ML20137L719
| ML20137L719 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 03/27/1997 |
| From: | Haisfield M, Lahs W NRC |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20007F933 | List:
|
| References | |
| FRN-60FR15649, FRN-60FR25983, RULE-PR-20, RULE-PR-61 AD33-2, AD33-2-044, AD33-2-44, NUDOCS 9704070292 | |
| Download: ML20137L719 (9) | |
Text
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fpf NRC'S PROPOSED RULEMAKING ON THE DOCUMENTATION AND REPORTING OF LOW-LEVEL RADI0 ACTIVE WASTE SHIPMENT MANIFEST INFORMATION i
William R. Lahs Mark F. Haisfield U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Background
Since the 1982 promulgation of regulations for the land disposal of low-level radioactive waste (LLW), requirements have been in place to control trans-fers of LLW intended for disposal at licensed land disposal facilities.
These requirements established a manifest tracking system and defined processes to control transfers of LLW intended for disposal at a land disposal facility.
The information to be provided on the shipment manifest included physical, chemical and radiological descriptions of the waste, the waste's classification (i.e.,
class A, B, or C), and the total quantities of certain long-lived radioisotopes.
Because the regulations did not specify the format for the LLW shipment manifests, it was not unexpected that the two operators of the three currently
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operating disposal sites should each have developed their own manifest forms.
The forms have many similarities and the collected information,'in many cases,
.is identical; however, these manifests incorporate unique operator preferences and also reflect the needs of the Agreement State regulatory authority in the States where the disposal sites are located.
This Agreement State regulation, authorizcd under Section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act, as amended, will apply at most of the approximately 14 disposal facilities being sited by individual States or Regional State Compacts as a result of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985 (LLRWPAA).
Since Agreement State regula-tions must be compatible with, but need not always be identical to, those of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the possibility of a proliferation of 1
different manifest forms containing variations in collected information could be envisioned.
If these manifests were also to serve a shi effective integration of the Department of Transportations'pping paper purpose, (DOT) requirements would also have to addressed.
This wide diversity in uses of manifest information by Federal and State regulatory authorities, other State or Compact entities, and disposal site oper-ators, suggested a single consolidated approach to develop a uniform manifest format with a " baseline" information content and to define recordkeeping require-ments.
This approach could:
(1) impact the quality of regulatory, operational, and administrative decisions based on manifest information, (2) reduce the information processing burden for LLW shipments which could transverse Compact or State boundaries (e.g., for processing prior to disposal) and (3) improve the tracking of waste from generation to disposal.
i The NRC, in 1989, had embarked on a rulemaking activity to establish a
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base set of manifest information needs for regulatory purposes.
In response 1
9704070292 970327 PDR PR 20 60FR15649 PDR
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to requests from State and Regional Compact organizations who are attempting to
-design, develop and operate LLW disposal' facilities, and with the general sup-port of Agreement State regulatory authorities, this orginal data base rule-making was expanded to include development of a uniform low-level radioactive waste manifest.
Overa11' Purpose of Uniform Low-Level Radioactive Waste Manifest As alluded to above, there are a number of purposes which can be served by the information reported on a low-level radioactive waste manifest.
These are listed in Table 1, in which the regulatory or other entity most likely to use
.and/or require the manifested information is indicated.
Table 1 Purposes Served by Uniform Low-Level Radioactive Waste Manifest Information
' Purpose Principal entities served 1.
Assist in selection of appropriate DOT (Emergency Responders) emergency response actions in the event of transportation incident 2.
Shipment tracking NRC, Agreement States, States, Compact Commissions, Shippers 3.
Safe shipment and handling DOT, States 4.
Safe and efficient LLW management NRC,. Agreement States, States, Compact Commissions, Site Operators 5.
Site performance assessments NRC, Agreement States, States, Compact Commissions, Site Operators 6.
Confirm effectiveness of existing NRC regulations 7.
Assess significance of problem NRC, Agreement States, States, wastes Compact Commissions, Site Operators Information Needs In specifying the information that should be reported and stored for NRC regulatory purposes. a review was undertaken of the performance assessment models under development for disposal facility licensing.
The goal has been to ensure that reasonable and prudent amounts and types of information are collected and stored ~so that possible movements of radioactivity from disposed LLW can be adequately predicted.
Each shipment of LLW to a disposal facility is currently accompanied by a multi-page manifest.that describes the shipment's contents.
These manifests have been developed by each of.the existing LLW disposal facility operators, 2
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Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc. and U.S. Ecology, Inc., and typically contain most of the information currently considered appro The existing manifests, in their unique ways,priate for NRC regulatory purposes.
also contain information intended to comply with D0T requirements and could be modified to be generally responsive i
L to waste tracking and other needs of the States and Compact Commissions.
As a j
result, the proposed rulemaking, for the most part, is attempting to set a mini-mun standard in terms of data needs and data specificity, and to format this information in a manner that not only meets regulatory needs (e.g., DOT require-ments for shipping papers) but minimizes the information collection and transfer
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burdens.
j Approach to the Design of the Uniform Low-Level Radioactive Waste Manifest
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In order to initially satisfy stated D0T regulatory requirements, the design of. the' proposed uniform low-level radioactive waste manifest has focused 4
on a segregated approach to capture the needed manifest information.
Speciff-i cally, coordination efforts with the 00T solicited the view that information.
-required for potential incident response purposes should not be commingled with l
other manifest-supplied-information and should not unnecessarily be pushed back to continuation pages in a large manifest document.
As a result, a three form manifest document with general instructions has been proposed.
The forms are shown in Figures 1 through 3.
The first form, NRC Form 540, is principally directed at DOT requirements but may also serve the waste ship-ment acknowledgement purpose required in NRC regulations.
This form has been developed to reflect anticipated changes to DOT regulations which were proposed 1
in the Federal Register on November 14, 1989.
The second form, NRC Form 541, gathers information which may be particularly useful in defining LLW and dis-1 posal container characteristics so that reasonable disposal site performance assessments can be made.
Finally, NRC Form 542, allows the tracking of LLW iback through processors or collectors to the initial waste generator.
States and Compacts need to identify the generators of LLW so as to establish whether the waste has been generated in the State or Compact in which the LLW disposal facility is located.
When new disposal capacity is available, the LLRWPAA grants j
the authority to Compacts / States to bar waste from outside the Compact / State.
Development of individual manifest forms in this manner opens up the possibility that the entire uniform manifest would not have to physically i
accompany a LLW shipment.
Instead, only NRC Form 540 would be used to meet DOT shipping paper requirements, and this form would also be the vehicle used to satisfy NRC's LLW shipment control and tracking requirements.
The remaining l
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information on NRC Forms 541 and 542 could be transmitted electronically or by some other suitable means.
This approach could significantly reduce the amount of parerwork which currently accompanies LLW shipments.
a 1 three forms shown in the figures will be designed for potential use in computer printers and each form will be provided as an original and 5 copies.
i Continuation sheets have also been developed for each form and are respectively numbered as NRC Forms 540A, 541A and 542A.
A comparison of the proposed manifest forms with those currently being used by the two disposal facility operators will indicate not only a number of format similarities but also some significant differences. On Form 541, the reliance
.on descriptive codes has been extended to cover the disposal containers and to 3
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'l .j l V I j i i indicate.through a lettered suffix whether disposal requires use of an approved structural overpack..In like manner, a letter suffix, "-s," is used to indi- ,I cate that a waste form or solidification media meets'the structural stability raouirements' required at a particular disposal. site. On'both Forms 540 and 541, the columnar space provided for information on individual isotopes and-their respective activities has been widened to allow reporting _in two adjacent columns. This feature was incorporated into these forms after finding that the single column listing on existing manifests 4 resulted in a considerable amount of. unused space across the remaining width 1 of the manifests. i Recordkeeping and Reporting' The principal rulemaking issues on the subject of recordkeeping and report-i 1 ing have been related to NRC s requirements on the storage of. manifest informa-i tion in licensee's recordkeeping systems and the reporting of this information i .or subsets of this information by the licensee to the NRC. Similar to the manner { l in which information is stored at the existing disposal sites, licensees could t be required to store LLW and di nosal container information using some subset of the over 150 different descriptors included on the manifest forms. The potential regulatory needs to sort this disposal container and waste data into a variety of data fields appears to clearly warrant the need for an electronic data storage / sorting system. One approach could (1) require electronic data storage by the licensees, (2) provide for transfer of this information to regulatory authori-ties, and (3) allow the regulators to develop programs to sort this data to i accommodate their particular purposes. A second possibility could be to require j licensees to store the data on a computer system so that the data could be mani-pulated in certain generally prescribed ways. s. On this alternative, the question is whether NRC can justify, on public health and. safety grounds, the need for licensees to have a computerized record-keeping system. If required, the regulation could also require that the system 4 i be developed and used in accordance with a quality assurance program. This quality assurance program would address system development, verification, 4 } operation, maintenance, and modification activities. i l A similar rulemaking issue is applicable to information reporting; specifically, should NRC require the transfer of manifest information between a disposal facility licensee and NRC in an electronic format. Certainly, time-liness, efficiency and the goal of error-free transfer of data would be enhanced, 2 but again the significance of this requirement in terms of public health and safety must be considered, j On both these recordkeeping and reporting issues, it should be pointed out j that licensees would not only have to meet NRC regulatory requirements but also 1 address the needs of State / Compact authorities. 4 l Interface Is, sues The proposed use of an NRC-developed uniform low-level radioactive waste manifest has led to the need to address a number of interface issues. One of the most important' involves the matter of Agreement State compatibility. As currently envisioned, the uniform low-level radioactive waste manifest, or [ 7 3 m
I \\ facsimile, would be used by all shippers of low-level radioactive waste: that is, by waste generators, waste collectors, and waste processors. To serve the intended purpose, both NRC and Agreement State licensees would be required to use and record the minimal information as called for on the applicable manifest forms. However, it is recognized that a particular Agreement State may require additional information for their unique regulatory purposes and that disposal site operators may require further information to satisfy operational and admin-istrative considerations. Therefore, the uniform low-level radioactive waste manifest allows Agreement States or disposal site operators to impose additional manifest requirements which may be transmitted as additional pages to the pro-posed uniform manifest, as indicated on Form 540, Figure 1. Serious considera-tion, howcVer, should be given to the need for specific additional information via-a-vis the advantages in maintaining a " uniform" manifesting system. Fur-thermore, caution must be taken to ensure that any additional requirements for information are reported in a format which does not conflict with DOT regulations for shipping papers. A second interface issue results from the need to determine which licensees must use the manifest and to prescribe the method used to attribute manifested waste back to original generators. The importance of this issue has been recog-nized by the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Forum, who have had a working group developing consensus guidelines for defining when shipments of radioactive material should be classified as radioactive waste. To address this issue, a licensee who is a processor or collector of LLW would be required to identify on Forms 541 and 542 the licensee to whom waste should be attributed. In this context, the licensee is defined by referencing the intent of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985. In this manner, it is believed that the uniform manifest can be used to attribute radioactive waste to the proper generators, including those situations involving shipments of radio-active material or items for decontamination, potential recycle, or sorting and separating (i.e., situations in which an identifiable low-level radioactive waste component occurs as a result of these processes). This approach is also viewed as one that provides flexibility to States and Compacts in controlling and tracking of the radioactivity which may be treated, processed or disposed of in their respective State or Compact facilities. Status and Plans for Rule Finalization A draft of the proposed rule was issued for Agreement and Non-Agreement State comment in March 1991. Based on these comments, a revised package was prepared and sent to DOT for their approval in May. This package was also sub-mitted to the formal NRC review process. DOT approved this package in July and the expectations are that the Commission will consider the entire rulemaking package around the first of the year. A positive Commission view could result in publication for public comment early in 1992. If and when the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, an active review process involving inter-actions with generators, collectors, processors, and disposal facility operators, as well as States and Compacts is envisioned. Since the manifest forms and instructions for their completion will be referenced but will not be embodied in the proposed regulation, the review process on these elements of the rulemaking has already been initiated through this and other forums. Although content and format issues have been and will undoubtedly continue to be raised as the rulemaking process unfolds, the goal is to issue a final rule in CY 1992. 8
e ( Conclusion The NRC is seriously considering a Low-Level Radioactive Waste Shipment Mani-fest Information and Reporting rulemaking which includes development of a uniform manifest. This rulemaking approach is seen as accomplishing NRC's primary ob-jectives to clarify, standardize, and expand, in a limited manner, the existing NRC requirements for the collection, recording, and reporting of manifest infor-mation. At the same time, the development of a uniform manifest, approved by DOT, will standardize the format for complying with shipping paper requirements. This standardization should not only reduce the paperwork physically accompanying LLW shipments but also provide for more effective use of shipping paper information in the event of a potential transportation incident. Finally, the uniform manifest recognizes the need to properly attribute waste in the context of the LLRWPAA, yet provides the States and Compacts considerable flexibility in determining how to use the manifest " generator" information to accomplish their particular LLW attribution and tracking goals. 4 f i ) ) v \\ l l 9}}