ML18023A060

Advises of Erroneous,Inaccurate & out-of-date Info Submitted to NRC in Aslb 860516 Ltr Re Generic Concerns on Adequacy of FEMA Stds for Determining Alert & Notification Sys Effectiveness.Served on 860707

ML18023A060
Person / Time
Site:	Indian Point
Issue date:	07/03/1986
From:	Brandenburg B CONSOLIDATED EDISON CO. OF NEW YORK, INC.
To:	Bernthal F, Roberts T, Zech L NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
References
CON-#386-888 SP, NUDOCS 8607090162
Download: ML18023A060 (9)

Text

Brent t.. Brandenburg P1ssEe/cA~/A~~/ ~~

OocKET NUÃ".. R gjgiLIsUTH FI<<~

~ g 47-ZA 2 p 5'

Consolidated Edison Company ol New York, Inc a Irving Place. New York, N Y f 0003 Telephone f212 l 460.4333 OOCKPg0 866249 July 3, 1986 USHgC Indian Point Unit Nos. l.and 2 Docket Nos. 50-03 and Pgg2+

OFFICE n.-:.-.

Chairman Lando W. Zech, Jr. OOCKF.fist'r p BH'ge lf

[jfpj(r Commissioner Thomas M. Roberts Commissioner Frederick M. Bernthal Commissioner James K. Asselstine U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C. 20555 Ssf+D JUf. g 886 Re: Indian Point Alert and Notification S stem

Dear Mr. Chairman and Commissioners:

As owner and operator of Indian Point Unit No. 2, Consolidated Ed'ison Company of New York, Inc. ("Con Edison" ) is obliged to advise you of certain erroneous, inaccurate and out-of-date information recently submitted to you regarding the adequacy of the Indian Point Alert'and Notification System ("ANS") . In a letter to you dated May 16, 1986, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (the "ASLB") overseeing operating license proceedings for the Shearon Harris facility wrote to you expressing its generic concerns about the adequacy of Federal Emergency Management Agency ("FEMA") standards for determining ANS effectiveness at nuclear power plants. One of these concerns addressed winter nighttime alerting, and the issue of whether alerting levels would be adequate under such conditions.

In the course of its letter the Shearon Harris ASLB rfsferred to a September 1982 NRC Staff analysis entitled

~

"Evaluation of the Prompt Alerting Systems at Four Nuclear Power Stations," NUREG/CR-2655.

Subsequently, on June 9, 1986, two ASLB members who sat on the hearing board for the Indian Point Special Proceeding, Judges Oscar Paris and Frederick Shon, citing the May 16 Shearon Harris ASLB letter, wrote to you stating that they had been unaware of NUREG/CR-2655 when the Indian Point hearing board issued its Recommendations to the Commission on October 24, 1983. This letter erroneously states that NUREG/CR-2655 "predicted that on a winter night with snow the sirens at Indian Point would alert only 53%

of the residents in the EPZ" (cf. NUREG/CR-2655 at p.

4-2). The letter then makes predictions for self-alerting, using estimates borrowed from the May 16 Shearon Harris ASLB letter, and asserts that a significant percentage of Indian Point EPZ residents might. not be notified under conditions. the'tated The Paris/Shon letter is particularly critical of the NRC Staff for not bringing NUREG/CR-2655 to their attention during the course of the Indian Point proceed-ings. What the former hearing board members failed to acknowledge in their letter to you is that significant

.enhancement to the Indian Point ANS was undertaken subsequent to the analysis which formed the basis for NUREG/CR>>2655, rendering the alerting opinions expressed by the NUREG's authors erroneous and obsolete at the time of the Indian Point hearings.

In an Order dated August 9, 1982, the Indian Point ASLB directed that "hearings, discovery and filing dates are suspended",pending Board reconsideration of, inter alia, emergency planning contentions in'the proceedrng.

NUREG/CR-2655 was published in September 1982. On January 7, 1983 the Indian Point Licensing Board issued its Order reformulating emergency planning contentions, and hearings resumed before the Board on January 10, 1983.

By this time, the Indian Point ANS scarcely resembled the ANS which had been evaluated by the authors of NUREG/CR-2655 on August 25, 1981.* The initial 88 siren

• See NUREG/CR-2655 at p. 4-1. Even absent major enhancement of the Indian Point ANS, NUREG/CR-2655 would hardly be an adequate basis for arriving at reliable conclusions regarding the alerting effec-tiveness of the four ANSes it addresses. The data are derived from an extremely small sample of 50 listener locations from each 314 square mile EPZ. Sound level at each. location was projected using theoretical assumptions as to sound propagation, without consideration of actual site topographical features or ambient noise factors. The opinions as to alerting effectiveness expressed in the NUREG received no field testing or validation whatsoever, unlike the comprehensive Indian Point ANS effectiveness studies performed by licensees in March 1983, and by FEMA in June 1985, as described below.

system modeled in the NUREG (see NUREG/CR>>2655 at p. Z,-l) had undergone major enhancement, including the installation of 57 additional sirens, the relocation of 22 sixens to improve their alerting capabilities, and increages .in the sound output of 58 of the initial 88 sirens. In addition, numerous tone alert radios not considered in NUREG/CR-2655 had been distributed to schools, hospitals and other special facilities within the these circumstances EPZ.'nder it would-have been highly prejudicial, rather than appropriate under board notification"procedures, for the Staff to have knowingly transmitted obsolete and misleading information regarding the Indian Point, ANS to the Licensing Board and the parties at the time of the resumption of the hearings in January 1983. Instead, and quite properly, the Staff and the other parties promptly brought information about the then-current enhanced status of the Indian Point ANS to the Board's attention. Following a full scale emergency planning exercise conducted at Indian Point on March 9, 1983, the following exchange took place between the Board and emergency planning witnesses in the hearings on March 25, 1983 (see Transcxipt p. 11759):

"JUDGE PARIS: Were all 88 plus 50 sirens installed for the March 9 exercise?

MR. JACKSON: Yes, sir, 145.

JUDGE PARIS: Do you know how many of them sounded?

MR. JACKSON: Every one.

JUDGE PARIS: 145 sounded?

MR. JACKSON: Yes.

MR. MONTI: Yes.

JUDGE PARIS: Congratulations."

Subsequently, in its October 24, 1983 Findings and Recommendations (18 NRC 811), the Licensing Board acknowl-edged its awareness of the upgrading of the Indian Point ANS after the time of the evaluation conducted in NUREG/CR-2655. The Board stated at 18 NRC 938 that:

"With regard to public notification, Intervenors first asserted that the siren system is inadequate.

Intervenors presented many witnesses who testified that the sirens were inaudible. However, with anly one exception (Tr. 10,728), this testimony related to sounding of the sirens during the 1982 exercise. Since then, the system has been substantially upgraded and now appears adequate. (See Con Ed Supp. Onsite Testimony, ff. Tr. 11,713, at ly Tr. 11,759; McIntire, et al., ff. Tr. 14,720, Post-Exercise Assessment at 26, 39, 48, and 53.)"

The June 9, 1986 Paris/Shon letter cites the NRC's McGuire doctrine in support of its assertion that the Staff should have brought NUREG/CR-2655 to the Board's atten-tion. The McGuire doctrine has never required parties to make specifzc dzsclosure to a licensing board concerning information contained in a publicly available document.

McGuire is relevant only to situations where a licensee or tlie Staff has failed to keep a licensing board abreast of relevant and material non-public information regarding changing circumstances affecting a facility. In such

,situations, the doctiine supports reopening the licensing record only when it is discovered that the information withheld was relevant and material, and gives rise to a significant safety-related issue. Vermont Yankee Nuclear k

ALAB-167, 6 AEC 1151 (1973).

The McGuire rationale has no application to the Indian Point situation, where the NRC Staff published a study which became obsolete by the time of the hearing and was therefore,not brought to the attention of the Licensing Board. As noted above, NUREG/CR-2655 did not reflect current facts at Indian Point at the time of the hearings and would have been misleading and prejudicial had the Staff brought it to the parties'ttention. Such a result would in fact be contrary to McGuire, where the licensing board emphasized the need for dzsclosure of the latest facts when necessary to avoid inaccuracy. The introduction of false or inaccurate information could render an adjudi-cation meaningless, for as noted in the McGuire decision, "adjudicatory boards would be passing upon evidence which would not accurately reflect existing facts." Duke Power

~Com an (McGuire Nuclear Station, Units 1 and 2j, ALAB-143, 6 AEC 623, 626 (1973) .

Under circumstances such as these, we submit that Licensing Board members should make every effort to avoid bringing erroneous and misleading data to the Commission's attention, and also to acknowledge the surrounding circum-stances. This is particularly so when the record ein a

proceeding which has long since been concluded may be called into question. As the Commission can wejLl appre-ciate, heightened public concerns with the safe operation of nu'clear power and the adequacy of emergency planning make it imperative that the citation of obsolete data and the resulting implications be identified and corrected immediately.

A report describing the Indian Point ANS as it currently exists was submitted to FEMA (copy to Dr. Thomas E. Murley, NRC) by Con Edison and the New York Power Authority, licensee of Indian Point Unit No. 3 ("NYPA"), in a letter dated October 22, 1984. The Commission is respectfully referred to this report for accurate and current information on the capabilities of the ANS. The adequacy of the current system under FEMA and Commission standards was also verified in field tests conducted by both Con Edison'nd NYPA on March 9, 1983, at which time 145 sirens had been installed, and in a test conducted by FEMA on June 27, 1985, at which time the Indian Point ANS was in its present 151 siren operational mode. .Con Edison's telephone survey of area residents as to the effectiveness of the March 1983 ANS test revealed that over 87% of the EPZ population had been alerted by the siren system alone, and that an additional 5% of the population not alerted by the sirens would have been alerted because they were tuned in to radio or television programming at the time. of the alert.

FEMA's 1985 telephone survey verified Con Edison's 1983 test results. Moreover, in both cases, the total population alerted would actually be higher than reported because of social interaction and the resulting informal notification, a factor acknowledged in both the May 16 Shearon Harris ASLB letter and the June 9 Paris/Shon letter. Accordingly, we are confident that the Indian Point ANS currently meets the FEMA alerting criterion.

Relying on NUREG/CR-2655, the June 9 Paris/Shon letter also contends that the effectiveness of a siren system would be diminished in an alert during snowfall.

This contention, however, is not supported by the available data. First, in winter, tree defoliation would cause less attenuation as sound propagates from the sirens. Second, it is likely that traffic noise, which is the main consti-tuent of ambient background sound, would be diminished during snowfall because of the reduced number of vehicles on the road. Third, during snowfall, "the gradients of

e temperature and wind tend to be small so that sound carries further outdoors . . . ." See, L.L. Beranek, Noise and

! ~ ). h all contribute to producing sound propagation values during a winter night that are at least comparable to a sunny day. Moreover, during a significant winter storm, it likely that a greater portion of EPZ residents than usual is would be tuned to radio or television for storm and school closing news, further enhancing the overall-EPZ alerting rate.

In sum, the June 9 Paris/Shon letter raises safety concerns which do not exist in the Indian Point EPZ. Had the letter acknowledged the inapplicability of NUREG/CR-2655 to the current status of the Indian Point ANS, which we submit is essential to a fair and accurate discussion of the subject, the letter would have avoided creating erroneous impressions about the conduct of the NRC Staff and the effectiveness of the ANS.

Re ctfu ly ubmi ted, Brent L. Brandenburg cc: B. Paul Cotter, Jr.

Chairman, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel Oscar H. Paris Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel Frederick Shon Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel 6

4 c ! g!.

ti Cl O

lNtlTEO STATES NUCLEAR'EGULATORYCOIIIIMISSION WASHINGTON, O. C,.20555 cm g

+**t +

'AAlltMAH August 7, 1986 Judge James'. Kelley Judge James H. Carpenter Judge Glenn 0. Bright

Dear Judges Kelly,

Carpenter, and Bright:

Thank you forryour letters of November 19, 1985 and Nay 16, 1986 co'ncerning.'he adequacy'f emergency alerting siren systems at

'nuclear power reactors. 'The Commission is continuing.'to assess:

the issues raised by your letters and your initial decision, and has been closely following the resolution of this issue in the licensing proceeding. The Ccnnmission will be asking staff for its views on the generic issue which you raise, with a view to deciding whether the relevant rules or guidance documents need to be revised.

Thank you for bringing this matter to our specific attention.

Sincerely, ~

I ando W. Zec, Jr rg

~&

~ k