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Home > Electronic Reading Room > Document Collections > Commission Documents > Commission Meetings, Slides, Transcripts, Meeting SRMs, and Full Written Explanation for Closed Meetings > 1997
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02/19/1997
1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
***
BRIEFING ON MILLSTONE AND MAINE YANKEE
LESSONS LEARNED
***
PUBLIC MEETING
***
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Commission Hearing Room
11555 Rockville Pike
Rockville, Maryland
Wednesday, February 19, 1997
The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
notice, at 2:04 p.m., the Honorable SHIRLEY A. JACKSON,
Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission
KENNETH C. ROGERS, Member of the Commission
GRETA J. DICUS, Member of the Commission
EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., Member of the Commission
NILS J. DIAZ, Member of the Commission
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STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE:
JOHN C. HOYLE, Secretary of the Commission
KAREN D. CYR, General Counsel
HUGH THOMPSON, Acting EDO
FRANK GILLESPIE, Director, Inspection & Support
Program, NRR
STEVE STEIN, Senior Technical Assistant, NRR
FRANK MIRAGLIA, Director, NRR
BILL BORCHARDT, Chief, Inspection Program Branch,
NRR
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P R O C E E D I N G S
[2:04 p.m.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen. The purpose of this meeting is for the
Commission to be briefed by the NRC staff on the status of
recent Lessons Learned activities and to explore the Staff's
recommended approach to address key policy issues that have
been identified.
In November of 1995, I requested that the Staff
perform a Millstone Lessons Learned review to improve
existing oversight processes, that is, reactor oversight
processes, and/or to develop new processes to aid in earlier
recognition of deficient conditions or trends at all of our
powerplant licensees.
This review, although titled a Millstone Lessons
Learned, has been supplemented by information from several
other recent NRC inspections.
Additionally, I believe an honest assessment from
the NRC would indicate that several of these areas are
overdue for improvement, particularly the use and
maintenance of the final safety analysis report and the
implementation of 10 CFR 50.59, changes, tests, and
experiments.
The Commission was provided with the Lessons
Learned Part 1 report in September of last year. Recently,
. 4
the Staff provided the Commission with two additional
reports, the Lessons Learned Part 2 report, which will be
discussed and is publicly available today, and a paper on
the implementation of 10 CFR 50.59, which, although closely
related, will be the subject of a future Commission meeting,
tentatively scheduled for March 10, 1997.
The Commission is very interested in the policy
questions being presented in today's briefing regarding the
important areas of licensing basis, design bases, and the
final safety analysis report.
The Commission is interested in how we got to
where we are, but is much more interested in ensuring that
there is a timely plan for integrated fixes to the processes
that are based on either ensuring compliance with existing
regulations or providing improvements with a net safety
benefit, dually considering costs.
The Commission understands that there will be
considerable industry interest in these topics and is
interested in the Staff's plan on interaction with the
industry and the public regarding the various topics to be
discussed today.
Now, I understand that copies of your presentation
are available at the entrances to the meeting, and so,
unless my fellow Commissioners have any additional comments,
please start. Mr. Thompson?
. 5
MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, Chairman, Commissioners.
With me at the table this afternoon are Frank
Miraglia, who is the acting director of NRR, and Bill
Borchardt, who is the chief of the Inspections and Support
Branch. To my left is Frank Gillespie, who is the director
of the Inspection and Support Program in NRR, and Steve
Stein, who you may recall headed up the Millstone Lessons
Learned Task Force.
Today's briefing focuses on the results of the
Staff's evaluation of four of the six issues discussed in
the Millstone Lessons Learned Report Part 1, which was
forwarded to the Commission in September of '96.
Chairman Jackson, as you said, this is an issue
that we did in response to your directions, and in fact, it
turns out to be a very comprehensive effort and one that
really does take very careful integration of our responses
into these, and obviously, it is an important element in
improving the Staff's performance with respect to oversight
of operating reactors.
The Part 2 report offers a number of recommended
short-term and long-term actions related to regulatory
oversight and improvements in the areas of the design basis,
the current licensing basis, and the content and use of the
safety analysis report. The recommendations include changes
to regulatory guidance and studies to determine the need for
. 6
rulemaking.
Now I would like to turn the briefing over to
Frank Miraglia who will begin the formal presentation.
MR. MIRAGLIA: Madam Chairman, Commissioners.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good afternoon.
MR. MIRAGLIA: Can I have the first slide, please?
This first slide has the questions that were
raised in the Part 1 report, Lessons Learned, that was made
available to the Commission and to the public in September
of 1996. Each of these questions have policy considerations
and policy issues that we would like to discuss with the
Commission today, those issues involving licensing basis and
current licensing basis, design basis and design basis
documentation, FSAR, updates and commitment, and related
issues of 50.59.
The last two questions deal primarily with the
50.59 process. The fourth question also has a nexus and an
overlap to the 50.59 paper, and as you mentioned, Madam
Chairman, that briefing is scheduled tentatively for March
10th, and those areas will be considered in a little more
detail at that briefing.
Each of these issues and policy questions have
been examined by the agency as single issues over probably
the past decade. In the backup Vugraphs on pages 14 to 15,
there is a chronology. I just direct your attention to that
. 7
briefly.
FSAR considerations and 10 CFR 50.71(e) was
considered back in 1980. There were internal consideration
and documentation of commitments in '81 and '85. Certainly,
the '90 to '95 time period was a very, very active period in
terms of design basis, documentation and review, and
interaction with the industry and the Commission, and the
license renewal rule and the development of that rule
brought a lot of licensing basis and current licensing basis
issues before the agency's consideration.
As I have said, these issues have been looked at
and considered singularly by the agency over a period of
time, and in the context of this Lessons Learned, it has
certainly pointed the vulnerabilities in the process, areas
for improvement that the Chairman mentioned that said
perhaps some of these issues need to be reexamined in light
of the vulnerabilities that have been identified by the
lessons learned conducted to date.
As Mr. Thompson said, we have some short-term
actions that we propose as well as some long-term. The
short-term actions are some of which have been taken and are
underway, don't involve policy questions. Some, we will
have to come back to the Commission for a further review and
comment, and those short-term actions are aimed at
addressing these vulnerabilities. Closing the windows of
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vulnerabilities, I addressed, perhaps, not completely, but
slightly. We are gaining information by which we can
further access the significance of cost benefit
considerations of further long-term actions, perhaps as much
as going to rulemaking in some areas.
The report that you will hear from Mr. Gillespie
will go over several of these major areas to discuss the
issue and problem, the short-term corrective actions, and
then the longer-term corrective actions.
As Mr. Thompson indicated to you in a memo that
forwarded both of these papers, there is a nexus between
these issues and the 50.59. The 50.59 is more
process-oriented and could move perhaps in parallel, but it
has to be closely coupled, and we'd like to integrate our
actions and get back to the Commission subsequent to some
initial feedback from the Commission on the issues raised
here and in the 50.59 process.
If there are no questions for me, I would like to
turn it over to Mr. Gillespie.
MR. GILLESPIE: Slide 2 just gives some
background, Chairman Jackson, which you already really
outlined. So let me go, then, immediately to Slide 3, the
difference between the first report and the second report.
The first report was organized along functional
lines to be able to ask questions about licensing inspection
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enforcement, licensing reporting, management oversight, and
license renewal.
What we have extracted from that for Lessons
Learned 2 is those policy questions where we really needed
involvement, direction or guidance from the Commission, and
which crosscut the areas, so that the question of licensing
basis, design basis, and FSAR and decisions made there will,
in fact, then have an effect on licensing inspection
enforcement. So it is written in a different format.
There are a number of actions already undertaken,
and in response to recommendations from the first report, I
have included some samples of those as backup slide 18 and
19. I am not going to propose that I go through them, but I
will be happy to answer questions. Some of them are part of
the short-term actions which are already done, and they were
previously supplied. Many of these were previously supplied
to the Commission in our project's performance improvement
plan document, which was, I think, a very large table that
came up probably around 10 or 12 pages long, with a lot of
individual items that are being worked on.
Looking at the policy questions that came out of
Part 1 and to be addressed, 50.59 is being addressed, as was
said, separately. So we will go into Slide 4.
The objectives of the Part 2 report were, one, a
management review of the Part 1 report to come down to the
. 10
key policy question which crosscut all of those functional
areas which is how the Part 1 report was organized,
identification and discussion of the policy issues, trying
to get at the root cause of the problem, as was seen, some
possible actions and approaches. In doing that, the major
policy issues that came out dealt with the licensing basis,
design basis, FSAR questions, and these are all closely
linked because, by our regulations, a design basis is part
of the FSAR, and both the design basis and FSAR are part of
the licensing basis. So they are very closely interlinked.
The Vugraphs actually get kind of repetitive when
we get through them on short- and long-term actions because,
when you have set it for one, it shows up, again, on the
next several.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask a question. Does
that involve your getting comments from the regions as well?
MR. GILLESPIE: Absolutely.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: This went through extensive
comment --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And all the technical branches?
MR. GILLESPIE: From all of the technical
branches, all the divisions, extensive rounds of comments,
and incorporating comments and recommending on those
comments. It was a massive consensus development process.
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CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: Just by background, and quickly,
the current regulatory process, as currently practiced, not
making a claim to its absolute correctness or anything, is
that the licensing basis is contained in a variety of
documents, answers to generic letters, answers to notices of
violation, responses to calls, requests for additional
information, safety evaluation reports that accompany
technical specifications. A variety of documents would be
considered in the licensing basis, if I apply the licensing
basis definition as given in Part 54, and that is a
recognition that the licensing basis is not defined in Part
50 and, in fact, the term is only used once, and that is in
our authority to issue a 50.54(f) letter to say how do you
comply with your licensing basis. Yet, it is left undefined
in Part 50, and that will come up later in one of our
longer-term recommendations.
It is unique for each plant. The SER that
supports the amendment, the amendment is unique for each
plant. The answers to generic letters tends to be unique.
So it is in a unique information form, but on the docket
file and in the public record.
It is continually evolving or growing because we
continue to correspond with licensees that continue to
answer letters of inspection reports, items of
. 12
noncompliance. So this is an ongoing process. It didn't
stop just for us to look at it. So this is just a thought
that it is there.
Current licensing basis, again, I said it's used
once, and we used the Part 54 definition to baseline
ourselves here.
Design basis is defined --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It's used in Part 50 without
ever having been defined in Part 50?
MR. MIRAGLIA: Just a phrase.
MR. GILLESPIE: Just the phrase "current licensing
basis," yes.
MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes.
MR. GILLESPIE: Design basis is defined in Part
50. It is also presented in the FSAR as to be in 50.34(b)
that the design basis is to be included in the FSAR. So the
relationship is fixed in our regulations.
We do recognize that there is important
information. It is not necessarily in the FSAR, which could
be considered design basis information, and this would be
material that potentially -- and if I could use maybe the
Maine Yankee example, the items over in the SER that were
conditions on the use of a code, the conditions did not find
their way into the FSAR. Yet, those conditions could have
been viewed as a design restriction on the use of the code
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in design work.
Policy statements for supporting information. In
1992, there was a Commission policy statement on design
basis, design basis reconstitution, and in that policy
statement, the Commission was very careful in their use of
terminology of design basis and design documentation, and in
fact, it is very consistent with the regulations, the
definition of design basis, and then it refers to the policy
statement to design documentation, which is even another
layer of supporting information.
FSARs. The FSAR is initially part of the license,
that initial licensing. It does present the design basis.
By regulation, that relationship is established. It is
unique to each plant in a temporal sense, as well as in a
design sense. There is a uniqueness plant-to-plant based on
their design and the basic engineering, but there is also a
significant uniqueness based on when in the history of the
agency that a particular plant was licensed, and this was
also evolving, but we'll find in -- I think everyone is
familiar with the anecdotal information about the one-volume
FSAR at the early sights, licensed in the late '60s or early
'70s, and I think it's the 31 Volume FSAR that belongs to
Comanche Peak.
So a big span -- that is what I mean, a temporal
nature. So the level of the detail was affected by time,
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but they are all controlled by updates required by 50.71(e).
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you this question.
What's the relationship between the FSAR that is part of the
license application, the 50.34 FSAR, and the updated FSAR,
and what regulatory function does the updated FSAR serve
relative to --
MR. MIRAGLIA: The FSAR is the initial
documentation, and 50.71(e) provides for updating that to
reflect modifications and changes. So it would be the
starting point for each of the documents.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. And which one serves the
regulatory function in terms of any current regulatory
action we would have with licensees?
MR. MIRAGLIA: It would be the updated, plus any
changes that they had made since the last update that would
impact on that information.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: In fact, the relationship between
the original FSAR and the updated FSAR, 50.71(e), is
actually spelled out in the regulation where it refers to
the FSAR originally submitted is part of the application for
operating licenses. So that relationship is fixed, so that
the updated FSAR is, indeed, the operable document today.
And 50.71(e) -- and I'm going to cover this also
later -- has really two parts. It has a reporting
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requirement and it also has words in it that talk to the
substance of what should be reported, and those are two very
unique and important pieces.
Going on to the licensing basis, starting from the
most broad terminology that we have, the identified problems
with the licensing basis where some practices of some
licensees differ from the licensing basis -- and this is a
statement which reflects both good and bad. It's not
necessarily bad that they're not doing it. They might have
changed it. They might have done it a different way, but
it's just different than those documents which may, in fact,
be on the docket file.
On the other side, they might be -- they might
have stopped doing something we really wanted and continue
to do, but it's different. So the root problem here was
that it was different.
They have difficulty in identifying or locating
some licensing basis information. I mean, even ourselves,
when you go in and try to manually go through and mind the
docket file, it is a very tedious, tedious effort, and to do
it in a complete manner for any given system is extremely
difficult, but we could do it.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you a couple of
questions on these points. On page 7 of the report that you
actually sent, there is a statement that the NRC and the
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industry, however, did not implement -- or fully, I guess,
implement the FSAR update rule. Would you elaborate a
little on that and say how that came about?
MR. MIRAGLIA: We are going to cover that later.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You are?
MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes. It is in the presentation
later, and we will talk to that.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: All right, okay.
Well, then, let me ask a question on your current
page 7 of the Vugraph. If some of the licensees -- or
there's been difficulty identifying or locating some
licensing bases or some have not been incorporated into
plant procedures, how have we been able to adapt in terms of
our inspection program to these variabilities that have come
about as a consequence of this?
I mean, how have we handled that from the point of
view of inspection if one can't identify the licensing basis
or locate it or it is not incorporated in the plant
procedures? What do our inspectors, then, inspect against?
MR. MIRAGLIA: The inspectors will go out and they
will go and look, and more recently, I guess it was last
March -- February or March where we put the guidance out --
to specifically start with the FSAR.
Some of the difficulties in identified issues with
respect to the differences and practices and such have been
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reported to the Commission in terms of the spent fuel
cooling FSAR survey and the first four months of the FSAR
inspections, but we get at it by the FSAR and by some of the
inspections that get into information design and by pushing
to say what is the licensing basis, and most places come up
with the information. The difficulty is having it readily
accessible.
If you go back to the Commission's policy
statement on accessibility, it talks in terms that it should
be readily accessible, and I think there's a variability out
there with the licensees.
Certainly, we don't have ready access to all of
the information because it's in a multitude of databases,
essentially maintained by the licensees. We depend upon the
licensees' systems, in large measure, and use what we have
in our independent knowledge going in on that area as to
what we understand the basis, and we root around in that.
One of the issues that we talked about in the last
week or so at Maine Yankee was the off-site power and the
electrical lines and what was the licensing basis. It
wasn't clear. We kept asking questions, and looking at
questions, we came to a resolution what the licensing basis
was. So we can get at it, but it's not always easy or
readily accessible, and I think that's what Frank was
alluding to in the comments here.
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CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So, I mean, is the statement,
then, that it, in fact, does have or has had some effect,
then, relative to our inspection function? Because if it's
not readily available or you have to root around, then you
don't have it readily available to use.
MR. MIRAGLIA: In terms of our inspections, they
are audit-type functions. We look in those areas that we
are auditing. The licensee has the responsibility for --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: No, I understand that, but I'm
just saying if it's not there, even where we look, then it's
not there where we look. Okay. I think you are going to
deal with some of this.
MR. THOMPSON: And I think as we progress, there
were some times we had commitments in subsequent licensings
that earlier plants may not have had in their licensing
basis or their tech specs.
So, as we said earlier, in the temporal nature of
the licensings, we were able to inspect at a different level
of detail to different licensees, but obviously, the
operating tech specs is kind of like the fundamental thing
that we start and always make sure the licensees follow the
tech specs.
As you get further and away from the operating
tech specs and more into the details of the FSAR and the
other licensing basis, the more you have to dig down into
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what you are really looking for.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Except that I recall when there
were these original inspections and studies done, there were
some instances where there were things in the FSAR -- I'm
not saying it was widespread, but there were at least a
couple where there was essentially a conflict between what
was in the FSAR and what was in the tech specs, and the one
seemed to speak against the other. So there was, in fact,
A, areas where they overlapped, and, B, where they were
inconsistent.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And what we found in those areas --
Bill, you can help me with some of the statistics -- there
was a number of discrepancies found. Very few resulted in
noncompliance or escalated enforcement. Some were as simple
as the documentation in one area was updated and the other
wasn't. So you have to go in and look and evaluate.
One of the areas where the vulnerability is broad
is in the design area because we don't -- as we have talked,
our operational focus has been -- I mean, it has been on
operations. So we don't probe into design area, and to get
into those areas, and an operational focus, we're looking
basically from the broad performance base or the procedures
doing the job or the tests showing that the equipment works,
and that vulnerability has been discussed with the
Commission in the context of our areas of design, and that's
. 20
where the design basis and licensing basis becomes harder to
root out. You have to really look and dig in certain kinds
of areas.
I think some of the special inspections that --
Millstone had demonstrated that. The ISI, the Maine Yankee,
the ISA, ISI.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: No, I agree with you, and I'm
not disagreeing with anything you have said.
MR. MIRAGLIA: I just want to give the right kind
of context.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Right, but let me give you my
context, and that is, we have done these focused special
inspections, and they've told us certain things, and in some
ways, they've given us more comfort, and in some others,
they've shown some vulnerabilities.
It is very difficult at a certain level, though,
if we talk about the variability in the FSARs to start with
and then we talk about difficulty in identifying and
locating design basis information or it hasn't been
incorporated into plant procedures. You can't give an
unequivocal statement in the absence of some particular
focus look that you have actually been able to satisfy or
could satisfy the public or perhaps the Commission or
yourselves that you know, I mean, in spite of what you say
about tech specs that everything that has any safety
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significance, you know, we know about, and I think that's
the vulnerability we are trying --
MR. MIRAGLIA: And I think that is fair. I think
what we are talking about is putting actions in place to get
a better dimensioning of those issues and concerns, how many
of them in safety were significant and what measures and
next steps we should take.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Right.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And I think that goes to some of
the short-term actions and long-term actions.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: Overall, in the licensing basis
area, we included in the report, and I'm going to repeat it
here, what we're intending to try to get at, and that's to
provide increased assurance that licensees know and are
complying with their licensing basis without imposing undue
regulatory burden, and the burden I am talking about there
is the kind of burden we would have to analyze under 51.09,
which is our backfit rule.
In addition, improve NRC's systems to
independently verify and retrieve plant licensing basis.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: What does that mean? I
mean, how do I understand how big that effort is? It seems
to me that it could be very big.
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think it is a global statement,
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Commissioner Rogers. I think you are correct.
What we are indicating in some of the short-term
actions are first steps, and the longer-term actions would
perhaps be a more global. In order to take those
longer-term actions, we need to do some of the shorter-term
so we could fully access and dimension that. This is a very
broad goal, as stated. You are correct.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, yes. When you say
independently identify and retrieve plants licensing basis,
that means you should be able to do it without any reference
to the plant itself.
MR. THOMPSON: To the licensee, you mean?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Licensee itself, not the
plant license.
MR. THOMPSON: Right.
I think we will discuss some of the steps.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: It sounds like a very big
bite.
MR. THOMPSON: Right. And I think we'll discuss
some of the steps that we are going to be taking to enable
us to be able to do that as we go through this and to
identify those licensing basis issues up front, up early, as
we impose them, as there are new ones, and then we will have
to decide how we would follow that in backfit space, but
certainly, for the forward-looking, I think we will be able
. 23
to address some of the short-term efforts.
MR. GILLESPIE: That is the reason we have this
organized in the short- and long-term actions, and it was
exactly that same question that the managers in the NRC
wrestled with a lot before this report came out, how do we
sort through that question, given that there are things we
can do in the short term and done now to minimize our
exposure and fix the problem from here into the future, but
looking retrospectively back, we have to first gage the size
of the problem we are dealing with, both the size and the
physical potential, physical work that has to be done to
achieve it, and the safety size, how much safety do we
perceive we are going to get for the benefit.
As I go through the short-term actions on
licensing basis we are proposing, we would identify future
licensing basis commitments, and the example of this would
be we would change our internal procedures on the way we are
dealing right now with license amendments.
Right now, when we issue a tech spec amendment, we
generally issue a new tech spec, and there will be an SER
attached, maybe a brief SER in some cases and maybe longer
in others, and in that SER, there will tend to be what the
Staff considered in approving the technical specification
that was changed, and in that approval, the Staff will
generally recognize what I'll call might be conditional
. 24
statements that the licensee committed to in correspondence
in order for us to give them that tech spec.
The more easier one, I'll just keep using it
because it's a good illustration, is the SER that was on the
computer code. The Maine Yankee had 12 conditions for use.
The 12 conditions were, in fact, in the SER. We are now
looking at those and trying to understand how we might
change our own practices, which would cause those 12
conditions to be incorporated into the FSAR, so that they
potentially get into a controlled document, or if there are
important enough conditions incorporated into the license
itself.
Now, how might that change? It is a procedural
question we are working with OGC right now to work up what
might be kind of a standard format to do that on a regular
basis with each license amendment. That way, we get into a
control document as a forward fit on license amendments.
Using NEI guidelines for managing commitments,
this is still -- we have endorsed the guidelines. The
Commission has endorsed the guidelines, and this is to deal
with the retrospective question because we have done it,
with the chronology in the past, a number of inspections on
industry commitment and management processes, and so we do
have some feel that, in general, we have a working system
out there. It is not a perfect system, but we found no
. 25
fatal flaws in looking at the past, and this was a further
refinement on that.
This was put in place about a year ago. Our
intention now would be we're developing an inspection
procedure now to go out and look and inspect it for
goodness, if you would, to see if it's doing what we think
it's going to do. So that's, in the short term, to keep
dealing with the past commitments.
Continue implementing the process improvement
plant which was sent, the project's process --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me stop you. For past
commitments, I think we talked about this once before. This
NEI guideline for managing commitments does have one
vulnerability in that it would allow deletion of old
commitments u sing 50.59 criteria; is that correct.
MR. MIRAGLIA: For certain classes. This was a
program that the industry came up with and we endorsed, and
I believe we -- I don't believe we briefed the Commission,
but I think the Commission was informed by a Commission
paper about a year ago.
In that process, there is classification of
commitments, commitments that are important to the agency,
that cannot be changed without our knowledge. Then, there
is commitments that can be changed within the context of a
50.59 process, and they would have to inform us and document
. 26
and keep records of those, pretty much like they have to do
for a 50.59-type process within the context of 50.59.
Then, there are commitments that would not
necessarily fall within the control process, that they could
change, but they would need to document and keep records of.
So it does have that type of discipline.
The inspection program that Frank is talking about
is to go out and say are the -- is the industry utilizing
that program in a way that they are putting the commitments
in the right kind of categories and are they maintaining and
controlling those commitments with the right kind of
processes that we can audit and inspect and we would test
those elements of the program, and that is one way of
looking back at commitment management that is in place at
this point in time.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. COMmissioner?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Is that very well defined, our
licensing commitments?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That is what I was going to
say. That is right.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: The protocol of the initial
structure?
MR. MIRAGLIA: The program that we looked at,
Commissioner Diaz, had those kinds of elements that sort of
defined the threshold and the control elements. It is well
. 27
over a year. We can certainly provide more information and
detail and update on that to the Commission.
I am doing that from memory right now, but I think
it did establish a threshold. It did establish a
categorization and the control processes to be used in each
of those categories and what records the utility would have
to keep, such that it would be subject to NRC review and
audit.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: How much -- oh, I'm sorry. Go
on.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I was going to say, are those
consistent with present knowledge and established -- have we
reviewed them without our present Lessons Learned?
MR. MIRAGLIA: This was a program that the
industry said that they would implement about a year ago,
and we indicated we would give them time to get that in
place. We certainly haven't looked at those programs at
all. We would look at them at this point in time.
I think the inspection program would have to say
we need to probe in certain areas based upon the lessons
learned, and that can be factored into the inspection of
that kind of activity.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: How much of the categorization
and the protocols associated with that are dependent upon
the definition of terms that show up in 50.59, such as
. 28
shudder margin, you know, probability, other things?
The reason I am asking is that we are talking of
having a follow-on Commission meeting in March and a more
explicit discussion and potential Commission action on
50.59. So, if we are talking about a commitment management
scheme that relates to criteria laid out in 50.59 in terms
of both the categorization and the protocols for managing
and disposition of those, is this putting the cart before
the wheel, the horse?
MR. MIRAGLIA: It depends on one's perspective.
In terms of 50.59, those issues on 50.59 exist minus this
commitment management issue.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: No. I guess I understand that.
I agree with that. The issue is --
MR. MIRAGLIA: And we do --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: But are these things affected,
the way you would actually -- the commitments would be
managed relative to what's in here, are they affected by
what you are going to be bringing forward to the Commission?
MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes. To the extent that the 50.59
process would be changed, then we would have to make --
codify the same kind of --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: The corresponding changes.
MR. MIRAGLIA: The corresponding changes with
respect to the change process of the commitment management.
. 29
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Commissioner McGaffigan?
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I was just going to keep
on this analogy that Mr. Gillespie has been using.
If this commitment management system were in place
and Maine Yankee had found these 12 commitments or these 12
conditions we put in the license and entered them and then
did a 50.59, is that the notion?
MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Could they have just
declared that whatever tweaks they needed to get to where
they wanted to go were unreviewed safety questions and,
therefore, not require -- I mean, could they have ended up
where they would have been, anyway, using this process?
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think the answer is probably yes,
but it would have been done -- it would have had an
auditable trail. It would have had an auditable trail.
I mean, you're talking about absolutes and
guaranties, and I don't think I'm prepared to say there is a
guaranty about anything.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Right. So we would have
an auditable trail.
MR. MIRAGLIA: Well, but in this case here, if we
--
MR. GILLESPIE: If we go back to the philosophy --
MR. MIRAGLIA: That's right.
. 30
MR. GILLESPIE: -- of 50.59 and the word of a term
is giving us problems with industry and that is the word
"any decrease in safety," if you take 50.59 as -- the thing
that tries to maintain the safety envelope that is
prescribed by the FSAR and someone does that in good and
reasonable faith, then something that would end up reducing
safety shouldn't happen, and if it does, yes, we should have
the auditable trail that someone crossed the line.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: So giving up these
conditions or tweaking them, if we had audited it, we would
have said no, that wasn't an -- that there is an unreviewed
safety question here --
MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: -- and it should have
come in for an amendment.
MR. GILLESPIE: It is likely with the strength of
those 12 conditions that were placed in the code, that if we
inspected it, we would have made that finding.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: But it is not an absolute.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I mean, there are two pieces, I
think, that come out of the Commissioner's comments. One,
will this create the auditable trail? Two -- would it have?
-- two, then, would we have done the audits? to have caught
things that we should have caught?
. 31
But again, this seems like a going-forward
solution. I'm interested in the going-backwards solution.
I mean, you've outlined, I think, with talking
about identifying future licensing basis commitments using
the NEI guidelines, what we have been talking about, and
having a system to track planta-specific license and basis
commitments and reviewing selected issues as going forward.
How are you going the backward look? Because that is the
space in which we exist.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And I think what we are attempting
to say, Madam Chairman and Commissioners, is that these are
reasonable short-term steps that we can implement rather
quickly to try to build a fence around the vulnerability.
In addition, some of these short-term solutions
will provide us with additional insights as to the scope of
the issue out there, the risk significance and safety
significance of those, so that we can make reasoned
discipline judgments in terms of the longer-term solutions.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I understand, but all I am
asking is a simple question, Frank. Are we talking about it
on a going-forward basis? Is putting this fence around it
going to cover the backward look and allow us to do the risk
significance, you know, look, or is it merely going to cover
the fence, put the fence around the going-forward?
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think it is aimed at doing both,
. 32
Madam Chairman, and if the commitment out there -- and it's
a voluntary program, and we have to also -- this is not a
regulatory program. This is an NEI program that the
industry would voluntarily implement on their own.
Consistent with Commission guidance, where we do have a
voluntary program, we have been asked to follow up on is
that program working.
The sense of the inspections would answer the
question, is it an effective program, is it working, are
they being categorized, the commitment is being categorized
in the right way, are they being controlled in the right
way.
If those answers are all positive, then maybe we
would have enough confidence to say -- and this is
supposedly for all the commitments that are in place -- then
that might give us the basis for saying, well, that gives us
some confidence that this is sufficient, and then maybe what
we would have to say for places that weren't voluntarily
doing it is that maybe we need to have it made a mandatory
program or extend it further and change rules or regulations
or specific requirements.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So is everything you have up
here under the short-term voluntary actions?
MR. MIRAGLIA: No, no. In terms of the first one,
the licensing basis, this would be something we would
. 33
initiate and impose in the future for all future things.
In terms of the NEI guidelines, it's a voluntary
program. I don't believe it met the initiative category
where it was an initiative that they all agreed to
implement.
It would be, it's out there, a program that's been
developed. The NEI coordinated this activity with the
agency, and it's an approved -- and it has an endorsement.
So utilities could look at and use that program, and now
what we are saying, consistent with Commission guidance, we
would go out and look to make some judgment of the
effectiveness of that program, to manage commitments, such
that we can use that information to say what reasonable next
steps, including going to some of the longer-term issues,
should we do when considering further back for
consideration.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And how long would you expect
to have this voluntary program go on before you would be
coming back to make some decisions about what next steps to
take?
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think we would need some
inspection results at a variety of utilities with a variety
of commitment, management tracking systems out there, and I
would say that we would probably, six months to eight months
of inspection experience out there before we have enough
. 34
information to come forward.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you this kind of a
bomb question. You know, given that, in a certain sense, we
got to where we are because we thought there were voluntary
things that were being done by the industry relative to
design basis, one could argue this is a deja vu kind of a
set of statements. What comfort do we take that this would
be any different from what got us to where we are in the
first place, you know, always keeping the focus on what is
most risk-significant? But if you don't have the basis here
in the first place, you can't pars it to talk about what has
a risk or safety feature.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And what we are doing is we are
integrating a number of judgments, Madam Chairman, in this
kind of regard.
Certainly, the voluntary programs in terms of the
design basis didn't appear to work based upon some of the
samples, and that is why we went out with the 50.54(f)
letter, specifically on design basis, to further assess
where the industry is and to assess their implementation of
that type of program.
In addition, that led to the Commission giving the
Staff guidance on voluntary programs that, when they are in
place, we need to follow up to see and to test the orders,
and what we are proposing here in the short-term solution is
. 35
to say, given we have endorsed this commitment management
process, given nominally it's in place for about a year or
more at most facilities who voluntarily use it, we can get
some information on that.
In addition to the concerns that have been raised,
we have found FSAR. We did look at commitments. If you go
back to the chronology, there were at least two audits that
were reported to the Commission in the '92-'94 time frame
about how commitments were being managed.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Right, nine plants, as I
recall.
MR. MIRAGLIA: There were two -- I think there was
one audit of nine or 10 plants and one of around seven.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: But there are 109 plants.
MR. MIRAGLIA: I understand. So, based upon that,
there was some recognition that there were commitment
management things in place. They appeared to be managing
the commitments, and they might provide a basis, and that
got extended to the endorsement of this commitment
management program.
In addition, some of the things that we have been
finding where we have found discrepancies in issues in terms
of significance in that, not all of them are significant.
In terms of the FSAR discrepancies, we have
provided the report on spent fuel pool cooling to the
. 36
Commission and on the FSAR inspections. So I think we need
to get a better -- based upon what we see, in terms of
saying should we go further, we feel that we need to have
some sample to make the assessment that the next step is a
cost-effective step and that we are getting the safety
increment that we need and that burden on --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I know, and I am telling you, I
am sure you told the Commission, you know, five years ago
the same thing.
MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And I don't disagree with
everything you said, but the issue is I want to understand
what is going to be different so that, you know, 5, 10 years
from now, you know, the next Commission that is sitting here
isn't, you know, hearing --
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think one of the things we are
committing to is that we will go look, and then we will
report back to the Commission and say, in our judgment, it
should continue or should we go further, and I can't offer
any more than that.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. BORCHARDT: The only other point that I would
add is that the short-term actions that are under NRC
control here --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Right.
. 37
MR. BORCHARDT: -- identifies some concrete steps
that can be taken that will add a lot of discipline --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. BORCHARDT: -- to what we had previously
exercised, and those are directly under our control, and
those are the four short-term actions, minus the one that
talks about NEI commitment.
We can inspect that, but we can't enforce it, nor
can we mandate that a licensee use those.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So you are saying that Points
1, 3, and 4 --
MR. BORCHARDT: Right.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: -- are specific things that we
would do, and are they different than what we have done in
the past?
MR. BORCHARDT: Yes.
MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes, they are.
MR. BORCHARDT: No. 1, for example, talks about
specifically identifying licensing basis commitments. Well,
we have never pointed directly at a commitment and said
that's --
MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes, we have, see, and -- don't say
never. "Never" is an absolute word. In terms of if you go
back to the chronology in 1981, for 1985, for the --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's when I was a child.
. 38
MR. MIRAGLIA: I was fairly young then, too. In
fact, I might have had black hair back then.
But at that point in time, it was recognized for
near-term operating license, and it was internal directives
that the Staff, in preparing its SER, needed to identify
those things that were significant enough to be captured
when in technical specifications, those things that were
significant enough to be captured within license conditions,
those things that were significant enough that needed to
have verification in the field prior to licensing, and we
had that discipline for near-term OLs, and that discipline
-- we didn't carry through and follow through on what we are
saying.
As I said, these issues were looked at and
examined by the agency in the past. We have had programs.
I think Bill makes a good point. It is adding discipline,
and I think what I was trying to say in my opining remarks
with respect to vulnerabilities, the short-term actions
close the window somewhat.
Does it close it completely on all of the issues?
No. Some of the short-term actions, we'll say, we've closed
the window or is it closed, give us the information to
determine whether it's been closed enough.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: One second. I think
Commissioner McGaffigan wants --
. 39
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I was just going to ask
two questions. On the issue of commitments, whose
responsibility is it to know, track, and identify these
commitments? Is it the project manager. Is it the
resident? is it both? Who is going to have this
documentation?
MR. MIRAGLIA: In terms of the process that we are
talking about here, that that licensing commitment -- it
would be the technical staff to identify to the project
manager and the project manager to put in the appropriate
part of the licensing and then track from there on out.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: So the project manager
will be responsible?
MR. MIRAGLIA: That is the intent.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Then, on the NEI
guideline for managing commitments, it is voluntary within
NEI. It is not an initiative, as you said. Do you have a
sense as to how many of the 108 or 109 plants are utilizing
the NEI guideline?
MR. MIRAGLIA: No, I don't, but I know there is an
industry group that is -- I don't know its acronym, but it's
called the commitment management utility group where they
have been sharing the information on how they track
commitments. So there is a significant number of utilities
engaged in that activity. That was the principal body that
. 40
NEI operated through.
So I would say that at least the members of that
group, which was a significant number of utilities -- and we
can provide that paper and some of that background.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: But we really don't know,
really, how many --
MR. MIRAGLIA: No, I couldn't answer it.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: -- are using the NEI
guidelines.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Would NEI know? Would
NEI tell you?
MR. MIRAGLIA: We could ask. We could ask.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: It seems to me that looking at
this, that the only real bridge that we have between the
past, the present, and the future would be this tracking
system, to plan a specific licensing basis, and that would
be the one that could actually provide you, if we do it
right and if we put enough resources on it and maybe if we
not only do it by ourselves independently, but jointly with
the licensee, that that would be a bridge that would allow
you to determine where you are, where you were, and where
you are going, and that is the only thing that remains. Is
that correct?
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think that is what we say is a
. 41
reasonable starting point to assess those things, to say is
the bridge complete and do we have enough knowledge to close
it.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Is this tracking tool
something that we are committed to maintain? Because I
think that is the heart of the issue. If we maintain a
tracking tool, then 5 years from now, 10 years from now when
we get a few gray hairs like you --
MR. MIRAGLIA: Let the record show that it is more
than a few and growing by the moment.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Speak for yourself.
MR. GILLESPIE: If I could, this is the intent
here. It is really more than a tool. It is a process.
If I could talk through a license amendment that
comes in, it gets an SER. There is an amendment -- let me
say there are several what we would now call commitments in
it, that we would now say deem to be appropriately
incorporated into the FSAR.
The project manager will keep track of those, and
then when the FSAR update comes in, as required, he would
reconcile. Once he reconciles and it gets into the FSAR and
we're assured it is in a controlled document, then the 50.59
philosophy, maintaining the licensing envelope described in
the FSAR takes hold, and the individual commitment then
. 42
takes on as an individual sentence or requirement less
importance and it is now part of a hole, now 50.59 or the
change process is supposed to be the process we were relying
on to control that level of safety. Again, it is that catch
word.
It maintains the envelope of the FSAR. It gives
the licensee the freedom to move around within that safety
envelope.
So once you reconcile -- and the words of 50.17(e)
are, "Six months after each refueling outage, you get an
SFAR in." Once you reconcile, you should not have to
maintain an interminable list of those things that get
incorporated into the document.
In fact, the amendment package itself might have a
tech spec amendment, and then there might be what looks like
a boilerplate license condition as a companion to it that
says incorporating the six following conditions into your
FSAR is the contingency upon this amendment being approved.
As soon as they put it in their FSAR, that becomes
a moot license amendment. The tech spec carries. We
reconcile to the FSAR, and we have a system that closes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes, but that is the whole
point. The system has not always.
MR. GILLESPIE: It has not closed in the past.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: All we want to understand is
. 43
what you are proposing either in the short term or the
longer term is going to close the system.
MR. GILLESPIE: Okay. If I --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Maybe we should let you talk,
but I think Commissioner McGaffigan wants to say something.
MR. GILLESPIE: Okay.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I am just trying to -- I
mean, I'm putting myself in a project manager's position for
a moment, and I know they turn over. There, the person
responsible also for keeping the updated FSAR, you know, the
agency's copy of it. Is that correct? Or, who is
responsible?
MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. The project managers keep a
copy. The official FSAR is in the official docket file, and
we have a replicate working copy with the project managers.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: These are very large
documents, as you said. How does a person -- have you all
looked at computerization?
We had a meeting yesterday about computerization
and tracking commitments made and materials licenses. Is it
important that they be able to see why so and so did such
and such maybe five years before, maybe three project
managers before, in evaluating an issue that might come
before a project manager?
MR. GILLESPIE: If I can keep this in kind of a
. 44
number perspective, if you allow me, we do on the average 10
to 12 licensing actions per facility per year.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Right.
MR. GILLESPIE: So, if there are three or four
commitments for each one, we are only dealing with 30 or 40
items. So it is manageable. It is doable in the short
term, but for the most part, without going to an
over-computerization initially.
The FSAR report, when it comes in, is supposed to
be a summary of all changes to the FSAR. So, lining up what
might be a list of 50 or 60 items long to a summary report
that is also 50 to 60 items long, it is doable, and it is
probably -- even if you used a computer to pull the text up
on the screen, someone still has to read and compare the
text and say, okay, that is this commitment and that is this
commitment, because the machine isn't going to be able to do
that for you.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Right.
MR. GILLESPIE: So I think, short term, we are in
a doable range, within the way we are functioning, and it is
a discipline we haven't really exercised, the reconciliation
to the FSAR.
Now, if you find something not in the FSAR, then,
of course, a letter to the licensee or a phone call says,
you know, you have lost this commitment, where is it, would
. 45
take place, but it is definitely a future fit.
The short-term actions throughout this
presentation are, from here, forward. The longer-term
actions are trying to address what we would do to develop
information to make the decision on potential rulemaking in
the future.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I think following Commissioner
McGaffigan, I think -- and I know you know this, but it is
important to point out that even as large as the FSAR is, it
is still manageable. What becomes very difficult is when
you add the design basis to the FSAR and you have all of
these and all of those, the references and things. That
makes it very complicated, and that interface is the one
that eventually we will need to define, how much of the
design basis are we going to have or constituted so we can
address it, and that is a very difficult issue.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That is what they want to bring
to us, you see.
MR. GILLESPIE: And that is where the Commission
was extremely careful, I believe, in the policy statement of
1992 in distinguishing between the word "design basis" and
"design documentation."
It was never anybody's intent that all the design
documentation be incorporated into the FSAR, but
. 46
conceptually, I think we had a thought on what the design
basis was, and it is defined in the regulations as to
higher-level definition. It is those key parameters and
functions that really must work in a certain way. It is
those key setpoints. It is those key things that go into
the safety analysis.
I am not saying that is a real clear line because
I would be the first to admit that the difference between --
MR. MIRAGLIA: But I think it is always recognized
the design basis didn't require all the drawings, all the
design calculations and all of those type of --
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And that is where the
distinction is made.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That is where the line may be
able to be drawn.
MR. MIRAGLIA: If you go back to that policy
statement, as Frank said, that was clearly articulated in
the NUREG that supported some of the studies in that, and we
recognized --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Does that provide us a basis
for going forward and beginning to address the issue, that
distinction that the Commissioner is talking about?
MR. MIRAGLIA: I believe so because I think the
50.2 definition that is in the rule is that higher-level
definition.
. 47
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And I believe that the
position that was taken at the time was very reasonable at
the time. It was understood. It is just that now we have
all of this additional knowledge.
I think the clear definition of the interfaces
must be restated so we can manage.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Why don't you go -- the
longest it's been, half an hour per page.
[Laughter.]
MR. GILLESPIE: The long-term is definitely the
retrospective look. It is a prospective look in a sense in
my first bullet, and that is defining current licensing
basis in Part 50.
We have referenced the term which is not clearly
designed in Part 50. It is designed in Part 54. And if we
would re-read it, we may, in fact, not want the same
definition in Part 50 as part 54, and I think that needs
some definite thought put into it.
The Part 54 definition was done in a certain
perspective, and the Part 51 might be in a different
perspective.
Compilation of the licensing basis has been
addressed in license renewal space, and decisions were made
that it would be at that time not beneficial, basically;
that it was too costly an effort to have to go to actually
. 48
list every commitment that ever was and how it was disposed.
To establish regulatory controls for all licensing
basis commitments, this is really a bullet that is an
expansion, the potential expansion of the base to which
50.59 would apply. 50.59 clearly right now applies to the
FSAR, and included in the FSAR is a design basis, but if we
were going to pick up answers to generic letters that
currently are not in the FSAR or responses to items that are
on compliance or confirmatory action letters, clearly, that
is an expansion of the use of 50.59, whatever process that
ends up evolving not, and that is just in lock-step with
what do you want those controls to apply to.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And I think at this point, I would
just make a note that these long-term issues were considered
just a few years ago in the context of license renewal in
that kind of context.
Now the information that we have says we need to
go back and revisit some of those, where were we and how did
we get to where we are and what do these vulnerabilities say
and what should we do with it.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, I think you have new
information. You have a new Commission.
MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And you have a new ability to
parse things in a way that might allow some --
. 49
MR. MIRAGLIA: That is what I said. They need to
be reexamined and reconsidered, but we have to recognize
where we have been and how we got to where we are and what
does the new information now suggest.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I am afraid I have two
questions. Number one, I don't want to let you off so easy
on why there would be a difference in definition between
Part 50 and Part 54, why you would not just take the Part 54
definition that presumably people labored over in the
license renewal context and plug it in here.
MR. GILLESPIE: If I could, let me give you an
example. The definition we are talking about, 10 CFR 50.3,
is actually backup slide 21.
When in doubt, I didn't want to paraphrase. In
the definition of current licensing basis, it has got a
hierarchy of requirements in current licensing basis. It
goes from the regulations to the license to technical
specifications to the FSAR, and then it goes on, and the
licensee's commitments remaining in effect that were made in
docketed licensing correspondence, such as licensee
responses to NRC bulletins, generic letters, and enforcement
actions, as well as licensee commitments documented in NRS
safety evaluations or licensee event reports.
Let me take the one on compliance, just as an
example. If someone writes in a response to an item of
. 50
noncompliance and says they are going to do certain
corrective actions, if they didn't do those actions and we
went back six months later and found that it wasn't done,
would we take action because they didn't do what they said
or would we take action because they didn't fulfill the
fundamental requirement?
What this definition -- I think our action would
be, as a former inspector, the citation would be against the
fundamental requirement again. You wouldn't be creating a
new requirement through the inspection process. So there
are some questions like that, that you might say, because
there is a lot of paper and a lot of what would be
considered commitments coming out of inspection reports;
that the way this definition was written, it was
intentionally written to be all-inclusive, basically all
documents on the docket file, to make sure it encompassed
all the information there.
Would we want to continue that in the future?
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think what Frank was saying --
MR. GILLESPIE: That's all I'm saying. In fact,
you may reconcile --
MR. MIRAGLIA: You need to go back and reexamine
it.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: If you're going to reexamine the
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definition for Part 50, let me say it a different way. We
might have to reexamine a consistent definition also in Part
54. I didn't mean to imply they would be different, but
they could be.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: They could be for the
two purposes.
MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The second item, and I
am not sure I am going to paraphrase you properly, but you
may be about to get to it, but the notion as to -- that
there is a fundamental issue as to what we have and haven't
been requiring in the 50.71(e) updates.
And what you said a moment ago, and I won't try to
paraphrase it, I think, is consistent with the Staff
interpretation that has been propounded occasionally over
the years or maybe consistently over the years as to what
should and shouldn't be in the FSAR, but you sort of get
into the problem of the plain reading of what 50.71(e) says.
A plain reading of it isn't necessarily consistent with what
the Staff has been saying over the last 15 years.
MR. GILLESPIE: That's true.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think they're going to come
to that. I think now is the time for me to become the
chairman again. Let's move along.
MR. GILLESPIE: We have eventually touched upon
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the design basis. Some licensees not appropriately
maintaining the design basis, we continue to see problems
with numbers, calculations being incorrectly applied or
incorrect ones used.
Some licensees are not appropriately implementing
some bases, and some bases are not consistently incorporated
into the FSAR, and that statement gets the essence of
potentially a literal reading of 50.71(e), which is the FSAR
document of which this is a subset. So I will try to
rapidly get to that.
What we need to do is provide increased
understanding of the design basis, make sure everyone
understands the difference between design basis and design
documentation because we sometimes use our terms maybe too
freely, and greater assurance of facilities or controlling
and are in compliance with their design basis.
It is not that they have to necessarily control to
our satisfaction every detail and every drawing, but there
are certain key things that are designated design basis that
should be controlled.
Short term, provide guidance on the use of design
basis. We should be identifying in things like generic
letters when we expect the reply will, in fact, affect the
design basis and be very clear about what it is.
Implement 10 CFR 50.71(e) as basically literally
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read as a future --
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: It was in the statements
of consideration.
MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.
And I didn't include 50.71(e) as a backup slide,
but I did bring it so I could read it without my reading
glasses in big print because it is a good, well-worded rule.
Use the responses to 50.54(f) letters to guide us
-- provide some guidance on how we are going to be looking
at designs specifically in the future and what level of
inspection will be appropriate for what facility.
We clearly cannot do the maximum amount of
inspection at every facility, and we'd continue the design
inspections that we are currently doing, which are basically
at two levels. We are doing our more traditional design
inspections of system inspections, which are run by the
regions, with one or two contractor support people, and we
are running the architect engineer programs, which are much
narrower, actually, looking specifically at design, will the
system carry out its function as intended and is it being
carried out as described in as best we can understand the
design basis to be included in the FSAR.
Long term, determine if policy or design basis
should be -- if the policy on design basis should be
codified in regulations. The 1992 policy would probably --
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wording-wise, if I just literally read the policy -- could
be edited and turned actually into a rule. That's a
long-term option to be looked at.
Determine the benefits of incorporating all
existing design basis that backfit into the FSAR, including
information which may not currently be there.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Go back on the top of that page
of implementing 50.71(e) as explained in the statements of
consideration. What is that going to fix?
MR. GILLESPIE: In the short term, we are looking
at -- it would be probably appropriate to potentially issue
a generic letter that says from here on, it would be the
Commission's intention to --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: A generic letter implies a lot
of things. Why is that necessary?
MR. MIRAGLIA: It may not be necessary in the
classic sense.
MR. GILLESPIE: It may not be necessary.
MR. MIRAGLIA: I mean, I think if you look at
50.71(e), there were two distinct pieces. It is a reporting
requirement, and it is also fairly clear in terms of what
the content that that update should be, and I think we have
been pretty consistent on the reporting requirement and
pretty inconsistent as terms of looking at the quality of
the content as to whether all of the material that would be
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implicit and explicit based on the rule to be there.
I think the only thing one would have to do is to
be, if you want to characterize, some sort of generic
communication to indicate to the industry. Perhaps that
hasn't been consistently implied. That was always the
intent. And be warned, that is what we are going to start
enforcing.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: But it is not a backfit.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And we would defer to the Office of
General Counsel in the application of the 109 process as to
how that would play out.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: How would the design control
as explained in 10 CFR 50 Appendix B match into this?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Can I just --
MS. CYR: I don't believe it would be back. I
mean, demanding compliance with the rule, as it is written,
is not a backfit. I'm sorry.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes, because you are talking,
really -- you are differentiating with the design basis and
the design recommendation and 50.71(e) as applied to the
SFAR. It is design control on -- is it found on the
Appendix B list?
MR. GILLESPIE: Well, Appendix B still applies.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes, but if it is somehow used
also by the agency specifically enough, that will provide us
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some guidance in what the interfaces are.
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think the 50,71(e) would then
incorporate certain material clearly within the FSAR, and
then that would clearly put it within a control process of
50.59.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Okay, 50.59.
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think that's --
MR. GILLESPIE: That's the control process. It
becomes 50.59.
MR. THOMPSON: And I think that is one of the
other elements that we talk about, the revisions of 50.59
and to bring closure to that as such an integral part of
this whole approach.
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Thank you.
MR. GILLESPIE: Going on to Slide 11, FSAR, which
virtually repeats the entire presentation for a design basis
because one is contained in the other, but the FSAR is
slightly larger, that we found many discrepancies between
facilities in the FSAR because the FSAR is the design basis,
but it uses the words in what it contains. It is also a
facility description. So that's a little more extensive,
and in fact, the words "facility description" may in a
longer term need to also be looked at by way of
understanding what 50.59 specifically applies to in an FSAR
and what it doesn't, and the simplistic example would be if
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the color of a building or something was referred to.
Clearly, we don't want someone doing an analysis of the
color of a building, but yet, it may be described at that
level of detail.
FSARs are not consistently updated relative to
their content. They are consistently updated relative to
the frequency required, which is something that Frank has
already mentioned.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Have we provided any guidance
for exactly what information? Well, I guess if we haven't
been consistently doing it, we haven't been providing any
guidance as to what information would be required in the
update.
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think within the context of
50.71(e) in terms of the rule and the statement of
consideration, there is pretty explicit -- I think you could
read -0-
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So we just haven't been doing
it.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And we haven't been consistent. I
think it could be rearticulated clearly for everyone to
understand what the desire is and to go out and start
implementing it in that kind of context.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: The intended result of our action,
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short term and long term, would be to ensure licensees are
updating their FSARs with the appropriate information, to
determine if it is necessary to establish a standard level
of detail for FSARs because we do have a variability from
when they were issued, determine if additional information
should be added to updated FSARs.
I might comment on "determine if it is necessary
to establish a standard level of detail for FSAR updates."
I believe I could say the general practice has been that the
FSAR updates tend to update that which is already in the
FSAR and tend not to add additional detail.
So, if a system is changed, but a specific set
point or something was not originally in the FSAR, it
generally would not get put in because of the change. The
change would be focused in the change of material already
there, which gives you a very reduced scope of what you are
changing in your FSAR and leave some things outside of the
FSAR.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Is that consistent with what
the statement of considerations --
MR. MIRAGLIA: I think some of that would be
captured by a consistent -- but there are also -- when
50.71(e) was first promulgated, it was recognized that the
update applied to the FSAR. In other words, the
understanding of variability of content was taken as a
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given, and it was to say as you make changes that needed to
be -- could be interested to be in the content. That should
be included, and that is what haven't consistently
implemented.
So I think, to a large measure, it would capture
most. We need to make sure, I think, what Frank is saying
that are there pieces that aren't being captured that we
need to be assured need to be in.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Right. One big piece of it is
inherently already there in the existing regulation.
MR. GILLESPIE: Yes.
Short-term actions, implement previous actions --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Short-term actions.
MR. GILLESPIE: Short term, implement 50.71(e).
[Laughter.]
MR. GILLESPIE: I didn't think I'd ever get to
that bullet. I'm sitting here tense.
It would be to do what we need to do to implement
50.71(e), as written, including any kind of appropriate
notifications. It says, hey, this is what we are going to
do. Whether that is generic communications or whatever -
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Send out the statements of
considerations.
MR. MIRAGLIA: We need to make sure the Staff
understands what we're doing. We'd have to do all those
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things, but yes, it can be done.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes, please.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: You want my question?
Could you give the Commission some insight on what
seems to be a very simple question? Why didn't we enforce
this regulation? Was it some feeling that it wasn't
worthwhile, some reason it was not necessary, or did we just
not do it?
MR. MIRAGLIA: The only reason that I can come up
with, it is the result of unintended consequences.
I think when terms of FSAR updates -- when we
shifted away from the normal licensing function -- and I
think it's a matter of evolution, if you look at points in
time -- FSAR amendments and updates were very critically
looked at up through the point in time of initial licensing.
We became sensitive again after the pause, after
TMI-2 in terms of making sure the commitments and the
material was put in and commitments were put into the FSAR.
Then, subsequent to the big licensing activity to
get the TMI requirements in there, we started to shift to
operational focus and design issues. I think, to the extent
that commitments dealt with operating procedures and those
kinds of things, we would probably have a better line
because we looked harder in that area. I just think it is
an error of omission as opposed to an error of commission.
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That doesn't make it any -- it wasn't conscious
decision-making. I think it was just the circumstances at
the time and the focus of the agency at that time, and it
happened over a period of time, and there is some
inconsistent application. That is the best explanation I
can offer.
COMMISSIONER DICUS: Just a very quick statement,
then. Being consistent is extremely important. I think we
all recognize that in everything we do, certainly for the
Commission, certainly for our licensees, and certainly for
the public.
And then the other thing, I think I have raised
this concern previously, so I think it is important to raise
it again, and I think you have heard it from other
Commissioners and from the Chairman, the balance. We are
shifting now over more to the licensing issues, but let's
not forget, we still have to do the operational parts, too.
So let's be sure we try to stay balanced, as we move forward
in this.
MR. MIRAGLIA: That is a consistent theme, and we
appreciate it, we understand it, and I think we recognize
the responsibility to maintain the focus as well.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Could I get a --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: It's just a short
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question, and I hope Karen will be able to answer it.
The memo pending before the Commission says there
is a possibility that we would also be subject to the Small
Business Regulatory Fairness Act, and I will read the
bullet, provide guidance to licensees, to implement 10 CFR
50.71(e) as explained in the rule, statement of
consideration, and to include an FSAR's new design bases
developed at the Commission's request.
Is it the "and" part?
MS. CYR: Right. The question, to the extent that
we were trying to look at whether we needed to require more
design detail or try to catch something broader in terms of
the design bases, that we would have to look to see whether,
in fact, that would rise to the level.
We weren't necessarily concluding that it did. It
just meant that we needed to look to see whether the Small
Business Regulatory Fairness Act would have some application
in that context.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: But for the first part --
MS. CYR: The 50.71, as written and understood and
described in 81.10 and so on, I don't believe so.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Frank, get going.
MR. GILLESPIE: We will continuing auditing the
FSARs through the inspection program, and in fact, our
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intent would be to reverse a cleansing we did in the late
'80s and early '90s. We took the FSAR references out of a
lot of our inspection guidance because we are really forcing
to focus on operations, and we are now integrating not all
of it back in, but pieces back in, to say, for example, when
you look at --
MR. THOMPSON: The admonition of balance.
MR. GILLESPIE: Yes. Well, we are being very
careful.
Identifying information to be added to FSARs
through generic communications and licensing actions, this
would be when we issue a generic communications. When you
read 50.71(e), there are words in here which would affect
that any time someone basically answers a generic
communications, that if that answer affects what is in the
FSAR and a design basis, then that answer in and of itself
needs to be incorporated into the FSAR, and that is already
in the rule.
This would be -- the Staff, when we write a
generic letter, showing the discipline when we write it, to
make sure we recognize up front what is it we expect from
people that will also be in there, be incorporated into the
FSAR.
Long-term actions. A relook at our previous
actions on defining a compiled licensing basis, and the
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potential of revising Regulatory Guide 170 is, in fact, the
format and content guide of what goes in an FSAR for an
operating license or an NTOL.
It is very thick, but this would be the guidance
that we would probably pick to amend to -- if we needed to
amplify any more, what is the process for maintaining the
FSAR once you pass the operating license issuance point, and
now you are an operating plant, what is the level of detail
expected to be in it, is the level of detail consistent with
original detail, or is it consistent with the detail needed
to describe what you are going to do. It is the different
level of detail.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: This reg guides dates back to
1978.
MR. GILLESPIE: That is correct.
MR. MIRAGLIA: That is correct.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It is 20 years old. Okay.
MR. GILLESPIE: The recommendations -- and this is
really right from the paper -- that we continue to implement
the short-term actions, following the short-term actions,
using information that we gain to evaluate the need for
different pieces of the long-term action relative to looking
at a redefinition or a definition in Part 50 of licensing
basis, and the expansion of what might be considered the
applicability of 50.59 to a broader base, and that would be
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the licensing basis that would be defined, and that we would
make individual recommendations on the long-term action
relative to things like defining licensing basis, 50.59,
level of detail, redoing the reg guide if that's deemed to
be appropriate, or picking a different reg guide number and
putting the guidance out in that form.
With that, that really concludes the presentation.
We have included some backup slides.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Yes. I think that some of
the things, Lessons Learned here, that have to be emphasized
involve -- are lack of consistency. Commissioner Dicus has
emphasized that a number of times, and I think it is really
important.
This comes back to fundamental definitions of
things, and I think that as we get into this, this type of
activity, I think it is terribly important that we try to
make sure we are looking at everything we do that is
connected. Most of these things are connected in some way,
and to see where are, employing words, that we know what we
mean, and we don't imply that the meaning in one place is
going to be the same as in another place unless we are sure
we want it to be that way. It could be. It might not be.
I think that many of the things that we are doing
here reflect a recognition that we could have done some
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things better in the past, but for various reasons, life
doesn't always go that way.
I think one of the things that I would like to see
come out of this is a very high-level look at these issues
from a policy perspective. That is what you are trying to
do, but a lot of these are getting into nitty gritty
applications of policy very soon.
So I think that the attention to consistency and
detail and definitions and, in fact, being very clear on
what we mean by terminology, that somehow we have employed
in the past in a way that, well, we all know what it means,
except we don't all know what it means, 10 or 15 years
later.
We talked about the project manager role in this.
I think the shifting of project managers that we talked
about, rotation of project managers makes it all the more
important. The documentation available to every project
manager really says what has to be known about that plant.
My understanding is that when a new project
manager takes over, it takes several years to become really
familiar with just the documentation of the plan. I think
we have got to find a better way to do that, and I think our
information systems can help us there, new electronic
information systems, and we ought to make sure that we
employ them so that one doesn't have to plow through tons of
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paper to get at the essential understandings that are
necessary.
So I think these are all things very important to
keep in mind, and one other point that I feel very strongly
about is I think we have to understand what the resource
demands are going to be on the Commission and on our
licensees in carrying out this full program. It has a
beautiful completeness to it and it's very appealing, but I
have to tell you, I am very worried about what the resource
demands are going to be in actually carrying this out, both
in-house and on our licensees.
I would really like to see how we answer the
question, what are the safety benefits that we are going to
buy, by doing this. I think it is a very fine kind of
activity, but I would really like to see what the safety
payoff is, and I would really like to know what the cost in
FTEs and dollars is going to be.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I would think that most of the
longer-term actions that you proposed have built into them
the cost benefit backfit-type requirements, at any rate,
would force us to address those issues that Commissioner
Rogers raised in terms of resource implication.
MR. MIRAGLIA: And our intent was, after initial
feedback, since these -- these things are, as you said,
Commissioner Rogers, very interrelated, and as I said, we
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have l looked at these issues singularly before in
discussions, some of the debating on approaches. Well, what
are we saying different here than we have said here? We
said, well, gee, we haven't really said it different. It is
consistent, but we have never really put the two together
and take an integrated look. So you have a slightly
different context.
I think your comments are well taken. I think
what we are trying to do here is identify those high-level
issues, some reasonable first short-term steps that, as I
say, narrow the vulnerabilities and provide us some input to
make those kinds of -- provide the regulatory analysis in
terms of the longer term, to understand what the full
implication is, not only on ourselves, but also our
licensees, to get some measurement of the risk and safety
benefits. That is so we can make some conscious decisions.
So it has to be a disciplined process. What we
need to do is try to integrate these short-term actions and
how do they feed these and over what time frame would we be
prepared to come forward. I think the memo from the EDO to
the Commission says 90 days after feedback, we will try to
come up with an integrated plan saying how the pieces come
together and what we would plan to come forward with at each
point in place.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Excuse me just for a second.
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Let me touch on one more point, and then I will be finished.
I notice that we touched on the use of the
statement of considerations in one connection here, and I
would like to just point out that we haven't always been
entirely consistent in what we say in the statement of
considerations and what the rules say. It has tripped us up
a couple of times in the past when somebody points that out
to us, and I think that this is also a time to look at that
kind of consistency.
Sometimes I've had the feeling that whoever wrote
the rule and whoever wrote the statement of considerations
were just different people, and they chose to use different
language because it seemed to explain things a little bit
more clearly or a little differently, and the net result is
a difference.
I don't think there should be any differences at
all. There was no intent, but it does creep in. So, again,
it is an issue of consistency that is very important.
MR. MIRAGLIA: That is a fair comment.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Dicus?
COMMISSIONER DICUS: Just to emphasize quickly, I
think the actions that seem to be laid out here are going to
be useful, but emphasize that short-term actions are,
indeed, short term, and the Commission could expect to see
some definitive activity in the very near future on them.
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CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Thank you.
Let's see. I have a statement. I don't know
whether I can read it because I never read any of my own
notes, a statement on that challenge.
I think what we are seeing is an increased level
of awareness on the part of the Staff and Commission, and
hopefully the licensee, about how these different parts
interact with each other, and I believe that looking at the
word balance is that we actually have a mechanism to provide
balance.
I am going to read something I just wrote a moment
ago. It says the balance between the licensing base is the
FSAR, the design basis. An operational safety comes through
the inspection and assessment process. That balance is
reflected in what we do, and it is reflected on resource
utilization. Therefore -- and it comes to challenge.
When we talk about integration, which is really
needed, we need to integrate the entire process of
inspection from, you know, the resident inspector to how we
process it through the licensee events reports, through the
SALPs, through all the other different levels, simplify that
so that every level can be as clear and as independent of
the next level as possible. We will repeat information
continuously from the inspection process all the way through
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the end, and we can magnify it rather than simplify it.
So, if we are concerned about resources and
balance, we have the mechanisms if we simplify them to
introduce the balance and balance the design basis with
operational safety and resources, but that means that -- and
here is the challenge -- that we need to look at all of
these things together. We cannot look at 50.59
independently of how we do inspections. Every one of these
things is part of the whole, and I agree with Commissioner
Rogers that these are major policy decisions, and we should
look at them together, not as independent points, and that
the total effort is going to result in a much better
product.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan?
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I want to just follow up
on one point that Commissioner Rogers made, and I do think
statements of consideration and rules sometime differ, but
in this case, I think they don't. I mean, unfortunately for
the Staff and the interpretation that has been used for the
last 15 years, the rule itself, which I have in small print
in front of me and can still read, you know, is -- the
updated FSAR shall be revised to include the effects of a
lot of things, but the last of them is all analyses of new
safety issues performed by or on behalf of the licensee at
the Commission request, and that's things that we haven't
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been asking for clearly, you know, the effects of new rules
and generic letters and all that. I mean, it just clearly
falls under that language.
MR. MIRAGLIA: The Staff has put itself on report,
sir.
COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Yes. This is not a case
where there is a disconnect. It is clear.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, thank you.
As you have heard, on behalf of the Commission, I
want to thank you for briefing the Commission on your
overall approach and recommendations in each of these areas
related to licensing basis, design basis, and FSARs, and you
have given us summaries of both short-term -- proposed
short-term and long-term possible corrective actions related
to the various deficiencies or vulnerabilities.
The beauty is it has helped to clarify for the
Commission how these issues, as you have heard, are
intertwined and obviously interdependent.
Now, we do recognize that you need additional time
to develop the details of your integrated plan, particularly
relative to the long-term actions, particularly as they are
fed by the shorter-term ones, but the long-term changes in
particular and certain aspects of the short-term changes are
actually dependent on whether th changes will be made to
certain existing regulations, 10 CFR 50.59 being the most
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obvious example.
So I think the Commission will be better prepared
to discuss the future direction, particularly relative to
the longer-term changes, and evaluate them to address
conditions that exist because of past practices following an
integrated review of your Lessons Learned paper and the
50.59 paper.
As I indicated in my opening comments, that
Commission meeting to discuss the 50.59 issues will be on
March 10th, and we will consider release of the paper
associated with that meeting as soon as possible.
As you have heard over and over again, and you
said yourselves that these issues have digressed to this
point in one decision at a time, and as you have heard from
essentially everyone at the table, they obviously now are
being considered in an integrated fashion, which is the way
they need to be considered.
Licensees have recognized the importance of
commitments and that plant changes should be evaluated
against, in fact, more than the FSAR. The NRC has
recognized the importance of 50.59 for various reasons and
has struggled to provide adequate guidance, but the bottom
line is kind of this. You know, the plant system engineer
who is preparing an evaluation of a system modification or a
procedure change and the NRC inspector in the field who is,
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quote/unquote, "looking over the engineer's shoulder,"
perhaps, both need clear guidance, and this clear guidance
should be rooted in a firm regulatory and safety basis.
It is interesting because I think the difficulty
of dealing with things one at a time, at a time, at a time,
is that when there finally is a comeuppance about something,
there is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bath
water.
We have heard various ones talk about balance and
consistency. What happens is, if we don't do the integrated
look and don't really try to fix the problems, when we go
out to redress a problem, it looks like we are actually
having to swing the pendulum or people worry about our
swinging it too far back because we have gone too far in the
other direction.
The only way to do that is to have the kind of
consistency and balance and risk-informed judgment, but also
to enforce our regulations that we have, particularly when
there isn't some inconsistency between what the statements
of consideration may say and what the regulations say.
You know, there is no reason not to do that, and
we get ourselves into trouble in terms of apparent lack of
consistency and lack of balance when we don't do it because,
when we don't do it, we lose our way. When we don't do it
and we redress it, people say we don't have balance, that we
. 75
are somehow swinging the pendulum too far the other way, and
all it had to do with is whether we were consistently in a
consistent way using what tools we already had, that is,
even as we talk about the need or no need to develop more
tools.
So that is the thing that strikes me in all of
this, is that if we have tools available to us and we don't
use them and things get out of whack, to bring them back
seems to be so very difficult, and it strikes me that yes,
we should be dealing with the resource demands on the
Commission and the licensees for a full program,
particularly with respect to the longer-term actions, but
there is no need not to get on with most of the short-term
things.
The only thing I would add is I agree with
Commissioner Diaz that the connection of what ties licensing
basis, design basis, and FSAR together is inspection and
assessment, and in the end, our enforcing our own
regulations.
So, unless there are some additional comments, we
are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:40 p.m., the briefing was
adjourned.]
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