ML20059J095

Expresses Concern About Delay in Response to 10CFR2.206 Petition Re Allegation of Deficiencies in Dauphin County,Pa Radiological Emergency Response Plan

ML20059J095
Person / Time
Site:	Three Mile Island
Issue date:	10/07/1993
From:	Gary R PENNSYLVANIA INSTITUTE FOR CLEAN AIR
To:	Selin I, The Chairman NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
Shared Package
ML20059J092	List: ML20059J088 ML20059J095 ML20059J535
References
2.206, NUDOCS 9311120024
Download: ML20059J095 (3)

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a 2211 Washington Avenue (#301), Silver Spring, MD 20910 Dr. Ivan Selin Tele: (301) 587-7147 octo3er 7, 1933 Commissioner, NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission ,

Washington, DC 20555 l

Dear Dr. Selin,

l As you know, PICA has been waiting over a year for an answer to its 10 CFR 2.206 Request regarding emergency evacuation  ;

procedures applicable to Three Mile Island Unit 1. That facility ,

is unique in the U.S. because of the fact that over 100,000 l additional people would be taken in if the ten mile emergency I evacuation zone were extended by 1 extra mile. Since these  ;

downtown Harrisburg residents would have to evacuate somehow anyway, it makes sense to take them into account in the official l plans even if there is a longstanding, unexamined, national standard of ten miles for evacuation zones.

Another aspect of PICA's complaint is that the entire evacuation plan seems to be based on schoolbusses, and a few private company busses, while Harrisburg itself is one of the rail hubs of the East coast. When the official plan itself admits that it is 50 busses short, even omitting the 100,000 people in downtown Harrisburg, it is nonsense not to take trains and military trucks from New Cumberland and Indiantown Gap into account in the emergency evacuation planning process. The use of ,

these modalities should be planned for in detail, and their use i should be fully integrated into the County, State, and Federal plans for THI-1 evacuation. They should be fully activated during  ;

emergency preparedness drills, which should be run on an l unscheduled basis, the way Admiral Rickover did them, and not as mere choreographies and mummeries which make a mockery of professional standards of emergency planning, and test nothing but the radios (all the people having been warned in advance of the drill and standing around waiting for the moment that they do their part of the dance).

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l There are five other major points in the complaint, all of which have been discussed at length with PEMA, and FEMA, and the '

i NRC. We don't want to complicate your consideration of our present petition for redress of grievances by spelling-out every part of our 10 CFR 2.206 Request in detail. Today we want to - -

address the issue of the rules that govern the procedure.for handling such complaints in general, and the inadequacies of that procedure arising from the way responsibilities are divided and ,

the way the CFR's are written (i.e. their substantive content).

The NRC, following the CFR's turned our 2.206 Request over to FEMA for investigation. We think this is nonsense for two reasons. If the emergency evacuation plan is inadequate, it might be attributable to inadequate skills at FEMA, the supervising Agency. But if they were not skillful enough to avoid an inadequate plan in the first. place, how do they suddenly become skillful enough to evaluate the adequacy of that same plan? The second reason it's nonsense to let FEMA do the investigation, is that our tradition of Anglo-American law going back to Magna Carta prohibits any man from being the judge in his own cause. ,

There is a glaring conflict of interest and basis for bias in letting FEMA decide whether FEMA has done a good job, or in asking FEMA to say that FEMA has done a bad job. We've had enough '

whitewashes at Three Mile Island. A 2.206 Request like PICA's, ,

should have been turned over to an independent counsel, or an independent commission appointed by the Judicial Branch. This would ensure that the allegations were addressed by a party free of bias, and able to solicit expert opinion from a variety of sources, including PICA.  ;

Another procedural aspect, apart from the investigation of the 2.206 Request, that arises out of this case or controversy, is the fact that nobody anywhere is actually authorized to fix the problem. It won't do to have the NRC order the Licensee to stimulate better emergency evacuation planning in Dauphin County, or in the State of Pennsylvania. The Licensee has no such power, and such an initiative would be completely contrary to the Licensee's interests (narrowly construed as they always are). The NRC is not ready to power down the reactor due to inadequate evacuation plans, because technical jurisdiction falls with FEMA.

FEMA is not ready to tell PEMA or the Licensee what to do because of the issues of state sovereignty, and Takings Clause-related property rights. So we have a perfect circle in which all organizations and persons are paralysed and unable to take substantive action to correct the problem.

The limit of what can be done is that the NRC can write some bureaucratic papers that embarrass FEMA, and FEMA can do that for PEMA, and PEMA can do it for Dauphin County and the Licensee.  :

What gets lost in this process is the fact that to the citizen who dies because of overexposure to radiation from our Chernobyl waiting to happen which we call TMI-1, it doesn't make any difference which bureaucrats should have provided for his evacuation. He doesn't care about the relations between NRC and i

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-la FEMA and PEMA and Dauphin 1 County and the Licensee. That's just'so much nonsense to a man or woman or child that doesn't have a-seat on a transportation mode to'get away from an out of control- ~

nuclear reactor.  ;

This basic fact raises the issue of whether or not'there -i should be a Nuclear Safety Commission. Such a Commission, by its- d founding statute would have unitary, absolute,-undelegable, i indivisible authority over the safety of all persons.in'the U.S. 1 from hazards arising from nuclear materials of any kind. .;

t The NRC is composed mainly of ex Navy reactor types whose j basic training and instinct is to try to "look good" rather than  :

to actually be good. I say this as a retired Naval-officer with. i substantial experience of the nuclear Navy. The NRC deals'in  ;

units of embarrassment rather than in units of action. What they.

don't understand is that the executives who receive these units.

of embarrassment, some of whom are pasty-faced, cigar-smoking,  !

golf-ball-hitting, dirty joke-telling, bottom line-oriented,

middle-aged white males, are not easily embarrassed. They tend to  !

respond if their plant is closed, but anything short-of=that.is ,

just legal fodder for their lawyers and-the' basis of jokes down j at the club. I say this as former corporate General Counsel. .

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The NRC is an organization that is P. captive of big business ]

and bankrupt fron the perspective of action. They are neither' '

i willing nor legally able to take unitary, absolute, undelegable, and indivisible responsibility for nuclear safety which is the .;

only thing the taxpayers look to them for and count-on?them to l do, and pay them billions of dollars a year'tu do. The NRC needs to be decommissioned and replaced by a better organization.

The Congress is composed of people'who say they, care about j how government is run in the U.S. They are elected to do serious- j business on the People's behalf. They don't come to Washington j just to pose and to posture and to get'themselves re-elected. The lives of 600,000 people are at stake in how PICA's 2.206. Requests is resolved. The NRC and FEMA have been mulling over this  ;

emergency petition for over a year. It's time for somebody to -j step in and just get the job done.  ;

1 Sincerely, l y &

Robert ary Senior Researcher  :

-for PICA . .i .-.

The Pennsyldania Institute j for Clean Air q i

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