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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2016
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5.
NRC has its own emergency response
center. Are there these emergency
response centers in Memphis and
Phoenix?
The centers in Memphis and
Phoenix are called National SAFER
Response Centers, which are staffed and
operated by the industry. They contain
emergency equipment. They’re not
really an emergency response center. If
a reactor has a very dire event, they will
call to activate a center in Lynchburg.
The Lynchburg center coordinates the
emergency response from those two
centers in Memphis and Phoenix.
The SAFER Response Centers have
portable lighting, pumps, hoses, power
supplies, cables, electric current inverters,
fuel bladders, and other equipment
needed to support phase 3 requirements
of the mitigation strategies order.
Every plant has an emergency
operation center that interfaces not only
with federal and state entities but also
with the NRC emergency operations
center in Rockville, MD. This is a
coordinated emergency preparedness
effort that’s been in place for many years,
well before Fukushima. We routinely
practice this coordination. For example,
Southern Exposure was a recent exercise
that we just did a few months ago to look
at the interfaces and to determine how
they’re working.
6.
How are the various response centers
coordinated?
The plant itself has to do the call
out. The plant will do the first call to
the National SAFER Response Center,
and SAFER knows its protocol. Once
the plant activates the National SAFER
Response Centers, then they follow a
playbook and they know who and what
interfaces need to be coordinated. While
all this is happening, theNRC’s operations
center is in monitoring mode. We are
watching what’s going on, and prepared
to respond when necessary. For instance,
if a plant needed helicopter support from
the National Guard or something like
that, we would interface for them with the
government. The NRC has participated
in several tabletop exercises that have
demonstrated this coordination.
All of the plants, as part of their
mitigation strategies, are required to
maintain communications inside and
outside the plant if they lose normal
sources of electricity. They all have
satellite phones or some other type of
communications mechanism. We’ve
inspected these as part of the overarching
mitigation strategies. In addition to their
hardware strategy, we’ve reviewed their
staffing assessments and communications
assessments to be sure they have enough
people and equipment to maintain these
coordination abilities.
7.
What is the status of implementation
of hardened vents?
Order EA-13-109, “Order to Modify
Licenses with Regard to Reliable
Hardened Containment Vents Capable
of Operation Under Severe Accident
Conditions” is the vent order. It has a
backstop date of June 2018 for Phase 1,
which requires hardened wetwell vents.
By June of 2019 they have to come into
compliance with Phase 2, which is either
installing a drywell vent, or they must
have developed a strategy that says they
don’t need to have a drywell vent. All
phase 1 plans have been submitted to
the agency, and we’ve looked at them
and said that they look reasonable. All
phase 2 plans have been submitted to the
agency, and we’re currently in the process
of reviewing those.
Even though those dates are 2018
and 2019, a lot of plants are coming into
compliance much earlier than that. A
quarter of the plants will be in compliance
with phase 1 this year, 75% will be in
compliance by 2017, and the remainder
by 2018. Phase 2 is on a similar staggered
approach, where we’re going to have over
50% of the plants in compliance by 2018,
and then the remainder by 2019. We’re
making good progress.
8.
What are the major regulations and
guidelines related to Fukushima, which
the plants are complying with?
There are two big ones. The
Mitigation of Beyond-Design-Basis
Events (MBDBE) rulemaking was
put out for public comment back in
November 2015. The public comment
period just closed in February 2016, and
we received 20 comment letters. We’re
working through those right now, and we
owe the Commission the final proposed
rule in December 2016. The Commission
will likely put that out sometime in 2017,
and the final rule will probably become
effective in the mid-2019 time frame.
The second one is that we put out
revised Interim Staff Guidance for the
mitigation strategies. This revision
contains the guidance needed to ensure
that the mitigation strategies are effective
considering the reevaluated flooding and
seismic hazards. That became effective
in February 2016. Plants will use this
guidance to modify their mitigation
strategies, if needed, to ensure they are
effective considering the reevaluated
hazards.
9.
Does USNRC have a preference for
the implementation of its post Fukushima
directives?
Utilities have a risk-informed task
force to say what types of things they
should consider going forward, what gets
you the biggest bang for the buck and
so on. We’re not a part of that because
our Fukushima effort was considered of
utmost importance, but we’ve worked
very collegially with them. We work
with our stakeholders to make sure we do
Fukushima activities such that we’re not
interfering with plants doing their routine
safety work. For instance, the seismic
probabilistic risk assessments (SPRAs)
that are due to the agency are going to
come in on a staggered schedule. That
way, it doesn’t overburden our resources,
it doesn’t overburden their resources.
We instituted a lot of innovative
processes in Fukushima space to better
facilitate licensees providing information
and making it easier for them to be able to
work with us. For instance, we instituted
