[Federal Register Volume 68, Number 35 (Friday, February 21, 2003)]
[Notices]
[Pages 8530-8533]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 03-4106]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Solicitation of Public Comments on Spent Fuel Transportation
Package Performance Study Test Protocols
AGENCY: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
ACTION: Opening of comment period and public meeting announcement.
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SUMMARY: This Federal Register notice announces the availability, for
public comment, of the Test Protocols Report (draft NUREG-1768) for the
NRC's spent nuclear fuel transportation Package Performance Study
(PPS). The PPS is a confirmatory research program focused on the
probabilities and consequences of severe transportation accidents--the
very small fraction of accidents that could result in impact or thermal
forces, on casks, that exceed NRC's standards for cask design. The PPS
will use a combination of testing and analyses to develop data and
validate methods of analysis for use in transportation risk
assessments. A public participation process will continue as PPS
proceeds, to ensure that stakeholder concerns are considered by the PPS
and to support increased public confidence in NRC's regulatory
activities, considering potential future increases in the number of
spent fuel transports.
The test protocols report describes, at a conceptual level, full-
scale spent fuel cask impact and fire physical testing that NRC may
sponsor over the next couple of years. The ``Executive Summary'' of the
test protocols report is included in this notice, and full copies of
the report are available for comment at NRC's Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff or may be obtained
from the contact. Additional copies of the report and other PPS related
documents can also be found at the Sandia Web site: http://ttd.sandia.gov/nrc/modal.html.
DATES: Written comments will be accepted until May 30, 2003. Comments
received after this date and time will be considered if it is practical
to do so, but the Commission is able to ensure consideration only for
comments received before this date and time. As part of the public
comments period, NRC will hold four (4) facilitated meetings: in
Bethesda, Maryland, on March 6, 2003; in Las Vegas, Nevada, on March
12, 2003; in Pahrump, Nevada, on March 13, 2003; and in Rosemont,
Illinois, on March 19, 2003. The meetings will be transcribed and
transcripts will be made available from the Sandia Web site.
ADDRESSES: NRC recommends that comments be submitted by e-mail, but
mail delivery is acceptable. Submit comments to Michael Lesar, Chief
Rules and Directives Branch, Office of Administration, Mail Stop: T6-D-
59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC, 20555-0001; or
by internet electronic mail to [email protected]. Comments may also be
provided at the NRC Web site: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/doc-comment/form.html.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Andrew J. Murphy about any
questions on the material in the Test Protocols Report. He can be
reached at the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Mail Stop: T-10-D-20, Washington, DC 20555-0001;
telephone 301-415-6011 or by internet electronic mail at [email protected].
Any questions on participation in the public meetings should be
directed to Mr. Francis X. Cameron; telephone 301-415-1642 or by
internet electronic mail at [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The PPS began in 1999 with a scoping phase,
consisting of a series of public meetings to identify stakeholder
issues with transportation risk studies and identify potential areas of
further research. The scoping phase of PPS culminated in 2000 with
issuance of the PPS issues and resolution options report (hereafter
Issues Report) for comment, and an associated series of public
meetings. NRC has since reissued the Issues Report, together with
summaries of the public meetings and written comments received, as
NUREG/CR-6768. The Issues Report identified the lines of investigation
for PPS: (1) Use recent accident statistics/data to reconstruct train
and train accident event trees; (2) perform a high-speed impact test on
a full-scale rail cask, to compare pre-test analyses with test results;
(3) perform a long-duration fire test to compare pre-test analyses with
test results; and (4) perform experiments on fuel pellets, rods, and
assemblies, to examine failure modes and fracturing properties, to
support radioactive material release analyses.
The PPS Test Protocols Report is the first major PPS document since
the Issues Report. The Test Protocols Report describes, at a conceptual
level, the impact and fire tests that are currently planned for PPS,
along with the goals for these tests. Several other PPS tasks,
including the accident statistics/data work, historical accidents
investigation, and uncertainty/sensitivity analyses for risk
assessments, are planned as part of PPS, but they are not part of the
Test Protocol, as it focuses on testing. Fuel tests are not discussed
in the Test Protocols Report, because those tests are proceeding on a
different schedule from the impact and fire tests being conducted under
the PPS.
As mentioned, the Test Protocols describe PPS tests at a conceptual
level. NRC believes it is prudent to obtain comments on the tests while
at a conceptual level, because detailed planning and procurement for a
specific series of tests will be a resource-intensive effort, and NRC
recognizes that comments could change test approaches and plans. After
comments on the Test Protocols have been collected and considered, NRC
will modify PPS plans as necessary and direct development of detailed
test plans and procedures for each of the PPS testing programs. The
detailed plans, procedures, and tests will be made available.
Public Meetings
In addition to soliciting written public comment on the protocols,
NRC will conduct public meetings to facilitate discussion and comment
on the PPS Test Protocols. The meetings are planned as follows:
[sbull] Workshop: March 6, 2003, 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m., in the
Auditorium at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Headquarters,
Washington, D.C. 20555-0001;
[sbull] Workshop: March 12, 2003, 10 a.m.-7 p.m., at the Clark
County Building Department, Russell/Cameron Office, 4701 West Russell
Road, Las Vegas, Nevada 89118;
[sbull] Public Meeting/Seminar: March 13, 2003, 6 p.m.-9 p.m., at
the Mountain View Casino and Bowl, 1750 South Pahrump Valley Boulevard,
Pahrump, Nevada 89048; and
[sbull] Workshop: March 19, 2003, 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m., at the Embassy
Suites Hotel O'Hare, 5500 N. River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018.
[[Page 8531]]
The workshops will be convened in a ``roundtable format.'' To have
manageable discussions, the number of participants at the table will be
limited. NRC, through the meeting facilitator, will ensure that by a
broad spectrum of interests participates at the meetings, including
citizen and environmental groups, nuclear and transportation, industry,
academia, and governmental representatives at the Federal, State, and
local level. Other members of the public are welcome to attend, and
there will be opportunities to comment on each agenda item to be
discussed by roundtable participants. Written comments will also be
accepted at all meetings.
Workshop Provisional Agenda [March 6, Washington, DC (8 a.m.-5:30
p.m.); March 12, Las Vegas, NV (10 a.m.-7 p.m.); March 19, Rosemont, IL
(8 a.m.-5:30 p.m)]
Meet and Greet
Work shop objectives, ground rules, agenda overview
Participant Introductions and Concerns
Regulatory and research framework for cask testing/Questions
Overarching Issues: participant participation
Break
Discussion on General Testing Issues
Lunch on your own
Impact Test Issues
Break
Baltimore Tunnel Fire Presentation
Fire Test Issues: participant discussion
Other Issues
Adjourn
Seminar Provisional Agenda (March 13, Pahrump, NV)
NRC Opening remarks and welcome
NRC Activities and Roles for Spent Fuel Transportation
Introduction of Package Performance Study
Break
Test Protocols Report: impact and fire tests
Wrap up
Adjourn
A World-Wide Web site has been established for dissemination of PPS
information and documents to interested members of the public.
Electronic copies of the Test Protocols Report and additional
information on the public meetings can be obtained at http://ttd.sandia.gov/nrc/modal.htm.
Executive Summary of Test Protocols Report
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) believes that current
regulations and programs for transporting spent nuclear fuel (SNF)
result in a high degree of safety. The Agency bases this belief largely
on the staff's confidence in the shipping casks NRC certifies. Ongoing
confirmatory research regarding transportation safety further supports
the Agency's belief.
Under the current regulations, NRC requires that SNF casks must be
designed and constructed to survive a sequence of tests designed to
simulate postulated accidents. These tests include a 30-foot drop onto
an unyielding surface and a 30-minute fully engulfing fire. NRC
regulations permit certification through testing, analysis, comparison
with similar certified designs, or various combinations of these
methods. Typically, the Agency has certified SNF casks using a
combination of analyses and testing of scale models or cask components.
Previous NRC risk studies have estimated that the Agency's
certification standards encompass well over 99 percent of possible
transportation accidents.
NRC certification of SNF casks has contributed to an excellent
safety record for transporting spent fuel. Further, the characteristics
of both fuel and cask systems continue to evolve, and the testing and
analytical techniques used in certification applications continue to
improve. However, the near-term possibility of a significant increase
in the number of spent fuel shipments has focused public attention on
the safety of SNF transportation. Despite the excellent record achieved
to date and general improvements in cask design and analysis, some
stakeholders have voiced concerns regarding transportation safety and
the lack of full-scale testing of SNF casks.
NRC believes the safety protection the current transportation
regulatory system provides is well-established. NRC's primary role in
transportation of spent fuel is certification of the casks used for
transport. NRC ensures that shipping casks are robust by regulating
their design and construction, by independently confirming the ability
of designs to meet the regulations and accident conditions through
modeling and analyses, and by overseeing that licensees properly build,
use, and maintain the casks. NRC's confidence in casks that it
certifies is also supported by ongoing transportation safety research
and by the outstanding safety record compiled using NRC-certified
casks. Currently, NRC has certified several transportation cask designs
that could be used to transport spent fuel, and additional designs are
under review.
Package Performance Study
Because of stakeholder concerns and a desire to further validate
the computer models used to evaluate the safety of cask transportation,
NRC initiated, in 1999, a program known as the Package Performance
Study (PPS). Under this ongoing program, the NRC staff is examining the
adequacy of the analytical methods and data that are used to estimate
the response of transportation casks to those improbable, extreme
accidents that might cause radioactive materials to be released to the
environment. However, the PPS is not intended to involve the
development of new standards for transportation casks.
The NRC staff identified the tasks that are described in this
report through two series of public meetings and associated comment
periods, during which the staff solicited and discussed the various
concerns of citizens, members of the nuclear industry, and governmental
organizations. The staff, with contractor support, subsequently rated
and summarized those concerns in the ``Spent Nuclear Fuel
Transportation Package Performance Study Issues Report,'' NUREG/CR-
6768, June 2002, which Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) prepared for
NRC. Specifically, on the basis of its review of the public record from
both the public meetings and written comments, the NRC staff concluded
that the following four tasks would address the primary concerns
stakeholders raised:
(1) Use recent accident data to re-analyze the truck and rail
accident-speed and fire-duration statistics developed by the Modal
Study (Fischer, et al., 1987).
(2) Perform high-speed collision tests on full-scale rail and truck
casks \1\ and compare the test results with pretest damage predictions
developed by computer models.
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\1\ The ``Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Package Performance
Study Issues Report,'' NUREG/CR-6768, did not specify the type of
transportation cask to be tested; subsequently, NRC has proposed
that the PPS test program should involve one rail cask design and
one truck cask design.
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(3) Expose full-scale rail and truck casks to fully engulfing,
long-duration fires and compare the measured cask temperatures with
pretest temperature predictions developed by computer models.
(4) Conduct laboratory tests to examine rod failure, pellet
fracturing, and the release of particles from the failed rods, and use
the test results to determine the response to extreme impacts of fuel
pellets, fuel rods, and fuel rods containing fuel pellets.
[[Page 8532]]
This report addresses Tasks 2 and 3, listed above. It does not
address the reanalysis of rail and truck accident statistics published
in the Modal Study because that reanalysis does not involve conducting
any tests or experiments. Similarly this report does not discuss NRC's
plans regarding laboratory tests to determine the response of spent
fuel pellets and rods to extreme accident conditions, because those
test are proceeding on a different schedule than the impact and thermal
tests being conducted under the PPS.
Test Protocols
This report summarizes the field tests that NRC proposes to perform
under the PPS, as well as the analyses performed to develop the test
summaries. Throughout this report, these summaries are called ``test
protocols.'' Publication of these test protocols does not imply any NRC
commitment to conduct any of these tests, or to conduct any test
exactly as described in this report.
Collision Test Protocol
Within the context of the PPS, NRC plans to conduct separate high-
speed impact tests of a full-scale rail spent fuel cask and full-scale
truck spent fuel cask, using a drop impact as opposed to a horizontal
impact test. The drop impact test was proposed after weighing such
factors as test objectives, costs, local environmental and logistical
concerns, and modeling issues. The staff will then compare the results
of these tests to detailed pre-test damage predictions developed by
computer models. (The computer model analyses conducted in the process
of developing the preliminary design of the impact test are described
in this report.) The staff proposes the following tasks for the
collision test protocol:
[sbull] Subject a full-scale rail cask to an extreme impact onto a
flat, unyielding surface. (The staff proposes an unyielding surface
because: (1) The proposed impact test is intended to evaluate cask
performance, and an unyielding surface causes all the cask kinetic
energy to be spent deforming the cask; and (2) an unyielding surface
simplifies the analysis by deforming only the cask and not the target.)
[sbull] Equip the lid end of the test cask with an impact limiter;
ensure the cask contains a fuel canister, if the test cask design uses
canisters, with one real fuel assembly containing surrogate fuel, and
sufficient dummy assemblies to fill the canister or cask.
[sbull] Structure the test to deliver the impact onto the lid end
of the cask that is equipped with the impact limiter.
[sbull] Orient the cask so the impact is on the corner or edge of
the lid.
[sbull] Test cask performance on impact with an unyielding surface
at an impact speed of 26.8 to 40.2 meters per second (m/s) (60 to 90
miles per hour (mph)) (based on preliminary analysis of the computer
model).
[sbull] Subject a full-scale truck cask to an extreme ``back-
breaker'' impact \2\ onto one of the internal flat sides of the cask,
midway between the impact limiters onto a rigid semi-cylinder, as shown
in the following illustration.
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\2\ A back-breaker impact is one in which the cask strikes the
target between the impact limiters in a sideways orientation. The
impact target is similar to a bridge column or abutment.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TN21FE03.000
[sbull] Ensure that the cask contains one real fuel assembly and
sufficient dummy assemblies to fill the cask.
[sbull] Test cask performance on impact with an unyielding surface
at an impact speed of 26.8 to 40.2 m/s (60 to 90 mph) (based on
preliminary analysis of the computer model).
Proposed Speed for Rail Impact Test
The NRC staff, with contractor support, obtained preliminary impact
analyses to support the development of the test protocols. These
analyses spanned the range of impact speeds from 26.8 to 40.2 m/s (60
to 90 mph); this report presents the results of these analyses for
impact speeds of 26.8 and 33.5 m/s (60 and 75 mph). The NRC staff
reviewed these SNL analyses and developed three criteria for proposing
test parameters for the PPS impact and thermal tests. The NRC staff
conducted a trial application of these criteria to determine the speed
for the rail cask impact. (Appendix A to this report fully describes
the three criteria and the trial application.) The NRC staff optimized
the benefits of the three criteria [ i.e., (1) Enhancing public
confidence; (2) validating the computer models; and (3) ensuring
realism in the probability of the occurrence of the test parameters].
On the basis of that optimization, the NRC staff proposes the impact
speed of 33.5 m/s (75 mph).
Fire Test Protocol
Within the context of the PPS, NRC plans to conduct separate fire
tests of a full-scale rail cask and a full-scale truck cask. For these
thermal tests, PPS will use a fully engulfing, optically dense fire,
which completely surrounds the test specimen and obscures visibility of
the test specimen through the flames. In each test, the fire will burn
for more than the half-hour duration of the thermal certification test.
The NRC staff will compare the measured temperature history of the cask
at various points with the detailed pretest predictions developed by
computer models. (Again, the computer model analyses conducted in the
process of developing the preliminary design of the thermal test are
described in this report.) The staff proposes the following tasks for
the fire test protocol:
[sbull] Subject a full-scale rail cask to a fully engulfing,
optically dense fire for a duration of more than one-half hour.
[sbull] Subject a full-scale truck cask to a fully engulfing,
optically dense fire for a duration of more than one-half hour.
Public Comments
NRC is publishing and distributing this report to solicit public
comments
[[Page 8533]]
regarding the proposed SNF cask performance test protocols, while they
are still at a conceptual level as reflected in this report. In
addition to continuing the interactions in developing the scope of the
PPS, this review at the conceptual level is being conducted because
detailed planning and procurement for a specific series of tests will
be resource-intensive. NRC anticipates that the public comments could
result in worthwhile changes to the underlying test approaches and
plans. The Agency is particularly interested in stakeholders' views on
the following eleven issues:
[sbull] How many casks and what types of cask designs should be
used in the tests?
[sbull] At what scale should the cask impact tests be conducted
(e.g., full-scale or partial-scale)?
[sbull] Should the impact tests be conducted as drops from a tower,
as proposed in this report, or along a horizontal track, using a rocket
sled?
[sbull] What should the impact speed and orientation be for the
rail cask impact test?
[sbull] Are 26.8 to 40.2 m/s (60 to 90 mph) a reasonable speed
range for the rail cask impact test, given that the frequency for a
rail cask impacting a hard rock surface within this speed range is
10-6 to 10-8 per year?
[sbull] Is the 33.5-m/s (75-mph) rail cask impact speed proposed by
the NRC staff appropriate?
[sbull] What should the impact speed be for the back breaker truck
cask impact test?
[sbull] What should be the duration and size of the cask fire
tests?
[sbull] What should be the cask position relative to the fire?
[sbull] How many and what types [real or surrogate, pressurized-
water reactor or boiling-water reactor] of fuel assemblies should be in
the casks during the tests?
[sbull] Will the proposed tests be able to yield risk insights
consistent with NRC's risk-informed regulatory initiatives?
After receiving and considering all stakeholder comments on the
test protocols, the NRC staff will direct the development of detailed
test plans and procedures for each of the PPS testing programs. NRC
will make these detailed plans, procedures, and tests available to the
public before finalizing and conducting the planned tests. Thus, the
finalized detailed plans will reflect public comments on these test
protocols, constraints imposed by NRC's programmatic priorities, and
the available funding to support these tests.
Conclusion
PPS development of this new cask impact, cask fire, and spent fuel
response data will substantially improve the technical basis that
underlies the estimation of the risks posed by extra-regulatory
accidents that might occur during the shipment of spent fuel in Type B
packages.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of February, 2003.
For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Charles L. Miller,
Deputy Director, Spent Fuel Project Office, Office of Nuclear Material
Safety and Safeguards.
[FR Doc. 03-4106 Filed 2-20-03; 8:45 am]
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