Nuclear Information & Resource Service Southeast

www.nirs.org   nirs.se@mindspring.com

P.O. Box 5647   Augusta, Georgia  30916-5647

706-722-8968   706-722-3506 fax  

 

Chief

Rules and Directives Branch

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, DC 20555-0001

 

Comments on: Draft  NUREG 1718, Standard Review Plan for the Review of an Application for a Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility, January 2000

 

These comments are submitted 03/27/2000 (under extension) via fax to 301-415-5390 as per phone instructions from Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards personnel and also via e-mail to axp1@nrc.gov because web address given in extension notice would only give an "error message," and the individual named in the notice was 1) not available and 2) voice mail box was full.  I request that these comments be validated as within the comment deadline if they have been misdirected.

 

We reserve the option to add to these comments at a future date.

 

The Commission Should Actively Oppose MOX Fuel, Not Establish Acceptance

 

NUREG 1718 is a document designed to enable the construction of a MOX fuel production facility. There is nothing in the document that even mentions the possibility that a license would not be granted.

 

The mission statement for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) paraphrased from NUREG 1718, is to 'identify factors that are inimical to the common defense and security and to provide reasonable protection of the health and safety of workers and the public and the environment.' The use of Mixed Oxide plutonium fuel is contrary to this mission. It is a failing that the Commission did not intervene in the national process to select a plutonium disposition strategy to forestall MOX as an option for the following reasons.

 

MOX undercuts our security and common defense. In a global era of nuclear disarmament and the need to more strongly affirm nuclear nonproliferation policy, the United States government in the body of the Department of Energy (DOE) is acting irresponsibly to convert weapons plutonium into commercial reactor fuel. This action reinforces the counterproductive and dangerous idea that plutonium is a commodity, opens the door to much more difficult safeguarding and removes any separation between US military and civilian nuclear programs. NRC should oppose it.

 

MOX is reduces the margins of safety on nuclear reactor operation and therefore jeopardizes public health and the environment. Weapons MOX has NEVER been used anywhere in the world and NRC should recognize that it is completely inappropriate to launch this experiment with full scale implementation in civilian reactors in communities that could be affected by an accident to a much greater degree than a similar accident with conventional uranium fuel, the consequences of which the NRC has already managed to ignore over its entire regulatory existence.  DOE itself acknowledges that there would be more cancer deaths from a major reactor accident with a MOX plutonium core than the same accident with uranium fuel.

 

MOX, particularly weapons MOX will have adverse impacts on a number of reactor operations, including moderation of the fission reaction, aging of reactor components and complications of source term and all types of waste and emissions. Again, NRC in its mission to protect our health and our environment should oppose this program altogether.

 

MOX fuel fabrication in particular will place workers, the rest of us, and our environment at greater risk than the alternative of plutonium immobilization since it will require more plutonium processing steps, and produce more waste.

 

If all of this perspective were adequately reflected in NRC's implementation of its mission, even if the Commission did not take action to stop the DOE's program, the Review Plan would look very different as a document. Instead of defining "acceptance criteria" and providing affirmative text about acceptance throughout the document, NUREG 1718 would take the core values in the mission statement seriously. Then guiding principles would be used to define regulatory criteria and means for determining if the facility and program would meet or fail to meet those criteria. There would be the possibility that NRC would not in fact license the facility.

 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Habit of Exemptions Must Stop Here

 

Since it is unlikely that our point of view will change the Commission or its staff over night, we would like to note that NUREG 1718, and indeed our comments on it, are not worth the paper they are written on, or the electronic memory they reside in, if the Commission continues with its long history of granting regulatory exemptions. If these are the rules, use them. Do not make of new ones on the spot when the process or facility cannot meet these!

 

Nonetheless, we do have some specific comments following on deficiencies in these guidelines.

 

Quality Assurance: Learn from the Nuclear Lessons of 1999 and 2000

 

The world has been astounded by events in England and Japan in the last year. A workers at a fuel fabrication facility in Japan and the community around it suffered from an inadvertent nuclear criticality reaction. The fission products from this event were recorded as far away as California. In the same time frame the scandal of criminal negligence in MOX fuel production procedures at Sellafield has unfolded. Both of these events has bearing upon the commencement of plutonium fuel production in the US.

 

NUREG 1718 refers to the need to establish a "safety culture" but nowhere are the attributes of this culture defined. In the light of Tokaimura, where workers who had been in employ for decades did not even know about the possibility of a criticality accident, it cannot be stressed enough that education is a key piece of the required culture.

 

In England, not only was the situation ripe for worker negligence, but indeed Management was unaware of the falsification of inspection records for apparently as long as 4 years. Clearly the actions of all levels of the organization were beyond a functioning safety culture, and cannot be pinned solely on the workers or seen as an isolated event. The vast contamination which exists at the Savannah River Site now also bespeaks of the absence of a safety culture or any respect for workers, environment or health.

 

The following section 3.5 of the Health and Safety Executive report entitled "HSE Team Inspection of the Control and Supervision of Operations at BNFL's Sellafield Site" where workers decided to falsify MOX fuel inspection reports contains many specific recommendations which NRC staff should evaluate and distill into a section for NUREG 1719 on what appropriate "safety culture" looks like. (the entire report is worthy of review, and can be accessed at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd.team3.htm

 

"3.5 Safety Culture

 

     We did not specifically look at safety culture using the HSE's Health and Safety Climate

     Survey Tool. Rather we have derived our views based on observations whilst undertaking the

     inspection. We therefore report on a number of specific observations.

     Elements we would expect to see in a good safety culture include learning from experience,

     encouragement to report minor happenings (no blame culture), a proactive management and

     good communications. We inspected a number of activities which had previously been subject

     to incidents to see how learning points had been picked up. We were disappointed to find

     failures to learn from experience in most of our sample. We were more concerned to observe

     that the learning points from two Improvement Notices served by HSE within the past year on

     BNFL had not been effectively taken up across the company.

     An example of particular concern was the considered response of a senior level manager to

     justify one such failure He based his justification on a claim that the risk was under control and hence was acceptable. This argument was fundamentally flawed given that for the particular

     situation, action could have been taken to remove the risk at the point in time it was created.

     Furthermore, if proper planning had taken place, the risk would have never been created in

     the first place.

     We found plant log book entries which in our opinion warranted being reported as either a

     happening or event. Although the numbers were not large given the small size of our sample,

     we consider that these observations are indicative of a failure by people who are responsible

     for reporting happenings or events, which is not acceptable. We noted the tolerance by

     management on a number of plants of the Hazard Log book entry not being properly

     closed-out in a timely manner. We found examples where staff on plant were not aware of

     incidents elsewhere on site which had substantive learning points for them. It appeared to us

     that there were too many occasions where the event review teams failed to derive lessons

     from events. We recognise that BNFL is aware of this shortfall and is putting in efforts to

     improve its learning from experience system.

     In one plant we noted that staff were of the view that if safety had not been affected at the

     time, then an occurrence where the intended operational control had been lost was not

     reportable under the site system for reporting happenings, events and incidents. We consider

     this reflects a lack of understanding of the need to learn from such occurrences. In another

     plant we observed that this view had even been reinforced by the provision of an operating

     instruction which covered a recovery operation to bring the product back within specification.

     We suggest that BNFL should be spending effort to minimise such events rather than putting

     the effort in to recover the situation or more succinctly, "get it right first time".

     In one example we learned that one of two duplicate pieces of equipment, which was a safety

     mechanism, had been defective for a considerable period of time. Staff argued that it was not

     necessary to repair it, as the safety case was based on the availability of a single piece of

     equipment. We consider that given duplicated equipment had been provided, it would have

     been reasonably practicable to repair or replace the defective item, so as to maintain the levels

     of safety which had initially been designed into the plant.

     We observed operators in some of the older plants running them with a number of systems in

     an alarm state. The numbers involved were sufficient to be poor practice. We noted operators

     using uncontrolled copies of operating instructions at work locations and in one case a

     temporary instruction, posted up for use despite it having been formally withdrawn. We

     believe that if copies of instructions are required at work locations, normal quality assurance

     requires that they should be subject to control procedures.

     We found that there were widely varying working cultures and practices across the site,

     particularly apparent with the general process worker and skilled trade positions. We noted a

     relationship between the age of the plant and the working practices adopted. In some of the

     more modern plants, there was a flexible approach to worker skilling and the basis of

     allocating tasks to individuals. We understand this flexibility was possible because staff had

     been trained and encouraged to build up actual work experience in different skills from those

     for which they were originally trained or that their jobs formerly required. We observed in

     some of the older plants, the practice was to retain an approach of almost single skill areas for

     process workers and skilled trade positions. We found that the staff in these areas in general

     felt less valued than those in the areas of more flexible working.

     An important indicator of a safety culture is the so called no blame culture. This encourages

     people who have found something wrong or done something inappropriate to report the

     matter so that colleagues can learn to avoid the event. It is important to emphasise that there is

     a difference between a no blame and a no discipline culture. There will be times in a no blame

     culture where disciplinary action has to be considered because of the nature of the event. We

     looked at a small number of investigations for evidence of this no blame culture.

     Whilst not wishing to comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of any specific

     disciplinary action, we note from the sample of incidents studied that the effect of BNFL

     Sellafield's shift in attitude to following-up events is often to challenge either the individual, or

     his or her immediate supervisor. This can be seen to be in line with BNFL's recent

     exhortations that people must comply with their instructions. However, in the sample of

     incidents we specifically examined, we observed that behind any deficiency in an individual's

     performance was often a trail of poor standards which had been tolerated by management. In

     the sample of incidents we examined, it appeared that higher levels of management were

     unaware of day to day custom and practice. When the custom and practice was brought to

     their attention by an incident, they considered the custom and practice to be unacceptable.

     We note that concern amongst employees and others such as contractors at BNFL Sellafield,

     and the sense of injustice which is engendered, has grown within the past year.

     We noted a lack of critical questioning attitude by staff, for example when considering the

     potential impact of a modification proposal if it were inadequately conceived or executed."

 

As the HSE report continues, it is very important to note that it was not only negligence on the part of the workers. Management, to the top level of the operation was involved in this long term, systemic negligence. From the report:

 

"Recommendation 26 - BNFL should implement a programme to improve the safety

behaviour of staff and management.

 

     It is inevitable that some staff will fall short of perfection in matching their deeds with their

     words. For example we have already noted that at the highest level, the company has not

     reissued the company vision statement or updated the Company Manual. We have examples

     of similar failings across all levels within BNFL. We consider the shortcomings are sufficient to  warrant BNFL taking remedial action. Key areas which we have identified during our

     inspection are ensuring consultation with all stakeholders, delivering the requirements of high

     level company documentation, ensuring that a better balance of communication is achieved

     (good news versus bad news reporting), dealing with incidents and associated potential

     disciplinary action, and ensuring actions are properly closed out.

 

Recommendation 27 - BNFL should review the resources available to and the expertise of

management and demonstrate to NII that this is sufficient to ensure that management's

actions match their words."

 

A recent (March 22, 2000) article in the New York Times (appended) quotes this very management of BNFL, David Bonser as saying "We feel very badly about the pellets." If a major reactor accident had been caused by MOX fuel failure or dysfunction due the negligence of BNFL, they would be doing more than "feeling bad."

 

There is no area more important than Quality Assurance

 

NUREG 1718 gives lip service to this concept. However, in a number of key areas there is blatant disregard for this principle. The following two examples are chosen for comment, but the lack is endemic throughout the document.

 

Criticality: The detailed nuclear criticality (chapter 6) requirements are summed by the Safety evaluation which cross-references  many other sections of the Review Plan, but omits the Quality Assurance, Quality Control section.

 

There are also a great many opportunities for exemptions given throughout the NUREG. One which startled this reviewer was the statement that overhead water pipes could be flatly ignored in the evaluation of limiting fission moderator material. There was no mention of necessity to qualify such pipes to seismic standards or consideration of water hammers. Thus NUREG 1718 itself dismisses the very safety culture it gives lip service to.

 

Fire Protection: Quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) are vital in the area of fire protection. Section 7.4.3.2 C. states: "Combustible materials are not used in the construction and confinement system."  Given the problematic and even fraudulent history of both the industry and the NRC as regulator in the area of  fire barrier QA and QC it is vital that there be specific guidelines as to what is and is not a combustible material. This also applies to 7.4.3.2. G. on electrical wiring. The history of the installation of Thermo-Lag and RTV silicon foam is an illustration of what can happen when words are used but their meaning is contravened. Both of these so-called fire barrier materials are in fact combustible.

 

Thermo-Lag has been installed across the U.S. in nuclear power reactors to "protect" key electrical wiring. It has subsequently been shown to be combustible, and also in some situations to increase the possibility of a fire starting. RTV silicon foam has been used extensively as a fire penetration seal where wiring has to pass through structures. This material has been shown to be combustible, support combustion and harbor fire. It has been demonstrated to be difficult to install correctly industry wide, where inspections show insufficient fill, voids, cracking and these problems are exacerbated by the lack of a non-destructive method of evaluating the seal's reliability.

 

When it comes to QA/QC on plutonium handling, the regulator MUST categorically and specifically exclude the use of problematic materials already known through a history of dysfunction to be non-protective. Further, aging of any fire protection materials must also be factored into the QA/QC regulatory scheme. Not only manufacturer and installation problems have been seen, age related degradation can significantly affect these systems and must be controlled for.

 

Risk Modeling

 

It is unacceptable to use risk modeling in the case of plutonium handling. We have seen in this past year what the results can be. All plans should be geared to prevent the high consequence events that are possible at such a facility, regardless of their probability.

 

In the area of Fire Protection risk modeling is particularly inappropriate as part of the acceptance criteria. What we have seen is that risk modeling on fire is next to impossible to do with any reliability. There are too many variables that are impossible to predict, such as transient combustible such as lubrication oil, diesel fuel and combustible gases.

 

Financial Qualification

 

There has been a quiet policy decision completely un-reviewed in the NEPA process, that the MOX fuel fabrication facility under question will NOT be dismantled and decommissioned under the DOE contracts with the applicant.  This opens a tremendous uncertainty about the financial liability for this eventual costly process. Plutonium contaminated waste is most certainly not cheap to deal with. Is it possible since it is completely omitted in this Standard Review Plan, which clearly states that it is intended to apply to license amendments and extensions, and per chance, other possible MOX fuel fabrication facilities in the future (? perhaps implied, not stated) that this HUGE area of financial consideration is simply to be ignored?

 

Is it therefore possible that under some eventual bankruptcy of this completely uneconomical, high risk and ill advised nuclear expansionism that NRC and DOE are pursuing together at the expense of the "common defense and security and to provide reasonable protection of the health and safety of workers and the public and the environment" that the cost of decommissioning could devolve to the people of South Carolina? This is exactly what happened to the people of Oklahoma with regard to the contamination of the Gore, Oklahoma Sequoya Fuels site for which no decommissioning funds were ever secured. This situation in Oklahoma is the direct result of inadequate action on the part of NRC as regulator, allowing the General Atomics Corporation to apparently transfer not only their assets, but their federal ID number to an international "off shore" entity, leaving Sequyah fuels all "washed up" and a sea of uranium in the ground water on the borders of the Cherokee Nation and a number of fast growing communities.

 

While we have offered some specific critique of NIREG 1718, we nonetheless find it inconceivable that an agency such as NRC that clearly supports and endorses the nuclear energy option would go forward with such a misguided plan as the licensing of a MOX plutonium fuel fabrication facility. We suggest you get your priorities straight.

 

At the very least we urge you to rewrite the document to indicate that rejecting the application is at least an option.

 

Mary Olson

Nuclear Information & Resource Service

from the Southeast Office

3/27/2000

 

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A LAPSE AT HOME COMES TO HAUNT A BRITISH EXPORT

                         New York Times

                    Wednesday, March 22, 2000

                       by Matthew L. Wald

 

      WASHINGTON, March 21 -- From simmering tanks of high-level nuclear

waste in Washington State and plutonium laced with chemical poisons in

Idaho to production of radioactive gases in South Carolina, the federal

government's nuclear weapons program has festering technical and

environmental problems like no one else in the country.

    With no easy way to solve them, the Energy Department has gone to

one of the few entities in the world with experience as broad as its

own: British Nuclear Fuels, part of the nuclear power and weapons agency

of the British government, now spun off as a government-owned company.

    But as the British company now known as BNFL prepares to tackle the

American problems, an embarrassing lapse has emerged back home in its

core business, which is producing plutonium fuel. British government

inspectors reported in February that for months, employees who were

supposed to be performing a final measurement of fuel pellets bound for

Japanese reactors were instead copying numbers from previous shipments.

BNFL executives said workers felt the work was boring and a crew on the

night shift had apparently found it easier to falsify the numbers.

    Concern over the company's business practices is now affecting its

contracts with the United States government. Energy Secretary Bill

Richardson, in a telephone interview from Algeria, where he is meeting

OPEC ministers, said he had ordered his department to send a team to

England to meet with British investigators. "We are now placing BNFL

under extra scrutiny because of these problems," he said. "I have been

uneasy about some of their operations in the U.S. If we uncover

anything, I will take swift and strong action."

    He added, "Business as usual is over with BNFL and with all our

contractors, but especially with BNFL." The situation, Mr. Richardson

said, was "itching for stronger management review."

    The company said the incident with the pellets was an isolated

problem. "We feel very badly about the pellets," said David R. Bonser, a

director of the government-owned company, and head of waste management

and decommissioning. He said it was a problem caused by "a handful of

people in one of the plants who did things they absolutely should not

have done."

    Britain's nuclear installations inspection agency, however, rejected

that defense. "Although various individuals were at fault, a systematic

failure allowed it to happen," a report, published in February, said.

"In a plant with the proper safety culture, the events described in this

report could not have happened."

    John J. Taylor, the company's chief executive, has resigned, but the

company's problems continue. Sellafield, the plant on the west coast of

England where the fuel was made, was never popular with neighbors: for

years it has dumped radioactive waste into the Irish Sea; English

anti-nuclear advocates and the Irish government would like it shut; and

the British government reported that pigeons in the area had become

radioactive from the plant's emissions. But now the problem is not just

with neighbors, but with customers.

    Japan asked the British company to take back the fuel, although the

company insists that two automatic systems measured the pellets and

found their diameter to be within specifications. A German utility,

PreussenElektra A.G., shut a reactor running on the fuel that was not

properly measured, and asked for compensation; Germany also suspended

imports of additional fuel.

    Well before its fuel problem at Sellafield, however, it was clear to

leaders of the British company that the future profitability of that

business was uncertain. As a result, they moved decisively into the

United States. With an American partner, the Morrison Knudson

Corporation, the company acquired many assets of the old Westinghouse

Corporation, which had been a major Energy Department contractor; it

also bid directly on Energy Department work at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and

Hanford, Wash. And it has hired several former Energy Department

officials, including one who approved giving a contract to BNFL without

making the company take part in a fully competitive bidding process.

    The Hanford contract, which involves solidifying liquid nuclear

wastes in glass, is expected to take decades and cost tens of billions

of dollars. At Hanford, BNFL hired the Energy Department's former site

manager, one of four high-ranking Energy Department officials now on its

payroll.

    Meanwhile, a coalition of American groups that has been pressing the

Energy Department for years to clean up its nation-wide archipelago of

weapons operations plans to file a petition with the department on

Thursday urging that BNFL be barred from government contracts, for lack

of integrity and competence. "We think clearly a case can be made, and

that the case is self-evident, that this is a company that does not

possess those qualities," said Thomas Carpenter, a lawyer with the

Government Accountability Project, in Seattle. 

    The problem is serious for the Energy Department, critics say,

because its track record on overseeing its contractors is particularly

poor. No evidence of wrongdoing has been found in BNFL's American

operations. But at Rocky Flats, near Denver, where a BNFL subsidiary

works in plutonium clean-up, a prior contractor committed five felony

violations of environmental laws with no apparent notice from the

department, which owned the plant. At Savannah River, where the company

is now involved with the plant that refuels hydrogen bombs with a

radioactive form of hydrogen gas, a prior contractor's list of 30

reactor accidents over the years came as a complete surprise to top

Energy Department officials.

    Secretary Richardson has had the department put special emphasis on

improving its oversight, but in January of this year a report by its own

inspector general complained that at Hanford, where BNFL has been

selected for the largest environmental cleanup in the country, the

department lacked the personnel, plans and other management tools needed

to oversee the project. Without those plans, the inspector general

warned, "the Department may be unable to control, predict, explain, or

defend future changes to cost and schedule." The cost estimate is now

$47 billion, up from an estimate of $30 billion to $38 billion in 1996.

The company's portion would be $6.8 billion to $10 billion, by current

estimates. A decision on a contract is supposed to be made by August.

    In addition, outside groups that have followed the Energy

Department's clean-up efforts for years now say that the company has

taken on other jobs for the department in areas in which it has no

special qualifications. For example, in Oak Ridge, the department has

enormous derelict factories that it formerly used to enrich uranium for

reactor and weapons fuel, and which it would like to release for private

industrial use. Forgoing bidding, the Energy Department gave BNFL a $238

million contract in 1997 based on the idea that it had done similar work

at Capenhurst, in England. The department relied on a contracting system

called "other than full and open competition."

    The Energy Department reported to Congress that it wanted BNFL

because of "efficiencies in the approach to recycle and building

decontamination based on the company's successful experiences at

Capbenhurst." A key point for the Energy Department was the ability to

decontaminate tons of nickel, a valuable metal that was used in the

enrichment process.

    But the company did not do that work at Capenhurst; the nickel there

is still contaminated. And the system it proposed to use for

decontamination of nickel at Oak Ridge is now the subject of a patent

dispute between its American inventor and the Energy Department. In a

suit brought by the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union

against the plan, a federal district court judge in Washington described

the process as "entirely experimental." Because of uncertainty about

what standards should apply, the department has dropped plans, for now

at least, to sell the nickel on the open market.

    The contracting officer for the Energy Department who approved

"other than full and open competition" later went to work for BNFL. So

did the former manager of the Hanford site, who is now an executive vice

president at an American subsidiary of the company, and so did the

former manager of the Energy Department's Idaho Engineering and

Environmental Laboratory, where BNFL won a contract to build an

incinerator for plutonium mixed with hazardous chemicals not far from

Yellowstone National Park.

    "They're swallowing fairly important and influential executives

right and left," said Mr. Carpenter of the Government Accountability

Project. Energy Department officials said that none of the officials had

violated any conflict-of-interest rules.

    BNFL's problems at Sellafield have produced ammunition for a group

opposed to the incinerator, Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, as they have

for other critics around the country.

    "It is inconceivable," said Tom Patricelli, the group's executive

director, "that the United States government would allow a foreign

corporation surrounded by such scandal and turmoil to build a

first-of-its-kind incinerator on American soil, so close to the crown

jewel of our national park system."

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