ML20044B863

Forwards Mayor Reed 930208 Ltr Providing Suppl to Pica Rejoinder to Briefs on Behalf of Licensee Which Were Filed on or About 921230

ML20044B863
Person / Time
Site:	Three Mile Island
Issue date:	02/14/1993
From:	Gary R PENNSYLVANIA INSTITUTE FOR CLEAN AIR
To:	Murley T, Selin I, The Chairman NRC COMMISSION (OCM), Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
Shared Package
ML20044B864	List: ML20044B863 ML20044B935
References
2.206, NUDOCS 9303110171
Download: ML20044B863 (5)

Text

. . .

PICA The Pennsylvania Institute for Clean Air 749 Silver Spring Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910 Telepinne: (301) 587-7147 1

From: PICA, The Pennsylvania Institute for Clean Air To: Mr. Ivan Selin and Dr. Thomas Murley Subj: Supplement to Rejoinder to Licensee's Response to 2.206 Petition by Robert Gary, of December 30, 1992, Docket Number 50-289 (10 CPR section 2.206)

Date: February 14, 1993 Enc 1: Letter dated February 8, 1993 by Mayor Stephen Reed

1. Mayor Reed's letter which is enclosed is hereby provided as a supplement to PICA's Rejoinder to the briefs on behalf of

Licensee which were filed on or about December 30, 1992.

2. That brief, it will be recalled, contained, as Attachment A, an affidavit by Mr. George J. Giangi, and it is requested that the Mayor's letter now being provided, be given the same status as Mr. Giangi's affidavit.

3. The difference, of course is that Mayor Reed is an elected official who has represented the people of Harrisburg for well over a decade, has been re-elected several times, and presumably speaks for the community, as Mr. Giangi clearly does not.

4. PICA is in complete agreement with the enclosed letter by l Mayor Reed, with one caveat. We feel that full-scale bus drills i are appropriate and that they.should be done without prior notice l to participants and at random times. If you only measure readiness when everybody is standing around ready to go,.you are always going to find readiness. It's like measuring radiation when you have a piece of uranium stuck on the end of your Geiger counter. To only accurate way to ascertain readiness is to make the test match the circumstances for which readiness is required. )

5. The problem appears to be that this is costly and clearly it would be bad for the image of the nuclear industry to have busses and military trucks conducting drills at randon times, without notice to the public to see if they are ready to evacuated even 10% of a city like Harrisburg.

-s 3, en N[ '

4 Letter to Mr. Ivan Selin and Dr. Hurley 14 FEB 93, Page 2.  !

6. On the money question, Question 5 of the Questions for PEMA Annotated and Final Version, which you have on file, and which was discussed last summer with Mr. LaFleur at PICA's meeting with him, deals with this issue directly. PEMA is now beginning to consider making some plans to decide if asking the General Assembly for more money would be appropriate. PEMA needs to take ,

action on this. They should be collecting at least $5,000,000 per -

year, not $500,000 to protect all the citizens in the Commonwenith of Pennsylvania. Not only that, they should be distributing the money to the counties and cities directly responsible for the risk areas and not spending it at PEMA Headquarters on more computer systems, security systems, and communications systems.

7. On the question of the public relations impact on the nuclear industry of genuine readiness drills, it would be fair to say that some adverse impact is inevitable. That's the price that must be paid for living in a country organized around the consent of the governed and not around secrecy and the convenience of the big fellows at the top. People if they see military vehicles rumbling through the streets a various times, may very well '

realize that there are consequences to living with nuclear power.

They may accept those consequences or they may revise their '

choice to live with nuclear power. But it's up to them to decide.

The issue shouldn't be pre-empted by an NRC that is overly solicitous to help industry, or by issues of cost, inconvenience, overtime, or public relations.

8. We have a fellow who has broken into the plant with his truck, i and, as the Mayor points out, if that truck had been loaded with explosives, as was the truck that broke into the marine barracks in Beirut, a turbine serving an 800 megawatt nuclear power unit might have been destroyed, which might well have led to a class 9 accident. We have a fellow here in Washington who has shot several CIA employees on their way to work. The U.S. is making new transactions in the Middle East, Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti every day. Who can say which of those transactions might produce an individual dedicated to doing great harm to this country? With the international trade in small arms and light combat systems, I that currently seems to be centered in Virginia, who can say that such an individual might not obtain equipment that would be  ;

adequate to breach a containment dome and rupture the major pipes 1 cooling a nuclear reactor. What reactor is a better target than one that is situated between the capitol of a major state and the l capitol of the United States, and one that has had a history of ]

mishaps, negligence, and security problems? l I

I 1

1 l

l

n . 1 Letter to Mr. Ivan Selin and Dr. Murley, 14 FEB 93, Page 3

9. Under these circumstances, it is appropriate to use DOD equipment to evacuate people, certainly from the EPZ, and hopefully from the other 90% of Harrisburg as well. The use of this equipment in an emergency requires detailed plans before the fact and genuine readiness drills, which admittedly may upset some people. The deficit upsets some people -- but we don't keep it a secret. We let people be upset so they can do something about it. The whole concept of consent requires a free flow of information.

10. Sometimes the information is implicit in actions. For example, genuine readiness drills around nuclear power plants implicitly convey the information that nuclear power plants could be dangerous -- so dangerous that people would have to be evacuated from the area on an emergency basis. Letting people have this information is what honor requires. Preventing people from get, ting this information is contrary to ideals of democracy and to the mission of the NRC, which is distinct from the Department of Energy, because it takes the community view into account, and its not just there to promote industry.

11. PICA understands that local military forces are now in the course of developing detailed plans to assist in the evacuation of at least the EPZ (and PICA would hope the other 90% of I Harrisburg as well). As the NRC may know, PICA wrote last Fall l l to the Office of the Secretary of Defense to facilitate what we l call lateral working-level cooperation between Mayors requesting l such assistance and Commanding officen of local military installations physically capable of providing same. This was before the appointment of Mr. Aspin our new Secretary of Defense. I At this point PICA is in a waiting mode to see if a plan emerges.

We know we are asking for something new and different so we are )

ready to wait for a while to see if it can be arranged through l ordinary channels. We are merely a research institute dedicated to the public interest through education on clean air isssues. If it turns out, however, that e_verybody's hands are tied at the local level, we are ready to freely speak to other environmental organizations, and they will go see the new Secretary of Defense in his office or in a hearing room in the Congress.

Sincerely, Robert Gary Senior Researcher for PICA, The Pennsylvania Institute for Clean Air

Enclosure:

Reed Letter 8 FEB 93

d . ,

t k'

_ ,, ,s OFFICE OF THE MAYOR  :

REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

CITY GOVERNMENT CENTER -

HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 17101 1678 ,

STEPHEN R. REED nwon February 8, 1993 ,

Robert Gary, Esq.

Executive Director '

The Pennsylvania Institute for Clean Air 749 Silver Spring Avenue Silver Spring, MD 20910 ,

Dear Mr. Gary:

This is to acknowledge and thank you for your correspon-dence, received on February 4, 1993, which included the various items related to the Emergency Management Plan for Dauphin County-and TMI's response to the same.

i As earlier expressed, the City of Harrisburg remains of the strong view that the Dauphin County Emergency Management Plan must include the specific details for the use of military vehi-cles from the New Cumberland Army Depot and Indiantown' Gap. We should also consider the inclusion of vehicles and personnel from ,

the Mechanicsburg Ships Parts Control Center, which is the largest military installation in the region. your points on this ,

matter have been well taken. Like you, we also believe that training must be conducted by the several military installations so that their response capability to any major public evacuation would be'both timely and prepared.

We are surprised to learn that TMI wants to remove from the RERP all of the critical operational data. This, in our view, would be a major omission. The City of Harrisburg therefore -

opposes the removal of such information, and our Emergency Management Director is being instructed to fonnally express the  ;

city's position on this matter with the_ Federal and Pennsylvania cr.ergency management authorities.

As for bus drills, I can advise that a limited mobilization -

of transportation resources has been a part of_ previous city-con-ducted exercises. We are mindful of the fact ~that an evening or even a daytime activation or redeployment of busses involves potentially significant expense for overtime and extra duty for the several agencies involved. Therefore, a full. mobilization of all bus resources as part of an emergency management drill would

• not be necessary. These busses would be reporting to a staging

o - . $

Robert Gary, Esq.

February 8, 1993 Page 2 ,

area where senior city officials would provide their further direction. We are comfortable with the current level of preparedness in this regard.

You are correct in your assessment that it makes little sense for 90% of the city's population to be excluded from the 10-mile evacuation zone around Three Mile Island. The truth is ,

that if an evacuation began in the zone, including that portdon which is south of Interstate 83 in the City of Harrisburg, contiguous areas would likewise begin an evacuation, whether requested to do so or not. We have pressed this point on multi-ple occasions in the past. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, however, have steadfast-ly maintained the position that under no circumstance will they recognize or require emplacement of resources for evacuation activity beyond the 10-mile radius. For Harrisburg, therefore, we would expect to mobilize resources sufficient to evacuate not only our part of the official EPZ but areas to its north. We have sufficient identified resources in our plan to accomplish this, even though such is not officially recognized by any other level of the emergency management system.

On the matter of Three Mile Island, there was an incident at the plant on Sunday, February 7, about which you have undoubtedly hesrd. A civilian rammed his station wagon through the perimeter security gate and drove the same station wagon through the closed bay door of the Turbine Building, housing the on-line 800 mega-watt turbine. The individual left the vehicle and hid in the basement of the building where he was found by Pennsylvania State  ;

Police and TMI security more than four hours after the incident occurred. An on-site emergency was declared during this episode.  ;

It is obvious that plant security leaves something to be desired.

If this man had a carload of explosives, he would have literally been in a position to bring about significant damage to the plant and risk to the public. This is one of the most serious security breaches I have ever heard of regarding a nuclear power plant in the United States. While the city has no direct jurisdiction in

• the matter of plant security', we are nonetheless pursuing the '

matter of facility security.

Your continued interest in the welfare of this city and region is very much appreciated. I wish you well in your future >

pursuits. ,

With warmest regards, I am Yo sincerel ,

'7 St en R. Reed  !

Mayor cc: Chief Donald H. Konkle  ;

I

!