[Federal Register Volume 75, Number 219 (Monday, November 15, 2010)]
[Notices]
[Pages 69648-69649]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2010-28683]


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DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD

[Recommendation 2010-1]


Safety Analysis Requirements for Defining Adequate Protection for 
the Public and the Workers

AGENCY: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

ACTION: Notice, recommendation.

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SUMMARY: Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 2286a(a)(5), the Defense Nuclear 
Facilities Safety Board has made a recommendation to the Secretary of 
Energy requesting an amendment to the Department of Energy's nuclear 
safety rule, 10 CFR part 830.

DATES: Comments, data, views, or arguments concerning the 
recommendation are due on or before December 15, 2010.

ADDRESSES:  Send comments, data, views, or arguments concerning this 
recommendation to: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 625 Indiana 
Avenue, NW., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20004-2001.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Brian Grosner or Andrew L. Thibadeau 
at the address above or telephone number (202-694-7000).

    Dated: November 9, 2010.
Peter S. Winokur,
Chairman.

RECOMMENDATION 2010-1 TO THE SECRETARY OF ENERGY

Safety Analysis Requirements for Defining Adequate Protection for 
the Public and the Workers

Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec.  2286a(a)(5) Atomic Energy Act of 1954, As 
Amended

Dated: October 29, 2010

Background

    The Department of Energy's (DOE) nuclear safety regulations were 
developed as a result of a mandate by Congress in the Price Anderson 
Act Amendments of 1988. These regulations now appear in Parts 820, 
830, and 835 of Title 10 in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). 
In this Recommendation, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board 
(Board) addresses recent changes in DOE's ``interpretation'' of 
certain critical provisions of Title 10 CFR Part 830, Nuclear Safety 
Management (10 CFR Part 830), provisions which are intended to 
provide adequate protection of the public health and safety. As 
explained below, in the Board's view this revised interpretative 
posture weakens the safety structure the rule is designed to hold 
firmly in place.
    10 CFR Part 830 imposes a requirement that a documented safety 
analysis, or DSA, is to be prepared for every DOE nuclear facility. 
This DSA, once approved by DOE, forms the regulatory basis for 
safety of the facility or operation. 10 CFR Part 830 does more, 
however: its Appendix A provides ``safe harbors'' for the 
preparation and approval of DSAs. These safe harbors are, in the 
main, references to detailed guidance issued by DOE. A DSA that is 
prepared following applicable guidance found in ``safe harbors'' 
should be found acceptable, meaning that the facility's safety 
systems are adequate to protect public health and safety from 
nuclear hazards.
    One of the key safe harbor guides for the preparation of DSAs is 
DOE Standard 3009-94, Preparation Guide for U.S. Department of 
Energy Nonreactor Nuclear Facility Safety Analysis Reports.\1\ First 
issued in July of 1994, this Standard was intended to provide 
guidance on meeting the requirements imposed by DOE Order 5480.23, 
Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports, a set of nuclear safety 
requirements that preceded and were supplanted by 10 CFR Part 830. 
The Standard stated that ``Technical Standards, such as this 
document, support the guides by providing additional guidance into 
how the requirements [of Orders and Rules] should be met.'' As such, 
it did not contain any nuclear safety requirements. Five years after 
its initial issuance, DOE amended Standard 3009-94 by the addition 
of Appendix A, entitled ``Evaluation Guidelines.'' These guidelines 
apply dose criteria to the results of accident calculations found in 
DSAs. Stated broadly, the Evaluation Guidelines mandate that safety 
class systems be installed if, as a result of a potential accident, 
the unmitigated dose consequences at the site boundary approach or 
exceed 25 rem Total Effective Dose Equivalent (TEDE).
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    \1\ When DOE issued Change Notice 2, the title of this Standard 
was revised to Preparation Guide for U.S. Department of Energy 
Nonreactor Nuclear Facility Documented Safety Analyses.
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    When 10 CFR Part 830 was promulgated in final form in early 
2001, the version of DOE Standard 3009-94 incorporated into Appendix 
A of the rule as a safe harbor included the Evaluation Guidelines. 
This combination of the rule's requirement for an approved DSA and 
the application of the Evaluation Guidelines of DOE Standard 3009-94 
formed the basis upon which adequate protection of the public health 
and safety would be gauged. Whenever dose consequence calculations 
showed that an accident scenario would result in offsite doses 
approaching or exceeding 25 rem TEDE, safety class systems would 
have to be chosen and installed to reduce this dose to a small 
fraction of the Evaluation Guidelines.

Developments Since 2001

    As a safe harbor for 10 CFR Part 830, the Evaluation Guidelines 
described in DOE Standard 3009-94 have been enforced and met for the 
majority of DOE's defense nuclear facilities, assuring adequate 
protection to the public, workers, and the environment. However, in 
December 2008, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) 
approved a DSA for the Plutonium Facility at Los Alamos National 
Laboratory that represented a significant departure from the 
accepted methodology, as discussed in the Board's Recommendation 
2009-2, Los Alamos National Laboratory Plutonium

[[Page 69649]]

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[hellip], 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 system needs a clear and 
unambiguous set of nuclear safety requirements to ensure that 
adequate protection 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, and components 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]
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