ML17221A634
| ML17221A634 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Saint Lucie  |
| Issue date: | 02/22/1988 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML17221A635 | List: |
| References | |
| TAC-66970, TAC-66971, NUDOCS 8802240320 | |
| Download: ML17221A634 (13) | |
Text
ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT BY THE OFFICE OF NUCLEAR REACTOR REGULATION RELATING TO THE TRANSFER OF UNIT NO.
1 SPENT FUEL BETWEEN UNITS NO.
1 AND 2 OF THE ST.
LUCIE PLANT FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE NOS.
DPR-67 AND NPF-16 FLORIDA POWER AND LIGHT COMPANY, ET AL.
ST.
LUCIE PLANT UNIT NOS 1
AND 2 DOCKET NOS. 50-335 AND 50-389 Date:
February 22, 1988 p
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION IDENTIFICATION OF THE PROPOSED ACTION THE NEED FOR THE PROPOSED ACTION ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF THE PROPOSED ACTION IV.1 Occupational Radiation Exposure IV.2 Public Radiation Exposure ALTERNATIVES TO THE PROPOSED ACTION ALTERNATIVE USE OF RESOURCES AGENCIES AND PERSONS CONSULTED BASIS AND CONCLUSIONS FOR NOT PREPARATING AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT
I.
INTRODUCTION The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission or staff) is considering amending Facility Operating License No.
NPF-16 for the St.
Luc ie Plant, Unit No. 2, to permit Unit No.
1 spent
+'uel to be transferred from the Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool to the Unit No.
2 spent
<uel pool.
The St. Lucie Plant, Unit Nos.
1 and P, is operated by the Florida Pnwer and Light Company, et al. (the licensee),
and 's located in St. Lucie County, Florida.
II.
IDENTIFICATION CF THE PROPOSED ACTION Facility Operating License t!o.
OPR-67 for the St. Lucie Plant, Unit Nn. 1, currently permits storage of Unit No.
1 spent
+ue~ in the Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool located in Fuel Handling Building Number 1.
Similarly, Facility Operating License No.
NPF-16 for.the St. Lucie Plant, Unit No. 2, currently permits storage o~ Unit No.
2 spent fuel in the Unit Nn.
2 spent fuel pool located in Fuel Handling Building Number 2.
The Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool has a maximum licensed capacity of 728 fuel assemblies.
As a result. o: the Unit No.
1 refueling outage, completed in April 1987, there is no longer enough storage space in the pool to completely off-lnad the Unit No.
1 reactor core should the need arise.
The next Unit No.
1 refueling outage is scheduled for the summer of 1988.
Additional soent fuel assemblies will be added to the pool at that time, compounding the problem.
By letter dated June 12, 1987, the licensee has proposed a license amendment to re-rack the Unit No.
1 spent fuel oool, which will increase the storage capac'.ty of the pool significantly.
The application is under review as a separate licensing action.
The Unit No.
2 spent fuel pool has a maximum licensed capacity of 1076 fuel assemblies.
Since Unit No.
2 was licensed in 1983 and is currently in its fourth operational cycle, there is a considerable amount of excess capacity in the Unit Nn.
2 spent fuel pool at this time.
The Fuel Hand~ing 8uildings are apprnximately 300 feet apart.
The spent fuel pools dn not communicate with each other.
In order to store Unit No.
1 spent fue> in the Unit No.
2 spent fuel pool, a fuel shipping cask would have to be used ta transfer the spent fuel between the fuel pools.
The licensee proposes to use an approved shipping cask that would be used ta transfer one fuel assembly at a time fram Unit No.
1 to Unit No.
2 should the need arise.
The licensee does not presently have the authoritv tn transfer spent fuel between units and store Unit No.
1 fuel in the Unit No.
2 spent fuel pool.
Py applicatian dated July 2, 1986, the licensee prnpased to transfer Unit Nn.
1 spent fuel between units should additional storage capacity or Unit No.
1 fuel become necessary.
The licensee's amendment application was supplemented by
~etters dated February 6 and 9, 1987, March 2 and 27,= 1987, and April 28, 1987.
III. THE NEED FOR THE PROPOSED ACTION The licensee does not have a full Unit 1 core off-load capability at this time, and the licensee's application for re-racking the Unit 1 pool is under review. If any unexpected event occurs at Unit No.
1 requi,ring the core to be off-loaded be~ore the pool can be re-racked, there will be insufficien+
s.orage space in the Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool.
Thus, the '.icensee would need to transfer some fuel from the Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool to the Unit Na.
2 spent fuel pool.
The next refuelinq outage is scheduled for the summer of 1988.
If the pool cannot be re-racked before this outage, the additional fuel stored as a
result of the outage would physically preclude the re-rackir a because the licensee is not allowed to carry loads in exress of 2,000 pounds (e.g.,
a rack) aver spent fuel.
Thus, the licensee would need to transfer some fuel
,rom the Unit. Nn.
1 spent fuel pool to the Unit No.
2 spent f'uel pool in order to eff'ect the re-racking.
The sheaf<
and the licensee do not envision a need to trans.er fuel if the pool can be re-racked before the next refueling nutage.
- However, should a
plant condition arise that requires full core off-loading or if the poo> cannot be re-racked before the next outage, the proposed amendment would give the licensing authorization to transfer fuel, and the transfer could be accomplished in short order.
IV.
FN~JIRnelFNTAL IMPACTS OF THF. PROPOSFn ACTIAN The environmental impacts of plant operation were assessed in the "Final Fnvironmental Statement Related to the St. Lucie Plant, Unit No. 1," U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission, i)une 1973 and "Final Environmental Statement Related to the Operation of St. Lucie Plant, Unit No. 2," U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, April 1982 (NUREA-0842).
Each document was issued prior to the commercial operation of the respective unit.
The proposed amer dment would not alter the type or amount of fuel that can be received,
- used, and possessed at the site.
Limitations on the amount o; fuel that may be stored in the Unit No.
2 spent fuel pool and the manner in which it may be stored and har died would also not be chanced.
Only the Unit Nr.
1 spent fuel that has aged for at least 1490 hours0.0172 days <br />0.414 hours <br />0.00246 weeks <br />5.66945e-4 months <br /> after withdrawal from the reactor would be transferred.
Only shipping casks that have been registered with the NRC and for which a Certificate of Compliance has been issued hy the NRC would be used to transfer spent fuel between units, thus ensuring that the casks to be used meet the packaging and transportation requiremer.ts of 10 CFR Part 71.
Unit No.
1 spent fuel may be subsequently returned to the Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool after sufficient storage space has been provided.
The 1490 hour0.0172 days <br />0.414 hours <br />0.00246 weeks <br />5.66945e-4 months <br /> minimum agin@ time (approximately 62 days) is already a
Unit. to.
1 Technical Specifica.ion requirement.
The actual minimum aging time would probably be more and would depend upon the cask requirement.
For example, one of the casks proposed by the licensee is the NLI-I/2 cask.
Its minimum aging
timh is 150 days.
The HLI-1/2 shipping cask has received a Certificate of Com-pliance for Radioactive Materials
- Packages, which was issued hy the Commission
{Certificate Ho. 9010, Revision 7, expiration date January 31, 1991).
Such certificates are issued by the Commission to certi+y that the packaging (-:.o.,
cask) and contents meet applicable safety standards of '.,0 CFR Part 71, "Pack-aging and Transportation of Radioactive Material."
By letter dated August 28, 198F, the Commission acknowledged Florida Power and Light Company, licensee for the St. Lucie Plant, es a registered user of the NL~-1/2 shipping cask pursuant to Section 71.12 of 10 CFR Part 71.
The proposed transfer process would begin with the spent fuel handling machine ransferring an assembly underwater from the Unit No.
1 spent fuel stor-age racks to the spent fuel shipping cask.
The fuel assembly would be placed in the cask while maintaining a prescribed minimum water level above the assem-bly.
Pfter the assembly has been loaded into the cask, the cask would be pre-pared
~or transport.
Controls would be in effect to reduce the possihle spread of contamination.
The crane would then load the cask onto the transport vehicle for travel tn Unit Ho. 2, a distanc~ of approximately 300 feet.
The o<floading and storage of the Unit No.
1 spent fuel at Unit No.
2 would he accomplished in a manner similar to the ahove.
The process would be repeated f'r each spent fuel assemblv transferred.
For purposes o
assessing the environmental impact of the proposed transfer, the licensee cor servatively estimated that no more than 728 Unit Ho.
1 spent fuel assemblies (the total capacity of the Unit Ho.
1 spent fuel pool) would he transferred per year hetween the units.
The staff has evaluated the potential non-radiological environmental impacts associated with the above described transfer and concludes that they are not significant.
Theref'ore, onl.y the po..ential radiological environmental impacts ara evaluated below.
IY. 1 Occu ational Radiation Ex osure The occupational radiation exposure for the proposed transfer operation is estimated to be less than 0.4 person-rems per spent fuel assembly.
This small increase in radiation dose would not affect the licensee's ability to maintain individual occupa.ional doses within the limits of 10 CFR 20, and is as low as is reasonably achievable (ALARA).
A radiation protection program, as identi ied in the guidelines of Regulatory Guide 8.8, would preclude any significant occupational radiation doses.
Based on present and prospected operations; the staff estimates that the oroposed transfer of Unit No.
1 spent fuel hetween the units should add only a small fraction to the total annual occupational radiation dose at the facility.
The total occupational dose for 1984 and 1985 at the site was approximately 1304 person-rems per year.
The total collective dose for the 728 spent fuel assemblies (the total capacity of the Unit 1 spent fuel pool) would be 291 person-rems.
However,'it is unlikely that it would be necessary to transfer the entire contents of the Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool.
The licensee presently estimates moving less than 25 fuel assemblies if an entire core off-load is required before the summer of 1988.
The licensee expects to add about 70 more assemblies to the spent fuel pool as a result of the summer 1988 outage.
Thus, the staff assumed, for occupational radiation exposure
- purposes, that a maximum of 100 assemblies might need to be trans-ferred; this would cause a dose of less than 40 person-rems.
This estimate conservatively assumes that the re-rack takes place after the summer 3.988 outage but before the subsequent refueling outage estimated for early 1990.
This would be less than 3X of the annual occuoational dose at the site.
- Thus, the staff concludes that the proposed transfer of spent fuel would not result in any significant increase in doses received by workers.
IV.'2 Public Radiation Fx osure IO CFR Part 71.43 provides
.hat a package
<shipping cask) must he designed, constructed, and prepared for shipment so that under specified tests for normal conditions of operation, there will be no loss or dispersal of radioactive t
- contents, no significant increase in external radiation ~evels, and no substar-tial reduction in the ef ectiveness o~ the packaaing.
The licer see submitted a document entitled "Sa.ety Analvsis Report, NLI-I/? Spent Fuel Cask" for the cask which is planned to he used for transporting the spent fuel between Unit No. I and Unit No. 2.
This report describes the helium leak test procedures and acceptance criteria used on the NLI-!/P cask to verify its compliance with 10 CFR Part ?I requirements.
10 CFP. 71.47 provides that radiation levels external to the package must not exceed 10 millirem/hour at any point two meters beyond the outermost sides of the transporting vehicle.;.
For a cask meeting this criterion, the corre-spondinq dose rate is approximately 0.0001 millirem/hour at the nearest site boundarv (approximately one mile from the transfer path between the units).
The licensee stated that each loaded cask would be out-of-doors for up to approxi-matelv 8 hours9.259259e-5 days <br />0.00222 hours <br />1.322751e-5 weeks <br />3.044e-6 months <br /> during each transfer
,rom one unit to the other.
Under the above condition
, and as~uming 728 transfers per year, the staff estimat~s that the ar nual dose commitments to a maximall>> exposed individual at the nearest site boundary due to the proposed trar sfer of spent fuel between the units would be approximately 3 millirem.
This es.imated annual total dose commitment is within the limitations of the plant Technical Specifications, which are based on the offsite dose requirements nf 10 CFR Parts 20 and 50 and 40 CFR Part 190.
Like-wise, the staff estimates that the annual population dose to the general public due to the proposed transfer would be a small fraction nf the three person-rem population dose estimated in the Unit Nos. I and 2 Final Ervironmental Statements for all transportation of fuel and waste to and from a nuclear power reactor.
Thus, the estimated annual total population dose, inc',uding the proposed transfer of spent fuel, would be very small compared to the annual dose to this same population from background radiation.
The staff has also reviewed the potential consequences nf three postulated desian basis accidents which involve spent fuel as par+
o the review of the acceptability of the licensee's reauest.
to transport spent fuel frnm the St. Lucie Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool to that of St. Lucie Unit No. 2.
These accidents are the fuel handlir g, cask drop, and cask transport accidents.
The radiological conseauences of these accidents were previously analyred hy the staff and reported in Safetv Evaluation Reports related to operating
',icense dated November 8, 1974, March 1, 1976 (Suppl. 2), and March 29,
!.978 (Amendment No.
- 22) for St. Lucie Unit No. 1, and Octoher 1981 and Octoher 16, 1984 (Amend-
,ment No. 7) for Unit No. 2.
The previous fuel handling and cask drop accidents do not require reevaluation hecause the operations potentially involved with these accidents are not modified by the proposed license amendment.
The cask transport accident previously involved the transport of 10 spen+ fuel assem-blies following a 90 day cooldown period.
The proposed license amendmen+
would permit only the transport of a single fuel assembly in a cask which could occur at the earliest with a 1490 hour0.0172 days <br />0.414 hours <br />0.00246 weeks <br />5.66945e-4 months <br /> cooldown (accordinq to Technical Speci-fication 3/4.9. 14, the earliest decay time of spent fuel, before a shipping cask would be allowed '.nto the cask compartment in the area of the spent
+uel pool with greater than a third of the core in storage, is 1490 hours0.0172 days <br />0.414 hours <br />0.00246 weeks <br />5.66945e-4 months <br />).
The staff has reevaluated the consequences of the single fuel assembly cask transport accident.
The accident assumptions are tabulated in Table 1.
The calculated thyroid doses at the exclusion area and low population zone boundaries were 18.4 and 7.P rem, respectively.
The whole body doses at both locations were less than 0.1 rem.
These calculated doses are well below the
gui'deline values stated in 10 CFR 100, i.e.,
300 rem to the thyroid and 25 rem to the whole body.
Thus, the staff concludes that the consequences of postulated design basis accidents for the spent fuel trans er are acceptable.
ALTERNATIVES TO THE PROPOSEO ACTION Since the staf+ has concluded that there are no significant environmental impacts associated with the proposed action, any alterna+ives wil~ either have no environmental impact or greater environmenta impact.
A possible alternative would be to deny the Unit No.
2 license change.
If this alternat'.ve was taken, the Unit No. I core would not be able to completely off-load if the need arose because there is no full core off-load capability in the Unit No.
1 spent fuel pool at this time.
Denial would not enhance the protection of the environment.
VI.
ALTFRNATE USE OF RESOURCES This proposal does not involve the use of resources nnt previously con-sidered in connec+ion with the "Final Environmental Statement Related tn the Operation of St. Lucie Plant, Unit No. 1," dated June
- 1973, and the "Final Environmental Statement Related to the Operation of the St. Lucie Plant, Unit No. 2," dated April I982.
VII. AGFNCIFS AND PFRSONS CONSULTED The Comm'.ssion's staff reviewed the licensee's reques+
and did not con-sult other agencies or persons.
VIII BASIS AND CONCLUSIONS FOR.
NOT PRFPARING AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT The Commission has determined not to prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed action.
The staf, has reviewed the proposed license amendment relative to the requirements set forth in 10 CFR Part 51.
Based on this assessment, the staff concludes that there are no significant radiological or non-radiological impacts associated with the proposed action and that the
proposed action will not change any cor clusions reached by the Commission in the
~inal Environmental Statements for Unit los.
1 and Therefore, pursuant to 10 CFR 51.31, an environmental impact statement need not be prepared for this action.
Based upon this environmental assessment, the Commission concludes that the proposed action will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment.
Table 1 - Assumptions used in the fuel transport accident analysis Power Level Number of Fuel Rods Damaged Total Number of Fuel Rods in Core..
Radiation Peaking Factor of Damaged Rods Shutdown Time Inventory Released from Damaged Rods Atmospheric Diffusion Factors (seconds per cubic meter) 0-2 hour X/Q Value at 1560 meters 0-8 hour X/Q Value at 1610 meters 2754 Mwt 236 51,212 1.65 1490 hours0.0172 days <br />0.414 hours <br />0.00246 weeks <br />5.66945e-4 months <br /> 10% (iodines) 10%