ML050560373

License Amendment No. 57, Elimination of Monthly Report Requirement on Operating & Occupational Reports (TS-04-15)

ML050560373
Person / Time
Site:	Watts Bar
Issue date:	03/21/2005
From:	Pickett D NRC/NRR/DLPM/LPD2
To:	Singer K Tennessee Valley Authority
Pickett D, NRR/DLPM, 415-1364
Shared Package
ML050980365	List: ML050560373 ML050980208
References
TAC MC5185
Download: ML050560373 (11)

Text

March 21, 2005 Mr. Karl W. Singer Chief Nuclear Officer and Executive Vice President Tennessee Valley Authority 6A Lookout Place 1101 Market Street Chattanooga, Tennessee 37402-2801

SUBJECT:

WATTS BAR NUCLEAR PLANT, UNIT 1 ISSUANCE OF AMENDMENT REGARDING ELIMINATION OF REQUIREMENTS TO PROVIDE MONTHLY OPERATING REPORTS AND ANNUAL OCCUPATIONAL RADIATION EXPOSURE REPORTS (TAC NO. MC5185) (TS-04-15)

Dear Mr. Singer:

The Commission has issued the enclosed Amendment No. 57 to Facility Operating License No. NPF-90 for Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, Unit 1. This amendment is in response to your application dated November 8, 2004 (WBN-04-15).

The amendment eliminates requirements in the Technical Specifications (TSs) to submit monthly operating reports and annual occupational radiation exposure reports. A notice of availability for this TS improvement using the Consolidated Line Item Improvement Process was published in the Federal Register (FR) on June 23, 2004 (69 FR 35067).

A copy of the safety evaluation is also enclosed. Notice of issuance will be included in the Commission's biweekly Federal Register notice.

Sincerely,

/RA/

Douglas V. Pickett, Senior Project Manager, Section 2 Project Directorate II Division of Licensing Project Management Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Docket No. 50-390

Enclosures:

1. Amendment No. 57 to NPF-90

2. Safety Evaluation cc w/enclosures: See next page

ML050560373 Attachment No.: ML050980208 NRR-058 OFFICE CLIIP PM PDII-2:PM PDII-2:LA SC:IROB SC:PDII-2 NAME WReckley DPickett BClayton TBoyce MMarshall DATE 03/ 07 /05 03/ 04 /05 03/ 04 /05 03/ 10 /05 03 / 21 /05 Mr. Karl W. Singer Tennessee Valley Authority WATTS BAR NUCLEAR PLANT cc:

Mr. Ashok S. Bhatnagar, Senior Vice President Mr. Paul L. Pace, Manager Nuclear Operations Licensing and Industry Affairs Tennessee Valley Authority Watts Bar Nuclear Plant 6A Lookout Place Tennessee Valley Authority 1101 Market Street P.O. Box 2000 Chattanooga, TN 37402-2801 Spring City, TN 37381 Mr. Larry S. Bryant, General Manager Mr. Jay Laughlin, Plant Manager Nuclear Engineering Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Tennessee Valley Authority Tennessee Valley Authority 6A Lookout Place P.O. Box 2000 1101 Market Street Spring City, TN 37381 Chattanooga, TN 37402-2801 Senior Resident Inspector Mr. William R. Lagergren Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Site Vice President U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Watts Bar Nuclear Plant 1260 Nuclear Plant Road Tennessee Valley Authority Spring City, TN 37381 P.O. Box 2000 Spring City, TN 37381 County Executive Rhea County Courthouse General Counsel 375 Church Street Tennessee Valley Authority Suite 215 ET 11A Dayton, TN 37321 400 West Summit Hill Drive Knoxville, TN 37902 County Mayor P. O. Box 156 Mr. John C. Fornicola, Manager Decatur, TN 37322 Nuclear Assurance and Licensing Tennessee Valley Authority Mr. Lawrence E. Nanney, Director 6A Lookout Place Division of Radiological Health 1101 Market Street Dept. of Environment & Conservation Chattanooga, TN 37402-2801 Third Floor, L and C Annex 401 Church Street Mr. Fredrick C. Mashburn Nashville, TN 37243-1532 Senior Program Manager Nuclear Licensing Ms. Ann P. Harris Tennessee Valley Authority 341 Swing Loop Road 4X Blue Ridge Rockwood, Tennessee 37854 1101 Market Street Chattanooga, TN 37402-2801

TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY DOCKET NO. 50-390 WATTS BAR NUCLEAR PLANT, UNIT 1 AMENDMENT TO FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE Amendment No. 57 License No. NPF-90

1. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has found that:

A. The application for amendment by Tennessee Valley Authority (the licensee) dated November 8, 2004, complies with the standards and requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the Act), and the Commission's rules and regulations set forth in 10 CFR Chapter I; B. The facility will operate in conformity with the application, the provisions of the Act, and the rules and regulations of the Commission; C. There is reasonable assurance (i) that the activities authorized by this amendment can be conducted without endangering the health and safety of the public, and (ii) that such activities will be conducted in compliance with the Commission's regulations; D. The issuance of this amendment will not be inimical to the common defense and security or to the health and safety of the public; and E. The issuance of this amendment is in accordance with 10 CFR Part 51 of the Commission's regulations and all applicable requirements have been satisfied.

2

2. Accordingly, the license is amended by changes to the Technical Specifications as indicated in the attachment to this license amendment, and paragraph 2.C.(2) of Facility Operating License No. NPF-90 is hereby amended to read as follows:

(2) Technical Specifications and Environmental Protection Plan The Technical Specifications contained in Appendices A and B, as revised through Amendment No. 57, and the Environmental Protection Plan contained in Appendix B, both of which are attached hereto, are hereby incorporated into this license. TVA shall operate the facility in accordance with the Technical Specifications and the Environmental Protection Plan.

3. This license amendment is effective as of the date of its issuance, and shall be implemented no later than 45 days from the date of its issuance.

FOR THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

/RA/

Michael L. Marshall, Jr., Chief, Section 2 Project Directorate II Division of Project Licensing Management Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation

Attachment:

Changes to the Technical Specifications Date of Issuance: March 21, 2005

ATTACHMENT TO AMENDMENT NO. 57 FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE NO. NPF-90 DOCKET NO. 50-390 Replace the following pages of the Appendix A Technical Specifications with the attached pages. The revised pages are identified by amendment number and contain vertical lines indicating the area of change.

Remove Pages Insert Pages 5.0-30 5.0-30 5.0-31 5.0-31

SAFETY EVALUATION BY THE OFFICE OF NUCLEAR REACTOR REGULATION RELATED TO AMENDMENT NO. 57 TO FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE NO. NPF-90 TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY WATTS BAR NUCLEAR PLANT, UNIT 1 DOCKET NO. 50-390

1.0 INTRODUCTION

By application dated November 8, 2004, the Tennessee Valley Authority (the licensee) proposed an amendment to the Technical Specifications (TSs) for the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, Unit 1. The application is available in the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) under Accession No. ML043200128. The requested change would delete TS 5.9.1, Occupational Radiation Exposure Report, and TS 5.9.4, "Monthly Operating Reports," as described in the Notice of Availability published in the Federal Register (FR) on June 23, 2004 (69 FR 35067).

2.0 REGULATORY EVALUATION

Section 182a of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the "Act"), requires applicants for nuclear power plant operating licenses to state TSs to be included as part of the license. The Commissions regulatory requirements related to the content of TSs are set forth in Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Section 50.36, "Technical specifications." The regulation requires that TSs include items in five specific categories, including (1) safety limits, limiting safety system settings, and limiting control settings, (2) limiting conditions for operation (LCOs), (3) surveillance requirements, (4) design features, and (5) administrative controls.

However, the regulation does not specify the particular requirements to be included in a plants TSs.

The Commission has provided guidance for the content of TSs in its "Final Policy Statement on Technical Specification Improvements for Nuclear Power Reactors" (58 FR 39132, published July 22, 1993), in which the Commission indicated that compliance with the Final Policy Statement satisfies Section 182a of the Act. The Final Policy Statement identified four criteria to be used in determining whether a particular item should be addressed in the TSs as an LCO.

The criteria were subsequently incorporated into 10 CFR 50.36 (60 FR 36593, published July 19, 1995). While the criteria specifically apply to LCOs, the Commission indicated that the intent of these criteria may be used to identify the optimum set of administrative controls in TSs.

Addressing administrative controls, 10 CFR 50.36 states that they are "the provisions relating to organization and management, procedures, recordkeeping, review and audit, and reporting necessary to assure operation of the facility in a safe manner." The specific content of the administrative controls section of the TSs is, therefore, related to those programs and reports that the Commission deems essential for the safe operation of the facility, which are not adequately covered by regulations or other regulatory requirements. Accordingly, the U.S.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff may determine that specific requirements, such as those associated with this change, may be removed from the administrative controls in the TSs if they are not explicitly required by 10 CFR 50.36(c)(5) and are not otherwise necessary to obviate the possibility of an abnormal situation or event giving rise to an immediate threat to the public health and safety.

The impetus for the monthly operating report (MOR) came from the 1973-1974 oil embargo.

Regulatory Guide 1.16, Revision 4, "Reporting of Operating Information - Appendix A Technical Specifications," published for comment in August 1975, identifies operating statistics and shutdown experience information that was desired in the operating report at that time. In the mid-1990s, the NRC staff assessed the information that is submitted in the MOR and determined that while some of the information was no longer used by the NRC staff, the MOR was the only source of some data used in the NRC Performance Indicator (PI) Program of that time period (see NRC Generic Letter (GL) 97-02, "Revised Contents of the Monthly Operating Report"). Beginning in the late 1990s, the NRC developed and implemented a major revision to its assessment, inspection, and enforcement processes through its Reactor Oversight Process (ROP). The ROP uses both plant-level PIs and inspections performed by NRC personnel. In conjunction with the development of the ROP, the NRC developed the Industry Trends Program (ITP). The ITP provides the NRC a means to assess overall industry performance using industry level indicators and to report on industry trends to various stakeholders (e.g., Congress). Information from the ITP is used to assess the NRCs performance related to its goal of having "no statistically significant adverse industry trends in safety performance."

The ITP uses some of the same PIs as the PI Program from the mid-1990s and, therefore, the NRC has a continuing use for the data provided in MORs. The NRC also uses some data from the MORs to support the evaluation of operating experience, licensee event reports, and other assessments performed by the NRC staff and its contractors.

The reporting requirements for the monthly operating report include challenges to the pressurizer power operated relief valves or pressurizer safety valves. The reporting of challenges to the pressurizer power operated relief valves or pressurizer safety valves was included in TSs based on the guidance in NUREG-0694, "[Three Mile Island] TMI-Related Requirements for New Operating Licensees." The industry proposed and the NRC accepted the elimination of the reporting requirements in TS for challenges to the pressurizer power operated relief valves or pressurizer safety valves in Revision 4 to TSTF-258, "Changes to Section 5.0, Administrative Controls." The staffs acceptance of TSTF-258 and subsequent approval of plant-specific adoptions of TSTF-258 is based on the fact that the information on challenges to relief and safety valves is not used in the evaluation of the monthly operating report data, and that the information needed by the NRC is adequately addressed by the reporting requirements in 10 CFR 50.73, "Licensee event reports."

Licensees are required by TSs to submit annual occupational radiation exposure reports (ORERs) to the NRC. The reports, developed in the mid-1970s, supplement the reporting requirements currently defined in 10 CFR 20.2206, "Reports of individual monitoring," by providing a tabulation of data by work areas and job functions. The NRC included data from the ORERs in its annual publication of NUREG-0713, "Occupational Radiation Exposure at Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors and Other Facilities," through the year 1997, but no longer includes the data in that or other reports.

3.0 TECHNICAL EVALUATION

3.1 Monthly Operating Reports As previously mentioned, the administrative requirements in TSs are reserved for "the provisions relating to organization and management, procedures, recordkeeping, review and audit, and reporting necessary to assure operation of the facility in a safe manner." The current use of the information from the MORs is not related to reporting on or confirming the safe operation of specific nuclear power plants. Instead, the data is used by the NRC to assess and communicate with stakeholders regarding the overall performance of the nuclear industry. Data related to PIs for specific plants are reported to the NRC as part of the ROP. The NRC staff has determined that the MORs do not meet the criteria defined for requirements to be included in the administrative section of TSs and the reporting requirement may, therefore, be removed.

Although the MORs do not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in TSs, the NRC staff, nevertheless, has a continuing need to receive the data in order to compile its reports on industry trends and to support other evaluations of operating experience. In addition, information such as plant capacity factors that are reported in the MORs are useful to the NRC staff and are frequently asked for by agency stakeholders.

The NRC staff interacted with licensees, industry organizations, and other stakeholders during the development of the Consolidated Data Entry (CDE) program (currently being developed and maintained by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operation), regarding the use of an industry database like CDE to provide data currently obtained from MORs. These discussions also involved the related Revision 1 to TS Task Force (TSTF)-369, "Removal of Monthly Operating Report and Occupational Radiation Exposure Report." As described in Section 4.0 of this safety evaluation, the licensee is making a regulatory commitment to continue to provide the data identified in GL 97-02, following the removal of the TS requirement to submit MORs, and will, therefore, continue to meet the needs of the NRC staff for the ITP and other evaluations.

The use of an industry database such as CDE is more efficient and cost-effective, for both the NRC and licensees, than having the NRC staff obtain the needed information from other means currently available. Should a licensee fail to satisfy the regulatory commitment to voluntarily provide the information, the NRC could obtain the information through its inspection program (similar to the process described in NRC Inspection Procedure 71150, "Discrepant or Unreported Performance Indicator Data") with the licensee being charged for the time spent by the NRC staff.

The only significant changes resulting from the adoption of TSTF-369 are that the information will be provided quarterly instead of monthly (although the operating data will still be divided by month) and the form of reporting will be from a consolidated database such as CDE instead of in correspondence from individual licensees. The change of reporting frequency to quarterly has some advantages for both the NRC staff and licensees, since it will coincide with the collection and submission of the ROP PI data. In terms of the specific method used to transmit the data to the NRC, the licensee has committed (see Section 4.0) to provide data identified in GL 97-02 on a quarterly basis. The NRC staff believes that the most efficient process for licensees and the NRC will be for all licensees to use a system such as CDE. Such systems

have advantages in terms of improved data entry, data checking, and data verification and validation. The NRC will recognize efficiency gains by having the data from all plants reported using the same computer software and format. Although the data may be transmitted to the NRC from an industry organization maintaining a database such as CDE, the licensee provides the data for the system and remains responsible for the accuracy of the data submitted to the NRC for its plant. The public will continue to have access to the data through official agency records accessible through ADAMS.

The content requirements for the MOR currently include information on challenges to the pressurizer power operated relief valves or pressurizer safety valves. As discussed in the previous section, the staff has documented in its approval of TSTF-258 and related plant-specific amendments that the reporting of challenges to pressurizer power operated relief valves or pressurizer safety valves may be removed from TSs since the information needed by the NRC is adequately addressed by the reporting requirements in 10 CFR 50.73. The staff finds it acceptable to remove the requirement to report challenges to pressurizer power operated relief valves or pressurizer safety valves along with the other reporting requirements associated with the MOR.

3.2 Occupational Radiation Exposure Reports The information that the NRC staff needs regarding occupational doses is provided by licensees in the reports required under 10 CFR Part 20. The data from the Part 20 reports are sufficient to support the NRC trending programs, radiation related studies, and preparation of reports such as NUREG-0713. Accordingly, the NRCs limited use of the ORER submitted pursuant to the existing TS requirements no longer warrants the regulatory burden imposed on licensees. Therefore, the NRC staff finds it acceptable that TS 5.6.1 is being deleted and the ORER will no longer be submitted by the licensee.

4.0 VERIFICATIONS AND COMMITMENTS In order to efficiently process incoming license amendment applications, the NRC staff requested each licensee requesting the changes addressed by TSTF-369 using the Consolidated Line Item Improvement Process to address the following plant-specific regulatory commitment.

Each licensee should make a regulatory commitment to provide to the NRC using an industry database the operating data (for each calendar month) that is described in Generic Letter 97-02, "Revised Contents of the Monthly Operating Report," by the last day of the month following the end of each calendar quarter. The regulatory commitment will be based on use of an industry database (e.g., the industrys Consolidated Data Entry (CDE) program, currently being developed and maintained by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations).

The licensee has made a regulatory commitment to provide the requested data via an industry database (e.g., the CDE) by the end of the month following each calendar quarter.

The NRC staff finds that reasonable controls for the implementation and for subsequent evaluation of proposed changes pertaining to the above regulatory commitment can be provided by the licensees administrative processes, including its commitment management program. The NRC staff has agreed that Nuclear Energy Institute document NEI 99-04, Revision 0, "Guidelines for Managing NRC Commitment Changes," provides reasonable guidance for the control of regulatory commitments made to the NRC staff (see Regulatory Issue Summary 2000-17, "Managing Regulatory Commitments Made by Power Reactor Licensees to the NRC Staff," dated September 21, 2000). The NRC staff notes that this amendment establishes a voluntary reporting system for the operating data that is similar to the system established for the ROP PI program. Should the licensee choose to incorporate a regulatory commitment into the final safety analysis report or other document with established regulatory controls, the associated regulations would define the appropriate change-control and reporting requirements.

5.0 STATE CONSULTATION

In accordance with the Commission's regulations, the Tennessee State official was notified of the proposed issuance of the amendment. The State official had no comments.

6.0 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATION

The amendment relates to changes in recordkeeping, reporting, or administrative procedures or requirements. The Commission has previously issued a proposed finding that the amendment involves no significant hazards consideration, and there has been no public comment on such finding (70 FR 2902, January 18, 2005). Accordingly, the amendment meets the eligibility criteria for categorical exclusion set forth in 10 CFR 51.22(c)(10). Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.22(b), no environmental impact statement or environmental assessment need be prepared in connection with the issuance of the amendment.

7.0 CONCLUSION

The Commission has concluded, based on the considerations discussed above, that: (1) there is reasonable assurance that the health and safety of the public will not be endangered by operation in the proposed manner, (2) such activities will be conducted in compliance with the Commission's regulations, and (3) the issuance of these amendments will not be inimical to the common defense and security or to the health and safety of the public.

Principal Contributor: W. Reckley Dated: March 21, 2005