ML12018A407
| ML12018A407 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Watts Bar  |
| Issue date: | 12/29/2011 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | Division of Operating Reactor Licensing |
| References | |
| Download: ML12018A407 (91) | |
Text
WBN2Public Resource From: Poole, Justin Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2011 2:12 PM To: Krieg, Rebekah; Fells, Carmen Cc: Bavol, Bruce; Milano, Patrick; WBN2HearingFile Resource
Subject:
Transcripts from public meeting Attachments: 1208nrc1313-Evening.doc; 1208nrc1313-Afternoon.doc I have attached copies of the transcripts from the public meeting on Dec 8th. These are being put in ADAMS today and should be available to the public next week.
Justin C. Poole Project Manager NRR/DORL/LPWB U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (301)415-2048 email: Justin.Poole@nrc.gov 1
Hearing Identifier: Watts_Bar_2_Operating_LA_Public Email Number: 620 Mail Envelope Properties (19D990B45D535548840D1118C451C74DC8B3F63A88)
Subject:
Transcripts from public meeting Sent Date: 12/29/2011 2:11:56 PM Received Date: 12/29/2011 2:11:57 PM From: Poole, Justin Created By: Justin.Poole@nrc.gov Recipients:
"Bavol, Bruce" <Bruce.Bavol@nrc.gov>
Tracking Status: None "Milano, Patrick" <Patrick.Milano@nrc.gov>
Tracking Status: None "WBN2HearingFile Resource" <WBN2HearingFile.Resource@nrc.gov>
Tracking Status: None "Krieg, Rebekah" <rebekah.krieg@pnnl.gov>
Tracking Status: None "Fells, Carmen" <Carmen.Fells@nrc.gov>
Tracking Status: None Post Office: HQCLSTR02.nrc.gov Files Size Date & Time MESSAGE 317 12/29/2011 2:11:57 PM 1208nrc1313-Evening.doc 98810 1208nrc1313-Afternoon.doc 126458 Options Priority: Standard Return Notification: No Reply Requested: No Sensitivity: Normal Expiration Date:
Recipients Received:
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Watts Bar Nuclear Plant EIS Public Meeting: Evening Session Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: Sweetwater, Tennessee Date: Thursday, December 8, 2011 Work Order No.: NRC-1313 Pages 1-34 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + +
4 PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS 5 DRAFT SUPPLEMENT TO THE 6 FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENT 7 FOR WATTS BAR NUCLEAR PLANT, UNIT 2 8 + + + + +
9 Thursday, December 8, 2011 10 Magnuson Hotel 11 1421 Murrays Chapel Road 12 Sweetwater, Tennessee 13 + + + + +
14 Evening Session 15 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 (6:30 p.m.)
3 MR. CARPENTER: Good evening. We're ready 4 to go ahead and get started now. I'm Gene Carpenter.
5 I'm with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
6 Thank you for coming. This is the second meeting 7 today of the Public Meeting to discuss the Draft 8 Supplement to the Final Environmental Statement for 9 Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, Unit 2.
10 What we will be doing today is Patrick 11 Milano and Jeremy Susco will be giving presentations 12 at the beginning of this meeting. Then we will go 13 into a question and answer portion. And then once we 14 finish with your questions, we will go into a comment 15 period. And that will allow everyone here to ask 16 questions specifically related to the Environmental 17 Statement Supplement. And then if you have comments 18 about related to Watts Bar, we will go into that.
19 We do not have -- because this is a 20 meeting between the NRC and the public, we will not be 21 taking questions specifically for the licensee. If 22 there are TVA people here who would like to talk to 23 someone about something after the meeting, certainly 24 welcome to do so. But today's meeting is specifically 25 for the NRC to interact with the public. And we do NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 1 appreciate your taking your time to come and chat with 2 us.
3 Now as I said, Pat will be giving the 4 presentation. And then Jeremy will be giving a 5 presentation. Let's go ahead and get started.
6 We also have Steve Campbell. Steve is the 7 Branch Chief for the Watts Bar Special Projects 8 Branch. Alan Howe, he is the Deputy Commission 9 Director for the Division of Operating Reactor 10 Licensing. These folks are all in the Office of 11 Nuclear Reactor Regulation in Rockport, Maryland at 12 the NRC Headquarters.
13 We also have some folks here from the 14 Regions. If you have questions about that, we can 15 talk -- introduce those.
16 And we also have a representative from our 17 Office of General Counsel if there's any legal 18 questions that we need to answer.
19 Couple of administrative aspects first.
20 Obviously everybody came in this door; that's one of 21 the fire exits. The other fire exit is the other side 22 of the room. There are the restrooms right there on 23 the left. So if you need to do something like that, 24 you don't have to run downstairs.
25 We do have some sign-in sheets right over NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 1 here. And I would like to encourage anyone who is 2 interested in asking questions or providing comments 3 to go ahead and sign in. You're obviously not 4 required to, but we would like to be able to keep a 5 record of who's asking questions and who are giving 6 comments in case we need to get something back to you.
7 Also we have here at the table also some 8 public meeting feedback forms. And as with any NRC 9 public meeting, we do encourage you if you do have any 10 comments about the meeting, how it runs, anything we 11 can do to improve it, please provide that. We always 12 appreciate that.
13 Also there are some handouts on the table.
14 There are some hard copies of the book in case some 15 of you have interest in that. They have electronic 16 copies of those again for your personal use and feel 17 free to take them. If you do sell them, more power to 18 you, but they're free for you to take, okay?
19 The other thing is I do encourage everyone 20 to please turn off your cell phone or at least put it 21 on mute just to give everybody a chance.
22 When we go to the question and answer 23 portion of the meeting, anyone who has signed in and 24 has indicated that they'd like to do questions, I will 25 take those people first. And then we will throw it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 open to anybody else from there. And the same with 2 comments from that point. We will try to go in as 3 much as possible around the room and give everybody a 4 chance.
5 So I will initially limit the question and 6 answers to three minutes for each question and three 7 minutes for each comment. If we have fewer or more 8 comments than that after we've gone through the first 9 or second round, we'll expand the time as appropriate.
10 With that I think we're good to go. At 11 this time we'd like to introduce Pat to come and have 12 a talk -- present his talk.
13 MR. MILANO: Thank you, Gene.
14 Again as Gene indicated, my name is 15 Patrick Milano, Pat Milano. I'm Licensing Project 16 Manager with the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor 17 Regulation. We commonly refer to it as NRR and you 18 may hear that again repeated several times tonight.
19 Our office is responsible for the Agency's 20 review of the application from Tennessee Valley 21 Authority to operate -- to license and operate a 22 second unit at the Watts Bar Station, Watts Bar 23 Nuclear Plant, Unit 2. And I will be discussing a 24 little bit about in general what's going on with the 25 licensing process for Watts Bar.
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6 1 And Jeremy will be taking and talking 2 about the environmental related activities for this 3 operating license application.
4 As all of you are probably aware, on 5 November 10th of this year, the NRC published its 6 notice of availability of the Draft Supplement to the 7 Final Environmental Statement related to the operation 8 of Watts Bar Unit 2. The Draft Supplement documents 9 the NRC's preliminary review of the environmental 10 impact associated with operating this unit for the 11 duration of the proposed operating license period.
12 Next one.
13 Oh, excuse me. Before we start, a 14 question came up earlier this evening with regard to 15 the docket number for this the operating license 16 activity at Watts Bar. And in general the docket 17 number is 50-391. However, if you're trying to find 18 information in our document control system that the 19 NRC maintains, it's called ADAMS; that's the acronym 20 for it. It's the Agency-wide Document Access and 21 Management System. And if you're using that, it's got 22 a field to put in the docket number and rather than 23 using the dashes, they use 05000391 there.
24 So we put it up on the screen just in case 25 somebody wants to find some of the information related NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 to overall as to what's been going on with Watts Bar 2 Unit 2 and the flow of information both from TVA and 3 from the NRC.
4 Next slide.
5 On this slide we're showing you the basic 6 agenda for today's meeting. I will be discussing, 7 like I said, a short discussion about the NRC's 8 regulatory role. Then we will provide you with a 9 summary of the environmental review, some of the 10 upcoming milestones, and then also how to submit 11 comments after this meeting if you'd like to submit 12 them either electronically or by some other written 13 method.
14 At the end of the presentation, like I 15 indicated, there will be some time for interested 16 parties to ask questions on the environmental review 17 process and more importantly time for you to present 18 your comments on the Draft Supplement too to the Final 19 Environmental Statement for Watts Bar Unit 2.
20 Next slide.
21 The NRC was established to regulate 22 civilian uses of nuclear materials, including 23 facilities that produce electric power. The NRC is 24 responsible for licensing and regulating the operation 25 of commercial nuclear plants in the United States.
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8 1 Watts Bar, like the other currently 2 operating nuclear plants, is being licensed under a 3 two-step process described in Part 50 of the NRC's 4 Regulations. And when I say two-step process, what 5 I'm saying there is there was a process to -- wherein 6 TVA was granted a permit to construct the facility.
7 And then separate from that there's the process that 8 we're currently in right now where we're evaluating 9 TVA's application to operate the facility.
10 In all aspects of the NRC's Regulation, 11 the Agency's mission is to ensure adequate protection 12 of public health and safety, to promote the common 13 defense and security, and to protect the environment.
14 Next slide.
15 All nuclear power plant applications must 16 undergo a safety review, an environmental review, and 17 an anti-trust review by the NRC. In order to 18 construct or operate a nuclear plant, an applicant 19 must submit a Safety Analysis Report. This document 20 contains basic design information criteria for the 21 proposed reactor and comprehensive data on the 22 proposed site.
23 As part of the application for an 24 operating license, an applicant provides more details 25 in its Final Safety Analysis Report, commonly referred NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 to as the FSAR, that provides further details about 2 the facility, presents the design basis and the limits 3 on its operation, and presents the safety analysis of 4 structures, systems, and components and the facility 5 as a whole.
6 It also discusses various hypothetical 7 accidents and the safety features of the plant that 8 would help to either prevent or to lessen the effects 9 of an accident. The NRC Safety Review covers a broad 10 range of areas, including those that are shown in the 11 upper portion of this slide.
12 The National Environmental Policy Act, 13 NEPA, requires federal agencies to integrate 14 environmental values into their decision making 15 process by considering the environmental impacts of 16 the proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to 17 those actions. To meet NEPA requirements, federal 18 agencies prepare a detailed statement known as an 19 Environmental Impact Statement. And this is in part 20 what we're here today to do. The NRC has prepared a 21 supplement to the Environmental Statement that was 22 done for Watts Bar Unit 1 and 2. And this supplement 23 is for Unit 2.
24 Because TVA is also a federal agency, it 25 was also required by NEPA to prepare an Environmental NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 Impact Statement to support the operation of Watts Bar 2 Unit 2.
3 The NRC's Regulations also define criteria 4 wherein licensing and regulatory actions require an 5 Environmental Statement. One of those criteria is the 6 issuance of a full power, or also you may hear it 7 called a Design Capacity License, to operate a plant.
8 The criteria for an identification of licensing and 9 regulatory actions of requiring Environmental Impact 10 Statements are found in Part 51 of our Regulations.
11 These Regulations require that an 12 applicant for a license contain a comprehensive 13 statement of the environmental impacts of the proposed 14 plant. And because of the two-step processes, as I 15 was indicating, an Environmental Statement was 16 prepared to support the construction permit. And this 17 environmental report at the operating license stage 18 that we're at right now expands on that initial report 19 and focuses specifically on the plant operation and 20 also it's submitted only in connection with the first 21 licensing action authorizing full power operation.
22 During the licensing of a nuclear plant 23 the NRC, like I indicated, also issues a Final 24 Environmental Statement, which identifies those 25 potential impacts and evaluates them and the benefits NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 1 of the proposed plant. After completing the review, 2 the NRC issues a Draft Environmental Statement for 3 comment by the appropriate federal, state, and local 4 agencies as well as the public. And then once all 5 those comments are received, the NRC addresses the 6 comments and issues the document in the final form 7 called the Final Environment Statement.
8 Next slide.
9 Here's a simplified chronology of some of 10 the major things that have taken place at the plant as 11 it relates to the environmental review. As I 12 indicated, because of the fact that TVA is a federal 13 agency and it was required to submit its own 14 Environmental Impact Statement, that was done 15 initially in September of 1972 to support the 16 construction permit. And the operating license 17 application came in several years later in June of 18 1976. And although I don't have it on here, the 19 Environmental Impact Statement to support operation at 20 that time of Watts Bar Unit 1 and 2 was submitted by 21 TVA in about September of `76.
22 The NRC evaluated the information that TVA 23 provided along with its doing some of its own reviews 24 and issued its Final Environmental Statement for Watts 25 Bar's Units 1 and 2 as an NRC document or an NRC NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 1 report. And the number of it is NUREG-0498. And that 2 was done in December of 1978.
3 As some of you are aware, in around 1985, 4 when TVA thought that Unit 1 was about ready to be 5 issued an operating license, a number of issues came 6 up and construction stopped at both Unit 1 and Unit 2.
7 And subsequently after a number of those issues were 8 corrected and TVA completed the remainder of the 9 plant, in the mid-`90s TVA did a review of its 10 Environmental Impact Statement for Unit 1 in May of 11 1994. And in April of 1995, the NRC supplemented that 12 December 1978 Environmental Statement for Unit 1 and 13 specifically for Unit 1 operation.
14 In July of 2008, TVA submitted a 15 Supplemental Environmental Statement to support 16 operation for Watts Bar Unit 2. And as indicated in 17 the report, there was some additional information that 18 was necessary to be submitted to support some aspects 19 of the environmental review. And that information was 20 submitted in January of 2009, wherein the staff felt 21 it had a complete submittal from TVA.
22 And also at the time that TVA informed the 23 NRC of its intent to reactivate construction of Watts 24 Bar, our five member Commission provided some 25 direction to the staff on how they wanted the review NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 1 to be conducted. And one of those things that they 2 did tell the staff to do was they wanted to offer the 3 public another opportunity to request a hearing if 4 need be.
5 And because of that the NRC issued a 6 Federal Register Notice of Availability of an updated 7 operating license application and opportunity for 8 hearing. This March 2009 date here is the date that 9 the information that updated the original operating 10 license application came in from TVA. And then May 11 2009, the NRC issued its Federal Register Notice for 12 the updated application.
13 And so that basically takes you up to 14 today with regard to what's been going on licensing 15 wise for Watts Bar Unit 2. If you've got some more 16 questions about some of the details, I know I went 17 through -- a lot has taken place in the last three 18 years. So if you've got other questions or want to 19 know a little bit more specifics about it, feel free 20 to ask me after the environmental review.
21 In any case I'm going to turn over the 22 floor now to Jeremy Susco, who's going to go into the 23 specifics about the staff's Environmental Review.
24 Thank you.
25 MR. SUSCO: Thanks, Pat. My name is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 1 Jeremy Susco and I work for the Environmental Team 2 that put together the document that we're here to 3 discuss today. And for those of you who heard me 4 speak earlier, my presentation hasn't gotten any 5 funnier or more interesting. So I hope you can stay 6 awake until we get to the Q&A period.
7 So why we're here today is to talk about 8 the Draft Supplement to the Final Environmental 9 Statement, which is kind of a confusing thing to say.
10 So to help kind of clear that up, so there's two 11 Environmental Impact Statements we're talking about, 12 one submitted by TVA and one done by the NRC. The one 13 submitted by the TVA I'm not going to call it an 14 Environmental Impact Statement. That was their 15 application, just so we can make that a little less 16 confusing.
17 TVA submitted their application. And 18 we're working on our Environmental Impact Statement 19 now.
20 So why are we doing a supplement to what 21 used to be a final and now it's a draft?
22 So back in '78, we put out our Final 23 Environmental Statement related to Watts Bar 1 and 2.
24 If they had gone up and operating since then, that 25 would have been it. There was a 20-year hiatus. And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 1 so we decided back in the `90s, when they started up 2 Unit 1, that was going to be Supplement 1, so 3 Supplement 1 to their 1978 document. Worked on that 4 while the conditions were still the same so we wanted 5 to supplement that and build on it for Unit 1.
6 That brings us up to Unit 2 and now we're 7 talking about Supplement 2. And so now we're also --
8 we're supplementing that `78 document, kind of 9 building on what was in there, building on Supplement 10 1 that was in the `90s. Again a lot of similar 11 issues. And now we're here at Supplement 2.
12 And this is draft and so that's what we 13 just put out a couple of months ago is the Draft 14 Statement that we're here to receive your comments on.
15 And if you're interested the third bullet on there, 16 our Part 51 requirements, that discusses what's 17 supposed to be on TVA's application as well as the 18 issues that we look at at the NRC. And further 19 guidance at the NRC is that fourth bullet down there, 20 another report called our Standard Review Plan.
21 That's what we look at.
22 And really what the Environmental Impact 23 Statement looks at is what would be the environmental 24 impact of granting that second license to our Watts 25 Bar 2 to operate.
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16 1 Next slide, please.
2 So putting together our Environmental 3 Impact Statement, this is not complete, but it's a 4 very good example of why the issues that we looked at.
5 And so some of the things that we're looking to hear 6 from the public on today are did we miss an issue.
7 And for the issues that we did examine is our analysis 8 complete? Is there something that we missed?
9 And so if we hear up at the podium and we 10 speak later as well in written comments you provide 11 later, those are the kind of things that we're looking 12 to hear about. That's why we have this public comment 13 period when it goes from draft to final.
14 The next slide, please.
15 So to give you an idea of some of the 16 information sources that we looked at, you can see it 17 there, the license application. That is TVA's 18 Environmental Impact Statement.
19 Public comments, we were here two years 20 ago about this time to hear public comments on the 21 scope of our view, what things should we look at, what 22 shouldn't we look at. Different permitting 23 authorities, the NRC is not the only person that TVA 24 has to answer to as far operating and a lot of their 25 permits they have to receive. We talked to those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 1 authorities and agencies, different state, federal, 2 and local agencies as well as some local tribal 3 councils, and NRC staff site eyed.
4 We actually came here back in October of 5 '09. And we actually examined the site and the 6 environmental issues to get a better idea of what was 7 really going on at this than we can realistically do 8 from our Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
9 But as part of this -- again everything 10 we're looking to hear public comments on is did we use 11 the best available data? And if we didn't, in your 12 public comments, let us know. Point us to that -- to 13 a particular reference and we will definitely take a 14 look at that.
15 Next slide, please.
16 So our preliminary conclusion -- and I'll 17 read this, "The NRC staff preliminary recommendation 18 to the Commission is that the environmental impacts 19 are not significant enough to forego issuing operating 20 license for Watts Bar Unit 2."
21 I just wanted to kind of break down that 22 overwrought statement and kind of highlight some of 23 the salient points there. The first one I want to 24 point out is preliminary. And synonymous we're using 25 here the term draft. We put out a Draft Environmental NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 1 Impact Statement. And our preliminary recommendation 2 is we haven't considered everything yet because we 3 haven't seen our public comments. And so that will 4 become a final recommendation after we do so. And 5 we're looking to put out our final document in May.
6 The next key word there is recommendation.
7 And the Watts Bar 2 license is not just resting on 8 this Environmental Impact Statement. This is just one 9 of the documents that goes up to the Commission when 10 they're looking to make the decision on whether or not 11 to grant that operating license.
12 They have the Environmental Impact 13 Statement, the Safety Evaluation Report that Pat 14 talked about earlier, different inspection reports.
15 And so this is just one component to the Commission 16 making that decision.
17 And then the not significant enough to 18 forego. What that legal term of art what that really 19 means is that it's not an unreasonable environmental 20 choice to make to issue an operating license. It's 21 not to say that there will be no impacts. It's that 22 there not will be impacts that are great enough that 23 it would be a ridiculous option environmentally to 24 grant the operating license.
25 So that's what we really tried to examine NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 when we put together this Environmental Impact 2 Statement.
3 And next slide, please.
4 So this milestone review, this is just the 5 documents that we're talking about here. The black 6 text here that's where we are now. We put out the 7 draft for public comment in October and we're here to 8 the public meeting to hear your public comments just 9 very shortly. And the public comment period is going 10 to close on December 27th.
11 And I do want everyone to know there were 12 several commenters in our meeting earlier today who 13 did ask for an extension. I just want everyone else 14 to know that we're going to take that request back to 15 Headquarters and look at the option of extending that 16 comment period for a little longer, especially past 17 the holiday period. And we're looking to put out our 18 final document after we consider and respond to all 19 the public comments in May.
20 Next slide, please.
21 So four other ways to submit public 22 comments. Number one, you have the podium today after 23 we're done speaking. And I promise this is my last 24 slide. Next way is by mail and you have the address 25 there. Probably the easiest way is on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 1 regulations.gov. And that docket ID is what's 2 particularly important there. When you go to 3 regulations.gov, you can put that docket ID and it 4 will bring up the web page for this particular 5 document. And there's a pretty easy form where you 6 can -- just a blank space for you to submit your 7 comments. And you press the Submit button and it 8 heads out to the NRC. And the last way if you so 9 choose, we do also have a fax number for comments.
10 It's like I said the current due date for 11 comments is December 27th. But we are going to look 12 at potentially extending that based on public request.
13 So that concludes my do. And I'll turn it 14 back over to Gene.
15 MR. CARPENTER: Thank you. All right, now 16 this is the real meat and potatoes part of the 17 meeting. Well, the reason that we're here today, and 18 that is to get your questions and comments to the 19 staff. Now the first part of this that we're going to 20 go into is the question and answer portion of this 21 meeting. And specifically if you have any questions 22 that the staff here they can answer, that we will 23 write down and take back and respond back to you in 24 writing. This is the portion that we would like to 25 have you go ahead and ask your questions.
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21 1 As soon as we're finished with all the 2 questions that we may have from the floor, then we 3 will go into the comment period so that any comments 4 that you have that you'd like us to consider then we 5 will take those. All right?
6 Now I'd ask at the beginning of the 7 meeting anybody who was interested in having to be 8 asked first for questions, comments to sign in and to 9 mark it that they would like to do so. With that 10 there is nobody who has done so, so I'm just going to 11 throw it open to the audience. Does anybody have any 12 questions of the staff?
13 Because we are having this transcribed 14 when I bring the mic over to you, please stand up and 15 tell your name when you do so. Or you can sit.
16 MS. HARRIS: Earlier today we talked about 17 --
18 MR. CARPENTER: Give your name.
19 MS. HARRIS: He knows. Ann Harris.
20 MR. CARPENTER: Thank you.
21 MS. HARRIS: Earlier today we talked about 22 some of the documents that you used to make your 23 judgment in here and some of them refer to 40-year-old 24 documents. Now I realize some things haven't changed, 25 but a lot more has changed than has not.
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22 1 And I'm wondering on these documents where 2 you used TVA's documents when you did use them and did 3 you just accept TVA's documents without going back and 4 checking to verify in those old documents and did you 5 go and look for new information concerning those same 6 documents because I'm not finding consistency between 7 what you've put in and some things that I personally 8 know about? And I'll put those in my comments. But 9 I'd like to know how you made those determinations.
10 MR. SUSCO: It's kind of a combination of 11 all of those things. So it really kind of depends on 12 the issue. For example, one issue that there's not 13 going to be a lot of new information is going to be on 14 the geology and soils of the area. Nothing has really 15 changed as far as what this -- what Watts Bar is built 16 on in the last 40 years. So we really could use some 17 of the older studies.
18 But for something like aquatic impacts, 19 now we might start -- as a starting point we might 20 look at something that was from when the plant was 21 initially built, but then we're -- I guarantee that 22 we're going to look at new information for that type 23 of impact, in particular because we really want to see 24 what has changed. And we already got the documents 25 from 40 years ago. We can see the delta and what sort NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 1 of impact the plant may have had on that particular 2 type of issue.
3 But as far as documents submitted by TVA, 4 yes, we do put a certain amount of trust in our 5 licensees that what they are submitting to us is 6 truthful. But that's not the only place that we look.
7 There's a lot if you look in the referencing section 8 for each of the chapters, you'll see 10 pages for 9 every chapter and all the references that we looked.
10 And only a small portion of those are TVA's. There's 11 a lot of expert studies that we look at from all sorts 12 of different sources. So it's kind of a combination 13 of all those things.
14 MR. CARPENTER: Any other questions for 15 the staff?
16 MR. RIDEN: David Riden from Riceville, 17 Tennessee. I signed the sign-in thing earlier. Had 18 no intent to ask a question, okay? What you said two 19 things that raise two questions in my mind.
20 The first one relates that I've lived 21 three years in Minot, North Dakota prior to 1968, when 22 the Mouse River flooded. And then recently I was a 23 contractor at Fort Calhoun on the Missouri River.
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24 1 projections were for the Missouri River. Fort Calhoun 2 had used data from the Corps of Engineers. And NRC 3 has a process to calculate each utility to calculate 4 that without utilizing the data from the Corps of 5 Engineers. And the reason why I was there was to look 6 back over their information that they were going to 7 present to NRC. And they did extensive updates.
8 Don't need to go into that.
9 But the bottom line is the information 10 provided by the Corps of Engineers was faulty. And 11 they made great improvements at Fort Calhoun and 12 they're still working on it. If you watch the news, 13 if they hadn't prepared for it, they'd be in a lot of 14 trouble, lot worse trouble. And I attribute NRC 15 pushing them to correct what they had there and it 16 made a bad situation a lot better.
17 And my question is has TVA depended on the 18 Corps of Engineers data for anything related to the 19 Tennessee River at Watts Bar? And if they have, will 20 NRC then go back to the Tennessee Valley Authority and 21 ask them the same prudent questions they asked the 22 utility owner on the Missouri River to do it in 23 accordance with the federal regulations and not depend 24 on the Corps of Engineers? So that's the first 25 question.
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25 1 And if there's any response, you've got my 2 email address. If there's any response back, I would 3 like to know because I'm an old-time resident of East 4 Tennessee, okay?
5 And that leads into the second question.
6 You want me to go ahead with the second question?
7 So that was the first question. I don't 8 know the answer to it even though I'm a former NRC 9 employee and a former TVA employee. I was here in 10 1978, when we were originally trying to start up Watts 11 Bar Unit 1. And I was the Nuclear Assurance Engineer 12 at the time.
13 And TVA upper management gave up on Watts 14 Bar and said, "David, we brought you here to start up 15 Watts Bar. We want you now to go to Sequoyah because 16 we changed our mind. We want to put our effort in 17 Sequoyah." So I went to Sequoyah and I was there 18 helping them start up the Sequoyah units.
19 And for whatever reason they wanted to --
20 it doesn't hurt my feelings -- but TVA ripped me along 21 with everybody else that were supplement people that 22 they moved over to Sequoyah. And when they released 23 me, they said, "Oh, by the way, David, we like what 24 you do. You're going to be back cause we've got a lot 25 more in TVA to do especially at Browns Ferry." So in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 1 the last 20 years I've spent over half of that time as 2 a contractor for TVA.
3 Before all that I mentioned I spent three 4 years in Minot, North Dakota. That's because I was 5 with the United Stated Air Force. I'm a Nuclear 6 Weapons Specialist. I was there to start up the 7 Minute Man Three Multiple Independent -- where you had 8 three vehicles.
9 So I preface this question with I am pro-10 nuclear. I'm an environmentalist. And there's 11 nothing with a more green environmental impact than 12 nuclear power. Its carbon footprint is zero. So I 13 come from a pro stance, okay?
14 But the question is -- and I guess I 15 should preface it. Having come from the nuclear 16 weapons industry and then going to the University of 17 Tennessee and getting a degree in nuclear engineering 18 and then getting into the nuclear power part and 19 working for NRC, people would beg me, "David, counting 20 on you to make sure that what you're doing out there 21 is safe. We don't know enough to even ask the 22 question."
23 And this is general. I get this 24 everywhere I go across the United States for the last 25 35 plus years. Will that thing blow up?
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27 1 And my answer has always been no, there is 2 no nuclear special grades material in our commercial 3 reactors in the United States that is used to make 4 nuclear weapons grade material. That is all made at 5 Savannah River. Don't even concern yourself.
6 Well, now I have to eat crow because the 7 Department of Energy got into an agreement with NRC 8 and TVA to shut down Savannah River and make their 9 special nuclear grade material at Watts Bar. Doesn't 10 hurt my feelings one bit at all. It's closer to home.
11 That's fine with me.
12 But I happen to know back in 1978 we 13 didn't even consider having a special core in Watts 14 Bar Unit 1 or 2. It wouldn't in the Environmental 15 Impact Statement to even look at that question of that 16 special nuclear grade material in the rods to go into 17 the core for the Department of Energy then to 18 reprocess.
19 So what I would expect or what NRC taught 20 me to do back in 1978, come up with some good words.
21 And so even though I haven't had a chance to read 22 this, one of the good things was you are here to find 23 out if you missed an issue or has something changed.
24 Well, something has changed. And it could be for the 25 good. I'm all for it; I'm not against it.
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28 1 What I'd like to see are words added to 2 the Final Environmental Impact Statement that address 3 the issue of the relationship with the Department of 4 Energy and the core that's being used that 5 everything's okay. That's what I'd like to see. Good 6 words to address it. And I don't know, maybe it's 7 addressed in here. But if it's not addressed at all, 8 then I think that leaves the door open for somebody 9 later on to raise an issue and I don't like issues 10 that fall under the area of assumptions or unverified 11 assumptions. I would like to know that NRC addressed 12 it and everything is okay.
13 That's the two questions I have.
14 MR. MILANO: Again it's Pat Milano. Since 15 my organization, the organization I'm with, has done 16 the Safety Evaluation Report, in Section 2 of the FSAR 17 and the final Safety Analysis Report as provided by 18 TVA and in Section 2 also of the staff's Safety 19 Evaluation Report, we address issues that relate to 20 site characteristics. And one of which is hydrology.
21 And that information has been significantly 22 supplemented in several of the last supplements to the 23 Safety Evaluation Report that the NRC has done.
24 And let me -- I'll try to give you a 25 little bit of a brief history of what's gone on. The NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 1 NRC staff was reviewing the code, the computer code, 2 and the input assumptions that were being used by TVA 3 to assess the overall operation of, you know, in the 4 Tennessee Valley, you know, the river operations. And 5 because of that the staff had a number of questions 6 and comments related to how well TVA had managed that 7 code.
8 And based on the staff's -- based on the 9 issues that the staff raised, TVA spent an over a year 10 effort to upgrade the computer code itself and 11 reassess all the input assumptions that go into 12 utilization of that code. And they did that for the 13 whole river system that's under their control. And so 14 that was recently done and you'll see that documented 15 in the staff's review as such.
16 So as you had originally indicated when 17 you were talking about the Corps of Engineers, it's 18 not -- the Corps of Engineers did not do the studies 19 for flood height and stuff like that. That was done 20 by TVA and utilizing these codes. And the staff, the 21 NRC staff, put a significant effort into reviewing 22 what TVA did in terms of upgrading the code and 23 rerunning it. So that's been documented in Chapter 2.
24 So does that answer your question?
25 MR. RIDEN: Yes.
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30 1 MR. MILANO: Okay.
2 MR. SUSCO: So on to the second half of 3 that. To be perfectly honest I don't know if this 4 particular environmental statement we're talking about 5 now mentions or discusses that particular issue about 6 --
7 MR. MILANO: First of all, I'm sorry to 8 take it away from you, Jeremy, but I'll turn it back 9 to him anyway. What you're talking about is the 10 production of tritium. And TVA in their negotiations 11 and their Memorandum of Understanding with the 12 Department of Energy they -- TVA is currently only 13 producing tritium with Unit 1 and there are no current 14 plans at least before us right now for them in the 15 core for Unit 2 to produce tritium.
16 And they're not -- I can talk to you later 17 a little bit. Some of this is somewhat security 18 sensitive and stuff.
19 But it's not something that's done 20 throughout the core. There's specific rods that 21 produce the tritium and sequester it and stuff. And 22 again it's currently only planned for Unit 1.
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31 1 license for Unit 2. And right now we're not 2 evaluating tritium production for Unit 2 because TVA 3 has not requested that.
4 And currently the core that TVA has 5 purchased from Westinghouse does not have that 6 capability with it. There are no tritium producing 7 rods in the current core.
8 When DOE and TVA requested to do this for 9 Unit 1, that came in as a specific request. It was 10 evaluated by the NRC staff and as part of that 11 evaluation the NRC staff is required to do an 12 environmental assessment of that. And so that 13 environmental assessment was done for Unit 1, not at 14 the original licensing, but as an amendment to the 15 operating license several years ago.
16 And if you want to know the specific 17 amendment, I'll have to get back with you because I 18 don't generally deal with Watts Bar Unit 1. But you 19 can find that type of information that you're looking 20 for in the information that supported that amendment 21 to the operating license for Unit 1.
22 MS. HARRIS: It's not hard to find in 23 ADAMS since TVA is the only one that makes it.
24 MR. SUSCO: Just to add a little bit.
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32 1 raise your hand, she -- it actually is in Chapter 4.
2 And Becky is one of the engineers that worked on 3 putting together different parts of this Environmental 4 Impact Statement.
5 And so I do encourage you to do those.
6 Read Chapter 4. And if somehow we didn't properly 7 characterize it or if there's pieces of information 8 that we're missing, let us know in your public 9 comments and we'll take a look at that.
10 MR. CARPENTER: Any other questions?
11 MS. HARRIS: One of the things that you 12 should know about the tritium is that DOE worked on 13 the evaluations from Sandia when they were done out in 14 New Mexico for a long period of time, like 20 years.
15 And they've had to back off of the amount that they're 16 producing at Watts Bar because it was not designed for 17 that. There's a lot of information out there that you 18 can find.
19 MR. CARPENTER: Thank you. Any other 20 questions?
21 And again if you have questions and you'd 22 like to give it to us in writing, we have some 3x5 23 cards here on the table, or you can send it in via the 24 regulations.gov website, mail it to the Chief, Rules, 25 Announcements and Directives Branch, or fax it in to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 1 us. We'll always take your questions at any time.
2 If there's no further questions, I'd like 3 to go ahead and open it up for comments. Do we have 4 any comments?
5 And we will take written comments also if 6 there's no public ones here.
7 None?
8 Pat, Jeremy, any last comments?
9 MR. SUSCO: No.
10 MR. MILANO: All I want to mention is I 11 don't want to take thunder away from Gene here, but 12 we're not -- the NRC we're not going to leave here 13 right away. If you've got anything else that's not 14 related maybe to the Environmental Statement, you want 15 to ask some general questions about and stuff like 16 that, we'll be here for a while. And if you want to 17 ask some more questions, we'll do what we can to 18 answer them for you.
19 MR. CARPENTER: Any other?
20 Well, thank you all for coming. We do 21 appreciate your taking the time and effort to come 22 here. I hope that this was informative for you. And 23 I do appreciate the questions and the comments, both 24 in this meeting and in the earlier ones.
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34 1 back to you if there's any other questions. We did 2 have written questions in the afternoon session. If 3 there's any further written questions, we will get 4 back to you on those.
5 So this is, as we put it out earlier, is 6 being transcribed. The transcription will be 7 available later once that is completed.
8 So at this point unless questions, 9 comments? Thank you all very much for coming. We do 10 appreciate your time. Thank you.
11 (Whereupon, this meeting was concluded at 12 7:18 p.m.)
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Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Watts Bar Nuclear Plant EIS Public Meeting: Afternoon Session Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: Sweetwater, Tennessee Date: Thursday, December 8, 2011 Work Order No.: NRC-1313 Pages 1-53 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + +
4 PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS 5 DRAFT SUPPLEMENT TO THE 6 FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENT 7 FOR WATTS BAR NUCLEAR PLANT, UNIT 2 8 + + + + +
9 Thursday, December 8, 2011 10 Magnuson Hotel 11 1421 Murrays Chapel Road 12 Sweetwater, Tennessee 13 + + + + +
14 Afternoon Session 15 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
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2 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 (2:00 p.m.)
3 MR. CARPENTER: Good afternoon. Can 4 everybody hear me now? Okay, good. All right, 5 welcome. I'm Gene Carpenter with the U.S. Nuclear 6 Regulatory Commission. And thank you for joining us 7 today.
8 This is a public meeting, a Category 3 9 Public Meeting, to discuss the Draft Supplement to the 10 Final Environmental Statement for Watts Bar Nuclear 11 Plant, Unit 2. We have still two paper copies up here 12 and a variety of electronic copies of that if anyone 13 would like to get a copy of it.
14 Today we are going to be discussing the 15 various aspects of this report and where we're going 16 from here. We have at the table Patrick Milano. Pat 17 is the Project Manager for Watts Bar 2. We also have 18 Jeremy Susco; he is the Environmental Project Manager.
19 He'll be also detailing this.
20 Today we will be going over various slides 21 to give you some information about what is happening 22 to date. The slides are also up here at the table if 23 anybody would like a copy of the handouts. And of 24 course they will be up here on the screen.
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3 1 for the meeting is to facilitate it, to ensure that we 2 do hear from the public. This is not only informing 3 you of what's going on but also to get your feedback.
4 That's the whole purpose behind a Category 3. So 5 after we go through the presentation materials, we 6 will then open the floor to questions and answers.
7 We have up here at the table some sign-in 8 sheets. We encourage you that if you will be asking 9 questions of the NRC to sign in and to just put a 10 check mark beside it because I will use that sign-in 11 sheet to have those people do the initial sign-in --
12 or pardon me -- the initial questions for this. And 13 then as we have time, we will open the floor to other 14 people who would like to ask questions.
15 Now as I said, I've introduced Pat and 16 Jeremy. We also have Steve Campbell. Steve is the 17 Branch Chief for the Watts Bar Special Projects 18 Branch.
19 A couple of other things for your 20 information. Right over here at the corner there are 21 the restrooms. You see the fire escapes, the door 22 that you came in on right over there. Hopefully we 23 won't have any need for that, but just in case.
24 We also have here at the table public 25 feedback forms. We do encourage you that if you have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 1 any feedback, go ahead and fill those out and provide 2 them to us.
3 And the other thing that I'd like to 4 remind you -- and it's something that I always forget 5 so I did it before the meeting start -- please silence 6 your phones. Thank you very much.
7 For those of you who want to ask questions 8 but are feeling a little shy about asking them, I do 9 have 3x5 cards. Anybody who would like some, just 10 raise your hand, I'll hand them out. That way we'll 11 ask those questions from there.
12 And then going forward with this, again 13 this is a meeting between the NRC and the public.
14 This is not a meeting with licensee. We do have some 15 members from the TVA here. But if you have questions 16 specifically for the TVA, that will have to be in 17 another forum. Staff cannot answer for the licensee.
18 With that I'd like to introduce Pat. He 19 will give the first of the presentations.
20 Thank you for coming.
21 MR. MILANO: Thank you, Gene. Go to next 22 slide, please.
23 Good afternoon. Again, my name is Patrick 24 Milano. And as Gene indicated, I'm Licensing Project 25 Manager with the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 Regulation. And if I talk to it again as I go through 2 my portion of the presentation, I'll refer to it as 3 NRR. It's our headquarters organization. And again 4 we do the technical reviews of operating license 5 applications.
6 The office is responsible for the Agency's 7 review of the application for -- from TVA for a second 8 unit at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant site. While today 9 I'll be talking just generally about what's been going 10 on from the licensing side, it's not where our 11 predominant focus is today. So I'm going to try to go 12 through my six or seven slides relatively quickly.
13 Along with me as Gene indicated is Mr.
14 Jeremy Susco. And he will be presenting some 15 information with regard to the environmental review 16 that took place to support the operation of Watts Bar 17 Unit 2.
18 On November 10th of this year, the NRC 19 published in the Federal Register the notice of the 20 Draft Supplement to the Final Environmental Statement 21 related to the operation of Watts Bar Unit 2. The 22 Draft Supplement documents the NRC's preliminary 23 review of the environmental impact associated with 24 operating a unit for the duration of the proposed 25 operating period, license period.
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6 1 I'll be providing you with some background 2 information, the details of which are for the overall 3 effort to review the application. And Mr. Susco again 4 will be addressing questions and on the results of the 5 staff's position on the application related to the 6 environmental impacts of operation.
7 I hope that the information that we 8 provide to you today will help you understand what 9 we've done so far and the role that you can play in 10 helping us make sure that the Final Environmental 11 Impact Statement is accurate and complete.
12 Next slide.
13 Thus here's the agenda for today's 14 meeting. Again I'm going to, like I indicated, I'm 15 going to try to keep it short. The real purpose of 16 the meeting today is to obtain comments and questions 17 from the public. However, we will be discussing a 18 little bit about the NRC's regulatory role. Some of 19 the summary of the environmental review that took 20 place itself, some upcoming schedule or milestones, 21 and then finally we'll go through some detail as was 22 presented in the Federal Register notice also how to 23 submit comments after this meeting if you want to do 24 so in writing or some other electronic way. And then 25 we'll go into a question and answer period and then NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 also into discussing comments or obtaining comments 2 itself.
3 Next slide please.
4 For those of you that may be have not been 5 at some of our other public meetings, I'm just going 6 to spend a little bit -- just a few seconds here 7 describing the NRC's role. The NRC was established to 8 regulate civilian uses of nuclear materials, including 9 facilities that are used to produce electric power.
10 The NRC is responsible for licensing and regulating 11 the operation of commercial nuclear plants in the U.S.
12 And Watts Bar, like the other currently 13 operating nuclear plants, is being licensed under a 14 two-step process that's described in Part 50 of the 15 NRC's Regulations. This process requires both a 16 construction permit and an operating license. NRC 17 approval is necessary before a nuclear plant can be 18 built and operated. The NRC maintains oversight of 19 the construction and operation of a facility 20 throughout its lifetime to ensure compliance with the 21 Commission's Regulations. In all aspects of the NRC's 22 Regulations that the Agency's mission is to assure 23 adequate protection of public health and safety, to 24 promote common defense and security, and to protect 25 the environment.
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8 1 Next slide.
2 All nuclear power plants must undergo a 3 safety review, an environmental review, and an anti-4 trust review by the NRC. In order to construct and 5 operate a nuclear plant, an applicant must submit a 6 Safety Analysis Report. This document contains the 7 design information and criteria for the proposed 8 reactor and comprehensive data on the proposed site.
9 As part of the application for an 10 operating license, an applicant provides more details 11 in its Final Safety Analysis Report, commonly referred 12 to as an FSAR, that describes the facility, presents 13 the design basis and the limits on its operation, and 14 presents a safety analysis of the structures, systems, 15 and components of the facility as a whole.
16 It also discusses various hypothetical 17 accident situations and safety features of the plant 18 that would prevent accidents or would lessen their 19 effects. The NRC Safety Review covers a broad range 20 of areas, including those that are shown on this 21 slide.
22 The National Environmental Policy Act, 23 NEPA, requires federal agencies to integrate 24 environmental values into their decision making 25 process by considering the environmental impacts of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 the proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to 2 those actions. To meet NEPA requirements, federal 3 agencies prepare a detailed statement known as an 4 Environmental Impact Statement. Because TVA is also a 5 federal agency, it was required also by NEPA to 6 prepare an Environmental Impact Statement to support 7 the operation of Watts Bar Unit 2.
8 The NRC's Regulations define criteria 9 wherein licensing and regulatory actions require an 10 Environmental Impact Statement. One of these criteria 11 is the issuance of a full power, or it's also 12 sometimes called the Design Capacity License, to 13 operate a nuclear reactor. That criteria for an 14 identification of licensing and regulatory actions of 15 requiring Environmental Impact Statements are found in 16 Part 51 of the NRC's Regulations.
17 The regulations require that an 18 application for a license contain a comprehensive 19 assessment of the environmental impacts. And because 20 an operating license applicant would have already had 21 to prepare an environmental report at the construction 22 permit stage, the environmental report at the 23 operating license stage expands on that initial report 24 and focuses predominantly on plant operation and is 25 submitted only in connection with the first licensing NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 action authorizing full power operation.
2 During the licensing of a plant, the NRC 3 issues its own Final Environmental Statement, which 4 identifies these potential impacts and evaluates them 5 and the benefits of the proposed plant. After 6 completing this review, the NRC issues a Draft 7 Environmental Statement for comment by appropriate 8 federal, state, and local agencies as well as the 9 public. Afterwards the agency issues its Final 10 Environment Statement that addresses all comments that 11 were received.
12 Lastly I'd just like to indicate to you 13 this chronology is not all inclusive. It's just some 14 that are more appropriate towards the environmental 15 review that took place. As you can see here, the TVA 16 submitted an Environmental Impact Statement for the 17 construction of Watts Bar Unit 1 and 2 back in 18 September of 1972. The original operating license 19 application came in and was docketed by the NRC in 20 1976 with the application coming in about June of 21 1976. And I believe the Environmental Impact 22 Statement for operation came in around September of 23 that same year.
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11 1 Environmental Statement for operation of both Watts 2 Bar's Units 1 and 2 in a form of an NRC report, the 3 number of which is NUREG-0498. And that was done in 4 December of 1978.
5 And as all of you are aware, between that 6 time and the start of operation of -- or the licensing 7 of Watts Bar Unit 1 -- a number of things occurred.
8 And there was a period wherein TVA was stopped 9 construction for a period of time and then had to 10 correct a number of both corporate and site specific 11 issues. And because of that, because of that long 12 duration between the 1976 or 1978 environmental 13 statements, TVA supplemented its review of its 14 Environmental Impact Statement for Watts Bar Unit 1 in 15 May of 1994. And likewise the NRC supplements its 16 Final Environmental Statement in April of 1995. Both 17 of which supported the operation of Watts Bar Unit 1.
18 Watts Bar Unit 2 was not completed at the 19 time and it was not until 2008, when TVA made the 20 decision to take Watts Bar Unit 2 out of the deferred 21 plant status and to complete construction, ultimately 22 leading to operation of Watts Bar 2. And that was 23 done -- it was a supplemental Environmental Impact 24 Statement that was done by TVA to support operation of 25 Watts Bar 2. And that was submitted in July of 2008.
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12 1
2 There were several items that TVA also 3 needed to provide to further supplement its 4 supplement. And those things came in in January of 5 2009.
6 Lastly based on -- based in part on a 7 direction from the NRC's Commission, we requested that 8 TVA update the original operating license application 9 because of the long period of time that had progressed 10 from the original application until 2009. And as such 11 in March of 2009, TVA provided an update to its 12 operating license application and the NRC in May of 13 that same year issued a Notice of Availability and 14 Opportunity for Hearing based on that updated 15 operating license application.
16 And with that, that's about all my 17 prepared notes are for a little bit of the background 18 of Watts Bar and where the plant currently stands.
19 And with that I'm going to turn over the 20 floor to Jeremy Susco, who's going to go into the 21 details of the Environmental Review, which is the 22 reason why we're here today.
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13 1 here to discuss today. So some of you may find it a 2 little bit confusing to kind of describe how we got to 3 where we are today. So first thing I guess I want to 4 make I guess a little bit clear. We're talking about 5 two different user terms. TVA has their EIS and then 6 we have our Environment Impact Statement that we're 7 putting out. So I'm not going to call TVA's EIS their 8 EIS. It's part of their application.
9 So TVA put in their application. It also 10 happened to include their assessment of environmental 11 impacts. We use that as one of the sources of 12 information put together our Environmental Impact 13 Statement. So we have TVA's application. And we 14 have the Environment Impact Statement that we wrote 15 that we're here to describe today.
16 So back in '78, assuming the plants were 17 going to get done then, we put out our Final 18 Environmental Impact Statement. And that never 19 happened. So come back in the `90s, then we decided 20 to supplement that. When TVA came in, they said we 21 want to build Watts Bar 2. And then we said, okay, 22 we're going to take what we've done. We're not going 23 to throw away what we did back in '78. We're going to 24 supplement that. It's got a lot of good information.
25 And so we supplemented that. That's the first NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 1 supplement we did back in '95 for Watts Bar Unit 1.
2 Now we get to that really long complicated 3 name we put up in the first slide, we're Supplement 2.
4 And so now we're talking about Supplement 2 to that 5 1978 document. So again we're taking what was in that 6 '78 document and we're building on it. And that's 7 where we are today. We've got Supplement 2 to that 8 document.
9 And now we get to the word draft. And now 10 that Supplement 2 is in its draft form. And that's 11 what we're here to talk about and get your comments 12 on. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement is not 13 final and it won't be final until -- I think our 14 schedule now has it being put out in May. But after 15 we receive your comments and after we examine them and 16 take a look at how it might impact our Environmental 17 Impact Statement, then get put out as a final 18 statement, very similar to the final statement that 19 was put out back in '78.
20 So as Pat said if you're interested in any 21 of requirements that go along with what's in TVA's 22 application and in our review, those are in Part 51 of 23 the NRC's Regulations and as well another publicly 24 available document is the last document on the bottom 25 there. That discusses what we look at and how we put NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 1 together an Environmental Impact Statement.
2 This is not an all-inclusive list, but I 3 wanted to give you an example. I mean you can see the 4 same thing in our Table of Contents. These are some 5 of the issues that we looked at and again why we're 6 here today.
7 So one of the things to think about is did 8 we miss an issue? Great source of public comments.
9 Is our analysis complete? Again we encourage you 10 today to make comments on that and as well any written 11 comments.
12 The next slide, please.
13 So where did we get our information from?
14 License applications, that is TVA's EIS. I wanted to 15 make that clear. That's one of the sources of 16 information. Public comments, we were here back in I 17 think it was October 2009 to receive public comments 18 on the scope of what we should look at. Different 19 permitting authorities that are also involved in 20 different permits that TVA is required to get as part 21 of operation. We talk to many federal, state, and 22 local agencies as well as some tribal organizations in 23 the area.
24 And we also came here back in -- oh, so it 25 was November of '09, October, November of '09. And we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 1 did a site on it where we actually went to the site 2 and it's a very -- we all live and work in Washington.
3 So we wanted to make sure we got out to the plant to 4 see what everything looked like, what species were 5 here, and the representative things. And so that's 6 why we came here.
7 But again another good source of 8 information we're looking for is you see all this 9 stuff that we kind of looked at and you'll see all the 10 references in our document.
11 Did we use all the best available data?
12 Another great source of public comments. And you can 13 either tell is that we didn't or even better yet you 14 point us to -- if you have data that we didn't use, 15 point us to that data in your public comments.
16 So the conclusion -- I'm sorry, our 17 preliminary conclusion. So the staff have preliminary 18 recommendations to our Commission that the 19 environmental impacts are not significant enough to 20 forego issuing Watts Bar Unit 2 license.
21 I'm a full-time bureaucrat and I probably 22 would have a hard time making that any more 23 complicated than it already sounds. So I'll just kind 24 of break that down a little bit. So there's a couple 25 important key words in there. Number on is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 1 preliminary. And it synonymous with a draft. It's 2 not a final yet. And that's again why we're here 3 today to hear your comments.
4 Second one is the word recommendation. So 5 the Watts Bar 2 license is not going to stand alone on 6 the Environmental Impact Statement. We're going to 7 give our recommendation in this document to the 8 Commission, the ultimate decision maker on whether or 9 not Watts Bar Unit 2 is going to get a chance to 10 operate.
11 And the Environmental Impact Statement is 12 going to be one part of the things that go to those 13 decision makers to make that decision. It's going to 14 be the Environmental Impact Statement, the Safety 15 Evaluation the NRC performs as the result of 16 inspections. So this is just -- it's one component 17 and it's just our recommendation on the environmental 18 impact associated with operating Unit 2.
19 And the last one is not significant enough 20 to forego. So just to say that in more plain English, 21 it's would not be unreasonable to go forward. The 22 impacts would not be so unreasonable that it wouldn't 23 make any sense to possibly operate this plant. Now 24 that's not to say that there will be no impacts. But 25 what we're trying to say is that they will not be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 1 significant enough that this decision would be totally 2 ridiculous.
3 So those are the kind of key breakdown of 4 what that really means. And it will go from 5 preliminary to final with our Final Environmental 6 Impact Statement that we put out next year.
7 So this particular side is just the 8 environmental review milestones. So we are down at 9 the black one down there. Since we're here today for 10 the public meeting, we're going to receive your 11 comments here in the microphone after a short Q&A 12 session. Your comments are due by December 27th.
13 So the next slide does show other ways 14 just to make comments.
15 And it's May 2012 after examining all 16 these comments when we're anticipating putting out the 17 Final Statement.
18 So other ways to submit comments. So 19 first one, the microphone. I've got transcriber here.
20 And so today or you can come back to the meeting this 21 evening. Also you can do mail. And there's the 22 address there. Probably the easiest way now to do it 23 is on the internet, regulations.gov. That's where 24 actually all federal agencies post -- do all their 25 rule making and ask for comments.
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19 1 The important thing you note there is the 2 docket ID. And that's so when you go to 3 regulations.gov and you enter that docket ID, you'll 4 go right to this particular -- I don't know the right 5 word. It's not rule making, but this particular 6 document will give you a chance to make the comments 7 there.
8 And the last thing is if you want you can 9 fax them as well. But again remember December 27th is 10 the due date for comments.
11 And so that's all I have. And we'll turn 12 it back over to our Facilitator, Gene.
13 MR. SAFER: Can we ask a question?
14 MR. SUSCO: Yeah, Gene's going to 15 facilitate it.
16 MR. CARPENTER: We're going to leave that 17 one on up here for a little while so that everybody 18 who'd like to write it down will have an opportunity 19 to do so.
20 Now this is -- we've gone through the 21 formal presentation portion of the meeting. Pat and 22 Jeremy have told you what it is that we're doing now.
23 Now is the time that we are going to throw 24 this open for questions that we have. The way that I 25 will do this, first off is when you came in we asked NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 1 you to sign in. And the individuals who signed in and 2 told us before the meeting started that they wanted to 3 ask questions put a little check mark beside their 4 name. I've got the list.
5 So Ms. Ferris, we're going to start with 6 you. And then Mr. Safer, you'll be the second 7 question. The reason for that is simply that Ms.
8 Ferris' name is first on there and you're the second 9 name on there. Okay.
10 And what we'll do, if you don't mind, 11 we'll going to start this with a three-minute time 12 limit for questions and answers. That's to give 13 anyone else here a chance. If we go through the first 14 set of questions and there's nobody else, we'll throw 15 it open for a second round, a third round, however 16 many we need. And then we'll go into -- once we're 17 through with the questions and answers, we'll go into 18 the comment period. Okay? Very good.
19 Justin here is going to help me. He will 20 raise his hand whenever we get to three minutes. So 21 again, just give everybody an opportunity to have 22 their time to talk. Okay?
23 Ms. Ferris. Would you like to stand up?
24 Would you like me to hold that for you?
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21 1 with the geology, the underground structures that this 2 plant has been built upon. And my question is whether 3 this is karst, k-a-r-s-t. Don't ask me what that 4 stands for. But it's limestone. And I'm wondering 5 whether this is being built and has been built on 6 limestone topography?
7 MR. MILANO: Sorry about that. There were 8 too many switches. Although today we're not here to 9 discuss the safety analysis that was done for the 10 plant, the aspects of geology were discussed and can 11 be seen in Section 2 of the staff's Safety Evaluation 12 Report of which is in it's also an NRC Regulation.
13 No, that's the Final Environmental 14 Statement, Gene. The Safety Evaluation Report is also 15 another NUREG document. And it's NUREG-0847, zero 16 eight four seven. And it's -- you can observe it on 17 the NRC's website. And both the original that was 18 done to support the operation of Watts Bar Units 1 and 19 2 when TVA at the time was proposing licensing both 20 units at the same time.
21 And it has been supplemented. It was 22 supplemented through Supplement 20 to support Watts 23 Bar Unit 1 and right now we're at Supplement 25 --
24 Supplements 21 through 25 have been specifically for 25 Watts Bar Unit 2 operation. And I'm sorry. I'm not a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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22 1 geologist or seismologist. So all I can do is refer 2 you to those documents and it's discussed in there.
3 And also there's some -- there is information in TVA's 4 Final Safety Analysis Report and also in Section 2 on 5 site characteristics that describes that.
6 MR. CARPENTER: Mr. Safer.
7 MR. SAFER: I have a couple of questions.
8 I don't think it will take three minutes. The first 9 one is since the public comment period is over 10 December 27th, right in the middle of the holidays, I 11 think that's extremely inconvenient. Those of us that 12 think the NRC is not that cooperative to the public 13 comments feel like it's by design. But we would ask 14 for an extension of 45 days so that people have an 15 opportunity to comment on this outside of the holiday 16 period. And I don't know that that can be granted 17 today, but I think that's a formal request, as formal 18 as I can get right here.
19 So I don't know if there's a response to 20 that. And I have another question.
21 MR. SUSCO: Very reasonable request, and 22 we've in many other proceedings we've entertained 23 extensions. Andrea, can you speak to -- we've one of 24 our lawyers here -- what the process is as far as 25 requesting an extension?
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23 1 MS. JONES: Sir, I am a lawyer for the 2 NRC. I'm actually not very clear on what the 3 extension process is. But I do know that the timeline 4 -- I don't mean this to patronize you either. But I 5 do know that the timeline is set according to 6 Regulation. But as far as extensions are concerned, I 7 think that would be a matter we'd have to take back to 8 the office and ask them. That would be a decision for 9 the office to make.
10 MR. SAFER: And how would we get the 11 answer? When would we expect an answer?
12 MS. JONES: I'm not sure, because I'm not 13 sure what the process for getting an extension would 14 actually be. We don't necessarily have a process for 15 that in our Regulations, not that I can recall.
16 MR. SUSCO: We will grab your information 17 and we can discuss that afterwards about the exact 18 process for making that occur.
19 MR. SAFER: Okay, well, that would be 20 something that of course other members of the public 21 would be interested in.
22 Then another technical question. In 2.6, 23 the radiological environment, it references a report, 24 Annual Radiological Environmental Operating Report, 25 RAMP, and also the Annual Radioactive Affluent Release NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 1 Report. I believe those are from TVA, but -- and I 2 know you all are not TVA. But I'm just wondering how 3 to get a hold of this document.
4 MR. MILANO: Both of those documents are 5 available through -- they were submitted on the docket 6 by TVA. And if you're familiar with our Agency-wide 7 Document Access and Management System, ADAMS, you can 8 find them in ADAMS. They're probably -- since both of 9 those documents are generally to support operation of 10 the facility, probably use the Watts Bar Unit 1 docket 11 number which is 50-390. So in ADAMS they use a bunch 12 of zeros so you go like zero five zero zero zero three 13 nine zero.
14 THE REPORTER: Zero five --
15 MR. MILANO: Zero five zero zero zero 16 three nine zero.
17 MR. SUSCO: If you look in the references 18 to that particular chapter -- actually any chapter --
19 almost everything that we reference will give that 20 specific ADAMS number. So if you go on our website 21 and you go in ADAMS, type in that number, it'll pull 22 up that report for you. So look in the references for 23 Chapter 2 for the ADAMS number.
24 MR. CARPENTER: Thank you. Other 25 questions?
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25 1 MS. HARRIS: We've got a new guy here. We 2 have a lot of people from headquarters that should 3 come here more often to see what's really going on.
4 The other thing is -- my name is Ann Harris. And I'm 5 with We the People. And I want to second Mr. Safer's 6 request that an extension be given to this because 7 that right now I'm looking at 13 different comments 8 that has been requested that I make on. And all of 9 them are due within like 6 days of each other.
10 And then when we can't get the documents, 11 because this document is -- it's a nightmare. I'm 12 seeing a lot of information that has not been updated 13 from 1972. I'm a local resident so I know.
14 So I don't know where you got your 15 information. You may have gotten it from different 16 agencies. You said federal, state, and local. Well, 17 some of these with information in here that whenever I 18 went, I got different information. So I'm having a 19 hard time dealing with your numbers and the 20 information that you're giving as opposed to what I'm 21 getting from the same agencies.
22 Because they said, "Oh, they've already 23 been here." And I asked. I said, "Give me the 24 information you gave them." And they said, "Oh, we 25 can't do that." So I said, "Okay." So they're making NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 1 me do FOIA requests over your documents that you 2 requested to put into this. So this is a nightmare.
3 And I don't know how that somebody that 4 can read and write out of the third grade could 5 discover what you've done here. It's so convoluted.
6 It's really, really a written nightmare. Now I've 7 been through about half way through it. And it's 8 taken me two and a half weeks. And I spent at least 9 two to four hours at night trying to go through it.
10 But some of the information -- let's go 11 over one issue. You talk about the tritium in the 12 water. And I know nobody don't want to hear about it.
13 And you're here sick and tired of hearing me talk 14 about it. I'm sick and tired of having to deal with 15 it. But the other thing is, you've not dealt with the 16 tritium. You call it a spill.
17 Three years of over the limit and then you 18 didn't even do anything to TVA about it to begin with.
19 That is still sitting out there. Don't tell me the 20 tritium is gone because I know better.
21 And the other thing is you're relying on 22 these local state agencies through your agreement 23 state letter to do a lot of your work for you. That's 24 just so that you're further removed. The state is not 25 testing for a lot of this stuff. So there's no NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 1 records and no benchmark for you to start with. And 2 you're using old data to do that. Well, somebody's 3 got to go back in there and do some real work instead 4 of just dropping it into this.
5 So I'm making a formal request that we 6 have an extension for 45 days. And this is strictly 7 up to the staff, ma'am. I don't know how long you've 8 been in General Counsel's office. But this is just --
9 it's not something that's a big deal. These guys 10 here, they can do it today or Bob Petty has the 11 authority to say I will see that the extension goes 12 through.
13 Thank you.
14 MR. CARPENTER: Thank you. Appreciate the 15 comments.
16 Any questions? No other questions for the 17 staff?
18 And now we'll go on to the comment section 19 since we've basically already have been in comment's 20 section. So do we have comments?
21 MS. FERRIS: Can we comment more than 22 once?
23 MR. CARPENTER: You may comment as many 24 times as you wish. But we'll go one time each. And 25 then everybody else has a fair term before we go to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 1 the second.
2 MR. SAFER: Is there a time limit on these 3 comments?
4 MR. CARPENTER: Want to say again, three 5 minutes.
6 MS. FERRIS: Well, my first comment is 7 that last Christmas, I had 20 people coming to dinner.
8 And I was spending time trying to get the NRC to give 9 us a public hearing on the German waste that's being 10 imported into Tennessee to be burned at Oak Ridge.
11 And I had -- I was working on my computer by night and 12 cooking by day.
13 It is not a dot away. If you put these 14 comments and these deadlines right at Christmas time, 15 you're going to get a lot fewer of them. And you 16 probably are aware of that. Donnie took it from 17 there. The time my company arrived, he worked on the 18 proposal yet.
19 Of course we were told we had no standing 20 after spending untold hours trying to get an appeal to 21 the NRC to at least give us a public hearing on the 22 fact that radioactive waste is being imported into the 23 state.
24 So I think this matter of a deadline is 25 extremely important.
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29 1 MR. CARPENTER: Any comments?
2 MR. SAFER: Hello, everybody. I think we 3 were here in, what was it, 2007, you said, or '09 --
4 nine. I read some of my comments in the book. If you 5 didn't listen the first time, you probably don't 6 listen this time. But I'll say it again because maybe 7 it makes a few people squirm in their seats.
8 I speak today for all the future 9 generations that have no voice in this proceeding but 10 will be terribly affected by the decisions that are 11 being made that are allowing this plant to be built.
12 I think we all have seen what has gone on 13 at Fukushima and it's terrible. People are having to 14 leave their homes. School children's tennis shoes are 15 contaminated with radiation. Whole areas are 16 evacuated. Farms that have been in families for 17 generations are now abandoned and probably never to be 18 returned to.
19 So when you talk about the environmental 20 impact of this type of reactor, of any nuclear 21 reactor, you have to realize that the effects are not 22 small. And that was what in this document what they 23 came up with was that the environmental impacts are 24 small. Now tell that to the people in Fukushima.
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30 1 the crux of it.
2 I realize that there's nothing that I can 3 say here today that's going to turn this thing around.
4 I feel like David and Goliath. And I don't have the 5 magic stone that he had and I wish I did. And I 6 wouldn't throw it to hurt anybody, but I would sure 7 throw it to stop this reactor because I think the 8 effects of it -- unfortunately if something goes 9 wrong, something go monumentally wrong.
10 And I do find it troubling that in this 11 document there is -- I didn't see the word Chernobyl 12 one time. I understand from the discussion earlier in 13 the informal period with Mr. Susco that it's included 14 in the computer model. But including 6,000 thyroid 15 cancers into the computer model is not quite the same 16 thing as stating that when that reactor blew up the 17 effect was 6,000 at least documented cases of thyroid 18 cancer. And if we understood us to say, oh, it was a 19 minor thing. The effects aren't that great.
20 But you know, they're still monitoring a 21 lot of the agricultural products in that region.
22 There are still great areas that are uninhabitable for 23 many years. It's the *cesium that's going to stay 24 positive for 300 to 500 years. That's what we're 25 talking about here.
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31 1 Now Fukushima you've got enormous releases 2 of radiation. You've got just today in the newspaper 3 the announcement that baby food is being recalled, 90 4 containers of baby food because the Japanese are 5 catching it. But the rice has been contaminated.
6 It's a nightmare. The economic effects, the human 7 effects, and the ecological effects are going to 8 reverberate around the planet till kingdom come 9 basically. And that's what's at stake here.
10 And I'm just going to keep saying it even 11 though it seems to fall on deaf ears because 12 everything that was brought up leading up to that 13 document there was always an answer to it and don't 14 worry, pat us on the back and say --well, when I went 15 to the Atlanta hearing on the Blue Ribbon Commission 16 for high level waste, they kept on saying that the 17 more -- it's just you're not educated.
18 Listen, I've been studying this stuff for 19 about 15, 20, 30 years. I mean I was involved in this 20 process back the first time around with TVA and the 21 nuclear plants. The more I know, the more it troubles 22 me. So don't be saying that, oh, all you need to do 23 is know more about it and you won't be so concerned.
24 The more I know, the more concerned I get.
25 MR. CARPENTER: Any other comments?
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32 1 MR. KURTZ: I feel like I'm in the middle 2 here and I ought to stand somewhere where everybody 3 can see me. Where shall I go? I'll go up here with 4 Donnie.
5 I'm Sandy Kurtz. I'm with Bellefonte 6 Efficiency and Sustainability Team and we are a 7 concerned citizens group, a chapter of the Blue Ridge 8 Environmental Defense League. And of course we don't 9 care much for the idea of building yet another nuclear 10 plant in the Chattanooga region. I live in 11 Chattanooga.
12 And it just -- I guess I can summarize my 13 comments with these words, more is not better. And as 14 I told the press, it makes no sense to say there will 15 be no significant environmental impacts when you 16 double the number of nuclear plants at the same site.
17 The only reason I can think that they could possibly 18 say that is because the environment has already been 19 ruined with the first plant. Two plants in the same 20 place makes twice as much risk for accidents, for 21 human error, for radiation in the water, for tritium 22 in the water, and for ongoing aquatic danger to the 23 aquatic species, not to mention the health of our 24 people themselves.
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33 1 continue to add more risk to what's happening already.
2 We already had six nuclear reactors in this area and 3 we don't really need another one.
4 The Environmental Impact Statement, I just 5 can't believe that there would be no more impacts when 6 you're actually doubling the possibilities.
7 Thank you.
8 MR. CARPENTER: Other comments?
9 MS. HARRIS: Questions?
10 MR. CARPENTER: You have a question? Yes.
11 MS. HARRIS: At what point -- cause we 12 don't seem to have a benchmark of what -- how far TVA 13 can go that you won't let them go any further? You're 14 saying in here I see about the tritium. TVA managed 15 to fill a leak so they're containing the tritium.
16 Now whatever that magic thing is, Mr.
17 Stinson (phonetic), I hope, will sell it to the other 18 100 nuclear plants in this country which leak every 19 day during their operations. So it's worth bazillions 20 of dollars to stop the tritium leaking into the river.
21 Now the State of Tennessee, TDEC, they're 22 not even testing for anything like that. They don't 23 look at it. They say it's not -- they don't have the 24 money to test for it. Well, whenever I question an 25 NRC person, they look at me and say, "That's TDEC and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 1 we don't have authority over them." Well, you gave 2 them a letter of authority under the agreement state 3 letter in -- I'm sorry, Roger. Yeah, it went into 4 your hair on your head, into your ears. But the thing 5 is that there has to be a limit of how far they can 6 go.
7 The other thing is that I want to know 8 what kind of security is around the intake pumping 9 station. And I'm talking about serious security and 10 about the outfalls. Now everybody says, oh, nobody 11 don't know where they're at. They don't know what's 12 going on with them. Get real. These things are not 13 secrets.
14 I mean when you live here on this river 15 like I have all my life, you know all the secrets on 16 this river. They ain't secrets. And then the idea 17 that there is a swimming hole within a thousand feet 18 of that plant is just sick.
19 I have -- the media that has come in here, 20 they wanted to talk and use this plant as a poster 21 child, some of it for good and some of it for bad.
22 But some of it has been good for the NRC. But I don't 23 see the NRC -- is it you don't have the regulations in 24 place? Is that the point?
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35 1 Boxer's door more often? I mean I'm up there on a 2 regular basis with information and talking about the 3 problems and the things that are good and bad about 4 here because I want a safe plant cause I still have 5 relatives that lives in the evacuation zone. I just 6 buried my mother with colon cancer.
7 These things are significant to people 8 like myself who live here. I have children; I have 9 grandchildren; I have great-grandchildren. My 10 grandson just came back from Baghdad. He's fighting 11 for us to have clean air and clean water and go by the 12 rules and have rules to go by.
13 But I don't see the cooperation. I just 14 got told that whenever I make a statement about a 15 problem at this plant that if I won't give up my 16 sources, NRC just flips it over in the garbage can.
17 Now that pissed me off. I can tell you it did.
18 Because whenever I tell you something, I 19 don't have a problem; my credibility is not on the 20 line here. Whenever I tell you that there's a problem 21 in the area and you don't deal with it, then it 22 aggravates me to no end. And I'm not seeing when you 23 just fluff them off. It's like you're swatting at 24 gnats. This is our life and our community and our 25 future and our whole future of these communities and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 1 these mountains.
2 I'm deeply resentful that there is a fan 3 crane 2,500 acre island down here that is so 4 contaminated that the geese are even -- they're not 5 even coming in there anymore. The cranes don't want 6 to go there. You can't entice them; you can't put 7 enough food on them to entice them in is what I'm 8 seeing.
9 Now come on, guys, let's get real about 10 this. Can we please tell me what rules you go by? I 11 mean some of the things that you say I can't even 12 find. So somewhere along the line you've got to put 13 some reality in here instead of all this fluff and pie 14 in the sky.
15 MR. CARPENTER: Any other questions or 16 comments?
17 MS. FARRIS: My name is Kathleen Farris.
18 I'm from Rutherford County, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
19 And if you're wondering why I'm here, it's because 20 four years ago we discovered we had low level waste 21 going into our landfill. That landfill is right on 22 the Stones River, which provides the drinking water 23 for most of Rutherford County. That includes the city 24 of Murfreesboro.
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37 1 about water that I want to speak today. It's a source 2 of life. If our drinking water is polluted and we're 3 taking radiation or chemicals into our bodies, I think 4 that can very well account for the epidemic of cancer 5 that we have in this country today.
6 And furthermore, it's not just a question 7 of pollution. It's a question of consumption. Only a 8 very -- I wish I had all my figures with me today, but 9 I left my computer at home by mistake. But I had read 10 very recently the report that was done by the Union of 11 Concerned Scientists on water consumption and energy 12 production and it's available on the Union of 13 Concerned Scientists' website. And most of what I'm 14 going to say is taken from that information.
15 Only a very small fraction of the earth's 16 water is potable. And already huge corporations are 17 buying up water supplies all over the world, which 18 means that before long anybody who can't afford to buy 19 water won't have clean water to drink or may not have 20 water at all because there are water wars going on.
21 We've already had it over the Tennessee River here 22 where Georgia and North Carolina want their share of 23 our water, right?
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38 1 the supplies of water and threaten -- think about it -
2 - land masses are shrinking; populations are growing.
3 The demand for water will ever be greater, 4 particularly if we are able to continue in what we 5 think of as an advanced civilization.
6 The single largest use of fresh water in 7 the United States is thermal nuclear -- no, I'm sorry 8 -- the thermal energy, either by nuclear or coal. And 9 I have -- the study that I referred to has a pie 10 chart, shows that 41 percent of the water, the largest 11 usage is for these forms of energy production. Now if 12 you look at the chart, here is nuclear, here is coal, 13 oil, gas. Solar thermal uses a lot of water, so does 14 biofuel. However, solar photovoltaic and wind, look, 15 you can't even see a line for how much water is 16 required to produce energy in those ways.
17 Now it's not just on a global scale that 18 we have to think, although I think we need to think 19 that way as well. One of the things that the Union of 20 Concerned Scientists have pointed out is that in the 21 Southeast United States we have a particularly severe 22 problem of water and energy production. That drought 23 and heat have caused many -- and we all know this --
24 many closings, shut-downs of nuclear reactors because 25 the water is too hot or there's not enough of it.
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39 1 Same thing has happened in -- and the drought is 2 threatening the nuclear industry in Europe now.
3 Particularly Browns Ferry has been closed, 4 heavens knows, how many times.
5 I was in Texas this summer. The darker 6 the area, the greater the intensity of drought. People 7 are losing their crops. In Fort Worth they're telling 8 you don't use too much water, constantly reminding 9 people not to use too much water. That's this year.
10 If you look at 2007, this is right where 11 TVA is building all these plants, six, going on seven, 12 on the Tennessee River. And TVA wants to put four 13 more at Watts Bar. Now that Tennessee River provides 14 drinking water for the cities of Knoxville, 15 Chattanooga, Huntsville, all the communities in 16 between.
17 The TVA's plan is to become, as Mr.
18 Kilgore said, the foremost producer of nuclear energy 19 in the country. And that means this Watts Bar 2. It 20 also means the plant at Bellefonte, the first one, and 21 then three more.
22 And I propose that this is a threat to our 23 drinking water. It's not what your study says.
24 And I went through and I marked all the 25 sections in which you claim that the impact will be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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40 1 very small. Section 4, 4221, surface water use 2 impact, based on the NRC staff's independent analysis 3 the staff concludes that because of the small amount -
4 - small volume of water consumed relative to the 5 Tennessee River flow, the impact on surface water use 6 of operating WBN Unit 2 is small.
7 The same thing it says further on, on 8 ground water use, No. 4-11, Page 4-11, we're told that 9 based on the independent analysis of additional 10 information since the 1978 whatever this is, FES-OL, 11 the NRC staff concludes that the impact on ground 12 water from operating Watts Bar Unit 2 would be small.
13 Now I asked the question, is this karst 14 topography? And nobody really answered my question.
15 I'm sorry, sir.
16 MR. MILANO: It is.
17 MS. FERRIS: Karst topography is 18 limestone. It's got cracks and crevices everywhere.
19 If it gets into -- if radiation gets -- or pollution 20 gets into that, you have got an effect on the ground 21 water.
22 Now we know about that in Dickson, 23 Tennessee right now, which is also a landfill built on 24 karst topography. There are people who have become 25 terribly ill and they're bringing a lawsuit against NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 1 the county and state for that polluted landfill 2 because of the topography.
3 The same thing is true of the Stones River 4 in Rutherford County. It's built on -- this landfill 5 sits on limestone right over our drinking water 6 supply.
7 If we -- I'm sorry. I think I'm allergic 8 to something here.
9 MR. SAFER: It's the radiation.
10 (Laughter) 11 MS. FERRIS: I hope not. In any event I 12 want to say to you the population of the earth is 13 growing. The water demands are growing. And one way 14 we can make sure that other industry and agriculture 15 and people have enough clean water is to use clean 16 means of producing energy. And we've got them. I 17 couldn't get up here if I didn't know the technology 18 already exists for wind and solar energy production.
19 And I get this argument with people all 20 the time, both at these meetings and elsewhere. Say, 21 oh, they can't produce enough. Well, if we put the 22 billions of dollars into solar and wind energy that we 23 are putting into nuclear energy, we could do it. We 24 went to the moon. We're sending off explorers into 25 space. The technology is there. What's lacking is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 1 the will.
2 And I would like to -- all of you would be 3 dead without water. Your children will die without 4 water. Other species will die without water. We have 5 got to preserve it. There was a documentary made on 6 water wars called Blue Gold and that's water that 7 they're talking about. We've got to have it and we've 8 got to preserve it while there's still some left to 9 preserve.
10 Thank you.
11 MR. CARPENTER: Other comments?
12 MR. SAFER: I can go again. I wanted to 13 get into some specifics. One thing in this document, 14 and I of course haven't read all of it. It was much 15 harder on the computer. I appreciate having a hard 16 copy now; that does make it a lot easier. I realize 17 it is more costly to the NRC, but this is an important 18 issue.
19 The Watts Bar -- this book says that no 20 other new nuclear facilities within 50 miles are being 21 considered. That's just false. Oak Ridge is within 22 50 miles.
23 TVA is on record as being far beyond 24 considering small modular reactors. They're in 25 communication with the NRC, other branches of the NRC, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 1 daily. There's meetings; there's been several 2 meetings this month on SMRs and TVA. They plan to 3 build -- first they planned to build six up at the 4 Clinch River site; now I think it's down to two.
5 These are 125 to 150 megawatt reactors 6 that are modular built and they're sunk into a hole 7 150 feet deep in the ground, the same karst geology.
8 So I wish that would be corrected or you check that.
9 I know there was some discussion about whether that's 10 accurate or not.
11 I don't see -- if you speak English, 12 considered means considered. And they're certainly 13 being considered. So that's one thing.
14 The second thing, the highly irradiated 15 used fuel that's often called spent fuel is being 16 stored in fuel pools as long as possible. And that's 17 just the biggest danger that it can be. They need to 18 be moved to a hardened onsite storage. And I know 19 they have to be in the pools for about five years till 20 they cool down. But beyond that point the packing of 21 these pools with more and more rods that way beyond 22 what they were designed for is a real huge risk that 23 the community is taking on and needs to be aware of.
24 And the community needs to support the idea of 25 hardened onsite storage.
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44 1 The reason that's not happening is 2 strictly cost. And when you're talking about cost, 3 this whole reactor is nuclear power on the cheap. And 4 I don't know why we're accepting the cheapest possible 5 nuclear power plant. TVA tried to build a new AP 6 1000, two of them at Bellefonte. They found out they 7 was going to be so much more expensive than finishing 8 this reactor and the Bellefonte Unit 1 that they 9 backed off from it.
10 Well, excuse me, but this is not the place 11 to cut costs. If they want to build these things, 12 they have to be state-of-the-art. This is far from 13 state-of-the-art.
14 This ice condenser design is really a joke 15 in the industry. And I mean I talked to the operators 16 at Sequoyah and they just kind of grinned when I asked 17 them about -- the ice condenser design means there's 18 three million pounds of ice, literally three million 19 pounds of frozen water, that's in the reactor within 20 the containment structure. And should they have a 21 loss of coolant, all of that hot gas is supposed to go 22 through that ice room to lessen the pressure. And so 23 they've made the containment less sturdy than the 24 other reactors around the country and around the 25 world.
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45 1 Nobody else is building any ice condenser 2 designs ever again. They were built back in the `70s.
3 Sequoyah, ice condenser designs; Watts Bar 1 is an 4 ice condenser design. There's no justification for 5 finishing this thing.
6 I talked about this the last time in 2009.
7 Obviously it was not heard. But just so everybody 8 knows, it's a Rube Goldberg contraption. If you don't 9 know Rube Goldberg, look him up on the internet 10 because he was a fascinating guy. But, you know, I 11 could go on about that.
12 But the other specifics about this 13 particular Environmental Impact Statement, on Page H-14 3, Appendix H is the Severe Accident Mitigation Design 15 Alternatives. I'll quote, "TVA did not include the 16 contribution from external events in the Watts Bar 17 Nuclear Plant risk estimates."
18 External events. Now whether those is a 19 tornado like the one that almost hit Browns Ferry, a 20 F-5 tornado. The very same day, April 27th, tornadoes 21 came through here and they got pretty close to Watts 22 Bar. They went right across Bellefonte, where that 23 reactor was going to be built as soon as they finish 24 Watts Bar. And it's just kind of -- to me it's kind 25 of eerie, but in the same day all of TVA's nuclear NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 1 power plants were affected by tornadoes. If that's 2 not a message from on high, I don't know what is, to 3 be honest, folks.
4 So those kinds of things, plus terrorist 5 attacks, that's an external event. They just don't 6 even factor that into this. And I'm sorry that we 7 live in a world where that has to be factored in, but 8 we all know that it does. And that these things are -
9 - they're the biggest target for a terrorist that you 10 can imagine and the effects would be -- they'd put 11 9/11 into a footnote of history almost.
12 So these things are huge target for 13 external events and that really needs to be factored 14 into the design. And believe me, in 1970, they 15 weren't factoring in the possibility of a terrorist 16 attack on U.S. soil in the design of the containment 17 structure which, as I've said, is already thinner than 18 other nuclear power plants of that era.
19 I just have to make note that the 20 definition of risk in this document is it's the 21 product of frequency and the consequences of an 22 accident. Work on that one for a while. I don't 23 know.
24 As I said, it's in 6.2.4, where the staff 25 concludes that the environmental consequences of a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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47 1 severe accidents are small, 6.2.4. I don't know how 2 you get that.
3 Severe accident mitigation alternatives in 4 6.3, there's a quote in here. I'll read it directly 5 because I didn't copy it all down. They eliminate the 6 severe accident scenarios that were "excessively 7 costly to implement such that the estimated cost would 8 exceed the dollar value associated with completely 9 eliminating all severe accident risks at WBN 2."
10 I take that to mean that some of the risks 11 it was just too costly to mitigate those risks, so we 12 just threw them out because, if it costs too much, we 13 couldn't possibly deal with it. So we'll just deal 14 with the risks. That's what that says to me.
15 And by the way that whole severe accident 16 thing was required of the NRC by the Third Circuit 17 Court's opinion in Limerick Ecology Action, Inc.
18 versus the NRC in 1989. It was a court ordered thing 19 for the NRC to have to take into account these risks.
20 It took a federal court to require that in 1989.
21 If you read this document, you'll see -- I 22 don't think you'll see the word Fukushima or even 23 Chernobyl in there. As I said earlier, they say it's 24 factored into the computer models, but that sure is 25 sanitizing the realities.
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48 1 Page 6-15, "It is noted that the risks 2 from deliberate aircraft impacts were explicitly 3 excluded since this was being considered in other 4 forms along with other sources of sabotage." I don't 5 know where the other form is. I asked an individual, 6 a couple of individuals, with the NRC here. They were 7 going to get back to me on that. But again deliberate 8 aircraft impacts were explicitly excluded from this 9 document.
10 And I think that concludes my comments.
11 Thank you.
12 MR. CARPENTER: Any other questions?
13 Comments?
14 MS. HARRIS: I'm not going to ask anything 15 else because you don't get an answer. You get fluffed 16 off and I'm not interested in that. So I'll just put 17 it online in writing. It's become a task to deal with 18 the NRC whenever you get kindergarten answers to 19 chemistry questions. And I'm kind of over it. I just 20 want the time so that I can do the writing. I want 21 the extension that should be granted.
22 MR. CARPENTER: Anything else?
23 MS. FERRIS: I would like to add something 24 to what Donnie said about terrorists. There was a 25 Newsweek article either last week or the week before NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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49 1 of an FBI undercover agent who was working with 2 extremist groups in the South. And some of the people 3 he encountered were planning an attack on Browns 4 Ferry. So this isn't some hypothetical. I mean there 5 are people out there who would love to attack these 6 reactors and probably many of them don't have any idea 7 of what the real consequences would be.
8 MR. SAFER: I'm sorry you have to listen 9 to me again. I think unfortunately a lot of people 10 that believe the same thing that Kathy and Ann and I 11 do have gotten so discouraged from this process that 12 they just don't show up at these meetings anymore. So 13 I feel like I have to speak for many, many people.
14 I think that one of the things that the 15 community needs to realize is that decommissioning of 16 these reactors, both Unit 1 and Unit 2, is going to be 17 a huge task on down the road. Now the decommissioning 18 fund, TVA and the other utilities put money into it 19 all the time, but they invest that money just like 20 anybody that has a little money tries to invest it in 21 the stock market or wherever to do the best they can.
22 Well, when the stock market took a big hit, that 23 decommissioning fund took the same hit. And there's 24 just simply not as much money as you need to 25 decommission these reactors.
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50 1 And we've all been through this thing 2 recently of the government shutting down and the 3 government saying no more loans, no more deficit. We 4 don't know who is going to be charge of our government 5 in 10, 20, 30 years. But the reality when it comes to 6 these nuclear materials that are being manufactured at 7 these sites is that they're going to have to be dealt 8 with.
9 But if the federal government refuses to 10 do it, it's going to be the community's problem just 11 to safeguard that plant from now until kingdom come 12 again, till eternity. And I think we've all been sort 13 of shaken in our confidence of the federal government 14 being able to continue its obligations into the 15 future.
16 And these materials, these radioactive 17 materials, need to be kept out of the environment for 18 half a million years. Now if you think the federal 19 government is going to be here half a million years 20 from now, I'd like to see your information.
21 But I'm just trying to point out that all 22 of these things are built on a best-case scenario, 23 that everything is going to go perfectly and the world 24 is going to operate in a way that we wish it would.
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51 1 operate in that way.
2 And whether it's Chernobyl or Fukushima or 3 the fire at Browns Ferry or Three Mile Island, these 4 nuclear reactors are just as prone to accidents, 5 mistakes, failures, human error, whatever, terrorism, 6 or whatever it might be as any other human enterprise 7 and any other human activity. They will have 8 problems. They will have worse-case scenarios. It 9 may not happen very often, but that doesn't mean it 10 can't happen tomorrow here. And if you have two 11 reactors, it just doubles the chance.
12 And again the whole clean-up thing is a 13 whole nother issue that whether that money is really 14 going to be there. The same is true for the high 15 level waste that's in those fuel pools. The federal 16 government is trying to figure out how to take care of 17 its responsibilities on that and they're struggling 18 with that. They have struggled with it for over 50 19 years.
20 There's not a single deep repository for 21 radioactive waste that I know of in the world.
22 There's some talk in France about they maybe started 23 to experiment with one and maybe Finland has done a 24 little, but Finland doesn't have very many nuclear 25 power plants. So talking about the amount of high NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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52 1 level radioactive waste we've been generating in the 2 United States, it's a lot of material and we simply 3 don't have any place to put it.
4 The Blue Ribbon Commission has been 5 working on it for over a year. They're due to release 6 their report which is highly controversial in my 7 opinion. But you can't take it on face value that 8 these materials are going to be able to be handled the 9 way they need to have been.
10 MR. CARPENTER: Thank you. Any other 11 comments? Questions?
12 Anything from the staff?
13 In that case I would like to thank 14 everyone for participating. We did have some very 15 good comments and questions today. We will get back 16 to those who have given us questions as quickly as 17 possible. I do know that we have at least one written 18 set of questions already. If there are any other 19 written questions that you'd like to provide, you can 20 do it both by submitting from here or leaving it with 21 us before you leave.
22 I would like to remind everyone that again 23 there is a meeting comment sheet. We do like to get 24 those. It tells us how to do these meetings a little 25 bit better each time. So thank you for doing that.
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53 1 We will finish up now and reconvene for 2 the second part of this at 6:30 tonight. Anybody that 3 would like to come back, you're more than welcome.
4 We'd like to have you. It will be in this room again.
5 And with that I quit and close the 6 meeting. Thank you again for coming. Thank you.
7 (Whereupon, this portion of the meeting 8 was concluded at 3:20 p.m. to reconvene for the second 9 portion at 6:30 p.m.)
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