ML19268A189

Transcript: October 31, 2017 - NRC: Afternoon Session

ML19268A189
Person / Time
Issue date:	10/31/2017
From:	Haile Lindsay NRC/NMSS/DSFM/IOB
To:
Lindsay H
References
Download: ML19268A189 (100)

Text

>> We'd like to make sure everyone is here. So if you're not here, please raise your hand. Okay. Somebody's paying attention. Okay. Couple of reminders. When you're at the microphone these are directional microphones so if you don't hold it in front of you when you're talking it's hard to hear what's going on. Try to keep the microphone focused at your face. Speak clearly and state your name so we get a clean transcript. Trying to stay on time. We would like to limit the time of your -- all the questioning to a question and maybe one follow-up question after rather than turning it into a longer dialogue. We've got a lot of people from out of town that would like to have an opportunity to ask questions as well. This goes for everybody and even supervisors. One second to respond to something that the young man from Duke said. There are no bad questions, just the ones that I ask. Because when we're facilitating they tell us the best thing to do is to have somebody facilitate that really isn't an expert in the field because it keeps us from jumping and being part of the conversation. I'm you're guy. I don't know what you guys are talking about. We were going to mention something this morning and didn't. We have microphones here that you need to consider hot all the time. Or particulars of some policy work they're doing that's relevant. We don't want those things broadcast to

everybody so be aware of the microphones in the room. We don't need a hot mic incident like we see among our fearless leaders every once in a while.

Having said that, I would like to jump in because we did a good job of getting back on schedule before, now without having to get caught up we have some elbow room and I would like to start the session now. Where's our speaker? There you go.

>> Good afternoon, my name is Kristina Banovac project manager in materials branch in the division of spent fuel management at NRC. Session three chair for spent fuel storage renewals.

Thank you for your participation.

In this session we'll provide status updates for several topics, creating a sustainable framework. There has been increase in recent years and will continue to be an increase in the next several years in storage renewal applications for specific licenses and also for certificates of compliance or COCs for storage system design used by ISFSI general licensees.

Response to increase in work at NRC and also based on lessons learned from our storage renewal experience over the last several years several initiatives are underway for storage renewals. These include improving or developing regulatory guidance, developing NRC inspection procedures and developing delivery systems for inspection was canister based to dry

storage systems. We'll hear about developments on these initiatives from NRC and industry represents in the session today and also hear from one of our ISFSI licensees on recent operating experience from their ISFSI aging management program inspections.

After the four speakers finish their presentations we'll open it up to audience Q and A and as you heard, to give all audience participants an opportunity to ask questions today we'll limit it to the one question and I believe one follow up.

That way we'll get to all participants who may have a question and come back around to participants who may have multiple questions.

With that I'd like to introduce our first presenter Dr. John Wise senior materials engineer, responsible for evaluating applications for the storage and transportation of spent fuel and radioactive materials and development of guidance for spent fuel storage renewals. John has been with the NRC since 2010.

Before arriving at the NRC, he worked in the steel industry and consulting. Holds a bachelor of science degree from Michigan tech university and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University. John will be presenting on NUREG 2214 managing aging processes in storage or MAPS reports.

Please welcome John Wise.

>> Thank you, Chris. As Chris said I'm here today to talk about this beauty. I'm holding up NUREG 2214, draft report for comment.

Next slide, please. For those of you waiting for this document, and it's been about a year since we presented this to our ACRS committee for review, there's your ML number. You can go online now and pull it up. It was issued last Tuesday for public comment and SRM is October 24th. We decided it's a good size document. Let's give you 60 days to review and have a public meeting in December. It will be in the first half of December.

So we'll get a chance -- today we're not going to get a chance to talk a lot about technical details. That public meeting we're going to have hours to talk about the technical details. So we look forward to that.

Next slide, please.

Why do we have this document? I'm assuming you know what's in it so that's going to be a slide or two from now. Let me give some motivation. You're looking at a slide that shows the applications for renewing storage licenses. Again, to date we've issued licenses for storage of spent nuclear fuel for 20 years after that. Those licenses can be renewed for periods up to 40 years. And so what you're looking at in that chart is all of the renewal applications that are scheduled to come in.

And those -- that can shift around a little bit because some applicants may wish to come in a little early and we're already getting that sense from at least one applicant.

But it gives you a sense of what we're facing. Here in 2017, currently evaluating the Trojan renewal license and TMI2 renewal license. And we're looking forward to a couple of years where -- little less, but then all of a sudden we have a lot happening. And in order to tackle that in an efficient manner, resources are limited. You heard about that this morning. We need something to make it easier. To clarify the staff recommendations in the area of what goes into a renewal application. That's really the point behind this document.

Next slide.

So we've already last year, Chris led to team to issue a new standard review plan. This set up the expectation of what goes in a renewal application and how we're to review such applications.

And so that's our standard review plan. That's the step by step checklist the staff goes through when they evaluate an application for renewing a storage license.

So what is this 2214. It's a technical document. Think of it as a companion document. For example, the standard review plan says that our expectations are that applicants will identify the aging mechanism that could potentially challenge a

function of these storage systems.

Well, in the MAPS report we actually identify those aging mechanisms and provide a technical basis for why we feel those are credible aging mechanisms. Another example, standard review plan lays out what is expected as far as aging management programs, all the elements that go into an effective aging management program. And 1927 did provide a couple example programs for people to see. In the MAPS report we take that one further and take the aging management example programs in 1927 and expand those to more or less cover most of the components we need to worry about.

So again, MAPS report, technical document that complements our standard review plan. Marlone will be talking about the inspection manual in a bit. And those NRC documents in combination of the industry documents such as 1403 and the ASME code work, these are the documents that are going to let us efficiently evaluate the large number of applications that are coming our way.

Next slide.

For those of you that remember what we presented to ACRS a year as we almost went without this -- what we did was -- what this document does is it assesses all the major storage systems out there. Tabulates what the components are and for each of those components, what are the aging mechanisms that we're

concerned about that may have to be addressed through an aging management program.

So in the document we provided to our ACRS community a year ago we did that exercise fore about five storage systems. And in this document we expanded that with another five or six systems to essentially take care of almost all of those applications that you saw in that bar chart I showed a couple slides ago.

And in the meantime we took the time to just do some refining of the technical bases behind why we're suggesting certain aging mechanisms are credible. And a little bit additional guidance on time limited aging analyses because everyone wants to no what that means and a few revisions to our example aging management program.

So now we're going to -- for those who aren't very familiar with this document, I'll spend a moment really explaining how this works. Again, what you're seeing is a renewal application process as outlined in our standard review plan 1927. How does MAPS fit in? You start by scoping, which is what components do you need to worry about, which essentially is important to safety components.

And in our MAPS report we actually did what we could to scope the various important safety components of all those major system designs. Second part of the review of what goes in a

renewal application is performing an aging management review which is for each one ever those components, what environment is it in, what material is it made out of, and given that information, which aging mechanisms could challenge the capability of that component to fulfill its function.

And so the MAPS report does just that. So chapters 3 for those of you that are really interested in the gritty details of corrosion mechanisms, it's a very nice literature review that identifies first of all, what we think an aging mechanism is credible but also a discussion of why that's so.

So a ton of references and I would really welcome input on if you think we can improve on those technical bases. We did a lot of work as you can imagine, it was a great deal of work, we were helped by the center for nuclear waste regulatory analysis at southwest research institute. We had our own materials people reviewing that to come up with this literature review. Hey, this is going to be the basis -- essentially what this does is lays out our technical position. So if you see something in here that's questionable, you disagree with the conclusion we came to or maybe we ignored some data we should have considered, now is the time to bring that information forward, because, again, think of this as the staff's bible we're going to be holding as you review all these renewal applications.

Finally, once those aging important aging mechanisms or

credible aging mechanisms are identified, either using an analysis to essentially explain why that aging mechanism won't challenge a safety function or you actually have to do an inspection. That's where the aging management programs come into play. The MAPS report gives a list of examples, aging management programs, that we feel are generically applicable to address all of those aging effects we evaluate earlier in the report. Again, those are presented as examples.

And so we have to keep in mind that this isn't a regulatory -- this isn't -- these are recommendations. This is an example of an acceptable approach for evaluating systems for a renewal application.

Alternatives are welcome. Next slide.

As I said before, this is just an expansion of the system --

of the report that was present to our ACRS committee last year.

Initially we did this exercise of evaluating the aging mechanisms for those storage systems that you see there. New homes through the TN systems. Expanded that had to include the NAC systems as well as the remaining, again, remaining systems that really get us through those large number of applications that you saw on that bar chart earlier.

Next slide.

Very, very quickly, how would somebody use this report?

Well, if you're creating your renewal application the first step

is do a scoping process. You go to your safety analysis report in this example here's a little excerpt from the publicly available high storm safety analysis report that shows that, for example, the outer shell of their cask and the fact that it's exposed to an outdoor environment, and then you go to the MAPS report, the MAPS report says okay if you have a steel component exposed to the outdoors, what are the aging mechanisms that are credible. And that table I have there is just kind of a snippet of what's the more detailed tables in this report.

And this example here shows in this case for outdoor air, it's the usual corrosion mechanisms you would expect of steel exposed to outdoor -- the outdoor environment. In this case, general corrosion and pitting. It says now that we've evaluated those mechanisms that could credibly challenge a function if left unchecked, if never addressed or inspected, what do we do about that? That's where that last column comes in, the recommended aging management approach. In this case it's pointing to the example external surfaces aging management program Chapter 6 in this report. If you go to the next slide, if we go to that program, this is an example of one approach the staff finds to be acceptable to address the aging of steel components exposed to the outdoors. And what we're looking at are essentially a walk down program, dt3 visual inspection program of all accessible surfaces at least once every five

years looking for evidence of corrosion. If you see something, it goes to your corrective action program.

And again, just an example.

What we tried to do here is, again, circling back, we tried to provide the technical basis behind why we think specific aging mechanisms are important.

So renewal applicants have a clear understanding of our position. And we provide examples of aging management programs to address those mechanisms. But, again, similar to what happens on the reactor side, they have a similar report. It's referred to as a Gal report in an earlier presentation.

Applicants come in and say we're going to adopt that example program, it works for us, end of story. Other applicants say that program doesn't work for us, we're going to suggest an alternative. That's fine.

These are examples.

Next slide. The next step is to get your comments so that this report is as high as quality as we can get it, because, again, think of this as know that this is going to be in front of all the technical reviewers as they look at your application in the next five years or so.

So what we want are public comments. Everything from the detailed technical comments to generic comments like is there some way this could -- is this missing something or is it going

to be organized in a way that allows you to better use it.

We're going to schedule a public meeting. I'm hoping to solidify that in the next couple days first half of December and ultimately publish in the spring.

Thank you.

(Applause)

>> Thank you, John. Our next presenter is Mr. Marlone Davis, senior safety inspector in the division of spent fuel management at the NRC. And he has over 18 years of nuclear industry experience. Marlone joined NRC in 2003 as reactor engineer and he worked as an inspector in region one and Region IV. He was a resident inspector at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland and served as senior resident inspector at Waterford steam in Louisiana. Prior to NRC he worked as an engineer for Sargent & Lundy at several nuclear power plants. He holds a bachelor of science degree in nuclear engineering with specialization in waste management and environmental restoration everybody Kansas state university. Marlone will be present be aging management temporary instruction and please welcome Marlone Davis. (Applause).

>> Good afternoon. Just following lunch so I got you guys where I want you.

(Laughter)

Okay. You can go ahead, next slide.

So a quick agenda. Want to do a quick introduction describes the purpose of the background for the TI and IP development and the status update of the IP.

Selection criteria that we're going to develop or has developed and the path forward, next step and summary of all those. Okay. Next slide.

The purpose of this presentation is to provide an informative overview of the status of the aging management implementation, temporary instruction, and the selection criteria for eligible sites. We're going to define what eligible sites are in this presentation.

I always like to define success for the presentation and that's to have good interaction and dialogue about the TI implementation. The background. We wanted to do this development of the inspection procedure which is really our ultimate goal in two phases. So we first -- we said how can we do this.

And we looked at how the reactor side did their license renewal so we wanted to mimic closely what the reactor side was doing similar to what MAPS, GAL, so what the reactor side did was they first implemented a temporary instruction to help them develop their procedure and I said that's a good idea.

So, again, this temporary instruction is for -- to gather information to help us develop our inspection procedure. Which

is really Phase I of our ultimate thing we want to do.

Generally, again, TI's are only 12 to 24 months. And again, are used one time. We expect to have two to three inspectors with us when we're doing this temporary instructions and we're going try to plan them during the planned ISFSI inspections. If you have a scheduled ISFSI inspection and at your eligible site that's when we're going to come implement this TI. Again, we did not want to cycle the licensees and when we came out to do this inspection, we want to schedule it when they were doing their loading campaign so it wouldn't be a burden on the licensee.

Next slide, please.

So the contents of the TI, we discussed this, previous two REG CONs. Again, it was interesting, when I was preparing my slides, Kristina Banovac asked some of them are bold -- did you mean for this? I said yeah, because we want to put emphasis on the 10 -- some of the 10 program elements that make up the aging management program and scoping is going to be very important.

So if you have a properly scoped program, you'll be able to identify and what components are important to safety and ones that actually may experience aging effects.

And then you want to be able to detect those aging effects and have a great acceptance criteria. And then have a good corrective action program. So if you identify based on your

acceptance criteria and your corrective action program to be able to mitigate if you identify issues will be great. Then administrative controls. Because we know that when you start to do these visual inspections initially that's what you probably will be doing, that you may want to extend your period of doing inspections on these casks. So your administrative controls and having that in place, for example, 7248, to extend that technical justification to extend past that period and you'll have the MAPS report to also help with that.

And then operating experience is going to be very important.

What other sites are identifying, that will be something that people can learn from. And, again, we want this to be a learning experience throughout this whole aging management practices.

Next slide, please.

So the update status on the TI. Again, repeat to incorporate the internal comments. Actually we have already incorporated the internal comments. And submitted the completed version TI to our program office.

So we're hoping it will be issued relatively soon within the next month or so.

Next slide.

What's the timeline? There's been a lot of discussion on when we were going to implement the aging management program.

We have information in our standard review plan to develop the aging management program itself and the implementing procedures.

So I kind of developed this timeline for this and will walk you through the steps how we're going to do the stage process and ultimately come to our inspection procedure because we believe our inspection procedure will be best served with good information.

So again, you have the program, we go out, we take a look at it as part of the TI, we implement that TI, gather that information and then develop our inspection procedure.

Next slide.

So selection criteria for the TI. When developing the selection criteria for the staff reviewed the following. First, we wanted to establish what sites were applicable in the TI implementation and essentially if you have a renewed license rather than site-specific or CFC license, you're eligible.

Second, we wanted to select a site-specific general licensee who had a CFC renewed license, we wanted to also select prestandard review planned NUREG 1927, selected renewed license of CFC from each of the regions and different types of dry cask storage system designs.

We'll further talk about these.

When we initially started our aging management license renewal, we were in the development of our standard review plan.

So we had actually five sites that were available that we were still developing our standard review plan so there were five sites. I don't have the wet storage one on here. So we had the four that's mentioned here.

I have the region, which licensee it was, and what type of dry cask storage system it was.

Next slide.

Then we have the renewed site-specific which came under revision 0 I believe of 1927 which was Calvert Cliffs. Again, Calvert was a canister over pack and the other was a metal cask and I think they have seals also. Again, different regions, one and three. Next slide.

And then we have the renewed CFCs. Right now TN America is still -- CFC1004 is in the process of getting renewed. And again, that's going to affect 19 sites. Industry solutions, I believe that has been -- okay. Industry solutions, they're definitely on the list of selection activities. Which would affect three sites, VSC24 and again that's Region III and four.

So going back to our selection criteria, again, we wanted to look at prestandard review plan, general licensee, site-specific licensee, make sure we gather each one region and make sure we capture each of the designs if possible and they have to be renewed.

That will come into our selection criteria when we're

selecting the sites and then we will inform through our regional counterparts on when we're going to come out and conduct that TI.

Next slide.

Our next step and path forward. Hopefully the TI will be issued in 2017. Of this year in November. And again, November 2017 through May 2019 was put on there because that's the 24-month effectiveness of the TI because it can only go for 24 months unless we ask for an extension, and then develop inspection procedure shortly afterwards and then calendar year 2020, again, that's really almost three years out or I should say two and a half, have our inspection procedure developed and start our aging management program inspections. Next slide.

In summary, we wanted to conduct the TI inspection activities using the ten program elements. Use our selection criteria to identify sites to implement the TI, and then we want to develop an inspection procedure upon the completion of our temporary instruction.

That's all I have.

(Applause)

>> Thank you, Marlone. Our next presenter is Mr. Jack Desando.

He currently serves as manager for ISFSI implementation and support at Exelon. He has 37 years of combined experience in naval nuclear propulsion plants and commercial nuclear power

plants. Regarding his commercial nuclear career of 34 years, his experience includes engineering, maintenance, project management, nuclear fuel services and outage management. For the last nine years Jack has worked in manager level positions within Exelon. Jack holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering technology from the Pennsylvania state university. Jack will be presenting on ISFSI AMP date lessoned learned at the Calvert Cliffs ISFSI. Please welcome Jack Desando.

(Applause)

>> We are. Okay. You can still say that after Saturday, that's -- I'm still getting over that loss on Saturday.

I'm not going to smile much. I hope you don't mind.

So my presentation is going to be a little different. We've talked a little bit about so far in this session, a little bit about what's being done to provide us with us being licensees, with some guidance on license renewal and specifically the aging management program that goes along with the application for an extended operating license for dry cask storage.

So my presentation is going to really focus on the practical application of that guidance. And I'm so relieved to know that our aging management program basis document pretty much follows what's in the MAPS and also what's in the TI in the inspection program. So I'm glad to hear that.

So let's move on to the first slide. I want to just take a minute and give you all just a brief overview of our history at Calvert Cliffs with regards to the ISFSI facility there.

So in 1992, we be began dry cask storage operations under a 20-year site-specific ISFSI license special nuclear material tack 2505 is the number. And then in 1993 we completed our first loading and we happened to be using the new homes system or dry cask storage system there and we started with loading the 24 pop a type DSC's.

In 2001 we came to our first ISFSI expansion milestone. We expanded our facility by 24HSMs and those particular HSMs weren't modular, they were poured in place. In 2005 we adopted license amendment 6 and 7 to approve the use of new homes 32 POPA or 32pDSCs. In 2010 we adopted license amendment nine which was approved allowing the use of what we call 32P plus.

Now, that was not a change in design of the canister, the canister was the same. It just allowed us to load, well really to increase the burnup limit from 47,000 to 52,000 megawatt days per MTU and also allowed us to increase the delta t across the HSM from 60 to 64 degrees.

That takes us to a more recent history in 2010. We applied for license renewal and turned in our license renewal application and I believe your slide reflected that we were one of the first in 2010 to do so. 2012 our initial 20-year license

expired in 2012 but we were allowed to continue to operate the ISFSI because we had an active license renewal application in process.

Also in 2012 as part of the license renewal application and some requests for additional information, we did some material condition inspections again in support of those license renewal requests for additional information.

Our aging management program really benefitted a lot from what we learned in 2012. In fact what we did in 2012 really became the sort of a baseline for our inspections going forward.

So that was a very significant event for us in 2012.

Then in 2013 we continued to expand the facility, added 24 this time prefabricated HSN's in 2014 we did Z our 40-year renewed operating license. That's going to be valid through 2052 if you do the math. And then in 2016 adopted license amendment 11 which was approved for allowing the use of new homes 32PHB or high burnup DSCs. That takes us to 2017 and this past year was five years since our renewed license. And that brought us into our aging management program inspections for this year. So we did our first set of inspections on HSNs and DSC's, these are the five-year frequency inspections. Again, using 2012 as a baseline.

Next slide.

So in summary, our current status, we have -- our pad is big

enough to allow for 132 HSNs. Currently we have 48 loaded with 24 P DSCs, 30 loaded with 32 PDSCs, and 7 Hsm's loaded with the 32 PH PDSCs, so we have a total of 85hsm's loaded. That equates to a total of 2336 fuel assemblies in dry storage at Calvert Cliffs.

So on October 23rd, big day for us, 2014, we got the approval to continue operation of our dry cask storage facility in Maryland and that renewed license came with conditions that required periodic inspections of casks and associated storage components to ensure the potential aging effects are promptly and effectively managed.

Next slide.

So our aging management program attributes. We have an aging management program basis document you see it listed there as AMBD ISFSI. That's ISFSI aging management program basis document. We used the NUREG 1927 structure as we built that basis document using that standard structure which is also some of the structure that's in the temporary instruction for inspections.

So we used that to build our basis document. And scoping was critical. As was said earlier, and in scope for these inspections we have our dry shielded canisters inspecting external surfaces, have that aging management program, we have our aging management program horizontal storage modules. We'll

talk about those since these are really the five-year frequency inspections that I'm here to provide an update on. We also do inspections on our transfer cask, we have an aging management program for that. We also have an aging management program for our transfer cask lifting yoke and cast support platform that sits in the spent fuel pool in the cask loading area and then have an aging management program for high burnup fuel.

Next slide.

So before we talk been the DSC's and HSMs, the transfer cask aging management program again, we count on VT1 examinations there done in accordance with ASME Section 11. Those are done annually and of course we have access to the transfer casks so we can do that between campaigns on an annual basis.

We also do PT examinations of the trunnions on those and those pt's not only include the trunnion itself but two inches as it transitions. So we do pt's on that and again, and that's again an annual inspection.

And we do those inspections to verify that we have no loss of material due to corrosion, no cracking or material due to stress or strain on that equipment.

The next item is the transfer cask lifting yoke aging management program. We do some NDE inspections, ASME 3, ANSI n14.6. We also do magnetic tests under those same requirements and again we're looking that we have no loss of material or

cracking due to stress or strain. Cast support program is different if that we don't have direct access to that platform.

It sits in our spent fuel pool. So we manage that using chemistry control. Monitoring chemistry in the spent fuel pool and maintaining chloride concentrations in the spent fuel pool.

In a way to ensure that we're not creating favorable conditions for stress, corrosion or pitting and we do obviously that on a monthly basis.

And then high burnup fuel aging management program that we're taking currently we're taking credit for the TM32 research project cask at north Anna. So that takes us to the inspections we did this year the five-year frequency inspection and the first component is the over pack or horizontal storage module.

And the program really its purpose is to manage aging effects. That's what we're doing is we're trying to identify as early as possible if we have conditions that would be favorable for effects. Those type of effects. And we're managing those appropriately.

The scope of the program includes all the concrete and structural steel components including HSM walls and roof and floor slab, HSM access door. The support structure inside the HSM, the heat shields, vents, and all anchorages within the HSM.

All the structural connections including anchor bolts, cast in place bolts, through bolts, mounting hardware, so we're trying

to be as thorough as possible in the scope of our inspection of the HSM. Our inspection criteria is actually taken from the American concrete substitute standard 3 49, tack three, Romeo dash 02. That particular code is -- has a three tier acceptance criteria for inspections.

And the inspections are not just visual. We also do some NDE inspections of HSM. We do things like ground penetrating radar inspections and also do -- it just escaped me -- the ultrasonic, what's the device used, you set it up on both sides of a crack in concrete and it actually is used to determine the depth?

No, this is -- this is a -- ultrasonic pulse velocity testing. Thank you.

Ultrasonic -- I knew -- I'd get it sooner or later.

Ultrasonic pulse velocity testing. And you set up the probes on both sides of a crack in the concrete and it essentially looks at that crack and maps it out for you, tells you the thickness and depth of the crack and you can really characterize any type of cracking in concrete. So we do NDE as well as visual inspections that have equipment and we -- the results of those inspections both visual and NDE are taken to ACI3 493 r tag 02 and look at the 3 tier inspection criteria there and we decide where we're at.

I'm going to ruin the end of the story here, but I will tell you that everything we've found is within tier one criteria,

which requires no further action until the next inspection. So it was all favorable results. Tier.

Again, what we do is perform visual inspections of accessible exterior surfaces of HSMs. We do that annually so this is sort of an all encompassing walk down ever of the ISFSI by our own civil engineers site and they take photographs and catalog any of their findings and anything that needs to be put into the corrective action program is put into the corrective action program attachment but these are annual walk downs and inspections done in house by our civil engineering group.

And then based on the findings from that inspection, we set up a five-year inspection on five targeted HSMs. So based on what we find in the annual inspection, we pick five HSMs that we're concerned about and bring a contractor in and they do a more thorough evaluation of those five HSMs, again, visual inspections and NDE that I talked about earlier.

So that's great for what you can see. All the visible parts of the external parts of the HSM. But there are parts that you can't see. There's below grade concrete that has to be evaluated.

So what we did at Calvert Cliffs is we drilled three wells around the ISFSI facility, and we sampled water from those wells to ensure that we don't have an aggressive environment there for

-- that would promote concrete degradation.

So we sampled that and do that as part of our five-year inspection program. Next slide.

As I said earlier, I kind of let the cat out of the bag early but the HSM inspection results both interior and exterior surfaces were considered to be acceptable so well within the Tier 1 ACI criteria. No -- and really the important thing is we have baseline data so we went back and compared what we say to what we saw in 2012 and no noteworthy changes from the conditions we saw in 2012. No changes in those conditions.

And then the groundwater samples we took from the three locations met the established acceptance criteria. The DSC's aging management program, again, we do the internal as we go into the HSM and do an external surface exam of the DSC using remote equipment. We also take samples from the surface of the DSC. So the scope of the program is the DSC shell including the bottom shield plug, DSC cover plates top and bottom and DSC ram on the bottom of the DSC.

We do visual exams, again using a remote digital camera. Vt1 if prior examination would require a closer inspection. We would do that.

And the acceptance criteria is just that indications of corrosion or heavy pitting corrosion are absent and discoloration or stains identified in baseline inspections have not increased in extent, new areas of discoloration or staining

have not appeared since prior inspection, and cracks are absent within the material. Next slide.

So we do this visual inspection of DSCs. For this year, we happened to be able to select the same two DSCs and the same two HSMs that were inspected in 2012. HSM 15, DSC six I believe which is in HSM 15, that was selected in 2012 because it was our lead canister. And then HSM one had DSC 11 in it. That was selected because it was the coldest canister we have stored on the pad. You can see 4.2 kilowatts there. So this year we went and reperformed our calculation for lead canister because obviously that can change over time.

So we reperformed that calculation. We had one DSC that came very close to becoming a part of the scope our inspection. But we looked closely at it and thought about adding a third canister and it just didn't really warrant based on what our findings were from the calculations. So we stuck with the two DSCs and two HSMs that were inspected in 2012. We went and did the remote visual inspections as I said. And we collected surface samples and used the salt smart and the scotch bright collection packets to collect the -- to sample the surfaces and any material that is on those surfaces and had those analyzed by Sandia Laboratory.

Next slide.

So the DSC inspection results, DSC accessible surfaces were

considered to be acceptable using the acceptance criteria so there were no evidences of pitting or stress corrosion. No cracking was observed. No notable changes in conditions seen since 2012 so again, we had that in our favor that we're looking at the same canisters we looked at in 2012 so we had good baseline data to compare to. And then as we took those samples, chloride concentrations were less than 50 milligrams per square meter which remain below the threshold of 100 milligrams per square meter. So no real significant or notable increase in chloride concentration identified in 2017 versus 2012.

In conclusion, we feel like our aging management program is hitting the mark. We are -- I think we're -- we have a program in place that will help us to identify any aging effects right now we have good baseline data. We've completed our second inspection, and I really -- there wasn't much to take away from that to go back exchange the age management basis document.

It's a learning program. So we have the opportunity to go in and modify that based on intentional and external operating experience. Every time we do one of these inspections we go back and revisit that aging document and make sure we're doing all the right things in the right way. That age being management basis document also is set up with predetermined I'll call them off ramp or toll gates so as we get to a certain point if we feel we're at a point where we may not need to do a

certain inspection every five years then we'll have the opportunity to address that.

So we have those already preprogrammed into the aging management basis document to revisit that.

So that's all I have for my presentation today. I hope you found that to be informative.

(Applause).

>> Thank you, Jack. Our last presenter is Dr. Jeremy Renshaw, program manager for the used fuel high level waste group at Electric Power Research Institute. He manages R&D efforts focusing on all aspects of the back he said of the fuel cycle including used fuel, wet and dry storage, transportation, and dispositioning. These activities include aging be management of dry cask storage systems, dry cask inspection development, understanding high burp cladding performance and activities related to interim and final storage options. He holds a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering, masters in systems engineering and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering all from Iowa State University. He will be presenting on the development of dry cask storage inspection and delivery systems and please help me welcome Jeremy Renshaw.

(Applause)

>> I have a hard time standing still so I have the travel microphone. Unlike Jack I'm from Iowa state. So I am beaming

ear to ear after the success our football team has had.

Normally I feel your pain, Jack, but not this week.

The reason I bring that up is because I'm sure many of you have had seemingly insurmountable challenges in your lives and professional careers like Iowa state did playing two top five ranked teams. People said it's impossible. You're not going to win, you're not going to be able to did that. One I'm going to tell you about with developing these inspection systems, we had many people tell us this problem is too hard, don't try, it's impossible, utility never make it there, it's a waste of time, a waste of effort.

So I'm glad my football team didn't believe that and all the people that worked on this project also didn't believe in that because I think we'll show you today this problem is certainly not impossible and we'll talk more about that.

So as everyone in this room knows, dry canister storage systems are going to be used for much longer than originally anticipated. So much longer than the original 20-year license being period. To be able to maintain that confidence that we have that we're maintaining public health and safety, we need to perform inspections.

We have over 2500 canisters in service today. So that means we have a fair number of canisters that will need to be inspecting over the next number of years. We've heard about how

the inspections need to be performed, what inspections have been performed, so what I'll talk about is a little bit about the technologies we're developing top do the next set of inspections to make them faster, better, safer, cheaper.

So we'll go to the next slide. Before I go too far one thing I have to say is that this is not just an EPRI project, this is an industry project where we have a number of collaborators we're working with. You see our project structure here on the bottom we he show collaborations. We have collaborations all across the industry from the utilities to vendors, national labs, DOE, universities, and a lot of this is organized through our extended storage collaboration program. So certainly everything I'm talking about today would not be possible without all of those people involved, many of which are here in this room today have supported us in this effort. So we're very thankful for that.

So in addition to collaboration, we've identified a number of other areas that are important to be able to address the inspection issue. One you can see here is developing mock-ups, we have to be able to show that we can put flaws in specific mock-ups going and find those flaws to be able to have certainty or confidence that when we go to do a real inspection, that we're not fooling ourselves, that we really have an understanding of what a flaw response looks like.

Next we have to have NDE techniques. Beyond that we also need tools to get us to where we need to go because we can have the best technology in the world, if we can't get it where it needs to be, it's completely useless. So all of these different aspects have to work together. We need the collaboration opportunities, mock-ups, we need NDE tools and delivery systems.

On the first topic, we developed a number of mock-ups at EPRI, we have eight QA style with a number of very specific flawed geometries, locations in and around welds of different depths and orientation. These are available for industry use and we've had an um inform groups come in or borrowed these to these to test and away feel provides a lost value. We've also been fortunate to be given a number of mock-ups from Sandia where they've provided them and we've worked with other labs to I am implant flus PWR flaws. You can see one every those at the bottom, it's a full diameter partial length mock-up that has actual welds that were done by rain, one of the companies that does a lot of the welding for the canisters. We tried to make these as similar as possible to actual fields conditions so when we do our inspections, again, we're not artificially stacking the deck to make it so it's easy to do. We're trying to make it realistic.

Next slide.

So some of the challenges we have in performing these

inspections, some of the reasons why people said this is impossible, you shouldn't try, is because it is a difficult challenge. High temperature environment. High radiation.

Confined entry, sometimes multiple 90-degree vents get from where you are to where you need to be. It's not easy. Some of the things we found through the process of doing these tests is maybe it's not as challenging as we originally thought. Some of the temperatures aren't quite as high as we thought. Some of the radiation levels aren't as high as we thought. In terms of -- sometimes that has become more challenging than we originally thought. So that's why robotics has been important.

We have a couple of robots up here I'm not going to pass them around because these are the actual robots we're going to do inspections with. I don't want them to get broken or damaged or anything else.

Certainly we'll leave them up here if people want to see, feel, touch them afterwards.

They are 3-D printed robots. If robots weren't cool up in 3 D printed robots are very cool. We need these specialized delivery systems to get into canisters to get to where we need to go. We'll show a couple videos of these robots in action here in just a minute. But I did want to tease you with that because at the end of the day, we need to combine these systems together with our NDE tools to perform very high quality

inspections of canisters.

Next slide.

So when we started this project three years ago we put together a table like of this the different in evidence technologies we have and what are some of the different high-level needs of dry storage canisters like temperature resistance, radiation resistance, ability to find stress corrosion cracking, how long it would take to develop a system.

What you can see here, green is good, blue is good, yellow not so good, red is bad.

There wasn't anything that was really great. So in the past three years, we and other in industry have been developing a lot of tools and technologies and I thought I would have a clicker.

If you could click forward maybe six times. This is showing some of the updates in those areas that have happened over the last three years.

So the bottom line ... one more ... bottom line is it looks a lot better today. That last one, I should point out that we're not saying the visual is quite sensitive enough to be fully confident. We can find all -- one of the things that has developed is going from a few years ago where most of our cameras were standard definition, to now high definition and very soon we're going to be having 4 k inspection cameras. So going from a standard definition to 4 k is about a 30 times

resolution improvement. So we're much, much more sensitive than we used to be.

And you can see also on the far right, make sure I get me directions right, far right some of these technologies are ready to go today. So we can do inspections, as Jack mentioned, not just some of those inspections but other inspections are available to us today as well.

Next slide.

How do we do this? At the start we said industry and vendors have a lot of very specialized tools. Won't do want to go recreate that. We want to use what they have and not reinvent the wheel. So we split up the division of work to where the vendors played to their strengths with some of the visual inspection technologies, ultrasonic technologies, and we at EPRI looked at some of the other technologies that were rapidly developing.

Things like current arrays. Instead of doing a small point measurement we could do accurate measurements over much larger area. We also looked at guided waves to be able to do an ultrasonic inspection remotely without needing direct physical access to the point being inspected.

And third we looked at acoustic as a monitoring technology.

Once we've done an inspection, maybe we can go and install a monitoring system to where any degradation occurs we'll be able

to detect it and potentially reduce or eliminate the need for inspections because we're monitoring. So we have real time data.

So that's kind of how we split up the division of labor. And I'm happy to report on both sides we've made a lot of progress.

We'll talk about it today, but my shameless plug for escape here in two weeks, we'll be talking a lot more in two weeks, not just EPRI but a lot of other technology developers will be there talking about their advancements on each of these different areas.

Next slide.

On the current side I show a little bit of data to give you a sense of what we're looking at here. This is one of our mock-up plates where we put different flaws in. There's some cracks and some pitting as well. In a few seconds we can perform an inspection of a relatively large area, what you're seeing is this image is maybe eight inches by 14 or 15 inches. And not only can we get an indication of the flaws, but also qualitative understanding of their severity. So in this case we had two cracks, you can see they show up in all four of our eddy current signals and we have some very small pitting on the surface of our mock-ups. You can see that shows up really only on the two left images which are our sensitive channels on the two right we filter those out.

So right away we get a very good sense of how severe are the different flaws.

Next slide.

We've also done a fair a work in guided wave in the center of time I won't go too much into this other than to say we can inspect areas we don't have direct access to. There's an EPRI report at the bottom, that report is freely available to the public. We have a number of reports in this area and they're all freely available to the public so anyone can download those and see what we're working on in this area.

Next slide.

Next the robotic development. We started about three years ago and we set a goal of being able to do an inspection in about five years. So two years from now. And through the interactions with industry, with vendors and a number of other people I think we've moved this ball forward pretty quickly and today we've had five different field trials of varying complexity, continuously increasing the complexity. And we'll talk about those one by one. These are the robots we have developed so far. These aren't the fine. We're going to continue making them better as we go along.

Next slide.

The first field trial in collaboration with Ariva in South Carolina, we found this first design we had after a few months

of development was good but wasn't nearly good enough.

So this is a vacuum suction system uses a vacuum to clinic to the surface and drive around. We showed it did have some functionality but had a long way to go. So you can see some of the key lessons learned. I'm going to go through these pretty quick.

The second field trial was pal low Verde station. We worked both at the site and energy education center. And this was with a magnetic system that was on the over packs and using that to drive around and perform inspections of the canister. We inspected here with visual and eddy current. We also tested some other early on tools we were developing. We had identified some improvements to the robot design as well in relation to SME and other considerations.

We saw we were continuing to make progress but still have more work to do.

Next slide.

The next field trial was at the McGuire nuclear station which is outside of Charlotte where I'm based out of. We went there and this time on a slightly different system. This was also an NAC system like at Palo Verde, internal stand offs. We found the challenge we didn't anticipate was those internal standoffs, we could get caught with the our prototype we had about two years ago. We made some continued design improvements to

preclude this from happening again -- to the next slide. And then you can see in the bottom right here's our improved design which doesn't allow us to get stuck in those waves again and this fourth field trial was at main Yankee. And did some inspections of a greater than class c waste canister. So again, like I said, we're continuing to increase the complexity of the examinations we're doing. This is also very successful. We were able to take visual data, radiation data, evaluate some temperature monitoring devices we had developed as well as fake some surface samples of the canister and again the over pack.

That was also very valuable to us.

And then the fifth field trial, this was going to the Hatch nuclear power plant on yet a different style of over pack. This a hold tack design going in about a miniaturized robot because of the smaller space and again taking visual examination data and showing that we can go in and take temperature data, radiation data and other measurements. And one of the things you see here in the middle, we also developed miniaturized cleaning devices to go in and if we don't have direct visual access to the surface, if there are deposits or dust or something, we can clean those off and perform visual examination of those surfaces.

So in just a second we're going to show a video of the compilation of these five fields trials. EPRI is a nonprofit so

I apologize, our videos are not amazing quality and the voice over may be -- may leave something to be desired but we'll go ahead and start it.

(Video)

>> Robot development began in late 2014 with early prototype concepts. These are been modified and improved upon via field trials with industry participation and engagement to produce field deployable inspection robots. Field trials have been a part of this effort. The first field trial was for a vacuum suction robot capable of cleaning and inspecting a canister, three the field trial several design improvements were identified. Second field trial was at the Palo Verde station and robot design using magnetic wheels to traverse along the magnetic liner of the over pack including passing through multiple 90-degree vents. This robot could enter the cask successfully and access the entire out are shell between the canister and the over pack.

>> We don't actually go 90 miles an hour.

>> -- and the over pack on the lower portion. Industry engagement at this field trial identified several enhancements for the system. The next field trial was at the McGuire station. This video those the work performed associated with the inspection efforts. In this case the over pack lid was

removed to help with access for taking photos and videos of the robot in action. This field trial identified inspection challenges related to internal stand off such as cable issues and catch points. Additional improvements were implemented in the robotic design to minimize or eliminate these challenges.

This field trial was a key step towards preparing for future field implementation.

Fourth field trial was an inspection conducted on a canister loaded with greater than class c radioactive waste in Maine at the Maine Yankee spent fuel storage installation. This field trial performed an evaluation of the surface condition of a canister that had been in service for over 14 years. During the field trial, several other measurements were performed including canister surface temperature measurements, radiation dose measurements along and around the canister, as well as surface samplings of canister and shell regions.

Since that time a fifth field trial was conducted to assess enhanced surface cleaning techniques, improved temperature measurement methods, and advanced 3 D localization technologies.

The next step of the project is to deploy a robotic inspection system on canister loaded with nuclear fuel in the next one to two years.

>> So that shows a little bit more about some of the work we've done to date. We also want to show a little bit about some of the things we're working on today.

So that mostly focused on vertical canisters. Obviously we know there are a number of horizontal canisters as well. This will show a little bit of work we're doing, the hot off the presses because this is brand new. (Video)

>> You see here we have multi robot system, a mother ship and then a deployable robot where we can go in and deploy on a canister. This is a mock-up at EPRI so we can go in and come back out. That was for one style of over pack. For a different style where we can come in through the top, we can push out the back and then have a robot that can transition over 90-degree turns as you see here so then in that way we can access the entire surface of the canister to perform inspections.

Regardless of the kind of over pack we have, whether we have to come in through the bottom vents or top vents.

Next slide.

The bottom line is we made a lot of progress. We're not to the finish line yet. But we feel like we're making very good progress. And part of this really is due to the attitude of the industry. I won't embarrass the person I talked with earlier today, but I talked with somebody from industry and he told me that let us know what we can do to help. We'll do anything we

can to help this project be successful. With that kind of attitude from our industry participants that's what's helped us get to the point where we are now. So I won't read all the words on this slide. Basically we've been developing collaborations, they've been very helpful to us, the mock-ups we've developed have been used broadly both within EPRI swell in the industry. We have a number of tools in development for available today to do inspections. And finally our robotic systems are continuing to advance and improve to be able to provide inspection options for dry storage canisters. And the bottom line is we have a number of reports here, I mentioned the first one there if we look at the bottom, the 823 4 report. A second 1 came out that ends in 10607 that's an industry progress report where we had about 22 different organizations and the world that provided input on what are they doing to address dry storage canister inspection.

And the final one is up coming report, the 10621, that will be out later next month describing the in detail what is EPRI doing development.

So with that, I'll stop talking.

(Applause)

>> Well, that was worth the wait. Do we have questions? Come on. I've got a question and I don't even know what I'm talking about.

>> B-r-i-a-n g-u-t-h-e-r-m-a-n. Jack, how far below the ISFSI pad is your water table?

>> Question I don't have an answer to. So I don't know much about the wells. In fact, so I can get more information on those. And [inaudible] --

>> Let's go to the phones.

>> Please press star one and record your name. One moment.

Our first question from Donna Gillmore.

>> Hi, this is Donna Gilmore. And the [indiscernible]

presentation there was a mention of inspecting for cracks. My understanding is that you can't inspect for cracks yet. So could you clarify what technology is used to find cracks?

>> Yeah. Absolutely. We did inspect for cracking as well as pitting and we used pan and tilt type camera with a resolution that meets ASME Section 11 for BT3 inspections.

>> And what size cracks can that find?

>> Without going into the code, I cannot really answer that question adequately.

>> What -- if you find cracks, what do you do next?

>> Let's take one question at a time. I'll chime in for the first question.

Starting the ability to see cracks and again, this is the direction the ASME code group is going as well, is on visual inspections to identify those mechanisms considered precursor to

cracking. So what really looking at was for some indication of corrosion break down at the surface through a pit or a rust spot, even just minor rusting in an area of a we would requires some sort of follow up. But it's really visual inspections trying to find those precursor to cracking rather than a direct examination. Follow-up question about cracking. I don't know --

>> I can take a first stab at it. So I talked -- this is Jeremy Renshaw. I talked a little bit about some of the inspection technologies that we're developing both at EPRI and in the industry.

We're also looking at and working with companies that are developing repair and mitigation technologies. So those are strategies that we want to have in place, because if we were to find anything, we want to be ready with a tool or set of tools in our tool belt to be able to address it. Some of the things we're looking at are cold spray technologies, friction stir welding, we would overlays, actually the escape mitigation repair subcommittee is putting out a report soon on list of about 15 or 20 different technologies that they're evaluating for mitigation repair of dry storage canisters.

>> Does that mean in a pool or in a hot cell facility or how would you do that without one of those two options?

>> It would depend on a number of factors. Different

technologies are available for different scenarios. Some would be in situ repairs, some would be required to take back to the spent fuel pool. I don't believe we would need to go as far as hot cell but I know there's some people here in the audience today whose organizations are working on mobile hot cell facilities. So there are a number of organizations. And, if you look up the 3002010617 report that will have 156 pages on different organizations working on this issue. And the Oak Ridge work on a mobile hot cell is mentioned in that reported.

>> From regulatory you perspective if a crack was identified the expectation is there would need to be follow up examination to further characterize that crack, et cetera, to essentially determine whether or not you have something that needs to be repaired now or whether it can be monitored or whatnot. So those activities are essentially the normal follow up root cause activities we would expect to follow if any indication of a crack was found. And everything sort of follows from there.

The plant would come in with a proposed corrective action and NRC would be there to review it.

>> These have been great questions. In fact one of them is one that I had in the back of my mind. But we've got a bunch of or stuff we need to go through. Have you got one last question?

>> It's more of a comment. I would say until you have something better or in place, you at least need to keep the

pools, number one, you know, or some way to deal with this.

Right now we're sitting another San Onofre and we have no plan in place for cracks or leaks, and Southern California Edison wants to destroy the spent fuel pool when it's empty. So I'm very unclear as to how we would deal with leaks or severe cracks at this point.

>> I think if you go to that EPRI report you're going to have another hundred questions for us next year at the REG CON.

Let's move on.

>> I'm just looking for the answers.

>> So are we. Let's move on to the room. Is there somebody that's got a question or a comment? How about on the web?

Okay.

That'll keep us on schedule.

Is there anybody else on the phone?

>> Yes. Our next question is from Gary Headrick.

>> Gary Headrick, H-e-a-d-r-i-c-k. I was wanting to started first by saying how impressed I am by the number of people that go into the research and development of these tools. I'm very encouraged by all that. I appreciate all the people in those photos with the ones we don't see or hear about. What I'm really concerned about is we're continuing to use these thin canisters we know have cracking, 2500 of them and the number is growing.

And I'm concerned because seems like at some point we have to transfer these to a different kind of canister. One that doesn't leak. Even Chris saying the CEO of full tech, if you have a canister that is -- if you could find a leak, if you could repair it, the repair would create a site where further damage would be done. Temporary fixes where you would have to put it into another canister. Seemed like we're trying to do a Band-Aid approach and running out of time because other problems have been pointed to the NRC has found issues it the Cobert plant. As shown in San Onofre, there's canisters that have been in service for 14 years. If we only have 17 years before they start cracking, leaking into the environment, I'm concerned about all this representative being done right now won't be done in time so. It goes back to my other question about why don't we open welded canister that's been in service and be able to inspect from the inside and not have to rely on technologies that's not fully developed yet and get on to the other issue Donna was talking about, how are we going to solve these things and what do we need on site in order to address one of these issues? Because one of the really disturbing parts of living near this problem is talking to Tom Masano the VP of Edison, he's saying that there's no plausible way for criticality events to occur, which is not very comforting, because we know that's a possibility even the CEO of full tech acknowledges that. To say

it's not plausible is just not acceptable. We know that serious problems could be addressed and then in the recent Diablo canyon safety committee there's a quote from Peter Lamb saying -- he's offering a disclosure, he said 20 years ago I served as a

[indiscernible] licensing board that approved the demographic storage system here at Diablo canyon. At that time as far as stress and corrosion cracking was not known to the licensee, the licensing board, to full tech, so this is involving entirely new development. I would like --

>> This is getting a little rambly. You've asked three or four different questions here. Can we sum them up?

>> I would like to know how can we advance opening the welded canister, seems like from what I know that process is already underway and how can we address the problem when we find a crack.

>> Okay. These are the questions we're trying to explore here too. So just hang on and keep watching.

>> But if you don't have the answers, why are we continuing to use these canisters?

>> Let me chime in. This is John Wise --

>> It's never been approved

>> Gary, we can't answer if you're talking.

>> This is John Wise from NRC. The stress corrosion cracking of canisters has been a subject of study for several years now.

And I don't believe you've had a lot of interactions in the recent -- in the past, but we've done several public meetings, held several public meetings regarding the stress corrosion cracking issue. And ultimately it comes down to we acknowledge there could be a potential, just a potential, for cracking in extended storage periods. That's why we have recommendations of what we're expecting as far as inspections of those canisters.

We want to look at the exterior of the canisters, that's where the -- that's where the concern is, so you just [indiscernible]

opening of the canisters, but I'm not quite sure where that's going, but what we're looking for is inspections of canisters that are out there in the field. And if you looked at the one spot I had that shows all the renewal applications coming up, what we need to impress ton is you the fact that all those bars are associated with inspections of canisters for the most part, all those bars have to do with inspections of canisters that are coming up.

And, for example, the new home system which is that 2014, that's one system, but I think there are 19 people use the new home system. So those are 19 opportunities to inspect those canisters just under that system in a diverse environment all around the country.

And then you start marching through all those other bars in that chart. And that's what I mentioned before earlier this

morning. We're on the cusp of getting a lot of data. And we feel confident that in the initial term, the 20-year term, we don't have a concern for stress corrosion cracking. Again, that's been a subject of several of our public meetings in the past. So I don't want to rehash that.

But going forward, that's why we have our aging management program recommendations that detail the sampling, where to look, and that coupled with all the work that EPRI is doing, I think we're in a very good position and I think we're going to see a lot of inspection results coming in in the next few years.

That's where we're going to get our assurance and confirmation that cracking is not challenging the confinement function of these systems.

>> Thank you very much. We're going to move on here because we've got a busy afternoon and we don't want to shortchange the next set of presenters. So at this time I think we're going to go to break and I'd like to see everyone back here at what time?

3:30.

(Break)

>> Ready to get started with our last session? If you guys can take your seats, we would greatly appreciate it.

And we have live microphones. All right. I'm going to turn this over to Meraj Rahimi to conduct this last session.

>> Thank you. Good afternoon. All right. For those folks who are standing up in the back, please come on down. Have a seat.

All right. The session this afternoon, we're going to discuss research activities and for this session I decided actually to focus on two areas and one is high burnup fuel, the other one is BWR burnup credit. The first three presentation kind of is around high burnup fuel and the last one is by Drew is going to be on BWR burnup. So our first speaker is Ms. Sylvia Saltzstein. Sylvia has a master's degree in public health and environmental health sciences from the University of California at Berkeley, and she's a certified industrial hygienist. She's worked at Sandia National Laboratory for the last 23 years.

She's currently manager of the -- where her primary customer is Department of Energy, office of nuclear energy. Her department's main focus is to help develop the scientifically informed technical basis for understanding potential issues with the structural and material integrity of spent fuel and its containment during long term storage and subsequent transportation.

Sylvia? (Applause)

>> Thank for hanging out for the last session, especially on Halloween, which is my favorite day of the year. But there's no place I'd rather be than here, of course.

So I'm going to tell you -- give you an update on the DOE

ENUN also carry CORA collaborative a multi-modal transportation test. And so if we can go to the next slide.

So the purpose of this test is to quantify the strains and accelerations experienced during normal conditions of transport.

And in past this community has quantified the strains and accelerations seen on casks both normal conditions and accident conditions, but never on the actual fuel. And so that's what this whole project has been.

This is the fourth of a series of tests that have been led by Sandia National Laboratories to quantify the strengths and accelerations seen on spent nuclear fuel. We started with a cheap and simple test where we got a surrogate assembly, we're not using realized fuel here. There's no radioactive components to it.

And we put this on a shaker table at Sandia and loaded it with data from 700-mile truck trip and shook it just shook it up and down and got strains and accelerations just to get a ballpark number. And we brought it to the larger community here and everybody said yeah, that's sort of cool. Your numbers are really low, but, boy, that's not very realistic. So we took our shoestring budget and our next test was we put our assembly in its basket, we got some concrete blocks that were the same mass as a transportation cask and we drove it around Albuquerque over the worst roads we could find, dirt roads, railroad crossings

and our data ended up being pretty much exactly what the shake are table was.

So we can go to the next slide.

We brought it to the community and said that doesn't look very realistic and you really need to improve upon that again.

So we did that again and got a better shaker table and this went in six directions, and we did it all over again and lo and behold the numbers were about the same. And so that was six degrees of freedom and we were able to capture hertz below 3 hertz which we couldn't do before. Each was a little improvement upon the next. Next slide.

Again, the objective is to really validate the hypothesis that spent fuel are maintain its integrity during normal conditions of transport.

And so each time we iteratively got better and each time our data landed almost exactly at the same spot showing very, very low accelerations and very low strains during normal conditions of transport.

And then we got some wonderful international collaborators who donated some hardware and expertise and shared in the cost of this final test, possibly final test, that we've almost completed now. Next slide.

So basically what happened is that the Spaniards came to us and they said, hey, if you'll redo those tests we will lend you

a transportation canister and we have one coming right off our production line, and you guys can go test it using pretty much the same methods you've done before. And then we'll just put it into service.

So we said wow this is an opportunity we can't turn down. So we got some money from DOE and we started this test. It started out pretty small. We were going to drive it around Europe a little bit. They were more interested in truck transport. We were more interested in -- United States was more interested in rail transport because most likely if we do have a large transportation campaign we'll be doing about 90 percent that have over rail. We thought they were going to drive it around Europe a little bit, take it to Germany and maybe do some tests and send it back.

Well, it ended up getting more and more complicated, and we ended up with a wonderful test that I'll show you and a lot of you have seen, but we're almost done with it now.

So we ended up, in addition to getting the transportation cask, we got three surrogate assemblies, and along the ride got some wonderful collaboration from the Koreans who are here, Dr.

Suk are you still in the audience today? Raise your hand. Dr.

Choi? And none of the Spaniards are here. Is Steve Ross here from PNNL? In the back. Okay.

So we couldn't have done this what PNNL. We got three

assemblies. We have here the Sandia assembly, we have here the Spanish assembly, and here's the Korean assembly. You can see the sort of arrange colors are where we put the strain gauges.

The turquoise are the accelerometers. PNNL did extensive modeling to determine where we should put these on these assemblies. We were then able to incorporate the Korean assembly. I don't think my pointer -- and because they came a little later in the game, we weren't able to move a lot of these strain gauges and accelerometers around, but we got some strain gauges and accelerometers on their assembly here. But what's really unique about their assemblies, they were able to manufacturer a little cave into the hardware so we could actually see the movement of the hardware during this test.

PNNL also did great modeling and determining where in the basket would be the best place to put these assemblies. So this is the Sandia assembly. This is the ENC assembly and this is I think I actually can't read it from here, this is Sandia assembly, this is the Korean assembly and this is the Spanish assembly, I think.

We also were able to put accelerometers on top of the cask, on the cradle, and on the roll on, roll off vehicle or on the trail train car so that we could see how those strains and accelerations transferred up through the whole system and into the fuel.

This system we used two, 40-channel data acquisition systems to collect the information from the strain gauges and accelerometers. This had to be able to just push the on button and let it go unattended, which was a real technical challenge for all of us. We could not be with this system as it went over the ocean. We could not be with this system as it went on the train. So we literally had to turn it on and hope that everything worked. One of the biggest challenges of that was power.

How are we going to power the data acquisition system and all of this during this transport. Ended up needing 20 marine batteries to power this system. And you can see the 20 marine batteries over here, not showing up, there we go, not showing up. Anyway, the lower right-hand corner or the lower left-hand corner, 20 marine batteries, they were all housed in this box on the upper right. And on the very top of the box are our two data acquisition systems.

And we also, in order to connect all of the accelerometers we used one and a quarter mile of cabling to connect all of this.

And you can see on the lower right is the transportation system, the cask on the cradle and then right in front of that is our box that has the batteries and data acquisition system.

Next slide.

This is the route we took. The first things we did were cask

handling tests. We did that in the facility in Spain on the northern coast of Spain. We then -- after we did cask handling test which is basically taking at cask up with the crane, off the ground, and setting it back onto the ground, we did some wiggling of it sometimes, sometimes we set it down gently and sometimes hard just to see again what those accelerations and strains, the fuel would experience during those cask handling tests.

We did nine of those. Then we put it on a heavy hall truck and drove through the northern part of Spain in a loop. It then went back up to Spain and we loaded it onto a ship that sailed up to Belgium where it got loaded onto an ocean-going vessel across to Belgium. And we're collecting data this entire time during all these transports and during the transfer. So from the heavy haul truck to the ship from the ship to the rail we got all the data on those transfers.

It then went across the ocean from Belgium to Baltimore, once it got there it went on dedicated train to pueblo, Colorado, and in pueblo, Colorado, the American association of railroads has the transportation testing center where we did a whole series of controlled normal condition of transport testing under pretty extreme normal conditions of transport test.

After that was done, put it back on the commercial rail system, back to Baltimore, and then on a ship back to San Tander

and it's somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean right now on its way back to Spain. We stopped collecting data, well, our batteries ran out somewhere around St. Louis. And so that's when we stopped collecting data. But from the time it started in Spain in June until now we've been collecting data and we pulled the batteries off and the data acquisition in Baltimore and shipped it back to Sandia. So that's the test in a nutshell. You can go to the next --

So what we have here is 54 days of data collection. That amounted to eight terabytes of data. The next year we're going to spend looking at eight terabytes of data this. Last year has been really, really fun and very exciting. This next year ...

going through a lot of data.

So from, again we did one day of cask handling tests. Then the heavy haul truck through northern Spain was two days, about 250 miles of data. We then got on the ship to Baltimore which was considered a smaller ship, still a large ship, but -- not to Baltimore, to Belgium, that was four days, a little under a thousand miles. We got on an ocean going ship that stopped in Germany, France, UK and then made it across the ocean to Baltimore. That took 14 days, about 4,200 miles.

Then got on a dedicated rail, dedicated train, from Baltimore to pueblo, that took six days, and 2,000 miles. We then had nine days of very specific controlled tests at the

transportation testing center in Pueblo. And then it went on the commercial rail back to Baltimore. This was a real lessons learned to all of us. What took us six days to get out on a dedicated rail took 43 days to return, and so -- and it was about the same number of miles. So not the best -- not the best way to go. Good lessons learned for a big transportation campaign. And now it's again in the middle of the Atlantic on its way back.

These are quick summary of the tests. Basically they have all sorts of rail there that they have modified to make the train wobble in every possible way. And this is a series of tests I can talk to you guys about it later if you want more details. Next.

Okay. Even those these casks were huge and heavy, it's very precise dedicated work. This is Karisa Gray from Sandia connecting everything that goes into the casks. The 29 spaces that did not have our assemblies had concrete masses. So that we had the same exact weight in the -- in the cask.

Again, as these -- the whole system is very large. The actual work we do is very small and precise. This is her assembling the accelerometers of. This is the cask handling test where we picked it up and put it down nine times.

Sometimes hard, sometimes soft.

This is a picture of the cask system on the cradle with the

data acquisition and battery box attached. Next.

We put accelerometers on the cask cradle and also on whatever transportation platform it was on.

This is our system being loaded onto the 16 axle, 110-foot truck that drove through the northern and central part of Spain and you can see here, we're in Spain right there. My laser pointer isn't working. Go on.

And we came across many challenges. This is trying to go through a roundabout in Spain with our very long transportation system. We also had to go up some relatively steep grades, and so the truck that's attached to the back is actually to push, help push the whole system up some hills.

We then got back to the northern part of Spain and put it on the ship that would go along the coast of France and up to Belgium. And this is the picture of that ship.

We got to -- since we were the first ones on the ship, we were -- and also extremely heavy, we were on the bottom of the ship pretty much in the center.

This is going on to the ocean-going vessel, a larger ship.

And this is once we got into Baltimore, taking the transportation system off the ship, putting it onto the rail car.

In this picture, this is before we lashed on the cradle was welded to the rail car. And then we went across the country to

Pueblo, Colorado, and we'll give you just some very, very preliminary data just from that first heavy haul truck we've had to look at. Our first three tests when we looked at the maximum shocks, which were measured in micro strain, our first shaker table test which was just up and down, we had a maximum strain of 119 micro strain. The next one when we drove it around Albuquerque on the truck we got 143 was our highest. Then when we did the shaker table with all six degrees of freedom we had 160 to 3 01 micro strain and during our heavy haul truck test, we only -- this is the one in Spain, in the cask, in the basket, with the cradle, we only the got 97 microstrain. So we'll continue so see as we analyze more data how this all plays out.

What that shows us and you can go to the next slide, is we have a very large margin of safety. And if you look here, these points up here, that is the yield point for a radiated spent fuel. This is the yield point for unradiated spent fuel. So these are all around over 9,000 micro strains for the yield points. Our data is all the way down here. These are the three tests, the results of the three tests I showed you just now which was around 3 00 micro strain down to 100 micro strain.

What we found with the heavy haul truck is less than 100 micro strain. We have two orders of magnitude of save the here, which is lending some good data towards the hypothesis that spent fuel will not break during normal conditions of transport.

Again, next year will be spent analyzing all of this data.

We'll be talking about this in more depth at the EPRI meeting in two weeks and also we hope to show analysis of the tests at the technology -- at the transportation testing facility at the IMM conference in January in DC.

Thank you.

(Applause)

>> Thank you, Sylvia. Great presentation. So when hi put this session together my plan was Sylvia is going to present, actually quantify the loads that the fuel sees under normal condition of transport.

Then the next presentation that Ricardo is going to talk about at Oak Ridge with our research program how we took samples of high burnup fuel and applied the loads. We didn't know, we don't know what the range is from that experiment, but what we applied a range of the loads which Ricardo is going to present.

So next presentation by Ricardo Torres, Ricardo is a materials engineer in the Renewals and Materials Branch of the division of spent fuel management. Ricardo is a reviewer for part 7172, licensing actions and has supported multiple efforts on aging management of concrete structures, fuels, and neutron absorber materials in dry storage systems. Ricardo holds a Ph.D. in materials science from University of Florida and a bachelor and masters in polymer science from case western

reserve university. Prior to NRC he worked as a senior engineer at Savannah river national laboratory. Ricardo? (Applause).

>> Good afternoon. As Meraj mentioned there's two parts of the puzzle. One is getting the data for the strains that would be experienced during transport, and the other part is how to implement that for your specific design, transport design.

I'd like to before I get started, provide a couple of disclaimers. Throughout my presentation I'm going to be talking about two NUREG documents. One is NUREG CR document which was produced by Oak Ridge national laboratory we reviewed and provided comments. And the other one is a staff NUREG document, a technical report that we're drafting that will be issued out for public comment. So the NUREG CR from Oak Ridge is final and that's not out for public comment but the NUREG that the staff is producing which provides an assessment of those results from Oak Ridge, that will be available for public comment.

The other disclaimer I want to put out is throughout this presentation I'm going to be talking about example licensing certification approaches. These are not requirements. These are just like in the MAPS report we have example AMPs. We spent a got amount of time discussing potential approaches for the certification of high burnup fuel and came up with these other approaches are welcome.

Next slide, please.

So my presentation assumes that you know a little bit about high burnup fuel and the work that's been conducted just for the purposes of time expediency. NUREG CR7198 revision one which is that Oak Ridge contractor report, that is finalized, was issued last week. And you can find in this slide the ML number if you want to read the results.

That includes results on rigidity and fatigue life of high burnup fuel specifically HVR Robinson rods clad.

And in there we have data prior to and after orientation. So before it gets in the cask, and after it goes through the loading, drying process and cools down where reorientation can occur.

This is the first type of testing in which we're evaluating the mechanical performance of high burnup fuel as a composite system, as well as the PCI pellet clad bonding effects.

Reg 1 incorporates the results of Rev 0, which is out of the public domain. And it also incorporates the new results of Phase II which are for the reoriented cladding.

So in 7198 reg one you'll see two sets of data. One is static testing which is just pure bending of the rods, of high burnup fuel. You'll also see dynamic testing which is to assess the fatigue life for compliance with the vibration requirement of part 71.

So what we see in the results, this slide just provides a

snapshot of the static test results.

Where you have a bending moment versus rod curvature curve and you have a comparison between the composite fuel performance and the cladding only response. We used PNNL data for as I remember radiated non-reoriented cladding and compared that to figure out what's the increase in rigid city imparted by the fuel pellet. What we see based on this data isn't that up to bending moments of 35 Newton meters which corresponds to for the HB rods to 100g rod load, we see that there's very little deviation for the irradiated and reoriented cladding. But what's more important is that the response of the -- the composite response is still markedly higher, that slope of that curve, that rigidity is much higher than you have for the cladding only response. Next slide, please.

So this just reiterates some -- the conclusions that I just pointed out here, but we see that reorientation at least for sir C4 does not appear to change the fluctual rigidity of fuel rod response. Again, that separation in the flexual rigidity gives us confidence the use of cladding only mechanical properties continues to be adequate for all cladding alloys, not just for sirc 4. Now that I have 7198 out of the way, let's talk about the staff NUREG.

We have a separate document that will be issued out for public comment and that contains example licensing and

certification approaches for high burnup fuel and we have been working actually same staff that's working on this is also working on the storage SRPs, working on the MAPS report, so all of those pieces need to be talking together particularly when they're all going out for public comment around the same period of time.

The approaches depend on the condition of the fuel whether it's undamaged or damaged and the length of time that the fuel has been in dry storage.

And as I said, these are not requirements. An applicant can come in with alternative approaches.

Next slide, please.

For dry storage up to 20 years, what we have -- and the way this the nomenclature that I'm using here for those of you just to normalize things we're using the nomenclature in ISG1, Rev two. Some of you have different definitions for intact and undamaged fuel in here we're using the definitions of our guidance. For normal off normal conditions we don't see any differences between how we evaluate the current behavior of high burnup fuel up to 20 years in dry storage. For accident conditions, it's very similar to low burnup fuel. You can use as irradiated cladding properties as it would be in the pool.

Or you could also use the cladding mechanical properties of reoriented cladding once those are available to my knowledge

that data is very limited right now, but once that data is available an applicant can come in using it.

Next slide.

So for dry storage beyond 20 years, the same structural evaluation for accident conditions up to 20 years is applicable.

You have to evaluate the postulated accidents during transfer operations, transfer and retrieval operations and demonstrate that the cladding will adequately perform. But on top of that, we want the application to be supplemented with either these two approaches.

This is consistent with what's in appendix B and appendix D of NUREG. The left side. Which is the use of confirmatory programs such as the one that DOE and EPRI are working together on in which you can use a surrogate cask to demonstrate your fuel configuration has remained as you expected it. If you don't have that data and you come in with an application beyond 20 years, then an alternative approach is for you to review, to provide safety analysis in which you assume reconfiguration of your fuel. You assume fuel rupture of why you are fuel because you just don't have the data to demonstrate that the fuel reconfiguration hasn't occurred.

Next slide, please.

So for transportation, again, intact and undamaged fuel up to 20 years, we are -- for the drop scenarios for 7171, c7, which

is commensurate with the weight of the transportation package, as well as the hack drop for 7171, c1, again, you can use cladding only mechanical properties based on the based on our assessment of the 7198 Rev one results. On top of that we're expecting an evaluation of fatigue, vibration normally incident to transport per the requirement of 10CFR 7171c5.

And what we're proposing is to use the dynamic test data that has been produced already for sirc 4 as well as it can be -- can also be applied to other cladding alloys once that be data is produced. And that data, there are plans to -- DOE has plans to obtain that data under the sister rod program. Once that data is available, that endurance limit for fatigue evaluation during normal conditions of transport can be developed for those other alloys.

So for the drop analysis, for transportation as well as for storage transfer and retrieval, what you will find in the staff NUREG is a method nor calculating the tensile strength and stresses on the rod based on the rod dimensions and the rod curvature as a result of the drop accident scenario. That rod curvature is a function of the applied bending moment and the rod flexural rigidity. So the -- these things kind of feed into each other. Parameters to the next thing.

As far as the flex rigid city, we discussed how you can actually take credit for the increased bending stiffness

provided by the fuel pellet. For that you would need the static test data of the reoriented cladding which right now that data is only available for circ 4 because of the NRC sponsor test program. We talk about how you can -- you can still use the flex rigidity of the cladding only but if you want to take credit for the pellet you can also do that and we demonstrate the type of calculation that we would expect in the application.

We apply that approach to the results of 7198, and we compare the results of the field rod composite performance to the defuel as I remember radiated rigidity of the PNNL properties in PNL1700 other than for cladding and five.

This approach can be replicated with other alloys once that data is available. And again, the sister rod program, there are plans to obtain that data for other alloys. So there's additional work down the pipeline that you guys can use as it's being generated using the similar approach to what's in this NUREG. We also describe a method for calculating the applied bending moment based on the rod G load and determining a safety margin per the static testing results. So you can calculate applied bending moment per this approach and then compare to that initial curve which I showed the applied -- the bending moment versus curvature and demonstrate you have sufficient safety margin. We apply this, again, those can be replicated once the data for the other alloys is available.

We also discuss -- we have a section devoted to compression testing and we provide our revised assessment on this transition as determined from compression testing of defueled specimens.

So these are the results of 7198 Rev one dynamic testing which applicants can use as they develop lower bound SM curve that's a strain versus a cycle curve.

On that earlier curve, actually, if we could go back one second. So what we see here is that the three dots, the three red dots are the reoriented cladding. All the other 16 dots are the as I remember radiated condition. We see here that the reoriented rods failed add similar or even higher strains than those of non-reoriented cladding.

So in the NUREG what you'll see is a way to calculate a lower bound three part lower bound endurance limit based on that best fit estimate, and minus two standard deviations which is further penalized by because of the limits number of test results you see. That lower bound curve covers both the as irradiated and lower bound cladding. This covers what I just said. Next slide.

With respect to transportation, beyond 20 years the approach is similar to dry storage. Why are we asking for the supplement? It ties to confirmation, we want confirmation that the synergistic effects of reorientation haven't had an impact on fuel configuration. We're looking for a that confirmation.

If not you provide revised 50 analysis.

Next slide, please.

With respect to damaged fuel the report does not delineate any changes from the current standard review plan. The damaged fuel is expected to be confined which can be done in a separate damaged fuel can. And the way that's analyzed is you assume the fuel can freely reconfigure within the can. Next slide, please.

As far as conclusions, the results of 4 have given us confidence that reorientation has minimal effect on the cladding mechanical performance and this confirms our initial hypothesis that because of the tensile stress in both parallel to radial and circumferential hydrides had has limited effect on the bending performance. We expect very similar performance for other alloys but that data has not been obtained. DOE is plaque on obtaining it in the future.

And as far as crediting the flex rigidity for other cladding alloys the data that's available right now is sirc 4 but once the data is available, the applicants can use it.

And I think that's it. So thank you for your attention.

(Applause)

>> Thank you, Ricardo. I think these three presentations, next is also Sylvia, I'll introduce you, but these three presentations kind of a building a store for the high burnup fuel at this point. Sylvia her first presentation quantified

are the loads under normal condition of transport on the fuel.

Second presentation, Ricardo, said, objection, we took high burnup sample, did static tests which is supposed to simulate accident condition transportation. We did the fatigue tests, which is a normal condition by version which Sylvia showed the number 97 micrometers -- micro strain. That was the highest recorded and it was in Spain, heavy haul. That's right. So we've got that number now. And you put that number on the fatigue. And you could tell how this high burnup fuel going over a million or 10 million at that strain, how it's going to behave. The next presentation, Ricardo referred to the high burnup. What's the high burnup demo for? This is for the storage side. It's for the high burnup fuel stored beyond 20 years, the question is does anything happen to that high burnup fuel sitting in the there in terms of the cladding?

So what she's going to present about the program, that they're loading today? This week. And it's going to tell us basically she's going to talk about describing the task. So that is the piece for the storage.

So with that, I just want everybody to follow the story, the pieces. Thank you.

(Applause)

>> Okay. Yes. So beautifully set up for me. This is again looking at the storage aspect and how does the fuel, how does

the cladding specifically change over long term dry storage.

So this is -- and let me set the stage. This is also a joint collaboration between EPRI and the Department of Energy. EPRI's collaborators are dominion and north ANNA nuclear power plant and then on the DOE side, the collaborators are Sandia National Laboratory, Oak Ridge and John Scaglioni is sitting here and been vital in this whole multi year build up and Argonne national laboratory. So what I'm going to talk about is what's this project, what's the high burnup spent fuel data project, I'm going to show some -- a little teaser on results of the non-destructive analysis that Oak Ridge has done in the last year, a little more than a year.

And then our plans for destructive analysis, and these plans are draft plans, and it's out for review. I think it went out to quite a few of you in this room for reviewer. So we would love to get all your comments and ideas and insight back before we finalize that plan.

And then I wanted to just show you, the plan was for the cask actually to be loaded at north Anna today with the 32 assemblies. That didn't happen. Hopefully it will happen this week. But there was just a little paperwork delay.

So let's move to the next slide.

So what is the high burnup spent fuel data project? Go to the next slide.

Again, this is a project where we are obtaining data on what happens to fuel and to cladding as it sits in dry storage for an extended period of time.

And we chose ten years for this.

The goal of all this data is for model validation and potential improvement of those models, for future spend nuclear fuel dry storage cask design, for license renewal and new licenses, for ISFSIs, and potentially for transportation licensing of high burnup spent nuclear fuel.

So the steps that have pretty much happened so far, again, we were hoping to load the casks today, but this week we will load the cask with 32 high burnup spent nuclear fuel assemblies that are in the North Anna spent fuel pool right now into a TN32 storage cask.

We will drive that according to the normal procedures that North Anna uses all the time. It will be stored on the North Anna ISFSI for ten years where then we will transport it to a national lab or other facility to open it, and then we will test those rods to quantify their mechanical attributes at that point, mechanical properties.

So because we didn't want to wait ten years to get data, we are obtaining baseline data now, and it's always good to have a baseline set of data to compare to.

So we got 25 fuel rods from some from assemblies that is are

going on into the cask and others from assemblies with very, very similar burnup histories. And we're calling those the sister rods. Those sister rods are comprised of nine ARIVAm5 rods, four Zerc4 two of which are low ten and two of which are standard, and all of those sister rods are currently at Oak Ridge undergoing non-destructive testing right now as we speak.

After the non-destructive tests, 14 and a half of those rods will stay at Oak Ridge, ten will be shipped off to PNNL for mechanical testing and half, about one half will be shipped to Argonne for mechanical testing.

Next slide.

Let me just give you a sneak peek of the non-destructive tests that are going on at Oak Ridge right now. They have completed visual examination of all of those rods as well as gamma scanning and the results are from those 25 rods there are no we would failures, no cladding breaches, there are no significant defects in any of those high burnup rods.

Bar codes when they had bar codes are visible. There is some shallow grid to rod fretting marks. There are a few patches of crud and spalling that were found and I'll show you some of the worst pictures there and those are I want to stress those are not typical. But it would be boring if I showed you just the typical pictures. Long axial scratches on almost all the rods.

You can see the pellet to pellet interface when they measured rod links all in the expected range and no significant ovality.

You can see the details of all of this in the Oak Ridge report cited at the bottom of this slide.

So here's some of the more exciting pictures. You can see on the left some of the crud, the top picture is of M5 cladding, the middle is Zerlo and the bottom is Zerk4 and all of those have, you can see some instances of crud.

On the right, you can see lines showing the pellet, pellet interfaces. Thesis pictures ended up being a little dark but here are some of the lines.

And then this picture ended up projecting very dark. But here on the grid to rod fretting, right there is a -- looks like a little divot. And again, you can see many more details and many more pictures in the Oak Ridge report.

In addition they contemplate the gamma scans on all these rods, and this is in order to document locations of large pellet cracks if we had any, pellet stat gaps, pellet stack height, burnup depressions from the grid spacers, and gives us a relative axial burnup profile for each rod. And this picture here is five rods with a data all on top of each other on one graph, and you can see how close they all are to each other.

And here the results show there's no sign of migration. The depressions in burnup were easily observed. You could see

pellet-to-pellet interface and you could see the spring in the pellet region, and there was some small fuel stat gaps observed, but it all looked very natural. And the reason for obtaining this data is to, when we pull out the rods in 10 years, do these same exact tests and compare them to what we find here.

These are the results of profilometry of six of the rods all the data lay on top of each other. Everything looked pretty pristine.

Next slide. So Oak Ridge after this will be doing eddy current scans to look at the clad mechanical microscopic Z and see if there are any defects and take surface temperature measurements. After they complete that, we will do the destructive analysis and again, this is draft, it's out for review. We welcome comments from anyone in the community. But what we're going to do here is we have 25 rods, 15 at Oak Ridge, 10 will be shipped to PNNL, half segments equalling about a half will be sent to Argonne.

And so we're going to take 10 rods first, and that's going to be the first phase of our destructive testing. The other 15 we're going to safe for later, and look at the results of the testing on these first 10, and we'll all get together look at the results and decide what to do with the remaining 15.

Two of those 10 that we're going to test first will undergo surf testing at Oak Ridge and the testing gives us fatigue

failure, gives us information on pellet, pellet, pellet clad interaction and the overall strength of the rod system.

So then we have eight rods left. All of those eight rods will be tested in the same way, and those tests are depicted on the right side of the graphic here. So if this were a rod, we're going to test at the top and in the middle of the rod.

We're gonna do test two places on the top and two places in the middle, identically using the identical same tests.

We're going to be using -- dock the ASTM tensile test, burst test ASTM four point bend test at two points, at the top, two points in the middle.

And one of those will be at room temperature so we can see what the fuel is like in its most brittle condition, and the other will be at 200 degrees which is about the maximum temperature at which we would transport fuel.

So we'll do one set at room temperature, one at 200 hundred degrees at the top and also in the middle. In between those two sets of tests we will do optical microscopy to visualize how many radial versus circumferential hydrides there are at the top and middle. We will look at the hydrogen content, we'll do a test for micro hardness and rod internal pressure. We'll do that before we cut everything up.

And also cut them for ring compression tests that get sent to Argonne.

So again, we do that at the top and the middle for all of those eight rods.

The difference in all of the eight rods is depicted on the left side here.

So three of those rods we're going to heat up to four hundred degrees c. Reason for that is that's sort of the regulatory limit for how hot cladding can get during normal conditions.

One in five had -- and then cool it at five degrees c per hour until a hundred degrees c and then either let them go to room temperature or bring them back up to two run degrees. Then we'll take two rods and we won't heat treat those. That will be our really base case. No heat treatment. What does the mechanical properties look like without any heat treating at all.

Then we'll take the remaining three rods and we will mimic the temperatures that we get in the demo cask with the thermal couples within the demo cask. And we'll mimic those temperatures to see the mechanical properties that will be identical to what's in the demo cask. Once we do all that we'll stop, look at all that data and decide are we done or are we going to then do some further testing on the remaining 15 rods.

So again, this is draft, welcome anybody's comments, suggestions, insights. But that's where going with the destructive testing.

So then I was hoping to get some pictures of the casks being loaded today with the 32 assemblies at North Anna, that got delayed. It's not going to happen today. Hopefully the end of this week or the beginning of next week, but this is a picture of the TN32 at North Anna. These are over here are the openings in the lid where our thermal couple lenses are going. We'll have 63 thermal couples inside the cask, all the way from the top to the bottom in different axial locations. So that we can get a lot of temperature measurements for what the cladding actually sees.

And then the picture on the top is the cask with the security seal and it's all, you know, buttoned up and pretty much ready to go.

So next slide.

And thank you to the NRC for approving the ISFSI license amendment. They did that September 13th this year. So that was, again, a thank you to the NRC. And I think that's our last slide.

Thank you.

(Applause)

>> Okay. So we're going to switch from high burnup fuel storage to burnup credit.

So I think a number of years ago we wrote this story, ended this story on PWR burnup credit. What Drew is going to give we

started three years ago, research on BWR burnup credit based on the indication from our applicants that they wanted to come in for BWR burnup credit. Drew Barto received his BS in nuclear engineering from the University of Maryland college park in 1997. For the past 20 years he has worked in the division of spent fuel management, at NRC, performing radiation protection and criticality safety technical reviews of radioactive material transportation package and spent nuclear fuel dry storage designs, regulated under 10CFR parts 71 and 72.

Drew?

(Applause)

>> Thanks, Meraj.

One more.

We're almost there.

Meraj talked a little bit about our PWR burnup credit activities. Before I jump into BWR I want to back up a little bit and talk about the brief history of what happened with PWR burnup credit.

Back in 1997 when I started here at the agency if you had asked for burnup credit in spent fuel transportation and storage, I believe you would have gotten a flat no.

We relied pretty heavily on the fresh fuel assumption for storage and transportation. It was an easy calculation to do, and more importantly, from our perspective, it was very, very

conservative.

Licensees and applicants I believe made a good case that there was a significant safety benefit to PWR burnup credit in the form of higher capacity casks and that it was in everybody best interest to collectively figure out best safest way to take credit for burnup. So from our side we enlisted Oak Ridge national lab to do a good deal of research on issue. They produced a large quantity of research over more than 10 years, there's a big stack of NUREGs that look at every aspect of PWR burnup credit.

And we were able to coal less research into a guidance document that I'm personally very happy with and I believe most of our stakeholders are as well.

Personally it's made reviews of PWR burnup credit applications a lot more efficient and just a lot easier.

So I think it's a real success story and it's one that we'd like to emulate with BWR burnup credit to the extent we can.

Next slide.

So as Meraj said we initiated a project with Oak Ridge through our Office of Research about three years ago to study factors important to BWR burnup credit analysis for spent nuclear fuel storage and transportation.

So if anybody is out in the audience that doesn't know what burnup credit is, it's basically taking credit for the loss of

uranium 235 and build up of neutron absorbing products and also consideration of the build in of fizzle plutonium 239 and 241 with irradiation. Plenty of modelling tools that will allow you to calculator the k effective of a burn fuel system. The question is always been how do you validate those tools. How do you adequately characterize fuel design and operating parameters across a wide range of fuel types burned at a large number of sites and again, we think we provided this guidance in our interim staff guidance eight revision three for PWR burnup credit. But that guidance says vanishing little about BWR burnup credit.

So we would like to update our guidance to the extent week, commensurate with storage and transportation needs for BWR fuel.

Next slide.

So this, again, it's the benefit of PWR burnup credit. You could get an increased task capacity within basically the same volume. So the end result is you end up loading fewer casks, fewer welds, less exposure to workers, and eventually less or fewer number of casks that eventually need to be transported.

For BWRs benefits are probably not as dramatic. If you look at how PWR cask is loaded you can rely on soluble boron in the pool water for BWR they have they have to evaluate with fresh water in the pool. When you move into the transportation space where you have to look at fresh water in leakage you've done

that. You could use burnup credit to get to higher initial enrichment for certain canister types, lower b10 in the absorber panels and possibly using burnup credit to counter potential reconfiguration of fuel under transportation hypothetical accident conditions.

In the end, the need might not be as great for BWR burnup credit but we wanted to understand all the factors associated with BWR burnup credit for when applicants came in requesting it.

So there was some work done on BWR burnup credit before we initiated this project. First really we started out with all the work that was done for PWRs. There was a lot of spent fuel pool and cask research done to support PWR burnup credit. I mentioned earlier the stack and NUREGs related to that.

That all fed into two new regs that directly supported ISGA NUREG 7108 on eye so topic depletion validation. And 7109 on criticality validation. There is some work in those NUREGs that touches on BWRs, appraisal focused on BWR burnup credit but there's bladed of information in there.

So in addition to that, there were a couple early sensitivity studies done on BWR burnup credit, NUREG 7157 is a computational benchmark, that's the -- where Oak Ridge developed a hypothesis they the Cal GDC68 BWR cask model that was used in all of its subsequent studies, and also NUREG cr71 gate which is review and

prioritization of technical issues related to burnup credit for BWR fuel.

A lot of the information in that NUREG fed directly into our statement of work to Oak Ridge for this current research project.

So we used the PWR information to the extent that we can, but there's really quite a few differences between p's and b's. A lot more complex fuel design in radiation history compared to PWRs a lot of additional things you have to consider, partial length rods, enrichment variation, control blade insertion during the cycle as opposed to PWRs which operate all rods out and the void profile from boiling that hardens the spectrum. As far as validation data there's -- there wasn't a lot you can lien on. We had that same issue with PWR burnup credit and we were able to use the data that we had in generating our guidance but starting off there was less data available for BWRs particularly in the radiochemical assay department.

There are a number of radiochemical assays for depletion validation but almost 0 in the range of interest for peak react activity burnup credit and I'll describe what that is in a minute.

That's basically at low burnup and nobody discharges at low burnup so that's why you don't really have any data.

So you can you be to the next slide. There's a lot going on in this slide. One of the most important features of a BWR is gadolinium. Most have oxide burnable absorber in several fuel rods to keep down react activity in the first cycle. What this results in is this characteristic peak in k effective at low burnup.

And the amount of Gad determines where that peak is. You can see on the graph there there's a red dotted line that's light gadolinium loading which results until early and higher peak and green is heavy gadolinium concentration or heavy gadolinium loading that will extended peak and it will be lower in terms of k effective.

So where we're coming from in our current recommendations for how to deal with BWR spent fuel is this fresh know gadolinium assumption that's the red line at the top. You can see don't pay a lot of attention to the scale but there's a significant decrease in activity even looking at the peak which the peak really identifies what the actual most reactive time in life s that's a to assume it's at the peak, in reality you're burn out two or three cycles which is way, way down that curve. So much the peak itself represents a significant conservatism if you assume every assembly of that peak and coming from fresh new gad assumption which is even higher.

So we divided the research into two phases, Phase I looks at

peak reactivity methods and then Phase II looks at reactivity beyond peak.

Phase one work is complete. It's in NUREG cr7194 which has been out since April 2015. And it looks at a whole series of issues associated with identifying where peak reactivity is for storage and transportation casks.

Similar to with PWRs there's not a lost data for validation and that's part of the reason we've engaged in this program to get more radiochemical assay, it's a program where they've pulled -- it's actually not a BWR rod but a PWR rod that has gadolinium oxide in it, and for whatever reason was discharged at low burnup. The gadolinium you're interested in and has the burnup you're interested in even though it's not app BWR. So a lot of different countries have signed on to this project and basically are going to take this rod and cut it into various segments and apply to this program and paying for two measurements and other countries are paying for various measurements and we're all, everybody that's involved in the program is going to get access to the data.

So that's something that will be forthcoming in the future.

So we're done with the peak reactivity phase and there's a lot of recommendations in the document. There's really no specific prescriptive recommendations like there is in ISG8.

It's more of a how do various parameters about irradiation and

assembly design affect the peak and what's conservative. It also takes a look at a couple of methodologies used in spent fuel pool analysis of BWR credit.

So we're getting into Phase II. This task three through five of this contract are summarized in NUREG CR7224. This looked at the what I would call major radiation parameters with respect to discharge reactivity. Action moderator density control blade usage and burnup profiles.

The objective here was to identify conditions and assumptions that can be used for regulatory guidance but, again, there's nothing prescriptive in there. It's more about the direction of change in k effective with changes in these parameters.

And this is to help us understand the effects of these parameters and as well as the margin present in peak reactivity burnup credit.

Next slide.

Draft NUREG cr7240 looks at what I would describe as medium importance operating parameters. This all came out of the sensitivity analyses done in NUREG cr7158. We suspected today we'd have an impact but not as big as the parameters evaluated in NUREG CR7224 so we looked at fuel temperature specific power operating history and by flow density. Another thing this NUREG looked at was the impact of correlated operating parameters.

What that means is we basically took all these parameters and

look at them in a silo. We just look at the effect of control blade insertion on its own, what effect does it have on the insert control blade and looked at void profile separately.

Keeping control blade insertion constant, what's the effect of a change in void profile. In reality these two things impact each other significantly.

So you can't have large control blade insertion at the same time as a high void fraction. So this made an attempt to kind of hash out, well, if I assume, you know, I kind of know how these things are related. If I can make some assumptions about their effects on each other, how does that effect my conclusions about what's conservative.

This NUREG is in publication right now lately, but we expect that is going to be out within the next month or two. And this is the research that's going to close out Phase II, task eight is almost complete, but it's a draft is almost complete. And this is a review of the available radiochemical assay data for BWR burnup credit at higher burnups. And again, this is an area where it's actually better than at peak reactivity because of the radiochemical assay data that exists for BWRs, most of it is at higher burnups, again, because nobody wants to discharge at right at peak reactivity.

So this is done and should be published in the first half of next year. The next task is to review the validation from the

criticality side to see which experiments can support validation criticality validation of BWR burnup credit calculations.

So I don't believe we've really started on this yet, but the expectation is that we're going to look hard at the French HT

[indiscernible] experiments as well as available mocks experiments.

Final task is to generate some recommendations for us for which -- that we can rely on when we revise our ISG or more likely we're going to revise the standard review plan because ISG8 is currently in the process of being incorporated into the standard review. With that, we'll close out Phase II research which is supposed to end next year. So next slide.

In addition to all that, we have been engaged in some international BWR burnup credit activity. There's actually some interest in this from other countries as well.

We've been interacting through the NEA working party on nuclear criticality safety. And they have devised a computational benchmark problem that looks at depletion of a gad pin in a BWR assembly. So the expert group out of the working party defined the problem which was to calculate topics for 10 regular rings of a gad pin and to report a whole range of isotopes for various burnups focusing in specifically on peak reactivity.

So basically they gave this problem out to the international

community so that other countries can go off with their own codes and data.

And calculate isotopics as well as the k effective of the whole system. And submit the results back to the working party to be compiled into a document that compares the results.

So there was a good deal of interest. We got a lot of results for kind of a wide variety of codes and cross-section data and different combinations of codes and cross-section data from nine different countries and 12 different institutions.

So we are working, I say we, it's really going to be Oak Ridge that's going to compile these results into a report. We expect to have a draft completed by the next time the NEA working party meets July of next year.

So in summary, we're engaging in research to get up to speed on peak reactivity burnup credit and full BWR burnup credit to the extent we can. We expect this research will help us develop guidance for allowing burnup credit for BWR spent fuel in casks and transportation packages, Phase I is complete, we're in the middle of Phase II and we expect to back off a little bit of what we're committing to here. I'd say we'll start the process of revising SRP expected in 2019. And also we have been involved internationally on this issue. So that concludes my prepared remarks, thank you for your attention.

(Applause)

>> All right. Time for comments and questions. We've got a fight for the microphone over here.

>> This is S-t-e-f-a-n A-n-t-o-n. Ricardo, a question on the schedule. When is the document expected to be out of the high burnup fuel? I understand that's a draft.

>> I will tell you when the staff will complete addressing comments. So that it's ready for concurrence. December. And however long it takes to get the concurrence process, I am terrible at --

>> So you basically -- it would be ready for concurrence, you expect it to be ready in December and then --

>> At this moment we're resolving the very last comments that we have.

>> And then it's just -- how long it takes to go through the system?

>> And then -- yeah. So it will be out for public comment and I also understand that there's a little bit of a backlog so my expectation is probably in the spring.

>> Okay.

>> By the time it will all be completed

>> Okay. Thank you.

>> Our goal is to put the NUREG that the Ricardo is leading hopefully pushing regard, by hopefully for public comment.

We're going to put out this high burnup NUREG for public

comment, because it's going to take all the tests at Oak Ridge, it's a method, and we're going to try to push it before the end of the year to put the draft NUREG for public comment.

>> So the draft may be out before the end of the year?

>> That's --

>> I know -- (Overlapping speakers) --

>> That's our goal. Because as Ricardo said, we're trying to really address a lot of internal comments from the task force.

>> Okay. Good. Thank you.

>> I'm from Korea. Research institute. I'm not sure I'm eligible to ask a question here. My questions are general ones.

So let me ask a question.

Spent fuel structure integrity under NC it has under the vibration and shock conditions is one of the hard issues in Korea these days for public acceptance. If you can conclude that spent fuel integrated is maintained through all the tests and simulations, then is it possible for new casks to transfer spent fuel or does each cask vendor have to show that their casks maintains spent fuel integrity by adopting the data from the test to simulations? What I'm asking is what is going to be the NRC position for the approval procedure related to these issues in the future? My first question.

And second question is if you start high burnup sister rod testing in 2017, you can obtain the results in 2027. I

understand that the US started high burnup spent fuel storage around 2005. So therefore, around 2025 the renewal of high burnup spent fuel storage will come. Then how can you or how will you apply the test result or lesson learned from the high burnup test to the renewal for high burnup storage in 2025?

>> The first part of your question I think Ricardo will answer that one.

>> So with respect to normal conditions of transportation, our NUREG delineates a method, and it implements the method based on 7198.

The input parameters for G loads applied bending moments on the rods are design specific. So any applicant will have to come in with those parameters using the methodology, well, if they choose to, using the methodology we have delineate in that staff NUREG and applying them to their specific design.

The work that we have done is only on Sir C4, so if an applicant wants to come in with other cladding contents, our advanced cladding alloys, they would have to make that argument for their specific design.

With respect to the second question I wasn't sure if that was a regulatory question. It seems like it's more on the regulatory side. So from my perspective, or from our perspective, the guidance is very clear in NUREG 1927 Rev one on

the use of -- on the applicability of a surrogate demonstration program for dry storage up to 40 years. Actually, up to 60 years.

That's consistent with the MAPS report as well. It referenced, it actually has to the same AMP in NUREG 1927, that is one approach. So for extended storage, you can rely on confirmation provided by a surrogate demonstration program. Or for your specific dry storage design if you don't want to wait until that data is available or don't want to do the work to demonstrate applicability of that data, then you provide revised 50 analysis that assumes a given amount of fuel reconfiguration and that you can still meet Part 72 regulation.

>> So we're going to move over here. Thank you.

>> I'm David Tang from spent fuel storage management. I have a question for Sylvia. You mentioned the sister programs about some destructive testing. But I didn't hear of anything about confirming that reoriented hydride will not have a huge impact on the performance of high burnup fuel. Is there any intention to do that as part of a sister program or are you basically have confirmed that that would be case for all these cladding materials?

>> I think probably we'll be confirming that the closest I think what you're looking for is the two rods that will be doing the surf testing on that's probably the biggest confirmation in

there. But other than that, we're not doing that specifically.

We're going to test these, look at mechanical properties for these and then decide what else we want to do.

>> Reorient hydride configuration, nothing that rod has to be treated in certain fashion

>> The rods we heat up to 400 degrees C have the highest probability of having reoriented hydrides and we'll be testing those. And if we can, if we have extra room in there, we'll be possibly testing some of those during the surf method as well.

John, did you want to add anything to that?

>> The number of tests that can be used to look at address this issue. One of the things that we'll be going on is we'll be looking at doing a full rod heater test before it's punctured to understand if you actually even get hydrides reorientation under prototypic condition. 4 hundred degrees c, details how we're gain get what we want done done, but the bottom line is that there's -- it's a theory that the hydrides actually do reorient.

So we're going to try to use our current testing to prove if it does happen or doesn't happen and then there will be put through the testing for the mechanical property. So we should be able to address the issue

>> For each one of those rods we will be doing microscopy to see, to document if we do have hydride reorientation. This is all good conversation

>> I wanted to be very sensitive to the time. So operator, we're going to look for one more question on the phone.

Operator, can you see if there's anybody on the phone that has a comment or question.

>> Your line is open.

>> Thank you. I've been waiting for a long time and somehow I didn't get through so these questions refer to some very early events today.

Two short questions. The first one is for the key note speaker. We looked at it and listened to his curriculum vitae and I didn't see anything that had to do with medical applications. What I'm wondering is if he believes there's such a thing as hormesis where a little bit of radiation is good for you and no matter how much you've already had a little is good for you or agrees with the more scientifically theory of linear no threshold. The question is for the NEI representative who said there are a number of environmental groups who have come around to some in some way support nuclear power. I'd like to know which groups he's talking about and to what extent.

>> Thank you for your questions. Unfortunately the folks for your questions are no longer here. And so that we can make sure that you do get answers to your questions, we ask that you submit them through the NRC website so that we can adequately respond to you directly rather than just taking the questions

back and asking and not having anybody to respond to. That would be terrific. So looks like we've come to the end of our day. I do appreciate everyone's cooperation. The great presentations that we've had. It's been a wonderfully smooth meeting. Again, appreciate everyone working with us in that regard.

We will pick up again tomorrow morning at 8. I do ask that you complete the feedback form and you can leave them with Dan or I, you can also email to PDFing it. His email is in all the information. Thank you very much and have a great evening.

(Meeting adjourned)