ML101320618
| ML101320618 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Cooper  |
| Issue date: | 04/07/2010 |
| From: | NRC/OCM |
| To: | |
| bennett Brady, DLR/NRR, 415-2981 | |
| References | |
| NRC-151 | |
| Download: ML101320618 (16) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Cooper Nuclear Station License Renewal Public Meeting: Evening Session Docket Number:
(n/a)
Location:
Auburn, Nebraska Date:
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Work Order No.:
NRC-151 Pages 1-2 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
+ + + + +
3 PUBLIC MEETING ON 4
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES PERTAINING TO 5
COOPER NUCLEAR STATION LICENSE RENEWAL 6
+ + + + +
7 Wednesday, April 7, 2010 8
Auburn City Council Chambers 9
1101 J Street 10 Auburn, Nebraska 11 12 7:00 p.m.
13 MEETING FACILITATOR:
14 Andy Imboden 15 PROJECT MANAGER:
16 Bennett Brady 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 2
1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2
(7:00 p.m.)
3 MR. IMBODEN: Good evening, everyone. My 4
name's Andy Imboden.
I'm the Chief of the 5
Environmental Review Branch and the Office of Nuclear 6
Reactor Regulation in the Division of License Renewal.
7 And I'd like to thank everyone for coming out this 8
evening to discuss. The NRC's here to receive public 9
comments on our Draft Supplemental Environmental 10 Impact Statement for the License Renewal of Cooper 11 Nuclear Station, so, what are the environmental 12 impacts of extending the license of Cooper Nuclear 13 Station by 20 years.
14 This meeting is one way to participate.
15 We have also -- we're accepting written and e-16 mailed comments as we'll hear later, the details on 17 that. This meeting will be in three parts. The first 18 part is a presentation by the NRC staff, Bennett 19 Brady, the project manager. And the second part will 20 be open to the public to receive comments that you 21 want to say on the record. The meeting is being 22 transcribed, so please come up to the podium, state 23 your name, your organization, if you represent one, so 24 that way we can get a clean transcript.
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After the public comment period is over, 1
we're going to stop the transcript and then we're 2
going to hear a presentation from Greg Pick. He was a 3
team leader for the inspection team at Cooper, and 4
he's based out of our Arlington office. And he'll 5
present, you know, what they found at the inspection.
6 I don't believe anyone has signed up to 7
speak, but we'll open the floor anyway. And just as a 8
matter of business, the restrooms are right through 9
here. Please silence your cell phones. And there are 10 feedback forms provided. Postage is free. Give us 11 your comments so we can improve our public meetings.
12 Pop them in the mail or hand it to one of the NRC 13 staff. There's also copies of the presentation, too, 14 as well. If anyone needs one, raise your hand and 15 I'll give it to you.
16 With that, I'd like to invite Bennett 17 Brady to come up. Thank you.
18 BENNETT BRADY 19 Good evening. As Andy told you, I'm 20 Bennett Brady, and I was the Environmental Project 21 Manager for the Cooper Nuclear Station license 22 renewal. My role as the Environmental Project Manager 23 was to coordinate the environmental review. We have a 24 lot of environmental engineers in the NRC to review 25
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the various aspects, the impacts that might be 1
associated with license renewal. I've gathered their 2
comments and completed this document, which is the 3
analysis that we did on the site-specific impacts.
4 Why do we do this?
The National 5
Environmental Impacts (sic) Act, NEPA, as we call it, 6
requires that all federal agencies making certain 7
decisions must evaluate the impact of those decisions 8
on the environment. They have a very systematic 9
approach for doing this and the NRC follows that in 10 doing their review for license renewal.
11 As Andy also mentioned, at the end of my 12 presentation, I would welcome comments to you. Of 13 those of you who don't want to give oral comments, 14 written comments -- there are several ways I'll talk 15 about where you can input your written comments.
16 Just to give you an outline of my -- of 17 the meeting today, I'll try to be very brief in my 18 comments and telling you something about the license 19 renewal process, the two types of reviews we do. I'll 20 give you a summary of our environmental findings, our 21 findings related to various aspects like the air, 22 water, surface issues. I'll give you the schedule 23 that we have for producing our final Environmental 24 Impact Statement. This is a draft now. And then I'll 25
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also explain how you can provide written comments to 1
us. Next slide, please.
2 The NRC's regulatory responsibility is to 3
manage all civilian uses of nuclear materials, and 4
this, of course, includes licensing and monitoring of 5
nuclear power plants. We conduct the license renewal 6
reviews as a safety review and environmental review.
7 Tonight, we're talking about the results of our 8
environmental review. But in all of these aspects, 9
the NRC's mission is threefold. First, to protect 10 public health and safety. Promote common defense and 11 security. And to protect the environment. Next 12 slide, please.
13 This slide presents a very high level 14 diagram of license renewal process. It begins, of 15 course, when the licensee submits their application.
16 As I mentioned, there are two parallel reviews that 17 are going on at the same time. The upper part of this 18 diagram shows the safety review. The lower part is 19 the environmental review, which I will speak more 20 about on the next slide.
21 During the safety review, we have on-site 22 inspections. Greg Pick will be talking about one of 23 those at the end of this meeting. We also have audits 24 in which we visit the Cooper Nuclear Station to look 25
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at their Aging Management Programs and the scope of 1
license renewal at their plant. We review the 2
application in depth and then we do an independent 3
review of practically all aspects of the application.
4 And then, at the end of this top level process, we 5
publish our Safety Evaluation Report. The Draft 6
Safety Evaluation Report was just produced yesterday.
7 A month from now on May 5th, we will have another 8
public meeting with one of our advisory counsels to 9
review the -- what we call the Draft SER.
10 There's also, on occasion, there may be 11 hearings associated with the license renewal process, 12 and that provides input into our final decision. We 13 don't anticipate or expect that there will be any 14 hearings related with the Cooper Nuclear Station. Next 15 slide, please.
16 This is a more in depth review of the 17 bottom part of the previous diagram in which it shows 18 the environmental review process. All of the yellow 19 boxes there are parts where we welcome input from the 20 public in our process. When the license applicant 21 submits their application for renewal, part of that 22 application is their environmental assessment. The 23 NRC reviews that, and then we begin our environmental 24 review in which we may have a meeting in the local 25
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area to meet the public officials, talk to the public 1
there, and learn more about the plant. And then we 2
have another meeting, a scoping meeting. Some of you 3
may have attended that, in which we try to define the 4
scope of the environmental review and get public 5
comments on that.
6 We also conduct a site environmental audit 7
with our environmental reviewers. All of this goes 8
into what we call the Draft Supplement to the GEIS.
9 I'll use the word Draft SEIS several
- times, 10 supplement. I'll explain that a little bit more in 11 the next slide. We're now at the middle yellow box 12 here in which we get comments from the public on our 13 Draft SEIS. These comments, written or oral, are then 14
-- all of them are considered by our staff and they 15 could change our findings that we've published in the 16 draft.
17 At the end of the comment period, which is 18 May 5, we produce our final supplement to the GEIS.
19 And this is one of the inputs that goes into the NRC's 20 decision on applications. Next slide, please.
21 I've been mentioning what we call the 22
- GEIS, G-E-I-S.
That is short for Generic 23 Environmental Impact Statement. This was a document 24 prepared by the NRC that looks at all of the 25
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environmental areas that might be impacted by license 1
renewal. They, then, divided the issues, impacts, 2
into two categories. Category 1 are the issues that 3
respect to be applicable to all plants that have the 4
same impact at all plants. And the staff, in the 5
GEIS, categorized these issues according to the 6
environmental impact, either if they were small, 7
moderate, or large. And then -- that was the Category 8
- 1. Then there were the, what they call the Category 2 9
issues that were expected to be site-specific that 10 might depend on -- the environmental assessment might 11 be different for different plants. And those are the 12 issues that the NRC focuses in on in this volume of 13 the site-specific issues that apply to Cooper Nuclear 14 Station.
15 And again, when staff looks at these site-16 specific issues, they determine whether they should be 17 small, moderate, or large. Next slide, please.
18 This slide shows all the, what we call 19 site-specific issues that apply to Cooper Nuclear 20 Station. These -- we analyze these in depth and our 21 conclusions are there on the right. We found that all 22 the issues, site-specific issues related to Cooper, 23 that their impact on the environment would be small.
24 Next slide, please.
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Here is an example of some of the site-1 specific issues that relate to Cooper's cooling 2
system. As you likely know, the Cooper withdraws 3
water from the Missouri River, through the plant, 4
heats it, and then puts it back into the Missouri 5
River. This has impact on the small fish and 6
shellfish. In particular, there are three impacts.
7 The first two being entrainment and impingement of 8
fish and shellfish. By entrainment, which is primary 9
the smallest type of fish, they may be sucked in and 10 dragged through the plant. The impingement for larger 11 fish refers to pinning them on the intake structure of 12 the plant. We analyzed this. We noted that NPPD has 13 taken measures to reduce entrainment and impingement 14 with equipment they're installing. They have plans to 15 do more. And NRC staff concludes this would have a 16 small impact on entrainment and impingement and maybe 17 even a positive impact.
18 The other environmental impact here is the 19 heat shock, that is, the impact of thermal discharge 20 on fish and shellfish. We also reviewed a lot of old 21 studies. We've looked at the permits that NPPD is 22 using. We read a lot of old field studies and our 23 conclusion from this was that this also would have a 24 small impact. Next slide, please.
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NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 10 To this point, I have been discussing what 1
the impact of relicensing Cooper would have on the 2
environment. In addition to looking at the impact of 3
license renewal, we also examine what we call the 4
cumulative impacts, that is the impact over time and 5
over all other actions, not necessarily license 6
renewal. What of other federal decision, what other 7
people are doing, and we try to determine what is the 8
environmental impact. And this, when you talk about 9
the past, present, and future, by the past, we mean 10 the time when Cooper began operation. The present, 11 the current operation. And then the future activities 12 go through 20 years of license renewal. Again, this 13 is looking at all impacts on the environment, not 14 necessarily license renewal.
All the aquatic 15 resources, as I just mentioned, in the last slide, as 16 far as license renewal is concerned, the impact is 17 small on aquatic resources. However, when you look at 18 everything that is going on to the Missouri River, our 19 license reviewers found that the Missouri River is in 20 an unstable state and possibly degraded beyond the 21 thought of return. And so our conclusion is that that 22 would be large cumulative impacts on aquatic 23 resources.
24 Similarly, for terrestrial resources, when 25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 11 we look at license renewal for Cooper, it was small, 1
but when we look at the cumulative impacts, it's 2
moderate impact.
3 In all the other environmental areas that 4
we considered, we found that the cumulative impact was 5
small. Next slide.
6 NEPA also requires that when a federal 7
agency is making a decision that might have an 8
environmental impact, that we also consider what 9
alternatives to our decision could we possibly make 10 and what are the environmental impacts of these 11 alternatives. And then the federal agency must 12 compare these alternatives to the alternative they are 13 considering.
14 The NRC staff began with 19 possible 15 alternatives to meeting the energy needs that Cooper 16 now provides. You see some of these would be to build 17 another coal-or gas-fired plant at the site, to 18 purchase power from other companies, to build a new 19 nuclear site, wind power, solar power, hydroelectric 20 power. Some of these were dismissed because they 21 couldn't meet the current nuclear needs. Some of 22 them, obviously, have a higher environmental impact.
23 But in the end, we selected three alternative energy 24 sources that we analyzed in depth to determine what 25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 12 their impact was. These were the supercritical coal-1 fired power plant, natural gas-fired combined cycle 2
unit, and then a combination alternative that would 3
include one combined cycle gas-fired unit, 250 wind 4
turbines, and energy conservation, that's cutting back 5
on the energy use.
6 When we -- And there was also another 7
alternative, which was -- I guess it's not really an 8
alternative. It's what we call the no-action 9
alternative. That is, NRC takes no action on the 10 application and Cooper has to shut down on or before 11 2014. This would not meet the energy needs now served 12 by Cooper. Next slide, please.
13 Our preliminary findings from this review 14 of alternatives was that the coal-fired alternative is 15 the least environmental friendly due to the air 16 emissions and construction impact. The gas-fired 17 alternative has little slightly less environmental 18 impacts due to air emissions and construction. The 19 combination alternative that we talked about would 20 have large impacts due to construction costs. And 21 thus, all other alternatives capable of meeting the 22 energy needs served by Cooper have greater impacts 23 than the proposed action of license renewal. Next 24 slide, please.
25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 13 So, this is our preliminary conclusion 1
from our review of the impacts, the cumulative 2
impacts, and alternatives, the staff concludes in this 3
report that the environmental impacts of license 4
renewal for Cooper Nuclear Station are not so great as 5
to make license renewal unreasonable. However, this 6
is our preliminary conclusion with still more to be 7
done. Next slide.
8 This shows our schedule for the 9
environmental review. We're down here now, April 7, 10 holding the Draft SEIS Public Meeting. We've been 11 receiving comments and will continue to receive 12 comments until May the 5th, when our comment period 13 closes. The staff will then consider all of these 14 comments that could possibly change our conclusions 15 that we have in this document. And we will publish 16 our final SEIS in July of this year. Next slide, 17 please.
18 Here is some information about how you can 19 reach me, e-mail me, call me. Also, our Safety PM, 20 Tam Tran, who could not be here because he was getting 21 out the final SER report that I mentioned. The Draft 22 SEIS, there's copies over here, there are copies on 23 some CDs that we have here, it's also available at the 24 Auburn Memorial Library, and it's online at the NRC 25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 14 website, and that is the address. You can go there 1
and get it. Next slide, please.
2 As I mentioned and Andy mentioned, we also 3
welcome written comments. Here's the address where 4
you can send them to us by -- either by e-mail or by 5
regular mail, our address. And also there is a new 6
website, regulations.gov that has all of the documents 7
and rules that the federal government is proposing.
8 And you can go to this site and get documents and 9
submit comments, and check back and see that your 10 comments are there and see comments that other people 11 are making. And, finally, you can come see us and 12 bring it to us in Rockville, Maryland.
13 That concludes my comments now, and I'll 14 turn it back over to Andy for comments people may 15 have.
16 MR. IMBODEN: Thank you, Bennett.
17 So, just to recap, there's a typo in the 18 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. It's in 19
-- In the written one, it says that comments are due 20 by April 6th, so I just want to reiterate the point 21 that they're really due May 5th.
22 So, does anyone have any questions to 23 Bennett on her presentation? Or, if not, we could go 24 to accepting general comments from the public. Nobody 25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 15 signed in indicating that they would like to make a 1
statement, so I would just open the floor. Raise your 2
hand and I'll invite you up here.
3 Thanks everyone for coming out. And I'm 4
going to close the formal part of the presentation and 5
then we're going to hear from Greg Pick and what he 6
found on his inspection and his team's inspection.
7 Thanks.
8 (Whereupon, at 7:25 p.m., on April 7, 9
2010, the public meeting was concluded.)
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