NRC holds hearing on Limerick license renewal
Villanova rolls to win
By Evan Brandt | ebrandt@pottsmerc.com | The Delaware County Daily Times
PUBLISHED: September 21, 2011 at 4:08 a.m. | UPDATED: August 19, 2021 at 5:43 a.m.
LOWER POTTSGROVE — As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission prepares to receive comment from the public tomorrow about what environmental issues should be considered when deciding on Exelon's request to re-license the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station, they are likely preparing to answer a few questions about earthquakes.
Earthquakes are much on the mind of the agency these days as it announced last week it is looking for public input on a draft instruction requiring "U.S. nuclear power plants to re-examine their sites' seismic risk and provide that information to the NRC."
This request for public comments — which will be accepted until Nov. 15 and which will also be the subject of a public meeting in October — comes in the heels of the earthquake-related Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan and the Aug. 23 earthquake that rocked a Virginia nuclear plant and was felt in Pennsylvania near the Limerick plant.
However, the review began long before either event brought the combination of earthquakes and nuclear plants into such sharp public focus.
It began with a new seismic analysis started in 2003 and continued in the wake of new analysis of seismic risks in the eastern half of the U.S. by the U.S. Geological Survey.
But the agency nevertheless has been infused with a new sense of urgency about the issue.
On Monday, according to the Associated Press, the NRC issued a new report urging the agency to "immediately require operators to re-evaluate whether U.S. nuclear plants can withstand earthquakes and floods."
The report identifies "seven steps the NRC should take 'without delay'" including "immediate reviews of seismic and flooding risks at the nation's 104 reactors."
The five-member commission is scheduled to discuss the report today.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, praised the report, but noted it could take as long as two years to implement the changes recommended.
Earthquake threats to nuclear plants are measured according to a system called "design basis."
In other words: is any given plant's design adequate to withstand any particular threat, ranging from hurricane, to tornado, to flood, to earthquake to terrorist attack, to impact from a jet airliner.
The NRC insists the agency's safety standard is to determine the "design basis" for a particular threat, and then supplement that with an additional margin of safety.
For example, the epicenter of the Aug. 23 earthquake — the strongest to hit Virginia in more than 100 years — was near to the North Anna nuclear plant northwest of Richmond.
Preliminary data from the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that ground movement exceeded the plant's design basis during that quake, the first time that has occurred at an operating U.S. nuclear plant.
Both NRC officials and the plant's operators — Dominion Resources — say neither of the plant's two nuclear reactors sustained damage.
The plant has been offline since the earthquake.
The lack of serious damage shows "there's a lot of margin built into these plants," Tony Pietrangelo, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, told the Associated Press.
The NRC has scheduled an Oct. 3 meeting to discuss the inspection at the North Anna plant, and the plant's reaction to the Aug. 23 quake.
That plant is among 27 that a preliminary NRC review found may need upgrades to protect against earthquake risk. That list also includes the Limerick Generating Station's two reactors. (See related story).
In the wake of that quake, the Associated Press also published a report analyzing NRC data and concluding that "the risk an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought — 24 times as high in one case."
The AP analysis mirrored one done by MSNBC.com in March that also used NRC data to determine that the risk of earthquake damage was greater than once thought by the federal agency.
The MSNBC.com report ranked Limerick as the plant with the third highest risk of being damaged by an earthquake.
The risk of an earthquake damaging either or both reactors at Limerick was increased by 141 percent under the MSNBC.com analysis.
That analysis found the chance of an earthquake damaging the plant was raised in the study to 1 in 18,868.
The previous risk rating was 1 in 45,455.
The NRC disavowed both the MSNBC.com and AP analysis, saying NRC data had been used in a way that is inconsistent with how the agency measures risk.
"AP data is not our data and should not be interpreted as such," Viktoria Mytling, an NRC spokeswoman for the region that regulates Illinois told an Illinois newspaper in the wake of the AP report.
"They took certain data from NRC documents and turned it into a table that poses a nuclear threat to power plants. This is not what the NRC data means, and is not how the agency uses it," Mytling told The Morris Daily Herald. "We do not endorse AP's conclusions and ratings."
In May, The Mercury reported on an NRC inspection at Limerick — done in the wake of the Japan disaster — that found some parts of the plant might not be reliable to prevent damage from flood or fire if the plant was struck with an earthquake.
An NRC spokesman confirmed in May some of the elements called into question by the site inspectors "could adversely impact the plant's fire and flood mitigation capabilities," even if the emergency were within the bounds of a disaster the plant was designed to withstand — it's "design basis."
In the wake of the Aug. 23 quake, NRC inspectors conducted a "visual" inspection of the Limerick plant and announced no damage had been found.
However, an NRC spokesman confirmed the only way damage to underground infrastructure at the plant — pipes and wiring and the like — would be through irregularities in flows on guages.
"Whether those checks would need to be accelerated in light of yesterday's earthquake will have to be determined," spokesman Neil Sheehan said the day after the quake struck.
An extensive AP investigation in June highlighted numerous long-standing leaks and corroded underground pipes that went, in some cases, undiscovered and un-repaired for years.
Although the NRC and plant operators maintain the plants are safe, "e-mails obtained in a more than 11,000-page records request by the AP this month show NRC experts were worried privately this year that plants needed stronger safeguards to account for the higher risk assessments," the wire service reported earlier this month.
On March 14, Brian Sheron, who heads the NRC's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, wrote an e-mail subsequently obtained by the AP, which had updated numbers showing the government "didn't know everything about the seismicity" in the central and eastern parts of the country.
"And isn't there a prediction that the West Coast is likely to get hit with some huge earthquake in the next 30 years or so? Yet we relicense their plants," he wrote.
Whether or not earthquake risk is a factor in the current relicensing request for Limerick remains to be seen.
Two public hearings on Limerick's re-licensing request will be conducted by the NRC tomorrow, Thursday, Sept. 22 at Sunnybrook Ballroom, 50 N. Sunnybrook Road, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The ballroom is located near the intersection of Sunnybrook Road and East High Street.
Exelon Nuclear submitted its license renewal application for both reactors, on June 22.
On Aug. 12, the NRC accepted the application and deemed it complete, allowing the relicensing process to begin.
The license for Unit 1 expires on Oct. 26, 2024, and the license on Unit 2 expires on June 22, 2029.
Unit 1 went on line in 1986 and Unit 2 went on line in 1990.
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Evan Brandt | Reporter
Evan Brandt has been a reporter for The Mercury since 1997.
ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
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