ML20150D158
| ML20150D158 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Zion File:ZionSolutions icon.png |
| Issue date: | 11/09/1978 |
| From: | Sekuler S ILLINOIS, STATE OF |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20150D152 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 7812050051 | |
| Download: ML20150D158 (14) | |
Text
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. 9 UNITED' STATES OF' AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
.IN THE MATTER OF COMMONWEALTH
)
' EDISON CO. Zion Station,' Units
)
1 and 2
)
)
Docket Nos. 50-295 Amendments to Facility-
)
50-304 Operating-License Nos. DPR-39
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and DPR-48
)
(Increase Spent Fuel Storage
)
Capacity)
)
MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF CERTAIN AMENDED CONTENTIONS
-The State of Illinois requests the Atomic Safety and Licensing-Board to admit contentions 2, 6D, 9 and 16 of their amended contentions filed November 1, 1978 on the grounds that they are legally sufficient under 10 C.F.R.
52.714 and are relevant to the existing proceeding.
-As stated in the Regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commis-sion at 10 C.F.R.
S2.751(a), provision may be made for a special pre-hearing conference to allow the Board to:
(1)
Permit identification of the key issues in the proceeding.
(2)
Take any steps necessary for further identification of the issues.-
4 (3)
Consider all intervention petitions to allow the-i presiding officer to make such preliminary or final determ-inations as to the parties to the proceeding...
(4)
Establish a schedule for further actions.in the proceeding...
10 C.F.R. S2.752 specifies that-the purposes of pre-hearing i
conferences include:
(1)
Simplication, clarification and specification of the issues;
.781205005l
. (2)
The necessity or desirability of amending the pleadings; (3)
The obtaining of stipulations and admissions of facts and of the contents and authenticity of documents to avoid unnecessary proof; (4)
Identification of witnesses and the limitation of the number of expert witnesses, and other steps to expedite the presentation of evidence; (5)
The setting.of a hearing schedule; and (6)
Such other matters as may aid in the orderly disposition of the proceeding.
Although a licensing board may under certain circumstances reject contentions on legal grounds on the pleadings along, it is not permitted to make determinations concerning the merits of contentions otherwise admissible. Northern States Power Company (Prairie Island 1 and 2), ALAB 107, 6 AEC 188 (1973); Dequesne Light Co. (Beaver Valley, Unit 1) ALAB 109, 6 AEC 244 (1973).
Where contentions involve mixed questions of law and f act they are not appropriate for determination as a matter of law on the pleadings alone.
Tennessee Valley Authority (Clinch River Breeder Plant), LBP 76-14, 6 NRC 430 (1976).
In making its pre-hearing determinations as to the admissibil-ity of contentions a licensing board bears no affirmative obligation to create contentions for a petitioner or to transform patently bad con-tentions into acceptable contentions.
Commonwealth Edison Co. (Zion Station), ALAB 226, 8 AEC 381 (1974).
"However, where an issue, clearly open to factual adjudication, can be discerned somewhere within the four corners of submitted pleadings, a licensing board is not free to disregard it."
Tennessee Valley Authority (Browns Ferry Nuclear
Plant,. Units 11 and 2) LDP 76-10, 6 NRC 209 (1976).
At' this point in.the proceeding any facts alleged must be taken.as true; the merits of the contentions are not at issue nor is the determination of adequacy of' contentions at a special pre-hearing conference a substitute for consideration of motions for summary. dis-position as provided by 10 C.F.R. S2.749.
Nowhere in the regulations is it. stated that Intervenors bear the burden of proving the truth or sufficiency of facts alleged in contentions.
In fact, the Licensing Appeal Board has held
...it is not the function of a licensing board
.to reach.the merits of any contention contained...
(in an - intervention. petition)...Moreover, Section 2.714 does not require the petition to detail the evidence which will be offered in support of each contention... Needless to say, it will be open to.both the applicant and the regulatory staff to move, pursuant to'Section 2.749 for summary dis-position... The existence of this summary dis-position procedure -- which was adopted at the same time as the contentions provision of the present Section 2.714 -- is a furtherLindication of the error in the view of the applicant and the regulatory staff that an intervenor must provide the evidentiary foundation for its contention (i.e., demonstrate that it has merit) ' before it is admitted into the proceeding.
Mississippi Power and Light Company (Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, Units 1 and 2), ALAD-130 AEC 423, 426(1973).
Accordingly,~the Staff and Applicant should not be allowed to use the special pre-hearing conference as a means of circumventing the summary disposition process by having Intervenor's contentions removed fnxn the intervention' petition by the assertion of unsworn, untested and-unverified. statements.
With these points in mind, the State of Illinois requests the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to admit the following contentions.
CONTENTION 2.
- 2. Approval of the amendment request would be contrary to the NRC policy position on spent fuel storage which prohibits non-emergency licensing of any existing storage facility prior to the adoption of an official long range policy regarding the permanent storage of spent fuel. See " Intent to Prepare Generic Environmental Impact Statement of Handling and Storage of Spent Light Water Power Reactor Fuel", 40 F.R.
42801, September 16, 1975.
A.
There is no emergency need to rerack as tho existing storage pool contains more space than is necessary to accomodate full core discharge.
B.
The existing pool is able to accomodate normal refueling discharges until 1981, therefore failure to grant the application at thin time poses no threat of imminent shut down of the facility.
Applicant and the Nuclear Regulatory Staff would ask to have Contention 2 strichen on the grounds that it is not relevant to the proceedings and is beyond the scope of jurisdiction of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. The State of Illinois maintains that the Commission's Federal Register notice of September 16, 1975, 40 F.R.
42801, explicitly grants to licensing boards the right to consider whether or not such licensing proceedings should be conducted pending the development of the final generic environmental impact statement on handling and storage of spent light water power reactor fuel.
4
. In this notice the Commission stated that spent fuel' storage problems could be reviewed but that licensing should occur only "in the event that a.particular on-site spent fuel pool become filled, and no alternative form of spent fuel storage could be found."
Although the' Commission has not forbidden the issuance of any license amendments permitting the procedures being considered by the GEIS, as it prevjously has done in regard to other areas, such as the use of mixed oxide fuels, neither did the Commission intend piccomeal licensing of storage expansion plans to become the rule.
This is evidence by the Commission's statement, at.40 F.R.
- 42802, that the issuance of operating license amendments for increased spent fuel storage capacity pending completion of-the generic environmental impact statement could continue only under the following conditions:
(1) It is likely that each individual licensing action of this type would have a utility that is in-dependent of tha atility of other licensing actions of this type; (2) It is not likely that the taking of any particular licensing action of this type during the time frame under consideration would constitute a commitment of' resources that would tend to signi-ficantly foreclose the alternatives available with respect to any other individual licensing action of this type; 1
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission published a notice on May 8, 1975 providing thatfa cost-benefit analysis of alternative safeguards programs should.be prepared ~and set forth in draft and final environ-
. mental. impact statements before a Commission decision is reached on wide-scale use of mixed oxide (recycle plutonium) fuels in light water. nuclear power reactors. (2) There'should be no additional licenses granted for use of mixed oxide fuel in light water nuclear power reactors except for expermimental purposes (3) with respect to light water nuclear power reactor-fuel cycle activities which depend for their. justification on wide-scale useaof mixed oxide fuel in light water nuclear power reactors there shouldLbe no additional licenses granted which would foreclose future
-safeguards; options or result in unnecessary "grandf athering"
_..-.m..._,_,
4 (3) It is likely that any environmental impacts associated with any individual licensing action of this type would be addressed within the context of the individual. license appli-cation without overlooking any cumulative environmental impacts; (4) It is likely that any technical issues that may arise in the course of a review of an individual license application can be resolved within that context; and
.(5) _A deferral or severe restriction on licensing actions'of this type would result in substantial harm to the public interest.-
It is obvious that the Commission intended such considerations to come within the armbit of the appointed licensing board, else when would such considerations be reviewed? The relevance to the existing proceeding is likewise obvious. This is a proceeding to review an application to amend an operating license to allow for additional storage of spent nuclear fuel at a reactor. Contention 2 questions the need for such a license to be reviewed and/or granted at the present time. There is no more appropriate forum before which this issue should be oned thsn the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board which is currently convened.
In the proceeding at hand, the Applicant cannot meet all the conditions specified by the Commission in its notice.
- 1. Commonwealth Edison is currently applying for amendments to six operating licenses to modify its spent fuel plans.
- 2. The granting of this license might well constitute a commitment of resources which would significantly foreclose viable alternatives.
This foreclosure can also have a significant impact on whatever generic scheme.is chosen by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in its final generic l
, environmental impact statement. If,for instance, the EIS called for large utilities such as Commonwealth. Edison to build indenpendent away from reactor storage. facilities, the generic scheme could be thwarted i
by Edison's logical claim that it had already made a commitment to on-site storage and transshipment between existing utilities..The existence of a compacted storage scheme could mean that an AFR storage facility would no longer be, for Edison, the most cost effective and efficient means to. provide interim ~ storage for spent fuel.
- 3. The cumulative effects of. storing fuel on site are yet unknown. Such effects cannot be adequately addressed in the context of the present proceeding.
4.
It-is very likely that.several of the technical issucs-that have already arisen in the context of reviewing the Zion application cannot be resolved-in the context of this proceeding. In particular, the problems of Intergranular stress corrosion cracking (IGSCC), pool boiling, and the safety of the Brooks and Perkins Boral racks are all generic unresolved safety issues.
- 5. It has not been shown:that deferral of the license amendment request in this case would result in substantial harm to to the public interest. As indicated in Contentions 2A, and 2B, there is no imminent threat of shutdown should the licensing review-be delayed until the generic envi-ronmental impact statement is issued. And as Contention 3 states, the Applicant has not shown that a shutdown would inconvenience the public to any extent, as there are other sources of electricity, currently available within the Edison system, to fill any shortages endangered by a shutdown at Zion.
L The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has both a right and a duty to rule that contention 2 be admitted in this proceeding so that the board may correctly perform its function, as directed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to assure that no license will be issued to the
. Applicant unless it is in conformity with the conditions stated above.
1
-8 CONTENTION 6D 6.
There has been insufficient development of all credible accident scenarios.
D.
There is no discussion of credible accidents not directly caused by the proposed pool modification which could occur during the installation of the new spent fuel storage racks.
There is no discussion of the corrective. measures necessary to be taken of should such accidents occur.
Examples of credible i
accidents include:
1.
pool overflow 2.
pipe breaks causing leaking or spraying of irradiated water 3.
accidents involving failure of the Spent Fuel Pool Cooling systems.
Contention 6D concerns those accidents which, though not directly caused by the pool modification,-can have more deleterious effects if they occur during the pool modification.
Applicant and Staff assert that such accidents are not relevant because they are not specifically related to the modifications and because they have previously been considered in the FSAR.
To the contrary, the impact of such accidents is greatly increased by the presence of additional workers who will be affected by any such occurrences.
In addition, any accidents which could credibly occur during the modification can be compounded, or possibly caused, by accidents not caused by the reracking but occurring durine the operation.
Consider only'one such example.
Should a pipe leak such as that.which occurred at Turkey Point in 1975 (See Appendix A) cause radioactive water to spray down upon workers engaged in the pool rerack, not only would more work voosed to excessive radiation,
~_..
S i
I but the incident could cause workers to panic and cause additional accidents such asLfalling into the pool or~1osing control of instru-
-l ments and machinery.-
The State of Illinois contends that it is entirely.appro-priate for such accidents to be reviewed prior to the granting of the license amendment.
CONTENTION 9.
9.
The Applicant has not discussed whether the proposed modification and lona term storage may cause the following effects on the stored fuel: accelerated corrosion, microstructural' changes, al-
- terations.in mechanical properties, stress corrosion, cracking, inter-granular corrosion, and hydrogen absorption and precipitation by the f
zirconium alloys.
It has been conceded by previous Licensina Boards that the i
effects listed in contention' 9 do exist and that such contentions are in issue.
Similar contentions have been considered in PORTLAND GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY (Trojon Nuclear Plant), Docket No. 50-344, ASLB Initial Decision, October 6, 1978; Du Quesne Light Company (Beaver Valley Power Station, Unit No. 1), LBP-78-16, 7NRC 811(1978); and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation (Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station),
In the latter case the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board stated that "the' poss.4' '+y of stress corrosion crack-ing of sensitized' stainless steel or y cannot be eliminated re entirely..."
6NRC at 440.
I
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r I
10 : -
)
i i
Contention 9 is valid on the basis of precedent. More i
i t
importantly, Contention 9 is valid because, given the acknowledged
[
I existence of the corrosion effects listed, the Applicant has an j
I obligation to show that any additional radiation released as a result l
of intergranular stress corrosion cracking (IGSCC)' or related effects will not'increaseithe' dosage of radiation to workers and environment f
I beyond acceptable limits.
' i i
1 CONTENTION 16.
l
- 16. The amendment request and supporting documentation do not include anti-sabotage and security plans; therefore there is no assurance that adequate protections has,been developed.
The State of Illinois strongly disagrees.with the positions-of'the Commission staff that Contention 16 is'not relevant to the present proceeding and that the fact that security plans were previously i
studied at the operating license hearing for Zion should be sufficient to satisfy the State's concerns.
At the outset the Board should be aware that the very existence i
)
of the planned spent fuel pool modification'has been an issue of great interest to large numbers of Illinois citizens, including those who do not reside within~50 miles of the Zion facility. There has been consider-I
)
able activity on the part of these concerned citizens, l
The proposed modification has been widely publicized and as a-result' persons around the country have ' been made aware that Zion is i
aipossible. target for' demonstrations both-lawful and otherwise. That such1 demonstrations may include possible attempts-at sabotage is a foregone j
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. t conclusion'. At a.very minimum, such demonstrations will require the t
Commonwealth Edison Security. Staff to be taxed to the fullest, and l
its is-virtually certain.that State law enforcement will have to become involved.
[
t The State acknowledges its responsibilities to_ participate in preventing damage to the property at Zion and to thwart any sabotage
'I i
attempts. However, to fully _ perform their necessary functions state officials must have access to the NRC and \\pplicants procedures for security.
t It may well.be that the security plans designed by the i
Applicant and approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the i
time Zion was' licensed was sufficient to exclude'the necessity of calling on public police forces for assistance in maintaining plant security. However, the State has no way of knowing this to be true, since the Applicant and NRC have refused to make available any of the I
existing security plans.
Additionally, the State has become aware that Commonwealth Edison is currently revising its security procedures; therefore even if i
the original plans'had been made available, the State would have no means by which to ascertain the safety of existing procedures.
The State's interest in reviewing. security and sabotage
.It plans is clear. There is a! responsibility.to protect the health i
and'welfarefof'its citizens through the use of,its police powers; the: State also has'an interest in that it has a statutory obligation
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. under Ill. Rev. Stat. ch. 38 $201 to license and regulate the use of private guards, such as the Burns guards employed by Edison at Zion.
The objection to contention 16 seems to be based not on the lack of existing documents or on the inability of the State'to prove j
.its legitimate interest in reviewing the security plans, but on a Nuclear Regulatory Commission. staff determination that it shall be the only body given1the power to review security and anti-sabotage
-l l
criteria. At preser' there is no substantial justification to allow l
i the staff to maintain this position.'Although the staff favors j
classification'of such documents under the Commission regulations,
}
such classification does not presently exist; therefore'the security plans fall within the rubric of proprietary documents for the purposes of this hearing. The State has previously entered into a protective agreement in regard to all proprietary documents-for the purposes of this hearing. The State has previously entered into a protective agreement in regard to all proprietary documents to be supplied to it by the Applicant during this proceeding. (See Appendix B attached).
The security and anti-sabotage plans'can easily be brought within the terms of the protective agreement. The State is willing to have all testimony regarding security and sabotage take place in camera,.and.will i
take any other precautions the Board deems necessary to protect the
~
1 safety of the Zion facility.
l l
Contention 16 raises relevant questions.of fact. According to the standards established for the admission of contentions in contested l
4
. hearings on applications before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it is a valid contention and should be admitted.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, SUSAN N.
SEKULER Assistant Attorney General Environmental Control Division 188 West Randolph Street Suite 2315 Chicago,' Illinois 60601 312/793-2491 DATED: November 9, 1978 l
1
s.
d UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE Tile ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD In the Matter of:
)
)
Docket Nos. 50-295 COMMONWEALTII EDISON COMPAb'Y
)
50-304
)
(Zion Station, Units 1 and 2)
)
CEPTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that copies of the State of Illinois' MOTION TO AMEND CONTENTION 6A and MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF CERTAIN AMENDED CONTENTIONS dated November 1, 1978 in the above-captioned proceeding have been served upon the following by deposit in the United States mail this 9th day of November, 1978.
Edward Luton, Chairman Atomic Safety and Licensing Atomic Safety and Licensing-Board Panel Board Panel U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commissaan U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Ccmmission Washington, D.C.
20555 Washington, D.C.
20555 Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Dr. Linda W.
Little Board Panel Research Triangle Institute U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission P.O.
Box 12194 Washington, D.C.
20555 Research Triangle Park, Ncrth Carolina 27709 Docketing and Service Section U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Dr. Forrest J.
Remick Washington, D.C.
20555 305 E.
Ilamilton Avenue State College, Pennsylvania 16801 Richard Goddard, Esq.
~
Guy II. Cunningham, Esq.
Philip P.
Steptoe, Esq.
Myron Karman, Esq.
John W.
Howe, Esq.
Office of the Executive Legal 1 sham, Lincoln & Beale Director one First National Plaza U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chicago, Illinois 60690 Washington, D.C.
20555 SUSAN N.
SEKULER Assistant Attorney General Environmental Control Division 188 West Randolph Street, suite 2315 Chicago, Illinois 60601 312/793-2491 a.-