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NUREG-1437 Supplement 30 Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants Supplement 30 Regarding Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station Draft Report for Comment U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Washington, DC 20555-0001 AVAILABILITY OF REFERENCE MATERIALS IN NRC PUBLICATIONS NRC Reference Material Non-NRC Reference Material As of November 1999, you may electronically access Documents available from public and special technical NUREG-series publications and other NRC records at libraries include all open literature items, such as NRC’s Public Electronic Reading Room at books, journal articles, and transactions, Federal http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm.html. Register notices, Federal and State legislation, and Publicly released records include, to name a few, congressional reports. Such documents as theses, NUREG-series publications; Federal Register notices; dissertations, foreign reports and translations, and applicant, licensee, and vendor documents and non-NRC conference proceedings may be purchased correspondence; NRC correspondence and internal from their sponsoring organization. memoranda; bulletins and information notices; inspection and investigative reports; licensee event reports; and Commission papers and their attachments. Copies of industry codes and standards used in a substantive manner in the NRC regulatory process are NRC publications in the NUREG series, NRC maintained at— regulations, and Title 10, Energy, in the Code of The NRC Technical Library Federal Regulations may also be purchased from one Two White Flint North of these two sources. 11545 Rockville Pike 1. The Superintendent of Documents Rockville, MD 20852–2738 U.S. Government Printing Office Mail Stop SSOP Washington, DC 20402–0001 These standards are available in the library for Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov reference use by the public. Codes and standards are Telephone: 202-512-1800 usually copyrighted and may be purchased from the Fax: 202-512-2250 originating organization or, if they are American 2. 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Some publications in the NUREG series that are The NUREG series comprises (1) technical and posted at NRC’s Web site address administrative reports and books prepared by the http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs staff (NUREG–XXXX) or agency contractors are updated periodically and may differ from the last (NUREG/CR–XXXX), (2) proceedings of printed version. Although references to material found conferences (NUREG/CP–XXXX), (3) reports on a Web site bear the date the material was accessed, resulting from international agreements the material available on the date cited may (NUREG/IA–XXXX), (4) brochures subsequently be removed from the site. (NUREG/BR–XXXX), and (5) compilations of legal decisions and orders of the Commission and Atomic and Safety Licensing Boards and of Directors’ decisions under Section 2.206 of NRC’s regulations (NUREG–0750). COMMENTS ON DRAFT REPORT Any interested party may submit comments on this report for consideration by the NRC staff. Comments may be accompanied by additional relevant information or supporting data. Please specify the report number NUREG-1437, Supplement 30, draft, in your comments, and send them by March 7, 2007, to the following address: Chief, Rules Review and Directives Branch U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Mail Stop T6-D59 Washington, DC 20555-0001 Electronic comments may be submitted to the NRC by the Internet at [email protected]. For any questions about the material in this report, please contact: R. Emch U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555-0001 Phone: 301-415-1590 E-mail: [email protected] 1 Abstract 2 3 4 The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) considered the environmental impacts of 5 renewing nuclear power plant operating licenses (OLs) for a 20-year period in its Generic 6 Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants (GEIS), NUREG-1437, 7 Volumes 1 and 2, and codified the results in Title 10, Part 51, of the Code of Federal 8 Regulations (10 CFR Part 51). In the GEIS (and its Addendum 1), the NRC staff identifies 9 92 environmental issues and reaches generic conclusions related to environmental impacts for 10 69 of these issues that apply to all plants or to plants with specific design or site characteristics. 11 Additional plant-specific review is required for the remaining 23 issues. These plant-specific 12 reviews are to be included in a supplement to the GEIS. 13 14 This draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) has been prepared in 15 response to an application submitted to the NRC by Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, LLC and 16 Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. (Entergy), to renew the OL for Vermont Yankee Nuclear 17 Power Station (VYNPS) for an additional 20 years under 10 CFR Part 54. This draft SEIS 18 includes the NRC staff’s analysis that considers and weighs the environmental impacts of the 19 proposed action, the environmental impacts of alternatives to the proposed action, and 20 mitigation measures available for reducing or avoiding adverse impacts. It also includes the 21 NRC staff’s preliminary recommendation regarding the proposed action. 22 23 Regarding the 69 issues for which the GEIS reached generic conclusions, neither Entergy nor 24 the NRC staff has identified information that is both new and significant for any issue that 25 applies to VYNPS. In addition, the NRC staff determined that information provided during the 26 scoping process did not call into question the conclusions in the GEIS. Therefore, the NRC 27 staff concludes that the impacts of renewing the VYNPS OL would not be greater than the 28 impacts identified for these issues in the GEIS. For each of these issues, the NRC staff’s 29 conclusion in the GEIS is that the impact is of SMALL(a) significance (except for collective offsite 30 radiological impacts from the fuel cycle and high-level waste and spent fuel, which were not 31 assigned a single significance level). 32 33 Regarding the remaining 23 issues, those that apply to VYNPS are addressed in this draft SEIS. 34 For each applicable issue, the NRC staff concludes that the significance of the potential 35 environmental impacts of renewal of the OL is SMALL. The NRC staff also concludes that no 36 additional mitigation is warranted. However, under the provisions of the Clean Water Act 316(b) 37 Phase II regulations, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation may impose 38 further restrictions or require modifications to the cooling system to reduce the impacts on (a) Environmental effects are not detectable or are so minor that they will neither destabilize nor noticeably alter any important attribute of the resource. December 2006 iii Draft NUREG-1437, Supplement 30 Abstract 1 aquatic resources from entrainment and impingement. The NRC staff determined that 2 information provided during the scoping process did not identify any new issue that has a 3 significant environmental impact. 4 5 The NRC staff’s preliminary recommendation is that the Commission determine that the adverse 6 environmental impacts of license renewal for VYNPS are not so great that preserving the option 7 of license renewal for energy-planning decisionmakers would be unreasonable. This 8 recommendation is based on (1) the analysis and findings in the GEIS; (2) the Environmental 9 Report submitted by Entergy; (3) consultation with Federal, State, and local agencies; (4) the 10 NRC staff’s own independent review; and (5) the NRC staff’s consideration of public comments 11 received during the scoping process. 12 Draft NUREG-1437, Supplement 30 iv December 2006 1 Contents 2 3 4 Abstract ............................................................... iii 5 6 Executive Summary...................................................... xv 7 8 Abbreviations/Acronyms................................................... xx 9 10 1.0 Introduction ........................................................ 1-1 11 12 1.1 Report Contents ................................................. 1-1 13 1.2 Background .................................................... 1-3 14 15 1.2.1 Generic Environmental Impact Statement ....................... 1-3 16 1.2.2 License Renewal Evaluation Process .......................... 1-5 17 18 1.3 The Proposed Federal Action ....................................... 1-8 19 1.4 The Purpose and Need for the Proposed Action ........................ 1-8 20 1.5 Compliance and Consultations ...................................... 1-9 21 1.6 References..................................................... 1-9 22 23 2.0 Description of Nuclear Power Plant and Site and Plant Interaction 24 with the Environment.................................................