ML20204J020

Comments on Des (NUREG-1166) on Facility Decommissioning.Fes Must Be Substantially Improved to Comply W/Provisions of Section 102(2)(c) of NEPA

ML20204J020
Person / Time
Site:	Humboldt Bay
Issue date:	08/04/1986
From:	Sherwood M Sierra Club
To:	Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
References
RTR-NUREG-1166 NUDOCS 8608080284
Download: ML20204J020 (11)

Text

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-l -ap SIERRA CLUB n ew w o LEGAL DEFENSE FUND,INC.

Sunrise, Afr. A&Kint,y Ansel Adams 2o44 Fillmore Street San Francisco, California 94:35 (415) 567-6:oO SAN FRDCISCO OmCE August 4, 1986 Fredric P. Sutherland a-}

Exuuta o,r,a*

Director wiiran s. Curtiss office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation 1

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission QE Washington, D.C. 20555 Laurens H. Silver Michael R. Sherwood stephan C. volker Re: Comments on Draft EIS For Decommissioning

1. #""" Humboldt Bay Power Plant, Unit No. 3 (NUREG-1166)

Vavter Parker conimarms An-ng

Dear Sir,

Earl M. Blauner Of couns,I The Sierra Club submits the following comments on the I'""*Ijs'Y$'j""^'

p ,, i, Nuclear Regulatory Commission's draft Environmental Impact Statement (" draft EIS") on the Decommissioning of Humboldt g,7&gg7 con,,,ri,, Bay Power Plant, Unit No. 3 ("the plant") (NUREG-1166).

Diana C. Laczkowski al membeM of h e M e na M b may sd d Comme d af,n,n err,,,, of their own as well.

Tom Turner sig wrir,r The Sierra Club is gratified that the NRC has seen fit other osc,, to prepare a draft EIS on this issue, which is of immense ROCKY MOtJNTAIN OFTICE within which comments could be made. We have both general

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[Denver, B'600CO' '9202 and specific comments.

(3o3) 86 3-9 988 General Comments WASHINGTON, D.C. OITICE 5 6 P Street, N.W.

The draft EIS is seriously deficient in three general suite 300 areas and the final EIS will have to be substantially Wahingtm, D.C. 2mo5 improved in order to comply with the provisions of Sec.

(2o2) 667-45 102 (2) (C) of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),

ALASKA OTT!CE 42 U.S.C. N 4332 (2) (C) .

419 6th St.

su 32 Under NEPA, an EIS has two purposes:

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(907) 586-2751 One purpose of the EIS is to provide decisionmakers with an enviren=cntal disclosure sufficiently detailed to aid in the substantive decision whether to proceed with the project in light of its environmental consequences. . . . In addition, preparation provide [s] the public with information on the environmental impact of a proposed project, as well as encourage [s] public participation in the development of that information.

Adler v. Lewis, 675 F.2d 1085, 1095-96 (9th Cir. 1982).

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office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Two See also Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. v. NRDC, 462 U.S.

87, 97 (1983); 40 C.F.R. 5 1502.1. When an EIS fails to fulfill either of its dual purposes of informing both the immediate decisionmaker and also the public of the environmental consequences of, and all reasonable alternatives to, a proposed action, it will be ruled inadequate by the courts. Ibid.

In order to fulfill these purposes, an EIS must examine the direct, indirect, and cumulative effects of the proposed action; must be based on accurate, high quality scientific information and analysis; and must discuss all reasonable alternatives to the proposed action. Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U.S. 347 (1979); Flint Ridge Development Co. v. Scenic Rivers Ass'n of Oklahoma, 690 U.S. 776 (1976); California v. Block, 690 F.2d 753 (9th Cir. 1982). Further, an EIS is to be a pre-decisional document, providing the agency with the information it needs to make an environmentally informed decision, "rather than justifying decisions already made." 40 C.F.R. 5 1502.2(g).

When the draft EIS is examined in the light of these l basic principles, it quite obviously is inadequate.

Perhaps the most fundamental flaw with the draft EIS is that it assumes throughout that the agency's preferred alternative (30 year SAFSTOR) is "the sole viable alternative for spent fuel stofage" at this time. E.g., _

pp. v (Summary and Conclusions); 5-1 (conclusions). This statement indicates that the agency has already made its decision; the discussion of alternatives (itself inadequate - see below), and indeed the entire EIS procedure thus becomes a sham, an exercise in justification of the decision the agency has already made, contrary to the mandate of NEPA.

Secondly, the draft EIS fails adequately to disclose the full range and magnitude of the possible environmental consequences of the 30 year SAFSTOR alternative.

To begin with, the draft EIS provides virtually no description or analysis of the human and natural environmental setting of the plant. One would not learn l from reading the draft EIS, for example, that Humboldt Bay is the largest wetland and estuarine habitat in the California coastal zone, containing approximately 23 percent of the coastal wetlands in California, and that it

Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Three provides habitat to hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife, including several endangered species. Nor does the draft EIS describe the human populations within the vicinity of the plant that could be affected by the proposed action.

A fatal deficiency is the draft EIS's failure to discuss the environmental impacts of a rupture in the spent fuel pool and consequent uncontrolled release of highly radioactive materials into the environment caused by a major earthquake or series of earthquakes in the vicinity of the plant. This is the Sierra Club's main concern with the 30 year SAFSTOR alternative. The plant sits on or near three major fault lines, and has been shut down since 1976 for the very reason that it is not designed or constructed to withstand a major earthquake.

It is hard to understand why a plant which everyone concedes is not seismically safe for normal operations could, without major modifications, be a safe repository for high level radioactive waste for 30 or more years.

The draft EIS does not answer, or even address, this question. After the tragedy at Chernobyl, it is not sufficient to assume that "it could not happen here"; nor can the agency legally avoid discussion of the impacts of such an event. See, e.g., Save Our Ecosystems v. Clark, 747 F.2d 1240, 1243-1245 (9th Cir. 1984); 40 C.F.R. SS 1502.22.

The final EIS should contain a full analysis of the possibility of a major earthquake or series of earthquakes occurring in the immediate vicinity of the plant during the next 30 years, as well as a candid disclosure of the impacts to the natural and human environment in Northern California should the spent fuel be released into the environment because of such an earthquake or otherwise.

Third, the discussion of alternatives in the draft EIS is inadequate. The Council on Environmental Quality's regulations for implementing NEPA (which are, of course, binding on all federal agencies, see Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U.S. 347, 357-58 (1979)) term the alternatives section of an EIS "the heart of the environmental impact statement." 40 C.F.R. 5 1502.14. The discussion "should present the environmental impacts of the propesal and the alternatives in con.parative form, thus sharply defining the issues and providing a clear basis for choice among options by the decisionmaker and the public." Ibid. The EIS must " Rigorously explore and objectively evaluate all I

reasonable alternatives," and must " Devote substantial

Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Four 1

treatment to each alternative considered in detail including the proposed action so that reviewers may evaluate their comparative merits." Section 1502.14(a) and (b). A presentation of alternatives that is skewed and biased in favor of the preferred alternative does not comply with NEPA. E.g., California v. Block, 690 F.2d 753, 766-769 (9th Cir. 1982).

The discussion of alternatives is fatally flawed from the start because, as mentioned above, it assumes that the agency's preferred alternative, 30 year SAFSTOR is "the sole viable alternative." This premise results in a discussion of alternatives that is half-hearted at best and disingenuous at worst, and that omits completely a number of reasonable alternatives.

The most important alternative, and the one Sierra Club favors, is immediate dismantling of the plant and removal of the spent fuel from the site ("DECON"). This is also the decommissioning alternative favored by the NRC itself in its draft Generic EIS on Decomissioning of Nuclear Facilities. (NUREG-0586, January 1981). As the NRC stated in that document, " Decommissioning of a nuclear facility should have as its primary objective thorough decontamination of radioactivity resulting in unrestricted use of the facility at the earliest practicable time....DECON would be considered the more preferable alternative in most instances since it would restore the facility and site for unrestricted use in a much shorter time period than SAFSTOR or ENTOMB." NUREG-0586, p. 0-39 (emphasis added). See also pp. 0-16; 5-3; 5-10 to 5-12; 15-2 to 15-3. In light of this, one must question how the NRC can, only five yeara later, reject DECON as "not presently feasible". The agency's reason, again, is the premise that the spent fuel rods must be stored on site until a permanent NRC repository is ready to receive them. As is discussed below, this premise is erroneous because reasonable alternatives do exist to storing the spent fuel for 30 years or more at this admittedly leaking and seismically unsafe facility.

Sierra Club agrees that ENTOMB is an unacceptable alternative, but notes that the agency's reason, namely that "the entombment structure may also fail as a result of seismic events with a potential for a release of radioactivity," draft EIS, pp. 1-3; 4-1, seems equally applicable to the 30 year SAFSTOR alternative preferred by the agency.

Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Five Sierra Club also agrees that the no action alternative is not acceptable.

Finally, Sierra Club agrees that SAFSTOR for a period of no more than 30 years may, in some cases, well be an acceptable, or even the preferred, decommissioning alterna-tive, as also determined by the NRC in its Generic EIS on Decommissioning. Each particular situation must be looked at individually, however, and therefore the NRC cannot rely on its so-called generic determination, contained in 10 C.F.R. S 51.23(a), that in all instances, under all conditions, "no significant environmental impact will result from the storage of spent fuel in reactor facility storage pools... located at... reactor sites." Draft EIS,

p. 1-3; 4-1. Rather, for potential environmental con-sequences of the magnitude involved in decommissioning nuclear power plants, NEPA requires that site-specific determinations must be made. E.g., City of Tenakee Springs v. Block, 778 F.2d 1402, 1407 (9th Cir. 1985).

The Humboldt Bay plant is a classic example of the need for site-specific review: while spent nuclear fuel could perhaps safely be stored temporarily at some nuclear facility sites around the country, it is at least questionable whether it is safe to do so at Humboldt Bay because of the earthquake problem. At the very least, this problem must be candidly acknowledged and fully discussed in the final EIS.

The discussion of alternative dispositions of the spent fuel ought to be the heart of this EIS. In the draft EIS, unfortunately, the discussion is fatally skewed and biased, apparently so as to confirm the agency's premise that the fuel rods have to remain at the site.

Two of the four alternatives discussed, for example, are simply not alternatives, and their inclusion can only be seen as an attempt to " pad" the alternatives discussion. Shipping the spent fuel to Diablo Canyon is not a realistic alternative because that facility also sits on highly earthquake-prone ground and is just as seismically suspect as is the Humboldt Bay plant.

Similarly, one wonders why the draft EIS bothers to include as an alternative shipping the spent fuel to a reprocessing facility for reprocessing while simultane-ously acknowledging that this is not in fact a viable alternative "because there is no operating commercial reprocessing facility in the United States, nor is there the prospect for one in the foreseeable future," p. 1-4.

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Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Six Two of the alternatives discussed, on the other hand, l seem reasonable and may be appropriate under the circumstances of this case: shipment of the spent fuel to a Federal interim storage (FIS) facility, or constructing an independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) at a site away from the plant. See p. 1-4. These should be given a much fuller and more objective treatment in the final EIS, with a quantified discussion of the costs and environmental consequences of each for comparison with the costs and possible consequences of storing the spent fuel at the plant for 30 years.

Finally, the draft EIS omits altogether any discussion of alternative disposal sites that may be available through the Department of Energy or Department of Defense. Such facilities are being utilized as the waste repositories for the decommissioning of the Shippingport and Three Mile Island nuclear power plants. NEPA requires

{ that the NRC include a discussion of reasonable alternatives "not within the jurisdiction of the lead agency," 40 C.F.R. 9 1502.14(c). The final EIS must not confine itself only to a consideration of the availability of NRC operated disposal sites. Specific Comments For ease of presentation, the following specific comments are listed sequentially page by page starting  ; from the front of the draft EIS:

1. Page v, Summary and Conclusions, Paragraph 3. This paragraph indicates that PG&E concluded in 1983 that the seismic requirements may continue to be too costly to consider and therefore decided to decommission the plant. Has the NRC clearly determined that the seismic design of the structure necessary for safe storage of the spent fuel is of adequate design for the next 30-50 years? l

2. Page vi, paragraph 5(e) indicates that there is a

           " negligibly small likelihood" that seismic loads or other mechanical loads would generate criticality among the spent fuel assemblies stored in the pool.

This likelihood is not properly quantified and the draft EIS does not say how the NRC is assured that it is " negligibly small."

Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Seven

3. Section 2, Description of Plant and Proposed Decommissing Plan. Page 2-1. Third paragraph of the page mentions 390 partially or " completely spent" fuel assemblies. The term " completely spent" is a term that is not particularly meaningful in the discussion of high-level waste. It certainly does not mean that the fuel is non-radioactive. What it really means is that the fuel assembly has been judged to be not suitable for reinsertion and operation in the Humboldt Bay reactor. The EIS should make this clear. The same paragraph also mentions that a cover is to be constructed and installed over the spent fuel pool to mitigate spread of contamination. No information is given as to the design requirements for the cover.

This should be specified.

4. Page 2-1, 4th paragraph, discusses fuel pool leakage that has occurred in the past and is still occurring.

It indicates that the liner gap leakage is processed to the radwaste system and that the water level in the gap between the fuel pool liner and the structure is maintained at a level lower than the ground water level. The implication of this is that this

               " pump-down" process should assure that the leakage is from the ground water into the gap rather than from the gap into the ground water. There is no indication given, however, that the SAFSTOR decommissioning plan will require continued operation of the liner gap pumping system and the radwaste system to assure that the leakage does not go the other way. Such a require-ment should be a condition of approval of the plan.

5. General comments on Section 2:

No schedule is stated for the proposed actions. No commitment is made for monitoring and processing the fuel storage pool liner leakage or for stabilization of soil contamination. No consideration is given to the possibility of decontamination and removal (now) of those portions of the plant that are not necessary for the l continued safe storage of the spent fuel.

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l Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Eight

6. Section.3, Environmental Impacts. Page 3-3, paragraph-3.1.7, water use. This paragraph indicates that there will be occasional releases from the liquid waste treatment system which will be diluted with the cooling water flow from the two fossil fuel units.

Has PG&E given any assurance that the two fossil fuel units will be in operation for the next 30 years?

7. Page 3-4, last paragraph of Section 3.2. This paragraph indicates that the NRC is using estimates from NUREG/CR-0672 for calculating the environmental radiological impact from delayed DECON. Have the NUREG/CR-0672 estimates been given proper review and have they been accepted by the NRC and/or others for l this purpcse?

1 8. Page 3-4, Section 3.2.1., Occupational Radiation i Exposure. This Section states that the total I occupational exposure for SAFSTOR with delayed DECON i will be about 177 personrems. These totals are based , on estimates produced by PG&E. Later in the draft EIS (Table 4.1) it is stated that the SAFSTOR with l deferred DECON alternative has the lowest occupational

radiation dose of all alternatives. However, the draft EIS nowhere quanitifies the doses for the other alternatives for purposes of comparison.

I 9. Page 3-6, fifth paragraph. This paragraph discusses , the processing of liquid radwastes from the spent fuel l pool. The statement that "the batch will be processed more before it is discharged" is quite nebulous. Some limits should be specified. Limits are mentioned on the following page 3-7, fifth paragraph, where the draft EIS indicates that PG&E has proposed technical specifications. These specifications are not set out or discussed. Has the NRC reviewed these specifications and are they adequate?

10. Pages 3-6 and 3-7, Section 3.2.2, Radioactive Waste Management Systems. There are numerous points in this section which talk about the control of emissions and releases but which give little information on the actual limits that will be imposed. The second paragraph on page 3-7 indicates that no treatment is to be provided for the ventilation system release for

                                                      " normal releases." What about abnormal releases?

This paragraph also discusses the cover to be installed over the spent fuel pool but gives no

performance requirements. It also indicates that

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Page Nine controlled ventilation will not be provided for the solid waste storage vault, the low-level waste storage building, or the solid waste handling building. Why net? iThe' third paragraph indicates that actual releases are expected to be less than the calculated releases but does not indicate how much less.

11. Section 3.2.3, Postulated Accidents, pages 3-7 and 3-9. The last paragraph of this section indicates that boral neutron absorbing blankets surround each fuel assembly to insure subcriticality. Sierra Club understands that there has in the past been some

       . problem with deterioration of the boral plates in high
      ' density spent fuel storage racks. The EIS should discuss this. Has PG&E proposed any surveillance of the program to ensure this material is maintained in a functional condition?

12. Page 3-9, Section 3.2.3.2, Fuel Handling Accident.

This section discusses the offsite radiological consequences of the drop of a spent fuel assembly. It calculates the offsite dose assuming that there has been damage to one of the pins in each of two assemblies, "a reasonably conservative assumption." What is the basis for the assertion that this is a reasonably conservative assumption? Given the age of this fuel it would certainly be more conservative to assume that damage would be sustained by all of the pins in the affected fuel assemblies. This should be considered.

13. Page-3-10, Section 3.2.3.4, Critically Potential of Stored Fuel. Sub-paragraph 1 discusses the neutron absorbing material boral. See comment on this issue on page 3-9.

14. Page 3-11. This page has numerous statements that are vague and/or unsubstantiated. For example: sub-paragraph (1) states that "this is conservative as even a small amount of burn-up will reduce reactivity somewhat"; sub-paragraph (3) asserts that a local pile of fuel pellets (low-enrichment) is "very likely to be undermoderated and sub-critical"; next paragraph, "the staff concludes that there is a negligibly small likelihood" of criticality; last paragraph, "these are all very small fractions of the PAG dose levels." The above statements are judgment factors that are unsupported by_the draft EIS.

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Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation August 4, 1986 Page Ten

15. Page 3-12, Section 3.2.3.6, Spent Fuel Pool Rupture.

This section discusses the consequences of a rupture in the spent fuel pool. The second paragraph (last sentence) states that the staff considers the PG&E estimates "to be reasonable and conservative for the site." What is the basis for this judgment? The' fourth paragraph of this section indicates that for purposes of calculating doses, the radio nuclides were assumed to remain in Humboldt Bay for one year. It is not clear where the staff expected the radionuclides to go after one year. This should be clarified.

16. Summarizing some of the above comments on Section 3:

There is a frequent use of imprecise terms including: somewhat, very likely, small likelihood, very small fractions, etc. 1 - There is a need to make sure that the PG&E proposed technical specification is adequately reviewed and implemented. l - The NRC should perform bounding (maximum possible) calculations for the consequences of all pathways. The final EIS should provide the basis for all of the conclusions reached in it.

17. Section 4, Summary of Decommissioning Alternatives.

Page 4-1, third paragraph. This paragraph states that the DECON decommissioning alternative would result in greater occupational radiation exposure. This is not quantified at any place in the draft EIS. Similarly, the fifth paragraph states that the occupational , radiation exposure would be the lowest for the SAFSTOR alternative and that the volume of radioactive waste is likely to be lower. These two claims are not i quantified at any place in the draft EIS.

18. Page 4-3, Table 4.1. This table provides a comparison of the decommissioning alternatives. These factors should all be quantified.

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Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation l August 4, 1986  ; Page Eleven l l Thank you for this opportunity to comment. Very truly yours, l 00 Michael R. Sherwood MRS:lhl s

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