ML19284B574
| ML19284B574 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Kewaunee  |
| Issue date: | 10/24/2019 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards |
| To: | |
| Carter T | |
| References | |
| NRC-0520 | |
| Download: ML19284B574 (40) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
NEIMA Section 108 Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: Kewaunee, Wisconsin Date: Tuesday, September 24, 2019 Work Order No.: NRC-0520 Pages 1-37 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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PUBLIC MEETING NEAR KEWAUNEE POWER STATION ON THE NUCLEAR ENERGY INNOVATION AND MODERNIZATION ACT (NEIMA) SECTION 108
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019
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The meeting was convened in the Town of Carlton Town Hall, N1296 Town Hall Road, Kewaunee, Wisconsin, at 6:00 p.m., Bruce Watson, Reactor Decommissioning Branch Chief, presiding.
ATTENDEES NRC HQ:
BRUCE WATSON, Branch Chief, Reactor Decommissioning
- Facilitator TED CARTER, Senior Decommissioning Project Manager ZAHIRA CRUZ, Reactor Decommissioning Project Manager NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 NRC-Region 3:
CHRISTINE LIPA, Deputy Director, Division of Nuclear Materials Safety VIKTORIA MITLYNG, Senior Public Affairs Officer HARRAL LOGARAS, Regional Government Liaison Specialist ALSO PRESENT:
RICHARD BAKER MITCHELL MARICQUE ROD MCCULLUM TRACY NOLLENBERG BREM KREISS DWRIGHT FIELD DOUG OWER MIKE DAVIS Ramona Lake PAUL SCHMITT BRADLY MCMAHON DEAN CURTLAND PETER DEVLIN BOB BUSH BILL ZIPP PAUL CHAMBERLAIN BRITT GRIFFIN MITCHELL MARICQUE STEVE TADISCH NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 P R O C E E D I N G S 6:01 p.m.
MR. WATSON: Okay, I guess we'll get started. First of all, I want to thank you for showing up tonight. I realize that there is no Community Advisory Board here at Kewaunee, but we did get a request to hold a meeting in Wisconsin and since the Community Advisory Board at La Crosse lost interest, I think, about 15 years ago with the longevity of the plant being shut down, for whatever reason they disbanded. And right now we have Region 3 inspectors at La Crosse performing an inspection, doing basically final surveys of the land and remaining structures to ensure they meet our criteria for unrestricted use.
We elected to choose Kewaunee and Zion because both have been shut down for a number of years and we're required by law to hold a meeting within 50 miles of a plant in decommissioning status. Zion is almost gone and Kewaunee is in SAFSTOR.
We have a short presentation. My name is Bruce Watson; I'm Chief of the Reactor Decommissioning Branch at NRC headquarters. All of the 23 reactors that are shut down in the country and the research reactors that are undergoing NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 decommissioning are in my branch where I'm responsible for the licensing activities and support to the regions for the inspection program.
So with me tonight I have Ted Carter who's actually the Project Manager for Kewaunee, and Zahira Cruz who's one of my project managers and part of the active working group which is fulfilling the needs from the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act requirements of us.
We're going to have a small presentation by me, and then we will ask any elected officials or Native American tribes to make any statements that they would like to, and then we'll go to public comments. I've asked Mr. Baker to make a comment, to open the public speaking time.
So with that said, we will go to the slides. This is a NRC Category 3 -- oh, I forgot to mention that Alison over here is recording the meeting, so there will be a transcript of the meeting. The transcript will be publicly available after we get it back from her and review it. We'll make it public for everyone to see on our website.
So with that said, I'll go ahead. This is a NRC Category 3 meeting. The purpose of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 meeting is to obtain comments and identify best practices for the establishment and operation of local Community Advisory Boards (we call them CAB's) for decommissioning nuclear power reactors, including any lessons learned from existing CAB's.
So I've kind of gone over the meeting procedures, we have very few people that want to sign up to speak, so you'll have plenty of time to speak when we go to the public part of the meeting. I've already introduced the staff, except for Region 3, and we have a number of people here from our Region 3 office out of Chicago.
MS. LIPA: Sure, I'm Christine Lipa, and I'm out of the Region 3 office and I have oversight for the inspectors at the nuclear power plants that are decommissioning in Region 3, such as La Crosse, Kewaunee, Zion, and some others.
MR. WATSON: Anybody else?
Okay. So with that, we'll continue with my presentation and then I'll go over the ground rules. And then we'll go to public comments. We will close the meeting by 9:00pm, if not earlier if we run out of people to talk.
Next slide, please.
I just want to point out that the NRC NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 regulations, that are currently in the books, went into effect in 1997, so we have extensive experience in decommissioning. One member of the public asked me what extensive meant; well, we've decommissioned more reactors in the United States than the rest of the world combined. We have completed the decommissioning of ten nuclear power plants in the U.S. and there are four more that are on the brink of having their licenses terminated and completed decommissioning. That would be the two units at Zion, the unit at La Crosse and one in California at Humboldt Bay. We will be up to 14 probably by the end of next year. I think our experience is expensive compared with the rest of the world; they seek our opinions on decommissioning activities worldwide.
I want to also point out that all of these sites, almost 80 of them, which includes the ten reactors, complex material sites and research reactors, have been released from unrestricted use; meaning that the owner of the property can use the property for whatever purpose. So the land could be repurposed for whatever they choose to do. And I can tell you at some of the power plants they built additional power generation capabilities, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 about a third of them are just bare and about a third of them have been converted to parks. So it's really up to what the licensee wants to do.
Keep in mind that they generally are a very valuable property to the licensee, or I should say the owner at that point, because there is the grid there, cooling water, and Environmental Impact Statement done for a nuclear power plant.
So with that, move onto the next slide.
This is just a picture of decommissioning activities in Wisconsin. Obviously Kewaunee is there in SAFSTOR and the last time I was here we actually had the post shutdown decommissioning activities report meeting. It has been in SAFSTOR, the owner, the licensee(Dominion Energy) has placed the plant in a SAFSTOR condition and they have transferred the spent nuclear fuel to a dry storage facility which is maintained safe and secure 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We continue to inspect this facility. As I mentioned, to a few of you earlier, we were on the site today and did a tour with one of Christine's Region 3 inspectors, and so we did a tour of the site today.
The picture on the right is where the reactor was at La Crosse. And what's behind it is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 a large coal plant. So don't think that's the nuclear plant; that's the coal plant that's been there for many, many years also. But they built the coal plant right next to the nuclear plant, and so what you're seeing there is just the ground where the nuclear reactor used to be. And so, like I said, we are hopefully doing our final inspection there and surveys by our independent contractor, we use Oak Ridge Associated Universities to do confirmatory surveys with our inspectors to verify that the site meets our criteria for unrestricted release.
The next slide please.
The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, Section 108, we call it NEIMA Section 108. We formed a NEIMA working group because in January the Congress issued the legislation, and it requires that the NRC shall submit to Congress a report identifying the best practices with respect to the establishment and operation of a local Community Advisory Board; to foster communications, which is what a board is supposed to do; and information exchange between a licensee planning for and involved in decommissioning activities and members of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 community that the decommissioning may affect, including lessons learned from such boards in existence. It requires us to have a minimum of ten public meetings. And like I said, we had a request from the state of Wisconsin to hold one here. This is our seventh meeting. We've met at Vermont where we heard from the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Advisory Panel; we were at Pilgrim where we heard from the Pilgrim Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel; we've been to Palisades which will be shutting down in a few years; we've been to San Onofre which was shut down a few years ago, and they are in the middle of moving their spent fuel to dry storage and then they will be going into active decommissioning. We also went to Humboldt Bay and that plant is finishing decommissioning.
We probably had our last inspection there at Humboldt Bay when I was there in September --
actually late August -- because they are just planting grass there on the facility.
We are accepting comments on this meeting and any comments from the NEIMA Section 108 on our website. We have that slide at the end of the presentation. You can send your comments to the regulations.gov website or you can mail us a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 letter or send us an email. We're going to be accepting comments through November 15thand we have a Federal Register Notice I just approved today to go out with that announcement to close the end of the comment period.
Next slide, please.
So what are Community Advisory Boards?
They're an organized group of citizens interested in safety commissioning practices, and spent fuel management at a decommissioning facility. The sponsor is usually a local licensee or mandated by a state legislature. There's a third type of sponsor which the local community formed at Indian Point for the impending shutdown at Indian Point next year -- at least Unit 2, and then Unit 3 a year after that (Unit 1 has been shut down for many years). This type of sponsor is slightly different
-- the local community has formed the Community Advisory Board and the Board is being chaired by a local mayor.
The composition of CAB's is usually local community leaders, elected officials, state representatives and members of the licensee's staff. Typically the licensee is invited to provide information on the plant itself. And those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 CAB's have a governing charter to establish the roles and responsibilities.
Next slide, please.
The typical things they do are review the licensee's plans for decommissioning, provide insight of the potential impact on the local community. There are opportunity for public education on decommissioning, they can make recommendations to state officials, and some CAB's recommend their own clean-up standards. And of course they can provide input on the site restoration, plans for future reuse of the site and economic development. So it's pretty much limited in what they can do, it's up to the CAB to decide what they're going to do.
Next slide, please.
Our report to Congress, the contents that are spelled out in the law are that we will have a description of the CAB discussion topics, CAB recommendations to inform decision-making processes during decommissioning, CAB interactions with the NRC, the Commission, and other federal agencies or federal regulatory bodies to support the board members' overall understanding of the decommissioning process and promote dialogue NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 between the affected stakeholders and of course the licensee involved in the decommissioning activities.
Part of this is how a CAB could offer opportunities for public engagement throughout all phases of the decommissioning process.
Next slide, please.
So our report to Congress will contain the CAB best practices for CAB membership, membership composition, selection process, how people are put on the CAB and of course their terms of membership, when the CAB was established and the frequency of CAB meetings, specific logistics required to support the CAB and other identified best practices or activities.
There is a questionnaire in the back that's available, it's also available online. You can also go online (we'll give you that address soon), but you can also fill out the questionnaire and provide it to us or you can mail it in.
You can provide your public comments at our meeting here that's being recorded. We'll be looking at the transcripts for information, as well as listening tonight to your comments. You can fill out the NEIMA questionnaire online (its website) and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 we'll have a little bit more instruction on that in just a second. We do have copies of the NEIMA questionnaire in the back. You can submit comments electronically to the federal rule-making website which is regulations.gov, and of course this is the NRC docket number which will get it to the right place, or you can scan completed questionnaires or anything else you want to do and send them by email to NEIMA108.resource@NRC. Or you can mail any questionnaires or any comments to Kim Conway who's a project manager on my staff at NRC, and that's her address there.
So if you go to our next slide, if you go to our public website, we have what we call a spotlight section on the left side of the public website. And if you go to spotlight you'll see that there's NEIMA Community Advisory Board listed, listing there, if you click on it you will get right to our website for providing comments or looking at the other information.
If you have other questions -- next slide -- you can contact our Office of Public Affairs, Dave McIntyre is our public affairs representative at headquarters, there's his phone number. And of course, you can email it to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 NEIMA108.resource. So just to summarize, our meeting tonight is to obtain your comments, public comments and feedback on best practices for Community Advisory Boards that decommission nuclear power plants.
With that said, as far as ground rules, I only have two speakers. Once we get through the elected officials, I think we'll go to Mr. Baker and then after that we'll open up to public, which there's two people listed here that want to talk.
With that said are there any elected officials that would like to make a statement?
Anybody from the federal government, Congress, Senate?
No?
Any local state officials want to make any comments?
No? Nobody?
Okay. Any Native American tribes that are represented that would like to make a statement?
Nobody? Okay.
With that, then we'll turn it over to Mr. Baker. We've asked him since he's, I guess, been involved with the economic development here since there's no real CAB to make a comment. Then NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 we'll go to public comment.
MR. BAKER: These are going to be very brief comments, folks, because I've only been here since January, so I wasn't involved in the shutdown.
MR. WATSON: Yes, you're new here.
MR. BAKER: Thank you, Bruce and your team for coming out and allowing the public to give some input and looking forward to keeping up to date as the shutdown continues on, keeping us abreast of what's happened. As you guys know, the economic impact of this culture is always helping the community, there were a lot of jobs that left the area. I do want to thank Dominion for stepping in and my predecessor was involved with negotiating some financial assistance that Dominion is doing for economic vitality, so appreciate that funding over the next ten years that will help alleviate some of that loss that the county has experienced and hopefully be put to good use to foster economic development here in the county.
So again, thanks Bruce and thanks everybody for coming. I'm hoping you guys can give some input.
MR. WATSON: With that, we'll go to the list of speakers. Is it Doug Ower?
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16 MR. OWER: Mm-hmm, that's me.
MR. WATSON: And you're welcome. Come on up.
MR. OWER: All right, thank you. I'm actually from Zion; I'm on the Citizens Advisory Panel there and I wasn't able to make the meeting on Thursday, so I came up here because I think it's important to talk about Citizens Advisory Panels.
Just for some background on the Zion Nuclear Plant being shut down '97-'98, they started the decommissioning in 2010, so I've been on the Advisory Panel since then. It's approximately $900 million to do the decommissioning and it's almost done, they're in final stages and it should be complete next year.
So I have to say in terms of Citizens Advisory Panel, it was a great experience for me.
I'm a life-long Zion resident. I really wanted to be on the panel, I lobbied very hard to get on it.
The suggestions on here are from local elected officials and that sort of thing, but I'll get into a little bit more of who I think should be on the board. But it's a great experience to be on the board, to see what's going on and try to watchdog your community. I think in Zion's case, I believe NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 Zion was the first place where the utility is Exelon and the license was transferred to a subsidiary of Energy Solutions called Zion Solutions and they did the decommissioning work. So license is in their possession now and then will be transferred back to Exelon when the project is complete.
So the panel was set up by Zion Solutions and I personally think it's a conflict of interest. I strongly believe that Citizens Advisory Panels should be independent and funded separately by the decommissioning funds so that hopefully we can take a harder look at what's going on to make sure that we get the best results for our community.
We have 65 dry casks in Zion that are going to be there a long time. And how do we know that these are done -- I mean, the NRC watches of course -- how do we know that it's done to standards We're the community that's impacted. So the Advisory Panel is really the only opportunity for citizens to have an eye on what's going on. And so I think that there should actually be an application process for citizens, it shouldn't just be elected officials --
certainly some elected officials are great to be on there, but I think people that are highly interested in decommissioning should be on the panel. The NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 average citizen has very little knowledge about nuclear operations or decommissioning, so high level of interest I think is very important.
So I think, also, there either should be nuclear watchdog groups. I mean, there's a number of groups around the country that they're very interested in nuclear. It'll be helpful to have someone like them on the panel. Also, I think with the separate group that's funded separately you could maybe hire some technical experts to see what's going on. I think that that would be an important item so that it's just not us listening to the contractor, telling us what they're doing, and hopefully it's correct.
The other thing I noticed in your slide presentation, which we had when the decommissioning started, was it mentioned that the NRC typically provides briefings. It never happened for Zion, it was never offered as an opportunity, and I think it would have been very important to have that available, have the NRC in parallel with Zion Solutions both discuss what they're seeing on the decommissioning. If the NRC is seeing issues or they think it's going great, it would have been great to hear that from the NRC. I mean, sometimes NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 someone's at the meetings and might make a comment or two, but there were was no presentations. And I think that would be an important part of decommissioning. We should hear from NRC what are you seeing on the site during the decommissioning process.
One of the big questions with a lot of people during our decommissioning was transparency on financials. Like I said, it's about $900 million. The NRC looks at the funding to make sure that there's enough money to do the radiological decommissioning, but they don't really get into the details on all the transactions that occur and there is no watchdog on financial transactions. So we had no financial transparency other than they would list like the balance of the fund and some of the major cost things, but for the most part we had initial fund balance and current fund balance, and very little information for transparency. And I think it's very important. We're ratepayers, we pay for the fund. We should know how that money is being spent. In Zion's case the contractor agreed to do it for the amount of funds. I personally think they're going to lose a little bit of money on it, is what it looks like, but we don't really know NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 because we don't get the financial records and have no ability to get them.
And we have very little authority, there's almost no authority. About the most we can do is ask for a presentation on something or say yes we'd be interested in that or whatever. So, again, any ability that NRC has to give the Citizens Advisory Panel a little more authority I think would be helpful. Also, one thing mentioned in the presentation was provide input on site restoration decisions, consider plans for future reuse of the site, consider economic development concerns. So Exelon is our utility that owns the land, they've never been to a hearing. They've had no discussion on what they want to do, they won't meet with local officials. And I think there needs to be regulations on that; we should have some input as to what's going to happen. Right now no one has any idea what they're going to do with that property, and I don't think we'll find it. So I think it will be better if whoever owns the property, they should be required to have representative of Citizens Advisory Panel meetings. And then, also, we have the license termination hearing several years ago, and from what I hear that's the last requirement the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 NRC has to do anything. So when this project's done, this is done. I think it'll be helpful to have a final hearing from the NRC to let us know what they see, make sure everything's all set, at least have some feedback from the NRC about the completion of the project.
Also, what I think, the NRC should work a little bit on improving turnout. I think this isn't too bad here today, but I think by far a license termination hearing, there were more staff than NRC people there and citizens because no citizens knew about it. I wasn't informed about these hearings by the NRC. I heard about it through some nuclear watchdog group and then I sent the information to our Citizens Advisory Panel because I don't think anyone was informed about it. And I think this is a great opportunity for us to give some input on what should be done. So I think one of the metrics the NRC should have is there should be a metric on turnout for hearings, I think a lot more should be done to see what can be done for turnout. In Illinois right now we're going to have hearings by the Illinois EPA on the Coal Act because there was a bill that was just passed. Well, the first hearings are on how to improve community NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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22 involvement in the hearings. I think that's a great idea, what can be done to get more people involved in the process of seeing what's going on in your community with these decommissionings and getting out to these important hearings from the NRC.
I think that's my major part are the turnouts. Again, I do really appreciate that you're having these hearings. I think, again, that Citizens Advisory Panels are incredibly important for the community and it's a great opportunity to get some input and quickly improve the whole process.
Thank you.
MR. WATSON: You're welcome. I was going to make one comment in that it's unfortunate that we were never invited to any of the ZCAP meetings.
MR. OWER: That's a lack of knowledge on our part.
MR. WATSON: Yes, but --
MR. OWER: If I had known, I sure would have.
MR. WATSON: Yes. I know, myself, I've been to the Pilgrim, Vermont, Indian Point, and a number of other meetings -- I've been out to San NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 Onofre a number of times for their meetings, what they call Citizens Engagement Panel. So we try to make ourselves available if we're invited to speak on a specific subject and we've done that, and it's unfortunate that we didn't know that there was a desire to be invited either. But we normally have one of our inspectors there, one of our project managers there during the week that they hold those meetings --
MS. MITLYNG: Actually we did attend the Zion meetings. I don't know --
MR. OWER: Right. I know at least some of the time they were there and some of the times responded. So I think that's one reason that speaks to why the Citizens Advisory Panels should be independent, because basically things are filtering through the contractor to us, and I don't think we have the knowledge that that would be available. If we had then, if I had known that, I would have insisted for our panel that we have the NRC speaking at every meeting.
MR. WATSON: Yes, and there are statutory requirements to hold a public meeting.
It's actually a legal term in our language, but public meeting is what we call it. We did have the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 public meeting for the license termination point.
As a matter of fact, I ran that one as I recall.
And I thought we had a pretty good turnout from the local community. We did have a lot of people there from our organization because we were training people there also.
MR. OWER: Yes.
MR. WATSON: So I'll agree with that, we had a lot of people there. So I want to thank you, again, for your comments. We'll be at Zion this coming Thursday, so.
Is it Ned Patera?
MR. PATERA: That's right.
MR. WATSON: Sir, come on up.
And could you just spell your name for us, for Alison?
MR. PATERA: Sure, the formal name is Edward.
MR. WATSON: Okay.
MR. PATERA: That's what everybody calls me when they don't know who I am. And the last name is Patera, P-A-T-E-R-A.
Okay. And I wanted to come down here tonight just to express my gratitude to the Kewaunee nuclear power plant. I've driven by this plant NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 numerous times, even when it wasn't a plant, during its construction and all that. And I'm just always amazed what a beautiful plant it is. It sat there for years and years and years and generated a ton of, a lot of electrical power for Northeast Wisconsin. And it's done it in a very safe, clean, sustainable and very efficient way. So I want to say thank you to the people that designed, constructed and operated this plant, and I want to say thank you to the people of the NRC and the predecessors, the Atomic Energy Commission, for the work that they had done to ensure the quality of not only this plant but all plants in this country.
And that's all I want to say. Thank you.
MR. WATSON: You're welcome. Thank you for your comment.
Is there anybody else that wants to speak now that you drove all the way out here and we have plenty of time?
We're interested in hearing what you got to say.
Yes, sir.
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26 Institute in Washington D.C. We are the trade association of the commercial nuclear industry, so we represent the industry through all sorts of government agencies, including regulator. We've been following NRC around on this learning tour that Congress has sent them out on. It's been very interesting. It's very important for us because decommissioning is becoming a bigger part of our business model as more of our plants age. It's something we understand we have to do very well because we want to avoid this plant shut down because it wasn't economical. We've got a whole new generation of nuclear power plants on the drawing board that we hope will be economical, and we got to prove we can shut them down. So being part of this learning tour and hearing what you had to say, we've been to all seven meetings so far, I think we'll cover all of them but one. We are learning that every community is different just as every plant is different. That makes it hard for NRC to regulate this, and I think the NRC acknowledged that, but getting your ideas is helpful. I think the idea --
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27 about what we had known. This is good input to have, I think it's important to our industry to hear it, as well as for the NRC to hear it. So I appreciate you all coming out and showing your interest and sharing your views. When the meeting breaks up if anybody wants to come and ask me a question about the overall status of the nuclear industry, I'd be happy to answer it.
MR. WATSON: Floor is open. Anybody?
Sir, come on up.
And if you would, state your name, for Alison for the record.
MR. MARICQUE: It's Mitchell Maricque.
I just wanted to say that a lot of, whether or not there's going to be a Community Advisory Board has to do with the terms under which the permanent closure is taking place. For example, is the utility offering money for economic development to the community or is money available from the state?
Like the State of New York has active legislation to help communities that are impacted by closed power plants. Some communities have to deal with not getting any settlement money for economic development. As a matter of fact, they find that they're billions of dollars in debt, as what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 happened at San Onofre, because of a botched repair job for the steam generators or at the permanently closed St. Lucie nuclear power plant in Florida, which also had a botched repair job and they found themselves over a billion dollars in debt.
So the nature of the Community Advisory Boards becomes different to them; for example, in Florida they didn't have money for economic development because they were over a billion dollars in debt, so therefore then the question became well how do we raise money. For them it was to raise property taxes by over 30 percent and to authorize legislatively a securitization to lower the repayments on a permanently closed nuclear power plant. And so a lot of it depends on the circumstances under which the permanent shutdown is taking place. And that's what I wanted to say.
Here it was a couple of years late, and this latest round of closures started actually in 2012 with Vermont and Yankee and they got an outstanding settlement that was over $65 million of money for the economic development for the community that Entergy gave them. Plus the nuclear power plant there that was closed, being decommissioned and dismantled in a very speedy fashion. Here the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 settlement with the utility was a little late in coming because there was a dispute over the property tax assessment, so although closed in 2013 the settlement didn't actually come out until I think it was 2015. And so that's why I think there wasn't a Community Advisory Board here is because the settlement didn't come until two years after the permanent closure.
And that's what I wanted to say.
MR. WATSON: I was just going to mention, I think you're talking about the Crystal River plant in Florida.
MR. MARICQUE: Yes.
MR. WATSON: Because we're going down there in another few weeks to hear it.
MR. MARICQUE: Thank you for correcting me.
MR. WATSON: Yes, I get them confused too. So it's fine. But it is Crystal River that had the containment issue where they couldn't repair it, so they had to shut the plant down.
MR. MARICQUE: Right.
MR. WATSON: So I just want to make sure we're talking about the same plant, that's all.
MR. MARICQUE: San Onofre, they're NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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30 billions in debt. And so most of the role of the Community Advisory Board there is for safety.
MR. WATSON: Right, and they have a very active Citizens Engagement Panel there and they have lots of money in their decommissioning fund also to do the decommissioning, so they're in pretty good shape I think.
So thank you very much.
Floor is open. Do we have any more takers?
Sir, come on up.
Yes, I knew you'd come.
MR. TADISCH: Okay, Steve Tadisch here.
I just had a question on procedures here for dry cask storage. I don't know if that's for this panel or not?
MR. WATSON: Well, we'll try and answer it, but we're supposed to be talking about the CAB.
MR. TADISCH: Okay, so all the fuel's removed out of the wet pool to dry cask storage.
MR. WATSON: Mm-hmm.
MR. TADISCH: Sponsored daily. The question always was if a leak is detected in that dry cask storage, what is the procedure to fix a container if it's leaking? The wet pool is dry, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 can't move it off the site.
MR. WATSON: Right.
MR. TADISCH: So what does it do here?
MR. WATSON: Basically the licensee and the manufacturer of the cask is supposed to be have a plan ready to put it in larger container to make sure it stays intact.
MR. TADISCH: I've never seen that in writing since the day they closed that plant. Once they put it in dry cask storage the question has been asked several times and I was told a procedure is a procedure, there's nothing in writing.
MR. WATSON: Unfortunately, it's not my area, just trying to answer your question as best I could there. But the plan is to over-pack them, but there is extensive research going on with the Electric Power Research Institute on how to monitor the integrity of those containers and obviously the design life is much longer than the original license time, so they'll be doing lots of measurements on them. I think they've done some preliminary measurements. But my old plant, Calvert Cliffs, which was one of the first ones to have dry field storage put into place. But more to come on it.
MR. TADISCH: I understand, you know, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 but if this plant here doesn't mix hotter fuel with the cool rods, they can remove them from the wet pool quicker. This is one of the first ones they did that was correct.
MR. WATSON: No, they had been doing that with lots of plants. And what it is, is your -
- it's not my expertise, but basically you have a certain heat load you can put in a container, and so you take older fuel rods which are very low in energy and mix them with newer rods so you can meet the -- you can still be under the requirement for the head load.
MR. TADISCH: Well, I remember a couple years ago we had a meeting to discuss this procedure. This was something they were going to try and they were just checking this on this plant.
MR. WATSON: That's normal procedure these days, you can get the fuel out faster and into storage quicker. And the passive systems are the way to go.
Questions? Anybody else?
I was hoping we would make it at least an hour.
So I was hoping that the discussion would spur some more thoughts from the people that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 were here. There are, like I said, some dramatic changes when the plant shuts down. It's just like any other large industry that shuts down. There's loss of jobs, there's loss of economic development in the process, so unfortunately most of these plants are in fairly, reasonably remote areas, and so the local community benefits, but then also it has the, I guess I'll call it the reprise when a plant shuts down and the revenues kind of dry up.
So it's kind of a very sad situation. And I sympathize with you dramatically; I see it all over.
So I'm hoping that, my own personal opinion is that the properties can be reused for something that will benefit the local community and hope that pans out for not only here but at the other sites.
So anybody else? Any questions or comments that you have?
Okay, we do have these little cards back there which basically has the information we have up here on the website on this slide up here. So you can submit your comments to us. We have the questionnaire in back you can submit electronically by going to that website. You can go to regulations.gov, you can mail us the comments, and also you can email them at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 NEIMA108.resource@nrc.gov.
So I was just going to kind of summarize a little bit of what I heard briefly tonight. And you've heard a few of these comments before in that Community Advisory Boards should be somewhat independent, they should be funded maybe out of the decommissioning fund. There's been other suggestions on how to do that funding from the state, some funding from the NRC, but the key thing is they need to be -- the recommendation from what we're hearing is that they should be somewhat independent of the licensee.
I also heard that the NRC should have maybe some representation at the meetings. I know our inspectors do come. As I said before, I've gone to a number of meetings and done presentations on specific issues that the local community was interested in, whether it was environmental reviews or the decommissioning process. The last one in January I was at Pilgrim and talked about the license transfer process that we use for re-evaluating new applicants and for applicants for licenses.
As Mr. Ower said, Zion was the first one of a license transfer, so we've learned a lot about NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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35 what's going on in that situation. The newest business model is to actually not only transfer the license but sell the plant, including the spent fuel to a decommissioning company or a fuel company that's going to manage the facility, and also go ahead and decommission the facility and make some money on that process. But it decommissions the plant very much quicker than the original plant from the licensee or the utility. I can tell you that it takes about seven to ten years to decommission the plant and that's about what they're going to do at these other sites. I think Zion's right around ten from start to finish, right?
MR. OWER: Yes.
MR. WATSON: So that's right in the same ballpark and they did two units there. So it was double the work, at the same time they had stuff simultaneously going on. We continue to inspect the plant, Christine's folks from Region 3 continue to inspect the plant. Like I said, we'll be doing more final inspections there coming up to make sure that the criteria for free release or unrestricted release for the facility.
And we used the comments what typical memberships we're seeing out there. So membership NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 should be a variety of people that have an interest in decommissioning, obviously. Some elected officials included, some non-government officials, interested people, and so it should be a diversity as what we've heard at other ones too.
And I guess I'll be hearing more about this, I'm sure, at Thursday night's meeting. The NRC has a fairly high level of financial assurance, we just want to know that there's enough money to complete the decommissioning. The states actually regulate the commerce and the spending of the money in their states, so we do not necessarily get involved in terms of contracts or anything else, but I know Exelon was doing audits of the books frequently. So they were kind of looking after their money because it was their trust fund that signed up to take care of -- so there was an audit there, but it wasn't necessarily by the NRC. If we get involved it's not good for anybody because we actually have the Department of Justice come with us. So it's a different framework if we have to get involved in the funding issues. So I'll just leave it at that, but it is a different ballpark. And we do have one facility out in the Midwest that's not a reactor, it's a privately owned company that we've NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 had to get the Department of Justice involved in --
there was a lot of money being spent but no work getting done kind of thing, so we've been working through the Department of Justice with that. And so there are mechanisms for us to get involved; we just don't watch it all go away. And part of our inspection process is to look at how the money's being spent and what work's being done throughout the process.
So again, the license transfer at Zion was the first one. We've had the license transfers through actual sales of the properties, at Oyster Creek recently. We just approved the license transfer at Pilgrim, there's an application in right now for Crystal River to transfer the license, but the land's going to go back to Duke Energy when the decommissioning is complete. Kind of a similar one, but the applicant is going to continue to manage the spent fuel until it's removed.
So that's kind of the new business model that seems to be helping get some of these sites decommissioned quicker, and also in terms of the management the spent fuel to companies that are also capable of managing the spent fuel in the future.
Because there is two applications in for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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38 consolidated interim storage of spent fuel, one in New Mexico and one in Texas, which the NRC is reviewing those applications, those licensed applications for allowing those types of facilities to be built. So most of the fuel in the country can be consolidated in it looks like two spots until the federal government resolves the final high-level waste disposal issue. So I just thought I'd mention that.
With that, I have 6:50. The staff and I will be hanging around a little bit, but I guess I'll have to say that the meeting's officially over.
But thank you all for coming.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 6:50 p.m.)
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