ML110230013

Pilgrim Watch Reply to Energy'S Motion in Limine to Exclude from Evidence Pilgrim Watch'S SAMA Remand Pre-Filed Testimony and Exhibits

ML110230013
Person / Time
Site:	Pilgrim
Issue date:	01/23/2011
From:	Lampert M Pilgrim Watch
To:	Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel
SECY RAS
Shared Package
ML110230012	List: ML110230013 ML110230014
References
RAS 19476, 50-293-LR, ASLBP 06-848-02-LR
Download: ML110230013 (10)

Text

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD In the Matter of Docket # 50-293-LR Entergy Corporation Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station License Renewal Application January 23, 2011 PILGRIM WATCH REPLY TO ENTERGYS MOTION IN LIMINE TO EXCLUDE FROM EVIDENCE PILGRIM WATCHS SAMA REMAND PRE-FILED TESIMONY AND EXHIBITS Pilgrim Watch objects to Entergys Motion in Limine.

As PW said in its SAMA Remand Pre-Filed Testimony, this Board and the Commission have already eliminated the substantive issues raised by Pilgrim Watchs contentions.1 Entergys 1

Pilgrim Watch has noted an unfortunate tendency of the NRC Staff, Entergy and other licensees to cite previous decisions in this proceeding as though they decided substantive issues. In fact, as the NRC Staff and Entergy well know, they have not.

Rather, the prior decisions of both a majority of this Board and the Commission rejected PWs contentions, without considering their merits. Neither made any substantive decision concerning the Contention 2 that the Aging Management Plan at Pilgrim fails to adequately monitor for corrosion in the drywell liner, the dangers caused by spent fuel stored in a swimming pool outside the containment (Contention 4), or health effects resulting from PNPS continued operation (Contention 5); they simply did not consider these issues.

Similarly, the Board narrowed Contention 1 to exclude what was originally filed (The Aging Management Plan does not adequately inspect and monitor for leaks in all systems and components that may contain radioactively contaminated water); and instead limited the inquiry to something very different, leaks in buried pipes carrying radioactive liquid that are so great as to disenable a shut down or maintain a shutdown in an emergency.

Motion in Limine is simply another step in its efforts to insure that no important questions will be pursued, even in the upcoming remand hearing.

I. The Pilgrim Watch Statement (Entergy at 3)

PWs agrees that its Statement, in and of itself, it not testimony. It was provided to the Board as a guide to the evidence to which it refers. However, the Exhibits and the like to which it refers are evidence.

PW accordingly does not ask that the Statement per se be admitted; it does say that the attachments and Exhibits in their entirety properly should be admitted as evidence in this proceeding.

II. Exhibits Entergy claims that the following exhibits are beyond the scope. In doing so, Entergy ignores that many are relevant to issues that even Entergy agrees are in scope, and also would be relevant to issues that PW could prove had they not been excluded as a result of Entergys and the NRC Staffs efforts and the prior decisions of a majority of this Board.

Others, as noted below, are relevant to excluded issues, and were presented as examples of what PW could have proved had it been allowed to do so.

A. Egan Declaration, Exhibit PWA00001 (Entergy at 4)

Entergys misleading assertion that Dr. Egans declaration is directed to the issue of emergency planning (Entergy at 4) overlooks that the declaration is directly relevant to the issue As for Contention 3 that is the subject of this remand, there will be no substantive decision here either.

The bifurcated nature of the hearing requires PW to prove what cannot be proved, and the exclusion of essentially all real costs mean that no SAMAs will be required even if PW might do the impossible in stage 1.

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of what is, and is not, the correct meteorological model to use at Pilgrims coastal site to determine the likely area impacted in a severe accident and the probable deposition in that area.

What Entergy fails to understand is that the meteorological/air quality dispersion modeling issues raised in Dr. Egans declaration apply directly to the inadequacy of Pilgrims SAMA analysis; the fact that they also may apply to other nuclear power plant licensing program objectives, such as emergency planning, is unimportant.

Also, evacuation time estimates are part of the admitted original contention and SAMA Remand. Therefore it is clearly appropriate to demonstrate the connection between Entergys use of the wrong meteorological model, the straight-line Gaussian plume, and the effect of that wrong choice on underestimating evacuation time estimates.

B. Beyea Declaration (Entergy at 5)

Entergy admits that Dr. Beyeas Declaration addresses the meteorological inputs challenged in Contention 3. Its suggestion that PW cannot rely on the portions of the Beyea declaration that address meteorological patterns or phenomena in the New England coastal area because neither Pilgrim Watch nor Dr. Beyea provides any basis to show that Dr. Beyea is qualified by training or experience as a technical expert to review, analyze, or express an opinion on any of the meteorological or plume transport and modeling issues relevant to Contention 3 is simply wrong.

Dr. Beyeas CV, attached to the report, demonstrates his qualification to speak to the issue.

It says, for example:

Personal

Background:

I am a nuclear physicist who has studied the consequences of both real and hypothetical nuclear accidents, as well as strategies for mitigation I did research at Princetons Center for Energy and Environmental Studies modeling 3

the consequences of nuclear accidents One of my specialties is geographic exposure modeling of toxic releases (Beyea and Hatch 1999). (Emphasis added)

What Entergy fails to understand that the issues in even this limited hearing involve both meteorology itself, and the effects of meteorology; and that both are within scope. According to Entergys reasoning Dr. Hanna, who is a meteorologist, would not be able to testify at all because he is not an expert on the effect of the meteorology on offsite consequences.

C. Chanin Declaration, Exhibits PWA 00003 and PWA 00004 (Entergy at 5)

Entergy wishes to exclude Exhibit 00004, "The Development of MACCS2: Lessons Learned," [written for:] EFCOG Safety Analysis Annual Workshop Proceedings, Santa Fe, NM, April 29-May 5, 2005. Ironically, Mr. Chanin says that, Kevin O'Kula (Entergys expert) encouraged me to write this paper - the very paper that Entergy now wants excluded.

PW understands why Entergy objects to this exhibit, but it has little or nothing to do with relevance. The Exhibit says very clearly that the MACCS2 code was never designed for licensing purposes, only as a research tool. Entergys SAMA analysis was not a research project; it was performed for one purpose only- licensing.

Mr. Chanin explains that the MACCS2 code was not held to the QA requirements of NQA-a (American Society of Mechanical Engineering, QA Program Requirements for Nuclear Facilities, 1994). Rather they were developed using following the less rigorous QA guidelines of ANSI/ANS 10.4. [American Nuclear Standards Institute and American Nuclear Society, Guidelines for the Verification and Validation of Scientific and Engineering Codes for the Nuclear Industry, ANSI/ANS 10.4, La Grange Park, IL (1987). ]

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What this means is that all steps of the code development have not been documented and tested, and hand calculations have not verified the code's implementation of major transport and exposure pathways for a subset of the radionuclide library. Mr.Chanin says further that, If errors are later found in authorization basis calculations, an Unreviewed Safety Question (USQ) could be raised, and continued operation of the facility would then require a demonstration that the facilitys safety basis was adequate. (Emphasis added) Mr. Chanin concludes the paper saying that,

[T]he QA distinctions between an NQA-1 "licensing code" and a "research code" like MACCS2 have been emphasized in light of the fact that MACCS2 calculations are being used to support the Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives (SAMA) analyses required for the license renewal of commercial nuclear power plants. It seems to me that the code's QA shortcomings and the lack of input justifications are again being ignored.

Pilgrim Watch notes that Mr. Chanins statement apply to the whole MACCS2 code; he makes no exception for the ATMOS module that is central to meteorological issues. The Exhibit may be an Inconvenient Truth but it is undeniably relevant and within scope.

D. Emergency Planning - Exhibits PWA0005 and PWA 00013 (Entergy at 8)

Exhibits PWA 00005(Rothstein Decl.) and PWA 0003 (DOE/EH-0173T) are all within scope. Again Entergy tries to separate appropriate accident dispersion modeling for emergency planning from accident dispersion relevant to relicensing SAMAs. What conceivably could be the rationale for thinking that you should use different dispersion/meteorological models for 5

emergency planning purposes than for SAMA analyses for relicensing purposes? The wind blows the same at each specific site in either case; and it is not dependent on whether the Guidance protocol comes from DOE, EPA or NRC.

Exhibit 13 (Revised Chapter 4, Meteorological Monitoring, of Guide DOE/EH-0173T) is within scope. A few excerpts from the document demonstrate that fact and support Pilgrim Watchs statements of fact regarding meteorology presented in this proceeding. For example:

1. Contrary to Entergy, the DOE document is relevant to consequence (SAMA) assessments.

(Meteorological data) are not only vital to environmental protection, emergency response, and consequence assessmentsMoreover, this information is needed to assess the transport, dispersion, deposition, and resuspension of materials released to the atmosphere Meteorological data, which are needed to characterize atmospheric transport and dispersion conditions, are an integral part of the radiological dose assessment and chemical consequence assessment capabilities to assess impacts from both planned and unplanned releases.

2. Pilgrim Watch has repeatedly stated that meteorological data simply from the onsite tower and precipitation data from Plymouth airport was insufficient to properly characterize Pilgrims complex site.

those sites with complex terrain, where one monitoring site location is inadequate to be spatially representative of atmospheric conditions for transport and dispersion computations (per Section 4.2 of ANSI/ANS-3.11-2000) are required to establish environmental monitoring programs that include additional meteorological measurements at more than one location.

3. Again, the DOE document is relevant and in scope 4.2 METEOROLOGICAL PROGRAM BASES 4.2.1 Overview A primary use of meteorological and climatology data at DOE sites is to characterize atmospheric dispersion conditions for authorization basis safety documents, emergency preparedness consequence assessments, and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) evaluations.

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As the maximum magnitude of potential releases from a facility increases, the use of more realistic, and therefore complex, models is necessary to either assess the consequences of the releases or to demonstrate compliance with Federal and State laws, enabling regulations, and DOE Orders and Notices. Computational techniques based on straight-line Gaussian models (e.g., CAP-88) are appropriate for facilities that are located in simple topographic settings

4. Pilgrim Watch demonstrated to the Commission and in its January 3, 2011 brief that Entergys meteorological assumptions were not conservative.

4.11.3 Assessment of Accidental Releases Consequence analyses for postulated accidental releases should be made for each downwind direction using conservative meteorological assumptions for each release scenario.

5. Pilgrim Watch has repeatedly shown that data from one year is not acceptable.

The joint-frequency distribution and choices of meteorological conditions for the accident analyses should be based on a minimum of 5 years of hourly-averaged data acquired by a meteorological program that meets the objectives and principles of ANSI/ANS-3.11-2000 and EPA-454/R-99-005.

Further evacuation time estimates are part of the admitted original contention and SAMA Remand. Therefore it is clearly appropriate to demonstrate the connection between Entergys use of the wrong meteorological model, the straight-line Gaussian plume, and the effect of that wrong choice on underestimating evacuation time estimates.

E. Economic Consequences and Cost Estimates, PWA0008, PWA0009, and PWA0015 Entergys complaint argues that these exhibits are not within scope. Pilgrim Watch introduced these exhibits as part of its Offer of Proof demonstrating that if we had been permitted to do so, we would show that Entergys SAMA analysis is woefully insufficient and that the public was cheated out of mitigations that it deserves.

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F. Spengler and Keeler Report, Exhibit PWA00011 (Entergy at 11)

The portions of the report that Entergy objects to are clearly within scope. Entergys arguments are ridiculous on their face. They object to the Summary of (Meteorological) Findings because they deal with releases during normal operations. Do they believe the winds will necessarily blow differently during accident situations? If that is so, then we should eliminate all of Dr. Hannas testimony and all of Entergys data weather input data in its SAMA analysis because that data was derived from normal plant operations.

G. Dr. Lyman, MAAP Code - Lessons Learned and Emergency Dose Assessment Exhibits PWA0012 and PWA00019 (Entergy 12-13); H Generic Challenges to Probabilistic Modeling, Exhibits PWA00014 and PWA00020 (Entergy at 13-14)

Pilgrim Watch put forward these Exhibits to support its Offer of Proof. If Pilgrim Watch had been allowed to discuss issues in dispute that properly should be argued before the Board we would have shown beyond doubt that Entergys SAMA is insufficient and severely underestimated the costs of offsite consequences. Therefore any decision that this Board makes will be based on pleading not on substance.

H. The NRC Staff Exhibits This is like President Regans There you go again. It is yet another example of Entergys and the NRC Staffs continued effort to avoid the real issues and any facts that they do not like.

There is no basis for admitting NRC Exhibits 3-7 only for the limited purpose of showing Mr. Bixlers familiarity with, and knowledge of the issues in this proceeding. First, all 8

of these exhibits are already part of this proceeding, and not for any limited purpose. Second, all relevant evidence is admissible, not simply evidence that might favor the NRC Staff or Entergy, and these exhibits in their entirety is relevant. Finally, if the NRC Staff wishes to introduce these exhibits, PW has the right to insist that they be introduced for any and all purposes, not merely for the selective purposes that the NRC Staff and Entergy seem to think favor them.

III. Conclusion For the foregoing reasons, Pilgrim Watchs appendices and exhibits in their entirety should not be excluded from the evidentiary record for this proceeding.

Pilgrim Watch explained to this Board Pilgrim Watch Memorandum Regarding SAMA Remand Hearing (December 2, 2010) that even though it will not present any new evidence at the upcoming SAMA Remand Hearing because prior Orders in this proceeding would make that a fools errand, it will rely on what has previously been presented. At the pre-hearing stages of this proceeding.

The evidence already of record shows that use of a site-appropriate variable plume model, rather than a straight line Gaussian plume model, could result in significant changes in the areas that would be affected by a serious accident at PNPS.

It is also clear, however, that simply a change in area, on its own, would not alter the Pilgrim SAMA Analysis. The majority Orders of September 23, 2010 and November 23, 2010 have so limited the scope of the remand hearing (in PWs view improperly) that there is no reason for PW to expend its limited resources to prepare and submit to the Board additional meteorological evidence for the limited initial phase of the remand hearing, or additional cost evidence for the limited second 9

phase, should a second phase occur. No decision this Board makes will substantively decide whether PNPS site specific meteorological conditions could result in the real costs of a radioactive accident being large enough to require additional SAMAs.

Respectfully Submitted,

[Signed Electronically]

Mary Lampert 148 Washington Street Duxbury, MA 02332 Tel: 781-934-0389 Email mary.lampert@comcast.net January 23, 2011 10