ML19225A227
| ML19225A227 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Salem  |
| Issue date: | 06/14/1979 |
| From: | Onsdorff K NEW JERSEY, STATE OF |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML19225A219 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 7907180585 | |
| Download: ML19225A227 (10) | |
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Cl pocmo UNITED STATES OF AMERICA , W3M8G ,
M NUCLEAR FIGULA'IORY COMMISSION -
dQN 1819[3 >
Y p es mes====r Before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board eshste &
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In the Mat".er of : Docket No. 50-272 .
PU3LIC SERVICE mf"I"AIC : Proposed Issuance of Amendment -
& GAF CO. to Facility Operating License (Salem Nuclear Generating : No. DPR-70 Station, Unit #1)
INTERVENORS, COLEMAN, RESPCNSE -
'ID NRC STAFF OBJECTICN TO BOARD QUESTICN NO. THFIE STANLEY C. VAN KESS PUBLIC ADVOCATE OF NEW JERSEY DEPARTAENT OF THE PUBLIC ADVCCATE DIVISION OF PUBLIC INTEREST ADVOCACT POST OFFICE BOX 141 520 EAST STATE STREET TRENTCN, NEW JERSET KEI"H A. ONSDORFF ASSISTA:iT DEPCY PUBLIC ADVOCA C On the Brief I
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PRELI24INARY ' STATE!'ENT By Order dated April 18, 1979, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, charged with the responsibility for adjudicating the abitted contentions pertaining to Public Service Electric and Gas Co: pany*s application to rerack its spent fuel pool at the Salem One Nuclear Generating Station, indicated the following: - - -
"The Board wishes to add the fnllowing ._...
questions for discussion at the hearing- - _
- 3. If an accident such as the one at Three Mile Island occurred at sat , to what extent would the, accident affect the spent fuel pool? If an explosion or
' meltdown' occurred at Salem to what extent would that affect the spent fuel pool? To what extent would it have mattered how much spent fuel was present at tha pool at Salem?"
- In objecting to not only its participation in this hearing discussion of the effects a Class Nine accident on the Salem SFP, the URC staff has scught to foreclose any party frem examining this issue or even the Board itself frca inquiring about this particular subject. The authority relied upon by the MRC staff in interpcsing crus cejection focuses on the pu-Wed extreme unlikeli-hood of such a catastrephic event, which in the past has been used to justify their exclusior from the final Safety Evaluation Re,e prepared for NRC licensing reviews. We rational for this exclusion would appear to be that for reasons of administrative ccnvenience and efficiency it was not worthwhile to devote months and months of time by scarce technical resources to evaluating consequences of events which were deemed realistically incapable of occurring.
- It shculd be noted that in its objection dated June 1,1979, the NRC staf f ~~
, incorrectly asserts that "the Board propcunded three questions to be answered by the staff and the licensee." (Staff objectiva, pl; Backgrcund) .
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For two basic reasons, however, this rational is not applicable to the Board's Order of April 18, 1979. Intitially,it is important to note that the Board has not directed the NRC staff to redo its final SER done on either the Salen One plant or the final SIR prepared on the proposed reracking of the Salem One spent fuel pool.'
Eather, the Orfer is very limited in scope, requesting only that a discussion be held at the hearing concerning two specific potential impacts of a Class Nine ace-iden It contains no directive to either the Staff or the Licensee to spend months of ..
tir.e by experts e:<am5ing all the many raaifications of a full-blown M.," Nine -
accident at a nuclear power plant. Thus, since the Board's Order c -pls no undue level of resource coritt=ent by the staff or PSE&G Co., reasons of *inistrative expediency are not implicated in this request.*
Secondly, since the Board's Order is directed to a legit-imate safety concern which is germane to the adaitted contentions in this proceeding, the panel members, pursuant to the authority vested in them by 10 CFR S 2.721 and 2.718, may exam ne hearing witnesses pertaining to the potential impacts Claw Nine type accidents -
at their em discretion. 'l'he entry of an order affording the parties advance notice of the Board's intention to do so can not be construed in any fashion to limit the e:: press authority of an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to manage the con-duct of a hearing as it progresses, including the right to examine witnesses at the panel neriers sole discretion. A good example of this type of ASL3 panel member witness examination occurred during the May 1979 hearings in this matter when Dr. Lamb questioned Mr. Liden on the possible safety considerations involved in
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W c $iinh on its face, Yallows It can even be stated convincinglyCthat*'thMOfder,&) Y O #U U ;U the staff and licensee to offer no affirmative evidence on the Class Nine impacts issue while allowing the burden to be carried by intervenor's witnesses and T i'i ting the;-
"discussien" of this tcpic to reacting to whatever is proffered by these other parties, as deemad appropriate in light of tne evidence su%itted. Of course, this approach involves no ase of agency resources to evaluate the Class Nine impacts in advance of the hearings and removes entirely the ar'm nisrrative convenience rational for the staff objection to the ASLS informing itself about an issue of poten"'ily paramount i=portance to the public safety.
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caintained a full core discharge capability at the Sale:2 One Reactor. (May 4 1979 transcript at ps. 866-869). Despite Mr. Liden 's acknowledg=ent that full core _
discharge capability is not a safety factor in any way regulated by the NRC, Dr. Lamb continued to explore in detail the possible safety nna enviromnantal i= pacts associated with its absence, without significantly, any objection thereto by -
either the staff or the licensee. For either the staff or licensee to now object ~ ~
-G to the Board's exami9ation of witnesses on a subject which they possibly do not -- (
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deem as favorable to their position is simply not consistent with their earlier receptivity to prior board initiated questioning in this proceeding. Fundamental fairness dictates thac either the staff and licensee consent to striking Liden*=
teseimny regarding full core discharge or inclusion of Class Hine accident testi-cony.
They should not, however, be entitled to obtain the benafits of the former while seeking to exclude the perecived disadvantages of the latter testimnny.
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s ARGUMENT (
THE BOARD SHOULD EXAMINE THE CONSE- .,
QUENCES OF A CLASS NINE ACCIDENT SEGUSE THE FAILURE TO CONSIDER ALL POTEN'1"2L , [, g7 RISKS TO THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF THE PUBLIC IN LIGHT OF THE TMI-2 EXPERIE2;CE .
WOULD CONSTITUTE ABDICATION OF THE f *# A',
NRC'S STA'It! TORY RESPONSIBILITIES .
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Repeatedly since March 28, 1979, the highest federal officials charged
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with the responsibility for regulation of nuclear power generation in the United States have assured the public that they would not ignore the lessons to be learned from the near catastrophy at Three Mile Idnnd Nuclear Genera-tion Station No. Two. All aspects of the nuclear plant safety would be ernined, we have been told, to prevent a recurrence of the situation where URO Chaiman Joseph Hendrie was reduced to excl.uming in apparent desperation-
"We are operating al=ost totally in the blind, his .information is ambiguous, nine is non-
" ' existent and -- I don't know, its li'ke a - ' -
couple of blind men staggering arou=d making decision." (Nucleonics Week, 4.26.79, p.3;
. transcript of Commission meeting March 30, 1979 regarding then ongoing TMI-2 crisis) .
Chair =an IIendrie's remarks vera closely echoed by Harold I)enton, Director, nuclear Reacti9n Regulation and Roger Mattson, Director, Systems Safety Division, NRC, in reporting to the Commission their understanding of the then unfolding ri! accident:
"We saw failure modes, the likes of which have never been analyzed." (Mattson, Nucleonics Week, 4.26.79, p.10; transcript March 30, 1979, Cocnissicn meeting) .
We kind of had the feeling this =orning . . . that . . g. .
the licensee doesn't recognize the problem that we're facing with regard to the bubble and amge and what night happen if we were to lose vacuum and so forth." (Denton, Nucleonics Week, 4.26.79, p.8; transcript March 30, 1979, Commission Meeting) .
- See , e.g.,
New York Times, April testimony before U.S. Senate.
10, 1979, p. 1, report of 1U10 Chairman Hendrie's
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Apparently, however, these reassurances may have been somewhat over-stated and it continues to be business as usual for the U.S. regulation of the nuclear industry, despite the unprecedented events at the Metropolitan Edison, TMI-2 nuclear generating facility which narrowly avoided (it seems by mere good fortune) the ultimate nuclear accident. In it$2 brief in support of its objection to Board consideration of a class nine accidant . _
ct the Salem One facility, the Staf f ascerts that such an event is deemed
" highly unlikely," citing an eight year old document as authority for this now somewhat dubious proposition - 36 F.R. 22851 (December 1,1971) .
A more current expression of the Cor: mission's thinking on the probaM!ity of such a catastrophic event at a reactor can be found in its 'Ihree Mile Island deliberations this past March:
Mattson: "They are working on some alternatives. One, we thought c f, and one that B&W kind of likes, but it doesn' t have a lot of promise. B&W says start up all the reactor coolant pumps, burn them out, blow the seals and hope they cause a loss of coolant accident that way, which would depressurize the system rapidly. Then we get into a mode for which all these systems were designed and we could cope with." (emphasis added) .
Corrtissioner Gilinsky:
"let me ask you again suppose we go into this caneu rer, or one of them, and it turns bad, what sort of ti=e scales are involved there?"
Mattson: Hours.
Gilinsky: Ecurs before what?
Mattson: Before you had core celt down.
(Nucleonics Week, 4.30.79, pp. 2-4, transcript ,
March 30, 1979, Ccc=tission Meeting) . -
p u. 4 346 139
In light of the Three Mile Island accident, simple prudence dictates that a]l Ictential consequencer of the storage of massive amounts of radioactive materials 80 feet from an active reactor be careful.ly and fully examined, unless compelling reasons exist demonstrating that this not be done. Surely, the proposition that a Class Nine accident is " highly unlikely" no longer can be deemed persuasive. The one hypothetical study which the NRC used to reach this conclusion, WASH-1400, has now heen officially resch led by the Co= mission and the actual experience with nuclear power plants in the United States (Fermi, Detroit; Browns Ferry, Alabama; and Three Mile Island, Harrisburg) lends little support for the glib assertion that a core melt down just cannot and will not happen.
Nonetheless, even assuming that the chances of a Claes Nine accident are still determined to be small and such an occurence is deemed unlikely, such a c r bsion does not justify the responsible regulatory officials taking a carecorical position that they refuse to exmne this eventuality despite its catastrophic consequences. The reasoned and cons,ervative analytical approach to the safe use of nuclear energy required close scrutiny of the class nim consequences, particularly when licensing decisions involve authorization to place the equivalent of five nuclear cores 80 feet from an ' active reactor. No additional insights into reactor safety can be gleaned by ignoring the consequences of a Class Nine accident and if this " highly unlikely" eventually does in fact occur, the NF.C will again find itself confronted with " failure modes, the likes of which have never been analyzed."
(.Mattson , supra, at p. 4 ) . Of course, this need not be the case. Adoption of a conservative approach to he analysis of the Salem Cne reracking propesal can produce a planning document that would be available in the event it was ever required over the next forty years of reactor operations at Icwer Alloways Creek which could prevent the responsible regulatory officials frem
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7, cespairing of their non-existent data base. (Hendrie, supra, at p. 4 ) .
Having shown no countervailing considerations warranting exclusion of this evidence, the staff's position is wholly lacking in a rational basis necessary to sustain it.
Moreover, it is readily apparent that the NRC's policy on consideration of Class Nine accidents is far more flexible that the staff's brief contends.
At no time did the Commission, the NRC staff or anyone else deter:aine that a core melt down at a floating nuclear power plant was " reasonably likely to occur" and therefore warranting scrutiny of the consequencer flowing there frem. Rather, the Commission has adopted a policy which does not require consideration of Class Nine accidents, absent a showing of special circumstances. This flexible standard permits the NRC staff and licensing boards sufficient discretionary authority to exercise their judgment as to when such analysis would be appropriate and prudent. It should also be noted at this juncture that since the annex to former Appendix D to 10 C.F.R. , Part 50 (1970), published at 36 Fed. Reg. 22851-52 (December 1,1971) has not been adopted as a regulation by the Cc= mission, it does not have force and effect of " law."
In any event, the Commission's most recent articulation of its policy en this matter, as reflected by Chairman Hendries'sumtion at its January 31, Power Systems 1979 meeting on the Offshore / appeal, indicates the extremely broad discretion which has been delegated on the Class Nine question: "the thrust of the In fact, the NRC staff in the pending Offshore Power Systems proceeding "does not dispute that the probabilities of experiencing a Class Nine accident at a nuclear power plant ashore or afloat are the same."
8 NRC at 211; slip Opinion at 32 (emphasis in original) .
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Commission's decisicn, th en , is that indeed these considerations the staff has raised in this case are appropriately considered." (Tr. at 51).
Most assuredly, then, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has been delegated no less authority than the NRC staff to raise Class Nine considerations where such an eynm hacion is appropriate. This is clearly the situati.on here. The Atcmic Energy Report -- Theoretical Possibilities and Consecuences of Maior Accidents in Large Nuclear Power Plants, (Wash. - 740, March 1957) ,
calculated that the release of .15 million curies of strontium 90 could result in the contamination of 150,000 square miles of land mass. A loss of coolant water accident at the Salem One spent fuel pool could conceivably cause the release of forty-five million curies of strontium 90, or three-hundred times the WASH-740 predicted release of lethal radiation.
In light of the near catastrophy at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, this Board's expressed desire to examine the consequences of a Class Nine accident at the Salem plant on this huge stockpile of radio-active materials is entirely justified, reasonable and prudent. No further special circumstances need be shown than the close proximity of the spent fuel pool (within 80 feet) to the reactor core to warrant review of the consequences of a core melt down on the spent fuel pool.
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CCNCLUCICN For all the foregoing reasons, it is respectfully requested that the Board deny the tiRC staff's objection to consideration of tha consequences of a Class Nine accident on the reracked Salem One spent fuel pool.
Respectfully submitted, j g; -
KEITH A. CNSDCIUT Assistant Deputy Public Advocate DATED: JUNE 14, 1979 k
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