ML19289C442
| ML19289C442 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 01/03/1979 |
| From: | Etherington H, Kerr W, Seiss C Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T, NUDOCS 7901120198 | |
| Download: ML19289C442 (93) | |
Text
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4 I
NUCLE AR REGULATORY COMMISSION-ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS IN THE MATTER OF:
SUBCCMMITTEE MEETING Y
on SPENT FUEL STORACE POOL DESIGN PIC**
- Washington, D.
C.
Date -
Wednesday, 3 January 1979 Pages 1 - 92
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PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE 2
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
5 Wednesday, 3 January 1979 6
The contents of this stenographic transcript of the 7
proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 8
Co= mission's Advisory Cc=mittee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS ),
9 as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions 10 recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
Il No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at this 12 meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies 13 of statement or data contained in this transcript.
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
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22 1
23 24 Federal Reporters, lac.
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2 i
i UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IR2015 1
VHITLOCK 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS I
4 5
SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING 6
on j
SPENT FUEL STORAGE POOL DESIGN j
7 8
Room 1046 9
1717 H Street, N.W.
10 !
Washington, D.C.
11 Wednesday, 3 January 1979 12 The ACRS Subcommittee on Spent Fuel Storage Pool De-13 sign met, pursuant to notice, at 1:00 p.m.
Dr. Chester 14 l Siess, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.
15 BEFORE:
16,
DR. CHESTER SIESS, Chairman of the Subcommittee 1
17 MR. HAROLD ETHERINGTON, Member 18 PROF. WILLIAM KERR, Member 19 l MR. WILLIAM MATHIS, Member l
20 l DR. JERAMAIH RAY, Member f
1 21 22 23 i t 24 l Am.k_ral Reporters, Inc. !
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WHITLOCK t-9 mte 1 1
P _R O _C _E _E _D _I N _G _S l
2l (1:00 p.m.)
3 DR. SIESS :
The meeting will come to order.
I 4
This is a meeting of the Advisory Committee on i
5 Reactor Safeguards, Ad Hoc Subcomnittee on Spent Fuel Storage am Chairman of the i
6 Pool Design.
My name is Chester Siess.
2 l
7 Subcommi ttee.
And the other ACRS members present at the meeting 8
are:
Harold Etherington on my immediate left; and, continuing, 9
William Kerr and Jerry Ray.
Mr. Mathis, I think, may be with 10 i us later on this af ternoon.
11 The purpose of the meeting is to develop information 12 for consideration by the ACRS in its review of the NRC~ proposed '
13 rule on licensing requirements for the storage of spent fuel 14 and an independent spent fuel storace installation, which it l
15 i says here is ISFSI, but that is an awfully long word to spell 16 ont.
17 ;
The meeting is being conducted in accordance with the 18 provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the 19 1 Government in the Sunshine Act; and the designated federal 20 employee for the meeting is Mr. Al Igne on my immediate right.
21 The chief spokesman for the NRC staf f will be Mr. Bob Bernero, 22 l to the extent that he can speak.
And then I think Mr. Stanford l
23 I will cinch-hit for him when his voice runs out.
I
^
i 24 ;
A transcript of the meeting is being kept, and I will Ace-Fauerst Reoorters, Inc.
25 '.
ask that each speaker first identify himself, and then, following 6
I
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/.
I that, please use the microphone.
And we will be sure that they I
2 are operating.
If you need another one over there, we will l
l 3l provide it.
I 4
The most recent arrival is Mr. Steve Lawroski, member ;
5 of the ACRS.
6 I might say, by way of introduction, that the Ad Hoc 7
Subcommittee on Spent Fuel Storage Pool Design was established a 8
year or so aco, chiefly to keep an eye on the questions that l
9 were arising regarding designing existing spent fuel storage 1
10 1 pools at reactors for the closed-space conficuration, to increase 11 their capacity. I don 't think we ever did anything in that i
12 particular area, because it seemed not to require it, j
l 13 The subject we are going to discuss today is a quite 14 diff erent subject.
This is essentially the independent spent 15 fuel storage installation, the installation not at a reactor 16 site, not as part of a reactor plant, that will handle spent 17 fuel from more than one plant.
18 The staf f has recently issued for comment proposed 19 rules as part of the Title X, Code of Federal Regulations,
20 Part 72; and the Commission has asked the ACRS to comment on 21, those proposed rules.
And this is the first step toward 22 getting some comrents from the ACRS.
The Subcommittee will 23 review it first and, depending on what we hear, we will either 24 l report to the full Committee or we will ask the NRC staff to AceJweral Reporters, Inc. l 25 l make a presentation to the full Committee at an appropriate I
I mce 3 5
l I
time.
l 2
The specific items on the agenda include siting 3I fea ture s, seismic design, general design criteria and such 4
other aspects as may be of interest, including quality assurance,,
e i
5 plant protection and so forth.
6 With that introduction, I will turn it over to 7
Dr. Bernero.
8 DR. BE RNERO:
Thank you, Dr. Siess.
i 9
I am Bob Bernero, from the regulatory staff, Office of:
10 !
Standards Development.
And with me is Russell Stanford, who is 11 the task leader for the preparation of Part 72 and the associated i
12 regulatory guides.
We have material to provide a presentation, m
13 first of all, on the Part 72 and how we came to have this 14 re gulation.
And in addition, Mr. Stanford is prepared to give 15 you the highlights of the comments we have received to date 16 on that proposed regulation.
The comment neriod ends 17 tomorrow.
18 And lastly, there is one regulatory guide of special 19 1 interest that we are working with an ANSI committee on.
20 Mr. Stanford is our member and he has material to go into 21 that, the ANSI 57.7 Committee, which gets right into the design 22 specifics of the independent spent fuel storage pool.
i l
23 I would just like to say, by way of introduction, a 24 j few remarks.
One of them, we alleaed that the acronym is Am-Fwas Reporters, Inc. l 25 j pronounceable.
It is an "Isfissy".
It is a terrible acronym.
i
I mee 4 6
i i
i 1
But a lot of people prefer to call these things "AFRs", away-l 2
from-reactor storage pools.
And that in itself is not l
3l terribly acc Irate either, because one could builc one of these 1
4 things right. Text door to a reactor, which would be a very j
5 logical place.
6 In th'e past, it has always been assumed that spent 7
fuel would be hussled right out of the reactor and right into 8
a reprocessing plant.
As a result, one spoke of the regulation.
of the storage of spent fuel only associated with either one o
10 of those facilities and for relatively short time s,
changes in 11 national policy, failure to close the back end of the fuel 12 cycle, a variety of things, led to a situation where we evolved ;
13 a need to store spent fuel and store it for very great lengths Ml of time, and store more and Fore of it.
15 The licensing staff that we have at NMSS has already, 16 in essence, licensed a number of facilities that you could l-17 call independent spent fuel storage installations in the present s -
18 context.
There is the NFS West Valley f acility that sto re s 19 '
fuel.
It was licensed as part of a reprocessing plant, but it 20 is still a storage pool.
The GE Morris facility, again, a part 21 of a reprocessing plant that never operated as such, converte d 22 l to a spent fuel storage depot.
And the Barnwell pool was in l
23 the licensing action when the owners decided to suspend, with 24 hl the failure of the reprocessing plant.
But there was a separate Ac..ra,..i seconm. ine. l 25 '
licensing action to license just the storace pool there.
I I
i mte 5 7
1 The licensing staff presented us with a request that l
2 they would like to have a clear regulation for this new beast, l
3l this new spent fuel storage.
So that is how we got to have 4
Part 72.
5 As we go through the logic, the rationale of how we i
6 develop this regulation, I would just call to your attention tha't 7
this is an opportunity for us to look at the true requirements )
8 of a situation and say, do we really have to do it the old way 9
because that is the accustomed way to do it.
When this proposed l 10 1 regulation was prepared, there was creat misgiving in the staff Il because of the novelty of this approach.
We are conscious of l
12 that, but we are willine to try it.
I 13 So now I would like to turn over the floor to I
14 Mr. Stanford to give you the presentation of the material that I
15 we have.
16 (Slide.:
17 MR. STANFORD:
I think maybe, j us t following Bob 18 l Bernero's brief introduction, we edght go through with this l
19 '
brief presentation that we have planned, with the thought that 20 it is not new to you, but maybe it stimulates discussion.
So I
21 interrupt me, please.
22 We are talking about a new step in the fuel cycle.
23 { It is somewhere between a nuclear power plant and a fuel l
24 reprocessing plant or a high-level waste repcsitory, and it is Ace-Facersi Reoorters, Inc.
25 l this new step here which is spent fuel storace in an l
mte 6 8
i 1
independent spent fuel storage installation.
2p I might just comment on that name.
We wanted to 3i emphasize the " independent", and in the regulation or in the i
6 4 i law we cannot use the term " f acility".
So the lawyers pushed 5
us to find some other word but " facility", and that is where 6
the " installation" comes from.
l i
7 DR. SIESS:
John, will you move that chair out of the 8
way and see if you can back him into the corner?
Can you stand 9
at the lectern?
We can ' t see.
We want you over in that area 10 '
somewhere.
11 MR. STANFORD:
All right.
i 12 DR. SIESS:
Thank you.
13 (Slide. )
14 '
MR. STANFORD:
Our present regulations covering at 15 i the reactor and at the reprocessing, which is basically short-i I
16 cool ed fuel, fres1f discharged spent fuel, or under 10 CFR IlPart 50; and transient, which is also relatively fresh, 120 cc 17 lI la 18 l 180 days decay--under the regulations it is Part 71.
I 19 !
( S li de. )
l
'20 '
DR. SIESS:
Is Part 72 a new part?
MR. STANFORD:
Yes, Part 72 is a new part, and what 21 [
1l l
22,1 we are faced with is a developing pattern.
Reactors were h
1 23 i; originally designed for storage of something less than one year.
o 13 Most reactors were built with the thought that they would 24 Am-Feuerel Reoorters, Inc.
25 ship of f site the fuel discharged in any one year prior to next
l mte 7 9
i i
1 year 's discharge.
Now we see the reactors are being -- the 2 l storage capacity at reactors being expanded from somewheres up 3
to ten years.
The transient situation, the shipping situation, l
4 is changing, too.
Whereas originally the shipping was --
5 regulations were designed with the principle in mind that the 6
,cos t of money, the investment involved, has made a pretty s trong i
7 incentive to ship fuel as soon as possible.
So f rom a safety i
8 standpoint, that was defined as 120 days.
Now, with no place 9
to go, the shipping is somewhere from 120 to 10 years or so 10 ;
old.
So that picture is changing, too.
11 At a spent fuel storace installation, away from 12 reactor, this ISFSI, we say it is a minimum of one year.
DOE 13 says a minimum of five years.
But somewhere between one year 14 and five years is a minimum, to what we really don 't know how 15 long.
16 DR. SIESS:
That is how long it will be there, from 17 one to five years, you mean?
18,
MR. STANFORD:
No, that is the earliest it can be i
i 19 there.
20 !
DR. SIESS:
That is the age at which it will be I
i 21 there?
22 MR. STANFORD:
After discharge.
23l DR. LAWROSKI:
That is the acceptance age.
24 i MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
The rule says greater than one Am Fweral Reoorters. Inc.
25 l year since reactor discharge.
I
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Keep in mind that DOE would have some
{
2
! motives about who owns the fuel when they speak of their age.
3 We would only be talking about the logic of safety with it, I
4 where DOE has got to face that ownership problem or they have l
5 to write it off or the owners turn it over to the government, 6
that sort of thing.
7 DR. SIESS:
DOE said how many years?
8 MR. BERNE RO:
They haven't come down hard, but they 9
said they are thinking of five years.
10 !
MR. STANFORD:
This age is an important factor in II developing a regulation and a whole regulatory base, in that 12 L11 the short-lived activity has decayed.
I 13 MR. MATHIS:
You are talking about the one to five Id years as time after discharge?
15 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
16 MR. MATHIS:
Regardless of who owns it, t
17
( Sli de. )
i 18 MR. STANFORD:
I will give you some numbers.
The I9 heat generation from time of discharge decays by about a factor 20 j of 10 in the first year, by about a factor of 40 in five years.
21 The activity is measured in curies.
It decays by a facter of l
22]h 50, decreases by a factor of 50 in the first year, by a factor
~3'
- I of about 200 in five years.
So when you are looking at storage 1
24 l pools at reactors, you are looking at fresh fuel much less than Acm-Feceral Reporters, Inc.
25 l a year old.
l 1
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MR. ETHERINGTON:
What are those factors based on?
i.
2 i Do you take into account the very high decay rate in the first 3 I few seconds?
~
l MR. STANFORD:
I have a curve here.
Maybe it will 4
5; tell tne story a little bit better.
l 6
(Slide.)
7 DR. LAWROSKI:
It would be better if, like for the 8
radioactivity, you had units for the heat generation like 9
kilowatts or watts.
10 '
MR. STANFORD:
In watts, watts per metric ton and 11 curies per metric ton.
The curie curve is this lower curve, 12 and it is on this scale.
At the time if discharge it is i
13 something greater than 10 to the 8th curies per metric ton.
I 14 At five years it is 7 times 10 to the 5th on this scale.
15 PROF. KERR:
These are calculations.
I assume they 16,
take into account both the fission products and the trans-17 !
uranics?
18 !
MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
This is the latest origin output.
I I
19 i MR. BERNE RO:
On spent fuel, heat in curies, of course, I
i 20 the only interest is when the spent fuel cones out of the reactor building into the pool for handling.
So that this 21 (!l 22 ll stuff has to be more than a few seconds old or minutes or hours.
23 l The finite time it takes to unbolt the reactor and do all of the 3
24 ll riemarole in the reactor pools.
As you know, the assembly that Ace-eweral Reporters, Inc.,
1 25 is dropped in the referenced accident is a fresh assembly, not i
l l
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I an old one.
2 DR. LAWROSKI:
What was this factor of 10 for one 3
year that was compared to what other?
i 4
MR. STANFORD:
This was the heat generation, from i
I 5
10 to the 8th down to about 10 to the 7th in one year.
This 6
is years at the bottom of the scale.
7 DR. LAWROSKI:
One year versus what?
I 8
Time of discharge.
9 MR. BERNERO:
Versus the earliest time you could be 10 !
handling it, roughly.
Look on that curve and yo" get up there i
11 in the very small fraction of the year.
That represents two i
12 days or something like that, of unbolting time.
That is a very l
13 arbitrary comparison.
14 MR. ETHERINGTON:
That is about 3 percent of normal 15 power?
16 MR. STANFORD:
Pardon?
ll l'7 ;
MR. BERNERO:
I think the nominal at shutdown is 5 or l
18 j 6.
I 19 MR. ETHERINGTON :
At the time it coes into the pool 20 l it 's much less than 5 or 6.
It is about 3 percent.
I 21 l, MR. STANFORD:
It isn't even that high, is it?
II 22 l MR. ETHERINGTON :
It may not be.
'tl 23 h MR. STANFORD:
It is a little bit more than 10 to the Y
24 8th watts per metric ton.
j Am Feverst Reoorters, Inc. l 25 MR. BERNE RO :
The point is, it is not exactly where l
l
I mte 11 13 i
j you are on that curve.
It is the fact that if you wait a year, i
2 you are nowhere near as hot, you are nowhere near as hich in i
3i volatile activities.
I DR. SIESS:
In looking at the curve, the things 1 4
i think we should be interested in are where these curves lie 5
6 compared to where they would be for a spent fuel pool at a j
plant, which is what we have design
.teria for, which would 7
be the first eighth of an inch out from zero or something, is 8
what they are designed for, the fresh fuel just a few days out 9
i i
of the reactor.
10 11 MR. STANFORD:
At a reactor plant you are talking 12 about this first year's period, in fact, the first few days' 13 pe riod, the first ten days or so.
14 DR. SIESS:
So the worst case is the first few days.
15 MR. BERNERO:
You almost can't see the I-131 curve 16 there,
MR. STANFORD :
Which is gone.
j7 ;
18 MR. BERNERO:
It is just disappearing.
19 (Slide. )
MR. STANFORD:
The whole point here is, what we are 20 i
21 talking about is greater than one year.
We are out beyond this 22,
point.
I Any further cuestions on that point?
23 l!
i 24 !!
(No respons e. )
Am-Fouerel Reporters, Inc.
25 :
(S lide. )
i
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l 1
MR. STANFORD:
This -- it is an important factor l
2 that w e should pretty thoroughly explore, because this is the i
i 3
basis for the safety requirements, is what is there or what 4
isn't there.
The other factors are that zircalloy is a pretty l
5 highly corrosion-resistant material.
In the ionized water at 6
100 degrees Fahrenheit, the corrosion rates are so low as to be 7
nearly immeasurable, and the estimates of any significant i
8 corrosion is greater than 100 years.
9 The centered UO-2 is a pretty refracting material.
10 '
It doesn't resolve in the ionized water at slightly above room 11 tempe rature.
That is hardly a measurable rate.
Again, it is i
12 a pretty refracting material and pretty stable.
j 13 So w e are talking about materials here that, first of I i
14 all, th e activity levels are a lot lower than in the reactor 15 pool.
Jecondly, our storage conditions in the water pool are 16 very benign.
17 One other point that we don 't normally think of is --
i 18 !
I see I got a misprint here -- water acts as a containment.
i l
19 You do have some activities, some surf ace crud activity, a nd 20 1 you do have an occasional leaker.
But the pool water itself 1
21 contains such activity, and it is in a form that is either 22 dissolved or suspended.
You can filter it out or take it out i
1 23 with exchange technicues.
,i 24;!
This is a pretty important point in this whole Ace.Neral Repo'ters, Inc.
25 j concept.
We don ' t have a building as containment ; we actually i
l i
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1 have a pool of water as our concainment.
t 2
i The other thing is that af ter a year load, the heat
{
l 3I generation rate is low enouch so that you can lose the water and I
4 it will still air cool without significant overheating.
Calcu-5 lations show something on the order of 500 to 600 degrees i
6 Fahrenheit.
7 DR. LAWROSKI:
Do you have any estimate of what the t
8 pressure is?
l l
9 MR. STANFORD:
Inside the fuel?
10 '
DR. LAWROSKI:
Yes, on the affected fuel.
You know, 11 there is a sizable pressure, even at room temperature, the t
12 gases that have evolved.
13 MR. STANFORD:
I guess all modern fuels are pres-14 surized before catting, aren't they?
15 DR. LAWROSKI:
Yes.
There are additional gases.
16 MR. STANFORD:
There is krypton, but the krypton s tays 17 there.
18 DR. LAWROSKI:
Do you know what it is for 33,000 19 megawatt-days per ton?
20 MR. BERNERO:
I don ' t remember Sandia, in their l
21 analysis, quoting those numbers.
Sandia analyses of the pos t-22 ll sabotage type of things.
l I
23 !
DR. SIESS:
You mean the pressure of -- the pressure 24 l at the end of life or the pressure as a result of heat-up and Ac.-ve neoonm. inc. :i 25 air-cooling?
I l
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l mte 14 1
16 l
1 DR. LAWROSKI:
At the end of life at ambient tempera-2 tures.
i 3 I MR. STANFORD:
In a dry pool or in s torage under I
4 water?
5 DR. LAWROSKI:
Under water and, let's say, at 100 6
Fahrenheit.
l 7
DR. SIESS:
It seems to me, if you pre-pressurize 8
the fuel, you end up with about the same pressure you started 9
with.
It hasn't increased during life.
10 DR. LAWROSKI:
There are gases generated as fission 11 products.
12 MR. STANFORD:
We don't get very high pressures.
13 DR. LAWROSKI:
There is a sizable fission yield.
That 14 is the rare gases.
15 '
DR. SIESS:
If you don't repressurize, the pressure 16,
builds up.
il 17 !
nR. LAWROSKI:
One reason you pre-pressurize is to i
18 avoid collapse of the cladding.
i 19 I DR. SIESS:
Early in life you don't have any pressure.
l 20 Later in life you do.
If you pre-pressurize and then add 1
l 21 ; pressure on top of it -- but I do n ' t think you do.
22 MR. BERNERO:
I don ' t remember the numbers.
h 23 ll
..j DR. SIESS:
The plenun is at the top.
24 MR. BERNERO:
We have a resident e xpe rt.
AcwJeweral Reoorters, Inc.
25 MR. DI SALVO:
I think typically you might -- that a I
i
mte 15 17 l 1
maximum pressure would arrive at double.
2 DR. LAWROSKI:
As a result of exposure?
3 MR. DI SALVO:
It might start out at about 350 psi at i
4 fresh, and for very high burned-out fuel you might go up to 5
8600 or 8700 psi, because there is a criterion which says that 6
the pressure inside the rod during operation shall not exceed l
7 system pressure.
So when you bring it back down to room 8
temperature, it is around 600 psi.
That, combined with a high 9
temperature of 500 or 600 degrees Fahrenheit, I don 't think 10 '
would be sufficient to make the fuel fail by rupture.
It may.
Il DR. LANROSKI:
I just wanted to have an idea what 12 the size of the pressure was.
I knew it wasn't negligible.
13 MR. MATTHIS:
You said that water acts as a contain-14 ment for leaks.
Are you talking about fission product release?
15 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
16 DR. LAWROSKI:
That can only be true for things like 17 cesium.
18 MR. STANFORD:
It is not true for krypton, but you e-9 l' I don 't get it in an AFR.
It is gone when it gets there.
20 21 l 22 1
23 l 24 ;
Am-Lersi Reporters, Inc.
25 j i
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You find cesium, a little strontium.
2 MR. MATHIS:
It isn' t a true containment.
That's ny,
~
3!
problem.
i 4
DR. SIESS:
It is not released to the air.
It 5
releases to the water, and you can -? uan up the water easier 6
than you can clean up the air.
7 MR. MATHIS:
There is going to be some gas that is j
8 going to leak out of the water.
That is my point.
l 9
MR. STANFORD:
Not detectable; very, very small.
10 !
MR. MATHIS:
And you are going to have some leakers, I
11 just from handling it if nothing else.
12 MR. STANFORD:
Not at the storage pool.
You do 13 find leakers at the reactors.
We don't see them in either NFS i
i i
14 or GE.
15 MR. MATHIS:
You know and I know there are going to 16 be some.
17 iiR. STANFORD:
Well, you can see things -- you can 18 measure activity pretty damned accurately.
19 !
DR. SIESS:
What you mean is:
If they are leaking 20 at the reactor, by the time you get them to this pool the 21 amount of gas that is lef t is either negligible or the activity 22 ' is negligible.
23 !
MR. STANFORD:
The fuel element has a hole in it, 24 ! literally a penetration through the cladding, and some of the Am-k.ral Reporters, Inc. ;
25 fuel itself'is dissolving.
We do find strontium --~ primarily i
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19 1,
cesium more than anything else -- but even that dies off in 2i time.
3l There is apparently a self-healing mechanism --
l
! self-sealing mechanism.
Right near the surf ace is soluble, 4
5 and the solubility rate goes down.
6 What I meant ist The water acts as a containment 7
in that the leakers are not exposed t'o release.
8' (Slide.)
9i Th', other thing I think we should understand is that i
i 10 there are very few accident mechanisms for the release and 11 dispersion of the activity contained; even though 1000 tons of 12 spent fuel might have 1 billion curies of activity, there is t
13 really no mechanism we can dream up for its release, and secondly 14 no way to disperse it off site.
15,
DR. LAWROSKI:
Except to fire -- if you were to lose i
16 the water and then have a fire.
17 MR. STANFORD:
If you lose the water and then have 18 a fire.
19 !
MR. BERNERO:
One of the things that you begin to 20 see after a while, a reactor pool is designed for refueling i
21 l and therefore the pool, in its water level, the fuel level, 22 l water level, are associated with the core level in a reactor.
23 l And you find reactor pools like challises in the air.
They are 24 I up high.
You can walk under them in many places.
Am-FM,ersi Reporters, Inc.
25 '
Some of those BWRs are a 90-foot drop from the lip of i
i
10-3 jwb 20 l
I I
1 the pool to the grade level.
An independent spent-fuel storage ;
2 i pcol is designed to match a truck or a train because that is I
3 what it transfers with.
An independent spent-fuel pool will
! naturally be at or below grade level, just for that reason, 4
I 5
making it very, very hard -- among other things -- to have fires; 6
under it, to have rapid leakage of water out of it, to have 7
collapse of its walls, or thing: like that, its natural embed-l l
8 ment.
~
9 (Slide.)
10 l MR. STANFORD:
As regulators, we had some options.
11 We could have -- we could say that one regulation j
12 could cover all spent fuel, regardless.
Or we can come up with 13 a new regulation to cover the needs of old, or aged fuel.
And f
14 the reason we chose to pursue this second route of a new regula-i 15 tion to cover the specific requirements for aged fuel is that 16 aged fuel in and away from reactor and independent spent-fuel 17.
storage installations, is that we see different siting require-18 ments.
19 1 And we are aiming at sound sites.
We don't think i
20 that there will be very many of these installations built, and i
l 21 we see no need for not selecting sound sites.
And with a sound 22 l site with an area of low seismic potential, there is no reason l
23 ! to build the things on the San Andreas fault.
We stay away i
24 ;
from places'like that.
We stay away from flood planes.
And Am-Fweral Reporters, Inc.,
25 l we see then no necessity for a very involved site investigation.
I I
l l
i
10-4 jwb 21 i
i 1
Secondly, we can see some somewhat different design 2
requirements.
The pools and the racks have to be seismic l 'I resistant; no argument.
But we don't have to have a hard and 4
cooling system.
The cooling system for a 1000-ton pool could 5
be shut down for days and there is plenty of time to make some 6
sort of emergency repairs.
7 We don't see any need for a complex ventilation 8
system for the total building.
The air quality levels in a 9
place like GE Morrison are less than 5 percent of Part 20 10 '
requirements.
11 We do see some ventilation requirements for areas 12 like where they vent the cask, your filters, your changeout 13 areas for ion chain, resin units, any place where you are 14 compacting the contaminated solid waste, that sort of thing.
15 But these are small-unit evaporations done within a cell and 16 they would be ventilated, but you don't have to have a 40-l 17 1 50,000 cfm system for the total building.
I 18 DR. LAWROSKI:
Do you have a ball park number for the 19 l heat generation?
You expressed curies, but what does that i
20 ! translate into in terms of kilowatts for a typical ISFSI?
i 21 MR. BERNERO:
That graph you have --
22,
DR. LAWROSKI:
But the graph --
23 MR. BERNERO:
It is in watts.
24 ll DR. LAWROSKI:
But is it at a given --
w A Recorurs, la..,
25 t MR. STANFORD:
Something on the order of 1 to l:
10-5 jwb 22 10 million btus.
i MR. BERNERO:
10 kilowatts per metric ton in a year, 2!
IIi.
3' and one of these things will hold 1000 tons, or 2000 tons.
I I
DR. LAWROSKI:
That is what I wanted.
4l DR. SIESS:
That is 10 megawatts a year.
5 l
You said 1000 tons?
6:!
l MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
71 DR. SIESS:
So it is --
81 MR. BERNERO:
10 KW per ton, and 10 megawatts.
9, I
i DR. SIESS:
You said that the activity at Morrison 10 ',
I 11 ; was low.
That is for a normal operation.
If you drop a fuel i
i 12 l element or something at this age, does that add anything i
of significance?
13 MR. STANFORD:
No.
The only thing I would add ja would be crypton 85.
You know, the thing that is a big factor 15 l 16 ! in the fuel-drop accident is the iodine 131.
There is no I
11
!' iodine 131 here in aged fuel.
j7 18]
DR. SIESS:
I may be getting ahead of it, but do ycu 19 have a design-basis accident?
i MR. STANFORD:
Not really.
We have a site -- I'm 20 l 21 l hunting for words -- we have an accident which we use to 2, y determine site acceptability.
And that is, that you lose all
!. the water in the pool.
It is not a conceivable -- it is not 23 h li 9a credible accident.
24 Aa-Lesi Aeoorters, Inc.
25 '
DR. SIESS:
But that wouldn't control your i
i l
10-6 jwb 23 I
ventilation needs?
2 MR. STANFORD:
No.
All that is is sky shine.
It l
3!
is reflected radiation from a pretty hot source in the bottom l
4 of the pool.
5 DR. SIESS:
You are going to have to have some kind i
6 of a criterion for ventilation, though.
Will you have some 7
kind of criteria for ventilation?
l 8
MR. STANFORD:
10 CFR Part 20, plus the added 9
requirement of ALARA.
10 !
DR. SIESS:
I was going to say that ALARA would
~
11 supercede Part 20.
l 12 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
Part 20 is the numbers.
ALARA 13 is doing as well as you can, better than that.
l 14 DR. SIESS:
ALARA could, without the $1000 per man-15 rem, you could go almost anywhere on this.
You could presumably; i
16 go from 0 to almost any conceivable accident by just having an 17 l in-leakage building in filters.
i 18 MR. BERNERO:
What would be going to =ero -- you 19 l see, there is so little activity that comes out of old fuel, l.
20 ! there is so little to come out, and an inert gas like crypton 21 85, you are not going to catch anyway.
You really are at --
22 you are at ALARA, because you are negligible.
23 l DR. SIESS:
You can catch crypton as low as reason-24 i ably achievable.
I don't know what is " reasonable" in this A a-F,
.31 Reporters, Inc.
25 case.
i i
i, i
10-7 jwb 24 l
l MR. STANFORD:
You say you can catch crypton, but 2
this is with a cryogenic system.
I don't think you can justify I
'l 3 ! anything like that for this kind of installation.
I 4
DR. SIESS:
On $1000 per man-rem, I don't think you 5
can justify anything.
6 MR. BERNERO:
But can you not justify ALARA, because 7
your dose levels are now down so very low that they are almost facetious to calculate?
i 8
DR. SIESS:
You could, to me.
9 10 l MR. STANFORD:
What turns' out to be the situation 11 in these kinds of installations is that the manpower force is 12 very small, three or four men per shift.
And you cannot 13 tolerate any occupational exposure.
i 14 So the operator has a very strong incentive to keep 15 his operational dose levels very low.
DR. SIESS:
I am trying to look ahead to when you 16,
l!
17,
review one of these, and what criteria are you going to apply ja to the ventilation system?
Is it adequate?
Is it not?
Or, 19 ;
to the cooling system.
You are going to have to have some criteria for 20 i
21 review, aren't you?
I assume that will be in the ANSI Reg Guides?
22,
l MR. STANFORD:
The ventilation system will be unit 23 ll f!
24 " systems for unit operations such as the ion exchange changeup A ceJ- _. al Reporters, Inc.
25,
cell, or a solid rad waste --
l i
10-8 jwb 25
{
1 DR. SIESS:
That means nothing over the pool.
2 MR. STANFORD:
No.
i 3I DR. SIESS:
Does the pool just have a conventional I
i 4i steel-frame asbestos siding structure over it?
5 MR. STANFORD:
That's right.
If the ANSI standard - i 6
it says:
If you recirculate the air, then it has got to be 7
filtered.
l 8
DR. SIESS:
For protection of the operating l
9 personnel.
10 !
MR. STANFORD:
Don't let it build up.
That's all.
I 11 That is an added factor.
j 12 DR. SIESS:
We want to drop a meteorite through the I
13 top of this thing.
l i
14 MR. BERNERO:
Feel free.
Take a tornado and do it, i
15 a tornado missile.
t 16 DR. SIESS:
Let's take a tornado missile, that it 17 takes the roof orf, or part of it, and hits X number of fuel 18 j assemblies.
19 MR. STANFORD:
How would you like 20 tons?
20 l DR. SIESS:
You look at that, and that is less than i
21 Part 20?
22,
MR. STANFORD:
Well --
23 DR. SIESS:
That is sort of a DBA, if you wish.
I 24 ' am trying to get a f eel for it.
Ac.+
eret Reporters. Inc. ;
25 j
.MR.
STANFORD:
John Roberts is a member of the staff,
10-9 jwb 26 l
l l
1 and this is the number he developed for the Environmental 2 I Impact Statement, in which he assumed that the tornado missile 3 I ruptured 20 tons of fuel.
t 4
Do you remember the numbers, offhand?
i
-7 5
MR. ROBERTS:
10-2, 13 f
6 MR. STANFORD:
These are millerems at the site 7
boundary.
They are pretty small numbers.
l 8
DR. SIESS:
Assuming that you have the water?
9 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
10 !
DR. SIESS:
You don't require a backup water system?
11 MR. STANFORD:
We require a backup water supply i
12 system.
I 13 DR. SIESS:
Water supply?
14 MR. STANFORD:
That could be a fleet of tank trucks, 15 though.
It could be the fire department.
It could be anything 16 that will deliver enough water to make up the evaporation losses.
17 DR. SIESS:
Is there a water cooling system --
18 ! circulating water and cooling?
l 19 !
MR. STANFORD:
No requirement that it be backed up.
I 20 l DR. SIESS:
There is a system.
~
I I
21 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
22 '
DR. SIESS:
You could boil off?
23 j MR. STANFORD:
The ANS standard under development t
l 24 i says that there must be provisions to recover from a loss of Am.b eral Reporters, Inc.
25 coolant before a number of events occur.
The one they are most I
i l
10-10 jwb 27 l
concerned with is damage to the concrete due to a rise in j
temperature -- not boiling, but a structural damage to the 2
i concrete.
i 3j I
DR. SIESS:
If you lost all the water, how hot would 4
this get?
5 MR. STANFORD:
About 5-or 600 degrees Fahrenheit.
6 DR. SIZSS:
That is how hot the fuel would get.
7 MR. STANFORD:
The concrete would get pretty close g
to that, too.
9 DR. SIESS:
You've got air between the fuel and 10 !
the concrete.
jj i
MR. STANFORD:
You get natural-circulation cooling.
12 MR. ETHERINGTON:
Even so, you must have fresh air 13 coming in from the heat sink.
Is that it?
j4 MR. STANFORD:
Yes, and it would come down the side 15 walls.
16 MR. ETHERINGTON:
And escapes from the building?
Or j7 what?
18 MR. BERNERO:
We assume it would escape fron the j9 ;
building.
20 MR. STANFORD:
As a matter of fact --
21 MR. ETHERINGTON:
You need a heat sink, otherwise it 22 i
l has to be an in-and-out situation.
23 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
24 Am-Fusi Reporters, Inc.
DR. SIESS:
Are you talking in terms of stainless-steel 25 '
I i
i
10-11 jwb 28 i
l i
1 lined fuel, with 6-foot thfck walls, like we usually see?
i MR. STANFORD:
Stainless-steel lined, but more like 2j I
3i 30-inch thick walls, below grade.
l 4
DR. SIESS:
We have some below-grade now at plants 5
that are 6-feet thick.
Any reason for that?
6 MR. BERNERO:
When you ge t to the seismic requirement l l
7 a quarter G, we have a quarter G standard anyway.
I don't know l l
8 why they would have to go 6 feet.
9 MR. STANFORD:
Unless it is ;or foundation reasons.
10 !
DR. SIESS:
I will ask somebody next time I see them.
11 MR. MATHIS:
You mentioned a meteorite.
12 DR. SIESS:
I mentioned the meteorite.
I 13 MR. MATHIS:
Do we have any problems with critical 14 mass if you tear up your racks and dump everything in a pile?
15 MR. STANFORD:
We designed to prevent criticality 16 under every conceivable condition, including seismic conditions.
I 17 ;
DR. SIESS:
Not the meteorite.
18 l MR. STANFORD:
I don't see any way that we can get
~
l l
19 l a criticality tth the design requirements of both th= regula-i i
20 l tions and the guide and the standards.
i 21 DR. SIESS:
Suppose I dropped an explosive in there 22 and I am going to sabotage?
It went straight down and then out.
23 [ And for some radius jammed the fuel elements together.
24 MR. STANFORD:
You might'get yourself a swimming Aceberal Reconm, Inc. l 25 ' pool reactor.
i l
1 9
10-12 jwb, 29 i,
1 MR. BERNERO:
Theoretically, a tornado missile 2
could do that.
3 I MR. ROBERTS:
There has been some study on that by 4
Safeguards.
I don't think you can get much beyond about the 5
first assembly or so with the type of charge that someone can 6
carry in.
7 But basically, if you start shattering the assem-8 blies and so forth, I doubt if you are going to geu a critical 9
configuration anyway.
10 !
It would be pretty difficult to do.
As Russ says, 11 the one or two assemblies together, then it is at the bottom 12 of the pool and you have a swimming-pool type of reactor.
13 The calculations in Barnwell showed that this is 14 not a serious problem.
15 MR. ETHERINGTON:
You might have a swimming-pool type 16 reactor without a control rod.
17,
MR. BERNERO:
Theoretically, you could.
And one 18 ; would have to grapple with things to pry them apart to shut l
19 l them off.
It is a theoretical possibility against which this i
20 - regulation provides no protection.
21 DR. SIESS:
The most vulnerable thing is to sabotage.
22, We cannot discuss this in an open meeting, but if we get this l
23 l in the full committee we may want to explore that.
I 24 MR. BERNERO:
The committee might be interested to Am...,,si neoorwn, inc..
25 know of work that GE did on the Morrison f ar:ility in sabotage i
i i
10-13 jwb I
30
~
l analysis of an independent spent-fuel storage pool.
2 DR. SIESS:
Keep that in mind.
3I MR. BERNERO:
There is a report --
I 4
DR. SIESS:
So far, it seems that most bases are j
5 covered, but that' one hadn't been discussed that f ar, and we 6
can't discuss it now.
7 MR. ETHERINGTON:
Would it be possible to have 1
8 enough poison in the racks to make criticality completely j
9 impossible?
l 10 !
MR. ROBERTS:
There is perhaps some solution.
i end #10 11 MR. STANFORD:
Use the mike, John.
beg #11 12 MR. ROBERTS:
We are not talking about a situation 13 where you are evaluating the criticality of the fuel in the 14 pool.
We are talking about a situation of essentially pre-15 venting a remote accident, or a sabotage event.
16 It seems to me that you could add a requirement for 17 simply adding boron to the pool water.
That would effectively 18 preclude it.
19 You know, normally we are evaluating K-effect on 20 fresh fuel for a PWR, and we know it is not fresh fuel.
So 21 our calculated effective.95 is not really.95; it is probably 1
I 22 down around.8-something.
23 DR. LAWROSKI:
That is even in the so-called 24 l
" compact-type storage"?
Am-f al Reporters, Inc..
25 '
MR. ROBERTS:
Yes.
I 11-14 jwb 31 l
l 1
MR. STANFORD:
But we don ' t think they would go to 2
compact storage in an ISFSI.
The designs we have seen so far j
i 3 i are more like the GE Morrison type of canister.
The tradeoff I
4 is about 10 feet of water depth.
i
\\
5 The canister pool can use 29 feet of water; whereas 6
the compact storage needs 39 feet.
That extra 10 feet deep l
7 costs a lot of dough.
I 8
MR. ETHERINGTON:
This is a standard forma
- guide.
9 This does not preclude having additional guides spelling out 10 i technical requirements, does it?
11 MR. BERNERO:
You will see those.
They are listed 12 here.
13 MR. - ETHERINGTON :
I know it is, but these other 14 matters could be picked up in special guides.
15 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
16 MR. BERNERO: 'They are.
17 Let me add one thing.
You know, this loss-of-water 18 '
accident, this postulation, perhaps a bette.- term we could have 19 i used in the proposed regulation was, it is more like a " site l
20 !
suitability accident" a la the partial core melt of the loss-of-21 coolant accident used in Part 100.
22 Never mind how you got there, just postulate it and 23 l show that the site boundary is far enough away to give no more 24 l than 5 rem.
It is not intended to be a DBA in any rigorous Am.F st Reporters, Inc. I
~,
25 j sense.
It is more of a siting requirement.
i l
11-15 jwb 32 1
MR. MATHIS:
You mentioned earlier the ionized water.
a H
2t.Is that a criteria?
o a
2, MR. STANFORD:
I.t turns out to be a requirement --
t 4! not a regulatory requirement but a practical operating require-5jment.
They run this water through an ion exchange resin bed 6! which essentially gives them the ionized water.
t 7l I think the impurities are less than 1 part per i
S I million, all impurities.
l 9,
Getting back to this Part 72 and how it came about, i
10 a couple of points we want to make are:
It is a materials I
11 ! possession license, not a facility license.
It is a Part 70 l
12 ! series, not a Part 50 series.
13 It is a legal gimmick.
The law defines " production i
14 and utili=ation facilities" as reaccors, reprocessing plants, e
15 N and enrichment plants.
This is not one of those kinds of i,
t 16 ) things.
And it is more like the Part 70, which is a license to 1
17 possess materials to do something with them.
.i h
18 :
Of the 68 points that you have encountered in tnis
,i 19 - regulation, 41 of them are -- in other words, about two-thirds 20 of them nearly come directly from established regulations in l
21 jj Part 50 or 70; 27 of them are plowing new ground.
1 22,,
There are some novel features.
There is a new a
22 l approach to siting requirements.
There is a specific, general i
24 ! design criteria which you do not see in a Part 70 license, even ACR-e Jdi ROOorters, Inc.
25 though we require that a plutonium plant, for example, have some u
11-16 jwb 33 I
l approved design.
j There are no general design triteria in Part 70 2
3l licenses for this one.
We are talking about one Safety Analysis' i
Report, and one license to be issued prior to construction.
i This means that the Safety Analysis Report must be 1
5 much more complete than a reactor SAR, than a PSAR for either a 6
reactor or a reprocessing plant.
7 It means there is no construction permit, as auch.
8 We think that an applicant coming to us wanting to build one 9
f these facilities should know enough about it so that he can 10 ;
~
describe it in quite considerable detail before he ever breaks 33 I
ground.
12 S
it is a more detailed ~ initial license application.
13 We hope to save time and effort, in the long run.
{
j, Now the other thing that is another part of it, 15 to make sure that this works, is that in our license condition 16 we are covering not only operating conditions, but also construc-37 tion conditions; that an NRC inspector will be able to inspect jg 19 l the site, the facility, and say that this was built tihe way it was designed.
20 I
l So there are license conditions which cover construc-21 tion, preop testing, and operations.
We don't normally think 22 l!
23 !
f license conditions going that far.
I 24 l (Slide.)
Ac..her.i neoortm. inc. l 25 l Some of the logic is:
We are dealing with aged fuel,.
I
11-17 jwbl f
34 i
1 a considerably reduced risk compared to most other types of nuclear facilities.
2
~
l 3,
We think that we can justify a reduced level of I
m effort on both the siting and design analysis compared to what 4
5 we require for some other facilities.
i I
6 We want to base the citing on regional seismic data, 7
the kind of thing that the USGS publishes, and limit the siting --
8i the location -- to an area of low potential se: mic risk.
And l
9 we define that as something less than.25G.
10 i We say that, even so, design it for.25G anyway.
11 And that you can compare with present practice of, I think, all 12 power plants now designed at
.2.
When they say a design at l
13
.1, I think in practice they are actually designed at
.2.
The 14 standard plant is to be designed at
.3.
15 We can't really justify a requirement to design one 16 of these ho-hum facilities to
.3.
We can say.25, and it gives i
17 ; it, we think, an added measure of conservatism with a justifiable 18 small, incremental cost.
19 We have set up site boundary doses criteria at 25 20 } millerem, which is based on the EPA 10 CFR 190 requirement for 21 nuclear fuel cycle facilities; and an accident dose of 5 rem 22 lwhich was the accident dose below which no affects could be
! expected.
23 i
0 24 It is also consistent with our 5 rem, the annual Ace-Lrel Reporters, irse.
- 25. occupational doses.
It is a number that is used in many ways.
I i
l
11-18 jwb 35 I
i (Slide.)
j In addition to this, Dr. Etherington brought up the 2
i 3l standard format.
We not only have a regulation in our scheme l
of things, but then we back it up with all sorts of Reg Guides I
4 i
and national standards.
5 l
We have issued Reg Guide 3.44, which is -- it has 6
been issued for comment.
I think you have copies of it.
It is 7
the standard format and content of a Safety Analysis Report, and; 8
it goes into a lot more detail, and gives you a better under-9 10 !
standing of what the requirements really mean.
We have an ANS Committee, a Standards Writing Com-ji i
mittee, that is developing a standard on design criteria.
The j
12 i
document looks like this (indicating).
It is about 100 pages.
13 I can go into some detail, if you wish.
14 And we also have another ANS-2 Committee, which is 15 developing guidance on siting criteria.
Both of these guides i
16 i have been sent to their respective ball'oting groups.
The ANS 17 !
I I goes to a policy committie, and right now, jg the ANSI Board of Standards Review are there for a current 19 ballot.
They are due January 19th, and I think the ANSI is 20
' early in February.
So they are moving right along, is my 21 22 l p int.
I MR. ETHERINGTON:
The point I was making -- rather, 23 i
24 j let me make it a question:
With the problems such as we were Am-Fe rst Reoorters, Inc. !
! talking about, the possible criticality, they wouldn' t affect 25 i
11-19 jwb 36 i
this document at all, would they?
j They would be covered by specific guides?
2 3l MR. STANFORD:
The ANS 57.7 has the best chapter I I
have ever seen in the way of a standard for criticality --
4 design for criticality.
It goes into great detail.
5 MR. BERNERO:
Either the regulation, or the design 6
guide would address that matter, not the standard format.
7 MR. ETHERINGTON:
That was the question.
8 MR. BERNERO:
You know, I expected a bit more apo-9 plexy from the committee on our seismic design requirement.
10 DR. SIESS:
We haven't gotten to it, yet.
ij (Laughter.)
12 DR. SIESS:
There is nothing wrong with the seismic 13 design requirement that says a design for.25 and don't site j4 it in an area where you can get more than.25G, except the 15 difference is your.25G is the Algermisson of the 500-year 16 I
occurrence figure.
Right?
77
,, j MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
DR. SIESS:
Rather than ar. ISE.
,9 MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
20 DR. SIESS:
It is sor.ewhere between an OBE, which we 21 figure at about a 100-year occurrence interval, or 50 years, 22 l and the SSE which nobody has ever put an occurrence on, and it 23 i
i 24 f may be close to 500; I don't know.
Ace +mral Reporters, Inc.
MR. BERNERO:
It depends upon where you are, 25 I
l l
l
-20 jwb ;
37 i
i 4
probably, what cart of the country.
In a
4 DR. SIESS:
I think that we do want to explore that 2f, I.
,1 somewhat, at some stage.
I notice from the discussion of the regulation, it talks about a minimum amount of site review, and you mentioned a minimum amount of site review.
y, I
I don' t know how " minimum" it is going to get, 6
because your general design criterion mentions that, which is 7
i 72.66 (b).
It says:
"No detailed site-specific earthquake g
analysis is required."
I am not quite sure what that means.
9
>iies You will be able to reduce the site-specific 10 11 l to establish a peak ground acceleration if you come up witn the 12 j regulation as you got it using the map, but you are still going i
to have to look at all of the things that you need to look at:
13 {i 1,
34 j liquefaction, capable faults, and things of that sort.
You 15 '
won' t have to go out as far as you do with Appendix A of Part ul' 16 lnl 100.
.i 1,, j.
MR. STANFORD:
It depends on where you are located.
jg:! There are lots of places where your problem of an earthquake
- i l is about.35.
19 ld a
1 DR. SIESS:
It still cannot be a " capable fault,"
,03 4
- 1levenifitis
.05.
And it doesn't say that here, but I assume 1
4 d it is going to say it somewhere.
You are not going to locate 3
ne of these things over a capable fault, no =atter what the 23,
- G value is, unless you are going to design it to take so many 24 Ace Seceral Recor=ers, Inc.
inches of differential movement.
25
11-21 jwb I
38 j
1 MR. BERNERO:
You have to cover that in the guide, 2
certainly.
3 DR. SIESS:
But the basic question is the probability 4
of the earthquake for which you design.
That is, the SSE that l
-s 5
the power plant is designed for.
It may be, let's say, 10 I
6 don't know.
If Dave Okrent was here, he could give you a range
-7
~
7 of figures, but it is not 10 or 10
, and it is probably.--
8 PROF. KERR:
35,000 years --
9 DR. SIESS:
That is the geology.
The SSE is maybe
-3 10 l 10-4, 10-, and you are talking about 2 x 10 Now the risk 11 is the product of the probability of the frequency and the 12 consequences.
13 If your consequences are sufficiently low, you can i
14 accept the probability of exceedance of quite a bit higher than 15 we would accept.
16 MR. BERNERO:
May I just review some of the thought 17 ! as
_ went through it?
18 Originally, you would recognize of course that we 19 could have found it a let simpler if we had just said: 'Look, l
20 ! a spent-fuel pool for a reactor is designed to an SSE, and so i
I 21 is one at a reprocessing plant.
So design one of these for the 22 ll same thing.
23 ll But we recognized, with old fuel, the reduced hazard 24 h potential --
Am-k,rei Reporters, Inc.
25 [
DR. SIESS:
Let me give you a specific I think you
11-22 jwb 39 can tie this to if you want to give us a rationale.
j In designing a nuclear power plant, radwaste storage.
2
! tanks don't have high activity, most of them.
And if I am not 3
i i
s l
mistaken, if you can show that the f ailure of that tank will a
n t pr duce an off-site dose greater than Part 20, I think it 5
is, it doesn't have to be seismically designed at all.
Isn't j
6 I
that right?
7 MR. STANFORD:
I think you are correct, yes.
g DR. SIESS:
To me, that is your parallel.
If you 9
10 ! have got something the f ailure of which -- and an earthquake would not produce an off-site dose above some low level, it 11 doesn't have to be Part 20.
You can justify designing for a
~
12 1 wer earthquake.
13 If I can design a radwaste tank for no earthquake, 14 I can certainly design something intermediate for a smaller 15 16 earthquakt It seems to me that is the basis for the rationale.
37 MR. BERNERO:
That is the basis.
And t"en there is 18 another, further step:
Is there a way to simplif. the process 19 l
20 l so that we don't, on these facilities, engage in the same 1
cult of analysis of endless agonizing over what is the exact 21 value of the earthquake; what is the exact value to design the 22 i
23 [ f acility.
0 If you go to existing authorities and use it like a 24 Ace-N.,ast Reporters, Inc.
25 ' seismic risk map, and you rule out a place in California and a f
11-23 jwb l
40 and then of course you still havel place here, and a place there, j
to do site-specific evaluation for liquefactica --
2 3l DR. SIESS:
That is your basis for the 500-year l
return period, because you have a map based on that.
4 MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
And the lower risk potential, 5
the lower hazard potential is the ground -- are the grounds on 6
which you accept the more frequent earthquake, the 500-year 7
And then you attempt to take advantage of the 8
known authorities for that value to simplify the whole analysis, 9
i 10 ! by saying " don't argue about it; we will take a quarter G and 11 you take a quarter G, and that is the end of it."
DR. SIESS:
What has to be designed seismically?
12 The pool itself?
The racks and the cra'ne structure?
13 1
tiR. STANFORD:
We don't want heavy loads, heavy ja weights falling into the pool.
15 DR. SIESS:
You can almost handle that by parking 16 i the crane not over a pool.
37 MR. STANFORD:
But the building structural members, 18 t00-19 l DR. SIESS:
The cooling system?
20 I
MR. STANFORD:
No.
21 DR. SIESS:
Not seismically designed.
How did you 22 pick.25?
Most standard power plants are being designed for 23 j 24 ].3.
Ace A v.el Reporters, Inc. l MR. STANFORD:
It turned out it was picked from a 25 i
I
11-24 jwb 41 l
number of different-sources.
Talking to the geologists, we j
2fsaidthatwewouldliketoeliminatevarious--wewantedto pick sound sites; that we wanted to eliminate areas of high 3
I potential seismic activity.
What is a reasonable chopping-off 4
p int?
5 And we picked.25 -- the geologists picked.25.
And 6
they were looking at -- Hanford was one reason, as a potential 7
site.
8 DR. SIESS:
That is about as good a logic as any.
9 (Laughter.)
10 l MR. STANFORD:
We were looking at a map --
11 MR. BERNERO:
"You don't want San Onofre, but why 12 not Hanford?"
13 DR. SIESS:
.25 will cover almost anything in the 14 Eastern U.S.
15 j I
MR. BERNERO:
Almost the whole U.S.
16 j7 l DR. SIESS:
I don't know what that map has around Madrid and Charleston.
18 i'
i j9 l MR. STANFORD:
.19.
l 20 l MR. BERNERO:
Around New Madrid, the Madison River i
~
Basin around Yellow Stone and the California Strip are going to 21 22 h e ruled out by this.
b l!
I can show you the map, if you want 23 Il to see it.
24 Ace-Fweral Reoorters, Inc. i DR. SIESS:
Charleston wouldn't be ruled out, would 25 l
t
11-25 jwb 42 it?
i MR. STANFORD:
Charleston proper, I believe, would.
l 2
l
., l MR. BERNERO:
A little circle around the city there.
~l MR. STANFORD:
Anyway, that --
4 l
DR. SIESS:
You could go to a lower value than.25 l
5 n the Algermissen map and have an awfully lot of good sites.
6 c1R. BERNERO:
Yes.
7 MR. STANFORD:
The geologists picked.25, i
8 i
DR. SIESS:
And after the first one, the applicants 9
10 ; probably will.
MR. STANFORD:
We then we to Stone & Webster, because' 11 they submitted a standard design.
And they submitted a standard.
12 design with a.3G.
13 I said, wt t did that cost you extra to make it ja
.3 over standard construction?
15 16 They said, it cost a little extra.
And I said, i can you identify it?
And he came up with the statement that 17 about.25 he couldn't identify significant additional costs 18 j9 l over what he would have to do anyway just to withstand soil 20 Pressures.
DR. SIESS:
The biggest cost in the seismic is when 21 you go to point-anything.
Once you have to make a seismic 22 23 I analysis, you have spent some money.
And it will curve until 24 l you -- until you get pretty high up.
I expect the difference Ace 4wel Reporters, Inc. !
I between.25 and.3 is negligible, but Stone & Webster has 25 I
i l
I i
i
11-26 jwb 43 l
argued that they wanted to come in with a standard balance of
)
plant at.15,
.2,
.25,
.3 or something, and they thought they 2
3l were saving in rebar, for example.
I MR. STANFORD:
A little more rebar, and a little more' 4
concrete.
And I checked this out with somebody down at Duke 5
who was also designing one of their structural -- one of their 6
structural men -- with Exxon, one of their structural men, and l
7 then this committee, the ANS committee.
I bounced it off of 8
them.
9 DR. SIESS:
The argument I think for using the map --
10 I and I don't know how conservative the map is, how good it is, 11 excepting that return period makes sense.
I can unde'rstand 12 the reason.
g I am not sure everybody buys it -- the argument for 34 using a shorter return period as a design basis earthquake here 15 for a nuclear plant can be justified in terms of consequences.
16 I But I guess somehow you ought to define what the consequences j7 :
w uld be of a failure due to an earthquake.
18 In other words, what are the consequences?
You 39 l
20 l could lose your water?
l 21 l MR. BERNERO:
Right, there.
I DR. SIESS:
That's one thing.
That is already 22 l included.
That doesn' t do a darn thing; right?
23 l 24 l MR. BERNERO:
We make sure it doesn't.
We set a Acs-Feuerst Rooorters, Inc..
25 l site-suitability test.
i l
11-27 jwb J
44 l
1 DR. SIESS:
So that doesn't exceed Part 20?
Or is 2
that the 5 rem?
3 MR. BERNERO:
It is 5 rem in 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br />.
i 4
DR. SIESS:
What if an earthquake f ailed your racks?
t end #11 5
Could you get the criticality problems?
6 7
i 8
i 9
10 !
11 12 i
13 14 15 16 17 18 !
i i
19 i l
20 l i
21 22 l
ll 23 24 ;
Ace F al Recorwrs, Inc.
25 j i
i
CR2015 pv WHITL. #12 45 i
1 HR. 3ERNERO:
Yes.
You are not protected against that.
2 DR. SIESS:
You have got to look at the effective 3
exceedance and establish its consequences before you can decide 4
what is an acceptable probability.
5 Now, about the parallel with the radwaste tank.
6 MR. BERNERO:
That is the Class IX, exceeding the l
l 7
500-year earthquake and having a big collapse of the racks or 8
criticalities and whatever, becomes the Class IX accident.
And 9
the argument being that the inherent mechanism of spent fuel, 10 1 with its low, short-lived activity, the potential for criti-11 cality being quite arguable --
1 12 DR. SIESS:
Could you, if asked, compare a Class IX 13 accident for this pool with a Class IX accident for a reactor?
14 There are, cf course, a whole spectrum of Class IX accidents, 15 but you can take the integrated risk or whatever.
What if you 16 collapse the racks and go critical?
17 MR. STANFORD:
What could you do to salvage the i
18 situation?
19 '
DR. SIESS:
What can you do to the people outside?
20 That.is who we are interested in.
21 MR. BERNERO:
We have done, for instance, in the 22 Barnwell safety evaluation report, this is where the Barnwell 23l fuel pool was being analyzed for licensing.
The staff has 1
24 !
done an analysis of a criticality:
Never mind how it happened; Ac.w.i neoonm. ine. l 25 l it happened.
What kind of doses are you getting?
Of course,
pv2 l
46 1
to have the criticality, you need the water.
And if you look at:
2 that criticality, the dose even above the pool is very small, l
3 1 and you obviously don' t want the thing to go on forever.
I s
4 DR. SIESS:
You haven't got as many curies here as i
5 you have in an operating reactor.
6 MR. BERNERO:
You don't have the readily dispersible 7
curies that you have in a reactor.
8 MR. ETHERINGTON:
I don't quite agree that this is a l 9
Class IX accident.
In the reactor situation, we consider a 10 Class IX accident an extremely low probability event, in 10 to i
11 the minus 6, perhaps.
Here, we are talking PJout something 12 which, in a 30-year period, has a 10 to the minus
-l robability.
13 MR. STANFORD: I want to make a point:
I think there 14 is a point we missed.
We say that the.25 G is a siting criteria; 15 stay away from anyplace that has a potential of an earthquake.
16 MR. ETHERINGTON :
So, your design G may be a lot l'7 higher.
18 MR. STANFORD:
But design for it anyway.
So, we have 19 got --
20 DR. SIESS:
Design for.25 G, don't site at anyplace 1
21 more than 2.5 G.
I 22 MR. BERNERO:
Bolt it at the limit.
23 MR. ETHERINGTON:
It is not really a Class IX paral-24 l lel..
Am.t u neoonm. inc.
- 25 l MR. STANFORD:
The other thing is:
On the criticality
PV3 l
47 i
i l
1 we are designing for fresh fuel, for fuel in its most reactive l
- 2hstate, either fresh fuel.
i 3 !
DR. SIESS: I think, by " Class IX," Bob meant it is I
4 not t. heir design-basis accident.
3f MR. BERNERO:
Beyond design-basis event.
6 DR. SIESS:
It is not the " incredible accident."
The!
7 Class IX has been -- once it was the " incredible accident."
8 MR. BERNERO:
Now we don't call it that anymore.
9 DR. SIESS:
The standard definition of the Class IX 10 1 accident or the statement that is made in the environmental 11 reports is that its probability is so low that it need not be 12 considered, not that its risk is so low.
If you recall a dis-13 cussion in connection with the hearing board recently, its i
14 probability is so low.
So, that definition does not apply here.
15 We are not talking about a low probability 'ccident if we assume 16 that exceeding.25 G will lead to criticality.
That is no t a 17 probability of one, obviously.
But I think to carry it through 18 you need to say, "All right, we do have an earthquake that 19 I exceeds our design basis.
It does do certain things to the racks, l
20 j whatever you can think of; either mechanistically or nonmechanis-21 tically, assume something.
You do go critical.
And how much can 22 h be released and what is the danger to the public?"
l!
23 4 If this comes out four orders of magnitude less than 3
24 j a Class IX reactor accident in terms of property damage, mortality, Ace Feters: Reporters, Inc.
25 ; delayed effects, whatever, then I think you have got a better i
i l
pv4 48 1
argument for treating it as you do.
2[
MR. BERNERO:
That comparison has been made.
I hesi-1 3i tate to make the source, but it is in WASH-1400.
The spent-fuel l
I 4
pool Class IX accident was compared and shoved aside as far 5
less significant.
l 6
DR. SIESS:
Was the total number of curies the same?I i
7 MR. BERNERO:
It used a family of fuel that was 8
fresher, but smalle r in quantity; and one could extrapolate from 9
that.
10 !
DR. SIESS:
Was it a low risk because of low probabil-l 11 ity, or a low risk because of low consequences?
12 MR. BERNERO:
It is more the latter in the framework 13 of comparison to the reactor.
14 DR. SIESS:
This is something you might think about.
15 MR. BERNERO:, I am not sure we should cite that 16 source anymore, though.
I 17 DR. SIESS:
But there are other things you can look 18 l at.
You might want a new study on it, just to establish it.
l 19 l PROF. KERR:
I would urge the NRC staff not to com-l 20 !
pletely abandon WASH-1400.
i 21 MR. BERNERO:
I, for one, don't want to.
22 DR. SIESS:
Can I see that Alger Missen map?
l 23 (Slide.)
24 ;
MR. STANFORD:
There are actually two, but this is a Ac.us m.oonm. inc.
25 very brief, oversimplified version.
i i
pv5 l
49 i
1 DR. SIESS:
This has a break at 3/10.
This is the 2
one I meant.
This is the Alger Missen map.
x 3.
You see, you can go anywhere in the eastern U.S.
and I
4 not be higher than.19.
5 MR. BERNERO:
That doesn't include the City of 6
Charleston; does it?
l 7
DR. SIESS:
Charleston has a big circle around it.
8 MR. STANFORD:
There is finer detail than shown on 9
this map.
10 1 DR. SIESS:
Look, on reactors we haven't got a reactor 11 east of the Rocky Mountains with an SSE higher than.25; have we?
.2 MR. BERNERO:
Other than standard plants, I don't 13 know.
14 DR. SIESS:
I am almost sure.
Quad Cities is
.22.
I 15 think we did get somebody up to.25.
That.is not a 500-year 16 return period.
That is SSE basis, whatever that is.
17 MR. BERNERO:
We think that a typical spent-fuel pool, 18 designed to the quarter G, is going to have quite a bit of 19 margin.
20 DR. SIESS:
It is easier to establish the margin on a I
l 21 concrete tank and a few pumps than on the whole system.
22 MR. BERNERO:
No big SNUBBERS.
23 DR. SIESS:
It is a passive type thing; it is more of 24 a structural problem.
AceJeueral Reoorters, Inc. j 25 l Now, I think that you can justify the approach, and I
pv6 i
50 l
l 1
think that you might be able to justify the numbers.
But I think 2. that we need some of the kind of reasoning that has been sug-1 3
gested here in order to do it.
.25 is not a low value, not if 4
we think in reactors.
Only a handful of reactors are designed S
for it.
6 Hanford is.25; isn't it?
Trojan is
.25.
Skagit, I 7
think, ended up --
l 8
MR. STANFORD:
The WEPPS are about
.25.
9 DR. SIESS:
It would be a little marginal, but if it l 10 is slightly marginal for a power plant, it should be adequate 11 for this system.
i 12 MR. STANFORD:
That is all of the prepared slides I i
I 13 had on the rule itself.
I thought that by now we would have had 14 quite a few comments.
15 DR. SIESS:
On ANS-57.5, the design criteria, you have 16 design criteria proposed in the regulation.
17 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
18 ;
DR. SIESS:
Are they paralleling that, or paraphrasing, i
19 or what?
20 MR. STANFORD:
Pretty well.
They are going into a 21 lot more detail.
I have a set of slides here on 57.
22,
DR. SIESS:
It is more detailed than the general l
23 design criteria would be.
And these and the regulation are 24 written more like general design criteria.
Ace-Nw.I Reporters, Inc.
25 MR. STANFORD: Yes.
l il
pv7 51 l
l 1
1 MR. BERNERO:
We originally intended to develop a l
2 l reg guide of our own and Ave started on that, and only went d
3!
along to support the ANS-57.7 because we thought, rirst of all, l
4 we would come up with a timely standard; second, a better, 5
broader-based standard; and third, a standard consistent with 6
our regulation.
That is why we are throwing our effort behind 7
this ANSI standard.
8 (Slide.)
i 9
MR. STANFORD:
We think there is merit.
10 !
DR. SIESS:
Looking again at the 72.66(b), where it 11 says:
"If it is not founded on bedrock," it mentions "lique-12 faction," " potential liquefaction."
I don't see anything in 13 there about soil fracture interaction, which seems to me is t
14 going to -- it is already a prcolem, and it will tend to be worse 15 for something like this.
16 Is that something that they would cover in any of the 17 l ANS standards?
18 MR. STANFORD:
There is a reg guide on foundation 19 engineering.
It is a Division I guide.
20 l DR. SIESS: There is no existing reg guide to cover i
21 soil structure interaction very adequately.
22 MR. STANFORD: Isn't this one?
Wasn't it written by 23 l; Larry White?
Doesn't it do a good job on that?
t!
24 !
MR. ASHER:
I don't think (inaudible).
Am.6erW Recornn, Inc. j 25 i MR. STANFORD:
They just haven't seen it yet.
i l
pv8 1
52 1
DR. SIESS:
Yes.
l 2{
MR. STANFORD:
There is a reg guide in development.
1 3
MR. ASHER:
I heard abcut it.
t I
4:
MR. STANFORD:
On foundation engineering, which goes.
l 5
into the subject very completely.
The standard mentions soil 6
structure interaction.
7 MR. ASHER:
The ANS standards make reference to the 8:
soil structure interaction in a very brief manner, for certain I
i 9l particular kinds of soil.
But it is a reg guide for Division I.
I 10 l MR. ROBERTS:
3.44, I would just note that this is 11 addressed a little in the standard format contact guide 3.44, 12 engineering properties and materials for seismic wave propagation 13 and soil structure interaction analyses.
Although this doesn' t!
14 give any detailed information, it is outlining the format of 15 what the Applicant is expecting, page 2-17.
16 DR. SIESS:
That provides the basis for the argument.
I 17l MR. ETHERINGTON:
Several standard format guides, the 18, most recent one we looked at, is the new revision of 1.70.
All l9 of these guides have co= mon territory.
The site characteristics; o
20 the format is the same in all of them.
But for some reason, 21 different words are used to express exactly the same rt iuirements.
i 22 ll l It looks as though semebody has used one of them but has pre-li 23 ferred his own wording and has edited it.
I don't know why that
- a
' 1should be.
Ace 4wal Reporters, Inc. ]
23 ]
Is this avoided in the regulation?
Have you trief to
eve nneners, irc 25 l
pv12 56 1
MR. BERNERO:
From NRR, in general.
Great misgivings 2
about changing and doing it differently and possibly fouling up 3
the whole thing.
There is almost a subculture of seismic 4
analysis and --
5 DR. SIESS:
They have to keep busy, too.
6 MR. BERNERO:
And, by great pain and great effort, 7
they have reached a stage of communication where at least 60 percent of the time they agree on what they are saying to one 8
9 another.
So, there is a great deal of reluctance in the staff 10 1 to do it a different way.
11 DR. SIESS:
Do we have anybody here from GO sciences?
12 MR. BERNERO:
I had hoped Leon Beratan could be here.
13 DR. SIESS:
I was hoping Carl Stepp could be here.
14 MR. BERNERO:
He has left.
He has resigned or is 15 resigning.
16 DR. RAY:
Are the incidents of response predominantly 17 staff people, are there outside agencies?
18 MR. STANFORD:
The comments are from the public; a 19 few from staff people.
20 MR. BERNERO:
The staff people.
It was during the 21 preparation of the proposed regulation.
I 22 DR. RAY:
You mean, industry, manufacturers, and so on?
23 MR. STANFORD:
Everybody.
This was sent out to the 24 l broadest distribution we could think of.
We sent copies to i
neoorms ine.l ac.-aer :
25 ' everybody and requested comments.
Law firms, public-interest l
I l
i 57 l
l I
groups, universities, particularly the engineering departments 2
of universities, state governments, our state liaison officers, 3
every state in the Union.
4 DR. RAY:
It sounds like you got pretty broad dis-5 Persion of reactions.
6 MR. BENDER:
I haven't got the comments back.
l l
1 7
DR. RAY:
Wait a moment.
You have been able to cate-l 8
gorize them.
How did you do that?
9 MR. STANFORD:
These are just a few.
I haven't 10 1 gotten any comments --
11 DR. RAY:
You aren't satisfied with the volume yet?
i l
12 MR. BERNERO:
It is a very low yield.
I 13 DR. SIESS:
Did you get comments from Stone & Webster?
l 14 MR. STANFORD:
Not yet.
15 DR. SIESS:
Duke?
16 MR. STANFORD:
Not yet.
I haven't gotten them yet.
17 I know we will get some, but --
18 DR. RAY:
What about the engineering agencies and 19 associations, ASME and ANS?
20 MR. STANFORD :
The only one I got a comment from is 21 the ANS 57.7 committee, and that is because I am a member of the 22 committee, and I beat on these guys to give me their comment 23 personally.
24 DR. SIESS:
But if you get too many, then people will Ace-F ral Reporters, Inc.
v 25 l think that there will only be a couple of these built and it is l
l 1
pvl4 4
58 l
1 not a big economic question.
2 MR. STANFORD :
I think we will get some.
I 3!
DR. SIESS:
I think building is important, but I l
4 don't think the cost of one is so great that they are going to 5
fuss about it.
6 DR. LAWROSKI:
Did you get any objections to the fact l 7
that this would rule out California, for example, for a sizeable' 8
part of it?
9 MR. STANFORD:
Not yet I haven't.
I expect to get 10 1 some, but I haven't gotten any yet.
11 MR. BERNERO:
I would like to insert one more idea 12 here.
Lurking in the woodwork, so to speak, this regulation is.
1 13 for the temporary storage of spent fuel in temporary facilities,.
14 temporary in the sense of decades.
We are also working on high-15 level waste standards and a high-level waste repository is going 16 to have surface facilities for handling either spent fuel or 17 processed waste before it goes down the hole.
We fully expect 18 to use this regulation,with minimum change, as the prototype for 19 that, because, you know, in some definitions, spent fuel is 20 high-level waste now.
We don't say that in the regulation as 21 it stands, but it has been said many times in staff discussions 22 and meetings.
23 DR. SIESS:
Okay.
I 24 (Slide.)
w.%,.i a n.. w. l i
25 MR. STANFORD :
Without belaboring this point too much, l
59 i
j the other area, of course, of comment so far has been in the general design criteria, and this is primarily the protection 2
f r national phenomena.
3 DR. SIESS:
Enat does the "1.11" mean, under "Overall-4 i
Requirements"?
5 MR. STANFORD:
This is general design criteria, 6
Criteria 1 through 11.
7 DR. SIESS:
I see.
8 MR. STANFORD:
Then, next is 12 to 13.
There are 20 9
listed.
I am sorry I can't give a better picture on the 10 11 public response to this, but I really don't expect a very full 12 picture until maybe a month from now.
DR. SIESS:
What is your timetable?
13 MR. STANFORD:
We are going to try to publish the jg 15 final rule consistent -- to coordinate the publication of the 16 final rule with the final generic environmental impact statement..
j7 Assuming that we really must accept comments that come in at least through another 30 days, we won't really know what our 18 j9 picture is for another 30 days.
Assuming that they are something that is resolvable with reasonable effort, maybe something like 20 1
three months, another 90 days; that would mean that we would 21 22 have a final rule ready for publication about four months from DOW-23 i
DR. SIESS :
That means effective rule?
24 ;
Aa-Lral Reporters, Inc. l 25 >
MR. STANFORD :
Yes.
I i
60 1
DR. SIESS:
No further comment.
2 MR. STANFORD:
That is if we run into no snags.
- Now, i
3 !
obviously, we could run into a public hearing; we could run into l
4 something that would make it more difficult to resolve somehow or 5
other.
Somebody that we got into deep trouble with with a 6
standard earthquake, for example.
l 7
So, from where we stand right now, it looks like late end#12 8,
spring, early summer.
9 10 !
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24,
Am A._ rst Reporwrs, Inc.
25 j
I CR 2015 61 :
WHITLOCK t-13 mte 1 John Roberts is sitting here.
He is my counterpart 1
2 i on the environmental impact statement.
John, is my date 3l late spring, early summer?
4 MR. ROBERTS:
Yes, we will try to cet this thing out 5
by the end of May or in June.
6 MR. STANFORD:
It looks like we are reasonably well i
t 7
coordinated.
l 8
DR. SIESS:
When will the ANS 57 be out?
9 MR. STANFORD:
It is out for ballot The ballot 10 responses are due at the ANS of fices on the 19th of January.
I 11 1 They have a meeting scheduled on the 12th of February, the 12 week of the 12th of February, to resolve comments.
Hopefully, 13 by the end of that week we will have a draf t that is in pretty 14 good shape, in good enough shape for us to endorse as a reg 15 guide, even though it is a draft.
It probably won't actually 16 be published for something like a year.
17 f DR. SIESS:
What I am trying to get straight is what 18 time schedule th. aCRS night want to work on if we are going 19 l to give some advice to the Commission.
Clearly, they would like l
20 i to have that advice sometime before you come out with your final 21 rule.
I think, equally clearly, there won't be very much time i
I 22 to review a reg guide.
But we have to assume that the reg guide i
23 h in the ANS standard would be consistent with the general 24 b criteria that are in the rule and consistent with what you call Ace-Noral Reoorters, Inc.
25 ; the rationale, the risk philosophy, if you wish.
So I think i
i i
I
mte 2 62 1
that the ACRS should concentrate on basically this risk philo-2 sophy, which sort of is summarized on the first page of this i
3 next thing you are going to talk about, and looking at the I
1 I
4 engineered safety features or their absence, and I think that 5
we are going to want to pay a little bit more attention to 6
consequences in order to relate those to probabilities of 7
frequency, and that would include the earthquake frequency, i
8 which is clearly somewhat dif ferent than the SSE.
9 We would have to have some feel on consequences.
10 t The DBA, if there is one, you have somethina as a DBA in your 11 mind, the possibilities and consequences of sabotage.
I suspect 12 that we may need another Subcommittee meeting to get into some 13 of that before a full Committee meeting, but we can settle that i
14 later.
15 I j ust wanted to mention, that's why I asked.
We 16 are talking about getting something through the full Committee 17 in the next few months, hopefully.
I 18 l MR. BERNERO:
I would like to interject something i
19 ' here that may be useful to you.
It is on the vein of this 20 staff uneasiness about the thing.
Usually when we bring a l
21 proposed rule or a reg guide -- not a reg guide, but a proposed 22,
rule -- to the Commission, we have a staff consensus, a clear l
21 1 consensus:
Yes, this is what the staff things is the right 24 l rule.
Ace-Fwret Reporters, Inc. f 25 j There was so much misgiving with this one, because of i
I
=te 3 i
63 1
4, i
1 li its novelty, that there was a sienificant flavor en the part of ll 0
2>
the Cc=.ission and the principal staf f menbers involved of, yes,
2l let's publish it for co==ent, but there is this shaky consensus i
I 4 :l about publishing it.
I think there was an expectation on the i
i 5
Co =ission's part that there would be a lot rore fruitful 6!
co==ent from the public available.
i i
7l Lacking that, I think that they will look more to.ard 8
re-scrutiny by the staf f and advice to the ACRS.
9 DR. SIESS:
The ACRS in that case would be very much 10 tnterested in hearing different viewcoints within the staff.
11,
In fact, I think that we can do the Co==ission a service bv 12 i hearing some of the concerns within the staf f and including t
131j those as a part of our co= cents on -- staf f co==ent on these i
14 i as a part of our co==ents to the Co==ission.
If we do have 15 '
another meeting, perhaps we should get spokesmen.
16 h MR. SERNERO:
Get an anti.
Too bad Carl Stepp is
-l 17 ' going.
He was --
18 OR. SIESS:
He was acainst it?
it
- \\
19 ]
MR. BERNERO:
The novelty of it.
It wasn't the risk,
'lr 20 al it was just a change for change sake, was the impression I got.
n i
21 h OR. SIESS:
It is
=v. reading -- and I would like for a
'l 22 y otner me=cers or the Subec==ittee to cive =e a feel of whether 23 4 they think I a: richt -- that the ACRS attitude toward the i
24 ' rationale is coinc to decend verv stronciv en a feel for what Ae. v u n. con m. w.,
4c the consec.uences are for various ktncs c:. events un. to anc.
6 I
I nte 4 64 1
including -- I won't say -- sabotage -- do you agree with that? :
2,1 That is where the questions are going to come.
You can say 3
there is a low inventory, a low heat generation rate.
Then i4i somebody is going to want to know how low.
5 DR. LAWROSKI:
It is not all that low.
6 DR. SIESS:
But again --
7 DR. LAWROSKI:
That is, the heat ceneration rate.
8 DR. SIESS:
Okay.
If it is true that it can suffer 9
loss of water for X days, if a criticality accident consequence 10 '
is three orders of magnitude less than a Class 9 accident, these 11 are the kinds of things that I think people need to get a feel 12 for, and then they can back off and look at these criterion in But I think that we are coing to need something a f 13 those terms.
14 little quantitative on that.
15 MR. STANFORD:
The ANS 57.7 Committee has made such 16 an analysis.
I I
l' l DR. SIESS:
It is not j ust the seismic. The seismic 7
18 '
might be the easiest part.
But the ACRS, by its nature, tends 19 to look at the extremes.
We have been looking at Class 9 before 20 they had a nane, or we have been thinking of th en.
I 21 Do you want to continue with your little discussion 22 -l on 57. 7?
Would you like to take a short break before we do 23 ll that?
24 l (Recess.)
Ace-Feuerel Reporters, Inc..
25 :
DR. SIESS:
The meeting will reconvene.
We will i
l 1.
mte 5 65 i
1 continue with our discussion on ANS 57.7.
2 MR. STANFORD:
The next s ubj ect I thought you might 3'
be interested in is the ANS 57.7.
t 4
(S lide. )
5 The rationale that this Comnittee used in arriving 61 at this standard was that tha risk in one of these facilities l
7 is orders of magnitudes -- and they use numbers, something like 8
three orders of magnitude or more less than for a nuclear power 9
plant.
They recognize the NRC licensing policy that we would i
10 i strongly favor strong sites.
No reason to build one of these 11 things in a questionable site.
And therefore, the siting 12 requirements would eliminate extreme natural hazards.
And 13 thirdly, that safety can be assured without the engineered 14 safety features you find in a reactor, without redundant systems 15 '
and through passive systems.
16 So the thrust here is toward safety through the 17 ll developnent of passive systems :
the pool structure itself, i
18 the racks, the large volume of water.
19 DR. SIESS:
You say that you wouldn't approve of 20 i sites subj ect to extreme natural hazards.
I assume the same i
21,would be true for manmade hazards.
,l 22l MR. STANFORD:
There is a companion standard being d
23 !l developed that is not far along.
It is the ANS 2 Committee.
e 24 i It is 2.19.
It addresses siting criteria, and in that standard Am.Laret Reporten, Inc. '
25 l there is a table that says that you will stay so many miles i
f I
t
i i
mte 6 I
66' I
away from a quarry where they are doing blasting, you will i
2 stay so I:.any miles away from an airport.
They have got cuite j
i 3!
a bit of detail in that standard on siting criteria, mininum i
s 4
distances, that sort of thing.
5 (S lide. )
6 To understand this standard, just in the language 7
they have used, they talk in terms of design events.
Now, this I
8 is similar to -- this is in ANS 50, a reactor-oriented r
9 standards writing group that are writing the atandard, and the I 10 I reactor standards.
They talk about design conditions.
In 11 this standard they talk about design events, if you can equate 12 that same language, those of you who are familiar with the 13 ANS 50 standards.
And they talk about a Category I as something:
14 that is normal operation, something that happens frequently, 15 such as a cask unloading operation.
16 A Category II event would have a category of one per 17 year; a Category III, once in a lifetime; a Category IV is 18 much less than once in a lifetime, it is a beyond-design type 19 1 of generally speaking event.
l 20 1 MR. ETHERINGTON:
What is the lifetime?
I 21 MR. STANFORD:
40 years.
22,
DR. SIESS:
You put a greater than.25 G earthquake l
say a.25 on the map at Category IV, then, since it
- hatasite, 23 24 is only 10 percent probability of occurring in the lifetime.
AC24%, cal Reporters, Inc.
i 25 ;
What would be Category III, for example?
Where would I
i
f i
mte 7 67 i l
I a tornado be, III or IV?
i 2
MR. STANFORD:
As examples, they say a credible 3l passive failure of a radioactive liquid retaining boundary, a I
4 pool liner leakage, is one of their examples.
A second example 5
is a dropped fuel assembly.
And the third example is a loss of 6
external power for more than 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br />.
l l
7 DR. SIESS:
That is once per lifetine, the Category III?
8 MR. STANFORD:
Yes, once per lifetime.
7 DR. SIESS:
A dropped fuel assembiv only once in 10 !
40 years?
II MR. STANFORD:
I think we have only had 8 in our 12 history so far, and we haven't had any since the last 10 years 13 that I am aware of, at reactors.
Id DR. SIESS:
You have a pretty good data base there.
IS MR. STANFORD:
The dropped fuel assembly is much 16 overdone.
I tried to get some data on that and there is iust 17 l not much on it.
There haven 't been many for a long time.
18 l' MR. BERNERO:
Are you aware of that tabulation of I9 fuel assembly drops that was done about a year ago by Johnson 20 l of Battelle?
He researched all of the fuel assembly drops at 2l the various reactors.
22 DR. SIESS:
Send us a copy of that.
Send it to A1.
23l!
DR. LAWROSKI:
What is believed to have had such an 24,
ef fect?
Am->,/el Reporters, Inc.
I 25 i DR. SIESS:
Why have they had so few?
mte 8 6 P.
I i
1 DR. LAWROSKI:
In more recent years.
l 2
MR. STAMFORD:
They had failures of their bales, the i
3' stainless steel handling bale.
I 4
MR. BERNERO:
His analysis goes into each incident, 5
what happened, why it happened and what the consequences were.
6 DR. SIESS:
Something you do quite a few times you 7
learn pretty fast.
8 MR. STANFORD:
I think they had some trouble with 9
bolts.
1 10 1 MR. ETHERINGTON:
The stress corrosion bales failed.
11 MR. STANFORD:
I am speaking from memory, and that 12 is going back quite a long ways.
13 (Slide.)
l 14 The pools themselves -- this standard ducked the 15 design earthquake, and they said it referred to 2.19 and 2.19 16 has not adopted the.25 G.
This is an area which we still 17 have to resolve.
18 DR. SIESS:
Does that mean they have not adopted the 19 Alger-Missin-Mapp criterion, either?
20 MR. STANFORD:
The siting standard would be 2.19, 21 and they have not adopted the Aleer-Missin-Mapp.
22,
DR. S IES S :
Or the Fluor desian?
l
~
23 MR. STANFORD:
No.
They are talking in terms of a 24 deterministic earthcuake design like an SSE.
Ace-F
. el Reporters, Inc.
25 j DR. SIESS:
At that level, or are they talking of a i
i mte 9 69 l l
1 variable earthquake, a variable earthquake design level or just l 2
a higher level?
I 3 !
MR. STANFORD:
They are talking a 500-year earthquake.
I 4
They have missed the point.
So there is still work to be done.
5 This standard is not yet -- the 2.19 is not adequately developed.
6 We have still got some real serious problems with it.
But this 7
57.7 ducked the issue and will -- they will either incorporate 8
it or we will incorporate it in our reg guide that endorses it.
9 We can endorse a national standard, 95 percent, say it is i
10 95 percent okay, here are the exceptions, and list them off, 11 and it is still a good document.
12 My point is, we don't have to be 100 percent in 13 agreement with the national standard to endorse it.
There are l
14 stresses for design conditions I through III.
They are 75 15 percent of yield.
For Design Condition IV it is equal to or 16 less than -- or equal to yield strength.
17 ll DR. SIESS :
That is on rebar and the concrete pool 18 or stainless steel liner, or both?
19 l MR. STANFORD:
Stainless steel liner; it is on the 20 racks.
1 21 DR. SIESS:
Racks is separate.
Racks is the next 22 page.
I have another cuestion when I get to it.
l 23 i MR. STANFORD :
Excuse-me.
In the pools, we are talk-24 l ing about the liner, the tie-downs, the way in which the liner Ac.-> _ rai Reconm. anc. l 25 l is fastened to the pool.
t
1 mte 10 70 '
1 DR. SIESS:
I don't think it is on rebar.
l 2
MR. STANFORD:
I think it is, and the concrete.
3l DR. SIESS:
I don't know why anybody would deviate 4
from the standard concrete desian procedures.
l 5
MR. ASHER:
It is not the same thing as in the other.
6 In Appendix A of the guide, it is stated exactly according to 7
the Code.
l 8
MR. STANFORD:
I don 't think Appendi:: A is quite i
i 9
consistent with the text.
There is an area here in which we 10 1 have got to make some modifications of the text to make it II match their own appendix.
4 I2 MR. ASHER:
As far as we are concerned, the Code 13 requirements are the ones which would be.
l l
14 DR. SIESS:
359.
15 MR. ASHER:
359 is containment.
16 DR. SIESS:
I 'm sorry, you 're righ t.
17 MR. ASHER:
It's 349.
18 MR. STANFORD:
I cuess I am trying to give you what l9 amounts to a progress report.
I am giving you the status of 20 this strandard as it now stands, prior to the resolution of 21 comments, some comments which we will make which are going to 22 have to be resolved.
The steel, the minimum values, as shown 23 ll in AISI and AISC specs.
The concrete, they are using a yield 1
24 i strencth of.85 of the compression strength.
AceJ= f al Reporters, Inc.,
25 l DR. SIESS:
Hans j ust over ruled that.
l I
e
mte 11 71 l
l 1
MR. ASHER:
It is not right.
i 2
MR. STANFORD:
The standard allows no cask movement 3l over the fuel, no reason for moving a shipping cask over a I
4 storage pool.
It does recuire that the pool structure withstand i
5 the maximum load that can be dropped, whatever this may be.
If 6
you got a ventilation fan and a motor up in the scaffolding i
7 somewhere, the raf ters, whatever the maximum load is, the cool 8
has to be able to withstand that drop from the maximum height.
9 If there is more than one pool, they are isolated by gates.
10 Now, there are design loadings in thi7 thing.
They II talk about ACI 318 and Appendix C.
Of course, there is an 12 inconsistency there.
No penetrations or potential siphons 13 below the minimum water level.
Id Shieldirg throughout the plant, less than 10 mR per 15 week.
We think that that is pretty much ALARA.
And the water 16 depth, a minimum of 8 feet.
They have also thrown in a design 17 l DF for iodine, which I don't think really has much meaninc in 18 this case.
l9 MR. MATHIS:
Is that a total depth of 8 feet or 8 feet:
20,
above?
I 21 MR. STANFORD:
3 feet above the top of the pool.
It 22 turns out in actual neasurements about 4 feet.
It is a little 23 ll more than 4 feet, which is enough to cive you maximum shielding.
Il 24 h The other 4 feet is a safety factor.
Ace Fw,rsi Reporters, Inc.,
25 l (Slide. )
i l
mte 12 72:
1 1
Mostly, this is to control where penetrations come in i
2 h for your water circulation system and that sort of thing.
3, The racks' design earthcuake is the same as the pool.
4 The stress is less than yield strength, and it should be.75 5
percent of yield strength for conditions I and II, and less than 6
the ultimate strength for III and IV.
7 DR. SIESS:
That means for III and IV they would 8i allow greater than yield.
9!
MR. STANFORD:
It is in the plastic range, as they i
10 have expressed it.
Il DR. SIESS:
That is ASME type thinking:
Make an 12 elastic analysis, but let it go hicher than yield.
13 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
They talk in terms of limiting 14 the deformations to maintain suberiticality under all conditions, 15 to preserve the fuel assembly integrity under all conditions, 16 and to preserve the geometry, at least to the extent where you 17!
can move fuel in and out of the racks under what they call lo j design events I and II.
The rack can be free-standing or i
19 I supported by embedments in the floor, in the walls.
I call them I
20 European railroad buf fers, between the racks and the walls.
1 21 They must design to protect the fuel assemblies frem i
i 22 ll mechanical damage.
Materials must within 10 to the 10 gamma
,h 23 or neutrons.
They must desien for natural circulation, cooling
,i 24 ; to the extent of no surface boiling under normal operaticns.
Ac. receral Reporters, Inc.
25 h They could stand some nucleate boiling under abnormal operations, o
1 ll
I mte 13 73 1
which they define as something between II and IV.
l 2
DR. LAWROSKI:
If neutron absorbers are included in 3l the racks, what form might they be?
I 4
MR. STANFORD:
The neutron absorbers?
i 5
DR. LAWROSKI:
For criticality control.
6 MR. STANFORD:
I really don't think we will have any 7
neutron absorbers in the racks in these pools.
I don't think 8
they can be -- you use the neutron absorbers in a neutron rack, I 9
and then the fuel has to pass over the top of the storage rack, 10 '
which means the pools must be 10 feet deeper.
I have never 11 seen a justification for that additional 10 feet by the small 12 amount of additional storage you can get.
i 13 DR. SIESS:
You lost me.
If you have got the compact i
14 rack, you said you have to bring the fuel in from the top and 15 you s aid you bring it in from the side?
16 MR. STANFORD:
On these pools we expect, at least l'7 the ones we have seen so far, including the designs, with the 18 exceptions of Stone & Webster, the fuel is stored in cannisters,-
19 1 what they call movable racks, and they are moved underwater 20 to a position.
21 DR. SIDSS:
Okay.
22 MR. STANFORD:
If you move the rack, you only need 23 !l 10 feet of water or so above the rack.
If you move it over the 24 top of the rack, then you have to have another 10 feet of Am-Feueret Reporters, Inc.
25 l water.
i I
mte 14 74' 1.I DR. SIESS:
But you can have the compact racks that il
'l 2 i! vou load in deec. e.- e. cols, as in this case you must load the 3l racks in a deeper pool, right, and then you move them in here?
i 4i, But I don' t think the econenics of the compact rack would =ake i
S any sense if vou are start ;nc from scratch.
A 1
6 !
MR. BERNERO:
That is exactiv it.
1 I
I 7'
DR. SIESS:
Concrete is a lot cheaper.
I I
8-MR. 3ERNERO:
The reactor is takinc. a c.iven pool and I
9{
trying to cram as much as nossible into it, whereas this thinc, i
10,
with a fresh sheet of pacer you ust design a reasonable packing e-13 11 '
de ns ity.
I i
i 12 I i
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i 14 !
l 15 !
i 16 -
il 17 ie 18. -
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Ace Fw.rm Reporters, Inc. l:.
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- 14 1
MR. ROBERTS:
A point that I might make, there has 2
been some problem with the compact racks in some of the designs i
3!
and presently the State of Minnesota is involved in an action J
4 in Monticello.
5 DR. SIESS:
We know.
6 (Slide.)
7 MR. STANFORD:
For the water system, recognizing 8
that it takes quite a period of time to fill up a storage pool, 9
probably the best you can do is maybe 500 tons per year just 10 1 for the logistics of moving casks in and out.
So that the 11 standard that is allowable to add coolers is, as needed.
12 They do specify a temperature, which is less than i
13 90 degrees on the average, with a max of~110.
That is compar-14 able to the ANSI N-210, which I think allows 150.
I think our 15 technical position in NRR is allowing 140, so this is a much 16 more conservative temperature.
I 17 Their point is that these will probably be occupied 18 a good bit more of the time, and this is really a comfort 19 1 conditioning as much as anything else.
l 20 l They say they want the -- the cooling system must 21 have recovery time adequate to prevent bulk boiling under their 22 i Design Condition II adequate to prevent structural damage l
23 ll under Conditions II and III.
And'really, what they have in I
24 hl mind in " structural damage" is a Delta T through the concrete Ace-Lral Reporters, Inc.
25 which may be considerably less than bulk boiling, somewhere up i
i i
14-2 jwb 76 1
around 160 degrees.
l 2
That is probably the most restrictive requirement on 3
their cooling system.
i 4
Their makeup water supply is adequate to offset 5
evaporation, and to maintain a minimum depth.
6 MR. MATHIS:
At what kind of leak rate?
7 DR. SIESS:
Whatever they specify.
8 MR. STANFORD:
Whatever it is.
9 They do not expect any leak rate in a lined pool.
10 1 DR. SIESS:
But Condition IV is an earthquake, say.
11 Condition III might be a tornado.
It might be Condition IV.
12 If you are completely below ground, the tornado missile is not 13 going to punch a hole in the concrete.
That is a cinch.
But 14 if you are not completely below ground, somebody has got to 15 look at that.
16 MR. STANFORD:
The Stone & Webster standard design 17 is somewhat above ground.
If they design by this standard --
18 DR. SIESS:
The water level is above ground?
i 19 '
MR. STANFORD:
The upper water level is above ground.
20 The fuel is below ground.
21 DR. SIESS:
They would have to analyze it for some 22, kind of a tornado missile and produce cracks in the concrete?
l 23 MR. STANFORD:
Yes.
The standard says they would 24 l have to have a water supply adequate to keep that fuel cc vered.
AcsJouvral Reporters, Inc.
25,
MR. ROBERTS:
It is perhaps a little unfair to use i
l
14-3 jwb 77 i
Stone & Webster, in the sense that that came out before this j
rule.
In the Stone & Webster case, they were adhering more to 2
i reactor standards, and the building itself is proofed against 3
4 i
MR. STANFORD:
So they have provided missile protec-5 tion.
I 6
DR. SIESS:
It would be silly not to.
It is easy 7
en ugh to do.
They can pile-dirt up there, if they need to.
8 MR. STANFORD:
The standard does call for a purifi-9 10 I cation system to adequately keep the pool water less than I
5 x 10-4 microcuries per milliliter.
That is about 4 times EPA's ji drinking water standard.
It is pretty damn pure.
You can swim !
12 in it.
13 DR. SIESS:
That thing in front of " curies" is a ja
" micro' isn't it?
15 MR. STANFORD:
Pcrdon?
16 il j7 lI DR. SIESS:
That's all right.
I 18 l (Laughter.)
MR. STANFORD:
Clarity adequate for identification, j9 there is an identification system on the racks.
You have got 20 i
t be able to see it.
It has got to be a closed system to 21 prevent loss of water to the ground or outside the f acility,
,2,
Il 23 j; and the chemistry has got to be compatible with fuel assemblies.
Il, 24 !!
In other words, no chlorine, low chloride.
Ace-Feuere'. Reoorters, Inc. g (Slide.)
25 ;
78; 14-4 jwb 1l This is a 100-page document and I am skimming over itj lightly, but some of the other features provide for the contain-l 7
ment of cask washed waters which could be potentially contami-3 It provides for an offgas system for cask venting.
i
,l nated.
Restrainment, restraining of the cranes:
This 5
doesn't mean the cranes themselves' must be designed earthquake, 6
They have got to have some sort of but they can't fall down.
7
}
tiedowns.
g The travel of casks over the stored fuel:
Not 9
ventilation systems -- the general system is that the supply 10 The exhaust air is filtered for selected air is filtered.
11 areas only.
12 The buildings -- the structural members are designed 13 The idea i
not to f all in und ur design earthquake conditions.
j4 is that we don't want a gross collapse of the building into 15 the storage pool, something like the sports arena up in Connec-16 ticut last year.
That is what they are really driving at there.
j7 they do not provide for missile protection.
jg l But The radwaste generated is treated onsite, ready for j9, disposal.
I have got some comments on that, by the way, but r
20.
i including its 21, the point is that the f acility is independent, wn radwaste system.
22 The emergency power supply is for -- primarily just I
23 l!
There is no emergency power supply f r monitoring and security.
24 :
Am-F.emi neconm. inc. ; here for an operating, or a process need.
25 l I
i
14-5 jwb I
791 i
i DR. SIESS:
If you lost your power, you have no 2
circulation of cooling.
3 MR. STANFORD:
That's right.
I 4
DR. SIESS:
And you can go into nucleate boiling?
5 But you are allowed to go into nucleate boiling in any condition ~
6 beyond normal; right?
And. so you just sit there and boil off l
7 and you have so much time to get your power back; right?
8 Has anybody studied how long it will take?
9 MR, STANFORD:
There is a catch to it.
You can go 10 I into nucleate boiling, but there is a small inconsistency here 11 in that they don't want to reach a temperature that would 12 damage -- cause structural damage any more than once in the 13 life of the f acility.
14 DR. SIESS:
How long can you be without circulation 15 l'and cooling before you have to restore it?
16 MR. STANFORD:
Anywhere from a half a day to a number i
17 of days.
18 DR. SIESS:
Depending on how much fuel?
19 i MR. STANFORD:
Yes, and depending upon the thermal l
20 inertia of the system.
We are talking about million-gallon 21 systems, which have a lot of thermal inertia.
22 DR. SIESS:
I didn't see that as a criteria.
l 23l MR. STANFORD:
Which?
I 24 DR. SIESS:
That you have to be able to restore power Ace 4 et Reoorters, Inc.
25 in a certain length of time.
Is that under " protect fuel'
14-6 jwb i
80I 1
assemblies from mechanical damage *'?
i i
2 l MR. STANFORD:
No.
That is under the one that says t
3l something about " recover from loss of cooling."
l l
4 DR. SIESS:
Recovery time adequate to prevent struc-5 tural damage.
That is only for II through III.
6 MR. STANFORD:
Something happens --
f 7
DR. SIESS:
For.IV, which is an earthquake --
I f
8 MR. STANFORD:
You would get some structural damage.
9 DR. SIESS:
It doesn' t say that the recovery time 10 !
has to be adequate.
II MR. STANFORD:
No.
12 DR. SIESS:
That sort of leaves the earthquake 13 uncovered.
14 MR. BERNERO:
I am not sure that you should count 15,
the design-basis earthquake as a IV event.
I think it is I
16 really a III.
Exceeding it would be a IV.
il 17 DR. SIESS:
All right.
Yes.
Have they got a list 18 '
of events somewhere?
Who is going to categorize these events?
i 19 l MR. STANFORD:
They have a list of them.
It needs 20 a little more work done on it, but it is on --
21 !,
DR. SIESS:
We will see it eventually, o
22ll i
MR. ETHERINGTON:
If you lose the cooling system, i
2 ll can' t you continue to add water indefinitely with no time
!i 24 i limit?
Am.6 al R morMrs. lN.
25 MR. STANFORD:
Correct.
4 l'
14-7 jwb l
81 MR. ETHERINGTON:
I thought you put a time limit on it.
2 i
3!
MR. STANFORD:
No.
DR. SIESS:
You said, "not enough to cause damage."
4 If y u can keep the wate; level up with no circulation and no 5
c ling, will you get into -- you would have no damage?
6 MR. ETHERINGTON:
212 won't damage anything, will it?'
7 MR. STANFORD:
The concrete.
8 DR. SIESS:
Yes, if it is held there long enough.
9 Over 160, 170 will cause some deterioration of the concrete 10 jj s treng th.
MR. ETHERINGTON:
You won ' t lose the integrity?
12 DR. SIESS:
You will not lose the integrity of the 13 3-foot wall.
You will lose about 3 inches of it.
ja MR. STANFORD:
That is all you are concerned with.
15 This committee was quite concerned with --
16 I
DR. SIESS:
I expect if you kept it at 212 indefi-j7 nitely, you would have some deteriorated concrete for a foot jg behind the stainless steel liner.
I think you can still hold 19 ;
20 l water.
t MR. STANFORD:
That is the kind of thing that you 21 w uld expect.
It might happen less than once in the lifetime 22 23 !
f the facility.
?
DR. SIESS:
All right.
Thank you.
24 l Ace Fweral Reporters, Inc.
MR. STANFORD:
That is a pretty brief rrnfown on that 25 i
i i
i
14-8 jwb I
S2 '
I1!! document.
The document is this thick (indicating), but I wanted-
'i 2 l; to give you the flavor.
o'!
'I 34 DR. SIESS:
What does one of these things look like?
4:
You said Stone & Webster had a design?
Roughtly what dimensions, t
5!
width and length?
I 6 I MR. STANFORD:
This standard has an example.
l 7 !
MR. BERNERO:
I would have brought my GE Morrison i
f I i 8g viewgraph.
9 DR. SIESS:
This is a new one at Morrison?
i i
10 MR. SERNERO:
It was the original pool for the g
0 11 !
reprocessing plant.
It was originally only about 100 tons of 1
J 12. sc.ent fuel and the rest was for the calcide waste.
But then 13 ; what they did was rack the whole thing.
i la L DR. SIESS:
What size were these things?
15 MR. BERNERO:
Anywhere from 1000 metric tons to i
16,
10,000, something on that order.
4 17 1' DR. SIESS:
So they end up being a long, narrew t
1 il IS, building, don't they?
,i 19 MR. STANFORD:
Prchably a series.
The practicality 4
20 l of the bridge crane across a pool, they make about 35 or 40
'l 21 ;! feet wide.
That is about as wide as you can make them.
Sc how 22, long?
Well, maybe 100 feet long is --
Y DR. SIESS:
What kind of money are you talking about?
23 24 l MR. STANFORD:
535 million for 1000-ton unit; up to Ace 5.cc., Recomn. inc. !
25, $200 million for a 15,000-ton unit.
Ih
!ii
14-9 jwb.;
y 83
\\'f iln 1L MR. SERNERO:
There are lots of assumptions that o
2 J would go into that.
If sc=eone wanted to go onto a reactor site, i
3lyou know, find some real estate over near the reactor where all 4; vou really have to do is get your foundation squared away, vou t
5 just buy all of the site analysis for nothing.
t 6{
If you go in there, you can probably build this i
7i thing quite chea?ly, compared to coing to an independent site.
a 31 DR. SIESS:
They have a few sites around that they 9
weren't allowed to build reactors on.
10 (Laughter.)
11
- MR. BERNERO:
TVA has talked about using tha Exxon 12 Fuel Reprocessing Site, because that is down on the Oak Ridge 13 g Reservation.
It has all sorts of site analysis already done.
?!
14.
DR. SIESS:
Newbold Island?
c 1
15 l (Laughter.)
i 16 MR. STANFORD:
Another thing that affects the cost i
17 is the big plants that have a number of receiving bays.
This is is a big part of the cost.
I think the Dupont design has 19 ~J three receiving bays, ari they can handle a large number.
20 MR. BERNERO:
You also make a choice on whether you il 21 ] could take the gas-filled casks like the NLI.
If you take old 22 l fuel, you can probably get away frc= that.
You don't need a 22 steam cool-down system for a cask.
24 DR. SIESS:
I am just wondering.
The PWR cask holds A v. Reconm. inc.
25 jone assembly?
l 1
14-10 jwb I
84j MR. BERNERO:
The truck cask -- the standard truck
)
And if you go to rail casks, you 2
i
., I can get up to 1024, the NLI cask.
And DOE is taking a look at 1
whether you can get a standard-weight truck cask to hold two 4
PWR assemblies if you make them five years old.
Because 5
usually the cask is limited by thermal design.
6 7
I hope the environmental impact statement; DR. SIESS:
considers the traffic.
8 DR. LAWROSKI:
What was the estimate at Dupont on 9
i the spent-fuel storage?
10 MR. STANFORD:
About $200 million.
I am giving this 11 from memory, now.
12 There is a recent report -- I think it was just 13 issued.
It is a DOE report on the cost of spent-fuel storage, ja 0040.
Does that ring a bell, John?
15 MR. ROBERTS:
It is a long number, with a couple of 16 slashes and hyphens.
I don't remember it.
j7 i
MR. BERNERO:
This is part of their environmental 18 19 statement.
DR. SIESS:
How many tons do you generate a year 20 21 l f r 1000 megawatts?
MR. BERNERO:
Just under 30 on the PWR, you know, 22 i
l 23 j the reference reactor.
It is around 30.
I DR. LAWROSKI:
40 tons for 100 percent by a factor.
24 Ace Foueral Reporters, Inc., It is 70 percent, the number you are quoting.
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But we don't have 1000 megawatt clants.
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i necessarily the best argument I have heard, but I have heard i
it.
And you let us know when you are ready and we will try to 2
3l schedule something.
And if I can get something scheduled for i
the Full Committee, we can conceivably try to do it the day befcre a Full Committee meeting rather than in between.
5 I think running that by the subcommittee should help,i 6
i l
unless we have a real light meeting, and we can allow you three j 7
hours or something, then it is best to have it worked out.
i 8
We have only taken 2-1/2 hours today, and I am sure 9
the Full Committee can get a pretty good presentation in about 10 ;
jj 2 hours2.314815e-5 days <br />5.555556e-4 hours <br />3.306878e-6 weeks <br />7.61e-7 months <br />, once you got your act together enough to get including questions and so forth.
12 MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
13 DR. SIESS:
The questions take up over half of it.
ja 15 l MR. ETHERINGTON:
Could you give us a conceptual idea of the size of the pool?
The length, width, depth?
16 I
MR. BERNERO:
Just to give you an order of magnitude, 77 i
the "E Morrison pool is maybe 60 feet wide, and about 110 feet 18 i
19 l long.
Its fuel assembly depth was 10 feet.
It is about 25 feet i
20 l deep.
The racks are nothing more than bundles of stainless 21 l!
steel pipe that hold the fuel, and then the whole bundle is 1
~2llatchedtothefloor.
't 23 p The capacity, I said, was 750 metric tons, and it is d
24 rectangular.
The narrow end, one end, is the entrance where Ace.F~eral Rooorters, inc. f
!! there is a cask unloading pcol which is deeper, of course.
And 95 il i
il
87 14-13 jwb 1
1 at the far end, there is an expansion gate.
So that if you want to add another pool, you just 2 !.
3l build it out at the other end and put an expansion gate in that i
s one.
5 DR. SIESS:
They load the racks and move them in?
6 MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
They move those bundles of racks.l 1
7 The same rack design is being used in some of the compact e
storage.
The Brunswick plant uses that.
I have seen that.
9 GE has sold it, or given it to a number of plants.
Sometimes 10 I they square them.
11 In the Brunswick pipe they are squared to save I
12 space.
At the Morrison f acility, there is just a stack of 13 pipes, sort of tack-welded together to keep them as a unit.
You' 14 pick up the whole bundle of them, and each pipe has a fuel 15 assembly in it.
16 DR. SIESS:
Horizontal?
17 l MR. BERNERO:
You carry them vertically.
18 DR. SIESS:
The fuel assemblies are all vertical?
l 19 !
DR. SIESS:
Yes, and you just put this thing down l
20 l in the deep whole, unload the cask into it, and then lif t it i
21 out of the cask unloading pool, and you almost slide it along 22 l the floor and latch it down.
23!
The rest of it, there is a sheetmetal building, d
1 24 j basically, an industrial-grade building.
And you have, at one AmA
.al Reconm. Inc. l 25 side or another, separate structures, rooms for coolers and j
i
14-14 jwb I
88 i
i 1
assembly rooms, laboratory, what have you.
2 DR. SIESS:
So if you handle it right, there is I
38 hardly anything handled over the pool, is there?
You put them I
4 in one end and out the other?
5 MR. BERNERO:
You end up leaving an aisle, and you 6
don't even carry the things.
That is one of the niceties of 7
that design.
You don't carry anything over anything else.
8 MR. ETHERINGTON:
They have the round tubes in a 9
triangular?
Or a square array?
10 I MR. BERNERO:
Square.
11 MR. STANFORD:
Visualize a grid about 2 feet square 12 in the floor.
13 MR. BERNERO:
We have some color photographs of that.
14 DR. SIESS:
How many in a rack?
15 MR. BERNERO:
They come in two different sized 16 bundles.
If you were using BWR assemblies which are smaller, I
l'7I it is 3 x 3.
For a PWR, it is 2 x 2.
I 18 !
DR. SIESS:
Then they are latched down?
19 l MR. BERNERO:
They are latched at the bottom in a 20 little gizmo to actuate the latch.
And on the bottom of the i
21 pool is a lattice of like I-beams.
22 i DR. SIESS:
It is supported at the bottom, lateral?
l 23 l MR. BERNERO:
No lateral support.
24 !!
MR. MATHIS:
You get convention cooling.
Ace-A al Reporters, Inc.
25 :
MR. JERNERO:
When Russ talks of " air cooling," if I
l 8
14-15 jwb, 89 l
1 you want to be sure you get air convention cooling and water 2ll convection, for that matter, too, these pipes -- if you were 3
using that sort of a rack -- have to have holes in the bottom, u.d #14 4
or gaps or something, to let the water in, let the flow go.
5 1
6 I
i 7
8 9
10 1 11
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12 13 14 15 16 l!
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19 l 20,
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Am Letal Reporters, Inc. '
25,
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I CR 2015 90 WHITLOCK t-15 mte 1 i
I These facilities are surprisingly plain and simple I
2 when you get to them.
When you separate this operation from I
3l the operation of a power plant or a reprocessing plant, th ere d
is very little to it, very small plant staff.
5 The point Rus was making is that you get such a small 6
plant staff that you become very conscious of accumulated occupational exposure, and your ALARA design is really individu !
7 8
alized.
9 DR. SIESS:
Morris was desianed quite a few years 10 I back.
II MR. BERNERO:
Yes, as a reprocessing plant, of course.!
I MR. MATHIS:
The pool desien was a couple of years I2 i
I3 ago?
I#
MR. BERNERO:
It was designed as part of the 15 reprocessing plant, it was designed and built.
16 MR. MATHIS:
They were doing some work on tryinc to I7 expand the cacacity of it.
Yes.
19 DR. SIESS:
Do you know what G value Morris was 20 desianed for?
2I MR. MATHIS:
.2 G.
22 MR. BERNERO:
That expansion is to use that gate.
23 DR. SIESS:
Those racks have been analyzed for.2 G.
24 I As long as vou stay in the eastern U.S.,
the.25 is not a low Ace Fooeral Rooorters, Inc.
25 I value.
I mte 2 91 !
i 1
MR. STANFORD:
We think it is high.
l DR. SIESS:
It is an SSE type value.
If you want to i
2 3 I stick one at Hanford, t is a little low.
It is marginal.
I 4
Hanford
. by, but some people weren't too happy.
The site 3
5 boundary helps.
It was the whole Pacific Northwest that was t
6 uncertain seismically, and there were people who might have beed l
more comfortable with three-tenths, ' but there are not too many l
7 8
peaple that wouldn't be comfortable with.25 anywhere east.
9 So that is not a great big deal.
I 10 I think the philosophy needs examining because I think 11 it is very interesting.
12 Bill, do you have any questions or comments?
l 13 PROF. KERR:
I do not, thank you.
14 DR. SIESS:
Jerry?
15 DR. RAY:
No.
16 DR. SIESS:
Any more, Charlie?
17 1 MR. MATHIS:
No.
l 18 DR. SIESS:
Do you agree that we should get them back i
19 1 in to go over some of these consequence things and set up some-l 20 l thing for the full Committee?
I 21 MR. BERNERO:
We will get back to you on a time 22 s ugges tio n.
I 23 h DR. SIESS:
Our scheduling problem will be a month d
24,
in advance of anything for these days.
Am+ del Reconm. Inc.
25 l MR. BERNERO:
We will get back to you, Al, in about 1
i
i mte 3 92 i i
1 a week.
I would like to do this early, get our stuff together.
2 lI DR. SIESS:
Your voice held up very well, Bob.
I 3l Anything else?
I 4
(No response.)
5!
DR. SIESS:
The meeting is adjourned, e-15 6
(Whereupon, at 3:38 p.m.,
the meeting was adjourned.)
i I
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