ML20133A859
| ML20133A859 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Fort Saint Vrain  |
| Issue date: | 12/16/1996 |
| From: | George M AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| To: | Pittiglio C NRC |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9701020136 | |
| Download: ML20133A859 (29) | |
Text
50 4 7 AFhILIATED MERIT
- G REPORTERS, INC.
Melanie L. Humphrey-Watkins RMR, RDR, CRR
.lacque Wilson, RPR, RMR, RDR MaryJ. George, CSR, RPR, RMR December 16, 1996 Clayton L. Pittiglio, JR., P.E.
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Mail Stop T7 F27 11555 Rockville Pike Rockville, Maryland 20852 ;
RE: Public Meeting -
Platteville, Colorado
Dear Clayton:
Enclosed herewith are the original and one copy transcripts of the Public Hearing, held on December-3, 1996, in Platteville, Colorado.
Please let me know if we can be of further assistance through our Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley or Cheyenne offices.
j incerely, J
MarkJ. yarms George i Registered Professional Reporter Registered Merit Reporter Certified Realtime Reporter Enclosure I
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4 9701020136 961216 r
/N i~ \O PDR ADOCK 05000267 T PDR ,
435 West Mulberry, Suite 207 303 East 17th Avenue, Suite 700 710 - 11th Avenue, Suite E-304 Suite 173, Httching Post Inn Fort Collins, CO 80521 Denver, CO 80203 Greeley, Co 80631 1700 West Lincolnway (970) 224 3000 (303) 661 $000 (970) 353-0300 Cheyenne, WY 82001 (307) 632-3800 1-800-845-3001
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INFORMATION PUBLIC MEETING , _;
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ORIGINAL t i-
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f Tuesday, December 3, 1996 7:00 p.m.
Platteville Community Center 508 Reynolds Avenue
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Platteville, Colorado 80651 '1
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RE: Decommissioning and License Termination of the Public Service Company's of Colorado Fort Saint Vrain Nuclear Generating Station.
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r AFFILIATED MERIT REPORTERS, INC. M Professional Court Reporting and Videotaping 1-800-845-3001 1c
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 (Public Hearing proceedings convened 3 7:03 p.m., December 3, 1996.)
4 MR. PITTIGLIO: Good evening and welcome to 5 the public meeting. I guess before we start, one 6 thing we'd like to do.is ask if there is any general 7' members of the public here tonight.
f 8 Okay. Do we have any members of the media 9 here also?
10 Okay. All right. My name is 11 Larry Pittiglio and I am with the Nuclear Regulatory 12 Commission and the project manager for 13 Fort St. Vrain. I'd like to take a few minutes and 14 introduce the participants at the meeting tonight so 15 that you'll be familiar with all of the players.
(' 16 First of all, I have identified as our 17 meeting monitor, Lane --
but Lane-is the --
is held 18 up tonight at a meeting at the town hall. They're
( 19 building a new town hall and they had some problems 20 related to it. I talked to him today on the phone 21 and he had a council meeting tonight and he said it 22 would probably be going on until 11:00 tonight and he 23 probably wasn't going to make it, but I certainly 24 wanted to recognize his and his staff's efforts in 25 helping us get this meeting room togeth'er. They f
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1 certainly have been a big help.
2 From headquarters, I'd like to introduce 3 who I have from NRC. I have Lawrence Kokajko.
4 Lawrence, where are you? Lawrence is here. Lawrence 5 is the project manager for the interim field storage 6 facility at the site. The site has two licenses, one 7 for the reactor and one for the fuel storage 8 facility.
9 Along with that, from headquarters I have 10 Dave Fauver, who is one of our technical specialists 11 and will be here to address any questions we might 12 have.
13 From the region four office, I have 14 Blair Spitzberg. Blair is in charge of the 15 inspection program. Also out in the audience is 16 Lou Carson. Lou is our inspector and Breck 17 Henderson, who is our public affairs officer.
18 And from Public Service Company of 19 Colorado, I have identified Clay Crawford, but Clay 20 is down with the flu, I understand.
21 We have Mary Fisher, who will be giving a 22 presentation. Ted, are you here? Okay. Ted Borst c 23 is here. M il' Holmes, Sam Chestnut is from licensing 24 and is --
we have had to put --
25 MS. FISHER: We have Harvey Storey here I
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1 from SEG.
2 MR. STOREY: Westinghouse.
( 3 MS. FISHER: Westinghouse. And we have 4 Dennis Reese here from Morrison Knutson.
5 MR. PITTIGLIO: The participants were 6 constantly a moving target so after revising this 7 slide two or three times I gave up and left it with
( 8 what was -- what we had.
9 Before we start, let me just take a minute 10 or two and talk about what the agenda is. I'm going 11 to do a little bit of a brief introduction about the 12 decommissions process and then I'm going to turn it 13 over to Public Service of Colorado. Mary Fisher is 14 going to do a presentation on the actual 15 dismantlement of Fort St. Vrain.
16 Following that, Blair Spitzberg is going to 17 talk a little bit about the inspection program that 18 we've had in place during the entire decommissioning
( 19 process.
20 Then I'm going to come back in and talk a
(- _ 21 little bit about the license termination process and 22 the supporting confirmatory supporting surveys and
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23 then open it up also for any opportunity for public 24 c omnte n t s .
25 Let me just put this slide up to again
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I 5
I remind you, as I had said earlier, there are two 2 licenses at Fort St. Vrain. One of them is a PART 50 3 license, which is the reactor license and the PART 72 4 license. So you have met both the project managers 5 for NRC in those areas.
6 Just a little bit of background about how 7 long this project has been going on. The Public f 8 Service Company of Colorado submitted an application 9 to decommission. Fort St. Vrain on November 5th, 10 1990. NRC issued an order to authorize 11 decommissioning on November 23d, 1992.
12 There was a --
in that two-year period, 13 there was a lot of time spent in resolution of 14 technical issues, there were more than 20 requests 15 for additional information exchanges and technical 16 responses to resolve technical issues related to the 17 decommissioning.-
18 Following the resolution of these areas, 19 the decommissioning plan was approved and the order 20 was initiated.
21 I think at this stage, that just gives you 22 a little bit of background. I'm going to turn it
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23 over to Mary Fisher to talk about the dismantlement 24 facility.
25 MS. FISHER: Good evening, ladies and s
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1 gentlemen. As I indicated, Clay Crawford was out 2 sick today and wanted to give this speech and it was
[ 3 unfortunate that he couldn't, but he sends his 4 regards to the town of Platteville.
5 I'm Mary Fisher, I'm the program director 6 to the decommiscioning of Fort St. Vrain and I'll 7 give you a brief history of Fort St. Vrain and then
( 8 also just the dismantlement technology that we went 9 through.
10 Just a brief background to tell you a
( 11 little bit about Fort St. Vrain. I'll go through 12 some of the spent fuel disposition and what we've 13 done with our spent fuel from the reactor, the 14 dismantlement methodology, safety and radiological 15 performance of the plant then the final survey, which
( 16 you see lined up over here, we'll talk about that and 17 what we have done with the site since then.
18 Just background, Fort St. Vrain was a high 19 temperature gas-cooled reactor, was a 330 megawatt 20 reactor. It was one of the first of its kind, only 21 kind, in the United States for as far as commercial 22 reactor.
23 We constructed it in 1968 and began 24 commercial power generation in '73 and then we 25 permanently shut it down in August of 1989.
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1 We did that for several reasons, which you 2 see listed here. We had poor operational performance 3 from 1976 to 1989; our fuel costs were high, because 4 we were one of a kind, only of a kind, which helped 5 to make a continuing loss to Public Service Company 6 on a financial basis. We had control rod drive 7 failures and steam generator ring header failures at.
8 the same time in August of '89, and even though those 9 repairs could have been done, it would have required 10 significant downtime as well as a high cost to Public 11 Service Company of Colorado, so we made the 12 determination to shutdown the plant.
13 When we shutdown the plant, we had several 14 things that we needed to look at. This was kind of 15 the project limitation or schedule that we went-( 16 through. The independent spent fuel storage 17 installation was one of the first things that we had 18 to consider, was: What are we going to do with our
( 19 fuel? And we'll go into that in a few minutes. We 20 loaded the IT in 1992. We received a decommissioning 21 order from NRC in November 1992.
22 ohysical decommissioning activities were
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23 done (n March of this year and since that time we've 24 been working on the fina3 survey. The final survey 25 was finally complete in October and we are s
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1 anticipating license termination sometime during the 2 first quarter of 1997.
3 Some of the fuel disposition issues that we 4 had to contend with was we needed to load the fuel 5 from the reactor vessel itself to continue with the 6 dismantling, we also needed to maintain licensed 7 personnel to de-fuel that reactor and so that was a f 8 continuing loss or a continuing financial impact to 9 Public Service Company in maintaining that staff.
10 Fort St. Vrain was not ready to de-fuel at 11 that time, the shutdown came as a surprise to 12 everyone, it was not something that was planned and 13 so we were not ready to de-fuel. We only had space 14 for about a third of the reactor core fuel and so 15 two-thirds would have to remain in the reactor until f 16 we'could find another alternative. We aid have an 17 alternative to ship spent fuel to a DOE facility in 18 Idaho, but the governor of Idaho refused to take that
( 19 fuel and that facility was not ready to receive our 20 fuel either because of the surprise shutdown.
( 21 We did go ahead and fill the spent fuel 22 storage installation and it is located about a 23 quarter of a mile north of the existing plant, so it 24 is on the same site but it is separate from the rest 25 of the plant. It is a passively cooled modular vault
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1 dry storage system and I have a diagram here in a few 2 minutes that I will show you of that facility.
{ 3 Fuel is stored --
are stored in sealed 4 steel canisters. And there are six fuel elements per 5 canister. The construction and the loading lasted 6 about two years and was completed on June 10th of 7 1992 and it was 10 weeks ahead of schedule.
8 This is a diagram of the facility itself.
9 As you see, it's 80 feet tall and has a chimney 10 effect which creates the passive cooling. Through f 11 the system it's 72 feet wide and 143 feet long so 12 those are the dimensions of the building and it is 13 separate from the plant site, it's an independent 14 facility.
15 This year Public Service Company reached 16 agreement on a settlement with DOE. As I indicated, 17 DOE had had responsibility and also had a location to 18 take our fuel. We did reach agreement with DOE to
( 19 take our fuel. Our fuel has the --
the spent fuel 20 has been transferred to DOE. That occurred on 21 February 9th of this year.
22 DOE is anticipating sending in a request
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23 for license transfer to take over the license'of the 24 facility as well sometime within the next two weeks 25 to NRC. DOE is reimbursing Public Service Company r
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1 for all operations and maintenance costs since 2 February of this year.
( 3 They also paid Public Service Company 4 $16 million and DOE is responsible for the shipping 5 of the spent fuel as well as the decommissioning of 6 that facility once the fuel is shipped.
7 The fuel is anticipated to be shipped when 8 the Federal depository is opened to receive the fuel 9 from basically from any utility -- I said basically 10 from any nuclear utility that has a power -- a 11 nuclear power plant.
12 Moving on to the dismantlement methodology, 13 how we decommission this facility, this was basically 14 what the prestress concrete reactor vessel looked
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15- like during operations. As you can see, we have 16 about 9 feet of concrete here, it's 106 feet tall.
i 17 We have several internal components, as are indicated 18 there.
( 19 Some of the highlights would be the core 20 support floor, which was a large component that had
[ 21 to be removed in one piece, and I will get into a 22 little bit more how we removed all these components.
23 The first thing we did was we had to remove 24 the top head concrete. It was 15 feet thick at the 25 top. It was removed, as you can see right here what c
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1 that's depicting.
2 In addition to that, we took out all the 3 movable internal components. As you can see here 4 it's been emptied. And then the next thing we did 5
was we bled into that core with 3 6 5 , 0 0,0 gallons of 6 water to provide shielding for our-workers as we 7 continued to work on this vessel.
8 This is one of the concrete sections. One 9 of the top head concrete blocks, as I indicated, you 10 can see down below the 15 feet of concrete that's 11 been cut. That's one of the blocks that had been 12 taken out and sectioned and shipped off as low 13 radioactive waste.
14 This is a rotary work platform. Once the 15 top head concrete was removed, we put in a work 16 platform and this is a picture of.that work 17 platform. You can see the slot right here that the 18 workers used to remove the internal components.
19 This is a diagram of the core support 20 floor, that was one of the things I indicated.
21 This is the core support floor itself, when 22 it was installed it weighed 270 tons, when it came 23 out it weighed 360 tons due to the water and extra
- 24 shilling we had to put on top that was retaining 25 water. It was a five-foot thick wafer of concrete
12 1 that had to be removed in one piece. 31 feet in 2 diameter and this is a picture of the core support 3 floor coming up in one piece.
4 This is some of the hydraulic lifts that we 5 used. There are some walkways for the hydraulic 1 6 lifts that we used in order to pick this piece up.
7 Here's some shilling that was put on top of the 8 structure as it came out.
9 Once the core support floor was removed, we 10 had the bottom component still to remove, we had 11 steam generators and circulators. And this is one of 12 the steam generators coming out, being packaged for 13 radioactive shipment --
or being packaged to be sent 14 to a low-level radioactive waste storage facility.
15 That component weighed about 40 tons and it 16 was shipped out in one piece. The next thing we had 17 to do is on the interior, some concrete internal to 18 that was activated, did have radioactive constituents 19 in it.
20 We removed the top 26 feet of concrete and 21 then we went down and removed the bottom 40 feet of 22 concrete. And if you look, this is one --
this is a 23 picture of one of the top head pieces coming out.
24 Now that we're done, this is what the 25 vessel looks like. We still have concrete remaining, I
1 13 1 all of the concrete internal that had any radioactive 2 constituents in it has been removed. We've gone in, l 3 done the final survey on that structure and have 4 proven that it is clean, has no more radioactivity 5 in it.
6 One of the things that we kept track of as 7 we went through this was radiation exposure to our 8 workers and we wanted to make sure we protected them 9 in the best way possible while they were doing this 10 work.
11 We had submitted -- previously when we 12 submitted back in 1991 our decommissioning plan with 13 NRC that we would expend 433 per REM activity.
14 Actual project exposure was less than that, 380.
15 We did pay attention to that and kept it as 16 low as reasonable --
as low as possible. Our agency 17 performance, our radioactive waste shipping 18 performance, we did project 290,000 cubic feet. As 19 you can see we were very close to that projection.
20 There were 1511 shipments and some of you 21 that live in the area maybe had seen those going out 22 or trucks coming in on the roads around here.
23 There was 127,000 cubic feet buried at 24 Richland, Washington, which is a low-level waste 25 disposal facility that we sent all our local waste t
14 1 to.
2 There are 14,400 cubic feet that went to 3 Beatty, Nevada, that was opened early on in the 4 projects --
or late in 1991 and it closed in early 5 1992. It is no longer available to us. The rest of )
6 it went to Washington.
1 7 And there was 159,000 that was sent to the 8 processors and as I indicated earlier, SEG is 9 represented tonight, the Scientific Ecoloc; Group, 10 and they are in the process of sending it --
what 11 they do is take the waste and recycle it.
12 Industrial safety was also something that 13 we were very concerned with. We wanted to maintain a 14 very safe work environment both radiologically and 15 industrially for our workers. We had six lost time 16 work accidents over the time frame from 1991 to 17 1996. We compared that --
we wanted to know what 18 that was like compared to other construction projects 19 across the nation, so we compared that to other 20 construction projects.
21 The way you do that is by incidence rate 22 and you take the number of accidents multiplied by
. 200,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> divided by the productive hours worked 24 where you didn't have an accident. That comes out --
25 at Fort St. Vrain it was point 7. Across the I
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1 industry on a typical construction job it ranges --
2 it averages about 5.5.
3 Severity rate was something we also kept 4 track of. And what that is is how long a worker was 5 off work as a result of an injury, one of those six r 6 injuries. Typical construction projects is 132, at 7 Fort St. Vrain it was down --
it was --
we kept it 8 down to 52, so not only were there less injuries but 9 they were also less severe than you see on other 10 construction projects.
11 Moving to the final radiological survey, it 12 documents the plant surfaces are clean, as I 13 indicated before, that reactor vessel, that 106-foot i 14 high structure, had to be documented that it was 15 clean. We did go in and survey it. It does now meet 16 the criteria, which --
and we're just waiting NRC to 17 finish the review of all that information to make 18 sure that it's accurate.
19 There were 221,000 final measurements 'lat 20 were done in 312 survey areas. We did do other 21 characterizations and investigations. If we found 22 something in one of those areas that concerned us, we
! 23 would go back and look at it again and either clean 24 up the area again or determine that it was not a 25 concern. And that brought the measurements to over r
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16 J 1 400,000 measurements of points, locations that were 2 surveyed during the final survey.
3 The site buildings are clean, as well as 4 the site, itself, and we are asking NRC to release us 5 from our license which will permit us to use that i 6 facility without restriction.
7 And we can use it for any purpose the 8 Public Service Company would see fit: offices, 9 industrial, continued agricultural use, which is 10 currently what's being done on that site.
11 One tning that we have decided to do is to 12 revitalize that site as a power generation station.
13 We are repowering that site. We have put in a 1 14 130-megawatt combustion turbine. That combustion 15 turbine is currently up and running. It started 16 operation April of this year.
17 We are also in the process of constructing 18 a 102-megawatt heat recovery steam generator. That 19 will be on-line in May of 1998. And we have plans to 20 re-utilize the existing Fort St. Vrain turbine 21 generator, the. steam generator that was used as part 22 of the nuclear generation.
23 With the -- with that construction and an 24 additional combustion turbine, we will have a total 25 generating capacity at Fort St. Vrain of 471 l
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1 megawatts, with the option to go back in to the 2 Public Utilities Commission and ask for a third 3 stage, which would put in another turbine generator, 4 combustion turbine and heat recovery generator, which 5 would total 685 megawatts at that facility.
6 So there are plans to continue with the 7 repowering at this location. It's a very key
( 8 location for Public Service Company.
9 And this is a picture of the combustion 10 turbine that's been installed and is currently 11 operating at Fort St. Vrain.
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12 There are a couple of overheads that we 13 wanted to go through as well. One is that we have 14 successfully demonstrated the technology of the high 15 temperature gas-cooled reactor. It was one of the 16 things when this plant was built that was something 17 that Public Service Company felt very strongly about 18 being able to do and we have done that.
19 We are very proud of the people and the 20 staff that we had as well as the contractors that we 21 had on-site, Westinghouse, Science Ecology Group and 22 Morrison Knutson, who did an excellent job during the 23 decommirasioning, f 24 They have gone out and done -- made extreme 25 efforts at this plant and they have all been done
18 I with professionalism and dedication, both during the 2 operation of the decommissioning and now in the 3 repowering phase.
4 Along with that, we've had a lot of help 5 from the NRC and we do thank them for their 6 commitment and help. We're very proud of being in a 7 community that has readily accepted us and we wanted
[ 8 to say thank you to you.
9 We have a good working relationship with 10 the town of Platteville and we want to continue that 11 through our repowering process.
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12 We're very committed to safety as our 13 records show and want to continue to do that. The 14 six lor.t-time accidents that you saw on there all 0 15 occurred with one of our contractors. Public Service 16 Company has not had a lost time accident at Fort St.
17 Strain since 1991.
18 We will continue our commitment to safety 19 and even though this is the end of a nuclear era, it 20 is the beginning of the revitalized site for 21 Fort St. Vrain.
22 With that, I'll turn it back over to NRC.
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23 MR. PITTIGLIO: You might want to point out 24 the reactor vessel was --
actually had over 25 90 percent of the total contamination of the plant.
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F l 19 1 MS. FISHER: Yes.
2 THE COURT: Okay. I will turn it over to 3 Blair.
4 MR. SPITZBERG: Good evening. My name is 5 Blair Spitzberg and I'm the chief of the nuclear
( 6 materials licensing branch.
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7 Our name is pending a change and we will f 8 have decommissioning in our branch's name here 9 shortly within the next few weeks. It will be the 10 Nuclear Materials Licensing and Decommissioning 11 Branch.
12 We have the responsibility for conducting 13 the inspections of Fort St. Vrain, which have always 14 been conducted out of the region 45?. office, which is 15 based in Arlington, Texas.
f 16 The NRC is centralized with our 17 headquarters office in Rockville, Maryland, however, 18 we do have 451 regional offices and the regional 19 office's function are twofold: The primary function 20 of the regional office is inspection. That's most of 21 what we do.
22 The other function of the regional office 23 is to provide emergency response capabilities should 24 an emergency arise at one of our operating reactors.
25 Let me give you a brief oversight of how I
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20 1 we're organized in the region. I don't know if this 2 will show up too well. We have a regional 3 administrator, Joe Callan, who just yesterday, I can 4 announce, was announced as the next executive 5 director of operations for the NRC, so he will be 1 6 starting sometime early next year being the top 7 executive in the NRC.
8 Beneath him, we have some individuals who 9 perform unique functions: Regional state liaison 10 officer, regional counsel, enforcement officer, 11 public affairs officer, Breck Henderson, who's here, 12 emergency response coordinator, and then we have an 13 administrative division and three technical i 14 divisions.
15 And of the three technical divisions are 16 the divisions that are responsible for conducting the 17 inspection programs out of the regional office.
18 My branch is located under the Division of 19 Nuclear Materials Safety, which Ross Morano is the 20 director. The other two technical divisions are 21 oriented more toward operating reactors; however, in 22 some of the inspections that we conducted in recent 23 years at Fort St. Vrain, we have utilized a technical 24 specialist from the other technical divisions to 25 perform some of these inspection functions.
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l 21 1 The purpose of the inspection program is 2 very simple: It's to verify compliance with the NRC
- 3 license that has been issued to Fort St. Vrain and 4 with the technical specifications, the 5 decommissioning plan, the final surveys, procedures 1 6 that are implemented by the utility, all of these are 7 requirements that are binding on the licensee. And 8 the job of our inspectors is to verify through 9 various means, including direct observation, 10 compliance with these requirements.
11 What I wanted to do is focus on the 12 inspection program that has been conducted since the 13 decommissioning plan was approved in November of 14 1992. Prior to that, when the plant was operating we 15 had a different focus on the inspection program and 16 that was based on the operations of the plant. Since 17 1992, obviously the focus of the inspection program 18 has been toward the decommissioning activities.
19 Some of the inspection procedures that have 20 been implemented during this period of time include 21 inspections of the plant procedures to make sure that 22 they're technically accurate and that they're being 23 implemented in accordance with the specifications and 24 regulatory requirements. We've also spent a good 25 amount of inspection effort looking at the audit l
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1 program.
2 The NRC is a relatively small agency in 3 terms of numbers. Even though we have highly 4 qualified staff, we don't have enough staff to be out 5 here all the time, so in --
in order to increase the 6 confidence that we have in the activities that are 7 going on here and the compliance with the procedures 8 and the technical specifications, we rely to some 9 extent on the quality assurance programs that are 10 implemented by the licensee and we do inspect this 11 vigorously.
12 We also look at the operation of the PSC on 13 a regular basis, which is somewhat separate from the i 14 decommissioning activity, but it's connected in that 15 when the reactor license, the 50 docket license is 16 terminated, we have to ensure that the programs and 17 staff are acceptable at the PSC at a stand-alone 18 program so that we have confidence that it will 19 continue to be operated in a manner that it has been 20 in the past, without some of the support that has --
21 it has received from the reactor program.
22 Some of the other areas I'll point out, 23 environmental monitoring we look at on a regular
( 24 basis, the radiological environmental monitoring, to 25 make sure it's been effectively implemented during c
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these few years since the decommissioning 2 management went into effect. We've also looked at 3 . occupational exposure during the save, store end 4 decon operations to ensure that personnel exposures 5 are kept low and below the regulatory limits. We 6 performed quite a bit of independent surveys here, 7 primarily through a contractor that we utilize, f 8 ORISE, which Dave, you may want to talk about that in 9 a little bit, but part of the process of inspecting 10 during the decommissioning is to conduct side-by-side 11 independent surveys throughout the process at various 12 stages so that we not only confirm that the 13 contamination levels and radioactive material have 14 been reduced to levels that are below the criteria 15 for release, but also to gain confidence in the 16 licensee's ability to conduct the survey so that when 17 we look at these 11 feet of final surveys over here, 18 that we have confidence based on our own surveys that
( 19 these surveys had been performed in accordance with 20 their plan and procedures.
21 We also routinely lock at radioactive waste 22 management to ensure that the licensee's radioactive i
23 waste management and consolidation, characterization, 24 and shipment and waste has been conducted in 25 accordance with the requirements.
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1 We look at the spent fuel activities to 2 ensure that the spent fuel and all the operations e
3 associated with the safe store of the fuel at the PSC 4 is conducted in accordance with their license.
5 And then down here, the follow-up procedure 6 is to continuously follow up or any violations or 7 deviations or open items that we may have identified 8 in previous inspections.
9 Just to give you a sense of what the 10 inspections that we have performed since tha 11 decommissioning plan was approved in November of '92,
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12 and these numbers are not exact, but I wanted to pull 13 together some figures that I think are reasonably 14 accurate that would give you some ideas of what our 15 effort has been here since November of '92.
16 In these four years we've conducted about 17 22 individual inspections. Many of these inspections 18 were team inspections involving more than one 19 individual; some of them have been individual 20 inspections.
21 All total, we've expended approximately 22 750 inspection hours during that period of time and
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23 the inspections have identified some six cited 24 violations, three deviations, and two noncited 25 violations. So that's a reasonably good record, I I
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1 would say, based on the number of inspections and 2 inspection hours that have been expended here.
( 3 I just want to wrap up my section, then 4 I'll invite any questions by saying that where we are 5 today in the inspection program, is Lou Carson is out 6 here conducting an inspection this voek; we are 7 likely to continue conducting inspections until the 8 license is terminated.
9 We believe that Public Service of Colorado
(. 10 has been a compliant licensee that we have had a good 11 relationship with, they've been very open with us, 12 they've gone to great lengths to keep us informed of 13 the activities out here, and at this point we have no 14 outstanding inspection items that would, i this 15 pojnt, hinder license termination.
(- 16 MR. PITTIGLIO: Thank you, Blair. I'd like 17 to take a couple more minutes now and come back and 18 talk a little bit about the confirmatory survey that
( 19 NRC conducted. It's really tied into part of what 20 was done and Blair touched on the inspection 21 program.
22 Over the last year, I think Dave and I have 23 been out here from Washington about four different 24 times for a week each to participate in a team 25 inspection and review what's been going on on the L
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l 26 1 confirmatory --
on the licensee survey and conduct 2 the confirmatory survey.
3 First of all, over the last period of time, 4 NRC has conducted an extensive quality assurance 5 audit of the final survey records and supporting 6 documentation and this was done over an 18-month 7 period consisted of using the regional inspection 8 team, Dave Fauver and another QA specialist, 9 John Buckley, out of headquarters and myself, to 10 do --
participate in this QA audit.
11 In addition to that, as Blair has 12 mentioned, not only have we contracted with ORISE, 13 we've also contracted with Environmental Measurement 14 Laboratory, EML, to support the confirmatory survey 15 efforts.
16 Currently we're reviewing, believe it or 17 not, all of those volumes of information. As we said 18 before, we've had ORISE out with us, we've gone 19 through numerous quality assurance .udits, and the 20 EML and ORISE measurements have been consistent with 21 PSC's survey measurements.
22 Now, for Dave and I, we've been through 23 this once before because we did this with Shoreham.
24 I was the project manager and Dave was the specialist 25 related to the final survey. It was an extensive F
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1 process for both of these. plants, but it's really the 2 basis for which we find that the contamination has 3 been removed and that we release the facility from
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4 restrictive use. Again, right-now we're in the 5 process of completing the review of the documents 6 that have been submitted to as.
7 We've completed our confirmatory surveys at 8 this time and we are basically looking towards 9 license termination to occur in spring of --
early 10 spring of this year, spring of '97.
11 I'm just identifying some of the steps that
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12 ;Ce've gone through or are. We're conducting, 13 obviously, the public meeting and we're proceeding to 14 terminate the license in accordance to 10 CFR 50.82 15 A-11 and included in that process will be the NRC 16 supporting safety evaluation that provides the basis 17 for the release of the facility.
18 Do we have any questions from anybody? No f 19 questions at all? Sure you can't find something to 20 ask Dave? We dragged him all the way out here.
21 Thank you.
22 (Public hearing proceedings concluded 23 7:40 p.m., December 3, 1996.)
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28 C E R T I F I C A T E I, MARY J. HARMS GEORGE, a Registered Professional Reporter, Registered Merit Reporter, Certified Realtime Reporter and a Notary Public of the State of Colorado, appointed to take the public I hearing, do hereby certify that the public hearing was taken by me at 508 Reynolds Avenue, Platteville, Colorado, on December 3, 1996; that the proceedings were thereafter reduced to typewritten form by means of computer-aided transcription, consisting of 27 pages herein; that the foregoing is an accurate transcript of the proceedings at that time.
I further certify that I am not related to any party herein or their counsel and have no l interest in the result of this litigation.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my Notarial Seal this 16th day of Dece ber, 996.
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, MARY J.
HARMS '
t" jqye g3gg t-/! --gis}ered 3, gg R Professional Reporter
.. Registered Merit Reporter
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Certified Realtime Reporter My Commission Expires 10/2/98.
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