ML20059B973

Transcript of 931027 58th ACNW Meeting in Bethesda,Md.Pp 1-133

ML20059B973
Person / Time
Issue date:	10/27/1993
From:	Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
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References
ACRS-T-0077, ACRS-T-77, NACNUCLE-T-0077, NACNUCLE-T-77, NUDOCS 9310290175
Download: ML20059B973 (160)

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g: -3 MDM-<DWJ c3ig l O - OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS \\. ) -i Agency: Nuclear Regulatory commission Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste 1 l

Title:

i 58th ACNW Meeting Docket No. O t LOCATION: Bethesda, Maryland I DATE: Wednesday, October 27, 1993 PAGES: 1 - 133 p}ggg@[Q;Q; r~ rem m,--, t f 7 W& %s g y 's 9 00 Nc1 E ara ^, "; J.m (.AIICE O ~ ' 290098 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. M 1612 K St., N.W.. Suite 300 i ' 9310290175 931027 Washington, D.C. 20006 PDR ACRs (202) 293-3950 T --007 7 PDR b

L 1 PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE UNITED STATE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE DATE: October 27, 1993 r P The contents of this transcript of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, (date) October 27, 1993 , as Reported herein, are a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date. This transcript has not been reviewed, corrected or edited, and it may contain inaccuracies. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 =- - 4 -ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE 5 6 58th ACNW Meeting 7 B Holiday Inn 9 8210 Wisconsin Avenue -t 10 Connecticut Room i 11 Bethesda, Maryland 'I 12 Wednesday, October 27, 1993 i l 13 8:30 a.m. 14 BEFORE: ~l .([) 15 Dade W. Moeller, Chairman, ACNW ~! 16 Martin Steindler, Vice Chairman, ACNW 17 William J. Hinze, ACNW Member 18 Paul W. Pomeroy, ACNW Member 19 Designated Federal Official: 20 Lynn Deering 21 22 23 l 24 25 ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950_

.~ _.. .~ _. _. _ 2 1 PROCEEDINGS Os 1 2 [8:30 a.m.] 3 MR..MOELLER: The meeting will come to order. 4 This is the first day of the 58th Meeting.of the Advisory i i 5 Committee on Nuclear Waste. During today's meeting,.the 6 Committee will first hear reports from ACNW members and ACNW 7 staff on recent technical meetings that they have attended. 8 These meetings pertain to: A, radionuclide migration and 9 related near-field phenomena; B, hydrological research; C, 10 Exploratory Studies Facility; and D, surface-based testing. 11 associated with the Yucca Mountain Project. j i 12 Secondly, we will hear a briefing on the NRC '{ 13 Technical Training Programs. This will be offered by the 14 Office for Analysis and the Evaluation of Operational Data. 1 O 15 Then that will carry us up till noon. I 16 After lunch we will discuss preparation of the .17 ACNW White Paper related to implementation plans for. future i 18 activities. There are three segments or elements within 19 this paper. The first one is -- covers, protocols for ACNW 20 operations; the second is how we will select topics that we 21 review; and thirdly, a discussion of the resources or 22 personnel requirements that would be necessary to undertake 23 what we propose to do. 24 We will, lastly, discuss anticipated and proposed 25 future Committee activities, future meeting agenda, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 1

3 1 administrative and organizational matters, as appropriate. 2 These will include completing our plans for our 59th 3 Meeting, reviewing our plans for the 60th meeting, review 4 our activities including -- future activities, including 5 those for January 1994. We will also include within that a 6 review of our working group meeting schedules. We also will 7 be nominating and electing ACNW officers for calendar year-- 8 1994 and will be selecting our meeting dates for calendar 9 year 1994. 10 Lastly, we will go into closed session to discuss 11 possible future members or potential candidates for 12 membership on the Committee. 13 Ms. Lynn Deering, seated two seats to my right, is 14 the Designated Federal Official for the initial section ( 15 today. The meeting is being conducted in accordance with-16 the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. We 5 17 have received no written statements, nor have we received 18 any requests from members of the public.to make oral 19 statements'at today's meeting. If any of.you, though,-have-l 20 anything to contribute, simply let us know, and we will 21 certainly be glad to provide an opportunity for you to offer 22 input. I 23 Before proceeding with the first agenda item, we 24 do have a number of items of interest, plus -- even before 25 that, I wanted to mention several other items that I wanted-O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 m

V 7 4 1 to be sure the Committee was aware of.- We do need -- 2 although it is'not scheduled till'this afternoon -- we do 3 need to firm up our November and December' meeting plans 4 because Tanya Winfrey, ameng others, desires to make plane 5 reservations and so forth, and she needs to know exactly. 6 what it is we need. j 7 And then we are -- I want to put on the record ] 8 that we are meeting, Dr. Steindler and I, with Commissioners .l 9 Rogers and Deplanque at 9:30 tomorrow morning. That will.be i 10 to discuss future activities of the Committee. 1 1 11 Then, we need also, at some point, to try to ' j i 12 decide what time we are adjourning tomorrow. What time do-1 13 you gentlemen -- Bill, you have no -- ] l 14 MR. STEINDLER: No problem. j .( ) 15 MR. POMEROY: No, problem. I 16 MR. MOELLER: What do you assume? 5:00 o' clock? ) 17 Okay. We will assume then 5:00 o' clock tomorrow. That ) 18 takes care of that. o 19 MR. POMEROY: Dade, excuse me. I am wondering 20 though if we can set up something at some point.today about 21 what we are going to do tomorrow morning while both you and 22 Marty are gone. There is also a briefing over at White 23 Flint on phase 2.5 of the performance assessment being done a 24 by the Center Staff. 25 MR. MOELLER: Yes. 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 - w-

n 5 ) I 1 MR. POMEROY: We might want to consider just not 2 having a morning meeting so that we could -- both sets of us 3 could do those other things. A MR. MOELLER: You are right. Cover the two 5 things. Okay. We will discuss that. That is probably what-6 we will do. Marty and I will go see the two Commissioners,. 7 and Bill and Paul may attend then the briefing by the-Center 8 on the performance assessment the Yucca Mountain repository. 9 Okay. In the way of items of interest, let_me 10 begin with several here and then Dr. Steindler has'a list 11 that I would like for him to share with us, and then-I will 12 resume with just some other items. 13 As many of you know, Carl Gertz has been 14 reassigned by DOE to head up a special task force on the 15 high-level waste tank farms at the Hanford Site. 16 Jay Russell Dyer has been named as the Acting 17 Director of the Yucca Mountain Project, replacing Carl 18 .Gertz. 19 The House and the Senate conferees recently 20 approved a compromise provision eliminating any further DOE 21 grants to study the feasibility of citing an MRS. It is 22 going to be interesting to follow that, because, as many of 23 you know, there were several Indian tribes that were moving 24 ahead with plans for an MRS. This apparently at least 25 tempcrary terminates their funding. I gather the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite.300 Washington, D.C. L0006 (202) 293-3950

6 1 controversy was not in terms of funding the group 2 considering the MRS, but funding the neighboring towns and 3 so forth who may want to review and evaluate in terms of 4 what impacts there might be on them, if a particular-5 neighboring group agreed to be the site for the MRS. 6 The third item. President Clinton has forwarded. 7 the nomination of Richard Stallings to Congress to be the 8 Nuclear Waste Negotiator. Has that not yet been confirmed? 9 You know, I almost -- it has not yet been -- he has not yet 10 been confirmed. 11 The fourth item. The NWTRB has suggested that DOE 12 change its contracting and purchasing practices on the ESF 13 to be consistent with typical underground construction-14 industry practices. There is a complete new report out by 15 the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. You have been 16 provided copies of it. 17 Then, another item. Westinghouse Idaho has 18 reported that basic calcium aluminum silicate slagging can. 19 decontaminate radioactive scrap metals down to less than one 20 part per million uranium, and even lower when calcium 21 fluoride and nickel oxide are introduced. I gather they are 22 thinking of applying this to try to reduce the volumes that 23 are in storage and so forth. 24 Now, I read the notice, and either I am totally 25 mixed up or I can't read; but it said that DOE estimates it ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (.2 02 ) 293-3950

H i i 1 7 y 1 has 1.5 million tons of radioactive scrap' metal in storage. I 2 And then the news item went on'to say that the U.S. uses 70 3 million tons per year of scrap and, for that reason, the 4 principal use of the process will be to reduce the volume of I 5 contaminated steel requiring long-term storage, implying it 6 is not to clean it up so it can be fed into this scrap for -l 1 7 the steel industry. Well, to me, one and a half million j 8 tons is peanuts, compared to the 70 million tons a year. I 9 So, I wondered if that might have been, you know, one and a 10 half billion tons or something. 11 MR. LARSON: The numbers are right and your 12 percentage is right. That is the point. The U.S. uses 70 13 million tons a year, and DOE has one and a half million tons 14 a year. So, it wouldn't be the same use that the United 15 States, as a whole, uses as scrap metal. DOE just measures 16 it according to the report, to reduce the volume that it has 17 in storage. It is not going to.be a major input into all of 18 the U.S. scrap metal supply. 19 MR. MOELLER: Right. 20 MR. LARSON: One and a half-million and 70 21 million. 70 million a year and one and a half million. 22 MR. STEINDLER: First off, the one and a half 23 million that DOE has is its total inventory. It is not an i 24 annual production number. 25 MR. LARSON: That's right. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

l 8 1 MR. MOELLER: Oh, 2 MR. STEINDLER: Secondly, it.is not altogether 3 clear whether there is an unambiguous release concentration 4 limit that can be met -- 4 5 MR. LARSON: Or any limit. 6 MR. STEINDLER: -- which it -- or any limit,.yes, 7 which would allow the stuff, even if it is decontaminated, 8 to go back into commerce. s 9 MR. LARSON: Yes. 10 MR. STEINDLER: But, more interesting, at least I 11 found more interesting, about 15 years ago we did some 12 experiments in which we used steel mill slag to 13 decontaminate steel from plutonium -- plutonium oxide 14 systems, doing exactly the same thing as these folks did. 15 It turns out that the process itself is based on the-16 ordinary distribution between slag and oxide slag in a 17 liquid metal, of a fairly insoluble oxide. So,_it is-no -- 18 nothing magic. 19 The difficulty with this process is that surface 20 contamination normally doesn't come rising to the top very 21 easily if a molten puddle of steel or whatever you happen to 22 have, and the ability of the process to, in fact, 23 demonstrably clean up the metal is up for grabs, as far as I 24 can tell. But, the interesting thing is we don't seem to be 25 able to read the literature. All they would have had to do I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) I.93-3950 ~

= - -9 1 -is read-the reports we brought them,.and they would have' b ~ a 2 saved themselves whatever' dollars thef spent doing the 3 experiment. 4 MR. MOELLER: Okay. Following on with items-of 5 interest, let me call on Dr. Steindler to mention a couple l 6 of items that he wants to bring to our attention. 7 MR. STEINDLER: The first one is the new tri-8 partite agreement between Hanford,'the State of Washington 9 and U.S. EPA. You recall that their low-level waste was ) 10 going to be grouted into a significant number of very large 11 chunks of grout sitting on asphalt-type pads out there. The .i 1 12 Jacama Indians looked at th3 and said gee, we really don't j 13 think we like that because ultimately the stuff is going to 14 leech into the soil. I think they also mentioned j ' O. 'r 15 groundwater. The things that they were looking at, of 16 course, were the long-lived isotopes, Technetium-99, 90, 17 127, and perhaps Carbon-14. I 18 So, the new agreement calls for glassification of 19 the low-level waste, rather than turning it into grout, 20 which is fine, but it has some interesting fall-out from it. 21 That is a terrible term, actually. 22 The first one is that they are using -- they are 23 planning to use a process developed, or at least I guess 24 patented by Pacific Nuclear, a vitrification process about 25 which, as far as I can tell, relatively little of this has ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

g i 10 1 been published. But, more important, the economics of which 2 are' essentially totally unknown. The vitrification of-low-3 level waste may, on the surface, sound like it solves that 4 problem, but it certainly would be interesting to see what 5 kind of economics these folks are planning to come through-6 with. 7 Secondly, I am wondering whether this is going to 8 be the new format for commercial low-level waste disposal'. 9 If it is, the current price of -- what is it, about $200 per 10~ cubic foot or thereabouts, I think is rapidly going to 11 escalate to maybe five times that as a broad guess. So, I 12 think we need to at least track or watch what these folks 13 are doing and why they are doing it and how well that works. 1 14 MR. HINZE: Marty, if I may ask, is anyone doing 15 this at the present time -- any other country or any; group? i 16 MR. STEINDLER: Vitrification? 17 MR. HINZE: Vitrification of low-level waste? 18 MR. STEINDLER: Not that I am aware of. There is 19 a lot of grout being produced in the world. 20 MR. HINZE:

Yes, 21 MR. STEINDLER:

But, I am not aware of anybody,.cn1 i 22 any kind of reasonable scale, doing vitrification of low-23 level waste. The fact that I am not aware of it doesn't 24 preclude it, but I have not seen it. I think it is 25 something that we need to watch, because it could become the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006-(202) 293-3950

.3 a 11 1 format for future activities in this country. () 2 The other thing that I thought was interesting, 3 President Clinton issued an Executive Order within this' i 4 month which requires agencies who are writing -.that are 5 writing regulations to compece the risks that thef are l 6 guarding against, if that is the right term, with other 7 risks that the same agency has either accepted ~or is built 8 into their regulations. This may well become a move to.Llook 9 at the risk-based regulatory approach which we have 10 discussed from time to time and have, I think, generally. 11 thought to be a useful exercise. I think we need to watch 12 two things: One, how well does this work, recognizing that i 13 there may well be more information available on the risks i i 14 from radioactive contamination in the biosphere than from an 15 awful lot of, for example, chemical contamination of the 16 biosphere, and secondly, whether or not the congress, as 17 well as the people at large are prepared to use a 4 18 rationalized rystem of risk rather than the-current system j 19 that we are using, which is non-rationalize -- that is, a-20 risk from nuclear activities is believed to be much' greater. 21 than the same risk from automobile traffic, for example. 22 That will remain to be seen whether or not they can -- ~ 23 peopla can make that fly. 24 MR. POMEROY: Marty, just as a point of. 25 information there, when I read that material, I was under R ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

-_.. ~ -. - 12 1 the improssion that it applied to the EPA establishing 2 standards, for example, and having to compare that with 3 other standards that they had established essentially. .But, t l 4 I didn't get any feeling that it applied to any inter-agency 5 relationship, t 6 MR. STEINDLER: No. 7 MR. POMEROY: That is, NRC regulations don't'have 8 meet the same level of risk, for example, that EPA standards 9 do or vice versa. Is that the way you -- 10 MR. STEINDLER: I agree. That is'the way I read 11 it. The natural next step, on the other hand, it seems to 12 me, is to make this government-wide -- that is, government i .13 agency-wide. That is where I see the barriers that might 14 well occur. - O 15 Furthermore, presumably, the agencies now have to 16 demonstrate that, for example, in the case of EPA, to one l 17 part in a million, which is their rough general approach to'. I 18 chemical hazards, can be shown to be applicable to, for 19 example, the high-level waste hazard. That demonstration,. 20 if you recall, is precisely what we wer-entirely 21 unsuccessful in getting from the EP in the early stages of .I 22 the Part 91 polemic that we got invt ..a in. -That 23 demonstration will be interesting, depending on how i 24 thoroughly the agencies adhere to them. But, yes, so far, [ 25 it seems to be within the single agency. 1 .l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

l 13. 1 l 1-MR. MOELLER: Excuse me-a second on that. Of 2 course, it is part of what I had referred to or -- I didn't c 3 coin the word, but the NRC and EPA were talking about risk 4 harmonization. In that regard, let me mention to things. 5 Dr. Steindler had brought to our attention, and we discussed - l 6 it a couple of months ago, the fact that most steel in the' 7 United States has some Cobalt-60 in it, due to the lining of 8 the furnace brick with Cobalt-60, to indicate when you need 1 9 to shut it down and re-line it. And we were'looking at the l 10 risk that might be associated with that. It is widely-11 accepted, and it is okay. But, this month, somewhat 12 stimulated by this and some other things, I looked into i 13 another area just out of interest, because I couldn't find 14 anything on it, and what it was was the use of thickness 15 gauges in the United States -- radioactive thickness gauges. 16 I believe radioactive static eliminators may be the most 17 widely -- the greatest use of radioactive materials in j 18 industries for static eliminators. But, if that is true, 19 thickness gauges are a close second. 20 Well, anyway, I contacted the NRC staff and they 21 were very cooperative. They came up with the~ number that' 22 there were 1,500-industries in the United States using 23 radioactive thickness gauges and that there are 5,400-out 24 there being used. So, then I went on and said, well, what - 25 - how is the radioactive material incorporated into them. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court-Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006-(202) 293-3950 g yr - f -g--+- M r-gy _eg_- -py -p,- 3,w-- .+-m v e w v+ui-++

L' 14 1 They said, well, unlike a static eliminator, you know,-these ,,( 2' are -- have more power, they are not alpha emitters. In. 3 general, they are beta and gamma, and they have got -- you 4 can cover the radioactive source or seal it pretty well. 5 They said not only is it sealed, but they require that it be 6 incorporated in an insoluble chemical compound so that, even 7 if it works loose and you ingest it, it won't be too easily 8 taken up within the body. But, the bottomlineLwas that 9 these 5,400 gauges are all licensed under general. licenses 10 which permits them to give the people working around them a 11 hundred millirem a year, compared to RBRC and so forth. So, 12 it is juts interesting. 13 And harmonization or a Federal requirement that 14 all agencies make sure that they are applying the same risk 15 standards in all of their regulations would be extremely 16 upsetting. It would mean a total overhaul of everything. 17 Excuse me. 18 MR. STEINDLER: I was just trying to see if that 19 has impact that we can define. 20 MR. MOELLER: Well, all I am saying -- 21 MR. STEINDLER: I think the point that Paul was 22 making was that it may well not, at the moment be inter-23 agency. 24 MR. MOELLER: Right. 25 MR. STEINDLER: Although, the risk harmonization ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

] 15' l i 1 issue is inter-agency. ] 2 MR. MOELLER: Right. But, even if this wasn't .I 3 inter-agency, if is intra-agency -- if someone said to the 4 NRC every regulation you have must be based on the same risk 5 limit, they would be in a lot of trouble, I mean, or they 6 would be facing a lot of work, and it would be very 7 upsetting to industry and many other groups. So, a hundred. 8 millirem is permissible here, but not for low-level waste. 9 MR. STEINDLER: Especially in Illinois. 10 Okay. The only other two things that I want to i 11 simply mention is Sandia has a new manager. Martin Marietta 12 taok over f rom AT&T. AT&T has been the operator of the l .i i 13 Sandia National Laboratory since the war, and actuallyt it i T 14 was the Western Electric folks that, I gather, or Bell Labs, 15 or Western Electric, one or the other. Martin Marietta took i 16 over on October 1st. It remains to be seen whether there 17 will be any significant changes in approach or orientation .I 18 to Sandia. 19 The other one that I guess I found a little 20 troubling frankly, was that the schedule for the Savannah l 21 River Defense Waste Processing Facility is such that I 22 radioactive testing is not going to-start until December of 23 1995. This was a facility which I thought was going to get d i 24 cranked up and begin hot runs a-year and a half ago. The ] 25 initial testing is not even going to use hot: material. They ^1 ~; ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. . Court Reporters 1612.K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i )

f 16 1 are doing to use Cesium-137 spiked solutions as a stand-in. 2 It isn't very clear to me and perhaps we should 3 have a look sometime as to why there is such a delay -- 4 particularly, is the delay caused by technical issues, or is S the delay caused by what I call bureaucratic institutional 6 issues? At the moment, I don't have-a clear picture, and 7 frankly, haven't found out too much about it. The delay is 8 troubling. 9 That is basically it. 10 MR. MOELLER: Okay. We have distributed to each 11 of you a list -- an additional list of items of possible I 12 interest. I don't believe there is any need to go through 13 them. At some point, I guess Georgio is not here this 14 morning; but I had mentioned in the items of interest how O 15 Georgio has been calling to our attention the problems with 16 QA in the high-level waste program. At some point we may 17 want to follow-up on that. 18 Just to mention a couple of things. I found it [ 19 interesting -- and it is like Marty says, you find out thing 20 that -- maybe you have seen them, but it didn't register 21 with you. There was a Chief Financial Officers Act of'1990 i 22 that the Congress passed. It requires that.all-Federal 23 Agencies develop indicators to evaluate their performance. 24 So, now the NRC annually publishes a report to I guess the j I 25 Congress, to someone, I didn't pay attention to whom it was k ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i. n,

. ~ 17 1 addressed; but they are trying to develop now indicators of () 2 performance for the regulatory program. They have got 3 indicators of performance on site decommissioning. They [ 4 have got indicators of performance on transportation of { ~ 5 radioactive materials. Maybe, in time, they will have 6 indicators of performance for low-level waste. 7 Then, Howard called to our attention a couple 8 things on underground injection of radioactive waste. And 9 EPA has stated or declared that underground disposal of ') 10 containerized radioactive waste in a geologic repository is l ? 11 not underground injection. Then, it is interesting, in the 12 same category, that EPA and the NRC jointly approved a group 13 -- a company in Ohio to dispose of Uranium-contaminated 14 liquid waste by deep-well injection. Howard sent us the i .O 15 details on that. 16 Then, speaking -- getting to things -- well, that 17 is of interest to the Committee and of importance to the -j 18 Committee -- and another thing that is coming up on the. 19 horizon that we need to be alert to is this whole subject of j l 20 the radionuclide contamination of sewage. There is a 21 petition before the NRC now that any licensee that plans to 22 discharge radioactive material to the sewer system must give-23 the plant operator the treatment -- the sewage treatment 24 plant operator 24 hours. notice before discharging.such. 25 They don't want it to be incinerated and so forth. In fact,. .1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 e

18 'l there are problems at several sewage treatment plans -- I j () 2 mean, several, five or 10, where they normally incinerate 3 the sewage sludge, and now that it is known to be 4 contaminated with radioactive materials, are they breaking i 5 the law, or should they be permitted to do that? So, there ) 6 is a lot developing in that area, and we may want to't2ar to 7 keep up with it. i 8 You also probably noticed that the NRC staff 9 endorsed EPA's request to request that the Center for j 10 Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses do research and studies. l 11 for EPA pertaining to WIPP. j 12 MR. POMEROY: That particular item, when I read

1 13 the background material, struck me as extremely important.

)

14 MR. MOELLER: Yes. O 15 MR. POMEROY: It could have a major impact on the 16 ability of the Center to adequately address the problems 17 that have been posed by the NRC staff, as far as high-level 18 waste is concerned. And it certainly -- one would hope that 19 the NRC staff, at some point, has considered whether or.not. .i 20 it is more important to them to worry about the WIPP problem 21 rather than perhaps have the Center address some of the low-22 level waste problems. 23 From what you have said and from the material, it 1 24 eeemed as though this recommendation from the staff has gone 25 forward to the Commission, that they accept EPA's -- you i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

i 19 1 know, that they concur with EPA's idea of utilizing the ) 2 center. Since it is not clear to me that it -- and it is of 3 some concern that the Center will be adequately addressing 4 all of the NRC problems, I wonder if this isn't a topic that. 5 we should address in a somewhat urgent way -- not urgent, I 6 perhapr but obviously, if it has gone to the Commission or 7 goini Lo the Commission immediately, it won't pass through 8 us. The Staff's recommendation won't pass through us.

But, 9

the question is should we try to gather some information and 10 offer some comments to the Commission for their R 11 consideration in regard to this matter? It seems to me it 12 could have some significant impact. And it certainly might, 13 if the same people who are the. key people who have learned 14 high-level waste issues within the Center, are also now 15 dividing their time and spending a certain amount on WIPP-16 issues. 17 MR. HINZE: When I looked at that I also saw that 18 there was the opportunity to really enhance their 19 opportunities for performance assessment, in other words, a 20 broader base of people and talents and so forth. You said 21 impact. It is not necessarily negative, but it also could 22 be positive. I agree wit i Paul that it is unfortunate.that 23 we didn't have a chance to be involved in this in a timely. 24 fashion. 25 I wonder if any member of the staff has in mind l O i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

20 1 when the Commission is going to act upon this? 2 MR. MOELLER-I think -- 3 MR. STEINDLER: It wasn't up for action, was'it? 4 It was just information. 5 MR. MOELLER: It was one of those things.that said 6 if we don't hear from you within 10 days, we are moving 7 ahead. 8 MR. POMEROY: Yes. And EEO has recommended that-9 the Commission approves the request by default,.if nothing 10 else. 11 MR. MOELLER: And, Paul, it did say, if my memory 12 is correct, it said that you -- that the Center had-to hire 13 new staff to do this work -- that they could not dilute the 14 existing staff. I believe that is the way it was worded. 15 MR. POMEROY: I guess what concerned me there is - 16- - and I think it is a positive thing in some sense,'but the 17 question is can they hire new staff that has the necessary. 18 expertise, cnr will it require the supervision of the people - 19 who are already there to train and bring these people up to. 20 speed, if they do hire them? 21 I am also concerned because we have discussed:this 22 question of involving the Center with low-1.evel. waste 23 activities. And I think that might be a very positive. thing 24 also. But, I am wondering if they're involved with WIPP and 25 low-level waste, as well as high-level waste -- whether we I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

21 1 are most effectively using those people that we have got at 2 the Center? I really.would like to hear something from the 3 staff I think on what the thought processes were there'. 4 MR. MOELLER: Okay. 5 MR. STEINDLER: Yes. I have got a problem. .I 6 think we have to be a little careful. There are two-7 concerns it seems to me concerning the work of the Center. 8 One is would any other activity violate the original ground- .9 rule under this the Center was chartered, namely, you want 10 to get work done in an area where the people who are doing r 11 the work have a clear separation between themselves and the 12 potential licensee. So, if you want to get work done on 13 high-level waste, you don't want to get anybody involved in 14 this case. 15 The same ground rule holds for WIPP presumably, 1 16 since NRC has no explicit license relationship in that area. 1 17 So, that is still within'the same charter. ~! 18 The other issue is is it going to dilute the 19 effort of the center? I think that is a slippery thing for 20 us to get involved in. I think we can evaluate the quality 21 of the high-level waste program and continue to address.the 4 22 issue has it changed any because they are now working on the { 23 WIPP program. But, I think it would be -- I am not 24 convinced at the moment that there is anything that we can - 25 - while we may think it is unwise or whatever we think, I am O.. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

m. m p r [ 22 1 not sure-that there is anything that we ought to do at this 2 juncture'to try and convince the. staff to come to us with at 3 least information on the subject prior to them running it up 4 to the Commission. I don't -- perhaps I don't see the 5 threat, so to speak, to the quality of the output of the 6 center. l-7 MR. POMEROY: I guess the first one I would say.is L L 8 the conclusion of effort that you already mentioned. But,~ - 9 the second'one is where are -- where is the Center going in 10 the future? Can it do both low-level waste and WIPP? Can: 11 it draw the necessary expertise and people together-to-12 handle all of those issues, or will that~ result in some 13 dilution of effort? 14 It seems to me the staff must have considered this O 15 prior.to taking a position and sending it to the Commission. 16 This is certainly an issue that is on the Commissioner's l l 17 table at this point. 18 MR, STEINDLER: I have.not read the SECY on this. 19 MR. POMEROY: I haven't either. l 20 MR.. STEINDLER: At least, if I have, I certainly 21 don't remember it. 22 MR POMEROY: I scanned it, but I haven't read it. 23 MR. LARSON: You have got it. I summarized it'for i 24 internal use only -- the questions that you have brought up q 25 or what was it the~ staff has indicated to the Commission- ~ L ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. 'l l Court Reporters j 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 .(202) 293-3950

23 1 they have considered. But, it will be phased in, it will be 2 phased out. They will-hire additional people. We will-3 point out to the Commission that they have to recognize that 4 it may have some impact. They are saying that the staff 5 will monitor this to minimize any impact on their high-6 level waste activities. EPA has also said, you know, it 7 will take them six months to get a contract to go' forward ] 8 and phase the work in. As you know, it took them a long 'l 9 time to get the people that they wanted. There was supposed -l 10 to be a notation both by the -- to the Commission. 11 MR. HINZE: I don't recall the length of time in d 12 that SECY. Was there a length of time that the EPA -- d 13 MR. LARSON: Well, the contract -- you know, the-14 Center -- the contract is only at five-year cracks. So -- 15 MR. HINZE: But, it is the EPA? 16 MR. LARSON: Even though EPA says we'will probably 17 need their services for at least five to six years, it will 18 probably extend beyond the current contract. 19 MR. POMEROY: Howard, when they say they are going 20 to monitor the effect of the EPA's work on high-level waste, 21 do you have any conception of what they mean? Suppose they 22 find there is no use having an effect?. They don't have any 23 recourse, as far as I know, to -- once the Center has a 24 contract with EPA, the Center has to live up to its i 25 contracts clearly. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202).293-3950

.i 24 1 MR. LARSON: Yes. I don't think -- I 2 MR. POMEROY: How are they going to -- I mean, 3 they may monitor it and say that is wrong. l ^ 4 MR. LARSON: I don't know that much or any detail 5 of the Commission contract -- you know, when they I 6 established it with the Center -- if there is any 7 interference with the work we are doing. My-only point was 8 that they did recognize the SECY -- to minimize-the impact. 'l { 9 MR. MOELLER: Okay. A couple of other th ings, and 10 then we will try to wrap this up. 11 Howard has also been keeping us up-to-date on the 12 EnviroCare disposal facility. It maybe that the Committee 13 will want to invite someone on for an update on that. I say-14 that because, you know, initially we had Beatty and Hanford O 15 and they are the only low-level waste disposal -- 4 16 MR. LARSON: The executive vice president of 17 EnviroCare came in. 18 MR. MOELLER: Six months, or whatever was.

But, 19 now EnviroCare is becoming broader.

The latest material' 20 that Howard sent us, they now dispose of radioactive 21 materials, hazardous chemical waste and mixed waste. So, I 22 just mention that to you. 23 Another item I don't -- yes? 24 MR. STEINDLER: Let me just add. The issue there 25 it seems to me is the ownership of the site -- t ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington,.D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

25 1 MR. MOELLER: Yes. 2 MR. STEINDLER: -- not whether or not they dispose 3 of it, and whether or not they are planning to dispose of 4 low-level waste on a site that is not going to be owned or 5 in the control of a governmental agency, 6 MR. MOELLER: Okay. 7 MR. STEINDLER: I think that is the only issue 8 that I can see that represents potential argument. One 9 assumes that the licensing process is done in a reasonable 10 fashion. There are several layers of folks who are looking 11 at that. I have not seen any noise about that being an 12 issue. 13 There, I thought the thing I read was that there 14 are going to be two separate sites on the same site, one in l 15 which low-level waste is going to be disposed of which will 16 be owned by the thing, you know -- controlled by the state 17 government, and the other areas were private ownership is 18 allowed. There will be some clear demarkation between those 19 two. If that is an accurate statement of the issue, then I 20 guess my comment is there is not much that represents 21 uncertainty in that situation. I don't know what else we 22 need to do other than to maybe track it. It is when they 23 violate this first ground rule, namely, we are going to 24 dispose of low-level waste in areas that are not going to be 25 controlled by a governmental agency, then I think we have O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C, 20006 (202) 293-3950 _ _, _, _ _ _ _ _ _ _,, _. _ _ - - - - - - - - - - - - ^ ' " " - " - - ~ ^ ' E

26 1 some cause to go back and say well, that isn't the way the ~ 2 original ground rule was written and take it up from there. 3 So, it kind of limits our notion I think. But, we do have i 4 to track it. 5 MR. MOELLER: Okay. In the way of a final -- just E 6 a couple of items I will mention in passing. On page 3, I 7 will mention that DOE now has issued a statement outlining 8 their policy for doing work at Yucca Mountain where they do 9 not have an approved study plan. I would leave it, you 10 know, to Paul and Bill to tell me how that sounds. 11 And then, on page 5, the top item, Marty, you had 12 mentioned this in a memo or on the bulletin board about West 13 Valley and you had some -- you said we may want to schedule 14 a briefing on it. 15 MR. STEINDLER: I think it would'be useful. 1 16 MR. MOELLER: Okay. Put down a West Valley 17 briefing as a possible future item. I I 18 MR. LARSON: I. thought it was on the item for 19-January. 'l 20 MR. MOELLER: It is? Okay. Fine. 21 And then, on page 6, the first full item there at l l 22 the top. And I really don't know enough'about it. But, the l' I 23 NRC has published this TP, the Technical 1 Position on 1 24 Concentration Averaging and Encapsulation for Low-Level '25 Waste. I understand it superficially, but"I don't.know-how ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters L 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 ~..

b l l l 27 L L 1 significant.that is. You know, obviously, it was enough to .I 2 file'a written and technical position on it.

But, 3

apparently it is important enough to have treated it that 4 way. 5 Then, lastly, on page seven, I mention here that' 6 EPA officials have told a Congressional Committee that they i 7 will set standards for the clean-up of nuclear facilities by l 8 next summer. You know, of course, in concert with that, the I 9 NRC has its enhanced participatory rulemaking moving ahead. 10 Let me close out though, it pertains to or relates 1 L 11 to our white paper that we are-doing, but-I found this l 12 Office of Technology. Assessment Report that Howard brought i 13 to our attention quite interesting. It says that, and I am quoting from the Office of Technology Assessment' Report, and ] 14 15 it is a report entitled Aging Nuclear Power plants: 16 Managing Plant Life and Decommissioning. Here is-a quote 17 from it. It says: "The development of a viable long-term j i 18 management and disposal strategy for nuclear waste will j 19 resolve not only major uncertainties with decommissioning 20 the first generation of commercial nuclear plants, but could 21 influence substantially the future prospects of developing _a 22 second generation of nuclear reactors in the United States. I 23 Unless such a strategy'is developed, utility and financial 24 planners and the public will remain reluctant to invest 25 further in nuclear power." ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 __..~.,.1

28 1 I mention that. I think maybe we ought to put it 2 in our-report. f i 3 Bill, or Paul, did you have anything more to add 4 on to this list? I 5 MR. HINZE: Well, perhaps'it is worth while 6 mentioning that we have received this DOE Plan for Adequacy 7 of Management Plans for Future Generation of Spent Nuclear. -I 8 Fuel and High-Level Waste. We -- apparently this has.gone ] 9 to the Commission for their comments by October 21st. It is i 10 a bit late for us to get involved in this, but it would seem j 11 to me that this should have reached our hands in a much more i 12 timely' fashion, so that we could have reviewed this. It 13 seems like it is a document that this Committee might look 'I 14 at regardless of the fact that the DOE has already moved 15 ahead with it. 16 MR. MOELLER: Paul, anything? 17 MR. POMEROY: Not at this point. Thanks. 18 MR. MOELLER: Let me -- having said I was through, j 'l 19 let me mention two other things. I have sent Richard a memo 20 which he has shared with you on the NRC _5-Year Plan. And 21 sometime we may want to discuss some of that, i 22 Secondly, though, for this meeting, I wanted to 23 remind you that we had received a request from the NRC staff-24 that we hear a report on the NMSS information-package 125 pertaining to the revised procedural and project-specific ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i

t i 29 1 agreements between the NRC and DOE. We declined to hear 2 their report. And -- but they did, of' course, send us the-3 written report. I have read the written report.and had a 4 couple of comments on it. I just wondered if the Committee 5 -- we can consider it later -- but whether the Committee 6 will want to send a note to Mr. Bonnero about that report, 7 inasmuch as we did not hear their oral presentation and if, 8 indeed we considered we had comments worthy of transmission 9 to them, we can consider it. We can take that up later. 10 Okay. Let's move ahead then into the reports on 11 the various meetings that members of the Committee and the 12 staff have attended. We will begin with a report on 13 radionuclide migration and related near-field phenomena. 1 14 Lynn Deering, you are the one to cover that for us. So, we k-- 15 look forward to your comments. We each have a copy of our 16 handout. 17 MS. DEERING: Okay. I thought I would take about 18 ten minutes or so to summarize the highlights of each of 19 those meetings, and what I'm going to really try'to get at 20 is the discussions that took place, to capture those for 21 you. 22 I have a big stack of view graphs that I'd be 23 happy to send out to all of you so that you can get the 24 flavor for more of the' technical permeations. 25. Those three meetings included October 5th and 6th. -l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950 .p e-

30 1 I went down to the Center for a Hydrology Research () 2 Coordination Meeting. The following week, on the 13th and 3 14th, I was in Los Alamos. There was a technical exchange, 1 4 NRC/ DOE Technical Exchange. The first' day was radionuclide 5 migration in the unsaturated zone, and the second day was-6 books on near field phenomenon and source term related 7 research. 8 The third meeting was last week in Las Vegas,;and 9 that was the Nuclear Waste Technology Review Board, and they-10 had a meeting. The first day they focused on their surface 11 based testing program and all their deep and shallow bore 12 holes. Their second day, they focused more on the ESF.and 13 the kinds of testing that would be going in the ESF. 14 I just wanted to add that my purpose, really, in 15 going to all three of these was the focus was on the 16 unsaturated zone, and in particular hydrology issues. In-17 that we are having a working group on that very subject, I 18 wanted to make sure we were getting the most current 19 information and that we're aware of current trends 20 What you have in front of you is -- you can just 21 follow along with me. It is really my notes that I'm. 22 speaking from, and hopefully it will help you later if- .23 you're interested. You also have a copy of each of the 24 meeting agendas in the back. 25 Okay, let me start with the first meeting, down at O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

..__ _ _ _ ~. _ _ _ _. _ _ _ _.. _ _ 4 1 i y 31 i l 1 the Center. This was what they' call their Sixth Annual () 2 . Hydrology Research Coordination Meeting. As you know, the 3 Center and the University of Arizona, both are involved in 4 high level waste hydrology research, 5 So they brought the two groups together, and their. 6 purpose to discuss key technical uncertainties that the NRC l 7 staff have' identified in the area of hydrology. They also-8 brought in some geochemistry. 9 Just to refresh your memory, the key technical 10 uncertainties are identified as part of the SRA process, and 11 as their developing their licensed application review plan, 12 the LARP, the key technical uncertainties are a product that 13 comes out of that, and right now, EdC staff has identified 14 in every technical discipline a whole list of these key ~ 15 technical ancertainties. They say they're pre-decisional, 16 they're draft. 17 Their next step is to do what they call'an 18 integration review. So all of FY '94, they're going to be 19 looking across disciplines at the uncertainties they've 20 identified, making sure that there are no redundancies and' 21 the level of detail is consistent and really kind of. fine 22 tune these things. As I go through this, I'll define.for 23 you what their definition is of a key technical uncertainty.. 24 So the. point was to bring these contractors and 25 technical experts and say, hey, do we have the right key-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

32 1 technical uncertainties? Are there major omissions, and -2 most importantly, is the research program.that we have in 3 place, does it address these things? I think that was the 4 whole purpose. { i 5 Mel Silverberg's group was really the lead. He 6 had his hydrologist, Tom Nicholson, and Margaret Federline 7 had two hydrologists from the technical system side of the 8 house, and I really would like to comment that I was very 9 impressed with'the integration that they reflected. They 10 were almost as if they were one, and I was impressed and I 11 just wanted to pass that along. 12 MR. MOELLER: Okay, Lynn. When you say that, help 13 me to understand. This was a meeting at the Center and they 14 brought in the University of Arizona people. O i i 15 MS. DEERING: Right. 16 MR. MOELLER: Yet now, the work that Mel 17 Silverberg or Margaret Federline reported would have been 18 out of headquarters, would it not? I mean, it wasn't Center-19 personnel or University of Arizona, either one? 20 MS, DEERING: Well, Mel wanted to bring in the 21 researchers and have them come together. His purpose was to 22 bring them together and report on research. Margaret's 23 purpose -- you know, the Center also works on technical' -24 assistance, and the NRC staff themselves have done a 25 significant amount of work in identifying key technical H ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

33 1 uncertainties and writing large portions of this licensed 2 application review plan, and they've worked very closely 3 with the Center to do that. 4 So I guess I would just say there was elements of 5 both research and technical assistance, both from the Center 6 and from the NRC staff. 7 MR. MOELLER: And that it was all well 8 interesting? 1 9 MS. DEERING: It was. It really was. Everybody L 10 seemed to know what the other was doing and supported the 11 other. 12 Briefly, you can look at your agenda in the back, f 13 but Mel got up and gave an overview of the framework. You 14 know, the whole SRA process, and how user needs and' key 15 technical uncertainties fit in with performance assessment-1 16 and license application review plan, the kinds of things 17 we've seen before but it is always a little confusing. 18 But from here the NRC staff talked about -- I'm 19 just going to call them KTUs from here on out. The 20 University of Arizona gave a nice overview. They had a lot 21 of graduate students working on a number of projects at the 22 Apache Leap test site,.which is tough, fracture tough. 23 What I'm going to do is pull out one or two of the 24 talks and go through those, but one in particular. Bill 25 Murphy from the Center talked about Geochemical. Constraints ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

L 34 l l 1 on Groundwater Travel Time, which was a real interesting 2 talk I'll go over. Then they reviewed some of the hydrology 3 stochastic modeling that they're doing to support 4 groundwater travel time calculations. 5 There were discussions about Pena Blanca, the t 6 natural analog and hydrologic research going on there, and 7 various things. 8 MR. HINZE: Excuse me. Can you give us a little l 9 bit of update on Pena Blanca? What is going on? How are =l 10 things going? What is being learned? ) 11 MS. DEERING: Well, okay. I wasn't planning on ] 12 talking -- I wasn't going to go into that particular area. 13 I have some material I can give you on that. It was really 14 Ron Green of the Center who described some of the hydrologic 15 focus. That is really what they were looking at, some 16 transport studies that they were doing. 17 MR. HINZE: Through geochemistry? j I 18 MS. DEERING: Yes, through geochemistry and also 19 geophysics. They have a fresh water-body there and they 20 were using geophysics to determine roughly where it was.and 21 other than -- off the top of my head I -- let me try to get 22 something for you because I really wasn't focusing on that 23 one. 24 MR. STEINDLER: Can I go back a notch? The number -i 25 of key technical uncertainties is significant. 'Was there ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

= '35. 1 any indication that folks at this meeting are prepared to () 2 prioritize them according to their importance to some kind 1 3 of a performance assessment process after this? l 4 MS. DEERING: No. In fact, that was one of the 5 questions. How do we set priorities for these key technical 6 uncertainties? But I would say they're at the beginning of 7 this. 8 Now that they've identified them and they-are af i 9 draft and I have this big stack that lists the key.-- there 10 was 31 talked about in the area of hydrology, and this pack 11 of paper right here goes into -- it actually.is very 12 informative. I'm going to make copies for everybody and I l 13 can pass it around. 14 But no. These contractors -- I don't want to.say 15 they were put on the spot, but it just wasn't the form. I 16 There wasn't time to really address how do we set' priorities 17 for these things and how do.we go from -- I'll talk about 18 this. 19 But some of the real difficult issues is how'do 20 you go from a key technical uncertainty which is rather 21 conceptual to trace it all the way back to an actual user 22 need, and also how do you take a key technical. uncertainty, 23 define a research project, get results, and then how do you 24 build those into performance assessments? 25 You know, there is a lot of tracing here. It was ~ b ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. . Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i i ,...i

l-36 P 1 not clear at this meeting. So you're question is good. 2 MR. STEINDLER: Do you -- let me just pursue this 3 a little bit ---did you get the impression that somebody is 4 thinking about this process? 5 MS. DEERING: Yes. I get that impression only 6 because they put it on the table as here is going to be 7 something that is going to be tough to deal with and we're 8 struggling with it now. It.is not an easy thing to do but 1 9 it is something we have to do. But that-was more -- it was ] 10 very -- 11 MR. STEINDLER: I guess I'll just make a comment 12 that I'm a bit disturbed to hear that somebody is not 13 actively addressing it. The time when resources presumably 14 are fairly limited, you can't attack everything at once it 15 would seem. 16 MR. HINZE: Is this being attacked at the Center 17 or at the staff here in the DC area? 18 MS. DEERING: I think it is both. I mean they 19 both support it a lot, and I think the staff is really the 20 lead on it, and then they act for assistance from the 21. Center. But they really are the ones that are leading the-22 effort to write the license application review plan so that 23 they can review the license application. 1 24 If you remember, the real effort is what they call- ~ 25' " compliance demonstration strategies." I have some examples i \\ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C 20006 (202) 293-3950

9 37 1 .with me,.if you'd like to see one. They're thick and they k 2 go through a whole logic of how, in that particular, very 7 3 narrow technical area, the staff is going to conduct a l 4 review of a certain regulatory aspect or issue. 5 It is a whole systemic approach to how they are 6 going to do that review, and out of that, these key l 7 technical uncertainties are embedded in these compliance 8 determination strategies. 9 The framework is really important, I think, that 10 we really eventually come to a clear understanding of the 11 whole framework, because if we don't it is going to be very 12 hard to get involved and give reasonable input on this, and~ 13 it is very complex. But I think it would be worth our time. 14 But let me walk through one. Neal Coleman and' [] '( ) 15 Jeff Poole of the hydrology staff'got up and they. talked -1 16 about these KTUs, and I'll try to give you some highlights. 17 They defined a KTU as~an uncertainty related-to 18 repository performance such that if it is not resolved it 19 could pose a very high risk of noncompliance with'the 20 regulation. The idea here is the KTU is not necessarily 21 NRC's uncertainty. It is the program's uncertainty,- and'it 1 22 could be DOE's problem. 1 23 This is where it also gets tricky is they made'it 24 a point to say that all these KTUs that we have on the table 25 are not necessarily research projects. In fact,.they could ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

38 1 be things that DOE will take up. Some of them will become-() 2 research projects, but there is also a logic to get them 3 through, to decide which of these should NRC fund and for 4 conformity analysis. 5 Like I said, there were 31 on the table in the 6 areas of unsaturated zone, climate geochemistry, and general 7 hydrology, is how they characterized them. I have some 8 examples on your sheet on what some of these KTUs are. Let 9 me walk you through one. 10 As you know, in regulation an example is the 11 formation of perched water bodies is an adverse condition, 12 and staff is going to have to do -- or DOE is going to have 13 to do a quantitative analysis to show the likelihood of 14 perching to form and the consequences if you have a perched 15 water body. 16 Well, from there, given that adverse condition, 17 NRC staff has identified a key technical uncertainty as 18 being modeling groundwater flows through unsaturated 19 fractured rock caused by the lack of codes tested against 20 lab and field data. So in other words, because the 21 quantitative analysis is necessary and there aren't many 22 codes that have been tested and shown applicable to 23 unsaturated fractured rock, this is a key technical 24 uncertainty. 25 As you can see, it is very broad, very general, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 '(202) 293-3950-

.~ 39~ 1 and'you need to take that and turn that into a research 2 project and take it-from there. 1 3 One interesting thing was groundwater travel time. 4 There-is a very thick compliance determination strategy 5 written cn1 the groundwater travel. time performance 6 objective. How staff is going to review analysis to support . l 7 groundwater travel time? 8 In that determination strategy, there are:five 9 major key technical uncertainties, and these would'be -- 10 I've just briefly listed them here. One is identifying 11 conceptual models for the unsaturated zone flow and 12 transport, mathematical models, determining the future state i 13 - the repository in terms of climate change and'that kind i i 1 of thing. j 14 15 One important one that kept coming up over and 16 over is parameter estimation, the lack of techniques'and l 17 instrumentation and methodologies to actually measure 18 certain geologic parameters in fracture and.in matrix. That 19 in itself is a big problem that they're going to have to 20 break down and maybe do some research on coming up with new 21

methods, i

22 Okay, so basically I mentioned the integration 23 review that is going.to be going on this year, and we should 24 want to get involved in that, at some point in '94. We can 1 25 talk about this later, because there is a lot of material ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i 4 e,-. = m -e,s y =

) ) 40 I here,_but'I'm going co have to move on to some of the other 2 things I think that were important there. 3 MR. HINZE: Excuse me, Lynn. -Is there going to be L 4 possible for us to have a look at this document on 5 groundwater travel time before the unsaturated? { 6 MS. DEERING: Yes. 7 MR. HINZE: Could we look at that? 8 MS. DEERING: 'Yes, you can. It was not sent to us .l 9 and I literally had to beg for it and I did. I have itLin t 10 my possession and I'll make copies for you. They're'very l 11 sensitive-about the pre-decisional nature of a lot of this 12 material. 13 MR. HINZE: Sure. It is understandable. i 14 MS. DEERING: They think once we got a hold of it, O e 15 it could hurt them-in some way. I can't imagine,_ but I'll. 16 get that for you when a send out a package of stuff,'okay? 17 MR. HINZE: Who has prepared that document? An i 18 assessor of the Center? 19 MS. DEERING: That was written by NMSS, Jeff. 20 Poole, of the hydrology staff, and they will talk to us 21 about that next month when we go up there. 22 MR. FINZE: Great. Let us have it them before 23 next month. 24 MS. DEERING: Sure. Absolutely. 25 One of the talks I wanted to highlight is the one O i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters i 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 J Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i

1 1 I 41 / 11 by Bill Murphy on geochemical constraints. He went over af 2 number of lines of evidence that are emerging lately in_some 1 -i 3 of the conferences and research going on at DOE on -] 4-groundwater age dating. -5 They're seeing evidence of rapid fracture: flow, l 6 rapid flow paths, which is really.important, and I'll show l l 7 you why later in some of the other meetings. But one of the~ N 8 lines of cvidence was worked by Al Yang of DOE on -- 9 MR. STEINDLER: What is rapid? 10 MS. DEERING: Rapid? Well, okay. 11 MR. STEINDLER: You geologists turn to' talking in ) 12 time units that are-somewhat different.from what the j 13 ordinary mortal. _l 14 MR. HINZE: Per "geigeryear." - i 15 MR. STEINDLER: Per geigeryear? ll 16 MR HINZE: Right. .) q -17 MS. DEERING: Well, an example here is they found

j 18 tritium, which you know -- bomb tritium, which hasn't been j

.i 19 around since whatever -- is it '50s was its first ) 20 introduction? They found it at 50 meters and they were. 21 surprised that it was that deep. At least this is my 22 understanding. 23 They also found evidence of low electrical 24 conductivity zones at depth, meaning that the water there 1 25 had not really calibrated there with the other water, l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W.,-Suite 300 . Washington, D.C. 20006 '(202) 293-3950

42-U 1 suggesting the residence time was'not much. ~ Marty. Let-2 I don't want to give you. quantitative, 3 me go back and just do a.little bit of -- I don't know. I'd. 4 have to figure it out what fast and what a-short residence 1 5 time it before I say. 6 MR. STEINDLER: This is fast in relation to the 7 1,000 years? 8 MS. DEERING: Yes, yes. 9 MR. STEINDLER: You used the word " flow." Do you i 10 mean liquid flow or do you mean transport? For example, any 11 other possibility? j 12 MS. DEERING: When I use it, I generally mean 5 13 liquid. i 14 MR. STEINDLER: Is that what they mean? 15 MS. DEERING: That is a good question. That came- ] 16 up at a meeting of state. _ Carl Johnson said we_ interpret 17 NRC's use of the word groundwater to mean vapor, liquid, and 18 air flow. That is important because NRC said no. Not 19 necessarily. 20 We meant, when we said groundwater travel time, we 1 21 were talking about liquid, and we're having OGC investigate j 22 that right now. So I don't know if there is a definitive 23 answer on what is meant by groundwater travel time or flow. 24 Another thing was the chlorite 36 -- 25 MR. POMEROY: Before you go on to that, Lynn, I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters. 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 1 .Ll

.j 43 1 1 must say that that answer by the NRC staff to that 2 particular question raised major eyebrows around-the room. 3 MS, DEERING: I know. I know it did. 1 4 MR. POMEROY: Because the question of whether 5 liquid flow is gaseous flow is gaseous flow also is 6 extremely important here because it is either more regulated l 7 or not, and to the state and to DOE both it came as a shock j 8 that NRC was in the process of trying to legally define this 9 problem away. Not away, but legally separate these 10 problems. 11 MR. STEINDLER: I don't see that that is 12 particularly surprising. The original regulations were 13 worried about dissolved contaminant transport to the 14 accessible environment. At the time, the exception of your-15 paper which I rediscovered, at the time nobody thought about 16 gas transport particularly, and the issue was -- nobody even 17 thought about colloids. 18 So the fact that they are looking at this thing 19 from the standpoint of liquid water into which'you can 20 dissolve cesium or technetium or plutonium doesn't come as a 21 surprise at all. I think that is probably the original 22 intent. 23 MR. POMEROY: Well, I'm not sure. 24 MR. STEINDLER: So eyebrows may be raised, but 25 that is 20 year later eyebrows. Or 10 year later eyebrows. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

44 1 MR. POMEROY: But it is what they're working under 3 MR. STEINDLER: Yes, I understand. 4 MS. DEERING: Okay. Some additional evidence was 5 some chlorite 36, where June, Martin and apparently -- I J 6 don't have view graphs for this, but in my notes.I have 250 7 feet, and it was surprising again that the researchers, and l 8 they feel that it could be some contamination from' drilling 9 or'it could be real, and they're looking for into that now l 10 and what it might mean in terms of conceptual models and 11 flow paths, i 12 Another example that Bill Murphy brought up was-13 the G tunnel, were there is evidence of dripping in the fractu.es in the.Ranier Mesa formation, and'I believe they O '14 15 did some chemical analysis of groundwater and found actual 16 separate systems of water and fractures and water in matrix 17 to suggest separat - flow paths. 18 Then finally he-brought up some data from Devil's 19 Hole, which is to the south. It'is a discharge zone. Here 20 they're finding groundwaters I think of relatively young-21 ages, and they are under saturated with respect to calcite, 22 and they're interpreting that to mean then,that this water. 23 has not been in contact with very much rock in its path and .l 24 along the way and finally.to discharge, and perhaps that'-its 25 residence time wasn't all that long either, meaning again i .O: ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. 9 Court Reporters j 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

.4 5 ' 'l 'l that they might have - well again, evidence of separate: 2 channel and rapid flow through fractures 3 Now, this'was real quick. He put it.out.on the i 4 table and it is kind of provocative. -It.is like wow. 5 Obviously, Bill Heinz wants to have a' working group on .i 1 6 groundwater age dating and I hope that we pursue that so we 1 7 can bring some of this new data to our table and see what 8 the implications are because one of our big interests right 9 now is fracture flow versus matrix flow. So this was 10 interesting, I think, to us. l 11 I should probably move on. The one thing-I want q l 12 to mention about this other talk. It was University of 13 Arizona. They're doing a lot of air permeability testing in l \\ - the tough at Apache Leap. One important thing that'came out 14 15 was the question was asked, are you measuring the l 16 permeability in the fractures or the matrix or,do you know? 17 The answer was the way we have the methodology and 18 instrumentation, we can't distinguish between. We'have to 1' l 19 treat it as a continuum. Now, this comes up later at one of 20 the other meetings.where DOE claims that they a're doing air 21 permeability testing and they are testing permeability of 22 fractures. 23 I don't know how they're doing that because a lot 24 of their experience came from the Apache Leap. They've been 25 down in Apache Leap practicing, my understanding was and I'm. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

46 1 not sure~if there is a discrepancy there that I think I' \\ 2 should look into. 3 MR. STEINDLER: Except as it relates to waterE 4 movement. If you're only interested in gas movement, it 5 doesn't make any difference, does it? ] 6 MS. DEERING: Well, gas in fractures -- j 7 MR. STEINDLER: If you want to address gross gas j l 8 movement is all. You don't care whether it is through ) i 9 fractures or -- l 10 MS. DEERING: You don't? Well, at the TOB meeting 11 it was suggested that you do. i i 12 MR. HINZE: I think you really do because the 13 formations are going to differ in that some formations will 14 be much more fractured than others. So the whole integrated 15 aspect of it was very important, I think, to find out how f -l l 16 much is by matrix and how much is by fracture. 3 17 MS. DEERING: If it is possible. 18 MR. HINZE: I think some generic generalizations i 19 here are absolutely essential in terms of whether it is. L 20 If you take a rock and it isn't fractured, you'll l l 21 obviously get matrix air permeability. 1 22 MR. STEINDLER: No, my point.is you've got air p 23 movement from here to there, you don't really care how-it-l l 24 gets there unless you begin to extrapolate that in water. 25 MR. HINZE: In terms of predicting, I think you do l j O. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 L

47 I want to know what is happening in terms of that becauselyou ) 2 want to be able to predict based upon your geologic 3 knowledge of the formations. t 4 .MR. STEINDLER: We need to visit that again. 4 i 5 MS. DEERING: Yes, we can because-that came up a 6 lot in the meetings and we can go back and clarify that j .i 7 iiecause I think that is a really important issue. We ) 8 should. 9 MR. HINZE: I can plead ignorance with great 10 conviction. 11 MS. DEERING: I'm just going to move quickly into 12 some of the observations and discussions from that meeting, 13 and again, what I thought reflected coordination and 14 integration between NMSS and research. ) i 15 A question was raised, how is detailed geochemical. 16 modeling? There was technical presentations and someone did 17 address this or bring up some' geochemical modeling. 'It was 18 like how do you take this process. mechanistic modeling and. j 19 use it in performance assessment? No one had an answer. 20 I just wanted to bring this up because it came up -1 21 in all three meetings, over and over and over. Another 22 thing was, I had mentioned before, how you take these KTUs 23 and go all the way and use them in iterate performance 24 assessments, and there is no real there. It was just put on 25 the table. \\s, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

..,. ~ ..~ + b 48 -1 : Again,'the emerging evidence we're starting-to see 2 in fracture flow,-rapid flow paths. The question was 3 raised, does NRC have the need to do field work as they're [ 4 designing'more research? That was' discussed, and should 5 that be part of their research program? 6 They felt that, yes, it should be, ~ because the 7 example raised was this air permeability testing. It is 8 very difficult to interpret the results, and these U of A 9 people have a lot of experience and they see a lot of 10 caveats and correlations.when interpreting your data that 11 they felt if you get this kind of data from DOE, NRC won't 12 have -- you know,.how can they trust the veracity-of this. 13 when the methodologies themselves are so difficult and 14 uncertain? (:) 15 Yes, NRC probably should be doing field work. 2 16 That is what came out. 17 MR. HINZE: Is that Yucca Mountain or in a test - 18 - in a site' characterization or test?- 19 MS. DEERING: They didn't say. But so far, a lot = 20 of the field work U of A has done has been at Apache Leap, 21 but Boddy Sagar of the Center -- Technical Director, I guess 22 is his title -- was asking the question, why are we still 23 doing all this Apache Leap work when we're now starting to 24 get a lot of data from Yucca Mountain, which will be DOE 25 data but he threw that out on the table. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 b S 7 4 u-y- e-v Mt e1 e" 1 W - +uT= M--F--'-"'P*' -?

i 49 1

I think NRC research is-looking to cut back on 2 some of the University of' Arizona's work but they're;saving. 3 that for another meeting this winter to really talk about 4 that 5 MR. MOELLER: DOE would be the only'ones gathering I 6 data at Yucca Mountain and is the NRC the only one gathering. 7 data at Apache Leap? 8 MS. DEERING: Yes, except I did hear DOE say'they 9 had done that too at Apache Leap, and I'm not sure under 10 what project or study plan or quite from what, but they 11 referenced that. 12 So if you want to talk about the key technical i 13 uncertainties, we can definitely do that later and I can 14 give you information because I knew I went through that' fast - 3 O 15 and there has got to be questions. But I'll move into the 1 16 second meeting that I went to the Los Alamos meeting, which 17 was really mostly geochemistry -- 18 MR. STEINDLER: Excuse.me, before you do that one.' 19 I tell you what I think will be useful. You have, as you 20 wondered through the various topics, raised polemics and 21 issues that you think we ought to look at or that could 22 have, in particular of light of the new charter, have-some r 23 impact on the things we ought to be looking at.. -24 I think it would be useful, at least for me, if 25 you could scribble that down in a fairly coherent fashion 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES,.LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

. ~. -.. 50 1 alth your recommendations on what you heard and what might 2 be of interest to us. I think that would be useful. ~3 MS. DEERING: Okay. Yes, I'd'be very glad to do. 4 that. When I summarize this talk, what-I've done is draw.a 5 little list of issues that were discussed in allithree of 6 the meetings as major items that seem to be becoming 7 emerging problems, and I think I will probably put,those on 8 the list, okay? 9 This meeting was, as I said, it was a. lot, huge 10 amount of material presented at lightening speed on 11 geochemistry.research, and a lot of it I don't have -- I'm 12 not going to be able to discuss with you a lot of it. I do 13 have these view graphs and I can follow up on your questions-14 if you go through the view graphs. 0 15 I'm also going to call up Ray Wallace because he 16 picked up on a couple of issues which I didn't, and I think 17 it might be beneficial if he quickly added those when I'm 18 finished. 19 But the purpose here was to discuss geochemical 20 research since 1990. Apparently, they had not had a 21 technical exchange since three years. So-there was a lot of 22 new information coming out in geochemistry research, and. 23 they looked at -- predominantly their focus is on sorption, l-I 24 speciation, and solubility experiments. 25 They have geochemical modeling. They have some l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l : Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

51 ^l 1 analog research going on in New Zealand, and then also they- ~ 2 attempted to address how one integrates geochemistry. l 3 research with total system performance assessment. But-I 4 don't think I -- I think I must have missed it because'I -- 5 Again, this was a lot of the NRC staff, the 6 geochemist from NRC staff, Dick Codell, Charlotte was there. 7 Jeannie Colton.Bradley, John Bradbury, and George Bushard of j 8 research, and they also had maybe four or five geochemists 9 from the Center come. y l 10 I have some highlights here. I don't even know if 11 much of this I really care to speak about. They have a i 12 pretty comprehensive strategy on what they're doing on 13 radionuclide migration research, and Ardyth Simmons walked 14 through that, and it involves lab and field studies for . O= 15 validation, and they have a lot of. nice view graphs that 16 show how all this research feeds into total system i 17 performance assessment. You-can look-at those. graphs. 18 I mean, there was; like I~said, a lot of stuff and i 19 it seemed very impressive. One' thing a lot of people got 4 20 very excited about was the atomic force microscopy, AFM, 1 21 studies that were looking at iron oxides and they were 22 bringing them into contact with water and looking at'them at 23 them in molecular level to surfaces to see what physically 24 is happening with sorption, what influences sorption. 25 The interesting thing -- I guess they were using ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950

I 52 t 1 gothite surfaces, and they could see precipitation and-j 2 dissolution surfaces on this gothite, and I think the 3 implications were that I guess it would really accelerate 4 and enhance our understanding of sorption processes. ( l 5 But the problem here is that this would be matrix. l 6 related and it was not samples from Yucca. Mountains-tuff. 7 It was iron oxide from elsewhere. So I'm not sure how 8 applicable. They'll have to do additional research to find j 9 out and make analogies. 10 One topic I did want to mention was Bill'Halsy, 11 who I think Dr. Moeller has met this man before. He-wanted .] 12 to talk about the integration of process modeling in-13 performance assessmente, and he also talked a lot about EBS models and mechanistic source term models and how those are O - 14 15 developing and some of the things they can do now.and 'l 16 progress in that area. 17 But the one thing that impressed me,-what he-said 18 was this is done. The only way to go from process modeling 19 and roll that up into some kind of more generalized 20 performance assessment modeling is through intensive 21 int.eraction and communication with the investigators and the 22 performance assessment people. 23 He described how he goes to these people routinely 24 and says, okay, tell me what you think are the salient 25 features and points of your modeling that I need to retain ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

53 1 in my modeling. And they say no, no, no. My God, I ' can t. 2 You'know, it is like'too much detail.. Don't even think 3 about generalizing all the work that I've done, all the 4 realizations that I ran. All the many different' parameters 5 that I've used to have huge impact and influence on the-1 i 6 results. 7 Then the PA person says, hey, well'I'm going to 8 use the following equations and assumptions and that gets o 9 them to react and say no, no, no. So it is like this give 10 and take and slowly pulling teeth to bring them along. 11 But from what I saw across all.three meetings, 12 this is an extremely difficult thing, and Tom Bushceck, who-13 is a modeler from Lawrence Livermore felt -- he has done a 14 lot of the thermal loading type modeling -. felt that'it 'l 15 can't be done. It can't be done. 16 MR. HINZE: What can't be done? 17 MS. DEERING: Going from -- what they're doing'is 18 this very detailed process, mechanistic modeling. You'know, 19 DOE's what they call abstraction? They go from that level 20 to subsystem modeling to performance assessment modeling at~ 21 a very high, generalized level to come up with demonstrated 22 compliance. 23 These researchers down at the process end are 1 24 extremely uncomfortable with the whole concept of 25 abstraction and don't feel that you can trace the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 a Washington, D.C. 20006 1 (202) 293-3950 Lj i

j 54 1 uncertainty and retain it and bring it along-the way to.have ) 2 meaningful results and performance assessment. 3 .You know,- this is.the kind of. stuff Jeremy'Boack' 4 talks about, how the pyramid and how you.go-from' detail to 5 some -- and honestly, what I heard coming'out of these three-6 meetings -- somebody can correct me if they heard 7 differently -- but by the time it got to the TRB meeting.the 8 third week, it was like wait a minute. l 9 So many people are saying this is so incredibly 10 difficult, and we need to rethink the whole approach to i 11 performance assessment and the idea of abstraction. Maybe 12 we can't use these generalized models to do our compliance 13 demonstration. Maybe we have to do mechanistic modeling in 14 a very detailed way and understand the Yucca Mountain site j O' 15 in its entirety, which obviously isn't going'to be_possible. i 16 But there was a lot of questions and' arguments 17 broke out. Maybe Paul can talk about those. r 18 MR. HINZE: I think that really goes back'to some-19 of the things that we have discussed about concerns'about i 20 the interface between the scientists and the systems

i q

21 analyst. It is the whole crux if performance assessment lec l 22 any reality or not. 23 MR. POMEROY: Well, I would certainly disgusted in 24 a roundtable discussion at the TRB meeting in some detail. 25 When we get there, I think if you'll let me talk.a little ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. .) Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

= O t 55 11 bit ~about that, I'd like to discuss it with you because they 2 brought up some of the-issues that we've-brought up in the .h 3 past. 4 But particularly Allen Clinton, his group at the 5 USTS, were extremely unhappy. Not only had'they not had any 6 interaction with the performance assessment people, but they j l 1 7 felt that what the performance assessment people were doing 8 -- and I think I'll get this right -- had essentially ) 9 nothing to do with it, what the actual performance of the 1 l 10 repository might be. i l 11 In fact, he would rather see performance 12 assessment at this point concentrating down at the process-g i 13 level. In fact, he has been looking for years for somebody 14 who is a hydrologist and a performance assessment person to: L O 15 come and help him with some of those problems, and that has 16 never happened. 17 Contrary to what they say here, and they do'say 18 it, there is very, very little contact between the PIs'in 19 the field -- at least in the TS areas -- and the people-who 20 are doing performance assessments, Jeremy Boack and company. 21 We'll go into that more but it is a major problem 22 that I think both the NRC and the DOE face. That is that 23 abstraction process may -- I think Allen put it that you 24 don't need us. You haven't asked us for parameters. You've 25 done the performance assessment. You don't need what we're ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 o Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 l l

56 1 doing to do that kind of performance assessment. () 2 MR. HINZE: I hope you'll be ready to answer the-3 question, what this committee ought to do about that. 4 MR. POMEROY: Well, I wish I were. Thank you. 5 But I do have some suggestions. r, 6 MR. STEINDLER: There is another side to that, I 7 Just another side. One of the difficulties that I,think the-i 8 system faces is to have the performance assessment folks l 9 dictate to the experimenter what kind of experiments should -i 10 be done because that is the only mechanism at the moment j 11 that exists in some places, and that will lead to an 12 absolute guarantee that you're going to verify your model, 13 by definition. 14 Well, that is equally absurd. So some where there O 15 has got to be -- I guess my question to you then is 16 somewhere I hope you're going to tell us what the current 17 NRC staff's position on this whole thing is, if-you can-pull 18 on together in some manner. 19 MS. DEERING: Is Abe here? 20 MR. STEINDLER: How they intend to get to the 21 bottom line? 22 MR. POMEROY: I don't know whether Lynn heard that 23 from somebody, but I don't think there is any clear 24 definition of that problem, either by the NRC -- 25 MR. STEINDLER: There is no strategy outlined any ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 - ~.

~ t 57 1 t 1 place, then? i 2 MR. POMEROY: That is right, and, in fact, one of 3 my suggestions is that in fact we, as part of what we're t 4 doing in performance assessment review, look specifically at. -j 5 that question of simplification and abstraction in terms of 6 what we're losing out of it and what we're gaining from the 7 process. 8 Another aspect that people brought up was'also'one i 9 that Bill has brought up before and that is that at least'it 4 10 was the opinion was expressed that some of the people who. 11 were doing performance assessment might be very good 12 hydrologist, but they didn't have any apparent for what was 13 being done in the field and, as Bill has brought up, it 14 would be nice to have the scientist's closely involved in O a 15 the performance assessment work and that doesn't seem to be 16 happening in the DOE program very effectively. l 17 A number of people, not only Allen, but: a number 18 other people were quite strong on that point. DOE said of 19 course. We're in constant contact with PIs all the time 20 over the phone. 21 I don't know. Those PIs weren't present at that-22 meeting I guess is what you have to say. Anyway, we'll 23 come back to this abstraction question as well. 24 MS. DEERING: Yes, when I was leaving, one' of the 25 PIs at the roundtable said, I just like to say I've been: ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

i 58' j l' working on this project'in the field for X-number of years ~ 2 and I have not been approached by one performance assessment 3 person, and then that triggered some internal arguments 4 between the DOE family. 5 Then I heard later that after the meeting, there 6 has been some serious meetings and discussions and things 7 brewing from that roundtable. l 8 MR. HINZE: Lynn, we can go on. I have nausea in' 9 my midst, but let me ask you a quick question. Is it clear 10 that all the study plans are in place for this geochemical 11 constraints? l 12 MS. DEERING: Geochemical constraints? The Bill 13 Murphy -- 14 MR. HINZE: This whole aspect of the geochemistry. O 15 Are all the study plans in place? Are they operating? l 16 MS. DEERING: I think so. I got the impression 17 that that was correct. They had references to study-plans 18 and they traced what they were talking about to numbers,- 19 study plan numbers and it all seemed to make sense in a 20 rather comprehensive strategy. ~ i 21 It seemed to be all tied together in terms of --- 22 MR. HINZE: There is a lot of room between flow 23 charts and study plans though. 24 MS. DEERING: Well, one thing Ardyth pointed out 1 25 was the strategy that describes how you go from their ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

59 l .1 experiments, their modeling, their lab and,their field-l 2 validation testing and then to performance assessment, which 3 is a flow chart, is not described in any study plan. i 4 So the strategy is a separate thing which ties j 5 them altogether, but it was noted, this are not in' study j i 6 plans. That is why I'm showing it to you now. That is why 7 I think it is published in a separate document. 8 MR. HINZE: The "I" word again. 9 MS. DEERING: Just to wrap up with this meeting on 10 geochemistry, some of the NRC staff didn't raise any real 11 big issues or questions, but Dick Codell was present and I 12 think he said a number of things that were relevant and 13 important. 7 14 First thing he said after he saw the two days of' 15 talks is it is not clear to me how the geochemical research, 16 in particular the KD research, fits into performance 17 assessment, and more importantly, how the performance then 18 feeds back into prioritizing research, deciding what 19 experiments to do to validate models, etc., and that was. 20 really absent from his perspective and what he heard 21 Again, most of the work we saw on geochemistry was-22 all geared towards matrix and not fractures and some of the 23 local county governments and others said sorption may not 24 even matter in fractures. It may not even be a phenomenon ) 25 because of fracture coatings. You're doing a lot of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 1

+ ~.; 60 1 research on matrix that may not apply when we've got these 2 rapid flow paths that zip on by. i 3 So I think that -- also he made the comment that 4 you know, you spend a lot of time.sometimes talking.about l 5 performance assessment. You still don't have much data. j 6 You spend a lot of money on TSPA. He said I.think you would l i 7 have served us better in this meeting if you had' talked i 8 about spent fuel degradation and radionuclide releases from R .F 9 spent fuel. 10 He says this is a big gap. This is the most 11 important piece and it wasn't here at the table. He alluded-12 to some research at P&L. I don't want to say the.research 13 isn't going on, but it was not part of this discussion and 4 14 to him it seemed like a very important piece-that was'not-15 there. 16 MR. STEINDLER: Is that a source term issue? ? 17 MS. DEERING: I think so, yes. The second day was i 18 geared to source term, but -- it was agreed upon or 19 discussed anyway at this meeting that the heater block-20 experiment that is going on at Fran Ridge and there is also 21 some large scale block experiments in the ESF I believe. 22 They are really banking a lot on this research in 23 terms of thermal loading strategies and validating models, 1 24 gas transport models and heat flow and coupled processes, I 25 and the experiments are just beginning to move dirt now, 1 i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite.300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

61 1 getting that thing. underway. I-think it is a six-to-eight -2, or more-year accelerated test. l~ '3 But this was brought up at.all three meetings, the l 4 .importance of these tests, and they want a separate 5 technical exchange just to think about the large. block 6 heater tests. So the -- l 7 MR. STEINDLER: That is aimed at rock mechanics, 8 though, isn't it? For the most part? 9 MS. DEERING: Well, you know,-I don't know if I - 10 - I don't know. It is apparently that the heater block is 11 described in a waste package study plan. A waste package l 12 study plan, and I'm not sure what area you'd tuck it into, 13 but it -- 14 MR. STEINDLER: Well it could be geochemistry. I. -15 just naively assumed that the issue of hot cold repository 16 focused more in field work on rock mechanics than it is 17 anything else. I may not be right. 18 MS. DEERING: So anyway, I'm about finished here -l 19 because a lot of this is repetitive again -- discussions .20 about how do you do abstraction, and all that. Now, Ray, if 21 you wanted to mention the couple of things you picked up on. 22 MR. WALLACE: The New Zealand work is being done 23 by Carroll Bruton. As I understand it, it's designed to 24 verify a geochemical code and also there will be some i 25 experiments going on with the fate of manmade materials in a ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters l 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 . Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950. .i

p 62 1 hydrothermal environment in the analog to hollow waste () 2 repository. 3 There were some questions regarding that work, as-4 to the transferability. I think the state and Don Langier 5 questior ad that and the application, of course, to. Yucca 6 Mountain, which was a bit of a stretch, and weren't there-7 U.S. systems that were as good or better analogs. I don't 8 think that was adequately answered. 9 The other -- 10 MR. POMEROY: What's the problem with the 11 transferability, Ray? 12 MR. WALLACE: There will always be the 13 intervenor's ability to question that the processes, the 14 rocks, the fluids and what have you in the system in New 15 Zealand would be a close analog to the Yucca' Mountain 16 -system, having the hollow waste in the unsaturated zone, if 17 you will, there versus the New Zealand and having been 18 produced for 40 years, something like that. 19 There was no mention in this work of the DOE's 20 geothermal program R&D, as you know, Bill. That has been 21 associated with the New Zealand system for some time, both 22 conducting geothermal reservoir engineering modeling as well 23 as experiments with manmade materials. 24 Of course, that's a big item in this country, too. 25 The geothermal division work on manmade materials is being ri ANN RI)2.Y & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ~ Court Reporters 3 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

n 63 1 done primarily at Brookhaven National Laboratories aSd the () 2 reservoir work'has been done and modeling primarily.by'ABL. 3 and by U.S. Geological Survey. We_had a tough time getting 4 one of our people back from down there he enjoyed it'so 5 much. 6 The other interesting discussion centered around a 7 recent report by Annamarie Mikey having to do with 8 environmental concerns in a future-repository. 9 There was another talk on-this same subject, a 10 great concern over the use of hydrocarbons and the exhaust 11 of hydrocarbon into the underground and the consequences-12 this might have with microbial action. 13 Going then to the full review board in Las Vegas,. 14 it appears that a decision-has been made, at least as far as 15 the designs are concerned, to go ahead with electric trains 16 rather than diesel equipment underground,'but it was noted 17 that there have been no risk analyses so far and no 18 discussion of any environmental' consequences that might 19 occur as a result of use of electric trains and so forth in 20 the underground. 21 MR. STEINDLER: Ray, I also understood there that '22 they said that they had never studied the effect of using 23 diesels underground that had any sort of scrimping system 24 associated with them and they just looked at -- That's-just 25 exhaust from diesel engines rather than scrimped exhaust, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

'I i i L' -64' i t I 'I which everybody uses as far as I'm aware. ' j) N N, 2 MR. WALLACE: I have read the report and heard'the j ') 3 discussion at Los Alamos and frankly got the opinion that-L 4 the only way we can ensure a pristine environment at Yucca -] 5 Mountain is to keep man out of there. 1 1 6 MS. DEERING: Thank you,-Ray. 7 If anybody else that was at those meetings wants 8 to correct or add anything, that's fine. 'l i I 9 MR. POMEROY: You're going to go on to -- 10 MS. DEERING: Yes, now we've moving to that 11 meeting and Paul will talk about this one and I have 12 something to say, too. 13 I wanted to discuss the purpose was to look at .e 14 both the surface based testing and the underground and, as-15 you know, those have always been sort of competing in terms 16 of dollars and schedules and there has been recent pressure 17 to go ahead with the underground testing and get ESS opened la up as soon as possible to start looking at and doing the j I 19 testing that's going on there. 20 Unfortunately, it may impair certain aspects of 21 the surface based testing program and that was something 22 discussed at this meeting I'll bring out. 23 They also were worried about the speed at which 24 the drilling is taking place. I don't know if that's a 25 concern to us but some of the scenarios that they have the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

_e 65 1 1LM300 drill rig, it's very slow and they have RICO doing 2 the drilling and' things are moving slowly. 3 I think there was an estimate of something like 29 L 4 years it would take with one crew with.one. drill rig working 5 five days a week to get all the holes drilled and the coring 6 done that they need to do, what they think they need to-do 7 to characterize the site. 8 Then they have other scenarios where you could 9 bring in more drill rigs with smaller diameter cores and 10 more crews and more days, seven days a week, night and day,

)

l 11 so it goes from 29 years to at one point six years 12 Russ Dyer made it clear that the schedule for 1 i l 13 completing site characterization is strongly dependent upon s 14 funding available to expedite some of these testing and 15 characterization methods so that was discussed. 16 Also total system performance assessment, 17 integrating that with a lot of the data coming out of this 18 testing. 19 They were also concerned about DOE's ability and 20 flexibility to modify study plans as new data becomes l l 21 available and they were grilled on that. What is it about 22 these study plans that I should believe given new thinking 23 and new paradigms that are ever-evolving and why are these 24 still useful. 1 25 Okay, so I'm going to talk -- Joe Holonich came i i. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1512 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 ) Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

I L 66 and talked about NRC's recent concerns with the ESS quality 1 b-d 2 assurance. l' 3 MR. STEINDLER: On the study plan issue, did you-I mean was there any kind of response to the 4 get 5 potential criticism that study plans are only a snapshot in 6 time? 7 MS. DEERING: Yes, I think Russ Dyer responded 8 that, you know, he was trying to respond that we do continue L 9 to reevaluate the study plans as we get data. We do do 10 that. 11 We do talk to the investigators and make sure that. 12 the data that we're planning to collect is in fact what's-13 needed with the performance assessment people and we do need 14 order and structure and continuity and when we get a lot.of 15 new people on the program over time you need.something in 16 place that remains and can be picked up by new people and 17 you can't ever ever be changing everything. 18 I'm not saying it very elegantly but that's kind 19 of was the response. We need order and structure and 20 process and procedure for change. 21 MR. POMEROY: But there was another set of 22 comments that were made somewhat in regard to that, the 23 whole question of flexibility of this surface based program 24 and they were made by Larry Hayes, who rather succinctly 25 said I'm beginning to question the worth of these meetings, () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

~. 67 1 you come in and say -- you, the board, come in and say we () 2 have concerns about your flexibility and so forth, we spend 3 a great deal of time preparing a major pile of vu-graphs 4 telling you how our program has evolved as a result of 5 emerging information and then you still ask us the question 6 after we get all through of what are you doing with regard-7 to flexibility or nonflexibility of the program. 8 So there was a major dissenting voice brought up 9 with regard to how much study plans should be modified 10 versus field flexibility. I don't think that was well 11 resolved but it certainly was discussed. 12 MR. STEINDLER: Was there any implication that the 13 quality of the work would degrade if the study plans were i 14 not continuously updated? 15 MR. POMEROY: I think the only -- Well, I don't 16-know what Lynn heard but what I heard was that the study 17 plans were done at some point in time and they would be 18 revised and they were necessary, but that didn't affect the 19 quality of what was happening, and I think that's-a fair 20 assessment. 21 MS. DEERING: I would say that -- I don't know of 22 " quality" is the right word, but the real concern'that I j 23 heard was these study plans are no longer or possibly may'no j 24 longer going after the right data and may be collecting data 25 that we don't need and we're not getting the data we do need l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

~. 68 '1 and does anybody_ask the performance people what they need 2 as we learn that thermal loading is a different problem than 3 we once thought and as we learn about a couple of processes 4 and some of the complexities, is anyone continuously asking: J 5 them what data do they need so that it is' reflected in the ] 6 study plans, so in that sense it could'be a' quality 'roblem. ) p 7 I think I'll talk about Joe Holonich. He came and i 8 talked about the CSF concern, that letter that they sent out d 9 and I'll give you a real quick summary of that issue, and j 10 Russ Dyer gave some accomplishments and facts about where 11 they stand and I can go over those if you would like. 12 Also the issue of pneumatic testing came up and' 13 Paul asked me if I would briefly go through that. ~ 14 The concern that the state has raised about if. f 15 you're going to get underground so quickly with your tunnel 16 boring machine and disturb the site, it may be that we can't 17 get our undisturbed pneumatic-baseline data that is critical i 11 8 for a number of things including ground water travel time ) 19 calculations and understanding-air flow and gas flow through ' i 20 the repository, so I'll briefly talk about that. H 21 Other things are listed on here which you can read 22 at your leisure. 23 I don't know, we'll hear more.of this inLDecember. 24 We'll hear about the accomplishments. They're making a lot 25 of progress. They're drilling holes. They're digging ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 [ Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 -) i ~ v r

69. 1 trenches and they're starting their heater block tests, 2 these kinds of things. 3 They are 200 feet into the mountain, ahead of 4 schedule. They have a budget for '94 they feel'is pretty 5 firm of 270 million and that's ten million more than last 6 year. 7 Pneumatic pathways. This issue, it's something 8 NRC staff has raised in some of their study plan reviews, 9 their progress report-reviews, even the SEP and the state 10 has also raised it, the concern again of this interference-11 that would be BSF getting some baseline data. 12 This is where what we mentioned before about the 13 definition -- the state defines pneumatic pathways to 14 include gas, air and vapor and they claim that NRC's ~ O 15 definition of ground water includes gas, water and vapor. 16 That then would imply that the ground water travel-17 time would have to consider the gas vapor pathway'which-18 could be -- the repository would be a lot faster than any 19 ground water pathway and at this Joe said, whoa,-whoa, OGC 20-is making a decision or contemplating this now. 21 MR. STEINDLER.: Excuse me. I guess that's 22 troubling. I don't find that the OGC is a good. place'to 23 make that kind of decision. 24 I realize that that's. kind of whistling uphill but. 25' it's a technical issue that goes back to the original. I I O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 j (202) 293-3950 i

70 1 concern.that people'had and the rationale for introducing of () 2 thousand-year travel' time in the first' place. 3 I would hope that somebody somewhere invites ~some 4 technical people into that discussion rather than having it 5 decided strictly by one or two legal folks. 6 Is it possible for us to make that comment, 7 probably unofficially, to somebody within the NRC and, if 8 so, how is it done? You might want to consider that. 9 MS. DEERING: I will. 10 MR. HINZE: That's an excellent point and it will 11 be interesting to know what advice the staff has given to-i 12 the OGC on this. 13 MR. STEINDLER: Having heard no discussion among I 14 what should be interested parties, I agree. 15 MS. DEERING: What was interesting here is'that ] 16 Carl Johnson made a good presentation and what he noted was 17 that the USGS, there has been a number of letters going back { 18 and forth on this topic s the USGS has officially reviewed 19 the issue and has acknowledged that they have a valid 20 technical point in need of resolution. 21 This was important because from here the DOE now 22 has accelerated some of their surface base testing to 23 collect this so-called pneumatic data. -] 24 In response to the state's concerns, and'some of Il 25 NRC's concerns, one of NRC's concerns was that tunnel ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 y m _,., v ..m.,,,,

71 l 1 ventilation from the ESF will dry out_the rock and preclude l 2 DOE from being able to collect certain' geochemical isotope 3 data and isotope data for ground water'for age dating, and 4 the state is concerned that they're not going to get the 5 kind of data needed to validate some of these pneumatic i 6 models and gas f, low models. I 7 Anyway, Carl was just wanting to say that-for the 8 first time in ten years USGS acknowledged that they had a -9 valid technical issue. 10 A lot of the models of gas flow have been i 11 conceptualized to have this layer that impedes gas flow up 12 and out. I'm not real familiar with this. I'm just 13 speaking from my notes. This has been done repeatedly in 14 models that-exist. O 15 Carl's point is that this has never been tested, 16 we don't have the data that would support that in the i 17 modeling and let's test it and we've got to do it before the 18 ESF goes in.

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19 Robert - Craig of the USGS got 14) and talked about- ) 20 what they're doing to get some of'this data in a rapid way. 21 .This is where the question was asked about'are you i 22 getting -- One of the TRB membersfsaid gas flow in fracture-23 is what's really important. The. matrix is absolutely i 24 irrelevant when we're talking about gas flow through the ) ) 25 repository up and out. It's the fracture data that's ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293 -3950

i 72 i 1 important. () 2 That's when he said, yes, we're setting up-our i 3 packers and our-instrumentation so that we can isolate the 4 fractures and measure the permeability and that's when I i 5 made the note, yeah, but I don't know that they're able to 6 do that at Apache Leap and they said they couldn't. 7 Another interesting question was, well, is the 8 data you're collecting, is it going to satisfy what point's ti 9 Carl has raised here, and the answer was yes. 10 Well, Warner North of the TRB didn't like that 11 answer one bit and he went on and on, oh, really, you're 12 going to collect the data needed to validate some of the 13 thermal loading models and thermal hydraulics models~of Tom 14 Buchek and others. O 15 Here's one of his key points, was how is DOE 16 collecting the data needed from the performance assessment 17 people with the data being collected and he was not 18 convinced at all, the example being flow infractures, we see 19 that there's a need here, we know we have fractures in the 20 mountain, we know that we have a lot of air movement and-i 21 what is it DOE is doing to respond to that need. 22 He pointed out a lot of integration problems 23 between the PA people and the investigators. e 24 That's all I wanted to say on that, I think. 1 25-Joe Holonich then talked about his concerns with-ANN RILEY & ASFOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters i 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C.-20006 (202) 293-3950 b

. ~ 73 1 the ESF design control process and I think we're all' () 2 familiar with that issue. 3 Based on some DOE audits, they had I guess some 4 problems with the BMO not following procedures and also NRC 5 did not feel that they had all the information they needed 6 and all the changes that are being discussed-for the ESF'and 7 the conceptual design changes. 8 They finally in their letter said, wait, we need 9 to hear from you on this and what is your rationale to 10 continue your work in the ESF, you have QA problems, we 11 don't have all the documents we need. 12 Anyway, there have been some meetings, technical 13 exchanges that have apparently have been very fruitful. 14 Both sides have really come to understandings and agreements O 15 and really they did a lot of clarifying ~on either side. 16 Apparently, the way Joe made it sound,-was.their 17 dialogue continues and now they're waiting. In November 18 they're expecting a formal response from DOE on a' number of 19 issues that they outlined were problems in'the August 20th. 20 letter, which we have and we've seen, and DOE will formally 21-respond to those problems and how they plan to fix them and 22 continue work in the ESF. 23 The state, of course, is saying, hey, you ought to 24 reissue objection number one, but NRC, I don't think, i 25 intends to do that, but-the state feels that it's worth ~ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court' Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 ~ _ ~

-74 1-stopping everything and raising it. ) 2 MR. HINZE: The November 20th letter is still on 3 track? 4 MS. DEERING: Apparently, yes, Joe'said we've not 5 heard otherwise from DOE, we asked them if.they couldn't 6 meet that-to tell us and we've not heard a word so we're 7 expecting it in November. 8 MR. HINZE: When would it be reasonable for us to 9 have a presentation by the staff on their concerns and the 10 response from DOE? 11 MS. DEERING: I can find out. 12 MR. STEINDLER: Is this thing driven by QA? 13 MR. HINZE: No. 14 MR, STEINDLER: Is the excuse for raising it at 15 all by the NRC a QA problem? What's the rationale that says 16 to the NRC staff, hey, we don't know what's going on here. 17 and therefore we think we need to raise objections and 18 whatnot? 19 MR. HINZE: One of the factors is.that in 20 listening to the NRC staff on this, they are concerned.about 21 some of the things that Lynn has just discussed and_that la 22 the relationship between surface and the ESF testing and the-23 building of ESP. 24 They're concerned about that'and they are'also 25 concerned about what data are available for the design of () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

75-1 the ESF, so there are technical reasons here and scientific ) 2 reasons as well as the QA. The QA may be the entree into it 3 but it's part of that. 4 MS. DEERING: Another talk was given by Nye County f 5 about some independent drilling that they're doing 6 themselves which was an interesting thing. They're 7 describing how they're doing with the method they're using 8 of monitoring and coring. They using smaller diameter. 9 They're doing it a lot cheaper than DOE because 10 they're not using Rico. They're doing it faster. 11 Nye County has a major concern that there's an 12 over-reliance on DOE's part on modeling and expert judgment ) i 13 with the data to support the modeling and they feel if it's 14 going to take 29 years to collect the data it won't be done 15 in time, so this was some of the rationale to move forward 16 with some of their own independent drilling and data 17 collection. I 18 What I thought was interesting here was that they 19 identified that they've identified -- Nye. County has l 20 identified like five or six major performance related issues 21 that they are on top of and are going to track and follow -22 and I thought you might like to hear those because we're-23 doing a similar exercise and see if there's some commonality 24 here. 25 I don't know whether they did a systems analysis 1 l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court' Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i I .yv., ,y. ..m.. ._.,r. ,w. y

i 76 1 to come up with these or how they did it but we could ask () 2 them to talk to us about it when we go to Los Vegas if we 3 were interested. 4 They have vadose zone and saturated zone 5 hydrology, disturbed zone performance, climate change as it 6 affects performance, radionuclide release, tectonics and-7 seismic issues and age dating processes and-these were 8 pulled out as something that their independent drilling and 1 9 coring and monitoring that they're doing, that they're going 10 to use that data for these kinds of independent analysis-_to 11 look at some of these performance related issues. 12 One final talk that I thought was interesting was 13 one we want to keep our eye on, was in the UZ14 hole which 14 is being drilled right now, they found perched water and the 15 perched water is comprised at least in part of drilling 16 fluid from an adjacent hole drilled back in the late '80s, I-17 think, and it's like a polymer drilling fluid and it's now 18 in the -- 19 What they're not sure of and they're doing age 20 dating to try to ascertain what's going on here, is if the 21 perched water is all drilling fluid and apparently they lost 22 something like 2.4 million gallons and they're wondering -- 23 they're trying to do'some calculations to see what would_the 24 aerial extent be of a plume of that amount of drilling 25 fluid. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 a 1

~. t 77 1 At any rate, they're finding very young ages, was ( 2 my understanding, of this perched water at this. point and 3 they're wondering -- apparently the drilling fluid itself-4 would give an old signature is what was being discussed and 5 it would take a lot of very new water to be mixed with the 6 old drilling fluids to give the kind of age dates they're 7 getting which is on the order of 3600 years with I think a ~ 8 carbon 14 date uncorrected. 9 They're doing more dating and they're not 10 satisfied with what they have now so they've not put their 11 picture together, but they do know they've got something.to. 12 be concerned about. 3 13 Perched water was an issue'again through all three 14 meetings. It came time and time again. If we have perched .O 15 water or if perched water bodies can form, what are.the 16 implications with respect to performance. 17 MR. STEINDLER: Is UZ-14 in the repository? 18 MS. DEERING: In other words -- yes, it goes. 19 through that but I'm not sure the perched water, where it 20 was found exactly. 21 MR. STEINDLER: I guess my question is is this 22 pertinent to the repository? 1 23 MS. DEERING: It's not in the repository horizon, I 24 I don't think. I think it's above the repository horizon 25 but if you had a pressure head and something driving the l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

..~ 78 I water'down, you might have a more rapid travel time and get 2 waste packages wet when you might not otherwise if you 3 didn't have perching, even though say the waste package 4 isn't sitting in the perched water but it could have an 5 influence on travel time. 6 That was discussed at the research meeting, too, 7 like what's this overwhelming interest in perched water, 'I 8 anyway, and what are the implications with respect to 9 performance and it was kicked around a little bit but not 1 10 everyone was in agreement of its importance. 11 Of course, that's one of NRC's technical 12 uncertainties, is how important is that and how does one 13 model it and what kinds of things influence perched water-14 formation, you know, change in infiltration, climate change. j O 15 I'm kind of wrapping up here. There's some other 16 highlights from the roundtable you might want to read, and 17 Paul will talk. 18 Do you want me to go over the common issues, Paul, i 19 after you talk? 20 MR. POMEROY: Sure, maybe we could do that. I 21 won't take too long here but I do think it's important. 22 This report by the technical review board that-l 23. Dade referenced earlier contains really three basic 24 recommendations. One, that thermal testing be accomplished -1 25 as soon as possible, in essence, underground. The second ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i

79 1 recommendation that the DOE establish a geoengineering_ board 2 with a lot of engineering, construction and management of 3 large underground projects represent. 4 The third one is interesting and that is that the 5 board recommends that the DOE develop a comprehensive 6 strategy that integrates exploration and testing priorities 7 with the design and excavation approach for the exploratory 8 studies facility. 9 This bears immediately on some of the other 10 comments that we've touched on briefly. The_ board clearly 11 doesn't believe that such a strategy exists and they in fact 12 asked questions about could USGS live with a lot less in the 13 way of core, for example, from the surface, why was so much 14 core needed, how could the surface base testing program be. 15 made more efficient. 16 They tried to look at the question and try to make 17 as many changes as they could within the constraints of 18 study plans to the program and that's where the comment came 19 up that we thought they were talking past each'other or that 20 this perhaps wasn't a worthwhile process because they were 21 convinced that their program was good, that it was flexible 22 and that they were getting or would get the information that 23 they needed. 24 There was a feeling that you got emanating from 25 the board that they weren't convinced of that and so there ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 R Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

~... t 80 1 needed to be some better communication but perhaps some more () 2 technical modification as well. 3 A second one was that the board I think felt that 4 surface base testing should be subsidiary to the question of. 5 getting underg sund and even once-you eliminate that problem l 6 there seemed to be a great drive by the board to get this 7 one 26,000-foot loop built as fast as possible. 8 They're talking about some 40 testing out holes 9 along the way of the 26,000-foot loop for not only pneumatic 10 testing but other kinds of testing as well. 3 11 The board was continually questioning could that i 12 be done, could perhaps three or four of them be built while 13 the 26,000-foot loop was going through and could the others 14 be built either later or while not disturbing the forward ' O 15 going TBM work. 16 So there seems to be a drive now to get the 26,00-l 17 foot loop done almost at any expense except for the 18 pneumatic testing, any thermal testing underground and 19 anything that can be done above ground that won't' interfere 20 with some surface testing. 21 MR. HINZE: Paul, what was the reason for the 22 expediency? 23-MR. POMEROY: I don't know. I just perceived, 24 particularly on the part of Ed Cording, that it was 25 extremely important to get that 26,000-foot loop done and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. 1 Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

'81 1 that if there were going to be -- ) 2 The latest' design from the ESF has two wing 3 tunnels coming off the 2,000-foot loop and he said that 4 should be taken care of afterwards, perhaps'by another 5 tunnel boring machine, we shouldn't even think about trying 6 to do that while we're getting the loop around and getting. 7 it back out. 8 Again, I think it comes from the older perception 9 that how you convince people that you're doing something is 10 to get things moving underground. 11 Let's come back to the question of performance ~ 12 assessment because it did come up, as Lynn pointed out, 13 several times. 14 Someone asked the question of whether anybody had 0 15 looked at or done any or changed any of the performance 16 allocations that were made in the SCP and the answer was, 17 no, nobody has looked at the question of performance-18 allocation in the past five years, which is the timeframe 19 since the SCP. 20 That's not in itself as important'at this pointLas 21 it might be because somebody sooner or later will have to 22 look at that again. ~ 23 MR. MOELLER: Excuse me, Paul. You're referring -24 here to how much credit should be given to each barrier and 25 so forth? ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES,.LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

82 i 1 MR. POMEROY: That's right. That's the way they. 2 did it in the ECP. 3 I think the most serious question that was brought 4 up, though, was the one that we discussed ~ earlier, and that 5-is if the performance assessment is abstracted as -- which 6 is the word that DOE uses -- or simplified is the word the 7 NRC staff uses -- does that have significance in terms of i 8 the actual repository performance. 9 I believe that's such a fundamental question that 10 I suggested to Warner North and some other people whom I had-11 been discussing the possibility of joint meetings'and that i 12 that be one of the topics that we might really drive and 13 consider in a joint meeting because I am not -- 14 I would like to know specifically how much the NRC -O 15 staff interacts to get the parameters that they used in l 16 their performance assessment and it was clear that at-least 17 in some specific technical areas there was very little 18 interaction between DOE performance assessment and DOE 19 principal investigators. 1 20 MR. STEINDLER: I guess I don't understand.what j 21 you're saying. At first what I thought you said was if the 22 performance assessment is simplified does that change the 23 performance of the repository. -l 24 MR. POMEROY: No, I don't think I said that. 25 MR. STEINDLER: What is it that you're concerned ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i .~-

83 4 1 about? What's the focus of the concern if we shift to a () 2 simplified performance assessment process? 3 MR. POMEROY: Well, we've seen two simplified 'f 4 performance assessments done by the NRC staff. 'The question f 'i 5 is do they relate in a2yr way to the actual performance on 6 the repository. 1 7 MR. STEINDLER: But isn't that a question that's l-; 8 not dependent on whether it's a simplified PA? 9 MR. POMEROY: No. i 10 MR. STEINDLER: Any PA has to address that same 11 question. 12 MR. POMEROY: You have to address that question 13 but the question is are you even carrying the uncertainties 14 and the parameters that you should be, or are you O 15 arbitrarily assuming parameters.that don't allow you to even 16 come close to the actual repository performanco,_ are you 17 getting the data that you need to insert into the 18 performance assessment. 19 MR. STEINDLER: I think it's a topic we ought to 20 take up sometime because I think it's a question of relative 21 uncertainties between a simplified PA and the error band and 22 the output that it finally gives you in comparison to a not 23 so simplified PA where, presumably but not necessary, the 24 error band is lower, smaller. l 25 If the only issue now is an error band, now you () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W.,_ Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

1 84' 1 have~to ask so'what, are you far enough below the' limits of f ( 2 the CCDF requirement that the error band is of'no great '3 consequence. 4 If that's true, then a' simplified PA is a 5 perfectly acceptable way to get there, _and'furthermore it l 6 may be a lot cheaper and faster. 7 MR. POMEROY: Well,'getting to the nth degree,.you-I 8 would say that if the error band is small enough it wouldn't- -9 be necessary to do-any -- you have all the parameters you 10 need to do a prediction of repository performance. I don't 11 believe that. 12 MR. STEINDLER: All right. I'm just trying'to /, 13 figure out what it is that we're concerned about and what i 14 would be the topic of'such a meeting. 15 MR. POMEROY: I guess I would be concerned about 16 whether or not -- if-it can be demonstrated, which it can't i 17 be -- if the error band is small enough so that it doesn't-18 come close to the CCDF limits, then I would perhaps say'I 19 could agree with you, but you can't do a simplified 20 performance assessment and prove that because it's not clear 21 to me that you're even carrying the uncertainties or the i 22 right parameters to do that. 23 MR. HINZE: That's a-very critical point because 24 it is the point of knowing what the error bands are and the. 25 over simplification may lead to a gross misjudgment 1 i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300-Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

~. 85 1-regarding the error bands. 2 MR. POMEROYi I think there's also two things that 3 you want to be thinking about. One is should you be doing 4 the kind of detailed modeling that Dick Modell did on carbon 5 14, for example, where I think that is an example of process 6 modeling'at the base of the pyramid and that's the kind of 7 study that provides you with a great deal of insight right 8 now and that apparently is not taking place at DOE and I'm 9 not sure that it's taking place very much at.the NRC staff, 10 beyond that particular study. 11 MR. STEINDLER: I'd just like to comment about 12 that. 13 In one of the recent abstracts that came across my 14 desk, somebody had done a carbon 14 release study and found 15 out that most of the analyses that have been done, the .i 16 substance that have been in the past about releases, simply j 17 didn't match the experimental results. Why? Because 18 minerals that are also soaked into the surface were simply 19 overlooked and absorption of CO2'was overlooked. 20 I'm just trying to find out what the level of 21 concern is. 22 MR. HINZE: To give you an answer to your question 'l 23 about how to approach this and how to get a handle on it, it. 1 24. seems to me that you can't leave getting a handle on this to 25 the performance assessment person, the systems analyst. -i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

. -. ~ i 86 1 The critical question is really left to the ) 2 scientist to understand whether the model is really being 3 adequately replicated, to see whether you have the correct 4 parameters, and that requires an interaction with the 1 5 systems analyst. 6 One of the ways to get at it is to make certain 7 that there is this strong communication between the systems 8 analyst and the scientist because that is what the 9 performance assessment is all'about. -It's really about 10 helping each other. 11 If we don't'have that kind of interaction, the 12 process doesn't stand a chance, but if you have that, then 13 getting to the correct error bands, getting to how much you 14 can simplify is at.least approachable. 15 MR. POMEROY: I think it's a different problem 16 somewhat for the DOE and for the NRC'because DOE clearly in 17 some areas is not effectively communicating between its PA 18 program and it's PIs. 19 I'm not sure how the NRC communicates directly 20 with PIs to get the k.ind of information that they want. I'm-21 sure there's some protocol that does that but I'm sure it's H 22 a complicated one. 12 3 MR. STEINDLER: I think the NRC has got a bigger 24 problem than DOE does because they're not going.to be 25 collecting on their own all of the data that they neec'.. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington', D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

87 1 MR. HINZE: And they're not going to be' ready to. () 2 develop codes, either, and thus you end up not knowing the 3 codes. There is that possibility. 4 MR. POMEROY: And Bill's point is well taken and 5 discussed out there at that meeting, also. 6 You need somebody who is doing the PA, who is a ? 7 scientist, who understands what the problem is and is 8 interacting with the PI out in the field to get a clear 9 understanding of that problem, or he's bring the'PI out in 10 the field into the performance assessment study itself'and r 11 says this the result, as Bill says, this is what happened-12 when I did the parameters and uncertainty you gave me and 13 does this seem realistic and therefore how good is the 4 14 model. 15 I don't know that we'll hear a lot more. This was 16 a very frank exchange in the roundtable discussion for a TRB P 17 meeting and I'm not sure, in view of Lynn's comment that 18 there have been a lot of meetings after this one, I don't 19 know that we'll hear a lot more about,this in the future. It -i 20 was a very worthwhile meeting to go to. 21 MS. DEERING: It was. 22 MR. POMEROY: I do want to at some point later 23 this afternoon, Dade, to perhaps talk about this question of- ] 24 joint meetings because several people there were interested 25 in a joint meeting as well. 1 -l O l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ] Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300-Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

i 88 1 Lynn, that's about all I have to say. 2 MS, DEERING: Okay, Paul. Then I'll just 3 summarize by saying that there were, as I said, because the 4 three meetings all dealt with unsaturated zone hydrology, 5 there were some common themes that came out and I'll briefly 6 list those. 'I 7 The issue of perched water, be it thermally 8 induced or climate induced or already present, what are the d 9 impacts on performance and how to model that. 10 As Paul was talking about, the performance 11 assessment, the abstraction, if you're going to do the j J 12 detailed process modeling with uncertainty, how do you roll 13 it all up and do you need to, should we be doing that. .) 14 The lack of emphasis on fracture. flow, even though - ([]) 15 we have geochemical data to suggest that this is a i 16 phenomenon we need to worry about. but a lot of the research j 17 and testing really isn't geared to that yet, so that's a i 18 gap. 19 Plus the importance of reeding that geochemical: 20 evidence to verify. I saw that theme come out in every 21 single meeting like, yes, we do need, we know we need this' 22 geochemical evidence as an independent means to verify: ) i .] 23 ground water travel time, infiltration rates, howfmuch water-24 is in matrix, how much-is in fractures, like mass transfers 25 between the two. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202)-293-3950 a

89 1 There'are a number of different things that 2 geochemistry can be used for in that area. 3 The importance of the large-scale heater. block 4 test and how everybody wants to follow them and keep very 5-close track of how they're being set up and the data coming 6 out of them. 7 There was pretty much at every meeting-at least 8 one person would get up and say, yeah well, I think there's 9 got to be more emphasis on the post-emplacement and 10 performance as opposed to all this pre-emplacement pre-11 disturbed ambient conditions, ground water travel time and 12 so forth, what about performance after the ESF is in and 13 disturbs them. 14 Again the importance of coupled processes and the 15 effects of heat and infiltration on gas flow and how those 16 all interconnect. 17 The pneumatic pathways issue seems to be relevant .) 18 and discussed everywhere. H 19 Total system performance assessments since there. 20 really is not much data that they're integrating into that 12 1 yet. How is that really being used to drive the experiments 1 22 and the data collection and the testing. Is that feedback 23 loop apparent, and it does not seem to be because no one has 24 ever addressed it. 25 -That's an important part of PA. That's how they ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. -Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

-i 19 0 1 justify its existence in the prelicensing mode. They say we j l 2 use this as a tool to do sensitivity analysis and' drive data 3 collection. q 4 Well, you've got to do it, you can't just say it 5 if that's true, so that was a-theme. 1 6 Again, the concern about analogs'being'useful and j 7 analogous. 8 The thing on. performance assessment -- 9 MR. STEINDLER: I'm sorry. Who is concerned about 10 the analogs? 11 MS. DEERING: Well, the cases that I'm referring 12 to here, I know at the meeting on geochemistry, Don Langmeres 13 of the board was in the audience and he stood up'and said i 14 why is this New Zealand analog analogous, the one Ray was O 15 talking about, and I know that was raised, it's always 16 raised. 1 l 17 It's always a question, given the expense and the 18 fact that you have to do a lot of transferring and assuming, 19 are these things worth it, these large-scale field 20 validation studies using analogs 21 The need to bound answers was something -- Paul 22 was alluding to this but somebody got up and said you will 23' see -- there was a meeting called Focus '93 this fall.and 24 somebody said -- i o 1 12 5 There was something that really came out of that l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington,'D.C.'20006 (202) 293-3950 'l u

o 91 1 meeting as an emerging theme and that was all this detailed ~ () 2 ' mechanistic process modeling, what it really is going to 3 amount to is just coming up with values that can be used 4 justifiably to bound answers in the more generalized-5 performance assessment, and they said look for this coming 6 down the pike, this is how we will eventually be using these 7 processed detailed studies. 8 Also, the final thing was just limitations and 9 some of the methodologies to collect and measure parameters 10 for models that are being used. We just plain don't'-- 11 state of the art doesn't have it and that came out. i 12 I'll do what you said, Marty, 'and make some 13 -recommendations. 14 MR. MOELLER: Is that it, Lynn? (::) 15 MS. DEERING: Yes. 16 MR. MOELLER: Thank you so much. It's been a long 17 effort on your part but a very good summary, both orally and 18 written. 19 MR. POMEROY: Dade, I know we're running way 20 behind here but there was one other meeting and I think'Lynn 21 was at part of it and I think Bill was maybe a part of it, 22 too, on the exploratory studies facility. 23 I don't think we want to spend a lot of time on I 24 it, but were there any really significant things that we 25 aren't aware of that came out of that meeting? ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

' 9 2' ' 1 MR. HINZE: My answer to that is no. The meeting 2 on September 19th was a management meeting to establish what 3 were the concerns of NRC and the Holonich letter to DOE 1 l l 4 regarding both the QA and the technical aspects. 5 There was a subsequent meeting on October 4th or 6 5th, something like that. That's one that we-don't have any L .7 information on. 1 8 Were there minutes of that meeting? 9 MS. DEERING: There should be and-I plan to get 10 minutes for both, if I can, and Joe Holonich in his talk 11 summarized both of those meetings rather quickly, justLways 12 to clarify what the problems were, because that seemed to be 13 one of the biggest issues, was a total misunderstanding on 14 DOE's part and NRC's part. 15 NRC didn't think they had the information they 16 needed and didn't feel like they were being kept informed, 17 and DOE was trying to understand what is it you feel'you 18 don't have. 19 It was back and forth. It was just clarifications 1 20 of concerns and amplification of that. That's the way Joe l 21 kind of characterized it. I'll get the minutes. 22 MR. HINZE: Another aspect of that,. Paul, was that= 23 NRC, I think correctly, felt that they are not given reports ) 24 in a timely fashion and there was considerable discussion.of-l 25 that at that September 19th meeting in an attempt to improve j j ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington,. D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 j i

93 4 1 that whole process, because events really overt'ook'the ( 2 reporting procedure and that has to be of concern to NRC. I 3 That was one of the significant points that I felt 4 there was a sensitivity of DOE on that but I also felt that 4 i 5 in reading Holonich's letter you didn't get the feel that 6 there was a stress towards the technical scientific aspect t 7 that was expressed during the meeting. 8 MR. POMEROY: I think at the TRB meeting he did a 9 very good job of stressing that, that it wasn't simply a 10 matter of the right QA slips, but it was something more 11 fundamental. 12 MR. MOELLER: Any other comments? Let me thank 13 Lynn and Paul and Bill once again. 14 We could talk about these things further, but O 15 people are here for the next presentation. .However, the 16 committee has not had a-break so let's take five minutes and-17 then we'll resume. 18 [ Recess.] 19 MR. MOELLER: The meeting will resume. 20 We want to welcome Ed Jordan, the Director of 21 AEOD, who has with him several of his staff. He will be 22 providing to us a briefing on the technical training 23 programs by the Office for Analysis and Evaluation of 24 Operational Data. 25 Welcome, Ed. We would appreciate it if you would k ANN.RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

t 94 1 introduce your staff. () 2 MR. JORDAN: Thank you very much, Dr. Moeller. 3 I have with me Steve Shoa from our Technical 4 Training Center in Chattanooga, and John Ritchie. 5 Steve is an original member of our training 6 program in the NRC, which was aimed initially at training 7 our inspectors for reactors. It has evolved over the years. 8 We are now trying to provide a training program for the 9 entire technical staff. 10 John Ritchie is a more recent addition. He is a 11 health physicist and is involved in maintaining and 12 developing the radiation protection side, the material side 13 of our training program. 14 The reason that I asked to meet with you is to O 15 afford us an opportunity to ultimately to get some advice 16 from your Committee and from the ACRS. We are at a point of 17 reexamining our training programs and we felt that it.was 18 important to convey to the committee what we presently do, 19 why we are making the changes, and then when we have 20 proposed changes, get comments from the committees where 21 they are relevant to the programs. -We feel that the 22 academic members of these two committees are capable of 23 giving us advice that we can't replicate. So we appreciate 24 the opportunity to meet with you. 25 By way of introduction, the NRC does use two ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

~.. ~.. - ~. t f 95 1-internal advisory groups. We have what we call a Training i 2 -Advisory Group and the Training Advisory Council. 3 The Training Advisory Group hac representatives- .4-from the regional offices, from the programs office. These .1 5 are supervisory level people that are involved directly ini j 6 those program activities. They provide a form of feedback 7 to the Technical Training program in terms of what is.needed' 8 and are we satisfying the needs on a day-to-day level. 9 The Training Advisory Council are senior managers. 10 My deputy director is chairman of that council. Normally 11 it's at a deputy office director level from Nuclear i 12 Materials Safety and Safeguards, from NRR, the Office of-13 Research, and a regional representative. That is more a 14 strategic planr'ag group. O 15 The training resources that the NRC employs across 16 its technical training program. In terms of the total i 17 support, we have some 32 FTE that we expend in technical 18 training, on the order of $5 million. It's divided very 19 heavily towards the reactor program. There is some 20 difficulty in separating out, because the reactor program 21 includes most of the health physics area, which covers a 22 wider program area. 23 Administrative support of $1,000-on the list.is 24 really rent for our facility principally, and travel for,the 25 staff itself. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 1 Washington, D.C. 20006-(202) 293-3950 j

96 1 1 There are.two figures in brackets, the PRA program-() 2 and the agreement states training program. Those have "I 3 previously been administered other than through the t-4 Technical Training Center and in a cooperative way. The 1 5 Office of Personnel managed the PRA program. A decision has 6 been made jointly by my office and the Office.of Personnel 7 that it's time now to put the PRA training intimately in j 8 with the technical training program. l 9 A similar agreement has been reached with Dick _ 10 Bangart in the Office of State Programs to put the agreement 11 states training program in conjunction with our materials 12 training program so that. people from agreement. states would 13 get the same training along with people from the NRC's 14 materials program. Those things are happening right at'this 15 moment. 16 MR. MOELLER: Ed, a couple'of questions. Are the' 17 people in Chattanooga NRC employees? I 18 MR. JORDAN: They are NRC employees. 19 MR. MOELLER: So they count against your FTEs? l 20 MR. JORDAN: Yes, they do. 21 MR. MOELLER: It's not a contract. 22 MR. JORDAN: That's correct. We do administer 23 contracts for support from a variety of sources. 24 MR. MOELLER: We had received from Bob Bernero 25 from NMSS an information package on their revised procedural 1 i ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202).293-3950 l i.j I e, ---s- .r.. = =- e

i I 97' 1 and project-specific agreements between the NRC and DOE. He l 2 described in that a training program or~a series of' courses 3 that are to be set up to teach the NRC staff members, or to. 4 be sure that everybody treats these agreements in the same. 5 way. Are you going to do that training? l 6 MR. JORDAN: At this time,' ru). We will 7 coordinate. Whatever training, if it is something that will 8 be longstanding, then we would expect to put it into the 9 training curricula. j 10 MR. MOELLER: There are one-time. training efforts .i 11 that individual offices do? 1:2 MR. JORDAN: Right. Those are under an Office of 13 Personnel funding program generally. By a special request, j 14 a one-time training effort is conducted. ) 15 MR. MOELLER: Thank you. i 16 MR. POMEROY: Those agreement states training 'j i 17 programs were formerly handled by the Office of State 18 Programs? 19 MR. JCRDAN: Yes. There was a formalized program. _j ,] 20 run by contract through the state programs office. Some of 21 those contracts were for NRC employees and they were sending 22 some agreement state people through our training center 23 courses. So it just Oeems the right time now to put those 24 together. 25 I covered' slide 2. 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

l 98 c

-1 MR. HINZE: Excuse me. Do these training programs ) 2 include refresher programs? 1 3 MR. JORDAN: Yes. The focus of our training has t 4 been on initial qualification of people to do a task, to do-5 a project manager for reactors, or a resident inspector, for j 6 whom we also do have refresher training. One of our changes 7 in emphasis is sharpening skills now. 8 MR. HINZE: So a continuing education type of-I 9 approach. 10 MR. JORDAN: Yes. 11 MR. HINZE: Where does the stimulus come from? Is 12 this at the operational level or is this from your office? i 13 MR. JORDAN: I woulu say it's mutual. We see 14 changing needs and we are trying to be very responsive to l 15 those on the part of the program offices, and on the part of 16 the industry. I would say one of the forces towards 17 improving our technical training has been the industry 18 itself. The survey of the regulatory impact on the reactor 19 program that was conducted about three years ago identified 20 from the industry's viewpoint that NRC inspectors, NRC 21 reviewers were not as well prepared-in some cases as they 22 felt they should be. 23 As managers, the program office managers, myself 24 and EDO say, okay, what do we need in the way of training in 25 order to equip our people better. This is an ongoing ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

99 1 process. There are steps. I think we are now at another 1 2 step. 3 There'are two things that I think are important. 1 4 First of all, there are personnel and staffing changes that 1 5 we are seeing in response to the administration, and then we-6 have programmatic issues. The NRC is-really under a very, 7 strong FTE restraint. There has already been a severe 8 reduction in hiring. There are cutbacks in every government. 9 agency and the NRC is receiving ours, s 10 In addition, economic forces causes attrition to j 11 be quite low. The NRC's attrition is remarkably-low at this I 12 cime. So the external hiring rate is quite low. That 1 13 results in a potential skills mismatch within the agency. 14 that we are tightening up. Then we have a mismatch in i . O. i 15 skills that you can't correct by hiring; you have to correct 16 by cross training people. A part of our needs survey to the 17 office is what are these skills mismatches and what level of-l 18 training is needed in order to resolve those. 19 The programmatic issues in terms of upgrades in. 20 technical skills is one that came out of the regulatory t 21 impact survey perhaps first and then is perceived by the 22 program offices as something where they want to continue to 23 improve the skills of the staff. 24 A shift within the agency towards risk and j i 25 performance based activities is really occurring to make.the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters i 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 [ (202) 293-3950 I

100 1 1 regulations less prescriptive, to provide better guidance-2 and'to have reviewers who were then focused on what are the 3 safety issues, the real risk-related issues, and drive those 4 harder. We have to then provide those' risk ski ~lls to a; 5 greater extent to our staff. 6 I've mentioned the agreement state training. 7 There is an increased emphasis on materials. Some of the ( 8 investigations that have been conducted in the recent past-9 indicate, for' instance in the medical area, that there is a l 10 need for increased emphasis, which requires increased 11 training. 12 The last one on the list and one I haven't-13 mentioned at all is the implications of the advanced reactor 14 program. There are no plant orders, obviously, but there is-15 now a body of knowledge in developing a licensing program i 16 that needs to be able to be conveyed in a timely fashion to - 17 the set of reviewers that would embark on a review of'a new .) 18 license, and to inspectors who would be involved. We are 19 anxious not to 3et the information that has been compiled i 20 and the methodologies that have been compiled lose their j 21 basis and have to start an advanced reactor program without ) I 22 having a good training base for it. So we need to look at 23 what work do we need to do in that training. 24 MR. POMEROY: You talk about PRA training here. 25 Does this program carry out any training in performance 'O. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 d (202) 293-3950 i

~; 1 101-1 assessment, which is a very similarLkind of animal but one ~ ( '2 we are more used to thinking about in terms of_the waste 3 programs? Do we'do any training of'NRC personnel in-4 performance assessment through your office? i 5 MR. JORDAN: We manage the program for inspector 6 technology training. In terms of general inspector skills, 7 that would be included in that particular' activity. 8 MR. MOELLER: We saw an announcement.a few months 9 ago about an NRC course for their divisions of high and low 10 level waste on performance assessment techniques. j 11 MR. JORDAN: Yes, sir. 1 12 MR. STEINDLER: At least in some parts of'the. 13 agency the structure of the quality assurance base for their 14 activity has resulted in a significant amount of demand for 15 pre-qualification and qualification training. .It is no' ] 1 16 great secret that in the area of the Department of Energy at i 1 17 least the new environment, safety and health approach that j q 18 the agency has used towards its contractors has resulted in 19 an astronomic rise in training requirements. Much of that '20 is for operations, that is, formalized training, whereas in 21 the past informal, on-the-job kind of information was 22 adequate. An awful lot of it is not just operations. It's 23 also things like access and evaluations. 24 Does that reflect back into the kind of needs that 25 you are now reevaluating? Do you see QA driven requirements L ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters-H 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 -l Washington, D.C. 20006 i (202) 293-3950 ) i .. ~

5 i ? l . \\ L H L 102 1 ~ for certification in order to'do.a particular job as being () 2 important-tolthe kind of restructuring that you are;doing,. 1 3 or'has that not come into the agency? 4 MR. JORDAN: That has not really come into the 5 agency as being a need. I think from the reactor side there L 6 was a view -- this is my interpretation - that-the NRC l 1 7 perhaps even overstressed quality assurance in terms of a 8 process as opposed to a way of getting a quality product and 9 worked too hard on the details and not hard enough on a. i 10 system. .I 11 MR. STEINDLER: I'm pleased to hear you say that, 12 as a matter of fact. Thank you. 13 MR. JORDAN: I think at this time'I would turn to 14 Steve and ask him to discuss the training program. 15 We are going to de-emphasize the reactor side in- ~\\ 16 the interest of time and the expectation that it's not the l a 17 area of your principal focus or interest. HWe would be il 18 willing to go wherever you would like to question further. 19 MR SHOA: Starting with slide number 4, what I 20 had planned to do was to give a brief overview of what the. 21 Training Center is, the personnel, the facilities,.and the 22 programs that we administer. I will start off with the 23 staff profile. i 24 Of the individuals that Ed had mentioned, the 32 25 FTE, we have a broad mix of education and experience and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

~,. 1 103 1 skills. About two-thirds of thefpeople'have-some nuclear ) - ( 2-background. There.is some combination. -Some of1these 3 people ~have two or three-different experience and skill 4 levels. 5 About two-thirds.of them have commercial 6 experience. About a third of them came to us from other NRC-7 offices. So we have some background there in the inspection 8 process, project management, operator licensing, and things: ) .1 9 such as that. 10 We are heavily weighted toward the reactor side. 11 Nineteen of-the staff has held some sort of senior reactor 12 operator license or certification for either commerciall i 13 reactors or tests, or sometimes university reactors. 14 We have three HPs on staff. Two of them are board. ~ 15 certified and a third is going to achieve certification:this 16 year. Of the three HPs, two of them have doctorates and one 17 has a master's degree. So we have some good talent for HP 18 purposes. 19 The programs that we have managed. We have 128 20 courses in varying disciplines that we either present 21 directly or that we control or coordinate. Most of our 22 internal is reactor because there is a-large need and we can 23 support providing these courses with the resources we have 24 in house. 1 25 In the non-reactor side, in HP, engineering k ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

104-1 support, safeguards, things such as that,_they are highly-2 specialized,.and_we really can't have all the' experts on 3 site that we need, so we do'most of those by contract. ~4 The breakdown is 51 reactor courses and.about 5 non-reactor. That covers all those HP and waste, radLwaste,- 6 transportation courses, and things.such as that. 7 We have a syllabus here that I can leave with you 8 and provide copies for everybody. 'It'has a one page 9 description of each of the courses, prerequisites and what 10 is expected. 11 Each NRC employee receives a schedule of courses. 12 We publish a two-year schedule so that supervisors and 13 individuals can plan when they can take these courses. 14 MR. MOELLER: You have 128 courses that you O 15 control or coordinate or directly produce yourself? 16 MR. SHOA: That's correct. 17 MR. MOELLER: Some of=these are done by. contract? 18 MR. SHOA: Some of these are done by contractors; 19 some are through agreements with DOE. There is a fuel 20 enrichment course that we get through DOE. We.have some 21 courses through OSHA to make our inspectors aware of OSHA 22 type things when they are out on site, since many of them 23 are onsite inspectors. 24 MR. MOELLER: When you do a course by contract, 25 how much detail do you go into? Having looked at proposed ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202)- 293-3950-

-105 1 contracts, not'from the NRC but with other government' 2 agencies, frequently they will give you a manual and they'll 3 say we want this manual taught precisely,.and that.gives 4 very little flexibility to the group teaching the-course. j 5 Do you do'that or do you give them broader guidelines? 1 6 MR. SHOA: It varies. It depends on the= .l -l 7 situation. If we are going'out for a brand new course, what j 8 we will do is determine the need and try to get a group of i 9 experts from the NRC to figure out what the course should I 10 look like. Then we'll develop a statement of work from'that 11 and the contractor will develop a training manual and the i 12 training materials. 13 We've learned over the years that we have to put a 14 lot of front-end effort in to make sure we get what we;want. 'l 15 That contract may be up for re-competition in a few years I 16 and then we may have the new contractor use that manual'and-17 those training programs. For every contract we put a-clause 18 in there that there may be redevelopment work in case of i 19 changing needs. 20 MR. MOELLER: How long are the courses generally? 21 MR. SHOA: We have a variety of courses. Anywhere 22 from one to three weeks. I believe the longest course is 23 five weeks, in the HP area. ) .l 24 MR. RITCHIE: That's not one of ours. 25 MR. MOELLER: Is the shortest one week, or do you ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ) Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

.106 1 have some one-day or two-day? () 2 MR. SHOA: -There are some very short courses we 3 give in support of public affairs. We have a news media 4 course that is about a day and a half long..That would be 5 about our shortest course. Most of the courses which are in-6 any kind of technical detail would-have to take at least a 7 week. '8 MR. STEINDLER: How do you evaluate the quality of 9 the stuff that your contractors are doing for you? 10 MR. SHOA: To evaluate them, especially early in a 11 contract, we will have people attending the course, andiit 12 may be some of the people who are on the group that 13 suggested what the curriculum should be for that course. 14 Our people go,.and also we get feedback from the students'. . O 15 For every course that we present or coordinate we'try t'o.get 16 a student evaluation sheet back. So we get feedback from. 17 the students, from experts we have' attend the course, and i 18 from the supervisors out there to see'if they got-what the. 19 supervisors thought they would get from the course. 20 MR. MOELLER: In any training program of.this. l 21 nature there will always be those who will say, oh, those 22 guys, all they do is teach; they've never had any practical 23 experience, et cetera. Then there will be others who say, 24 well, the people who have the practical experience don't 25 know how to teach. You say the participants rate the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

... } 107' i 1 course, but do they rate the lecturers, and what do you do 2 if the lecturer is getting very low ratings? 3 MR SHOA: For contract courses we try_to handle o i that through the contractor. We take the contract project i 5 manager and the contract administrator and work within the f 6 contract to try to either get the instructor upgraded or 7 replaced. We don't have too much trouble with that, l 8 although we have in the past had contractors cease and 9 desist teaching courses. It's very rare for that.to happen. 10 For internal, of course, internal supervision monitors 11 courses on a periodic basis and gives feedback to the 12 individuals. 13 MR. MOELLER: Do you have the flexibility to .I 14 replace a lecturer? 15 MR. SHOA: For internal courses we do. For 16 external courses it's very difficult to do that. Usually a' ) 17 correction is made within a few days or by the next course 18 for a contracted course. Obviously we have less control. j 19 MR. MOELLER: You mentioned that this manual goes 20 to all the supervisors within the agency. Are they given 21 any guidelines on how much time or how frequently each 22 employee should take a course? 23 MR. SHOA: The NRC has a qualifications and 24 training policy. Manual Chapter 1245 defines the 25 qualification requirements for formal training, on-the-job i i A ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

108 -1 training, et cetera, for 17 different categories of ) 2 inspectors. Then?for a number of other positions in NRR,- 3 AEOD and NMSS there are office letters which define minimum 4 qualification-training requirements for most of the 5 positions. 6 MR. MOELLER: Yours is based more on the position 7 and the qualifications for the position. For example, I 8 have seen organizations that will say every employee should 9 attend at least one one-week course every 10 years. You-10 don't have something like that? Or the agency doesn't? 11 MR. JORDAN: No. That would become an office 12 prerogative. For instance, in my office, AEOD, we'do_try to 13 encourage people to take training beyond the qualification. 14 The qualification program is a mandatory one.. Subsequently 15 there is development training. We try to use the courses in 16 a fair and equitable manner. 17 MR. MOELLER:.You know this. It's like preaching 18 to the choir. People gain more out of a training course 19 than necessarily the technical knowledge that is there. 20 People come back refreshed. They've had a week away from 21 the job. Let's say it's a one-week course. They've 22 established contacts that they didn't have previously, and 23 they probably received a lot of new ideas for addressing 24 common problems. So there is far more than the technical. 25 information. I was probing to see if the NRC just had a 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

109 1 policy of one' course every couple of years for every 2 employee, but obviously you don't quite have that. 1 3 MR. JORDAN: Not as such, but I think the NRC l 4 would be viewed as being very liberal and generous with 5 regards to training. It is part of my closing comment, but 6 I have a very, very high level of support from Jim Taylor in l 7 managing a technical training program, and from the Chairman ~ 8 and from the Commission in training and trying to maintain a y 1 9 high level of excellence. The program office directors are 10 each very supportive of the training programs and have been 11 very responsive to requests to them for their assessment of ) 12 training needs. 1 13 It costs when you put somebody on a two-week. 14 training program and they are not producing.the product that ~l 15 you were anxious for, but then one has to weigh that.

Okay, 16 there is going to be a benefit; they are going to be able to 17 do their job better once they do return to the productive 18 level.

19 An anecdote aside. One course that we developed j ~ i 1 -20 for one purpose has been very effective in another. We i 21 began development about two years ago of a reactor safety 22 course that was intended for interns and people without 23 nuclear experience to explain to them how the Appendix K 24 .ECCS considerations came about, to explain to them how TMI 25 affected the agency's safety considerations, and how ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters I 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

I i ~110 ~ i. 1 requirements have evolved over the years. A fairly historic 2 presentation that we were seeking to provice. 1 3 The people that have enjoyed it the most have been-4 those more senior ~ managers who have attended, what we call l 5 gray beards, to add a little bit of color to the 6 presentation and to state their own experience. The Region i 7 I administrator went to the last one and is now insisting 8 that each of his managers go through'the course atLthe 9 earliest opportunity. What it turns out to do is round out 10 people's experience. Each one of us has experienced a part 11 of these things but not all of it. { 12. That course has suddenly become extremely popular 13 and is being aimed at people with more experience as opposed. 14 to those with less. E15 MR. SHOA; I will go next to a brief description 16 of our facility down in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is far 17 enough away from most people's home office that they are not 18 bothered by work or homt-elated things and can concentrate 19 on their studies. l 20 our training center is in a modern office building. 21 which is on the perimeter of a shopping mall, which'is good 22 for the students because they have someplace to go at lunch i 23 and it's close to motels and things such as that. L 24 We have seven classrooms and presently four full-l 25 scope control simulators for the reactor operations. l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. L Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 i N 'I ~

~ 111 1-training. 2 We are in the process of procuring a fifth full-1 3 scope simulator. Those take quite a bit of time and money 4 to maintain but they are about the best way of describing l 5 system transients for reactor type inspectors. i 6 We have also managed to procure'a number of what I b 7 will call hardware training aids, which are actual equipment 8 from various industrial processes, whether it be a nuclear

i 9

plant, from a canccled plant or some other places. We have ~ 10 gotten pumps, valves, electrical circuit breakers, a small. 11 turbine, some survey instruments,- a dummy radiological 12 camera, a dummy moisture density gauge. 13 Those are quite important. We are not getting as 14 many new people now, but the new people we do get don't .O i 15 generally have a lot of practical experience. For the 16 reactor types, when someone thinks of a valve, they think of-17 c symbol on a diagram, which is what most of them have been I

1 18 exposed to.

So this-helps quite a-bit in gaining the 19 practical experience that they didn't otherwise have. 'i 20 MR. MOELLER: Hands-on experience? I 21 MR. SHOA: As much as we can give them in a 22 training center environment. Part of the training program-23 for inspectors is onsite time. So they get on-the-job 24 training under the supervision of qualified people when they 25 are on site. That's all part of the program. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202)-293-3950

L 1 L l 1 112 1 MR. HINZE: IX) you have much use of videos and do~ '2~ you have videos that you pass out to offices to upgrade on i 3 minor aspects? 4 MR. SHOA: We have some videos. We found'in 5 general, unless it is something very specific, a very 6 specific topic, that the videos weren't as useful as some 7 other methods. Those things are getting better now, but-the ) 8 old talking head videos just didn't work out very well. For i 9 specific things we have used some computer-based training, 10 like sit e access training and things such as that, and we do 1 11 have some specific videotapes. 12 MR. RITCHIE: We have a videotape on 10 CFR Part l 13 20, for example. J 14 MR. MOELLER: Did you make that or supervise it?. 15 MR. RITCHIE: Yes. It was developed by a 16 contractor directly under our supervision. 17 MR. HINZE: And closed circuit 1R7, isLthat l 18 incorporated? -l 19 MR. SHOA: We don't have any of that yet but that 20 is something we will be looking at as the NRC moves into the 21 video conferencing arena. That is one of the agenda items, 22 the possible uses of video conferencing. We are very early i 23 in the development stages. We will be one of the locations L 24 that has video conferencing capability. l 25 While we are on high technology type things, we l l 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

, t 113 L 1 have' slide 14. We have attempted to use high technology whenever it.made sense, whenever.that was a cost-effective 2 3-method of providing training. One of the things we've. 4 . procured is an interactive laser video disk tour. We have-a 5 system that has a video disk, a computer and-a means of 6 projecting onto a large screen. The system has about 50,000f .i 7 or 60,000 still photos on a laser disk. The computer-8 program allows us to effectively tour through the plant, and 9 for people who haven't been to a plant it gives them an 10 appreciation for the size, the equipment, what the stuff 1 11 looks like. J 12 Another enhancement that is provided with the' i 1 13 system is the ability to add health physics survey data to 14 show what the radiation levels are at various places. -John -( ) 15 and-the HPs use that in one of their HP courses. That has 16 been a very helpful addition. We have 28 different planto. 1 17 For those, we have been very fortunate to have the I 18 cooperation of the industry. They pay to develop all this i 19 stuff and we pay them a nominal fee for copying the disk. l 20 They have been very cooperative. 21 We are also working on something with nuclear 22 engineering workstations to provide classroom simulations 23 where we can tie to one of our simulators and use the 24 modeling to drive displays and show parameters that we can't 25 show in a control room environment, show things like clad i i ANN RILEY.& ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20006 (202)- 293-3950

. =. .114 1-temperatures, fuel' temperatures, void d'istribution, void '2 fraction. We haven't gotten there yet, butLwe could -3 probably show radioisotope distribution for what our 4 simulators will model. We are very limited on' training 5 simulators and what they will model. 6 Also with this system we are incorporating plant 7 instrumentation and systems diagrams to work through this. i 8 system and.be able to change system alignments to show 9 students what happens.during an engineering safety features 10 actuation, or doing some other.off-normal condition. 1 11 Our instructors are developing most of this 12 themselves, with the exception of the detailed modeling 13 which we purchased from other people..The diagrams and 14 things our instructors are doing. 15 We are using PICASSO, which is a graphical 16 interface. Some of you may be familiar with it. It was 17 developed by the Haldon Research Project of.which NRC is a 18. paying member. We've had a Haldon engineer at our site for 19 the last year helping us get up and running with this 20 graphical interface to make these things more useful and 1 21 meaningful both for the instructional staff and for the 22 students. 23 In the future we plan to go forward with this l 24 project and use it as much as we can. The next step in 25 development, or probably two steps down the road, is to have ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

1115-3 1 a_ simulator which is strictly CRT based where we can 2 simulate.a number of-different processes'-- it could be an 3 advanced reactor or several different designs ofcan existing 4 reactor -- and not have to be tied to a set of control room 5 panels and_the associated expense and difficulty of i 6 maintaining that, i 7 So we have a lot of interesting plans for high 8 technology for the future. I'm sure video conferencing will i 9 be a big part of that before it's all over with. 10 Back to slide number 5 for a moment. We spoke 11 briefly about the qualification program. We do it by i 12 position in the NRC, and there are qualification 13 requirements. I mentioned the manual chapter for 14 inspectors; office letters for other. positions. 15 For inspectors who actually go-out on a site land 16 inspect, the culmination of that qualification program is an l a 17 oral qualification board and then certification by the 18 regional administrator for the regional inspectors', or the 19 office director or delegate for headquarters. 20 The manual chapter that describes the 21 qualification requirements is a living document that gets 22 modified based on changing needs. The last modification was i 23 in 1991. That was accomplished through a working group 24 which was jointly chaired by the Training Center and NRR to 25 develop new training requirements, eliminate old ones which 1 l O I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300-Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

116 E 1-don't make sense anymore. ( 2 There is training listed in there for initial 3 training, for training which is to be accomplished within 4 maybe two years of qualification. So it's sort.of like 5 ongoing training. Or supplementary training, which is 6 training to enhance someone's capability beyond the minimal, 7 and then refresher training. 8 Many of the positions have a refresher training. 9 requirement in the office letter or the manual chapter. 10 In the interest of time, we will jump to the 11 specialized training, which is the non-reactor. 12 MR. STEINDLER: I was particularly interested in I 13 your NMSS fuel cycle training to support diffusion plants. j 14 You can run head on into classification problems fairly 15 quickly in that area. Do you stay out of those? 16 MR. RITCHIE: Yes. t 17 MR. STEINDLER: Entirely? 18 MR. RITCHIE: Yes. Our courses are not J, 19 classified. 20 MR. JORDAN: They have not been. If it became 21 important in this case, we would have to have a closed j l 22 session. ] 23 MR. SHOA: None of our courses are classified, 1 24 although we have some courses in safeguards They won't 25 even tell me where they hold them. So I guess they are. I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950-d

117 1 signed a travel request for someone and.the space was blank l k 2 where'it said where the person was going. I.wasn't allowed 3 to know where they were going. They were going 1somewhere to j 4 break open doors. 5 We are going to slip to slide 10 now. I'm going l 6 to turn it over to John to talk about the specialized 7 technical training specifically in the non-reactor support 8 area. .i 9 MR. RITCHIE: My specific area of expertise is the. f I 10 health physics. I was the first health physicist hired by 11 the Training Center. 12 Most of the training that we provide is done by 13 contractors. We have a contract with IT Corporation of

)

'1 14 Knoxville, Amersham Corporation of Massachusetts, et cetera. ll i 15 They provide most of.our industrial and medical training. 1 16 What they do is provide the students with the ability'to see 17 facilities hands on. i 18 In our medical training programs they actually. ) ) 19 take the students to medical facilities and-let them see ~ 20 teletherapy units, nuclear medicine facilities, and stuff 21 like that. .i J 22 Similarly with industrial radiography. Amersham. 23 takes the students into their source room where they 24 actually make the sources, and also takes t' hem out in the 25 field to show them an actual radiography setup. .I. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D.C. 20006 (202)-293-3950

118 1 We actually only teach two course in house, that 2 is, two courses are taught by the three HPs. One is a two-3 week health physics training course, which is kind of an 4 intermediate level. We expect the students who attend that 5 course to have some background in radiation safety, not 6 necessarily a health physics degree. Many of them have 7 science degrees, physics, chemistry, biology. It helps to B have a little bit of experience in health physics, 9 That particular course we developed ourselves from 10 scratch, and it has been very successful. In fact, we have 11 received 32 continuing education credits from the American 12 Board of Health Physics for that course. 13 And I might add we also request certification 14 credits for any of our other courses when certified HPs O 15 attend them, which is not very often. But we have received 16 credits for our internal dosimetry course as well as our 17 criticality safety courses. 18 We have been cooperating with the office of State 19 Programs in training. Previously the two programs were 20 separate as far as training inspectors. For various 21 reasons, about three years ago we even took over 22 responsibility for industrial radiography and 23 transportation. Although we pay for the course, all the 24 expenses, we split the student attendance 50/50 with the 25 Office of State Programs. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 m

il k l-119 1 It has actually turned out to be a significant 2 benefit in that the NRC students tell us that they really 3 enjoy attending courses with state inspectors because they. 4 get a lot of cross information, and state inspector, of 5 course, get cross information as well. 6 It is anticipated that we will.be doing a lot more 7 training in conjunction with the Office of State Programs, 8 taking over courses and splitting the attendance fee. 9 Most of our contracts are five years, by the way, 10 five-year training course contracts. We have entered into a 11 couple purchase orders with Nordion for radiator training. 12 There has been some interest in radiator technology,.and 13 Nordion has conducted two training courses for us, and'those 14 courses have been extremely well received. 15 Steve mentioned OSHA. As a result of~an incident 16 five or six years ago with a primary hazardous chemical, it 17 was decided that we needed some OSHA training. So we 18 contacted the OSHA training center in Des Plaines, Illinois, 19 and had them develop a training course specific ~for NRC 20 inspectors. 21 The only other thing I wanted to mention is the 22 fact that manual chapter 1245 does specify required 23 training, supplemental training and refresher training. I 24 think it's important to understand the difference between 25 those. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950-c

1 t 120 1 There are some courses'that are absolutely -) 4 2 required.of individuals-before they become certified 3 inspectors. It's divided up by what category they fit in, i 4 whether they are reactor health' physicists or materials j 1 5 health physicists or field facility health physicists. 6 Those are three separate groups. Not all of the required 7 courses are the same, obviously. 8 The materials health physicists are required, for j 9 example, to take diagnostic and therapeutic nuclear medicine 10 and brachytherapy and teletherapy courses, whereas power 1 11 reactor health physicists are required to take rad waste 12 management courses. 13 I might comment that we only have two courses at 1 14 present that deal with rad waste issues. One is a five-day -j 15 course called Rad Waste Management which is very heavily 16 weighted to rad waste with about one day set aside for part 17 61 low level waste type issues. 18 The other course is transportation of radioactive 19 material, which is a five-day course with about three and a 20 half days devoted to transportation in general, a half a day 21 devoted to low level waste, and since the contractor is Chem 22 Nuclear, they have a one-day field trip where they actually 23 take the students and give them an opportunity to evaluate 24 tracks coming into the site carrying low level waste. 25 In addition to the required courses, there is also IJUJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 L._

.~. t R ,i 121-1 supplemental.and refresher. The two sides of the house.have () 2 kind of handled this differently. R 3 ' Reactor health physicists have a long list of i 4 refresher courses that they are expected to take every'three . J 5 years or so. 6 On the materials side of the house'there are no 7 refresher courses specified except for fundamentals of 8 inspection,.but there is a long list of supplemental courses 9 which at the discretion of regional management the 10 inspectors are expected to take over and above the courses 11 that they are required to take. 12 That's basically all I had, unless you have some 13 questions on the health physics curriculum specifically. 14 MR. HINZE: Is there any' chatting between the 15 compacts and your program.in terms of training? 16 MR. RITCHIE: We have not had any direct ~ contact 17 with the low level waste compacts. I think State Programs 3 -] 18 is involved with that. H 19 MR. STEINDLER: The incident reports that NRC 20 files with Congress for sometime had as the majority of the 21 types of things that were cited things that would come.under-22 the heading of medical maladministration. Can I assume;that 23 you have reviewed these to see where some additional 24 training or some changes in training might be beneficial for 25 the folks who are supposed to keep track of these guys? 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

~ ~122 1 MR. RITCHIE: Obviously that's the case. Recently () 2 we had the unfortunate misadministration in Indiana, 3 Pennsylvania, and as a result in the subsequent teletherapy 4 and brachytherapy course there was a significant emphasis on 5 high reactor loaders. The contractor got copies of videos 6 from the manufacturers and went over that in great detail as l 7 well as the report of the incident itself, the NUREG. 8 We are fortunate in that our contracts are broad 9 enough that we do have some input into changing the 10 curriculum from year to year. When something like that 11 happens we do ask our contractors to incorporate that kind 12 of information. l 13 MR. STEINDLER: Have you done that over all of the 14 range of incident types that are reported? 15 MR. RITCHIE: We don't do it for each individual-16 incident. If there is something that indicates there is 17 something significant that the student should be aware of, 18 we try to incorporate those kinds of things into the course. 19 We don't have provisions for each time an' incident occurs we 20 incorporate that. 21 One of the factors that we try to do also.is get 22 NRC guest lecturers for these courses. We try to set aside j l l 23 about three hours for each of these training courses to get 24 someone from the NRC who is familiar with all the things 25 that are occurring to get in front of the students and i. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street,.N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 -(202) 293-3950

123 j 1 convey that information to them, something that perhaps the (k 2 contractor might not personally be aware of. 3 That has been kind of a mixed success in the sense 4 that it's sometimes difficult to get NRC people because_they 5 are too busy with their other jobs to be guest lecturers, 6 but in most cases we have been relatively successful in-7 getting qualified people to donate their time. 8 MR. MOELLER: That reminds me of the Bernero plan 9 for these procedural and site-specific reviews between DOE 10 and NRC. One of the questions I wanted to ask him was 11 whether he invited any DOE people in to give their 12 perspective. You don't want to just-give.one side. You 13 just mentioned guest lecturers from within the NRC. If-you 14 do a course on transportation of radioactive materials and O 15 let's say a source has fallen off of a truck or something 16 and-been lost, then DOE had the group in Las Vegas with the 17 helicopters and planes and aerial surveillance. Do they. 18 come and lecture in your courses and tell your people about 19 that capability? 20 MR. RITCHIE: Not that specific one. In our two-- 21 week health physics course we tell the students about_the-1 22 AMS capabilities and Lawrence Livermore. We have had Glen ] 23 Murphy from Martin Marietta, who used to be with-RAU. He l 24 has come down for every one of our'two-week courses and [ i 25 provided guest lecturers on environmental monitoring and l' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 .. - ~ ~. , +. - -, + <

124. 1 confirmatory measurements that they used to do'for the NRC 2 and provides information from the DOE perspective as well. 3 Actually, our two-week health physics course is 4 the only one where we specifically get a DOE guest speaker 5 who comes in and talks about those issues. 6 MR. JORDAN: If I may respond to the. incident 7 response side of things. We have both contractual and-8 inter-agency agreements with DOE with regard to response. 9 We do joint training with them for response purposes. Their 10-capabilities from Nevada in setting up a federal 11 radiological monitoring center are part of our overall 12 programs and strategy. So we are very closely linked.there. 13 We just participated at the Fort Calhoun facility with them 14 in setting up this FERMAC operation and participated in an 15 exercise at one of their facilities at Hanford as NRC 16 support in an interaction there. So we are very closely 17 linked. 18 I-had one comment to make in response to a 19 question I heard earlier. As things evolve, and abnormal 20 occurrences are certainly one, there is a need to provide 21 some document, something to the NRC personnel about this 22 emerging issue and emerging technical issue. In the past 23 year we have created a thing'that we call a Technical Issue 24 Training Bulletin. We have only issued two of_them. We 25 look at it as a tool that we plan to use'much more widely.. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950~

t ' 125 l 1 The first one was BWR level' instrumentation, non-2 condensable gas release. A very. simple phenomena has been ] 3 driving BWRs for sometime and has caused misunderstandings I i 4 of water level. The phenomena, although simple, was hard to 5 understand. It took many years to fully understand it j 6 - between industry and ourselves. f 7 What we have done here is compiled.for the'NRC's -) 8 use the technical phenomenon, what drives it.and how it-9 affects the reactor and the operator and put in'one place 10 and distributed it widely to inspectors, to project' 11 managers, to licensing examiners, so that everybody has in 12 fact seen a clear picture. 13 The experts that put out the generic 14 correspondence participated in developing'this particular l , ( 15 document. 4 16 The subsequent one we are issuing right now is on i 17 BWR instability, which is similar. It's a little bit 18 complicated to understand but needs to be expressed in a way. l 19 that everybody sees it the same way finally. 20-We would expect to do that for materials 21 situations as well. Whenever there is a new understanding 22 of the phenomena, a generic issue, we will promptly get 23 something out so that it-doesn't wait to be embedded in the 24 - training programs and taught to somebody five' years after is 25 happens but.gets disseminated widely in the same fashion. l I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 Ww y 5-7>N e w ey-uer + e-e.> - + - +- h- +wM ew 's-wrN4 'e#1e 1 vn +fsw e We w ww 4e w use~ mwe-<e em a r,y,. y 9,y - g-k ' T

i 126 l 1 I think we probably ought to summarize at this 2 point. 3 MR. HINZE: Let me ask a quick question'. Do you l -4 cover mixed waste in your waste managemant course? [ 5 MR. RITCHIE: I brought along a copy'of the table 6 of contents for that course if anybody-is interested in 7 seeing what's in it. Frankly I don't know. That's not-one 8 of my courses, but I think it's covered very,~very-briefly. 9 MR. JORDAN: I think it's an important point. We 10 don't do much at all in waste. We are cognizant of it. In 11 going for a user need with NMSS, that's a question: do we 12 need to provide more in this area? Certainly from your

)

13 viewpoint, when you look at our syllabus and course outline, the question is, are we really covering the right things for O 14 15 people? 16 We are not at all defensive. We see that there is H 17 a need to reorient the material. 18 In summary, the program enjoys a very high level 19 of support from the agency. The program that we have for 20 technical training for regulators is considered a model 21 among the international set of regulators. In fact, we are 22 participating very heavily in the Lisbon initiative and 23 providing training to the Ukrainians and the Russians and 24 helping them set up a technical training program for their 25 regulators. You've been to Russia and Ukraine.and are ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

i 127 1 involved in meetings. In fact, there is a group of Russians 2 coming here this week to continue with this effort. 3 That's been a very large resource sink in the last 4 year, assisting them in that fashion. That assistance 5 includes helping them with equipment and setting up 6 facilities. 7 We do have a need survey under way and we expect 8 early in the year to have compiled that. We are also 9 consolidating the state programs, agreement state type 10 training and the PRA training into a set of technical 11 training. r 12 We certainly recognize that we need to respond to i 13 the personnel staffing and the programmatic changes that are 14 occurring in the NRC. That is why the needs survey is out. 15 We would expect to have a proposal in early 1994 16 of the changes that we anticipate making, which would give 17 you an opportunity to review and comment on that proposal. 18 We would appreciate your comments. 19 I would make one other offer. If there are-20 members of the ACNW that would be interested in visiting the 21 Training Center and talking to the people, reviewing the 22 curricula in more detail, we would be very pleased to host 23 such a review. 24 MR. MOELLER: Let me be sure I understand. You haie this program change proposal that will be ready.in 25 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K-Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

128 1-early 1994 and you'll provide it to us? () 2 MR. JORDAN: Yes. We will provide it to you along 3 with the ACRS to get your comments. 4 MR. MOELLER: What can we do for you at'this 5 meeting? We've heard what you've had to say. Of course we 6 haven't gone into the depths to have too much to say in 7 terms of detail. 8 MR. JORDAN: All we were trying to do was 9 familiarize you and to then invite you to get more details 10 by a visit to the Training Center if that's practical, and 11 then to be in a better position to advise us when se do 12 provide you with the proposal of the changes we plan to 13 make. 14 MR. HINZE: Do all agreement state personnel go .O 15 through your programs, your waste management program? Is 16 this elective? 17 MR. JORDAN: It's elective. It's my understanding 18 that the NRC makes the training available and not only was 19 it a contract course, but the per diem for the state 20 personnel was provided by the Office of State Programs. So 21 they had a budget that paid for the transportation and 22-housing costs of the people. 23 MR. HINZE: Is this a common affair? 24 MR. JORDAN: It has been in existence for a number 25 of years and the degree to which the state uses it.is pretty ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 ,..___.___._._____._______.__.____-_.._J

4 129 1 much up to the state. ) 2 MR. MOELLER: In fact, Congressman Synar said, how 3 do you evaluate a state program? Well, one thing would be 4 to have all of their key staff attend certain courses that 5 you offer, and that ought to be one of the key items. ~ 6 MR. JORDAN: Indeed. The State Programs Office 7 does have that in fact as one of their evaluation criteria. 8 MR. STEINDLER: The key is that that is an 9 elective aspect on the part of the agreement states as to 10 whether they want to send one or more of their people? t 11 MR. JORDAN: Yes. 12 MR. STEINDLER: It's not a requirement by the NRC? 13 MR. JORDAN: No. My sense is that it has been I 14 fairly widely used, but I have no statistics at this point. i 15 MR. MOELLER: I'm just shooting from the hip, i 16 speaking for myself, but I think there ought to be some l 17 formal requirements. Either people should have attended. 18 your course or an equivalent course somewhere else. k 19 You mentioned ABHP certification or continuing 20 education credits. You could come under medical 21 accreditation if you got into misadministrations. When you 22 get into that, they always say, of course, do you.give the. 23 participants an opportunity to rate the course, the 24 individual speakers and the topics, and whether,they got'all-25 ~ they wanted out of it. One of their pet areas, and in fact ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters i 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

4 1 l 130 l l. they emphasize it, is that a year or two after the person is 1 a 2 finished the course you're supposed to go back and find out 3 to what degree did-he or she apply what they learned and i L ~ 4 with a year or two of hindsight what new opinions or what 5 opinions do they now have. j 6 Do you do that type of a follow-up? 7 MR. RITCHIE: Yes. In fact, we have a post-course-l 8 evaluation. It's relatively new. I think it only started [ - ? j 9 last year. We plan to send out questionnaires to'all 10 attendees approximately six to 12 months after,they have 4 11 attended the course, basically requesting whether it has-had 12 an impact on their job performance, whether they have had an 13 opportunity to use it. 14 MR. MOELLER: Another item the medical group i 15 emphasizes is that you shouldn't -- and I don't agree with 16 this -- but they'll say to you, you should not decide what ' i 17 courses to teach; the only way you decide what courses to- ~ 18 teach is through " user need surveys." l 19 Do you do user need surveys? l 20 MR. JORDAN: Yes. That is in fact what we are 21 doing with the request we give out to the program offices 22 now. We do not unilaterally develop any course. j 23 MR. MOELLER: But you say to them what do they see-24 as a need? 25 MR. JORDAN: Right. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 . 1

. ~. i 131' 1 MR. MOELLER: And then you meet that need? l 2 MR. JORDAN: That's right. We try to aim it 3 here's a position and what does that position need in the 4 way of training and qualification, and then the program l 5. office revises those periodically. It's an iterative 6 process. We are just now going through the next iteration-7 of those needs. 8 MR. SHOA: We also get valuable input from the 9 Commission senior management. I J 10 MR. HINZE: Along that line, could we get a copy 11 of the outline of the waste management course, the one you 12 looked at to determine whether mixed waste was in there? 13 MR. RITCHIE: You can have this copy. I brought a 14 copy along figuring that the two courses that involved rad O 15 waste are the ones of interest. So you have the table of 16 contents for the transportation course and the rad waste 17 management course. 18 MR. HINZE: Good. i 19 MR. MOELLER: Great. Thank you. l 20 MR. STEINDLER: When you go through the user need 21 survey, which I gather you are going to have done roughly by 22 the end of the year, do you ask the question'in the context 23 of your existing course catalog, or do you ask the question 24 in the context of topics that they might produce on their 25 own? ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

132 1 MR. JORDAN:

Both, 2

MR. SHOA: There's also a copy of the survey here. 3 MR. MOELLER: Thank you. 4 MR. STEINDLER: You do allow for the opportunity 5 to have people suggest that here's a topic you ought to 6-cover? 7 MR. JORDAN: We are' seeking those. We feel that. 8 there is a need to make changes and that there are new 9 courses that are warranted. Then it becomes a matter of' 10 what are the courses, what should be in them, and then. 11 what's a cost-effective way of providing that level of 12 information. 13 MR. MOELLER: You seem to really be hitting all i 14 the important items. I would just make one comment in terms' l 'O 15 of user needs. Of course you're in a little different-16 situation. I previously was at a northeastern university 17 and taught short courses. We were required to do user 18 needs. 19 I'll never forget. About ten years ago we did a 20 very comprehensive user needs survey and we followed it up-1 21 with telephone calls and we.then ranked the courses, say, in -1 22 environmental and occupational health, according to 23 priority. Then we developed a couple of courses for the two .I 'l 24 top priority areas and we announced them, and no one came. 25 So it doesn't always work. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

133 1 MR. JORDAN: I think this has been remarkably ) 2-successful. What we are doing is connecting it to a 3 position in the NRC and what are the' qualifications for that 4 position and how many people are there in that position. 5 MR. MOELLER: In that category. 6 MR. JORDAN: Right. That will become one of the 7 prioritization features. If there are three people in that 8 position, we won't develop a course. If there are 35, or. 9 whatever the number is, then it will warrant perhaps'a 10 course. In the last five years what we have come from is 11 from individual wants to the program office needs. I think 12 it's important to move even further in that direction. 13 MR. MOELLER: Very good. 14 Any other comments of questions? O 15 [No response.] 16 MR. MOELLER: Thank you, John, Steve and Ed. .It 17 has been very informative, and we appreciate it. 18 With that, I will declare a lunch recess. 19 [Whereupon at 12:20 p.m. the meeting was 20 adjourned, to reconvene in unreported session at 1:45 p.m., 21 this same day.] 22 23 24 25 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20006 (202) 293-3950

O REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: NAME OF PROCEEDING: 58th ACNW Meeting DOCKET NUMBER: PLACE OF PROCEEDING: Bethesda, MD were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Comnission taken by me and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting 0 f company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings. V20t/A/?p ( tfac> official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.

i l i \\ INTRODUCTION Attended three meetings in October: 1. October 5-6, 1993 -CNWRA - Hydrology Research Coordination Meeting. 2. October 13-14, Los Alamos, Technical Exchange on Radionuclide Migration in UZ and Near Field Phenomenon 3. October 19-20, 1993, Las Vegas, NWTRB meeting in Las Vegas Surface Based Dry Drilling and the ESF UG Testing Program Purpose in attending: gain insights in unsaturated zone flow and transport for unsaturated zone groundwater working group and interest in GWTT and hydrology. MEETING HIGHLIGHTS: 1. October 5-6, 1993 -CNWRA - Hydrology research coordination meeting. 1

Purpose:

To discuss hydrology related research cooperation between the U of A and the CNWRA in support of resolving KTU's in the areas (~~ of hydrology and geochemistry. Emphasis on addressing uncertainties related to groundwater flow and transport simulations for GWTT and PA, and supporting geochemistry uncertainties. KTU's are identified as part of LARP development. Questions: What additional KTUs are needed? Does current hydrology research program address KTUs? How do we set priorities? Did we miss major issues? ) Attendees: included Mel Silverberg and Margaret Federline and their j hydrology staff members. i } Agenda: NRC RES-overview, NMSS -hyrology KTUs, UAZ-Overview of Apache Leap Studies,

CNWRA, Geochemical constraints on GWTT, stochastic modeling in support of

GWTT, gas flow and vapor distribution Pena Blanca Analog, UZA Air inj ection permeability

) testing at Apache Leap, Interval studies, other. Highlights: NRC staff -hydroloav/ceochemistry KTUs e KTU-uncertainty related to repository performance such that if not resolved, poses a high risk of noncompliance. Type 4 - would have large risk of noncompliance -doesn't imply need ) new research. Type 5 -poses highest risk of noncompliance. () Staff will do independent calculations / testing / may involve new research.

O e31 KTUs in area of UZ, Climate, Geochemistry, Hydro general e Examples: -Adverse condition -formation of perched water bodies Uncertainty in modeling groundwater flow through unsaturated fractured rock caused by the lack of codes tested against lab and field data. -gas flow and transport -predicting precipitation and temperature due to climate change and -identifying conceptual model of isothermal and nonisothermal liquid and vapor phase movement of water thru unsat zone. -determining characterization parameters. Experimental error, instrumentation, spatial variability. Lack of established data collection and interpretation techniques. -experimental confirmation of the basic physical concepts of groundwater flow through unsat fractured rock as needed. Few experiments have been designed to test concepts. Major KTUs for GWTT Performance objective -conceptual models -math models -future states O' -parameter estimation -codes e FY 94 will be doing an integration review e KTU's do not constitute researc.S needs. Geochemical Constraints on GWTT at Yucca Mountain e Evidence of rapid fracture flows -H3 peak at 50 meters and low EC zones at depth - suggesting rapid flow paths. -CL36 signatures at 250 feet - -G tunnel dripping out of fractures in Ranier Mesa evidence of separate chemical systems of water in fractures and water in matrix -Devils hole -discharge area -see young age and interpret little contact with rock unsat wrt calcite therefore fast pathway, via restricted flow channels. UAZ Air Permeability testing Results see strong pressure dependent behavior which correlates to degree of saturation. Infer water perm from air perm measurements. Recognize difficult to interpret results. () Many correlations. Must be done carefully. 4

3 Qd e Cannot distinguish permeability in fractures from matrix--must treat as a continuum. U of &Z research e Validity of using C-14 to est GWTT j e Isotopic rations to define mass transfer between fractures and matrix i e Perching -water balance to explain presence of perching Modeling fracture flow using dual continuum model DCM3d being used by the NRC characteristic curves for fractures, need transfer function to correlate fracture and matrix permeability. Gas diffusion coeffs Observations and discussions: Excellent coordination between NMSS and RES e Importance and need to track Fran Ridge large scale heater block experiment--waste package study plan. e How is detailed geochemical modeling supported in PA models? e How is the research to support KTUs integrated into IPA? e Lifficulty in going from KTU's to user needs 1 e Emerging evidence for rapid flow via fractures j e Does NRC have a need to do field work and prototype testing? Cannot have independent means to evaluate if have to rely on DOE and veracity of its data, e Data now available from Yucca -why still using Apache Leap? 2. October 13-14, 1993 NRC/ DOE Technical Exchange at Los Alamos Day 1 -geochemical research related to radionuclide migration in the unsaturated zone, and Day 2-Near field Phenomenon related to Radionuclide releases from the EBS. Purpose of meetings: discuss advances in geochemical research since

1990, experimental studies in

sorption, speciation solubility, Geochemical modeling, analog research, and integration with TSPA.

Attendees: included geochem staff and CNWRA and Charlotte Dick Codell, Ginny Colten-Bradley, John Bradbury, George Buschard. Four j or Five reps from CNWRA.

S ^ 4 Highlights: o Ardyth Simmons - Overview of Radionuclide Migration Program - strategy for radionuclide migration characterization and testing. Shows progression from study plan results, to conceptual model development, to performance assessment, using lab and field data for validation. overview of advances in experimental Ines Triay, LANL studies Colloids microbial

effects, GW chemistry and speciation, solubility, speciation of actinides, sorption studies, field / analog studies.

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) studies look at e Pam Rogers molecular level iron oxide surface reacting in water to determine which surface feature structures, ie roughness, structure, orientation most influence sorption of iron oxide minerals. In water gothite surfaces react immediately when contact water, increase surface roughness higher surface area for sorption. (did not use tuff samples from Yucca Mountain), e T Bushceck --modeling effects of heat on saturation of rock and on circulation of air and water vapor, and modeling of t dripping in fractures in the heated zone on to waste packages. e Bill Halsey - integration of process modeling inst performance assessment. Defined Near field environment as that portion of natural system containing engineered features. Several mechanistic EBS source term models have been developed, and beginning to incorporate hydrothermal water

contact, temperature dependence, and specific corrosion processes.

-waste package degradation. Abstraction -need to talk to researchers-many informal meetings -what should PA-include? No real successes yet. Ask them what to retain what is important Must retain salient features from process models and use in PA. Discussions and observations: Dick Codell -not clear how geochemical research fits into PA and how PA feeds back into research. Majority of work is focused on matrix properties is sorption, not fractures. Dripping due to condensate from vapor flow is a big concern, how do we deal with thi's? Diffusion tests being conducted on matrix not fractures. Should have replaced talks on PA where still little data with rad. release from spent fuel and glass. This research is critical and is a missing piece. e State and NRC suggested separate technical exchange needed on O heater block tests.

n 5 b e Local Governments -Nye County -not comfortable with connection j of research to PA. Fractures are important pathway -don't know if sorption is important in fractures. No emphasis on this. e Too much emphasis on ambient conditions, rather than thermal / disturbed conditions perhaps because DOE has not settled on a design. Need to focus on effects of heat on Calico Hills unit DOE is planning a study plan to excavate Calico Hills to look at rad transport under ambient conditions in ESF and maybe under heat-- 1996 at earliest. e DOE is focus on speciation, solubility, and sorption of NP in i experimental and modelling studies. What else is NRC concerned about? e Don Langmiere-NWTRB-how does abstraction process work without loosing critical features of process models and uncertainty? T. Buscheck -says can't be done. Too many realizations and variables, parameters if use one bulk permeability would miss piping effects. e NRC emphasized importance of considering coupled processes 3. October 19-20, 1993. NWTRB meeting in Las Vegas Surface Based Dry Drilling and the ESF UG testing Program

Purpose:

to discuss status of DOE's surface based drilling program, and Underground Testing Program in the ESF. With emphasis on characterizing the UZ zone. How to speed up drilling rate, integration with TSPA, modification of studies as new data and paradigma are developed, How do groups within communicate? Attendees: NRC field reps, Joe Holonich, NRC Engineering staff. Agenda: First day: General Intro by Linda Smith (Acting Associate Director, and Russ Dyer (Acting Project Manager) Status of UZ 14 hole -found perched water, overview of ESF progress, Joe Holonich from NRC on Aug 20 letter and concerns for ESF design control, C. Johnson on State's concerns with pneumatic testing. Followed by overview of surface and underground testing program, current j surf ace based drilling program--cooperative drilling ef fort by Nye Country, accelerated Pneumatic testing, among others. Conclude with roundtable discussions. Second day: Current Underground testing Program review of ESF tests Char of UZ zone in ESF, thermal testing, testing program and integration, roundtable. Highlights from presentations: Smith, Dyer

ex 6 V e YM budget for FY 94 is firm and at 270 M, compared to last year 260 M. Although much of the work remains underfunded??? e 200 feet into Mountain --3 weeks ahead of schedule ESF testing and mapping have been initiated, e Completion of site characterization was shown with a sliding scale -- depends on funding. Drilling rates discussed -- 29 years -- different scenarios, e Completed 24 shallow boreholes for infiltration studies e Deep holes UZ 16 and 14 downhole testing underway in UZ 16. e 17 trenches excavated for faulting studies with detailed geophysical logging. e Fran Ridge large block heater tests--moving dirt. ESP tunnelling schedule TBM arrives April 94, begin Aug 94, end June 1996. PR 8 released Carl Johnson, State. Pneumatic testincr-e State defines pneumatic pathways to include gas, air and vapor pathways, and NRC's definition of groundwater includes gas, air, and vapor --suggests GWTT fastest path must consider pneumatic pathway. Joe Holonich noted that OGC is looking at this now - NRC may not agree. Concern raised by the State, and by the NRC for effects of ESP ventilation on ability to collect ambient undisturbed ~ data. Concern that drying out the rock will affect diffusion tests, geochemical isotope data for use in age dating and other purposes. State feels need to collect undisturbed data to develop and test pneumatic flow model for undisturbed conditions to answer what are the pathways, where are they, and how fast is the TT? Needed to understand pneumatic paths, determine fastest path, thermal loading models, performance and impact on desert eco system. Need a surface based program with sufficient boreholes to develop data base of i undisturbed soil gas pressure and flow in response to barometric pressure changes in repository, j e Gas phase circulation through mountain is known to exist but its significance on repository performance is not understood. Os Study plan on Gaseous Phase Movement in UZ zone address this, but only using several boreholes--to extrapolate data across I

d O site. Nevada Feb 4, 1993 letter expressed larger concern that early ESF excavation may preclude adequate characterization of undisturbed pneumatic pathways. Specific concern relates to ~, a bedded layer (PB non welded unit) conceptualized in models to impede gas or vapor flow up and out of Mountain -but know data collected to validate this model. Do not know how this layer will act. Concern ESF construction will short circuit this pathway. e Significant USGS has acknowledged state' concern as valid technical issue needing resolution -first time in 10 years. Robert Craio-USGS Accelerated Pneumatic testing e Objectives: to obtain data before ESF construction, monitor effects of construction, asses impacts of ESF construction on site conditions. USGS agrees need pneumatic data prior to i opening up Topopah Springs Unit. e Collect data on pneumatic permeability, gas chemistry, and in-situ distribution of moisture, pressure, and temperat..re. e Tests include gas phase testing, gas chemistry sampling, geophysical logging, air permeability testing e Adequate funding to do the work. e Questions and comments from TRB: -Gas flow in fractures is what is important. Matrix irrelevant. DOE response -will identify fracture zones, with associated air permeability, trying to set up packers to catch air from fractures using camera. ISSUE: AMANDO GUZMAN, UAZ, SAYS CANT DISTINGUISH FRACTURES FROM MATRIX. -Will planned tests address C. Johnson's concerns? DOE responses yes. Warner North, TRB: Really??????? Data needed to support Buschecks model for thermal hydraulics? How is DOE connecting the data needed with the data planned? Must ask i the PA people what they need --ie flow in fractures. Need to talk to State, PA people Are you doing this???? INTEGRATION PROBLEMS We know there is large scale sias circulation, due to fractures and need data prior to ESF. What are you doing about this? -C. Johnson-problem with objectives of study: effects of ESF vs. test and support use of pneumatic models. Need repository scale-- more than a few boreholes. need to implement recommendation in -Larry Hayes, USGS States letter -- ie meet with State, USGS, DOE, modelers, is

there a match between supply and demand. Joe Holonich-NRC ESF desian control nrocess concerns: P background and Aug 20 letter - NRC had concerns with findings from DOE audits and surveillences, lack of obj evidence. Technical exchange postponed, DOE to provide needed

info, Aug 20 letter identifies areas of concern, subsequent interactions allowed for clarification, continue dialog, awaiting DOE response.

Nye Country -On Site Drillina Initiative - Describe a system of data collection cheaper and faster - and described performance issues the Ind Scientific Investigation (ISI) program is addressing. Vadose zone drilling undertaken due to limited surface based program, e Using dry dual wall reverse circulation drilling. West Bay Instrumentation Package. CM savings. Continuous cuttings and logging, analyses, QA and sample management considerations O being considered. West Bay Inst. Package used for continuous monitoring Concern modelling and expert judgement is overly relied upon-without data needed could be collected by altering the spending patterns and collect data needed for 3D model. Costly. dry core drilling limits # of boreholes. Data base will be insufficient for pneumatic pathway, fracture flow, perching, moisture contents, isotope gechem data, eMajor issues affecting performance -vadose and sat zone hydrology -disturbed zone performance -climate change performance -rad release -tectonics and seismic -age dating processes Richar_si Luckey, USGS O e Found perched water body in UZ 14 -similar to hole UZ1, where

i l e 9 lost 24 million gallons of drilling fluid. See degradation of 1 polymer product microorganisms --three interpretations getting age dates now to see age of water -- calculations to -l establish areal extent if only drilling fluid. Finding water is much younger than expected --implies need alot of young water to mix with drilling fluid to give signatur' they are l getting. Implications: extensive perched water aody mixed with drilling fluid, or just drilling fluid. Roundtable: e Why is so much core needed? porosity distributions --will it be used in PA? Emphasis is on measuring matrix properties in the system, not fractures. Core provides info on saturation and matrix potential. Paint Brush - sparse fractures - matrix is important here. e Marty Mif flin, State, agrees moisture content spatially is important-- to understand hydro regime-- but will take forever to get this -- without use of geostatistical approaches. e Concern for data collection --pace will never get data needed in timeI e Can PA be abstracted? How is this done? Communication problems between PIs and PA people. One of PIs said he has never been approached by a PA modeler. Don't know if can model or roll up. e Concern for data collection --pace will never get data needed in timei e Need to start thermal testing ASAP e Concern that not packaging and communicating info to NWTRB. Convinced the program is good. Need to find way to convince Board. Does Board ever change its mind?? Are we wasting our time?? North wants to see more doubts, questions, analyses in progress and current thinking. o Pneumatic testing -- Mif flin - not convinced program is ahead of TBM. Larry Hayes, USGS doesn't believe schedule of TBM. UZ 14 and 16 way out - years before TBM getti there. Warner North -- has perception that study plans do not reflect new thinking--coupled processes, thermal loading. Why are study plans still adequate. How is DOE changing and revising them relative to new information and paradigms. Response --can't loose original objectives --need continuity and plan, internal control, orderly process. O e FOCUS 93 - new trend-use data collection to bound parameter

i, 4 10 O values used in PA numbers Expect program to go in this direction. 1 e No discussion on how PA is used to drive data collection and testing. Roundtable Day 2 - communication between PA people and Project Investigators. COMMON ISSUES EMERGING FROM THREE MEETINGS Perched groundwater-ef fect on GWTT and performance-thermally induced, drilling fluid. e TSPA abstraction of process models -very difficult to communicate and integrate detailed, process research into TSPA, and visa versa. Can this be done and how is this done? Communication problems. Difficulty in retaining salient information, e Not enough emphasis on fracture flow for air, waterr and vapor transport in site characterization testing and research pd sorption may not be applicable in fractures. Need for geochemical evidence to verify infiltration rates, rapid flow paths, matrix vs. fracture flow, and groundwater travel time. between Problem of communication of what the work is disciplines and to the TRB. Large Scale Heater Block tests e Need more emphasis on post -emplacement performance e Coupled processes e Pneumatic pathways -importance of a Lack of data for TSPA, and how is TSPA being used to set priorities in research and site characterization? e Concern about usefulness of natural analogs e Need to bound answers instead of make predictions, e Limitations in data collection and testing techniques

FINAL CNWRA/UAZ/USNRC HYDROLOGY RESEARCH COORDINATION MEETING CENTER FOR NUCLEAR WASTE REGULATORY ANALYSES O s^" ^"Toxio. Tex ^s OBJECTIVE: To discuss research cooperation between the University of Arizona (UAZ) and the CNWRA in support of resolving Key Technical Uncertainties (KTU's) in the areas of hydrology, geochemistry and geophysics, and to support ongoing reviews of DOE's Yucca Mountain Study Plans PARTICIPANTS: NRC Staff, Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses (CNWRA), and University of Arizona (UAz) Contractors LOCATION: Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses, Southwest Research Institute,6220 I Culebra Road, San Antonio, Texas TIME October 5-6,1993; 8:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Agenda Items Tuesdav. October 5 i 8:30 a.m. Welcome Budhi Sagar, CNWRA Review Meeting Objecdve and Agenda Mel Silberberg, RES Tom Nicholson, RES KTU's Relevant to Hydrogeology Neil Coleman, Jeff Pohle O & wittism eoro susS Overview of Apache Ixap Tuff Studies Randy Bassett, UAZ 10:00 a.m. BREAK Carbon & Noble Gas Isotopes as Indicators of Gregg Davidson, UAZ Travel Times & Flow Path in Fractured Unsaturated Tuff (KTU's 5,7, 8, 12, 14 & 28)I Installation of an Automated Weather Station & Betsy Woodhouse, UAZ Preliminary Energy Budget Considerations (KTU's 4 & 7) Interpreting Unsaturated Zone Features From Ernie Hardin, UAZ Geophysical Logs (KTU's 30). (Agenda continued) 12:00 LUNCH Modeling Transport in a Fracture System, Dual Tom Fitzmaurice, UAZ Continuum Approach (KTU's 4,5 & 6) I ee attached Key Technical Uncertainty (KTU) Index for reference to numbers. S

i Air Pycnometer Experiments & Gas Diffusion Mike Gedis, UAZ Coefficients in Tuff (KTU's 5,6,7,8,18,27 & 28) e,, bw TT Geochemical Constraints at Yucca Mountain William Murphy, CNWRA 1] (KTU's 5,27,28,30 & 31) BREAK Applications of Stochastic Method Approaches in Ross Bagtzoglou, CNWRA Conjunction with the Incorporation of Persistent (Fracture) Discontinuities to Conduct Flow & 9fb 6 ^ h~ y n,a p,7,/ Transport Model Verificadon Exercises at the ALTS (KTU's 4,6,30 & 31) CNWRA Hydrology Laboratory Tour Ron Green, CNWRA 6:00 p.m. ADJOURN e Wednesday. October 6 8:30 a.m. Review Objectives & Agenda Tom Nicholson, RES Thermosyphon Analysis of a Repository to Predict R. Manteufel, CNWRA Gas Flow and Vapor Distribution (KTU's 9,22 & 28) Hydrologic Investigations at the Pena Blanca Ron Green, CNWRA O Natural Analog Site (KTU's 4,6,7,8,18,19, 23 & 25) Time-Space Modeling of Hydrogeologic Processes Peter Lichtner, CNWRA (KTU's 3, 5, 7,10,12(16),13(17),14,18,19, 20,21,22, 23,24,26,30 & 31) BREAK Air injection Permeability Tests at Apache Leap: Amado Guzman & (KTU's 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 28, 30 & 31) Shlomo Neuman, UAZ ^ (Agenda continued) Exact Theory of Transient Unsaturated Flow in Shlomo Neuman, UAZ Some Heterogeneous Media & the Issue of Effective l Properties (KTU's 3,4,5, 6,7,8,30 & 31) 12:00 LUNCH Deterministic Analysis of Solute Transport in Shlomo Neuman, UAZ Heterogeneous Media Conditioned on Hydraulic Data: Concentration, Cumulative Release, Travel Time Distribution, Spatial Moment & Uncertainty O , Calculations Yucca Mountain Test Case: Need for Research, G. Wittmeyer, CNWRA (KTU's 1,2,6,10,30 & 31) 6 f,, ( ]\\hy% Iwy 2,gya da / yu j,,, o t' l, }ad l

AGENDA . O DOE-NRC TECHNICAL EXCHANGE ON RADIONUCLIDE MIGRATION October 13, 1993 at les Alamos, NM 8:00 Welcome/ Protocol / Opening Remarks DOE, NRC. State. Counties 8:10 Overview of radionuclide migration DOE (Simmons) Philosophy of program Status of studies - update of activities since 1990 TE = Participants Purpose / scope of interaction Processes / conditions affectine radionuelide mirration 8:40 Advances in experimental studies of radionuelide DOE (Trisy) migration 9:10 Recent solubility results DOE (Roberts) 9:30 Recent sorption results DOE (Triay) 9:50 Organic Sorption DOE (Kung) 10:05 Matrix diffusion affecting mobility in fracture flow conditions (Trisy) 10:30 BREAK Advances in theoretical studies of radionuclide micration 10:40 Groundwater chemistry modeling DOE (Ebinger) 11:00 Speciation models DOE (Morris) NEA thermochemical data base 11:30 AFM studies to elucidate sorption DOE (Rogers) 12:00 Surface completation model DOE (lakie) 12:25 LUNCH 1:40 Retardation sensitivity analysis DOE (Zyvoloski) 2:10 International Program DOE (Rundberg, Curtis) 2:40 Modeling studies NRC Sorption modeling { Geochemistry modeling KD modeling for Iterative Performance Assessment 4:10 BREAK 4:25 Integration with TSPA DOE (Simmons) 4:45 SCA Open items DOE (Simmons) 4 5:15 Closing Comments DOE, NRC, State, Counties j t 5:45 Adjourn NOTE: Each topic on the agenda includes time allotted for discussion.

4 m AGENDA DOE NRC TECHNICAL EXCHANGE NEAR-FIF.LD PHENOMENA RELATED TO RADIONUCLIDE RELEASES FROM THE ENGINEERED BARRIER SYSTEM October 14, 1993 at les Alamos, NM 8:00 Welcome/ Protocol DOE, NRC, State, Counties 8:15 Overview of radionuclide release studies DOE (Simmons) 8:45 Modeling effects of heat on the saturation of rock and DOE (Buscheck) on the circulation of air and water vapor and modeling of dripping in fractures in the beated zone 10.00 BREAK 10:15 Modeling of coupled processes in the altered zone DOE (Glassley) 11:00 Testing geochemical modeling codes using New Zealand DOE (Bruton) bydrothermal systems 11:30 Radiation effects on environmental conditions DOE (Van Konynenburg) 12:00 LUNCH 1:15 Experiments on the interactions of steam and water with DOE (McCright) the components of the EBS l 2:00 Integrated testing DOE (Viani) 2:45 BREAK 3:00 Conceptual models for releases of radionuclides from DOE (Halsey) the EBS in realistic near-field environments (source term) 3:45 Thermally driven vaporization, condensation, and flow NRC around waste package 4:30 SCA Open items DOE (Simmons) 5:15 Closing Comments - DOE, NRC, State, Counties 5:45 Adjourn NOTE: Each topic on the agenda includes time allotted for discussion. O

M" " UNITED STATES

(

'4 NUCLEAll WASTE TEC11NICAL llEVIEW BOAllD ~f / Iloo Wilson Houlevard. Suite 910 Arlington. VA 22209 p4'8_ e s Agenda Full Board Meeting Surface-Based Dry Drilling / Underground Testing Program i October 19-20, 1993 Plaza. Suite Hotel 4255 Paradise Road las Vegas, NV 89109 (702) 369-4400 Tuesday. October 19.1993 8:30 A.M. Welcome and Opening Remarks John Cantion, Chairman Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) (') v 8:35 A.M. Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project Office (YMPO) Institutional Update Linda Smith, Acting Associate Director Office of Geologic Disposal 8:45 A.M. YMPO Technical Pmgress Update Russel Dyer, Acting Project Manager 9:05 A.M. Update on Fluid in UZ-14 Richard Luckey U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 9:35 A.M. BREAK (15 minutes) 9:50 A.M. Update on the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) Program Daniel McKenzie Managment and Operating (M&O) Contractor - Morrison-Knudsen 10:10 A.M. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Concerns on ESF Design Contml Joseph Holonich, NRC 1 l Aouw: Telephone: 703-2354473 I ax: 703-235-4495

7 I Wednesday.~ October 20.1993 ( CURRENT UNDERGROUND TESTING PROGRAM .n1/ e d*W r/ 8:30 A.M. Session Introduction Ed Cording, NWTRB 8:40 A.M. Review of Planned ESF Tests Ned Elkins Los Alamos National Laboratory (IANL) 9:15 A.M. Characterization of the Yucca Mountain Unsaturated Zone in the ESF - SP 83.1.2.2.4 Michael Chornack, USGS 10:30 A.M. BREAK (15 minutes) 10:45 A.M. 'Ihermai Testing update Dale Wilder Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (ged Elkig, LANL bSF Testing & Test Ixxstions 11:15 A.M. Q 11:45 A.M. LUNCH 12:45 P.M. Testing Program Coordination and Integration Thomas Statton M&O (Woodward Clyde Federal Systems) 1:30 P.M. DOE Closing Remarks Russell Dyer, YMPO 1:40 P.M. BREAK (15 min) 1:55 P.M. Round. Table Discussion 3:55 P.M. Final Comments and Adjournment John Cantion, Chairman, NWTRB i O I AOe 3 o

~ O O O NRC TECHNICAL TRAINING PROGRAM INTRODUCTION Currently Two Advisory Groups Used Training Advisory Group Training Advisory Council Training Resources FTE Program Support Reactor Program Area 30 3,260K Matcrials Program Area 2 360K Administrative Support 1,000K Travel 130K PRA Program

350K]

Agreement States Training [300K 1

o o o PURPOSE Brief ACRS/ACNW on Existing Program Solicit More Detailed Understanding by Subcommittee (s? or Ad-Hoc Group using Academic Members of Committee to Full Advantage Obtain Comments of Committees on Staff Proposed Program Revisions 2

O O O BASIS FOR NEEDS REEVALUATION Personnel / Staffing issues FTE Restraints and Low Attrition Reduce External Hiring Rate Resultant Skills Mismatch Necessitates increased Cross Training Programmatic Issues Upgrades in Technical Skills / Qualifications Shift Toward Performance / Risk-Based Activities Consolidate Agreement State Training and increase Emphasis on Nuclear Materials Consolidate PRA Training with Reactor Technology Training Implications of Advanced Reactor Program 3

O O O TECHNICAL TRAINING CENTER Staff Profile Contracts Management Facility Description Training Space Full Scope Reactor Simulators Hardware Training Aids 4

O O O STAFF QUALIFICATION PROGRAMS AND TRAINING PROGRAMS Qualification Program Development Process and Participants Inspector Training Covered by inspection Manual Chapter Several Positions Covered by Office Letters Recent Working Group Review of Inspector Training Requirements Future Training for NMSS Licensing Reviewers NMSS Fuel Cycle Training to Support Regulation of Gaseous Diffusion Plants Significant Changes Anticipated to Address Current Situation 5

O O O DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS FOR NEW HIRES Identified in SECY-91-016 of 1/22/91 Reactor Engineer Interns Non-Nuclear Trained Specialists Personnel with Nuclear Experience Established for Expected Categories of New Hires at the Time All Were To Get Full Course Series in Reactor Technology Gradual Upgrade of Overall Staff Reactor Technology Knowledge 6

O O O REACTOR TECHNOLOGY TRAINING Coverage of GE, W, CE, and B&W Vendor Designs Broad Spectrum of Courses Classroom and Simulator Training Full Course Series Refresher Training for Inspectors and Examiners Quantity of Training Distribution of Available Training 7

4 O O O TYPICAL REACTOR TECHNOLOGY CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT Normal Course Life Cycle Processes (Constant Upgrading? Course Overhaul to Reflect Simulator Systems Simulator Procedure Development EOP Flowchart Development Computerized Exam Bank System Validation Others 8

O O O RISK-BASED TRAINING PERSPECTIVES Increase Staff Awareness of Risk Dominant Sequences and Major Risk Contributors Earlier Special Training for TTC Staff Senior Management Perspectives Provided to TTC Staff Upgrade TTC Course Manuals and Course Materials in 1990 Full Course Series after 1/1/91 Include the Perspectives Insights from Recent PRA Working Group Report PRA Training Program Shift to TTC 9

O O O SPECIALIZED TECHNICAL TRAINING Engineering Support Courses Health Physics Courses Safeguards Courses Inspection or Examination Techniques Courses Quantity of Training Distribution of. Available Training l 10 i

O o le S t n L ne A ob l I s a R r E e ei g l T b Pa n l v i A sa eA n l Pi t i M a a Hv as r t e T R sA Ss A l r e a) ou t E r5 t i L o a e4 t st eC S C Pa2 l sb s U N HM1 ea t m n l rCsi e r r aa D oaMuvr m O N 1 t eI g oAo e cl 1 ( C A ac e r eus sP r ed e g R RNses e A O pr t r r r T oo u u a f o ff ol ot o CS AT ssCeCS v / n ES t tnndeCA o I i R C ee eDTP f t r a mmiu yT G f I R S ad m eeqt nn ti l OY l iieniiSoa r r F H uuRe aa s r tCn g t G P qq cr r eel eeeRo o NH RRARCCNCP r l IN T L IAA O RE TH ~

O O O SIMULATOR PROGRAMS Simulator Time. Needed for Each Technology Long-Term, Cost-Effective Solutions Established Original Simulator Modeling Adequate at Time CE Simulator Acquisition BWR/4 Simulator Acquisition 12

~ O O O SIMULATOR UPGRADE PROJECT Limitations of Original Modeling Comprehensive Upgrade Plan Being implemented Upgrade of Computer Hardware Platform Development of New Instructor Stations (BWR/6 and B&W? Establishment of input / Output i:I/0) Override Capability Addition of Advanced Simulation Codes i:BWR/6 and B&W) CE Simulator Capabilities Performance and Reliability Problems with Westinghouse SNUPPS Simulator l l 13 1

O S g T n i r N e E se M n r ui E og C Tn e N E c t a A nr f a a) r H et e l N Pl ct cen E cujI o s s r iNr n G d( Pe 4 a O N sl osrUP 1 I eno N d ot st I a n A Vtl Ae i i R au T umOm rle Y smSiSp ai So G LSnAe l O emioCve L v tI oaPD O i t N c ot r sf e a sk or H r sr u ao et C e t s u nCWUF E l T I H G O I H ~

- o o .o TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE /SPECIAL TRAINING Training in Support of Orientation and Public Affairs Programs Simulation Support for NRR re/ Interim SG Tube Plugging Criteria Simulation Support for NRR re/ EPGs Proposed by BWROG for ATWS Stability Technical Issue Training Bulletins 10 CFR Part 20. Training i Ukrainian Priority 2 of Lisbon Initiative (Establishment of Regulatory Training Program) { Russian Priority 5 of Lisbon Initiative i (Establishment of Regulatory Training Program) r 15

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