[Washington, DC] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety Licensing Board took a step towards granting a hearing to a coalition of public interest groups today by re-admitting a contention focused on the severely corroded containment which now remains at issue in the 20-year license extension for the Oyster Creek nuclear generating station.
“We are pleased the licensing board re-admitted our challenge on the inadequacy of sound wave measurements taken in this severely corroded reactor containment,” said Paul Gunter, Director of the Reactor Watchdog Project for Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Takoma Park, MD. “However, the board whittled down our concerns to the extreme focusing solely on the issue of frequency of inspections to the exclusion of 99% of a potentially more corroded area that AmerGen has not proposed to inspect,” he said.
The licensing board broadly dismissed the citizens’ arguments including an inadequate acceptance criteria to ensure safety margins in damaged areas, AmerGen’s failure to adequately monitor and respond to leakage and potential deterioration of an epoxy coating over severely rusted areas, the inadequate scope of ultrasonic test (UT) measurements which focus on less that 1% of the damaged “sand bed” region, and flawed analysis of UT measurements which nullified the results of 1994 and 1996 testing.
“This is a great decision for us because it means that we will get disclosure of Exelon documents regarding monitoring of the drywell liner,” said Richard Webster, staff attorney for Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic which is representing the citizens groups. “What I can not believe is that the board thought we should have known in November 2005 how Oyster Creek was going to take and analyze measurements that it did not commit to doing until 6 to 8 months later,” he said. In fact, Exelon’s July 22, 2005 application to NRC requesting a twenty-year license extension for the nation’s oldest operating reactor credited that the corrosion was stopped solely by on the basis of visual inspections of an epoxy coating painted over the severely rusted portion of the containment component in 1992 and proposed no further actual measurements of the remaining wall thickness of the damaged component. Based on UT measurements taken in 1992 and 1994 some corroded areas were already found to be under safety margin.
The last UT measurements taken in the severely damaged “sand bed” region were conducted by the previous operator in 1996. The 1994 and 1996 results have been discredited as fundamentally flawed and “anomalous” by NRC.
“We are back in the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ world of NRC,” said Webster referring to the board’s dismissal of some of the citizens’ claims on timeliness grounds.
“We are considering our options to correct this illogical approach as we move forward,” said Webster.
Earlier federal licensing board decisions had granted then “mooted” the coalition’s contention filed on November 14, 2005 filing after AmerGen acquiesced to amend its application with three subsequent commitments for further limited inspections in the severely corroded “sand bed” region of the all important reactor containment structure, before and during the license extension. The licensing board, however, did not dismiss the contention but provided intervenors the opportunity to argue further on why AmerGen’s amended application might also be insufficient. The intervenors responded which has now been accepted on a limited scope of the coalition’s concerns for public safety arising out of the damage seen to date.
“It is extremely disturbing to those of us living around the reactor the NRC continues to focus on narrowing a hearing on matters vital to public safety through arcane legal procedures rather than open this rust bucket up to full disclosure and thorough inspections,” said Janet Tauro of Grandmothers, Mothers and Other for Safe Energy.