ML20053D115

Amended Petition of Chapel Hill Anti-Nuclear Group Effort & Environ Law Project for Leave to Intervene & Request for Hearing,Specifying Contentions.Certificate of Svc Encl

ML20053D115
Person / Time
Site:	Harris
Issue date:	05/24/1982
From:	Read D AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
To:	NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
References
NUDOCS 8206040097
Download: ML20053D115 (5)

Text

.y q's.'s.P UNITED STA'ZIS OF AGRICA NUCLEAR REGULATC2Y C01: MISSION. gr.3 28 M0:32 In the Matter of CAROLINA _001:ER ~~k f c- $

AND LIGHT COMPANY et al. (Shetron )

Dock ts 50-4bo Harris Nuclear Power Plants, 50 401$ERVED MAY 281982 Units 1 and 2) )

) l.ay 24, 1982 BEFORE THE ATO:~IC SAFETY AND LICENSING ECARD AMENDMENT OF PETI 2 ION FOR LEME TO INTERZ*E OF CHAPEL HILL AI:TI UUCrME GROUP EFP-ORT (CHANGE) A'D IUVIRONGUT'-

AL LO! Ph0 JECT (ELF)

N0u comes Petitioner CHA':GE/ELP, P.O. Box 524, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, and amends its petitzon for leave to inter-vene and the supplement thereto filed I:ay 14, 1982, pur-suant to 10 C.F.R. 2.714(a!(3). Petitioner takes this action not to " shoehorn in" extra contentions, but to clarify and make more specific those cententions it has already submit-ted. Petitioner may do this without prior approval of the presiding officer up to 15 de:s prior to the special pre-hearing conference,10 C.F.'. 2.714(a)(3), since contentions are a supplement to the petition for leave to intervene and -

therfore part thereof,10 C.F.R. 2.714(b).

Petitioner would amend its " Supplement to Petition for Leave to Intervene," liay 14, 1982, in the following ways, contending the following widhout waiving any right to fur-ther amend its contentions within the time specified by .

10 C.F.R. 2.714(a)(3): '

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1. Amend contention number 50 at page 24 to read ~as follows:

"80. CHAUGE/ELP has already satisfied the interest test, see " Applicants' Response to Petition to Intervene by Chapel Hill Anti-Nuclear Group Effort," I: arch 3,1982, a' nd similar-

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. 4 Page 2 response to petition by ELP, and see also "::RC Staff Response to Petitions for Leave to Intervene," Earch 9, 1982, pp. 15, 18, 25. Therefore it should be granted party status auto-catically upon filing these contentions. The NRC's position on and use of contentions reflect an intent to limit the participation of citizen intervenors, contrary to the intent of Congress in passing the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 (n-a 93 U.S. Code Cone, a Admin. News 548E-85), contrary to the recommendations of the Keceny Commission, and contrary to the spirit of the Due Process Clause of the United SN tes Constitution.

There is support in the case law and the general body of administrative law for this contention. Although no court has held that there exists an absolute right to intervene, in Cities of Statesville at al. v. AEC, 441 F.2d 962 (D.C.Cir.

1969) (en bane) the court held "that when a petitioner can show it possesses a substantial interest in the outcome of the proceddings it has a right to intervene," subject to the rules for public particiration established by the egency. In Statesville intervention was denied only because of substant-lal identity of interest, not because petitioners had failed to raise substantial issues: in fact, the court was willing to expand the scope of the proceeding significantly in even considering petitioner's anti-trust arguments. The issue was considered at greatur length in EFI v. AEC, 502 F.2d 424 '

(D.C. Cir.1974), where the court cited the legislative history for the proposition that contentions must be reason-ably specific to guarantee the right to intervene. "The statement of contentions is analogous to good pleadings in civil cases, i.e., the allegations cust be reasonably speci-fic." What constitutes " good pleadings" has been the subject of much litigation in the civil courts: the codern trend has been to hold pleadings valid which when construed in favor of the plaintiff gave the other parties reasonable notice, sae for exarmle Dicruardi v. Durninc, (2d Cir. 1944). This is especially true where, as in these proceedings, informa-tion upon which specific pleadings might be ' cased is under the control of the adverse party, see Lodce 741. International

i Page 3 Association of Eachinists v. United Aircraft Coro., 30 F.R.D.

142 (1962). This notice concept of pleading and contention would be in line with the desire and purpose of the rule to weed out " nuisance interventions," sae FFI v. Asc, 502 F.2d at 428. CHANGZ/ELP has raised many issues of substantial concern and provided reasonable notice to Applicants and the Staff of the seriousness and resronsibleness with which they are approaching the proceedings. Therefore the granting of party status should be a formality, not a careful grillin5 of each point of Petitioner's contentions; in light of accepted civil practice, Petitioner would ask the Board in ruling on its contentions to construe them in the light most favorable to Petitioner, rather than Applicants, and would r:rcest the s?me treatment be given the contentions of the other Petitoners."

2. Amend contention number 30 at page 12 to read as follows:

"30 The analysis of mechancial and flow-induced vibration is inadequate, in that it overlooks the " shake and break" nhencmenon which is prevalent in Westinghouse codel D and I steam generators with pre-heater design. The Harris plant will use Westinghouse Du steca generators, which are suspected to share the defect with other D codels, as the recent notice that Yugoslavia's Krsko reactor (which uses a D4 model) cannot operate at full power corroborates. Although Westinghouse has asserted that it will solve this problem in the next year or so, their past assertions about steam generator problems and anticipated resolution times have been incorrect, and there is no reason to believe that a satisfactory resolution to the problem will be reached before the plant goes on line.

Therefore, there is inadecuate assurance that the plant can be operated safely at the levels of power at which Applicants propose to operate it, and there is also no reason to be-lieve that in lighc of this problem that the cost-benefit ana. lysis conducted by Applicants is still valid."

3. Amend contention 38 at page 14 to insert the words "is based" af ter the words " operation of the plant" (line 2).

4. Amend contentions 12 and 13 at page 7 to aad contention

a Page 4 12-13A to read as follows:

"12-13A. As the foregoing two contentions indicate, there is serious doubt that Applicants are in fact financially qualif-ied to use, operate, and poscess the Shearon Harris plants.

As the accident at TMI demonstrates, a major accident can have a severe impact on the financial health of a utility, even threatening it with bankruptcy. In addition, during'the normal operation of the plant decisions may be made on a cost /

safety balancing basis, and a financially week utility may in such decisions try to spare its already weak cash situation at the expense of public safety (e.g. , by operating a plant with parts of emergency systems or redundant systems out of order and delaying repair until the next refueling outage).

Therefore a consideration of Applicants' financial qualific-ations is in order to determine if in fact they can provide reasonable assurance that they can operate the plant safely and that they can deal uith accidents effectively without en-dangering the public safety. This is particularly so because executives of toplicant CP&L have repeatedly stressed their belief that the company's financial picture is unfavorable:

in testimony before the N.C. House Public Utilities Connittee in 1981, CP&L's william Graham eloquently described the finan-cial hardship repeal or modification of existing construction work in progress provisions of N.C. Gen. Stat.62-133 would work on tee company. Other utility executives have repeatedly stressed that the industry, CP&L included, is " sick" and

" ailing" (see letter from Carl Horn of Duke Power, specific-ally discussing CP&L, Raleigh News and Cbe arver, April 2 1982, p. 4A), Therefore Petitioner CHANGE /ELP asks that the Board waive those amendments to 10 C.F.R. Parts 2 and 50 promulgated at 47 F.2.13750 (:: arch 31,1982), and allou Petitioner to show that Applicants CP&L ar.d NCMPA3 are not financially qdalified to opera'e the nlant a_ely and to deal with a major accident at the p~ ant i l' JA.. EL F. 2J President, CHANGE

Fago 5 CERTIFICATE I hereby certify that the parties listed belcu have been served with a copy of this "Anendment of Petition for Leave to Intervene of Chapel Hill Anti Uuclear Group Effortc (tf of A W M -

(CHAN05) and Environmental Law Froject" by placingA ame in -

a United States mail box, first-class postage prepaid, this 2TI day of May, 1982, addressed as indicated below.

Office of the Executive Legal Director U.S. Nuclear Rerulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comnission ATTU: Docketing and Service Branch Washington, DC 23555 Mr. George F. Trowbridge Shaw, Pittngp, Fotts, and Trowbridge 1800 K St, N.~..'. }

Washington, DC 20036 l l $ dV LXI.IEL F. F.ZAD President, CEAUGE

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