ML20050A832

Motion to Compel Answer to First Set of Interrogatories Directed to Licensee Re full-scale Sleeving.Related Correspondence

ML20050A832
Person / Time
Site:	Point Beach
Issue date:	03/28/1982
From:	Patricia Anderson WISCONSIN'S ENVIRONMENTAL DECADE
To:	Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel
Shared Package
ML20050A540	List: ML20050A539 ML20050A830 ML20050A832
References
NUDOCS 8204020311
Download: ML20050A832 (13)

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nELATzo connzsxrnme C': .'g-WED-03/28/82-P: 50266NRC.P37 1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 ' 3I IIO 2}

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

.Before_the Atomic Safety and Licenring Board Wisconsin Electric Pouer Company POINT BEACH NUCLEAR FLANT UNITS 1& 2 DOCKET NOS. 50-266 AND 50-301 Operating Licence Amendment (Steam Generator Tube Sleeving Program)

DECADE'S MOTION TO COMPEL LICENSEE'S ANSWER TO FIRST INTERROG010 RIES RELATIVE TO FULL-SCALE SLEEVING The Intervenor Wisconsin's Environmental Decade, Inc. (" Decade") , hereby moves the Atomic Safety and Licensing Boa rd (" Boa rd") in the above-captioned matter, pursuant to 10 C.F.R. $ 2.7 4 0 (f), for an order compelling an ansuer by the Licensee to the questions propounded in the Decade's First

, Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents to Licensee on the Full Scale Sleeving Program, dated February 10, 19 8 2 (" Decade Inte r r oga tories") , as is more specifically described and for the reasons set forth belou.*

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INTERROGATORIES 1 TO 4 Filhlre of Interrogatorien Interrogatories 1 to 4 sought facts from the Licensee related to the measures being taken to minimize reactor vessel This Motion supplants our earlier Motion to Compel, dated Oct'ober 29, 1981. -

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embrittlement at Point Beach Nuclear Plant and any study being done as to the interrelationship between those measures and degrading steam generator tubes.

_ Description of the Objection The Licensee's Response to Decade's First Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents on the Full Scale Sleeving Program, dated March 1, 19 8 2 ("Lic e n se e's Answ e r ") ,

objects to Interrogatories 1 to 4.

According to the Licensee, " reactor vessel embrittlement and thermal shock * *

• is in no way related to the sleeving of steam generator tubes, and is thus totally beyond the scope of the proceeding." Licensee's Answer, at p. 2. The Licensee also contends that the Board " expressly rejected Decade's proposed reactor vessel embrittlement contention * * *" . . Licen s e e's Answer, at p. 3.

For the f ollowing reasons, both grounds f or the Licensee's objection should be rejected and an answer compelled.

Reasons for Overruling Objection Under the Commission's rules:

" Parties may obtain discovery regarding any matter, not privileged, which is relevant to the subject matter . involved .

in the proceeding [and are related] only to those matters in  !

, controversy which have been identified by the Commission or {

the presiding officer * * *. i "It is not ground f or objection that the inf ormation .

sought will be inadmissible at the hearing if the information sought appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence."

10 C.F.R. 52.740 (b) (1) and (2).

The matters in controversy which "have been identified by the presiding officer" are:

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" Wisconsin Electric Power Company has not demonstrated that its sleeving program for the Point Beach Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2, can be conducted without endangering the health and safety of the public and vill be cond.icted in compliance with the Commission's regulations."

Transcript p. 164.

The Board went on to explain that this simplified contention "will provide Decade lattitude f or discovery in rational areas concerning saf ety ef fects." Memorandum and Order, dated October 13, 1981, at 9.

As a courtesy to the Staff, the Decade subsequently offered greater specificity as to those matters it considered in controversy, including:

"(9) Measures that may be taken to alleviate ther al shock or embrittlement of the reactor vessel, such as reracking of the core to place lou burnup assemblies in the center, may exacerbate a loss-of-coolant-accident in terms of interactive effects caused by secondary primary in-lea k age. * * * "

Letter from P. Anderson (WED) to R. G. Bach m ann (NRC) , dated January 18,19 82, a t p. 3.

.Under the procedures established by the Board in this proceeding, there will be no further resolution as to which matters are in controversy, inEnfar as ihn f ull-scalg sleevina Phann 91 the nInsnedino in sansninn_d, until the Board rules on t

Decade's Motion Concerning Litigable Issues that will be due  ;

E within 14 days f rom the receipt of answers to the second round E discovery requests. Transcript pp. 890 to 892.

Contrary to the Licensee's claim that the Board has already adversely ruled on the thermal shock issue, that ruling was in reference to'the highly irregular and abbreviated phase of these proceedings dealing uith the damnustration sleeving program.

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Memorandum and Order Authorizing Issuance of a License Amendment Permitting Return to Power with Up to Six Degraded Tubes Sleeved Rather Than Plugged, dated November 19 81. In this phase of the proceeding concerning full-scals sleeving, on the other hand, there has been no such ruling at this time.

Thus, the only question for the purpose of this Motion to Compel is whether these is a reasonable basis for assuming that evidence might be discovered shouing a nexus between sleeving and vessel embrittlement under the vide lattitude traditionally allotted in the discovery process.

Sleeving has been proposed in another attempt by the Licensee to cope with deteriorating steam generator tubes, a concern which implicates the " health and safety of the public".

Reputable, independent scientists have concluded that a loss-of-coolant-accident may cause degraded or impaired steam generator tubes in a pressurized water reactor to rupture, resulting in substantial in-leakage of heat energy from the secondary side to the depressurized primary side. This, in turn, may result in suf ficiently serious steam binding as to " reduce the [ reflood rates] to values so low that .the core would not be adequately cooled." Report to the American Physical Society by i L

the Study Group on Light Water Reactor Safety, 47 Review nf h Li Bodern Physics (Supp. 1), Summer 1975, at p. S-91. , y The American Physical Society Study Group goes on in its report to note that "the core thermal behavior in the reflood period represents a most critical problem area in the thermal history of the core." Id. , a t S-91. Not only are there serious questions of simple cooling problems due to inadequate reflood

rates, but also those low reflood rates may create " substantial thermal shocks" on the " structural behavior" of the core as well as from embrittled fuel cladding. Id . , at S-90. Those additional loadings may cause " brittle cladding f ailure." Id. ,

a t S-91.

These safety problems with degrading steam generator tubes in general may be exacerbated by sleeving. In line with the overall broad contention set forth by the Board, Contentions 3, 4 and 5, as well as Contention 7, show that sleeving may impair the integrity of steam generator tubes, and do so to an extent worse than from plugging. Contention 6 show: that the flow of primary cooling water through sleeved tubes will be retarded. Petition of Wisconsin's Environmental Decade, dated July 20, 1981, at pp.

3 to 4.*

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• Admittedly, the Licensee disputes all or part of these Contentions.

But, at this juncture before the Doard has ruled on which contentions are admitted and before a trial on the admitted contentions has been held, reliance on these perceived problems is appropriate for the limited purpose of ruling on discovery requests, especially in view of the f act that the intervenor's contentions are consistent with the Board's broad contention.

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If the accident at Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant taug'ht anything, it shoved that major catastrophic events can be propogated by the interaction of widely separated components in a nuclear plant.

Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Icland, Ihr Need fDI fhangn(1979), at p.

9.

Thus, actions that may appear on the surface to be unrelated to steam generator tubes can play a major role in the safety of a nuclear plant, especially if, as here, they affect the cooling requirements of the core that tube failures can exacerbate.

One such potential interaction of concern relates to the thermal shock issue.

It should first be noted that embrittlement of the reactor vessel uall is a concern to the " health and safety of the public":

"Because the possibility of failure of nuclear reactor pressure vessels * *

• is remote, the design of nuclear facilities does vessel failure.

not provide protection against reactor Prevention of reactor vessel failure

• depends primarily on maintaining the reactor vessel material fractureduring fracture toughness at levels that vill resis t brittle plant operation. At service times and operating conditions typical reactor vessel fracture toughness of current operating plants, adequate margins of safety against vesselproperties provide failure; houever, as plants accumulate more and more service time, neutron irradation intial safetyreduces margins."the material fracture toughness and Renolutkan nf. the Benc. tor McBRc1 BBLcrials TaughncBS Enf1Ly JEsyn, NUREG-0744, at p. A-1. .. . .

"s In fact, several older , '5 reactors are experiencing difficulty maintaining safety margins.

Point Beach Nuclear Plant is one of the 20 older pressurized water reactors in this country suffering from worrisome rea"ctor vessel embrittlement. Memorandum from L.

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l C. Shao(DOR) to D. G. Eisenhut(DOR), dated September 14,19 7 7, re

I Reactor Vessels with Farginal Toughness Properties.

At least two actions being taken by the nuclear industry  ;

demonstrate that the thermal shock issue is intertuinned with the  !

I tube degradation issue.

, First, an amelorative measure being considered to retard embrittlement is " changing the core design to reduce the vessel fluence * *

• i.e. louer the neutron production in elements t

nearest the pressure vessel vall * * *." Memorandum f rom T. J.

4 Walker (DOE) to S. S. Paulicki(DOE), dated April 7, 1981, re Minutes of PWR Ouner's Group Meeting with NRC on March 31, 1981, at p. 2. That is to say, higher r eutron emitting elements may be 1 relocated auay f rom the peritaeter to the center of the core and visa-versa.

It appears from the Licensee's statements in other filings that these measures have been taken at Point Beach Unit since  !

1980:  :

i "For Point Beach Unit 1, Cycles 1 through 7 (1970 -

through 1979), neu f uel was located on the core periphery as was contemplated in the original design. Beginning with

! Cycle 8 (1980), core loadina patterns employed a Lou Leakage Loading Pattern (LLLP) design and assemblies with several "

previous cycles of burnup uere positioned at certain locations on the core periphery. <* *

• Thus, the neta con exposure of the Unit 1 longitudinal uelds f or t.he last two years has been reduced belou the fluence levels which have

. *been predicted. The LLLP uas also f ully ' implemented f or PBNP Unit 2 Cycle 7 (1980)." r Letter f rom C. W. Pay (WE) to H. R. Denton(NRC), dated January'15, ,

4 1982, at p. 3 of the attachment.  !

It necessarily follous that this reconfiguration of the core

, may result in gr6ater heat and neutron bombardment in the center [

of the core incurred in an attempt to reduce irradiation of the  !

outer wall of the reactor along the beltline and uill result in  ;

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entirely different peaking characteristics that " contemplated in u

the original design". In turn, this implies that the cooling requirements in the center of the core vill be higher, and, hence, louer reflood rates due to tube f ailures and sleeved tubes will be more severe in their consequences. It rlso implies that fuel cladding may be subject to greater embrit".tement which can suffer from the thermal shock exacerbated by tube failures during LOCA.

Second, operator actions taken to ameliorate the consequences of steam generator tube ruptures (that' may be exacerbated by sleeving) may have unintended adverse implications for the thermal shock problem. In fact, during the Ginna Nuclear Plant tube rupture on January 26, 1982, the plant operator

, delayed terminating high pressure injection uhen the pilot operated relief valve stuck open during depressurization during a best-effort ettempt to equalize primary-secondary pressure. This was a reasonable operator response to a steam generator tube accident uhen the goal is to minimize primary unter leaking into the environment through the pathuay created by a ruptured tube, but it is directly contrary to the appropriate action for reducing thermal shock uhere high pressure injection during i

, repressurization could rupture an embrittled vessel.

ti 1 t Memorandum (Draf t) from T. P. Speis(URC) to R. Mattson(NRC), dated January 2 8,19 8 2, a t p.1.

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Clearly, the interactive effects of tube degradation and l

embrittlement may contain the prescription for the nuclear industry's next major accident.

The Board ought not let legal pirouettes elevate form to substance by so narrowly defining the ambit of this proceeding as to exclude serious safety concerns from adjudication.

When the former Atomic Energy Commission first perpetrated such an abdication of its responsibilities in this regard, the American Physical Society was forced to conclude that "the potential for steam generator tube leakage appears to be a serious problem which uns precluded fJam evaluation at the ECCS hearings [in 197 2] ." Report to the American physical Society, supra, at S91. (Emphasis added.)

Even that criticism failed to shock the Commission into action. Later, after the near catastrophe at Three 14ile Island, the Rogovin panel concluded in an analogous matter:

"The failure to heed these uarnings and take action cannot be said to be an isolated example. He found that in the past the NRC and the industry have done almost nothing to evaluate systemically the operation of existing reactors, pinpoint potential saf ety problems, and eliminate them by

• requiring changes in design, operator procedures, or control logic. The lack of any such comprehensive program constitutes, in our view, an unacceptable situation that compromises safety and .cannot ha IL11oued ta continue."

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Special Inquiry Group, Three Eil.e

_ Inland (1980), at p. 95. (Emphasis added.-)-

The Licensee should be compelled to answer Interrogatories 1 to 4. _

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y INTERROGATORY 11

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N3ture of Interrogatory Interrogatory 11 sought.the names and other identifying l factors of 'those individuals temporarily employed to conduct the I t demonstration sleeving program.

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l 10- J Description of the Objection Licensee objects to answering this question on the grounds that it "would constitute an undue invasion of personal privacy",

would " subject workers to harassment and intimidation" and would be "a fishing expedition". Licensee's Answer, at p. 10.

Reasonn for Overruling Objection It is of record in this proceeding that 'the necessity to employ transients to conduct the delicate installation of sleeves has resulted in severe quality assurance problems involving such things as drug usage. Letter from A. D. Johnson (NRC) to L. T.

Papay(SCE), Docket 50-206, dated September 14, 1981.

To determine the adequacy of the Licensee's EIitten i

procedures to overcome these limitations, it is necessary to perform an independent evaluation of the actual on-the-job experience. The first place to look to this is the individuals

, who vere involved in the demonstration program.

A select number of structured intervieus of such individuals would not rise to the level of an invasion of privacy in the s9ninst of thili infinn hnIn. Because of the implications on public, health and safety, nuclear vorkers are already and properly subjected to a wide range of intrusions, including f

security checks, personality tests and pat doun inspections, that m might be considered unacceptably intrusive by the general populace. A voluntary, polite interview is actually significantly less violative of their privacy than that which they'have already'been subjected to as a condition of employment.

As to the Licensee's cry that the request is a fishing

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expedition, the f acts of the matter demonstrate that there is a serious concern that the annuer might enlighten. In addition, the modern rule of lau is that discovery requests are to be

" accorded a broad and liberal treatment.  !!o longer can the time honored cry of ' fishing expedition' serve to preclude a party f rom inquiring into the f acts underlying his opponent's case."

Hishman L Iaylor (194 7), 3 29 U.S. 4 94, 5 07.

The Board should also compel the Licensee to ansuer Interrogatory 11, or, in the alternative, commission an independent investigator to interviou a random sample of individuals who uorked on the demonstration project.

III I!1TERROGATORIES 15 TO 16 IJature of Interrogatories Interrogatories 15 and 16 relate to the extent to uhich previously plugged tubes have e::perienced leahage.

DesexLption oF thc_Qbiectinn The Licensee objects that the subject of leaking plugs is "in no uay related to the sleeving of steam generator tubes, and is thus totally outside the scope of this proceeding."

Licensee's Ansuer, at p. 24. ,

i Reasons f or Over rttling_Dbjection J_

i As discussed in Part I, nnpra, the safety concerns from t' degrading steam generator tubes arises from possible secondary-to primary in-leakage of heat energy during a LOCA. The extent of that in-leakage determines uhether steam binding vill prevent reflooding the core.

In the previous phase of this proceeding that commenced with

i the filing of the Decade's 10 C.P.R. S2.206 Petition on tiovember [

14, 197 9, th r. Staf f concluded that the e:: tent of the in-leakage  ;

through tube ruptures at Point Beach IJuclear Plant would be less j than that needed to prevent reflood. Safety Evaluation Report on Point Beach Unit 1, dated I;ovember 30, 1979.

The Decade informed the Staff that another source of in- _

leakage than tube ruptures arose throuch fanity plugs that cou'ld rock loose under the stress of a LOCA, and asked that this factor be considered in its safety analysis. Decade Request for Hearing on Confirmatory Order, dated December 17, 1979.

d To this serious safety question, the Staff responded by ignarang it, presumably because it was unable to conveniently explain the issue away.

Then, in this phase of the proceeding, the Decade included the problem of leaking plugs as part of its list of contentions. <

, L e t. t e r from P. Anderson (WED) to R. G. Dac h m ann (11RC) , 6ated January 18, 1982, at p. 2.

The rule of lau does not compel the transmorgification of l substance into form. At some point, administrative agencies charged with protecting the public health and safety have a moral :s obligation to cease the abuse of legal process that hampers the Iy fi perrormance of their solemn duty. E Interrogatories 15 and 16 should also be answered.

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DATED at fladison, Wisconsin, this 28 th day of !! arch, 1982.

WISCpNSN'SElIVIRO11I1ENTALDECADE, INC.

n by PETER ANDCRSON

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t Director of Public Affairs 114 IJor th Carroll Street -

Suite 208 11adison, Wisconsin 53703 (608) 251-7020

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