ML20127M304
| ML20127M304 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 11/20/1992 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0065, NACNUCLE-T-65, NUDOCS 9211300123 | |
| Download: ML20127M304 (237) | |
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1 /^\ V PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE UNITED STATE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S , ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE DATE: Friday, November 20, 1992 The contents of this transcript of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, (date) Fridav, November 20 1992 , 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. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES,'Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. - 20006 (202) 293-3950
187 m . 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCWAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 --- 4 5 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE 7 --- 8 9 48th ACNW MEETING 10 11 --- 12 13 Nuclear Regulatory Comraission 14 Conference Room P-110 15 7920 Norfolk Avenue 16 Bethesda, Maryland 17 - 18 --- 19 20 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1992 . 21 + 22 --- 23 24 8:30 o' clock a.m. 25 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
i 188 1 PARTICIPANTS: 2 D. Moeller, Chairman of the ACNW 3 M. STEINDLER, Vice Chairman of the ACNW l 4 W. HINZE, Member of the ACNW 5 P. POMEROY, Member of the ACNW 6 D. OKRENT, Consultant to the ACNW 7 R. MAJOR, ACNW Staff Member 8 H. LARSON, ACNW Staff Member 9 G. GNUGNOLI, ACNW Staff Member 10 L. DEERING, ACNW Staff Member 11 F. CAMERON, NRC/LSSA
-12 D. COOL, NRC/RES
- 13 R. BERNERO, NRC/NMSS l [
\ 14 E. HOLSTEIN, Nye County 15 N. ORLANDO, NRC/NMSS 16 M. WEBER, NRC/NMSS 17 J. KLEIN, ORNL 18 S. JONES, EPA 19 20 l
l 21 22 l 23 L 24 25 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. ! Court Reporters l -1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 l' (202) N3-3950
189 1 PROCEEDINGS 2 [8:30 a.m.) 3 MR. MOELLER: Good morning. The meeting will now 4 come to order. This is the second day of the 48th meeting 5 of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. The topics that l 6 we will be discussing today are as following: number one, 7 to hear a status report on " Enhanced Participatory 8 Rulemaking" regarding residual levels of radionuclides 9 acceptable following decommirsioning; number two, we will be 10 meeting with Mr. Robert Bernero, the Director of NMSS and we 11 will be briefed on the National Profile on Mixed Waste. We 12 will be discussing future activities and future agenda items 13 for the Coumittee and we will be trying to complete several 14 reports that we have underway. 15 The designated federal official for the initial 16 portion of this meeting is Howard J. Larson two positions to ) 17 my right. The meeting is being conducted in accordance with 18 provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 19 We have received no written statuments nor have we 20 received any requests for members of the_public_to make oral 21 statements at this meeting but if there are people here who 22 have something to contribute to the discussions that are 23 underway by all means, we invite you to make your wishes 24 known and we will provide time to you to offer comments, 25 simply let one of our staff members or even a member of the_ O V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. u Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 * (202) 293-3950
1- - - 190 1 Committee know of your interest. {m} 2 If you do speak, we ask that you go to a 3 microphone, give us your name and speak with sufficient 4 clarity and volume so that you may be readily heard. 5 The first item on our agenda to repeat is a status 6 report on the " Enhanced Participatory Rulemaking." We will 7 be focusing on the various aspects of that effort and we 8 have with us Francis X. Cameron who will be leading that 9 discussion. Welcome, we look forward to hearing what you 10 have to say, 11 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Dr. Moeller and thanks to 12 the ACNW, too, for giving us the opportunity to come down 13 and give you a status report on the Enhanced Participatory 14 Rulemaking. 15 What I would like to do today is to focus on the 16 process that we are going to use to conduct this rulemaking 17 and we would like to come back sometime in the future to 18 talk about some of the substantive issues that are going to 19 be discussed in the rulemaking. 20 I know that the Committee is interested in process 21 and risk communication and we welcome your comments on this 22 process. With me today to my left is Dr. Don Cool with the 23 office of Nuclear Regulatory Research and Don and his staff 24 at the office of Research have the lead in terms of the 25 technical aspects of the rulemaking. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
191 () 1 As you know, earlier this year the Commission 2 initiated a rulemaking to establish generic site clean-up 3 standards for NRC licensed facilities. This rule will have 4 broad applicability to reactors, fuel cycle facilities and 5 non-fuel cycle facilities. 6 It is a high priority rulemaking for the 7 Commission and the objective of the rulemaking is to attempt , 8 to establish some consistency in the clean-up across sites 9 that are to be decommissioned, to ensure that the clean-up 10 criteria are based on current information and to attempt to 11 promote a wide acceptability of the standards through a 12 thorough public discussion of the rulemaking issues and 13 approaches. l
\ 14 As you know, the Commission does not have any 15 generic standards for decommissioning at this time. For the 16 past 20 years, we have been using criteria, guidance and 17 practices that were primarily developed in the 1970's and
- 18 1980's to make site specific clean-up decisions and the 19 Commission believes it is now important to move forward to l-_
20 establish consistent current and acceptable regulations for 21 site clean-up. 22 We are going to be using a different process to j 23 establisit these standards than we normally use to establish 24 rules and we are calling this an " Enhanced Participatory 25 Rulemaking" and after about a year I finally learned how to () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers l 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
192 I y (ne) 1 spit that phrase out without stumbling on it. It is 2 somewhat awkward. 3 But the idea of the Enhanced Participatory 4 Rulemaking is to get early comment and recommendations on 5 the rulemaking issues and approaches from a wide spec" am of 6 affected interest before the NRC staff develops a draft 7 proposed rule for Commission review. 8 In other words, we want to use the early comment 9 and recommendations to assist us in developing our approach 10 to the rulemaking process. The normal process, as you know, 11 is that the staff basically on its own develops a draft 12 proposed rule, sends it to the Commission for review,
,- 13 revises as necessary and issues it for public comment. -- 14 Then there is a rather passive one-way dialogue -
15 between the Commission and the commenters where individual 16 commenters submit written comments and the Commission 17 responds to those comments in the supplementary information - 18 to the final rule. 19 So our Enhanced Participatory Rulemaking has two 20 enhancements on the normal process. The first one is to 21 move the comment period up much earlier in the rulemaking 22 process before the staff takes a position on the issues. 23 The second enhancement is to promote an active 24 dialogue among all of the interests affected rather than the 25 passive one that we use in the normal notice and comment V(3 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 l
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193 t
) 1 rulemaking process.
2 To accomplish these enhancements, we are going to 3 hold a series of workshops and there are a number of 4 important factors about the workshops that you should know 5 about. 6 one is that we want to have balanced participation 7 in the workshops and that means the representation of the 8 broad spectrum of interest that may be affected by the 9 rulemaking, state governments, local governments, tribal 10 governments, other federal agencies, citizen groups, a broad 11 range of industry interest and also representatives from 12 professional societies. 13 The second important point is that we want to 14 encourage a dialogue among the people around the table where 15 these representatives cannot only state their positions on 16 the issues but they can be questioned by the other 17 participants on their positions. 18 We are hoping that this will enable us to find out 19 what the concerns are behind those positions, to make sure 20 that we have identified all of the important issues, to find 21 out about any implementation problems with a particular L 22 rulemaking approach and most importantly to see if we can 23 develop some creative solutions to resolution of some of the L 24 issues. 25 In order to have a manageable dialogue on the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. tie' - Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suita 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
194 1 issues, we are going to limit participation in each of the 2 workshops and participation will be by invitation. Howe'rer, 3 the workshops will be open to the public and at discrete 4 times during the workshop process, the public will have the 5 opportunity to comment and question. 6 The third important factor about the workshops is 7 that we are going to do them on a regional basis. We 8 decided to do it on a regional basis ao that we would have 9 an opportunity to hear from people that we ordinarily don't 10 have an opportunity to hear from. 11 So our focus in the regional workshops is to hear 12 from groups that operate at the regional level and by region 13 I mean state and local mainly but perhaps there might be 14 some groups that operate at the regional level that will 15 also participate 16 Right now, we plan to have workshops in Chicago, 17 San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston and we 18 are going to finish up with a workshop in Washington, D.C. 19 that is going to-be a forum for groups that have a national 20 focus to come in. So it is not any escalation on the 21 workshop process or on prior regional workshops. It has the 22 same status. However, the actors involved, the participants 23 will be different. 24 The workshops are going to be of two-day duration. 25 There will be a transcript taken of the workshop proceeding. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
195 () 1 The workshops will be facilitated by an independent neutral 2 facilitator and the focus of the workshops is going to be on 3 a rulemaking issues paper that has been developed by Dr. 4 Cool and the technical staff in Research with input from the 5 other technical offices, NMSS, NRR and others. 6 The idea of the rulemaking issues paper is to try 7 to provide a comprehensive and neutral discussion of the 8 potential rulemaking issues and approaches as well as a 9 discussion on the nature and except of the decommissioning 10 process. This will be what we are going to try to use to 11 set the agenda for the meetings. 12 one last important fact about the workshop process 4 13 is that the staff is going to document how it considered the 14 workshop comments in arriving at its particular rulemaking 15 approach. 10 I would like to emphasize that this workshop 17 procera, the Enhanced Participatory Rulemaking, is not a 18 consensus process in that we are not attempting to forge an 19 agreement on the issues among the participants at the table. 20 Rather, we have a much more modest and we think 21 achievable objective which is to provide a forum for early 22 comment to assist us in developing the draft proposed rule. 23 We know that we are not going to be able to accept every 24 comment and every recommendation that we receive because 25 some of them are going to be diametrically opposed to one O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006
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196 1 another. 2 But we can document how we considered those 3 comments in arriving at our approach so that people realize 4 that we have been listent a and that the comments just don't 5 go into a black hole somewhere. 6 The schedule for the rulemaking, the Commission 7 has recently approved the design for the rulemaking 8 workshops and we are preparing revisions to the rulemaking 9 issues paper that have been requested by the Commission. 10 We are going to be sending a Federal Register 11 Notice to the Federal Register that announces the workshops, 12 the objective, the schedule, the location for he workshops 13 and we are going to be sending letters of invitation to 14 potential participants to the workshops and we will send 15 along a copy of the rulemaking issues paper which those 16 invitations so that they cannot only have an idea of what 17 would be involved ihat is expected of them in participating 18 the workshops because we do expect whatever the point of 19 view of the various group, we do expect them to 20 knowledgeably discuss _the rulemaking-issues. 21 At this point the final schedule is pretty well 22 set. We will begin at the end of January in Chicago and we 23 will run through the first week in May where the Washington, 24 D.C. workshop _for national groups will be held. 25 one final point that I think the Committee would O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters i 1612 K. Street, N.'W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C.~ 20006 l (202) 293-3950 l
197 1 be interested in is our relationship with the Environmental 2 Protection Agency on this rulemaking. The Commission 3 realized early on in the process that it would be important 4 for EPA to be involved in this rulemaking not only because 5 of their expertise on clean-up standards but also because of 6 their regulatory authority discretionary in this particular 7 area. 8 We wanted the EPA to not only come to the 9 workshops but also to work with the dRC staff throughout the 10 rulemaking in preparing the rulemaking issues paper and in 11 ovaluating comments that come in from the workshops. 12 We have had a very good working relationship so 13 far with EPA along these lines. We have also reached an 14 agreement iith EPA that is based on a Memorandum of 15 Understanding that Dr. Selin and Administrator Reilly signed 16 back in March of this year. 17 The agreement is on the process that will be used 18 to establish site c' 'an-up standards generally. .There'are 19 two major components to this process. The first component 20 is our Enhanced Participatory Rulemaking that is going to 21 focus on NRC licensed site and the EPA is going to 22 participate in that process. 23 The_second component is the inter-agency working 24 group that EPA i s reviving which will consider radiation 25 protection guidance and standards generally and more () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
198 () 1 2 specifically, clean-up standards. The objective of this process is to try to arrive 3 at an agreement with the EPA through the workshops and 4 through participating on the working group that the NRC 5 standards are sufficient to protect public health and 6 safety. 7 If the EPA does agree that they are sufficient, 8 then the EPA efforts in the inter-agency working group will 9 focus on federal clean-up standards for federal sites and 10 not for NRC licensed sites. 11 So we hope that this is the most efficient way to 12 establish effective and consistent federal government clean-13 up standards and basically that is an overview of the 14 process and where we are at this point and I will be glad to 15 answer any questions that the Committee has. 16 MR. MOELLER: I guess to open up the. discussion it 17 sounds, of course, like you are trying to do a very careful, 18 thorough approach or take a careful, thorough approach to 19 developing these standards. 20 Let me ask just a question shooting from the hip, 21 is not the bottom line the acceptable dose liiait for the 22 public from decommissioned or cleaned up facilities sad if } 23 you know what that acceptabla dose rate limit is, then you 24 have to backtrack and leave no mo* Tan that amount of 25 radionuclides that will produce tr. dose. What 7m I O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. ! Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washingtn, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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199 1 missing? 2 MR. CAMERON: I am going to turn that over to Don 3 to answer. 4 MR. MOELLER: All right. 5 MR. CAMERON: I would just say as a prologue that 6 the rulemaking issues paper identifies a number of issues 7 and approaches that surround how you might get to that 8 bottom line and that is what we want to try to get comment 9 on. But there always is a bottom line and I am going to let s 10 Don talk about it. 11 MR. POMEROY: Before he starts, can I just ask you 12 what the schedule is for a time when we might see a copy of 13 the issues paper? f 14 MR. CAMERON: What we will do Ji we tpect to have 15 a revised issues paper done by the end c7 th.e first '9ek in 16 + December and I will luake sure that we send fou a cor , . 17 only the issues paper but also the Federal Register Notico 18 that will be going out and as I mentioned, we would like to 19 get together with you for a talk about the substantive 20 issues at some point. 21 MR. MOELLER: Don. 22 MR. COOL: Donald Cool, with the Office of Nunear 23 Regulatory Resear.n. Dr. Moeller, you have suggested one 24 porsible bottom line which is a dose value. At
- hic point, 25 the staff has left open its options for other possible O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd.
Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
200 () 1 2 bottom lines in that, for example, we might ne' want to have focused strictly on dose but rather to focus more generally 3 upon risk so as to avoid in the future potentiel 4 complications with " Gee, what are we going to do with 5 Hiroshima snd Nagasaki data today," tc focus more generally 6 on risk. 7 There are, in addition to that, other possible 8 approaches that the commission could consider, use of some 9 specified type of technology sometimes called Best Availabin 10 Technology or those sorts of activities which is another 11 approach towards deriving a particular set of criteria. 12 The fourth possibility would be establishing a 13 criteria on the basis of returning the particular site or 14 area to its pre-existing state from a radiological 15 standpoint which would derive yet another possible set of 16 assumptions. 17 So while certainly that dose is one way to
'8 approach it, we have in the issues paper which we provided 19 to the commission outlined four possible approaches which 20 will be one of the primary issues that we are looking to 21 have discussed during the workshops and what are the pros 22 and cons to these, how would these flush out in terms of 23 working through dealing with various issues and sub-issues 24 that would come into it, how would you end up with a bottom 25 line set of criteria that would actually be ' implemented into O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd.
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201 () I the Commission's regulations. 2 At this point, just to perhaps re-emphasize the 3 point, tue staff has not taken a particular bottom line 4 approach, selecting one vorous the other. We would really 5 and hope to get that input out of the workshop process. 6 MR. MOELLER: Let me ask and this is a pot long-7 term concept of mino. Let's say I had a contannitiated site 8 and it is very difficult though for me to remove the cesium 9 or strontium or plutonium or whatever artificial 7 radionuclideG that I have put there but I can more casily 11 remo're the radium and the uranium and the thorium from the 12 soil so that overall I have brought it back down to an 13 acceptable level. Do you restrict me on which radionuclidos 14 I must remove or will that be farther down the road that you 15 will make those decisions? - 16 MR. Co0L: Those decisions will be mado farther 37 down the road. At this point it is premature to say what 18 those sorts of criteria would be. I guess I would be rather 19 intrigued to know what situation you would have difficulty 20 removing the cosium and cobalt and have an easy time of 21 removing the uranium and radium but anything is possible. 22 MR. MOELLER: Well we have Dt. Steindler on this 23 comnittee and nothing is impossible. 24 [ Laughter. ) 25 MR. MOELLER: Before I leave you, let me comment O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 : (202) 293-3950
_ _ _ . _ - . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ . ~ . _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ -_ _ _ _ ____ _ ._ __ ._ _ -. _ -_ _ __ . 202 1 on the critical gcoup and first express the committee's 2 appreciation for the ALARA regul3 tory guide, he revisions 3 in the final product where you took into consideration our , 4 comments and then to complement you on the background 5 6 terial that was provided to us for this morning's session 6 whtre critical group is right in there in giving the public 7 a chanca to comment on that as one possible approach in 8 evaluating doses to the public. So we appreciato it. 9 MR. Cool: Thank you. 10 MR. MOELLER: Marty. 11 MR. STEINDLER: I don't want to appear that I am 12 the frog swimming in the punchbowl but let me suggest to you 13 that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to estimate the 14 course of your hearings. 15 We have had as an institution as well as a 16 business-at-large enough experience with interactions with 17 various groups including the public, whatever that may mean, 18 to be able to estimate with soms significant reliability the 19 outcome and the focus of some of those discussions. 20 I have a couple of concerns. First off, I think 21 these discussions will drive the NRC into areas where it 22 does not belong. It is highly likely on the basis of past 23 experience t..at the discussions ultimately will focus on the 24 general acceptable public risk. That is not an issue that 25 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a license-to operate
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Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, Dc C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
203 1 in. It is, in fact, I think the EPA role to set the 2 generally applicable standards. 3 If that assumption is correct, then the only thing 4 that remains having had advice about the level of risk 5 tolerated, the only thing that remaine then is the 6 regulation c,f that process which indeed is the role, I 7 think, of the NRC. 8 I don't understand how the process that you are 9 proponing to follow will avoid getting into the question of 10 what will be the residual rink with which the public-at-11 large has to put up with, if you will pardon that terrible 12 sentence, on a site that has ' con decommissioned and 13 declared decommissioned by the NRC. 14 It is not very clear to me in spite of your 15 comments about the role and the agreements with the EPA how 16 you are going to stay clear of the area that really sets 17 generally applicabic standards. 18 The other point that I would make for you is in 19 the area of regulation and, in fact, let me just add one 20 other point. When you solicit comments from the public 21 about this general topic, you are unlikely it seems to me to 22 get regulatory commentary. 23 What you will get is the general view of the 24 public of what constitutes an acceptable risk, residual or 25 otherwise, and if that is the case then I think that O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
204 () 1 reinforces my concern that this rulemaking is going to 2 solicit information which I think the Commission ought not 3 to be using. 4 I have a number of other issues of that general 5 kind, but I would be interested in your comments which in 6 effect say, "I think this is a misguided rulemaking." 7 MR. CAMERON: I don't want to be the one who is 8 sort of hunting for that frog in the punchbowl with a 9 speargun but I think I would take that job on. 10 MR. STEINDLER: I would imagine. 11 MR. CAMERON: I would respectfully disagree with 12 your views 01: that, Dr. Steindler. 13 MR. STEINDLER: All right. 14 MR. CAMERON: I think that there is sufficient 15 exportise in the many constituencies and stakeholders that 16 we ask to come to the table on the issues that are going to 17 have to be addressed by the staff in the rulemaking to offer 18 us valuable insight on which direction we should go with 19 that rule. 20 Granted, this is not a room full of experts such 21 as the ACNW. We are trying also to reach out to the various 22 political constituencies that are affected by our rules and 23 that have a right to comment on our rules and'the Commission 24 wants to hear from them and I think that that input is going 25 to be valuable. 1 LO ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006
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205 1 Going back to your first point on the EPA, as I 2 did mention earlier we do have an agreement on how we are 3 going to work with the EPA and indeed part of that agreement 4 is that the information that comes in through the workshops 5 is also going to be useful for EPA in doing their work. 6 The EPA has not set generally applicable standards 7 in this area and that is one reason why the commission 8 decided that we needed to get going on it. In a perfect 9 world, there would be EPA generally applicable standards. 10 Unfortunately because of resource constraints and 11 other problems, the way that this han evolved is that the 12 NRC is going to establish a rulemaking for NRC licensed 13 sites. To get the EPA perspective in, we are bringing the 14 EPA into it and as such, we need to talk about acceptable 15 levels of risk and things that you th'nk might be outside 16 ordinarily of the NRC's purview. 17 That would be my comment in response and I would la ask Don if he has anything to say about on the EPA /NRC 19 point. I don't know if you have anything to add or not, but 20 please do. 21 MR. COOL: We could get into a very long 22 discussion but I would like to note for the Committee's 23 information that what the NRC staff and EPA staff envisioned l 24 is a parallel process. The EPA has already convened and 25 meetings are already being held of an interagency working O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 , (202) 293-3950
206 () 1 group to develop federal guidance in this area. 2 This is in reality a reinitiation of an effort 3 that was started several years ago and, in fact, was placed 4 on the back burner if you will due to resource 5 considerations at EPA on the order of two years ago first to 6 develop generally applicable federal guidance for public 7 exposure, the companion picco for the occupational guidance 8 which was signed by the President in 1987. 9 That effort is now ongoing and that draft has 10 pretty much been completed and will be circulated through an 11 EPA internal process through the interagency working group 12 participants which include NRC and DOE and DOT and the 13 Department of Defense and a number of others. I won't even 14 attempt to gct all of them. 15 Once that draft is out in that comment process and 16 the working group has completed its effort there, that 17 working group is going to begin looking specifically at 18 federal guidance in the area of residual activities in 19 general and they recognize that mandate as being 20 considerably larger than what our NRC rulemaking would be 21 for the particular decommissioning of plants and structures 22 including concerns with regard to DOE types of facilities 23 where there will be institutional controls and a variety of 24 other things. 25 That effort is ongoing and will proceed in () ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
_z _ _ . _ __ _ _ . _ - _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ ___ _ . - -._ _ _. _.. _ _ _._ __ _ . - l i i 207 1 parallel with the NRC rulemaking effort which will proceed 2 in parallel with yet a third activity anticipated which 3 would be EPA specific rulemaking, generally applicable 4 environmental standards which is somewhat different from the 5 federal guidance function, which would be the standards 6 which would be applied in areas where the NRC rulemaking did 7 not have particular jurisdiction. 8 That is what Chip Cameron was talking about 9 carlier under the EPA MOU where assuming we can continue to 10 walk down the road side-by-side which is what has happone.t 11 thus far in this case, that EPA would be able to make a 12 finding that the NRC standard was acceptable and appropriate i 13 and that therefore, that was the standard which would be in 14 place for NRC licensed facilities and that the EPA generally 15 applicable environmental standard would be in place for 16 other types of facilities so that the entire spectrum would 17 be covered by one of the two but otherwise avoid 18 duplication. l 19 The workshops that we go through will have EPA at l 20 the table, every single one of the workshops, as a co-21 participant with us. We are very much in hopes to work with 22 them then on the analysis of everything that comes out. It 23 will be a partner with us in going through that process and 24 be able to take all of that information and feed it into 25 these parallel processes. ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
208 () 1 MR. STEINDLER: Let me point out that all thoso 2 good words notwithstanding the fact that the workshops are 3 likely to be of use to the EPA in setting their generally 4 applicable environmental standards is salutary and I would 5 certainly hope that they pay attention because that is 6 certainly one of the things that they have not done as an 7 aside in their own standard-setting process. 8 But the fact remains that the attempt to identify 9 the area in the below regulatory concern has caused a 10 political uproar and therefore was set aside. Had that not 11 happened, then these workshops would be perfunctory at best 12 and regulations could be easily derived if push came to 13 shove from the levels of residual concern below which the 14 NRC no longer has any significant interest. 15 The whole process it seems to me is interesting 16 and may in fact produce some useful results but perfect 17 world or otherwise, if there is not to be the kind of 18 anarchy that we currently see as to who does what among the 19 various agencies it seems to me one needs to keep clear the 20 respective missions of both the EPA and the NRC. 21 Let me ask a couple of other questions without 22 dragging this thing on. I looked through this paper that we 23 got which is, I guess, the accompanying document to the SEcY 24 and I saw nothing in there about groundwater. Did I miss it 25 or is it missing? O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N,W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
209 1 MR. CAMERON: I think it is in there. I know it 2 is in there and Don, I think, is going to flip to it 3 quickly. i 4 MR. STEINDLERt If it is there, I will be happy to 5 hear it. The other one that I wonder whether you plan to 6 take up is the whole question of dollars per man rem, an 7 issue which keeps cropping up and so on and so forth. Is 8 that an issue that you intend to address and if so, how do 9 you intend to devise groundrules on how to do this? 10 MR. CAMERON: That issue 5.s also in there. 11 MR. STEINDLER: I missed both of them, I guess. 12 MR. CAMERON: I will let Don make whatever 13 comments he wants to make on both the groundwater and the 14 ALARA aspect. 15 MR. COOL: First with respect to groundwater, 16 groundwater is one of the pathways that has to be treated 17 and so in a sense permeates if you will the entire document 18 because if you were to set risk levels or dose levels, that 19 would be one of the factors that would have to be taken into 20 account. l
- 2) There are certain considerations in here such as l 22 the amount of time over which you calculate which apply much 23 more directly to groundwater than to some of the other 24 pathways because groundwater by nature of the slow diffusion
[ l -25 process will result in delayed doses versus a direct O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Court Reporters i 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
_ _ . _ _ . _ _. _ . _ __ _ . __ ___ ___._. _ - - - _ _ _ _ . _ __ _- ._. _m l 210 1 radiation dose where the person stands on the site and is 2 there. 3 So believe that we have included the 4 considerations which will be necessary to talk about 5 groundwater in there although I will admit to you, there is 6 no issue that says, "Now let's discuss groundwater" because, 7 in fact, groundwater as direct radiation, as surface 8 contamination that I rub off or eat, all are woven together 9 and must be taken together in concert. 10 As far as your second point is concerned on the 11 dollars per man rem, that is also something which is open 12 for discussion. There is a brief paragraph and I am not 13 sure I would be able to find it as I flip through my version 14 which is now a line in/line out and somewhat different from 15 the version which the Committee had because we are already 16 attempting to respond to the Commission's SRM which does 17 raise the issue as one of the sub-issue points for 18 discuasion and notes an ongoing effort in other forums. 19 MR. STEINDLER: Let me just stop there. Thank 20 you. 21 MR. MOELLER: Bill. 22 MR. HINZE: I would like to investigate just 23 briefly the association of this with the Agreement States. 24 The relationship of this to the Agreement States is a very 25 special one and I am wondering what attention is being given O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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211 1 particularly to the Agreement States who in many cases must 2 see that your regulations or their regulations ate carried 3 out. 4 I guess the other aspect of that that I am 5 concerned about is that the uniformity and I know you 6 mentioned this in the paper that you have, the issue of 7 uniformity from state-to-state is something that I think is 8 in the best interest of all of us. What special efforts 9 might you be taking to try to move towards that as you go 10 through this process? 11 MR. CAMERON: Let me respond to that in a couple 12 of ways. Yes, Agreement States are very important to the 13 process and the whole uniformity issue is an important issue 14 in relation to the rulemaning. 15 The Commission has decided that the compatibility 16 issue in terms of the decommissioning standard should be 17 explored in the parallel process that is going on at the 18 Commission to establish a general policy on compatibility 19 and that issue will not be discussed at the workshops so 20 that we can -- 21 MR. HINZE: Excuse me, Chip, I don't understand 22 that. Could you expand roon that a bit? 23 M.R . CAMERON: Sure. Over the past year or so the 24 Commission has been in the process of deciding whether it 25 should establish a' general policy on how it makes O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
212 1 compatibility decisions in various areas. 2 In other words, the heart of the uniformity issue 3 comeo under the label of compatibility. Do the Agreement 4 States have to be compatible? Do their regulations have to 5 be compatible with our regulations so that uniformity can be 6 promoted across the board or are they going to be given a i 7 certain amount of flexibility to set, for example, stricter 8 standards? 9 The Commission has been in the process of looking 10 at establishing a general policy because right now 11 compatibility decisions on various regulations or whatever 12 are made according to a set of procedures that the Office of l 13 State Programs has devised and the Commission felt that it 14 was time to go back and not only take a look at those 15 criteria that State Programs have but also to elevate it 16 into a Commission-based policy and there was a paper sent in 27 the beginning of July, a Commission paper, and I think wo 18 can get that for you, on this compatibility policy. 19 So that is the background and what the Commission 20 decided is okay, you have a lot of issues to cover in these 21 workshops and we are also going to establish this other 22 process to take a look at compatibility, our compatibility 23 policy, so let's bring that discussion on compatibility in 24 terms of decommissioning standards into the compatibility 25 process. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l t l i 213 ( 1 They would not have left it out of this process if 2 there wasn't another process ongoing to discuss it and that 3 is basically what the Commission decision vss but 4 nevertheless, Agreement Stato participation in this 5 rulemaking is very important and in terms of state 6 participation in the workshops, that is where the emphasis 7 is going to be. 8 MR. HINZE It seems to be rather diluted though 9 in the workshops and I am wondering whether any spccial 10 offort is being made to work with the Agreement States and 11 their thoughts where they'are in this whole process to try 12 to converge towards that uniformity. 13 MR. CAMERON: We expect to be working with them i s) 14 initially through the workshop process to hear what their 15 vieva are on these particular issues and you get into this 16 chicken / egg thing again. 17 MR. HINZE: Sure. 18 MR. CAMERON: You could see in the BRC policy 19 where the states were really in an uproar about how much 20 flexibility they would be vis-a-vis the Commission's policy 21 and then you would go out and talk to them and they said, 22 "Well, you know, if we had more input into the development 23 of the policy so, i.e., the standard then maybe we wouldn't 24 be so concerned about the state / federal issue. 25 What we hope to do is to give them that input on O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. i Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950
234 1 what the standard if and see where we are after that in 2 terms of the uniformity flexibility issue. 3 MR. IIINZE: So you are basically hoping that they 4 will not come in with a hard firm position but that it will 5 be an iterative approach to trying to settle on the correct 6 regulations? 7 MR. CAMERON: I wouldn't want to say anything 8 about that I hope that they don't come in with a hard firm 9 position. 10 MR. IIINZE: I understand that. 11 MR. CAMERON: But we would hope that it would be 12 an iterative process where we can work with the states on 13 this particular issue. 14 MR. COOL: If I could perhaps add to that just a 15 little hit, we have recognized very clearly that we needed 16 to have the states input to this process and in the 17 development of the issues paper, a copy of which you had 18 when we sent it to the Commission, one of the meetingc which 19 we held in the development process was to spend an entire 20 afternoon with a number of Agreement State folks during the 21 Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors meeting in 22 orlando where we spent that entire afternoon going through 23 where we were going with the issues paper, getting their 24 feedback on what things needed to be in it, what ways they 25 would like to express things. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300
- Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950--
?15 1 So we began the process very early in trying to 2 get the states on board with this paper as with EPA and some 3 of the other groups and we are in hopes to be able to 4 continue that effort with the states at other meetings an 5 well as their participation in the workshops themselves.
6 MR. IIINZE: That sounds like an excellent 7 approach. Let me ask you during that meeting was there any 8 suggestion that the states might want to have similar types 9 of meetings wherein they might receive the input from the 10 various players in the stato situation and essentially a 11 parallel at a state level among the Agrooment States? 12 I am worried about the dilution of the Agreement 13 States and it seems to me that if you had this going on also 14 at the state level or at least provide the opportunity for 15 that, that you might get down to even more basic elements. 16 MR. COOL: That topic did not como up in that 17 meeting. Tbc area which those participants were 18 particularly concerned about was their views with regard to 19 what would be included in the paper and they had had a draft 20 of the paper beforehand so the version that was in existence 21 at that time served as sort of a basis for that discussion 22 and their considerations about what their participation 23 would be within this process. 24 The discussion did not really go to whether either 25 in parallel or after we were somewhere farther down the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 0 50 - u
216 1 road, whether they might wish to do similar and thht may 2 well in the end be driven by their level of comfort with the 3 participation in the workshops that actually occur out 4 there. 5 MR. IIIHZE t But then it is after the fact from the 6 participation in your workshops and the foodback that you 7 are getting? 8 MR. CAMERON: I guess what I would add to what Don 9 said that may be relevant is we have been working with the 10 organization of Agreement States through their executive 11 committee to get not only their input to the development of 12 the issues paper but their views on the process generally 13 and they are very enthusiastic about the process. 14 One of the things that we have done not only with 15 the 'greement States but with the public health officials 16 and radiation protection officials in each state is to ask 17 them who is an important constituency, an important 18 organization from your stata that should participate in the 19 workshop. 20 so you have a very good point and what we are 21 trying to do is to bring that right into the workshop itself 22 and also I think that the radiation protection officials in 23 the states also come with a good blt of the capability to 24 represt.c the views in their state, also. 25 MR. IIINZE t Anything they could do towards working O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
217 ! I towards a uniformity would be worth the effect. Let me 2 just say that. let me ask you, where have I missed it, a 3 sample agenda? Is there a sample agenda? 4 MR. CAMERON: No. The agenda has not yet boon 5 developed. The Issues Paper is going to be the basis for 6 developing the agenda for the meetings. 7 MR. }lINZE: Could you give me just an idea of how 8 this two-day meeting might work? 9 MR. CAMERON: Sure. 10 MR. IIINZE: That is part of the process and I 11 didn't see it and I am interasted in that and I did not see 12 it in the material provided. 13 MR. CAMERON: Let me address tnat generally and 14 ask Don to add anything onto it. We are working _with the 15 facilitator for the meetings to take the Issues Paper and to 16 turn that into an agenda so that there can be a manacaable , 17 discussion of the issues. 18 Part of the test of that agenda is going to como 19 through a workshop simulation that we are going to be doing 20 just with the NRC staff to get prepared for the workshops 21 but our preliminary thoughts on it have been basically to 22 try to keep the NRC presentations to a minimum to have 23 enough presentations formally from the Commission staff to 24 give people a context for the issues that will be discussed 25 and then to move through issue block by issue block and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
218 1 devote most of the time to a discussion among the 2 particip nts around the table to the issues. 3 That is basically where we are at this point. 4 Don, do you want to add anything on that? 5 MR. COOL: I am n6t sure that I can really add a 6 great deal more. A number of things have been talked about 7 and we are looking to the facilitator that we now have under 8 contract. This is an independent facilitator not associated 9 with the NRC but familiar with these activities. 10 We have actually obtained them through an 11 interagency agreement with EPA. We are looking to them to 12 help us structure how best to go through these discussions 13 and make sure that we get to the points. l 14 One of the things that we had had in our mind 15 going in and whether this will remain as we actually develop 16 the final agenda was to take each of the issues blocks that 17 were here in the issues paper as chip Cameron said and have 18 a very brief sort of overview of what was entailed in the 19 issue, five or ten minuto maximum perhaps summary of what is 20 contained in the issues paper to make sure that everyone has 21 a common understanding but to try to move very quickly away 22 from a one-sided, here is NRC, here is what we are thinking 23 which has been the traditional approach and what we want to 24 try to get away from to a here are the issues, you tell us, 25 let us talk about it, let's get interchanges going between l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W.,. Suite 300 l Washington, D. - C. 20006 (202) 293 3950 1 - - - _.
219 () 1 2 not them and us, I would hate for it to be a series of bidirectional arrows between myself and anyone else who may 3 be there from the NRC and each of the participants but 4 rather multi-directional arrows amongst all of the 5 participants where someone will trigger another piece of 6 thought and hopefully in a synergintic manner get us 7 forward, but to have each of the blocks of time focusing on 8 each of the issues so that as we move through that process 9 and at the end of the two days have gotten to all of the 10 issues. That is about all the level of detail I can give 11 you right now. l? MR. HINZB: Thank you. 13 MR. MOELLER: Paul 14 MR. POMEROY: This sort of follows on that same 15 line. I had a couple of questions. I believe you said that 16 there were two enhancements that you saw, first was that you 17 were getting comment at a much earlier point in tiree and I 18 certainly agree with that. 19 The second was to promote an active dialogue as we 20 have just heard, not a series of vectors but rather an 21 interchange synergistically of ideas among all of the 22 affected parties and that, of course, is a risk 23 communication function. 24 I guess that wh.i I was hearing first of all and I 25 have several questions but first of all, I was hearing that O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
220 you basically want an input to the decision making process ( 1 2 from a balanced set of participants. I was asking myself 3 the question, what would happen with regard to at 1 cast the 4 first step there of the early comment if you simply wrote an 5 issues paper and provided it to the participants that you 6 have identified in the process. 7 I don't believe that industry or professional 8 societies or the state or local governments would be 9 hesitant at all about providing an input and, in fact, you 10 have just suggested that the states have provided some input 11 to his process at an early point in time. 12 So from that standpoint, this is not basically 13 different from that first step now before we get to risk 14 communication, but that first step of simply getting early 15 commentary. Is there something that I am missing there? 16 MR. CAMERON: I think I know what your concern is. 17 One of the things that we tried to do is to learn some 18 lessons from the Commission's experience with the BRC 19 policy.
< MR. POMEROY: Right.
2 MR. CAMERON: We thought it was very important to 22 not just send out a document and have written responses to 23 it at this point because one of the things that was clear 24 from the development of the BRC policy is that some groups, 25 t ,,; capl e , the medical community did not believe that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Coud Reponers 1612 K. Stieet, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
i 221 () I their message about the impact on the health care profession 2 from not having a BRC policy did not get communicated very 3 well to other groups who were also affected by the policy 4 cither supportive or critical. 5 So we want to make sure that that message gets out 6 and also the dialogue is very important. It is not again 7 another lesson from BRC is that it is not the public hearing 8 after the fact where the NRC staff is on some sort of a 9 raised dian in front of a massive audience and you just have 10 those (Jestions and comments, I guess is probably a mild 11 term for what happened, going up there but you can actually 12 allow people to talk with one another and engage in a gentle 13 cross-examination of each other about their particular 14 positions. 15 I have been involved in these types of processes 16 before and the chemistry that develops during a process like 17 this is really, I think, pretty amazing in terms of when 18 people find out what the concerns of a particular 19 representative are about an issue they can often come up 20 with a creative solution for dea'.ing with that issue or 21 giving them information that could help them to understand 22 another position. 23 That is just not going to happen through a written 24 comment process so that is why we are going that way. 25 MR. PoMEROY: I understand that and I think the () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
222 () 1 risk communications process is a very offective part of 2 this. I was simply trying to isolate ,le other part. I 3 wonder though and I don't want to pursue this too long but 4 did you, I agree that the Agreement States are very 5 important and have a very special relationship with the NRC 6 and certainly it was useful to get their input to the issues 7 question, but did you look to some of these other groups for 8 any input to the issues paper? 9 In other words,.could I as a violent intervenor, 10 for example, say, "Well, you have already established what 11 you are trying to look at and I have other parts of the 12 agenda that I would like to look at." 13 MR. CAMERON: We wanted to be very scrupulous in 14 ensuring that we anticipated all points of view in the - 15 issues paper in terms of what approaches were laid out for 16 discussion and you are absolutely right on with your point. 17 To make sure that we did that and to make sure that we were 18 neutral we had a selected target review audience that we 19 arranged in advance to give us an informal review of the 20 paper and to us feedback and we asked them a number of 21 questions, have all the issues and all the approaches been 22 identified, have we indeed been neutral and not tried to 23 subtlety shade the conclusion one way or another, is the 24 paper understandable? 25 So we did have six or seven questions that we O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. ! Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950 l
223 1 asked each of these people and we did go out to one major 2 environmental organization and one safe energy organization. 3 As you know, we are talking about citizen groups because 4 another thing that we found out, I think, is that it is not 5 a monolith out thero. You have environmental organizations 6 and you have the safe energy community and others out there. 7 So we tried to do a proper sample along those lines. 8 MR. POMEROY: I was only suggesting that you do 9 have to be very careful on that. Who you sclera in a very 10 real 'y, of course, affects the outcome. 11 MR. CAMERON: Absolutely. 12 MR. POMEROY: As well as who you select as a 13 facilitator can seriously affect the outcome. 14 MR. CAMERON: You are absolutely right. 15 MR. POMEROY: I was wondering again though in 16 looking at the participants that you have or those broad 17 categories of participants which were state and local and - 18 tribal governments, citizen groups, industries and 19 professional societics, is there one group more than another 20 that you are targeting by having these series of workshops 21 around the country or do you envision the importance of 22 having these different workshops around the country being 23 the public participation at discrete times I believe as you 24 have used it, public participation being other people other 25 than the people you invite. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
224 () 1 2 Chicago? In other words, what is magic about going to If you held a series of workshops on the different 3 issues in Washington, certainly we have had lots of 4 indication that state and local people will come to , 5 Washington and artainly industry representatives and 6 certainly professional society groups will come and vocally 7 present theit- viewpoints. Why is the concept of having a 8 series of these around the country useful? 9 MR. CAMERON: I guess I would start off by saying 10 that there is nothing magic about going to Chicago 11 especially in January. I don't think that that would be the 12 term to use. 13 MR. STEINDLIR: Well now! l 14 (Laughter.) 15 MR. CAMERON: I am sorry. I love Chicago, CHI 16 Town as we call it. 17 [ Laughter. ) 18 MR. CAMERON: The idea is that we did not want to 19 take a travelling roadshow around from region to region and 20 one of the other things, we really did try to analyze what 21 happened with the development of the BRC policy and take 22 those threads into this process design. 23 One of the things that became clear in terms of 24 trying to orchestrate a BRC consensus process is that the 25 Commission is somewhat isolated fron various groups not only l () ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950
225 1 on a notional level but particularly on a regional 2 grassroots level and one of our subtler agendas here is to 3 establish a network of contacts, adversaries or non-4 adversaries, across the country who we can turn to, who can 5 talk to us about what their positions and basically just 6 fundamentally to give people who ordinarily do not have a 7 chance to come to Washington, D.C. to express their 8 opinions. 9 MR. POMEROY: Let me interrupt you there for just 10 a second to simply say that I don't think we lack, for 11 example, a representative sample of industry or nion in 12 Washington here. Would you say that we do? 1.3 , MR. CAMERON: No. I dc.n't think that we do. O 14 MR. POMEROY: Do we lack a state and local 15 government input? 16 MR. CAMERON: Well, you have stato and local 17 government organizations bl.. they often do not speak, for 18 example, if you went to the National Governors Absociation 19 or the National Conferonce of State Legislators or the 20 National Association of Attorney Generals, I mean I have had 21 several discussions with them over the years. 22 They do not want to say that they represent the 23 viewpoints of individual states and indeed they want the 24 individual states to be involved in the process and indeed, 25 that is what we are trying to do. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
226 () 1 You might make the argument that NUMARC could give 2 us the industry view, that the U.S. Council on Energy J Awarenons could givo us the industry view, that the Society 4 of Nuclear Medicine could give un the medical view but again 5 going back to chemistry and I realize to scientists, all of 6 this stuff is a little l'!t like unusage probably and you 7 have a lot of okepticism about what goes into it but the 8 point is that different people, different organizations have 9 dif ferent ways of expressing themselves on t'..e issues and 10 sometimes can make a point clearer, can facilitate some il light bulbs going on. 12 That is another reason besides all the other 13 things I mentioned that I think we need to have this 14 discussion in each region with different regional 25 representatives. Another approach would have been to just 16 hold, c<ay, we are going to have one workshop here for the 17 national organizations and indeed, we are going to do that. 18 MR. PoMERoY: I do understand the risk 19 communication value of doing this and I don't want to 20 minimize the value of doing it. I am simply trying to bring 21 out some possible points. The last one bears on the same 22 subject again which is the question that you are not trying 23 to reach a consensus. 24 If you don't try to reach a consensus, what are 25 you trying to reach, simply a greater degree of O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W..- Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
227 lh 1 communicat ion between the particular groups of people that , 2 are sitting around the table? Is that, in essenc( it? Of l 1 3 cource, you will consider those comments as well but that is 4 a separate issue. 5 MR. CAMERON: Let me say on that fi. of all that 6 again another thread from BRC the citizen grc e community by 7 in large found the notion of consensus very threatening and 8 we did not participate in the BRC consensus process so we 9 decided to dial down a little bit and go for a more modest 10 objective not consensus at this point, trying to learn from 11 the past. 12 But what we do want is to dialogue among the 13 groups, th early input and I think if you look at the usual /O \ssl 14 rulemaking process, not that there is anything generally 15 wrong with it but you can get an idea of what you might 16 achieve. 17 Of tee ,raas there are certain positions that the 18 staff might not take because they are uncertain of what the 19 reacticn out there is going to be until they get out with 20 the proposed rule. 21 Often times particular . fl ementation problems 22 from various pet-oectives are not addressed because they 27 might be overloo; 1, because that knowledge is peculiarly in 24 the hands of a par icular interest. 25 Often times when the proposed rule goes ouc the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, U. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
228 () 1 2 staff has a position and it is human nature to be reactive when comments home in. It doesn't mean that you are not 3 receptive to comments but as a person who has done rules and 4 responded to comments, you are sitting there thinking that 5 we have this great approach and should we put this in or do
~
6 you look fr: some elegant way to respond and not put it in. 7 By movi7g the comment period up earlier and I 8 don't want to say comment period because it is more than 9 that but by moving the input up to an earlier time before 10 the staff takes a position, it gets the benefit of knowing 12 what is out there, what people's views are on it and it is li ot shooting from any particular position. It really is 3 trying t) be open-minded about it. 14 MR. POMEROY: Again, I would just emphasize though 15 also that the particular groups and presumably you choose 16 schat particular grouta are going to be chosen as citizen 17 groups, for example, and even within the ranges of those 18 citizens groups there may be wildly divergent opinions. 19 MR. CAMERON: Absolutely. 20 MR. pOMERC l: One needs to be careful to get a 21 representative sample of that also. 22 MR. CAMERO!!: That'is one thing that we have tried 23 to do because we don't want to be accused of "well, you have 24 only brought in the mild-mannered so-to-speak citizen groups 25 rather than the ones who are very anti-nuclear" but the one CD V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washingtcn, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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-1 thing that we also do not want to do is to bring groups to 2 the table who solely bring rhetoric rather than being able 3 to knowledgeably discuss the issues.
4 I appreciate your comments and, in fact, all of 5 the committee's cc,mments on these issues because they do 6 bring up the important issues involved here and I think it 7 is very worthwhile to discuss them even if we.mignt have a 8 slightly different point of view on it. 9 MR. POMEROY: This certainly is a good opportunity 10 for me at least to give some better fealing of your 11 experience with the BRC consensus process and how it is 12 affecting this. So it has been very useful for me. Thank 13 you. 14 MR. MOELLER: Dr. Cool has a comment and then Dr. 15 Okrent. 16 MR. COOL: I wanted to go back and address 17 something that Marty Steindler had earlier. This'is a 18 little parenthetical to help clarify the record for you. 19 You had asked me about where gwundwater was within the 20 document and I would like to direct you to what was 21 secondary-issue "B" where, in fact, not only in that 22 document and I don't know what page it is on in your version 23 but where, in fact, we call out the fact that groundwater 24 has been treated uniquely by EPA-in certain circumstances 25 and there are a couple of sub-issues there which ask, in O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
}
230 1 fact, the question should we address groundwater separately 2 or in combination with the other criteria. 3 I wanted to point that out to you as being another 4 particular place where groundwater and tl.a unique issues 5 that have been addressed with groundwater are, in fact, 6 already included in the issues paper. 7 MR. STEINDLER: Thank you. 8 MR. MOELLER: Dr. Okrent. 9 MR. OKRENT: Let me throw you a kind of curve 10 ball. Do you ever deliberately bring in people to these 11 workshops who to your knowledge have evinced no interest in 12 the subject. 13 Let me give you an example. We have a large 14 Spanish American or Mexican American or Latin American 15 community in Los Angeles and there are some people who have 16 now been elected and are in a sense representative of this 17 group and one can think of other groups of this sort. It 18 seems to me that when one is talking about some of these 19 issues, it may be relevant to find out what is on people's 20 minds and, in fact, are equally members of the public. 21 MR. CAMFP'N: That is an excellent and intriguing 22 suggesti-r. As L mentioned before we are targeting the 23 participants in this process but I think what your comment , 24 suggests is that we'should also target particular_ members of 25 the public as public for attendance at the workshop and we !O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Court Reporters l 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202)_ 293-3950
231 () I will try to do that. We had not thought about doing that 2 but I think that is a good suggestion. 3 You mentioned Los Angeles. One of the suggestions 4 that we got for a participant was the Jewish League of Women 5 Voters from Beverly Hills but that is sort of at the 6 opposite end of your spectrum that you were talking about 7 but I think that that is a good idea and if we can do it, we 8 will try to do it. 9 MR. GKRENT: I think it might be salutary to find 10 out what other members, segments of the public, think are 11 matters of relative importance and so forth and how they 12 look upon different size risks compared to the risk of 13 walking to the grocery store, for example, and back. 14 MR. STEINDLER: Or breathing the air in Los 15 Angeles. 16 (Laughter.] 17 MR. OKRENT: Or breathing the air in Los Angeles, 18 thank you. 19 MR. MoELLER: Marty. 20 MR. STEINDLER: I have a couple points I would 21 like to throw in. Thank you, _I did find that that on 22 groundwater which was useful. A comment about the general 23 conduct of ralemaking as it has ueen practiced prior to this 24 issue. 25 The staff clearly has a position on the things O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
232
) 1 that are submitted for rulemaking as it well_should. Most 2 of the Imlemaking- issues tend to be technical and some of 3 -them extremely complex.
4 The process is not contrary to advertisement in a 5 view that is presumably radical a popular process. The 6 staff lays it out, obtains comments and then in its infinite 7 wisdom accepts or rejects them. Very seldom do they 8 drastically change the proposed duration of the rule. 9 The process, however, is a minor aspect and the 10 product is more important than the process in general. This 11 is not true here. I think the process is far more important 12 than tua product. This leads, I think, to some significant 13 confusion as to what the output of this whole exercise will 14 be. 15 A warm, fuzzy feeling on the part of the 16 participants without a significant amount of technical input 17 different from the general view of how to handle the 18 problems of decommissioning and the residual contamination 19 is certainly one possibility. 20 A severe polarization of the participants by 21 clearly identifying the extent of disagreement between what 22 I would call for lack of a better term the far right and the 23 far left on views of the process of-decontamination and 24 decommissioning is much more likely. 25 What I don't understand at the moment, if this is O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud - Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
233 ( 1 not a consensus solicitation is how will the staff that 2 currently claims to have apparently no view or not an 3 expressed view make a decision from the spectrum that you 4 have now enlarged because of the vastly increased 5 participation process? How is the staff going to make a 6 determination of what finally to put into the technical 7 aspect of this rule if it is not, in fact, a consensus 8 process? 9 MR. CAMERON: I do not see any unresolvable 10 conflict between not having it be a consensus process in 11 terms of the participants around the table arriving at an 12 agreement and how the staff will arrive at a conclusion on 13 what the rulemaking approach should be. 14 The staff, armed with its technical ability and 15 with our obligations under the Atomic Energy Act, is going 16 to evaluate the informhelon that comes in from the workshops 17 just like it would evaluate information that comes in from 18 anywhere else during the rulemaking process and arrive at a 19 decision. 20 I guess that I would really have to disagree with 21 you again about a couple of things. One is I thin one 22 lesson that we tried to learn from the BRC policy is that 23 the process is very, very critical to the substance. The 24 BRC policy in terms of the policy itself to a lot of groups, 25 they thought this is really, really great but the process O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
t 234 that was used to develop that policy made it dead on J
) 1 2 arrival.
3 So just in general terms, there is an interplay 4 between process and policy that is very, very important. I 5 do not think that I would ever want to describe and I don't 6 believe that this exercise is about giving people a warm, 7 fuzzy feeling. 8 This is not meant to be an exercise. Why waste 9 the time? I sincerely believe and it has been confirmed by 10 others that I have talked to in industry, citizens groups, 11 NRC staff and academics that trying to establish a dialogue 12 in an organized way with the issues clearly set out can 13 develop valuable information that the staff might not 14 otherwise have in developing the rule. 15 MR. STEINDLER: Fine. Let me not get involved in 16 a discussion about whether I think the process is important-17 or not. Clearly the process is important. Let me comment 18 that the dead in the water BRC aspect by the way was not a 19 denise based on technical issues. The response, in fact, 20 was a political response that had nothing to do with the 21 technical issues. 22 I heard nobody of consequence point out that the 23 limits were set out of bounds. What I did hear and what we 24 did read is various political processes that drove it into 25 the far limit of acceptable, that the Delaney amendment was O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
235 l () 1 used as a model and the consequences basically were that the 2 various states passed explicit regulations that said under 3 no conditions are you allowed to discharge, for example, 4 measurable quantities of radioactivity in the landfill. 5 Period. 6 It was simply a preemption of that particular
? policy. It wasn't that the State, whatever it was, decided 8 that the limits set by the NRC were out of bounds and 9 therefore proposed different limits that were, in fact, 10 truer limits.
11 MR. CAMERON: That is exactly my point and I am 12 sorry if I didn't express it clearly. The point I was 13 trying to make is that process is very important to how 14 acceptable the substance of your product is. 15 Indeed, there was a lot of support for the BRC 16 policy but because of the way that the policy was developed, 17 the process, there was a lot of grassroots support mobilized 18 without countervailing information being out there. The 19 medical community did not feel that it was able to get its 20 message across. 21 People commented on the policy _but-did not really 22 know what the disposition of those cominents were. The 23 people that I talked to around the country on the 24 development of the BRC policy and my findings were 25 documented in a SECY paper, the overwhelming conclusion is O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Coud Reponers l 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 I
236 1 that because the process was not adequate, the, process of 2 developing the policy. It essentially killed the substance
-3 of the policy.
4 I think from what.you are saying that we agree on 5 that and that is all I was saying. I was just trying to 6 point out the relationship between process and substance. 7 MR. STEINDLER: Let me not drag this nn. Let me 8 simply make an observation that I hope the staff understands 9 tnat this is a fairly risky process because you are likely 10 to antagonize, I mean you are absolutely guaranteed that the 11 final product of a rule dealing with residual contamination i 1 12 will antagonize somebody. 13 MR. CAMERON: Which is not going to be any change 14 from if we never did this process to begin with, 15 MR. STEINDLER: I hope that there will be some 16 change. Otherwise, I have to go back to your comment, why 17 bother going through the exercise. 18 MR. CAMERON: I am saying that this is one way. I 19 realize you are sending a caution to the staff, but if you 20 try to criticize this process on the grounds that it-is 21 going to bring out the very strong conflicting points of 22 view, I think that they are out there.anyway. 23 MR. STEINDLER: No, no. In fact bringing out the 24 canflicting points of view is a useful thing to do. The 25 issue is what you do with it and if, in fact, you look to O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
237 1 minimize the upset, then I think the outcome, in fact, may _ 2 not be all that great. 3 MR. CAMERON: That is a great point because one of 4 the things that the staff is going to keep in mind and that 5 we have to keep in mind is that we do not build falso 6 expectations among the people out there about what this is 7 all about. 8 In other words, we are not going to go into these 9 workshops without saying, "Look, we want to hear what your 10 comments are. We think it is going to be very valuable but 11 we are not going to be able to accept everybody's comments." 12 In other words, we don't want to put a gloss on this that 13 isn't there and I think that is a very useful point for us U 14 to remember, 15 MR. MOELLER: We need to bring this to a close. 16 Go ahead quickly, Paul, 17 liR . POMEROY: One quick question. What is the 18 size that you envision for the people, in terms of number of 19 people, that are sitting around the table? 20 MR. CAMERON: Fifteen to-20 is what we are 21 thinking about. 22 MR. POMEROY: Fifteen to 20, thank you. 23 MR. STEINDLER: I have one. 24 MR. MOELLER: All right, Marty. 25 MR. STEINDLER: What is your-expected schedule? O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3960
238 () 1 2 At what point do you expect to be able to propose what somebody would call a final rule? 3 MR. CAMERON: The schedule now and I probably 4 should let Don amplify -- I should probably let Don talk 5 about this. Go ahead, Don. 6 MR. COOL: With the workshop agenda scheduled to 7 be done in May and we will provide some opportunity for 8 people to submit us some written information if on the way 9 back from the meeting they say, "Oh, if I had just thought 10 about this or that" by about the end of May. We are in 11 hopes to have something put together that the Commission 12 could look at by about the end of 1993 so we are looking at 13 about a seven-month duration. 14 That will in great measure be driven by whether or 15 not supporting documentation such as a GEIS and a regulatory 16 analysis can be prepared properly in that period of time. 17 If that came about, then the Commission would have something 18 to look at about the end of the year, whatever time they 19 take to consider it, publish it as a proposed rule and now 20 we are back into the nominal process because once again 21 there would be the formal public comment period with 22 comments received and considerations. If that were to. 23 proceed in the nominal manner, we are looking at.a final 24 rulemaking for the Commission to look at about the end of 25 1994. ...- O ANN Ril.EY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, . N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. . C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
239 () 1 2 MR. MOELLER: view of the time. I think we had better wrap it up in Let me offer just a quick couple comments 3 hopefully not too controversial because we do want to bring 4 it to a close but it was my privilege to attempt a symposium 5 or a conference on risk communication at the University of 6 Wisconsin, I think it was the last day of July and the first 7 couple days of August.
. 8 At that conference they concluded at the end of it 9 that there are certain keys to good risk communication and I 10 wished I remembered all of them but just to share a couple 11 of them with you and I know you know them but the first one 12 was, what is the message; and two, who is the target 13 audience; three, who will be the messenger and four, what do 14 you expect to accomplish.
15 Having looked at those questions in terms of this 16 morning's discussion, let me offer just a couple of 17 comments. Like who is the target audience, you had 18 mentioned eight groups at these public meetings plus 19 professional societies and others. I would venture to say 20 that one of the key target audiences is probably the states, 21 the state governments, because if you don't have their full. 22 support and cooperation you can forget it. 23 Number two, who will be the messenger and I 24 believe if I were you and it didn't come through or maybe I 25 just didn't read what you said but if this indeed is and it O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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'1 is a joint EPA /NRC effort, then maybe you would be smart to-2 let EPA be your messenger. I don't know.
3 Then, what do you expect to accomplish, above all, 4 don't try to accomplish too much. You are undertaking a 5 monumental effort so keep the final product as simple as 6 possible. 7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Dr. Moeller, and we did 8 have the advantage of seeing your report from Wingspread and-9 we looked at a nt.nber of the points that were made on the 10 last page, lessons learned type of thing and tried to 11 evaluate the process as we were developing it in light of 12 those to make sure that we had that covered. So I 13 appreciate that. 14 MR. MOELLER: There is supposed to be written 15 proceedings or something coming out on that and when I 16 receive it, I will certainly see that it is transmitted to 17 you promptly. 18 MR. CAMERON: Thank you and I thank the Committee 19 for the questions and the discussion and I hope that some of 2c you will be able to attend one or more of the workshops. ! 21 MR. HINZE: Is there a revised schedule? The l 22 schedule that I have is out of date. 23 MR. CAMERON: Yes, severely. 24 MR. MINZE: If you could provide that to us so 25 that if it would be possible for us to sit in as observers, iO ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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241 1 it would be very informative to us. 2 MR. CAMERON: We will definitely do that. 3 Sometime in the next two weeks, we will have that to you. 4 MR. MOELLER: Make a note of that, Stan, and S number two, you mentioned a SECY, Chip, in which you 6 summarized the lessons learned from BRC. If I have seen 7 that, I don't remember it. 8 MR. CAMERON: It was May of last year. 9 MR. MOELLER: Let's check that out. 10 MR. CAMERON: I will put a copy in the mail to 11 you. 12 NR. MOELLER: Great. Let's close this out then 13 when an expression of appreciation on behalf of the O b 14 committee to both Chip Cameron and tu Don Cool. It has been 15 very helpful and you have filled in a lot of voids. You 16 have certainly, for me you have answered a number of the 17 questions that I had. 18 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. 19 MR. OKRENT: Can I ask you a question? l l 20 MR. MOELLER: Yes. 21 MR. OKRENT: Is it your impression that the 22' problem with the B.c was process and not the level itself? 23 MR. MOELLER: That would be my impression, yes. 24 MR. OKRENT: I guess that wouldn't be mine. 25 MR. MOELLER: Let's move on then to the next item O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l 242 1 on our aganda which is the discussion with Robert Bernero, 1 2 the Director of NMSS, and we have five or more topics to 3 discuss, the implications of the new Energy legislation, in 4 other words, the Energy Policy Act of 1992 including the 5 proposal for now environmental standards for Yucca Mountain, 6 a discussion of the Waste Negotiator, of BRC, of uranium 7 mill tailings, clean-up and of decommissioning funding. 8 I hesitate to say, Bob, that you are looking great 9 because I recall what you said last time I said that. 10 [ Laughter.) 11 MR. BERNERO: Good morning to all and I am glad to 12 see you all and this is going to be a very mixed agenda. 13 There is one subject that isn't on the published agenda that O 14 I just took advantage of timing herc. In coming down I have 15 a letter to John Bartlett on high level waste. I think it 16 has been distributed to you. It just went out. 17 Basically it is a request to take stock of the 18 program. If you read the letter, you will see that we are 19 basically calling on DOE to say, " Hey, it is time. It has 20 been a number of years since the site characterization plan" 21 and we may expect to hear.some response to that letter in 22 December. As.is the practice, John Bartlett will come to l r 23 brief the Commission and I think they are working on 24 something like December 18th is the schedule. I haven't 25 seen it yet on the agenda. ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950
243 i 1 But I expect that that will occur and then we will 2 have some foodback from DOE. Of course, the election and 3 the expected changes at the Department of Energy with 4 Secretary Watkins leaving and so forth, I don't know if we 5 will know anything by then of what is happening at DOE but 6 it should be rather interesting in the near future. 7 Now the first thing that I would lika to do is 8 come at this Energy Policy Act and I circulr4ted to you 9 copies of the OGC analysis. 10 MR. LARSON: It is in your notebook. 11 MR. BERNERO: The legal analysis of the Energy 12 Policy Act of 1992, and it makes a convenient reference for 13 me to simply walk through some of the topics and draw your 14 attention in other directions other than the direct analysis 15 of the Act. 16 The first thing that I think is probably the most 17 significant resource impact that I face right now in the 18 Office of NMSS is the subject of uranium enrichment. This 19 act, the National Energy Policy Act of 1992, basically sets 20 up the U.S. Enrichment Corporation which will take over the 21 two big gaseous diffusion. plants which DOE is still 22 operating and as part of that. takeover, they will put us in 23 regulatory charge, you might say, but in a very unique way. 24 25 The Act speaks of certification. For those of you O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
244 () I 2 who have never seen a gaseous diffusion plant, I have an aerial photo taken from a fairly low angle of the Portsmouth 3 plant. You might circulate that and I have a set of slides 4 that are Martin Marietta's that were in the package to be 5 distributed that are self-explanatory. 6 If you read them at your leisure, you can see the 7 essential charact6ristics and those essential 8 characteristics are that they are huge plants. Ti.ey hav'e 9 very large power requirements, over 2000 megawatts electric 10 in that one plant, for example, and they have a very large 11 number of employees in the plant. They are just very large 12 installations. 13 They will be regulated by a process called 14 certification and we have a great deal of effort going into 15 figuring out just what certification is and when it is 16 because the Act actually sets up the U.S. Enrichment 17 Corporation on July 1, 1993 and presumably at that time, 18 Atomic Energy Act regulatory jurisdiction would shift from 19 DOE to NRC. 20 However,-the Act also says that NRC has up to two 21 years to promulgate the regulations or regulatory 22 requirements and it also says that the facilities leased by 23 the U.S. Enrichment Corporation cannot be operated unless 24 they are certified to those requirements or there is some 25 DOE prepared plan and NRC approval of that plan for O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
245 ( . 1 achieving compliance, 2 So that latter may be the most important clause in 3 that. waat we may have is a situa+ n.1 where we will set up 4 some sort of clear plan with DOE for the transition of 5 regulatory authority and the promulgation of requirements 6 and the certification process. So we are working on that 7 right now and you will hear developments on that subject in 8 the coming months. 9 MR. STEINDLER: Bob, the operation of the 10 diffusion plants at the moment is under the normal series of 11 DOE orders and heaven knows what other internal documents 12 that DOE uses. Those look for the most-part in the areas of 13 health and safety look an awful lot like the existing 14 regulations that you folks are using except for the strange 15 operation that goes on inside the plant which is a physical 16 chemical process, I guess I can't see really any inordinate 17 difficulty. 18 M
.R. BERNERO: Let me point out a couple of 19 problems.
20 MR. STEINDLER: There is a classification problem. 21 MR. BERNERO: That is not a problem for us yet. 22 The real problem we are running into and the orders is that 23 we would envision that a regulatory system that exists today 24 on June 30, 1993.say, that that regulatory system provides 25 an operational safety and safeguards basis of acceptability O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 2S3-3950
246 1 that_shouldn't change dramatically on July 1. 2 We would look toward that Atomic Energy Act-3- regulation certainly as'the basis for entering the 4 regulatory regime. However, DOE"for some years has 5 promulgated orders that are-first of all, general in 6 character. They apply to all of the' DOE-facilities and they 7 have not been promulgated as regulations. They-have just 8 been issued as orders. 9 As a result they appear to have been -isuplemented-10 via the contracts and possibly even with negotiation of 11- conditions through contract negotiations. We do not have a 12 clear picture yet of to what extent do these two facilities 13 comply with any of the general orders. 14 We have a very long. list of orders-which 15 potentially apply. We are working with DOE now to narrow it 16 down and to get-the roadmap of_what_really does apply and 17 there is'another spin to the thing that has changed the 18 perspective somewhat. 19- The Department of L.,ergy in the past-~ year or two: 20 has undertaken an effort which is going on-right now to 21._ elevate the stature of key orders, particularly health and 22 safety orders, to the level of_ regulation which they have 23- the authority to do_under the Atomic Energy Act and-they'are-24 in rulemaking_on such orders. 25 So some of~the key orders that we have are-in a i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. ' Court Reporters 1612 K/ Street, N.W.,= Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l 247 ;
) 1 rulemaking process we believe at DOE in a general character 2 to apply to all of their facilities and we are going to try 3 to thread into this process with minimum perturbation and 4 maximum clarity, I hope.
5 For instance, they have a Radiological Control 6 manual most recently published. You have probably seen it. 7 Paul Ziemer's manual came out what a month ago or two months 8 Jo. There is a rulemaking process by which that is going 9 into regulatory effect at some date I am not sure of. 10 When we scanned that Radiological Control inanual, 11 it looks very much like our new Part 20 except for some 12 modest differences and so we will have to confront issues 13 such as will we take the regulatory requirements that DOE 14 has on June 30th and now say, "on these facilities, let us 15 evolve to the new Part 20" or do we instead adopt whatever 16 is coming through the DOE process. 17 We haven't yet identified any egregious 18 contradiction between DOE requirements and our requirements, 19 that is that they don't require some very fundamental 20 element of safety that we would but one thing we are trying 21 to do, we are trying to avoid starting out with whatever NRC 22 has for regulations on an enrichraent facility. 23 We have an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 24 and a Commission order which is being used as the basis of 25 licensing for Louisiana Energy Services, a new facility, and ! ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 2934B50
248 1 what we don't want to do is just blindly go in and say, 2 "Here is what we want to do, here is a fresh sheet of paper 3 and now guys have to figure out how do you comply with 4 these." That just doesn't make much sense. 5 So we are trying to enter it from the other side 6 and really look very closely at what parts of the DOE order 7 system we can adopt or modify as appropriate to make our 8 own. 9 So the uranium enrichment is a very ir.:. aresting 10 thing and by the way I believe copies of the Act are 11 available down here for all of you and there are a couple of 12 things that I would like to point out related to uranium 13 enrichment. 14 One in particular is that the Act and, in fact, I 15 think I have a paperclip on it for this purpose, the Act on 16 page 385 of the copy I have and this is the Definitions 17 Section of Title II, Section 1201. The Act defines 18 decontamination and decommissioning as including depleted 19 tailings. 20 So at long last, we are going to come to grips 21 with the DUF-6 and you may recall that some time ago we sent 22 a paper to the Commission that is almost two years ago that 23 said that this asset continues to accumulate in the DOE 24 yards and we had reached 500,000 tons of it, a formidable 25 quantity for making depleted uranium bullets and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters . 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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i 249-(_ 1 counterweights. 2 The Act by making depleted tailings part of
.I 3 decommissioning almost defines it as.a waste. If you read-4 the passage they speak of facilities that have' residual 5 radioactive or mixed radioactive and hazardous chemical 6 contamination including depleted tailings.
-7 What it does is bring us to grips with the idea 8 that sooner or later something has to be done with those 9 tailings and that is an issue that we have already 10 confronted in the licensing process for Louisiana Energy .
11 Services. 12 MR. STEINDLER: The words seem somewhat coa *using. 13 Tailings are not normally applied in that_ specific way to 14 the tails that come from the fusion plant so-I assume they- , 15 mean tails. 16 MR. BERNERO: DUF-6 is what they mean, yes. 17 MR. STEINDLER: Then the other point that I would 18 make is that.there is a significant activity that I:think_is-19 still ongoing at a modest rate of converting DUF-6 to DUF-20 4. 21 MR. BERNERO: A modest rate is the appropriate 22 modifier. The market for,greensalt DUF-4 and-ultimate-23 conversion to depleted uranium metal widely-used in the-24 military, in armaments and also in counterweights and other 25- specialty processes and also as a catalyst in chemical _
- O ANN RlLEY_ & ASSOCIATES, Ltd.
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250 l () 1 2 reactions. inventory is, It is a tiny, tiny fraction of what the l 3 The more significant processing is perhaps what is 1 4 going on in France. At EURODIF, the major diffusion plant 5 on the River Rhone, the French started processing DUF-6 to , 6 recover hydrofluoric acid some time ago and what they are 7 doing is basically converting DUF06 to DU-3 0-8 and putting; 8 it into big cubicle steel boxes which stack one on another 9 and they really don't know what they are going to do with 10 the DU-3 0-8 but it is a more benign form of storage and 11 they have the recovered hydrofluoric acid. 12 but unfortunately that hydrofluoric acid is not 13 anhydrous and doesn't have market value that is terribly 14 significant. So one looks at it as perhaps more a waste 15 processing operation than a chemical recovery operation. 16 Presumably here in the United States we would end 17 up either bringing DUF-6 to DUF-4 or bringing it all the way 18 to DU-3 0-8 and finding some disposal method for it. It 19 does not lend itself to disposal in any of the existing 20 waste disposal sites. 21 It is far too bulky to go into a_ conventional _ low 22 level waste disposal site. It would just swamp the place 23 and it also would be horribly expensive to do it that way, 24 too, because current low level waste disposal costs are 25 really high. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
251 1 It doesn't comport with uranium mill tailings very 2 well. It is very concentrated. Probably the best disposal 3 would be mine cavity. Get an old uranium mine and put it 4 back in and then it is a question of which form and DU-3 5 O-8 seems to be the more attractive, less soluble and more 6 stable and so forth. 7 So what is interesting is if you go elsewhere in 8 the bill and I believe, I have a marker on it here, there is 9 a call in the bill for a study and this is section 1016, the 10 uranium inventory study, and the legislation calls for the 11 Secretary of Energy to submit to the Congress within one 12 year and I will just highlight the key words of what this 13 submittal includes, "A study and report that includes (1) a O V 14 comprehensive inventory of all government-owned uranium or 15 uranium equivalents including natural uranium, depleted 16 tailings, low enriched uranium and highly enriched uranium" 17 and then it carries on with a plan for the conversion of - 18 inventories of foreign and domestic highly enriched uranium 19 to low enriched uranium for commercial use. 20 You all know that there is substantial discussion 21 of purchase or other arrangement to obtain former Soviet 22 Union high enriched uranium, make low enriched fuel out of 23 it. 24 This also calls for domestic and if you go on into 25 the report at the very end it says that it would include G V ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
252 > A
- 4) 1 recommendations for the future use and disposition of such 2 inventories and presumab?y that would include and I suppose 3 it would be another thing on Leo Duffy's plate that there 4 would be a plan for disposition of the depleted tailings.
5 This raises the prospect that one might have a 6 na.tional program for depleted tailings to which licensed or 7 certified generators of tailings would be a contri! tor. In 8 other words, DOE would have the primary responsibility and 9 then would have some sort of pro-rata charge for the U.S. 10 Enrichment Corporation or the Louisiana Energy Services 11 people to send their tailings there for disposal in the 12 national program. 13 Certainly if you look at the quantity, it would 14 come out that way because DOE starts with 500,000 tons and 15 the others haven't even generated any yet. 16 Let me turn to high level waste because it is a 17 key part that I know is of great interest to the Committee 18 and I passed out those key pages separately just to be sure 19 that you had them. This bill puts a very surprising thing 20 right into legislation and you should be aware that
'l simultaneously -- you got this, didn't you?
22 MR. LARSON: I got the whole bill. 23 MR. BERNERO: I thought I brought some copies of 24 this as well, just copies of these pages in one of the 25 bundles. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3G50
I 4 253 l () 1 But if you were to go to Section 801, if you have 2 the bill in your notebook. 3 FROM THE FLOOR: I brought them from the back of 4 the room. 5 MR. BERNERo: Thank you. The key thing here is 6 remember that this bill came out at the same time as the 7 WIPP land transfer bill, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant bill, 8 it is called Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act 9 and that bill acted on the EPA standard by saying that the 10 Environmental Protection Agency will promulgate 40 CFR 191,- 11 the generically applicable environmental standard, promptly 12 and the only part that is left open is the part remanded by 13 the court, remember in the two dose sections, and they are (-)N
\_ 14 supposed to fix that in some timely way.
15 So one law says promulgate 40 CFR 191 promptly and 16 fix the remanded parts. Dr. Okrent has been involved with 17 this for years. Now if you come to this law, the National 18 Energy Policy Act, in section 801 it does something quite 19 opposite to that. 20 It says that the Administrator of EPA shall and I 21 am quoting, " ... based upon and consistent with the findings 22 and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, 23 promulgate, by rule, public health and safety standards" et 24 cetera, et cetera, "
...for the Yucca Mountain site."
25 Now if you read on what you see is that the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
254 () 1 standards shall prescribe the maximum annual effective dose 2 equivalent to individual members of the public from release 3 to the accessible environment and the Administrator is going 4 to do this in not later than one year. 5 Now it clearly cal.'s for an Individual dose 6 standard which is as you know exactly opposite the essential 7 character of 40 CFR 19' which is a collective dose release 8 quantity standard although it has elements of individual 9 dose in it and we shouldn't forget that. 10 The statute also goes on to have the Administrator 11 of EPA contract with the National Academy of Sciences to do 12 a study in order to get these findings and the study is 13 supposed to determine and now this is a little farther on in 14 that same section, " ...whether a health-based standard based 15 upon doses to individual members of the public " et cetera, 16 et cetera, " ... will provide a reasonable standard for 17 protection of the health and safety of the general public." 18 The element there sounds to me and reads to me 19 like to see whether on ICRP 46 or safety serice 99, an 20 individual dose standard, is more the choice. Secondly the 21 statute says, " ..whether it is reasonable to assume that a 22 system for post-closure oversight of the repository can be 23 developed, based upon active institutional controls, that 24 will pr6 vent an unreasonable risk of breaching the 25 repository's engineered or geologic barriers"-and thirdly, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l 255 1 ...whether it is possible to make scientifically 2 supportable predictions of the probability that thi 3 repository's engineered or geologic barriers will be 4 breached as a result of human intrusion over a period of 5 10,000 years." 6 As you know in 40 crR 191 the po.Tiod of 10,000 7 years makes its appearance as the frame of regulatory L 8 reference .?nd in its current edition one is to analyze the 9 likelihood of human intrusion as one of the ways of 10 broaching the repository and thoro has boon some debate of 11 is it a probability of one condition or o'horwise. 12 But it in probabilistically weighed under the 13 terms of the standard. So if you read on then this Act also 14 says that not only when the study is dono does EPA 15 prohiulgate a standard for Yucca Mountain that apparently has l' to comport with the findings but then it goes .$n and 17 mandates that the NRC doos something to not later than one la year after the Administrator promulgates the standards that 19 he has to promulgate under the terms, then we have to do 20 something in the safeguards and it comes by way of required 21 assumptions and they are assumptions relative to intrusion. 22 So it would become the licensing basis for intrusion. 23 There is a very significant difference in wording. 24 If you read this section of the Act about the intrusion and 25 the safeguards associated with it, I will read a key passage O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suhe 300 , Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
]
_ _ _ _ ]
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256 () I 2 here about the required assumptions. repository closure, the inclusion of engineered barriers and "That following 3 the Secretary's post-closure oversight of the Yucca Mountain 4 site..." "...chall be sufficient to (A) prevent any activity i 5 at the site that poses an unreasonable risk of breaching the 6 repository'r engineered or geologic barriers; and (H) 7 prevent any increase in the exposure of individual members 8 of the public to radiation beyond allowable limits." 9 Two very important concepts seem to be welling up 10 to the surface in this, one is the idea of perpetual 11 oversight to prevent human intrusion, active institutional 12 control, fences, guards, whatever, in perpetuity, far beyond 13 the typical 100 years or so of presumption. 14 But (B) there raises the possibility of the 15 perpetual oversight even having a role in remediatien. That 16 is if some natural upset breached the repository unplugged 17 the shaft or formed a crack in the ground, this team would. 18 presumably go get a bucket of grout and plug it. 19 It is a very interesting concept and- it calls for 20 the Academy to study that and for us again presuming that 21 the Academy makes such a recommendation, it ca:,1s for us in 22 our licensing to make that a licensing basis. It is a very 23 significant thing. 24 Then it calls for the Secretary basicallu to hmve 25 the continued oversight. So it is a very interesting and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D. C. 20006 _(202) 293 3950
257 () I frontal attack you might say or consideration at least of what has boon the custom in human intrusion and the role of 2 2 oversight to avoid human intrusion. 4 I must say that one of the things that has 5 bothered me for a long time is that we as a nation and 6 certain we as a regulatory Commission as NRC in our i 7 overbight, we have not been entirely consistent in how we 8 handle human intrusion. 9 Think for a moment of uranium mill tailings. Now 10 admittedly, the radiotoxicity of uranium mill tailings is 11 quite a bit lower than high level waste. The half lives are 12 of course very, very long in uranium mill tailings and I would describe in simple terms our approach to intrusion as 13 14 look, we are going to take this property, stabilize the 15 tailings, put the clay caps and riprap and whatever on top 16 of it in such a way that natural forces are not liktly to 17 erode it and typically we speak that we have to be very 18 highly confident for about 200 years and then be able to say 79 that there la reasonable confidence out to about 1000 years 20 no where near to any end of ten or 20 half lives but a very # 21 long societal period. 22 Then we say that the Deptrtment of Energy or the 23 state will own it and provide what we basically would 24 consider in my words passive institutional control. We 25 don't count on it to any great extent but we vest the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 . .
258 () 1 2 property with the government and as long as their is a government presumably there is some passive institutional 3 control. That is mill tailings. 4 Consider then low level waste. We use the same 5 kind of ownership vested passive institutional control but 6 we also provide for the more radiotoxic form of waste, the 7 class C, an intrusion barrier against the concept of an 8 intruder somehow without proper warning getting in there, 9 starting to shovel the stuff up and we have a barrier that 10 would limit the intruder dose. 31 We are not looking at the barrier to protect the 12 repository from onceeding its release standard, whether that 13 be releae= to some fence post person, no. We are loo:ri.ng at 14 the intruder barrier as some way to inhibit the intruder 15 dose in a reasonable way. 16 It doesn't preclude somebody if they get .o the 17 intruder barrier and say, " Gee, there must be Captain Bly's 18 treasure underneath this thing and keep digging" but the 19 intruder dose, there is a reasonable barrier against high 20 intruder dose. 21 In high level waste, we have a different thing. 22 It is much more radiotoxic but much more remote. We have 23 site selection criteria about stay away from oil domes and . 24 r.:other loads of silver and gold anc .hings like that and 25 then we are wrestling with the whole idea of passive or () ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
259 1 active institutional control here, active institutional 2 control, and then the EPA standard of course does say treat 3 it as one of the scenarios for intrusion. 4 It is an active debate in WIPP or will be an 5 activo debate in Yuaca Mountain. This is a very interesting 6 thing. Perhaps this can smoke out the possibility of a more 7 coherent approach to human intrusion in all forms of waste. 8 Yes, sir. 9 MR. OKRENT: Can I note two things. When you were 10 reading on page 379 the (A), (B) and (C), you sort of 11 skipped over that the National Academy should provide 12 findings and recommendations on reasonable standards, 13 emphasis on reasonable, " reasonable standards for protection 14 of the public health and safety, including..." and so it . 15 wasn't written that t'aese are the only three things that the 16 Academy would study. I just wanted to emphasize that first 17 point. - 18 MR. BERNERO: Yes, that is very important. 19 MR. OKRENT: The second point is your comment 20 about inconsistency with regard to human intrusion becomes 21 still more let's say apparent when you look at the lack of 20 consideration of human intrusion that EPA applies in 23 disposal of waste at RCRA sites. 24 HR. BERNERO: Yes. 25 MR. OKRENT: Where it is not even looked at and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
i 260 I 1 yet you hat ' the potential for very largo doacs to people 2 who choose it as a residential site 200 years or 500 years 3 in the future. So when you are looking for exampics of a 4 variation in treatment, I highly recommend you include EPA's 5 own if you will lack of consideration of human intrusion i 6 and, in fact, short ter=. they allow walk-away in less than 7 100 years responsibility A ft th. 8 The only othsf U; u th A .. T would like to mention 9 is that I once not quito facetiously said I thought it might 10 be cheaper to hire a trio of ex-Marines succeeded in 11 perpetuity to live over the Yucca Mountain site as the 12 people who prevent the human intrusion and as long as there 13 is a government, in fact, they could serve this purpose and 14 it would be in my opinion cheaper than especially if you 15 fund it today. 16 MR. BERNERO: Endow it. 17 MR. OKRENT: You endow it, yes. 18 MR. BERNERO: That seems to be the concept behind 19 this perpetual care, active perpetual care. I would like to 20 add, first of all on your first point, the matter of 21 comparison to RCRA and hazardous waste, under the big MOU, 22 the one between the Commission and Administrator Reilly of 23 what a year or year and a half ago, under that Memorandum of 24 Understanding we have an active effort with EPA aimed toward 25 understanding how we assess risk and how we might harmonize O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l 261 1 it that is between tne two agencies. 2 This subject is part of that dialogue, that very 3 subject. We have iteration, principally with Air and 4 Radiation, with the office of Radiation Programs but we are 5 broadening it to include that very comparison because that 6 is the case. 7 The dual liner-leachate collection system, they 8 are entirely active maintenance and they don't even consider 9 beyond one generation really. They are a very near term 5 10 perpetual care assumption. 11 MR. STEINDLER: Do you consider the words in this 12 very small part of a much larger document as having been put 13 together sufficiently carefully as to constitute the new 14 governmental policy on the management of waste? You recall 15 in the Carter Administration a policy promulgated by the 16 Environment Counsellor whose name I have suddenly forgotten. 17 MR. BERNERO: Gus Spoth. 18 MR. STEINDLER: Yes, Gus Speth and company, 19 consisted primarily of the fundamental principle that we 20 will not burden subsequent generations with the care and 21 feeding of this waste and therefore, our disposal proce'ss is 22 to be complete in this generation and not carry a legacy of 23 required action into subsequent generations. 24 That policy except for the modest deviation in the 25 case of high level waste at least that we ought to think
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262 () 1 about retrievability for a period of time, very small, was 2 carried on through the NRC's regulations up to the passage 3 of this Act and now there has been a step function in that 4 approach. We now are prepared to exceed to the notion that 5 by golly, some things we are going to watch forever. Do you 6 consider that a deliberate shift in policy? 7 MR. BERNERO: I would answer your question this 8 way. This feature of the Act appeared in this autumn of 9 this year, appeared very quickly. It came into a very 10 complex piece of legislation. It is the law of the land. 11 It was signed by the President on something like october 23. 12 1 don't think it constitutes a major national policy re-13 think. I don't think there is a legislative record to 14 describe in that way but it represents the law of the land. 15 MR. STEINDLER: I understand the latter. The 16 issue, 1 think, could be one of having if this were, in 17 fact, believed to be broad policy to last for prolonged la periods to avoid by calling on this particular policy, you 19 can avoid an enormous amount of argument and polemics and 20 set aside some things which appear to be intractable. 21 MR. BERNERO: I would say that the focus of it is 22 much more sharply on release standard versus a dose 23 standard, individual standard versus a collective dose 24 standard, and the passive probabilistic treatment of human 25 intrusion versus active prevention. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
263 () 1 2 I think it is much more sharply directed at key terms of the high level waste standard insofar as they 3 affect, well, in this case it is only Yucca Mountain but 4 this is applicable only to Yucca Mountain. 5 MR. OKRENT: If you combine the individual dose 6 standard and allow then active, what is the Word, oversight 7 of the site, you mentioned the possibility of plugging 8 holes, to me that also could include active sampling of 9 wells within the vicinity of the site so should anyone get 10 more than whatever it is, ten or 20 mr per year, DOE pays 11 for a clean-up system as it were for that set of vells. 12 This affords a variety. 13 MR. BERNERO: The wording of the Act here does 14 raise that possibility, not only provention but remediation. 15 MR. OKRENT: Yes. It makes an individual dose 16 probably more tractable at Yucca Mountain. 17 MR. STEINDLER: But what it really does is it says. 18 that we don't Yucca Mountain because we do the same thing in 19 an MRS much cheapet if you carry it one step further. 20 MR. BERNERO: I think the point that should be 21 made in line with the comment that Dr. Okrent made is that 22 Yucca Mountain is a uniquely dry site and for years we have 23 had the calculation available that since there is only about 24 a glass full of water a day that runs under the place, if it 25 finally leaks down to that glass full of water a day, o ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Coud Reponers 1612 K.- Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
l I 264 () I whoever drinks from that glass full of water a day is going 2 to get more than four millirem or whatever it is a year. 3 That is because the site is so dry. A release 4 storiard can deal with the dry site and a done standard has 5 difficulty dealing with a dry site. In a dose standard, the 6 Florida Everglades are much more attractive because you have 7 the dilution and, of course, that is contrary to commti 8 sense for a high level waste repository. 9 This mixture of dose standard and human
'O prevention, they kind of go together.
11 Let me turn to one other thing or actually two 12 other elements of the Act that I would like to touch on. 13 One is Title X of the Act, Section 1001, gets into remedial 14 action and uranium revitalization and it is remedial action 15 at active processing sites. 16 The key thing here is that it doesn't involve the 17 NRC actions at all, this is a DOE burden, to all active site 18 uranium licensees, payments made under paragraph one to 19 active site uranium licensees. 20 MR. MOELLER: What page are you on? 21 MR. BERNERO: I am on page 442. 22 MR. MOELLER: Thank you. 23 MR. BERNERO: Perhaps I snould point out first to 24 section "(A)" on that page, 2(a) which says, " ...an amount 25 to individual active site uranium licensees $5.50 multiplied O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
265 1 by the dry short tons of by-product material," in other 2 words, a pro-rata share of decommissioning costs and it has 3 conditions, generated as an incident of sales to the United 4 States and so forth but it is a decommissioning cost and it 5 is capped it section "B" to $270 million dollars and then 6 there is section "C" to thorium licensees, payments mado 7 under paragraph one to the licensee of the active thorium 8 site shall not exceed $40 million dollars and may only be 9 made for off-site disposal. It has an interesting ring to 30 it, the active thorium sito is often called in the 11 literature Kerr McGee West Chicago. 12 [ Laughter.] 13 MR. BERNER0: Thia is the haul away cost. 14 MR. STEINDLER: Which is no longer a part of the 15 problem of Illinois. 16 MR. BERNERO: Oh, it still is. Illinois has the 17 jurisdiction and they are trying to work out removal of the 18 material. 19 MR. STEINDLER: Didn't they give you the problem? 20 MR. BERNERO: No. It was the other way around. 21 We had the jurisdiction. We had approved in situ disposal 22 or were in the process of it and the State of Illinois 23 sought jurisdiction under an amendment to the Agreement 24 State agreement. 25 MR. STEINDLER: Oh, that's right. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
o 266 1 MR. BERNERO: And they got jurisdiction to 11e(2) 2 by-product material, this one site, and then said " haul it 3 away" and that is what is going on and here is the cost. 4 The other thing is on page 991 of the Act it 5 relates to the subject you just discussed with Chip Cameron 6 and Don Cool and I quote, " State authority to regulate 7 radiation below level of regulatory concern of Nuclear 8 Regulatory Commission, no provision of this Act or of the 9 Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act may be construed to 10 prohibit or otherwise restrict the authority of any state to 11 regulate on the basis of radiological hazard the disposal or 12 off-site incineration of low level radioactive waste if the 13 Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the date of the O O 14 enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 exempts such 15 waste from regulation." 16 This is rather interesting. This, of course, in 17 get the BRC act and as I recall somewhere the Act also says 18 that we should go rescind the two BRC policy statements. 19 MR. LARSON: Next page. 20 MR. BERNERO: Yes. The interesting thing here is 21 the words appear to apply to disposal or off-site 22 incineration of low level radioactive waste presumably to 23 waste streams, the classic image in the BRC debate, of a 24 barrel of low level waste and someone at the plant saying, 25 "That is below regulatory concern, send it to the landfill" ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. St/eet, N.W., Suite 300 V'ashington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
267 l 1 as against, "No, it is not below regulatory concern, send it 2 to Barnwell." 3 This seems to be aimed at that but it may also 4 apply. I don't know. It is a question I have been asking. 5 It may also apply to the disposal of waste in situ such as 6 if we say that here is a plot of land that has 100 7 picocuries per gram of depleted uranium contamination and we , 8 tell the licensee, you pick up overything that is over 30-9 picocuries per gram. We get a nice big survey and suitable 10 grid, pick up all the stuff greater than 30 picocuries per 13 gram, get rid of it in an appropriate disposal site and 12 anything less than or equal to 30 picocuries por gram is 13 acceptable option one Branch Technical Position 1981, et 14 cetera, et co' 'ra. 15 Does this give the state the authority to step in 16 and then ray no, we think it ought to be 15 picoeuries per 17 gram even if they are not an agreement state. I don't know. 18 I don't know. It raises that question. I think it is a ! 19 rather interesting one. l 20 MR. STEINDLER: How do you intend to find out? l l 21 MR. BERNERO: For one thing, we are going to find 22 out from experience. l l 23 [ Laughter.) 24 MR. BERNERO: Because right off the bat, some 25 states are proposing legislation based on this and we are O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
268 () I going to hear more on this subject, I am sure, in licensing 2 actions and seeing the legislation that comes out of states. 3 The Act also has some information about user fees. 4 Research reactors are exempt from it. It is a fairly narrow 5 thing. There are export restrictions that go with the old 6 concept of let's transfer all research reactors out of high 7 enriched fuel and get them into low enriched fuel and this 8 law has a passage codifying that as a requirement in future. 9 That is made rather complicated because we have a 10 lot of fuel out there, the spent fuel and there is 11 difficulty in bringing it back and it is a kind of chicken 12 and egg thing that is going on there. 13 The only other thing I would point out is 14 elsewhere that affects us in a technical regulatory way, the [ 15 plutonium that Japan is getting back from France from the 16 LaHague reprocessing plant, this statute requires a very 17 prompt safety risk analysis report of such plutonium 18 shipments and a risk management plan very quickly. 19 MR. STEINDLER: From whom? 20 HR. BERNERo: It is actually the State Department 21 with NRC contribution and DOT contribution and it basically
- 22. is aimed toward discerning the level of risk the shipment 23 poses if it comes to a U.S. port and some sort of emergency 24 management plan associated with potential needs of the state 25 or any state that feels the needs for such plans and one ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd.
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269 l 1 state has already expressed that need. It is the State of 2 11awaii . That report is being done. 3 It has to be done in 60 days and that means before 4 Christmas. We are working at that right now. The shipment 5 by the way is on the liigh Seas. You may be aware of it. It 6 was loaded not long ago and I believe it has outrun the 7 Greenpeace ship. I am not sure of that. It is a convoy of 8 two, has an escort vessel and the transport ship and they 9 are out in the Atlantic. 10 So let me turn away then, I think the rest of the 11 analysis in here can speak for itself, an audit of building 12 efficiencies and things like that that I don't think would 13 be of much interest to you. 14 What I would like to do is spend just a few 15 minutes on spent fuel as high level waste. Now what I did 16 is I put together this great bundle of viewgraphs here, a 17 great bundle of slides, and this covers all sorts of 18 information about the use of various casks and things like 19 that for the disposal or rather the storage. 20 MR. OKRENT: Bob, could I interrupt you, just 21 before you begin that, you undoubtedly recall that when the 22 NRC was commenting on EPA draft number two and three in 23 recent years for 40 CFR 191, tnat it recommended that EPA-24 consider a risx perspective and other regulations and so 25 forth. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. - Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 L (202) 293-3950
270 () 1 I was wondering if now that there seems to be a 2 fair chance that the NRC will be asked its opinion by the 3 National Academy on what form it thinks is a practical 4 standard as well as answers to the specific questions, will 5 you introduce such information as part of your reasons for 6 whatever you recommend? 7 MR. BERNERo: We have already recommended in the 8 past the use either as a supplement or an alternate of an 9 individuel risk based standard. To go back for a moment, 10 our comments to EPA for years and years have wrestled with 11 the issue of the fundamental basis of this standard, why it 12 is acceptable and as you know, the development of the 13 standard was not what is acceptable but what is achievable 14 and it used available technology, reasonable depth in 35 reasonably selected media. Here is what is achievable. 16 Gee, that doesn't look to bad. Therefore, that is 17 acceptable. 18 That concept which subsumes ALARA, has a lot of 19 attractiveness. It gives you a nice framework to deal with 20 times of extrapolation, regulatory frame of reference and so 21 forth. 22 It is baffled when you come to Yucca Mountain, an 23 unsaturated volcanic tuff, which was not in the catalogue of 24 media considered and Carbon-14 comes out with a collective 25 dose picorem to mega people, that collective dose exceeds O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltci. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l 271 l 1 the standard and yet any appraisal of it says, 2 " infinitesimal risk" and it says, "Now, EPA, you have to 3 confront the bafflement. 4 Your extrapolation that this is achievable and 5 therefore acceptable no longer holds" because this is not 6 achievable, does that make it therefore unacceptable? We 7 have proposed such alternatives as have a cross-check in a 8 case like that as an individual risk standard, an alternate 9 way to make the judgment of acceptability. 10 I think we would probably express our opinions to 11 the National Academy. I assume they are going to ask us for 12 opinions and I don't think we are going to change 13 dramatically in what our recommendations are. 14 ' The whole world, the rest of the world, in high 15 level waste is using health risk, individual risk based 16 standard, and we are the only nation that I know of that as-17 this sort of a standard and certainly we cooperate 18 extensivcly internationally and I am sure_that the Academy 19 is aware of that. 20 I suspect that the NRC will not suddenly jump on 21 the bandwagon and say, "Let's throw out 40 CFR 191." I find 22 it troubling. liigh level waste in my mind and in 23 terminology is transuranic waste and high Icvel waste in the 24 sense of the standard and I find it troubling if the United 25 States has two repositories with two totally different O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
272 1 standards, 2 Somehow I find that difficult to say that either 3 one of them is a generically applicable standard. But 4 anyway, it depends on what the National Academy does. I 5 think the thrust of your question is do you think that NRC 6 will come out and recommend a health risk based standard and ! 7 Jt is not clear but I don't think that we would suddenly 8 chango totally toward that direction. 9 MR. OKRENT: I will let it go for now. What I was 1 10 saying that you had urged EPA to review their own standard 1 in terms of whether its stringency was comparable to tha 11 12 stringency of other standards. 13 MR. BERNERO: Yes. 14 MR. OKRENT: And disposal even of chemical waste 15 or regulation of other kinds of things. 16 MR. BERNERO: Yes. We had urged them_to do that. 17 Unfortunately many people who look at the EPA standard think la of stringency as a binary thing, that the release based 19 standard is unduly stringent and a health risk based 20 sthndard is not stringent. 21 If you go to the fear that I mentioned earlier 22 that one-glass of water per day aquifer gets the 23 radionuclide release, then a health based standard is much 24 more stringent than a quantity or a release based standard. 25 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reponers 1612 - K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l l l 273 () 1 The trouble is tnat you loso sight when you just 2 speak of stringency, you lose sight of why is it acceptable. 3 The wholo idea is that society is trying to make a 4 decision. This position of wasto is acceptable and it is 5 acceptable because it doesn't poso an undue risk to some 6 tuture generation or because and it is the mechanics of ; 7 those becauses that we are struggling with here. 8 They are not clarified by bold stroken of this is 9 too ctringent, let's go that way. You can find strin v encies 10 and also with the health risk based standard such as the 11 Europeans generally havo tollowed or are following, you sit 12 down in academic pursuit with them and they have biological 13 or biosphere models three ice ages in the future and you 14 begin to wonder if everybody is sane when you are looking at 15 the Thames River Basin in the year 6852 or something like 16 that. 17 I think we havo to koop very sharp attention on 18 why is it acceptable or why is it not acceptable. What is 19 the right figure of merit. 20 (SLIDF.) 21 MR. BERNERo: Let me just say a few words on spent 22 fuel. You should be aware that a great deal of activity is-23 going on right now in dry storage of spent fuel and it is 24 high level waste. There is a lot of debate whether the new 25 Administration or whatever, what considerations will go inte: O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 2000G I _ _ . -
274 () I high level waste disposal, MRS, the Department of Energy, 2 what will happen and so forth. 3 It is important to know that in the United States 4 right now the generation of high level waste at power 5 reactors has aircady exceeded spent fuel storage capacity to 6 some reasonable degree and continues t? exceed it. 7 As a result we have developed a licensing system, 8 a technology and it is now being regularly applied to take 9 the overflow, so-to-speak, to take the dry storage option 10 and so we really have monitored retrievable storage, "mrs" 11 with lower case letters, no capitals, because with the 12 capital letters it is doe contral facility. 13 Here what we have is a little "mrs" at one and 14 then the other in the other plant. Now the key kings that 15 the licensing system, it ic 10 CFR 72, and the key aspects 16 of it are passive robust control, safe confinement, prevent 17 degradation by having benign conditions and where possible 18 be compatible with transport. 19 Now this has been a desire of the Commission going 20 back for a few years and it is the desire that you minimize 21 handling. Now I can show you analyses, ALARA analyses, of ( 22 the actual handling of spent fuel where redandant han* ling 23 exists. It really isn't a big dose. 24 The technology of handling high radiation 25 materials like spent fuel has improved greatly over the O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
275 m) ( 1 years with practic so that even now when steam generators 2 are replaced in a p essurized water reactor, we don't have 3 anywhere near the occupational exposures we had on the first 4 one. 5 It is just that innovative practices have improved 6 it. But nonetholoss, there is a desire for compatibility 7 and so when we look at storage we look for that as well. O But the first line of defense is passivity and benign 9 conditions. 10 MR. STEINDLER: One assumes that compatibility 11 kind of stops at transportation and you haven't because you 12 are unable to go further. 13 MR. BERNERO: Not entirely. The Virginia Electric
) 14 Power company which was the first company to get a license 15 for dry storage with casks and in their initial proposal 16 were trying to use a nodular cast-iron cask whose design 17 concept really was cradle to the graver store it, ship it 18 and bury it.
19 Once the fuel assembly goes into it, you never 20 open it again. We declined to certify it for shipment 21 because of its material and, in fact, Dr. Shewmon challenged 22 me on this just recently and he is interested in 23 reconsidering nodular cast-iron. 24 Here in this room he suggested to me that he 25 thinks that that is worthy of reconsideratior.. It is
/T V
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Ocud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
276 1 basically the margin of safety you get, the reproduceability 2 of the ratorial and the margin of safety you can count on in 3 its toughness or ductility as against alloy steels rather 4 than nodular cast-iron. 5 ( S LI DE . ] 6 MR. BERNERO: We have two ways to license. You 7 should be ? ware of that. We can Direct License Part 72, 8 that is Baltimore Gas and Electric Company right down the 9 road here came to us and said that we want a Part 72 license 10 for this dry storage system and " boom," we can do a dry 11 stcrage license. 12 But we also have a General License. Some of you 13 are quite familiar with the process of general licensing 14 which exists typically for smaller stuff, for gauges or gas 15 chromitographs or things like that, smaller sources where 16 the conditions of use can be suf ficiently confir.ed that 17 basically you don't need a radiation safety officer and 10 things like that and therefore, you can have radioactive 19 material under a General License. 20 In the case of spent fuel storage, it is rather 21 Interesting. It is the identity of the owner that 22 constitutes the qualification for General License. Yes, 23 Daar Public, you are entitled to have a general license to 24 store megacuries of radioactive high level waste provided 25 that you are an operating Part 50 reictor operator. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
277 () 1 What that means is, the qualifications that you 2 have physical security, you have all kinds of health physics 3 and maintenance plans and emergency plans, you have all the 4 bells and whistles and therefore, really what you can do is 5 under 50.59 authority, 10 CFR 50.59, you can just look at 6 your situation and say, "Well, if I but a bulge in the fence 7 over here and some yard lights here and change the guard 8 walks and so forth, I can put a pivalve storage system on 9 site or adjacent to the site or whatever." 10 So we have that genere) licensing and it is a very 11 important thing because of current events and getting dry 12 storage. 13 (SLIDE. ) 14 MR. BERNERot If you look at this photograph and 15 you don't have in your package. That handout I passed out 16 has a lot of information about applications and it has line 17 drawings but if you look at this photograph this is Surry. 18 This the Surry Nuclear Station. 19 This is the CASTOR V/21 cask. That was the very 20 first one that was certified and this is an MC-10 cask, a 21 new generation that they have been building and they are 22 deploying. 23 It is very interesting. There are 21 assemblies 24 in that cask. Each one of those has 23. This one has 24 as 25 I recall. Think about it for a moment. There aren't that O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C, 20006 (202) 293-3950
. - - - - - .- =
278 ( 1 many fuel assemblies that come out of a reactor in the 2 course of refueling. The entire inventory of spent fuel 3 off-loading in the United States is probably no more than, 4 in fact, it is less than 200 of these casks. 5 They are expensive casks. These things aren't 6 cheap. In volume or mass, they are very simple and they 7 don't take up a lot of space. It is just the concrete pad. 8 There is a lot of promotion.' There are many, many people 9 who oppose the big MRS, the capital letter MRS, or Yucca 10 Mountain who say, "What you ought to do is keep putting them 11 at the reactors because they aren't taking up that much 12 room, they are evidently safe, you could drive a truck 13 through there and you would wreck the truck and you wouldn't I 14 wreck the cask." They are very, very robust systems. 15 So there is a lot of sentiment being expressed 16 that no, you ought . keep those at reactors. 17 (SLIDE.) 18 MR. BERNERO: This is the Oconee Nuclear Station, 19 thw chree containment buildings portray that. The Calvert 20 Cliffs system is essentially identical. This is called a 21 NUlloM system. I guess you can see that. 22 It is basically a concrete bunker with horizontal 23 boreholes in it and I brought last week's Washington Post 24 that had an interesting article with a picture and I will 25 pass this around. It is a picture taken from inside one of () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
__ __.._m__ _ _ _ - . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ._ _ _. _ . ._. ___ . _ . _ . . - 279 1 the boreholes. 2 What is done if you look in the photo up here, 3 there is a trailer with a cradle on it, an eight-wheel 4 trailer with a cradle on it and the spent fuel is put into a 5 canister, a steel canister, seal-welded and in this 6 particular one, 24 PWP assemblies go into it and then it is 7 put into a shielding sleeve, a temporary shield, on this 8 cradle, brought out to the yard from the spent fuel pool and 9 then there is a plunger used to push it into this bunker and 10 then a shielding door goes down in front of it. 11 So you have this steel can full of fuel assemblies 12 seal-welded, benign atmosphere, and it is sitting there in 13 that bunker with convection cooling and the protection of 14 this massive bunker all around it. So that is the other 15 major system. 16 Now other systems and some of them are shown in 17 that handout carry out the theme. There is a third type 18 that really has only been used once and that is at Fort St. 19 Vrain. It is basically a dry spent fuel pool. It is a 20 modular storage vault where the fuel is hung just as if it 21 were in the spent fuel pool but because the decay heat has 22 dropped so much air convection cooling is appropriate and-if 23 you look at the Fort St. Vrain: there is a diagram of it in 24 the handout, if you look at t.he 1vct St. Vrain, it is just 2' sitting there passive cooling, it har been built and now O v ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
280 () I 2 has all of the fuel from Fort St. Vrain, all of the spent fuel in it. It is out at the site, cf course. 3 The other systems are casks or these bunkers and 4 now we even have dry casks that have concreto. So it is 5 kind of an amalgamation of this. Instead of taking a steel 6 can and putting it into a bunker, a fixed facility, you put 7 the steel can into a concrete cask and set it on end just 8 like the one in Surry there. 9 [ S LI DE . ] 10 MR. BERNERO: I have the stuff in the handout but 11 I just want to highlight that license applications received 12 and here is the Calvert Cliffs one and that license is P 13 before the c;mmission right now. Palisades is interesting. 14 They applied for a specific Part 72 license. It was 15 contested and they withdraw that application and instead 16 went for a general license with the VSC-24 cask. 17 That is a dry cask using concrete as the outer 18 part but that wasn't yet through the ru.amaking for general 19 licensing. So the rulemaking for general licensing of that 20 cask has become the critical path for Palisades to be able 21 to store spent fuel and basically the problem that they have 22 is their next refueling, they don't have room. 23 They do not have full core off-load capability and 24 they don't have enough room and therefore, they need that 25 rulemaking in order to procer;d and that rulemaking has some O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202).293-3950
l 281 very heated comments and the most heated comments about the 2 VSC-24 cask are from the other cask which is in the 3 rulemaking which is a steel cask. , 4 [ Laughter. ) i 5 MR. BERNERO: It is rather interesting. 6 (SLIDE.) , 7 MR. BERNERO: We have a lot of applications out 8 there but let me just go to the spent fuel situation. We 9 are developing a document that you'may be interested in. We 10 are trying to develop a document that will list for ready 11 access where is the spent fuel that is in dry storage today. , 12 DOE puts out an annual report that says how much : 13 is in which pool but we are trying to develop a supplement , 14 that could marry with that and, for instance, here is just a 15 little bit of a map of what is out there right now. H.B. 16 Robinson has 56 assemblies; Oconee, 96; Surry, 252; Fort 17 Saint Vrain, 1482-and remember these are very small. 'ihey 18 are HG gas reactor fuel assemblies. 19 How we are developing a-document-that will~be r 20 readily available for-routine interest and also for 21 emergency' response. If a major accident or difficulty 22 occurs at a site,.a transportation accident or something, we 23 would want to have-some immediate information available in a 24 _our emergency. response to say, "Yes, we ... w what that is in. 25 the yard and it is this kind of spent fuel and so.forth." O ! ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court. Reporters
- 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950: ._c ,.u. . _ _ _ . _ _ . , , _ .,_ _._ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ . _ . .
282 () 1 So we are developing that and that will be made 2 widely available here. 3 (SLIDE.] 4 MR. DERNERO: Now let's get to the crpital letter 5 "MRS." The DOE program using the Nuclear Waste Negotiator 6 as the front person on it, you know the Nuclear Waste 7 Negotiator was appointed by the Congress for this purpose , 8 and they have been proceeding with their Phase I grants and 9 they have six active applicants here and from time to time 10 our staff meets with them. 11 The various candidate hosts for an MRS want to ask 32 questions about what is an MRS, what does it look like, how 13 would it be licensed, how could we be sure it is safe and 14 things like that. So we have a Memorandum of Understanding 15 with the Negotiator to provide thht kind of information and 16 we go to their site or they come to Washington and we meet 17 with them. 18 The National Energy Policy Act extended the 19 Negotiator's term by two years and this is a very active 20 work. Most of sites as you can see are in the west, the 21 middle west a a west. 22 ( SLIDE. ) 23 MR. BERNERO: We are also into the Phase II grant 24 now with ona active applicant, the Mescalero Apache Tribe in 25 central New Mexico, slightly south of the middle point. For !() l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Coud Repoders l 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20C06 (202) 293-3950
l 283 1 those of you who go to the Rio Doso resort a ed ski or 2 something like that, that de part of their reservation. 3 That is going on. 4 { SLIDE.) 5 MR. BERNERO: The siting milestunes that DOE is 6 holding right now are host identification, December 1992 and 7 these other acts to follow. This is where they would get a 8 negotiated agreement, then go on to the congress and get the 9 whole thing to go operational. 10 The key daces are that they want to have the MRS 11 oporational by 1998, all the publicity about DOE will start 12 taking title to the rent fuel. That is the objective date 13 for them. 14 I think it is quite possible that next month will 15 not show a host. I think the extension of two years was 16 intended to take a little more time for that and whether a 17 host or not comes up but the important thing I wanted you to 18 see here is at this time we are already fairly pinched in 19 the time it takes to get to a 1998 taking of title. It is 20 almost like a one-for-one delay from here on. C 21 MR. STEINDLER: A couple of questions. Did the 22 Act make any comments about the preemption of the Indian 23 tribes willingness to accept fuel by states surrounding 24 that, et cetera, et cetera? 25 MR. BERNERO: No. The Act, at least in my n U ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Lid. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20000 (202) 293-3950
284 m ( ) 1 understanding, there is nothing in there on that. T think v 2 that is an open question. For instance, i f the M .n l 'ro 3 Apache in New Mexico are willing to take the MR3 but the 4 State of New Mexico objects, we$will go back to the 19th 5 Century, I think, and reargue the sovereign nation issue. 6 MR. STEINDLER: The other point that I would raise 7 is, is there an implication in that last slide that 8 construction cari be done bchween 9/96 and 1/987 9 MR. BERNERO: Oh, yes. In much of the discussion 10 of the MRS, DOE recognizes that th,ere is no extent a very 11 substantial technology for dry storage and the cost of it 12 has come down arough competition at reactor sites and the l 13 DOE, in fact, supported the beginning of that program i (~% l (_) 14 extensively. 15 They could very quickly become functional as an 16 MRS for storage purposes with what people call a parking lot 17 MRS by just simply duplicating what the dry storage does and 18 that can be done very quickly with existing technology. l 19 MR. STEINDLER: DOE had a program some years ago l 20 called SURF in which the details of that kind of an 21 operation at the Hanford Reservation I think had gone almost 22 to Title I. 23 MR. BERNERO: I remember it, yes. 24 MR. STEINDLER: You recall that as far as the j 25 naked eye could see, you see monoliths with jack rabbits in 1 r\ V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COun RepOners 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 1
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()- 1 and out. If that is the current concept, then I think that 2 18-month or 15-month period may be do-able but if they are 3 talking about a significant single structure, I would doubt 4 it. 5 MR. BEkst 0: No. They heve talked about a phased 6 MRS where you would start with the parking lot phase in 7 order to start bringing the fuel in and in the meanwhile be 8 proceeding with the part of the MRS that would manipulate 9 the fuel, disassemble it, the hot cell sort of stuff. 10 MR. POMEROY: Bob, just another question. On that 11 schedule I think there is an allowance of a one-year time 12 interval between the time an application is received, is 13 that correct, and the time of licensing? Is that the 9/95 OV 14 to 9/967 15 MR. BERNERO: Yes. We have here the environmental 16 impact statement in 1995 and'they issue the license a year 17 later. - 18 MR. POMEROY: Is that realistic from your 19 standpoint, Bob? That is ry only question. 20 MR. BERNERO: Yes. We think it is. It is tight 31 but because the environmental impact statement for the site 22 is golag to control the thing. The safoty of the technology 23 is cut and dry. That is very, very simple. It is the whole 24 siting issue. 25 As I say, I think that schedule is such that any O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud Repoders 1 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
286 () 1 delay in this first thing of host identification is a
-2 one-for-one delay in the whole thing. I don't think that 3 there is a whole lot of space.
4 MR. MOELLER: A couple of additional questions. 5 In terms of the review of the MRS and the siting of the MRS 6 and so forth, I assume that your office would interact with 7 this committee and we would bounce things back and forth. 8 What about uranium enrichment? Where do you seo 9 this committee's role there? 10 MR. BERNERO: I think uranium enrichment is going 11 to be a peculiar one. The ACRS, of course, generally 12 indicates that if it is a facility they are interested, that 13 the Advisory Committee is interested. They look at fuel 14 cycle facilities in general and so forth. 15 The uranium enrichment enterprise and the 16 certification process, I think will be handled as a facility 17 and I have already talked to the Advisory Committee on 18 Reactor Safeguards about it, but it entails -- no pun 19 intended -- some real waste issues, the depleted tails and 20 especially the concept that the U.S. will one way or 21 another, I think, get into a wholly new disposal program, l 22 something that'doesn't exist today. I think this-Committee, 23 I would expect to follow that with this Committee 24 extensively. 25 MR. STEINDLER: I just want to make a comment that O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
287 1 I have some difficulty with the criteria that says 2 facilities are outside of the purview of this committee. 3 MR. BERNERO: I would suggest, sir, that you take 4 that up with Mr. Fraley because I have been buffeted by this 5 for some years. 6 MR. STEINDLER: We ought to straighten Ray out on 7 that one. There is, I think, a reasonable amount of insight 8 into uranium enrichment processes and the nuances of those 9 in this committee that you might want to take advantage of. 10 MR. MOELLER: One other question. You presented, 11 of course, the Energy Policy Act and those portions of it 12 that are of tremendous importance to this Committee and to 13 the NRC and so forth and you present it as something that 14 has come down upon us from on high. 15 MR. BERNERO: Yes. 16 MR. MOELLER: I am sure that is true. 17 MR. BERNERO: As laws do. 18 MR. MOELLER: Yes. Was the NRC involved in the 19 drafting of any of that legislation or EPA or DOE and so 20 forth? 21 MR. BERNERO: With respect to the uranium 22 enrichment portions, we were indeed. We commented 23 extensively on it and, in fact, we are the culprits that 24 came up with the concept of certification. 25 MR. MOELLER: All right. ,Q V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
288 () 1 MR. BERNERO: What we were really trying to do is 2 tell the Congress don't have us license old plants and 3 whatever you do, don't have us committed to prepare 4 environmental impact statements. 5 _Those plants are 38 years old or so and the 6 Congress didn't listen to us totally. They decided they 7 wanted NRC jurisdiction and we had said in one of tha 8 letters at most we should do no more than some form of 9 certification of their operational safety and safeguards. 10 That is how we got it. 11 The NRC was not involved with the high level waste 12 portion of it or with the Uranium Revitalization and things 13 like that. As I say, that came out in this autumn of this 14 year end bang, there it was. 15 MR. MOELLER: Thank you. Are there other 16 questions or comments? 17 [No response.] 18 MR. MOELLER: Thank you very much. 19 MR. BERNERO: Thank you for your attention. 20 MR. MOELLER: It is always a pleasure to hear you 21 and you always come with stimuldtir.g messages. 22 MR. HOLSTEIN: Mr. Chairman, my name is Elgie 23 Holstein and I represent the Nye County, Nevada Board of 24 Commissioners. I was wondering if I could just take a 25 couple of minutes to address the changes that were made in O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coun Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950 -
289 () 1 Section 801. 2 MR. MOELLER: All right. 'Please go right ahead. 3 MR. HOLSTEIN: I know the Committee met recently 4 in Los Vegas and you had a chance to hear from our program 5 manager out there briefly about the changes that were made 6 but I think now that Bob Bernero has had a chance to review 7 in some detail and put the language actually before you, I 8 would like to bring into somewhat sharper focus Dr. 9 Steindler's question which is really to what extent does 10 this represent in just these few brief pages some major 11 changes in law and in policy. 12 I think the answer to that question lies in two 13 components. First is the process and second are the actual 14 regulatory changes themselves. Under the category of the 15 process, as is noted in Congressman Oxley's letter which is 16 included in the General Counsel's handout, I believe on page 17 nine or ten, the bill does create a rebuttable presumption. 18 In other words, in instructing the National 19 Academy of Sciences to take a look at this issue of the 20 health standard, it is not an even-handed study. The 21 Academy is not charged with simply sitting down and making a 22 recommendation after studying all of the relevant 23 information eitner to EPA or the NRC or to the Congress 24 which will then consider its views. 25 Rather, I think the emphasis is slightly O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D. C. 20006 I (202) 293-3950
290 ( 1 different. That is, there is a bias in favor of one 2 approach over the other. I think to the extent that the EPA 3 is to serve and the language is specific about this, as a 4 contractor to the Environmental Protection Agency, you have 5 a rather bizarre situation under which a contractor to a 6 federal agency is guided by Congress in the direction of one 7 particular alternative, not necessary to the exclusion of 8 the other alternatives but with certainly greater direction 9 in one area. 10 It comes up with a recommendation and then the EPA 11 barring some major difficulty must accept the findings of 12 that contractor to the greatest extent possible. The 13 Academy, you will discover there in that paragraph in the O U, 14 language that describes the responsibility of the Academy 15 study, is supposed to adopt the individual dose approach 16 provided it can be found to be a reasonable standard for the 17 protection of health and safety. 18 Thirdly, under the process issue it is just 19 something again that Mr. Niedzielski-Eichner, our program 20 manager, mentioned at your Los Vegas meeting is we believe 21 that because of this rather strange arrangement under which 22 the Academy will serve as a contractor to EPA, we think the 23 Academy should be encouraged and we have written them a 24 letter to this effect, to follow the requirements of the 25 Advisory Committee Act which among other things requires O V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
291
-1 input from a wide variety of sources including the public 2 and equally important, that the Academy's board or.whatever 3 unit of the Academy actually does this work be composed of 4 people with a variety of different points of view.
5 These are requirements under the long-standing 6 Advisory Committee Act even though the statute itself here, 7 Section 801, does not specifically reference the 8 responsibilities of the Academy under that Act. 9 So under the process again, we have the rebuttable 10 presumption approach. We have the NAS serving as a 11 contractor to EPA. They get EPA basically required to the 12 greatest extent possible to adopt the findings of the 13 Academy. 14 Finally, the second category, the regulatory 15 issues. We are very concerned, leaving aside completely the 16 question of which approach to this health standard you 17 prefer, we are very concerned about what Bob Bernero 18 described as the dual approach taken here under which we 19 would now have Congress establishing one standard, the 20 collective dose approach or the collective approach for the
- 21 WIPP facility and a completely different standard for the 22 repository program.
23 What that raises in our minds and here Dr. I 24 Steindler's question, I think is relevant, is whether the 25 whole concept of a quote, " generally applicable standard," l O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
292 1 unquote, for the protection of public health and,pqfety is 2 relevant anymore and if not, I think we do have a major 3 change in public policy in the offing. 4 Second, I think we have to pay particular 5 attention and again Bob reterenced this because of time 6 constraints just in passing the possibility that the 7 emphasis on the long term monitoring raises the possibility. 8 for that component to deal not only with the question of 9 human intrusion but with remedia61on. 10 I think Bob, somewhat in jest, but it makes the point nevertheless, talked about grabbing a bucket of grout 12 to plug a leak that might develop in the repository. So we 13 are very concerned in the long term about what that would g-g ' 17 ;; mean if you take the concept of indefinite monitoring and A 15 ccmbine it with the emphasis that Section 801 places on L 16 engineered barriers, what are the imp 1ications for that in 17 terms not just of human intrusion but as is noted very, very - 38 briefly in the General Counsel's memorandum on page 12. 19 What are the implications for performance 20 assessment. What are the implications for the functioning 21 of the various repository systems? In other words, to what 22 extent does this language take us far beyond the simple 23 question of meeting the human intrusion requirements and 24 generate a new emphasis on engineered barriers which in 25 combination with the indefinite monitoring raises the 9 ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Weshington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
1 293 ( 1 possibility of a whole new approach to the performance 2 assessment. 3 I think it is this latter issue that is going to 4 come back to haunt all of those of you who are trying and 5 have been trying so diligently to shape a reasoned approach 6 to the regulation of this facility. 7 I think again there are some real questions here 8 of public policy and public policy change that are raised by 9 this very brief language. The statement of managers which 10 unfortunately is not included here but you should take a 11 look at it as well that accompanied the conference committee 12 report is murky and frankly, if you look at the Floor 13 statements and we would be happy to provide them to you made 14 by the various members of the Conference Committee, you have 15 further confusion about just what is required here. 16 You will hear the Department of Energy and you 17 will hear Congressional sponsors argue vehemently that this 18 language does not create any bias in favor of-the individual 19 dose approach; that, in fact, the Academy is to conduct and 20 is free to conduct an even-handed objective review of both 21 alternatives. 22 But we don't read the actual language that way and 23 we are fairly certain that the Department of Energy and 24 certain Congressional sponsors will insist upon a literal 25 reading that does give much greater emphasis to the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. -C. 20006 (202). 293-3950
294 1 individual dose approach. 2 We think that there is a great deal of confusion 3 about exactly what was intended here but we are concerned 4 t*.at a plain reading of the statute suggests some of these 5 concerns that I have outlined. Thank you for the time. 6 MR. MOELLER: Thank you. That was a well thought 7 out statement. Let me comment also that when we were in Las 8 Vegas at our recent meeting, we did interact with the 9 representatives from Nye County and I felt they did a very 10 good job in terms of their objectivity and their review of 11 the issues and so forth. 12 Your comments also relate to mine where I was 13 saying that these things come down to us from on high and I b d 14 wondered who on high was. So we share those questions. 15 Thank you very much. With that, we will declare a 15-minute 16 break. 17 (Brief recess.) 18 MR. MOELLER: The meeting will resume and we will 19 take up the last item on the morn.ing's scher*ule which is a 20 discussion of the National Profile on Mixed Waste, a 21 briefing on that and I will call upon Mike Weber to begin. 2? Mike, it is a pleasure to have you. 23 MR. WEBER: It is a pleasure to be here. I 24 welcome you and members of the Committee. What we would 25 like to do is briefly give you an overview of the background O(3 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters i 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
295 () 1 of the National Profile this morning and the summary of the 2 results. 3 We do have a NUREG that is in preparation and 4 should be out shortly and then that will be released to the 5 public and we will provide a comprehensive summary of the 6 results. 7 I believe you already received the task reports as 8 well as the Commission paper that we transmitted earlier 9 this year to the Commission on the profile. I would like to 10 turn it over to Nick Orlando. Nick is our mixed waste 11 project manager and without further ado, I give you Nick. 12 MR. ORLANDO: Thank you, Mike. First of all, I 13 would like to introduce two additional people, Dr. Jerry 14 Klein and Susan Jones. Dr. Klein was the principal 15 investigator at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on the 16 profile development and Susan Jones is my counterpart at EPA 17 for the management of the national profile development. I, 18 would also like to thank the ACNW for inviting me to present 19 this briefing today. 20 [ SLIDE.) 21 MR. ORLANDO: The way I would like to proceed is 22 to give a background of the National Profile and then get-23 into the development of the profile outlining the 24 components, how we selecting the survey frame and survey 26 sample and then weighted the survey sample and then get into ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 , (202) 293-3950
296 () 1 the results of the profile talking about the mixed waste 2 generated in 1990, the amount of waste in storage as of the 3 end of 1990 and the mixed waste treatability report. 4 ( S LIDE . ) 5 MR. ORLANDO: Before I discuss the actual profile, 6 I thought it would be good to go over the definition of 7 mixed waste because that is important to what we asked the 8 participants in the survey. 9 Low level mixed waste is waste that satisfies the 10 definition of low level radioactive waste in the Low Level 11 Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act and is listed in 40 12 CFR 161 subpart D or exhibits one of the characteristics in 13 40 CFR 261 Subpart C. 14 This definition was developed by NRC and EPA and 15 published as a draft guidance document in 1987 and was 16 reaffirmed in 1989 in a final guidance document. 17 (SLIDE.] 18 MR. ORIANDO: The recently enacted Federal 19 Facilities Compliance Act defined mixed waste as waste that 20 contains both hazardous waste and source, special nuclear or 21 by-product material subject to the Atomic Energy Act of 22 1954. This obviously is a broader definition that that 23 developed by NRC and EPA and could include high level waste 24 or transuranic waste. 25 (SLIDE.) 1] ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. . Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950 l . .
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) 1 MR. ORLANDO: Finally, state definitions of mixed 2 waste may vary because state definitions of hazardous waste 3 may include PCBs or other non-federal RCRA materials. For 4 instance, 13 states currently list PCBs a a hazardous waste 5 and the State of Maryland does not make a differentiation 6 between radioactive and hazardous waste.
, 7 They have controlled hazardous substances of which 8 both hazardous waste and radioactive waste are one in the 9 same or are included. The reason I bring that up is that 10 the definition that we used in the survey was the federal 11 definition, the first one that I went over. 12 However, we did ask that survey participants 13 include any mixed waste that would be mixed waste because of 14 varying state definitions and we also requested that they 15 include used oil, 16 When we were developing the survey questionnaire, 17 EPA was in the process of considering whether to list used 18 oil as a hazardous waste. You are probably aware that a few 19 months ago, EPA decided'not to list used oil as a hazardous 20 waste. 21 However, if used oil contained a listed hazardous 22 waste under subpart D or exhibited one of the 23 characteristics under subpart C of 40 CFR 261 it would be 24 concidered a hazardous war.te and if it was contaminated it 25 would be mixed waste. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
298 1 [ SLIDE.] 2 MR. ORIANDO: Real quickly now, the profile was 3 developed au the request of the Host States Technical 4 Coordinating Committee or TCC. TCC requcsted that NRC and 5 EPA develop the profile in a letter to the agencies back in 6 May of 1990. 7 The profile is being developed for NRC and EPA by 8 the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It is based on a review C2 9 of existing survey data by compacts and states and our own 10 survey of over 1300 commercially licensed nuclear facilities 11 or I should say, licensed commercial nuclear facilities, not 12 commercially licensed. That would include both NRC and 13 Agreement State licensees. 14 As Mike said, we will be publishing the results as 15 a NUREG document. We anticipate the results will be used by 16 states, compacts, private developers and federal agencies to 17 develop treatment and disposal capacity for their - 18 commercially generated mixed waste. 19 We also expect that the profile will be used tc 20 support DOE's consideration of whether to accept 21 commercially generated mixed waste for treatment and 22 disposal. 23 [ SLIDE. ] 24 MR. ORLANDO: The project was initiated in 25 September of 1990. As I said earlier, management and 9 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
299 () 1 support has been from NRC and EPA. However, wc have had 2 input from the Department of Energy, states and the low 3 level radioactive waste forum. 4 For ease of management we divided the profile 5 development into three phases. Phase I consisted cf a 6 review and evaluation of existing data on mixed waste from 7 previous state and compact surveys. 8 In about March of 1991, ORNL reported that while 9 they felt that there was much useful existing information 10 available, the dif fering survey objectives and methods as 11 well as the differing timeframes argued against sole use of 12 the existing data (o develop the national profile. NRC and 13 EPA agreed with Oak Ridge so we moved into Phase II. O b 14 [ SLIDE.] 15 MR. ORLANDO: Phase II consisted of a survey of 16 potential mixed waste generators. Prior to finalizing the 17 survey form, it was pre-tested on 20 licensees belonging to 18 the ACURI or Appalachian Compact Users of Radioactive 19 Isotopes, that is the Appalachian Compact Users Group. 20 As part of the pre-test, ORNL, Jerry Klein and 21 some of the other principal scientists, also visited about 22 half of the pre-test sites to validate the data and to get 23 some input from the respondents on the survey form. 24 We did do a little bit of modification tc the 25 form. Over 1300-survey forms were sent to potential mixed ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
300 1 waste generators in November of 1991. By the end of 2 December 1991, we had received 190 forms back. At that time 3 we started a series of follow-up phone calls to facilities 4 that had not yet returned their form. 5 Essentially these calls were made to encourage 6 participation,'to help Walk the potential participants 7 through the survey form or if needed to gather the 8 information over the phone. 9 The target response rate for the full survey was 10 75 percent. The actual response resolution rate we achieved 11 was 77 percent. This was due in large part to the support 12 that was offered by the different compacts, the different 13 user groups. ACURI got on board very early on in the survey 14 and encouraged their members to participate. 15 The Edison Electric Institute, their executive 16 committee, was very enthusiastic about the survey. They got 17 on board. In fact, we had a 97 percent response rate from 18 the nuclear utilities which we thought was phenomenal. 19 Neither can'I stress the importance of the ORNL 20 team in developing or getting people to respond to the 21 survey. Susan and I went down in December of 1991 and 22 talked to the data collection specialists who were actually 23 environmental law students from the University of Tennessee, 24 is that right, it is either that or Tennessee State. 25 MR. KLEIN: Univers1-y of Tennessee. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, C. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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) 1 MR. ORLANDO: We went ovi what mixed waste was, 2 what RCRA was, the AEA, what they could and what they 3 couldn't do, what they could say and what they couldn't say.
4 That got very, very enthusiastic and we had a real good 5 tir.e doing it and they appeared to have had a real good time 6 getting involved in some actual data collection before they 7 went out and became lawyers. 8 MR. MOELLER: Are there assurances that the 23 9 percent that did not respond do not include the larger
'O generators of mixed waste?
11 MR. ORLANDO: One of the things that we did and I 12 am going to turn the answer to that over to Jerry and I was 13 going to go over this a little bit latar on, but NRC and EPA 14 do not know who responded to the survey, do not know names. 15 We tried to provide as much anonyalty-as possible. 16 We do have a mechanism in the event that a health and safety 17 matter arises that requires that we get the information but 18 I don't know how responded. 19 MR. HINZE: Along that line we had a presentation 20 by the NIH people a year or 18 months ago on mixed waste and 21 what we came away from in that presentation was that they 22 had a huge amount of mixed waste and any response which 23 would not include them would certainly or could be biases, 24 let me just put it that way. 25 MR. KLEIN: I am Jerry Klein from Oak Ridge. I O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
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!'g O 1 wouldn't like to say whether NIH was or was riot in the 2 survey. We went 'o some lengths trying to make sure that at 3 least the major producers as identified in various sources, 4 meaning identified in some document somewhere through 5 receipt at one of the burial grounds or something were 6 included in the survey.
7 MR. ORLANDO: I will be going over how we 8 determined who the survey frame and survey sample and that, 9 I think, will alleviate your fears, I hope. 10 MR. KLEIN: There are definitely a few, not the 11 largest ones, but a few larger individual facilities that 12 did not return it for one reason or another either because 13 they didn't want to return it or thought that it would
\ 14 compromise their position.
15 However, what we thought was the largest ones in b 16 the country definitely did provide us with the information 17 both commercial and in the nuclear reactor frame, both sides - 18 did provide information. 19 MR. WEDER: If I could add, one of the real 20 concerns early on in developing the questionnaire and the 21 survey was enforcement or the use information that we would 22 collect through the voluntary survey for enforcement 23 purposes. 24 That is why the agencies declined to get the names 25 of the people who responded to the survey so that the t ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.V'., Suite 300 Washington, J. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
303 7 1 infor4ation could not be used against the liccnsees or the 2 permittees. Of course, as Nick pointed out if there was a 3 health and rafety problem identified, then Oak Ridge would 4 have shared that information with us but so far they haven't 5 done so. 6 MR. KLEIN: Just an anecdotal piece of 7 information, one large state university system formally 8 declined to participate. However, several individual 9 facilities within it said, "We don't care what the formal 10 position is, we think it is important enough so as an 11 individual facility, we will give you the information that 12 you are requesting." It was kind of interesting. 13 MR. ORLANDO: The survey was designed to provide v 14 estimates that were accurate to within a factor of two and 15 with 95 percent confidence intervals. This applied to both 16 the 1990 generation rate and the amount of waste in storage 17 as of the end of 1990. - 18 MR. STEINDLER: How did you determine accuracy? 19 MR. ORLANDO: Excuse me. 20 MR. STEINDLER: How did you determine accuracy? 21 MR. ORLANDO: By the way that the frame was 22 developed. Jerry, I am going to direct that ne to you, I 23 think. The way we determined the number of facilities that 24 we would send questionnaires to, you mean accuracy of the 25 information that was given to us from the respondents? D (a ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, - N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
304 1 MR. STEINDLER: Well, that is what that last 2 bullet means. 3 MR. ORLANDO: That is something that we grappled 4 with for a very long period of time. We hope through the 5 encouragement that we got from the ACURI, the EEI, the 6 different groups that we have spoken to on this plus the 7 promise of as much anonymity as possible we got correct 8 data. 9 MR. STEINDLER: What do you mean by accuracy on 10 that s?.ide that you have up there? 11 MR. ORLANDO: That is that the numbers that we 12 would report would be accurate, would be correct within a 13 factor of two to the true volumes of mixed waste that was 14 generated.
-15 MR. STEINDLER: Second question. Did you find any 16 significant differences between your Phase I results and 17 your Phase II results? You indicated that Phase I was 18 likely to be inadequate and therefore, you moved to Phase 19 II. d this turn out to be the case?
20 MR. ORLANDO: What we found in Phase I was that 21 the existing data was and I don't off the top of my head 22 have the volume although actually the amount of mixed waste 23 that we determined was generated in Phase II was more than 24 what we thought at the end of Phase I. 25 MR. STEINDLER: Significantly? ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud _ Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
305 () 1 MR. ORLANDO: About twice to three times as much. 2 MR. STEINDLER: You have an accuracy factor of two 3 up there? 4 MR. ORLANDO: Yes, sir. Do you want to say 5 anything, Jerry? 6 MR. KLEIN: Yes. There were some discrepancies 7 though in the original survey. Like Nick just pointed out 8 we discovered about a factor of two more mixed waste in our 9 survey versus previous ones. However, there were a number 10 of groups within the country that had no previous ones and 11 so they weren't included in the number, 12 There were also some major parcels or pieces of 13 streams of mixed waste that a number of previous surveys did 14 not include such as oil, such as liquid scintillation 15 materials that the surveys may not have considered mixed 16 waste at that time. 17 So we think that although the raw numbers show 18 something like a factor of two, it is probably more like we 19 discovered maybe 30 to 40 percent more than the original 20 surveys. 21 MR. WEBER: The populations of mixed waste streams l 22 also changed over the timeframe that the original 1 23 information was collected. One big change at least that 24 af fected some of the survey results was the promulgation of 25 the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure as a final O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 , (202) 293-3950
l 306 1 regulation. 2 of course, depending on how that is implemented 3 could have large impacts on what would be considered mixed 4 waste. 5 MR. HINZE: Wouldn't the possible compaction of 6 the wastes also change the volumes? 7 MR. ORLANDO: What happens is most of the data 8 that we have on existing or most of the data that we have on 9 generation of radioactive material is really more 10 information on disposal and the IDB, the integrated data 11 base, that Oak Ridge develops every year discusses disposal 12 of radioactive waste because they get the information from 13 the manifests. s 14 I have a comparison slide a little bit later on 15 where I will talk about mixed waste compared to the 16 generation rate of radioactive waste and get into the 17 discusF ion about compaction and what not. - 18 MR. HINZE: All right. 19 (SLIDE.] 20 MR. ORLANDO: Phase III which is what we are in 21 now in the survey consists of compiling the data and 22 projecting the data to the national scope. It also includes 23 developing the report on the treatability for the waste 24 streams identified in the profile and publishing it as a 25 NUREG document. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters i 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
307 1 [ SLIDE.) 2 MR. ORLANDO: . The first task that 4 re undertook in 3 the development of the survey was to select the -survey frame 4 and the survey frame was a list of facilities-that were-5 deemed suitable for investigation in the study because they 6 were felt to have a high po antial for mixed waste-
' generation.
8 The survey frame had four-components. The first 9 component was what we called the ORNL list. This-list 10 consisted cf all nuclear reactor facilities and the 11 facilities with the highest probability to generate mixed 12 waste. These typically were facilities that had been 13 reported as mixed waste-generators on previous state or-
~
14 compact surveys and governor certifications. 15- The second. component were all facilities that 16 shipped radioactive material to one of the three commercial 17 disposal sites in 1990 that were not included on the ORNL 18 list. : 19 The~ third component was what we called ~the NRC-20 list and this was- a list of Lpotential- mixed waste generators p 21 with NRC licensees who had NRC Materials Licensing Program 22- codes that-indicated that they had a-high probability to 23 . generate mixed waste.
-24 The-fourth component was'the NRC list that also' 25 had EPA-RCRA permits. TheLtotal number of facilities-that L
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) 1 were selected for the frame was 2,936, 2 MR. MOELLER: Did you have any group that heard 3 about the survey and volunteered who had not been mailed the 4 questionnaire?
5 MR. ORLANDO: Jerry did come up with some good 6 ones here. 7 MR. KLEIN: There are a few facilities that did 8 call us up and say that we have heard about it and we would 9 like to receive one. 10 MR. ORLANDO: One of the things that we did to 11 sort of prep the regulated community for the survey was in 12 August, I think, of 1991 we had a joint letter go out over 13 Mr. Bernero's signature and Sylvia Lowrance who is the 14 Office of Solid Waste director at the Environmental 15 Protection Agency. 16 It went to all NRC licensees. We also sent ccpies 17 of the letter to the Agreement States and requested that 18 they send it out to their licensees. So we had as much 19 press before the fact as possible. 20 MR. WEBER: I believe the specific answer to your 21 question though is there were no grotips that were omitted. 22 There were individual licensees that identified themselves 23 as wanting to participate in the survey. l l 24 (SLIDE.] 25 MR. ORLANDO: The next task we had was to relect A U ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Coud Reponers l 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l l 309 () 1 2 the survey sample and the survey sample consisted of the facilities that were selected to be sent the survey 3 questionnaires. 4 The way we developed the sample was potential 5 generators of mixed waste were grouped into one of 17 6 substrata. That would be depending on which list it 7 appeared and whether it was an industrial, medical, academic 8 or NRC licensed government facility, based on the list, 9 there were four lists and you are going to say, " Wait a 10 minute, that is four times four and that is 16." Remember 11 that all nuclear power reactors were sent survey forms so 12 that would Pa the 17th substrata. 13 For each of the substrata and independently of the 14 other strata, a random sample of facilities was selected. 15 For nine of the substrata all of the facilities in that 16 substrata were selected because the numbers were so close 17 that we felt that we might just as well send everybody a - 18 form. A total of 1323 NRC and Agreement State licensees 19 were chosen including all nuclear power reactors. 20 [ SLIDE.] 21 MR. ORLANDO: The next task that we had to do was 22 to develop the weighting. The sampling weight for an 23 individual respondent was based on the substratum on which 24 it was placed and was computed by dividing the estimated 25 number of facilities in the substrata by the number of ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
310 () 1 2 respondents in thas stratum including the out of work facilities. i 3 As an example, we had 165 facilities in the 4, academic shippers substratum and that is what would have 5 been our (A) (2) substrata and out of that we ended up with 6 111 respondents with no facilities out of business. We 7 divide 165 by 111 and you end up with a weighing factor of 8 about 1.5. The sampling weights ranged from 1.03 to 31.5. 9 MR. WEBER: We did incidentally take credit for 10 facilities that were no longer in business in calculating 11 those weighting factors if they either sent back the fo; or 12 called us up and said, "I am not in that business any 13 longer," that was added in the denominator to calculate the 14 weighting factors. 15 MR. ORLANDO: As I said earlief, in all 2,936 16 facilities were included in the frame and 1,323 facilities 17 were included in the survey sample including all nuclear 18 power reactors. 19 The survey questionnaire was mailed out on 20 November 1, 1991 and by the end of April, 1992, 995 21 questionnaires had been returned to Oak Ridge. At that time 22 it was determined that an additional 21 facilities in the 23 sample population were no longer in business which brought 24 the response rate resolution rate to about 77 p,rcent. 25 [ SLIDE.] ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
i 311 1 HR. ORIANDO: In your briefing packets right now, 2 I believe v a will see two slides that are not going to go 3 up here. One is just sort of a glossary of the different 4 waste categories that I will be talking about later and I 5 will explain what those are as i go *hrough it. 6 The second page is sort of a national profile 7 moults at a glance. I thought you might be able to use 8 that. 9 Hased on the results of the survey, approx 1:nately 10 140,000 cubic feet of mixed waste was generated in 1990. 11 The industrial category produced the largest amount of mixed 12 was*a at about 50,000 cubic feet. The nuclear utilities 13 ge sted the least at about 14,000 cubic feet. The 14 acadtmic category produced about 29,000 cubic feet. The 15 government catege-8, I want to emphasize, are NRC licensed 16 government facilition. That nLJessarily would not include 17 the Department of Energy or DOD sites. The medical category 18 produced about 27,000 cubic foot. 19 Directing your attention to this pie, liquid 20 scintillation fluids comprised the largest portion of mixed 21 waste generated in 1990 at about 71 percent. The organics 22 such as chlorinated fluorocarbons, corrosives and oil made 23 up 1: percent; toxic metalu such as lead, cadmium, mercury 24 and chromium made up about three percent and the other mixed 25 waste made up about eight percent. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
I 312 1 The other category was the generally complex wasta 2 stream containing multiple components that didn't really 3 lend itself to easy delineation as a single stream. 4 MR. WEBER: Just a minor amplification. I believe 5 that the government licensed facilitles included DOD sites 6 other than defense related sites. 7 MR. ORLANDO: Yes. 8 MR. WEBER: Nuclear defense related sites. So 9 that would be, for example, if someone was storing depleted 10 uranium munitions, they may have been included in the sample 11 framo. 12 MR. ORLANDO: Aluo, it would have included Army 13 hospitals and those types of facilities. What I wanted to 14 stress is that we are not talking the Defense complex. 15 MR. STEINDLER: The time is 19917 16 MR. ORLANDO: Yes, sir. The results are for 1990. 17 The timeframe for developing and for doing the survey was 18 1991. 19 MR. STEINDLER: The results are for calendar 1990? 20 MR. ORLANDO: Yes, sir. Next slide, please? 21 (SLIDE.] 22 MR. ORLANDO: The predominant wastes seen in the 23 nuclear utilities was waste oil at about 35 percent followed 24 by chlorinated fluorocarbons at 27 percent. The other 25 category at 17 percent; metals at about 10 percentand the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006
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313 1 other organics category at about eight percent. 2 Interestingly enough, the nuclear utilities only 3 generated at about 11 cubic feet of liquid scintillation 4 fluid in 1990. You ulll notice and this will be true for 5 all of the subsequent slides, there is a miscellaneous 6 slice. 7 I had to put that on there because liarvard 8 Graphics won't let you walN sway unless you have 100 percent 9 of a ple and in this case miscellaneous included liquid 10 scintillation fluid, chlorinated organics and corrosives. I 11 will tell you what the miscellaneous for each of the 12 different pies are. 13 MR. MOELLER: Go back to 11 cubic feet por nuclear 14 power plant. 15 MR. ORLANDO: Total. 16 MR. MOELLER: Oh, I am sorry. So the total that 17 is 14,000 cubic feet which was ten percent of the total for 18 the nuclear power plants. 19 MR. ORLANDO: Yes, sir. 20 MR. MOELLER: If there are 100 plants, then we are 21 getting 140 or so cubic feet per plant. Now as there a 22 tremendous difference in the quantity of mixed waste 23 generated at different nuclear power plants? 24 MR. ORLANDO: Again I have to beg off. I do7't 25 know what the results were. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
314 () 1 2
*a,
! 0ELLER:
ALEIN: That would be of interest to us. Without looking at the numbers right 3 here, my impressica of what I remember seeing coming in is 4 about a third of them reported zero and then there was a 5 gradual rise. It is a distributed type of information or 6 data back from them. 7 MR. MOELLER: One of the items of potential 8 interest to this comm/tteu is performance indicators or 9 trend indicators and if you have some nuclear utilities that 10 produce none and others that produce a whole lot, to us, 11 that would be of interest. 12 If there would be a way without violating the 13 confidentiality of your reports, we wouldn't need to know 14 the name of the plant but if you could provide 1 data or 15 more detailed information on the distribution histograms and 16 so forth, we certainly would appreciate it. 17 MS. JONES: Actually, EPA did an independent study 18 after the survey was complete and looked at distribution 19 rates and what we found was that in the nuclear power 20 plants, there was a greater variety, for the typical 21 generator, there was a greater variety, a larger 22 distribution for nuclear power plants than in any other 23 category of mixed waste generator, we would be happy to 24 provide some information on that to the Committee. 25 MR. MOELLER: Thank you. () ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers L 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C, 20006 i '(202) 293-3950
315 1 MR. ORLAN DO: One of the other things and I was 2 going to go into it a little bit later is that NRC has 3 expanded the scope of work for this project to allow Oak 4 Ridge to develop tailored data tables to support different 5 types of activities such as that t.r to support state 6 programs. 7 Once you have seen the NUREG and looked at the 8 data or if you like, 1 can provido you with the raw data 9 stripped of facility identifiers and you can play with it on 10 your own PCs. We want to make this information as available 11 as is humanly possible to as many people as are interested. 12 So we can go either way for you. 13 MR. MOELLER: Sidelight, Stan, flag that and wo 14 will follow up. Go ahead, Nick. 15 (SLIDE.) 16 MR. ORLANDO: I think the next slide is the 17 academic institutions. 1 in the academic generator 18 category, 92 percent of mixed waste generated in 1990 was 19 liquid scintillation fluids followed by the other category 20 at four percent, chlorinated organics, and miscellaneous at 21 two percent each and here, miscellaneous was oil, other 22 organics, metals and corrosives. 23 ( S LI DE . ) 24 MR. ORLANDO: In the government category, liquid 25 scintillation fluid made up 77 percent of the mixed waste O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
316 ') ( I reported with 13 percent being reported in the other 2 organics category. Other organJcs were those organic 3 compounds not included in CFCs or chlorinated organics 4 category. Corrosives and chlorinated organics made up about 5 four percent each followed by miscellaneous waste at two 6 percent and here that was primarily oil and metals, the 7 primary metals being lead and cad:aium, 8 MR. STEINDLER: The contaminant in the 9 scintillation fluid is toluene? 10 MR. ORLAN DO: The hazardous component would 11 typically be toluene or benzene. 12 MR. KLEIN: Or xylene. 13 MR. ORLANDO: Or xylene, yes. 14 ( S LI DE . ] 15 MR. ORLANDO: In the industrial category, liquid 16 scintillation fluid made up about 68 percent of the mixed 17 waste reported and 14 percent of the mixed waste reported 18 fell into the other category, followed by organics at eight 19 percent, metals at five percent, corrosives at three percent 20 and the miscellaneous waste at two percent and here, that 21 was about equally distributed between oil, CFCs and 22 chlorinated organics. 23 ( S LI DE. ) 24 MR. ORLANDO: Finally in the medicul category and 25 you can see I made this slide on a different day because I O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repodars 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C 20006 (0 2) 293 3950
1 1 317 1 got a different pen to do the large one there, finally in 2 the medical category, liquid scintillation fluid made up 3 about 94 percent of the mixed waste reported with 4 miscellaneous or in the other organics coming in at about 5 three percent. Here miscellaneous was primarily chlorinated 6 organics with a little bit of lead and mercury. 7 The prevalent isotopes seen in the survey were 8 carbon-14, tritium, P-32, Sulfur-35, Cobalt-60, I-125, 9 Cesium-137 and 134, Chromium-51 and Uranium-238. That was 10 not in the order of prevalence. 11 MR. MOELLER: How in terms though of the 12 information that you are presenting, if we assume that all 13 of the liquid scintillation fluids can be incinerated, then 14 they don't really represent -- 15 MR. ORLANDo: A problem. 16 MR. MoELLER: A problem to us. This is said 17 softly. 18 MR. oRLANDo: That's correct. I will show in a 19 couple of slidos, in maybe two more slides, where we did 20 some comparisons. 21 MR. MoELLER: Great.
'22 MR. ORLANDO: It will give you maybe a little 23 better handle on what we think is going on.
l 24 MR. MoELLER: Terrific. 25 MR. STEINDLER: Did you break these down also by, O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 ; Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
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318 () 2 1 for example, combustibility? MR. ORLANDO: Do you mean the scintillation 3 fluida? 4 MR. STEINDLEP: No, the whole mixed waste set of 5 categories. 6 MR. ORLANDO: We have some data on the EPA 7 hazardous waste codes. Sore respondents did reply by giving 8 us the waste codes. It was one of the things we asked and 9 through those, you can get an idea of what the 10 combustibility, maybe not the Dtu output or anything, but 11 whether it would be considered flammable or whether it would 12 be a flammable material. 13 In fact, that was one of the things that DOE was 14 very happy about, that we could give them information like 15 that because that is how they are characterizing their waste 16 straight by the waste codes and then they can do an easier 17 overlay that way. 18 MR. WEBER: One of the tasks of this project was l 19 to just look at the treatability of the mixed waste streams 20 that are identified and I believe Nick has a slide later on 21 that will go into that. 22 MR. STEINDLER: Thank you. 23 (SLIDE. ) l-l 24 MR. ORLANDO: I would like to talk a little bit l 25 about mixed waste in storage. Based on the results of the O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud'Repoders i 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
i I 319 () 1 survey, 75,000 cubic feet of mixed waste was in storage as 2 of 12/31/90. 3 The cadmium waste category showed the largest i 4 amount in storage at about 35 percent followed by liquid 5 scintillation fluids at 17 percent and CFCs at about 12 6 percent. 7 These were then followed by waste oil ar.d then the 8 other category. The industrial generator category was 9 storing the largest amount of mixed waste at about 57 10 percent due primarily to about 26,000 cubic feet of cadmium 11 waste. 12 Now that was from a single facility that had been 13 involved in a sewer clean-up. Again, I don't know which one 14 it was but we did try to put those types of qualifiers in 15 the NUREG document so that people are clued into when you do 16 sco a large number and you are going to see a real large 17 number in a little while that we also discussed in the 18 NUREG. 19 The nuclear utilities were storing about 29 20 percent of the mixed waste in storage primarily chlorinated 21 fluorocarbons, CFCs, waste oil and lead. The academic 22 institutions were at about seven percent. NRC government 23 licensed facilities were at ab'out four percent and the 24 medical institutions were storing about three percent of the 25 mixed waste in storage.- O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006
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320 () 3 My first caution of the morning or actually of the 2 afternoon now, I need to caution you that the amount of 3 waste in storage and the estimated generation volume are not 4 additive because the waste in storage may have been produced 5 prior to 1990. 6 In addition, the amount of waste generated' add't'ho 7 amount of waste in storage do not represent the total amount 8 of waste, mixed waste, of course, that is going to require 9 disposal becav"e these numbers don't reflect the volume 10 reduction that you would see because of treatment. 11 This is especially true for liquid scintillation 12 fluids and you will see that in a few minutes. If you 13 subtract out liquid scintillation fluida from the total at 14 71 percent, that was about 100,000 cubic feet. 15 That leaves you with 40,000 cubic feet of 16 potentially disposable mixed waste but then I will show you 17 in a few minutes when we get to treatability that even that 18 comes down significantly. 19 MR. MOELLER: You mentioned about two minutes ago 20 on this same slido, but did you say that a number of them 21 are storing liquid scintillation fluids and why are they 22 storing them? 23 MR. ORLANDO: One of the things we did and again I l 24 will get into this in a little bit, once we go through the 25 treatability study, one of the questions that is posed is O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street. N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 l (202) 293-3950
321 () I why is that? So we went back or actually ORNL went back at 2 our request and talked to some of the generators to find out 3 why are you storing your mixed waste and we came up with 4 four reasons why we think there may be continued storage. 5 MR. STEINDLER: Remind me again, the only folks 6 that you polled are people who owned waste other than the 7 government, is that right? 8 MR. ORLANDO: Would you run that one by me again? 9 MR. STEINDLER: How did you determine who you are 10 going to poll? Let me give you the specific. There is a 11 national laboratory like Oak Ridge and it is run by Martin 12 Marietta. The waste is not owned by Martin Marietta. It is 13 owned by DOE. 14 MR. ORLANDO: That is DOE waste. 15 MR. STEINDLER: But they follow the rules of both 16 EPA and the NRC although not directly. y 17 MR. ORLANDO: I have a slide, I think maybe it is 18 the next one, on DOE generation rate and that is where we s 19 try to put all this together. 20 MR. STEINDLER: That is DOE waste? 21 MR. ORLANDO: Yes, sir. No? 22 MR. WEBER: That type of waste would not have been 23 included in our survey. I am not aware that they are 24 complying with HRC regulations. 25 MR. ORLANDO: DOE orders. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud Repoders
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322 1 HR. WEBER: They are complying with their I 2 counterpart for the DOE ordertr. i 3 MR. STEINDLER: If you look at the DOE orders and 4 you set them next to the NRC orders -- I 5 MR. WEBER: They are similar. 6 MR. STEINDLER: They are almost indistinguishable. 7 MR. ORLANDO: We hope so. j 8 MR. MOELLER: Go back on this second bullet. Now l 9 it says cadmium contaminated waste and it says 35 percent. 10 It is 35 percer.t of what? 11 HR. ORLANDO: Of the 75,000 cubic feet. 12 MR. MOELLER: All right. Now does 35 plus 57, 29 13 and seven equal 100? 14 MR. ORLANDO: I hope so. 15 MR. MOELLER: I thought it would be more than 100. 16 It would be way over 100, 17 MR. CRLANDO: Well, 35 percent of 75,000 should be 18 about -- 19 MR. MOELLER: But 35 percent plus the next one is 20 57. 21 MR. ORLANDO: That is 57 percent of 75,000. 22 MR. KLEIN: Correction. The cadmium isn't in the 23 industrial category. 24 MR. ORLANDO: I am sorry. This 35 is down-in here 25 two. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
323 () 1 2 MR. WEBER: MR. ORLANDO: It is apples and oranges. Sorry about that. 3 MR. MOELLER: I am straight. 4 MR. WEDER: One other reason to answer your 5 question on the liquid scintillation fluids and why they may 6 have been in storage, of course, smaller generators will 7 tend to accumulate those liquid scintillation fluids and 8 then batch ship them when the treatment operator collects or 9 the broker comes by to pick up the waste. So this survey 10 would have picked up that waste had it been in storage at 11 the end of the year. 12 MR. ORLANDO: Some data again was not included in 13 the survey data base. A specific example was the one time i 14 generation of some two million cubic feet of mixed waste at 15 a sing]e facility. This was a one-time occurrence. 16 ORNL went out and investigated the situation. 17 They determined it was a one-time occurrence. That facility 18 is currently under or determining if they can get their 19 waste de-listed which would then render it not hazardous 20 waste and it could be considered straight radioactive waste. 21 We didn't include that number or that volume of 22 waste in the survey because essentially everything else that 23 we did would become noise and we didn't want that to happen 24 but we do report it in the NUREG and outline that that did 25 exist. OG ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950 i
I 324 , () 1 2 (SLIDE. ) MR. ORLANDO: How we were talking about low level 3 waste. Actually, could you give me the other slide first? 4 MR. WEBER: The DOE slido? 5 MR. ORLANDO: Yoc, the DOE slide, first. Thanks. 6 (SLIDE.) 7 MR. ORLANDO: My comparison and we were talking 8 about DOE, my comparison the amount of mixed waste reported 9 in a May 26, 1992 Pedoral Register Notico that announced 10 EPA's proposed decision to grant DOE a one-year extension to 11 their LDR waste indicated that DOE was generating about 12 808,000 cubic feet of mixed wasto per year. 13 If you exclude the liquid scintillation fluids 14 form the commercial mixed waste, we como up with about five 15 percent of DOE waste volume would be commercial mixed wasto 16 volume. 17 Can I have the next ano, please? 18 MR. WEDER: You might want to explain what LDR 19 means? 20 MR. ORLANDO: I am corry. That is the Land 21 Disposal Restrictions. That would be your first, second and 22 third-third waste. EPA when they promuigated the Hazardous 23 and Solid Waste Amendments back in 1986, one of the things 24 they had to do was to 11vi.a the universe of waste into 25 essentially five groups. /~T L) ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
325 () 1 2 One was called colvents c9d the other one was called the California list which was a list that California 3 had already developed and then everything else was lumped 4 into either a first-third, a second-third or a third-third. 5 The Land Disposal Restricted Waste are pretty much 6 the first, second and third-third wastes. This is DOE LDR i 7 waste that I am speaking of, keeping in mind that I am 8 comparing a portion of DOE waste generation with all of, we 9 hope, all of the commercial generE on. 10 This does not include or does not necessarily 11 include the decommissioning waste that DOE is generating nor 12 would it include their solvents and toxins or their 13 California list wastes. So this actually would be, 1 14 believe it is going to end up being significantly less than 15 even rive percent of the DOE waste. 16 MR. MC4LLER: But the bottom line is that DOE 17 relative to the commercial sector is tremendous. 18 MR. ORLANDO: A whole lot more. 19 MR. MOELLER: Now in your surveys of the nuclear 20 power plants, were any of those being decommissioned and 21 would that have created a lot of mixed waste? 22 MR. ORLANDO: I went back a little bit later on 13 and looked'at the decommissioning plans for the facilities 24 that are undergoing decommissioning and for the most part, 25 they were not reparting the generation of an awful lot of O) w ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud RepOders 1612 K. JJeet,- N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C, 20006 (202) 293 3950
__. _. _. . - . . . _ _ . . _ - - - - ._ . . . . . . - - - - - - _ _ - .~ - - ~ _ 326 1 mixed waste. 2 MR. MOELLER: All right. 3 MR. ORLANDO: For the most part, in my experience 4 where it has been is typically in the bioshield or in lead 5 shielding or what-not. Technology has come a long way 6 considering that you can't dispose of most of this waste or 7 it is difficult to dispose of a lot of this waste. You 8 don't generate it. 9 (SLIDE.) 10 MR. ORLANDO: Now if you look at this slide, mixed 11 waste made up about nine percent of the low level waste 12 generated in 1991. This is based on 1.6 million cubic feet 13 of estimated generation. 14 Earlier I talked about the IDB, bear in mind I 15 believe for 1991, the IDB reported something like 1.1 or 1.2 16 million, something like that. What we did was we also asked 17 survey respondents how much radioactive waste did you 18 generate and we then took the weighting factors that we had 19 develor H for the survey respondents and applied it to the 20 radioactive waste generation that they reported and as I 21 said, we came up Jith 1.6 million. 22 When you then compare that to the IDB number, you 23 are looking at about half a uillion cubic feet less but if 24 you start thinking about the different types of compactions 25 and volume reductions that might occur through just O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
327 1 mechanica] volume reduction or incineration, it seemed 2 pretty reasonable. 3 We do have a discussion of that in the NUREG 4 document, a comparison of why we think this is still a 5 reasonable number. 6 MR. WEBER: What is the IDB? 7 MR. ORLANDO: The Integrated Data Base. I thought 8 I had mentioned that earlier, I hope I did. Before you put 9 the next slide up, I want to stress the national scope of 10 the profile. 11 The profile was developed to illustrate mixed 12 waste at the national level. All of our assumptions, the 13 projections and everything were done to illustrate waste at O U 14 the national level. 15 Having said that, the first thing we did was we 16 divided it up by compact. 17 [ SLIDE.] 18 MR. ORLANDO: The Appalachian compact appears to 19 have produced the most mixed waste at about 23 percent and 20 the Rocky Mountain compact the least, at about 0.5 percent. 21 MR. HINZE: Is there an explanation for that? 22 MR. ORLANDO: If you look at what iu going on, 23 again I am trying to explain something from a practical why 24 is there more waste in the Appalachian compact than in the 25 Rocky Mountain, it may not be that there is more or less O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters ' 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (209\ 293-3950
328 ( 1 waste out there. It mey have do to more with the sampling 2 that was done in a particular region. That is not to say 3 that those are incorrect numbers. 4 MR. HINZE That is what it sounded like. 5 MR. ORLANDO: Thst's what it sounded like to you? 6 Actually, it sounded that way to me, too. I have to figure 7 out how to pull myself out of this onel 8 (Laughter.) 9 MR. ORLANDO: I didn't mean that, okay. 10 MR. WEBER: Go on. 11 MR. ORLANDO: Let me let, Jerry, because he was 12 the one who actually did this. Let's put him on the spot 13 here.
\ 14 MR. WEBER: Let me just say one thing. In part, I 15 think what you are seeing is a distrJbution of the 16 facilities that are generating the mixed waste more so than 17 anything elce.
18 There are a lot of medical facilities and what not 19 or academic or industrial facilities in the Appalachian 20 compact so you are going to have an elevated generation rate 21 in the Appalachian compact. 22 MR. CRLANDO: I also did want to bring that up. 23 If you do look at where most of it seems to be, you are over 24 on the east coast and that would kind of tend to fall into 25 where most of the licensed facilities would be. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l 329 l 1 MR. KLEIN: I could put a side comment on this. I 2 think some of those differunces are real in a sense that i 3 what you are seeing up there is that the larger groups were 4 the large.ct generators. 5 on the other hand, there is a small fudge factor 6 going on, not fudge factor, but discrepancy in the way that 7 the sampling weights are put anti. that those compacts that B had done a previous survey so we know who they were that 9 generated mixed waste were tended to be slightly over-10 campled relative to those compac.ts that did not have any 11 previous information available. 12 So, for instance, like Appalachian compact has 13 done an annual survey, Southeast has done an annual survey, 14 Southwest did a major survey a number of years ago ao they 15 might tend to be slightly over-sampled in our survey. The 16 other ones might tend to be slightly under-sampled. 17 MR. ORLANDO: That is kind of what I was trying to 18 allude to but I didn't mean it to come out the way it did. 19 May I have the next slide, please? 20 MR. STEINDLER: Before you go on to the next one, 21 do you have a clue as to waste generation rates in non-U.S. 22 areas say in Europe or in Japan and how do they compare? 23 MR. ORLANDO: Non-U.S. facilities don't 24 necessarily have RCRA so they may not have mixed waste the 25 way we have. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 , (202) 293-3950
4 3 4_fi___m._._za w aa-- z a__: J-4__.sw.. e ,.I . w.._ - .u , , .w _ ----_ ,__- a#- 330 1 MR. STEINDLER: I realize that. 2 MR. ORIANDO: Radioactive vaste you meln? 3 MR. STEINDLER: But you can identify contaminants. 4 MR. ORIANDO: We haven't done any study of that, 5 no. 6 MR. STEINDLER: You haven't? l 7 MR. ORLANDO: No. B (SLIDE.) j i 9 MR. ORLANDO: Based on the results of the ! 10 treatability study, it appears that adequate treatment 11 capacity exists for most mixed waste although we estimated 12 an additional 12,000 cubic feet of treatment capacity was 13 required to treat the vaste ger.erated and in storage as of 14 the end of 1990. 15 Specifically, adequate treatment already exists 16 for liquid scintillation fluids, waste oil and most organics 17 and most CFCs and that would be incineration, metal bearing 18 solutions, metal alloys and sealed sources and that would be 19 stabilization and wastes requiring precipitation, 20 neutralization or chemical reduction. 21 It appears that insufficient capacity currently 22 exists for mixed wastes contaminated with CFCs in storage, 23 some liquid scintillation fluids, lead shielding and other 24 wastes contaminated with lead solids and equipment and 25 debris contaminated with mercury. O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
331 ( 1 For companies are currently offering some type of 2 treatment services for some mixed waste. These are NSSI 3 Pecovery Systems in Houston, Texas; DSSI or Diversified 4 Scientific Services down in Kingston, Tennessee; Ramp 5 Industries in Colorado in Denver and Quadrex Corporation 6 down in Gaineville, Florida. 7 In addition, two other facilities are currently 8 developing or are considering developing treatment capacity 9 and these are SEG or Scientific Ecology Group out in Oak 10 Ridge, Tennessee and Envirocare of Utah out in Salt Lake 11 City, Utah. 12 When talking about the treatment capacity another 13 caution is that Oak Ridge had to rely on the information 14 provided by the treatment facilities. As such, and I am not 15 saying it is not, but the treatment capacity reported by 16 these facilities may in some cases be a little overly 17 optimistic. 19 We don't feel that but that is just a caution that 19 I am putting out. There was no evidence of that. It is 20 just that we did ask them, "What can you do" and they told 21 us back what we can do so we had to go with what they told 22 us. 23 MR. STEINDLER: It seer.s E little 24 counterintuitive. There is such a horrendous amount of 25 stuff stored certainly in the DOE area, that you wonder if, O j ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
l l l 332 1 () 1 in fact, there is adequate treatment capacity available, why 2 isn't it being used? ; 3 MR. ORLANDO: I am going to go into that in just a 4 few minutes, in fact, right when I finish up this discussion 5 here. As I said, Oak Ridge went out and took a look at or 6 went back to some of the generators and talked to them about 7 why are you storing your waste. 8 MR. STEINDLER: Oak Ridge could ask its own Martin 9 Marietta Energy Systems waste folks the same question. 10 MR. ORLANDO: DOE is in the process, under the 11 Pederal Facilities Compliance Act, they have been instructed 12 to go out and develop that treatment capacity for the DOE 13 complex. They don't have it either, 14 One of the factors that could affect the treatment 15 capacities of the commercial facilities are the impact that 16 DOE might have were they to decide to send their waste to 17 the commercial treatmen' facilities as the different 18 facilities committed treatment capacity to taking care of 19 strictly DOE waste, that may necessarily knock out the
- 20. availability of that capacity for the commercial waste.
21 Some other factors that we came up with was that 22 the timing of treatment campaigns and the down-time between 23 campaigns that might cause problems for getting this waste 24 treated and some of the limited capacity to simultaneously 25 treat diverse waste streams. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.- C. 20006 (202) 293 3950
333 () 1 As I said, I promised I would talk about why is As I said, oak Ridge went out and 2 everything being stored. 3 asked some of the generators that responded or actually, I 4 should say, the survey respondents and we came up with four 5 main reasons that we feel or that we determined would be the 6 reason why waste is not being treated. 7 Number one, small mixed waste generators may not 8 be aware of the existing facilities or their capabilities. 9 Number two, the generators may not have sufficient 10 information about their own wastes to satisfy the il requirements of the treatment facilities. 12 Humber three, generators believe that they may be 13 liable for their waste from cradle to grave and do not want l l 14 to send the waste to any facility unless they are offered i 15 assurances that the waste is going to be handled in 16 accordance with all applicable regulations. In some cases, 17 that assurance is difficult or impossible to get. ! 18 Number four, because of the various regulatory l 19 authorities involved with mixed waste, the varying 20 regulations, state-to-state-to-state and the interpretations l 21 of these regulations by the regulatory authorities, l 22 generators just don't know what they are supposed to do and 23 are essentially uncomfortable with sending their waste to a 24 particular facility so they prefer to hold on to it. ! 25 MR. STEINDLER: Is it deliberate that you did not O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950-
334 1 include issues about transportation? 2 MR. ORLANDO: I don't believe anything on that was 3 reported. 4 MR. WEBER: It never came up. 5 MR. STEINDLER: Oh? 6 MR. ORLANDO: No problem with that? All right. 7 MR. STEINDLER: It 10 puzzling, I think. 8 MR. ORLANDO: Really. 9 MR. WEBER: One other item I was informed of on 10 Wednesday night by one licenace is that upparently one of 11 these treatment facilities has backlogged enough waste on 12 site to fill their capacity for a full year or more and so i 13 they can't receive any more waste on site. 14 In addition, some of the licenses put restrictions 15 as do most of our licenses on the effluent levels and they 16 have annual effluent totals. If they had gotten close to 17 exceeding those effluent totals, they can't continue to 18 treat waste during the year until the next calendar year 19 rolls around. So those are two other factors that tend to 20 be limiting right now in capacity. 21 MR. ORLANDO: The agencies, NRC and EPA, are 22 relatively confident that the profile represente as complete 23 a picture as we could get for the generation rate for 1990 l l 24 but recognize that there are limitations to at,. survey. l l 25 It is important to remember that this was a I O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
335 () 1 snapshot. It can be used as a predictive tool but you also have to remember it is a snapshot. The survey was not 2 3 specifically designed to collect information from 4 contaminated sites or from decommissioning activities. 5 llowever, if a particular facility was undergoing a 6 remedial action or decommissioning and we didn't ask them, 7 "What are you doing?" We just got the names and phone 8 numbers if you would and sent them the survey forms. 9 If they were undergoing those types of activities 10 at the time, if they filled out the form and returned it to 11 us, that information would be included in the volumes and 12 characteristics reported. 13 Again, the doe waste is not included in here or in 34 the survey results. As I said earlier, we recently expanded 15 the scope of the survey to include the development of 16 tailored data tables to support state and compact programs 17 or questions such as the ACNW has. We \.Juld be more than 18 happy, tell us what you want and we will generate it for 19 you. We won't generate the numbers but we will generate it 20 in whatever format you want, d 21 Finally, as far as the publication of the NUREG 22 document, we are dropping it off as soon as we get finished 23 with the briefing today with the Division of Publications in 24 the office of Administration. So I am hoping that I will 25 have a really nico Christmas present for everybody. That is O ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
336 1 really all I have. Thank you. 2 MR. OKRENT: Can I see the last transparency on 3 treatment capacity? 4 (SLIDE.] 5 MR. WEBER: Sure. 6 MR. OKRENT: Thank you. First, is it your 7 impression that incineration of mixed waste is an accepted 8 form of treatment as is being used now? 9 MR. ORLANDO: Well, for he majority if you were 10 consider or if you inc).ude the liquid scintillation fluids, 11 almost all of that is. That is the 71 percent that we l 12 talked about earlier. j 13 MR. OKRENT: I see. 14 MR. ORLANDO: So incineration is a major treatment 15 for nixed waste keeping in mind that EPA looks at treatment 16 from sort of or will require treatment in one of.two ways, 17 either under their BDAT, best demonstrated available 18 technologies method, or they will come up witn a specified 19 treatment for a particular waste. 20 They may say, "this is such-and-such a waster the 21 method of treatment is incineration." Then the other ways 22 that EPA will develop treatment standards would be through 23 allowing the generator to come up with a method and then 24 they had to meet certain waste extract standards. 25 MR. OKRENT: And the radioactivity involved is not I O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. l Court Reporters
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=
- a. - -r . - . . . . _ . . - - . _ . -. u - - - - - - . -__.--a - . - --- - . - ... - - - _ .
337 () 1 a problem in any of these? 2 MR. ORLANDO: No, given proper air pollution 3 control handling, of course. 4 MR. KLEIN: It depends. For instance, if it is 5 less than your 0.5 microcuries of tritium or carbon, there 6 is no problem. That is not considered radioactive. There 7 are limits. Host of these have a total, like Nick ! 8 mentioned, a total annual level of one curie or something 9 like that for the whole year that they can release of other 10 isotopes. So as long as it fits within those Ifmits, then 11 radioactivity is not a concern. 12 MR. ORLANDO: Again, some CFCs and I think it is 13 about betwoon five and ten percent that were reported l , 14 cc.itained additional contaminants that cause the effluent 15 gas to be too acidic and it tore up the bag houses at the 16 incinerators so there is a lot of different things that you 17 have to keep in mind when you scy, "Okay, incineration is 18 the way to go." 19 MR. OKRENT: A different question. For metal 20 bearing solutions, metal alloys and so forth, stabilization, 21 does the presence of radiation complicate disposal of 22 stabilized material of that form or is it straight forward? 23 MR. ORLANDO: Again you are in a situation where l i 24 you are depending on what type of waste you have. If you l 25 are dealing with a waste where the treatment, a O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 3 (202). 293-3950
1 1 338 () 2 1 characteristic waste, if the treatment removes the characteristic, it could be disposed of as a radioactive 3 waste. 4 MR. OKRENT: Let's say you have chromium and 5 cadmium together with some radioactivity. They are 6 catelnogens. So you can't treat them away. 7 MR. ORLANDO: Right. 8 MR. OKRENT: They don't go away and so forth. I 9 am wondering whether the exictence of radiation complicates 10 in any way current disposal regulations of EPAE 11 MR. WEBER: It does because the only facility that 12 is available right now for that kind of waste disposal is 13 Envirocare and that is for low activity fixed waste. There l .
\
14 are no other licensed permitted disposal facilities for 15 stable mixed waste. 16 MR. OKRENT: And Envirocare can take things like 17 cadmium and so forth. 18 MR. ORLANDO: It depends on the concentration and 19 it also depends on what the other contaminant is. 20 MR. OKRENT: I see. Mercury, also? 21 MR. ORLANDO: I don't know if they can mercury or 22 not. One of the things that will be in the NUREG document 23 are the licenses of the different facilities that report l 24 that they can do treatment so that generators or users of l 25 the document-can look and see if their waste matches up with () ANN RiLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
339 ( 1 what these folks can take. 2 One of the things that we always cautidn anybody 3 who asks questions about what treatment capacity is out 4 there is you .vr *o be well-informed about what your 5 generating, what is in it and it is imperative that you 6 discuss that with the treatment facility because you may 7 think that they can take your waste and they may think you a can take their waste but when you actually do any type of 9 analysis, you may find out that they can't. 10 MR. OKRENT: I guess what I was getting at is 11 there may be some caveats under that first bullet, " Adequate 12 treatment appears to exist." I think that maybe some ! 13 combinations exist and it is not so straight forward, l
\ - 14 MR. ORLANDO: Yes.
l 15 MR. STEINDLER: Do you have a clue as to what 16 fraction of the so-called adequate treatment capacity is 17 related to simply an attempt to de-list or to provide a 18 de-listable waste stream? 19 MR. ORLANDO: De-listing is not necessarily a 20 great way to go to get rid of your waste. I think it is 21 about ten percent of all, seven to ten percent of all 22 de-listing petitions get approved. We were look;.ng at 23 straight treatment capacity, straight treatments ano not . 24 de-listing. l 25 MR. STEINDLER: Treatment then is aimff at Voluge O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Rcpoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
340 1 reduction. 2 MR. ORLANDO: _ Treatment is aimed at reducing the 3 hazard so that it could be handled for disposal. 4 MR. STEINDLER: In the first area where you are 5 talking about incineration, that hazard reduction is by 6 destruction generally of the hazardous component. 7 MR. WEBER: Right. 8 MR. ORLANDO: Right. 9 MR. STEINDLER: Which also happens to give you 10 some volume reduction. 11 MR. WEBER: But in other cases like the metal 12 bearing solutions, it is not a volume reduction. It is a 13 volume increase because you are going to stabilize it in a 14 solid waste form. 15 MR. ORLANDO: Right. 16 MR. STEINDLER: I see. It looks like it is under 17 incineration. 18 MR. ORLANDO: I see what the problem is. I have 19 this mark here and it should be over one. I am sorry. 20 MR. WEBER: Did you want to add something? 21 MS. JONES: I could add something.- Our treatment 22 standards are based on concentration levels or a technology 23 and treating some of the characteristic wastes may eliminate-24 the characteristic and make these wastes no longer 25 hazardous. That is something that some of the treatment ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. COud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300
- Washington, D. C. 20006 (202)_ 293-3950
i 341 () 1 standards do. 2 Recently there was a court case settled on our 3 third-third. We got sued on our third-third treatment 4 standards and they upheld our belief that EPA can have
" neople treat below the characteristic level. So that adds t 3 complication to the whole treatment scheme and we are
' :ing out how we are going to deal with that.
We are going to have to come up with new treatment candards for the characteristic waste based on levels below 10 the characteristic level so that you are still going to have c 11 to treat some of these things and some of these things still 12 can be non-hazardous and that is a desirable effect of 13 treating at least the characteristic wastes. (_) 14 If we do come out with oe minimis levels for 15 listed hazardous waste because as you may recall once a 16 listed hazardous waste, the waste is always a listed 17 hazardous waste on whether you treat,_ store or dispose of 18 Jt. If you do eventually come out with these so-called it 19 is equivalent to maybe NRC's, I guess I am not supposed to 20 use this term. 21 MR. ORLANDO. Jon't use that term. 22 MS. JONES: That will help get some o' the wactes
~" Mi 23 out of the universe as well.
24 MR. OKRENT: If I could have 30 seconds more. I 25 am just trying to understand, if you have a sizeable amount ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 i Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
v 242-1 of something like., cadmium or arsenic or chromium which is a 2' recognized carcinogen and it contains'enough radioactivity. , 3 that you classify as a low level waste and sho'uldn't be 4 disposed of in a low level waste facility, is that a solved 1 5 problem, how to dispose of that? 6 MR. ORLANDO: No. 7 MR. OKRENT: No. Thank you. , 8 MR. MOELLER: Bill. 9 MR. HINZE: I realize that your objective was to 10 look at the magnitude of the problem here-but in my-business 11 we are constantly interesting in gradients and I am 12 wondering'in gradients the changes, rate of change._ Do you
'13 have from any of your statistics any feeling about whether 14 the amount of mixed waste is going up or going down or how 15 is it being modified and what can-.we-look for a couple._of 16 years from now?
17 MR._KLEIN: We got numerous comments.that came_in-18 on it. There is one section-of the report that asked-for: 19 esscy type answers of what are you doing to eliminate the 20 problem and there is a strong direction to eliminate at-31 least- the liquid scir.tillation fluid; issue- in the sense of. 22 either going to either biodegradable or aqueous type 23 ? scintillation fluid.- So a lot of that.is appearing.
~
24 .s o , a number of' facilities, generally the larger 25 with larger institutional controls like some of the nuclear O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W.,. Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202):293-3950
I 343 1 reactors, are going into limiting the hazardous material (J) 2 entry into the radioactive area in the first place so 3 therefore, you do not generate the mixed waste in the second 4 place. 5 MR. HINZE: Is this type of thing going to be 6 discussed in the NUREG. 7 MR. ORLANDO: There is not a section on waste 8 minimization, no. 9 MR. WEBER: It is also important to point out that 10 the EPA RCRA requirements require the generators of the 11 waste to have a waste minimization program. That is 12 something that the EPA permit reviewers will look at to 13 ensure that there is some program in plac;. ()
\s 14 As we continue to hear these cost estimates for 15 disposal of mixed waste in the range of $10,000.00 to 16 $15,000.00 per cubic foot on up, there is a strong financial 17 incentive for the generators to seek any way they can to -
18 avoid generating mixed waste in the first place. 19 MR. ORLANDO: Also, EPA right now is doing or is 2C the preliminary stages from the risk reduction evaluation il laboratory out in Cincinnati is looking at raixed waste 22 reduction at one of the national labs and we plugged into 23 that and hopefully we will be involved in that effort. 24 MR. HINZE: Can we look forward then to a 25 percentage decrease in mixed waste of the total low level O J ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
344 ) 1 waste as well as a magnitude? 2 MR. ORLANDO: I hcyestly don't want to make that 3 statement although I would suspect that as the costs go up, 4 you are going to see it become more and more imporative to 5 minimize the amount of waste you are generating. 6 MR. KLEIN: The question has two parts. One is an 7 absolute amount and I said, definitely you are going to see 8 a decrease in the absolute amount. 9 MR. HINZE: Sure. 10 MR. KLEIN: On the percentage of low level waste, 11 1 wouldn't want to hazard a guess because incentives to 12 decrease low level waste are also there. So whether that 13 remains the same percentage and they-both go down or one 14 increases percentage-wise over the other, I am not sure what 15 will happen. 16 MR. WEBER: The other reason for caution in 17 hazarding a guess is we have the SDMP program which you are 18 probably familiar with and there may be other 19 decommissioning programs which will generate mixed waste 20 simply because over the history of the operation of the 21 facility, you had a mixture of hazardous waste and 22 radioactive waste and because that program is really at the 23 starting stage more so tnan at the finishing stage, there 24 may be increased volumes of mixed waste generated through 25 decommissioning actions. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
345 () 1 2 MR. URLANDO: Finally, RCRA gets reauthorized every couple of years and new wastes can get included in the 3 universe. 4 MR. HINZE: I have been there 5 MR. ORLANDO: Evidenced by the recent court 6 decision to remand the mixture in dry form rule. 7 MR. HINZE: Is there any indication that you could 8 sample a subset of the sample you have used after two years 9 and get a reasonably recurate, if that is the word, 10 estimate? 11 MR. ORLANDO: One of the things that we did and I 12 do not know if we necessarily will do it, I mean anything is 13 possible, I guess that was one of the comments earlier, but 14 we have provided the survey form for use by anybody that 15 wants it. It is a public document. 16 In fact, the Northwest Compact wanted to do a 17 survey of their own and asked, "Can we use your survey 18 form?" and we said, "You have carte blanche, do whatever you 19 want to it" and they did their numbers for 1991, so there 20 would do some comparisons. 21 MR. KLEIN: The names and addresses are a]no 22 available to us and both those that got the survey forms and 23 those that actually reported mixed waste generation so it is 24 feasible to some time in the future to go back and hit those 25 especially the ones that said that they generated mixed /3 V ANN RlLEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Repoders 1612 K. Street, N3N , Suite 300 Washington, 3. C 20006 (202) 293-?950
346 1 waste to hit them again in two years and see what they (f 2 generate two years hence, yes, r 3 MR. HINZE: It would be very interesting to take 4 that subset and if it is in digital form, it wouldn't take 5 more than an analybt to do it. 6 MR. MOELLER: A follow-up survey would be of 7 considerable interest. One question in terms of the survey 8 form, did you ask how many generators actually were being 9 hampered in their operations because of the problems of 10 disposal of mixed waste? 11 For example, when we toured NIH and so forth we 12 heard that investigators were actually not doing research 13 that they wanted to do in order to avoid the production of-O 14 mixed waste. 15 MR. ORLANDO: Typically, that is not a question we 16 have to ask. That information comes to us free of charge. 17 Pretty much anybody that we talk to is more than happy to 18 let us know what the problems are. I appreciate that. 19 MR. POMEROY: Can we just follow-on with that just 20 a little bit? In reading in your SECY document, for 21 example, you talk about the possibility of DOE accer,cing 22 large scale mixed waste, not until 1995 and perhaps beyond 23 1995 is the impression I got. l 24 Somewhere else you talk about NRC staff resource l 25 as being devoted primarily to documenting this profile and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud RepOders 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 2K3-3950
347 1 to developing joint guidance on the storage. Do you foresee 2 in the next few years a significant problem with mixed waste 3 until the time that large scale disposal by DOE can take 4 place or do you think that storing mixed waste until 1995 or 5 1996 or until you can get them treated is going to be a 6 problem 7 MR. ORLANDO: There are always going to be the 8 issues associated with actually storing it. In other words, 9 you have to get a permit; you have to get a license and all 10 of these other things. You are all in the private sector 11 and you may know what it takes to get an EPA permit so that 12 may continue to be an issue if you have to store it. 13 What may happen in the commercial sector where b.
\~/ 14 somebody decides to set up a commercial storage facility for 15 mixed waste, there are a lot of unanswerable questions.
16 However, I don't think that the mixed waste issue.is going 17 to go away. 18 Everybody that I talk to says, "We can treat or we 19 can minimize, we can do as much as we can to get rid of the 20 problem but there is always going to be some" and as long as 21 the statutory environment and the regulatory environment. 22 remains the same, yes, there will be something to do out
~
23 there. 24 MR. WEBER: The whole category of low level 25 radioactive waste is going to be a storage issue over the m ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES; Ltd. , Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D. C. 20006 L (202) 293-3950
348
)- 1 immediate future simply because of the limited progress that 2 has been made in developing new disposal facilities and even 3 with the continuance of some facilities like the Barnwell 4 site remaining open beyond which they were originally 5 planning to do, a large number of generators are talking 6 about deferring shipments because of the inttrest in cost.
7 So it is something that NRC has to be very 8 attentive to to ensure that there are no safety problems - 9 caused by the increased reliance on the storage and that is 10 something that occupies a great deal of time in our division 11 back in the Division of Low Level Waste Managelaent and 12 Decommissioning. 13 MR. POMEROY: That was really my question, did you 14 foresee a problem from a public health and safety standpoint 15 because of the necessity for this increased storage whether 16 it is economic or whatever. 37 MR. WEPER: We remain vigilant for those kinds of 18 prcblems because that is our job. 19 MR. MOELLER: I think with that, we will bring it 20 to a close and let us once again thank Mike and Nick and 21 Susan and Dr. Klein'for coming down and sharing this 22 information with us. It is very interesting. It ties 23 closely into many of our interests. So thank you very much. 24 This will also bring to a close the recorded 25 -portion of our meeting. We will continue after a one hour O V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Coud Reponers 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suit 3 300 Washington, D. C. 20036 (202) 293-3950
349 1 lunch break, we will continue in executive session and 2 members of the public are still invited to bc present if 3 they desire. Thank you. We will come back at 2:00. Thank 4 you again. We stand in recess. 1 5 (Whereupon, the Committee meeting was adjourned at 6 1: 10 o' clock p.m.) 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. Court Reporters 1612 K. Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D. C. 20006 (202) 293-3950
REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
- p'-
G This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission In the Matter of: NAME OF PROCEEDING: 48th ACNW Meeting DOCKET NUMBER: PLACE OF PROCEEDING: Bethesds, Maryland were held as.herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear-Regulatory _ Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the f3 direction of the court reporting company, and that the (_) transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings. 1
! ulM) -
h Y Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd. m e [.
i
# 'o UNITED STATES
~g
! c. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION W ASH'NGTON, D. C. 20555
,E (q) $ l f November 18, 1992 Dr. John W. Bartlett, Director Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management U.S. Department of Energy 1000 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC 20585
Dear Dr. Bartlett:
Several events have occurred in the past year that directly affect the progress of the high-level waste repository program. These events include the acquisition of permits from the State of Nevada needed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to initiate various site characterization activities, the lifting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's objections to DOE's Site Characterization Plan related to the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) and quality assurance (QA), and the enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 1992. At the same time there have bean issues on which progress has been slow such as the Licensing Support System (I"S) and promulgation of a final U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standard. In light of these events and the issues ((~N) before us, I believe that there is a need to take stock of the interaction between our two agencies to ensure the continuation of an effective pre-licensing consultation program that focuses - on resolution of issues in an open and timely manner. On December 28, 1988, the DOE issued the Site Characterization lan (5CP) for conducting site characterization work at the Yucca Aountain, Nevada site. The NRC staff reviewed the SCP and, on July 31, 1989, issued its Site Characterization Analysis (SCA; see transmittal letter, enclosed), wherein it identified 190 concerns, two of which were objections that DOE agreed to resolve before site characterization work related to those objections began. The two objections dealt with DOE's need to implement a baselined QA program before beginning site characterization, and the need for DOE to demonstrate the adequacy of both the ESF design and the design control process. The objection related to DOE's quality assurance (QA) program was lifted in March 1992, based on DOE's demonstration that those organizations involved in site characterizatior have developed and are implementing programs which meet hRC requirements. The objection related to DOE's ESF design control process and the ESF design was lifted in October 1992, based on DOE's demonstration of effective implementation of a design control process for design of the ESF. In its July 1989 letter transmitting the SCA, the NRC also highlighted four issues believed to be of particular importance fs) ( x- in site characterization. These issues highlighted DOE's need to
- 1) conduct periodic total system performance assessments to l
Dr. John W. Bartlett 2 November 18, 1992 provide early and ongoing evaluation of the adequacy of data being gathered and the ability . the site to meet the 10 CFR part 60 performance objectives; 2) direct early attention to investigations related to the understanding of tectonic phenomena and consideration of a full range of appropriate tectonic models; 3) improve technical integration of the overall site characterization program and 4) systematically integrate all studies to ensure that results will provide the data necessary to differentiate among the various models under consideration. The staff believes that DOE has made progress toward resolving some of these important issues, and encourages DOE to continue its progress in this area. Since issuanco of the SCA, DOE has provided additional information such that the NRC staff now considers 68 of the 196 SCA concerns resolved. The status of the remaining 128 concerns was reported in my letters to you dated July 31, 1991, March 2, 1992, and November 2, 1992. However in an August 4, 1992, letter to me, the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Faste (ACNW) noted a lack of progress toward resolution of many of the remaining SCA concerno. Now that activities at the site have increased and woi-k has begun on a number of new studies, the ACNW believes, and we agree, that NRC staff SCA concerns need to be resolved in a more timely manner. As indicated in my July 31, 1989, letter to fi N# S. Rousso, transmitting the SCA, DOE should consider all SCA concerns as " serious" and "give full attention to each in an attempt to resolve them early during site characterization." In the past year our staffs, along with representatives of the State of Nevada and affected units of local government, have held pre-licensing consultations on varied topics related to site characterization activities. Although the staff believes theso l interactions have produced some effective discussions of issues, we also believe that they need to be more focused on resolving i existing issues such as those in the SCA at the staff level. Although issue resolution at the staff level will not be binding on the licensing board or the Commission at the time of adjudication of the license, the role of the NRC staff during the pre-licensing period is to conduct an ongoing review of activities to identify and to facilitate-timely resolution of potential licens.ing issues. Ac DOE's data gathering and assessment activities nxpand, it is imperative _that we maximize the effectiveness of t? 'sa interactions. In addition, we believe that more communication by DOE concerning the planning process far programmatic and technical activities would allow the NRC scaff to provide more timely and meaningful guidance. As has always been the practice, all interactions would of course provide an opportunity for participation by representatives of the state of Nevada and affected units of local government.
d Dr. John W. Bartlett 3 November 18, 1992 As indicated in its reviews of DOE Site Characterization Progress Reports, the NRC staff has stated that it regards these reports is the mechanism by which DOE is to report and update activities and changes to its program. As. required by 10 CFR Part 60.18(g), these reports should include information such as the identification of new issues, status of studies, and modifications to activities and schedules. Timely submittal of these reports is important so that the NRC staff can continue to provide DOE with early identification of potential licensing Concerns. DOE has also proposed its Annotated Outline (AO) Skeleton Text for the Preparation of a License Application as a mechanism for providing the NRC with notification of progress and changes in DOE's program. Although the semi-annual progress reports are identified by the regulations as the statutory mechanism for reporting changes and progress in the cite characterization program, the iterative development of DOE's AO also provides an important mechanism for the staff to provide DOE guidance on the interpretation and implementation of NRC regulations. We would strongly enccurage DOE to identify, through the AO or other means, any specific areas where DOE believes NRC needs to provide guidance or modify existing regulations for purposes of clarity r- or completeness. Such information would assist the staff to ( ,)j allocate finite resources to the most pressing regulatory tasks affecting this program. Another area whore the NRC staff believes attention is needed is in the development of the LSS. The NRC staff is counting on th'e LSS to be able to conduct a timely review of DOE's application for authorization to construct the repository. The LSS is equally important to the Commission and its adjudicatory board's ability to reach a licensing decision within three-years after submission of the application. Although NRC does not have budgetary responsibility for development of the LSS, it is important that we continue to work together to ensure timely development of the system. As you know, NRC and DOE staffs have had several interactions with regard to LSS development and the potential advantages to be gained by using DOE's INFOSTREAMS as a basis for the LSS. The NRC is reviewing varicus alternatives whereby development and implementation of the LSS may proceed in a more timely and cost effective manner. Wa are prepared to work with the DOE in the future to ensure that issues involving _the LSS will be resolved, and its development and implementation will be completed as early as practical. i Finally, the recent Energy Policy Act establishes a process for ! dealing with some of the more contentious issues related to l ,_ development of the EPA standard. Although, based on the ( schedules in_the Act, it will be two ye.ars before the EPA standard is promulgated, the NRC staff does not believe that this schedule should cause any delays in DOE's near-term site
. _. - .- . _ - . _ . , _ _~ _ _ . . . - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
Dr. John W. Bartlett 4 November 18, 1992; characterization program, because DOE would have to collect much of the same basic site data regardless of the form of the'f'Tal standard. I believe, based on progress in specific areas to date, such as the lifting of the SCA objections, that we can work towards addressing the issues discussed in this letter. As you know, I have directed Mr. B.J. Youngblood, Director,; Division of High-Level Waste-Management, to work with your: staff to explore ways to improve our interface to better focus our activities on these-issues. If you have any' questions about the, items discussed in this letter, please feel free to contact me at (301) 504-3352, 4 Sincerely, Robert'M. Bernero, Director Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards Enclosure ! As stated
-O cc: R. Loux, M ate G3 Nevada T. J.- Hic.ey, Nevada Legislative Committee C. ' 'rtz, DOE /NV M. rphy, Nye County, NV M. aughman, Lincoln County, NV D. Bechtel, Clark County, NV D.-Weigel, GAO ,
P. Niedzielski-Eichner, Nye Count,y, NV B. Mettam, Inyo-County, CA V. Poe, Mineral County, NV F. Sperry, White Pine County, NV R. Williams, Lander County,-NV P. Goicoechea, Eureka County, NV L. Vaughan II, Esmeralda County, NV C. Shank, Churchill County, NV E. Holstein Nye County, NV W. Barnard, NWTRB
i
/s** ""s,'g UNITED RTATES y s e a NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
- msmHOToN,0. C.20M5 O '*'% 4 ,,,. V.p 1 JUL311M9 Mr. Sam Rousso, Acting Director Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management '
U. S. Department of Energy Washington, D. C. 20545 .W
Dear Mr. Rousso:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) regulations for disposal of high-level radioactive wastes in geologic repositories (10 CTR 60.16) require that the Department of Energy'^ (DOE) submit a Site Characterization Plan (SCP) before proceeding to sink shafts at a site and to defer sinking of such shafts until such time as there has been an opportunity for Commission ** comments to have been solicited and considered by DOE. On December 28, 1988, DOE submitted the SCP for the Yucca Mountain Nevada site, supplementing that submittal with the Exploratory Shaft Facility (EST) Design Acceptability Analysis (DAA) on February 9, 198S. The NRC staff has reviewed the SCP and DAA; our concerns are identified in this letter and in the enclosed staff's analysis of () the SCP, which is called the Site Characterization Analysis (SCA). We have organized our concerns into three categories. These categories aret (1) objection, which is a matter of such imoediate seriousness to a particular area of the site characterization program that NRC would recommend DOE not start work in that area until it is satisfactorily resolved; (2) comment, which is a concern with a particular program area or areas that would result in a significant adverse effect on licensing if not resolved, but that-would not cause irreparable damage if activit.(es in those areas were started prior to resolution; and (3) question, which is a concern with the presentation of the program in the SCP that precludes understanding an important program area well enough for the NRC staff to be able to completely evaluate that area. A question
- identifies a concern that could result in a significant adverse effect on licensing if not resolved, but that would be unlikely to cause irreparable damage if activities in that area were started prior to resolution.
The NRC considers all concerns identified in this letter ane. in the SCA to be serious and encourages DOE to give full attention to each in an attempt to resolve them early during site characterization. In particular, DOE should give early priority to addressing those concerns whJch may most significantly impact the determination regarding site suitability. In accordance with 10 CFR 60.lB(g), DOE should discuss modifications in the site O. characterization program made to address NRC's SCA concerns in its semiannual site characterization progress reports. l ENCLOSURE
l m Mr. Sam Rousso O overall the SCP shows improvement over-the Consultation Draft' Site Characterization Plan (CDSCP) . Nevertheless, the staff - still has many major concerns and raises two-objections. 'These a objections involve the need to implement a baselined quality assurance (QA) program before beginning site characterization, and the need for DOE to demonstrate the adequacy of both-the exploratory shaft facility (ESF) design and the design control process. , The NRC staff raised a concern regarding QA in its review of the CDSCP because a progran meeting NRC requirements was not then-in place. That is still the case and thus the concern remains._ However, as you are aware, NRC and DOE have agreed on a <.- step-by-step approach for.rcsolution of this. concern. Several of the agreed upon steps necessary to resolve this concern have already taken place. Once the agreed.upon steps.have been
' satisfactorily accomplished, for each of-the participants -
involved in a given area, the NRC has no QA related concern with-DOE proceeding with that a&pa of its site characterization program while it continues to complete the steps needed for other areas of the site characterization program. At_a July 6, 1989 NRC-DOE QA meeting, the approach to resolution of this QA concern
- vas discussed and reaffirmed.
- " . The ESF concern arises because the SCP and the ESF Design-
;- Acceptability Analysis'(DAA) do not demonstrste the adequacy of the- design control process under which the ?st _ design presented l- in the SCP (Title I design) was developed or the adequacy of the i design itself. This concern is based on the fact that'the ESF' vill become part of the repository.itself if.the. site is found to .
, be acceptable. To resolve this concern, DOE needs to demonstrate the adequacy of both the design control process and the design which- will ultimately' be used for the ESF.- An important part- of
- -that strategy needs to be timely interactions with the NRC staff as the design control process and design art developed.. During a-seeting on July _6-7, 1989,-the DOE-and NRC staffs took the first steps toward-a mutually-acceptsble approach whereby the NRC-staff l
can gain an early understanding of the adequacy of the ESF design ' control process and of the ESF design, so that this concern can l: .. be resolved in parallel with completion of the final ESF-design. L With regard to the second category of concerns, NRC has a number I of comments on various-site characterization program areas. NRC i staff offers specific-recommendations for approaches to resolvs. . each comment through' improvements which should be made early in the ongoing site characterization program.- These improvements
- should advance attainment of our mutual goal of a site characterization program which will resultiin sufficient i informationifor early identification sad resolution of issues and, , if the site is found to be acceptable, a complete and high quality license application. Particularly important comments
[() I requiring DOE management attention are highlighted below. t . L
Mr. Son RouOco ~3-- (1) Potal system performance assessments need to be O conducted periodically, starting at an early date. Such assessments should be used to decide whether the 10 CTR Part 60 requirements, including those which implement the EPA environmental standards, w'11 be satisfied. NRC staff also considers the use of total system performance assessments to be very important to integrate data gathering activities during site characterization. In particular, total system performance assessments need to be used together with subsystem (10 CFR 60.113) performance assessments to provide an early and ongoing evaluation of whether any of the potentially adverse conditions (10 CFR 60.122) significantly affect the ability of the site to meet the 10 CFR Part 60 performance objectives and whether data being gathered are adequate to-make this determination.
~
(2) Investigations associated with tectonic phenomena should receive early attention. At the Yucca Mountain site, thorough understanding of tectonic phenomena such as volcanism, faulting, and seismicity is critical to tho identification of potentially disqualifying conditions. The NRC staff considers that a full range of tectonic models reasonably supported by the existing d*ta base should be considered in planning.the () tsctonics investigations. High priority should be glven to conducting those investigations which can lead tt. a determination of whether the site is subject to an unacceptably high probability of disruption as a result of volcanism, faulting, or seismicity. These investigations need to be conducted as early as possible'in site ch racterization. The full spectrum of sitt characterization activities should proceed, with. proper coordination and integration. This recommendation is not intended nor should it be interpreted to mean that there should be a delay in any other surface-based testing.or in ESF construction. (3) The need for improved technical integration of.the overall site characterization program is illustrated by both the performance assessment and tectonics concerns. Although many of the individual seguents of the program are of high quality, it is unclear how they are being incorporated-into a coordinated and integrated program. For example, there appear to be some situations related to tectonics investigations where geophysical and geological activities intended to gather data required as input to assessments of potentially adverse conditions, e.g., faulting, may not be carried nut until well after those assessments have been initiated. [)
, .m,. .. ., .__ .,. _ . _ . , . . , . . _ , , , .
_ _ .. _ ... _ ._ - __ ._ _._. _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ __ ___ _ _ ~_. Er. San Rousso ; 'O other situations exist where it appears DOE plans to , conduct intrusive activities, e.g., drilling and , trenching, prior to, or without, conducting' nonintrusive geophysical and geological activities that l ceuld provide information needed to optimise the i L locations of proposed drillholes and trenches. J Likewise, it is not clear that data obtained from-holes
- drilled for one investigation-will-be utilized as i possible input into other investigations or, more
- importantly, that the number of boreholes has been ,
l minimised (hence minimising potential damage to the
- site) cy integrated planning to select borehole locations that could be used to obtain data for diverse 4 investigations, rurthermore, the concern mentioned. l earlier regarding the need for total system performance ;
assessments early in the site characterization program to integrate data gathering activities and guida evaluations of potentially adverse conditions ~also reflects a need for stronger coordination and integration. (4) The discussion of alternative conceptual models presented in the SCP is an improvement-over that found in the CDSCP. While some potentially important models L O may have been-overlooked, the range of models-considered in the SCP. appears sufficiently wide that essential investigations are unlikely to be precluded, l-Although the'NRC staff considers the objection raised. during the review of the CDSCP regarding the treatmen't of alternative models to be resolved-to the extent that it is now in the comment category, this-issue is l central to a successful site characterization program and should be treated more effectively in an early site characterization progressLreport. The NRC staff - y continues to be concerned that the SCP does not reflect " l an understanding that the models and their alternatives' aust be systematically integrated across the various technical disciplines. Furthermore,-it'is unclear that' the studies proposed will, in all cases,. provide the 1 l data necessary to adequately differentiate among the various alternative models nn question. Based on the specific concerns. identified in the Sch, NRC has a broad programmatic concern that the pressure to meet unrealistic-schedule milestones may leave.DCE insufficient time to plan and to execute proper technical information-gathering activities-necessary to develop a sufficient understanding of the site, and to develop a complete and high-quality-license application. The NRC pointed out this danger in its September 16, 1988 - letter to DOE on the Draft 1988 Mission Plan Amendment in which it noted- ___, ,m,
Mr. Sam Rousso . ( that the schedule for near term program activities, including in situ sits character 1tation, was being compressed. specifically, despite a delay in the start of both exploratory shaft construction and in situ testing, all the subsequent program milestones were unehanged. In the SCP, DOE has not demonstrated that its currant schedules allow time for conducting the site characterization activitiss needed to support the license application. A recent development that illustrates this concern IF DOE's decision to proceed with the ESF Title II design even though the baselined quality assurance (QA) program under which that design is to be developed has not been accepted by DOE. This appears to be driven by the attempt to meet milestones , for construction of the ESF. In closing, in order to ensure that DOE fully understands our concerns and to reach a mutually. agreeable approach for resolving them, we stand ready to meet with you and your staff as necessary. Sincerely,
/ _ __ _
-f Robert M. Bernero, Director
' O Office of Nuclear Material Safety
- and S'afeguards
Enclosure:
Site Characterization Analysis cc: R. Loux, State of Nevada C. Gertz, DOE-NV/YMPO L. Bechtel, Clark County M. Baughman, Lincoln County S. Bradhurst, Nye County O
.o O
Status of Dry Spent . Fuel Storage Under 10 CFR Pad 72 Robert M. Bernero, Director ' Office of Nuclear Material l Safety and Safeguards fS ! Y) O l l J' ww L
.n g 5 q.
1 Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 1 11-02 1992
O REGU'LATORY REQUIREMENTS General Objectives
= SAFE CONFINEMENT OF SPENT FUEL
= PREVENT DEGRADATION OF FUEL CLADDING
= COMPATIBILITY WITH TRANSPORTATION, WHERE POSSIBLE I
I 1 I O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 2 11 02 1992
O i REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS Design Criteria for Natural Events
= EARTH QUAKES
, = HIGH WINDS / TORNADOS !
l = MISSILES I = LIGHTNING
= FLOODS i
O . 4 O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 3 11-02-1992
VH O REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS Design Criteria for Accidents
= EXPLOSIONS
= FIRES
= DROPS / TIPOVERS i
I i O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 4 11-02-1992
n 10 CFR Part 72
'd Regulations
= TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
-SITING CRITERIA
-DESIGN CRITERIA i
-QUALITY ASSURANCE '
-EMERGENCY PLANNING
-TRAINING
-PHYSICAL PROTECTION i
( l (~
' )\
Status of Dry Soent Fuel Stora9' 5 11-02-1992
Tw Methods for Dry Storage j
.O-Licensing
= Direct Licensing Per Part 72
-Direet Review i
-Topical Report Approval
= General License Per Part 72
-Certificate of Compliance .
-Concditions for use '
i k l O i l. l l Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 6 11-02-1992
n DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE v Licenses issued REACTOR SITE DOCKET & LICENSE MODEL SURRY POWER STATION 72 2; SNM 2501 CASTOR V/21 i MC 10 I NAC 128 S/T H. B. ROBINSON 72-3; SNM 2502 NUHOM S-7P f OCONEE NUCLEAR 72-4; SNM 2503 NUHOMS24P STATION l FORT ST. VRAIN 72 9; SNM 2504 MVDS ! O c ( Status of Dry Spedi'uel Storage 7 11-02-1992
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5 i O _ Status of Ory Spent Fuel Storage 8 11 02 1992
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t O NAC-STC
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0 k O . Status of Dry spent Fuel Storage 10 4 11 02 1992-w -v - - - - - -
WHOMS Horizontal Storage O Module ('HSM? f we wo e.
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l m./ s:.p , o.c .=r imuert,. 0 , l i t ( ( ( l Status of Ofy Spent Fuel Storage 1 11 02 1992_
NUHOMS Dry Shielded Canister O
.'osc?............
=
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l i l l l l O I Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storsqe 12 11 02 1992 l
1 oV I l VSC Storage Cask l e ot.Ttre P 'IE C UD
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(vss: see i ne f e cosentit cAss tota
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usa suzu a ExthNet p%/ h (L ] Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 13 11 02 1992.
O B&W CONSTAR _.. 2
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K h-1 Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 14 11-02 1992-
9 I O Modular Vault Dry Storage (MVDS? I J H 16 4 in NNN
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l -. I I l t O - l: l Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 15 11 02 1992
DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE O , License Appi cations Received PLANT SITE DOCKET NO. SYSTEM BRUNSWICK 72 6 NUHOMS 7P I ' j PALISADES 72 7 VSC 24 I (WITHDRAWN 8/90] CALVERT CLIFFS 72 8 NUHOMS 24P PRAIRlE ISLAND 72 10 TN-40 l RANCHO SECO 72 11 NAC STC l O O o Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 16 11-02 1992.
[ DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE O Topical Reports Approved VENDOR MODEL CAPACITY NUCLEAR ASSURANCE NAC.C28 S/T 56PWR CORPORATION METAL CASK i NUCLEAR ASSURANCE ?JAC 128 STF 28 PWR COPPORATION METAL CAS( PACIFIC NUCLEAR NUHQMS 24P 24 PWR FUEL SERVICES, INC. CONCREn E MODULE l l TRANSNUCLEAR, INC. TN.24 METAL CASK 24 PWR i PACIFIC SIERRA VSC 24 24 PWR I i NUCLEAR CONCRETE CASK i I (CONTINUED) t I l 1 l I Status of Dry Spent Fuel S crage 17 11 02-1992
DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE O Topical Reports Approved
........................~
VENDOR MODEL CAPACITY GENERAL NUCLEAR CASTOR V/21 21 PWR SYSTEMS, INC. METAL CASK , I PACIFIC NUCLEAR NUHOMS 7P 7PWR FUEL SERVICES, INC, CONCRETE MODULE WESTINGHOUSE MC 10 24 PWR METAL CASK NUCLEAR ASSURANCE S/T 26 PWR { CORPORATION METAL CASK ' FW ENERGY MODULAR VAULT 83 PWR or APPLICATIONS DRY STORE 150 BWR O m tw-O Sts:us of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 16 11-02-1992
4 DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE O Topical Reports Under Review i ......................... VENDOR MODEL CAPACITY { GENERAL NUCLEAR CASTOR X 28 PWR or METAL C ASK 33 8WR i
! NUCLEAR ASSURANCE NAC.STC 26 PWR CORPORATION I l OUAL PURPOSE METAL CASK O
O Status of Dry Spent Fud Storage 19 11 02 1992
Spent fuel storage under a O . l General Ljcense
= Final Rule permits onsite storage of spent fuel ,
under a General License in NRC-approved dry storage casks
<- = Secton 1-33 of the NWPA required NRC to develop such a rule
= Final Rule - published July 18,1990 (55 FR >
29181)- effective August 17,1990 0 O Statu= of Dry Spent Fue Norage 20 11-02 1992
i l ) O - Overview of the General License l
= General License issued to power reactor l'
licensee for storage of spent fuel in NRC-approved casks ;
= Safety requirements of 10 CFR Part 72 remain in effect .
Current safeguards requiremente of 10 CFR ' Part 73 for fixed sites remain applicable
= Rule approved four cask designs i
= New cask designs to be added by rulemaking I i
O l l l . O i.
< Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 21 11-02 1992
I O General Licensee Requirements l
= Before using a certified cask design at an onsite i ISFSI the General Licensee must demonstrate t
(written evaluation):
= No unreviewed safety questions (10 CFR 50.59)
= No reactor Tech. Spec. changes were required-O l
t O l-Stem of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 22 11 02 1992
- . ~ . - . . . . . _ - . . . . . . - - .. .. -. - . ...
i General Licensee Requirements O ! (continued)
=That the conditicos of the certificate of j compliance have been met '
= That the reactor site parameters are enveloped l by cask design basis
= That the site dose limits are not exceeded t
i I I O - k Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 23 11-02 1992
f e C neral Li ensee Requ?rements O ! Jcontin ueg, , , , , , , , , , ,
= Review and modify onsite programs to include l lSFSI operations and obtain necessary l
approvals a Security plan
= Reactor emergency plan l
l O - g., geaure8 gmAb e Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 24 11-02 1992
General Licensee Requirements O (contLnued)
. . . . . . . . . . . . ~ , , , , , , , , , , . . .
= Quality assurance prograni
= Training program ;
= Radiation protection program
= Conduct ISFSI activities in accordance with written procedures i
i i O . - 1 l t I - l
~_
O l Status of Dry Spent Fuel stora9' 25 11-02 1992
~
i l I General Licensee Requirements O (continued)
,.... .......,,. .,,,,,,. 1
= Notify NRC:
l -90 days prior to first storage under the . I General License ,
-Register use of a cask design within 30 days 1 of use
= Maintain a copy of the Certificate of Compliance and other vendor supplied documents 1
0 _ O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 26 11-02 1992
i o' l Certificate of Compliance j ......................... l = 20 year renewable certificate ; I -Casks manufactured under a Certificate of i
! Compliance may be used for 20 ynars (longer : l if certificate renewed)
-Description of cask and references to l appropriate drawings j i
O G
= _
O 4 Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 27 11-02 1992
; I certificate of compliance l O f c,,,,,
o n ti n u e g), i l = Conditions for use of cask
-Requires written operating procedures
-lSFSI QA in accordance with Appendix B,10 l CFR Pad 50 i l
Preoperational Conditions :
-lSFSI training and certification program '
-Dry run training exercise ;
ll i F O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 28 11-02 1992
certificate of compliance O (continued)
= Functional and Operating Limits
-Sun /elllance/ maintenance requirements
-Inert gas pressure
-Leak tightness
-Surface dose rates and contamination limits
~
^ - ',
O 9
l Certificate of Compliance O (continued)
= Lift height restrictions
= Cooling time
= Burnup / Heatloads
= Initial Enrichment
= Type of fuel ,
l I t O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 10 11 02 1992
cask vendor / Manufacture O Requirements
= Establish written procedures and test before !
cask use
= Establish and Maintain records for each cask
= Fabricate a cask under a Certificate of Compilance program
= Design, fabricate and test casks under an NRC approved QA i
l l O : O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 31 11 02-1992
l O DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE Certlficates of Compliance issued VENDOR MODEL CAPACITY t GENERAL NUCLEAR CASTOR V/21 21 PWR ' SYSTEMS, INC. WESTINGHOUSE MC 10 24 PWR NUCLEAR ASSURANCE S/T 26 PWR CORPORATION : 1 l NUCLEAR ASSURANCE NAC.C28 S/T 56 PWR CORPORATION l 1 1
~
l l l l l l O i l Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage - M 11-02 1992-
i DRY SPENT FUEL STORAGE ! O Appilcations for Certificate VENDOR M_QQ5L DOCKET NO. PACIFIC NUCLEAR NUHOMS 24P 72 1004 i FUEL SERVICES, INC. NUHOMS 528 l l TFANSNUCLEAR TN.24 72 1005 B&W FUEL COMPANY CONSTA.'t 32 72 1006 PACIFIC SIERRA VSC 24 72 1007 NUCLEAR ASSOCIATES I l O l l Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 33 11-02 1992 l .- - -- _ . . . - . - . - . . . - .
1 lO 1 Spent Fuel in Dry Storage l Ft. Saint Vrain 1482 Elements !
, Surry l
. 252 Assemblies . Oconee
# 96 Assemblies H.B. Robirison ,
l 56 l ,, Assemblies O - O Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 34 11 02 1992
-- ._, _. _ - _ _ . . ~ . _ . . . . _ _ . _ _ _ . . . _ _ ~ _ _ - -
,le..
O uonitor9,dgetrievable storage
= Phase I Grants
-Understand Waste Management System and MRS Role
. Up to $100,000
- There are 6 active Applicants
-Mescalero Apache Tribe (NM)
-Yakima Indian Nation (WA) 4
-Prairie Island Indian Nation (MN)
-Skull Valley Goshute Tribe (UT)
-San Juan County (UT)
-Ft. Mcdermitt Indian Reservation (OR/NV)
= 6 More Applicants are under review l
l L , l O l l Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 35- 11 02 1992
O Monitored Retrievable Storage
= Phase ll Grants
-Phase llA - Public Information Activities
. Up to $200,000
-Phase ll B " Credible Formal Discussions" Possibly leading to agreement
. Up to $2,800,000 ,
= 1 Active Applicant
-Mescalero Apache Tribe (NM)
. Phase llA-Status of Dry Spent Fuel Etorage 36 11 02-1992
1: O I l MRS Siting Milestones (DOE?. . . . . . . I
! = Host identification 12/92 i l = Complete EA / Negotiated /.grument 6/93 :
! = Congressional Aoproval nf 2.ie 9/93 i
= Submit SAR 9/94
= Environmental Impact Statement 9/95
= NRC lssue License 9/96
= MRS Operational 1 /98 !'
O _
>' sb O_
Status of Dry Spent Fuel Storage 37 11-02-1992
f l RESULTS OF THE NATIONAL PROFILE ON COMERCIALLY GENERATED LOW-LEVEL RADI0 ACTIVE MIXED WASTE PRESENTED TO ! j i THE ADVISORY'COM m EE ON NUCLEAR WASTE i i NOVEMgre 20, 1992 > i I
. + _ _ . _ _ _ _ ___._- _ _ _ _ _ _ _
i O LO O': t i i RESULTS OF THE NATIONAL PROFILE ON COMMERCIALLY GENERATED - LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE MIXED WASTE * ,- I) 'It!TRODUCTION-II) BACKGROUND OF THE NATIONAL PROFILE III) DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL PROFILE A) ' COMPONENTS OF THE NATIONAL PROFILE 1 a) : SELECTING THE SURVEY FRAME C)' ' SELECTING'THE SURVEY SAMPLE-D) WEIGHTING THE SURVEY SAMPLE IV) RESULTS OF THE NATIONAL PROFILE A) .
' MIXED' WASTE GENERATED'IN 1990 s): MIXED WASTE IN' STORAGE AS'OF 12/31/90 C) . . MIXED. WASTE-IREATABILITY V) .. CONCLUSION' National Profile on Commercially.
November 20/1992 - Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste
..C
. .ly;
, - - - - . .,a ..
e ~ DEFINITION oF MIXED WASTE ' NRC/EPALJoINT GUIDANCE DOCUMENT (0CToBER.1989) Low-LEVEL MIXED WASTE IS DEFINED AS WAST 5 THAT SATISFIES: , e THE DEFINITION OF LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE IN THE LLRWPAA AND
- C9MTAINS A WASTE'THAT.EITHEet:
- IS. LISTED AS_A HAZARDOUS WASTE IN SUBPART D OF 40 CFR PART 261 4 OR !
-q
- CAUSES THE WASTE TO EXHIBIT ANY'OF THE HAZARDOUS CHARACTERISTICS IDENTIFIED IN SUBPART C OF'PART 261 ,
'i r
1%ational Profile on Commercially November 20,1992 Generated 1.otv-level Radioactive Mixed Waste i
O O OD' DEFINITION OF MIXED WASTE t FEDERAL FACILITIES COMPLIANCE AcT (OCTOBER 1992) t MIXED WASTE IS DEFINED AS:
- WASTE THAT'CONTAINS BOTH HAZARDOUS HASTE AND SOURCE, SPECIAL l NUCLEAR OR BYPRODUCT MATERIAL SUBJECT TO THE ATOMIC ENERGY ACT OF 1954 ,
.i 1
4
'l I
National Profile on Commercially
' November 20,1992. Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed ' Waste -i f , s - , e *. -. - +-
O O O~ DEFINITION OF MIXED WASTE STATE DEFINITIONS 1 o STATE DEFINITIONS MAY INCLUDE NON-RCRA HAZARDOUS WASTES e 13 STATES CURRENTLY INCLUDE PCBS In THEIR DEFINITION OF HAZARDOUS WASTE e STATE DEFINITIONS MAY INCLUDE RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL (MARYLAND) l l National Profile on Commerciany November 20,1992 Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste
o O
~'
O L 4 l NATIONAL PROFILE ON COMMERCIALLY GENERATED LOW-LEVEL I MIXED RADIOACTIVE WASTE ; i
- e. DEVELOPED'AT THE REQUEST OF THE HOST-STATES TECHNICAL >
COORDINATING cot 41ITTEE - MAY, 1990 - t e BEING' DEVELOPED FOR NRC AND EPA BY ORML e BASED ON A. REVIEW OF EXISTINuLSURVEYS BY STATES AND COMPACTS AND A NATIONAL SURVEY'OF OVER 1300 LICENSED COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR t FACILITIES (0CTOBER 1991- AUGUST 1992) e RESULTS WILL-BE PUBLISHED AS NRC NUREG DOCUMENT'IN LATE 1992 ! 4 .e RESULTS WILLiBE USED BY STATES, COMPACTS, PRIVATE. DEVELOPERS AND .i ' FEDERAL AGENCIES TO DEVELOP TREATMENT-AND DISPOSAL CAPACITYFOR
^
COMMERCIALLY GENERATED MIXED WASTE r e RESULTS WILLLALSO SUPPORT. DOE'S CONSIDERATION OF WHETHER TO ! ACCEPT COMMERCIALLY.' GENERATED MIXED WASTE FOR TREATMENT AND DISPOSAL + National Profile on Commercially [ November 20,1992 Ge.nerated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste Y
O O .O
^ -
L 1. i. ! PHASE I
- SEPTEMBEP 1990 - MAY 1991 l
l REVIEW AND EVALUATION OF EXISTING DATA FROM PREVIOUS STATE L AND COMPACT SURVEYS 1 j 3 EARLIER SURVEYS CONTAINED MUCH USEFUL INFORMATION BUT
- DIFFERING SURVEY OBJECTIVES, METHODS AND TIMEFRAMES'
! ARGUED AGAINST SOLE RELIANCE ON EXISTING DATA ' 4 1 i National Profile on Commercially < November 20,1992 Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed ' Waste
t i PHASE II i 1 e MAY 1991 - APRIL 1992
- SURVEY OF POTENTIAL MIXED WASTE GENERATORS -
o-PRE-TESTED ON 20'ACURI VOLUNTEERS e 1300 SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES MAILED NOVEMBER 1, 1991 e FOLLOW-UP PHONE CALLS e TARGET RESPONSE RATE - 75% P e ACTUAL RESPONSE RATE - 77% e ACCURACY WITHIN A' FACTOR OF 2 WITH 95% CONFIDENCE INTERVALS n National Profile on Commercially - November 20,1992 Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste
,t
.----------,____.,--__r -
- P' f - yQS- y g p- r,. y
O O . O~ . s PHASE Ill .
- APRIL 1992 - NOVEMBER 1992 e COMPILING AND PROJECTING THE SURVEY DATA TO A NATIONAL SCOPE t e DEVELOPMENT OF TREATABILITY REPORT FOR WASTE STREAMS IDENTIFIE9 IN THE SURVEY e-PUBLISH THE PROFILE RESULTS AS A NUREG - DECEMBER 1992 National Profile on Commercially '
- November 20,1992: Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste n
~
O O LO SELECTING THE SURVEY FKAME e LIST OF FACILITIES WITH HIGH POTENTIAL TO GENERATE MIXED WASTE
- ORNL LIST - 444 FACILITIES WITH A HIGH POTENTIAL TO GENERATE
~
NIXED WASTE D4IXED WASTE GENERATORS' ON PREVIOUS SURVEYS)
- ALL FACILITIES.THAT SHIPPED RADIOACTIVE WASTE TO' DISPOSAL SITES IN 1990 TAAT DID NOT APPEAR ON-THE ORNL LIsr t
- NRC LIST - NRC LICENSEES WITH MATERIALS PROGRAM CODES'THAT.
I HAVE A HIGH PROBABILITY OF GENERATING MIXED WASTE
- NRC' LIST.WITH EPA PERMITS - SAME AS ABOVE BUT WITH AN EPA ,.. P.CRA PERMIT
- ?
e TOTAL-= 2,936 NRC Ann AGREEMENT STATE LICENSEES i-National Profile on Commercially , November 20,'1992 ' Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste '!
,t
..[
O O OE-SELECTING'THE SURVEY SAMPLE J e FACILITIES SELECTED TO BE SENT QUESTIONNAIRES e 17 SUBSTRATA. BASED ON FACILITY TYPE'AND LIST e RANDOM' SAMPLE'FROM EACH OF THE SUBSTRATA-FOR 9 SUBSTRATA'ALL FACILITIES WERE SELECTED ^ r e TOTAL = 1,323 NRC AND AGREEMENT STATE LICENSEE
- TNCLUDING ALL NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS 1
National Profile on Commercially November 20,1992 ' Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste ' 4 % m
O O OM
- e. ,
NATIONAL PROFILE WASTE STREAMS LSF - LIourD SCINTILLATION flu 1D WASTE DIL -ANY WASTE OIL REPORTED BY A. FACILITY AS BEING A HAZARDOUS OR. MIXED WASTE . CFC - CHLORINATED FLUROCARBONS ORGANICS /0THER ORGANICS-- NON-CHL'ORINATED OR FLUORINATED ORGANIC " COMPOUNDS SUCH AS PETROLEUM DISTIf.LATES OR . ACETONE CHLORINATED ORGANICS-~- CHLORINATED.OREANIC COMPOUNDS SUCH AS DI-CHLOROBENZENE FLUORINATED ORGANICS - FLUORINATED ORGANIC COMPOUNDS SUCH AS FR' EON j
-i METALS.- LEAD, MERCURY, CHROMIUM AND' CADMIUM'OR MATERIALS CONTAINING. .i THESE METALS- j CORROSIVES - ACIDS OR BASES .
OTHER-'- A COMPLEX WASTE' STREAM CONTAINING' MULTIPLE COMPONENTS THAT DID NOT: LEND-ITSELF TO: DELINEATION AS.A SINGLE WASTE STREAM . National Profile on' Commercially , November 20,'1992;^ Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste - 1
.,s." ,w.-..y _. ~ . si m s-e _ w a
O O O ~~ i j
SUMMARY
OF THE NATIONAL PROFILE ^
-t e BASED ON THE SURVEY OF,1326 LICENSED NUCLEAR. FACILITIES,1R 000 i FT* OFlMIXED WASTE WERE. GENERATED IN 1990 i e 75,000'FT or MIXED. WASTE WERE IN STORAGE AS OF 12/31/90 l
- INDUSTRIAL CATEGORY PRODUCED THE MOST MIXED WASTE (35 PERCENT)' .
L e!THE GREATEST VOLUME OF MIXED WASTE WAS SEEN IN THE APPALACHAIN
. COMPACT'(23: PERCENT) i e LIourD SCINTILLATION FLUID COMPRISED 71 PERCENT OF MIXED' WASTE F GENERATED ~IN.1990
'4 '
e PREDOMINANT. RADIONUCLIDES WERE: 0, H,. 2p, as3, 22sy, ia7CS,
- CS, 23sg. -AND 5'CR -(NOT IN ORDER
- OF PREVALENCE)
I
-i
+-..
National Profile on Commercially-November 20;1992 Generated Low-level Radicactive Mixed Waste - >
O 0 0~ WEIGHTING'THE SAMPLE o'USED TO PROJECT NATIONAL REdULTS'FROM SURVEY DATA 4 . i
- BASED ON THE SUBSTRATUM IN WE:ICH A FA.CILITY WAS PLACED i
e DETERMINED BY DIVIDING THE NUMBER OF FACILITIES IN THE SUBSTRATUM BY THE NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS IN THE STRATUM !
- EXAMPLE: 165 FACILITIES'IN ACADEMIC SHIPPERS SUBSTRATUM 111 RESPONDENTS, NO FACILITIES OUT OF-BUSINESS i
-165/111 = 1.49. WEIGHTING FACTOR e SAMPLE WEIGHTS' RANGED FROM 1.03 - 31.5 i
~!
National Profile.on Commercially November 20,1992 Generated Low-level Radioactive Mixed Waste _
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O O O Results of the National Profile ' Mixed Waste by Waste Stream and Facility Metals 3 Gover nmen t . Nuclear Utility Organics 18?> 20% _- 10 % 1 Other 8% Medical M% N( Industria' LSF 35%
'N 71%
Academic '
' 1%
2 l Total: 140,000 cubic f t. - l Nac aicenaea government racini 4..
O O O Mixed Waste Generation Nuclear U'ility Oil 35% CFC 27%
/ Misc.
/ 3%
Other Organics i s 8%
\ ~/
Mete!
"Olher" 10 %
17 % Total = 14,000 cuf t l - - - - .. .
o o o~ , Mixed Waste Generation i Academic '4nstitutions Chlorinated Organics 2% !
"Other" 4%
y k Misc. 2z LSF O2% i J i ! l Total = 29,000 cuf t i i
o - o o : Mixed Waste Generation NRC-Licensed Gov. Facilities l l 1 i I Corrosives 4% Chlorinated Organics 4%
) ,
Other ' Organics 13% i LSF 77%
/ Misc. 2% i i
e Total = 27,000 cuf t : i 4 i
! l1,, li;! ! ;j ! ,' ? I !( i,I i !; ! !
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- O s i c n n a o g D, g g y i o8 is t s r o a r l ta%1h e50 e o C r r
-r es ni e M '
e i hez t O N t % eli i Gca - c% s i2 M F o o l t a - si r - at s Wudn dI F% _ e S8 L6 t f _ i x c u M 0 0 0, 0 5 .
=
l t a o T - o ,
,rm -
O O- o Mixed Waste Generation
\4edical Facilities sF
~
94 % -
~
Md '
. / Other Organics 3%
Total = 20,000 citf t
O O O~~ I MIXED WASTE IN STORAGE e 75,000 FT OF MIXED WASTE WAS IN STORAGE AS OF 12/31/90 e CADMIUM CONTAMINATED WASTE WAS LARGEST VOLUME IN STORAGE (35 PERCENT) e INDUSTRIAL CATEGORY WAS STORING THE MOST MINED WASTE (57 PERCENT) AS OF 12/31/92 COMPRISED OF CADMIUM, LSC AND THE "0THER" OR HISC. WASTES e NUCLEAR UTILITIES WERE STORING 29 PERCENT OF MIXED WASTE COMPRISED PRIMARILY OF CFCS, WASTE OIL AND LEAD c THE ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS WERE STORING 7 PERCENT, GOVERNMENT l FACILITIES WERE STORING 4 PERCENT AND MEDICAL FACILITIES WERE l STORING 3 PERCENT l l National Profile on Commercially November 20,1992 Geneisted I.nw-level Radioactive Mixed Waste
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I DOE LDR vs. All Commercial Mixed Was::e* (excluding Commercial LSF) i , DOE 95% i Comi;nercial
- Based on May 26,1992 FR notice l
O O O ~~ i Low-Level Waste vs. Mixed LLW ; (cubic feet) ! i i l t i l + i I Low-Level Waste 91% 1 t Mixed LLW 9% : i i j - i t Based on 1.6E6 cuf t generated in 1990 ! I i ! [
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07~ - MIXED WASTE TREATMENT CAPACITY e ADEQUATE TREATMENT CAPACITY APPEARS'TO EXIST FOR: LSF, WASTE ~ OIL AND MOST ORGANICS (lNCINERATION)
- HOST-CFCS (INCINERATION)
- METAL BEARING SOLUTIONS, METAL ALLOYS AND SEALED SOURCES (STABILIZATION)
- WASTES REQUIRING PRECIPITATION, NEUTRALIZATION AND CHEMICAL REDUCTION e ADDITIONAL'CA.*ACITY IS NEED2D FOR:
- CFCS IN STORAGE ^
- WASTES REQUIRING DECONTAMINATION, 'AND MACROENCAPSULATION
- WASTES CONTAMINATED WITH SOLID LEAD AND MERCURY e APPROXIMATELY.12,000 FT OF ADDITIONAL. TREATMENT. CAPACITY NEEDED TO TREAT ALL' MIXED WASTE GENERATED AND Ih STORAGE AS OF 12/31/90 National Profile on Commerciallyi November. 20,1992- Ger' rated I.ow-level Radioactive' Mixed Waste !
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