ML061090128
| ML061090128 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Palisades  |
| Issue date: | 04/05/2006 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-956 | |
| Download: ML061090128 (140) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Public Meeting to Discuss Palisades Nuclear Plant License Renewal Application Docket Number:
(Not applicable for meetings)
Location:
South Haven, Michigan Date:
April 5, 2006 Work Order No.:
NRC-956 Pages 1-139 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1
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2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
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4 PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS 5
DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR 6
PALISADES NUCLEAR PLANT 7
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9 WEDNESDAY 10 APRIL 5, 2006 11
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12 SOUTH HAVEN, MICHIGAN 13
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14 The above-entitled matter commenced pursuant to 15 Notice before Chip F. Cameron, NRC Special Counsel.
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
2 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 PRESENT:
1 Chip F. Cameron, Special Counsel for Public Liaison 2
3 NRC STAFF:
4 Rani Franovich, Chief Environmental Review Branch 5
Bo Pham, Project Manager 6
Robert Palla, Senior Reactor Engineer 7
Bob Schaaf, Senior Project Manager 8
John Ellegood, Senior Resident Inspector 9
Viktoria Mitlyng, Public Affairs Officer 10 Dr. David Miller, Argonne National Lab 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
3 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 I N D E X 1
2 AGENDA ITEM PAGE 3
I. Welcome and Purpose of Meeting 4 4
II. Overview of License Renewal Process 14 5
III. Results of the Environmental Review 19 6
IV. Results of the Severe Accident Mitigation, 66 7
Alternatives Review 8
V. How Comments can be Submitted 79 9
VI. Public Comments 81 10 VII. Closing/Availability of Transcripts, etc. 137 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 P R O C E E D I N G S 25
4 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 (1:35 P.M.)
1 MR. CAMERON: Good afternoon everyone. My 2
name is Chip Cameron, and I'm the Special Counsel for 3
Public Liaison at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 4
the NRC. And it's my pleasure to serve as your 5
facilitator this afternoon for this public meeting.
6 And my responsibility on that score is to try to make 7
sure that all of you have a productive meeting this 8
afternoon.
9 Our subject today is the environmental 10 review that the NRC has conducted as part of its 11 evaluation of an application that we received from the 12 Nuclear Management Company to renew the operating 13 license for the Palisades Nuclear Plant. And I just 14 want to go through a few things on meeting process, so 15 that you understand how we're going to work today 16 before we get to the substance of today's discussions.
17 And I want to talk about format, some very simple 18 ground rules that will help us to have a productive 19 meeting, and to introduce the NRC speakers who are 20 going to be talking to you today.
21 Let me thank all of you for coming out to 22 be with us this afternoon to help the NRC with its 23 important responsibility in terms of evaluating this 24 license application.
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 In terms of the format for the meeting, 1
it's basically a two-part format. The first part is 2
for the NRC to give all of you information, background 3
on not only what we look at when we review an 4
application to renew a license, but in this case, what 5
are the findings in the Draft Environmental Impact 6
Statement that we prepared on this license 7
application. And we're going to give you some 8
information. We're going to go out to you during 9
those presentations to answer any questions that you 10 might have.
11 The second part of the meeting is for us 12 to have an opportunity to listen to any concerns or 13 comments, advice, recommendations that you have on 14 license renewal and possibly on the specifics in the 15 Draft Environmental Impact Statement. I know that 16 some of you have had an opportunity to look at that, 17 so we'll look forward to those comments.
18 And this is a Draft Environmental Impact 19 Statement that we're talking about today. And the 20 reason it is a draft is that it won't be finalized 21 until we have an opportunity to evaluate the comments 22 that we hear today. We're also asking, and the staff 23 will tell you more about this, for written comments, 24 okay? And we'll consider your comments from today's 25
6 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 meeting, and the written comments when we begin 1
finalizing the Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
2 In terms of ground rules, they're real 3
simple. When we go out for questions from you, just 4
signal me if you have a question and I'll bring this 5
little microphone out to you and if you could just 6
introduce yourself to us, and any affiliation that, 7
any group that you're with that's applicable and we'll 8
try to answer your questions as best as we can.
9 I would ask that only one person speak at 10 a time. Two reasons, the most important one is so 11 that we can give our full attention to whomever has 12 the floor at the moment. And secondly, we are taking 13 a transcript of the meeting. Mr. Ron LeGrand is here.
14 He's our stenographer. The record of the meeting that 15 is on the transcript will be available to all of you.
16 If you want to see what happens today, we have another 17 meeting tonight. We'll be taking a transcript of 18 that. But one person at a time helps Mr. LeGrand to 19 know who is talking so that we can get a clean 20 transcript.
21 I would ask you to be to the point in your 22 questions, because we want to make sure that we can 23 get to everybody who wants to talk today. So try to 24 be brief on that aspect. And during the question 25
7 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 period, it is the opportunity to ask questions. And 1
I know questions can often be attached to a comment 2
that you might want to make to introduce that, but as 3
much as you can, if you could keep the questions to 4
the question period. And if you have comments, let's 5
get that out when we go to comments, the second part 6
of the meeting.
7 Now in terms of those comments, we do have 8
yellow cards out there for you to sign up if you want 9
to make a comment. That doesn't mean that if the urge 10 strikes you when we're in the comment period that you 11 just can't tell me, I'd like to make a comment. But 12 it allows us to know how many people want to, want to 13 speak.
14 And I would ask you, this is a guideline, 15 is to try to keep your comments into the five to seven 16 minute range. And if we're going way outside that, I 17 may ask you to summarize. If you have a written 18 statement, we can attach that to the transcript. If 19 you have a lot more to say, then you can submit 20 written comments and amplify on your comments tonight.
21 And usually I've found that five minutes or so is 22 enough for people to summarize their main points. And 23 it accomplishes two important objectives. One is it 24 alerts the NRC staff to issues of concern that they 25
8 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 can start thinking about immediately, including 1
talking to you after the meeting about your particular 2
comment.
3 Second thing that it accomplishes, is it 4
tells the other people in the audience what the 5
concerns are that people might
- have, or 6
recommendations, advice about the Draft Environmental 7
Impact Statement.
8 So, let me introduce the staff to you, 9
who's going to be talking to you. First, we have Ms.
10 Rani Franovich who's right here. And Rani is the 11 Chief of the Environmental Section in our license 12 renewal program. And Rani and her staff are 13 responsible for doing the environmental reviews on 14 each of these license renewal applications.
15 And to give you little bit of her 16 background, she's been with the NRC for about 15 17 years. She was a Project Manager on a safety 18 evaluation, as opposed to the environmental evaluation 19 on license renewal applications. She's been an NRC 20 Resident Inspector at the Catawba Nuclear Power Plant.
21 And Rani will be introducing the residents that are at 22 Palisades.
23 But, the NRC Resident Inspectors are our 24 eyes and ears, so to speak, at the particular plant.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 They live in the community to make sure that NRC 1
regulations are complied with. But Rani was a 2
Resident Inspector. She also was the Enforcement 3
Coordinator for our reactor program. And that's, has 4
to do with any enforcement actions that are taken for 5
non-compliance with NRC Regulations. She has a 6
bachelor's degree in Psychology from Virginia Tech, 7
and also a master's in Industrial & Systems 8
Engineering. And she's going to give you a broad 9
overview of --
10 Then we're going to go to one of Rani's 11 staff, Mr. Bo Pham, who's right here. And Bo is the 12 Project Manager for the preparation of the 13 environmental review on the Palisades license renewal 14 application. And he's going to talk to you about that 15 process. And Bo's been with the NRC for about four 16 years. He was a Project Manager for the NRC for the 17 San Onofre reactor in California. He comes to us from 18 the Nuclear Navy. He was an officer on submarine, 19 nuclear navy. And he has a bachelor's degree in 20 Mechanical Engineering from the Naval Academy in 21 Annapolis, Maryland.
22 After those two presentations, which are 23 on the process, we'll see if you have any questions.
24 And then we're going to proceed to the substance of 25
10 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the environmental review and these are the information 1
and the findings in the Draft Environmental Impact 2
Statement.
3 And we have Dr. Dave Miller, who's right 4
here. Dave is the Team Leader of our group of 5
scientists and expertise, experts who prepared the 6
Environmental Impact Statement, with the NRC, for the 7
NRC staff, with the NRC staff. And he led that team 8
of scientists and he'll be talking to you about what 9
they found. And Dave is from Argonne National Lab 10 outside of Chicago, and he's an Environmental Engineer 11 and he has a PhD in Environmental Engineering from 12 Johns Hopkins University. He's also a Professional 13 Engineer, certified, and he's also a Registered 14 Geologist.
15 And after Dave's presentation, we'll go to 16 you for questions again. And then we have a real 17 specific part of the Environmental Impact statement, 18 the draft EIS, to talk to you about. And that's 19 something called SAMA, Severe Accident Mitigation 20 Alternatives. And we have one of our experts from the 21 NRC here to talk to you about that. That's Mr. Bob 22 Palla. And Bob has been with the Agency for 25 years, 23 and he's an expert on something called Probabilistic 24 Risk Assessment and Severe Accident Analysis. And 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 I'll tell you a little bit about that. He has a 1
bachelor's and a master's in Mechanical Engineering 2
from the University of Maryland. And we'll go again 3
for questions.
4 And then we're going to have Bo come back 5
up, Bo Pham, to just tell you how you submit comments, 6
where, whatever. And then we'll get into the second 7
part of the meeting. We're going to do the 8
presentations now and I would just ask you to be 9
patient. Let the presenters get through their 10 presentation. Make notes of questions that you have, 11 and then we'll come back and get your questions, just 12 to insure that they can, we can get all the material 13 out to you today. And Rani, you're going to talk to 14 us now. Rani Franovich.
15 MS. FRANOVICH: Thank you Chip. And thank 16 you all for being here.
You
- know, you're 17 participation in our process is very important to us.
18 MALE VOICE: Can't hear very well.
19 MS. FRANOVICH: Can you hear better now?
20 Is that better? Can everybody hear me?
21 FEMALE VOICE: You have to hear your own 22 echo. Then you know we're hearing.
23 MS. FRANOVICH: Is this better? How about 24 that? Okay. Thank you. Again, I want to thank you 25
12 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 all for coming to our meeting. Your participation is 1
very important to our process. I hope the information 2
we provide today in this meeting will help you to 3
understand the process we're going through, what we've 4
done so far, and the role that you can play in helping 5
us make sure that our final Environmental Impact 6
Statement for Palisade's license renewal is accurate.
7 I'd like to start off briefly by going 8
over the agenda and the purpose of today's meeting.
9 We'll explain the NRC's license renewal process for 10 nuclear power plants with emphasis on the 11 Environmental Impact Analysis and review process. And 12 then we're going to present the preliminary findings 13 of our environmental review which assesses the impacts 14 associated with extending operation of the Palisades 15 Nuclear Facility for an additional 20 years.
16 Then really the most important part of 17 today's meeting is for us to receive any comments that 18 you may have on our Draft Environmental Impact 19 Statement. We also will give you some information 20 about the schedule for the balance of the Staff's 21 review and let you know how you can submit comments 22 after today's meeting.
23 At the conclusion of the Staff's 24 presentation, we'll be happy to answer any questions 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 you may have. However, I must ask you to limit your 1
participation to questions only and hold your comments 2
until the appropriate time in this meeting when we ask 3
you to provide those comments. Once all questions are 4
answered, we can begin to receive those comments that 5
you have on our Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
6 Before I get into a discussion of the 7
license renewal process, I'd like to talk a minute 8
about the NRC in terms of what we do and what our 9
mission is. The Atomic Energy Act is the legislation 10 that authorizes the NRC to issue licenses.
11 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Excuse me. Can I ask, 12 how many people are hearing clearly? Some of us are 13 white haired and it makes a difference.
14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's hard to hear you.
15 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. It's really, 16 you're not as loud as he was. You have to be 17 practically eating the microphone.
18 MS. FRANOVICH: Well, I will try my best 19 to make sure everybody can hear me.
20 MR. CAMERON: Was that, was that better, 21 what she just said right then.
22 AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's not that much 23 better. How many people are having some problems 24 hearing?
25
14 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Lean into the mike.
1 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Your mike was better.
2 You're voice was better.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's give it a, 4
Rani, try to really --
5 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Eat it.
6 MR. CAMERON: -- get in there and let's 7
see if that works. You've got to hear, so we'll solve 8
the problem one way or the other. So, let's go, Rani, 9
and try it. Give it another try.
10 MS. FRANOVICH: Okay. The Atomic Energy 11 Act is the legislation that authorizes the NRC to 12 issue licenses. The Atomic Energy Act also provides 13 for a 40 year term for a license for power reactors.
14 This 40 year term is based primarily on economic 15 considerations and anti-trust factors, not on safety 16 limitations of the plant. The Atomic Energy Act also 17 authorizes the NRC to regulate civilian use of nuclear 18 materials in the United States.
19 In exercising that authority, the NRC's 20 mission is three-fold; to insure adequate protection 21 of public health and safety, to promote the common 22 defense and security, and to protect the environment.
23 The NRC accomplishes its mission through a combination 24 of regulatory programs and processes, such as 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 conducting inspections, issuing enforcement actions, 1
assessing licensee performance, and evaluating 2
operating experience for nuclear power plants across 3
this country and internationally. The regulations 4
that the NRC enforces are contained in Title 10 of the 5
Code of Federal Regulations, which is commonly 6
referred to as 10CFR. 7 As I've mentioned, the Atomic Energy Act 8
provides for a 40 year license term for power 9
reactors. Our regulations also include provisions for 10 license renewal, and extending plant operation for up 11 to an additional 20 years. For Palisades, the license 12 will expire in 2011.
13 Palisades is owned by Consumer's Energy, 14 a subsidiary of CMS Energy Corporation and licensed to 15 operate by Nuclear Management Company LLC. Nuclear 16 Management Company has requested license renewal for 17 the Palisades plant. As part of the NRC's review of 18 that license renewal application, we have performed an 19 environmental review to look at the impact of an 20 additional 20 years of operation on the environment.
21 We held a meeting here in July of last year to seek 22 your input regarding the scope of the Staff's view and 23 items we needed to evaluate. We indicated at that 24 earlier scoping meeting that we would return to South 25
16 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Haven to present the preliminary results of our 1
Environmental Impact Statement. That is the purpose 2
of today's meeting.
3 The NRC's license renewal review is 4
similar to the on, the original licensing process in 5
that it involves two parts; a safety review and an 6
environmental review. This slide really gives a big 7
picture of the overall license renewal process which 8
involves those two parallel paths. I'm going to 9
briefly describe both the safety review process and 10 the environmental review process, starting with the 11 safety review.
12 You might ask, what does the safety review 13 consider? For license renewal, the safety review 14 focuses on aging management of systems, structures, 15 and components that are important to safety as 16 determined by the License Renewal Scoping Criteria 17 contained in 10CFR, part 54. The license renewal 18 safety review does not assess current operational 19 issues, such as security, emergency planning and 20 safety performance. The NRC monitors and provides 21 regulatory oversight of these issues on an ongoing 22 basis under the current operating license. Because 23 the NRC is dealing with these current operating issues 24 on a continuing basis, we do not reevaluate them in 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 license renewal.
1 As I have mentioned, the license renewal 2
safety review focuses on plant aging, and the programs 3
that the licensee has already implemented or plans to 4
implement to manage the effects of aging. Let me 5
introduce Juan Ayala. He is the Safety Project 6
Manager. Juan, thank you. He's in charge of the 7
Staff safety review. The safety review in our, excuse 8
me, the safety review involves the NRC's staff's 9
evaluation of technical information that is contained 10 in the license renewal application. This is referred 11 to as the Staff's safety evaluation.
12 The NRC Staff also conducts audits as part 13 of its safety evaluation. There is a team of about 30 14 NRC technical reviewers and contractors who are 15 conducting the safety evaluation at this time. The 16 safety review also includes plant inspections. The 17 inspections are conducted by a team of inspectors from 18 both headquarters and the region 3 office outside of 19 Chicago. A representative of our inspection program 20 is here today. John Ellegood is the Senior Resident 21 Inspector at Palisades. Thank you, John.
22 The Staff documents the results of its 23 safety review in a Safety Evaluation Report. That 24 report is then independently reviewed by the Advisory 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Committee on Reactor Safeguards or the ACRS. The ACRS 1
is a group of nationally recognized technical experts 2
that serves the consulting body to the NRC, to the 3
Commission. They review each license renewal 4
application and the Safety Evaluation Report. They 5
form their own conclusions and recommendations on the 6
requested action, and they report those conclusions 7
and recommendations directly to the Commission.
8 This slide illustrates how these various 9
activities make up the safety review process. I'd 10 like to point out that the hexagons on the slide 11 indicate opportunities for public participation. The, 12 mechanical failure. It's the yellow hexagons on the 13 slide. Those represent opportunities for public 14 participation in the safety review process.
15 The second part of the review process 16 involves an environmental review. The environmental 17 review which Bo will discuss in a few minutes in more 18 detail, evaluates the impacts of license renewal on a 19 number of areas, including ecology, hydrology, 20 cultural resources and socioeconomic issues, among 21 others. The environmental review is all scoping 22 activities, and the development of a draft supplement 23 to the Generic Environmental Impact Statement for 24 License Renewal of nuclear plants, also referred to as 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the GEIS. The GEIS forms the basis for plant specific 1
environmental reviews.
2 The Draft Environmental Impact Statement 3
for Palisades has been published for comment. And 4
we're here today to briefly discuss the results and to 5
receive your comments. The Draft Environmental Impact 6
Statement for Palisades, I'm sorry. In October of 7
this year, we will be issuing the final version of the 8
Staff's Environmental Impact Statement, which will 9
document how the Staff addresses the comments that we 10 receive here today and in the future, on the draft 11 EIS.
12 So, the final Agency decision on whether 13 or not to issue a renewed operating license depends on 14 several inputs; inspection reports and a confirmatory 15 letter from the Region 3 Administrator, conclusions 16 and recommendations of the ACRS, which are documented 17 in a letter to the Commission, the Safety Evaluation 18 Report which documents the results of the Staff's 19 safety review, and the final Environmental Impact 20 Statement, which documents the results of the Staff's 21 environmental review.
22 Again, the hexagons on the slide indicate 23 opportunities for public participation. The first 24 opportunity was during the scoping period, and the 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 meeting back in July of 2005. Many of you may have 1
attended that meeting. This meeting on the Draft 2
Environmental Impact Statement is another opportunity.
3 No contentions have been admitted to a hearing, so 4
that does not apply here. Appeals are before the 5
Commission at this time.
6 That concludes my presentation on the NRC 7
and general overview of the license renewal process.
8 Now I'd like to turn things over to Bo, who will 9
discuss more details about our environmental review 10 and our preliminary results.
11 MR. PHAM: Thank you Rani.
12 MS. FRANOVICH: Sure.
13 MR. PHAM: Thank you. Good afternoon, and 14 thank you everyone again for coming today. Can 15 everyone hear me fine like this?
16 AUDIENCE MEMBER: No. You've got to be 17 real close so you can hear your own echo.
18 MR. PHAM: Okay. I'll try to, I'll try to 19 project a little bit more. Good afternoon. My name 20 is, as Rani and Chip have mentioned before, my name is 21 Bo Pham. I am an Environmental Project Manager for 22 the NRC. My responsibility is basically to coordinate 23 the activities of the NRC Staff and the various 24 environmental experts that we have in the National 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Laboratories to develop the Environmental Impact 1
Statement associated with the license renewal proposal 2
for Palisades Nuclear Plant. So, it was on the wrong 3
slide. Here we go.
4 The National Environmental Policy Act of 5
1969 requires that Federal agencies like the NRC, 6
follow a systematic approach in evaluating potential 7
environmental impacts associated with certain actions.
8 We're required to consider the impacts of the proposed 9
action and also any mitigation, mitigation of those 10 impacts that we consider to be significant.
11 Alternatives to the proposed action, including taking 12 no action of the applicant's request, are also to be 13 considered.
14 The National Environmental Policy Act and 15 our Environmental Impact Statement are disclosure 16 tools. They're specifically structured to involve 17 public participation, and this meeting that we're 18 having here today facilitates the public 19 participation. So we are here today to collect your 20 public comments on the, on our Draft Environmental 21 Statement, and these comments will be included in the 22 final Environmental Impact Statement for Palisades.
23 But now I'd like to provide a little bit 24 more information in detail about the development of 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the license renewal Environmental Impact Statement.
1 In the mid 1990's, the NRC was faced with the prospect 2
of having to prepare Environmental Impact Statement 3
for the majority of, for the license renewal of the 4
majority of the operating nuclear plants in the U.S.
5 In order to do so, the NRC decided that it would 6
tackle this problem in two ways.
7 First, we evaluated the impact of all the 8
plants across the entire country to determine if there 9
were impacts that were common to all operating plants.
10 We looked at 92 separate areas and found that for 69 11 issues, the impacts were the same for all, for plants 12 with similar features. The NRC called these category 13 ones, category one issues and made the same or generic 14 determination about the impacts in a document called 15 the Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License 16 Renewal, which Rani mentioned earlier, which we also 17 refer to as the GEIS. These category one issues 18 include things like the discharge of chlorine or 19 biocides, thermal shock, and fish entrainment or 20 impingement to the, for, to the environment. The 21 Generic Environmental Impact Statement was issued by 22 the NRC in 1996 and contains the NRC generic 23 determinations for all 69 category one issues.
24 And secondly, the NRC found that it was 25
23 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 not able to make the same generic determination or 1
conclusions about the remaining 23 issues. The site 2
specific supplements were needed for 21 of these 3
issues. We call them category two issues, and also 4
there were two remaining issues that we referred to as 5
not categorized. And they also needed site specific 6
analyses. The NRC did not rule out the possibility 7
that its generic conclusions for the category one 8
issues may not apply in some cases, therefore a 9
verification is done to determine if new and 10 significant information is found that contradicts the 11 generic conclusion, and if so the Staff would perform 12 a site specific analysis on each of those issues.
13 The Palisades Supplement containing a 14 summary of category one issues and site specific 15 analysis for category two issues, as well as the two 16 not categorized issues, is what we're presenting to 17 you today. And there are copies in the back of the 18 room if you, if you have not seen one.
19 This slide here shows our decision 20 standard for the environmental review. And the 21 standard comes straight out of our regulations under 22 part 51.71 of the Title 10 of the Code of Federal 23 Regulations. And I'll give you a second to read 24 through it, but simply put, it, the standard is for us 25
24 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 to verify if the license renewal is acceptable from an 1
environmental perspective.
2 This slide shows the important milestone 3
dates for the, for the environmental review. The 4
highlighted dates indicate opportunities for public 5
involvement in the environmental review. We received 6
the Nuclear Management Company's application 7
requesting for the license renewal of Palisades on 8
March 22nd of 2005. On June 27, 2005 we issued a 9
Federal Registered Notice of Intent to prepare the 10 Environmental Impact Statement and conduct scoping for 11 the review. A meeting was held on July 28th, as Rani 12 mentioned earlier, as part of the scoping process.
13 And many of you may have attended that meeting to 14 provide comments that were included in the Draft 15 Impact Statement.
16 The comments that were given at the 17 scoping meeting and on the scope of the review are in 18 the Appendix A, as I mentioned. I also have copies of 19 the Scoping Summary Report that we published as part 20 of the scoping process in the back of the room, if 21 you're interested in taking a look at that. The 22 scoping period ended on August 22nd, 2005 and the 23 Scoping Summary Report was issued on December 14th of 24 2005 addressing all the comments that were received 25
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 from all sources during the scoping process.
1 Our draft supplement to the Generic 2
Environmental Impact Statement, otherwise known as the 3
GEIS, as each plant comes for license renewal, we 4
publish a plant specific supplement, and in Palisades 5
case its supplement is supplement 27 to the GEIS.
6 This draft supplement was published on February 14th 7
of this year, entitled Supplement 27 of the GEIS, 8
regarding Palisades Nuclear Plant. And here we are 9
currently accepting public comments on the draft until 10 May 18th. And that's the next major milestone in this 11 process.
12 Today's meeting, as Chip has mentioned 13 also, will be transcribed, and comments provided here 14 carries the same weight as written comments provided 15 to us. And once the comment period closes, we will 16 develop the final Supplemental Environmental Impact 17 Statement which we expect to be published sometime in 18 October of this year.
19 And at this point, I would like to turn it 20 over to Dr. Dave Miller of Argonne National Labs. But 21 before that, I think we can take any questions 22 regarding the process up to this point.
23 MR. CAMERON: Yes. Let's see if we have 24 questions on the process before we get into the 25
26 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 substantive findings of the EIS. And we just need to 1
make sure that we save time to get your questions on 2
that, but any questions on the license renewal process 3
at this point? Yes, let me get you with this 4
microphone here.
5 MS. CAREY: Well, as a mother of four boys 6
and a teacher of fourth graders, I usually talk pretty 7
loud, but I wanted to ask you, the hour before the 8
meeting, in other words, the pre-meeting availability 9
of all these nice people to answer questions. Is that 10 new in the process or has that gone on from the 11 beginning?
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay, good question. Bo?
13 The informal open house that we do, traditionally do 14 before 15 the --
16 MR. PHAM: That has --
17 MR. CAMERON: -- the meeting.
18 MR. PHAM: Yes. Both the scoping meeting 19 and our draft meetings we have traditionally have held 20 one hour before and after, before the formal 21 presentations itself as an open house.
22 MS. CAREY: I think my question about it 23 is that in order to get the issue, I may have a 24 question and issue that I really want answered, but I 25
27 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 want other people to hear it too because I need 1
everybody's input. And if it's done on this private 2
discussion before and after the meeting, it means that 3
the other people that are hear don't get a chance to 4
hear my very important question.
5 MR. CAMERON: And that's, I think, Rani 6
would tell you, would urge you to, to also ask the 7
question here so that everybody else can hear it.
8 It's not, the open house is meant to give people an 9
opportunity to informally talk to the NRC's staff, and 10 it's not meant to foreclose any questions or comments 11 from coming up in this session. Right, Rani?
12 MS. CAREY: Thank you.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Yes, sir? And we 14 have a question back there, but, and please introduce 15 yourself too.
16 MS. CAREY: Oh, I was Corinne, oh, go 17 ahead.
18 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead, sir.
19 MR. LOWE: Yes, this is Corinne Carey.
20 MR. CAMERON: Thank you.
21 MR. LOWE: And I'm Chester Lowe. Both 22 from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I wanted to know what 23 the, or whether or not there are any local residents 24 from South Haven here that had any input or any kind 25
28 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 of part for the environmental review process, and what 1
happens here in the community. In other words, are 2
there any representatives of South Haven area, or even 3
this area of Michigan? In the, as part of a team for 4
part of the process of this? Also, about the 5
socioeconomic factor. I wanted to know more about 6
that.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We'll, we'll hold off 8
on the socioeconomic and go back to that after you 9
hear Dave Miller's presentation on that. And in terms 10 of local residents and local government being, being 11 part of the process, I think Bo and/or Rani are going 12 to tell you about the fact that we did have local 13 residents who spoke at the scoping meeting and I think 14 that Bo, and you elaborate on this, in terms of how we 15 work with local government here in terms of the 16 process, okay?
17 MR. PHAM: Yes. During the scoping 18 process, when we had the meeting here in July 28th 19 last year, we basically, we asked everybody that if 20 they were interested and they registered at the 21 meeting, and we had the address and contact 22 information, we have been keeping everyone on our 23 expanded mailing list. If there any correspondence 24 that we have been sending out regarding the license 25
29 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 renewal issues, everyone should have been getting, so 1
and when we published the Draft Impact Statement, we 2
also mailed a copy to everyone on that.
3 Now as far as the people are showing up 4
here today, I couldnt tell you who specifically is 5
from the community, but that, the process carries on 6
from here on to and that if you register, and that's 7
one point I, I kind of wanted to follow-up onto. If 8
you're here and you haven't registered I ask that you 9
please do so, so that we can have your information so 10 that we continue to keep you informed of the whole 11 process here.
12 MR. CAMERON: Good, good point. And we're 13 going to go here, and then we'll go over to you. And 14 if apropos of Corinne's question about the informal 15 open house, we'll be here after the meeting too if 16 anybody wants to get more information on a point or a 17 question to talk to the NRC staff after the formal 18 part of the meeting is over. And, Kevin?
19 MR. KAMPS: My name is Kevin Kamps. I 20 work for Nuclear Information and Resource Service, but 21 I'm from Kalamazoo. And my question, Bo, has to do 22 with the schedule that you went through. My question 23 is what is the breakneck speed up there all about? I 24 mean, back in July 28th, we requested an extension to 25
30 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the scoping period and I don't even think we got an 1
answer on that. We sure didn't get an extension, but 2
we didn't get an answer even. And so my question is 3
if you really want public input on this stuff, then, 4
and I know you're going to say, well, the Commission 5
told us to and maybe even, well, Congress told us to 6
beyond that but, this, this breakneck speed, this 7
sprint is just, you know, kind of, the writing's on 8
the wall, I would have to say.
9 MR. CAMERON: And Bo, in terms of a couple 10 of points as, you know, the basis for the, for the 11 schedule, perhaps something that you might not know is 12 what did we do with Kevin's request, which I remember, 13 I think, from the last scoping meeting. Not that it 14 matters that I remember, but what we did with that.
15 Kevin, I don't know if implied in your question you're 16 formally, or at least at this meeting, requesting that 17 the comment period be held open. If you are, we'll 18 want to get that on the record.
19 MR. KAMPS: I would like to make that 20 request. I'd like to ask for another three months on 21 the comment period --
22 MR. PHAM: Okay --
23 MR. KAMPS: -- for meaningful public 24 input.
25
31 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. PHAM: Let me --
1 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
2 MR. PHAM: Let me have Bob take on the 3
first part of the question and whether we responded to 4
your request. I remember hearing about that, but Bob 5
was the, the Environmental PM at the time. And now, 6
Bob?
7 MR. SCHAAF: Right. Kevin, we did respond 8
to that request and I can get you the accession number 9
for the letter. I thought it had been addressed, 10 actually, to you. It may have been misdirected in 11 responding, but we did, we did address that, that 12 request. And I'll make a note to get that accession 13 number for you.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Great. That's Bob 15 Schaaf. Thank you, Bob, and --
16 MR. SCHAAF: I, I, as, as far as the 17 schedule and, and the timing and the amount of time 18 for comments, you know, the gist of our response both 19 for, for the scoping period and I guess it would be a 20 similar answer to your question regarding comments on 21 the draft, is that the Commission has, has a number 22 of, of goals that, that we work towards, one of which 23 is openness to the public and involving the public in 24 our process. We also have goals regarding, you know, 25
32 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 efficient operation, conduct of, of the public's 1
business.
2 And the Commission has determined that 3
these time frames are reasonable time frames for 4
balancing those, those goals that, particularly in the 5
case of, actually in the case of the comment on the 6
draft period. Our regulations stipulate a 45 day 7
comment period and include opportunities for the 8
public to request 15 day extensions. And by default, 9
when we started the license renewal process, we, we 10 went ahead and added on essentially two 15 day 11 extensions to the, the, the regulatory requirement for 12 a 45 day comment period. So there has already been 13 some allowance for additional time, nearly double the, 14 the required time frame for that response, for folks 15 to provide responses.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And we're going to go 17 on to one last question before, and see if we can 18 revisit these issues, but we'll go to you. Then I 19 just want to give Kevin a follow-up.
20 MR. KAMPS: Well, just to respond to that.
21 I mean, our efforts as local concerned citizens 22 regarding this very dangerously deteriorated plant 23 have involved the NRC licensing process, performed pro 24 bono by us through completely volunteer efforts on a 25
33 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 grass roots level. And so this thing is going on at 1
the same time as that licensing process, which we're 2
still engaged in because we've appealed the licensing 3
board's ruling against us. So I think the 4
Commission's regulations are unreasonable.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And that is on 6
record, Kevin, as is your request. And let's go right 7
here and then we'll go on. Yes, ma'am?
8 MS. ELZERMAN: My name is Mary Ann 9
Elzerman, and I am a Physicist for the Department of 10 Environmental Quality. And I want to assure all of 11 you that we have had two people, two physicists, in 12 this process of the environmental and the technical 13 review ever since it started. And the state is very 14 aware of what's going on and we do comment on all of 15 the publications that come from the NRC.
16 MR. CAMERON: Great. Thank you State of 17 Michigan, Department of Environmental Quality. Thank 18 you very much. Let's, do you have a quick process 19 question sir, before we go on? And also please 20 introduce yourself.
21 MR. PICCIUCA: My name is Sebastian 22 Picciuca, and I live in, within 50 miles of the plant.
23 Did, you said 45 days, it's only 43 at the bottom, one 24 of the upper ones was only 30, like 3, 25. What was 25
34 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the 45 days?
1 MR. PHAM: It was, it's 45 days from the 2
publishing of our Draft Environmental Impact Statement 3
and the recognition of it by the EPA, and as published 4
in the Federal Registered Notice. So that's the 45 5
days, and actually they, May 18th --
6 MR. PICOIUCA: So when's the 45 days?
7 MR. PHAM: It, it should have been from 8
February 24th, which is the date that the EPA issued 9
the Federal Registered Notice. So 45 days from 10 February 24th, but actually when I'd put up the 11 schedule, May 18th built in a little cushion just in 12 case. We could even make the 45 days. So you 13 actually have more than 45 days.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Ken, 15 let's go to you.
16 MR. RICHARD: I'm Ken Richard.
17 MR. CAMERON: Well, Ken, what I wanted to 18 do is, is get Dave on with his substantive findings 19 and then we'll go to you first after he's done with 20 that for your question. Because I think it may relate 21 more to that, I don't know. And we do have the 22 socioeconomic in the parking lot, so to speak too. So 23 we didn't forget that, Chester. It is Chester, right?
24 MR. LOWE: Right.
25
35 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. CAMERON: All right. Dave? Dave 1
Miller.
2 MR. MILLER: Good afternoon. Can you hear 3
me in the back all right? Okay, very good. Well, as 4
Chip mentioned, I'm Dave Miller. I'm with Argonne 5
National Lab, and we're out of Chicago. The NRC 6
contracted with Argonne National Lab to provide the 7
expertise necessary to evaluate the impacts of license 8
renewal at Palisades. My team consists of nine 9
members from Argonne National Lab, plus one member 10 from Lawrence Livermore National Lab. And the 11 expertise areas are listed here on the screen, but 12 I'll just go through them briefly.
13 We provide expertise in atmospheric 14 science, socioeconomics, archaeology, terrestrial 15
- ecology, aquatic
- ecology, land
- use, radiation 16 protection, nuclear
- safety, and hydrology and 17 regulatory compliance. Okay. For each environmental 18 issue that's identified as, there's an impact level 19 that's assigned. And I'll go over these impact 20 levels. You can see them on the screen here.
21 For instance, small, a small impact is an 22 effect that's not detectable or too small to 23 destabilize or noticeably alter any important 24 attribute of the resource under consideration.
25
36 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 For a moderate impact, the effect is sufficient 1
to noticeably alter the, the resource, but not 2
destabilize important attributes of that resource.
3 For a large impact, the effect must be clearly 4
noticeable and sufficient to destabilize important 5
attributes of the resource.
6 I'll use a hypothetical fishery situation 7
in Lake Michigan to illustrate how we look at these 8
three criteria. For instance, a plant might cause a 9
loss of adult and juvenile fish at an intake 10 structure. If the loss is, if the loss of fish is so 11 small that it cannot be detected in relation to the 12 total population in Lake Michigan, the impact would be 13 small. If losses cause the population to decline and 14 then stabilize at a lower level, the impact would be 15 considered moderate. If losses at the intake cause 16 the fish population to decline to a point where it 17 can't be stabilized and continually declines, then the 18 impact would be large.
19 Now this goes to the subject of 20 information gathering. My team, when we evaluated the 21 impacts from continued operations at Palisades, we 22 considered information from a wide variety of sources.
23 We considered what the licensee had to say in their 24 environmental report. We conducted a site audit 25
37 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 during which time we toured the site, we interviewed 1
plant personnel, we reviewed documentation of the 2
plant operations, and we also, over the course of the 3
evaluation, have talked to Federal, State, local 4
officials, as well as local service agencies. And we 5
considered all of the comments received from the 6
public during the scoping period, as previously 7
mentioned. These comments are actually listed in 8
Appendix A of the document that's available today, 9
along with the responses that NRC, along with NRC's 10 responses.
11 The body of this information collected 12 from these various sources, forms the basis of the 13 analysis and preliminary conclusions in this Palisades 14 supplement. The central analyses in the supplement 15 are presented in Chapters two, four, five and eight of 16 the supplement.
17 In Chapter two, we discuss the plant, its 18 operation, and the environment around the plant. In 19 Chapter four, we looked at the environmental impacts 20 of routine operations during the 20 year license 21 renewal term. The team looked at the following 22 issues, and on this slide it's everything but the very 23 bottom one which we looked at in Chapter five. So in 24 Chapter four, we looked at the cooling system, the 25
38 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 transmission lines, radiological issues, socioeconomic 1
issues, ground water use and quality, and threatened 2
or endangered species. Chapter five, as I said, 3
contains the assessment of accidents.
4 At this point, I'd like to make a 5
distinction. Environmental impacts from the, from 6
routine day-to-day operations of the Palisades plant 7
for another 20 years are considered separately from 8
the impact that could result from potential accidents.
9 That is, potential accidents during the license 10 renewal term. I'll discuss the impacts from routine 11 operations. Mr. Palla will discuss impacts from 12 accidents, and he'll follow me.
13 Chapter eight then describes the 14 alternatives to the proposed license renewal, and the 15 environmental impacts associated with those proposed 16 alternatives. Each of these issue areas are discussed 17 in detail in the supplement. And now I'm going to 18 just go through the highlights of some of these.
19 For cooling systems, for the cooling 20 system, there are no category two issues related to 21 the close cycle cooling system operation at the 22 Palisades Nuclear Plant. In other words, no site 23 specific issues. They were category one. Preliminary 24 findings are there is no new and significant 25
39 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 information that was identified for this cooling 1
systems, and the GEIS, in its category one analysis, 2
concluded that impacts are small.
3 The category one issues that are related 4
to cooling system, include issues related discharge of 5
sanitary wastes, minor chemical spills, metals and 6
chlorine. And as you recall, the GEIS has already 7
determined that these impacts are small. We did 8
evaluate all available information to see if there was 9
any information that was both new and significant for 10 these issues, and we did not find any new and 11 significant information from the sources that we 12 talked about on the previous slide. And therefore, we 13 adopted NRC's generic conclusion.
14 Radiological impacts.
Radiological 15 impacts are also category one, and the NRC has made a 16 generic determination that the impact of a
17 radiological release during nuclear plant operations 18 over the course of the 20 year license renewal period 19 are small. But because there are releases, and they 20 are concerned, I want to discuss them in some detail.
21 Nuclear plants are designed to release 22 radiological effluence to the environment. Palisades 23 is no different than other plants, and Palisades 24 releases radiological effluence to the environment.
25
40 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 During our site visit, we looked at the effluent 1
release and monitoring program documentation. We 2
looked at how the gasses and liquid effluence were 3
treated and released, as well as how the solid wastes 4
were treated, packaged and shipped. We looked at how 5
the Applicant determines and demonstrates that they 6
are in compliance with the regulations for release of 7
radiological effluence. We also looked at data from 8
onsite and near site locations that the Applicant 9
monitors for airborne releases and direct radiation, 10 and other monitoring stations beyond, stations beyond 11 the site boundary including locations where water, 12 milk, fish and food products are sampled.
13 We found that the maximum calculated doses 14 for a member of the public are well within the annual 15 limits, since releases from the plant are not expected 16 to increase on a year-to-year basis over the 20 year 17 license renewal term. And since we also found no new 18 and significant information related to this issue, we 19 adopted the generic conclusion that the radiological 20 impact on human health and the environment is small.
21 Threatened or endangered species. The 22 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, one of the agencies 23 with whom we consulted, determined there are four 24 terrestrial Federally listed or, Federally listed as 25
41 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 threatened or potentially endangered species, and they 1
have the potential to occur at Palisades or along its 2
transmission lines. These four species are the 3
Pitcher's Thistle, Karner Blue Butterfly, Mitchell's 4
Satyr Butterfly and the Indiana Bat. The Eastern 5
Massasauga Rattlesnake has been identified as a 6
candidate, as a potential candidate for listing.
7 Our review has indicated that continued 8
operation of Palisades during the license renewal 9
period term would not likely have any adverse effect 10 on these species. The Applicant currently has no 11 plans for refurbishment activities that could affect 12 the habitat of these species. The U.S. Fish and 13 Wildlife Service determined that there was no need for 14 a biological assessment or further consultation under 15 Section seven of the Endangered Species Act. Based on 16 this, the Staff's preliminary determination is that 17 the impact of the operation of Palisades Nuclear Plant 18 during the license renewal period on threatened or 19 endangered species would be small.
20 Cumulative impacts of operation. This the 21 last issue I'd like to talk about from Chapter four, 22 and it's cumulative impacts. These are impacts that 23 are considered minor when considered individually, but 24 significant when considered with other past, present 25
42 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 or reasonably foreseeable future actions regardless of 1
what Agency or person undertakes the actions, the 2
other actions. The Staff considered cumulative 3
impacts resulting from operation of the cooling 4
system, operation and transmission lines, releases of 5
radiation and radiological material, sociological 6
impacts, groundwater use and quality impacts, and 7
threatened and endangered species impacts.
8 These impacts were evaluated to the end of 9
the 20 year license renewal term, and it's, and I'd 10 like to note that the geographical boundaries of the 11 analyses depend upon the resource. For instance, the 12 area analyzed for transmission lines is different than 13 the area analyzed for perhaps, say, the cooling 14 system. Our preliminary determination is the 15 cumulative impacts resulting from the operation of the 16 Palisades Nuclear Plant during the license renewal 17 period would be small.
18 There were other environmental impacts 19 evaluated. The team also looked at issues for uranium 20 fuel cycle and solid waste management, as well as 21 decommissioning and they are considered category one.
22 For these issues, we would be looking for new and 23 significant information. And as I had mentioned, in 24 the resources that we work with in terms of input to 25
43 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the process, no new and significant information was 1
identified.
2 As I pointed out, then we discuss what 3
alternatives might be available. My team also 4
evaluated the potential environmental impacts 5
associated with the Palisades Plant not continuing 6
operation and replacing this generation with 7
alternative power sources. The team looked at a no 8
action alternative, new generation from coal-fired, 9
gas-fired, new
- nuclear, purchased
- power, and 10 alternative technologies such as wind, solar and hydro 11 power. And then some combination of the various 12 alternatives.
13 For each alternative, we looked at the 14 same types of issues. For example, water use, land 15 use, ecology, socioeconomics. They're the same issues 16 that we looked for during the evaluation of the 17 Palisades Plant during the license renewal term.
18 Palisades has a net summer capacity of 786 megawatts, 19 so we, when we were looking at the coal-fired and 20 natural gas alternatives, we assume construction of 21 approximately an 800 megawatt plant to replace that 22 Palisades capacity. For new, for the new nuclear 23 alternatives, the Staff assumed the same capacity as 24 the existing Palisades Plant, that is 786.
25
44 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 For two alternatives, solar and wind, I'd 1
like to describe the scale of the alternatives that we 2
considered because a
scale is important in 3
understanding the conclusions. First for solar, based 4
on the average solar energy available in Michigan and 5
the current conversion efficiencies of photo, I'm 6
sorry, photovoltaic cells and solar thermal systems, 7
between 17,000 and 43,750 acres of land would be 8
required to replace the generation from just the 9
Palisades plant. For wind power, replacement of that 10 base load would require approximately 120,000 acres of 11 land.
Due to the scale of the reasonable 12 alternatives, the team's preliminary conclusion is 13 that their environmental effects, at least in some of 14 the categories that we considered for impacts, would 15 be moderate or large.
16 So for the preliminary conclusions, for 17 the 69 category one issues presented in the generic 18 EIS, the GEIS, that relate to Palisades we found no 19 information that was both new and significant.
20 Therefore, we have preliminarily adopted the 21 conclusion that the impact of these issues is small.
22 My team analyzed the remaining category 23 two issues in this supplement, and we found the 24 environmental effects resulting from these issues were 25
45 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 also small. During our review, my team found no new 1
issues that were not already identified.
2 Last, we found that the environmental 3
effects of alternatives, at least for some of the 4
impact categories, could reach moderate or large 5
significance. Now, I'll turn it over to Bob Palla to 6
talk about the postulated accidents.
7 MR. CAMERON: Let's go for questions.
8 Okay, Bo, do you want to clarify something?
9 MR. PHAM: Yes. I want to just take a 10 quick moment just to pause here and make sure that 11 Chester was satisfied with our addressing of the 12 socioeconomic. We looked at factors like housing, the 13 infrastructure and land use for the area, and we did 14 not find anything that was, that negatively impacted 15 the environment.
16 MR. CAMERON: And let me just see if 17 Chester has a follow-up on that. Chester, do you have 18 more things that you want to ask about the 19 socioeconomic analysis.
20 MR. LOWE: Not about the socioeconomic.
21 Mainly about the sociological impact.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let me go to Ken, and 23 then we'll go to this young, Nancy? Kathy. All 24 right. All right. So are you guys ready to answer 25
46 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 questions? Okay. Okay, Ken, please introduce 1
yourself to us.
2 MR. RICHARD: I'm Ken Richards. I live 3
three miles from the plant and I've been following 4
this issue probably since the plant's inception. And 5
the first question I have is about the process here.
6 We've, I've been talking with a lot of local people.
7 There's a lot of folks who really think this license 8
is already done. It's already been issued. I was 9
wondering if you would clear that up. I'm reading in 10 the manual and I come across, or it sounds like it's 11 trying to justify the license that is already done.
12 And other places I see, it's not going to be, the 13 decision won't be made until 2007. There's still 14 another meeting in Washington, D.C. in December. When 15 does this license get issued?
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And what I'd like you 17 to do Bo, is to not only talk about what remains to be 18 done on the Environmental Impact Statement, but please 19 tell people going back go Rani's initial presentation 20 all the different parts that need to come together 21 before there is a decision and what time frame. I 22 think starting off, the bottom line is is there has 23 been no decision yet. And Bo with that, can you 24 explain --
25
47 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. PHAM: Yeah.
1 MR. CAMERON: -- to the audience what this 2
is all about?
3 MR. PHAM: Yeah. Definitely I want to 4
reiterate that there has been no --
5 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Louder.
6 MR. PHAM: Okay. It was off. Can you 7
hear me now? Okay. Yeah, I definitely want to 8
reiterate that no decision has been made and there's 9
no finality on this decision. What we're here today, 10 what we're here to do today is to take your comments 11 regarding the environmental review process. And if 12 you look at this screen up there, the process of 13 license renewal breaks down into two paths basically.
14 One is the safety review, and Juan Ayala is the 15 Project Manager for that path. And I am here for the 16 environmental review process. And we're not complete 17 with that, you know, so basically towards, at the end 18 there what you're going to have is a complete review 19 from both paths and that, those two, you know, when 20 the Commission comes to a decision based on those two 21 paths, is the finality of the review and that's when 22 the Commission will decide whether a license is 23 renewed.
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
25
48 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. PHAM: Does that answer your question?
1 MR. CAMERON: Let's just, Rani, do you 2
want to, hold on a minute Ken. Just let me see if 3
Rani wants to add anything to that for your benefit.
4 MS.
FRANOVICH:
The final Safety 5
Evaluation Report, which is the culmination of the 6
Staff's safety review, here, that is expected to be 7
issued in October of this year. Once we issue the 8
Safety Evaluation Report, it will go to the ACRS for 9
their independent review. And once they've completed 10 their review, they'll have some recommendations for 11 the Commission directly. The NRC decision on whether 12 to issue a new license here, is when Juan? What's the 13 ETA for the new licenses? 22 months from the time 14 that we get the license in hand. So 22 months from 15 March, I guess it will be January of '07. January of 16
'07 is when we are supposed to --
17 MR. RICHARD: Is that the old original, 18 one of the, and one of the decommission --
19 MR. CAMERON: Ken, we need to get you on 20 the record, so I'm going to give you a follow-up, and 21 then I'm going to go to Kathryn. And then we'll go 22 over to you. And that estimated time for the 23 decision, is the decision on whether to renew the 24 license?
25
49 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MS. FRANOVICH: Correct.
1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Do you have one 2
follow-up?
3 MR. RICHARD: No, I've got quite a few.
4 I was going to wait for the two hour session.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. All right. Let me go 6
to Kathryn.
7 MS. BARNES: Yeah. These questions are 8
for Mr. Miller. You are, your degree is in 9
Environmental?
10 DR. MILLER: Engineering.
11 MS. BARNES: Engineering. Have you worked 12 with wind technology?
13 DR. MILLER: Well, members of my team 14 have. Oh, sorry, yes. I am the team lead as I --
15 MS. BARNES: Okay.
16 DR. MILLER: -- wanted to point out. We 17 had another ten other experts in their various subject 18 matter experts.
19 MS. BARNES: Okay.
20 DR. MILLER: For instance, when I, when I 21 actually do a subject matter expert, mine's hydrology 22 ground water, water resources, because that's where my 23 discipline is. So we bring the appropriate expertise 24 to the subject matter.
25
50 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MS. BARNES: I was wondering on this 1
assessment of wind and solar, granted Michigan doesn't 2
have sunshine every day like the Western states.
3 Solar really isn't feasible here as an alternate. But 4
what about the wind? You're saying it's, it's a large 5
concern because it takes a lot of land. How much of 6
power for Palisades is sold out of state? What 7
percent of the power is sold out of state?
8 DR. MILLER: I'd like to address the wind, 9
the wind point first and then I can ask others to 10 address that.
11 MS. BARNES: Okay. Well, this, this --
12 DR. MILLER: But, may I address the wind 13 part of it?
14 MS. BARNES: Well, this, this, this all 15 comes together because if you're taking this and 16 you're saying 143,000 acres, but if Palisades, like DC 17 Cook, sells most of its energy out of state, that's 18 really not a proportionate summation.
19 DR. MILLER: I, I think I understand your 20 question. I think I understand your question.
21 MR. CAMERON: -- please.
22 MS. BARNES: And also I was wondering --
23 MR. CAMERON: Kathryn, let me --
24 MS. BARNES: One other thing, please.
25
51 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 This is, this is important. What are you basing on, 1
what size wind generators are you basing this 2
summation on? The small little ones, or the ones that 3
they're using now, the big ones that Consumers 4
Energy's investing in to replace the nuclear?
5 Palisades is up for sale. They want it off their 6
hands. They were investing in green energy and it's 7
working. So I wonder about this.
8 And also, this whole summation. It's all, 9
you're all under the premise on this whole review that 10 there's, nothing's going to happen. That there's no 11 accidents. But there's things that happen all the 12 time. So this, you're, you're, you're process, I 13 think is defective.
14 MR. CAMERON: And Kathryn --
15 MS. BARNES: But I would like to know, 16 technically, all right, how you came to this summary 17 and the size of the wind generators you took into 18 account in this summary, et cetera, et cetera, et 19 cetera. The whole detail.
20 MR. CAMERON: And if you could just, we 21 appreciate your comments and we want to hear them.
22 MS. BARNES: I'd like some answers.
23 MR. CAMERON: But if you could just hold 24 your comments until the comment period and we'll try 25
52 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 to get you some answers to your question. And I just 1
want to make sure that Dave gets a chance to answer 2
the question about the analysis. And Bo you indicated 3
you understand where Kathryn's going with the amount 4
of power generated, shipped out of state. Why don't 5
we let Dave talk about how that analysis was done on 6
wind, and then you can tie that going out of state 7
thing in, I think --
8 DR. MILLER: Sure.
9 MR. CAMERON: -- would be good.
10 DR. MILLER: Well, regarding, and I 11 realize it is a complex issue, and that's why we do 12 look at combinations of alternatives. And the details 13 that are fairly significant would be difficult to get 14 into completely here, but they are laid out both in 15 the GEIS and then supplemental information in the 16 supplement.
17 But to answer the basic question about the 18 kind of wind generation capacity that's considered, 19 it's not a single specific design. It's basically a 20 design that uses current efficiencies ranging between 21 about 25 to 35 percent efficiencies that, that would 22 gather roughly 25 to 35 percent of the energy 23 available in the wind, in that wind field at any 24 single time. And so that, and then you look at the 25
53 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 size of area that you need to support that amount of 1
wind and you scale it by the 25 to 35 percent value, 2
and that's how you come up with the acreage required 3
for the wind replacement of the base level.
4 MS. BARNES: So you're --
5 MR. CAMERON: And its size, and Kathryn, 6
I'm sorry, we need to get everybody on the transcript.
7 And also, although I apologize for this, we can give 8
so much of an answer now to the questions, and then we 9
might have to talk to you after the meeting because we 10 do want to hear your comments also. So let's go with 11 the questions that you have on the floor, and I think 12 that, did we answer? You did have a question about 13 the size of the wind turbines that are used. Steve, 14 can you say anything about that?
15 DR. MILLER: Yes. The analysis, the 16 alternative analysis assumes that Palisades is 17 producing 780 megawatts of electricity right now. And 18 so we're trying, in all of our alternatives we try to 19 baseline that as the replacement amount of energy that 20 needs to be, that needs to be provided. So based on 21 that the scale of the wind farm or, you know, other 22 sources, in the particular case of wind and solar, the 23 amount of land use that's required for, to produce 24 that capacity is going to have a greater impact. And 25
54 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 that's why we, you know, we're not saying that wind 1
power in general has a large effect on the 2
environment. We're just comparing to what we have 3
today. And so that's the basis of our comparison and 4
analysis.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And you can please 6
talk to Kathryn after the meeting with more details on 7
this. And I'm going to go to this gentleman over 8
there, and then Corinne, and we're going to go on to 9
the SAMA issue. Okay? Yes sir? And please introduce 10 yourself.
11 MR. DAL MONTE: My name is DalMonte, and 12 I am the President of -- Now my, my question is, in 13 this regard, is that we are reading this report or 14 your final result is administered by you and it's 15 only, is going to say, well, that Palisades can 16 continue. I mean, the fact that Palisades can 17 continue operation is not unreasonable. And I 18 understand that you are stressing that result. But on 19 the side, you are taking position on alternative 20 solutions that I read and I don't think is enough 21 education in your point. Because the fact is that 22 wind is flying. We are having wind all over the world 23 and in here too. So I guess you missed the point in 24 this. And I don't understand why you, you are so 25
55 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 concerned on our selecting alternatives if we know 1
about the alternatives. And really, you are not doing 2
a good job and the guys are going to really make the 3
decisions, went through the final decision. Okay, 4
thank you.
5 MR. CAMERON: Mr. Dal Monte, thank you for 6
that. And we are going to hear from you later on. I 7
think that the question there that we could provide 8
some information on is why do we do the alternatives 9
analysis. Can you put that in perspective for us Bo?
10 MR. PHAM: Yeah, let me try to frame that.
11 You know, like I said before, we take a baseline of 12 what we're trying to replace, the energy source that 13 we're trying to replace, which is the Palisades 14 Nuclear Plant that's there right now. We're not, if 15 you can try to look at it as not comparing wind power 16 versus nuclear power versus anything else. We're 17 looking what, what the potential environmental impact 18 of each of those alternatives is going to result in.
19 So that's what our analysis is.
20 We're not here, and we don't, the NRC 21 doesn't have the jurisdiction really to make the 22 energy policy of what, you know, what comes out of 23 Palisades and what other different sources of energy.
24 And so what we're here, and you know, I'm trying to, 25
56 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 I guess, define the scope of what we look at is 1
really, all these different alternatives and not 2
comparing them and making the judgment of whether one 3
is better than the other. We're just simply stating 4
that this is what the environmental impact is going to 5
be with wind power, with the nuclear power plant, or 6
with solar power, or with other alternatives as well.
7 MR. CAMERON: And Rani, do you want to add 8
to that?
9 MS. FRANOVICH: I just want to add 10 something. You know, you're, you're looking at a 11 nuclear power plant. It's already built. It's 12 already operating today. So the impact of its 13 continued operation is quite different from the impact 14 of closing that facility, building a wind farm of 15 large components that would harvest the wind energy, 16 or another site that would have solar panels to 17 harvest the energy of the sun. The environment 18 associated with building those new sites is larger, 19 it's a larger impact to the environment than 20 continuing to run a facility that's already built and 21 operating now. So on a logical level, that time makes 22 sense.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We're going to go to 24 this gentleman.
25
57 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. HENKEL: I'm Don Henkel.
1 MR. CAMERON: Yes, we usually --
2 MR. HENKEL: I'm still Don Henkel. Point 3
of information. I understand there's some hundred and 4
some odd nuclear power plants throughout the United 5
States. How many of those have applied for renewal 6
licenses? And of those who have successfully applied 7
for a renewal license, how many have been approved and 8
how many have been disapproved?
9 MS. FRANOVICH: Okay. That's a good 10 question.
11 MR. CAMERON: And Rani, please, put that 12 in the context too in terms of our process about 13 rejection of applications, et cetera, et cetera.
14 Thank you sir.
15 MS. FRANOVICH: There are 103 operating 16 reactors across the country. We haven't quite gotten 17 halfway through the fleet. I'd say 47 or 48 or so, 18 thus far, have applied for renewal. And this is 19 reactor units, not necessarily sites. There have been 20 a couple that we've returned because the information 21 in the application was not adequate or sufficient for 22 the Staff to begin and complete its review.
23 For those that we did not return, we 24 requested additional information and it depends on 25
58 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 really the quality of the original submittal will 1
dictate how many requests for additional information 2
the NRC needs to put out there. But for the plant 3
that I managed back a few years ago, there were 273 4
requests for additional information. So the Staff 5
does not grant renewal for every application it 6
receives because it's a pro forma review. The Staff 7
will continue to get the information it needs to 8
complete its review, and will not be satisfied until 9
that information is received.
10 So when we issue our Safety Evaluation 11 Reports, a number of times there are still open items 12 that the Staff is not satisfied with. We do not issue 13 a final Safety Evaluation Report and brief the ACRS on 14 our work until the Staff is satisfied.
15 So the answer is we're roughly halfway 16 through the fleet. We've returned a couple of 17 applications for sufficiency issues. For the rest, we 18 gathered more information than we received to insure 19 we were satisfied with the information to complete our 20 review.
21 MR. CAMERON: In terms of the number of 22 licenses we've renewed though?
23 MS. FRANOVICH: I don't have the specific 24 number off the top of my head, but I'm saying 40, I'm 25
59 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 thinking 48, 49 --
1 MR. CAMERON: 39.
2 MS. FRANOVICH: 39 per unit.
3 MR. CAMERON: All right. And Corinne, you 4
had a question?
5 MS. CAREY: Yes. Several things. Number 6
one, I'm concerned that the kinds of answers we're 7
hearing, I, I feel are very questionable. For 8
instance, wind power in itself, you don't measure that 9
by acreage because farmers are finding a very 10 successful business for them to put the wind farms 11 along their lot lines. And so it's a very definite 12 advantage environmentally in that respect, and I 13 didn't hear that kind of that thing in your report.
14 Secondly, I heard that solar and acreage.
15 And it's my understanding that solar is very commonly 16 mounted on rooftops and walls in cities, which also 17 reduces the transmission loss, et cetera, that comes 18 from centralized nuclear plants scattered around and 19 have this great transmission loss over their process 20 of getting the electricity to where it's needed. And 21 there was a third point, and I can't think of it right 22 now.
23 MS. FRANOVICH: Did you have a question?
24 MR. CAMERON: And no, I think Corinne is, 25
60 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 I think the comment we have of what Corinne is saying 1
is that there may, comments like she just made and 2
like we're going to hear tonight, and I'm sure from 3
Kathryn, for example, on wind power are all the things 4
that we need to hear to consider in finalizing our 5
report. And Dave Miller did a summary of the report 6
and didn't get into every detail where that type of 7
thing may be coming out. And I'm going to go to this 8
lady back here for a question, and then I think we 9
need to go on to SAMAS. If we have time to come back 10 to you, Kathryn, we will. But we really need to get 11 to the next presentation. Yes ma'am?
12 MS. HIRT: I'm Alice Hirt. And I do not 13 really need to ask a question right now, but I want to 14 respond to Ms. Franovich. Is that what your name? I, 15 I feel that you respond to the question about the 16 impact of other technologies on the environment with 17 a very subjective answer. And I sort of resent you 18 making that sort of sweeping statement. I don't 19 believe that you are an expert on all other 20 technologies and for you to say that new other 21 sources, say wind and so forth, would have a greater 22 impact on the environment than keeping Palisades 23 going, I, that is certainly not my estimation, and I 24 don't believe that that was really your place to make 25
61 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 that sort of a sweeping comment.
1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And the, Alice, what 2
we have in the report, and Rani is the Section Chief 3
for the environmental section that does these, there's 4
details in there that arrives at that conclusion as 5
Mr. Miller presented. And he may have done that 6
before you, I don't know if you were here for his 7
presentation, but that is the conclusion. And indeed 8
people will, can and will disagree with that, and we 9
want people to tell us if they disagree with it and 10 tell us why they disagree with it basically. And 11 Rani, do you want to add anything else at this point?
12 It wasn't --
13 MS. FRANOVICH: She's entitled to her --
14 MR. CAMERON: -- a question.
15 MS. FRANOVICH: -- view and I appreciate 16 her expression of it. I, I'm not an expert. You're 17 absolutely right. What I was doing was explaining the 18 Staff's conclusions on the analysis that was performed 19 by the experts.
20 MR. CAMERON: Which was done by the 21 experts.
22 MS. FRANOVICH: Correct.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I'm sorry that we 24 can't go back for second questions here.
25
62 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MS. BARNES: I didn't have my first one 1
answered. I asked questions and no one answered them.
2 MR. CAMERON: They tried their best to 3
answer the question Kathryn.
4 MS. BARNES: I asked how much is sold out 5
of state and what size wind, what size wind 6
generators.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. That's two questions.
8 How much is sold out of state and what is the size of 9
the turbine? That's, that's true Kathryn.
10 MS. BARNES: No. What, what is the size 11 in your analysis, what size, what size wind generators 12 are you saying would take that much acreage? And how 13 much of Palisades power is sold out of state? Those 14 are two questions I asked they will not answer.
15 MR. CAMERON: You want to do this one?
16 Okay. Exactly right.
17 MR. PHAM: Only can answer the first one.
18 I do not have the numbers to provide for you regarding 19 how much power is sold out from Palisades. That's, 20 the NRC doesn't have any say in that, in that decision 21 actually. Your second question regarding the, what 22 size turbine, I believe we look at the predominant 23 research that's out there based on the Department of 24 Energy and other bodies. The National Academy of 25
63 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Sciences, for example, and take a look, and we use, we 1
don't use specific models or types of turbines. We 2
look at the general baseline efficiency of what wind 3
turbines, the best and the worst of what the wind 4
turbines can do right now.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And if anybody does 6
have the information on the amount of power sold out 7
of state, if they can give Kathryn after the meeting, 8
please, please do that. And, yes sir?
9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm, I'm, my only 10 questions is why was oil in the same category with 11 solar and wind? That's, in the alternative, it was 12 listed with the alternatives.
13 MR. CAMERON: And the answer to that 14 question? And is it going to be Bo or Dave?
15 MR. PHAM: I would say that there was no 16 connotation or nothing meant by it. Yeah, it's just 17 one of the alternatives that we looked at.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
19 MR. SCHAAF: I can, I can --
20 MR. CAMERON: All right. Bob Schaaf on 21 that one.
22 MR. SCHAAF: What we look at in the 23 alternatives analysis is, NEPA requires us to evaluate 24 and assess the impacts of alternatives to the proposed 25
64 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 action. The proposed action here is for the plant to 1
continue operating for an additional 20 years. At the 2
very least, we need to look at what's called the no 3
action alternative, which would be not renewing the 4
license and identify those impacts. The NRC has 5
decided from a practical standpoint, if the plant does 6
not continue to operate, something will need to be 7
done to replace the generation lost when that plant 8
ceases operation. That may be a new base load power 9
generating facility. It may be purchasing power from 10 outside of the service area. That may be renewable 11 alternatives. It may be a new, large, base load power 12 generating station.
13 When we do these alternatives' analyses, 14 we look at the infrastructure that is in place in the 15 vicinity of the site to look for what are the likely 16 alternatives that we do a detailed analysis on. You 17 have a gas fired plant just across the freeway from 18 the Palisades site. So there is infrastructure in 19 place to deliver natural gas which would allow you to 20 install and construct a large base load gas-fired 21 generating station. There's a rail line in the 22 vicinity of the site, which would allow you to bring 23 in coal to construct a coal-fired generating station.
24 Although I believe in this case we didn't look at 25
65 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 placing the coal-fired plant at the site. We looked 1
at placing it somewhere else in the service territory 2
because of the sensitivity of the dunes area. We also 3
looked at new nuclear construction because there is 4
interest in the industry in constructing new nuclear 5
generating stations.
6 Under other alternatives, the reason oil 7
is in with the wind and the solar and the 8
conservation, is because these are alternatives that 9
we looked at in less detail because we didn't consider 10 them to be the likely alternatives for replacing loss 11 generation if the license was not renewed. There's 12 not infrastructure in place necessarily to bring an 13
- oil, plus there are other uses for oil in 14 transportation and in the chemical industry. That's 15 why it's in there.
16 We're not saying that it's equivalent to 17 some of these renewable sources that we considered, 18 the wind, the solar. The reasons that the wind and 19 solar aren't looked at in, in as great a detail 20 frankly, is that we're talking about replacing a large 21 base load generating station that is expected to 22 operate for roughly 90 percent of the time. Wind 23 won't generally do that. Solar won't generally do 24 that. And so we consider those alternatives, and we 25
66 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 discuss the impacts of those alternatives, but we 1
don't view them in the same level of detail.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
3 MR. SCHAAF: I guess that's, that's why 4
it's in there.
5 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. That's very 6
helpful.
7 MR. SCHAAF: And that's kind of a concise 8
discussion on that.
9 MR. CAMERON: That's very helpful. We 10 really, I'm sorry, we really do need to move on to Bob 11 Palla.
12 MR. SCHAAF: And I'm available to discuss 13 that after, after the meeting is over.
14 MR. CAMERON: Yes. I think that gentleman 15 and a bunch of people might want to talk to you about 16 that, Bob. Thank you Dave, Bob, Bo. And we're going 17 to go to Bob Palla. And then we'll be back to Bo for 18 some final comments here. These are accidents, the 19 accident analysis.
20 MR. PALLA: Good afternoon. My name is 21 Bob Palla, and I'm with the Division of Risk 22 Assessment at NRC. And I will be discussing the 23 environmental impacts of postulated accidents. These 24 impacts are discussed in section five of the Generic 25
67 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Environmental Impact Statement, or GEIS.
1 The GEIS evaluates two classes of 2
accidents. These are called design basis accidents 3
and severe accidents. Design basis accidents consists 4
of a broad spectrum of postulated events that both the 5
licensee and the NRC Staff evaluate to insure that the 6
plant can respond without undue risk to the public.
7 The ability of the plant to withstand these accidents 8
has to be demonstrated before the plant is granted a 9
license. Since the licensee has to demonstrate 10 acceptable plant performance for the design basis 11 accidents throughout the life of the plant, the 12 Commission has determined that the environmental 13 impact of design basis accidents is of small 14 significance. Neither the licensee nor the NRC is 15 aware of any new and significant information on the 16 capability of the Palisades plant to withstand design 17 basis accidents. Therefore, the Staff concludes that 18 there are no impacts related to the design basis 19 accidents beyond those discussed in the GEIS.
20 The second category of accidents evaluated 21 in the GEIS are severe accidents. Severe accidents 22 are by definition more severe than design basis 23 accidents because they could result in substantial 24 damage to the reactor core. The Commission found in 25
68 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the GEIS that the risk of a severe accident is small 1
for all
- plants, and by this I
mean the 2
probabilistically weighted consequences.
3 Nevertheless, the Commission determined 4
that alternatives to mitigate severe accidents must be 5
considered for all plants that have not done so.
6 These alternatives are termed SAMAs, Severe Accident 7
Mitigation Alternatives. The SAMA evaluation is a 8
site specific assessment and it is a category two 9
issue, as explained earlier. The SAMA review for 10 Palisades is summarized in Section 5.2 of the GEIS 11 supplement, and is described in more detail in 12 Appendix G of the supplement. And the purpose of 13 performing this SAMA evaluation is to insure that 14 plant changes with the potential for improving severe 15 accident safety performance are both identified and 16 evaluated.
17 The scope of the potential improvements 18 that were considered include hardware modifications, 19 procedure changes, training program improvements, 20 basically a full spectrum of potential changes. And 21 the scope of the SAMAS include SAMAS that would 22 prevent core damage, as well as SAMAS that would 23 improve containment performance given that a core 24 damage event were to occur.
25
69 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 The SAMA evaluation consists of a four 1
step process. The first step is to characterize 2
overall plant risk and leading contributors to risk.
3 This typically involves the extensive use of the plant 4
specific Probabilistic Safety Assessment Study, which 5
is also known as the PSA. The PSA is a study that 6
identifies the different combinations of system 7
failures and human errors that would be required in 8
order for an accident to progress to either core 9
damage or containment failure.
10 The second step in the evaluation is to 11 identify potential improvements that could further 12 reduce risk. The information from the PSA such as the 13 dominant accident sequences is used to help identify 14 plant improvements that would have the greatest impact 15 in reducing risk. Improvements identified in other 16 NRC and industry studies, as well as SAMA analyses for 17 other plants are also considered.
18 The third step in the evaluation is to 19 quantify the risk reduction potential and the 20 implementation costs for each improvement. The risk 21 reduction and the implementation costs for each SAMA 22 are typically estimated using abounding analysis. The 23 risk reduction is generally over estimated by assuming 24 that the plant improvement is completely effective in 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 eliminating the accident sequence it is intended to 1
address. And on the other hand, the implementation 2
costs are generally underestimated by neglecting 3
certain cost factors, such as maintenance costs and 4
surveillance costs associated with the improvement.
5 The risk reduction and the cost estimates are used in 6
the final step to determine whether implementation of 7
any of the improvements can be justified.
8 In determining whether an improvement is 9
justified, the NRC Staff looks at three factors. The 10 first factor is whether the improvement is cost 11 beneficial. In other words, is the estimated benefit 12 greater than the estimated implementation cost of the 13 SAMA. The second factor is whether the improvement 14 provides a significant reduction in risk. For 15 example, does it eliminate a sequence or a containment 16 failure mode that contributes to a large fraction of 17 the plant risk. And the third factor is whether the 18 risk reduction is associated with aging effects during 19 the period of extended operation, in which case it 20 was, we would consider implementation of the SAMA as 21 part of the license renewal process.
22 This slide summarizes the results of the 23 SAMA analysis. The preliminary results indicate that, 24 well basically, 23 candidate improvements were 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 identified for Palisades based on review of the plant 1
specific PSA and dominant risk contributors at 2
Palisades, as well as SAMA analyses performed for 3
other plants. The licensee reduced the number of 4
candidate SAMAS to eight, based on a multi-step 5
screening process.
6 Factors considered during the screening 7
included whether the SAMA is applicable to Palisades 8
due to design differences and whether the SAMA would 9
involve extensive plant changes that would clearly be 10 in excess of the maximum benefit associated with 11 completely eliminating all severe accident risk. A 12 more detailed assessment of the risk reduction 13 potential and implementation costs was then performed 14 for each of the remaining SAMAS. This is described in 15 detail in Appendix G of the GEIS supplement.
16 The detailed cost benefit analysis shows 17 that several of the SAMAs are potentially cost 18 beneficial when evaluated individually in accordance 19 with the NRC guides for performing regulator analysis.
20 Six of the eight SAMAs that survived the screening 21 process were identified as potentially cost beneficial 22 within the environmental report that was submitted for 23 the NRC's review.
24 Four additional potentially cost 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 beneficial SAMAS were subsequently identified during 1
the Staff's review of the environmental report. Two 2
of these additional SAMAs involve lower cost 3
alternatives to SAMAs that were eliminated in the 4
licensee's initial screening. In other words, the 5
Staff thought that there might have been a lower cost 6
alternative to some of the ones that were identified, 7
and these were flagged for further consideration. The 8
other two additional SAMAs involve improvements that 9
were found to be cost beneficial at several other 10 plants when they looked at them as part of license 11 renewal. And these were thought to be potentially 12 applicable to Palisades, so these were also identified 13 as potentially cost beneficial for Palisades. So, 14 thus, a total of 10 SAMAs were identified as 15 potentially cost beneficial as a result of the SAMA 16 analysis.
17 And I just want to point out that it's 18 important to note that some of these improvements, 19 these SAMAs, address the same risk contributors but in 20 a different way. For example, one SAMA might involve 21 procedure changes that improve the ability to cope 22 with a station blackout event, whereas another SAMA 23 might involve hardware changes that also address 24 station blackout events. In such incidences, 25
73 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 implementation of one of these SAMAs could reduce the 1
residual risk to a point that one or more of the 2
related SAMAs would no longer be cost beneficial. And 3
it's because of this interrelationship between SAMAs 4
that we would not expect that the implementation of 5
all 10 SAMAs would be justified on a cost benefit 6
basis, but rather implementation of a carefully 7
selected subset of the SAMAs could achieve much of the 8
risk reduction and would be more cost effective than 9
implementing all of the SAMAs.
10 To summarize the results, in looking 11 across the set of 10 potentially cost beneficial 12 SAMAs, none of these SAMAs relate to managing the 13 effects of plant aging during the period of extended 14 operation. Accordingly, they are not required to be 15 implemented as part of license renewal pursuant to the 16 regulations. Notwithstanding this, NMC has committed 17 to further evaluate the 10 potentially cost beneficial 18 SAMAs for possible implementation as a current 19 operating license activity. And completion of these 20 activities is underway and is being tracked in the 21 licensee's plant change process.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Bob. And 23 that's all laid out in the Draft Environmental Impact 24 Statement. Anybody have any questions on this SAMA 25
74 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 aspect?
1 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Are they detailed in the 2
EIS?
3 MR. CAMERON: Yes they are.
4 MR. PALLA: In the supplement. Chapter 5
five is a summary, Appendix G is a detailed 6
accounting.
7 AUDIENCE MEMBER: The ones that were not 8
approved are detailed also?
9 MR. PALLA: The entire set is described 10 there. And then which ones were deemed to be cost 11 beneficial, and which ones are being further 12 evaluated, that's all spelled out specifically.
13 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Mr. Dal Monte?
14 MR. DAL MONTE: What I wondered is, the 15 basis like sabotaging where taking account can be --
16 in this way too. And if you have done that, because 17 this, my contention is is a new issue. They're not 18 the same like previous plan.
19 MR. CAMERON: Bob, I think this is a 20 question that we get in terms of seismic, what are the 21 subjects that are included within the scope of SAMA 22 procedures.
23 MR. PALLA: Well, let me say what is 24 included. The short answer is sabotage is not 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 included within the risk profile that we do this, the 1
SAMA analysis for. What we include is internally 2
initiated events, fires within the plant, internal 3
floods, seismic events, high wind events, things that 4
we can analyze basically. When it comes to sabotage, 5
even if we wanted to include it, it defies 6
quantification and really systematic analysis. So 7
that, that would be one deterrent to, to try and 8
include it here, is that it just is very difficult to 9
quantify the frequency of these events.
10 Now Rani Franovich mentioned at the 11 beginning, this is, these issues are being addressed 12 as part of the current situation with the plant.
13 We're not done with that work yet. This is still in 14 progress. Plants are, have beefed up their security 15 arrangements and are looking further at mitigation 16 strategies within the plant to deal with things like 17 aircraft impact. This is all not being forgotten.
18 But we're looking at it now. It's not really tied 19 into license renewal. And it was not part of this 20 evaluation.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. And let's 22 have one more question right here on SAMA, and then Bo 23 if you could conclude and then we can go and hear what 24 people have to tell us. Yes ma'am?
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MS. MCFADDEN: I'm Jean McFadden. I'm a 1
social worker. I'm assuming that the SAMA discussion 2
doesn't relate to the embrittlement of the aging 3
reactor.
4 MR. PALLA: That's correct.
5 MS. MCFADDEN: Okay.
6 MR. PALLA: That would be determined to be 7
acceptable as part of the, as the safety review did.
8 MS. MCFADDEN: So, so then, looking at 9
this other report on emergency finding and 10 preparedness, are you confident in the ability of 11 FEMA, after seeing Hurricane Katrina, to come in and 12 manage an emergency here in Van Buren County?
13 MR. CAMERON: And can we just, this, this 14 is an important issue, obviously, emergency planning.
15 And can you just, Rani or Bo, can someone just lay out 16 what the responsibilities are for emergency planning 17 NRC, local government, FEMA, and we may need to talk 18 to you further about that, but can you do that?
19 MR. PHAM: Yes.
20 MR. CAMERON: All right.
21 MR. PHAM: The, basically, the NRC, our 22 jurisdiction as far as emergency planning is to make 23 sure that the personnel on site are protected from the 24 dose, dosage in the case of emergencies. Now in the 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 case with outside of the, offsite, that's something 1
that we coordinate with FEMA, local authorities and 2
everything. I can't, I can't answer your question 3
regarding do I have confidence in FEMA to do it.
4 MS. MC FADDEN: Why not?
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Rani, do you want to 6
try to address this, and we'll just hear from the 7
State of Michigan before we go on. But can we do, can 8
we tell people what FEMA's responsibility is vis a vis 9
local government and the NRC, at least tell them that?
10 MS. FRANOVICH: Yes. And we're experts 11 more in the license renewal arena, so we don't have 12 people at this meeting who can really speak to you on 13 the details of, of, you know, the NRC's coordination 14 with FEMA and local and state officials.
15 But I can tell you that licensees 16 periodically conduct drills, and the NRC participates.
17 So does FEMA, so do state and local officials. And 18 after the drills there is a debriefing, there is a 19 look at lessons learned, so that is where the NRC is 20 engaged. We really can't comment, it wouldn't be even 21 appropriate for us to comment on FEMA's capabilities.
22 But I can tell you that our jurisdiction is, does the 23 site have an emergency plan? Do they exercise that 24 plan on a periodic basis? And does that involve 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 coordination with other stake holders, state and local 1
officials and --
2 MR. CAMERON: And I think we're going to 3
hear from the, from the people who have direct 4
responsibility, Jean, right now, with the state. Can 5
you explain that please?
6 MS. ELZERMAN: The State of Michigan is 7
very proactive in doing their own emergency planning.
8 The state police, Emergency Management Division and 9
Homeland Security are in charge as lead agency for the 10 State of Michigan for any emergency. During a 11 radiological emergency, we, the Department of 12 Environmental Quality Radiological Protection, will 13 step in and be their counterpart for the radiological 14 part. In no way will we let FEMA take over. Our 15 state will run the emergency until the very end.
16 Thank you.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you for that.
18 And Bo, can you summarize so we can on and --
19 MR. PHAM: Yes. Thank you for that 20 comment, by the way. So turning on to our 21 conclusions, we found that the impacts of the license 22 renewal in all areas were small. We also concluded 23 the alternative actions that we discussed in some 24 subsequent discussions after Dr.
Miller's 25
79 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 presentation, including the no action alternatives, 1
may have moderate to large environmental effects in 2
some impact categories.
3 Based on these results, our preliminary 4
recommendation is the adverse environmental impacts of 5
license renewal is not so large that it would be 6
unreasonable to forward the planning decision makers 7
to leave that as an option.
8 This slide is a quick recap of our current 9
status. The Draft, like I said before, the Draft 10 Environmental Impact Statement was issued on February 11 14th. To go back to the question earlier about the 45 12 day period, the February 14th date is actually the 13 date that the NRC issued or published our 14 Environmental Impact, our Draft. Publicly it's not 15 legitimate or it's not available to the public, per 16 se, until the EPA recognizes it, checks it in the 17 system, and publishes a Federal Registered Notice.
18 And that was done on February 24th.
19 Now by regulations we are required to give 20 a minimum of 45 days for comments from the time of 21 issuance of the Draft, and we actually built in a 75 22 day period from the February 24th date. And like I 23 said, even with that we have a little cushion for May 24 18th. So once again the comment period end date is 25
80 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 going to be May 18th, and then we expect to issue the 1
final impact statement sometime in October of this 2
year.
3 This slide identifies me as your primary 4
point of contact with the NRC for the preparation of 5
the Environmental Impact Statement.
It also 6
identifies where the documents related to our review 7
may be found in the local area. Palisades' Draft 8
Environmental Impact Statement is available at the 9
South Haven Memorial Library. All documents related 10 to the review are also available at the NRC's website, 11 www.nrc.gov.
12 And in addition, as you came in you were 13 asked to fill out a registration card. If you did and 14 you included your address on there, we will mail a 15 copy of the draft and a final, final impact statement 16 to you. If you did not fill out a card, I do 17 encourage you that you do. And if you need to know 18 how to do it, please contact, Cristina, could you 19 raise your hand please? Cristina Guerrero will be out 20 at the registration desk and they'll be able to give 21 you the cards for the registration.
22 In addition to providing comments at this 23 meeting, there are other ways that you can submit 24 comments to, for our environmental review process.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 You can provide written comments to the Chief of our 1
Rules and Directives Branch, at the address on the 2
screen there. You could also make comments in person 3
if you happen to be in Rockville, Maryland. We've 4
also established, to make it easier, we've also 5
established an e-mail address that you can write to us 6
at palisadeseis@nrc.gov, there at the bottom.
7 This concludes my remarks and thanks 8
again. Once again, thank you for taking the time to 9
come this afternoon. And I suppose we can take a few 10 more questions.
11 MR. CAMERON: Well, let's, I think what 12 we're going to do is move on to the comments now, but 13 I would just ask the NRC staff, you heard questions, 14 concerns. After the meeting, if there's a possibility 15 of talking to people. For example, we heard Kathryn, 16 Corinne, others on, and Alice Hirt about the analysis 17 of alternatives. You might want to talk to them, and 18 I don't want to forget that Chester had some issues on 19 sociological, so Dave I know you have a colleague with 20 you. I don't know how much you can divide your time, 21 but you might want to talk to them after the meeting.
22 And with that, we're going to go to hear 23 from you. And we have to start with, three 24 governmental folks. And we're going to start with 25
82 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Mary Ann Middaugh first, and then we're going to go to 1
John Tapper, and then to Nancy Ann Whaley. Mary Ann, 2
could you come up? And then after we hear from those 3
three, we're going to go to Kevin Kamps, Ken Richards, 4
and Don Henkel. Yes, please. And I guess that in 5
order for this to really be heard, you're going to 6
have to --
7 MS. MIDDAUGH: I'm pretty good at that.
8 MR. CAMERON: -- speak in. Good, good, 9
thank you.
10 MS. MIDDAUGH: Politicians always want to 11 be heard. My name is Mary Ann Middaugh. And the 12 people of southwest Michigan voted to have me 13 represent them in the Michigan legislature for six 14 years, the maximum allowed under our Constitution. I 15 served as Chair of the House Energy and Technology 16 Committee when the electric restructuring was passed.
17 During our hearings and other 18 deliberations, it was clear that Michigan needs 19 nuclear energy and Michigan needs the Palisades plant 20 as it generates enough power for 500,000 of Michigan's 21 residents. Because Michigan is a peninsula, we're 22 limited in the amount of energy, we can't come across 23 where the lakes are, limited in the amount of energy 24 we can import from contiguous areas.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Our committee looked at the environmental 1
and safety record of this plant and the record of how 2
the Nuclear Management Company dealt with any problems 3
that arose. The record is excellent on both counts.
4 And we, as elected officials, were kept apprised of 5
all activities at the plant.
6 I've had an opportunity to review the 7
NRC's draft environmental report and want to commend 8
you on a very thorough job you have done. Your 9
conclusion that Palisades has not added anything 10 harmful to the environment, has protected the 11 endangered Pitcher's Thistle, monitors fish, water and 12 crops monthly in the surrounding areas, and has kept 13 reports and permits current with Michigan Department 14 of Environmental Quality matches our findings.
15 Palisades employs about 600 individuals 16 with a payroll of about $60 million. We very much 17 need the jobs that Palisades provides to this area.
18 These employees are not only responsible while at 19 work, they are also a very real asset to this area of 20 the state. They are involved in their churches, 21 schools, families and communities.
22 Palisades is also a good corporate 23 neighbor. They pay a great deal of taxes to area 24 governments, and are very supportive of the community 25
84 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 and work together to make this area of the state a 1
good place to live and raise a family. This is 2
evident from the numerous letters and resolutions of 3
support of re-licensing of this plant from area 4
governmental bodies. I add my voice of support for 5
re-licensure of this environmentally friendly electric 6
generating plant. Thank you.
7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Mary 8
Ann. We're going to go now to Mr. Tapper. And Mr.
9 Tapper is a member of the Van Buren County Board of 10 Commissioners. Mr. Tapper?
11 MR. TAPPER: Thank you.
12 MR. CAMERON: Your welcome.
13 MR. TAPPER: I'll make a quick comment 14 because when I first talked with you earlier on, you 15 elaborated five minutes. But I understand my five 16 minutes started about ten minutes ago. Is that 17 correct?
18 MR. CAMERON: No. I think we'll start it 19 right now.
20 MR. TAPPER: Okay. Well, I'd like to tell 21 you a little bit about myself, because I have been 22 around Van Buren County all my life. I'm four 18's 23 plus nine in age. I live in the house I was born in.
24 And since '57, we've had a summer home along Lake 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Michigan between South Haven and the Palisades plant.
1 And actually, with being around all these years, I had 2
the opportunity to be in the County Board of 3
Commissioners 30 years, well, I've served over 38 4
years, since '52. And actually, I remember when 5
Palisades was in the thinking stage, because Consumer 6
had us go down to Benton Harbor. We got on a DC-3 and 7
flew up to Charlevoix to look at what they had up 8
there prior to our resolution. And we did have a 9
resolution way back then. Now I do have a resolution 10 that we approved on March 22nd of '05, and I would 11 really like to read it to you.
12 Report of the Administrative Affairs 13 Committee. I'm a Board of Commissioners. I hope 14 everybody can hear me. Okay, thanks.
15 Whereas, Palisades has been in operation 16 since 1971, safely providing electricity to Consumer 17 Energy customers for those 34 years, and; 18 Whereas, based on Palisades' continued 19 improved performance, particularly over the past four 20 years since Nuclear Management Company has been 21 operating Palisades, Consumers Energy has increased 22 confidence in the plant's safety, reliability and 23 predictability, and; 24 Whereas, to that end, Consumers Energy 25
86 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 announced last summer that it would seek a license 1
renewing for Palisades. Nuclear Management Company 2
will apply for a 20-year license renewal on behalf of 3
the Consumers Energy next month with the U.S. Nuclear 4
Regulatory Commission. When approved, Palisades' 5
license will be renewed through the year 2031, and; 6
Whereas, this means continued employment 7
to the residents of Van Buren County who operate and 8
maintain the plant, continued tax revenue from the 9
plant that are, revenues that are shared by various 10 governments, hospitals, schools, county government, 11 government throughout the region. And this really is 12 continued support for the emergency management 13 activities and continued employment paychecks that 14 bolster your local economy.
15 Now therefore it be resolved that the Van 16 Buren County Board of Commissioners support Consumers 17 Energy in their application process.
18 This was approved March 22nd, '05 and 19 signed by all seven commissioners. And really our 20 livelihood since this plant has been here, has 21 certainly helped. Helped schools particularly, and 22 not just the Covert region. Thank you.
23 MR.
CAMERON:
Okay.
Thank you 24 Commissioner Tapper. And if you want us to attach a 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 copy of the resolution to the transcript --
1 MR. TAPPER: Sure.
2 MR. CAMERON: -- we can do that.
3 MR. TAPPER: Okay.
4 MR. CAMERON: All right. Thank you very 5
much. And now we're going to go to Nancy Ann Whaley 6
who's Geneva Township Supervisor.
7 MS. WHALEY: Hello. I'm Nancy Ann Whaley 8
from Geneva Township. And I, like Mr. Tapper, live on 9
the same land that I was born and raised on.
10 Geneva Township is located directly east 11 of South Haven Township and it corners with Colbert 12 Township on our southwest corner and their northeast 13 corner. We are in the 10 mile range of the speaker 14 system that gives us the alert warnings. And our 15 western three tiers of sections are located in that 16 siren system of Palisades.
17 I never realized until I became a board 18 member of Geneva Township in 1987 and became 19 acquainted with the operations and effects at 20 Palisades Nuclear Plant on the structure and economic 21 well being of Geneva Township, as well as the 22 surrounding area. Palisades plant and people 23 continuing support of our communities, organizations 24 and businesses through usage, involvement and monetary 25
88 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 support enhancing the overall community health and 1
welfare.
2 Many Palisades personnel live in Geneva 3
Township and are tax payers which benefits Geneva 4
Township, South Haven Area Emergency Services, Lake 5
Michigan College, South Haven and Bangor Public 6
- Schools, Van Buren County Intermediate School 7
District, South Haven Hospital, South Haven Senior 8
Services and Van Buren County.
9 Being a South Haven Area Emergency 10 Services Authority Board Member, I have watched as 11 Palisades has contributed much to our fire and 12 ambulance service in the way of training, equipment 13 and support. This joint effort for the safety of our 14 citizens and Palisades' personnel is a tribute to 15 working together to make our community what it is 16 today.
17 Over the years, we have been privileged to 18 reports by Palisades' personnel at our Township board 19 meetings, keeping us informed on happenings, new 20 procedures, updating of siren warning system and just 21 being available to answer questions that arise in our 22 public settings.
23 The seminars presented by Palisades' 24 personnel to provide exposure for the local 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 municipalities, businesses and industry to review the 1
plant and safety procedures that are in place, as well 2
as having contact personnel for our comments and 3
questions is indeed beneficial. Mark Savage, 4
Palisades' employee as well as property owner in 5
Geneva Township, is always available to review any 6
concerns that arise.
7 At the April 12th 2005 board meeting, the 8
Geneva Township Board unanimously voted to support the 9
license renewal by resolution which was presented to 10 Mark Savage at that meeting. It is my strong belief 11 that the negative personal and economic impact that 12 all of us will feel if the operating license for 13 Palisades is not extended will be a loss of great 14 magnitude to this community. I'm asking your full 15 support for the 20 year renewal of the licensing for 16 Palisades.
17 The resolution that was passed at the 18 Geneva Township Board on April 12th, 2005 reads:
19 Whereas, Palisades Nuclear Plant has been 20 in operation since December of 1971 safety providing, 21 safely providing electricity to Consumers Energy 22 customers for those 34 years, and based on Palisades 23 continued improved performance, particularly over the 24 past four years since Nuclear Management Company has 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 been operating Palisades, Consumers Energy has 1
increased confidence in the plant's
- safety, 2
reliability and predictability, and to that end, CMS 3
Energy announced last September that they would seek 4
a license renewal for Palisades.
5 Nuclear Management Company will apply for 6
the 20 year license renewal on behalf of Consumers 7
Energy next month with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 8
Commission. When approved, Palisades license will be 9
renewed through the year 2031, and this means that the 10 residents of Geneva Township and surrounding areas are 11 receiving continued employment for those who operate 12 and maintain the plant, continued tax revenues from 13 the plant that are shared by the various governments, 14 hospitals and schools throughout the region, continued 15 support for energy management activities, and 16 continued employee paychecks that bolster local 17 economies, and to date, the NRC has approved 30 18 license renewals for generating stations and is 19 reviewing applications for 10 others, and there are 20 103 operating nuclear plants in the United States that 21 generate approximately 20 percent of the nations' 22 electricity.
23 Therefore, be it resolved that the Geneva 24 Township Board of Trustees supports Palisades' efforts 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 in the application for a 20 year renewal of the 1
operating license and their efforts to continue the 2
enhancement of economic conditions in our area. This 3
resolution was presented and supported by all Geneva 4
Township board members. Thank you.
5 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Nancy 6
Ann. I realize that a lot of you that took the time 7
to do a prepared written statement for us, and we 8
really appreciate that. We are going to try to move 9
through this so that we get to everybody, so if you 10 are going to be longer than five to seven minutes, if 11 you could just try to summarize and we will put the 12 prepared statement on the record too. And that's not 13 directed at you Nancy. You were right on time. But 14 I just wanted to say that.
15 And now we're going to Kevin Kamps from 16 Nuclear Information Resource Service. And Kevin, you 17 have a long history here so, please tell us about that 18 too.
19 MR. KAMPS: My name is Kevin Kamps, and I 20 work for Nuclear Information and Resource Service in 21 Washington, D.C. But I'm from Kalamazoo, Michigan and 22 I'm still a board member of Don't Waste Michigan 23 representing the Kalamazoo chapter.
24 How many of you here heard about the near 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 drop of the fully loaded dry cask at Palisades last 1
October? I have a question for folks at NRC. When we 2
were having the hearing in early November in this, 3
down the block here, how come that wasn't brought to 4
our attention? I mean, our, if we have any 5
credibility left in the NRC and in the company, if we 6
had any trust left in the company and in this 7
government agency that's supposed to protect our 8
health and well being and our environment and our 9
safety, it's gone. It's absolutely gone. And NRC's 10 response in the press is, it was not a reportable 11 incident.
12 The potential consequences, according to 13 NRC's own documents of that incident, if the cask had 14 dropped into the pool and damaged the pool and drained 15 away the water, there could have been a radioactive 16 inferno in the waste. And thousands to tens of 17 thousands of people could have died downwind. Those 18 are NRC's own numbers. I'm not making this stuff up.
19 So it just is a real betrayal of the public to have on 20 our part, to have taken part in good faith and at that 21 very moment be kept in the dark about something as 22 significant as that. So the outrage we'll try to 23 control to an extent, but it's, it's deep burning at 24 this point in the local community.
25
93 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 What I'd like to address in regards to 1
this proceeding today is radioactive waste, speak of 2
the devil, and reactor accidents. The NRC says in its 3
Nuclear Waste Confidence decision that a repository 4
for commercial irradiated fuel will open by 2025.
5 And it's appropriate to bring this up 6
because the Bush Administration yesterday introduced 7
a bill to get rid of any remaining impediments to 8
opening Yucca Mountain. That means public health 9
protections and safety regulations, that kind of 10 thing. Just get rid of those. But the problem is 11 that Yucca's in complete disarray. The last date DOE 12 gave for its opening is 2012. They won't give dates 13 anymore. They won't give cost estimates any more. It 14 used to be $60 billion, but they won't give that kind 15 of prediction.
16 So the state of Nevada's challenging this 17 NRC Waste Confidence decision in Federal court. So 18 how NRC can dismiss this issue at Palisades is just 19 really beyond me, especially given the irony that 20 Palisades license is up in 2011, and that's the very 21 year that Yucca will be full. Will have reached its 22 legal limit long before it opens because there will be 23 that much commercial waste in the country, 63,000 tons 24 of it. Quite a bit of that at Palisades, its fair 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 share.
1 So from 2011 to 2031 all waste made at 2
Palisades would be excess to Yucca's capacity. So it 3
would continue to sit at Palisades with nowhere to go, 4
unless a second repository's opened, this time in the 5
east. So would that be in Michigan or Wisconsin 6
perhaps? So it needs to be pointed out that 7
Palisades' current dry cask storage pads are in 8
violation of NRC regulations. We raised this during 9
the NRC licensing proceeding on this extension and 10 were rejected. But our expert witness on this matter 11 is none other than Dr. Ross Landsman from NRC region 12 three, whose job it was to inspect those pads and the 13 casks on them. And he warned NRC since 1993 that the 14 cask close to the lake, the pad close to the lake is 15 in violation of safety regulations, specifically 16 earthquake regulations. If there's an earthquake, the 17
-- could open up, the lake could pour in, and one of 18 those casks or more than one, could end up in the lake 19 under water. And what could that mean? If water 20 infiltrates the cask there's enough fissile material 21 inside to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. So we 22 could have a nuclear reaction in Lake Michigan.
23 In another scenario, the sand could open 24 up in an earthquake and casks could be buried under 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the sand. Overheating could occur. The cask could be 1
damaged. Radioactivity could escape. And it would be 2
a matter of time before it hit the lake. NRC now says 3
in another Orwellian twist that Dr. Landsman's 4
allegations against the newer pad built in 2004, also 5
that it violates earthquake regulations are under 6
review. Those allegations are under review. They 7
have been for years. The incredible thing is that 8
while under review, the storage pad is used for 9
storing waste. More and more waste as time goes on.
10 The cask dangle that happened last October, was a part 11 of that campaign to move dry casks to that newer pad, 12 seven of them.
13 So we've got two pads at Palisades, both 14 in violation of NRC's safety regulations, and just 15 yesterday we filed an emergency petition to the NRC to 16 enforce its own regulations and stop storing waste on 17 those pads. So the question is, where is Palisades 18 going to store 20 more years worth of waste?
19 In terms of reactor accidents, again I 20 will point to NRC's own numbers. They haven't updated 21 these since 1982, so of course the number of people 22 has grown in this region, the economy has grown in 23 this region, so these damages from a severe accident 24 at Palisades would be much worse now than what's 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 given. But NRC calculated that a severe accident and 1
catastrophic radiation release, and this was a 1982 2
report, a radiation release from Palisades would kill 3
11,000 people downwind, injure 7,000 people, and do 4
over $50 billion in damages. That's 1982 figures, so 5
if you adjust for inflation, it's over $100 billion 6
now. And of course, if there's a major radiation 7
release from Palisades, that's it for Michigan's 8
tourism, that's it for its agriculture, and that's the 9
reason that our volunteer pro bono citizen's effort to 10 try to stop this 20 year extension has been so 11 determined and will continue to be so at every turn, 12 because we care a lot about the future of this state.
13 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And our homes and our 14 families.
15 MR. KAMPS: Amen. And I'd like to raise 16 a point. In the back of the room, there's a summary 17 of the findings of this EIS and one of them referred 18 to, it's a contradiction with NRC's own report. It 19 said historic and archaeological impacts would be 20 small, but right in the beginning of this report it 21 says that they may be small, but could be moderate for 22 historic and archaeologic resources.
23 And when you read the details in here, NRC 24 actually verifies exactly what we raised last July 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 28th at this very podium and again during the 1
licensing proceeding, but we got thrown out of that, 2
that Native American sites very well could exist, very 3
likely do exist, NRC is now saying that, at Palisades, 4
but no site survey is going to be required. They can 5
do 20 more years worth of routine radiation releases.
6 If forced to build new dry cask pads that comply with 7
safety regulations, that could be built right on top 8
of a Native American archaeological site, burial 9
grounds, village sites. It's not exactly far fetched 10 when NRC admits that there are 15 such sites within a 11 mile of Palisades or its transmission lines, including 12 one 0.3 miles away, which I believe is the Brandywine 13 in Palisades Park, exactly what we pointed out here.
14 So my question is, how in the world did we 15 get booted out of the NRC licensing proceeding on that 16 one? But --
17 MR. CAMERON: Kevin, can I ask you to --
18 MR. KAMPS: Yes.
19 MR. CAMERON: -- give a summary of this?
20 Thank you.
21 MR. KAMPS: Yeah. Instead of five or 22 seven minutes, of course, I could go on for five or 23 seven days about this stuff. But I'm glad that 24 there's a good turnout today and I look forward to 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 hearing other concerned local citizens.
1 And the last thing I'll say is NRC said 2
that, you know, this license renewal may be granted 3
but there are other factors out there that may end up, 4
you know, deciding whether or not this place will 5
operate for 20 more years. I'd like to say, yeah, 6
there really is. One would be a severe accident at 7
Palisades that would kind of take care of it right 8
away for all of us.
9 But another thing is, this coalition of 10 ours, which is 25 group strong including Michigan 11 Environmental Council, the biggest coalition of 12 environmental groups in the state, 75 of them, 200,000 13 Michigan residents. The coalition's still growing, 14 and we plan on fighting this at every turn and that's 15 the factor that's going to stop this from happening.
16 Thank you.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. Thank you 18 Kevin. Ken, could we have you come up and talk to us?
19 MR. RICHARD: Hello. My name is Ken 20 Richards, and I've been a resident of South Haven my 21 whole life.
22 AUDIENCE MEMBER: We can't hear you.
23 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Use the mike.
24 MR. RICHARD: My name is Kenneth Richards, 25
99 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 and I've been a citizen here in South Haven pretty 1
much my whole life. And back when Palisades first 2
went into dry cask storage in the early '90's, we 3
formed a group called Palisades Conversion Group 4
because, basically what they're doing out there is 5
they're boiling water to make electricity and as Ralph 6
Nader said, there's a lot of ways to boil water and 7
make electricity.
8 So, having worked in two occupations 9
within the nuclear field, laborer for J.A. Jones 10 Construction Company in '71, '72 on the Donald C. Cook 11 Nuclear Power Plant, then at the Palisades Nuclear 12 Power Plant, Decon-Tech for Essential Services Company 13 14 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Louder.
15 AUDIENCE MEMBER: We can't hear you.
16 MR. RICHARD: -- during a refueling outage 17 in the '90's, I have seen construction of and then 18 finished plants during tours. The plants then new and 19 impressive, then again many years later aging, much 20
- obsolete, often highly contaminated equipment, 21 malfunctioning devices such as the reactor containment 22 hatch door inoperable for some time while I was de-23 conning when Consumers Energy operated the plant.
24 Things get old, dilapidated with time 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 especially when they are neglected. I'm sorry, my 1
glasses, I have to back off to read here. Things get 2
old, dilapidated with time, especially when they are 3
neglected, worn out, under the influence of radiation, 4
outdated or used up such as the Palisades plant's fuel 5
pool, now double racked. Steam generators replaced 6
highly contaminated previous units within their own 7
mortuary on the plant site. Along with approximately 8
30 V.S.C. 24 and 34 dry storage casks in use for above 9
ground spent fuel assembly storage, also on site.
10 A cut rate move Consumers Energy Company 11 took when their fuel pool was filled to maximum 12 capacity. Well passed its original design capacity 13 threatening a shut down of the plant. Breaking 14 another promise made when the plant was first built, 15 that no highly contaminated radioactive materials 16 would be on the plant site outside of its high level 17 containment structure. For purposes other than 18 refueling and eventual removal of spent fuel 19 assemblies to a national depository.
20 After 38 years of operation, Palisades 21 Nuclear Power Plant and its reservation is showing its 22 age and effects of embrittlement. Its pressure 23 reactor vessel being protected with old, many cycled 24 fuel assemblies, a case in point. Years now, no 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 vessel replacement or further shielding in sight. Or 1
2007 says the NRC, 2011 say others. 2014 say 2
Palisades' lawyers. This should have been replaced 3
ten years ago. As P.R. spokesman Mark Savage told the 4
local press back in 1993 when the problem surfaced 5
during an interview with the South Haven Daily 6
Tribune. Once they finally got to admit, there was a 7
metal condition called embrittlement affecting the 8
reactor.
9 One of the biggest complaints from plant 10 critics is the operators have been less than 11 forthcoming when problems surface. Make excuses, rosy 12 predictions they know will never come to pass. Or lie 13 to anyone listening when the information might or will 14 be perceived as contentious, placing public trust in 15 jeopardy.
16 Much of the same thing can be said of the 17 NRC during these current rounds of scoping meetings 18 concerning the re-licensing endeavor. Long time 19 followers of this issue have seen or heard it all from 20 a
very different NRC under past presidential 21 administrations. The difference between now and say, 22 the early 90's, cannot be denied. This is a very 23 business friendly NRC, not public or environmentally 24 friendly.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Yesterday I received my copy of the 1
Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License 2
Renewal of Nuclear Plants Supplement 27 regarding the 3
Palisades Nuclear Power Plant. Reading through both 4
the manual and its cover letters, I see, despite the 5
potential radioactive hazards, the NRC insists the 6
environmental impacts of the Palisades Nuclear Power 7
Plant and the radioactive materials about its 8
reservation is always regarded as small throughout 9
this report. But when I turn to the alternative 10 energy sources, which should be pursued at the 11 Palisades Plant site, their impacts are often referred 12 to as large. Which all considering, they would be, 13 taking into account the enormity of the electrical 14 power the plant puts on the grid, for alternatives to 15 equal out in their current forms at this site.
16 A rather particular assumption bracketing 17 both the plant and the NRC's positions well, yet 18 ignoring the simple fact that if all the resources 19 used to continue operation of this plant were put into 20 renewables and other forms of electrical generation 21 throughout the state, it would turn the argument on 22 its head.
23 What my real concern here is the fact that 24 the GEIS report does not take into consideration of 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 dry cask storage or other highly radioactive 1
contaminated things such as the former steam 2
generators on site. Many would argue the Palisades 3
reservation is already a defacto high level nuclear 4
waste dump. Which to their, our Palisades Conversion 5
Group and my viewing of this issue, a large impact on 6
this fragile lake shore environment. More to the 7
point, potential impact should things not go as 8
planned or designed or promised, which over the last 9
38 years, time and time again have been broken.
10 With an additional 20 years worth of above 11 ground dry cask storage, along with other contaminated 12 equipment, which is sure to be replaced should this 13 plant be pushed so far past its original design 14 capacity, which it already has by years now. Counter 15 to the GEIS's insistence that no changes to the plant 16 need to take place in the additional 20 years.
17 Isn't the reactor head soon to be 18 replaced? In July perhaps? The pressure reactor 19 vessel long in question operated in such a patchwork 20 method since embrittlement was discovered more than 21 ten years ago. How long before it's replaced?
22 Annealiated as once promised in court or a neutron 23 thermal shield installed? Or the reactor replaced?
24 And yes, dry cask storage casks piling up 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 on site. I'm sure we'll all hear about Yucca Mountain 1
or the Goshutes, Skull Valley Indian Reservation 2
taking all of this off our hands for the umpteenth 3
time in the last 20 years. There are now over 20 to 4
30 dry casks on site. Will anyone here give us an 5
exact number? Or are you going to just dodge the 6
question again, insisting it's a Federal issue, none 7
of this re-licensing businesses concern.
8 This is a local community concern for we 9
will have to live with and care take all of this waste 10 for generations to come. In '93 we were told these 11 experimental, cut-rate dry storage casks would be gone 12 in '98, time and time again by Mark Savage, the plant 13 spokesman.
14 Now we're told by the NRC, they're 15 licensed to store --
16 MR. CAMERON: Ken, I'm going to have to, 17 I'm going to have to ask you to summarize. I'm sorry, 18 Ken, we can attach your full statement to the record.
19 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Go on for years.
20 MR. RICHARD: Well, you know, you 21 literally could go on for years because this thing has 22 and it keeps piling up a good record for anybody that 23 really takes a look at it.
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 very much. Is Mr. Henkel, is it --
1 MR. RICHARD: Do I hand these to him?
2 MR. CAMERON: Yes. Why don't you do that 3
and we'll make sure that we get a copy of them as a 4
formal comment for our purposes. But they will be 5
attached to the transcript. So Mr. Henkel, do you 6
want to still talk to us?
7 MR. HENKEL: My name is Don Henkel. I've 8
had a cottage at Palisades Park Country Club for about 9
40 years. We're probably about the closest of anybody 10 to the nuclear power plant. Before 9/11 I had many 11 opportunities to walk in front of the power plant, to 12 enjoy the beach area, et cetera. Our park is 100 13 years old so, both our cottage and myself and the park 14 have preceded the nuclear power plant by a long period 15 of time.
16 I am convinced that the way of producing 17 electrical power in this country needs a great deal of 18 attention. There's no doubt in my mind that coal 19 burning and so on adds a great deal of pollutants that 20 nuclear energy does not incur. But that's as long as 21 the genie is in the bottle.
22 And for many years now I've heard on 23 Saturday morning the sirens go off and this rather 24 metered voice, terrible voice comes over, this is a 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 test, this is only a test. And then at the end of 1
that there's a cow-lunk, like somebody's dropped a 2
hammer or something like that on the floor. And I 3
don't think too much about it because I've experienced 4
this for many, many years. But upon occasion I think, 5
well, what if it were not a test. And that's of 6
course when the genie comes out of the bottle.
7 One time I was sitting on the deck of my 8
cottage, which is right on the shores of Lake 9
Michigan, a stone's throw from the, from the plant and 10 of course, this was after 9/11 and a no-fly zone was 11 instituted. And all of a sudden a Japanese zero comes 12 zooming down the lake shore there about 50 feet over 13 the water. It of course flew right over the plant on 14 its way up to an old plane show someplace up north 15 along Michigan.
16 And I thought to myself well, how easy it 17 would be for somebody, a plane to come on, and you 18 know, I was really surprised that the accident report 19 didn't include sabotage and other things along that 20 line. So that's, that's kind of a problem. I'm a 21 boater, and I boat past the plant many times from 22 South Haven down to Palisades Park where the cottage 23 is. And now it's not a no fly zone, but a no boat 24 zone. The parameters of the property are 3/4's of a 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 mile. And I looked at my boat and I said, boy, those 1
casks are so easy. They're right,, right over there.
2 So I think that somehow or another we need to entrust 3
the issues of, of license renewal for just 20 years 4
because we're really looking, according to what I 5
read, 10,000 years down the pike.
6 And sooner or later human beings probably 7
are going to make some errors. And with a gas-fired 8
plant, right across the road you can -- facilities, as 9
the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant that I kind of 10 wondered, why in the world don't we go to a plant 11 already on line there, already ready to deliver, as 12 opposed to the aging Palisades Nuclear Power Plant.
13 Thank you very much.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Mr. Henkel.
15 I'll, I am going to ask Viktoria Mitlyng who is one of 16 our Public Affairs Officers from Region three to just 17 summarize what the NRC's stance is, I guess, on the 18 crane drop. And do you want to talk to us for a 19 little bit up there Viktoria?
20 MS. MITLYNG: Good afternoon everyone.
21 Can you hear me? Yes? My name is Viktoria Mitlyng, 22 and I'm Public Affairs Officer for the NRC. From my 23 accent you could probably tell I'm not a native to 24 this country. Originally, I'm from Kiev which is 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 about 40 miles from Chernobyl.
1 One of the reasons that I work for Nuclear 2
Regulatory Commission is because I can stand here and 3
tell you what happened. In my former country, I 4
couldn't do that. So when Kevin was talking about the 5
NRC losing credibility because the public wasn't 6
informed about the crane incident, it got me a little 7
riled. My job is not to get riled, but I was.
8 The inspection reports that include 9
information about all the findings at the plant are 10 publicly available. There was so much information in 11 our inspection reports produced by Resident 12 Inspectors, by Specialists, that it is impossible at 13 a meeting to come for us and give you a summary of 14 what happened. It's not an expectation we can meet.
15 Other we literally would spend our time sitting here 16 and telling you, telling you what happened, or our 17 Resident Inspectors instead of inspecting the plant.
18 That's not possible.
19 So I'm hoping that if you're interested in 20 what's going on at the plant, you can take a look at 21 the reports that are publicly available. You can call 22 me anytime and I will let you know what is going on 23 and any information that you want provided about what 24 the NRC is doing.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Now about the cask. I'm not going take 1
long. I'm just going to say that the cask was secured 2
in place. It was not an issue of the cask being about 3
to get dropped. It was a procedural error. And 4
that's why the NRC wrote it up, is because the 5
operators were not supposed to manipulate the grade 6
according to their own procedures, and they didn't.
7 I have a picture of the cask if anybody's interested 8
in taking a look at it. And it is not about to drop, 9
to drop and cause a nuclear disaster.
10 So the very real issues that people are 11 bringing up here that we want to hear about, however, 12 there are certain things that I really wanted to 13 respond to and one of them is public confidence and 14 openness. The information is out there. And our job 15 is to protect public health and safety, and we take it 16 very seriously. I take it seriously for personal 17 reasons, because, you know, half of my family is gone 18 from leukemia, cancer, et cetera. So I would not 19 stand here and tell you anything that's not true 20 because it would be like, you know, shooting myself.
21 There would be no reason for me to be in this country.
22 And people I work with I trust. So that's what I 23 wanted to say. If you want to talk to me further or 24 you want to hear Russian jokes, come and talk to me 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 after the meeting.
1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I don't want to get 2
to, I don't want to get into a long running discussion 3
because we have to hear from, from people on this.
4 Okay? We heard Kevin's viewpoint. We heard from the 5
NRC, which I thought was important on this recent 6
event to hear that.
7 MR. KAMPS: I just got a quote from the 8
very document that Viktoria encouraged me to read.
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
10 MR. KAMPS: That -- from the NRC. It took 11 several months to get, but I've got it right here.
12 I'd love to read from it.
13 MR. CAMERON: Well, let's go through the 14 rest of these people, Kevin, and hear from them. And 15 Kevin is here with a report from the NRC. If people 16 want --
17 MR. KAMPS: Yeah, I'll just read it real 18 quick. It'll take me 10 seconds. This is an NRC 19 inspection report that Viktoria encouraged me to read.
20 MR. CAMERON: Kevin, if you, and this, 21 again, is something that is, you know, we don't know 22 what the context is. If you have 10 seconds, let's go 23 10 seconds from this. I just want to keep --
24 MR. KAMPS: What is the context? The 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 context is the very incident she just described.
1 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead.
2 MR. KAMPS: The NRC Quarterly Inspection 3
Report.
4 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
5 MR. KAMPS: Coming out many months after 6
the incident occurred, so we're just supposed to wait 7
I guess. If we wait long enough, that's okay.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Kevin, go ahead.
9 MR. KAMPS: Well, got this through 4F 10 everybody. This is the NRC inspectors writing.
11 Therefore, the on scene inspectors concluded that 12 working outside the bounds of the approved work 13 package and manipulating the brake release on the 14 crane represented an increase in the risk of a load 15 drop, the load being the fully loaded cask on the 16 crane. This increase in risk is directly associated 17 with the reactor safety cornerstone objective of the 18 spent fuel cooling system as a radiological barrier.
19 What does that mean? The pool water could have 20 drained away. What happens then? The waste catches 21 on fire. What happens then?
22 MR. CAMERON: Kevin, Kevin, you read, you 23 read from that. Okay? And I don't, you know, 24 obviously it is an important issue. The report, you 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 guys can do this later, okay? The report is there for 1
people to read, and Kevin read from one part of it.
2 Viktoria gave a summary of it, okay? And John who's 3
our resident, I don't know if there's a bottom line 4
you want to add to this, but I just want to conclude 5
it.
6 MR. ELLEGOOD: Yeah, I'd like to conclude 7
this, and we can talk afterwards. We wrote that 8
because you cannot up and manipulate equipment without 9
the proper procedures in place, without the right 10 management oversight understanding what you're doing, 11 without understanding the consequences of what you're 12 doing. In this case, the worker went up there. Prior 13 to going up there he had been briefed. It had been 14 discussed. I have been in the meetings that they 15 would not manipulate any components on the crane. It 16 was to be an inspection of the crane to understand 17 exactly why the brake engaged, understand if there was 18 any damage at all done to the crane, and understand 19 what they needed to do to proceed to lower the load 20 safely.
21 The individual up there in communication 22 with an off site vendor decided to manipulate 23 components of the crane and he simply should not have.
24 It's very tough to quantify the change in risk when 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 you've got an individual going up there. I have no 1
idea how far he might have gone, how much he might 2
have slipped. I judge that was an increase in risk.
3 However, at all times there were two brakes fully 4
engaged on that crane. Either one of those could 5
support the full load. Looking through the 6
documentation as to brake failures in cranes, it's 7
about one every 10,000 events for a single brake, 8
probably more than that. Therefore, with two brakes 9
you've figured out is about one to the minus eight.
10 With the guy manipulating it, there's an increase in 11 risk. I don't know exactly how much. Maybe a couple 12 of words of magnitude. One in a million chance. We 13 took it seriously. We wrote a non-cited violation, 14 and we remained observant of the licensee's activities 15 in repairing cranes, maintaining cranes, and in crane 16 operations.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much 18 John, at the plant. And we're going to go back to 19 license renewal now, and we know that there's concerns 20 about these issues so it's important to discuss them.
21 We're going to go to Mr. Dal Monte right now, and then 22 to Mr. Mitchell, and then to Michael Martin. Mr. Dal 23 Monte, do you want to come up? All right.
24 MR. DAL MONTE: Good afternoon. I am a 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 resident of the South Haven area. I, we select this 1
area for the end of our life. So I retired. I was 2
working in Chicago, and then I came here. And now I 3
have a little time to go overseas. My profession is 4
an Electrical Engineer. I am from Illinois, and today 5
we covered some of my concerns regarding the operating 6
license renewal of Palisades Nuclear Power Plant.
7 My first concern, and more important I 8
think, is in relation to the spent fuel. Everybody 9
know that right now the spent fuel is stored outside, 10 next to the power plant. So this keeps accumulating 11 and there is a possibility of, theoretically send it 12 to a central, national central depository. But it was 13 impossible in 40 years to obtain or to realize this 14 central depository. And the reason for that is not 15 political. It's not because people are not doing 16 their work. It's just because they, they waste half 17 their -- long, long time, I mean. You have to keep it 18 under control, under storage for at least 10,000 19 years. So nobody can guarantee that even the more 20 stable place can guarantee that. So this is, if we 21 continue doing that we are going to keep this material 22 in that place forever. That's what we have to 23 understand. I mean, this is a fact.
24 What, what, why we are scared? Because we 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 are increasing the possibilities of an uncontrolled 1
releases of radioactive material. The plant has a 2
bigger accident and can have uncontrolled releases, 3
but this other thing we're allowing here can also 4
prove to have accidents by sabotage, by error, human 5
error, by many things that, one important thing in 6
life is imagination. So with a little bit of 7
imagination, we, we can figure out that this is not 8
way to go. It is not the way to go.
9 Consequently, so I will leave this point 10 for the time being and I continue that in this 11 situation my recommendation is that, I request that no 12 approval of operating license renewal be given unless 13 all existing spent fuel is removed from the site and 14 sent to a national central depository.
15 My second concern is regarding the 16 equipment refurbishing, refurbishing of our equipment.
17 I have low opinions. A plant with 40 years is ready 18 for a good refurbishing. You can tell that, you have 19 done a wonderful job, but I don't believe it. And 20 your report, the NRC is saying that they considered, 21 I don't know, I don't think, this is requested by the 22 licensee, but the NRC I don't know really, what he's, 23 he's going to do, but it doesn't look like he's going 24 to request --
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. CAMERON: Mr. Dal Monte, you've raised 1
two very important points, but I have to ask you to 2
summarize now. Do you have another important point to 3
tell us?
5 MR. CAMERON: And if you could just state 6
that and then we'll have to go on --
8 MR. CAMERON: -- to the next person.
9 Thank you.
10 MR. DAL MONTE: Okay. And my second 11 concern is related a little with the first. The 12 analogy that is used at Palisade has been following --
13 first. Through the use of a large amount of spent 14 fuel waste, which is highly radioactive and this 15 toxicity for a long time, 10,000 years.
16 Second, the waste contains plutonium which 17 if enriched could be used in the manufacture of atomic 18 bombs. Third, it is a low efficient use of the fuel, 19 uranium. If continuing with this old technology, the 20 amount of the available uranium in nature could be 21 exhausted in a short time.
22 The Nuclear Power Industry is in the 23 process of producing a new generation of reactors.
24 General Electric Company, Western Electric Company, 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Westinghouse Electric Company are doing that using 1
full fuel recycling. These reactors that could be 2
approved by 2015 will not have the above mentioned 3
drawbacks of the old reactor technology.
4 The spent fuel, the spent fuel in this 5
reactors would be reduced in amount and would require 6
shorter time in storage, 400 years. Therefore a 7
Central depository could be readily found. It would 8
use the energy content in the fuel much more 9
efficiently. The uranium available in nature could 10 last for many centuries. The plutonium in the waste 11 is not usable for manufacture of weapons.
12 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Mr. Dal Monte, 13 I'm going to have to ask you to --
14 MR. DAL MONTE: But, I, I would just to 15 say in regard to this concern, I recommend that any 16 approval of operating license renewal of existing 17 nuclear plants be in moratorium until the year 2015.
18 Thank you for your, for your time.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thank you Mr. Dal Monte.
20 Thank you very much. Do we have a Mr. Mitchell?
21 Lewis Mitchell? Mr. Mitchell, oops, are you okay?
22 All right. This is Mr. Lewis Mitchell.
23 MR. MITCHELL: Thank you.
24 MR. CAMERON: Your welcome.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. MITCHELL: My name is Lewis Mitchell.
1 I'm a native of South Haven. We were gone for about 2
30 years and moved back. I'm retired from this, 3
weekly newspaper publisher. We sold our paper in 4
Illinois and moved back home and found a place out by 5
Bangor, which is directly east of Palisade plant.
6 I knew about the plant when we bought the 7
place. I wasn't concerned a bit about the plant being 8
there, and I'm still not concerned about it. I 9
believe that nuclear power is one of the best answers 10 we've got to getting power in this country. With all 11 of these other things that have been named, they 12 either don't work fully or they're more expensive and 13 they're harder on the environment. I personally am in 14 favor of the nuclear power. And by the way, I'm also 15 one that says thank god for the atomic bomb, because 16 I was in the 77th infantry division and I saw the 17 coast of Japan that we were supposed to hit. And the 18 reason, one of the reasons I'm here today is because 19 they dropped that bomb. And I'm not the least bit 20 ashamed to say so.
21 Heard a lot of ifs today. If this, if 22 that, if the other thing, and having been in the 23 newspaper business, I'm a little more inclined to rely 24 on some facts. Not if this happens or if that 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 happens. I've never been in the plant. I've heard 1
people talk about the condition of it. I've never 2
been out there, so I do not know anything about the 3
condition of that plant, whether it's good, bad, 4
brittle or whatever. I'll leave that up to the people 5
that know, the people that are experts. I think the 6
NRC has a whole staff of experts and I'd rather trust 7
them than somebody that's not on the site making 8
inspections and so forth.
9 Talk about this crane hanging up. I've 10 been around machinery enough to know that there's 11 things like that do happen, and that things can be 12 secured and there's no danger from them.
13 And this, heard a lot about alternate 14 forms of generating electricity. And I've read quite 15 a bit about it and nothing I have read has convinced 16 me there is a better way. I'm local, sometimes a lot 17 of these people from far away come in and tell us how 18 we're supposed to do things. I don't particularly 19 appreciate that either. In my opinion, Palisades is 20 safe and I want to see that license renewed.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much 22 Mr. Mitchell. Thank you. We're going to go to Mr.
23 Martin, and then Mr. Norm Knight and Mr. Milan. Mr.
24 Martin?
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. MARTIN: Mark Savage if he was still 1
here can well attest that I've been a gadfly at 2
Palisades for 20 years now. And, thank you, I don't 3
plan to be for another 20. It astounds me that this 4
proceeding can go on like a runaway train in light of 5
the fact that the industry has been allowed to run for 6
50 years with no high level waste facility, guaranteed 7
or otherwise. Different things about Yucca Mountain 8
are interesting in that they have gone on and approved 9
almost everything that the opponents have suggested, 10 seismic, water leaking into the -- underneath it, and 11 other things. And then most recently, we hear that 12 the original loading of it, if it were carried out 13 would cause overheating and make --, if they were to 14 use it, to have that capacity. And if it had opened 15 10 years ago when it was supposed to, that capacity 16 wouldn't have taken care of what waste we had at that 17 point anyway. So now it's, maybe a quarter of what we 18 have, if they were to use it. And if they don't use 19 it and the Indian Reservation is brought up as an 20 alternative, it's, it will be interesting to see how 21 the EIS has arranged for that. Maybe there's an --
22 under it like the Mississippi River for all we know.
23 That sure would be a mess.
24 And the next part of what I have to say, 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 it's interesting when you go west on the old Route 66 1
area, we see all the old barns painted with the 2
taverns, and Missouri taverns and Arkansas, and so 3
forth. And it seems back in the early 70's, Oklahoma 4
Power Company decided they were going nuclear. And 5
when they did this, there was a local woman a few 6
miles away who decided that this would not happen and 7
she decided to intervene. She mortgaged her farm, 8
sold her nursing home, and we had quite an interesting 9
intervention on that.
10 And at the time I worked for a newsman who 11 had been a part of the Manhattan project and went 12 around the country with a brief case locked to his 13 wrist. Had a lot of secrets in it, I imagine. And 14 after that he became an oil well person, drilled a lot 15 of wells. And at the time I was working with him 16 during the intervention and on his newspaper, he 17 candidly admitted to me that he had drilled a well on 18 the side of this Black Fox Nuclear Plant that they 19 wanted to install just east of Tulsa. And when he 20 drilled this well, it went so far until all of a 21 sudden they were drilling into nothing. And they kept 22 adding more divisions to the well, and it still struck 23 nothing. And finally, they just hooked the drill 24 point to a cable and they never did find bottom there.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 That was where the August nuclear industry was going 1
to put its nuclear plant.
2 And you've heard of these places where the 3
ground gives away in Florida and stuff. Here's one 4
that could have taken the whole nuclear plant. And as 5
it finally turned out the plant was turned down. They 6
didn't really need that power to begin with. And it's 7
kind of a situation where we're talking about that if 8
we conserved a little bit, we could do without 9
Palisades as well. Thank you.
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Mr. Martin.
11 Is Mr. Knight here? Yes, Mr. Knight.
12 MR. KNIGHT: Thank you.
13 MR. CAMERON: You're welcome.
14 MR. KNIGHT: I am Norm Knight. I'm from 15 Kalamazoo, Michigan. I've probably been involved with 16 nuclear power more than anybody else in this room. I 17 was involved with the first, dropping the first bomb 18 on Okinawa, not on Okinawa, but from Okinawa to 19 Hiroshima, and three days later on the second one over 20 in Nagasaki. So that I knew these pilots, Mr. Tibbets 21 and Mr. Sweeney on a personal basis and was involved 22 with that for some time.
23 However, I was released from the Marine 24 Corps and was involved with the studying about nuclear 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 power about that time, and took my training at 1
Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland under a fellow by the 2
name of -- Joe Stillwell, the general from the far 3
east. Since that time I've been involved with 4
pharmaceuticals. I was an Upjohn person. I'm a 5
chemist involved with chemistry. And I can remember 6
one of our -- tests for sodium was to go ahead and mix 7
it with uranium oxide. And then you wait to sodium 8
urinate. Well, that was okay, fine.
9 But I've been a proponent, and I'd like to 10 thank Mr. Mark Savage for the wonderful job that he's 11 done over there at Palisades. And in the winter time, 12 I also winter out in Arizona. At that point I'm about 13 20 miles from the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant, 14 which is the largest one in the country. It supplies 15 most of the electricity for Phoenix. I have some 16 pictures which I forwarded to Mark Savage, and have 17 some of them here, which involves replacement of the 18 steam generators. These came up, these were too large 19 to come through the Panama Canal, so they shipped them 20 around South America and up through Mexico, and from 21 there they were transported by fazoli trains up to the 22 Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. And I still think 23 nuclear power is the way to go. I think today, 24 approximately 70 percent of the power that's 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 distributed in France is by nuclear power. Why we 1
can't go ahead and listen to these people even if we 2
can't speak French. But, I would like to thank 3
everybody here. I enjoyed your program very much.
4 And I'm a proponent of nuclear power, still. Thank 5
you.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Mr. Knight.
7 Mr. Milan? Corinne? Can you just point that at you?
8 MS. CAREY: Great. We'll do that. In 9
fact, while the other people involved in my 10 presentation come 11 up --
12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can't hear you.
13 MS. CAREY: Oh, well, I, just a minute.
14 MR. CAMERON: And Corinne, it's fine to do 15 a little theater, but we do need to watch the time.
16 MS. CAREY: Yeah. Oh, yes. We will.
17 Yes.
18 MR. CAMERON: All right.
19 MS. CAREY: If the other people involved 20 in my presentation will come up please. The Raging 21 Grannies? And we've invited a few grandpa's in the 22 meantime also.
23 MR. CAMERON: All right.
24 MS. CAREY: Yeah.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. CAMERON: Here we go.
1 MS. CAREY: All right. Okay. Now, we do 2
want to say that one of the important points, and the 3
word I haven't heard, is sustainable. We have not 4
talked sustainable power and energy. And in the 21st 5
century and beyond, we need sustainable power, not the 6
fossil fuel which nuclear is also. There's a limit to 7
uranium involved, so it's about time that we began to 8
think for our great great grandchildren. And we have, 9
anybody else? This little guy's going to help us 10 here. This is an adaptation of the Raging Grannies 11 presentations that they have given all across the 12 country in various ways.
13 Oh, give me a home, where the rivers don't 14 foam, and the squirrels and the chipmunks can play.
15 Where lakes all have fish, you can put on your dish, 16 and the skies are not smoggy and gray. Home, home, on 17 the earth, you're beauty's beginning to fade. We've 18 got to act fast, our -- won't last, our home you just 19 can't throw away.
20 There's nuclear waste, are inclined to 21 escape, and into the ground they are dumped. We don't 22 want PCB's, in the birds and the bees, and dioxins on 23 our babies rumps.
24 Oh, give me a home, safe inside the ozone, 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 there is danger in those cosmic rays. Oceans up to 1
our necks, from the greenhouse effect, please don't 2
wash all this beauty away.
3 And I know that's a silly, superfluous 4
approach. Thank you. I do want to encourage people 5
to find out that radioactive releases from nuclear 6
power plants in the Great Lakes basin, what are the 7
dangers. There are copies of this at that table, and 8
other things. If there's more than one, you are free 9
to take it.
10 On this table are some other things also.
11 In fact, this gives you quite an interesting map.
12 Some other things, including those thick books, like 13 the one I got from Bruce. Now Bruce is the nuclear 14 facility, I've heard it's the world's biggest. They 15 have, is it nine or 11, reactors in their complex, 50 16 miles from Michigan. Right across from the thumb on 17 the little pinky finger that sticks out of Canada 18 there. And that is their Yucca Mountain in progress.
19 Luckily, the wind doesn't very often blow 20 to, on us from the east, so we usually don't concern 21 ourselves with the fact that there, we could be 22 downwind from that. We are downwind. I'm from Grand 23 Rapids, and we are downwind from Palisades obviously.
24 50 miles was the intervener zone. It goes through 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Jennison, so I wasn't able to be one of the 1
interveners. I'm another 10 miles in, but that's not 2
far enough if a dangle drops, or any of the kinds of 3
things that can happen in a Chernobyl situation. I 4
would suggest that particularly you pick up one of 5
these. It gives you several interesting articles, 6
including the one that's current about the British 7
report on finding, they call it the Queen's --.
8 Depleted uranium measured in Britain's atmosphere. If 9
it's measured in Britain's, what about the U.S. Who's 10 going to do that? Who makes those studies? Who's 11 going to pay for that? The taxpayers? The nuclear 12 plants? The NRC? How do we know what's going on? I 13 understand one of the problems in our intervener 14 court, court suit is that we don't have specific data 15 from Palisades. Well, who's going to pay for that?
16 Taxpayers? Nuclear plants? Not likely.
17 Another thing back there at this table is 18 the summary report. And not only is it several pages 19 long, it's based upon U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 20 Commission Freedom of Information Act response 21 documents, and so on. But you can have your very own 22 picture of the cask. So it's back there on the top, 23 stack back there.
24 I was, I have an encore ready if you'd 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 like.
1 MR. CAMERON: I heard, I heard no. I 2
heard yes. But thank you. Thank you very much 3
Corinne. Kathryn, Kathryn Barnes? And we're running 4
a little bit late over here, but we'll be done soon.
5 MS. BARNES: I want to say no matter where 6
you stand on the nuclear issue, if you think Palisades 7
is great and you like nuclear energy, or if you're 8
opposed to it, we're all in the same boat, all of us 9
that live here in this area. And that is that. What 10 happens there is going to affect us. It's not only 11 going to affect us, but it's going to affect our 12 children's children's children. You might be the last 13 person in your lineage if that thing blows because 14 you'll never have any, any offspring with normal DNA, 15 if at all, you survive it. If at all, that you can 16 reproduce.
17 What happened in Chernobyl was disastrous.
18 Kevin Kamps, who is one of my good friends, brought 19 children from Chernobyl over here. I worked on the 20 U.S., U.S.S.R. Reconciliation Project to stop the 21 nuclearization and the cold war, and we, we were 22 successful. And when I see these children from 23 Chernobyl whose beautiful souls with their sunken 24 eyes, and they're severely handicapped, and I see 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 American kids who are bright and bouncing around and 1
having fun, Corinne and I ran the Children's Peace 2
Camp and we had American children and Chernobyl kids.
3 The, the contrast between the children was so immense, 4
yet they're all innocent beautiful little children.
5 The only difference is Chernobyl blew and Palisades 6
hasn't yet.
7 And I am convinced that because it's of 8
the geology, the problematic problems, the history, 9
the track record at Palisades, the possibility of 10 terrorism, the probability of increased nuclear waste 11 problems, that it's only a matter of time something's 12 going to happen there. And I don't think the risk is 13 worth it. Even though right now were in that, were in 14 a crossroads. And you can take this day and live in 15 this day forever. You could live here. But if after 16 a disaster, you couldn't.
17 And there's so much to lose. It's not 18 just your lives, your children's lives and the 19 possibility of grandchildren, great grandchildren, but 20 it's a life in this area. It's the soil. It's our 21 relationship with Canada. Do you think Canada would 22 every forgive us for the fall out? Do you think that 23 we could ever restore the Great Lakes, our water 24 table, if something happened there? And the, and the, 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 the mounds of nuclear waste got into the Great Lakes 1
that's stored there? I don't think you can get it 2
back people. Not with radiation, and not with the 3
huge contamination that an accident would cause.
4 And it was only built for a certain amount 5
of time. The engineers that designed that place built 6
it, they thought it would last that long, and the 7
licensing is, is beyond that point. I believe that so 8
far these band-aids have, people have been very lucky 9
that we haven't had accidents with stuck valves, 10 leaking coolant, all accidents that have happened at 11 Palisades over and over again, they've always been 12 able to fix it in time.
13 I know someone that worked inside of 14 Palisades. He said he wouldn't work in the Michigan 15 anymore. He works in another state. I won't mention 16 his name. I won't mention what state he works at, 17 although the NRC and other people have tried to find 18 out. He told me that Palisades is the most likely to 19 blow of all the nuclear reactors in the United States.
20 He said it's a well known fact in the nuclear 21 industry. And I said well why, you know, like at DC 22 Cook I know that for ten years they operated with a 23 cooling system that wouldn't function in the case of 24 a melt down. I said are they trying to cover 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 something up at Palisades? He says no, it's just the 1
way they run things. He says they don't report 2
things. He says there's so much that goes on that 3
people don't know about. He says the NRC doesn't know 4
about it, and I don't know what he was talking about.
5 I tried to get more information out of him. He 6
wouldn't talk, but that bothers me.
7 And I think that a lot people are in the 8
dark and I'm one of them. And I come here. I take 9
time out of my life, and like Kevin and other people, 10 we're doing this without any monetary reward. We're 11 using our own gas money which is expensive and 12 everything else, and I hope somehow that something I'm 13 saying makes a difference, you know. That something 14 is going, that somehow that something I say or write 15 or do is going to forestall a big disaster. And I 16 don't know if it, if it means anything at all. I 17 don't know if everything I say is futile, if anybody's 18 listening, if anybody cares. But I know that if it 19 blew, then your little plant that's full of holes, if 20 it blew, that people would understand what I'm talking 21 about because you can't get it back. An acceptable 22 risk, as far as you're dealing with something this 23 big, if you can shut it down, go to natural gas, 24 Consumers Energy is already --, then do it. Why not.
25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Kathryn.
1 We have two final speakers. Alice Hirt, could you 2
join us, and then we're going to go to Paul Harden.
3 And then we're going to ask Rani to just adjourn the 4
meeting. Here's Alice Hirt.
5 MS. HIRT: Thank you. I'm going to be 6
very brief. I, responding I think to David Miller or 7
whoever said that the consequences of the daily 8
releases into the environment of radioactive nuclides 9
is small, I don't know what small means. I know cells 10 are small. And I know that the newest report by the 11 National Academy of Sciences has said that there is no 12 safe threshold for radiation. Not one bit of it. So 13 how do you determine, this is new information. You 14 didn't have that information when you licensed this 15 plant 40 years ago. So this should be considered in 16 your re-licensing process. It's new information. Are 17 you talking about a small person, or a small cell, you 18 know? I'm a small person and I don't want one of my 19 small cells injured. So I think that information 20 needs to be considered in this license application.
21 So please look at that information.
22 Now the other thing is the issue of 23 embrittlement, and the question was have you 24 considered an accident based on the fact that 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Palisades is quite embrittled. When Palisades was 1
licensed 40 years ago, the issue of embrittlement I 2
don't think was considered because you didn't really 3
know that that's what was happening or would happen.
4 So in my understanding, this is, if there is an 5
accident, the result, as a result of embrittlement, it 6
would be a beyond design accident, if that's the 7
correct terminology. So that's an accident that 8
you're not considering, but that's new information 9
since this plant was re-licensed 40 years ago. So I 10 think you need to look at what would happen if there 11 is an accident as a result of embrittlement, since you 12 didn't know that when you licensed this plant 40 years 13 ago.
14 My last thing, in yesterday's New York 15 Times, I don't know if you all saw it, but maybe some 16 of you from the NRC might get red ears when you read 17 this article, because it is, after consulting with the 18 industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission weakened 19 security regulations it had proposed for reactors, 20 government auditors said in a report to be released 21 Tuesday. This is a GAO report. The audits said the 22 process, quote, created the appearance that the 23 changes were made based on what the industry 24 considered reasonable and feasible, feasible to defend 25
134 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 against rather than assessment of the terrorist threat 1
itself. The report, by the Government Accounting 2
Office, stopped short of saying that the Commission 3
had made changes, quote, based solely on industry 4
views. This cozy relationship between the NRC and the 5
industry is what really bothers all of us.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you Alice. I 7
would just ask Juan if you want to talk to Alice 8
afterwards about the embrittlement issue. And Dave, 9
I think the Draft Environmental Impact Statement might 10 address the -- 7 report that Alice mentioned to us.
11 So if you could talk to her about that.
12 And finally, I think Corinne or someone 13 put a copy of a Wednesday New York Times article on 14 the table over there that talks about a hearing, a 15 Congressional hearing yesterday that provides further 16 amplification on what you mentioned. Okay.
17 Let's go to our final speaker. This is 18 Mr. Paul Harden, who's the site Vice President at 19 Palisades.
20 MR. HARDEN: As Chip mentioned, my name is 21 Paul Harden. I'm the site Vice President at 22 Palisades. I'm also a Nuclear Engineer, so I happen 23 to understand the topics and the issues and discussion 24 here very, very well as we discuss them.
25
135 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 First, I'd like to focus my comments on 1
the purpose of the meeting, the Draft Supplemental 2
Environmental Impact Statement. And I'd like to 3
commend the NRC on the scope and depth of the report.
4 It's very comprehensive and a lot went into it. A lot 5
of views have gone into it. Nuclear Management 6
Company will also have comments on it. Our 7
preliminary review showed, has come up with no issues 8
of significance, but as we complete the review we will 9
also submit our comments.
10 Before I address a few of the facts, I'd 11 like to talk about regarding environmental impact to 12 operating the plant, I'd first like to state that not 13 everyone in the public is ever going to agree on 14 whether nuclear power is a good or bad thing. Not 15 everyone in the public is ever going to agree whether 16 the method that this country has chosen to store fuel 17 is a good or bad thing. The diversity of the people, 18 the diversity of the views, and our freedom to express 19 them, that's part of what makes this country great.
20 So I think it's okay that there are differing views 21 out there. But I would like to address a few facts 22 regarding the environmental impact of operating 23 Palisades Nuclear Plant.
24 Environmental responsibility is built in 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 to the design, the operation, the management and the 1
regulation of nuclear power plants. There are 2
multiple redundancies. There are multiple levels of 3
safety. There's defense in depth, and there's a 4
regulatory agency that's very, very intrusive into how 5
we do business to insure that environmental 6
responsibility.
7 The employees at the plant, they're also 8
residents. We raise our children, my baby in the back 9
of the room, here in South Haven and we have a vested 10 interest in also insuring that the plant is 11 environmentally responsible. We continuously monitor 12 radiation levels at the plant. We continuously 13 monitor the release paths from the plant. That's not 14 all we do. We go on to verify it. We sample soil.
15 We sample fruits. We sample fish. We sample water 16 from surrounding areas as an additional validation 17 that we are maintaining the environment safe.
18 And there are multiple regulatory 19 agencies, not just the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
20 There's Environmental Protection Agency, and there's 21 the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality all 22 of which enforce strict regulations and review what we 23 do at the Palisades Nuclear Plant to insure that we 24 are safe to the environment.
25
137 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 Consumers Energy and Nuclear Management 1
Company are convinced that Palisades can be operated 2
safely with minimal impact or adverse impact to the 3
environment. That's why we're investing millions of 4
dollars in the plant in upgrading the plant and the 5
equipment today as we proceed forward with our license 6
renewal process.
7 We're satisfied the continued operation of 8
this plant is an environmentally responsible decision, 9
and I'm also quite gratified that the Draft 10 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement has come 11 to that conclusion. And we look forward to a long and 12 prosperous operation and a
very safe and 13 environmentally sound manner at the Palisades Nuclear 14 Plant.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much 16 Mr. Harden. I'm going to ask Rani Franovich to just 17 18 MS. FRANOVICH: Are there any more 19 comments?
20 MR. CAMERON: No.
21 MS. FRANOVICH: Okay.
22 MR. CAMERON: We're good.
23 MS. FRANOVICH: I just wanted to again 24 thank you all for coming to our meeting. I mentioned 25
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(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 at the beginning of the meeting, and I really mean it.
1 Your comments, your participation is really important 2
to our process. It helps us to insure that we didn't 3
miss anything. So thank you for your input.
4 As you came in this afternoon, you may 5
have received an NRC Public Meeting Feedback form.
6 They're outside the meeting room. If you have any 7
suggestions about how we can conduct our meetings 8
better in the future, ways that we might be able to 9
provide information that, that works better from your 10 perspective, we'd certainly be interested in hearing 11 your views. So please fill out one of those forms.
12 The postage is pre-paid. You can mail it into the 13 NRC, or you can just leave it with us. And I also 14 wanted to remind everyone that we are accepting public 15 comments on our draft sites until May 18th. Bo Pham, 16 the Project Manager for the environmental review is 17 the point of contact. So please let Bo know if as you 18 read the document or as you think of new comments that 19 you want to provide to us, please do so. You have 20 another several weeks, actually I guess it's about six 21 weeks to do that. And again, appreciate the time that 22 you've invested in being with us today at this 23 meeting. Thank you.
24 MR. CAMERON: Thank you.
25
139 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 (Whereupon the public meeting 1
was concluded at 4:50 p.m.)
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