ML19209B176
| ML19209B176 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Seabrook  |
| Issue date: | 08/21/1979 |
| From: | Jordan W, Sheldon K NEW ENGLAND COALITION ON NUCLEAR POLLUTION, SHELDON, HARMON & WEISS |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML19209B166 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 7910090281 | |
| Download: ML19209B176 (15) | |
Text
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-Ci UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
,e NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION TO:
DIRECTOR OF NUCLEAR REAdTOR REGUUKTION 3\\
U 45 RE:
CONSTRUCTION PERMITS
. CPPEsl35
- ' CPPR-136
)
In the Matter of
)
)
PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY OF
)
NEW HAMPSHIRE, et al.
)
Docket Nos. 50-443 :
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50-444 (Seabrook Station, Units 1 and 2)
)
-a--
)
NEW ENGLAND COALITION ON NUCLEAR POLLUTIO!3 MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF SEACOAST ANTI i POLLUTION LEAGUE REQUESTS FOR ORDERS TO SHOW CAUSE WHY CONSTRUCTION PERMITS SHOULD NOT BE SUSPENDED OR REVOKED The New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution (NECNP),
an Intervenor in the proceedings concerning the issuance of a construction permit for the Seabrook nuclear reactor, joins the Seacoast Anti-Pollution League (SAPL) in requesting the issuance of an order to show cause why the Seabrook construc-tion permits should not be suspended or revoked for the following reasons:
(1) there is no basis for the Commission's finding that it has " reasonable assurance" that Public Service Company of New Hampshire is financially qualified, (2) the Commission has failed to consider the consequences of a Class 9 accident, which has new been demonstrated to be a credible event, and (3) the Commission has failed to require the preparation of an evacuation plan beyond the low population zone despite the fact that evacuation well beyond the LPZ has b
7910090 11i3 080 6
been considered to be advisable and, in fact, has been s
required as the result of a nuclear reactor accident.
SAPL raised the first of these issues in its Request for an Order to Show Cause dated March 12, 1979.
It raised the second and third issues in its Request dated May 2, 1979.
NECNP joins in the arguments presented by SAPL in those Requests, and it submits this Memorandum to bring those Requests up to date and to present its own arguments on these issues.
I.
As a Result of Changed Circumstances, There Is No Present Basis for a Finding That the Applicants are Financially Qualified Under 10 CFR 50.33(f).
When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission affirmed the Appeal Board's finding that Public Service Company of
.New Hampshire ("Public Service or "the Company") was financially qualified t'o construct the Seabrook plant, the inclusion of " construction work in progress" (CWIP) in the rate base was still a possibility, and the parti-cipation of the other utilities was reasonably certain.
That situation has now changed, with the result that the Commission must halt construction at the plant pending a further showing of financial qualifications by Public e
Service.
Given Public Service's continuing financial weakness and given Public Service's reliance upon various utilities that may not be allowed to purchase more of the plant, there is no present basis for concluding that Public Service and the other applicants are financially qualified e
1113 001
to construct the plant.
A comparison of the Preliminary s
Prospectus issued by Public Service, dated April 26, 1979, and the final Prospectus is instructive.
After noting its efforts to obtain a nuclear fuel lease financing and to obtain further long-term bank credit, the Company sanguinely explained, at page 6 of the Preliminary Prospectus, that:
After the sale of tne new Preferred Stock, the Company will need additional external financing before July, 1979 in order to maintain the Seabrook construction sche-dule and continue the company's business operations.
This additional financing is expected to be provided by the nuclear fuel financing, the proposed long-term bank credits or the advance payments trom certain or the orner participants, or a combination of these.
(Emphasis supplied)
At page 5 of the final Prospectus, Public Service had to
, admit that efforts to obtain further financing had fallen through:
,e The Company is also exploring the possibility of obtaining additional funds through a sale of general and refunding mortgage bonds, loans
.from banks other than its existing revolving credit banks and nuclear fuel financing.
One such other bank approached by the Company has declined to make such a loan and an institu-tional investor with whom the Company had commenced negotiating a nuclear fuel lease financing has terminated such negotiations.
(Emphasis supplied)
Therefore, there is little prospect cf obtaining the necessary financing through banks or investors.
Based on the statement in the Preliminary Prospectus, advance pavments from other participants are essential to construction of Seabrook.
We cannot st, ate the Company's difficulties better than it did itself at page 6 of the final Prospectus:
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There cen be no assurance that the regula-tory approvals for the proposed reduction in the Company's interest in the Seabrook project will be obtained or that the Company can obtain financing or advance payments in the necessary amounts or in a timely manner.
Timely approvals and financing are essential to enable the Company to maintain its contruction program and continue its business operations.
In addition to admitting that its immediate financing needs are by no means assured, the Company here highlights a' fact that prevents the NRC from being able to have any " reasonable assurance" that the applicants are financially qualified to.
contruct the. plant.
That fact is that efforts to sell at least 9.2% of the plant to utilities in Massachusetts and Vermont are subject to challenge and may well be denied.
In particular, Connecticut' Light and Power Company's sale of approximately 4.2% of t'e plant to New Bedford Gas and Edison Light Company, Montaup Electric Company, and Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company has been challenged by the Massachusetts Attorney General before the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities.~1/ The Massachusetts DPU decided on June 28, 1979, (Attachment 1) that the Massachusetts Attorney General had raised saricus e
1/ In Re D.P.U.
19738 and D.P.U.
19743, Investigation by the Department of the Joint Application of Montaup Electric Company, New Bedford Gas and Edison Light Company, Fitchburg Gas & Electric Light Company, and the Connecticut Light and Power Company under the General Laws, Chapter 164, Sections 97 and 101 as amended, in connection with Joint Ownership Participation in the Planning, Construction and Operation of Seabrook Units I and II in Seabroox, New Hampshire.
e e
L questions as to whether the purchases by New Bedford, Montaup, and Fitchburg were in the public interest.
The DPU found that the record was not adequate to make a finding on that issue and ruled that the case should be consolidated with consideration of the more recent purchase request by New Bedford and Montaup.
The DPU will take further evidence on the "poblic interest"
. issue in the consolidated proceeding.
The question that the Commission faces is whether the applicant has "a reasonable financing plan in the light of relevant circumstances."
Public Service Company of New Hampshire, et al. (Seabrook Station, Units 1 and
, 2), CLI-78-1, 7 NRC 1 (January 6, 1978).
The " relevant
~
circumstances" have changed since the original finding
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was made.
In $ddition to the Connecticut Light and Power attempt to sell its interest in the plant, which was referred to in the Commission's decision and which remains unresolved pending the outcome of the Massachusetts DPU litigation, Public Service is now attempting to sell an additional 22% of the plant, much of which will be subject to the same sort of challenge.
Paraphrasing the'First Circuit's affirmance of the Commission's decision as applied to the present situation, clearly the likelihood of Massachusetts or Vermont regulatory decisions unfavora-ble to Public Service's attempt to r build its collapsing financing plan are relevant to t'.te question of whether the
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applicant is financially qualified to construct the plant.
New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution v.
U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 582 F.2d 87, fn. 9 at 93 (1st Cir.
f 1978). Given the Court's direction to consider relevant regulatory actions by the states and the requirement that the decision on financial qualifications reflect the relevant circumstances, the Commission must stay the construction permit until the applicant's financial qualifi-cation has been demonstrated through further licensing proceedings addressing the changed circumstances.
II.
The Com$ission Must Consider the Consequences of a Class 9 Accident Occurring at Seabrook The issue of whether the Commission must consider the consequences of Class 9 accidents in its environmental
. reviews has been argued.many times before Licensing Boards, Appeal Boards, -and the Federal Courts.
To date, the Commission has not formally accepted its responsibility to consider the consequences of Class 9 accidents at land-based nuclear reacter, Recent developments, both within the Commission and at Three Mile Island, demonstrate the lack of any rational basis for the Commission's position.
SAPL has outlined the developments within the Commis-sion that have undermined its position on Class 9 accidents.
Most important is the Commission's repudiat' ion of the Reactor Cafety Study, WASH-1400, which formed the only even quasi-scientific basis for the Commission's position that Class 9 accidents"were so improbable as to be "incre-
dible."
Since the Commission's position on probabilities has been the only justification for the refusal to consider the consequences of Class 9 accidents, Offshore Power Systems, (Manufacturing License for Floating Nuclear Power Plants)
ALAB-489, 8 NRC 194, 214 (1978), the repudiation of the basis for the probability determination renders that policy invalid.
NECNP joins in SAPL's arguments concerning develop-ments with respect to the Reactor Safety Study, and with respect to the Staff recommendation, SECY-78-137, March 7, 1978, that Class 9 accidents be considered where popula-tion densities exceed the " trip levels" of Regulatory Guide 4.7.
These developments indicate that the Commission and its Staff are uncomfortable with the decision that Class 9 accidents are so improbable that they need not be considered.
The accident at Three Mile Island has now shown that the Commission and its Staff have been correct in becoming uncomfortable with their position.
According to the informa-tion available to date, the accident at Three Mile Island was one that had never been considered in designing the
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plant and one whose consequences exceeded those of the
" design basis accident" - a classic Class 9.
The argument over consideration of Class 9 accidents stems frca the Annex to form Appendix D to 10 CFR Part 50, which was issued as a proposed rule on December 1, 1971, m
at 36 FR 22851.
According to the preamble to the proposed Annex, it is to be considered "useful as interim guidance" until the Commission takes further action.
The Commission has never dove so, and the Annex remains a mere proposal.
The definition of a Class 9 accident appears in the intro-duction to the Annex:
The occurrences 1in Class 9 involve sequences of postulated successive failures more severe than those postulated for the design basis for protective systems and engineered safety features.
T?.e discussions among the NRC Commissioners and Staff during the early days of the Three Mile Island incident establish that a Class 9 accident occurred at T:5I.
In general terms, Edson Case, and Roger Mattson, explained that the accident had net been foreseen:
Mr. Case:
Now, ose of the problems is to what degree.could you control that mode?
It is not designed to be controlled it is designed to be full out.
The core is in a mode that this is just not designed for. (Tr. at 54)
Mr. Mattson:
My best quess is that the core uncovered, stayed uncovered for a long period of time, we saw failure modes, the likes of which has never been analyzed.
e e
Dr. Mattson:
We are still doing analyses with what we now understand the conditions, to see if we can try to estimate with the codes, what the condition of the core really is.
It is a failure mode that has never been studied.
It is just unbelievable.
(Tr. at 77) x*
1113 CP7
Dr. Mattson:
Well, my principal concern is that we have got an accident that we have never been designed to accommodate, and it's, in the best estimate, deteriorating slowly, and the most pessimistic estimate it is on the threshold of turning bad.
(Tr. at 83-84).
Transcripts of the Closed Commission Meeting for Friday, March 30, 1979.
(Emphasis supplied).
Here, suddenly, despite all of the Appeal Board rulings and the court victories, was an accident that refused to follow the Annex.
The NRC was now outside its carefully constructed theory that it was able to predict all credible accident scenarios and, therefore, that it was able to require that all nuclear power plants be designed to prevent or protect against all of the scenarios.
The incredible, or, in Dr.
Mattson's words, " unbelievable," accident had occurred.
Dr. Mattson explained two ways in which the accident had exceeded the design basis established by the regulations.
First, the. actual release of radioactivity was greater than the size of the release assumed in calculating the size of the Low Population Zone:
Dr. Mattson:
We have driven out, by most estimates now, more than the TID t
assumption.
It is a severely damaged core.
Voice:
What's TID?
Comm. Gilinsky:
What is TID?
Dr. Mattson:
The dose assumption in the Part 100 citing review.
TID 14844.
Actual,1y, it has been replaced by a couple of Reg. Guides and every-body knows it is the TID assump-e 1113 'JP8
tions which is 25 percent of the total inventory of the fission products.
Comm. Gilinsky:
That's for what, design basis accidents?
Dr. Mattson:
Yes, sir.
Comm. Gilinsky:
So we have exceeded that?
Dr. Mattson:
We are working from very sketchy information, Vic, so -,-
Comm. Gilinsky:
But it is compara,ble.
Dr. Mattson:
But it'~is comparable.
Id. at 78-79.
(Emphasis supplied).
TID 1488'4, referred to by Dr. Mattson, is Technical Information Document 14844, March 23, 1962, noted in the site criteria regulations at 10 CFR 100.11.
It conthins
'the assumptions concerning the amount of radiation that will be released in the event of postulated accident.
The assumptions are used to determine the size of the Low Population Zone and the Exclusion Area under $100.11.
The import of Dr. Mattson's statement is that in this case the radiation released at TMI exceeded the amount assumed as the basis for determining the size of the LPZ and the exclusion area, which means that the accident was "more severe than those postulated for the design basis for protection systems and engineered safety features."
The second, and perhaps even clearer, example of the accident's having exceeded those postulated as the basis for the design of the pJant is the fact that the amount of f
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hydrogen released by the fuel cladding vastly exceeded the maximum amount established as an acceptance criterion by 50 CFR 50. 4 6 (b) (3).
Whereas that section requires the calculated amount of hydrogen that might be released to be no greater than 1% of the total amount that would be released if all of the metal in the cladding cylinders were to react, Dr. Mattson explained that between 10 - 30%
was released at.TMI:
Dr. Mattson:
The only thing that could explain this bubble is metal-water reaction.
We just ran a calculation on that and it looks like Val Pedisco, he said 10 to 30 percent -- he used a couple of assumptions -- I quess I can't remember -- either 10 or 30 percent water reaction would explain the 1500 cubic feet of hydrogen that is there now, 1000 psi, but if there was a hydrogen explosion in addition to that, there could have been a lot more.
Id. at 80 - 81.-
The accident at Three Mile Island is the kind of accident considered by the NRC to be virtually impossible.
This is true regardless of the amount of radiation actually released, which is still in dispute and may never be known due to inadequate radiation monitoring.
A single spark in the reactor vessel could have caused the hydrogen explosion that would have released vast amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and caused unthinkable disaster.
The question now is whether the Commission must consider the consequences of an accident such as the one that occurred at Three Mile Island, i cluding the consequences of accidents 111J 090
that result in massive reledses of radiation to the atmosphere or in melting of the reactor core, both of which nearly occurred at TMI.
The answer hinges on the well established proposition that the Commission must consider any events that are reasonably probable.
In the Matters of Northern States Power Co. (Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station, Units 1 and 2 and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. (Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station), ALAB-455, 7 NRC 41, 49 (1978).
Three Mile Island has demonstrated that Class 9 accidents are at least reasonably probable.
The only issue that requires discussion is the remarkable confusion that continues to reign concerning the status of the proposed Annex to former Appendix D to Part 50.
Simply put, the Annex has no status in the law.
It is merely a rule that was proposed by the then Atomic Energy Commission, and on which neither the AEC nor the NRC has ever taken any action.
As,such, it governs nothing and cannot be considered as binding the Commission to its refusal to consider Class 9 accidents now that the basis for that. refusal has been eliminated.
III.
The Commission Must Consider the Feasibility of Evacuation Beyond the Boundary of the Low Popula-tion Zone for the Seabrook Plant.
The need to consider the consequences of a Class 9 accident is particularly acute at Seabrook because of the extreme difficulties of evacuating the nearby beach area
if such an accident were to occur.
The real possioility of the occurrence of a Class 9 accident requires that
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,the Commission consider the feasibility of such an evacuation beyond the low population zone since a Class 9 accident could result in radiation releases greatly in excess of the 10 CFR S100.11(a) (2) exposure lEnits used in calculating the size of the LPZ.
NECNP will not repeat SAPL's arguments on the evacuation insue here, except to emphasize that the proposed amendment to Appendix E to Part 50 published on August 23, 1978, at 43 FR 37473, which is to be considered as interin guidance, provides for considera-t' ion of evacuation beyond the LPZ in appropriate cir-cumstances.
The diffic,ulties of evacuating the beaches plus the size of the summer population just beyond the LPZ render Seabrook an appropriate location to consider such an evacuation.
Indeed, we would argue that the occurrence of the accident at Three Mile Island now makes consideration of such an evacuation appropriate at all reactors.
Three Mile T.'.and requires consideration of evacuation beyond the LPZ for at least two reasons.
The first, and more technical, is that the radiation release at TMI exceeded the amount used to calculate the size of the LPZ, as discussed above.
The necessary result is that the size of the LPZ must be increased, or, in the alternative, that e
I l fj?fN $}A.T^
William S / Jordan, 111 Dated:
[ ) ' 'TN
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