ML19329G185
| ML19329G185 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Indian Point  |
| Issue date: | 06/26/1980 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML19329G186 | List: |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 8007140084 | |
| Download: ML19329G185 (64) | |
Text
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21s is an unofficial ::anscrip of a =aa"d g of :ha Uni:ad Scatas Nucisar Regulatory Cc..d_ssion held on June 26, 1980 in the Commissien's officas a: 1717 E Sc: a:, N. W., Washing:en, D. C.
The maating was open :o public a::andanca and observatic=.
21s ::anse:1pt has son baan reviewed, corrac:ad, er edi:ad, and it =ay centain inaccuracias.
The ::anscript is 1standad sola17 for gn=aral i=fc::.a:ic=al purposes.
As p cvidad by 10 C71 9.103, 1: is con par: of de formal or dsfc:=al record of decision of :he =at:ars discussed.
4:assicus of opd den 1: :his ::anscript dc so nacassarily reflac: fi=al datar=.'=ations or be11afs.
No pleading or other pape: =ay be filed with :ha Cc*ssion is any p ccanding as :ha result of or addressed :o a=7 stata= ant or argu= ant ec=:ai=ad harais, except as :ha-Cc= mission =ay authorisa.
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THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS POOR QUALITY PAGES i
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1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
4 BRIEFING ON RECOMMENDi.TIONS OF INDIAN POINT TASK FORCE 5
PUBLIC MEETING 6
Nuclear Regulatory Commission 7
Room 1130 1717 H Street, N.W.
8 Washington, D.
C.
9 Thursday, June 26, 1980 10 The Commission met, pursuant to notice, at 11 1440 p.m.
14 BEFORE:
13
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JOHN,F. AHEARNE, Chairman of the Commission 14 VICTOR GILINSKY, Commissioner RICHARD T. KENNEDY, Commissioner 15 JOSEPH M. HENDRIE, Commissioner PETER A. BRADFORD, Commissioner 16 ALSO PRESENTS 17 L. BICKWIT 18 E. HANRAHAN R. BERNERO 19 G.
EYSY?ONTT R.
WEINER, DOE 20 J. BROWN, DOE R.
BLOND 21 M.
TAYLOR 22 23 24 Pages 1 to 62 25 ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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1 EE2CIEAIEGH 2
3 CHAIBMAN AHEABNE The Commission meets this afternoon 4 to hear from -the task force that we had established on 5 Indian Point.
6 At the beginning of the meeting I would like to say 7 that approximately 20 to 25 minutes ago we received a 8 request from the Ms. Joan Holt for the Citizens Task Force 9 which included a Citizens Task Force report on the interim 10 shutdown of Indian Point.
I have consulted my f ellow 11 Commissioners and we have concluded that we will not accept 12 th e request for a presentation this afternoon.
- However, 13 af ter having had a chance to review the report that they 14 have submitted we may ask f or a presentation of it.
15 Let me remind the audience where we are.
We issued an 16 order on May 30th in the matter of Consolidated Edison and 1'7 Pasny on the Indian P: int issue and that indicated that we 18 were going to have four steps in the approach we were taking.
19 The first point was setting up a licensing board.
The 20 licensing board would be in the vicinity of Indian Point.
21 We included six questions and we said that the licensing 22 board would recommending findings and conclusions and send 23 th a t along with the record of the proceedings to the 24 Commission to make the final agency decision on the merits 25 of the proceedings.
We pointed out that the six ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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3 1 questions we outlined would be subject to modification in 2 light of an informal proceeding.
3 The second point then was an informal proceeding 4 in which we asked an additional two questions.
Those were-5 dir' ;ted to anyone who wished to file comments and the 6 comments were to be filed with the closing date somewhere 7 around the 20th of June I believe.
8 The third was an announcement of a generic 9 proceeding.
This would be the generic consideration of the 10 question of the operation of reactors in the areas o' 2igh 11 population density. It said the Commission would make the 12 determination as to the form for that af ter it concluded the 13 informal proceeding.
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14 Then finally we identified a task f orce on interim 15 oper ation.
We said that more information would be necessary 16 in order to make a decision as to the status of the two 17 f acilities during the pandency of the adjudication 18 contemplated in the order.
19 Accordingly we directed the General Counsel and 20 the Director of the Office of Policy Evaluation to establish 21 a task force to prepare a report to the Commission on the 22 information avsilable at this time that bears on the 23 Commission's decision whether to permit interim operation of 24 Indian Point units two and three.
25
'; e identified five items that we wished the task ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC, 400 VIRGINIA AVE. S.W., WASHINGTON D.C. 20024 1202)554-2345
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s 1 force to address, or at least to address those.
We meet 2 this afternoon to hear the report of the task force.
3 The Director of the Office of Policy Evaluation.
4 MR. HANRAHAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
5 Ihe briefing this afternoon will be in two large 6 parts:
the first which will deal with the sccial and 7 economic impacts of the shutdown of continued operation of 8 the Indian Point plant; and the second will deal with the 9 accident risk considerations.
We are doing them in that 10 order since we have members of the Department o'f Energy here 11 to answer questions and to deal with the first part and 12 their time is limited this afternoon to about 2:30.
So 13 their participation then will occur first.
14 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
So it is not because you 15 conclude that is the most item?
16 MR. HANBAHANs No, nor is that the order they are l'7 in in the report, but for the convenience of having their 18 presence here.
The first part will be introduced by George 19 Eysymontt who will be assisted by Mr. Richard Weiner, 20 Director of the Division of Power Supply and Reliability of 21 the Economic Regulatory Adninistration and members of his 22 sta f f.
23 MR. EYSYMONTT:
Pu r'suant to the May 30th order, we 24 asked the Economic Regulatory Administration to take a look 25 at four things relative to curtailment of operation of the
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5 1 Indian Point units.
2 We asked them to look at operation at 50 percent 3 power beginning June 1st this year for three months, a 4 shutdown beginning June 1st for three months, operation for 512 months at 50 percent power and a shutdown for 12 months 6 beginning June 1st.
Mr. Weiner will address that issue.
7 I would like to say just a few background things 8 about the New York power pool, which is what we are talking 9 about.
The total capacity of the New York power is about 10 30,000 megawatts.
The Con Edison system represents about 31 11 percent of this total, about 9,400 megawatts.
12 FROM THE AUDIENCE:
Louder.
13 MR. EYSYMONTT:
Sorry.
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14 FROM THE AUDIENCE:
Can you start over please.
I 15 didn ' t hear any of that.
16 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Start talking, George.
17 MR. EYSYMONTT:
The total capacity of the New York 18 power pool is about 30,000 megawatts.
19 CHAIRMAN HEARNE:
Bob, in the back can you hear 20 that?
21 MR. EYSYMONTT The Con Edison system represents 22 ab ou t 31 percent of this total, about 9,400 megawatts.
23 Pasny contributes an additional 22 percent or about 6,700 24 megawatts.
Con Edison serves the five boroughs of New York 25 City and a major part of Westchester County.
About eight d
- ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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6 1 million people are served in this area.
2 Pasny' builds and operates generating and 3 transmission facilities.
It sells electrical energy to 4 distributors and to industries; that is, it sells to other 5 electric utilities and it sells to major users like the 6 Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City.
It also 7 arranges and schedules energy exchanges with other utilities 8 in the New York power pool.
Its generating capacity, a good 9 part of it, is not located in the New York City area.
They 10 are located 'in the northern part of the State.
11 I guess one other factor I would mention is that 12 the downstate area of New York, the New York City area, is 13 summer peaking, whereas the upper part of New York State is 14 winter peaking.
15 I think with that as background I will turn it 16 over to Mr. Weiner.
17 MR. WEINER:
Mr. Chairman, my name is Eichard 18 Weiner.
I am Oirector of the Division of Power Supply and 19 Reliability at the Department of Energy.
To my left is 20 James Brown, Branch Chief of our System Reliability and 21 Emergency Response Branch.
22 We have been asked by NRC to look at the various 23 shutdown scenarios, as Mr. Eysynontt had expressed, for 24 shutdown of Indian Point units two anc three and judge the 25 adequacy and systet reliability impact of these various ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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7 1 shutdown scenarios.
2 Our Division is in charge of administering DOE's 3 electric utility programs which relate to the planning, 4 design and operation of the adequate, reliable and 5 cost-eff ective bulk power supply in the country.
6 My role in this light is not to recommend to you, 7 and I want to make this clear, whether or not these units 8 should be shut down or kept on line.
I want to do a serious 9 review of the impact of these ' nits being out of service u
10 under these scenarios and advise you of our percept.on of 11 the power supply adequacy given yt'2r decisions based on 12 health and safety issues.
13 Cur staff has analyzed these various shutdowns,
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14 related data, all the inforamtion that we have in-house and 15 independently have drawn our conclusions.
We find that the
'16 area in greater New York, the greater Consolidated Edison 17 Pasny area, the southeastern New York area, could survive a 18 partial shutdown over this summer of both units or a 19 shutdown of one of the units.
It could not adequately 20 supply their customers with a shutdown of both of the units 21 or anything less than 50 percent of each unit on line.
22 I would like to explain what we mean by adequate 23 snd reliable service.
We are not talking about a blackout,
- 24 a blackout potential, the things that have happened to New 25 York in the past.
Any time you take a large generating unit e
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8 1 or especially two units at the same site out of service you 2 are going to impact system adequacy and system reliability.
3 Those units are there.
The operating system is planned to 4 have those units in service and they operate around tha t 5 f act.
6 What you are talking about here is the companies, 7 the operating companies having to go into a different mode 8 of operation.
Knowing that the units will be unavailable to 9 them they will pursue different scenarios.
They will pursue 10 volteca reductions, or the term " brownout" that often gets 11 conf used with blackout.
They will ask for customers to 12 voluntarily curtail load.
In some cases they will have to 13 curtail a load on a non-voluntary basis where they have i
14 certain contracts in pince.
This is the kind of scenario 15 they would go into.
16 A blackout is a system operating problem.
It 17 comes suddenly usually.
It comes because of some sort of 18 system equipment malf unction.
This is not the case here.
19 They know the units are unavailable.
But without that 20 available capacity they would very likely have to go into 21 this operating mode asking for the brownouts, the voltage 22 reductions and a sking f or curtailments.
23 (Slide) i 24 We have prepared a slide, you have copies of it in j
25 f ron t of you, just to give you a picture of why the lower ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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1 New York area is somewhat different than the rest of the 2 State.
We have seen a lot of numbers bandied around where 3 they talk in terms of 30, 40 or 50 percent reserve margins.
4 That is fine when you are looking at a state or an operating 5 pool.
You may find very large margins.
Even the margin 6 within the area that we are concerned about appears to be 7 somewhat large until you start looking at the physical 8 constraints.
i 9
That little upside down or right-side up pan that i
10 says Consolida ad Edison Company is essentially the region 11 in which the Indian Point units operate and we looked at 12 this for analysis.
13 The Indian Point units supply the load that is in
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14 that greater Manhattan, lower borough area, and those little 15 arrows with the double lines represent the transmission 16 f acilities that come into the area.
17 We took a look at the various emergency 18 capabilities of these transmission lines and how they would 19 operate under various contingencies.
We looked at them 20 without the Indian Point units.
Our finding was that if 21 bot '. of those units were out that the transmission system 22 and the systems behind them would not be adequate to supply 23 the large demands over the summertime in the New York City 24 area, in the_ greater Consolidated Edison and lower Dasny 25 area as you see.
They would not be able to sustain an ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
400 VIRGINIA AVE. S.W., WASHINGTON. O.C. 20024 (202)554-2345
i0 1 operating condition that would be normally required to E
2 protect against that.
That would be the loss of the single 3 largest remaining unit within that operating region.
So
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4 that is why they would have to go to the load reduction 5 through voltage reduction or curtailment strategy to prepare 6 for that type of an outage.
7 I want to make it clear, too, that any of these 8 types of analyses are moving targets.
One of the things 9 that we tried to do is to see that the numbers that we used, 10 and we tried various sets ot numbers, to see if they would 11 all kind of come out with the same answer and then see if 12 the peaks are coming close.
13 The city area has been experiencing hot weather i'
1-4 this week and we fin'd the peaks are coming very close to the 15 numbers that we used a few weeks ago to come up with this 16 type of reliability analysis.
17 The dependence that the companies would be in, the 18 systems would be in, on imported power at this time does 19 increase a reliability risk, too.
Now you starting to 20 depend on imported po-=r and you throw transmission systems 21 between the generating sources.
It does degrade system 22 reliability somewhat.
You are now dependent, too, on 23 purchases f rom another company.
If you buy from, say, 24 Central Hudson and you are importing power through two 25 transmission systems to get to Consolidated Edison you are I
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11 I depending on those systems on those sys: ems being available 2 and you are also depending on Central Hudson not having a 3 problem within their sys v; that they have to withdraw that 4 sale.
The sales are mo st..ikely non-firm on this basis.
5 The operating criteria, as I stated, requires them 6 to get into this mode.
It would entail some other things 7 that are aside to this which I know are.of no consideration 8 to you, but I cannot represent th e Depa r'. men t of En z.rgy 9 without mentioning that oil will be used to replace this 10 power.
The costs will be high; the oil costs will be high.
11 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
You say oil would be used to 12 replace it.
Why are you positive oil will be used to 13 replace it?
l i 14 MR. WEINER:
In this period of time the marginal 15 fuel in that area is oil.
There are very little 16 coal-burning units.
Those coal units that are there are
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l'7 primarily base load.
The hydro, of course, being the lowest 18 cost capacity will be on line whenever they could use it.
19 Most of that margin, that large 30, 40 or 50 percent margin 20 that you hear about is made up of oil-fired capacity in the 21 region.
So that is really all they have th a t they can. bring 22 in.
That is the swing f uel so to speak.
23 The bottom line of what we have is, as I said, 50 24 percent operation.
It was one of the scenarios that we 25 looked,at.
I am talking about over the sunmer.
We consider ALDERSON REPORTING COMPAN j
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12 1 the summer to end sometime around the end of September.
On 2 each unit that would be the preferable mode of operation 3 from a reliability and adequac'y standpoint because then you 4 would have the other unit available in case of a contingency 5 and you would have a little bit better support so to speak 6 in the syst;;,
That is the-preferable mode of operation.
7 You start hearing about unreliability and inadequacy when 8 you go below that.
9 Can I answer any questions?
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
In the letter ; hat you sent on 11 May.15th you went beyond the summer.
12 MR. WEINERS Yes.
As I said, we were asked to 13 check into the situation until the end of the year.
The 14 ' only problem I find is in September.
That little pan is
'd what we are talking about, and that is a summer peaking i
16 p an.
After that period of time then the loads drop off I'7 significantly and the ratings of the units are a little 18 better at that period of time as well as hydro availability 19 and so forth.
The situation is not of concern after the end 20 of September.
21 CHAIRMAN AHEA?NC.
So dropping, for example, to 22 the 50 percent would not be a problem af ter September?
23 MR. WEINERS The end of September; that is
,24 co rr*ct, sir.
25 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Do I also read your last point l'
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1 that dropping both of them off the line would similarly 2 af ter September not be a problem?
3 MR'. WEINER:
That is right.
4 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE Any questions?
5 Vic?
6
. COMMISSIONER GILINSKY4 No.
7 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY.
No.
8 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE4 Joe?
9 COMMISSIONER HENDRIEs I have no questions.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I thank you very much for 11 providing the information and your willingness to come and 12 present it.
13 ER. WEINER:
Thank you.
I appreciate your
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14 changing the agenda to take care of my schedule.
15 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE4 No problem.
16 All right, Ed.
17 MR. HANRAHANs The next part of the briefing will 18 deal with the accident risk considerations.
Pob Bernero, 19 Director of the Accident Risk Analysis Staff and his 20 assistants will present that part of the briefing.
21 MR. BERNER04 Good afternoon.
The accident risk Z!section of the task force report when we perceived the 23 Commission's need on this we recognized the short time scale 24 the vork that had to be done.
I would like to say here that 25 we consider this : very serious assignement for u: in l
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14 1 research.
2
,I put the two best people that I could on this, 3 these two gentlemen with me right here.
On my left Roger 4 Blond and on his lef t Mat Taylor.
Roger Blond is 5 principally in the consequence area and Mat Taylor is in the 6 systems analysis area.
What we have them do, providing the 7 support that.as necessary to help through the few weeks va w
8 had, was a parametric analysis, a risk comparison to 9 consider the three basic parameters, site, public protective 10 measures and the design and operation of plants.
11 (First slide)
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12 In order to do that would have to be a great deal 13 of actual work. to develop an insight into the risk l
1-4 associated with the specific Indian Point designs, and I 15 will get to that a little later.
16 (Next slide) e l'7 Now, in the process of setting this up one of the 18 first things that had to be done was to revieu the WASH 1400 19 models and other data that was available.
As you know, the 20 W ASH 1400 model used for calculating reactor risk was much 21 criticized and our staff vent back in and rebaselined it.
22 There is an appendix in the report that describes that.
Th e 23 rebaselining effort takes out the much maligned smoothing i
24 technique, sets up explicit sequences, refines and basically 25 brings the thine up to date.
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CHAIRMAN A'HEARNE And adds one for PUF, doesn't l
it?
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MR. BERNER0s It does both.
We did both, the 2 Surry, FWR and the Peach Bottom BWR.
3 CH AIRMAN AHEA RNEa And there is one particular 4 sequence that ---
5 MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
There is a sequence TC Gamma 6 that was added or modified in the treatment of the BRW.
7 The curves in Appendix B, and one of them is 8 repeated here as a slide, show what is really individual 9 risk before and af ter that baseline for the WASH 1400, PWR 10 and BWR.
11 I use this one curve here just to provide a 12 perspective.'
When you are speaking of someone, some 13 individual, not societal risk, the risk is inversely i
14 proportional to the distance from the plant.
Just note the 15 scale here.
As one gets out to several miles from the 16 plan t, the probability of suffering in this early fatality l'7 in an accident is dropping significant.
18 If you recall, the Commission not long ago adopted i
19 a planning policy of using 10 miles as the planning radius 20 for evacuation or public protective measures of that sort 21 and that 10-mile radius reflects this, this variation of 22 risk with distance.
23 There is another curve in the report for latent 24 cancer risk which goes out to a much larger radius.
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Now, if we look at the parametric analysis that 2 was done, the first thing we looked at was site var iation.
3 I wish to emphasize here that what we are trying to do is 4 vary one parameter at a time and hold the other two constant 5 so we can see the effect of that parameter and its 6 contribution to risk.
7 So the first thing we did here was to follow up on 8 a procedure that was used several years ago and reported of 9 moving a reactor safety study reactor from site to site to 10 see how the sites compared and what the different population 11 distributions do.
12 For our site variation here we took the Surry 13 reactor as our benchmark, boosted its power level to 30/25 14 megawatts thermal.
That happens to be the power rating of 15 Indian Point Three, the larger of the two units.
Z' m we 16 kept it constant.
So now for all of the site consideration,
l'7 that is, th a t same reactor moved hypothetically from site to 18 site, the same public protective measure assumptions were 19 used and we looked at four measures of riska early fatality 20 risk ; early injury, which is a dose rate of 50 Rem or more.
1 21 Early fatality is drawn, as the report indicates, at a dose 22 rate in excess of about 300 rem.
Then the latent cancer 23 f atalities are associated with total integra ted exposure 24 with a mean Rem calculation basically.
25 We also did a, property damage calculation which is ALDERSON REPORTING CCMPANY, INC.
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17 1-very directly related to the population distribution.
It is 2 the WASH 1400 model for property damaga.
3 CHAIRHAN AHEARNE:
I think you said in the report 4 it is proportional.
5 MR. BERNER0s Yes.
It is in essence proportional 6 to population and does not include subtleties such as what 7 would happen to the New York Port Authority.
It just 8 doesn't have a way to deal with that sort of thing.
9 The cites were selected, six sites for a 10 manageable number, and we deliberately chose four populous 11 sites.
One site we assert is roughly typical.
If you look 12 at-the population tables Palisades is somewhere in the 13 middle.
Then we chose Diablo Canyon as a representative 14 remote site.
15 (Next slide) 16 Now, I am going to go through the Figures I 17 ?,hrough IV.
18 This figure here, Figure I, is the plot, the CCDF, 19 Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function.
It is an 20 awful name for a thing.
Basically.it is plotting the 21 probability of of exceeding a certain level of probability.
22 COMMISSIONER HENDRIEa Exceeding a certain level 23 of possible acts.
24
- 53. BERNERO:
Oh, excuse me, I misspoke.
I prefer
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l 25 to call it a risk profile.
It is cut off at in this case l
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18 1 early fatalities, ten to the zero is one death as a 2 consequence at the lef t end, and on the right end of th e 3 curve, really the bottom of the curve as the curves move, it 4 is cut off at a probability of ten to the minus nine per 5 year.
6 I don't need to tell you the uncertainties in the 7 discussion of the absolute levels of predicting these 8 probabilities.
We are consciously trying here to avoid 9 reliance on absolute probability and use relative comparison 10 to the best advantage.
11 If you look at this risk of early fatality you can 12 see the three most populous sites, Indian Point, Zion and, 13 Limerick, are virtually the same curve.
Fermi is not far 14 behind.
Then the Palisades site, the typical site, falls in 15 the mid-range and the lower one, Diablo Canyon quite a bit 16 leve r.
17 Roughly the report discusses numerical ways to 18 compare the risk curves, but roughly one might say that the 19 risk of a populous site here is about ten times higher, a 20 magnitude higher than a typical site, and a remote site is 21 about a magnitude lower.
22 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE. 'You men tioned, Rob, and yoa 23 stress in the report the absolute numbers are probably 24 uncertain by at least one order of magnitude, and I think 25 you mentioned perhaps two.
So you are using the relative l
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19 1 probabilities.
What kind of uncertainty do you feel exists 2 in calculating the relative probability?
3 MR. BERNER0s That is hard to say.
We have had 4 some discussion of that.
As you notice in all these curvec 5 they are deswn with a nice pen, a sharp line with smoothing, 6 you know, French curving.
I suggested at one time that in 7 order to display the uncertainty more accurately that one 8 ought dip his thumb in the inkwell and draw the curve with 9 the thumb, and Bill Vesely said use your whole hand.
10 The answer I think really lies in this.
If you 11 look at the site comparison we are po stulating the same 12 reactor so we are in a way normalizing away the uncertainty 13 of whether or not we are accurate with that reactor in its 14 absolute prediction.
Now we are looking at what the site 15 contributes and the uncertainty is r eincipally associated 16 with our knowledge of the demography, our knowledge of the l'7 meterology, both of which are fairly good, and our 18 uncertainties associated with their treatment, that is, the 15 treatment demography and meterology in the calculation.
I 20 can' t give you a sharp figure, a quantitative figure for 21 i t.
I would welcome Roger a ttempting one.
j 22 MR. BLONDS We all have the same problem.
23 MR. BERNER0s It is not so broad, we do not 24 believe, it is not so broad in uncertainty that one cannot 25 compare over an ceder of magnitude range to refine in any of J \\/
ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC, 400 VIRGINIA AVE, S.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20024 (202) 554-2345 j
20 1 these curves trying to make a distinction j the overlap of 2 the three populous sites.
If you see some of the curves 3 overlap and shif t by a f actor of two or three these are 4 difficult to ascribe, you know.
A factor of two could be a 5 factor of six.
So dealing in orders of magnitude we believe 6 is reasonable.
7 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE To do the calculation you have 8 taken a variety of the possible accident sequences.
9 MR. BERNER0s Ch, yes, yes.
The model here 10 displays an integrated analysic of a whole host of specific 11 accident sequences and meterology combinations, and each one 12 of them has its own profilo.
The machine combines all these 13 profiles and presents the results i n a single display for 1-4 this single element of risk, early fatality.
15 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Now, what type of protective 16 action do you assume?
17 MR. BERNERC4 Well, in this particular case for 18 the site evaluation we assumed, as the footnotes of the 19 tables all say 20 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
But it doesn't show yet.
21 MR. BERNERO: --- that within ten miles, and this 22 was a so-called ten-mile evaculation, but there is an 23 important cavest with that -- that within the ten-mile 24 radius all t*te people are exposed to the entire passing 25 cloud followed by four hours of ground exposure in th e act ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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1 of getting out of the place.
Now, in the view of some that 2 sight be a very pessimistic assumption.
It says no one beat 3 the cloud.
On the other hand, ~it does not fall into any 4 optimistism of surressfully getting people out before the 5 cloud.
I will go into a little later some of the elements 6 of that choice, but for the sake of our comparison all of 7 our initial analyses were done on this conservative or 8 perhaps realistic basis not taking credit for outrunning the 9 cloud.
10 COMMISSIONER HENDRIEs I think it is a perfectly 11 reasonable basis for the purpose for which it is being used; 12 that is, to compare sities trying to normalize out of the 13 comparison every, thing except the specific site, conditions 14 of meterology and demography.
I don't know that I would 15 agree with you about the evacuation provisions, but that is 16 a separate discussion and one that needn't come here in the 17 site comparison.
18 F. R. BERNEPGs Well, actually yes, in the site 19 comparison, but later on'we did some further calculations 20 which are not in your report.
You will see some slides here 21 that we think give added insight to the sensitivity 22 associated uith' that assumption.
23 Just last week the Commission was discussing 24 emergency planning and warning times and minimum 25 notification times.
What if you did have successful ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY. INC.
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l' 22 t
l 1 diagnosis, successful and prompt warning and successful and 2 prompt evacuation if that were called for?
We will have 3 some information to shew you there of what might be gained 4 and what how the risk shifts with such success.
5 Obviously in the limit for early fatalities, if 6 everyone got out in a car and beat the cloud and got out of 7 town, it would disappear.
8 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I guess what I was trying to 9 get at is along with the concept of doing a relative 10 comparison I can understand treating it as an assumption all
'l the.same, but there probably are differences.
In fact, 12 there would be significant differences between the 13 feasibility of carrying out an evacuation in one region 14 versus that of another region.
15 MR. BERNERO:
Oh, yes.
I will talk about the 16 concept of warning time and what that means within an 17 accident sequence.
What we did was look for an exploration 18 of different warning times or advanced notices, different 19 evacuation rates as well as different radii and I think we 20 vill give you some sense of that sensitivity.
21 (Next slide) 22 Figure 2 shows the early in ju ries.
I showed you 23 previously the individual risk curve which indicates that 24 the risk of early fatality is principally found within the 25 first few niles.
Ien miles is' sort of an outer bound on ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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23 1 that.
When one gets to early illnesses, doses of 50 Rem or 2 more, there is a much longer range reach to it, and we are 3 speaking in terms of ranges of 50 miles, of that order.
4 Now, if you look at the profile here it reflects a 5 diff erent grouping.
The four populous sites now look much 6 the same.
They all have large cities near them and l'arge
- 7 suburban populations and ths typical site which is in 8 western Michigan and the remote site selected which is on 9 the middle coast of California begin to look more alike.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
You previously describe your 11 assumption for within ten miles.
Here now you are looking 12 at effects that extend beyond the ten miles.
What are the 13 protective action assumptions that you are using here?
14 MR. BERNERC That everyone who is'outside gets 15 the cloud exposure.
They get seven-day ground exposure with 16 shielding based on normal activity.
This is building 17 shielding and that sort of thing.
Then that after a week 18 those who are where the plume would have been are gone.
One 19 then in some orderly fashion removes those people.
They 20 don' t stay there looking at the ground activity.
So it is a 21 seven-day ground exposure.
It is an ex post f acto selective 22 evacution which is presumed.
23 (Next slide) 24 Now, if we look at the latent cancer risk, which
'E is Figure 3 in the report and this next slide, those are in
'.n ALDERSON REPCRTING COMPANY, INC.
24 1 essence all the same curve.
2 Really what it says is that the exposures 3 associated with the risk of latent cancer are the integrated 4 exposures out to ranges up to about 200 miles.
Unless one 5 selected a few unique cases out in the western desert a 6 200-mile radius of almost anywhere in the Continental U. S.
7 is going to give you a f'airly population and a somewhat 8 similar population count.
9 I would like to emphasize throughout the report 10 here we have presented the latent cancer risk in the form 11 that some people call the per-year /per-year.
By definition 12 the latent cancer is for deaths that would not occur 13 immediately after the accident but in a succeeding 14 generation in a period of the order of 30 years.
This is 15 the annual rate of death associated with that.
16 Tho=e who would amalgamate the risk of immediate 17 death and latent cancer death f requently speak of using some
~
18 sort of a combination f actor of perhaps counting the annual 19 rate of latent death with some multiplier and adding it to 20 the acute death or immediate death rate.
Ihat is why we 21 chose this.
I.t is a little easier to manipulate mentally.
22 (Next slide) 23 Now, the property damage risk is also a 24 f ar-reaching one.
It is a distance one.
It includes 25 interdiction and it includes clean-up, decontamination 2
ALDERSON REPORT!NG COMPANY, INC.
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25
,o.
r 1 costs.
Ignore any apparent subtle differences in curves.
I 2.sometimes say those are due to the effect of Monte Carlo, 2
3 Illinois, or Monte Carlo, New York, because the machine is 4 giving you a subtlety thdt probably isn ' t th ere.
5 I have remarked in the report that if anything, it 6 sight be that the teactor safety study model is optimistic 7 for property damage, that if you used interdiction criteria 8 and clean-up criteria of a much more strict variety such as i
1 9 are being talked about in decommissioning standards or 10 post-accident clean-up cases that the dol'lar cost would 11 probably be elevated.
Of course, there is the inflation.
12 These are 1974 dollars.
We didn 't bother to try to revise 13 with a f actor of about 1.5.
So that if anything, on those i
j =
14 two grounds these numbers are likely to be low.
15 COMMISSIONER GIIINSKY:
What sort of clean-ups are
]
16 you talking about?
17 MR. BERNERO:
Well, this is where the plume would f
18 go out.
If one goes in the reactor saf ety stud'y model the 19 plume goes out and deposits things like Cesium 137.
In 20 order to calculate both interdiction and decontamination 21 costs it has to assume e level of activity deposited on the 22 ground which is grounds for interdiction, in other words, to 23 send people away and then an acceptable level of clean-up, 24 what. residual radiation dose is tolerable af ter the clean-up 25 crew gets through and that raises the question of how is one l
ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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gg I cycle of clean-up and what is the decontamination f actor.
2 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY Is this Cesium you were 3 talking about?
4 MR. BERNERO:
Among other things, yes.
They are 5 the longer lived activities.
The iodides all go away by 6 themselves.
You don't have to clean them up.
7 COMMISSIONER GILINSKYa How large an area are you 8 talking about?
9 MR. BLONDS As reported in the safety study, it 10 was for interdiction up to hundreds of square miles and 11 decontanination thousands potentially in the worst possible 12 cases.
13 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Is this property damage as 1-4 listed here, is that money spent for clean-up or money spent 15 in disposing of certain wastes?
16 t' E. ELOND:
Money spent first to interdict areas.
1'7 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY What does interdict areas 18 mean ?
19 MR. BLOND 4 To keep people off and pay for their 20 lands or their f a-lities or whatever, plus =eney spent for 21 decontamination and going in and cleaning up areas where you 22 wocid have a chance of getting the contanination levels l
23 acce ptable, plus monies f or crops.
24 COMMISSIONER GILINSK?:
Wha t is talked about i
25 here ?
Is one vaccum cleaning the surface or what?
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MR. BLOND Anything from hosing to scraping and
(
2 physically removing the soil.
3 MR. BERNERO :
As has been done in accidental
(~
4 spills ranging from the Polomara in Spain to Rocky Flats and 5 places like that.
Rocky Flats is probably a better 6 exam ple.
An accidental release from a plant and the 7 decontamination of the adjacent territory.
Now, the Rocky 8 Flats release didn't go all that f ar.
9 COMMISSIONER GIIINSKY:
Now, when you talk about 10 hundreds of square miles where on that curve would you be?
11 Is that way. out at the end?
12 MR. ELOND:
Yes.
13 MR. BERNERO:
That would be at the low probability
(
1<4 en d.
15 MR. B LOND:
It is in the minus nine area.
16 MR..BERNER0s You see, as you get to the numbers l'7 th a t are below a billion dollars the curve coalesce and they 18 a re a t this much higher probability.
19 COMMISSIONER GILINSKYs What does the billion 20 dollars correspond to, basically cleaning up a site or what?
21 MR. BERNERO:
Oh, no.
No.
I tried to make the 22 poin t in the report.
Three Mile Island is a rather graphic 23 example.
In round numbers the Three Mile Island accident 24 cost in on-site damage of one to two billion dollars.
If 2.5 you speak of the clean-up costs of some hundreds of millic'ns j
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28
\\
l I and the replacement power cost as an analogue of i
l 2 interdiction you are speaking one to two billion dollars 3 cost on site.
But off-site costs, because the release was 4 so small and principally gaseous, the off-site costs of 5 interdiction as paying motel bills and people that had to 6 leave their homes, I don 't know what the current number is, 7 but it a few millions of dollars, maybe ten million dollars, 8 something like that.
So it would appear on a curve like 9 this somewhere way in that first bar in the first section.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
You did not include, did you, 11 the cost of replacing power?
12 MR. BERNERO:
Oh, no. No.
'J e ignored on-site 13 costs altogether.
(
14 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
All on-site costs.
15 MR. BERNER04 Yes.
In other words, there is-16 perhaps another curve that would be overlaid on this for l'7 reactor risk.
It is risk to the owner, economic damage to 18 the owner.
Similarly in the fatalities and latent cancers 19 the plant staff is not included.
This is the public public, 20 the off-sita public.
21 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let me ask you, after a 22 clean-up like this could people then come back in, or 23 presumably you clean it up to the point that it is reusable.
24 MR. BERNERO:
That it is reusable, yes.
25 COMMISSIONER GILINSKYa How long would a process ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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t,s-o I like this take?
2 MR. BERNER04 The paper that we distributed to the 3 Commissioners with this, there is a NUREG 0340, an overview 4 of the reactor safety study consequence model, which goes 5 into this to some extent, and then in the reactor safety 6 itself it is more extensive.
There are a lot of assumptions 7 in this of the time, successful clean-up and the criteria 8 f o r clean-up.
9 The point I am trying to flag is that it is laced 10 with optimism, in my view, with respect to the criteria and 11 the time.
Experience, if anything, teaches us that it takes 12 longer to do things, it is slower and it is stricter and so 13 forth.
(
14 COMMISSIONER GILINSKYs Roughly what are we 15 talking about?
16 MR. RERNERO:
I can't tell you how much more.
I'7 COMMISSIONER GILINKSKY Months, years, tens of 18 years?
19 MR. RLOND:
The assumptions were months, about 20 ninety days.
The assumptions that went into these curves is 21 that it would 90 days to clean up an area.
22 F. R. RERNERO:
That means marshaling forces to do 23 i t, and where do you get the people and recruit them and 24 make a program plan and decide who is going to pay them.
25 Now, in the case of the insurance industry, to ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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l 39 1 TMI, now mind you, the insurance company was paying motel 2 bills.
J'h e y were passing out flying twenties to people 3 right after the accident.
So for the inteudiction costs 4 there apparently an ability for a very goick response.
But 5 to get people together with fire hoses and wisk brooms and 6 shovels and barrels and plastic bags and Looties and all 7 that stuff, that is going to be a different story.
l 8
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
A re we talkin g about a 9 slight contamination of a 'large area?
10 MR. BERNER0s Oh, its a range.
11 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Obviously there is a rance.
12 MR. BERNERO:
The probability varies.
If you are 13 going to melt a core, the highest probability for some of 1-4 the reactors we know like ?'ARs is that you won't even have 15 to decontaminate of'f-site, like TMI.
You will have some 16 interdiction costs for the evacuation but that is it.
But l'7 then at the lower probability end of it this could be a very 18 large piece of real estate, a lot of buildings and a lot of 19 land.
Uell, these are astronomical sums.
These are very M high.
21 COMMISSONER GILINSKY:
Are these numbers that you 22 took out of the report or are these your numbers?
These were separate calculations 24 using the model in the reactor safety study.
25 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
'I see.
9 ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
4 31 1
MR. BERNER0s These were separate calculations 2 reflecting the population densities associated with these 3 sites using that model and using this particular reactor.
4 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
When you said you thought 5 that the estimates were optimistic, they remain optimistic?
6 MR. BERNERO:
Yes, yes.
I think the model is 7 inherently optimistic in tha t it will underestimate the cost 8 at this low probability end, the f ar-lower righ t of the 9 curve.
10 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY Than:t you.
11 (Next slide.)
12 MR. BERNERO:
I mentioned a previous work.
There 13 was a Sandia report that did something of this a couple of 1-4 years back, Jeremy Sprung's report, and that led to raising 15 a. question that you have heard about before, the question of 16 do Zion and Indian Point dominate societal risk.
1'7 I thought it would be useful to point cut that th e 18 very analysis we just did or showed you and which was done 19 bef ore about two or three years ago is the basis of an 20 equation that would suggest that Zion and Indian Point 21 dominate societal risk of commercial reactors.
The equation 22 goes like this.
It makes the analysis we just did, which in 23 ef f ect says that Surry at Indian Point or at Zion, mind you 24 the Surry reactor instead of the reactor is really there, is 25 ten times worse than Surry reactor is et a typical site.
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33 1
So with the limited knowledge, and I only know one 2 reactor design and I am going to move it around 3 hypothetically, I will see ten units of risk for each 4 reactor at Zion and ten units of risk for each reactor at 5 Indian Point for a sum of 20 for each site.
I will 6 arbitrarily say that all the other, and I picked 68 more 7 reactors, all the other reactors are typical sites with 8 typical reactors, Surry, and I get 68 units of risk.
I add 9 them up and I have just over a hundred units of risk, and u0 10 of them or 40 percent are at those two sites.
That equation 11 is based on the premise '. hat Surry is typical of all 12 designs.
As we will point out shortly, it is not.
So that 13 equation is wrong.
14 (Next slide.)
15 If we turn to the variation of design and 16 oper ation, and mind you sometimes just design is used, but 17 really we mean the design and operating characteristics of 18 the plant as used in a risk assessment where one considers 19 not only the ha rdware but how the operators must operate it 20 and where they can make their mistakes.
The human error can 21 contribute at least half to the risk of operating the 22 reactor.
But we use the shorthand term " design and 23 operation" which are designed to represent this.
24 Now what we did for this parametic evaluation was 25 we said let's hold the Indian Point site constant, let's ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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top-I hold that one public protective measure, ten-mile evacuation 2 and everyone sees the cloud constant, and now let us look at 3 different reactors all at the same power level.
We went 4 through our files.
In fact, this was where it was very 5 important to have the right people doing the work because 6 must of this is work in progress, it is in-site from 7 evaluating work in progress against previous work in the 8 reactor safety study on accident sequences and so forth.
9 So we did this work and had to do de novo work on 10 Indian Point before and after the winter.
11 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE.
You are talking around lawyers 12 n o w.
Careful.
13 (Laughter.)
14 MR. BERNER04 Bite my tongue.
I should never talk 15 like that.
16 (Laughter.)
17 MR. BERNER0s As you know, Surry and Peach Bottom, 18 of the five designs we list here, Surry and Peach Bottom 19 were examined in the reactor safety study and we rebaselined 20 those.
Sequoyah, which is a f our-loo p Westinghouse PWR with 21 an ice condenser, is being examined along with three other 22 plants in a reactor safety study methodology application 23 prog ram.
It is a follow-on of sorts to the reactor safety
.'4 s t u d y, and we had available to us some of the work on that.
25 In the report I mention some other work that we ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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34 1 considered.
The IRAP program has just done the first cycle 2 of Crystal River and we had that available to us.
We had 3 some knowledge of the other plants in the reactor safety 4 study methodology program, namely, Oconee, Calvert Cliffs 5 and a little bit of Grand Gulf.
6 So we chose these five and MAP got into Indian 7 Point and did k very close look at Indian Point tracking 8 down dominant accident sequences or potentially dominant 9 accident sequences and pulling them out one at a time and 10 feeding them into the model.
i 11 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Before and after Indian Point 12 ref erred to what?
13 MR. BERNERO:
This is the order cycle, the fixes, 14 to so speak, that Harold Denton ordered about, I forget the 15 date of the order.
It was like February 1st, give or take a 16 couple of weeks.
It was the cycle where he basically looked I'7 a t the plant and said on the short term do these 12 things, 18 or whatever the number was, and in the long term consider 19 vented filtered containment and a bunch of other things.
20 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Right.
So the after, though, 21 is it with vented filtered?
No, no. The after here is only those 23 things like ---
24 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE.
That he ordered.
25 MR. EERNERO:
Yes, the things that he ordered like i
ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
u.
4 35 1 certain inspections of the check potential and check valve 2 f ailure, assured availability of a gas turbine generator, 3 and that sort of thing.
4 So they are things either in place now or will be 5 in place now shortly.
We did not have the time to track 6 down are they in place.
7 CH AIRM AN AHEARNE:
The assumption is they are all 8 in place.
1 9
(Next slide.)
10 MR. BERNEROs Yes.
We presumed that the 11 short-term things were done.
We made not attempt to see 12 whether they are in today or will be tomorrow.
13 We will just look at the one curve here.
It is 1-4 Figure 7 of the report.
This is now the Indian Point site, 15 and curve No. 2 there is the same as the Indian Point site 16 curve of Figure 1,
you know, it is Surry.
Curve No. 2 is l'7 Surry a t Indian Poin t.
But now what we are looking at for 18 comparison, everything is at Indian Point ---
19 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
At 30/25?
20 MR. SERNERO:
Everything is at rhe same power 21 level and everything has the same assumption on public 22 protective measures.
So the only thing we are changing is 23 the risk characteristic of the design.
Curve Nc. 1 is the 24 Peach Bottom rebaseline.
Curve No. 3 is the Sequoyah ice 25 condenser.
Curve No. 4 is our assessment of Indian Point 1
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36 1 before the January-February fix, the short-term fix, and 2 Curve No. 5 is after the fix.
3 Now, subtle differences like that tail on the 4 Sequoyah ice condenser, that is a different containment 5 failure mode and we have got a couple of accident scenarios 6 that suggest that that is out there, but we are not sure 7 that is real.
8 The differences between curve 2 and curve 3 or 9 curve 1 and curve 2 or even for that matter the difference 10 between curve 4 and curve 5, Indian Point before and after 11 the fix, one has to be caref ul, those fixes are good.
They 12 work on known dominate accident contributors and they work 13 in a positive direction.
So we can say with assurance, with 14 confidence that it is better, but we can't be sure it is a 15 factor of three, which is what one would calculate.
It 16 could be a f actor of one and a half and it could be a f actor 17 of five and a half.
It is v.ot that rigorous that one can 18 assign great importance to that difference, a factor of 19 three, but it is definitely an improvement.
20 So looking at the range, the range is real.
The 21 typical reactor we can go back and say that Surry is the 22 typical reactor.
There is a comparison in the report that 23 calculates a numerical, the apparent numerical difference 24 between the risk of Surry and the risk of Indian Point after 25 the fix at Indian Point, and, as I recall, there were i
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l 37 1 numbers of the order of a factor of 50 or 60, but one can't 2 get that kind of sharp a dis tinction.
So really I would say 3 the analysis indicates that the reactor reliability appears 4 to be on an order of magnitude better for Indian Point af ter 5 the fix than the Surry, and, if you recall, the site 6 appeared to be about an order of magnitude worse.
So there 7 is an apparent cancelling here.
8 I want to emphasize here that the least certain of 9 our bases of knowledge is the design.
We have a very 10 limited library of designs we know and understand.
Two of 11 these designs, curve No. 1 and curve No. 2 up here, had 12 f airly exhaustive analysis in the reactor safety study.
13 Sequoyah had a little bit more paced analysis.
14 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
" Paste" analysis?
15 MR. PERNERO:
Well, a more deliberate, a well 16 paced, longer program.
17 CHAIRY.AN AHEARNE:
Oh, c-e-d?
18 MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
19 (Laughter) 20 MR. BERNERO:
P-a-c-e-d.
Then the Indian Point 21 bef ore and af ter was done in this very short time frame you 22 are f amiliar with.
We don't have a well established library 23 of risk profiles for all the designs, or even a very large 24 number of them.
That is one of the driving forces making us 3 want to do individual plant profiles.
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38 1
I would like to digress just for a moment to say 2 we do know now that it is not sufficient to do a 3EW Stone 3 and Webster plant, or a G. E. somebody else, Bechtel, 4 combination, or whatever.
They don't come out in nice 5 generic sets, would that it were so.
We find tha t th e 6 dominant accident sequences are frequently associated with 7 the interface requirements, the way they hooked up the 8 balance of the plant to the nuclear steam supply.
You go 9 into the auxiliary feedwater, the closed cycle cooling 10 water, the miscellaneous air system, or something like 11 that.
These apparently less important systems and the 12 non-standard systems are crucial and very important.
So 13 this forces us to say you virtually have to look at all the 14 designs.
You can't generically do th em.
15 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE.
Unless there were to be a 16 system whereby the whole plant was standard.
17 MR. BERNERO:
Ohm yes, but I am addressing the 18 existing population of reactors in this context.
19 CHAIR?.AN AHEARNE:
I thought I would get a plug 20 in.
That is all.
21 (Next slide.)
22 MR. SERNERO:
So now if we turn to the variation 23 of public protection, here our approach was to use the 24 benchmark reactor, Surry, put it at the Indian Point site, 25 and in the report we varied the public protection in that 1
e ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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39 1 constrained way I mentioned before.
Basically no one beats 2 the cloud.
We varied the sheltering or no sheltering.
We 3 had one variation where the people stood outdoors for 24 4 hours4.62963e-5 days <br />0.00111 hours <br />6.613757e-6 weeks <br />1.522e-6 months <br /> staring at the sky and then moved off.
Then we had 5 diff erent radii, 10, 25 and 50, but no one ever beat th e 6 cloud.
That was crucial.
7 We did some later analysis which we will cover 8 here and attempt to do graphically so that you can see it 9 for a sensitivity of what would be the effect of different 10 early warnings and diff erent evacuation rates where people 11 can beat the cloud which is achievable.
It doesn't require 12 bizarre assumptions.
13 (Next slide.)
14 Now, before we show those curves I would like to 15 show a little bar chart to b ring out a crucial point.
This 16 little bar chart, and it is not in the handout for those who l'7 d o n ' t ha ve i t.
For thase who have a handout you won 't find 18 a copy of it in it.
We made it up at the last minute.
It 19 is really needed 'to show a concept.
20 Inere are a host of dominant accident sequences 21 that all come together to constitute the risk of a reactor.
22 Each one' cf them has a characteristic initiating event and 23 sequence of f ailure or success that ultimately leads to a 24 release, and in tha t release there is a different 25 characteristic.
Some would be a puff release, very quickly l
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t 40 1 done, a high puff release because of high temperature, some 2 might be a low release and some might be a long release.
T 3 here are many variables in there.
4 All of the accidents, all of the events started at 5 time zero, a start of a sequence.
It is a LOCO or it is a 6 transient where'something went wrong.
All of the sequences 7 that started some TS, starting time, and if you think in 8 your mind of the Three Mile Island accident, that is the 4 9 a.m.
10 Now, whatever the sequence 1s, it proceeds to some 11 time of release shown here as a triangle with I
,T sub R
12 R.
That is when the release starts, and at that point 13 people are potentially or actually exposed to the 14 radiation.
Somewhere along in that sequence is a time of 15 diagnosis.
Somehwere along in that sequence the operator is 1C able to say, if he is alert and looking at the plant and I'7 understanding what is going on he is able to say, in this 18 sequence I am in deep trouble, I am melting the core, I am 19 going to have a release.
It is at that point tnat he is 20 able to begin a notification process.
21 Now, note, that time is not time zero.
It is not 22 4 a.m.
That time which is assigned the earliest credible 23 time for diagnosis is assigned in the safety analysis by a 24 person like Mat Taylor who looks at it and says on this 25 sequence I think if the fellow is reasonably alert he can ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY. INC.
400 VIRGIN!A AVE. S.W., WASHINGTON. D.C. 20024 (202)554-2345:
41
,o 1 tell now.
So on that sequence No. 1 up there, which is a 2 blackout kind of a sequence, three hours go by before ne 3 diagnosis and then one and a half hours before the release 4 he is able to warn.
But now any time consumed by the plant 5 staf f ruminating on what recommendation they would make 6 reaching state authorities or whoever they are going to a
7 reach and those authorities making up their mind and moving 8 people, they have to start counting that clock from the time 9 of diagnosis.
10 CHAIRMAN AHERANE:
Now, Bob, and let's just use 11 your upper example, the. decision time point, is that when 12 you choose, or whoever chooses, Mat or whoever chooses the 13 three hours, is tha t based upon the conclusion that at that 14 point the operator would have a high degree of certainty 15 that a release was going to occur?
16 MR. BERNERO:
Do you want to answer that, Mat?
1'7 MR. TAYLOE I think it is a high degree of 18 certainty that he has really lost the game.
He is going 19 into a damage core situation that a release is imminent, 20 th at his restoration efforts have not succeeded.
21 CHAIRMAN AHEAENE:
So that it does not then, for 22 example, have with it the concept that there woul; he any 23 earlier poin t a t which a decision would be reached that 24 there is a potential for a release to occur somewere 25 downstream?
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42 1
MR. BERNERO:
No, that is not ruled out.
2 CHAIRMAN AHERNE:
Well, but I think from Mat's 3 description that would have to be or could be sometime 4 earlier than TD.
5 MR. BERNERO:
Oh, yes, it could.
The sequence No.
6 2 is AG, a loss of collant accident greater chan six inches 7 followed by loss of containment heat remova].
He can 8 discover he has got a LOCA.
The crucial thing is is the 9 containment heat removal successfully working.
So he could 10 have decided as a precaution in those first 18 hours2.083333e-4 days <br />0.005 hours <br />2.97619e-5 weeks <br />6.849e-6 months <br /> shown 11 to do something.
Of course, in that particular sequence his 12 diagnosis time is six hours bef ore release time.
13 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
That relates I think somewhat 14 to some of the discussions we have been having over this 15 past last two weeks.
It relates to what kind of information 16 and at what stage do you transmit information to agencies 17 that are involved in protective action circumstances.
18 HR. BERNER0s And what decisions can be based or 19 will be based on those actions.
20 CHAIRMAN AHERANEs Yes.
21 MR. EERNERO:
Tha emergency planning thing just 22 hinges on this.
When one speaks of taking advantage of 23 warninc time this happens to be uppermost in mind.
24 MR. BERNERO:
Would you like to add something to 25 th a t, Roger?
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MR. BLOND:
The diagnosis time would correspond to 2 the - time at which a general emergency refuel would be 3 called.
So that is at that level and the action level when 4 you would initiate off-site protective measures and 5 recommend evacuation or shelter.
6 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Certainly.
7 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
But in both of these cases 8 you would have had a site emergency call before that.
In 9 one case you have got a blackout and you are struggling to 10 get something back on line, and in the other case you have 11 had a loss-of-coolant accident.
In both of those 12 circumstances there would have been notification off-site to 13 the emergency organization officials on sort of an alert 14 basis rather than any action basis.
15 COMMISSION GILINSKY How does this relate to the 16 THI experience where you had -- you were about to go into 17 i t, right?
Yes, I was about to mention it.
The 19 TMI emergency plan called for when radiation was in the 20 building at 7 a.m.,
give or take a few minutes, I forget the i
21 exact minutes, there was a little formula sheet that the man 22 filled out.
It takes the actual meteorology, the radiation 23 reading from the dome monitor in the reactor building and 24 plugs in whatever he has to plus in and he calculates the 25 off-site dose in Goldsboro and he got 10 3 per hour dose l-ALDERSON REPORTING CCMPANY, INC.
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44 1 rate which would say evacuate.
2 Now, simultaneously as soon as he discovered that 3 they notified the state and the state knew about it, but 4 they had people running out there to monitor it.
That does 5 rates - presumed reactor building leakage at the design basis 6 leakage rate which of course it wasn't doing.
As soon as 7 they had the monitoring, they said, well, gee, it is not 8 really coming out.
So they decided not to evacuate and 9 stood on standby, as you know, for a very long time after 10 that.
l 11 There are questions, and this is not anything that 12 we need, you know, for this topic here today.
But basically 13 in emergency preparedness and planning if you look at a 14 sequence like sequence 2 we have six hours to go.
Will 15 people ruminate and try to restore that cooling?
There are 16 some cooling coils that will turn that sequence around.
17 Will there be an attempt to say let's not evacuate, let's 18 try to restore cooling and wait for a couple of hours before 19 we e vacua te.
Those are the decisionmaking tradeoffs th a t 20 are very complex.
21 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What I was going to get at 22 is t ha t there was a general emergency announced ---
23 MR. BERNERC:
Oh, yes.
but yet it reflected 24 COMMISSIONER GIIINSKYs 25 merely readings, radiation readings or the kind of, thing you ALDERSCN REPORTING COMPANY. INC.
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45 1 were talking about but still didn't reflect an understanding 2 of the seriousness of the situation.
I am referring to some 3 days later.
4 HR. BERNERO:
Even our guidance today, in our 5 emergency plan, and in emergency plans in individual plants 6 it typically says things like if you have high radiation in 7 *ue building and corroboration of the problem by some other 8 measure or even two other measures then it is appropriate to 9 make emergency evacuation.
10 Now, they had radiation in the building.
They did 11 not have high pressure.
They had a couple psi, and they had 12 no significant radiation off site.
So that even today'our 13 emergency preparedness would tolerate that sort of 14 temporizing or waiting.
15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What is the right TD then ?
16 MR. BERNER0s I don't really know.
That is why we 17 had a hard time picking one for you.
We can have an expert 18 system analyst identify when a smart operator who 19 understands his plant can see perdition coming, but we don't 20 have the basis here, and certainly it could be explored and 21 developed methodically, a basis for precautionary decisions 22 and time limits and notification decisions.
You know, it is 23 no t outrageous to consider how to do it.
It can be done 24 with an orderly analysis, but we haven't d.one that.
It 25 would be a f airly major analysis pf all the families of ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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46 1 sequences and most of the combinations of plant situatiods 2 and notification structures and that sort of thing.
3 MR. BLONDS - The point should be made though that 4 that is very design specific.
As we are pointing out here, 5 the design would be critical in that determination of when 6 that TD would occur.
7 MR. BERNER0s 'You see, for any one plant you have 8 got a 5: hole set of these sequences.
Then when you turn to 9 the next plant you have got a whole different set.
10 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What I can't seem to fully 11 come to grics with here ir my own mind is TD wa's described 12 on the one hand as roughly the time when one calls a general 13 emergency.
At the same time you said that it is the time 14 when you feel you have lost control of things.
15 MR. BERNER0s It is really more what Mat said.
16 Roger is making a comparison.
It is not defined as general 17 emergency time.
In the case of a large LOCA I think you 18 vould have defined a general emergency within an hour.
So 19 there are some sequences where you will actually have the 20 general emergency proceed this thing.
What you are looking 21 for in that sequence No. 2 is when does the man know it is 22 no t like the book said where the plant is successfully 23 coping with the LOCA, but the plant is not successfully 24 coping with the LOCA.
That is the TD, the diagnosis time.
25 COMMIRSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, looking back on TMI ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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47 1 was there a TD?
2 MR. BERNERO:
I don't think there really was 3 because my interpretation of TMI, that opera tor who closed 4 the block valve was reactine to a symptom and never followed 5 up with a diagnosis of the circumstances.
Even late in the 6 day when the plant was repressurized and the reactor coolant 7 pump was started that was done more on general principles 8 than on the basis of having diagnosed precisely what had 9 happened.
I think TD at Three Mile Island was on March 30th.
10 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE4 Along about 8 o' clock in 11 the morning.
12 MR. BERNERO:
Well, maybe the nigh t before.
13 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE Some place between the 14 previous night and that morn'ing.
I 15 MR. BERNER0s It didn't exist because there was no 16 action with it.
The closest it ever came was 7 o' clock that l'7 morning where they went to the f ornula.
7 or 7:20 or 18 whatever it was, you know, right af t'er the general emergency 19 was declared, they started what amounted to a TC and never 20 finished it.
21 CHAIR?.AN AHEARNE:
Why don't you move on.
22 (Next slide.)
23 MR. BERNERO:
So now if we look with that in mind, 24 that ' relationship, let's repeat the curves of Figure 5 in 25 th e re por t.
This is the early f atality risk.
This is going
/
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43 1 to be tough for our min in the back because he has got to 2 overlay some curves here.
This is 1,n the report.
This is 3 the pair curves, mind'you, Indian Point site, Surry reactor, 4 same power level and the only thing varied is in cases one, 5 two and three the radius of evacuation, in case five 6 sheltering in lieu of evacuation and case four no evacuation 7 for a day.
8 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Sheltering during that day?
9 MR. BERNERO:
No, no.
Sheltering is -- what did 10 you use, Roger, one day?
11 MR. B10ND:
Yes.
12 MR. BERNERO:
Sheltering for a day and then
+
13 leaving.
That is a much belated evacuation.
As you can 14 see, the dif f erence with that pessimistic assumption of 15 everyone sees the cloud the difference is not substantial.
-16 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Wait, let me make sure I 17 understand.
You are saying that for the 10, 25 and 50-mile 18 evacuation, which is where everybody sees the cloud and then 19 evacuates?
20 XR. BERNERO:
Yes, and they get a medicum of 21 ground exposure in the prccess of leaving af ter they see the 22 cloud.
23 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Rut they do see the cloud and 24 th ey e vacuate?
25 MR. BERNERO:
Yes.
l l
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CHAIRMAN AHEARNEs The sheltering is the cloud 2 passes over where they are.
Another way of looking at that 3 af ter the cloud goes through the region the sheltering isn't 4 helping that much?
5 MR. ELOND:
The ground sheltering would be what 6 the deduction would be.
7 MR. BERNER0s It suggests that sheltering is as 8 effective as belated evacuation and we should be honest to 9 point out that it is a stacked deck, that the different 10 radii, 10 miles, 25 miles and 50 miles, are not really 11 variables when you come right down to it because early 12 f atality risk is concentrated in the first few miles.
It is 13 th e injuries and latents that go out to those greater 14 distances.
So that is really not a fair comparison.
We 15 weren 't happy with that.
It is really not that informative.
16 What we tried to do is look at emergency response l'7 ith different delays.
We have two curves.
Now, in the one 18 case you see here -- f or those people with handouts these 19 curves just appear in sequential order -- if you look at the 20 upper one that is almost congruent with the original curves
~
21 is one in which f rom time of diagnosis it took you five 22 hours2.546296e-4 days <br />0.00611 hours <br />3.637566e-5 weeks <br />8.371e-6 months <br /> to decide to evacuate, to notify people and to get the 23 people moving.
Five hours after the time of diagnosis all 24 th e people moved out in even radial directions at a rate of 2510 miles an hour.
That is a fairly effective evacuation ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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4 50 1 speed.
2 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
This is still rhough for a 3 variety of accidents?
4 MR. BERNERO:
It probabilistically treats all of 5 those.
6 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
So for some of them it is 7 before the release and others af ter?
8 MR. BERNERO:
Yes, for some of them yoit beat the 9 cloud and for others you don 't, but the risk profile 10 indicates that such a belated evacuation is not effective.
11 You haven't really gained anything.
You haven't really beat 12 the cloud.
13 The lower of those two curves represents the 14 assumption that within one hour of diagnosis you have the 15 people moving at 10 miles an hour. So you see you can reduce 16 substantially.
I'7 Now, we also looked at a one-mile-an-hour 18 evacuation with a cne hour advance notice and you are right 19 back up in the f amily of curves.
20 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
You are moving radially--
21 MR. SERNERO:
Away.
22 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
--- on your evacuation.
- 'h a t a
23 is the assumption on the cloud?
24 MR. B10ND:
The cloud is also moving radially.
25 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Normally?
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MR. BLONDS Yes.
It is a straight line radially 2
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
So that you don 't then have 3 some large number of degrees that the people aren't even 4 aff ected.
It is essentially one dimension?
5 MR. BLONDS Well, it has got a small spread.
6 MR. BERNERO:
It has a spread.
Then it is 7 statistically banged in every direction according to the 8 meteorology.
9 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I guess what I was trying to 10 get at is that as the cloud goes out and you are evacuating, 11 you are evacuating with knowledge ahead of the cloud then?
12 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
No.
13 MR. BERNER0s Not necessarily.
On a quick release 14 with certain meterology they could be overtaken by the 15 rioud, although in general with a 'f ast enough wind speed to 16 overtake a 10 -mile-a n-h our e vacua tion ---
17 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Well, I am not sure whether 18 analytically it would make any diff erence.
Your plant is 19 h e re.
20 MR. BERNER0s Yes.
21 CHAIR AN AHEARNE:
The cloud goes out in some 22 plume direction to start with.
Now you are going through 23 your evacuation.
Let's say your one hour.
Do you evacuate i
24 th e people on the other side of the cloud in the plume l
25 direction 180 degrees away ?
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MR. BLONPs Yes, b;t they are not in the problem 2 of that cloud.
3 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Well, then the wind shifts.
4 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
You do a whole batch of 5 cases.
In each case where you are doing the evacuation as 6 they describe, after one hour, or after TD, why people start 7 to move out at 10 miles per hour.
The difference between 8 the assorted cases that are done are the different 9 meteorological sequences that are followed.
Each one has 10 some result.
What we see here is the sum of all of those.
11 MR. BLOND:
But each direction is treated 12 independently.
13 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
All right.
14 MR. BLOND:
So when we start in one direction and 15 then we let out to start in another direction and see what 16 impact that would have.
l'7 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY So what you have here is a 18 composite ?
19 "R.
BLOND:
That is right.
20 t* R. SERNERO:
What we felt is that this gives you 21 a sense of the improvement in reduction in early fatality 22 risk that is achievable with orderly evacuation, with prompt 23 notification and an orderly, well paced, p-a-c-e-d, 24 evacuation away from the site.
25 (Overlay slide.)
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53 1
Now, I would_like to use this family of curves 2 here to overlay the other parameter consideration to give 3 you the sensitivity.
4 If we look at these heavy lines that overlay next, 5 this is the spread of difference we saw on the site 6 appraisal.
The Surry reactor at the Indian Point site is 7 the upper solid line that goes right into that family of 8 public protection curves we have there.
The lower one, the 9 Diablo Canyon site with the Surry reaction is roughly two 10 orders of magnitude in risk lower.
11 (Next overlay) l 12 If we add the next one, the design spread, these 13 are dashed lines and they represent the previous curve, I 14 forget the number of it, that we showed you in the report 15 for the range of designs all at the Indian Point site, and 16 you can see the spread there.
I emphasize again, that is 17 the one where we don 't really know what the popula tion is.
18 We have a limited number of cases, a limited number of 19 samples in that population.
The site, of course, we know l
20 all the sites f airly well.
l 21 (Next overlay) 22 Then we have one last one.
In the report there is 23 a discussion of power reduction.
An honest characterization 24 o f i t, I would have to admit, is there is a great deal of 25 arm wavin; in it and previous few numbers, if any.
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CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Yes, I noticed.
2 Laughter.)
3 MR. BERNER0s It is difficult to do that analysis 4 because, among other things, we do have a calculation, we 5 did, f or given fission product inventory due to fuel burnout 6 and a given power level due to steady state power operation 7 for at least a month.
We can tell you what the fission 8 product reduction is, and that element of the risk we can be 9 quite rigorous on, but it is very difficult to say how much 10 saf er is a reactor that has 50 percent less decay heat to 11 cope with, that has that much more sensible heat to absorb 12 before it bursts '.he clading or melts the core.
13 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Now, the way your report is
- 14 written ene could conclude that you are saying it is 15 directly proportional.
16 MR. BERNERO:
Well, basically what we assert in l'7 the report is as an approximation about the best we think we 18 can say is that from a fission product inventory point of 19 view risk is not reduced in proportion to power reduction 20 because of the long-lived fission products, but we think 21 that from the standpoint of plant invulnerability or greater 22 capability to absorb damage ---
23 COMMISSIONER HENDFIE:
Resistance to severe damage.
24 MR. RERNERO:
Yes, th a t you get more than a 25 proportional reduction, and we assert that it about cancels ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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55 1 out.
What we did here is if you look at the two curves that 2 are just done with circles to separate them, so you can see 3 them visually, we said if the upper one with circles is 4 Surry at Indian Point at 100 percent power, what would the 5 risk profile be at half that risk?
And there is it, the 6 lover.
The whole point of it is a 50 percent power, a 50 7 percent risk assumption is f airly trivial variation in this 8 band of variability.
That is the real point we are trying 9 to make, that to chase a subtlety of whether the reduced 10 decay heat has a 1.2 multiplier on risk ' reduction where the 11 reduced fission products is a
.8 reduction is a rather 12 trivial exercise.
We just don't see that'as a worthwhile 13 pursuit.
14 We have no analysis to support the former.
We 15 have no such analysis.
That would be very subjective 16 analsis, too.
It involves recalculation of a whole bunch of 1'7 a c c i d e n t scenarios and a lot of assertions abect how do 18 operators operate plants that are coasting at 50 percent 19 power or 50 percent power.
Are they more likely to be 20 negligent or making errors or, you know, is it off normal 21 operation.
You know, these plants are usually base loaded 22 and the guys are trained for that.
It is questions like 23 that that really are very subjective in their resolution.
1 24 So we just show this in order to get the 25 perspective of where would a 50 percent reduction in power h6 ALDERSON REPORTING COMPA'NY. INC.
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56 1 and commensurate reduction in risk fall in this band of 2 variation 3
(Next slide.)
4 So if we look, to sum up our analysis, we have 5 some insights that we offer.
It appears that the Indian 6 Point site is worse than a typical site, and as I said 7 earlier, it appears to be worse by about a magnitude.
The 8 Indian Point reactor appears to be better than a typical 9 site by about the same amount.
We would conclude from our 10 analysis that the Indian Point site or reactors are not the 11 dominant societal r,.3k.
That equation I spoke of before 12 doesn't hold.
Now, this is for Indian Point.
We don't.,
13 speak to Zion.
We didn't analyze Zion at all.
14 I add that last one, the design and operation part 15 of the balance is the least certain and the most significant 16 variable.
It is at least as big a spread as site or l'7 emergency preparedness, and it is the one we know least 18 a b ou t.
19 So that concludes my presentation.
20 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE Well, the one you know 21 least about in terms of the~ limited time tha t you have had 22 to work on this study.
23 MR. SERNERO:
Well, I would sa'y that in the amount 24 of analysis available to all of us, you know, the limited 25 number of cases that have been analyzed.
Now that situation ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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57 l
1 is changing drastically as you know with the greatly 2 increased interest in doing risk assessments of this sort.
3 The industry is off doing them.
We are off doing them.
The 4 level of knowledge is growing by leaps and bounds on that.
5 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I had a couple of questions if 6 I could.
Just to make sure I understood on one of the 7 previous points you were making, Bob, about the balancing of 8 the fission product inventory and power, in the re port you 9 have the statement in general "The risk a reactor poses is 10 proportional to its power level."
That should be viewed in 11 the context of the way you described it thau that is an 12 approximate statement given this analytic intuitive 13 balancing of those two f acets.
14 MR. BERNEEOs Yes.
In general the risk is due to 15 the fission products, of course, and about half of the risk 16 comes out of the short-lived iodines.
The longest half life 17 of interest is eight days.
So the iodine level, the iodine 18 activity level tracks power level fairly closely.
So it 19 will go up and down in its consequent risk, after an 20 accident it will go up and down, in proportion to what the 21 power level was for the last 30 days or so.
22 The other half of the risk is those is those 23 long -lived things which are on balance proportional to fuel 24 bur n-u p.
So that aven if you operate Indian Point at 50 25 percent' power, unless you said only burn up the fuel half ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
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58 I vay, you wouldn't yield that other half of risk reduction.
2 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE Now, another point I think is 3 in your part.
You had just finished mentioning in your 4 conclusion that the design operation is the most significant 5 variable.
In the report there is a statement "We found no 6 risk significant differences between the Indian Point 2 and 7 3 designs."
Now, you just finished saying that the design 8 and operation is the most significant item, but nevertheless 9 you are saying your review of the two designs.
Do you feel 10 it was a sufficiently detailed enough of a review?
11 MR. BERNEB01 Well, I think 5at is the best 12 qualified to answer that.
13 MR. TAYLOR:
Again, I do want to point out this 14 was a limited scoping study.
We did a look at the designs 15 in the context of all of the dominant scenarios that we have 16 seen across a number of designs that could dominate the risk 17 of that design.
We saw no meaningful difference between the 18 two Indian Point 2 or Indian Point 3 designs in the terms of 19 those dominant risk scenarios.
20 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
What kind of access to 21 information did you have on the differences between the two 22 designs?
23 HR. TAYLOR:
Largely this was what was on the 24 licensing record, the safety analysis report and the final 25 design information that was on the record.
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ER. BERNER0s Mr. Chairsan, I would just like to 2 add that I hold quite a bit of confidence in that statement 3 because Mat Taylor knows what to look for.
It is not a 4 matter of relying on some exhaustive search to find items of 5 difference and then see if they are important.
It is, on 6 the other hand, going af ter what is potentia 11'y important 7 and seeing if they are' dif f erent.
It is a much more 8 efficient process.
9 CHAIRMAN AHEARNEs I guess just reaffirm the 10 earlier point you also say that "No quantitative analyses 11 were p' rformed to access the degree of risk reduction that e
12 can be achieved by reduction of the operating power level."
13 MR. BERNER04 No complete analysis.
We did a 1<4 pa rt, but it was like half.
I't was the fission product 15 inventory half of it.
It would give you a f alsely 16 pessimistic picture.
It would tell you falsely that it I'7 doesn't achieve any or it achieves a progressively less 18 proportional benefit.
19 CHAIRMAN AHEARNEs Vic?
20 03MMI55IONER GILINSKYs No.
21 COMMISSONER KENNEDYs No.
22 CHAIR 7.AN AHEARNEs Joe?
23 COMMISSIONER HENDRIEs I don't have any questions i
24 a t this time.-
It is certainly a subject for very careful 25 consideration.' The briefing here this afternoon has I think k
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60 1 been very good and hits squarely on the sorts of points that 2 I would have wanted to exercise.
I feel amply supplied with 3 inf ormation a t the moment.
The intake hoppers are full and 4 we will, at this and of the table anyway, I will have to sit 5 and think a while.
There may be questions down the line in 6 further discussions that would help me understand the 7 points.
I as well nigh as informed as I can stand at the 8 moment.
9 (Laughter.)
10 MR. BERNER0s I will turn off the word hose.
11 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Peter?
l 12 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Bob, just one question.
13 If I have got it correctly, it is sort of a rough conclusion 14 f rom your last slide that the site is worse and the reactor 15 is better.
Now, the reactor as you put it on the last slide 16 was in the singular.
What difference does it make if there 17 vere in f act two reactors?
18 NR. 3ERNERO:
We don't have a basis to say that a 19 two-plant site has "X" f actor greater risk than a one-plant 20 site per reactor.
There is some risk asscciated with an
- 21. accident in one reactor affecting or perhaps even causing an 22 accident in another reactor.
23 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
For purposes of your 24 calculations do you take the risk, whatever number it comes 25 as, f or one plant on that site?
e e
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MR. BERNER0s Yes.
The model is really treating a 2 reactor as if it were alone on a si t e.
It doesn't reflect 3 any adjustment for the presence of an adjacent reactor.
4 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD.
But then for purposes of 5 this site do you have to multiply by two?
6 ER. BERNER0s Well, for any two-plant site we 7 would say the sum of tne two plants' risk is the risk posed 8 by the site.
Millstone has three different reactors on it, 9 and if one would do a rigorous summation summation of risk 10 at that site you would take the boiling-water reactor, I 11 think the unit two is a CE, pressurized water, and just add 12 them up.
There are three different risk curves.
13 COH51SSION ER BR ADFORD:
But does your conclusion 14 that the inadequacies of the site and the extra levels of 15 safety in the design more or less off set each other, is that 16 really worked on the basis of one plant as against the site 17 or is that worked on the basis of those both together?
18 MR. BERNER0s The factor of two associated with 19 two plants a t that one site is lost in the comparison when I 20 a m rounding off to the nearest decade.
As I mentioned, I 21 think, if you look at the actual tables, the expected value 22 tables, you can set up an apparently more rigorous 23 comparison where you take the site comparison and the design 24 comparison, and in both cases you multiply by two.
You 25 could do a little manipulation there.
Peally what I am ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC, 400 VIRGINIA AVE. S.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20024 (202)554 2345
62
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1 saying is that that site is about ten times worse than a 2 typical site, and I would ignore a difference of one or two 3 reactors on it.
You know, I am normalizing to look at one 4 reactor.
I am not going to that subtlety.
5 As I recall actually the rigorous comparison there 6 was about a factor of two difference between increment on 7 design risk and the increment on site risk, but the 8 uncertaint7 mushes that over completely.
9 CHAIRhAN AHEARNE:
Ed, are we back to you?
10 MR. HANRAHAN:
That is all we have this afternoon.
11 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Glen?
12 MR. BICKWII:
No.
13 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
All right.
The Commission will 14 have to then, having received the task force report, as I 15 mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, take into 16 consideration the other information that has been provided I'7 us and reach a decision on this segment.
18 I think that' Glen and Ed and Bob and you did a 19 good job in a rapid time in pulling together the information 20 th a t we asked you to.
It will enable us I think to move 21 forward on this very difficult subject.
Thank you.
22 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Thank you very much.
An 23 excellent briefing.
24 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
The Commicsion will take a five 25 minute break before moving to the hydrogen issue.
(Whereupon, at 3:25 p.m.,
the public meeting adjourned.)
ALDERSON REPORTING COMPANY, INC.
400 VIRGINIA AVE. S.W.. WASHINGTON, D.C. 20024 1202)554 2345
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