ML20062H534
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1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION f
BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD o
l In the Matter of S
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S HOUSTON LIGHTING & POWER S
e COMPANY S
Docket No. 50-466 5
(Allens Creek Nuclear S
Generating Station, -Unit S
No. 1)
S APPLICANT'S MOTION FOR
SUMMARY
DISPOSITION f
OF INTERVENOR DOHERTY'S CONTENTION NO. 15 i
Applicant moves the Board under 10 CFR S 2.749 to E
grant sw= mary disposition with respect to Intervenor Doherty's L
I Contention No. 15 relating to the WIGLE computer code.
As shown in the acccmpanying statement of material facts as to f
which there is no genuine issue to be heard, and affidavit of John F.
Schardt, there is no issue to try in this proceeding and Applicant is entitled under S 2.749 to have the contention summarily dismissed as a matter of law.
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The Contention Doherty Contention No. 15 states:
Intervenor contends his health and safety interests are inadequately protected because the industry standard power excursion theory (WIGLE) is inadequate to represent the increase in heat energy due to rapid increase in reactivity in a
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Design Based Power Excursion Accident (DB-PEA).
Experiments reported in IN-1370 Large Core Dynamics, pp. 48-87, where a burst of neutrons was injected in the side of reactor, give results which when compared to WIGLE, indicate this industry standard DB-PEA j
theory might underpredict the energy yield of a power i
excursion by 50 percent.
This underprediction is not j
factored into the DB-PEA calculations, which is
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significant since power excursion theory predicts the energy yield per gram of fuel in a PEA will be about i
70 percent of the design safety limit (280 calories /
gram) for fuel rods.
(See, Regulatory Guide 1.77, i
l May 1974, PSAR, Montague I & II, pp. 4.3-29, and 15.143-55.)
Further, the National Reactor Testing
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Station (NRTS) recommended in 1970, a special re-(
search program to resolve this underprediction (IN-J 1
1370, p. 18).
4 Hence, Intervenor contends that Applicant's one-dimensional time code (described in Supp. No. 2 to
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the SER on p.
4-11) under generates the true SCRAM reactivity function for this system because the 4
product generated is too small compared to data resulting from the neutron burst experiments reported in IN-1370 (supra), as is the data generated by WIGLE.
(Note:
This Intervenor does not contend t
Applicant's NSSS vendor uses WIGLE or relies upon it, j
but rather that Applicant's analytic method generates g
the SCRAM reactivity function for the DB-PEA theory as does WIGLE.)
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Hence, Applicant or Applicant's NSSS provider should be required to provide data from power ex-l cursion tests from full-scale reactors as was re-commended by the AEC's test laboratory in 1954 (see
" International Report," PTR-738, "A Review of the Generalized Reactivity for Water-Cooled and Moderated UO2 Fueled Power Reactor," G. O. Bright, et al.), and
)
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the BWR system be redesigned to reduce its reactivity j
potential.
Argument Intervenor alleges in Contention No. 15 that the computer code used by General Electric to predict SCRAM activity
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I following a Power Excursion Accident (PEA) is not conservative because it predicts results similar to those obtained during the WIGLE code which, allegedly, has been shown to be noncon-servative in tests (SPERT tests) conducted by the Idaho iuclear Experimental Laboratories and reported in IM-1370.
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This contention should be dismissed for the following reasons.
First, the underlying premise of Intervenor's con-tention--that the SPERT tests demonstrate the nonconservatism of the WIGLE code as related to SCRAM reactivity calculations--
has no factual basis.
The particular SPERT experiment referred to by Intervenor Doherty was performed on a test reactor which bears little resemblance to a BWR core.
Moreover, no control i
rods were inserted during the experiment and, therefore, the 1
test measured only positive reactivity insertion effects and not the ef fects of SCRAM reactivity.
Thus, the tesc results relied on by Intervenor do not provide any relevant information as to the WIGLE code SCRAM reactivity calculations.
Secondly, General Electric does not rely on the WIGLE j
u code, but uses its own one-dimensional time / space code to pre-dict SCRAM reactivity values for ACNGS.
While these values may be similar to those predicted by the WIGLE code, as discussed above, the SPERT test results relied upon by Intervenor are not relevant to calculating SCRAM reactivity using the WIGLE code, much less using General Electric's one-dimensional time / space code. 4,'a?6
Finally, General Electric's one-dimensional time /
space code has.bcen compared to a plethora of actual operating t
plant data gathered on scram reactivity values.
This compari-son has conclusively established the accuracy of the General Electric code predictions.
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Since Intervenor has raised no material factual issue f
to be tried in this proceeding to challenge the conservatism of the code used by General Electric to predict SCRAM reactivity, t
i Applicant is entitled to have this contention dismissed as a g
i matter of law.
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