Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Meyers.
Mr. Denton.
STATEMENT OF HAROLD R. DENTON, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NU-
CLEAR REACTOR REGULATION, NUCLEAR REGULATORY COM-
MISSION
Mr. Denton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to summarize
my testimony briefly.
Following the formation of the task force, we created within the
NRC a Chernobyl incident tracking team, using our response
center, which we created after the TMI accident. That provided a
way that we could serve as the clearing house for the entire
world's interest in this area. We had daily contact with most of the
regulators in the European countries and Japan. We supplied all
the background information that we could gather to the task force
with regard to the possible causes of the accident and its consequences.
As you know, we have identified significant design differences between
that plant and the U.S. plants. That plant is not exported
outside of Russia. It is a graphite plant, a boiling water plant, vertical
pressure tubes; very different than U.S. light water plants. I
could go into those differences if you so desire.
We intend to issue a report to the Commission by about the
middle of July which summarizes all the information we have
gathered to date. We now have access to a great deal of information
that we have gathered which is in the public record, regarding
the design of that plant. We are trying to look at the entire plant;
what are the general design criteria in the Soviet Union, what are
their approaches to QA, operating training, the licensing, what is
their safety philosophy.
We hope ultimately to provide the Commission with a report on
that plant and on the accident that the Commission can use in deciding
whether or not design changes may be necessary.
We will be participating in the forthcoming IAEA meetings. I
met with two of the Soviet designers of this plant in Vienna several
weeks ago. They have promised to be fully forthcoming and
cover all the details from the initiating event through the biomedical
aspects.
Chairman Palladino has asked that the senior staff recommend
by the end of the year whatever changes we think are necessary in
our program. Based on all that we can gather, we have identified
three areas which we think need a detailed look.
we want to look at accident prevention, to see if there is
First,
anything in the initiating event, the relationship of the Chernobyl
design to U.S. design and accidents that might occur here. We
intend to
compare accident prevention aspects with what we require
in this country.
The second area we want to look at in detail involves emergency
response planning. We want to be sure we understand what happened
there, how severe the accident was and what implications it
might have to the United States.