ML082671248
| ML082671248 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Oyster Creek |
| Issue date: | 09/18/2008 |
| From: | Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| To: | |
| SECYRAS | |
| References | |
| 50-219-LR, ASLBP 06-844-01-LR, RAS H-68 | |
| Download: ML082671248 (143) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION DOCKETED USNRC September 23, 2008 (3:00pm)
OFFICE OF SECRETARY RULEMAKINGS AND ADJUDICATIONS STAFF Title: Oyster Creek License Renewal Docket Number: 50-0219-LR; ASLBP No. 06-844-01-LR Location: Toms River, New Jersey Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008 Work Order No.: NRC-2434 Pages 907-1048 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
907 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + +
4 BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD 5 + + + + +
6 _________________________
7 In the Matter of : Docket No. 50-0219-LR 8 AmerGen Energy Company, : ASLBP No. 06-844-01-LR 9 LLC :
10 (License Renewal for :
11 Oyster Creek Nuclear :
12 Generating Station) :
13 Thursday, September 18, 2008 14 15 Ocean County Administration Building 16 Room 119 17 101 Hooper Avenue 18 Toms River, New Jersey 19 20 The above-entitled matter came on for 21 hearing, pursuant to notice, at 9:00 a.m.
22 BEFORE:
23 E. ROY HAWKENS, Chairman 24 DR. ANTHONY J. BARATTA, Administrative Judge 25 DR. PAUL B. ABRAMSON, Administrative Judge NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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908 1
2 APPEARANCES:
3 On Behalf of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 4 Commission:
5 MARY C. BATY, ESQ.
6 Office of the General Counsel 7 MARCIA J. SIMON, ESQ.
8 Counsel for NRC Staff 9 LOUISE LUND 10 Branch Chief, Division of License Renewal 11 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 12 Office of General Counsel 13 Mail Stop 15 D21 14 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 15 Washington, D.C. 20555 16 (301) 415-1324 17 18 On Behalf of the AmerGen Energy Company, LLC:
19 ALEX S. POLONSKY, ESQ.
20 Of:Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP 21 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 22 Washington, DC 20004 23 (202) 739-5830 24 (202) 739-3001 Fax 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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909 1
2 On Behalf of the AmerGen Energy Company, LLC:
3 (cont.)
4 KATHRYN M. SUTTON, ESQ.
5 Of:Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP 6 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 7 Washington, DC 20004 8 (202) 739-5738 9 (202) 739-3001 Fax 10 11 RAPHAEL P. KUYLER, ESQ.
12 Of:Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP 13 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 14 Washington, DC 20004 15 (202) 739-5146 16 (202) 739-3001 Fax 17 18 On Behalf of Exelon Corporation:
19 J. BRADLEY FEWELL, ESQ.
20 Associate General Counsel 21 Lead Counsel, Exelon Nuclear 22 4300 Winfield Rd., 5th Floor 23 Warrenville, IL 60555 24 (630) 657-3769 25 (630) 657-4323 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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910 1 On Behalf of Citizens:
2 RICHARD WEBSTER, ESQ.
3 JULIA LeMENSE, ESQ.
4 Of: Eastern Environmental Law Center 5 744 Broad Street, Suite 1525 6 Newark, New Jersey 07102 7 (973) 353-5695 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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911 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 (9:01 a.m.)
3 JUDGE HAWKENS: We're ready to proceed.
4 My name is Roy Hawkens. On my right is Dr. Anthony 5 Baratta, on my left is Dr. Paul Abramson. We're 6 Administrative Judges on the Atomic Safety and 7 Licensing Board panel, which is the administrative 8 adjudicative arm of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 9 Commission, and we have been assigned to the Board 10 that's adjudicating the case today.
11 I'd like to welcome the members of the 12 public who are in the audience, and we appreciate your 13 interest in this proceeding.
14 We are here today to hear oral arguments 15 in the case of AmerGen Energy Company. The case has a 16 lengthy history, and I'll take a few moments to 17 summarize part of that history, the salient portion of 18 that history so the audience can place today's 19 argument in context.
20 AmerGen owns and operates the Oyster Creek 21 Nuclear Plant, and their operating license expires 22 April of 2009. Three years ago, in July of 2005, 23 AmerGen applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 24 renew its license for a 20-year period. Citizens 25 opposed AmerGen's renewal request. They argued that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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912 1 AmerGen's Aging Management Plan for the drywell shell 2 would not insure that the shell would maintain an 3 adequate safety margin during the renewal period.
4 Almost exactly a year ago, this Board held 5 a two-day evidentiary hearing in this facility, and 6 several months later in December we issued a written 7 decision rejecting Citizens challenge.
8 Citizens immediately appealed the Board's 9 decision to the Commissioners, the Nuclear Regulatory 10 Commission Commissioners, and they are the 11 Presidentially appointed individuals who provide the 12 first layer of review of Board decisions. That appeal 13 remains pending before the Commissioners.
14 In the meantime, in May of this year, the 15 Commissioners asked the parties to file a written 16 brief on a new issue, and that issue is paraphrased, 17 whether the structural analysis of the drywell shell 18 that AmerGen is committed to perform will result in a 19 3D model of the shell that's conservative, and will, 20 therefore, adequately reflect the shell's actual 21 condition.
22 In June, the parties filed their briefs 23 consistent with the Commissioners' request, and last 24 month, on August 21st, the Commissioners issued an 25 order referring that newly briefed issue to this Board NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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913 1 for resolution. And that's why we are here today. We 2 are going to hear oral arguments to allow the parties 3 to advocate the positions they've taken in their 4 brief, to respond to several written questions that 5 the Board gave them last week, and, as well, to answer 6 any questions that the Board may have for them today.
7 For those of you who were here for last 8 year's evidentiary hearing, I'd like to emphasize 9 there is a significant difference between an 10 evidentiary hearing and what you'll hear today at an 11 oral argument. An evidentiary hearing is akin to a 12 trial, where the parties put witnesses forward, the 13 witnesses provide factual testimony, expert witness 14 testimony which becomes part of the record of the 15 case.
16 Today you will not hear from witnesses.
17 You'll hear simply from the parties' attorneys who 18 will be advocating their client's position based on 19 the established facts in light of the governing law.
20 You'll hear from three parties today, AmerGen, the NRC 21 Staff, and Citizens.
22 Each counsel has been allotted one hour to 23 make their arguments. However, if the Board feels 24 that additional time is necessary for the Board to 25 understand a point that counsel is endeavoring to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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914 1 present, we will allow that party to exceed that time.
2 On the other hand, the oral argument is the 3 opportunity for the Board to insure it understands the 4 position, and once counsel feels they have made their 5 point, and the Board is likewise satisfied we 6 understand their point, they need not feel compelled 7 to take the entire time.
8 NRC Staff and AmerGen will be given the 9 opportunity to present rebuttal argument. If they 10 avail themself of that opportunity, it will be taken -
11 - they'll have to reserve time from their allotted 12 hour1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br />. So, as I indicate, although they will have 13 rebuttal time, their time will not exceed an hour 14 total, unless the Board wants to hear further from 15 them.
16 I believe if we adhere to the schedule, we 17 should be done by noon. There's, in my mind, a 18 substantial likelihood we will finish up before noon, 19 but as I say, if we have to exceed the hour allotment, 20 we will continue. We'll continue through lunch. The 21 audience can be assured we will not go beyond 2:00 22 because there's another event that will be going on in 23 here at 3:00, so we will finish up no later than two, 24 and hopefully earlier than that.
25 The Board's law clerk, Mr. Rotman, for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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915 1 benefit of counsel, when they have five minutes left 2 of their allotted time, if they, in fact, go that long 3 into oral argument, Mr. Rotman will be raising the 4 amber light, or the amber five minute sign, so if you 5 see that, please take that into account.
6 If I could ask members of the audience if 7 they do have cell phones, if they would put them on 8 vibrate or turn them off, and I will also ask if 9 anybody on the bench has cell phones, I'd ask them to 10 do likewise.
11 We have a motion that we need to address.
12 Before we do that, I'd like to ask counsel if they 13 would just from where they're seated introduce 14 themselves and their associates. And let's start with 15 AmerGen, please.
16 MR. POLONSKY: Good morning. Thank you, 17 Your Honor. Alex Polonsky of Morgan Lewis on behalf 18 of AmerGen. To my left is Kathryn Sutton, Raphael 19 Kuyler, and Brad Fewell.
20 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you. NRC Staff.
21 MS. BATY: My name is Mary Baty, and with 22 me are my co-counsel, Marcia Simon, and also seated at 23 counsel table is Louise Lund from the NRC Staff.
24 JUDGE HAWKENS: Good morning, Mr. Webster.
25 MR. WEBSTER: Good morning, Your Honor.
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916 1 I'm Richard Webster from Eastern Environmental Law 2 Center, with my colleague, Julia LeMense.
3 JUDGE HAWKENS: All right. Thank you, and 4 welcome.
5 At the outset, we have a motion which the 6 Board received yesterday morning from Citizens. I want 7 to confirm, we were not aware of any response filed by 8 either AmerGen or the NRC Staff. Am I correct in 9 assuming that none was filed?
10 MR. POLONSKY: Correct, Your Honor.
11 MS. BATY: Also, NRC Staff has not filed 12 anything. We assumed that we were going to address 13 the issue at the hearing, oral argument.
14 JUDGE HAWKENS: All right. Thank you for 15 offering to address it. I'm going to rule upon it.
16 We are going to rule upon it, the Board will rule upon 17 it. They've made three requests. First, they 18 requested to submit a supplemental brief following the 19 argument for reasons embedded in the motion. The 20 Board is going to give each party the opportunity to 21 file a supplemental brief, and I'll discuss that in 22 more detail after the arguments have been presented.
23 The second request was that Citizens 24 requested they be afforded the same time as the other 25 parties, and I believe that was based on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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917 1 misapprehension that rebuttal time would be in 2 addition to the hour of allotted time. However, they 3 will be, if they're going to present rebuttal, they'll 4 be reserving a portion of that one hour allotted time, 5 so it will not exceed one hour.
6 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you. Judge, can I 7 just ask, could we also reserve some time for 8 rebuttal, as well?
9 JUDGE HAWKENS: If the Board feels that 10 rebuttal is warranted, we will give you that 11 opportunity.
12 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you very much.
13 JUDGE HAWKENS: The third request was that 14 they felt that because the NRC Staff and AmerGen may 15 be presenting arguments, consistent arguments, that 16 the fact that each of them has one hour for a total of 17 two hours, they felt that they were deprived of an 18 adequate amount of time to respond, or it was an 19 inequitable allocation of time; and, therefore, 20 requested that that be redressed by the Board. The 21 Board is not going to reduce the time allotted to any 22 of the parties here. I think it's unlikely, to the 23 extent that the NRC Staff and AmerGen have duplicative 24 arguments, I'm sure they will not advance them. And, 25 as I indicated earlier, to the extent that we feel NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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918 1 that any position or argument you are going to make 2 requires extended time, we will allow that.
3 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you very much.
4 JUDGE HAWKENS: Before launching into oral 5 argument, as we indicated in our scheduling order, the 6 Board wished each of the parties to take a few moments 7 and explain what they understand the boundaries of the 8 issue, the boundaries of the Commissioners' request, 9 what those boundaries are. And if we could start with 10 AmerGen, go to the NRC Staff, and then to Citizens, 11 and you can do this from your tables.
12 MR. POLONSKY: Thank you, Your Honor. We 13 would like to reserve 15 minutes for rebuttal, just so 14 the Board knows, from our one hour.
15 JUDGE HAWKENS: You'll just be sitting at 16 your table talking about the boundaries. We'll then 17 ask you to come to the podium, but thank you.
18 MR. POLONSKY: In its August 21 order, the 19 Secretary did not request that the Board revisit the 20 question settled in the Board's initial decision, LBD 21 0717, or reconsider its prior holding. As the Board 22 has already recognized, the record remains closed, and 23 the Commissioners did not mandate this issue for 24 consideration.
25 The Commissioners merely requested that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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919 1 the Board provide its opinion on the limited, and 2 that's language from the August order, the limited 3 question asked of the parties in CLI Order 10. And 4 that question is whether the structural analysis that 5 AmerGen is committed to perform matches or bounds the 6 sensitivity studies that Judge Baratta would impose.
7 And, in any event, explain whether additional analysis 8 is necessary. AmerGen believes, therefore, that 9 resolution on the referred question does not impact 10 the validity of the Board's initial decision.
11 Even if the Commission had remanded this 12 narrow issue to the Board, which it did not, the 13 finality doctrine would foreclose a broadening of its 14 scope to the many issues that Citizens raise in their 15 initial and reply briefs to CLI Order 10.
16 As for how AmerGen recommends that the 17 Board consider responding, and in what form the Board 18 should consider responding, we recommend a memorandum, 19 and not an order. Boards have issued memoranda in 20 other situations to convey similar information when 21 the Commission has requested it. Most recently, Judge 22 Hawkens issued a memorandum on behalf of the entire 23 panel responding to a request in the high-level waste 24 Yucca Mountain proceeding as to the reasonableness of 25 certain deadlines. The Board in the Claiborne NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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920 1 Enrichment Center licensing proceeding issued a 2 memorandum when it responded to a Commission order 3 that -- in that case I think it remanded one issue, 4 but it remanded it for further explanation, which is 5 very similar to the situation here. And there are 6 other examples that we could provide.
7 As for factual arguments, we need to put 8 the 3D analysis in perspective, and that ought to be 9 taken into account in whatever the Board provides to 10 the Commission. AmerGen's Aging Management program 11 for the drywell shell, with all its many facets, 12 provides reasonable assurance without the 3D analysis.
13 The Board's initial decision did not rely 14 upon any features of the 3D analysis to support its 15 finding, and certain specifics about the methodology 16 of the 3D analysis are not on the record, when the 17 analysis is not required to be completed under 18 AmerGen's commitment to the NRC until April 2009.
19 The goal of the 3D model is to merely 20 better quantify the margin that exists above the code 21 required minimum. To meet this goal, AmerGen is 22 modeling the drywell thickness realistically with some 23 conservatism versus an overly conservative model in 24 the basics. And this is where Citizens and AmerGen 25 diverge.
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921 1 Citizens suggest, as they did last fall, 2 that AmerGen must focus its analyses on the external 3 UT data, those single individual points. It is from 4 these data that Citizens arrive at their inbound 5 general area thickness of the drywell shell. However, 6 the Board found in its initial decision these 7 individual external UT points provide a very localized 8 and conservative representation of shell thickness, 9 because they were selected as the thinnest points, and 10 metal was removed to prepare the surface for UT 11 measurement.
12 The area between the measured points is, 13 therefore, thicker; therefore, quote, and this is from 14 Footnote 30 of the initial decision, "They are not 15 representative of the overall shell thickness, and do 16 not provide a basis for determining available buffer 17 or margin."
18 The drywell Aging Management program has 19 many facets.
20 MR. WEBSTER: Judge, are we still in the 21 scope?
22 JUDGE HAWKENS: I'd ask counsel not to 23 interrupt while another counsel is talking.
24 MR. POLONSKY: So the 3D analysis itself 25 is independent of the Aging Management program that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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922 1 AmerGen has in place, which includes then finding 2 surface water and mitigating that water, checking sand 3 bed trains for water, and taking UT measurements.
4 Thank you.
5 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you. Ms. Baty.
6 MS. BATY: Yes. I do note at the outset 7 of this oral argument, last year we were here to 8 litigate a contention on the frequency of UT 9 measurements that AmerGen plans to perform on the 10 drywell shell at Oyster Creek, and whether the 11 frequency was adequate to insure that the margins were 12 not exceeded.
13 The Commission's August 21st order referred 14 a single specified issue to this Board for expeditious 15 resolution. That issue is whether the discretional 16 analysis that AmerGen has committed to perform, and 17 that is reflected in the Staff's proposed license 18 condition, matches the bounds of sensitivity analyses 19 that Judge Baratta would impose. And, in any event, 20 explain whether additional analysis is needed.
21 In referring this issue to the Board, the 22 Commission asked the Board to answer the question, and 23 report its answer to the Commission. Once Citizens 24 appealed this decision - excuse me. The Board's 25 jurisdiction at this point is, therefore, limited to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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923 1 the single specified issue referred by the Commission 2 to the Board.
3 Once Citizens appealed the Board's initial 4 decision in this proceeding on their admitted 5 contentions, and the interlocutory decisions back in 6 January, jurisdiction over this proceeding passed the 7 Commission, and those appeals, as noted at the 8 beginning of this argument, still are pending with the 9 Commission.
10 The Commission's August 21st order did not 11 remand this case to the Board for further proceedings, 12 did not reopen the record, or did not request further 13 evidentiary hearings be held. The Commission merely 14 referred a single specified issue.
15 The form of the Board's response to the 16 Commission is most likely to be a memo. Because the 17 Commission did not remand this proceeding, the Board 18 arguably lacks jurisdiction to issue an order. There 19 is precedent for the Board, as is noted by AmerGen, 20 there is precedent for Boards to provide information 21 to the Commission in the form of a memo.
22 It is important to keep in mind today what 23 the Commission has not asked this Board to do. The 24 Commission has not asked this Board to reconsider its 25 initial decision. The initial decision is still B the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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924 1 appeal of the Board's initial decision is still 2 pending with the Commission.
3 The Commission has not asked this Board to 4 reconsider its findings, including the finding that 5 AmerGen has demonstrated frequency of UT measurements 6 in combination with other elements of their Aging 7 Management program provides reasonable assurance. They 8 have not asked this Board to re-examine that 9 reasonable assurance is linked to the assessment of 10 the adequacy of the amp. They have not asked this 11 Board to reconsider whether the thickness acceptance 12 criteria are part of the CLB. They have not asked 13 this Board to reconsider whether the compliance with 14 the acceptance criteria assures the adequate margin of 15 safety. They did not ask this Board to reconsider its 16 decision to not admit certain contentions that were 17 proposed by AmerGen, and appeals of those decisions 18 are still pending.
19 Finally, as this oral argument proceeds, 20 the Staff respectfully requests that this Board insure 21 the integrity of this proceeding by being mindful that 22 only a single specified issue has been referred to 23 this Board by the Commission, and be vigilant against 24 attempts to distort, mischaracterize, or supplement 25 the record of this proceeding.
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925 1 As this Board noted in its September 10th 2 order, this is not an evidentiary hearing, and the 3 record of this proceeding is closed. Today this Board 4 will hear arguments of counsel, not testimony.
5 Counsel is not qualified to testify. An argument of 6 counsel on technical matters, no matter how eloquent, 7 does not substitute for evidence.
8 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you.
9 Mr. Webster.
10 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you. Broadly, I think 11 it's pretty clear from the Commission's order that it 12 has referred a single question, a double part question 13 to the Board. The first part of the question is 14 whether the structural analysis that AmerGen has 15 committed to perform, and that is reflected in Staff's 16 proposed license condition matches or bounds the 17 sensitivity analysis that Judge Baratta would impose.
18 And I think to understand that question fully, one 19 has to look at Judge Baratta's statement.
20 Judge Baratta's statement, and I hesitate 21 to paraphrase it, so I'll actually quote directly 22 says, "Although I join my colleagues in the previous 23 decision in the main, I differ on one point regarding 24 whether the licensee has fully shown there is 25 reasonable assurance that the factors of safety NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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926 1 required by the regulations will be met throughout the 2 period of extended operation, assuming a four-year 3 every other refueling inspection cycle."
4 After giving some background, Judge 5 Baratta then concludes, "It is essential to have a 6 conservative best estimate of the drywell shell before 7 entering the period of extended operation."
8 With regards to how that analysis should 9 be carried out, Judge Baratta states, and I'm going to 10 pick up in mid-sentence here, "I do concur with 11 Citizens that there is a lack of knowledge about the 12 actual thickness of the drywell, and that this 13 knowledge must be taken into account in any analysis."
14 And then Judge Baratta wraps up by 15 stating, "To account for the very limited data set of 16 thickness measurements, I would impose an additional 17 requirement on the 3D analysis to be performed by the 18 applicant; specifically, the applicant should be 19 required to perform a series of sensitivity analyses, 20 at least one of which includes an extrapolation scheme 21 to determine the thicknesses between the measured 22 points. The technique might be similar to the one 23 suggested by Citizens' expert, Dr. Hamilton, that uses 24 contour plots generated from known thicknesses, both 25 interior and exterior." So I think that pretty NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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927 1 comprehensively explains the first part of the 2 question.
3 The second part of the question is a 4 little more open-ended, I think, which says, in any 5 event, explain whether additional analysis is 6 necessary. And so I think we're engaged here in a 7 two-step process. First of all, there's a lot of 8 differing interpretation about what Judge Baratta's 9 requirements actually are. I guess we all think that 10 we know what they are, but we all think they're 11 something different, so I guess that will be the first 12 part of the argument. And I think once it becomes 13 clear what Judge Baratta's requirements are, then -- I 14 mean, I think I have to make some assumptions about 15 that. But let's clarify that first.
16 JUDGE HAWKENS: Judge Baratta will make 17 them clear in this proceeding. Continue.
18 MR. WEBSTER: And so then we need to 19 address the second part of the question, which is 20 whether additional analysis is necessary.
21 Now, it may well be that to fully address 22 this question, some issues that were not addressed in 23 the first adjudicatory hearing may need to be 24 considered within this hearing. And we believe that 25 the Board has the power to do that.
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928 1 In Vermont Yankee, it's 5 NRC 717, the 2 Commission referred the question to the Appeal Board, 3 and stated, "The Appeal Board involved in each case 4 should take appropriate action to secure the 5 information necessary for it to act. In particular 6 cases, the Board may choose to request the parties to 7 address themselves to this issue."
8 So, in other words, yes, we agree that the 9 Commission has not either affirmed or reversed this 10 Board's initial decision. Yes, we agree that the 11 scope of the proceeding, this proceeding, is to 12 address the Commission's question; that is the 13 jurisdiction that this Board has. But the Board has 14 the power to take appropriate action to fully address 15 that question. If the appropriate action involves 16 taking additional testimony, or revisiting some 17 issues, then we believe that the Board has the 18 jurisdiction to accomplish that. Thank you.
19 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you very much.
20 We'll now hear from counsel presenting their 21 arguments, starting with AmerGen.
22 Mr. Polonsky.
23 MR. POLONSKY: Thank you. Before I start, 24 Your Honor, we have compiled some of the exhibits that 25 have already been circulated, exhibits that are in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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929 1 record that I will be talking to. So instead of you 2 thumbing through volumes of exhibits, we'll be passing 3 out to the various counsel tables those exhibits for 4 ease of reference, and we'll project them up on the 5 board for the members of the Board, as well.
6 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you, Mr. Polonsky.
7 Also, you indicated you wish to reserve a certain 8 amount of time for rebuttal?
9 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, 15 minutes for 10 rebuttal, Your Honor. Thank you.
11 MR. WEBSTER: Judge, before Mr. Polonsky 12 starts, could I just request, could we get electronic 13 copies so that we all get mailed the exhibits on the 14 overhead projection, as well?
15 JUDGE HAWKENS: I'm sorry?
16 MR. WEBSTER: Could we request an 17 electronic copy from AmerGen so we can also project 18 these same slides onto the Board?
19 MR. POLONSKY: An electronic copy now?
20 MR. WEBSTER: If possible, that would be 21 B-22 MR. POLONSKY: I'll have to defer until 23 we're done with this, and see how procedurally we can 24 accommodate that request.
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930 1 would like to have happen here is us to walk through 2 the questions one by one, unless you have a different 3 protocol you'd like us to proceed on.
4 Okay. The first question was how did 5 AmerGen choose the thicknesses and mesh for the 3D 6 model? We had circulated on Tuesday the diagram 7 that's now posted. It shows a bottom view of the 8 drywell. It shows each of the ten odd-numbered bays, 9 their orientation with respect to each other, and it 10 shows that each bay is split with two areas of general 11 thickness, one above 11 foot, which goes from 11 foot 12 to 12 foot 3, and one from 11 foot down to the sand 13 bed floor, which is at elevation 8 foot 11 inches.
14 It also shows five locally thinned areas 15 that are part of the base case, and these bays here, 16 Bays 1, 19, 17, 15, and 13, and the thicknesses that 17 were assigned to those locally thinned areas. Those 18 locally thinned areas, as Mr. O'Rourke describes, are 19 either an 18-inch diameter circle, and those are the 20 smaller circles, or a 51-inch diameter circle, those 21 are the larger circles.
22 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Counselor, are these the 23 B is this information in the briefs you filed before 24 the Commission? Is this a characterization of what's 25 in Table One, or is there something new here?
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931 1 MR. POLONSKY: Your Honor, we don't 2 believe there's anything new on this diagram. The 3 information that's on this diagram is all in the 4 record, and I'll walk you through where we think it 5 is. Mr. O'Rourke's affidavit in Paragraph 15 6 describes how individual external UT thickness 7 measurement points were used. He describes, "Five 8 locally thinned areas were modeled in the sand bed 9 region as circular shaped ranging from 18 to 51 inches 10 diameter, and thickness of 658 to 850 mils. These 11 modeled areas are conservative, since this amount of 12 thinning does not actually exist."
13 I know in Citizens' motion, they raised 14 the concern that they didn't interpret that as being 15 part of the base case, but I think if you look at the 16 affidavit as a whole, I don't know how you can come to 17 that conclusion. In Paragraph 23 of Mr. O'Rourke's 18 affidavit, he states that, "The sensitivity analysis 19 also models a locally thinned area of 51 inches in 20 diameter, which a conservative average of 720 mils 21 which had been modeled into the base case and remains 22 unchanged for the sensitivity analysis."
23 There is similar language about the 24 locally thinned areas in Paragraphs 18 and 19. The 25 locally thinned areas are also clearly present in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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932 1 Citizens' own exhibit, number 45, which is part of the 2 packet of materials I handed out. The last five pages 3 of that exhibit shows each of these locally thinned 4 areas, page 8 of 12 shows Bay 1, and Bay 13, Bay 15, 5 Bay 19, and Bay 17 in order, and the second paragraph 6 of that exhibit explains that this technical 7 evaluation, which is Citizens' Exhibit 45, says that 8 this is going to be provided to Structural Integrity 9 Associates as input to the finite element model.
10 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And this, Citizens' 11 Exhibit 45, was presented when, was it in the original 12 hearing?
13 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, it was. Yes, all of 14 the exhibits are in the original hearing. But if you 15 match up the statement in Mr. O'Rourke's Paragraph 15, 16 it matches up exactly with Citizens' Exhibit 45.
17 The general thicknesses are provided B 18 JUDGE BARATTA: Let me interrupt you for a 19 second.
20 MR. POLONSKY: Yes.
21 JUDGE BARATTA: Looking at what was 22 Applicant's Exhibit 5, that's a picture of the drywell 23 showing the sand bed region, which extends from 8 feet 24 11 to 12 feet 3 inches according to the exhibit.
25 MR. POLONSKY: Yes.
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933 1 JUDGE BARATTA: Why did you choose to 2 divide the model up at, what was it, 11 feet?
3 MR. POLONSKY: Above and below 11 foot, 4 Your Honor.
5 JUDGE BARATTA: Why was that particular 6 choice made?
7 MR. POLONSKY: The rationale was 8 engineering judgment. There are some bays where above 9 11 foot, which is the elevation at which the internal 10 grid measurements are taken - if you recall from the 11 inside of the drywell, you cannot access, at the time 12 when the sand was there, anything below 11 foot unless 13 you dig a trench and remove concrete.
14 JUDGE BARATTA: That's the level, the 15 internal level of the concrete on the inside of the 16 drywell that we discussed previously at the original 17 hearing.
18 MR. POLONSKY: Right. The lowest level of 19 existing concrete, yes.
20 JUDGE BARATTA: And then you have -- there 21 are two troughs, as I recall, that were excavated in 22 two of the bays below that level.
23 MR. POLONSKY: Correct. Not until the 24 sand was removed could you then go on the outside and 25 look and see what the condition of the shell is from NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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934 1 the outside. So some of the internal grid data 2 AmerGen recognized were not representative of that 3 bay, overall, because the outside of the drywell shell 4 in the sand bed region had a sand bed, and that sand -
5 -the top of the sand bed was not even. It, 6 essentially, and undulating surface, and the highest 7 level of corrosion, as was discussed at the 8 evidentiary hearing last fall, was at that sand-air 9 interface. If a grid was slightly above that, or 10 right at that interface, it would, if you used that 11 data, suggest a unconservative number for the whole 12 bay. So using engineering judgment, AmerGen decided 13 to split the bays in a horizontal way by modeling in 14 the 3D model a different elevation in some cases for 15 above the 11 foot, versus below the 11 foot.
16 JUDGE BARATTA: All right. When we're 17 talking about these regions, these are regions of 18 constant material property? That is, thickness, 19 unless you have another region defined, such as, I 20 guess in Bay 19, where you have a circular region of 21 720 mils versus 826, I think is B 22 MR. POLONSKY: Correct. A general 23 thickness was assigned to each of the bays of 11 foot, 24 and below 11 foot. And a separate single thickness 25 was assigned for these locally thinned areas. The NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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935 1 exception is in Bay 17, where there's essentially a 2 donut with a locally thinned area within a locally 3 thinned area.
4 JUDGE BARATTA: What we're talking about 5 here is not actually the finite element mesh that was 6 used, because that's even smaller, I would presume, 7 than what these regions are.
8 MR. POLONSKY: Correct. Your Honor, the 9 mesh size, and I would look to you for guidance on how 10 to address this, is not in the record currently. I'm 11 prepared to respond to your question on mesh size, but 12 how would you like me to proceed, considering that 13 this is not an evidentiary hearing?
14 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Let me see if I can pick 15 this up. If I recall the record, you were asking Dr.
16 Mehta how he did the calculations, and I think the 17 record transcript, and I can give you some, roughly 18 some pages from the transcript.
19 JUDGE BARATTA: Actually, if you go to the 20 exhibit that shows from the ACRS hearing, it actually 21 shows the mesh that was used for the sector model that 22 was originally done. You could refer to that exhibit, 23 I think.
24 JUDGE ABRAMSON: I think -- I don't have 25 that in front of me, but I have the transcript of a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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936 1 prior hearing, and on page 477 of the transcript, Dr.
2 Mehta described the mesh as three inch by three inch, 3 I think. So we can just confirm whether that's, in 4 fact, the mesh that's being used for this, or if it's 5 something different. And if it's something different, 6 we'll deal with that some other way.
7 MR. POLONSKY: The mesh size is different, 8 Your Honor.
9 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Okay. See if I can come 10 at this another way, then. In your affidavit, in your 11 brief to the Commission, and in the affidavit, there 12 are statements, I guess I can call them assertions, 13 but there are statements to the effect that this new 14 model is conservative. In making that statement, do 15 you know, counselor, whether to be conservative 16 involved considerations of mesh size?
17 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, Your Honor. And the 18 goal of the 3D model, as was discussed at the 19 evidentiary hearing, was to use modern techniques that 20 have the ability with greater computing power to see 21 things at a much finer level than had been done by GE 22 years ago.
23 JUDGE ABRAMSON: I'm not comfortable going 24 farther than that.
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937 1 that's -- modern methods automatically generate by the 2 mesh, is not the question. What is of importance is 3 how physically the thicknesses were input, not 4 necessarily the mesh size, because I presume it's much 5 smaller than the regions that you've applied here, 6 which are feet by feet, as opposed to inch by inch.
7 So I think -- I just wanted to confirm that we're not 8 talking about mesh here, we're actually talking about 9 large regions, which are then made up of smaller mesh, 10 portions of mesh at some points.
11 MR. POLONSKY: That's correct, Your Honor.
12 For the general thicknesses, Table One describes 13 bay B 14 JUDGE HAWKENS: In the evidentiary 15 hearing, Mr. Gallagher indicated the model will employ 16 a finer mesh than the previous GE model. There is no 17 reason for us to question that representation, is 18 there?
19 MR. POLONSKY: There is no reason for you 20 to question that, Your Honor.
21 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And we are correct in 22 assuming that Dr. Mehta's testimony at the original 23 hearing, that the mesh they used was three inch by 24 three inch is correct?
25 MR. POLONSKY: I believe that's correct, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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938 1 Your Honor. Table One, that is part of Mr. O'Rourke's 2 affidavit, sets forth the general thicknesses that 3 were assigned to each bay. You've asked for us to 4 explain how we came upon those thicknesses, but did 5 the Board have any specific questions, because, 6 frankly, all the detail about how those thicknesses 7 were selected is presented in that table, and I am not 8 sure I have anything further to add on the general 9 thicknesses.
10 JUDGE BARATTA: Yes, we have a few more 11 questions, but if you want to just kind of just 12 summarize what's in that table briefly.
13 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, Your Honor.
14 JUDGE BARATTA: Then we'll proceed from 15 there.
16 MR. POLONSKY: For the general area 17 thicknesses, AmerGen used the internal UT data grids 18 as representative numbers in most cases. In some 19 cases -- well, let me back up. For those bays which 20 have different numbers above and below 11 foot, the 21 internal grid data is sometimes itself split, and the 22 data from that grid was used to inform the 3D model 23 for above and below 11 foot.
24 For certain bays, it's very clear, and I'd 25 like to go to one of the pictures in Applicant's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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939 1 Exhibit 40, which is a picture of Bay 13. Here, and 2 let me just orient you, this is the vent header up 3 here, and this is the support for the vent header.
4 This is a vertical weld, so this is the top of the 5 sand bed region, and down here is the bottom. But on 6 the inside, you can see how you could take a grid 7 reading over here and get essentially nominal 8 thickness. And then take a grid reading on the other 9 side of the weld and get a very different thickness 10 average in your grid. And for Bay 13, for this 11 particular bay, there were three grids, one of which 12 showed nominal thickness. And that grid was ignored, 13 and the other two grids were used as a result, so that 14 is how the general thickness was selected for certain 15 bays. That's an example I gave you for Bay 13.
16 JUDGE BARATTA: Right. So looking at Bay 17 13, then, we had two corroded regions that were 18 depicted in the photograph, and a third which looked 19 essentially the original thickness. And then you 20 chose to ignore that, and use a thickness that was 21 more representative of the corroded region, which 22 would have been in that photograph to the left of the 23 region that was not corroded. Is that what B 24 MR. POLONSKY: Yes. That's how 25 engineering judgment was used in assigning general --
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940 1 one example of how engineering judgment was used in 2 assigning general thicknesses.
3 JUDGE BARATTA: All right. Now, looking 4 B I don't have all of the photographs that you've 5 presented. There's some others in that Exhibit 40, 6 was that done in each of the bays then?
7 MR. POLONSKY: Each bay was handled 8 uniquely and independently based on the data that was 9 available for that bay.
10 JUDGE BARATTA: Okay. You're saying the 11 data included these photographs, not just strictly the 12 UT measurements. In other words, you used that as a 13 guide?
14 MR. POLONSKY: It wasn't the photographs, 15 themselves. It was knowing what the condition of the 16 drywell shell was below 11 foot, because they had 17 visually observed it.
18 JUDGE BARATTA: Included the photographs, 19 and observations, et cetera, that we discussed.
20 MR. POLONSKY: Yes.
21 JUDGE BARATTA: And if you recall from the 22 hearing, we had personal observations, people who went 23 into the sand bed region and actually saw that, so 24 that was all factored in then to developing the model?
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941 1 you a good example from Bay 1, because one of the 2 later questions asks about Bay 1. Bay 1, the internal 3 data, suggests nominal thickness, and once they had 4 access to the outside of Bay 1, the external surface, 5 they understood that that was not representative.
6 So for purposes of modeling, they have 7 selected, and as explained in Mr. O'Rourke's affidavit 8 again in Table One, they selected the adjacent bay, 9 Bay 19, and assigned the thicknesses for Bay 19 into 10 Bay 1, which is why Bay 1 has identical parameters.
11 And that was done to be conservative, to be 12 representative, acknowledging, using engineering 13 judgment that the internal grid data was not 14 representative.
15 Now, one of the questions that's been 16 raised is well, why didn't you take into account the 17 external points? And AmerGen did do that. There are 18 23 external UT data points in Bay 1.
19 JUDGE BARATTA: All right. Could we --
20 Exhibit 44, Applicant's Exhibit 44, shows a diagram 21 of Bay 1. It says, "Spatial relationships of internal 22 grids and externally local thin areas". And what this 23 shows are a series of square and triangles that 24 represent points where UT measurements were made, not 25 clear which ones are internal versus external. I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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942 1 don't think that's identified, at least not in the 2 Exhibit 44.
3 MR. POLONSKY: Your Honor, a better 4 picture of that is in the 24 calc, which is the calc 5 of record, and that's provided behind Applicant's 6 Exhibit 16.
7 JUDGE BARATTA: Okay.
8 MR. POLONSKY: And it's the first figure 9 there, Figure 1-2.
10 JUDGE ABRAMSON: This is all that we -
11 sorry, counselor. This is all was -- these are 12 exhibits that were discussed at length during the 13 original hearing. Is that correct?
14 MR. POLONSKY: Yes.
15 JUDGE ABRAMSON: So there's no new 16 information here.
17 MR. POLONSKY: Absolutely none, Your 18 Honor.
19 If I could draw your attention to this 36 20 by 36-inch area, there are 15 UT data points. All of 21 these are external points.
22 JUDGE BARATTA: So all the triangles and 23 squares represent external points.
24 MR. POLONSKY: Correct. Yes. The squares 25 are less than 736 as the bottom indicates, and the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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943 1 triangles are greater than 736.
2 For Bay 1, there are 23 points here, 15 of 3 them are within this 36 by 36-inch square. This 36-4 inch square area became the 51-inch diameter circle 5 that is the locally thinned area in Bay 1.
6 JUDGE BARATTA: That's what I was trying 7 to get at.
8 MR. POLONSKY: Yes.
9 JUDGE BARATTA: Actually, what did you do 10 with that, and is that -- because the orientation of 11 this, you're looking up in one case, and down the 12 other case.
13 MR. POLONSKY: So all of these points are 14 encompassed in the locally thinned area that's 15 included in the base case.
16 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And how do we get from 17 the affidavit that Mr. O'Rourke submitted to the 18 Commission, which says he's got a 51-inch diameter 19 circle, to how you just characterized that circle as 20 originating from this? Can you show us that train of 21 logic, or are we introducing something new here?
22 MR. POLONSKY: I don't believe we're 23 introducing anything new, Your Honor. In Mr.
24 O'Rourke's affidavit, in Paragraph 15, he describes 25 that there are five areas that were modeled. He says, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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944 1 "They're modeled in the sand bed as circular shaped 2 ranging from 18 to 51 inches in diameter, and 3 thickness of 658 to 850 mils." That information is in 4 Applicant's - I'm sorry - Citizens' Exhibit 45. And, 5 as I mentioned previously, the beginning of that 6 Citizens' Exhibit 45, which is a technical evaluation, 7 says that it's being prepared for Structural Integrity 8 Associates, for the finite element model. It's 9 signed. It's the final version. And in the back, the 10 very first locally thinned area for input, page 8 of 11 12, is for Bay 1. And it says, "Area C from Figure 1-12 7 from the 24 calc." It says, "51 diameter circular 13 area that is 696 mils thick", and you can then go to 14 the 24 calc, which is Applicant's Exhibit 16, and 15 Figures 1-2 through Figures 1-7 are all Bay 1.
16 So the way we assigned in this case for 17 this bay, we have 15 points which are included in the 18 51-inch diameter locally thinned area. The average of 19 all the other external points, assuming that they are 20 representative of the exterior, of the shell 21 thickness, which they're not, but assuming that they 22 were, the average would be somewhere in the range of 23 860 mils. And the assigned value for this bay is 826 24 mils, so we believe that's a conservative thickness to 25 use for the general thickness area for this bay.
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945 1 JUDGE ABRAMSON: I don't recall, but was 2 there an exhibit that showed a picture of Bay 1?
3 There's quite a few pictures, I just couldn't find 4 one.
5 MR. POLONSKY: We'd have to look through 6 the ACRS presentation, which is AmerGen's Exhibit 40 7 and 41, to look for that. And we'll do that while 8 we're talking.
9 JUDGE HAWKENS: So you accounted -- took 10 the external measurements into account for Bay 1.
11 Were they taken into account for any of the other 12 bays?
13 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, Your Honor.
14 JUDGE HAWKENS: And in what way?
15 MR. POLONSKY: If we can go back to the 16 diagram, any of the five bays that have locally 17 thinned areas. Those were areas that had been 18 evaluated in the 24 calc as -- evaluated against a 19 local buckling criterion. If you recall, there was a 20 tray that we talked about a year ago, it was 21 Applicant's Exhibit 11. And the 24 calc, its purpose, 22 one of its purposes was to insure that none of the 23 areas of local thinning, as determined by the external 24 points, would be outside of that local, or exceed that 25 local acceptance criteria. And so, the 24 calc NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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946 1 identified these areas, those 36 by 36-inch areas, or 2 12 by 12-inch areas, for evaluation.
3 The model input was then taken from the 24 4 calc, and essentially given to Structural Integrity 5 Associates, and that's described in Citizens' Exhibit 6 45. And those 36 by 36-inch areas that were square 7 simply became circles, 51-inch diameter, and the 12 by 8 12-inch areas became 18-inch circles. And that's how 9 the external points, those thin points, were 10 accommodated from the 24 calc, and translated into 11 input for Structural Integrity for the 3D model.
12 External points were also used in another 13 way. For those bays where we used data from adjacent 14 bays, and let me discuss those briefly. For Bays 1, 15 3, 7, and 15, AmerGen used data, internal grid data, 16 from adjacent bays, because as I previously discussed, 17 AmerGen did not believe that the internal data was 18 representative for the thickness below the 11 foot 19 level. So for those bays, at least for Bays 3, 7, and 20 15 below the 11 foot level, the general thickness area 21 was assigned using the average of the adjacent bays.
22 So if we can take Bay 3, for example, this was taken 23 from data from adjacent bays, Bay 7, frankly, which 24 has no external or internal data below 11 foot. It 25 was taken using data from adjacent bays.
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947 1 JUDGE BARATTA: Could you just reiterate 2 why you used the data from the adjacent bays, what 3 data you were using there?
4 MR. POLONSKY: Yes. The internal grid 5 averages for those bays suggested that the drywell 6 shell was near nominal thickness; yet, visual 7 inspections from the exterior suggested that some 8 corrosion had occurred in those bays.
9 JUDGE BARATTA: Again, you're using 10 additional -- the additional information that we 11 discussed previously.
12 MR. POLONSKY: Yes.
13 JUDGE BARATTA: In addition to the UT 14 measurements B 15 MR. POLONSKY: Correct.
16 JUDGE BARATTA: -- to better define it.
17 MR. POLONSKY: That's right. And just to 18 check ourselves to make sure that we weren't just 19 picking an average number, we looked at what the 20 normal distribution would have been for points, 21 external points for that average. And we compared the 22 external UT thickness measurements to the distribution 23 curve that would have been expected from average 24 thickness based on the internal UT grids from the 25 adjacent bays. And the external measurements were NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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948 1 bounded by that distribution, demonstrating to us that 2 the average thickness selected in the bay was 3 reasonable.
4 JUDGE BARATTA: And these distribution 5 curves, as I recall, were in the -- one of the calcs.
6 I think the points were plotted to test for normality 7 and such.
8 MR. POLONSKY: Correct. And I believe 9 they were all normal, except for Bay 1.
10 JUDGE BARATTA: And was it -- when you say 11 it was bounded, do you know whether it was one, two, 12 or three standard deviations?
13 MR. POLONSKY: I'm afraid I don't, Your 14 Honor.
15 If there are no further questions on how 16 the general thicknesses were selected, or how the 17 local area thicknesses were selected, I can move on to 18 question two.
19 JUDGE BARATTA: Were there any other areas 20 -- I noticed at least looking at -- this was Applicant 21 Exhibit 16, your figure that you had up there a moment 22 ago, if you could bring that back up. That outside of 23 the 51-inch circle which is shown as that large 24 rectangle approximately in the center of the screen 25 there, there's also another region to the left there NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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949 1 under minus 48 inches, I think, where you have two 2 squares represented there. How as that type of 3 information factored in?
4 MR. POLONSKY: That type of information, 5 which did not implicate the local buckling criterion 6 in the 24 calc was just treated as part of the general 7 thickness for the bay. The general thickness for this 8 bay was selected at 826 mils. And as I tried to 9 explain, there are eight external UT data points that 10 fall outside of this box. All eight of those, if you 11 average them, would come out to somewhere greater than 12 826, so the thought was that 826 was a bounding 13 number. There's only one locally thinned area in Bay 14 1.
15 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Sorry. Counselor, do I 16 correctly understand then that the general -- the 17 thickness used for the balance of the area in that bay 18 was below nominal?
19 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, very much below 20 nominal. Nominal is greater than 1,000 mils and the 21 number that was used was 826 mils. And that was based 22 on some averaging of these eight data points that were 23 taken outside of the big box. Well, the eight data 24 points were used as a check. The average of the eight 25 data points is greater than 826 mils. 826 mils was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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950 1 taken from the average for the general thickness from 2 the adjacent bay, which is Bay 19, which had a similar 3 pattern of corrosion.
4 JUDGE BARATTA: So in terms of an 5 extrapolation scheme, that would be how you are 6 extrapolating thicknesses for those regions where you 7 do not have data, or you question the data. Is that 8 correct?
9 MR. POLONSKY: That is correct, Your 10 Honor. Extrapolation was used we believe in a number 11 of ways, both of which we believe are conservative or 12 bounding. The first is for general thicknesses for 13 the base case, we used or extrapolated information 14 from adjacent bays where we did not have data in a bay 15 that would be representative of the corrosion below 11 16 foot. We also used an extrapolation technique in 17 looking at the locally thinned areas that are part of 18 the base case. I mean, the locally thinned area in 19 Bay 1 is 696 mils, as inputted into the model. We 20 know it's not 696 mils, and we know that area is not 21 51 inches in diameter. Those were based on 15 22 individual UT data points that we know were selected 23 because they were some of the thinnest locations.
24 What we've done is essentially averaged 25 and extrapolated between those points, and out to a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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951 1 51-inch diameter, and said well, let's be 2 conservative, and assume that that entire 51-inch area 3 is the average of all of those points, or is 696, 4 which I think is even a lower average than all of 5 those points. So that's an extremely conservative 6 bounding way, but we believe that uses extrapolation.
7 We then have sensitivity analyses, which 8 we haven't even gotten to. So far, I've just been 9 discussing what the base case is, but the sensitivity 10 analysis, we have one that looks at the uncertainty in 11 locally thinned areas, and one that looks at the 12 uncertainty in general thickness areas. The locally 13 thinned area sensitivity case takes that same locally 14 thinned area, the 51-inch diameter at 696 mils in Bay 15 1, and then it thins it by 100 mils, which is bounding 16 and conservative. So we are going to be running the 17 model at 596 mils for that locally thinned area, to 18 see what the sensitivity of the model is for that kind 19 of high-level change.
20 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Was that information 21 available to the Commission, that you were taking 22 another 100 mils off in the sensitivity study?
23 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, Your Honor. It's 24 described in Mr. O'Rourke's affidavit, and the 25 sensitivity analyses I believe are first discussed in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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952 1 Paragraph 18, where it says, "The first analysis 2 assesses the sensitivity of the base case to 3 uncertainties in the thickness of locally thinned 4 areas. The sensitivity analysis uses a hypothetical 5 locally thinned area in Bay 1, i.e., a 51-inch 6 diameter circle with an average thickness of 696 mils, 7 and reduces the thickness of that area by 100 mils to 8 596 mils." That is the simplest way to describe what 9 the first sensitivity analysis is.
10 JUDGE BARATTA: Okay. And there were no 11 measurements to suggest that, in fact, the thickness 12 was 596 in any of that region.
13 MR. POLONSKY: That's correct.
14 JUDGE BARATTA: And that there were no 15 visual observations to suggest that the thickness in 16 that area was 596.
17 MR. POLONSKY: That's correct. If you 18 took a gross conservative approach, you would look at 19 those external measurements and average them, and come 20 up with a number. And in Bay 1, I believe 696 is even 21 lower than that average, so the starting point for the 22 base case is conservative. Then you take another 100 23 mils off of that, again, just to see how the model 24 reacts to that level of uncertainty. But in no way do 25 we believe that that reflects reality, or the real NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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953 1 uncertainty in the data.
2 For the second sensitivity case, we are 3 going to be looking at the reduction of general area 4 thickness. And in this case I believe it's Bay 19, 5 and we are reducing the general thickness area in Bay 6 19 from 826 mils down to 756 mils - I'm sorry - 776 7 mils. And that's described in Paragraph 22. It says, 8 "The sensitivity analysis models the general area of 9 the bay with a 50 mil reduction, i.e., 776 mils. The 10 general area", and it goes on to describe that it 11 affects the entire bay. And, again, the thought was 12 let's look and see if the uncertainty in the model 13 would be -- how it would be affected by a reduction in 14 50 mils over the entire area of the bay, excluding the 15 locally thinned area, and what would that do? Again, 16 we don't believe that reflects reality. We believe 17 that's a bounding conservative assumption, and that's 18 why that was selected.
19 Any questions on the sensitivity analyses, 20 the two sensitivity analyses that were done?
21 JUDGE BARATTA: Is there any reason that 22 similar sensitivities should have been applied to, 23 say, Bay 17, where you have that region 660 versus 850 24 spread over probably something about 50 some odd 25 inches? Your drawing isn't all up to scale.
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954 1 MR. POLONSKY: The sensitivity analysis 2 was not conducted in Bay 13, because we don't believe 3 it would have been bounding. Bay 13's locally thinned 4 area is only 18 inches in diameter. It's a small 5 area, and so the sensitivity analysis that we wanted 6 to do for locally thinned, on locally thinned areas, 7 we selected the largest area, which is 51 inches in 8 diameter. And we selected the thinnest of those 51-9 inch areas, which is 696 in Bay 1. We believed it was 10 bounding, again, responding to the Commission's 11 directive that it be consistent or bounding with what 12 you had requested. That's how we've interpreted that 13 language.
14 JUDGE BARATTA: And when you -- unlike the 15 previous analysis where it was not possible to do a 16 B factor those actual areas into the actual model 17 itself, when you talk about a sensitivity analysis 18 using a locally thinned area in Bay 1, we're talking 19 about doing that as part of an entire 3D model, or are 20 you going back to a scheme where you represent just 21 the plate, as was done in the earlier analysis?
22 MR. POLONSKY: The sensitivity analyses, 23 both the local and the general area cases, were both 24 done in a 3D model using the base case thicknesses.
25 The only changes were as I described, 100 mils for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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955 1 local area, 50 mils for the general area.
2 JUDGE BARATTA: You want to clarify that.
3 MR. POLONSKY: Yes.
4 JUDGE BARATTA: That's different than the 5 original that was used, one of the reasons why you did 6 it.
7 MR. POLONSKY: Right. Any additional 8 questions on the sensitivity studies? I think we've 9 covered engineering judgment, which was question two.
10 We could move on to question three, about the finite 11 element, how it was chosen, how it overlays the 12 measurements.
13 JUDGE HAWKENS: I don't want to go any 14 farther than we've gone on B 15 MR. POLONSKY: Moving on to question four 16 then. I think we've also addressed question four. We 17 described how we assigned general thicknesses. We 18 discussed how we assigned the local area thickness, 19 and how the sensitivity studies were done, and how we 20 believe those are conservative and bounding.
21 JUDGE BARATTA: Let me just interrupt you 22 for a second, just to clarify one point. We talk 23 about physical properties. The original model had 24 physical properties that were assumed for the strength 25 of the material. I think it's -- again, I assume NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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956 1 those were the same properties that were used here.
2 There's no reason that they should be different. Is 3 that B 4 MR. POLONSKY: When you mean "properties",
5 Your Honor, do you mean the inputs to it, or do you 6 mean the ASME code assigned tensile strength B 7 JUDGE BARATTA: Whatever was used in the 8 original model, which was probably the code values, or 9 as-built values that were obtained from the vendor.
10 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, I believe they were 11 the same, Your Honor, based on the ASME code.
12 JUDGE BARATTA: Thank you.
13 MR. POLONSKY: I believe we've also 14 covered question four and five, unless the Board has 15 additional questions.
16 JUDGE HAWKENS: Let's proceed to six.
17 MR. POLONSKY: Okay. I believe that many 18 of the following questions go to a misinterpretation 19 that the Citizens had about whether AmerGen used a 20 locally or locally thinned areas in the base case. As 21 I've just explained, we did. This assertion, 22 essentially, we read it as assuming that we didn't use 23 any of the external data to create locally thinned 24 areas, and we did, so the answer to this question is 25 we don't know what they're referring to, because we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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957 1 did use the external data taken from the 24 calc and 2 converted those into circular areas, and assigned them 3 into these five bays as locally thinned areas.
4 Question seven, they state that again we 5 were overly optimistic using the average thicknesses 6 in Bays 1, 3, and 7. I described how we selected the 7 thicknesses for Bay 1 in detail, and how we checked it 8 against the external points. I've also described in 9 3, 7, and 15 how we used the external data. Again, 10 for Bay 7, there is no external data below 11 foot, or 11 internal data below 11 foot, so we're not sure what 12 Citizens are talking about with respect to Bay 7. But 13 Bays 3 and 15, I described how we used the average 14 general thickness of the adjacent bays, and then used 15 a normal distribution check of the external points 16 against that general thickness value.
17 For question eight, as to whether or not 18 the NRC believes that the 106 external measurements 19 should form the base case from which sensitivity 20 studies would be conducted, we didn't read the Staff's 21 affidavit as requiring that, and will defer to the 22 Staff to answer that question.
23 As for question nine, we've already 24 covered this issue about Bay 1. It was conservative 25 and acceptable to use the external UT data points and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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958 1 get a value greater than 826 mils. As I described, it 2 would be higher than that if you used the ones outside 3 of the locally thinned area.
4 Question ten, again is the same thing.
5 The only way you arrive at 0.788 inches is if you 6 average all of the external points, and just use 7 external points, which we know are bias thin.
8 Question eleven, we have already discussed 9 the extrapolation that we did, and we think that 10 that's bounding, so we don't think there ought to have 11 been a different technique.
12 For question twelve, seeing as my five-13 minute bell has already rung, I will move quickly.
14 Question twelve, the fact that the internal 15 measurements, which cover less than 1 percent produce 16 non-conservative and uncertain estimates, first of 17 all, 1 percent is misleading. The internal grids were 18 selected after interrogating the entire, or a lot of 19 the internal diameter surface of the drywell shell to 20 select those grids. So to say that oh, they're only 21 in one area, we looked at a lot of the circumference 22 and selected those areas, particularly, so in some 23 ways they, themselves, the internal grids are 24 conservative themselves.
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959 1 tend to coincide with the former sand-air interface 2 where the level of highest corrosion was. And for 3 those bays where it looks like once we got access to 4 the outside, that there was not nominal thickness 5 below 11 foot, and we adjusted the values for the 3D 6 model accordingly. So we believe we've been 7 reasonable in our interpretation, and bounding in most 8 cases.
9 Question thirteen, the issue about 1.81, 10 if all of the local and generalized acceptance 11 criteria have been met. This question challenges the 12 current licensing basis. It's outside the scope of 13 the proceeding, and most certainly is outside the 14 scope of what the Commission delegated in its August 15 21 order. And we're not going to be addressing it for 16 that reason.
17 Question fourteen, discuss the assertion 18 that the Staff's reliance on the Sandia study to 19 support conclusions about the drywell shell is 20 misplaced. Sandia's analysis is overly conservative.
21 In the first instance, they did not use the modified 22 capacity reduction factor, which was addressed at the 23 ACRS, and they came up, even without using that, with 24 a safety factor of 2.15, which satisfies the AMSE 25 code. And if they had used that modified capacity NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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960 1 reduction factor, we believe they would have come up 2 with a higher number, in the range of 2.83, which is 3 previously entered as an exhibit, Applicant's Exhibit 4 41, slide 27, where at the bottom it shows Sandia 5 without modified capacity reduction factor 2.15, and 6 with it 2.83.
7 Citizens also attempt to undermine the 8 Sandia study with citations to Dr. Hausler's contour 9 plots, which the Board has found not reliable. So I 10 believe I've addressed the Board's fourteen questions.
11 Happy to answer other questions, if there are, or 12 retire.
13 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you. We'll now hear 14 from the NRC Staff.
15 MR. POLONSKY: Thank you, Your Honors.
16 MS. BATY: Good morning, Your Honors. I'd 17 just like to begin by briefly summarizing the Staff's 18 position.
19 JUDGE HAWKENS: Before you do, Ms. Baty, 20 would you like to reserve any time for rebuttal?
21 MS. BATY: Oh, yes. Thank you for 22 reminding me. The Staff would like to reserve 15 23 minutes of our allotted time for rebuttal. And I 24 highly doubt we will use all of our allotted time, 25 anyway.
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961 1 I'd like to begin by briefly summarizing 2 the Staff's position. As we stated in our June 11 3 submission to the Commission's order of CLI08-10, the 4 Staff's understanding -- based on our understanding of 5 what AmerGen plans to do, our position is that their 6 analysis will address and bound Judge Baratta's 7 concerns. And, in any event, no additional analysis, 8 including the 3D analysis that AmerGen has committed 9 to perform, is needed to support a finding of 10 reasonable assurance of the structural integrity of 11 the drywell shell during the period of extended 12 operation.
13 The Staff's finding of reasonable 14 assurance was based not on this commitment and license 15 condition, but rather the analyses that have already 16 been performed, including the confirmatory analysis 17 performed by Sandia, and the extremely conservative 18 analysis performed by GE.
19 The finding is also based on the results 20 of the 2006 inspections, and AmerGen's Aging 21 Management program, as enhanced by commitments, 22 including the commitment to perform full-scope UT 23 measurements every other outage.
24 It's also important to have a little 25 background about how this license condition and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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962 1 commitment came into being. AmerGen, who proposed 2 this, volunteered to do this during an ACRS 3 Subcommittee meeting. Then AmerGen submitted this as 4 a formal commitment based on the response received 5 from the ACRS Subcommittee, that the ACRS Subcommittee 6 thought it was a good idea. Then the ACRS suggested 7 that the Staff make it a license condition in order to 8 better quantify the existing margin.
9 It is not -- another important point to 10 understand, is that it is not the Staff's practice to 11 specify precisely how a licensee performs an analysis.
12 The Staff does not intend to -- unless the results of 13 this analysis show that the drywell shell does not 14 meet the code specified acceptance criteria, the Staff 15 will not be performing an in-depth review. Rather, 16 the Staff will be reviewing the summary report that we 17 received in considering whether the analysis looks 18 rigorous, whether it was consistent with good 19 engineering practice, and whether it's compliant with 20 various codes and standards.
21 JUDGE BARATTA: Could you explain, though, 22 how you would do that if you're not going to look at 23 the detailed report?
24 MS. BATY: Your Honor, we did not -- this 25 is not required for our finding of reasonable NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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963 1 assurance. We are not requiring AmerGen to even 2 submit this analysis for review and approval. Rather, 3 they have agreed to provide us with a summary, and if 4 we review it, and we find that it lacks rigor, or that 5 it doesn't comply with accepted engineering practice, 6 or it doesn't have compliance -- it doesn't comply 7 with various applicable codes and standards, we will 8 be asking questions, and we may perform an audit. But 9 unless the analysis shows that the shell does not meet 10 code-specified acceptance criteria, or AmerGen decides 11 to request a change to its current licensing basis, 12 the Staff is not going to be performing a detailed 13 review of the analysis.
14 JUDGE ABRAMSON: All right. Counselor, 15 let's pick this up right here, because it seems to me 16 this is the crux of this whole matter, is what's the 17 Staff going to do to get comfortable that AmerGen 18 meets its commitment. And what you're telling me is 19 you're going to rely on the honor system. And we 20 appreciate that that's generally been the approach of 21 the Agency where things are not critical. But I 22 personally was involved right after the Three Mile 23 Island accident in assisting the Staff with a review 24 of all safety analyses by all licensees, and the Staff 25 did in-depth review of safety analyses, mandatory NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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964 1 transient analyses to make sure that those analyses 2 were, in fact, reasonably representative, and 3 reasonably conservative.
4 Is it your view that this particular 5 confirmatory analysis that's being done under this 6 commitment, or that will be done under this commitment 7 does not rise to the level that needs Staff detailed 8 scrutiny and review? Is that what you're telling us?
9 MS. BATY: Yes, Your Honor, because, as we 10 stated in our briefs and the affidavit that Mr. Ashar 11 provided, the Staff's finding of reasonable assurance 12 is not conditioned upon, and relies in no way on the 13 outcome of this analysis.
14 JUDGE ABRAMSON: So what is the Staff's 15 view then of the value of trying to quantify this 16 margin?
17 MS. BATY: This was, as I explained, the 18 origin of this commitment and this condition is not 19 something that the Staff required. It's something 20 that the ACRS suggested, and that the applicant 21 volunteered to do.
22 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And you don't think that 23 the reason the ACRS suggested that this be done raises 24 the level of importance of this?
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965 1 that I'm prepared to -- that I have a good answer for 2 that.
3 JUDGE ABRAMSON: That's okay. You can 4 stop there.
5 MS. BATY: My understanding is how this 6 came about, and that the GE analysis was done in the 7 early `90s, and that the ability to quantify -- there 8 were limitations to what computers, the mesh that 9 could be -- the finite element analysis that could be 10 performed at that time based on what computers could 11 accomplish. And now that is much greater, and so this 12 analysis will just provide a better way to quantify.
13 Right now, we have a worst case scenario. With GE it 14 was an extremely conservative analysis.
15 JUDGE ABRAMSON: So will the Staff be 16 looking at the assumptions and model that's used in 17 the to be submitted 3D analysis, and comparing those 18 to the assumptions that were used in the original GE 19 analysis to see whether, in fact, the GE analysis was 20 hyperconservative?
21 MS. BATY: Your Honor, my understanding is 22 that we will be reviewing -- we will review what we 23 get to look to see whether it was a rigorous analysis, 24 whether it was consistent with B 25 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Yes, you don't need to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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966 1 repeat that.
2 MS. BATY: Yes, don't repeat. That's what 3 we will be doing. And I don't know -- I would have to 4 check -- if you would permit me, I can check with the 5 Staff member here, but I can't give you that detail.
6 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Let me ask counsel for 7 AmerGen, is there any reason that you would not be 8 willing to submit more than a summary report, submit 9 enough detail that the Staff could look at it in more 10 depth?
11 MR. POLONSKY: I'd have to get back to you 12 with that, if I could answer it B 13 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Later? That's fine.
14 JUDGE HAWKENS: That's fine.
15 MS. BATY: But, Your Honor, realizing that 16 this would be a change in the Staff's position, if we 17 were to -- because our position is that we have 18 reasonable assurance based on what has been done.
19 JUDGE ABRAMSON: I understand your legal 20 position, counselor, but let's take a close look at 21 what's going on here. One of my colleagues has said 22 that he thought that it might be useful to do a little 23 more with the commitment, with the analysis and the 24 commitment. The Applicant has now said what we're 25 doing is better than what Judge Baratta had suggested.
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967 1 The Commission has referred it to us for resolution, 2 which in my mind means they're asking us to suggest 3 how this might be resolved, and how it might best be 4 handled.
5 The norm for dealing with commitments is 6 that the Staff reviews the commitment, that's not for 7 a Board to deal with. Norm is when there's a 8 condition on a license, the Staff looks at that 9 condition on the license to see whether it's met. And 10 what's happening here, at least in my mind, is the 11 Commission has asked us, is that condition sufficient 12 to satisfy Judge Baratta's concern? And, to me, that 13 means are we comfortable that the Staff is going to 14 assure that that condition is satisfied? And if 15 you're telling me the Staff is going to give it a 16 cursory review, that does not give me a very warm 17 feeling.
18 I understand the trust me philosophy, but 19 the Commission in particular asked us to looked at 20 this issue, and to suggest to them what's an 21 appropriate resolution. And I'm not very happy with 22 what I'm hearing about the Staff's business as usual 23 on this one.
24 JUDGE BARATTA: Yes. I share Judge 25 Abramson's concern. I mean, this resulted from an NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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968 1 attempt by me to address the uncertainty that we have 2 with respect to the number of data points, and such, 3 that we take. And while I do feel that your 4 commitment to get the analysis done is a good one, I 5 didn't think you went far enough. And what I'm 6 hearing now is that it's almost like when this thing 7 comes in, it's going to get filed, and I think it's 8 going to get filed in something other than a square 9 file. That bothers me.
10 MS. BATY: Well, Your Honor, I don't think 11 the Staff's -- at the risk of incurring the ire of 12 this Board, I would have to state that you are going 13 to be sending a memo to the -- or referring some kind 14 of -- preparing some kind of paper for the Commission, 15 but I do have to say that - and I understand that this 16 Board is looking at how -- and Judge Abramson, 17 especially, you're looking at a way to resolve this 18 and looking at a solution, or a compromise, or some 19 sort of -- developing a way of approach to this issue.
20 And I understand that, but I also -- realizing that 21 it would be the Commission's position -- and the 22 Commission is the only one who has the authority to 23 direct the Staff in how it reviews applications.
24 JUDGE ABRAMSON: We don't doubt that.
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969 1 memorandum, or however that comes out. What I'm 2 suggesting is that, from my perspective, my advice to 3 the Commission would be to have the Staff check this.
4 MS. BATY: And that's very well and good, 5 but I am not, of course, in a position to commit the 6 Staff to performing an in-depth review, given that our 7 position throughout this proceeding, and the position 8 that we took in our SER, our analysis tells us that we 9 have reasonable assurance, and that there is a margin.
10 And that the only purpose of performing this analysis 11 is to be better quantify that margin, using modern 12 techniques that are now available to us, that were not 13 available in the early `90s, and that's the sole 14 purpose of doing this.
15 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And, by the way, the 16 Board's original ruling was to that effect.
17 MS. BATY: That is correct.
18 JUDGE ABRAMSON: We don't doubt that there 19 are reasonable assurances. That was the majority 20 opinion. And, in fact, in that, I believe Dr. Baratta 21 concurred. His concern was simply, let's get a little 22 more careful with this 3D analysis that's going to be 23 done to quantify things, and I think the Applicant 24 sounds like they have addressed that quite thoroughly, 25 and so the missing link here is what's the Staff going NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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970 1 to do?
2 JUDGE BARATTA: And you're correct. I 3 mean, we don't have the authority to direct you to do 4 it, but we have been asked by your boss, our boss, to 5 advise them on what should be done.
6 MS. BATY: I really cannot go beyond that 7 at this point. If that's what this Board -- I can't 8 commit the Staff to perform any kind of review, 9 because our current position is what I have stated, so 10 I don't think we can get much further with this 11 without direction from B 12 JUDGE ABRAMSON: That's fine. We don't 13 need any more. We understand.
14 MS. BATY: Okay. Turning to the specific 15 questions that this Board has posed, the Staff notes -
16 - we note that this analysis has not yet been 17 performed, and as duly noted here, the Staff has not 18 had an opportunity to review it, any type of review of 19 what AmerGen is going to do. And, therefore, we're 20 not prepared at this point to answer detailed 21 questions about the assumptions that were made in the 22 analysis that has yet to occur.
23 Therefore, with regard to Questions One 24 through Five, AmerGen has addressed those questions 25 quite thoroughly. And the only question among those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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971 1 that seems to be relevant to the Staff was part of 2 Question Three, reviewing the mesh -- how we would 3 review for convergence and conservatism. And, once 4 again, assuming that the Staff was under some -- had 5 some reason to be performing a detailed analysis, 6 either because we are ordered to by the Commission, as 7 you suggest, or AmerGen requests a change of its CLB, 8 or the analysis doesn't show that the shell meets the 9 code specified acceptance criteria, we would review 10 for -- we would examine the approach used for 11 optimizing the mesh, finite element size mesh, and we 12 would see what -- we would review whether the chosen 13 mesh size is consistent with good engineering 14 practice. But not having seen it, not having had a 15 chance to review it, we can't provide any more 16 detailed answer.
17 With regard to Question Six B 18 JUDGE HAWKENS: Ms. Baty, in the event 19 that this analysis were to reveal that it was less 20 than 2.0, less than the CLB, can you walk me through 21 what the process would be, and what impact that would 22 have on the renewal?
23 MS. BATY: Well, Your Honor, I -- it's 24 hard to speculate what impact that would have on the 25 renewal, because I believe there's a good likelihood NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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972 1 that this analysis will be completed before a renewed 2 license is even issued, given I understand AmerGen's 3 plans to submit it before B 4 JUDGE HAWKENS: I believe that was part of 5 the commitment, it was before the B 6 MS. BATY: Right. But it will be -- and 7 I'm guessing based on the way this proceeding has 8 progressed, that they will not be in possession of a 9 renewed license by the time this is submitted.
10 If it would show -- in the highly unlikely 11 event that it would show that they do not meet the 12 required code acceptance criteria, the Staff would, 13 indeed, be performing an in-depth review, and would 14 probably be requiring additional analysis on the part 15 of the Applicant to provide justification. And if 16 that justification was not provided, the Staff would 17 have to take appropriate action, including possibly --
18 I mean, the Commission certainly has the power to 19 shut the plant down and order decommissioning, 20 commencing decommissioning.
21 So, in short, there would be a lot of 22 action taken, including very detailed analysis of --
23 review by the Staff of this analysis in the highly 24 unlikely event that the analysis doesn't provide an 25 acceptable result.
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973 1 Turning to Question Six, again, AmerGen, I 2 believe, has addressed Citizens' assertion that --
3 Citizens seem to be under the impression that AmerGen 4 should use just the external points. And AmerGen has 5 cleared up that they are not, in fact, relying solely 6 on the internal points. They are also considering the 7 external data points.
8 With respect to Question Seven, once again 9 it appears that Citizens have misinterpreted what 10 AmerGen plans to do. And AmerGen has clearly stated 11 that they are considering the external points.
12 With regard to Question Eight, which is a 13 question directed more to the Staff, about whether 14 AmerGen must use the 106 external data points and its 15 base case. Citizens have misread Paragraph 8 of Mr.
16 Ashar's affidavit. Mr. Ashar did not state that the 17 106 external UT measurements must form, and 18 exclusively form the base case. If that's how his 19 paragraph was interpreted, it's simply been misread.
20 The Staff's position is that all available data should 21 be considered, and the Staff's position is further 22 that the 106 external UT measurements represent the 23 extent of local corrosion, they represent the locally 24 thinned areas.
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974 1 AmerGen has explained, has responded to this concern 2 of Citizens, and the Staff's review of what -- of the 3 documents submitted by AmerGen, including the diagram.
4 It appears to be reasonable, but, of course, the 5 Staff has not had an opportunity to review the 6 assumptions that were made in this analysis at this 7 point, but it appears reasonable at first blush. And, 8 once again, it appears that Citizens are pushing for 9 an analysis relying exclusively on the external 10 measurements, which would be unduly conservative.
11 Question Eleven, I believe AmerGen has 12 addressed that. And based on the Staff's 13 understanding of what AmerGen intends to do, we 14 believe that they are using an extrapolation technique 15 in considering both the internal and external.
16 With regard to Question Twelve and the 1 17 percent argument made by Citizens, just to echo. This 18 question relates to a contention that was challenging 19 the spatial scope of UT measurements. And that 20 contention was not admitted by this Board, and the 21 appeal of that decision is still pending with the 22 Commission.
23 Furthermore, the record reflects that the 24 severe corrosion of the drywell shell is localized, is 25 not a generalized corrosion, and the bathtub ring that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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975 1 we all spoke about last September. And, so, the 2 Staff's position is that AmerGen has adequately 3 characterized the extent of the corrosion of this 4 drywell shell. And the record reflects the number of 5 UT measurements that were taken in order to select the 6 locations for the UT measurements that they have 7 repeatedly taken.
8 With regard to Question Thirteen, as this 9 Board found in its initial decision, AmerGen's 10 acceptance criteria is part of the CLB, and issues 11 related to the adequacy of the CLB are outside the 12 scope of this proceeding. The single issue that the 13 Commission referred to this Board is whether the 3D 14 B is about the 3D analysis that they plan to perform.
15 And they simply did not ask this Board to revisit the 16 acceptance criteria that's in the CLB.
17 However, in any event, the conditions that 18 would give rise to a safety factor of 1.81 do not 19 exist, because generalized corrosion of the drywell 20 shell has not occurred. It has not been degraded 21 throughout to a uniform thickness of .736. And 22 there's no evidence that that's going to occur in the 23 future.
24 Finally, with regard to Question Fourteen, 25 the assertion that the Staff's reliance on Sandia is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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976 1 misplaced. First of all, the Sandia analysis was a 2 confirmatory analysis, and it was not the sole basis 3 of the Staff's reasonable assurance finding.
4 The Sandia study used the average external 5 UT measurements from 1992, in addition to, they used 6 the external measurements for the general thickness 7 criteria from 1992, no internal points. Plus, they 8 used a couple of -- two locally thinned areas.
9 The difference between the 1992 and the 10 2006 measurements really is negligible. The record 11 reflects -- furthermore, the record reflects that the 12 UT measurements, the external UT measurements were 13 taken at areas selected, at thin areas, and they're 14 biased. And that is what this Board found in its 15 initial decision.
16 Finally, Citizens' argument relies on Dr.
17 Hausler's contour plots, which this Board found in its 18 initial decision to be unreliable.
19 To repeat the Staff's position, I'm sure 20 it's very clear that the Staff's finding of reasonable 21 assurance was not based on this promise to perform 22 condition, commitment to perform this 3D analysis, and 23 that our finding of reasonable assurance is based on 24 the analyses that have been performed, the results of 25 the 2006 inspection, and AmerGen's Aging Management NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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977 1 program, which includes full scope UT measurements 2 every other outage, and inspections to insure the 3 integrity of the coating.
4 I have nothing more unless the Board has 5 further questions for the Staff.
6 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you.
7 Mr. Webster, are you prepared to proceed?
8 MR. WEBSTER: Could we just spend five 9 minutes setting up our projection here?
10 JUDGE HAWKENS: Let's take a 10-minute 11 break. We'll return at 10:43. Thank you.
12 (Whereupon, the proceedings went off the 13 record at 10:34 a.m., and resumed at 10:47 a.m.)
14 JUDGE HAWKENS: Please be seated.
15 Mr. Webster, you may proceed.
16 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you, Judge. If I may, 17 I would like to reserve 10 minutes for rebuttal.
18 JUDGE HAWKENS: We will take that request 19 into consideration.
20 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you, Judge. First of 21 all, I'm afraid I'm forced to object to testimony by 22 AmerGen regarding the distribution, the normal 23 distribution of the external points. While my 24 recollection is somewhat hazy, and I haven't quite 25 been able to find it in the record, I do believe there NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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978 1 was some argument about what was the appropriate 2 statistical distribution, and we'll address this point 3 in a briefing afterwards. With regard to the 4 averages, we'll address that point in the 5 presentation. The physical properties in the model, 6 again, we don't believe that has been stated 7 previously in the record.
8 With regard to the NRC Staff, I have an 9 interesting presentation. I think the thing that 10 really sticks out is the Staff's assertion there is no 11 generalized corrosion of this drywell. I mean, it's 12 very, very clear that there is a -- in the sand bed 13 region there is generalized corrosion. AmerGen's own 14 estimates very clearly show that.
15 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Okay. Let's not belabor 16 it. Let's get on to what we've got to look at.
17 MR. WEBSTER: Well, I think it's 18 troubling, Judge Abramson, that the Staff doesn't even 19 appear to understand that, even at this juncture. So 20 the big picture here is that the limiting margin is 21 probably the margin above the safety factor of two, 22 which is a CLB requirement. The problem is, we don't 23 know what that margin is, so it's rather difficult, as 24 we've all maintained all along, to decide what the 25 appropriate margin frequency is, when we don't know NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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979 1 what the margin is, you don't know what the limiting 2 margin is, and you don't know what the uncertainty of 3 the limiting margin is.
4 AmerGen's modeling is supposed to quantify 5 this margin, but we've heard nothing about how they're 6 going to do that. We need to know more than whether 7 it's just above the safety factor. We need to know 8 something you can relate to the measurements, unless 9 AmerGen's proposal is to continuously remodel each 10 time they take some more measurements. AmerGen had an 11 original proposal to actually evaluate the margin in 12 terms of thickness. They now seem to have dropped 13 that proposal.
14 There's an open question about what the 15 required limit of uncertainty is. I realize the 16 Commission has not referred this issue to the Board, 17 but we believe that Judge Baratta's requirements make 18 it necessary to provide an estimate of the 19 uncertainty, initially a best estimate, and then some 20 bounding estimates of the uncertainty.
21 Finally, we believe that they must do the 22 analysis before a license is granted, not as a 23 condition, and I refer you to Indian Point decision 24 which again will pick up the briefing.
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980 1 to pick it up factually first, and then address the 2 Board's questions all at the end, if I may. I may 3 pick up some along the way, as well. Obviously if you 4 would like it any different, I'd be more than happy to 5 change it.
6 JUDGE HAWKENS: That's fine. Thank you.
7 MR. WEBSTER: So, first of all, I think 8 it's clear, this is Citizens Exhibit 6118. I think 9 it's clear that there are three data sets here. We've 10 had lots of different argument about what the 11 appropriate data sets are. There's the external data, 12 that's the red line there. There's the trench data in 13 two bays, and then there's the grid data, which is the 14 larger dots in the middle there. And, broadly, this 15 data doesn't disagree that much.
16 Obviously, it's taken from different 17 areas, so one wouldn't expect perfect correlation.
18 The internal data is, by necessity, by physical 19 necessity, always taken at around the 11 foot 3 level, 20 and that's because there's concrete on the inside 21 apart from where these trenches exist. The external 22 data is sometimes taken above the 11 foot 3 level, 23 sometimes below the 11 foot 3 level, but it's the only 24 data that we have that deals with the area below 11 25 feet. So we basically submit that what should be done NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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981 1 here, contrary to AmerGen's suggestion, we're not 2 saying you should use only the external data. We're 3 saying you should use all the data. And we're saying 4 we have some known data points. Those known data 5 points are where you actually did the measurements, so 6 it makes sense to assign in this fine mesh model, it 7 makes sense to assign the meshes where the points are 8 actually taken to be the values that you've measured 9 there.
10 JUDGE HAWKENS: When you look at the 11 external data points, and we discussed this quite a 12 bit during the original hearing, how would you propose 13 those measurements be adjusted for the fact that there 14 was grinding down? Would you propose they take off 15 100 mils, they add 100 mils back, would they 200 mils 16 back? As I recall, there was that level of 17 uncertainty. What would you suggest would be a 18 reasonable way to deal with that?
19 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. Well, I think this is 20 dealt with actually by AmerGen's Exhibit 27 at 17, 21 which says that some inspected spots are over-ground, 22 not all, but some. So I think the first step is to 23 identify which of those spots were over-ground. And 24 the result of that over-grinding, it says accommodates 25 -- were slightly deeper than originally found by .03 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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982 1 to .1 inches. So, again, I think you need to go back 2 to the original data. I think we need to look at the 3 records that we've got about grinding, and we need to 4 find out which of the points actually were over-5 ground. And then if correction is appropriate based 6 on those records, then correction should be made.
7 Just as -- while we're on this subject of 8 bias, this is the evidence at the hearing that AmerGen 9 pointed to, to show bias. It actually doesn't show 10 bias, at all. This is purely a measurement, 11 micrometer base measurement of the state of the 12 drywell around the measurement point, nothing to do 13 with bias.
14 Now, this is the trench data. And, again, 15 here we have quite a lot of data. These trench data 16 really provides quite a nice vertical profile. It's 17 limited in terms of the circumferential profile, but 18 it provides a very nice vertical profile, and we don't 19 quite understand why it's not used. Basically, we 20 have all this data. It's hard to understand why the 21 Applicant isn't assigning the meshes to actually have 22 the actual values that have been measured.
23 Judge Baratta's requirement talked about 24 analysis of the actual condition of the drywell.
25 AmerGen's proposal is not the actual condition of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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983 1 drywell, at all. It is some sort of bizarrely smooth, 2 dimpled shape, that has nothing to do with reality, or 3 at least has a tangential connection to reality. It's 4 not as close to reality as it could be.
5 So just on the 1 percent point, obviously, 6 the internal measurements, this is AmerGen email.
7 Seven hundred square feet is the drywell, the measured 8 area is 3.9 square feet, so that's a little more than 9 half a percent. And Mr. Polonsky talks about scanning 10 around the drywell, obviously, because they couldn't 11 go below 11 feet. Actually, the area that's subject 12 to the most corrosion, AmerGen simply could not check.
13 Like, for instance, in Bay 1, as we'll see a little 14 bit later, the higher level measurements didn't show 15 any corrosion, but Bay 1 is one of the most corroded 16 bays. So that circumferential scan is of very limited 17 use. And what's more, no data has ever been produced 18 from that circumferential scan, no records whatsoever, 19 actually.
20 Now, moving on, these are the measurements 21 in Bay 1. What we see is that the measurements range, 22 the lowest 1.3 is 665 mils, .665 inches; .7 is 669 23 mils, .669 inches. And, in fact, when we plot these 24 out, Dr. Hausler's plots, much maligned, I might add.
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984 1 could be incorrect. They're simply a result of 2 applying a mathematical algorithm. It's not really a 3 question of correct or not correct. These are a 4 visualization of the data. They show you -- they 5 present a visualization. That's what they do.
6 Obviously, the very limited data we have, 7 we're not clairvoyant here. We can't find out what is 8 in between these points. We can only look at what 9 data we've got. So the question here is, well, this 10 is what Mr. Tamburro, and AmerGen showed a slide from 11 AmerGen Exhibit 16, which represents these areas in 12 Bay 1. So there's Area 3, which AmerGen has in some 13 way included in its area, it's thin are, that's 14 putting in Bay 1.
15 The problem is that the visual 16 observations actually show that there's a bathtub 17 ring. All the visual observations are that there's a 18 bathtub ring running around the outside. That bathtub 19 ring is represented by Area 2. Now, Area 2 is not 20 included in AmerGen's model at all, not even 21 mentioned. And then we have Area 3, which lays off to 22 the left. And here, I think there's some very 23 misleading issues.
24 If we look up the top there, there's two 25 points up at the top, Point 15 and Point 14. Those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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985 1 points were actually taken by AmerGen to check B well, 2 actually, they were taken by GPU, but to check whether 3 the meter was working. When they were taking this 4 data, they couldn't believe how thin this bay was, so 5 they went up to the nominal area where they knew it 6 was uncorroded, to see whether the meter would give 7 them an uncorroded reading, and indeed it did, so that 8 showed that the results were right.
9 Now, the only way that you can come up 10 with an estimate of -- that's larger than 826 for that 11 area, which is Area 1 on this chart, which is over to 12 the left slightly towards the bottom, is if you 13 include .15, which is the nominal 1160. If you 14 exclude the nominal, and then average those other 15 points, I just did it at the table over there, the 16 average is actually 751 mils, which is way below the 17 826, which AmerGen has assigned to this area.
18 So, yes, that's just showing -- that's the 19 same diagram that Mr. Polonsky showed. It just 20 corresponds, just want to illustrate it does 21 correspond to Dr. Hausler's representation. And, of 22 course, the other point to pick up is that the problem 23 with a lot of these measurements is they're very 24 narrowly focused around the vent lines. There are big 25 areas between the vent lines where we just don't have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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986 1 measurements, and in certain places across those areas 2 it's going to create a huge amount of uncertainty, 3 admittedly, but that's what we're stuck with because 4 of the limited amount of data that we have.
5 So picking up, just to confirm that for 6 Bay 1 then the proposal is nothing like the reality.
7 AmerGen has repeatedly suggested that Bay 1, a 8 conservative estimate for Bay 1 is around .8 inches.
9 Now, they're assigning it 826, and the thin area in 10 Bay 1 does not encompass anything like the thin area 11 that's actually been observed.
12 JUDGE BARATTA: In what respect, counsel?
13 MR. WEBSTER: In the respect that the 14 bathtub ring is not present in the model, and the area 15 to the left, which is an average of 751 is also not 16 present in the model. So when you actually 17 extrapolate, as well as interpolate, beyond, we see 18 this area to the left, towards the middle, which is 19 extremely thin. And it's extremely thin because this 20 is driven by a point, the thinnest point measured, I 21 think, which is .5, which is the one on -- it's a 22 minus 44, minus 24, and that's a thickness of 685, I 23 think.
24 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Counselor, we had a lot 25 of discussion of extrapolation and interpolation in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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987 1 Dr. Hausler's model, so I don't see a need to spend a 2 lot of time on it now, unless my colleagues would like 3 to.
4 MR. WEBSTER: Yes. Okay. Moving forward, 5 Bay 13, a couple of problems here. One big problem is 6 that the measurements in 2006 missed out many of the 7 thin points that were measured in `92. We see here in 8 the right column, the measurements that are in bold 9 and to the right, and a right justified, in the 10 remaining wall thickness, 2006 column, which is the 11 second from the right, were not measured in 2006. So 12 we know those areas are thin. We just don't know how 13 thin they are right now. In general, the 2006 14 measurements came out to around .2 inches thinner than 15 the previous set of measurements, so Dr. Hausler 16 suggested that the only thing we can really do is 17 apply a correction of .2, and then put them in there.
18 That's certainly better than missing them out 19 completely. But, obviously, it's far less than ideal.
20 It would be much better to actually have a 21 measurement.
22 Again, here what we see, two things. Dr.
23 Hausler's plot, we see the measurements plotted out, 24 and we see AmerGen's assessment of what these thin 25 areas are. Again, what AmerGen has included in its NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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988 1 model is actually Area 3, at a thickness of 758 mils.
2 I'm sorry, I think this is 658 mils. I'm not quite 3 sure why that's done, but, anyway -- but the problem 4 is there's a big area here, again, the bathtub ring 5 area, which is totally omitted from the model. And, 6 so, we don't think the model is anything like a 7 realistic representation of what's going on. It's, 8 admittedly -- we agree that it's difficult to produce 9 a realistic representation, but we think we should do 10 the best we can.
11 This is going back to the original 12 estimate by AmerGen, which clearly shows that there's 13 an area there, 12 by 12. That's where the 658 comes 14 from. Right. There's an area there, 12 by 12, which 15 is 658 mils, but then there's a much bigger area, the 16 bathtub ring area is assigned as Area B, which is a 17 thickness of .751. Now, AmerGen is proposing to use a 18 thickness of .907 for Bay 13. So it's kind of hard to 19 understand how that thickness has been assessed by 20 AmerGen as 751, and morphs into being 907.
21 Again, if we look at the extrapolated 22 plot, what we have here potentially is a huge area 23 which is less than 725 mils. A very large area. The 24 sensitivity analysis that AmerGen is doing just 25 doesn't encompass this area, at all. That's really NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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989 1 the problem with the sensitivity analysis, is that it 2 should bound the potential solutions for the thickness 3 of this drywell shell, and it simply doesn't do that.
4 Now, here I just wanted to illustrate, 5 this is -- I just picked a random from Dr. Hausler's 6 affidavit, contour plot. What this really shows is 7 that the little blue area at the top in the middle is 8 the area of the internal measurements. So you can see 9 just how little area is covered by the internal 10 measurements. And what a leap of faith it is to go 11 from a few of those internal measurements, miss out 12 all the external data, and then project forward from 13 those.
14 This is the actual three, we see how few 15 measurements there actually are. Now, looking at the 16 averages, I mean, we don't think averages, to be very 17 clear on this, we think averages -- we're going to 18 have to do some averaging. The contour plots is a way 19 of averaging. That's straightforward, so we think 20 averaging is going to have to be used, but we think we 21 should make the model as realistic as possible by 22 fixing the points at which we have measurements to be 23 the thickness measured. And then using averaging 24 through contour plotting, or another kind of 25 extrapolation routine. I mean, we can work on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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990 1 interpolation routine, but we're going to have to do 2 some averaging between the points. We need to come up 3 with the best estimate between the points. And if 4 there's a correction needed, Judge Abramson, we 5 believe that we should find the records and actually 6 try and figure out what it's needed to be.
7 I don't want to belabor this one. I think 8 it's pretty clear. The right-hand column here, this 9 is from AmerGen Exhibit 16 at page 5. It's the right-10 hand set of tables. It shows in the second column the 11 average of the external points. And then on the left, 12 I've put the diagram that AmerGen is using here. So, 13 for instance, in -- let's pick a bay, in Bay 13, 14 AmerGen is using an average of 907, but the average of 15 the external points is .986, or .786, sorry. So 16 there's a difference of .2 inches between -- well, .12 17 inches between the Bay 13 measurements, and the actual 18 was proposed. And in every case, I think that what's 19 proposed is actually quite a bit B 20 JUDGE BARATTA: Let me interrupt you at 21 this point. I hear what you're saying about using 22 actual data, but there's a -- in the original 23 discussions we had here last September, it was pointed 24 out that there is a region over which you'd have to 25 have something in order for it to impact on the total NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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991 1 capacity of the drywell shell. And I believe, and 2 it's in that same section that Judge Abramson referred 3 to before, where we were told that it's on the order 4 of about 18 inches. I can find in the transcript 5 where that was said. Yes, I think it was Dr. Mehta, 6 if I recall, said that. So you get to a point where 7 this type of detail on such a very local basis just 8 gets washed out, because the material is averaging.
9 MR. WEBSTER: Well, that's B 10 JUDGE BARATTA: I don't understand.
11 MR. WEBSTER: Can I just B 12 JUDGE BARATTA: Yes.
13 MR. WEBSTER: If I can pick that up. I 14 mean, if you look at the size of this area, this 15 bathtub ring on this diagram, it's about 12 inches by 16 -- well, it's not very clear from that diagram. This 17 is to scale. The size of the ring there is about 16 18 inches by about 54 inches, so these are sizeable 19 areas.
20 JUDGE BARATTA: I'm not taking issue with 21 that. What I'm saying, you were saying that we should 22 use the actual measurements, which are only over a 23 fairly small area. I don't remember what that was, 24 but I go to page 477 at 18, that's where Dr. Mehta 25 says that the square root of R over T, referring to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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992 1 the radius and thickness of the material, the 2 extensive 18 inches, you know, this is my judgment 3 call, but shouldn't affect materially the buckling 4 margin, referring to if you've got things smaller than 5 18 inches variations, it's not going to really affect 6 that. Okay? And so, in essence, the material itself 7 is averaging a lot of this out, which is what you'd 8 expect, because it's a reasonably stiff material. So 9 I'm trying to get how fine do we have to do this in 10 terms of the model.
11 MR. WEBSTER: I think what's interesting 12 here is this is the -- these are the cutout areas that 13 were put into the GE model, 36 -- they were 12 by 12 14 in the middle, and then 3 feet square around the 15 outside in the transition area. And those -- putting 16 in those areas reduce the buckling capacity by around 17 9.5 percent.
18 JUDGE BARATTA: And that's consistent with 19 what -- if it's more than 18 inches, which clearly 20 that is, it's going to have an effect.
21 MR. WEBSTER: And so I think you're right, 22 that we may not have to go -- I mean, I think it's a 23 question of how do we do this interpolation. We may 24 do it more -- it may not be useful to go down to the 25 mesh size of the model, because we don't really have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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993 1 the data to support going down to the mesh size of the 2 model.
3 JUDGE BARATTA: Right.
4 MR. WEBSTER: But we need to go down to an 5 area which is smaller than would be -- make a 6 difference structurally.
7 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Counselor, let me see if 8 I can't get you to sort of encapsulize what your view 9 is of the analysis that AmerGen is proposing to do, 10 and their statement that this would be conservative.
11 And I understand all the questions about the data, but 12 I'd like to hear you address maybe in bullet form, 13 give me a few -- give us the bottom lines, if you 14 will, of how you think they err, and how it should be 15 fixed.
16 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. So just let me take 17 it from the top then. The first problem, the 18 commitment isn't all the way around. It should require 19 AmerGen to assure the Staff that the model does not 20 show any problem, rather than waiting for AmerGen to 21 highlight a problem. So that's the first problem.
22 The second problem, they've over-23 averaging. I mean, the averages, even if you had -- I 24 mean, although some degree of averaging is needed, the 25 areas that they've averaged are too big.
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994 1 Third problem, the actual averages derived 2 aren't based on the data. I mean, if you think about 3 it, and they've averaged, they only used the internal 4 data from Bays 5, 9, 11, 13, 17, and 19. Bay 13 is 5 actually modeled as the lower -- as the average of the 6 lower part of Bay 19, and the average of Bay 5. So 7 there's some strange -- it's very hard -- we know that 8 bay-by-bay there's -- each bay is very different.
9 It's a very strange approach to then start using bays 10 that aren't even adjacent to try to derive some 11 thickness, when you actually have data in the bay.
12 JUDGE BARATTA: Right. Again, when I read 13 the affidavit, I had the same concern. And that's why 14 we had some questions. Now you've heard that they did 15 take additional information, not just strictly the 16 thickness measurements, but the photographs that they 17 have, and visual inspection and such, which you saw 18 last time, into account, and in an effort to try to 19 capture or get additional information for those areas 20 that they don't have thickness measurements. I may be 21 over-simplifying things, well, they're taking this bay 22 which is not -- because if you look at the 23 photographs, they show they are similar.
24 MR. WEBSTER: Well, actually, the visual 25 inspections, as I said, do backup the assertion about, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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995 1 for instance, the bathtub ring is a notable feature of 2 all the visual inspections that have taken place since 3 the sand was removed, and that's not present in the 4 model. So I take issue, although that's an assertion 5 of counsel, I don't think that's on the record, and I 6 find it hard to believe, if they did do that, they 7 didn't do a very good job doing it.
8 The fourth problem is that they're using -
9 - the capacity reduction factor they're using is far 10 too high. We know from Sandia that the capacity 11 reduction factor should be much -- the enhancement is 12 not justified. Actually, if you go back and look at 13 the Brookhaven National Lab's report, they also concur 14 that they're double counting this hoop stress. And 15 our experts, Russ Engineering, has said the same 16 thing. They tend to agree that to be conservative, 17 you should take the .206 capacity reduction factor, 18 not the .3 something that AmerGen is proposing to use.
19 And, at minimum, this needs to be included in the 20 sensitivity analysis. It's not very hard to include 21 in the sensitivity analysis, because as AmerGen 22 showed, it's just a linear correction factor at the 23 end, so you derive a -- you can smear out the results 24 with the capacity reduction factor very, very easily.
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996 1 uncertainty. The sensitivity analyses don't bound the 2 results, as we've shown.
3 JUDGE BARATTA: Well, let me quote from 4 your own exhibit with regards to that, and see if they 5 want to rethink that statement. I'm referring to the 6 article that's by George Apostolakis, and Joshua 7 Reinart, and looking at page, I think that was Exhibit 8 C-3. Is that correct?
9 MR. WEBSTER: Yes, I do believe it was, 10 Judge.
11 JUDGE BARATTA: If I go to the Article 12 page 357, Section 3, Model Uncertainty, and then the 13 second paragraph, which reads: "The methods that deal 14 with model uncertainty include prediction expansion 15 and model set expansion. In prediction expansion, a 16 single model is chosen as the best one to represent 17 the system. Recognize that this model has 18 uncertainties, and may model some characteristics of 19 the system better than others. Sensitivity studies 20 are performed on the various assumptions to analyze 21 the effects of the choice of the assumptions on the 22 model output", in other words, the result. "The 23 uncertainty is dealt with by applying an adjustment 24 factor of the model results, the adjustment factor may 25 be multiplication or additive, or both may be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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997 1 necessary."
2 So I was troubled by a very early 3 statement where you said that well, they haven't taken 4 into account the uncertainty. And yet, by your own 5 exhibit, that is one way of doing that, which appears 6 to be what they have attempted. Now, whether they've 7 done it correctly or not, that's something B 8 MR. WEBSTER: Perhaps I misspoke. We 9 happen to think it would be ideal to actually 10 explicitly deal with the uncertainties in the model, 11 and we put forward that as a way to go. But I think 12 provided that the sensitivity analyses fully bounded 13 the data, then I think that's absolutely an 14 alternative approach, which would work. It's just a 15 question of how do we fully bound the data. And the 16 approach that we've put forward, which is to do a 17 Monte Carlo analysis, and then repeatedly extrapolate 18 and interpolate, would insure automatically that we 19 fully bound the data. AmerGen's proposal just doesn't 20 do that. Okay?
21 May I should run through the Board's 22 questions now, just to make sure. I think I can pick 23 up, actually, on the -- this is about double counting.
24 Pick up on the 181 point. Oh, something very 25 interesting happened. In the modeling, between GE, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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998 1 and the Staff keeps saying it's relying on the GE 2 model. And one thing that's very interesting is, 3 actually, the GE fixed T analysis, which did the 4 sensitivity analysis, used a different model to the GE 5 model. They actually changed it and used a -- this is 6 from AmerGen Ex. 39, says that now mesh refinement 7 activity on the global pie slice model enabled them to 8 use a pie slice model for everything. And that gave 9 zero percent margin on the base case. And that's why 10 you end up with the sensitivity -- originally, there 11 was a margin of greater than 14 percent. But when 12 they revised the model, the margin dropped to zero, 13 and that's why, then when they did the sensitivity, 14 you can see that the load factor dropped from 6.141 15 down to .562 in the thinnest case. So that's where 16 you get the 9.5 percent reduction. And that's why 17 that ends up being, if the first one is zero margin 18 corresponds to a load factor, a safety factor of 2, 19 then that 9.5 percent then comes to 1.81. And that, 20 indeed, is what Dr. Hartzman has confirmed. And I 21 don't think the Staff is disputing that.
22 Now, why is that important? I think 23 that's important because what it shows is that the 24 limiting margin -- the margin above the safety factor 25 of 2 is much more likely to be the limiting margin, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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999 1 the margin above the acceptance criteria. And that's 2 why we need to know the margin above the safety factor 3 of 2 before we derive the Aging Management Plan. It's 4 unacceptable to derive it after, because we don't know 5 what this margin is, if there is any margin at all.
6 The Sandia model. The problem here is 7 that the thicknesses assigned in the Sandia model just 8 don't correspond to the data. And we've never quite 9 been able to understand why. Looking at, for 10 instance, Bay -- Sandia ascribed the thicknesses not 11 bay-by-bay, but between bays. So Bay 19-1 was 12 assigned a thickness of .858. By AmerGen's own 13 exhibit and the external data, Bay 19 has an average 14 there of .801. Bay 1 has an average of .802, so it's 15 hard to see how Bay 19-1 comes out to .858.
16 Similarly, Bay 13-15 is .842. Bay 13 is 17 .786, Bay 15 is .788. And, admittedly, Sandia was 18 using the previous data, the Staff has asserted it's 19 not much different. It actually is quite different, 20 so the thicknesses used in the Sandia model, again, 21 thicker than we have measured in this drywell by quite 22 a bit.
23 The second issue with the Sandia model is 24 that the thin points were directly under the vent 25 headers, not very realistic, and minimize the effect NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1000 1 of the thin points. Nonetheless, the thin points 2 still cause the buckling mode shown.
3 I don't wish to belabor it, Judge 4 Abramson, if you don't want to. The Sandia model has 5 a mesh B I knew it didn't have the mesh there, just 6 illustrating the mesh side in model techniques is 7 easily thin enough to pick up, is easily small enough 8 to pick up quite small local variations.
9 JUDGE BARATTA: Again, that's true.
10 There's no doubt about that, but from a material 11 standpoint, it doesn't matter. There's a radius of 12 effectiveness, in other words.
13 MR. WEBSTER: I understand that, Judge.
14 And, indeed, you may not have to go all the way down 15 to the mesh size to B 16 JUDGE BARATTA: I just want to make sure, 17 because it's oftentimes a confusion factor that people 18 have.
19 MR. WEBSTER: Again, the Sandia analysis, 20 the Staff says they're relying on it, or at least part 21 of their -- what they're factoring in. Sandia 22 specifically said that, basically, the focus of the 23 model was to look at the relative reduction in design 24 margin due to the corrosion model, not the absolute 25 stresses or stability limits, which are calculated.
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1001 1 And Sandia calculated a 44 percent 2 reduction caused by this corrosion. So that's what we 3 should focus on with Sandia, is that there's huge 4 reduction from design. The actual absolute amount, 5 Sandia aren't claiming that's accurate. That's why we 6 need the next model. So that's Staff Exhibit 6, the 7 Sandia report at page 12.
8 Didn't Sandia very specifically say that 9 they looked at whether to use an enhanced capacity 10 reduction factor? They can't. After the ACRS 11 meeting, the chief modeler from Sandia wrote in saying 12 that he did not agree with the Staff's approach, which 13 was to correct the Sandia model for the higher 14 capacity reduction factor, which AmerGen has shown a 15 slide of. He said that, "The capacity reduction 16 factor already accounts for the hoop tension which 17 develops in the shell. This is evidenced by the 18 double lobe shape of the buckling mode in the sand bed 19 region. Therefore, we do not think it is appropriate 20 to take additional credit for the presence of the hoop 21 tension." So there's really -- it's pretty clear, NRC 22 Staff's own modelers think that NRC Staff is taking 23 the wrong approach here. Indeed, our expert opinions 24 confirm that.
25 JUDGE HAWKENS: Counsel, I know this is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1002 1 one of the issues we asked the parties to address, but 2 even assuming you're correct, that doesn't have any 3 direct relevance to the issue that was referred today.
4 Is that correct?
5 MR. WEBSTER: Well, I think it depends on 6 whether the Staff -- I'm really presenting this, first 7 of all, to respond to the Board's question.
8 JUDGE HAWKENS: I understand.
9 MR. WEBSTER: And second of all, to 10 respond to the Staff's -- what in our view is an over-11 reliance on the absolute numbers in the Sandia report.
12 The Staff keeps saying the Sandia report did not show 13 any problem with the capacity -- with the factor of 14 safety. The reality is the Sandia report wasn't 15 designed to be a compliance or non-compliance B 16 JUDGE ABRAMSON: So let's think about 17 what's been sent down to us for our advice, which is 18 will this analysis bound -- is it conservative, and 19 will it bound the kinds of sensitivities that Judge 20 Baratta was concerned about? And is additional 21 analysis required, generally? Now, the Board 22 initially in its original ruling said we don't need 23 anything more. It's done. We believe we have enough 24 to have reasonable assurances, so I have a hard time 25 understanding what the Commission meant by, "Is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1003 1 additional analysis required"? Are you suggesting 2 that Staff needs to do additional analysis, Applicant 3 needs to do additional analysis? How do you read that 4 piece? Let's get to the meat.
5 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. Judge Baratta's 6 statement, and I know Judge Baratta is here, so I 7 think it says that it was essential to do this 8 modeling. So I think the Commission read that and 9 said okay, it's essential. Now let's figure out how 10 good it needs to be. Does it meet the requirement?
11 Judge Baratta set certain requirements. He said I 12 would propose certain requirements, certain additional 13 requirements. And the Commission said okay, well, is 14 the Applicant's analysis -- and we're talking about 15 the Applicant's analysis, and what really should 16 happen is the Applicant should do a good analysis.
17 And the Staff should then fully review it.
18 And, moreover, it should be part of the 19 hearing record. And it should be available for 20 Citizens to review, as well, because it's an inherent 21 part, finding this margin is an inherent part of the 22 -- figuring out whether the Aging Management program 23 is adequate, so that is the issue.
24 JUDGE ABRAMSON: You can take the question 25 of whether it's part of the hearing record up with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1004 1 Commission. That's not for us.
2 MR. WEBSTER: Right. I mean, the -- I 3 agree. So the question is, is any additional analysis 4 needed? Now, here we need a crystal ball, because, 5 first of all, as I said, there's a lot of argument 6 about what Judge Baratta's requirements are.
7 Now, we believe that if the sensitivity 8 analysis fully bounds the uncertainty, what is very 9 likely to happen is that we will see that the 10 prediction included the uncertainty capacity reduction 11 factor, as well as all the other factors, the 12 prediction will vary from a point that's below two, 13 likely to a point that's above two. We will have a 14 high degree of uncertainty. We will be back sailing 15 in the choppy waters of the sea of uncertainty. So 16 the question is what do we do then? And we believe 17 that you can't get much on -- this model was -- we're 18 really talking -- I think about the model in this way.
19 The model is a Ferrari, the data, unfortunately, is 20 like an old trailer. And what we're really doing here 21 is we're pulling an old trailer with a Ferrari. And 22 what we really need to do is at least get ourselves a 23 decent quality trailer to pull. And that's why we 24 believe the additional analysis is not going to be on 25 the computer side, it's going to be on actually taking NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1005 1 more measurements. And it may be there are techniques 2 actually to go from photographs and try to produce 3 interpolations from the photographs, so it doesn't 4 have to be physical measurements. There are many 5 techniques that can be applied to attempt to get a 6 better idea about what the thicknesses of this shell, 7 the distributive thicknesses of the shell are. And 8 then once we've applied those techniques, we need to 9 redo the model. Hopefully, that will narrow the 10 bounds of uncertainty, and then we'll find out (a) do 11 we have CLB compliance here with a reasonable degree 12 of certainty, which we believe is a relatively high 13 degree of certainty. (B) What is the limiting margin?
14 And (C), is the Aging Management program adequate?
15 And that's really -- that's the additional 16 analysis we believe is required, is those things. And 17 that's totally within your jurisdiction. And that's 18 what the Commission has asked for to do. We believe 19 it might be best, in some ways, if we did the first 20 part of the question first, and then the second part, 21 because the Board is in a good position to clarify 22 exactly what Judge Baratta meant by his statement.
23 JUDGE ABRAMSON: I beg to differ with 24 that. Only Judge Baratta is in a position to clarify 25 what Judge Baratta meant.
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1006 1 JUDGE BARATTA: You have about 11 minutes, 2 with your 10 minutes left if you decide you need them, 3 and if we decide you have them.
4 JUDGE HAWKENS: Let me give some guidance.
5 If you wish to use the full hour, go ahead. This is 6 really your opportunity to rebut what they have said.
7 So if you wish to use your full hour, you should. If 8 you feel you need not use it all, you're welcome to do 9 that, as well.
10 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Where this is going, I 11 think, is -- Judge Hawkens, are you suggesting that 12 even if he uses his full hour, after we hear rebuttal 13 from the other two, if he has something important to 14 say we'll let him say it? Or are you saying he needs 15 to reserve time now? I think that's the question that 16 has to be answered.
17 JUDGE HAWKENS: Use your full hour. And 18 if we feel we need to hear from you, we will address 19 that afterward.
20 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. Thank you, Judge.
21 Just to say that there were a number of assertions in 22 the original presentations which were entirely 23 incorrect, and this is to correct, and I hope we can 24 add some service to the Board by pointing out those 25 particular errors.
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1007 1 JUDGE HAWKENS: I assume you did that in 2 the initial stages of your presentation.
3 MR. WEBSTER: Well, that's correct. But I 4 don't know what they're going to say in the next -- in 5 rebuttal.
6 JUDGE HAWKENS: And then are we going to 7 give them the opportunity to rebut your rebuttal?
8 MR. WEBSTER: Well, if they believe there 9 are statements in my B 10 JUDGE HAWKENS: I understand. Continue, 11 please.
12 MR. WEBSTER: That are consistent with the 13 record, absolutely, I think you should get B 14 JUDGE HAWKENS: And a reminder to 15 everybody, you're going to have the opportunity for 16 supplemental briefs where you can address anything, as 17 well.
18 MR. WEBSTER: So this is the -- I think 19 we've already dealt with this point. Let me now try 20 and pick up somewhere in my presentation. Let me pick 21 back up.
22 Very strange about the Sandia model, by 23 the way, sort of explains what we were talking about 24 before, about the thicknesses. Sandia says that the 25 thickness assigned to each region were based on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1008 1 limited measurement data, since a very small 2 percentage of the shell has been examined. And they 3 say many cases the raw data was not available. This 4 led to the use of averages provided by AmerGen 5 throughout the relevant documentation, so, again, it's 6 strange, but it seems like Sandia didn't actually go 7 through the raw data. It's not quite clear what they 8 really meant by that. But the bottom line is that the 9 data that they used is not reflective of what's 10 present right now.
11 Now, coming back. I think it might be 12 useful here to go all the way back to the start. This 13 is the Brookhaven National Lab's view on the original 14 GE model. First of all, there's a problem with the 15 stress, and Brookhaven Labs are basically saying that 16 you have to limit the high stress to the localized 17 areas. The effect of these -- and that's another 18 reason I think why we need to be careful with modeling 19 these localized areas. It leads to -- local corrosion 20 leads to increased stress, and so we need to get to a 21 level where we can actually figure out what that 22 increased stress is.
23 They were predicting an excess beyond the 24 ASME code, but Brookhaven said provided these areas 25 are localized.
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1009 1 JUDGE BARATTA: Let me ask you, and you 2 may not be able to answer this since you're not a 3 stress analyst, but I -- when you have a relatively 4 thick area adjacent to a relatively thin area, such as 5 we have at Bay 1, do you have any idea, doesn't that 6 produce a stress concentration at that interface?
7 MR. WEBSTER: I think that's what the 8 Sandia model shows, is you do have stress 9 concentration at that interface. So, basically, 10 Brookhaven said provided these areas of severe 11 corrosion are localized, then we're okay. The problem 12 is the data doesn't show it to be localized. The data 13 shows, at least in Bay 13, it could be very extensive.
14 Now, Brookhaven then said that -- this is 15 based, as I'll show on the next slide, on a margin of 16 over 14 percent. They said if the actual thickness in 17 the sand bed region of 14R is close to the predicted 18 thickness of .736, there may not be adequate margin 19 left for further corrosion. And we are close to .736, 20 so we're somewhere around -- I think the thinnest bay 21 is somewhere around .788, so that kind of informs the 22 question of how good the amp has to be, has to be very 23 good, because there's very, very little margin.
24 This is Exhibit 56, Citizens Exhibit 56.
25 This is just confirming that the margin was over 14 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1010 1 percent. It was actually the post-accident condition 2 that gave the 14 percent buckling margin. Now, the 3 critical path has shifted to the refueling condition.
4 And in the GE model, to reiterate, that now the base 5 case is zero, at .736. So in view of these 6 observations, it is essential that the licensee 7 perform UT thickness measurements at refueling 8 outages, and at outages of opportunity for the life of 9 the plant. I think that's been belabored long and 10 hard, but I think what's most interesting, it says the 11 measurements should cover not only the areas 12 previously inspected, but also accessible areas which 13 have never been inspected, so as to confirm that the 14 local -- so the corroded areas are localized.
15 Both of these assumptions are the bases of 16 the Staff's acceptance of these results. Now, that 17 assumption that the corrosion is localized isn't met.
18 Corrosion is very general, in some places very 19 severe, so the original analysis that the conditions 20 that the Staff set for accepting it are no longer met.
21 Picking up the hoop tension point. The 22 licensee may have double-counted the effects of hoop 23 tension. Last, the instability analysis, stress 24 calculated by ANSYS Code may have already taken into 25 account the effects of hoop tensile stress. It then NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1011 1 says, "But it appears that the effect of hoop tension 2 in the ANSYS calculations is small, and there is 3 sufficient margin, there is sufficient margin in the 4 results to compensate for the potential double 5 counting." So that was based on the assumption there 6 was a substantial margin. In fact, that margin 7 dropped to zero. And so because that margin dropped 8 to zero, again, that sufficient margin doesn't exist, 9 didn't exist any more. And this all goes, Judge 10 Abramson, to why we need a good model.
11 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Counsel, let me ask you a 12 question here. You seem to be very comfortable with 13 the analysis done by the two National Labs to support 14 the Staff. Is that right? I mean, you're certainly 15 relying on them. You're taking them to be good expert 16 pieces of work. Is that B 17 MR. WEBSTER: Well, our experts have 18 looked at these, and have found no serious problems 19 with them.
20 JUDGE ABRAMSON: It's not uncommon for the 21 Staff to use these kinds of outside experts to help 22 them do their confirmatory analysis. And would you 23 have discomfort if one of these organizations, or a 24 similar organization were used by the Staff in its 25 examination of the work that's to be submitted?
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1012 1 MR. WEBSTER: Not at all. We'd be more 2 than happy, provided that the Staff then allows the 3 Staff of the National Labs to actually present the 4 results, and does not then take the results and do 5 things that the staff of the National Labs think is 6 inappropriate.
7 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Well, that will, 8 obviously, be a Staff judgment, but the Staff hires 9 consultants to do things. Okay. Thank you.
10 MR. WEBSTER: Let me wrap back now. I 11 think that's most of the slides that I've got, so let 12 me wrap back to the point about Mr. O'Rourke's 13 affidavit. Mr. O'Rourke's affidavit doesn't say that 14 the base case is going to include these at small 15 areas. We've done our best here to try to respond to 16 the small areas, which we only found out about 17 yesterday or the day before.
18 Mr. O'Rourke's affidavit actually 19 specifically says that the base case is contained in 20 Table One. Table One makes no mention whatsoever of 21 these thin areas. Mr. O'Rourke's affidavit refers 22 specifically to Citizens Exhibit 46, which basically 23 just reiterates the same things in the O'Rourke 24 affidavit. Citizens Exhibit 45, which was in the 25 record, and contained a specification of the thinned NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1013 1 areas, was not referred to by AmerGen at all. I would 2 have thought that for purposes of clarity, and for the 3 purpose of fully informing the Commission about what 4 it was actually going to do, AmerGen might have 5 referred directly to Citizens Exhibit 45.
6 Furthermore, the O'Rourke affidavit makes 7 no specification at all for what these areas are. It 8 merely gives you -- it mentions that five thin areas 9 were modeled, note the past tense. Doesn't talk about 10 the future, they will be modeled. It says the past 11 tense, they were modeled. And it gives a range of 12 their thickness. No specification whatsoever. So 13 it's very fortunate the Commission referred this 14 question down to this Board, because, otherwise, we 15 could have had the whole proceeding end up going off 16 on a misapprehension, that AmerGen was not going to do 17 these thin areas, when it is. I mean, we don't think 18 this actually makes a huge degree of difference, 19 because the thin areas that they're proposing aren't -
20 - they aren't reflective of the actual conditions, so 21 the modeling is still inadequate. But, clearly, it's 22 unfortunate that we only found out about this, and you 23 and the Commission only found out about this at this 24 very late stage of the proceeding.
25 A point which I'm now trying to recall.
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1014 1 JUDGE ABRAMSON: That prerogative is left 2 to old people like me.
3 JUDGE BARATTA: Yes, you're too young to 4 have that.
5 MR. WEBSTER: Well, I think it's this. I 6 mean, I hope that the additional briefing that the 7 Board is going to allow will also provide for the 8 submission of expert testimony, because we are in a 9 position where our expert testimony was based on the 10 assumption, and I think it's a perfectly reasonable 11 assumption, that the O'Rourke affidavit and its 12 description of the base case did not include thin 13 areas. And now we discover it did include thin areas, 14 as you see. We're quite prepared to argue about that, 15 as are they adequate or not. But in terms of the 16 appeal record, we have a rather strange record. The 17 record doesn't fully reflect that these thin areas 18 actually are going to be modeled.
19 The diagram AmerGen has put forward is not 20 in the record, and so it's kind of a very strange 21 record at the moment. So we believe that as a matter 22 of cleaning up the record B 23 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Can you give me a 30-24 second summary of how this particular issue relates to 25 the appeal of our order?
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1015 1 MR. WEBSTER: Well, Judge, obviously, I 2 can't really put myself entirely in the minds of the 3 Commission.
4 JUDGE ABRAMSON: No, but it must relate to 5 your appeal somehow.
6 MR. WEBSTER: But if the Commission were 7 to decide that Judge Baratta was right, and this 8 analysis is essential to fully -- to provide 9 reasonable assurance that the shell meets the CLB, 10 then that would mean that this analysis would be 11 required as part of that reasonable assurance.
12 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And this is a matter that 13 in your appeal you raised, you said to the Commission, 14 Judge Baratta has it right, and everybody else has it 15 wrong, and this needs to be done. Is that the way 16 this went?
17 MR. WEBSTER: Well, we certainly thought 18 Judge Baratta had it right. Yes, that's a 19 straightforward issue we've raised, is that, if you 20 recall, the whole discussion about what the CLB 21 actually was, if it was the safety factor of two in 22 the CLB or not. The Staff made a lot of attempt to 23 kick it out of the CLB in a rather strange set of 24 arguments, which were summarily rejected by the whole 25 Board, which we believe entirely right in that case.
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1016 1 And then the question came well, okay, so it is in the 2 CLB, so how has AmerGen shown that they've met it?
3 And we believe that AmerGen did not show that they met 4 it, and that's part of our appeal to the Commission.
5 And we don't know. We concur with the Staff that the 6 Commission has not decided one way or the other on 7 this appeal, but it's certainly open to the Commission 8 to decide that this model is required, and that this 9 model, therefore, has to be done prior to the close of 10 the proceeding. Or even the Commission may decide, if 11 it has sufficient specificity, it could be done post-12 hearing. We don't know. I mean, that may be another 13 question.
14 But the Commission obviously thinks this 15 question is important, Judge Abramson. And so we 16 don't think the Commission will be asking you the 17 question if they didn't have some reason to do so.
18 JUDGE ABRAMSON: That much is clear to me.
19 I'm just trying to figure out what chain of logic 20 leads -- how this is incorporated into your appeal, 21 and what -- how this flows into the decision the 22 Commission has to make on your appeal.
23 MR. WEBSTER: I think, as I said, it flows 24 into the -- we've really argued that we can't -- the 25 same thing I argued today, that we can't decide on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1017 1 adequacy of the amps until we know the limiting 2 margin. And so the Board, with due respect to the 3 Board, our issue is well, we'd like to know the 4 limiting margin first, then we can talk about the 5 frequency and so forth. And so that's how I think it 6 flows into the appeal.
7 So let me summarize. I seem to be getting 8 ahead. Do you have any more questions? Maybe I 9 should run through the questions that you put forth.
10 Are there any that are an issue? We've covered most 11 of those, so let me just summarize now. And if I 12 don't quite use all of my time, then that will be 13 fine.
14 So, in summary, the Commission, we're here 15 on the shore, very nice. It's a beautiful day on the 16 Jersey shore, and once more in Tom's River. And the 17 Commission had decided to try to rescue us from this 18 sea of uncertainty. The Commission sent the Navy to 19 rescue us from that sea of uncertainty, and so AmerGen 20 and the Staff have now finally slightly diverged. I 21 mean, we saw from the briefs that the Staff was 22 assuming that AmerGen would use the external points.
23 They didn't do that. The Staff is now saying well, 24 AmerGen could basically do what it likes, because 25 there's no need for this model, as far as I can tell.
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1018 1 Obviously, we believe that's inconsistent 2 with the view of the Commission. The Commission would 3 not have referred this question if this was just kind 4 of a sort of cursory tick the boxes type of thing.
5 Indeed, I was at the ACRS meeting, and this issue came 6 up. And the reason -- one of the reasons that the 7 ACRS felt more comfortable is precisely because 8 AmerGen offered this model at the ACRS meeting. So 9 it's part and parcel of the finding of the ACRS that 10 this thing would be done. And specifically discussed 11 at the ACRS meeting, was that if the model showed 12 some problems, then there were mechanisms to come back 13 and deal with that. So this is not a cursory tick the 14 box. This is something that absolutely needs to be 15 done very carefully with much more thought than we've 16 seen so far from AmerGen, I'm sad to say. And it 17 needs to be viewed very carefully by the Staff, not 18 have a quick look at the summary which will say 19 everything is fine.
20 I could write the summary now, everything 21 is fine. That's the summary the Staff's going to get, 22 then they can tick the box. That's totally 23 inadequate. The Staff needs, and I think here the 24 State of New Jersey has joined us in saying that the 25 Staff needs to get hold of a copy of this analysis.
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1019 1 And what's more, with the metal fatigue analysis, kind 2 of interesting. The metal fatigue analysis, the Staff 3 has actually reviewed that at Exelon's site. The 4 reason they've done that is precisely so that Citizens 5 cannot get a copy of that metal fatigue analysis.
6 So, therefore, we believe that it should 7 be specified that not only should the Staff review the 8 analysis carefully, they should review the analysis 9 carefully at the NRC headquarters. And they should be 10 prepared to provide either a proprietary, or a non-11 proprietary version to Citizens. Citizens have an 12 agreement with AmerGen, which allows AmerGen to 13 provide us with proprietary information. AmerGen has 14 provided us with a number of pieces of proprietary 15 information. There's been no problem with that 16 whatsoever. AmerGen has held up the idea that the 17 proprietary nature of this document could foreclose 18 disclosure. Well, Sandia managed to produce quite a 19 detailed report with no proprietary problem. So we 20 don't quite understand why AmerGen can't produce a 21 non-proprietary report that's highly detailed. And we 22 don't understand why we couldn't have disclosed to us 23 the whole report with all the proprietary information.
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1020 1 this is not something you can sweep under the rug. An 2 old saying, "Justice shall be done, and it shall be 3 seen to be done." And that's what should happen here.
4 Time and time again, we've had assertions from 5 AmerGen which have turned out to be incorrect or 6 wrong. And let's not allow those assertions to rest.
7 Let's actually do the work, do the analysis, find out 8 what actually is going on. And that's all we've ever 9 wanted in this proceeding.
10 It's kind of amazing to me that it's taken 11 us around two years to get to the point where we 12 finally get closer to getting to what we want, which 13 is a rigorous, scientific, realistic, and fully 14 considered assessment of the state of the drywell. I 15 would have thought that the NRC's relicensing process 16 would have automatically provided that. Clearly, I 17 would have thought wrong.
18 It is only through the intervention of 19 Citizens that this analysis will be done properly.
20 And we are here relying on you, the Board, to insure, 21 to make a very considered decision about how this 22 analysis shall be done. And to leave room for, in the 23 case of high degree of uncertainty, about compliance 24 for further analysis to be done.
25 We believe the Board, as I said about a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1021 1 year ago, we believe the Board is fully qualified, is 2 very intelligent, and we've seen is also courageous.
3 So we look forward to a decision from this Board, 4 which finds appropriately that the analysis should be 5 based on all the results taken, that any corrections 6 should be bounded fully in records. It may be 7 necessary here to reopen the record, because at the 8 moment we don't have anything on the record about this 9 grinding, about how it was done. The only place that 10 we have anything about the grinding is where I pointed 11 to, so we don't have any justification which points 12 were over-ground, or by how much. Maybe we would have 13 no objection to reopening the record for AmerGen to 14 put those records forth so we could have a look at 15 them, and we could then take some considered view 16 about corrections, rather than this guesswork, which 17 has been thrown around.
18 We must explicitly evaluate the 19 uncertainty. We can do it a number of ways, as long 20 as we fully bound the data, and fully bound the 21 uncertainties, then we are happy to do it by 22 sensitivity analysis, or by Monte Carlo, which really 23 is just an automated sensitivity analysis. I don't 24 think it's really any different.
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1022 1 different, having done a lot of those things.
2 MR. WEBSTER: Well, it requires a lot more 3 computational power, absolutely.
4 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Not just that. It 5 requires an awful lot of assumptions about the 6 statistical variations, and the distribution functions 7 of the parameters that are being used to sample Monte 8 Carlo. It's a very B 9 MR. WEBSTER: Judge Abramson, we see that 10 AmerGen is already making assumptions about the 11 statistical distributions of the data, and hasn't 12 presented any information, as far as I recall, to 13 justify that. So that's another reason why Monte 14 Carlo would be useful, because it would entail some 15 systematic careful analysis of what statistical 16 variation is present in these input data.
17 And then, finally, I'd like to point out 18 that Stress Engineering has put forward how one would 19 do a state-of-the-art analysis. A state-of-the-art 20 analysis means that we dispense with the capacity 21 reduction factor. We measure the shape of the vessel, 22 and we measure the thickness of the vessel, as far as 23 we can. We can then place both the actual shape, and 24 the actual thicknesses into a 3D model. And then we 25 can find out, that's the most accurate way possible to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1023 1 do this. And we believe that the time has come for 2 the NRC to require AmerGen to do the most accurate, 3 realistic model that can be done.
4 The Citizens of Tom's River deserve the 5 best. AmerGen has been offering them, at best, last 6 year's technology, in fact, 20 years ago technology.
7 Citizens have fought long and hard. They have been 8 justified at every turn, they deserve the best. We 9 anticipate this Board will give them the best. Thank 10 you.
11 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you, Mr. Webster.
12 Are you ready, Mr. Polonsky? You reserved 15 minutes 13 for rebuttal.
14 MR. POLONSKY: I think I'd like to cover 15 five points on rebuttal, Your Honor. The first is 16 that the majority of what we just heard is rehashing 17 of what happened last fall. Using contour plots that 18 are not reliable, using an extrapolation scheme based 19 on extreme value statistics, which was debunked last 20 fall, misinterpreting micrometer readings, and 21 misrepresentation of the facts. Specifically, as an 22 example, Citizens urging that AmerGen use all of the 23 data, but in their reply specifically contained in 24 Question Ten from the Board, clearly demonstrates that 25 they want us to solely rely on the external data as NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1024 1 being representative; for example, the way they came 2 up with 788 mils clearly can only be done with an 3 averaging of the external data. And those data are 4 simply not representative of the general thickness of 5 the shell.
6 Similarly, their comparison of our 7 diagram, and page 5 from AmerGen's Exhibit 16.
8 AmerGen's Exhibit 16 on page 5 is a summary from each 9 bay of all the averages of all the external points.
10 And so to compare that to the average general 11 thicknesses that we used is comparing apples and 12 oranges, and inappropriate.
13 I also would like to point out that Dr.
14 Hausler has provided new contour plots in their reply, 15 and if I could draw your attention to just one of 16 them, Dr. Hausler positions where he believes the 17 internal grid locations are with respect to external 18 locations. So, for example, on Figure 4, which is a 19 contour plot of Bay 3, all the way up at the top is a 20 small square box, and it says, "Approximate", I assume 21 that's position and size of the 1 by 7 grid used for 22 internal UT measurements. Similarly, you could go on 23 to further pages and find where those grids are placed 24 with respect to the external points. They are not 25 correctly placed; and, therefore, the contour plots NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1025 1 themselves are wrong.
2 In AmerGen's Exhibit 40, the last page 3 that we provided in our supporting references is the 4 famous grid with the yellow and green triangles, and 5 green rectangles, which shows the internal points 6 juxtaposed with the external - I'm sorry - the 7 internal grids and trough data juxtaposed against the 8 external individual points. And you will see that 9 there are many points that are above or within these 10 grids. And those simply don't match up with what they 11 have done. There's no information in the record here 12 how Dr. Hausler came up with what he did, but it's 13 incorrect. And so, clearly, even if you were to go 14 these plots, which we don't believe you should, they 15 are not reliable, because the internal data is in the 16 wrong place, and the plots would clearly change.
17 The third item is, I believe, Citizens 18 objection as to how the external data was treated, and 19 whether that was in the record. And suffice to say, 20 I'll just point you to Exhibit 46, and page one, two, 21 the third page, which has an OCLR number of 29744.
22 And the second to last paragraph says, "External point 23 measurements were used in a limited way to confirm the 24 basis for an engineering judgment", and it's the 25 following language that's important, "assuming a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1026 1 normally statistical distribution regarding an 2 appropriate thickness to use in the re-analysis." So 3 that's where my statement came from. If I said 4 something different, I was relying on this document 5 form the source.
6 As for "is more analysis required",
7 because the scope of UT measurements, that is where UT 8 measurements are taken, is outside the scope of the 9 proceeding, and we don't believe that was part of the 10 issue that was sent down to the Board from the 11 Commission, we do not interpret the "is more analysis 12 required" question to additional UT measurements in 13 new locations. We viewed that, and we urge the Board 14 to adopt a view that that is just asking our 15 additional analyses, sensitivity analyses, et cetera, 16 required, and our answer, AmerGen's answer is no, that 17 they're not, that we have a sufficiently bounding 18 analysis.
19 And, finally, Judge Abramson asked whether 20 AmerGen would be willing to submit more than a 21 summary. And let me clear up the misrepresentation, 22 or misinterpretation, perhaps, of what a summary is.
23 It is not going to be a single page with a sentence 24 that says hey, it's fine. And it won't be a 20-page 25 summary, either. AmerGen expects that it will be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1027 1 hundreds of pages, that it will have figures, that it 2 will have diagrams, that it will have data, and that 3 it will allow a knowledgeable structural engineer to 4 view it with an independent eye. The entirety of the 5 information, all of the supporting information, will 6 be available to the Staff at AmerGen's facilities, as 7 all other information is. Whether it's proprietary or 8 not, the standard procedure is that the Staff is 9 allowed to come back and look at anything they want 10 with any reasonable notice, and that will include the 11 vendor information, and the validation and 12 verification information, and at times they can even 13 talk to the individual modelers at their request.
14 JUDGE HAWKENS: Mr. Polonsky, do you have 15 an estimated date for when the analysis will be 16 complete, and the invitation to the NRC Staff 17 extended?
18 MR. POLONSKY: I do not, Your Honor. The 19 commitment is merely that it be done, completed by 20 April 2009.
21 JUDGE BARATTA: Would that include the 22 submittal of the summary by then?
23 MR. POLONSKY: My understanding, and my 24 client will correct me, is that before April 2009, we 25 will have submitted the summary and made the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1028 1 information available to the Staff for review.
2 JUDGE BARATTA: Thank you very much. I'll 3 be honest with you. I was a little troubled with your 4 modeling of some of these bays, and the point that 5 Citizens brought out was along the lines what I was 6 concerned about. I would take a careful look at, if 7 you do have data, which you do in some cases, that 8 suggest that it's not as -- the corrosion is not as 9 extensive or whatever, you may want to include that in 10 your model. Just, I don't understand why you're not.
11 I mean, it could be beneficial, but you do have maybe 12 some stress concentration factor to be considered. I 13 just don't understand -- I kind of understand what 14 you're trying to do in a way, but also it does take 15 away from the realism, I guess. I don't know, that's 16 something I'd like you to respond to in a way is, what 17 you think about that or not. It just bothered me.
18 The other point that I didn't understand, 19 and just go over Bay 15 again. I'd appreciate that.
20 Looking -- I don't have the figure that -- I'm sorry, 21 I take that back. It's Bay 15. I don't have the plot 22 that shows the points that you got other than what you 23 just pointed out, which is this page in Exhibit 40, I 24 guess. How you concluded the 711 region there in 25 size, I just couldn't quite figure that out from the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1029 1 data that's there.
2 MR. POLONSKY: I'd be happy to address 3 that, Your Honor, if I could just pause and take a 4 look at Applicant's Exhibit 16, which is the 24 calc 5 rev. 2. I'll pull up the page where that original 12 6 by 12 inch area would have come from.
7 JUDGE BARATTA: It may have been covered 8 previously, but that was a while ago. I apologize.
9 MR. POLONSKY: Well, I guess the starting 10 point would be in Citizens Exhibit 45, on page 10 of 11 12. It describes Bay 15 with a locally thin area, 18-12 inch diameter circular area that is 711 mils thick, 13 and it references the 24 calc. So I'm now going to go 14 to the 24 calc, but that's how we get to the 24 calc.
15 Well, it's page 15 - I'm sorry - it's Figure 15-6 in 16 AmerGen's Exhibit 16, which has Bay 15, which shows a 17 locally thin area of 12 by 12 inches, that is 711 mils 18 thick. It is that area that was then transcribed into 19 an 18-inch diameter circle.
20 JUDGE BARATTA: The same thickness as the 21 12 by 12 in the other model.
22 MR. POLONSKY: Correct. Conservatively 23 expanded out to 18 inches, but also keeping it 711 24 mils thick.
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1030 1 working right, that's about two and a quarter times as 2 much surface area that's thinned. Is that right?
3 MR. POLONSKY: If we go to Figure 15-3 of 4 that same exhibit, this shows individual external UT 5 measurement points with two concentric squares or 6 rectangles. The inner square or rectangle has a 7 single point in it, which is 711 mils, that is 8 conservatively extrapolated out to encompass the 9 entire area, assuming that the entire area is 711 10 mils.
11 JUDGE ABRAMSON: That would be -- there is 12 one point that appears I think on that colored exhibit 13 that we mentioned a moment, that that would be that 14 point then?
15 MR. POLONSKY: Yes. There is only one 16 point that is 711. The other ones that are shown on 17 this slide are 777 mils, 791 mils, 793 mils.
18 JUDGE BARATTA: One point that I picked up 19 on was the influence of a single data point on the 20 average. As part of a sensitivity study, not only do 21 we look at the actual model inputs, but sometimes we 22 need to look at the -- how those model inputs were 23 developed. And it was pointed out, if I followed the 24 Citizens argument, that inclusion of the one 25 uncorroded point seemed to have a tremendous influence NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1031 1 on the average that was used in the 3D model. Do you 2 plan to address that, examine that in your report, or 3 as part of your analysis?
4 MR. POLONSKY: I don't know, Your Honor.
5 Mr. Webster made certain assertions, did not cite to 6 the record. I can't even confirm that his assertions 7 are in the record, but we'll, obviously, address those 8 in some form of briefing.
9 JUDGE BARATTA: Well, he raises an 10 interesting question from an analysis point that one 11 has to be careful developing the model input, that you 12 have to look to see if there are any outliers which 13 might cause an undue bias. That's consistent with, 14 like I said, what Apostolakis says in his Article 4.
15 MR. POLONSKY: I think the undue bias that 16 we've introduced is in the bounding conservative way.
17 For example, selecting the locally thinned areas, I 18 mean, it's kind of ironic that Citizens are suggesting 19 we use the external data and average it out for the 20 entire bay. Well, we did use that data, and averaged 21 it out for the entire locally thinned area, and yet, I 22 guess we're hearing that that's not enough. That is a 23 bounding conservative treatment of locally thinned 24 areas. And then to extrapolate that square area into 25 a circular diameter area adds even more surface area NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1032 1 to that conservative thickness.
2 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Let me pick this up for a 3 second. One of the fundamental concerns, it seems to 4 me that I'm hearing from Citizens, is the thought that 5 all the way around the drywell shell at the top of the 6 sand bed region there's some sort of corrosion; and, 7 therefore, there's some sort of ring that might be 8 weakened in the shell. Is that addressed by your use 9 of the general area thinning well below the 1100 mils, 10 or whatever the original thickness was? Tell me how 11 the general thinning -- how you've addressed the 12 question of the bathtub ring, that is.
13 MR. POLONSKY: First, of all, there is B 14 we don't agree that there is a bathtub ring around the 15 entire exterior. That's just not the case. There is, 16 in certain areas, in certain bays where the sand-air 17 interface was, and where water was present for a 18 significant amount of time, significant corrosion.
19 But that does not exist around the entire ring. In 20 fact, there are many bays that have essentially no 21 corrosion in them.
22 For those areas that have some corrosion, 23 the external data points were taken at areas that were 24 believed to have been the thinnest points, or biased 25 to the thin side.
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1033 1 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And in the model that's 2 been prepared, and not yet run, or is being prepared 3 to be run, those areas of actual corrosion are 4 modeled, and generally modeled to be thinner than the 5 average measurements in those areas?
6 MR. POLONSKY: We believe that is the 7 case. Not every single external UT measurement point, 8 those taken from the 24 calc, that the 24 calc said 9 would impact the local buckling criterion. An 10 individual point.
11 Let me back up from last fall. We could 12 have a hole in the shell. You could have a hole, and 13 it wouldn't buckle. Problem with the pressure 14 criterion, okay, but an individual point does not 15 implicate a buckling concern, so you have to keep it 16 in perspective.
17 JUDGE BARATTA: That one we recall.
18 MR. POLONSKY: I'm done with my rebuttal, 19 if there are no further questions.
20 JUDGE HAWKENS: One second. I keep 21 hearing the word "proprietary", and I have trouble 22 understanding when these are classical techniques, why 23 any such report would be proprietary. I think that is 24 a concern I don't quite understand. I know certain 25 organizations will, I found that interesting enough, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1034 1 would consider my textbook to be proprietary, since it 2 has the same statements that they have in their 3 reports, but I understand in preparation of data, 4 there's certain things that are proprietary, methods 5 and such, but I kept hearing you refer to 6 "proprietary", and I just -- I don't quite understand 7 that.
8 MR. POLONSKY: I believe it was Mr.
9 Webster who referred to it as "proprietary". I don't 10 believe I used that word today. And, in fact, I don't 11 believe the summary report, or the underlying data 12 itself will be deemed proprietary by AmerGen. And my 13 client can correct me if I'm wrong.
14 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Counselor, before you 15 leave the stand, let's talk for a couple of minutes 16 about how the process is designed to work, and how it, 17 at least my view, it should work. You're going to 18 submit -- the record of our proceeding is closed.
19 There's now a proceeding that's still going on because 20 the appeal hasn't been resolved. But, in my view, the 21 record of our proceeding is closed. There's been no 22 motion to reopen, and there's been no remand, there's 23 been no indication from the Commission they want it 24 reopened. They've asked for our advice on this 25 particular point.
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1035 1 Your client has made a commitment to 2 submit an analysis. In the order course of things, 3 the Staff would review that analysis. Is that 4 correct? And decide whether it likes it or not, and 5 iterate with the Applicant on getting to a 6 satisfactory result from that commitment?
7 MR. POLONSKY: I'll dwell on terminology 8 here just for a second.
9 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Please.
10 MR. POLONSKY: You used the word 11 "condition", and I don't believe this is a license 12 condition. This is a commitment.
13 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Well, if I recall 14 correctly, commitments B 15 MR. POLONSKY: I'm sorry.
16 JUDGE ABRAMSON: -- are license 17 conditions.
18 MR. POLONSKY: Yes. I retract that, Your 19 Honor. I'm sorry.
20 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And that, Mr. Webster, by 21 the way, is an important thing for you to be aware of.
22 This commitment is a condition on the license. Okay.
23 Now, let's proceed.
24 MR. POLONSKY: Pretend that I didn't just 25 say that.
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1036 1 JUDGE ABRAMSON: I'll pretend you didn't 2 say it. You were promptly corrected by your 3 colleagues.
4 MR. POLONSKY: My client expects to submit 5 a significantly thick and detailed summary report to 6 the Staff, and the Staff will review that report, is 7 certainly our expectation. And if the Staff has any 8 additional questions on it, then they would get back 9 to my client with those questions. Any deficiencies 10 in that analysis, assuming the license has been 11 granted, would be handled in Part 50 space, as any 12 other deviation or concern that the Staff would have 13 on an operating plant.
14 JUDGE ABRAMSON: This is not a condition 15 precedent to the issuance of the license. Help me for 16 a minute. It is a commitment to submit something 17 before the commencement of the license, extended 18 license term, so the license could be granted today.
19 The license extension could be granted today, it's not 20 a condition precedent on the issuance of the license 21 extension.
22 MR. POLONSKY: That's been AmerGen's 23 understanding, and from what I heard from the Staff, 24 that's B 25 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Is that correct, Ms.
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1037 1 Baty? This is a condition -- it is not a condition 2 precedent to the issuance by the Agency of the 3 license, the requested license. It is simply a 4 condition that has to be fulfilled prior to 5 commencement of the term. Is that right?
6 MS. BATY: Yes, Your Honor. That's 7 correct. And I believe that was also this Board's 8 finding in its initial decision, that it's not a 9 condition precedent to the issuance of a renewed 10 license. In some cases, a renewed license is issued 11 several years before -- more than two years, five, ten 12 years before they go into their period of extended 13 operation, and then having to come before the -- yes, 14 it is a condition that must be completed before April 15 2009.
16 JUDGE ABRAMSON: And from your statement, 17 this is likely to be several hundred pages of -- in 18 this report. Is it inappropriate for me to assume 19 that this report will describe how the data was 20 gathered, treated, assembled, and used as input for 21 the model?
22 MR. POLONSKY: All of those, Your Honor.
23 JUDGE HAWKENS: And it's your 24 understanding it's not -- the summary itself will not 25 be proprietary?
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1038 1 MR. POLONSKY: That's correct.
2 JUDGE HAWKENS: So if Citizens, for 3 example, requested a copy, or requested to look at the 4 summary, they would be able to coordinate with you.
5 MR. POLONSKY: Our understanding is that 6 the summary will be placed on ADAMS, which is the 7 NRC's B 8 JUDGE HAWKENS: Oh, in the public record.
9 MR. POLONSKY: Publicly available for 10 anyone to download.
11 JUDGE BARATTA: You will agree with that?
12 MS. BATY: Yes. Absolutely. It will be a 13 document of correspondence, and will be available for 14 everyone, I mean, anyone with a computer. And it will 15 be available on the public docket, as well.
16 JUDGE BARATTA: I do understand, because 17 of the type nature of the calculation that there's 18 literally thousands and thousands of additional 19 information, basically the numbers that go into this 20 thing, which the only way you can get them is they're 21 in some sort of computer, electronic media, so I 22 understand that you can't really -- there's a 23 practical limit as to what can be made available.
24 MR. POLONSKY: Yes, Your Honor.
25 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Is the calculation being NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1039 1 done with a generally available computer code, or is 2 it a proprietary code of your client's consultant?
3 MR. POLONSKY: It is a generally accepted 4 methodology, and code. I believe it's the ANSYS code.
5 I mean, I think that's even what -- I believe Sandia 6 used ANSYS, as well. No. Okay. Sandia did not use 7 ANSYS, but the GE model was done under the ANSYS code.
8 If what you're getting at is can someone replicate it, 9 then yes, they can if they want.
10 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Yes. And let me just 11 state what I understand of the situation. We have a 12 closed record at our proceeding. In order for an issue 13 that would be raised by -- as a result of whatever 14 information is contained in that report to come back 15 to us would have to be -- the record would have to be 16 reopened. Is that -- do you agree with that, 17 counselor?
18 MS. BATY: Yes. And actually, the motion 19 would have to go to the Commission first, and then 20 perhaps it would be referred. But yes, it would be 21 required to reopen the record.
22 JUDGE ABRAMSON: There's no longer a 23 proceeding before us at this point.
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1040 1 the report? It sounds like B 2 MR. WEBSTER: Well, obviously, it would be 3 very helpful to get the report prior to decisions made 4 on licensing. It would also be helpful if could get 5 hold of the electronic summary before the analysis.
6 If they're using ANSYS Code, I don't quite know what 7 part of the analysis will be proprietary.
8 JUDGE BARATTA: He said none.
9 JUDGE ABRAMSON: He says he didn't use the 10 term "proprietary".
11 MR. WEBSTER: Well, he has asserted in the 12 past that it would be proprietary.
13 JUDGE ABRAMSON: Well, come to that in the 14 road when you reach it. Thank you, Mr. Polonsky.
15 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you, Mr. Polonsky.
16 MR. POLONSKY: Thank you very much.
17 JUDGE HAWKENS: Ms. Baty?
18 MS. BATY: I have just a few points of 19 clarification, some of them from the Staff who's with 20 me today. I'd like to say before we leave today, we 21 should set the record straight that we misspoke 22 earlier when the Staff -- we said that we just -- or 23 correct any misapprehension that the Staff is going to 24 be doing some sort of cursory review of this, or 25 simply filing it in the circular filing bin. That's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1041 1 completely incorrect.
2 The Staff understands the interest of the 3 parties, and the public in this 3D analysis. And the 4 Staff will be conducting an -- first of all, as a 5 general matter, the Staff will be conducting an 6 inspection under 71003 as part of the license renewal 7 process to insure the completion of various 8 commitments, including license conditions.
9 JUDGE HAWKENS: When you say 71003, what 10 are you referring to?
11 MS. BATY: It's an inspection procedure, 12 the license renewal inspection procedure. The intent 13 of that document is to inspect commitments, and we 14 will be looking at the license conditions, as well, 15 including this one. And we will be looking at the 16 details of the analysis. However, in addition, we are 17 going to be receiving the summary report, which, as 18 has been stated here, will be put on the docket, and 19 will be publicly available. And it should provide 20 B the Staff expects to get a beefy, and it has been 21 represented here today that this summary is going to 22 be a rather beefy summary. It's going to be a hundred 23 pages, and the Staff expects that that summary will 24 provide a clear understanding of what was done, the 25 assumptions that were made, and the basis for the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1042 1 various conclusions. And the Staff is prepared to 2 review that summary.
3 And, as a similar example, recently there 4 was the confirmatory analysis of the metal fatigue 5 calculation. And there, the licensee provided a 6 summary, and the Staff proceeded to conduct an audit 7 of the material. And the Staff is preparing to issue 8 a supplemental SER, in which we detail our review of 9 that analysis.
10 The Staff interests as we review the 11 summary will be in insuring that the current licensing 12 basis is upheld. And, I mean, it's important to keep 13 in mind, the summary -- this 3D analysis that has yet 14 to be performed, is not part -- is not going to change 15 AmerGen's B Oyster Creek's current licensing basis.
16 The purpose of this analysis is to better quantify the 17 margin, but it isn't going to change their acceptance 18 criteria, which is already part of their CLB. And 19 it's not going to change any other aspect of their 20 current licensing basis, unless we get a separate 21 request from AmerGen to make a change to their 22 license. And the current licensing basis, of course, 23 according to the regulations in Part 54 continues into 24 the extended, any extended period of operation.
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1043 1 proprietary information, and just to be clear, that if 2 a document is represented to us as being proprietary, 3 the Staff cannot disclose it. And we are under the 4 Trade Secrets Act, and, actually, we could be 5 B individuals who are caught disclosing such 6 information could be sent to prison, so we won't be 7 disclosing anything that is duly proprietary, and the 8 proprietary privilege adequately asserted.
9 As a general note, we know -- the Staff 10 understands that we're here to talk about this 11 specific question that's been referred by the 12 Commission to this Board. And the Staff respectfully 13 requests that any material submitted today was an 14 attempt to reargue contentions that were either not 15 admitted, such as contentions challenging the spatial 16 scope of inspections, or the inspection technique, 17 that those matters are all pending before the 18 Commission at this point.
19 We also heard some representations about 20 the Sandia report, and the use of the capacity 21 reduction factor. Capacity reduction factors are 22 calculated based on the compressive and tensile 23 stresses derived from the load combinations from the 24 refueling loading. Credit for tensile stresses has 25 been researched extensively, and was presented to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1044 1 ACRS in January of 2007.
2 The ACRS Code case for Section 3, Case 3 757, recognized the methodology for cases --
4 recognized the use of the capacity reduction factor 5 for cases other than internal pressure. And I hope I 6 have accurately represented what my technical advisors 7 have presented. Anyway, the Staff also would note 8 that some of the information presented with regard to 9 Sandia's disagreement with the Staff about the 10 capacity reduction factor is not -- doesn't tell the 11 entire story, and we would refer the Board to a 12 publicly available document, Packages ML070670513, 13 which is a letter to the ACRS Chairman from the 14 Director of License Renewal, explaining that Sandia 15 was not prepared to use capacity reduction factor 16 because they had not had an opportunity to review all 17 of the work that has been done on that, on the use of 18 that by Dr. Clarence Miller.
19 So unless there are further questions from 20 the Board, that's all I needed to B 21 JUDGE BARATTA: I just -- I do want to 22 clarify, I was not suggesting that you would release 23 proprietary information. I hope that we've already 24 had that point clarified I think, and thank Mr.
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1045 1 be proprietary.
2 MS. BATY: One final point, is that with 3 regard to the analysis that will be submitted, it 4 will, obviously, be submitted under oath and 5 affirmation. That's a requirement for their 6 submissions to the Staff. And if anything would prove 7 to be inaccurate, incomplete, that's likewise subject 8 to criminal prosecution, as well.
9 JUDGE HAWKENS: Thank you. Please bear 10 with me one minute while I have a few moments with my 11 colleagues.
12 MR. WEBSTER: Judge, before you go off the 13 record, there are a couple of things I would like to 14 correct.
15 JUDGE HAWKENS: One second, please. Thank 16 you. Mr. Webster, to the extent you have matters that 17 you want to bring to our attention, we're going to 18 allow you to do it in a supplemental brief. The case 19 is submitted. We thank counsel for the their 20 presentations. They were very helpful. They answered 21 our questions, and they clarified a lot of matters for 22 us.
23 Yes. I want to make it clear, each party 24 will have the opportunity to provide the Board with a 25 supplemental brief, not to exceed 10 pages. Mr.
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1046 1 Webster had indicated a week, he would require a week 2 in order to prepare that. Is that what you'd like, 3 Mr. Webster? That would be Thursday, September 25th.
4 MR. WEBSTER: A week after the transcript 5 is available, Judge.
6 JUDGE HAWKENS: All right. It will be a 7 week after the transcript is on ADAMS. There should 8 be a three-day turn-around, so I anticipate they'll be 9 on ADAMS at the latest on Tuesday.
10 MR. POLONSKY: Apologies for the sound 11 from the mic, but I understand that the Board 12 typically gets a copy of the transcript many days 13 before it's on ADAMS. Is it possible once the clerk 14 or the Board receives it, that the clerk can 15 distribute it, and that might speed things up, as 16 well?
17 JUDGE HAWKENS: Regrettably, it's not.
18 But we -- generally, when we get it, if we work 19 closely with SECY, we're able to get it either one 20 day, at most two-day turn-around, so we will make 21 every effort to get it out there as quickly as 22 possible.
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1047 1 available, so if we could get some sort of notice 2 saying your time starts now.
3 JUDGE HAWKENS: We will have our law clerk 4 provide counsel with an email telling you when the B 5 MS. BATY: That will be appreciated.
6 JUDGE HAWKENS: -- clock is triggered.
7 MS. BATY: Thank you.
8 JUDGE HAWKENS: And you had indicated you 9 would like an opportunity to respond to what you 10 perceived as new information with an affidavit. That 11 is granted, not to exceed five pages.
12 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you, Judge.
13 JUDGE HAWKENS: The Board anticipates for 14 the information of the audience and counsel, as well, 15 we're going to anticipate issuing a decision some time 16 during the month of October.
17 Because we are guests here, I have certain 18 individuals I would like to thank. They've been very 19 gracious to us. Ocean County, first of all, for 20 allowing us to use this facility once again, and 21 several individuals I want to identify, focus on 22 especially, Mary Porcellini, who's receptionist for 23 the Board of Chosen Freeholders, Donna Flynn, Director 24 of Public Information Division. She's been 25 consistently the last three times we've used, is just NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1048 1 exceeding gracious, and a wonderful sense of 2 cooperativeness and humor throughout. And Alan Avery, 3 the Administrator, and the Ocean County Sheriff's 4 Department, as well. They've been out here supporting 5 us, and we're grateful for that.
6 This hearing is adjourned. Thank you very 7 much.
8 (Whereupon, the proceedings went off the 9 record at 12:27 p.m.)
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