ML20134K922
| ML20134K922 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 08/01/1985 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20134K911 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8508300511 | |
| Download: ML20134K922 (71) | |
See also: IR 05000731/2008001
Text
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UN11ED STATES
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL TRANSPORTATION SEMINAR
Sponsored by
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
and
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
.
,
LOCATION: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS PAGES: 259 - 329
DATE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1985
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ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
(.)
Official Rgorters
444 North Capitol Street
8508300511 850823 Washington, D.C. 20001
PDR 1OCFR
PT9.7 PDR (202)347-3700
NATICNWIDE COVERACE
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9330D00 101 , 259
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
3 U. S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
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and
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5 U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
6 ' sponsored
7 > SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL TRANSPORTATION SEMINAR
.8 Thursday, 1 August 1985
9 Americana Congress Hotel,
'
10 Chicago, Illinois
11 The seminar was reconvened at. 8 :00. a.m. , pursuant
12- to notice, He ard G. Shealy, presiding.
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9330 01 01 260
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(,_)WRBeb 1 PROCEE' DINGS
2 MR. SHEALY: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
3 I am Heyward Shealy, and I will be chairing
4 Session V this morning on insp.ection activities.
5 Yesterday we heard presentations on regulatory
6 roles of the federal agencies, the Department of
7 Transportation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and they
'
8 will discuss further their regulato'ry' roles with respect to
9 inspection activities. I know that many of us are
.
10 interested in this because at the state level and the local
11 level we many times ask questions, who-is inspecting these
12 shipments?
/'
(_)j 13 Our first speaker this morning will begin by
a
14 giving us an overview of the Department of Transportation
15 activities in the inspection area. We have with us John
16 O'Connell who is Acting Chief of the Hazardous Material
17 Enforcement Division of the ;l aarch and Special Programs
I 18 Administration within t}E ';e n tment of Transportation.
19 John, will you come up, please?
20 MR. O'CONNELL: Thank you, Heyward.
I
21 I will try not to keep you too long here. It has
22 been my uncanny ability the last few speaking engagements
23 that I've had to be put on here at eight o' clock in the
24 morning, right off the bat, you'know. I don't know why that
g-)
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~
25 is, but bear with me, please.
m - __
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.9330 01 02 261
,m
.! 1 This morning's topic is inspection activities,
)WRBeb
2 and in the time allotted to me I will just give you some
.
3 information about the Department of Transportation's
4 involvement in the inspection of spent fuel shipment.
5 The Department has five major operating
6 administrations, all of which have inspection and
7 enforcement authority as delegated by the Secretary of
8 Transportation under the Hazardous Materials Transportation
9 Act.
'
.
10 We enforce the hazardous materials regulations
'
11 that are found in Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations,
!
12 Parts 100 to 199, with respect to a variety of hazard
.() 13 classes, anything from an aerosol can to tankers full of
14 gasoline to radiopharmaceuticals and other radioactive
15 materials. Spent fuel is just one of the materials
16 under the radioactive class that we have some involvement
17 with.
18 Three of the Department's operating
19' administrations are principally involved in spent fuel
,
20 inspections, and those are the Research and Special Programs.
,<3 , 21 Administration, whom I work for, Ed Pritchard's
22 organization, the Federal Railroad Administration, and
I
23 Gerald Gregory's organization, the Federal Highways
l>
l em , 24 Administration, Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety.
\]
25 We got involved specifically with spent fuel
i
I
_. - .
_ - - -
__ _. . ._ . - _ . _ _ _ -- _ - ,_
9330 01 03 262
()WRBeb 1 shipments just about two years ago, at the time when new
2 movements were being contemplated. At that time the
3 Director of the Materials Transportation Bureau, one of
4 RSPA's principal organizations, called together
5 representatives from the three modal administrations and
6 expressed his desire that the Department provide an
7 inspection presence at each of the shipping locations prior
8 to the first shipment being made.
9 Now the other fellows may be able to correct me.
10 I know our organization has only been involved at initial
11 movements. There may have been some' inspection made at
12 other movements in a series, but we've been only involved in
() 13 the initial inspection -- the inspection of the initial
.
14 movement.
15 The Director's reasoning in asking us to do this
16 was that he felt with the Department of Transportation
17 working alongside the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
18 Department of Energy, all aspects of a transportation
19 movement, security and safeguards, container integrity,
20 radiation levels, vehicle safety, proper documentation,
21 marking and labeling, would be monitored for compliance at
22 one time, and any problems encountered could be corrected
23 before the movement took place.
,-
, 24 The Department has a coordination mechanism in
()) 25 place with these other organizations to receive advance
. - - - -- ~
.
9330 01 04 263
(.
Tss) WRBeb 1 notification of upcoming shipments, and the three groups
2 represented here from the Department do have an in-house
3 coordination process to provide coverage.
4. RSPA's Hazardous Materials Enforcement Division
5 has a full-time radioactive materials enforcement
6 specialist, Jim Schuler, whom I'm sure a lot of you know,
7 who is here today. He is primarily-- In addition to the
8 inspection work that he does for us, he does quite a bit of
9 radioactive materials inspection monitoring at airports and
10 going to shipper facilities, but as pertains to spent fuel,
11 his primary role is to assist the Federal Railroad and the
12 Federal Highway people at a site where a spent fuel movement
A 13 is going.to take place.
7,y
14 One of his contributions thus far has been to
15 work with the shipping facility in reviewing all the
16 required paperwork to make sure all applicable
,
17 transportation requirements have been complied with.
18 To date, the DOT has been involved, along with
19 either the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Department
20 of Energy, in conducting the following inspections:
21 In September '83, we were at West Valley, New
22 York;
23 August 1984, Round Hill, Nebraska, Nebraska
g- 24 Public Power;
V) September '84, Chalk River, Canada, the Canadian
25
--r_
9330 01 05 264
I)WRBeb 1 Atomic Energy Control. Board;
2 November '84, Monticello, Minnesota, Northern
3 States Power;
4 And in June '85, Jim was down at Surry, Virginia,
5 down at the Virginia Electric Power facility.
6 To my knouledge, no major problems have been
7 encountered in any of these movements, any of the
8 inspections. Discrepancies that did arise, and there were
9 some, were noted and corrected prior to the movement being
10 made. I think that is the whole intent of the inspection
11 program with respect to spent fuel.
12 In the case of the Nebraska and Minnesota
[ )i 13 ship'ments, both of which were rail shipments, there was also
14 inspection, a post l rip inspection provided by Federal
t
15 Railroad people and Jim Schuler when the material arrived at
16 Morris, Illinois, where they were going to be stored.
17 That's really all I have. If you have any
18 questions for me, I will entertain them right now.
- . 19 Otherwise, I will defer to Darrell and Ed.
20 MR. SHEALY: I am sure we may have some questions
_
21 for John. We will, however, hold all questions until the
22 end of our presentations.
23 I want to thank John for giving us that overview
24 of DOT activities in the inspection area.
25 Our next two speakers really need no
. _ _ . -- ._. - _ .
9330.01 06 265
m
(,)WRBeb 1 introduction. They were with us yesterday. They will be
2 talking about carrier inspections with respect to rail -
3 transportation and highway transportation.
4 We will first hear from Ed Pritchard, who will
5 discuss-the Federal Railroad Administration activities in
-
6 rail inspections, and then we will hear from Darrell
7 Gregory, who will discuss the highway transportation
8 inspection.
9 Ed.
10 MR. PRITCHARD: Thank you, Heyward.
11 Good morning. Is everyone wide-eyed and
12 bushy-tailed for our trip this morning? I see people
'
() 13 shaking th.eir heads and groaning.
~
14 What I am going to give you is again a brief
15 outline of what the Federal Railroad Administration -- what
16 our activities are, and what we have done on our past and
17 present nuclear waste movements.
18 The FRA is comprised of a field staff of
.
19 approximately 325 inspectors all across the United States,
20 and of those 325 inspectors, 34 of them are full-time
21 hazardous material personnel.
22 Within the FRA we have five disciplines of
2:3 inspectors. We have what is referred to as the motor power
24 and equipment inspectors who are responsible for the
O,
25 complete inspection of all rolling stock of the United
__
- _ - _ - - . - . . . -. - . - _ - - - - . _ _ - - - _ - _ _ , _
. - -
9330 01 07 266
g
(_)WRBeb 1 States railroads, along with the locomotive.
2 We also have operating practices inspectors who
3 go out and monitor the carriers' operating rules, their
4 training procedures. They deal with signal protection,
5 hours5.787037e-5 days <br />0.00139 hours <br />8.267196e-6 weeks <br />1.9025e-6 months <br /> of service, accident reporting.
6 We have track inspectors who monitor the nation's
7 tracks. We have federal track standards.
8 And in addition, we have signal and train control
9 inspectors who go out and monitor the signal systems
10 employed by the various railroads.
11 And the last discipline would be hazardous
12 material inspectors, of which there are 34.
n
(_) 13 During the last year, in fact starting in August
14 of '84, as John mentioned earlier, since that time we've had
15 approximately 12 spent nuclear fuel movements from Nebraska
16 and Minnesota combined, going into Morris, Illinois. And
17 the FRA's policy on the maiden move of each of those was to
18 inspect the entire track route from origin to destination.
19 Included in that complete inspection of the track
20 was a complete inspection of signal systems, along with the
21 rail carrier's operating rules, and the equipment to be
22 used. We looked at every piece of equipment that was
23 employed in that train.
24 We also looked at the billing and placarding
(^)
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25 documentation before the shipment was made. And again with
-
.
9330 01 08 267
n
(_jWRBeb 1 the aid of RSPA-- As John mentioned earlier, we had the aid
2 of Jim Schuler, who conducted full-scale readings on the
3 cask and again assisted our inspector in the documentation.
4 Now that was on the maiden voyage.
5 The policy of the FRA now that we've made the
6 maiden voyage is we still conduct a full equipment
7 inspection on each move that is made. In addition to that,
8 wo also do a full documentation and check the casks to make
9 sure they are properly placarded.
10 Regarding the track and signals, we drop down to
11 what we refer to as a periodic inspection, of which-- Our
12 inspectors have scheduled track inspections across the
e,
(_) 13 country. .
14 FRA will retain this polic) as long as we have
15 our personnel and money to make these necessary inspections.
16 That basically is exactly what we are doing right
17 now. And we will be glad to entertain any questions
18 afterwards.
19 Thank you.
20 MR. GREGORY: Good morning.
21 As a representative of the Federal Highway
22 Administration, Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety, I thought to
23 begin with I would give you a very brief overview of what
gs 24 our radioactive monitoring capabilities are.
L.)
25 We have a very small field staff, as many of you
9330 01 09 268
l)WRBeb 1 know. They are scattered among '/C-some-odd field and
2 regional offices throughout the United States.
3 However, each field office does have the
4 capability of -- by instrumentation, of monitoring beta and
5 gamma radiation levels on radioactive material shipments.
6 However, these particular instruments are not, in our
7 opinion, suitable for surveillance or long-range detection
'
8 projects.
9 So with that in mind, approximately a year ago
10 the agency purchased three state-of-the-art instruments from
11 one of the major manufacturers to use in a pilot program for
12 surveillance and detection of radioactive material movements
(k 13 by highways. The instrument is very versatile. It can be
14 used on a stationary basis; it can be mounted in, fo'r
15 instance, a state police cruiser and used similar to the way
16 moving radar is used.
17 As I mentioned, it was a pilot project. We've
18 been very pleased with the results that we have obtained
.
19 from it. While it was not used or has not been used to date
20 in a particular movement of spent nuclear fuel, it
_
21 certainly, by its very being out there, is monitoring that.
22 However, we have found that in the movement of
23 radiopharmaceuticals it is an excellent tool. It is so
24 good, in fact, that we will probably purchase some more
25 devices for each one of the regions and, in addition, we
9330 01 10 269
q:
'b,WRBeb 1 loan them regularly to states that wish to become involved
2 in this type operation.
3 . Additionally, at least two of the states in our
4 Region I, which is the northeast region, have been so
5 impressed.with it that they have elected on their own to
6 purchase similar type machines. So we feel this is an
7- excellment method of monitoring all types of highway
8
movementsofradioactivematerfals.
9 In addressing the particular movement of spent
10 nuclear fuel you have heard my two colleagues mention the
11 system that we operate under. It is virtually the same in
12 Federal Highways. We coordinate with John's office in
13 RSPA. When we receive notification from thqm of the
14 movement of spent fuel, we will assign field staff and try,
15 in every instance, to send one of our regional hazardous
16 material specialists, but certainly a field representative
17 to conduct a physical examination on the initial move on the
18 equipment.
19 To those of you that were here yesterday some of
20 this will be repetitious, but on the drivers, we will
21 inspect driver qualifications to be sure the driver is
22 medically qualified to operate in interstate commerce. We
23 review his hours of service to determine that he has
24 adequate hours available for the move.
O 25 We inspect, physically inspect, the equipment
9330 01 11 270
,m
(_)WRBeb 1 with primary emphasis on the areas of steering, suspension,
2 tires, brakes, lighting and coupling devices.
3 Under the hazardous materials regulations we
4 obviously will inspect for proper placards, shipping papers,
5 that they meet the necessary requirements, that the blocking
6 and bracing is adequate, and that the driver has his
._
7 certificate of training for movement of radioactive
8 materials, and has a written route plan.
9 As John mentioned, to date we are quite pleased
10 with the results in that there have been no major problems
11 encountered. Now that is not to say that there have been
12 no problebs but there have been no major problems
'. ) 13 encountered.
14 Certainly if defects are observed on the
.
15 equipment or in the driver in any way, steps are taken
16 immediately to correct them.
17 We have found, quite frankly, that the attitude
18 of the carrier involved in these particular shipments is
19 excellent. To say they are cooperative doesn't give them
20 enough credit. They have many, many reasons for being
21 cooperative, but the fact remains that they have extended a
22 great deal of cooperation to us. In most instances they
23 have dedicated equipment; that is, equipment that moves
7s 24 solely in that type of movement. They use the same
'd
25 equipment over and over again.
9330 01 12 271
I)WRBeb 1 And the same holds true with the drivers. In
2 most instances, the carrier we find will assign a senior
3 driver or drivers if it is a sleeper-berth team, one that is
4 very conversant with this type of movement, one that has a
5 wealth of experience in the type of equipment that is being
6 operated, and use them solely in dedicated service.
7 As far as the Bureau's activities, we are there
8 on every initial move and as Ed mentioned in the Federal
9 Rail, we go back on a spot-check basis in coordination with
10 NRC and DOE to inspect the equipment.
11 Again I would like to reiterate that overall,
12- we've been very pleased with what we've seen. We feel that
O)
(_ 13 a grea' deal of effort is being expended, not only from the
14 federal level but from the industry level. They are
15 cooperating 100 percent.
16 And as John and Ed indicated, I, too, will be
17 happy to answer any questions if you have any.
18 Thank you very much.
19 MR. SHEALY: Thank you, Ed and Darrell, for
20 explaining to us the Department of Transportation
21 activities in the inspection area.
22 We will move on now to another federal agency,
23 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And to explain to us
24 their role in inspection activities, we have Al Grella.
25 Al has quite a long list of credentials here.
9330 01 13 272
'
s
( ) WRBeb 1 He has had a number of years of experience in the nuclear
2 field. I will just touch on some of these.
3 He has worked in Region I of the Atomic Energy
4 Commission as a radiation specialist. He worked for some 11
5 years with the Department of Transportation in various
6 capacities as a radiological engineer, and also as chief of
7 the Technology Division which had responsibilities for the
8 transport regulatory program for nuclear material, and
9 R&D programs relating to safe transport of hazardous
10 materials,
11 He has been with the Nuclear Regulatory
12 Commission since 1979, and he is a Senior Health Physicist
,, .
(_) 13 with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
14 So Al will come up and explain to us NRC
15 activities.
16 MR. GRELLA: Thank you, Heyward.
17 Good morning, everybody.
18 By now we have been hearing a lot about packaging
19 and the whole activity of spent fuel transportat. ion. My
l
! 20 chore today is to try to explain what NRC's activity has
l
- 21 been in the inspection of spent fuel transportation,
!
22 particularly in the last several years.
23 I would like, as the others have done, to explain
24 a little bit about the organization of the inspection
s /
25 program in our agency.
- . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
9330 01 14 273
(m_)WRBeb 1 (Slide.)
2 The NRC has five regional offices around the
3 country as shown on this map. In each of those regions we
4 have many inspectors. Regional offices at one time were
5 responsible solely for inspection and enforcement. Several
6 years ago that changed. Each of the regional offices became
7 the regional office of the agency rather than regional
- *
8 inspection and enforcement offices.
9 So within each of those regional offices we have
10 quite a few inspectors who inspect many aspects of the uses
11 of material as well as the operation of reactors or fuel
12 facilities.
(). 13 In each of those regions there are inspectors
.
14 inspecting operating reactors as well as the radiological
'
15 protection aspects of licensed facilities. It generally
16 breaks out into three types of specialization.
17 We have inspectors who look at fuel facilities,
18 of which there are not too many, the material licensees, of
19 which there are very many, hospitals, academic institutions,
20 industrial labs who are licensed to use material, and the
21 reactors themselves. So in each of those areas there will
22 be those three specializations, and generally there are
23 health physicists assigned to inspect radiological
24 protection.
25 Several years ago, actually in 1979, the
, __ __ _ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
9330 01 15 274
7N
im) WRBeb 1 responsibilities of inspectors changed somewhat in that
2 transportation was added to the list of things that they
3 were responsible to inspect. We do not have, and have not
4 had generally inspectors dedicated only to looking at
5 transportation, so this meant we had to train each of our
6 inspectors who are assigned to inspect transportation, had
7 to train them in the transportation regulations and all of
8 the DOT regulations actually.
9 In 1979, we also adopted a very simple,
10 one-paragraph change to Part 71 whereby we imposed DOT
11 requirements on all of our licensed shippers.
12 So that we have had considerable activity in the
i
n
(_) 13 past several years in training our inspectors to inspect
14 transportation activities of licensees.
15 The major'activitiy in transportation generally
16 involves low-level waste, so that I think a larger
17 percentage of our routine inspection efforts in
18 transportation is looking at the transportation activities
19 relating to transportation of low-level waste, and this
20 particularly has been the case since '79.
21 Along came 1983, and a number of large shipment
22 campaigns of movements of spent fuel began.
23 In those regional offices there have been three
24 regions involved with the inspecting of spent fuel
(3
L)
25 shipments. The Region I office in Philadelphia, King of
.
L
9330 01 16 275
()WRBeb 1 Prussia, was involved with the shipments from West Valley
2 and two licensees in the Region I area.
3 The Region III office here in Glen Ellyn is
4 involved with the inspections, two points of origin and
5 destination in this region, namely Morris, Monticello, and
6 Dresden.
7 And in only one case has another region office--
8 The Dallas or Arlington, Texas, office has been involved in
9 the origin inspection of last year's shipment from Cooper to
.
10 Morris.
11 So we have a number of health physicist
12 inspectors who are in the reactor inspection side of the
r~ house who had considerable involvement in inspecting spent
i
s 13
14 * fuel shipments. And I will give you some of the figuros on
15 that shortly.
16 (Slide.)
.
17 This is sort of a schematic, certainly not to any
18 geographic scale, of these campaigns in the last couple of
!
19 years. And I've got a Vugraph on each of these campaigns.
20 I might mention that in the handout materials,
21 there are copies of both of these Vugraphs, and I am not
22 using them necessarily in the same order that they are in
'
23 your handout.
I
24 As you can see here, they are broken down into
'
25 campaigns that are on-going, of which there are I believe
!
l
!
9330 01 17 276
(m_) WRBeb 1 two at the present time. Four of these campaigns have been
2 completed, one as recently as last month. And there is one
3 campaign which will involve a DOE shipment which is planned
4 I believe for later in the year.
5 So the major point of origin and destination
6 sites have been West Valley, New York, and Morris, Illinois.
7 In two cases the movements were out of the storage facility
8 back to actual reactors, which is Point Beach.
9 I think this is fairly self-explanatory.
10 This type of activity, these campaigns, was
11 certainly not a normal thing. The pattern of commercial
12 spent fuel shipments in the past decade has been that there
() 13 haven't been too many shipments, and all of a sudden there
,
14 was this large increase.
15 I believe Lee Rouse will be going into spent fuel
16 shipments, and I am not sure he is going to cover the
17 reasons for why there have been a number of shipment, but he
18 probably will. It mainly has to do with a court order that
19 ordered the decommissioning of the West Valley site. It
'
20 ordered the removal of all of the fuel out of the West
21 valley site I believe by the end of this year.
! 22 And then in the other case I guess the
23 restrictions that had precluded General Electric from
(g
,-)
24 receiving fuel, several years ago those restrictions were
j 25 lifted and this resulted in a number of shipments
L
-
c330o01 01 277
m
-(,)WRBeb 1 beginning to start to come back into Morris.
2 Generally I think John O'Connell pointed out that
3 DOT management had requested the presence of DOT inspectors,
4 at least during the early stages and initial shipments, and
5 I think it was pretty clear that higher management in NRC
6 pretty much had the same view at the time, that we should
7 spend a considerable effort in putting inspection resources
8 into looking at the' shipments at the point of origin and
9 destination early in these campaigns.
10 In fact as it turned out, at the beginning of a
11 campaign it almost is a 100 percent effort. We are there
12 for most of the inspections at the point of origin and
-
() 13 receipt. Generally we tend to phase this down as the
14 campaign gets along, particularly if there are no problems.
15 And as the others have stated, there have been relatively
16 minor problems and our inspection experience reflects the
17 same conclusions, that the problems have been essentially
18 minor.
19 But we have expended a considerable effort in
20 inspecting quite a few of these shipments, probably on the
21 order of 50 percent as it averages out. But at the
22 beginning of any campaign we are usually there most of the
23 time, at either the origin or destination location, or both.
24 But we try to at least say that we are making on a
25 statistically significant basis.
- . . _ _ . - - --
c330 01 02 278
m
(_)WRBeb 1 (Slide.)
2 These campaigns aren't in any geographical or
3 chronological order, but I'll just run through these.
4 Interspersed with each of these slides I've got some
5 picture. I don't think anybody has actually had a picture
6 up here yet of a spent fuel cask or a fuel assembly, and
-
7 I've got some of these.
8 Here is a campaign that was completed last
9 November, some 114 shipments in the NLI cask which holds one
10 PWR element or two BWR elements. I believe it has been used
11 mostly for PWR elements, one cask in each highway shipment.
12 And of the 114 shipments our inspectors out of
r
' (_)j 13 Region I inspected 56 of those at West Valley, and 21 were
14 inspected b'y our Glen Ellyn office at Point Beach.
15 I believe that the empty casks -- I'm not s'ure of
16 this; I'll check with the Wisconsin people. I believe the
17 Wisconsin health people have probably gotten into inspecting
,
18 some of the empty casks after they were unloaded at Point
19 Beach.
_
20 Is that still the case?
21 VOICE: Both empty and full.
22 MR. GRELLA: In fact, we provided some training
23 to that group back in December of '83 I believe.
l
!
gs 24 I think in the beginning we were doing a little
!V
25 inspection of empties, but we haven't gotten into that.
L
c330 01 03 279
D'
d WRBeb
-
1 (Slide.)
2 This~is a picture of a presumably unirradiated
3_ fuel assembly.
4 (Laughter.)
5 I don't know whether it is a PWR or a BWR, but it
6 is just to'give you an idea of what a fuel assembly looks
7 like. Whether it is a PWR or a BWR I'm not sure.
8 VOICE: BWR.
9 MR. GRELLA: I suspected that it was.
10 This is a picture of the NLI cask which holds one
11 BWR or two PWRs. This is the cask without its thermal
12 shield, and we will have some other pictures which will show
() 13 that.
.
14 (Slide.)
- 15- This is the same cask with the thermal shield on
16 it,-and we will see that some more. I don't believe this is
17 going to be at Morris. I understand that there will be an
18 IF-300 cask down there on display.
19- (Slide.)
20 Now West Valley to Oyster Creek. A different
21 cask was used, the TN-9. This hold seven BWR elements.
-22 There were 33 highway shipments completed as of July, so
23 this campaign just got finished. Again one cask to each
24 highway vehicle.
25 Four of those shipments were inspected at West
,
c330 01 04 280
'
()WRBeb 1 Valley by Region I staff, and 33 of them, in fact all of
2 them, were inspected at Oyster Creek.
3 And in this case we had this high percentage
4 because in this case we trained our resident inspector.
5 Each of our operating reactor plants has at least one
6 resident and sometimes two as resident NRC inspectors. They
-
7 are mainly involved with looking at the operational aspects
8 of the reactors. But they were given some training and
9 survey techniques, and they have been performing some of the
10 destination receipt health physics inspections at Oyster
t
11 Creek.
4
12 That campaign just finished early in July, last
() .
13 month.
14 (Slide.)
15 Here is a picture of the TN-9. It has many fins
16 on the outside.
'
17 (Slide.)
18 The next few are some pictures of cask operations
19 at West Valley. This particular cask has a boot surrounding
'
20 it as it is lowered into the pool. The interface between
,
21 the cask and the boot is filled with distilled water as the
!
- _
22 cask is lowered, and this prevents contact with the pool
23 water, which does have some contamination in it, with the
-
24 cask surface.
1
4 2
25 This is an extremely important technique for this
!
- _ _ _ - - _ _ - _ _ _ _ - - - _ - - _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ - _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ - _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ .
,_ _
c330 01 05 281
/~
( j) WRBeb 1 cask in that one of the chronic problem areas, if you want
2 to call it that, with cask operation involving immersion in
3 spent fuels is this problem of cask weeping in which the
4 phenomenon involves the cleaning of the cask after it is
5 removed; they are steam cleaned, bone dry. And the shipment
6 goes down the road and the contamination actually will weep
7 from the fissures and pores of the surface of the cask and
8 upon receipt it is sometimes found to be above the' DOT
9 limits.
10 However, we have done considerable work in
11 reapplying the regs. and using a provision in the
12 regulations on determining the officiency of wipe sampling
(q
_; . 13 so that in many cases, upon resurvey at destination to
14 a'scertain whether the survey technique was greater than the
15 efficiency assumed in the regulations, which is 10 percent,
'
16 some of these higher readings can be brought into
17 compliance.
18 But this technique of isolating the cask surface
19 from the pool water in the case of a cask like this is
20 extromely important.
21 (Slido.)
22 This picture is the fuel rocoiving and storage
23 area at West Valley. They've got some workers standing
24 abovo one of the casks hanging vertically there.
25 (Slido.)
- __ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ -
- _ _ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ .
l
'
c330 01 06 282
(3
'
V WRBeb 1 Again this is another picture of the TN-9. And I
t
2 think most of you would agree that keeping that surface of
3 that cask isolated from contaminating pool water ought to be
4 a pretty good idea.
5 (Slide.)
6 This is a picture of tha cask on its vehicle
7 showing the canvas box-type cover that in this case has slid
8 to the side. This is at West Valloy.
9 (Slide.)
10 This is the cask on the vehicle as it
11 essentially appears during transportation.
12 (Slide.)
13 The samo cask was used earlier for a campaign of
14 shipments of BWR fuel to Dresdon, again seven DWR acsemblics
15 in a cask.
16 There were 31 shipments, and 25 were inspected by
17 Region I at Wost Valley, and 26 Wore inspected by our Region
18 III staff at Dresden.
'
19 (Slide.)
20 ,
Again hero is another picture of the cank.
21 (Slide.)
22 This is an actual picturo I guess DOE usos in ono
,
l 23 of its press kits showing the transport vehiclo as it is
ip 24 leaving the Wost Valloy plant.
O
25 (Slido.)
l
l
l
l
[
. . . - . . . .- _ . - _ _ _ _ . - - . - -_ . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ - - _ _ - _
d
i
4 [
j 0330 01 07 283 f
!
Owaeeb 1 nere is enother ca geian thae finished-- 1 ehink
2 'this was the first one of all, shipments from Morris,
.
3 actually leaving Morris going back to Point Beach. I am not
f
~
l 4 familiar with all of the details but due to reracking of the
f 5 storage pool, Point Beach was able to essentially call back l
6 some of the fuel that was in storage at Morris.
'
7 So again 109 shipments were made in the NLI cask,
i
,
8 one assembly per cask. And the Region III people expended ;
!
'
9 considerable effort. They inspected 61 of those at Morris, l
[ 10 and 60 at Point Beach. It is a little easier,
11 resource-wise, to go down to Morris than it is to Point
l 12 Beach. But fortunately, at least from the inspectors' [
'
O 13 staadooint, ooiaa to Morris or oresden is noe too 1ono a :
f 14 trip. !
'
l
4
15 (Slide.)
!- ;
'
i 16 Again here is another picture with the thermal
-
] <
l 17 shield. !
! :
18 Some of you may know that I'm the biggest packrat I
! 19 with slidos, obtaining slides from any source that I can ;
1
I
j 20 find around the country. !
'
21 (Slide.)
?
'
22 Rail shipments. This is on-going, I guess the
23 only current on-going campaign. Thirty shipments are
!
!
24 planned. They began late last fall. There was a lot of j
- O l
l
25 press coverage and certainly public interest in these ;
.'
l
i ;
I
I
i
r-_____-____-__-
_ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ ___
a330 01 08 284
( WRBeb 1 shipments.
2 This shipment involves two of the IF-300 rail
3 casks on a special train. There are 18 BWR assemblies in
4 each of those casks, so a considerable number of fuel
5 elements can be moved in each shipment. Ten have been
6 completed through June, probably more by now.
7 In this case our Region III people inspected
8 eight of those at Monticello and eight at Morris.
9 I believe this transport system will be on
10 display, although I've got a number of pictures of it here.
11 (Slide.)
12 Here is the actual IF-300 hanging vertically.
() 13 (Slide.) -
14 I ought to get Chuck MacDonald up here to explain
15 this slide. It is a cutaway that has been used for training
16 on the IF-300.
17 This cask can hold 18 BWRs or I believe seven PWR
18 elements, and it uses an integral uranium shielding material
19 inside the cask.
20 (Slide.)
21 I guess it is the largest licensed cask that is
22 in use in the United States for commercial fuel.
23 (Slide.)
24 The same cask system. I believe three of the
25 existing four casks were used. Only four of them have been
.
_, - -- - -- ._ _- - . - _ . - . _.
0330 01 09 285
)WRBeb 1 built. They were used in one special train shipment last
2 August. And I believe 30 of these are planned. I am not
3 aware as to the reason why there aren't more going on at the
4 present time, but initially I remember 30 were planned.
5 There was this one first shipment last August of three
6 casks, a special train. ,
7 There are some excellent pictures of that in
8 black and white in this very good document which I saw
9 myself for the first time yesterday. It has some excellent
10 pictures of it that are very well done.
11 Again in this case one of our other regional
, 12 offices, Region IV, with inspectors out of Arlington, Texas,
.
I) 13 inspected that shipment at Cooper Station in Nebraska. And
14 it was inspected by the Region III people at Morris. -!
l
15 (Slide.)
16 Here is another picture of it.
17 (Slide.)
18 And a couple of more pictures of the rail cask
I 19 itself.
l
20
_.
(Slide.)
21 (Slide.)
22 I guess this is-- I believe this is on-going.
23 This campaign just began. As you can see, 81 shipments are
24 planned which I guess will complete the removal of the
j 25 commercially owned fuel out of West Valley. Eighty-one
L
0330 01 10 286
rm
!w,)WRBob 1 shipments in the NLI casks are planned, and as of the middle
2 of July, two had been made. And each of those was inspected
3 at both points by our Region I staff.
4 These are fairly short shipments in terms of
5 geography, as you might be aware.
6 (Slide.)
7 Again the NLI cask. I'm not sure how many of
8 these were built. I believe it's three or four in number.
9 (Slide.)
10 With the removal of all the commercially owned
11 fuel out of West Valley, that will only leave some 125
12 assemblies that essentially are government owned material.
/ .
(_) 13 They had been acquired as ,the property of the former
14 operator, Nuclear Fuel Services. They became the property
15 of the government. DOE will be making two shipments of
16 these to Idaho, I believe, as part -- probably part of a
17 demonstration project for dry storage.
18 I believe that one cask is being fabricated for
19 each group of elements, 85 BWR assemblies and 40 PWR
20 assemblies. And I believe one of them was actually
,
21 fabricated and may be onsite.
22 This will I think complete the removal of all the
23 assemblies out of West Valley. I understand it has been
l
fs 24 scheduled for later in the fall, but I am not sure if that
N-]
.
25 schedule will hold.
t
l
_ _ _ _
_ .- -
'
' '
c330 01'll n 287
f3 (i
( ) WRBeb 1 These I bel'ieve will be moved by rail. They are
2 obviously going to be pretty big casks to hold that many
f
3 elements.
4 (Slide.)
<5 ,
So to sort of summarize the campaigns, these are
6 the numbers in terms of -- and this is in your handout ,
7 material -- the number of' planned and completed shipments,
L ,
8 and the number of NRC inspections and the region that did
9 them.
,
'
10 It is pretty clear that we probably had -- we
11 definitely had over a 50 percent effort in the number of
'
12 inspections that we made at both origin and destination.
,
i f' 13 And this is not something that comes easily. It comes out
14 of the hide of your routine programs. These resources for
!
s 15 making inspections have to be diverted from our routine
16 programs.
17 (Slide.)
18 '
But we definitely, policy-wise, do not -- try not
l
,
19 to convey >the impression that we are going to make 100
.i
20 percent inspections. We try to cover as many as we can
21 early in the campaigns and if there are no problems we'll
22 phase that down.
23 (Slide.)
f- 24 Prior to actually inspecting these shipments our
b 25 inspectors go out and make pre-shipment inspections, looking
<
t
4
- - .,- , _ , _ . . . , _ , - - . . , , .,---.,--,.,_,_y,-__. _ , , . _ _ _ _ . , _ _ . , , , , . _ , , , - . . , . - , , _ - - , .
_
_ . , , -
t - - p <
e330 01 12 288
I)WRBeb 1 at how the licensee is getting ready for handling the fuel.
2 And the key documentation that we're looking at is, one, the
3 certificate of compliance that Chuck MacDonald talked about,
4 which contains all the requirements for the use and
5 maintenance of the cask.
6 And we look at the in-plant procedures that have
7 been developed to implement the requirements of the
8 certificate. We look at the procedures that have been '
9 implemented to carry out the quality assurance program that ,
'
10 has to have been approved by our agency.
11 So that the pre-shipment inspections are made at
12 both the origin location and destination location. <1
( 13 (Slide.) .
14 I am not personally in the safeguards area; and
>
15 safeguards was well covered yesterday, but these
16 pre-shipment inspections involve looking at both the safety
17 aspects and the safeguards aspects.
18 So as I said, we are looking at the adequacy of
,
19 preparations for following the certificates of compliance
20 and of procedures, and involves the training and e'ven the
'21
- testing of the load-handling devices, the lifting devices
22 for the casks.
23 (Slide.)
24 In terms of the pre-shipment safeguards \
O
P
25 inspections, I don't want to go into these because they were
,'
, - , - - - - , - . - -
_
,
o c330 01 13 289
,y
,
( ,1WRBeb 1 covered in detail, although I would like to correct one of
2 the items on the first bullet on this slide.
3 The inspection itself does not involve approval
4 of the route. This is a Headquarters function, as Bob
5 Nulsen pointed out yesterday. It is an administrative
6 approval given by NRC Headquarters. It is not a function of
7 the inspection.
8 The inspection does look at whether the route has
9 been approved, obviously. And some of our regional people
10 are involved in getting the information that leads to thc'
11 route approval.
12 (Slide.)
- ( *
' '( ) 13 As far as when we go to inspect a shipment at
14 origin we are looking at all of the security provisions as
15 well as the safety provisions. We are looking at the
16 documentation and paperwork, the loading and testing of
<
17 handling equipment, various communications aspects, cask
18 labeling, vehicle placarding, and also, most significantly,
19 carrying out independent radiation and contamination
20 surveys.
__
21 And of course these measurements are over and
22 above what the licensee is doing, what the state may be
>
23 doing or the DOT may be doing. So if you are getting the
f- 24 idea that these shipments are well inspected by a lot of
b 25 people, that is a correct one. There's a lot of look-sees
,,.
s -
9330 02 01 290
,
k)WRBeb 1 at these shipments at both ends.
2 And during transportation, we do not make safety
3 inspections during transportation. Our inspections for
4 safety purposes are confined to the point of origin and
5 destination.
6 I don't have any slides of checklists but to give
7 you some idea of what they're like, there are a couple of
8 checklists in the orange document, the Illinois document,
9 and we use forms similar to that, which are
10 information-gathering forms where the inspector signs off,
11 checks and signs off on each point that he has inspected.
12 And these are used at point of origin and destination. It
13 is a pretty common technique to use some sort.of a -
14 checklist to perform your inspections.
,
15 (Slide)
16 And at destination the same thing, although we
17 don't look at as many things, but again, most importantly,
18 we are conducting independent radiation and contamination
19 surveys, looking at whether the vehicles are still intact,
20 and mainly by questioning, verifying that the security
21 procedures were followed. And again we use checklists for
'22 that, too.
I
23 (Slide.)
l
{} 24 While I was at DOT I got a lot of good advice and
25 some slides, and this is also good advice for all
r
.
9330 02 02 291
\e' WRBeb 1 inspectors.
2 (Slide.)
3 That's the end of the slides.
4 Thank you very much.
5 MR. SHEALY: Thank you, Al, for that very
6 informative presentation.
_
7 We have now heard from the two federal agencies
8 on inspection activities, and it is now time to move to the
9 state experience with inspection activities.
10 John Cooper, will you come up, please?
11 Our next speaker is John Cooper, who is manager
12 of the_ Office of Waste and Transportation Management. John
.O N- 13 is with the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety.
14 MR. COOPER: I flew in this morning. I have had
15 enough trucks and trains.
16 Illinois has had 286 spent fuel shipments since
17 August of 1983.
18 (Slide.)
19 And in the period of some 700 days, a little over
20 700 probably, 286 is about one every two to three days. And
21 for an area that is controversial, it certainly does serve
22 to keep it, you know, in the public eye.
23 And I thought I would approach-- In fact, we
24 approached our program by addressing what we thought were
}
25 the issues involved in spent fuel transportation, and they
. - _ -
9330 02 03 292
WRBeb 1 really seem to revolve around cask safety, transportation
2 safety, the ability of the state to respond, and the degree
3 of its response, and local preparedness, which is not the
4 least of these. Local preparedness seems to be very common
5 issue in hazardous materials safety and transportation in
6 general.
7 So in developing the programs for these we
8 involved a number of the state agencies.
9 (Slide.)
'
10 I have simply outlined them here, and there is
,
11 really no need to read them individually.
12 " Rail" may be somewhat confusing to you. It is
,
13 'under the jurisdiction in Illinois of the Illinois Commerce
14 Commission.
15 The Department of Transportation covers highways.
16 The State Police is the enforcement agency.
.
17 The Emergency Services is the disaster agency
'l
18 which is the coordinating agency.
19 And they all operate under the direction of the
" *
20 office of the Governor.
21 And since we have multiple modes of
.
22 transportation-- We did have no barge shipments which is
23 good because we have no Illinois Navy.
24 (Laughter.)
('}
25 But we did involve all of the applicable
-
9330 02 04 293
- iRBeb 1 agencks.
2 (Slide.)
3 We developed a program of really inspecting the
4 entire shipment and doing some escort, and this outlines
5 really the purpose of it.
6 The program was derived or designed to address
7 the issues. We didn't attempt to put in any new permits.
8 We didn't attempt to put in any new restrictions. We did
9 attempt to ensure that each shipment met all applicable
10 standards, and we used the Department of Transportation
11 standards for both packages and vehicles, the Commerce
12 Commission standards for trains, and of course the radiation
-_ .
13 safety standards for the shipments.themselves.
14 We inspect at the point of origin and on trains,
15 at the point of receipt. We don't go out of the state so
16 that we didn't inspect the Point Beach shipment at Point
17 Beach.
18 We did do some cooperative work with the State of
19 Wisconsin, so they didn't have to run into Illinois and we
20 didn't have to run into Wisconsin. c
21 We also provided an escort. We found it would be
22 very difficult for us, in a very limited period of time, to
23 initiato a program to really train local people, so we
'
) 24 simply substituted state people for local people, and we
25 used the health physicists there for the purposes that we've
9330 02 05 294
.r\
V WRBeb 1 outlined.
2 We did subsequently do some training for our
3 local agencies.
4 (Slide.)
5 We did very limited training of them.
6 Essentially we taught them what they would have to do to do
7 their normal job if there were an incident, even an incident
8 where a cask perhaps left a roadbed but was uninjured.
9 We had an incident in the state a couple of years
10 ago where a nuclear med technician rolled a truck -- not
11. rolled a truck but rolled a vehicle with a couple of
12 diagnostic packages of radioisotopes. They were really
13 pretty small. And he was injured and he got turned down at
14 the same hospital that he came from. We thought that really
15 shouldn't have happened, so we really addressed the local
16 training, our interface with them.
17 We also added some requirements for them. We
18 have had-- In Illinois we have two seasons up here, winter
19 and construction. Either way it doesn't help the
20 shipments. So we have asked local agencies to respond to us
21 on road conditions and local conditions.
22 And then there is the shipment route that goes
23 directly to a fairground.
(} 24 I will try to outline now the problems, and
25 problems probably are not the right idea, but essentially
-9330 02 06 295
WRBeb 1 the findings that we've had from the spent fuel program, and
2 I've broken them down into three categories:
3 The vehicles themselves, whether they are truck
4 or train;
, 5 The shipment itself, which is really the package,
6 the radioactive material; _
7 And the routing considerations.
8 The program is not designed to write items of
9 non-compliance. There haven't been that many fines levied.
10 It was written essentially or developed essentially to
11 prevent non-compliance items and to see that they're
12 corrected before the shipment has left. They don't
t
'
13 necessarily get reflected in non-compliance statistics, and
.
14 that is somewhat a mistake for people who look at
15 non-compliance items; it says they are very low for spent
16 fuel shipments. They are not reflected in the pre-shipment
17 inspections.
18 The inspections are done by the state police, by ,
19 the Department and by some associated agencies. And we have
20 done them so far 100 percent, not without some
21 difficulties. The first winter happened to be a fairly cold
22 one here.
23 (Slide.)
(} 24 Let's start with vehicle problems.
25 Most of the shipments of the 286, I think at
,
.
9'330'02:07 296
WRBeb 1 this point' about 273 have been truck, and about 13 have been
2 train,.so most of the data is on trucks.
3 We. haven't broken these out in numbers of items
4 that we found;'we've broken them qualitatively rather than
5 quantitatively. We went through an exercise to see what,
6 out of 286 shipments, the shippers or carriers or state
7 agencies or other agencies, for that matter, could learn
8 from this particular exercise.
9 And after this many miles on the highway, it is
10 kind of nice to have the inspectors figure out"what-they
.
11 really did know.
12 The vehicle problems run the range from leaking
-
13 airbrakes -- and tha,t doesn't mea'n very many shipments; we
/
14 probably had'only'a few leaking airbrakes -- to lights, to
15- some that are administrative, one of the last in the series,
16- .somebody let his license expire, inoperative communications
17 equipment, and broken trailers.
18 Flat tires are not necessarily an incident unless
i- 19 you can't deal with them and they stop the shipment. Mixed
20 tires.
21 I put on on trailer overhaul simply because it
22 had so many things wrong with it that they finally-- In
23 fact, I don't even remember what they cited them for and
24 stopped them,-I think generally a broken trailer.
]{}
25 There are several things that contribute to
.
t
.
!:
,
- 9330'02 08 297
i
(~'s
h.'l WRBeb 1 problems with vehicles. One is that they do take an
2 intensive beating in campaigns. I have heard described
3 that the vehicles used for spent fuel shipments are probably
4 the cream of the crop, and that is very likely true.
5- Compared to the vehicles that are seen at the sportsmen
6 details that have bolts that are screwed by hand, they are
7- not trailers, they are falling apart.
8 .But they do take very extensive long-haul
9 beatings, and they show up.
.
10 They also are subject to fairly severe weather-
11 conditions. All but one leaking airbrakes could be directly
12 traced to loading and attempting to move vehicles in
fT
\~l 13 sub-zero weather, 29 below zero or 30 below zero in part
14 of the country. And gaskets and 0-rings don't seal in that
15 kind of weather.
16 Contrasting that with the next slide, which are
17 shipment problems--
18 (Slide.)
i
19 Of course one problem is that the secretaries who
20 put these together tend to like to make things come out
21 even, and they do a really good job on it, and they did on
22 this especially.
<
23 Actually the list of the vehicle problems is
k
24 significantly longer than the list of the shipment
[(}
25 problems. Most of the problems revolve around the
L
.
9330 02 09 298
WRBeb 1 placarding, the shipment papers, and notification. And we
2 have had some problems with both timing and adequacy of
3 notifications, a couple with contaminated empty casks, and a
4 few shipments that we looked for that really weren't there.
5 Were I a shipper, the last thing I would do would
6 be to forget to tell the state police that I wasn't going to
7 lue there.
. .
8 Most of the safety items are tied up with the
9 vehicle itself; very few safety items were with the cask.
10 We have had no casks out of specifications. The
~
11 contaminated casks were empty casks. And there are some
12 lessons in that.
A
i-) 13 Shipping papers really were out of specifications
8
14 every time that the shippers changed the coordinator for
15 shipments. And for the entire series, if there is one
16 lesson there, it would be either don't change your
17 coordinators constantly, or train the ones that you do
18 change.
19 (Slide.)
20 On the roadway, I have a third group, and that
21 includes both the highway and the rail shipments. The
22 problems really are broken into route conditions, permits,
23 and routing instructions. There are still some shipments
24 that have come through with no routing instructions. There
[ }-
25 are some which have come to the border with inadequate
9330 02 10 299
.
\ WRBeb 1 permits or no permits, or overweight permits.
2 And there are several things on the routing that
3 really-- We have had one split rail on a route.
4 Michigan and Illinois are not like other areas.
5 They have really two seasons. Chicago has two seasons, the
6 major one, which is construction. And surveying a road at
7 the initiation of a set of shipments really doesn't verify
8 that it is going to be in that shape all the way through.
9 And it is one reason that--
10 In fact, we have two sets of shipments coming
11 through the state from essentially the same point of origin
12 in Virginia. One is a commercial set which comes to the
(~m
N- 13 state on I-74, the interstate across the middle of the
.
14 state, and one is a Department of Energy set which uses
15 I-80. I won't pick at the Department of Energy for their
16 route, -- I'm not a shipper -- but they managed to bump into
17 four different toll highway authorities, one of which has
18 been very controversial. So the commercial I-74 shipments
19 have had probably a dozen or fifteen with less problems than
. 20 they have had with three.
21 They also had some unspecified bridges, so they
22 can' t move overweight shipments over them without special
23 escorts.
24 And really I think it is worth using experience
,/ }
25 on routes rather than drawing on some sort of static
I
9330 02 11 300
WRBeb 1 indication.
2 (Slide.)
3 If we can look at the lessons that I think we've
4 learned, for shippers-- of course it is easy to draw
5 lessons for shippers because we're not shippers. We don't
6 own trucks and we don't make things run that way.
7 I have mentioned continuity of personnel. We ,
8 really can't plot the problems with both labeling and
9 placarding, notifications, shipping papers, every time
10 shinpers change personnel, and they seem to do so fairly
.
11 frequently.
12 Routing experience I think we've mentioned.
13 There are a number of routes that have been used. I think
~
14 at one point we had something like six in operation across
15 this state, and we are not the only state by any means.
16 Weather seems to have been ignored as a serious
17 problem. The coldest shipment we did was at 29 below,
18 with the wind chill at something like 80 below, and it is
19 really very difficult to make vehicles even operate in that
20 weather. It is very difficult to make them operate below
21 zero. It is difficult in terms of airbrakes. Most of the
22 airbrake failures really are failures of hoses to connect or
23 to be able to connect.
~) 24 Suspension, placards and labels are all-weather.
(G
25 Most of the shipments, by the time they have
c_ . .
9330 02 12 301
s
(
'r') WRBeb 1 reached Illinois, regardless of their beginning, have had to
2 stop and use commercial telephone service. They haven't
3 been able to do their communications with radio telephones.
4 And we have had a fairly interesting look at the
5 control. Decentralized control of a shipment at the
6 beginning really doesn't work all that well. We have had a
7 number of shipments which have had to stop and wait for
8 placards and in some cases for light assemblies. Light
9 assemblies will normally go out; it is a fairly common
10 thing. State police are really relatively generous. They
11 normally, for tail lights, will simply require those to be
12 fixed on the spot before they run. They don't really hang
[~
'
13 the drivers for that, but they really do expect them to be
.
14 fixed.
15 We have had campaigns which have started out very
16 well and halfway through have had the drivers, newer drivers
17 or drivers that have been there, had their training expired,
18 maintenance expired, trailer license-- In one case the
19 trailer license expired.
20 A surprisingly difficult problem was review of
21 the items and corrective action, depending on where the
22 shipment originates. Now for those that originate in the
23 state, we have had no problem at all. For some which have
/~N 24 originated actually in Europe and come through Virginia,
O
25 we've had a very difficult time getting, for instance,
. . _ , - . -- - -_. . .-
,
, 9330 02 13 302
g
\<l WRBeb 1 the current placards rather than the placards which have
2 been obsolete for several years.
3 (Slide.)
4 For our state we have undertaken a program.
.
5 Communications are probably one of the most difficult
6 problems we really have. Both we and the state police have
7 waited for shipments which didn' t come.
8 We have had to train a number of inspection
9 personnel and most of the people who are automatically
10 placed in transportation inspection are really not used to
11 the requirements for spent fuel. There are requirements for
12 the casks apart from the DOT requirements. They are solely
Or 13
.
vehicles.
I
14 We have worked with some of the people who have
15 come out to inspect them and have come out with the wrong
,
16 equipment, who have worked in several states and did not
17 show up with the proper equipment.
18 We have had to develop interagency cooperation,
19 primarily between our groups and the state police, but also
20 for communications.
21 We have also attempted to develop some
22 contingency plans. The first winter we had some very icy
23 roads. The tollway authority in this area will not let
(} 24 trucks go over them. In fact, they have truck bans on the
25 tollways and elevated roadways subject to very severe winds
9330 02 14 303
WRBeb 1 and ice. So safe pavements were a problem.
'
2 Safe pavements do have to be safeguarded. In
3 original discussions they were safeguarded so well that they
4 wouldn't tell us or the truck and that I think is going a
5 little too far, I think.
6 (Laughter.)
7 There has been cooperation now between state and
8 federal shippers and it works fairly well, and of course I
9 don't think locals can be ignored. We did already do a
~
10 local training program and incorporated it into the state
11 inspection program. I think they have only involved
12 themselves about twice with regard to road conditions.
~
\
,
(~/
A- 13
Thank you very much.
.
14 (Applause.)
15 MR. SHEALY: Thank you, John, for sharing with us
16 your experience with inspecting shipments of spent nuclear
-
17 fuel.
18 John, will you join us up here, because I am sure
19 that shortly there will be someone who will want to ask you
20 some questions.
21 Our last speaker will discuss with us the
22 development of state capabilities, the MCSAP program.
l 23 Darrell, now you are on again. Tell us what that
i
24 is.
25 MR. GREGORY: Thank you, Heyward.
l
l
i
9330 02 15 304
(~\
^w) WRBeb 1 I would like to spend the next few moments giving
2 you a very broad brief overview of the Motor Carrier Safety
3 Assistance Program. Now I am sure that there are many of
4 you in this audience that are very familiar with it, but
5 in all likelihood, there are a significant number that are
6 not.
7 In January of '83, the United States Congress
byr fact,
8 passed the servtee Transportation Assiscance Act of '82. It
9 did a number of things. It was the Act that added the
10 five-cent-a-gallon fuel tax, but the area that impacted the
11 Motor Carrier Program most significantly was that it
12 authorized a grant-in-aid program for the first time to the
13 states that qualified as having or are in the development
14 process of a Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program.
15 Its scheduled start was FY '83, which it did in
16 October of '83. The fundirg was authorized for five years,
17 fiscal '83 through fiscal '87, on a 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50
18 million dollar basis over the consecutive five years.
19 The allocation that finally came down, in other
i
20 words, the hard dollars that were actually spent on the
21 program or authorized to be spent, is somewhat less than the
22 authorization.
23 One of the requirements of the Act was that the
{} 24 states adopt the federal regulations on safety, highway
25 safety, or have equivalent regulations in place. And quite
9330 02 16 305
(-
\</ WRBeb 1 frankly, we at the federal level have encouraged the states
2 to adopt the federal regs, simply for a uniform and
3 standardization policy.
4 The program initially is-- When a state
5 initially comes into it, it is slanted toward a roadside
6 inspection, a roadside inspection of commercial vehicles,
7 both interstate and intrastate. It is a labor-intensive
8 program. It is not intended, as some of the other programs
9 that have historically come down through the years, as
10 equipment-oriented although there are certainly provisions
11 for a state purchasing that type of equipment if they feel
12 it is necessary to have a successful program.
(
'
13 The funds come directly out of'the Highway Trust
14 Fund. They are not appropriated by Congress. They come
15 directly out of the Highway Trust Fund which the highway
16 users pay into.
17 We are very pleased that the program has
18 progessed to where it has to date, and we are also very
19 pleased that while the initial authorization was to end in
20 '87, from the Department's standpoint, they have asked for
21 authorization to go beyond FY '87, well into the '90s.
22 The program breaks out into two phases. The
23 first one is the development stage. The spectrum of where
24 the states are in motor carrier safety enforcement is from
{}-
25 one end of the gamut to the other. Some states have a very
'i
. . .
9330 02 17 306
g
5
% WRBeb' 1 viable on-going, very worthwhile program while other states
2 have somewhat less than that.
3 So there is a provision in the system, in the
4 . program, that a state may come in for what is called a
5 development grant, and this simply means that the federal
6 government will authorize up to S50,000 to a state for a
7 one-year project, although it can be renewed, the
8 development grant can be renewed. We will pay the states
9 S50,000 to develop what they see that their state needs in a
10 motor carrier program.
11 Now I failed to mention early on and I should
12 have that this is an 80-20 program. It is 80 percent
(~h
Nl 13 federal and 20 percent state f'unds. It can be a hard match
14 or it can be a soft match. In other words, the states can
15 authorize or allocate a flat 20 percent of whatever the
'
16 federal grant is back into the program, or they can match
17 it with equipment, salaries, overhead; things of that
'
18 nature.
19 Al'1 right. The development grants can be
20 extended fot_at least one year and, depending on where the
'
21 state is, in some instances into the third year. But in no
22 instance can the development grant exceed $50,000 per fiscal
! 23 year.
24 The other side of the coin is the implementation
{}
25 side. Now when the program geared up, as I mentioned, some
.
-
c330 02 01 307
,a
(
Sc) WRBeb 1 states had a very viable, on-going program; others did not.
2 Those that did did not use the development system but went
3 immediately into the implementation system.
4 In that system they were allocated a percentage
5 of the funds that were available. They sent in what we call
6 a State Enforcement Plan that was reviewed both by our local
7 offices, the regional office, and the headquarters office,
8 and we worked with the states to attempt to get them as much
9 funding as we possibly could. The formula that is applied,
10 as I mentioned, is a percentage of the gross amount that's
11 available less the development states.
12 Now for FY '85, we have 21 states in the
13 development category, and 28. states that. ate currently in
14 implementation. Now our projection for '86 is that the 28
15 in implementation will increase to 35.
16 Now those of us who were in on the ground floor
17 when the program evolved or was born, I must confess that
18 some of us missed it because in long-range planning we
19 thought if in the first year we had ten states in
20 implementation we would be very fortunate; if in the second
21 year we'd have 12 to 15. As you can see with the projection
22 in FY '86 of 35 in implementation, this program has
23 skyrocketed.
(} 24 We are very pleased with the results that we've
25 obtained so far. Quite frankly, the first year that we were
c330 02 02 308
7,
s WRBeb 1 in it, fiscal '83, due to some circumstances that the action
2 agency, the Federal Highway Administration, and the states
3 had no control over, i.e., funding, in real-world costs that
4 year kind of dwindled down to about four months. The states
5 only had four months in that program.
_
6 So really, although it started officially in FY
7 '83, from a real-world standpoint, FY '84 was actually the
8 first full year that we were in it.
9 The mission of the program is quite simple, to
1
10 reduce highway accidents by commercial vehicles, all
11 commercial vehicles, not only those engaged in interstate
12 commerce but those engaged in intrastato commerce. It I
- i
w 13 believe was an attempt by the federal government that i
14 finally realized that there is no way that we should not !
.
15 take advantage of the state enforcement capabilities. By
16 bringing in the states in a motor carrier inspection i
17 program, we increased our inspection capabilities a
18 hundredfold.
19 We are in the process of developing a data base ,
20 among states where states can interchange information. They
21 can obtain information from us; we can obtain information
22 from them.
23 We believe that from an Administration
standpoint, the Federal Highway Administration standpoint,
{} 24
it is a very excellent on-going program. We are quite
25
i
__
c330 02 03 309
WRBeb 1 pleased that from all indications, the Department feels the
2 same way, and they are asking for additional funding
3 throughout the '90s.
4 Safe highway transportation is certainly a goal
5 that-- While we may never achieve perfection, it is a goal
6 I believe of every state agency that is interested or
7 engaged in highway transportation. Certainly at the federal
8 level it is a goal that we can work for. We feel very
9 strongly that this Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program
10 is a very effective tool. We have asked for it for a number
.
11 of years, dating back to the late '60s, and finally got what
12 we were asking for in '83.
13 Again I can't emphasize enough that we are
14 pleased with the progress that we've seen so far. It is a
15 program that we not only think will work, we know it will
16 work.
17 Thank you.
18 (Applause.)
19 MR. SHEALY: Thank you, Darrell.
20 Now the time has come that we can ask questions
21 of our speakers. I do ask that when you have a question
22 that you please use the mikes. There are two mikes in the
23 center aisle. The two front rows can use this mike here.
24 Please identify yourself, giving your name and
25 the organization that you are affiliated with.
a330 02 04 310
V WRBeb 1 I do ask that our invited designees be given an
2 opportunity to ask questions first, from the front of the
3 auditorium.
4 We are now entertaining questions, and please
5 direct your question to one of our speakers.
6 MR. TEDFORD: I'm Charles Tedford, Tempe,
7 Arizona.
8 I would like to direct a question to you,
9 Heyward, and to Al Grella also.
10 Would you sort of outline for us where the
-11 current spent fuel storage facilities are in the country?
12 Morris I understand is the only one for commercial spent
13 fuel, but what ab.out the DOE facilities? And maybe a word
14 about how much of that capacity is used, and where it's
15 full.
16 MR. SHEALY: I'll let Al start on that, and maybe
17 I can fill in some.
18 Al.
19- MR. GRELLA: I'm afraid I will have-to pass on
20 that one. I only have only a very general awareness on DOE
21 fuel storage.
22 On commercial fuel it would be my guess that
23 mostly all the fuel in storage is at reactors other than
24 what is at Morris.
25 MR. ROUSE: Lee Rouse, NRC.
e330 02 05 311
(3
1 WRBeb 1 Tomorrow morning I'll be spending a very few
2 minutes, but I will cover that particular topic with respect
3 to the sort of status for LWR fuel in the United States. So
4 why don't we just hold that one until tomorrow?
5 MR. TEDFORD: That's only part of my question. I ,
6 asked for a summarization of where DOE has storage
7 capabilities today, and is Morris the only commercial
..
8 storage site?
9 MR. GRELLA: G.E. Morris is the only storage
10 facility right now, commercial, outside of the reactors,
11 other than West Valley, which is moving fuel back to the
12 reactors.
O- 13 DOE currently does not have any storage locations ,
14 for-any significant quantity of LWR fuel, and part of that
15 demonstration program is to develop storage technologies.
16 They're moving some fuel up to Idaho and storing it there
- 17 for demonstrating dry storage.'
! _18 MR. SHEALY: I might add a little to that.
!
I 19 The Savannah River plant being in my state, we do
$
20 receive some spent fuel from Chalk River, we do receive some
.
j 21 'from overseas that comes into Portsmouth, Virginia, and is
!
I 22 shipped to the Savannah River plant. As far as I know, this
..
! 23 is government-owned fuel that is returning to this
i
24 country, and is brought to the Savannah River plant for
[}
i 25 further reprocessing. And those average one or two
!
!
!
!
k
'c330 02 06 312
(
i WRBeb 'l shipments per months, something like that.
2 MR. FUNDERBURG: Bob Funderburg, State of Idaho
3 Radiation Control Office. I don't have questions as much as
4 I have a statement.
5 What concerns me, first, is the current
6 inspection criteria of the programs that are set up for
7 inspection. A truck goes through the State of Washington to
8 Idaho, and it can be inspected by the State of Oregon and,
9 in turn, inspected by the State of Idaho and, in turn,
10 inspected by the State of Washington. And this happens.
11 It seems to me like there's a lot of redundancy
12 in inspections. There ought to be some kind of uniform
13 inspection program where, if it is inspected in Oregon, it
14 will be given a pass or something so that he could proceed
.
15 after that to his destination.
16 The other item concerns the Federal Railway
17 Administration. I'm responsible for emergency response in
18 the State of Idaho, and I don't know who the Railway
19 representative is. I don't think there is a federal law
20 that requires the railway to notify the state of an accident
21 on the railroad involving radioactive materials. I would
22 encourage a bit closer work between the Federal Railway
23 Administration and the State Radiation control offices.
(} 24 MR. SHEALY: Does anyone care to follow up on
25 that?
E
-
.a330 02 07 313
,
br' WRBeb 1 MR. O'CONNELL: I'm not the most knowledgeable
2 person with respect-to the gentleman's first comment, but I
3 believe there may be some people out there who can help him
4 out.
5 There's an organization called the Commercial
6 Vehicle Safety Alliance, which is a group of states that
7 have joined together in conducting inspections of hazardous
8 materials and other materials. I believe that one of their
9 objectives is to issue some type of a pass, or a sticker, or
10- some type of documentation when one state does an
.
11 inspection, so that there isn't a duplication of effort.
12 Now, I'm not sure ,what states are involved. But
O. -13 to,the extent that states do belong to this organization,
14 there is a mechanism in place to avoid redundancy of
15 inspection of vehicles.
., 16 MR. SHEALY: I would like to add a little bit to
17 what Bob says.
18 I understand what he's saying, and I think that
19 at the state level phase of the situation where our
20 policy-makers, our decision-makers are asking us, you know
21 "Aren't you inspecting these vehicles as they cross the
iS
22 state border of your state?" And thisja situation that
23 we've been asked many, many times by a decision-making
24 politician in our state. And it's a situation, you know,
[}
25 that keeps recurring.
9330 03 01 314
WRBeb 1 MR. PRITCHARD: We'll get in touch with you and
2 tell you who with FRA to get in touch with.
-3 MR. GREGORY: Just to amplify on what John said,
4- one of the primary objectives of the Motor Carrier Safety
5 Assistance Program is to address just exactly the concern
6 that the gentleman from Idaho expressed.
7 Now, what we have done is: as John mentioned,
8 there is a commercial vehicle safety line which the majority
9 of the western states were originators of, and they and the
10 Federal Highway Administration have agreed on a uniform
11- inspection procedure in which a sticker is issued to the
12 power unit good for a ninety-day period. That tells any
p/
s_
x
13 other inspecting agency in another state or the same state
14 that unless they see an obvious out-of-service defect-on the
15 vehicle when they stop it, that the vehicle has been
16 inspected and passed by an agency that has agreed to a
17 standardized vehicle safety inspection procedure.
18 So there is a mechanism in place for that.
19 MR. McDONNELL: Larry McDonnell, State of
'
20 Wisconsin Radiological Program.
21 I have two questions, one for Darrell Gregory.
22 You mentioned that there was a pilot program in
23 several ctates, and you have obtained the use of
i
24 instrumentation. I wonder if you could comment as to the
{}
25 specific type of instrumentation and the name.
f
-.,
L
9330 03 02 315
.,n
'kJ WRBeb 1 MR. GREGORY: Sure. It's Eberline. I can't give
2 you the model number. It's the same model the Air Force
3 bought tdo use on airbases for radioactive detection
.\/
'< 4 capabilities. And we have been extremely pleased with it.
5 The firm is out of New Mexico, and we work very, very
6 closely with them.
7 Quite frankly, we initially had some calibration
. ,
8 problems, but they sent their field people in, and once the
>
9 thing was up to speed we have been very, very happy.
10 MR. McDONNELL: Thank you,
11 The second is more of a comment than anything
12 else, and it is directed toward Al Grella, and it has to do
- D
4J 13 with uniform inspections.
14 < We have found that inspecting well over 100
.
15 casks, both empty and full, that there's a great deal of
16 confusion as to the interpretation of the regulations with
17 regard to removal and examination. Some of this stems from
18 assigning'a deficiency number for everybody's measurement.
19 And I think that there's a great deal of uniformity that
20 needs to be obtained by not only the people in the states
21 inspecting these casks but also people in the federal
.
22. government. And I would hope that these comments that were
23 made in the DOT rule promulgation will be taken to heart and
,
(} '
- 24 that somebody will do'something'to clarify these
25 measurements.
f
-
-
,
)
9330 03 03 316 '
(~'\.
LJ WRBeb 1 MR.'GRELLA: I couldn't agree more heartily with
2 your comment as far as the need for uniformity as well as
3 complying particularly with the rules for surface
0
4 cyntamination. We've been working on this problem for a
5 couple of' years, and hopcsfully we've,had some success.
6 On June 10th there was an information notice. _
I
7 don't know if you've seen it: .I have a few copies with me.
8 It's titled " Clarification of Several Aspects of Removal of
.
9 Radioactive Surface Contamination from Transport Packages,"
10 and it deals with averaging of wipe samples, use of high
.
11 efficiency wipe sample methods, racking of packages, and
12 exclusive use surveys for surface contamination. In it we
(D
13 have quoted directly the text of letters of' interpretation
14 that we directed to DOTand their reply, and this information
15 notice has been coordinated with them. So hopefully this is
16 going to help to answer some of the questions on applying ,
17 those aspects of the surface contamination regulations.
18 I couldn't agree with you more that they are very
19 difficult to apply, particularly in these areas of averging
20 samples and efficiency.
. ,
21 I have four or five copies with me.
22 Unfortunately, it was distributed only to power reactor
23 facilities, although I understand State Programs does
24 distribute information notices to the states. So you may
}
25 you may have gotten one from that source by~now,
f
,
9330 03 04 317
_
T 'u/ WRBeb 1 MR. SHEALY: We're ready for the next question.
2 MR. AAROE: Bill Aaroe, West Virginia Health
,
3 Department.
,
4 I would hope that you people can refresh my
5 memory as to what percentage of spent fuel shipments are
. .
., 6- being inspected by which agency. And then I have a comment
,
7 about that.
8 I was going to suggest that there be better
9 coordination arranged, so that the states the shipments were
10 to be routed through would be contacted, and there would be
,) -
11 coordination established to a greater extent.
12 MR. GRELLA: I would just comment on the shipper
kl 13 part of it, not the inspection part of it.
,
14 As I indicated on one of the slides and in the
15 handout, at least in terms of the seven or eight campaigns
16 that have been o,n-going since July of '83, NRC has inspected
17 well over 50 percent of the shipments at both origin and
18 destination. We're looking at the shipper requirements
19 primarily.
20 MR. SHEALY: Any further comments?
,
21 MR. O'CONNELL: As far as rail shipments go, I
22 think there is 100 percent inspection of those. I'm not
, 23 sure of the percentage of the highway shipments. All
4 24 initial shipments are being inspected, and I think there is
' N_.( )-
,
25 a periodic re-inspection. As far as percentages, I really
'9330 03 05 318
zf3 :
kJ WRBeb 1 can't give'you any.
2 MR. SHEALY: Any other questions from the front?
3 MR. MOBLEY: Michael Mobley, Tennessee.
4 I guess this is for you.
5 How do you answer the question that you posed
6 there with respect to the shipments that come into the
7 state? I have a real problem. I have the same question
8 asked of me.
9 Given the level of activity that we've seen here
10 relative to spent fuel shipments, the requirements that are
11 put on it, and the concerns that I have from a technical
12 standpoint and a radiological health standpoint, I really
.t}
k- '
13 have a problem saying that I am going to dedicate manpower
e
14 for looking at shipments coming into the state, given these
15 other types of radiation problems that I deal with where
16 people are really being exposed.
17 It is real difficult for me to try to say I'm not
18 really concerned about these shipments when there seems to
19 be a lot of concern about, for apparently no real reason.
20 What do you tell your people?
21 MR. SHEALY: Well, I sort of agree with you.
22 We have to feel that we do have some assurance that someone
23 has inspected this shipment at the point of origin of, if
(} 24 it's coming in from overseas, at the appropriate port, some
25 port authority, whether it's the Coast Guard or whoever.
9330 03 06 319
g
\zJ WRBeb 1 If this is not done, and we have no assurance that it has
2 been inspected, we do go out and inspect these shipments.
3 I agree, it does take time and effort, but we
4 have to react and respond to the concerns of the people in
5 the state.
6 MR. MOBLEY: I understand that concern. But the
7 problem I have is that in dealing with radiation problems
8 the concern I think is maybe in the wrong area, when there
9 are other radiation problems that are impacting on people
10 every day, and we have manpower that we have to spread out,
11 and it's very diffi-cult to deal with.
12 The other point -- and I want to make sure I get
jq
J 13 this point over: I harped on this a little bit yesterday.
i
14 The other thing is the concern for the potential for
15 shipments that are outside all of these inspectica
16 activities, all of these regulatory activities, and these
17 would be shipments by DOE and DOD. I don't think that that
18 was commented on yesterday, but there is a potential for
19 shipments other than nuclear or other radioactive materials
20 that are not covered by any of these standards. And I
21 wanted to be sure that I made that point.
22 MR. HARDEMAN: Jim Hardeman, State of Georgia.
23 This question, I guess, is directed at all the
()
L,'
24 individuals on the dias.
25 Mike opened up something when he was talking
r
1
-9330 03 07. 320
rT.
. kl
e WRBeb l- about dedicating resources of manpower to the inspection
2 effort, and I really don't have a good feeling for what kind
3 of devotion of resources we're talking about here, what kind
4 of commitment both of manpower and dollars.
5 So maybe you all can clarify your experience over
6 the past few years as to what type of resource commitment
7 we're talking about to do these inspections.
8 MR. GRELLA: I don't have any ready figures on
9 man-hours. But I think if you think in terms of the number
10 of shipments that we're inspecting, let's say 50 percent of
11 300 -- say 150 out of 300 shipments, and you consider that
12 each of those inspections involves at least a minimum of a
13 work day and probably more, it involves traveling out of
14 state, this can give you some idea of the inspection
- 15 resources.
16 Now, in the case of groups of inspectors that are
,
17 involved, in the case of Region III these resources are
18 coming out of-a group of health physics inspectors who
19 inspect op,erating reactors. There are five or six health
20 physicists in that group to cover the health physics aspects
21 at the number of reactors in Region III.
22 Now, as I pointed out, these are not going to be
23 inspectors only of transportation. So that this time is
24 coming out of the total effort. And it does affect the
(}
25 ability to carry out the percentage of work planned to do
, . . - _ - _ . _ - - . . , _ . _ _ _ . . . . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ . _ _ . . _ _ _ _ . _ - _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . - - - - . _ . _ - _ ,
--
WRBeb 1 for the routine program.
2 I don't have any readily available figures on
3 staff hours. But in the case of Region I, the inspection at
4 one destination was started by the resident inspector.
5 Again, the resident inspector is all things to all people,
6 he has more things to do, there are constant demands on his
7 time. We have one fuel facility inspector in Region I who
8 does carry out the other inspections, plus another person.
9 And this has involved, if I had to pick a figure, probably
10 20 to 40 percent of the staff.
11 These are just some very off the top of the head
12 estimates.
13 MR. O'CONNELL: As far as the Department of
.
14 Transportation goes, I'll speak for my organization, the
15 Research and Special Program Administration. We are the
16 only organization in the department that does not,have any
17 field staff. We have a very small inspection staff, eight
18 people working out of Washington. We do quite a bit of
19 traveling. We operate like a field office, but we're
20 located at the headquarters.
21 Of those eight people, we have one person that
22 devotes his total inspection time to radioactive materials.
23 He goes to airports and monitors materials,
radio-pharmaceuticals and other radioactive materials moving
(q>
f 24
25 through the airport facilitios. He goes to a lot of shipper
9330 03 09 322
~ (^)
i>-WRBeb 1 facilities to look at shipments before they move.
2 We were directed to get involved in this, so we
3 found the time to supply a man to go out to do this.
4 The gentleman from Tennessee brings up a good
5 point. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is concerned with
6 radioactive materials exclusively. The Department of
7 Transportation has, I think, maybe fifteen other hazard
8 classes or hazardous materials that we're also involved in
.
9 looking at.
10 In terms of specific time, I would say probably
11 two days: one man, two days. Our man goes out to wherever
12 it is to do the inspection. So he has got airfare and other
13 expenses. He works with the local Federal Railroad and
14 Federal Highway Administration person who normally doesn' t
15 have to travel as far because he's located within the
16 regional office. Again, that's probably one to two people
17 from the modal administration; again, about two days,
18 depending on how much there is to look at.
19 MR. SHEALY: Thank you, gentlemen.
20 MR. MOBLEY: Let the State answer that question,
21 too.
22 MR. COOPER: I just did some figures on that and
23 sent them up to the Director, who is sitting in front of
^
{} 24 you. I don't remember the total figures. I'm sure he
25 hasn't read them yet. And they are misleading.
'9330 03 10 323
WRBeb 1 (Laughter.)
2 If I had to rank all the statistics for
3 inspectors, obviously No. I would be a state trooper,
4 because that's where most of the items are; No. 2 would be a
'
5 railroad inspector-- That would probably be a state
6 hazardous materials trooper who can do vehicle and radiation
7 safety work; his time is probably the lowest because he has
8 got district offices all over the state. Essentially, his
9 time is inspection time, which really amounts, on a truck
10 shipment, to a matter of two or three hours per shipment.
11 You might not really think that a truck would
12 take that long. It doesn't, once you find them. But they
k-) 13 are moving targets and are very difficult to locate.
14 There's more time hooking things together than inspecting.
15 For our department, on a truck, one man
16 essentially has blown a full day; if it's in the winter,
17 probably a day and a half, because of frequent breakdowns
18 due to weather.
19 Transportation statistics are all over the place,
20 depending on who does the inspection. And that's one reason
21 why we went for 100 percent for trains. A train takes about
22 three days.
23 At one point we had about 40 percent of the
24 shipments delayed by a period of half a day to a day just on
25 time coming in. People who are doing that are essentially
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' p(-), WRBeb 1 shot and unable to do something else for about six hours.
2 And the same thing happens, to a lesser extent,
3 with the state police officers because they are police
4 officers.
5 We have essentially have an inspection team of a
6 trooper and one of our inspectors. I think our allocation
7 last year of 286 was about 730 days lost -- or hours
8 consumed in the inspection activity.
9 MR. SHEALY: Thank you, gentlemen.
10 We're on a very tight schedule this morning, as
11 all of you realize.
12 VOICES FROM THE AUDIENCE: No; no.
l () 13 ,MR. SHEALY: I think we have time perhaps to
14 entertain one more quick question, a short question.
15 MR. MAHER: Mine is a comment. I would like to
1
16 respond to the gentleman from Idaho who had a question about
!
l 17 state notification.
i
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18 It is a matter of public policy to notify states
19 through their designated agencies, and Idaho has recently
!
20 enacted an 801 call system, and we have that published in
!
21 our emergency response plan for state notification. You are
22 covered, regardless of whether it's a legal requirement or
23 not.
n 24 Thank you.
(m)
25 MR. SHEALY: This concludes this morning's
9330 03 12 325
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k<J WRBeb 1 session. I'd like to thank our speakers. Let's show our
2 appreciation.
3 (Applause.)
4 MR. SHEALY: I'd like to turn the program over to
5 Steve Salomon.
6 MR. SALOMON: Thank you very much.
7 I'd like to welcome you all to one of the most
8 interesting parts of the seminar. If you look in your blue
9 folder under your name you'll see some letters, either R, I
10 or EP. These letters represent the assignments in the
11 discussion groups. R is for routing, I is for inspection,
12 and EP is for emergency preparedness. The assignments are
(
K- 13 for everyone except federal staff. They preserve balance in
14 size and geographical distribution, and so on. Large
15 delegations are split evenly.
16 These assignments are suggestions, and you are
17 not bound to stay in any particular discussion group. Your
18 assignment may change if you wish. But we tried to retain
19 some balance in that regard.
20 One of the main purposes of the discussion group
21 is to learn more about the regulatory roles and
22 responsibilities in NRC and DOT and the interface of these
23 federal activities, the state and local governments, and the
f'}
xs
24 Indian activities related to spent fuel transportation. For
25 this reason we have assigned technical support staff to each
9330 03 13 326
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_ {'o/~1
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WRBeb 1 group. However, issues that may be discussed can included
2 institutional, socio-economic and economic, in addition to
3 the technical issues.
4 The chairperson of each discussion group, with
5 the aid of the group, may.wish to begin the discussion by
6 listing the issues for that particular discussion group, and
7 then ranking them. There's a blackboard in each one of the
'
8 discussion group rooms to act as an aid.
9 The rapporteur for each one of the discussion
10 groups will present the group's findings, conclusions, and
11 recommendation tomorrow morning.
12 Also, we have provided extra time tomorrow
13 between eight and nine so that the discussion groups can
14 continue, if they wish. ,
15 I would like to introduce the chairman of the .
16 rapporteurs of the technical support staff for each one of
17 the discussion groups. The first one, selecting and
18 designating alternate highway routes, which will meet in thu
19 Lincoln Room, which is on the third floor. To find it after
20 the break, go out into the Francis I room, which is the
21 reception area, and you'll see the bank of escalators. Go
22 up the escalator and through the corridor. There are three
23 swinging doors there. Bill Thompson will be at the top to
(} 24 assist you in finding the room.
The chairman for this session is Hal Borchert,
25
r
9330 03 14 327
c' WRBeb 1 Director of the Nebraska Division of Radiological Health.
2 The rapporteur is Nancy Kirner, Supervisor, Radioactive
3 Materials Control Unit, Washington Department of Social and
4 Health Services.
5 Williams Andrews from Battelle Pacific Northwest
6 Labs and John Allen of Battelle Columbus will be the
7 technical support staff for that discussion group.
8 The second discussion group, Effective
9 Inspections, will meet at the Grant Park Room, which is on
10 the third floor next to the Lincoln Room, up the escalator
11 and through the corridors. The chairperson is Terry Lash
12 substituting for Dan Williams. Terry is the Director of the
13 Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety. And the rapporteur
14 is George Bruchmann, Chief of the Michigan Division of
15 Radiological Health. Technical support staff is Al Grella
16 from Inspection and Enforcement, NRC, and James Shuler,
17 Hazardous Materials Enforcement Division of DOT.
18 The third discussion group, Emergency
19 Preparedness and Response, will meet in the Plaza Room on
20 this floor. To get to the Plaza Room, go out into the
21 Francis I reception area and turn right and go right through
22 the corridor and you'll get to it. The chairperson is Karim
23 Rimawi from New York, the rapporteur is William Dixon,
(} 24 Administrator, Siting and Regulation Division, Oregon
25 Department of Energy. The technical support staff is
_ - - _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _
9330 03 15 328
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\<l WRBeb 1 Vernon Wingert from the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
2 FEMA.
3 Remember, the breakout rooms are also available
4 from eight to nine tomorrow morning, on Friday, to continue
5 with the discussion, if you wish.
ai
6 The discussion groups will break out this morning
cLE
7 wetti 11:30 promptly, and people will mount on the busses
8 which will be outside on Michigan Avenue. As soon as the
9 first bus is filled it will take off, and then the
10 subsequent busses will take off. Be sure to keep, and have
11 your ticket with you. If anybody still wants to go, tickets
Cancolyd buggAVS
12 are still on sale outside. See Garl: Or_0 1 ae-or Beverly
13 Smith at the registration desk.
,
14 There are eight exhibits to see: the Morris
15 facility; the rail cask; two vans, one from NRC Region III,
16 a radiological van, and also the Illinois Department of
17 Nuclear Safety has been kind enough to have a van there as
18 well.
19 The Illinois State police will have their
20 hazardous materials patrol car there. Also, Burns
21 International will have a security vehicle, and Northern
22 States Power has offered an escort vehicle.
23 Are there any questions that anybody might have
24 about the discussion groups?
25 (No response)
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9330 03 16 329
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( )
' _ ' WRBeb 1 (Administrative announcements were made.)
2 MR. SALOMON: We'll break now, and the meetings
3 will begin at 10:00 o' clock.
4 (Whereupon, at 9:55 a.m., the seminar was
5 recessed to the breakout sessions.)
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