2005 Transcript[805]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION +++++ BRIEFING ON OFFICE OF NUCLEAR REACTOR REGULATION (NRR) PROGRAMS, PERFORMANCE AND PLANS +++++ WEDNESDAY APRIL 20, 2005 +++++ The Commission met in open session, pursuant to notice, Commissioner Nils Diaz, Chairman of the Commission, presiding. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: NILS J. DIAZ Chairman of the Commission EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR. Member of the Commission JEFFREY S. MERRIFIELD GREGORY B. JACZKO PETER B. LYONS Member of the Commission Member of the Commission Member of the Commission (This transcript produced from electronic caption media and audio and video media provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.) -2- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 STAFF AND PRESENTERS: SUZANNE BLACK, NRR/ADPT/DSSA JIM DYER, Director, NRR ELLIS MERSCHOFF, DEDO WILLIAM KANE, DEDO BRIAN SHERON, Associate Director, NRR CYNTHIA CARPENTER, NRR/PMAS -3- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S CHAIRMAN DIAZ: The Commission is very pleased today to be meeting with NRR. We're going to find out a lot of good things this afternoon, I hope. And, if not, well I leave it to my fellow Commissioners to make it known that you guys were actually just meeting just to let us know how you're doing. But, no, we know that you've been doing good. We know that you have a very challenging program. You have been working not only on the reactor oversight program, which is what everybody thinks we do. We've got a tremendous amount of licensing actions, we have the Davis-Besse Lessons Learned. We have issues of grid stability, plant agents, materials degradation. I could go on for a little while, but then I will take most of your time. I don't want to do that. I think because of the higher level and broader scope and nature of this meeting, I think it does provide us with a good forum for discussing the excellence in management that needs to be applied at every level in NRR, which is our largest office, and our most complex office. And the issue of also accountability that management is asking from everybody, the issue of timeliness, and many of the issues that we are confronting becomes very, very important. -4- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Commissioners. any comments. I think starting this meeting with a discussions of NRR's mission, Human Capital is appropriate, because I know that's why you met your challenges. With that, I'd like to see if my fellow Commissioners have MR. KANE: Good afternoon, Chairman, Commissioners. We're very pleased to be here today to brief you on NRR programs. I am filling in for Luis Reyes, our Executive Director for Operations who could not be here today because of some significant personal business. Joining with me at the table are Ellis Merschoff, our Deputy Executive Director for Reactor Programs, and the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Team. At this point I'll turn the presentation over to Jim Dyer. MR. DYER: Thank you, Bill. Good afternoon, Chairman, COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: Could I just -- it's very good business, the personal business that the EDO is on. I think he's marrying a child. MR. KANE: Yes, that is correct. COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: thing. It's no crisis. MR. DYER: All right. Thank you, Chairman, So, this is a good Commissioners. With me from the NRR team here today is Dr. Brian -5- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Sheron, who is the Associate Director for Project Licensing and Technical Analysis. And, to my right is Cindy Carpenter, who is our Director of Program Management Policy Development Planning Staff. And also, next to Brian is Suzie Black, the Director of the Division of Systems Safety and Systems Analysis, or DSSA. Who is not here is Bill Borchardt, my Deputy Director who is still leading the efforts in Vienna on the Convention on Nuclear Safety, in particular the ongoing peer review activities. Can I get slide two please? Slides two and three are a list of acronyms. As we went through the presentation, I've tried very hard not to over-utilize acronyms. I'm getting better Commissioner. But SECY still warns us we need to put them in here just in case we deviate. So, they're here. Slide four, please. This is the agenda for today's presentation. The first five topics, as the Chairman initiated, really are -- I'll take the lead for the first five topics, which are the management excellence areas and international programs. And then Brian Sheron will present our major program accomplishments and challenges. I note that we briefed the Commission five times since last November on various technical topics, including plant aging and materials degradation, the Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force items, various reactor safety and licensing issues, and most -6- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 recently nuclear fuel performance and a briefing on the status of the new reactor program. Additionally, next week we are scheduled to brief you on grid reliability. And then, after the Agency Action Review meeting, we'll provide an oversight of the review of the reactor oversight program. So, we developed this agenda to try to give you a status update on a lot of the key programs we've discussed before and avoid some of the issues that I know -- topics that we were going to be covering in the near future. But, as usual, I brought my management team behind me. So, if you have questions on anything that we didn't cover, we're ready. Next slide, please, slide five. Let me start off with the NRR Mission Statement. And, collectively, NRR developed a Mission Statement in the past year to help improve our organizational effectiveness by articulating what we do and how we do it. It identifies what part of the NRC mission that NRR has responsibility. That is for protecting public health and safety and the environment, and for the reactor programs, non-power reactors, and the power reactor programs. It doesn't include activities in the materials and the waste areas, or involve security directly in our Mission Statement. However, we recognize that we need to make the connection with those areas to be successful. -7- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 It also identifies how we do it by developing and implementing four programs for the reactor area. The first is rulemaking or developing reactor regulations. The second is licensing or issuing permits to qualified parties for the safe construction and operation of a reactor. The third area we identified is oversight or the activities to ensure compliance with our regulations and licenses as well as providing feedback on the effectiveness of those regulations and licenses to see whether we have adequate coverage for reactor activities. And lastly, and maybe most importantly, is incident response, for those activities where we work with the licensees and Federal, State, and local government organizations, to respond to a plant when it's in an upset condition. Each of these programs is governed by a different process with different internal and external stakeholders who we must work with for success. Our Mission Statement also identifies our goal to conduct these activities in a manner that develops trust. I once read in a management book that trust is developed through character and competence. In NRR we demonstrate character by conducting our duties consistent with the NRC values. And we demonstrate competence by delivering on our commitments, most importantly our operating plan and strategic plan goals. -8- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Collectively, these activities contribute -- are the activities that govern -- attributes that govern our daily activities, our awards programs, and our communications with both internal and external stakeholders. Slide six, please. The NRR Human Capital Action Plan was first developed in June of 2002 and is now used as an integral part of our operating plan. The overall objective of the plan is to get the right people with the right skills and the right job at the right time. As has been discussed in several earlier Commission meetings, this is quite a challenge given the demographics and demanding environments that we work in right now. In NRR, Bill Borchardt, my deputy, leads extensive monthly meetings with all deputy division directors and Cindy Carpenter to review office progress in the key areas of the NRR Human Capital Action Plan. One of those areas is striving for strategic alignment. Just as developing the NRR Mission Statement helped us to align our office with its role within the NRC Mission, each division, branch, and section has also developed a Mission Statement that identifies their contribution to the NRR and NRC Mission. We also have an ongoing initiative to clarify the roles and responsibilities within each level of the NRR organization. Collectively, these efforts have provided a valuable input into our organization to -9- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 approve alignment and review organizational options to accommodate long-term shifts in our work load, such as the emerging work with new reactors, potential emerging work with new reactors, or declining responsibilities, such as when we transferred emergency preparedness the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response. We have also developed a functioning, centralized work planning center for much of our work to improve our accountability and provide improved estimates for future work projections. These estimates are critical for the input to the NRC Strategic Workforce Planning to identify our potential demands of the future. This same center has improved our workforce utilization by allowing us to identify and adjust for short-term changes in our workload. When emergent work calls for redirection of specific NRR resources, such as the case when security plan review teams were formed last year, we are now able to identify the displaced work, and adjust our operating planned commitments as we did last year. As a result of these activities, we now have a much better -- we refer to as the add-shed process to identify what we will not be able to accomplish when higher priority work emerges during the execution year. Additionally, as Carl Paperiello discussed with you during his Research office program review, we are also working with Research to improve knowledge management. -10- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 For NRR that includes working on a Standard Review Plan update, developing a qualification program for our key technical positions, such as project managers, health physicists, and technical reviewers, the various technical reviewers, capturing knowledge through handbooks and training guides such as the Project Manager's Handbook, and utilizing web-based information forums such as our Operating Experience database and our community forum for inspectors. Slide seven, please. Communications was identified in the 2002 Office of Inspector General cultural survey as an NRR area for improvement, both directly and as it contributed to other areas for improvement. As with the rest of the NRC, we have focused on this area, and it seems that the more we learn, the more we need to improve. In 2004 we hired a professional communications assistant reporting to me, conducted an internal assessment of our communication activities, and developed a communication program with initiatives to improve both our internal and external communications. We provided this plan to all NRR staff as part of our rollout of the NRC Strategic Plan and the NRR Mission Statement. Internal face-to-face communications with the entire NRR office of 600 people at one time is difficult at best. NRR divisions hold periodic meetings and office level managers attend these meetings occasionally to provide face-to-face opportunities for the Staff. -11- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 To compensate, NRR uses the "Have I Got News For You" newsletter that is distributed internally to all its staff. And we have a very active NRR internal website to highlight our accomplishments, get information to the Staff and introduce new staff members to the rest of the office. To get feedback, we've created an email talk-back system features for employees to respond with questions and comments to the information we've provided. We have also initiated an office level non-concurrence procedure to provide a constructive mechanism to air differing views. Bill Borchardt is alerted to all non-concurrence and assures descending views are given due consideration without any retribution to the submitter. To improve our communications with external stakeholders, NRR has aggressively implemented communication plans for significant activities, and conducted public outreaches for key program activities such as early site permits, power uprates, and license renewals, as well as sensitive rulemaking activities. The NRR communications assistant also provides constructive feedback to managers and staff on the conduct of all our major meetings. performance today. Overall, we are utilizing all tools that we can to best improve our availabilities to communicate with both our staff and our As a matter of record, he will be critiquing my -12- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 external stakeholders by providing information and listening to their feedback. Slide eight, please. For international activities within the office of NRR our primary purpose for NRR's international activities is to obtain operating experience. We also contribute our experience to the other country's programs. There are more than 340 operating power reactors outside of the United States. Most of the international operating experience is potentially applicable to our reactors. As we learned with Davis-Besse, this is an area that we needed to focus on and improve our understanding of what's going on outside of our borders. In addition, the regulatory approaches used by other foreign regulators may be of benefit for NRC to consider either in a confirmation of what we do, or looking at new insights as we have with the oversight of safety conscience work environment. So, accordingly, the international activities are very valuable in assisting us with fulfilling our oversight program and the NRR mission. Last week the United States presented, at the Convention of Nuclear Safety, the third national report meeting -recognize Commissioner Merrifield was there with the EDO. -13- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 And, as I said earlier, Bill Borchardt's presence -- he's there this week. The NRC's participation in this convention is an important part of our goal of promoting nuclear safety worldwide. It has also acted as an international peer review of the regulatory programs for the NRC. And we find it to be quite valuable. NRC's reactor licensees can also benefit directly from our international colleagues by hosting the Operational Safety Assessment Review Team, or OSART. Next month, Brunswick Nuclear Station will be hosting an OSART. The NRR staff has been working with the Office of International Programs and the licensee to make sure this is -- and the International Atomic Energy Agency -- to make sure this is a successful undertaking that we can learn as much as possible from. NRR also gained significantly from our regular bilateral, regulatory, and safety information exchanges. We conduct these with a number of countries predominantly each year, up to 12 countries each year, and some of them every two to three years. Access to the foreign operating experience is readily available from our international counterparts. Early and more detailed access of this experimental information is enhanced by these bilateral exchanges. I would note that next month Suzie Black will be leading a delegation to Japan where we hope to get good information on control -14- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 rod drive nozzle cracking and their construction inspection program as we exchange with our risk informed regulation program. Slide nine, please. I think, to complete my part of management excellence presentation, I'll talk a little bit to some of the streamlining and efficiencies that the Office of NRR has recently undertaken. In addition to some of the process improvements to our programs that Brian Sheron will discuss later, we have sunsetted two programs, and are working to streamline others. We recently sunsetted the license renewal steering committee, which was originally established in 1998 to provide a forum for industry and NRC Staff exchanges on the development of this new program. Effectively, at the beginning of this year, in February of this year, this committee was dissolved. Both the Industry and the NRC came to the conclusion that this is a well working program that doesn't need this oversight. We have also sunsetted the reactor operating experience task force, which was originally established in April of 2003. That was after the Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force report recommended major changes to this program. When we came up in November of 2003 we developed an action plan. And, in March, we established an effort to develop a clearinghouse effect for the operating experience. -15- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 In January the program was put into a pilot implementation with the issuance of our draft management directive and our governing office procedures. And so, at that point we made a decision to sunset the operating experience task force report. The Staff was also reviewing our internal information needs. The one thing that we recognized as we went through our self-assessment was the communications within NRR between the EDO's office and the Commission and all our stakeholders, we are very redundant and diverse. We have several programs of communications vehicles which duplicate, such as the Director's Quarterly Status Report, and our monthly Significant Topics Report. I have tasked Cindy Carpenter with looking at all these reports, looking at all the directions they go in, who the stakeholders are, and seeking to streamline them, come up with a common format and look to make them available online to the extent that we can so that we can cut down on the number of reports that we repeatedly change every month. Lastly, as I spoke earlier, in the Human Capital, the centralized work planning initiative was initially developed to improve our accountability. However, we are advancing this centralized work planning initiative to aid more effective use of office resources, better -16- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 predictability of work process and continued improvement in our overall work process. And we've seen this as the accountability and the scheduling are more strictly accounted for. At this point let me turn the presentation over to Brian Sheron to talk about some of our programs. DR. SHERON: Thank you. In licensing -- I'm sorry, next slide, please, slide ten. In licensing we are on target to support the Agency's performance goals. We are on track to complete 1,500 licensing actions this year. As you know, security plan reviews in fiscal years 2004 caused deferral of some licensing actions to fiscal year 2005, and a slight relaxation of our timeliness metric. While we generally have delivered on our timeliness metric, we are improving our performance metrics to increase our reliability and responsiveness. We continue to give priority to license amendments associated with power operates and outages and safety significant licensing actions. Two years ago NRR performed a Program Assessment Rating Tool evaluation, or PART, of the inspection program. This year we are conducting a PART evaluation with support from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and other officers of the reactor licensing program, an effort which serves to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of our program. -17- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Consistent with the Commission's policy statements on technical specifications and the use of probabilistic risk assessments, the Staff and the industry are developing risk informed improvements to the current system of technical specifications. Two initiatives have been approved and six are being developed. We are also assessing the results of the regulatory impact survey conducted by Brookhaven National Laboratory, which surveyed managers at power plants. The survey found that 60 percent of responders expressed satisfaction with our regulatory performance. While the overall results are positive, some concerns were raised about the timeliness of licensing actions and a number of requests for additional information. Efforts are underway to examine both issues and, if appropriate, address the industry's concern. For example, in conjunction with the Nuclear Energy Institute Licensing Action Task Force, we are evaluating the request for additional information process. There are also some challenges in our licensing program. We recognize that we need to improve the Agency's integration of security requirements into the licensing process. We have a process in place for that integration, but we need to implement it. In December we formed a safety security interface advisory panel and working group to ensure safety security interface issues are appropriately considered in NRR and NSIR processes. -18- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 With regard to the licensing process, the working group and panel have the responsibility to develop a screening process for use by project managers and technical review staff to identify any aspects of license amendments that could involve security implications. Next slide, please. I'm now going to talk about power uprates. The subset of licensing actions is power uprates, which we briefly addressed at our December Commission meeting. To date, the Staff has approved 105 power uprates that have added the equivalent of approximately four large nuclear units to the Nation's electric generating capacity. I want to point out the slide says 104. We just recently approved Waterford since these slides were made and sent up. So, there's one change. Most recently we approved the Waterford extended power uprate of eight percent. This was the first application in which the Staff used the guidance document Review Standard for Extended Power Uprates. Currently there are 11 power uprate applications under review. And the Staff expects to receive 28 additional applications over the next five years. As you know, the focus of our review of power uprate applications has been and will continue to be on safety. There are some challenges in this area. -19- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 The Industry has experienced isolated incidents of steam dryer cracking, loose parts generation, and flow-induced vibration problems at plants with extended power uprates. The NRC Staff has taken appropriate regulatory action in response to this issue. And we will take additional regulatory action as necessary to ensure safety. We are also following the Industry's evaluations of a problem that some plants have experience using ultrasonic flow meters for measurement uncertainty recapture power uprates. With regard to future and ongoing activities, the Staff will be evaluating the review standard for extended power uprates and updating it as appropriate. As we gain experience with its use, we will make the appropriate changes to the power uprate program to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Moving to another program which is addressing challenges, the research and test reactors program is expected to receive ten new reactor re-licensing applications between now and fiscal year 2007. This will necessitate increasing staffing and technical assistance funding. We've established a 48 month goal for completing a reactor re-licensing review. Next slide, please. Reactor licensing renewal -- license renewal for power reactors continues to be a highly successful program, -20- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 but completing the review of renewal applications on schedule continues to be a challenge on staff resources due to the timing of submittals. To date we have issued renewed licenses for 30 reactors at 17 sites, all on or ahead of schedule. We currently have under review applications to review the licenses for 18 reactors at ten sites. Thus, approximately one half of the operating plants in the U.S. have either received or submitted applications for renewed license. To ensure quality applications we have stringent requirements on the content of applications submitted and perform thorough acceptance reviews of the applications. Although there have been problems with two recent applications, the majority of applications submitted have been of acceptable quality. We completed the three pilot applications of the onsite audits for aging management reviews that are consistent with the Generic Aging Lessons Learned Report. The audit process has improved communication and reduced the number of requests for additional information. Both the applicants and the Staff believe that the audit process has been beneficial and has made the reviews more efficient and effective. Lessons learned from the pilot audits are being implemented by the Staff and applicants for the current license renewal applications. The Staff is implementing process improvements to further increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the license renewal program. -21- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Lessons learned from the review of license renewal applications and from industry input were incorporated into draft updates of the license renewal implementation guidance documents that were made available for public comment on January 30, 2005. A public workshop was held in March to discuss the updates and receive comments. The final documents are scheduled to be issued by September 30, 2005 after resolution of comments received. In summary, the license renewal program continues to meet established schedules for license renewal reviews. We are continuing to work to improve the process to achieve greater efficiencies. Next slide, please. We'll now talk about rulemaking accomplishments. During our program review briefing in October 2003 we discussed our revised approach for rulemaking in which we would develop the technical basis and obtain stakeholder input before initiating rulemaking. We have been following this approach for newly initiated rulemakings. A good example is the rulemaking that appends 10 CFR 50.55a to update the latest American Society of Mechanical Engineering Codes and Standards. However, there are instances where it has been necessary to conduct these steps, that is technical basis and rule language development, in parallel, such as the recent proposed rule for 10 CFR 50.46. -22- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 We continue to consider that rulemaking is best served when the technical basis is well informed, peer reviewed, and publicly vetted prior to entering the rulemaking process. This sequential process allows for better resource management and scheduler discipline. However, we remain flexible to consider other options to best serve the Agency and ours stakeholders. I'd like to highlight some recent successes in the rulemaking area. This slide lists the higher priority proposed and final rulemakings that have been completed in the past year. The rules provide for risk informed performance-based alternatives consistent with our strategic plan. Other lower priority rulemakings recently completed have been provided to you. Two of these recent rulemakings relate to fire protection, which I will discuss later under that topic. Of the others, one is the 10 CFR 50.69 final rule that provides licensees with a voluntary alternative to comply with selected deterministic requirements in the regulations with respect to design, quality assurance, construction, and operation. The rulemaking permits licensees to redefine the scope of systems, structures, and components that are subject to the special treatment requirements using risk-informed criteria set forth in the amended rule. Pilot activities are under way with Surrey and Wolf Creek expected to submit applications in mid-2005 to implement the risk informed alternative in 50.69. -23- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Additionally, we recently sent to the Commission a proposed revision to 10 CFR 50.46, also known as the emergency core cooling system rule, that allows a risk informed treatment of break size for loss of coolant accident analysis. Next slide, please. We do have some challenges in the rulemaking area. In the upcoming months the Commission can expect to receive several complex, and in some instances controversial rulemaking packages. We plan to deliver on schedule in June a proposed rule on Part 26, Fitness-For-Duty. The rule would revise Part 26 substantially with respect to both drug and alcohol testing and would add requirements related to work fatigue. We are working with the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response on reactor security rulemakings to align our regulations with issued orders and to use the rulemaking process to obtain stakeholder input with the proposed rule for design-basis threat scheduled for June as well. Finally, the Staff is preparing a proposed rule to amend Part 52, early site permits, standard design certifications and combined licenses for nuclear power plants to take into account experience from the previous design certification rulemakings. As we discussed at the April 6th New Site and Reactor Licensing Commission Briefing, with regard to regulatory stability, the -24- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 current Part 52 is considered sufficient to proceed with any new reactor licensing. But the proposed changes would enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. Next slide, please. I'm now going to talk about fire protection activities. Fire protection has been a challenging area over a long period due to numerous regulatory and technical issues. The Commission was briefed on the status of the major fire protection program activities last December. The Staff has also made several major advances in each of our major activities during the past few months. The risk-informed performance-based fire protection rule alternative was issued in July of 2004. Public meetings were held in January and February of this year to discuss stakeholder comments on the regulatory guidance in support of this alternative. The Staff and the Nuclear Energy Institute are on a path to endorse NEI-04-02, and will finalize development of the Regulatory Guide in late summer of 2005. Representing a major licensing action on February 28th, Duke Energy provided a Letter of Intent to adopt the risk-informed alternative in 10 CFR 50.48, which allows use of the National Fire Protection Association 805 Standard for all of their plants. -25- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 For post-fire safe shut-down circuit analysis, revision to the Regulatory Issues Summary 2004-003 as issued this past December, which informed licensees of the restart of circuit inspections and the enforcement discretion available for circuit findings until December 2005. The regions restarted circuit inspections using the riskinformed guidance this past January. We are taking steps to endorse industry guidance while we continue to clarify compliance expectations in this area. Currently the Staff is preparing a new Regulatory Issue Summary to formerly document and clarify fire protection terminology and ensure consistent interpretation among the operating reactor fleet. Additionally, the Staff intends to issue the appropriate generic communication to resolve concerns related to the term "one at a time" with respect to its application to associated circuit failures. The Staff will invoke the compliance exception to the backfit process as needed to ensure licensees are in compliance with Agency regulations in this area. The proposed rule on operator manual actions was published last month. And the public comment period lasts until late May. A public meeting is scheduled for April 27th to further solicit stakeholder comments. The Staff will address public comments under the overall direction provided by the Commission Staff Requirements Memorandum on the proposed rule. -26- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 The Staff looks to improve fire protection safety through continued progress in risk informing our fire protection activities, communicating clearly with our stakeholders, and by effectively managing any emerging issues. For example, the recent fire test performed on the Hemyc fire barrier system revealed some configurations of concern. The Staff is resolving the non-compliances associated with this issue using regulatory tools such as the Information Notice and, if necessary, a Generic Letter. Next slide, please. I'm going to talk about Generic Safety Issue 191. I would like to touch on the key technical issues in resolving Generic Safety Issue 191, assessment of debris accumulation on pressurized water reactor sump performance. The Staff issued Bulletin 2003-01, potential impact of debris blockage on emergency sump recirculation at PWRs, in June of 2003 asking licensees to confirm compliance with existing applicable regulatory requirements or describe any compensatory measures implemented to reduce the potential risk due to post-accident debris blockage until evaluations to confirm compliance are completed. From the responses to the Bulletin and the requests for additional information, the Staff has concluded that plants are implementing interim compensatory measures to reduce risk of operation while permanent solutions are being analyzed. -27- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 The Staff has also reviewed the first of two responses to Generic Letter 2004-02, potential impact of debris blockage on a emergency recirculation during design basis accidents of pressurized water reactors. This letter requested licensees to perform an evaluation of the emergency core cooling system and containment spray system recirculation functions and, if appropriate, take additional actions to ensure system function. Generic Letter 2004-02 required responses by March, identifying the methodology used in their analysis and responses by September identifying the results of their sump analyses, their intended sump modifications and the schedule for their completion. The final Generic Letter responses are due from all 69 pressurized water reactor plants in September of 2005. From the review of these responses, a sample of plants will be chosen for a more detailed staff evaluation. Although the industry guidance and the Staff safety evaluation provide an acceptable approach that should facilitate consistency, we anticipate that the very plant specific features and a range of corrective actions selected, will require considerable staff effort. In addition, despite the substantial experience and information base regarding PWR sump performance, deficiencies in data and knowledge do exist in certain technical areas, for example, codings, -28- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 chemical precipitation, and downstream effects. The Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research has ongoing and planned testing in these areas. Licensees have been strongly advised to provide sufficient margin in any design modifications they propose to account for these uncertainties. The Staff will continue to communicate the results of additional RES activities to industry as testing is completed. In the interim, the Staff will continue to deal with licensee-specific performance deficiencies such as degraded codings. Next slide, please. I'll talk about Operating Experience now. At the time of the Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force briefing last December, we were in the final stages of launching our new Operating Experience Program. The new program was implemented on January 1, 2005, and is codified in draft Management Directive 8.7, which will be used on a trial basis for one year to receive feedback and make adjustments. All of the Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force Operating Experience action items have been completed. Also, a 2004 audit of the Operating Experience Program conducted by the Office of the Inspector General provided a number of recommendations that have been resolved. One audit recommendation to issue Management Directive 8.7 will be fully implemented following the one year trial use of the draft Management Directive. -29- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 As discussed in the December Commission briefing, the cornerstone of the new Operating Experience Program is the clearinghouse, which serves as a single organization to collect, make available and communicate and manage the evaluation and application of Lessons Learned from operating experience. We plan to strengthen the interface between the clearinghouse and other technical organizations, including the regional offices. At present, all four regions in NRR are participating in an operating experience benchmarking task group to review regional practices associated with operating experience and to identify best practices which can be used by the regions to implement consistent regional programs. In the near future we plan to create teams of technical staff that will automatically receive and systematically assess operational data in their specialized areas to identify trends and recommend action accordingly. In the international community I am the NRC Senior Management Representative on a Nuclear Energy Agency's committee for nuclear regulatory activity senior level task group on regulatory challenges in using operating experience. This group will meet for the first time in May to examine ways to improve the collection analysis and use of operational experience data. This completes my part of the presentation. I would now like to turn it back over to Jim. -30- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MR. DYER: Thank you Brian. Slide 18 please. Chairman and Commissioners, we've gone through a lot of information in a short period of time. In our presentation we identified a number of future policy issues. Obviously there are several rulemaking activities that Brian described, as well as some of the activities that may come about because of our new reactor activities and plans in that area. We have no shortage of challenges, as you can see. These challenges I break down fall into three areas. challenges in the area of planning. We have the emerging issues in the security area that we are working closely with the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response as well as more on a longer term the uncertainty as to what's going to happen with the new reactor area. We also have technical challenges as Brian described, certainly with the power uprate program, the GSI-191 sump issues, and some of the fire protection emerging issues. And lastly we have concerns that we fall into the Human Capital area. Obviously we have an aging workforce that we're looking at succession planning and knowledge transfer as well as emerging skills and changing skills as the NRC becomes more advanced in the nuclear reactor oversight and review areas. Having acknowledged these challenges, NRR has developed a number of approaches to address them, as I said earlier. In One, are key -31- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 coordination with the Office of Research, Nuclear Security and Incident Response, and our NRC Staff Offices, we have emphasized our commitment to safety and continuous improvement in our overall approach to our duties and responsibilities. This completes my part of the presentation. I'll turn it back over to Bill. MR. KANE: That completes the Staff's presentation. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Thank you, Bill, Jim, Brian. I appreciate the presentation. And, of course, we appreciate the work that you do. And I think today is Commissioner Lyons' turn to go first. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Thank you. And thanks to all of you for a very, very good briefing. The first couple of questions I have would be more in the area of, Brian, that you just discussed. You mentioned Hemyc and the use at 11 plants. Would you just help me understand a little bit better where in the application of a technology like Hemyc do we do this testing? I'm curious that we're testing it now that it's installed in 11 plants. And why not sooner? Or were we relying on other data, or I just curious. MS. BLACK: Let me answer. Actually, there was testing of this material over 20 years ago. But the test standards have changed and we have learned additional information through the thermolag testing. -32- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 And so, we understood that there were different materials in use. Thermolag was the one we went after first because it was used in most applications. And then we had Kaowool. And then this was just the NRR plan, the next process we did. We asked the industry to test it. And they wanted to stand behind their current test reports. And so we had to take it on as an agency. It's kind of a burden of proof of whether the material was good enough or not. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Well, it just strikes me as unfortunate to find out now. But I'm sure it strikes you that way too. MR. MERSCHOFF: Actually, Commissioner, I think The industry is that's a real success for the Research program. responsible for the testing and assuring that this component is acceptable for use. We were doing confirmatory testing and found a significant lapse there. Now, we can and need to go back to the decisions that were made by the industry to employ it in the field. But, I think Research scored a homerun here in terms of doing the testing and finding the problem. COMMISSIONER LYONS: comment on license renewals. Okay, thank you. A Certainly a very, very impressive performance, all kinds of kudos on that. But I think also it's probably kudos due on the point that you emphasized that there have been two -33- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 recent instances where concerns have been expressed in a renewal application and the Commission has acted appropriately. And I hope that's sending a very strong message to industry that these renewal applications have to be treated very carefully, very seriously, and will be treated thus by your team. So, on the one hand, a very, very impressive performance on the numbers and the timeliness. But I couldn't help thinking that also very impressive performance on identifying the occasional outliers and saying so. On the power uprates, I was curious if you could expand a little bit on progress that we maybe make, that I hope we're making on understanding some of the vibration issues in the steam dryer cracking like has been observed at Quad Cities recently. Is there a path through this to better understand this issue? MR. SHERON: Yes. We have been working very closely with the industry, both with General Electric since these failures have mostly occurred in boiling water reactors. I think they have all occurred in boiling water reactors, the cracking. They are working to try and improve their analysis methods for predicting the loads on the dryers so they can determine where the high stress points are and make design modifications accordingly. Most recently, Exelon, in replacing the steam dryers in Quad Cities Unit 2, has instrumented the dryers. They put a number of -34- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 string gauges and accelerometers within, I think, the dryer assembly, as well as on the steam line -- all designed to get data to help confirm the analysis methods. And the approach then is to try and get confirmation of the analysis methods such that we can now predict these in the future so that when licensees design their new dryers they'll be able to get the loads correctly, put in the right stiffeners and get the right strengths so that we would avoid the cracking. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Is it anticipated that the problem is going to boil down to something like stiffeners in the right place or perhaps heavier gauges as opposed to -- I can't imagine what else it could be, but could it be more something more fundamental? MR. SHERON: Well, it may just be the nature of a certain type of dryer. We've only seen this cracking in the square hood dryers, which are the older ones. The plants that have the newer, the slant hood or the rounded hood dryers have not seen the cracking. So it may just be unique -- we just don't know yet -- to this kind of dryer. But we're hoping that, with the analysis methods, that will help confirm why we're seeing it in this one kind of dryer. COMMISSIONER LYONS: On the license amendments, you mentioned the research reactors, which are kind of a subject of great interest to me personally. -35- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 to limited -about? I think they play a very, very critical role in the overall educational process across the country. In fact, I'll be visiting the University of Missouri next week and their research reactor. But I was curious on one particular comment that just confused me. In the text there's a statement that the FY '05 target -- this is with regard to RTR licensing actions -- that the FY '05 target may not be achieved due to limited inventory. And I couldn't understand what inventory are we talking MR. DYER: Commissioner, I think we were looking at -I think that might have -- I can't remember the exact title. We didn't have that many in. We didn't have that many submittals in for whatever the particular licensing category that we were measuring in our operating plan. I can get back to you on the exact details of that. COMMISSIONER LYONS: So that's what the reference MR. DYER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER LYONS: I'm sorry, okay. I was just very puzzled by that. MR. DYER: We estimated that we would have such a demand from the industry, and, in fact, we didn't have that demand in that particular area. -36- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 COMMISSIONER LYONS: Okay. That makes a lot of sense, now that you say it that way. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: The English might not be right, but -(Laughter.) COMMISSIONER LYONS: A question on the Human Capital area, which I applaud you for. I've been very, very impressed with what I've seen throughout the NRC in this area. And you mentioned a similar program within Carl Paperiello's area in Research. I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about how these activities you're doing, Carl's doing, is HR involved in coordination? Or how are you folks coordinating these across the agency? You did refer to some coordination. But, could you expand on that a little bit? MR. DYER: Yes, sir. I think -- and I'll let Cindy pick up the details of it. Carl and I talked initially about where we have the similar needs. And we wanted to come up with a consistent program. So, as Carl described the knowledge transfer process that he was very focused on, actually, as we were starting up our program, Carl came over and explained Research's. He made a presentation to the Executive Team and the Leadership Team, and NRR, and had all the references. And he had done a lot of work on it. -37- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 And we chose to follow much in his footsteps in the same kinds of programs as far as the knowledge transfer goes. But, at the same time, we have different -- what I would say software packages, such as the Standard Review Plan that Research doesn't have, such as the training and qual guides that would be different for our types of personnel. So I don't -- Cindy if you -MS. CARPENTER: And the Office of HR is involved in this also. There is an expert knowledge interview that they're doing. And I know the Office of Research is involved in that, and so is NRR. And so, we're following what Research is doing. And they are following what we are doing. And so, we're trying to coordinate. But, we do have other needs also. So, we're trying to get out ahead of all of this. COMMISSIONER LYONS: I think that's very positive. And I might mention that, when Commissioner Jaczko and I were down on the Hill for our confirmation hearing or whatever you want to call the hearing -(Laughter.) COMMISSIONER LYONS: But, in any case, for our hearing today. Yes, it may have been a get-to-know-you hearing. In any case, there were at least a couple of Senators who addressed issues with Human Capital and expressed great interest, great support, strong enthusiasm for the types of activities going on within NRC, and also interest in the legislative vehicles that are now pending, which hopefully will also help in this area. -38- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 stop? they finish. MR. DYER: In his absence, I have to give a lot of credit to Bill Borchardt. He really drives the program in NRR. Those monthly meetings are -- whatever they are -- the first Monday. And it's blocked out the calendar from two o'clock until And sometimes that's around six o'clock. And they go through a very thick notebook full of agenda items that's maintained by Cindy's staff. COMMISSIONER LYONS: One more? Or should I CHAIRMAN DIAZ: You can do one more. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Okay. On the communications program, certainly I'm very, very impressed with the number of different vehicles that you discussed and the much improved or greater emphasis on communications, both inward and outward, very, very positive. But it also strikes me that the next step after improved communication is to be sure, if you will, that those communications are being used effectively and that they're resulting in increased collaboration, more efficient work relationships. So, on the one hand, I congratulate you on the communications. But I'm just wondering if you're starting to see benefits of that emphasis on communications in some of the other work processes. -39- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MR. DYER: I think from my perspective, where we've seen the most benefit is what I would call rumor control. We get the message out before the message comes back to us about what your motives are, what your plans are, and what's going on within the office. That's been the value of a lot of these communication plans, is when we implement something we don't get the message out piece meal or that. And, as far as working together, I think -- and I'll give credit Sam Collins. He initiated this team, this leadership team, which is the division directors within the office. And they meet for planning purposes. And so, to develop a plan, the leadership develops a plan, the divisions execute it. And so I think that's -- I came in and I haven't noticed a significant change. But that effort, I was very impressed with in overall the way NRR conducts its business. MR. MERSCHOFF: If I can add one thought to that, the IG will be beginning their third of a culture survey for the NRC. That has a communications dimension to it. And that will provide us some measurable results of these communication efforts that we can compare to 1998, 2002, and 2005. COMMISSIONER LYONS: That should be interesting. And that really was the kind of point I was trying to get to, that the communications are certainly very, very important. -40- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 But the reason for the communications is to facilitate the other work processes. And hopefully that will show in the survey. Thank you. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Thank you Mr. Lyons. Let me start with the Mission Statement. You commented that you have a Mission Statement and then every office has a Mission Statement. I am bound to believe that you have used this Mission Statement to clarify the roles of each one of the offices and make sure that each one of them fits into each other and eventually results in your overall Mission Statement. MR. DYER: Yes, sir. I think the interesting thing is we've gone through this cascading down of Mission Statements, is where we find out we duplicated effort. That's one of the things that we're looking for. And I think the -- I reviewed each of the divisions all the way down to the section chief statement. Identifying -- I think your term -- interconnectivity, where we have reached out and particularly where we're interfacing with Research, and identify how we can do that better, and centralize it, and look at what we need to do. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: So, you're Mission Statements and the way they cascade down actually do help you to improve accountability and connectivity. -41- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Okay. Right. On the issue of communications, you know, I've beaten you enough on that issue. But, if you want to look at slide nine -- you don't need to look at it now. But, it's, I think somebody went a little bit outside of the scope. And it says review of internal information. You actually mean review of internal communication, don't you? MR. DYER: Slide nine? Oh, yes, sir. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: All right. Then I got it. No problem. In the issue of power uprates and we talk about license renewals and Commissioner Lyons already mentioned the fact that we are very, very serious about the quality of the applications. And we have been running a little late on some of the power uprates because of the quality of the applications. Are we sending the same message to the licensees that fundamentally where there's a power uprate, we realize some of them don't have the same safety significance as standard power rates that the quality of the application is a very important issue, because it would allow us to do things very well, put safety in the right place and within a timely manner. MR. DYER: Yes, sir. I think one of the things we've done as a result of the lessons learned as the first license renewal package that we couldn't approve it, and in fact, at the time we finally made that decision, we'd already realized we were going to miss our timeliness metric, our goal for 22 months for the review. -42- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 And, as a result of that, we went back and started -we're taking a systematic look at all our licensing actions. Do we have clear acceptance criteria? Are they communicated to the licensees? And do we live by them? And, in particular, the Waterford 3 package, we're doing a lessons learned on that. It took longer than we anticipated. I can't remember how long it was. It was the first time we used the new review standard for an extended power uprate. And we significantly over-expended our planned resources to accomplish that review. And so, one of the things that we need to do is to go look back. But we have taken that going forward. And at the point now, it's important that we do the acceptance review. And it's during that, you know, 30 day period when we're reviewing that we used to just have a checklist. Did they address? Now we're taking it to the next step and saying up-front does it technically make sense? Is it something we can work for. And we need to, of course, communicate that with the industry and provide that feedback when we get it. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: I think it is a very important issue, because timeliness is not only, you know, what we do, but it depends on the quality and thoroughness, completeness of the application so we can address every issue, especially every safety issue. -43- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Talk a little bit about one of my favorite subjects, fire. Our we there yet? (Laughter.) CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Are we getting closer? MS. BLACK: Of course. MR. SHERON: We are getting closer. (Laughter.) CHAIRMAN DIAZ: You are getting closer. Let me put a checkmark in here. MS. BLACK: Do you want more detail? COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: Is the rate of getting closer this or this? COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Suzie, you may want to bring that microphone a little closer to you. MS. BLACK: Okay. I think this year we have the new risk informed rule. We have at least one licensee expressing interest in it, another licensee expressing some interest in it. We have the manual actions rule that's out for public comment. We restarted the circuit inspections. And we've tested Hemyc. We have one more material to test, which we're testing this month. And so, I see things coming together. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: I just want to repeat, we have two new Commissioners now that the older Commissioners -- maybe that -yes, that's right, older, been here for a longer period of time. -44- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 meet that one. taken it very -- Some of us are younger than others. We do have a significant interest in making sure that every one of the key issues in fire protection arena is brought to closure or close to closure. And this is something that I believe will receive significant review in the months ahead. I want to tell you that I personally think this is an area that we are due for closure, and/or significant improvement. Let me just stop right there. COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Mr. Chairman, before you stop, I'd just like to say, like you, I've had a long-standing interest in fire protection especially in FPA-805. And I would concur with your comments in terms of the desirability to try to come to closure on these issues. COMMISSIONER MCGAFFIGAN: Speaking as another one of the older Commissioners, I agree. But my test is whether the STP for fire protection results in timeliness less than infinity. And so that, you know -CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Well, that's not difficult. You have MR. MERSCHOFF: We want that measure, we can (Laughter.) CHAIRMAN DIAZ: You shall not have it. All right. Thank you very much Suzie. Commissioner McGaffigan? -45- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I need to check something with Ellis, namely whether he's coming next week to the grid stability. MR. MERSCHOFF: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Okay. So, we don't have to fetch you today. Beware next week. I thought they might give you a day off the last couple days you're here, but I guess not. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: No way, he's acting EDO. (Laughter.) COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Well, that perhaps leads to a subject. In today's news clips -- and I do this -- it may sound somewhat funny at times. But, there was a staff to Clinton yesterday talking about the early site pyramid. And Sandy Lindberg from "No New Nukes", did the usual talking point that some public interest groups use about this. Her quote was, " the NRC must become a watchdog and not a lap dog for the nuclear industry." So, I'm going to ask a couple questions. Whichever of you wants to answer, probably Mr. Dyer. And then some of them have been anticipated by my colleagues. But, I'm trying to decide which category you all think you're in. I know where you are. But let's just try a few. Isn't it true that you returned the Beaver Valley license renewal application? I'm just doing the last couple of weeks. -46- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 MR. DYER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: license renewal application. MR. DYER: We did not accept -COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Because it was not an acceptable quality. MR. DYER: We performed the acceptance review on Beaver Valley and did not accept it. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Did not accept it. The Beaver Valley Isn't it true that you gave the Nine Mile license renewal application a 90 day cooling off period or whatever, again because you were having to inspect repeatedly and you weren't liking the results? You had already done five inspections. MR. DYER: Yes, sir. In that case we stopped the review and returned it to the licensee. That was after we had performed five audits, when normally we usually don't do more than three. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: We've already talked about Hemyc testing. I always mis-pronounce it. I'm following Brian here. And, Mr. Merschoff described this as a homerun for Research. And I agree. Isn't it true that your staff is now aggressively pursuing the results of the Hemyc testing? MR. DYER: Yes, sir. We've issued an Information Notice. And we're meeting with the industry to discuss the next steps. -47- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Isn't it true that your staff is aggressively pursuing simulator fidelity issues that have come up in our inspection process? MR. DYER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Very aggressively? MR. DYER: Yes, sir. We're working INPO, and NEI and individual licensees as part of our pre-qual program and initial licensing. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Isn't it true that, you know, I think Ellis himself as acting EDO praised a recent Point Beach preliminary inspection finding that was NRC inspection at its absolute best? MR. DYER: between Region III and NRR. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Right. MR. DYER: Because the inspector identified the issue and then the NRR staff reviewed the entire licensing basis to make sure we had the full scope of it. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Isn't it true that you're aggressively pursuing GSI-191, including additional research with the Office of Research to fully understand the chemical codings issue. MR. DYER: I think those are two examples. Hemyc and GSI-191 are clearly examples where we have been linked closely with the Office of Research and looking at the regulatory implications of their work. I think that was a good teamwork effort -48- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I could go through more. I think I'm making my point. But, the bottom line, I just ask you or - do you think of yourself more as a Rottweiler or a Bichon Frise. I needed help on the Bichon Frise by the way from my staff. (Laughter.) COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Bichon Frise apparently sat on Marie Antoinette's lap and quietly sat there -CHAIRMAN DIAZ: They do bite. MR. DYER: Commissioner, I'm not a dog owner, but the acting EDO, Bill Kane, is so we'll let him answer. MR. KANE: We owned Rottweilers for about 20 years, considered the middle linebackers of dogs, fast, strong and intelligent. But I think I would characterize -- I have difficulty in the analogy. I would describe this agency and the Staff as tough, but fair. Unfortunately I would describe my Rottweiler as tough but not fair. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: A German Shepard perhaps. Okay. But, as I get to be one of these elderly Commissioners -older Commissioners, I just tell you -COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Seasoned. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Seasoned. That's a good word. It just bothers me, and it bothers me that it's usually folks who can't win a technical argument, don't even try. -49- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 But they want to question our motives. And this Staff, based on almost eight and two thirds or whatever, and counting, this Staff pursues issues. They pursue them aggressively. They drop everything if there's an important safety issue that comes to their attention. They find important safety issues. And we're very proud of them. And I'm proud of my fellow Commissioners. I don't think any of us, you know, whether we're German Shepards or Rottweilers, we're certainly not, as you know, we're not Bichon Frises. So, there wasn't really a question there, other than a bunch of rhetorical questions for Jim. But I feel very strongly about that. And I wish people would cut it out, but they won't, because it's a heck of a talking point, even though there's no truth to it. Let me ask one question and perhaps help my colleague, Commissioner Jaczko. Ellis and I had a recent final meeting and we were talking about a Stew Ebneter rule, which was no guidance document will reach its fourth birthday in his Regions. Obviously we don't do that at headquarters. But some of the regions, according to Ellis, do. What would be a reasonable goal for the birthday of which guidance documents should be at least reviewed and said, yes, it's okay, or let's change it? I raise this particularly because of this knowledge transfer issue that our two colleagues have said the Senators are very -50- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 interested in. A typical staffer -- and I've never been down there in the typical staff -- but, an electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, he has the Standard Review Plan, he has a bunch of office memos, and he knows what he did on cases, or she did on cases X, Y, and Z. It's written in notes probably somewhere. And those folks may not be here five years from now, probably many of them. So, it strikes me that keeping the guidance documents, following an amended Ebneter rule could be terribly important to the effectiveness of this agency five or ten years from now. So what -- this will be my final question -- what is a reasonable -- I've given them time to coordinate -- a reasonable Ebneter rule for NRR? MR. MERSCHOFF: Let me answer it and work backwards from the perspective of a person who won't have to do it. Five years is probably reasonable. The Ebneter rule was that no regional office instruction will see its fourth birthday without being revised, even if it's revised with no changes, a human being will take a look at it an assure that it meets our intended process and can be handed to a new employee with some confidence that this is the way we do business. Covey would put that work in quadrant two. It's important, but not urgent. And important not urgent work is often the victim of emerging important and urgent type crisis. You can help us with this in budget space. As we continue -- this is infrastructure work. And, with the right amount of -51- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 money invested in infrastructure, I'm sure that NRR as an example would take that money eagerly to invest it and update the Management Directives and operating instructions and keep them that way. But it's not cheap. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Jaczko. COMMISSIONER Chairman. (Laughter.) CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Lately I am looking too much to the right. That's the second time, there won't be the third. COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: No, that's fine. Well, not to continue the analogy too long with Commissioner McGaffigan's dog analogy. But, as the owner of a 140 pound Bernese Mountain Dog who sometimes think he's a lap dog, anybody who would like to call us a lap dog and would like to have my dog sit in their lap, I would be happy to let that occur. Because, I think following the analogy, we're not. A MERRIFIELD: I'm still here Okay, thank you. Commissioner couple of quick comments and I'll go into questions. The first one is relative to the comments that Jim Dyer made on the Convention on Nuclear Safety.. I did have the opportunity to go over and lead the delegation last week. And I would want to recognize the work that Luis -52- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Reyes and the entire team put in to making what I think was an exceptionally successful presentation on the part of the U.S. We received 266 questions from our international counterparts which, when you add up all the sub-questions, was probably more along the lines of 400 plus questions. There was an extraordinary amount of effort which went into a very high quality National report and very open and explicit answers to the questions by our international colleagues. A huge amount of effort went into that. We will hopefully appropriately recognize the team at some later point. But I certainly want to follow-up on your comments. The second comment I would make is in follow on to a comment by the Chairman. That's in part related to some of the applications that we have received lately. And we have talked about Beaver Valley, the Waterford issues that we are looking at right now. You know, at the end of the day while our licensees play our fees, because we are a fee-based agency, we are cluing up their contractor. And I would certainly encourage the Staff to continue their review of how we accept those applications. appropriate, we should send them back. And I think the Staff is doing the right thing. Our ability to effectively manage our reviews in a timely and disciplined way is directly proportionate over the quality of the work that's provided by our licensees. And, where -53- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 And if they don't do the right job, they should get it sent right back ASAP. The third comment I would make -- and this is -- I put this on my sort of quibble scale with a comment that you made, Brian. In your presentation you said that Part 26 was, quote, on schedule, unquote. Now, this particular one predates me, dating back to 1996, I believe. So I wouldn't, from a communication standpoint, ever refer to Part 26 as being on schedule. But, you need not comment. DR. SHERON: It's on our current schedule. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: If I may add, there was a time when nuclear power plant were being built in this country, and every six months they were put on a new schedule. And they were always announced to be on schedule until the next six months. I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Anyway, you'll get my further comments on that later on. You made a -- I think the overall presentation was very good. And I think we talk a lot about our Human Capital Action Plan and getting the right people in the right places. And I think that NRR, along with others, has done a good job in that regard. But I'm interested in sort of refining this a little bit. We've done a lot of work to make sure that we're replacing folks. We're getting plenty of people on board, bright, young, new people, mid-career people to fill vacancies. What are we doing to make sure that it's not merely getting people to fill the slots but that we're -54- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 evaluating the skills that need to be maintained within a section to fill the overall needs of the program? Can you give me some greater degree of resolution on how you're doing? MR. DYER: Commissioner, I think it starts off -- one of the things that, as we went through our planning capabilities and how much was the investment, and what kind of training investment do we need? First of all, we had to define what the needs were. And, historically we've always had a mentor-mentee type relationship. And we've had that kind of staff. One of the things we've found out now to define what the needs are or what does it take to get somebody qualified, we're starting to move into this qualification program. We need to document, you know, what does it take to become a technical reviewer? And not just say, okay, you follow somebody around for six months and then you're doing your own independent reviews. We need to make sure that these people know the licensing process, that they are up to date on their technical capabilities and they understand the overall regulatory process and they have those skills. That being said, one of the things that we started looking at is, as I said, the work planning center has really been trying to come up -55- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 to speed just to capture all of the stuff that we have working in progress and hold some accountability. Now, as we're looking over the horizon, we're starting to see what are the major workloads coming in. renewal used to be the largest. And what the skill sets were going to be needed for license renewals. Now we've been able to analyze what do we expect skill sets needed for the new reactor scenarios. And, in fact, it was taking a look at the -- superimposing just our major workloads between power uprates, license renewals and perspective ESBWR design certification application later this year that made us say, we need to put discipline into our process to make sure that we're not over-expending our budgets. We have to really start living by those budgets because there are some critical skills. And, as follow-up from the new reactors Commission meeting, I have an action item to go through and flush out some of that background material and superimpose the schedule and say, okay, where are my shortages? What are they? And so, hopefully, we'll get that into the strategic workforce planning and be able to forecast out what the nature and types that we're going to have. MS. CARPENTER: And one of the things that we've done is we are using the Agency's strategic workforce planning tool. And And certainly license -56- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 so, each section in the office has identified what are considered the most critical skills for their section. And we use that in we prioritized our training, our external training funds so that we're looking at those most critical skills and trying to maintain those skill sets. MR. MERSCHOFF: And that's in Jim's performance appraisal and the Regional Administrator's performance appraisal, the rate at which that strategic workforce planning is employed. COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: We talked a little bit about power uprates at Quad Cities. And, clearly in this case, Quad Cities, GE, and Exelon are going beyond merely adding some additional reinforcements. They're going to the extent of actually building new steam dryers. I mean, these are -- having seen the first one that they were manufacturing, U.S. Tool and Dye, this is not a small effort by any stretch. I mean, this is a major investment in the site. How are we inspecting that process? I mean, there a significant new component that's going into the plant that was constructed at U.S. Tool and Dye, some additional work is being done onsite in the Quad Cities area before that gets installed at some point down the line? Tell me how our inspection program is following through in that particular regard. -57- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MR. SHERON: Well I think the region does its normal inspection, the resident and so forth, in terms of when a new component comes on site and everything. We also had our engineering staff. They've gone out. I can't remember if they actually went to the tool and dye. MR. DYER: Yes. MR. SHERON: They did. They were there to look at the manufacturing process and so forth. And then they've been on site as well. So we've been kind of following this closely. We've had a number of meetings with the licensee in terms of understanding the details of the design, especially the instrumentation and so forth that they're installing. So, I would say we've been actively involved and intimately involved basically. COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Mr. Chairman, I'll have some additional questions later. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Commissioner Jaczko? COMMISSIONER JACZKO: I just want to say I All right, thank you so much. appreciate the comments talking a little bit about getting the guidance up to date. And I hear your point about the budget. And I think we talked about this at a previous meeting. So, I'm sure we'll have further opportunity to discuss that in the budget context. I want to talk a little bit. -58- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 I'm happy to see the work that's gone on in the Operating Experience Program. And one of the things that I always like to talk about is the NRC's Mission Statement. And you've done a nice job developing Mission Statements for NRR as well as the divisions. And the Operating Experience Program has kind of an objective. And that's to collect, evaluate, communicate, and apply to support the Agency goal of assuring safety. experience information. Would the program, the status that it's in now, I guess in January the new Operating Experience Program has been up and running. Do you have any experience so far about how it's working? And specifically in that applied aspect, in getting the operating experience information back into the regulatory framework or kind of into the knowledge basis. If you could, comment on that a little bit. MR. DYER: I do not know that I have any experience where the use of our operating experience has directly resulted in an inspector finding or an avoided plant transient or something like that. The one thing I was extremely impressed with -- and, if you go to the NRR internal website with this ROP digital city and click on the inspector forum section, you know, as a former inspector who used to have to carry around these notebooks and prepare for inspections. Now you can go to the inspection procedure and click on and it will print out, it will tell you which were the previous operating And that's operating -59- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 experience that the NRC has issued that are relevant to that inspection procedure. And, you know, I would just absolutely -- that is just outstanding. So, Brian, I do not know if -MR. SHERON: Yes, I've just got some statistics from the Staff. We had screened, since January 1st, we have screened over 200 items in the Operating Experience Program. One hundred and fourteen items were communicated on the operating experience forum, which is our internal communication mechanism. resolution. Nine of those have been closed. And we have issued twelve generic communications that they may not have been directly related from operating experience, but there was a relationship there. And it evolved, so -- and as I said, the next step is to actually create teams within the Agency, Office of Research, Regions, Headquarters. For example, pump experts. They would automatically get pump information, pump operating experience. We would expect them maybe once a quarter to get together, talk about the experience, ask themselves are there any trends here? Is there anything we need to alert management to that we need to take action on? And report back to the operating experience staff. So we want to make it a much more formal process. Thirty-seven were opened, we call them issues for -60- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 application. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: So, you think it's working? The mechanism is in place and that it's -- at this point it's successful? MR. SHERON: Yes. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: The Chairman and Commissioner Lyons I think both addressed the issue of fire protection. There's one issue that I wanted to raise on that. I think, Suzie, you mentioned that we have one more material to test. Is that MT or -- MT. I guess none of them have simple names. What is the -- is that a material that is widely used or less widely used than Hemyc? MS. BLACK: There's only two plants that have that COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Okay. The expectation is there will we find something anomalous with the previous work that's been done, or are you expecting that that's largely the testing that's done is going to confirm what we think we know about the material? MS. BLACK: It's to confirm what we think we know. But, based on the Hemyc test, I guess we'll find out. That testing is going to be done next week. So we'll find out very soon. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Okay. The additional issue that I wanted to talk about is on safety culture, this is something where I think we have, certainly have a lot of work that's been done. And there was a comment that was made at the RIC, I think by somebody that our safety culture is not so much better than what -61- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 it is in the industry, which is something we can certainly discuss, whether that's the case or not. And I'm just wondering where you think NRR is in terms of reacting to some of the issues that were raised in the Inspector General survey from 2002. I guess we're getting ready to do another one at the end of this month, and where you think things will come out in the end of that survey. MR. DYER: Commissioner, I wasn't here in 2002. I was out in the region at the time. I think, as a result of the IG cultural survey, the office took a real hard look and initiated some action. Some of these issues about the roles and responsibilities, teams, the communications initiatives and that, those were all a direct result of the IG. They were there to develop a solution. So we put a lot of energy into this. I think, going back to Commissioner Lyons' question too, you know, how do you know what you got? And we may find out. think. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: And what is it? MR. DYER: That it's improving. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: That it's improving? We get anecdotal feedback, I -62- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 20 minutes. MR. DYER: Yes. We're getting this talk-back feature. You know, we get replies back from the Staff and I seem them and, you know, what they are. And so, we're trying to still improve our overall and get our message out. But it's still a challenge. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Thank you so much. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: The second round we've got about COMMISSIONER LYONS: Perhaps one question. Jim, you went through this. On slide eight, international activities, you talked about the Operational Experience Program. It certainly struck me as very, very positive. I was curious, perhaps you could share a little bit more about your vision on how to extract the maximum value from this Operating Experience Program. And I was also curious -- I'm guessing that some of the information you're going to extract is perhaps less relevant to the NRC and more relevant to industry. I'm just wondering if there is a comparable -- to your knowledge -- role that industry is playing in an operating experience international view or whether industry is in fact perhaps a part of what's being done within the Commission. -63- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 MR. DYER: Yes, there is. And I think the World Association of Nuclear Operators, or WANO as it's often called, has its own program through INPO that there's this sharing of experience. The IAEA -- part of our operating experience database is the IAEA incident reporting system or IRS. And so, we get that access internationally through the IAEA as part of our operating experience database. I think the best sense that I had -- I can give you an example of where we've shared experience and are in the process of following up on it. During my most recent visit to Japan in one of the visits, one of the questions came up is has Japan experienced flaws or bottom nozzle cracking? And that's, of course, a very important to us because, you know, we've had top of the nozzle cracking, but haven't explored any bottom nozzle cracking. And that question is raised. And that's one of the issues that Suzie's placed on the agenda for her visit next month, to have a regulator-to-regulator exchange to make sure that they scrub their data and we fully understand what operating experience information in this important area is available to the regulator. At the same time we raise this issue with NEI. And NEI was going through WANO to make sure that they could understand from their international database whether or not this issue is the same. -64- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 further. At the same time they've got a program underway to look at selected plants that are going through their ISI in the United States to answer this question and to try to get out ahead. This is one of the materials reliability program initiatives where we're trying to get out ahead of a problem rather than waiting until we find a crack or an issue and then we're in a reactive mode. So, I think from my perspective it was initiated when we got this potential information from Japan, which is when we -- the specific example that we looked at turned out to be a construction flaw. It wasn't actual cracking. But, now we're pursuing this MR. MERSCHOFF: If I could add one more thought. Domestically, INPO has the NPRDS database, which is a very extensive component level database that's fed by all the licensees. INPO is exploring modern IT techniques to mine that data and look for unexpected relationships and trends. And it's just the beginning process. But that's one that may bear fruit in terms of using this information. COMMISSIONER LYONS: And is there some coordination perhaps between the -- or is there a similar WANO database and INPO database that allows similar data mining on an international basis? -65- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MR. MERSCHOFF: I can't answer that. I can find out. But that question is the heart of the real problem. Most of the databases are separate. NPRDS is separate from our 50.72 and 50.73. The IAEA IRS is separate. And then most countries So, don't release their 50.72 and 50.73 data the way we do. internationally, there are many separate databases that we could be more effective in combining. MR. DYER: And I think one of the real successes of Operating Experience Program is we've worked at liaison with INPO as well as the international community to have access to that information. But we've got to build the firewalls up so the industry can't use our database. Because of its connections with the international reporting system. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: There are firewalls that are built in. Some of those are more difficult to handle than others. Okay. Thank you. COMMISSIONER LYONS: Thank you. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: I just have two quick questions. And I'd like to get some specific quick answers because I do not have much time. Let's see, on the issue, Brian, of the sump performance, which I used to call long-term recirculation cooling. This issue is both an issue of accomplishing some improvements that the plants need to do which are probably easier to define and a series of complex issues that are coming in, whether it's the -66- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 chemical effects or where there is debris actually decreasing the capability of the pumps. A lot of these issues are what I call either dynamic or time dependent issues. I think we need to come to a point where we need to say we are now making a determination that the plan of the licensee is adequate. How close are we to that point? MR. SHERON: Well, the licensee's plans are not supposed to be submitted, you know, their actual design plans until September. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: I know. But, are we ready when they submit it to be able to make that determination? MR. SHERON: We believe we will be ready to be able to make that determination. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Okay. MR. SHERON: As I said there are still some uncertainties. We will be getting some Research information in over the next several months. And we have talked to the industry extensively about making sure they include margin in their designs to account for some of these uncertainties. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Some of these uncertainties might be on the fourth or fifth significant figures. It is the one that are in the second significant figure that we are to be concerned about. The other one is an interesting issue. And I just really want to go back to something you said, Jim, regarding how inspectors do -67- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 the work. And it goes back to the central question that many years ago it was being debated in here that the things that the NRC does maintain safety. And I strongly came out and said no, practically all of the things that we do when we do a review, when we do a research analysis, whenever we improve the inspection procedures, is to improve safety or enhance safety, or increase safety. And you were just talking about how an inspector now when he's going to perform an inspection he not only has his own little book with a manual, but he has a reference that he can go back and compare what is happening. Is that maintaining safety? Or is that increasing safety? MR. DYER: I would say it's increasing safety. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: You would say? MR. DYER: I wouldn't say, it's the right answer, I know. (Laughter.) MR. DYER: And I would say it because it improves inspector efficiency and effectiveness. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Is that a category guess, Jim? MR. DYER: Yes. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Commissioner McGaffigan? All right. Thank you very much. -68- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do want to -- I should have done this earlier. But I was so tied up in my Rottweilers and Bichon Frises. I do want to compliment Commissioner Merrifield and Luis, and Bill Borchardt, and Tom Hiltz, and everyone else who worked on the Convention on Nuclear Safety. I know it's not over. Bill is still there. I particularly want to compliment them on something that isn't in our country report but Commissioner Merrifield has reported to us. We often times get challenged on the fact that we don't have periodic safety reviews. And the response -- which I compliment Commissioner Merrifield and Luis, the team for -- is we do continuous safety reviews. We have the most aggressive reactor oversight licensing, etcetera program on the face of the earth. There's nobody that comes close as far as I'm concerned. And it's often times a matter of how you communicate that. And so, I compliment the whole team. And I think we should adopt continuous safety review as part of our lexicon because I think it's what we do. The question I have is for Ellis. You, in December, talked to us about a NRC corrective action program. And I think our SRM said something to the effect that the Commission enthusiastically supports this and looks forward to it being done by December of 2005. -69- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 We didn't know at the time. And Luis turned to you and said Ellis is in charge. We didn't know at the time -- at least I do not remember when I knew -- that you were leaving. And I'm a little concerned about this March 31st memo to us that looks like it may have morphed a little bit into -- the word corrective action program is mentioned at one stage in there -- but it's morphed into more of a lessons learned thing. And I think that's different. I mean, I think they're not identical. Can you tell us as you leave -- I may be already over -- no, not quite -- the status of what we talked about in December and whether or not it has morphed to something different. MR. MERSCHOFF: I don't think so. We believe we are developing the corrective action program that the Agency needs. We're trying to link it very closely to knowledge management because, at the end of the day, that's what it's really all about, to assure that we capture the lessons worth learning. That's the corrective action program part of it, but then keep them, learned. And we changed the name to an Agency Lessons Learned System. And we're partnering with HR to assure that we move forward in one front on the Agency's knowledge management approach to this. But, it's not a working level deficiency capturing system. This was not envisioned. Nor will it be a system that says the lights are out on the third floor. -70- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 guess I'll stop. This is a higher level for those islands that were discussed like Millstone and Davis-Besse and other issues that they get learned there. You verify periodically that you've kept learning them, that they're available to train new inspectors and to transfer that knowledge. So we think that we've met the original intent and the original description to the Commission. But we have changed the name. COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Well, Mr. Chairman, I My only concern is that a licensee corrective action program is fed in, has a low threshold for things to be considered. And it isn't -- the threshold seems to be quite high to put something in the system. And I do not know. I just say that. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: It might very well be that's an issue that the Commission will review. Commissioner Merrifield? COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When we had the last review of the safety culture issues, and I remember back in '02 we were really looking quite hard at the results that IG had come up with, and we had certainly been looking at the differences between different offices. And, in that review NRR in the main did pretty well. But more recently -- just recently I had a chance to see sort of the break down between different divisions within NRR. And there are some -- and I'm surprised at the degree of variation between some of those. was -- didn't do quite so well. Division of System Safety Analysis -71- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Division of Reactor Improvement Programs did a whole lot better. But there were variations. There were variations. And I'm wondering how, if you could just briefly explain how your strategies go to seemingly, in some cases, significant differences in the way that different people within NRR understand where we're going as an Agency relative to our future, job satisfaction, our mission, or commitment. MR. DYER: Yes, sir, Commissioner. I'm more familiar with the overall office initiatives in that. But I asked for this breakout when I got here because we found it particularly useful when I was in Region III and we had much worse scores. So, one of the things it did is you recognized that you have pockets within the organization that are in different levels. And it appears to compare and contrast. I think we've provided separately the Division of Engineering assessment of some of their specifics. As we did this, when we picked the two division directors to be in the front table, Suzie is the Division Director for DSSA. And, at the time Cindy was the Deputy Division Director for the Division of Inspection and Program Management. So let me ask Suzie to address some of the specific things that they did in response to the -- back in 2002 with DSSA. MS. BLACK: When we got the survey we had an offsite retreat with our managers to discuss the possible causes and solutions to that. But one of the things that I think the reason that the technical -72- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 divisions have a worse score is there's always a sort of a natural tension between the production people, the projects people, and the technical people who feel like they're being pushed to meet a schedule in spite of maybe safety concerns they have. So, we have done a few things like we recognize the technical value that our staff has by -- we have a weekly electronic newsletter where we'll highlight like a good technical finding or things like that. We have technical brown bag seminars where we let people, you know, expound on their findings, that type of thing. And we also have taken potential pockets of -- with the disconcerted staff you might say who thinks he doesn't agree with a policy decision that's been made. And we allow that person to express that position to the actual leadership team to say, do the division directors understand that this is what their decisions are at the implementation level and to get the feedback? And so, I think we've been attempting to improve the communications two ways, to explain why decisions aren't made to the technical staff and vice-a-versa. MS. CARPENTER: And, in the inspection program branch, the management team took a hard look at what we did well and what it was we weren't doing so well. -73- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Jaczko? We tried to continue to do the things well that we were doing. But we found some other things that we needed to improve on. We needed to allow the section chiefs to do more, to have more of a voice. We wanted to emphasize walking around and talking with the Staff. Sometimes they felt that the senior managers stayed in their office and they didn't reach out to the Staff. We try to be more open to innovative ideas of the Staff if they wanted to try some things. Some of the things that came out that were the inspector newsletter, the electronic library that the inspectors have, some ideas that were tried. And, again, as DSSA did, more communications with the Staff. And one of the other things that the Division does is every week the division Director and the division Director meet with the section chiefs. It's their hour to talk to the division Director one on one about what's going on, what's on their mind. There are no restrictions on that. So, more open communications with the Staff with the section chiefs, and to be more open to innovative ideas that the Staff might bring forward and just to point those ideas. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: All right. Thank you. Commissioner COMMISSIONER JACZKO: One other really positive thing I think I heard during the briefing is some of the good collaboration that's gone on with NRR and Research. -74- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 I think Hemyc is a good example of where that's happened. And also just in the Human Capital area. I was wondering if you can comment a little bit on how NRR is working with NSIR and what that coordination is like in areas where there may be need for better coordination and improvement in that area and things that are working well. MR. DYER: Well, Commissioner, I think one of the key areas, of course, is the effort that Brian alluded to and Suzie heads up with our security safety interface panel where we look at where are we going to tread on each other? Where are we going to initiate a security change that impact safety? Where are we going to initiate a safety change that may impact security? And so that's been something that really evolved to the point now where this group has now got criteria to get out to both offices to try to flag and raise the kinds of issues that need to get brought before this panel. I think also Roy and I have been -- Roy Zimmerman, the Office Director in Nuclear Security and Incident Response -- and I have been working closely with a lot of these initiatives. They're not just security folk requiring security talent. They require a lot of engineering talent. And, to the extent that we can understand and work with each other to understand what are the demands going to be? -75- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 What is the scope of work in where we're headed? I think that that's an area that we're working on. The security area is still very much an evolving issue. And it's one that I think we need to continue to try to look forward and predict where we're going to be in that particular area. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: One kind of specific question I have too, how does the interaction -- NRR has a responsibility for kind of oversight and then the licensing, and then the regulatory aspect. If there are, for instance, safeguards advisories and things -- I think there was something recently with access control and identity falsification. How does NRR follow-up or incorporate those kinds of things into the – MR. DYER: We issue any generic correspondence. [Note for clarity: NRR issues all generic correspondence; however, safeguards advisories are not generic correspondence and are issued by NSIR. Further clarification indicates that Commission Jaczko was specifically interested in NRR’s role in Safeguards Advisories. NRR’s role includes reviewing and concurring on all Safeguards Advisories to ensure that operational safety and safeguards activities are appropriately integrated.] If that's -- we're the choke flow or the funnel that goes and communicates with the industry through our Operating Experience Program. -76- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 MR. KANE: I just wanted to add, that is a very important area. But I don't want to leave out the third leg of the triangle, which is emergency and preparedness. And it's a challenge as you separate the organizations to make sure that the interfaces are sound. And I think it works both ways as you have noted. You can do things for operational safety that can in fact have an impact on security. And certainly the challenge that we have is looking at things that we do in security or changes that are made in security that can have an impact on operational safety. And we must -- as well as emergency preparedness. So we need to continue to have strong and vital interfaces to make sure we're constantly testing those. COMMISSIONER JACzKO: Do you --and this is very specific -- is there an equivalent to the safety security interface panel for emergency preparedness? Or do emergency preparedness issues get wrapped up in that panel? MR. KANE: It certainly should be in the same panel. It's one meeting with all the issues. COMMISSIONER JACZKO: Thank you. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Thank you Commissioner Jaczko. I want to thank my fellow Commissioners for their questions and their very, very good wrap-up of the many issues that are facing NRR. -77- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Commission? I want to thank the Staff for their very good work and also for the presentation today. I had as my closing remarks to bring the issue of the Convention of nuclear safety and how that represents many of the things that we have done. But I have been already superceded three times. So, I'm not going to go there anywhere. But that was a very good work of everybody. And, of course, I thank Commissioner Merrifield and Luis and everybody that contributed to that effort. I wonder if, Ellis, is this your last meeting with the MR. MERSCHOFF: No, sir. Well, with you, yes. The grid meeting next week that I think you'll be -CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Oh, okay. And you know that I'm not going to be here. MR. MERSCHOFF: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: Okay. I'll make sure that my fellow Commissioners treat you well at that time. (Laughter.) COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: When the cat's away, the mice do play. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: But, since this is my last opportunity across this table with you, and hopefully not the last opportunity to deal with you I personally want to thank you on behalf of the Commission for Speak for yourself. -78- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 your efforts all these years and your dedication to the work and to the safety of the American people. I say that sometimes very frequently -- and I think you've done a wonderful job. And we want to make sure that you're fully recognized in this Agency and outside for what you have done. MR. MERSCHOFF: Thank you very much Chairman. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: And with that -- oh. Yes, sir? COMMISSIONER MERRIFIELD: have comments. I'm going to hold my fire. No, I'm sorry. I just I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate all the comments about the convention. And, on behalf of Luis and the Staff I certainly want to thank you for that. I didn't get a chance to ask the question. And I'll have the Staff get back to this later on. I'm interested, now that we, you know, had a great presentation and also learned a lot. And there's a lot that we received from the convention. I would be interested to get an answer of how we're going to incorporate that into our continuous movement for improvement and how that's going to be presented to the Commission. But that will be a question that they can answer at some later point. CHAIRMAN DIAZ: And I believe that you focused this meeting on what I will call an integral process, which is driving the NRR processes toward excellence or increasing not only the connectivity but the communications. -79- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 And that certainly will enhance your efforts and the efforts of the Agency. And with that, we are adjourned.