ML20198C021

Safety Evaluation Supporting Amends 241 & 231 to Licenses DPR-77 & DPR-79,respectively

ML20198C021
Person / Time
Site:	Sequoyah
Issue date:	12/16/1998
From:	NRC (Affiliation Not Assigned)
To:
Shared Package
ML20198C011	List: ML20198C005 ML20198C021
References
NUDOCS 9812210271
Download: ML20198C021 (10)

Text

_

6 p

p UNITED STATES g

j NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION WASHINGTON, D.C. 30666 4001 o,Q W,R$

SAFETY EVALUAT:ON BY THE OFFICE OF NUCLEAR REACTOR REGULATION RELATED TO AMENDMENT NO. 241 TO FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE NO. DPR-77 AND AMENDMENT NO.231 TO FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE NO DPR-79 TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY SEQUOYAH NUCLEAR PLANT. UNITS 1 AND 2 DOCKET NOS. 50-327 AND 50-328

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) requested amendments to Operating Licenses DPR-77 and DPR-79 for Sequoyah Nuclear Plant (SON), Units 1 and 2, rer actively, in a letter to the r

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) dated August 22,1996, as supplemented on August 27 and October 8,1998. The August 27,1998, amendment request superseded the original (August 22,1998) request in its entirety. The October 8,1998, letter provided clarifying information that did not change the initial no significant hazards consideration determination.

The amendments would modify the SON Unit 1 and 2 Technical Specifications (TSs) by modifying TS 3.8.1.1, Action b, to extend the emergency diesel generator (EDG) allowed outage time (AOT) from 72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br /> to 7 days. The original request proposed the AOT be changed to 7 days on a once per 18-month basis. Subsequently, by letter dated August 27, 1998, the licensee revised their request to replace tho original request for a once per 18-month provision for a 7-day EDG AOT with a permanent 7-day AOT for the EDGs. The main purpose of this proposal is to allow on line EDG major 6-and 12 year maintenance activities that would normally be performed during refueling outages. The licensee indicates that performing EDG maintenance at power using the proposed extended EDG AOT would result in a net risk decrease due to increased EDG availability during refueling outages. The licensee's risk analysis indicates that the increasing the AOT from the current 3 days to 7 days is not risk significant.

Additional changes have also been proposed which include eliminating the special reporting requirements for EDGs in TS 4.8.1.1.2.a in accordance with Generic Letter (GL) 94-01 and eliminating a license condition that no longer applies regarding implementation of EDG design and procedure modifications.

The NRC staff has reviewed the requested changes and finds them acceptable as discussed in the following evaluation.

2.0 BACKGROUND

SON Units 1 and 2 are each equipped with two Class 1E EDGs to supply emergency power to the safety-related buses in the event of a loss of offsite power. The current SON TS for both units requires that all four EDGs be operable for either or both units during power operation 9812210271 981216 PDR ADOCK 05000327 P

PDR

, ~.

e i

i because many systems are shared between the Unit 1 and Unit 2. The syctems that are shared between Unit 1 and Unit 2 are the emergency gas treatment system, the auxiliary building gas treatment system, the auxiliary control air system, and the component cooling water system.. Since the inoperability of one EDG results in the degradation of one train of safety-related system functions for both units, a dual unit shutdown would be required if the

. repairs / maintenance of any one of the four EDGs is not completed within the current AOT of l

72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br />. Since the licenses is required to perform the upcoming 6-and 12-year maintenance activities on SON EDGs in'early 1999 and the scope of the this effort is substantially larger, the

licensee is proposing a longer EDG AOT to complete this effort.

3.0 EVALUATION i

In their submittal dated August 27,1998, TVA proposed the following changes to TS 3.8.1, "AC Sources - Operating":

1.

Extend the AOT in TS 3.8.1.1, Action b, for one EDG inoperable from the current 72-hours to 7-days.

2.

Delete the current footnote that is associated with the above Required i

Action b that provides a 72-hour extension for cleaning activities of the fuel oil storage tank. This note will not be necessary because the proposed i

7-day AOT provides adequate time for cleaning the fuel storage tank.

3.

Delete the reporting requirements associated with EDG reliability report in l

TSs 4.8.1.1.4,4.8.1.2, and 6.9.2.2.

4.

Delete license condition,2.C.(15) for Unit 1 and 2.C.(12) for Unit 2,-

l associated with the implementation of EDG design and procedure modifications, that are no longer applicable.

Additionally, the pertinent TS Bases sections are revised to reflect the above TS changes. In particular, because of the proposed addition of TS 6.8.4.1,

" Configuration Risk Management Program," the following statement is added to L

Bases Section 3/4.8.1 and 3/4.8.2, "AC Sources and Onsite Power Distribution Systems:"

E "When applying Action b of LCO [ limiting condition for operation] 3.8.1.1, the configuration risk management program described in Section 6.8.4.1 is l

required to be implemented."

3.1 DETERMINISTIC EVALUATION 1

The purpose of the proposed change to TS 3.8.l.1, Action b, is to extend the EDG AOT from the current 72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br /> to 7 days to allow the licensee to perform the major 6-and 12 year i

preventive rnaintenance overhauls on-line. Although the licensee has demonstrated, based on l

a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) basis (see PRA evaluation below), that performing on-line I

l l

~ -

o ECO mairenance at power using the proposed extended EDG AOT would result in no significat incrone in risk, the staff also redewed the submittai from a deterministic approach as toilovm.

l The licensee originally proposed changes tc TS 3.8.1.1, Action b, to provide AOT extension from 72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br /> to 7 days for one EDG or one train of EDGs. This proposal could nave allowed the licensee to take two EDGs simultaneously f ar up to 7 days. The sWf informed the licensee that the proposed change to allow two EDGs to te inoperable for 7 days would be too risky and, therefore, is unacceptable. Subsequently, the licensee proposed a revised TS 3.8.1.1, Action b, to add a footnote that would read as follows:

• No more than one diesel generator may be made simultaneously inoperabla. on a pre-planned bacis for maintenance, modification or surveillance testing.

The staff finds that the noce in the TS would restrict the licensee to declare only one EDG st a time to be inoperable on a preplanned basis for up to 7 days. The above change to the TS satisfies staff's concern.

in evaluating the licensee's request to extend the AOT for EDGs, the staff evaluated the request to ensure that the overall availability of the EDGs will not be reduced significantly as a result of increased on-line preventive maintenance activities. hi order to determine the above, the NRC staff sent a request for additionalinformation dated Novw.her 26,1997. The licensee's responses were induded in letters dated August 27,19M and October 8,1998, and are summarized below:

1.

In evaluating the licensee's request to extend the allowed EDG AOT from the current 72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br /> to 7 days, the staff requested the licemee to state whether the EDG unavailability for a 7-day AOT would also be consistant with the objective and intent of 10 CFR 50.65, Appendix A, the maintenance rule.

The licensee stated that the maintenance rule unavailability performance criteria for the EDGs is 0.025 for a rolling 24-month average per EDG This unavailability is bounded by the SON probabilistic safety assessment. The expected unavailabhy for each EDG resulting from performing the 12 year and 6 year maintenance in a sinole 7-day AOT versus performing the maintenance over multiple periods within the current 72. hour ACT were compared. Utilizing multiple 72 hour8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br /> AOTs to perform tne 6-and 12-year maintenance will likely result in the P.A-A EDG exceeding the criteria. In contrast, performing the same maintenance with a single 7-day AOT will not cause any of the four EDGs to exceed the performance criteria and is consistent with the objective and intent of the maintenance rule. Since the unavailability of the EDGs with the 7-day LCO is within the unavailability established for maintenance rule, the staff finds the above response acceptable.

Additionally, the licensee stated that in order to perform the major rnaintenance with the current 3-day AOT, the duration of work could extend for over 215 hours0.00249 days <br />0.0597 hours <br />3.554894e-4 weeks <br />8.18075e-5 months <br /> with five LCO action statement entries and 19 EDG starts. A 7-day AOT will reduce entries into LCO action statement entries to one, reduce EDG unavailability to 113 hours0.00131 days <br />0.0314 hours <br />1.868386e-4 weeks <br />4.29965e-5 months <br />, decrease the

n o number of required EDG starts to six, and reduce the risk associated with the activities necessary to complete. The above demonstrates that at SON, the longer EDG AOT not only reduces the entries into the LCO but also the number of EDGs starts.

2.

The staff also requested the licensee to provide a discussion of the loss of offsite power at its facility.

=

The licensee stated that there has been no complete loss of offsite power event at SON g

through July 1998. This information is based on the data from Nuclear Safety Analysis (NSA) Center, specifically NSA-166, and p; ant records.

{

3.

The staff requested the licensee to provide detailed discussion of the measures taken during EDG maintenance outages to minimize transients on the offsite power system.

E The licensee stated that the plant specification requires verification of the proper

[

breaker alignment of the offsite power sources within an hour of removing the an EDG,

E and every eight hours thereafter until that EDG is returned to service to assure that the offsite power is available during the EDG AOT period. Further, in order to minimize the r

risk of offsite power during the time the EDG is inoperable, the licensee would restrict access to the switchyard and to the relay room at all times and ensure that switchyard activities are controlled during an EDG outage. The staff finds that the above measures

{

taken by the licensee will minimize the probability of loosing offsite power during the EDG outage y

(

On September 30,1998, a meeting was held between TVA representatives and the NRC staff 1

to discuss tne proposed amendment. The Electrical Engineering staff informed TVA that because of the potential safety impact of extended outage time for an EDG, the staff believes r

that certain compensatory measures are needed during the extended EDG AOT to ensure safe cperation of the plant. This should include (1) verification that required systems, subsystems, trains, components, and devices that depend on the remaining EDG as a source of onsite power are verified to be operable before removing an EDG for an extended maintenance, (2) voluntary entry into an LCO action statement should not be scheduled when adverse m9 weather is expected.

By letter dated October 8,1998, the Ucensee provided the following responses to our concerns.

In response to item (1), the licensee stated that in accordance with the SON TS requirements in 3.0.5, redundant safety related syms that depend on the remaining EDG are required to be operable when removing an EDG feta. mice. If this provision cannot be satisfied, those components supplied by only an opercio redundant component, are considered inoperable.

E This condition will result in reduced action timas ;or continued operation before requiring a unit shutdown. In addition, the licensee proposed a Configuration Risk Management Program (CRMP) to support risk-informed TSs to ensure that a proceduralized PRA informed process is m p' ace that assesses the overallirapac' of plant maintenance on plant risk. The CRMP will be implemented whenever an EDG is cut-cfevice. The CRMP is codified in SON TS 6.8.4.1.

k The staff finds the response acceptable.

b' Ir

-m

o !

In response to item (2) above, the licensee stated that the procedural controls will ensure that l

the EDG LCO action will not be voluntarily entered when the severe weather is expected.

l Moreover, there have been no site specific severe weather events that have caused the lose of offsite power at the site. The staff finds the above response acceptable.

TVA proposed deleting the current footnote that is associated with TS 3.8.1.1, Required Action b, which provides a 72-hour extension for cleaning activities of the fuel oil storage tank.

The note will no longer be necessary because the proposed 7-day AOT provides adequate time j

for cleaning the fuel storage tank. Therefore, the proposed change to celete the note is acceptable.

With regard to the proposed change for deleting the reporting requirements of EDG failure and reliability reporting requirements in TSs 4.8.1.1.4,4.8.1.2, and 6.9.2.2, the licensee states that these provisions are not necessary based on the implementation of the maintenance rule at SON. On July 14,1997, the NRC staff approved the TS requirements to remove accelerated testing requirements of EDGs for SON based on the implementation of the maintenance rule.

The licensee states that the deletion of the reporting requirements should have been included in its original TS change request, but was overlooked at that time. The staff finds the deletion of EDG failure reporting requirements to be consistent with GL 94-01, ' Removal of Accelerated Testing and Special Reporting Requirements for Emergency Diesel Generators," which allows the licensee to remove the special reporting requirements for EDGs based on the implementation of the maintenance program in accordance 10 CFR 50.65," Requirements to for Monitoring the Effec iveness of Maintenance at Nuclear Power Plants," and is acceptable.

With regard to the proposed change to delete the license condition,2.C.(15) for Unit 1 and i

2.C.(12) for Unit 2, associated with the implementation of EDG design and procedure modifications, the licensee states that this modification is administrative in nature. This condition involved actions to be completed prior to unit operation following the first refueling outage on each unit. The licensee performed the necessary design and procedure activities to support completion of this condition in the early 1980s. This license condition provides no further benefit and currently has no associated open actions. Based on the above, the staff agrees with the licensee that this condition has already been satisfied for SON and, therefore, the deletion of the above license condition for Unit 1 and Unit 2 is acceptable.

3.2 CONCLUSION

OF DETERMINISTIC REVIEW The staff evaluated the proposed change to extend the EDG AOT from the current 72-hours to 7-days to ensure that the overall availability of the EDGs will not be reduced unnecessarily due to preventive maintenance activities. The staff concludes that the licensee's request for 7-day i

EDG AOT to perform major maintenance is acceptable. Our conclusion is based on the following: (1) At SON, the longer EDG AOT would reduce the entries into the LCO and reduce the number of EDG starts for major EDG maintenance activities, (2) no loss of offsite power event at SON during the whole commercial operation, and (3) several improvements to the offsite power system. Further, we believe that precluding testing and maintenance of other electrical systems during the extended outage will reduce the probability of a station blackout at SON.

.y I The NRC staff also reviewed the other proposed changes to 3/4.8.1 and finds them to be acceptable.

l The NRC staff evaluated the net contribution of the change to ov'arall plant risk due to the i

i extended EDG AOT in Section 3.3.

3.3 PRA REVIEW l

The staff used a three-tiered approach to evaluate the risk associated with the proposed amendment. The first tier evaluated the PRA model and the impact of the change on plant operational risk. The second tier addressed the need to preclude potentially high risk configurations if additional equipment will be taken out of service simultaneously or other risk significant operational factors such as concurrent system or equipment testing are involved.

The third tier evaluated the licensee's configuration risk management program, to ensure that equipment removed from service prior to or during the proposed AOT will be appropriately assessed from a risk perspective. Each tier and associated findings are discussed below.

3.3.1' TIER 1: PRA EVALUATION OF AOT EXTENSION 1

1 The Tier 1 staff review of the licensee's PRA involved two aspects: (1) evaluation of the PRA l

model and its application to the proposed AOT extension, and (2) evaluation of PRA results and insights stemming from the application.

1. Evaluation of PRA Model and its Application to the AOT Extension The licensee's risk analysis used to support the proposed change is based on its revised Individual Plant Examination (IPE), Revision 1, in 1995, as compared to the original IPE, Revision 0, in 1992. IPE, Revision 1, was submitted to the staff for information in early 1998. It incorporated various changes made to the facility in terms of plant design, procedures, and training programs; updated initiating event frequencies based on additional operating i

experience; and additional changes in the PRA model to represent the current plant configuration.

The overall PRA methodology used in both revisions is essentially the same. TVA submitted the SON IPE in 1992 for staff review. The staff review concluded that the submittal met the intent of GL 88-20. The IPE was developed by a combined effort of the licensee staff, Pickard, l

Lowe and Garrlck, Inc., and EOE Engineering, Inc. The IPE capitalized on insights stemming l

from the NUREG-1150' for SON and the IPE prepared for Watts Bar. For front-end analysis, the SON IPE used a large event tres and small fault tr'ae technique with linked event tree for quantification. The RISKMAN computer code was usad for quantification. The type of initiating events considered are generally consistent with othe" PRAs. The staff noted that electrical support systems such as AC and DC power were ar,alyzed in the PRA, and no major l

deficiencies were identified. For common cause failures, the Multiple Greek Letter method was used and the associated parameters were generally consistent with other PRAs. In general, the database for the IPE was based on both generic and plant-specific information. The review

'NUREG 1150,' Sever Accident Risks: An Assessment of Five U.S. Nuclear Power Plants,* w.S. NRC, December 1990 l

l

i l of the IPE found no significant problem or errors in the area of human reliability analysis. The original IPE reported the core damage frequency (CDF) for internal events, including internal flooding, to be 1.7x10 /yr, but the revised IPE in 1995 reported a new CDF of 3.8x10 /yr, with d

4 the sequence truncation value of 1x10 /yr. The loss of offsite power (LOOP) initiator 4

contributed approximately 10% of the CDF, which amounts to about 4x10 /yr.

4 The Level 2 portion of the original IPE has not been revised. However, TVA performed calculations to estimate the large early release frequency (LERF) impact from the proposed extended EDG AOT. In the IPE, the transition from the front end analysis to the back-end analysis was accomplished by binning the Level 1 core damage sequences into appropriate l

plant damage states. Information resulting from the NUREG 1150 study for SON was used to l

develop the containment event trees. The staff review of the IPE found that the SON back-end l

analysis used reasonable PRA techniques. The IPE indicated that the release group frequencies associated with large early release comprised less than 10% of the CDF.

The LOOP initiating frequency used,4.85x10-2/yr, is considered relatively low. However, the relatively low LOOP frequency is justified due to several reasons, which include: (1) no LOOP event at the site during the whole commercial operation; (2) relatively low vulnerability to severe weather, i.e., hurricanes, and (3) the switchyard design and redundant offsite power sources to i

the switchyard.

TVA provided to the staff the recent EDG performance data, associated with unavailability and reliability for each EDG. The staff finds that the actual performance data from 1995 to 1997 l

were generally better than those used in the PRA, and the reliability of EDGs was generally l

high, in addition, the EDG performance consistently exceeded the Maintenance Rule criteria.

(

The staff did not identify any significant deficiencies or shortcomings associated with the SON risk analysis to support the proposed change. The licensee provided additional information to address several questions regarding the validity of the risk analysis, and the information was l

sufficient to resolve the issues. Therefore, the staff believes that the licensee's risk analysis to l

Justify the proposed EDG AOT extension is of sufficient quality for the proposed application.

l l

2. Evaluation of PRA Results and Insights SON indicated that the proposed extended AOT would result in an EDG unavailability decrease because the unavailability would be less with the 7-day AOT than with the current 3 days. With the current 3-day AOT, the licensee plans to enter and exit multiple outages to perform scheduled maintenance activities. In particular, the upcoming 6-and 12-year inspection would require five AOTs per EDG; in contrast, the licensee indicated that only one extended cutage per EDG would be needed to perform the inspection. TVA determined the expected annual EDG unavailability for the 3-day and 7-day AOTs to be 434 and 332 hours0.00384 days <br />0.0922 hours <br />5.489418e-4 weeks <br />1.26326e-4 months <br />, respectively, per EDG per year when those major inspections are included. The CDF impact for both expected I

unavailabilities were summarized as follows:

Case EDG Unavailability CDF Uvr)

% Chanae

(

4 Base 171 hours0.00198 days <br />0.0475 hours <br />2.827381e-4 weeks <br />6.50655e-5 months <br /> /yr 4.06x10 4

7-day AOT 332 hours0.00384 days <br />0.0922 hours <br />5.489418e-4 weeks <br />1.26326e-4 months <br /> /yr 4.13x10 1.8%

4 3-day AOT 434 hours0.00502 days <br />0.121 hours <br />7.175926e-4 weeks <br />1.65137e-4 months <br /> /yr 4.19x10 3.1%

l

V

't 8-A sequence truncation value of 1x10 /yr was used to calculate the CDFs. The staff finds that 48 the CDF risk increase from the base case to the proposed 7-day AOT case is very small, less than 1x10'7/yr. In addition, compared with the 3-day case, the 7-day case would result in a smaller increase in CDF.

j The incremental conditional core damage probabilities (ICCDPs) for a single outage have been

)

provided for both cases,3-day and 7-day, and are summarized as follows:

J

.Qgag ICCDP for a sinale outaae 3-day AOT 2.14x10-7 7-day AOT.

4.98x10~7 The ICCDPs were calculated based on an entire AOT duration.

The licensee performed a sensitivity study to determine the impact of changing the sequence truncation value on the CDF of the base case model. The result of the study is summarized as follows:

Truncation Value CDF Uvr) 1x10*

3.77x10 (Rev.1 IPE) 4 1x10 "

3.97x10'5 4

1x10 "

4.03x10'S 48 4

1x10 4.06x10 The result indicates that the CDF results are generally robust against different truncetion values. The increase in LERF resulting from the proposed change was estimated to be 9x10*/yr. The results of LERF calculations are summarized as follows:

_Qgag LERF Uvr) 4 Base 4.45x10 4

Proposed 4.54x10 Based on the information provided from TVA, the staff calculated the incremental conditional large early release probability for a single 7-day outage to be less than 2x10.

4 The staff finds that the calculated risk impact of the proposed change in EDG AOT extension is small and below the guidelines in Regulatory Guides (RGs) 1,174 and 1.177.

2 8

3.3.2 TIER 2: AVOIDANCE OF RISK SIGNIFICANT PLANT CONFIGURATIONS 2RG 1.174,"An Approach for Using Probabilistic Risk Assessment in Risk-Informed Decisions on Plant-Specific Changes to the Licensing Basis," July 1998 l

8RG 1.177,'An Approach for Plant-Specific, Risk-informed Decision making: Technical Specifications,"

September 1998 j

w

> TVA did not identify additional TS restriction-s or compensatory measures required to avoid potential risk significant configurations during an EDG outage. However, the licensee proposed additional procedural controls associated with severe weather conditions, switchyard activities, and the same-train activities as part of their CRMP for Tier 3.

3.3.3 TIER 3: RISK INFORMED PLANT CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT The staff believes that the licensee's risk informed CRMP will allow an evaluation of the risk associated with both scheduled and unscheduled plant activities when performing the EDG maintenance at power. TVA uses multiple elements to incorporate the risk management concept into their maintenance planning, scheduling and activities at power. These elements include the 12 week scheduling process, the Work Week Manager, the computer program SENTINEL, and the Operations Risk Senior Reactor Operator. A risk matrix, developed using the plant-specific SON PRA, and the SENTINEL computer program are tools to evaluate the risk level of scheduled activities. For equipment configurations of potential risk significance that are not covered by these tools, a PRA engineer is consulted. Emergent work is evaluated by

'he Work Week Manager against the rise matrix or SENTINEL. The staff finds that the icensee's program to control the risk associated with the activities regarding EDG outages is reasonable.

TVA proposed a supplemental change that adds a CRMP to the Administrative Controls section and bases of TSs. The proposed change is consistent with RG 1.177. The staff concludes that the licensee has met the intent of the Tier 3 guidance.

3.

3.4 CONCLUSION

OF THE PRA REVIEW The staff did not identify any significant weaknesses or deficiencies associated with the licensee's risk analysis used to support the proposed change that could impact the overall quantitative conclusion. The PRA methodology and approach used to estimate the risk impact were reasonable, and the risk impact of the proposed change was found to be small. The licensee also has a CRMP that provides reasonable tools and processes for configurational risk control during EDG outages. Based on the review, the staff concludes there is a reasonable assurance that the licensee's risk analysis support the EDG AOT extension and the overall risk impact of the proposed change meets the intent of the criteria and guidelines used in the RGs 1.174 and 1.177.

Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that the results and insights of the PRA analysis support the proposed EDG AOT extension from 3 to 7 days.

Imolementation and Monitorina The staff expects the licensee to implement these TS changes in accordance with the three-tiered approach described above. The licensee has also indicated that the maintenance scheduling practice and the tools used to implement a means of evaluating the impact of maintenance activities on plant configurations are consistent with the Maintenance Rule (10 CFR 50.65). The AOT extension will allow efficient scheduling of on-line maintenance within the boundaries established by implementing the Maintenance Rule. The licensee will monitor EDG performance in relation to the Maintenance Rule performance criteria. Therefore,

9-application of these implementation and monitoring strategies will help to ensure that an extansion of TS EDG AOT does not degrade operational safety over time and that the risk expected when an EDG is taken out of service is minimized.

4.0 STATE CONSULTATION

in accordance with the Commission's regulations, the Tennessee State official was notified of j

the proposed issuance of the amendments. The State official had no comments.

5.0 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATION

The amendment changes a requirement with respect to installation or use of a facility l

component located within the restricted area as defined in 10 CFR Part 20. The NRC staff has determined that the amendment involves no significant increase in the amounts, and no significant change in the types, of any effluents that may be released offsite, and that there is no significant increase in individual or cumulative occupational radiation exposure. The Commission has previously issued a proposed finding that the amendment involves no significant hazards consideration, and there has been no public comment on such finding (63 FR 48270, dated September 9,1998). Accordingly, the amendments meet the eligibility criteria for categorical exclusion set forth in 10 CFR 51.22(c)(9). Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.22(b), no environmental impact statement or environmerci assessment need be prepared in connection with the issuance of the amendments.

8.0 CONCLUSION

The Commission has concluded, based on the considerations discussed above, that: (1) there is reasonable assurance that the health and safety of the public will not be endangered by i

operation in the proposed manner, (2) such activities will be conducted in compliance with the Commission's regulations, and (3) the issuance of the amendment will not be inimical to the common defense and security or to the health and safety of the public.

Principal Contributors: Om Chopra lan Jung Dated: December 16,199f3 l

s 3

--