Honorable Marcus A. Rowden Commissioner Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C. 20555 Dear Mr. Rowden: COPY At the Subcommittee's recent hearing on the Reactor Safety Study, one of the matters of concern was whether the report, and particularly its executive summary, contained an implied conclusion that the hazards associated with operation of light water reactors were so small as to be 'acceptable'. While I am aware that the Study states that such value judgments are not its intent, the manner in which the executive summary is laid out can readily convey a contrary impression. The impression of a value judgment was also conveyed to the Congress during the debate last fall on extension of the PriceAnderson Act. At that time, the Reactor Safety Study was cited to support the contention that the Act's liability limitations had no practical significance owing to the improbability of an accident occurring in which damage would exceed the specified limits. This raises a matter of continuing concern to the Subcommittee, namely the role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the legislative process. I would appreciate, therefore, your providing for the hearing record a statement addressing the question of whether the decision to publish and release the final draft of the Reactor Safety Study (NUREG 75-014) prior to peer review was influenced by the forthcoming debate on PriceAnderson renewal. Sincerely, Jonathan B. Bingham UNITED COMMISSION OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN WASHINGTON, D. C. 20555 September 17, 1976 The Honorable Jonathan B. Bingham Dear Congressman Bingham: This is in reply to your inquiry on "whether the decision to publish and release the final draft of the Reactor Safety Study ... prior to peer review was influenced by the (then) forthcoming debate on Price-Anderson renewal." The Commission was aware of Congressional interest in having the Reactor Safety Study's final report during its deliberations on the extension of the Price-Anderson legislation, and when the Study was completed, the pendency of Congressional debate on this matter was a factor in the timing of the report's release. However, it has been and remains our view that there is no direct connection between the. report and the need for this legislation. The charter of the Reactor Safety Study was to make a technical assessment of the potential accident risks in nuclear plants. In fact, the report does not address the need for Price-Anderson coverage. Our support for P.L. 94-197 has been based on the view that it is necessary to provide assurance of an adequate level of readily available financial protection for the public in the unlikely event of a large nuclear power plant accident, while at the same time providing for an orderly changeover from government indemnification to private coverage. WASH-1400, released in October 1975, was published in final form; it was not a "final draft" as your letter terms it, but the final report of a completed engineering study. Further, it was not published prior to peer review, but was in fact issued only after the draft had received an unusually extensive peer review. Some 90 organizations and individuals representing a broad spectrum of society and many diverse viewpoints and expertise contributed about 1800 pages of comments, many of a highly technical nature. In the preparation of the final report, detailed consideration was given to the peer review comments received on the draft, and appropriate changes were made in converting the draft into the final report. Furthermore, those comments were made publicly available and were carefully analyzed and discussed in a new Appendix XI to the final report. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review of the final report indicated that it has indeed been responsive to the comments received and that a major effort was made to correct the errors noted by the comments on the draft report. More specifically, the principal comments of the APS study group and the EPA were that the draft report underestimated the health effects that could occur from potential reactor accidents. The final report reflects modifications from the draft report to account for the effects of these comments. Moreover, to assure that the health effects computations in the final report would be soundly based, a consulting group of some of the most distinguished scientists in the country in the area of radiation health effects was formed to provide advice to the study team. This group was unanimous in its support of the model used. In regard to the schedule for publication of the final report of the Reactor Safety Study, the original plan was to finish the study in June of 1975. However, it soon became apparent that the development of a new and improved consequence model could not be completed in that time frame and the schedule was delayed until October. While the Reactor Safety Study Group had earlier believed it might be useful to discuss the health effects area with some members of the APS study and the EPA prior to publication of the final report, as the new consequence model was developed, it became apparent that the potential usefulness of such discussions diminished because virtually all of the recommendations on the draft with respect to health effects had been adopted and because, as mentioned earlier, the advice received from the health effects consultants had been unanimous. Furthermore, no significant new issues concerning the report were raised either by the EPA or by Dr. Panofsky during the June 11, 1976 hearings before the Subcommittee. Essentially, each criticism that was brought up at the hearing had been previously discussed in detail in Appendix XI. Finally, I would like to emphasize that great diligence was taken not to impose value judgments on the data presented in WASH-1400. The purpose of the study was to estimate the risks to the public from potential accidents; no judgments were made as to the acceptability of these risks. The data and conclusions drawn from the data were, I believe, stated accurately, fairly and without bias. Your criticism was particularly directed at the presentation of the data in the Study's Executive Summary. As I am sure you are aware, it is extremely difficult to summarize a highly complex technical work of 2,300 pages in 12 pages that can be easily read and comprehended by the general public. It is |