ML20125D018
| ML20125D018 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | 05000000, Diablo Canyon |
| Issue date: | 10/18/1984 |
| From: | Chilk S NRC OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY (SECY) |
| To: | Asselstine NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20125C531 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-84-814, FOIA-84-A-82 COMJA-84-7, NUDOCS 8506120224 | |
| Download: ML20125D018 (1) | |
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%,', ',. 4 October 18, 1984 COMJA-84.7, '
N-OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY MEMORANDUM FOR:
Commissioner Asselstine i
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FROM:
Samuel J. Chilk, Secreta
SUBJECT:
DIABLO CANYON Responses to your memorandum of September 7, 1984, containing four suggested actions the Commission could take to minimize the potential for delay in the Diablo Canyon case are as follows:
Suggestion 1:
All Commissioners disagree.
Suggestion 2:
Chairman Palladino and Commissioners Roberts and Zech disagree.
Commissioner Bernthal agrees.
Suggestion 3:
Chairman Palladino and Commissioners Roberts and Zech disagree.
Commissioner Bernthal believes that concerns about the performance of Region V will be addressed in OIA's ongoing review of administrative management of allegations.
Suggestion 4:
Commissioners Roberts, Bernthal and Zech disagree.
Chairman Palladino states that he will review OGC's analyses and advice on the various pending Diablo decisions.
This completes SECY action on COMJA-84-7.
Attachment:
Commissioner Responses cc:
Chairman ralladino Commissioner Roberts Commissioner Asselstine Commissioner Bernthal Commissioner Zech OGC OPE B506120224 850207
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MEMORAtiDUM FOR:
Chairman Palladino Comissioner Roberts Comissioner Bernthal Comissioner Zech Je.
FROM:
James K. Asselstine f
SUBJECT:
DIABLO CAtlYON During the course of the Congressional hearing last week on Diablo Canyon, I suggested several actions the Comission could take to minimize the potential for delay in the Diablo Canyon case.
I would like you to consider those suggestions:
1.
The Comission should reopen the hearing record to permit litigation of the complicating effects of earthquakes on j
emergency planning.
2.
The Comission should establish a further special review of the small and large bore piping seismic design adequacy.
This review should be under the direction of NRC staff members who have not been directly involved in the previous design review efforts and should have as its objective achieving a consensus resolution of the concerns identified by Isa Yin and of the allegations relating to the seismic design work at the plant.
Mr. Yin should have a significant role in this review effort.
3.
The Comission should reopen the OIA investigation of staff's conduct. Such an investigation should include interviews with those who submitted allegations to assure that we have all the facts.
4 The Comission should consider carefully the need to reopen the record of this proceeding on other design and con-struction QA issues and decide whether the Appeal Board rulings are correct.
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L'e should make good use of the next few months while the stay is in place rather than just sitting back and hoping that some court even-t tually rules in our favor. Doing any one or all four of these things will help to minimize the potential for delay should the court ulti-mately rule against the NRC.
These are some of the more likely grounds upon which a court would reverse the agency's licensing decision.
Authorization of a license would more than likely have to
'l await the completion of whatever action the court would require to correct flaws in the Comission's decision.
Further, clearing up j
these flaws in the Comission's decision can only help to increase the public's confidence in our decision.
I would like SECY to track responses to this memo.
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November 30, 1983 MEMORANDUM FOR:
Comissioner Asselstine FROM:
Guy H. Cunningham, III Executive Legal Director THRU:
William J. Dircks Executive Director for Operations
SUBJECT:
CONSIDERATION OF COMPLICATING EFFECTS OF EARTHQUAKES ON EMERGENCY PLANNING In your Memorandum of Novenber 14, 1983, you inquired about the ongoing efforts concerning consideration of the complicating effects of earthquakes on emergency planning.
The Staff is presently developing a Memorandum for the Comission which will provide an analysis of the matter supplemental to the Memorandum from Mr. Dircks to the Comissioners, dated June 22, 1982. Completion of this paper is anticipated within the next few weeks.
It is expected that the Staff will continue to recomend that consideration of the potentially complicating effects of earthquakes in the context of emergency planning is not necessary given the level of planning already required by the Com-mission's regulations and, thus, no change to the regulations is warranted.
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Guy H. Cunningham, III
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Executive Legal Director cc: Chairman Palladino Comissioner Gilinsky Comissioner Roberts OGC d(g p'I -,,
Comissioner Bernthal r
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JUN 2 2 1982 MEMORANDUM FOR:
Chairman Palladino Comissioner Gilinsky Comissioner Ahearne Comissioner Roberts Comissioner Asselstine
'FROM:
William J. Dircks Executive Director for Operations
SUBJECT:
EMERGENCY PLANNING AND NATURAL HAZARDS By memorandum dated March 1,1982, the Secretary of the Comission requested the staff to consider several questions with regard to emergency planning.
1.
Should the emergency planning activities of NRC licensees include consideration of the possible effects on emergency plans of a very large earthquake?
It is the judgment of the staff that for most sites earthquakes need not be explicitly considered for emergency. planning purposes because of the very low likelihood that an earthquake severe enough to disturb onsite or offsite planned responses will occur concurrently with or cause a reactor accident.
Planning for earthquakes which might have implications for response actions or initiate occurrences of the " Unusual Event" or
" Alert" classes in areas where the seismic risk of earthquakes to offsite structures is relatively high may be appropriate (e.g., for California sites andotherareasofrelativelyhighseismichazardintheWesternU.S.).
2.
If NRC requirements are to include this consideration, then what criteria should be applied in evaluating the adequacy of such plans in this respect?
In view of the staff response to question 1, current review criteria are considered adequate. Also the staff does not believe that rulemaking is necessary with regard to this issue based on the analysis conducted.
The Hearing Boards have read the Comission ruling in the San Onofre case (CLI-81-33) to eliminate consideration of all earthquakes at California sites.* The interaction of earthquakes less than the SSE with emergency preparedness was considered in the staff SER for San Onofre and ultimately was not a matter in contention in the San Onofre proceeding.
Comissioner Ahearne requested several actions be taken by the staff and these requests were also transmitted in the March 1, 1982, memorandum from the Secretary of the Comission.
These are addressed below.
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Plant, Units 1 and 2), Memorandum and Order, December 23,1981(unpublished),
directed certification denied by Comission Order dated March 5,1982, p
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,The Comissioners.
1.
The staff should, in conjunction with FEMA, develop an approach for checking the ability of emergency plans to cope with natural phenomena which would be expected to occur during the life of the plant.
Examples earthquakes, blizzards, tornadoes, h'Jrricanes, tsunamis, and are:
4 floods that might be expected once every 40 years.
FEMA and the staff should develop guidelines for examining plans for flexibility and should identify measures which can be used to assure flexibility.
As stated in the enclosure, a site emergency plan is expected to address all
.the site characteristics which may require an emergency response. Adverse conditions, which generally correspond to once in 20 to 40 year events, are considered in the evacuation time estimates called for in staff guidance (Criteria for Preparation and Evaluation of Radiological Emergency Response Plans and Preparedness in Support of Nuclear Power Plants, NUREG-0654/
FEMA-REP-1) which was developed jointly by the staff and FEMA.
The evacuation time estimates are used in.the optimization of evacuation and shelter plans as.well as being available to decisionmakers in emergency conditions.
Continuing review of plans to assurb flexibility is already provided by 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix E and 10 CFR 550.54(t).
2.
The staff should develop a list of the once in a lifetime natural disasters most likely for each plant either holding an operating license or in the OL process.
Because of the relatively high risk, current practice calls for Californ,ia licensees and applicants to consider the effects of earthquakes in their emergency planning and for the Trojan plant to consider the consequences of a Mt. St. Helens eruption in its plan.
Other plants do consider adverse conditions in developing evacuation time estimates as discussed above but l
a consolidated listing does not appear to warrant the effort.
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3.
Existing emergency plans should be examined to determine whether adequate flexibility is present.
4 The emergency plan reviews and the onsite implementation appraisals which the staff has been conducting include examinations of the overall j
flexibility of a licensee's emergency response capability and the adequacy of evacuation time estimates, which include the consideration of adverse J
conditions.
Therefore, no further review is believed to be necessary by NRC,
$igase Wmlam1.Diteks William J. Dircks i
Executive Director for Operations l
Enclosure:
Staff Analysis J
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ENCLOSURE m
BASIS FOR CONSIDERATION OF NATURAL HAZARDS IN EMERGENCY PLANNING A fundamental premise in the approach to emergency planning utilized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Comisison is that the emergency planning basis must be capable of responding to a wide spectrum of
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accidents.
This was the conclusion reached by the Task Force which authored l
NUREG-0396 (Planning Basis for the Development of State and Local Government Radiological Emergency Response Plans in Support of Light Water Nuclear Power Plants). That Task Force report was subsequently endorsed by the Comission f
in its Policy Statement with respect to the Planning. Basis for Emergency Responses to Nuclear Power Reactor Accidents' (Policy Statement). 44 Fed.
j Reg.61123(October 23,1979). The concept is reiterated in NUREG-0654 1
j, (Criteria for Preparation and Evaluation of Radiological Emergency Response Plans and Preparedness in Support of Nuclear Power Plants).
Consequently, as a single specific accident sequence for a light water reactor nuclear l
powe,r plant could not be identified as a planning basis, both NUREG-0396
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and NUREG-0654 emphasized that the most important element of any planning
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basis is the distance from the nuclear facility which defines the area over which planning for predetermined action should be carried out.
Not only i
is this area, termed the Emergency Planning Zone or EPZ, crucial but the j
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characteristics of the EPZ are significant.
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The need for specification of areas for major exposure l
pathways is evident.
The location of the population for l
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whom protective measures may be needed, responsible i
authorities who would carry out protective actions and 1
I the means of communication to these authorities and to i
l the population are all dependent on the characteristics j
of the p1anning areas _.
(Emphasissupplied).
NUREG 0654, 1
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' It is, therefore, inherent in the planning approach utilized by FEMA and the Cornission, i.c., the Emergency Planning Zone concept, that the charac-teristics of the Emergency Planning Zones themselves must be factored into emergency planning considerations.
For example, if an EPZ is an area with singular adverse weather attributes, those attributes must be considered in emergency planning. This' reasoning would extend to all attributes that might adversely affect ari Emergency Planning Zone. Although neither 10 CFR 50.47 nor Appendix E explicitly state that the emergency plans must account for adverse weather conditions or adverse site characteristics, such conditions are covered by NUREG-0654, which the Comission has adopted to provide guidance in developing plans for coping with emergencie's.
NUREG-0654 calls for required evacuation time estimates to consider' adverse conditions which might reasonably be expected to occur during the plant lifetime at a particular site and be severe enough to affect the time estimates for a particular event.
Two conditions--normal and adverse--are considered in the analyses.
Adverse conditions would depend on the characteristics of a specific site and could include floodino, snow, ice, foo or rain.
(Emphasissupplied).
NUREG-0654, pp. 4-6.
' Thus, adverse site characteristics of a particular Emergency Planning Zone must be taken into account to satisfactorily implement the Comission's emergency planning regulations.
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. Explicit planning for emergency preparedness provides a base capability which can be expanded or contracted to address an actual emergency.
Backup communi-cations and feedback of damage estimates regarding transportation routes to decisionmakers after an earthquake would be generally available with or without
'pecific advance planning. The general planning base would allow decisionmakers s
to choose specific actions from among available alternatives for a spectrum of events.
There is no explicit guidance in 10 CFR 50.47 or.in Appendix E to Part 50 nor in NUREG-0654 as to the extent to which adverse earthquake conditions ~are to be taken into account in emergency planning"at:particular sites. The staff, however, believes the answer to this question is dependent upon the nature of the risk and the nature of the remedy to deal with the risk.
Except in California and 'other areas of relatively high seismic hazard in the Western U. S., the staff's judgment is that the nature of the seismic risk is such that no explicit con-sideration of earthquake effects is needed in emergency planning.
(Thisjudgment is not based on a quantitative analysis but rather on qualitative observations of the relatively lower seismic risk to roads, bridges and communications facilities in the east versus the west.) The occurrence of. earthquakes of a nature that could have implications for onsite or offsite response actions or initiate occurrences of the " Unusual Event" or " Alert" class is an adverse characteristic of the type discussed above.
The NRC staff made requests to California facilities to consider earthquake effects in their emergency planning, and the NRC staff also requested FEHA to consider earthquake effects in its evaluation of offsite plans.
On the other. hand, the staff concluded that additional requirements such 9
9
4 as the design of additional facilities, structures and systems to specifically withstand earthquakes was not necessary for the reasons discussed above.
In particular, no special seismic design of public notification systems, environ-mental monitoring capability or communications equipment is contemplated.
Also, explicit consideration need not be given to a seismic event coincident with a significant accident at the plant from another cause because of the very low likelihood of such a coincidence.
With respect to offsite effects at California sites, the FEMA Radiological Emergency Preparedness staff believes there should be assurance of continued comunication between the plant and outside agencies.
In addition, the EmergencyOperationsCenters(EOCs)ofeachofthejurisdictionsinvolved in the emergency planning effort for a specific nuclear facility should.
have suitably distant backup facilities to permit continued functioning of a jurisdiction's emergency response given the possible failure of its primary E0C.
In addition, for California sites the capability should exist to obtain damage estimates both to the plant and to transportation and communication facilities offsite to provide a data base to factor into the decisionmaking process.
Finally, California licensees should have available a range of recomendations to offsite authorities, taking into account the degree of damage to the plant caused by the earthquake and to transportation and comunication facilities offsite.
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. Given an earthquake of magnitude less than or equal to the SSE, while the earthquake could have impacts upon communications and transportation as a consequence of the earthquake, the plant would li,kely not pose an imediate radiological hazard.
If, however, an earthquake substantially in excess of the SSE were to occur, then the potential exists for a radiological ha:ard complicated by the nonradiological impacts posed by a major earthquake, in the view of the NRC staff, such a contingency does not warrant specific emergency planning efforts because of the general, planning base capabilities discussed above.
We conclude that this general planning base is adequate because of the remote likelihood of an earthquake substantially in excess of the SSE.
In addition, the characteristics of an accident which could theoretically be created by an earthquake substantially larger than the SSE would not be outside the spectrum of accident consequences considered in NUREG-0395 upon which the judgment on planning zone sizes and other planning elements was based.
This unlikely sequence would not be unlike the case of a severe accident (not generated by an earthquake) occurring after a winter storm at a site in the northern U. S.
Evacuation may not be a feasible option in such a circumstance.
It also should be noted that to provide for a preplanned emergency response in all remote circumstances could require a commitment of substantial societal resources, e.g., to assure that houses and bridges would withstand very large earthquakes.
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\\ucear n"ormation and Resource Service 1346 Connecticut A erue fN! 4th Floor. V! ash;nyon. D C 20036 (202) 296J557 October 19, 1984 HAND DELTVERED I
James M. Felton, Director EREEDOM OF INFORMATON Division of Rules and Records Office of Adminstration
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Washington, D.C. 20555 T
gat 'd IO FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REOUEST
Dear Mr. Felton:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 522, as amended, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service requests the following documents regarding the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
This request is made on behalf of the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace Inc., intervenors in the Diablo Canyon Operating License proceedings, docket nos. 50-275, 323.
Please consider " documents" to include reports, studies, test results, correspondence, memoranda, meeting noter, meeting minutes, working papers, graphs, charts, diagress, notes and summaries of conversations and interviews, computer records, and any other forms of written communication, including internal NRC Staff memoranda.
The documents are specifically requested from, but not limited to, the Office of General Counsel (OGC).
In your response, please identify which documents correspond to which requests below.
Pursuant to this request, please provide:
- 1. All documents related to Commission meetings held during June, July, and August of 1984 concerning the complicating effects of earthquakes on emergency preparedness at the Diablo Canyon plant including, but not limited to, SECY papers, vote sheets, and memoranda to and among the Commissioners.
In our opinion, it is appropriate in this case for you to waive search charges, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552 (a) (4) (A) "because furnishing the information can be considered as primarily benefiting the general public."
The Nuclear Information and Resource Service is a non-profit organization serving local organizations concerned about nuclear power and providing infor-mation to the general public.
Information required by 10 CFR 9.14a was provided by letter dated August 3, 1984.
This FOIA request is submitted on behalf of the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, a non profit organization involved in intervention and litigation on the Diablo Canyon plant.
Information sought ee l
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a pursuant to this request will be used in these proceedings and tht!s will benefit the public interest.
If you should desire to contest the matter of the fee waiver, NIRS and the Mothers for Peace request immediate notification.
I expect a response within the ten working days allowed by law.
If you do not intend to make this deadline, I request that a written statement to that effect be provided by you no later. than I
that same date.
If you have any questions regarding this request you may contact I
I Sandy Silver of the Mothers for Peace at 805-543-7748 or me.
Sincerely)
.nu Nina Bell Assistant Director cc: File Sandy Silver 1760 Alisal Street San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 l
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