ML072841073
| ML072841073 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Oyster Creek |
| Issue date: | 02/01/2007 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| SECY RAS | |
| References | |
| 50-219-LR, AmerGen-Intervenor-24, NRC-1422, RAS 14337 | |
| Download: ML072841073 (18) | |
Text
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMI SSIONOOMFIED on wi-ness/Panel Acbio Tabmf:
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Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards 539th Meeting Docket Number:
Location:
(not applicable)
Rockville, Maryland DOCKETED USNRC October 1, 2007 (10:45am)
OFFICE OF SECRETARY RULEMAKINGS AND ADJUDICATIONS STAFF Date:
Wednesday, February 1, 2007 Work Order No.:
NRC-1422 Pages 1-342 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 7-emp /,a t & 56c y' - 0 A
1 1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS (ACRS) 4 539TH MEETING 5
+ + + + +
6 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2007 7
VOLUME I
.8+
+ + + +
9 The meeting was convened in Room T-2B3 of 10 Two White Flint
- North, 11545 Rockville
- Pike, 11 Rockville, Maryland, at 8:30 a.m.,
DR.
WILLIAM J.
12
- SHACK, Chairman, presiding.
13 MEMBERS PRESENT:
14 WILLIAM J.
SHACK, Chairman 15 JOHN D.
SIEBER, Vice Chairman 16 SAID ABDEL-KHALIK, Member 17 GEORGE E.
APOSTOLAKIS, Member 18 J.
SAM ARMIJO, Member 19 SANJOY BANERJEE, Member 20 MARIO V.
- BONACA, Member 21 MICHAEL L. CORRADINI, Member 22 THOMAS S.
- KRESS, Member 23 OTTO L.
- MAYNARD, Member 24 DANA A.
- POWERS, Member 25 GRAHAM B.
- WALLIS, Member NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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STAFF PRESENT:
2 ZENA ABDUALLY 3
WILLIAM H.
BATEMAN 4
GARY HAMMER 5
CORNELIUS HOLDEN 6
MICHAEL JUNGE 7
RALPH LANDRY 8
TIMOTHY R. LUPOLD 9
RALPH MEYER 10 BOB RADLINSKI 11 TANEY SANTOS 12 TED SULLIVAN 13 JENNIFER L.
UHLE 14 SUNIL WEERAKKODY 15 ALSO PRESENT:
16 JOHN ALVIS 17 MICHAEL C.
BILLONE 18 BERTRAND DUNNE 19 NAYEM JAHINGIR 20 CHRISTINE KING 21 ALEX MARION 22 ODELLI OZER 23 JIM RILEY 24 MIKE ROBINSON 25 GLENN WHITE NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 II 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 A-G-E-N-D-A Opening and Preliminary Matters....
Five Percent Power Uprate Application for Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant Unit 1 License Renewal Application for the..........
Oyster Creek Generating Station Development of TRACE Thermal Hydraulic System Analysis Code Adjourn NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 2
1:18 p.m.
3 CHAIRMAN SHACK:
On the record.
I'd like 4
to come back into session now.
We're going to be 5
discussing the final review of the license renewal 6
application for Oyster Creek Generating Station and 7
Otto Maynard will lead us through that.
Thank you.
8 MEMBER MAYNARD:
Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
9 As many of you
- know, we've had two subcommittee 10 meetings on this subject, one in fact last October.
11 The other was January of this year.
During those 12 meetings, a number of questions have been asked, 13 raised, answered, developed.
We've had the benefit of 14 looking at a lot of data.
A lot of information has 15 been provided to the ACRS members to review.
Some of 16 that has answered questions.
Some of it generates 17 questions and that's the purpose of this meeting.
18 We've also received input from the public 19 and weIve received some letters from the Congressional 20 representatives from New Jersey.
We've also received 21 a letter, actually I think the Commissioners did, from 22 the governor inviting us if we needed to to come to 23 Oyster Creek for a
meeting there and discuss 24 information further.
So getting a lot of interest.
25 We also have some people on the telephone NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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listening today.
We need to make sure that everybody 2
does speak up so the people on the phone can hear us.
3 We'll do our best to keep that going.
4 The presentation today, we're going to be 5
going over some of the material in the beginning just 6
to bring everybody up to speed and I would caution the 7
members.
If there's something from clarity from the 8
beginning of that on the history, that's fine.
But 9
we're going to be getting a number of the specific 10 details of certain issues after the Licensee, the 11 Applicant, has gone through some of those.
So we'll 12 keep an eye on that so we don't spend too much 'time on 13 history that's already been gone over in some of the 14 various meetings there.
15 After all of our discussion, there are two 16 key areas that have still generated a lot of questions 17 and interest.
One is the continued leakage that is 18 seen for refueling outage and stuff, although it's put 19 in the drain capacity, I think 'there's still some 20 interest in discussing that.
The other gets into the 21 analysis done for the containment shell, the drywell 22 shell and the use of certain code
- cases, the 23 applicability of that, and I understand we're going to 24 have some good discussion on that as well as some 25 other things.
So there is a number of key issues that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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are going to be addressed.
2 With that, I'd like to turn it over to Bob 3
Schaff of the staff just to get us started with the 4
staff and then I think turn it over to the Applicant.
5 MR.
SCHAFF:
Thank you, Mr. Maynard.
My 6
name is Bob Schaff.
I'm the Acting Branch Chief for 7
License Renewal Branch A in the Division of License 8
Renewal.
To my left is Pat Hiland who is the Director 9
of NRR Division of Engineering.
To his left is Louise 10 Lund who is Acting Deputy Director for the Division of 11 License Renewal.
To my right is Donnie Ashley.
He is 12 the Project Manager for the review of AmerGen's 13 application for the renewal of the Oyster Creek 14 operating license.
We also have a number of members 15 of NRR's Technical Staff in the audience who are 16 available to provide additional information and answer 17 any questions that the Committee may have today.
18 As Mr.
Maynard noted, several questions 19 regarding the Oyster Creek drywell shell remain the 20 following last license renewal subcommittee meeting 21 held last month.
Today's meeting will allow the 22 Applicant and the NRC staff an opportunity to respond 23 to those questions as part of their presentations.
24 With that, I'd like to turn the meeting 25 over to Mike Gallagher, Vice President of Exelon's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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license renewal group to begin the Applicant's 2
presentation.
3 MR.
GALLAGHER:
Okay.
Thank you, Bob.
4 Good afternoon.
My name is Mike Gallagher and I'm the 5
Vice President of License Renewal Projects for AmerGen 6
and Exelon.
Also with me here today from our senior 7
management team is Rich Lopriore, our Senior Vice 8
President of MidAtlantic Operations and Mirshak Rame, 9
our Senior Vice President for Engineering and 10 Technical Services.
11 On January 18th, we presented to the 12 subcommittee the details and basis for our overall 13 conclusions on the Oyster Creek drywell corrosion 14 issue and just to recap, our overall conclusions are 15 the corrective actions to mitigate drywell shell 16 corrosion have been effective; drywell shell corrosion 17 has been arrested in the sand bed region and continues 18 to be very low in the upper drywell elevations; and 19 the service life of the drywell shell extends beyond 20 20.29 with margin.
The corrosion on the 'embedded 21 portion of the drywell shell is not significant due to 22 the environment of embedded steel and concrete.
The 23 drywell shell meets code safety margins and we have an 24 effective aging management program in place to ensure 25 continued safe operation of Oyster Creek.
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For today's presentation, we will provide 2
a summary of the drywell shell corrosion issue.
Can 3
we go to the agenda?
- However, we can go into any 4
level of detail that you desire.
5 We also will have discussed five issues 6
that the subcommittee had from our last meeting and 7
our proposed resolution and you mentioned two 8
specifically, Mr. Maynard.
We have those covered.
We 9
will also provide an overall summary of our license 10 renewal application at the end of the meeting.
11 Our handouts today are we have the 12 presentation.
We have the reference material booklet 13 which is the same reference material booklet we 14 provided last time.
It has the pictures and the 15 detailed graphs of the entire drywell and we also are 16 providing to you today this table which is a summary 17 of all our drywell inspections and that's one of the 18 five issues we want to talk to you about later in our 19 presentation.
20 Also this week, I did send in a letter, 21 Subcommittee Chair Maynard, with AmerGenIs response to 22 issues presented to the subcommittee during the public 23 comments session of the subcommittee meeting just for 24 your consideration.
25 Presenting for AmerGen today will be Fred NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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Polaski, John O'Rourke and Ahmed Ouaou from our 2
License Renewal group.
We also have with us here 3
today Dr. Hardiyal Mehta from General Electric for our 4
presentation on the capacity reduction factor which is 5
in our buckling analysis and we also have Dr. Clarence 6
Miller, the author of Codecase N-284 which relates to 7
- the capacity reduction factor.
And both Dr. Mehta and 8
Dr. Miller will be making a presentation later on in 9
our presentation.
10 I'll now turn the presentation over to 11 Fred Polaski who will go through some background and 12 then the drywell corrosion issue.
13 MEMBER MAYNARD:
Before you, since you 14 brought up your letter, I need to mention that at the 15 beginning of the full Committee meeting this morning 16 we acknowledged letters that we had received.
But 17 some of the people may not have been in the room at 18 the time and in addition to your letter, we also 19 received a
letter from Mr.
Webster and others 20 mentioned earlier from Congressmen and the Governor.
21 So there is other correspondence and I believe Mr.
22 Webster also is going to be making comments at the end 23 of the meeting today.
So just to put that on the 24 record, although it was stated this morning also.
25 Go ahead, Mr. Polaski.
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CHAIRMAN SHACK:
That was very helpful.
2 MR.
POLASKI:
The second issue that the
.3 subcommittee raised was that the thickness margin may 4
be better understood with a modern three-dimensional 5
finite element model with various thickness and 6
thickness configurations in the sand bed region could 7
be evaluated.
And our response is that (1) our 8
current licensing basis analysis demonstrated that the 9
Code requirements were made and that's what we've just 10 been discussing; (2)because the GE model used a 11 uniform thickness corresponding to the lowest average 12 thickness measured, we agree that use of a modern 13 modeling technique inputting actual shell thicknesses 14 should demonstrate more thickness margin and a larger 15 safety factor; and
- lastly, in order to better 16 understand the margin that is available for the Oyster 17 Creek drywell shell, AmerGen will be performing a 3-D 18 finite element analysis of the Oyster Creek drywell.
19 This analysis will be completed prior to entering the 20 period of extended operation.
21 MEMBER MAYNARD:
Just to make sure I 22 understand because I believe that Item 3 is a new 23 commitment that we had not discussed or talked about.
24 MR. GALLAGHER:
Yes, that's correct, Mr.
25 Maynard, but we're trying to address the issues that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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you all brought up and this is a new commitment.
it 2
is a significant commitment on our part and we will do 3
that.
4 MEMBER MAYNARD:
Okay.
And I wanted to 5
make sure that your position, you would be willing --
6 you would be making this as a commitment to be done, 7
not just something that you're thinking about doing.
8 MR.
GALLAGHER:
That's correct and we will 9
send in a letter with this commitment following the 10 meeting.
11 MEMBER MAYNARD:
Okay.
I don't think any 12 of the members would tell you not to do that.
13 (Laughter.)
14 MR.
GALLAGHER:
We didn't think so.
15 MR.
POLASKI:
Mr.
John O'Rourke will now 16 present the other three subcommittee issues, those 17 being the issue with the reactor cavity liner leakage, 18 future monitoring programs and the interior surface of 19 the embedded drywell shell.
John.
20 MR.
O'ROURKE:
The next issue from the 21 January 18th subcommittee meeting was that the leakage 22 through the reactor cavity liner should be eliminated.
23 We agree that eliminating the liner leakage would be 24 desirable.
Our current program is designed to control 25 this leakage to ensure that no water gets into the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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sand bed region and it was proven successful during 2
the 2006 refueling outage.
However, based on the 3
subcommittee's input, we have decided to perform an 4
engineering study prior to the period of extended 5
operation to investigate cost effective replacement or 6
repair options to eliminate this leakage.
7 MEMBER MAYNARD:
This one when I read this 8
the first
- time, I was more excited than after the 9
second time.
10 (Laughter.)
11 MEMBER MAYNARD:
I see a commitment to do 12 an engineering study, but the way I read this that's 13 not necessarily a commitment to actually 14 MR.
SIEBER:
Do anything.
15 MEMBER MAYNARD:
do anything.
Would 16 you clarify that?
17 MR.
GALLAGHER:
I will clarify that.
I 18 mean our intent is to find a solution here.
Ats we 19 talked about last time to the subcommittee and Dr.
20 Bonaca,. this is a difficult repair situation.
So we 21 want to find a solution.
We want to implement a 22 solution and that's what this is about.
Will we find 23 a solution that's cost effective?
I hope so and 24 that's what we're trying to do.
25 MR.
SIEBER:
And right now, you're using NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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duct tape and paint, right?
2 MR.
GALLAGHER:
We're using strippable 3
coating and metallic tape.
That's correct.
4 MEMBER MAYNARD:
I'll tell you.
My issue S
is I understand that right now the leakage is within 6
the capacity of the drain.
However, the drain is 7
there'as a backup in case there's a failure of some 8
components, some
- leakage, unexpected leakage or 9
whatever.
So by counting on that as part of normal
-10 operations, you've reduced your margin to. any 11 additional leakage or whatever.
12 The system, the design intent, is to not 13 have any leakage and it is bothersome to still have 14 some leakage and be willing to live with that.
I know 15 that you would like to fix it.
I'm just not sure that 16 We'll have to see how others feel about how 17 strongly the stuff is here.
I appreciate what you're 18 doing here.
19 MR.
GALLAGHER:
We believe the feedback we 20 did get from Dr. Bonaca was that cost effective could 21 come into it.
I do have our Senior VP here, Rich 22 Lopriore, who he is behind this 100 percent and wants 23 to make sure we find a solution.
24 MR.
LOPRIORE:
Yes.
I'm not as tall as 25 the other guy.
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MR.
GALLAGHER:
This is Rich Lopriore, our 2
Senior VP.
3 MR.
LOPRIORE:
I'm Rich Lopriore, the 4
Senior VP from Mid Atlantic Operations.
I am 5
responsible for Oyster Creek in my area of 6
responsibility.
We agreed.
We certainly want zero 7
leakage and that is fundamentally what these studies
.8 are going to do.
9 But we want to make sure we know what is 10 the right approach to this.
I think at this point 11 without studying this further, we don't know exactly 12 what that is.
It could be a membrane.
It could be 13 welding a new skin, but there are complications with 14 all of that.
15 So it's not for not wanting to put 16 investment into the plant.
We clearly want to invest 17 in the plant and we share the Committee's concern 18 about wanting to achieve zero leakage.
We will pursue 19 that very vigorously and come up with the right 20 answer.
In the meantime, we do agree that we have a 21 way to manage and by no means does that mean it's 22 going to stop us from trying to get zero leakage.
23 MEMBER MAYNARD:
I understand and I 24 appreciate that and I can understand the difficulty in 25 making a commitment doing something that you don't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVL., N.W.
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know what the answer is.
So I understand that, too.
2 MR.
SIEBER:
The problem is not as simple 3
as it may first appear because of the stresses.
You 4
can't weld on that very well.
This isn't the only one 5
that leaks.
That's exactly what we've said.
This is 6
not a unique problem.
On the other hand --
7 CHAIRMAN SHACK:
You've got to permit it 8
after it's fixed.
9 MR.
SIEBER:
Yes.
10 MEMBER MAYNARD:
It's a building where 11 you're relying just one drain, too.
12 CHAIRMAN SHACK:
That's the other thing.
13 I was going to ask if anybody put a ball bearing on 14 that lip up there just to see how well it rolls 15 around.
One drain?
16 MR.
POLASKI:
The design --
This is Fred 17 Polaski.
The design of that is about a two inch drop 18 away from the side 180 degree away from the drain to 19 the drain.
The design, I can't guarantee that it's 20 two inches, whatever the design was.
So that built 21 into the design.
22 MEMBER MAYNARD:
And it should be higher 23 on the side that doesn't have the drain.
24 (Laughter.)
25 CHAIRMAN SHACK:
I hope it's better than NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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my gutters.
2 MR.
SIEBER:
Yes.
,i any event, I 3
consider this a challenge to you and I'm interested in 4
it.
So I will follow what it is you do to solve the 5
problem.
6 MR. GALLAGHER:
Okay.
We understand.
7 MEMBER ABDEL--KHALIK:
Is that area of the 8
damaged lip accessible?
9 MR.
POLASKI:
The area of the damaged lip 10 when they did the repairs, they had to cut actually 1II holes in the, I call it, the floor in the reactive 12 cavity to gain access to that.
It's not readily 13 accessible.
The way they do the visual is through 14 four scope of fiber optics up through the drain line 15 to see in that area.
Difficult to get to.
16 MEMBER ABDEL-KHALIK:
Have you considered 17 increasing the height of that lip?
18 MR.
GALLAGHER:
We repaired the lip is 1.9 what we did and as we said in this outage, we showed 20 that all the leakage was controlled and not going into 21 the sand bed region.
So we think we have that lip 22 fixed.
This is really get back up -- You know, the 23 feedback we got from you all was getting back up to 24 stop it from getting there in the first place and 25 that's what we're going to focus on in this study.
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MEMBER ABDEL-KHALIK:
Thank you.
2 MR.
O'ROURKE:
Moving on.
Slide 33.
The 3
next subcommittee comment that I will address is the 4
monitoring of the drywell shell thickness should be 5
more aggressive in the short term.
At the 6
subcommittee meeting on January 18th, we did not 7
adequately explain the breadth and frequency of our 8
monitoring activities.
We prepared a summary of these 9
activities and provided them to the Committee as a 10 handout and that's the 11" X 17" that I referred to 11 earlier.
I'll discuss the monitoring in detail using 12 your handout and the next slide.
13 This slide summarizes the monitoring.
14 activities for the drywell shell beginning with the i5 activities performed during the most recent outage 16 through the period of extended operation.
The table 17 is divided up into four major areas.
The first area 18 contains the activities we used to verify that there 19 is no water leakage into the sand bed region.
20 The second area identifies the upper 21 drywell shell monitoring.
As we had previously 22 described to the ACRS subcommittee, the monitoring 23 locations for Item 2
were established based on 24 extensive examinations performed over several years.
25 Once the monitoring locations were established, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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