Revitalizing Nuclear Safety Research (1986)

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Appendix A Sponsors of Commercial Nuclear Research and Development This Appendix provides a brief overview of the programs of the major sponsors of nuclear research in both the public and private sectors. The discussion principally centers on the programs of the NRC, the DOE, and the electric utility industry. GOVERNMENT SPONSORSHIP OF NUCLEAR RESEARCH The majority of the nuclear safety research funded by the fed- eral government is sponsored by the NRC. Statutory responsibility for the NRC's research program, funding for which in fiscal year 1986 will be about $108 million, resides with the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. A small amount of safety research is also conducted by other NRC program offices. For example, the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) funds about $30 million of "technical assistance," of which the committee estimates at least $10 million is safety research. The NRC's budget for nuclear safety research is slightly more than half of what DOE will spend in FY 1986 on civilian nuclear R&D. However, the entire NRC program is safety research in sup- port of current reactors, whereas DOE's program is principally aimed at the development of advanced reactors. There have been significant reductions in congressional appropriations for NRC re- search over the past five years; so although in current dollars the program is twice the size it was a decade ago, it is less than half what it was at its peak in 1981. In terms of true buying power (i.e., constant dollars), the reductions have been even more dramatic. 75

76 Tables A.I, A.2, and A.3 present figures on the NRC research program in each of three years: FY 1975, the year the NRC was established; FY 1981, at the height of NRC spending for research; and FY 1986, planned spending for the current fiscal year. The figures for FY 1975 clearly show that the entire $52 million program was dominated by research on thermal hydraulics and ac- cident evaluation. At that time this research focused primarily on the analysis of large-break, loss-of-coolant accidents. In order to conduct realistic experiments testing the adequacy of emergency cooling systems to cope with loss-of-coolant accidents, the NRC had previously decided to build a Loss-of-Fluid Test (LOFT) fa- cility at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, and by FY 1975 spending on LOFT had already begun. Over the next decade, LOFT was the single most expensive component of the entire NRC research program. As early as 1975, Idaho accounted for about 40 percent of NRC's research dollars. The figures for FY 1981 reflect the growth in spending on LOFT over the previous six years. Between 1975 and 1981, con- tracts awarded to Idaho quadrupled, in step with the overall qua- drupling in current dollars of the NRC research program, which by 1981 had risen to $209 million. Five years later, however, these trends were completely reversed. Data on planned expenditures for 1986 show the effects of the intervening decision to terminate LOFT; NRC contracts to be awarded to Idaho have plummeted from 39 percent of the total in 1981 to less than 18 percent of the program in 1986. The NRC research program has been in transition since the late 1970s. The transition has been away from research on large- break, loss-of-coolant accidents toward more complex types of accidents. A larger share of the NRC program is now devoted to understanding the transportation of fission products and the integrity of reactor containments during core melt accidents. The principal catalyst for the change in approach was the accident at Three Mile Island. A comparison of NRC's actual spending for research in FY 1981 with the program planned for FY 1986 indicates how the NRC has accommodated the 50 percent reduction in support it has received over the past five years. The reduction was absorbed by sharply cutting back on thermal hydraulics and accident evalua- tion research (terminating LOFT and reducing the level of research at other experimental facilities), by canceling all NRC research on

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80 advanced reactors, and by reducing both the number and kind of projects in the area of waste management, earth sciences, and radiological health effects research. Meanwhile, support for severe accident research and research on risk assessment was increased. Risk assessment research, for example, doubled between 1981 and 1986. Sandia National Laboratories, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has become the NRC's principal research contractor. San- dia's program of NRC-sponsored research centers on analytical and small-scale experimental studies of severe reactor accidents. Over the first half of the 1980s, Sandia's level of NRC-sponsored research remained at about $24 million at a time when the NRC research program as a whole was being subjected to a 50 percent cut. As other projects and contractors were being cut back, Sandia's share of the NRC research program climbed to 20 percent. Table A.4 indicates that despite severe fluctuations in NRC funding over the agency's first decade, the pattern of NRC con- tracting—the percentage of research allotted to government, uni- versities, and the private sector—has remained fairly constant; the vast majority of NRC funds continue to go to federal laboratories. This long-term consistent pattern of contracting, when coupled with a steep decline in available funds, has meant a significant drop in the level of NRC research performed by the universities. Although it is the committee's impression that, in the last few years, NRC spending for university research has increased mod- estly, the five-year trend shows a reduction of two-thirds—from 4.3 to 2.9 percent of the budget. A close examination of the planned FY 1986 program shows that most of the research that NRC plans to sponsor in universities consists of relatively small amounts aimed at funding university operation of seismic moni- toring stations throughout the eastern hah7 of the United States. These are programs that the NRC recently has said are candidates for transfer to the U.S. Geological Survey, a move that would fur- ther diminish the level of NRC support for university research. While this report focuses primarily on the NRC, it should be noted that substantially more of the amount spent by the federal government on civilian nuclear power is spent by the DOE than by the NRC. However, DOE spends the greatest part of its civilian nuclear R&D money on development, not on safety research. DOE will spend approximately $182 million for civilian nuclear R&D in FY 1986. In addition, DOE has large programs in uranium

81 TABLE A.4 Allocation of NRC Research Contracts by Sector Percentage of Designated Contracts FY 1975 FY 1981 FY 1986 U.S. government 88.9 89.1 85.7 national laboratories (86.0) (85.9) (83.4) Universities 1.6 4.3 2.9 Private sector 8.0 6.0 10.4 Other 1.6 OJt 1.0 TOTALS 100.0 100.0 100.0 enrichment, naval propulsion reactors, and high-level radioactive waste management, each of which is larger in scale than the NRC program of safety research. Table A.5 shows how DOE intends to allocate the $182 million available in FY 1986 for civilian nuclear R&D and how this sum is meant to be distributed among the five programs within the de- partment devoted to that effort (Light Water Reactor Safety and Technology; Regulatory Development; Plant Performance; Ad- vanced Converter Reactors; and Technology Development). Table A.5 indicates that DOE has allocated only about $50 million for light-water reactor safety. Furthermore, most of that amount is aimed at supporting the decommissioning of the LOFT facility and the removal and analysis of the damaged Three Mile Island reactor core. Table A.6 provides a different perspective on the DOE pro- gram by dividing it into research on current light-water reactors and research on future reactors. The table also provides greater detail on how the $182 million is allocated: at least 70 percent of the DOE program is directed at advanced reactor R&D; 16.5 percent will fund the continuing cleanup at Three Mile Island; and 5 percent will fund the cleanup of the LOFT reactor in Idaho. Very little of the remaining 9.5 percent of DOE's civilian nuclear R&D budget for FY 1986 directly supports current reactors, and even less goes for safety research.

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83 TABLE A.6 Allocation of the 1986 DOE Research Program by Reactor System- (thousand* of dollars) Future Generation Reactors 1. Current LWRs 2. Ad- vanced S. Ad- 4. HTGRs 5. Breeder* 6. Both-'2 vanced LMRi 7. Other LWR« 745 8,996 30,909 28,700 50,107 34,760 20,727 Project! included in each of the above categories: 1. plant life extension; plant availability 2. advanced reactor assessment; ALWR assistance; advanced LWR (EPRI program); advanced LWR; pool plant design and evaluation 3. advanced concepts development; power conversion technology development; nuclear systems technology development 4. HTGR fuels and materials testing, design and licensing 5. breeder components development; fuel performance and supply; reactor core development; breeder fuel cycle development 6. extended bumup of LWR fuel; source term; technology management center; STEP; LOFT (postirradiation fuel examination); Three-Mile Island; risk-based licensing 7. LOFT cleanup; international nuclear policy and program; nuclear/fossil power plant economics, costs; economic regulation; institutional issues; constructibility; safeguards; research/test reactor fuel demonstration "Includes the following divisions under the assistant secretary for nuclear energy: LWR safety and technology; regulatory development; Plant performance; and advanced converter development. —Potentially applicable either to current or future reactors or to both. -May be applicable to current and future reactors.

84 PRIVATE SECTOR SPONSORSHIP OF NUCLEAR RESEARCH Because of proprietary restrictions on access to data, the com- mittee is unable to estimate accurately the current scale of safety research sponsored by U.S. reactor vendors (Babcock and Wilcox, Combustion Engineering, GA Technologies, General Electric, and Westinghouse); it is believed to be in the tens of millions of dol- lars. The committee has no estimate at all of the R&D conducted by nuclear suppliers (e.g., pump and valve manufacturers), but it assumes that the amount is relatively limited, particularly when compared with the amount of R&D sponsored by reactor vendors or the electric utility industry. Architectural engineering firms also conduct some nuclear research, some of which is safety re- search, but the committee estimates the level of safety research by architectural engineering firms at less than $10 million. Utilities sponsor research either by contracting for it or by performing it themselves. In general, only the larger utilities, like Tennessee Valley Authority, Duke Power Company, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and Commonwealth Edison Company, have the human and financial resources to conduct safety research apart from the work they sponsor through their membership in the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). For example, TVA is conducting research on advanced reactor design concepts and acoustic emission monitoring of reactor vessel flaws; Duke has an in-house Artificial Intelligence Demonstration Project; Pacific Gas and Electric is beginning a four-year study entitled "Field Studies to Support Off-site Dose Calculations at Nuclear Power Plants"; and Commonwealth Edison is conducting research to as- sess the addition of hydrogen to reactor coolant as a potential means of arresting crack propagation in reactor coolant system piping. Several nuclear utilities, including the New York Power Authority and Northeast Utilities, have performed probabilistic risk assessments on their reactors; and some, such as Arizona Public Service Company, cofund Gas Cooled Reactors Associates, an organization sponsored primarily by the utilities and by DOE that conducts research on gas-cooled advanced reactors. Some of the smaller utilities do sponsor research independently of EPRI. For example, Portland General Electric is currently sponsoring a small program of thermal hydraulics research at Oregon State Uni- versity; Yankee Atomic is involved in development work to explore

85 design improvements and to improve calculational methods; and Baltimore Gas and Electric Company supports the Johns Hopkins NDE (Nondestructive Examination) Center. In recent years the utility industry has also sponsored a num- ber of ad hoc projects of a short-term nature directed, like the Owners Groups discussed below, at specific problems. This year, one of these—the Industry Degraded Core Rulemaking project (IDCOR)—will come to a close. The purpose of IDCOR was to develop a technical understanding of the issues related to severe accidents using the best available information, to develop an inte- grated methodology for assessing reactor severe accident behavior, and to serve as a unified industry point of contact with the NRC, which had undertaken a large-scale program of severe accident re- search after the accident at Three Mile Island. IDCOR led to the development of new mathematical models and analytical codes for assessing reactor behavior during severe accidents, and these were used to analyze four reference plants. IDCOR has nearly com- pleted developing simplified techniques for use by utilities with nuclear power plants to enable them to screen for susceptibilities to severe accidents. Aside from the vendors, the principal sponsor of nuclear safety research in the private sector is EPRI, headquartered in Palo Alto, California. EPRI was formed by the electric utility industry in 1972. Utility membership in EPRI is voluntary; financial support for EPRI research by a member utility is based on the amount of power it produces. Nuclear safety research is conducted by EPRI's Nuclear Power Division, which had expenditures in 1985 of about $65 million, which is about $4 million more than was budgeted for that year. Only about one-third of EPRI's 1985 expenditures, however, were for safety research. Although figures on expenditures for 1986 are not yet available, the committee is told that they are likely to be somewhat lower than in 1985. Roughly 90 to 95 percent of EPRI's nuclear research is tar- geted at current light water reactors, and about half of the ad- vanced reactor R&D budget ($5.4 million in 1985) is devoted to breeder and advanced gas reactors, with the remainder funding re- search on improved light water reactors. In sum, as in the case of DOE, most of the research undertaken by EPRI's Nuclear Power Division does not have safety as its primary emphasis; perhaps 30 to 35 percent of the work does, but the majority is aimed at

86 TABLE A.7 EPRI Nuclear Power Division Budgets, 1973-1985, in Current and Constant 1985 Dollars Current Dollars Constant Dollars 1973 (.0 11.3 1974 4.2 8.7 1975 15.0 28.4 1976 29.5 5S.O 1977 35.8 60.9 1978 48.6 76.9 1979 48.9 71.2 1980 53.5 71.4 1981 55.1 67.2 1982 57.6 66.3 1983 68.6 76.4 1984 60.7 64.0 1985 60.9^ 60.9 TOTALS 543.4 716.6 -Planned spending (actual expenditures were somewhat higher after accounting for rollovers and reductions from commitments made in previous years.) improving power plant economics (e.g., availability and reliability) which may yield safety improvements as a by-product. Table A.7 shows figures for the EPRI Nuclear Power Division since its inception. In thirteen years the Nuclear Power Division has funded more than half a billion dollars of research. In current dollars the peak year was 1983, when nearly $70 million was expended. In constant dollars spending peaked in 1978. Both of these cases are anomalous. If one looks at the overall trend in constant dollars, spending went up until the late 1970s and has been decreasing since then. Table A.8 shows actual expenditures by EPRI's Nuclear Power Division in 1985 both in terms of the type of research conducted and the sector of the contract research community that performed it. Table A.9 shows the percentages of EPRI, DOE, and NRG prime contracts allocated among different sectors of the contract research community. The total value of this research (in mixed 1985 and 1986 dollars) is approximately $356 million; but it is

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88 TABLE A.9 Patterns of DOE, EPRI, and NRC Support for Nuclear R&D (prime contracts in thousands of dollars) DOE2 EPRI- NRC- U.S. government 117,822 (64.8%) 6,863 (10.5%) 94,038 (86.4%) Universities 6,600 (3.6%) 3,140 (4.8%) 3,067 (2.8%) Industry 57,322 (31.5%) 51,713 (78.9%) 11,396 (10.5%) Foreign 0 — 3,013 (4.6%) 260 (0.2%) Other 0 — 804 (1.2%) 125 (0.1%) TOTALS 181,744 (100.0%) 65,533 (100.0%) 108,886 (100.0%) rPrimarily non-safety-related research, FY 1986. -Primarily non-safety-related research, CY 1985. ^Primarily safety-related research, FY 1986. important to reiterate that the greatest part of these funds was not earmarked for nuclear safety research. One finds clear distinctions among the principal sponsors of nuclear R<kD. In total dollars, DOE provides over half of all of the nuclear R&D sponsored by these three organizations ($182 million of a total of $356 million, or 51 percent). Dollar for dollar, DOE provides more support for nuclear research conducted by federal laboratories, by universities, and by the private sector than any other sponsor, public or private. On a percentage basis, however, the picture is a little different. The NRC spends by far the largest share of its available research budget on work performed in federal laboratories. EPRI spends more, proportionately, than either of the others for research con- ducted either in the universities or in industry. The proportion that EPRI spends for research in industry is significantly more than either government agency, and the total dollar amount of this research is on a par with the amount that DOE provides to industry for civilian nuclear RfcD. The NRC, on the other hand, provides the least support for nuclear research whether performed in the universities or in the private sector, and whether on a percentage or total dollar basis. The utility industry sponsors and conducts research through several additional mechanisms. One of these is the so-called Owners Group. Research in several specific areas—for example,

89 TABLE A.10 1985 Allocation of Owner* Group Contracts (thousands of 198S dollars) ABODE F Totals U.S. government 0 329 0 0 1 537 873 National labora- tories 0 329 0 0 1 537 873 Other U.S. gov- ernment 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Universities 0 279 162 0 0 59 500 Industry 09 7,039 1,837 359 1,052 3,584 13,940 Foreign 0 1,148 0 734 0 0 1,882 Internal use Other2 0 0 0 -145 0 0 0 0 0 -20 0 -1,065 -550 -350 TOTALS 69 8,876 1,450 743 1,059 4,158 16,130 A — Steam Generator Owners Group I B - Steam Generator Owners Group II C - Seismicity Owners Group D - Nuclear Fuel Industry Research Owners Group E - Hydrogen Control (BWR6/Mark III) Owners Group F - Boning Water Reactors Owners Group II NOTE: Columns may not add up due to rounding. ^Unidentified contracts minus reductions from previous years commitments. steam generator performance and stress corrosion in boiling wa- ter reactors—is managed by EPRI; but it is funded and has its agenda set by a utility Owners Group, which consists of a group of utilities in partnership with one or more reactor vendors, foreign utilities, or industrial firms, depending on the research area. Fund- ing is arranged by the Owners Group rather than out of general EPRI funds. This approach is followed for several reasons. Often the benefits from the research apply to a limited number of utili- ties. Foreign utilities, which are not permitted to join EPRI, can provide funding and participate in research decisions more easily through Owners Group activities. And agreements regarding the scope of the research and the funding responsibility of vendors can be developed on a programmatic basis. In addition to the two areas identified above, EPRI manages Owners Group programs on hydrogen control, nuclear fuel, and seismic research. As Table A. 10 indicates, these programs fund an additional $16 million of nuclear research.

90 The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) in Atlanta disclaims conducting research, but it does collect and distribute operating data to the nuclear utility industry and conducts audits of power plant operations with the aim of defining and promoting standards of operational excellence. In particular, INPO manages the nuclear plant reliability data system (NPRDS), which consists of two data bases. One is a component failure reporting data base, and the other is an engineering data base. This information is not only valuable for member utilities to determine histories of particular types of equipment, but also serves as the data base necessary for finding accident precursors and for doing statistical treatments included in probabilistic risk analyses. INPO estimates that the annual cost of operating the NPRDS system is about $1.4 million. A major upgrade of the system, including over $1 million in new programming, is scheduled for FY 1987.