ML18086B228
| ML18086B228 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Salem  |
| Issue date: | 11/09/1981 |
| From: | Knuth D KMC, INC. |
| To: | Chilk S NRC OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY (SECY) |
| Shared Package | |
| ML18086B163 | List: |
| References | |
| RTR-NUREG-0696, RTR-NUREG-0814, RTR-NUREG-696, RTR-NUREG-814 GL-81-10, NUDOCS 8201040125 | |
| Download: ML18086B228 (12) | |
Text
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November 9, 1981 DR. DONALD F. KNUTH President Mr. Samuel J. Chilk Secretary of the Commission U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C. 20555
Dear Mr. Chilk:
The Coordinating Group on Emergency Preparedness Implementation (CGEP) appreciates the opportunity to comment on NUREG-0814, "Methodology for Evaluation of Emergency Response Facilities," pursuant to the notice in the Federal Register, 46FR44935.
The CGEP was formed in September 1979, to work collectively with the NRC staff in the development and implementation of the rapidly evolving emergency planning criteria. The CGEP consists of over twenty-five utilities identified in Enclosure 1.
The CGEP has elected not to comment on each individual line item in NUREG-0814, but to address the much more signif-icant issue of the untimely and staggering increase in require-ments/considerations still being issued after the time that a utility must have made a financial commitment in order to meet the specified implementation date.
The TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force presented a number of recommended changes intended to enhance safety, however, these changes were evaluated in isolation, which was consistent with the time constraints initially placed on that group.
The individual items have since been assigned to various organizations within NRC, with some items receiving an inordinate amount of redefinition and detail while other related and interdependent items were put aside in deference to concurrent NRC licensing situations. The NRC staff's issuance of hastily
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Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 2 developed requirements which are later changed, modified, clarified and restated by the staff with an apparent disregard for the utility's efforts to implement the changing require-ments is indicative of an irresponsible regulatory atmosphere and environment which has developed and flourished since TMI-2, and is not unique to Emergency Planning.
The failure to coordinate, evaluate, and pace these changes to assure that the synergistic effect of individual changes on the total system will not adversely impact the health and safety of the public is costly, counterproductive, and inconsistent with responsible regulatory practice.
This Federal Register Notice states that "neither this draft not the final evaluation methodology imposes any new requirements" which is correct only if one chooses to ignore one hundred and thirty-three of the one hundred and sixty-eight individual requirements/considerations.
- NUREG-0814 is similar to NUREG-0696, "Functional Criteria for Emergency Response Facilities," in one significant respect: that the utility is responsible for answering every question and either responding affirmatively, providing supporting data or submitting alternate proposals which would be equally acceptable to the staff.
The entire emergency response facility issue has, from the regulatory sense, been plagued with unnecessary haste and indecision. The industry has committed funds and proceeded with construction of facilities where, in many instances there was very limited information, yet in order to meet the NRC implementation dates a commitment was needed. Utilities found it absolutely necessary to make financial commitments to meet vaguely stated requirements or be judged as recalcitrant by the staff in response to requests for time extensions. The staff has on several occasions stated that utilities had been aware of a particular requirement under consideration but not yet issued for *some period of time, which the staff apparently felt was sufficient justification to transfer the full responsibility for failure to implement a given change to the staff's satisfaction in a specified time to the utilities, rather than accept respon-sibility for its failure to provide changed, modified or promised guidance in a timely manner.
Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 3 We have performed an analysis of the requirements and schedule for the Emergency Response Facilities and the SPDS to assist in understanding the impact of schedule changes and changing requirements. Enclosure 2 is a Bar Chart for the TSC and Enclosure 3 is a detailed list of require-ments for the TSC which can also be used to track the numbered requirements on the Bar Chart. An identical analysis was performed for the Emergency Operations Facility (Enclosures 4 and 5) , the Operations Support Center (Enclosures 6 and 7) ,
the SPDS (Enclosures 8 and 9). These requirement lists have been compiled as accurately as possible. There are instances where there are options, but for the purposes of the comments in this letter they were generally shown as individual require-ments. There has been no attempt to assign a weight to these individual requirements although it would be a useful exercise for the NRC staff to undertake in order to better understand and appreciate the adverse impact of the expanding requirements.
The enclosures to this letter outline the growth of requirements for all Emergency Response Facilities and the SPDS.
For purposes of further illustrating the expansion of requirements shown in the enclosures, we have elected to provide in the following pages a narrative discussion of the TSC.
The following is the discussion of the requirements pertaining to the TSC. Enclosure 2 is the Bar Chart that illustrates the points made in this discussion.
NUREG-0578 - July 1979 The TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force prepared and published NUREG-0578, entitled, "TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force Status Report and Short Term Recommendations, in July 1979~" That report contained what we have identified as twelve distinct requirements for the TSC. The stated completion date of the center was January 1, 1980 with upgrading to be completed by January 1, 1981. This guidance, while not overly prescriptive, was sufficiently clear to permit the utilities to proceed with commitments to design and construct a TSC.
EISENHUT LETTER - September 13, 1979 The next official reference to the TSC was on September 13, 1979 when a letter from Darrell Eisenhut, Director of Licensing, NRR, made minor changes in the requirements and required utilities to commit to establish an interim TSC by January 1, 1980
' ,.. Ar. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 4 which was the date specified in NUREG-0578. This letter did not change the basic requirements/considerations in NUREG-0578, hence the utility was justified in proceeding, particularly in view of the request for a commitment for an interim TSC in this letter, although "interim" was not further explained and only three and one half months remained for completion.
NUREG-0585 - October 1979 In October 1979, the TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force issued NUREG-0585, "TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force Final Report" which stated in reference to the "Plant Safety Status Display" that "The implementation of the recommendation should be undertaken in conjunction with the year-long control room study previously described, but should be completed by January 1, 1981, in consonance with the final implementation date for the onsite technical support center recommendation in NUREG-0578." This was a new requirement, but would not change
.the basic TSC described in NUREG-0578, although the SPDS was an esoteric device understood at that time by few persons. The requirements for the SPDS contained in this document lacked sufficient definition for utilities to proceed with design and procurement and this situation has not improved significantly to date.
DENTON LETTER - October 30, 1979 Harold Denton wrote to holders of Operating Licenses on October 30, 1979 and Near Term Operating License applicants on November 17, 1979. These letters contained twenty-nine requirements - eight of the requirements applying only to the "interim" TSC required by January 1, 1980, fourteen requirements applicable to the "upgraded" TSC required by January 1, 1981, and the remaining seven applicable to both the "interim" and the "upgraded" TSC. Eight of these twenty-nine requirements had been previously stated irt NUREG-0578, and one significantly changed a previous requirement. The fourteen total requirements (seven are applicable to both the interim and the upgraded facility and also repeat previously stated requirements) which were applicable to the "interim" TSC were not significant in terms of affecting the completion of the "interim" TSC. The fourteen new requirements for the "upgraded" TSC identified for the first time that "close proximity" to the control room meant onsite, within the plant security boundary, and also for the first time specified the size in terms of numbers of people and engineering data and information displays to be provided.
Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 5 Unique features of each facility which would limit proximity to the control room and size were not recognized in the staff's requirements and if an overriding safety reason existed for requiring the TSC to be within the security boundary or "close" to the TSC it was not stated. The remainder of the requirements for the "upgraded" TSC could be interpreted and conceiveably accomplished in the fourteen remaining months:
however; building construction underway does not lend itself to location changes. It is important to recognize that the utilities were striving to meet a deadlin~ and a required com-mitment which was only two months away and they could well find that they must abandon their construction efforts or take a chance that distance and size could be arbitrated since the NRC had not provided timely guidance. The disregard by the staff at previous utility efforts and previous commitments required by the staff supports our concern over arbitrary and untimely regulatory requirements.
The requirements in Denton's October 30, 1979 letter, while vague, were sufficiently described to cause concern in that such phrases as "display of vital plant parameters" and "instrumentation transient effect on computer memory" implied that the TSC instrumentation as currently perceived by the staff might well be more sophisticated than theNUREG-0578 requirement for the display and transmission of plant status. However, only fourteen months remained to complete a design and acquire these hardware and software components.
EISENHUT LETTER - April 25, 1980 The next significant correspondence pertaining to the TSC was in the form of a letter dated April 25, 1980 from Darrell Eisenhut to all utilities with operating licenses. It contained thirteen requirements, ten were restatements of requirements contained in the correspondence discussed above and three were new requirements. Two of these requirements were cause for concern. The first was the new requirement for nuclear data link (NDL) tranmission to be available for display in the TSC even though the NDL would not be defined for approximately eleven months and the TSC upgrade will be due to be completed in eight months. The second new requirement of concern was the suddent and unexplained need "to locate the TSC to facilitate occasional face-to-face contact between key control room and TSC supervisors (management presence)," which is but another step in redefining the location of a facility which should be completed in just over eight months and could conceiveably have been started any time during the preceding nine months. This requirement, however, could have been accommodated since the utility was not yet constrained by time or distance in locating the TSC.
I" Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 6 NUREG-0660 - May 1980 NUREG-0660, "NRC Action Plan Developed as a Result of the TMI-2 Accident" was published in May 1980 with the stated purpose "to provide a comprehensive and integrated plan for the actions now judged necessary by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to correct or improve the regulation and operation of nuclear facilities based on the experience from the accident at TMI-2 and the official studies and inves-tigation of the accident." It would be reasonable to expect that this "comprehensive and integrated plan" document would encompass or supersede all previous requirements. This document which was submitted to the Commission does neither and in fact it provides simple restatement of only six of the twelve NUREG-0578 requirements issued in July 1979.
It is difficult to construe this to be either a comprehensive or integrated plan, since it lacks the detail of the earliest document pertaining to the TSC and fails to include requirements from other communications relative to the TSC. The utility now had an official Commission document, which one should assume takes precedence over all preceding documents, but in fact does not, leaving the utility with a number of sources of staff views on the TSC.
NRC UTILITY MEETING - September 22, 1980 On September 22, 1980, the staff of the Division of Emergency Preparedness met with industry representative and announced two important significant changes. "Close proximity" to the control room and "occasional face-to-face contact between key control room and TSC supervisors (management presence)"
had been defined by the staff as two minutes walking time between the TSC and the control room. It is unconscionable for such an arbritrary and unsupported definition to be announced by the staff fourteen months and eight communication opportunities after the first expression of the requirement in NUREG-0578 in July 1979. The second change announced was a deferral of completion of the TSC until April 1982 with the design due by January 1, 1981.
This would be of little assistance to a utility who had atttempted to meet the original schedule in terms of a building. This time change was not made to accommodate the industry's needs, but was required because the staff had not yet completed and presented to the Commission their position on many facility aspects.
Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 7 NUREG-0737, November 1980 NUREG-0737, "Clarification of TMI Action Plan Requirements," issued in November 1980, states that "only those items that the Commission has approved for implementation to date are included in this document, NUREG-0737." The emergency response facilities were addressed in the draft, but were omitted from the final document at the Commission's direction in order that the proposed siting criteria for the Emergency Operations Facility could be re-evaluated.
EISENHUT LETTER - February 18, 1981 A continuance of NUREG-0737 was issued over Darrell Eisenhut's signature on February 18, 1981. This letter is further identified as Generic letter 81-10 and contained the Commission's finalized decision on Item III.A.i.2., "Upgrade Emergency Support Facilities," NUREG-0737. This document listed eleven requirements, with five of the requirements traceable back to NUREG-0578, which was published in July 1979.
NUREG-0737 was published as a clarifying document with a section under each item entitled, "changes to Previous Require-ments and Guidance," as well as one entitled, "Clarification,"
either of which would have been a suitable place to make both the Commission and the utility aware that the TSC must be located no further from the control room than two minutes walking time which was brought to the licensee's attention during the September 22, 1980 meeting discussed above. This letter announced a further deferral of the completion schedule over that announced on September 22, 1980. The design submittal date was changed from January 1, 1981 until June 1, 1981 and completion/
operational date from April 1, 1982 until October 1, 1982. Two months after the announced schedule for design submittals had passed the staff announced another extension obviously because the schedule was totally inconsistent with the promised guidance document NUREG-0696 which was at the time of that letter in draft form.
The utility industry at the time of that letter had for nineteen months been faced with mandatory completion dates which were apparently firm dates (yet frequently restated in the interval from July 1979 to September 1980); and faced with changing evolv-ing requirements, one body of the requirements issued through official NRC publication (NUREG's) which reflected a certain stability of requirements and a second body generated by a series of letters. *
. iv-~** ...
Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 8 NUREG-0696 - February 1981 Nineteen months after the TSC was initially described in NUREG-0578, only thirty-five requirements from nine separate documents existed for the TSC. NUREG-0696 contained a total of eighty-five requirements, twenty-two were a repeat of previously stated requirements. The net result was the addition of sixty-three new requirements to the existing (but not repeated) thirty-five requirements which had not been superseded or changed.
For all practical purposes, the staff had sent the industry back the beginning of the conceptual design phase with a redefined and a considerably more complex TSC requirement. The NRC staff remained firm on the completion date of January 1, 1981 for the TSC from July 1979 until a change was announced in late September 19_80 at the NRC regional meetings with the utilities and as late as May 1980 the staff reaffirmed this completion date in NUREG-0660e The new requirements contained in NUREG-0696 are a further definition of previous requirements which results in restriction of the utility's options in TSC location and size and in the instrumentation and communication systems which must be installed. This single document changes the previous expressions of the purpose and intent of the TSC from a facility designed with the "capability to display and transmit plant status to those individuals responsible for engineering and management support of reactor operations in the event of an accident" to that of a facility which has access to more data and approaches the sophistication of the control room.,. Utilities which proceeded in good faith to construct and instrument a TSC based on guidance between July 1979 and September 1980 found their efforts were made obsolete. It is difficult without discussing each individual new requirement to communicate the magnitude and impact of changes caused when a phrase such as "close proximity" is redefined to mean within two minute walking distance or a requirement which originally required the utility to have the capability of providing displays of VLtal plant parameters from the time the accident began and now requires that the TSC data system will have type A, B, c, D, and E variables specified in R.G. 1.97 with data recall capability of at least two hours of pre-event data and twelve hours of post event data. While all the new requirements do not have the same impact, each utility is affected.
It is particularly significant that the overall improvement in safety as a result of these changes has not been addressed and it appears that the changes are arbitrary and not correlated to any safety benefits.
Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 9 NUREG-0814 - August 1981 NRC licensees were required by the Darrell Eisenhut letter of February 18, 1981, which was an extension of the Commission - approved NUREG-0737, to make a "facility design description" design submittal by June 1, 1981. This "facility design description" was to include the following:
"(l) Task functions of the individuals required to report to the TSC and EOF upon activation and for each emergency class; and (2) Description of TSC instrumentation, instrument quality, instrument accuracy and reliability.
(3) Descriptions of .TSC power supply systems, power supply quality, reliability and availability and consequences of power supply interruption.
(4) Description of the design of the TSC data display systems, plant records and data available and record management systems.
(5) Descriptions of the data transmission system to be installed between the TSC and control room."
The utility had from mid-February 1981 until June 1, 1981 to develop a "facility design description" in accordance with the Eisenhut letter, which would incorporate and address all of the requirements contained in NUREG-0696, also issued in February 1981. Again, the argument could be put forward that although NUREG-0696 was not published until February 1981 the manuscript was completed in December 1980 and therefore the industry was aware of what could be required. The regulatory environment surrounding emergency response facilities, however, was not conducive to reliance that there would not be further changes, particularly since the Commission decided to issue NUREG-0737 with Item III.A.1.2. deleted while they reconsidered the requirements for the EOF.
Two months after the utilities submitted their "facility design description," NUREG-0814 was issued for interim use and comment, which, according to the abstract, "will be used in final form by the staff to review the Emergency Response Facilities 1 conceptual designs which are presently being submitted by nuclear power reactor operators." NUREG-0814 contains one hundred and sixty-eight requirements or considerations. One hundred and thirty-seven of these requirements/considerations had not been previously
Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 10 stated in any of the twelve communications .opportunities with the utilities and several Commission briefings since July 1979. Four changes of consequence were also contained in this document. It is difficult to establish a relationship between requirements contained in this document and the requirements contained in the February 18, 1981, Eisenhut letter because of the detail contained in this document. The most comprehensive of "conceptual designs" would not contain the detail proposed in NUREG-0814 which could be better described as a design checklist rather than evaluation criteria.
The abstract states that "this draft report was prepared largely from the criteria in NUREG-0696 *** ,"but contrary to this statement increases almost threefold the number of requirements. The implementation of NUREG-0814 is regulation by fiat. An excellent example of irresponsible regulatory action is the development of location of the TSC which began as close proximity to the control room, later described as within the security boundary, and still later close enough to the control room to facilitate face-to-face contact between the TSC and control_
room managers, and finally as being within two minutes walking distance from the control room. NUREG-0814 now requires the route between the TSC and control room to meet the habitability require-ments of the TSC and the control room arbitrarily without any consideration for the utility's efforts to date on the design and/or construction of the TSC or the availability of space for the TSC at existing reactors. Typical of the one hundred and thirty-seven new requirements in NUREG-0814, are these few selected at random which include a listing of TSC supervisors as perceived by the staff rather than the utility, the physical layout of the TSC groups under each of these supervisors, require-ments for backup communication systems for the NRC, ENS and HPN hotlines, validation of tasks in the TSC by an analysis of error likely situations, requirements for access to control room data not available through the TSC data system and an analysis of the location of facilities and equipment to establish consistency with patterns of interpersonal interaction and machine utilization.
A discussion of each individual item in NUREG-0814 would be too tedious to prepare and to read. Comments and proposed changes to eliminate new and arbitrary requirements would result in a document with little or no resemblence to NUREG-0814 as presently written.
.e Mr. Samuel J. Chilk November 9, 1981 Page 11 We believe that data provided in this letter and its enclosures supports our request that NUREG-0814 be withdrawn and the subject of the implementation review of NUREG-0696 vis-a-vis Emergency Response Facilities be reconsidered by NRC. More importantly, we consider it essential that the staff be directed to stop prematurely applying NUREG-0814 in "cook book" fashion, as evidence suggests is now being done.
It is the intent of this letter and the enclosures to bring to the Commission's attention the extent of uncontrolled and untimely regulatory changes, which have been imposed on the industry without the benefit of rule-making and in most instances without any defined relationship between the requirements and the health and safety of the public. Representatives of our Utility Group would be pleased to meet with the NRC to assist in the resolution of this problem.
Sincerely,
ts 9Y\.~ f. ~,, ~
Donald F. Knuth DFK/cs Encl.
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ENciURE l COORDINATING GROUP ON EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS IMPLEMENTATION ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY ARKANSAS POWER &LIGHT COMPANY BALTIMORE GAS & ELECTRIC COMPANY BOSTON EDISON COMPANY CAROLINA POWER &LIGHT COMPANY CINCINNATI GAS &ELECTRIC COMPANY COMMONWEALTH EDISON COMPANY CONSUMERS POWER COMPANY DETROIT EDISON COMPANY FLORIDA POWER CORPORATION FLORIDA POWER &LIGHT COMPANY GPU SERVICE CORPORATION LONG ISLAND LIGHTING COMPANY MAINE YANKEE ATOMIC POWER COMPANY MISSISSIPPI POWER & LIGHT COMPANY NEBRASKA PUBLIC POWER DISTRICT NORTHERN STATES POWER COMPANY OMAHA PUBLIC POWER DISTRICT PACIFIC GAS &ELECTRIC COMPANY PUBLIC SERVICE ELECTRIC &GAS COMPANY PUBLIC SERVICE OF INDIANA
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