[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 23, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 9003-9004]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-03811]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
[Docket No. 50-293; NRC-2016-0035]
Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Petition request; receipt.
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is giving notice
that by petition dated June 24, 2015, as supplemented, David Lochbaum
of the Union of Concerned Scientists and others (the petitioners)
requested that the NRC take action with regard to the Pilgrim Nuclear
Power Station (Pilgrim). The petitioner's requests are included in the
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section of this document.
ADDRESSES: Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2016-0035 when contacting the
NRC about the availability of information regarding this document. You
may obtain publicly-available information related to this document
using any of the following methods:
Federal Rulemaking Web site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID NRC-2016-0035. Address
questions about NRC dockets to Carol Gallagher; telephone: 301-415-
3463; email: [email protected].
NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System
(ADAMS): You may obtain publicly-available documents online in the
ADAMS Public Documents collection at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. To begin the search, select ``ADAMS Public Documents'' and
then select ``Begin Web-based ADAMS Search.'' For problems with ADAMS,
please contact the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at
1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by email to [email protected]. The
ADAMS accession number for each document referenced (if that document
is available in ADAMS) is provided the first time that a document is
referenced.
NRC's PDR: You may examine and purchase copies of public
documents at the NRC's PDR, Room O1-F21, One White Flint North, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On June 24, 2015, the petitioners requested
that the NRC take enforcement action with regard to Pilgrim concerning
the current licensing basis on flooding (ADAMS Accession No.
ML16029A407). The petitioners requested that the NRC take enforcement
action to require that the current licensing basis for Pilgrim
explicitly include flooding caused by local intense precipitation or
probable maximum precipitation events.
As the basis for this request, the petitioners referred to
Pilgrim's flood reevaluation report provided by Entergy Nuclear
Operations, Inc. (Entergy, the licensee) to the NRC in a letter dated
March 12, 2015 (ADAMS Accession No. ML15075A082). The petitioners state
that Pilgrim's reevaluations indicate that the site could experience
flood levels from heavy rainfall events nearly ten feet higher than
anticipated when the plant was originally licensed. Although existing
doors protect important equipment from being submerged and damaged, the
petitioners assert that neither regulatory requirements nor enforceable
commitments exist that ensure the continued reliability of flood
protection features that are currently installed at the site to protect
important equipment from being submerged and damaged. The petition
states in relevant part ``the petitioners seek to rectify safety
shortcoming by revising the current licensing basis to include flooding
caused by heavy rainfall events.''
The request is being treated pursuant to Section 2.206 of title 10
of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) of the NRC's regulations. A
conference call was held between the petitioner and the Petition Review
Board (PRB) on August 5, 2015, to discuss the petition; the transcript
of that teleconference is an additional supplement to the petition
(ADAMS Accession No. ML15230A017). The PRB has reviewed the petition,
and its supplement, and referred the request to the Director of the
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. The Director partially granted
for review the petitioners' concerns that the current licensing basis
be revised to include specific beyond-design-basis flood events at
Pilgrim. The parts of the petitioners' concerns not granted for review
are the impact of precipitation events on safety-related submerged
cables as this was previously reviewed and resolved in a prior 10 CFR
2.206 Director's Decision (ADAMS Accession No. ML13255A191), and the
request for an updated site plan of Pilgrim, because this request is
outside of the scope of the 10 CFR 2.206 process. The NRC staff will
hold the petition until a resolution of ongoing reviews associated with
the subject of the petitioners' concerns is achieved.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 11th day of February 2016.
[[Page 9004]]
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
William M. Dean,
Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. 2016-03811 Filed 2-22-16; 8:45 am]
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