ML20151B089

Comment Opposing Proposed Rule 10CFR50 Re Licensing of Nuclear Power Plants Where State &/Or Local Govts Decline to Cooperate in Offsite Emergency Planning

ML20151B089
Person / Time
Site:	Three Mile Island
Issue date:	02/23/1987
From:	Hart G AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
To:	NRC
References
FRN-52FR6980, RULE-PR-50 52FR6980-00087, 52FR6980-87, NUDOCS 8807200237
Download: ML20151B089 (9)

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COMMENTS BY FORMER SENATOR GARY HART BEFORE THE UUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION '87 WR --4 Pi2 :07 REGARDING THE EMERGENCY PLANNING REQUIREMENT

WASHINGTON D.C. FEBRUARY 23, 1987 Next month, Americans will note the eighth anniversary of Three Mile Island, our nation's worst nuclear mishap to date.

< A .cnth later, the world will observe the first anniversary .

of Chornobyl, to date the greatest catastrophe of civilian nuclear power.

Given the shadows these memories cast, and given this Commission's specific respcnsibility for the safety of nuclear power in the United States, one might think the Commission had called this meeting to talk about tougher safety regulations.

Instead, we are here to discuss the weakening of a safety regulation. The Commission staff says we can relax the require-ment by which nuclear power plants must have a state plan for protecting the public in the event of an accident -- a plan that provides the public reasonable assurance of effectiveness.

This was one of the key safety requirements spawned by Three Mile Island. That is why I sought to address this meeting.

Because the emergency planning requirement is not the sole creation of this Commission, or of the previous Commissioners who approved it in Augunt of 1980. It was strongly recommended by the several public commissions that investigated the accident

at Three Mile Island. And, even more importantly, the Commission's regulation was preceded by extensive debate, negotiations and roll call votes in Congress.

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-In the short time available, I cannot reprise _all of :.he Congressional debate. But I will note some of the highlights for-

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i you and refer you to the attached brief, originally filed with the Commission.on January 21 of this year, following.the first public announcement of the intent to review emergency planning.

Beyond that, I urge the Commission to re-read the Mouse-Senate Conference heport that was approved by both houses in June 1980 (Report No. 96-1070) and the Senate floor debate of July 16, 1979 (Congressional Record, 7/16/79, pp. 18656-18676).

When the Three Mile Island accident occurred in March of 1979, I was chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Cubcommittee. in the United States Senate. In the first stages of the investigation, I went to the crippled plent along with the subcomaittee's senior Republican, Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

We were Doth shocked to learn that, even as technicians struggled to control events within the reactor. no plan existed for evacuating the people who lived all'around it.

In the weeks that ' 911 ow e f, , I wrote an amendment tc the bill by which Congress annua .y authorizes NRC operations. It said r.o plant could operata without a state plan for evacuation in the event of an accidt.it, a plan that state and local officials had participated in and tested.

The first versien of that amendment was adopted by the full .

Senate Enviroment and Public Works Cormittee on May 10, 1979.

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a On July 16, Simpson and I took a revised version of that amendment to the Senate floor. There we' heard all the argu. tents o

about pre-emptive federal authority in nuclear matters. We heard all about the possible recalcit.ance of gevernors and local officials and the troublesome nature of people who did not like -

nuclear power. But in the end, the Senate preserved this emergency planning requirement through a series of votes. Final adoption of the amendment came by a vote of 64 to just 19.

Later, the House and Senate combined their respective NRC

• bills and approved this combined version in June of 1980. This conference report applied the requirement to new licensees only.

And it allowed that in certsin situations, an r-ergency plan urawn up by the utility it.self could be considered by the Commission in lieu of a state plan.

But the conferees also agreed that no utility plan would be adequate if, in the view of state, county or other local authorieles, it left emergency planning issues unresolved. And it was understood that the Commission was not to license a plant where the lack of state-and-local parr,1cipation in emergency -

planning might hobble the plan's hopes of successful execution.

That was the meaning of ths ' reasonable assurance" standard.

The Commission's own rule had proceeded to adeption along a parallel tracn. In fact, the Commission had published its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking -- a call for comment that began the public portion of the process -- on July 17, 1979.

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. _4-That was the day after the Senate approved the Hart-Simpson

• , emergency planning amendmcet. And the Commission's rulemaking process was completed in 11 gust of 1980, just two months after the House-Senate Conference Report had been approved.

In promulgating the final rule, as Commission Chairman John Ahearne has said, the Commission decided that the dangers of inadequate emergency planning outweighed the risks of non-cooperative state and local authorities.

The final rule also established an emergency planning zone that reached 10 miles away from the plant. (At Three Mile Island, state officials eventually recommended evacuation of persons living within 20 miles of the plant. At Chernobyl, the Soviets forcibly evacuated everyone within 18 miles.)

Why is the existing rule endangered today? Is it because the Commission has new evidence concerning radiation and its dangers?

Do we have a way to render it har.nless to nearby residents, their children and their descendants? Have we discovered an antidote?

No. What the Commission has discovered is that a tough emergency planning requirement makes it tough to license plants that are located too close to too many people. The Commission has discovered that giving status and local governments a real role can delay or stall the licenLing process.

In recent months, several governors have decided that .

evacuating the vicinities of certain nuclear power plants within their states is i.npossibly difficult and inherently perilous.

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-S-Their decision not to prepare or to test emergency plants has slowed or stopped the licensing of these plants. They have taken this position despite great. pressure from utilities, manufactur6rs, plant operators and investors. *

-Several of these governors are here today. I salute them and I hope they stick to their guns. In so doing, they will be.

carrying cut the true intent of the Congress, as well as that of >

the public commissions that investigated Three Mile Islar.d.

Unfortunately, the Commission seems to regard this as a breakdown in the process, an unintended consequence. There l seems to be an assumption that every nuclear plant that breaks ground must eventually be licansed, thac each investment must be recovered and that ubjections are made to be overcome.

In fact, the emergency planning requirements were written so as to make the threat of license denial very real indeed. -

P Remember that the Senate, in approving its first emergency planning requirement, applied it to all existing plants as well

- as new license applicants. .

This was the great stick with which Congress (and others) proposed to drive the emergency planning process. We had been through a generation of waiting for interested parties to do it on their own. And as a result we had scores of Three Mile Island situations incubating all across the _nuntry.

And yet we haar that the originators of the planning requirement never foresaw the situation that has since evolved.

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The Commission staff suggests we can solve the gurrent.

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- i impasse by. requiring a state government to make "a good faith effort" to devise a plan or cooperate in a utility's plan.

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Failing in that, the staff says, the state should forfeit its 1

rights i'n the matter.

I This is sometimes portrayed as a clarification of the emergency planning requirement, or at least as a fresh way of getting around it. Actually, it it neither. The "good faith" argument waf aired at length when Congress debated and. passed its emergency planning requirement in July of 1979, more than a year prior to che Commission's rulemaking.

Senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana used this very ,

phrase. His proposed solution to the recalcitrant Governor problem was to let the Commission devise plaas on its own. But when he submitted that approach or. the Senate floor, he lost on a roll call vote.

Similar amendments met similar fates. The Senate wanted state and local authorities to be pivotal in determining the fate 4

of.a p1* ant, and this idea survived the House-Senate conference 1

com.mittee that reconciled the bills. The conferees reported:

i Ultimately, 1very nuclear plant will have applicable *o .

it an approved State or local emergency preparedness plan which provides reasonable assurance that the public health and safety will not be endangered in the event of an emergency at such plant requiring protective action. (Conference Report 96-1070, p. 28]

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_7 l-Throughout the controversy, a' key question has been: Who

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should draft and submit the emergency plan? Some say the state i

and local governments must de it. Others say a plan drafted by the utility, or even by the Ccamission itself, should suffice.

But authorship of the plan is not the point. The fundamental need is for a plan that is in place and that provides "reasonable assurance the public health and safety are not endangered." And to meet this standard, a plan must guarantee the participation of those most capable and qualified to execute i t.

- The utility lobbyists and the commission staff say any conscientious plan could provide such assurance, even if the state and local governments have explicitly refused to have anything to do with it. But Al Simpson asked the salient questions back in 1979 on the Senate floor: Who would have the proper authority to supervise ambulance and hospital response?

Who would order the police and firefighters into action? Would utility personnel direct evacuation traffic?

And surely the Commission does not expect an exclusive y

exercise of federal authority to galvanize all the state and local personnel, or to bring state and local resources and infrastructure into play. Such usurpation of local and state autnority would bite off a-~e of the Constitution than even _

this Administration might care to chew. ,

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! But, again, what is really at stake here is notLthe relative

.i It is the prese.rvation of-j- power or jurisdiction of governments.

. public health and safety. And as a practical matter, evacuating-4 Long Island -- or the coastal areas of taine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts near Seabrook Statior. -- would be a daunting prospect under the best of circumstancas.

If state and local officials have not been part of the drafting.and testing of evacuation plans, we can only expect the worst. And the panicky rush to escape could produce results as l unwanted as the nuclear accident itself.

Through the first years of the nuclear era, government was plainly complacent about public safety. Serious accidents causing major radiation releases were considered all but impossible .

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have exploded that myth. Moreover, we can no longer assume such a radiation release I could only result fun an accident. Indeed, global terrorism has

, already demonstrated its ability to force the unthinkable upon 4

the unprepared.

As nuclear power's threat to public health and safety a

becomes more credible and multifaceted, many Americans, including I .

former members of this Commission, question the adequacy of the emergency planning we have done to date.

We should be addressing those questions, working to improve .

our emergency preparations and showing people that we care.

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, $ .IftheCommissionwishes'todemonsiplatethecommitmentto  ;

-e . safety that it continually asserts, then$it shou 1Cpursue such

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- [. an agenda. It would certainly make more~ sense than looking for

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ways to dismantle the protections we nave now. ,

_, The Commission's will to. license pl nts flows properly fror.

its st'atutory responsibilities. But.so ihould ar. even stronger will to protect..public-health and safety. Where these mandates are seen to conflict, health and safety must take precedence.

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Any other balancing of the scales will raise doubts regarding this Commission's understanding of its mission. If the

, Commission relaxes a crucial regulation so as to license a given plant'or group of plants, it will surely destroy the public's fragile faith.

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