Samuel Miranda is a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official:
From: Samuel Miranda
Date: Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 2:31 PM
Subject: My response to the NRC's withdrawal of RIS 2005-29
On May 15, 2019, the NRC withdrew a Regulatory Issue Summary, RIS 2005-29 (1), and referred to (2) for supporting information (i.e., its reasons for withdrawal). This information is in an NRC memorandum from Eric R. Oesterle to Mirela Gavrilas, entitled, “Supporting Information for Staff Recommendations in Response to Executive Director for Operations Tasking in September 15, 2016, Exelon Backfit Appeal Decision.” The memorandum (2) is dated September 6, 2017, and recorded under ADAMS Accession No. ML17237C035.
The withdrawal memorandum responds to the Executive Director for Operations Tasking with an important rejection of the Executive Director's claim that the pressurizer safety valves can be relied upon, consistently, to relieve water without fail. The withdrawal memorandum (1) supports the rejection with the results of several valve tests that indicate the valves will be damaged if they relieve water. (They're designed for steam relief only.) This means that no licensee can assert a water relief capabilty for these valves. That is, no licensee except Exelon. See (4) and (5) for details.
Significantly, (2) is not available to the public. It seems that the NRC staff withdrew a Regulatory Issue Summary, RIS 2005-29, a guidance document that had been publically available since 2005; but withheld its reasons for doing so. Consequently, I filed a FOIA request, NRC-2019-000363 (3), to have [2] released. The NRC responded with a redacted copy (4) of (2). The response (4) lists 19 staff positions in RIS 2005-29 and draft Revision 1, and completely redacts 18 of them. The NRC invoked the deliberative process privilege (FOIA Exemption 5, which is specified in 5 U.S.C. 552(b) (5)), to justify the redactions.
Yesterday, I filed a lengthy appeal to the NRC's FOIA response. (5)
Here is a brief timeline of these events.
Date Event Description and Reference
5/15/2019 NRC withdraws RIS 2005-29, and Draft Revision 1, “Anticipated Transients That Could Develop Into More Serious Events” (1) (ADAMS No. ML19121A534).
7/18/2019 I filed a FOIA Request for the NRC's non-public memorandum which is cited as ADAMS No. ML17237C035. (2) The FOIA Request is designated NRC-2019-000363. (3)
9/20/2019 NRC responds to FOIA Request, NRC-2019-000363 with ADAMS No. ML19266A445 (4), a redacted version of the requested memo, ADAMS No. ML17237C035. (2)
10/25/2019 I filed an appeal regarding the NRC's response to FOIA Request, NRC 2019-000363. The appeal is designated NRC-2020-000026. (5)
If you devote the time and effort it takes to sort through the attachments, then I expect you’ll have lots of questions.
I look forward to answering them.
Sincerely,
Sam Miranda, PE [Professional Engineer]