ML20134H495
| ML20134H495 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 11/01/1996 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| DSI-G-3-00008, DSI-G-3-8, NUDOCS 9611140120 | |
| Download: ML20134H495 (217) | |
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hSI- G 3 Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION of
Title:
Strategic Assessment and Rebaselining lnitiative Stakeholders Public Meeting 11 Docket Number: (not applicable) 'd /
5 NOV n 81996 3 office of the
" 8'"""*
&, g 4 i
Date: Friday, November 1,1996 Work Order No.: NRC-896 Pages 248-463 b
NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 9611140120 961101 g p NRCSA I PDR TS /3 1
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..-..-.7 i'$ l
. DISCLAIMER !
i
!~" PUBLIC NOTICE i BY THE
, UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S .r STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT AND REBASELINING INITIATIVE
! STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETING ,
L Friday, November 1, 1996 !
The contents of this transcript of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory I Commission's Strategic Assessment and Rebaselining Initiative Stakeholders Public Meeting held on Friday, November 1,1996, ,
as reported herein, is a record of the discussions recorded i
~
at the meeting held on the above date.
This transcript has not been reviewed, corrected and edited and it may contain inaccuracies.
i r
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, 1 UNITED STA'EES OF AMERICA 2 +++++
3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 +++++
5 STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT AND REBASELINING INITIATIVE 6 STAKEHOLDERS PUBLIC MEETING 7 +++++
8 FRIDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 1, 1996 10 +++++
11 COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO 12 The Strategic Assessment and Rebaselining Initiative 13 Stakeholders Meeting resumed at the Sheraton Colorado 14 Springs Hotel, at 8:15 a.m., Chip Cameron, Special i
15 Liaison, Office of General Counsel, NRC, presiding. ;
i i
1 16 PRESENT:
17 CHIP CAMERON 1 l
18 JOHN W. CRAIG 19 JAMES L. MILHOAN i
20 JESSE L. FUNCHES l
21 JAMES JOHNSON 22 EDWARD L. JORDAN 23 FRANK MIRAGLIA 24 STEVEN F. CROCKETT 25 THEMIS P. SPEIS NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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, 1 PRESENT: (Continued) 2 JIM SHEA 3 MALCOLM KNAPP i
, 4 ATTENDEES:
5 TIM BONZER 6 CHARLES BRINKMAN i
i 7 ASHOK DHAR 8 LESLEY ENGLAND 9 STEPHEN FLOYD
- 10 BILL FLOYD i
- 11 FRED GOWERS 12 MICHAEL HOLMES I
13 ROGER HUSTON 4 14 WALTER MEDINA 1
j 15 MARTHA MITCHELL 3 16 CRAIG NESBIT l 17 PEDRO SALAS i
18 JON SATKO
]
/ 19 WILLIAM SINCLAIR 20 PHILIP STOFFEY 21 TOM TIPTON 22 JOHN TROTTER 23 ROGER WALKER 24 KENNETH WEAVER NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 A-G-E-N-D-A ,
2 Acenda Item Pace 3 Opening Comments 251 4 Reactor Licensing for Future Applicants 257 i l
5 Operating Reactor Oversight Program 287 **I i
6 Decommissioning - Power Reactors 317 l
7 Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Regulation 341 l 8 Low-Level Waste 370 -
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9 High-Level Waste 397' 10 Decommissioning Non-Reactor Facilities 414 !
11 Fees 437 12 Closing Remarks by Mr. Milhoan 461 l
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15 !
16 !
F 17 !
18 19 20 , [
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23 !
1 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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, 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S I
2 (8:15 a.m.) !
3 MR. CAMERON: Good morning, everybody, and l
4 welcome back for our second day of the Nuclear Regulatory i
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5 Commission's stakeholder meetings on the strategic 1
! 6 assessment process. We were very pleased with the content l l
7 and activity of the discussion yesterday, and I would just l 8 urge you to keep that discussion level and that 9 constructive dialogue up today.
l 10 We do have a couple of new people with us this 11 morning, and I think there will be people who will be
! 12 joining us for this afternoon's session. In keeping with 13 our atmosphere of informality, I think that I'll ask our l l
l l
14 two new people to just introduce themselves.
15 MS. MITCHELL: I'm Marti Mitchell, senior l
16 technical manager at Roy F. Weston, l 4 l 17 MR. GOWERS: Fred Gowers with the El Paso l 18 Electric Company. I'm site represente,tive at Palo Verde 19 Nuclear Generating Station in Phoenix.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, both of you.
l 21 Is there anybody else who's new with us this j 22 morning?
23 (No response.)
24 MR. CAMERON: I'11 just quickly go over the 25 ground rules for the benefit of'the new people. After the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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252 ,
-1 NRC staff makes a presentation on a particular issue, if 2 you want to comment on that issues paper, please raise l
.3 your hand, and when you're recognized, we'll get a e
4 microphone to you, and state your name and affiliation if ;
5 you want.to for purposes of the court reporter. We are -
6 transcribing this session.
7 And once again as a reminder, there are a ;
8 number of ways to submit comments on the strategic l i
9 assessment process and-issues papers. One vehicle is the !
i 10 discussion that we're having at this public meeting and.at j l
I 11 the next public meeting that we're going to hold in 12 Chicago next week on November 7 and 8. ,
I 13 You can submit comments hard copy to the !
l 14 Commission; you can submit them through the Internet. We !
I c
15 have an Internet site for this. And there are comment j i
16 forms in the back of the room and outside that you can jot l 17 down comments that you want and just put them in the !
18 cardboard boxes that we have back there. ;
i 19 Copies of all the issue papers are outside 20 this room,. and before each morning and afternoon session, 21 the view graphs for the presentations will be in the back 22 of this room. .i I
23 Now, just to go over our agenda for today, *i I
24 this morning we're going to start out with the strategic i 25 arena, assuring safe operations, operation of nuclear j NEAL R. GROSS ,
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I 253 1 reactoro, and Frenk Miraglia, who is the acting director i
2 of the office of nuclear reactor regulation, is going to 1 3 present the first three of those papers.
4 But we will have discussion after each paper 5 presentation, and then Themis Speis from the office of 6 nuclear regulatory research will come up to present the 7 risk-informed performance-based paper.
8 And as I said yesterday, there will be a lot 9 in that paper that's applicable not only to the power 10 reactor area but also to the materials licensing area.
11 We're going to break for lunch, and then we're 12 going to come back and do the nuclear waste arena. In j l
13 keeping with yesterday's format, we're not going to do a 14 concurrent session on fees. Rather we will discuss fees 15 right after we do the nuclear waste discussion, so we'll 16 all be together for that and, of course, Jesse Funches is i
17 going to be the main NRC staff person on that particular 18 paper.
l 19 And then we'll just have a short close-up 20 after we're done. Before we get going with the first 21 paper, does anybody have any comments or any questions?
22 Yes, Charlie.
23 MR. BRINKMAN: I just was reflecting on 24 yesterday's session and was thinking about some of the 25 comments that were made, and it occurs to me that, you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 know, most of the comments sound like they're criticisms ,
2 of the NRC staff, and at least speaking for myself, I 3 certainly want to put it in context that that isn't my i sl' 4 intention. I think the spirit of this is looking for ways 5 to improve and so forth. '>
6 But I got thinking about some of the comments 7 I made yesterday, and I thought, Boy, taking as in toto, 1
8 it really sounds extremely critical. I want to say that I 9 have a great deal of respect for the NRC and much more so l
10 for the individuals who make it up, many of whom I've 11 worked with or even against, but for many years.
12 There was one comment in particular yesterday 13 I-really feel badly about, and I would like to recant it i
14 and that was any suggestion that the NRC's research !
15 program is driven by the National Laboratories. I didn't i
! 16 mean to say that, but as I got thinking about it, I was 17 afraid it sounded like that. So I don't think that, and I 18 would apologize for making a statement like that. ;
i 1
19 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much for that '
l 20 thought, Charlie. l l
21 Jim Milhoan?
L .,
1 22 MR. MILHOAN: Jim Milhoan. We at the NRC did 23 not regard any of the comments made yesterday -- did not 24 take it in that regard. In fact, the NRC staff is very
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, 1 taking thn cpirit of the fact is that there are areas for 2 improvement at the NRC. We regard these meetings as a 3 very valuable part of getting input from all of our )
J 4 stakeholders in the NRC processes, and the quality of l l
5 comments we've received at this meeting has just been j 6 outstanding, and we appreciate the people attending and l 1
7 the comments that we received.
8 I think in the long run it's going to help us 9 at the NRC position ourselves for changing for the future, 10 and we are appreciative of the high level of comments that 11 we received and also the thought that has gone back into 12 reviewing the issue papers on a fairly short notice, the 13 volume of it, the comments we've received as shown that, 14 in fact, there's been a lot of work that's been going on 15 in the review of the issue papers and the quality of the 16 comments reflect that, and we're appreciative of those 17 comments.
18 MR. CAMERON: And well said, Jim.
)
19 Bill Sinclair? 1 20 MR. SINCLAIR: I meant every comment I said 21 yesterday. Just kidding. l 22 Just an observation. This has really been a l
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23 tremendous -- I can't think of the word. Well, anyway --
24 I'm speechless; it's so breathtaking how much material 25 that has to be reviewed. And for programs such as state NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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256 . l 1 programs, I know it's been a real difficult tack in trying 2 to go through all these issue papers and trying to deliver 3 comments on time for these meetings and even for the 4 November 15 deadline.
5 And I know you're under pretty strict ..
6 timelincs as to get the comments back and so forth, but I I
7 would just ask if there's any flexibility at all in 8 extending the deadline of November 15, I'd really wish you 9 would take into consideration, because it's quite a huge 10 elephant to start eating, and I know I'm having difficulty 11 as a state person, and I'm sure other state persons are as 12 well.
13 MR. MILHOAN: Jim Milhoan again. We have had 14 a similar request from other organizations. That subject 15 is being discussed with the Commission at the present 16 time. I do not have any information to give you on that 17 decision, but we are looking and asking. We'll be l 18 responding to those requests, but that will be discussed I 19 with the Commission. l 20 MR. CAMERON: Great. Thank you.
21 Themis, did you want to say something?
~.l 22 MR. SPEIS: Themis Speis, the office of 23 research, NRC. I want to second what Mr. Milhoan has -
24 said. We appreciate the constructive criticism, even out 25 of the box comments and even our research program needs l
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, 257 1 scrutiny and criticism and constructive or de-e constructive, we all take them into consideration. So 3 there is nothing personal, and we appreciate everything 6
4 that has been said.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Themis.
6 Well, let's get started with the first paper.
7 Frank Miraglia is going to present reactor licensing for 8 future applicants.
9 MR. MIRAGLIA: Thank you, Chip. We've spent a 10 few minutes defining what arena means. It's friendly 11 competition and constructive criticism in the terms of a 12 sporting event and not in terms of the Roman gladiator 13 kinds of things, and I think that's the spirit we're going 14 to receive all of the comments in.
15 I'll be talking about three papers today 16 dealing with reactor issues. As Chip said, the risk-17 informed performance-based regulation that Dr. Speis will 18 talk to you towards the end of the session also has 19 implications for the materials program, so it's certainly 20 of interest.
21 One of the papers I'll be talking about is 22 reactor decommissioning, and that's related to the 23 materials decommissioning, and there's a linkage between 24 those papers, and that'll be discussed, I believe, in this 25 afternoon's session.
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1 The first iosus dsals with future reactor ,
t 2 licensing and applications. For over a decade, the .
3 Commission has been endorsing regulatory policies to I 4 encourage standardization. That resulted in a number of 5 activities by the Commission, establishment of a policy i i
6 statement for advanced reactors, change in the regulations 7 and the regulatory structure, and the promulgation of Part 8 52 that established the design certification process and ,
9 early site review process, and the potential for a one-10 stop combined construction permit / operating license i 11 process. j 12 The standardization in those regulatory !
13 processes were kind of -- were reaffirmed by the Congress 14 in the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Since Part 52 was 15 issued, the NRC has been engaged in a number of activities l i
16 with the industry in response to industry initiatives for
- 17 reviewing designs for future reactor site designs. i 18 The agency has reviewed two design 19 certifications for the evolutionary light-water designs.
l l
20 That was the General Electric advanced boiling water 21 reactor and the ABB Combustion Engineering System 80-Plus 22 reactor. In addition, it also has an ongoing review of
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23 the Westinghouse AP600. A few years back, there were a 24 number of other designs and review underway.
l 25 The current environment is such where there is l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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[ 1 not a n2w ordsr on the horizon. There domen't appacr to 2 be short-range plans in the industry to test the i 3 regulatory process beyond the Part 52 design certification 4 processes, two of which are near the end but have not ,
5 quite been completed. The final design certification for j
6 the two evolutionary designs is pending before the 7 Commission at this time.
i 8 And so the direction-setting issue as stated 9 here is: Given the current environment, what should the i
10 Commission's policy be with respect to future reactors?
1 11 Some of the factors that were considered are
- 12 listed here. As I said, Part 52 was promulgated. It had 13 three features. The design certification feature is being 14 tested and has been tested for the evolutionary designs,
! 15 and we also have an ongoing review for a passive design.
- 16 As I've indicated, there's no new orders for 17 nuclear power plant within the United States seen in the 18 near term. There is budgetary pressures on the industry, 19 the Department of Energy and the NRC. Many of the.
20 advanced designs were a joint, cooperative effort between 21 the industry, utilities, EPRI, DOE to look at the new 22 designs and the cooperative efforts that were put before
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23 the NRC and to test the regulatory processes.
l 24 Budgetary pressures are such that those 25 budgets are getting smaller, and it doesn't appear that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 the other acpsets of Part 52 are likely to be tested, ,
2 namely early site review and then certainly not an .
3 application in the near future. t 4 Notwithstanding that, there are foreign ,
5 interests in the United States designs. The Pacific Rim '+
6 countries have expanding energy growth, and there is lots i 7 of off-shore interest in American designs, and as a key >
8 point for those designs, those countries are interested in j 9 what the U.S. regulatory position is with respect to those 10 designs, so we recognize that that's a factor that bears 11 on the decision-making in this area. !
12 And certainly as I indicated, the Congress has 13 been interested in the stabilization of the regulatory 14 process, in supporting standardization in terms of the act 15 that they passed in 1992, and they had expressed this i
16 interest in various authorizations, appropriations bills 17 for both the Department of Energy as well as the NRC, so j 18 that's another factor that was considered.
19 In looking at these, the staff developed four i 20 options for the Commission's consideration. The first 21 option is to reassess and to reprioritize options, the 22 position being is that we've tested a part of Part 52; we
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23 have been giving priority attention to these things.
24 Given that there doesn't appear to be new 25 tests on the horizon, should we reassess the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 1 prioritization to just the ongoing procaccoo end look et 2 other ways of articulating new objectives and priorities 3 on the completion of ongoing activities?
4 The suggestion was that the Commission would j l
5 give priority attention to future tests in terms of either 6 new design certifications or early site reviews, or a 7 combined licence if one should materialize.
8 The sustained responsiveness is the closest to 9 the current Commission policy. The Commission has 10 committed to provide the resources and the priority to the 11 designs that are before us. As new initiatives come 12 before us, it would have that sustained responsiveness, 13 and it would remain a high priority task for the agency to 14 consider and focus on.
15 In this option, the current policy of the 16 Commission would not have to be revised, and that's 17 consistent, as I said, with the current posture of the 18 position.
19 The third option is recognizing that the 20 activity in this area is expected to continue to dwindle 21 and that we should take a step back and, say, refocus the 22 resources that are being applied to this area for 23 application in other areas of the agency's interest, 24 operating reactors, high-level waste, or other areas that 25 require attention. And that would be a step back from the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 current position. ,
2 And then the fourth option, which we deemed to 3 be the single solution option, would be that the NRC would 4 state a willingness to participate in a process, l 5 recognizing that the agency has a role in defining the .
6 regulatory processes for these new designs, but it 7 wouldn't be in a lead type positions, that the other 8 stakeholders, in terms of the industry, other federal 9 agencies, to articulate a view of maintaining the nuclear 10 option would have to be brought forth, and the NRC would 11 express a willingness to participate in that kind of 12 single solution.
13 This here is in recognition -- in developing 1
14 this option, the point of discussion was: Our agency, as i 15 a regulatory agency, when the NRC was established back in 16 1975, it was established to deal with the question of the 17 predecessor agency, Atomic Energy Commission, having a 18 role for fostering and developing and promoting the uses 19 of nuclear energy, as well as regulating.
20 And the perception was that dual role had some 21 built-in conflicts, and as a result of that, the 22 independent regulatory commission, the Nuclear Regulatory
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23 Commission, those aspects were removed, and so the agency 24 has been always sensitive to a position of appearing to be 25 in a promotion mode.
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1 (8:30 c.m.)
2 And so the single solution would be saying, If 3 that nuclear option is to be maintained and that m.,
4 suggestion is brought forth, the agency recognizes that it
{* 5 has a role to play and would be willing to play such a j 6 role in that type of single solution.
7 This is the options that were put forth before 8 the Commission, and the Commission has stated its 9 preliminary views. There was recognition by the 10 Commission that, indeed, the next steps in this process 4 l 11 are going to be fundamentally decided by economic 12 decisions by license applicants, the industry, and that l
! 13 will really focus on what's needed and when is it needed. I 1
14 They went on to say that the Commission should 15 give priority to reviewing standard designs and advanced i
16 reactor designs, early site review, and licensing for new ;
! I 17 reactor applications. That's essentially option 2, the 18 sustained responsiveness option, which is the current 19 position, so they reaffirmed that position.
20 In addition, they recognized that as part of i
21 the activity, that the staff should address and develop 22 implementation plans and guidance that addressed a number
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23 of the issues that are stated here. The utilities J
24 requirements documents was a document prepared by the 25 utilities, the Electric Power Research Institute, that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 providad brond guidanca that need:d to be considerad in ,
2 the design of future reactors.
3 And so the Commission has expressed an
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4 interest here to maintain that document and how it would 5 be used in'the certification process.
6 They also recognized that a substantial amount 7 of work has been done in a number of areas and that 8 they've asked the staff to address an orderly close-out of 9 all of the activities that are ongoing in terms of the 10 active reviews, and then also to document where we have 11 been on several of the other reviews.
12 The two mentioned here are the simplified 13 boiling water reactor, which was a GE passive design that 14 had received some review. General Electric decided to 15 terminate that review, and the direction here is to 16 document and complete the staff's review of the activities 17 that were performed to date.
18 The MHTGR is the high temperature gas-cooled 19 reactor, which was -- a preliminary safety evaluation was 20 done by the Commission in response to information provided 21 by the Department of Energy, and that review has been
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22 documented and has been issued.
23 In addition, the Commission said we needed to 24 take a step back and look at the design certification 25 process following the completion of the current NEAL. R. GROSS court REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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265 1 applications, to examine it for losmons learned.
2 As I said, the two evolutionary designs are 3 currently before the Commission. Those reviews have been
- b 4 ongoing for probably three years. They're at the final 5 step. The staff has proposed a design certification rule 6 for both the system 80 Plus and the ABWR, and those issues 7 are pending before the Commission.
8 There's been lots of dialogue, lots of 9 interact.lon with the industry and DOE in the conduct of ,
10 those reviews, and certainly there have been lessons i
11 learned as to how Part 52, in terms of the design 12 certification process, has been implemented to date. ,
1 13 The other review that's currently active is 14 the Westinghouse AP600 review, so this was further i l
15 direction from the Commission on this area.
16 This is a brief overview, summarizes the 17 options, the factors, and the Commission's preliminary 18 views, and I'd like to turn it over to Chip and to you for i
19 comments and suggestions, thoughts of how we proceed l 20 beyond this point. l 21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Frank.
22 This strategic issue concerns the licensing of 23 future reactors, and you heard Frank present a number of 24 options on what direction the Commission might go on this 25 issue. Have we identified all o'f the options, do you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i think, or in there any other options that should be addad ,
i 2 on this one?.
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! 3 (No response.) l s-l l 4 MR. CAMERON: How about the Commission's j i
E 5 choice of options, their preliminary views? Does anybody -l 6 have a comment on that? Yes, John. !
l 7 MR., TROTTER: I guess my comment is I'm trying 8 to understand how this strategic planning effort affects f
l 9 things that are going to be going on between now and l l
10 fiscal '99. I understand it affects the plans in fiscal 11 '99, but much of what's being talked about here i
12 necessarily would happen between now and then. ;
13 So is there a; tie-in between this strategic l I
14 planning and, you know, relatively near-term activities? !
l 15 MR. MIRAGLIA: That's beyond this particular !
16 issue paper, but in the context of-what the steering group 17 has been considered and considering, even in the embryonic 18 stages of the phases that we're in, we have looked at, 19 What are the issues that we've identified to date, and how 20 should they be considered in the '97 as well as the '98 21 budget; look for the big drivers.
22 Jesse Funches could give you some additional 23 thoughts on that, but, yes, there is a linkage. The plan.
24 that comes out of this we see having its first major 25 comprehensive impact on the '99 budget, but in the l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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I 267 1 planning proca33 for both '97 as wall as the '98 budgat, 1
2 we tried to feed into the process through the commission, 1 1
3 with guidance back to the staff in the development of the 4 other budgets.
1 5 So the answer is, yes, there is an ongoing 6 process. Perhaps Jesse can be more specific in how we've I 1
7 done that. !
8 MR. FUNCHES: As Frank mentioned, what I was 9 saying yesterday is for the '99 budget itself. The budget j l
10 will be developed, you know, HTDD plan as the guide. The 1
i 11 '97 budget has gone forward in terms of resource leve19, 12 but we do have opportunity to make a transition between 13 now and '99, and we will be using -- the strategic plan 14 would be available to us to start adjusting and making a 15 transition into '99 to where the plan would have, as Frank 16 mentioned, this comprehensive review.
17 So we would see the plan being available for 18 some transition action during fiscal year '97 and '98.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, 20 Jesse.
21 Further comments on licensing of future 22 reactors paper?
23 Frank talked about the single -- well, let's 24 go to Charlie.
25 MR. BRINKMAN: I'm not sure in which of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 1 questions this goas, so I'llLjust make a comment, I guoso.
2 We have just completed -- ABB has just completed, as you 3 indicated, the review and staff approval of the System 80
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4 Plus evolutionary advanced reactor and are now in the )
5 rulemaking phase, and that's almost completed as well. "l I
6 One of the most troubling aspects that I J l
7 really think the Commission has got to come to grips with.
l !
! 8 in the area of Part 52.has to do with -- people wanting to )
i 9 put forward. advanced designs in the future or utilizing-10 them -- has to do with the recognition of the improved !
11 safety level of the designs. !
12 We have designed a plant which the NRC has !
13' reviewed, and in that is a nine-volume PRA, probability l 14 risk assessment, which draws some general conclusions that l
15 these plants are not only safer than currently operating l l
16 plants, but substantially safer,~like two orders of 17 magnitude, at least one order of magnitude, and the NRC 18 has reviewed this and has approved the PRA,. concurs with-l 19 the results. l 20 But the NRC has got-to relook at -- in my 21 opinion, has got to relook at their desire to say, okay, 22 we have a safer plant; we now have to back that up with t
23 regulations that enforce that safety, such that if the ^!
24 licensee at some point.in-time finds himself in a I
25 situation where for some reason'that safety level has t
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269 1 d grad:d, he in in the sama predicamsnt as currently 2 operating plants get into.
3 These plants really are a lot safer; they've 4 taken -- they have a lot of improvements. They obviously 5 still have to be regulated and operated safely and so 6 forth, but I don't think that the Commission has 7 addressed, from the top down and in a coherent way, their 8 policy with respect to increased safety.
9 It is the Commission's policy that future 10 plants shall be safer than currently operating plants, and ,
)
11 that is also the industry's point of view, and it's been I 12 well documented and is embodied in the EPRI ALWR utility 13 requirements document, which we designed our plants to.
14 However, the business of actually following 15 all that up with regulations which enforces that level of 16 safety is very troubling and is something I think this 17 rebaselining ought to address as a significant problem. I 18 don't know if it just comes under lessons learned to be 19 looked at or whether it really is a whole relook at this 20 area.
21 MR. CAMERON: Let's explore that. Frank, do 22 you want to start?
~
23 MR. MIRAGLIA: You know, I understand the 24 comment and the question. The industry has put its views 25 before the Commission in terms of applicable regulations NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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I 270 .
1 with rcepsct to the current Part 52 process. The staff ,
2 has taken a view and those matters are pending. j 3 It would appear to v.e that that would be 4 encompassed within the context of looking at the process 5 and lessons learned from Part 52. I think if you look at -
6 the industry documents as well as the staff's safety 7 evaluation on these plants, that there is concurrence that 8 the designs as proposed are safer designs. The 9 question --
10 That's a technical issue, and that process 11 is -- that decision and comments and conclusions have been 12 drawn. Now we're saying, How does one institutionalize 13 that within the regulatory process, and that's the 14 question of applicable regulations that's before the 15 Commission, and they're going to have to -- they have that l
16 netter pending and will be addressing those kind of l 17 things i
18 But certainly I would see that as part of the i 19 lessens learned in terms of the design certification 20 process. There have been lots of implementation issues 21 that have been identified throughout the two and a half to 22 three-year review, and I think if the industry gives that 23 kind of focus and wants to provide -- make sure that those 24 kinds of issues are considered in that, thac certainly is 25 an opportunity now to make sure'that it encompasses those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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f 271 ,
,' 1 kinds of areno, end it would ba an appropricto crem for l
l 2 comment within the context of this issue paper and the !
l l
l 3 strategic planning effort. r l.
4 MR. CAMERON: Does everybody understand the 1
i- 5 point that Charlie is making here? Is it clear what we're l 6 talking about, because I think it is an important point.
i 7 (No response.)
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Charlie, do you want to t 9 continue?
10 MR. BRINKMAN: I had a separate point, and it 11 has to do with the slide that's before us here as far as !
i :
1 t
! 12 what else the staff should do. In addition, I agree with ;
13 the things that are listed here, and I agree with the j
- 14 Commission's preliminary views, so far as they go. But I i
15 also think that we ought to go further than this and that (
l 16 the staff and the industry need to work together to work 17 out the additional steps that are necessary for a COL 18 applicant to complete.
19 Your paper spoke to this and dismissed this on 20 the basis that it's preliminary; there are no applicants 21 out there; and it would be better to do that when an 22 applicant identifies himself, because it will be a
,' 23 different environmen . -
24 However, I maintain that we have a hiatus 25 right now, and we would really be remiss to ignore this
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l 1 opportunity to go ahend and lay it out, lay out what are , ,
2 all the steps, what-does it take to get your license, ,
t j 3 because that has not been identified. To use an old i .-
! 4 quote, The devil's in the details, and we need to work out l
I l 5 the details. It doesn't mean that it has to be cast in 6 concrete. Things do change, and if it's another ten years 7 before we actually use the process, it probably wou.'.d need 8 to be revisited.
9 But one of the things that people don't know 10 right now, to go into the Part 52 licensing process, is, 11 What does it take to get me through it. We had to work 12 this out as we went through the design certification, but 13 that's only one of the legs of the triangle. There's also 14 the early site review, and that, of course, takes industry 15 initiative which we don't have at this point. But then 16 there's the other portion of working out the details for ,
1 17 the COL applicant himself, what has he got to do to get a 18 license.
i 19 So I would really like to see that added to i 20 this option as additional steps. i 21 MR. CAMERON: Charlie, can you -- and, Frank,
.4 22 maybe you can clarify this. What option -- I think that !
23 that is in one of the options that was discussed, and 24 perhaps, Frank, you could put this in perspective.
25 MR. MIRAGLIA: I'm going back in'Jo preliminary NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 273 1 vicw hare, end ths Commission hen indicated that tha NRC j 2 should continue to give priority reviewing standard ;
l 1 2
3 designs, advanced reactor designs, early site reviews, and 4 licensing for new reactors. l l ;
5 I would read that as CPOL applicants as well.
6 I think give the priority to issues that are brought
! 7 before us, and I think the Commission has adopted option !
i 8 2, which is the sustained responsiveness option in saying l 9 that if the industry is going to put those things before 1
10 us, we'll give attention further dialogue.
11 And I think it's in there, but I think the 12 comment to make sure that that's covered within the l
13 context of that certainly should be put on the record, and i
14 that we could pass that on to the Commission, that that's !
15 the industry's view in terms of being incorporated within i
16 that. l l
17 I think that was the intent of the Commission l
18 by stating that, Charles, j l
19 MR BRINKMAN: I read it, Frank, as being, If 20 a new applicant identifies himself, then they would have 21 priority. But in the absence of an applicant, I read your 22 paper to say you would set these issues aside until an il 23 applicant does come forth.
24 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think that's what the paper ;
l 25 said. I think the preliminary views of the Commission NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. l (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234 4433 ,
l'
274 .
l I would bs that we would be sustained responniva to ,
l i
2 initiatives by the industry, regardless of -- i 3 MR. BRINKMAN: I'm glad to hear that.
_.i 4 MR. MIRAGLIA: But I think the comment is 5 worth taking. We can make sure that gets passed to the -
6 Commission, and that can be considered in the final 7 decisionmaking process.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
9 Fred? ?
10 MR. GOWERS: To affirm what Charlie just l 11 indicated from the viewpoint of a past participant in a 12 license. application, not the licensee itself, it would be 13 difficult for a management to even begin to think about i
14 how to -- the decision to approach a new plant in the i 15 absence of a clear path, what that means to embark on.
16 So I just kind of reaffirm .aat you said. We ,
17 don't want to step up to the bar un il we know what the .
18 bar looks like.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
20 MR. MIRAGLIA: I believe that's a valid point, 21 and I think that's understood by all, and as Charlie 22 indicated, in the implementation of Part 52, there were 23 lots of implementation issues, and that the true test is
24 going through the process, and the devil's always in the 25 details. We can dialogue and we can establish frameworks NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 275 i 1 and processco, but to guarantee predictable outcomma with !
2 certainty, you need to go through the process, and I think -
3 we've learned a lot in terms of the Part 52 process.
e.
4 I think that's one of the indications that the 5 Commission is saying. We ought to try to look at those
[- ,
6 lessons learned and say, How can they be applied in other 7 areas as well. So I think it's recognized. -
8 MR. CAMERON: John?
9 MR. TROTTER: I guess I'll just throw out a 10 thought that came to mind, at the risk of perhaps even 11 sounding self-serving. I don't know, Charlie, if you're l
12 talking about a requirements level discussion with the I .
13 As you know, I was involved with the review of the ;
j staff.
i l 14 requirements document, and I have truthfully mixed 15 feelings on the benefit of that review.
16 But that might be something for someone to 17 consider is if there is some way for industry to come 18 forward at a requirements for COL applicant level, to have 19 a dialogue. My reservation is simply that, as you know, a 20 lot of the details came out in the discussion of plant-21 specific applications, so we'd have to recognize the 22 limits of such an approach.
23 But I heartily endorse and I hear what you're 24 saying, that the dialogue on COL application has to go 25 farther than it is now. It's hardly anywhere now. It has NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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- 1 to go forther than it 10 now if wa exp;ct comebody to ,
2 start saying they're going to risk a few billion dollar 3 investment. i 4 MR. CAMERON: It seems like there's a thread 5 between Charlie, Fred, and John's comment here, about ,
6 pursuing this further. What would be the way that the 7 industry could bring this to the Commission, because I 8 think that from what Frank was saying is we're ready to 9 give priority, but the industry is the one who should take 10 the initiative on this.
11 Is there any thoughts on what the industry --
12 how could the industry bring this forward to the +
13 Commission in some sort of coherent fashion? Thoughts on 14 that? Charlie, 15 MR. BRINKMAN: Even though these design 16 certification applications were done by Westinghouse, 17 General Electric, and ABB, we all worked together through !
18 the auspices of the NEI and the working groups that they 19 set up, so certainly that's where I'd be looking to in 20 this instance, is NEI grabbing the ball here and being 1 l
21 supported by the vendors and others that are in those 22 working groups.
23 And we've already started down those paths.
24 My perception is, though, that get*.ing the designs 25 certified as rules may be in the minds of some people the i
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- 277 j 1 end of the road, and it.icn't the end of tha rond. As wns l i l 2 pointed out, we've got a long ways to go to define what's 3 left, so that an applicant knows what he's getting into ;
4 when he makes an application. 1 j'- 5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good. Do we have NEI I
l 6 comments on that? Roger? (
! i 7 MR. HUSTON: Yes, Chip. Roger Huston from 8 NEI. We're in full agreement with Charlie on that and 9 want to point out that.there is a suggested program, a 10 regulatory issue resolution plan which has been discussed ;
11 with the staff earlier this year and does include elements 12 of defining the remaining issues in the implementation of 13 Part 52.
14 As has been noted, the design certification 15 has been a significant effort, but that's only the first l
16 part, and a potential applicant does need to have an l 17 understanding of what the process is going to be.
18 And the whole intent of creating Part 52 was 19 to establish that that would be a stable process in which -
l 20 a licensed applicant would not have to fear the kind of 1 l
l 21 changes and disruptions during the course of licensing and 22 construction that happened on occasion in some of the 23 previous plants.
24 We agree that it's very important to nail down 25 as many of those details as we can on a process level, so NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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278 -
1 that that can be considarcd by a potentici applicant wh n ,
2 making a decision on whether or not to order a plant, and 3 we do encourage the Commission to proceed with addressing
..l 4 those issues in an orderly fashion, recognizing resource 5 limitations, but continuing to flesh out the skeleton that .-
6 we've got here to show that it can work.
7 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think those are all 8 worthwhile comments, Chip, and I think they can be 9 presented as either clarifications to the lessons learned 10 and to the second option, to make sure that it's addressed ;
i i
11 in that kind of context, and I think those comments on the 12 record would be helpful to the Commission in re-examining 13 this decision, to make sure that those points are fully 14 considered in the development of the final position.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I just would 16 emphasize, picking up on something that Roger said is that 17 he talked about recognizing resource constraints. Keep in 18 mind that the whole -- at the core of our whole strategic 19 assessment process is, How do we continue to function 20 effectively in a time of decreasing resources.
21 And so when you do comment on the papers, in 22 your written comment, keep that thought in mind, because 23 often, though I think we've heard the comments, Well, the 24 Commission should do more, they should do this, and the 25 key is how to do this in a time of diminishing resources.
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279 1 Yoo, Bill.
2 MR. SINCLAIR: Chip, you stole my comment 3 right there. I think the bottom line issue is what are !
l 4 the level resources that NRC is willing to expend on this ;
- - 5 issue. I think t hat's the critical issue to look at. !
6 It's very similar to what you're going to face when you 7 look at the low-level waste issue. ;
8 What level of services are you going to 9 provide? And I think here's an opportunity to move ;
10 resources around potentially, so those are the kind of 11 tough questions you're going to have to deal with.
12 MR. CAMERON: Now, that's another good point l 13 is that, you know, we sometimes tend to look at these 14 things issue by issue, but there are trade-offs among 15 these various areas, and I think the name of the game here ,
16 is also prioritizing. Where can the Commission step back 17 in a particular area and shift resources?
18 Frank?
19 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think I would just like 20 everyone to step back to yesterday's discussion of the 21 strategic plan, that the strategic plan in and of itself 22 was not a budget and prioritization document, but to set
!** 23 broad goals and objectives, and that the decisions as l
24 prioritization resources really comes in trying to 25 implement those goals and object.ives.
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i i
280 .
1 And thst's where you make the decioions over ,
2 what time frame, how long the processes, and so it's -- to 3 have goals and objectives and the plans that are directed l
.t 4 in this area, within the context of the strategic plan, 5 and then the real decisions in terms of resource .>
6 application, prioritization, comes in.trying to translate 7 those goals and objectives in the context of a budget 8 document.
9 And there was a slide that Jesse had up 10 yesterday in terms of what the plan is and isn't. But 11 those are all related issues, and those decisions do have :
12 to be made in terms of the reality of budget processes and 13 available resources. i l
14 And the priorities of issues and goals and 15 objectives will change, based upon the environment which 16 is going to be continually changing, so it's a real 17 challenge.
18 And I think the interesting thing about these 19 stakehold meetings is within the full range of the 20 activities that the agency is engaged in and a full 21 understanding of the changing environment that exists out
.22 there, it's a big challenge.
23 And I think if the stakeholders out there have -
24 thoughts and ideas of how to best do those kinds of 25 things, it's an opportunity right now to provide those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 281 i
1 kinds of views to the agency in all of the arono. I t ' s o. t 2 challenge for us to get from the plan to those 3 decisionmaking processes, and so your views and comments i 4 on that would be helpful as well. ,
- 5 MR. CAMERON: Let me follow up on that with a 6 question for the NRC staff. Is it appropriate for our 7 commenters in commenting on the strategic assessment 8 issues to suggest priorities to us? For example, if 9 someone wanted to say, We think that you should pursue a 10 particular option in relationship to future reactors that 11 minimizes resources so that those resources could be
- 12 shifted to low-level waste or something like that -- I :
13 mean, is that an appropriate type of comment for people to 14 make?
15 MR. MILHOAN: While we did not specifically 16 request that as one of the focus questions going out to i
17 the stakeholders, any views that they may have, any views 18 that our stakeholders may have on that process would 19 certainly be welcome, and we would, after receipt of the 20 comments, we would certainly reflect that in the i
21 stakeholder interaction report.
22 MR. CAMERON: Good. Thank you, Jim.
~~
23 Charlie, did you have some more to say on 24 this?
25 MR. BRINKMAN: This is really strategic, I NEAL R. GROSS i COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 1 gucco, I mann in the big global picture. But going back 2 to my comment about safety and your response, Frank, which I 3 was that it's in terms of the applicable regulations, I 4 don't think that the -- well, let me make the big global !
5 point, and that is if we could get these plants designed -
6 and operating safer in the next generation, presuming 7 there is a next generation, we ought to design the !
8 regulations related to them so that the plants aren't 9 operating up close to them, as close to them as the 10 current plants.
11 It's already been determined that current 12 plants are safe enough. That's a Commission 13 determination. So as we design these plants in the future ,
14 to be even safer, let's not bring the regulations up so ,
15 that the NRC is always in this compliance / enforcement 16 mode. That's one of the reasons why we want these plants 17 to be safer ourselves is so that we can operate further 18 from these and have less regulatory constraint, which 19 means less regulatory resources.
20 MR. MIRAGLIA: That's exactly the issue before 21 the Commission right now, as you have articulated, in 22 terms of the industry view and the staff view on that 23 subject, and that decision's pending.
24 MR. CAMERON: I think that issue, though, will 25 be clearly reflected for us in t'he record. Correct? I l
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, 1 mean, it'a --
2 MR. MIRAGLIA: In the record, yes.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. This last -- Bob, could 4 we see the options again, please?
5 We've been talking about the first three stars 6 here more or less. What about this single solution option 7 and the concerns about the appropriateness of the 8 Commission's rule here in terms of promotional? I mean, 9 we talked a little bit about that yesterday in the public 10 communications paper and public education.
11 This was not an option that the Commission 12 identified as a preliminary choice, but do we have any 13 comments on this particular option? Does anybody think 14 that it's a good option, that it's feasible, that it 15 should be explored further?
16 Yes, Fred?
17 MR. GOWERS: Fred Gowers, El Paso Electric. I 18 had difficulty with the single solution phrase. I 19 immediately keyed on something that just is not 20 appropriate. I keyed on, are we looking at one of the two 21 plant options. Could someone define that for me again so 22 that I'm talking with the rest of the group?
~~
23 MR. CAMERON: Good. Thank you.
24 MR. MIRAGLIA: The concept is that the 25 stakeholders that are interested in maintaining the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 284 -
1 nuclecr option -- it's broader than just the NRC, and tha ,
2 stakeholders would be the utility industry, the vendors, 3 DOE. l 4 To say in order to maintain the option that 5 we're. going to proceed in some way, to foster a new design -
6 and to come to some sort of effort, the agency recognizes 7 its regulatory role and it does have a part to play, but 8 it doesn't see itself as the prime mover, so to speak.
9 It was articulated in the Washington 10 stakeholders meeting that there needs to be an effort, a 11 national effort, to preserve the nuclear option, and I 12 think that's kind of within the scope of this option, that 13 if that's to be done, who should be the prime mover of j i
14 that?
15 The agency recognizes it has a role to play in 16 that, but it doesn't see itself as the prime mover, so to 17 speak, and that's -- the industry wants to come together 18 and put a design forth and really proceed with 19 applications, get all the stakeholders together to say, 20 The option needs to be sustained; here's the dollars and 21 effort and money that needs to be done to do that.
22 The agency says, Yes, we'll participate, and 23 they're expressing a willingness to participate in that 24 process, because we have a role to play in terms of the 25 regulation of the outcome of that kind of process.
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1 MR. GOWERS: I understand batter. Perhnp3 I l i
2 would use the word " unified solution." Thank you.
1 i 3 MR. MIRAGLIA: You're welcome. ]
i 4 MR. HUSTON: Roger Huston from NEI again. I'd 1- 5 have to say in reading this paper, it was sort of like 6 deja vu all over again, because in a previous. life, five I 7 years ago, I coauthored a paper for an ANS meeting which,
! l 8 in effect, proposed this single solution. It proposed 9 that the Government get behind having cne plant go through J
10 the process to demonstrate that it works.
11 I still think it was a good idea. It was an 12 idea driven by the vice president who wasn't my coauthor, 13 but I think it was a good idea then. It's a good idea 14 now. But I would agree that it's not appropriate for the 15 NRC to go out and beat the bushes and make that happen, 16 and I think the position taken by the staff in this paper, 17 that they would be responsive to such is appropriate.
i 18 MR. MIRAGLIA: And I'd like to clarify for the l l
19 record: We didn't necessarily say it should be the 20 Government, Roger.
21 MR. HUSTON: We did; five years ago.
.~
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Well, this is, I think, a
~~
23 useful clarification is that I think it's clear that the 24 NRC would be in a reactive role on this single solution, l 25 but the single solution itself,'as pointed out by Roger, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISI.AND AVE., N.W.
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. -- ~
286 .
1 would b3 to take ono plant cnd take it all the wey through .
2 the process, and I take it that you still think that this 3 is a good idea at this point.
4 MR. HUSTON: I think it's a good idea. I 5 don't have the few billion dollars it would take to pull .. ;
t 6 it off, though.
7 MR. CAMERON: Does anybody have a few billion?
l l
8 Let me ask that?
9 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think I clarified the record i 10 for the NRC staff.
11 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Frank.
12 All right. Do we have some more discussion on 13 this particular issues paper? Go ahead, Steve.
14 MR. S. FLOYD: Steve Floyd, NEI. There was 15 just one related issue that was mentioned in the paper and 16 that was whether or not the emergency planning 17 requirements can be simplified for advanced reactors. We 18 would answer that with a simple yes, and in fact, we plan 19 on petitioning the Commission for rulemaking during 1997 20 to effect that.
21 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much on 22 that. I think that is a real good example of the point j 23 that Charlie was trying to make.
s 24 And, Charlie, correct me if I'm wrong, but 25 that because of the additional safety of these plants, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 9 1323 RHoDE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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. 1 that perhcps the current -- there's regulations in ths 2 current regulatory framework that may not be necessary.
1 3 Is that a good example of what you were talking about ;
- , l 4 earlier? l l
5 MR. BRINKMAN: Well, I agree with what Steve 6 is saying. And, yes. This is an example of where these 7 advanced plants should be able to take advantage of their 8 increased safety.
1 9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much. l 10 Frank, do you --
i 11 MR. MIRAGLIA: With respect to related issues, 12 these are ongoing issues, and the decisions here would 13 perhaps impact or affect, but we recognize that the 14 industry has said that they would be putting a proposed 15 rulemaking before the staff, and that's an ongoing -- and
-l I
16 it was listed here,.because we recognize there's something 17 ongoing and planned and that the decisions here could have ,
18 a relationship to those kinds of activities. But we did !
19 recognize that.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
21 Well, let's go to the second issues paper for 22 this morning, and this is number 11, operating reactor 23 oversight programs. So we're going from the future into 24 the present at this point.
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1 288 .
1 dons address thm current procesces for ovarcight of ths ,
2 commercial nuclear power reactors, those that are 1
3 currently licensed to operate.
4 It is an oversight process in that the agency 5 has a role to play, but the primary responsibility for the -
6 design, the construction, and the operation of these 7 facilities rests with the licensees, and that we have an 8 oversight role in terms of the licensing process, to 9 assure that the plant meets requirements and regulations, 10 and so there's a licensing activity within the oversight l 11 process.
l 12 There's an inspection activity through 13 construction and through operation that's part of our 1
1 14 oversight process and another broad element within the 15 context of oversight plan is performance assessment. And 1
l 16 those are three elements of the oversight process that are j 17 discussed within the paper, and each of the options that l l
18 we talked about, we talked about the relationship of these 19 primary parts of the oversight process.
20 In terms of the DSI issue: Given the changes 21 in the external / internal environment, what are the 22 implications for the current strategies for the operating 23 reactor program?
24 And these are the key factors is that the l
25 operating -- the current number of operating plants is l l
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1
. 289 1 viewsd to b3 fairly stable in terms of ws don't --
thsre's i l
2 no new licenses on the horizons. The last construction j
- 0) !
3 has been completed; the Wattsbar plant was issued an l 4 operating license earlier in this year, and so there are 5 no other plants under construction. There's no new future f 6 reactors in terms of standard designs or even contemplated 7 to add to the current stable of operating license right 8 now which number 110 operating facilities. .
9 In looking at the future, the staff has
(
10 estimated that it's not unreasonable to predict three to 11 five shutdowns in the next five to ten years. This is a 12 projection based upon recent experience in terms of the 13 number of prematurely shut-down plants, and given 14 economics and changes in the environment, so it indicates 15 that perhaps the number would come down in a small way.
16 And the number of new requirements is expected ,
i 17 to remain relatively low. That doesn't mean that there 1 l
18 won't be new requirements. As plants get older, as 19 operating experience and research information come to 20 bear, new issues will be identified, but we see this as a 21 relatively stable workload in terms of the number of l
- 22 operating reactors. 1
~
23 In terms of external factors, there are a 24 number of things that are changing the environment in 25 which the program is operating today. There's been lots NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS :
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1 of discussion yastardsy in terms of industry deregulation ,
2 and increasing economic pressures. The nature of the !
-3 regulation of the utility and electrical industry has
- 4 impact on our licensing activities.
5 The rules and regulations were predicated -
6 under the financial umbrella that an electrical utility ,
7 had sustained income and that there would be a stable !
8 financial backing of the utility to meet operating and 9 maintenance costs and decommissioning funding.
1 10 There's issues that that environment's 11 changing, and the agency has been fairly proactive in 12 trying to understand and be sensitive to that changing 13 environment, to try to say and to try to determine what 14 impact would that have on our licensing, inspection is regime, if any.
16 There is the greater use of PRA. We'll be i
17 hearing more about that in the discursion of DSI number 18 12, to have performance-based regulations to assure that 19 the regulations are providing the safety that's required 20 without unnecessary burden. And so that's -- and there 21 are many activities that the staff has completed in this 22 regard and has underway that addresses those areas.
23 And as those things change, as those results -
24 come to fruition, that requires adjusting in how we ;
l 25 license and inspect plants perhaps. An example would be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 291 1 toch cpec improvamant program that has a rick-informcd 2 basis to it, indicated that the number of limiting 3 conditions for operations for an operating plant could be
~
4 reduced substantially by putting this information, taking 4
" 5 it from the tech specs and putting it in other licensee
! 6 control documentation and the like.
7 That's a change in the licensing, but there !
has to be-some sort of commensurate change in how we l i 8 I
9 follow up on the inspection of the control documentation.
) 10 So those are aspects that are related to the oversight.
- 11 Industry has expressed concerns about the 12 level of inspections. We heard some comments relative to 13 that yesterday in terms of the consistency, the coherency l l
14 of the programs need to be fully understood, and those are j 1
1 15 external factors that the agency is trying to consider and i
16 respond to.
! 17 As I indicated, as the operating plants out J
- 18 there become older in terms of operating life and i
i
- 19 component and system aging, issues have come to the fore;
- 20 some of those
- the steam generator lifetime issues, l 21 pressurized thermal shock, and vessel embrittlement, and i.-
22 things of that nature.
i 23 Safety issues will continue to arise and have 24 to be addressed based upon operating experience, research, 25 new information, so we need to be responsive to that. And 4
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- 1 there is a continund public concern regarding the cafoty ,
2 and interest in the regulatory process, and so all these O 3 factors need to be considered and balanced, and in looking 4 at the area of operating reactor oversight.
5 The options that the staff considered is to 6 review the processes in the context of lessons learned 7 from the current issues and develop mechanisms to provide ,
l 8 for systematic reexamination of our activities to ensure ;
9 their effectiveness.
10 There was some discussion to that yesterday in j 11 the context of the DSI 23, regulatory excellence. The 12 process, the oversight processes and the agency's 13 processes, have never been static. They've always ,
I 14 responded to -- as Ed Jordan indicated yesterday, they do 15 respond to events, information, lessons learned, to i
16 constantly upgrade and look at the effectiveness of those l
17 programs. l l
18 The Commission themselves have identified a 19 number of activities for the staff to undertake in terms l 20 of its performance assessment processes, in terms of the 21 systematic assessment of licensee performance, the senior 22 management meeting process, to make that process more
~*
23 transparent to the regulated, to the industry, and to the 24 public, so people could really understand what those 25 performance assessments are articulating relative to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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293 1 performance of the industry.
l 2 The Commission has also indicated that we j 3 should put time, energy, and attention into trying to 4 encourage the use of the standardized technical 5 specifications. There have been recent events at i
< 6 Millstone and Hadamneck and Maine Yankee that have
- 7 indicated that there are lessono to be learned in how to I l 8 improve the process in that area, and the Commission has 9 directed the staff to look at those issues.
5 10 This option goes a little further in saying:
i 11 Also try to develop a process for systematic evaluation of 12 the oversight processes to try to identify those issues :
1 I 13 before they're revealed by experience or events. And so T
- 14 that would be the first option.
15 The second option is to seek new approaches j I
16 within this framework to improve the effectiveness by l
17 working with the industry and to have an environment where j 18 we can continue to seek improvement in performance of the 19 program, and also to involve and look for continued 20 opportunities for public involvement.
J 21 This is over and above things that are 22 currently being considered in programs. Some of these
~~
23 initiatives were discussed in yesterday's morning session 24 on the public confidence issue, and so again to look for
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't
294 .
1 of initictivaa. The role of the industry, which was a DSI ,
2 which was discussed yesterday, is related to those kinds ,
3 of activities.
4 And the third option that was discussed is the 5 Commission has asked the staff to take a step back. What -'
6 was proposed here is that the staff would examine the 7 business process reengineering that was done in the 8 materials area in terms of its processes and how to 9 examine the process to look for more effective and 10 efficient ways of operating, to look at what has been done 11 in the materials program, and to look for opportunities to 12 apply those kinds of techniques to the oversight process, 13 in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.
14 The preliminary views of the Commission ,
15 reflects a combination of these three options. It 16 indicates that we should continue with the ongoing !
l
, 17 comprehene i reviews and seek ways to make those kinds of i
18 reviews even more systematic in the oversight program, so l 19 they've endorsed option 1, and they went on to say in 20 their preliminary view that we ought to continue to work 21 with the industry to encourage the industry to develop 22 guidelines that could be endorsed and carried out by the
~-
23 industry.
24 As I indicated, that was related to a 25 discussion yesterday of DSI 13. There have been a number NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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- 295 i , 1 of succasoful cooparative efforts betwsan the NRC and tha 2 industry in this regard. The tech spec improvement !
3 program is one where there was substantial activity 4 working with the owners groups and NEI to develop standard 5 documents that were endorsed by the staff.
L 6 The maintenance rule is another activity, and 7 to continue to look at those processes and utilize them to ,
8 the extent that you can.
9 In addition, it said that we needed to also j 10 provide opportunities for public involvement. This is 11 related a bit -- not a bit, but it is related to what we 12 discussed at yesterday's session about public confidence i
13 in the process, is that we have to do this in a way and be l 14 able to communicate to the public what our regulatory ,
15 processes and programs are, such that there's a full 16 understanding of what we're doing.
17 If it's not done appropriately, not done in 18 full public view, this cooperation with the industry 19 that's nominally to reduce burden, could be seen as the 20 agency accepting less than what's necessary to protect the 21 public health and safety or be perceived that way.
22 So the Commission is saying we have to do this 23 in a public way, so that there's full public understanding 24 of what changes we're making to the process. And then it 25 goes on to say we ought to look at the technology. In NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- i e
1 terms of technology, it's tha new information technology 2 to make our processes more efficient, less burdensome and 3 time-consuming.
.. i
~
4 They also had some -- the last two are ongoing
. 5 activities in terms of how we would apply the staff. In -
6 terms of increase the flexibility in staffing of multi-7 unit sites, the current policy is if you take the number 8 of reactors at a site and add one, and that establishes 4
r
- 9 the level of resident inspectors that that site would be i 10 staffed with.
11 There are some exceptions to that, and there's 12 a process by which we can have some flexibility, and the 13 Commission is asking us to look at increasing that l 14 flexibility even more in terms of that particular issue.
4 15 And the last one is improve the effectiveness l 16 and understanding of the performance assessment process.
1 17 As I say, there have been a number of directives from the j l
18 Commission relative to those processes to do that, and 19 those are ongoing activities, and we need to continue in I
- 20 that regard.
21 They also said that they like part of option 22 3, and they know that that's a big process and that we 23 ought to look at that business process reengineering to 24 say, Are there pieces of the program that we could look, 25 based upon the experience we've'had in material licensing, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 and then coma b:tck cnd identify to the Commiosion, Horc's j-2 areas where we could perhaps provide that methodology and 3 use it to further improve the oversicht processes.
4- In addition, they asked the staff to look for
].
- - 5 best practices from other regulatory agencies, domestic 6 and foreign, again to look for areas that we can perhaps 1,
j 7 implement some of the best practices, to the extent that 8 we're able to within our own existing framework for 3 9 further effectiveness and improvement, so they sort of 3
10 picked a combination of all three options in this area.
l i
11 That's a broad overview of this paper, and, i
12 Chip, I'll turn it over to you and the stakeholders.
13 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Frank.
14 As Frank mentioned, it seems like the 15 Commission picked a lot of different things from the three 16 options that were presented. Is there anything that you 17 think that the commission missed in its preliminary views l 18 that should be added? Let's go to Roger first.
19 MR. WALKER: Roger Walker, Texas Utilities.
20 That's the -- what I thought was missed in option 1, you 21 wanted to systematically reexamine your reactor oversight 22 activities to ensure continued effectiveness. Very 23 applaudable. But I would have been much more comfortable 24 if you would also have added the words "and usefulness in 25 promoting nuclear safety as determined by risk production NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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298 .
1 or atabilizztion." .
2 The present connotation seems to be one of 3 continued aggressive regulation where I think there are 4 some applications where you could look at on some 5 periodicity as to whether you're really getting anything ,
i 6 out of them as regard to safety or whether you've just 7 been doing them because that's what you've always done.
8 And we fall into that trap, too, by the way. l 9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, 10 Roger.
11 Frank, was Roger's point clear to you?
12 MR. MIRAGLIA: Yes. I understand, and I think 13 the agency does have a program that's underway. We're 14 going to hear more about the risk-informed approaches to 15 regulation, and not only to regulation but to our 16 inspection program, to our guidance, and so that's all 17 part of the agency's program. And those efforts are 18 underway.
19 I mentioned the tech spec improvement process.
20 I mean, that was looking at risk-informed approaches as 21 part of the PRA implementation plan that I think Dr. Speis 22 will mention at least briefly. There are aspects of that, 23 of applying risk, and so we have risk-informed activities ' 'l 24 in terms of inspection to look at graded QA, in-service 25 inspection, so those are elements of the program that are NEAL R. GROSS COUPT REFcRTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOt E ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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299 l
. 1 ongoing kinds of cetivities.
1 2 The risk-informed regulation covers a gamut of l 3 those, so that's encompassed within this kind of activity 4 as well. It may not have been mentioned in this paper. I 5 think there's an allusion and an illustration, saying 6 related activities in those areas that are going to affect 7 all three of the elements of the oversight program, the 8 licensing, the inspection, and also the performance 9 assessment piece.
10 So it's a point well taken, and I think that l 11 comment on the record is helpful.
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Steve?
13 MR. S. FLOYD: Steve Floyd, NEI. I guess what i
14 we saw was missing is that in doing an oversight 15 effectiveness review, we think it's difficulty to measure 16 how successful a current program is and where you need to 17 go with it in the future without an objective and credible 18 adequate protection standard.
19 And what we would recommend is that now that 20 the safety goal policy has been out for about ten years, 21 that the NRC more aggressively seek to try to develop a 22 means of applying those safety goals throughout the
~~
23 regulations in helping to define that standard.
24 We note in the paper that it talks about 25 continuous improvements to the regulatory process and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 cecking continual improvemonts in inductry cafety ,
2 performance. Without an objective standard to measure 3 that against, we are concerned that continual improvement 4 may bring into question the economic viability of the 5 plants and remove the nuclear option which we think is an -
6 important one for this country because of the 7 burdensomeness of some of the regulatory oversight 8 activities.
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, 10 Steve.
11 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think that's understood as 12 well, and I think the Commission does have that activity 13 underway within the context of the PRA implementation 14 plan, and those are elements of the agency's program.
15 This is more directed at the specific activities, but 16 those results are ongoing. Those activities are ongoing.
17 DSI 12 encompasses some of those very aspects, 18 to look at the scope of that, and part of that 19 implementation plan is for the Commission to indicate, how 20 should safety goals be used in licensing decisions and 21 inspection and all of that is encompassed within that 22 activity as well. So I think it's a point well taken in 23 that it is an ongoing program within the agency, to do 24 exactly that as well.
25 MR. CAMERON: Other comments on this? Fred?
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301 1 MR. GOWERS: Two suggsstions: In your slide 2 on internal key factors, there's an item that might be 3 added there in terms of workload; that is, relicensing 4 that may come up over the next years. I don't know if 5 that's in that number of new requirements expected to 6 remain relatively low. It is a pending factor. That's i 7 one suggestion.
8 Another best practices area the.t. was on a 9 later slide, general indust 1y internal .uditing, best 10 practices might be a good thing to look at. Also the NRC 11 is very familiar with what we do at the plants in terms of 12 our own internal monitoring, quality assurance program.
13 There are some best practices there that could be looked 14 as ways and means.
15 MR. CAMERON: Those are good points, Fred, and 16 I think we need -- the more suggestions we get about 17 specific ways and means, the better off we're going to be 18 in terms of this.
19 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think both comments are well 20 taken. The license renewal activity is one that's being 21 contemplated, and if there is renewal, that should keep 22 the current stable of operating reactors, at least, at the i .
j' 23 same numbers or close to the same numbers that are out 24 there. Both comments are well taken.
25 MR. S. FLOYD: One thing we didn't see in the J
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302 .
1 p psr was eny effort to take a second look at the ,
i r
2 rulemaking process. I guess the problem that the industry 3 still sees with the rulemaking process is it just seems to 4 take too long to effect a change, even when there isn't 5 very much disagreement between the NRC and the industry -f 6 and the public on the need'for the change, it still seems 7 to take too long, and we would urge something in this 8 effort to take a look at that process.
9 We would also recommend an evaluation of the i 10 effectiveness of the NRC's resident inspection program, as 11 to whether or not it's really been providing what you hope !
12 to gain from it from the resources that are entailed in i 13 it. I guess to think outside the box quite a bit, you're 14 looking at the N-plus-one.
15 We would encourage you to look at some of the 16 Western European regulatory inspection programs and how 17 they accomplish their inspection activities. We think ,
18 those plants are running very safely, and in some of those 19 countries, they have a resident inspection program where a 20 resident is assigned to multiple sites and spends !
21 typically a day, day and a half-or up to two days perhaps 22 in a given week at each reactor site, without the need for 23 continuous presence on a daily basis. '-
24 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Steve.
25 What about the resource implications of the NEAL R. GROSS CC URT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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303 1 preliminnry views? Can we scy anything cbout that, Frenk, 2 or is that just speculative? It's going to take more 3 resources to do all of this than any single one --
4 MR. MIRAGLIA: Well, one of the things the 5 staff is looking at right now is to provide the 6 Commission -- and either John or perhaps Jim might want to i
7 speak to the issue more fully. But one of the pieces of 8 information that we're endeavoring to provide the f 9 Commission as well is that given these prelininary i
~
10 decisions, what's the potential resource impacts in terms 11 of the whole range of preliminary decisions, and not in 12 terms of specific, precise budget-type or kinds of things,
{
13 but, you know, high', medium, low increases, to get a feel :
14 for the direction that these -- in terms of impact on ,
15 resources that these preliminary decisions may have. And l i
16 that's a factor that the staff is examining right now.
17 MR. CAMERON: So there is -- and I think Jim's i
18 going to say more about this, but there is a formal 19 , analysis that's being done across the whole range of the 20 issues papers, I guess. Is that correct?
21 MR. MILHOAN: That's correct, Chip. We do 22 have that underway at the present time, of having the 23 staff look at the preliminary views and then provide us an 24 estimate of the resources necessary to implement the 25 Commission views, which would be another source of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l
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^
304 *
, l 1 information the Commission would have in its hands when it , j l
, 2 makes its final decision. ;
l 3 One factor also is a lot of these, for l j 4 example, you take the business process reengineering l
5 effort, there's a lot of up-front cost that goes into that -
6 process, but in the end, there may be a significant 7 resource savings in the out years, certainly I think in 8 the materials area.
9 It's very cent up front, but there's a
. 10 recognition of that with the end point being that there 11 would be a resource savings through both efficiency and 12 effectiveness of the process in response to that, so that 13 there's up and down pides of the up-front costs versus the 14 long-term costs.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And I think that that i
1 16 would also be an appropriate subject for people to comment '
17 on too if they had any views about resource implications ;
18 as we discussed earlier. '
19 MR. MILHOAN: We would certainly welcome that, l
20 Jim. '
21 MR. CAMERON: Let's talk a little bit about
~.
22 business proc,ess reengineering. This may be an N'
23 opportunity for some of the materials licensing folks or 24 some of the state government reps who might have some 25 experience with this. I think BPR is perhaps more of a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 305 l j ,
1 mystery in the recctor area at this point.
t 2 Do we have any comments on BPR? Bill l
- 3 Sinclair.
i *- ;
} 4 MR. SINCLAIR: Bill Sinclair, Organization of
{
4 l
'*- 5 Agreement States and the state of Utah. BPR, whatever you ;
i i 6 call it, TQM -- there are other terminologies used out i
7 there -- can be a very valuable thing. I i
8 our agency has been involved in total quality l 9 management.since 1991, and we have looked at a number of 4
10 our processes in-house and made significant improvements 11 that have really benefitted both the agency and the 12 regulated community, so it can be a very valuable thing.
13 However, with that you have to be careful that 14 you don't spend your time on efforts that are not l 15 worthwhile. You have to be very careful in your approach ,
i 16 to how you decide what you're going to examine as far as l l
17 reengineering, so I would caution that. i 18 There's a great rule that I use with my staff !
l 19 all the time. It's called the one, ten, one thousand 20 rul,e, and it talks about the level of effort that is put 4
21 out on an issue. And I think you can apply this to this 22 particular issue that you're looking at currently.
23 For instance, a level of effort to solve an 24 issue, if the nuclear power industry or reactor comes 25 forth and solves an issue, the level of effort's probably NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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l 1 a one. If tha NRC, c resid: int innpsctor or whitover, his ,
1 2 to come in and resolve the issue, probably the level of 3 effort is a ten. If somebody from the outside comes in 4 and brings up an issue that causes problems, the effort is 5 probably a thousand or a million, depending on what -
6 happens.
7 So we apply the one, ten, one-thousand rule a 8 lot, and I think it's something valuable to look at.
9 MR. CAMERON: That's very interesting. Do we 10 have some comments on the cautionary note that Bill just j 11 expressed, as well as his, one, ten, ten-thousand 12 guideline? Anybody from the reactor industry want to 13 express anything about this whole business process I i
14 reengineering? Tom? l l
15 MR. TIPTON: Frank, are you going to also look l 16 at what tbc industry has in place? I know yesterday we 17 were talking about giving more credit for self-evaluation, 18 self- reviews, et cetera. When you look at what we're 19 required to have in place, like our independent safety 20 engineering group, plant operating review committee, 21 corporate operating review committee, quality assurance 22 reviews, and then external we have the American Nuclear 23 Insurers, IMPO, et cetera --
24 Will you look at that and factor that into 25 your future role in oversight?
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307 1 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think you have coveral 2 questions there, Tom. In terms of the issue of working 3 and giving credit for self-assessments, I think that's a 4 part of the ongoing program, so that's in the option 1.
5 We have given credit for self-assessments in some areas, i
6 and I think what the Commission said we ought to continue 7 that; in fact, we ought to look at ways where we can even 8 go further in those kinds of areas.
9 So to the extent that there's initiatives 10 there to give consideration, I think we're being 11 encouraged to do so.
12 In terms of the -- and it's related to a 13 comment, I guess, Steve made before about the regulatory 14 process and that kind of thing. We are looking at the QA 15 programs and initiatives in terms of risk-informed and 16 graded QA, and to the extent that some of those oversight 17 kinds of activities may bear on those kinds of dialogues 18 that we're having with the industry, I think that's i
19 certainly within the scope of that. l l
20 The business process engineering is one that )
1 21 we have -- was proposed in a futuristic sense. If you're 22 suggesting that that's an area for -- you know, the
~~
23 Commission is looking for us to pick areas that would 24 benefit by such as that, and if that's a view that you're 25 expressing, perhaps you could pr' ovide it on the record. !
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~
1 MR. TIPTON: I think one example that has b:cn ,
1 2 very successful is, as you know, several years ago, we i
3 went through a very detailed discussion on operator 4 requal, and more of the role was given tot eh industry 1 5 with the industry in oversight, so I think that's an -
6 excellent model that has worked well to date.
7 MR. MIRAGLIA: And as I said, that's been 8 done. It's part of the current program, and we're being 9 encouraged to do even -- to look at more of that. That 10 was part of the issue that we discussed with respect to 11 DSI 13 yesterday, and I think the Commission has sort of 12 endorsed those activities as well, and we are looking 13 right now, as you're well aware, in terms of initial 14 operator licensing, again looking at some ways of getting 15 more industry utility involvement in that type of process.
16 So I think that's part of the program and the 17 elements of the program that we'll continue. I 18 interpreted your comment more in terms of the business 19 process engineering. If there are other specific areas 20 that you think would benefit from that kind of stepping 21 back, those comments would be welcomed by the staff and 22 the Commission as well.
~
23 MR. MILHOAN: Tom, I agree with Frank's ~
24 comments. I think it would be most helpful to us in those 25 areas if you could identify those areas where the maximum NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 309 1 benefit could b3 retained, both in the chort-term and the 2 long-term, and what are the priorities you think we should 3 address them in, recognizing that it will take resources -
4 to address those, and what are the priorities that you
!- 5 think we should address, recognizing we can't address a
6 everything at one time. .
7 It would be most helpful in your comments if 8 you could identify those areas for our consideration.
9 MR. TIPTON: We'll try and factor that into 10 ours. Going back to what I was saying yesterday, from our 11 internal perspective, we have imposed a lot of review on 12 the same area, for example. I remember several years ago, 7 13 I was in a plant manager's office, and he had four 14 separate reports on fire protection. Obviously the 15 American Nuclear Insurers are interested in fire 16 protection.
17 You're interested -- the independent safety
- 18 engineering group had gone through their review, et 19 cetera, so I think even internally, if we could look --
20 and.you mentioned yesterday this is not at that level, but 21 in the future we probably need to look at that level --
22 going back and revisiting so;ne of those to see if, in 23 fact, we do have redundancy, vlication, and several 24 different groups looking at the same thing.
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310 .
I will gat bnck to you on othsr issues that wa think would ,
2 go along the same lines.
\
3 MR. MILHOAN: We would certainly appreciate 4 that. I think we've had even examples on follow-up of 5 specific plant events where individual utilities come in, -
6 and if they have a comprehensive effort going on in 7 response to an individual event and we're aware of that, 8 publicly available, it allows us to step back and oversee 9 that effort of having the individual utility who's 10 responsible for running the plant conduct a comprehensive 11 event response and allows us, in certain cases, to step 12 back and oversee that process and let the utility do its 13 work up front.
14 And we've had certain successes in those where 15 we're aware of it, and the utility, in fact, defines a 16 comprehensive process to evaluate those type of events.
17 MR. CAMERON: Steve?
18 MR. S. FLOYD: Yesterday we talked a little 19 bit about NRC public credibility and also about the 20 adversarial relationship between the industry and the NRC.
21 One policy that we notice is mentioned in the paper is the 22 enforcement policy, and we think that one exacerbates both
~
23 of those issues. -
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311 1 cgainst the other fedaral agencica that havs safety 2 responsibilities such as FAA and EPA, and also to take a 3 look at, again, how the Western European countries use 4 their enforcement techniques on the industries over there.
- 5 I had the opportunity a couple years ago to 6 attend an international regulators conference that was 7 held over in Europe, and the general consensus over there 8 was, amongst the Western European regulators, that the 9 NRC's enforcement policy was regressive and did not 10 promote good two-way communication between the industry 11 and the NRC, and I think we would share that view.
12 One other comment I would like to make in a 13 different subject is -- and I think this would help with 14 the implementation of new regulation and requirements is 15 that if we could see draft reg guides, standard review 16 plans, and inspection modules prepared more in parallel 17 than what they are today, I think it would afford both the 18 internal management of the NRC, the industry, and the 19 general public the opportunity to see the combined 20 integrated impact and effectiveness of those three 21 documents in their use in the ultimate implementation of 22 the regulation than what we get by the more piecemeal 23 fashion that we have today in many instances.
24 MR. MIRAGLIA: With respect to the latter, 25 that's something that I think we would agree with, and we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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- 1 hnva in com3 instcncas done that. In terms of the .
2 maintenance rule, we've done that. Station black-out rule 3 was another one where we worked on that aspect. I think 4 in the plant shutdown, we're working in some regard with 5 that. We've got the INC plan where we're developing a reg -
6 guide as well as the SRP, trying to put that out at the 7 same time; PRA implementation, the Part 100.
8 Those activities -- and there's a trade-off in 9 terms of in order to get that full gamut, it makes the 10 rulemaking process -- which you said, Boy, you ought to 11 get the rules out faster, so that's the trade-off in those 12 kinds of things.
13 I think it's recognized and I think for some, 14 if there's a view that that's a trade-off worth taking -- i l
15 I mean, again, in terms of prioritizing issues, we've l
16 tried to, on the bigger issues, use that approach, but i
17 that does take longer, because you're getting down to the j i
18 implementing detail.
l 19 Steam generator rule, we're trying to do that, 20 and.that's taken a long time to get that rule to the point 21 where we could even issue a proposed form. So I think 22 that's a point well taken, and I think we're trying to do
~
23 that in the issues that we think are the bigger impact ~
24 ones.
25 MR. CAMERON: And I guess another thing to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 313 1 note here is a lot of these commsnts go to the regulatory
. I 2 excellence paper also from yesterday, as well as today's 3 paper.
4 I'd like to just try to tie something back to
.- 5 what Bill sinclair said earlier, at least get a >
6 clarification on this. Bill, you talked about your one, i 1
7 ten rule. Were the types of things that Tom Tipton ,
8 suggested in terms of industry self-assessment programs --
9 that's an example of a one. Is that correct?
10 MR. SINCLAIR: That would be correct. Yes.
11 MR. CAMERON: So the whole idea of that would 12 be more compliance oriented rather than enforcement 13 oriented, that it takes less resources if the licensee can I
14 build this in_rather than having the regulator do it or 15 much less have intervention of someone outside of the ,
16 regulatory agency come in and do it.
17 Any comments on that? Tom Tipton.
18 MR. TIPTON: I haven't heard the one, ten, 19 one-thousand theory, but I have to agree that that does 20 cecur. But I also have to note that when you have public 21 meetings, public enforcement conferences, et cetera, a lot 22 of things drive the outcome in terms of the issue, the
- 23 public's perception of the issue, the number of media 24 there, how you're going to handle the answers, et cetera.
25 My concern has always been -- first of all, I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 1 hnya to cey I think the public neede to be fully involved 2 in the process. There's no doubt about that. We're 1
3 talking public health and safety. They need to understand i 4 as much as they can.
l 5 I know when we go before the public and talk
.-l 6 about certain events, people sometimes get the feeling 7 we're talking down to them and we're not. I mean, right 8 after chernobyl, I think we all found it difficult to talk l
9 about prompt critical and positive power coefficient in 10 layman's terms. It is extremely difficult; this is a very i 11 difficult technology to explain to the public.
12 But what happens in some cases is we find i 13 ourselves not talking about the technical issue in a i 14 public forum, but playing to the other players that are in 15 that forum, and we lose sight of what we're there for, I 16 think on both sides. Sometimes I feel like we're sitting l
17 there, trying to figure out, How can we say this for 18 tomorrow's headline, whether it's in one of our trade 19 magazines or the local paper, et cetera, and it's very ,
20 difficult to stay on the technical track.
21 So one way, I think, to look at that on the ;
22 one, ten, one-thousand number is trying to be trained to 23 handle those situations, so that you can stay on that 24 track and try and avoid the one-thousand number. ;
25 MR. CAMERON: I think you raise a good point.
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- 315 1 It's difficult to -- we haard commento yesterday about 2 risk communication, about training of NRC staff, not just 3 in technical aspects but perhaps communications of 4 regulatory aspects, and it is tough to have the discussion
. 5 of the technical issues while still trying to maintain 6 some sort of an understandability.
7 And I think your point is maybe we lose some 8 of the substance of the technical discussion because we 9 try too hard -- we pay attention to other things that are 10 going on in the meeting, and it's -- do we have further 11 comment on this particular point that Tom raised? I mean, 12 it's a real challenge, I think, on how you do this. Did 13 you want to say anything further?
14 MR. TIPTON: No.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Anybody else comment on 16 that?
17 MR. MIRAGLIA: I'd make an observation, and I 18 think it's related to the discussion yesterday in terms of 19 communication, and I think in technical -- we can come to 20 technical understanding fairly readily, and then there was 21 a discussion. yesterday -- I don't see Ken from Colorado; I 22 don't recall his last name.
23 MR. CAMERON: Ken Weaver.
24 MR. MIRAGLIA: But he made the observation 25 that there needs to be an understanding of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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316 -
1 administrctiva and the regulatory procono. a 2 Being a regulatory agency, if we can come to 3 technical resolution and we can understand the technical 4 issues, then how do we implement that technical resolution 5 in terms of all of the regulatory processes that are .-
6 available, be they rulemakings, inspection, licensing 7 activities, or whatever?
8 That sort of has some bounding conditions on 9 that, and then the real challenge is: How do you 10 articulate that in a way that's clearly understood and 11 communicate what the real significance of all of that is 12 to the public? So that's a real challenge that I think we 13 all face, and I think that was kind of what I got out of 14 yesterday's discussion on the risk communication, and 15 that's a challenge that we all need to do a better job at, 16 and it's going to take us a while to get there.
17 MR. CAMERON: And I think Ken Weaver will be 18 with us for the risk-informed discussion, and I know we 19 had a comment at the Washington meeting about the 20 understandability of that particular paper and some of the 21 concepts in there, so maybe we can revisit this and also 22 get some more of our money's worth out of NEI before they 23 go up the hill, I guess.
24 MR. TIPTON: I think we heard in Washington a
- 25 comment that we are going to have a big challenge with and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 317 1 that is the moving forward and using PRA in all arcas cnd 2 using performance-based and risk-informed decisionmaking.
3 From the public's point of view, that's going 4 to be tough and understandably so. But I think the 5 challenge is doable if we lay out the groundwork up front 6 in terms of how to do it.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Great. That's a good 8 discussion of that issue.
9 Why don't we take a break until 10:15, and 10 we'll come back and get into power reactors and risk-11 informed, and this is going -- both of those areas, I 12 think, are relevant to the materials licensing folks, too.
13 Thank you.
14 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)
15 MR. CAMERON: Well, let's go right to power 16 reactor decommissioning, Frank Miraglia again.
17 MR. MIRAGLIA: Thank you, Chip, i 1
1 18 The Commission has been interested in power 19 reactor decommissioning for quite some time. In the. way 20 of background, back in 1987 or '88, the Commission put new 21 power reactor decommissioning rules in place, and at the ,
22 time t hat those rules were put in place, they didn't 23 contemplate premature shutdowns of facilities.
24 And the rules established criteria for 25 decommissioning alternatives, plans for decommissioning, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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318 -
1 assuranco of funds, and the like, but cubr quent to tha ,
2 rules being put in place in the early '90s, there were a 3 number of plants that shut down prematurely, and by 4 prematurely, we mean they terminated operations before the 5 expiration of the operating license. -
6 Those plants were Fort St. Vrain, Yankee Row, 7 Rancho Seco, and Trojan. And since that wasn't 8 contemplated within the structure of the rule that was 9 issued in '88, it raised some new issues for the 10 commission to deal with, and they dealt with those issues 11 on a case-by-case basis, and then they directed the staff 12 to go back and sort of garner the lessons learned for 13 improving the rules for consideration of some of the 14 issues that have been ongoing.
15 And as time and the environment changes, a 16 number of other issues have come up, and the staff has 17 been following a strategy to have a number of rulemakings 18 in place to address the infrastructure for decommissioning 19 of reactors.
20 And the issue that this paper discusses: What 21 should the strategy be for regulating decommissioning of 22 power reactor sites?
23 And as I said, there are three major -- there '-
24 are a number of rulemakings and staff activities underway, 25 but there's three principal rulemakings.
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319 1 There's the dscommissioning of nuclear powar ,
2 plants, and that rule just became effective, I believe, at 3 the end of August of this year. And there's rulemakings
\*-
l 4 regarding financial assurance, and then there's the i
5 related issue of what's the site release criteria, and 6 that's of interest in terms of the decommissioning of the 7 materials sites as well.
8 Some of the issues and factors that bear on
- 9 this issue from an external perspective is, again, the i
10 deregulation of power industry has created some sort of 11 uncertaintles as to the financial instruments that are
.1 12 used to assure decommissioning funding.
13 As the nature of the regulation of the utility ;
14 industry changes, it does create a certain amount of 15 uncertainty with respect to decommissioning funding j 16 assurance, and that's an issue that has come up, and 17 there's a rulemaking -- ongoing rulemakings in that area.
18 The future of nuclear power plants are very 19 dependent on economic factors, and it could contribute to 20 the decisions to decommission and the tine of 21 decommissioning. As I said, we've seen several premature 22 decommissioning activities in the past few years, and the
- ~ ,23 expectations are that economic considerations may continue 24 that trend at a low rate.
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320 .
1 impact the dscisions in terms of high-level waste end alco ,
2 in terms of low-level waste, and that's an issue that l l
3 bears on the economic decisions, certainly impacts 4 decommissioning funding estimates and the like.
5 And there's certainly public interest within .-
6 the decommissioned sites and in terms of we've had some 7 very active public interest in the sites-at Trojan as well 8 as Yankee Row. And there's the ever-present internal 9 factor of resources and budget constraints internally and
- 10. to assure that we can respond to the workload that we see 11 before us.
12 In terms of the options, as I said, the 13 Commission's strategy right now is to deal with this 14 principally through rulemakings and a number of related 15 staff activities. In addition to the rulemaking, there is 16 an activity underway that's related to nuclear power i
17 costs, decommissioning cost estimates. There's the !
18 insurance coverage. What level of insurance and indemnity 19 is needed for permanently shut-down sites? That's an 20 issue. i l
21 What's-the physical protection requirements 22 for the spent fuel at permanently shut-down sites, and 23 then generally staffing and operator requirements at shut- -
l j
24 down,'so there's a range of activities. And the first
, 25 option is that the Commission does have a strategy and a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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321 1 numbar of rulemakings and activitica laid out that ws can 2 continue along this path to address these types of issues.
3 The next option would be to pursue some of
~
4 these issues in the current direction, to put higher 5 priorities in this area. One of the comments we received 6 at the Washington meeting is that the activity regarding 7 the estimation of decommissioning costs for power reactors 8 was of interest to the industry.
9 And so should we look at that? Should we 10 reprioritize that, some of the activities underway? Are 11 there other issues that need to be put into the mix for 12 consideration to be responsive to what the option may be?
13 The other is that maybe we've done enough and 14 we should perhaps -- the third option would be: Should we 15 move slowly and wait for certain things to happen in terms 16 of the derep<.lation, and how should the timing of these 17 activities be matched up with one another?
18 The Commission picked option 1 and also 19 indicated to the staff that it should pursue certain 20 implementation guidance to explore more innovative 21 approaches towards decommissioning, and they raised a 22 number of issues here. And, again, this is an area that 23 we would seek views and comments from the stakeholders on.
24 The first on is transfer nuclear power plants 25 to agreement states' control af tier the fuel has been put NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTER.i AND TRANSCRIBERS
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322 .
1 in dry storage or hna been rcmoved from the Part 50 sito. .
2 That's an option that the Commission asked for some 3 consideration.
4 In terms of they're asking for comments and 5 views or possible approaches: Is there a need to have a .-
6 resident inspector stationed at the facility during all 7 phases of decommissioning, only during specific phases, or 8 is there a need at all? And, again, they're seeking 9 comments and views from the stakeholders on this issue.
10 And then the last item on this view graph is:
11 Does the NRC take a performance-oriented approach by 12 reducing the oversight and performing a radiological 13 assessment of the site when it's ready to be released?
14 And there's a number of surveys that are done by the 15 licensees, some cases by the states, and how many in the 16 conduct.
17 Should we just, instead of being prescriptive 18 of what the assessment, radiological assessment has to be, 19 how many points it should be, maybe we should just state a 20 broad performance objective that the facility has to meet 21 and set that as the ultimate goal, to see if it has been 22 met towards the end of the process.
I think that completes the Commission's views, "-
23 24 and as I said, the Commission is really seeking input. It 25 does have a strategy laid out, with a number of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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- 323
[ 1 rulemakings and activities, and they're looking for 2 comments, or should they be reprioritized, did they leave 3 any out, and they're also seeking views on these specific 4 issues, as well as the four focus questions that have been 5 provided for everyone.
6 Are the factors appropriate; are the 7 alternatives and options the fair ones? And, again, I'll 8 turn it over to Chip and the stakeholders.
9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Frank. You can see 10 from these options all have to do with timing or 11 aggressiveness in terms of how a certain number of 12 substantive ideas are pursued, and I guess I'd be 13 interested in your comments not only on the options that 14 the Commission laid out -- and we'll get to those specific 15 questions later -- but also on -- have we identified the 16 major substantive strategic issues that should be 17 considered within these three options?
l l
18 Turn it over to you all. Who would like to 19 make a comment on this? Okay. Mike.
l 20 MR. HOLMES: Mike Holmes, Public Service l 21 Company of Colorado. I have a number of comments. Maybe 22 I'll wait until you get to some of these questions to 23 cover some of the issues. But on the overall strategy l
/
24 part of this thing, we would certainly endorse option
, 25 number 2.
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324 ,
, l 1 Now, m2ybe option number 1, with the 2 Commission's caveats here, is essentially the same as i 3 option number 2. We feel there's any number of 4 opportunities out there to more aggressively and more l 5 quickly reach resolution of technical issues that would .-
6 both cut down the costs of decommissioning for licensees l l
7 and save the NRC resources as far as reviewing the !
i 8 exemption requests or whatever for unneeded safety '
9 requirements in a lot of the areas that you mentioned, 10 insurance, fitness for duty, emergency response plans, so 11 forth. l l
l 12 There's a whole list of these things that the i 13 rulemaking that just went through covered a few of these I
14 items, but I think there are more opportunities out there 15 to save both NRC resources and licensee resources. And 16 whether you call it option number 2 or option 1 with 17 pursuing some of these additional elements at the 18 preliminary views of the commission, it may be one and the 19 same.
20 From an overall strategy standpoint, let me 21 make one comment or express a concern. The overall 22 question of having a decommissioning successfully 23 completed and then having it stick is still a concern that -
24 we have and, I think, a concern that most any licensee 25 would have.
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326 1 regulatory guidancs, and you get to the point whsre you l
2 literally can knock off the radiation protection program. ]
3 There's not enough radioactivity around to be detected by l 4 a frisker or these machines that check the people in and !
5 out after you go into a radioactive area and so forth. .;
i 6 The place is essentially clean, and yet j 7 there's millions, tens of millions of dollars to be spent ,
I 8 on decommissioning, characterization surveys, final i 9 surveys, tens of millions of dollars in each of these i
^
10 areas, to get down to our acceptance criteria.
11 And looking at the rulemaking, that criteria 12 may be cut in half again. I wouldn't be surprised to see 13 plants reach this frisker clean level and just stay there, 14 maybe in a safe-store condition or whatever for years to 15 avoid spending, you know, these additional tens of 16 millions of dollars to reach the final acceptance -- a 17 stringent final acceptance criteria that doesn't have any j 18 safety benefit associated with it.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Mike. I think 20 you've raised a number.of issues there, including the need j 21 for predictability and stability in the regulatory
.l 22 process. l 23 And could you just -- could you spell that -
l 24 term "frisker"? What is it?
25 MR. HOLMES: You know, there's any number of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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325 .
l 1 To have a utility spand 100 million or more ,
l 2 likely $200 million, perhaps more, on a decommissioning, i
3 and then get rid of the Part 50 license, and have whatever 4 the subsequent situation is, whether it's NRC regulatory 5 changes and agreement state, the EPA come in and say, 6 Well, it's not radiologically clean enough; we need you to 7 look harder; there isn't -- you know, without any 8 particular safety issue or benefit.
9 That's still a concern to us, and just looking 10 at the paper here, the question that the commissions are 11 raising about using agreement states, turning the site 12 over to agreement states, who's going to set the criteria, 13 and are they going to stick? Of course, the l l
14 decommissioning rulemaking hasn't been completed yet on 15 the acceptance criteria, and it's just a tremendous 16 concern to us.
17 One -- let me put a cautionary note out. I 18 would call it the unanticipated response type concern. It 19 was kind of enlightening to me to be going through the 20 decommissioning process'and reach the point where the 21 plant was what I call frisker clean. This is -- you're 22 busy dismantling the place; the radioactive stuff is being 23 shipped out as low-level waste.
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328 1 MR. CAMERON: Fricksr, okny. Frickor. I liko 2 that.
3 Frank, and then we'll go to Mal.
4 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think Mike has hit on a key 5 point, and that is a major rulemaking that the Commission -
l 6 sees has to be decided in terms of the site l
7 decommissioning activity levels, residual activity levels, I
8 and that's true not only for power reactors but also for '
9 the materials program. !
l 10 And so that rulemaking is an issue, and I take l l
11 your comment to say that it's important to get that issue 12 resolved as quickly as possible, and I think that's 13 recognized, and I think again to affirm that on the record 14 is an important piece, an3 I think that's behind many of 15 the comments that Mr. Holmes has been making relative to 16 the decommissioning area.
17 MR. CAMERON: And that would be option 2.
18 MR. MIRAGLIA: That's true also of the 19 materials areas as well.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And you were talking 21 about option 2, really pursue this more aggressively.
22 MR. HOLMES: Yes. That particular 23 rulemaking -- all the rest of these rulemakings, you know, -
24 fitness for duty, some of the other ones that the paper 25 mentioned, insurance and so forth --
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1 dDvices. .
2 MR. CAMERON: But what were you referring to?
3 MR. HOLMES: Okay. A typical detector that t
4 you have -- there's any number of these devices, and Ken
- 5 Weaver can probably name the numbers of these things. I'm 6 not an RP type. But basically it's the device that ,
7 occupational exposure workers use to see whether there's 8 any radioactivity that they're taking home with them.
i 9 If you leave a radioactive controlled area, is 10 the radioactivity staying back there and whatever you're 11 carrying out, is it frisker clean? It's reg guide 1.87 --
12 I think that's the right number. There's 1,000 DPM i
13 removable limits, 5,000 DPM fixed limits, that sort of ,
14 thing, that's -- you're not exposing the workers to any l 15 particularly measurable, you know, millirem per hour l l
16 number; you're not traipsing around contamination. It's l l
17 basically clean.
18 MR. CAMERON: I think I get the concept. It ;
19 goes to whether the -- for example, the 15 millirem limit 20 in the proposed radiological criteria rule, whether that's 21 too low a number, I guess. ;
l 22 But I just wanted to make sure that the 23 spelling of that -- do you know the word that he was 24 using?
25 MR. HOLMES: T-R-I-S-K-E-R.
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- . . - - - .- . . - . . . . . - . - ~ . . _ _ . - .. . . - . . . . . - _ _
+ 329 $
i s
With respact to that, it would l 1 MR. MIRAGLIA:
l 1
2 be helpful if there's a view out there as to which of i
}
3 these are more important and should be prioritized in some j
, 4 way, if there's a view from the stakeholders out there j l
ej 1 5 relative to those. I hear *.he issue is we need to i
6 complete the site decommissioning, and if there's other l i
~
7 ones in priority order that the stakeholders would like to l 8 share, those would be important commente for us to ,
9 receive. ;
10 MR. HOLMES: This whole issue, ties back into !
< r 11 the research program that we were talking about yesterday. l 12 Apparently Brookhaven National Laboratories is doing some 13 sort of effort on spent-fuel storage and how much danger i I d 14 stored spent fuel poses for how long a period of time j l
j 15 before insurance requirements and other sorts of things ,
i 1 P 16 can be safely reduced, without some excessive margin. I
- i 17 MR. MIRAGLIA
- As I said, there's numerous ,
l
, 18 staff activities related to insurance, related to new s i
19 estimates of cost and those types of things, and so if i
- 20 there is a hierarchy of need that's perceived by the i 4
i 3
I 21 industry or the stakeholders for these type things, that
- r 22 would be -- they're all out there, and we're proceeding on
)'
a 23 those, and should we move faster or there's a priority j 24 need, if those could be identified, that would be very ;
i i 25 helpful to the Commission.
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330 ,
1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go to Mal now.
2 MR. KNAPP: I just had a question on frisker-3 clean. I didn't quite follow. I could interpret that two 4 ways, and I'd appreciate if there's a difference.
5 One would be that you run a detector over the ..
6 surfaces and the area, and you meet the reg guide, 1.86, I 7 think. The other would be a frisker as used to people i'
8 exiting the area, like portal monitors or actual friskers.
9 Did you mean the former or the latter?
10 MR. HOLMES: Really both.
11 MR. KNAPP: Both. Fine. That's all I want to 12 know. Thanks.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Tom Tipton, and then 14 we'll go to Steve for comment. Go ahead, Tom.
15 MR. TIPTON: Mike mentioned the rulemaking you 16 just went through, and you picked up on some of the 17 activitier. I encourage the NRC also to be very sensitive 18 when you're drafting future rules, like the shutdown rule, 19 the st.eam generator rtile, et cetera, that there's a caveat 20 in there that it does . lot apply to decommissioned plants 21 or only two apply to -- or we're going to have to go back 22 through the same thing, especially if you have something 23 like the shutdown rule, and it permanently shuts down. -
24 The other point I'd like to make is I think 25 Mike's point is extremely important, and I'd have to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSChtBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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331 1 phrece it as finnlity. When cm I finnlly dona, cnd whmt 2 threshold would cause me to have to go back and reopen the 3 issue? That's a lot of uncertainty in terms of questions.
4 MR. MIRAGLIA: I understand both of those. I ,
l 5 think your first comment's well taken. We've been trying 6 to do that, but that's worth reaffirming on the record as 7 well, and in individual rulemakings, when we put out 8 something in a proposed sense that that applies, that's a 9 worthwhile comment to get in the individual rulemakings as 10 well. We've recognized that, but that's a point well 11 taken.
12 And I think before we worry about what is it 13 going to take to reopen, I think Mike's saying we ought to 14 decide at least what that first level should be. So I 15 think both comments are understood and well made.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Steve.
17 MR. S. FLOYD: Steve Floyd. The industry 18 strongly supports option 2. Aside from the reasons that 19 have already been stated, as we move towards a deregulated 20 embarment, we're going to have to have as soon as possible 21 a good understanding of what final set of requiremente are l
22 going to be and what the final set of implementation costs
~
23 for those requirements are ' going to be, because they're .
24 going to have a big influence on what are the recovery ;
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~32 . 1 1 hnva to be built into wh tover rete otructure ultimatoly ,
l 2 we wind up with, v.{ 1ch could certainly vary from state to x
3 state, but still that needs to be known. Otherwise 4 there's just no way to fairly treat those.
5 Maybe touching a little bit on what Tom -
6 mentioned, we note that there are three separate 7 rulemaking activities currently underway or projected for 8 the next several years. One comment we have -- and maybe 9 it goes back to issue paper 23 --
is: Has the NRC given 10 any consideration to maybe tsking all of the 11 decommissioning requirements , hey're considering them and l 12 rolling them into one rulemaking package, rather than 13 having three separate packages which, as you go down the 14 road and come up with changing requirements, you might l 15 have to go back and change three sets of implementation 16 guidance documents, rather than having it captured in one 17 place.
18 MR. MIRAGLIA: That's a worthwhile comment.
19 MR. CAMERON: Who knows what -- there's 20 complications that attach to some of those rulemakings 21 that may -- I mean, we may be in the 21st century, but 22 that's a good thing to cons!. der.
23 How about other comments on the 24 decommissioning paper? I think we've had a couple of 25 people express support for option 2. How about comments, 1
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333 1 not cupport necessarily, but cny comm2nts on option 1, 2 which is to basically continue at the same pace.
3 And what is option 3? Anybody think that we 4 should go more slowly? Anybody think it's possible to go
- - 5 more slowly?
i 6 (General laughter.)
7 MR. CAMERON: Let the record show that's an 8 editorial comment.
9 Well, let's go back to the specific questions,
.10 because I think that Mike has some comments on those, and 11 I'm sure that Bill sinclair and others might want to weigh 12 in on at least the first one, which was to turn over these 13 reactor sites at a certain point in the process to the 14 agreement state.
15 Now, this says, after the fuel has been put 16 into dry storage or has been removed, and I take it that 17 at that point, there would still be a lot of 18 decontamination activities that would need to take place.
19 But could we have some discussion on that? Mike, did you 20 have a point that you wanted to make on that?
21 MR. HOLMES: Really the comment there again is 22 finality and consistency. Again, if you're spending a 23 couple hundred million dollars to clean the place up and 24 these agreement states -- I'm not sure to what extent that 25 they're consistent with each other, but I sense some NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE,, N.W.
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334 -
1 inconoictencico no for as -- at least from the rulemaking ,
2 process on the acceptance criteria, some states are much 3 more inclined to be down to these very low levels of 4 radioactivity, background or whatever, and some might be 1
., 5 more amenable to higher -- either 15 milligram per year or q i
6 30 milligram per year, 100 milligram per year or whatever 7 might be reasonable'by some agreement states.
8 I'm not sure that inconsistency would really 9 be viable amongst different licensees, and again in the 10 deregulated environment where everybody's competing with 11 each other, if some utility has to spend, you know, tens 12 of millions of dollars more to decommission a nuclear 13 plant than some other utility, that could certainly get ,
14 into economic viability concerns.
15 MR. CAMERON: So doing -- pursuing this ,
16 transfer under this first dash would cut against 17 uniformity of regulation which has its benefits then, I 18 guess is what you're saying.
19 MR. HOLMES: Yes.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Steve?
21 MR. S. FLOYD: In addition to the consistency -
22 issue, we would also see this as an impediment to the 23 finality issue. We think transferring this responsibility '
24 to the agreement states would require the agreement states
~
25 to consider new criteria and wou1d not be consistent with NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 335 1 our recommendation for option 2 overall.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
3 Bill Sinclair.
4 MR. SINCLAIR: It's interesting to note that 5 none of the agreement states commented on this particular
-6 issue, so this is something I'll try to bring to their 7 attention. I'm not sure they realize that this is even an I
8 issue.
9 Just from my perspective, is this an unfunded 10 federal mandate again from the federal government to the l 11 states? Certainly that will be an issue, but also maybe 12 it's an opportunity for some of the trade-offs we talked 13 about yesterday.
i 14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And we would appreciate j l
15 some agreement state comment on that. l 1
16 Jim?
17 MR. MILHOAN: I think one of the notes I made 18 from the Washington meeting is attributed to Tom Hill, 19 agreement states. It will be reflected in the transcript.
20 I copied down a comment that he had was, "Been there, done 21 that, don't do it again," with respect to transfer to 4 .-
l 22 agreement states. !
~
~
23 MR. CAMERON: Tom has a way of coining a 24 phrase on that. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of 25 support for this idea. Does anybody on the staff have any j NEAL R. GROSS i COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 iden where this notion cams from? I mnen, I know whsre it 2 came from, but --
3 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think it's important to 4 understand the predicate that might underlie that, and I 5 think if there was a clear understanding that the criteria -
6 was clearly understood and uniform throughout, there 7 perhaps may be less problems with that, but given the 8 discussion we had with respect to the consistency between 9 agreement states and those kinds, it's very similar to the 10 discussions we had on some of the' issues yesterday. And I 11 think that's the uncertainty that's being reflected by 12 this group.
13 And I think as Jim said, that sentiment was 14 certainly expressed at the Washington meeting as well.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Frank.
l 16 Ken Weaver?
17 MR. WEAVER: Colorado was, of course, faced by 18 some of these questions several years ago and went through 19 some modest thought process. It mostly had to do with 20 site release criteria and satisfying -- and becoming l
21 satisfied that the approach being used at the time would 22 stand up over time, the converse of the question that Mike 23 raised earlier. -
24 And, of course, because of geography, the site 25 will be turned over to the agreement state eventually in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i 337 l 1 somD'P hysical fcchion or other. In other words, whatovar 2 buildings and structures are still there after 3 decontamination and the findings in relation to s
4 decommissioning, it will, of course, be there in that 5 Bense.
6 MR. CAMERON: And that's true. I think we 7 better clarify not from a regulatory sense.
8 MR. WEAVER: That's right. Not from a 9 regulatory sense and not to be just humorous in the sense 10 that it will physically be there, and that was the I
11 consideration that was brought to us. Will we have 12 satisfied ourselves that what needed to be done was done ,
i 13 there, after all is said and done by the federal 14 regulatory agency?
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you for that point, 16 Ken.
17 This is sort of going to segue us into the 18 next paper, and I want to make sure that we get to that 19 before some of the folks have to leave to catch a plane I 20 this morning, this last point about an enhanced 21 performance-oriented approach.
22 Frank, do you want to -- does everybody !
~
23 understand what this means? Mike?
24 MR. HOLMES: I'd like to comment.
25 MR. CAMERON: Good. Why don't you do that.
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338 .
1 MR. HOLMES: Just a quick comm3nt on numb 3r 2, 2 and then I'll get to number 3. As far as having a 3 resident inspector on site during decommissioning, we !
4 originally requested or indicated to NRC that we would 5 certainly be willing to continue paying the fees and so -
6 forth for the resident inspector being on site, just from 7 the standpoint of enhancing communications with the NRC t
8 during the decommissioning process.
9 Due to regulatory priorities or whatever, that 10 didn't happen. We kind of substituted a weekly phone call 11 with the headquarters staff, which has worked very well as 12 far as keeping the NRC up to speed on what was happening, 13 and when'they arrived on site, there was no surprises as 14 to what activities were going on. j 15 So certainly there needs to be communication 16 there, and whether there's a resident inspector or not, I 17 guess there's ways around that. But certainly you have to 18 have communication.
19 The last point up here, as far as I'm 20 concerned, this is a real nugget. Something has to be 21 done in the area of final surveying, confirmatory 22 surveying. How do you figure out radiologically whether
'1 '
23 you're there or no as far as meeting the decommissioning -
24 acceptance criteria?
25 Shoreham and Fort St. Vrain were both l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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339 1 relatively clocn planto to b: gin with, cnd both of um cro 2 spending somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to $20 l 3 million to confirm that the radiological criteria we had 4 to meet was, in fact, met. Somehow or other in the P&L l
+- 5 decommissioning cost estimates that are done for the NRC, I
6 P&L thinks these surveys should only cost 1 to $2 million, 7 and we're in the wrong order of magnitude here as far as 8 reality versus the regulatory anticipation.
9 And this point seems to focus in on that area. i 10 What is a reasonable amount of inspection, final 11 surveying, to show that you're at whatever the final i 12 acceptance criteria is? I think it needs a lot of work. I 13 There is room for a lot of resources that could be saved 14 or employed more beneficially than snooping around, 15 finding these very, very low levels of radioactivity, 16 using the most sophisticated instruments around and trying 17 to distinguish it from background.
18 And we're trying to find five micro-R per i
19 hour2.199074e-4 days <br />0.00528 hours <br />3.141534e-5 weeks <br />7.2295e-6 months <br />, in a setting where that naturally occurring l 20 background is varying between five micro-R per hour and i
21 thirty micro-R per hour, and it's really tough.
-22 MR. CAMEPON: Ar.d keep in mind -- that's a l T 23 good point. Keep in mind that a lot of these comments are ,
i 24 just as relevant to the decommissioning of materials sites l l
25 as they are to reactor sites, particularly that one on how i l
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340 a 1 you do the close-out curvey. ,
l 2 Frank, do you want to comment on that?
3 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think on all of these issues, 4 I think the Commission recognizes that we've touched and I
5 dealt with some of these issues on a case-by-case basis as .-
6 Mike has indicated.
7 For example, on the resident inspector
- 8 program, the resident was kept there for a while. Then it 9 went to -- in some places we've gone to changing from an 10 operations type resident to a radiation protection type 11 resident. We've gone to the phone calls and then sent 12 inspectors for major evolutions, and they all appeared to 13 work. ,
14 And I think also in terms of the performance 15 approach here, they recognize that this is an issue that 16 we have to deal with, and they're really seeking views and ;
17 comments based upon experience out there and viewpoints )
l 18 out there to say, These are things that could be 19 considered, and they're looking for comments and thoughts :
1 1
20 on how these issues could be pursued and ways of achieving 21 that.
22 So I think we're in that mode of soliciting 23 that, and to the extent that there's relevant comment from -
24 the stakeholder community, I would encourage them to 25 provide that.
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. 341
. l 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Frank. l l
2 Why don't we move to the risk-informed paper, l
3 and then after Themis Speis, Dr. Speis, is done with his 4 presentation on it, let me go to our friends from NEI for )
- 5 first comments on that paper.
6 MR. SPEIS: Thank you, Chip.
7 Frank Miraglia this morning has been alluding 8 a lot to this paper and saying that PRA will be providing 9 perspective and the word " perspective" has been heard a 10 lot this morning, so I have a little story about 11 perspective. I normally don't tell stories because of my 12 Greek accent, but I'll try.
13 There were these two sardines chatting with 14 each other, and all of a sudden a submarine zoomed by, and ,
15 one of the sardines were shaken up and asked the other 16 one, What was that. And the other sardine said, A can of 17 people. So I hope this provides some perspective on 18 perspectives.
19 Well, the issue we're talking about is risk-20 informed, performance-based regulation, and I think some 21 background and perspective is appropriate.
22 Again, the concept of using risk and risk
~
23 insights to improve our regulatory process is not, of 24 course, a new one. Among the most important milestones in 25 the development ano application'of risk or PRA technology NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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.-. - . . . - - - - = . _ - . _ - . . - . . . - . - - - . . . _ ~ - . .- -
342 .
j 1- by NRC have bacn the 1975 groundbrecking work of the .
t 2 reactor safety study, the so-called Watts 1400. r i
3 Subsequent to that, there was a very detailed
- i I 4 NRC-sponsored study which' documented in Newark 1150 and i
5 which was looked very carefully at the risks associated .-
6 with five nuclear plants.
I 7 And, of course, the many successful
)
8 applications of PRA methods and insights into several 9 regulatory activities during the '80s and '90s, which 10 proved to be a valuable complement to our traditional 11 deterministic engineering approach that we have been 12 using, that I'm sure you're familiar with some of them.
13 Among these applications have been the backfit 14 rule, the Commission's policy statement on severe 15 accidents regarding future designs and existing plants 1
16 which led to the IPE program where every utility performed i 17 PRA to identify plant-specific vulnerabilities, which 18 basically led to the closure of the severe accident issue 19 for existing plants.
20 And more recently, the 1995 Commission policy 21 statement on the use of probablistic risk assessment 22 methods in nuclear regulatory activities, and if you 23 recall, the policy statement stated, "The use of PRA -
24 should be encouraged and the scope of PRA applications in 25 nuclear regulatory matters should be expanded to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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343l 1 extent supportod by the state of the art methods and 2 data." .
3 Along with the policy statement, there is a 4 companion document, the PRA implementation plan, which 1
5 describes and monitors and tracks the progress that we are 6 making at NRC regarding risk-informed activities 7 throughout the agency.
8 Do you want to go to the next view graph so 9 that we can see the DSI itself? You see that the phrasing' I 10 of the DSI contains the words " expanding the scope."
11 These words reflect the continuing NRC emphasis on the use 12 of risk insights where appropriate to enhance our safety 13 decisionmaking, to reduce unnecessary burden, and to 14 improve staff efficiency.
15 The DSI paper is meant to provide an umbrella- i 16 type approach for how we consider how fast and how far the 17 agency moves in implementing risk-informed, performance-i 18 based approaches. We also recognize in the paper -- and 19 the paper, of course, addresses this explicitly -- that 20 there are differences in the regulations and the 21 regulatory approaches between reactors and materials.
22 In fact, the paper draws some distinctions and
~
23 recognizes how far is probably going to be an 24 implementation issue of the overall strategic policy, and 25 therefore how far we-go and what areas are more amenable l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
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344 .
1 to rick-informad, parformanco-based epproachan will be ,
2 identified during the implemenc.arion phase.
3 In the paper also, we provide definitions of 4 the various concepts of risk-based approaches, to help 5 provide some clarify and context hopefully for ..
6 understanding the direction the Commission may decide on 7 this strategic issue.
8 So with that background, we'd like to say a 9 few things about the factors that will influence this 10 direction-setting issue. Some of the external factors 11 listed on this view graph, it's fair to say that NRC is 12 not the only organization that is interested in risk-13 informed, performance-based approaches.
14 The congressional and executive -- Congress, 15 for example, as recently as 1995 was considering 16 legislation considering risk assessment, and I think that 17 passed the House but somehow it got stopped on the Senate 18 side, and I'm sure it will be resurrected again.
19 Standard-setting organizations will also play 20 a key role in this activity. International and national 21 standard-setting committees may influence the transition 22 towards risk-informed, performance-based regulations, and 23 the issue of translating goals and risks is an important -
24 one that was raised at the committee last week, and I'm 25 sure more will be said and discussed on this important NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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345 1 issue of translating goals and risks, espacielly as it :
2 affects criteria-setting the materials therein.
3 Some of the code consensus organizations l 4 involving reactor applications for in-service testing and
- 5 in-service inspection are becoming involved or likely to i 6 become more involved as these issues are going forward. .
7 Also other federal agencies, in particular the 8 EPA, is going to influence how fast'and how far we proceed 9 in this area. The paper itself describes some of the 10 difficulties we have been experiencing with.our sister l 11 agency, and there is no need to dwell on this farther at 12 this point in time.
13 Nu' clear industry will play a role in both the 14 reactor and the materials area, and in the reactor area, #
15 commercial reactor power utilities and industry 16 organizations are using risk insights already to identify 1
17 and reduce unnecessary burdens.
18 In the materials area, there is less demand, l l
19 at least in this time -- and maybe Mal can correct me --
20 for regulatory change based on risk insights done in the i
21 reactor area. l i
22 Let's see the other factor I have listed 3f J 23 "public" which is an important one: The public will l
24 likely play a substantial role in the transition to risk-25 informed, performance-based regulation, so it is important NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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346 .
1 in ordar'to maintain public confidsnes, tha bnaic for and 2 implications associated with risk-informed, performance-3 based approaches should be well defined. They are clearly 4 and easily understood by the public so we can proceed 5 easier. ..
6 Internal factors: Nuclear materials 7 initiatives -- the basis for a decision regarding NRC 8 oversight of the medical use of nuclear materials may 9 affect the oversight and regulation of other material 10 licensees, and consequently the extent to which the agency I
11 may pursue risk-informed, performance-based approaches.
12 I already have mentioned the Commission's PRA 13 policy statement.
14 The defense-in-depth is an important 15 consideration. We want to ensure that we don't lose sight 16 of defense-in-depth, even though at the same time, we feel 17 that the risk insights provide a more structured way to 18 assess relative importance of the levels of defense-in-19 depth, and in fact, it can lead to enhanced defense-in-l 20 depth.
21 The other issue that I have listed is policy ;
22 and legal issues, and they are very important. For 23 example, how we do compliance, how we do enforcement, and -
24 how the risk-informed, performance-based approaches are 25 translated to ensure that compliance and enforcements are NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 347 '
1 taken into considcration.
1 2 So with that brief men ~; ion of the factors -- l 3 and, again, they are discussed in more detail in the j j
4 paper -- the options that we came up with are shown in the ]
5 next view graph. We proposed four options to address the 6 strategic issue.
7 One of them is the so-called current option, 8 which is described in the PRA implementation plan.
9 Basically the current process is responsive to industry 10 initiatives in reactor-related areas, and in part this is 11 because the potential benefits for reducing unnecessary 12 industry burden, enhancing safety decisionmaking and 13 improving staff efficiency are more readily apparent to us 14 at this point in time.
15 We are working on a number of pilot issues 16 involving -- and Frank mentioned some of them alre=dy --
1 17 in-service inspection, in-service testing of pumps and 18 valves, greater quality assurance and technical 19 specifications, and the effort there involves -- the focus i
20 there is to develop standards and guidance to help clarify 21 and facilitate the use of risk-informed, performance-based 22 for both the NRC and the industry itself.
' 23 The next option is more rigorously assess 24 relationship to public health and safety. This option is 25 more narrowly focused than option 1 and applies a higher NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND THANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 throchold to pursuing cctivities in this aron. ,
2 The third option is the most aggrassive one of 3 the four options, and this approach -- in :.hi + option 4 basically, it will involved kind of a comprehensive review 5 of our regulations, both in the materials and the reactors -
6 area, to determine areas that could be improved through 7 the risk-informed, performance-based regulatory 8 approaches.
9 And the agency priority for this activities 10 would be established based on consideration of the 11 cumulative impacts on safety, burden reduction and 12 efficiency. l 1
l 13 Of course, at the present time we have ;
1 14 developed a framework for using these approaches in the 15 reactor area, but a similar framework has not been 16 developed yet even though it has been in some initial 17 stages in the materials area, which means that ze will 18 have to do more in the materials area in this area if we 19 are to get risk-informed, performance-based approaches in 20 the materials area.
21 The last option is to use the -- basically 22 respond to stakeholder initiatives, so this option is the 23 most responsive to stakeholder interest and will determine 24 involvement in this area based on resources, on the areas 25 that are being asked to address, and basically the scope NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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349 l 1 will ba based on the demand or request.
[ :
2 So with that brief description of the four 3 options -- and again the paper itself goes into great 4 detail -- the next view graph summarizes the Commission's 1
5 preliminary views, and as you see, the Commission itself i
6 re-emphasized some of the concepts and goals of its policy
]
l 7 statement which I mentioned earlier, which basically the i 8 focus is -- and I'm quoting - "In order to accomplish the 9 principal mission of the NRC in an efficient and cost-i 10 effective manner, it will in the future have to focus on 11 those regulatory activities that pose the greatest risk to 12 the public."
13 The Commission wants tha staff to continue the i
14 current efforts which are described under option 1, to 15 pursue the pilot programs and work with industry to i
)
16 develop standards and appropriate guidance for both 17 industry and the SRP and the staff.
18 And also they want us to proceed somehow in 19 the direction of enhancing the PRA implementation by I 20 considering some elements of option 3; that is, in some 21 well-defined and thought-out areas, to be more aggressive.
22 Also they want us to review the basis of the 23 nuclear materials regulations and processes and identify 24 and prioritize those areas that may be amendable to risk-(
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1 carlier, thic assessmsnt should leed to a frcm work for )
2 applying PRA to materials areas, similar to the framework l
x 3 that we have developed for the reactor area. ;
4 And finally the Commission is particularly ,
5 interested in public comments on how NRC should deal with -
6 dual regulation when applying a risk-informed, 7 performance-based regulatory approach.
8 So with that, I'm turning over to you, Chip.
9 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Themis, and thanks for 10 the can of people joke. That was good.
11 Tom Tipton, Roger, Steve, do you want to give 12 us some comments on this?
13 MR. S. FLOYD: Steve Floyd. We found the 14 paper.to be fairly comprehensive and thought it was a real 15 good discussion of the issues. With that, we did see some 16 issues or topics that we thought were omitted or perhaps 17 needed a little bit more emphasis.
18 The first one is the importance and probably 19 challenge of changing the regulatory culture from a 20 procedural compliance mindset to a performance-based 21 assessment perspective, and that comment applied both to 22 the NRC and to the industry. And I think the paper and 23 the Commission should certainly not under-estimate the -
24 challenge ahead of them in doing that. It's a big task.
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. 351 1 snother area in cdopting risk-inform 2d, performance-bassd ;
2 regulation as an option, and what I mean by that is I e
i E clon't believe that we should necessarily . make all of 4 these risk and performance-based approaches mandatory. If
'f
, 5 a licensee would like to stay with the current approach, ,
6 then it should be optional whether they go to the next i
7 approach, and that's particularly important, I think, for 8 plants that are close to their end of life. It may not be 9 worth the investment to make the transition.
10 I think the importance of being able to i 11 benchmark the risks to public health and safety from l
i 12 nuclesr plants, compared with the risks from other i i l 33 societal activities and events is an important aspect that l 14 needs to be developed in the Commission's approach, and I 15 guess that really goes back to the comment we made this 16 morning about the need for an objective, adequate h
17 protection standard.
18 And I guess the last comment in this area is I 19 think the paper needs to perhaps recognize that if we are 20 going to have these regulations as an option, that there's 21 an added expense for the NRC to have both a set of 22 compliance-based regulations and a set of risk and 23 performance-based regulations on the books, and what that ;
i 24 might mean for your resources, your training requirements, l 25 and things like that.
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1 MR. TIPTON: Tom Tipton, NEI. Two comm:nte: ,
2 One, as we mentioned earlier today, it's extremely 3 important that we start using the safety goal. It's been l
4 around over ten years. We really need to use that.
5 The second one is the major concern of the c 6 industry in performance-based, risk-based philosophy: If 7 it just becomes regulation-plus, we really haven't 8 accomplished anything. I mean, if we have to continue 9 with everything we're doing today instead of focusing on 10 results, establishing performance criteria, and being able 11 to show quantitatively that we have effective programs, 12 that's going to be a major step back.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Tom.
14 Roger?
15 MR. HUSTON: And Roger Huston from NEI. I 16 think in this whole area, there has been a lot more l
17 attention applied to the risk-informed aspect than to the 18 performance-based, and just as sort of a personal caution, 19 I would encourage that more attention be put on that other 20 half.
21 This gets to the cultural issues that Steve 22 was talking about. I've heard comments made, seen 1
l 23 comments made at various levels within the agency and the '
24 industry to the exte.it that the inspection program has 25 always been performance-based, because the NRC comes out NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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353 1 cnd inspseta performance against the existing progrcm2.
2 And in the context that we think of when we 3 talk about risk-informed, performance-based regulation, j
. j 4 that's not the kind of performance that we're talking
- 5 about. It's more along the lines of the maintenance rule, 6 performance against established goals and options, but 7 even there, since the maintenance rule is involved right 8 now in its first set of baseline inspections, taking a 9 look at how the maintenance rule programs were set up, the 10 inspection effort is still highly programmatical, not 11 inappropriate for the baseline and the way that regulation 12 is being implemented, but it does reflect that we still on 13 both sides of the regulatory table have an element of 14 deeply established culture that we're going to have to 15 shake loose, and that's going to take some attention on 16 both sides.
17 MR. CAMERON: Thanks for that clarification on I 1
18 the performance-based aspect of it, and I guess I would 19 just throw out for general consideration: Is there 20 anybody who -- are there any cautions or anybody who feels i 21 negatively about a move to performance-based regulation as i
.. 1 22 opposed to prescriptive, the usual prescriptive -- or not
~
~
23 the usual, I shouldn't say, but a prescriptive regime?
24 Does anybody want to comment on that aspect? Is there 25 general support for trying to move to performance-based NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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I hara? .
2 Roger?
3 MR. WALKER: I don't want to comment on --
4 yes. I support risk-based regulation, but I do want to 5 ask, I guess, plead that we have got a lot of programs up -
6 in front of the staff, and I think we can learn a lot from 7 them. We'll answer some of Tom's questions and Steve's 8 questions and your questions.
9 I would like to plea that we focus on getting 10 those reviews completed. I know we expected IST, which is 11 one of my principal concerns, in September. It's now 12 November. I'm hoping we can get through with it this 11 year.
14 MR. CAMERON: And IST, for the record, is --
15 MR. WALKER: In-service testing of pumps and 16 valves.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
18 MR. WALKER: And I think it's the lead 19 application.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, 21 Roger.
22 Ashok?
23 MR. DHAR: Ashok Dhar, Mallinckrodt Medical. -
24 I just want to give you some perspective from materials 25 aspects. In general, we are in' support of a combination NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 1 1 of options 3 and 4, which is a perform:nce of 2 comprehensive assessment by NRC on the regulatory 3 approach, as well as considering the risk- and 4 performance-based approaches on behalf of the j 5 stakeholders, a combination of these two.
6 In addition to that, I have a couple of 7 questions or concerns in terms of what's stated in the ,
. I 8 issue paper. In one of the external factors in the issue 9 paper, they're talking about the fact that in the nuclear 10 materials area, there is less demand for regulatory 11 changes based on risk- and performance-based, and I would 12 take issue with that. I think there are plenty of 13 opportunities in the materials areas where this should be !
l 14 utilized. I 15 The risk- and performance-based approach 16 should be very strongly looked at, and it should not be 17 ignored. The opportunities may be small compared to the 18 power plants, because by the nature of the work, it's a l
19 smaller program compared to power plants. But there are 20 issues there that should be addressed.
21 And the second point that I have a concern 22 about is the timing issue, and the timing issue basically
~
23 relates to this review which is based on materials, l 24 licensing, based on the risk- and performance-based 25 regulations versus the IRM report where the oversight NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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- 1 regulatory authority would be going cway from NRC to !
2 somebody else.
l 3 I'm concerned about the timing. I just 4 believe that these things should be -- both reviews should 5 be going on simultaneously, and what I'm concerned about .-
6 is that there is going to be some recommendations of the 7 IRM implemented before the risk analys.6a is done, and 8 these things should be done simultaneously so that we 9 don't miss the boat. 1 10 MR. CAMERON: Okay. That's a good comment, I 11 think, and reflects the discussion yesterday in the i
12 materials paper. ,
f 13 And, Mal, do you want to comment? ;
14 MR. KNAPP: Yes. Two things. First, with 15 respect to y w r comment on the demand, I very much 16 appreciate that comment. Our perception has been that )
I 17 while we agree there are things that can be done, that 18 there was not a strong demand from the licensees to do 19 this, and so we're happy to hear that comment, and that 20 will be reflected.
21 With respect to your second comment, timing, 22 we're concerned about that, too. As we look at how we 23 might change the materials regulatory program, as to -l 24 whether certain aspects of the program might get decreased 25 attention or might possibly no longer be subject to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 357 1 regulation, as m ntioned yesterdny, certainly it's our 2 intent to do that at the same time with a risk-informed 3 approach, so that we have a high confidence that we are, 4 in act, emphasizing the significant risks and de-5 emphasizing those that are less significant.
6 And hopefully we will do that as you 7 described, but we certainly are interested in it. Thanks 8 for the comments.
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Mal.
10 Do we have a state viewpoint on this? Bill?
11 MR. SINCLAIR: Bill Sinclair. Just a couple 12 of comments in relation to the materials regulation:
13 There was an omission in the paper, the organization of 14 Agreement States felt, in' relation to that there is 15 already an approach that has been brought forward on risk-16 based, performance-based regulations, and this is in 1*/ conjunction with the CRCPD, where the CRCPD and the NRC 18 have agreed to participate in parallel rulemaking, along 19 with the agreement states, so I think that's something 20 that ought to be mentioned in the report, something that 21 needs to be added, and I think that's a good thing. j 22 I guess I agree with the issue of demand, that
~
23 I think there is some demand out there for changes in the 24 materials regulation arena, and maybe we just haven't 25 identified all of them yet, but I think there's a lot of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPOR1ERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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. l 1 interest on behnif of the agreement states no w3ll as the ,
2 industry concerns. ;
I 3 And then I guess another omission that we
.. t 4 noted in our paper -- and our paper's quite lengthy, and I v l
5 won't go into detail regarding it -- but, anyway, it also .-
l 6 describes the roles and so forth played by the NRC, and it 7 talks about different and various organizations. f 8 But it fails to recognize the role of the [
9 CRCPD, for instance, and the agreement states in the basis 10 for the rules and the standards that a lot of times that 11 agreement state people and other state people sit on these 12 various committees, standards committees and so forth, and -
13 have great input into what comes out of that.
I 14 So that's a couple of comments. l 15 MR. CAMERON: And that's a good point, and I f 16 think that those types of comments will be reflected in f 17 the analysis that the staff does of the comments, because -
18 they do have implications probably for what strategic ,
j 19 directions we go in. And, Mal, would you like to expand :
i I
20 on that? j l
21 MR. KNAPP: Actually, I'd just like to ask for
-22 a clarification with respect to demand when you provide 23 the written comments. If you talk about the materials -
24 program, obviously that covers a very broad range of 25 licensees, from things as complex as fuel cycle facilities NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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- 359 1 and phnrmscrutical manufacturers to things ca simple ca 2 some gauges which are generally licensed.
3 One of the things that we will be looking at
.. \
4 ar we move towards risk-informed, performance-based is 5 where can that most effectively be done? Arguably, for 6 example, with respect to radiographers, they might work i 7 best and be most comfortable with some very prescriptive 8 direction, as opposed to something that would be more 1
9 complex.
10 As you finalize your comments, areas where you l
11 think it will be most advantageous to emphasize risk-12 informed, performance-based would be very useful to us.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Mal.
l 14 One of the things that's mentioned in the 15 paper itself talks about the public participating in the 16 development of the overall framework for this risk-17 informed approach, and I wondered: Ken Weaver, do you 18 have any thoughts on the whole risk communication idea and 19 how these types of concepts are best -- how the public is 20 best brought in to this process? I don't know if you have 21 anything to say, but I'll give you an opportunity.
22 MR. WEAVER: One always has thoughts. It's
~
23 just whether they're appropriate to be spoken. We 24 actually have an example, again, of trying to see what --
25 and we framed it as the familiar term " indicators of NEAL R. GROSS 0-NRT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 performance" -- the public naar thf cotter Corporation .
2 uranium mill I've mentioned, what indicators of 3 performance they would like to see tracked as part of a 4 triangle where the licensee and the regulator might make i
5 special efforts to portray the trends in those particular .-
6 indicators, and that that would, in turn, be a way to 7 communicate results or performance or at least indications 8 of performance to that wider public that was interested in !
9 how well the facility was doing.
10 We've thought about that and proposed some 11 models for that, but that's -- and that, of course, j 12 something that's been done in other sites and other 13 contexts by other agencies.
14 But it has potential that if the 15 performance -- once you've defined that term " performance" 16 and what that really means at a licensed site or for a 17 licensed activity or facility, then you can, in turn, of i
18 course, take that and portray it more widely to those that ,
19 are interested. 1 l
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
21 Any further comments? Bill?
22 MR. SINCLAIR: I always find it interesting l
'- l 23 that when you deal with the public, I think they have a 24 perception, and the perception is zero risk, at least from 25 things beyond their control. They're very willing to get NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i a
361 j 1 in.a car cnd drivo, which is a high-rick activity, smoke l
2 cigarettes or do a lot of other things, but when it comes i 3 to getting exposed from an x-ray machine or being close to l l
4 a power plant, they don't want to take that risk. So they l l
- 5 have a built-in perception of.zero risk, and that makes it 1
6 very, very difficult when you're trying to talk about risk ;
1 i
7 communication and trying to involve them in a rulenaking -
l C 1 process.
I 9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you for those comments.
]
10 Further comments on this risk communication ;
1 11 issue, including any from the NRC staff on what plans we ;
i 12 might have. Let's go to Themis and then Frank.
13 MR. SPEIS: Well, I want to discuss a number !
14 points that were raised by the NEI people.
i 15 Unfortunately, they left, but maybe we can have this !
1 l
16 dialogue in Chicago. )
1 17 One of the things they mentioned was to go i
18 more in the direction of performance versus risk-informed.
19 Of course, it is true that in the past, I would have used 20 risk insights in the deterministic framework and only 21 lately we are proceeding in the direction of performance-22 based, and the classic example has been the maintenance ,
l 23 rule. Another example has been the Appendix J which !
24 addresses the containment leakage testing.
4 25 But the point that has to be made is that when j NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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362 .
I 1 you go to performance, you have to develop maesureble i i
4 2 parameters, and you can do that either from operational 1
] 3 experience or from maybe, if you understand the issues 4 theoretically or analytically, you can do that from that, f 5 and it was easy to change Appendix J, because we had .-
1
- 6 operational experience in the containment leakage testing ,
i !
i 7 and experience about leakage. :
8 And it's not -- that information doesn't exist 1
9 in all the areas, either experimentally or analytically, I 10 so we have to feel and be very deliberate and very careful i 11 and make sure that we are able to develop these measurable
- l l
12 parameters to monitor plant and licensee performance, 1
. 13 because otherwise performance-based has no meaning. So I 14 want to make that point.
- 15 The other point that they raised, they talked i
16 about regulation, performance-based plus cxisting
- I 17 regulations, and that is a very important area, and it's l 18 important to listen to your comments, but at least the i
i 19 Commission policy at this point in time is that PRAs are ;
i i
20 not. substitutes for meeting current rules, regulations,
- 21 requirements.
.22 Current rules and regulations shall be
- 23 complied with unless these rules and regulations are -
i
. 24 revised, so that's why we are proceeding in the direction l
l 25 of as we gain understanding of s'ome of these areas like j
i NEAL R. GROSS 3 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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+ 363 1 the example that I msntioned, Appsndix J, then ws'll 2 proceed simultaneously to change the rules in this area, 3 so we don't have this burden of existing regulations and 4 then additional requirements from the so-called risk
- 5 insights, performance-based regulation. .
6 So I just want to make those points. And the 7 reason that we have the statement in the materials area we 8 have no takers, what we meant by that, we didn't have 9 specific proposals in front of us, either individually or ,
1 10 collectively, addressing issues and using risk insights or l 11 performance history to present their views and for us to 12 make decisions, so that's --
13 Frank, do you want to add something on the --
14 MR. MIRAGLIA: Two i ssues : One was the 15 culture issue that was brought up by NEI and the need for l
16 training. I think that's been recognized, and in terms of 17 the Commission's own PRA implementation plan, we have a 18 fairly ambitious program for informing the staff via l
19 training at various levels. What do the risk insights l 20 mean, performance-based regulation mean?
21 And changing the culture takes time and ;
22 effort. The program that's alluded to a lot is the
~
23 maintenance rule, and that's being done in a very 24 disciplined kind of way. There was a discussion of the 25 other pilots. Again, this is another way of gaining the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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364 .
1 expsrience of applying these kinds of techniquss, and so I 2 think we recognize that, and there's a challenge on both 3 sides of the table, certainly for the industry as well as 4 us.
5 The issue of risk communication, I think at -
6 the Washington taeeting, the public expressed a concern is 7 that the perception, when we talk about reducing burden, 8 it has the potential for being perceived as accepting less 9 than meeting the overall objectives of protection of the 10 public health and safety, so it gets to the communication 11 issue, and how can that be done with the public fully 12 informed, which I think is what the Commission is 13 directing, so that people and the public and everysne 14 understands the direction we're going to meet that common 15 objective in a very efficient and effective way.
16 And that's a real challenge. We discussed it 17 yesterday in communicating that, and one suggestion is 18 early involvement of the parties in some of these kinds of 19 issues, and I just make that observation from the l
20 Washington meeting to share with the group here. !
21 MR. CAMERON: That was great, Frank. I think 22 that's a terrific characterization of that particular part 23 of this issue. -
24 Themis, go ahead.
25 MR. SPEIS: I have one other point. It was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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+ 365 1 also msntioned that ws should be using safety goals, cnd 2 of course, in the past, again, for Commission guidance, we 3 have been using safety goals and subsidiary objectives on 1
4 a generic basis, but not on a plant-specific basis.
j - 5 And one of the objectives of this pilot 6 studies that Frank and I mentioned is to see whether we !
)
7 can derive numerics or numerical criteria which, of j
8 course, would be related to safety goals and use them on a
- 9 plant-specific basis. And that's why these pilot studies
- 10 are very important in completing them and bringing them to !
I 11 a successful end. l 1
12 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Themis.
I 13 I think you can see that the NRC staff is l
, 14 providing information for you to amplify on some of these 15 points, but of course, all of the comments that we have l
16 received from you will be analyzed as part of the t 17 stakeholders interaction report.
I 18 And just so that the Commission can get the 19 benefit of your thinking on the options, Ashok, I think, 20 talked about they would -- Mallinckrodt would support 21 options 2 and 3 --
22 MR. DHAR: Three and four.
23 MR. CAMERON: Sorry. -- 3 and 4. NEI -- I 24 don't know if they expressed support for a particular 25 option, but it seemed that -- and perhaps sometre can NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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366 .
I clarify what optiono thsy ware talking about. ,
2 But, John?
3 VOICE: Two.
4 MR. CAMERON: Two, okay. NEI, option 2. How 5 about the rest of you? Anybody want to chime in on any of .-
6 these options? Les?
7 MR. ENGLAND: Les England, Entergy Operations.
8 We would favor a more aggressive approach in the risk-9 informed, performance-based regulation and would favor 10 option 3 as the more aggressive approach.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much.
12 How about anybody else out there? Bob, can we 13 go to the last slide, Commission's preliminary views? As 1
14 you'11 note, the Commission did support option 1; they I 15 supported some elements of option 3; then they talk a'>out 16 performing a thorough review of the nuclear materials 17 regulations, and I think that the dialogue that we've had 18 with Mal Knapp on this discussed that issue.
19 What about this last star? When the 20 Commission talks about public comments on how the 21 Commission should deal with dual regulation when applying .
.1 22 a risk-informed, performance-based regulatory philosophy, ,
1 23 does everybody -- does anybody understand what the context -
24 is here in terms of dual regulation? Can we get some 25 discussion on that or perhaps some amplification from the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 367 l l
1 NRC staff on thia? Ashok?
l l
2 MR. DHAR: I think this is'a very complicated 3 issue, and there is a more underlying issue here that is j 4 the statutory authority, and that needs to be discussed 5 before the dual regulation aspects can be discussed. I
]
6 think NRC or other agencies should be pursuing -- we 7 talked about single agency from the federal government 8 being responsible for regulating radiation protection and ,
)
9 those kind of things, and I think that needs to be looked 10 at extremely sericasly.
11 That issue comes up every so often whenever 12 there's an event or an insue, but it dies down, because 13 nobody really wants to handle it the way it should be 14 handled.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Ashok.
16 Anybody else in the audience? Frank.
17 MR. MIRAGLIA: I'd just like to comment on 18 Ashok's comment is that what you're really saying is that 19 there should be elimination of dual responsibilities, and J 20 that's the way to deal with the issue. I think another 21 context of looking at the issue, given that that may take 22 a long period of time where it cannot be realized because )
i
' 23 of other kinds of things, I think the Commission would 24 also be interested in hearing views as to if you do have 1
25 dual regulation, what's the ways of minimizing the j i
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368 .
1 conflicts and potential overlaps?
2 MR. CAMERON: I think that would be very
, 3 helpful for the staff and the Commission.
4 Mal, did you want to comment at all on that?
5 MR. KNAPP: I think I could simply add to what .-
6 Frank has already said. If we're going to have dual 7 regulation, and in particular thinking about dual 8 regulation of EPA and some of the prescriptive statutes 9 which they must implement, the question of how or even 10 whether we can do certain risk-informed, performance-based 11 approaches is possible.
12 We may not be able to make a change to a 13 different way of establishing regulations if we have to 14 comply with what EPA already has on the books.
15 MR. CAMERON: I think that's a very useful 16 summary of what that particular star means and some of the 17 problems there.
18 Do we have any other further comments on the 19 risk-informed, performance-based paper before we break for 20 lunch?
21 (:No response.)
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good. Well, we had a 23 good morning. -
24 Themis?
25 MR. SPEIS: Chip, I would like to give credit NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 369 1 to Thomas Hiltz who was the main author of the papar.
2 Unfortunately, he's not here, but he will participate in 3 analyzing the comments.
4 MR. MIRAGLIA: You could make that a generic 5 comment. We need to recognize all of the writers of all i
6 of the papers.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you for -- the 8 writers will appreciate that support. l 9 Let's be back at one o' clock, and we're going ,
10 to start with the low-level waste paper. !
11 (Whereupen, at 11:50 a.m., the meeting in the 12 above-entitled matter was recessed, to reconvene at 1:00 ;
1 13 p.m. this same day, Friday, November 1, 1996.)
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
[..
' 22 23 24 25 3
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1 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 2 (1:10 p.m.)
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good afternoon, and I can
.* l 4 only say that while we don't have quantity, we do have !
5 quality here, and we're looking forward to a good .. I 6 discuouion on the remaining issues papers.
7 And the first arena of the afternoon is the i 8 nuclear waste arena, and Mal Knapp is going to present 9 three papers for us, the first on low-level waste. We'll ,
1 10 have a discussion after each paper, and then the final 11 paper of the day will be the fees paper, and that'll be 1
12 presented by Jesse Funches.
13 So we'll just try to have as much discussion 14 as we can, and we'll see where we are at the end of the ,
l 15 fees paper.
16 MR. KNAPP: Good afternoon. The first of the 17 waste management papers we'll be talking about has to do 18 with low-level waste, and the issue is stated: What 19 should be the role and scope of NRC's low-level 20 radioactive waste program?
21 The history on this is that about two years 22 ago, we had what we'll call a full-size low-level waste l 1
1 23 program. We had about a dozen people working on it. And .!
24 under the press of a tighter budget, the decision was 25 tentatively made to scale down the program to the point NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 371 1 where 1999, it.would ba zerond out.
2 The basis for that deencioa was that we had a x
3 limited number of programs to choose from, and we had to 4 eliminate one of them. We were scaling down our overall 5 programs to the point where we could no longer take a bit 6 of each program; we had to make a decision to simply set 7 one aside and recognizing a number of things, such as the 8 fact that our applications were going to be coming in to 9 agreement states, not to the NRC, and the other programs 10 had significant ongoing business, while the citaff didn't 11 particularly want to eliminate the low-level orogram, it 12 was simply the least of the evils that were confronting 13 us.
14 But there were a lot of concerns about such a 15 decision. So in 1995, the staff provided to the l
l 16 Commission a paper, providing alternatives to the elimination of the program, and the Commission made the 17 18 decision that this paper would be considered, I think very l
l 19 appropriately, as a part of the strategic assessment l
l 20 effort you've been hearing about.
l 21 In the paper and today, there are a number of 22 key factors that deserve mention. As I said a moment ago, 1
23 virtually all of the new low-level facilities are being 24 developed in agreement states. Now, while we do have one 25 or two nonagreement states that are pursuing the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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372 .
1 developm nt of facilities, we don't foresee an application ,
2 within the next five years, and it's not entirely clear 3 that we will see an application, although they are working 4 at it.
5 Another factor is the lack of broadly based -
6 public acceptance of any sited undesirable facility, 7 whether it's a low-level site or as you'll see in a few 8 minutes when I talk about high-level waste, the same 9 concern, the difficulty of siting a facility, regardless 10 of its technical merit.
11 The fourth factor is that very arguably we do ,
12 not have the concerns with low-level waste disposal today 13 that we did, say, 15 years ago when some of the 14 legislation was enacted. In fact, today we have a 15 Barnwell site which is open to most users -- excuse me --
16 most generators for about the next ten years; we have a 17 site, Envirocare, which is open to all generators for 18 certain types of class A waste; and we have experience in 19 storage in the state of Michigan for over five years where 20 no significant safety hazards arose.
I 21 So arguably the pressure to develop and open 22 new low-level facilities is not as high as it has been in l 23 the past. -
24 And then the last bullet, that the program now 25 is different than it was two years ago. We've gone from NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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. 373 1 about a dozen psople to about a half a dozen psople, and 2 if we were to follow the course as a part of this 3 streamlining effort, we would be down to having no program 4 in about two years.
- - 5 With these factors in mind, we provided the -
6 Commission with a variety of alternatives. In particular, f 7 the Commission did not want us constrained by the changes i
j 8 that have been made in the program. They wanted a fresh
- 9 look, and they wanted to recognize that if it were to be d
i 10 considered from an overall perspective, certainly there ;
! l 2 11 were options, including growth. ;
12 And the first option is growth in a way.
13 Assume a greater leadership role in the national program.
34 I think you've heard some comments the last couple of days .
l 15 about NRC not wanting to be or to appear to be in an
, 16 advocacy role.
i 17 But could you argue that, while you don't j 18 advocate the use of nuclear materials, that perhaps it's 19 an appropriate role for the agency to advocate their 20 disposal; to say that given materials are going to be ,
1 21 used, for them to be used safely, they must be disposed j
22 of, and we are going to press for disposal. ]
J 23 So perhaps we should consider a leadership i
24 role. How far could we go to advocating disposal and 25 pushing for it without going bey'ond our appropriate role i
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1 as a nonadvocate as a regulator?
2 The second option would be to assume a strong 3 role in the national program, but a regulatory role rather 4 than a leadership role. We would return to the program 5 that we had two years ago. We would have a technically -
6 strong program; we would do a certain amount of research; 7 we would develop guidance, and we would be more involved 8 in the public than we can now with the resources at our 9 disposal.
10 The fourth alternative would be to recognize 11 the progress that's been made and reduce the program, to 12 take the things I said a few moments ago, that disposal 13 capacity is available, that storage has not proven to be a 14 significant problem, that although states are having 15 difficulties getting new sites established, they are 16 making progress. California has a licensed site and 17 should the land become transferred, they could open.
18 Texas is making progress.
19 And given that, perhaps the role of NRC's low-20 level program should be less one of helping to develop new 21 capacity and more one of simply maintenance of what is 22 there, focus on the safe operation of Barnwell and Hanford
~
23 where we have responsibility for S&M disposal. -
)
24 Another option would be to transfer the low-25 level waste program to EPA. Some of the thoughts here are NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 375 1 not unlike comm of the onns that we've diccucard ecrlier 2 with the transfer to EPA. We could recognize the EPA as 3 certifying the WHIP [ phonetic] site; therefore arguably 4 they have the technology, the understanding to be able to l
- - 5 regulate low-level disposal. They also have RECRA 1
6 [ phonetic] sites.
7 Arguably if they can di.spose of chemically l
8 hazardous wastes, which are hazardou, forever, they 9 certainly should be able to dispose of radiologically 10 hazardous wastes whose hazards decrease as time passes.
11 And perhaps there might be a savings to the federal 12 government as a whole simply by consolidating this kind of 13 regulation.
14 The last alternative could be to accept what's 15 called " assured long-term storage." This is a concept 16 advocated by some folks that believe that the real 17 difficulty in low-level waste is public acceptance, that 18 public acceptance of storage will be easier to accomplish 19 than public acceptance of disposal.
20 The long-term assured storage would be some 21 sort of a facility which would be centralized. It would 22 be actively maintained, and it would be one which, should 23 the decision be made decades or perhaps a century or more 24 down the road, could be reasonably converted to a disposal 1 25 facility.
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1 This might raise some questions, such as at .
2 what point does indefinite storage become disposal for all 3 practical purposes, but it is an alternative. In 4 considering these options, the Commission came up with 5 several preliminary views. .
6 First, they favored the second option, assume 7 a strong regulatory role; in essence, return to the low-8 level waste program that we had about two years ago. In 9 doing this, the Commission had some areas where they 10 sought public comment. The first was recognizing that 11 there is a role here that goes beyond low-level waste 12 disposal; there is the entire management activity, which 13 includes handling, processing, recycle, storage and 14 disposal. They're looking for public comment on whether 15 they should take an integrated approach; that is, is there 16 an approach if you step back at it that would reduce risks 17 or that would be most cost-effective from a holistic 18 viewpoint rather than to look at each of these activities 19 separately.
20 Another question they'd like public comment on 21 is what .ahould they do about unauthorized disposal.
22 Unauthorized disposal of sometimes referred to 23 colloquially as " midnight dumping." Is that a concern? -
24 And if it is a concern, how might NRC best address it?
25 Those are the option'and their preliminary NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 377 f 1, views, and I'm now ready to hear yours. '
! 2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Mal. On this I 3 paper, Mal identified a number of key factors that were I
'4 important to the selection of the option, and I just P- 5 wanted to get a read from you people. Do you think we. .
l 6 have the right key factors? Anything to add up there, i
7 anything that might be based on a faulty assumption '
8 perhaps? Or is something going on that might change one 9 of those factors?
10 Martha, do you have anything to say on that? .
I i
11 MS. MITCHELL: Marti Mitchell, and I suppose I !
i !
l 12 should say this as an individual, not so much as a member l
t 13 of an organization.
14 One of the things that concerns me about !
l 15 potentially the transfer of things to EPA is what actually l l t 1 l 16 happens during the next year plus at WHIP, and will the i t
i l
17 compliance application be accepted as complete, and'how i
i 18 will the review process run?
19 I think the information isn't available to see 20 how EPA really does handle these issues at the moment, and 21 the other concern is that on other sites, EPA is so 22 divided into regions that handle activities within the 23 region in their own way that I'm concerned about the fact i
i 24 that.we will have something that looks like a uniform j 25 policy.
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378 .
l .
1 The case is going to be with a dozen .
2 acceptance criteria: Is somebody going to try to ship to 3 a place that they have the information for rather than a 4 more logical place from the standpoint of location? And 5 the transportation issues seem to be the things that drive -
6 the population the craziest, and we'll have trucks running ,
7 every which way potentially.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Martha.
9 Clare, could you put up the options again 10 right now, because I'll just confirm.
11 Martha, I assume that your comments are really 12 directed to this transfer low-level waste to EPA, and you 13 cited a number of reasons of why that would not be a good 14 idea. Why don't we deal with that option now and sort of 15 get it off the table. !
16 Do we have other comments on that particular 17 option? Bill?
18 MR. SINCLAIR: I guess I have comments on all 19 the options, so maybe I'll just comment on all the options 20 from the purview of the Organization of Agreement States.
21 This was an issue paper that we had a lot of 1
22 states interested in. We got comments from Texas, i
23 Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Tennessee, and Utah, some -
24 of which already have existing sites. And I guess we were 25 surprised in a way with the Commission's decision, their l
I l
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- 379 s
j ,
1 option to go back to a stronger regulatory role, accuming 4 2 that in 1995 they'd look at the program and decided t.o 1
3 downsize it, so I thought that was kind of interesting.
4 Let me just give you some conclusions about
. 5 each one of the options from the agreement states' 6 perspective. I can say from the comments that we received 7 from the agreement states regarding options 1 and 2 that 8 options 1 and 2 were not ones-that agreement states saw i-9 the NRC taking either a greater leadership role in the t
10 siting of new sites or a stronger regulatory role in the 11 current program. And so for us, options 1 and 2 are not i 12 good options.
- 13 I think the majority of the states that l 14 commented are looking somewhere between options 3 and 15 options 4, where we need to retain some kind of current ,
j 16 program, but we don't know what level that program.is.
4 17 But there certainly needs to be some level of expertise i
4 18 left at the national program, whereas states such as Utah 1
a j 19 can have the ability to go to the NRC and if we need 3
20 technical assistance or we need to consult on a particular 4
21 issue, get your opinion on it, that would be available for 4
, 22 us.
- -* 23 That is very beneficial for us to have a i
~
24 national program that we can go to. Just the fact that we 25 can say we went to the NRC and consulted with them and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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. .- . - _ .- . = - .. . . -. .
380
- 1 they cgreed with our position, that is a bonaficial thing ,
2 to have. So I think we're looking at there needs to be ,
s 3 some kind of program, and really NRC needs to decide how 4 big that program's going to be.
5 You certainly looked at that in '95, and -
6 you've been downsizing. You probably need to stop 7 downsizing to the point of there's no program left, 8 however.
9 On the issue of transferring the program to 10 EPA, the Organization of Agreement States, the majority of 11 them, I'd say unanimously, don't think that this is a good !
12 idea. Although, you know, certainly there is some 13 expertise over in EPA in the waste-management arena, the 14 programs are just so entirely different, whereas EPA has 15 such prescriptive type programs in their waste management 16 programs that they would really have a hard time trying to 17 come to grips with trying to deal with the low-level waste 18 program. And so it's just difficult at this time to think 19 about even transferring federal programs one to another.
20 Finally, accepted the assured long-term 21 storage, I think the majority of the commenting states 22 were not in favor of this particular option, because it
~
23 really doesn't answer the question of what is the long- -
24 term solution, and really if you look at it, you know, 25 disposal really is the long-term solution.
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1 If you looked at assured long-term storaga in 2 low-level waste the same way you look at long-term storage 3 in high-level waste, are you going to have a lot of little i 4 MRSs all around the country with low-level waste? And you
- 5 know how popular the MRS program is in the country; we 4 6 haven't got an MMR sited yet, so you might run into the 7 same kind of problems with long-term storage for low-level 8 as you would for high-level. l 9 The public doesn't perceive a difference when
]
10 you talk about the two. It's still radiation, and it's
- 11 still bad.
12 Just another comment, and this is a State of 13 Utah comment: one thing that I was disappointed in this 14 area that I thought we might have looked at in more detail l
1 15 was the uranium mill program and some of the waste issues l l
16 dealing with the uranium mill program. Even though it's 17 not low-level waste -- call it a different thing -- there 18 are a lot of issues in that program that I think would be 19 valuable to look at as part of the strategic assessment, 20 and,I guess I was just disappointed that some of those j 21 issues that were raised and that I have seen raised at 22 meetings such as the American Mining Congress meeting i
/ 23 weren't raised as part of this paper.
24 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead, Mal.
25 MR. KNAPP: A couple of comments. With NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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s 1 respect to the cgracmsnt states' views that a smaller 2 program, somewhere in the vicinity of options 3 or 4 is to 3 be preferred, one of the difficulties that that presents e
4 to us is that the number of staff we would associate with 5 that program is smaller than the number of disciplines .. l 6 that, in the NRC's view, we need to be competent in if we 7 were to, say, license a site.
8 I think at one point, if memory serves, we l 9 felt we would need to be good in somewhere in the 10 neighborhood of 12 to 14 disciplines, and yet a program 11 consistent with options 3 or 4 would probably be more in 12 the neighborhood of five or six folks.
13 That's not to say we would not have skills in 14 those disciplines in other programs, such as in some cases 15 uranium recovery or in our SDMP program we'11 talk about 16 later today, but if the states think that a smaller 17 program is desirable and then if the states like the ;
i 18 ability to consult NRC on particular issues, I'd be 19 delighted to hear if there are particular technologies 20 where you think you might more like to consult with us 21 than others.
22 It's just that if we tend to have a smaller 23 program -- and one of our purposes is to serve the -
24 agreement states -- if there are technologies where we 25 could be of more service than others, that'd be helpful to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 383 s
1 know. I'm not looking for an anewsr todny, but in your 2 f: nal comments, taat kind of view would be worthwhile to s
3 us.
4 Seconi, with respect to your concern that we
. 5 did not address uranium recovery as an issue paper, at the 6 time, we did not see major issues -- for better or worse, 7 we didn't see major issues of the magnitude that you see 8 here in the area of uranium recovery.
9 I mean, the low level, we're sitting there: I i
10 Should there be a program or not? Well, that isn't a i l
11 question in uranium recovery. There is going to be a 12 program. But you're correct in that we did run the risk 13 of not looking at .tssues that folks might think are 14 substantive. And so if in your comments there are a 15 couple of issues associated with uranium recovery that 16 you'd really like -- you know, you think are big-time 17 issues you'd like us to consider, please let us know what 18 they are, and that would be helpful to us. I 19 MR. CAMERON: Yes. That's good. I think 20 that's a new issue for us that we didn't hear before.
21 To just get rid of some of the outliers here, 22 I wanted to key on something that Bill said in his
~
23 presentation. This last option, assured long-term 24 storage, one of the assumptions -- and, Mal, correct me if 25 I'm wrong. One of the assumptions here is that these f ?".AL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 long-torm stortga sites would have a bstter public 2 acceptability '..han a disposal site. And I think Bill 3 indicated that he disagreed with that.,
4 How about that assumption that people make who 5 favor assured long-term storage? Dc de have any other .-
6 comments on the public acceptability issue? Ken?
7 MR. WEAVER: In fact, I think I can relate 8 some comments again for information and not personal 9 advocacy or for Colorado, and in part from knowledge as 10 the chair of the suggested regulations group one 11 committee, Conference of Radiation Control Program 12 Directors which has the Part M or model low-level waste 13 regulation.in its purview.
14 There was a workshop in March of this year, 15 attended by representatives from the present host states 16 for commercial low-level disposal sites and potential host 17 states, the various states that were in one stage or 18 another of working on disposal sites.
19 And at that workshop, this so-called assured 20 storage, the ? nger term, more centralized option was 21 presented, sud without objection, that group of regulators 22 from the 15 or so states did want the concept looked into 23 further. They felt it was appropriate to look further -
24 into the concept.
25 And a couple o" the reasons relate to your NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i question directly, and I'm trying to frcm3 them or recall
- 2 them. One, there, of course, is'the intergenerational
~
3 equity question not precluding for future generations
. 4 options or decisions, and it was intriguing to some state i
- 5 representatives that if you built a long-time series of l 6 data, performance data, monitoring data, for such a 7 facility which le essentially designed much like, as I 8 understand it, the earth-mounded concrete bunker approach 9 that's been considered for final disposal, that monitoring 10 and maintenance record would than be available to those 11 future generations, for them to make a decision of whether 12 to taper it off and put it to bed, or to continue to do 13 the monitoring.
14 I flagged in your paper here that it says 15 monitoring indefinitely. I think that would have to be 16 part of a proposal and a review of it, of course, by the 17 stalwart regulators, the licensing agent. That was the 18 one aspect that was, I think, intriguing to some of those 19 state. people.
20 MR. CAMERON: Do you want to go on and comment 21 on some of the other options? I think we heard Bill 22 Sinclair talk about the Organization of Agreement States'
~
23 support for a combination of options 3 and 4, retain ]
24 current program, recognize progress and reduce the )
l 25 program. l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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l 1 We just have hed a couple of vicwpoints on the 1
2 last option, about long-term storage. Do you want to give :
3 us your views on some of the other options, either from 4 Colorado's point of view or just your own personal point l !
5 of view? ,.
l 6 MR. WEAVER: Again, the thought process that I 7 went through and prepared to come here again, even though i 1
l 8 the CRCPD has taken no position on the assured storage l 1
9 concept to my knowledge and that would be something that 10 would come from the board of directors, and the same in 11 preparation for this meeting, that we haven't -- I'm here 12 as a chair of a working group of five people that have 13 this in their ambit.
14 But it would be a great loss not to have an 15 NRC presence in our working group as a resource to the 16 committee, as a resource person to the committee, in order 17 to be able to have access to not only expertise, but some 18 of the historical records, the historical knowledge of the 19 whole Part 61, low-level radioactive waste regulatory l
20 framework. Not having that available would be a loss.
I 21 So if you look at the options, the coup?e of l
22 kind of scaled-back options, if it went way back te zero, 23 that would be a difficult think, I think, for our ,
l 24 committee with the consideration of a model state code.
25 At that same workshop in March, the group NEAL R. GROSS l COURT kiPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l .
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- 387 1 acked that Part M be expandsd to b3 radioactivs wanto l
2 management and perhaps consider that there be subparts l 3 related to not just storage and not just treatment and ]
4 processing, handling, not just disposal, but also even the
. 5 waste volume reduction, waste minimization issue. Perhaps l l
6 four subparts was put forward as an option, and our SR-1 7 committee was asked to consider that over time.
8 There were some nea -term and more urgent 9 things on our agenda, but over time to look at that 10 radioactive waste manageme;t, Part M of the model state 11 code, and that does, in fact, touch on one item that was 12 mentioned in one of your other slides here.
i 13 So I can key to that, which is that would 1
14 indicate from that workshop of low-level waste regulators I 15 some support for some worti.;g elation to an integrated 1
16 approach to regulation of nsadling, processing, recycle, 17 and disposal. We've made some steps to that with the 18 recent changes in the uniform manifest framework.
19 MR. C7?'.SRON: That's the preliminary view 20 slide, I think. So that your comment is directed to the 21 second start there.
22 MR. WEAVER: That's right. In that March 23 workshop and another that was held just recently in 24 September, there was interest in looking at the collector-25 processor aspect of radioactive' waste management, partly NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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a 1 es c kindrcd quection to the icsua of centralized or 2 collected together storage of radioactive waste materials 3 in some of the states that were considering that kind of 4 centralized r,co.vage as an option.
5 I can one other thing to your question about -
6 the options presented here, and it's a follow-on to the 7 need for some NRC presence clearly. I think -- I was 8 trying to think this through, and it's hard when you're 9 not center stage or in charge to know exactly how to seek 10 and be skilled enough to find that kind of classic Greek 11 balance of taking action.
12 But I think that there really is some very 13 constructive presence that's needed from the NRC, and I 14 also think and I thir.k come of the workshop attendees an 15 the CRCPD workshop also r.ead that there not be barriers 16 put forward in any sense, in the sense of a political 17 I science sense -- this is me speaking -- the 18 nondecisionmaker, the person that can help make something 19 not happen.
20 And so I think helping to see that initiatives 21 like the assured storage get full scrutiny is a very 22 appropriate role for NRC, even though it really may -- it 23 is the states' licensing and regulatory responsibility -
24 that's key here.
25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE 13 LAND AVE., N.W.
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- 389 1 that.
2 Do we have other people who want to comment on 3 these particular options? Does anybody, for example, 4 think that the NRC should assume a greater leadership
- - 5 role? And keep in mind the distinction between the ,
6 greater leadership role in option 1 and the stronger 1 1
7 regulatory role in option 2. Puybody have any thoughts on l
8 the leadership role for NRC?
9 (No response.)
l 10 MR. CAMERON: One interesting question here is l 11 if you look at the factors that we-had up there, if those l 12 are key factors, do they validate the Commission's 13 preliminary views on what option to follow? In other i 1
14 words, I guess the preliminary view now is to have an !
I 15 increased regulatory role. Is that correct?
16 MR. KNAPP: That's right. We would go back to 17 the role we had again a couple of years ago, about twice 18 the size of the program that we now have.
l l
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And if you look at these 20 factors, some might argue that this would support a 21 reduced role, rather than a greater role, and I see Bill 22 shaking his head out there. I guess I'd just, for the
- ~- 23 Commission's benefit, like to get some of this on the i
24 record, if people think that the factors might not support 25 the preliminary view in and of themselves.
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. - - . . . . = - -
390i.
1 MR. SINCLAIR: Yes. I think it's very clear 2 from looking at the key factors that it doesn't support an 3 enhanced program, the first factor meaning -- saying low-i
- a. level waste facilities are expected to be located in ,
5 agreement states; second factor, NPC does not expect to .-
6 receive an application from a nonagreement state.
4 7 That, combined with the lack of broadly based 8 acceptance for new sites, I think, is a really key issue.
9 I don't think we'll be seeing many more low-level waste i 10 sites. Even though they are citing efforts that are going 11 forth at this particular time, I don't see we'll have more 12 than three or four sites within the country in the next i 13 ten years total.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Bill.
15 Ken?
16 MR. WEAVER: Very briefly I can add a couple 17 of thoughts to that, and that is that I think some of the l
18 states, certainly the present chair of committee 5, 19 radioactive waste management, Paul Murgess (phonetic] of 20 New York and I have talked about this, perceive that the 21 level of FTE that's mentioned in the paper, five or six v 22 so as the reduced program, it's actually less of a 23 presence, it seems like, than that right now. It's down -
24 to one or two folks that are able to communicate with.
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i question of enhancing. Are you enhancing from one or two 2 or from six or seven to twelve or beyond that? And I 1
3 think pegging on the scale there is a real key in l
- I 4 answering the question. j i
5 But being selective, the table in the l l
6 appendix, Table 1, has a number of topics, and for 7 instance, there may be a way to do the topical reports 8 that have been done by NRC through other agencies or other 9 means.
10 South Carolina is able to do some of that, but 11 then there are certain other things that NRC may uniquely 12 be in a position to help with technically, especially if 13 the Department of Energy responsibility falls to the U.S.
14 Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
15 Then we would have waste acceptance criteria 16 to compare across commercial low-level sites and the 17 Department of Energy diFposal sites, and there's a lot to 18 be learned from that kind of cross-comparison, and so 19 there would be a role obviously.
20 The one other thought on this is turnover in 21 programs of this small size is such, just the individuals 22 and the expertise, that for a new application, you're very 23 f likely, I think, to be bringing in new people almost in L
24 any case, and while that's mentioned in the options paper, 25 that may not be so much of a factor from my own personal NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 expariento cnd psr:pective. .
2 There just will be that turnover of people as 3 they look for new things to de and move sideways or find 4 other work, and so that gearing up that has to happen, if 5 there were an application in a nonagreement state that NRC .-
6 had to act on would probably have to happen in some way in 7 any case.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. And I think 9 that that's -- I don't know if it's a key factor, but I 10 suppose the factor is to the extent that the NRC assumed 11 regulatory authority for DOE, then certainly we would be 12 in the low-level waste ballgame.
13 But it seems like from what everybody here is 14 saying is that NRC's presence and expertise is important, 15 but perhaps it doesn't need to be an increased regulatory 16 role. But, again, going back to Mal's request that you 17 identify specific types of expertise that are perhaps tied 1
18 to particular technologies, I think that would be 19 important for us.
20 So, Mal, do you want to make any comments on l
21 this? i 22 MR. KNAPP: I agree with what you've said.
23 Ken raises another point just to think about, in noting -
24 that perhaps things like topical reports could be done by 25 South Carolina or other agreement states.
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. 393 1 I might put the question two ways. The first 2 way, I asked a little earlier when I asked Bill what 3 technologies do you think we should be capable in. From a 4 different perspective, given the suite of things that are
'4 5 on the plate of the NRC or an agreement state, are there 6 particular things that you would like to see us work at, 7 that is to say, topicals versus perhaps guidance on how to 8 calculate radionuclide transfer or something like that.
9 They are really two different subjects. One 10 would be what skills should we have, and the other, what 11 areas would you like us to work in. And, again, that's 1
12 not where I'm looking for an answer this afternoon, but if
]
j 13 in youc final comments, you say, Given that we would 14 suggest you have a program of the size that you have now 15 or a little smaller, these are the things that we would 16 like to see you work on, and we in the agreement states 17 will work in these areas, we think that will work. That i
18 would be a help. l 19 MR. CAMERON: Good. Any final comments?
l 20 Bill?
21 MR. SINCLAIR: Just a mention of the question 22 regarding unauthorized disposal. I don't know where I
23 you're coming from as an agency on that particular issue.
24 I'm not aware of a lot of this happening across the 25 country, but it certainly could be a big probica really NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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394 .
- 1 quick, and I gunas it gets down to a money incue and who's ;
2 really going to take responsibility and take care of it.
3 If you find a midnight dumper that's dumped a i, 4 bunch of drums out in the middle of nowhere, who's really 5 going to be responsible for taking care of that? And can .. ;
' 6 we come to NRC and say, Give me some money to get rid of 7 these drums? Certainly that ability exists now in the EPA 8 programs with hazardous waste. So I don't know if you've l
~
9 looked at that issue or not in that context.
10 MR. KNAPP: I think we might be interested in 11 the issue from a variety of perspectives, any comments 12 you'd care to make. One of them would be, Are there any 13 factors that you think tend to cause midnight dumping that 14 we might be able to reduce. For example, I think probably 15 our -- I don't even know if I'd call this unauthorized i
16 disposal, but I'd call it loss of control. Probably the ;
l 17 most significant situation we have is where someone will i 18 find a radiography truck where the radiographer has gone l
19 out of business, hasn't told anybody, and in the back of 20 the truck, we find two or three sources, two or three 21 radiography cameras. ,
.. i 22 If there are any areas where anybody has 23 experience that these things tend to breed any sort of -
24 loss of control or unauthorized disposal and any ,
25 suggestions as to how we might regulate it a bit )
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. 395 l e
differently to make that happan, that'd ba question one, .
1 2 to minimize the likelihood.
4 3 But then the next item as well: What do we do 4 about dealing with the consequences? At this time, the l
2
- 5 NRC doesn't take these things on, but we've had pretty
~
.6 good luck working with DOE and having them accept waste in j
{ 7 emergency situations, and occasionally we've had brokers i j 8 or other licensees that were prepared to take l
- 9 responsibility and control some small amounts of material.
10 So I think we'd be looking -- you could !
! 11 address the question a couple of ways.
12 MR. SINCLAIR: I appreciate those. comments. I l
l 13 just thought of two real quick responses. One is that 14 money often drives the issue of disposal, although the ,
- I
- 15 radioactive waste monies are a lot more significant than !
16 hazardous waste monies. And secondly I tend to worry.
17 about brokers.
i; 18 That was a particular issue when I dealt with l 19 hazardous waste facilities, where you'd have a broker that 20 would accumulate a vast amount of waste and then just 21 leave, and then somebody else would be responsible for 22 getting rid of it.
~
23 And whether it be that we need to look at 24 brokers and financial assurance or whatever, I think 25 that's another issue that could be part of this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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396 .
1 unauthorizsd dieponnl discursion.
2 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bill.
3 Ken?
4 MR. WEAVER: I just have one more point 5 perhaps to add to the discussion of the integrated .-
6 approach to handling, and it relates in part to waste 7 forms, but there is at least one of our commercial low-3' level sites that does at-origin inspections, the point-of-t 9 orig'ni inspection of the package destined for disposal, 10 and there's some very, very great pluses for that, and 11 that's where the regional offices of NRC and the 12 inspection function -- and especially because of the -- at 13 the nuclear generating stations, there's a lot of 14 attention to the process control programs and to that 15 effort.
16 That's an aspect of the handling that could be 17 an important one if you do a good inspection, when it 18 leaves the generator site. Then that for the disposal 19 site is superb, and you know you've seen is what you get.
20 And so that dimension may be one that could be looked at I
21 in this context. i l
22 And the State of Washington has been the lead 1 l
23 on that, but also South Carolina has a related kind of -
24 program. ,
1 25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good comment.
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I a 397 1 Anybody else on low-level?
2 (No response.)
1 3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Well, let's go to high-
~.
4 level now. !
'I 5 MR. KNAPP: Direction-setting issue number 6 4
6 deals with high-level waste and spent fuel, and the issue 7 is: In recognition of current uncertainties, how should ,
l l
8 NRC approach the present high-level waste situation?
- -9 And there are two principal sources of l
10 uncertainty to be concerned with: the fact that there l i
11 have been significant reductions in DOE budget over the
}
12 last couple of years and dramatic reductions in the NRC
- 13 budget. We've gone from several years ago we were in the 14 vicinity of $22 million a year; we are now down to $11 15 million a year.
1 16 The second is that there has been legislation, l 17 as I suspect most of you know, pending before Congress for 18 several years now in the form a variety of bills that l
. 19 would do such things as establish a standard for high-
- 20 level waste disposal of, say, 100 millirem per year. They 21 might give us a single performance objective as opposed to !
1 22 the defense-in-depth approach which is currently embodied i
~
23 in NRC regulations.
24 They would change priorities and perhaps might I
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398 !
1 and_have long-term disposal as a secondary priority. .
2 There are various pieces of legislation that have been I 3 considered. With the termination of the last Congress, 4 there is no bill active, but there's no reason to believe 5 bills may not be introduced against this spring. WP So these add uncertainties to the DOE and the 6
7 NRC programs. With those things in mind, we have a number i 8 of-key factors. :
?
9 The key factors that I'm going to mention here 10 were described by DOE several years ago, but the NRC l 11 considers all of these to be key factors today, and the ,
.12 fact that they.have been key factors for a number of years j 13 is a bit of a commentary on the program itself.
14 DOE says that the lack of consensus amor.g the 15 scientific and technical community and the major 16 interested and affected parties on fundamental elements of !
17 the program is a key factor. Stated differently, it's the (
18 inability of all of the people involved to agree on how ,
19 big a problem is, say, seismicity or vulcanism or
[
20 groundwater flow, i
21 And that's pretty well related to the next key 22 factor, the unprecedented nature of geologic disposal.
~
23 We're attempting to predict for hundreds, thousands, --
24 perhaps tens of thousands of years into the future, 25 depending on who you're talking to, what will happen to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 399 1 Yucca Mountain, and that is simply a big problem, 2 regardless of what kinds of agreement you might get. j 3 The linkages between the siting and
~.
4 construction of an MRS and licensing and constructing the
- 5 repository: At present, the legal situation has caused 6 delays in looking at an MRS. The changes in law may very 7 well change those linkages.
1 8 As I mentioned in the low-level discussion, j 1
9 public resistance -- here I've stated it " strong public 10 resistance to waste management and other undesirable 11 facilities."
12 And then the last factor, as I mentioned on l l
13 the previous slide, program and budgetary constraints.
14 With these factors in mind, the staff came up q 15 with a variety of options, and here's where we've done 16 some thinking that I would say is very seriously out-of-17 the-box thinking.
18 In some ways, these options are not unlike 19 similar options in the low-level program. The first one: i 20 Approach Congress and the administration to refocus the 21 na.tional program. This is not unlike the leadership role
~
22 that we talked about in the low-level program.
23 It would recognize again that perhaps NRC 24 should show leadership in the disposal of radioactive i 25 waste, perhaps again on the premise that safe use of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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400 .
=
. l 1 nuclear materials requires their cafo disposal, and that 2 we should take a strong role in ensuring that that 3 disposal takes place.
4 For example, there are a lot of people that ;
5 hold that it will be very difficult for the NRC's P l
6 licensing process to reach a timely conclusion on whether 7 the high-level repository should be licensed. Perhaps the l
8 NRC should go to Congress and suggest that this be a l
9 congressional decision, that it's of sufficient national 10 interest that Congress should make that decision. ;
11 Perhaps DOE should no longer develop a high- i 12 level site. Recognizing the difficulties they've had, the 13 concept of privatization has arisen in the past; perhaps 14 that's a good way to go and perhaps NRC should advocate l
15 it. These are just examples of what we might try if we 16 were to take a more aggressive approach to the national 17 high-level waste concerns.
18 The second bullet: Reduce uncertainty by 19 modifying NRC's own program. Again, in some ways this is 20 analogous to the low-level waste option of a strong 21 regulatory program. But there are some things we could 22 do.
23 We could attempt to resolve some of these -
24 issues now. If we could reach technicel agreement with 25 DOE and the affected parties on, say, seismicity and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 401 1 perhaps through come sort of a regulatory procacs cnd :
l 2 issuance of a rule or a stipulation, we could agree as to I i
3 how much of a concern seismicity is, set it aside and not )
~.
4 have to deal with it again the licensing arena. This 9 5 could very possibly simplify and accelerate the licensing l
6 decision down the road. j l
7 Obviously if we were to reach a situation like 8 that where there were a show-stopper, that we felt that 9 seismicity or vulcanism had reached the point that a 10 facility could not be licensed, we would immediately act.
11 Another alternative under reducing uncertainty 12 might be to have an internal practice or procedure such as i 13 a senior review board that would look at the technical 14 issues that NRC raises and ensure that they are, in fact, i 15 the right set of issues.
16 The third option would be to maintain our 17 current repository program. To describe that briefly, 18 among the things that we are doing at the present are 19 focusing on ten key technical issues, which we believe are 20 the. cornerstones to safe disposal of high-level waste, 21 although I would recognize that with budget constraints we 22 are under now, we are only going to be able to address
~
- 23 seven of those ten issues in the future, and that number 24 may drop if the constraints increase.
25 We could take a minimal approach. We've been NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISI.AND AVE., N.W.
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402 ,
1 juct a few yanra Eway from recaipt of DOE application for 2 the better part of 20 years now. We could argue that the
-3 NRC has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this
.4 subject, a: that what we should do is simply minimize our 5 program and keep an eye open, but not spend significant >
6 resources until such time as DOE is about to bring in an 7 application, and at that time, we would ramp up the 8 program.
9 Now, that might introduce a delay while we 10 develop the program, but arguably we've spent a great deal 11 of money that really has shown little profit because DOE 12 has not been able to submit an application.
13 That's not intended to be critical of DOE.
14 They have a very difficult process, and it's been turned 15 around a number of times by law and by other things 16 outside their control, but the fact remains that'we have 17 not been able to make the progress we would like on their 18 development of a decision in this area.
19 Finally, recognizing that it's been a lengthy 20 process and that almost whatever happens, spent-fuel 21 storage is going to be a significant factor, perhaps the 22 agency should move to take a position on spent-fuel 23 storage. Perhaps we should become a strong advocate of -
24 centralized storage, on the theory that it's a lot safer 25 to have a single facility than it is to have perhaps as NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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e 403 1 many as 71 at every reactor site in the country.
2 Or we could take the position that, Let's 3 leave it at the sites. We find that dry cask storage is a 4 safe way of disposal and transporting all of the waste to
]
c 5 a centralized facility prior to the decision on a final 6 repository might result in more transportation than we'd 7 like.
8 In any case, perhaps we should again move into 9 a leadership role on spent-fuel storage. That fifth 10 option is not -- does not mean we could not take one of 11 the other four. It could be worked in combination with 12 other options, but it's one we could consider.
13 From these options, the Commission reached the 14 preliminary view that they would prefer the third option.
15 They would continue the existing high-level waste program.
16 But they recognize that perhaps we could take a more 17 active role in resolving issues in the national program, 18 and they'd like to explore that.
19 And an area where they particularly seek 20 comment is what additional activities the NRC might 21 reasonable undertake. Again recognizing we have a role as 22 regulator and not as advocate, what might be appropriate
~
- 23 activities?
24 Mow I'd like to hear your views.
25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Mal, one question for you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 on this. ihe second star, does that pretty basically ,
2 correspond to option number 17 3 MR. KNAPP: I don't think -- oh, you mean, 4 option --
5 MR. CAMERON: In other words, is that the > i l
6 stronger, the more active role is the strong, stronger 7 leadership role basically that's in option 1 about 8 approaching Congress and the administration?
9 MR. KNAPP: I don't want to put words in the 10 Commission's mouth, but I'd say it does lean in that 11 direction, yes.
12 MR. CAMERON: But we're not sure there's an 13 exact overlay.
14 MR. KNAPP: It's not -- the Commission did 15 not, and I think deliberately did not, say, What do you 16 think of option 1, approach Congress. But there are a 17 variety of things that the Commission might do other than 18 approach Congress for significant change in the program.
19 We could simply, as a matter of policy, be a stronger 20 advocate of disposal. We could make suggestions to the 21 DOE program that go beyond safety issues. There are other 22 things we could do.
23 MR. CAMERON: I think you want to hear if any '.
24 of our participants have eome suggestions on that also.
25 MR. KNAPP: Yes. T.We two questions: Should NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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. 405 I wa? And if wa chould, any suggsstions as to what wa might 2 say or advocate or how we might go about making decisions ,
l 3 on what we might do? !
l 4 MR. CAMERON: What do people think about both
~ 5 the idea of the Commission taking a more active role and, 6 you know, that could be a broad range on the spectrum, and 7 if we did take a more active role, what types of things )
l 8 might the Commission do to resolve issues in the national 9 high-level waste program?
10 Does anybody have any comment on that? Does 11 anybody think that some of the issues that were mentioned 12 under option 1, such as approaching Congress and saying, 13 Create a quasi-public corporation, or, Why don't you 14 certify the repository, Congress, or assigning NRC a 15 certification role, rather than going through the 16 licensing hearing and adjudicatory hearing? l l
17 Does anybody have any comments on any of those l 18 ideas that were addressed in the paper? Bill?
19 MR. SINCLAIR: This is Bill's personal 20 opinion. I want to make that clear.
21 You've got to remove the politics from all 22 this, and that's probably the most difficult thing you
~
- 23 have to do, and I'm thinking -- I'm trying to sit here 24 thinking out of the box of how do you do that. And I'm 25 thinking, are there any examples of successful activities NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- . . . - . . . - .. - _. . .- - _ . _ _ - . - - - .- - _ = . _ . - . . ..
406 .
1 that have occurred in the near term that we might be cble 2 to look at as an example.
-3 And the thought occurred to me that there's [
l 4 been a lot of activity in the Department of Defense, r l
l 5 closing bases, and that was very emotional and highly -;
6 political, and they took that program and put it to the i
7 purview of a commission, and I think that helped move some 8 of those activities forward. ;
9 So I don't know if that's the answer, but 10 certainly somehow you've got to get some of the politics 11 out of it, or it's not going to move forward.
12 MR. CAMERON: Well, good. That may be a ,
13 creative idea to explore. Can we continue in that vein?
14 Does anybody have any ideas about how we -- is it possible !
15 to take politics out of it, and would that solve the 16 problem? Anybody have any ideas on that? And, of course, 17 what should be the Commission's role in that obviously? ,
18 MR. KNAPP: I have a question I'd like to ask 19 if there are no questions on yours, and that is: The 20 concept of transportation -- again, maybe this is an area 21 where we could take a more active role or area where 22 perhaps we could do something with our regulatory program.
23 The opinion has been offered that perhaps one '.
24 of the greatest difficulties that the Department of Energy 25 will have in building and operating a high-level waste NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE,, N W.
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. 407 1 facility will be trenoporting spant fuel to that facility. !
2 Again, we don't want to get into an advocacy role, and to
! 3 a degree, this backs us up almost to the communications
~
4 issues that we had that started off this meeting.
l l~ 5 Any thoughts that anybody has on the 1 6 difficulties, technical or perceptive, and -- public l
7 perception -- and any thoughts as to how we might address l
l 8 those?
9 MR. SINCLAIR: Once again this is Bill 10 speaking. The transportation issue is a difficult issue, 11 and because Utah is a border state, right next to proposed 12 Yucca Mountain site, about four to five times a year, I'm 13 dealir.g with press issues related to what if Yucca 14 Mountain goes on line and what if suddenly we have 200 15 shipments cf spent fuel coming through Utah that we never 16 had before, and how we're prepared to handle that.
17 People have a problem with that. That's 18 something we haven't dealt with on a large scale before, l 19 and I think that's part of the issue. Transportation is 20 part of the issue. I would really like to see more i 21 information put out on that particular issue and whether 22 the Commission does that or not, certainly there's been 1' 23 some -- already been some groups that have put some ;
l 24 information out, but I would really like to see some good
\
l f* 25 work done on getting the facts out on transportation, I
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408 .
1 baccuse thsy're not out there. .
2 People are still scared to death of it, and no 3 matter how many times I stand up and say, It's safe, it's i
4 safe, it's safe, they don't believe me.
8.i MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bill. -
6 Did that provide some information for you, 7 Mal?
i 8 MR. KNAPP: Yes. Thank you.
I 9 MR. CAMERON: Anybody else? Does anybody 10 think that the Commission, given the fact that DOE is 11 pursuing the license application and we know they have 12 this new programmatic approach and there's going to be a 13 viability. decision and all this stuff, does the Commission i
14 really have any other option but to pursue option 3, in 15 other words, maintain as opposed to reduce their high-16 level-waste profile at this time?
17 (No response.)
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Ken, final -- well, I 19 don't know if it will be a final comment. You'll probably 20 provoke a whole lot of discussion with this, but go ahead.
21 MR. WEAVER: I don't think so. For the
~.
22 radioactive waste management committee 5, Conference of 23 Radiation Control Program Directors, the question of the -
24 greater than Class C, low-level waste is an issue we've 25 discussed, and I just wanted to flag today for discussion ;
)
l NEAL R. GROSS '
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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _l
. 409 1 that that aspset, the possibility that that greater thnn ;
2 class C material would go to a geologic repository needs ;
l 3 to not get lost in the focus on the spent fuel and the l 4 rest of the high-level waste.
l - 5 And then it would be remiss to not remind that l
6 there are some NARM greater than Class C. Although l
7 they're not technically greater than Class C, they're in l l
8 the same strength of source range. There are some sources 9 that need to be taken care of, in the same way, at the j 10 same time as the greater than Class C sources, and I think 11 most of us all know that, but somehow that's important to 12 not lose track of.
13 MR. CAMERON: Good points. And I think, Mal, 14 it's true at this point that the Commission's position on j i
15 greater than Class C is linked with the repository at this :
1 16 point, isn't it?_ ;
1 17 MR. KNAPP: That's correct. I believe our ;
18 position is that -- well, to back up a little bit, j 19 disposal greater than Class C was made DOE's 20 responsibility back in the Low-Level Amendments Act of 21 1985.
22 And certainly an option that DOE might have
~
- 23 would be to build some sort of, let's say, for lack of a 24 better word, intermediate facility to deal with greater l.
25 than Class C waste, those which are -- certainly we l
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410 .
I wouldn't want to put in a low-level facility, but may not 2 be so onerous that they should go into a high-level 3 facility. And if DOE were to choose to site or develop 4 such a facility, we'd be ready to help them by licensing 5 and assistance. -
6 But unless and until they do that, then our 7 position is that greater than Class C should be going into 8 a high-level facility, and in light of budget constraints 9 and the siting difficulties we've spoken about this I
10 afternoon, I would anticipate that a high-level facility 11 will be the final resting place for greater than Class C 12 wastes.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Mike?
14 MR. HOLMES: One comment on the last point up 15 there on additional activities NRC might reasonably 16 undertake, one thing I would like to see is -- there is 17 this perception of the NRC's reluctance to be an advocate.
18 Given the NRC's role to protect public health and safety, 19 I would like to see the NRC out there, advocating safety 20 when there's a clear public policy safety benefit to going 21 one direction versus another direction.
22 I don't have any trouble at all with the NRC L
23 being an advocata, in the legislative arena, in whatever '.
24 arena, you know, advocating, lobbying the DOE, whatever it 25 may be. If something is determined to be clearly safer by NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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+ 411 i the NRC, I would think the NRC ought to be out there 2 advocating that approach to high-level waste or whatever 3 the subject might be.
l 4 MR. CAMERON: That's a good point, a good '
- 5 general point across the board. Do you or does anybody in 1
6 the audience, in the area of spent fuel, high-level waste, 1 7 is there anything from the safety point of view that we 8 should be -- that you think we should be advocating, 9 whether before Congress or with DOE or whatever?
l 10 MR. HOLME. That's maybe a little more j 11 difficult question to answer. We've looked at light rail 12 transportation versus road transportation, and we've 13 concluded that, gee, they're both reasonably s=#: and 14 they've got some different accident rates and wnatever, 15 but that may not be a statistically significant difference 16 one way or the other as far as which transportation method 17 ought to be used.
18 I guess what I'm saying is when it appears as 19 a matter of public policy that something is safer, whether 20 on-site storage at 100 reactors of spent fuel versus 21 centralized storage and which one's safer, if a conclusion 22 can be reached, the NRC -- it would be an appropriate role
- 23 for them td take, to advocate the safer method.
24 You know, in our opinion, spent-fuel storage 25 and -- well, disposal may be another -- spent-fuel NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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412 .
1 storaga, ep:nt-fuel transportation, I think, well, mayba ,
2 to a lesser extent spent-fuel disposal, this isn't somi 3 obscure -- you know, we've been doing it for years in one ,
4 form or another, spent-fuel pools, dry storage. Fort St.
5 Vrain has been transporting spent fuel for quite some -
6 number of years. It's an activity that can be done 7 safely. ;
8 Then it comes -- you know, as a matter of 9 public policy, is centralized either storage or disposal 10 the right answer? If there's clearly a safer -- if Yucca 11 Mountain is safer than having it scattered at a hundred 12 reactors, I wouldn't think -- I wouldn't have any qualms 13 with the NRC advocating, Hey, we ought to get on with 14 Yucca Mountain, if that's determined to be a safer place 15 for the spent fuel to be. l l
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I think it's a good 17 general point. Mal, do you have anything to say on that, 18 any examples of where we have done that or where we might 19 do that?
20 MR. KNAPP: Noth.tng immediately comes to mind.
21 We tend -- at least I tend to think of what-is adequate ,
l 22 sometimes as opposed to what is safest. And if we find a l l
~
23 particular methodology or approach inadequate, then we -
24 will speak up, and I think we have in a couple of cases, 25 but very honestly, at the moment nothing jumps out at me.
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. 413 1 I sae Frank with his hand up, and I'm going to 2 give him a chance to talk. But given, for ex;=yle, that 3 we consider that at-reactor storage is seie, the dry cask 4 storage is_ safe -- in our waste conference proceeding we 5 found that that would be good for 100 years and perhaps 6 more -- yes, we recognize that there are some advantages, 7 economies of scale to a central interim facility.
8 The question of the extent to which we might 9 advocate what is safer, that's a good point and it's i 10 interesting to hear. Frank, go ahead. ;
11 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think the one example that 12 comes to mind has to do with the spent-fuel storage in .
l 13 terms of wet storage in spent-fuel pools versus dry cask l i
14 storage, and I think the position of the Commission has '
15 been both are safe, and you can have even more safety in 16 dry cask storage in getting the material out of the pools, 17 so both are acceptable, and the Commission did state a 18 preference and to try and encourage people to go to dry 19 cask storage for long-term storage of spent fuel.
20 So it's a step in that direction, Mike. How 21 many more steps in that direction and on what other 22 issues, you know, the future will tell, but that's one ;
l 23 example that came to mind.
24 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Frank.
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1 .
1 have two more p para to go. I think we're going to got c l i
2 lot of discussion on decommissioning. Do you want to try 3 to forge ahead with decommissioning, or do you want to l 4 take a 15-minute break now? What's the sense of the group 5 on this? Do you want to keep going? Do you need a break? ..
6 Someone's voting with their feet. Great. The 7 victor goes to the one who tock the initiative, so let's 8 take a break for 15 minutes ano be back at 2:30.
9 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)
10 MR. CAMERON: Well, I think we're in the home l
11 stretch now, and I think this next paper is one that 12 you'll be interested in particularly. It's the 13 decommissioning paper, and it focuses on nonreactor 14 facilities, but there's a lot that may be applicable to 15 reactors and also we would be particularly interested, 16 those of you who have had experience with reactor 1
17 decommissioning, to give us your comments on this paper 18 from your perspective.
19 And then we're going to do the fees paper, and 20 then as we started off yesterday, you'll have gotten the 21 whole wagon load of stuff from us, and we'll be ready 22 to -- you know, the cows have been fed. I better stop l '
1 23 while I'm ahead here. -
24 MR. KNAPP: I'd like to add a tag on to the i 25 last discussion that we had, because Clare Defino reminded j NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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+ 415 1 me of something that I should have mentioned.
2 The question came up, does NRC ever take a l
3 position on whether we find something safer or not. And 4 she reminded me one of the fundamentals when we talk about
.- 5 storage options and disposal options. We have continually 6 taken the position that disposal of high-level or low-I 7 level waste is the right way to go, and we've advocated 8 that in front of all sorts of forums. We have nothing 9 against storage, but our ultimate goal is disposal, so i
10 there's an additional data point.
11 Okay. Issue number 9, decommissioning of non-1 What should be i 12 reactor facilities. The issue stated is:
13 our strategy to take advantage of new and differer.c I
14 approaches to optimize site remediation of the site 15 decommissioning management plan and other problem sites?
16 For just a second, for those of you that may 17 not be familiar with it, what are site decommissioning 18 management plan sites? The NRC decommissions ptobably in 19 the neighborhood of about 300 sites a year, and most of 20 these are very easy. They move without incident. There's 21 no difficulty.
v 22 However, decommissioning of some sites from 23 the past has been difficult. We now require financial 24 assurance, but at one time we did not. There are also 25 sites which were decommissioned'before the NRC ever came NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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416 .
1 into existenca. Ths=c can precent difficulties. It may ,
2 be a difficulty of dollars. There may not be money there.
3 There may not be people there to find.
4 The companies that were responsible may have 5 gone out of business years earlier. There may be -
6 competence problems. There may be companies that have the 7 money but just don't seem to be technically able to do it, 8 or there may be willingness problems. There may be .
9 responsible parties who are unwilling.
10 Right now, we've got about 50 people on our 11 site decommissioning management plan program. They look 12 at this set of sites. It's about 50, but the number can 13 change. We find a few; we get rid of some. And our 14 process in general is that we require, prior to 15 remediation, that the responsible parties give us a plan.
i 16 We approve the plan; then they remediate; then we survey I 17 to ensure that their remediation has been sound, and in i 18 certain cases, prior to their development of a plan, we 19 have them characterize the site to find out what's there, 20 and on occasion we approve the plan for characterizing the 21 site.
F 22 So it can be a multi-step process. They give 23 us a rian for characterization. We approve it. They give -
24 us a plar. for remediation. We approve that. They conduct 25 the remediation, and we check it'. It can be a lengthy, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 417 1 challenging process, and it burns, as I mentioned, a fair i
2 number of resources.
3 With that in mind, we had a number of key 4 factors to consider. As I mentioned earlier, some 4
- 5 licensees or responsible parties -- in some cases, we do l
6 not have a licensee -- may be unable or unwilling to ,
- 7 decommission. We have limited resources. Although 50 may 8 sound like a lot of resources, the fact is we can't 9 address all of the sites that Congress and the public 10 would like us to address on the timetable in some cases i
, 11 they'd like us to address them.
12 Another factor is that our legal authority is l
13 limited. Since many of these sites have contamination at l
- 14 extremely low levels, we can't demonstrate an immediate i 15 health hazard associated with them, anti t.N' provides I 16 certain constraints to the legal tools that we have right 17 now, particularly if our tools m.scht be to try to tie up a 18 company's assets to ensure that they don't move them into 19 an account where we can't touch them.
20 Another factor is EPA's proposed groundwater 21 requirements. They're talking a'out having groundwater 22 standards which roughly would translate to four millirem a
. 23 year. That is a very tight standard. It-can be expensive 24 and difficult to implement. The question of when and how 25 it might be implemented is a factor in how best we might NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- 418 .
1 remsdiate the sites wa're now responsible for.
l 2 With these challenges in mind, we provided a 3 series of options to the Comu.ission. The first would be 4 to continue the existing program. The second would be to 5 change the decommissioning review process. We might ..
6 streamline it or simplify it. We might, for many cases, 7 eliminate what I mentioned a moment or two ago about 8 requiring a site characterization plan.
9 Perhaps we might eliminate the requirement for 10 a decommissioning plan, simply set a series of 11 performance-oriented goals for the site to meet when it 12 was done, and then tell the licensee to go to it, check 13 things out when they were finished. This would simplify 14 and accelerate the decommissioning process, but it would 15 also create a risk that if a licensee made mistakes, a lot 16 of money could be spent that might have to -- that would 17 cause work to be done that might have to be redone.
18 We could change the residual criteria or 19 review standards. We could, for example, relax the 20 criteria so that we had a dose of 500 millirem per year to 21 an intruder rather than 100 millirem a year. We could use 22 more realistic scenarios for addressing the standards when 23 we review them. For example, at the present, we consider S 24 intrusion to be a serious concern; perhaps we could re-25 examine the models we use to predict intrusion and take NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE N.W.
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a 419 1 more credit for passive institutional controls, such ca 2 signs or faces or deeds restrictions.
3 We could also change the standards to look at 4 site clean-up for shorter periods, not worry about going
. 5 as far into the future as we do now.
6 The fourth option: We could apply the EPA 7 Superfund standards. What we have in mind here is that if 8 EPA does a RECRA site, they look at it differently than we 9 do. They might find that it would be perfectly acceptable 10 to have a dual liner collection system to protect 11 groundwater; they will assume that there ic going to be no 12 problem with intrusion; and they'll look at the site again 13 in about 30 years and decide whether things seem to be in 14 order.
15 Much easier to meet their standards if we were 16 to have that sort of a program than to have one like ours 17 where we consider intrusion, and we look hundreds if not 18 soutetimes thousands ci' years into the future.
19 Another option would be to regulate source 20 material the same way that NARM is regulated; that is to 21 say, right now NARM is regulated by EPA in the states, and 22 there are NARM sites whose only real difference in hazard
~
- 23 from the sites that the NRC regulates, for some of the 24 high-volume, low-contamination sites, is simply these 25 happened to be regulated by the NRC. The hazards NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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- . - . - . - . ~ _ .__ -.- ..
420 .
1 associated with the NARM sites are the ceme.
l 2 Perhaps it makes sense to simply have those 3 treated as NARM sites and have EPA and the states 4 responsible for dealing with them as they do the other 5 sites. ..
6 We had a whole set of optio.is here. Those 7 were the first five. We actually have a total of nine.
8 The next option would be to focus on sites in which we can 9 make progress. If we can't make progress, turn the site 10 over to the EPA. We make progress when we have a licensee !
11 that's willing and financially able; sometimes we have l
12 unwilling licensees, licensees that don't have the money. i i
13 We have sites that are very difficult to remediate. .
14 Perhaps when a site gets stalled, we should l
15 simply transfer them to the Superfund program, allow EPA l 16 to remediate them or have them remediated as the way EPA 17 would like, and to use the tools that it has available.
18 Among the tools that they have are that they 19 don't have a problem with responsible parties who are not 20 licensees. They can go after anybody that they believe 21 has contributed to the site, and they can assess triple 22 damages. They can repair it and then assign principal 23 parties triple the price. With thrase sorts of tools, S 24 they can make progress that we can't right now because of 25 our legal limitations.
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. 421
, 1 1 A coventh alternative: Take an aggressiva 2 position to develop a regulatory framework for lower cost i 3 decommissioning waste disposal options. As I said 4 earlier, some of these sices contain materials that are
- 5 very much like uranium mill tailings.
6 Right now we do not allow them to be 7 transferred to mill tailing sites, but maybe we should.
8 Maybe there's a win-win there, or maybe we should l l
9 remediate them the way we remediate uranium mill-tailing I 1
l 10 sites, which is to cover them, to fence them, and once 1
11 they are remediated properly, to turn them over to DOE for !
I 12 long-term care. It's a potential fix. ]
13 The eighth option is to develop a strong I 14 litigative strategy. I said a moment or two ago that one j 15 of our frustrations is that because these sites are a very 16 limited hazard, we have limited legal tools that we can 17 use to bring the licensee or a responsible party in front 18 of us to cause them to fix the site.
19 We should perhaps develop a strong litigative 20 ' sciategy, so that we can ensure that, in fact, the tools 21 are there and that if we go to court, we will win.
22 Finally, we could seek our own Superfund
- 23 authority. As I mentioned a moment ago, tools that EPA 24 has that we don't are an ease of reaching responsible 25 parties who are not licensees and the ability to assess NEAd. R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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422 ..
1 triple damsges. Perhaps wa should try to get that
'2 authority from Congress so that we could do it.
3 This is a broad range of options, and with l 4 those in mind, the Commission came up with a broad range i
5 of preliminary views. They looked at what we offered and - ,
6 came up with an endorsement of four of the nine options.
1 7 What they would like to do is to give us an )
8 opportunity to hold folks more responsible and give us 9 some better tools'to deal with the problem sites. They l 1
10 would change the decommissioning review process, provide 1
11 more flexibility for how we might implement l 12 decommissioning reviews. I J
13 They would suggest that we focus on sites 14- where we can make progress and transfer stalled sites to I 15 EPA. They would have ;w nove to develop frameworks so i
16 that we could have lower cost decommissioning solutions, 17 and they'd have us develop a strong litigative strategy.
.18 Now, their actual views were a little more 19 complicated than that, as you can see on the next slide.
20 This idea about allowing licensees or responsible parties 21 to clean up'without plans does have some hazard associated 22 with it. As I mentioned a moment ago, perhaps they might 23 make mistakes and spend money that would turn out not to -
24 be well spent, so it would be important to run in the
'25 Commission's view a pilot study, to see how well it would .
l NEAL R. GROSS l COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND A'd., N.W. i (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005 3701 (202) 234 4433 j
- . 423 l
- 1 1 work.
2 Ma should have a pilot program in which we 3 look for volunteers that we think would be suitable for i .. L 4 participation because of their skills and knowledge, and o 5 as you can see in the last bullet, something we're looking 1
6 for today is we are seeking comment on whether that's a i 7 reasonable way to proceed, and particularly should we hold 9 workshops or seminars to help licensees understand what s wov'd be expected of them.
10 There are some additional views that they 11 have. With respect to option 6, which is the idea of i 1
12 transferring stalled sites to EPA, we should examine the i
13 risk level at the sites, and the ones that we should j
. 14 transfer in the Commission's view or the ones we should j 15 consider would be transferring the sites which are low a
i 16 risk and which are stalled.
l i 17 But on a case-by-case basis, as you can see in
- 18 the second bullet, we might send a high-risk site that is 19 stalled or perhaps a low-risk site where progress is being 20 made. In other words, they did not want to constrain us 21 to which ones might be transferred; we'd do it on a case-i 22 by-case basis.
. 23 And the implementation process should not A
24 preclude Commission review. Before we transfer sites to
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< 424 ,
1 a careful look at which ones wa transfer.
2 So these would be their preliminary views. If
! 3 you were to summarize, what you would hear is that the i
4 Commission plans to give the staff more flexibility in 5 terms of the way it implements the program and more tools ..
6 to use to implement it.
7 With that, I'd like to hear your views.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Mal. It's sort 9 of an interesting set of options and preliminary views, in 4
10 the sense that if you go to the key factors -- and, Clare, 11 could we see those key factors again? -- a lot of the 12 concerns here are resource concerns, timeliness concerns, 13 efficiency. And if you go back to the preliminary views, 14 I think you can see how the Commission's preliminary views 15 deal with timeliness, efficiency, resource savings.
16 This first star up here, key factor, " unable 17 or unwilling to decommission." Now, that's a public 18 health and safety concern basically. Are any of the i 19 options that were selected -- do any of the options go to 20 that particular factor as opposed to efficiency, cost, et 21 cetera?
22 I'll ask the first question, I guess.
23 MR. KNAPP: I presume this is a question for ,
24 me.
25 MR. CAMERON: A question that you don't want NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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i . 425 i .
1 me to --
2 MR. KNAPP: No. Thank you for making that
- 3 easy. Just a moment while I thumb through the options.
4 You're saying, in my view which of the options tend to go
- 5 most to health and safety as opposed to efficiency.
6 MR. CAMERON: I guess if we selected any 7 options that wonid -- have we addressed all of the key 8 factors, the -- with our options? And I guess I would 9 just throw that open to the group as a whole. Anybody l l
10 have any comment on the relationship again between the 11 factors and.the options?
12 MR. KNAPP: Chip, while they're thinking of 13 that, let me give you at least a partial answer. I would 14 quickly say that I think probably about the first, oh, I'd l
15 say, five options or 2 through 5 tend to be more in the 16 vicinity of more efficiency and more flexibility.
17 The last four, I'd say, would tend to more 18 emphasize, if you like, health and safety. It would allow 19 us to focus on higher risk sites. It would give us more 20 authority to deal with sites, so that if -- it's kind of a 21 loose differentiation, but I'd say if you wanted to say 22 which ones of these would allow us to more aggressively
- 23 deal with health and safety issues, it would probably tend 24 to be the last four, and then the first set would tend to 25 give us more flexibility to address the issues.
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426 ,
1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Good. That's helpful, 2 Mal.
3 Do we have any comments on factors related to i
4 options or on the options themselves? Anything on l
5 decommissioning here? Ken? Mike? Martha? Ken. -
6 MR. WEAVER: In regard to your first key 7 factor, the licensee unable to close out a site, we do 8 have an exper.'.ence in Colorado where we've used a 9 variation on option 6, which is to cooperate with the 10 Environmental Protection Agency in a removal action, 11 because there were also some hazardous constituents 12 present, and so we had the specter and the reality of some 13 mixed wastes. And for that reason, we operated very 14 cooperatively.
15 My director, Bob cullen [ phonetic], was able 16 to work very well with the Region VIII radiation 17 representative, Milt Lamering [ phonetic], and they and 18 their staffs then worked together and continued to do 19 that, to solve some lingering difficulties with that site.
20 So there may be some variations on 6 that have to do with 21 collaboration and cooperation.
22 MR. KNAPP: That's a good point. We've had a 23 few examples of that on our own, where we've worked with '.
24 EPA and things seemed to go -- again, as folks have noted, 25 it can be a regional effect because of EPA's region, but NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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a i 427 l
. l 1 we have had come succasses. But I think the concept that !
i l
2 you suggest that option 6, perhaps not taken as an '
3 absolute but more as a cooperate with EPA and have some ,
e-
)
4 flexibility in that. That's a good point and one we'll j
- 5 keep in mind.
I 6 MR. CAMERON: If you'll notice, option 2 pops 7 up a lot in the Commission's preliminary views, and that's 8 changed the decommissioning review process, and the 9 Commission talks about implementing this on a pilot basis.
10 Does anybody have any comments on this option? In other 11 words, is it clear what change the decommissioning review 12 process means? From a licensee perspective, would this be 13 useful? Would it be feasible? Any comments on that?
14 Mike.
15 MR. HOLMES: Just a couple of observations.
16 The new rule that just came out obviously with this l 17 license PSDAR, the post shutdown decommissioning review 18 something or other -- whatever it is, the 15- or 30-page 19 description of what to do at the site in the way of clean 20 it up, get the public involved, 90-day period and so 21 forth, and what we're talking about here really isn't 22 unlike that process.
~
23 You provide some flexibility to whoever is 24 willing to do something about the site; don't make it a 25 big regulatory burden, but, you know, put something in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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428 .
1 writing, chow it to the NRC; you know, mayba have the ,
2 public involved, a very, you know, loose sort of process, 3 you know, guidelines, performance standards, whatever it 4 might be.
5 In one sense, the idea here is try to get the -
6 radiation cleaned up at a reasonable cost and at a I
7 reasonable price in a reasonable amount of time, and 8 whether it meets the final acceptance criteria or whatever 9 is almost a secondary or an additional consideration to 10 getting the things down to the point where maybe signs and 11 fences and whatever institutional controls might be the 12 most cost-effective, long-term resolution rather than 13 trying to get the last ounce of radioactivity out of 14 there.
15 MR. CAMERON: In that example that you're 16 talking about is an example from the reactor I
17 decommissioning area, isn't it?
18 MR. HOLMES: Yes.
19 MR. CAMERON: That also may, at least 20 conceptually, have applicability here.
l 21 MR. HOLMES: Yes. l 22 MR. CAMERON: Do you have anything else to add 23 while you have the microphone, or should we go on? -
24 MR. HOLMES: Go on.
25 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Martha?
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429 -
1 MS. MITCHELL: Marti Mitchell again. Som3 of 2 the reasons that we have these problems to clean up relate 3 to the fact that we originally lost the life cycle of the 4 activities on site in the project, and I think we need to
~ 5 make sure that in current activities, this doesn't happen
) 6 again.
7 As far as some of the options are concerned, I 8 think we have to look at why would we do some of these i
9 things and make sure that we pick the option for the right -
- l. 10 reasons. We've cost benefit risk activities to look at,
- 11 and we have to pick a good model for solving them and do ;
1 i
12 some specific work on each case.
)
13 An example of this is probably the strong 14 litigation and Superfund authority approaches. In a lot 15 of cases being in a Superfund environment drives the 16 technology that you use and the clean-up levels that you l l
17 have to reach, and to some extent, you've given up things 18 like detect limits for method assuredness in laboratory l 19 activities.
20 And this is really, in part, to make sure that i
- 21. you do have the litigation assuredness rather than the 22 technical activities on site, and_I think that has to be
.~ 23 looked at.
24 MR. FNAPP: Forgive me, but I would be pleased 25 if you would elaborate that thought to about a paragraph NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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430 .
1 or so. I hear your concern, but I have to admit I didn't 2 quite follow when you say we would have to look at it.
3 Clarify what the down side is that you see with this
.s 4 approach.
5 MS. MITCHELL: Okay. When you're on a J 6 Superfund site for chemicals, your initial work is j l
7 primarily done because you really need to -- you're really 8 trying to justify nailing the potentially responsible 9 party to the wall. And this drives a lot of the 10 technology that you use for analysis and QC, and these are 11 pretty expensive.
12 And in some cases, it doesn't technically give 13 you information that you most need later on during the 14 clean-up activity. Does that answer it?
15 MR. KNAPP: Thank you. That does it. Thanks 16 a lot.
17 MS. MITCHELL: Okay.
18 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Martha.
19 Do we have some other comments on the paper?
20 How about on this idea of -- if we could see the last
-21 slide, Clare -- this idea about transferring sites to the 4 22 EPA? Anybody have a comment on whether -- how viable that 23 is? What does that accomplish? How difficult would it be .
24 to do? Any comments on this Superfund relationship that 25 runs through this paper?
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431 1 (No recponse.)
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. I guess we're done with 3' the arena. Oh, one more. We're not done with the arena 4 yet. Go e. head, Ken.
4 5 MR. WEAVER: I'm trying to be selective, but 6 it's too good an' opportunity to not offer a couple more 7 thoughts.
8 One is irom what amounts now to almost 18 9 years of experience in the uranium mill licensing and 10 inspection part of what we do in Colorado. It's my sense 11 that NRC staff have explored as well or better than any 12 other agency with a clean-up related role this issue of 13 the viability of institutional controls, the issue of 14 release for unrestricted use, and the duration of control 15 issues, the time frame for how long a solution will last 16 or how long it really is good for. j 17 And I think, thoagh, that that could be pulled 18 together, the various efforts in that regard, in relation i
19 to the high-level waste program, the low-level waste I 20 program, other. work that's been done in the past. That i
21' could be pulled together and perhaps summarized and become 22 very useful as a counterpoint to some of the other 23 documents that are now available, but pulled together just 24 in one place, and that might help inform part of this 25 discussion. I don't know.
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1 I just think there are probably some materialo .
I 2 out there that haven't quite been all pulled together yet, 1 1
3 perhaps from the performance assessment arena or work. So 4 that's a comment.
5 MR. CAMERON: Good. .-
l 6 MR. KNAPP: I appreciate the comment, and I ,
l 7 would -- I don't want to digress too far, but j 8 institutional controls and how they may be applied and 9 whether you have active or passive controls and for how 10 long is something that we're taking a look at. And I !
11 would certainly encourage any comments that you have in l
12 that area. j 13 Obviously, although it's not explicit, the 14 concept of those controls is implicit in, I think, the 15 fourth option rhare we would use the EPA standards, where ;
16 clearly active, institutional maintenance of a RECRA site 17 is something that they contemplate, at least for 30 years, !
18 and there are controls to prevent intrusion during that 19 interval.
20 Any comments you have on that with respect to )
21 the institutional control concept would be of interest. I
~
\
I 22 don't mean at this moment. I just mean if you have final 23 comments on that. - l 24 MR. WEAVER: There perhaps are some of those 25 more detailed comments that could be available. It does l
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- 1 relate to option 7, I believe, too, a fairly aggreaciva 2 effort to pull that together and sort it out.
3 The other comment that I can make, because we 4 have discussed it in a meeting of committee SR-1, the 5 suggested regulations committee, which has that low-level 6 waste framework and the source material milling piece as 7 well: Just a question that's come up and a possibility 8 that, I think, fits perhaps in option -- perhaps somewhere 9 in one of these options, that licensed source material l
10 that's essentially natural uranium, not enriched, not i
11 depleted, could be exempted from Part 61 and be allowed, j 12 indeed, to go to a licensed uranium mill tailings disposal 13 site. !
14 After all, we do permit any kind of feedstock, 15 any kind of uranium-containing feedstock material, special 16 or we have different names for these. We do permit those 17 to be inserted in the metallurgical process at mills, 18 sometimes at the very start like ore, sometimes later, 19 just before the concentration step, the extraction-20 concentration step.
21 But we do allow special feeds, at least the n
22 mills that we license here in Colorado, and so for things 23 like some reagent-grade uranium compounds, it's very 24 natural for those to be accepted and processed for the 25 mineral value.
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. ~ . - - -
434 .
1 And so allowing that to occur by being ,
2 explicit with some sort of exemption in Part 61 and then 3 somehow incorporating it in the source material milling l
4 licensing framework is -- we had actually thought as a 5 committee of perhaps putting that forward as one of these -
l l 6 items where we would just call it to NRC's attention in t
7 the petition sort of mode, and see if it was something 8 that struck a chord.
9 It has implications for some of our waste 10 disposal sites, and so you would obviously have comments 11 from that quarter. I wish Bill Sinclair were here from 12 Utah.
13 The other piece of that is to not disallow 14 naturally occurring uranium-related materials from going 15 to such a site. That's a bigger step; it's been subject 16 to a lot of policy papers, and I believe that would be 17 a -- it would be related to your option 5 here in some 18 way, to think that through.
19 What is equivalent protection for some of 20 those processed but not at a uranium -- not primarily for 21 uranium or thorium extraction materials. If you're really 22 going to re-examine that, perhaps that issue is 23 appropriate to be revisited here. -
i a4 MR. KNAPP: That's a good point. I see that l 1
25 perhaps both in option 5 and 7.
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. 435 1 MR. WEAVER: Possibly.
2 MR. KNAPP: But that's a good point that we 3 hadn't really worked up. Thank you.
+
4 MR. CAMERON: And I think this -- not to play
. 5 the numbers game, but just so that it's clear, I think the 6 one option you were talking about relates to what I 7 believe is option 7, which is this, Take an aggressive 8 position. That's utilizing uranium mill tailings sites 9 for disposal. Is that correct, Mal?
10 MR. KNAPP: That's probably the first place 11 I'd look. Although the Commission at this point does not 12 have as its preliminary view option 5, which would be, 13 Regulate some of these things consistently with NARM, but 14 the fundamental concept of a lot of these things look a 15 lot like NARM. Treat them in similar ways makes a lot of 16 sense, and the concept that I heard Ken bring in is there 17 may be NARM materials which we could fold in here or 18 permit to be folded in.
19 As he pointed out quite correctly, in the past 20 we've sort of agonized over, Well, can you put NARM at 21 untrapped sites or not, and what are some of the 22 implications of that. And I think the point's well taken.
.' 23 And if we're going to look at more aggressive ways of 24 solving these problems, more cost-eff3ctive ways of 25 solving the problems, that's one to add to the mix. So I l l
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I 436 .
1 th.'.nk it's a good point.
2 MR. CAMERON: Good. And I would note that 3 option 7, at least, is one of the options that the 4 Commission identified in their preliminary view.
5 Ken? .- 1 6 MR. WEAVER: Yes. And I need to be careful to 7 add the qualifier. Mal said if that's an option looked 8 at, then you could look at that. Again, the Conference of 9 Radiation Control Program Directors would want to be 10 pulsed, would want to have a chance to react to that.
11 There are several resolutions that the 12 conference has passed in times past that may be of some 13 use to inform the discussion, but it's just something that 14 was among some brainstormed ideas of how to break the 15 source material related logjam. Enough said, but it's an 16 if-then. If you look at it, then there's an area to 17 explore.
18 MR. KNAPP: You know, we recognize that there 19 is a lot of experience that CRCPD has, that as we get into 20 implementation of some of these decisions later on, we 21 very much look forward to calling on you for that 22 experience.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Great. I think we're 'a ,
24 done with decommissioning, done with this arena, and we i 25 have one more arena, one more paper to go, and Jesse NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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. . 437 I l
1 Funches is going to present this paper for you. And it I 2 focuses on fees.
l 3 MR. FUNCHES: The last six years, NRC has been lr l
4 required to recover its budget by assessing fees to its j l
. 5 licensees and applicants. What we are required to do is i
- 6 to recovery basically all of our appropriated fund, less j
. I 7 the amount that is funded from the high-level waste fund j 8 through fees.
9 We do not retain the funds that we recover 10 from fees. Basically our money is appropriate directly to i
11 us, and we collect the fees and provide those to the l 12 Department of Treasury.
13 This issue paper relates to those fees that we f
- 14 are required to recover. There are two separate issues 15 that we are addressing in the issue paper, that we have 16 addressed in the issue paper. The first one focused on j l
17 our strategy for making decision about activities that we i 4
18 perform; that is, how should the NRC consider fees in 19 making decision on what activities that it should perform?
20 I'd like to point out on both of these issues, 21 we are talking about the strategies as opposed to 22 implementation. I think maybe the fees area is somewhat ;
/ 23 unique. Each year, in terms of implementation, the rates 24 that we charge, who we charge, the amount we charge to 25 each is provided -- is under a rulemaking where we ask for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1223 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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c .
1 comments.
2 So what we are trying to focus on in this 3 issue paper would be the strategies, the broader questions 4 of how we deal with fees.
5 The second issue, on the next page, basically -
6 addresses questions of how do we make fees as fair and as 7 equitable as we can? And the first issue is: What 8 funding mechanism should NRC pursue, in addition to annual 9 appropriations, to fund activities that are not required 10 to be funded through appropriations? l 11 One of the reasons this question is stated the 12 way it is is that certain things we are required to fund j I
13 through appropriation, and then some -- anything that i 14 we're required to do by statute, we are required to fund 15 through appropriation, and therefore required to recover I 16 from fees under the current laws.
17 However, we can perform other work for -- that 18 are not required to be funded through appropriations, and l l
19 in performing that work, we can be reimbursed. Basically l l
20 we enter into a contractual type arrangement with the 21 party, and in essence, this is typically with other a
22 federal agencies, and there are specific areas where we 23 might go beyond federal agency, but typically we are ".
24 allowed to do this with other federal agencies if we have 25 the expertise.
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439 1 The last incue cddressen the other constraint i 2 that we have in terms of our resources. Even though we
- 3 might be able to perform work by reimbursable agreement u
4 with another agency, we are still controlled by the office i
. 5 of Management and Budget, by both the amount of money that 6 we can spend and the number of people that we can have, or I
L 7 the number of FTEs that we can have.
8 So this issue is addressing the question of 9 how should NRC address the FTE consideration that limited 10 number of staff that we can have as we enter into q
11 reimbursable agreements.
12 NRC has tt'o basic methods of receiving funds, 13 ; and I mentioned earlier those are from appropriations and j 14 from reimburser.Ltds from others. So those two factors i 15 have to be cut,1dered in any solution that we look at for 16 those two issues.
17 The second factor is the omnibus Budget 18 Reconciliation Act of 1990, the act that requires us to 19 recover 100 percent of our budget authority by assessing i
- 20 fees. Currently that act would -- the requirement would 21 expire in fiscal year 1998. There have been discussions 22 or actually there are ongoing discussions now about
/ 23 extending that requirement beyond fiscal year 1998.
24 Another key factor that we have to consider is 25 that fees have been highly contrcversial. Six years that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 we have implem nted 100 parcant recovery, we've probably 2 seen over 5,000 comments on the rules that we have issued.
3 We have had petitions for rulemaking; we have received a
4 hundreds of letters, both from licensees and from -
5 Congress; we've had congressional hearings; we've met with r 6 congressional staffers, so it's been highly controversial.
7 In fact, Congress asked us in the Energy 8 Policy Act to perform a study to look at how to make fees 9 more fair and equitable. In doing so, they asked us that 10 we seek comments from the licensee and the public. We did 11 that and completed a report -- brought a report to 12 Congress in 1994, the early part of 1994.
13 We also had a hearing before Senate committees 14 on that report. We testified, and industry testified 15 also, both the reactor side and, if I recall right, we had 16 someone from the mining side also testified.
17 The issue that was pointed out in the report 18 was -- I think the key concern o:: the key factor that was 19 causing the concerns about equity was that not all 20 beneficiaries of NRC's activity pay fees, and ~ think 21 earlier yesterday and today, we've talked about some of e.
22 those situations. I know the question was raised 23 yesterday about certain international activities. -
24 We have talked about the agreement states, but 1
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. 1 1 and the b:nsficicry of thosa ectivitics do not fecc. And l 2 some of this is because of the existing statutes, the 3 statutes constraining us in certain ways. I
^
l 4 For example, we are not permitted to charge a
- 5 fee for service for federal agencies. The Independent 1
6 Office Appropriation Act, which gives us the authority to )
1 7 charge a fee for service, explicitly says you shouldn't 8 charge a fee for service to federal agencies.
9 So if we review an application for Veterans i
10 Administration Hospital, we do not charge them a fee for 11 the application review, or if we did an amendment, we ,
1 12 would not charge them a fee.
13 Likewise, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation i 14 Act only gives us authority to charge a licensee an annual 15 fee, so if we have new activities coming on and there's no 16 licensees to charge, we are prohibited from charging that 17 annual fee.
18 And the Commission, by its own policy, he.s 19 made certain decisions not to charge fees. For example, 20 it decided that it would not charge any fees to nonprofit 21 education institutions.
22 So these factors cause -- the summation of
. 23 things that caused the fairness and equitable concar s, 24 and it equates to approximately 10 percent of the NRC's 25 budget.
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~
1 We submitted a report to Congress. Howevor, 2 Congress took no action. Our recommendation was that this 3 10 percent of the budget be taken off the fee base; that 4 is, NRC be required to recover approximately 90 percent of 1 5 its budget. -
6 Congress didn't take any action, so we did the 7 next best thing within the constraints that we had. We 8 took those costs, and we basically treated them like 9 overhead and prorated them to all licensees that were l
10 paying an annual fee, based roughly on the amount of 11 annual fee that they were paying. ;
12 There is one additional key factor, I think I 13 that's very important in looking at the options and look 14 at the solution, and that is Congress and the 15 administration are likely to continue efforts to balance 16 the budget or reduce the deficit. And what that basically ,
17 means is they will cut expenditure based on reduced 1
18 budgets, and the second thing is the likelihood of giving l l
19 up revenue is probably low also.
20 So those are the key factors that we looked at i
21 and that we are considering in the issue papers. '
22 To develop the options, we first looked at 23 NRC's activities -- and these are the options dealing with -
24 the question of how should we consider fees in making 25 decisions about what we shculd do. I would divide our i
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l 4
l 443 i 1 cctivities into two categories, two broad cctegories.
2 The first category is what we call mandated I
i 3 activities. And these are activities that NRC performs in 4 response to statutes, executive orders, treaties, or other s 5 external mandates that we have. Basically we don't have a i
6 great deal of choice in whether or not we carry out a l l
, 7 particular function.
8 The second set is the opposite of that. It's i
9 non-mandated activities, and these are activities where we l
10 perform at the request of someone else. Basically we're 11 performing a service, and this service -- the organization l
l 12 requesting the service have a choice. They don't have to 13 come to NRC for the service; they could go somewhere else. I 14 We developed four options to address the 15 N'considerationoffeesindecisionmaking. The first option l
i 16 was for most mandated activities, we would not consider !
17 fees in making decisions; for non-mandated activities, we l 18 would consider fees in making decisions or who pays for 19 it. This is essentially the status where we are today.
20 The second option is basically a more 21 definitive statement of the first one, where we would --
i 22 no consideration of fees, not for any mandated activities, j 23 and we again would consider fees for non-mandated 24 activities and that we would request the requester to 25 reimburse NRC for NRC's costs.
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444 .
1 The third option would be th:t we wouldn't ,
2 consider 'sho pays in any decision that we made about any I 3 NRC activities, both mandated and non-mandated activities.
4 This is the situation we were in prior to 100 percent 5 recovery. Basically we looked at the work-we had to do, -
6 and since we did not have to recover 100 percent of 7 budget, we would just make a decision on the merits of the 8 work.
l 9 And'the last option is what we call, I guess, 10 a fee-for-service option; that is, we would look and try 11 to have the requester of any service pay for that service, 12 and that is, we would look to consider the payment of fees ,
13 in making all decisions about activities performed by the 14 NRC.
15 This option would require legislation in the. I 16 sense that there are certain things now that we are 17 required to do. For example, as part of our Atomic Energy 18 Act responsibility, we are required to license the use of 19 radioactive materials by federal agencies, such as VA 20 hospitals ...id other federal agencies.
21 If we, you know, were required to pay the 22 fees, either one of two things. We either have to stop 23 licensing them or we would be required to change the law -
24 so we could charge them fees. So legislation would be 25 required.
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445 l
1 In cach of these four options, there are two 2 features that are common to each. The first feature is l
3 that we will, for any new responsibility, we would request l
- r. 1 1
4 Congress and the administration to explicitly address fees i
~ 5 prior to giving us the responsibility.
6 This was done when Congress gave us the 7 responsibility for the uranium enrichment cooperation.
i 8 They gave us authority, even though it's a federal agency, 9 to charge fees. We are also doing that as part of our 10 effort to perform certain things we do for DOE; for 11 example, we went to Congress and asked them to address the 12 fee question as part of the appropriations bill for the 13 Hanford tanks, and in this case, rather than giving us 14 authority to charge fees, they excluded the resources for ;
15 the review of the Hanford tanks from the NRC fee base.
16 And I guess the last thing that would be- ;
17 common with each of these options is that we would 18 continue to evaluate our activities and only perform those 19 that would give us the most effectiveness for the least 20 cost.
21 The alternative funding mechanism that we 22 considered, again we looked at four alternative funding 23 mechanisms, and again these funding mechanisms' primary 24 intent is to look to see how to make fees more fair and
) l 25 equitable. !
l l
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l .
1 Tha first alternative would be to recover tha ,
2 costs of providing requester service for a requester using l
l 3 fees and reimbursable agreements. Cost of activities that
- 4 aarve the collective interest of the general public would i 5 be recovered from the general revenues raised by taxes. -
6 This is, in essence, what we recommended to 7 Congress as part of the report that we sent to them in ,
8 1994. If you look at it, that's approximately 10 percent 9 of the budget. We were saying those activities are being I
10 performed for the collective interests of the public and i
11 therefore shouldn't be part of the fee base.
12 The second alternative we looked at is the 13 current situation is that NRC's applicants and licensees 14 would continue to pay for approximately 100 percent of the 15 appropriated budget authority. Reimbursable agreements 16 would be used to fund all non-mandated activities.
17 That's essentially where we are today. We l l
18 have made some changes. Hopefully they improve the 19 fairness of the fees that we do assess to people.
20 Option 3, in option 3 we would go to Congress 21 and request that we amend the fee legislation; that is, 22 the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act or the Atomic Energy .
. l 23 Act to give NRC maximum flexibility to assess fees. And '
I 24 in this case, for example, we would ask that we be 25 permitted to assess fees to federal agencies for fee for l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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447 1 cervices.
2 I would like to point out that we do -- even i
3 though TVA is a federal agency, we were given an exemptior.
4 to assess fees to TVA, so TVA is treated just like any b 5 other power reactor as it relates to fees.
6 And the last option would be to request that j 7 we would not be required to collect fees to offset our 8 budget, but barically that the NRC be funded totally 9 through taxes. This would be a change in the position 10 that the Commission has taken in the past and that the 11 Commission said they would take no position on how the 12 Government raises its revenues.
13 The Commission's preliminary views -- and in 14 this case, the Commission did provide bases for their 15 views, and on the first question, what the Commission said 16 is the commission believes that NRC's public health and 17 safety mission must be the foundation in making decisions 18 about what activities the agency should perform.
19 In making decisions on the activities that the 20 agency and the work which the NRC will perforrn, the 21 Commission does and will continue to consider the costs of 22 these activities and consistently examine ways to
,' 23 accomplish the mission with response to budget. '
24 Whether the ImC's budget is funded by the 25 public through taxes paid by the Treasury or by licensees NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 through fees paid to the Treasury, the NRC's decision !
2 about its program should be the same. And, therefore, the l 3 Commission's preliminary view is that programmatic ;
4 decisions'in response to NRC mandates will not be driven 5 by fees and should be based on their contribution to Jl 1
6 public health and safety. l l
7 In terms of the funding mechanism, how should 8 NRC fund itself, the Commission's preliminary view is that j 9 we would continue the agency's current approach whereby f 10 applicant and licensees continue to pay 100 percent of 11 their appropriated budget authority and reimbursable i 12 agreements will be used to .wi non-mandated activities.
13 In essence, the Commission chose to stay with the current 14 situation.
l 15 In terms of the FTE constraint, the 16 Commission's preliminary view is that they would support 17 working with the Office of Management and Budget to remove 18 the FTE constraint, so that we can perform reimbursable 19 work without having to consider that ceiling.
20 That's a summary of the issue of fees and how 21 the NRC should finance themselves given fees and the 22 Commission's preliminary views on that particular issue.
23 We will turn it over to Chip to either -- \
24 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Jesse. That's a 25 fairly complicated area that you're dealing with.
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- 449 e
1 Do wa -- wa have a numbar of options, and wa 2 also have alternative funding mechanisms. I'm not sure 3 where the better place to start would be, but how about 4 alternative funding mechanisms? Do we have any comments b 5 on alternative funding mechanisms? Les?
6 MR. ENGLAND: I have an issue that's somewhat 7 related to that, and I want to address an issue that's 8 talked around in the paper but it's really no talked )
9 about.
10 The NRC is our only supplier for licensing 11 reviews. Your limited resources necessitate prioritizing 12 based upon your safety assessments. Industry has good 13 business needs for many of its amendment requests, but 14 currently there's no mechanism in the present scheme for 15 the NRC to hire a contractor to perform an industry-needed 16 review and then bill the requester for that review.
17 Legislative changes are needed to permit this, 18 including any staff FTEs that might be required above the 19 current limits. For example, several years ago we 20 performed and submitted a full scope probablistic risk 21 assessment for one our facilities. For the past three 22 years, we've been trying to get a complete review of that 23 PRA, so we could take credit for it in certain licensing 24 activities.
l 25 But we found no way for the staff to have the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBEO3 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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450 .
1 review conducted outside the current budgst limits, so in 2 short we pay for the reviews that we get, but we can't 3 always get the reviews that we want.
~
4 MR. CAMERON: Jesse, could you, if possible -- ,
- 5 I know you're going to respond to this or ask a question <
l I
6 of Les about it. But for the rest of us, could you -- if i 7 it's possible to put that in the context of the options j l
8 and alternative funding mechanisms? Are there specific !
9 ones that that point goes to? !
10 MR. FUNCHES: I don't think in terms of the 11 option -- what he's talking about is we are constrained in 12 terms of what we can do about funds that are appropriated 13 to us. Given that we are required or part of our mission :
14 is to review submittals that come in as it relates to 15 reactors and materials, we can't say, Well, the amount of l 16 work we have exceeds the amount of appropriate funds tL i i
17 we have; therefore, if they're willing to pay for it, we i 18 can increase how much work we do.
19 So there's no means at the current time to 20 increase the amount of work that we can do for those 21 things that we're mandated to do. We are limited by -- we 4
22 can't supplement our budget for things that we are 23 mandated to do. I 1
24 And if the amount of resources we have is not 25 sufficient to do all of the requests on the schedule that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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451 1- the requestors want, we can't say, Well, giva us anothar 2 $100,000 and we'll go hire two more people or we'll go 3 contract for it, because we can't retain those nor can we a
4 ask for those funds.
L 5 MR. CAMERON: Even though they might be 6 willing to --
7 MR. FUNCHES: They might be willing. Right.
8 So just as an aside, I know like at FDA recently, they 9 were given authority -- I don't know if they call it 10 value-add or whatever; if someone came in and said, I want 11 to get at the front of the line with my particular drug 12 application, they would say, Well, you've got pay three 13 times as much as anybody else, and you pay us that and 14 we'll put you at the front of the line, and they could 15 retain those funds and hire more people. We are not 16 permitted to do that.
17 MR. CAMERON: Les, do you have -- again, 18 keying on either the options / alternative funding 19 mechanisms that were presented or perhaps an option that 20 we missed, what would be your -- how would we solve this 21 problem? How would we take care of your problem?
22 MR. ENGLAND: I think you'd have to get the 23 legislative authority to just be able to do that. I think 24 where the industry has the funds and it's cost-effective 25 for us to pay additional for that, to create a mechanism NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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452 -
1 that we could just simply do that. ,
2 MR. CAMERON: So it's a legal issue that -- I 3 think you're implying that it really is interfering with 4 our regulatory effectiveness perhaps.
l 5 MR. FUNCHES: That's a different alternative '
6 than either one up here, and that is an alternative that, 7 you know, that can definitely be considered. It's j 8 basically saying that there's certain funds above the 9 appropriation that you could retain and do extra work or 10 expedite certain things as people are willing to pay for f 11 them.
4 12 MR. CAMERON: Yes. Many of these perhaps --
13 and these perhaps have come in to us on comments on the 14 proposed rule. But as many of these specific examples as 15 we can get would be helpful in making a decision, I think, 16 on which way to go. ,
a 17 Les, do you want to add anything to this?
18 MR. ENGLAND: Not really. I just want to 19 raise the fact that that need is there, and it's real.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Anybody else with i'
21 comments on this?
l 22 I did have one clarification or one question l
23 for you, Jesse. In the Commission's preliminary views, it \
~.
24 says, " Programmatic decisions in response to NRC mandates 25 will not be driven by fees and should be based on their j l
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- . -_- -- - - . . - --. ~ - - .. . -
.- 453 ;
I contribution to public health and safety." Are thero I i
i 2 examples, maybe not even real examples, but theoretical, l I
i' 3 where you could, under the existing framework, where a
4 programmatic decisions would be driven by fees rather than l
- 5 their contribution to public health and safety?
i l
6 MR. FUNCHES: I think the issue that was l 7 coming up, you know -- I can't say that the Commission l l l 8 ever made a decision that would be inconsistent with 1
1 9 public' health and safety. I think the issue that kept I l
10 coming up was from time to time, the Commission would be i 11 looking at a particular activity, and the question would 12 be: Should we perform this activity?
13 And then somewhere in that discussion, the 14 question was raised: Well, who's going to pay for it? !
15 And I think what the Commission was trying to do with this l
16 pe.rticular issue was to say, you know, whereas we want to !
3 l 17 be as fair and equitable as we can in how we charge our {
18 fees,'but in the first instance, we must decide what we i 19 need to do based on health and safety reasons, and then 20 fees will be something that we would, you know -- it's a 21 fact of life, and we have to just live with those fees and a
l l
22 try to make them as fair and equitable as possible.
l
- 23 I think because of the controversy about fees 24 during the first six years, from time to time the question j 25 of who will pay for it was being' raised as part of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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1 decisionmaking. I think the Commission was just anying, 2 Let's deal with this issue and make sure that we 3 communicate clearly to ourselves, internally and w
11 externally on how we're going to deal with it.
5 But I can't recall any issue where the <
6 Commission didn't ultimately make a decision based on ;
7 health and safety.
8 MR. CAMERON: I guess from another 9 perspective, too, on that -- and we'll go to Charlie -- is 10 that I suppose there might be times when the NRC is 11 thinking about a particular decision or requiring certain 12 information to be submitted, the extent of a review or l l
13 whatever. The Commission, the NRC, is probably sensitive l 14 to the fact that because it is a fee recovery program, 15 that we might be criticized by the industry or the 16 particular licensee because we're taking a particular l l
17 action.
l 18 That might be sort of an indirect influence of l
19 the fee program, and I don't know if that's been an j 20 important consideration for us.
21 MR. FUNCHES: I like to think that we try 4
22 first, in the first instance, with the minimum resources
! 23 if we're going to -- if we're requesting information. But 24 typically I think the concern about requesting information 25- is not so much the fee part of it as opposed the licensees NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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. 455 1 using their own resources to respond.
2 There have been times, I think, you know, 3 people will think -- say, Yes, this is fee-bearing, and we ,
4 ought to make sure if we send a person out -- say, you're A 5 sending two people out and one person was going out for !
6 training, that the person doesn't charge the training time i 7 as a fee-bearing, but since the training is part of 8 overhead, so I think those things, people are very careful 9 about.
10 And I do think from time to time, you know, 11 people will think, you know, Do I really need to send one 12 or two, but I think in most cases, people ask that 13 question independent of whether the fees were there.
14 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you.
15 Charlie?
1 16- MR. BRINKMAN: Charlie Brinkman, ABB. I I l
17 certainly concur that this is a contentious issue, and our i
18 company, off the top of my head, I would guess over the 19 six-year period has probably paid something like $20 20 million in fees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so 21 it definitely impacts us.
22 But in that, it impacts our customers who Y 23 principally are the nuclear utilities, who are also paying 24 these Part 171 fees and the Part 170 fees. And I just 25 want to say.something that I think is obvious, but since I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 havon't heard it caid, I'm going to say it. .
2 The environment is changing. These fees were 3 onerous before, because we didn't feel that we should be 4 paying for services that we weren't directly benefitting 5 from or couldn't see a direct benefit, but now in a /
6 deregulated environment, this is putting nuclear power at 7 a significant disadvantage as a source of electric power, 8 compared to the other alternatives.
9 It's not certainly the only factor, but it is 10 a factor, and basically the nuclear utilities are bearing 11 most of the burden of the half billion or so per year that 12 the NRC recovers in fees. That is significant, and I 13 think the Commission should take that into account and 14 should renew their legislative activities to attempt to 15 get the Congress to recognize.
16 Because not only that, but as you're well 17 aware, we're also paying a fee for waste disposal, but not 18 getting any benefit from it, and that's on top of 'tlum 19 nuclear option. All this stuff keeps mounting up and l 20 makes nuclear power that much less competitive, so 21 therefore I guess I'm just saying: I really would like to 22 see the Commission take this issue very seriously, 23 recognize it's putting a strain on the resources of the -l 24 operating plants, and seek to not have licensees bear the 25 burdens that they're not benefitting from.
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1 MR. CAMERON: Charlie, would that --
2 MR. FUNCHES: That's option 1.
3 MR. CAMERON: That's a good point. That's 4 what I'm trying to figure out --
N 5 MR. FUNCHES: It's option 1.
6 MR. CAMERON: This one right --
7 MR. FUNCHES: The first funding alternative.
8 MR. CAMERON: I have a question about one of 9 the things that was up in relationship to what you said, 10' and I just want to pulse the audience on this, on the 11 other slide.
12 Does this take care of your problem?
13 MR. BRINKMAN: Is thin the opCion that has no 14 fees? That's my favorite.
15 MR. CAMERON: That's the one that I was 16 curious about, when we go back to Congress and say, Let's 17 cut the fee program altogether, and that's what'I thought 18 you were driving towards. Maybe not.
19 Frank, do you want to --
20 MR. MIRAGLIA: I think what Charlie's saying, i I
21 that's the position that industry is maintaining is that 22 generally all of these things serve the collective i 23 interest and the general public, and so it should just be l 24 raise the general revenues by taxes, and there should be 25 no fee recovery.
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1 MR. CAMERON: Can you put that slide -- it's , ;
2 the second alternative' funding slide up, and then we 3 can -- this-is the one that would solve the problem.
v 4 MR. BRINKMAN: I believe that's the one that ,
t 5 we're -- /
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay. So there's support at 7 least from one part of the industry for this alternative 8 funding mechanism. I have to be honest. I'm not sure 9 what the connections are between the funding mechanisms 10 and the options, and I don't know if that's something that 11 other people out there are also a little confused about.
12 MR. FUNCHES: They're basically separate.
I 13 Either one can go with the other ones.
14 MR. BRINKMAN: I'm a little confused on which 15 option does this, because I'm not -- I haven't carefully ,
- 16. studied the paper, which I'll do before we submit l 17 comments. However, I don't think it's realistic to ask 18 that there aren't going to be any. fees. What I'm trying ;
l 19 to say is I would like to see the Part 171 type fees l I
20 rescinded, the ones where the utilities really are not the i l
21 beneficiaries. ,1 4
22 MR. FUNCHES: Those costs such as -- certain 23 costs -- you're not talking about research -- are you h 24 talking about research?
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1 doesn't have a direct application to the license.
2 MR. FUNCHES: And that would be closer, I 3 think, to option 1, where we say we'll go back -- those w
4 things that serve the collective interest of the public 1 5 we'll take off the fee base. I think that statement would 6 be closer to option 1.
'7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Jesse.
8 Les?
9 MR. ENGLAND: Even in the days before fees, we 10 had situations where there were insufficient resources to 11 conduct reviews that were of interest to the industry and 12 of a lesser interest to the staff, so that doesn't 13 necessarily, you know, solve the problem.
14 We still need the ability to be able to go out j 15 and get the services we need, and I think that the safety 16 issue here is if there is an expensive way of meeting, you 17 know, the health and safety of the public or the public's 18 health and safety needs in a less expensive way, that we 19 believe, and still meet, you know, the health and safety 20 needs, we need the ability to get that alternative 21 reviewed and accepted, to demonstrate that it's equally as s
22 safe, albeit less expensive.
I 23 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Les.
24 Any comment on that, Jesse?
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1 that he raises, how do you get additional resources bayond )
I 2 the budget if there are things that the industry would i
{ 3. like to have NRC complete; you know,~once you prioritize I w 4 things, that you can only do so much within the budget 5 that Congress has given you; you know, what are the r ;
6 l
alternatives to get additional resources to pursue work )
l 7 beyond the budget. j 8 And that question is valid, independent of f
9 fees I mentioned earlier. We don't -- our budget is set !
10 by Congress as part of appropriation, and if we had no !
11 fees, it would still be set by Congress as part of 12 appropriations, so the amount of the budget would 13 basically be the same and you still have that question.
14 MR. CAMERON: That's a good point.
15 MR. FUNCHES: So that's a different 16 alternative. I would like to make one clarifying comment, 17 just maybe for people who might not know. I think Mr.
18 Brinkman mentioned that the industry also pays into the 19 waste fund. That money -- those fees are paid to DOE, and 20 we just get appropriated money from those, so those fees 21 are not collected by NRC, just as a matter of ,
22 clarification.
23 MR. CAMERON: I think that's a good h!
l 24 clarification, although I guess Charlie's point was that l
25 these are -- that's just another straw perhaps. But I'm i NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TF#84 SCRIBERS
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- l 1 glad this is your area, Jesso, bscause it's complicatcd !
2 and controversial.
3 Do we have any other comments on the fee
,u 4 paper?
% 5 (;o N response.)
l i'
6 MR. CAMERON: Well, I'm going to ask Jim 7 Milhoan to formally close us out for you, but I would just l 8 thank you for your attention, your constructive comments. )
l 9 It's evident that you prepared well for this, and I would 10 just remind you that when you're thinking about submitting i 11 formal comments on this, I hope that some of the things 1
12 that you learned from each other are useful in formulating '
13 your comments, and also some of the specific points that 14 the NRC staff had asked to be commented on will be 15 helpful.
16 Jim Milhoan.
17 MR. MILHOAN: Thank you, Chip.
18 I just want to express my appreciation for you 19 attending the meeting today and yesterday. I know it's 20 been two long days. We've had a large number of issue 21 papers, wide-ranging issues that we've gone through. But
.o 22 for one, I am certainly impressed by the quality and v
23 quantity of comments that we received. We received some 24 extremely thoughtful comments that will be very useful, I 25 think, to the Commission in arriving at its final NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 decisions on the papers.
2 I'm very pleased with that input that we've 3 received, and we will certainly reflect that input into u
4 the stakehold interaction report to the Commission.
5 We have one additional meeting in Chicago next #
t 6 week. I would certainly encourage you to let other people 7 know about this meeting. We certainly made a wide notice 8 ourselves through press announcements, mailings, et 9 cetera, but I would certainly encourage you to notify 10 anyone else that you think would benefit from attending 11 the Chicago meeting.
12 And all of you are certainly welcome back to 13 Chicago to next week. We're going to be there, but also 14 in closing I'd like to thank Chip for the two days that he 15 has given us as facilitator. I know it's a very difficult 16 job to run the meeting, and he's done a very good job of 17 trying to obtain the comments, and we certainly appreciate 18 that.
19 Are there any other questions that you-would 20 like to have, or other comments, before we close the 1
'21 meeting? Les? l 22 MR. ENGLAND:
You raised the possibility of an -
1P l 23 extension of time. When would you be able to answer that? kl 24 MR. MILHOAN: I would expect probably by next 25 week, you know, because it's going to be a Commission NEAL R. GROSS court REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AV6., N.W.
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1 decision. It's hard for my crystal ball to look at it, 1
2 but I would anticipate it would be t hat range of timing .
3 for doing it. Certainly we're talking with the !
4 '
4 Commission. We've been talking with them today and will I
O 5 continue to do that. i 6 If no other comments, thank you very much for i
7 your attendance. It's been appreciated.
8 (Whereupon, at 4:00 p.m., the meeting in the -
1
! 9 above-entitled matter was concluded.) l 10 ;
I 11 ,
12 13 i
14 .
15 16 17 18 l
j 19 l
20 !
4 21
'b i ty n
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if 23 i
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i l L CERTIFICATE '
V]
- This is to certify that the attached l
~ .,
e proceedings before the United States Nuclear 93I
- i. ;
- Regulatory Commission in the matter of
- I
, i 4
i f Name of Proceeding: Stakeholders Public Meeting i i i Docket Number: n/a !
I i Place of Proceeding: Colorado Springs, Colorado l a >
were held as herein appears, and that this is the original l l :
I j- transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear ;
i 1
- Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to ;
typewriting by me or under the direction of the court l i
reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and t
accurate record of the foregoing proceedings. j i
Anita tyler i Official Reporter l Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
i !
f 5 i
. ~E d, Jl
-jg a1v i
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