MR. MORRISON: We are hoping that Professor
Mitchell brings that kind of focus back to the committee.
Professor Woods from Ohio State was on the committee
earlier. We have had about a two-year gap without a good
human factors/digital I&C person. Woods had that focus, and
Christine Mitchell comes from sort of the same mold in that.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: There are a few places that
have recognized the importance of linking those two
together, and it is very important, but I think there is a
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hurdle to get over here in that the backgrounds of people
that can contribute to this very often come from very
different parts of the academic spectrum.
MR. BOULETTE: But we shouldn't miss the point. I
think the point the committee was trying to make in this
area was that in some other industries integration of these
two functions seems to be taking place and being done well.
So I wouldn't want to scapegoat on academia, to say that
because of academia this is not happening. In the aviation
industry it is working very well.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I agree with you, Dr. Boulette.
[Laughter.]
MR. BOULETTE: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I'm happy to say it's
academia. I spent 30 years there and I know where all the
dirty linen is.
[Laughter.]
MR. BOULETTE: It is working in some places.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: At any rate, I do think that
is a bit of the problem.
You have used some words in your report that I
wanted to understand a little bit better, and that was
"regulator basis," where you felt there was a regulatory
basis that exists or that didn't exist. I wasn't quite sure
what you were saying when you used that term. It seemed to
. 27
me that one could interpret it in several different ways. I
don't know if I can put my finger on the use of it here
directly, but perhaps you know what I am talking about.
MR. BOULETTE: I don't, but I am scanning it
quickly. One of the difficulties of being a chairman of a
committee is that the report is written to reflect the views
of everybody. It's a difficult position to be in, because
as an individual I may not totally share that view.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: It was a term that was used
a couple of times in here. It seemed to me that it perhaps
meant that we had some strength at NRC in this area, and
that was what you meant by a regulatory basis. Or maybe you
meant something totally different. I am sorry that I didn't
highlight it here, because I thought it might be something
that would be right on the top of your thinking. We may
have to pass that over.
MR. BOULETTE: It is not generating any reaction
on my part.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I'll have to go back at it
later then, because I don't want to delay everything.
MR. BOULETTE: At the risk of going down the wrong
alley, one of the things that has been expressed by this
committee as well as previous committees is in fact the
relationship between the various parts of the NRC in terms
of communications and what have you.
. 28
MR. MORRISON: I found it. It is on the very last
page of the handout. It is from the September meeting.
It's the top of page 2. It's limited technical bases.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Yes, it was the September
report in which you at the bottom of page 1 said,
"Specifically, some areas have ongoing substantial R&D
efforts by the industry and the DOE and have strong
regulatory bases. Examples are severe accidents,
containment performance, reactor aging, et cetera. The
Committee recommends that opportunities to reduce efforts in
these areas be further seriously explored."
That is really what I was trying to get at. What
did you mean by "strong regulatory bases"? Did that mean
that you have an effort ongoing here? We are the regulatory
outfit. DOE is not and industry is not. Did you mean that
there is enough going on combined in industry and DOE and
NRC that these areas should be reduced? What is the message
there? I just didn't understand it.
"The Committee recommends that opportunities to
reduce efforts in these areas be further seriously
explored." Are you advocating reduction, or are you saying
watch out, don't reduce? What is the message there about
those areas, severe accidents, containment performance,
reactor aging?
MR. BOULETTE: Let me caveat this with I'll review
. 29
the question later, and if my recollection changes, I will
address it at some further meeting.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Sure.
MR. BOULETTE: One of the concerns that we have
expressed at several committee meetings is how effectively
is the research arm of the NRC using the information that
comes out of other agencies and other organizations,
including industry, to form a base of technical data that
could be used to reduce the need for further research.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: You are talking about a sort
of codification for regulatory purposes, a sort of database
in some cases, a knowledge base that is identified, defined
and structured. Is that what you are talking about?
MR. BOULETTE: It's along those lines. Is there
enough effort on the part of NRC Research to look at other
organizations, say in the geological investigations? Other
entities are doing this worldwide as well as within this
country. The concern, I believe, at least part of it, was
are we taking advantage of those other databases, these
other resources effectively, and if we did, might that not
reduce the pressure on the specific agency for conducting
research?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I think there are some
important thoughts here that maybe we need to explore
further.
. 30
I want to make sure I don't monopolize everything,
but I've got a lot of things I want to hear about today.
I'm happy to give up and go back, if we can.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: We will pass the token back
around.
Commissioner Dicus.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: Do you receive the reports
and correspondence from the other advisory committees?
MR. BOULETTE: Such as ACRS?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: Yes.
MR. BOULETTE: Not on a routine basis. They are
made available to us if we request them, or if Dave may see
an issue that he thinks should come to our attention, or
Jose or somebody like that, and we would get copies of them,
yes.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: Some of those reports or
correspondence will on occasion, I've observed, suggest
either a research project or imply perhaps an area of
research. I just wondered if you got them, if you had a
mechanism in place to review those, and then what sort of
review or comment or action you might take on them.
MR. BOULETTE: At the risk of putting Dave on the
spot, I believe that he and his staff would be sensitive to
that and as they run across these topics in his reports he
would make them available to us. It has happened in the
. 31
past.
MR. MORRISON: I think that is true. Very often
these subjects are brought up, particularly at the
subcommittee meeting. I am thinking right now about the
thermal hydraulics area since that was one of the most
recent reports that ACRS published on the AP-600 and the
analyses we were doing in support of that. That happened to
be a complimentary one that the program was moving in the
right direction with the technical issues. The only
question ACRS had was the timing, if we were going to be
able to complete it.
I suspect if I go back six months to a year ago
and look at an ACRS report in the thermal hydraulics area
there would have been some real questions about the
priorities and what was being done in the research program,
and I think we have responded to that, and hence their
turnaround.
I'm sure the committee probably looked at it back
in the early days when the program was sort of stumbling a
year or so ago trying to get their hands around the most
important issues.
MR. BOULETTE: But there is no formal mechanism in
place that has all the committee members receiving tons of
reports. We sort of depend on Dave and his staff to make
sure that these things are caught and we have a chance to
. 32
review them and integrate them into our assessment of the
research program of the NRC.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: If I heard you right, I think
in one of your comments earlier on you mentioned that on the
performance-based, risk-informed concept there seemed to be
perhaps a difference of understanding or opinion between the
reactor side of the house, the materials side of the house
and your committee on what that meant. Did I hear you
right? If so, what is the core difference? I was sort of
curious about that.
MR. BOULETTE: When you are a licensee like myself
and you undergo routine inspections, your views of
risk-informed, performance-based regulations are certainly
very different from Mike Golay's views, who is a professor
at MIT. I think what I was trying to say there is it is
very important for the committee to hear some sort of a
consolidated presentation on this and get the NRC's views.
We can argue it out.
I know that one of the concerns that Dave and I
have is, where are these committee members coming from?
Sometimes they sound like proponents for the nuclear power
industry, and what we are really after is assessing the
NRC's research program to see if it is focused properly and
it is done to the extent it should be done.
That is the only point I was trying to make, that
. 33
we come from different places when we look at that statement
and we interpret it differently, and as we do that, we may
have different views as to what kind of research should be
done and which way it should go.
Does that help to answer your questions?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: I was still curious about
what a difference is, though. I don't think I got that
answer.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Maybe you could put that on for
an answer for the next time. Perhaps this can come after
you have some input from the NRC.
MR. BOULETTE: As a part of the response, my focus
is on performance-based. Mike Golay, whose background is
PRA and those kind of things, his focus would be on
risk-informed. I am sure that if we wrote a brief thesis on
this statement it would be biased in those two directions
because of where we are coming from.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think the Commissioner is
also interested in whether there is a difference of opinion
between those who have operated in reactor space versus
other nuclear licensees.
MR. BOULETTE: I believe the answer is yes, but we
will amplify on that. It's a good question. We know that
we have to dig into that area.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I have a follow-on question for
. 34
you. This doesn't really relate to that. I note that the
committee expressed some concerns over the longer term
viability of the national laboratories. The question is,
why did that come up specifically within the context of this
committee?
MR. BOULETTE: I think probably because the
majority of the members have either strong affiliations with
those laboratories or have a history of having been there.
I spent 12 years at national labs, and in spite of how
objective you try to be when you look at the needs of an
agency like the NRC and the research arm, it is still
disturbing to me that some of the technology and some of the
expertise that used to exist at Hanford Labs in Washington
State is decaying away and dying.
Dave points out to me, and rightly so, that the
impact of NRC research on the long-term viability of the
labs is minimal, is very, very small. But I think the
committee as a whole are concerned from a national
standpoint that the expertise and the brain power and the
creativity is decaying. And it is.
I am almost regretting that the comment was in the
report, but it was something that was spoken to by several
members and I felt compelled to put it in there.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I too may have a broader based
public policy concern about maintaining various kinds of
. 35
skills and levels of expertise in various parts of our
economy and society. However, from where I sit here I have
a parochial view in terms of asking you to address the
question from the perspective of the relevance to NRC's
regulatory needs and its interface with or impact on our
ability to do the kind of research that we need to do. I
think that is the kind of question your answer to which I
think would be helpful not only to Dr. Morrison but to the
Commission.
MR. MORRISON: I should step up and take blame for
raising the issue with the committee, because I have great
concern about the research program as some of the
capabilities in the laboratory disappear, or if we, NRC,
have to pay for the whole capability. That's an issue that
I have under discussion with DOE right now.
One of the areas, for example, is if we need a hot
cell, which we do, to look at steam generator tubes we pull
from service or look at some of the irradiated vessel
samples that we get. As long as DOE is using that facility,
I only pay my share. If I have to pay for the whole
facility, I probably won't be able to do that kind of work.
It's just too expense to maintain a hot cell facility. And
there are other things that get into that.
I think I was the one that probably raised the
issue and then it got broadened in the discussion of what
. 36
about the whole future of the labs. The committee members
are certainly aware of what is happening to DOE's budget.
MR. BOULETTE: That is one side of the coin. As
the resources diminish, support in these laboratories and
the expertise disappears as well. The fast breeder program
that we had back in the 1960s and early 1970s, even though
there is still some activity going on there, it is pretty
much gone. That was my beginning. You are hearing some
frustration on the part of people who remember the good old
days.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Those of us who live in the
real world have to try to deal with these things.
I will pass the token back around. Commissioner
Rogers.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Thank you.
I think that your comment that most of the
committee members are new is something that needs some
focus. It is my view that research at NRC plays a somewhat
different role from research in most other organizations.
To be most valuable to us, the committee has to really
understand how research should be used at NRC and how it
should be integrated into our total program.
I think that is going to take some time. You
don't automatically come with that understanding when you
come from industry or from academia or from a national lab.
. 37
How to sort out the features of research which are important
for regulatory decision-making is a complicated business
that comes from experience in working in the area.
I think one of the values that the committee
brings is, of course, the external view and experience from
outside of NRC. On the other hand, it has to try to
understand how those views and areas of expertise can in
fact be most useful to us here for regulatory
decision-making purposes. That means you have to understand
something about how regulation takes place and how it
actually works. That is only going to come with time. I
don't think there is a crash course in that.
I am just urging the committee to somehow try to
educate itself in how we have to use the results of research
and how they can be most effectively used and integrated
into our regulatory decision-making, because that is why we
have research here at NRC. I would urge you to try to take
some steps in that direction. I don't know how, but I think
Dr. Morrison can assist in this.
MR. BOULETTE: One of the things we might consider
is rotation of these individuals. I haven't spoken to Dave
about this, but I'm sure it occurs to him as well. When I
look at the list of the membership, there are only two or
three of us who have been on the committee for more than two
years. In fact, probably a year and a half. I think that
. 38
is just the way it fell out, because we weren't conscious
about that concern.
I think if we think about this in the future,
rather than rotate out nine members at a time and bring in
over the course of five or six months nine new members, we
might be a bit more deliberate about it and make sure there
is more continuity.
You are absolutely right. I've been in the
commercial power business for 15 years. It was still a
steep learning curve for me when I came on board the
committee.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I think one of the things is
your perception of how well we are integrating research
activities into our regulatory decision-making. I think
that your following that from the research end is very
important and can be very useful to us. I would just urge
you to think not only about the truly technical aspects of
research at NRC but how it actually links and can serve a
useful purpose here.
Many of us have research backgrounds and we
understand research in the classical sense, but I certainly
have come to the view that at NRC there is something more
involved than what one normally thinks of as research in a
national laboratory or in an industrial laboratory or in a
university. It has a unique quality. With resources as
. 39
scarce as they are, I think we have to make sure that we are
getting as much as we possibly can from our investment in
what we call research in that respect.
MR. MORRISON: I have two brief comments. It has
been my experience in being on the committee and observing
it now that it takes an individual about two years to get up
to speed on the committee. If they go to the full six years
that they are allowed, we have got four very productive
years.
I tried something at this last January meeting,
which is the first time in my recollection we even briefed
that subject, which was what we do in the Office of Research
in regulation development. All of the rules, reg guides and
all of that sort of thing essentially get their origins
within the Office of Research. That was a very difficult
concept for the committee to understand. In fact there were
some comments in the report from the committee on that.
Mainly, why should that function be there?
It is there and I have to address it as part of my
responsibilities, but it is a very integral one that fits
into all the rest of the activities of the agency.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I think there is a general
lack of understanding of why NRC should be doing research of
any kind in this town. You don't have to go very far away
from here to find that question asked. Why do you do
. 40
research? Do you do research? Why should you be doing
research?
There is an assumption about what that word
"research" means. For us it has a very special meaning and
a very special importance that I think is not appreciated
outside the agency. I think we have to understand it very
well and be able to support and defend what we know to be
the importance of research at NRC, and it means really
understanding how it does support the regulatory efforts.
MR. BOULETTE: I think you may remember the Towers
report that came out about a year ago.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I think I heard of it, yes.
MR. BOULETTE: One of the things that came out of
that report was the strong lack of understanding on the part
of the utility executives that even a research arm existed
let alone what it might be doing. We have talked about that
on the committee several times. In fact, we are inviting
some industry representation to our next meeting not only to
impress upon the committee the utilities' concerns but to
try to indoctrinate the utility as to what happens at these
meetings, what they are about. So it's a serious issue.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I want to thank Drs. Boulette
and Morrison and Mr. Milhoan for a very informative
briefing. As Commissioner Rogers has said, our research
program must provide a strong, independent technical
. 41
capability for our regulatory programs. As such, the
Commission appreciates what your committee does in this
regard. I encourage you, Dr. Boulette and the committee, to
continue to work with the staff to resolve issues but also
to focus in on a number of the comments that Commissioner
Rogers has made.
I also appreciate the timeliness of having this
briefing now as opposed to a four to six month delay. It is
consistent with my perspective about timeliness in all we
do. We are trying to not have these undue delays between
the committees' deliberations and meetings where we hear the
results of those.
Do my fellow Commissioners have any further
questions or comments before we close?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: No, thank you.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: No.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: We stand adjourned.
[Whereupon at 11:30 a.m. the meeting was
adjourned.]
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