13 O Is it proper for NRC staff to conduct a review of this study in the absence of a formal petition or exemption request by PS NH? o When is early involvement by NRC staff in a licensee study associated with a clear regulatory intent inappropriate? How much involvement is appropriate? What guidelines should the NRC staff use in making these decisions? Has the NRC blurred, if not erased, the line between advocacy and technical comment in the licensing process? When the Subcommittee staff asked the NRC staff to draw a distinction between the goals of the utility and the NRC in this review, especially as supplemental information is exchanged during the review, the NRC was hard pressed to draw such a distinction. We believe that the Subcommittee might usefully question the propriety of an NRC review of a licensee study which the staff understands may be used by the utility as the technical basis for a future request for an exemption from NRC regulations. PSNH has solicited and secured the benefit of the technical expertise of the NRC to ensure that if and when the company seeks an exemption, the Commission staff will support granting it, because that same NRC staff already will have approved the technical arguments supplied as the basis for that exemption. If PSNH pursues such an exemption, the same NRC staff will be called upon by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board and/or the Commissioners to provide their views. The NRC is charged not only with the licensing of nuclear power plants. More importantly, it bears the responsibility of protecting the public from the health and safety hazards of nuclear power. The public has every right to expect that the Commission will discharge its duties impartially. If the integrity of the regulatory process is to be maintained, the Commission and its staff must take particular care, especially in contested licensing proceedings, to avoid even the appearance of favoratism, promotion, or partiality. The staff must abide by a standard of conduct which avoids planting seeds of doubt in the public's mind that the regulatory process has been biased. In effect, the public regards the NRC as judge and jury. When the staff acts in such a way as to engender doubts about the Commission's objectivity, then the public may perceive that the Commission is stacking the jury in favor of the nuclear industry. To permit even such an appearance undermines the credibility of the regulatory process. 14 Especially in the case of Seabrook, where the public confidence in both the NRC and PSNH is strained at best, the public interest might have been better served by a more open and formal review process. How and where to draw the line is another question the Subcommittee may wish to address. In short, the NRC appears not to have been sufficiently sensitive to the public's concerns about the potential safety implications of reducing the emergency planning zone at Seabrook. The staff's actions to date threaten to inflame public sentiment rather than to provide the inarguably impartial discourse necessary to calm it. PAST NRC STAFF COMMENTS ON DEFERRING REQUESTS FOR REDUCING As noted above, the question of reducing the size of the EPZ had arisen previously, in a request by Baltimore Gas & Electric to seek a reduction in the size of the EPZ for Calvert Cliffs. In that instance, Robert Minogue, the Director of the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, wrote the following in a January 27, 1986 memorandum to Harold Denton. "At the last RES quarterly meeting it was agreed A few of those reasons are illustrative. "The orderly progression of generic rulemaking on the emergency planning issue will serve the public better than a piecemeal, site-specific approach." "The public must be involved in major rule exemption or rulemaking decisions. However, because of the broad policy implications of this action, the public would be better served with a generic rulemaking rather than a site-specific one." 15 "RES would prefer an integrated approach looking at the The memorandum concluded by saying that "We understand that you have sent a letter to BG&E to the effect that it is premature to consider reducing the EPZ, and we strongly support that action.' A January 6, 1986 memorandum to Denton from Thomas Murley, NRC's Regional Administrator for Region I, also offered pertinent comments on the BG&E proposal. In that memorandum, Murley wrote: Two "...The consideration of this exemption (20-mile radius)...." "The most conservative approach would be to plant-specific basis. This is our [the Region Murley's comments on the appropriate role of state and local governments in determining the size of the EPZ sound somewhat Incongruous in light of the staff's present involvement in an attempt to craft a technical argument designed precisely to circumvent state and local government concerns about emergency planning by summarily excluding those governments from the EPZ. The NRC staff position in January 1986 clearly opposed dealing with such requests on a plant-by-plant basis. We see no evidence that the situation 11 months later is substantially different. PAST NRC STATEMENTS REGARDING REACTOR SAFETY, CONTAINMENT 16 CURRENT NRC WORK ON RISK REBASELINING AND SEVERE ACCIDENTS After the TMI accident the NRC began a comprehensive review of the risks of a severe accident. According to discussions between NRC staff and Subcommittee staff, this review has taken more than 5 years and has cost more than $250 million. The objective of the review is to attempt to establish with greater precision appropriate source term assumptions for a severe accident and to refine risk assessments so as to improve upon the work of the 1975 Reactor Safety Study (WASH-1400). According to staff, the draft document resulting from this review, NUREG-1150, is currently scheduled to be released for review and comment early in 1987. Following a 120-180 day review period, staff expects to take an additional 120-180 days to digest comments and make changes to the draft document. While the staff has informed us that the objective includes various rulemaking proceedings, they do not expect those proposed rules to be issued until the final NUREG-1150 is released late in 1987 or early in 1988. Many of the issues under review in the NUREG-1150 process are directly relevant to the issues under discussion with regard to Seabrook. It is extraordinarily difficult to understand why the NRC staff seems intent upon fine-tuning a study for one plant when a sweeping generic review is drawing to a close. The NRC bears an extremely heavy burden to justify its departure from the rationale offered in the Minogue memorandum (above). The NRC has provided no reason why it could not await the promulgation of rules pursuant to the publication of NUREG-1150 before taking any action on the size of the Seabrook EPZ that depends upon containment and risk analyses for the Seabrook plant. To proceed otherwise directly contradicts positions taken by staff only months earlier. LARGE UNCERTAINTIES IN SAFETY-RELATED ISSUES In an April 30, 1986 memorandum from Victor Stello, Jr., Executive Director for Operations to Commission Secretary Samuel Chilk, Stello identified a long list of safety-related issues that 17 require further research. Many of them bear directly on issues related to containment performance under severe accident conditions, and therefore on off-site consequences resulting from a severe accident. Although the purpose of Stello's memorandum was to argue for additions to the NRC budget necessary to pursue research programs in these areas, the issues themselves paint an extraordinary picture of the gravity of outstanding safety-related issues and the extreme lack of knowledge on the part of the NRC about severe accidents. Given the number of items enumerated and the breadth of their implications, it is difficult to understand why the Commission staff is intent on expending its time and public funds on the Seabrook technical studies in light of these many extant technical uncertainties. Indeed, the breadth of the safety issues appears so great that we recommend the Subcommittee consider an independent investigation into their implications for operating reactors. Stello wrote in his introductory narrative: "In evaluating the various technical issues We provide below excerpts from the Stello memorandum. Safety Issue: Large uncertainties exist in determinations. |