ML20028D866
| ML20028D866 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Perry  |
| Issue date: | 01/12/1983 |
| From: | Youngblood B Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | Houston W, Knight J, Speis T Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8301200036 | |
| Download: ML20028D866 (2) | |
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JAN 121983 MRushbrook JStefano Docket tios.: 50-440 and 50-441 ME!10RAHDUM FOR:
T. P. Speis, Assistant Director. for Reactor Safety, OSI W. R. Houston, Assistant Director for Radiation Protection, DSI J. P. Knight, Assistant Director for Components and Structures Engineering. DE FROH:
B. J. Youngblood, Chief, Licensing Branch Ho.1, DL THRU:
Thomas M. Novak, Assistant Director for Licensing, OL
SUBJECT:
PERRY LICENSING BOARD'S ORDER DIRECTING STAFF TO RESPOND TO OCRE'S INTERROGATORIES AND E0ARD QUESTIONS OH ISSUE #8 (HYDROGEN CONTROL)
In a Memorandum and Order dated December 23, 1962 (copy enclosed), the Licensing Board in the Perry OL-proceeding directed the staff to respond to: (1) OCRE's 6th Set of Interrogatories to staff dated September 13,1982; and (2) five Board ouestions at page 8 of the Order.
Although the staff had earlier prepared draft answers to many of OCRE's interrogatories, those answers should be reviewed and updated as necessary in light of the Board's Order, and ir light of the Applicant's answers to OCRE's interrogatories on Issue #8 (see the Board Order at page 9).
It should be under-stood that staff persons are not required to perform studies or nake calculations in providing responses, but to only provide information that already exists.
A meeting was convened on January 4,1933 by the project manager (J. Stefano) with those staf f persons from RSB, CSB, SEB and AEB who had provided earlier draft responses to the OCRE interrogatories. The five Board questions were also dis-cussed. Copies of the Board Order and the Applicant's responses to DCRE inter-rogatories on Issue #8 were provided to the staff at the meeting. In discussing the draft responses, guidance was provided by the Perry Attorney (Mack Cutchin) as to the scope and focus of the expected staff responses.
It had been understood by the project manager that AEB would be preparing responses to the Board's cuestions; however, in subsequent conversations with the AEB staff, the project manager was advised that CSB and RSB should be addressing the Board's questions since they relate to responses being prepared in response to OCRE's interrogatories and because the Board's nuestions relate to work that was perforned l
by CSB and RSB for THI-2. We are comitted to provide the Perry Attorney your l
approved staff responses to the OCRE and the Board questions (with the required I
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~ JAN 121993 staff affidavits) not later than COB, Tuesday, February 1,1983. Based on this comitment, OELD has advised the Board that it will receive our responses by February 4,1983. It is therefore requested that the project manager.be advised which organization will he responding to the Board's questions.
As a means of ensuring that we can meet our comitments to OELD (and ultimately the Board), it is urged that draf ts of staff responses be made available for consultation with the project manager and the Perry Attorney by January 21, 1983.
Your continued support of the Perry project will be nost appreciated and your immediate attention to this request is-urged.
i B. J. Youngblood, Chief Licensing Branch No.1 Division of Licensing
Enclosure:
As stated cc w/ encl.:
D. Eisenhut R. Mattson R. Vollaer E. Ct r.stenbury W. Butler J. Hulman B. Sheron F. Schauer J. Gray J. Cutchin, IV PV 4K/O
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. UNITED SThTES OF /WERICA
- NUCLEARf REGUL ATORY: CC:G1SSION ATOMkC SAFETY AND LICEN. SING ~ BOARD..._
Before Administrative ' Judges:
J Peter B. Bloch, Chairman
- Dr.- Jerry R.,Kline-
.Mr.LGlenn O. Bright In the" Matter of -
Docket Nos. 50-440-OL-50-441-OL' C L EVE L AND ' EL ECTR I C.-[I t LUMI NAT I NG 2 COMPANY,-etLal.
(Perry Nuclear Power. Plant, Units 1 F. 2)
December 23, 1982 MEMORANDUM AND ORDER (Concerning. Discovery From Staff on. Hydrogen Issue)1 Chio Citizens for Responsible ' Energy (OCRE) ha:;: requested that,; t)e j,
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a staff of :the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (staff) answer ' a set of inter-rogatories all.egedly relevant to Issue #8, the hydrogen contention.
The mo-tien was filed en November 30; 1982:and Staff's Answer was filed en December 20, 1982.
On December 13, 1982, we. denied the staff's request to reconsider the admission of Issue #8.
We denied the request on both procedtiral and -sub-
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" stantive grounds.
That decision is now a part of the law of the case.
The admitted contention states:
Applicant has not demonstrated that the manual operation of two recombiners in each of the Perry units is adequate to assure that l arge amounts of' hydrogen can be safely accommod ated without 'a rupture of the containment and a release of substantial quantities of radioac,tivity into the environment.
Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, et al. (Perry Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2), ALAB-675,15 NRC 1105 (1982) at 1110.
At the time we admit-
. ted the contention, we found that " Sunflower has suggested several mecha-v nisms [of hydrogen release], any one of which would do."
Id. at 1114.
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Hydrogen Interrogat ories:2 e
cc menting on cur decision, 'in the ccurse of its denial of its cwn jurisdic-tion, the Appeal Ecard suggested that:
[T]he [ Licensing] Board has chosen to explore the matter of hydrogen control rather than hydrogen generation.
In so doing, it~
has assumed the existence of a credible accident.
While we express no judgment on the propriety of such an assumption, we point out that this is 'not the same as' disregarding the TMI-Restart requirement of a credible LOCA scenario.
As noted, the Board did not specify the particular type of
" credible" accident it has assumed.
Different types of accidents, however, result in different rates and quantities of hydrogen genera-tion.
A given hydrogen generating mechanism thus has obvious rele-vance to the efficacy. of a hydrogen control system.
[ Emphasis in original.]
Id. at 1114.
In so many words, the Appeal Board already has suggested.its answer to the staff arguments before us.
The Appeal Board has found that "a given hydrogen generating mechanism has relevance to the efficacy of a hydrogen control system."
Hence, interrogatories designed to obtain infor", *
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.n mation about hydrogen generation are relevant to the admitted contention'. -
Since ~the staff has substantial expertise in this area plus a responsibility to the public to assure public safety, its response to relevant' hydrogen generaticn interrogatories also is necessary.
It must respond.
10 CFR 2.720(h)(2)(ii) and @2.744.
(With respect to documents, the staff asserts that all relevant documents are in the public document room.
Consequently,
' unless staff dis, covers additional documents in the course of responding.to interrogatories, there do not appear to be any documents to discover.)
We note that staff has not cited any precedent that defines "neces-l sary" in the procedural regulations.
We know of no such precedent.
- Hence, this is a matter of first impression.
c He reject staff's attempt to define "necessary" to prohibit OCRE from obtaining information that' it " suspects" or believes may be helpful to it.
ERE may not be required to know what the st af f 's views are before it
'cht ains them.
To erect that requirement would make a mockery of the discovery process.
Compare our Memorandum and Order of December 8, 1982,-
l denying Sunflower's motion for discovery concerning ouality assurance.
=
. Hydrogen interrogatories'3
,e consider the staff's-views cn hydrogen control to be so ir..portant that it must discl_ose these viewsI fully and completely, in response to a fair interpretation of these_ interrogatories.
We need not-decide the
. meaning of '"necessary" in_ another contexts The ~ staff has dorje extensive
'elease area and its views about 'this subject are work in the hydrogen r
"necessary" to.a complete record in this scontext.
That is the normal and accepted use ~ of the term "necessary" and no more _ appropriate definition.has been suggested to us.
We urge staff', in the interest of f airness and efficiency, to make
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its responses to 0CRE's interrogatories completeg in light of the fact that.
OCRC'S questions were phrased by a non-lawyer, albeit a clever one.
Under the circumstances, simple responses should-be accompanied by a statement of reasons that responds to OCRE's intent as well as to its specific woFds.
For example, OCRE asks about' a "TMI-type accident".
The phrase obviously i{ :
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vague.
One meaning that one could attach to the phrase is a loss of coolint -
accident acccmpanied by one or more operator errors.
On the other hand, one y
r.ight interpret the phrase to apply only to ' a LOCA in a pressurized water reactor accompanied by instrumentation problems, a f ailure of the PORV, a f ailure to close the manual block valve and a manual shut-off of the high pressure injection system.
We believe that the staff should respond to the first 'o,f these possible meanirtgs, as that. meaning is sympathetic to OCRE's intent and to its limited litigation experience.
This proceeding is not a game.
Its purpose is to provide OCRE and the public answers to DCRE's questions about the safety of the Perry plant.
Particularly when the intervenors have demonstrated their sense of responsi-bility by cropping contentions after adequate information is supplied to it, as OCRE and Sunflower have done in this proceeding, staff evasiveness in esponding to interrogatories. is destructive of public confidence.
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OCRE'S QUESTIONS i
In this section of our memorandum, we will discuss each of OCRE's 1
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Hydrocen Ir.terrogatories:4
- cestions, as they have been 'grcuped by OCRE. - Motion at 4-8.
ke will 'do cur best to rule on the relevance of each of_ the: interrogatories even though the staff has not both'e' red to reach that level of detail because of its firm
- view that none of the interrogatories is proper.
A. Interrogatorie's 6-1, 6-2 and 6-25 Each of these questions should be' answered pursuant to the provi-sions of 10 CFR 2.740b(b).
Staff has a,dmitted the relevance of 6-1.
Interrogatory 6-2 requests information on hydrogen generation without re-spect to. its connection to a TMI-2 accident.
The relevance of 6-2, which inquires abou't worst-case hydrogen gen-eration, is more difficult to decide.
A possible interpretation of the Ap-peal Board's non-binding directions to us is that we are adjudicating con-trol of hydrogen and are looking to hydrogen generation only as an indica-tion of how much and how rapidly hydrogen would be generated.
Another pos
. 7 7..- s.:
sible in'terpretation of the Appeal Soard's non-binding directions to us*is -
that we must limit ou'r concerns to specific credible scenarios of a TMI-2 C
t;. : e.
Since we have not yet decided which of these views to take, the staff shculd answer this interrogatory both generally, without respect to the method of hydrogen generation, and then in a raare limited fashion, answering solely with. respect to a small-break loss of coolant accident accompanied by one or more operator errors.
We expect, Decause the Commission is consider-1lg,i" gpromulgating a hydrogen rule for Mark III containments, that staff's re-spense either will supply a basis for believing that hydrogen generation would exceed 10 CFR 50.44 standards or that it would provide us with a dis-cussion of the basis for the Connission's proposed rule on this subject and the staff's reason for concluding that hydrogen generation would not exceeo the existing standard under %50.44.
I 6-25 may be unnecessarily complex.
Staff may answer this interroga-
't' cry by referring to its answer to 6-2 and by explaining generally why the listed scenarios are either of concern or not of concern.
For those scenare ios that are of concern, of course, staff should answer more completely.
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Hydrogen interrogatories: 5 B. Interrogatories 6-3.and 6-4 Interrogatory 6-3. is rel ev ant..
- However, 6-4 was withdrawn by
-letter of December 14,.1982.
C. Interrogatories 6-5, 6-12, 6-13,6-26 and 6-30 These questions deal with the strength of the Perry containment.and appear to be irrelevant to the admitted. contention.
This conclusion is
' based on the Board's belief that neither applicant nor staff will rely on the strength of the containment as a line of defsnse against a hydrogen ex-
.plosion.
If' either of the parties will rely on this line of defense, then i:E. "-
we request prompt notification.
If we receive notification, these questioks
'a must be answered.
Otherwise, they need not.
. p.f.:.
D. Interrogatories 6-6, 6-7 and 6-10 These questions are relevant only to the extent that they ' inquire 9
into the adequacy of the distributed-igniter hydrogen control system cur-rently planned for Perry.
So interpreted, these interrogatories shoulo be answered.
E. Interrogatories 6-8, 6-14, 6-15, 6-32 and 6-34 Interrogatory 6-8 was withdrawn by letter of December 14, 1982.
Although the other questions apparently were developed with recombiners in mind, staff should do its best to reinterpret these questions as applicable to the current system, including the distributed-igniter system that is planned.
Witif this modified understanding, 6-14, 6-15, 6-32 and 6-34 should.
be answered.
U F. Interrogatories 6-9 and 6-11 Interrogatory 6-9 requests the status of the proposed hydrogen rule 4
Hydrocen Interrogatories:6-f or ". ark 111 ccnt ainments.
This is a simple procedural requbst that cug'ht to be accomodated so that. OCRE will kncw whether impending -legal changes affect its pending contention.
Interrogatory 6-11 requests a list of on-
. going research en hydrogen generation and interim findings, if.any.
Given the staff's extensive. involvement in the hydrogen generation quest i on.,
access to a list of 'its research and of interim findings are necessary for OCRE to be fully informed about essential facts and opinions bearing on its contention.
This information should be provided.
G. Interrogat~ories 6-16, 6-17, 6-18 and 6-?4 In light of our interpretation of tna re:.ombiner interrogatories, e
above, these questions now seem -redundant.:
However, staff should review these questions and provide any additional information about th~e distributed igniter system that has not' been provided in response to other questions.
G'. Interrogatories 6'-19 and 6-21
'O[d 9<
These interrogatories relate to the adecuacy, under the regula-g,. t. ' '
. i t
'tions, of the Perry hydrogen control system.
Since the staf t 's views on this question must be published in the Safety Evaluation Report, these i~nterrogatories should be answered. The additional information requested on regulatory non-conformances is entirely proper, H.
Interrogatory 6-22 This interrogatory attempts to clarify a relevant section of the SER that seems to OCRE to be incomplete.
This is relevant and should be answered.
1.
Interrogatories-6-23, 6-31 and 6-33 OCRE has explained in its Motion, p.
7, why it seeks an answer to 5.hese interrogatories.
Staff should first respond to this ' explanation, as if it we.re..a..n i.n.terrogatory.
Then, if the mixers are essential to ad' equate hydrogen control lin a core melt situation, tne other interrogatories should t
Hydrogen Interrogatories: 7
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be answered.
If the mixers are not, essential, then the other interrogator-ies need rot' te answered.
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Interrogatories 6-27, 6-28 and,6-29 These interrogatories need be answered only if the staff or ap-
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.s plicant will rely on comoustion analyses _ or data. to assure the adequacy of the hydrogen control system.
K.
Interrogatory 6-35 In response to this question, staff should first provide its under-standing of whether the activation of the hydrogen control system is manual.
Only if it is manual need the interrogatory be answered.
t L.
Interrogatory 6-37
..v 4This interrogatory is necessary for OCRE to evaluate staff responses to the other interrogatories, it should be answered.
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11 OUR QUESTIONS In reviewing OCRE's questions, the Board has concluded th at there are possible gaps in the information it will obtain.
Because of the Board's
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interest in compiling a comple'te record, se have decideo to ask some ques-tions ourselves in order to fill these gaps.
Footnote ' 7 of staff's Answer seems particularly relevant to our authority to ask these questions.
In that footnote, staff states:
Board questions necessary to assure a complete record on an issue that has survived summary disposition procedures may be appropriate.
See Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commis-sion, 354 F.2d 608, 620 (2d Cir. 1965).
However, tne necessity of such questions cannot reasonably be determined until the Board has reviewed the evidence' presented by the parties on that issue.
s.*n'e note that the proposition that we may not ask questions durino the dis-l covery period is not supported by authority.
That is a question for which no authority has been cited.
Furthermore, we find that the proposition the
5 Hydrogen Interrcoatories:8 st aff advances' is not appropriate. [ When the Board notices possible gaps' in the record at.an early stage of the proceeding, there is~ every reeson for it to raise its concerns pro.mptly.
Otherwise, d.en the Board raises its con-
- cerns at the hearing, it is apt to get an incomplete response or to-find it necessary to continue the hearing.
In the interest of expedition, questions that could be asked at the hearing may be rasked earlier.
The only important contrary argument is that by asking questions now we may appear to ~ be takin'g a position in support of OCRE.
However, th at contrary argument applies at any stage of the proceeding and is without merit at any stage.
Board questions are asked f6r the purpose of eliciting the truth and completing the record.
At times, answers may favor one or an-other party. 'There is no way to know in advance which party will be advan-taged.
We dq not know at this time which position we will support and we do not even have a present inclination concerning the resolution of evidentiari,
..w.- -
question's we have not yet seen.
We conclude that we have the authority and responsibility to ask.
V questions and we propound the following questions as our own:
1.
What, if anything, has the staff done to develop different scen-arios about a TMI-type accident (a loss of coolant accident, com-pounded by one or more human errors) that results in core uncovery and hydrogen generation?
2.
What, if anything, bas staff done to determine whether such scen-arios are' credible?
3.
Discuss whatever doubts the staff has about whether a TMI-type accident could occur at Perry or at similar BWR reactors?
4.
Frovide documents and analyses tn at are not available in the I
docket room and have not been provided to OC.<E in response to its Freeoom of I nf ormation Act requests but that bear on the above 3 questiens.
5.
Provide the name of any staff pe'rson or NRC consultant who, in the course of work for the NRC, prepared a memorandum or other document suggesting that there are one or more credible TMI-type b
accident scenarios for Ferry or for similar. BWR reactors.
Provide the memorandum or other document.
4
7
).
Hydrogen.In.terrocatories:9 I
.in ans,.ering these questions,. staff may refer to answers.to OCRE interroga-i
' tories.
The purpose of the' questions is to.make sure that important gaps in the record will not be left open, not to require the production of redundant
-information.
We do not -consid'er our propounding of questions. relevan't to admitted contention to be equi. valent to the raisidg of a sua sponte issue. '- A sua sp'onte-issue is a question that lies outside the admitted contentions. ~See
- 10. 'CFR %2.760a concerning the authority to raise issues not raised by parties.
Hence, we need not notify the Coranission tnat we are propoun' ding questions.
We do not believe the Comnission intends to receive notification' every time a Soard asks a question, either at a hearing or prior thereto.
III.
PROCEDURE Staff should respond to the interrogatories and Board questiony promptly.
To the extent th at it agrees with applicant's response to similar interrogatories, it may respond by an affidavit listing the answers with which it concurs and indicating whatever differences exist.
It should negotiate with OCRE, which has demonstrated its willingness to act responsi-bly in these proceedings, concerning reasonable methods of making informa '
tion available to OCRE.
Within one week from the issuance of this decision, the staff should. file its proposed schedule for compliance with thi.s order, ORDER For all* the foregoing reasons and based on consideration of the entire record in this matter, it is this 23rd day of December,1982, m-
r-Hydrogen Interrogatories: 10.
. ORDERED' The-Staff ~ of.the Nuclear Reculatory ' Corrinission shall ' respond to interrogat6cies: propounded to-it by Ohio Citizens for Responsible Energy and
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and by this Licensing. Board as ' directed in' the accompanying meniorandum.
.s FOR THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD (Jerry R. Kline, Administrative Judge, not participating) 0 9
Yeter B. Bloch, Chairman -
ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGE Glenn 0. Bright ~- A 3. [
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' ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGE -
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Bethesda, Maryland q
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