ML20137E040
| ML20137E040 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/25/1997 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20137E014 | List: |
| References | |
| PROJECT-697 NUDOCS 9703270047 | |
| Download: ML20137E040 (46) | |
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OfficicI Transcript cf Preco2 dings c NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Public Meeting on DOE's Proposal to Produce Tritium in Commercial Light-Water Reactors -
Docket Number: (not applicable) h f 14 No. 6f 7 Location: Rockville, Maryland Date: Tuesday, February 25,1997 I
l Work Order No.: NRC-1023 Pages 1-44 ,
I NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 7 970220 Attachtnent 1 97032h J PDR 6
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- 1- UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 5 3 4 + +++
4 PUBLIC MEETING ON DOE'S PROPOSAL TO PRODUCE ,
J 5 TRITIUM IN COMMERCIAL LIGHT-WATER REACTORS 6 4 +4 ++ l s
l 7 TUESDAY I I
8 FEBRUARY 25, 1997 ;
l 9 +++++ '
10 ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND 11 +++++ i 1
12 The public meeting was held in the Auditorium 13 of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Two White Flint 14 North, 11545 Rockville Pike, at 1:00 p.m., David B.
15 Matthews, Acting Deputy Director, NRC Division of Reactor 16 Program Management, presiding.
17 PRESENT:
18 David B. Matthews 19 Stephen M. Schinki 20 Jerry L. Ethridge 21 James H. Wilson l 22 William Yeniscavich i
23 24 j- 25 1
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2 1 A-G-E-N-D-A l
2 Acenda Item Eggg 3 Welcome, Introduction, and Explanation of Meeting 1
4 Format, David B. Matthews, Acting Deputy l l
.5' Division Director, Division of Reactor i l
l 6 Program Management, Office of Nuclear I l
I 7 Regulation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 8 Commission 3 l
9- Overview of DOE's Tritium Program, Stephen M.
10 Schinki, Director, CLWR Project Office,
! 11 U.S. Department of Energy 6 12 Technical Discussion of TPBARs, Jerry Ethridge i
- 13. Senior Program Manager, Batelle Pacific 14 Northwest National Laboratory 21 15 Status of NRC Staff's Review,' James H. Wilson, 16 Senior Project. Manager, Office of Nuclear 17 Reactor Regulation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 18 Commission 33 19 Closing remarks 41 1
20 21 22 I
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f 24 I
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 (1:10 p.m.)
3 MR. MATTHEWS: If everyone could please be 1
4 seated, we'll get started.
5 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name 6 is David Matthews. I'm the Acting Deputy Director of the 7 Division of Reactor Program Management in the Office of t 8 Nuclear Reactor Regulation here at the NRC.
i 9 Our division is the one responsible for 10 overseeing matters within the NRC related to DOE's 11 proposal for the commercial light-water reactor production !
12 of tritium and that is a subject that we are here to 13 discuss today. ;
14 I'd like to make a few introductory {
15 administrative comments and then move on to discussing the {
16 agenda. I 17 First of all, this is our new building, so ,
18 there's no eating, drinking or smoking anywhere within the I 19 confines of the building except in some selected, 20 designated areas you'd be hard-pressed to find.
21 Certainly, no eating and drinking in this auditorium.
22 As announced in the Federal Reaister of 23 January 27, 1997, this is a transcribed public meeting for 24 the purpose of providing an opportunity for public comment 25 and to inform the public of the staff's activities on this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 project.early in the evaluation process.
2
$[ranscriptofthismeetingwillbeattachedto 3 sp meeting summary for this meeting and this combined 4 record of this meeting will be placed in the Commission's 5 public document room in the Gelman Building at 2120 L 6 Street, N.W.
7 It will also be placed in the Watts Bar local 8 public document room and will be available through NUDOCS 9 under$rojectkumber697.
s :
10 There are two sign up sheets on the tables at
/5 11 the rear of the auditorium, near the exit. One sheet wee-12 for people to register on a first-come, first-to -speak 13 basis, if you have a presentation to make or if you have 14 commend to offer.
4 15 Since we have received no requests for_the i 16 opportunity to make presentations or comments prior to 17 this meeting, we will be reviewing the sign up sheet at 18 the break to determine who is interested in speaking and 19 how to equitably apportion the remaining. time.
20 Following the break, we will announce how many .
l 21 speakers we will have and how much time will be allotted 22 to speak. In the instance that we do not have anybody j 23 willing to make public comments, we may be able to shorten 24 the agenda today. ,
l 25 The second sign up sheet at the rear of the NEAL R. GROSS i COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 auditorium is for those of you who wish to receive a i
s 2 summaryoftoday'smeeting(withoutthetranscript)andif 4
3 you'd like for us to send you a meeting summary, please l
4 provide your name and mailing address and we will send it 5 out to you when it is issued, probably in about two weeks.
6 Copies of some background material, as well as i
- 7 copies of the slides that DOE and the staff will be.using 4 ,
t 8 in their presentations today are available at the rear of
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9 the auditorium. A tentative agenda for today's meeting is 10 also provided.
11 Do we have a copy of the tentative agenda for
- 12 display?
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13 Okay, well, I'll just go over it then. I 14 believe there's copies of it that were available when you ;
15 came in the auditorium. '
16 The format for this meeting is to have two DOE ,
17 presentations and one NRC staff presentation. Following j i
18 each of these presentations we will provide a brief I 19 opportunity for specific questions regarding the material 20 presented.
21 If you could, when you ask a question, please 22 state your name so that the court reporter can identify 23 the source of the question in the transcript. And would 24 you please step to one of the three microphones that are 25 available? There's a small one up here and there's two in l
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- 1 each of the aisles. ;
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2 Following the presentations, we will take a t
t 3 short break and then we will reconvene, if needed, to hear !
4 information that members of the public wish to present. ,
5 We plan to adjourn the meeting no later than 5
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6 o' clock.today and are there any questions about the .
j 7 subject or format of today's meeting that you may have at s
- 8 this point?
- 9 -(Pause.)
i 10 Okay, thank you. Now I'd like to present Mr.
11 Steven Schinki, Director of DOE's Commercial Light-Water -1 j 12 Reactor Project Office, who wi.ll provide an overview of 13 DOE's tritium program and he will also introduce the 14 subsequent DOE speaker.
4 l 15 MR. SOHINKI: Thank you, Dave. I want to 4
16 thank the staff and the Commission for inviting us to 17 discuss our program with all of you today. I wanted to j 18 give a brief background of the program, what we've done in i' 19 the past, what we intend to do from here on out and then 4
y 20 Dr. Jerry Ethridge, who's our project manager from Pacific
' 21 Northwest Laboratory, the laboratory that is responsible 22 for the design of the rods that will be placed in the 23 Watts Bar reactor later this year will give a more 24 detailed technical discussion of that rod design.
25 To begin with, -- next slide -- to begin with NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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7 1 tritium for those of you who are not aware of it is a form -
2 or isotope of hydrogen which is an essential component of 3 every weapon in the United States nuclear weapon 4 stockpile. And the weapons simply require tritium to 5 perform as designed. It decays at about 5.5 percent a 6 year, half life of about 12 years and so it must be i
7 replaced periodically and it occurs in nature in such 8 small quantities.that practically speaking for the 9 quantities we're talking about, it has to be man-made 10 either in reactors or in accelerators.
11 We, at DOE, made tritium for several decades 12 at our Savannah River site down in South Carolina in a 13 number of heavy-water reactors that have operated since 14 the late 1940s, early 1950s. The last of those was shut 15 down in 1988 and so we have not made any tritium since 16 then.
17 We are living off tritium now that has been I
18 recycled from w.sapons that are being retired as a result 19 of a couple of arms limitation agreements in the past ten 20 or so years, and that means that at some point in the 1
21 future, the calculations demonstrate that we will need a 22 new supply of tritium.
23 Every year, the President issues what's called j i
24 a nuclear weapons stockpile plan. It's a classified 25 document, but it contains a requirement with regard to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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l 8 t 1 types and amounts of weapons that will be maintained in i
2 the' United States stockpile for that year and several
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3 years out into the future. !
l 4 The latest nuclear weapon stockpile plan from !
l 5 the President requires that the Department have a new 6 supply of tritium as early as 2005, if the reactor option 7 is selected for use and by 2007, if we're to usa an 8 accelerator.
i 9 Next slide. This is an unclassified cartoon, 10 if you will, of how a nuclear weapon functions and the 11 role of tritium in the functioning of a weapon.
12 Basically, there is a primary portion of the weapon made 13 of a hemisphere of plutonium and a secondary portion of a 14 weapon made of uranium and lithium deuteride salt. 'It is !
15 the secondary portion of the weapon from which you get the 16 majority of the yield from the weapon and the primary made 17 out of the plutonium acts as a trigger.
18 There is high explosives surrounding the 19 primary tritium as injected into that plutonium pit, as we 20 call it at the proper time during detor.ation, or just l 21 prior to detonation. And that, in effect, creates the l~ ,
22 energy that then sets off the secondary and creates the i
! 23 yield from the weapon.
l l 24 Now, it has been suggested by some people in 25 the past that-if we let tritium decay in the weapons it's
(
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9 1 no big deal because we just get a lower yield from th f r
! 2 weapons. As you'll see from the bottom cartoon, that is ;
l ;
I .3 correct to a point, but there's a knee in that curve where 4 the yield-drops off to essentially nothing if you don't j 5 have sufficient tritium, so tritium must be supplied 4
l 6 periodically.
7 Next slide. Because the last of the reactor l
8 shutdown in Savannah River in 1988, the Department began a i 9 fairly intensive look at alternatives for producing a new 10 supply of tritium. There was a program at the Department 11 at that time called a New Production Reactor Program which 12 began looking at a number of alternatives including a new 13 heavy water reactor, a new water modular high temperature 14 gas reactor. They were looking at the time at the (MP35 15 potential completion of the We4pJ'One Reactor out at 16 Hanford as their light-water alternative, but they were 17 not looking at either the accelerator or commercial 18 reactors. I 19 When President Bush made the first of three 20 announcements in 1991 of a major cut in the United States i
21 weapons stockpile, it became apparent that we did not need ;
22 tritium as soon as we had previously thought we would or 23 in as large a quantity as we previously had thought and 24 therefore the New Production Reactor Program was 25 essentially canceled and the analysis of new alternatives NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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. l l
1 was folded into another document that we were preparing at ;
1 2 the time. I i
3 It was a major programmatic environmental l
4 impactstatementontheweaponscomplegg)fngeneraly Je /
5 added the analysis of tritium alternatives to that l
6 document. It subsequently became a tritium programmatic l 7 environmental impact statement, the rest of the complex 8 having been separated out for separate analysis.
9 We published a draft of that PEIS in 1995.
10 The draft looked at the alternatives that were listed at i
11 the bottom of the slide. We did add as an alternative the 12 accelerator production of tritium, a linear proton 13 accelerator and the consideration of commercial reactors.
W.
14 , gublished a final EIS in 1995, late in November. Next 15 slide.
16 In December of 1995, the Secretary of Energy 17 issued her record of decision with regard to that 18 environmental impact statement in which she determined l 19 that the Department should investigate a dual track i
20 strategy for establishing a new supply of tritium.
I 21 The first of those tracks was design, test and i 22 build critical components of an accelerator and the second 23 one was to begin the process leading to the potential 24 purchase of a reactor or purchase of irradiation services 25 for the production of tritium from an NRC licensed reactor.
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11 1 The decision indicated that by the end of 2 1998, the Department would make a decision and we still 3 intend to make a decision by that time as to which of 4 those two tracks, the accelerator or commercial reactors i
4 5 would be the primary tritium supply option for the future 6 and which would be a backup supply.
7 And then in any case, the Secretary decided a that commercial reactors would be worked to the point 9 where they were established as a viable contingency option 10 of tritium if that were ever required. When we say 11 contingency, we would intend to complete qualification 12 activities associated with the tritium producing rods that 13 Dr. Ethridge will discuss with you in a few minutes. i 14 We would fabricate the first core load of 15 targets. We would construct a new extraction facility 16 down at our Savannah River site and we're working on the 17 design of that facility now and then we would go ahead and 18 try to establish options contracts with utilities for the 19 potential use of their reactors, if that were ever 20 required.
21 Next slide. This is a fairly busy slide. You 22 have it in your packets. If you picked the up at the back 23 of the room, I won't spend a lot of time on it, but the 24 main purpose of this slide is to tell you that everything 25 that is in green on the top half of this slide are actions NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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12 1 that we would take regardless of which of the two tracks 1
1 2 accelerator or commercial reactors was selected as the 1 3 primary tritium supply option.
4 So the activities'that I just talked about for 5 commercial reactors are reflected at the top half'of that 6 schedule. For the accelerator, if the commercial reactor-.
7 option were selected as the primary supply option for the 8 future, the accelerator's design would be completed and 1
9 put on the shelf in the event that we ever wanted to 10 exercise that option and build an accelerator.
11 Everything at the bottom half of that slide in 12 blue, depending on whether it's an accelerator, a reactor
- 13 purchase or purchasing radiation services from a reactor 14 wou'.d be done only in the event that that particular track 15 was selected as the long-term supply option.
16 As we began to think about the program and as 17 we've developed our thinking over the past year or so, l 18 we've come up with four, what we believe are major 19 milestones in the overall program, the first of which l
l 20 would be the conditional selection.of reactors that would l
21 do this job for us if the Department determined that l
22 reactors were going to be the long-term supply option.
l 23 We have issued as of January 28th of this i
24 year, a request for proposals to utilities to determine j 25 who is interested in making a proposal to participate in i NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 the program. We will get best and final offers-later in 2 the year and of" course, we have to have funding in place, 3 but the conditional selection will take place, we believe, 4 at the beginning of next calendar year. When I say 0
] 5 conditional selection, I mean that it's conditioned.on
. 6 three things happening, the first of which is a decision i
! 7 by the Department to make this the long-term supply 4
- 8 option.
2 i
- 9 The second is a completion of a site-specific l 1 i 10 environmental impact statement with regard to the reactors l 11 that we're considering. And the third is the completion 4
- 12 of the licensing process because there will be license i
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i 13 amendments that will be required for the utilities that i l 14 are selected to do this job.
15 So that's the first of the major milestones 16 that we believe are apparent in the program. The second i
17 one.is one that's basically internal to our program, but i
18 prior to the Secretary's selection of one of these two 19 tracks at the end of 1998 we're going to have to i
20 demonstrate to the Secretary that we have a feasible 21 option for long-term tritium supply. !
- 22. And there are several items that you can see 23 on the slide there and I won't go into each of them in 24 detail that we think have to be addressed in that report 25 as a result of the work we're doing now and through the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W. ,
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i 14 1- end of 1998,in order to write that report to make that 2 recommendation to the Secretary. ;
i 3 After that, if we. are selected, we would have l
4 to begin irradiation of our tritium-producing rods in a 5 reactor by 2003 so that we can meet the 2005 requirement !
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6 that the President has set for us and then -- and 2005 we !
t 7 would extract the first tritium gas from the new !
i
! 8 extraction facility. !
i 9 This is our attempt at capturing the program 10 for producing or the process for producing tritium in i
11 light-water reactors in one slide. There's also a larger 12 depiction of that on one of the boards on the side of the !
l
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13 room here, if you're interested in taking a look at it !
l 14 later.
15 Basically,'it starts at the left upper left of j 16 the slide with the manufacturer of these rods. We have 17 not determined yet whether we'll be making production ;
18 quantities of the rods in the DOE complex or whether we 19 will privatize that effort. We need to do a make buy -
20 analysis to determine which of those paths would be the 21 better path to choose and we have not done that yet. l 22 But that manufacturer would fabricate the rods r
23 which would then be installed in rector fuel assemblies.
24 Dr. Ethridge will talk about that in some detail. Those i 25 rods would be irradiated in a reactor for what -- it can 1
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15 1- be one to two years, but we can accommodate whatever the 2 utility's. cycle is. Most of them now are 18 months to two 3 years.
14 After that irradiation, they would remain in 5 the spent fuel pool for a very short period of time while 6 the is being refueled and then would be loaded into casks 7 by the utility and' shipped by DOE to the Savannah River 8 site where the tritium would be extracted in our new 9 facility and then sent to what we call our tritium recycle 10 facility where the tritium is bottled for-use in weapons.
11 With respect to the acquisition of a reactor, 12 I mentioned we basically are looking at two options, 13 either the purchase of a reactor or the pur:hase of 14 irradiation services. We'd like to get.an option to buy-15 from at least one utility who is interested in selling us 16- irradiation services. There are further suboptions which 1
17 have made the request for proposals which we just issued 18 for comment fairly complex to prepare and that's part of 19 the reason why we issued it in draft form for comment.
20 But for example, we could purchase the nuclear island only 21 or the entire plant.
22 One other suboption is that we have not ruled 23 out the potential for completing a partially completed 24 plant and then purchasing either irradiation services or 25 the plant.
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16 1 The milestones for the acquisition process are 2 as in the slide. We've discussed those somewhat. We 3 expect to receive proposals from utilities in June of this 4 year. We expect to make a selection either at the tail 5 end of this year or very early next year and we're 6 approaching this, the contracting in phases we want to 7 make this contract at DOE's option to exercise so that at I
8 any given point either pre-Secretarial decision or post-l 9 Secretarial decision we can decide to proceed or not to 10 proceed.
I 11 Part of that by the way, has to do with what l 12 the tritium requirements, specific tritium requirements i l 13 are at the time.
14 There are a number of policy considerations l
15 that we have discussed within the program and other people l 16 have discussed outside the program. One thing that we
\ l 17 need to make clear at the outset is that with regard to !
18 either statutes, for example, the Atomic Energy Act, or j l l
! 19 treaties, for example, the Nonproliferation Treaty, ;
J 1
! 20 tritium is neither a special fissile material as defined J
l 21 in the treaty or a special nuclear material as defined in 22 the Atomic Energy Act.
23 That is important, we think, because the issue 24 of civilian use of a military reactor has arisen in the ;
25 past solely in the context of discussions with regard to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234 4 33
17 1 fissile or special nuclear materials, plutonium and 2 uranium for which there are significant proliferation 3 concerns.
4 Tritium is sold commercially in the 5 international market place. So that it's difficult to 6 argue that you're interested in keeping somebody from 7 getting their hands on a substance that they can buy 8 anyway in the market place.
9 That means that the same proliferation 10 concerns that exist with respect to plutonium and uranium 11 from which weapons can be directly made do not exist with 12 regard to tritium.
13 We have taken a look at international 14 agreements that we can find that address subjects that are 15 anything like the use of civilian machines for military 16 purposes and any related subjects. We have been unable to 17 find that prohibit the production of tritium in an NRC 18 licensed reactor.
19 And one point that I think has become 20 important in our discussion with a variety of groups who l 1
21 have been assuming that we would have to withdraw reactors 22 from the IAEA safeguards list as a result of this activity !
23 is that we would not have to do so, that we see no reason )
24 why the International Atomic Energy Agency could not come !
i l
25 in and inspect these plants, despite the fact that we are !
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18 I 1 producing tritium in those facilities.
2 There are bilateral agreements.between the ;
Entwm United States and Canada, Australia and spretum, 3
4 respectively, that prohibit the use of material that is 5 transferred by those nations to the United States for l
! i L 6 anything other than peaceful purposes. And those L
7 bilateral agreements are referenced in fuel contracts that l l 8 utilities have for the fuel for their reactors in this i 9 country.
10 That means for all practical purposes that we .
11 need to find an un hcumbered source of fuel for the 12 reactors we're going to use f or this mission. Now there l
13 are a couple of ways that immediately come to mind that !
14 that can be done. We have talked about the possibility of 15 reimbursing utilities that participate in the program for i
16 the difference between what they're paying now for fuel 17 and what they would have to pay for a source of 18 unincumbered fuel. That's one option.
19 The second option is that the Department 20 itself has a fairly large supply of uranium that the 21 taxpayers have already paid for once that could be made 22 available to utilities to do this job. So we're 23 considering both of those options.
24 A little bit about what we've done in the past 25 to emphasize the point that this is not a new technology I
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! 1 l 19 ,
I l 1 that we're suggesting for use in the Watts Bar reactor for l l \
2 the future. There has been over 10 years of intensive l I
l 3 research and development that's gone into these tritium L i l 4 producing rods that you'll hear about in a few minutes.
i 5 In actuality, work started on variations on the-theme, if l
6 you will, back in the late 1960s. Those have evolved to i i
7 the point where in the new production reactor, as the j t
8 slide indicates from 1988 to 1992, about $69 or $70 ;
l 9 million was spent in research and development efforts. We j 10 actually irradiated 4-foot segments of these rods in our I i
11 Advanced Test Reactor in Idaho. There were 11 segments '
i 12 that underwent irradiation.
13 One of those segments we took all the way from 14 irradiation through post-irradiation exam and laboratory I 15 scale extraction. The rod performed better than expected 16 and we have not found any different results from the rods,
]
17 the other rods that we have examined thus far from those I t
18 that had been previously irradiated. .
19 We did fabricate full-length rods and
(
20 demonstrate superior retention, tritium retention !
21 capability during those, that four-year period. We also l l 22 tested on a laboratory scale the new extraction process 23 that would have to be applied to this design and we did a 24 review or there was a review done by a group called the ;
r 25 Energy Research Advisory Board at the time, raised a NEAL R. GROSS t COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS i 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. r j (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON, D L 2000#3701 (202) 234 4433 l I
20 i 1 number of issues with respect to the rod design. All of '
2 those issues were closed at the time this program was 3 suspended in 1992 and we had identified commercial vendors t
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4 for the individual target components that you'll hear [
i l 5 about in a few minutes. j 6 As a result of that program, Pacific Northwest 7 Labs produced 8 major reports. They have all been made !
L 8 available to potential proposers to the public and the NRC I
9 staff has a full set of those reports and about 40 subtier 10 reports that were produced as a result of the program. i i
l 11 So that's what we've done in the past. The
-l 12 general plans for henceforth for confirmatory testing to 13 assure'ourselves that we can duplicate those results l l
14 include the completion of the examination of those rods !
15 that we previously irradiated in the Advanced Test 16 Reactor. We're going to do some laboratory and mechanical 17 testing of these target rods and then the subject that Dr.
18 Ethridge is here to talk about today and the NRC staff, 19 the irradiation of lead test assemblies in the Watts Bar 20 reactor.
21 As I said, we are examining those previously 22 irradiated ATR rods. We'll be completing, we have 23 completed the non-destructive examination of all those 24 rods. We'll shortly be beginning destructive examination 1
25 of the remaining rods and we hope to complete most of that {
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r 21 [
1 during 1998. I mh af Ile .
2 And then as I said, irradiation of the Watts -
A !
'3- lh' Bar ar.d thm dauum Bat reactor towards the end of this 4 year. '
5 Just briefly, the purpose of the Watts Bar l 6 test that we're here to talk about today is to confirm the- I l
7 excellent results that we have gotten from the prior 8 testing. It's important to understand that we are not 9 conducting an experiment at Watts Bar. As I said, and as 10 I just explained, these rods have been the subject of a 11 great. deal of research and development activity, actual 12 irradiation testing.
13 ,
The results have been as we said, better than 14 we expected and we believe that the major outcome of the 15 Watts Bar test will be to provide added confidence to both 16 utilities and the NRC that we can make tritium in a light- l 17 water reactor in a technically straightforward and safe 18 manner.
19 And then briefly what the test involves and i 20 you'll be hearing that in more detail in just a minute, is 21 the placement of four lead test assemblies with eight rods 22 in each assembly, in the Watts Bar reactor for one 23 operating cycle of about 18 months and then we would 24 remove them and shift them back to Pacific Northwest labs 25 for subsequent examination.
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t 1 Wow just to give you a frame of reference, out 2 of a typical reload of about 1,000 burnable absorber rods, 3 we're replacing only 32 of those typical thousand absorber
?
4 rod reloads.
5 And then we already made the point about this t
6 test not being an experiment.
7 So with that, I'11 be glad to take any 8 questions you have with respect to the overview of the 9 program. And then i'll introduce Dr. Ethridge for the ,
10 technical discussion of the rod design, i 11 (Pause.)
12 Anybody?
13 Okay, then let me introduce Dr. Jerry Ethridge 14 who is our project manager at Pacific Northwest 15 Laboratories, responsible for the design and confirmatory 16 testing of these tritium-producing rods.
i 17 Dr. Ethridge?
18 MR. ETHRIDGE: I'm going to go over a little 19- bit of theory, a little bit of practicum, a little bit 20 more theory, much more practicum and try and describe for !
21 you how these work, why they work and what we plan to do j 22 in this lead test assembly.
23 This first slide then is Physics 101. How is 24 tritium made. You bombard a lithium-6 atom with a 25 neutron. It momentarily becomes a lithium-7 atom. It NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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~
1 quickly decays to helium-4, standard, run of the mill !
2 helium gas. A tritium atom and then as Mr.-Schinki talked !
-l 3 about that typically decays into -- with a half life of
{
4 about 12.3 years to Helium-3 through a beta' decay.
S' So that's kind of the theory.
6 The next slide is a diagram of the rod.
l 7 There's a much larger diagram over here to my right. You 8 can look at it a little bit later. And what I'll do is !
9 peel this back for you like an onion skin so that you '
l 1
10 understand what the rod looks like.
11 Let me start at the top of the zircalloy 12 liner, that is a standard reactor material. Its function 13 is to crack triated water to tritium and oxygen and I'll 14 describe that in a little bit more detail in a moment.
15 Th next layer is the actual meat of the target 16 or the lithium aluminate material. It's a higher i j
17 temperature ceramic. It's light in color. And is where 18 the lithium is housed in the target rod.
I 19 The next then component is called the getter. 1 20 This is a material that has a physical nature that it will 21 actually grab tritium and place it into solid solution so 22 that it is not available as a free gas to be leaked from l 1
23 the rod. In fact, it is held very tightly in that 24 component.
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24 .
I cladding. It is identical in size to a standard-burnable 'i 2 poison assembly or~a rod that is in most commercial plants l l
l 3 today. It is made of stainless steel. It has a coating 4 placed on the inside of it that prevents any of the 5 tritium that might be free to diffuse out into the reactor 6 coolant. j
.7 So the tritium is born, if you will, in the l 1
8 pellet. It combines with whatever free oxygen there might 9 be to become triated water. The liner cracks the water to )
1 10 T-2 and oxygen and then the tritium then is gettered, if l 11 you will, in that nickel plated getter.
12 The next diagram kind of explains in words l
13 what I.just described, what the purpose of each of.these 14 components re, the cladding is very similar, virtually 15 identical to the cladding on your burnable poison i
16 assemblies or your fuel rods. The aluminide coating is to )
i 17 prevent the diffusion of the tritium outside the rod into j t
i
. 18 the reactor coolant. The zircalloy plated getter then ,
19 absorbs the tritium gas. The nickel plating on the f 20 outside of that is to protect that getter from oxidizing 21 and thus preventing it from absorbing tritium. The 22 pellets are where the lithium is and in the liner removes ;
23 the free oxygen
[
24 I might add at the bottom the bullet indicates 25 during and after irradiation, that tritium is held in that :
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1 very high temperature -- I'm sorry, in the getter, such l 2 that it takes very high temperatures to even get it out, 3 far above what you might see in an accident.
4
~
A little more theory, the top is'just chemical l
l 5 formula for what I showed earlier. We have three 1
6 functions here on the left hand side, if you will, of the 7 target. The production of tritium make sure we retain it l 8 and then where have we found it in our testing that has 9 been done to date.
10 On the right hand side I list the functions or 11 each of the three components for'which the formulas are L 12 given for their function. The liner then takes that 13 tritiated water, combines with the zirc, forms zire oxide 14 and free tritium. That's the H-3. j 15 The tritium then combines with the nickel !
16 plated zire to become zire hydride or zire tritide, again, 17 very high temperature in order to get it removed from that I
18 getter and we have developed a gauge, if you will, to 19 determine how well that inter-coating of the cladding 20 works. We call it the PRF or the permeation reduction 21 factor and that is simply a measure of how much tritium i
22 might diffuse as compared to bare stainless steel, so that 23 with a PRF or permeation reduction factors, a high number 5
4 24 represents very low tritium diffusion.
25 So we are typically getting PRFs related to NEAL R. GROSS 4
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26 )
1 the barrier on the order of 10 to the 5th or the reduction 2 in the amount of tritium that diffuses through the 1 I
3 cladding as 10 to the 5th better than bare stainless i 4 steel. The coating works very well.
I l 5 The next diagram then is to take eight of-6 those rods and combine them with a standard reactor 7 component which is the hold down assembly. You typically 8 would have one of these in virtually every assembly in the l l 9 reactor with the exception of those that might have 10 control rod elements. We will be taking eight of them and l
11 combining them on each of four hold down assembles for 12 four different assemblies in the reactor.
13 You see a thimble plug. Typically, these hold l
l 14 down assemblies will hold 24 units. Eight of those will
{
15 be tritium target rods. The remaining then will be i 16 thiehle plugs which will allow us to control the flow 17 through that assembly and make sure that there's coolant 18 through that assembly as well as an appropriate level of 19 coolant through some of the adjacent assembles.
l l 20 AS Mr. Schinki talked about, they are 12 foot 21 in length, very much like a fuel assembly. And they are i
22 identical diameter, so they will match exactly with a 23 normal PWR fuel assembly.
i l 24 I couldn't go without my cartoon as well.
1 i
25 This is how the LTA will work. We will assemble the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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27 1 target rods at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 2 using parts procured from industry, meeting NQA and NRC 3 requirements, quality requirements. Those will be shipped 4 to the Watts Bar supplier of fuel, Westinghouse. They 5 will be assembled then into four Westinghouse fuel 6 assemblies and those fuel assemblies then will be trucked 7 to the Watts Bar plant for its normal irradiation cycle 8 beginning in the September-October time frame of this 9 year.
10 Following that irradiation cycle, those 11 assemblies will be removed from the reactor. The burnable 4 12 poison hold down assemblies will be removed from the fuel 13 assemblies and just those four then hold down assemblies 14 with the target rods will be shipped in a cask back to 15 Pacific Northwest Lab for examination.
16 I want to try and put these rods in context 17 with what is typically in a reactor and is typical of the 18 Watts Bar reactor. Mr. Schinki talked about using 19 approximately 1000 burnable poison assemblies. We'll be 20 replacing only 32 of those.
21 The purpose of a burnable absorber assembly is 22 to control the reactor power on a local level so that 23 optimum energy can be produced with the type of fuel 24 that's used in that reactor. Those absorbers typically 25 use Boron-10 as an absorber. It typically burns out over NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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l 28 ,
I reactor cycle and that'is what allows you to tailor the j 2 energy on a local level in a reactor and so that's where 3 the term burnable comes from over the life cycle. That 4 material typically will burn out. ;
5 They are virtually the same diameter or size 6 as the fuel rods and are all attached then to the hold ,
7 down assemblies that I showed earlier. >
8 What we've tried to do here is to match as ;
9 closely as possible that design and those materials. They 1
10 essentially have the same function, lithium-6 has a-high ;
11 cross section for neutrons, not as high as boron, but we 12 can enrich the assemblies to match as closely as possible 13 the same hold down effect or reactivity effect as these i
14 burnable poison assemblies.
15 I mentioned before they are of the same i
16 diameter, same size. They will be using lithium-6 rather ;
l 17 than boron-10. Lithium-6 is in or found or will be used l 18 in the form of a high temperature ceramic whereas the-19 boron is in a glass form.
20 From a neutronic perspective, those doing the 21 analysis for the core, the safety analyses, in many 22 respects they behave almost identically to a burnable 23 poison assembly.
24 I might emphasize here these target rods 25 contain no fissionable material, no uranium, and no l
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l 4
l 29 1 plutonium.
2 I'd like to briefly talk about some of the l
l 3 confirmatory testing and data that we have available that 4 shows us that these will work as designed. There were 11 I l
5 rods irradiated, four foot in length. Three of those were 6 capsule test in a static capsule that were irradiated in 7 the Advanced Test Reactor. The remaining eight rods were 8 in a loop simulating a very -- in an exact fashion a PWR 9 assembly.
l
, 10 We did sampling of the water in both the 11 capsule and in the loop to show that very, very little 12 tritium is released from the rods. In fact, I'll show 13 some data here in a moment of that.
I 14 So we were able to watch these as they were 15 irradiated, as they cooked in the reactor to demonstrate 1 16 there was virtually no tritium released.
17 The next slide then shows some of the results, 18 compares what we were predicted. Those were conservative l l
, 19 predictions used typically for safety analyses and then l 20 what we actually measure. l 21 If you recall, the -- one of the byproducts of 22 the lithium-6 reaction is helium. We predicted that we 23 would have somewhere between 90 and 99 percent of the 24 total gas volume that was free in the rod after it was 25 irradiated would be Helium-4. We measured 99.1.
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1 l 30 l 1 The tritium, again, the free g&s, we predicted 2
somewhere on the order of 10 to the minus 5th curries -- 1 3' I'm sorry, these are percents. We found less than 1 part J
4 per million. Again, in the free gas !
! 5 Triated water, 10 to the minus 2 is what we
! 6 predicted. We found less again than one part in a 7 million. The total activity in that gas then measured was 8 about hal'f what we predicted, but again those were 9 conservative predictions used for safety analyses, j 10 What this basically shows is that the target l 11 works. it does not release tritium and in fact, we know 12 where the tritium went and the components in the rod 13 worked as they were designed. I 14 In looking then at the analyses of these .
15 target rods in a reactor, under normal operations, 100 16' percent power, these rods perform almost identical to the I 17 burnable poison rods and we specifically tailor them to 18 act and behaved very much like those rods so there's 19 essentially no difference in the way the reactor has 20 operated.
.21 All of the tritium is -- that is p wdned l 22 absent the small amount that we saw in the previous slide 23 is held in a solid matrix, requiring extremely high 24 temperatures to extract or remove so it's very safely held 25 in that getter.
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31 !
i 1~ And from an operations' perspective, i.e., .the 2 control rod, I'm sorry, the control room and so forth, the 1
3 way these assemblies behave with these rods are !
'i 4 essentially no different than assemblies with comparable 5 burnable poison assemblies.
6 Performance of these rods during an accident, j 7 again, they behave very much like a burnable poison ;
i 8 assembly, essentially have no impact on any accident l r
9 scenarios. The cladding that we're using is somewhat ;
i 10 stronger than the zirc and therefore we feel that the j 11 analyses on the zircalloy cladding bounds anything that 12 might occur on the TP bars, tritium-producing burnable 13 absorber rod.
14 And that under nominal coolant conditions, -
i 15 present during both the nominal operations in the 16' anticipated occurrences, we found no way that these rods l 17 would in essence force themselves to fail. !
18 In the large break LOCA which was. determined 19 to be the bounding accident, just as in the case of fuel 20 failure, it is predicted under extremely conservative 21 assumptions that the burnable poison assembly would also 22 rupture. That's not a real surprise and typically what ,
23 might happen in an accident like that, one is far more i
24 concerned about the fuel than a small amount of additional 25 tritium. ;
i 1
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i 32 ,
1 In some of our safety' analysis conclusions and ;
2 I'll talk about a document in a moment that summarizes all 3 of these, and in the unlikely event of a large break LOCA, i
\
4 the ruptured rods, again, under conservative conditions, !
5 do not challenge the fact that that must remain coolable, :
6 that there are passages for water to keep the assembly
\
7 cool. They do not in any way impair the effectiveness of 8 a control rod shutdown system and the radiological !
s 9 consequences are near zero for this compared to what you ;
l 10 might expect to fuel failure. I i
11 To document these results along with some of i 12 our previous history, the laboratory under the direction I
13 of the Department of Energy has written a technical report 14 called the LTA Technical Report. It's been drafted. It 1
1 15 is currently going under review by the Commission. It l 16 describes the design and the fabrication requirements of 17 these rods that will go into the lead test assembly. It 18 evaluates the impacts of those four assemblies under a 19 variety of conditions, both accident and nominal.
20 And what's more, it addresses point by point 21 those applicable areas to what's called NUREG-0800 which j
22 is the standard review plan, a recipe for looking at i i
23 issues that may, that need to be resolved for introducing ;
24 something new to the core like this. :
l 25 The next slide then talks a little bit more !
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i 33 i.
1 1 about that standard review plan and identifies for those
'2 who have an interest the section that has been determined 3 to be applicable and parallels in that section from this 4 technical report that has been written and is under 5 review.
6 I won't go into those in much detail, but the 7 design is discussed, both nuclear and technical --
{ 8 physical design, the materials that are used, the impacts ;
9 of the irradiation, both under normal and abnormal 10 conditions. The very strict' quality assurance ,
11 requirements that are held to in the fabrication of these 12 assemblies, the safeguards and security aspects of this
. 13 because it is weapons related, not from the LTA _
l 14 perspective, but from a production perspective and then 15 obviously the regulatory issues that surround these LTAs 16 into a commercial plant.
i
. 17 Very briefly then, the conclusions that are
-18 drawn in that report, that technical report that's under 19 review, the LTAs are compatible with existing assemblies.
20 There's no special tooling required,no special loading
?
21 requirements. All the existing equipment that is needed n
22- to place the hold down assembly into the assembly and
- 23 remove it and then place the assembly in the core are 24 exactly the same things you use for a standard refueling.
25 The. materials are nothing new. These have all NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 1 been materials that have been irradiated before, both in 2 commercial light-water :t actors as well as DOE test 3 reactors. Nothing new here, all predictable performance.
4 From a thermal-hydraulic perspective, both 5 under normal and abncrmal conditions, no surprises. These 6 behave exactly like teev are predicted to behave and are, 7 in essence, no consequence to any sort of accident, either 8 fru a a neutronics point of view or from a thermal-5 hydraulics or a coolability perspective.
10- The off-site doses are within regulatory 11 limits and are essentially zero. These will not fail in 12 any abnormal type of accident outside the large break LOCA 13 and.of course, as I mentioned earlier, you have fuel 14 failure there and so the consequences are focused on the 15 fuel, not on 32 rods. !
16 The off-site dose consequence of a non-LOCA 17 event are only a small fraction of any of the limits and 18 are essentially inconsequential. They do not contribute 19 to the LOCA as shown here in the next slide in any way.
20 There i~s such a small number. The off-site dose 21 consequences of a large break or accident or failure of 22 these rods is well within the guidelines, again, near zero 23- consequences.
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35 1 changes required to.the tech specs and as a result of 2 these items, it is felt that the valuation of' irradiation l: 3 of'these 32 rods out of a thousand that might ordinarily.
4
- be in a reactor is within the criteria for a 10 CFR 50.59.
t 5' Okay, I'll entertain any questions anybody Y
p 6 might have.
i 1 7 (Pause.)
8 Okay. Thank you very much.
L j' 9 MR. MATTHEWS: Before we proceed with the NRC i
E10 portion of-this presentation, let's take-a 10-minute break 11 so if you could please be back at 5 minutes after 2.
12 (Off the record.)
13 MR.'MATTHEWS: If we could all be seated, we'd 14 like to proceed with the NRC portion of the presentation 15 today.
16 This part of the presentation'will be made.by 17 Jim Wilson who is a Senior Project Manager in the Generic 18 Issues and Environmental Projects Branch. As I indicated 19 before, the NRC is. reviewing a technical report submitted 20 by DOE in connection with this activity. Jim is going to 21 describe today the review of that report and the 22 subsequent activities that might ensue following our 23 completion of that review.
24 Jim?
25 MR. WILSON: Thank you, Dave. I'd like to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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36 .
1 briefly describe NRC's involvement in'the project and give L 2 you a status of the staff's current review and then lay 3 cut etI a tentative schedule for completion of the 4 remainder of the lead test assembly phase of DOE's CLWR 4
5 tritium program.
6 With me today in the audience are members of i
7 the s'.af f, the staff's tritium review team)that have been ,
8 assembled to evaluate DOE's report on tritium-producing ,
/**/ I 9
burnable absorber rod A test assemblies.
Gens 10 Carrie, Jim, Dave, Jim Lyons,-GesR7'will you 11 stand up or raise your hand?
12 Okay, with me also today are some senior 13 managers who are responsible for oversight of this 14 activity here with us this afternoon. Dave Matthews, Iv u 15 you've already met. 44+e6 encourage /# members of the public 16 who are interested in this project to talk to the NRC 17 staff and to the DOE representatives during the break.
18 We're here to exchange information and we're going to be 19 available for a brief time after the meeting. Just come 20 up and introduce yourself to us.
21 The first slide summarizes the joint DOE-NRC 22 memorandum of understanding. This is the vehicle that 23 describes the operating interface between the NRC staff 24 and DOE. The text of this MOU was provided as one of the 25 background materials out in the lobby before you came into NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W (202) 234 4 433 WASHINGTON D C. 20005-3701 (202) 234 4433
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37 ,
1 this room. The MOU was negotiated between the two 4
2 agencies and was sent to the Commission in a Commission 3 paper, SECY-96-058 in March of 1996. '
4 The draft memorandum of understanding was 5 approved by staff requirements memorandum in April of this 6 year and was. signed by the Chairman and the Secretary of
\
. 7 Energy on May 22, 1996. It became effective immediately.
8 The MOU agrees that NRC is to provide review-9 and consultation with respect to DOE's possible I ,
10 acquisition of commercial light-water reactors or l
11 acquisition of irradiation services from the CLWRs for'the 12 production of tritium.
J 13 The MOU acknowledges that an issue exists 14 involving the use of civilian commercial reactors to 15 support military requirements, but stipulat that NRC 16 will not get involved in either a policy or a technical 17 role in resolution of the issue.
18 .The MOU also stipulates that NRC will not be 19 involved in the decision on whether to use an accelerator 20 or a commercial light-water reactor to produce tritium to M
21 maintain aVstrategic stockpile. Those decisions, as well 22 as the need to sponsor any needed legislative changes j fall 23 to DOE.
24 ' Finally, the MOU provides for the NRC to 25 recover costs associated with this program through a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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38 .
r
- 1 reimbursable _ agreement between the two agencies. The cost >
2 of this review will not be split up amongst licensees and I
3 paid as part of the: annual fee,under Part 171,to cover NRC ,
~4 overhead. ,
I 5 Next slide, please. This slide summarizes the for 6 staff's proposed approach to reviewing DOE's proposal :reF
- 7 the production of tritium in commercial light-water ;
. To I
- 8 reactors.3 Its Commission paper dated October 3rd entitled l
9 " Review of Department of Energy's Proposal for Tritium- '
i 10 Production in Commercial Light-water Reactors" the staff ;
whic.k '6s 11 described its proposed review approach aneF-thm ;#
12 summarized here.
- i l 13 Basically, what it calls for is for DOE to )
i jend -1 l 14 submit an LTA technical report, the test assembly )
'^
15 technical report and then the staff would issue a Federal I I
. I 16 Reaister notice announcing that we had received the report j i
17 and then we would prepare a safety evaluation and send it 18 to the Commission prior to issuance.
19 Should the Commission authorize us to proceed, ion k l 20 the staff would conduct an inspect,of any use of 50.E97 21 provisions b .59, to use LTAs in a reactor without further n
22 NRC licensing action and now we know that that licensee is 23 goingtobeWattsBagfothatwouldoccursometimethis l
l 24 summer. Some time after that,about two years after that, l 25 as indicated in the SECY paper, we would expect to receive NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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39 1 from DOE a production report.
2 We would prepare a safety evaluation of the 3 production report and provide the results to the' sho hul 4 Commission prior to issuance, again. A licensee ::culd:
e4 5 enter into a contract with DOE for a production phase'of 4
6 this program, would submit an amendment to its facility 7 operating license,which the staff would then reviewgped' e io**4 8 conduct both a safety and environmental review of the 9 license amendment request.
10 Finally, the Commission paper commits the 11 stafftonotifytheCommissionf'/fthestaffisableto
+
- 12 make a finding of no significant hazards consideration, 13 after which the Commission could choose to allow the 14 action to take place and have a hearing after the action 15 was taken.
16 Next slide, please. This next slide 17 summarizes the direction from the Commission to the staff 18 regarding the staff's proposed review approach that was L
19 outlined in SECY 96-212. [hestaffrequirements 20 memorandum dated December loth which is also provided as 21 background material, the Commission approved the staff's 22 plan for reviewing DOE's program for production of tritium 23 in commercial light-water reactors in its entirety. The 24 Commission also directed the staff to hold a series of 25 public meetings.
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- - =. -
.n - - ~ . . . . - - . - . . -. .. . _ -
s
)
40 1
,[irstoftheseisthismeetingwe'rehaving )
2 now. Its purpose is to provide an opportunity for public 3
comment regarding the technical issues during the lead 4 test assembly phase and to inform the public of the 5 staff's activities early in the evaluation process. The !
6 next public meeting directed by the Commission will be i
7 held in the vicinity of the lead test assembly host i 8 facility (JaknownowthatthisisgoingtobeWattsBar) h i
9
[riortoinsertionoftheleadtestassembliesintothe l l
10 reactorg/ e'll see some dates of when that public meeting !
anJ we. Etl 4q 4e 11 might occur. T 're lik:10 to fill in schedule in the next 4 4 12 couple of slides.
13 Finally, the staff will hold similar' local 14 public meetings prior to insertion of the tritium-f 15 producing burnable absorber rods in any particular NRC i 16 licensed facility which is engaged in the production phase 17 of DOE's tritium program.
The 18 Nextslide.,gext slide lays out a proposed 19 review schedule for the staff's review. As you can see, 20 the proposed schedule is very aggressive. And doesn't 21 last too awful long.
22 DOE submitted its LTA report in early 23 December Staff issued RAIs. We received some of the j 24 responses to those RAIs, requests for additional i 25 information, from DOE. And we held a public meeting with NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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I 41
-1 DOE on January 22nd to discuss the staff's request for 2 additional information to insure that DOE fully understood 3 the. staff's concerns prior to their submitting a response 1
4 and we.have not yet gotten all of DOE's full responses on l l
5 the RAIs.
I 6 Following DOE revision of the LTA topical 7 report and submittal to NRC, the staff would prepare its 8 safety evaluation and transmit it to the Commission. And j 9 I guess at that point the Commission would inform the 10 staff of whether it wished the SER to be issued.
11 Next slide, please. The final slide shows4h*
12 proposed schedule for activities associated with lead test ibs n
13 assembly phase of DOE's CLWR tritium program. They're 14 scheduled to occur after the staff sends its safety 15 evaluation on the DOE report to the Commission.
16 As you can see, assuming that the staff 17 determines there are no.unreviewed safety questions 18 involved in irradiating tritium-producing burnable 19 absorber rods in a limited number of lead test assemblies, i'
20 and the Commission authorizes it, the staff is a little 21 more than abut a month away from issuing a safety 22 evaluation.
l 23 It is envisioned that TVA would then spend the l
j 24 next couple of months conducting its evaluation under the 25 provisions of 10 CFR 50.59 and then would notify the staff NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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f 42 ,
1 once it s 50.59 evaluation is completed.
2 Once we've received that notification, the 3 staff plans to conduct an inspection of the 50.59 4 evaluation that would be composed of staff from NRC 5 headquarters and from Region 2.
6 Once the staf f ' conpletes its inspection and !
il ,
-7 issues an inspection report, plans to meet with the 8 Commission in early to provide information on the 9 status of its review.
10 Around the middle of July, the staff would ,
11 issue a Federal Recister notice announcing another public 12 meeting in the vicinity of Watts Bar, again to provide for 13 public comment regarding the technical issues associated i
14 with LTA irradiation and to make sure that the public is :
15 aware of the staff's activities. This meeting would be ;
I 16 conducted before TVA loads the lead test assemblies into 17 thereactor.,[urrentschedulecallsforWattsBartogo 18 down for its first refueling outage the beginning of ,
lase-19 September. About five weeks later, Watts Bar should -be-20 completed d the activities associated with the first 21 refueling and should be ready to go back on line. l 22 Remember the milestones and schedules that ;
l 23 we've just laid out here are tentative and depend on the +
24 assumptions I described' earlier. If things play out ned ,
25 differently, we'll have to review, revise our plans
?
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43 1 accordingly.
2 This concludes the staff's presentations on 3 how it. plans to go about its review of DOE's proposal for
{
4 production of tritium in commercial light-water reactors j
5 as well as the proposed schedule.
6 Are there any questions about these slides?
7 (Pause.)
8 Okay, Dave, do you want to take another 15 9 minute break and see if we have an interest in making 10 presentations or comments?
11 MR. MATTHEWS: At the last time I checked 12 there were no interest in anybody making a public comment 13 or a presentation. Is that still the case?
14 My friend, Etoy, says that that's still the 15 case, so at this point in time I think we would open it up 16 for just any general questions _that might remain from 17 anybody in the audience and in the absence of those 18 questions, we'd be prepared to adjourn.
19 (Pause.)
20 MR. YENISCAVICH: Will there be a presentation 21 to the Advisory Committee on reactor Safeguards on this 22 issue?
23 MR. MATTHEWS: DOE has volunteered to make a 24 presentation to the Advisory Committee on Reactor 25 Safeguards. I believe that presentation is scheduled for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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44 1 March 6th -- 7th, okay, it's changed since I last checked.
2 And that review, as I understand it, would --
3 I mean that briefing is for the purposes of an 4 informational briefing to the ACRS. We're not aware that' 5 there was any intention of the ACRS to actually' review 6 this project and make a finding.
7 Have I got that right? Okay. Any other 8 questions?
9 Well, thank you all for joining us today and 10 we will keep the public and the respective staffs informed 11 as we proceed.
12 (whereupon, at 2:27 p.m., the meeting was 13 concluded.) .
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i 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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l CERTIFICATE l This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: - i l
Name of Proceeding: PUBLIC MEETING ON DOE'S'PR'OPOSAL TO PRODUCE TRITIUM IN COMMERCIAL LIGHT-WATER REACTORS Docket Number: N/A Place of Proceeding: ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and 1
accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
l CORBETT RINER Official Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODEISLAND AVENUE,NW (202)234 4433 WASHINGTON,D.C. 2000$ (202)234-4433