ML20136H787
| ML20136H787 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Shoreham File:Long Island Lighting Company icon.png |
| Issue date: | 11/21/1985 |
| From: | Shoemaker C NRC ATOMIC SAFETY & LICENSING APPEAL PANEL (ASLAP) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| CON-#485-264 ALAB-824, OL, NUDOCS 8511250195 | |
| Download: ML20136H787 (15) | |
Text
f, DUCXETEP USNRC UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
'85 NOV 21 P2:39 ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING APPEAL BOARD __ DF SEch n.
v.rn:
DOCXETm3 4 SE::, s' Administrative Judges:
BRM,cy Alan S.
Rosenthal, Chairman November 21, 1985 Gary J.
Edles (ALAB-824)
Howard A. Wilber SERVED NOV 211985
)
In the Matter of
)
)
LONG ISLAND LIGHTING COMPANY
)
Docket No. 50-322 OL
)
(Shoreham Nuclear Power Station,
)
Unit 1)
)
)
Fabian G.
Palomino, Albany, New York, for the intervenors State of New York and Suffolk County (Lawrence Coe Lanpher, Alan Roy Dynner, and Douglas J.
Scheidt, Washington, D.C., were on the brief for Suffolk County).
T.
S.
Ellis, III, Richmond, Virginia (with whom W.
Taylor Reveley, III, Richmond, Virginia, Odes-L.
Stroupe, Jr.,
Raleigh, North Carolina, and Lucinda E.
Minton, Washington, D.C., were on the brief), for the applicant Long Island Lighting Company.
Richard J. Goddard (with whom Edwin J.
Reis was on the brie f) for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff.
DECISION Before us is the joint appeal of intervenors Suffolk County and the State of New York from the Licensing Board's June 14, 1985 partial initial decision in this operating license proceeding involving the Shoreham nuclear facility.1 In its decision, the Board determined that, for the first LBP-85-18, 21 NRC 1637.
8511250195 851121 PDR ADOCK 05000322 O
PDR I
a 2
fuel cycle, the three Transamerica Delaval, Inc. (TDI) emergency diesel generators installed at the facility will satisfy the requirements of General Design Criterion (GDC) 17.2.
Insofar as here relevant, that criterion provides:
Electric power systems.
An onsite electric power system and an offsite electric power system shall be provided to permit functioning of structures,. systems and components important to safety.
The safety function for each system (assuming the other system is not functioning) shall be to provide sufficient capacity and capability to assure that (1) specified acceptable fuel design limits and design conditions of the reactor coolant pressure boundary are not exceeded as a result of anticipated operational occurrences and (2) the core is cooled and containment integrity and other vital functions are maintained in the event of 1
postulated accidents.
The onsite electric power supplies, including the batteries, and the onsite electric distribution system, shall have sufficient independence, redundancy, and testability to perform their safety functions assuming a single failure.
Although a large number of subsidiary findings and conclusions undergird the Licensing Board's ultimate determination on the short-term acceptability of the TDI generators, the appeal presents a single, and relatively narrow, issue.
That issue concerns the exclusion by the 2 The General Design Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants are found in Appendix A to 10 CFR Part 50.
As the Introduction to the Appendix states, they " establish minimum requirements for the principal design criteria for water-cooled nuclear power plants similar in design and location to plants for which construction permits have been issued by the Commission."
3 Board of certain evidence offered by the intervenors that purportedly reflects the NRC staff's interpretation of the requirements' imposed by GDC 17.
For the reasons that follow,'we conclude that the evidence in question could not Jserve its' intended purpose and, therefore, was properly excluded.
In-addition, we have conducted our customary sua sponte review of the ultimate determination of the Licensing Board on the acceptability of the TDI generators.
Finding no error. requiring corrective action, we affirm the partial
. initial decision.
.A.
.In the case of a loss of offsite power accompanied by a loss-of-coolant accident (regarded as the " worst case" for analytic purposes),3 the Shoreham emergency event
. generators must be capable of furnishing sufficient AC power to. enable'various systems to bring the reactor to a safe shutdown condition.
In order to ascertain whether.the TDI generators satisfy this requirement, one of them was subjected to an endurance test.
It yas successfully operated for a period of 740 hours0.00856 days <br />0.206 hours <br />0.00122 weeks <br />2.8157e-4 months <br /> at power' levels that, for the most part, met or exceeded 3300 kilowatts (kW).4 Each of the generators was therefore deemed capable of supplying i:
3 l
Dawe, at al.,
fol. Tr. 27,153, at 8, 29.
l See LBP-H5-18, 21 NRC at 1681, 1697.
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4 power in that amount over a protracted period.5 On this basis, the staff found the generators " qualified" to fulfill their assigned function; i.e.,
should the worst case event occur, they would provide an adequate amount of electricity to the required systems.6 For their part, the intervenors did not contend that the continuous emergency power need imposed on any one generator might exceed 3300 kW.7 They nonetheless claimed that the generators should not have been deemed acceptable unless it had been demonstrated that each was capable of delivering more than that amount of power.
To the extent pertinent to their appeal, this claim rested on the 5 As a general matter, the staff relies upon the power ratings assigned by the manufacturer.
Tr. 27,759-60, 27,968-69.
See Regulatory Guide 1.9, Revision 2,
" Selection, Design, and Qualification of Diesel-Generator Units Used as Standby (Onsite) Electric Power Systems at Nuclear Power Plants" (December 1979) (Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) Exhibit C-3).
Because of problems encountered by TDI generators, the staff suggested that the capacity of those generators (whether installed at Shoreham or at another nuclear facility) be determined through an extensive empirical test.
Tr. 27,981-84.
See also Dawe, et al.,
fol. Tr. 27,153, at 9-10.
Knox, fol. Tr. 27,735, at 12; Tr. 27,787, 27,945-46.
See LBP-85-18, 21 NRC at 1689,1691.
Although the intervenors did argue before the Licensing Board that there might be intermittent power demands that would produce a total load on a single generator in excess of 3300 kW, that thesis is not renewed in connection with their appeal.
In any event, we see no reason for concern on this score.
See p.
13, infra.
5 proposition that, as interpreted and applied by the staff, GDC 17 requires that emergency generators be equipped not merely to provide the electricity necessary to take care of the expected maximum loads during the postulated worst case event but, as well, to accommodate unerpected and unnecessary additional loads stemming from possible untoward operator actions.
In an endeavor to buttress this proposition, the intervenors offered the written testimony of two officials of a " technical consulting firm on nuclear power plant safety and licensing matters."8 These witnesses maintained that "(i]t has been the standard practice in the licensing of all boiling water reactors" to require the " maximum rated load" of the emergency generators to exceed by a "significant margin" the amount of power required to shut down the reactor safely.9 The essential foundation for this assertion was a table referring to 27 operating boiling 8 Bridenbaugh and Minor, fol. Tr. 27,500, at 1.
9 Id. at 15.
By " maximum rated load", the witnesses apparentTy had reference both to (1) in the case of TDI generators, the capacity of the generator as determined empirically (in the words of the staf f " qualified load");
and (2) in the case of other generators, the capacity of the generator as represented by the manufacturer (i.e.,
" power rating" or " nameplate rating").
i l
I
6 water reactors located in 18 nuclear power facilities.10 That table,'which was appended to their proposed testimony, had been prepared by the witnesses following an asserted survey made of Final Safety Analysis Reports and other documents.
According to it, the emergency generators associated with the 27 reactors had capacities that exceeded the loads that they might have to satisfy by margins ranging from approximately three to 100 percent.
With the support of the staff, the applicant moved to strike the proposed testimony and accompanying table on the ground that the capacity / power demand margins at other
' facilities were irrelevant on the question of the acceptability of the Shoreham TDI generators.11 The motion was granted for a somewhat different, albeit allied, reason.
According to the Licensing Board, admission of the testimony and table would lead to the litigation of issues "at least 10 Many such facilities have, of course, more than one reactor (i.e., unit).
See LILCO's Motion to Strike Testimony of Dale G.
Bridenbaugh and Gregory C. Minor Regarding Suffolk County's Emergency Diesel Generator Load Contention (February 1, 1985), at 3; NRC Staff Response to LILCO's Motions to Strike Suffolk County's Testimony on Emergency Diesel Generator Load Contention and Cylinder Blocks (February 8, 1985), at 2.
7 so remotely collateral to the material issues before us as to be digressive without any redeeming usefulness."12 As earlier noted, the intervenors' appeal from the June 14 partial initial decision is confined to this Board ruling.
According to the intervenors, the testimony and table did provide support for their claim that the staff has consistently interpreted and applied GDC 17 to require that the rated capacity of emergency generators exceed by a t'
substantial margin the anticipated maximum loads associated with a worst case event.
This being so, the intervenors maintain, the exclusion vf this evidence was improper.
The applicant and the staff urge affirmance of the ruling (and thus the June 14 decision).
They insist that the evidence was properly excluded because it both did not demonstrate past agency practice and was " excessively collateral."
In addition, we are told that, had it been admitted, the evidence would not have affected the outcome of the proceeding.
B.
Contrary to the intervenors' position, we are entirely satisfied that the testimony and table in question were correctly excluded by the Licensing Board.
As ue have seen, that evidence was proffered for a single purpose:
to 12 February 11, 1985 Memorandum and Order Ruling on Motions to Strike Portions of Suffolk County and LILCO Testimony (unpublished), at 3.
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establish that the staff has uniformly interpreted and applied'GDC 17 in a manner. consistent with intervenors' own thinkingfon the subject.
It is manifest, however, that
)
neither the testimony nor the table establishes anylsuch thing.
More specifically, they do nothing.to contradict the staff's insistence on the appeal that "GDC 17 has not been construed as requiring a substantial margin, or a.m'argin'to accommodate operator error, between a diesel generator's rating or qualified load and the maximum emergency service load."13 In the final analysis, all that the table demonstrates is that there;are 27 boiling water reactors licensed by this 4
agency that possess emergency generators 6ith widely varying capacity / power demand margins.
While eaca of those margins exceeds to some extent the margin at.Shoreham, by no means can all of them be characterized as substantial.
As previously noted, the table reflects that one of the margins (that at Millstone 1) was in the neighborhood of three percent.
Moreover, several others also were relatively 13 NRC Staff Response to Suffolk County and State of New York Brief in Support of Appeal of June 14, 1983 ASLB Decision on Emergency Diesel Generators (August 26, 1985),
at 12-13 (footnote omitted).
The term " maximum emergency service. load" (or "MESL") was employed in this proceeding.to refer to the load that the generators would have to bear in response to the worst case event for more than a short time period.
LBP-85-18, 21 NRC at 1691-92.
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small (i.e.,
less than ten percent.)
Still further, the k
'i table did not embrace all licensed boiling water reactors-and made no mention of any pressurized water reactors.14 p
This is a matter of some significance, given the fact that the TDI emergency generators for Unit 1 of the Catawba facility (a-pressurized water reactor) have staff-accepted capacity / power demand margins that are less than those possessed by the Shoreham generators.15 If anything, then, both the table and the Catawba data 4
bear out the staff's representation to us that it has not construed GDC 17 to have the effect attributed to it by the intervenors.
But even had the table reflected that the emergency generators associated with all of the listed reactors possessed large capacity / power demand margins, there still scarcely would have been room to infer that such
\\
14 Although Shoreham is a boiling water reactor, there is no reasonable, technical basis for distinguishing between it and pressurized water reactors for present purposes.
Both types of reactors are equally subject to the
(.
requirements of GDC 17 -- and fulfill those requirements in
' the same fashion.
'~
h 15 See Supplement No. 4 to the Safety Evaluation Report y
4,or Catawba Nuclear Station, Units 1 and 2 (NUREG-0954, December 1984) Appendix G, page 9.
At Catawba, the staff-accepted rated capacity for each of its two emergency generators'is 5750 kW and the power demand for its worst case event is 5714 kW.
The' equivalent figures for Shoreham i
are'3300 and 3253.3, respectively.
See LBP-85-18, 21 NRC at 1691-92.
Thus, the Catawba margin is 0.6 percent and the
,.Shoreham margin is 1.4 percent.
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margins were provided in obedience to a staff mandate, rooted in GDC 17.
For utilities and their contractors do many things in the construction and operation of nuclear power reactors that are not in direct response to a staff-imposed requirement.
The short of the matter is that the table, and accordingly the testimony of the witnesses founded thereon, were of so little probative value on the question of the staff's interpretation and application of GDC 17 that the Licensing Board was fully justified in excluding them from the record.
In this-connection, if interested in obtaining an authoritative answer to the interpretation question, the intervenors might well have sought through the discovery.
1 1
process to obtain that answer from members of the staff
{
responsible for the enforcement of GDC 17.
It is unclear to us why such a direct approach was eschewed, in favor of an endeavor to have the Licensing Board indulge in assumptions that the proffered indirect evidence simply would not
-- a llow.16 i
l-16 The intervenors cited in their brief and at oral argument a portion of the prepared testimony of staff witness John L.
Knox, introduced into the record following Tr. 27,735.
Mr. Knox did not state directly, however, that the staff interpreted GDC 17 to require substantial capacity / power demand margins.
With respect to the intervenors' reliance on Mr. Knox's testimony regarding operator error loads, we discuss the ability of the (Footnote Continued)
~
11 It need be added only that'there is no substance to the
-intervenors' claim at oral argument that the' exclusion of this evidence deprived them of hearing rights guaranteed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended.17 The intervenors were accorded a full hearing on the subject of the acceptability of the TDI generators.
They had ample opportunity to adduce any evidence of true probative value and to test on cross-examination the evidence presented by other parties.
That was the extent of their entitlement.
More specifically, their counsel's apparent differing view notwithstanding, the statutory hearing right enjoyed by the intervenors carried with it no license to encumber the record with evidence of little, if any, intrinsic worth on the theory that the examination and cross-examination of other witnesses might establish the proposition for which that evidence had been offered.18 C.
We have reviewed sua sponte the evidence on the adequacy of the Shoreham emergency generators and concluded, in common with the Licensing Board, that the generators will suffice at least for the first fuel cycle.
Although there (Footnote Continued) emergency power supply to accommodate such loads at p.
12, infra.
1 See section 189a., 42 USC 2239 (a).
18 See Abernathy v. Superior Hardwoods, Inc., 704 F.2d 963, 968 (7th Cir. 1983).
See also 10 CFR 2.743 (c).
c.
12 is no need to explore this matter in great detail, a few brief observations are appropriate.
To begin with, there is no basis for the belief expressed below by the intervenors that a substantial capacity / power demand margin is required to avoid the consequences of operator error.
To be sure, such error might occur and might lead to the loss of the availability of one of the three generators.I But GDC 17 requires the emergency power supply to be able to provide sufficient power to perform its safety functions even in the event of such a " single failure."20 Accordingly, the three generators each must and do possess sufficient capacity to enable any two of them to meet the power demand should the worst case event be accompanied or followed by a loss of the third generator (either because of operator error or otherwise).21 Nor is there merit to the other reasons advanced by the intervenors before the Licensing Board in support of their 19 The applicant has ensured that a single operator error cannot cause the loss of more than one emergency generator.
Dawe, et al.,
fol. Tr. 27,153, at 37.
20 See p.
2, supra.
21 Dawe, et al.,
fol. Tr. 27,153, at 37.
The loss of only one emergency generator must be postulated because GDC 17 does not require that the emergency power supply be capable of enduring more than a " single failure."
y-(
13 claim that the capacity / power demand margins are
-insufficient.22 With regard to the power requirements'of equipment that might operate intermittently, the record-indicates both that (1) such operation would be for no more than a few minutes; and (2) in the unlikely event of the simultaneous occurrence of all of the intermittent loads, the total additional power demand for that relatively short period would be 78.1 kW.23 Yet the tested generator successfully completed a 220-hour segment at power levels at or above 3500 kW -- i.e.,
200 kW. greater than the 3300 kW capacity accepted'as more than sufficient to accommodate the maximum continuous load.24 This consideration also provides an adequate response to the intervenors' concern that the instrument used by the operators to determine the power output of the generators might be crucially inaccurate.25 Although the design accuracy of the instrument is plus or 22 See LBP-85-18, 21 NRC at 1689, 1691.
3 Id. at 1693, 1694; Dawe, et al.,
fol. Tr. 27,153, at 11-19.
24 LBP-85-18, 21 NRC at 1697.
25 See id. at 1691.
The intervenors also claimed below that an allowed operating band of 100 kW rendered the capacity / power demand margin insufficient.
Ibid.
This operating band is allowed, however, only during surveillance testing and will not result in the generators being operated at increased power levels during an emergency.
Dawe, et al.,
fol. Tr. 27,153, at 27.
14 l
minus 140 kW, the calibrations performed before and after the endurance test showed that it was accurate within 70 kW.26 Apart'from the issue regarding the power capacity of the TDI generators, the Licensing Board considered in detail the adequacy of the cylinder blocks'and crankshafts of the TDI diesel generators at Shoreham.
On our review, we have found that the TDI diesel generators have been subjected to extensive analyses, testing and inspections.
In addition, stringent license conditions have been imposed with respect to operating limits, surveillance testing and inspections of the generators.27 As previously noted, the Licensing Board approved the use of the TDI generators for only the first fuel cycle, after which newly purchased diesel generators from a different manufacturer presumably will be available for service.28 Along this line, the Board agreed "with LILCO and the staff that the record supports the 26 Id. at 28-29.
The extensive testing of one of the qmergency generators for 220 hours0.00255 days <br />0.0611 hours <br />3.637566e-4 weeks <br />8.371e-5 months <br /> at or above 3500 kW also satisfies the intervenors' concern that the endurance test did not demonstrate that the generators can provide 3300 kW.
See LBP-85-18, 21 NRC at 1691.
27 See id. at 1677-79, 1687, 1689-90.
28 Id. at 1677-78.
For its part, LILCO has not raised an objection on appeal to any of the license conditions or
, limitations established by the Licensing Board.
.i 15 approval of continued operation of the Shoreham TDI [ diesel generators] for multiple fuel cycles -- with appropriate inspections -- but consider [ed] it prudent for the NRC to defer a decision on operation past the first fuel cycle until industry experience with TDI diesels up to that time can be reviewed."29 In our view, there is no reason to disturb any condition or limitation placed on the operation, testing or inspection of the TDI diesel generators by the Licensing Board.
The Licensing Board's June 14, 1985 partial initial decision is affirmed.
It is so ORDERED.
FOR THE APPEAL BOARD b.
M hb
'Secre$n Shoemaker C.
J tary to the Appeal Board 29 Id. at 1654.