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{{#Wiki_filter:UNITED STATES OF AMERICA U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BRIEFING ON THE STATUS OF NRC RESPONSE TO EVENTS IN JAPAN AND BRIEFING ON STATION BLACKOUT APRIL  28, 2011 9:30 A.M.
TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS Public Meeting Before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission:
Gregory B. Jaczko, Chairman Kristine L. Svinicki, Commissioner
George Apostolakis, Commissioner William D. Magwood, IV, Commissioner
William C. Ost endorff, Commissioner
2  APPEARANCES NRC Staff Panel:
Bill Borchardt
Executive Director for Operations
Pat Hiland Director, Division of Engineering, NRR 
George Wilson 
Chief of Instrumentation and Control Branch,      Division of Engineering, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation     
Eric Bowman 
Senior Project Manager, Division of Policy and Rulemaking, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation 
3  P R O C E E D I N G S 1  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Good morni ng, everyone. Before we begin 2 today's meeting, I wanted to recognize t hat this is National Administrative 3 Professionals Week and take this oppor tunity to acknowledge the dedicated 4 efforts and the high-quality perform ance of our agency's administrative 5 professionals. It's always, I think, a great opportunity during this week to make 6 sure we highlight the work that those people do every day to allow us to do our 7 jobs and to keep everything working and functioning. This is also a very special 8 day at the NRC. This is Bring Your Children to Work Day here at headquarters, 9 so there'll be lots of people, our future work force, running around, learning the 10 business, I think, at the agency.
11  With that, I'll turn to th e agenda for today's briefing. The 12 Commission meets this morning to receive a brief update on the situation in 13 Japan and the NRC's ongoing efforts there to assist the Japanese government, 14 but then the remainder of today's meeting will focus on the NRC station blackout 15 rule, which is our regulatory approach for ensuring that licensees can effectively 16 cope with a loss of alternating current electric al power. And, I think, certainly this 17 is a situation that has relevance, as our task force looks at the situation in Japan, 18 but we also have seen that th is is a rule that has re levance here for us in the 19 United States. Severe storms in the sout h last night provided a reminder of this.
20 One or more nuclear power plants experienced a loss of nearly all their off-site 21 power, leading to shutdowns of those plant
: s. All of the sa fety systems performed 22 as they were designed and all available diesel generators star ted and loaded.
23 And, ultimately, the core cooling system s are operating normally. In addition, the 24 spent fuel cooling is currently in serv ice. So, all these plants are stable and 25 4  they're being placed in a cooled-down condition.
1  Of course, these storms are also a reminder that these storms have 2 tremendous impact, and there have been many people who have lost their lives 3 as a result of this, so we always want to remember that as we talk about these 4 issues. But it was certainly a reminder of the importance of th is particular rule 5 and dealing with the potential t hat not all of the alter nating power capabilities 6 function.
7  So, today, the staff will give us a general background on the rule's 8 development as well as more detailed information on the structure of our 9 regulatory approach for dealing with station blackout. And this is one of the 10 many significant issues that the agency's senior level task forc e is examining as 11 part of our comprehensive revi ew of the safety of the U.
S. nuclear facilities as a 12 result of the situation in Japan. And, ce rtainly, from my per spective, I think the 13 purpose for us today is to get a good base line of information for the Commission 14 to get us all at the same level of know ledge about this rule, so that if we get 15 recommendations from the task force in this area, we'll be able to move 16 expeditiously and promptly to ad dress those, and we'll have a good 17 understanding of the basis of the existing rule, and then, if there are changes to 18 be made, what those changes would be and how we would effectively and 19 expeditiously move forward with those re commendations. With that, I would offer 20 any colleagues, my colleagues to make any comments that they would like.
21 Commissioner Svinicki.
22  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of 23 all, I appreciate your recognition of the hard-working administrative professionals 24 here at NRC who make possible all of the im portant work that we do here. And I 25 5  also would add, that, although, as you've indicated, we're still working to gain 1 knowledge of the events in Japan, station blackout certainl y identifies itself as an 2 important issue that we need to be looking at, so thank you for today's meeting.
3  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Okay, B ill. I'll turn it to you.
4  MR. BORCHARDT:  Well thank you, good morning, what I'll do is 5 begin today's briefing with just a very brief overview of the situation in Japan.
6 Since March 21, when we held the last Commission meeting, on the Japan issue, 7 I would say that the situation has definit ely improved but we're still in the accident 8 mitigation phase. Off site and on-site AC power has been restored, however 9 they're still using temporar y pumps and hoses to inject water into the reactor 10 vessels and spent fuel pool, and into t he containments.
There's still many 11 unanswered questions regarding the status of various pieces of equipment, the 12 reactor vessel integrity, the spent fuel pool.
13  Regarding the core, the reacto r vessel, and the containment, as 14 well as the spent fuel conditions, I would describe the situation as not being quite 15 stable, but certainly not as highly dynam ic as it was on March 21 when we last 16 met on this subject. The changes that are occurring within the plant are slower 17 and allowing more time for the Japanes e operators and regul ators to respond 18 and take corrective actions, as necessary.
19  There's still feed and bleed operati ons in progress. That is a 20 somewhat dynamic situation, as well as there's unfiltered and unmonitored 21 release paths that remain to be a concer n at the Fukushima site. One of the 22 things that make this difficult for the Japanese in responding to this event and for 23 to us to understand the exact situation is that there's a number of suspect 24 accuracy and failed instrumentation at the site , affecting all of the units that really 25 6  hamper our ability to get a clear and consistent picture of the situation.
1  As you know, the site team in Japan continues. We're providing 2 technical support to the ambassador.
We're interacting with the Japanese 3 officials of NISA, our regulatory count erpart, and the operator TEPCO. And the 4 team in Japan is also coor dinating the efforts of t he consortium of private 5 companies as well as non-government or ganizations as they work with the 6 government of Japan. Our operation center remains on a 24/7 response 7 capability. We're providing di rect support to the site team as well as coordinating 8 all of the related headquarters acti vities by the technical staff.
9  One of the major developments ov er the last month has been the 10 creation and development of TEPCO's reco very plan, which is called a road map 11 towards restoration from the accident at Fukushima Power Stat ion. There is a 12 number of elements in this road map, and it focuses on nitrogen injectio n that will 13 help minimize the potential for future hydrogen detonations, flooding of 14 containment to cool the core, working on process to provide reliable spent fuel 15 pool makeup to achieve long-term cooling.
They'll also work on the Unit 4 16 structural integrity of t he spent fuel pool, looking at ways of providing waste 17 storage and processing as well as controlling radioactive material on-site and off-18 site. And then, finally, to address t he issue that I m entioned earlier, enhanced 19 monitoring of off-site conditions at the plant. So, our overall assessment is that 20 the Japanese are making progress on addressing the safety and the 21 environmental issues and that the road map that's been put into place is certainly 22 a good start towards long-term restoration.
23  Moving into today's Commissi on meeting. Obviously, the 24 earthquake and then the following tsunami resu lted in a station blackout at the 25 7  site, which greatly complicated and contribu ted to the serious events in Japan.
1 Today's briefing's going to be a technical background about the conditions in the 2 U.S. plants, both the regulatory background and what processes and equipment 3 exists in the plants. As I mentioned, on March 21, we did, what I would say, was 4 an instant review of the situation and of the capabilities of U.S. facilities and 5 concluded that there was no need to make immediate changes or to impose 6 immediate orders on U.S. licensees. However, we have well underway the short-7 term, or 90 day review, that is looking at station blackout and a number of other 8 issues, out of which may result in so me future regulatory action or some 9 requirement on licensees.
10  Following that 90 day review, t here's going to be a longer-term 11 review that will continue to use all of the technical information available from 12 Japan in order to inform our regulatory appr oach moving forward. Very recently, 13 we've issued a temporary instruction to our inspections staff that has been 14 performed to evaluate the compliance wit h the existing regulations, and those 15 results are being provi ded to the headquarters staff for analysis now.
16  We'll be hearing from three speaker s today. The first is going to be 17 Pat Hiland, who's going to provide an overview of the NRC station blackout rule, 18 as well as the advanced accident mitigat ion strategies implemented at U.S.
19 plants. George Wilson is going to discuss, in detail, the station blackout rule 20 requirements and guidance, and the preparedne ss of U.S. power plants to cope 21 and recover from a station blackout. And then, fina lly, Eric Bowman will discuss 22 the mitigating strategy requirements imposed following the terrorist attacks of 23 September 11, 2001. So I'll now tu rn the briefing over to Pat.
24  MR. HILAND:  Thank you, Bill. Good morning Commissioners, 25 8  Chairman, and go to slide two, please, st ation blackout background. Looking 1 back over 35 years ago, the WASH-1400 document was issued. And that 2 document clearly stated that station blackout could be an important contributor to 3 the risk of nuclear power pl ant accidents. In particular, it concluded that if a 4 station blackout were to persist, it c ould lead to a core melt and containment 5 failure. In 1980, the Commission designated the issue of station blackout as an 6 unresolved safety issue, A-
: 44. Additional regulator y requirements were imposed 7 in 1988, when 10 CFR 50.63 was issued. It's known as the SBO rule, that rule 8 requires each plant to be able to cope and recover from a station blackout event, 9 specifically to assure that the core is cooled and that the cont ainment integrity is 10 maintained.
11  When the station blackout rule wa s issued, coincident with that was 12 a Regulatory Guide 1.55 that was released.
That regulatory guide endorsed an 13 industry standard, 8700, providing guidance in how to implement the rule. All of 14 the operating fleet, all 104 plants today, met t he station blackout rule at the time 15 based on a detailed review of each applicant's submittal of how they complied 16 with the rule, as well as, we conducted two on-site inspections in each of the 17 regions, for a total of eight, to provi de us confidence that the rule was being 18 properly implemented.
19  After that time period, under the reactor oversight program, we 20 have our Component Design Basis Ins pection, or CDBI inspection, that 21 continually looks at t hose components that may be involved in the station 22 blackout mitigation strategies, as well as there are other inspection modules for 23 our regional inspectors and our site resi dent inspectors, such as the corrective 24 action inspection program, a plant modification inspection module, as well as an 25 9  equipment alignment m odule. All of those items might touch on the station 1 blackout. Feedback from the regions and from the inspections to date indicates 2 that the component design basis inspecti ons are pinpointing some of the SBO 3 activities that we see in the field.
4  Regarding license renewal activities, the evaluation for renewing 5 license has a specific requirement, and they're 10 CFR 54 for a review of the 6 station blackout aging and component s required, the safety systems and 7 structures required for the SBO must be included in their aging management 8 process. 9  Regarding new reactors, now, a ll new standard, that's a word I 10 used in this slide, standard meaning that
's not a passive new reactor, because 11 the second bullet would tell you that's not all plants, but all new standard reactors 12 are required to have an alternate AC power source. It's a diverse source, 13 meaning that it must be different than the installed emergency or standby diesel 14 generators. For new reactors with a pa ssive design, that's an AP1000 has a 15 passive design, its design includes a batte ry-power coping strategy of up to 72 16 hours. 17  As you're aware, we responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist 18 attack through a number of initiatives.
Initially, we issued interim compensatory 19 measures in an order in February of 2002.
Within that order is section B.5.b, and 20 that's, we've heard the term B.5.b, and that's where it comes from. Those interim 21 compensatory measures were inspected at each site, evaluated, and eventually 22 became a license condition for all of our facilities. Just two years ago, in 2009, 23 10 CFR 50.54(hh) was issued to codify those requirements.
24  And the last slide is just a paraphrase of that paragraph in 25 10  50.54(hh). And these mitigat ion strategies are for beyond designed basis events 1 that could be beneficial in the context of the station blackout. With that, I'd like to 2 turn it over to Mr. George W ilson to go into more detail.
3  MR. WILSON:  Thank you, Pat. Good morning, Chairman, 4 Commissioners. As Pat had stated, the 10 CFR 50.63 rule will also involve 5 alternating current power.
It intended each site to have to cope, and the big key 6 here is to recover from the loss of off-site power, and we'll get both a little bit later 7 on in the procedures. Once this rule was issued, the NRC staff met with the 8 industry and several working groups, and t hey started developing the strategy 9 that the rule would be implemented. So we developed Regulatory Guide 1.155.
10 At the same time, the industry devel oped a NUMARC guide, it's 87-00, on how 11 they would implement and deal with t he rule. The NRC endorsed the NUMARC 12 guidance as a way to implement and comply with the station blackout rule.
13  The real key with the station blackout rule was coping, and coping 14 is defined as the time that it takes to recover either on-site or off-site alternate 15 current power back into the plant. The rule specifically gave guidance on how 16 you would calculate and how you would go about doing the coping of the plant.
17 One of it was the on-site redundancy, the amount of diesel generators that you 18 would have at the site, the reliability of the diesel generators. Their reliability was 19 evaluated by different starting mechanism s; 10, 20, 50, to 100 start times, and 20 then that was evaluated. Also, the ex pected frequency of the loss of off-site 21 power, whether it would be hurricane-type winds , icing. That was also evaluated.
22 And the probable time needed to restore the off-site powe r that you would restore 23 based on your experience. All that criteria went into the coping analysis, and to 24 the plant. And that's how it was defined.
25 11    I want to point out here that we have had several, we have had 1 hurricanes here, and the diesel generator lia bility is a key here, both at Turkey 2 Point in Hurricane Andrew and at Waterford in Hurricane Katrina, the diesel 3 generators started and ran for multiple days.
They never did go into a station 4 blackout based on the reliability of the emergency diesel generators that we have 5 at the American plants.
6  And the coping methods; there's two different coping mechanisms 7 that can be used in U.S. plant
: s. Forty-four of the plants in the U.S. are battery-8 only, so they can have a maximum coping period of up to four hours. When it 9 was analyzed if the coping period went above four hours, then they had to either 10 do modifications to the plant to reduce t he coping time, or they had to install an 11 alternate AC power that would come up. The AC, to be an alternate AC plant, 12 with to do no coping analysis at all, you had to be able to be able to bring the 13 power up within 10 hours, excuse me, 10 mi nutes, and tie it on to the buses. If it 14 took longer than 10 minutes, then you had to do a combination of having an 15 alternate AC power and a coping analysis that was done for the time that you 16 would bring the plant up.
17  Sixty of the plants in the United States are alternate AC plants.
18 They cope from anywhere from coping analys is of two hours up to 16 hours. The 19 coping -- the alternate AC power s ources are either hydro-generators, 20 combustion turbines, gas turbines that they can use. It can be the alternate, it 21 can be an opposite unit's diesel generat or, if they have excess capacity.
22  The staff reviewed the SBO rule implementation by writing a safety 23 evaluation for all 104 sites, and, in addition, as Pat had mentioned, we also went 24 out and performed eight inspections with a tem porary instruction that was written.
25 12  We did two units, or two plants, in eac h region, and there was no major issues 1 identified during the temporar y instruction. We did fi nd some of the assumptions 2 in the coping analysis, and those were resolved. And so, based on that and the 3 safety evaluations, the staff had dete rmined that the i ndustry properly 4 implemented the station blackout rule, and they were in compliance with that.
5  Basically, the design overview of the plants with the station 6 blackout is that, as I stated, battery c oping was a maximum of four hours. They 7 also evaluated and looked at how you coul d extend battery life, and I'll get on to 8 that in a little bit in the procedures by shedding loads. You had to evaluate the 9 effects of ventilation. You had to use ventilation, so heat up calculations were 10 done in each room to see what the impacts were. You looked at condensate any 11 way that you could do manual operator ac tions, bringing in compressed air, 12 minimize RCS inventory leakage. The leakage was based on, one of the key 13 components is that for the reactor cool ant pump seals in a pressurized water 14 reactor, you could only assume 25 gallons per minute leakage for a total of 100 15 gallons.
16  And the big key here is, operator training was performed and 17 procedures were written. So not only did they have to write specific procedures 18 on how they were going to deal and cope wit h a station blackout, but they had to 19 be trained upon it.
20  For the specific SBO procedures, they did specific actions on the 21 restoration of AC power.
We, in the United States, were a little bit different, 22 because there's a very close relationship between the grid operators and the 23 nuclear power plants. And one of the th ings, when we wrote a generic letter, in 24 Generic Letter 2006-02, that had to do with the grid interface with the nuclear 25 13  power plants, we verified that each one of the nuclear power plants would be the 1 first load that would be re stored if the grid was los
: t. So we went back and made 2 sure that the primary reason is that for the safety of the power plants, but that is 3 the first load that's restored in a gr id when it goes down in that area.
4  They also developed procedures to enhance emergency diesel 5 generator troubleshooting, and they looked at additional ways to bring power 6 back on, so you look at additional procedures where you bring an alternate AC 7 power on, and look at different ways you c an tie it into the plant. They also 8 ensured that the support equipment woul d be functional without alternating 9 occurring power. That could be bringing in bottled air, putting in nitrogen air 10 stations in there, looking at what valves would have to be manually operated and 11 associated throttle position of those valv es. Protection is done to any of the 12 steam-driven pumps, HPCI, RCIC because that is used to mitigate an action of a 13 station blackout, identify the RCS leakage packs, try to minimi ze the amount of 14 water, and conserve the inventory of wa ter that you have in the primary.
15 Additionally, you look at past, the procedures actually look at past -- the first 16 primary water source, which woul d be the Condensate Storage Tank, and 17 looking past that, look how you could get additional water sources into the 18 Condensate Storage Tank to further provid e inventory water. Also look at 19 stripping non-essential loads off on the DC, which is looking at taking off DC-20 powered pumps, or removing the starting-fl ash circuitry for a diesel generator, 21 because that takes down the battery.
22  Also, you would look at, during the heat-up calculations that you 23 would do in the room, that can cause some actuations to happen. So some of 24 14  the actions, the procedures would di rect, would have operators go out and 1 bypass the isolation for HPCI or RCIC to ensure the steam valves would stay 2 open, you still have the steam supply for the steam-driven pumps. Also, look at 3 the equipment that you would actually us e to cool down and shut down the plant, 4 and evaluate what that usage would be.
This is -- the procedures got very 5 specific, and they were site specific on exactly how they could cope and deal with 6 a station blackout.
7  Also, in the United States, the grid interface, as I explained earlier --
8 there are agreements between each one of the nuclear power plants and the 9 local grid operators, based on voltage and frequency and the restoration of the 10 plant. In addition, the NRC staff here locally, on Monday through Friday, do a 11 grid report, and we look at w hat potentials for the grid is. And based on the fact 12 that if the grid is stre ssed or strained, then sometimes maintenance at the power 13 plants would minimize, to ensure that t here's no trips, or minimize the chance 14 that there would be a trip of the plant to maintain the grid reliability. We also 15 have grid-reliability standards in the United States now, t hat are in full force by 16 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissi on, and those grid-reliability standards 17 were written after the Northeast blackout, and they ensured additional reliability 18 and stability in the grid, and additional st udies are done on that to ensure that 19 that is one of the reasons tha t, to try to maintain the stab ility of the off-site power.
20 In addition, there's a specific grid-reliability standard for the nuclear power plants 21 only, which is Nuclear 001, which specifically goes into voltage and frequency 22 requirements at a nuclear power plant, because those are a lot tighter than 23 normal loads that are on the grid.
24 15    In summary, in the Unit ed States, there has only been one 1 identified case of a station blackout. T hat was at the Vogtle plant in 1990, and 2 that event lasted for approximately 55 minutes. The plant was in a shutdown 3 during the time, and it was because a truck had backed into one of the other 4 transformers that was being used, caused a ground, and ended up being in a 5 station blackout. The plant was able to restore one of the diesel generators and 6 get power restored, and come out of the blackout. As Pat had stated earlier, we 7 do still evaluate for station blackout compliance, and in the license renewal, we 8 make sure that the recovery paths have an aging-management plan. And once 9 again, that is recovery paths. A nd power uprates, if a licensee changes 10 something, the staff goes back and ensures that the battery-loading capacity 11 didn't change, which could potentially chang e your coping. We also look at 12 license amendment requests. As stated earlier, one of the plants is a 16-hour 13 coping plant, and originally it was a fou r-hour coping plant, but there was some 14 operating experience that had happened at the particular plant out west, and 15 based on that operating experience the staff was aware of, the licensee re-16 performed a coping analysis, and went from four hours to 16 hours. Which 17 included -- that includes some modifications to ensure that the amount of fuel oil 18 that they would need would be there.
19  And we also interface with FE RC and NERC. We meet quarterly 20 with FERC and NERC. If there's any issue at all that happens on the grid, 21 there's a memorandum of agreement and a memorandum of understanding to 22 sign with both agencies, which, if there is issues with the grid up to a certain 23 level, if it does get severe, then our headquarters operations officer is called by 24 16  NERC, and the electrical branch is contacted to look at it. We also get anything 1 that would cause local problems in the grid , so we're very in tune with the grid in 2 looking at issues, and we would get those back out to the plants as they would 3 get stuff back into us. Now I' m going to pass this on to Eric.
4  MR. BOWMAN:  Thank you G eorge. Good morning Chairman, 5 Commissioners. I'm Eric Bowman. I'm t he staff lead for the mi tigating-strategies 6 requirements that were imposed following th e terrorist events of 9/11. As Pat 7 had mentioned, we imposed these requirem ents through a series of regulatory 8 actions, but for convenience' sake, I'll re fer to them generically as the B.5.b 9 requirements. By their terms, the B.5.b requirements are broadly applicable to 10 any events that are related to explosions or fire. Due to the context in which the 11 strategies to meet those requirements were developed, most of the details of the 12 strategies on a site basis are designated fo r official use only, as security-related 13 information. Although they were develo ped to address impacts to the plant due 14 to explosions or fire, the result was a set of flexible, deploy able strategies to 15 accomplish the key safety functions for the reactor sites that could be useful in a 16 wide variety of circumstances.
17  Throughout the development proce ss for the B.5.b requirements, 18 we met periodically with our international partners to share information on 19 approaches to the problem and improve our response.
The B.5.b development 20 process was a deliberate, phased approach.
Initially, we started out looking at 21 what could be done with readily availabl e materials or personnel. Then we 22 moved on to see what can be done further to aid in the cooling of the spent fuel 23 in the spent fuel pools, and the final phase of the development process was 24 17  looking at the core cooling and maintenance of containment. The efforts started 1 out under the lead of the Office of Nu clear Security and Incident Response, 2 ultimately transitioning to the NRR in the lead for operating reactors. We had 3 great support from the regional offices, and analyses that came up from the 4 Office of Research during the effort.
5  As I had mentioned, Phase 1 looked at what could be done with 6 readily available materials and personnel.
In large part, the reason for that was 7 because we wanted to see what could be put in place rapidly to address the 8 need, and also the terms of the order itself referred to t he use of readily available 9 materials and personnel. Phase 1comprised a series of inspections, 10 assessments, and analyses, drawing on existing equipment and procedures, 11 best practices the licensees had for their initial responses, and lessons learned 12 that came about from the research analyses. That phase culminated in the 13 Phase 1 guidance document that was produced in Febr uary of 2005, describing 14 what our expectations were for the characteristics of the strategies that would 15 meet the requirements of the Interim Compensatory Measures Order. That 16 guidance document is designated safeguards information.
17  High-level overview of what we can speak of publicly about the 18 Phase 1 strategies; they involved c oordination of response with off-site 19 responders, improvements to the firefighting capabilities on-site, and what I 20 would term as passive measures, such as configuration of fuel within the spent 21 fuel pools in order to enhance coolability.
22  In Phase 2, we looked further at what could be done to promote 23 spent fuel cooling using measures that didn't rely on readily available materials or 24 18  personnel. The results of this phase were a set of mitigating st rategies that are 1 required for the licensees to be able to prov ide makeup water, or cooling spray to 2 the fuel, using means that are divers e from the normal methods for makeup 3 water or cooling of the pools. The dive rsity includes a diversity from the power 4 supplies within the spent fuel pool buildin g, or the building containing the spent 5 fuel pool -- whatever it's called on the site. And a number of the strategies within 6 this group are use of motor forces diverse entirely from on-site power distribution.
7  The Phase 3 looked at what el se could be done for core cooling 8 and containment. In that effo rt, we worked with the indust ry to identify just what 9 are the key safety functions that would need to be satisfied, based on the design 10 characteristics of the plants. The re sults here were two sets of mitigating 11 strategies; one that is r equired of pressurized water reactors, and one that is 12 required of boiling water reactors. For the majority of these strategies, the entry 13 conditions assume a loss of all internal power distribution, both alternating 14 current and direct current, and minimum staf fing on-site, so it's slightly more 15 conservative than a station blackout condition.
16  Because of the passive nature of the initial strategies, as well as 17 the entry conditions being more conserva tive, assuming a loss of all internal 18 power distribution, the B.5.
b strategies, if they were used in the event of an 19 extended station blackout, would have the potential to extend the period for 20 which a licensee could supply the key sa fety functions without on-site power 21 available. Subject to your questi ons, that concludes my briefing.
22  MR. BORCHARDT:  That comple tes the staff's presentation.
23  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Thanks, appreciate the insights. We'll start 24 19  with Commissioner Magwood with questions.
1  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  Thank you. Thank you for your 2 presentations today. Very in formative. Let me ask sort of a basic question on 3 station blackout, something that I've been looking at in the last several weeks, 4 and I just wanted to sort of hear your thoughts about this. The -- you've talked 5 about the maximum life of the batteries and the coping strategy being four hours.
6 And I wonder if you could describe how the agency dealt with this, came up with 7 a four-hour coping duration, while at the same time, the procedures clearly 8 indicate that this is supposed to be a site-specific analysis where you look at site-9 specific characteristics of the plant, off-site power resources, and one would think 10 you would have a variety of conclusions after going through that analysis. But 11 yet most of the plants, a va st majority of the plants, have this four-hour coping 12 strategy. Can you reconcile those for me?
13  MR. WILSON:  Yeah, the four-hour coping analysis was arrived 14 when the staff worked with the industry, and they looked at how long, roughly, it 15 would take to restore off-site power in various places. The estimate was .9 to 16 two hours, so based on that , the staff doubled the time and said you will cope 17 with a station blackout for f our hours. So the industry came up with, it would be 18 .9 to two hours, like I said, and we doubled it to have a safety margin there, to --
19 you'd cope with four hours. We chos e four hours based on the size and the 20 capacity of the batteries, so anything longer than that, modifications were made 21 or you brought an additional source on, but that's where the original four hours 22 came from.
23  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  What
's our actual experience with 24 20  loss of off-site power, in terms of how lo ng it takes to restore off-site power?
1  MR. WILSON:  There is some data that was -- we used a NUREG, 2 6890, that has some data in it, and it would go anywhere from .5 hours to three 3 hours. We're also in, one of the statem ents that I made is we have constant 4 communications with NERC and FERC, and they have done some studies and 5 done some projections across the country on certain circumstances. How long it 6 would take to restore an off-site power, and we're presently looking at that, and 7 we have that to t he quick-look team.
8  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  W hen you're thinking about the 9 restoration of off-site powe r, it's interesting that having an alternative source of 10 off-site power is one of the options that you look at in mitigating a station 11 blackout. However, when you think about t he sorts of events that lead to the loss 12 of off-site power, what is the thinking in terms of, if you lose one source of 13 transmission from one off-site source, why do you think you have a second?
14 What sorts of scenarios woul d it be useful to have the second, redundant off-site 15 power source if you lost the first one?
If you have a hurricane that takes out the 16 transmission lines for one source of off-si te power, why would you think there'd 17 be a second?
18  MR. WILSON:  I would go ahead and say you're not asking a 19 question with alternate AC source, or are you asking a question about the 20 redundancy of off-site power?
21  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  Yes.
22  MR. WILSON:  Well, the more of f-site power lines that you have, 23 unless you would have a common cause failu re that would wipe out a switchyard, 24 21  the more lines that would come in and you have a more redundant off-site power, 1 then that would give you more capability to mitigate an acciden
: t. You would want 2 an alternate AC source, t he staff would like to have an alternate AC source, 3 because the capacity of an alternate AC s ource is above that of the battery, so 4 there's more margin if I have an alternate AC source. There's no requirement, as 5 you had mentioned, to protect that alter nate AC source from events. I mean, 6 from environmental effect
: s. There's no requiremen
: t. We have, Appendix A, 7 GDC-2, that affects safety-related stuff from environmental effects, but those 8 requirements are not for the alternate AC source, so it is not a safety-related 9 source as robust as the emergency diesel generators, but it does have a longer 10 capacity and capability. T hat's the reason we'd w ant it, but there's no 11 requirement as such to have an underground cable which would protect it from, 12 like, high winds. There's no requ irement that we have for that.
13  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:
But you mentioned that the 14 procedures that have been developed for station blackouts -- how much work 15 has been done to reconcile, or I guess to merge the station blackout procedures 16 with the severe-accident management guide lines?  How much coordination is 17 there between those two?
18  MR. WILSON:  Well, the stati on blackout is an abnormal operating 19 procedure. The SAMGs are above anything that you would have, so they're way 20 beyond what a station blackout. The basis of the SAMGs, when you go through 21 them, is you would have power to do ce rtain things, to get water back or to 22 minimize the release path. So as far as I know, they're not in tune, they don't go 23 from one to the other. The st ation blackout specifically tries to restore power, but 24 22  as far as I know, and -- Donny , can you add anything?
1  MR. HARRISON:  You got it.
2  MR. WILSON:  But they're not in tune where one feeds into the 3 other. They're used for a different purpose.
4  COMMISIONER MAGWOOD:  So you never assumed that in the 5 case of a severe accident, that you lost offside power?  Is that what you're 6 saying? 7  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Donny, do you want to maybe go up to the 8 mic? 9  MR. HARRISON:  I'm Donny Harrison from NRR. The answer to 10 your question would be no. If you're into the SAMGs, you're into an event that's 11 gone beyond your normal emergen cy procedures and your abnormal 12 procedures, but what you might be in is going through the SAMG guidelines 13 looking for water sources, for containment fl ooding, and that type of thing. But at 14 the same time, you may have your stat ion-blackout procedures open also, and 15 you're trying to recover AC power. You might be doing the coping strategies of 16 taking loads off your batteries so you can prolong their life. So you may be 17 actually in both at the same time. That's kind of what would probably happen.
18  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  I mean, I've looked at some of the 19 SAMGs. I haven't looked at all of them. I've looked at some examples of 20 SAMGs for specific plants.
You might want to stick aro und for this. And I'm just 21 curious as to what -- most of the SAMGs, as I read them, seem to anticipate that 22 you do have power 23  MR. HARRISON:  Well for most things, you need water and you 24 23  need to pump it, so implicit in that, you're going to need some type of power 1 supply or steam, if you can run a RCI C pump off the steam and have DC power 2 for the control of the pump. So the SAM Gs basically are geared towards a list of 3 water supplies for containment flooding.
Some of them need AC power, some of 4 them probably need DC power for control.
Again, then you get into the strategy 5 of, "Can I prolong the battery life so I can control the RCIC pump?"
if that's what 6 you're using to provide water to the core. So it's a mix, and the SAMGs are 7 guidelines. They're not procedural for specif ic events. So what it is is a list, 8 oftentimes, and so you'll get into that and you'll start going through the list saying, 9 "What is available?  What isn't available?"
and you'll get down to what you've got.
10  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  All right, I think I'll leave it at that 11 for now. Let me ask just sort of a broad question. This is something that 12 actually, Eric, Leeds and I have talked about a little bit already. Which is, what 13 are the options if one were to have the desire to have a longer coping time?  A 14 longer coping duration?  What technical options immedi ately present themselves 15 in your mind to increase the duration?
16  MR. WILSON:  Well, the way you would have to -- right now, we 17 don't know about the batteries. You coul d potentially have a higher-capacity 18 battery would be one way, but even with an alternate AC source, you have to 19 have everything on-site. Like the one plant that has a 16-hour coping analysis.
20 That means their alternate AC source has enough fuel capacity. It's already 21 there that it will run for 16 hours, and they need to get off-site power back within 22 16 hours because that is all the capacity that's there unless they're going to 23 mitigate and bring additional fuel oil and st uff on for the source. So to go beyond 24 24  a four-hour capacity, I think you would have to have an alternate AC source and 1 you would have to have the capability of those -- well you'd have to have 2 everything there for it to run if you wanted to cope wit h something for longer than 3 four hours, or change the ba ttery out to a higher-capac ity battery that could 4 handle a larger discharge.
5  Another option would be to potent ially bring in a battery charger 6 that you could bring in, with a power supply to recharge the batteries and 7 maintain that capacity. That would be something that would -- you wouldn't have 8 to change your batteries. That would be, just bring another battery charger, 9 charge the batteries, and you could extend the capacity of those batteries that 10 you have on-site now.
11  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  A nd I understand there are a small 12 number of licensees that are doing some thing along those lines now, is that 13 correct? 14  MR. WILSON:  Yes, there is one licensee that I'm aware of that has 15 brought a temporary battery charger in, they have it in their procedures that they 16 would charge, and increase the capacity of that battery. And that is one of the 17 coastal plants in the United States t hat a hurricane could actually affect.
18  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  Thank you very much. Thank you, 19 Chairman.
20  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Commissioner Ostendorff?
21  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
22 Thank you all for being here today. I w anted to maybe start out with Pat, I guess 23 it's a question for you and perhap s George. Just a big pi cture, looking at what 24 25  the NRC does via regions, resident-inspector programs, to assess the readiness 1 of a specific plant to deal with a station blackout. I understand there was a one-2 time inspection done back in the '80s t hat is part of, also, license-renewal 3 application process. Are t here any other looks that t he NRC takes via its resident 4 inspectors or by other mechanisms, to provide an NRC perspective on the 5 licensee's readiness to deal with the station blackout conditions?
6  MR. WILSON:  Pat, I'll take th is one if you don't mind. Actually, 7 after Generic Letter 2006-02, we have wr itten some procedures. We used to go 8 out and do a temporary instruction that looked at the worst grid conditions, so 9 whether that would be -- mostly in the summer, where the grid would be 10 stressed. So we used to have a temporar y instruction that would go out and look 11 at summer readiness, to make sure that the plant was ready for the extreme grid 12 conditions that could happen in the summer. We changed -- actually went in and 13 changed one of the procedures. The adver se weather procedure actually looks 14 at summer readiness for the plant, on a gr id-type basis. Not specifically for 15 station blackout, but it looks at -- are t he diesels ready, or are they monitoring the 16 grid?  So specifically looks at that --
not looking at incompliance with station 17 blackout, but looks at because the grid's stressed during those conditions. And 18 that's something the resident inspectors do.
19  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:
Anything there, Pat?
20  MR. HILAND:  I'd like to add some thing, just a minor comment. My 21 first 10 years in the Commission, I was a resident inspector at three different 22 power plants. PWR and two boiling-water re actors. And the job of the resident 23 inspector is to be aware of the plant conditions every day. He goes into the 24 26  plant, he hears what the plant modifications are, what the design changes are, he 1 understands the need for the alternate AC sources on-site, both the standard 2 diesel or in Oconee's case, the hydro plant, as well as what's there for the station 3 blackout. And so you rely on that daily presence, five days a week or actually 4 seven days a week, of the resident inspec tor. So I would add that only, just 5 emphasize.
6  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:  Let me just kind of maybe add 7 another question on to that, that is related to this prec ise query. And that is --
8 and Commissioner Magwood was asking quest ions about the four-hour battery 9 time and so forth, as one component of the coping strategies for a specific plant.
10 Can you talk a little bit
-- I guess George, about -- is the coping strategy a 11 dynamic, evolving, living piece?  Or is it static?  Can you talk a little bit about how 12 that might be updated as conditions at the plant, or in that particular part of the 13 grid, may change?
14  MR. WILSON:  The coping analysis that was done was a one-time 15 snapshot that the licensees had to look at their coping analysis. We do evaluate, 16 as I stated, in some of the license am endments like power uprate, if the battery 17 capacity would be affected if they were changing and adding DC loads, and we'd 18 go back and look at that. And as in t he case of the one unit, due to operating 19 experience, we challenged them and they went back and redid their calculation, 20 ended up being a 16-hour coping plant.
There has been several findings on 21 station blackout. They look at the assumpti ons. So it is -- there are issues that 22 are identified in different inspecti on procedures, but we do not go back and 23 reevaluate the full-blown assumptions and calculations that a licensee does.
24 27    MR. BORCHARDT:  I think that's -- the key is that the regional 1 inspections that are done, as well as the resident inspectors, will look at every 2 design change that's made at the plant, or nearly every, and then they'll look at 3 50.59 evaluations to make sure that all the proper considerations were taken into 4 account. One of those would be loading on diesels, and if you change the load 5 of the diesel, or you change the load on a battery, those would all be evaluated 6 and would likely lead to an issue, perhaps, with station blackout. We don't do 7 station blackout reviews per se, but ther e's many, many ways that you would get 8 to a station-blackout issue just in the normal course of our oversight activities.
9  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:  Ok ay, thank you. Let me go 10 back to a comment that G eorge had mentioned in his brie fing, and that was, we 11 do have experience with hurricanes, and the Chairman mentioned the tornadoes 12 we've had just in the last 24 hours, and certainly we had a tornado here in the 13 last couple weeks down in southern Virgin ia that impacted a switchyard at a 14 nuclear power plant. From the hurricane experience, or tornadoes, is there any 15 big area of query that you think the NRC needs to look at, or feel pretty 16 comfortable that our exit ing processes adequately asse ss the impact of these 17 weather-related events on off-site power availability?
18  MR. WILSON:  Well, I know one of the things that the staff has 19 done, to give you an example to add defense and depth, when industry and 20 utilities have come in and asked for an ex tension, an AOT extension, a lot of 21 outage time on some sort of power source, either being a diesel generator or 22 transformer or one of the lines , one of the things that the staff requires is the 23 replacement of that power source with some sort of other power source. Not 24 28  safety related, but they bring in tem porary diesel generator s, and with that, the 1 temporary diesel generators, what we have seen is that t here are temporary 2 diesel generators, so if something would happen, you could easily get one of the 3 temporary diesel generators, and they got them at Waterford during Hurricane 4 Katrina, they had the temporary diesel generators brought on-site. They had 5 them in case they did lose off-site power, or they had a problem with the other 6 diesels, and they had that temporary diesel there. So that we know that they do 7 have that capability to do it, and they also line up fuel sources, I think, based on 8 some discussions -- and one of my staff members, actually out in Waterford 9 during Katrina, the roads were blocked, they had no other way, so they were 10 starting to bring fuel oil through with a barge. So we have had lessons learned 11 from the hurricanes that not only do they have extra power sources that they can 12 get, but also, you have to think outside the box, to look to see how you're going 13 to get the fuel oil there if the roads were blocked. So that is stuff that we've got 14 lessons learned, and it has seemed to wo rk. At Turkey Point, they ran the 15 diesels for a couple weeks, so it seems to work.
16  MR. HILAND:  Yeah, let me just add -- and Turkey Point's a good 17 example, where hurricanes are somethi ng that you see on the weather map, 18 approaching you. And there are procedures at the site, and they initiated it at 19 Turkey Point. They shut the plant dow n before the hurricane got there. They 20 started up the diesels, and essentially, they were well prepared for that event.
21 So there is a process, versus a tor nado is unknown. T hat tornado, you get 22 about, at luck, 15, 30 minutes of warning, for a tornado warn ing, to react. But for 23 hurricanes, we have procedures in place. Our regional office goes into a standby 24 29  mode in the response center. The resi dent inspectors for Hurricane Andrew 1 were on-site throughout the entire even t, and so there are some preparatory 2 work that you can do for a hurricane.
3  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:  Thank you. Eric, I'd like to turn 4 to you for a minute here on B.5.b. And again, thank you for your presentation, 5 and I recognize that there are limitations as to what you might be able to address 6 in this session, but let me just ask this question. Can you talk in general terms as 7 to what the NRC does to inspect the ability of the licensee to carry out B.5.b-type 8 actions, as far as equipment reliability, te sting that equipmen t, operator training, 9 et cetera?
10  MR. BOWMAN:  That's examined on a triennial basis, as part of the 11 triennial fire protection inspection.
We added the B.5.b requirements and the 12 strategies that meet them as an inspectable area there, January 1 of 2010. So 13 they look at -- so they look at the capabilities of the equipment to be used to meet 14 the strategies, the maintenance on the equipment, and the training of the 15 personnel.
16  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:  So we have a little bit over a 17 year experience with that. Is that what we -- you said January 1, 2010?  Any big 18 "ah-ha" kind of lessons learned from that level one year experience so far?
19  MR. BOWMAN:  If I could defer that to the closed session, I'd 20 prefer. 21  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:
Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
22 Chairman.
23  MR. BORCHARDT:  Commissioner, I would also just acknowledge 24 30  that the industry has done a review of that equipment, of their own. They've 1 identified some issues that are being reso lved. Some of them are being informed 2 by the uniqueness of what happened in Japan, as to where equipment is stored, 3 for example. It was look ed at differently now, giv en the tsunami kind of flooding 4 issues, than we might have looked at it previously.
5  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:  Thank you.
6  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  If I could just clarify, the tri-an nual is not the 7 first inspections we've done at B.5.b. We did, following implementation of B.5.b 8 we did a temporary instruction, as I recall, to inspect all the B.5.b implementation.
9  MR. BOWMAN:  That's correct, sir. There were, I believe, four or 10 five temporary inspections that were conducted along the development process.
11 In 2008, we did a final verification that everything was in place. Then we 12 transitioned to monitoring it through the reactor ov ersight process and the tri-13 annual fire protection inspection, and --
14  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Okay. So that, I just wanted to clarify.
15  MR. BOWMAN:  That's correct.
16  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:  Thanks for the clarification.
17  MR. BOWMAN:  Sure.
18  COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:  Thanks, Chairman.
19  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Commissioner Svinicki?
20  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  Thank y ou all for your presentations.
21 My colleagues have touched on some topics I might have addressed. They 22 might not have posed the questions in the exact same way, so I apologize if I'm 23 covering any of the same ground a little bit.
24 31    At a very high level, Bill, you talked about the fact, you gave a 1 status report on what's happening in J apan, and you talked a little bit about our 2 90 day and our longer term review. As long as our colleagues in Japan are 3 focused, as they are now, very immediately and deeply still on mitigation, dealing 4 with the circumstances on the ground ther e, they're obviously appropriately 5 focused on that and not focused, right now , in being able to look at detailed 6 chronologies of events, or lessons learned, or things like that. And yet, we have 7 underway this near term review.
8  And so, my thought turns on station blackout to a question that I still 9 want to ask you, because we do know quite a bit, and we have a presence in 10 Japan, and we've been learning a lot about the events. I would ask any of you if 11 you want to respond: based on what you k now today, is there anything about the 12 events that occurred in Japan, with relation to station blackout, that cause you to 13 immediately identify areas in our regulat ions that you would assess today are 14 potentially inadequate, based on what you know right now?
15  MR. BORCHARDT:  Right after t he event, and every day since, we 16 ask ourselves whether or not there's some regulatory action we need to take to 17 assure the protection for the 104 plants in th is country. And to date, we have not 18 identified anything that requi res immediate action. That doesn't mean we won't 19 identify some things that we want to raise to the Commission for future 20 consideration. Station blackout rule oversight might be one of those.
21  But the short term task force is looking at station blackout. I believe 22 they'll address it to some degree. I think it
'll, if I were to guess, would guess that 23 will also be an element of the longer te rm review, as we gain more and more 24 information about the existence or the c onditions of switch gear inside of the 25 32  plants in Japan, which we really have no idea of the condition of that equipment.
1  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  And I think, somewhat, my question 2 is rooted in a comment, that I believe you made representing the U.S., and you 3 were also, I think, Vice President, the Convention on Nuclear Safety, a really 4 important international meeting on national nucl ear safety cooperation 5 internationally. But I think you indicated in your remarks there that we may be 6 learning about this event even a decade from now.
7  So is it accurate to say that, for our 90 day review and also the 8 longer term, that we will, by, perhaps, t he end of the year, we'll be looking at 9 issuing some further recommendations if appropriate?  It will still be challenging 10 to have good fidelity and solid knowledge of all of the events that occurred over 11 in Japan. Is it true that the team that's doing the 90 day review and our longer 12 term review, they're going to struggle with that issue?
13  MR. BORCHARDT:  Clearly.
I mean, and their charter 14 acknowledged that they're to use whatever information they have available today.
15 Because we didn't want to wait until we had all of the information; who knows 16 how long that would be?  So we didn' t want to delay in doing what was 17 appropriate and prudent to do now, or in the near term. And so they will identify 18 many holes in our knowledge that, hopefully, many of those will be filled during 19 the time period of the longer term review. But it's not outside the realm of 20 possibility that it'll be years before we know the full condition of, you know, the 21 inside of the core, and various pieces of equipment that are currently in very high 22 radiation areas.
23  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  And this may sound simple, but 24 sometimes things are more complicated than we think. Do we have a good 25 33  ability right now to do a comparison between our requirements on station 1 blackout and Japan's requirements on station blackout?  That sounds very 2 simple, like, as long as we can translate it, why don't we have the ability to just 3 lay those side by side?  Is that more complicated than we think?
4  MR. BORCHARDT:  I don't know, you know, and I don't know how 5 much of the short term task force, they'v e looked into that. But you're right, it 6 sounds like it'd be pretty simple, it's something you could do through a web 7 search even. But I don't really k now, if Artie or -- where's Artie?
8  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Right behind you.
9  MR. BORCHARDT:  Yeah. We'll have to get back to you.
10  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  Okay, but that is something that it 11 would be your understanding that, for the 90 day review, they'll at least try to 12 access whatever they can in terms of comparability, and that would inform 13 whatever it is the 90 day review would put forward?
14  MR. BORCHARDT:  I think that sounds reasonable.
15  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  Okay.
16  MR. BORCHARDT:  they're not doing it now, they will be later 17 today. 18 [laughter]
19  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Let's make sure that they have their, you 20 know, that that's a task, that they c an complete in the appropriate way, then 21 they'll do that.
22  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  And t hen I would characterize some 23 of my colleagues' questions, based on the pr esentations you gave, they have to 24 do with something I think the NRC has been questioned about since this event 25 34  occurred, and it is: how frequently do we challenge and reassess underlying 1 assumptions that we've made in developing the regulations we have in place?
2 So, George, you talked quite a bit today about looking at any time a licensee 3 might propose a change on-site, we will look at the evaluation they did to comply 4 with station blackout. We'll see if t here's any effect there, and we would 5 challenge that.
6  But I think that some of the questions that I think NRC has been 7 asked have to do with:  do we look at our assumptions about broader external 8 conditions?  And George, you've ment ioned working with the Federal Energy 9 Regulatory Commission on grid reliabili ty, grid status, the North American 10 Electric Reliability Corporati on. We have important relationships there where we 11 reassess that. But, of course , that's very dynamic, as the nation looks at maybe 12 having more renewable energy, the grid may look different in the future.
13 Can you characterize our overall engagement on really having access to the best 14 information about external things like grid reliability, so that we can constantly be 15 informing whether our regulatory assumpti ons that we've made in the past are 16 adequate?
17  MR. WILSON:  We -- as I had stated, we meet quarterly with both 18 NERC and FERC. And if anything comes up, we're aware of it. We actually are 19 noticed and given information if they're going to change any of their reliability 20 standards. We have commented on the reliability standards to ensure that the 21 safety of the nuclear power plants are main tained. I feel very confident about the 22 status of the grids.
23  When they do new reports, we know that they are doing new 24 research reports, such as t here's three reports out right now that we're looking at, 25 35  based on the frequency response of the grid and the interconnection. We do 1 have, joint Commission meetings with the Federal Energy Regulatory 2 Commission and we also invite NERC. We have contacts with the Department of 3 Energy on their grid sector, their e nergy sector, to evaluate that.
4 So, as things do change, we do re-look at that. And to see if we do have to 5 evaluate the grid assumptions and the staff has been looking very hard at this for 6 the last three years, specifically with stuff that c hanges in the grid, and to see 7 how the renewable sources such as, spec ifically, wind, and how that's taken, 8 because it potentially affects the reliability. And there has been an incident 9 where the wind just stopped blowing and there was 1100 megawatts that was 10 lost in ERCOT, which is the Texas grid.
So I feel very confident, we know the 11 status of it and ar e evaluating that.
12  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  And you mentioned, in response to a 13 question from Commissioner Ostendorff, that our site-by-site evaluation of the 14 compliance with station blackout was a bi t of a one-time snapshot. Based on the 15 answer you just gave me, do you have all of the authorities that you need, if you 16 did need to change an underlying assumption that was external to the plant 17 conditions itself, having to do with a grid or something else?  Do you feel 18 confident that you have the authority to com pel that licensees have to take that 19 changed circumstance into account?
20  MR. WILSON:  Yeah, I think that we have the process that we do 21 look at it potentially as plant-specific backfit, or if we thought there was a broad 22 look at potential rulemaking, and route that through the pr ocess. So I would think 23 that process is in place to do that.
24  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  Okay. And my last question is -- I'll 25 36  rope in Pat, because I think this is a little bit of a put you on the spot question, but 1 for George and Pat:  we've talked a lot about four hour batteries. We talked a 2 little bit about eight hour batteries. But, you know, you're probably, like many of 3 us, since this event occurs, there's been a lot of discussion about four hour 4 battery life.
5  And I don't know if, perhaps, at a family event, or a barbeque, or 6 anything, maybe some member of your family might come up to you and say, 7 "Well, you know, we have natural events that can occur, like hurricanes:  those 8 can be multi-day events. What is the basis for having four hours?"  Just to a lay 9 person, when they come to you and say, "I s it really only four hours that nuclear 10 power plants have to cope with some sort of event of a long duration?"  What do 11 you say to -- if you were talking to a family member, what would you say to that?
12  MR. HILAND:  Yeah, I'll start. Firs t of all, the, I would talk to the 13 family member and say, "That's the maximum that we allow reliance on a 14 battery."  We have a high expectation that you restore either off-site power or one 15 of your emergency diesels, or an alternate AC power source. It doesn't mean 16 that the battery -- as you heard, we have an example of a plant that has a small 17 generator; maybe they bought it at Home Depot. And they bring it in, they 18 charge the battery, or recharge the battery.
19  That means you can extend the life of the battery, but the four hour 20 coping time is the maximum we allow. T hat's not to say the batteries can't last 21 longer than that. I don't hav e the details of all the batteries at the plants, but 22 they're tested periodically to assure that they're in a high state of readiness.
23 That's how I would answer that question.
24  Our experience is the reliability of our emergency diesels is very 25 37  high. Very high reliability, and it's very -- demonstrated very promptly to restore 1 emergency diesel that either didn't start the first time, there' s a problem with it, 2 the mechanics are on-site, the operators kn ow how to operate the controls of the 3 diesel. So we have some high level of confidence that, within four hours, they'll 4 get either off-site power back, of course that doesn't happen if you have a 5 hurricane, or they'll get the emergency dies els back on line. That's my answer.
6 George? 7  MR. WILSON:  Yeah. What I would add is, because I've been 8 asked this question. I commute two hours each way and I get asked this 9 question a lot, recently. And how I've answered is that we've only had one 10 station blackout in the Un ited States. Our diesels are very reliable, and they 11 restored that power within 55 minutes.
I also explain that we have redundant 12 power supplies. So you have to have something to take out multiple sources of 13 power. And once I explain that, I've, usua lly they stop, or I run overboard --
14 [laughter]
15  COMMISSIONER SVINICKI:  All right, thank you. Thank you all 16 very much. Thank you.
17  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Commissioner Apostolakis.
18  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I 19 guess most of my questions have been asked, but I, we've been talking about 20 assumptions and so on. It seems to me, two of the assumptions that we have 21 been making regarding station blackout now have to be questioned in light of 22 what has happened in Japan.
23  One is the time that we cons ider when we try to manage station 24 blackout. I mean, we talk about four hours, eight hours, some PRAs go to 24 25 38  hours. But as far as I know , there are no studies that go to weeks. And that's the 1 first assumption. The second assumption is that there may be major 2 infrastructure damage. So when you, Mr. Wilson, talk about diesel reliability, I 3 assume you are talking about under conditions that are not as severe as what we 4 have seen in Japan. So are these the two assumptions that we have to revisit 5 now, in light of Japan?  The time and the state of t he infrastructure?
6  MR. BORCHARDT:  Well, in my view, clearly the state of the 7 infrastructure is very important. I m ean, it's for station blackout, it's for 8 emergency preparedness, it really cuts across the entire spectrum of plant 9 response to an event. We practice emer gency response activities assuming that 10 there is the infrastructure surrounding the plant. So there's clearly a good lesson 11 learned.
12  Regarding the duration of the time, I think there is something, we 13 certainly need to evaluate. But I do believe that our regulatory processes and 14 requirements, even though they might, you know, they talk about four hours for 15 the batteries. We, as Pat and George mentioned, have requirements for 16 reliability of the diesel generat ors, for tech specs, times for how long they can be 17 out of service, and all of those requirements, and fuel storage tanks 18 requirements, that assume that it's going to be a longer duration event than just 19 four hours, certainly.
20  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:
But certainly not weeks, 21 though. I don't know of any st udy that went out that far.
22  MR. BORCHARDT:  No, but I think that there are, there are plant 23 procedures and protocols in place to get the tanks refilled for diesel generators. I 24 mean, diesel generators are an incredibly important system for plant response.
25 39  And there are -- every plant that I'm aware of has arrangements to have their 1 facilities, their tanks refilled, in the event that they need to go on long term 2 operation of the diesel generators.
When we had the northeast blackout a 3 number of years ago, there were some plants that had, off-site power was out, 4 for a time period, and all those preparations were put into play in order to go, 5 assume that we would have long te rm loss of transmission capability.
6  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:
Now, I have a question 7 regarding the temporary inst ruction. I'm trying to understand what exactly the 8 inspectors did that led you to the conclusion that there are no issues. Did they 9 go in there and look at whether our r egulations and the co mmitments of the 10 licensee are met?  Or did they go bey ond that and they looked at, you know, 11 what if we have a major external event, natural phenomenon, what's going to 12 happen?  Are you prepared to cope with it?  Is that something that the task force 13 will look into and the inspectors just looked at the current commitments and 14 made sure that they are, in fact, satisf ied?  And then, of course, the conclusion 15 that there are no issues probably makes sense.
16  MR. BORCHARDT:  In general, we want to give our inspectors 17 guidance to go out and inspect against exis ting requirements.
They may identify 18 topics and ideas that go beyond the des ign basis or beyond the regulatory 19 requirements. We were certainly becoming aware of some of those ideas, but as 20 a general rule, we inspect against existi ng requirements. The task force would 21 be the proper vehicle to say, okay, that's fine, but do we need to revisit what the 22 regulatory requirement is?  Does it need to go further than the current construct 23 does? 24  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:
The B.5.b equipment. I don't 25 40  know if it's appropriate to ask the question now, but did you consider major 1 catastrophe and what it could do to the B.5.b equipment?
2  MR. BOWMAN:  The B.5.b was the response to an event that 3 involved explosions and fire, so that wa s generally the focus of what was looked 4 at in developing the mitigating strategies that would meet the requirements. We 5 can discuss it further in the closed session. I think that would probably be 6 appropriate.
7  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:  Commissioner Magwood 8 mentioned earlier that what will happen at a particular site is, of course, site-9 specific. And I'm wondering whether we have site-specific accident sequences 10 and somebody, the licensee, or us, or both, are looking at these sequences and 11 make sure that the regulat ory requirements we have, or the commitment of the 12 licensee, since it's beyond design basis, ar e actually consist ent with the site-13 specific nature of these events.
14  And one example, for example, we -- one example, for example, 15 okay. When we assume that the operators will actually do something, are we 16 considering the possibility they won't do it?
Or that they woul d do the right thing, 17 or the wrong thing?  You know where I'm going with this. Ar e you using PRA at 18 all, when you're doing these evaluations?
19  MR. HARRISON:  I think, in a general sense, if you go back to the 20 IPEs and IPEEEs, there was considerations that would be PRA-oriented analysis 21 to address some of this. The IPE and IPEE E were used to close out a number of 22 the safety issues that were, in the mid-80s, related to variou s capabilities. So 23 those were reviewed in that context. Now, we also have SPAR models, and 24 licensees have internal event PRA model s that they have. And again, that 25 41  should inform their SAMG's as to, like, if you need a diesel generator or fire pump 1 capability, if you have that capability, you c an put that in your plant-specific PRA 2 and show that you could mitigate so me severe accidents using that.
3  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:  So some of it is done.
4  MR. HARRISON:  Some of it is there.
5  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:
Okay. Thank you, Mr.
6 Chairman.
7  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Okay, I'll go back to Commissioner 8 Svinicki's question about the family picnic, or whatever, wherever it was. One of 9 the things I'm having trouble reconciling, I think Commissioner Magwood raised 10 this point too, is the four hour, the four hour time, t he coping time, and I think, 11 Pat, you did a nice job explaining that's the maximum time t hat we would allow 12 before we would expect off-site power to be restored. Wher e I'm having a hard 13 time reconciling that is we have lots of examples where it takes longer than four 14 hours to restore off-site power. So there seems to be an inconsistency with that 15 assumption, and I think, George, you said t he same thing: that our data says that 16 restoration takes about three hour
: s. So I'm not sure if th at, if that includes some 17 run time for the diesels and then four hours, or if that is four hours with, say, an 18 immediate loss of off-site power and an i mmediate inability of the diesels to 19 operate. How do you reconcile those two issues?
20  MR. WILSON:  Well, the four hour s is based on losing all alternate 21 current power. So that's the losing the diesels and losing off-site power. As to 22 diesels are running and you have your power supply --
23  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Right.
24  MR. WILSON:  -- and that's what we've seen here, in the U.S., the 25 42  diesels have ran. We've only had that one event. But the four hours, like I said, 1 is, that's just based on having no power and just doing, only coping on the 2 batteries by itself. If you have -- if you can do a combination, then you do an 3 analysis. You do a coping period that, if yo u think your batteries, you're going to 4 need your batteries for two hours, you would do a coping analysis that says, I 5 can handle just on the batteries for two hour s, then I have my alternate AC power 6 come on, and then I do an analysis on how long I would think that alternate AC 7 power needs to run before I would rest ore the power. That's how they're all 8 combined. So the four hours is the, what I would consider to be the worst-case 9 scenario, where I have nothing, I'm just on my batteries. And, like I said, there 10 are processes that --
11  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  And I appreciate that. The point, though, is 12 that, clearly, if we get into a situation which is the situation we have in Japan, 13 which is, where you lose the diesels, it takes more than four hours, in some 14 cases, to get off-site power restored. In the hurricane si tuation, you know, 15 Turkey Point, you said the diesels were r unning for days?  I'm interpreting that to 16 mean that it was days before off-site power was restored. I m ean, I think, from 17 Browns Ferry last night, they still have not restored, maybe they have one line, 18 not fully restored, but they have one line, so that they seem to be okay, there. So 19 -- 20  MR. HILAND:  [inaudible] emergency diesels there.
21  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  And, again, and in that case, the diesels are 22 running. But, of course, the station blackout is the rule for when the diesels 23 aren't running, is not the rule for when the diesels are running. It's intended to be 24 that situation in which they don't, they don' t run, for whatever reason. So, again, 25 43  that's why I think, from a risk perspective, we don't believe it's a significant event.
1 But four hours doesn't seem to be a reas onable time to restore off-site power if 2 you've, if you've lost the diesels immediately. So I'm not sure where we have the 3 data that supports that right now. I mean, unless I'm, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, 4 I guess it's what I'm trying to ask. Am I wrong about hu rricanes?  Did it only take 5 four hours to restore site power and they just didn't --
6  MR. HILAND:  No, you're correct. You're correc
: t. But the four 7 hours, as George described, came from an analysis that what was the ability to 8 restore off-site power, and what was the ability to restore, how reliable were the 9 emergency diesels. Now, they came up with two hours. And we said, okay, two 10 hours is the average at the time. We'r e not going to allow anyone to give an 11 analysis greater than four hour s, with that expectation.
12  And you're right. In the hurric ane situation, the reason the plants 13 have, you know, preemptive procedures, when they see a hurricane approach, 14 they shut the plant, they turn on t heir emergency diesels, and that's, they 15 anticipate the loss of the off-site power.
You know, the four hours is, you want to 16 restore either off-site or an emerg ency diesel. And we, we may confuse 17 emergency diesel with alternate AC pow er. And alternate AC means your 18 emergency diesels are out of service, as some, some mechanical problem or 19 common mode, and you have this alternate AC. And there's a number of plants 20 that chose that path. T he alternate AC, and the reason for the time frames, is 21 how much fuel do you have on-site for this alternate AC, whatever the gas 22 turbine, how much gas do you have available to run it?  And you know, typically -
23 - 24  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Those alternate ACs are not seismically 25 44  qualified.
1  MR. WILSON:  That's correct, they're not.
2  MR. HILAND:  Right, that's correct.
3  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  So they
're not intended to necessarily 4 survive --
5  MR. HILAND:  That's correct.
6  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  -- some of those type of events.
7  MR. HILAND:  Right.
8  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Well, I apprecia te that and as I said, I'm just 9 trying to understand the, you know, kind of the basis. And, again, just to 10 reiterate, it's not, the diesel reliability is very high, and I was just looking back at 11 the statement's consideration for the original ruling, even, I think, in the time from 12 the 80s to the time in which the rule was ultimately implemented, there were 13 improvements in diesel generator reliabilit
: y. I assume that those improvements 14 have only enhanced over time, to today. So the likelihood of a station blackout is 15 very low, but in the event that there is a station blackout , that's externally driven, 16 I'm not convinced that, in that situation, four hours is a reasonable time to restore 17 off-site power. And that ma y be something that we want to look up a little bit 18 more. 19  There's been, I think, a lot of good questions about the coping 20 analysis and the living nature of that coping analysis. I understand that the staff 21 has looked at this issue in the past, and one of the, I think one of the options that 22 was considered, given that the rule does n't appear to allow, directly, the agency 23 to require an update, that coping analysis, one of the issues that was presented 24 was the possibility of a generic letter. I don't know if you have any information on 25 45  the status of that.
Is that something the staff is pursuing, or are they no longer 1 pursuing a generic letter to update coping analyses?
2  MR. WILSON:  Actually, we were, we have evaluated looking, 3 looking into going to the rulemaking as what we have looked at. So that is 4 something that the staff is still looking, and we'll pass the data that we have on to 5 the 30 day look team --
6  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Okay.
7  MR. WILSON:  We do have, we do have some data that we've 8 done and that data will be passed on to the, to the look team. And I was not 9 aware of a generic letter. We were lookin g at a lot of data that we had received, 10 both from FERC and NERC, and some of the NUREG studies, and looking to 11 see whether or not we had to go after rulemaking and --
12  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Okay.
13  MR. WILSON:  -- enhance the station blackout rule itself.
14  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  So that is, t hat is effectively ongoing at this 15 point, although not at a, ma ybe not gotten to a --
16  MR. WILSON:  Yes, we're still, we're still accumulating data.
17  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Okay. Good.
Thanks. To what, and we've 18 talked a little bit about, kind of from the external perspective , what the station 19 blackout does, but I wanted to explore just an issue of, obviously, a significant 20 consideration that we've s een from Japan is the impact on spent fuel pools. And 21 to what extent are the s pent fuel pools and the limited power needs that they may 22 have included in the station blackout considerations. Is that a piece of it, or is it 23 just the core?
24  MR. WILSON:  No, the station bl ackout rule did not evaluate the 25 46  spent fuel pool cooling, so that was not part of the rule itself. That was one of the 1 reasons that we had added the other porti on, and had Eric go over some of the 2 B.5.b strategy, because that specific ally evaluated the spent fuel pool.
3  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  They, ma ybe under severe -- I mean, are 4 there procedures, maybe under severe a ccident, or under, I guess it would be 5 more under the B.5.b, to provide power to, to whatever systems are necessary 6 for circulation in the pools?  Do thos e procedures exist more on a kind of a 7 severe accident perspective, or?
8  MR. WILSON:  Well, I have some rough data that, we have 9 conducted a survey of the spent fuel pools. It was done in the mid-90s, and 10 about a third of the plants, the spent fuel pools themselves are actually on a --
11 the back-up power is the diesel generator , so they're actually on the safety 12 buses. They're manually loaded, so they are on a safety-related power supply.
13 A large number of the other ones actually have RHR as a back-up to provide 14 spent fuel pool cooling or make-up, so RHR is a safety-related system, then that 15 would be the back-up of the diesel.
16  And then there's several others that they can put a spool piece in to 17 cross-connect systems, to provide additional cooling and make-up mechanisms.
18 So we did look at that in the 90s and ev aluate that. So there are ways that they 19 could transfer power, since they could get the battery backup, or a system that is 20 powered by the 1E safety-related system, to provide that. So that has been 21 looked at.
22  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  All right. A nd then, just turn to the last 23 question. And maybe it, almost may be the opposite of, the flip side of what 24 Commissioner Apostolakis raised, which is:  to what extent are we, and how are 25 47  we modeling station blackout in some of the risk assessment s that we do?  Do 1 we have a good way to model these kinds of events as we look at our severe 2 accident and the, I mean, particular in t he PRA?  How exactly do we model these 3 kind of events?  And I think, hinting from Commissioner Apostolakis, we don't 4 necessarily look beyond 24 hours for this ki nd of situation, into the longer, longer 5 time frame. And is that a non-conser vatism or a conservatism in the PRA 6 analysis that we have.
7  MR. HARRISON:  The way that the point-specific PRA's are 8 developed, the key become s the probability of recove ry of off-site power, 9 ultimately. I know back in the '80s, it was, like, 50 percent of all events were 10 recovered in the first half-hour, and it ki nd of works down from there. So, and 11 most of the data says that at least pr ior from my past, we had no events that 12 went beyond like 10 or 11 hours, or something like that. So that gives you a tail 13 of the curve on the recovery curve.
14  So most PRAs run for 24 hour missi on times, if there's some critical 15 issue that occurs after that, they may r un to 32 hours, or some thing like that. But 16 what they're looking for is reaching a safe, stable condition at the plant, so if I can 17 -- I got power back or I've got some capability where I can maintain that, then 18 they'll stop the analysis and declare it success ful. What that will mean is if you're 19 into an extended outage after an earthquake or whatever, you're going to have to 20 provide fuel to the diesels, and in that situation it's determi ned that, within a day, 21 you can get those supplies there. Or, within eight hours, you'll be able to get that 22 fuel supply to the plant and be able to pr ovide it. So, that
's an inherent 23 assumption, I would say, that's underneath t he PRA: that those capabilities will 24 be there.
25 48    CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  As we go fo rward, I mean, and again, as we 1 get more information and the ta sk force is looking at this kind of things, I mean, 2 that obviously would probably be relevant data inputs to see if some of those 3 assumptions are no longer unnecessarily vali d as we go forward. So, again, we 4 appreciate your information. I don't know if anyone has any other questions.
5 Commissioner Magwood?
6  COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:  Just a quick question about Japan.
7 One of the things about t he early portions of the events in Japan that was a bit 8 frustrating was recognizing that the Japanese were unable to provide emergency 9 power to the plant and weren't able to connect the -- they brought generators in 10 but couldn't get them connected. Do we have any more insight or understanding 11 as to what the problem was in the early days of the event?
12  MR. BORCHARDT:  I don't have a definitive answer. It's another 13 one of those areas where we don't have clear information, but we do have good 14 indication that the switch gear on the lower elevations of the building were 15 severely affected by the tsunami, and that probably, and this is just my opinion, 16 probably caused serious degradation to the el ectrical distribution within the plant.
17 So even if you had an electrical supply, the temporary generator, there's no place 18 to make an easy connection.
19  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Any other questions?
20  COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:  I'd like to make one brief 21 comment. The key in developing the acci dent sequence in a station blackout is 22 the recovery of off-site power, as Donnie mentioned.
The 0.9 to two hours range 23 that you mentioned referred to routine failures of the grid. People now have two 24 separate curves, which goes back to your question, Mr. Chairman. There is one 25 49  curve for recovery from these rout ine events, and another one from major 1 external events. And that time goes much longer t han two hours. So the four 2 hours which was conservative I guess appl ies only to the routine events and not 3 to the longer.
4  CHAIRMAN JACZKO:  Well, again, I thank you all for your insightful 5 information, and it's given us lots of thi ngs to think about. A nd we'll adjourn now 6 and have just a brief closed portion to discuss some of the B.5.b. issues. Thank 7 you. 8 [Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded]
9}}

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Transcript of Briefing on the Status of NRC Response to Events in Japan and Briefing on Station Blackout
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Issue date: 04/28/2011
From: Apostolakis G E, Jaczko G B, Magwood W D, Ostendorff W C, Svinicki K L
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BRIEFING ON THE STATUS OF NRC RESPONSE TO EVENTS IN JAPAN AND BRIEFING ON STATION BLACKOUT APRIL 28, 2011 9:30 A.M.

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS Public Meeting Before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

Gregory B. Jaczko, Chairman Kristine L. Svinicki, Commissioner

George Apostolakis, Commissioner William D. Magwood, IV, Commissioner

William C. Ost endorff, Commissioner

2 APPEARANCES NRC Staff Panel:

Bill Borchardt

Executive Director for Operations

Pat Hiland Director, Division of Engineering, NRR

George Wilson

Chief of Instrumentation and Control Branch, Division of Engineering, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation

Eric Bowman

Senior Project Manager, Division of Policy and Rulemaking, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation

3 P R O C E E D I N G S 1 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Good morni ng, everyone. Before we begin 2 today's meeting, I wanted to recognize t hat this is National Administrative 3 Professionals Week and take this oppor tunity to acknowledge the dedicated 4 efforts and the high-quality perform ance of our agency's administrative 5 professionals. It's always, I think, a great opportunity during this week to make 6 sure we highlight the work that those people do every day to allow us to do our 7 jobs and to keep everything working and functioning. This is also a very special 8 day at the NRC. This is Bring Your Children to Work Day here at headquarters, 9 so there'll be lots of people, our future work force, running around, learning the 10 business, I think, at the agency.

11 With that, I'll turn to th e agenda for today's briefing. The 12 Commission meets this morning to receive a brief update on the situation in 13 Japan and the NRC's ongoing efforts there to assist the Japanese government, 14 but then the remainder of today's meeting will focus on the NRC station blackout 15 rule, which is our regulatory approach for ensuring that licensees can effectively 16 cope with a loss of alternating current electric al power. And, I think, certainly this 17 is a situation that has relevance, as our task force looks at the situation in Japan, 18 but we also have seen that th is is a rule that has re levance here for us in the 19 United States. Severe storms in the sout h last night provided a reminder of this.

20 One or more nuclear power plants experienced a loss of nearly all their off-site 21 power, leading to shutdowns of those plant

s. All of the sa fety systems performed 22 as they were designed and all available diesel generators star ted and loaded.

23 And, ultimately, the core cooling system s are operating normally. In addition, the 24 spent fuel cooling is currently in serv ice. So, all these plants are stable and 25 4 they're being placed in a cooled-down condition.

1 Of course, these storms are also a reminder that these storms have 2 tremendous impact, and there have been many people who have lost their lives 3 as a result of this, so we always want to remember that as we talk about these 4 issues. But it was certainly a reminder of the importance of th is particular rule 5 and dealing with the potential t hat not all of the alter nating power capabilities 6 function.

7 So, today, the staff will give us a general background on the rule's 8 development as well as more detailed information on the structure of our 9 regulatory approach for dealing with station blackout. And this is one of the 10 many significant issues that the agency's senior level task forc e is examining as 11 part of our comprehensive revi ew of the safety of the U.

S. nuclear facilities as a 12 result of the situation in Japan. And, ce rtainly, from my per spective, I think the 13 purpose for us today is to get a good base line of information for the Commission 14 to get us all at the same level of know ledge about this rule, so that if we get 15 recommendations from the task force in this area, we'll be able to move 16 expeditiously and promptly to ad dress those, and we'll have a good 17 understanding of the basis of the existing rule, and then, if there are changes to 18 be made, what those changes would be and how we would effectively and 19 expeditiously move forward with those re commendations. With that, I would offer 20 any colleagues, my colleagues to make any comments that they would like.

21 Commissioner Svinicki.

22 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of 23 all, I appreciate your recognition of the hard-working administrative professionals 24 here at NRC who make possible all of the im portant work that we do here. And I 25 5 also would add, that, although, as you've indicated, we're still working to gain 1 knowledge of the events in Japan, station blackout certainl y identifies itself as an 2 important issue that we need to be looking at, so thank you for today's meeting.

3 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay, B ill. I'll turn it to you.

4 MR. BORCHARDT: Well thank you, good morning, what I'll do is 5 begin today's briefing with just a very brief overview of the situation in Japan.

6 Since March 21, when we held the last Commission meeting, on the Japan issue, 7 I would say that the situation has definit ely improved but we're still in the accident 8 mitigation phase. Off site and on-site AC power has been restored, however 9 they're still using temporar y pumps and hoses to inject water into the reactor 10 vessels and spent fuel pool, and into t he containments.

There's still many 11 unanswered questions regarding the status of various pieces of equipment, the 12 reactor vessel integrity, the spent fuel pool.

13 Regarding the core, the reacto r vessel, and the containment, as 14 well as the spent fuel conditions, I would describe the situation as not being quite 15 stable, but certainly not as highly dynam ic as it was on March 21 when we last 16 met on this subject. The changes that are occurring within the plant are slower 17 and allowing more time for the Japanes e operators and regul ators to respond 18 and take corrective actions, as necessary.

19 There's still feed and bleed operati ons in progress. That is a 20 somewhat dynamic situation, as well as there's unfiltered and unmonitored 21 release paths that remain to be a concer n at the Fukushima site. One of the 22 things that make this difficult for the Japanese in responding to this event and for 23 to us to understand the exact situation is that there's a number of suspect 24 accuracy and failed instrumentation at the site , affecting all of the units that really 25 6 hamper our ability to get a clear and consistent picture of the situation.

1 As you know, the site team in Japan continues. We're providing 2 technical support to the ambassador.

We're interacting with the Japanese 3 officials of NISA, our regulatory count erpart, and the operator TEPCO. And the 4 team in Japan is also coor dinating the efforts of t he consortium of private 5 companies as well as non-government or ganizations as they work with the 6 government of Japan. Our operation center remains on a 24/7 response 7 capability. We're providing di rect support to the site team as well as coordinating 8 all of the related headquarters acti vities by the technical staff.

9 One of the major developments ov er the last month has been the 10 creation and development of TEPCO's reco very plan, which is called a road map 11 towards restoration from the accident at Fukushima Power Stat ion. There is a 12 number of elements in this road map, and it focuses on nitrogen injectio n that will 13 help minimize the potential for future hydrogen detonations, flooding of 14 containment to cool the core, working on process to provide reliable spent fuel 15 pool makeup to achieve long-term cooling.

They'll also work on the Unit 4 16 structural integrity of t he spent fuel pool, looking at ways of providing waste 17 storage and processing as well as controlling radioactive material on-site and off-18 site. And then, finally, to address t he issue that I m entioned earlier, enhanced 19 monitoring of off-site conditions at the plant. So, our overall assessment is that 20 the Japanese are making progress on addressing the safety and the 21 environmental issues and that the road map that's been put into place is certainly 22 a good start towards long-term restoration.

23 Moving into today's Commissi on meeting. Obviously, the 24 earthquake and then the following tsunami resu lted in a station blackout at the 25 7 site, which greatly complicated and contribu ted to the serious events in Japan.

1 Today's briefing's going to be a technical background about the conditions in the 2 U.S. plants, both the regulatory background and what processes and equipment 3 exists in the plants. As I mentioned, on March 21, we did, what I would say, was 4 an instant review of the situation and of the capabilities of U.S. facilities and 5 concluded that there was no need to make immediate changes or to impose 6 immediate orders on U.S. licensees. However, we have well underway the short-7 term, or 90 day review, that is looking at station blackout and a number of other 8 issues, out of which may result in so me future regulatory action or some 9 requirement on licensees.

10 Following that 90 day review, t here's going to be a longer-term 11 review that will continue to use all of the technical information available from 12 Japan in order to inform our regulatory appr oach moving forward. Very recently, 13 we've issued a temporary instruction to our inspections staff that has been 14 performed to evaluate the compliance wit h the existing regulations, and those 15 results are being provi ded to the headquarters staff for analysis now.

16 We'll be hearing from three speaker s today. The first is going to be 17 Pat Hiland, who's going to provide an overview of the NRC station blackout rule, 18 as well as the advanced accident mitigat ion strategies implemented at U.S.

19 plants. George Wilson is going to discuss, in detail, the station blackout rule 20 requirements and guidance, and the preparedne ss of U.S. power plants to cope 21 and recover from a station blackout. And then, fina lly, Eric Bowman will discuss 22 the mitigating strategy requirements imposed following the terrorist attacks of 23 September 11, 2001. So I'll now tu rn the briefing over to Pat.

24 MR. HILAND: Thank you, Bill. Good morning Commissioners, 25 8 Chairman, and go to slide two, please, st ation blackout background. Looking 1 back over 35 years ago, the WASH-1400 document was issued. And that 2 document clearly stated that station blackout could be an important contributor to 3 the risk of nuclear power pl ant accidents. In particular, it concluded that if a 4 station blackout were to persist, it c ould lead to a core melt and containment 5 failure. In 1980, the Commission designated the issue of station blackout as an 6 unresolved safety issue, A-

44. Additional regulator y requirements were imposed 7 in 1988, when 10 CFR 50.63 was issued. It's known as the SBO rule, that rule 8 requires each plant to be able to cope and recover from a station blackout event, 9 specifically to assure that the core is cooled and that the cont ainment integrity is 10 maintained.

11 When the station blackout rule wa s issued, coincident with that was 12 a Regulatory Guide 1.55 that was released.

That regulatory guide endorsed an 13 industry standard, 8700, providing guidance in how to implement the rule. All of 14 the operating fleet, all 104 plants today, met t he station blackout rule at the time 15 based on a detailed review of each applicant's submittal of how they complied 16 with the rule, as well as, we conducted two on-site inspections in each of the 17 regions, for a total of eight, to provi de us confidence that the rule was being 18 properly implemented.

19 After that time period, under the reactor oversight program, we 20 have our Component Design Basis Ins pection, or CDBI inspection, that 21 continually looks at t hose components that may be involved in the station 22 blackout mitigation strategies, as well as there are other inspection modules for 23 our regional inspectors and our site resi dent inspectors, such as the corrective 24 action inspection program, a plant modification inspection module, as well as an 25 9 equipment alignment m odule. All of those items might touch on the station 1 blackout. Feedback from the regions and from the inspections to date indicates 2 that the component design basis inspecti ons are pinpointing some of the SBO 3 activities that we see in the field.

4 Regarding license renewal activities, the evaluation for renewing 5 license has a specific requirement, and they're 10 CFR 54 for a review of the 6 station blackout aging and component s required, the safety systems and 7 structures required for the SBO must be included in their aging management 8 process. 9 Regarding new reactors, now, a ll new standard, that's a word I 10 used in this slide, standard meaning that

's not a passive new reactor, because 11 the second bullet would tell you that's not all plants, but all new standard reactors 12 are required to have an alternate AC power source. It's a diverse source, 13 meaning that it must be different than the installed emergency or standby diesel 14 generators. For new reactors with a pa ssive design, that's an AP1000 has a 15 passive design, its design includes a batte ry-power coping strategy of up to 72 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br />. 17 As you're aware, we responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist 18 attack through a number of initiatives.

Initially, we issued interim compensatory 19 measures in an order in February of 2002.

Within that order is section B.5.b, and 20 that's, we've heard the term B.5.b, and that's where it comes from. Those interim 21 compensatory measures were inspected at each site, evaluated, and eventually 22 became a license condition for all of our facilities. Just two years ago, in 2009, 23 10 CFR 50.54(hh) was issued to codify those requirements.

24 And the last slide is just a paraphrase of that paragraph in 25 10 50.54(hh). And these mitigat ion strategies are for beyond designed basis events 1 that could be beneficial in the context of the station blackout. With that, I'd like to 2 turn it over to Mr. George W ilson to go into more detail.

3 MR. WILSON: Thank you, Pat. Good morning, Chairman, 4 Commissioners. As Pat had stated, the 10 CFR 50.63 rule will also involve 5 alternating current power.

It intended each site to have to cope, and the big key 6 here is to recover from the loss of off-site power, and we'll get both a little bit later 7 on in the procedures. Once this rule was issued, the NRC staff met with the 8 industry and several working groups, and t hey started developing the strategy 9 that the rule would be implemented. So we developed Regulatory Guide 1.155.

10 At the same time, the industry devel oped a NUMARC guide, it's 87-00, on how 11 they would implement and deal with t he rule. The NRC endorsed the NUMARC 12 guidance as a way to implement and comply with the station blackout rule.

13 The real key with the station blackout rule was coping, and coping 14 is defined as the time that it takes to recover either on-site or off-site alternate 15 current power back into the plant. The rule specifically gave guidance on how 16 you would calculate and how you would go about doing the coping of the plant.

17 One of it was the on-site redundancy, the amount of diesel generators that you 18 would have at the site, the reliability of the diesel generators. Their reliability was 19 evaluated by different starting mechanism s; 10, 20, 50, to 100 start times, and 20 then that was evaluated. Also, the ex pected frequency of the loss of off-site 21 power, whether it would be hurricane-type winds , icing. That was also evaluated.

22 And the probable time needed to restore the off-site powe r that you would restore 23 based on your experience. All that criteria went into the coping analysis, and to 24 the plant. And that's how it was defined.

25 11 I want to point out here that we have had several, we have had 1 hurricanes here, and the diesel generator lia bility is a key here, both at Turkey 2 Point in Hurricane Andrew and at Waterford in Hurricane Katrina, the diesel 3 generators started and ran for multiple days.

They never did go into a station 4 blackout based on the reliability of the emergency diesel generators that we have 5 at the American plants.

6 And the coping methods; there's two different coping mechanisms 7 that can be used in U.S. plant

s. Forty-four of the plants in the U.S. are battery-8 only, so they can have a maximum coping period of up to four hours. When it 9 was analyzed if the coping period went above four hours, then they had to either 10 do modifications to the plant to reduce t he coping time, or they had to install an 11 alternate AC power that would come up. The AC, to be an alternate AC plant, 12 with to do no coping analysis at all, you had to be able to be able to bring the 13 power up within 10 hours1.157407e-4 days <br />0.00278 hours <br />1.653439e-5 weeks <br />3.805e-6 months <br />, excuse me, 10 mi nutes, and tie it on to the buses. If it 14 took longer than 10 minutes, then you had to do a combination of having an 15 alternate AC power and a coping analysis that was done for the time that you 16 would bring the plant up.

17 Sixty of the plants in the United States are alternate AC plants.

18 They cope from anywhere from coping analys is of two hours up to 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br />. The 19 coping -- the alternate AC power s ources are either hydro-generators, 20 combustion turbines, gas turbines that they can use. It can be the alternate, it 21 can be an opposite unit's diesel generat or, if they have excess capacity.

22 The staff reviewed the SBO rule implementation by writing a safety 23 evaluation for all 104 sites, and, in addition, as Pat had mentioned, we also went 24 out and performed eight inspections with a tem porary instruction that was written.

25 12 We did two units, or two plants, in eac h region, and there was no major issues 1 identified during the temporar y instruction. We did fi nd some of the assumptions 2 in the coping analysis, and those were resolved. And so, based on that and the 3 safety evaluations, the staff had dete rmined that the i ndustry properly 4 implemented the station blackout rule, and they were in compliance with that.

5 Basically, the design overview of the plants with the station 6 blackout is that, as I stated, battery c oping was a maximum of four hours. They 7 also evaluated and looked at how you coul d extend battery life, and I'll get on to 8 that in a little bit in the procedures by shedding loads. You had to evaluate the 9 effects of ventilation. You had to use ventilation, so heat up calculations were 10 done in each room to see what the impacts were. You looked at condensate any 11 way that you could do manual operator ac tions, bringing in compressed air, 12 minimize RCS inventory leakage. The leakage was based on, one of the key 13 components is that for the reactor cool ant pump seals in a pressurized water 14 reactor, you could only assume 25 gallons per minute leakage for a total of 100 15 gallons.

16 And the big key here is, operator training was performed and 17 procedures were written. So not only did they have to write specific procedures 18 on how they were going to deal and cope wit h a station blackout, but they had to 19 be trained upon it.

20 For the specific SBO procedures, they did specific actions on the 21 restoration of AC power.

We, in the United States, were a little bit different, 22 because there's a very close relationship between the grid operators and the 23 nuclear power plants. And one of the th ings, when we wrote a generic letter, in 24 Generic Letter 2006-02, that had to do with the grid interface with the nuclear 25 13 power plants, we verified that each one of the nuclear power plants would be the 1 first load that would be re stored if the grid was los

t. So we went back and made 2 sure that the primary reason is that for the safety of the power plants, but that is 3 the first load that's restored in a gr id when it goes down in that area.

4 They also developed procedures to enhance emergency diesel 5 generator troubleshooting, and they looked at additional ways to bring power 6 back on, so you look at additional procedures where you bring an alternate AC 7 power on, and look at different ways you c an tie it into the plant. They also 8 ensured that the support equipment woul d be functional without alternating 9 occurring power. That could be bringing in bottled air, putting in nitrogen air 10 stations in there, looking at what valves would have to be manually operated and 11 associated throttle position of those valv es. Protection is done to any of the 12 steam-driven pumps, HPCI, RCIC because that is used to mitigate an action of a 13 station blackout, identify the RCS leakage packs, try to minimi ze the amount of 14 water, and conserve the inventory of wa ter that you have in the primary.

15 Additionally, you look at past, the procedures actually look at past -- the first 16 primary water source, which woul d be the Condensate Storage Tank, and 17 looking past that, look how you could get additional water sources into the 18 Condensate Storage Tank to further provid e inventory water. Also look at 19 stripping non-essential loads off on the DC, which is looking at taking off DC-20 powered pumps, or removing the starting-fl ash circuitry for a diesel generator, 21 because that takes down the battery.

22 Also, you would look at, during the heat-up calculations that you 23 would do in the room, that can cause some actuations to happen. So some of 24 14 the actions, the procedures would di rect, would have operators go out and 1 bypass the isolation for HPCI or RCIC to ensure the steam valves would stay 2 open, you still have the steam supply for the steam-driven pumps. Also, look at 3 the equipment that you would actually us e to cool down and shut down the plant, 4 and evaluate what that usage would be.

This is -- the procedures got very 5 specific, and they were site specific on exactly how they could cope and deal with 6 a station blackout.

7 Also, in the United States, the grid interface, as I explained earlier --

8 there are agreements between each one of the nuclear power plants and the 9 local grid operators, based on voltage and frequency and the restoration of the 10 plant. In addition, the NRC staff here locally, on Monday through Friday, do a 11 grid report, and we look at w hat potentials for the grid is. And based on the fact 12 that if the grid is stre ssed or strained, then sometimes maintenance at the power 13 plants would minimize, to ensure that t here's no trips, or minimize the chance 14 that there would be a trip of the plant to maintain the grid reliability. We also 15 have grid-reliability standards in the United States now, t hat are in full force by 16 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissi on, and those grid-reliability standards 17 were written after the Northeast blackout, and they ensured additional reliability 18 and stability in the grid, and additional st udies are done on that to ensure that 19 that is one of the reasons tha t, to try to maintain the stab ility of the off-site power.

20 In addition, there's a specific grid-reliability standard for the nuclear power plants 21 only, which is Nuclear 001, which specifically goes into voltage and frequency 22 requirements at a nuclear power plant, because those are a lot tighter than 23 normal loads that are on the grid.

24 15 In summary, in the Unit ed States, there has only been one 1 identified case of a station blackout. T hat was at the Vogtle plant in 1990, and 2 that event lasted for approximately 55 minutes. The plant was in a shutdown 3 during the time, and it was because a truck had backed into one of the other 4 transformers that was being used, caused a ground, and ended up being in a 5 station blackout. The plant was able to restore one of the diesel generators and 6 get power restored, and come out of the blackout. As Pat had stated earlier, we 7 do still evaluate for station blackout compliance, and in the license renewal, we 8 make sure that the recovery paths have an aging-management plan. And once 9 again, that is recovery paths. A nd power uprates, if a licensee changes 10 something, the staff goes back and ensures that the battery-loading capacity 11 didn't change, which could potentially chang e your coping. We also look at 12 license amendment requests. As stated earlier, one of the plants is a 16-hour 13 coping plant, and originally it was a fou r-hour coping plant, but there was some 14 operating experience that had happened at the particular plant out west, and 15 based on that operating experience the staff was aware of, the licensee re-16 performed a coping analysis, and went from four hours to 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br />. Which 17 included -- that includes some modifications to ensure that the amount of fuel oil 18 that they would need would be there.

19 And we also interface with FE RC and NERC. We meet quarterly 20 with FERC and NERC. If there's any issue at all that happens on the grid, 21 there's a memorandum of agreement and a memorandum of understanding to 22 sign with both agencies, which, if there is issues with the grid up to a certain 23 level, if it does get severe, then our headquarters operations officer is called by 24 16 NERC, and the electrical branch is contacted to look at it. We also get anything 1 that would cause local problems in the grid , so we're very in tune with the grid in 2 looking at issues, and we would get those back out to the plants as they would 3 get stuff back into us. Now I' m going to pass this on to Eric.

4 MR. BOWMAN: Thank you G eorge. Good morning Chairman, 5 Commissioners. I'm Eric Bowman. I'm t he staff lead for the mi tigating-strategies 6 requirements that were imposed following th e terrorist events of 9/11. As Pat 7 had mentioned, we imposed these requirem ents through a series of regulatory 8 actions, but for convenience' sake, I'll re fer to them generically as the B.5.b 9 requirements. By their terms, the B.5.b requirements are broadly applicable to 10 any events that are related to explosions or fire. Due to the context in which the 11 strategies to meet those requirements were developed, most of the details of the 12 strategies on a site basis are designated fo r official use only, as security-related 13 information. Although they were develo ped to address impacts to the plant due 14 to explosions or fire, the result was a set of flexible, deploy able strategies to 15 accomplish the key safety functions for the reactor sites that could be useful in a 16 wide variety of circumstances.

17 Throughout the development proce ss for the B.5.b requirements, 18 we met periodically with our international partners to share information on 19 approaches to the problem and improve our response.

The B.5.b development 20 process was a deliberate, phased approach.

Initially, we started out looking at 21 what could be done with readily availabl e materials or personnel. Then we 22 moved on to see what can be done further to aid in the cooling of the spent fuel 23 in the spent fuel pools, and the final phase of the development process was 24 17 looking at the core cooling and maintenance of containment. The efforts started 1 out under the lead of the Office of Nu clear Security and Incident Response, 2 ultimately transitioning to the NRR in the lead for operating reactors. We had 3 great support from the regional offices, and analyses that came up from the 4 Office of Research during the effort.

5 As I had mentioned, Phase 1 looked at what could be done with 6 readily available materials and personnel.

In large part, the reason for that was 7 because we wanted to see what could be put in place rapidly to address the 8 need, and also the terms of the order itself referred to t he use of readily available 9 materials and personnel. Phase 1comprised a series of inspections, 10 assessments, and analyses, drawing on existing equipment and procedures, 11 best practices the licensees had for their initial responses, and lessons learned 12 that came about from the research analyses. That phase culminated in the 13 Phase 1 guidance document that was produced in Febr uary of 2005, describing 14 what our expectations were for the characteristics of the strategies that would 15 meet the requirements of the Interim Compensatory Measures Order. That 16 guidance document is designated safeguards information.

17 High-level overview of what we can speak of publicly about the 18 Phase 1 strategies; they involved c oordination of response with off-site 19 responders, improvements to the firefighting capabilities on-site, and what I 20 would term as passive measures, such as configuration of fuel within the spent 21 fuel pools in order to enhance coolability.

22 In Phase 2, we looked further at what could be done to promote 23 spent fuel cooling using measures that didn't rely on readily available materials or 24 18 personnel. The results of this phase were a set of mitigating st rategies that are 1 required for the licensees to be able to prov ide makeup water, or cooling spray to 2 the fuel, using means that are divers e from the normal methods for makeup 3 water or cooling of the pools. The dive rsity includes a diversity from the power 4 supplies within the spent fuel pool buildin g, or the building containing the spent 5 fuel pool -- whatever it's called on the site. And a number of the strategies within 6 this group are use of motor forces diverse entirely from on-site power distribution.

7 The Phase 3 looked at what el se could be done for core cooling 8 and containment. In that effo rt, we worked with the indust ry to identify just what 9 are the key safety functions that would need to be satisfied, based on the design 10 characteristics of the plants. The re sults here were two sets of mitigating 11 strategies; one that is r equired of pressurized water reactors, and one that is 12 required of boiling water reactors. For the majority of these strategies, the entry 13 conditions assume a loss of all internal power distribution, both alternating 14 current and direct current, and minimum staf fing on-site, so it's slightly more 15 conservative than a station blackout condition.

16 Because of the passive nature of the initial strategies, as well as 17 the entry conditions being more conserva tive, assuming a loss of all internal 18 power distribution, the B.5.

b strategies, if they were used in the event of an 19 extended station blackout, would have the potential to extend the period for 20 which a licensee could supply the key sa fety functions without on-site power 21 available. Subject to your questi ons, that concludes my briefing.

22 MR. BORCHARDT: That comple tes the staff's presentation.

23 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Thanks, appreciate the insights. We'll start 24 19 with Commissioner Magwood with questions.

1 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: Thank you. Thank you for your 2 presentations today. Very in formative. Let me ask sort of a basic question on 3 station blackout, something that I've been looking at in the last several weeks, 4 and I just wanted to sort of hear your thoughts about this. The -- you've talked 5 about the maximum life of the batteries and the coping strategy being four hours.

6 And I wonder if you could describe how the agency dealt with this, came up with 7 a four-hour coping duration, while at the same time, the procedures clearly 8 indicate that this is supposed to be a site-specific analysis where you look at site-9 specific characteristics of the plant, off-site power resources, and one would think 10 you would have a variety of conclusions after going through that analysis. But 11 yet most of the plants, a va st majority of the plants, have this four-hour coping 12 strategy. Can you reconcile those for me?

13 MR. WILSON: Yeah, the four-hour coping analysis was arrived 14 when the staff worked with the industry, and they looked at how long, roughly, it 15 would take to restore off-site power in various places. The estimate was .9 to 16 two hours, so based on that , the staff doubled the time and said you will cope 17 with a station blackout for f our hours. So the industry came up with, it would be 18 .9 to two hours, like I said, and we doubled it to have a safety margin there, to --

19 you'd cope with four hours. We chos e four hours based on the size and the 20 capacity of the batteries, so anything longer than that, modifications were made 21 or you brought an additional source on, but that's where the original four hours 22 came from.

23 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: What

's our actual experience with 24 20 loss of off-site power, in terms of how lo ng it takes to restore off-site power?

1 MR. WILSON: There is some data that was -- we used a NUREG, 2 6890, that has some data in it, and it would go anywhere from .5 hours5.787037e-5 days <br />0.00139 hours <br />8.267196e-6 weeks <br />1.9025e-6 months <br /> to three 3 hours3.472222e-5 days <br />8.333333e-4 hours <br />4.960317e-6 weeks <br />1.1415e-6 months <br />. We're also in, one of the statem ents that I made is we have constant 4 communications with NERC and FERC, and they have done some studies and 5 done some projections across the country on certain circumstances. How long it 6 would take to restore an off-site power, and we're presently looking at that, and 7 we have that to t he quick-look team.

8 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: W hen you're thinking about the 9 restoration of off-site powe r, it's interesting that having an alternative source of 10 off-site power is one of the options that you look at in mitigating a station 11 blackout. However, when you think about t he sorts of events that lead to the loss 12 of off-site power, what is the thinking in terms of, if you lose one source of 13 transmission from one off-site source, why do you think you have a second?

14 What sorts of scenarios woul d it be useful to have the second, redundant off-site 15 power source if you lost the first one?

If you have a hurricane that takes out the 16 transmission lines for one source of off-si te power, why would you think there'd 17 be a second?

18 MR. WILSON: I would go ahead and say you're not asking a 19 question with alternate AC source, or are you asking a question about the 20 redundancy of off-site power?

21 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: Yes.

22 MR. WILSON: Well, the more of f-site power lines that you have, 23 unless you would have a common cause failu re that would wipe out a switchyard, 24 21 the more lines that would come in and you have a more redundant off-site power, 1 then that would give you more capability to mitigate an acciden

t. You would want 2 an alternate AC source, t he staff would like to have an alternate AC source, 3 because the capacity of an alternate AC s ource is above that of the battery, so 4 there's more margin if I have an alternate AC source. There's no requirement, as 5 you had mentioned, to protect that alter nate AC source from events. I mean, 6 from environmental effect
s. There's no requiremen
t. We have, Appendix A, 7 GDC-2, that affects safety-related stuff from environmental effects, but those 8 requirements are not for the alternate AC source, so it is not a safety-related 9 source as robust as the emergency diesel generators, but it does have a longer 10 capacity and capability. T hat's the reason we'd w ant it, but there's no 11 requirement as such to have an underground cable which would protect it from, 12 like, high winds. There's no requ irement that we have for that.

13 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD:

But you mentioned that the 14 procedures that have been developed for station blackouts -- how much work 15 has been done to reconcile, or I guess to merge the station blackout procedures 16 with the severe-accident management guide lines? How much coordination is 17 there between those two?

18 MR. WILSON: Well, the stati on blackout is an abnormal operating 19 procedure. The SAMGs are above anything that you would have, so they're way 20 beyond what a station blackout. The basis of the SAMGs, when you go through 21 them, is you would have power to do ce rtain things, to get water back or to 22 minimize the release path. So as far as I know, they're not in tune, they don't go 23 from one to the other. The st ation blackout specifically tries to restore power, but 24 22 as far as I know, and -- Donny , can you add anything?

1 MR. HARRISON: You got it.

2 MR. WILSON: But they're not in tune where one feeds into the 3 other. They're used for a different purpose.

4 COMMISIONER MAGWOOD: So you never assumed that in the 5 case of a severe accident, that you lost offside power? Is that what you're 6 saying? 7 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Donny, do you want to maybe go up to the 8 mic? 9 MR. HARRISON: I'm Donny Harrison from NRR. The answer to 10 your question would be no. If you're into the SAMGs, you're into an event that's 11 gone beyond your normal emergen cy procedures and your abnormal 12 procedures, but what you might be in is going through the SAMG guidelines 13 looking for water sources, for containment fl ooding, and that type of thing. But at 14 the same time, you may have your stat ion-blackout procedures open also, and 15 you're trying to recover AC power. You might be doing the coping strategies of 16 taking loads off your batteries so you can prolong their life. So you may be 17 actually in both at the same time. That's kind of what would probably happen.

18 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: I mean, I've looked at some of the 19 SAMGs. I haven't looked at all of them. I've looked at some examples of 20 SAMGs for specific plants.

You might want to stick aro und for this. And I'm just 21 curious as to what -- most of the SAMGs, as I read them, seem to anticipate that 22 you do have power 23 MR. HARRISON: Well for most things, you need water and you 24 23 need to pump it, so implicit in that, you're going to need some type of power 1 supply or steam, if you can run a RCI C pump off the steam and have DC power 2 for the control of the pump. So the SAM Gs basically are geared towards a list of 3 water supplies for containment flooding.

Some of them need AC power, some of 4 them probably need DC power for control.

Again, then you get into the strategy 5 of, "Can I prolong the battery life so I can control the RCIC pump?"

if that's what 6 you're using to provide water to the core. So it's a mix, and the SAMGs are 7 guidelines. They're not procedural for specif ic events. So what it is is a list, 8 oftentimes, and so you'll get into that and you'll start going through the list saying, 9 "What is available? What isn't available?"

and you'll get down to what you've got.

10 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: All right, I think I'll leave it at that 11 for now. Let me ask just sort of a broad question. This is something that 12 actually, Eric, Leeds and I have talked about a little bit already. Which is, what 13 are the options if one were to have the desire to have a longer coping time? A 14 longer coping duration? What technical options immedi ately present themselves 15 in your mind to increase the duration?

16 MR. WILSON: Well, the way you would have to -- right now, we 17 don't know about the batteries. You coul d potentially have a higher-capacity 18 battery would be one way, but even with an alternate AC source, you have to 19 have everything on-site. Like the one plant that has a 16-hour coping analysis.

20 That means their alternate AC source has enough fuel capacity. It's already 21 there that it will run for 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br />, and they need to get off-site power back within 22 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br /> because that is all the capacity that's there unless they're going to 23 mitigate and bring additional fuel oil and st uff on for the source. So to go beyond 24 24 a four-hour capacity, I think you would have to have an alternate AC source and 1 you would have to have the capability of those -- well you'd have to have 2 everything there for it to run if you wanted to cope wit h something for longer than 3 four hours, or change the ba ttery out to a higher-capac ity battery that could 4 handle a larger discharge.

5 Another option would be to potent ially bring in a battery charger 6 that you could bring in, with a power supply to recharge the batteries and 7 maintain that capacity. That would be something that would -- you wouldn't have 8 to change your batteries. That would be, just bring another battery charger, 9 charge the batteries, and you could extend the capacity of those batteries that 10 you have on-site now.

11 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: A nd I understand there are a small 12 number of licensees that are doing some thing along those lines now, is that 13 correct? 14 MR. WILSON: Yes, there is one licensee that I'm aware of that has 15 brought a temporary battery charger in, they have it in their procedures that they 16 would charge, and increase the capacity of that battery. And that is one of the 17 coastal plants in the United States t hat a hurricane could actually affect.

18 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: Thank you very much. Thank you, 19 Chairman.

20 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Commissioner Ostendorff?

21 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

22 Thank you all for being here today. I w anted to maybe start out with Pat, I guess 23 it's a question for you and perhap s George. Just a big pi cture, looking at what 24 25 the NRC does via regions, resident-inspector programs, to assess the readiness 1 of a specific plant to deal with a station blackout. I understand there was a one-2 time inspection done back in the '80s t hat is part of, also, license-renewal 3 application process. Are t here any other looks that t he NRC takes via its resident 4 inspectors or by other mechanisms, to provide an NRC perspective on the 5 licensee's readiness to deal with the station blackout conditions?

6 MR. WILSON: Pat, I'll take th is one if you don't mind. Actually, 7 after Generic Letter 2006-02, we have wr itten some procedures. We used to go 8 out and do a temporary instruction that looked at the worst grid conditions, so 9 whether that would be -- mostly in the summer, where the grid would be 10 stressed. So we used to have a temporar y instruction that would go out and look 11 at summer readiness, to make sure that the plant was ready for the extreme grid 12 conditions that could happen in the summer. We changed -- actually went in and 13 changed one of the procedures. The adver se weather procedure actually looks 14 at summer readiness for the plant, on a gr id-type basis. Not specifically for 15 station blackout, but it looks at -- are t he diesels ready, or are they monitoring the 16 grid? So specifically looks at that --

not looking at incompliance with station 17 blackout, but looks at because the grid's stressed during those conditions. And 18 that's something the resident inspectors do.

19 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:

Anything there, Pat?

20 MR. HILAND: I'd like to add some thing, just a minor comment. My 21 first 10 years in the Commission, I was a resident inspector at three different 22 power plants. PWR and two boiling-water re actors. And the job of the resident 23 inspector is to be aware of the plant conditions every day. He goes into the 24 26 plant, he hears what the plant modifications are, what the design changes are, he 1 understands the need for the alternate AC sources on-site, both the standard 2 diesel or in Oconee's case, the hydro plant, as well as what's there for the station 3 blackout. And so you rely on that daily presence, five days a week or actually 4 seven days a week, of the resident inspec tor. So I would add that only, just 5 emphasize.

6 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF: Let me just kind of maybe add 7 another question on to that, that is related to this prec ise query. And that is --

8 and Commissioner Magwood was asking quest ions about the four-hour battery 9 time and so forth, as one component of the coping strategies for a specific plant.

10 Can you talk a little bit

-- I guess George, about -- is the coping strategy a 11 dynamic, evolving, living piece? Or is it static? Can you talk a little bit about how 12 that might be updated as conditions at the plant, or in that particular part of the 13 grid, may change?

14 MR. WILSON: The coping analysis that was done was a one-time 15 snapshot that the licensees had to look at their coping analysis. We do evaluate, 16 as I stated, in some of the license am endments like power uprate, if the battery 17 capacity would be affected if they were changing and adding DC loads, and we'd 18 go back and look at that. And as in t he case of the one unit, due to operating 19 experience, we challenged them and they went back and redid their calculation, 20 ended up being a 16-hour coping plant.

There has been several findings on 21 station blackout. They look at the assumpti ons. So it is -- there are issues that 22 are identified in different inspecti on procedures, but we do not go back and 23 reevaluate the full-blown assumptions and calculations that a licensee does.

24 27 MR. BORCHARDT: I think that's -- the key is that the regional 1 inspections that are done, as well as the resident inspectors, will look at every 2 design change that's made at the plant, or nearly every, and then they'll look at 3 50.59 evaluations to make sure that all the proper considerations were taken into 4 account. One of those would be loading on diesels, and if you change the load 5 of the diesel, or you change the load on a battery, those would all be evaluated 6 and would likely lead to an issue, perhaps, with station blackout. We don't do 7 station blackout reviews per se, but ther e's many, many ways that you would get 8 to a station-blackout issue just in the normal course of our oversight activities.

9 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF: Ok ay, thank you. Let me go 10 back to a comment that G eorge had mentioned in his brie fing, and that was, we 11 do have experience with hurricanes, and the Chairman mentioned the tornadoes 12 we've had just in the last 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br />, and certainly we had a tornado here in the 13 last couple weeks down in southern Virgin ia that impacted a switchyard at a 14 nuclear power plant. From the hurricane experience, or tornadoes, is there any 15 big area of query that you think the NRC needs to look at, or feel pretty 16 comfortable that our exit ing processes adequately asse ss the impact of these 17 weather-related events on off-site power availability?

18 MR. WILSON: Well, I know one of the things that the staff has 19 done, to give you an example to add defense and depth, when industry and 20 utilities have come in and asked for an ex tension, an AOT extension, a lot of 21 outage time on some sort of power source, either being a diesel generator or 22 transformer or one of the lines , one of the things that the staff requires is the 23 replacement of that power source with some sort of other power source. Not 24 28 safety related, but they bring in tem porary diesel generator s, and with that, the 1 temporary diesel generators, what we have seen is that t here are temporary 2 diesel generators, so if something would happen, you could easily get one of the 3 temporary diesel generators, and they got them at Waterford during Hurricane 4 Katrina, they had the temporary diesel generators brought on-site. They had 5 them in case they did lose off-site power, or they had a problem with the other 6 diesels, and they had that temporary diesel there. So that we know that they do 7 have that capability to do it, and they also line up fuel sources, I think, based on 8 some discussions -- and one of my staff members, actually out in Waterford 9 during Katrina, the roads were blocked, they had no other way, so they were 10 starting to bring fuel oil through with a barge. So we have had lessons learned 11 from the hurricanes that not only do they have extra power sources that they can 12 get, but also, you have to think outside the box, to look to see how you're going 13 to get the fuel oil there if the roads were blocked. So that is stuff that we've got 14 lessons learned, and it has seemed to wo rk. At Turkey Point, they ran the 15 diesels for a couple weeks, so it seems to work.

16 MR. HILAND: Yeah, let me just add -- and Turkey Point's a good 17 example, where hurricanes are somethi ng that you see on the weather map, 18 approaching you. And there are procedures at the site, and they initiated it at 19 Turkey Point. They shut the plant dow n before the hurricane got there. They 20 started up the diesels, and essentially, they were well prepared for that event.

21 So there is a process, versus a tor nado is unknown. T hat tornado, you get 22 about, at luck, 15, 30 minutes of warning, for a tornado warn ing, to react. But for 23 hurricanes, we have procedures in place. Our regional office goes into a standby 24 29 mode in the response center. The resi dent inspectors for Hurricane Andrew 1 were on-site throughout the entire even t, and so there are some preparatory 2 work that you can do for a hurricane.

3 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF: Thank you. Eric, I'd like to turn 4 to you for a minute here on B.5.b. And again, thank you for your presentation, 5 and I recognize that there are limitations as to what you might be able to address 6 in this session, but let me just ask this question. Can you talk in general terms as 7 to what the NRC does to inspect the ability of the licensee to carry out B.5.b-type 8 actions, as far as equipment reliability, te sting that equipmen t, operator training, 9 et cetera?

10 MR. BOWMAN: That's examined on a triennial basis, as part of the 11 triennial fire protection inspection.

We added the B.5.b requirements and the 12 strategies that meet them as an inspectable area there, January 1 of 2010. So 13 they look at -- so they look at the capabilities of the equipment to be used to meet 14 the strategies, the maintenance on the equipment, and the training of the 15 personnel.

16 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF: So we have a little bit over a 17 year experience with that. Is that what we -- you said January 1, 2010? Any big 18 "ah-ha" kind of lessons learned from that level one year experience so far?

19 MR. BOWMAN: If I could defer that to the closed session, I'd 20 prefer. 21 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF:

Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

22 Chairman.

23 MR. BORCHARDT: Commissioner, I would also just acknowledge 24 30 that the industry has done a review of that equipment, of their own. They've 1 identified some issues that are being reso lved. Some of them are being informed 2 by the uniqueness of what happened in Japan, as to where equipment is stored, 3 for example. It was look ed at differently now, giv en the tsunami kind of flooding 4 issues, than we might have looked at it previously.

5 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF: Thank you.

6 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: If I could just clarify, the tri-an nual is not the 7 first inspections we've done at B.5.b. We did, following implementation of B.5.b 8 we did a temporary instruction, as I recall, to inspect all the B.5.b implementation.

9 MR. BOWMAN: That's correct, sir. There were, I believe, four or 10 five temporary inspections that were conducted along the development process.

11 In 2008, we did a final verification that everything was in place. Then we 12 transitioned to monitoring it through the reactor ov ersight process and the tri-13 annual fire protection inspection, and --

14 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay. So that, I just wanted to clarify.

15 MR. BOWMAN: That's correct.

16 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF: Thanks for the clarification.

17 MR. BOWMAN: Sure.

18 COMMISSIONER OSTENDORFF: Thanks, Chairman.

19 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Commissioner Svinicki?

20 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Thank y ou all for your presentations.

21 My colleagues have touched on some topics I might have addressed. They 22 might not have posed the questions in the exact same way, so I apologize if I'm 23 covering any of the same ground a little bit.

24 31 At a very high level, Bill, you talked about the fact, you gave a 1 status report on what's happening in J apan, and you talked a little bit about our 2 90 day and our longer term review. As long as our colleagues in Japan are 3 focused, as they are now, very immediately and deeply still on mitigation, dealing 4 with the circumstances on the ground ther e, they're obviously appropriately 5 focused on that and not focused, right now , in being able to look at detailed 6 chronologies of events, or lessons learned, or things like that. And yet, we have 7 underway this near term review.

8 And so, my thought turns on station blackout to a question that I still 9 want to ask you, because we do know quite a bit, and we have a presence in 10 Japan, and we've been learning a lot about the events. I would ask any of you if 11 you want to respond: based on what you k now today, is there anything about the 12 events that occurred in Japan, with relation to station blackout, that cause you to 13 immediately identify areas in our regulat ions that you would assess today are 14 potentially inadequate, based on what you know right now?

15 MR. BORCHARDT: Right after t he event, and every day since, we 16 ask ourselves whether or not there's some regulatory action we need to take to 17 assure the protection for the 104 plants in th is country. And to date, we have not 18 identified anything that requi res immediate action. That doesn't mean we won't 19 identify some things that we want to raise to the Commission for future 20 consideration. Station blackout rule oversight might be one of those.

21 But the short term task force is looking at station blackout. I believe 22 they'll address it to some degree. I think it

'll, if I were to guess, would guess that 23 will also be an element of the longer te rm review, as we gain more and more 24 information about the existence or the c onditions of switch gear inside of the 25 32 plants in Japan, which we really have no idea of the condition of that equipment.

1 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: And I think, somewhat, my question 2 is rooted in a comment, that I believe you made representing the U.S., and you 3 were also, I think, Vice President, the Convention on Nuclear Safety, a really 4 important international meeting on national nucl ear safety cooperation 5 internationally. But I think you indicated in your remarks there that we may be 6 learning about this event even a decade from now.

7 So is it accurate to say that, for our 90 day review and also the 8 longer term, that we will, by, perhaps, t he end of the year, we'll be looking at 9 issuing some further recommendations if appropriate? It will still be challenging 10 to have good fidelity and solid knowledge of all of the events that occurred over 11 in Japan. Is it true that the team that's doing the 90 day review and our longer 12 term review, they're going to struggle with that issue?

13 MR. BORCHARDT: Clearly.

I mean, and their charter 14 acknowledged that they're to use whatever information they have available today.

15 Because we didn't want to wait until we had all of the information; who knows 16 how long that would be? So we didn' t want to delay in doing what was 17 appropriate and prudent to do now, or in the near term. And so they will identify 18 many holes in our knowledge that, hopefully, many of those will be filled during 19 the time period of the longer term review. But it's not outside the realm of 20 possibility that it'll be years before we know the full condition of, you know, the 21 inside of the core, and various pieces of equipment that are currently in very high 22 radiation areas.

23 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: And this may sound simple, but 24 sometimes things are more complicated than we think. Do we have a good 25 33 ability right now to do a comparison between our requirements on station 1 blackout and Japan's requirements on station blackout? That sounds very 2 simple, like, as long as we can translate it, why don't we have the ability to just 3 lay those side by side? Is that more complicated than we think?

4 MR. BORCHARDT: I don't know, you know, and I don't know how 5 much of the short term task force, they'v e looked into that. But you're right, it 6 sounds like it'd be pretty simple, it's something you could do through a web 7 search even. But I don't really k now, if Artie or -- where's Artie?

8 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Right behind you.

9 MR. BORCHARDT: Yeah. We'll have to get back to you.

10 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Okay, but that is something that it 11 would be your understanding that, for the 90 day review, they'll at least try to 12 access whatever they can in terms of comparability, and that would inform 13 whatever it is the 90 day review would put forward?

14 MR. BORCHARDT: I think that sounds reasonable.

15 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Okay.

16 MR. BORCHARDT: they're not doing it now, they will be later 17 today. 18 [laughter]

19 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Let's make sure that they have their, you 20 know, that that's a task, that they c an complete in the appropriate way, then 21 they'll do that.

22 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: And t hen I would characterize some 23 of my colleagues' questions, based on the pr esentations you gave, they have to 24 do with something I think the NRC has been questioned about since this event 25 34 occurred, and it is: how frequently do we challenge and reassess underlying 1 assumptions that we've made in developing the regulations we have in place?

2 So, George, you talked quite a bit today about looking at any time a licensee 3 might propose a change on-site, we will look at the evaluation they did to comply 4 with station blackout. We'll see if t here's any effect there, and we would 5 challenge that.

6 But I think that some of the questions that I think NRC has been 7 asked have to do with: do we look at our assumptions about broader external 8 conditions? And George, you've ment ioned working with the Federal Energy 9 Regulatory Commission on grid reliabili ty, grid status, the North American 10 Electric Reliability Corporati on. We have important relationships there where we 11 reassess that. But, of course , that's very dynamic, as the nation looks at maybe 12 having more renewable energy, the grid may look different in the future.

13 Can you characterize our overall engagement on really having access to the best 14 information about external things like grid reliability, so that we can constantly be 15 informing whether our regulatory assumpti ons that we've made in the past are 16 adequate?

17 MR. WILSON: We -- as I had stated, we meet quarterly with both 18 NERC and FERC. And if anything comes up, we're aware of it. We actually are 19 noticed and given information if they're going to change any of their reliability 20 standards. We have commented on the reliability standards to ensure that the 21 safety of the nuclear power plants are main tained. I feel very confident about the 22 status of the grids.

23 When they do new reports, we know that they are doing new 24 research reports, such as t here's three reports out right now that we're looking at, 25 35 based on the frequency response of the grid and the interconnection. We do 1 have, joint Commission meetings with the Federal Energy Regulatory 2 Commission and we also invite NERC. We have contacts with the Department of 3 Energy on their grid sector, their e nergy sector, to evaluate that.

4 So, as things do change, we do re-look at that. And to see if we do have to 5 evaluate the grid assumptions and the staff has been looking very hard at this for 6 the last three years, specifically with stuff that c hanges in the grid, and to see 7 how the renewable sources such as, spec ifically, wind, and how that's taken, 8 because it potentially affects the reliability. And there has been an incident 9 where the wind just stopped blowing and there was 1100 megawatts that was 10 lost in ERCOT, which is the Texas grid.

So I feel very confident, we know the 11 status of it and ar e evaluating that.

12 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: And you mentioned, in response to a 13 question from Commissioner Ostendorff, that our site-by-site evaluation of the 14 compliance with station blackout was a bi t of a one-time snapshot. Based on the 15 answer you just gave me, do you have all of the authorities that you need, if you 16 did need to change an underlying assumption that was external to the plant 17 conditions itself, having to do with a grid or something else? Do you feel 18 confident that you have the authority to com pel that licensees have to take that 19 changed circumstance into account?

20 MR. WILSON: Yeah, I think that we have the process that we do 21 look at it potentially as plant-specific backfit, or if we thought there was a broad 22 look at potential rulemaking, and route that through the pr ocess. So I would think 23 that process is in place to do that.

24 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: Okay. And my last question is -- I'll 25 36 rope in Pat, because I think this is a little bit of a put you on the spot question, but 1 for George and Pat: we've talked a lot about four hour batteries. We talked a 2 little bit about eight hour batteries. But, you know, you're probably, like many of 3 us, since this event occurs, there's been a lot of discussion about four hour 4 battery life.

5 And I don't know if, perhaps, at a family event, or a barbeque, or 6 anything, maybe some member of your family might come up to you and say, 7 "Well, you know, we have natural events that can occur, like hurricanes: those 8 can be multi-day events. What is the basis for having four hours?" Just to a lay 9 person, when they come to you and say, "I s it really only four hours that nuclear 10 power plants have to cope with some sort of event of a long duration?" What do 11 you say to -- if you were talking to a family member, what would you say to that?

12 MR. HILAND: Yeah, I'll start. Firs t of all, the, I would talk to the 13 family member and say, "That's the maximum that we allow reliance on a 14 battery." We have a high expectation that you restore either off-site power or one 15 of your emergency diesels, or an alternate AC power source. It doesn't mean 16 that the battery -- as you heard, we have an example of a plant that has a small 17 generator; maybe they bought it at Home Depot. And they bring it in, they 18 charge the battery, or recharge the battery.

19 That means you can extend the life of the battery, but the four hour 20 coping time is the maximum we allow. T hat's not to say the batteries can't last 21 longer than that. I don't hav e the details of all the batteries at the plants, but 22 they're tested periodically to assure that they're in a high state of readiness.

23 That's how I would answer that question.

24 Our experience is the reliability of our emergency diesels is very 25 37 high. Very high reliability, and it's very -- demonstrated very promptly to restore 1 emergency diesel that either didn't start the first time, there' s a problem with it, 2 the mechanics are on-site, the operators kn ow how to operate the controls of the 3 diesel. So we have some high level of confidence that, within four hours, they'll 4 get either off-site power back, of course that doesn't happen if you have a 5 hurricane, or they'll get the emergency dies els back on line. That's my answer.

6 George? 7 MR. WILSON: Yeah. What I would add is, because I've been 8 asked this question. I commute two hours each way and I get asked this 9 question a lot, recently. And how I've answered is that we've only had one 10 station blackout in the Un ited States. Our diesels are very reliable, and they 11 restored that power within 55 minutes.

I also explain that we have redundant 12 power supplies. So you have to have something to take out multiple sources of 13 power. And once I explain that, I've, usua lly they stop, or I run overboard --

14 [laughter]

15 COMMISSIONER SVINICKI: All right, thank you. Thank you all 16 very much. Thank you.

17 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Commissioner Apostolakis.

18 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I 19 guess most of my questions have been asked, but I, we've been talking about 20 assumptions and so on. It seems to me, two of the assumptions that we have 21 been making regarding station blackout now have to be questioned in light of 22 what has happened in Japan.

23 One is the time that we cons ider when we try to manage station 24 blackout. I mean, we talk about four hours, eight hours, some PRAs go to 24 25 38 hours. But as far as I know , there are no studies that go to weeks. And that's the 1 first assumption. The second assumption is that there may be major 2 infrastructure damage. So when you, Mr. Wilson, talk about diesel reliability, I 3 assume you are talking about under conditions that are not as severe as what we 4 have seen in Japan. So are these the two assumptions that we have to revisit 5 now, in light of Japan? The time and the state of t he infrastructure?

6 MR. BORCHARDT: Well, in my view, clearly the state of the 7 infrastructure is very important. I m ean, it's for station blackout, it's for 8 emergency preparedness, it really cuts across the entire spectrum of plant 9 response to an event. We practice emer gency response activities assuming that 10 there is the infrastructure surrounding the plant. So there's clearly a good lesson 11 learned.

12 Regarding the duration of the time, I think there is something, we 13 certainly need to evaluate. But I do believe that our regulatory processes and 14 requirements, even though they might, you know, they talk about four hours for 15 the batteries. We, as Pat and George mentioned, have requirements for 16 reliability of the diesel generat ors, for tech specs, times for how long they can be 17 out of service, and all of those requirements, and fuel storage tanks 18 requirements, that assume that it's going to be a longer duration event than just 19 four hours, certainly.

20 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:

But certainly not weeks, 21 though. I don't know of any st udy that went out that far.

22 MR. BORCHARDT: No, but I think that there are, there are plant 23 procedures and protocols in place to get the tanks refilled for diesel generators. I 24 mean, diesel generators are an incredibly important system for plant response.

25 39 And there are -- every plant that I'm aware of has arrangements to have their 1 facilities, their tanks refilled, in the event that they need to go on long term 2 operation of the diesel generators.

When we had the northeast blackout a 3 number of years ago, there were some plants that had, off-site power was out, 4 for a time period, and all those preparations were put into play in order to go, 5 assume that we would have long te rm loss of transmission capability.

6 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:

Now, I have a question 7 regarding the temporary inst ruction. I'm trying to understand what exactly the 8 inspectors did that led you to the conclusion that there are no issues. Did they 9 go in there and look at whether our r egulations and the co mmitments of the 10 licensee are met? Or did they go bey ond that and they looked at, you know, 11 what if we have a major external event, natural phenomenon, what's going to 12 happen? Are you prepared to cope with it? Is that something that the task force 13 will look into and the inspectors just looked at the current commitments and 14 made sure that they are, in fact, satisf ied? And then, of course, the conclusion 15 that there are no issues probably makes sense.

16 MR. BORCHARDT: In general, we want to give our inspectors 17 guidance to go out and inspect against exis ting requirements.

They may identify 18 topics and ideas that go beyond the des ign basis or beyond the regulatory 19 requirements. We were certainly becoming aware of some of those ideas, but as 20 a general rule, we inspect against existi ng requirements. The task force would 21 be the proper vehicle to say, okay, that's fine, but do we need to revisit what the 22 regulatory requirement is? Does it need to go further than the current construct 23 does? 24 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:

The B.5.b equipment. I don't 25 40 know if it's appropriate to ask the question now, but did you consider major 1 catastrophe and what it could do to the B.5.b equipment?

2 MR. BOWMAN: The B.5.b was the response to an event that 3 involved explosions and fire, so that wa s generally the focus of what was looked 4 at in developing the mitigating strategies that would meet the requirements. We 5 can discuss it further in the closed session. I think that would probably be 6 appropriate.

7 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS: Commissioner Magwood 8 mentioned earlier that what will happen at a particular site is, of course, site-9 specific. And I'm wondering whether we have site-specific accident sequences 10 and somebody, the licensee, or us, or both, are looking at these sequences and 11 make sure that the regulat ory requirements we have, or the commitment of the 12 licensee, since it's beyond design basis, ar e actually consist ent with the site-13 specific nature of these events.

14 And one example, for example, we -- one example, for example, 15 okay. When we assume that the operators will actually do something, are we 16 considering the possibility they won't do it?

Or that they woul d do the right thing, 17 or the wrong thing? You know where I'm going with this. Ar e you using PRA at 18 all, when you're doing these evaluations?

19 MR. HARRISON: I think, in a general sense, if you go back to the 20 IPEs and IPEEEs, there was considerations that would be PRA-oriented analysis 21 to address some of this. The IPE and IPEE E were used to close out a number of 22 the safety issues that were, in the mid-80s, related to variou s capabilities. So 23 those were reviewed in that context. Now, we also have SPAR models, and 24 licensees have internal event PRA model s that they have. And again, that 25 41 should inform their SAMG's as to, like, if you need a diesel generator or fire pump 1 capability, if you have that capability, you c an put that in your plant-specific PRA 2 and show that you could mitigate so me severe accidents using that.

3 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS: So some of it is done.

4 MR. HARRISON: Some of it is there.

5 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS:

Okay. Thank you, Mr.

6 Chairman.

7 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay, I'll go back to Commissioner 8 Svinicki's question about the family picnic, or whatever, wherever it was. One of 9 the things I'm having trouble reconciling, I think Commissioner Magwood raised 10 this point too, is the four hour, the four hour time, t he coping time, and I think, 11 Pat, you did a nice job explaining that's the maximum time t hat we would allow 12 before we would expect off-site power to be restored. Wher e I'm having a hard 13 time reconciling that is we have lots of examples where it takes longer than four 14 hours1.62037e-4 days <br />0.00389 hours <br />2.314815e-5 weeks <br />5.327e-6 months <br /> to restore off-site power. So there seems to be an inconsistency with that 15 assumption, and I think, George, you said t he same thing: that our data says that 16 restoration takes about three hour

s. So I'm not sure if th at, if that includes some 17 run time for the diesels and then four hours, or if that is four hours with, say, an 18 immediate loss of off-site power and an i mmediate inability of the diesels to 19 operate. How do you reconcile those two issues?

20 MR. WILSON: Well, the four hour s is based on losing all alternate 21 current power. So that's the losing the diesels and losing off-site power. As to 22 diesels are running and you have your power supply --

23 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Right.

24 MR. WILSON: -- and that's what we've seen here, in the U.S., the 25 42 diesels have ran. We've only had that one event. But the four hours, like I said, 1 is, that's just based on having no power and just doing, only coping on the 2 batteries by itself. If you have -- if you can do a combination, then you do an 3 analysis. You do a coping period that, if yo u think your batteries, you're going to 4 need your batteries for two hours, you would do a coping analysis that says, I 5 can handle just on the batteries for two hour s, then I have my alternate AC power 6 come on, and then I do an analysis on how long I would think that alternate AC 7 power needs to run before I would rest ore the power. That's how they're all 8 combined. So the four hours is the, what I would consider to be the worst-case 9 scenario, where I have nothing, I'm just on my batteries. And, like I said, there 10 are processes that --

11 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: And I appreciate that. The point, though, is 12 that, clearly, if we get into a situation which is the situation we have in Japan, 13 which is, where you lose the diesels, it takes more than four hours, in some 14 cases, to get off-site power restored. In the hurricane si tuation, you know, 15 Turkey Point, you said the diesels were r unning for days? I'm interpreting that to 16 mean that it was days before off-site power was restored. I m ean, I think, from 17 Browns Ferry last night, they still have not restored, maybe they have one line, 18 not fully restored, but they have one line, so that they seem to be okay, there. So 19 -- 20 MR. HILAND: [inaudible] emergency diesels there.

21 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: And, again, and in that case, the diesels are 22 running. But, of course, the station blackout is the rule for when the diesels 23 aren't running, is not the rule for when the diesels are running. It's intended to be 24 that situation in which they don't, they don' t run, for whatever reason. So, again, 25 43 that's why I think, from a risk perspective, we don't believe it's a significant event.

1 But four hours doesn't seem to be a reas onable time to restore off-site power if 2 you've, if you've lost the diesels immediately. So I'm not sure where we have the 3 data that supports that right now. I mean, unless I'm, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, 4 I guess it's what I'm trying to ask. Am I wrong about hu rricanes? Did it only take 5 four hours to restore site power and they just didn't --

6 MR. HILAND: No, you're correct. You're correc

t. But the four 7 hours8.101852e-5 days <br />0.00194 hours <br />1.157407e-5 weeks <br />2.6635e-6 months <br />, as George described, came from an analysis that what was the ability to 8 restore off-site power, and what was the ability to restore, how reliable were the 9 emergency diesels. Now, they came up with two hours. And we said, okay, two 10 hours1.157407e-4 days <br />0.00278 hours <br />1.653439e-5 weeks <br />3.805e-6 months <br /> is the average at the time. We'r e not going to allow anyone to give an 11 analysis greater than four hour s, with that expectation.

12 And you're right. In the hurric ane situation, the reason the plants 13 have, you know, preemptive procedures, when they see a hurricane approach, 14 they shut the plant, they turn on t heir emergency diesels, and that's, they 15 anticipate the loss of the off-site power.

You know, the four hours is, you want to 16 restore either off-site or an emerg ency diesel. And we, we may confuse 17 emergency diesel with alternate AC pow er. And alternate AC means your 18 emergency diesels are out of service, as some, some mechanical problem or 19 common mode, and you have this alternate AC. And there's a number of plants 20 that chose that path. T he alternate AC, and the reason for the time frames, is 21 how much fuel do you have on-site for this alternate AC, whatever the gas 22 turbine, how much gas do you have available to run it? And you know, typically -

23 - 24 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Those alternate ACs are not seismically 25 44 qualified.

1 MR. WILSON: That's correct, they're not.

2 MR. HILAND: Right, that's correct.

3 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: So they

're not intended to necessarily 4 survive --

5 MR. HILAND: That's correct.

6 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: -- some of those type of events.

7 MR. HILAND: Right.

8 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Well, I apprecia te that and as I said, I'm just 9 trying to understand the, you know, kind of the basis. And, again, just to 10 reiterate, it's not, the diesel reliability is very high, and I was just looking back at 11 the statement's consideration for the original ruling, even, I think, in the time from 12 the 80s to the time in which the rule was ultimately implemented, there were 13 improvements in diesel generator reliabilit

y. I assume that those improvements 14 have only enhanced over time, to today. So the likelihood of a station blackout is 15 very low, but in the event that there is a station blackout , that's externally driven, 16 I'm not convinced that, in that situation, four hours is a reasonable time to restore 17 off-site power. And that ma y be something that we want to look up a little bit 18 more. 19 There's been, I think, a lot of good questions about the coping 20 analysis and the living nature of that coping analysis. I understand that the staff 21 has looked at this issue in the past, and one of the, I think one of the options that 22 was considered, given that the rule does n't appear to allow, directly, the agency 23 to require an update, that coping analysis, one of the issues that was presented 24 was the possibility of a generic letter. I don't know if you have any information on 25 45 the status of that.

Is that something the staff is pursuing, or are they no longer 1 pursuing a generic letter to update coping analyses?

2 MR. WILSON: Actually, we were, we have evaluated looking, 3 looking into going to the rulemaking as what we have looked at. So that is 4 something that the staff is still looking, and we'll pass the data that we have on to 5 the 30 day look team --

6 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay.

7 MR. WILSON: We do have, we do have some data that we've 8 done and that data will be passed on to the, to the look team. And I was not 9 aware of a generic letter. We were lookin g at a lot of data that we had received, 10 both from FERC and NERC, and some of the NUREG studies, and looking to 11 see whether or not we had to go after rulemaking and --

12 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay.

13 MR. WILSON: -- enhance the station blackout rule itself.

14 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: So that is, t hat is effectively ongoing at this 15 point, although not at a, ma ybe not gotten to a --

16 MR. WILSON: Yes, we're still, we're still accumulating data.

17 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Okay. Good.

Thanks. To what, and we've 18 talked a little bit about, kind of from the external perspective , what the station 19 blackout does, but I wanted to explore just an issue of, obviously, a significant 20 consideration that we've s een from Japan is the impact on spent fuel pools. And 21 to what extent are the s pent fuel pools and the limited power needs that they may 22 have included in the station blackout considerations. Is that a piece of it, or is it 23 just the core?

24 MR. WILSON: No, the station bl ackout rule did not evaluate the 25 46 spent fuel pool cooling, so that was not part of the rule itself. That was one of the 1 reasons that we had added the other porti on, and had Eric go over some of the 2 B.5.b strategy, because that specific ally evaluated the spent fuel pool.

3 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: They, ma ybe under severe -- I mean, are 4 there procedures, maybe under severe a ccident, or under, I guess it would be 5 more under the B.5.b, to provide power to, to whatever systems are necessary 6 for circulation in the pools? Do thos e procedures exist more on a kind of a 7 severe accident perspective, or?

8 MR. WILSON: Well, I have some rough data that, we have 9 conducted a survey of the spent fuel pools. It was done in the mid-90s, and 10 about a third of the plants, the spent fuel pools themselves are actually on a --

11 the back-up power is the diesel generator , so they're actually on the safety 12 buses. They're manually loaded, so they are on a safety-related power supply.

13 A large number of the other ones actually have RHR as a back-up to provide 14 spent fuel pool cooling or make-up, so RHR is a safety-related system, then that 15 would be the back-up of the diesel.

16 And then there's several others that they can put a spool piece in to 17 cross-connect systems, to provide additional cooling and make-up mechanisms.

18 So we did look at that in the 90s and ev aluate that. So there are ways that they 19 could transfer power, since they could get the battery backup, or a system that is 20 powered by the 1E safety-related system, to provide that. So that has been 21 looked at.

22 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: All right. A nd then, just turn to the last 23 question. And maybe it, almost may be the opposite of, the flip side of what 24 Commissioner Apostolakis raised, which is: to what extent are we, and how are 25 47 we modeling station blackout in some of the risk assessment s that we do? Do 1 we have a good way to model these kinds of events as we look at our severe 2 accident and the, I mean, particular in t he PRA? How exactly do we model these 3 kind of events? And I think, hinting from Commissioner Apostolakis, we don't 4 necessarily look beyond 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> for this ki nd of situation, into the longer, longer 5 time frame. And is that a non-conser vatism or a conservatism in the PRA 6 analysis that we have.

7 MR. HARRISON: The way that the point-specific PRA's are 8 developed, the key become s the probability of recove ry of off-site power, 9 ultimately. I know back in the '80s, it was, like, 50 percent of all events were 10 recovered in the first half-hour, and it ki nd of works down from there. So, and 11 most of the data says that at least pr ior from my past, we had no events that 12 went beyond like 10 or 11 hours1.273148e-4 days <br />0.00306 hours <br />1.818783e-5 weeks <br />4.1855e-6 months <br />, or something like that. So that gives you a tail 13 of the curve on the recovery curve.

14 So most PRAs run for 24 hour2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> missi on times, if there's some critical 15 issue that occurs after that, they may r un to 32 hours3.703704e-4 days <br />0.00889 hours <br />5.291005e-5 weeks <br />1.2176e-5 months <br />, or some thing like that. But 16 what they're looking for is reaching a safe, stable condition at the plant, so if I can 17 -- I got power back or I've got some capability where I can maintain that, then 18 they'll stop the analysis and declare it success ful. What that will mean is if you're 19 into an extended outage after an earthquake or whatever, you're going to have to 20 provide fuel to the diesels, and in that situation it's determi ned that, within a day, 21 you can get those supplies there. Or, within eight hours, you'll be able to get that 22 fuel supply to the plant and be able to pr ovide it. So, that

's an inherent 23 assumption, I would say, that's underneath t he PRA: that those capabilities will 24 be there.

25 48 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: As we go fo rward, I mean, and again, as we 1 get more information and the ta sk force is looking at this kind of things, I mean, 2 that obviously would probably be relevant data inputs to see if some of those 3 assumptions are no longer unnecessarily vali d as we go forward. So, again, we 4 appreciate your information. I don't know if anyone has any other questions.

5 Commissioner Magwood?

6 COMMISSIONER MAGWOOD: Just a quick question about Japan.

7 One of the things about t he early portions of the events in Japan that was a bit 8 frustrating was recognizing that the Japanese were unable to provide emergency 9 power to the plant and weren't able to connect the -- they brought generators in 10 but couldn't get them connected. Do we have any more insight or understanding 11 as to what the problem was in the early days of the event?

12 MR. BORCHARDT: I don't have a definitive answer. It's another 13 one of those areas where we don't have clear information, but we do have good 14 indication that the switch gear on the lower elevations of the building were 15 severely affected by the tsunami, and that probably, and this is just my opinion, 16 probably caused serious degradation to the el ectrical distribution within the plant.

17 So even if you had an electrical supply, the temporary generator, there's no place 18 to make an easy connection.

19 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Any other questions?

20 COMMISSIONER APOSTOLAKIS: I'd like to make one brief 21 comment. The key in developing the acci dent sequence in a station blackout is 22 the recovery of off-site power, as Donnie mentioned.

The 0.9 to two hours range 23 that you mentioned referred to routine failures of the grid. People now have two 24 separate curves, which goes back to your question, Mr. Chairman. There is one 25 49 curve for recovery from these rout ine events, and another one from major 1 external events. And that time goes much longer t han two hours. So the four 2 hours2.314815e-5 days <br />5.555556e-4 hours <br />3.306878e-6 weeks <br />7.61e-7 months <br /> which was conservative I guess appl ies only to the routine events and not 3 to the longer.

4 CHAIRMAN JACZKO: Well, again, I thank you all for your insightful 5 information, and it's given us lots of thi ngs to think about. A nd we'll adjourn now 6 and have just a brief closed portion to discuss some of the B.5.b. issues. Thank 7 you. 8 [Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded]

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