ML18067A312
| ML18067A312 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/27/2018 |
| From: | NRC/Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel (LSNARP) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| Download: ML18067A312 (198) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel Docket Number:
(n/a)
Location:
Rockville, Maryland Date:
Tuesday, February 27, 2018 Work Order No.:
NRC-3529 Pages 1-197 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
+ + + + +
3 LICENSING SUPPORT NETWORK ADVISORY REVIEW PANEL 4
+ + + + +
5 MEETING 6
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7 TUESDAY 8
FEBRUARY 27, 2018 9
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10 ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND 11
+ + + + +
12 The Advisory Committee met at the Nuclear 13 Regulatory Commission, Three White Flint North, Room 14 01C3, 11601 Landsdown Street, Rockville, Maryland, at 15 10:03 a.m., Andy Bates, Chairman, and Chip Cameron, 16 Facilitator, presiding.
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2 BOARD MEMBERS:
1 ANDY BATES, Chairman, LSNARP 2
JESSICA BIELECKI, NRC 3
LAURIE BORSKI, State of Nevada 4
ANNE COTTINGHAM, NEI*
5 DIANE CURRAN, Eureka County, Nevada 6
ROBERT HALSTEAD, State of Nevada 7
ABIGAIL JOHNSON, Eureka County, Nevada*
8 PHIL KLEVORICK, Clark County, Nevada*
9 L. DARRELL LACY, Nye County, Nevada*
10 SUSAN LYNCH, State of Nevada*
11 MARTIN MALSCH, State of Nevada 12 REX MASSEY, Churchill and Lander Counties, Nevada*
13 LEVI MCALLISTER, DOE 14 TIM MCCARTIN, NRC 15 ROD MCCULLUM, NEI 16 JOHN MCINTIRE, NEI 17 LOREEN PITCHFORD, Churchill and Lander Counties, 18 Nevada 19 THOMAS POINDEXTER, DOE 20 BRYAN PYLE, White Pine County, Nevada*
21 KAITLIN REKOLA, NEI 22 CARRIE SAFFORD, NRC 23 CONNIE SIMKINS, City of Caliente, Nevada, and 24 Lincoln County, Nevada*
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3 BOARD MEMBERS (CONTINUED):
1 JUDY TREICHEL, Nevada Nuclear Waste Taskforce, Inc.
2 HEATHER WESTRA, Prairie Island Indian Community*
3 IAN ZABARTE, Native Community Action Council*
4 5
ALSO PRESENT:
6 CHIP CAMERON, Facilitator 7
PAUL BOLLWERK, NRC, ASLBP 8
RUSSELL CHAZELL, Office of the Secretary, NRC 9
K.G. GOLSHAN, Branch Chief, OCIO, NRC 10 MARGIE JANNEY, Acting Administrator, LSN, NRC 11 REKHA NAMBIAR, NRC 12 BRIAN NEWELL, Office of the Secretary, NRC 13 ANDY WELKIE, IT Specialist, NRC 14 THOMAS WELLOCK, NRC Historian, NRC 15 16
- Present remotely 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 1
Call to Order and Opening Remarks........
5 2
Overview
.................... 20 3
Opportunity for Public Comment
......... 40 4
(None) 5 Status of the Yucca Mountain Adjudicatory.... 42 6
Process 7
History of the LSN and LSN Library
....... 54 8
Introduction of LSN Reconstitution/Replacement
. 63 9
Options Paper 10 Status of EIE/EHD and Exhibit Submission Gap
.. 71 11 Opportunity for Public Comment
......... 94 12 Option 1, Traditional Discovery........
101 13 Option 2, NRC ADAMS LSN Library 152 14 Adjourn....................
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5 P R O C E E D I N G S 1
10:39 a.m.
2 CHAIRMAN BATES: (presiding) Good 3
morning, everybody.
4 I'm Andy Bates, the LSNARP Chairman and 5
the designated federal employee for the meeting. I'm 6
with the NRC's Office of the Secretary.
7 I want to welcome all of the Committee 8
members and the public who are in attendance today, 9
both in person and virtually.
10 Before we get into introductions, let me 11 go through a couple of formalities. This is an open 12 public meeting of NRC's Licensing Support Network 13 Advisory Review Panel, and it's being held in 14 accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, 15 FACA for short.
16 It was announced in The Federal Register 17 on January 10th, 2018, and included the topics for the 18 discussion and a preliminary agenda. And updated 19 agenda was posted to the internet on February 23rd.
20 There are sign-in sheets at the back of 21 the room, and I ask that everybody please sign in.
22 For those members of the public in the 23 room, there's wifi available, and the wifi password is 24 posted on the wall. Please note that the connection 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 is going to timeout after four hours and you'll need 1
to reconnect.
2 The meeting is going to be transcribed, 3
and we expect the transcript to be available in about 4
a week. We also expect to post it on the internet and 5
send it to the members by March 9th.
6 This is the first meeting of this panel 7
since December of 2003, and it's the first time we 8
have used virtual meeting technology for the 9
Committee. Since this meeting is being held with both 10 attendees here in Rockville and virtually, I'll ask 11 that everybody make sure to identify yourself for the 12 record whenever you speak, so our transcriber can 13 produce an accurate record of the meeting.
14 For the LSNARP members who are 15 participating using GoToMeeting, please self-mute your 16 audio connection by clicking on your audio icon in the 17 GoToMeeting control panel. During the portions set 18 aside for member comments, we'll ask for comments from 19 members in the room first and, then, using GoToMeeting 20 and, then, any member not using GoToMeeting but using 21 the audio-only option.
22 If you would like to make a comment, 23 please turn your name tent on its end, so that we can 24 see it through your web camera. When we call on you 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 for comment, please unmute your audio and wait a few 1
seconds before providing your comment or question, as 2
it takes a moment for the audio signal to unmute.
3 If you are not using a web camera, please 4
use the chat feature to send a message that you wish 5
to provide the comment or a question, and that message 6
will be forwarded to our meeting facilitator. When 7
sending and using the chat feature, please make sure 8
to choose "organizers only" when you send the message.
9 If there's technical difficulties, you can 10 all 888-395-2501.
The listen-only code is 11 4-6-5-2-5-5-4. Members should refer to the email that 12 was sent out that contains the GoToMeeting link if you 13 have difficulties.
14 I would like now to go around the room and 15 ask each Committee member who's here to introduce 16 themselves and, then, we're going to go to those who 17 are connected by GoToMeeting, where I'll go through a 18 list of the participants that I have. And we expect 19 to try to follow that process during the day, where we 20 go to members here in the meeting and, then, go to 21 members who are online through GoToMeeting. And then, 22 subsequently, several locations during the course of 23 today and tomorrow, we'll ask if members of the public 24 have any comments that they want to make, and they can 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 participate by sending questions in through the 1
GoToWebinar or our audio connection, if they're 2
connected by telephone.
3 Let me go to first to Jessica.
4 MS. BIELECKI: Good morning. Jessica 5
Bielecki, NRC staff.
6 MS.
CURRAN:
I'm Diane
- Curran, 7
representing Eureka County.
8 MR. POINDEXTER: Tom Poindexter, Morgan 9
Lewis, counsel to DOE.
10 MS. TREICHEL: Judy Treichel from the 11 Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.
12 MR. HALSTEAD: Bob Halstead, Nevada Agency 13 for Nuclear Projects, which is part of the Office of 14 Governor Brian Sandoval.
15 MR. McCULLUM: Rod McCullum, Nuclear 16 Energy Institute.
17 MR. GOLSHAN: K.G. Golshan, LSN staff.
18 MS. JANNEY: Margie Janney, Acting LSN 19 Administrator.
20 CHAIRMAN BATES: And online we have Ian 21 Zabarte. And I apologize if I mispronounced your 22 name.
23 MR.
ZABARTE:
Ian
- Zabarte, Native 24 Community Action Council.
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9 CHAIRMAN BATES: Okay. Thank you.
1 Is there anybody else that we've missed at 2
this point?
3 MR. LACY: Darrell Lacy, Nye County.
4 MR. PYLE: Bryan Pyle, White Pine County.
5 CHAIRMAN BATES: Abby, are you there?
6 Abby Johnson, are you on?
7 MS. JOHNSON: Abby Johnson, Eureka County.
8 CHAIRMAN BATES: Okay. Thank you.
9 I'm not sure at this point whether we have 10 members of the public here in the room. As I 11 indicated before, periodically, we will go and open up 12 the floor and the audio to members of the public. We 13 do have a microphone in the back here, if you would 14 use that when we ask for any comments that you may 15 have.
16 A couple of other logistical issues.
17 We're planning to break for lunch no later than about 18 one o'clock today. We'll take several 15-minute 19 breaks during the day.
20 There are restrooms back to the right in 21 the main lobby and, also, to the left around the 22 corner.
23 I'll turn now, introduce Chip Cameron, 24 who's going to help facilitate the discussion over the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 next three days, couple of days, two days, to provide 1
some introductory comments on the meeting process and 2
that we want to follow over the next two days in order 3
to facilitate a good discussion amongst all of the 4
members.
5 Chip?
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank 7
you, Andy.
8 Andy W., is my lavalier on? Can everybody 9
hear me? Okay. Great.
10 Good morning to everybody here and online.
11 My name is Chip Cameron, and I'm going to be serving 12 as your facilitator for this two-day meeting of the 13 Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel.
14 We're going to try to keep acronyms down, 15 but one acronym you're going to hear a lot is LSN.
16 And the most important objective of these 17 two days of meeting is to hear the Advisory Review 18 Panel's ideas, both collectively and individually, on 19 the options for a reconstituted or replacement LSN.
20 The NRC ARP staff has done some research on possible 21 options for you to consider, and we'll be discussing 22 those during the next two days, as well as any other 23 options that you may want to suggest.
24 At this point, I should note that the NRC 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 LSN staff is composed of representatives from the 1
Commission's Office of the Secretary, the Office of 2
the Chief Information Officer from the Atomic Safety 3
and Licensing Board Panel, and we have Margie Janney, 4
who is the Acting LSN Administrator.
5 And that term "NRC LSN staff" 6
distinguishes it from the NRC staff who's here at the 7
table, Jessica Bielecki, and Carrie Safford will also 8
be joining us. And we have members of the NRC 9
technical staff here. They are the staff who's 10 responsible for the licensing process for the high-11 level waste repository.
12 I would emphasize that all members of the 13 LSN Advisory Review Panel who are with us today and on 14 GoToMeeting, a webinar technology, that you're all 15 going to get a chance to participate and talk to one 16 another. Some of the members of the ARP may be more 17 familiar with the LSN or more interested in the LSN.
18 And I know we're going to be hearing a lot from them, 19 but we want to hear from all of the panel members.
20 We're in a virtual meeting setting, so 21 we're not going to be able to be as spontaneous as if 22 we were in a face-to-face meeting. So, we're going to 23 have to be a little bit more disciplined about how we 24 go through the discussion process, so that we can 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 avoid at least some chaos during the next few days.
1 But, before I go through the meeting 2
guidelines, the discussion guidelines, let me explain 3
the backdrop of all who are involved in this meeting.
4 We have the member organizations of the ARP, and each 5
of those organizations has a designated primary, and 6
in most cases a secondary, representative. One or 7
both representatives may be in attendance here in 8
person in Rockville or they may be one here, one on 9
the virtual technology GoToMeeting.
10 And I've asked each member organization to 11 designate a spokesperson to sort of act as a 12 gatekeeper for when the other members of their team 13 want to speak. I think the spokesperson will probably 14 be the main discussant, but I want to emphasize again 15 that everyone going to get a chance to talk, if they 16 have something to say.
17 Now each member organization can 18 participate in one of three ways, here physically at 19 the table in Rockville. The second way is those on 20 through GoToMeeting. And third, we have a dedicated 21 phone line for ARP members, and they can come in 22 through that phone line.
23 Members of the public can also participate 24 in the meeting, and we're looking forward to hearing 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 any comments or questions that members of the public 1
have today. And they can be here in person. We'll 2
find out who is here in person and as a member of the 3
public. They can be on virtually through a technology 4
called GoToWebinar. And we'll see how many times I 5
can foul up and confuse the GoToMeeting and 6
GoToWebinar.
But GoToMeeting, ARP members; 7
GoToWebinar, members of the public.
8 There is also a separate phone line for 9
members of the public to come in on. Okay? And 10 that's how they'll be coming in. Members of the 11 public who are on through GoToWebinar can also use 12 that technology to type a text into the NRC LSN staff, 13 and that will be relayed up here, so that we can hear 14 that comment or answer that particular question.
15 For comments, there's always going to be 16 comments that are out of sequence on the agenda.
17 Usually, we have a parking lot to put those items in, 18 and we come back and address them at the appropriate 19 time. We're going to use a corral. Okay? That's in 20 deference to all the people here from the West, from 21 the State of Nevada. At any rate, we'll do that.
22 Now discussion guidelines, we'll start 23 each segment with a brief NRC presentation, and the 24 staff is going to keep their presentations brief 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 because they want to hear from you. But it will sort 1
of set the stage for whatever agenda topic is there.
2 And just hold your questions until they finish that 3
presentation.
4 And then, we're going to follow this 5
process at each discussion point: we're going to go 6
to anyone who wants to talk from the ARP who's here at 7
the table. Then, we're going to go to the ARP members 8
that are on through GoToMeeting. Then, we'll see if 9
anybody is on the phone who wants to make a comment.
10 So, once we get those initial comments in, 11 then we're going to come back to the table and try to 12 have an interactive discussion, to hear what anybody 13 thinks about a comment that's been made previously, 14 either in the room, on the phone, through GoToMeeting.
15 As usual when we have these meetings, I'm 16 going to ask those of you who here in the room to 17 raise your name tent if you want to make a comment.
18 Okay? That will alert me to who wants to talk.
19 The members of the ARP who are on through 20 GoToMeeting also have name tents that they will raise 21 if they want to make a comment. Okay? And we have 22 great staff back here who is going to alert me to who 23 might have their name tent on up there.
24 Okay. Andy mentioned that we have a court 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 reporter. This is Sam Wojack who's with us. He is 1
eventually going to get to know who's in the room, but 2
we're asking everybody to state their name, so that he 3
knows who to properly attribute the comment to. And 4
that's going to be especially important for all of you 5
who are on through GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar.
6 When we get to the public comment portion 7
-- and I'll repeat this at that time -- we usually in 8
a face-to-face meeting have a member of the public 9
come up and make their comment and, then, we'll see 10 whether the NRC staff or members of the ARP have 11 anything to say about that comment. They may not.
12 But, in this case, we're going to hear from a member 13 of the public in the room, if they want to talk.
14 We're, then, going to go to those members of the 15 public who are on through GoToWebinar, those who are 16 on through the dedicated phone line for the public, 17 then come back to all of you for ARP members here and 18 through GoToMeeting to offer anything they want to say 19 about that public comment.
20 And I would just ask you to all have 21 patience and bear with us today in this virtual 22 meeting. There's a lot of moving parts involved, but 23 we want to make sure that we get to everyone and that 24 we can try to actually form some, what I call, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 discussion threads, have a dialog on everything.
1 And I'm almost done here. This seems like 2
it's going on a long time.
3 But I do have some instructions for those 4
people, the public, who are on through GoToWebinar.
5 So, if you're using GoToWebinar to participate in 6
today's meeting, you're going to see an orange arrow 7
that will open the GoToWebinar control panel. The 8
orange arrow is typically found in the upper righthand 9
portion of your screen after you connect to 10 GoToWebinar.
11 When this control panel is open, you have 12 two options to ask questions or make comments. The 13 first is to use the GoToWebinar "raise your hand" 14 feature. You can use that "raise your hand" feature 15 to orally ask questions or make comments throughout 16 the meeting. So, you can raise your hand. We'll 17 recognize you and we'll unmute your phone. Note that, 18 if you're on through GoToWebinar, your phones are 19 muted until you use the "raise your hand" function.
20 The other option with GoToWebinar is the 21 questions feature. You open the questions panel, type 22 in your question, and press Send. And so, those will 23 be relayed to us up here in the front of the room.
24 Finally, I just have a couple of notes on 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 the agenda. In a few places after the NRC 1
presentation, we're going to start the discussion with 2
a brief presentation by the State of Nevada. And I 3
believe that the State of Nevada's PowerPoint slides 4
are in the back of the room, for anybody who needs 5
them.
6 And if you look at your agenda, there's a 7
10:45 slot that is "Comments on the Meeting Process 8
and Agenda". At that point when we open the 9
discussion for the ARP, we're going to open with Bob 10 Halstead. Then, we're going to get comments from 11 anybody else who's here physically, then comments from 12 ARP members who are on through GoToMeeting, the phone, 13 if we have anybody on the phone. Then, we're going to 14 come back for a discussion with all of you and the NRC 15 staff on what they heard from the NRC staff or our 16 meeting process, agenda, what Bob Halstead said, 17 whatever.
18 After the "Status of Yucca Mountain 19 Adjudicatory Process" -- that's 11:45 on your agenda 20
-- we're going to have a short presentation by Marty 21 Malsch from the State of Nevada's legal team. And 22 then, we're going to roll on through history of the 23 LSN, all the way up to lunch. And these are summary 24 presentations. This material will be addressed at 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 various other points during the day. So, we're not 1
going to have a big discussion period, but we are 2
going to take clarifying questions then.
3 When we move to this afternoon, you'll 4
note there's an option 2 at 2:45, "NRC ADAMS LSN 5
Library". We're going to hear a presentation from 6
K.G. Golshan on that option, brief. And then, to open 7
up the discussion, we're going to go to Laurie Borski 8
from the State of Nevada's team, who has a number of 9
slides based on some research that she's done 10 searching the ADAMS LSN Library.
11 After that, there's a few points I think 12 that K.G. and his team will present. And then, we'll 13 go to discussion, follow the usual process, here in 14 the room, GoToMeeting.
15 And I think that's about it.
16 Andy, where do we go next?
17 CHAIRMAN BATES: Well, Chip, let's go 18 back. I think since we got started here initially, 19 we've had several other people from GoToMeeting join 20 us online. And I understand Rex Massey is on.
21 Rex, I see you on screen.
22 MR. MASSEY: Hi.
23 CHAIRMAN BATES: Have you unmuted your 24 audio?
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19 MR. MASSEY: I did.
1 CHAIRMAN BATES: Okay. Good morning.
2 I understand, also, that Connie Simkins 3
from Lincoln County is on. Is Connie there?
4 MS. SIMKINS: That's correct.
5 CHAIRMAN BATES: Thank you.
6 Also, as before, Ian Zabarte is online.
7 MR. ZABARTE: Hello.
8 CHAIRMAN BATES: Darrell Lacy from Nye 9
County.
10 MR. LACY: Yes, Darrell Lacy and Celeste 11 Sandoval are here together --
12 CHAIRMAN BATES: Okay.
13 MR. LACY: -- in a conference room.
14 CHAIRMAN BATES: All right. Thank you.
15 Heather Westra from the Prairie Island 16 Indian Community.
17 Heather, are you there?
18 (No response.)
19 Muted? Heather, you must be on mute.
20 (No response.)
21 Okay. Let me go on to Byron (sic) Pyle of 22 White Pine County.
23 MR. PYLE: I am here. It's Bryan.
24 CHAIRMAN BATES: Bryan? Okay.
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20 MR. PYLE: Yes.
1 CHAIRMAN BATES: Thank you.
2 MR. PYLE: Thank you.
3 CHAIRMAN BATES: And Abigail Johnson from 4
Eureka County?
5 MS. JOHNSON: I'm here.
6 CHAIRMAN BATES: Okay. Thank you.
7 The next item on the agenda this morning 8
is kind of an overview of the goals of what we would 9
like to accomplish in the next two days.
10 First, it's been about 15 years since this 11 Committee has met. So, we have some members who have 12 participated back in the late 1980s and during the 13
'90s. Others are new to the Committee. And 14 consequently, some of you are going to have to bear 15 with us as we go over material that you're familiar 16 with. We really kind of want to recap some of the 17 history of the Committee and bring everybody up to a 18 common level of understanding on really three main 19 topics.
20 First, the status of the LSN document 21 collection, that the NRC is now housed in a separate 22 library within the NRC ADAMS document system. Those 23 documents were provided to the NRC at the time the 24 hearing was suspended back in 2011.
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21 Secondly, we would like to go through the 1
capabilities and functionality of the current ADAMS 2
LSN Library, just to have an understanding of what the 3
current collection capabilities are in the library 4
collection.
5 And finally, go through a variety of 6
options that might be considered to reconstitute the 7
LSN system if the high-level waste proceedings are 8
going to be restarted.
9 We've structured the meeting to provide, 10 again, a series of short overviews on the topics.
11 We've built a lot of time into the agenda to provide 12 for a discussion and feedback. And we want all the 13 members to participate and provide their views and 14 offer up suggestions that can be constructive towards 15 moving forward, again, if the high-level waste 16 proceedings should be restarted.
17 At the end of the meeting tomorrow 18 afternoon, we really plan to ask for the views of the 19 members on whether they've got a preferred option 20 amongst those that we've presented. Negative comments 21 about various options, positive comments about 22 options, reservations, things that maybe needed to 23 make an option function better, all of that feedback 24 and, then, discussion will be valuable to us.
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22 As I indicated earlier, the meeting 1
transcript should be available in a week or so, and we 2
will post that online. We would like to get any 3
additional comments that people might have as a 4
followup, once you've thought about it and reviewed 5
the transcript, get that back in writing by March 6
23rd, which is about two weeks after the transcript 7
will be posted.
8 Following the meeting and any additional 9
input, the LSN staff, the Board, and SECY will be 10 providing basically a summary of the meeting and all 11 of the comments that we've received from the members 12 to the Licensing Board Chairman for recommendations 13 that eventually we assume will go to the Commission 14 for any action on a restart of proceeding.
15 With that, Chip, I'll pass the time to you 16 for, I guess, the next item we've got. Bob Halstead 17 from the State of Nevada has asked for a short 18 opportunity to make some comments.
19 MR. CAMERON: Yes. Let me just call your 20 attention to, at the end of today, there is an 21 orientation session on searching the ADAMS LSN 22 Library. We're lucky to have Rekha Nambiar who is 23 going to do that for us at the end of the day. It's 24 an optional session, but please attend if you want to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 see more about it.
1 We do have these green cards which, if you 2
have specific questions about searching the system, 3
you can use those to write your question down and give 4
to us. And so, Rekha will know that before she starts 5
the orientation. That might be helpful for her. But, 6
also, like anything else, we're going to have a live, 7
so to speak, session where people can ask questions 8
after Rekha goes through that. But I just want you to 9
know that.
10 As Andy just mentioned, we're going to go 11 to Bob Halstead to lead us off with the public or the 12 comment discussion, the ARP comment/question 13 discussion. So, we'll go to Bob.
14 I'm going to look around to see if anybody 15 else here at the table has their name tent up. We'll 16 go to you, and then, we're going to look for anybody 17 who's on through GoToMeeting, whether their name tent 18 is up. Then, the phone. And then, we're going to 19 come back for a discussion.
20 And after that discussion, we'll also see 21 if there's any member of the public who has some 22 comment or question. And then, we'll all go to lunch.
23 So, Bob, you can come up here or I can 24 give you this clicker. Which would you prefer?
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24 MR.
HALSTEAD:
What's best for 1
transmission? I think I'll come up and do this.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good.
3 And, Andy, we have all of Bob's slides?
4 Okay.
5 MR. HALSTEAD: We are going to use the 6
slides.
7 MR. CAMERON: Yes, yes.
8 And there is that thing. Don't ask me how 9
to operate it. I have no clue.
10 MR. HALSTEAD: Well, good morning. Let me 11 begin by saying how much we appreciate the opportunity 12 to participate as members of this Advisory Review 13 Panel, how much we appreciate the rescheduling of the 14 meeting, this meeting, and how much we appreciate the 15 revising of the agenda. And I particularly want to 16 thank our Chairman, Dr. Bates, and our Facilitator, 17 Chip Cameron, but I also want to thank the NRC staff 18 contact people, Mr. Chizell and Mr. Newell.
19 And on our team, I want to especially 20 thank Laurie Borski, who you'll hear from later this 21 afternoon; Susan
- Lynch, our Technical Program 22 Administrator, who's participating from Carson City, 23 and, of course, always Marty Malsch for his guidance.
24 Next slide, please.
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25 The LSN and any LSN substitutes serve 1
truly important purposes. One is to allow the public 2
to stay informed about Yucca Mountain. But the 3
principal objective of the LSN and any LSN substitute 4
must be to provide an electronic discovery tool that 5
will serve the needs of the participants in the 6
licensing proceeding.
7 And this, of course, especially important 8
to the State of Nevada. We plan to defend over 200 9
contentions, probably under strict deadlines, and we 10 will be the party, we believe, that suffers the most 11 if the LSN or the LSN substitute performs poorly.
12 Next slide, please.
13 Here we talk about the determination of 14 the users' needs. Now the Advisory Review Panel was 15 established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, 16 and as required by FACA, it operates under an NRC-17 approved charter. The charter says that the primary 18 focus is to be on technical issues relating to the 19 operation and maintenance of the LSN and the 20 continuing assessments as to how and whether the LSN 21 is performing its intended function and serving users' 22 needs.
23 The users' needs, and especially the needs 24 because we have a large and diverse group of 19 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 participants, in our opinion, can only be determined 1
through active participation by all the members in the 2
Advisory Committee process and, we believe, in a 3
subsequent rulemaking. All 19 participants must be 4
involved, especially in the early stages when the 5
criteria for the architecture selection and 6
architecture options are put forward.
7 Next slide, please. Next slide, please.
8 Certainly, we all understand that these 9
are interesting times for the Yucca Mountain 10 Repository Project. There are many uncertainties and, 11
- clearly, constrained circumstances.
With the 12 proceeding having been suspended for over six years, 13 prospects for resumption unclear at best, no new 14 federal funding in the current fiscal year, it's 15 certainly not reasonable to expect the kind of 16 participant involvement at this time that we believe 17 is going to be required.
18 And the Commission has recognized that 19 participants' funding limitations must be taken into 20 account in deciding how to move forward. To move 21 forward with this Advisory Committee process, we 22 believe all of the members will need adequate 23 resources, so that they can participate effectively, 24 especially in formulating criteria for architecture 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 selection and, then, putting options forward for 1
further consideration. And let me say especially that 2
the State is concerned about the need for resources on 3
the part of the Nevada counties and Native American 4
organizations that are part of the process.
5 Next slide, please.
6 Our expectations for this meeting. First, 7
let me say that Nevada understands that our Chair, Dr.
8 Bates, and the representatives of the Atomic Safety 9
and Licensing Board Panel and all of the other NRC 10 staff are now, and will in the future, be constrained 11 by directives from the Commission. Nevertheless, 12 Nevada wishes to state for the record that, while we 13 are participating in this meeting, we will object to 14 any process whereby an inadequately funded Advisory 15 Review Panel would be asked to provide final advice 16 after only this one meeting. And we further suggest 17 that the proper deliverable from this meeting cannot 18 be final opinions and options to the Atomic Safety and 19 Licensing Board Panel. Instead, we suggest that the 20 deliverable, if there must be a deliverable, should be 21 a
path forward for facilitating effective 22 participation in future meetings and obtaining the 23 Advisory Review Panel's advice that reflects all of 24 the users' needs. Now Nevada's view of this 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 proceeding is, the overall licensing proceeding, we 1
expect a fair field and no favor, and the LSN as a 2
primary tool for making sure that the process is fair.
3 Now let me turn to some slides -- next 4
slide, please -- where we're offering Nevada's view of 5
user needs based on many person-decades of experience, 6
searching the documents in this docket. But let me, 7
again, say that these are Nevada's views. Other users 8
are going to have other needs. And so, they'll need 9
to be considered as well. But we thought it would be 10 useful for you to hear at the beginning what Nevada 11 would like to put on the table.
12 Now in this first slide -- and this is a 13 slide where, again, I want to acknowledge the work 14 that Laurie Borski did -- in this slide we address the 15 overarching system design issues. They're almost 16 common-sense rules.
17 That software has to be designed with the 18 end-users in mind. Not all the end-users are going to 19 use the database the same way or for the same purpose.
20 The designers need to be aware of these various end-21 user needs and functions at the beginning to reflect 22 them. And again, while this is a listing of desired 23 attributes based on our experience, it's Nevada's 24 experience only.
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29 Next slide, please.
1 In this slide we generally address issues 2
of access to the system and the documents. So, the 3
desired attributes are rapid speed for access, search, 4
filters, view, and download; centralized search 5
capability through a single-portal access to the 6
entire library; accessible to all viewers via the web; 7
accessible via a range of popular web browsers, and 8
not just Internet Explorer; equal access by agencies, 9
participants, and interested members of the public, 10 and a stable collection of documents and headers.
11 Next slide, please.
12 Now in this slide we address some document 13 entry and searching issues. And the desired 14 attributes are a transparent process for adding, 15
- revising, and deleting documents, although we 16 recognize deleting documents is rare; new versions of 17 documents already in the database are added. They do 18 not replace existing versions of documents. And 19 importantly, documents with marginalia are treated as 20 new documents.
21 The search templates need to have logical 22 search properties, such as the date, the title, the 23 LSN number, the acquisition number, and the type. And 24 the content search of documents must include the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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30 entire document and not be limited by page or line 1
breaks. Search items need to be highlighted in the 2
search results list, and the search template needs to 3
be designed so that it disappears to reveal search 4
results and does not have to be hidden manually by the 5
user.
6 Next slide, please.
7 So, in this slide we address some document 8
viewing and handling issues. The desired attributes 9
are the ability to narrow and filter search results, 10 the ability to set the number of documents displayed 11 per page of the search page. The display headers and 12 bibliographic information with each document need to 13 be listed in the search results. The ability to 14 scroll through pages of search results rapidly or a 15 page jump is needed.
16 Very importantly, the ability to print the 17 search results needs to be addressed with a little 18 extra attention because many people are going to want 19 to do this. I realize we're trying to live in a world 20 of reduced paper requirements and electronic offices, 21 but we would like to see a system with one-click 22 printing and not a copy-and-paste workaround, which is 23 often the case.
24 We believe the system has got to allow the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 actual document to be viewed without being downloaded 1
first. And then, of course, most importantly, at the 2
end of this, the system has to provide for the easy 3
and rapid download of the documents, many of which are 4
quite voluminous.
5 Let me say, in closing, that there are 6
three overall things that we would like to say about 7
the meeting. First, we believe that the Advisory 8
Review Panel should be the prime mover in 9
reconstituting the Licensing Support Network.
10 Secondly, the Licensing Support Network must be 11 designed from the beginning to meet the needs of the 12 users. And thirdly, the Licensing Support Network 13 must support both traditional, face-to-face 14 interactions in discovery and at hearing, but it must 15 also be designed to support virtual access to the 16 hearings.
17 Thank you very much. I'm looking forward 18 to a very informative and helpful meeting for all of 19 us. Thank you.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Bob.
21 And we're going to go to discussion.
22 MR. HALSTEAD: Yes.
23 MR. CAMERON: And there may be specific 24 questions or comments for you at some point, which I 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 believe you can just stay at your seat to address.
1 And the last two slides that you did on 2
some attributes or criteria about the LSN, I don't 3
think that it's the appropriate time to get in-depth 4
on those. The time to do that will be as go through 5
some of the options. But, be that as it may, if 6
members of the ARP want to comment on the general idea 7
that you put forth at this point, we should hear those 8
comments. I just don't want us to get too wrapped up 9
in specific LSN attribute issues at this point.
10 Judy Treichel?
11 MS. TREICHEL: Judy Treichel, Nevada 12 Nuclear Waste Task Force.
13 I think it's extremely important for NRC 14 to be aware that the LSNARP came into being a year 15 before there was a Google. And I remember sitting at 16 those tables when we were meeting back then; it never 17 occurred to any of us that we would actually own 18 personal computers, and certainly not that we would 19 have a personal computer that looked like this that we 20 could also use as a camera or phone, whatever.
21 But, in doing this, we all know now --
22 primarily I know because I have children and 23 grandchildren that are very well-versed in computers 24
-- but this is absolutely doable to put together a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 system that Bob was talking about or that people 1
expect, because they've all done internet searches.
2 The public is very aware of how to do this.
3 And it's really important for NRC to 4
understand that the public is skeptical, particularly 5
in Nevada. People are very skeptical. They're 6
worried. They're concerned that we're being dumped 7
on. And even if somebody is looking for something 8
that's not there, something that doesn't even exist, 9
if they can't find it, it's going to be NRC's fault; 10 NRC is going to be hiding something from them, even if 11 it's not there. Or, if anything is very difficult, it 12 comes back to you, and it becomes part of a pile of 13 complaints that people have about the NRC.
14 So, it really would be a good thing for 15 you, as well as for us out there in the public, to 16 have a system that's independent from you and that you 17 make sure works, that they have to be answerable to 18 you as well as to us. But it should not be just you.
19 So, thank you.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Judy.
21 Rod?
22 MR. McCULLUM: Yes, I want to thank both 23 the NRC and the State of Nevada for a lot of 24 thoughtful preparation into this meeting. We've got 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 multiple revisions of an option paper. The reason I 1
believe there's multiple reasons is that NRC has been 2
taking to heart the input that they've been receiving 3
from the various participants.
4 And I think it is appropriate that the 5
State of Nevada lead things off, as they are the most 6
significant intervener in this proceeding.
7 This proceeding is required by law to move 8
forward. NRC is under a court order to continue the 9
Yucca Mountain licensing process so long as it has 10 funding, and a certain amount of carryover funding has 11 been identified, which has made this meeting possible.
12 I think, as Bob said, the prospects for 13 additional fundings are uncertain. We all can easily 14 predict what Congress will do next in so many areas.
15 But, given that the amount of funding that is certain 16 is small, and given that there is a mandate for NRC to 17 move this process forward -- and certainly this 18 process does need to move forward; I think we do need 19 an answer to this question that's before the nation on 20 disposal of nuclear waste -- I think this activity of 21 the LSNARP is probably the most worthwhile thing you 22 can do with the limited amount of money that you have 23 now.
24 I kind of shuttered a little bit when it 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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35 was mentioned that the last time this Committee met 1
was 15 years ago, because I was there. And now I 2
officially feel old on the record.
3 (Laughter.)
4 But these last 15 years have seen a 5
revolution in technology which to say it's 6
unprecedented is an understatement. And I think that 7
the member needs that Bob has outlined are certainly 8
very valid things, not things that we would disagree 9
with.
10 However, I would like to put forth a 11 little bit more sense of optimism, that I think this 12 Committee can do this. I think that one of the key 13 aspects of this information revolution that we've 14 experienced is that we have so much more capability 15 now. This should be easier, not harder.
16 And I
- think, as evidenced by the 17 participation you're getting in this meeting, that the 18 parties should not require an extensive amount of 19 resources to come to a decision on which option to 20 move forward with. Now, beyond that, whether NRC has 21 the resources to deploy that option, that's up to 22 Congress.
23 But I just want to start off by conveying 24 a sense of optimism that the body I see assembled in 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 this room should be capable of choosing a path 1
forward. And then, we just have to wait for the 2
resources to see it implemented.
3 Thanks.
4 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Rod. Thank you 5
very much on that.
6 And we're going to go to Diane Curran.
7 MS. CURRAN: Yes. Thank you, Chip.
8 MR. CAMERON: Yes, Diane.
9 MS. CURRAN: I just want to say a few 10 words for Eureka County. We very much endorse what 11 Bob Halstead said about the importance of making sure 12 that, whenever final decisions are made about this LSN 13 system and about the discovery system for the Yucca 14 Mountain proceeding, that all of the interested 15 parties be able to participate with sufficient 16 resources to do it. And we don't have that right now.
17 So, we are looking at this as a 18 preliminary discussion. I'm a lawyer. This seems to 19 me like an advance notice of proposed rulemaking where 20 ideas get discussed, but nothing is set in stone.
21 There are, obviously, a lot of complicated 22 issues having to do with the usability of this LSN 23 system. I noticed a couple of statements in the NRC's 24 materials that the LSN collection is up and usable.
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37 Well, there's a long, long list of problems with it, 1
and I think that is one of the issues that's going to 2
have to be discussed. And all the parties are going 3
to need to be able to put on the table what their 4
needs are and whether this system is set up in a way 5
that can meet them. This is an awful lot of 6
documents.
7 So, just wanted to emphasize that point 8
that I appreciate the opportunity to participate here, 9
but we are assuming -- and I think it's appropriate to 10 assume -- that this discussion is preliminary.
11 Thank you.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank 13 you, Diane.
14 Let's go to the GoToMeeting people. Does 15 anybody have their card up out there, their tent, name 16 tent?
17 MR. ZABARTE: Can you hear me?
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We have Ian Zabarte 19 on the phone.
20 Hi, Ian. Why don't you go ahead?
21 MR. ZABARTE: Good morning. My name is 22 Ian Zabarte. I'm the Secretary for the Native 23 Community Action Council. We're the only unfunded 24 parties in the proceedings.
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38 We're here and open to develop and present 1
our issues that the United States cannot prove 2
ownership to Yucca Mountain because it's under treaty 3
with the Western Shoshone Government. And we feel 4
that there is a level of environmental racism involved 5
in these proceedings with the abject purpose of 6
saddling the Shoshone Nation with nuclear waste. And 7
we don't appreciate that. We think that funding needs 8
to be made available.
9 Our resistance here is 10,000 years. So, 10 if Nevada can prove somehow that their rights have an 11 interest of paramount to the Shoshone Nation, I'd like 12 to see that. But that's where we're coming from, and 13 our 10,000-year history, our 10,000-year language in 14 relation to this place is at risk, and Nevada can't 15 touched that. So, I take exception to whoever 16 suggests that these proceedings are about to help 17 Nevada. Nevada doesn't exist in his country and 18 that's what the law says, and those are things that 19 we're going to be contending.
20 Thank you.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you for that, 22 Ian.
23 Anybody else with their name tent on?
24 (No response.)
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39 Okay. Well, let's come back to the room 1
for a discussion, if there needs to be any, of what 2
was said. And I'm going to put Ian's point up here.
3 He used the term "environmental racism". And also, 4
that's certainly related to funding for Native 5
Americans to participate.
6 Anybody else? Anybody else around the 7
table who wants to say anything? We are in a general 8
point.
9 Bob?
10 MR. HALSTEAD: Yes, I want to reiterate 11 what I said before about the State's concern about the 12 resources that all the members of the Advisory Panel 13 are going to need to be involved in this process.
14 But, in particular, the Nevada counties and Native 15 American organizations, which there are two who are 16 admitted parties or interested governmental entities 17 in the licensing proceeding itself.
18 There is a larger issue. It isn't just a 19 matter of resources to participate in the Advisory 20 Panel's work. There is a larger issue of funding for 21 those parties to remain involved, even in simply 22 monitoring what is going on with the proposals to 23 restart the licensing proceeding. And that is an 24 issue that hangs over this meeting.
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40 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Bob.
1 Diane?
2 MS. CURRAN: I'm chiming in to ask for a 3
five-minute break at some point soon.
4 MR. CAMERON: What was that? I missed 5
that.
6 MS. CURRAN: A five-minute break at some 7
point.
8 MR. CAMERON: Oh, yes, we're going to take 9
a break. It will be longer than five minutes.
10 We have one more element of this opening 11 discussion which we'll do that, which is to see if we 12 have any members of the public who wanted to comment 13 on Andy Bates' overview, anything that was said at the 14 table or, for example, by Ian Zabarte.
15 So, let me see. Is there any member of 16 the public in the room who wants to say anything?
17 (No response.)
18 Okay. Well, let's go to GoToMeeting --
19 GoToWebinar. So, I did it one time. Okay. Keep 20 track.
21 (Laughter.)
22 (No response.)
23 Okay. GoToWebinar, do we have anybody 24 from the public on GoToWebinar? No hands raised?
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41 Tara, our operator, Tara, are you there?
1 OPERATOR: Yes, I am.
2 MR. CAMERON: Do we have anybody who's on 3
the phone from the public who wants to say anything at 4
this point?
5 OPERATOR: If you would like to ask a 6
question, please press *1 on your phone and restate 7
your name in order to introduce your question. If you 8
need to retire a question, please press *2. Again, to 9
ask a question, please press *1.
10 It will take a few moments for the 11 question to come through. Please stand by.
12 (Pause.)
13 We show no questions at this time.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks a lot, Tara.
15 We'll be back to you later on in the day.
16 And we have a break now, and the break was 17 originally scheduled from 11:30 to 11:45. So, we're 18 about a half-hour ahead of where we are on the agenda.
19 So, why don't we break from -- why don't you come back 20 at 10 after 11:00? That's a 20-minute break. And 21 then, we'll get started with the next part of the 22 program.
23 But thank you. Thank you all.
24 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 the record at 11:00 a.m. and went back on the record 1
at 11:21 a.m.)
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, everybody, we're going 3
to get started in about 30 seconds.
4 And I just have a few announcements. One 5
of them, the most important one, I think, is that 6
you've been introduced to all the people who are on 7
the phone through the GoToMeeting website, GoToMeeting 8
technology. We have Loreen Pitchford that we're going 9
to try to get her on, so she can introduce herself to 10 you. But Loreen has been involved working for various 11 counties in Nevada, advising on the LSN. So, she has 12 a lot of experience in this. When we do get her on, 13 we'll put her on. Okay? I just wanted to note that 14 she is on.
15 At the lunch break, we're going to be 16 showing in here and other places, I guess, online --
17 there's 11 training videos on the search process on 18 LSN ADAMS, and it's going to be a continuous loop.
19 After you watch that two or three times, if you still 20 want to see some more, you can go onto the YouTube 21 site at NRC and tune into those training videos. I 22 just wanted to call that to your attention.
23 We're going to start off now and finish up 24 with this in the morning. But we have a number of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 what I call summary topics. These are just to give 1
you some context; for example, the Yucca Mountain 2
adjudicatory process, and we're going to hear from 3
Margie Janney, the Acting LSN Administrator, who is 4
going to talk about history of the LSN.
5 So, we're not going to go for discussion 6
after each of those. We will have time for clarifying 7
questions at the end of all of those, with the 8
exception that after Judge Paul Bollwerk talks about 9
the status of the Yucca Mountain adjudicatory process, 10 we're going to have Marty Malsch from the State of 11 Nevada legal team come up and just give us a few 12 points on legal issues, some of which Judge Bollwerk 13 will be introducing in his presentation.
14 So, that's how we're going to spend the 15 morning. And it's time for the status of the Yucca 16 Mountain adjudicatory proceeding. We'll hear from 17 Judge Bollwerk and, then, we'll go to Marty. And 18 then, we'll continue down the list, come back for 19 clarifying questions at the end.
20 MR. BOLLWERK: All right. Thank you, 21 Chip.
22 Good morning, everyone. My name is Paul 23 Bollwerk, and I'm a legal administrative judge with 24 the agency's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel.
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44 And as Chip mentioned, I will be giving a series of 1
background presentations by the LSN staff, intended to 2
provide a common understanding regarding a number of 3
the matters that the Advisory Review Panel members 4
will be discussing over the next several days.
5 And I'm going to take a real chance. Mr.
6 Halstead took the safer approach. I'm going to try 7
the clicker. We'll see who made the better choice.
8 I bet it's going to be you, but we'll see.
9 So, the adjudicatory process associated 10 with the Department of Energy, or DOE's, Yucca 11 Mountain high-level Radioactive waste repository 12 construction authorization application and the LSN are 13 closely linked, as the LSN exists as a tool to 14 facilitate participation in the adjudicatory process.
15 That being said, I'm not going to try to provide a 16 history of the LSN. Acting LSN Administrator Margie 17 Janney is going to be talking about the LSN's history 18 in a
couple of
- minutes, although given the 19 relationship between the high-level waste repository 20 adjudication and the LSN, our presentations may touch 21 on some of the same items.
22 My presentation this morning has a 23 different purpose, which is to provide some background 24 information about the status of the adjudication 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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45 itself. And in doing so, I'm not going to review the 1
early stage of the adjudication, which began back in 2
October 2008 with The Federal Register publication of 3
a hearing opportunity notice and the subsequent filing 4
of intervention petitions regarding the DOE 5
construction authorization application for the Yucca 6
Mountain repository. Certainly many of you in this 7
room and participating online know that history well 8
because you were involved in the proceeding as it was 9
before the Commission or one or more Construction 10 Authorization Boards. Instead, I'm going to start at 11 the point some three years later when the adjudication 12 and the original LSN were no longer in an active 13 status and bring things up to the present, as that 14 portion of the proceeding's history is most relevant 15 to the LSNARP's efforts over the next several days.
16 Also, as an aid in following along, as 17 well as a reference tool for those who might want to 18 do some additional research into what I'm going to 19 discuss, a timeline will be displayed, which is also 20 part of the meeting presentation slides that are 21 available on the LSN Library website.
22 So, to begin, in early September 2011, in 23 CLI-11-7, the Commission directed that the then-24 presiding Construction Authorization Board, or CAB-04, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 should complete all activities before the Board by the 1
close of fiscal year 2011.
2 Thereafter, in late September 2011, CAB-04 3
in LBP-11-21 -- and these, again, are Commission or 4
Licensing Board decisions -- suspended the Yucca 5
Mountain adjudication. Also, consistent with this 6
Commission direction, the Licensing Support Network 7
was shut down and decommissioned at about the same 8
time.
9 Skipping ahead, in August 2013, in the 10 Aiken County case, the United States Court of Appeals 11 for the District of Columbia Circuit directed the 12 Commission to resume the Yucca Mountain licensing 13 process, and you've already heard that particular 14 court case referenced this morning as something the 15 Commission is seeking to comply with.
16 In response to the Court's direction, in 17 CLI-13-08, another Commission decision, the Commission 18 indicated its intent to, quote, "advance the licensing 19 process in a manner that is constructive and 20 consistent with the Court's decision and the resources 21 available". Close quote.
22 Knowing that the agency then had in hand 23 approximately $11 million in unobligated carryover 24 funding, appropriated from the Nuclear Waste Fund, the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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47 Commission further indicated that it would, quote, 1
"take an incremental approach, since the agency cannot 2
engage in all licensing activities that we would 3
undertake if fully funded. For example, we cannot at 4
this time complete a formal hearing requiring 5
depositions of nearly 300 contentions." Close quote.
6 Accordingly, the Commission looked to the 7
schedule set forth in 10 Code of Federal Regulations, 8
or CFR, Part 2, Subpart J, and Appendix D, and 9
identified activities that represented, quote, "the 10 next logical steps in the process". Close quote.
11 To implement that approach, in CLI-13-08, 12 the Commission took the following steps:
13 Directed the NRC staff to complete its 14 Safety Evaluation Report, or SER, for the Yucca 15 Mountain facility.
16 Requested that DOE prepare a Supplemental 17 Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, to address the 18 potential construction authorization associated 19 impacts on groundwater and from surface discharges of 20 groundwater.
21 And third, as an aid to the NRC staff's 22 SER completion efforts, and to ensure appropriate 23 treatment in accordance with agency records 24 requirements, directed incorporation into an internal 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 ADAMS database of the LSN documentary material that 1
had been residing with the Office of the Secretary 2
since the LSN was decommissioned in 2011.
3 Thereafter, an internal ADAMS database of 4
the LSN documentary material -- oops, I think I messed 5
up. I know I should have been careful.
6 Thereafter, an internal ADAMS database for 7
the LSN documentary material was established in April 8
of 2014, while the SER was completed in January of 9
2015, and after DOE declined to do so, the 10 Supplemental EIS was completed by the NRC staff in May 11 of 2016.
12 In February
- 2015, in the Staff 13 Requirements Memorandum, or
- SRM, for 14 SRM-COMSECY-14-0041, the Commission approved the 15 placement of the LSN documentary material into a 16 public ADAMS database, which is now referred to as the 17 LSN Library and which became operational in October of 18 2016.
19 In July of 2017, in the SRM for 20 COMSECY-17-001, the Commissioned authorized the Office 21 of the Secretary and the Atomic Safety and Licensing 22 Board Panel as a, quote, "next logical step," unquote, 23 in keeping with the Court's direction in the Aiken 24 County decision to proceed with organizing and 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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49 conducting a virtual LSN Advisory Review Panel meeting 1
to provide options and input to the Commission 2
regarding reconstituting or replacing the LSN in the 3
event the high-level waste proceeding should be 4
restarted.
5 Two questions generally raised regarding 6
the potential restart of the adjudicatory process are:
7 first, what process will the Commission follow in 8
restarting the adjudication? And second, will that 9
process include rulemaking to address items such as 10 the provisions in 10 CFR Part 2, Subpart J, regarding 11 LSN functionality and operation?
12 We cannot offer an opinion on the 13 Commission's direction for the restart of the 14 adjudication.
Lifting the suspension of the 15 adjudication, the issuance of any Commission decision 16 about the adjudicatory process and what guidance might 17 be given to the litigants are matters for a Commission 18 decision.
19 In CLI-13-08, however, the Commission 20 provided some insight into its possible approach 21 regarding each of these items by noting that, quote, 22 "Should we lift the suspension in the future, 23 participants will have the opportunity to resubmit 24 requests associated with the conduct of the proceeding 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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50 at that time. Among the questions we leave for 1
another day is whether to reconstitute the LSN, either 2
as it was originally implemented or in a different 3
incarnation." Close quote.
4 The Commission observed as well that, 5
quote, "Questions relating to how the LSN might be 6
configured in the future, the need for and scope of 7
any potential revisions to the LSN regulations in 8
Subpart J, and how those revisions might take place, 9
whether by a specific order or rulemaking, would be 10 decided at that time." Close quote.
11 What this suggests is that, first, if and 12 when the Commission decides that it's appropriate to 13 begin the process of restarting the Yucca Mountain 14 adjudicatory proceeding, it likely would invite 15 adjudication participants to comment on the matters 16 noted in CLI-13-08 and potentially other procedural 17 matters.
18 And second, whether a case-specific order 19 or rulemaking would be the appropriate vehicle for 20 implementing any aspect of that procedural approach 21 will be decided by the Commission as part of the 22 restart process.
23 And with that, I'll conclude my remarks 24 and step aside to allow Chip to introduce the next 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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51 presentation.
1 Thank you very much.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Paul.
3 We're going to have Marty Malsch come up 4
and just give us a few comments that are relative to 5
Paul's presentation. And then, we're going to go with 6
the rest of the agenda before we go for clarifying 7
questions, and if we have time, any discussion.
8 Marty?
9 MR. MALSCH: Hi. Thank you, Chip. I just 10 have four, maybe five, very brief remarks.
11 First, to point out that the LSN was 12 developed only after numerous Advisory Committee 13 meetings and consideration of options prepared by a 14 Special Technical Working Group that reported to the 15 LSNARP.
16 Also, both the LSN and its predecessor, 17 the LSS, were incorporated into Part 2, principally 18 Subpart J of Part 2, only after notice and comment 19 rulemaking. And we would stress here that we think 20 the same process should be followed here, assuming --
21 and I think most people are assuming this -- that the 22 old LSN cannot simply be revived.
23 And we wanted to stress that an 24 immediately effective change to Part 2, Subpart J, or 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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52 some sort of exemption from Part 2, Subpart J, as 1
opposed to notice and comment rulemaking, would only 2
cause confusion, delay, and possibly prejudice. And, 3
in fact, if the Commission were to proceed to amend 4
Subpart J to accommodate a new electronic discovery 5
system, and to do so without prior notice and public 6
comment, actually it would raise a significant legal 7
question whether it's violated Section 189(a) of the 8
Atomic Energy Act, which we don't have to go into 9
detail here. Just to say that this would raise a 10 significant legal issue.
11 And in that regard, I just wanted to point 12 out that, while the Commission was very good, in 13 response to the Aiken County Mandamus, in asking the 14 views of the parties on how to restart and continue 15 with the Yucca Mountain licensing process, it's been 16 not so great in its decisionmaking processes since 17 then.
18 As just two "for examples," it approved 19 the idea of DOE of the staff, rather than DOE 20 completing the Supplemental Environmental Impact 21 Statement. That itself raises a significant legal 22 question, and the views of the parties were not 23 solicited in that respect. The Commission just did 24 it, and in doing so, did something extremely unusual.
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53 It actually reconsidered and amended a formal 1
adjudicatory decision by a SECY requirements memo, 2
which I don't think has ever been done in the agency's 3
history.
4 And then, they also decided to move 5
forward with at least one LSNARP meeting, again, 6
without consulting the parties.
7 So, we hope in the future the Commission 8
will be a little more, express a little more concern 9
and be a little more interested in hearing about the 10 views of the public.
11 So, with that, that's my remark.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 13 very much, Marty.
14 And I think there's at least one issue 15 that we might want to have some views and discussion 16 on, which is Marty's point on the need for notice and 17 comment rulemaking. So, I don't want to just rule out 18 discussion on that because this is basically summary 19 topics.
20 But thank you. Thank you, Paul. Thank 21 you. Thank you, Marty.
22 And when we get to the discussion, the 23 clarifying questions, can we get Loreen to introduce 24 herself, since she's on GoToMeeting? Okay, we'll do 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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54 that then. She may have something to say on this.
1 We'll see that.
2 But, right now, we're going to go to the 3
history of the LSN and LSN Library. And we have 4
Margie Janney with us, who's the Acting LSN 5
Administrator.
6 Margie?
7 MS. JANNEY: Good morning. I am Margie 8
Janney, and I am the Acting LSN Administrator. I used 9
to work under Dan Graser, starting in 2000. So, I 10 have a lot of history here and I've met many of you in 11 the room.
12 10 CFR 2, Subpart J, defines the LSN 13 Administrator as "the person within the NRC 14 responsible for coordinating access to, and the 15 integrity of, data available on the Licensing Support 16 Network".
17 I'm going to talk for a few minutes on the 18 history of the LSN, so that we can all have a common 19 understanding of the original document collection.
20 Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 21 1982, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is responsible 22 for evaluating the Department of Energy's application 23 for authorization to construct a permanent geologic 24 repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and determining 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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55 whether to authorize construction of the proposed 1
repository.
2 The NRC's licensing process primarily 3
consists of a technical Review by the NRC staff of 4
DOE's construction authorization application and a 5
licensing adjudication before NRC Construction 6
Authorization Boards.
7 To support the NRC's adjudicatory 8
responsibilities, the Licensing Support Network was 9
established as the means of making discovery material 10 electronically available to the various participants 11 in the adjudication via a
publicly available 12 distributed database network that was expected to be 13 available for both the initial construction 14 authorization and subsequent receive and possess 15 licensing proceedings. A distributed database means 16 that there are different servers across the nation, as 17 opposed to one server or server farm that contains all 18 the documents in a single location. In other words, 19 all of the documents that you could find via the LSN 20 existed in servers across the whole nation.
21 The development of the original LSN began 22 in 1997 when the NRC issued a proposed rule that was 23 intended to take advantage of technological 24 developments that had occurred since the original 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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56 Licensing Support System rule was adopted in 1989.
1 That proposed rule, 10 CFR 2, Subpart J, which was 2
adopted at the end of 1998, initiated a series of 3
meetings and discussions with the Licensing Support 4
Network Advisory Review Panel that culminated in the 5
April 2000 submission to the NRC Information 6
Technology Business Council of a business case 7
analysis that discussed several LSN implementation 8
- options, including the distributed database 9
configuration that was ultimately implemented.
10 In October 2001, the original LSN became 11 operational and continued to operate through September 12 2011, when it was decommissioned. It has been more 13 than six years since the original LSN operated, and 14 since that time, there have been many technological 15 developments and changes in federal IT policy.
16 The development of the functional 17 requirements for the LSN culminated in a June 2001 LSN 18 baseline design requirements document. The LSN 19 guidelines were prepared under the direction of the 20 LSN Administrator to document the decision reached by 21 the LSNARP and the technical aspects of the July 2001 22 amendments to 10 CFR 2, Subpart J, that implemented 23 the original LSN technical solution.
24 In addition, they were written to help the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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57 participants develop their piece of the technical 1
solution, such as how to set up their LSN repository, 2
acceptable image file formats, and optical character 3
recognition, or OCR, accuracy requirements, so that 4
you could actually perform searches on the content, on 5
the words within the documents. They in no way 6
- affected, superseded, or otherwise relieved a
7 participant from compliance with 10 CFR Part 2.
8 The LSN comprised 19 servers in a local 9
area network environment connected to the internet in 10 an offsite data center, and it was accessible by the 11 public at www.lsnnet.gov. The system was connected to 12 the internet through a firewall and was protected by 13 an intrusion detection device. Interconnectivity was 14 provided by multiple switches and hubs.
15 Additionally, each high-level waste 16 participant operated a website that hosted its 17 collection of LSN headers and documents. The headers 18 assisted with searching for documents in the LSN.
19 They're also called the
- metadata, an
- index, 20 bibliographic information. So, they contained the 21 title, the document date, the author name. You can 22 think of them like looking through the old-fashioned 23 library card catalog, how many different ways you can 24 find access to one single book.
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58 The server count and configuration listed 1
on this slide does not include the components that 2
were required for each participant site. So, the LSN 3
crawled or spidered the participant servers to create 4
an index, much like Google does. So, the LSN did not 5
actually contain the documents, but went out to the 6
individual participant servers and brought back the 7
information to an index that was contained in the LSN.
8 Each of the participant's servers had their own 9
information, the actual documents. The LSN just 10 contained the index.
11 So, using the LSN search and retrieval 12 capabilities, you would be able to locate, identify, 13 and retrieve documents on the server of the party, 14 potential
- party, or interested governmental 15 participant. So, just like Google doesn't actually 16 own any of those documents that your search results 17 point you to, Google sends you to that, the owner of 18 those documents.
19 Shutting down the LSN. The high-level 20 waste proceeding was suspended in September of 2011, 21 and as part of an orderly suspension and to preserve 22 the document discovery materials, the ASLBP 23 Construction Authorization Board issued an order on 24 April 11th, 2011, directing that all high-level waste 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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59 participants, LSN document collections, both the 1
headers and the documents, be submitted to the Office 2
of the Secretary in portable document format, or PDF.
3 That order also stated that the Office of the 4
Secretary would add those headers and documents to the 5
NRC's agencywide Documents Access and Management 6
System, more commonly known as ADAMS, and make them 7
available to the public.
8 The submissions of these headers and 9
documents to the Office of the Secretary triggered 10 federal records requirements that obligated the NRC to 11 declare the hearing participant headers and documents 12 as NRC official agency records, and to preserve them 13 in compliance with the National Archives and Records 14 Administration's requirements and other applicable 15 federal laws.
16 The high-level waste hearing participant 17 collections are now part of the ADAMS environment and 18 have a narrow approved disposition schedule. The 19 headers and documents are stored in an internal ADAMS 20 Library to meet federal records requirements, but they 21 are available on a public library for the use of the 22 United States public and foreign countries.
23 As Judge Bollwerk said a couple of minutes 24 ago, on August 13th, 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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60 for the District of Columbia Circuit directed the NRC 1
to resume the licensing process for the DOE high-level 2
waste repository construction authorization 3
application.
4 The Commission decisions and communication 5
that I've provided on this slide show the history of 6
why the participants' collections were placed into 7
ADAMS and made publicly available. As I mentioned on 8
the last slide, on November 18th, 2013, the Commission 9
directed staff to put the LSN document collections 10 into ADAMS, so that the staff could easily work on the 11 Safety Evaluation Report.
12 On January 24th, 2014, the Commission 13 directed agency staff to make the LSN document 14 collection publicly available. On February 3rd, 2015, 15 the Commission directed
- that, consistent with 16 10 CFR Part 2.1011, LSN document activities shall be 17 coordinated by the Office of the Secretary and the 18 Atomic Safety Licensing Board Panel. On December 1st, 19 2015, the Office of the Secretary and ASLBP informed 20 the Commission that the project to make the LSN header 21 and document collection publicly available in ADAMS 22 would begin in December 2015. On July 29th, 2016, the 23 Office of the Secretary and ASLBP informed the 24 Commission that the ADAMS LSN Library would become 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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61 publicly available on August 19th, 2016, and it did, 1
indeed, become publicly available on that date.
2 When the NRC was loading the 3.692 million 3
documents formally located through the LSN, we did a 4
quality assurance check. Each document originally 5
loaded to a participant server was required to have a 6
Participant Accession Number. When those documents 7
were indexed in the LSN, we also assign them, or they 8
LSN assigned them, an LSN Accession Number.
9 The ADAMS LSN Library contents were 10 verified using the final list of the LSN Accession 11 Numbers generated by the LSN Administrator before the 12 LSN was shut down against the corresponding lists of 13 Participant Accession Numbers that were received when 14 the participants were required to turn over copies of 15 their documents to the Office of the Secretary. The 16 LSN Administrator found 130 issues. The Office of the 17 Secretary and ASLBP, then, informed the Commission 18 about the issues and what the resolution of those 19 anomalies would be.
20 The LSN Library Anomaly Result Report was 21 originally documented in December 2016 and last 22 updated in March 2017. Sixty of the 130 documents 23 were NRC documents whose status had changed from 24 publicly available to non-publicly available because 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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62 of the sensitivity of the information contained in 1
those documents. The other 70 were participants' 2
documents. Those were documents that either we had on 3
the LSN Accession Number list and were never received 4
or the participants had on their list -- or else we 5
received documents, but we didn't have them on the LSN 6
Accession Number list. So, we did resolve all of 7
those issues of the 70 participant documents except 8
for one or two. So, the ADAMS LSN Library accurately 9
reflects the content that was on the LSN except for 10 one or two documents out of that 3.692 million.
11 I do want to point out that, when the 12 documents came to the NRC's Office of the Secretary, 13 no changes were made. So, every header and every 14 document was loaded in with any errors that may have 15 already existed. So, if there was an incorrect date 16 or a title misspelling, they still exist. The NRC did 17 not make any changes to those 3.692 documents.
18 In sum, since the LSN was shut down, the 19 NRC has acted to: preserve all LSN documents in 20 accordance with the National Archives and Records 21 Administration record requirements; resolve anomalies 22 in the documents and indexes submitted by the parties 23 to the proceedings, and made LSN records available and 24 searchable for NRC staff and for public use in a new 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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63 LSN Library database.
1 On a final note, the LSN was a public 2
discovery database. The ADAMS LSN Library is a public 3
library system that experiences more than 500 hits per 4
month.
5 Thank you.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, 7
Margie, for that history. And there are some issues 8
there that I think we will probably be going into 9
later on this afternoon.
10 We are going to now have Margie do a 11 preview, a prelude to the options that are going to be 12 discussed this afternoon and the next day. And she is 13 going to give you a summary of that. Is that correct?
14 MS. JANNEY: That is correct. Thank you.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
16 MS. JANNEY: So, once again, I'm Margie 17 Janney, and I'm the Acting LSN Administrator.
18 The purpose of this presentation is to 19 introduce the different options in the options paper 20 outlining the reconstitution/replacement options for 21 the Licensing Support Network. The latest version, 22 Version 4, was emailed this past -- oh, it's sitting 23 over there.
24 (Laughter.)
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64 So, we just keep improving it. The 1
version before that had added Inyo
- County, 2
California's estimates. This one adds Nye County's 3
estimates.
4 So, the scope of the options paper is 5
limited to the technical discussion of the options to 6
reconstitute or replace the original LSN. Each option 7
discussed assumes, unless otherwise noted, that any IT 8
system developed to emulate or replace the original 9
LSN would meet the functional requirements found in 10 Appendix A of the options paper.
11 As a reminder, we will be polling the 12 LSNARP membership at the end of our two-day meeting as 13 to their opinion of the best option to reconstitute or 14 replace the LSN, should funding become available to 15 continue the high-level waste proceeding. If the 16 adjudication were to proceed, we would need to 17 evaluate the performance of any replacement or 18 reconstitution of the LSN.
19 There are a number of factors that will 20 influence a decision to either reconstitute or replace 21 the original LSN potentially with one of the options 22 outlined in the options paper. This list provides 23 factors that will need to be taken into consideration 24 when reviewing the various options.
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65 10 CFR 2, Subpart J, provided specific 1
rules governing the purpose and operation of a 2
discovery system for the high-level waste proceeding, 3
and these rules remain. All of the options provided 4
in the option paper will require modifications to, or 5
exemptions from, parts of 10 CFR 2, Subpart J.
6 An LSN Administrator within ASLBP would be 7
appointed to oversee the design, implementation, and 8
operation of a reconstituted or replacement LSN. The 9
hardware and software components that constituted the 10 NRC-operated portion of the original LSN are no longer 11 available nor supported. The original LSN guidelines 12 would be updated by the LSN Administrator in 13 coordination with the LSNARP to provide technical 14 guidance on the operation of a reconstituted or 15 replacement LSN.
16 A reconstituted LSN or a replacement 17 system will need to remain in operation through the 18 construction authorization licensing proceeding, the 19 interim period between the construction authorization 20 and the receive and possess licensing proceeding, 21 through the receive and possess licensing proceeding, 22 and through any judicial appellate proceedings 23 following the receive and possess licensing 24 proceeding. Remember, that's a long period of time.
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66 Think about your options.
1 The bibliographic information provided by 2
each participant in 2011 continues to be associated 3
with each header and document. The original LSN 4
Accession Number needs to be able to be used to find 5
the headers and documents that are right now within 6
7 Document sizing responses. Just as we did 8
with the LSN, we have to have sizing information.
9 Basic IT practice requires the knowledge of the 10 database.
11 On October 27th, 2017, I sent to the 12 parties to the proceeding that had 500 or more 13 documents in the original LSN, or who had sponsored 10 14 or more admitted contentions, a request to provide an 15 estimate as to the number of new documentary material 16 documents and header-only materials that each might 17
- produce, should the proceeding resume.
The 18 information was requested to assist ASLBP in 19 developing options for technical implementation 20 solutions for the possible reconstitution or 21 replacement of the LSN and an enhanced exhibit 22 submission process.
23 Inyo County, California provided a rough 24 estimate of approximately 50 documents with no header-25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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67 only documents.
1 A header-only document typically is an 2
indication that there is no publicly available 3
document because it could represent a videotape or a 4
rock sample or a photograph, or else it could be a 5
privileged, confidential safeguards or other type of 6
limited-access documentary material that should not be 7
publicly available.
8 NEI provided a rough estimate of between 9
100 and 500 documents with no header-only entries.
10 The State of Nevada provided a rough 11 estimate of more than 1,000 documents. However, at 12 this time they could not provide an accurate estimate.
13 DOE provided a rough estimate of more than 14 1,000 documents with approximately 9 percent as 15 header-only documents. However, additional license 16 application work and the number of new contentions 17 will influence the amount of new material.
18 The NRC staff provided a rough estimate of 19 between 1,000 and 2,000 new documents with 20 approximately 1 percent as header-only. However, 21 significant uncertainties related to the resumption of 22 the adjudication may impact their rough estimate.
23 Nye County, Nevada provided a rough 24 estimate of between 200 and 300 documents with 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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68 approximately 500 as header-only.
1 The two entities that did not provide a 2
formal written response to the inquiry were the 3
California Energy Commission and Clark County, Nevada.
4 So, the new documentary material estimates 5
total between 3,350 to perhaps 5,000 or more.
6 The general objective of the options paper 7
is it outlines possible IT system options for the 8
replacement of the original LSN, as well as discusses 9
the option of reconstituting the original LSN. Each 10 option includes a cost and time estimate, risks and 11 challenges, and pros and cons.
12 All cost and time estimates provided in 13 this options paper are estimated based on available 14 information and are intended to provide a consistent 15 comparison basis between the options. Depending on 16 the option selected, market research and a more 17 detailed independent government cost estimate may be 18 conducted as part of budget formulation or procurement 19 activities to develop a more precise cost.
20 A project plan, depending on the option 21 selected, may be developed to provide a more accurate 22 schedule.
23 The final implemented solution for the 24 selected option may vary from the description provided 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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69 in this paper, as the selected option will be subject 1
to design reviews and user acceptance testing.
2 The LSN Administrator may be coordinating 3
these activities in conjunction with the LSNARP.
4 So, as a high-level overview, Option is 5
traditional discovery. It uses existing public ADAMS 6
LSN Library to access previously submitted documentary 7
material, and new material will be exchanged amongst 8
the parties, as Judge Paul Bollwerk will be discussing 9
a little bit later.
10 Option 2 is the existing public ADAMS LSN 11 Library as a base. This option would build upon the 12 existing ADAMS LSN Library enhanced by additional 13 requirements. The library would be the base used to 14 access previously submitted and any new documentary 15 material.
The document intake and document 16 modification processes would either use a modification 17 to the Electronic Information Exchange, or EIE, 18 system, or a semi-manual process, which will be 19 discussed later by K.G. Golshan.
20 Option 3
is a
cloud-based system.
21 Previously submitted any new documentary material 22 would be moved from the existing ADAMS LSN Library to 23 a cloud-based system. The document intake and 24 document modification processes would be moved to the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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70 cloud. And K.G. Golshan will also be presenting this 1
option.
2 Option 4 is the original LSN design as it 3
existed in 2011. And I will be discussing this 4
option.
5 Appendix A includes the original LSN 6
functional requirements that couldn't be met by one or 7
more of the options or would need to be modified based 8
on new technology. Appendix A does not include 9
original LSN functional requirements that are not IT-10 system-related or currently provided by other systems 11 or have been overtaken by events.
12 Appendix B describes the risk factors that 13 were considered for each option, and we came up with 14 a relative risk score.
15 Appendix C lists proposed new functional 16 requirements such as enhanced exhibit processing and 17 a feature that was lacking, which was the ability to 18 take documents directly out of the LSN and file them 19 as exhibits. The newly identified functional 20 requirements would permit that capability.
21 And Appendix D is an options summary 22 table.
23 Thank you.
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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71 you, Margie.
1 I just want to put a finer point, before 2
we go to the next presentations on Electronic 3
Information Exchange and the Electronic Hearing 4
Docket, which gives you a whole context, I just want 5
to put a little finer point on a word that Margie 6
used. She indicated that we would be "polling,"
7 P-O-L-L-I-N-G, ARP members at the end of tomorrow.
8 And we are going to be asking you what your opinions 9
are on all of these options, but I didn't want anybody 10 to think that this was going to be some type of a vote 11 that might be given to the Commission that 5 of the 16 12 ARP members voted for the cloud, or something like 13 that. So, I just wanted to clarify that.
14 MS. JANNEY: Thank you, Chip.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
16 So now, e-filing in the Electronic Hearing 17 Docket, we are going to have Russ Chazell from the 18 Office of the Secretary talk to us about that. And 19 then, we're going to hear from Andy Welkie about 20 another thing.
21 Russ?
22 MR. CHAZELL: Good morning, everyone.
23 Thank you for attending today, either remotely or in 24 person, our meeting of the LSNARP.
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72 As Chip said, my name is Russell Chazell, 1
and I'm with the NRC Office of the Secretary.
2 With me, Brian Newell, if you could stand 3
up? With me today is Brian Newell. Brian's an 4
administrative and litigation assistant in the Office 5
of the Secretary. And he, along with two others, 6
handle most inquiries about the Electronic Information 7
Exchange and the Electronic Hearing Docket systems.
8 Many of you have spoken or emailed Brian while 9
planning to attend this meeting. Brian will handle 10 EIE/EHD logistics for high-level waste adjudicatory 11 proceeding, if it is restarted in the future.
12 Thanks, Brian.
13 Today I will provide an overview of the 14 Electronic Information Exchange, or EIE, and the 15 Electronic Hearing Docket, or EHD, systems. This 16 presentation is relevant to your discussions because 17 several of the options under consideration include the 18 EIE as the document intake system, and it's within the 19 mandate of the LSNARP because, if it is part of the 20 reconstituted LSN, it will be part of the LSN 21 infrastructure.
22 First, some background. I guess I should 23 do the slides, huh?
24 The NRC-mandated electronic filing for the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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73 high-level waste proceeding in 10 CFR Subpart J, 1
Section 1013. Further, that section in Subparagraph 2
(a)(2) mandates that the Office of the Secretary, or 3
SECY, manage e-filing systems, again, known as EIE and 4
EHD.
5 EIE is used for filing adjudicatory 6
documents such as pleadings,
- motions, orders, 7
transcripts, and admitted exhibits. EHD is the ADAMS 8
Library where the documents are housed after they're 9
filed.
10 The NRC's EIE permits users to make 11 electronic submissions in a secure manner using 12 digital signature technology. Upon receipt of 13 transmission, EIE timestamps the documents and sends 14 the submitter an email notice confirming receipt of 15 the documents. The interface may look a little 16 different than what some of you may remember because 17 the NRC has made some changes in the last few years.
18 We use these systems for all of our adjudications, not 19 just the high-level waste system.
20 So, to access EIE, you go to the NRC home 21 page at www.nrc.gov to find the EIE. And then, you 22 click on "Adjudicatory Submissions" at the bottom of 23 the page right there.
24 As I said earlier, a digital certificate 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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74 is required to submit documents to EIE. The 1
certificate serves to authenticate documents and 2
validate the identity of the person submitting the 3
information. Certificates are issued to appropriate 4
parties upon request to the Office of the Secretary.
5 The process to obtain a certificate is started at this 6
URL there. So, many of you may already have digital 7
certificates, but they may now be expired or would 8
need to be renewed before you could access EIE.
9 So, once you've arrived at "Adjudicatory 10 Submissions," you click on "Obtain a
Digital 11 Certificate". Then, that will take you to a page 12 there called "External Credential Service," and you 13 click there. "Electronic Submittals - Adjudicatory".
14 I'm just going through this real quick, so you can get 15 a flavor for how the system works. Then, you click on 16 "Apply Now" right there. And then, that takes you to 17 a page called "Level 1 Credentialing". And as with 18 all government websites, there's a nice warning there 19 that you need to read. And after you've read the 20 warning, click to "Level 1," continue to "Level 1 -
21 Credentialing".
22 Then, there's a form to fill out. You 23 fill out the form and click "Continue". At this 24 point, the NRC IT team will review and approve the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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75 request, if appropriate, and email you a digital 1
certificate with instructions on how to upload it to 2
your machine.
3 There are some browsers and operating 4
systems that are more challenging to use than others.
5 If you're using one of those challenging browsers, the 6
NRC Help Desk can walk you through that process. I'll 7
provide the contact information and hours of operation 8
for the Help desk later in my presentation.
9 So, once your certificate is installed, 10 you can get to EIE from the "Adjudicatory Submissions" 11 page shown earlier. You, then, click "Submit 12 Adjudicatory Documents" right there.
13 When you arrive at the EIE front page, 14 you'll get another warning. Read the warning. Click 15 "Consent to Monitoring" and, then, click "Continue".
16 Then, you'll get a front page that tells 17 you what's going on with the system. Are there any 18 maintenance issues going on, or whatever? It's a 19 splash page that tells you the current status of the 20 system.
21 So, then, once you've read that, you click 22 on "New Submission". And then, you click on "Type of 23 Submission," which is in most cases a public 24 submission.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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76 Then, you select the proceeding from the 1
dropdown menu. There are a number of active 2
proceedings happening at any given time, and the 3
dropdown box will only show you the proceedings to 4
which you have access. If high-level waste is the 5
only proceeding you're involved in, you'll only see 6
that on your dropdown. Now you can see there "High-7 Level Waste". There's the docket number, CAB-04. So, 8
you click on that box, and it takes you to the page 9
for submitting the information.
10 So, you fill out the form. You upload 11 your documents. Right there, you type in the 12 submission title, and you can upload your documents 13 there. And this is a straightforward document upload 14 process like you do for lots of other kinds of 15 applications outside the NRC.
16 Once the document is filed, all parties 17 will receive an email notification acknowledging the 18 submission with a link to open the document. You'll 19 see the page scrolling through many names here. So, 20 you say "Add Another File," if you want to. And then, 21 you can scroll through all of these names, and you get 22 down to the bottom. You'll the page. The high-level 23 proceeding has a long service list, and I think we 24 abbreviated that. But the first iteration of this 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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77 slide scrolled to like four pages because there were 1
that many people that are on the service list for 2
high-level waste. So, once you see that, you sign and 3
date and, then, click "Submit".
4 Please note that 10 CFR Part 2, Subpart J, 5
mandates specific attributes for filed documents.
6 These attributes include, for example, optical 7
character recognition and resolution requirements.
8 The NRC has an add-in to Adobe Acrobat called 9
Preflight that will flag attribute issues with the 10 document. Such issues need to be resolved before the 11 document is filed. And again, our Help Desk can help 12 you work through installing Preflight as an add-on to 13 your Adobe and that kind of thing.
14 So, once you've filed your document, 15 within one to three days after filing, the document is 16 added to the Electronic Hearing Docket specific to the 17 relevant procedure. The EHD is a database that houses 18 a visual representation of the docket for a particular 19 proceeding and a link to all the filings in that 20 proceeding. The EHD can be accessed at that URL 21 there, adams.nrc.gov/ehd. As you can see from the 22 URL, EHD is a subset of ADAMS.
23 Currently, high-level waste adjudicatory 24 documents, such as pleadings, motions, orders, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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78 transcripts, privileged logs, and admitted exhibits, 1
are housed in EDH. Documentary or discovery 2
materials, as defined by 10 CFR Part 2, Subpart J, are 3
housed in the ADAMS LSN Library. So, only the stuff 4
that's admitted to the proceeding is in EDH.
5 Everything else in the ADAMS LSN Library. These 6
discovery materials are used to develop adjudicatory 7
material and admitted exhibits.
8 So, to access the EHD, you go to the home 9
page again, nrc.gov. And then, you go to the "NRC 10 Library," and you can see "Electronic Hearing Docket" 11 down there at the bottom. You just click on that 12 link, and then, you'll get a page that says 13 "Adjudications". That was the same page we were at 14 before. "Electronic Hearing Docket" then comes up.
15 And then, you can click on "Access the Electronic 16 Hearing Docket". And once you're there, you see web-17 based ADAMS. So, anybody that's done a search of web-18 based public ADAMS has seen this interface before.
19 Once inside there, you can navigate to the 20 desired proceeding and its folders. Here we've 21 navigated to the high-level waste proceeding, CAB-04, 22 motions and pleadings.
23 On the right, you can see the packages and 24 files contained in that folder. Publicly available 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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79 documents are visible to, and can be opened by, anyone 1
accessing the folder. For non-public files such as 2
files subject to a protective order, everyone can see 3
the title of the documents, but only those on the 4
proceedings service list who have executed a non-5 disclosure agreement can open, view, download, or 6
print them.
7 So, detailed guidance for using these 8
applications and obtaining digital certificates is 9
available on the NRC public website. The NRC operates 10 a Help Desk to assist users with the applications and 11 digital certificates. Just call 866-672-7640, Monday 12 through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Eastern 13 time, and our Help Desk staff can work you through 14 those issues.
15 If you have further questions, I've got my 16 contact and Brian's contact information here on the 17 slide.
18 And thanks again for attending today.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Russell. Thank you 20 very much, and thanks for that offer for people to 21 talk to either you or Brian.
22 And we have one final presentation and, 23 then, we're going to go out to all of you. This is 24 Andy Welkie who's going to talk to us.
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80 MR. WELKIE: Good morning. As Chip 1
mentioned, my name is Andy Welkie. I'm an IT 2
Specialist with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board 3
Panel.
4 And one of my roles with the panel is I am 5
the exhibit processor or the exhibit stamper. So, 6
during evidentiary hearings, I am the one who puts the 7
electronic stamp on all the official exhibits.
8 So, to give a little bit of background 9
information on exhibit submission, and again, I'm an 10 IT guy; I am not a lawyer; I'm not a paralegal. So, 11 if I screw up these next couple of bullets, please 12 forgive me.
13 So, exhibits are documents or objects that 14 are offered as evidence to support written or oral 15 testimony, just to set that basis. And so, these 16 little 10 CFR definitions or these section quotes I'm 17 probably going to screw up. So, 10 CFR Section 18 2.1001, under Definitions, describes the LSN, as 19 Margie also mentioned, "a combined system that makes 20 documentary material electronically available to 21 parties".
22 It also goes on and says that the 23 Electronic Docket, as Russ mentioned, is "the 24 information system that receives, distributes, stores, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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81 and retrieves the Commission's adjudicatory docket 1
materials; i.e., the EIE and the EHD systems".
2 10 CFR Section 2.1013 talks about the use 3
of the Electronic Docket during the proceeding, and 4
little (b) says that, "Absent good cause, all exhibits 5
that are tendered during the hearing must have been 6
made available to the parties in electronic form 7
before the commencement of that portion of the hearing 8
where the exhibit will be offered."
9 And then, 10 CFR Section 2.304, little 10 (g), talks about prefiled written testimony exhibits 11 and says that, "Written testimony of each individual 12 witness or witness panel and each individual exhibit 13 shall be submitted as an individual electronic file."
14 Simply, that rule is in there, I'm assuming, so that 15 we can stamp each document electronically individually 16 as opposed to "Exhibit 6 consists of 30 exhibits."
17 So, one of the things when developing the 18 paper -- and quite frankly, this gap I feel existed 19 back in 2011 and even before that -- is there is a gap 20 between getting a document that's in the LSN and 21 taking it directly into the Electronic Hearing Docket.
22 So, there's an assumption that a high percentage of 23 the evidentiary material or the exhibits that are 24 going to be submitted in this proceeding are already 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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82 in the LSN. Again, there was not process back then, 1
and, quite frankly, if we went through with the 2
existing functional requirements, there would be no 3
way in a new system that you could take a document 4
directly out of the LSN and submit to the Electronic 5
Hearing Docket.
6 So, if you submit a document through the 7
Electronic Hearing Docket, or through the Electronic 8
Information Exchange, when you submit that document, 9
the only thing you really enter, as Russ showed in his 10 slide deck is you have to put in the exhibit title.
11 So, all the information, the document's author, the 12 addressee affiliation, the author affiliation, all 13 that information would have to be re-entered, and 14 that's typically done by the NRC's Document Processing 15 staff.
16 So, for a document to get into ADAMS as 17 official agency
- records, there are certain 18 bibliographic information or properties that have to 19 be entered. So, all that information is already in 20 the header that's in the LSN. But, if you download it 21 and resubmit it through EIE, that information as to be 22 re-entered by somebody, and it would be the Document 23 Processing Center. There's also potential significant 24 participant labor effort to take those documents out 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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83 of the LSN, log into the Electronic Information 1
Exchange, and refile those documents.
2 So, I'll just run through the process of 3
how you would take a document out of the LSN and file 4
it as an exhibit if the proceeding had continued in 5
2011. You do your search in the LSN. You find your 6
document or documents. You, then, have to download 7
that document, and you would either have to decide to 8
use the entire document as your exhibit or take parts 9
of that document as an exhibit, because I believe 10 there is also a blurb in 10 CFA Part 2 that says you 11 should only submit the part of the document that you 12 really need to use and not the entire thing.
13 You would, then, have to place an exhibit 14 number on each document. You, then, have to log into 15 the EIE, fill out information about the exhibit, and 16 really that is just the title. Then, you would have 17 to submit that exhibit. And currently, there is a 18 100-megabyte aggregate file size limitation. So, if 19 you have a document that's 100 megabytes, you can file 20 it as a single document. If you have two documents 21 that are 50 MB in total size, you can file two 22 documents. But, if you get something that's bigger 23 than that 100-megabyte aggregate file size, you have 24 to either break that document apart or do multiple 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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84 submissions.
1 You, then, receive a confirmation, a 2
confirmation
- email, that it was submitted 3
successfully. And then, in current practice for our 4
existing proceedings, the Board typically asks the 5
parties to file an exhibit list. And so, you would 6
have to take the title of that document, add it to the 7
exhibit list, and include your exhibit number on that 8
list as well.
9 So, the red box is kind of the place where 10 we really see the gap. And again, a new system or a 11 reconstituted system, I think we could probably 12 address that gap.
13 So, this would be the potential gap 14 closure process. You would still have to find your 15 document in whatever reconstituted or replacement 16 system was put in place. But, then, the idea would be 17 that, as opposed to having to download that document, 18 an exhibit cart could be created. So, you could check 19 a box next to each document or you could have a little 20 button that says "Add This Document To My Cart".
21 So, then, for each document that gets 22 added to the cart, you would go in and have a checkbox 23 to say "Use the Full Document" or "Use Part of the 24 Document". And then, you would provide an exhibit 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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85 number. So, you would type that in, because you're 1
still going to have to provide that. And then, you 2
would just submit the exhibit cart. And so, whatever 3
documents you added to the cart, it would, basically, 4
pull those documents out of the LSN, pull the header 5
information that's already in the LSN, and ship all 6
that information over to the Electronic Hearing 7
Docket.
8 And then, you receive confirmation that 9
the documents that were in your cart were submitted.
10 And then, you could, then, download that exhibit cart 11 list, as opposed to having to recreate yourself. So, 12 we could create a downloadable spreadsheet or -- I'm 13 looking at K.G. -- we could do something that would 14 basically let you not have to retype all that 15 information again.
16 And again, so that is the place that this 17 potential gap closure process could fill. There are 18 some limitations. So, it would only be available for 19 public documents that are contained in a reconstituted 20 or replacement LSN system, because header-only 21 documents, again, are either going to be non-public 22 documents, you know, a representation in the LSN as a 23 non-public document, or it's a physical exhibit. So, 24 obviously, you can't file a physical exhibit through 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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86 EIE. So, you would not be able to do that through 1
this enhanced exhibit processing system. And again, 2
any non-LSN documents, things like prefiled testimony 3
or other non-discovered material that's not in the LSN 4
would have to be filed through the normal process.
5 And there are some options that it is 6
applicable, and there are two that it is not 7
applicable to. So, it would be possible for option 2, 8
using the existing public ADAMS LSN Library. It would 9
be something that could be added to option 3, move to 10 the cloud; alternative 1 or alternative 2(a), or it 11 would be applicable to option 4, rebuilding the 12 original LSN.
13 For option 1, traditional discovery, as 14 it's currently in the options paper, it would not be 15 available, but you could make an enhancement, 16 theoretically, to the existing system to be able to 17 add that capability, although you would only be able 18 to transfer existing documents, not anything new.
19 And then, option 3, move to the cloud, 20 alternative 2(b), K.G. will talk about this, but in 21 that instance that option and that alternative, the 22 NRC really doesn't have the collection, nor does it 23 maintain the index. So, in the ones where it is 24 possible, as a possible capability, the NRC either 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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87 holds the document collection or it holds the index 1
into those collections.
2 That's all I have to say on exhibit 3
submission. And I will turn that back over to Chip 4
now.
5 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Andy.
6 So, we're going to go for questions, see 7
if there are any comments. What I would like to do is 8
we're going to follow our usual process, but I would 9
like to change it up a little bit and go to the people 10 on GoToMeeting first. So, we're going to see if 11 anybody on GoToMeeting has their name tent up.
12 But I really want to introduce Loreen 13 Pitchford.
14 Some of you out there on GoToMeeting have 15 your cameras turned off and you can keep them turned 16 off if you want, but if you want to ask a question or 17 make a comment, you're going to have to send a chat 18 message into us because we won't be able to see your 19 name tent, obviously.
20 Can we get Loreen up there?
21 MS. PITCHFORD: Yes. Hi, Chip. I'm here.
22 MR. CAMERON: Hey, thanks, Loreen. Thank 23 you very much.
24 And Loreen helps a lot of the counties 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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88 out.
1 Do we have any chat messages or anybody 2
who has their name tent up out there on GoToMeeting?
3 Oh, good. Okay. We have Darrell Lacy 4
from Nye County.
5 Darrell, go ahead.
6 MR. LACY: I just wanted to say, as far as 7
from our perspective, the work we've looked at, the 8
LSN ADAMS process works well. The only real questions 9
we have are the new documents and how we get those 10 identified. If the NRC is comfortable with managing 11 that process, then that's so much better for the rest 12 of us. And we, of course, have to put up a new server 13 and manage it ourselves. It's time and funding and 14 money, but we would prefer not to do it if we don't 15 have to. So, we appreciate what the NRC is doing 16 here. We think you put together a very difficult 17 process, and the insertions that we've done are 18 actually much easier than what we used to be able to 19 do on the old LSN. So, thank you.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Darrell.
21 And I should point out that we're going to 22 have a discussion of these specific options and, also, 23 asking people what they like. So, I want people to 24 remember what Darrell said about option 2.
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89 And, Darrell, we'll come back to you 1
during option 2 and at the end of the day tomorrow to 2
hear anything more that you have to say on that. So, 3
thank you.
4 And Darrell gave his rationale for that, 5
too. So, we shouldn't forget that.
6 Anybody else have their name tent up or 7
have chat message out there on GoToMeeting?
8 Judge Bollwerk's reminding me in a way 9
that there were a number of presentations, including 10 Russ Chazell and Andy Welkie's presentation, which 11 were fairly detailed presentation. So, if you have 12 any questions about any of the presentations, 13 including those, out there in GoToMeeting land, please 14 ask them. I don't think we'll be able to get into a 15 detailed discussion on either Russ or Andy's 16 presentation, but if there are questions, let's get 17 them out there and we'll try to answer them.
18 Okay. I don't see anybody else on 19 GoToMeeting, but I think we should see if anybody's 20 calling in who is an ARP member.
21 And Brandon is our operator, but we don't 22 have any calls. Okay.
23 Let's go to the table here and go to Judy 24 Treichel.
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90 Judy?
1 MS. TREICHEL: I had a comment on one of 2
Margie's slides or during her presentation where she 3
mentioned that reconstituted or replacement LSN needs 4
to maintain an operation through the hearings and 5
receive and possess hearings. It's sort of my 6
thought, from, lo, these many years of following this, 7
that whatever winds up on the LSN is probably going to 8
be sort of like the owner's manual for this thing, if 9
there's a repository, because you've got confirmatory 10 testing that would go on for years and years and 11 years. And this is really the repository for 12 everything that's known or been studied about the 13 thing. And I think that whatever winds up being the 14 LSN is going to have to last on and on and on.
15 In addition, you also were talking about 16 the ADAMS LSN and the fact that there were 500 hits 17 per month, and that seems really small. I don't know 18 how many hits you could think that you were getting 19 per day, but, as far as making that a gauge for what 20 would happen during discovery or during a hearing, 21 that would be irrelevant. So, I just wanted to 22 mention that.
23 Thanks.
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91 Judy.
1 Margie, do you have anything that you want 2
to add?
3 MS. JANNEY: The point I was trying to 4
make about there are actually 500 people on there, 5
when we're not even having a proceeding yet. So, 6
there is still interest right now, and I can only 7
imagine it's going to be exponentially larger interest 8
in being able to access the LSN, however it exists, at 9
a time when the high-level waste proceeding may 10 continue.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thank you 12 both.
13 Rod?
14 MR. McCULLUM: Yes. First of all, we want 15 to echo the sentiments of Nye County on the 16 simplicities of option 2, but I know we'll get to that 17 this afternoon.
18 What I really want to do is I want to hark 19 back to slide 39 in our package here in Margie 20 Janney's presentation. And you don't have to call it 21 up.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
23 MR. McCULLUM: I didn't have reading 24 glasses the last time this group met.
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92 (Laughter.)
1 The first bullet in Margie's slide is, 2
"Options will require modifications to, or exemptions 3
from, 10 CFR Part 2, Subpart J." This was something 4
she stated as an underlying assumption.
5 And without taking a position on whether 6
or not that assumption is correct -- and we're not 7
taking a position at that time -- I think that is a 8
very key assumption going forward, particularly in 9
light of Marty Malsch's presentation, as he pointed 10 out some potential concerns with what might or might 11 not be a rulemaking process. And I also want to be 12 respectful of what Bob mentioned, that all of the 13 participants, NEI included, have limited resources at 14 this time.
15 So, I guess my recommendation for this 16 afternoon and tomorrow, and for the immediate 17 deliberations of this panel, is let's focus on the 18 options and not on the question of whether or not it 19 requires rulemaking. If we could up with an option 20 that works, the best option, then, you know, it's 21 either going to be easy or hard to do what we have to 22 do in 10 CFR Part 2, Subpart J, space. And I think 23 the participants will have a lot to say with whether 24 it becomes easy or it becomes hard.
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93 But, given that this is right now a 1
limited-funded proceeding, I think the time of this 2
group would be spent -- let's focus on the options 3
and, then, let the rulemaking, potential rulemaking 4
implications follow on as something that gets 5
discussed when maybe there's more resources on the 6
table, if Congress has acted.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. The point is that 8
you're not expressing an opinion on whether rulemaking 9
or some other method should be used, but at this point 10 it's too premature --
11 MR. McCULLUM: I'm asking to set that 12 question aside. Yes, it's a premature question at 13 this point.
14 MR. CAMERON: Yes.
15 MR. McCULLUM: Let's just get the best 16 option. And once we get the best option, then there 17 will be an opportunity to figure out, because, you 18 know, this has to be done in accordance with the 19 Commission's rules and requirements and administrative 20 procedures, and all that. But let's put that aside 21 for this discussion and really focus on the options, 22 is what I'm saying.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Rod.
24 And, Bob?
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94 MR. HALSTEAD: Well, I have two other 1
comments, but I have to respond to Rod on this. We 2
don't think you can separate the issue of evaluating 3
the options and the requirement for rulemaking. And 4
I'll just leave that at that.
5 In response to two of the slides, there 6
were just a couple of comments I wanted to make. I 7
guess it was in Margie's presentation on the document 8
sizing responses. This is a big task for us in Nevada 9
to define our document sizing input into your 10 consideration. So, we weren't trying to be 11 uncooperative. We just really have an enormous 12 challenge in answering that question for you.
13 And then, it seems to me on Andy Welkie's 14 presentation, on slide 69, the exhibit submission gap, 15 that is potentially a very, very significant resource 16 issue, presumably, mostly a resource issue for the 17 Commission staff in carrying out that work. And I 18 appreciated the fact that that issue was highlighted.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good. Good.
20 We'll come back if there's any further 21 comments, but now we're going to go to see if there's 22 any public comments.
23 Any member of the public in the room that 24 wants to come up to the microphone and say anything?
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95 (No response.)
1 Okay. Let's go to GoToWebinar. Do we 2
have anybody on GoToWebinar from the public who wants 3
to say something?
4 MR. KLEVORICK: Phil Klevorick, Clark 5
County.
6 MR. CAMERON: Oh. Hey, Phil, how you 7
doing?
8 Phil is a member of the ARP, for 9
everybody. I think everybody knows that.
10 But go ahead, Phil.
11 MR. KLEVORICK: Thank you. I apologize 12 for not having a web cam because I know you guys want 13 to see my beautiful face this morning.
14 (Laughter.)
15 I have a comment that goes back to, I 16 believe it was Marty who made a comment about Clark 17 County not supplying any information regarding our 18 projected number of documents going forward. And the 19 reason why I didn't submit any of that stuff is 20 because it's very difficult to estimate what our work 21 will be if we ever get reconstituted with funding.
22 Because, at the end of the day, I don't want to be 23 giving out any false expectations. I don't think it's 24 going to make a big difference, even a very little 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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96 difference, to the number of documents
- that, 1
obviously, were proposed of 3,000 to 5,000 documents.
2 I mean, we would certainly be less than 1 percent of 3
any of those documents. So, that's the reason why I 4
didn't feel it was necessary to update with a newer 5
version of any new documents that may be coming 6
forward.
7 And, of course, some of that would be 8
required for any new contentions that Clark County may 9
propose. But all of that is well in advance of where 10 we are currently because, certainly, we don't have any 11 ability to update any of our current contentions on 12 any research or studies. So, I just wanted to make 13 sure that everybody is aware that that's why I didn't 14 submit it.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Thanks, 16 Phil.
17 And I guess I should ask the NRC staff, 18 with relation to that question, is that -- as I 19 understand it, the NRC staff wanted to get some 20 estimates of volume in terms of anticipating any 21 sizing of the system. But it's not like there's going 22 to be any legal implications of anyone not providing 23 an estimate or anybody's estimate being ultimately 24 incorrect. Is that true?
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97 MS. JANNEY: I would like to point out, 1
Chip, that it was the LSN staff who that question is 2
important to, as opposed to the NRC staff.
3 MR. CAMERON: Good.
4 MS. JANNEY: Yes, when one builds an IT 5
system, if you think your database is going to be a 6
thousand documents and you get a hundred thousand 7
documents, that's a different size system, and you 8
have to put more effort and more cost and more time 9
into it. So, we were trying to get a rough estimate, 10 and we did the exact same thing when we originally 11 build the LSN, so we would have approximate sizing 12 capabilities or requirements in order to know how many 13 servers we would need and just all the software that 14 would be involved, because it is a difference in cost 15 and time estimates. We're just trying to provide a 16 rough estimate.
17 And I
appreciate the efforts and 18 understand the efforts, especially if there is no 19 funding available to provide a response. So, thank 20 you to everyone who at least read my email.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Margie.
22 And I should have said the NRC LSN staff, 23 because we have Jessica and Carrie here, and others, 24 from the NRC licensing staff.
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98 MR. KLEVORICK: Chip, if I may? It's Phil 1
Klevorick again.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Phil.
3 MR. KLEVORICK: Yes, I don't think my tens 4
of documents is going to make a big difference to 5
anybody's calculation and how robust the system is or 6
how accurate the system is going to be. So, I don't 7
think that that would have made much of a difference.
8 So, I just want to make sure that's on the record.
9 But there was one thing that was brought 10 up by, I believe it was Rod and maybe Bob a few 11 minutes ago. And I don't want it to be lost because 12 I'm not sure at what point this is going to be part of 13 the conversation. But, certainly, the timing of all 14 of this is going to materialize, and whether it's six 15 months or two years from now, some people are 16 significantly going to be disadvantaged by the timing 17 of any reconstructing of the process. And I want 18 people to appreciate who may not understand the 19 difficulties of AULGs or smaller operations, the 20 tribals, or whomever, to get their processes going 21 again. So, I just want to make sure that we're going 22 to have some kind of a discussion on that later on, if 23 we can.
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Phil. I'm 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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99 going to put that, I'll put that in the corral.
1 MR. KLEVORICK: Thank you.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. You're welcome.
3 And I should remind the public that are on 4
through GoToWebinar that, if you do want to say 5
something, use the "Raise Hand" feature of 6
GoToWebinar.
7 And I don't think we see any raised hands, 8
but I should ask, while we're waiting, Brandon, 9
Brandon, are you with us?
10 OPERATOR: Yes, I'm here.
11 MR. CAMERON: Is there anybody on the 12 phone lines from the public who wants to say anything 13 at this point?
14 OPERATOR: I'm currently showing no 15 questions at this time.
16 I would like to remind participants that, 17 if you would like to ask a question or leave a 18 comment, to please press *1.
19 (Pause.)
20 All right.
Currently, showing no 21 questions or comments on the phone line.
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Brandon.
23 And just one last check. Anybody, any of 24 the ARP members on GoToMeeting have anything to say at 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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100 this point before we break for lunch?
1 (No response.)
2 Anybody raised hands on GoToWebinar?
3 (No response.)
4 I just want to keep practicing this.
5 (Laughter.)
6 But we managed to get back right on time, 7
even though we finished early.
8 So, 12:45, and we're going to go to two 9
o'clock. Okay? Two o'clock. We'll be back.
10 Don't forget that, if you want to watch 11 the video loops of training, they will be shown here 12 continuously.
13 So, thank you all.
14 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off 15 the record for lunch at 12:43 p.m. and went back on 16 the record at 2:00 p.m.)
17 MR. CAMERON: Good afternoon, everybody, 18 and welcome back to the afternoon session of the first 19 day of the Licensing Support Advisory Review Panel.
20 And just to remind everybody, we have members of the 21 panel here at the table in Rockville, Maryland, we 22 have members of the panel joining us virtually through 23 GoToMeeting, and we also have members of the public 24 primarily on through GoToWebinar joining us virtually.
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101 And now we're going to start to explore 1
the first of four options that the NRC LSN staff put 2
together for Advisory Review Panel consideration.
3 Option 1 is traditional discovery, and we have Judge 4
Paul Bollwerk from the NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing 5
Board Panel here to talk to us about traditional 6
discovery.
7 MR. BOLLWERK: All right. Good afternoon, 8
everyone. Again, I'm Paul Bollwerk. I'm a legal 9
judge with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board 10 Panel. And I have the unenviable task of trying to 11 keep everybody awake right after lunch, but I'll do 12 the best I can, especially when we're talking about a 13 discovery database or how to conduct discovery. We'll 14 move along and see how it goes.
15 So, basically, in restarting the Yucca 16 Mountain adjudication, a principal concern will be 17 ensuring that the participants have suitable access to 18 discovery material, both old and new. This option 19 explores the possibility, given the existence of the 20 LSN library and taking into account the estimated 21 volume of new documentary material that likely will 22 need to be exchanged among the participants, whether 23 it is necessary to create another LSN-like electronic 24 system to hold the entirety of the participants' 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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102 documentary material.
1 Under this option, to ensure that all 2
participant documentary material is appropriately made 3
available to other adjudication participants, a 4
combination of methods would be used. Specifically, 5
current and future investment in making the existing 6
LSN collection available to the adjudication 7
participants and the public via the LSN library would 8
be combined for the purpose of making new discovery 9
materials available with traditional methods for 10 document discovery already available under the 11 agency's rules of practice. Discovery regarding new 12 documentary materials would be implemented by whatever 13 directives might be put in place by the Commission or 14 a construction authorization board, presumably after 15 consultation with the participants.
16 Before getting into the details regarding 17 this option, so that everyone will have a common 18 understanding of what is being proposed, I'd like to 19 provide a brief background explanation of what's 20 involved in an NRC hearing practice in conducting 21 discovery with respect to document disclosure. Under 22 10 Code of Federal Regulations, Section 2.336 of the 23 agency's rules of practice, which is entitled "General 24 Discovery,"
initially, after the admission of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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103 contentions, and periodically thereafter, the parties 1
are required to provide a copy or a description by 2
category and location of all relevant documents and 3
data compilations. This generally is implemented by 4
filing document lists in the electronic hearing docket 5
that identify the documents with document distribution 6
governed by participant-established protocols.
7 In the case of the NRC staff, this 8
generally means a list of documents with the ADAMS 9
accession number for each document which allows the 10 other participants in the proceeding to access any of 11 the documents from the agency's website via ADAMS.
12 For the participants, distribution may involve sending 13 electronic copies by email or hard copies by snail 14 mail or providing physical access to a document 15 repository.
16 With respect to the assumptions that 17 underlie this particular option, first, hearing 18 participants will have a small volume of new 19 documentary material. In this assumption, there are 20 several terms that I'd like to discuss in further 21 detail. The first is discovery or documentary 22 material, which I'll use those words interchangeably.
23 Under Section 2.1001's definition of documentary 24 material, disclosures include: A) any material, party 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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104 or interested governmental participant intends to rely 1
on or cite in support of its position in the 2
proceeding; B) any information known to a party that 3
is relevant to but does not support that party's 4
position; and C) any study or report prepared by a 5
party or interested governmental participant that is 6
relevant to the license application and the issues set 7
forth in the topical guidelines in NRC Regulatory 8
Guide 3.69, which I should mention is still in effect.
9 And for those of you that may not be familiar with it, 10 NRC Reg Guide 3.69, it's basically a list of issues 11 relative to the high-level waste repository that were 12 put together a number of years ago so that parties 13 will know, essentially, what sorts of things could 14 come up and what sorts of documents they needed to be 15 concerned about putting into the LSN before the actual 16 contentions were filed in the case. This option, as 17 well as the others discussed today, assume that this 18 definition of what is relevant information will not 19 change.
20 The second term I'd like to talk a little 21 bit about is the term "hearing participants."
22 Consistent with Section 2.1001's definition of 23 documentary material, as it indicates whose material 24 is covered by that definition, for the purpose of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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105 inclusion in the LSN, there are three participant 1
types: potential parties, parties, and interested 2
governmental participants. Seemingly, two of the 3
three participant types identified in that definition 4
would be involved in the Yucca Mountain adjudicatory 5
discovery process going forward if it were to be 6
re-instituted: A) those admitted as parties to the 7
adjudication under 10 CFR Section 2.309, such as, for 8
instance, the Department of Energy, the NRC staff, the 9
State of Nevada, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and Nye 10 and Clark Counties in Nevada; and B) those admitted to 11 the adjudication as interested governmental 12 participants under Section 2.315(c), such as Eureka 13 and Lincoln Counties in Nevada.
14 Regarding the third participant type 15 designated in Section 2.1001, that is the potential 16 party, given the 2009 issuance of the first 17 pre-hearing order, as defined in Section 2.1021(d) of 18 Subpart J, there apparently are no more potential 19 parties as defined under Section 2.1001 who need to 20 provide documentary material to the LSN or, for the 21 purpose of the litigation, need to have access to such 22 material as a participant in the proceeding. I would 23 also note, however, that this does not necessarily 24 preclude the admission of new parties to the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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106 adjudication, which would be governed by the agency's 1
rules of practice and any directives that might be 2
issued by the Commission or construction authorization 3
board regarding the admission of new parties.
4 The third term I'd like to look at for a 5
second is a question of small volume. Based on the 6
sizing information received from six of the eight 7
adjudication parties with the greatest number of 8
documents in the LSN or the most admitted contentions, 9
based on that information that we've been provided up 10 to this point, a high-end estimate of new documentary 11 material, as you saw from Margie Janney's slides, is 12 approximately 5,000 documents. To be conservative in 13 its estimate as DOE and the State of Nevada were, 14 these are not necessarily upper boundaries for their 15 potential document submissions. Thus, we could say, 16 being conservative ourselves, maybe we need to 17 estimate 10,000 or 15,000 documents, basically double 18 or triple the number of documents. I should note 19 that's not an unreasonable estimate. I should note, 20 however, that this would be the sizing range for 21 discovery material that has been identified and 22 exchanged in recent large agency licensing 23 proceedings, such as the Indian Point license renewal 24 or several of the COL, or combined operating 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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107 licensing, proceedings in which there was no 1
centralized database.
2 The second assumption is that material now 3
in the LSN library is slated to remain publicly 4
available for the foreseeable future. Operations and 5
maintenance costs for the library are included in 6
future agency budget plans, as the library is a 7
component of the larger ADAMS environment and contains 8
federal records. Moreover, to the degree that 9
upgrades or fixes to the LSN library are identified as 10 needed to ensure its usability as a discovery 11 litigation database, those enhancements could be made 12 with respect to this option, as well.
13 So let's put that altogether and then have 14 a general description of the options. So under this 15 option, how would adjudication participants access 16 documentary material? The existing 3.692 million 17 pre-adjudication suspension materials could be 18 obtained from the public LSN library. New material 19 generated after the 2011 adjudication suspension would 20 be obtained via the Part 2 discovery process as 21 implemented by the Commission, construction 22 authorization board directives presumably issued in 23 consultation with the parties. The distribution of 24 new materials could include electronic access to or 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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108 physical or electronic transfer of materials on a 1
periodic basis, as reflected in periodic e-filing 2
submitted document listings that would be available to 3
the adjudication participants and the public, as is 4
the case in the existing discovery. Public access to 5
new materials would depend on the method of document 6
transfer used between particular participants, such as 7
the availability on disclosing participants with 8
public websites of EHD-listed material.
9 With respect to the cost and time estimate 10 for this particular option, as this option should not 11 require the agency to create or significantly modify 12 any existing IT system, it is deemed not to involve 13 any significant cost or implementation time beyond 14 what is required to put the discovery system in place 15 via a commission or construction authorization board 16 directive.
17 With respect to an implementation risk 18 score factor, by way of background, the implementation 19 risk score assigned to the different options were 20 calculated based on the impact and the likelihood of 21 occurrence of risks associated with a number of 22 different factors, including acquisition, technical 23 complexity, technical obsolescence, IT
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109 process is explained in more detail in the options 1
paper. With regard to Option 1, an implementation 2
risk factor score was not assigned because this option 3
should not require the agency to create or 4
significantly modify any existing IT system.
5 With respect to the pros and cons for this 6
option, the pros being the advantages and the cons 7
being the disadvantages, the major advantages are 8
potential for prompt implementation and no or low 9
cost. With respect to the disadvantages, possible 10 problems with public access to participant material, 11 particularly those not readily accessible from a 12 participant website.
Participants would be 13 responsible for distribution of their documentary 14 materials to other proceeding participants in accord 15 with discovery rules and a Commission or CAB 16 directive, although the use of periodic lists 17 submitted via e-filing could alleviate this issue to 18 some degree. No centralized search and retrieval 19 mechanism for new documentary materials or integrated 20 search for existing and new materials. Another con is 21 the lack of a centralized document numbering system 22 for documentary material. And also no established 23 process for modification or deletion of existing 24 headers or documents currently in the LSN library.
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110 We've also prepared a rank summary for 1
each of the options. This chart reflects a summary of 2
the estimates for each of the options as compared to 3
the other options for cost, time, implementation, 4
risk, and the pros and cons to arrive at a raw score 5
ranking. None of the ranking factors have been 6
weighed, so they all are basically treated the same 7
way.
8 In this chart, in general, the lower 9
numbers are the least costly, can be implemented the 10 fastest, have the least risks associated with 11 implementing the solution, and have more pros and 12 cons. For Option 1, as you can see, it is ranked 13 highest for cost, time, and implementation risk but 14 highest for cons over pros, as those are described in 15 the previous slide.
16 I should make one other comment, as well.
17 We had discussion this morning about sizing.
18 Obviously, one of the main things that drives this 19 option is the size of the database that we're talking 20 about. As I mentioned before, if we're talking 10,000 21 to 15,000 documents, that's something we deal with in 22 discovery already. Again, this is new material. If 23 we're not talking about that size, then that becomes 24 more important.
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111 Having lived through having to resize the 1
LSN several times after the database had been 2
established and had to re-size it twice, actually, 3
because the Department of Energy found they had more 4
documents that needed to be put in, that is not 5
something we want to do if we can avoid it. So 6
notwithstanding the fact that I understand the 7
concerns you had about being able to provide us with 8
accurate information, given funding and other issues, 9
it is very important for this option and the others 10 that we're talking about today that we have accurate 11 sizing information to the degree we can get that. And 12 it really was an important factor in setting up the 13 original LSN.
14 And with that, I will turn to Chip.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, 16 Paul. Okay. We're going to go to those of you in the 17 room for discussion of Option 1, your thoughts on 18 that, perhaps a rationale for why you like it or don't 19 like it. And then we'll go to your colleagues on 20 GoToMeeting.
21 So once again, anybody want to put their 22 name tent up to tackle this one? And let's go, we'll 23 go to Bob and then, Marty, we'll come over to you.
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112 see that. Just a clarification on what Paul was 1
saying, that the way that the traditional discovery 2
has been presented is that there would continue to be 3
NRC maintenance of the public LSN system. So the 4
traditional discovery would be for the new documents.
5 Did I misunderstand that?
6 MR.
CAMERON:
No, that's correct.
7 Correct.
8 MR. HALSTEAD: Okay. I think that's an 9
important distinction in that I think there are a lot 10 of people who, frankly, are willing to say, well, my 11 goodness, you know, we're moving forward technically 12 why, you know, why would we even consider seriously 13 traditional discovery. I think, particularly if you 14 have a number of documents, I think, you know, Paul 15 has properly focused that. Thank you.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Bob. Marty, 17 do you want to say something? And if you do, put it 18 on the mike.
19 MR. MALSCH: I just wanted to clarify my 20 understanding would that using traditional discovery, 21 the documents that would be disclosable would be the 22 same as would be disclosable under an LSN or LSN 23 replacement. So, for example, there's a waiver of 24 privilege for circulated drafts. There would still be 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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113 a
waiver of that privilege under traditional 1
discovery. I mean, if you just took the reg and 2
applied it, that waiver wouldn't so clearly apply.
3
- Also, I'm assuming that discovery 4
traditional would be available to participants that 5
were not parties. Again, that's true under Subpart J.
6 It's not usually true under traditional discovery as 7
such. So I'm assuming that, if there was traditional 8
discovery, it would be extended to participants who 9
are not parties.
10 MR. CAMERON: So what's you're suggesting 11 is that if this option was selected, there would have 12 to be some necessary realignment, so to speak, between 13 Subpart J and traditional discovery techniques to not 14 take away some of the advantages in Subpart J?
15 MR. MALSCH: That's correct.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, all right. Do you 17 want to add anything, Paul? You don't have to. I'm 18 just...
19 MR. BOLLWERK: Do you want us to wait 20 until the end?
21 MR. CAMERON: No, no -- yes, wait until 22 the end. That's good. That's good. Anybody else at 23 the table? Anybody else before we go out there?
24 Okay. GoToMeeting.
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114 MR. LACY: This is Darrell Lacy.
1 MR. CAMERON: Hi, Darrell.
2 MR. LACY: I don't think we're a big fan 3
of going back to traditional discovery. It's already 4
got the LSN information on there, so Option 2 is our 5
preference.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Basically, you're 7
saying what you said before about Option 2 and that 8
you're not a big fan of traditional discovery. Okay.
9 MR. LACY: We've been using electronic 10 discovery for years on this, and we think that's the 11 proper approach.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Darrell. And 13 before we come back to the table, let's see if there's 14 anybody else out there on GoToMeeting. Okay. And we 15 probably don't need to check the phones, correct?
16 Okay. So we're coming back to the table to bring up 17 any other issues you want to about Option 1, 18 traditional discovery but anything to address 19 Darrell's comment, Bob's original comment, what Marty 20 threw in for us. Let's go to Anne first.
21 MS. COTTINGHAM: Thanks, Chip. NEI just 22 wants to concur with the remarks of Nye County that we 23 do not think Option 1 is the way to go.
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115 County on that one?
1 MS. COTTINGHAM: Yes.
2 MR. CAMERON: All right. Thanks, Anne.
3 Bob?
4 MR. HALSTEAD: I want you to go to your 5
board with your marker and write that the existing 6
electronically-searchable LSN collection would be 7
retained, again, because I think that's an important 8
distinction to make. We're talking about 3.6 million 9
documents and the possibility that so far you've heard 10 that maybe 5, 10, 15, or 25,000 documents would be 11 added. So I think it's important that people not just 12 throw this out, that the traditional discovery 13 supplemented by continuation of the existing system, 14 I'd like to see you recognize that on the flow sheet.
15 MR. CAMERON: And this is sort of an 16 application?
17 MR. HALSTEAD: Yes. I don't think that 18 carries it for those of us who live, eat, sleep, and 19 breathe this. Yes, we know that, but there are many 20 people, I think, who don't understand what the current 21 system is. I think there are many people, you know, 22 in our case, we've spent a lot of time doing 23 electronic document searches. We probably have, I 24 would say just our team that's here today, I believe 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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116 we have about five decade persons' worth of searches 1
just between Marty and Laurie and myself. And I think 2
people who haven't used either the previous system or 3
the existing system may not understand that, for all 4
the faults we've documented with it and that they're 5
certainly going to be discussed with the 6
publicly-available portion now, that there is an 7
interestingly strong base, I think, there.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Does Option 1 only 9
for new documents, plus LSN ADAMS for the existing 3 10 million plus; is that --
11 MR. HALSTEAD: Yes.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. All right. Thanks, 13 Bob. Anybody -- Jessica?
14 MS. BIELECKI: Just a clarification 15 question or something to keep in mind. While the 3.69 16 million documents will be available through ADAMS, any 17 of the new documents will not be available, right, 18 Judge Bollwerk? You were saying those would not be 19 publicly available, so they would not be easily 20 searchable.
21 MR. CAMERON: Yes, you better --
22 MR. BOLLWERK: Right. So let me be a 23 little more specific about it when I talk. For 24 instance, when the staff now files its list in the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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117 EHD, each document is listed with an ADAMS, ML 1
accession number, excuse me. So, in theory, someone 2
can go to the ADAMS system and look at that document 3
anytime they want to. They can download it, they can 4
do whatever they want with it.
5 One of the ways, obviously, that this 6
could be implemented would be for the other parties, 7
particularly the parties that are going to have major 8
document collections such as the Department of Energy 9
or the State of Nevada. If you were willing to post 10 those documents on your website and every month or 11 whenever the periodic lists were put together, list 12 your accession numbers on those lists, and that 13 document database was available, then, in theory, 14 everyone could go and look at them. The public would 15 still have access to them.
16 The question becomes, certainly for public 17 participation, other than anybody that hasn't listed 18 them that way, how do you get those documents and in 19 fear that they would not be publicly available, as, 20 frankly, most discovery material in a regular case is 21 not. Did I answer your question?
22 MR. HALSTEAD: Thank you for that 23 clarification. That helps me very much. Thank you.
24 MR. BOLLWERK: I think Marty made the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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118 point that, you were talking about interested 1
governmental participants. There's normally a 2
question, you're right, about their availability to 3
get discovery. I don't think this option envisions 4
any change in those definitions within the rules, no.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. So there's sort of an 6
asterisk here is that new documents could be made 7
available, they will be made available in the NRC.
8 MR. BOLLWERK: Again, that's standard 9
practice with the way the NRC staff does it, and we 10 see different things from other parties. But, yes, 11 that's the standard way the NRC staff does it. And, 12 again, how the documents are distributed among the 13 different parties is a matter that generally is 14 negotiated by the parties as part of the initial 15 discovery process. They decide who can do what and 16 how the best way for them to exchange the documents 17 among themselves and work it out. And then, 18 generally, the licensing board will issue an order 19 that memorializes all that and everybody goes off and 20 does their thing.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay, good. Anybody on 22 GoToMeeting that wants to talk about Option 1? No one 23 has their tent card up? Okay. Well, let's see. I 24 have to ask any member of the public? Tommy may be 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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119 the only one. Okay. No one in the room. Is anybody 1
on GoToWebinar from the public who wants to talk?
2 And, Brandon, are you still with us? Is Tara? Tara?
3 OPERATOR (TARA): Yes, I'm still here.
4 MR. CAMERON: Can you see if there's 5
anybody on the public phone that wants to say anything 6
to us?
7 OPERATOR (TARA): Of course. If you would 8
like to ask a question, please press *1 on your phone 9
and record your name clearly. One moment, please. I 10 show no questions at this time.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Tara.
12 Well, we're ready to move on to Option 2, and this 13 should be an interesting discussion. And we're going 14 to have K.G. Golshan do a presentation. And then what 15 we're going to do is Laurie Borski from the State of 16 Nevada team is going to share the results of her 17 considerable research on the existing LSN ADAMS 18 library.
19 And at that point, I think we're due for 20 a break. Before we go to the break, though, K.G. and 21 some of his colleagues, Tom Wellock who's here at the 22 table, they're just going to give a few slides in 23 terms of their impressions of Laurie's research. Then 24 we'll take a break, and then we'll come back and we'll 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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120 start our discussion. K.G.?
1 MR. GOLSHAN: Okay. I'm going to try to 2
use the clicker here. Good afternoon, ladies and 3
gentlemen. My name is K.G. Golshan from the Office of 4
Chief Information Officer. Thank you for this 5
opportunity, and I'm going to just take a few minutes 6
of your time for the Option 2 today and, hopefully, 7
Option 3 tomorrow.
8 We are responsible, our group is 9
responsible for implementing the final Commission 10 decision regarding the Licensing Support Network.
11 Now, before I start the discussion, I want to bring in 12 a couple of points into perspective. As my colleagues 13 have mentioned in earlier presentations, the current 14 LSN library, as a result of Commission order to make 15 3.6, close to 3.7 million documents that was used by 16 staff to prepare the SER and the EIS publicly 17 available. I don't think it was ever intended to be 18 the, at its current form, to be intended to be the 19 litigation database. That was not.
20 This platform, as Watson, IBM Watson, we 21 installed it out of the box, exactly out of the box 22 with, you know, the original configuration on a bare 23 minimum infrastructure due to budgetary constraints, 24 which everybody is aware of. So with that in mind, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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121 let us start the conversation.
1 This option, as I said, leverages the 2
current platform, the current investment of NRC, has 3
two alternatives as far as for intaking the new 4
documents and also requests for modifying the existing 5
collection. Before we proceed, two assumptions that 6
I want everybody to keep in mind is that, for the 7
first alternative which is leveraging the Electronic 8
Information Exchange as the mean for bringing new 9
submissions or the requests for modifications of the 10 collection, in order to justify that investment, we 11 are assuming that the average number or the total 12 number of header document actions per month will be 13 about a thousand for the duration of the proceeding.
14 So that is an assumption. Otherwise, really a cost 15 benefit analysis that whether we spent money for this 16 option, for this alternative, whether it would be 17 worthwhile. The other assumption is that the NRC 18 would be responsible for the federal record-keeping of 19 the existing documents and any new documents that are 20 submitted to NRC for, you know, to publish, to be 21 published to LSN.
22 So two alternatives, as I mentioned, this 23 option leverages the Watson technology that's already 24 in place. Watson is one of the leaders, I make that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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122 statement because we've done our research, is one of 1
the leaders in the market. Using Watson, parties can 2
perform simple or advanced searches on bibliographical 3
information and the content of the documents in the 4
public LSN library.
5 Two alternatives for adding, deleting, and 6
modifying documents and headers.
The first 7
alternative uses the existing Electronic Information 8
Exchange, as Russ, my colleague, talked about. And 9
the second option is a manual submission. We say 10 semi-manual because the process of publishing and 11 capturing these for record-keeping and publishing it 12 to the public LSN, those processes will remain 13 automatic.
14 Neither of these alternatives require any 15 substantive changes, except, of course, meeting the 16 requirements, as Mr. Halstead mentioned about some of 17 the basic requirements that we have to revisit and 18 these functional enhancements that has to be made to 19 the current platform to bring it up to par and usable 20 for the participants. In both cases, logs of changes 21 will automatically be generated on a nightly basis and 22 it will be published in the public LSN library home 23 page.
24 The key difference between the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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123 alternatives. The alternative one leverages the EIE, 1
which you, by now, are aware of what it is, and it 2
provides three ways for users to submit new documents 3
or request to change or delete documents and header 4
information. One is that one at a time the 5
bibliographical information are typed into form and 6
you attach the PDF document, of course, if the PDF 7
document is publicly available. The second way is the 8
interface allows the upload of a list of multiple XML 9
files which represent the bibliographical information 10 and then the corresponding PDF documents which are 11 attached in the form of a list. And the third is 12 using a bulk load, which is a collection of the 13 documents and the bibliographical information are 14 loaded. And, of course, LSN accession numbers are 15 assigned as these documents are loaded. The same 16 three ways would be available for making changes or 17 requesting changes or deletion of the documents from 18 the existing collections.
19 EIE provides an advantage since it has 20 been used by the participants previously and it is a 21 stable and a reliable system, as well as it provides 22 the security controls and the secure transmission of 23 the documents which are managed through digital 24 certificates.
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124 Now, the second alternative for the 1
intake, removal, and modification utilizes this 2
semi-manual process. In this alternative, parties 3
would be required to make their submissions to an 4
authorized NRC individual on an electronic media, like 5
CD or a DVD. Now, as before, a daily log of all these 6
transactions are generated and posted to the LSN home 7
page.
8 This slide shows the time and the cost.
9 The cost and time all is incurred by NRC for 10 activities such as contracting action, design, 11 solution design and development, and implementation, 12 deployment, and testing, and, of course, functional 13 enhancement that may be required to this platform to 14 make it the litigation database.
15 Now, the gray boxes there, it basically 16 shows how the time and cost of these two alternatives 17 rank among other alternatives and options described in 18 the option paper. Option 2, alternative one, ranks 19 four for both cost and time; and Option 2, alternative 20 two, ranks three for both time and cost.
21 The risk factors, as Judge Bollwerk 22 mentioned, are calculated based on the impact and the 23 likelihood of occurrence of these risk factors shown 24 in the blue bar. And the ranges of these risks are 6 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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125 to 54, and the 6 being the lowest risk and 54 1
presenting the highest risk solution. And the risk, 2
you know, the risk factors have been collectively 3
argued and decided, and this is what we have come up 4
with, 15 for both alternative one and alternative two.
5 Now, this slide shows pros and cons common 6
to both alternatives. The pros are it's a relatively 7
quicker implementation. It utilizes a centralized and 8
a single repository, leverages an investment that NRC 9
has already made, continues with the standardization 10 of the LSN accession numbering scheme, and the search 11 platform, it's a robust, it's a leading search 12 platform, and then automated audit capabilities is 13 also available. The cons is additional cost 14 associated with federal record-keeping, although NRC 15 will maintain the collections but additional steps are 16 required by the participants to make their additions 17 and deletions to their collections.
And 18 modifications.
19 And the unique pros and cons to the 20 alternatives, for alternative one, since it's all 21 electronic and it's automated, it allows for a quick 22 processing of large volumes of the documents. The 23 cons for the alternative one is the aggregate size of 24 the submissions, both headers and the documents, could 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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126 not exceed 100 megabytes, although I have to bring to 1
everybody's attention that number is currently under 2
review and that number will be increased. I'm not in 3
a position to tell you what that number is at this 4
juncture, but that number will be increased. If I 5
have to guess, I'd say it will be at least twice as 6
much of this.
7 The alternative two semi-manual process, 8
there's no submission size restrictions there. And 9
then, of course, since it is partially manual, for 10 larger volumes of submissions there may be a 11 processing delay.
12 This slide, it's an overall ranking of 13 these two alternatives in relationship with the other 14 alternatives and options. So, you know, again, each 15 of the rankings are there for these two alternatives 16 in the green rows for cost, time, risk, pros and cons, 17 and the total.
18 So with that, I will defer to Chip to see 19 whether we could answer any questions and any 20 concerns. Thank you very much for your time.
21 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, K.G. And we're 22 going to have Laurie Borski from the State of Nevada 23 legal team. You can come up here if you want, Laurie.
24 And she's going to go through the results of her 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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127 research on what's known as ADAMS LSN, and then we're 1
going to have Tom or K.G. will come up and just say a 2
few -- yes, yes, yes.
3 We're supposed to take a break at 3:30.
4 I don't know where we'll be at the end of that, but 5
what I don't want you to lose sight of is that 6
Laurie's research is focused on the existing LSN 7
ADAMS. I don't want you all -- and we'll discuss that 8
as much as we want, but I don't want you to lose site 9
of the two so-called leveraging alternatives that are 10 associated with Option 2. Certainly existing LSN 11 ADAMS is the foundation and important. But when we go 12 to discussion, if you want to talk about the 13 leveraging alternatives, let's do that, too. Laurie?
14 MS. BORSKI: Thank you. Good afternoon.
15 My name is Laurie Borski. I'm a paralegal. I work 16 with Egan Fitzpatrick Malsch & Lawrence, and they are 17 special deputy attorney generals for the State of 18 Nevada, hence my involvement and work for the State of 19 Nevada.
20 Just by way of background, generally, I 21 have over 30 years, it doesn't seem possible, 22 litigation and trial experience as a paralegal. And 23 I have used many litigation support systems, some 24 early on in their stages and some later on. I have 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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128 been responsible for large databases of documents, 1
whether they be in paper form, even foreign language 2
forms, and the digital. So I've gone from Bates 3
numbering by hand-stamping to using early versions of 4
Compulit and Summation and Concordance, which 5
basically searched by an index that was prepared by 6
the user. So they were very much garbage-in 7
garbage-out type of deals. And then my favorite was 8
Liquid Litigation Management, which was a database 9
that PDF documents in OCR format, and you could search 10 for any word in any documents. So it didn't matter 11 that you had the equivalent of 100 boxes of documents.
12 You could find anything very fast.
13 So I was asked to analyze the public ADAMS 14 LSN library, which I'll call ADAMS LSN just for short.
15 That's the knowledge base I brought into it.
16 So my concerns have been, as experienced, 17 and I know that this is something that changes a lot, 18 but some problems have been resolved, for example, but 19 too many significant error messages were being 20 received by me for a database that was so advanced in 21 development. I could not, for example, ask to display 22 a hundred documents at a time without getting an error 23 message.
24 The LSNDR D-2.1 said sites must be 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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129 provisioned to be able to satisfy not less than 500 1
web page requests per minute. That was on the old 2
LSN. And my question was does the ADAMS LSN have the 3
same capability? And Margie was talking about 500 4
hits, about when you have a lot of people involved in 5
an active proceeding, it's going to go up 6
exponentially. So I just don't know. I'm not a 7
techie type person, so I just don't know. But it's 8
possible there could be 200 people on ADAMS at the 9
same time, not only the parties in a proceeding but 10 the judges, their staff, the NRC litigation staff 11 people and their staff, and then the public, 12 interested member of the public, and all the 13 participants and their staff.
14 So in my experience, attorneys usually 15 don't work alone. They have support staff work with 16 them. And so it would not be uncommon for a 17 participant to have attorneys and staff members all on 18 the same system all at the same time doing different 19 things.
20 Nevada asked several different people on 21 our team to conduct specific test searches on ADAMS 22 LSN and the same problems became evident to all 23 searchers at the same time. So it wasn't just me, it 24 wasn't just somebody else.
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130 Quotation marks, I found, must be freshly 1
typed because if they're copied from another document 2
they're disregarded. The ADAMS LSN feels very clunky 3
to the end user compared to other NRC and.gov 4
websites and litigation databases. NRC has spoiled me 5
a lot with the old system, the EIE and the EHD and the 6
DDMS, so that's kind of a standard to which you're 7
being held now, I'm afraid.
8 The document preview windows don't always 9
close. They don't always have a button to allow you 10 to close. And so I've had to actually exit the 11 program and then get back in. The computer problems 12 experienced during the second ADAMS LSN webinar with 13 freezing were reflective of user experience.
14 NRC documents occasionally download with 15 a default number that is not the LSN number and it's 16 not an ML number, but it's something totally 17 different. And sometimes it has a letter prefix and 18 sometimes it does not. So for me, I would have to 19 download the document and name all three names in 20 there so I could find it in the future.
21 Speed. Slow speed was an issue with the 22 LSN and not with web-based ADAMS so much and not with 23 the other ADAMS sites that I use for the 10 CFRs and 24 whatnot. LSNDR D-2.2 says sites must be provisioned 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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131 to deliver a web page or image page, on average, in 1
not more than five seconds to a web browser located on 2
the same LAN segment. This was the old LSN, but I 3
wasn't getting five seconds on the new one. Most of 4
my basic searches took and still do one to four 5
minutes to return a result. It took greater than two 6
minutes to narrow the results. It was almost as if 7
the system was conducting a whole new search instead 8
of searching within the results. The default setting 9
was used for number of entries displayed, so that was 10 not an issue here.
11 Searches were generally fastest if I had 12 an LSN number. Unfortunately, that's not always a 13 luxury.
14 My searches are more basic and broad to 15 discover what is on the LSN rather than trying to find 16 a particular document that I know is there or may be 17 there. One of my discoveries was that there's no 18 one-click printing of search results, and this is a 19 major database software error. One-click printing of 20 search results was available on the old LSNnet.gov.
21 I was told by the LSN IT that they would explore it as 22 a future option, and I totally understand budgetary 23 and procurement issues that necessitate that response.
24 Printouts are used for many purposes. In 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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132 my instance, I have one attorney that likes to see 1
what's there so he can ask me to download or print 2
certain of those documents that he thinks are most 3
relevant. Other times, printouts are used to show as 4
an exhibit or evidence of what is or is not on the 5
LSN. So they would be exhibits during a licensing 6
proceeding.
7 Users cannot cancel a request in progress.
8 And here, again, web-based ADAMS has spoiled me for 9
this, but this applied to search requests, page 10 scrolling, and refining searches. And this is an 11 issue because of the slow speed and the time it was 12 taking to conduct these searches and advanced 13 searches. The web-based ADAMS cancellation works, and 14 it works well. I've tried it many, many times.
15 Scrolling through pages of search results.
16 This was interesting. It took more than ten minutes 17 for one of our team members to scroll through 1124 18 search results at a hundred results a page. He was 19 able to get it to display a hundred results, but then 20 it took that long to get to the final one.
21 Scrolling through large search results 22 stops for me at document number 3,000. That's all it 23 would show. It did not matter if I was displaying 25 24 or 50 or 100 results per page, I could never get more 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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133 than 3,000. And all too often, a chance to scroll 1
results were ending in a repeated error message for 2
me, which meant I had to get out of the system and get 3
back into the system.
4 There's no ability to page jump through 5
search results by typing in a desired page number to 6
view. I would just have to rely on it coming up and 7
it would tell me there are, it was showing 10 to 25 or 8
10 to 20, and click to 20 and then I'd just go from 9
there. And so I had to go through five or ten pages 10 at a time. It takes a lot of time.
11 Documents previewed. On the old LSN, you 12 could click on the document title and it would 13 actually bring up the document so you could see what 14 it was, what it looked like, because that was 15 important sometimes. The preview does not exist in 16 the option to view the PDF in the action drop-down, 17 and, on our team, the ability to preview a PDF has 18 differed by user but not necessarily the internet 19 browser used. At one time, I thought, oh, okay, with 20 Chrome, you can actually preview the document, but 21 with Mozilla Firefox you cannot. Well, I have now 22 proven that wrong, so I'm not sure. It could be a 23 setting on my browser or it could be the system.
24 The file view of the document is text only 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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134 and is not reliable enough to use to confirm a 1
document search, especially if you're looking for a 2
document that may have an image on one of the pages.
3 Next, we move to the actual landscape of 4
the LSN search. The facet chart has the same 5
information as the facet tree. It's located on the 6
right-hand side of your screen. Its function seems to 7
be that it merely visualizes the search results that 8
are shown in the facet tree on the left side of the 9
screen. It doesn't allow scrolling down to see the 10 entire listing for a given property. For example, if 11 I ask it for a display of document types and there are 12 more than, like, seven of them, and I want to keep 13 going down to see where the end is but I can't because 14 there's no scroll bar.
15 The facet charts are not even mentioned in 16 the LSN quick guide. The LSN user guide says the 17 facet chart allows you to visualize how many documents 18 are available as meeting a certain criterion, but the 19 facet tree on the left-hand side gives you the actual 20 number of types of documents for whatever property you 21 choose. The facet chart takes up too much real estate 22 on the screen without providing any benefit, in my 23 opinion. And it often lags behind a current search, 24 displaying the results from my previous search if the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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135 new search returns zero hits. So I don't use it.
1 The facet tree. The more facet displays 2
for greater than 15 facet results, and there's a 3
smaller screen and it does take some getting used to.
4 Sometimes, the slider does not operate, so you cannot 5
scroll over to see more than a certain number. And 6
the LSN numbers and the participant accession numbers 7
listed in the facet tree are not in the same order as 8
those displayed in the list of document search results 9
by default.
10 The time series at the bottom has the same 11 information as the facet tree. It merely visualizes 12 search results shown in the facet tree and takes up 13 too much real estate on the screen without providing 14 any benefit, in my opinion, so I don't use it.
15 The advanced search feature takes up most 16 of the screen and does not retreat from the screen 17 once enter is pressed, as in most search software.
18 Users must manually click on hide advanced after every 19 search or modification in order to see more than one 20 line of search results, especially if you have your 21 time bars at the bottom still showing.
22 When changing the field query property, 23 the previous search term should disappear, as it does 24 on web-based ADAMS but, instead, must be manually 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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136 deleted each time.
1 Document dates. This was fun. Some of 2
these problems I know have been addressed and 3
resolved. The user should be aware that the original 4
LSN database, as much as we loved it, contained many 5
document date errors and those were all propagated to 6
the ADAMS LSN because NRC did not change the documents 7
they were given by anyone. And so just users should 8
just be aware of that.
9 An advanced search for documents dated 10 between January 1, 1900 through December 31, 1901, 11 which would be the default date for a partially-dated 12 document or undated
- document, returned 35,322 13 documents dated between 1899 and 1902. Eleven of the 14 documents were dated December 31, 1899. I think that 15 may be one of the things that's been solved now.
16 Over 3,000 were dated 12/31/1900. I was 17 not able to go past that because of that little 18 scrolling problem. And a search for documents dated 19 12/31/1900, and there are
- some, returns zero 20 documents, so you cannot find the document if you know 21 it's dated 12/30/1900, and that's all you have to go 22 by.
23 I've given some numbers that displays 24 having a date of 1900 in the header but then on the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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137 time search bar it shows 1901. Three documents I've 1
also put in here, but when you search for dates 2
between 1902, just in 1902, two of them are dated in 3
1901 and one is dated 1902.
4 Related records I had a problem with, and 5
I highlighted the actual numbers of the ones that I 6
could not find. I might get a document that had eight 7
related records. I could get to seven of those 8
records but not to one of them. So if all I have is 9
the participant accession number and I can't find the 10 document, is it on the LSN? Is it not on the LSN?
11 What am I doing wrong? There's got to be a way to 12 solve this problem.
13 I searched for a document title on a 14 presentation, and I thought that if I had a partial 15 title that it would search. But that was not the 16 results I was getting. So I now understand there may 17 be an issue with document in grayscale as being read 18 by the OCR.
19 I had a long title of a document, so I 20 went ahead and searched on the whole document title 21 and got zero results. So then I broke it down to the 22 second half of the title and got zero results. And 23 the third search was on the front portion of the 24 title, and I got 58 results, including 13 direct hits.
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138 So it's hard to know if you can, if you're looking for 1
a document as not being returned in a search by the 2
participant accession number and that's the only 3
information you have, how are you supposed to find the 4
document?
5 There's also a
difference between 6
participant accession numbers and document numbers, 7
and apparently a document number, it displays in the 8
properties but it might be a copy of the same document 9
that has a different participant accession number on 10 it but they're related.
11 A basic search of a known paper yielded 12 seven results, three of which were the correct NRC 13 documents but the other four had no words highlighted 14 in the blurb. And so I'm not sure how they were 15 relevant, and I didn't want to take the time to 16 download and search them.
17 In the olden days, before the licensing 18 proceeding was suspended, we had an issue with a 19 document that was titled "TDMS_Master_32807," and one 20 of our beefs was that you cannot find this because on 21 the LSN this was a title that was given to the 22 document. It's not the proper title for the document.
23 And so I tried to search for it again on this ADAMS 24 LSN and found that it is now part of a longer title, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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139 so I'm assuming that that got changed during the OCR 1
process somehow and NRC inherited this as it is.
2 Let's see. I did an advanced search by a 3
participant accession number and got one hit and then 4
tried for another, and this time I got two hits and it 5
took four minutes plus to perform. The advanced 6
search by exact phrase returned two hits took over 7
four minutes to perform. So if you're trying to find 8
all versions of a document to include those with 9
marginalia, is there a more efficient way to perform 10 this search? I usually assume that whatever goes 11 wrong is something that I'm not doing right, so I try 12 to approach it from that point of view.
13 I've asked if there would be a help desk 14 for the LSN in a restarted proceeding that was similar 15 to the help desk we had in the other proceeding before 16 it was suspended. I'm afraid you guys have just 17 spoiled me rotten on this one. That help desk was so 18 awesome, so I hope to see it again. Otherwise, if the 19 licensing proceeding is restarted and, say, we are in 20 Las Vegas in a licensing hear, then at 1:00 local time 21 there would be no one to help with IT issues. And so 22 I think we can all know that computers can hear us 23 think and talk sometimes, and so that's when problems 24 would likely occur.
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140 Right now, LSN errors are reported by 1
going to the PDR library and then she forwards them on 2
to an LSN IT person. Responses are usually not the 3
same day, and if additional information is requested 4
from the user there's no feedback unless the user 5
specifically follows up on it.
6 And I've had several help desk 7
experiences. Most of them are experiencing a delay in 8
getting back to me. I wait for a week. If I haven't 9
heard something, then I contact PDR again and say have 10 you heard anything on this from LSN IT? Like when I 11 discovered that you couldn't print document results or 12 search results, I asked about it. And so I followed 13 up in a week, and they said it would be explored as a 14 future option. Okay, fine. So then a week later a 15 cut-and-paste workaround was offered to the public via 16 LSN FAQs, and then only on the following day after 17 publication to the world was I given an email with the 18 same information. And the workaround is not 19 satisfactory.
20 When I experience an error message, I 21 report them because I believe that makes the system 22 better because you don't know what's wrong if I don't 23 tell you. And my report usually includes a what did 24 I do wrong, and so I would appreciate something that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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141 says you didn't do anything wrong, it's just the 1
system, because I know that to err is human but to 2
really screw things up it takes a computer.
3 So I just, that's the end of my remarks.
4 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. I was going to 5
make a joke and say is that all you found, but I 6
won't. But thank you, thank you, Laurie. That was 7
very thorough, and we thought it would be helpful to 8
hear from the NRC LSN staff just a few thoughts on 9
Laurie's findings. Tom, do you want to come up here 10 or do you want to stay? K.G., you're going to do it?
11 Okay. Okay, K.G.
12 MR. GOLSHAN: So first of all, I mean 13 that, Laurie. I'm very, very grateful that you spent 14 the time and you're sharing your experiences with us.
15 And I want to kind of give you our side. Hopefully, 16 you understand, you know, the limitations on our side.
17 As I said during my presentation, the 18 intention of this public, the public library was never 19 to be the, in its current form, was never intended to 20 be the litigation database. And we never intended to 21 really compare it with the old LSN, although I have no 22 experience with the old LSN. It was not there. So 23 it's been installed out of the box with the original 24 configuration on a bare minimum configuration, like, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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142 you know, literally one server, as you and I discussed 1
about it. So some of the slowness and all of that 2
that you experienced is because it really doesn't have 3
much power because we really didn't anticipate that 4
many people hitting it at one time since the 5
litigation is not going on.
6 But let's go through the error messages.
7 The 3,000 results, you are absolutely right. That was 8
a configuration, the buffer size that Watson was 9
shipped with. We have upped the limit, so that 10 problem has gone away.
11 The other thing which was the original 12 configuration was that, and my friend, Tom, is going 13 to go into detailed explanation of it, was that the 14 product was shipped configured for time zone 15 sensitivity. In other words, it adjusted the dates 16 based on the time zone of the place where you 17 conducted the search. So we turned off that feature, 18 so that should be in production and so you should not 19 see that time zone anomaly there.
20 So increased computing power and site 21 traffic and the speed, I agree with you. In its 22 current state, if you put in 200 people and perform a 23 complicated search, the system is not configured to 24 handle the load. You're absolutely correct on that.
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143 The scrolling part, that we are going to 1
address. And I said that these are the concerns that 2
we may address, and the reason that we may, we put the 3
word "may" there is because, you know, spending money 4
on this option to enhance it, to meet certain 5
requirements, if this option is not going to be the 6
selected option, you know, there's a cost benefit 7
analysis there.
8 But the scrolling function, you know, I 9
wanted to bring it to your attention, all the panes 10 that are within the Watson UI are collapsible. So if 11 you don't like the dynamic facet chart, you could 12 easily collapse it and it will kind of get out of your 13 way. You find no use for it, and the facet tree will 14 serve you better, you could keep that pane. And also 15 the time series pane, it's the same way. So all of 16 these panes are expandable or collapsible, so you 17 could actually modify them to meet you.
18 And then page numbering, those things we 19 could easily add. Those are the features, as Mr.
20 Halstead brought it up which I totally agree with, 21 those features or requirements, we could enhance the 22 platform to be meeting those requirements if this 23 option, of course, is selected.
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144 haven't spent any much time to really study the 1
efficiencies of the indexes and try to enhance the 2
- indexes, which actually makes your searching 3
experience more robust. At that time, we didn't have 4
the luxury, nor the budget, to really spend time to 5
enhance these indexes and all of that.
6 So thank you very much, and I'm glad that 7
you brought up these points and I'm glad that my 8
colleagues all heard it, so we'll be better prepared 9
if this option is selected. Thank you so much.
10 Yes, we are going to go -- oh, yes, I have 11 one. The help desk. Also, we don't have really a 12 help desk because there is no litigation going on, 13 there's no proceedings. There's no help desk. And we 14 have accounted budget-wise for a help desk that 15 hopefully will be just as robust as the help desk that 16 you had in the previous LSN. Right now, the PDR staff 17 have to coordinate their responses and all of that.
18 That may take a while, which you have experienced.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Now we have Tom, Tom 20 Wellock.
21 MR. WELLOCK: All right. Hello. K.G.
22 kind of covered the larger changes that can be made to 23 this system to deal with some of the issues of speed 24 and capacity that Laurie identified in her searches.
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145 I'm going to talk about a few of the more detailed 1
issues here that she brought up and, hopefully, can 2
get into ways that we could possibly work around these 3
things or perhaps some modifications, enhancements, to 4
the existing system that could deal with them.
5 One of the things that she had mentioned 6
in one of her slides was the issue of a close button, 7
being able to see it and being able to close out a 8
certain document. Rekha will, when she gives her 9
presentation later today about working with the 10 system, she will actually address that issue, so we 11 can talk about it then.
12 Given the size of some of these documents, 13 certainly you want to avoid a download if you don't 14 have to, especially if you simply want to find out if 15 a document is relevant. And as she pointed out, there 16 was one situation where you found three documents that 17 were relevant, but if you look at the little 18 descriptor below each of the documents you don't get 19 any hits, you don't see anything, so you don't know 20 whether this document is particularly relevant to what 21 you're doing.
22 Rather than download it, one of the things 23 that you can consider doing is looking at it in the 24 preview mode in the text. This is not ideal because 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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146 this really depends on the accuracy of the OCR 1
capability. But if you're simply trying to find 2
whether a document is relevant, if you open it up, it 3
opens up the document in text. And there's an advance 4
button. Again, Rekha can show this in her 5
demonstration later. There's an advance button that 6
will take you to the very first text search that you 7
do. So rather than having to download lots of 8
documents, you can at least do a quick search to see 9
if this is a relevant document that is useful to you.
10 That at least avoids this, you know, that is actually 11 quite fast and can be done quickly and without too 12 much pain.
13 One of the other things that were brought 14 up is the fact that document numbers and PDF names 15 were chosen by the participants. There isn't a 16 consistency with NRC documents. For some of the 17 counties, for example, actually identified their PDFs 18 by the title rather than document number. So those 19 are issues that exist with this system regardless of 20 the option you choose, and so, if those kinds of 21 things need to be worked out, that is something that 22 is going to have to be agreed upon and have to be 23 changed over time. But like I said, regardless of the 24 option we choose, that would have to be addressed.
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147 Regarding the facet tree, facet chart, and 1
time series, I'm not a fan of all of them either. My 2
favorite, I think, is the time series chart. I find 3
that when I do a search I instinctively look down at 4
the time series chart, and I look for a pattern in the 5
times, and that helps me choose what I want to look 6
for. If you don't like them, you can minimize them.
7 And, again, when Rekha does her demonstration later, 8
she'll show you how to minimize those and keep them 9
out of the way that will actually maximize the amount 10 that you can look at results. Since a lot of this 11 involves pulling out windows, especially for the 12 advanced search, having more real estate on the 13 screen, of course, is quite important.
14 And, finally, one of the other things I 15 wanted to mention was advanced searches. Field query 16 terms, as you pointed out, if you switch between 17 properties in the field query menu, there's a little 18 pull-down window that you can select the different 19 properties and do a search. It doesn't wipe out the 20 screen. I like that because, very often, if I have, 21 for example, an addressee affiliation, I then want to 22 go and flip and look under information source or 23 author affiliation, all those things I might want to 24 do. And if I simply tab between them and it doesn't, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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148 I don't have to type it back in. I'm wondering 1
whether a useful way around this is to simply add a 2
button next to that box that would allow you to just 3
clear the screen if that's what you want to do, and if 4
you want to leave the text it would allow you to do 5
that.
6 Okay. Specific concerns. K.G. said that 7
I was going to explain the date and time zone issue.
8 If a document was entered into the system for January 9
1st, 1901, it was usually given the time of 12 a.m.
10 So if you did a search in Texas for that document, it 11 would pull it up. It pulls up this January 1st, 1901 12 document, but it will display to you one hour earlier, 13 December 31st, 1900. So all of the issues that you 14 identified under your dates on your two slides dealing 15 with dates, that can be fixed by turning off that 16 function, as K.G. mentioned, and we're working on 17 doing that. So that will resolve this date 18 discrepancy issue. We wouldn't have known that, given 19 that we do our searches in Maryland. We never 20 recognized this.
21 Also, titles. Some of the other issues 22 that were raised dealt with the issue of titles and 23 not being able to find something that was by doing a 24 basic search. The titles box was not being searched 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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149 initially, and so we have turned that back on. And so 1
now, instead of the six hits that you find, you will 2
now find seven. And so that issue has been resolved, 3
too. So the text of the document and the title are 4
now all being searched, and so that resolves that 5
issue.
6 I only picked this up because of that 7
issue about the OCR not reading grayscale. I can 8
explain it in more detail later.
9 Finally, I did want to talk about related 10 records. The one thing you can do for related records 11 is to, instead of doing title searches, is go to basic 12 search and look. One of the things that you looked 13 for was an attachment and all you had was a title, and 14 you couldn't find it. I did find a document that was 15 actually the final version of that enclosure that you 16 had mentioned by doing it that way. But if you're 17 really interested in trying to find that original 18 version that was dated as you wanted it, that's not 19 going to help you. You want those original 20 participant accession numbers, and that has to be 21 done, this is not just related to record, there's 22 other records where attachments or enclosures, 23 particularly to emails, were not all added to the LSN 24 database, and so they were not transferred over to the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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150 LSN library when we took possession of them.
1 So for those participant accession 2
numbers, the solution is to go back to the participant 3
and find out why those records were not added into the 4
system. I can't speculate as to why they weren't all 5
added. But those documents that are not there, this 6
has been identified previously, those numbers are not 7
in the current system and you have to go back to the 8
participant to determine why they're not in the 9
library.
10 So just in closing, I just want to make 11 three points. A number of these document issues I'm 12 talking about here are not really related to the 13 discussion we're having today, which is to choose an 14 option. They're going to be an issue regardless of 15 what direction we choose.
16 Finally, secondly, a number of these 17 changes had already been made, such as the title 18 issue, some of the dates. These are issues that we'd 19 solve. And some of these can be dealt with by adding 20 additional resources if there's actually a proceeding 21 and we move forward.
22 So whichever option we select, keep in 23 mind that we're going to have to do some customizing 24 along the way. And so these kinds of changes are 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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151 normal, and so it's certainly a good thing that we are 1
exploring how this system works now because it can 2
only help us down the road, whichever option is 3
selected.
4 And I'll turn it back over to K.G. Excuse 5
me, to --
6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. And thanks, K.G.
7 and Tom. Laurie, do you have any general reaction to 8
what you heard from K.G. and Tom? I thought I'd give 9
you an opportunity to say anything you wanted to say.
10 MS. BORSKI: I very much appreciate the 11 opportunity to share the knowledge that I was able to 12 acquire on this. We had a discussion this morning, 13 some might say ex parte, but they explained these 14 items to me, so I very much appreciate their taking 15 time to look at the issues, take them seriously, and 16 then resolve what they can and put in line to be 17 resolved the rest. I think it will only help in the 18 long run.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good. Thank you.
20 And we're slated to take a break at 3:30. We're 21 almost there, so we'll do that. Before we do, I just 22 want to, we're going to come back and have a 23 discussion of Option 2 and everything that you heard.
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152 very important because it relates to the foundation, 1
as I call it, of Option 2. Let's get some comment 2
also, if anybody has it, on the two leveraging 3
alternatives that K.G. talked about.
4 And just one clarification.
K.G.
5 mentioned that all of this with the search capability, 6
etcetera, etcetera, of ADAMS LSN was important for 7
Option 2. Isn't it also important for these things to 8
be fixed in terms of Option 1? Okay? Because Option 9
1 is going to be the new docs, you still have the 10 foundation, the system. So it's a broader issue than 11 just Option 2.
12 And with that, let's take a break and 13 let's come back at, let's come back when we were going 14 to, at 3:45, and then we're going to have a discussion 15 of Option 2. Thank you.
16 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off 17 the record at 3:20 p.m. and went back on 18 the record at 3:44 p.m.)
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you very much.
20 This is the last discussion item of the day, and of 21 course it's an important one. And I just would remind 22 you that Rekha is going to do an orientation for us at 23 5:15 or maybe 5:00, whatever. And that you're going 24 to be able to interact with her during that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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153 orientation, but if you want to fill out a green card 1
and put a question on there, that may be helpful. But 2
you don't have to do that.
3 We're going to hear, we're going to go a 4
discussion around the table, and then we're going to 5
go to participants on through GoToMeeting. And I know 6
that Loreen Pitchford has a question, and when we go 7
to the ARP participants on GoToMeeting, I'm going to 8
perhaps ask her to clarify it after I read it. We 9
have a typed version of it, but Loreen will be, maybe 10 she'll be able to want to express that orally to us.
11 In general for those of you who are on 12 through GoToMeeting, if you want to hold up your name 13 tents so that you can be noticed to ask a question or 14 make a comment, please turn your camera back on. A 15 lot of people don't have their cameras on. Or you 16 can, under GoToMeeting, you can hit the chat, you can 17 do a chat and type something in, it's up to you.
18 And I'm just checking, Phil, are you with 19 us still, Phil Klevorick?
20 MR. KLEVORICK: Of course I am.
21 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Phil. I just had 22 to, I'll be asking you that throughout the meeting.
23 MR. KLEVORICK: You have to make sure I'm 24 awake, that's good, thank you.
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154 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Phil. Okay.
1 You've heard K.G. about leveraging the options, we've 2
heard from Laurie about some of the concerns about 3
using LSN ADAMS searching it. And we've heard from 4
the NRC LSN staff on what they might, what they might 5
have done, explanations, whatever. So I just open it 6
up to the table for any discussion on what you've 7
already heard. Judy.
8 MS. TREICHEL: Okay. Fasten your 9
seatbelt.
10 MR. CAMERON: So are we getting ready for 11 what?
12 MS. TREICHEL: Yeah, I'm ready to unload 13 here. I don't know when this turned into us versus 14 them, but we've got four options, and no one of them 15 should be any more important than the other. And 16 nobody should feel the right to defend this one.
17 And with the vigorous defense that you did 18 for this one, I want to reiterate again that NRC does 19 not want to be stuck with this thing if this is what 20 you end up with. And if they're the sort of problems 21 that they have right now, the public and possibly 22 other parties are going to see this as being NRC not 23 playing fair.
24 But the idea that you're throwing Option 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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155 2 out there, that we're supposed to be talking about 1
in terms of hearings, but yet they Option 2 that was 2
put up was never expected to be the litigation 3
database, makes this whole discussion sort of crazy.
4 Because if the thing is being overloaded 5
now, or if you're saying that it might be, people are 6
used to Google, and Google gets a billion hits an 7
hour. And we're talking about this thing maybe having 8
a little problem if there's 200 hits at the same time 9
or close together.
10 But, well, number one, I want to go 11 totally on record that I'm opposed to having 12 simultaneous hearings happening, or more than one 13 hearing at a time. But there's a lot of talk about 14 multiple hearings. That would really tax the system, 15 and the current system couldn't do it. And I'm not 16 sure that with the possible work that you're planning 17 to do on this thing if you're successful in getting 18 your own option in there, that you'd be able to do 19 that.
20 So the one thing I liked hearing was when 21 K.G. said that one of the reasons Option 2 hadn't been 22 totally fixed is maybe it won't have to be. And I 23 would hope that to be the case. But these are, I 24 haven't heard the presentations for Option 3 and 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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156 Option 4, but it doesn't appear, from what we've been 1
doing today and over the last couple of months, that 2
you're going to fight as hard for those as you have 3
been for this one.
4 So I would just say that it's, it appears 5
that this is not being a level playing field for these 6
options. And there may in fact be other options.
7 When we did this the first time, and we were working 8
on it in the late 90s, we weren't even sure that this 9
kind of thing was possible. Google hadn't been born 10 yet, so nobody had anything to judge it against.
11 But right now, one of the things that you 12 may have a problem with is making a choice. If you 13 actually go out there to honestly look at what's 14 available, there's all kinds of systems. And Laurie 15 talked about one that she really liked in the 16 litigation that she was involved in that worked 17 beautifully.
18 So there's no end of options. And I don't 19 think that the time to set it up and the money to do 20 it need to be terribly important features when you're 21 looking at something that's supposed to stay, stay for 22 a million years, and costs $100 billion. So that's 23 just my take. And I don't want to argue about it, I 24 just want to put those things out there. That's the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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157 way it hit me in listening to these presentations this 1
afternoon.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Judy. And I'm 3
not going to answer for the NRC staff. I think that 4
what we saw that perhaps created sort of a distorted 5
impression when we heard from Laurie, and then we 6
heard from the NRC staff, talking about the current 7
NRC LSN ADAMS. Those problems that were identified 8
are going to have to be fixed for whatever option is 9
chosen, 1 or 2, and I guess there's applications of 10 having a good NRC ADAMS for options 3 and 4.
11 So I would just mention that, but I guess 12 I would ask Judge Bollwerk to perhaps put in 13 perspective what the NRC LSN staff is, why they put 14 these options together, what's going to go to the 15 Commission. And keep in mind that what's going to the 16 Commission is not just the LSN, NRC LSN staff 17 summarizing what they heard in these two days.
18 But also you'll have two weeks after Sam 19 gets the transcript together, and I know he's going to 20 have it done in a couple of days probably. He's 21 shaking his head yeah. But no, I think he has a week 22 on that. But you can get your comments in on 23 anything, okay. So you're going to have that whole 24 chance to do it.
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158 But Paul could you, you've heard Judy, and 1
you know, there's a feeling that the NRC is really 2
trying to push Option 2 on people. So could you talk 3
a little bit about that Option, Paul, process.
4 MR. BOLLWERK: And again, in putting the 5
paper together and the way this developed with the 6
Commission, given the task we were given, the that 7
directive we were given, which was the whole long 8
meeting, we felt we need to put something in front of 9
the ARP in terms of options.
10 And while you're, folks here have had 11 experience over the years with dealing with the LSN 12 and with other databases. And one of the things you 13 obviously would want to look at is you have a system, 14 can you leverage it. That's really all this says is, 15 can you leverage the existing system and use it in a 16 way that makes sense.
17 But you're right, there are other options 18 out there. There's the cloud option, and that's got 19 several variations that we're going to hear about 20 tomorrow. But the one thing I would point out with 21 respect to the LSN library is it actually exists.
22 Laurie can go out and others can go out and use it.
23 That was not the case with the LSN.
24 I will say we took Dan Graser's word, but 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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159 he came up with, and working with the Technical 1
Working Group, came up with some things. But I don't 2
believe that Autonomy was ever tested before it was 3
actually put in place. And it was more or less a good 4
system. Laurie said she had some problems with it, I 5
think others did too.
6 So to some degree, you're right, we're 7
presenting you with something that's working option at 8
this point. Although it's not perfect, it's got to 9
have improvements. Also, you're going to get a chance 10 to use it in a way you didn't have an opportunity to 11 use the original LSN as you're looking at the options.
12 In terms of what Chip mentioned about what 13 the, what will happen next, at this point, we're going 14 to take all the comments that you have to give us. In 15 the end, it's the responsibility of the chief 16 administrative judge, as the LSN kind of gives 17 information to him and he passes it along to the 18 Commission, to provide whatever input you want him to 19 provide to them at that point about the process that 20 we talked about this morning, about these options, 21 about whether there are other options. About other 22 approaches.
23 It's our responsibility to sort of lay 24 that out for the Commission and then let the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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160 Commission decide what it wants to do as a next step.
1 And we've heard some concerns about 2
monetary expenses. If you, we do a monthly report to 3
the Congress, and some of you may be aware of it. If 4
you looked at that carefully on the back page, the 5
Agency really only has about $400,000 left in 6
high-level waste money at this point that isn't spoken 7
for in other ways. So that's going to be something 8
that's going to come into the process as well.
9 But the Commission did want us to go out, 10 talk with the LSN ARP, and get the input that they 11 could provide us, given the direction they gave us.
12 And that's sort of what we tried to do here to the 13 best of our ability.
14 And the next step for us that's important 15 is to get your comments, whatever they are, and to 16 pass them along to the Commission so that they know 17 what your feelings are, individually and collectively, 18 to the degree that's possible about what we've put in 19 front of you, and what other things you want to see 20 done with the process. That's the --
21 MS. TREICHEL: Do you think there's any 22 possibility of, like the first time we did this, 23 having a technical working group in which you get 24 people who really know what they're talking about, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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161 about what all is out there, what all is possible, and 1
kind of how long it takes, maybe how much it costs.
2 And be able to have them present to this group and to 3
you in the Commission this is what you got. And then 4
we can put in options like we did the first time 5
around.
6 MR. BOLLWERK: Well, again, that would be 7
a question for, to some degree, based on the money we 8
have left, can we do that before we get more money?
9 Four hundred thousand dollars is not a whole lot of 10 money.
11 MS. TREICHEL: No, but you don't want to 12 build this thing before you really get it.
13 MR. BOLLWERK: Oh, no, no, absolutely, we 14 would not do that. I mean, we're not, there's not, I 15 think it's pretty clear, I don't think I'm speaking 16 out of turn here that until more money arrives, the 17 Commission has basically said that the adjudication in 18 the form it was envisioned cannot start.
19 Having said that, it's my perception, you 20 can tell me if I'm wrong, that this database is going 21 to be very important to restarting that adjudication.
22 And so it's, one of the reasons talking about next 23 logical steps, it struck us as important to give the 24 Commission whatever information we could about this 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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162 database and how it should be set up.
1 How the Congress is going to approach 2
this, I don't know. You see, for instance, HR3053, 3
this basically says 30 months from the time the bill 4
is passed. Doesn't say 30 months from the time the 5
money arrives. So that's something to think about.
6 But you know, we have to take these things 7
into account as well. We're trying to plan, we're 8
trying to think about what the best approach is. But 9
you all have to deal with the database, and so we're 10 hoping you can give us your input and let us know and 11 let the Commission know what your thoughts are.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, Paul. And 13 this, Judy's recommendation about a technical working 14 group, that will be something that is in the staff's 15 report to the Commission about the meeting, okay.
16 Let's go to Laurie and then over to Diane, and then 17 we'll come back to Bob and Rod. Laurie.
18 MS. BORSKI: Thank you. I just have two 19 brief comments. First of all, there are a lot of 20 parties that don't have adequate funding to do their 21 testing and provide the information such as I 22 provided. And so I think that is important to hear 23 from them when the time comes and not make decisions 24 before they're allowed to, to even get out of the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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163 gate, as it were.
1 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
2 MS. BORSKI: My next is a specific comment 3
on the Options document at page ten. It talks about 4
document updates to Option 2, and they're talking 5
about replacing original documents with newer versions 6
of the same document.
7 MR. CAMERON: Oh, okay.
8 MS. BORSKI: And that has not happened in 9
the past, and that cannot happen in the future because 10 attorneys often use the older documents, document 11 versions, in discovery. And so why would we change 12 horses in the middle of the stream, for one thing?
13 But then why would we replace older versions of 14 documents with newer versions? They should be added 15 as brand new documents.
16 MR. CAMERON: Well, I'm going to ask, 17 we'll see what the NRC's LSN staff has to say about 18 that. But yeah, obviously there may be something in 19 the older document that has implications in terms of 20 a particular contention, so why are you replacing it.
21 Anybody, K.G., Tom, page ten, that statement on there.
22 Do we know what that means?
23 MR. GOLSHAN: Yeah, this is just basically 24 the capability that the group talked and we thought 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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164 about building it, and it just does not make sense.
1 I suppose that we have to change the, you know, change 2
the requirements and put them in the requirements 3
whether this function is needed or not.
4 MR. CAMERON: Oh, go ahead, Margie.
5 MS. JANNEY: Hi, sorry. Laurie, can you 6
point out exactly what paragraph, because --
7 MS. BORSKI: It's the second full 8
paragraph that starts with, The process for the 9
modification.
10 MS. JANNEY: And then halfway down when it 11 says, For a document update.
12 MS. BORSKI: Uh huh.
13 MS. JANNEY: That is talking about adding 14 a new document for a revision to a document, it is not 15 talking about replacing a document.
16 MR. CAMERON: Ah.
17 MS. JANNEY: Guideline 14, remember the 18 old LSN guidelines? Oh, you -- yeah, Guideline 14 19 actually discusses that.
20 MS. BORSKI: It does, and this seems 21 contrary, because it says, When copied to the public 22 ADAMS LSN library, the original document would be 23 removed and replaced with the updated document. And 24 so --
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165 MS. JANNEY: It does read that.
1 MS. BORSKI: I took that to mean you would 2
take the old one out and put the new one in.
3 MS. JANNEY: Yeah.
4 MR. CAMERON: Okay, because that's going 5
to have to be fixed.
6 MS. JANNEY: Yes, yes, that's contrary to 7
our intention and our practice.
8 MS. BORSKI: Okay.
9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, thank you, 10 Laurie.
11 MS. BORSKI: I thought I was, I thought 12 maybe I'd read that wrong, but thank you.
13 MS. JANNEY: Sorry I did not catch that.
14 Thank you, thank you for pointing that out.
15 MR. CAMERON: Diane.
16 MS. CURRAN: I really have a conceptual 17 question about this whole thing. Just the way I'm 18 looking at it, I want to see if I can get confirmation 19 that this is a reasonable way to look at it. It seems 20 to me that we had this LSN library for the documents 21 that already exist.
22 And question one is, is this system 23 adequate to go forward with a hearing and be able to 24 get access to the documents that are already in this 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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166 collection. And there's lots of questions about that 1
that were raised by Laurie.
2 The second question is what do you do 3
about documents that come in in the future? Do you do 4
something to add on to this existing collection, do 5
you supplement it with something completely different 6
and you put the two things together?
7 And then the third question is, given that 8
there's so many problems with the existing collection, 9
do you just put everything together in a new system?
10 And I think that's what Judy's referring to, is let's 11 look at what exists now that could be used for the 12 entire thing, because there's plenty of problems with 13 what we've got now.
14 That's how I'm looking at it. It's how it 15 fits, goes together to me or seems logical. And I 16 just wondered is that an unreasonable to look at it, 17 is that how you're thinking about it?
18 MR. CAMERON: And I'm going to ask the NRC 19 staff. I have an understanding of it, but could we 20 address Diane's questions? And the first one, can LSN 21 ADAMS, would that be sufficient to use as a litigation 22 support system, I think is the question. And I think 23 we've heard some answers to that. But K.G., do you 24 want to start, and you --
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167 MS. CURRAN: I'm not exactly looking for 1
the answer to that question. I'm asking is this what 2
-- I mean, I really think the purpose of this meeting 3
should be to figure out what is it that needs to be 4
addressed. And I frankly find these options and 5
alternatives a little confusing. And I'm just 6
wondering are the questions I'm asking, the questions, 7
are you thinking of it in that way too, or am I 8
missing the boat in some way?
9 MR. GOLSHAN: Yes, if I may answer, yeah, 10 I think we're thinking about what you're thinking.
11 And all the time. So to answer your question whether 12 the platform in Option 2, again, if I came across to, 13 you know, show any preference between these options, 14 that was not my intention. I've always said, we're 15 the pizza maker, you tell us what to make, we'll make 16 it for you.
17 So I have no preference as to which 18 options, you know. So I'm just presenting the options 19 the way they are. So --
20 MS. CURRAN: But K.G. --
21 MR. GOLSHAN: Number one --
22 MS. CURRAN: Could I just interrupt you 23 and ask you, when you talk about Option 1 and Option 24 2, those apply to the prospective, the records to be 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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168 put in, gathered in the future, right? It doesn't 1
relate to what we already have.
2 MR. GOLSHAN: No, no, I think you're 3
confusing the alternatives with the options. Every 4
options has alternatives, different alternatives. So, 5
I know in Option 2, we presented two alternatives for 6
in-taking new documents. But the platform was being 7
leveraged, it was the Watson. You know, and I said 8
over and over that the platform in its current 9
position was not intended to be the litigation 10 database.
11 So we are aware that this thing has to be 12 enhanced with additional functional enhancements to 13 meet your requirements, so. But let me also elaborate 14 that I think collectively we have to decide, any of 15 these options, whether they're viable to be the 16 litigation database or not. So there's the viability 17 is one thing, and also the functionality is another 18 thing, and what other function it has to have.
19 And I know Judy compared that to Google.
20 Yeah, but Google has a river that cools their server 21 farms, versus this current platform that we have runs 22 on a single server. So that's why it doesn't have the 23 kind of a performance attribute as Google. And 24 whether it would ever be like Google, I don't know.
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169 But you know we could try, you know, throw money and 1
efforts and resource at the current platform if it is 2
selected.
3 But there are other options available too.
4 So the Option 3 that we're going to talk about 5
tomorrow, that leaves it wide open for us to examine 6
other search engines, other ways of basically 7
collecting and transferring the current collections 8
there and keeping it up to date. So again, I think we 9
have to keep an open mind and talk about it.
10 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks K.G. And I see 11 that Paul has his name tent up. Do you want to add 12 anything to what KG said?
13 To just simply, Diane's questions are 14 straightforward and fairly simple questions, and if we 15 could give her a simple answer. I mean the answers 16 are not always simple, but if we could clear this up, 17 I think it would be very important to do.
18 MR. BOLLWERK: Correct. And so --
19 MR. CAMERON: Besides what K.G. has 20 already said.
21 MR. BOLLWERK: So when you look at the LSN 22 library the way it's configured now, I think what this 23 meeting has made clear is it is a library, it may work 24 all right. But as a discovery database, maybe it 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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170 doesn't. So there needed to be fixes to it and there 1
need to be improvements.
2 In terms of the Option 1, again, both of 3
those, both Option 1 and Option 2 leverage the LSN 4
libraries. So in some way, shape, or form, they both 5
depend on that being available in a way that works as 6
a discovery database.
7 In terms, but again, you're right, but 8
there may be other options out there. And sort of 9
Option 3 goes into that. And one of the things we try 10 to think about is in terms of -- so Options 1 and 2 11 both deal with the LSN library.
12 Option 3 tends to take it further and try 13 to think in the world of the cloud, and that's where 14 lots of people operate now, how is the best way to set 15 up a system, what would it look like. And we come up 16 with, we'll talk about it tomorrow, we're getting a 17 little ahead of ourselves.
18 But there's a cloud where the NRC runs the 19 database, the index, where the parties would each run 20 their own indices. There's all kinds of ways to do it 21 out on the cloud. Those have advantages and 22 disadvantages, and that's what we need to talk about 23 tomorrow.
24 The one thing that's a little different, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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171 though, when we're talking about out in the cloud is 1
you don't really know what the search engine's going 2
to be. So you get into different questions about how 3
you're going to basically implement it.
4 For instance, for the LSN, we chose the 5
Autonomy search engine. But there's lots of different 6
ways to do it when you get out in the cloud. And so 7
it does get a little bit more, a little broader. But 8
again, there are some disadvantages for the parties, 9
and potentially the folks that didn't like the fact 10 that the LSN required them to put together a database 11 and to interconnect and all that, the cloud may still 12 be an issue for them.
13 So there are some things that are still 14 there. There's other things, there's other vistas 15 that are going to be explored, sure. I don't know if 16 I've answered your question.
17 MR. CAMERON: Does that do it?
18 MS. CURRAN: Helps, thanks.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay, great, thank you, 20 Paul. Thanks, K.G.
21 MR. GOLSHAN: Can I add one other thing?
22 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead.
23 MR. GOLSHAN: Just in the 40-odd years 24 that I've been in this field of, you know, information 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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172 technology, I've discovered there is, you know, in 1
electronic computing, there's not, the word perfect 2
really doesn't exist. So some people like Google, the 3
others like Bing. Some like, you know, Yahoo Search 4
and all of that. Each of them have separate 5
algorithm. You go to one, you gain something, but you 6
lose another thing, and vice versa.
7 The same thing is with the search portals 8
and then the appliances that are out there. Everyone 9
gives you a certain advantages, but it takes anyway 10 another advantages that the ones has had.
11 So it's just a matter of coming to 12 consensus as to what it is, whether it meets your 13 requirement as far as being a viable portal as a 14 discovery, you know, as a discovery portal and a 15 litigation database. And we have to strive to get to 16 that point.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, K.G. Bob 18 Halstead and then Rod McCullum. Bob.
19 MR. HALSTEAD: Well, I want to summarize 20 some things that I think we heard in three areas that 21 maybe help us move forward. Actually, things we heard 22 in one area, things that are laid out in the fourth 23 revision of the options report, and then some things 24 I guess that we haven't said in this review.
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173 First of all, I think if I were to try to 1
summarize for Nevada what, you know, all the points 2
that Laura already made, the points I made on user 3
needs. If we were to try put this in terms of 4
functional requirements for the LSN going forward, 5
they needs to be fair, and to me part of being fair is 6
being transparent. So it's got to be fair.
7 It's got to be accessible. It's got to be 8
fast, it's got to be accurate. It's got to be 9
comprehensive. And while we don't have to be cheap 10 about it, government programs, even ones that are 11 supported by user fees that have peculiar 12 congressional funding mechanisms, it's got to be 13 cost-effective. And you know, I'm sure we'll come 14 back to these when we're doing closing points 15 tomorrow.
16 Now, the way I read the cost numbers and 17 the calculations that we've made in Nevada about what 18 would actually be involved in a restart of the 19 licensing, what we like to refer to repeatedly as the 20 legally mandated licensing process that we think we're 21 entitled to and that we think the country wants to do 22 to make a good decision, say we're talking five years.
23 Now, when I take the cost data that are 24 prepared in the options document, it looks to me like 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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174 to do the initial installation and operate for five 1
years looks like your most expensive option. You need 2
to take the high-end choices, which is the original 3
LSN. And I get somewhere in the twelve to sixteen 4
million dollar area to build it, rebuild it and 5
operate it for five years.
6 Whether that's a good idea or not, but 7
that gives you kind of a high number. And then you 8
look at your numbers for Option 2 and Option 3.
9 Again, building it and operating it for five years 10 with your numbers, you know, you're in the range, you 11 know, maybe as low as six million, maybe as high as 12 ten or twelve million.
13 But the point is there are not big dollar 14 differences here. So you're talking somewhere maybe 15 a difference over five years in constant year dollars 16 of eight million at the low end and sixteen million at 17 the high end.
18 Boy, now my third point is that isn't even 19 peanut shells compared to what's going to be spent on 20 five years of licensing. Two NRC chairman have given 21 the number of $330 million as their estimate for 22 licensing costs over a multiple year proceeding, 23 usually assumed, given the GAO report from last year, 24 as three to five years.
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175 Let's be generous and say whatever HR3053 1
might intend, it allows an extra year to be requested.
2 So you're probably talking about a five-year process.
3 So it's harder to estimate DOE's costs.
4 But if you go back to the very detailed 5
total system life cycle cost assessment done in 2008, 6
which looked at everything through the end of fiscal 7
year 2006, you take that $1.66 billion number in 2007 8
dollars. Subtract about half a billion for what DOE 9
actually spent in fiscal years '07, '08, and '09. And 10 if they're anywhere accurate, that gives you a number 11 that you can bring into current year dollars, 12 multiplying it by a factor of about 1.2.
13 I can see Rod and all the Public Service 14 Commission members around the country saying, Well, 15 he's doing this on the back of an envelope. No, he's 16 doing on the back of an NRC agenda. But the long and 17 the short of it is you're probably talking 1.4 to 1.6 18 billion dollars in DOE costs. So you're talking about 19 a total cost, when you roll in federal money for the 20 state, my goodness, there's got to be money for the 21 counties and the tribes in this, you're talking about 22 a $2 billion number.
23 And so hey, the amount of money here, 24 money should not at all drive the decision that we 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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176 make in evaluating either the four option, that are 1
nicely evaluated in the paper, or maybe other options 2
that we want to bring in.
3 And I think that's enormously liberating 4
to look at it that way, even though I know that the 5
people who are trying to get $120 million for DOE out 6
of the current Congress and $30 million for, this is 7
the fiscal year 2018 request that was never acted upon 8
in the Senate.
9 All that said, cost should not drive the 10 decision on which of these options the Commission 11 pursues. It ought to be what's fair, what's 12 accessible, what's fast, what's accurate, what's 13 comprehensive, and what's cost effective. And what 14 would give the country the basis of a decision on a 15 construction authorization at the end of those five 16 years that would be well supported. So thank you.
17 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bob, for that 18 perspective. And we're going to go to Rod next. And 19 I would just ask others around the table, others on 20 through GoToMeeting if you would want to comment on 21 Bob's statement that cost should not drive the choice, 22 other attributes should drive the choice.
23 And he put that in perspective in terms of 24 total life cycle costs for the repository. And Rod, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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177 you can, you know, obviously address that too if you 1
want, but you may have another way.
2 MR. McCULLUM: Yeah, I'll start there, 3
because it is an intriguing question Bob has put 4
before us here, and that wasn't the reason I 5
originally raised my name tent. I'll get back to that 6
in second.
7 But you know, representing the electric 8
utilities that collected this money from real, live 9
consumers of electricity, the cost does matter. But 10 I would agree it's important to do it in a 11 cost-effective way. One should not be penny wise and 12 pound foolish.
13 I think even more so than the cost, when 14 you look at the differences between the options, is 15 the time. While the cost compared to the 330 might 16 appear small, I guess I might not agree it would take, 17 that those $330 million dollar estimates are really 18 what's it's going to take. And I also, I wouldn't 19 necessarily agree they're small.
20 But the time differences are significant.
21 If this process is to resume and if this process is to 22 reach a conclusion, currently the law requires that, 23 and Congress may or may not be about to reinforce that 24 law, and Congress may or may not fund the law, whether 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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178 it reinforces it or not. But that's Congress.
1 But nevertheless, if the process is to go 2
to a conclusion, I would think the -- I know for 3
industry, and I would think for Nevada as well, living 4
with uncertainty for a period as long as 52 months 5
before you could even get to the adjudication, that's 6
a lot of uncertainty. And you know, money has time 7
value too.
8 So I think that both the cost and the time 9
to implement. Because if this is a go, I think both 10 sides would want to get to an answer sooner rather 11 than later. And obviously we both want different 12 answers. But so that's enough for that.
13 We came into this, as we stated in our 14 letter, in response to the initial Federal Register 15 notice supporting Option 2, Alternative 1. I don't 16 think we've heard anything this afternoon that would 17 cause us to change that position, although we do have 18 one question. And Laurie, your presentation is the 19 genesis of this question in part.
20 We thank you for your very thorough 21 running of the system through its paces. We also 22 thank NRC for the efforts that they've both already 23 conducted and as well as promised to conduct to 24 address those concerns. I think, as Laurie was 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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179 running through the concerns, we had somebody here 1
trying to do some of those things. Apparently, NRC 2
has already successfully addressed a number of those.
3 One of our reasons for liking this is, you 4
know, the LSN does not exist in a vacuum. It's funny 5
what, you know, this thing was ground-breaking when we 6
first created it, starting around the turn of the 7
century. But around ten years after that, the federal 8
court system did put in place an electronic court 9
filing system that our lawyers are very familiar with.
10 And we see this particular option as being 11 sufficiently similar to that that it would be equally 12 workable. Our lawyers have a lot of experience with 13 that system.
14 And also I should add that, you know, 15 NRC's efforts to address these issues in the contexts 16 of Option 2, Alternative 1, I wouldn't agree that 17 those reflect a bias toward that option because I 18 think we're seeing that a lot of those concerns would 19 exist no matter which option you picked. I mean, 20 obviously, the LSN and ADAMS have to work together.
21 And if there's something about ADAMS that limits the 22 LSN, then maybe you do have to go somewhere else.
23 Again, I think we're still thinking that 24 that can be made workable. We say this with a lot of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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180 familiarity with ADAMS and a lot of familiarity with 1
comparable systems. The question I have is NRC has 2
conceded that there's still some additional work to do 3
to bolster the system, and I think that's been evident 4
this afternoon.
5 Looking at these cost and time estimates, 6
and again, I think time is as important as money here, 7
does NRC envision that it could do the things that 8
you've committed to do this afternoon without altering 9
those cost and time estimates? In other words, can 10 you do those things within the cost and time estimates 11 you've provided?
12 And I'm referring to Appendix D of the 13 options paper now. So really that's the question.
14 Can you address those concerns that have been raised 15 that you haven't already addressed in those handouts.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Rod. I don't 17 know if NRC LSN staff wants to try to provide some, an 18 answer to that at this point, or treat it as a 19 question that you want to think about going forward.
20 Not a rhetorical question, but.
21 MR. McCULLUM: Yeah, if I can make it a 22 little less rhetorical perhaps. Certainly, when you 23 update this option paper, and again, I compliment NRC 24 for being responsive to input it receives as we're on 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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181 Revision 4 now. And when you come out with the next 1
product or the final product, certainly can you at 2
least commit that you will make sure you factor 3
addressing those concerns into whatever you're showing 4
us in terms of the cost time?
5 And I forgot to mentions risks as well.
6 I think in terms of certainty, the risk profile is 7
important too.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. All right, 9
Bob, do you want to say something else before we go?
10 MR. HALSTEAD: Yes, I just want to say a 11 quick response. I appreciate the way, I appreciate 12 Rod's measured response to what I said. And I had 13 looked at the times in Appendix D too. And it is true 14 that your worst case there is 52 months. But we've 15 looked at the lead time looking at some options that 16 we've looked at at the state level.
17 It's no secret to anyone that the parties 18 are concerned that perhaps we're going to need to 19 supplement whatever the LSN is with internal search 20 capabilities. And when I look at these months and 21 costs, they look pretty reasonable to me. And I think 22 it's important not to be put off on the time versus 23 cost by the high-end numbers here of 38, 42, and 52 24 months.
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182 I think we need some refinement on that.
1 And I think it's quite possible that cost is not a 2
significant delineator here. And in fact the lead 3
times, you know, are in range where, you know, you're 4
probably talking about somewhere between 12 months and 5
30 months in reality, in my opinion.
6 But again, there are always things that 7
aren't going to go as well as you expect when you try 8
to develop and implement a system. But I really 9
appreciate the measured way in which Rod has replied 10 to this, and I'm very encouraged by the kind of 11 discussions that we've had here this afternoon. Thank 12 you.
13 MR. CAMERON: That's great, that's great.
14 Thank you, Bob. We're going to go to the ARP 15 participants on GoToMeeting and see what they have to 16 say on these issues. And I'm going to go first to 17 Loreen Pitchford. And I'm going to try to read what 18 she sent typed in, and I'm going to give Loreen an 19 opportunity if she wants to orally address that, 20 reframe it to do that, okay.
21 And she frames this in terms of 22 alternative. She is unmuted -- Loreen, do you just 23 want to talk to us?
24 MS. PITCHFORD: Sure. Actually, I think 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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183 that this particular question that I had was cleared 1
up with Laurie and Margie's earlier conversation. It 2
was the same thing I was questioning about the 3
deleting of documents that were currently existing.
4 And you know, it was on page ten in that paragraph, 5
and I had noticed the same thing. So I think that was 6
answered very well.
7 MR. CAMERON: Oh, that's great. So you 8
noticed the same comment on page ten that Laurie did.
9 And that's what your question was based on, and we 10 have an answer to that, which is the language on page 11 ten has to be revised, basically.
12 MS. PITCHFORD: Yes, correct.
13 MR. CAMERON: All right, well thanks for 14 noticing that too, Loreen. Do we have anybody else on 15 GoToMeeting who has their tent up, put a chat into us?
16 MR. LACY: This is Darrell Lacy.
17 MR. CAMERON: Who was that?
18 MR. LACY: Darrell Lacy.
19 MR. CAMERON: Oh, Darrell. Okay, go 20 ahead, Darrell.
21 MR. LACY: Don't disagree a whole lot with 22 much of what anybody said. And you know, back to what 23 Laurie was indicating in regards to some of the 24 challenges she was dealing with on the first places 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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184 she spent more time looking at the process than we 1
have. Although what we have looked at does not run 2
into any of those challenges. But we also might look 3
at kind of keep it simple.
4 And as a smaller player at this, I think 5
we were looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 6
100, 120 current docs that we need to upload as soon 7
as we get started back and, you know, maybe another 8
couple of hundred over the period of time is what my 9
estimate was.
10 I want to keep it simple for some of the 11 smaller players here, especially the folks that are 12 smaller than us that don't necessarily justify 13 full-time people and keeping them trained on how to do 14 electronic submittals. Having the option of the 15 manual submittal of additional documents for the 16 smaller people may definitely be a preference.
17 And just in the vein of keep it simple, if 18 the problems are running across a current ADAMS 19 capabilities server that could be easily corrected, 20 then to me that's definitely the preferred option, 21 rather than starting with something new. That's 22 really all I have to say. Thanks.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And Darrell, the 24 implications of what I hear you saying is that when 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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185 the Advisory Review Panel is putting together 1
recommendations over the next several months and the 2
NRC LSN staff is informing the Commission, should the 3
choice of option, should there be, should one 4
criterion that they consider is what the impact or 5
implication should be for, as you phrased it, the 6
smaller players?
7 MR. LACY: Well, some of the electronic 8
submittals and other things definitely have additional 9
training requirements and other things for the party 10 to keep people trained and ready to go. I've used 11 some of these smaller players, the process may not 12 have more than ten or twenty documents to worry about 13 over the next three years.
14 Have to get full-time people in training, 15 they wanted do that. I think always allowing a 16 manual submittal as an option for the smaller types 17 should be an options.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay, well, thank you, 19 Darrell, for that perspective. And let's see who else 20 we have on GoToMeeting. ARP members, anybody, Lisa?
21 MR. KLEVORICK: Phil Klevorick.
22 MR. CAMERON: Hey Phil, go ahead.
23 MR. KLEVORICK: Yeah, thank you. I kind 24 of look at this as kind of almost like a good news/bad 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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186 news situation. The good news situation is for the 1
situation of the old LSN as it was, was somewhat 2
cumbersome and difficult to navigate at times, as 3
already been pointed out many times.
4 And of course the good news is now we can 5
look at trying to reconstitute the old system into 6
something that's more workable and manageable based on 7
newer technologies, Google-like or Yahoo-like, or 8
whatever you want to call it -like.
9 But at the end of the day, I don't want it 10 to be lost, but whatever is materialized out of the 11 discussion and eventually the selection of the 12 process, it needs to be useful for the general public.
13 And then not just the attorneys who have experts and 14 deal with it and some of the players who have a little 15 bit more knowledge on it than the average person.
16 But the average person needs to be able to 17 do this with capabilities that would be seen as pretty 18 logical and reasonable. So I want to make sure that 19 that gets in there. I'm not into discussing how much 20 things cost per document dollar or whatever the heck 21 it is. It's just, that's something to be worked out, 22 I guess, when you start doing a true comparative 23 analysis on all the different proposals.
24 And I would probably guess that by the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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187 time some of this discussion is all done in the next 1
48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br />, that there may be other IT gurus out there 2
who may come up with another idea of, well, have you 3
looked at this plan or proposal. So I just want to 4
make sure that the general public point of view is put 5
in there no matter what process is chosen.
6 And the other thing I want to do is I want 7
to support what Darrell was just saying, and Bob 8
alluded to it way earlier in the meeting, is that the 9
smaller players in stature doesn't make us any less 10 important in the whole process.
11 And what I mean by that is simply is just 12 because we're not going to have a thousand and more 13 documents to upload and provide into the system, we 14 need to be treated the same as anybody else who is 15 within the party. And part of that is understanding 16 our limitations and our capabilities based on 17 economics, our employee situation, our logistical 18 issues, etc.
19 And I know that that's what's put in the 20 corral by you, by a comment I made earlier.
21 MR. CAMERON: Yes.
22 MR. KLEVORICK: But I do want to make sure 23 that that gets addressed as part of this whole bigger 24 discussion. Thank you.
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188 MR. CAMERON: And we will address it. And 1
there's, I think, that's a great follow-on to what 2
Darrell said. And I'm sorry, Phil, you still have 3
some more?
4 MR. KLEVORICK: No, no, I'm good, thank 5
you.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay, so I think what you're 7
suggesting is we heard Bob Halstead list out several 8
attributes that should be considered for any system.
9 Fair, transparent.
10 MR. HALSTEAD: Let's call it functional 11 requirements.
12 MR.
CAMERON:
- Okay, functional 13 requirements. And he listed a bunch, and not that I'm 14 saying he would add what you said to it, but some 15 might say that a functional requirement should be 16 useful to the general public. And we heard from Judy 17 on that.
18 MR. HALSTEAD: And that's the fairness 19 issue.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay, and all also the 21 smaller players.
22 MR. HALSTEAD: Right.
23 MR. CAMERON: The fairness issue.
24 MR. HALSTEAD: That encompasses that.
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189 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
1 MR. HALSTEAD: I totally agree with you.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, so agree with both 3
Darrell and Phil.
4 MR. HALSTEAD: Darrell and Phil. They 5
make excellent points.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay, let's make a note of 7
that, that's good. Anybody else on GoToMeeting? No, 8
okay. This is good discussion, and we're going to 9
come back to the table. But I just want to make sure 10 what we hear from the public at this point.
11 So we're going to go to webinar. Tommy 12 Heitman's not going to come up here again, but how 13 about GoToWebinar public? Anybody? Okay, no one on 14 GoToWebinar from the public.
15 And our operator's name is, what is it?
16 Gabrielle. Okay, Gabrielle, are you there?
17 Ox: Yes, I am.
18 MR. CAMERON: Can you see if anybody's on 19 the phone who wants to make a comment.
20 OPERATOR: I absolutely can. To ask a 21 question on the phone line, please press star one.
22 And please stand by one moment for those to come 23 through. Okay, it looks like we have no questions or 24 comments from the phone line.
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190 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks a lot, 1
Gabrielle. And let's come back to the table and see 2
if anybody has anything more to say about costs or 3
whatever. Rod?
4 MR. McCULLUM: Yeah, I just want to say, 5
for the record, those functional attributes are okay 6
with the Nuclear Energy Institute. Those are things 7
the system should have. I would add we probably 8
can't, we certainly can't, as has already been 9
recognized, get to those by going backwards to a 10 system that is obsolete already, which would be the 11 old system.
12 I don't think we believe that we need to 13 create something entirely new, either, to get to those 14 attributes. So there's definitely some options on the 15 table there.
16 Taking it back to the glass half full 17 perspective, the improvement in technology that's 18 occurred over the last 15 years is a good thing. We 19 should be able to get to those attributes. And I look 20 forward to tomorrow's discussions to, you know, see 21 what else we should consider in that regard.
22 MR. CAMERON: So are you saying that, I 23 mean, you agree with the attributes we've been talking 24 about. But you're saying that also that we don't 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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191 need, necessarily need, to have something completely 1
new to fulfill all those attributes.
2 MR. McCULLUM: That's correct.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay, all right.
4 MR. KLEVORICK: Chip, if I may, this is 5
Phil Klevorick again.
6 MR. CAMERON: Yeah, go ahead, Phil, then 7
we're going to come back to Judy and Bob.
8 MR. KLEVORICK: I'm sorry, yeah, sorry 9
about jumping in. Somebody made a comment earlier 10 about the platform and searchability and all that 11 stuff, you know, Firefox or Chrome or whatever the 12 heck it was. And in all honesty, I think that that's 13 probably going to be the limiting factors.
14 Because as we know, under the current way 15 of searching, a lot of things are not interactive.
16 And I'm not an IT guy, so I may be using the wrong 17 terms. But I'd be cautious on the platform in which 18 anything is going to be created so that it is 19 basically searchable by whatever platform a end user 20 may have available to it.
21 So if it's the NRC LSN staff, maybe they 22 could talk a little bit about that tomorrow or later 23 on today, you know, where the problems may arise, that 24 kind of thing.
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192 MR. CAMERON: So Phil, just let me make 1
sure I understand this. Are you saying one of the 2
attributes, one of the functional requirements that 3
should be considered is that it should be searchable, 4
I don't know if that's the right term, by a broad 5
range of platforms?
6 MR. KLEVORICK: Correct, like whatever 7
browser a person has available. Because some people 8
don't, haven't updated their computer, or whatever the 9
case be. I think it's got to be searchable or be able 10 to usable under various different types of browsers.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay, and that may be 12 considered under the fair, functional requirement.
13 But thank you for that.
14 MR. KLEVORICK: Okay, thank you.
15 MR. CAMERON: Let's go to Judy first, and 16 then Bob. Judy.
17 MS. TREICHEL: Well, very quickly, I agree 18 with that list that you have, and especially including 19 what Phil just put in. Because there are people in 20 all sort of parts of the country, whether it's rural 21 or urban or whatever that have different sorts of 22 systems, and they should be able to do that.
23 And I guess that's what I was getting at 24 when I asked that there be a technical working group.
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193 And it doesn't have to last for a year. It can be 1
very quick now because we know what we're asking 2
somebody to build something. We're asking them to 3
guide us to something that's already there.
4 MR. CAMERON: So would you give the 5
technical working group a
list of functional 6
requirements? And I'm not saying these would be the 7
functional requirements, although there seems to be 8
some agreement on that.
9 MS. TREICHEL: Yeah, that's what we did 10 the last time. It needs to do this, this, this, and 11 this.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay, all right. Thanks.
13 Bob.
14 MR. HALSTEAD: Couple quick close-up 15 things. First of all, as Marty reminded me, I forgot 16 that there's this interesting discussion on page 42 17 that affects the general consideration of options. It 18 says, The federal government has adopted a cloud-first 19 policy. It is intended to accelerate the pace at 20 which government will realize the value of cloud 21 computing. It continues.
22 So I think there are a couple of points 23 here. If we have a federal government cloud-first 24 policy, that not only has some implications for 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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194 certainly downgrading, if not eliminating, 1
reconstitution of the original LSN is an option, I 2
think frankly it has some serious implications for the 3
two Option 2 variations. And maybe that's something 4
we can come back to in our closing discussion 5
tomorrow, about going forward with options.
6 The second thing I want to say is that it 7
really is important and cannot be said enough that 8
both for this LSN Advisory Review Panel and for 9
participation in the licensing proceeding there are 10 very special needs on behalf of the Native Community 11 Action Council and the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe.
12 The National Congress of American Indians 13 is a member here, and there are many Indian nations 14 that are going to be affected by various parts of the 15 proposal. So some thinking must be given to providing 16 resources to the tribal entities. To more effectively 17 define what their user needs are, it has to be done in 18 a timely way so that their needs can be worked into 19 this whole process.
20 And the same certainly has to be said for 21 the Nevada counties who are parties. Some will argue 22 that some counties, like Nye and Clark and Esmeralda 23 and Lincoln, because of both being host county and 24 transportation counties, that they have a higher 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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195 calling. But I think all the Nevada counties feel 1
that they are directly affected by this process.
2 And that means they have to have some 3
resources to help them define their needs as user 4
participants in the licensing proceeding and are 5
seated here, or virtually, on the Advisory Review 6
Panel.
7 And I just, I would be remiss if I did not 8
come back and say these things again, that we really 9
need to make sure that all the people who are entitled 10 to have a voice in defining their used needs have some 11 resource, provide some resources provided to them to 12 do that. Thank you.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Bob, and 14 thank you all. And we do have an issue in the corral 15 that we will address tomorrow, and it deals with 16 resources, timing, and Phil Klevorick first raised it 17 in terms of the AULGs. Clark County is one of the 18 two, and NYE, AULGs. We heard a reference to needs of 19 tribal governments, and Bob talked about all Nevada 20 counties.
21 We'll come and have a discussion of that, 22 and I think that we'll need to spend some time before 23 tomorrow figuring out where that should be placed and 24 to try to be more articulate about framing that issue.
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196 But we'll do that. And I should ask my colleague 1
who's the Chair of the Advisory Committee to, I guess, 2
close it out, and whatever else you want to say, Andy.
3 CHAIRMAN BATES: I think this has been a 4
great discussion today. If there's other thoughts 5
that anybody had at this point, welcome to it.
6 Tomorrow we're going to go into Options 3 and Options 7
4, which are more cloud-based, and some of the broader 8
considerations there. And I'm looking forward to that 9
discussion.
10 And I hope this has been productive for 11 everybody. It certainly has been educational and 12 productive for us, I think. And we appreciate all the 13 work that people have put into this to get your 14 thoughts together. Laurie, for her work on the 15 system.
16 It's been very beneficial to our staff 17 here to identify issues and problems that the LSN 18 library has. It also clearly points towards what we 19 need to look at in the future for any system that we 20 implement, whether it's one of our options that we've 21 considered or something else that comes forward over 22 the next couple days or the months ahead.
23 Laurie mentioned the possibility of you 24 know, looking at some of the other litigation 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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197 databases that are out there, how that would fit in 1
with a cloud-based system or not. And Judy's comments 2
with regard to the fairness issue and perception that 3
the NRC owns the system, all of that I think is an 4
important consideration going forward.
5 MR. CAMERON: Andrew?
6 CHAIRMAN BATES: I thank you for your 7
efforts here today, too.
8 MR. CAMERON: Oh, you're welcome. So 9
we're adjourned now.
10 CHAIRMAN BATES: Yeah, and then as about a 11 15-minute break, I think. And then around five 12 o'clock --
13 MR. CAMERON: We can have break-up, do the 14
-- and Rekha, you're going to come up here, right?
15 Okay, Rekha will be here. And do you think at like 16 five after five or ten after five? Well, let's get 17 everybody set up. And some people are going to be 18 leaving and everything. So let's take 15 minutes, 19 five after five. Okay, thank you all.
20 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 21 off the record at 4:48 p.m.)
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