Federal Register, Volume 75, Number 219, November 15, 2010, Pages 69571-69850 Page: 69,649
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Federal Register/Vol. 75, No. 219/Monday, November 15, 2010/Notices
Facility Seismic Safety. The Board followed
up its Recommendation with a letter to the
Deputy Secretary of Energy on March 15,
2010, that sought to determine whether
DOE's current interpretation of 10 CFR Part
830 and DOE Standard 3009-94 still supports
the principles of providing adequate
protection of the public, workers, and the
environment from the hazards of operating
DOE's defense nuclear facilities. The Board's
letter particularly expressed concern
regarding the appearance that DOE's present
interpretation is that nuclear safety
Evaluation Guidelines established in DOE
Standard 3009-94 do not have to be met.
DOE's June 10, 2010, response to the
Board's letter states that DOE's utilization
and implementation of DOE Standard 3009-
94 has not changed since issuance of 10 CFR
Part 830. DOE's response observes that DOE
Standard 3009-94 "was not written as a
prescriptive item-by-item requirements
document; rather it provides an overall
approach and guidance for preparing a DSA."
DOE's response states that the Standard
describes steps that the contractor may take
if the postulated accident consequences
cannot be mitigated below the Evaluation
Guideline. DOE's response also cites
guidance for DOE approval authorities
contained in DOE Standard 1104-2009,
Review and Approval of Nuclear Facility
Safety Basis and Safety Design Basis
Documents, and notes that the Safety Basis
Approval Authority may prescribe interim
controls and planned improvements if the
Evaluation Guideline is exceeded. DOE's
response closes by stating that its managers
"are expected to carefully evaluate situations
that fall short of expectations and only
provide their approval of documented safety
analyses when they are satisfied that
operations can be conducted safely..., that
options to meet DOE expectations have been
evaluated, and that adequate commitments to
achieve an appropriate safety posture in a
timely manner have been made."
The lack of definitive statements in DOE's
June 10, 2010, response illustrates the
difficulties inherent in applying a guidance
document as a safe harbor for implementing
the requirements of a regulation.
Furthermore, NNSA's approval of the DSA
for the Los Alamos National Laboratory's
Plutonium Facility in December 2008
demonstrates that, despite DOE's stated
expectations, it is not always true that DOE's
managers will ensure safety by imposing
conditions of approval that address
inadequacies in the safety basis. This is
illustrated to a lesser extent at the other
NNSA facilities-described in follow-up
correspondence NNSA issued to the Board
on June 30, 2010-which have not
implemented controls or compensatory
measures sufficient to reduce accident
consequences below the Evaluation
Guideline. DOE Standard 1104-2009 serves
as a source of guidance for DOE Safety Basis
Approval Authorities, but it, too, is a
guidance document, unequivocally stating,
"This Standard does not add any new
requirements for DOE or its contractors."
DOE's standards-based regulatory systemneeds a clear and unambiguous set of nuclear
safety requirements to ensure that adequateprotection of the public, workers, and the
environment is provided. Further, it is
imperative that DOE provide clear direction
to its Safety Basis Approval Authorities to
ensure that, if nuclear safety requirements
cannot be met prior to approval of a DSA,
DOE imposes clear conditions of approval for
compensatory measures for the short term
and facility modifications for the longer term
to achieve the required safety posture. This
acceptance of risk and commitment to future
upgrades must be approved at a level of
authority within DOE that is high enough to
control both the resources needed to
accomplish the upgrades as well as the
programmatic decision-making involved in
determining that the risk of continuing
operations is offset by sufficiently compelling
programmatic needs.
Item 4 of the Recommendation below
deserves a further word of explanation. The
Board does not recommend lightly a change
to DOE's nuclear safety regulations. But as
explained above, DOE has chosen over the
past several years to drift away from the
principles that underlay the rule as originally
intended. The Board has chosen to
recommend a rule change because this action
would tend, in the long run, to prevent future
shifts in DOE safety policy that would once
again have to be challenged and argued
against. For these reasons, the Board
recommends that the nuclear safety rule, 10
CFR Part 830, be amended as stated below.
Recommendation
Therefore, the Board recommends that
DOE:
1. Immediately affirm the previously
understood requirement that unmitigated,
bounding-type accident scenarios will be
used at DOE's defense nuclear facilities to
estimate dose consequences at the site
boundary, and that a sufficient combination
of structures, systems, or components must
be designated safety class to prevent
exposures at the site boundary from
approaching or exceeding 25 rem TEDE.
2. For those defense nuclear facilities that
have not implemented compensatory
measures sufficient to reduce exposures at
the site boundary below 25 rem TEDE, direct
the responsible program secretarial officer to
develop a plan to meet this requirement
within a reasonable timeframe.
3. Revise DOE Standard 3009-94 to
identify clearly and unambiguously the
requirements that must be met to
demonstrate that an adequate level of
protection for the public and workers is
provided through a DSA. This should be
accomplished, at a minimum, by:
a. Clearly defining methodologies and
providing acceptability criteria for controls,
parameters, processes, analytical tools, and
other data that should be used in preparation
of a DSA.
b. Delineating the criteria to be met for
identification and analyses of an adequate set
of Design Basis Accidents (for new facilities),
or Evaluation Basis Accidents (for existing
facilities).
c. Providing criteria that must be met by
the safety-class structures, systems, andcomponents to (i) mitigate the consequences
to a fraction of the Evaluation Guideline, or(ii) prevent the events by demonstrating an
acceptable reliability for the preventive
features.
d. Establishing a process and path forward
to meeting (a) through (c) above through
compensatory measures and planned
improvements if the DSA cannot demonstrate
compliance.
4. Amend 10 CFR Part 830 by
incorporating the revised version of DOE
Standard 3009-94 into the text as a
requirement, instead of as a safe harbor cited
in Table 2.
5. Formally establish the minimum criteria
and requirements that govern federal
approval of a DSA, by revision to DOE
Standard 1104-2009 and other appropriate
documents. The criteria and requirements
should include:
a. The authorities that can be delegated, the
required training and qualification of the
approval authority, and the boundaries and
limitations of the approval authority's
responsibilities,
b. Actions to be taken if conditions are
beyond the specified boundaries and
limitations of the approval authority,
c. The organization or the individual who
can approve a DSA that is beyond the
delegated approval authority's boundaries
and limitations,
d. The regulatory process that must be
followed if condition are beyond the
specified boundaries and limitations of the
approval authority, and any compensatory
actions to be taken, and
e. The criteria the approval authority must
use to quantify the acceptance of risk for
continued operations when offsite dose
consequences have not been reduced to a
small fraction of the Evaluation Guideline.
6. Formally designate the responsible
organization and identify the processes for
performing oversight to ensure that the
responsibilities identified in Item 5 above are
fully implemented.
Peter S. Winokur,
Chairman.
[FR Doc. 2010-28683 Filed 11-12-10; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3670-01-P
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Department of the Navy
Notice of Availability for the Draft
Programmatic Environmental
Assessment for the Development and
Operation of Small-Scale Wind Energy
Projects at United States Marine Corps
Facilities Throughout the United States
AGENCY: Department of the Navy, DoD.
ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: Pursuant to Section
(102)(2)(c) of the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1969
(NEPA) (42 United States Code 4321), as
implemented by the Council on
Environmental Quality regulations for
implementing the procedural provisionsof NEPA (40 Code of Federal
69649
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United States. Office of the Federal Register. Federal Register, Volume 75, Number 219, November 15, 2010, Pages 69571-69850, periodical, November 15, 2010; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc52800/m1/87/?rotate=270: accessed March 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.