ML20236G587

Responds to 870617 Request for Info Re GE Reed Rept on LER Sys.No Issues Raised in Reed Rept Support Need to Curtail Operation of GE BWRs

ML20236G587
Person / Time
Site:	Limerick
Issue date:	07/30/1987
From:	Stello V NRC OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS (EDO)
To:	Coughlin L HOUSE OF REP.
Shared Package
ML20236G589	List: ML20236G587 ML20236G617
References
NUDOCS 8708040315
Download: ML20236G587 (6)

Text

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n MR.36 E The Honorable Lawrence Coughlin -

United States House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Coughlin:

I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to your June 17, 1987, request for information regarding the (1) 1975 General Electric Company (GE) study herein referred to as the " Reed Report" (named for its principal author, Dr. Charles E. Reed, a senior engineer at GE) and (2) an article in the Times Herald of Norristown, Pennsylvania, regarding the NRC's " licensee event report system."

It should be noted first and foremost that the NRC staff did review the Reed

-Report'on a number of occasions, as discussed below. On the basis of its review of each of the issues addressed in the report, the staff determined that the Reed Report did not identify significant new safety issues.

l Another thorough NRC staff review of the Reed Report has recently been completed. A copy of NUREG-1285 is attached for your information. Proprietary and predecisional documents will be made available for your review through our Office of Governmental and Public Affairs.

The Reed Report, prepared in 1975 at the request of the Chainnan of the Board of Directors for General Electric was intended to be an internal critical self-analysis of GE's Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) design for the purpose of product improvement. It addressed future reactor designs and considered steps l to enhance plant performance.

After Dr. Reed testified before the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy in February 1976, two senior members of the NRC staff reviewed the Reed Report in GE's Washington, DC office. In this review, the staff members did not identify any new safety concerns not already known to the NRC nor any evidence that GE had not met the requirements of Section 206 of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 in regard to the reporting to NRC of signi'icant safety concerns. A copy of the memorandum from the two NRC staff menaers to the Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, was incorporated in e record of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy's " Investigation of Charge!

Relating to Nuclear Reactor Safety," held February 18, 23, and 24 and March .

and4,1976(VolumeII,atPage1774).

Since this initial review, the staff has examined the Reed Report several other l

times.

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In December 1977, Congressman John D. Dingell requested information on the Reed Report, which the Chairman provided in a letter dated February 9, 1978.

On March 6, 1978, the staff formally asked GE to provide a copy of the Reed Report or a list of the safety issues it raised. On March 22, 1978,.GE gave the NRC a list of 25 issues identified in the report as having some safety significance. On April 11, 1978, members of the NRC staff and a member of Congressman Dingell's staff met at the GE offices in Washington, DC and reviewed the Reed Report. On May 26, 1978, GE gave NRC the status and an evaluation of the 25 issues identified in the report. On November 9, 1978, the staff gave the Commission a draft letter response to Congressman Dingell discussing the staff review and stating the staff conclusion: "

...no substantive disagreement with the summary status provided by GE" (SECY-78-462A). The Chairman forwarded the staff's findings to Congressman Dingell in a letter dated December 27, 1978.

The Commission first received a copy of the Reed Report on January 5, 1979, when GE provided a copy to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the Black Fox proceedings. TheBoardreceiv'dt.ndreviewedthereportincamera,andthe report was not made public. GE categorized the report as " proprietary" and claimed that, under the provisions of the Commission's regulations in 10 CFR I 2.790, the report was exempt from mandatory public disclosure. As part of its l agreement with GE, the Board issued a protective order relating to the inclusion of the Reed Report into evidence in the Black Fox proceedings.

The pertinent terms of the protective order were as follows: (1) the Reed Report was available to the Board in confidence; (2) vercatim extractions were available to counsel insofar as they related to the intervenor's contentions and Board questions; and (3) the Reed Report was available to the intervenor's i counsel to evaluate the faithfulness of the extractions. The parties also signed protective agreements that limited access to and use of the report.

As mentioned above, as a result of the recent renewed interest in the 1975 study, the NRC assembled a task force to restudy the Reed Report from the perspectives gained from the licensing and the operating experience of GE BWRs, including Limerick, Unit 1. The conclusions of the task force are (1) there are no issues raised in the Reed Rt-port that support a need to curtail the operation of any GE boiling water reactor (BWR); (2) there are no new safety issues raised in the Reed Report of which the staff was unaware; and (3) although certain issues addressed by the Reed Report are still being studied by the NRC and the industry, there is no basis for suspending licensing and operation of GE BWR plants while these issues are being resolved.

The other matter you mentioned involved a newspaper article in the Norristown Times Perald regarding the NRC's licensee event report system.

Commission regulations, as given in 10 CFR 50.73 require the holder of an operating license for a nuclear power plant to submit licensee event reports (LERs) on a broad range of events "...regardless of the plant mode or power level and regardless of the significance of the structure, system or component

.s 1

. l that initiated the event." As the article noted, the vast majurity of LERs do not involve significant threats to public safety. The article also quoted an NRC spokesman who stated that of the several thousand events reported each year, only a very few (e.g., nine in 1985) are determined to be significant from the standpoint of public safety; these are reported to Congress on a '

quarterly basis.

There are many purposes behind the NRC's LER system. One purpose is to ensure that licensees thoroughly investigate the cause of any incident and, where appropriate, institute corrective action to prevent a recurrence. The NRC staff evaluates each LER submitted and frequently conducts an independent investigation and assessment. In addition, the staff uses the information from LERs in many ways, such as evaluating whether there is a potential generic problem with an item of equipment. LERs are also used in the NRC's Systematic Assessment of Licensee Performance (SALP), in which we specifically review LERs in regard to type, common mode events, trends, and root-cause identification..

For Limerick, Unit 1, the number of LERs submitted in 1986 was comparatively high, but, as reported ir the recently issued SALP evaluation for Limerick,. j none of the events reported was of unusual safety significance, and no events ,

or problems specific to Limerick were considered significant. Nonetheless, l Philadelphia Electric Company is making a concerted effort to correct the causes of the events that occurred.

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I hope this letter provides the information you are seeking. Please let me know if we can be of further assistance to you in this matter, i

Sincerely, j orJ ah mm g ,

Il n t cr ,h jag l

. Victor Stello,-Jr'.

Executive Director

. for Operations l En. closure:

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i EDO PRINCIPAL-CORRESPONDENCE CONTROL [

_y FROM: DUE: 07/24/87 EDO CONTROL: 003008 DOC.DT: 06/17/87

' REP. ~ LAWRENCE COUGHLIN FINAL REPLY:

TO:

CHAIRMAN ZECH FOR SIGNATURE OF: ** GREEN ** SECY NO: 87-799 l

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR l

L DESC: ROUTING:

REFERENCE NEWSPAPER ARTICLES CONCERNING POSSIBLE ' RUSSELL DANGERS OF CERTAIN GENERAL ELECTRIC NUCLEAR MURRAY REACTORS SUCH AS LIMERICK j i

DATE: 07/10/87 ASSIGNED TO: NRR CONTACT: MURLEY J

1 SPECIAL-INSTRUCTIONS OR REMARKS:

T) ae b A"% 7 af 1 .

NRR RECEIVED: JULY

{gj10c.198L, ACTION: VgGAgiyq)

.q NRR ROUTING: j MURLEY/SNIEZEK MIRGLIA 3 STAROSTECKI j BLAHA 1 FUNCHES MOSSBURG 4

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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY

. CORRESPONDENCE CONTROL TICKET PAPER NUMBER: CRC-87-0799 LOGGING DATE: Jul 9 87 ACTION OFFICE: EDO AUTHOR: L. .Coughlin AFFILIATION:. U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

! LETTER DATE: Jun 17 87 FILE CODE: ID&R-5 Limerick

SUBJECT:

Ref news articles concerning possible dangers of certain GE nuc reactors--such as Limerick.

ACTION: Direct Reply DISTRIBUTION: OCA to Ack, Docket SPECIAL HANDLING: None NOTES:

DATE DUE: Jul 23 87 SIGNATURE: . DATE SIGNED:

AFFILIATION:

Rec'd Cli. E00 y { D-O-l 9g, Time _.

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