Following are excerpts from an ACRS transcript (Fukushima). It turns out that about 10 weeks after the March 11 tsunami, NEI and the DOE talk about a lot of running around, but nobody seems very adept at cutting into the fundamentals. Of course, resolution of PRM-50-93 would be useful, however, those efforts have not proceeded, or remain unreported. Well in advance of Fukushima, the NEI and NRC insisted that tools such as the Baker-Just and Cathcart-Pawel were well founded. I wonder what tools the "experts" deployed in the alleged analyses of "Hydrogen produced from zirconium oxidation of the fuel cladding."I found out that NRC had "extended" its deadline for reviewing PRM-50-93 during ACRS and NRC staff discussions at the meeting of the ACRS Thermal Hydraulics Subcommittee on October 18, 2011. Following are a few of my remarks to Full ACRS on May 26, 2011. I have corrected the reference to PRM-50-93.
Now today we heard NEI tell us that while
4 we take this Fukushima act on we don't ignore what
5 else is going on. I would advise ACRS to be get into
6 PRM 50.93 as well as the NRC. NRC once had it as a
7 high priority item until a rather otherwise useless
8 meeting back in October of the Thermohydraulic
9 Subcommittee.But it's a fact that made any sense what
12 Mark Leyse and myself discussed. You went through the
13 whole thing and never got into zirconium or how it
14 would react in a loss of coolant accident. Instead
15 you listened to endless presentations from Penn State
16 and others that really don't bear on what's going on
17 today or was potentially going to go on.18 CHAIR ABDEL-KHALIK: Mr. Leyse.
19 MR. LEYSE: End of comments. Thank you.
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
Subcommittee on Fukushima
Location: Rockville, Maryland
Date: Thursday, May 26, 2011
DR. KELLY: So there is some
2 interconnection. That may explain the mystery of
3 Unit 4, so -- but basically, what I wanted to talk
4 about was, you know, what kind of happened in those
5 first days. Of course, you know, we know the NRC
6 stood up their Emergency Operations Center. They
7 deployed people to Japan.
8 They formed this reactor safety team that
9 was really there to provide advice to the Ambassador
10 and the government as questions came in. And it was
11 principally on the -- managing the reactors and spent
12 fuel pools. I mean, that's what the NRC team was
13 principally focused on.
14
But they initiated this consortium call
15 that was twice a day, daily, you know, it was very
16 frequent, that it had participation from NRC, INPO,
17 DOE, Naval Reactors, and GE, other industry partners.18 So there was a call that was discussing basically that
19 the appropriate accident management guidelines, as we
20 are gathering data and looking ahead, as to what was
21 next.
22 Dr. Lyons, my boss, and Chairman Jaczko
23 got together with INPO and discussed, how are we going
24 to deal with all the industry's interest in assisting
25 Japan? And so INPO agreed to be the coordinating
point for that, and they sent -- ended up sending
2 people both to -- to Japan as well as coordinating
3 things here in the U.S.
4 And so this really was a great idea,
5 because it helped get our capabilities, which are
6 great in terms of many of these areas, channeled in
7 the right direction, so that they could be deployed
8 more rapidly.
9 MEMBER CORRADINI: So INPO was the point
10 of focus, the point of contact to TEPCO.
11 DR. KELLY: Yes.
12 MEMBER CORRADINI: Okay.
13 DR. KELLY: And for all interesting in
14 assisting, it was -- INPO served as a clearinghouse
15 for that.
DR. KELLY: I was at the GE Emergency
8 Center on like the 13th of March. It turned out the
9 PSA conference was held in Wilmington. So I took the
10 opportunity to go over. I know that was really good.
11 So we've established that liaison, too. So that when
12 we need information on the GE plants we've got that
13 network in place.
Immediate ResponseUSNRCô€€€Activated its Emergency Operations Center
ô€€€Immediately deployed personnel to the U.S.
Embassy in Japan to support the Reactor Safety
Team (RST)
ô€€€Provided expert advice to the U.S. Ambassador d
and Government of Japan ministers
ô€€€Set up and coordinated consortium call that
involved NRC, INPO, DOE, and Naval Reactors
U. S. Department of Energyô€€€ Activated its Emergency Operations Center
focused on monitoring radiation release and
impact on U.S. citizens (both in Japan and the
U.S.)
ô€€€ Deployed Airborne Monitoring System aircraft
and sensors
ô€€€ Provided additional DOE Embassy reps to the
two already assigned to the U.S. Embassy
ô€€€ Deployed national laboratory reps from INL,
involved NRC, INPO, DOE, and Naval Reactors
PNNL and Sandia to provide technical assistance
ô€€€ Assigned NE personnel to stand watch in the DOE<>R>DOE EOC
INPOô€€€Organized nuclear industry technical response to
assist TEPCO
DOE has provided a significant
response to the events at Fukushima􀂄 During the first several weeks after the massive earthquake in
Japan, DOE provided a significant and diverse set of analysis to
support the events at Fukushima-Daiichi
􀂄 This response involved a broad set of institutions with over 200
people contributing
– DOE: Offices of NE, SC, NNSA, EM
– Laboratories: ANL, BNL, INL, LANL, ORNL, PNNL, and SNL
– Numerous universities
– Individual consultants – Secretary’s external science experts
Background on Unit 4 SFP Explosionô€‚„ Unit 4 explosion Occurred March 15, 6:00 am – Approximately 90 hours after
earthquake (Full core offloaded into pool, high heat load (~2.3 MW))
􀂄 The Unit 4 Explosion was originally attributed to hydrogen, but it has not be possible to definitively conclude this.
􀂄 An assessment of possible causes of the explosion was performed resulting three
primary causes:
– Hydrogen produced from zirconium oxidation from the fuel cladding (or other fuel assembly and storage rack structures) in the fuel storage pool
– Ignition of other flammable materials in the unit 4 building that were possibly being used for maintenance work (such as acetylene)
– Hydrogen that was transferred through the stack vent lines from the hydrogen produced in unit 3
􀂄 There were additional possible causes that have been proposed by others, but not
analyzed:
– Hydrogen production from radiolysis
– A proposed scenario based on material blockage preventing convective flow coupled with extreme boiling
You may also read an enlarged access to the following via ADAMS:
For emphasis, I am repeating the main paragraph of my e-mail dated October 13, 2006. The NRC stated that, "More than 50 tests were conducted to evaluate the thermal-hydraulic and mechanical deformation behavior of a full length 32-rod nuclear bundle during the heatup, reflood and quench phases of a large break LOCA." And that, "The NRC is reviewing the data from this program to determine the value of using it to assess the current generation of codes such as TRAC-M (Reference 20), now renamed TRACE."
PRM-50-93 is in several earlier entries in this blog. So are my related attacks on the Baker-Just equation and the fierce defense of Baker-Just by the NRC, NEI, and several elements of the industry. Following is one of several NRC responses to my actions related to PRM-50-93. Again, click to enlarge and use your back arrow to return here.
