the core is damaged and then, subsequently, in the process, that is a full-size experiment which we are stuck with, but now that we are stuck with it, we can get some value out of it if we spend a little extra in order to do the analysis properly. Mr. MORRISON. I agree very much and I hope that that will be underscored in the committee's consideration of this panel's input. One last question. Mr. Berga, your comments suggested that we move toward a greatly simplified design and process for nuclear power reactors. Are we not faced, though, with the complications that have arisen on what is a relatively simple design that have been related to safety? Or at least have spun out of the regulatory environment in which we have to work with increasing public concern about safety? And so, are we in a conflict there? Are we going to continue to have to have very complicated machines for that reason? Mr. BERGA. I think now, if we kind of take a clean piece of paper approach to it, that what we are doing, as well as looking into the design tradeoffs, I would like to say "greatly simplified" is probably not the right term because we do not want to stretch very far from what we know is proven technology, so we are not going to make any great leaps in the technology of what we are working with. We would just like to go back and look at, say, the regulatory back fits in the systems that we had and make sure that they are as good and easy to maintain and operate as we think they should be. So we are just looking at what is basically the technology. We have 35 years of use now and we are trying to see if we cannot look at it and clean it up a little. It is not an innovation move. It is an evolution to a new machine. The important part of this, too, is that we are working-—and have been for 3 years now-with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as we go through each part of the writing of the requirements for a plant, to make sure that we are cleaning up the licensing issues in advance and, hopefully, so that there are no surprises after we finish doing this work. And we have started-we inventoried their issues and started with a number like 650 that applied to future lightwater reactors and we now have resolved all but about 40 of those, and we have a methodology for coming to ultimate resolution on any issue with them. Mr. MORRISON. You sense we are really-even though the pressure-I think we are in a cooling-off period. Mr. BERGA. Yes. Mr. MORRISON. Mr. Diamond used that term. I worry about cooling-off periods because it seems like you lose momentum, that you never really get to the goal unless the heat stays on. But you have just assured me that you have a methodology working with NRC that this regulatory nightmare is going to be straightened out, even without Congress rewriting the ruleswhich I think we very clearly should do. Mr. BERGA. I think you should do it, too. Mr. BERGA. We are working on the technical side to make sure that there are no surprises between what the lightwater design looks like, and what the regulatory framework is. Mr. MORRISON. Would it be helpful at some point-and, Mr. Chairman, I mention this for you and the staff to consider-possibly at some point on down the road a little ways, if we put together representatives of the industry with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, just to express our concern that during this time we really are creating a new regulatory atmosphere in which nuclear might well survive? Mr. VALENTINE. Yes. I think that is an excellent suggestion. Mr. MORRISON. I think that is an idea that we should pursue. And I thank the panel very much for your presentation. Mr. VALENTINE. Thank you. Mr. Lujan. Mr. LUJAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one comment. It is very interesting. I have an advisory committee on energy at home. I am fortunate to have people from Sandia and Los Alamos and those kinds of people. And one of the interesting things that came out of the last meeting that we had, one of the fellows had done an analysis of all of the breakdowns and all of the problems we have in electrical generation by nuclear power and I cannot remember the percentage now, but, by far, the highest percentage of breakdowns and things happening was in the conventional end and nonnuclear end of the business, so that the nuclear portion of the powerplant has been relatively stable in most of our problems in generating electricity. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I do not have any questions. Mr. VALENTINE. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I believe that the majority of the members of this subcommittee of both parties hear you loud and clear. The next panel consists of Mr. Richard F. Walker, chairman, Gas-Cooled Reactor Associates, Mr. Warren P. Chernock, vice president, R&D Nuclear Power Systems, Combustion Engineering, Inc., and Mr. Richard A. Dean, senior vice president, GA Technologies, Inc. Welcome, gentlemen. We will hear from Mr. Walker first. STATEMENT OF RICHARD F. WALKER, CHAIRMAN, GAS-COOLED REACTOR ASSOCIATES Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is our pleasure to be here today in support of the high temperature gas-cooled reactor system and we would certainly like to acknowledge the House Science and Technology Committee's longstanding support for our concept. Over the years you have stuck by us, even when we had no support from the administration and we certainly appreciate that. I also want to acknowledge your leadership about 21⁄2 years ago, when you suggested that maybe smaller, simpler, inherently safe nuclear concepts and modular HTGR's in particular would be something that we ought to look at. We have certainly done that. And there are certainly some real advantages to the modular HTGR. 61-109 0. 86 10 One of them certainly is the passive safety and investment protection features. Certainly, when you can simplify the licensing and operations of a plant and you will certainly enhance, then, the investor and public acceptance of that. With the modular plant you can match capacity additions to our utility load growth-which is not near what it was several decades ago. It is also idealy suited for close-in siting, repowering, cogeneration process heat, plus export to other countries. And, certainly, the modular approach makes easier financing and reduced financial risks. And the modular one is certainly transportable to most sites. One of the very important features is the ability to shop-fabricate most of the parts. You get a shorter construction schedule, reduced field labor. And I have seen some interesting studies done on the time it takes to do field work for a conventional plant versus what it takes to do for a nuclear plant and the ratios of man-hours to do the same job is something in the order of three to four times. So, if in a modular plant, you can reduce the percent of the plant that is nuclear grade from maybe 60 percent down to 20, you can make a tremendous savings in the cost of building these plants. Certainly it lends itself to a demonstration of a standard modular unit that we could test full scale. We have supplied to the full committee the statement of support from various utilities that support this, and this is a part of my prepared statement. We have 15 utility executives who have been willing to put their name on this support statement, plus 5 of the vendors and architect-engineers that support our modular gas-cooled reactor concept. We think that is certainly, in this day and age when nuclear is not very popular, to have that kind of support, we think is certainly very worthwhile. Our past efforts have been to project development. The initiative for this was started by TVA and expanded on by our gas-cooled reactor associates. We have looked at some of the things that need to be done for that. We need to demonstrate that the HTDR unique licensing basis in support and design certification effort for standard nuclear island and we need to demonstrate the plant performance characteristics and some of the maintenance things and establish a basis for commercial plants costs and schedule, plus foster the development of a vendor-supplier infrastructure and establish utility user investor confidence to buy a commercial plant of this type. Some of the objectives that are ongoing that we need to look at are some of the costs and risk sharing that needs to be taken before we can go forward with this and it is certainly our feeling that the private sector should put up certainly more than half of the costs and share the risk in doing this. I would certainly emphasize other testimony that I have heard here today and other places, that we do need a stable Government support in this R&D system for many reasons and so our recommendation is that the budget for our project should be about the same as last year. Last year it was some $32 million and we need to continue the effort with DOE to advance a preference plant design and licensing development and key technology development activities. One of the primary goals for fiscal 1987 is to obtain a licensability statement from the NRC. Certainly, this concept is not going to be viable unless we can have the concurrence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that this can be licensed-and can be licensed as a standard nuclear island. And what are some of the interfaces with the other site characteristics? And are the top-level regulatory criteria acceptable? And can they remain valid through the final design approval? And what would be the approach to emergency planning on an inherently safe concept such as this? And is there any real possibility of design certification for a plant like this? There is kind of an interesting analogy that came to me the other day. Thinking back years ago, if you had started the airline industry on the basis that every airplane that was made had to go through a licensing process like we have to do with nuclear plants, we would not have any airline industry today. I think we just have to get the nuclear technology down to where you could take a modular, get it certified, and that could be put on a production line and you would not have to relicense every time you took one of them off. If you changed it, just like if you changed airplane design, you would have to do that and I think there is a good possibility that we could get that done and it would certainly simplify a lot of the problems we in the utility industry have in considering nuclear power as the future technology for all of us. And that is a tough position to take in these days, with some of the things that you have heard expressed here this morning. I would certainly like to acknowledge that we have got good vendor support. The GA Technologies and Combustion Engineering-who are here with me this morning-and they are certainly supporting putting together a project team to further this development of the modular reactor. One of our greatest problems is the CEO of an electric utility. In thinking what you are going to plan in the future, is there some way to minimize the investment risks that we are all involved in, in putting together new nuclear plants and our forecasting? Most of us have come to the conclusion that we do need smaller modular ones that can be expanded and we think that is probably the way to go. So we would certainly urge the committee to urge DOE and I think a strong policy statement from you would go a long ways toward Mr. VALENTINE. Excuse me, sir, would you go back because I was talking about something that was brought to my mind by something that you said that I thought was very appropriate. You had just asked us to do something. Would you go back so we can listen to that? Mr. WALKER. I think the thing you can do-and you have certainly done this in the past-is a very strong policy statement that to keep this technology going-certainly at the present level of funding, and you are all very-you know, experts and are looked to in Congress-in science and technology-and a good, strong policy statement from you would certainly go a long ways toward helping us with our efforts to keep this technology going, too. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I will now turn the panel over to Mr. Chernock. [The prepared statement of Mr. Walker follows:] |