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Executive Summary This report reflects the committee's conclusions on the general issues involved in nuclear safety research. The message that the committee hopes to convey is that nuclear safety research in the United States could benefit from strong leadership from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,* leadership that has not been forthcoming in the recent past. The report specifies areas needing detailed consideration. In particular the committee has tried to take a systematic approach to nuclear safety research, to point out the general principles involved, and to elucidate some of the implications of these principles for decisionmaking in the public and private sectors. There has been no attempt to produce a detailed research program or budgetâthat is more properly a task of others. But the report does indicate areas where too little is being done or where the research effort would benefit from being refocused. It is hoped that special attention will be paid to the general principles here enunciated and to ways in which they might be applied in the operation of the NRC's program of research. The main body of the report is contained in Chapters 2, 3, and 4. Chapter 2, "Principles of Nuclear Safety Research," ex- amines who should fund, who should conduct, and who should set the agenda for nuclear safety research. Chapter 3, "Elements of a Future Agenda of Nuclear Safety Research," outlines a num- ber of particular research topics on which additional research is From this point on throughout the report, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be referred to as the NRC for the sake of brevity. The acronym should not be confused with that of the National Research Council, which is not mentioned in the report in abbreviated form.
needed or on which research might be better focused. Chapter 4, "Eliminating Barriers to an Effective Program of Nuclear Safety Research," discusses organizational and management issues, and recommends ways to improve research sponsored by the NRC. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The committee reached the following general conclusions about nuclear safety research: 1. There are general principles for helping to answer the set of questions, "Who should pay for, who should carry out, and who should establish the agenda for nuclear safety research?" These principles, discussed in Chapter 2, require adjustments in the current practices of the NRC and in the pattern of institutional involvement in nuclear safety research. 2. Research on matters related to the safety of commercial nuclear power reactors should continue to be performed. Chapter 3 contains a list and discussion of some of the areas in which the committee believes research should be continued or begun. 3. Serious management problems affect the research program of the NRC, but there are well-known practices of the general research and development community that can be used to help solve some of these problems. Both the problems and possible routes to their solution are discussed at various points in the text, particularly in Chapter 4. After formulating its principal conclusions, the committee did not seek to reanalyze the current program with an eye toward constructing and estimating a budget. That would require, among other things, a rigorous technical analysis of the relative merits of different areas of research, a task that the committee was not able to undertake in the time available. For the past five years, the budgets of the federal agencies responsible for research on commercial nuclear reactors have been under attack. These pressures partly reflect the response of the Reagan administration to the nation's burgeoning federal deficits and to federal spending in general. They also reflect the adminis- tration's view that the private sector ought to be playing a much larger role in virtually all matters related to nuclear regulation.
The budget debates have served to highlight a fundamen- tal disagreement among federal policymakers concerning the ap- propriate scale and scope of the government's responsibility for nuclear regulation in general and nuclear safety research in partic- ular. In each of the past five years, the outcome of these debates has been reductions in support for nuclear safety research. The committee recognizes that in the real world when budgets get cut the first things to go are those that do not have obvious, immediate, guaranteed payoffs. This is what has happened to the federal program of nuclear safety research. Nonetheless, for any level of effort in the nuclear safety research program, the lead- ership and support must be there to carry the research through. The committee sees little to suggest that those most responsible for the federal program of nuclear safety researchâwhether in the responsible federal agencies, Congress, or the Office of Manage- ment and Budget (OMB)âappreciate the necessity of providing the requisite leadership. The following summary presents the principal findings of the report as drawn from Chapters 2, 3, and 4. Chapter 4, in particu- lar, sets forth most of the committee's detailed recommendations. Principles of Nuclear Safety Research To determine who should set the agenda and who should fund nuclear safety research, the committee began by examining the question, "Who benefits by learning the results of this research?" From this the committee reached the following guiding principles: ⢠Use the best facilities and the best people, without un- due regard for whether they are affiliated with a national laboratory, a university, or industry. ⢠Use systems and procedures that will ensure the integrity and independence of the result; care should be taken to assure that all laws relating to conflicts of interest are obeyed, and procedures should be used that can guarantee, independently of the NRC staff, the quality and integrity of the results. Viewing the federal program of nuclear safety research in light of the above principles, the committee makes the following recom- mendations:
1. The U.S. government should continue to fund research on the safety of commercial nuclear power reactors. 2. Nevertheless, an increased proportion of the research should be funded and conducted by the industry (utilities, suppliers, and vendors) than is now the case. 3. Direct NRC funding of research should continue. 4. The Department of Energy (DOE) and the NRC should encourage more research funded cooperatively with industry or with international partners. 5. Universities and other contractors with relevant knowledge and skill should be more actively involved in setting the research agenda. 6. Research funded by the NRC should be the product of a competition among the DOE national laboratories, private con- tractors, and university researchers. 7. The U.S. government should maintain programs of long- term and exploratory research and maintain effective nuclear en- gineering programs of the quality and quantity needed by the country at the university level. If private industry is unwilling or unable to sustain the university programs necessary for producing the trained personnel that the government needs to conduct an effective program of nuclear safety research, then it is sound public policy for government to do so. 8. In principle, the committee believes that internalizing the costs of research in a regulated industryâsuch as the electric utility industryâis desirable, and that ways of accomplishing this should, if possible, be adopted. Elements of a Future Agenda for Nuclear Safety Research The committee believes that not enough research is being done on certain topics important to the future regulation of nuclear power plants. In particular, the committee members believe, based upon their collective experience, that research should be intensified in these areas: ⢠Behavior of materials in nuclear power plant environments ⢠Human factors ⢠Nondestructive testing ⢠Nuclear power plant aging
⢠Policy research ⢠Research to reevaluate existing regulations In addition, research on the following topics should be contin- ued but refocused: Component and systems reliability Nondestructive examination Quality assurance/quality control Safety analysis methodology and application Severe accidents A future research agenda must include mechanisms for decid- ing the proper end-point of specific research topics. In research, every answer results in a new set of questions which might be addressed. The relative importance of the topic to real safety is- sues should be used as the basis for deciding whether to pursue or terminate further research. Eliminating Barriers to an Effective Program of Nuclear Safety Research There are many structural and procedural problems that the NRC must address if it is to have a sound research program. The committee's recommendations for improving NRC management call for changes in the way the director of research, the executive director of operations, the NRC itself, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congress currently discharge their responsi- bilities. 1. The NRC Director of Research must establish and maintain good, fundamental research practices, including the following: a. Use of the best researchers to perform the research. b. Establishment of a coherent planning process. c. Routine use of peer review to instill confidence in the quality of research results. d. Establishment of a strong advisory group that includes independent experts from industry and academia, along with representatives of organizations perform- ing research. e. Strengthening links between the Office of Research and the intended users of research.
6 2. The executive director of operations should take respon- sibility for the kind and extent of communication between the NRC program offices to ensure that they work closely together in designing and coordinating the program of research. 3. The chairman of the NRC must exert leadership in estab- lishing the NRC research program and defending it before OMB and the Congress. 4. Options for restructuring the NRC to restore leadership to nuclear safety research, including the possibility of reorganizing the NRC to provide for a single administrator, should be reex- amined. Some aspects of such a reexamination are beyond the scope of the NRC and are for Congress and the administration to consider. Whether or not Congress enacts legislation along these lines, both OMB and the Congress should support a level of fund- ing for nuclear safety research that is appropriate to the continuing federal responsibilities for nuclear safety research.
