ML20212K672

Affidavit of Jr Primack.*

ML20212K672
Person / Time
Site:	Seabrook
Issue date:	01/21/1987
From:	Primack J CALIFORNIA, UNIV. OF, SANTA CRUZ, CA, MASSACHUSETTS, COMMONWEALTH OF
To:
Shared Package
ML20212K635	List: ML20212K631 ML20212K650 ML20212K672 ML20212K702
References
OL, NUDOCS 8701290149
Download: ML20212K672 (11)

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA before the NUCLEAR RII3UIA'IORY COMISSION and the A'IOMIC SAFEIY AND LICENSING BOAPD .

(

In the Matter of )

) )

PUBLIC SERVICE CCNPANY OF ) Docket Nos. 50-443-OL NEN HAMPSHIRE, et al. ) 50-444-OL

) Off-site Energency (Seabrook Station, Units 1 and 2) ) Planning Issues

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AFFIDAVIT OF DR. JOEL R. PRDUCK Dr. Joel R. Primack, being on oath deposes and says as follows:

1. I am Professor of Physics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. A statement of my professional qualifications is attached hereto.

2. At the request of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I have performed a preliminary review of the Applicant's petition for a waiver from the NRC's emergency planning regulations, as well as the memorandum in support of the petition and certain of the documents referenced therein.

Because of the extremely short time permitted by the Licensing Board for this review, only a very brief review has been possible.

8701290149 870126 gDR ADOCK 05000443 PDR

3. The review has focused primarily on the following question: to what extent has the Applicant demonstrated special characteristics of the Seabrook plant which would justify a waiver from the extremely important emergency planning regulations, and to what extent is the Applicant's claim primarily an attack upon the regulation itself for technical reasons not unique to Seabrook. It is my understanding that if the Applicant's claim were primarily a more general attack on the emergency planning regulation, relying on claims not unique to seabrook, then the proposed action would constitute an impermissible attack on the regulations and the appropriate procedure would be a petition for rulemaking, or comments on the rulemakings already underway. It is with this understanding that I examined the question at hand.

4. My conclusion, based on the review possible in the brief time made available by the Board's schedule, is that the Applicant's support for its petition for waiver from the regulations is based primarily on a more general attack upon the foundation of the regulation, as would be appropriate in comments regarding the current emergency planning rulemaking proceedings, rather than on a showing of unique characteristics of the Seabrook facility, as would be appropriate in a petition for waiver from a rule.

5. The Applicant claims to base its petition on two factors: "(a) the specific design features of seabrook itself and (b) advancements which have occurred in the state of scientific knowledge in the areas of fission product behavior and accident analysis." (Applicant's Memorandum in Support of Petition, at p. 8]. The latter is clearly an attack upon the regulation rather than a basis for waiver; if the regulation is based upon outmoded assumptions, rulemaking is the proper arena. Indeed, it is where the 2

Commission is trying to deal with these issues, many of which are far from resolved. Wese are not "special circumstances" unique to Seabrook. All reactors face the same issues associated with the (still-unfinished) source term research and new approaches to accident analysis.

6. To what extent, then, is the petition based upon circumstances which are unique to Seabrook? As far as I can tell, virtually none. For example, a team from Brookhaven National Laboratory compared key design characteristics of Seabrook with several other reactors, concluding that the characteristics are quite similar. [NEREG/CR-4540].

7. 'Ihe petition makes much of the fact that Seabrook has a secondary containment with a filtration system. This may or may not be a good thing, and would require very thorough analysis and independent scrutiny, but again this is not a special circumstance unique to Seabrook. A number of other reactors have similar systems.

8. What the Applicant appears to have done is challenge the regulatory assumptims of the current emergency planning requirement by proposing a different sized Emergency Planning Zone for each nuclear reactor, based on probabilistic risk assessments and other estimates of risk for each specific facility. While such a rule change might be of interest to the Commission in its rulemaking role (and I understand the Commission currently has before it a rulemaking proceeding on precisely that issue), the Commission rejected the approach now proposed by the Applicant when the rule was initially issued, choosing instead to issue a rule with a generic-sized EPZ that would take into account aggregate risks from a population of reactors and the large uncertainties in estimating quantitative risk for individual reactors. To the extent the Applicant objects to a generic-sized EPZ based on aggregate risks ard large uncertainties, it is attacking the rule itself, not demonstrating unique characteristics that should permit a waiver 3

O from the rule. Were the waiver granted, every nuclear plant in the country could apply for similar waivers, which would effectively amount to repeal of the generic rule without following the proper rulemaking procedure.

9. The technical basis for the Applicant's petition appears to rest largely on a misunderstanding of the terms " realistic" and " conservative" as applied to risk assessment. [This is particularly distressing in repeated statements that the analyses are " realistic but conservative."] Because there are large uncertainties in estimating risk and because unidentified accident sequen s or contributors to inadequately assessed risk scenarios are likely to remain in risk assessments despite the best efforts of the authors, the NRC for regulatory purposes has relied on a certain level of intentional conservatism in its regulatory assumptions to attempt to compensate for non-conservatisms that may also be present. This level of conservatism has been the subject of much dispute in the technical community, with representatives of the nuclear industry generally arguing for the removal of conservatisms (e.g., a " realistic" analysis) and many in the independent technical community worried that the regulations carry with them much too little conservatism. (After all, until the Three Mile Island, the Commission's regulations had assumed that accidents involving severe core damage were of such vanishingly small probability that they were, for all intents and purposes, "non-credible.") 'Ihe point is that the regulations were based on certain conservatisms and non-conservatisms; what the Applicant is attempting to do is show that by removing some of the conservatisms and not correcting the non-conservatisms, one can reduce the estimates of risk of a nuclear accident. However, this risk reduction is a reduction on paper, obtained by lowering the level of conservatism the 4

0 Commission had decided, as a matter of policy, was necessary when it promulgated the rule.

10. A case in point is the Lee and Littlefield paper, " Licensing Aspects of the Seabrook Emergency Planning Zone Study." Rather than show unique circumstances at Seabrook, the authors say that "the technical basis of...(the NRC's emergency planning regulations ] is re-examined...." They say they a relied upon " realistic" analysis. But the regulation is based on conservative analysis. Attacking the technical basis of the regulation by stripping out conservatisms is not a showing of circumstances unique to Seabrook.

11. One of the regulatory bases for the rule was a calculation based on assumption of release of fission products into the containment and slow .

leakage at a very low rate from containment to the environment. The Commission's non-mechanistic release fraction assumptions combined elements of conservatism (e.g., not taking credit for sprays) with very large non-conservatisms (e.g., assuming the containment is not catastrophically breached). 'Ib lower the risk estimates for Seabrook, the authors stripped ,

out some of the conservatisms by adding additional reduction facters fcr sprays and the containment enclosure emergency air cleaning system (features not unique to Seabrook and not permitted in the Commission's calculatic'nal 1 assumptions for the regulation), without correcting for the ncn-l conservatisms in the regulation (the TID-14844 assumptims of no gross containment failure and modest release of isotopes such as the lanthanides).

This is not a showing of circumstances unique to Seabrook but a rather elementary demonstration that if the Commission were to change its regulatory basis for its Emergency Planning regulaticms by removing conservatisms or changing the formulas to use different assumptions, 5

different results might obtain, alt that would be true for all reactors, not just Seabrook, and that is what rulemaking is to determine.

12. 'Ihere are scxne referen s to new insights about the chemical form of radiciodine in accidents. It should be made clear that that is also a generic issue, not unique to Seabrcok, and that the technical basis for that assertion appears to be in question now. The document cited in support of that assertion about iodine is merely a theoretical analysis--without empirical tests to support it--indicating with many large caveats that iodine might be found in the form of CsI rather than more volatile iodine; it also concludes that even if true, that would have little effect on reactor risks or Commission regulations. Since then, tests have been done, and the results are very mixed, with a number failing to find CsI and finding volatile iodine instead. Furthermore, the primary study of TMI accident iodine issues concluded that the iodine released to the ccntainment of 'IMI was not in the form of CsI, but rather in volatile form, due to measurements of Cs and I fractions found on walls and floors. This points out further the dangers in attempting to litigate in individual licensing hearings generic matters about which the Commission has spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars of research funds and where resolution is still some very major distance away.

13. The Applicant points out that in scrae of its own calculations P/Gs are exceeded out 3.5 miles from the plant. In addition to contradicting the Applicant's own claim for a 1 mile EPZ, this strengthens rather than weakens the basis for a generic 10 mile regulatory EPZ. It is clear that with a diverse population of reactors you could either write a rule that created a generic envelope that would contain most individual reactors or create a rule that establishes a mechanism for setting 6

individual EPZs. @e Commission chose the former; the Applicant generically /

challenges that part of the regulation that declined to permit individually-tailored EPZs.

14. Were remains the issue of how uncertainties are dealt with. he original Reactor Safety Study, upon which the emergency planning regulations

, are in part based, was widely criticized for understating uncertainties.

g [See for example the report of the Commission's own special review group chaired by Hal Lewis, as well as the critique by the American Physical Society study group, which I helped establish.] We current risk assessments prepared by the Applicant likewise must have very large uncertainties associated with the quantitative risk estimates. It has long been accepted within the technical community that the primary valu9 of PRAs is identifying important contributors to risk rather than in providing absolute values for risk. Any such quantitative figures are notoriously suspect. Thus, comparing point estimates (with3ut error bars attached, which would be very large) from the Reactor Safety Study with point estimates from the Applicant's studies, using different assumptions, is in large measure _a meaningless exercise. The vast error bars for each study would entirely mask any purported reduction in risk.

15. A point must be made about the purpose of emergency planning regulations. Safety regulaticns are designed to provide reasonable assurance that a major accident is unlikely. Emergency plans are designed to respcnd in case the unlikely happens. 'Ib argue, as the Applicant does, that a major accident at Seabrook with dangerous doses exceeding PAGs beyond 1 mile is unlikely is to miss the point of emergency plans. If such an accident were likely, the plant wouldn't be permitted to run. If it is unlikely (but still possible, as it is), the plant may be permitted to operate, but only if it has an emergency plan meeting regulatory i

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requirements in case the unlikely happens.

16. Furthermore, sabotage is excluded from PRAs because the probability of sabotage is not possible to quantify. Ew n if one could demonstrate--which the Applicant has not, in my view-that the probability of an accident requiring evacuation beyond 1 mile is so vanishingly small as to abrogate the need for such plans to deal with accidents, the public still needs to be protected from ncn-random, intentional acts of destruction which can threaten them severely, out to considerable distances.

17. 'Ihe Applicant numerous times says it can meet the NRC proposed safety goals without an emergency plan that extends beyond 1 mile.

Calculaticns performed by NRC staff for the NRC's Containment Performance Design objective Workshop showed that virtually all reactor types could not meet virtually any ' f the containment performance design objectives currently being c6nsidered by the NRC for inclusion in the safety gml.

Secondly, cne of the ground rules for safety goals, as presented At the Commission meeting on January 8,1987, is even if safety goals are met,

" licensees must still meet regulations." [See " Commission Briefing on Status of Safety Goal Implenientation," January 8,1987.]

18. One brief comment on the " peer review" performed at the reque "

the Applicant. " Peer review" is a term of art in the scientific community.

It is my view that the review paid for by the Applicant does not meet traditional standards for true peer review. First of all, the reviewers selected are people with cne point of view on the generic issue at hand--the case for reducing EPZs at many reactors. The panel was not balanced.

Furthermore, several of the participants have been actively promoting the case for reduced EPZs generally. Secondly, the review admits that tlwre was i no independent confirmation cf the calculations or details of the studies in l

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i . question. Given that it is precisely those details which determine whether the conclusims are correct, this cannot be considered true peer review.

Third, the review appears to have consisted primarily of two days of meetings, with one of the reviewers unable to attend the meetings and the panel going up to his MIT office for an afternoon to meet with him. 'Ihis does not appear a very thorough, balanced, or detailed review. On a matter of such importance as whether to remove 99% of the area normally required to be in an emergency planning zme by shrinking the radius of the zone from 10 miles to 1, very thorough review is necessary.

19. A last point thus needs to be made. Because of the extraordinarily short time permitted by the Licensing Board for review of the Applicant's Petition and technical basis by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I have been able to perform only the most preliminary of reviews. This review has raised a number of serious questions, as identified above. 'Ib perform an adequate review, one that would provide the Board and Commission with a factually supportable evidentiary record on this very important issue, it is my opinion that a substantial period of time--at minimum a half a year, more reasonably, a full year-- would have to be provided the Commonwealth to establish a panel to review the technical details, obtain the necessary information through several cycles of discovery, and provide sufficient time that the detail of the Applicant's asserticns can be checked, verified, or challengcd. It is my opinion that the factual basis of the Applicant's assertions cannot be scientifically ccnfirmed given the procedure and schedule establisbed to date, and that any decision by the Commission on the accuracy of those facts (as opposed to legal determinations), would not be scientifically defensible unless the Commonwealth's time and procedure needs are met in a fashion that would permit detailed independent technical review.

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3 The foregoing statements are true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.

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.- <{' . jb if , L L s s s .... L Joe R. Primack State of California SJs dug C'"+5 , ss k . ,2./ , 1987 Then appeared before me the above-subscribed Joel R. Primack, and made oath that he had read the foregoing affidavit and that the statements set forth therein are true.

Before me,

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l Joel R. Primack EXPERIENCE RELEVANT TO NUCLEAR POWER ISSUES l

Joel R. Primack earned his A. B. in Physics at Princeton University Summa cum Laude in 1966, and his Ph. D.

in Physics at Stanford University in 1970. He was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University 1970-1973, and has since been on the faculty of the. University of California, Santa Cruz: Assistant Professor 1973-77; Associate Professor 1977-83; Professor 1983-present. He is a leading authority on elementary particle physics and cosmology, and the author of many articles in professional

-journals.

Dr. Primack proposed the series of summer studies on energy issues which have been carried out under the auspices of the.American Physical Society, and coauthored the proposal for the first of these studies, on reactor safety, which included a review of the Rasmussen Report.

He co-organized a symposium on this subject at an American Physical Society meeting and edited its publication in a special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

He was a coauthor of the Union of Concerned Scientists review of the Rasmussen Report.

Dr. Primack served as a consultant to the Ford Foundation Energy Policy Project 1973-4; as a member of the Sierra Club National Energy Policy Committee 1975-80; as a consultant to the Calfornia Energy Commission 1976; as a member of the Breeder Reactor Study Group of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Sources study 1976; as a member of the Keystone l

l Discussion Group on Nuclear Waste Management, 1978-79; as a consultant to the governor of Missouri on nuclear safety issues and to the Tennessee Valley Authority on spent fuel issues 1979; and as a consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Three Mile Island Special Inquiry Group (Rogovin Commission) 1979-80.

Dr. Primack has published a number of articles on l

reactor safety and other energy policy issues. His book, Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Political Arena, co-

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l authored with Frank von Hippel, received the 1977 American l Physical Society Forum on Physics and Society Award.

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