58204 Federal Register / Vol. 69, No. 188 / Wednesday, September 29, 2004 / Notices 

provision to require an FCU to include 

a mail ballot with its electronic election 

procedure instructions rather than 

require a member without the requisite 

electronic device to request a ballot. 

Requiring members to contact the FCU 

in order to receive a ballot may 

discourage member participation in the 

election process. If the mail ballot is 

included with the electronic election 

instructions, members will have a 

choice as to the voting method without 

having to contact the FCU. 

Article V, Option A4, Section 2(d)(5).

This provision addresses mail ballots 

and states that, if one form is used for 

the ballot and identification form, it 

must be ‘‘properly designed.’’ NCUA’s 

Office of General Counsel has 

interpreted this provision to require 

secrecy in the balloting process. OGC 

Legal Opinions 03–510, dated July 30, 

2003; 03–1048, dated March 12, 2004. 

Prior editions of the FCU Bylaws 

provided instructions that stated: ‘‘[t]he 

ID form will be separated from your 

ballot when it reaches the credit union, 

and before any ballots are opened.’’

Federal Credit Union Standard Bylaw 

Amendments and Guidelines, Sample 

Ballot, p. 41, October 1991. 

The Board is interested in comments 

on whether this bylaw should be revised 

to address the secrecy requirement in 

conjunction with what constitutes a 

‘‘properly designed’’ ballot. One issue to 

consider is the manner in which an FCU 

can establish an election process that 

assures members their votes remain 

confidential and secret from all 

interested parties when an independent 

third-party teller reviews the ballots 

with the members’ signatures. 

In another matter related to properly 

designed ballots, the Board is 

considering a change that would allow 

names printed on ballots to be placed in 

alphabetical order as an alternative to 

determining the order by drawing lots. 

The Board seeks comment on this 

suggestion and other alternatives to a 

fair and properly designed ballot. 

Article V, Section 4. This section 

currently reads: ‘‘Members cannot vote 

by proxy, but a member other than a 

natural person may vote through an 

agent designated in writing for the 

purpose. A trustee, or other person 

acting in a representative capacity, is 

not as such, entitled to vote.’’ The Board 

proposes deleting the second sentence. 

The second sentence reflects a prior 

legal view when FCU authority to 

establish trust accounts was limited to 

trust accounts for minors. Among other 

restrictions on these accounts at the 

time, the trustee had to be a member but 

was not entitled to vote. The provision 

is now outdated because a trust is 

recognized as a legal entity and may 

qualify for membership in its own right. 

Also, formal trust agreements generally 

provide that a trustee has the power to 

vote on behalf of a trust when the trust 

holds shares or stock that entitle the 

owner to vote.

Article V, Section 7. The Board seeks 

comment on whether to include a 

provision that sets a minimum age as a 

qualification for eligibility to vote and 

hold office, as a second option to 

Section 7, which currently allows an 

FCU’s board to establish the age by 

resolution. 

Article IX, Section 1. The FCU Act 

precludes the director who is the 

‘‘compensated officer’’ from being the 

director who can also be on the 

supervisory committee. 12 U.S.C. 

1761(b). The bylaw currently states that 

‘‘[t]he supervisory committee is 

appointed by the board from among the 

members of this credit union, one of 

whom may be a director other than the 

financial officer.’’ The bylaw incorrectly 

assumes that the financial officer is the 

‘‘compensated officer.’’ We propose 

replacing ‘‘financial officer’’ with 

‘‘compensated officer’’ so that the bylaw 

is consistent with the FCU Act. 

The Board is seeking comment on all 

of the above mentioned proposed 

changes and also suggestions on other 

ways to update, clarify and simplify the 

existing FCU Bylaws. For example, 

NCUA has encouraged FCU managers 

and directors to consider improvements 

in matters relating to corporate 

governance and auditing in a manner 

similar to the requirements imposed on 

public companies under the SarbanesOxley Act of 2002. NCUA Letter to 

Federal Credit Unions 03–FCU–07 

(October 2003). The Board believes that 

sound corporate governance practices 

begin with prepared directors and 

managers. The Board welcomes 

comments on whether particular 

corporate governance practices or 

related issues should be added to the 

FCU Bylaws, such as board training or 

ethics. Based upon the comments, the 

Board will issue a notice with proposed 

bylaws and request for comment.

By the National Credit Union 

Administration Board on September 23, 

2004. 

Mary Rupp, 

Secretary of the Board.

[FR Doc. 04–21758 Filed 9–28–04; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 7535–01–P

NUCLEAR REGULATORY 

COMMISSION 

[Docket Nos. 50–269, 50–270, and 50–287] 

Duke Energy Corporation; Notice of 

Withdrawal of Application for 

Amendment to Facility Operating 

License 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission (the Commission) has 

granted the request of Duke Energy 

Corporation (the licensee) to withdraw 

its June 7, 2002, application for 

proposed amendment to Facility 

Operating License Nos. DPR–38, DPR–

47, and DPR–55, for Oconee Nuclear 

Station, Units 1, 2, and 3, located in 

Oconee County, South Carolina. 

The proposed amendments would 

have revised the Updated Final Safety 

Analysis Report with regard to tornado 

mitigation. The proposed amendments 

would have eliminated credit for the 

flow path from the spent fuel pool to the 

high pressure injection pump following 

a tornado and would have credited the 

standby shutdown facility as the 

assured means of achieving safe 

shutdown following a tornado. 

The Commission had previously 

issued a Notice of Consideration of 

Issuance of Amendment that was 

originally published in the Federal 

Register on July 23, 2002 (67 FR 48216). 

A revised Notice of Consideration of 

Issuance of Amendment was published 

in the Federal Register on February 18, 

2003 (67 FR 7814). However, by letter 

dated September 9, 2004, the licensee 

withdrew the proposed change. 

For further details with respect to this 

action, see the application for 

amendment dated June 7, 2002, and the 

licensee’s letter dated September 9, 

2004, which withdrew the application 

for license amendment. Documents may 

be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at 

the NRC’s Public Document Room 

(PDR), located at One White Flint North, 

Public File Area O1 F21, 11555 

Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, 

Maryland. 

Publicly available records will be 

accessible electronically from the 

Agencywide Documents Access and 

Management Systems (ADAMS) Public 

Electronic Reading Room on the Internet 

at the NRC Web site, http://

www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/html. 

Persons who do not have access to 

ADAMS or who encounter problems in 

accessing the documents located in 

ADAMS, should contact the NRC PDR 

Reference staff by telephone at 1–800–

397–4209, or 301–415–4737 or by e-mail 

to pdr@nrc.gov.

Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 22nd 

day of September, 2004.

Federal Register / Vol. 69, No. 188 / Wednesday, September 29, 2004 / Notices 58205

For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

Leonard N. Olshan, Sr. 

Project Manager, Section 1, Project 

Directorate II, Division of Licensing Project 

Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor 

Regulation.

[FR Doc. 04–21764 Filed 9–28–04; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 7590–01–P

NUCLEAR REGULATORY 

COMMISSION 

[Docket Nos. 50–315 and 50–316] 

Indiana Michigan Power Company; 

Notice of Consideration of Issuance of 

Amendments To Facility Operating 

Licenses and Opportunity for a 

Hearing 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission (NRC or the Commission) 

is considering issuance of an 

amendment to Facility Operating 

License Nos. DPR–58 and DPR–74 

issued to Indiana Michigan Power 

Company (I&M or the licensee) for 

operation of the Donald C. Cook Nuclear 

Plant, Units 1 and 2, (D. C. Cook) 

located in Berrien County, Michigan. 

The proposed amendment, requested 

by I&M in its application dated April 6, 

2004, represents a full conversion from 

the Current Technical Specifications 

(CTS) to a set of Improved Technical 

Specifications (ITS) based on NUREG–

1431, ‘‘Standard Technical 

Specifications (STS) for Westinghouse 

Plants,’’ Revision 2, dated April 2001. 

NUREG–1431 has been developed by 

the Commission’s staff through working 

groups composed of both NRC staff 

members and industry representatives, 

and has been endorsed by the NRC staff 

as part of an industry-wide initiative to 

standardize and improve the Technical 

Specifications (TSs) for nuclear power 

plants. As part of this submittal, the 

licensee has applied the criteria 

contained in the Commission’s ‘‘Final 

Policy Statement on Technical 

Specification Improvements for Nuclear 

Power Reactors (Final Policy 

Statement),’’ published in the Federal 

Register on July 22,1993 (58 FR 39132), 

to the CTS and using NUREG–1431 as 

a basis, proposed an ITS for D. C. Cook. 

The criteria in the Final Policy 

Statement was subsequently added to 

Title 10 of the Code of Federal 

Regulations (10 CFR), Part 50.36, 

‘‘Technical Specifications,’’ in a rule 

change that was published in the 

Federal Register on July 19, 1995 (60 FR 

36953) and became effective on August 

18, 1995. 

In addition to the conversion, the 

licensee also proposed: (1) To delete 

three license conditions in the operating 

licenses for D. C. Cook Units 1 and 2 

and relocate the requirements to either 

the ITS or the Technical Requirements 

Manual of the D. C. Cook Updated Final 

Safety Analysis Report (UFSAR); and (2) 

34 beyond scope issues (BSIs) where the 

proposed requirements are different 

from the CTS or the STS NUREG–1431. 

The BSIs are identified later in this 

notice. 

This notice is based on the 

application dated April 6, 2004, and the 

information provided to the NRC 

through the Cook ITS Conversion Web 

page. To expedite its review of the 

application, the NRC staff issued its 

requests for additional information 

(RAIs) through the Cook ITS Conversion 

Web page and the licensee addressed 

the RAIs by providing responses on the 

Web page. Entry into the database is 

protected so that only licensee and NRC 

reviewers can enter information into the 

database to add RAIs (NRC) or providing 

responses to the RAIs (licensee); 

however, the public can enter the 

database to only read the questions 

asked and the responses provided. To be 

in compliance with the regulations for 

written communications for license 

amendment requests and to have the 

database on the D. C. Cook dockets 

before the amendments would be 

issued, the licensee will submit a copy 

of the database in a submittal to the 

NRC after there are no further RAIs and 

before the amendments would be 

issued. The public can access the 

database through the NRC Web site at 

http://www.nrc.gov by the following 

process: (1) Click on the tab labeled 

‘‘Nuclear Reactors’’ on the NRC home 

page along the upper part of the web 

page, (2) then click on the link to 

‘‘Operating Reactors,’’ which is under 

‘‘Regulated Activities’’ on the left hand 

side of the web page, (3) then click on 

the link to ‘‘Improved Standard 

Technical Specifications’’ which is on 

right hand side of the page, and (4) 

finally click on the link to ‘‘Comments 

on the application and responses by D. 

C. Cook,’’ near the bottom of the Web 

page, to open the database. The RAIs 

and responses to RAIs are organized by 

ITS Sections 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 through 

3.9, 4.0, and 5.0, which are listed first, 

and the 34 BSIs, which are listed later. 

For every listed ITS section or BSI, there 

is an RAI which can be read by clicking 

on the ITS section or BSI number. The 

licensee’s responses are shown by a 

solid triangle adjacent to the ITS section 

or BSI number, and, to read the 

response, you click on the triangle. To 

page down through the ITS sections to 

the BSIs, click on ‘‘next’’ along the top 

of the page or on ‘‘previous’’ to return 

to the previous page. 

The licensee has categorized the 

proposed changes to the CTS into five 

general groupings within the 

description of changes (DOC) section of 

the application. These groupings are 

characterized as administrative changes 

(i.e., ITS x.x, DOC A.xx), more 

restrictive changes (i.e., ITS x.x, DOC 

M.xx), relocated specifications (i.e., ITS 

x.x, DOC R.xx), removed detail changes 

(i.e., ITS x.x, DOC LA.xx), and less 

restrictive changes (i.e., ITS x.x, DOC 

L.xx). This is to say that the DOCs are 

numbered sequentially within each 

letter designator for each ITS Chapter, 

Section, or Specification, and the 

designations are A.xx for administrative 

changes, M.xx for more restrictive 

changes, R.xx for relocated 

specifications, LA.xx for removed detail 

changes, and L.xx for less restrictive 

changes. These changes to the 

requirements of the CTS do not result in 

operations that will alter assumptions 

relative to mitigation of an analyzed 

accident or transient event. 

Administrative changes are those that 

involve restructuring, renumbering, 

rewording interpretation and complex 

rearranging of requirements and other 

changes not affecting technical content 

or substantially revising an operating 

requirement. The reformatting, 

renumbering and rewording process 

reflects the attributes of NUREG–1431 

and does not involve technical changes 

to the CTS. The proposed changes 

include: (a) Providing the appropriate 

numbers, etc., for NUREG–1431 

bracketed information (information that 

must be supplied on a plant-specific 

basis, and which may change from plant 

to plant); (b) identifying plant-specific 

wording for system names, etc.; and (c) 

changing NUREG–1431 section wording 

to conform to existing licensee 

practices. Such changes are 

administrative in nature and do not 

impact initiators of analyzed events or 

assumed mitigation of accident or 

transient events.

More restrictive changes are those 

involving more stringent requirements 

compared to the CTS for operation of 

the facility. These more stringent 

requirements do not result in operation 

that will alter assumptions relative to 

the mitigation of an accident or 

transient event. The more restrictive 

requirements will not alter the operation 

of process variables, structures, systems, 

and components described in the safety 

analyses. For each requirement in the 

STS that is more restrictive than the 

CTS that the licensee proposes to adopt 

in the ITS, the licensee has provided an 

explanation as to why it has concluded