ML19206A483
| ML19206A483 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Indian Point  |
| Issue date: | 07/25/2019 |
| From: | NRC Region 1 |
| To: | |
| Schroeder D | |
| References | |
| NRC-0446 | |
| Download: ML19206A483 (118) | |
Text
Memo to File: July 25, 2019 Attached is the transcript of the Annual Assessment Meeting for Indian Point Energy Center held on June 20, 2019.
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
2019 Indian Point Annual Assessment Meeting Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: Tarrytown, New York Date: Thursday, June 20, 2019 Work Order No.: NRC-0446 Pages 1-116 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 ML19206A483
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 + + + + +
3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 + + + + +
5 2019 INDIAN POINT ANNUAL 6 ASSESSMENT MEETING 7 + + + + +
8 THURSDAY, 9 JUNE 20, 2019 10 + + + + +
11 12 The meeting was convened at the DoubleTree 13 by Hilton Tarrytown, 455 S. Broadway Street, 14 Tarrytown, New York 105961, at 7:00 p.m., Brett 15 Klukan, presiding.
16 PRESENT:
17 BRETT KLUKAN, Facilitator, Regional Counsel, NRC 18 Region I 19 JAMES CREIGHTON, Town of Cortlandt 20 MANNA JO GREENE, Ulster County Legislator 21 BRIAN HAAGENSEN, Senior Resident Inspector, Indian 22 Point 23 DIANE HACHMUTH, Administrative Assistant 24 LISA HOFFLICH, Senator Gillibrand's Office 25 PAT KEEGAN, Office of Congresswoman Lowey NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 RAY LORSON, Deputy Regional Administrator 2 DANIEL SCHROEDER, Chief, Projects Branch 2, Division 3 of Reactor Projects 4 MOHAMED SHAMS, Acting Deputy Director, Division of 5 Reactor Projects 6 SUSAN SPEAR, on Behalf of Westchester County Executive 7 Latimer 8 JUSTIN VAZQUEZ, Resident Inspector, Indian Point 9 BRUCE WATSON, Chief, Reactor Decommissioning Branch, 10 Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards 11 12 13 14 15 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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3 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 (Time not provided.)
3 MR. KLUKAN: All right, welcome, 4 everybody, to the Indian Point annual assessment 5 meeting. My name is Brett Klukan. Tonight I'll be 6 serving as the facilitator for the meeting as I've 7 done in years past.
8 In a couple of minutes, once I've finished 9 with my short opening remarks, I'm going to turn it 10 over to the NRC staff you see assembled here. After 11 their initial presentation, we'll turn it back over to 12 you for questions and comments.
13 For your awareness tonight, the meeting is 14 being recorded and a written transcript will be 15 generated from the audio file. The audio recording 16 will be posted to the NRC website and the transcript 17 entered into ADAMS, which is the NRC recordkeeping 18 system.
19 So in light of that, I would ask that when 20 it's your turn to speak, that you please identify 21 yourself. If you want, spell your name, that's up to 22 you, but at least say your name before you start 23 speaking, and any affiliation if you'd like that to be 24 entered into the record.
25 So here is how the order of public NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 1 speakers will be determined tonight. At the 2 registration table, there was a sign up list. When 3 you registered to speak, you should have received one 4 half of a ticket which went into a container. That 5 speaking order will then be determined by numbers 6 pulled from that container, the intent of which is the 7 speaking order should be at random.
8 Right now, I think we have 11 or 12 9 speakers. We should have no problem getting through 10 everyone by the end of this evening, okay, at 9:00, 11 assuming everything goes to plan.
12 Just so you have some advanced warning on 13 when it's your turn to speak, we'll be using the 14 screen to display your numbers. It's like a deli 15 counter. You go up once your number is called. It's 16 just in random order. You get how it works.
17 All right, if you'd like to speak this 18 evening and have not already done so, please step 19 outside to add your name to the list prior to the end 20 of the NRC's opening remarks just so I can then get a 21 sense of the total number of people who would like to 22 speak this evening.
23 There is no prohibition. If you decide 24 that, you know, you took a ticket, but you'd rather 25 someone else speak in your stead, you can do that.
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5 1 However, no person can speak twice at the microphone 2 assuming not everyone has already had an opportunity 3 to speak. So you can donate your ticket to someone 4 else, but you can't use that to have that person speak 5 twice assuming we don't have extra time at the end.
6 We'll see how it goes.
7 All right, right now, I'm keeping it to a 8 three-minute speaking segment. Depending upon the 9 number of speakers, we may expand upon that. I'll 10 probably keep it at three and then let people go a 11 second round as time permits, but we'll play it by 12 ear.
13 I'd like to keep the area, the front row 14 clear just for safety. If you have something to give 15 to the NRC staff, please hand it to me and I'll bring 16 it up there to them.
17 Some basic ground rules, all right, so 18 I've facilitated this meeting for several years now, 19 and I regard it with that experience under my belt, so 20 to speak.
21 Many of you likely have strongly held 22 positions regarding the matters to be discussed here 23 tonight, and further, the positions raised by one 24 portion of you are likely at fundamental odds with 25 those held by another portion.
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6 1 However, I ask, be that as it may, I 2 entreat you, I encourage you to respect each other, 3 that you refrain in particular from disparaging 4 remarks meant to denigrate other audience members.
5 Let's embrace civil decorum, give everyone an 6 opportunity to speak and have their voices be heard, 7 and have a great meeting this evening.
8 There will be a three strikes rule for 9 disruptive behavior. I've never had to use it fully.
10 I don't intend to use it tonight, but if you do 11 disrupt the meeting three times, I will ask you to 12 leave the room.
13 Let me very clear as to this next point.
14 Threatening gestures, on the other hand, or 15 statements, under no circumstances will be tolerated.
16 If you feel that you've been threatened in any way, 17 please let me know, or one of the officers positioned 18 around the room know, or another NRC staff member 19 wearing one of these little badges, so that we can 20 immediately address the concern, or just raise your 21 hand if someone is acting in a way that makes you 22 uncomfortable during the meeting as being offensive 23 remarks or anything like that. Please bring it to our 24 immediate attention.
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7 1 issues, the bathrooms are through those doors and 2 around into the main lobby. The exits, let's say 3 there's an event where we all have to evacuate. We 4 will go out through those back doors and then there's 5 a courtyard through that way. We will all go there.
6 That is the fastest way to exit the building, okay?
7 While cameras are permitted, you can video 8 record, you can take photos, just be judicious with 9 flash. That's all I ask. And then everyone, just 10 please silence your cell phones, you know, as a 11 courtesy to others.
12 Okay, now at this point, I'd like to 13 recognize some elected officials we have with us, or 14 representatives of elected officials we have with us 15 in the audience in this evening.
16 We have Pat Keegan of the Office of 17 Congressman Lowey seated in the back there. We also 18 have Susan Spear on behalf of Westchester County 19 Executive Latimer. There you go.
20 Are there any other elected officials that 21 would like to stand and be recognized at this time?
22 No. I will have -- there will be an additional 23 opportunity after the NRC's presentation to give 24 prepared remarks. This is just to stand and be 25 recognized. You can stand up. I'll bring it to you.
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8 1 MS. GREENE: Manna Jo Greene, I'm an 2 Ulster County legislator.
3 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Any others while 4 I'm positioned here? Okay, I will retreat back to my 5 podium.
6 Okay, now let me introduce -- oh, thank 7 you for joining us this evening. Let me introduce the 8 NRC staff you see seated here. First up is Ray 9 Lorson. Mr. Lorson is the Deputy Regional 10 Administrator for Region I. He joined the NRC in 1991 11 as a reactor engineer in Region I.
12 He subsequently was a resident inspector 13 at Peach Bottom and at the Salem Nuclear Power Plants, 14 and the senior resident inspector at the Seabrook and 15 Salem Nuclear Power Plants. Prior to joining the NRC, 16 Mr. Lorson served in the United States Navy.
17 Next we have Mohamed Shams. I asked him 18 and then I did the exact opposite pronunciation. Mr.
19 Shams is the Acting Deputy Director of the Division of 20 Reactor Projects in Region I. He joined the NRC in 21 1997 as a civil engineer in the Office of New 22 Reactors.
23 In 2015, he joined the Office of Nuclear 24 Reactor Regulation where he serves as the Chief of the 25 External Hazards Branch and the Deputy Director of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 Japan Lessons Learned Division. Mr. Shams currently 2 serves on Commissioner Wright's staff as a Reactor 3 Technical Assistant.
4 Prior to joining the NRC, Mr. Shams served 5 as the Department of Interior in the area of seismic 6 risk assessment and was a consultant to the Department 7 of Energy for the design of a highly enriched uranium 8 storage facility.
9 Next we have Brian Haagensen. Brian 10 Haagensen's career in nuclear power spans over 45 11 years, 10 years of service on nuclear submarines in 12 the Navy, 22 years of nuclear service consulting, and 13 13 years of service at the NRC.
14 He currently serves as the Senior Resident 15 Inspector at Indian Point. Prior to his current 16 position, he was a resident inspector at Millstone, 17 and prior to that, he was an operating licensing 18 examiner in Region I.
19 Finally, we have Bruce Watson. Bruce 20 Watson is the Chief of the Reactor Decommissioning 21 Branch in the Division of Decommissioning Uranium 22 Recovery and Waste Programs in the Office of Nuclear 23 Material Safety and Safeguards.
24 He has been with the NRC since 2004. He 25 has extensive experience in decommissioning of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 reactors and material sites, and was a technical lead 2 for the license terminations of Trojan, Maine Yankee, 3 Rancho Seco and Big Rock Point.
4 Thank you, and with that, I will turn it 5 over to Ray for the NRC's opening presentation. Thank 6 you very much.
7 MR. LORSON: Thank you, Brett. As Brett 8 said, my name is Ray Lorson. I'm the Deputy Regional 9 Administrator for NRC Region I. We're located in King 10 of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and we have responsibility 11 for the oversight of the Indian Point facility, both 12 while it's operating today, as well as when it enters 13 the decommissioning process, and up and through the 14 time until the license is terminated, and that won't 15 happen until the licensed facility has been shown to 16 be safely reduced any residual radioactivity materials 17 onsite to a level we find acceptable and the spent 18 fuel has been removed from the site, so from now until 19 then, we'll be here to provide the necessary oversight 20 to ensure safety.
21 We have a couple of presentations we've 22 planned for this evening. We're going to talk about 23 our assessment for the last year in terms of our 24 operational facility, the inspection we've conducted 25 at Indian Point over 2018. We conducted over 8,000 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 1 hours1.157407e-5 days <br />2.777778e-4 hours <br />1.653439e-6 weeks <br />3.805e-7 months <br /> of inspection with both resident and specialist 2 inspectors.
3 We're also going to talk about the 4 decommissioning process because that's the direction 5 that the plant is headed in, and we know that it's of 6 interest to the folks here that have attended.
7 I would like to thank everyone for 8 attending. It's nice to see a lot of folks from 9 previous meetings because it helps reinforce the 10 important commitment you're making to understanding 11 our safety role and how you can remain engaged to 12 ensure that yourself and your fellow citizens are 13 maintained in a safe condition from the operation of 14 the facility.
15 We do have some NRC folks here up on the 16 podium. We also have folks in the audience. We look 17 forward to the dialogue and the questions you may 18 have. In some cases, we'll be able to answer the 19 questions, and in some places, perhaps not, because we 20 may not have the right technical expertise here at the 21 meeting, and in those cases, we'll be happy to get 22 back to you later with more information.
23 So with that, I will turn it over to Brian 24 Haagensen, the Senior Resident Inspector at Indian 25 Point.
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12 1 MR. HAAGENSEN: Yes, good evening. I'm 2 the Senior Resident Inspector at Indian Point. I 3 supervise the resident inspector staff. We ensure 4 that the NRC inspection program is effectively carried 5 out at the site, and we would also respond to any 6 events that might occur.
7 I'd like to briefly introduce the staff.
8 Up there, that's me, and believe it or not, Ray 9 Lorson. We're looking at a pipe in Unit 3. Down here 10 is Andrew Siwy, who is not with us this evening. He's 11 monitoring things at the plant.
12 And then we have Justin Vazquez, who is 13 also here this evening, sitting -- Justin, where are 14 you? Stand up, Justin. Okay, and finally, you 15 probably already met our administrative assistant, 16 Diane Hachmuth. She was taking names as you checked 17 into the meeting this evening, and she's the one who 18 really runs the office.
19 The reactor oversight process, our 20 inspection program is a risk informed, you've heard 21 that many times, program that involves thousands of 22 hours2.546296e-4 days <br />0.00611 hours <br />3.637566e-5 weeks <br />8.371e-6 months <br /> of independent inspection to confirm plant 23 safety and ensure the licensee addresses the 24 identified problems.
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13 1 inspections. That is, as Ray had said, we did 8,000 2 hours2.314815e-5 days <br />5.555556e-4 hours <br />3.306878e-6 weeks <br />7.61e-7 months <br /> of inspection time last night, or, yeah, last 3 night, last year, and we have unfettered access to 4 Indian Point.
5 We can come and go 24/7, 365. We can 6 attend any plant meetings or events. We have the 7 ability to view Entergy internal documents, and our 8 inspectors can gain whatever access is necessary for 9 us to do our jobs.
10 We also have specialists from our regional 11 office and the headquarters in Rockville, Maryland who 12 conduct inspections and audits at the facility 13 periodically. These people are experts in targeted 14 areas like health physics, engineering, security, 15 emergency preparedness, and operations, and they will 16 do the same inspections at all of the sites, so they 17 have the chance to concentrate on targeted areas of 18 expertise.
19 As we said, we put in over 8,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> of 20 inspection activity last year. That was 248 separate 21 baseline inspections. Some examples of these things 22 that we will look at, maintenance activities that 23 occur in the plant. We will observe surveillance 24 tests and make sure that they're carried out properly.
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14 1 adverse weather that's coming in. We'll watch 2 operator performance in the simulator, and we'll look 3 at the emergency preparedness drills. And that's just 4 a small sample of all of the inspections that we do.
5 We also have teams that come up from the 6 region with the regional experts. Last year, they did 7 inspections in access authorization control and 8 safeguards information, and fitness for duty. They 9 looked at operator licensing exams and the 10 requalification program inspections.
11 They looked at the emergency preparedness 12 exercise that was held with the state of New York.
13 They did a design basis assurance inspection which 14 took a look at the engineering that goes behind the 15 design basis of this plant, and they did a security 16 force on force and baseline inspection program, which 17 is quite challenging.
18 The NRC conducted baseline inspections in 19 other specialty areas including operator licensing, 20 health physics. We looked at the heat sink program 21 and we did inservice inspections which looks at the 22 plant's compliance with the ASME codes.
23 The reactor oversight process, I know 24 you've probably heard this one before. We have an 25 action matrix framework to determine the appropriate NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 1 level of NRC oversight. It's predictable and 2 objective. It provides a predictable and objective 3 agency response to licensee performance.
4 The reactor oversight process takes a 5 graded approach that provides additional inspection 6 and oversight for declining performance or for risk 7 significant findings. The process uses two inputs.
8 It takes inspection findings, which are on this side, 9 and then it takes performance indicators, this is 10 interesting, which is over here.
11 The performance indicators are kind of 12 metrics where the plant reports a variety of data.
13 There's actually 22 performance indicators and they 14 are run through some algorithms that determine 15 relative to risk thresholds just where the, you know, 16 where they're at.
17 They have -- examples of some of those 18 performance indicators are unplanned shutdowns, safety 19 system availability, and reactor coolant identified 20 leakage, and like I said, there's 22, so there's many, 21 many others.
22 Our inspection findings come in the form 23 of either findings or violations, and they are kind of 24 our first assessment input. Each finding is assessed 25 to ensure the performance deficiency is more than NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 1 minor and has an objective level of risk significance.
2 They are graded green, which is very low safety 3 significance, white, which is a low to moderate safety 4 significance, yellow, which is substantial safety 5 significance, and red, which is serious safety 6 significance.
7 Last year in 2018, all of the performance 8 indicators for Unit 2 and Unit 3 were green, okay, 9 which is the lowest level of risk, and these 10 performance indicators get updated and reported to us 11 by Entergy and we verify the accuracy of the data.
12 There were also 11 findings that were 13 identified through onsite inspections last year. They 14 were documented in the quarterly inspection reports 15 and team reports, and all of these inspection findings 16 were assessed to have a very low safety significance 17 or green threshold.
18 So overall in summary, we believe that 19 both units were operated safely and in a manner that 20 met all safety cornerstone objectives. Therefore, the 21 NRC's assessment is that both Unit 2 and Unit 3 22 operated within the licensee response column of the 23 action matrix for all of 2018. That's the lowest risk 24 column.
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17 1 conducting our comprehensive baseline inspection 2 program for this year, and in preparation for 3 transitioning to the decommissioning phase, we've 4 reviewed our inspection manual. There's an Appendix 5 G that addresses how we change the focus of our 6 inspection program to take a look at a plant that's 7 going into near term shutdown.
8 So we're looking at things we haven't 9 looked at traditionally, at least down to this level, 10 things like plant staffing, and deferred maintenance, 11 and things like that, so we are taking a different 12 look today at plant performance than we have in the 13 past.
14 And at this point in time, I'd like to 15 turn it over to Bruce Watson who is the Chief of the 16 Reactor Decommissioning Branch.
17 MR. WATSON: Thanks, Brian. I just want 18 to take a couple of minutes and go over a few of the 19 things we've gone over at previous meetings. I just 20 wanted to remind everybody that the decommissioning 21 regulations have been in place since 1997. They are 22 performance based and risk informed.
23 So we do have extensive decommissioning 24 experience. All 74 sites that have been terminated 25 since 1997 have been released for unrestricted use.
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18 1 This includes 10 power reactors. One of those power 2 reactors was here in New York, the Shoreham Plant on 3 Long Island. Also I want to point out that at those 4 10 sites, seven of those still have spent fuel in dry 5 fuel storage facilities.
6 Basically, there are two options for 7 decommissioning. The first is DECON or active 8 decommissioning, which generally begins right after 9 the plant shuts down. The plant will begin active 10 dismantling of the plant systems.
11 The second options is SAFSTOR. The plant 12 is placed in a safe, stable condition, and a good 13 example of this is Indian Point 1. It was shut down 14 in 1974 and has been in that situation since in safe 15 storage.
16 Radiological decommissioning must be 17 completed within 60 years. However, it does take 18 seven to 10 years typically to decommission a nuclear 19 power plant.
20 With the addition of Pilgrim, which shut 21 down on May 31 this year, we have 10 power reactors in 22 active decommissioning. Pilgrim is one, Vermont 23 Yankee, Oyster Creek, San Onofre's Units 2 and 3, 24 Humboldt Bay, La Crosse, Zion 1 and 2, and the NS 25 Savannah, which is a commercial ship. We also expect NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 Fort Calhoun and Crystal River will be going into 2 active decommissioning also.
3 One of the things I wanted to point out to 4 you is that four of those sites, Humboldt Bay, La 5 Crosse, and Zion 1 and 2 will most likely have their 6 licenses terminated next year in 2020, so the number 7 of active decommissioning will go down a little bit.
8 We also have 11 sites that have announced shutdowns 9 through 2025.
10 Next slide. No, next slide. There were 11 go.
12 MR. KLUKAN: That's all I got.
13 MR. WATSON: That's all you got? Okay, so 14 with that, we can turn it over back to Brett and Ray 15 for questions.
16 MR. KEEGAN: Thank you, Bruce. That 17 concludes our presentation. I just want to also 18 remark once again. I appreciate everyone's 19 attendance. We do share a common goal in safety.
20 Your attendance here tonight demonstrates your 21 commitment, so thank you. And with that, I'll turn it 22 back to Brett.
23 MR. KLUKAN: Let me turn my mic back on.
24 Okay, is there anyone in the audience who would like 25 to speak, but has not already registered to do so?
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20 1 Hearing none, all right, then I assume that your name 2 is in the container which is now with Mark and 3 Brianna, all right, great.
4 Okay, I assume, and they can correct me if 5 I'm wrong, we have about 10 to 15 people who are -- I 6 don't know if they're listening to me. It's okay.
7 But anyway, that's what I last thought, so we should 8 have plenty of time to get through it tonight, and 9 again, however, I am still going to keep us at the 10 three-minute mark using the clock you see positioned 11 there.
12 When it's your turn to speak, please come 13 to one of the two aisle microphones, your choice. If 14 you cannot for whatever reason, or would like to have 15 a microphone brought to you, please let me know and 16 I'll bring one of the wireless mics over to you for 17 your speaking time.
18 Once I start the clock, I don't stop it 19 unless the NRC staff decides to respond in that moment 20 to one of your questions. I'm not going to stop it 21 for yes or no question, but if you ask a question that 22 the NRC decides, "Yes, we'd like to respond to it," I 23 will pause it to allow them to respond, and then you 24 can resume.
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21 1 speaking for longer. The time you're spending 2 speaking or asking questions can't exceed three 3 minutes.
4 Again, we may have time at the end of the 5 meeting to go a round two or speak again if we have 6 extra time at the end, but I want to keep it at three 7 minutes, factoring in time for the NRC staff to 8 respond, so that we have enough time to accommodate 9 everyone, and then potentially we might have some time 10 at the end. We'll see how it goes.
11 Once 10 seconds remains on that clock, it 12 will chime just to give you a warning to wrap up your 13 remarks, and then at three minutes, it will chime 14 again, and then I would ask at that time that you 15 please conclude your remarks.
16 Before we begin with our public speaking 17 portion, I would like to offer any elected officials 18 the opportunity to speak or to give prepared remarks.
19 I know that we had one additional elected official 20 join us, Mr. James Creighton of the Town of Cortlandt.
21 And I think of the elected officials with 22 us, I think Manna Jo Greene, the Ulster County 23 legislator, is the only one so far who would like to 24 give prepared remarks, so we'll start with Manna Jo.
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22 1 County legislator, but my day job is that I'm the 2 Environmental Director for Hudson River Sloop 3 Clearwater. I think I've been coming to these 4 meetings -- I've been coming to these meetings for 5 sure since 9/11 when we were very concerned about what 6 could have happened at Indian Point, and fortunately 7 didn't.
8 Last year, I asked about high burnup fuel 9 and how long the fuel rods need to stay in the fuel 10 pools before they are safe to move to dry cask 11 storage, and I was told that there wasn't really the 12 expertise on the existing panel and somebody would get 13 back to me, and to my knowledge, no one has.
14 But I do want to say that scientists like 15 Robert Alvarez and Marvin Resnikoff are saying that 16 regular high-level nuclear waste fuel rods should stay 17 in the pools for five to 10 years, and that high 18 burnup fuel should stay for at least for 10 years 19 before it is moved, and we're very concerned that 20 Holtec is planning to move fuel much more quickly.
21 We've heard two-and-a-half years, three-22 and-a-half years, even as short as one year. There is 23 old fuel that needs to be moved, 40-year-old, 30-year-24 old fuel.
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23 1 and others may speak more to it, is the Holtec thin-2 walled containers as opposed to the more robust 3 containers that are commonly used in Germany and other 4 places, and at San Onofre, those containers have been 5 scratched. There have been problems moving them into 6 the casks.
7 And then the other thing I want to say 8 about tonight's report is that I thought it was 9 somewhat dismissive in terms of what actually happened 10 over the last year. We saw the findings, but I think 11 it would be helpful to actually share with us what 12 those, specifically what those 11 findings were for.
13 And finally, originally Entergy was 14 planning to do what sounded like a combination of 15 DECON and SAFSTOR, that they were going to do some of 16 the decontamination and hold off so that the 17 decommissioning trust fund would grow, and then 18 finish.
19 And now that they're selling it to Holtec, 20 it's our impression that process is going to be, if 21 it's anything like what they've described at Oyster 22 Creek, and Pilgrim, and others, a very rapid, what 23 might be considered quick and dirty decommissioning, 24 and I really hope that the NRC will take seriously its 25 responsibility.
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24 1 And in that regard, I do have a question, 2 and that is in the post-shutdown activities report, 3 it's our understanding that all you have to do is 4 accept it, that is receive it. You don't get to make 5 suggestions to modify it, or even reject it and ask 6 that they redo it.
7 So those are my questions, and I do hope 8 that either we'll get answers tonight or that the 9 staff will follow up with me, and I'll leave my 10 contact information. Thank you.
11 PARTICIPANT: Thank you for your comments.
12 I did want to address the couple of questions you had 13 brought up. The first question you had related to 14 high burnup fuel. I wasn't aware that there was some 15 commitment to get back to you over the last year. If 16 no one got back to you or if you don't recall it, I 17 apologize for that.
18 With respect to the specific time that 19 fuel can remain in cooling until it's placed into dry 20 storage, you've got to remember that our ultimate goal 21 is safety. We ensure that the fuel cannot be moved 22 until it is safe to be placed into dry storage.
23 What that means is the fuel can sit in the 24 canister and cannot, will not exceed certain 25 temperature limits that would potentially harm the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 1 cladding. And so the time that the fuel has to remain 2 in a pool to be cooled before it can be moved really 3 depends on a number of variables.
4 There's no one answer that I can give you.
5 It depends upon the design of the system that's 6 selected by whoever is moving the fuel into the spent 7 fuel casks. It also depends on specific fuel 8 parameters, so there's not a simple answer.
9 The answer is that you really have to go 10 and look into the licensing basis for the canister.
11 Having said that, we do not permit fuel to be moved 12 into the canister until it's safe to do so, so I just 13 want to assure you of that.
14 I think the other question you had related 15 to the post-shutdown decommissioning activities 16 report. That is true. That's provided to the NRC 17 specifically for information, and we'll have a public 18 meeting and we'll collect comments on that.
19 You know, based on the comments, we do 20 have some, I think, ability to influence the process, 21 but the ultimate NRC approval of when the site is safe 22 to be released for unrestricted use really comes later 23 in the process from what is called the license 24 termination plan, and at that point in time, we'll 25 ensure that any radioactivity that remains on the site NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 1 has been reduced to very, very, very small levels, and 2 so that's where we have the formal approval process.
3 MS. GREENE: As a citizen, it seems to me 4 that you should have more direct oversight over 5 decommissioning itself, not just license termination.
6 Thank you.
7 PARTICIPANT: Thank you.
8 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. I would like to 9 note we have one additional representative of an 10 elected office. We have Lisa Hofflich, I apologize if 11 I'm mispronouncing that, from Senator Gillibrand's 12 office. Thank you for joining us.
13 Any other elected officials before I go 14 on? I just want to do one more, going once, going 15 twice, sold. All right, let's now begin with the 16 public comment portion. So first up is 102.
17 Again, once you get to the microphone, 18 state your name. I'll start the clock, and then 19 again, I would ask you to please conclude your remarks 20 in three minutes. Just give me one second to get the 21 clock going. All right, go ahead.
22 MR. WOLF: Good evening, this is Peter 23 Wolf from Nuclear Energy Solutions, Inc., and I have 24 a general and specific question further down the 25 process.
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27 1 The general question is is the NRC aware 2 of any credible study that compares both the risk and 3 the cost analysis of keeping nuclear waste onsite 4 versus transporting it?
5 The specific question is are there NRC 6 regulations dealing with canisters that actually test 7 not only the integrity of the canister in storage, but 8 the integrity of the canister if it's being 9 transported? Thank you.
10 PARTICIPANT: Yes, as I've said before, 11 safety is our primary goal. So we have regulations 12 under Part 71 that deal with the safety of fuel when 13 it's in the dry storage, and so those regulations 14 regulate the design parameters that have to be met in 15 order for the canister to accept spent fuel for 16 storage. Part 72 separately is used to define the 17 parameters associated with the transportation safety 18 of the spent fuel. Thank you.
19 MR. WOLF: As a follow-up question, where 20 is the differentiation between where the NRC has 21 jurisdiction and where DOE has jurisdiction, and at 22 what point is it considered to be part of the federal 23 government, the possession of the nuclear waste, as 24 opposed to, say, the decommissioning company or the 25 storage site?
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28 1 PARTICIPANT: Okay, the point of the 2 transfer occurs when the Department of Energy takes 3 title to the fuel. That's strictly a legalistic type 4 of question. It would be managed safety by the 5 licensee or the Department of Energy regardless of who 6 has title to the fuel.
7 And I think that's probably something you 8 would look at that might vary from site to site based 9 upon potential agreements they make with the 10 Department of Energy as they go to move the fuel from 11 the site to what the next place might be, whether it's 12 an interim storage facility or an ultimate disposal 13 facility. So I think the answer to your question is 14 it depends on the specifics of the situation. Thanks.
15 MR. WOLF: Thank you.
16 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Next we 17 have 103.
18 MR. KOSACK: Good evening, gentleman. My 19 name is Jake Kosack. My last name is spelled K-O-S-A-20 C-K. I am a former security supervisor and QC 21 inspector at Indian Point. I was a whistleblower, 22 hence no longer work there.
23 Tonight, I raise two concerns. First, 24 eight of the initial Holtec dry casks similar to the 25 cracked ones at San Onofre are of major concern. Four NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 1 of them, I was pressured by a former manager to 2 inspect by a paperwork review. Four other, as of 3 January 2016, were never inspected for initial QC 4 inspection, what's called a receipt inspection.
5 What's the current status of those four? Please, NRC, 6 report back on them to the public.
7 Last concern, the union workers, without 8 question, are the humans that keep that plant safe.
9 The muscle memory they possess must be retained by 10 keeping them during the shutdown.
11 And if anyone has any questions for me, 12 you can look me up or speak to me after tonight's 13 forum. Thank you.
14 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
15 PARTICIPANT: Thank you for your comments.
16 Relative to the specific answers you're asking 17 questions upon, we wouldn't have that information. We 18 could talk to you separately.
19 The thing to keep in mind is we do have an 20 inspection program that looks at dry storage 21 activities at the site, and it's very extensive. We 22 look at activities in the field. We look at -- we 23 also have a separate program that's run out of our 24 headquarters office where we actually go to the 25 manufacturing facility and look at their quality NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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30 1 assurance records.
2 We look to see how they're fabricating the 3 casks, and so if there are issues that are identified, 4 we would require that corrective actions be taken to 5 put the system back into a safe condition before it 6 can be placed into service. Thank you.
7 MR. KOSACK: May I have a quick rebuttal?
8 MR. KLUKAN: You still have a minute, 37, 9 so please.
10 MR. KOSACK: I would be happy to speak to 11 Congressional field hearings on this issue. I have 12 hundreds of safety concerns that I could bring 13 forward. I make that public. I would be happy to 14 speak to the press. Thank you.
15 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Okay, next we 16 have 191.
17 MS. DREXLER: Hello, I'm Jackie Drexler 18 (phonetic). I'm from Rockland County, New York.
19 Thank you for this opportunity. I would like to talk 20 today about the fact that we need to make sure that we 21 have a citizen's oversight board.
22 It must, it is essential, and it must have 23 scientists, experts, first responders, plant workers, 24 the people who know, environmentalists, and other 25 informed stakeholders, not just political people, not NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 1 just industry personnel.
2 In this room, you have more people who 3 probably know more about what has gone on there and 4 what could go on there, and they have such a world of 5 expertise at their fingertips. They need to be a part 6 of this.
7 So I'm asking that there is a real 8 citizen's oversight board because, you know, so you're 9 talking 10 years of these rods being cooled, and then 10 what? And where is this company, Holtec, going to be?
11 You know, it's going to come down to the people 12 because it usually does come down to the people taking 13 care of things.
14 I also would like to talk today -- you can 15 see -- this might just -- there we go, okay. You can 16 see obviously that this sign talks about the waste, 17 and so I'm very concerned about this, the Holtec 18 company.
19 So first, we have President Trump, who has 20 redefined high level nuclear waste down to low level 21 so it can be more easily gotten rid of or transported, 22 and what we have here at Indian Point is who knows 23 what underneath everything, so where is this company 24 going to be and who is really going to be taking care 25 of the clean up?
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32 1 I'm also exceedingly concerned about that 2 Spectra pipeline that runs through Indian Point, and 3 we all know Indian Point is built on the Ramapo fault, 4 and this pipeline needs to be shut down entirely for 5 this decommissioning process.
6 So I know there was some information that, 7 oh, it can be, that shutoff valve, someone is going to 8 be taking care of that, but what we know from Spectra 9 Energy is that it could take three minutes. It could 10 take three hours. It could take, you know, three 11 weeks, three days, because we don't know who is 12 actually watching over in Houston to see if everything 13 is okay, so this is a serious concern.
14 We're going to have a lifetime, our 15 lifetimes, everyone's lifetimes of trying to take care 16 of the remains. Okay, the other thing I'd like to 17 show you is the other side of my sign. Does that mean 18 10 seconds?
19 MR. KLUKAN: I think that means three 20 minutes, but go ahead and show them the other side of 21 your sign.
22 MS. DREXLER: The other side is that we 23 have the $7.6 billion bailout to the nuclear industry, 24 and this money could really be repurposed with people 25 who are going to need the jobs and will be wanting to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 1 work in a different sector.
2 The money could be repurposed certainly to 3 make sure that we are moving towards the proper kind 4 of energy that isn't harming our world, and I'm hoping 5 that this can also be addressed. Thank you.
6 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
7 PARTICIPANT: Thank you, Jackie.
8 MR. KLUKAN: Okay, next we have 198, 198.
9 Do we have 198?
10 MS. DECRESCENZO: Hello, my name is 11 Jocelyn Decrescenzo (phonetic) and I live in Rockland 12 County, and (inaudible) is going to be reading a 13 statement from the Sierra Club Lower Hudson Group, and 14 it's actually from Bill Meyer, who is of the Sierra 15 Club Lower Hudson Group.
16 The Sierra Club supports the critical need 17 for a citizen's oversight board empowered by the state 18 legislature and governor to have real oversight 19 authority of the decommissioning process, and that no 20 decommissioning company should be approved to operate 21 at Indian Point until this COB is in place.
22 That is our Sierra Club position as well.
23 You can make -- oh, I can make that as a statement.
24 Okay, so that's the statement from the Sierra Club.
25 Thank you very much.
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34 1 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
2 PARTICIPANT: Thank you, Jocelyn.
3 MR. KLUKAN: All right, next we have 197.
4 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Hi, my name is Susan Van 5 Dolsen. I wanted to talk about a couple of things, 6 truth and untruth.
7 The person who came every year who 8 inspired me to speak today, I'm not a really great 9 speaker, but, was Gary Shaw, and he's no longer with 10 us, and I feel this man spoke nothing but truth all of 11 the time and came every year with questions, came 12 every year with statements, true statements, 13 scientific statements, and many of those things still 14 have never been responded to, nor have they been 15 answered.
16 So I'm looking at you hoping that this 17 time, you will think about Gary and his questions and 18 be able to maybe conjure up, you know, some responses 19 to some of the questions.
20 Some of the other things that I've been 21 thinking about, I've been watching the Chernobyl 22 series. That was untruth or falsehoods, and it makes 23 us concerned about our government and what you would 24 do in that case, especially now.
25 So I want to ask you a few questions. One NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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35 1 of them was already raised by another speaker. Why 2 would any decommissioning firm be permitted to put the 3 fuel in, you know, to transfer the fuel in less than 4 five years, out of the pools if it's not cool and have 5 it be in SAFSTOR in less than five years and consider 6 that complete? From what we've all heard and learned, 7 that's not feasible, so I'm curious about that. I 8 believe that was already asked.
9 Then about the pipelines, are there any 10 other nuclear plants that have gas pipelines running 11 through them, and will those gas pipelines be shut 12 down during the decommissioning period? What 13 expertise does the NRC have to assess the risk of fire 14 in the spent fuel pools that could occur from the 15 rupture of the gas pipelines, and how --
16 Oh, have you heard of Von Hippel who 17 studied the spent fuel pools and the fire that could 18 occur there, and the amount of radiation that would 19 then be spread from probably above Boston to D.C.? I 20 don't know if you know him or his work. I would hope 21 you do.
22 And then how many of the 8,638 hours0.00738 days <br />0.177 hours <br />0.00105 weeks <br />2.42759e-4 months <br /> that 23 you conducted of inspections this year included any 24 evaluation of those gas pipelines and how that would 25 be dealt with, and what training has been done to have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 1 first responders deal with a gas pipeline rupture and 2 fire, and the significant fire that would occur at 3 Indian Point with the spent fuel even after the 4 reactors are shut down?
5 What public outreach has been done about 6 the collocation of the pipeline at the nuclear power 7 plant for first responders or any people in the 8 public? And that's the last question.
9 So I don't know if you can answer any of 10 them now or provide me with answers later, but in the 11 spirit of my friend who is no longer with us here 12 today, I hope you will tell the truth. Thank you.
13 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
14 PARTICIPANT: No, thank you, Susan, and we 15 always tell the truth.
16 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Do you have any answers 17 to any of those questions?
18 PARTICIPANT: Well, let me continue.
19 First of all, I'm sorry about the loss of Gary. I 20 know he was here at all of the meetings and we got to 21 see him every year, and I personally got to speak to 22 him many times, and so I'm sorry for the loss of your 23 friend. In terms of the pipelines, we have done --
24 MS. VAN DOLSEN: You know who this is 25 right?
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37 1 PARTICIPANT: I'm sorry?
2 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Do you know who this 3 woman sitting --
4 PARTICIPANT: I don't know.
5 MS. VAN DOLSEN: This is Jean Shaw. This 6 is Gary's wife.
7 PARTICIPANT: Oh, Jean, I'm very sorry for 8 the loss of your husband. We got to talk on many 9 occasions and he was a great guy. We had a lot of 10 good back and forth dialogue. We didn't necessarily 11 always agree on the points we were making, but I 12 always appreciated the opportunity to talk to him, so 13 I am sorry for your loss.
14 MS. SHAW: Thank you.
15 PARTICIPANT: With respect to the gas 16 pipeline, we have -- I think the thing to keep in mind 17 is Entergy actually did an assessment of the --
18 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Oh, I'm aware of that 19 assessment.
20 PARTICIPANT: -- impact of the gas 21 pipeline on the ability to safely shut down the plant.
22 The NRC independently inspected that several years 23 ago. In addition to inspecting, we conducted our own 24 confirmatory calculations, and we called them kind of 25 bounding calculations, if you will, and we did not NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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38 1 identify any concerns relative to the ability to 2 safely shut down either Unit 2 or 3 as a result of a 3 problem with the new gas pipeline.
4 That new gas pipeline is far away from the 5 plant, from safety equipment, and so we didn't 6 identify any hazards. When the plant enters 7 decommissioning, the hazards will be reduced from that 8 of an operating plant, so --
9 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Where do you come up with 10 that calculation that the plant's risk will be 11 reduced?
12 PARTICIPANT: The way we determine risk 13 for an operating reactor, we have a fairly systematic 14 structured approach, and in general, I think you'll 15 find that folks would conclude that the risk of an 16 operating plant, because the fuel is operating at so 17 much a higher power level, it's at a higher 18 temperature, is much more potentially, has a much 19 great contribution to risk than a plant that has fuel 20 in the spent fuel pool.
21 MS. VAN DOLSEN: You said folks would 22 think? Who are the folks that would think that?
23 PARTICIPANT: I think that's a commonly 24 understood consideration.
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39 1 true. I'm not sure that's true. Could you explain, 2 you know, what scientific basis you have? I would 3 really like to see some scientific basis for your 4 assumptions --
5 PARTICIPANT: Right.
6 MS. VAN DOLSEN: -- because folks might 7 not all agree on that.
8 PARTICIPANT: And the way we determine 9 risk is we look at what can go wrong, how likely is 10 it, and what are the consequences?
11 And if you take the risk associated with 12 an operating reactor to that of a shutdown fuel that's 13 been removed from the reactor for a period of time, it 14 has a much, much lower heat load, and so with a much 15 lower heat load, you have much more time to respond to 16 any potential problem, so I think that's driving a 17 large difference in the risk.
18 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Have you read or 19 researched Von Hippel's work? He's from Princeton.
20 Are you aware of his work?
21 PARTICIPANT: I'm not aware personally of 22 Dr. Hippel. However, I think if you look at the risk 23 of a plant that's permanently shut down when the fuel 24 has been removed from the vessel, it's much, much 25 lower than that of an operating reactor.
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40 1 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Has there ever been a gas 2 pipeline built or collocated with a nuclear power 3 plant?
4 PARTICIPANT: I personally wouldn't have 5 the answer to that. However, we have looked at the 6 gas pipeline at Indian Point, and we thought that the 7 existing gas pipeline did not present an undue hazard 8 to the operation of the site.
9 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Okay, I would hope that 10 you'll do more research during -- first of all, I 11 think the gas should be shut down during the 12 decommissioning process, and I think most folks would 13 agree with that as well as your folks thinking it's 14 safer, so, A, that.
15 B, I would really hope you'd look at Von 16 Hippel's work at Princeton, and I also would hope that 17 you would get back to me with your scientific basis 18 for saying the risk is reduced because I don't 19 necessarily agree with that. And I'm not a scientist 20 either, but it would be helpful to the public to 21 understand where you're getting that, you know, what 22 you're basing that on.
23 You're saying you think it's cooler or 24 whatever, but there's spent fuel, 40 years of spent 25 fuel, and the potential if that gas pipeline were to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 1 rupture of the fire and the consequences, I don't 2 believe it's been analyzed, and we spoke with the 3 county executive, and he agrees with us. He doesn't 4 believe that's been analyzed either.
5 PARTICIPANT: Okay.
6 MS. VAN DOLSEN: Thank you.
7 PARTICIPANT: Thank you for your comment.
8 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Next we have 101.
9 MS. WEININGER: Good evening. My name is 10 Ellen Weininger and I'm a Westchester County resident.
11 I wanted to focus a little bit about the New York 12 State risk assessment about the Algonquin pipelines.
13 There are three Algonquin pipelines collocated at 14 Indian Point.
15 And as the New York State agencies 16 indicated when they submitted their letter along with 17 the risk assessment to FERC, they found many questions 18 and concerns that confirmed the findings of nuclear 19 and pipeline experts.
20 And they, in particular, called for the 21 reevaluation of the NRC and Entergy's analyses relied 22 on for the pipeline approval and to consider the 23 termination of the gas flow, recognizing among many 24 increased risks, the imminent closure of the nuclear 25 reactors and the potential for excavation operations NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 1 to compromise pipeline integrity during that 2 decommissioning process.
3 So I'd like to know when will the NRC 4 conduct this reevaluation taking into consideration 5 these new excavation operations and these new 6 conditions that need to be considered?
7 Additionally, one of the other points that 8 was made in the analysis was the three-minute closure 9 time for pipeline closure, valve closure in the event 10 of a pipeline rupture.
11 And supposedly such a test was conducted 12 this past fall, but it did not take into consideration 13 actually the time it takes, the lengthy time it takes 14 for the pipeline operator in Houston to identify a 15 pipeline rupture, and pipeline experts have noted that 16 it takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 25 hours2.893519e-4 days <br />0.00694 hours <br />4.133598e-5 weeks <br />9.5125e-6 months <br /> to do 17 something like that.
18 And furthermore, pipeline expert, Rick 19 Kuprewicz has said that the NRC analysis of a three-20 minute closure is absolutely misleading and downright 21 false, and does not take into consideration any 22 thermodynamics associated with pipeline rupture.
23 One valve closure time is just completely 24 meaningless as isolation of a pipeline break will 25 require closure of multiple valves on all of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 1 pipelines, all of the pipelines at Indian Point.
2 Also, someone has already referenced the 3 Von Hippel study which actually talks about the 4 cooling pools, and I just want to point out the 5 pipeline failure rate. I do have the article about 6 the Von Hippel study that I can leave you with, and 7 the pipeline failure rate which shows an alarming 8 escalation according to PHMSA.
9 So, ultimately, given all of these new 10 conditions in decommissioning and excavation, I'd like 11 to know when you plan to do this reevaluation?
12 PARTICIPANT: I think what you started off 13 was quoting a letter from the State of New York to the 14 Federal Energy Regulatory agency, FERC. FERC is not 15 part of the NRC and we're not part of FERC, so I'm not 16 aware of any actions that FERC is taking to reevaluate 17 the gas pipeline, nor am I aware of any requests from 18 FERC for us to reevaluate the gas pipeline.
19 As I mentioned earlier, we did reevaluate, 20 or not reevaluate. We did independently look at the 21 gas pipeline. Our analysis did not assume closure of 22 the valves within three minutes. We assumed that the 23 valves did not close.
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44 1 demonstrate that the impact of a gas pipeline rupture, 2 if you will, will not adversely affect the ability to 3 safely shut down Indian Point 2 or 3, and we're not 4 aware of any information that would cause us to go 5 back and revisit our calculations. Thank you.
6 MS. WEININGER: Well, again, your 7 evaluation is based on a false premise, and given, 8 again, these new conditions under which the plant is 9 operating in a new decommissioning mode, it should 10 require a new analysis, and that is not even 11 considering the fact that it's a deficient analysis in 12 the first place.
13 And also, a correction on the proximity of 14 safety structures at Indian Point and these pipelines, 15 the newest Algonquin incremental market pipeline is 16 cited within 105 feet of a fuel tank that provides 17 backup fuel for, I'm sorry, provides fuel for the 18 backup generators, and it's located 115 feet from the 19 switch yard that provides power for Indian Point.
20 And it's several hundred, the pipelines 21 are several hundred feet from the cooling pools, which 22 pose a threat, and the calculations by independent 23 engineers for the blast impact radius includes the 24 entire nuclear power plant and your calculations just 25 don't add up.
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45 1 So I'd like, again, to beseech you to 2 reevaluate under these new operating conditions at the 3 plant, and ask you when you will do it, not in 4 connection with FERC, but in connection with the 5 responsibility of the NRC for the safe operation of 6 the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, whether it's 7 operating and the nuclear reactors are operating or 8 during its decommissioning process, which is imminent.
9 PARTICIPANT: Thank you. The one thing I 10 would mention is that during the decommissioning 11 process, we will provide and continue to provide 12 inspection oversight, and so if we saw that, as part 13 of the decommissioning activities, there was any 14 activity that could potentially impinge upon the pipe 15 or cause some type of problem relative to plant 16 safety, we would certainly identify that and expect 17 that the licensee would take actions to address it.
18 You also mentioned that you had some 19 papers. If you want to leave them with Brett, we'll 20 be happy to take a look at them. Thanks.
21 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Okay, next we 22 have 195.
23 MS. SHAPIRO: Thank you. I'm Susan 24 Shapiro from the Rockland Environmental Group and from 25 the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition. So far, we've NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 1 been lucky that nothing has happened that's 2 detrimental, very detrimental at Indian Point besides 3 the high increase of cancer around the plant, but now 4 we have two more years to go.
5 And from what I've read from the 6 inspection report, I believe that you're continuing to 7 call green ratings when we've had three unplanned 8 shutdowns, and your not looking at the cumulative 9 impact of these unplanned shutdowns and the 10 degradation it causes to the plant is negligent on 11 your behalf.
12 The ratings for this have to be higher.
13 You've let us have green ratings when we had corroded 14 and rusted out bolts. It's totally irresponsible of 15 the NRC not to give this plant a worse rating and to 16 give us more oversight.
17 If I'm not wrong, we are down now to only 18 one resident inspector, so there is less oversight, 19 and we're at the most dangerous point of this plant.
20 It's aging. It's falling apart and you're not 21 providing the adequate oversight.
22 With regard to Holtec and the NRC, I'm 23 specifically asking and requesting that the NRC does 24 not give its tacit approval to transfer to Holtec 25 Indian Point as you did at San Onofre and Oyster NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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47 1 Creek.
2 Holtec has not shown that their casks are 3 sound and safe for our environment. We have more 4 waste at Indian Point than at probably any other 5 reactor site in the country and we are at the most 6 dense population of any other plant in the country, 7 and we deserve better than Holtec, and certainly 8 Holtec hasn't shown that their casks don't crack and 9 that they're properly used for high burnup fuel.
10 I don't believe they're approved for high 11 burnup fuel, which now there's an enormous amount of 12 high burnup fuel at Indian Point. So what are you 13 going to do with Holtec and that waste?
14 I was at a very frightening hearing at the 15 NRC where the chief engineer said he's not worried 16 about high burnup fuel because even though we consider 17 it like it's broken rods, like it's broken fuel, he's 18 not worried because he doesn't think radiation is 19 dangerous. So if that's your chief engineer who is 20 deciding on casks, I worry about what the NRC is 21 doing.
22 And what's going to happen in 100 years or 23 less when those casks need to be replaced? Have you 24 designed a funding mechanism? Who is going to replace 25 them? Where is that funding going? If you allow NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 1 Holtec to take all of the money away, who is going to 2 pay to re-cask that waste? Also, what happens if in 3 60 years there's no place to take the waste and it's 4 still onsite? What's the consideration? Where's the 5 funding to take care of that?
6 And why aren't you requiring it to be 7 bermed, which we all know is the safest way? Right 8 now, those casks are just sitting on a pad on the side 9 of the Hudson River, and they could roll right into 10 the Hudson. Why not make it safe? The NRC is not 11 looking after the public safety.
12 I ask also why does the NRC -- I have only 13 two more quick questions. Why does the NRC not come 14 out and state, as it says in your studies and as the 15 IAEA has shown, that nuclear energy is not carbon free 16 during its entire life cycle and that, in fact, what 17 you're protecting in those dry casks is the carbon-14 18 that's produced by nuclear energy every single day 19 it's operating during the process of creating 20 electricity? The NRC needs to be proactively involved 21 in talking about the carbon-14, the new atoms of 22 carbon that are created by nuclear reaction.
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49 1 under Indian Point? The last decision that was made 2 by the NRC was just to let it leach into the Hudson 3 River. Now you're going to decommission the plant.
4 At what level of cleanup are you going to require?
5 And the last final question is once this 6 plant is shut down and the waste is still here, does 7 Price-Anderson still apply or is there a new liability 8 for Holtec to take on insurance to protect us? Thank 9 you.
10 PARTICIPANT: Thank you. That was quite 11 a laundry list. First, I'd just like to correct a few 12 statements you had made. You had mentioned that we 13 have one resident inspector onsite. In fact, we still 14 have three full-time resident inspectors that are 15 onsite.
16 You also made a point about plant trips 17 and how are they captured in our reactor oversight 18 process? If there was a particular finding or 19 performance deficiency that led to the trip based upon 20 some licensee activity, we could write an inspection 21 finding against that particular activity, and so it 22 would get captured as an inspection finding.
23 The other more direct way that it would be 24 captured, at the beginning of his presentation, Mr.
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50 1 indicators, and based upon the performance indicators, 2 we take things that are important to plant safety such 3 as unplanned power reductions, plant trips, and so we 4 count those and we have a certain metric that we look 5 at.
6 And if you go to our website, basically 7 nrc.gov, you'll see for operating reactors, you can 8 look and see the performance indicator for Indian 9 Point, and if it crosses a threshold from what we call 10 green to white, in other words, they've had more plant 11 trips or more particular problems relative to reactor 12 power, we then could transition them into a second 13 column two of the action matrix which then would 14 generate additional NRC inspection and a supplemental 15 inspection to verify that corrective actions have been 16 taken for kind of any underlying issues that led to 17 those. So that's a long-winded answer to those are 18 considered by our program.
19 Relative to the Holtec license transfer, 20 we will do a thorough review of the license transfer.
21 We haven't made any decisions at this point, and to my 22 knowledge, we haven't even received the application.
23 All we're aware of are reports that we see that 24 Entergy has signed an agreement, a purchase and sale 25 agreement to transition the site to Holtec.
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51 1 That will require an independent licensing 2 action by the NRC. We haven't received it. We 3 haven't taken any action. Rest assured we'll give a 4 thorough review as part of that process, and also 5 there are opportunities for public participation in 6 that process as well.
7 MS. SHAPIRO: What are those 8 opportunities?
9 PARTICIPANT: The question related to a 10 license transfer typically opens up hearing rights, 11 and so we will publish in the Federal Register a 12 notice when we receive the application. We'll put it 13 out and we'll describe in the Federal Register notice 14 the opportunities for public engagement.
15 I think the last question you had was 16 relative to Price-Anderson. I'm not an expert on 17 Price-Anderson, but Price-Anderson is designed to 18 provide financial assurance to folks who might be 19 impacted by a nuclear accident.
20 I'm not necessarily certain whether it 21 would end at the time of an operating reactor or how 22 it would impact if there was an accident with respect 23 to a site that's in decommissioning or if the fuel, 24 for example, is in dry storage.
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52 1 if we look at the range of postulated action that's 2 between an operating reactor and that of a reactor 3 that's permanently shut down where all of the fuel is 4 either in the spent fuel pool or has been moved into 5 dry storage, the risk and likelihood of a particular 6 plant event that would cause an offsite consequence is 7 much, much reduced, so that drives a lot of the things 8 that we do that differentiate our oversight program 9 from a decommissioning reactor as opposed to an 10 operating reactor.
11 MR. KLUKAN: Okay, next we have 193, 193.
12 Is there someone else who hasn't spoken yet who would 13 like to speak? Open ticket.
14 PARTICIPANT: Open ticket?
15 MR. KLUKAN: All right, well, I think 16 we're going to have extra time at the end of the 17 night, so if people, even if you don't think you want 18 to speak right now, you know, mull it over. We may 19 have extra time. So next up is 192.
20 MS. INSERRA: My name is Marie Inserra 21 (phonetic). I live in Peekskill, New York, 22 unfortunately close to Indian Point in my estimation.
23 I would like to ask a few questions. Some of them 24 overlap with some of the questions that have been 25 asked, I suppose.
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53 1 I'd really like to know what the process 2 is for you to vet companies that are stepping forward 3 to do decommissioning. Holtec, in my estimation, has 4 not got exactly the kind of track record that we would 5 like to see, the disaster at San Onofre.
6 They, themselves, are embroiled in some 7 tax issues in New Jersey, and now we know that they're 8 going to be joining forces with SNC-Lavalin that also 9 has serious issues that they've faced in Canada with 10 fraud and also attempts to bribe government officials.
11 That's one question. Also, why on earth 12 would we be approving casks that are less than an inch 13 thick when the rest of the world, or at least 14 certainly in Europe where there is quite a lot of 15 nuclear energy, they're using 14 to 19-inch thick 16 casks? It just doesn't seem reasonable.
17 And lastly, I wonder if you think that any 18 one of us could be reassured by the answers that you 19 gave regarding the pipeline at Indian Point issue? We 20 would be in for a horrendous, unprecedented disaster 21 if anything happens.
22 And the information from PHMSA about the 23 quality and the endurance of those newer pipelines is 24 enough to convince, I would say, anyone that we need 25 to be extra careful. The fact that this is the only NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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54 1 nuclear energy site that has a pipeline running so 2 close to it, the potential is horrific. We're looking 3 at a Fukushima-like event probably at the very best.
4 And we also know that the airborne 5 transmission of these nuclear radioactive particles 6 are going to, can extend as far as Vermont and go down 7 the eastern seaboard, not just the -- as if the 8 metropolitan New York area were not enough. Thank 9 you.
10 PARTICIPANT: Thank you. As I mentioned 11 earlier in the response to this, Susan Shapiro, as 12 part of the licensing process, if we were to receive 13 an application from Entergy, or if they request to 14 transfer the license to Holtec, that would be subject 15 to public hearing comments. And so that would be 16 available in terms of any comments or interactions you 17 would like to have at that time.
18 With respect to the pipeline, I've talked 19 about it. And, obviously, you know, in terms of 20 writing insurance it's clear from the questions that 21 there's still a lot of concern about the pipeline.
22 And we communicated in the best manner that we can 23 from a technical perspective as to why we don't think 24 it presents a problem. In the sense of if there were 25 a pipeline malfunction that would not be good.
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55 1 However, in the end with the result we would still 2 have confidence that both units could be safely 3 shutdown and that the reactor would be safe.
4 So, that kind of drives our conclusion.
5 But I recognize that, you know, now having the detail 6 of understanding of some of the science behind that, 7 I can understand why there is a level of uncertainty.
8 Or I should say, you know, I certainly appreciate that 9 you have a concern, and we'll just continue to try to 10 communicate the best we can to try to alleviate the 11 concern.
12 And then the last question you had was 13 related to the thickness of the wall canisters. I 14 think the thing to consider is that the canisters are 15 licensed under part of our regulation that allows them 16 to be in storage. The walls are typically, you know, 17 they vary from whether it's a side wall, or whether 18 it's a lid, or the base plate of the wall.
19 However, it's also important to recognize 20 that the canisters actually get inserted into 21 basically a concrete and steel overpack that's several 22 inches thick that provides substantial shielding and 23 protection.
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56 1 have all the information.
2 So, thank you.
3 PARTICIPANT: Why would other people be 4 using 14- to 19-inch thick casks if that wasn't 5 considered a safety standard or parameter? That's of 6 importance.
7 PARTICIPANT: Yeah. So, once again, our 8 requirements we think establish reasonable assurance 9 for storage of the dry fuel. And I'm not familiar 10 with the requirements that other countries may or may 11 not have. So I can't really comment on what 12 considerations go into those designs.
13 PARTICIPANT: Okay. And back to the other 14 issue about the pipeline, I would like to point out 15 that our concerns are not something that we've dreamed 16 up. These are based on scientific input from people 17 who are experts in the field and who think that there 18 is a very good possibility of something happening.
19 So, the fact that this pipeline was 20 allowed to be built at all is beyond comprehension.
21 We are living with that risk every day.
22 Thank you.
23 PARTICIPANT: Thank you.
24 MR. KLUKAN: Bruce, did you have something 25 to add?
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57 1 MR. WATSON: I was just going to add that 2 the design of the spent fuel canister is such that in 3 the United States they are designed so they can be 4 transported because the plan is to actually transport 5 them to a permanent repository for disposal. Whereas 6 in some of the other countries that may or may not be 7 the plan.
8 So, the canister -- What?
9 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.)
10 MR. WATSON: I'm sorry? I can't hear your 11 question.
12 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.)
13 MR. WATSON: The plan --
14 MR. WATSON: Go ahead, Ray.
15 MR. LORSON: Just I think the question that 16 I heard, if I interpret it correctly, is the plan to 17 transport the fuel offsite here?
18 Absolutely. The plan is not -- we've 19 talked about the storage facility at Indian Point as 20 an interim storage facility. And the ultimate 21 objective is that the fuel will be moved from the 22 site. That is the final end state. It will not 23 remain at the site.
24 PARTICIPANT: Are all the (Unintelligible.)
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58 1 current problem is that there's nowhere currently to 2 send it. However, however there are a couple designs 3 that the NRC has license applications that we are 4 looking at right now that would permit transport of 5 the fuel to an interim storage facility.
6 And there's also some work at the national 7 level on a disposal, ultimate disposal. But, again, 8 these actions are broader U.S. Government actions that 9 go beyond the authorities of the NRC. Our goal is to 10 make sure whatever approach that the Government takes 11 towards the management of the spent fuel, that it's 12 done in a safe manner.
13 But I think I share your concern, there 14 needs to be a place to transport the fuel, to remove 15 it from the site so that we can get to the ultimate 16 termination of the site license.
17 If we --
18 (Simultaneous unintelligible 19 conversation.)
20 PARTICIPANT: If we could get back to the 21 agenda, give everyone a chance to speak.
22 MR. KLUKAN: Yes, the problem with the --
23 I appreciate your questions. You know, it's a logical 24 follow-up to what Ray is saying. But we, because we 25 are recording this it's important to get this on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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59 1 microphone.
2 So, you know, we'll do this one follow-up 3 question. Then we'll go to our next speaker in an 4 attempt to make sure we can continue this 5 conversation.
6 So, I guess the question is if you don't 7 have a plan right now for a place to transport this 8 waste, whether it be an interim source or your final 9 geological repository, why not design then as a 10 defense in depth kind of measure as if it were 11 permanent, or if it would be more permanent than not.
12 I think that is the question that is being asked.
13 PARTICIPANT: Right. And I think it's 14 important to recognize that when the fuel is placed 15 into dry storage, those containers it's an inert type 16 of environment, internal to the canister. We think 17 they are very robust structures. We think they will 18 last a very long period of time.
19 There are requirements that they be 20 inspected. And if there are problems that are 21 identified with a canister, we would expect that the 22 licensee would take actions to fix the problem. And 23 so, until such time as they can be removed from the 24 site, the canisters are going to require inspection, 25 they're going to require assessment. And if there's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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60 1 a problem it's going to have to be fixed.
2 MR. KLUKAN: All right. So, again, if we 3 have extra time or time at the end we can continue 4 this conversation. But I'd like to turn to our next 5 speaker right now. Please.
6 MS. LEE: My name is Michel Lee with the 7 Council on Intelligent Energy and Conservation Policy.
8 And I am going to hog the next half a minute because 9 I came here expecting to hear a discussion of what was 10 found in this inspection report. And you gentlemen 11 totally failed in doing that.
12 So, I don't have the time to read some of 13 the little ditties in here, but let me just pick one 14 paragraph because I think the public deserves to hear 15 this.
16 The inspectors determined the performance 17 deficiency is more than minor because it was 18 associated with the protection against external 19 factors which are attributes of mitigating systems 20 cornerstone. This performance proficiency affected 21 the cornerstone objective of ensuring the reliability 22 and capability of systems that respond to initiating 23 events -- blah, blah, blah -- to prevent undesirable 24 consequences, specifically the failure of, whatever, 25 the offsite theater 13W93, caused the loss of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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61 1 station blackout in Appendix R diesel generator, an 2 increase in the on link risk monitor core damage 3 frequency from green to yellow risk, an unplanned 4 entry into technical specifications with a loss of 5 remote shutdown instrumentation and controls for decay 6 heat removal via steam generators. Blah, blah, blah.
7 Reactor coolant system inventory control. Blah, blah, 8 blah. And support equipment, including a circulating 9 cooling water pump.
10 And there's more in there that you should 11 have discussed with us.
12 But, I came here really to address 13 something that I think is pretty significant. And you 14 might call this a cost-cutting issue. And I really, 15 I'm going to ask you gentlemen, as individuals, to 16 think a little beyond your role at the NRC. And I 17 appreciate the delicacy of some of the areas you have 18 to tread with your senior members of your Commission.
19 And I'd ask you to start thinking a little 20 bit about national security risks. Because we have 21 all been reading, and for those of us who do research, 22 like me, we have been reading the actual reports 23 coming out on cyber security, the threat to our grid, 24 the threat to SCADA systems, the threat to 25 communication systems, and the threats that our NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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62 1 nation, that our Department of Homeland Security and 2 the FBI consider extremely, extremely high level risks 3 to this nation. We're all aware of what's going on in 4 the international geopolitical scheme right now with 5 Russia, and China, and Iran.
6 And within that context, what do I see 7 from the NRC -- so I'm taking extra time because you 8 did not talk about at all your findings from this 9 inspection report. I want to get into the cyber risk 10 issue.
11 You had a meeting with the Nuclear Energy 12 Commission which is memorialized in a memo that was 13 posted on ADAM where the NEEI requested that you 14 reduce your oversight of cyber. Okay? Soon after 15 that report came out the inspector general of the 16 Nuclear Regulatory Commission came out with a report 17 on the lack of going-forward capability of the NRC to 18 oversee cyber issues.
19 This is a serious issue. And I certainly 20 request, and I would really like you to respond to 21 this directly, how are you going to respond to the 22 nuclear lobbyists asking you to reduce your oversight 23 of cyber?
24 PARTICIPANT: Thank you for the question.
25 And also thanks for starting off looking at the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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63 1 inspection report and reading the findings. And it 2 sounded pretty grim. And I think that highlights the 3 level of intrusiveness that our inspectors are doing 4 in the field. When they are out there, they are 5 working hard, they are independent. We call it the 6 way we see it.
7 I think there were some questions earlier 8 about how can you trust the Government based upon 9 watching the HBO series of Chernobyl, and some of the 10 things in the statements that were made there?
11 I think that report shows we're not 12 pulling punches. We call it the way we see it. And 13 so, thanks to Brian and his team, they're out finding 14 issues like that. And, you know, we owe them a debt 15 because they're in there day in, day out, you know, 16 digging deep through the bowels of the plant. And I 17 think that finding represents that.
18 Relative to cyber, we're always looking at 19 do we have the right inspection footprint? Does that 20 mean that we look at things in the right -- are we 21 looking at the right things with the right level of 22 frequency or with the right scope and depth?
23 Ultimately, the agency will decide, the 24 NRC will decide what's necessary to give ourselves 25 satisfaction or assurance that we have enough of an NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 1 understanding regarding cyber security controls. We 2 take it very seriously. We were one of the first 3 federal agencies to implement a robust cyber program, 4 not only in terms of requirements but also in terms of 5 inspection. And so, we think we have a good record 6 there.
7 And we're not going to rest on our 8 laurels. We may make adjustments to the program based 9 upon operating experience, based upon input from 10 whether it's members or the public or even from, 11 potentially, from industry groups that might have 12 their own perspectives. Our goal is to be effective.
13 We are not going to maintain changes that we don't 14 have confidence will achieve the overall inspection 15 objectives.
16 So, thank you.
17 MS. LEE: I think your inspectors are 18 phenomenal but there's a limit to what they can do.
19 And there's also evidence in this report which people 20 should be aware of.
21 Okay, give me a minute.
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65 1 to the 2017 delta testing showed significant increase 2 in the delta values in your standard deviations for 3 the C phase. And then that was stated as a 4 deteriorated condition in 2012 to 2017.
5 What's also indicated in this report is 6 that your -- that Entergy was supposed to have the 7 vendor do an inspection and identify problems back in 8 November 2017. And that work order was never 9 followed. And, lo and behold, you found out there was 10 a problem and you had the actual event occur.
11 And this is, you know, Appendix R which 12 has to do with fire risk and diesel operations which, 13 as you're well aware, fire is one of the major safety 14 threat issues at nuclear reactors. And this is hardly 15 a unique kind of finding.
16 So, you know, you're always playing 17 catch-up. I'm aware that the plant's going to be 18 closing in a couple of years, but the cyber risk 19 continues. And that's a perfect -- it's also an area 20 that intersects very much with the threat posed by the 21 pipeline because the cyber threat of the pipeline, you 22 know, are approximate to this reactor site.
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66 1 rupture of the two pipelines that are located 2 proximate to that. And that, gentlemen, has not been 3 looked at in any of the reports that you've done, or 4 that FERC has done, or that Entergy has done. Nobody 5 has looked at this, at the possibility of those three 6 pipelines going, particularly in the context of the 7 area's regional deteriorated infrastructure such as 8 the water piping of the municipal area, which is 9 already degraded.
10 PARTICIPANT: Okay. Thank you for those 11 comments.
12 MR. KLUKAN: We have four additional 13 speakers to get through, and then we may have some 14 time for further comments that people have already 15 spoken. But let's finish up with these four.
16 So, number 200.
17 MS. VANN: Hi. My name is Nancy Vann. I'm 18 the president of Safe Energy Rights Group. And I have 19 a number of questions.
20 But I'd like to preface my remarks by 21 complaining about the forum that we are confined to.
22 We are bringing a lot of technical questions. We're 23 bringing a lot of information that we have researched, 24 things about high burn-up fuel, things about the 25 thickness of the casks and canisters.
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67 1 And you're giving us summary answers: We 2 don't do anything that isn't safe; safety is our 3 middle name.
4 That does not answer our questions. And 5 particularly a question, for example, where you say 6 you don't know what other countries do with their 7 casks and canisters. That just doesn't seem like a 8 very good position for our Nuclear Regulatory 9 Commission to take.
10 I would like to show you something. I 11 hadn't really planned on bringing this as part of what 12 I was going to say. But this is from Holtec. Holtec 13 wants to take over Indian Point. This is what they 14 are doing in the Ukraine. They are cleaning up the 15 casks, the Chernobyl site, and they are moving fuel 16 into casks and canisters.
17 These are double-walled casks and 18 canisters. This is a picture of the hot cell that 19 they are using that they can transfer fuel.
20 The casks and canisters we have here you 21 say, well, the licensee would report it if there was 22 a problem with it. They did that at San Onofre. It 23 was a whistleblower not the licensee who brought up 24 the fact that they had gouged 29 canisters, that the 25 coating that would keep those canisters from NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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68 1 corroding. Then they are put into concrete casks 2 where they can't be inspected.
3 The ones in other countries not only are 4 they ticker walled, 10 to 19 inches thick, but the 5 lids are bolted on. So, they can be inspected. If 6 something goes wrong, they can be transferred.
7 There's actually some question about whether a 8 canister that leaks could be transferred to a 9 different canister if all you have is pools.
10 So, maybe the NRC needs to do a little 11 research, a little technical study about what is being 12 done in other countries, and what is being done here, 13 and what issues other plants have had that we don't 14 want to have at Indian Point.
15 As I, as I mentioned to one of you, we had 16 a briefing for Congress about a month ago where one of 17 the briefers was a former NRC chairman, Gregory 18 Jaczko. He said that the NRC -- that the nuclear 19 industry should be shut down, that his feeling about 20 it is that it is just too safe -- too unsafe to keep 21 operating.
22 And the way that you're going about doing 23 the decommissioning, to say that it's going to be 24 perfectly fine as long as the plant is closed, that's 25 not what we have gotten from our experts. Our experts NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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69 1 who did actual studies under actual weather conditions 2 beginning on the first day of each month, January 3 through December of 2015, showed radioactive material.
4 If there had been a fire in the spent fuel pools, not 5 a core meltdown, a fire in the spent fuel pools, that 6 radiation would have gone all the way up to Vermont.
7 And there would be huge sections between here and 8 Vermont, and including all of Manhattan, not just the 9 financial center of the United States -- and I'm a 10 former mutual fund attorney and a Wall Street attorney 11 -- I know that that would cause a meltdown of the 12 world economy which you have never seen before.
13 To give summary answers about, oh, well, 14 we wouldn't transport it if it wasn't safe. As far as 15 I know, the canisters that you're going to try to ship 16 away from Indian Point, if you ever are able to ship 17 them away, have never been tested physically in water.
18 It was all done by computer mock-ups. And, now, we 19 know computer mock-ups never go wrong. So we're all 20 very comfortable with that.
21 But you say that our casks and canisters 22 are designed to be sent away someplace. Okay, this is 23 from the congressional hearing last Thursday about the 24 plans for Yucca Mountain and for the Consolidated 25 Interim Storage. Testimony, written testimony by NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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70 1 Robert J. Halstead, Executive Director of the Nevada 2 Agency of Nuclear Projects.
3 And his estimate is that if we restarted 4 the consideration of Yucca Mountain next year, it 5 would be 20 to 25 years before anything could be 6 shipped there.
7 Now, I live next to Indian Point. I'm 8 about 3.5 miles away as the crow flies. And I'm old, 9 I'm in my 70s. So, I, you know, I'm not going to wait 10 around for 20 to 25 years for this stuff to get out of 11 here. I want it safe where it is. And I want it 12 moved into canisters that are safe for shipping, if it 13 does ship.
14 Our rail lines are not sturdy enough to 15 carry the weight of these canisters. Our roads are 16 too crooked and not stable enough to carry the weight 17 which would have to be divided with a scaffolding over 18 three flatbeds to bear the weight. And that's not 19 going to get around any of the curves on Route 9.
20 So, we need to start with the first item, 21 which is these casks and canisters need to be made 22 safer. You need to think about what they're doing in 23 other countries. You need to have a way to repackage 24 them if something goes wrong. And then when there is 25 a way or a place for them to go, they could be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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71 1 transported. But until we have safe canisters we're 2 at risk here now. They're at risk if they're going to 3 be transported. They will be at risk out in the New 4 Mexico or Texas desert in the hot sun.
5 You've already had accidents out there 6 from kitty litter causing exploding -- you know what 7 I'm talking about, kitty litter causing exploding 8 barrels of nuclear waste.
9 Now, this is ridiculous. We really need 10 to have a forum in which we can sit down and discuss 11 these issues like adults with other adults, and talk 12 about, well, what about this type of canister? What 13 about this?
14 High burn-up fuel is far more hot when it 15 comes out of the nuclear reactors. And 16 Orana(phonetic) was asking for one year before it puts 17 it in a canister, and you're not giving us an answer 18 other than to say, well, it complies with our 19 regulations? Maybe you need to think about your 20 regulations, and not just by granting exemptions to 21 them.
22 I have right here a letter about Pilgrim 23 where the Pilgrim Nuclear Facility, and this was --
24 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.)
25 MS. VANN: Last point.
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72 1 The Pilgrim Nuclear Facility is requesting 2 an exemption from your guys, and exemption so that 3 after the plant is no longer operated, now when all 4 the material is in dry cask, after it all finishes 5 operating it won't have to maintain any offsite 6 emergency planning. There will be no coordination 7 with the fire or ambulance service offsite. That will 8 all come back to be the responsibilities of the 9 taxpayers of our communities.
10 And this, this -- and the reason I went to 11 the Pilgrim one, Holtec has also applied for this.
12 But there was correspondence between the Nuclear 13 Regulatory Commission and FEMA about the risk. And it 14 lists six other plants that are closing down.
15 Now, you said there are nine of them now?
16 Six other plants have asked for this regulation and 17 this exemption to the regulation. And it says and 18 this is just like those other six plants. And this is 19 the seventh one, Pilgrim. And now you're going to 20 have eight with Indian Point. This is regulation by 21 exemption. This is illegal under the -- don't look 22 like that, you must know about agency regulations and 23 the administrative pact.
24 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.) But you're 25 still going to have (Unintelligible.).
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73 1 MS. VANN: No.
2 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.)
3 MS. VANN: Okay.
4 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.)
5 MS. VANN: Yeah. Okay. But this is 6 illegal rulemaking. It's an illegal way to adopt a 7 regulation. And we will be talking to Congress about 8 that as well.
9 So, thank you for listening. And I hope 10 we can get together in a better forum and actually 11 discuss it.
12 (Applause.)
13 PARTICIPANT: And thank you for those 14 comments, Nancy. And I hope that you are here 25 15 years from now providing perspectives on dry storage.
16 And I hope you have nothing but good things to say.
17 I agree with the forum itself, recognize 18 that we're talking approximately a 2-hour period of 19 time. There's some very, you know, complex technical 20 issues that are being raised, and so we're trying to 21 provide the main points without getting into some of 22 the technical details, recognizing that any of the 23 individual topics that you raise like, for example, 24 dry storage or transportation of spent nuclear fuel, 25 you could have multi-day workshops just on those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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74 1 particular topics themselves.
2 With respect to the -- and there are 3 actually, there's a number of things. This is not t 4 he only outreach activity that the NRC offers. We 5 have a public website which contains information. You 6 can always pick up the phone, contact somebody from 7 the Commission. There are meetings that happen 8 throughout the year on a variety of topics, including 9 we talk about the regulations.
10 Recognize our regulations were not just 11 arrived at in an arbitrary fashion. Rather, they were 12 hammered into place through public comments, public 13 discourse, through a lot of detailed technical 14 analysis.
15 You mentioned transport and what are other 16 companies doing -- countries doing. That is an area 17 where are regulations are harmonized with the 18 international community, and have to be if you think 19 about it from a commerce perspective. So, when it 20 comes to transport, our regulations, we're required to 21 harmonize with the international community. And so we 22 actually have less room to maneuver or to make 23 adjustments to our Part 72, which is the area that 24 deals with transport of spent fuel and radioactive 25 material than we do in some of the other areas.
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75 1 So, thank you very much for the comments, 2 and look forward to continuing the dialog.
3 MR. KLUKAN: And I would say this. So, for 4 those of you who don't know, the agency just wrapped 5 up today a 3-day innovation panel, called a jam, in 6 which it was agency-wide. People submitted comments 7 about was that we can modernize as an agency.
8 What I would suggest you do, if you 9 believe this is an insufficient way of communicating 10 with the public, write to the commissioners. Put 11 together a campaign to let them know that you need 12 more and better outreach, that you are unsatisfied 13 with the level of information that's being conveyed or 14 the amount of ways that you can interact with them.
15 Let them know because that really, I mean, as a region 16 we're limited in what we can do by ourselves.
17 So, if you believe that there are 18 fundamental changes that need to happen in the way the 19 agency communicates, I would urge you to write 20 directly to the Commission.
21 PARTICIPANT: And if I could just add one 22 point, Brett. I meant to say this at the outset when 23 I was thinking about your comments on the forum, but 24 everyone should have received a public notice or 25 feedback form. Please fill those out with your NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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76 1 comments. We'll take them. We look at them very 2 seriously and try to see what we can do to improve 3 this meeting so that it more, I think, accurately 4 serves the interests that all of the folks have, 5 including yourself, Nancy. So, thank you.
6 MR. KLUKAN: And, again, I don't like to 7 cut anyone off. It brings me no joy. It's not why I 8 come here and savor it in no way. I just want to make 9 sure we get to the other people who have signed up to 10 speak this evening.
11 So, with that, without further delay, I 12 have 104.
13 MS. SHAW: Hi. I'm Jane Shaw. Yes, I am 14 the wife of Gary Shaw. I live in Croton-on-Hudson, 15 right 5.5 miles from Indian Point. And I also wanted 16 to talk about the casks, not the nature of the casks 17 -- that's been covered -- but the fact that they need 18 to stay in place.
19 There is no way to transport them 20 reasonably. I don't want them to be there either. I 21 hate the idea of living with the forever. But I hate 22 the idea of them rolling through the countryside, 23 falling off highways, getting filled with dirt and 24 crap when the roads fall apart, which they do, or the 25 railroad tracks can't hold anything, or, God forbid, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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77 1 sent in barges to sink in a barge and totally destroy 2 someone else's aquifer, or everybody's aquifer 3 depending on where it fell.
4 It's go to stay where it is. And not only 5 that, they have to be moved hire because Indian Point 6 is going to flood. Sooner or later the Hudson River 7 is going to rise. It's already been rising. The 8 groundwater is already rising. I know. I live there.
9 where we've never had water before, water's coming up.
10 There are streams running down my street, 11 and I live on a hill. This isn't going to get better.
12 This is going to get worse. It's got to be done 13 better and it's got to be done realistically. All 14 this talk about Yucca Mountain and New Mexico and all 15 these places, they are not going to be static long 16 enough to protect anything for as long as it needs.
17 So, they've got to stay where they are.
18 And they've got to be protected, and updated, and 19 upgraded constantly.
20 And what if those casks hold really well 21 for let's say, for argument's sake, 300 years, what 22 company is going to still be in existence to fix them 23 when they need to be replaced? I don't know. What 24 community is still going to be in existence to take 25 care of them when they need replacement? I don't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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78 1 know. Where were we 300 years ago?
2 It's just not reasonable. You can't bury 3 them someplace and put a picture like this on it and 4 say, hey, that will tell everyone to keep away. No.
5 You'll have people keeping away from the entire plant.
6 That's not okay. It just isn't. You can't bury them.
7 I had questions about do you think, do you 8 have any studies that show that the geological 9 repository is better than above ground? Well, you 10 know what, I'm answering my own question. There is no 11 deep repository that the earth isn't going to turn 12 around and cough up, because it doesn't belong there.
13 It doesn't belong anywhere on earth. So, it has to 14 stay where it is. And we have to be responsible in 15 every single community.
16 Thank you.
17 (Applause.)
18 PARTICIPANT: Thank you.
19 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Next we have 106.
20 MR. SULLIVAN: Hi. John Sullivan. I live 21 by Peekskill, 2 miles from the plant.
22 I first just want to begin with a bit of 23 a what I believe is a correction about Price-Anderson.
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79 1 that citizens get reimbursed for any nuclear accident.
2 So, anyway, let me keep going. I do have 3 concerns about the canisters. I think Nancy presented 4 a very good, compelling picture of our concerns. I 5 wonder if the NRC has actually done studies comparing 6 the different canisters in the different countries?
7 My impression from listening is that we kind of have 8 cast ourselves with the American companies, Holtec in 9 particular, and have gone with them.
10 If I was buying a washing machine, I would 11 do more oversight than these guys have done. I'd go 12 out and look at the various models and try to figure 13 out what's the best there is. And it doesn't even 14 seem we've gotten to that level, so.
15 I do have a question that's a little bit 16 different than what's been presented before. It has 17 to do with the CAP, which I understand is the 18 recommendation from the NRC to the company to 19 institute a CAP, citizens' advisory panel, which we 20 have one now here. And my question is this:
21 In the NRC regulations are there any 22 limits to liability that these folks face by being 23 part of that panel? If something goes wrong at Indian 24 Point and some lawyers decide that they can make some 25 money by either suing Holtec or the Government, will NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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80 1 they in turn then turn around and sue members of the 2 CAP, the Town of Cortlandt, the Village of Buchanan, 3 and the City of Peekskill?
4 Is there anything in the NRC regulations 5 that limits their liability by sitting on that panel?
6 PARTICIPANT: And, you know, the short 7 answer to that is I don't know. And I would turn to 8 Brett Klukan, who is our regional counsel. And he's 9 turning away.
10 I don't know of anything specific in the 11 regulation per se that speaks specifically to 12 citizens' advisory panels. In terms of liability, I'm 13 not aware of anything I've read in any of our 14 regulations that speak to liability as citizens in 15 terms of participation on a citizens' advisory panel.
16 With that, I'll see if Brett has any other 17 thoughts or ideas.
18 MR. KLUKAN: Well, first let's go to, since 19 he raised his name, let's go to Bruce and then --
20 MR. WATSON: Yeah. Well, first of all, the 21 NRC does not have any requirements to have a citizens' 22 advisory panel unless the site is going to be -- the 23 licensee is going to request that the site be released 24 for restricted use.
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81 1 we have in the country that have had their licenses 2 terminated have been terminated for unrestricted use.
3 So, we have no requirements for a CAB if the licensee 4 is going to pursue an unrestricted release.
5 We do recommend them because it is an 6 industry good practice. It was in a document from the 7 Electric Power Research Institute based on the 8 activities at Vermont Yankee where they had a 9 citizens' advisory panel. And the industry recommends 10 you have that. And the NRC also encourages the 11 licensees to have a citizens' advisory panel as a 12 means to communicate and hear what the citizens have 13 to say about the decommissioning and other issues.
14 As far as liabilities, I can't really 15 answer that, but I would assume there would be little 16 to none because they're normally volunteers that 17 participate on these panels. And actually the panels 18 don't make any real decisions other than 19 recommendations either to their states or through the 20 licensees. So there, you know, the people who make 21 the actual decisions I guess would be the person 22 liable for any issues.
23 So, I didn't know if that helps or not.
24 MR. KLUKAN: I'll take it back.
25 MR. WATSON: Certainly.
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82 1 MR. KLUKAN: Against my better judgment.
2 So, I'm also, for those who don't know, 3 I'm the regional counsel for Region I, which means I'm 4 the attorney for the region. Granted, I don't make 5 policy. That's not the job of regional counsel. I'm 6 kind of a on-the-ground working with our investigators 7 and inspectors kind of attorney.
8 But with that, what I will say is this, is 9 that I cannot imagine -- we lawyers are a crafty 10 bunch, there is no denying that, but I have a hard 11 time imaging a scenario in which members of the CAP 12 would be held personally responsible outside of gross 13 negligence or some other type of criminal activity on 14 their part for their participation on the panel.
15 I just simply cannot imagine a situation 16 in which anyone -- what, what would be the cause of 17 liability to bring an action against them, outside of 18 some kind of gross misconduct.
19 MR. SULLIVAN. So, if they went along with 20 what turned out to be a bad decision, that wouldn't be 21 grounds for a lawyer to bring that up is that they 22 were complicit in whatever that decision was?
23 MR. KLUKAN: I, I -- let me, let me put it 24 this way. So I don't, I don't want to speak in 25 absolutes because A) I don't have the authority to do NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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83 1 that; and also, this would not be something the NRC 2 would decide. This would be in a civil court.
3 MR. SULLIVAN: Right.
4 MR. KLUKAN: So, it would be up to -- I'm 5 not saying some lawyer couldn't try it. You know, we 6 try all kind of crazy things.
7 MR. SULLIVAN: Okay.
8 MR. KLUKAN: But the likelihood of success 9 of that I think personally, personally speaking, not 10 on behalf of the agency, but personally would be very, 11 very small.
12 MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. And I guess what I'm 13 hearing is it's up to the CAP to deal with the company 14 to set up whatever regulations, whatever laws or 15 bylaws they have in order to limit their liability?
16 MR. WATSON: Or, in some cases the CAPs are 17 sponsored by the state legislature, like in Vermont, 18 --
19 MR. SULLIVAN: Right.
20 MR. WATSON: -- and in Massachusetts, so.
21 MR. SULLIVAN: Right. Okay.
22 And just on the first question, is there 23 a place we can go to the NRC that compares the casks 24 that we know, the German casks versus the Holtec cask?
25 Do you guys have anything on that?
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84 1 PARTICIPANT: Not that I know of. But, 2 again, if you look at the regulations that underpin --
3 MR. SULLIVAN: Right.
4 PARTICIPANT: -- our design requirements 5 for dry storage, those are out there on the public 6 website.
7 MR. SULLIVAN: Okay.
8 PARTICIPANT: You can go to Part 71. You 9 can look at statements of consideration. And you look 10 at the things that we require of these manufacturers 11 of these systems be able to demonstrate.
12 They have to be able to demonstrate that 13 it's basically a robust system that can dissipate the 14 heat from the cladding. It has to be able to confine 15 the radiation. And it has to meet a series of reviews 16 that we perform before we will grant them a 17 certificate of compliance.
18 So, we have a pretty rigorous process, and 19 there is a lot of information that we have on our 20 website that talks about how we review and approve dry 21 storage systems.
22 MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. It just does seem 23 like a very different approach between Cannon 19-inch 24 steel wall canisters versus something that's 5?7ths of 25 an inch and then surrounded by concrete. I understand NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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85 1 it meets regulations, but it does seem like a very 2 divergent way of doing things.
3 PARTICIPANT: And the other thing, when you 4 mention those other thick-walled metal canisters, I'm 5 not sure if they have a concrete overpack --
6 MR. SULLIVAN: Yeah.
7 PARTICIPANT: -- on the outside or not.
8 And so there's probably some differences that you'd 9 have to get into. And really it's, you know, the 10 devil's in the details so to speak.
11 MR. SULLIVAN: Okay. All right, thank you.
12 PARTICIPANT: Thank you.
13 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. And then last we 14 have 196.
15 MR. WEBSTER: I'm Richard Webster. I'm the 16 legal director of Riverkeeper. It was a pleasure to 17 take the boys to Planet NRC for, for a few hours. I 18 do find this kind of interesting, especially this 19 planet with its own language and its own geography.
20 And so I think that's part of the reason, you know, we 21 have some interesting interface with the public 22 because you guys speak a different language than the 23 rest of us.
24 So, I have a few questions. On the 25 pipeline -- well, first of all, just on the green NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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86 1 findings on the riverside process, I think the 2 inspectors do a great job trying to find things. But 3 I think calling them green understates their 4 significance.
5 People associate green with good. And 6 green is not good in a riverside process; right? And 7 I always think about it as if you ran a stop sign but 8 you didn't hit anything, that's a green finding. So, 9 and if you ran a few stop signs but didn't hit 10 anything. But, you know, I do really don't want to 11 run stop signs. Right?
12 On the pipeline issue, New York State did 13 a risk assessment themselves. We haven't seen the 14 full risk assessment. And my question is has NRC 15 revised that risk assessment?
16 PARTICIPANT: I personally have not seen 17 the risk assessment. I'm not aware of anybody that 18 has in the agency.
19 MR. WEBSTER: And does it worry you that 20 New York suggested there was some deficiency in that 21 risk assessment, in the risk assessment they reviewed, 22 which is the one you signed off on?
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87 1 at any specific issues. I'm not aware of anything in 2 particular.
3 MR. WEBSTER: Right. But if you haven't 4 looked at it, how do you know that it's not there?
5 PARTICIPANT: Again, we have confidence in 6 the calculation and the oversight we've already 7 provided on the new gas pipeline.
8 MR. WEBSTER: See, I think, again, we're 9 having trouble communicating here. What I'm saying is 10 that New York State hired a risk assessment 11 consultant. They have some concern. It's a report 12 that you haven't seen.
13 So, I don't understand how you're saying 14 that the concerns they raised are not valid?
15 PARTICIPANT: We have frequent 16 communications with the State of New York at the staff 17 level, and I'm not aware of any specific concerns that 18 anyone's raised to our staff that would lead us to 19 revise any of our conclusions. But we do have 20 frequent communication.
21 So, I think if there was something in 22 their analysis that was of a particular concern, I'm 23 sure they would have shared it with us.
24 MR. WEBSTER: Well, maybe I'll talk to them 25 about sharing with you and then we can solve that one.
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88 1 PARTICIPANT: Okay. Thank you.
2 MR. WEBSTER: In terms of Holtec, I mean, 3 you've said repeatedly there's a public oversight, 4 there's a public comment process and a public -- and 5 a hearing right. But I guess my experience with the 6 hearing right is that the right is very narrow. It's 7 very legalistic. And what's relevant to the 8 proceeding can be quite -- can be very tightly defined 9 actually.
10 So, let me give you a few examples. Is 11 lying to a government agency a relevant issue in a 12 license transfer proceeding?
13 PARTICIPANT: I'm not sure I understand the 14 question, Mr. Cooper -- or Mr. Webster.
15 MR. WEBSTER: In other words, if the person 16 applying for the license or who wants to have the 17 license transferred to them has lied to a government 18 agency, is that relevant?
19 PARTICIPANT: I think when you look at the 20 -- we're talking about the opportunity for public 21 comment. In terms of opportunity for public comment, 22 we do provide the hearing notice rights. They're all 23 described in the Federal Register notice.
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89 1 activity. And those are all taken into consideration, 2 whether or not we approve the transport or not.
3 MR. WEBSTER: Right. But that didn't, with 4 respect, that didn't really answer my question.
5 PARTICIPANT: I think for him to answer the 6 question you'd have to give a specific reason and 7 example of some evidence of that. You're making, 8 you're making --
9 MR. WEBSTER: Right.
10 PARTICIPANT: -- a broad statement.
11 MR. WEBSTER: I think Holtec --
12 PARTICIPANT: We don't, we don't want to be 13 --
14 MR. WEBSTER: -- lied to New Jersey I 15 believe on one of their forms, for example. I think 16 their contracting was suspended with TVA for a while.
17 PARTICIPANT: Right, and so if that's a 18 specific concern you would have, I would suggest that 19 if we receive the application and we put out the 20 notice for public comment, public input, if that's a 21 specific concern, I would encourage you --
22 MR. WEBSTER: Right.
23 PARTICIPANT: -- to provide that so that we 24 could consider that.
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90 1 past with re-licensing, what I found was you provide 2 it and then it's deemed by the licensing panel not to 3 be relevant under the regulations. So then it's 4 thrown out again.
5 So that's what I'm asking you now is, is 6 it relevant or not?
7 PARTICIPANT: I would say that these are 8 hypotheticals. I think you'd have to look at the 9 instructions, follow the instructions.
10 And I know that we're talking about 11 something that's going to happen several months from 12 now. And I would say that when you go to raise the 13 concerns there will be points of contact that will be 14 listed on the Federal Register. And I would encourage 15 you to communicate and you can discuss the specific 16 concern on how to make sure that that gets considered 17 as part of the review process.
18 MR. WEBSTER: Well, I think it's a, it's 19 actually a regulatory question which is, is it, is it 20 within the purview of the license transfer proceeding?
21 And if it isn't, let me just make a comment, if it 22 isn't then whatever you say doesn't matter.
23 PARTICIPANT: I think with respect to the 24 license transfer, would that be something that Bruce 25 would discuss or would that be something that Kim NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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91 1 would talk a little about what we look at for a 2 transfer?
3 PARTICIPANT: Well, we do do a technical 4 review and look at the financial capability of the 5 company.
6 As far as I know, I can't speak to the 7 depth of that technical review. And most of that 8 information is provided to our, the branch that does 9 that review, the financial people. And most of that 10 is proprietary information which I wouldn't see.
11 But I do know we do a technical review.
12 We do a financial review. We do a foreign ownership 13 review. There's a couple other things that we do 14 along that line. But it is thoroughly looked at from 15 what I understand from our financial folks.
16 MR. KLUKAN: I'm going to jump in. I don't 17 like wearing both hats, but I'm going to do it.
18 I'm also, in addition to being the General 19 Counsel right now, I'm the head of the Allegations and 20 Enforcement Team. So, your question goes not to 21 licensing but to enforcement.
22 So, let's say, and we're all speaking in 23 hypotheticals right now because we don't have a 24 specific case, but let's say someone comes in with an 25 application and they, something is materially false.
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92 1 They fudged a number in a materially false way. Not, 2 like, saying we're going to paint the walls blue, but 3 we have this much money and we really have this much 4 money. Or something which is materially significant 5 to the NRC. That will go into the enforcement 6 process.
7 And then we have issued violations for in 8 terms of reactors involving the regulation 10 CFR 50.9 9 which doesn't allow them to make information to the 10 Commission that is materially inaccurate. Okay.
11 Paraphrasing that there.
12 So, that would go into the enforcement 13 process. We have issued violations for this kind of 14 thing in the past for falsification in applications.
15 Okay.
16 How it fits in the licensing stage, it 17 goes to the trustworthiness and reliability of the 18 licensee. And I understand that when we get into that 19 we're talking contention space, and how you build a 20 contention around that. It's different. But it works 21 in both processes.
22 So, if you do believe that a licensee has 23 submitted materially false information, I would urge 24 you submit that through the NRC Hotline and then it 25 will be processed through the enforcement process and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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93 1 investigated if we believe there is sufficient 2 evidence by using our Office of Investigations.
3 So, what you're talking about is really 4 something that really it can get into the licensing 5 process, but where it really lives is in the 6 enforcement process.
7 PARTICIPANT: And I think just to kind of 8 add to Brett's point, I mean I think you're raising a 9 number of hypothetical questions. You obviously have 10 a concern. And we're not going to evaluate the 11 efficacy of an application we haven't received. We're 12 going to wait. We're going to get the application.
13 We're going to put it through the due process, through 14 the rigor with opportunity for public comment, and 15 then consider all the information and, hopefully, make 16 the right, best decision.
17 MR. WEBSTER: Right. And to be clear, I'm 18 not asking to evaluate, I'm asking to determine. We 19 talk about trustworthiness of the applicant, you know, 20 if an applicant has lied to other agencies a number of 21 times, is that a relevant issue in the your contention 22 space?
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94 1 she has done one of the transfers, Kim Conway. I 2 guess the question would be, is there somewhere where 3 you could point folks to in terms of our guidance that 4 we use for how we evaluate an application to us for a 5 license transfer? Can we point to a specific 6 reference?
7 PARTICIPANT: Yes. Licensing Document 107, 8 which we presented at today's government meeting.
9 Lic. 107.
10 PARTICIPANT: So, maybe what we can do is 11 look up the reference and we'll give it to you before 12 we end the meeting. And that way you can go look at 13 it. And, you know, if you have follow-up questions, 14 please get back to us.
15 MR. WEBSTER: Okay.
16 MR. KLUKAN: And we'll put a link to that.
17 I think I can commit us to putting a link to that on 18 the -- assuming Lic. 107 is public, right, it is 19 public?
20 PARTICIPANT: Right.
21 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. So we can put a link to 22 that, just an easy quick link to that on the meeting 23 summary page for this.
24 MR. WEBSTER: And, yes, okay, I mean the 25 other concerns that we've actually (Unintelligible)
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95 1 the partner, the foreign sleeping partner, I'm not 2 sure how that works through the regs, but I don't 3 think I should belabor the point here, they've been 4 banned from contracting with the World Bank I think 5 for 10 years due to some bribery issues. So, you 6 know, I personally, I'm not to worried about the 7 foreign-owned partner. I know it's part of the 8 regulations. I'm more worried about the bribery part.
9 I happen to think foreigners are just as trustworthy 10 as non-foreigners but, you know, that's a personal 11 opinion.
12 (Laughter.)
13 MR. KLUKAN: While you're paused for a 14 second, so I just want to do a time check. It's 8:56.
15 Is there anyone else in the audience who has not yet 16 spoken who would like to speak? I apologize for not 17 -- You would like to speak?
18 PARTICIPANT: No. I don't need to speak.
19 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Is there anyone else?
20 (No response.)
21 MR. KLUKAN: Nancy, did you have anything 22 else you wanted to say? I cut you off and I feel bad 23 about it?
24 MS. VANN: Well, obviously, there's 25 something about the fact that SNC-Lavalin has been NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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96 1 debarred from (Unintelligible.)
2 MR. KLUKAN: SNC-Lavalin has been excluded 3 --
4 MS. VANN: Excluded. Cannot work with the 5 World Bank and (Unintelligible.) -- bribery scandal 6 MR. KLUKAN: Yeah. Bribery scandal 7 involving SNC-Lavalin, okay.
8 MS. VANN: You know, they bribed foreign 9 officials.
10 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. All right, and it has 11 bribed foreign officials, yes. Okay, thank you.
12 So, because of that can we let the 13 remaining time go to Richard? Is that okay?
14 PARTICIPANTS: Yes.
15 MR. KLUKAN: Okay.
16 MR. WEBSTER: Well, thank you.
17 PARTICIPANT: You get four minutes of pain.
18 MR. WEBSTER: So, let me ask a question 19 about, about the canisters, because I think there is 20 a lot of concern about those.
21 So, I have a fairly straightforward 22 question which is how is, how is degradation 23 monitored? And what are the exceptions criteria for 24 degradation?
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97 1 is with the canisters they're inspected on a very 2 frequent basis. In some cases there are weekly 3 checks, and you're looking for things like measuring 4 radiation. Is there any loss of radiation from the 5 canisters?
6 You're verifying that there's acceptable 7 heat transfer from the canister.
8 And, to date we've had very good 9 performance of the canisters in their dry storage.
10 MR. WEBSTER: So, you look through 11 through-wall problems. But do you look for 12 degradation at less than through-wall?
13 MR. KLUKAN: If there was a -- you've got 14 to recognize that these canisters are not 15 pressure-retaining vessels. They have very, very low 16 pressure of inert gas on the interior of the canister.
17 MR. WEBSTER: Uh-huh.
18 MR. KLUKAN: If there were a problem that 19 involved some type of through-wall leakage, we would 20 detect that through our radiation checks.
21 MR. WEBSTER: Right.
22 MR. KLUKAN: If the leakage is -- excuse 23 me, if the flaw was such that it's an 24 inpropagate(phonetic) through-wall, we think that 25 that's a very low probability event.
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98 1 You have basically rolled stainless steel 2 that's got full penetration walls. We think it's very 3 robust. And for the purposes that it really needs to 4 perform, it's very, very capable of performing its 5 confinement function.
6 MR. WEBSTER: So there's no, like, --
7 MR. KLUKAN: There are initial checks that 8 are done at time of fabrication and where you're 9 looking to verify that the canisters have been built 10 to the quality standards that are required.
11 MR. WEBSTER: Right. But there's no, 12 there's no, like, 10 yearly ultrasonic testing or 13 anything?
14 PARTICIPANT: There's, there's no 15 non-destructive examination of the canister that's 16 required. However, that's certainly something that 17 could be put into place potentially if there was a 18 problem that needed further investigation.
19 MR. WEBSTER: Again I'm not quite 20 understanding. How do you know if there's a problem 21 if you can't see it?
22 PARTICIPANT: Yeah. I think through 23 sensitive measurements you can look through your heat 24 performance of the canister. You can see that by your 25 getting the right temperature.
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99 1 Through the exterior of the canister, 2 they're doing periodic surveillance checks looking for 3 potential radioactive leakage out of the canister.
4 And if there was any particular leak, it would have to 5 be addressed.
6 MR. WEBSTER: No, I understand that. But 7 I mean, I think, for me --
8 PARTICIPANT: Yeah.
9 MR. WEBSTER: -- for the through-wall, I 10 understand you can monitor through-wall leakage; 11 right? Right.
12 MR. WEBSTER: And I guess, I guess there's 13 a risk assessment somewhere that says that even if you 14 have through-wall leakage it doesn't lead to any 15 terrible consequences.
16 PARTICIPANT: Well, if you have 17 through-wall leakage it would have to be fixed. The 18 thing about the question that you postulate relative 19 to through-wall leakage is what would be the magnitude 20 of the radioactive release for through-wall leakage 21 from the wall of a canister?
22 And that can vary depending upon the type 23 of fuel, the condition of the cladding, a whole host 24 of things. But we would expect that it be identified 25 and corrected.
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100 1 If you have a flaw that were developed 2 over time that were not through-wall, perhaps you 3 wouldn't pick that up. On the other hand, the 4 canisters themselves, internal pressure is very, very 5 low. There's very little difference in pressure 6 between the interior of the canister and the outside 7 atmosphere, so there's really no driving force that 8 would drive the flaw to a through-wall condition.
9 MR. WEBSTER: Right. I guess, okay. I 10 mean, I hear you. There's no attempt to prevent 11 leakage that evolves, you just wait for it to happen 12 and then fix it up.
13 PARTICIPANT: And I think we rely upon the 14 initial manufacturing standard, the quality that's 15 provided at the time of manufacture, and then the 16 periodic checks that are performed.
17 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.) -- your 18 manufacturing standards (Unintelligible.)
19 PARTICIPANT: Well, yeah. And I think you 20 raise an excellent point. If you identify a problem, 21 then it needs to be fixed. And so that's where our 22 oversight role comes into play. We ensure that 23 problems are fixed.
24 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.) at Indian 25 Point. We're still on a (Unintelligible.)
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101 1 PARTICIPANT: And with respect to any 2 problems identified, the pace and what's done to take 3 the correction actions is something that would be 4 specifically unique to that.
5 Brian, do you have anything you'd like to 6 add in terms of the HEMSEE(phonetic), in terms of the 7 fire protection standards at Indian Point, things that 8 you're seeing on a day in/day out walk through the 9 plant?
10 MR. HAAGENSEN: Yes. We don't just accept 11 the fact that some of the fire barriers are less than 12 what the regulations initially require. If we see 13 something like that, then we will go in and we'll make 14 sure that the -- they are taking compensatory measures 15 in places where those barriers may have degraded. And 16 that can include measures that are equally as valid, 17 equally as positive in terms of being able to stop a 18 fire. Okay?
19 PARTICIPANT: You haven't fixed those 20 tunnels? You know very well you haven't done anything 21 there. You know, what separation is required.
22 MR. HAAGENSEN: And we have imposed 23 compensatory measures that take that into account and 24 will prevent a fire from spreading to 25 safety-significant areas of the plant.
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102 1 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Because we're now --
2 MR. WEBSTER: Can I ask one --
3 MR. KLUKAN: -- past 9:00 o'clock. So one 4 more question and then we'll wrap it up.
5 MR. WEBSTER: One last question which is, 6 and this goes back to something Nancy was talking 7 about before, which is it seems to me that the NRC is 8 routinely granting exemptions allowing decommissioning 9 money to be spent, to be spent on spent fuel 10 management. And I guess I had always thought that an 11 exemption would be for exceptional circumstances. But 12 where it's given every time, it seems like not every 13 reactor can be exceptional.
14 So, so why -- and also it seems that 15 there's some, it's not that clear that the amount of 16 money in the decommissioning fund is so excessive that 17 you can divert it to spent fuel management. So why is 18 this routinely granted?
19 PARTICIPANT: With respect to the question 20 on the approval of the license amendment, we have Rich 21 Tuttle here who is our financial analyst who looks at 22 decommissioning.
23 Rich, would you care to address that 24 question, please?
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103 1 in headquarters at NRC.
2 So, the consideration of exemptions for 3 use of the decommissioning trust, as you mentioned and 4 we discussed earlier, the decommissioning trust funds 5 are for radiologic decommissioning, i.e., it's not for 6 greenfield, it's not for site restoration, it's 7 explicitly for decommissioning of the plant and does 8 not include spent fuel management.
9 But if a licensee requests consideration 10 of excess funds within the decommissioning trust, and 11 particularly when the licensee and ourselves look at 12 site-specific cost estimates for radiologic 13 decommissioning, should they see and should they want 14 to use excess funds to address spent fuel management, 15 the NRC would consider that exemption request for use 16 of spent fuel.
17 We have done it on several occasions. And 18 although the NRC does not want to regulate by 19 exemption, it does have -- licensees do have that 20 ability, that opportunity to request such an exemption 21 and the NRC will consider such. So, we see that as 22 only maintaining the decommissioning trust fund, 23 always ensuring that there are adequate funds for 24 site-specific decommissioning requirements. Should 25 there be excess funds, should the licensee request use NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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104 1 of those funds for spent fuel, we would consider that 2 request.
3 MR. WEBSTER: Right. It just seems that 4 it's hard to know when those excess funds when it --
5 till the end of the process rather than before the 6 process starts.
7 So, do you have any sort of security that 8 you require the licensee to put up when they take the 9 money out for other purposes? Do they have to provide 10 some guarantee that if there's a problem at the end 11 that they'll put the money back in?
12 MR. TURTIL: I will state certainly that no 13 license will be released until all radiologic 14 decommissioning is complete. So, there is reasonable 15 assurance that the funding that is available for 16 radiological decommissioning exists within the DTF.
17 And if there is excess funds, and if we look at a 18 site-specific estimate, and then over the years, as 19 Bruce can attest because his group is keeping an eye 20 on decommissioning funding on a regular basis, what is 21 being expended after operations during the 22 decommissioning process, as funds look to be in excess 23 of what is required we would then consider use of 24 those funds through exemption at this time for these 25 other, for this other purpose.
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105 1 MR. WEBSTER: Right. But that's a 2 projection.
3 MR. TURTIL: It's --
4 MR. WEBSTER: So do you require, my 5 question is do you require a sort of guarantee that if 6 the licensee's projections turn out to be wrong that 7 they have to put the money back in at the end?
8 MR. TURTIL: Guarantees, there are no 9 guarantees in this. We're looking at really an 10 assessment of what is reasonable, what is reasonable 11 -- reasonable assurance to achieve that goal of 12 decommissioning.
13 MR. WEBSTER: Right.
14 MR. TURTIL: With the caveat that no site 15 will be released until that radiologic decommissioning 16 is complete.
17 MR. WEBSTER: Right.
18 PARTICIPANT: And I think it's also fair to 19 point out, Rich, that we do look at when a licensee is 20 under the active decommissioning phase that they do 21 submit annual reports to us.
22 MR. TURTIL: Right.
23 PARTICIPANT: And it would be a spend plan 24 and we would look at what's the status.
25 So, it's not as if they take --
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106 1 MR. TURTIL: Right.
2 PARTICIPANT: -- money out and then we come 3 back at some point, distant point in the future 4 without having any monitoring performed, but rather we 5 look at this on an annual basis, and we ensure that 6 the amount of money that's remaining is adequate. And 7 if it's not adequate, then we would require that they 8 replenish the fund so that it retain a sufficient 9 level of assurance.
10 PARTICIPANT: I want to reinforce that. I 11 don't mean to interrupt you.
12 MR. WEBSTER: No, that's good.
13 PARTICIPANT: But Ray reminds me of this.
14 We have a regular, a regular reporting requirement, 15 well before decommissioning, well before a plant 16 ceases operation we are looking at their funding every 17 two years.
18 MR. WEBSTER: right.
19 PARTICIPANT: At a certain point in time as 20 we get closer we are looking -- in decommissioning, we 21 are looking at and the licensee is reporting and we 22 are looking at spending on an annual basis. And if 23 there are shortfalls, that year or within that year we 24 have dialog with the licensee and they say this is how 25 we're going to make up that shortfall.
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107 1 So, I really appreciate that, Ray, because 2 it reinforces there is regular dialog with a licensee 3 as we see spending that is, you know, being achieved 4 in, you know, Unit 1 we're starting, obviously, to see 5 some of that spending take place.
6 So, I hope that's responsive. So, NRC is 7 consistently keeping an eye on it.
8 MR. WEBSTER: And I just want to check my 9 understanding of what you said, though. Let's say 10 after the plant closes and during decommissioning 11 something unexpected happens, the rate of inflation is 12 higher, the return on investment is lower, you know, 13 whatever, maybe something happens at the plant that 14 requires more costly work and the decommissioning 15 entity suddenly realizes it's going to run out of 16 money. Is there a mechanism for either the 17 decommissioning entity or the original licensee to 18 replenish the decommissioning fund?
19 PARTICIPANT: I think the original 20 licensee, I will hold off on that question. But with 21 respect to we do look at the amount that's available 22 in the decommissioning fund. We do it on an annual 23 basis.
24 Rich, I think your group gets those 25 reports?
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108 1 MR. TURTIL: Yes.
2 PARTICIPANT: And what we do is we look and 3 say, is there sufficient money in the fund today?
4 MR. WEBSTER: Right.
5 PARTICIPANT: We look at the spend plan 6 over the next year. Will there be sufficient funding 7 remaining to still have the necessary amount of funds 8 to continue with decommissioning? If not, then we 9 would expect that the company take some type of action 10 to supplement that fund.
11 MR. TURTIL: That's correct.
12 MR. WEBSTER: Well, even if it's not an 13 operating plant?
14 PARTICIPANT: Correct.
15 MR. WEBSTER: And when you say "some type 16 of action," that wouldn't be delaying the 17 decommissioning for 20 years so that the money in the 18 fund can --
19 PARTICIPANT: We would identify the 20 deficiency. We would look to the licensee to propose 21 a solution, and we would evaluate it.
22 MR. WEBSTER: Okay, thank you very much.
23 MS. VANN: (Unintelligible.)
24 PARTICIPANT: In the microphone.
25 PARTICIPANT: Microphone, please.
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109 1 MS. VANN: Sorry. At Pilgrim Holtec has 2 asked for the trust fund to cover $541 million in 3 spent fuel management. That's out of a billion 4 dollars. That's half a billion dollars out of a 5 billion dollars that they're asking to cover things 6 that are not what is normally covered.
7 I don't know if this is being considered 8 or granted. But most of these plants are LLCs, 9 they're just subsidiaries of the larger corporation.
10 Are there any guarantees in place from the parent 11 corporation, well, Holtec, or SNC-Lavalin to be on the 12 hook for any of this money? They plan to set up 13 something on the order of Holtec Indian Point 1, 14 Holtec Indian Point 2, and Holtec Indian Point 3, 15 which would be three separate limited liability 16 corporations that could go bankrupt without any damage 17 to the parent company.
18 And if they're using half of their 19 decommissioning fund for non-decommissioning purposes, 20 this seems like something you should be addressing 21 from the very beginning, not waiting to see, well, 22 they spent this much last year, are they going to 23 spend more next year? How is the fund doing?
24 And I would just like to ask if there are 25 any guarantees that the, that the NRC is asking for in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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110 1 these licensing hearings, if they are asking for any 2 guarantees from the parent company that the only, the 3 only asset of the LLC is the decommissioning fund?
4 So, what are they doing with that? Are 5 they putting some money into escrow? Would there be 6 any clawbacks?
7 PARTICIPANT: With that, Rich, could you 8 take that, please?
9 MR. KLUKAN: And that's going to be our 10 last question tonight. And so once Rich answers, I'll 11 wrap it up.
12 MR. TURTIL: Yeah. So, the staff's 13 analysis looks at the decommissioning trust. That is 14 a significant, obviously a significant pool of funds 15 that the applicant is considering using, and will use 16 for decommissioning, and has requested an exemption 17 for spent fuel management.
18 Again, it gets back to guarant -- there's 19 reasonable assurance expectation, there's our annual 20 review of decommissioning, there's expenditure 21 reviews. Although there are these individual 22 entities, there's a particular contractor that will be 23 hired by the applicant for decommissioning. And that, 24 that applicant -- that licensee, should they become a 25 licensee, will be the licensed authority and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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111 1 responsible for the license to be terminated and for 2 the site to be radiologically decontaminated.
3 So, the ultimate responsibility falls upon 4 the licensee. And, again, at our oversight as the 5 years progress, and as we see decommissioning move 6 forward, and we see the funds start to be spent on 7 these, you know, on these expenses, it is that 8 oversight, it's kind of the constant vigilance over 9 what funds currently exist. And as the 10 decommissioning, you know, as it moves forward we are 11 keeping an eye on that to see if ultimate costs are 12 met by the assets put in that trust.
13 So --
14 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.) And you 15 don't know when fuel's going to be moved off the site.
16 You don't know if it's 6 years, 100 years, 300 years.
17 So how can you determine if (Unintelligible) if you 18 don't know how long this site is going to stay 19 radiologically hot?
20 PARTICIPANT: Well, we're looking at the 21 radiological decommissioning. And that is what Bruce 22 and by and large what the region is looking at for 23 that license, the Part 50 license to be by and large 24 terminated. If after that we have spent fuel only at 25 the ISPC(phonetic) , at the storage facility, now the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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112 1 radiological decommissioning by and large has been 2 complete except for the decommissioning of the ISPC, 3 so spent fuel management fund, should there be 4 remaining funds, they would -- they would no longer by 5 and large be necessary for the radiological 6 decommissioning of the Part fif -- of the facility, of 7 the operating facility, or the facility that's no 8 longer operating.
9 Does that make -- that makes sense?
10 PARTICIPANT: Well, I think I have a 11 different answer for you. Just let me answer the 12 question before you ask another question, please.
13 The agreement between the utility or 14 whoever owns that fuel, in this case it is currently 15 Entergy, has an agreement with the Department of 16 Energy, and they will be reimbursed for the costs of 17 storing that fuel and managing that fuel. That 18 agreement will continue, whoever owns the plant after 19 once the decommissioning or the license transfer has 20 occurred.
21 So that fund that they -- the money they 22 spent on spent fuel management will be reimbursed at 23 whatever agreement, whether they have to sue them or 24 whatever, the Department of Energy, to get that money 25 back.
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113 1 But the Department of Energy is 2 responsible for the financial funding of that fuel for 3 the future. So, okay.
4 PARTICIPANT: (Unintelligible.) And that 5 makes no sense at all. (Unintelligible.)
6 PARTICIPANT: The key word, the key word is 7 reimburse. They will spend the money first and then 8 they will get reimbursed by Department of Energy.
9 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. So I --
10 PARTICIPANT: You can't spend money you 11 don't have.
12 MR. KLUKAN: Do you have something quick 13 you'd like to say?
14 MS. DECRESCENZO: I do. Very, very quick.
15 MR. KLUKAN: Okay.
16 MS. DECRESCENZO: So, I'm Jocelyn 17 DiCrescenzo. And I have to say that this meeting, 18 like most of the other meetings I've attended, 19 although it's much more polite in its form, has left 20 more questions than answers. There's been a lot of 21 give and take, more give than take. And a lot of 22 hypotheticals thrown around.
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114 1 be taken care of so that it doesn't impact the future 2 generations and this precious plant we live on.
3 And I, I just don't quite understand how 4 you can be so glib and throw such things around when 5 really, you know, our planet is in the balance. And 6 it's very, very disappointing to me. I don't have 7 other words to say. I can't use technical terms 8 because I don't know them. All I know is that this 9 meeting has been kind of terrifying to me because I'm 10 looking at the four of you up there and you haven't 11 really answered a question.
12 And I don't think, I don't think this 13 format is good at all in terms of how we interact as 14 a community. So, that's all I have to say. Thank 15 you.
16 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
17 MS. DECRESCENZO: Oh, wait. And these 18 things do need to be dry casked in place, they should 19 not be transported at all. They need to be dry casked 20 in place.
21 Thank you.
22 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. So, that's a good 23 bridge on what I, just to reemphasize what I said 24 earlier. The NRC is always welcome to new ideas.
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115 1 session for the past three days. We have additional 2 technology, a site, webinars. I'm just brainstorming 3 myself right now.
4 If you believe that the NRC should be 5 communicating with the public in new and different 6 ways, write to the Commission. Okay? That is the way 7 that change gets made within the agency for how we 8 will communicate.
9 And I recognize that's putting the burden 10 on you but that, I mean, that's, you know, there's 11 been a lot of discussion within the agency about how 12 we communicate with the public. But if we really, if 13 you believe this change needs to occur, then I would 14 urge you to submit it that way, and also to fill out 15 the feedback forms.
16 I wanted to spend one minute before we 17 conclude and I wanted to thank you for being a 18 gracious audience and being civil to each other.
19 Just one minute in memory of Mr. Shaw. I 20 cannot claim to know him very well. I really only 21 knew him through the Indian Point Annual Assessment 22 Meetings. But even in those limited interactions with 23 him I got a personal sense of the commitment and zeal 24 that he brought to his advocacy.
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116 1 volunteer to facilitate these meetings so the public 2 can have an opportunity to raise these concerns 3 because I do believe it's fundamental to our democracy 4 to have a healthy dose of criticism and skepticism.
5 That's what keeps this system running, so to speak.
6 And so, you know, may he rest in peace.
7 And but, you know, I always appreciated the passion he 8 brought to these meetings.
9 So, thank you all. I'll turn it over to 10 Ray for final thoughts.
11 MR. LORSON: Thank you, Brett. We're 12 adjourned.
13 (Whereupon, at 10:28 p.m., the meeting was 14 concluded.)
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