clides under some circumstances that would be as high as they are now predicted and in a few cases even higher.

We believe that we need very sound science before we start to try to change our rules; otherwise we'll get bogged down in litigation, argument, and debate.

That research work and the progress we've made, I was hoping would be the progress would be greater than I've been able to see while I've been Chairman. As a matter of fact, in my personal remarks you will note that that's one of the areas where I express a little bit of disappointment. But nevertheless, we're making steady progress, and I can't predict at the moment when we'd feel that we're in a position, but maybe our staff might be able to help on that.

Mr. BEVILL. Yes, Vic.

Mr. STELLO. Well, I think there's maybe two points to make. Commissioner Bernthal suggested earlier that there is a question regarding, aside from the issue of the new research on source term work, whether the policy could or should have been examined. There was some discussion of doing that back in, as I recall, in 1981, a belief that we could modify what we were doing in the emergency planning area, based on what we understood even at that time.

It was decided not to do that, because we had the research program and expected to reach a conclusion on what the research showed us on source term work, and although it has taken consid erably longer than we thought, we are now nearing the end of that particular activity and expect some time this summer, probably around August, to have a report that will lay down the basic, fundamental science to be used for generating new information on source terms, and then following it, we will be able to then go back and take another look at the emergency planning issue.

Now with the history being what it is, clearly that is the best ac tivity to undertake now, to use this new information and take it into account in reexamination and not rely on just the old informa tion. And I hope that we will have that started sometime this summer and start reexamining those rules.

Mr. BEVILL. Thank you. Any other comments on that? [No response.]

Mr. BEVILL. What is the NRC doing to minimize its role as the cause of unnecessary downtime for operating reactors? And I'm basing that on the reports we get more and more that you have moved from construction, since there's none being built anymore, you've started into the operations, the day-to-day operations, and so that's why I'm asking this question.

Are you doing anything to minimize your role in the daily oper ations of the nuclear plants?

Mr. PALLADINO. I would be pleased to comment on that, Mr.

Chairman.

First of all, there are plants still under construction. I think we still have my last number is-

Mr. BEVILL. What is the number?

Mr. PALLADINO. About twenty-nine are still in various stages of construction. Some of those may fall by the wayside, but it's not an insignificant number when one looks at this issue. Mr. BEVILL. Right, 29 is not an insignificant number.

Mr. PALLADINO. But one of the most important items that I'm afraid may go by the board if we have to cut significantly into our budget, and that is the integrated safety assessment programno-integrated safety schedule. We are working with some pilot utilities, and I guess it's now only one, where we try to sit down with the utility and see what things need to be done, what priority they should have, what other things that the utility feels need to be done, and try to agree on a five-year schedule of outages whereby they know in advance what they're going to do at each outage. They can plan better for it. They can order the equipment for it and have less uncertainty in the outage.

Now that's a pilot program at the present time. Unfortunately, I don't see that we have the funds to do this on a widespread basis. Now we are, of course, encouraging utilities to do a better job of planning their outages, and I think some of them are doing an effective job.

I don't know if other Commissioners or Mr. Stello has a comment on that.

Mr. ASSELSTINE. Mr. Chairman, I might add a comment, if I could.

Mr. BEVILL, Yes.

Mr. ASSELSTINE. I think that at least in some instances, greater NRC involvement in the day-to-day activities at the plants can actually help reduce some downtimes that otherwise might not be necessary, and I'll give you a couple of examples.

The Davis-Besse plant, as a result of the event that occurred at that plant last June, has been shut down since June, and now it appears it will be shut down for several more months. At least concerning the problems that led to the operating event last June, if we had been more heavily involved and had taken a more active role in insisting upon real improvement at the plant, we might have avoided that operating event and the long shutdown that has occurred since then to basically rebuild the utility's nuclear pro

gram.

I think much the same thing can also be said of the TVA program. If we had been more heavily involved in 1981 and 1982 and had followed up on some of the warning signs that existed then, the five TVA operating plants might not be shut down today, and those plants have been shut down for a long period of time and are likely to be shut down for a considerable period of time from now. I think again that more involvement to identify problems early on and get them fixed before the situation really deteriorates can save the utilities shutting down their plants for substantial periods of time, and can save them and their ratepayers a substantial amount of money.

So it doesn't always cut the other way.

Mr. BEVILL. Are you stating that as a general rule, you think you all should be more involved in day-to-day operations?

Mr. ASSELSTINE. I think those cases justify a greater NRC involvement in terms of being able to understand the quality of operations, looking at the maintenance situation, identifying weaknesses in terms of the way the utilities manage and operate their programs from the standpoint of finding the weaknesses and problems and getting them fixed early on.

Not all of the utilities are weak. There are some very strong per formers. In fact, I would mention the plant in your state, Farley. It's an outstanding performer. Maybe not as much day-to-day involvement is necessary there as with the plants that are having difficulties. You have to differentiate between the two.

But if you look back at last year, we ended up with eight plants being shut down at the end of the year, five TVA plants, DavisBesse, San Onofre, Rancho Seco, because of either the management breakdown at TVA or the serious operating events at the other three plants. In my view, that's too high a percentage of plants to have to be shut down for long periods of time. We're not doing our job as effectively as we should if we can't spot those problems early on and get them corrected before we see a serious operating event leading to lengthy plant shutdowns.

Mr. BEVILL. Of course, a lot of that goes back to the days when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was watching them build the plants, and then when they were finished, you would say, "You can't use that pipe."

Mr. ASSELSTINE. That's true.

Mr. BEVILL. You can't use this; you can't use that. After you had stood there and watched them do it.

Mr. ASSELSTINE. That's certainly correct, and in many instances we weren't as heavily involved in the construction program as pos sible, although I think that in the TVA case, some of those warn ing signs were available to us, and we just didn't follow up on them.

Mr. BEVILL. So you would agree that in the construction phase is when you really need to do your real observation and take action when you see them doing something wrong.

Mr. ASSELSTINE. Absolutely. That's right.

Mr. BEVILL. Well, that's good. I'm glad to hear that.
Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PALLADINO. Mr. Chairman, let me speak specifically on the TVA case. I think in the TVA case we had identified the problems over the years, we had taken enforcement action, there had been periodic shutdowns of some of these plants. The problem there has been to get the management to realize that they have these problems and getting them to do things.

Now, I don't say we have been perfect in that, but there is quite a litany of occasions in which we have pointed out the problems, taken enforcement action, and cases where there have been shutdowns.

I think a similar kind of situation we found existed at some of the other problem plants, like Davis-Besse, things they hadn't done, things that Rancho Seco hadn't done, things that San Onofre hadn't done, and when they get these incidents, then they begin to appreciate the value of the information we were providing them along the way.

So I think we need to improve our process and maybe take stronger action to get their attention, but we also need their recog nition that they have these problems.

Mr. BEVILL. Especially during construction.

Mr. PALLADINO. What is that?

Mr. BEVILL. Especially during the construction period.

Mr. PALLADINO. And also in operation.

Mr. BEVILL. Yes, I understand, but especially during the construction period.

Mr. PALLADINO. Yes.

Mr. ASSELSTINE. That is right.

Mr. BEVILL. Yes, Fred.

Mr. BERNTHAL. Mr. Chairman, you are exactly right about the minimal effort that this agency has devoted across the country during construction, and the statistics are even worse than the impression, I think. I recall almost every time when we licensed a plant for operation in recent days-and maybe the staff isn't putting the numbers in by now-and it is just a fact that Midland, for example, is a catastrophe in terms of economic loss to the American people and the people of Michigan.

It turns out through that 15-year Midland effort, from the time the first shovel of dirt was turned, on the average we had one-half person from the NRC on site. Now, we shouldn't be there on site to interfere with the construction process or tell them how to do it, but we need to get into a mode of anticipatory helpfulness, I guess, would be the way I would put it, and still maintain our arm's length relationship.

But it is even worse than that. The other point that we touched on a bit earlier was that we were not involved in the design stage or least far less in the design stage. The Federal Aeronautics Administration, for example-I guess the Aviation Administration-is intimately involved when an airframe manufacturer is designing a new airframe, and gives timely, if not instantaneous, feedback on what they consider to be the safety characteristics of that airframe design.

The NRC has never done that. I think we will do it the next time around. But that is the origin, as you suggest, of some of the problems in this business.

Mr. ZECH. Mr. Chairman, if I may make just a brief comment? Mr. BEVILL. Yes.

Mr. ZECH. First of all, I think this is a very significant subject and one that has to be considered very carefully. We have the expertise in this agency, in my judgment, to regulate and to license. We have a talented group of people in the staff. That is where we can make a contribution. That is our job, that is our mission. On the other hand, the way our system in this country is designedand other countries are set up differently-but in our country the utilities themselves, the industry constructs the plant, maintains the plant, operates the plant and manages the plant.

Now, it is very true that we should be involved as we go along so there are not surprises at the end. Your point is well taken, and I agree with that. On the other hand, that is a monitoring and inspection technique and capability which we do have expertise in. We can do that. But I think when you get into the management area, it gets to be a little different.

We do not necessarily, in my judgment, on this Commission have all the management talent in the world. That is not necessarily our business. We can, though, do a better job, in my view, in looking at what I call performance indicators: how is the plant operating and are there things within our expertise that we can inspect and ana

lyze and make a judgment on, and can we see a trend of downward performance? There we can perhaps make a contribution and should do a better job.

I think this is a very important area for us to get more involved in, but I do think we have to be very careful about trying to tell the utility how to manage the plant. That is not our business. I think we can help them manage the plant, I think we have a responsibility to call out to them when we think they are not doing the right thing and we should do that, but I do think we should be careful about getting in so far into their business that we are actually telling them what to do in management.

The way we are set up, it is their job. I think they should do it themselves, we should hold them to it and be rather careful about dictating minutia to them that may really not be in our area of expertise. I think they have that. I think we can do a better job of helping them and we should be more involved. The key, in my judgment, in all the plants I have visited, the key is manager involvement. When they are involved on a day-to-day basis, those plants are the ones, in my judgment, that are operating best.

So management is an area that we should be careful about, that we can make a contribution to, but I don't think we should try to take that management responsibility away from the utilities. Mr. PALLADINO. I agree with Mr. Zech.

Mr. BEVILL. Any other comments?

Mr. ASSELSTINE. Mr. Chairman, I would just add that I agree with that. We shouldn't be involved in making the day-to-day management or operational decisions about how the plant should be run, but we can, both through our normal process of inspection, both for construction sites and for operating plants, identify where utilities or particular plants are going wrong, where they are running into real difficulty and where we are seeing a pattern of poor performance.

Often, the root cause of that poor performance is a management weakness by the company itself, and I think that is where we have to be stronger in saying, if we see that kind of situation, you have to stop and sort out your problems and come to us with a convincing explanation for how you are going to bring about real improvement in order to satisfy us that you can continue the construction program or continue operation of the plant.

I think we will be better off if we can do that early on rather than waiting for something fairly catastrophic to happen that really takes years or months to rebuild a whole program, and I think we are seeing that now with TVA. It is just plain wrong for us to allow a construction program to go forward where we know there is a seriously deficient construction program and a lack of quality assurance, only to stand up at the end of the line and say sorry, fellas, you didn't do it right and now you have got to go back and sort it all out and try and figure out how to make this thing correct. That is a failure of our program, and I think we need to learn from that experience.

Mr. BEVILL. Yes. I think you are making progress on that.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Rudd.

Mr. RUDD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.