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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2016
I would say probably about 85% of the
plants will have those protected against
the reevaluated hazard, and then there are
a handful of plants that will have to do a
little bit more in 2017.
5.
Are the plants which are projected
to shutdown, required to comply with
Fukushima upgrade requirements?
Plants that are projected to shut down
over the next couple years, Fitzpatrick,
Pilgrim, Oyster Creek, between now and
2019, they’ve been in discussions with us
about other certain aspects of the orders
that they can exempt themselves from or
ask for extensions on because in reality,
they’re going to be shut down. We’re
in dialogue with those utilities, in terms
of what sort of exemptions might be
appropriate.
6. Is g
roundwater and water body
contamination a concern for US nuclear
power plants?
Every plant in the country, over
the last few years, did a hydrogeologic
mapping of their sites as a result of
concerns about tritium releases through
groundwater. So I think there’s a really
good understanding from each of the
plants of what transport mechanisms
could potentially exist and where, if there
were to be some sort of tritium release,
where it might go. Recently, we had an
issue at Indian Point where a system that
they were using to clean up a refueling
water storage tank had hoses leak. That
ended up getting a certain amount of
contaminated water into the site, and it
was detected by routine sampling that
they do. All plants now have a number
of sampling wells across their sites that
they look at periodically to see if there’s
any potential tritium plume, for example.
And so they found one at Indian Point,
were able to identify the source of it,
terminated the source of it. But it got
a lot of attention from the public and
government officials in NewYork because
of the concerns that this is ultimately
going to migrate into the Hudson River.
The thing about tritium though is that
the half-life is only so long to begin
with. Secondly, as long as it’s contained
onsite, it’s not getting into drinking water
supplies. There’s no real safety hazard.
And then if it were ultimately to migrate
to the river, the dilution factor is so
tremendous that it’s non-detectable. But
it generates concerns, and it has generated
concerns for years. I would give industry
some credit for putting in place some
pretty substantive voluntary initiatives
to do things like periodic groundwater
monitoring, looking at underground
piping and buried tanks and things like
that, to periodically check those to see
if they have developing leaks. A lot
more sensitivity is associated now about
groundwater related issues at plants,
because ultimately, if a plant’s going to
decommission, you have to validate and
verify that the ground is releasable to
meet EPA standards for public release.
7.
What are the major regulations and
guidelines related to Fukushima, which
the plants are complying with?
Tier 1 of the recommendations
from our Near-Term Task Force
report
-
rm/ do c - c o l l e c t i on s / c ommi s s i on /
secys/2011/2011-0137scy.pdf
and
/
ML111861807.pdf) is almost all done.
Some of the things we’ve discussed are
activities that remain. We still have work
that we’re doing, for example, in the Mark
1 and Mark 2 containments associated
with the hardened vents, severe accident
capable hardened vents. We ended up
incorporating a lot of the Tier 2 activities
into Tier 1 items. One example of this is
how we worked some Tier 2 issues into
the mitigation of beyond design basis
rule-making, which we expect to deliver
to the commission at the end of 2016.
This will be a major outcome of the work
over the last five years, developing that
rule and getting that in place.
We did disposition at least one Tier 3
issue, expedited transfer of spent fuel. The
commission basically said no, we do not
need to move forward and expedite it.
There’s not a safety basis for trying to get
utilities to expedite the transfer of spent
fuel to the dry cask. And so, that Tier 3
item was dispositioned earlier because
there was so much energy around it.
Recently
we
provided
the
commissionwith a commission paper, and
we also had a commission meeting that
talked about the staff’s recommendations
for the remaining Tier 2 and Tier 3
items. We believe that we have enough
information to disposition of all the Tier 2
items without requiring additional action.
There are some Tier 3 items that require a
little more work, particularly as we look
at how we would periodically or routinely
assess any sort of changes in the external
environment. For example, as we stay
abreast of things in seismic or flooding,
is there some change that may cause us to
want to ask a licensee to reassess flooding
hazards? And also, to consider other
external hazards, like excessive snowfall
or drought, things like that. We still have
work to do in those areas, but I think by
and large, we have developed a rationale
for pretty much closing all the other ones
without any need for any additional work.
Contact: Scott Burnell, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Office of Public
Affairs, Mail Stop O-16D3, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852;
telephone: (301) 415-8204, email: Scott.
.
Fukushima
Lessons...
