ML20153F593

Forwards Correspondence Received from T Margulies Re Serious Concerns Re Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant in MD

ML20153F593
Person / Time
Site:	Calvert Cliffs
Issue date:	08/12/1998
From:	Sarbanes P SENATE
To:	Rathbun D NRC OFFICE OF CONGRESSIONAL AFFAIRS (OCA)
Shared Package
ML20153F555	List: ML20153F553 ML20153F593
References
NUDOCS 9809290174
Download: ML20153F593 (9)

Text

t PAUL S. SARBANES 339 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING SA^JtYLONO WASHING TON. DC 20$10 202-02 4 52s Bilittd States Erilatt WASHINGTON, DC 20510-2002 August 12, 1998 Mr. Dennis K. Rathbun Director Office of Congressional Affairs U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C.

20555

Dear Mr. Rathbun:

ftEC'D BY SECT Enclosed is a copy of correspondence I received from Mr.

Timothy Margulies.

The letter raises some serious concerns about the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant in Maryland.

I would certainly 21 M W IU Bhpreciate it if you would carefully review this matter and provide me with an appropriate response.

Your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

With best regards, Sincerely,

-ja Paul Sarbanes United States Senator PSS/lsb enclosure

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Senator Paul S. Sarbanes SH-309 Hart Senate Office Building i

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Dear Senator Sarbanes:

F l have completed an independent set of radiological risk and cost-benefit

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calculations for the Calvert Cliffs site considering av low as reasonably achievable policy and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's design back-fit approach for regulatory analysis decision-making. These results which are suminarized in the enclosed paper address severe accident consequences.' I

- offe'r these to your staff to further support that safety improvements can be

. Justified from both engineering and cost-benefit perceptual viewpoints to help ensure public health and safety. Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

Very truly yours, e

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Timothy S.

argulies, Ph.D

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Sevare Accident Resources For Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plants T. Margulies Probabilistic risk calculations with cost estimatas were made to evaluate potential cost-beneficial justifications for safety improvements to engineering systems at the Calvert Cliffs site. The approach is consistent with an "as low as reasonably achievable" radiation protection policy endorsed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection '.

The two power generating units reside approximately 35 miles south of Annapolis, Maryland each supplying 845 mega-watts. Unit i began operating in 1G75 and Unit 11 in 1977; hence, their licenses given by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission permitting them to operate expire in the years 2014 and 2016, respectively.

The dominant safety issues addressed concern severe accident scenarios such as a station black-out er containment bypass (Event V), each with approximately a one chance per one-hundred thousand likelihood of occurrence. Station black-out refers to the conditions that the alternating electrical supply onsite and offsite are unavailable for running cooling pumps and safety systems. Event V pertains to an " Achilles heel' of the containment where check valve failures would release coolant and radioactivity directly to the environment outside containment.

The transport calculations sample meteorological conditions, and include wind direction probabilities while simulating radiological exposures to over three million people within fifty miles of the plants and extending to people within 350 miles. Refer to the first bar chart showing the population distributed at various distances surrounding the site. An approach of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatcry Commission to evaluate whether to augment existing designs for light water reactors to reduce population dose (Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 50: Appendix 1, FR Vol. 40, No. 87,19439, May 1975) is applied. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's value for a cost-benefit analysis initially set radiation costs as $ 1000 per person-rem. Recent proposals have been made to increase this by a factor of two to five. The annual levelized cost results for various interest rates for the units are provided in the attached figures. These calculations corroborate previous analyses which neglect wind direction frequency, supported *by the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents during which the wind direction conti'nually shifted ard did not geneally persist uni-directionally 2 The costs in the following figures represent potential expenditures to improve the safe operation over the remaining lives of the plants and to prevent the severe consequences from reactor accidents. Improvements such as instrumentation and monitoring to minimize a bypass scenario, and suppicmental filtering and scrubbing to the present containments are considered viable based on these analyses. Alternative allocations of resources to emergency preparedness measures such as stockpiling potassium iodide for thyroid protection would not have the additional protection benefits of reducing substantial non-inhalation pathway contributions of severe accident

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radioactivity releases to offsite whole body doses, as well as, protecting land from 6 -,

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contamin tion.

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References:

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1. ICRP, " Cost-Benefit Analysis in the Optimization of Radiation Protection," Annals of the ICRP. No. 37, Vol.10, No. 2/3,1983, Pergamon Press.

2. " Cost-Benefit Risk Analyses: Radioactive Waste Systems for Light Water Reactors,"

T. Margulies, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Manuscript,1998.

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Calvert Cliffs I costs ( $ 10^6 )

$ 5000 per person-rem averted 98.6519 l

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Calvert Cliffs II costs ( $ 10^6 )

$ 2000 per person-rem averted j

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