ML043570023
| ML043570023 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Monticello  |
| Issue date: | 02/01/2005 |
| From: | Padovan L NRC/NRR/DLPM/LPD3 |
| To: | Thomas J. Palmisano Nuclear Management Co |
| Padovan L, NRR/DLPM, 415-1423 | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML050350073 | List: |
| References | |
| TAC MC4622 | |
| Download: ML043570023 (11) | |
Text
February 1, 2005 Mr. Thomas J. Palmisano Site Vice President Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant Nuclear Management Company, LLC 2807 West County Road 75 Monticello, MN 55362-9637
SUBJECT:
MONTICELLO NUCLEAR GENERATING PLANT - ISSUANCE OF AMENDMENT RE: DELETION OF REQUIREMENTS FOR SUBMITTAL OF OCCUPATIONAL RADIATION REPORTS, MONTHLY OPERATING REPORTS, AND REPORT OF SAFETY/RELIEF VALVE FAILURES AND CHALLENGES (TAC NO. MC4622)
Dear Mr. Palmisano:
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has issued the enclosed Amendment No. 142 to Facility Operating License No. DPR-22 for the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant. The amendment consists of changes to the Technical Specifications (TSs) in response to your application of October 5, 2004.
The amendment deletes TS 6.7.A.2, Requirement to submit an Occupational Radiation Exposure Report, TS 6.7.A.3, Requirement to submit a Monthly Operating Report, and TS 6.7.A.6, Requirement to report safety/relief valve failures and challenges as described in the Notice of Availability published in the Federal Register on June 23, 2004 (69 FR 35067).
A copy of our related safety evaluation is also enclosed. The Notice of Issuance will be included in the Commission's biweekly Federal Register notice.
Sincerely,
/RA/
L. Mark Padovan, Project Manager, Section 1 Project Directorate III Division of Licensing Project Management Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Docket No. 50-263
Enclosures:
- 1. Amendment No. 142 to DPR-22
- 2. Safety Evaluation cc w/encls: See next page
ML043570023 (Letter) ML050340156 (Tech Specs)
ML050350073 (Package)
OFFICE PDIII-1/PM PDIII-1/LA PDIV-1/PM OGC PDIII-1/(A)SC NAME LPadovan THarris WReckley MHiggins MKotzalas DATE 1/4/05 1/3/05 1/12/05 1/19/05 2/1/05
Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant cc:
Jonathan Rogoff, Esquire Vice President, Counsel & Secretary Nuclear Management Company, LLC 700 First Street Hudson, WI 54016 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Resident Inspector's Office 2807 W. County Road 75 Monticello, MN 55362 Manager, Regulatory Affairs Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant Nuclear Management Company, LLC 2807 West County Road 75 Monticello, MN 55362-9637 Robert Nelson, President Minnesota Environmental Control Citizens Association (MECCA) 1051 South McKnight Road St. Paul, MN 55119 Commissioner Minnesota Pollution Control Agency 520 Lafayette Road St. Paul, MN 55155-4194 Regional Administrator, Region III U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 801 Warrenville Road Lisle, IL 60532-4351 Commissioner Minnesota Department of Health 717 Delaware Street, S. E.
Minneapolis, MN 55440 Douglas M. Gruber, Auditor/Treasurer Wright County Government Center 10 NW Second Street Buffalo, MN 55313 Commissioner Minnesota Department of Commerce 85 7th Place East, Suite 500 St. Paul, MN 55101-2198 Manager - Environmental Protection Division Minnesota Attorney Generals Office 445 Minnesota St., Suite 900 St. Paul, MN 55101-2127 John Paul Cowan Executive Vice President & Chief Nuclear Officer Nuclear Management Company, LLC 700 First Street Hudson, WI 54016 Nuclear Asset Manager Xcel Energy, Inc.
414 Nicollet Mall, R.S. 8 Minneapolis, MN 55401 November 2004
NUCLEAR MANAGEMENT COMPANY, LLC DOCKET NO. 50-263 MONTICELLO NUCLEAR GENERATING PLANT AMENDMENT TO FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE Amendment No. 142 License No. DPR-22 1.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has found that:
A.
The application for amendment by Nuclear Management Company, LLC (the licensee), dated October 5, 2004, complies with the standards and requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the Act), and the Commission's rules and regulations set forth in 10 CFR Chapter I; B.
The facility will operate in conformity with the application, the provisions of the Act, and the rules and regulations of the Commission; C.
There is reasonable assurance (i) that the activities authorized by this amendment can be conducted without endangering the health and safety of the public, and (ii) that such activities will be conducted in compliance with the Commission's regulations; D.
The issuance of this amendment will not be inimical to the common defense and security or to the health and safety of the public; and E.
The issuance of this amendment is in accordance with 10 CFR Part 51 of the Commission's regulations and all applicable requirements have been satisfied.
2.
Accordingly, the license is amended by changes to the Technical Specifications as indicated in the attachment to this license amendment, and paragraph 2.C.2 of Facility Operating License No. DPR-22 is hereby amended to read as follows:
Technical Specifications The Technical Specifications contained in Appendix A, as revised through Amendment No. 142, are hereby incorporated in the license. The licensee shall operate the facility in accordance with the Technical Specifications.
3.
This license amendment is effective as of its date of issuance and shall be implemented within 90 days.
FOR THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
/RA/
Margie Kotzalas, Acting Chief, Section 1 Project Directorate III Division of Licensing Project Management Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
Attachment:
Changes to the Technical Specifications Date of Issuance: February 1, 2005
ATTACHMENT TO LICENSE AMENDMENT NO. 142 FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE NO. DPR-22 DOCKET NO. 50-263 Replace the following page of the Appendix A Technical Specifications with the attached revised page. The revised page is identified by amendment number and contains marginal lines indicating the areas of change.
REMOVE INSERT Page 249 Page 249
SAFETY EVALUATION BY THE OFFICE OF NUCLEAR REACTOR REGULATION RELATED TO AMENDMENT NO. 142 TO FACILITY OPERATING LICENSE NO. DPR-22 NUCLEAR MANAGEMENT COMPANY, LLC MONTICELLO NUCLEAR GENERATING PLANT DOCKET NO. 50-263
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Nuclear Management Company, LLCs (NMCs), letter of October 5, 2004, requested changes to the Technical Specifications (TSs) for the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant. The proposed amendment would delete TS 6.7.A.2, Requirement to submit an Occupational Radiation Exposure Report, TS 6.7.A.3, Requirement to submit a Monthly Operating Report, and TS 6.7.A.6, Requirement to report safety/relief valve failures and challenges as described in the Notice of Availability published in the Federal Register on June 23, 2004 (69 FR 35067).
2.0 REGULATORY EVALUATION
Section 182(a) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, (the Act) requires applicants for nuclear power plant operating licenses to state TS to be included as part of the license. The U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRCs or the Commissions) regulatory requirements related to the content of TSs are set forth in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50.36, Technical specifications. The regulation requires that TSs include items in five specific categories, including (1) safety limits, limiting safety system settings, and limiting control settings; (2) limiting conditions for operation (LCOs); (3) surveillance requirements; (4) design features; and (5) administrative controls. However, the regulation does not specify the particular requirements to be included in a plant's TSs.
The NRC has provided guidance for the content of TSs in its Final Policy Statement on Technical Specification Improvements for Nuclear Power Reactors (58 FR 39132, published July 22, 1993), in which the NRC indicated that compliance with the Final Policy Statement satisfies Section 182(a) of the Act. The Final Policy Statement identified four criteria to be used in determining whether a particular item should be addressed in the TSs as an LCO. The criteria were subsequently incorporated into 10 CFR 50.36 (60 FR 36593, published July 19, 1995). While the criteria specifically apply to LCOs, the NRC indicated that the intent of these criteria may be used to identify the optimum set of administrative controls in TSs.
Addressing administrative controls, 10 CFR 50.36 states that they are the provisions relating to organization and management, procedures, record keeping, review and audit, and reporting necessary to assure operation of the facility in a safe manner. The specific content of the administrative controls section of the TS is, therefore, related to those programs and reports that the NRC deems essential for the safe operation of the facility, which are not adequately covered by regulations or other regulatory requirements. Accordingly, the staff may determine that specific requirements, such as those associated with this change, may be removed from the administrative controls in the TS if they are not explicitly required by 10 CFR 50.36(c)(5) and are not otherwise necessary to obviate the possibility of an abnormal situation or event giving rise to an immediate threat to the public health and safety.
The impetus for the monthly operating report (MOR) came from the 1973-1974 oil embargo.
Regulatory Guide 1.16, Revision 4, Reporting of Operating Information-Appendix A Technical Specifications, published for comment in August 1975, identifies operating statistics and shutdown experience information that was desired in the operating report at that time. In the mid-1990s, the NRC staff assessed the information that is submitted in the MOR and determined that while some of the information was no longer used by the staff, the MOR was the only source of some data used in the NRC Performance Indicator (PI) Program of that time period [see NRC Generic Letter (GL) 97-02, Revised Contents of the Monthly Operating Report]. Beginning in the late 1990s, the NRC developed and implemented a major revision to its assessment, inspection, and enforcement processes through its Reactor Oversight Process (ROP). The ROP uses both plant-level PIs and inspections performed by NRC personnel. In conjunction with the development of the ROP, the NRC developed the Industry Trends Program (ITP). The ITP provides the NRC a means to assess overall industry performance using industry level indicators, and to report on industry trends to various stakeholders (e.g.,
Congress). Information from the ITP is used to assess the NRC's performance related to its goal of having no statistically significant adverse industry trends in safety performance. The ITP uses some of the same PIs as the PI Program from the mid-1990s and, therefore, the NRC has a continuing use for the data provided in MORs. The NRC also uses some data from the MORs to support the evaluation of operating experience, licensee event reports, and other assessments performed by the staff and its contractors.
The reporting requirements also include challenges to, and failures of, safety/relief valves. The reporting of challenges to safety/relief valves was included in TSs based on the guidance in NUREG-0694, [Three Mile Island] TMI-Related Requirements for New Operating Licensees.
The industry proposed, and the NRC accepted, the elimination of the reporting requirements in TS for challenges to safety/relief valves in Revision 4 to Technical Specifications Task Force (TSTF)-258, Changes to Section 5.0, Administrative Controls. The NRC staff's acceptance of TSTF-258, and subsequent approval of plant-specific adoptions of TSTF-258 is based on the fact that the information on challenges to safety/relief valves is not used in the evaluation of the MOR data, and that the information needed by the NRC is adequately addressed by the reporting requirements in 10 CFR 50.73, Licensee event reports.
NMC is required by TSs to submit annual occupational radiation exposure reports (ORERs) to the NRC. The reports, developed in the mid-1970s, supplement the reporting requirements currently defined in 10 CFR 20.2206, Reports of individual monitoring, by providing a tabulation of data by work areas and job functions. The NRC included data from the ORERs in its annual publication of NUREG-0713, Occupational Radiation Exposure at Commercial Nuclear Power Reactors and Other Facilities, through 1997, but no longer includes the data in that or other reports.
3.0 TECHNICAL EVALUATION
3.1 Monthly Operating Reports As previously mentioned, the administrative requirements in TSs are reserved for the provisions relating to organization and management, procedures, record keeping, review and audit, and reporting necessary to assure operation of the facility in a safe manner. The current use of the information from the MORs is not related to reporting on, or confirming, the safe operation of specific nuclear power plants. Instead, the data is used by the NRC to assess and communicate with stakeholders regarding the overall performance of the nuclear industry. Data related to PIs for specific plants are reported to the NRC as part of the ROP. The NRC staff has determined that the MORs do not meet the criteria defined for requirements to be included in the administrative section of TSs, and the reporting requirement may, therefore, be removed.
Although the MORs do not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in TSs, the NRC staff nevertheless has a continuing need to receive the data in order to compile its reports on industry trends and to support other evaluations of operating experience. In addition, information such as plant capacity factors that are reported in the MORs are useful to the staff and are frequently asked for by agency stakeholders.
The NRC staff interacted with licensees, industry organizations, and other stakeholders during the development of the Consolidated Data Entry (CDE) program (currently being developed and maintained by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations), regarding the use of an industry database like CDE to provide data currently obtained from MORs. These discussions also involved the related Revision 1 to TSTF-369, Removal of Monthly Operating Report and Occupational Radiation Exposure Report. As described in Section 4 of this safety evaluation, NMC is making a regulatory commitment to continue to provide the data identified in GL 97-02, following the removal of the TS requirement to submit MORs, and will, therefore, continue to meet the needs of the NRC staff for the ITP and other evaluations. The use of an industry database such as CDE is more efficient and cost-effective for both the NRC and licensees than would be having the NRC staff obtain the needed information from other means currently available. Should NMC fail to satisfy the regulatory commitment to voluntarily provide the information, the NRC could obtain the information through its inspection program (similar to the process described in NRC Inspection Procedure 71150, Discrepant or Unreported Performance Indicator Data) with NMC being charged for the time spent by the NRC staff.
The only significant changes resulting from the adoption of TSTF-369 are that the information will be provided quarterly instead of monthly (although the operating data will still be divided by month) and the form of the reporting will be from a consolidated database such as CDE instead of in correspondence from individual licensees. The change of reporting frequency to quarterly has some advantages for both the NRC staff, and licensee, since it will coincide with the collection and submission of the ROP PI data. In terms of the specific method used to transmit the data to the NRC, NMC has committed (see Section 4.0) to provide data identified in GL 97-02 on a quarterly basis. The NRC staff believes that the most efficient process for licensees and the NRC will be for all licensees to use a system such as CDE. Such systems have advantages in terms of improved data entry, data checking, and data verification and validation. The NRC will recognize efficiency gains by having the data from all plants reported using the same computer software and format. Although the data may be transmitted to the NRC from an industry organization maintaining a database such as CDE, the licensee provides the data for the system and remains responsible for the accuracy of the data submitted to the NRC for its plant(s). The public will continue to have access to the data through official agency records accessible on the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System.
Therefore, the staff finds it acceptable that TS 6.7.A.3 is being deleted, and NMC will no longer submit the MOR.
3.2 Reports of Challenges and Failures of the Pressurizer Power Operated Relief Valves and Safety Valves As discussed in Section 2.0, herein, the NRC staff has documented in its approval of TSTF-258, and related plant-specific amendments that the reporting of safety/relief valve failures and challenges may be removed from TSs since the information needed by the NRC is adequately addressed by the reporting requirements in 10 CFR 50.73, Licensee event reports.
The NRC staff finds it acceptable to remove the requirement to report safety/relief valve failures and challenges in TS 6.7.A.6.
3.3 Occupational Radiation Exposure Reports (ORERs)
The information that the NRC staff needs regarding occupational doses is provided by licensees in the reports required under 10 CFR Part 20. The data from the Part 20 reports are sufficient to support the NRC trending programs, radiation related studies, and preparation of reports such as NUREG-0713. Accordingly, the NRC's limited use of the ORER submitted pursuant to the existing TS requirements no longer warrants the regulatory burden imposed on licensees. Therefore, the staff finds it acceptable that TS 6.7.A.2 is being deleted and NMC will no longer submit the ORER.
4.0 VERIFICATIONS AND COMMITMENTS In order to efficiently process incoming license amendment applications, the NRC staff requested each licensee requesting the changes addressed by TSTF-369 using the Consolidated Line Item Improvement Process to address the following plant-specific regulatory commitment.
Each licensee should make a regulatory commitment to provide to the NRC using an industry database the operating data (for each calender month) that is described in GL 97-02 by the last day of the month following the end of each calendar quarter. The regulatory commitment will be based on use of an industry database (e.g., the industry's CDE program, currently being developed and maintained by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO)).
NMC, in its October 5, 2004, application, made a regulatory commitment to provide to the NRC using an industry database the operating data (for each calendar month) that is described in GL 97-02 by the last day of the month following the end of each calendar quarter. The regulatory commitment will be based on use of an industry database (e.g., the industry's CDE program, currently being developed and maintained by INPO). This regulatory commitment will be implemented to prevent any gaps in the monthly operating statistics and shutdown experience provided to the NRC (i.e., data for all months will be provided using one or both systems (monthly operating reports and CDE).
The NRC staff finds that reasonable controls for the implementation, and for subsequent evaluation of proposed changes pertaining to the above regulatory commitment(s) can be provided by NMC's administrative processes, including its commitment management program.
The NRC staff has agreed that Nuclear Energy Institute 99-04, Revision 0, Guidelines for Managing NRC Commitment Changes, provides reasonable guidance for the control of regulatory commitments made to the NRC staff (see Regulatory Issue Summary 2000-17, Managing Regulatory Commitments Made by Power Reactor Licensees to the NRC Staff, dated September 21, 2000). The NRC staff notes that this amendment establishes a voluntary reporting system for the operating data that is similar to the system established for the ROP Pl program. Should NMC choose to incorporate a regulatory commitment into the final safety analysis report or other document with established regulatory controls, the associated regulations would define the appropriate change-control and reporting requirements.
5.0 STATE CONSULTATION
In accordance with the Commission's regulations, the Minnesota State official was notified of the proposed issuance of the amendment. The State official had no comments.
6.0 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATION
The amendments relate to changes in record keeping, reporting, or administrative requirements. Accordingly, the amendments meet the eligibility criteria for categorical exclusion set forth in 10 CFR 51.22(c)(10). Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.22(b) no environmental impact statement, or environmental assessment need be prepared in connection with the issuance of the amendments.
7.0 CONCLUSION
The Commission has concluded, based on the considerations discussed above, that: (1) there is reasonable assurance that the health and safety of the public will not be endangered by operation in the proposed manner, (2) such activities will be conducted in compliance with the Commission's regulations, and (3) the issuance of the amendment will not be inimical to the common defense and security or to the health and safety of the public.
Principal Contributor: W. Reckley Date: February 1, 2005