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NRC NEWS
U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION |
| Office of Public Affairs |
Telephone: 301/415-8200 |
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E-mail: opa@nrc.gov |
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No. 96-94 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Friday, July 5, 1996)
NRC PREHEARING CONFERENCE SCHEDULED
FOR YANKEE NUCLEAR POWER STATION
An NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has scheduled a prehearing
conference July 16 in Rockville, Maryland, in a licensing proceeding
concerning the decommissioning of Yankee Atomic Electric Company's
nuclear power station near Rowe, Massachusetts. The Yankee facility
permanently ceased operation in October 1991.
The conference, which is open to the public, will begin at 9:30
a.m. in Room 3B45, Third Floor, of the NRC Two White Flint North Building
at 11545 Rockville Pike.
Intervenors requesting a hearing on the unfinished portion of work
to be completed under the Yankee decommissioning plan are Citizens
Awareness Network and New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution.
After a prehearing conference earlier this year, the
Licensing Board on March 1 declined to admit any of the intervenors'
contentions and denied their hearing request. On review of the
intervenors' appeal, the Commission on June 18 remanded the proceeding to
the Licensing Board to consider whether a new dose argument put forth by
the intervenors satisfies late-filing standards and whether it provides a
sufficient basis for challenging Yankee Atomic's choice of the DECON
rather than the SAFSTOR decommissioning alternative.
Under DECON, equipment, structures and portions of the site are
decontaminated to levels that permit unrestricted use of the property in
a much shorter time period than under other alternatives. SAFSTOR is an
alternative in which a facility is maintained in a condition that allows
it to be safely stored and subsequently decontaminated that permit
release for unrestricted use at a later date.
Intervenors contend that because occupational and public doses
under the Yankee Atomic DECON alternative will be higher than under
SAFSTOR, the decommissioning plan fails to achieve doses that are as low
as reasonably achievable (ALARA), thereby violating the Commission's
ALARA standard.
Members of the Licensing Board are the following Administrative
Judges from the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel: G. Paul
Bollwerk, III, chairman; Dr. Jerry R. Kline and Dr. Thomas S. Elleman.
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