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Implications of the Accident at Chernobyl for Safety Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power Plants in the United States Final Report

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Implications of the Accident at Chernobyl for Safety Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power Plants in the United States Final Report NUREG-1251 Vol. I Implications of the Accident at Chernobyl for Safety Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power Plants in the United States Final Report Main Report U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission p. o AVAILABILITY NOTICE Availability of Reference Materials Cited in NRC Publications Most documents cited in NRC publications will be available from one of the following sources: 1. The NRC Public Document Room, 2120 L Street, NW, Lower Level, Washington, DC 20555 2. The Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, P.O. Box 37082, Washington, DC 20013-7082 3. The National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA 22161 Although the listing that follows represents the majority of documents cited in NRC publica- tions, it is not intended to be exhaustive. Referenced documents available for inspection and copying for a fee from the NRC Public Document Room include NRC correspondence and internal NRC memoranda; NRC Office of Inspection and Enforcement bulletins, circulars, information notices, inspection and investi- gation notices; Licensee Event Reports; vendor reports and correspondence; Commission papers; and applicant and licensee documents and correspondence. The following documents in the NUREG series are available for purchase from the GPO Sales Program: formal NRC staff and contractor reports, NRC-sponsored conference proceed- ings, and NRC booklets and brochures. Also available are Regulatory Guides, NRC regula- tions in the Code of Federal Regulations, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Issuances. Documents available from the National Technical Information Service include NUREG series reports and technical reports prepared by other federal agencies and reports prepared by the Atomic Energy Commission, forerunner agency to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Documents available from public and special technical libraries include all open literature items, such as books, journal and periodical articles, and transactions. Federal Register notices, federal and state legislation, and congressional reports can usually be obtained from these libraries. Documents such as theses, dissertations, foreign reports and translations, and non-NRC conference proceedings are available for purchase from the organization sponsoring the publication cited. Single copies of NRC draft reports are available free, to the extent of supply, upon written request to the Office of Information Resources Management, Distribution Section, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555. Copies of industry codes and standards used in a substantive manner in the NRC regulatory process are maintained at the NRC Library, 7920 Norfolk Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland, and are available there for reference use by the public. Codes and standards are usually copy- righted and may be purchased from the originating organization or, if they are American National Standards, from the American National Standards Institute, 1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018. NUREG-1251 Vol. I Implications of the Accident at Chernobyl for Safety Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power Plants in the United States Final Report Main Report Manuscript Completed: April 1989 Date Published: April 1989 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555 ABSTRACT This report was prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff to as- sess the implications of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as they relate to reactor safety regulation for commercial nuclear power plants in the United States. The facts used in this assessment have been drawn from the U.S. fact-finding report (NUREG-1250) and its sources. This report consists of two volumes: Volume I, Main Report, and Volume II, Ap- pendix - Public Comments and Their Disposition. NUREG-1251, Vol. I iii CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT. .................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION................................. ............. 1 SUMMARY ......................................... ....................... 2 Chapter 1 ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROLS AND OPERATIONAL PRACTICES .................... 1-1 1.1 Administrative Controls To Ensure That Procedures Are Followed and That Procedures Are Adequate ....... ........................ 1-2 1.2 Approval of Tests and Other Unusual Operations .................. 1-7 1.3 Bypassing Safety Systems..... ..... 1-11 1.4 Availability of Engineered Safety Features...................1-15 1.5 Operating Staff Attitudes Toward Safety ........................ 1-19 1.6 Management Systems .............................................. 1-22 1.7 Accident Management ............................................. 1-23 2 DESIGN .......................................... ..................... 2-1 2.1 Reactivity Accidents ..................................... 2-1 2.2 Accidents at Low Power and at Zero Power ........................ 2-9 2.3 Multiple-Unit Protection..* ..................................... 2-12 2.4 Fire Protection...... ..................... .................... 2-15 3 CONTAINMENT .............. .................................. 3-1 3.1 ContainmentPerformance During Severe Accidents ................. 3-2 3.2 Filtered Venting ................................................ 3-4 4 EMERGENCY PLANNING .................................................... 4-1 4.1 Size of the Emergency Planning Zones ............................ 4-1 4.2 Medical Services ................................................ 4-4 4.3 Ingestion Pathway Measures .... ................................ 4-7 4.4 Decontamination and Relocation .................................. 4-9 5 SEVERE-ACCIDENT PHENOMENA ................ ........................... 5-1 5.1 Source Term ....... ... ................................. 5-1 5.2 Steam Explosions ............. I.................................. 5-10 5.3 Combustible Gas ................................................. 5-14 6 GRAPHITE-MODERATED REACTORS .......................................... 6-1 6.1 The Fort St. Vrain Reactor and the Modular High-Temperature Gas- Cooled Reactor ......................... ........................ 6-2 6.2 Assessment ................. ... ......................... 6-2 6.3 Conclusions and Recommendations .... ........................... 6-7 REFERENCES .................. ............................................ R-1 NUREG-1251, Vol. I INTRODUCTION This report was prepared by the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to assess the implications of the April 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union as they relate to commercial nuclear reactor safety regulation in the United States. Most of the assessment focuses on light-water-reactor power plants. A final chapter addresses graphite-moderated reactors. With respect to studying the Chernobyl accident, U.S. Government agencies have expended their energies on determining the facts, as well as on assessing those facts in terms of how the accident may affect U.S. policies and practices in the nuclear power field. The work was divided into two major phases. The first phase, fact finding, was a coordinated effort among several U.S. Government agencies and some private groups; this phase was completed in January 1987 and has been reported in NUREG-1250, "Report on the Accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station." The second phase, an assessment of the implications of that accident with re- gard to U.S. policies and practices, is being pursued separately by each organi- zation that participated in NUREG-1250. The present report, as part of this second phase, addresses the safety regulation of commercial nuclear reactors under NRC regulatory jurisdiction. (Department of Energy reactors, not subject to NRC regulation, are not addressed in this NRC study.) In developing the assessments presented in this report (NUREG-1251), the NRC staff depended on NUREG-1250 and its two major source documents (USSR, 1986; INSAG, 1986) for the facts of the Chernobyl accident. The Soviet document (USSR, 1986) is an official Soviet report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Experts' Meeting held in Vienna August 25-29, 1986; the second (INSAG, 1986) is the report to the IAEA prepared by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group at a second meeting in Vienna on August 30 to September 5, 1986. The assessment of the implications of the Chernobyl accident with regard to commercial nuclear reactor safety regulation in the United States is supported by detailed assessments of a number of particular issues, grouped in six subject areas. The particular issues selected for evaluation were those that are asso- ciated with significant factors that led to or exacerbated the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. A draft of this report was issued for public comment in September 1987. The comments received, together with further work within the NRC, were taken into account in preparing this final version. The passages that have been changed (except for those with minor editorial changes, such as the spelling out of acronyms) are marked by vertical lines in the margin. A separately bound ap- pendix to this report contains the comments received, provides the staff's re- sponse to significant issues raised in the comments, and identifies the nature and basis of the resultant changes to the draft report. The changes correct or clarify specific items of information and modify asspssments in some areas per- taining to specific issues; they do not substantially change the major aspects ,of the assessment. NUREG-1251, Vol. I 1 SUMMARY General Conclusions A study of the Chernobyl
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