ML20032E235
| ML20032E235 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 10/16/1981 |
| From: | Palladino N NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | Simpson A SENATE |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20032E234 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8111200005 | |
| Download: ML20032E235 (10) | |
Text
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d UNITED STATES 8
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION g
g WASHINGTON, D. C. 20555 October 16, 1981 CHAIRMAN The Honorable Alan K. Simpson, Chainnan Subcomittee on Nuclear Regulation Comittee on Environment and Public Works United States Senate Washington, DC 20510
Dear Mr. Chairman:
We are pleased to submit additional coments on specific provisions of S.1662 for.the record of the October 6,1981, hearings on radioactive waste management legislation.
We have also enclosed general coments on S. 6M.
I hope you will find these responses adequate for your purposes, but if you need additional information or clarification, please let me know.
Sincerely, O
LOSaD' C
Nunzio J. Palladino
Enclosures:
Coments on S.1662 and S. 637 cc:
Sen. Gary Hart 8111200005 811016 PDR COMMS NRCC CORRESPONDENCE PDR
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DETAILED COMMENTS ON S.1662 Se.ction 305(a)(2)
Drafting error.
The current language reads "The Secretary shall submit a license to construct... " Should read, "...shall submit an application..."
Section 303(b)
All activities in this section other than those in subsection (b) must take place within specific time periods.
"Within a reasonable time..."
invites litigation. We suggest specifying a period of 90 days.
i Section 310 Drafting error.
The reference to Section 303(a) is incorrect.
Reference should be to Section 305.
Section 311(b)
The section requires the Secretary to encourage the development of
" alternative technologies that can be licensed by the Commission on a generic basis." The NRC does not license technologies on a generic basis, but can approve a technology through rule-making.
We suggest the i
following language:
" alternative technologies that the Commission can adopt by rule..."
i Section 313(a) and (b)
The Commission requests clarification regarding the use of the term I
" hearing board" in this section, Hearing boards generally operate under a delegation of Commission authority.
Is it the intention of the Committee to place jurisdiction directly in a hearing board, and thus prohibit the Commission from conducting its own hearings?
If not, we suggest using "the Commission" in place of "the hearing board" wherever j
it appears., which would permit the Commission to delegate its authority l
to a hearing board at its discretion under Section 191 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.
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2 Section 402(b)
The Commission would appreciate clarification of the meaning and intent of the language in Section 402(b)(3) providing that the Commission "...
shall limit the retrievability of the waste and spent fuel emplaced in the repository unless such action is needed to protect the public health, safety and the environment." We believe the basic design of a repository should be such that the waste should be so emplaced that a range of actions including retrieval could be taken during the period when the repository is being evaluated to confirm its performance.
This period could be short or last a few decades.
We would recommend that the law not deal with this design. consideration. We hope that your intent is consistent with our position.
Furthermore, Section 402(b)(3) requires that the Commission include criteria for a license amendment to decommission the repository.
In our proposed regulation, we have dealt with decommissioning only in a general way, with the intent of augmenting the criteria in several years when we have more experience.
We believe it is premature to define detailed decommissioning criteria at this time.
Therefore, for both of the above reasons, we recommend that this provision be deleted from the proposed legislation.
Section 403(a)
We note that the bill requ<.'res the consideration of sites in several geologic media "to the extent practicable considering the schedule." The Commission prefers that sites in at least two media -- one of which is not salt -- be characterized, as required by the Commission's Part 60 regulations.
Section 404(a)
While Section 403 of the bill requires the Secretary to recommend three sites to the President as candidates for site characterization, it is not clear from the bill's drafting whether the President must approve more than one.
If the President rejects any of the three sites recommended by the Secretary, the Secretary should be required to identify additional sites until at least three have been selected for characterization. We recommend,the following language Section 404(a): "The Secretary shall carry out in eccordance with this section appropriate site characterization activities for at least three sites that have been approved by the President under Section 403. "
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Section 404(b)(1)(A) i The section requires the Secretary to prepare an environmental assessment of the site.
The Commission requests clarification regarding the relationship between the assessment and NEPA requirements. Would DOE prepare the assessment in addition to the NEPA-required environmental impact statement, or in relief, or partial relief of such requirements?
Section 404(c)
In our testimony, we offered to provide language permitting NRC to advise DOE regarding the selection of tests necessary for a complete license application.
We suggest the following:
"The Secretary shall, in consultation with the Commission, conduct such tests as may be required to provide the necessary data..."
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Section 405(e) j The Commission testified that the two years and nine months allowed for construction authorization proceedings is very tight, and the deadline will be very difficult to meet.
Some additional detail regarding the tasks that, under current procedures, we must accomplish during th's period may be of use to the Committee.
Prior to the licensing hearing itself, the staff must review the application, prepare a preliminary safety analysis report, have it reviewed by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and I
then issue the final report incorporating their comments.
In addition, the staff must prepare a draft environmental impact statement, notice it for i
public comment, resolve the comments and issue a final statement.
We estimate i
that the hearing itself will take a minimum of 20 to 24 months.
It will be difficult to complete these tasks adequately under the proposed schedule.
However, as we stated in our testimony, we will do what we can to avoid delaying the national program while fulfilling our statutory responsibilities to protect the public health and safety and the environment.
Section 407(d)(2)
The Commis'sion has concerns regarding the timing of the preparation of the environmental impact statement for the T&E facility.
The Commission recommends that the EIS be available to Congress when it reviews the Secretary's proposed design criteria.
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Section 502 In order to reduce transportation links between facilities, the Commission recommends that consideration be given to locating long-term retrievable storage at the site of a future reprocessing plant or at the repository location, Section 601 Drafting error.
The reference to Section 308 is incorrect.
Reference should be to Section 307.
Section 603 The Commission requests clarification regarding which costs are to be covered by the fund collected through the pt.- kilowatt-hour fee on nuclear generated electricity.
The language specifies that such fee shall be used to cover only "the costs...for the long-term storage and permanent disposal..."
It is not clear whether or not the funds collected through the one-time fee established by Section 303(a) would be transferred into the fund.
Assuming the AFR funds are transferred, it is not clear where funds for the T&E facility and handling and transportation will come from.
If those costs are also to be " borne by the direct beneficiaries..." as stated in Section 101(h), they should be specified in this section.
Section 703 Drafting error.
The text of the resolution, while intended to respond to concerns of "aath State and Indian tribal governments, mentions only State and local concerns.
The language should read, " State, local ai.J
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.1 concerns."
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5 Section 706(a)
Drafting error.
The phrase "with respect to a reorganization plan,"
should be replaced with something that refers to the resolution regarding State, local and Tribal concerns regarding the proposal, such as "with respect to a proposed facility".
10/16/81 Commissioner Gilinsky's Comments on S. 1662 and S.
637 Section 312 This section authorizes the Commission to issue a license or license amendment to expand a spent fuel pool or transship' spent fuel on an interim basis prior to the conduct or completion of any required hearing.
This provision should be modified to make it clear that interim licenses should be issued only in those cases where the conduct or completion of a hearing prior to issuance of the license would force the reactor to shut down.
Sdction 313 I am concerned that the provisions of Section 313, which prescribes the procedures to be followed in hearings on spent fuel pool expansions and spent fuel transshipments, are overly prescriptive.
The details of hearing procedures
.are usually specified.in the agency's regulations rather than in a statute.
The Commission has not had any experience in conducting hearings pursuant to the procedures specified by Section 313.
While these procedures may result in efficient hearings, they may, for one reason or another, prove to be unworkable.
If the Congress wishes the Commission to conduct the type of hearing described in section 313, it should give the Commission authority to do so, perhaps specifying the minimum procedural safeguards to be applied.
It would then be possible for the Commission to adjust the procedures in.
the light of experience without having to seek a statutory amendment.
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ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF COMMISSIONER BRADFORD ON S.1662 The Commission has long been on record that the same requirements and procedures should apply to the permanent disposal of both ; military and civilian high-level waste.
limiting its provisions to civilian waste, could bifurcateThis bill, by the national waste program.
This bifurcation might result in the preemption of superior repository sites for the military.
interim licensing and hybrid heerings.I also a' gree with-the view 4
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GENERAL COMMENT
S ON S. 637 Definition,of Permanent Disposal The propotad legislation ties the definition of permanence to the period of time th4 Commission determines is necessary for the radioactivity, heat generation and toxicity of radioactive waste to become equivalent to the radioactivity, heat generation and toxicity of naturally occurring uranium.
We have some concern about using natural uranium as a standard.
It may be very difficult to implement a requirement that the design life fur a deep geologic repository be at least as long as the time needed for the specified characteristics of the waste to become comparable to that of uranium ore, because there is a wide degree of uncertainty inherent in establishing a benchmark based on this comparison.
Since uranium ores vary in content and concentration, differinc assumptions can be made about their radioactivity, heat generation and toxicity.
Further, even if a standard ore could be agreed upon, its comparison to geologically-emplaced wastes would not account for differences in geochemistry, hydrology,.and other safety-related factors bearing on the suitability of the wastes for the proposed host geology.
This uncertainty has been compounted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection's.recent ICRP 30 a.:. "ent, which revises dose conversion factors in sucn a way as to extend.:s cross-over point of waste hazard and ore hazard to sometime on the order of thousands of years.
In facing the problem of setting a time requirement ourselves, w.
considered this approach along with a number of alternatives and selected a time period that we believe is consistent with the intent of this bill.
The proposed technical portion of 10 CFR Part 60 sets forth a 1,000 year time period for the containment of radionuclides by the waste package.
This number is based on the time required for the heat pulse from the wastes to peak and return most of the way to the ambient temperatures in the repository's host geology.
Definition'of Safe Repository The proposed legislation defines " safe repository" as "any underground facility for the permanent disposal... whether or not such safety is achieved solely by the characteristics of the medium in which the facility is located or by a combination of such characteristics with appropriate engineered structural containment, waste form and packaging,
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monitoring, and maintenance of such facility."
Natural systems are difficult to characterize and any understanding of the site will have significant limitations and uncertainties.
This understanding will be particularly limited in the area close to the emplaced wastes because that area will be physically and chemically disturbed by the heat generated by those wastes.
In light of these uncertainties, the Commission, in its proposed technical portion of 10 CFR Part 60, has placed an emphasis on the engineered features of the repository as well as the natural geologic environment, establishing separate performance objectives for these two components of a multiple barrier approach to waste isolation.' The Commission believes that this approach will reduce some of the uncertainties associated with depending " solely" on the medium in which the facility is located, and will enhance our confidence in the ability of the repository to isolate the wastes.
Monitored Retrievable Storage i
The proposed legislation requires the Secretary to develop a proposal for one or more safe repositories for the permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste resulting from civilian nuclear activities.
The design criteria for these facilities imply that they are subsurface, rather than deep geologic repositories, and would be similar to recent proposals for monitored retrievable storage facilities.
The Commission does not object to a long-term storage component in the national waste management strategy.
It may be useful to allow more time to settle the reprocessing issue.
In addition, there may be some technical advantages to allowing the waste to cool in a surface or subsurface facility prior to dicrosal in deep geologic repositories.
The Commission is concerned, however, that such a long-term storage facility should not be a substitute for geologic disposal nor should it be permitted to detract from the repository program.
The Commission i
therefore would prefer to see the geologic repository program remain the central element of the waste management program, rather than making it one of a number of alternatives for research and development.
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