ML061080579
| ML061080579 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Palisades  |
| Issue date: | 04/05/2006 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | |
| References | |
| Download: ML061080579 (194) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Public Meeting to Discuss Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Palisades Nuclear Plant License Renewal Application Docket Number: (Not applicable for meetings)
Location:
South Haven, Michigan Date: Wednesday, April 5, 2006 Work Order No.: NRC-956 Pages 1-147 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 + + + + +
3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 + + + + +
5 PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS 6 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR 7 PALISADES NUCLEAR PLANT 8 LICENSE RENEWAL APPLICATION 9 + + + + +
10 WEDNESDAY 11 APRIL 5, 2006 12 + + + + +
13 SOUTH HAVEN, MICHIGAN 14 + + + + +
15 16 The Building Public Trust and 17 Confidence Session met at Lake Michigan College, 125 18 Veterans Boulevard, South Haven, Michigan, (Chip) F.
19 Cameron presiding.
20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 PRESENT:
2 3 (CHIP) F. CAMERON 4 RANI FRANOVICH 5 BO PHAM 6 DR. DAVID MILLER 7 ROBERT PALLA 8 BOB SCHAAF 9 VIKTORIA MITLYNG 10 JOHN ELLEGOOD 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 1 I N D E X 2
3 AGENDA ITEM 4 PAGE 5 I. Welcome and Purpose of meeting 4 6 II. Overview of License Renewal Process 18 7 III. Results of the Environmental Review 24 8 IV. Results of the Severe Accident Mitigation 73 9 Alternative Review 10 V. How Comments can be Submitted 91 11 VI. Public Comments 91 12 VII. Closing 146 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 (7:05 P.M.)
3 MR. CAMERON: Good evening everyone. My 4 name is Chip Cameron and I'm the special counsel for 5 public liaison at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 6 the NRC.
7 And it's my pleasure to serve as your 8 facilitator for tonight's meeting and in that role 9 I'll try to help all of you have a productive meeting 10 tonight.
11 And our subject tonight is the 12 environmental review that the NRC is conducting as one 13 part of this evaluation of an application that we 14 received from the Nuclear Management Company to renew 15 the license for the Palisades Nuclear facility.
16 I just want to cover a couple of points 17 about the meeting process before we get into the 18 substance of tonight's meeting.
19 I'd like to tell you about the format for 20 the meeting, some very simple ground rules and to 21 introduce our speakers tonight.
22 In terms of the format it's going to be a 23 two part format. The first part of the meeting is for 24 the NRC staff to provide you with some information 25 about what we look at when we evaluate an application NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 to renew a license for an operating reactor.
2 And specifically to tell you about what 3 the conclusions are in a draft environmental impact 4 statement that has been prepared. And there's going 5 to be a few presentations, try to get them short, and 6 we will go on to you for questions on those 7 presentations.
8 And it's important to realize that this is 9 a draft environmental impact statement. It will not 10 be finalized until any concerns, recommendations, 11 advice that we hear from you tonight are evaluated by 12 the NRC staff. Not only comments from this meeting 13 but we're also requesting written comments. And we 14 had a meeting this afternoon where we heard comments.
15 16 Well, we're going to evaluate all that 17 before we finalize the environmental impact statement.
18 So the second part of the meeting is an 19 opportunity for us to hear from you and we're going to 20 ask people who want to comment to come up to the front 21 and talk to us. And I think that you might have had 22 an opportunity to fill out one of those yellow cards 23 out there that indicates that you want to make a 24 comment.
25 If you didn't fill a yellow card out and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 1 you decide that you want to speak that's fine just 2 tell me.
3 In terms of the weight that's given to 4 comments tonight is going to be the same as for 5 written comments. And also if you speak tonight you 6 can follow up with a written comment if you would 7 like.
8 In terms of ground rules during the 9 question and answer period, in other words after the 10 NCR presentations if you have a question just signal 11 me and I'll come out to you with this little 12 microphone and please introduce yourself to us and if 13 you have a group or an organization that you're with 14 tell us that and we'll try to answer your question.
15 I would ask that only one person speak at 16 a time so that we can give our full attention to 17 whomever has the floor at the moment. And also so 18 that we can get a clean transcript. We have Mr. Ron 19 LeGrand with [us] tonight who is our stenographer, our 20 court reporter who is taking a transcript. That 21 transcript will be available to anybody who wants a 22 copy of it.
23 You can also request a copy of the 24 transcript that was made from this afternoons meeting.
25 So one person at a time Ron will know who NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 is talking at any particular moment.
2 I would ask you to be to the point in 3 questions and try to keep them to questions instead of 4 just making a comment at that time because we really 5 want to provide answers to questions during that first 6 part of the meeting. Then we'll ask you to come up 7 and do your comments.
8 When we get to the comment part of the 9 meeting I have a five to seven minute guideline. You 10 may take less time than that but usually five minutes 11 is enough time to make your major points. And it 12 helps the NRC staff in two ways enough though it's 13 just five minutes.
14 It alerts us to issues that we should 15 start thinking about immediately and talking with you 16 perhaps about after the meeting. And it also tells 17 others in the audience what the advice, concerns, 18 recommendations are.
19 So let me introduce the NRC staff and 20 other who are going to be talking to you tonight. And 21 Rani Franovich is right here. She's going to give you 22 a short welcome and say a few words about license 23 renewals. She's the chief of the environmental review 24 section at the NRC within the license renewal program.
25 And Rani and her staff are the ones that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 1 conduct and supervise these environmental reviews that 2 are part of the license renewal evaluation process.
3 She's done several important things at the 4 NRC besides her existing position. She was the 5 coordinator of enforcement on reactor issues.
6 Enforcement for non compliance with NRC regulations by 7 licensees.
8 She's also served as a resident inspector.
9 These are the NRC staff who actually are at the 10 facility every day. They live in a community and 11 they're there to make sure that the NRC regulations 12 are complied with.
13 And Rani is going to introduce the 14 resident from Palisades in a few minutes when she 15 talks.
16 She has a, in terms of educational 17 background she has a Bachelors in Psychology and a 18 Masters in Industrial and Systems Engineering from 19 Virginia Tech.
20 And after Rani does a brief welcome we're 21 then going to go to Mr. Bo Pham who is right here.
22 And Bo, one of Rani's staff, he's the project manager 23 for the preparation of this environmental review on 24 this license application for Palisades.
25 And he's going to go over the license NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 renewal process with you. And Bo has been with the 2 NRC for four years. Rani has been with us for about 3 14 years I think. Bo is with us for four years. He 4 comes to us from the nuclear navy. He was an officer 5 in the nuclear navy on a submarine and his degree is 6 a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the 7 U.S. Navel Academy.
8 After Rani and Bo are done we'll see if 9 there's any questions on the process itself. And then 10 we're going to the part of the meeting tonight and 11 that's the information and conclusions that are in the 12 draft environmental impact statement.
13 And we have Dr. Dave Miller right here.
14 And Dr. Miller is the team leader of a group of expert 15 scientists who evaluated environmental impacts at 16 Palisades from licensee renewal. So he'll be going 17 over that with you.
18 And he's from Argonne National Lab. He's 19 an environmental engineer there. He has a PHD in 20 environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins 21 University. He's also a professional engineer and a 22 certified geologist.
23 And so he'll be telling you that. We'll 24 then go on to you for questions. And then we're going 25 to come to a small but important part of the draft NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 environmental impact statement and it's something 2 called severe accident mitigation alternatives.
3 The acronym is SAMA but what it stands for 4 is severe accident mitigation alternatives.
5 We have Mr. Bob Palla from the NRC staff 6 here. He has been with the NRC for 25 years. He's an 7 expert in something called probabilistic risk 8 assessment and severe accident analysis. And he's 9 going to talk to you about SAMA and Bob has both a 10 Bachelors and a Masters in mechanical engineering from 11 the University of Maryland.
12 Go onto you for questions again and then 13 Bo is going to close out us on the presentations with 14 where you can submit comments, things like that and 15 then we're going to go out to all of you for comments.
16 And with that I don't think I skipped 17 anybody did I. Okay, good. We're going to go to 18 Rani.
19 MS. FRANOVICH: Good evening. I need to 20 make sure everybody can hear me because we had some 21 challenges with the sound quality earlier. Can 22 everybody hear me? Okay, super.
23 Just wanted to extend my own personal 24 gratitude for your participation in our meeting today.
25 And it is a very important part of our process to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 1 solicit comments from the public on our work and make 2 sure that any questions the folks has can be answered 3 by us while we're here or if we don't have the answer 4 with us that we get back to you with our answers when 5 we return to our offices in Rockville, Maryland.
6 So thank you very much for spending your 7 time with us. I know it's your personal time, it's a 8 sacrifice by you all but it's important to us and we 9 appreciate it.
10 I'd like to start off by briefly going 11 over the agenda and the purpose for today's meeting or 12 tonight's meeting. We'll explain the NRC's license 13 renewal process for nuclear power plants with emphasis 14 on the environmental review process.
15 Then we're going to present the 16 preliminary findings of our environmental review which 17 assesses the impacts associated with extending 18 operations at the Palisades nuclear plant for an 19 additional 20 years.
20 Then really the most important part of 21 today's meeting as Chip indicated is for us to receive 22 any comments that you may have on our draft into our 23 impact statement.
24 We also will give you some information 25 about the schedule for the balance of our review and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 1 let you know how you can submit comments on our draft 2 environmental impact statement after today's meetings.
3 At the conclusions of the staff's 4 presentation we'll be happy to answer any questions 5 you may have. However, I must ask you to limit your 6 participation to questions only and hold your comments 7 until the appropriate time during tonight's meetings.
8 Once all questions are answered we can 9 begin to receive any comments you have on the draft 10 environmental impact statement.
11 Before I get into a discussion of the 12 license renewal process I'd like to take a minute to 13 talk about the NRC in terms of what we do and what our 14 mission is.
15 The Atomic Energy Act is the legislation 16 that authorizes the NRC to issue operating licenses to 17 nuclear power plants.
18 The Atomic Energy Act provides for a 40 19 license term for power reactors. The 40 year term is 20 based primarily on economic considerations and anti 21 trust factors not on safety limitations of the plant.
22 The Atomic Energy Act also authorizes the 23 NRC to regulate civilian use of nuclear materials in 24 the United States. In exercising that authority the 25 NRC mission is threefold. To ensure adequate NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 1 protection of public health and safety. To provide 2 for the common defense and security. And to protect 3 the environment.
4 The NRC accomplishes its mission through 5 a combination of regulatory programs and processes 6 such as inspections, issuing enforcement actions, 7 assessing licensee performance and evaluating 8 operating experience from the nuclear power plants 9 across this country and internationally.
10 The regulations that the NRC enforces are 11 contained in Title 10 of the Code of Federal 12 Regulations which we commonly refer to as 10CFR. 13 As I have mentioned the Atomic Energy Act 14 provides for a 40 year license term for power 15 reactors. Our regulations also include provisions for 16 extending plant operation for up to an additional 20 17 years. For Palisades the license will expire in 2011.
18 Palisades is owned by Consumers Energy.
19 A subsidiary of CMS Energy Corporation and licensed to 20 operate by the Nuclear Management Company, LLC.
21 Nuclear Management Company has requested 22 licensee renewal for Palisades. As part of the NRC's 23 review of that license renewal application we have 24 performed an environmental review to look at the 25 impacts of an additional 20 years of operation on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 1 environment.
2 We held a meeting here in July of 2005 to 3 seek your input regarding the issues we needed to 4 evaluate. We indicated at that earlier scoping 5 meeting that we would return to South Haven to present 6 the preliminary results of our draft environmental 7 impact statement. That is the purpose of tonight's 8 meeting.
9 The NRC's license renewal review is 10 similar to the original licensing process in that it 11 involves two parts. An environmental review and a 12 safety review. This slide really gives a big picture 13 overview of the license renewal review process which 14 involves those two parallel paths.
15 I'm going to briefly describe these two 16 review processes starting with the safety review.
17 You might ask what does the safety review 18 consider. The license renewal safety review focuses 19 on aging management. The systems, structures and 20 components that are important to safety as determined 21 by the license renewal scoping criteria contained in 22 10CFR Part 54.
23 The license renewal safety review does not 24 assess current operational issues such as security, 25 emergency planning and safety performance.
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15 1 The NRC monitors and provides regulatory 2 oversight of these issues on an ongoing basis under 3 the current operating license.
4 Because the NRC is dealing with these 5 current issues on a continual basis we do not 6 reevaluate them in license renewal.
7 As I have mentioned the license renewal 8 safety review focuses on plant aging and the programs 9 the licensee has already implemented or will implement 10 to manage the effects of aging.
11 Let me introduce Juan Ayala the safety 12 project manager. Thank you, Juan. He's in charge of 13 the staff safety review.
14 The safety review involves the NRC staff's 15 evaluation of technical information that is contained 16 in the licensee renewal application. This is referred 17 to as the staff's safety evaluation.
18 The NRC staff also conducts audits as part 19 of its safety evaluation. There's a team of about 30 20 NRC technical reviewers and contractors who are 21 conducting the safety evaluation at this time.
22 The safety review also includes plant 23 inspections. The inspections are conducted by a team 24 of inspectors from both headquarters and NRC Region 25 III office near Chicago. A representative, in fact we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 1 have two representatives from Region III here today.
2 The senior resident at Palisades is John Ellegood.
3 John, thank you. And his boss in Region III is 4 Christine Lipa. So thank you guys for joining us 5 tonight.
6 The results of the inspections are 7 documented in separate inspection reports. The staff 8 documents the results of its review in the safety 9 evaluation report. The report is then independently 10 reviewed by the advisory committee on reactor 11 safeguards or the ACRS.
12 The ACRS is a group of nationally 13 recognized technical experts that serve as a 14 consulting body to the Commission. They review each 15 license renewal application and safety evaluation 16 report, form their own conclusions and recommendations 17 on the requested action and report those conclusions 18 and recommendations directly to the Commission.
19 This slide illustrates how these various 20 activities make up the safety review process. I'd 21 like to point out that these hexagons, the yellow 22 hexagons on this slide represent opportunities for 23 public participation in the safety review process.
24 Also the staff will present results of its 25 safety review to the ARCS and that presentation will NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 1 be open to the public.
2 The second part of the review process 3 involves an environmental review. The environmental 4 review which Bo will discuss in more detail in a few 5 minutes evaluates the impacts of license renewal on a 6 number of areas including ecology, hydrology, cultural 7 resources and socioeconomic issues among others.
8 The environmental review involves scoping 9 activities and the development of a draft supplement 10 to the generic environmental impact statement for 11 license renewal of nuclear plants. Also referred to 12 as the GEIS.
13 The GEIS forms the basis for plant 14 specific environmental reviews. The draft 15 environmental impact statement for Palisades has been 16 published for comment and we're here tonight to 17 briefly discuss the results and to receive your 18 comments.
19 In October of this year we will be issuing 20 the final version of this environmental impact 21 statement which will document how the staff addresses 22 the comments that we receive here today at this 23 meeting or in writing after this meeting.
24 So the final agency decision on whether or 25 not to issue a renewed operating license depends on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 1 several inputs. Inspection reports and a confirmatory 2 letter from the Region III administrator, conclusions 3 and recommendations of the ACRS which are documented 4 in a letter to the Commission, the safety evaluation 5 report which documents the results of the staff's 6 safety review and the final environmental impact 7 statement which documents the results of the staff's 8 environmental review.
9 Again the hexagons on this slide indicate 10 opportunities for public participation. The first 11 opportunity was during the scoping period and the 12 meeting we held here back in July of last year. Many 13 of you may have attended that meeting.
14 This meeting on the draft environmental 15 impact statement is another opportunity. No 16 contentions have been admitted to a hearing so that 17 does not apply here. However, appeals are currently 18 before the Commission.
19 That concludes my presentation on the NRC 20 and general overview of the license renewal process.
21 Now I'd like to turn things over to Bo and 22 Bo will discuss the environmental review in more 23 detail.
24 MR. PHAM: Thank you, Rani, and thank you 25 all again for coming out tonight. Can everybody hear NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 me okay.
2 Like Rani and Chip had mentioned I am Bo 3 Pham. I am the environmental, I'm an environmental 4 project manager for the NRC. And my responsibility 5 [is] to coordinate the activities of the NRC with the 6 various environmental experts at the national 7 laboratories to develop our environmental impact 8 statement associated with this license renewal 9 proposed for Palisades Nuclear Plant.
10 The National Environmental Policy Act of 11 1969 requires that federal agencies like the NRC 12 follow a systematic approach in evaluating potential 13 environmental impacts of certain actions like the 14 license renewal of a nuclear power plant.
15 We're required to consider the impacts of 16 the proposed action and also any mitigation for those 17 impacts that we consider to be significant.
18 Alternatives to the proposed action 19 include taking no actions on the applicant's request 20 are also to be considered.
21 The National Environmental Policy Act and 22 our environmental impact statement are disclosure 23 tools. They specifically, they're specifically 24 structured to involve public participation and this 25 meeting here tonight facilitates that process.
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20 1 So we're here to collect the public 2 comments on the draft environmental impact statement 3 and these comments will be included in the final 4 environmental impact statement that's due to be issued 5 in October.
6 To go into a little more detail about our 7 approach I'd like to provide you a bit more 8 information of the background about the development of 9 the license renewal environmental impact statement 10 that we're working on. That we have issued the draft 11 of so far.
12 In the mid 1990's the NRC was faced with 13 the prospect of having to prepared impact statements 14 for the majority of the operating nuclear power plants 15 in the country. In order to do this the NRC had to 16 tackle it in two ways.
17 First we evaluated it the impacts of all 18 the plants across the entire country to determine if 19 there were impacts that were common to all operating 20 plants. So we looked at 92 separate areas and found 21 that for 69 of these issues the impacts were the same 22 for all plants with similar features.
23 The NRC called these category one issues 24 and made the same or generic determination about that 25 impacts in a document that we call The Generic NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 1 Environmental Impact Stated For License Renewal which 2 Rani previously mentioned also known as the GEIS.
3 These category one issues, to give you an 4 example, include things like the discharge of chlorine 5 or biocides 6 -- into bodies of water, thermal shock and fish 7 entrainment or fish impingement. So those are 8 considered category one issues common to plants with 9 similar features.
10 The Generic Environmental Impact Statement 11 was issued by the NRC in 1969, excuse me, it was 1996 12 and contains the NRC's generic determinations for all 13 its 69 category one issues.
14 The second way the NRC tackled this was 15 to, found it was not able to make generic conclusions 16 about the remaining 23 issues. Site specific 17 supplements were needed for 21 of these issues and 18 there were two, called category two issues and in 19 addition to that there were two issues remaining that 20 we put into the non categorized, category and 21 therefore those two almost needed the specific, a site 22 specific analysis.
23 The NRC also did not rule out the 24 possibility that its generic connclusions may not 25 apply in some of the cases. Therefore a verification NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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22 1 is done to determine if new and significant 2 information is found that contradicts the generic 3 conclusion. And if so then the staff would do a site 4 specific analysis on each of those issues.
5 The Palisades supplement containing a 6 summary of all the category one issues, category two 7 and a site specific analysis for category two issues 8 as well as the two non categorized issues is what you 9 have or what we are presenting to you today for 10 comments.
11 This slide shows our decision standard for 12 the environmental review. And the standard comes 13 directly out of the regulations under Part 51.71 of 14 Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations which is 15 what the NRC operates under.
16 And I'll give you a second to read it 17 there but simply put we look at the license renewal 18 request to see if it's acceptable from an 19 environmental standpoint.
20 This next slide shows important milestone 21 dates for the environmental review process and the 22 highlights indicate the opportunities for the public 23 involvement in the review process.
24 We receive the Nuclear Management 25 Company's application requesting a license renewal of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 1 Palisades in March 22nd of 2005. On June 27th of 2005 2 we issued a federal registered notice of intent to 3 compare the impact statement and conduct scoping.
4 A meeting was held on July 28th here as 5 part of the scoping process and many of you may have 6 attended as well as provided comments to us.
7 The comments that were given at the 8 scoping meeting and in the scope of this review are 9 contained in Appendix A of the draft of environmental 10 impact statement.
11 I also have copies of the scoping summary 12 report which contains your comments and our responses 13 to it in the back of the room if you're interested in 14 getting a copy.
15 The scoping period ended on August 22nd, 16 2005 and the summary, and the scoping summary report 17 was issued on December 14th of 2005 addressing all the 18 comments that we received from all the different 19 sources during the scooping process.
20 Our draft is actually a supplement to the 21 generic environmental impact statement or the GEIS so 22 it's a supplement 27 to the GEIS and that was issued 23 on February 14th, 2006.
24 We're currently accepting public comments 25 on that draft until May 18th of 2006. Today's meeting NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 1 is being transcribed as Chip mentioned earlier and the 2 comments provided here carry the same weight as if it 3 was submitted in writing.
4 Once the comment period closes we will 5 develop the final supplemental environmental impact 6 statement which we expect to publish in October of 7 this year.
8 Now before I turn over the presentation to 9 Dr. Dave Miller here I guess we can take some of the 10 questions if you have any regarding the review process 11 for the license renewal.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, thank you 13 both. Thanks, Rani.
14 Are there any questions on the review 15 process with the NRC? And please just introduce 16 yourself too.
17 MS. BARNES: My name is Kathryn Barnes. I 18 have a question. You mentioned biocides. I was 19 wondering what biocides are used at Palisades and for 20 what purpose.
21 MR. PHAM: I don't have the, I just gave 22 that as an example. I would have to probably get back 23 to you on that on the specific biocides. But that's 24 just an example of, you know, things that are released 25 and the known release into bodies of water if any that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 1 we document in the generic environmental impact 2 statement.
3 I do not have, I don't have the specific 4 on that right now.
5 MR. CAMERON: And Kathryn, if we have more 6 information we'll get that to you. John.
7 MR. ELLEGOOD: Just real quick, a lot of 8 licensees use some sort of biocide to limit the growth 9 of clams in service water systems. Palisades is no 10 exception to this in terms of biocides that would be 11 used --
12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you.
13 MS. BARNES: Do you know what it is.
14 MR. CAMERON: Now what --
15 MS. BARNES: I, I was wondering what kind, 16 what kind of chemical components --
17 MR. ELLEGOOD: I'd have to get back to you 18 --
19 MS. BARNES: Hydrocarbons or?
20 MR. ELLEGOOD: We'll get back to you.
21 MR. CAMERON: We'll find out specifically 22 for you. Process, did you have something, you don't, 23 okay.
24 MR. SCHAAF: I don't have the specifics off 25 the top of my head but we, that's one of the things NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 1 we, we did talk about in the supplement. It, it'll be 2 identified in the supplement to the GEIS and also 3 those are, those releases are permitted by the State 4 of Michigan and, and the permit includes conditions on 5 which materials are, are able to be released. And at 6 what, what concentrations.
7 MR. CAMERON: And if Kathryn wants to see 8 the specifics she can find that in the draft 9 environmental impact statement.
10 MR. SCHAAF: The permit is available in our 11 document management system. The utilities are 12 required to submit a copy of, of their permit when 13 it's renewed. These permits are renewed on a, on a 14 five year basis.
15 So we can identify the accession number in 16 our document management system if you're interested in 17 that information.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much.
19 Process questions? Yeah, and.
20 MR. RICHARDS: One of the things, Ken 21 Richards, one of the things I was looking through the 22 manual for was the plant's original decommissioning 23 date. I found decommissioning dates in there but I've 24 always been curious what was the original 25 decommissioning date for the Palisades Plant.
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27 1 When it was first built we were told 20, 2 25 years.
3 MR. CAMERON: Right.
4 MR. RICHARDS; They'd be building another 5 plant after that. They even worked on it, and it's 6 been like 38 years and now they want to go another 20 7 years with this. But I'm wondering what was the 8 original decommission date. And I've been all through 9 this thing --
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We're going to try and 11 see if we know that.
12 MR. PHAM: I don't have, I don't know what 13 the intention was for the original decommissioning 14 date. However, as Rani said in her part of the 15 presentation that when the NRC licenses a nuclear 16 power plant the, the life of the license is for 40 17 years --
18 MR. RICHARDS: 40 from that?
19 MR. PHAM: Yes. And that's, that's also 20 based on economic reasons not on plant aging.
21 MR. RICHARDS: Well, what does that --
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Can we, we need to get 23 everybody on the transcript. Could we follow up on 24 this.
25 MR. RICHARDS: Well, when did they issue a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 1 40 year permit? Because I remember back in the late 2 60s, early 70s they were talking 20, 25 years. Now 3 they're saying 40.
4 MR. CAMERON: And I think the very simple 5 answer is when we, when we gave this license to 6 Palisades originally what was the length of the 7 license time.
8 MR. PHAM: The, 2011 is the --
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Carry on.
10 MR. RICHARDS: That's the current --
11 MR. CAMERON: All right.
12 MR. PHAM: We haven't, we have --
13 MR. CAMERON: Let's, let's, do you have 14 anything else then?
15 MS. FRANOVICH: That's, that's the length 16 of the license. Now maybe the utility at time has 17 talked about closing before the license ends. Maybe 18 that's the information he has.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
20 MS. FRANOVICH: And that would be their 21 decision, it would be a business decision.
22 MR. CAMERON: Yes, sir and please introduce 23 yourself.
24 MR. ADAMS: Duane Adams. My question is 25 what was the design during the 60s when, when this was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 1 on the planning books. You design a piece of 2 equipment to last a certain period of time.
3 What was that in that original document 4 and is it in this document that you just issued?
5 Because normally the plants are built to last a 6 certain period of time much like cars are.
7 MR. CAMERON: All right.
8 MR. PHAM: I think the answer to that would 9 be that when the plant, the plant was, I don't, I 10 don't think this plant was specifically designed with 11 components lasting a certain period of amount of time.
12 Everything that the NRC does basically is 13 to ensure the health and safety of the public and so 14 we had ongoing safety programs to ensure that the 15 plants are operated safely.
16 And part of that is the equipment managing 17 process in which we look at the safety equipment and 18 make sure they're operating and, and they're going to 19 be sustainable throughout the life of the plant.
20 MR. ADAMS: But there are certain 21 components you cannot look at.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay, sir, sir. We need to 23 get all comments on the record and maybe Rani can 24 provide a little bit more on that question.
25 MS. FRANOVICH: Yeah, with the, with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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30 1 license being for 40 years the utility may have 2 purchased certain components that may have a life of 3 40 years or less in which case they replace or 4 refurbish those components to ensure that they perform 5 their intended functions during the extended period of 6 operation.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
8 MR. ADAMS: All the components have --
9 MS. FRANOVICH: No.
10 MR. CAMERON: Sir.
11 MS. FRANOVICH: No.
12 MR. CAMERON: Sir, we need to get you, you 13 know, on the transcript so.
14 MS. FRANOVICH: Those that may have a 15 design life for 40 years or less may be replaced or 16 refurbished to ensure that their intended functions 17 are performed. That's what we inspect.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Let's go 19 to one other question here and then go to, to the 20 draft EIS.
21 Yes, sir.
22 MR. ANAN: My name is Robert Anan. I just 23 want to, I, I think what the gentleman is getting at 24 is I'd like to ask the engineer, there was an engineer 25 over here. The major components of that plant I think NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 1 what the guy was trying to get at is anything that's 2 built like that the critical stages of when it's 3 break, it's break in point and when it ages.
4 And I'd just like to know from the 5 engineer if, if indeed that is, that's correct. Just 6 a yes or no would be fine.
7 MR. CAMERON: And the question is whether 8 the critical point is the break in period and then in, 9 as it gets --
10 MR. ANAN: As it --
11 MR. CAMERON: -- to its end of its useful 12 life --
13 MR. ANAN: Yeah.
14 MR. CAMERON: -- aging.
15 MR. ANAN: Exactly.
16 MR. CAMERON: All right. John.
17 MR. ELLEGOOD: What you're thinking of is 18 with components you typically have a infant mortality 19 and, and 20 a life mortality of the component when it fails.
21 At the power plants they do routine 22 inspection surveillance as preventive maintenance 23 activities on components a lot of predictive 24 maintenance to determine if that particular component 25 is nearing it's end of life and try to replace it for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 1 pro actively before it fails.
2 As part of the license renewal process 3 there was an extensive evaluation of the aging 4 management programs to make sure that they were in 5 place and licensing was doing additional inspections 6 above and beyond what they had historically been doing 7 to find out those types of issues.
8 For example a pipe a certain wall 9 thickness eventually is going to erode, make sure they 10 have a process in plan to determine the remaining wall 11 thickness and replace that pipe if necessary.
12 So the answer becomes they had an ongoing 13 program and the license renewal process adds 14 additional inspection activities and aging management 15 activities to replace components before they fail.
16 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, John.
17 We're going to go to Dr. Dave Miller to 18 talk about the findings in the draft environmental 19 impact statement now. And then we'll go back to your 20 questions.
21 DR. MILLER: Thank you, Chip. Is the sound 22 level okay back there, great.
23 Good evening. As Chip said I'm from 24 Argonne National Lab. We're in Chicago and the NRC 25 has contracted with us to provide the expertise NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 1 necessary to evaluate the impacts, the environmental 2 impacts as a result of license renewal at Palisades.
3 My team consists of nine members from 4 Argonne National Lab plus one member from the Lawrence 5 Livermore National Lab in California.
6 As you can see on the screen here the 7 categories of expertise that we provide are 8 atmospheric sciences, socioeconomics, archaeology, 9 terrestrial ecology, aquatic ecology, land use, 10 radiation protection, nuclear safety, hydrology and 11 regulatory compliance.
12 One of the things that's important to note 13 is how we actually quantify impacts. And when we use 14 the terms small, moderate and large they're used in 15 context.
16 For each environmental issue identified an 17 impact level is assigned. And so when we say a small 18 impact it means the effect is not detectable or is too 19 small to destabilize or noticeably alter any important 20 attribute of a resource.
21 For a moderate impact the effect is 22 sufficient to alter noticeably but not destabilize 23 important attributes of that resource.
24 And finally for an impact to be considered 25 large the effect must be clearly noticeable and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 1 sufficient to destabilize important attributes of the 2 resource.
3 I'll use a short example to provide a 4 little more clarity on that.
5 It's a, we'll use a hypothetical fishery 6 in Lake Michigan and illustrate how we use these three 7 criteria.
8 A plant may cause the loss of adult and 9 juvenile fish at an intake structure. If the loss of 10 the fish is so small that it can't be detected in 11 relation to the total population in the lake the 12 impact would be considered small.
13 If losses cause the population to decline 14 and then stabilize at some lower level the impact 15 would be considered moderate.
16 If losses at the intake cause the fish 17 population to decline to the point where it can't be 18 stabilized and continually declines then the impact 19 would be large.
20 This slide goes to the kind of information 21 and the sources of information that we gather.
22 When my team evaluates the impacts from 23 continued operations at the Palisades Plants, at the 24 Palisades Plant we considered information from a wide 25 variety of sources.
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35 1 We considered what the licensee had to say 2 in the environmental report. We considered, we 3 conducted a site audit during which we toured the 4 site. Interviewed plant personnel and reviewed 5 documentation of plant operations.
6 We also talked to federal, state and local 7 officials as well as local service agencies. And we 8 also consider the comments that come in from the 9 public during the scoping period. These comments are 10 provided in Appendix A of this draft supplemental 11 environmental impact statement along with NRC's 12 responses to those comments.
13 This collective body of information then 14 is the basis for the analysis and preliminary 15 conclusions in the Palisades supplement.
16 We'll talk about the structure of the 17 document, the actual environmental impacts and how we 18 look at them in continued operation.
19 The central analysis and the supplement 20 are presented in Chapters 2, 4, 5 and 8. In Chapter 21 2 we discuss the plant, its operation and the 22 environment around the plant.
23 In Chapter 4 we look at the environmental 24 impacts of routine operations during the 20 year 25 license renewal term. And as part of those impacts NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 1 the team looks at the following issues. They are all 2 but the last one which we address in Chapter 5 the 3 cooling system, transmission lines, radiologic 4 impacts, socioeconomic, groundwater use and quality, 5 threatened or endangered species.
6 And then in Chapter 5 that contains the 7 assessment of accidents.
8 At this point I'd like to make a 9 distinction. Environmental impacts from routine day 10 to day operation of the Palisades Plant for another 20 11 years are considered separately from the impacts that 12 could result from potential accidents during the 13 license renewal term.
14 I will discuss impacts from the routine 15 operations. Mr. Palla will discuss impacts from 16 accidents following my presentation.
17 Then in Chapter 8 we describe the 18 alternatives to the proposed license renewal and their 19 environmental impacts.
20 Each of these issue areas are discussed in 21 the detail in the Palisades supplement and I'm just 22 going to provide the highlights.
23 So for cooling system impacts. If you 24 remember from previous presentation there are category 25 two issues [which] are site specific issues. And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 1 there were no site specific cooling system impact 2 issues related to this closed cycle cooling system 3 operation at the Palisades Plant.
4 As part of the preliminary findings there 5 was no new and significant information identified.
6 Now there are a number of category one 7 issues related to the cooling system. These include 8 issues related to discharge of sanitary waste, minor 9 chemical spills, metals and chlorine.
10 As you remember the category one issues 11 are ones where NRC has already determined that the 12 impacts from these are small.
13 My team evaluated all information we had 14 available to us to see if there was any information 15 that was both new and significant for these category 16 one issues. We didn't find any new and significant 17 information and therefore we had thought that the 18 NRC's generic conclusions that the impact of the 19 cooling system is small.
20 Next we'll talk about radiological 21 impacts. Radiological impacts are also a category one 22 issue. And the NRC has made a generic determination 23 that the impact of radiological release during nuclear 24 plant operations during the 20 year license renewal 25 periods are small.
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38 1 But because these releases are a concern 2 I want to discuss them in detail.
3 Nuclear plants are designed to release 4 radiological effluents in the environment. Palisades 5 is no different from any other plant and Palisades 6 does release radiological effluents to the 7 environment. During our site visit we looked at the 8 effluent release and monitoring program and we looked 9 at the documentation associated with that program.
10 We looked at how the gaseous and liquid 11 effluents were treated and released as well as how the 12 solid wastes were treated, packaged and shipped.
13 We also looked at how the applicant 14 determines and demonstrates that they are in 15 compliance with regulations for release of 16 radiological effluents. And we looked at data from 17 onsite and near site locations and we looked to see 18 that the applicant monitors for airborne releases and 19 direct radiation and at other monitoring stations 20 beyond the site boundary including locations where 21 water, milk, fish and food products are sampled.
22 We found that the maximum calculated doses 23 for a member of the public are well within the annual 24 limits. Since releases from the plant are not 25 expected to increase on a year to year basis during NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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39 1 the 20 year license renewal term and since we found no 2 new and significant information related to this issue 3 we adopted the generic conclusion that the 4 radiological impact on human health and the 5 environment is small.
6 Another issue is threatened and endangered 7 species. Threatened or endangered species.
8 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 9 determined that there are four terrestrial species 10 federally listed as threatened or endangered that have 11 the potential to occur at Palisades or along it's 12 transmission lines.
13 These are the Pitcher's Thistle, Karner 14 Blue Butterfly, Mitchell's Satyr Butterfly and the 15 Indiana Bat. The eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake has 16 been identified as a candidate for listing.
17 Our review has indicated that the 18 continued operation of Palisades during the license 19 renewal term would not likely have any adverse affect 20 on these species. The applicant currently has no 21 plans for refurbishment activities that could affect 22 the habitat of these species.
23 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 24 determined there was no need for a biological 25 assessment or further consultation under Section 7 of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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40 1 the Endangered Species Act.
2 Based on this the staff's preliminary 3 determination is that the impact of operation of the 4 Palisades Nuclear Plant during the license renewal 5 period on a threat to endanger species would be small.
6 The last issue I'd like to talk about from 7 Chapter 4 is cumulative impacts. These are impacts 8 that are minor when considered individually but 9 significant when considered with other past, present 10 or reasonably foreseeable future actions regardless of 11 what agency or person undertakes the other actions.
12 The staff considered cumulative impacts 13 resulting from the operation of the cooling water 14 system, operation of transmission lines, releases of 15 radiation and radiological material, sociological 16 impacts, groundwater use and quality impacts, and the 17 threatened and endangered species impacts.
18 These impacts were evaluated to the end of 19 the 20 year license renewal term and I'd like to note 20 that the geographical boundary of the analysis depends 21 upon the resource.
22 For instance the area analyzed for 23 transmission lines is different than the area analyzed 24 for the cooling system.
25 Our preliminary determination is that any NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 1 cumulative impacts resulting from the operation of 2 Palisades Nuclear Plant during the renewal period 3 would be small.
4 There were other impacts evaluated. The 5 team also looked at all issues for uranium the fuel 6 cycle and solid waste management as well as 7 decommissioning and they are considered category one 8 issues.
9 Because they are category one we looked 10 for new and significant information and no new and 11 significant information was brought forward from any 12 of the sources that we worked with as part of our 13 evaluation process.
14 So as I mentioned we also look at 15 alternatives to what this plant might be able to, what 16 this plant produces.
17 My team evaluated potential environmental 18 impact associated with Palisades not continuing 19 operations and you, so the generation capacity would 20 have to be replaced and that would be with alternative 21 power sources.
22 The team looked at a no action 23 alternative, new generation from coal fired, gas 24 fired, new nuclear, purchased power, alternative 25 technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 1 then a combination of alternatives.
2 For each alternative we looked at the same 3 types of issues. For example water use, land use, 4 ecology, socioeconomics. You know, they're the same 5 issues that we looked at for the Palisades Plant 6 during the license renewal term.
7 Palisades has a net summer capacity of 786 8 megawatts. So for the coal fire to natural gas 9 alternatives the staff assumed there would be 10 construction of an approximately 800 megawatt plant.
11 For the new nuclear alternatives we assume 12 the same current capacity as the existing Palisades 13 Plant.
14 For two alternatives solar and wind I'd 15 like to describe the scale of the alternatives that we 16 considered because the scale is important in 17 understanding our conclusions.
18 First for solar. Based on the average 19 solar energy available in Michigan and current 20 conversion efficiencies of photo -- cells and solar 21 thermal cells between 17,543,758 acres would be 22 required to replace the generation from the Palisades 23 Plant replace in kind.
24 For wind power replacement of that base 25 load i.e., 786 megawatts, would require approximately NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 1 120,000 acres of land.
2 Due to the scale of the reasonable 3 alternatives the team's preliminary conclusion is that 4 the environmental effects at least in some impact 5 categories could reach moderate or large significance.
6 So for our preliminary conclusions for the 7 69 category one issues in the generic environmental 8 impact statement that related to Palisades we found no 9 information that was both new and significant 10 therefore we have preliminarily adopted a conclusion 11 that the impact of these issues is small.
12 My team also analyzed the remaining 13 category two issues in this supplement. Now we found 14 the environmental effects resulting from these issues 15 were also small.
16 During our review my team found no new 17 issues that had not already been identified.
18 Last we found that the environmental 19 effects of alternative of these in some impact 20 categories could reach the moderate or large 21 significance.
22 Now I think after a question I'll turn it 23 over to Bob Palla, is that correct?
24 MR. CAMERON: We're going to get a bunch of 25 questions so if you could just --
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44 1 DR. MILLER: Oh --
2 MR. CAMERON: Maybe we won't get a bunch 3 but we'll get some questions --
4 MR. PHAM: Chip, I just wanted to follow up 5 with Kathy on her question and, and we verified in our 6 document that the State of Michigan does license 7 Palisades to, to use Chlorine, Bromine and Amine as 8 far as their permit for biocides.
9 MR. CAMERON: And if you could when after 10 the meeting why don't you point out where that is to 11 her so she can see the content. But let's go, thank 12 you, Bo.
13 Let's go to see if there is questions on 14 the, the analysis on the presentation you just heard.
15 Any, any questions on, on that. Yes. And just please 16 introduce yourself to us.
17 MS. MORGAN: My name is Jeanise Morgan. I 18 was wondering what does it take to get denied or, you 19 know, the license denied. And has this group ever 20 done that?
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay, good, thanks Denise.
22 MS. MORGAN: Jeanise with a J.
23 MR. CAMERON: Jeanise, I'm sorry. Jeanise, 24 two questions is what does it take for a denial. That 25 means all the different parts of the analysis and what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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45 1 is our history in terms of denial, how do we modify 2 applications that come in.
3 Bo, do you want to start us off on that?
4 MR. PHAM: Yeah, the first part of that 5 question what does it take to deny a request is 6 basically the standard that I had, that I put up 7 before is we look at the environmental impact to see 8 if it's large enough to the point where it would be 9 unreasonable for us to leave -- as an option.
10 Now that sounds like a very subjective 11 measure I realize that but it's, it goes back to for 12 example the hypothetical example that Dave used on the 13 fishery on the lake for example.
14 MS. MORGAN: Can you give me a real example 15 of one that you denied?
16 MR. CAMERON: Let him, let him get there 17 and we'll go to that.
18 MR. PHAM: So that's the answer to the 19 first part --
20 MR. CAMERON: That's why it's, it's not a 21 complete answer in the sense that that's only the one 22 part of the review the environmental part of the 23 review.
24 MS. MORGAN: I understand that but I just 25 want an example have you ever --
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46 1 MR. PHAM: From a, yeah, from an 2 environmental perspective if a resource is impacted to 3 the point where it cannot be sustained is the general 4 answer on that, okay.
5 MS. MORGAN: Is that --
6 MR. PHAM: The second part of, the second 7 part of your question has it ever been denied. No, 8 the NRC has never denied. We have, we have returned 9 applications to applicants because of lacking of 10 information or inadequate formatting of the 11 information that they provided us. I remember, the 12 process isn't a go no go process.
13 The applicant submits their application.
14 We review it for consistency with our standards and if 15 it contains the adequate information that's required 16 per regulation.
17 Now if it doesn't to the point where it's 18 not, it's not quite at the, you know, at the effort 19 where we should be putting the effort into doing the 20 review without adequate information then we will 21 return it to the applicant and have them look at it 22 again or review it for quality of purpose prior to 23 trying to, to trying to submit such a document.
24 MR. CAMERON: And Rani, do you have 25 anything to add to that for Jenise?
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47 1 MS. FRANOVICH: Did that answer your 2 question or are you satisfied with that answer?
3 MS. MORGAN: I was hoping for a good 4 example of one you might have stopped because it just 5 seems to me there would be one that would need to be 6 shut down.
7 MS. FRANOVICH: Okay.
8 MS. MORGAN: And I'm sure you have a lot of 9 years under your belt to say that there would be one 10 that was just so bad it shut down.
11 MS. FRANOVICH: Well, to tell you the truth 12 when applicant comes to the NRC with a license renewal 13 application they have advanced invested a substantial 14 amount of time and money in putting together their 15 application to demonstrate to the NRC that that plant 16 will be safe to operate and will not adversely impact 17 the environment.
18 If an applicant cannot do that then they 19 will probably decide not to apply for license renewal 20 because it's costly endeavor.
21 So if an applicant feels they cannot 22 demonstrate that to the NRC they will not pursue 23 license renewal.
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. That, I think might 25 give Jeanise an idea of why a lot of the applications NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 1 end up being granted --
2 MS. FRANOVICH: The applications will be 3 typically accepted by the NRC we have returned 4 applications that we felt were not adequate or 5 sufficient for us to conduct our review.
6 MS. MORGAN: But 100 percent of those have 7 been okayed then? 100 percent?
8 MS. FRANOVICH: Well, when we, when we get 9 the application we review it. We typically will ask 10 a number, a large number of additional questions.
11 When I was project manager for license renewal for 12 Catawba and McGuire we had 273 requests for additional 13 information.
14 So the application comes, the staff looks 15 at it. The staff almost always is not satisfied with 16 that which is in the application. So we engage with 17 the, with the applicant to get more information so 18 we're satisfied that continued operation of the plant 19 will be safe.
20 MS. MORGAN: I guess it's just hard to 21 believe that never one has never been, you know, 22 denied like that.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
24 MS. BARNES: Wasn't there two --
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49 1 please just don't just speak out we need to try to get 2 people in turn --
3 MS. BARNES: I think --
4 MR. CAMERON: -- and get them on the 5 record and we're going to go to this gentleman over 6 here. Please introduce yourself, sir.
7 MR. KAUFFMAN: Maynard Kauffman. And I 8 have a question for Dr. Miller and ask if you really 9 want to stand by those figures that you cited on wind 10 energy 125,000 acres for I presume the kind of 11 megawatts the plant currently produces.
12 If you, if you, if you do the calculations 13 here I know there's been machines that put out four 14 megawatts each and there could be, you know, maybe 15 you'd need about 200 of them or so to do that and that 16 would be about 500 acres per machine. And that makes 17 it look as if wind is really impossible but it's not.
18 And I think there's a fallacy in there.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Dave, do you want to 20 address that and we're going to go to, to another 21 questioner.
22 DR. MILLER: Yes. The, the information I 23 provided to you is in the generic environmental impact 24 statement and you'll see that in the references.
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50 1 a part of you comments any additional updated 2 information that you might have on that because that 3 is exactly the kind of thing we would look at.
4 MR. KAUFFMAN: All right, I appreciate 5 that.
6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, thank you Maynard.
7 Yes, ma'am.
8 MS. ADAMS: My name is Sandra Adams and I'm 9 curious as to where Homeland Security and terrorism 10 falls in this environmental impact. Are you going to 11 discuss that tonight or are you going to discuss that 12 later?
13 MR. PHAM: Security is part of an ongoing 14 review process at the plants. So emergency 15 preparedness and security are part of the everyday 16 items that we look at at the NRC. And there are 17 processes in place that look at the adequacy of the 18 security of the plant. So therefore it's not part of 19 the license renewal process. So we look at more than 20 aging management of equipment. And in our case our 21 team looks at the environmental impacts of it.
22 And so no we will not address that tonight 23 because it's beyond the scope of --
24 MR. CAMERON: And as Bo pointed out and I 25 think Rani did in her presentation it's considered an NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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51 1 everyday issue that we need to look at. Yes.
2 MS. ELLIGIN: My name is Mary Ann Elligin.
3 I'm with the Michigan Department of Environmental 4 Quality and to answer, was it Jeneane, 5 MS. MORGAN: Jeanise.
6 MS. ELLIGIN: Jeanise's question we had Big 7 Rock Point out just a couple years ago. They went 8 through this study prior to putting it down to the NRC 9 and submitting it and they decided they could no 10 longer operate under this kind of condition.
11 And so the plants themselves are wise 12 enough not to pay to go through the NRC process and to 13 take themselves off.
14 MS. MORGAN: Yeah, I knew about that.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, thank you 16 very much. Let's go over here. Yes.
17 MS. TIDWELL: Hi, I'm Carol Tidwell. I 18 just have a question about the Argonne National Lab.
19 Is that related to the government? Is it part of the 20 government --
21 DR. MILLER: Argonne National Laboratory is 22 one of a number of national laboratories. The, the 23 structure is such that the Department of Energy owns 24 our facilities but we are operated under contract to 25 the government by the University of Chicago.
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52 1 Other labs are operated by other 2 consortiums typically universities but sometimes 3 they're corporations of some sort.
4 MS. TIDWELL: So is there, is there a 5 private not connected to the government agency that 6 reviews these plans/
7 MR. PHAM: Yes, actually we are using a 8 contractor Earthtech that is doing the review for one 9 of other plants as well.
10 MR. CAMERON: And you might want to note 11 that whenever, for any contractor that we use to help 12 us with this there is a specific conflict of interest 13 review that has to take place to make sure there's no 14 conflicts between who is doing it and the work they're 15 doing. So is that right, Bo?
16 MR. PHAM: Yes. The answer is yes we are 17 using commercial contractors.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Did you want to add 19 anything, Rani?
20 MS. FRANOVICH: I just wanted to affirm 21 what you said, Chip. We cannot use a contractor that 22 is for example engaged in doing work for the very 23 applicant that has requested license renewal.
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's to Mr. Hannan 25 and then Kathryn.
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53 1 MR. HANNAN: I, you mentioned the amounts 2 of radiation that are admitted or released annually 3 was small. Does radiation accumulate in the body over 4 time? And has anybody ever tested people who live in 5 Covert medically to see the amounts of radiation that, 6 that are in their bodies?
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Two, two good 8 questions. And one of them is the accumulation and 9 the second one is whether there has ever been a health 10 study done --
11 MR. HANNAN: Yes.
12 MR. CAMERON: -- on, on radiation here.
13 MR. PHAM: I'm going to try to answer this 14 man and Rich can help me in the back there.
15 But to answer the question yes radiation 16 does accumulate in the body. The amount of radiation 17 released from the plant is in our definition per the 18 EPA standard. We don't look at specifically at the 19 content but at the dose that's received from the 20 population and that's the standard we're, we're 21 looking at.
22 The second part of your question I believe 23 you were asking is anybody looking, looked at the 24 accumulation, Rich, which could you provide additional 25 information on that.
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54 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
2 MR. EMCH: Yes, I'll be happy to. My name 3 is Richard Emch and I'm a health physicist and I work 4 for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
5 To get back to the first question, sir, 6 about, about accumulation in the body. Yes, there is, 7 there is some chance of accumulation in the body. And 8 in fact there are certain radio nuclides that you have 9 in your body all the time no matter how far away from 10 a nuclear power plant you live, okay.
11 In addition to that though I wanted to 12 point out the dose models that are used where we 13 calculate doses and let's say you receive a certain 14 amount of -- or something like that from the plant the 15 dose models that we calculate have what we call a 50 16 year dose commitment.
17 In other words we're saying when we 18 calculate the dose we're saying the dose that you're 19 going to receive from this amount of radioactive 20 material, we're, we're estimating what that dose is 21 going to be over a 50 year period.
22 We're assigning it all in the one year but 23 it's estimated over a 50 year period.
24 The second question I believe was about 25 health effects about monitoring of heath effects.
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55 1 MR. CAMERON: And whether there's ever been 2 a study of health effects in Covert --
3 MR. EMCH: In 1990 the, the Congress 4 commissioned the National Cancer Institute to do an 5 evaluation of, of available data about cancer 6 incidents around nuclear power plants. And then they 7 also looked at control, what we call control counts 8 and Palisades was one of the plants that they looked 9 at.
10 And the conclusion was that they saw no 11 increased incidents, no, no evidence of increased 12 incidents of cancer from living near a nuclear power 13 plant. And that includes Palisades.
14 Beyond that what I would like to point out 15 and I'll give you an example of why that's the case.
16 Earlier Dave said that the doses from, 17 were very small. In reality the doses are less than 18 100th of one milligram per year maximum dose for an 19 individual living or working near a power plant.
20 For usefulness of comparison the 21 standards, the EPA standard is 25 milligram per year 22 from the entire fuel cycle. The, if you go to the 23 dentist and get dental X-rays you're probably looking 24 at 5 to 20 milligram. You take a cross country flight 25 you're probably looking at 2 to 5 milligram. Just by NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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56 1 being an inhabitant of planet earth you're getting in 2 the neighborhood of 300 milligram a year from all 3 sources including radon.
4 So you can see that the doses, the 5 difference in doses here we're talking this much 6 versus this much.
7 That's, that kind of thing is not going to 8 show up in health studies. And so as far as I know 9 there's been nothing specific done in Covert.
10 Now we did talk to the state agencies to, 11 to the State of Michigan about this and they indicated 12 that they were aware of no problem. So we did look at 13 that as well.
14 MR. CAMERON: Great, thank you. Kathryn.
15 Let me get you this microphone.
16 MS. BARNES: Yeah, two things. First of 17 all I believe that there was a couple of the reactors 18 in the State of Maine. The Yankee Row and another one 19 that were trying to get re licensed and they were 20 denied a re licensing. And also I have heard, read 21 that the level for nuclear power plant workers is 22 higher as if they're super human. In other words 23 their level for milligrams per year is higher than an 24 average person.
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57 1 for how much, how many milligrams per year a person 2 can have was increased. And I wonder how that's 3 justifiable. I don't believe there their 4 physiological beings are any different than anybody 5 else's. So two things.
6 MS. FRANOVICH: Actually I counted three.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And the first one in 8 terms of --
9 MS. FRANOVICH: Yankee Row and --
10 MR. CAMERON: -- Yankee --
11 MS. FRANOVICH: Yankee Row was considering 12 license renewal back in the early to mid 90s before we 13 actually even finished our rule and realized that they 14 really could not demonstrate that the plant could be 15 run safely. It didn't generate a large number of 16 megawatts.
17 And so they made a business decision to 18 not go through license renewal. In fact I think they 19 actually shut down and are decommissioning.
20 As far as Maine Yankee goes they did not 21 ever file for license renewal either. They also 22 decided to shut down the plant. It was a business 23 decision. They did not produce a lot of electricity 24 to, either. And so they decided to shut down and they 25 are decommission those, that plant.
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58 1 So no those plants never did come in for 2 renewal. One of them I know did consider it and 3 decided for economic reasons not to.
4 The second question or second comment.
5 MR. CAMERON: Question is the standards for 6 the radiation doses that workers at a plant can get, 7 are --
8 MS. FRANOVICH: It's a different standard 9 --
10 MR. CAMERON: -- higher than the standard 11 for the general public is, is what Kathryn was saying 12 --
13 MS. FRANOVICH: I believe that's the case 14 --
15 MR. CAMERON: -- is that, is that true and 16 why. Do you want Rich to do it or do you want to do 17 it?
18 MS. FRANOVICH: I'm going to let Rich 19 comment on that but I think she also made an assertion 20 that they receive higher levels than the general 21 public.
22 MS. BARNES: No, that the level was 23 increased for the general public --
24 MS. FRANOVICH: The standard was increased.
25 MS. BARNES: Yes.
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59 1 MS. FRANOVICH: Okay, Rich.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We got an answer over 3 here, Kathryn. Richard.
4 MR. EMCH: Okay. I'm a little confused.
5 I'm going to try it and if I don't quite get it you 6 let me know, okay.
7 I am not aware of any increase in 8 radiation standards for either members of the public 9 or for occupational workers ever. I, I don't ever 10 remember seeing that. Occupational workers are 11 limited by Part 20 to five rem, I was talking earlier 12 about millirem. Now I'm takimg rem, five rem per year 13 for an occupational exposure limitation.
14 And as I said before the 10CFR, I'm sorry 15 40CFR190 which is the EPA regulations, we have a set 16 of regulations ourselves but they're, but they're 17 supposed implement the, the EPA regulations.
18 The EPA regulations are, must be less than 19 25 millirem to any member of the public from the 20 entire fuel cycle and that includes Palisades or, you 21 know, if another plant was nearby it would be both 22 plants are included.
23 Did I cover what you were asking? I'm not 24 sure I did but.
25 MR. CAMERON: Why are they higher?
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60 1 MS. BARNES: So there is, there is a 2 different standard, there's a different standard?
3 MR. EMCH: There's a different standard for 4 members of the public and for --
5 MS. BARNES: Right.
6 MR. EMCH: -- occupational, for workers 7 yes.
8 MS. BARNES: Right. They're stand, they 9 can tolerate supposedly more radiation than average 10 people.
11 MR. EMCH: Actually in fact biologically 12 no. They're just very healthy members of the public, 13 okay. And, and in fact a member of the public could 14 get five rem and you would probably see no, no health 15 impact on them either, okay.
16 But the belief is because the worker makes 17 a conscious decision to work at the plant and, and 18 undergo whatever risk there is just like working at, 19 if you're a fireman or a, or a policeman or whatever 20 there's certain risks inherent with your job.
21 But occupational worker like at the plant 22 makes a decision that he's going to incur those risks, 23 okay. The plant does a good job of trying to make 24 sure that he gets a very low dose.
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61 1 public that's a different story. You folks aren't 2 volunteering for anything in terms of radiation 3 exposure so that's why the standard is so much lower 4 for members of the public.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. And I just 6 want to go the State of Michigan to add anything that 7 she wants to on this. We're going to take a couple 8 more questions and then we're going to go to Bob Palla 9 so we can hear about the severe accident aspect. Go 10 ahead.
11 AUDIENCE: I just want to back Rich up. As 12 a radiation worker I have protective clothing and I 13 also have other protective features that we have 14 available to us. These are not available to the 15 public. So politically we have determined that the 16 public needs a lower dose because you are not aware of 17 what you can do to help your dose. And you're not 18 aware of that you're getting the dose.
19 So the State of Michigan chose an even 20 lower one than the DPH standard and we have our own 21 administrative limits for our public.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 23 very much. Let's go over here and then Ken and then 24 Maureen. Go ahead.
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62 1 questions actually. One goes to the lady over here.
2 It's my recollection that Big Rock went, went into 3 service about 1959 or 60 about 11 years before 4 Palisades. And it's my recollection that Big Rock has 5 not been running really as a power plant for some 6 number of years here now. And it's got a lot of 7 trouble.
8 So that means that if you go ahead and, 9 and renew this you'll be, this reactor will be far 10 exceeding the line time of the Big Rock Plant in terms 11 of production.
12 My second question is to the health 13 scientist. Is there any level of radiation where you 14 cannot achieve an increase in incidents of cancer.
15 It is my understanding that there is a 16 linear relationship and there is no threshold between 17 the incidents of cancer and your exposure to 18 radiation, the lifetime.
19 MR. CAMERON: All right. I don't know what 20 we can say about the Big Rock comparison to, to this 21 plant. I don't think we'll be able to say anything 22 about that.
23 But, Rich, can you talk about the, the, 24 you know, the linear no dose threshold and maybe you 25 can go up there and do that and then we're going to go NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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63 1 to this young lady here and over here and then we'll 2 go back to a presentation.
3 MR. EMCH: It wasn't actually part of what 4 I was supposed to answer but I think you're, you're 5 assumption is correct, sir, if the, if the, if 6 Palisades is granted a renewed license I'm sure they 7 will operate longer than Big Rock Point did.
8 MR. CAMERON: Can --
9 MR. EMCH: I'm sorry, can you not hear me?
10 MR. CAMERON: We want to go to the --
11 MR. EMCH: To what I'm really up here for?
12 MR. CAMERON: Yeah.
13 MR. EMCH: Okay. Fair enough, all right.
14 Yes, sir, you are correct. And in fact the NRC does 15 stand by what's called the linear non threshold 16 theory. You've seen it probably in a number of 17 places. It was mostly recently reconfirmed in 18 something called the BIER 7 report which I earlier 19 today somebody mentioned to us.
20 And basically this theory is that there 21 is, that there is some but there is no actual 22 threshold that this is some amount of risk associated 23 with any amount of exposure. Okay, very 24 simplistically, okay.
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64 1 that theory as do most of the, the low radiation 2 protection community does. And, and that's part of 3 why the, the, those limits that I was talking about 4 for the public are as low as they are.
5 Earlier when I said that there was I think 6 I think I mentioned something about no recorded or no 7 health effects below five rems or something like that 8 I was talking about things that had been reported or 9 things that had been found in the studies.
10 But again back to the very basic 11 philosophy. The NRC's philosophy, the NRC's theory 12 our, our regulations are based on the concept of a 13 linear non threshold theory, yes.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you and there is 15 a discussion of the BIER 7 report in the draft 16 environmental impact statement.
17 Do you have a quick follow up, sir, 18 because we really need to move on.
19 AUDIENCE: Well, I wondered if I, I presume 20 that you couldn't calculate an increase number of 21 cancers that would develop because of the increased 22 exposure to radiation in the locality of this plant.
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65 1 for a hot spot.
2 MR. EMCH: What they did was they looked at 3 all of the available data from various counties, the 4 counties where these, where these plants were located, 5 control counties that, that would presumably not have 6 any effects from them and that we can certainly give 7 you that information.
8 It's, it's full of information like, I 9 don't want to get into it because it actually, some of 10 it I have trouble understanding.
11 But I'm a health physicist not an 12 epidemiologist, that's why I have some difficulty with 13 part of it.
14 I'm sorry, what was the, there was another 15 part of it or? Oh, yes, yes.
16 Actually these the, the international 17 committees like the international, I can never 18 remember, it's commission and radiation protection, I 19 believe it is, they have, there's a publication ICRP-20 60 that does have coefficients that you can, that you 21 multiply these coefficients times a dose.
22 If you say this person got a certain dose 23 you can calculate it times those coefficients.
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66 1 if you took those coefficients and multiplied them 2 times a number like .01 milligram per year it's, it's 3 not worth doing. It's so small.
4 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Rich. Yes.
5 MS. OVERHEISER: My name is Liz Overheiser 6 and I have two questions involving the last point on 7 the board there.
8 That includes, well, yes I guess, all of, 9 and when you consider those solar and wind power would 10 that be like a centralized like field of windmills and 11 --
12 MR. PHAM: Yeah. The, the model --
13 MS. OVERHEISER: -- sun panels.
14 MR. PHAM: Again the modeling assumption, 15 can you hear me okay.
16 The modeling assumption is that Palisades 17 produces a certain amount of megawatts right now, 780 18 plus some change.
19 The, so what we look at as an alternative 20 is a, that we're going to replace that we need 21 something to provide the same capacity.
22 And so whether the, the wind farm is 23 separated into several different areas or all 24 centralized in one location. The bottom line is you, 25 we have certain, some [thumb]rules that we have for X NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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67 1 amount of, a certain number of, of megawatts per 2 acreage for the wind farm production.
3 So in the end aggregately you're going to 4 need that much acreage, you know, even if it's in one 5 place or all separated.
6 MS. OVERHEISER: Well, I'm --
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Do you want to a 8 follow up there, go ahead.
9 MR. OVERHEISER: I'm worried about like the 10 environmental effects. Is that moderate or large 11 considering that it would be all in one place.
12 MR. CAMERON: And there's a, there's a 13 good, a good point is that conceivably there would be 14 different environmental effects depending on whether 15 it was centralized or decentralized. Good comment 16 also but Dave can you talk to, to that in terms of how 17 we considered that in the draft? Thank you.
18 DR. MILLER: It, it does depend on what 19 alternative source you're talking about. Now for 20 instance the gas, coal, they have to be in one place 21 to replace that base load.
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68 1 whole.
2 I hope I'm getting to your question.
3 Because, because the impacts then are looked at. So 4 for the one where you'd need a coal plant on an entire 5 site that would look at consuming that entire site.
6 For the kind of individual piecing 7 together of different sources of energy then it's 8 fractioned by the amount they contribute. So that's 9 how the impacts are evaluated. Does that get to what 10 you're after?
11 MR. CAMERON: And maybe, maybe we should 12 also consider that as a comment.
13 DR. MILLER: Yeah, I was about to say --
14 MR. CAMERON: Yeah, okay --
15 DR. MILLER: -- I mean that's something 16 we, we are going to take away with us today. It's a 17 simple answer and current modeling in what we looked 18 at in alternatives. Yes, it's all collectively or is 19 all centralized in one location.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let me, let me try to, 21 I know we have two people here we haven't heard from, 22 from you. So let me, let's just do some, try to do 23 this quickly so we can get --
24 MS. ANDERSON: Elizabeth Anderson. I would 25 like to ask Rani this question. You know, because --
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69 1 if you really feel that a place should be shut down 2 are you allowed to deny the license renewal or are you 3 only allowed to give recommendations?
4 MS. FRANOVICH: If we feel that a plant 5 needs to be shut down license renewal is not even a 6 consideration. We will issue an order to shut them 7 down when we feel it is necessary.
8 License renewal is should they extend 9 operation from the end of their current term, which is 10 a 40 year terms, for another 20 years.
11 If we have a concern about utilities 12 performance today to the point where we're not 13 comfortable with letting them continue to operate we 14 won't wait for license renewal to take action.
15 MS. ANDERSON: This recommendation --
16 MR. CAMERON: The NRC is not an advisory 17 body. They're a regulatory body and if the 18 regulations are, are violated and the plant needs to 19 be shut down we have the authority to --
20 MS. FRANOVICH: We have the authority to 21 issue an order to shut the plant down. We have a 22 number of other tools in our toolbox to either impose 23 additional requirements if we feel that there are 24 safety issues at the plant and to enforce existing 25 requirements to demand information.
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70 1 I mean we're a regulatory agency. We, we 2 determine whether or not a plant is safe enough to 3 operate. And if we don't think that they're safe 4 enough to operate irrespective of license renewal we 5 will take the actions that --
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you for that 7 question too. And Ken and then with Corrine and then 8 Bob are you ready.
9 MR. RICHARD: I have a quick one for the 10 health risk physicist. When you were answering her 11 question you were -- alpha, beta, gamma radiation like 12 it was altogether, it's all the same thing. And now 13 you're talking about normal background; can you 14 explain to me the difference between alpha, beta and 15 gamma radiation 16 MR. CAMERON: We have them, we have them 17 behind you right over here. Okay, Rich, you got a 18 question, right?
19 MR. EMCH: Yes.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, good. And Corrine 21 we're going to go to you and then we're going to go 22 back to presentations.
23 MR. EMCH: As you pointed out, sir, there 24 are a number of different kinds of radiation alpha, 25 beta, gamma and neutrons. Actually if you look at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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71 1 some of the documents you'll find that we even 2 attribute a different quality of factor to fission 3 product fragments.
4 MR. CAMERON: Speak up, Richard, if you 5 can.
6 MR. EMCH: Okay. And all, I mean all this 7 is when, when I'm saying a dose I'm usually talking in 8 terms of the whole body or total body dose, okay.
9 But we do also look at organ doses. We 10 look at internal, you know, doses taken through 11 ingestion and through inhalation. And, and when we do 12 that that's when you really start, that's when the 13 ones like the alpha and the, and the beta really start 14 to come into play because they're really not dangerous 15 at all outside of the body but once they get inside 16 the body they can be, yes.
17 And those are included in the dose models, 18 yes, sir.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Corrine.
20 MS. CAREY: Yes. Regarding the screen that 21 is showing up there. Which one of those is 22 insignificant? Small, moderate, large. Because time 23 and again I keep hearing reference to impact is 24 insignificant.
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72 1 don't you discuss the individual items and explain 2 those very quickly to Corrine and I think it will be 3 obvious, Dave.
4 MS. CAREY: I wanted a specific answer --
5 MR. CAMERON: Right.
6 MS. CAREY: -- and I wanted to know if 7 significance is a matter of a cumulative situation 8 like radiation is itself and if so at what numerical 9 point does insignificance become significant.
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We got a little bit 11 more information on what Corrine's question is with 12 that. Do you think you can --
13 DR. MILLER: I think I can.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
15 DR. MILLER: And Corrine help me --
16 MR. CAMERON: Good.
17 DR. MILLER: -- if I don't get it.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
19 DR. MILLER: We try to be very careful not 20 to call anything insignificant in our evaluations. In 21 fact we try to stick because of the definitions I 22 provided earlier to small, moderate and large.
23 And if I use the term insignificant 24 anywhere I, I should be corrected. But I, I hope that 25 I didn't. I don't think I did.
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73 1 In terms of quantification there are 2 elements of these that simply aren't quantifiable but 3 we use weight of evidence and multiple lines of 4 evidence to come to the conclusion about whether it's 5 a small, medium or large.
6 And we use those definitions that I had 7 provided earlier and we would skip back to them if you 8 like. That, that, to look at the impact to the 9 resource that we're concerned about and, and in 10 essence the semi quantitative magnitude of that 11 impact.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And if, if Corrine 13 needs further information please, please talk to her.
14 Bob Palla. Thank you, thank you both, Dave and thank 15 you Rich and Rani. Bob.
16 MR. PALLA: Good evening, my name is Bob 17 Palla. I'm with the division of risk assessment at 18 NRC. I'm going to be discussing the environmental 19 impacts of postulated accidents.
20 These impacts are described in Section 5 21 of the generic environmental impact statement or the 22 GEIS. The GEIS evaluates two classes of accidents.
23 They're called design basis accidents and severe 24 accidents.
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74 1 spectrum of postulated accidents that both the 2 licensee and the NRC staff evaluate to ensure that the 3 plant can respond without undue risk to the public.
4 The ability of the plant to withstand 5 these accidents had to be demonstrated before the 6 plant is granted a license.
7 Since the licensee has to demonstrate 8 acceptable performance for these design basis 9 accidents throughout the life of the plant the 10 commission has determined that the environmental 11 impact of design basis accidents is of small 12 significance.
13 Neither the licensee nor the NRC is aware 14 of any new and significant information on the 15 capability of Palisades Plant to withstand design 16 basis accidents. Therefore the staff concludes that 17 there are no impacts related to design basis accidents 18 beyond those discussed in the GEIS.
19 The second category of accidents evaluated 20 in the GEIS are, are the severe accidents. So these 21 accidents are by definition more severe than design 22 basis because they could involve substantial damage to 23 the reactor core.
24 The commission found in the GEIS that the 25 risk of a severe accident is small for all plants.
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75 1 And by this I mean the probabilistically weighted 2 consequences of the accident.
3 Nevertheless the commission determined 4 that alternatives to mitigate accidents, severe 5 accidents in particular, must be considered for all 6 plants that have not done so. These alternatives are 7 called SAMAs or severe accident mitigation design 8 alternatives.
9 The SAMA evaluation is a site specific 10 assessment and it's a category two issue as described 11 earlier.
12 THE SAMA review for Palisades is 13 summarized in Section 5.2 of the GEIS supplement and 14 is described in more detail in Appendix G of the GEIS 15 supplement.
16 The purpose of performing SAMA evaluation 17 is to ensure that plant changes with the potential for 18 improving severe accident safety performance are both 19 identified and evaluated. The scope of the potential 20 plant improvements that were considered include 21 hardware modifications, procedure changes, training 22 program enhancements, basically a full spectrum of 23 potential changes.
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76 1 containment performance given that a core damage event 2 were to occur.
3 SAMA evaluation process is a four step 4 process.
5 The first step is to characterize the 6 overall plant risk and the leading contributors to 7 risk. This typically involves extensive use of the 8 plant specific probabilistic safety assessment study 9 which is also known as the PSA.
10 PSA is a study that identifies different 11 combinations of system failures and human errors that 12 would be required to occur together in order for an 13 event to progress to either core damage or to 14 containment failure.
15 The second step in this process to 16 identify potential improvements that could further 17 reduce risk. The information from the PSA such as the 18 dominant accident sequences is used to help identify 19 plant improvements that would have the greatest impact 20 in reducing risk.
21 Improvements identified in other NRC and 22 industry studies as well as SAMA analyses that have 23 been conducted for other plants are also considered.
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77 1 implementation costs for each improvement. The risk 2 reduction and implementation costs for each SAMA are 3 typically estimated using a bounding approach.
4 Risk reduction is generally overestimated 5 by assuming that the plant improvement is completely 6 effective in eliminating the accident sequences that 7 it's intended to address.
8 Implementation costs on the other hand are 9 generally underestimated by neglecting certain cost 10 factors such as maintenance costs and surveillance 11 costs that are associated with the improvements.
12 The risk reduction and cost estimates are 13 used in the final step to determine whether 14 implementation of any of the improvements can be 15 justified.
16 In determining whether improvement is 17 justified the NRC staff looks at three factors. The 18 first is whether the improvement is cost beneficial.
19 In other words is the estimated benefit greater than 20 the estimated implementation cost of the SAMA.
21 The second factor is whether the 22 improvement provides a significant reduction in risk.
23 For example does it eliminate a sequence or 24 containment failure mode that contributes a large 25 fraction of the plant risk.
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78 1 The third factor is whether the risk 2 reduction is associated with aging effects during the 3 period of extended operation in which case if it was 4 we would consider implementation of the SAMA as part 5 of the license renewal process.
6 The next step summarizes the results of 7 the review. 23 candidate improvements were identified 8 for the Palisades Plant based on review of the plant 9 specific PSA the dominant risk contributors at 10 Palisades as well as SAMA analyses performed for other 11 plants.
12 The licensee reduced the number of 13 candidate SAMAs to eight based on a multi step 14 screening process. Now the factors considered during 15 this screening included whether the SAMA is applicable 16 to Palisades due to design differences and whether the 17 SAMA would involve extensive plant changes that would 18 clearly be in excess of the maximum benefit that's 19 associated with completely eliminating all severe 20 accident risk.
21 The more detailed assessment of each of 22 the, of the risk reduction potential and 23 implementation costs -- breach of the remaining eight 24 SAMAs. This is described in detail in Appendix G of 25 the GEIS supplement.
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79 1 The detailed cost benefit analysis shows 2 that several of the SAMAs are potentially cost 3 beneficial when evaluated individually in accordance 4 with the NRC guidance for performing regulatory 5 analysis.
6 Six of the eight SAMAs that, that 7 remained, that survived this screening process were 8 identified as potentially cost beneficial in the 9 licensee's environmental report.
10 As part of the staff's review four 11 additional potentially cost beneficial SAMAs were 12 identified. Two of these four involved lower cost 13 alternatives to SAMAs that the licensee had eliminated 14 in the initial screening. So there could be some 15 lower cost ways to do two of the potential 16 improvements.
17 So these were identified and two 18 additional ones beyond those were also identified 19 where they came from some SAMA reviews that were done 20 at other plants of, of similar plant design, other --
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80 1 at Palisades.
2 So in summary a total of ten SAMAs were 3 identified as potentially cost beneficial.
4 I just want to point out that it's, that 5 some of these ten SAMAs address the same risk, but in 6 a different way.
7 For example once SAMA might involve 8 procedure changes to improve the ability to cope with 9 station blackout accidents. Where as another SAMA 10 might involve hardware changes that also address 11 station blackout.
12 In such instances implementation of one of 13 these SAMAs could reduce the residual risk to a point 14 that the related SAMAs would no longer be cost 15 beneficial.
16 Because of this interrelationship between 17 SAMAs we would not expect that implementation of all 18 ten of these SAMAs would be justified on a cost 19 benefit basis but instead implementation of carefully 20 selected subset of the SAMAs could achieve much of the 21 risk reduction and would be more effective than 22 implementing all of the SAMAs.
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81 1 of extended operation.
2 So in accordance with the regulations they 3 are not required to be implemented as part of license 4 renewal because they're not tied to aging.
5 But notwithstanding this the licensee is 6 committed to further evaluate the ten SAMAs for 7 possible implementation as a current operating license 8 activity.
9 Completion of these evaluations is 10 underway and is being tracked in the licensee's plant 11 change process.
12 So that concludes my presentation and --
13 MR. CAMERON: All right, thank you.
14 MR. PALLA: -- questions.
15 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Any questions on 16 SAMAs at all? Okay. We have one question, two 17 questions and then we're going to go on to Bo for a 18 wrap up so that we can get to you all for comments.
19 And this is Kathryn.
20 MS. BARNES: Yeah, if you could give me an 21 example of a severe accident that might happen and the 22 SAMA that you would procure for it just as an example 23 such as what would happen during a meltdown with the 24 embrittlement issue.
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82 1 give you an example of an embrittlement issue because 2 it doesn't, it doesn't really tie in very well.
3 But I guess an example that may be a 4 little easier to understand is just that if you, if 5 one looks at the risk profile of the plant, meaning 6 the different types of sequences or scenarios that 7 could lead to core damage one that always seems to get 8 a lot of attention is called the station blackout 9 sequence.
10 Basically you loss, it's a loss of offsite 11 power. The plant is equipped with several diesel 12 generators. In this particular type of an event they 13 would fail. They fail to start or they fail to run 14 but they are not available so the plant is basically 15 sitting there without any power to, to supply the 16 pumps.
17 So the way that this could be covered 18 through SAMAs, and I'm, I'm flipping pages here just 19 to find the ones that are applicable.
20 One of the SAMAs, SAMA 10 it's described 21 in more detail in Chapter 5 and in Chapter, in 22 Appendix G but this SAMA would involve modifying 23 turbine driven auxiliary feed water systems so it can 24 be operated indefinitely without AC DC or pneumatic 25 support.
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83 1 So basically by implementing that SAMA the 2 plant would be able to continue to supply water to the 3 steam generators which would remove heat from the 4 reactor core.
5 This could be sustained for, for several 6 hours6.944444e-5 days <br />0.00167 hours <br />9.920635e-6 weeks <br />2.283e-6 months <br /> and in the meantime in, in PRA space we always 7 look at recovery of offsite power and there's a, 8 there's a curve that describes the probability of 9 recovering as a function in time.
10 But if you can extend the ability of the 11 plant to cope with these station blackout events for, 12 for several hours you increase the change of 13 recovering power. And so then at that point the main 14 line front, front, front line systems would be 15 available and --
16 MS. BARNES: Is that with a --
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, yeah. Let's, let's go 18 to this gentleman here and then maybe you can get more 19 into those examples with Kathryn after the meeting 20 because it is, it seems very complex. But you did a 21 good job of providing a simplified explanation.
22 AUDIENCE: Have you factored into your 23 considerations the impact of an earthquake. And the 24 reason I ask that is that, well, we don't have 25 earthquakes here really. The largest earthquake in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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84 1 the continental United States occurred in the Midwest 2 in the early 19th century. That could happen again.
3 Have you taken that into consideration --
4 MR. PALLA: Yeah --
5 AUDIENCE: -- in your computations.
6 MR. PALLA: -- within the, I'll explain 7 how we handle that and --
8 AUDIENCE: And that regards to both the 9 reactor and as well as those waste storage containers 10 that are sitting there on the shore of Lake Michigan.
11 MR. PALLA: Okay. So --
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay --
13 MR. MILLER: I'll, well, I'll begin by 14 saying we did not look at the waste containers in 15 this, in the, it's not in the scope of the SAMA 16 analysis.
17 What we looked at is the impact on the 18 plant. We, the way that this [was] done we have a 19 probabilistic safety assessment that looks at 20 internally initiated events. This is what I referred 21 to as the PSA.
22 And then there, in the early to mid 1990s 23 all plants were requested to perform an individual 24 plant examination for external events. And this is 25 done via a generic letter from NRC. It's not, it, it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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85 1 basically required every licensee to look at the, the 2 vulnerabilities of the plants to external events in, 3 including seismic events.
4 So those, the insights from the, that 5 study were brought to bear in the process of looking 6 for potential improvements to the plant. So we, we, 7 we have quantified estimates in core damage frequency 8 for internal events, we have some estimate of 9 approximately how much a seismic event contribute 10 relative to what an internal, internally initiated 11 event would contribute.
12 And as part of this study we did in fact 13 identify one seismic related change and there's a SAMA 14 that involves replacing some under voltage relays with 15 seismic requalified relays that these, these relays 16 were judged to be a, kind of a soft spot so to speak 17 in, in the design.
18 So this was an improvement that was 19 identified specifically for seismic.
20 AUDIENCE: But what was your --
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
22 AUDIENCE: -- decision on the --
23 MR. CAMERON: Sir. Now let's go to a 24 quick follow up because we really need to move on so 25 that we can hear from all of you. Go ahead.
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86 1 AUDIENCE: I would like a quick question as 2 to what sort of seismic event did you assume in this 3 calculation. In other words on a Richter scale. And 4 second why wouldn't you include the waste or the spent 5 rod storage in this calculation because I don't think 6 we can count on, on Yucca Mountain coming online 7 because as I understand it there have been some 8 conflicting information that's been presented on the 9 Yucca Mountain situation and that might not be 10 approved for many years.
11 MR. CAMERON: And Bob can you try to put 12 this into a little bit of perspective --
13 MR. ELLEGOOD: Let me --
14 MR. CAMERON: -- just because, John, can 15 I just finish, thank you.
16 Just because the spent fuel pool or the 17 dry storage and this may be where you're going, John, 18 isn't considered as a SAMA doesn't mean that the NRC 19 isn't concerned and take account of seismic in terms 20 of that. And, John, go ahead.
21 MR. ELLEGOOD: Let me answer the seismic 22 question for you. The entire plant is designed to 23 survive seismic events. The earthquake for Palisades 24 for safe shutdown or designed basis is a point 2G 25 earthquake. That's not characterized in terms of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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87 1 Richter scale because the Richter scale is more of a 2 energy release during an earthquake and for seismic 3 analysis it doesn't provide the right type of scale to 4 use for the design activity.
5 In terms of how frequently are you going 6 to get that size of an earthquake here that's going to 7 be about every 15,000 years you would achieve an 8 earthquake of about .2G which is the design basis 9 earthquake.
10 The plant was designed for that as well as 11 the original storage pads were designed for that size 12 of an earthquake.
13 Does that answer your question.
14 AUDIENCE: Well, I guess I don't understand 15 how you can say it's 15,000 years for this part of the 16 Midwest because new information suggests that it's a 17 rebound of the land --
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, I think we've --
19 MR. ELLEGOOD: It comes from a series of 20 government studies that calculated that particular 21 turn frequency.
22 MR. CAMERON: And we really need to, to 23 move on and if you can provide more information to, to 24 that gentleman offline fine. But, Bob, thank you.
25 MR. PALLA: You don't want me to say --
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88 1 MR. CAMERON: Do you, did you, did you want 2 to add anything more?
3 MR. PALLA: Well, what I, what I would add 4 is that from the risk point of view what we would look 5 at in, in contrast to a specific G value for the 6 design within a seismic risk study you look at the 7 whole range of potential seismic levels. And it's, 8 it's called seismic hazard.
9 Obviously you could postulate extremely 10 high G levels but the probabilities of those things 11 are correspondingly much lower. And in this 12 individual plant examination that I spoke of this 13 seismic analysis that, that I spoke of it relies on, 14 on the seismic hazard curve for the site.
15 And you, you look at the ability of the 16 various components and the structures to be able to 17 withstand that, the, the spectrum of, of the loads.
18 And at some point they don't, they would fail and, and 19 this is all solved in a very complicated matter.
20 But the end result if you, you end up with 21 some components that are generally thought to be the, 22 the lowest prone to fail and they might give you the, 23 via the greatest interest for looking at them in terms 24 of reducing risk.
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89 1 examination. We used it to help identify seismic 2 related fixes that would have the greatest impact on 3 risk.
4 MR. CAMERON: Great. That, I'm glad you 5 added that seismic hazmat curve that looks at 6 different G factors and probability. All right.
7 MR. PHAM: I'm sure Bob is available 8 afterwards, sir, if you want to address the question 9 some more.
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Bo.
11 MR. PHAM: Okay. So Dave and Bob has, have 12 gone through the details of our analysis and right now 13 I'd like to turn us to the conclusion in which we 14 found as David and Bob both mentioned that the impact 15 of license renewal are small in all areas.
16 We also concluded that the alternative 17 actions including the no action alternative may have 18 moderate to large environmental -- impact in some 19 categories.
20 Based on these results our preliminary 21 recommendation is that the adverse environmental 22 impacts of license renewal for Palisades are not so 23 great that it is not unreasonable to preserve the 24 option for license renewal for the energy planning 25 decision makers.
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90 1 This slide is a quick recap of where we 2 are right now. We issued the draft environmental 3 impact statement for Palisades on February 14th, 2006.
4 The comment period for the draft ends on May 18th, 5 2006. There are regulations require a 40, 45 day 6 period from the issuance of the draft until the, until 7 the closing of the comment period but we actually 8 build in a 70, at least a 75 day period there.
9 So we expect to issue the final impact 10 statement around October time frame of this year.
11 And then this slide identifies me as your 12 primary point of contact with the NRC awaiting 13 preparation of the environmental impact statement for 14 Palisades.
15 It also identifies where the documents 16 related to our review may be found in the local area 17 at the South Haven Memorial Library.
18 The documents are also available online at 19 the www.nrc.gov website.
20 And in addition as you came in today you 21 were asked to fill out a registration card. If you 22 included your name or address on that card we will 23 automatically mail a copy of the draft and final 24 environmental impact statements to you.
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91 1 you to do so as it, it's a good opportunity for us to 2 include you in the part of the public outreach process 3 that we have for the review.
4 And if you need to register please see 5 Christina or Laura out front would be your best.
6 In addition to providing comments at this 7 meeting there are other ways you can submit the 8 comments for our review process. You can provide 9 written comments to the chief of rules and directives 10 branch at the address on the screen. You may also 11 make the comments in person if you happen to be in 12 Rockville but for many of you that's not the case so 13 we provided an email address for Palisadeseis@nrc.gov.
14 All of our comments, your comments will be 15 collected and considered.
16 And this concludes my remarks and 17 presentation.
18 MR. CAMERON: Thank, thank you very much.
19 MR. PHAM: Thank you all again for coming.
20 MR. CAMERON: And thank you, Carl, those, 21 those were very very good questions.
22 We're going to go to the comment part of 23 the meeting so we have an opportunity to hear from you 24 and we're going to go first to Mr. Tom Tanlzos who is 25 the chair of the Van Buren County Board of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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92 1 Commissioners. And after Mr. Tanlzos we'll hear from 2 one of his colleagues Richard Freestone and then Mr.
3 Wayne Radell Covert Township supervisor. And this is 4 Mr. Tanlzos, the chair.
5 MR. TANLZOS: Thank you.
6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you.
7 MR. TANLZOS: I'll use the microphone. My 8 name is Tom Tanlzos, county commissioner. I represent 9 South Haven Township, South Haven City and the 10 northern half of Covert Township which includes the 11 plant.
12 I'm also the chairman of the commissioners 13 for Van Buren County.
14 On March 22nd we did pass in 2005, we 15 passed the unanimous resolution in support of the 16 license renewal of the nuclear power plant and I will 17 submit that as a certified copy to you.
18 One of the things even though you might 19 see it was an economic decision for the County, for 20 the Township and the area, yes, these are all true 21 benefits of having the plant in our area.
22 But if there was any concern that it was 23 harming the environment or the residents of this 24 county or this area we would not have taken such 25 action.
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93 1 So I would like to present this to you and 2 on behalf of the Board of Commissioners that we 3 unanimously support the license renewal application.
4 Thank you.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Chairman 6 Tanlzos. And we'll attach this to the transcript and 7 also have this as a formal comment on your record too.
8 So, Ron, I'm just going to give this to you right now.
9 How about Mr. Freestone. Is he still 10 here?
11 MR. FREESTON: I don't have anything 12 additional to add to what Mr. Tanlozos said. I'm also 13 a county commissioner and support the renewal license.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Mr.
15 Freestone.
16 Mr. Radell. Covert Township supervisor.
17 MR. RADELL: Yes. My name is Wayne Radell 18 and I'm the supervisor for Covert Township. Covert 19 Township has supported Palisades Plant since its 20 inception in 1965. The plant's very location is a 21 direct result of the township's encouragement to 22 construct and operate a nuclear plant in this area.
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94 1 the environment. At no time since the plant's 2 beginning operation in December of 1971 to the present 3 has posed any threat or danger to the residents of 4 Covert or the surrounding area.
5 The Covert Township board has officially 6 gone on record to support Palisades license renewal 7 activities through a resolution of support enacted on 8 March 8th, 2005.
9 As the host township for Palisades nuclear 10 plant Covert Township and seven other taxing entities 11 received over $6 million annually in taxes from the 12 plant. Over the years this tax money for the township 13 has funded paving roads throughout the township, 14 building water mains throughout the township, lighting 15 intersections and increased fire and police protection 16 for our citizens.
17 Covert public schools receives the lion 18 share of that tax money and provides first class 19 school facilities and services.
20 Covert Township is very much in favor of 21 Palisades Nuclear Plant's license renewal. It has 22 been, there has been a partnership between Covert 23 Township and Palisades since the beginning.
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95 1 you.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Mr. Radell.
3 Now we're going to hear from Mr. Dale 4 Lewis and then we'll hear from Mr. Maynard Kauffman 5 and then Mr. Wade Adams.
6 Mr. Lewis.
7 MR. LEWIS: I just had an operation on my 8 throat, nose last week so I can't speak very loud so 9 I won't speak very long either.
10 Palisades is a great vehicle for 11 industrial growth and growth in South Haven. At the 12 present time during normal operations Palisades 13 employees 600 people from their operations. And if 14 you can imagine in your town, and I presume that most 15 of you are from outside South Haven since I don't 16 recognize too many of you, if you have something that, 17 a plant that employed 600 people and that were to 18 close down there would be great economic impact on the 19 area.
20 So the nuclear plant right now, Palisades, 21 is in a refueling outage where 900 more people come in 22 to South Haven to work on the outage to repair things, 23 to improve things.
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96 1 boost to South Haven.
2 If you were to close Palisades down and I 3 haven't heard a good reason tonight for doing it, it 4 would make South Haven a ghost town almost because 5 there just wouldn't be the jobs that are there now.
6 And I have, as I say I haven't heard a 7 word that says anything about a good reason to close 8 Palisades down.
9 So and we as a city council, oh by the 10 way, I was mayor of South Haven for four years and 11 while I was mayor we passed a resolution also 12 endorsing the continuation of Palisades. Thank you.
13 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Thank 14 you, thank you very much.
15 We're going to go to Ryan McCoy at this 16 point because he's here with his family and his young 17 son and maybe they want to go bed. But --
18 MR. McCOY: I didn't mean to interrupt.
19 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead.
20 MR. McCOY: I'll be real brief.
21 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead.
22 MR. McCOY: My name is Ryan McCoy. I'm a 23 citizen of South Haven. I'm not affiliated with 24 anyone. I'm here mainly to be educated about it. I, 25 I'm blessed to live close to the beach and I'm on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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97 1 beach every day and I see that plant every day and 2 I'm, frankly I'm worried so I want to know what's 3 going on.
4 What I've heard from our former mayor and, 5 and some of the commissioners has all been economic 6 based. It's all about economy and jobs.
7 And this touches me deeply because I'm a 8 recently unemployed worker who was selling topical 9 plants and I lost my job from environmental impact 10 from hurricanes.
11 So I'm unemployed and I still stand 12 opposed to it. I want to know what I'm seeing here 13 more is public relations and not a lot of truth.
14 There was a gentleman asked a really profound question 15 why the dry cast things weren't affiliated or weren't 16 in with the seismic analogy. And to me that seems 17 more important than the deteriorating radioactive, see 18 and I don't even know the terminology, so forgive me.
19 But what I want to see happen is that 20 economy take a backseat to ecology. If this is not 21 ultimately safe for our citizens, if our citizens are 22 breathing radioactive fumes, if there's a potential 23 for a major accident that wipes us all out there's no 24 need for an economy.
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98 1 ecology. I'd like better answers on, on the questions 2 that are asked, a lot less lip service.
3 I have a young child I want to see grow up 4 in South Haven. I want him to grow up healthy. It's 5 a beautiful community. We'll find ways to replace the 6 economy.
7 These alternatives that you say have vast 8 potential for economic sustain ability. The waste 9 generated, dry casting it there and not having a home 10 for it worries me. 20 years from now what's that 11 going to be like or where are we going to be with, how 12 much more waste will they produce in those 20 years.
13 And right now from what I've read and 14 again I'm naive so I'm here to be educated but we 15 don't have a home or a place to put this waste that's 16 one of the most toxic substances on the plant from 17 what I understand. It's sitting 150 yards from our 18 precious resource the lake. Why that doesn't trouble 19 more people I don't know.
20 I understand the need for economy and 21 jobs. Let's get that behind us and let's look at the 22 ecology. I think that's most important.
23 You know, I'm happy to remain unemployed 24 for another couple of months if that's what it takes.
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99 1 lot less PR, a lot less bureaucracy and let's, you 2 know, let's really talk about what's, what matters 3 here.
4 I could go on and on but thank you for 5 listening and for the opportunity and clearly I'm 6 opposed to the re licensing. I've got a lot more to 7 learn. But I think the economy is no, is no reason, 8 it shouldn't be the top consideration.
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Mr. McCoy.
10 And I'm going to ask John Ellegood at some point not, 11 not now, John.
12 MR. ELLEGOOD: Whatever you want.
13 MR. CAMERON: But since you're here in the 14 community and since there's lots of questions that I 15 think Mr. McCoy has is the draft, at some point not 16 necessarily tonight but at some point, you guys could 17 hook up and maybe you could, you could talk about some 18 of these issues. That may be, may be helpful to him.
19 And, Mr. McCoy, did your, did your wife 20 want to say anything? I know she's out there but --
21 MR. McCOY: I'm sure she doesn't. She's a 22 little tied up.
23 MR. CAMERON: Yeah.
24 MR. McCOY: Our opinions are very similar.
25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. All right.
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100 1 MR. McCOY: I'll just stand behind what I 2 said.
3 MR. CAMERON: Good. Thank you very much.
4 Let's go to Mr. Kauffman, Michigan Land Trust and then 5 we'll go to Mr. Adams.
6 MR. KAUFFMAN: I appreciate the opportunity 7 to speak. Maynard Kauffman speaking on behalf on 8 Michigan Land Trustees.
9 I live on a farm about ten miles straight 10 east of here. And my comments are about alternatives.
11 And what I want to do first is say I am opposed to the 12 20 year extension of the Palisades operating license.
13 I think it's a needless risk. And I'll try to explain 14 why.
15 My hope is that by the time the current 16 license expires in 2011 that nuclear power should be 17 replaced by wind power and by a lot more conservation 18 and more efficient use of electrical energy. That is 19 possible. I'll come back to that.
20 Also it's cheaper. Currently as according 21 to my latest figures and I've been doing a lot of 22 reading on this, wind energy is sold for four cents a 23 kilowatt power or less sometimes when it's under long 24 term contract to where as I understand the cost of 25 nuclear energy is about three times higher than that.
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101 1 So we the taxpayers, the ratepayers are 2 paying so somebody else can make money. And it's not 3 necessary. Let me explain.
4 Palisades sits on 432 acre site of which 5 80 acres is developed or I presumed used. That leaves 6 200 to 300 acres of land which could be available for 7 wind turbines. If you figure four acres per turbine 8 and they're really large, this would be a four 9 megawatt turbine and they exist, you would need or you 10 would have room for about 50 large wind turbines.
11 They could be erected on the site, more land could be 12 rented for farmers down the line along the 13 transmission line too.
14 But even these 200 megawatts that would be 15 produced here by wind is not negligible. That's one 16 fourth as much roughly as the current nuclear plant 17 provides.
18 Now on page of the GEIS on page 845 I 19 understand that wind power had been considered and 20 rejected for a number of reasons. One of which is 21 that it said could be intermittent and there's sense 22 in which you could say that but I, I have a wind 23 generator next to my house, nearby, and I say that 24 wind power isn't seasonal.
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102 1 running for weeks and weeks. So it's not just 2 intermittent but it might be seasonal. So certain 3 other seasons might require a different mix of energy 4 to keep the customers going.
5 So that's one of the problems I have here.
6 It isn't simply intermittent. It's seasonal.
7 In any case wind power is really growing 8 worldwide. It's growing at the rate of 30 percent per 9 year. Most of this is happening in Europe and in 10 Europe Germany is in the lead with I believe at this 11 point 14,600 megawatts of electricity from wind. They 12 seem to know how to do it.
13 So I suggest to the people at the NRC or 14 to the, to the management company that they should go 15 to Germany and ask and say we don't know how to make 16 wind power work here maybe you could tell us how to do 17 it. You may to say this in German so you might want 18 to say ve con mein dusche dunday so they really 19 understand what you're trying to do, okay.
20 Okay. I'm not here to entertain.
21 I want to suggest that there are three 22 paragraphs on page 8-45 of this GEIS dealing with wind 23 power and together the three paragraphs includes so 24 many distortions, falsehoods or simple stupidity that 25 I think if this is a kind of an indication of what's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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103 1 in this book it's bad news because this is not going 2 to gly.
3 The way this is put down here is to sort 4 of make wind a non starter. And it's not true because 5 as I just said it is growing worldwide and it could 6 here too if people were to take a different kind of 7 attitude.
8 And incidently wind generators and their, 9 their towers can be reused and recycled over and over 10 again so that they have that advantage as well. And 11 they provide the jobs that you're so concerned about 12 in this community.
13 So let me wind this up.
14 There, I already mentioned in my comment 15 earlier that it does not require 500 acres for a 16 single wind generator and if the large ones, you know, 17 the, the way the GEIS puts it you really have a system 18 here where they say you need 500 acres or well 19 actually they say 150,000 acres in order to provide 20 1000 megawatts.
21 I've been on wind farms and many of you 22 have seen them. They're not one per 500 acres. This 23 is either a big mistake by somebody that should have 24 known better or it's a blatant distortion. As I 25 suspect the latter because they don't want to deal NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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104 1 with wind power they'd rather deal with nuclear 2 because that's the business that they're in both for 3 the commercial and governmental agency.
4 So I, I worry about this.
5 Finally I have to say that according to 6 the GEIS again Consumers Energy has decided they 7 didn't want to deal with what they call DSM and for 8 you who haven't read the book DSM mean demand supply 9 management. In other words giving advise to the 10 consumer to use less energy to get complex for, you 11 know, all of the things that could save energy.
12 Oodles of it. They chose not to do that. Why?
13 Well, it might be very costly or this or 14 that. Now come on. This would be a way of trying to 15 sort of curtail the need for licensing this plant in 16 a risky way for another 20 years.
17 Any relevance has said that we could do 18 with 50 percent less electricity if we used it 19 intelligently and if we conserved. And I think this 20 certainly true because I see all over the place that 21 people do waste a lot.
22 So my point is that I think the, the put 23 down of wind energy in this book is so blatant that I 24 suspect I have to say I'm afraid I lose, I think that 25 the nuclear regulatory commission loses credibility by NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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105 1 people who know something about this.
2 And that's a serious thing because I don't 3 want to live in a society where governmental agencies 4 lose credibility because they're supposed to be 5 responsible. Thank you.
6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Mr. Kauffman, 7 serious, serious comments that we have to seriously 8 consider. So thank you for pointing that out, 9 pointing that out to us tonight.
10 And then we're going to go Mr. Adams.
11 MR. ADAMS: Thank you very much. I'm Wade 12 Adams. I'm from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I decided to 13 take the, I decided to come over with my wife and, and 14 waste that energy. I hope it's not a waste. I didn't 15 come here to have it, to be a waste.
16 My concern is a catastrophic event. And 17 as this plant becomes older and older as we already 18 heard the Big Rock plant up in Charlaboy has been 19 closed and it hasn't been generating electricity for 20 some time. And as Mr. Kauffman said generating power 21 by nuclear plants is not the cheapest way to generate 22 energy.
23 Now I came from Kalamazoo because we're 24 right downwind of what could happen if radiation was 25 released from the Palisades Plant. It would NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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106 1 devastating to Southern Michigan perhaps Northern 2 Indiana. It could, if you look at the Chernobyl case 3 and I would guess that all those government 4 authorities there in the Ukraine were just 100 percent 5 behind Chernobyl until they had their accident.
6 And of course I also lived through the 3 7 mile island incident when Jimmy Carter was president.
8 So I, I believe that we would be far better to spend 9 our money on safer distributing energy sources like 10 wind power particularly in Michigan.
11 My wife and I just came back from 12 California. Even a state like Wyoming has tremendous 13 numbers of wind generating plants now. Wyoming has 14 tremendous amounts of coal. They have tremendous 15 amounts of oil yet they are going to wind generation.
16 And you look out across this nation the 17 idea that you, you cannot have distributed types of 18 energy production is insane in my view point.
19 So in that respect we do not have to take 20 the chance even though it might be in your estimation 21 small on re licensing this plant. This plant if re 22 licensed could be in operation for 60 years. I do not 23 believe it was engineered to last 60 years and I don't 24 believe you can change all the components in that 25 plant to make it really be safe for 60 years or even NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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107 1 50 years.
2 So let's invest in alternative energy 3 sources. I hope and, and as far as jobs I'm a PHD did 4 research in Kalamazoo for 27 years. 2500 of us lost 5 our jobs quite recently when Pfizer decided to close 6 that research facility. We're managing.
7 Certainly South Haven, Covert Township and 8 this county will survive if you happen to have to 9 close this plant in the next five years. Trust me.
10 Finally I'd like to say that I hope when 11 you do your consideration that you listen to what 12 Abraham Lincoln said. We need government of the 13 people, by the people and for the people.
14 And what I am seeing increasingly in this 15 nation is government of the corporation, by the 16 corporation and for the corporation.
17 I hope you will keep the people in mind.
18 Thank you.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Mr. Adams. We're 20 going to next go to, to Mr. Hannan, Robert Hannan and 21 then to Gary Kartch and Barb Geisler.
22 Mr. Hannan, do you want to come up.
23 MR. HANNAN: Thank you for allowing me to 24 speak.
25 It's just hard for me to imagine that, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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108 1 that we're all here in this room even talking about 2 this. I think the humanity of, of this nuclear thing 3 is, is not good. And if, and everyone in here is a 4 human being and therefore we should all be able to 5 define the meaning of humanity.
6 And to take a risk like this in my mind I, 7 I don't care how safe it is, you know, it's, it's 8 still a risk and you people you're here defending 9 yourselves from a risk, a potential risk.
10 So therefore you're admitting that there 11 could be a meltdown. So I, I just find this whole 12 thing just, us being here talking about this is 13 totally insane. We shouldn't even, man should have 14 never split the atom to begin with. It was a bad 15 thing. It's very bad.
16 And that's all, that's all I have to say.
17 MR. CAMERON: Gary Kartch.
18 MR. KARTCH: Thank you also for letting me 19 speak. I wasn't really planning on saying anything 20 but I am compelled to do so.
21 The statement by the resident, Ryan McCoy, 22 was very eloquent. He said he thinks the economy 23 should take a backseat to ecology. I agree. But the 24 secret that the people, the citizens of this country 25 and state and county do not realize that the economics NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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109 1 are indeed an issue.
2 And forgive me for not having the 3 information with me, the facts and figures at the 4 moment, but the information I have been reading 5 indicates that nuclear industry has received more 6 government subsidies during its lifetime than any 7 other industry. It's well over 50 percent of all of 8 the tax incentives, breaks, guaranteed loans, 9 supplementing catastrophic insurance for the industry 10 etcetera.
11 The amount of money that the taxpayers are 12 paying out of their tax, taxes to the industry on top 13 of these high electric rates that they're having to 14 pay monthly rates is absolutely extraordinary. If 15 people knew that and if that was, if that was analyzed 16 down to a level and given to them so they could see it 17 they would be absolutely appalled.
18 And the renewable, the percentage of, of 19 money going to renewal is something like 11 percent of 20 all the money and the nuclear industry gets well, well 21 over 50 percent as I say.
22 Now in the, and the media has, you know, 23 made some, had been reporting a large subsidy and tax 24 incentives to the oil industry and everybody is 25 appalled over that. The nuclear industry has them by NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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110 1 a mile.
2 So if this money were diverted to the 3 renewalables and the technology to wind and solar you 4 would and perhaps let's pretend that the, the 5 information in the environmental impact statement is 6 correct for a minute but as submitted by the, in the 7 EIS, that, that wind turbines need X amount of acreage 8 and all this and they can only produce X amount of 9 megawatts etcetera.
10 If you take even a minuet amount of the 11 money that is given to the nuclear industry just as a 12 given and divert that to renewables and, and improve 13 the technology of the renewables this would absolutely 14 not be an issue.
15 And I also concur with Mr. is it Hannan, 16 who said these, how can we even be in this year of, 17 of, of 2006 still being, trying to justify the 18 manufacture of a waste that is absolutely lethal for 19 hundreds and thousands of years. What are we going to 20 do with it.
21 Who, nobody wants it. This is the 22 substance of which we are having international, you 23 know, traumas over right now with North Korea and a 24 few years ago it was, you know, India, Pakistan and 25 every, every nation on earth wants nuclear and we're NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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111 1 giving it to other nations. It's absolutely 2 preposterous.
3 The process by which we are generating 4 electricity is the same process that was used to make 5 the atomic bomb that was dropped on, on Hiroshima and 6 Nagasaki. So this is a technology of death make no 7 mistake about it.
8 We are made of better stuff than this. We 9 are intelligent enough to create electricity in a 10 manner that does not produce a waste. And to have the 11 waste off of discussion for the environmental impact 12 statement is absolutely scandalous.
13 That is my comments. Thank you very much.
14 MR. CAMERON: Is, is Barb Geisler still 15 here.
16 MS. GEISLER: Yes.
17 MR. CAMERON: Oh, hi, Barb.
18 MS. GEISLER: Hi.
19 MR. CAMERON: Would you like to join us up 20 here. This is Barb Geisler.
21 MS. GEISLER: Thank you. I live 10 miles 22 from here on a farm. I'm going to address something 23 a little differently.
24 In the early 80s I became, can you hear me 25 or do I need to be over here more.
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112 1 MR. CAMERON: Maybe we, maybe we can bend 2 it over a little towards you.
3 MS. GEISLER: Yeah, okay.
4 MR. CAMERON: See this, this.
5 MS. GEISLER: I'm a little shorter than the 6 guys.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Go ahead and see how 8 that works.
9 MS. GEISLER: Dose that work.
10 MR. CAMERON: Is that better. It sounds 11 good.
12 MS. GEISLER: Okay. In the early 80s I, I 13 became concerned about nuclear issues in, in a broad 14 way. And I remember a film from that era which was 15 called The Dark Circle documentary. And it, they 16 interviewed lots of people in the nuclear industry 17 both the weapons industry and the power industry.
18 And what I remember from that is how 19 intertwined they all are. That it, that you can't 20 really separate atoms for peace, atoms for industry 21 from, from the weapons industry. And Gary Kartch 22 said, you know, it's, it's about death. Do we choose 23 death or do we choose life. It really is about that 24 ultimately.
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113 1 conferences through the last 25 years I want to focus 2 on just one thing which is I've heard a lot of whistle 3 blowers speak. And their lives have been ruined.
4 Now some of you may have seen the film 5 about Karen Silkwood and maybe you thought that was 6 over dramatized or not true or whatever. But I sat 7 down with a women in her 70s at at least three of 8 these events who told me what happened to her.
9 She went, and this is I'm, I'm moving to 10 the inside here. She was an innocent young girl. She 11 went to work for the industry and she noticed that 12 some figures weren't quite right. And so she thought 13 she better tell her boss and she did and that was the 14 beginning.
15 Basically she was told you can either do 16 the figures the way we want them or you can leave.
17 And she realized either way she was a marked woman.
18 And yes she did have to go underground. She, the, the 19 act that protected people that came out I believe 20 after Silkwood she, she, she literally had to go 21 underground. This is, this a gramma tell me this.
22 She, she was, she felt, she feels 23 deliberately exposed. She was dying of bone cancer.
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114 1 she's only one of several that I've talked to who had 2 their lives ruined in one way or another.
3 Ann Harris at Lockspar, part of TVA, 4 Curtis Overall eight years ordeal, same place.
5 Finally won on appeals. Wrongful termination. I, he 6 was in tears, divorced, everything else. Ann Harris 7 was run off the road.
8 Interestingly enough it was Curtis Overall 9 whose, who pointed out the flaws Lockspar which led to 10 Cook very near us, DC Cook being shut down for three 11 years because they had the same kind of system.
12 And I remember hearing a guy in St. Joe 13 talk about working at Cook and becoming a whistle 14 blower and his life was ruined too. That's very near 15 us. People are threatened. They are called on the 16 phone. They are run off the road.
17 So knowing this I wonder if this isn't 18 just a charade. How many of you within the industry 19 would have the guts if you, if you decided it was, 20 there were things that weren't quite right to say so 21 in public. You'd, you'd pay a heavy price number one.
22 Number two because of all this and because 23 of the nature of this dangerous industry that has to 24 be closed, it has to be secret, it has to be top down, 25 it has to be authoritarian. This isn't a real NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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115 1 democratic meeting here. It couldn't possibly be, you 2 see. This is so we think we have some input.
3 And when I look at our country as some 4 others here mentioned tonight and I see it moving more 5 and more toward secrecy and authoritarianism and it's 6 Orwellian, isn't it. We live in a democracy but you 7 know what? If you're a little Quaker lady in Palm 8 Beach our wonderful new spy people are down there, you 9 know, we're all being spied on you know that don't 10 you.
11 They wrote a report that these, and these 12 are passivists, you know, Quakers are passivists, they 13 wrote a report saying that this was a very dangerous 14 group. We went through this in Viet Nam. Quakers are 15 dangerous. They're not the real terrorists are they.
16 So I guess I want to end by saying I don't 17 think you can have nuclear weapons and nuclear power, 18 the Dark Circle and also have democracy. And I think 19 that's what we're up against in this country right now 20 if you want to look at, excuse me, the big picture.
21 So let's look for alternatives. We need 22 a whole new way of living. We can get along with a 23 lot less of this, look at this. Lights on all night.
24 You go to the cities they're, and frankly we're going 25 to, we're running out of oil, we're running out of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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116 1 natural gas, we're running out of a lot of stuff.
2 We're going to have to think about doing things a 3 different way guys.
4 And just keeping this little plant open 20 5 more years and maybe it won't blow maybe it will but 6 it's not looking at what we're going to need in the 7 future. That will be very different so let's, let's 8 think about a new way.
9 Thank you.
10 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Barb. Thank you.
11 Is Michael -- still here and did he, Michael, did you 12 want to, okay.
13 Let's go to, let's go to Kevin. Kevin, 14 did you want to speak again.
15 MR. KAMPS: Yeah.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go to Kevin and 17 then we'll go to Kathryn and Ken and Corrine and Mr.
18 Hart.
19 Kevin Kamps.
20 MR. KAMPS: My name is Kevin Kamps. I work 21 for Nuclear Information and Resource Service in 22 Washington, D.C. But I'm from Kalamazoo, Michigan, a 23 board member of 24 Don't Waste Michigan for the Kalamazoo chapter.
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117 1 because it really caused quite a stir earlier today 2 and I think it deserves as much attention from the 3 public as it can get because the public deserves to 4 know about it was the incident last October involving 5 the cask that was stuck on a crane above the pool at 6 Palisades.
7 And I just wanted to read some passages 8 from NRC documents from Palisades documents that 9 reveal the serious nature of that incident.
10 So I'll start with something I read 11 earlier.
12 The NRC inspectors concluded that working 13 outside the bounds of a work package on a crane with 14 a suspended load that if dropped would damage the 15 spent fuel pool warranted a safety significance 16 determination. Had the load dropped the spent fuel 17 pool could have sustained severe damage.
18 The inspectors concluded working outside 19 the bounds of the approved work package and 20 manipulating the break release represented an increase 21 in the risk of a load drop. This increase in risk is 22 directly associated with the reactor safety 23 cornerstone objective of the spent fuel, spent fuel 24 cooling system as a radiological barrier.
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118 1 the cask which weighed 107 tons had fallen into the 2 pool it would have cracked the floor of the pool, 3 drained away the water which cools the waste in the 4 pool. And in a matter of time, some hours, the waste 5 would catch on fire and it would be a large scale 6 radiation release perhaps worse than Chernobyl.
7 So what were the potentially catastrophic 8 consequences had the cask dropped. And again this is 9 from an NRC report entitled Technical Study of Spent 10 Fuel Pool Accident Risk published in February of 2001.
11 The analysis exclusively considered drops 12 serve enough to catastrophically damage the spent fuel 13 pool so that pool cooling water inventory would be 14 lost rapidly and it would be impossible to refill the 15 pool using onsite or offsite resources.
16 There is no possibility of mitigating the 17 damage only preventing it in the first place. The 18 staff assumes the catastrophic heavy load drop 19 creating a large cooling water leakage path in the 20 pool would lead directly to a zirconium fire.
21 Zirconium is the metal cladding around the 22 fuel rods. It's, it's a combustible material, highly 23 combustible.
24 The time from a load drop until a fire 25 varies depending on fuel age, burn up and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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119 1 configuration. The dose rates in the pool area before 2 any zirconium fire are tens of thousands of rem per 3 hour3.472222e-5 days <br />8.333333e-4 hours <br />4.960317e-6 weeks <br />1.1415e-6 months <br /> making any recovery actions very difficult. Tens 4 of thousands of rems per hour would deliver a lethal 5 dose of radiation to someone close to that in a matter 6 of minutes.
7 And that's what happened to the 8 firefighters at Chernobyl. They received deadly doses 9 of radiation in a very short period of time. They 10 died two weeks later because their red blood cells 11 stopped reproducing.
12 MR. CAMERON: And that, that part is not in 13 the --
14 MR. KAMPS: I'm sorry I'm, I'm trying to 15 translate from --
16 MR. CAMERON: Oh, if you, I think it just 17 needs to be clear if you're purporting to read --
18 MR. KAMPS: Okay.
19 MR. CAMERON: -- from our document and 20 then you're editorializing just tell us when you're 21 editorializing.
22 MR. KAMPS: I sure will, Chip.
23 MR. CAMERON: All right.
24 MR. KAMPS: I'm sorry that I was --
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120 1 didn't intend it.
2 MR. KAMPS: Right. I did not intend to at 3 all.
4 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Kevin.
5 MR. KAMPS: I'm reading directly from the 6 NRC again.
7 Based on discussions with NRC staff 8 structural engineers it is assumed that only spent 9 fuel casks are heavy enough to catastrophically damage 10 the pool if dropped.
11 In fact NRC has reported, "the possibility 12 of a zirconium fire leading to a large fission product 13 release cannot be ruled out even many years after 14 final shutdown of a reactor".
15 Palisades is an operating reactor so the 16 waste in the pool is thermally hot, it's radioactively 17 hot. All the more likely to lead to worst case end 18 results.
19 So this is a quote from a study done by 20 Robert Alvarez and others in 2003 and it was about 21 pool fires. This is the quote: "Spent fuel recently 22 discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively 23 rapidly to temperatures at which the zurcolode fuel 24 cladding could catch fire and the fuel's volatile 25 fission products including 30 year half life, cesium NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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121 1 137 would be released. The fire could well spread to 2 older spent fuel. The long term land contamination 3 consequences of such an event could be significantly 4 worse than those from Chernobyl".
5 Another quote from that same report, "The 6 damage that can be done by a large release of fission 7 products was demonstrated by the April 1996 Chernobyl 8 accident. More than 100,000 residents from 187 9 settlements were permanently evacuated because of 10 contamination by cesium 137. Strict radiation dose 11 control measures were imposed. The total area of this 12 radiation control zone is huge equal to half the area 13 of the State of New Jersey. During the following 14 decade the population of this area declined by almost 15 half because of migration to areas of lower 16 contamination". From the Alvarez study.
17 And so we found out about this cask 18 incident by a fluke because a number of us attended an 19 unrelated NRC technical meeting where a piece of it 20 was mentioned. But we understood what it could mean 21 and so we followed up.
22 And we did a Freedom of Information Act 23 request which NRC informed us would take two to four 24 weeks to get back to us. Well, it took two months to 25 reach us.
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122 1 And in the meantime we found out all that 2 we could and we found the tables in that earlier 3 report I read from about spent fuel waste fires and 4 the casualty figures downwind were quite remarkable.
5 The NRC's own numbers again 20,000 to 44,000 cancer 6 deaths over time downwind out to a distance of 500 7 miles away from a pool fire. That was at 2001 NCR 8 study.
9 So we finally got the FOIA, this was after 10 the Detroit Free Press exposed the incident in that 11 front page article. We only received a partial FOIA 12 response at this point. And the, the document that I 13 read from earlier was the quarterly inspection report 14 from the NRC. That was the first public document of 15 that incident.
16 But the details that came out in the FOIA 17 were quite interesting. The precursors that led to 18 the incident. Here's, here's a quote from an internal 19 Palisades mia copa done by the inspection crew that 20 inappropriately handled the crane.
21 MR. CAMERON: And, Kevin, could you just 22 sort of, sort of wrap up --
23 MR. KAMPS: Uh-huh.
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123 1 just need to go on to some, some other, other people.
2 MR. KAMPS: Well, I'd like to encourage 3 everybody to go over to that table in the back corner 4 and get their own copy of this thing and read it 5 because it's worth it.
6 So this is, this is the company's workers 7 who made the mistake that could have overridden the 8 emergency brake. That's the whole point. They 9 shouldn't have handled the crane because they didn't 10 understand the crane.
11 We failed to consider the severity of the 12 consequences if our troubleshooting caused the load to 13 slip or fall into the spent fuel pool. This is why we 14 set up an event response organization to, to allow an 15 open forum with full consideration of how these 16 activities will affect the plant and the health and 17 safety of the public.
18 This is the company saying this.
19 The NRC earlier said that the risk of a 20 load drop was increased because of this inappropriate 21 handling.
22 So I'll just, please do pick up a copy.
23 The precursors of the event that led to this thing, 24 the false setting of the emergency brake were due to 25 the fact that Palisades lacks knowledge of the crane.
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124 1 They have to bring in the crane company to help them 2 operate the crane.
3 The crane company representative who came 4 last August to set the emergency brake had to get to 5 vacation. He was in a hurry. So instead of setting 6 the emergency brake correctly with three checks on the 7 emergency brake he did one check. And he set it wrong 8 that time. He thought he set it at 175 foot pounds.
9 He actually set it at 140.
10 So that was one precursor. He had to go 11 home on vacation. And the other one was that 12 Palisades doesn't know how to handle the crane. The 13 people that did know how to handle it have left the 14 company.
15 And one of the amazing admissions by the 16 company is that there may be other aspects of 17 operations where we also lack full knowledge not just 18 this crane.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you, Kevin.
20 Kevin's report is back there on the table. I would 21 also urge you to read the NRC inspection report so you 22 can see what the NRC said about this particular 23 incident. If you need to find out how to get a copy 24 of that we'll be glad to get you a copy of the 25 inspection report.
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125 1 There was also a dialogue this afternoon 2 on this particular issue. It is in the transcript 3 that will be available from this afternoon's meeting 4 and we're going to go to, to Kathryn Barnes and then 5 Ken Richards, Corrine, Paul Harden.
6 Kathryn Barnes.
7 MS. BARNES: I'm a member of Don't Waste 8 Michigan. I'm one of the people that decide the, one 9 of the intervenors. I live within a 50 mile radius of 10 Palisades. I have a son that attends Western 11 Michigan. He's in electrical engineering. He's 12 almost graduated. He's nearby.
13 I have my other son and their father work 14 in Kalamazoo in carpentry. And my family pretty much 15 all lives in the danger zone and a lot of my friends 16 do.
17 And I'm concerned about Palisades because 18 through the years, you know, growing up here in 19 Michigan the last time I was in Lake Michigan was as 20 a baby, when I was a baby my mother has a photo of me 21 in the water.
22 When I was growing up I went swimming 23 quite a lot in Lake Michigan. I can remember drinking 24 the water, swimming, enjoying it. I can remember how 25 many people were on the beach. It was just glorious.
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126 1 And I can remember drinking the water and 2 it was clean, sometimes it tasted a little fishy but, 3 you know, it wasn't a bad taste, you could drink it.
4 You can't drink it now.
5 Since the, the building of the nuclear 6 reactors the water quality has deteriorated. Last 7 time I went swimming last year my daughter and my 8 granddaughter, I have a little almost three year old 9 granddaughter now, precious.
10 They went swimming and they both got 11 stinging rashes. And I got a rash myself although I 12 was only in the water for a couple of minutes. And we 13 cannot drink the water, it's got a bad, foul taste and 14 I don't know if this is because of the chlorine, 15 bromine and amean released or if it's from other 16 things.
17 One time I sat on the beach and I had the 18 sand in my fingers etcetera and there was a lot of gas 19 coming out of Palisades that day and I was near the 20 plant. I got real sick afterwards.
21 It reminded me of when I was out at the 22 nuclear test site the feelings I had afterwards being 23 very tired and nauseous and just really dead tired.
24 I'm a cancer survivor. I know what it's 25 like to go through that dark cloud. I've seen NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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127 1 children from Chernobyl. I've seen their sunken eyes 2 and their handicaps and I feel so sad for what they've 3 gone through, what their parents that carried them 4 went through. That's an end to the, to the lineage of 5 people.
6 Once you have a nuclear disaster you lose 7 your DNA. When you lose your DNA quality you use up 8 the seed for cancer and then you set the seed for 9 death. And there's no getting it back.
10 I live on land where there's pesticide 11 use. I'm been a victim of that which is an 12 essentially a cause of cancer not radiation but 13 radiation does cause cancer too.
14 I've seen frogs with ten arms. I've seen 15 a lot of things from broken DNA. And here what you 16 have is, I know a man who worked at Palisades and he's 17 still in the nuclear industry he's got a real high job 18 in the nuclear industry.
19 And he told me that it's well known quote 20 un quote, is what he said it's well know within the 21 nuclear industry that Palisades is the most likely to 22 blow of all the nuclear power plants in the United 23 States at this time.
24 And I asked him well why is that. I said 25 is it, are they covering something up like they did at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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128 1 DC Cook which for ten years they covered up the fact 2 that they had a non functioning coolant system. Or if 3 they had a meltdown they could not have, they could 4 not have stopped the meltdown.
5 And only by the grace of God we have not 6 had a meltdown yet.
7 Well, they covered that up and as people 8 have mentioned the whistle blower got in trouble for 9 that. And now he said no he says Palisades they don't 10 cover things up he says they just don't report it.
11 And I think this, this incidents of the 12 crane that was just mentioned that's another incident 13 I believe that was not reported to the NRC. And I 14 believe that Palisades asked for an exemption that 15 they don't want to report things any more.
16 I think that the premiss is upside down 17 where they consider the, another 20 years of, of 18 Palisades operating as, environmentally a small issue 19 and they consider alternatives as a great impact. I 20 think it's opposite actually.
21 I think that Palisades was burgeoning 22 nuclear waste which is a problem, unstable geological 23 strata, the singing sands, the shifting sands, 24 freezing and thawing conditions on the casks. Cask 25 number four which is surrounded by other casks has bad NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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129 1 welds, could crack.
2 There's a lot of problems there and, and 3 these aren't being addressed. The, at one of the 4 meetings earlier and I've been to all of these 5 meetings now, this is before there was a lot of people 6 here. Thank God there's more people getting involved 7 but maybe this is the last meeting.
8 They were talking about the experimental 9 use of sealants. And that wasn't addressed. There 10 was other things that the NRC themselves wanted to 11 address. And when I came to the meeting 12 supposedly for that, those issues they switched 13 locations and so they kept this, the public in the 14 dark on that one.
15 So where's, and I, I don't know the 16 answers to those questions or if they were ever 17 answered to the NRC's specifications. But I know 18 there's real issues at Palisades.
19 The biggest issue I've heard about and 20 this is not disputed, this is fact. Is that it is 21 embrittled. In a layman's terms I'll try to explain 22 to you what embrittlement is.
23 When a nuclear reactor has, of the, the 24 design at Palisades is, had so many reactions through 25 the years it gets like little finger holes in it, lots NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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130 1 of little holes from all this stress and these 2 reactions. Cooling, heating, cooling heating and the 3 near misses they've had.
4 And after you get this, these holes in 5 the, in the design structure it becomes embrittled 6 which means that if there was a stuck value, broken 7 coolant pipes, lots of things could happen to cause a 8 meltdown, okay, and then it starts heating up. And 9 they cool, they had to cool it real fast. So they 10 flood it with water. If the plant is embrittled as 11 Palisades is it's like taking a really hot glass 12 coffee pot and immersing it in cold water. Bang.
13 That's what accurate embrittlement is and 14 that's what I've hear would, would be the most 15 probable thing that would happen to cause a meltdown.
16 Well, what does a meltdown mean here.
17 Okay, well, if you live in Covert, you know, you don't 18 have a chance to say goodby to anyone.
19 If you live anywhere close to Palisades 20 you, you'll, you'll, you're gone. If you live 21 downwind which could be in any direction but usually 22 the wind comes from the Great Lakes. It comes from, 23 from the west going east.
24 MR. CAMERON: Kathryn, could you just try 25 --
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131 1 MS. BARNES: I will try and wrap up, yes, 2 I will to wrap up.
3 What it means that there is a huge area of 4 contamination. It could go into Canada. It could 5 affect all of us in Michigan and Canadians. And as in 6 the case of Chernobyl that year Meyer -- had the most 7 insane bizarre food. I am sure in Michigan because of 8 all our precipitation we had fallout.
9 I had turnips, they got this big with a 10 little narrow and then they bulged out again and they 11 were rotten inside. I had cabbage that was huge and 12 rotten inside. That's not normal. It's never 13 happened since.
14 But I, I think that it can affect 15 everybody in the world.
16 I would like to see with your rules, a 17 rule be made if, if this nuclear power plant is 18 relicensed that everybody that is in on the decision 19 to relicense it be obligated with their families to 20 live within five miles of Palisades until the plant is 21 shut down.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Kathryn, thank you.
23 MS. BARNES: That might make a difference.
24 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Ken Richards.
25 Then we're going to Corrine and to Mr. Paul Harden.
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132 1 Ken Richards.
2 KEN RICHARDS; Good evening. I'm Ken 3 Richards Palisades Conversion Group. I'm going to try 4 to get this down a bit but --
5 MR. CAMERON: We will have to keep you to 6 five at this point.
7 KEN RICHARDS: Yeah. Recently I got the 8 generic impact statement license renewal and I've been 9 reading through both the manual and its cover letters.
10 I see despite potential radioactive hazards the NRC 11 insists that environmental impact of the Palisades 12 Nuclear Power Plant, all the radioactive materials 13 about its reservation, such as the casks is always 14 regarded as small throughout the report.
15 But when I turn to alternative energy 16 sources which should be pursued at Palisades plant 17 site they're impacts are often referred to as large 18 which all considering they would be taken into account 19 the enormity of nuclear power the plant puts on the 20 grid for alternatives to equal out in their current 21 forms at the site.
22 A rather particular assumption bracketing 23 both the plant and the NRC's position as well yet 24 ignoring the simple fact that of all the resources 25 used to continue operation of this plant or renewables NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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133 1 and other forms of electrical generation throughout 2 the state it would turn the argument on its head.
3 But my real concern here is the fact that 4 the GEIS report does not take into consideration of 5 dry cask storage. Other highly radioactive 6 contaminated things such as the former steam 7 generators on the site.
8 Many would argue that Palisades 9 reservation is already a defactile high level nuclear 10 waste dump which to their, Palisades Conversion Group 11 and my way of viewing the issue a large impact on this 12 fragile lakeshore enviroment.
13 More to the point potential in fact should 14 things not go as designed or planned or promised which 15 over the last 38 years time and time again have been 16 broken. With an additional 20 years worth of above 17 ground dry storage cask along with other contaminated 18 equipment which is sure to be replaced should this 19 plant be pushed so far past its original design 20 capacity which it already has by years now.
21 Counter to the GEIS' insistence that no 22 changes to the plant need take place in the additional 23 20 years. Isn't the reactor head soon to be replace 24 in July perhaps.
25 I talked with the vice president and he said NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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134 1 2000 and something.
2 The pressure reactor vessel long in 3 question operating in a patchwork method since 4 embrittlement was discovered more than ten years ago.
5 How long before this is replaced.
6 Annealiated as once promised in court or 7 a neutron thermal shield installed. And yes, the dry 8 cask storage casks piling up on site.
9 I'm sure we'll all hear about Yucca 10 Mountain or the -- Indian reservation taking all of 11 this off our hands for the umpteenth time in the last 12 20 years.
13 Now there are over 20 to 30, somebody told 14 me 29 here but I keep getting different answers, dry 15 cask storage onsite. Will anyone here give us an 16 exact number. Somebody did give me 29.
17 This is a community concern for we will 18 have to live with and care take all of this waste for 19 generations to come. In '93 we were told these 20 experimental cut waste storage casks would be gone in 21 1998 time and time again by Mark Savage the plant's 22 spokesperson.
23 Now we're told by the NRC there license to 24 store fuel assemblies for 20 years. It'll last for 25 150 years and above ground storage is our nation's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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135 1 nuclear future since the Feds haven't found a hole 2 deep or dry enough to put all this radioactive waste 3 and materials in.
4 After nearly 50 years of looking, instructing, 5 spending and charging us ratepayers for a place to 6 take all of it off our lakeshore nothing but this.
7 Another promise broken, more public trust going by the 8 wayside.
9 On April 4th the Squaw Valley Reservation 10 will be approved for above ground storage but with 11 Yucca Mountain's inability to take this slated cask 12 off the Goshite's hands, there will not be move in 13 either nuclear waste storage site for all the waste 14 piling up at Palisades now much less that all the 15 additional waste produced during the 20 year 16 relicensing period. All for a little electricity now.
17 Decades perhaps centuries of radioactive waste for the 18 local citizenry to look at.
19 Yet the operators still insist this is a 20 cheap form of power generation.
21 Another concern is the plant's original 22 seven mile cooling loop rumored to be back in use 23 again. It's affect of Lake Michigan's eco system. Is 24 it or is it not back in use.
25 MS. ELLEGOOD: There's no seven mile NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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136 1 cooling loop.
2 MR. RICHARD: Okay.
3 MR. RICHARD: I, I agree --
4 MR. CAMERON: -- I would have to ask you 5 to, to wrap for us now.
6 MR. RICHARD: I know Mr. Bradley a welder 7 who built it back in the 60s, oh yeah.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Ken, so if you could 9 just make your main point for us.
10 MR. RICHARD: Yeah, wrap it up. Questions 11 about --
12 AUDIENCE: It's the last chance people 13 have, let him speak.
14 MR. RICHARD: -- the Palisades -- crane 15 break down on October 11th. 55 hour6.365741e-4 days <br />0.0153 hours <br />9.093915e-5 weeks <br />2.09275e-5 months <br /> shutdown with a 16 110 casks containing spent fuel assemblies partially 17 suspended broke in the air fell partly submerged over 18 the fuel pool.
19 The fuel pool went well beyond its 20 original design capacity with fuel assemblies going 21 back to the 70s. I gather from the Tribune article 22 all the brakes froze because plant personnel did not 23 set the emergency brake properly just before leaving 24 for his vacation.
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137 1 be giving off. How many rems the article certainly 2 didn't say. Did the whole fuel pool area must have 3 had, must have had to been decontaminated. How much 4 did it receive.
5 All that spent fuel at risk should that 6 cask have dropped down onto decades where for spent 7 fuel assemblies it would have caused a fire making for 8 an accident much worse than Chernobyl.
9 The article also pointed out this incident 10 was considered of low significance by the NRC within 11 its quarterly report. Quite a change from the NRC in 12 the early 90s when dry storage cask storage was 13 initiated at Palisades hearing the operators 30 14 violations for everything from cracked pipes to 15 mishandled drop fuel assembly rods into its reactor 16 vessel. Did they ever find the two pounds of missing 17 fuel.
18 To Palisades Conversation Group this 19 incident further demonstrates the aged long time 20 ineffectiveness of both the equipment and the 21 personnel at the Palisades Plant right along with the 22 current NRC not handing out violations for such --
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138 1 get their crane to budge for days because one brake 2 froze and all the brakes shut down for 55 hours6.365741e-4 days <br />0.0153 hours <br />9.093915e-5 weeks <br />2.09275e-5 months <br />. What 3 were the plant personnel doing scratching their heads.
4 A further explanation of partly suspended 5 a 110 pound metal inner cask leaves me with cause for 6 concern as it did others, was not made clear in the 7 article.
8 Just insistent that everything was okay.
9 Just what is the shielding of a bare metal cask --
10 MR. CAMERON: Ken, I'm going to have to ask 11 you --
12 MR. RICHARD: -- that neutron thermal 13 shielding --
14 MR. CAMERON: -- to wrap up --
15 MR. RICHARD: -- that they're -- in the 16 cask at the time.
17 MR. CAMERON: Ken --
18 AUDIENCE: Let him talk.
19 AUDIENCE: This needs to be answered in 20 public record. This is the last chance he has.
21 MR. CAMERON: He can submit his whole thing 22 to us.
23 AUDIENCE: We want to --
24 AUDIENCE: We want --
25 MR. CAMERON: Could you just please wrap up NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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139 1 and then we're going to go to Corrine, okay.
2 MR. RICHARD: We're wrapped up.
3 MR. CAMERON: All right. Thank you.
4 Corrine.
5 MR. RICHARDS: Thank you.
6 MS. CAREY: Will the volunteers for the 7 Raging Grannies please come forward if you're 8 available. You've seen this guy before. He was --
9 MR. CAMERON: We have, we have.
10 MS. CAREY: Yes. He's built as --
11 MR. CAMERON: -- come up here again.
12 MS. CAREY: -- a recycle but I added a 13 couple touches here.
14 MR. CAMERON: All right.
15 MS. CAREY: All right. Okay. I do 16 encourage you to, yes, yes, all of you who would like 17 to come, any honorary grannies are more than welcome.
18 The, yes, I urge you to get the materials 19 that are on these tables on the side. People look at 20 these over here including some rare books. And do get 21 this one which is the radioactive releases from 22 nuclear power plants in the Great Lakes Basin 23 including a picture down here of the Palisades Plant 24 and it's, it's, yeah, it's discharge holes and a map 25 etcetera of the Great Lakes area.
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140 1 And your very own picture of the current 2 situation at the cask or the one that we heard about 3 on March 18th. It happened in October. It made the 4 federal reserve or the federal report to, yeah, 5 register, in January.
6 So yes we, we all question that.
7 All right. So we are going to skip the 8 one that says about -- this, the great region grannies 9 are all over the country but they originated out in 10 the Washington State area. There is another one the 11 earth is going to throw up over, all over us. We'll 12 skip that one.
13 Give me a home where the rivers don't 14 foam. But this one is, happens to be about the land 15 of the beaver. Oh, I forget to use this. Now this is 16 an example of how inadequate this kind of protection 17 would be in a nuclear event, totally inadequate just 18 like the fallout shelters of years back.
19 So land of the beaver. Here in the land 20 of the beaver (singing) they say we are nuclear free.
21 We want to be happy believers but ask ourselves how 22 can it be.
23 There are nuclear ships in our harbors and 24 the tridents are out in the straights. We have tested 25 the crews, terriorized caribou's, do we look like the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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141 1 51st state.
2 They told us that we'd never do it. That 3 no nuc mess would ever be found. But it's starting to 4 look like we blew it and the bad stuff is spinning 5 around.
6 There are nuclear ships in our harbors and 7 the tridents are out in the straights. We have tested 8 the crews, terriorized caribou's maybe we'll be the 9 dirtiest state.
10 When business and George Bush are talking 11 they put on their friendship display, big smiles, 12 friendship display.
13 We wish they would do something shocking 14 and have Georgie -- every state. We'll take nuclear 15 ships from our harbors. We'll take tridents away from 16 the straights. We'll not test the crews, terriorized 17 caribou's and we won't be the dirtiest state. No, we 18 won't be the dirtiest state neah, neah, neah.
19 We won't be the dirtiest state, neah, 20 neah, neah. And that includes Michigan so.
21 MR. CAMERON: All right. Okay, thank you 22 and Chester.
23 Mr. Paul Harden, site vice president at 24 Palisades.
25 MR. HARDEN: My name is Paul Harden. I'm NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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142 1 the site vice president of Palisades Plant. And I'll 2 focus my comments on the purpose of the meeting and 3 that's the draft supplemental environmental impact 4 statement.
5 And I'd like to start off by commending 6 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the scope and 7 depth of that report. It's very comprehensive and 8 Nuclear Management Company agrees with the conclusions 9 although we may have some comments that are minor that 10 we'll submit as well by the date none of which will 11 affect the conclusions of the report.
12 I'd like to spend a few minutes addressing 13 the environmental impact of operating, continuing to 14 operate the Palisades Nuclear Plant.
15 But before I do that I'd like to recognize 16 not all of us are ever going to agree whether nuclear 17 power plants should exist. Not all of us are ever 18 going to agree the public policy that this country has 19 taken on how to deal with spent nuclear fuel. That's 20 okay. That doesn't bother me.
21 The fact that we have diverse people, 22 diverse views and we have the freedom to speak our 23 opinions is part of what makes this country great.
24 What I would like to do is share a few 25 facts.
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143 1 AUDIENCE: -- opinions and knowing --
2 MR. CAMERON: Excuse me.
3 MR. HARDEN: Some of the facts --
4 MR. CAMERON: Could we have the courtesy 5 to just listen to the speaker. Thank you.
6 MR. HARDEN: Some of the facts are the 7 environmental responsibility is built into the design 8 of nuclear power plants. There are multiple 9 redundancies so that no single failures of whether 10 it's human failure or equipment failures can cause 11 incidents that would be adverse to the environment.
12 There's environmental responsibility built 13 into the way the plants are operated, the way they're 14 managed and the regulatory oversight. The nuclear 15 industry is one of the more heavily regulated and 16 industries that has additional oversight that there 17 are out there. And the inspectors do a very good job 18 of challenging everything we do.
19 Another fact is that in addition to 20 continuously monitoring radiation levels on the site 21 and monitoring all the release pathways from the site 22 we go beyond that to verify that we're not having an 23 adverse effect to the environment or the people that 24 surround the plant.
25 We regularly sample soil. We sample fish.
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144 1 We sample fruits. We sample cows milks to verify that 2 there are no low or trace levels of radioactive 3 material that could have come from the plant. And we 4 do that on a regular basis.
5 Another fact is that the employees that 6 work at the Palisades Nuclear Plant over 600 employees 7 they're also residents of the local areas. They raise 8 their children here too and they have a deep respect 9 and desire to keep the environment safe as well.
10 They're just as concerned about their children as 11 everyone else.
12 Given that Consumers Energy and Nuclear 13 Management Company are confident that we can operate 14 Palisades Nuclear Plant and extend the license renewal 15 period safely and with no adverse impact to the 16 environment.
17 That is why we are spending hundreds of 18 millions of dollar each year as we proceed forward 19 through the license renewal process upgrading the 20 plant, changing the equipment.
21 I heard some of the concerns in here with 22 aging of equipment. In a nuclear power plant we are 23 required to have what we call aging management 24 programs.
25 We do regularly change out components.
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145 1 Components that aren't changed out get inspected or 2 tested to verify that they are in good condition to 3 continue to operate. And if they start to degrade or 4 the testing shows that there is degradation we change 5 out those components to keep them going.
6 I'm not up here to change the mind of 7 anyone who is against nuclear power. But I do want to 8 get those facts out.
9 We agree that, with the conclusions of the 10 draft report that there are no significant or adverse 11 impacts of operating the Palisades Nuclear Plant in 12 the continued license renewal period.
13 And if anyone would like to be educated on 14 the facts or learn more about the plant I would be 15 happy to discuss that with you. If you don't trust 16 talking to someone who works for the plant I'd 17 encourage you to talk to the Nuclear Regulatory 18 Commission because nuclear power can be a safe and 19 viable entity.
20 Everything we do in life has risks. It's 21 a matter of agreement whether those risks are worth 22 endeavoring whether it's a chemical plant, a coal 23 plant or a nuclear plant.
24 But for the purpose of this meeting the 25 draft environmental impact statement we agree with its NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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146 1 conclusions and we look forward to operating the plant 2 in a continued operating period.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, thank you 4 very much.
5 AUDIENCE: Can I ask a question please.
6 MR. CAMERON: And you can talk to Paul 7 after the meeting.
8 AUDIENCE: All right.
9 MR. CAMERON: If you want to get a copy I 10 believe the NRC inspection report on crane incident or 11 ask about it please talk to John Ellegood our resident 12 or Victoria Midland, one of our communications staff 13 from, from the region.
14 I would just thank all of you for 15 following the ground rules and the NRC staff will be 16 here to talk to you informally with you and I'm going 17 to ask Rani Franovich who has disappeared to, to close 18 the meeting out. And we'll, we'll get to you after 19 the meeting.
20 MS. FRANOVICH: Thank you, Chip. I just 21 wanted to again thank you all for coming to our 22 meeting, providing your comments, asking questions.
23 It's, it's one of my favorite parts of this job is 24 really going out to the communities and talking with 25 people.
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147 1 So thanks again for your input. It's 2 important to our process and we will consider your 3 comments in the development of our final environmental 4 impact statement.
5 I wanted to mention that each of you 6 should have received an NRC public meeting feedback 7 form when you registered for the meeting outside.
8 If you have any suggestions about how we 9 could conduct our meetings better, how we could 10 provide information to you better we would love to 11 hear your suggestions.
12 Please feel free to fill out the feedback 13 form. It's already postage prepaid. You can fold it 14 up and send it to us in the mail or you can just hand 15 it to us as you leave this evening.
16 I wanted also to just remind folks that 17 tonight was not the last opportunity to submit your 18 comments to the NRC. We will be taking comments until 19 May 18th. Bo Pham is the point of contact for those 20 comments. There's an email address you can send them 21 to in written form.
22 And with that again thank you all for 23 being with us tonight and we appreciate your time.
24 (Whereupon the meeting concluded at 10:15 25 p.m.)
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