ML23276A186
| ML23276A186 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Turkey Point  |
| Issue date: | 09/19/2023 |
| From: | Lance Rakovan NRC/NMSS/DREFS/ELRB |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-2509 | |
| Download: ML23276A186 (23) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Turkey Point EIS Public Meeting Docket Number:
(n/a)
Location:
Hampton Inn and Suites, Homestead, FL Date:
Tuesday, September 19, 2023 Work Order No.:
NRC-2509 Pages 1-20 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433
1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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PUBLIC MEETING TO RECEIVE COMMENTS ON THE DRAFT SITE-SPECIFIC TURKEY POINT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT
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TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
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The meeting was held at 7:00 p.m. EDT, Lance Rakovan, Senior Environmental Project Manager, presiding.
2 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Welcome and Introductions..........................4 Environmental Review Process.......................5 Environmental Review Findings.....................10 Next Steps........................................14 Public Comments...................................16 Closing...........................................20
3 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 7:03 p.m.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you, everyone for coming tonight. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Lance Rakovan. I am a Senior Environmental Project Manager at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC. I am going to be the main speaker for tonight - going over a little bit of what our preliminary findings were in terms of Turkey Point specifically, the Environmental Impact Statement.
If you give me just a short time, I'll go through some logistics. I have what hopefully will be a short presentation, and then we'll get to our whole reason for having this meeting, which is to take comments on the draft EIS, or Environment Impact Statement.
Our agenda tonight, again I have some opening remarks, some introductions and such. I'll be going through some of the preliminary findings and details in the draft EIS. Then we'll briefly see if anyone has some clarifying questions about the presentation.
Again, our focus here tonight is to receive comments. We don't want to spend too much time on questions. If there are questions, we might
4 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com take a moment to try to address them at a high level, and then have a conversation afterwards, or find the right person to respond to your question afterwards so that we can keep the microphones open for comments.
This is a comment-gathering meeting by NRCs definition which means, again, that our primary purpose here is to listen to the public. So, again, we are actively seeking comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement, EIS. We ask that participants be in listen only mode while we are giving the presentation. I want to specify that no regulatory decisions will be made at the meeting.
By way of introduction, again, I'm Lance Rakovan. I am the environmental lead when it comes to Turkey Point. Up here at the table we have Jessica Hammock. She is my safety counterpart. We also have John Moses. John is on my management team. He's the Deputy Director of the Division of Rulemaking, Environmental Financial Support, again, in my office which is the Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards.
John, I think you have opening remarks?
Do you want to use my microphone? I can hand it off to you, or do you want to come up to the podium?
Whatever works for you.
5 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. MOSES: As Lance said, we are all very excited to be here. Welcome to the first public meeting of the Draft Site-Specific Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Turkey Point license renewal for Units 3 and 4. We will also convene a public meeting virtually from 2:00 to 4:00 on September 27th.
The focus of today's meeting is primarily to inform you about our process but also to listen and hear your comments, your concerns, and hear your feedback.
Public participation
- openness, and transparency are key NRC values and it's how we do our work, including the licensing and both the safety and environmental review for nuclear reactors.
For your information, the public comment period to address EIS is open for 60 days until November 7, 2023. We included a 60-day public comment period primarily because this is the first draft site-specific supplemental EIS under the Commission Orders so rather than a typical 45-day public comment period, we will have 60 days. It also coincides with the time that interested persons can seek a hearing.
The series of Commission Orders all stem from February 24, 2022. The Commission issued two different orders; CLI-22-02 and CLI-22-03, and then
6 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com staffs recommendations memorandum SECY-21-0066. It impacted the subsequent license renewal at Turkey Point along with other plants.
The subsequent license renewal for Turkey Point - those licenses are still in place. The Commission ordered that the expiration dates for renewal be moved back by 20 years which Lance will cover in the slides. The Commission's order will hold until the staff completes its re-evaluation of generic environmental issues for subsequent license renewal.
As part of that process, on June 3rd the licensee submitted its supplemental environmental report and we adjusted the timeline, we evaluated, and then agency prepared the draft supplemental site-specific environmental impact statement.
Later in the meeting we will go over a few more details and logistics. The bottom line is we are interested in hearing your feedback and, very importantly, your thoughts on this process. We will collect your comments both here, virtually, by email, or postal mail. If you are interested, we have small cards with a QR code to get the environmental impacts statement or leave your comments.
With that, I'll turn it back to Lance.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thanks, John. Okay. Just
7 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com briefly, our regulatory role is covered in the Atomic Energy Act. Specific to this action in NEPA, both of these are detailed, again, in our regulation and Code of Federal Regulations, CFR Parts 54 and 51.
Our mission simplified is to present public health and safety and security, promote the common defense and security, and, of course, protect the environment.
As John mentioned earlier, operating licenses for Turkey Point Units 3 and 4 were issued in 1972 and '73. The renewed licenses were issued for both plants in 2002. Subsequent licenses were issued in 2019 and then we had the Commission orders. So the current expiration dates for the plants are July of 2032 and April of 2033. Again, the proposed expiration dates assuming the 20-year extension if the license renewal is granted would put them into 2052 and 2053 in terms of operation.
In terms of the environmental review, the way that currently, or formerly -- it gets a little complicated -- the NRC was doing the license renewal was to use a generic environmental impact statement or a GEIS. This addressed generic issues across a subset of plans or all plants and they were referred to as Category 1 issues.
8 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com The final environmental impact statement that was issued for Turkey Point back in 2019 primarily focused on Category 2 issues which were site-specific issues and looked at any new and significant information involving Category 1 issues.
As John mentioned, though, we then had an order by our Commission that said that we could not apply the generic issues to subsequent license renewal; so that's really why we're here today is that we had to take another look at the information and focus more and do a more in-depth look at the Category 1 or previously generic issues, and also look to see if there was any new information that was deemed significant with the Category 2 issues, the issues we did a deep dive on when we were looking at the plant previously.
That is what is in these documents. We decided to call it a Site-Specific Environmental Impact Statement. In truth, it is a supplement to a supplement, but calling something a supplemental EIS supplement is a little bit awkward so we went with site-specific. The document was issued at the end of August and was formerly published in the Federal Register to start the comment period on September 8th.
So this is just a graphic to demonstrate a
9 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com number of the issues that we look at when it comes to environmental review. I know when I came to the position, I thought it was interesting because there are things on here that I don't think necessarily people immediately think about when they think about environmental impacts.
Things like visual and noise impacts, and a lot of ecology which I think you'd expect, but alternative energy sources is something that we look at. There's a lot of different specialties, a lot of different subject matter experts are doing a pretty deep dive into the environmental impacts of the continued operation of these units.
In terms of how the impacts are defined, for the most part -- and we'll get into the ones that don't fall under these categories or under this rating system moving forward. For the most, we give a rating of small, moderate, or large for the potential impact for a particular topic.
Small would be something that we would expect to not really detect anything or so minor that there really wouldn't see any type of impact from it.
Moderate are affects that are sufficient that you would notice them but not to destabilize a particular resource. And large would be something that is very
10 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com obvious and could potentially destabilize a particular resource. Again, these are the ratings that we use to describe the vast majority of topics that we look at in the EIS.
The ones that we don't use small, moderate, and large include federally listed species and critical sub-habitats. We use the vernacular of well as the Endangered Species Act. Potential fish habitats we use the vernacular of the Stevens Act and you can see these here.
They parallel or are somewhat similar to the small, moderate, and large ratings, but they have slightly different denotations and slightly different verbiage that we use to denote them. Also, the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, again, is another system that we adopt the language from as opposed to using the small, moderate, and large.
A few other specialties. Cultural historic resources. We adopt the language of the National Historic Preservation Act.
- Finally, environmental justice which is whether there is disproportionally high and adverse human health and environmental effects because of an action.
So just kind of diving into the easiest, if you will, topics to address in terms of the draft
11 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com EIS preliminary findings, all of these resource areas were found to have a small -- a potential small impact for relicensing. You can see this is the majority.
All of these are unchanged from the findings from the previous final supplemental environmental impact statement that was done in 2019.
In terms of some of those specialty areas that I mentioned in terms of the ratings, for historical and cultural resources, the impact is that it would not adversely affect known historic properties. In terms of environmental justice, no disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects on minority and low-income populations.
Cumulative impacts is a hard one to summarize so we just ask that you go ahead if you're interested in cumulative impacts and take a look at the original FSEIS. Again, in terms of cumulative impacts, what we're talking about is the impact of the plant when you take into account other facilities in the immediate vicinity on the environment.
Diving down into a few other of the more interesting areas, in terms of special species and habitats, the NRC identified no new and significant information that would change the conclusions that
12 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com were made in the 2019 FSEIS.
You can see those effects here, including that they were likely to adversely affect the American crocodile and Eastern Indigo snake; may result in adverse modification to designated critical habitat of the American crocodile; may affect, but is not likely, to adversely affect the Florida panther; and a whole list of others that I'm not going to read because that would take me a very long time.
No adverse modification of the designated critical habitat of the West Indian manatee, no adverse effects on essential fish habitat, and no effect on sanctuary resources of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Again, these are all unchanged from the 2019 FSEIS.
In terms of groundwater, a few worth nothing. Groundwater quality degradation was found to be small to moderate, and groundwater use conflicts was also found to be small to moderate. All other categories of groundwater use were found to be small.
For aquatic resources, impingement and entrainment of aquatic organisms was found to be small to moderate. And thermal impact on aquatic organisms was found small to moderate. Again, all other categories that would be labeled under that particular
13 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com rating factor were found small.
In terms of alternatives, there was no new and significant information that we found that needed to be taken into account in addition to the analysis that was done for 2019 FSEIS. It essentially remains the same as it was in that document.
Again, the NRC does not make decisions in terms of whether a plant should continue to operate, what the ratio of types of power production should be in the United States. We are just the regulator. If someone wants to operate a nuclear power plant, we are there to regulate it.
With this specific action we are looking to ensure that the continued operation of the plant what impact that would have on the environment so we can provide that information to decision makers.
Let me read this and then I'll try to say it in English. "The adverse environmental impacts of subsequent license renewal for Turkey Point for an additional 20 years beyond the current expiration dates are not so great that preserving the option of subsequent license renewal for energy-planning decisionmakers would be unreasonable."
This is language that is from regulations.
It is obviously Government speak. Essentially what
14 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com it means, unchanged again from 2019 FSEIS, is that we did not see anything that would potentially happen to the environment that was so great that we wouldn't tell decision makers to close the plant down.
We would say, okay, this is looking ok for the next 20 years. You make the decision whether you want to keep the plant going or what you want to do, but we're not telling you to close it down because of this.
So, again, we published the draft document at the end of August. The comment period began on September 8th. We have our public meeting today and, as John noted, we have a virtual public meeting coming up on September 27th. Comments are due on the draft document by November 7th. I'll go through the ways that you can provide those.
Right now, our schedule would have us issuing the final EIS in March of 2024. Again, we do have the cards over there. If you are looking to get more information, there are some QR codes, but you can also find these slides on the public meeting page for this meeting and in our ADAMS system.
If you want to get a hard copy of the document, we did drop them off at the library today so you can find them at -- I'm not going to try to
15 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com pronounce this because I'll mispronounce it. Is it Naranja? Okay, Naranja Branch Library in Homestead.
You can go to various websites or, again, you can find it in our ADAMS system. The accession number is ML22321A323.
If you're looking for general information about the relicensing, we've got the website here.
That provides links to FPL's original environmental report, supplements, application, etc. It provides the current schedule, also it will let you know that both Jessica and I are involved along with a few other folks. You can also find some correspondence by the plant by region thru the link here.
So very important:
getting to the comments. If you are a snail mail kind of person, you can send them to our Office of Administration at this address. An easy way to provide them is by going to Regulations.gov and looking for the docket ID NRC-2022-0172, or you can send them directly by email to TurkeyPoint34Environmental@NRC.gov.
Again, we ask that you provide your comments by November 7th. If you provide comments after that date, we will attempt to consider them to the extent possible that we can given our processes.
Okay.
That was my presentation.
16 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Mitchell, I don't know if you want to take this microphone. What we'll do is just do a quick check to see if anyone has any clarifying questions about my presentation. Again, just looking to make sure that everybody understood the material that I covered.
If you have a question, just raise your hand and Mitchell can run the microphone to you. We want to make sure that everyone can hear so we'll ask that you use a microphone. If you would, please identify yourself and any group that you are with.
AUDREY SIU: Hi. I'm Audrey Siu. I'm a policy director with Miami Waterkeeper. I did sign up for public comment, but my comment is actually a question. Just a little bit of background. As the NRC is aware, there is a large hypersaline plume underneath the cooling canal system and FPL is due to submit a year five report on November 15th. Given that the comment window closes on November 7th, My question is can that the comment window be extended a few more weeks? Our position is that the NRC does need to see that year five report about the environmental impacts of that hypersaline plume.
MR. RAKOVAN: As I stated, although the comment period closes on the 7th, if additional information is received after that point that we think
17 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com is important information to consider, I think we would be open to receiving it and including it as part of our deliberations moving to the draft report. That sounds like something I think we would be interested in.
AUDREY SIU: I appreciate it, thanks.
MR. RAKOVAN: Any other clarifying questions on the presentation before we move to formal comments? Okay, I have a few people who signed up. If you didn't sign up, thats ok, we can still take you, but I'll go ahead and start with Peter England.
PETER ENGLAND: Thank you and good evening. I'm Peter England. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer with the Economic Development Council of South Maimi-Dade County. We've already gone on record in writing to the Chairman, but I would like to offer a few comments tonight. By the way, this position has been considered and adopted unanimously by our board of directors.
We represent small, medium, and large business owners in the south Maimi-Dade communities, as well as providing development for the region. We would like to express our strong support for FPL's request to renew the operating license for the reactors at Turkey Point.
18 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com More than 20,000 businesses and 600,000 residents rely on the clean, reliable energy that Turkey Point is providing for this area over the last 50 years with over 400 employees and an annual economic impact of $1.5 billion. Our local economy thrives as a result of the presence of Turkey Point.
With the licenses of these two reactors set to expire within 10 years, we fear that the adverse economic impact to the community and our business owners would be immeasurable. In addition, the loss of nearly $40 million in property taxes to Miami-Dade county would exacerbate the harmful economic impact.
The EDC believes that renewing the operating licenses for FPL Turkey Point reactors is essential to maintaining our region's energy, security and economic prosperity. The facility is well-positioned to withstand the challenges of sea-level rise and climate change. And FPL is made significant investments in recent years to improve the plants safety and environment performance.
The EDC urges the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve FPLs request to renew the operating licenses for its nuclear reactors at Turkey Point. This decision will help to ensure that our
19 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com region will have a reliable and clean source of electricity for decades to come. Thank you for your time.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you, sir.
I believe the next speaker we had signed up is Bill Duquette.
BILL DUQUETTE: Thank you. My name is Bill Duquette. I'm the Chairman of Chamber South.
Chamber South covers the municipalities and unincorporated Miami-Dade county from south Miami to almost Homestead and everything in-between. I'm not going to repeat what Peter said, I would have basically said the same thing. We wholeheartedly, Chamber South and its over 400 members, support FPLs request to renew its license for another 10 years.
Would have a severe economic impact. They provide a lot of good and renewal energy currently and we see that happening for the foreseeable future. We wholeheartedly support FPL. Thank you.
MR. RAKOVAN: Ms. Siu, would you like another chance at the microphone or were you good with your question?
AUDREY SIU: Im good with the question, thank you.
MR. RAKOVAN: Ok, I just wanted to make
20 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com sure because you were the only other person that we had signed up to speak. Would anyone else like a chance with the microphone or to provide a comment, please just raise your hand and Mitchell can bring the microphone over to you.
All right. Seeing none, I'm going to just rewind a bit and go over again how you can provide your comments if you don't wish to provide them today.
Again, you can provide them by mail to our Office of Administration.
You can go to the website Regulations.gov and search for Docket ID NRC-2022-
- 0172, or you can send an email to TurkeyPoint34Environmental@NRC.gov.
Again, we have cards over there if you want to grab one on the way out that have some QR codes to take you to this and other forums. We also have public meeting feedback forms that Beth is holding up towards the middle of the room there. If you want to provide some feedback on our meeting tonight, you can take a quick survey. There is also a QR code on the back that you can scan and provide your information electronically on that.
Does anyone else have a comment? That is more or less what we wanted to cover. If you are interested in getting the meeting summary and a copy
21 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com of the final EIS, please send me your contact information and I'll make sure that you are part of those distributions. The meeting summary for both this meeting and the virtual meeting will have a participant list, part of our presentation, and a transcript so that we can make sure we have a clear accounting of the comments that we received.
Again, our goal right now is to issue that final document in March of next year.
John, do you want to say a few words to close us out?
MR. MOSES: Thanks, Lance. So on behalf of the entire staff, I really appreciate you taking the time to come down here and listen to this presentation. Once again, if you decide later you would like to provide input or feedback on the draft EIS, the site-specific EIS, please go as shown on the screen to Regulations.gov. You can either use the QR code on the cards or look for ID NRC-2022-0172. We certainly appreciate your time and attention this evening as we move toward the process to issue a final EIS in early spring 2024.
With that, I'll close the meeting and hand it back to Lance.
MR. RAKOVAN: Just a quick point. NRC
22 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com staff will be lingering around after the meeting so if you have any comments, please track one of us down and we can have a discussion or if you have any questions, I would be happy to have some discussions with you.
Thank you for coming out tonight. I don't think it's storming but be careful out there either way. Thank you very much.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 7:34 p.m.)