Thermal-Hydrualic Phenomena -March 6, 2002

 
 
 
Official Transcript of Proceedings 
 
 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
 
 
Title: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
 Thermal-Hydrualic Phenomena Subcommittee
 OPEN SESSION
 

 Docket Number: (not applicable)
 
 
Location: Rockville, Maryland
 
 
Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2002
 
 
 
 
Work Order No.: NRC-265 Pages 1-25
 
 
 
 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
 Court Reporters and Transcribers
 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
 Washington, D.C. 20005
 (202) 234-4433 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
 + + + + +
 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS
 (ACRS)
 THERMAL-HYDRAULIC PHENOMENA SUBCOMMITTEE
 + + + + +
 WEDNESDAY
 MARCH 6, 2002
 + + + + +
 ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND
 + + + + +
 The Subcommittee met at the Nuclear
 Regulatory Commission, Two White Flint North, Room
 T2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, at 1:00 p.m., Thomas S.
 Kress, Acting Chairman, presiding.
 
 COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
 THOMAS S. KRESS Chairman
 MARIO BONACA Member
 WILLIAM J. SHACK Member
 JOHN D. SIEBER Member
 VICTOR H. RANSOM Invited Expert
 
 STAFF PRESENT:
 Paul A. Boehnert
 
 ALSO PRESENT:
 Fran Bolger
 Israel Nir
 Dan Pappone
 George Strambart
 Singh Bajwa
 Suzanne Black
 Corry Holden
 Ed Kendrick
 Matt Mitchell
 Stu Richards
 Dale Thatcher
 Brian Thomas
 John Zwolinski
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I N D E X
 AGENDA ITEM PAGE
 I. Opening Remarks, T. Kress, Acting Chair 4
 II. GE CPPU Licensing Topical and Associated 4
 NRC Staff Safety Evaluation, Introduction
 A. GE Presentation (Closed), I. Nir, GE
 B. NRC Staff Presentation (Closed), J. Donoghue
 1. Overview
 2. Technical Issues
 C. GE Presentation (Closed)
 III. Subcommittee Caucus 
 IV. Adjourn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
 (1:04 p.m.)
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: The meeting will come to
 order. This is a meeting of the ACRS Subcommittee on
 Thermal-Hydraulic Phenomena. I am Tom Kress, Acting
 Chairman of the Subcommittee. 
 Other ACRS members in attendance present
 today are Bill Shack and Jack Sieber, and Vic Ransom
 is attending as an invited expert, shortly to become
 a member.
 The Subcommittee will continue its review
 of the GE Nuclear Energy Topical Report, NEDC-33004P,
 Revision 1, "Constant Pressure Power Uprate," and the
 NRC staff's associated safety evaluation.
 The Subcommittee will gather information,
 analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate
 proposed positions and actions as appropriate for
 deliberation by the full Committee.
 Mr. Paul Boehnert is the cognizant ACRS
 staff engineer for this meeting.
 The rules for participation in today's
 meeting have been announced as part of the notice of
 this meeting previously published in the Federal
 Register on February 19, 2002. Most of this meeting
 will be closed to the public to discuss information
 considered proprietary to General Electric Nuclear
 Energy.
 A transcript of this meeting is being
 kept, and this transcript will be made available as
 stated in the Federal Register notice. It is
 requested that speakers first go to a microphone,
 identify yourselves, and speak loud enough so
 everybody can hear you.
 We have received no written comments or
 requests for time to make oral statements from members
 of the public. 
 I have no additional Chairman's comments. 
 Do any of the members have any comments that you wish
 to make? Seeing none, we will now proceed with the
 meeting, and I call upon Mr. Israel Nir, I guess, of
 General Electric Nuclear Energy to begin. The floor
 is yours. 
 MR. NIR: My name is Israel Nir with GE,
 and we will discuss today the GE BWR Constant Pressure
 Power Uprate Program. We met with you back in January
 of this year and spent four hours or more on this
 topic, and today I am going just to go over a limited
 portion of that presentation and a few limited topics,
 and provide summary of what we covered in January.
 I have a brief opening session, and then
 we close and go over the GE Constant Pressure Power
 Uprate Program.
 (Slide change)
 MR. NIR: As I said back in January, GE
 now has extensive analysis experience with EPU,
 ongoing implementation experience, EPU being
 implemented at ten BWRs, and NRC is now reviewing
 applications for three additional BWRs. 
 We expect a high volume of applications in
 the next several years. To respond to this
 anticipated volume and to facilitate the NRC review,
 we proposed a CPPU approach. It is based on our
 experienced, focused on impacts related specifically
 to power uprate and maintained safety margin.
 (Slide change)
 MR. NIR: We initially met with you back
 in June of 2001 to describe the approach. We
 submitted the LTR, CPPU LTR, which I'll refer to as
 CLTR, for NRC review in March of 2001. We received
 significant feedback from the NRC. We revised the
 CLTR and resubmitted in July of 2001.
 We then received a significant number of
 RAIs. They all were addressed, and in December of
 2001 we sent addenda to the CLTR, which is the basis
 now for the staff safety evaluation.
 We met with you in January, as I mentioned
 already, to discuss the CPPU and CLTR approach, and
 also you heard the presentation from Clinton on their
 EPU, which included selected CPPU topics.
 (Slide change)
 MR. NIR: The GE program is a power uprate
 program. It includes the stretch power uprate five
 percent -- these were the initial power uprates -- the
 EPU which was approved back in '98 with increased
 power up to 20 percent of original licensed thermal
 power; the thermal power optimization which is the GE
 terminology to the small operator, up to approximately
 one and half percent based on improved feedwater flow
 measurement uncertainty; and finally the constant
 pressure power uprate.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: Is 20 percent the limit
 or are there plans maybe to go further later?
 MR. NIR: We don't preclude that at this
 point. We are asking for generic process to support
 20 percent. We definitely see -- Some of the plants
 are reaching their limits, and what I say about that,
 there are some very expensive components that will
 have to be replaced in order to move to a higher
 power.
 So that is definitely a consideration for
 the future. It will become more expensive as we move
 to higher power levels.
 (Slide change)
 MR. NIR: This is a summary of GE power
 uprate experience. Most of the experience is five
 percent. On the left you can see all the initial five
 percent power uprates were done with increased dome
 pressure to avoid replacing the high pressure turbine. 
 More recently -- or opening the steam path. More
 recently, the five percent were done with no increase
 in maximum operating dome pressure.
 You also see on the righthand side the
 extended power uprate experience. The last three
 plants, Clinton, Brunswick and Browns Ferry, are now
 in progress. Clinton and Brunswick have selected CPPU
 topics, as you heard with Clinton and you will hear
 with Brunswick, which is basically the same topics. 
 Browns Ferry will the first submittal that
 will be fully based on constant pressure approach.
 DR. RANSOM: How much was the pressure
 increased in the ones in the initial?
 MR. NIR: Those initials?
 DR. RANSOM: Yes.
 MR. NIR: Probably varies between 20 to
 35.
 DR. RANSOM: Pounds per square inch, psi?
 MR. NIR: I'm sorry?
 DR. RANSOM: 20-35 psi?
 MR. NIR: psi, yes.
 (Slide change)
 MR. NIR: This final slide is -- again, I
 showed you this in January. It just shows the GE BWR
 contributions from power uprate to the US grid. Until
 now, we added 1700 megawatts electric, in progress
 another 800, and you can see that we still have almost
 50 percent on tap.
 That concludes my comments for the open
 session.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: So that's like five new
 plants total?
 MEMBER SHACK: Yes. You can play with the
 size of the plants.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: Yes, of course.
 MR. NIR: Yes. It is significant. So
 again, that concludes my comments for the open
 session, and I am ready to move to the closed session
 and discuss the constant pressure power uprate
 process.
 MR. BOEHNERT: Okay, we are going to go to
 closed session then. Anybody here that doesn't have
 an agreement to be here to hear GE proprietary
 information, please leave. Other than that, we will
 go to closed session. 
 So, transcriber, please start a closed
 session transcript.
 (Whereupon, the foregoing open session
 went off the record at 1:14 p.m. and went back on the
 record at 1:55 p.m.)
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: I guess we are ready to
 turn it over to you, John.
 MR. ZWOLINSKI: Okay, Dr. Kress. Thank
 you so very much. I had a few opening remarks that I
 wanted to present to the Subcommittee, and then get on
 with our staff presentation.
 For those of you who do not know me, I'm
 John Zwolinski. I am the Division Director
 responsible for the Division of Licensing Project
 Management. Thus, all licensing activity that is
 undertaken at NRR is processed within my division.
 Power uprates are a form of licensing amendment and,
 thus, licensing activities such as this are processed
 within Projects with the support of our technical
 divisions such as the Division of System Safety and
 Division of Engineering and the Division of Inspection
 Programs and their efforts.
 The staff is here to present the review of
 the GE licensing topical report on constant pressure
 power uprate for BWRs. I did want to note for the
 record that we have a number of the management team
 with us in support of our staff.
 Ms. Suzanne Black, our Deputy Director,
 Division of Systems Safety and Analysis, is with us. 
 Mr. Stu Richards, the Project Director responsible for
 plants in Region 4; Mr. Singh Bajwa, our Project
 Director for plants in Region 3; and a number of our
 first line supervisors that are integral to the
 success of NRR's mission. 
 We have Dale Thatcher who is with the
 Equipment and Human Performance Branch. We have Brian
 Thomas from our Systems Branch. We have Matt Mitchell
 from our Materials and Engineering Branch. We have
 Corny Holden from our Electrical Instrumentation and
 Control Systems Branch, and from Reactor Systems we
 have Ralph Caruso seated at the table and Frank
 Stulowitz.
 One of the reasons I mentioned that our
 management team is here in part is to provide visible
 support to our staff and to demonstrate overtly to the
 Subcommittee the management commitment made to power
 uprates and to the CPPU project in general.
 The CPPU topical report proposes an
 approach for the submittal and review of extended
 power uprate applications. It outlines what is
 expected from licensees in their applications.
 If a licensee follows the topical report
 and provides the information identified in its report
 as part of its plant specific application, the review
 should be greatly simplified. Approval of the CPPU
 approach would be a key change to the review of BWR
 power uprates.
 It presents a simplified approach compared
 to that previously approved in topical reports known
 as ELTR-1 and ELTR-2. Although the Clinton power
 uprate submittal uses some aspects of the constant
 pressure approach, it does not reference the CPPU
 approach.
 The staff -- does not reference to the
 topical report. The staff expects the first submittal
 based on the constant pressure power uprate topical
 report to arrive in the summer of 2002.
 On January 16, 2002, the Subcommittee
 received a presentation from General Electric that
 outlined the CPPU approach and presented details of
 selected technical areas. In our presentation today,
 the staff will address specific technical concerns
 which we believe to be of highest importance, and they
 have essentially been captured in the agenda that's
 been developed in working with the staff of the ACRS.
 We have with us, in addition to staff here
 to present information associated with the agenda,
 additional staff that have worked on this particular
 review, should question exist. So we've brought much
 of the team over, Dr. Kress.
 As you are aware, the CPPU deviates from
 the previously approved approach for extended power
 uprates for BWRs. The staff will discuss this matter
 in some detail. I will note that the staff has
 invested considerable resources in evaluating the
 basis for acceptance of this proposed approach.
 The staff has also conducted on-site
 reviews, traveling to General Electric and to other
 nuclear facilities. The point I am attempting to make
 is not only is our senior management deeply committed
 to ensuring that this program receives the highest
 amount of visibility throughout the staff and here
 with the ACRS, we are committed to ensuring that we
 perform first rate reviews and ensure the health and
 safety of our -- is preserved in the processing of
 these amendment requests.
 With that, I would like to now turn the
 presentation over to our plant project manager
 responsible for this activity, Joe Donoghue. Joe will
 provide an overview of the staff's efforts regarding
 the CPPU topical, and proceed with introductions, as
 appropriate.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: We certainly appreciate
 your comments and do appreciate the fine level of
 support you are providing to the Subcommittee and the
 full Committee.
 MR. ZWOLINSKI: Thank you very much, Dr.
 Kress, and we'll be here tomorrow also.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: And in April?
 MR. ZWOLINSKI: I believe there is a
 session scheduled for April, and we will support that
 with our team.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: That certainly is greatly
 appreciated. 
 MR. DONOGHUE: Thank you, John. I think
 my mike works. As you heard, I'm Joe Donoghue. I'm
 the GE Project Manager in NRR. I just have a few
 brief remarks to give you an overview of the staff's
 review that is documented in the draft safety
 evaluation.
 As you've heard, this part of the
 presentation is open. It will be followed by a closed
 session by the technical staff, and I will just point
 out now before I forget that on your handouts for the
 closed session, you will see some brackets around some
 items that were considered GE proprietary information. 
 You won't see them on the projection here, but we just
 want to point that out to make sure everybody is clear
 on the basis for the proprietary information.
 Just in way of history, I wanted to
 explain I think what you may have heard in the
 previous presentation, that there is a revision to the
 constant pressure power uprate topical that was
 received in July.
 There was a previous version that was not
 the basis for the staff's review. It's the July
 version. So if somewhere in somebody's cabinet they
 have a March version, that is not what we reviewed. 
 Get rid of it.
 In the past, as you are well aware -- the
 Committee is well aware that the extended power
 uprates that have been issued -- some examples I've
 listed up there, were based on the previous ELTR-1 and
 ELTR-2 documents, and you've heard that there are two
 in-house now, two reviews in-house, Clinton and
 Brunswick that I list here, that use some aspects of
 the constant pressure approach, and the staff has been
 starting to deal with these things on a plant specific
 basis, but this topical report, as you've been told,
 has a number of changes to the previous approach.
 I'll just put some key ones on the screen
 here for you.
 (Slide change)
 MR. DONOGHUE: Basically, the first three
 bullets address changes to what we see as the content
 in the submitted information with the amendment
 request. There's some details that you have heard
 before from GE today, and you'll hear some more
 discussion about that in the presentations to follow,
 but those are some key areas that we see some
 departures.
 Then I list the last item there as an item
 that we had to consider. The CPPU approach uses the
 ELTR-1 and -2 approach for testing with this one
 exception in large transient testing.
 The staff previously approved -- reviewed
 and approved the ELTR-1 and -2 approach testing
 proposal, and staff has looked at this large transient
 testing exception for CPPU and has found it
 acceptable. However, today -- in today's presentation
 by the staff we were not planning on discussing that
 and wanted to point out the reason, being that we plan
 on discussing it tomorrow during the Clinton
 presentation. 
 We understand that there's Committee
 members that were keenly interested in hearing about
 those details. So rather than being repetitive --
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: Yes, and those members
 will be here tomorrow, but are not particularly here
 today. 
 MR. DONOGHUE: So as long as that is
 acceptable, this is all I'm going to mention about
 large transient testing, unless a question comes up. 
 We have staff available.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: No, I think we will wait
 until tomorrow on that one.
 MR. DONOGHUE: Unless there's questions,
 I'll go on. There's some basic effects that the draft
 safety evaluation discusses of implementing the
 constant pressure approach.
 As you've heard, there's changes to the
 power to flow map. You saw a presentation from GE on
 some heat balance parameters that changed, and these
 things lead too some reevaluations of safety analyses
 that are required, and you will hear about those
 details very shortly.
 (Slide change)
 MR. DONOGHUE: This slide -- You've seen
 the list of specific exclusions. So you are wondering
 why Donoghue is putting this one up, because it
 doesn't have any information on it. 
 I wanted to make sure we emphasized that
 the staff considers these exclusions that apply to the
 CPPU approach to be very important. We want to make
 sure that in our safety evaluation we discuss these
 exclusions. 
 They came up in the presentation you just
 saw. They will come up again in the next presentation
 in some detail. We want to make it very clear that
 these exclusions have to be adhered to, to meet the
 spirit of this simplified approach that's contained in
 this topical report.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: Suppose a plant came in
 and referenced the CPPU process and the topical report
 and says but we don't -- this one exclusion here, you
 know, the list that we were given -- there's one of
 them here we don't conform to, and the reason is --
 they give you a reason.
 Is that going to be acceptable, as long as
 they can justify not --
 MR. DONOGHUE: I'll take a stab at it. 
 Then I think there's somebody else here at the table
 that would maybe chime in.
 I think the short answer is ELTR-1 and -2
 are there. They are approved and available for the
 licensees to use. If they want to have a power uprate
 with other encumbrances -- maybe I shouldn't use that
 word, but other changes that they are considering
 besides increase in power, they can use that approach.
 By allowing the CPPU approach to be
 available, it's a simplified approach. That's the
 impetus behind it. We are seeing that as a way to
 make our review also somewhat simplified, but if a
 licensee decides they want to do other things, I think
 our short answer is use ELTR1 and 2. I don't think we
 are going to be favorably inclined to consider a range
 of options in between.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: CPPU, we heard, was a
 subset of ELTR1 and 2. So if they say, well, we're --
 the only difference between the CPPU that we are
 addressing is this one item that -- So we are going to
 still reference the CPPU documents, but we're going to
 justify this one change.
 MR. CARUSO: Dr. Kress, this is Ralph
 Caruso. I'm going to give the next presentation, and
 I thought I would jump in here.
 The reason we approved topical reports is
 to make staff reviews efficient and effective, so that
 we don't have to review the same thing over and over
 again. If anyone who references a topical report
 decides to take an exception to it, they bear the
 burden of justifying that.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: As long as they justify
 the exception.
 MR. CARUSO: In the process of justifying
 it, they also take the risk that the staff may reopen
 the review and, as a result, they may not gain the
 efficiency and effectiveness that they had hoped to
 achieve by referencing the report in the first place.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: I think that's the answer
 I was looking for.
 MR. CARUSO: This is a general practice
 that we have with regard to all topicals, and it would
 apply here. So licensee can take a chance, and maybe
 they will get lucky.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: We understand. I think
 that was the answer I was looking for.
 MR. DONOGHUE: Thanks, Ralph. 
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: Okay.
 MR. DONOGHUE: The staff's review of the
 topical report that was submitted focused on, as you
 may expect, the differences from what was previously
 accepted in ELTR1 and 2. Wanted to point out that the
 staff in its review considered lessons learned from
 other power uprate efforts, and the SE, the draft
 safety evaluation, mentions the Maine Yankee lessons
 learned, in particular.
 I wanted to add here that the review spent
 some time examining one of the key differences here in
 the CPPU approach, and the staff acknowledges that
 there is going to be some analyses that we would
 normally expect to see in an ELTR1 and 2 based
 submittal that will not be available for our review in
 this submittal.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: We understand that, and
 that is one of the points of debate among the
 Committee members. Will that come up again either
 tomorrow or in April, that particular aspect?
 MR. DONOGHUE: I was going to add that
 this point will be discussed in more detail in the
 following presentations, because it gets into some of
 the proprietary aspects of the information. But we
 just wanted to emphasize it here, because it was an
 important aspect of the review and took some effort to
 come to some resolution on that.
 (Slide change)
 MR. DONOGHUE: My final slide just
 outlines what we expect to be the roadmap we would use
 for conducting the submittals for CPPU for specific
 plants. I think you heard a mention about a power
 uprate safety evaluation report shell that GE
 maintains.
 This shell, though it is discussed as part
 of this discussion -- it's not -- It was not submitted
 with the CPPU topical report. It is maintained by GE. 
 However, for plant specific submittal we will be
 seeing the power uprate safety analysis report. 
 In that report, staff is going to be
 looking for certain things. I list some of those key
 items up here, which we started to discuss a little
 bit today. We had to make sure we know what methods
 are being used for the analyses, justification for
 their applicability at the new conditions, and --
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: You will ask for the
 justification in this report?
 MR. DONOGHUE: And you heard just a little
 bit of discussion. There were some questions about
 conforming applicability of these generic evaluations
 that are discussed in the topical report.
 Another important point to bring up before
 I turn it over to the more detailed presentations is
 that the submittal, especially this power uprate
 safety analyses report, can be used as the basis for
 the NRC to conduct audits of selected safety analyses.
 You heard about the audits before. We
 will discuss them some more today, and I think it's
 going to be an important aspect of our approach on
 these submittals.
 Unless there's any questions, thank you
 for your attention. I'll turn it over to -- Yes?
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: For BWRs following this
 approach, this pretty much serves the purpose of a
 standard review plan for those?
 MR. DONOGHUE: I would not venture to call
 it a standard review plan. This is -- I think, as
 Ralph expressed earlier, this is a method that is
 being proposed to us to make the review -- the
 submittal first, more simplified and, therefore, the
 review, hopefully, more simplified.
 It's not necessarily something that the
 staff -- If we saw a submittal that said to check the
 box for CPPU, we did it; would not necessarily get in
 and take a look at it. This is an approach that we
 find, if followed, if all the things are done that are
 in the topical and we will discuss in our safety
 evaluation are done, we can then accept for review.
 MR. CARUSO: Also realize, Dr. Kress, that
 this topical does not address technical issues that
 have to be demonstrated to be acceptable. Those are
 addressed in the other technical topical reports, for
 example, for ECCS methodologies, for transient
 methodologies, for design stress calculations.
 Those are what the SRP generally contains. 
 The SRP generally contains technical issues. This is
 a process document. So those standards that are
 described in the SRP and that are accepted in the
 various approved methodologies still apply. Nothing
 changes with regard to them. This is a process
 document.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: The Standard Review Plan
 you're talking about there is just the original
 licensing standard review plan.
 MR. CARUSO: Standard Review Plan which we
 use right now to do ongoing license amendment reviews,
 the applicable regulatory guides, and all of the body
 of regulatory guidance that currently exists for
 operating plants right now. 
 MR. ZWOLINSKI: And if I may, Dr. Kress,
 and to the rest of the Committee, remind that we do
 have an IOU back. We are evaluating the pros and cons
 of a Standard Review Plan for this area.
 CHAIRMAN KRESS: That was really one
 reason I've brought the question up. 
 MR. ZWOLINSKI: Okay. And I think Joe and
 Ralph pretty much answered how far this actually goes,
 but this is really not going to supplant do we want a
 Standard Review Plan for the entire area, as we
 understand it. That's another matter.
 MR. CARUSO: I will make the observation
 that I believe that the purpose of the Standard Review
 Plan was to ensure consistency in staff reviews, and
 the use of this document does that, to a certain
 extent. The fact that the staff went through the
 process of reviewing it, and a large number of staff
 members participated in that, also helps to ensure a
 certain amount of consistency.
 MR. BOEHNERT: We will go into closed
 session now. Transcriber, go back to closed session. 
 If there is anyone here that should not be here,
 please leave.
 (Whereupon, the open session went off the
 record at 2:15 p.m.)