More about the Myth of TRACE and my FOIA

To begin with, here is what NRC staff told ACRS on September 4, 2008:
In order to do this, we organized a group of experts to review the code. These are individuals who have international reputations in thermohydraulics, models and methods and the applications. One of the peer review members was Dominique Bestion. He is the research director of CEA Grenoble and one of the primary developers of the CATHARE computer code. Another member was Peter Griffith. He is a retired professor at MIT, has a lot of experience in the nuclear area. Marv Thurgood was brought in because of his expertise in numerical applications and he is one of the principal developers of the COBRA code and George Yadiagaroglu, he was a professor emeritus of nuclear engineering in the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich.

So, I went after those consultant reports via FOIA as follows:
State: ID
Zip: 83353
Country: United_States
Email: bobleyse#aol.com
Phone: 208 622 7740
Desc: For your reference, the Accession Number is ML083220028 for the document that contains the information you are looking for. This document is dated December 8, 2008. Here are four ML's ML081640540 ML081640551 ML081640564 ML081640560 Of course, I need these docs, but when I go to ADAMS all I get is the ACRS letter, ML082540133, that lists the above ML's as references.
FeeCategory: Personal_Noncommercial
Waiver_Purpose: Private use
Waiver_ExtentToExtractAnalyze: Substantial. NRC has been in the TRACE game forever and wastes tons of $$$$$
Waiver_SpecificActivityQuals: I know heat transfer and fouling and I have a lot of PRM's in the system.
Waiver_NatureOfPublic: I'll put all this on my blog, nuclearpowerblog.blogspot.com
Waiver_MeansOfDissemination: see item 5
Waiver_FreeToPublicOrFee: Free
Waiver_PrivateCommericalInterest: None

So on March 4, 2009, I received documents in response to my FOIA and the responses are grossly incomplete with omissions under Exemption 5, "Deliberative process: Disclosure would tend to inhibit the open and free exchange of ideas ..."

Bestion on 2/5/2008 produced 53 pages of which I am allowed to see 5.
Yadigaroglu on 5/10/2008 produced 19 pages of which I have been allowed to see 4.
Griffith on 4/30/2008 produced 18 pages of which I have been allowed to see most of page 1.
Thurgood on 6/18/2008 produced 10 pages of which I have been allowed to see 2.

Today, March 6, 2009, I sent the following to Chairman, NRC:


Chairman:

Following are portions of slides that NRC staff presented to ACRS on September 4, 2008. The following has slides 16, 1, 2 and 11 in that order.

Now I am focusing on the third line from the bottom of slide 11 which is:

Model for nucleate boiling is overly complex and ad hoc

So, I want:
1. The model for nucleate boiling
2. The identification of the consultant who observed that the model is overly complex, etc.
3. The related remarks of that consultant.

Via FOIA/PA 2009-0068 I have received the report of each of the four consultants. However, under Exemption 5, one of your Directors (Sheron)deleted just about everything.

Robert H. Leyse bobleyse@aol.com

I'll report what I find out.