ML11187A198
| ML11187A198 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Prairie Island  |
| Issue date: | 06/20/2011 |
| From: | Mahowald P Prairie Island Indian Community |
| To: | Rulemaking, Directives, and Editing Branch |
| References | |
| 76FR29279 00002, CEQ #20110154, NUREG-1437 | |
| Download: ML11187A198 (8) | |
Text
11 37 PRAIRIE ISLAND INDIAN COMMUNIfTY.
LEGAL DEPARTMENT June 20, 2011 Chief, Rulemaking, Directives, and Editing Branch US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Mail Stop T6-D59 Washington, DC 20555-0001 RE: Final Plant-Specific Supplement 39 to the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) for the License Renewal of Nuclear Plants Regarding Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant (PINGP), Units I and 2, Goodhue County, Minnesota, NUREG-1437, CEQ #20110154 Greetings:
The Prairie Island Indian Community ("PIIC" or "Tribe") would like to offer the following comments on the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact States (FSEIS) for the relicensing of the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant, Units 1 and 2, pursuant to the notice in the Federal Register on May 20, 2011.
Trust Responsibifity The PIIC and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have established a Cooperating Agency relationship through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU recognizes PIIC's expertise in four areas: land use, archaeological resources, environmental justice, and socioeconomics. Indeed, it is within these four areas that PIIC had the greatest impacts on the FSEIS.
However, the Tribe has long-standing health and environmental concerns that go beyond the MOU that we believe have not been adequately addressed. Although the FSEIS recognizes that the "federal government owes a general trust responsibility to federally recognized Indian .Tribes," the NRC view is that if regulations and statutes that protect the public at large are complied with, the agency has met its trust responsibilities. In our view, trust responsibility means that the agency must go beyond the minimum required to protect the public. This is particularly true where, as here, the agency's action (or inaction) involves the potential adverse impact on tribal lands that are held by the United States in trust for the benefit of a federally-recognized Indian Tribe, potential adverse health impact on the tribaMemrnbers residing on those trust lands, as well as the
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2 environmental, cultural and historical resources of the Tribe that are associated with those trust lands.
Impacts from continued operations The PlIC believes that the impacts to Tribal members are disproportionately high and adverse. That is, the Tribe assumes all of the cumulative and integrated risks associated with the operation of PINGP 1 and 2, including the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) and the high-voltage transmission lines, and receives virtually no benefit. Due to its location immediately adjacent to the PINGP, the Prairie Island Indian Community is subjected to a number of impacts that have a potential integrated and cumulative effect unique to its residences and lands.
Further, the PGIC believes that these issues will affect no other community in the same unique way over the 20 year extended operating period.
Human health impacts We do not believe that human health impacts were adequately evaluated as part of the FSEIS. To be sure, REMP and the PINGP 1 and 2 Effluent Reports and Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) monitoring reports were evaluated and dose estimates were made. We understand that, based on the available data, all standards are being met. The current and continued operation of the PINGP is one of the most, if not the most important, environmental and health concern for the Prairie Island Indian Community.
Since the PINGP commenced operations nearly forty years ago, Tribal members have voiced their concerns about health impacts stemming from planned and unplanned radioactive releases.
Nowhere in the FSEIS is there discussion of human health impacts, such as cancer incidence or mortality rates, just an analysis of monitoring results. In this respect, we also concur with the comments of the United States Environmental Protection Agency dated June 15, 2011, including those questioning the "adequacy and clarity of radiological impacts, emergency access, environmental justice, [and]
decommissioning .... ." The EPA recommends further information or analysis of various points related to human health, emergency access, cumulative impacts, and decommissioning. PIIC shares those concerns and joins those recommendations.
In our EIS scoping comments, comments on the draft SEIS, and in numerous meetings with NRC staff, we have raised our concerns about impacts to human health from the operation of the PINGP.
Tribal members have been concerned about their chronic exposure to low-level radiation from the PINGP and Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) since they each became operational (we do realize that the NRC licenses the Prairie Island ISFSI separately). Many of our community members have been living on Prairie Island since the plant went on-line in 1973. Community members typically do not move in and out of the community. We are concerned about potential human health effects from 60 years of low-level exposure (the original licensing period and the extended licensing period). The PIIC's primary residential area is located less than one mile away from both units of the PINGP and its above-ground ISFSI.
3 Although the EIS scoping report states that "Human Health" will be evaluated in the FSEIS, nothing could be further from the truth. In our view Human Health impacts were not evaluated, as there was no'discussion or analysis of cancer incidence or mortality rates. Evaluating monitoring and effluent release data is not the same thing as evaluating health data. There is an underlying assumption that because monitoring data indicate very low levels of radionuclides present in the environment, there must be no corresponding health impacts. That has never been proven to be true. How can the NRC make this assumption when health outcomes were not even evaluated in the FSEIS? No incidents of cancer diagnoses or mortality were studied, no cancer registries were evaluated.
New and Significant Information In our EIS scoping comments, comments on the draft SEIS and in meetings, we identified newly published scientific studies that documented an association between nuclear power plant emissions and cancer incidence. As well, we asked whether the NRC's request to the National Academies of Science (NAS) to conduct a cancer risk study would be included in the Final SEIS. None of these items were evaluated in the FSEIS; in fact the NRC did not deem any of the referenced studies or newly published papers as new or significant information. See FSEIS at 4-21 and A-280 to A-282.
According to the EIS Scoping Report for the PINGP license renewal, "The NRC staff will address the radiological impacts to human health during the evaluation of the PINGP I and 2 license renewal. However, this issue is a Category 1 issue. Issues classified as Category 1 in Table 13-1 of 10 CFR Part 51 have been determined in the GEIS to have similar impacts across all sites and are, therefore, not reevaluated in the SEIS unless new and significant information is identified that would the NRC staff to reevaluate the GEIS's conclusions." FSEIS at A-152 NRC-NAS study Subsequent to the release of the draft SEIS, the NRC announced that it had asked the NAS to perform a state-of-the art cancer risk study for populations surrounding nuclear power plants. The NAS is the nation's premier source of independent and expert advice on scientific, engineering, and medical issues. This, in our view, raises important questions about the efficacy of the current study (done in 1990-20 years ago-by the National Cancer Institute), as well as the NRC's continued reliance upon it. The 1990 study evaluated mortality rates around nuclear powers at the county level. In the updated study, researchers will evaluate cancer diagnosis rates (not just mortality) and look at much smaller geographic units, such as census tracts within a county, not just the county level. Currently, the NAS study is in Phase 1 of a two-phase study. In our view, the NRC is tacitly admitting that existing health impact studies are insufficient by commissioning the NAS to update the studies.
It is important to note that the authors of the 1990 NCI study concluded, "that if nuclear facilities posed a risk to neighboring populations, the risk was too small to be detected by a survey such as this one" (emphasis added). PIIC has long believed that the 1990 NCI study was too limited in scope (cancer fatalities vs. cancer incidence) and conducted at too broad a geographic level (i.e., at the county level) as to be able detect health impacts
4 from the PINGP 1 and 2 in our Tribe. It is imprudent and irresponsible to move forward with the PINGP license renewal before the results of NRC-initiated update are completed. If the deficiencies and limitations of the outdated studies are known, why would the NRC nevertheless allow this application to proceed? Prudence and the public health tenet to avoid potential harm should demand that the admitted deficiencies in the relied-upon health impact studies be resolved before approving a 20-year license renewal.
From the Tribe's perspective, it makes no sense to rely on a twenty-year old study when the results of a state-of-the-art study will be available soon. Is it not tremendously significant that the NRC asked the NAS to conduct a state-of-the art cancer study?
If the status quo is sufficient, why then, did the NRC ask the NAS to perform a state-of-the art cancer risk study on populations around nuclear power plants? This state-of-the art study will update the 1990 National Cancer Institute Study, which, according to the press release on the NRC-NAS study, is used by NRC staff as a resource when communicating cancer mortality risks to the public who reside in counties that host or are adjacent to a nuclear power plant.
Within Appendix A of the FSEIS there is brief mention of the NRC-NAS study, merely noting that the NRC has asked the NAS to perform the state-of-the-art-study and its tentative schedule. Why is this so? We are disappointed that this was not addressed in the body of the FSEIS. This event is extremely significant. We sincerely hope that the NRC will take a retrospective look at power plant license renewal assumptions (with respect to human health effects) once this study is complete and the findings are made public.
New Health Studies In our scoping comments, we exhaustively summarized a number of recent European studies, believing that these were new and significant information. One of the studies we discussed in our scoping comments was the so-called KiKK-study, an epidemiological case-control study that involved populations residing in the vicinity of 16 German nuclear power plants during a 24-year period (from 1980 to 2003). This study was carried out by an agency of the German government (the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS)).
This is one of the most methodologically strongest studies that have been completed to date. The results of this long-term study found a correlation between childhood leukemia and proximity to a nuclear power plant. It is worth noting that at the May 23, 2011 meeting of the NRC-NAS study group, one scientist referenced the KiKK study as one possible model (for Phase I of the study).
The hypothesis of the KiKK study were: "Do children under five years of age more frequently develop cancer when living near a nuclear power plant?" and "is there a negative distance trend?" In other words: is the risk greater the nearer the child lives to the plant? The distance between the children's homes and the power plants was precisely determined to within 25 meters (or approximately 82 feet). The results showed not only a 60% increase in the cancer rate and a 117% increase in leukemia in infants within the 5 km radius (or approximately 3 miles), but also a significant increase in the risk of cancer and leukemia the closer one lived to the nuclear power plant.
5 In the second part of the study, which covered a shorter period of time and a selection of diagnoses (leukemia, lymphomas and tumors of the central nervous system), it was tested whether other risk factors (confounders) could have had any appreciable effect on the main result of the study - the negative distance trend. This proved not to be the case for any of the studied risk factors. The proximity of residence to the nuclear power plant remains the only plausible explanation at this time.
Another study we mentioned in our EIS scoping comments reported the results of a comprehensive meta-analysis (Baker and Hoel, 2007) of studies of childhood leukemia and nuclear power plants. This meta-analysis evaluated 17 international studies carried out in Germany, Spain, France, Japan and North America between 1984 and 1999. The study found that distance-dependence increased leukemia risks in children under 9 by 14 to 21 percent. When age was expanded to 25 years, the probability of morbidity increased to 7-to 10 percent and increased mortality of 2-18 percent were observed. The meta-analysis was able to show an increase in childhood leukemia near nuclear facilities, but does not support a hypothesis to explain the excess.
While we recognize that these studies were conducted in Europe, they present new and significant information that it is possible for children who reside within a close proximity to nuclear power plants to be at greater risk to develop cancer and leukemia more frequently that those living further away. The fact that the NRC has asked the NAS to revise the 1990 NCI study casts great doubt, in our view about the current NCI study and its conclusions. Again, the authors of the 1990 NCI concluded, "that if nuclear facilities posed a risk to neighboring populations, the risk was too small to be detected by a survey such as this one." This, in our view, clearly illustrates the fact that 1990 NCI study was not designed to detect cancer risks at the community level.
Not one of the studies referenced in our scoping comments is mentioned in the scoping report or discussed in the FSEIS. Appendix A of the FSEIS did not discuss these particular studies, but did mention some other studies specific to other power plants. See FSEIS at A-281 to A-282. Indeed, several studies summarized by the NRC, including the National Cancer Institute's 1990 study of cancer mortality rates, appear to contain the same deficiencies and limitations as the National Cancer Institute's 1990 study of cancer mortality rates, such as focusing on cancer mortalities rather than cancer incidence, and drawing conclusions about cancer causation from county-wide studies rather than smaller populations within closer proximity to the nuclear power plants.
Moreover, the NRC then reaches the remarkable conclusion: "In summary, there are no studies to date that are accepted by the nation's leading scientific authoritiesthat indicate a causative relationship between radiation dose from nuclear power facilities and cancer in the general public." Id. at 282 (emphasis added). The studies we referenced were published in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals. Why has the NRC chosen to ignore them? Who are "the nation's leading scientific authorities"? Have "the nation's leading scientific authorities" reviewed and commented on the KiKK study? Have "the nation's leading scientific authorities" rejected the KiKK study in peer-reviewed
6 scientific or medical journals? Because the NRC omits any reference to or discussion of the KiKK study, much less any review or discussion of the KiKK study by "the nation's leading scientific authorities," the FSEIS remains unacceptably deficient in its analysis of potential adverse human health impacts.
Why would the NRC continue to rely on a 15-year old GEIS that obviously would not have considered numerous studies that have reported elevated rates and/or risks for cancer experienced by populations residing proximal to nuclear facilities that were completed subsequent to the release of the GElS (NUREG--1437) in 1996? And how can it be that these subsequent scientific studies challenging the conclusion of the 1996 GEIS would not be considered as new and significant information? Because, to our knowledge, there have been no studies assessing whether there is a higher incidence of childhood cancer (or any cancers or other adverse health effects, for that matter) for populations living in close proximity to nuclear power plants in the United States, it cannot be said conclusively whether such a correlation does or does not exist. However, the fact that such a correlation has apparently been observed in the KiKK study, among others, simply underscores the need to conduct comprehensive health studies in the immediate vicinity of nuclear power plants. We find it very troubling that the NRC would give the PINGP 20-year license renewal application an environmental impact pass on potential adverse human health impacts without exploring these studies further. It is even more troubling in the context of the PINGP license renewal as the PIIC represents a discrete minority population whose principal residential area is located within the 1-mile radius of the PINGP.
Nowhere in the Scoping Report (or the FSEIS) is a response to the numerous new studies we cited. The PIIC continues to believe that these studies are new and significant, and the NRC's failure to address them renders the FSEIS incomplete and defective.
Groundwater concerns remain We do not believe that groundwater impacts were fully evaluated in the FSEIS. The FSEIS discloses that tritium levels in groundwater around the PINGP are at or near natural background levels, except for wells P-10 and MW-8, which have been consistently higher than other monitoring wells (the highest reported level for well P- 10 was 3773 pico Curies per Liter (pCi/L in 2006). While we do understand that the detected tritium levels in wells P-10 and M-8 have been below the EPA drinking water standard of 20,000 pCi/L, there has been no conclusive explanation as to why these wells have had consistently and significantly higher tritium levels than the other monitoring wells.
After an apparent decline in tritium levels around the plant, however, there was an unexplained spike in well P-10 (2980 pCi/L) in October 2010, which was approximately 50 times higher than the lowest most recently recorded level (58 pCi/1 in March 2008).
We have yet to receive a satisfactory answer from the NRC or NSP as to why this occurred. What is the source this spike?
7 Rather than be satisfied that the tritium levels present are below the EPA drinking standard, why doesn't the NRC endeavor to determine the source of tritium detected?
Doesn't this raise a red flag that something is wrong at the PINGP 1 and 2?
Long-term storage of nuclear waste The Prairie Island Indian Community believes that the spent nuclear fuel stored at PINGP 1 and 2 will never leave. Each day the "temporary" waste storage at PINGP I and 2 becomes more permanent. It is expected that up to 98 casks will be in use at PINGP 1 and 2, once the plant is decommissioned. Furthermore, under the current waste confidence rule, the 98 casks could conceivably be on Prairie Island until 2094(60 years after cessation of operations). The NRC has not completed an environmental impact study evaluating the environmental and health consequences of long-term on-site storage of spent nuclear fuel. Indeed, the initial Environmental Assessment (EA) for the PINGP's ISFSI was for a twenty-year period and the scope of the EA was not as broad as an EIS.
Given the fact that the US government has all but abandoned Yucca Mountain (and wants to start the process anew), the 60-year time-period may not be enough. In fact, the NRC initiated a process in February 2011 to develop a long-term waste confidence rule, which will include an Environmental Impact Statement for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel, and updated Waste Confidence decision. The EIS will be initiated in 2012 with the final EIS and Waste Confidence update expected in 2016. The EIS will cover a storage period from 2050 (when most reactors would have reached the "beyond 60 year" bench mark) until 2250 (which would approximate the time when the fuel could approach 300 years of total storage time).The current Generic EIS for reactor re-licensing includes the current waste confidence rule of at reactor storage for 60 years beyond licensed operation of the plant.
This is new and significant information, as the assumptions pertaining to long-term storage, as stated in the 1996 GEIS, have changed completely and significantly in the last 12 months.
Cumulative Impacts Evaluated While the FSEIS evaluated environmental impacts from the expected extended power uprate and dry cask storage expansion, the analysis was cursory at best.
There are very serious concerns about thermal and radiological impacts from the extended power uprate that were not adequately considered. The temperature of the thermal effluent discharged into Sturgeon Lake (an impoundment of the Mississippi River) will increase; there was no analysis of impacts.
Archaeological Impacts The FSEIS disclosed that archaeological sites within the PINGP 1 and 2 were adversely impacted by either archaeological excavation or construction activities in the later 1960s/early 1970s. The archaeological excavations were conducted by a professional archaeological, hired by Northern States Power (now Northern States Power Minnesota),
8 in advance of construction of the PINGP. According to the FSEIS, at least 4 archaeological sites within the PINGP I and 2 were destroyed or disturbed (to one degree or another) by construction or archaeological excavation.
There was no condemnation by the NRC that these sites were destroyed, and there was no attempt by the NRC to require NSPM to mitigate or attempt to reverse the damage caused to these important and irreplaceable resources.
Thank you.
Sincerely, Philip R. Mahowald General Counsel cc: Andy Imboden (via email)
Elaine Keegan (via email)