ML102560485
| ML102560485 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Duane Arnold  |
| Issue date: | 03/31/2010 |
| From: | Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-136 | |
| Download: ML102560485 (22) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Title: Duane Arnold Energy Center DSEIS Public Meeting Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: Hiawatha, Iowa Date: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 Work Order No.: NRC-136 Pages 1-21 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 ... +
3 BEFORE THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 ... +
Before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board 6+ + + + +
7 NUCLEAR MANAGEMENT COMPANY 8 DUANE ARNOLD ENERGY CENTER 9 Regarding Preliminary Results of the License 10 Renewal Environmental Review For Duane 11 Arnold Energy Center 12 . . . . .
13 WEDNESDAY 14 MARCH 31, 2010 15 7:00 p.m.
16 + + + + +
17 HIAWATHA CITY HALL 18 101 EMMONS STREET 19 HIAWATHA, IOWA 20 + + + + +
21 PRESENT:
22 NRC STAFF:
23 Girija Shukla - Branch Chief, Facilitator 24 Charles Eccleston - Project Manager, Division of 25 Licensing 26 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 R 0 C E E D I N G S 2 (7:00 P.M.)
3 MR. SHUKLA: Good evening, my name is 4 Girija Shukla. I'm the Branch Chief in the Division 5 of License Renewal as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 6 Commission, Washington D.C. We are here tonight to 7 get your comments on what' we call DSEIS, that's Draft 8 Supplement Environmental Impact Statement that we have 9 prepared. And your comments are very valuable. You 10 have a very important role to tell us your comments, 11 your feelings, and be heard today.
12 As you know, NRC regulates nuclear 13 retrieval/and nuclear power to protect public's health 14 and safety and environment. We do not promote nuclear 15 power. And license renewal is a very important part 16 of the nuclear power plants. The power plants were 17 given a 40 year lifetime for financial reasons, not 18 for any technical reasons. And when they were 19' approaching their end of life, so-called legal life, 20 we instituted a rule which is called 10 CFR Part 54 21 where we regulate renewal of the license by that rule.
22 And during that renewal we look at very hard on the 23 aging mechanism of plant companies and also the 24 environment, what impact would be on the environment 25 if the plant got --
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3 1 for 20 more years.
2 However, current regulation requires the 3 plant should be kept in top-notch shape. There are 4 regulations for operating the plant so most of the 5 plant is in pretty good shape all the time. But for 6 license renewal we look at again mechanism of 7 components, how well they would behave going forward.
8 And this is a very rigorous review..
9 So rest assured that we will look at 10 everything. We have the right to deny license 11 renewal. We haven't done that yet. We approved most 1 of the applications. And when I say most, because we 13 did reject some initially. We have a process for 14 accepting applications. So that we can't say it's not 15 good enough, good enough for review, we don't accept 16 it. So they go back to the drawing board and put it 17 together and send it to us.
18 So with that I would hope that you would 19 have some good comments and after giving us your 20 comment and after this official part of the meeting 21 you can sit back and ask us any questions you have.
22 With that I would like to turn it over to Charles to 23 have the rest of the presentation. Thank you very 24 much.
25 MR. ECCLESTON: I'm just going to go NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 1 through the ground rules and some preliminaries real 2 quick here. Please use the microphone if you want to 3 go ahead and give comments. Please give respect to 4 anybody that does give comments and please keep your 5 comments, you know, succinct and reasonably brief.
6 Over NRC presentation overview, I'm going 7 to give a brief project background on what's going on, 8 a summary of the environmental review, some of the 9 upcoming milestones and how to submit comments to the 10 NRC regarding this draft supplemental environmental 11 impact statement.
12 This is NRC's regulatory oversight, 13 regulates civilian use and nuclear materials including 14 nuclear power plants. It also, the NRC's mission is 15 to protect public health and safety, promote common 16 defense and security and to protect the environment.
17 Okay, NEPA, the National Environmental 18 Policy Act of 1969. NEPA is really important for two 19 basic reasons. First of all, it was passed in 1969 20 and this was a period when Congress and the public was 21 becoming extremely concerned about the state of the 22 environment and how fast it was degrading at that 23 time. NEPA basically establishes the national 24 environmental policy for the United States, the basic 25 national environmental charter for the entire United NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 States, except the environmental policy.
2 And also every single environmental regulation on law-3 is common sense followed on the tailsteps of NEPA. So 4 it's very important from that standpoint.
5 But it's probably even better known for 6 this little clause here. It requires prepa'ration of 7 an environmental impact statement, an EIS, for all 8 major federal actions significantly affecting the 9 quality of the human environment. Okay, and that's 10 why we're here today.
11 Okay, the purpose of this meeting is to 12 obtain comments on the Draft Supplemental 13 Environmental Impact Statement for the Duane Arnold 14 Energy Center License Renewal Application.
15 Before I get into some of the details of 16 the DSEIS I would to briefly give you an overview of 17 NRC's licensing process because I think it's important 18 to see that it has a couple of major components. The 19 license renewal application is submitted to the NRC.
20 Duane Arnold Energy Center has already done that. And 21 when they did that, that started a two tier review 22 process; a safety review and an environmental review.
23 When we went up to the safety review, they had very 24 detailed inspections and other things that took place.
25 And we also prepared what was known as an SER, a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 1 Safety Evaluation Report, a very detailed report that 2 went through and evaluated the state of the reactor in 3 terms of aging, management and various different 4 issues.
5 Once that SER is prepared it goes to an 6 independent review, the Advisory Committee on Reactor 7 Safeguards. They review this, they read it. And 8 based on what they find they make a recommendation 9 which feeds into the NRC decision-making process. So 1 this is a safety process here. There's also the 11 opportunity for public hearing here and they would be 12 opportunity during the environmental process for 13 hearings also this process right here.
14 The second tier is an environmental 15 review. And that's preparation of a supplemental 16 environmental impact statement which will evaluate the 17 impacts of continued operation over the next 20 years 18 as a proposal. That supplemental environmental impact 19 statement is issued and then that feeds in also to the 20 NRC decision-making process. So we have both the 21 safety part that feeds into the decision-making 22 process as well as an environmental aspect that feeds 23 into the environmental process.
24 Okay, I thought this was important because 25 a lot of people don't understand how NEPA works or-how NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 the environmental impact statement works. Okay, this 2 is really, it may look complications, but it's not.
3 It's really a simplified overview of the entire EIS 4 process. the environmental impact statement 5 essentially is initiated with issuance of a notice, a 6 public notice, in this case a notice of intent to 7 prepare an EIS to take a look at a proposal. In this 8 case a proposal is the license renewal for the next 20 9 years for the Duane Arnold Energy Center. That was 10 done. And then once that was done we move into a 11 public sculpting process. And that also includes a 12 public meeting where we obtain input from the public 13 in terms of what they want to see go into the EIS.
14 Okay, so the public has a, everything in 15 yellow is where the public has very important aspects 16 in terms of shaping the environmental impact statement 17 or process. So the public gives us their input. We 18 address their input and we prepare the draft, the 19 environmental impact statement, or in this case it's a 20 supplemental environmental impact statement.
21 Once that's done it is publically issued 22 and the public has an opportunity to review it and 23 then provide comments on the draft EIS. And also we 24 hold a meeting to accept comments, a formal public 25 meeting to accept comments which also will help us NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 address various aspects of what goes into the draft EIS. And that's what we're doing here today. We have the public meeting right now which is going on and any comments that are received will, in fact, be address in the EIS. And we will prepare a final supplemental environmental impact statement.
Okay, once that SEIS is prepared, again, it's issued to the public so they can read it, they can review it. And then we publically issue the SEIS and then, and only then, can a final decision be made with respect to license renewal. So the important thing is, this is a long, lengthy,. rigorous process with many, many steps. This is simplified, which goes into reaching a final decision. A final decision cannot be made until we get to this point here.
Okay, the EIS must investigate the environmental impacts of the license renewal proposal and the alternatives. And the purpose of the EIS is to inform the federal decision makers and the public regarding the impacts )f the proposal and reasonable alternatives including the alternative of taking no action, which in this case would be not issuing a renewed license for the Duane Arnold Energy Center.
Okay, I am going to skip over that. Now, 2E this may look really hairy and this may look really NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 complicated, but I'll try to simplify it because this 2 is the basis ofj the analysis. A number of years ago 3 the NRC prepared what was required, what was referred 4 to as a generic environmental impact statement or a 5 GEIS. And what they did was they went through and 6 they -- to nuclear reactors all over the country. And 7 they tried to determine what impacts were generic or 8 what impacts could they look at and reach- conclusions 9 regarding various environmental impacts. Okay, and 1 they divided all these issues that were evaluated in 11 the GEIS and to what was referred to as Category 1 and 12 Category 2 issues.
13 Now Category 1 issues are issues which, 14 where they said, these issues are common to most or 15 all nuclear reactors and we can make definitive 16 statements about what the impacts of these issues are.
17 We have studied them all and we pretty much have a 18 handle what these impacts are and we can pretty much 19 very definitely say what these impacts are. Those are 20 Category 1 issues. So the GEIS is up here. We look 21 at the proposal for like the DACE, and we compare that 22 proposal back to the GEIS. And then we try to 23 determine is if there is any new or significate 24 information that is determined that was never 25 evaluated in the GEIS. If any new or significate NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 information is determined to the EIS, then we preform 2 a rigorous sight specific analyst of that impact. And 3 in which case, after we've done that we document the 4 conclusions and the SEIS. If we reach a point where 5 we say, okay, we look at it, there's no new or 6 significate impacts, then we adopt the conclusions 7 that were presented in the GEIS. We just adopt them 8 and document them in the SEIS.
9 Now the Category 2 issues, these were the 10 issues that the GEIS had looked at and the GEIS 11 couldn't make definite decisions about what the 12 impacts are. Because there were sites specific, they 13 varied from plant to plant. They're the Category 2 14 issues, and if when we're evaluating the Category 2 15 issue, we preform a site specific analysis and we 16 analyzed the impacts and determine what the impacts 17 are for that particular plant. And after we've done 18 the site-specific analysis, we document the conclusion 19 in the SEIS. There is a third possibility, it's 2 relatively rare, but that's a possibility that we 21 could identify a potential new issue which was never 22 evaluated in the GEIS. It's a new issue. If we 23 identify a potential new issue and we determine that 24 that issue could be potentially significate, we're 25 back to performing a very rigorous site- specific NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 1 analysis, and then documented in the conclusion.
2 If we determine there's a potential new 3 issue, but it's not potentially significant, then 4 there's no further analysis that is carried on. So this is basically how the SEIS interfaces with this 6 GEIS.
7 NRC is kind of unique, because they have 8 taken the concept of impact or an effect and 9 environmental effect or environmental impact,, and they 10 have categorized them into small, moderate, and what 11 they call large impacts. And there's a definition for 12 each one of these.
13 Small impact is defined as an impact that 14 is not detectable or is too small to destabilize or 15 alter any important attribute of the environmental 16 resource. So, you either can't tell that the impact
.17 is even taken place, or is so small that it wouldn't 18 alter, it wouldn't significantly alter any attribute 19 of a resource.
20 The moderate impact however is an effect 21 that is sufficient to alter noticeably, you can see a 22 difference in some aspect of the environmental 23 resource, but it won't destabilize that resource. So 24 it will have some effect on it, but it won't 25 destabilize the resource.
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12 1 And a large impact is an effect which is 2 clearly noticeable and is sufficient to destabilize an 3 important attribute of the resource. Now I bring this 4 out because, you'll see this all the way through the 5 SEIS analysis, and we'll see it in the next slide here 6 coming up.
7 What I did, just try to summarize as best 8 as I could, because we are looking at about a three 9 hundred page analysis here, but I tried to summarize 10 the succinct conclusions that we reached. Right here, 11 we have these basic environmental attributes that we 12 look at. Everything from air quality, ground water, 13 surface water, human health effects, social economics, 14 and so on. And I took a look, or the SEIS looked at 15 the no action. Remember, the no action is not 16 renewing the license. And we determined what the 17 impacts of not renewing the license would be on these 18 aspects here. And what we found was that all the 19 impacts for not renewing the license would be small 20 with the exception of social economic effects. And 21 the reason for that is that if you were to close down 22 the DACE, that would, there would be loss of 23 employment, there would be loss of revenue, loss of 24 taxes that could effect schools, infrastructure, and 25 the surrounding community and things of this sort, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 1 therefore you could have a small to moderate impact on 2 the local social economics.
3 Now if you take a look at the proposal, 4 which is to renew the license for a 20 year extension.
5 Again, we see all the impacts are small, but with the 6 exception of two attributes here. One is surface 7 water. Now in the case of surface water, the impact 8 generally would be small. We're using, we're taking 9 some of the water away and we're using it. And that 10 impact is small, except in one case, and that is the 11 case where you are in a drought year. If you are in a 12 drought year and we are syphoning away additional 13 water, then that could result in a moderate impact on 14 water resources.
15 In terms of social economics, it has 16 nothing to do with really jobs, or employment, or 17 revenue, or schools, or infrastructure, or anything 18 else. What it has to do is, is there are potentially 19 archaeological artifacts and things of this sort on 20 the DACE site over the next 20 years. They could be 21 building buildings or maybe constructing roads or 2 things which could disrupt archaeological artifacts 23 and this, and I'll try to explain this a little bit 24 more in detail, but this may actually go to small.
25 Right now it's small to moderate. So there is a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 1 potential for a small to moderate impact on 2 archaeological resources.
3 Cumulative impacts. Cumulative impacts is 4 a very interesting area in NEPA and it's really 5 unique. You won't find this concept of cumulative 6 impacts almost anywhere else in the world. A 7 cumulative impact is defined as the effect of a 8 proposed action, in this case, license renewal. When 9 it's combined with the effects of other passed, 10 present, and reasonably perceivable future actions 11 that could take place within the local area.
12 So in other words, it's trying to combine 13 all the effects of the proposal in addition to impacts 14 that were, that have already taken place in the past, 15 taken place now, and that reasonable take place in the 16 future, so it's trying to get the whole ball of wax.
17 So we took a look at the cumulative impacts for these, 18 well, I can't go backwards because I'll mess the, 19 we'll have to start over. I'll have to restart this 20 thing over, I'm sorry I hit that key.
21 But basically, again I want to reemphasize 22 that the impacts on cumulative impacts for the no 23 action and also for the continue operation over the 24 next 20 years, the impacts- were exactly the same as 25 the impacts for the non-cumulative impacts that you've NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 1 seen in the previous table. There was no change.
2 They were almost all small. The no action had a small 3 to moderate for social economics and the license 4 renewal had small to moderate for water resources, 5 surface water, and a small to moderate for social 6 economics. So, the cumulative impacts were 7 essentially the same impact level as just the standard 8 impacts.
9 So,' this leads us to the preliminary 10 conclusions. What we've found was that the GEIS 11 conclusion on Category 1 issues were adopted. There 12 were no new impacts that were identified. The impacts 13 of license renewal for all impact areas range from 14 small to moderate. Most of them were small. And the 15 impacts for the alternatives, that I believe we saw 16 earlier, also range from small to moderate. So this 17 leads us to the final conclusion regarding the draft 18 SEIS and -our final conclusion is that the 19 environmental impacts of license renewal for Duane 2 Arnold Energy Center is, are not so great as to make 21 the license renewal unreasonable. That's the final 22 conclusion.
23 The next slide gives some important 24 environmental review milestones. They're in your 25 handouts over there, so I won't belabor this point.
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16 1 How do you get some of the information if you want to see the draft SEIS or if you want to see other NEPA 3 documents that were related to the draft SEIS? Okay, 4 we have the NEPA documents including the draft SEIS on 5 file with the Hiawatha Public Library, and you can also get it from the NRC website which is in your 7 handout, and there is more handouts in the back there.
8 Now, in addition to providing comments, 9 there's more than one way. to provide comments.
10 Certainly, you can come up here and you can provide 11 any comments that you have and those will be 12 transcribed and put it into the Draft Supplemental 13 Environmental Impact Statement. But there's three 14 other ways you can get comments in as well. If you 15 don't want to come up and speak you can send your 16 comments by mail to this address here. Again, that's 17 in your handout. You can e-mail comments to this 18 directory right here, DuaneArnoldEIS@nrc.gov, and you 19 can also, if you want to drive over to Rockville, 20 Maryland, we would be more than glad to accept your 21 comments over there and you can deliver them in 22 person. So, there's a multiple ways you can provide 23 your comments here. It's important to note, that the 24 comments should be submitted by April 19th. That's 25 key, so keep that in mind.
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17 1 And that opens it up to public comments.
2 So, I'll turn this back, Mr. Shukla and if you have 3 any comments, anybody that wants to speak, you're more 4 than welcome to take the microphone. It will be 5 transcribed over here, and your comments will be 6 included in the Draft Supplemental Environmental 7 Impact Statement.
8 MR. TAYLOR: I just had a question. The 9 slide that you skipped was really important.
10 MR. SHUKLA: One, I have to know who's 11 speaking. Your name and there should be a microphone 12 question.
13 MR. ECCLESTON: Can you take a microphone.
14 MR. SHUKLA: Please speak clearly and also 15 speak your name.
16 MR. TAYLOR: My name's Wally Taylor from 17 Meridian. It's just a question. The slide that was 18 skipped over, I'm sure not intentionally, was the most 19 important about the alternatives that were considered 2 other than the no action and the license renewal and 21 I'd like to have you discuss that if you could.
22 MR. ECCLESTON: Yes, yes, thank you for 23 bringing that up. We spent a lot of time looking at 24 alternatives. Alternatives, for anybody that has 25 worked in NEPA, you'll know that the alternatives are, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 1 it takes a lot of thinking to look at the alternatives 2 because a lot of times you have a infinite number of 3 alternatives. I mean, if not hundreds or thousands of 4 combinations in alternatives is sometimes different.
5 So what we tried to do is to make sure we have a range 6 of alternatives that kind of run this spectrum of the 7 major possibilities.
8 So, we looked at the no action 9 alternative, and analyzed that in depth. Again, no 10 action alternative would be to deny the license 11 renewal. We also looked at energy alternatives, and 12 the energy alternatives included a coal-fired plant, 13 construction of a new coal-fired plant to replace the 14 existing plant. A construction of a gas-fired plant 15 to replace the existing plant, and we also, based on 1 comments that we received from the scoping process, in 17 which one of the participants strongly asked that we 18 evaluate this alternative. We evaluated an 19 alternative where we call it an energy mix for a 20 combination alternative. And this alternative 21 basically said, okay, let's take a look at 22 constructing some wind mills, or some wind energy and 23 he was very strong on wind energy. And he also was 24 pretty strong on conservation measures and we'll take 25 a look at conservation measures, and our feeling that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 still would not be sufficient. to replace the power 2 that would be loss from DACE, so we said okay, let's 3 also take the next cleanest form a proven energy and 4 that would be a gas-fired plant.
So, we took a component of each one of 6 those, put them together, analyzed it and then 7 determined what the impacts were. And then the final 8 alternative as the alternative under NEPA which is 9 required by law, and that is the no action 10 alternative. You have to look at the no action 11 alternative and evaluate the impacts just as you would 12 evaluate the impacts of any other alternative and so 13 we looked at the alternative. What would happen if we 14 didn't renew the license. So, and also we looked at a 15 whole, a large rate, I think maybe 15 different other 16 types of potential energy alternatives, but those were 17 deemed not to be reasonable, for economic reasons or 18 technical reasons or various other reasons. They were 19 just deemed not to be reasonable for this particular 20 local. In a different local, they might be 21 reasonable, but for this local, they were not 22 reasonable. So we did look at a host of other 23 alternatives, but concluded that they were just not 24 reasonable.
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20 1 this is just Girija Shukla, the Branch Chief from NRC, 2 that these are for comparing the environmental 3 impacts. And NRC is not in the business of finding 4 something different, but we are looking at with these 5 alternatives, what would be the entire impact. So we 6 are looking at everything, but these are just to 7 compare the environmental impacts, not as a overall 8 that you know, what we should do as a final decision.
9 MR. ECCLESTON: It's important to realize 10 the way, the charter of NRC and the way we worked is a 11 little bit different from other agencies. We can't 12 mandate that somebody go out and construct a gas-fire 1 plant. So, what we do is we simply look at the 14 alternative, analyze the impacts, and say if they 1 chose to go that route, this is what you would expect.
16 But we can't say, if you're going to close down DACE, 17 that yeah, you 're going to go ahead and replace it.
18 We have no authority even to do that. But we do have 19 the responsibility to evaluate the impacts and show 20 the public and the decision maker, and everybody else 21 what the impacts are. If somebody were to say, okay, 22 just close down, this is what we do. So we have a 23 gage, we have a pretty good idea what the impacts 24 would be in terms of these other alternatives if a 25 decision was made to pursue them. Okay, we're open to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 comments. Are there any comments? Okay.
MR. SHUKLA: Again, there are various ways you can submit your comments in person, by mail, be e-mail, and so forth, so please let us know and we'd like to hear you, your opinions, your analysis you might have done.
MR. ECCLESTON: You're free to go. I'm going to keep this open for about another ten minutes or so, or fifteen minutes in case anybody else comes in. We don't want to deny anybody that happen to come in late, but we'll keep it open for another ten or fifteen minutes and then I think at that time we'll just simply close. I thank you for your attention.
MR. SHUKLA: And after that, we'll be available for questioning also, if you have any questions for us. After this official part of the meeting. Thank you very much.
(Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 8:00 p.m.)
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