ML20140B593
| ML20140B593 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 01/17/1986 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1481, NUDOCS 8601270051 | |
| Download: ML20140B593 (187) | |
Text
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O UN11ED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTER OF:
DOCKET NO:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMMITTEE ON WASTE MANAGEMENT and SUBCOMMITTEE ON REACTOR RADIOLOGICAL EFFECTS p'
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LOCATION:
MASHINGTON, D.
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PAGES:
592 751 DATE:
FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1986
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
5 SUBCOMMITTEE ON WASTE MANAGEMENT, AND 6;
SUBCOMMITTEE ON REACTOR RADIOLOGICAL EFFECTS 7
8 Nuclear Regulatory Commission Room 1046 9
1717 H Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C.
10 Friday, January 17, 1986 g
12 The meeting of the subcommittees reconvened at 8:30
'~'
13 a.m.,
Dr. Dade W. Moeller presiding.
14 ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT:
15 DR. DADE W.
MOELLER l
16 DR. MAX W.
CARBON DR. CARSON MARK 17 DR. WILLIAM KERR DR. FORREST J.
REMICK DR. PAUL G.
SHEWM3N 18 MR. JESSE EBERSOLE 19 20 21 22 23
~J 24 me-FederW Reporters, Inc.
25 6
PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE j
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONERS' ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS
~
FRIDAY, JANAURY 17, 1986 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of f
the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
t No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at O
this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this I
transcript.
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PROCEEDINGS 2
DR. MOELLER:
The meeting will come to order.
3 This is a continuation of the combined meetings 4
of the ACRS's Subcommittees on Reactor Radiological Effects 5
and Waste Management.
6 I am Dade Moeller, the subcommittee chairman.
7 With us today are the following other ACRS members:
Jesse 8
Ebersole and Paul Shewmon.
9 We have with us a team of consultants, consisting 10 of Richard Foster, Don Orth, Martin Steindler, Ron Kathren, 11 and Melvin Carter.
12 We have been covering a variety of topics.
On
()
13 Wednesday we covered primarily radioaptive waste matters, a 14 review of the modifications of 10 CFR 60 being made by the 15 NRC to make it comply with the EPA's high level waste 16 standards.
17 Then we talked about low level wastes in terms of 18 alternatives to shallow land burial.
19 On Thursday, yesterday, we spent the initial 20 portion of the meeting reviewing the changes in updating the 21 10 CFR 20, NRC's standards for protection against radiation, 22 and then for the remainder of the morning as well as all of 23 the afternoon yesterday, we had the pleasure of a series of 24 presentations by the Atomic Industrial Forum's National O
l 25 Environmental Studies Project.
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Not only the AIF people came, but their 2
contractors or leaders for the various studies were here to 3
present that information to us.
4 Today we have two topics that we are desiring to 5
cover.
The first one is to discuss the work, program, and 6
operations of the Committee on Interagency Radiation 7
Research and Policy Coordination.
I have never been sure 4
8 how you pronounce the acronym.
We will leave that to them 9
to explain it to us.
10 The people who are here from this committee and 11 who will be speaking with us include Alvin Young, the 12 Chairman of the committee, and Randy Caswell, who is their
()
13 Science Panel Chairman.
Then we a' Iso have with us, 14 well-known to the subcommittee, Bill Mills, formerly of the 15 NRC and EPA, and Diane Flack, formerly with NRC.
But I 16 understand Dr. Larry Hobson will be here, and Anthony Ewing, 17 the Program Director with the committee, is also here.
18 What I would like to mention in terms of the 19 schedule for the day -- we will see how things go, but 20 Dr. Young informs me that although we have two hours --
21 well, an hour and 45 minutes scheduled with the committee 22 this morning, it may be that it will not require that much 23 time.
24 If it does not, then prior to the second k-25 presentation today, which is the presentation by Floyd ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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Galpin, of EPA, on their newly developing low level waste 2
standards, we may go into executive session, still open to 3
the public, but to try to pick up a few of the loose ends 4
from Wednesday's and Thursday's meetings.
5 Carson Mark, another committee member, has now 6
joined us.
7 Continuing with the opening remarks, the rules 8
for participation in today's meeting have been announced as 9
part of the notice published in the Federal Register on 10 December 27th, 1985.
11 Owen Merrill, who is generally seated on my 12 right, is the ACRS staff member for the meeting.
()
13 We want to encourage members of the public and 14 others who are here to contribute to the meeting, as was 15 done on Wednesday and Thursday.
So if in the course of some i
16 of our discunsions you have something to contribute to the 174 discussion, simply be recognized and go to the microphone, 18 and we will permit you an opportunity to add your 19 contributions.
20 We will then ask are there any questions or 21 ccmments before we begin from the subcommittee or its 22 consultants 7 23 (No response.)
24 DR. MOELLER:
There being none, I will call upon 25 Dr. Alvin Young, Chairman of the Committee on Interagency i
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Radiation Research and Policy. Coordination.
2 DR. YOUNG:
Dr. Moeller, thank you for having us 3
here this morning.
It has been our pleasure to be here and 4
to inform you of the activities of the Committee on 5
Interagency Radiation Research and Policy Coordination.
6 With me today also is Dr. Marvin Rosenstein, from 7
the Department of Health and Human Services, a member of our 8
Executive Committee.
9 We call it CIRRPC.
You can call it anything you 10 want, but we call it CIRRPC, the Committee on Interagency 11 Radiation Research and Policy Coordination.
12 (Slide.)
,( )
13 In April of 1984, Dr. George Keyworth, the 14 President's science adviser, was tasked with looking at the 15 charters of three previous committees, an Interagency 16 Committee on Radiation under SPA, an Interagency Committee, 17 under the National Institutes of Health, chaired by 18 Dr. Wyngaarden, on Radiation Recearch, and a committee that 19 we had had at the Office of Science and Technology Policy on 20 radiation policy issues that had mat once in two years.
21 All three charters were coming due, and it was 22 time to give serious thought as to what we were going to 23 do.
As we looked over the past 10 yea.s, the previous 10 24 years, the frustration of trying to keep a committee 25 running, a committee that would address both policy and ACE-FgGERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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research, we saw the frustrations that in fact had 2
occurred.
3 It became obvious that one route would be in fact 4
to join together the policy and the research on radiation.
5 So using a model that had been used elsewhere in the federal I
6l government at the cabinet council level, we decided to put 1
7 together a committee, charter it under the Federal 8
Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and 9
Technology, FCCSET, which was established in 1976 under the 10 President's science adviser as the Director of the Office of 11 Science and Technology Policy.
12 So we established CIRRPC then as a FCCCET (q'
13!
committee, reporting annually to that federal council for 14 its review.
i 15 The charter specifically indicated that every 16 year there would be an annual review, and as long as there 17 continued to be progress and need for such a committee it 18 would continue.
19 We organized then officially -- after we 20 eliminated the other three committees, we organized 21 officially in April of 1984 and became the Committee on 22, Interagency Radiation Research and Policy Coordination.
l 23 (Slide.)
24 We report to the President's science adviser, and
()
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25 of course, as of December 31st, 1985, Dr. Keyworth has left ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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the off, ice.
We are now reporting to the Acting, which is t
2 Dr. John McTague.
3 Dr. John McTague also serves as the Chairman of 4
the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, 5
and Technology, and the Committee on Interagency Radiation 6
reports to McTague as the Chair of that committee.
7 I serve as the Chairman from the Office of 8
Science and Technology Policy of the committee.
9 Dr. Randall Caswell, whom you will hear in a few 10 minutes to talk about the science program, serves as the 11 Chair of our Science Panel.
12 (Slide.)
(m_)
13 You have this in front of you in your viewgraph.
14 Hard copies have been handed out to you.
15 13 ' federal agencies have programs related to 16 radiation or interests specifically in radiation, whether it 17 be compensation issues in the case of the Department of 18 j Justice, the regulatory aspects in the case of NRC, EPA, i
19i some of the research aspects of those agencies, the 20 Department of Transportation, FEMA, the United States 21 Department of Agriculture, and the list goes on, including 22 the Office of Management and Budget and the National 23 Security Council.
All serve on the committee.
24 We have structured it so thac tha main body p
25 consists of policy representatives, the main body of the ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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committee.
Under that we have assigned a major science 2
panel that consists of members from 14 of the federal 3
agencies.
4 We have structured the committee so that we can 5
address policy issues or in fact science issues.
6 MR. EBERSOLE:
There is no medical use of 7
radiation agency up there?
8 DR. YOUNG:
In fact, Health and Human Services is 9
here.
10 DR. MARK:
Could you explain how it was decided 11 to list the agencies in that unalphabetical order?
12 DR. YOUNG:
Strictly by chance.
()
13 (Laughter.)
14 DR. YOUNG:
Department of State, Department of 15 Defense, Department of Transportation, Interior, Commerce, 16 Labor, Energy, Health and Haman Services, USDA, National 17 Aeronautics and Space AdministratTon, EPA, VA -- the 18 Veterans Administration -- the Nuclear Regulatory 19 Commission, the National Security Council, the Office of 20 Management and Budget, the Department of Justice, the 21 Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Housing and Urban 22 Development.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
It is interesting that you put all 24 those boxes in the box.
Had you put them below, I would 25 have said you would have been flooded.
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How do all those individual agencies report?
2 DR. YOUNG:
When we established the' committee, we 3
wrote to the Secretaries of each of the individual agencies 4
and asked them for a policy member, in many cases a 5
political appointee that serves as the focal point within 6
that agency for the committee.
7 We meet quarterly as a policy body, and as you 8
will see in a few moments, how we have set up the committee 9
for communication is a very effective system.
I will show 10 you the CIRRPC process in a few moments.
11 We also asked the Secretaries, the Directors of 12 each of the agencies and the Commissioners, as the case may l
j 13i be, depending on the agency, to provide also -- in the case s
14 l of agencies that had science components, we asked them to 15<
provide a senior scientist from their agency.
16 I That is how we were fortunate to get individuals 17 like Dr. Caswell, the senior scientist from his agency, the i
i8 I Bureau of Commerce.
I 19 DR. MOELLER:
On this, I presume we will talk 20 i about some of these boxes, but I notice the SI Metric Units 21 Policy Subpanel.
22 Yesterday, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, 23 we were reviewing the revision of 10 CFR 20, and one of our 24 consultants -- one of his main points was that the revision 25 did not go f ar enough in promoting the use of SI units.
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essence, it gives everybody the opportunity to stay back and 2
use the old units and perhaps even use them with incorrect 4
3 definitions.
4 Ron, do you want to add to that?
5, MR. KATHREN:
That is the basic thrust.
The I
I 6l problem, as I see it, is the perpetuation -- well -- yes, 7
perpetuation of definition in our regulations that differs 8
from the commonly accepted scientific definition, and maybe 9
Randy or somebody can comment on that.
10 DR. YOUNG:
In fact, yesterday was also the 11 meeting of our Metrification Panel.
We have for many, many i
12 months been struggling with putting together a federal
()
13 position, as should become very obvious to you when you j
14 commit this many agencies represented on there.
I 15 If you can come to a consensus within that body, 16 you have reached a federal position, a government position, 17 and indeed the effectiveness of this committee will be how I
18 of ten we can come to a consensus on our documentation.
19 We have accepted the challenge of metrification.
20 What does this mean?
21 We are looking at the impact of converting 22 across the board to such units.
23 How long will it take?
24 Certainly, we recognize that the United States is 25 not a leader in this arena.
We are the tail.
I s
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And it was almost immediate after we informed the 2
committee that the Canadian government made an inquiry to 3
us, wanting to know what our position would be on 4
metrification.
5 (Slide.)
1 6
Let me review with you the CIRRPC charter because 7
I want you to clearly understand that we do not have 1
8 statutory authority or any kind of an authority to legislate 9
or mandate.
The committee was established for 10 coordination.
11 So we coordinate radiation policy among the 12 federal agencies.
We try to define and resolve the national
()
13 radiation issues that come before the committee.
We track, l
14 coordinate, and evaluate federal radiation research, and we 15 will be delighted to talk a little bit more about that with 16.
you.
And we try to take our resources -- we vector those l
1 17 i resources to try to solve issues and problems.
18,
We have taken on the responsibility of 19 interacting with Congress, with the standard setting bodies, 20 with the academic community, and the private sector.
4 21 MR. EBERSOLE:
You take on the whole mix, I 22 gather, both the political, institutional, and the 23 scientific aspects of these, including the high level waste 24 policy activities?
25 DR. YOUNG:
Indeed, we have taken a look -- we do I
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take on that responsibility.
2 Now, having said that, we are talking about the 3
coordinating function.
We are trying to serve as a forum 4
for the agencies.
5 We have no authority to tell EPA what to do or 6
NRC what to 'do.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
You can mak'e sage observations 8
about hazards, and so forth?
9 DR. YOUNG:
We can do^a lot of excellent eye i
10 contact discussion around tables, and, believe me, that can 11 be a very effective system when you have the policy 12 representation that we have on CIRRPC.
()
13 DR. CARTER:
Al, you have been in existence for a 14 couple of years now.
I wonder if you would comment, a 15 little later perhaps, on essentially how you identified l
16 various issues.
17 MR. EBERSOLE:
Will you talk about the pork 18 '
barrel aspects of that high level waste problem?
19 DR. YOUNG:
No, I will not.
20 DR. MOELLER:
Jesse is leading into one area that 21 the ACRS has encouraged the Waste Management Subcommittee to 22 get into, and that is to try to place the radioactive waste 23 management problem in proper perspective to the other 24 environmental problems.
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
Like reactor hazards.
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DR. YOUNG:
I understand.
2 DR. MOELLER:
A good example -- of course, you 3
would know it better than we -- was the announcement 4
yesterday of the selection of the states in which the 5
granitic repository may be located.
It is almost amusing to 6
sit and watch how that develops.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
It is hard not to be cynical.
8 DR. STEINDLER:
You indicated that the last item 9
of your charter said something about interaction with 10 Congress, standard setting bodies, academia, and the private 11 sector.
12 From that, can I infer that you are indeed a
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13 political group?
l 14 DR. YOUNG:
Well, to say political group, I am 15 l not quite sure what I am trying to hear you say, I guess.
16 Let me say in terms of policy we are interested 17 in issues where there are policy components, and one does 18 not in this environment talk about policy without 19 recognizing that there are political implications.
20 21 22 23 24 i
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DR. STEINDLER:
So you do not shy away from the 2
issues that represent broad political region and regional 3
interest and concern.
4 DR. YOUNG:
The way the CIRRPC program is set up, 5
I might as well hop right into that, issues come to us from 6
the federal agencies or they come through the President's 7
Science Adviser.
There are some general issues that are so 8
pervasive and we have done a survey of all of the federal 9
agencies and where their concerns are.
10 There are issues that are so pervasive, the lack 11 of scientific personel, the human capital in the nuclear 12 arena -- radiation, physics, health physics areas.
Everyone
()
13 recognizes that we're going to be in a crisis situation if 14 we don't get back to the training of the personnel in these 15 areas.
16 That's an issue that has come up to us.
We're 17,
beginning now to recognize that issue, simply because all of 18 the agencies are concerned but no single specific agency has 19 come to us and said:
Would you look at the human capital 20 issue for us?
21 We, for example, have received from the Health 22 and Human Services, we got one of the very first 23 opportunities to take a look at the radioepidemiologic 24 tables document developed by NIH.
They actually asked us to 25 be one of the review bodies prior to the release of the ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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- t-2 So we served along with the National Academy of 3
Science as a review body for that document.
4 The Veterans Administration has t'urned to us and 5
said, okay, how can that document be used for compensation 6
claims with regard to the atomic veterans?
I i
7 The Environmental Protection Agency has come to 8
us and asked questions relating to nonionizing radiation, 9
wanting to know what kind of research agenda would be 10 appropriate.
11 So we have taken on a variety of topics but they 12 come to us from the agencies.
- O u
< S u d e.. >
14 Let me go into the policy panel and then I'll 15 come back and show you the sequence, how something comes in.
16' MR. KATHREN:
There's no input into the policy 17 panel from the states at all.
18 DR. YOUNG:
Well, the state organizations, we 19 have had an opportunity to interact with.
And depending 20 upon a particular topic, as in the case of radon, 21 Dr. Caswell will have an opportunity to talk to you about i
22 the radon panel.
In fact, we have asked the state folks to 23 come in and briof us.
We have available to us an 24 extraordinary talent pool of more than 500 individuals that 4
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private sector and the public sector.
And within the 2
academic community.
3 So, when an issue comes up and we want that 4
expertise, we are in a position to be able to draw upon it.
5 Likewise, on issues that we believe affect states, we have 6
the capabil'.ty of being able to draw upon them and being 7
able to interact with them.
8 DR. FOSTER:
How do you interact with EPA's 9
Federal Radiation Council function?
10 DR. YOUNG:
Clearly, we cannot interfere in terms 11 of a mandated responsibility that they have.
By statutory 12 responsibility there are things they have that we cannot (a) 13 involve ourselves in.
In terms of coordinating, working 14 with EPA, assisting them whenever we can; whenever, upon 15) request, they want our assistance, when they complete a 16 document, for example, or they want a body to help review 17j that document, we can provide that immed iately.
18 l We can literally assemble a science board for any 19 of the federal agencies upon request because of our access 20 to our talent pool.
But EPA has a mandated responsibility 21 and we do not interfere unless they ask us to assist.
22 So it's very important that you understand that 23 we have a coordination function.
We have no legislative 24 authority; no fix-it committee does.
25 DR. ORTH:
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necessary for such things?
2 DR. YOUNG:
Very quickly, yes.
3 DR. ORTH:
About how many have you had to 4
assemble, say, in the past year and a half?
5 DR. YOUNG:
On every one of our panel subject 6
areas, we have been able to bring in consultants to work 7
with us.
In terms of an actual scientific advisory board 8
assembled by an agency, we have done nothing at this time.
9 MR. EBERSOLE:
What kind of a budget do you have?
10 DR. YOUNG:
We have a million dollar budget.
How 11 that comes about is we've asked each of the agencies to 12 contribute to the operation of the committee.
And I'll show
()
13j you the structure in a few moments.
14 DR. MARK:
You spoke only of responcing on 15 request.
Suppose some agency, EPA, NRC, NIH, s6meone, it 16 was obvious that some work should be going on?
Work was 17 needed?
And you formed the opinion that, hey, they didn' t 18 recognize this, or weren't doing it properly?
19 Can you take on a situation of that kind?
20 DR. YOUNG:
Our science panel recognized that 21 there was not sufficient coordination and discussion on high 22 LET radiation issues, the quality factor.
Some of these 23 things.
24 When we had reviewed the radioepidemiologic t'
25 report, in fact, that was one of the areas that Dr.
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Caswell's group pointed out, that there was concern on.
2 Over the next few months after that, it became 3
very apparent that we should be monitoring at least the 4
activities in this arena, trying to find out what was 5
happening.
6 Department of Energy had a little activity going 7
on, a seminar here.
Some of the federal agencies had 8
discussion groups meeting.
The National Academy of Science 9
had a group that was talking about it.
It.be~came apparent 10 that we should have some kind of a monitoring 11 responsibility, just to keep our members informed and our 12 science panel aware of those changes.
()
13 So we assembled the panel on high LET.
No one 14 mancated that it be established but the science panel came 15 to the policy body and said:
It is our recommendation that 16 we assemble a panel.
17 DR. MARK:
It might have formed the impression 18 that work ought to De done by someone and wasn't being given 19 enough support.
20 were you then able to nudge them, to tell them to 21 get on the ball?
22 DR. CASWELL:
I think there are three ways that 23 an issue can come, say, to the science panel.
One is that 24 some agency asks us to look into it.
O 25 Another one is that OSTP, or essentially the ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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executive office asks us to look into it.
2 The third is that the science panel in its early 3
meetings did a lot of discussion in itself of what issues 4
should we take up.
We didn' t want to only be a body that 5
followed the action when someone else wanted it.
6 We wanted to say what were the important things l
7 that we should be addressing, because all of the agencies 8
agreed that these were important problems.
In fact, the 1
9 majority of the things we have taken up, I think, or at 10 least that we're taking up now, have come from that group 11 rather than from the individual agencies.
12 If we perceived that an agency was not doing
()
13 something that we thought ought to be done -- we're trying 1
14 to be supportive of agencies and we don't want to be messing 15 in an agency's business if they don't want.
16 On the other hand, one could create a panel to 17 look at that subject.
And one of the things that might come 18 out of it would be that mord work needs to be done in the 19 area.
20 Another area that there's some discussion in the-21 panel that I'm not sure is resolved is 22 My impression had always been that we should be 23 in the nature of sayings research needs to be done on such 24 and such a subject," but the science panel anyway shouldn' t 25 say whose supposed to do it.
In other words, we don't want ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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to get into turf battles between agencies.
2 Conceivably, the policy people might feel that 3
it's obvious from a policy standpoint that this belongs in 4
such and such an agency.
5 MR. EBERSOLE:
I'll ask you about a particular 6
case.
My impression is that the radon issue has just come 7l out of the darkness.
Is that in fact true?
Or was it 8
well-known 10 years ago?
Five or four or one?
9 DR. CASWELL:
The radon issue, I think, has been 10 known for several years but it's become very important 11 because of findings in Pennsylvania.
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
That's what I meant.
n J
13 DR. CASWELL:
We are working very actively on 14 that issue.
We haven't really...I would say we have a draft 15l report, but we haven't reached a total concensus.
16 At our last science panel meeting there was a j
17 very vigorous discussion over what that report should 18 contain, and both what subjects should be covered and what 19 the recommendations should be.
20 MR. EBERSOLE:
You know, the story about its 21 being treated by a workman who comes out of his house?
It I
22 just sounds like it came out of the darkness.
l 23 DR. YOUNG:
Well, let me finish presenting how 24 we're structured and how we operate.
Then I'd like to get 7s
(
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25 into the issues because, in fact, I think that's where you ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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want to go, and see the issues.
2 One of the things that I found to be very 3
important is if we wanted to have high level people serving 4
on a committee, you have to have that committee well-5 greased, operating very, very efficiently.
6 You don't use high level people and waste their 1
7 time.
So, in fact, if you attend one of our meetings, it's 8
a very structured program.
We bring our policy people 9
together when we have decisions that need to be made, or 10 information has to be relayed to them for the functioning of 11 their business within their agency regarding radiation.
12 So we try to keep their attention by pointing out q\\_/
13 to them where the issues are going, their importance and 14 responding to their concerns.
l 15 I (Slide.)
16 We went and took a look at all of the 10 agencies 17 and the 18 agency programs, the various agency programs, 18 asked them what they considered to be the important issues 19 within their agencies and, eventually, we assembled a list 20' of agency issues.
21 I think all of those issues are issues you folks 22 are familiar with.
Indeed, many of these now are issues 23 that the CIRRPC program is addressing.
We'll talk about 24 that in a few minutes.
)
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
What is high LET radiation?
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DR. MOELLER:
High LET, the alpha neutrons.
2 MR. EBERSOLE:
Got it.
4 3
(Slide.)
4 DR. YOUNG:
Someone once said this looked like 5
the Star Wars machinery.
In fact, it's not.
When an issue 6
comes in to our committee, we have an executive staff that 7
consists of six individuals f rom six dif ferent agencies.
I 8
chair the executive staff.
We take a look at the issue and 9
decide if there are policy and science components that we'd 10 like to tease out to have a thorough review made of.
And if 11 in fact there are policy issues, we will then go to our 12 policy body and establish a policy panel.
13 Likewise, on science, the key here is that we 14 write a specific task.
There literally is a charter for 15 every one of our little panels or subpanels.
This is what 16 we want you to do.
We will provide all the resources for 17 you to do that task, and you have got a specified time 18 period in which to do it.
19 This is not a never-ending story.
Every task 20 that comes in is assigned a time period.
We get at it.
We 21 try to resolve it.
If it's unresolvable, we recognize that 22 as quickly as possible.
But it's important that we commit 23 the resources to try to get it to work through the processes 24 you're going to see here.
O 25 We have on board through a Department of Energy ACE-FEDERAL REPORTE S, INC.
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contract on the point of the various agencies, the various i
2 agencies contribute funds through a transfer mechanism which I
l 3
allows us to bring on board a technical support contractor 4
from Oak Ridge associated universities.
j 5
They are our present technical support contract.
I 6
That body, Mr. Ewing is here, Dr. Bill Mills is here, from
- }
7 that body.
l 8
They then work and assist us on our day to day 9
operations.
And when you've got 18 different agencies to 4
j 10 coordinate, you have all of these panel activities, as 11 you're going to see in a few minutes, going on.
You can see f
12 the tremendous task that is before us, and it can only be 13 ;
done through a dedicated staff of people.
j 14 One of the failures in the past 10 years has been 15 that committees have been formed sas,' have no support body l
16 to them.
Each individual agency is arked to take those t
j 17 resources out of their own agency.
NIH's big complaint on l
18 the interagency radiation research co aittew was that they 19 had to continue to provide the space and all the resources 20 and the staff.
And they were trying to work issues from the j
t 21 Department of Defense and Department of Energy and EPA, but l
t 22 nobody was providing the resources except NIN.
1 i
23 So here's a case where the agencies all 1,
i 24 contribute.
We are on neutral territory.
The office is not i o
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25 located in an agency.
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DR. MOELLER:
Do all agencies contribute equally?
2 DR. YOUNG:
No, not quite.
We try to promote 3
that.
The Office of Management and Budget doesn't throw in 4
anything.
5 (Laughter.)
6 DR. YOUNG:
OMB doesn't contribute any finances 7
but they're always there at the meetings.
So everybody's 8
equal but some are more equal than others.
9 MR. EBERSOLE:
Besides this million you spoke of i
10 which is your own budget, you have X-other millions?
11 DR. YOUNG:
No.
The operating budget of the 12 committee is about a million dollars.
13 MR. EBERSOLE:
What he means is like Marv 14 Rosenstein is here.
You don' t have to reimburse him.
15, DR. YOUNG:
No.
The individual agencies provide 16 the personnel to our panels.
And many times the travel is 17 necessary.
If it's a government scientist, that agency 18 covers the cost.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
That's the reactive component of 20 your work up there.
What about the proactive component?
Is 21 there a chart for that?
22 DR. YOUNG:
I'll come back to that.
23 The beautiful part here is that every time a 24 panel meets, or a subpanel meets, you see, we have a
(
l 25 scientist assigned to work with that panel to bring in the 1
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people, the experts.
2 Also, we have technical staf f assigned to gather 3
data information to help prepare that straw man document.
4 That's so critical because government people have a limited 5
time availability when they serve on a committee.
Straw man 6
documents are very, very valuable to us.
If we can prepare 7
a straw man document through our support program, in fact, 8
we can move very fast in trying to work those areas.
9 That's what makes it successful.
When you 10 provide the technical staff and the administrative staff to 11 make these work, things caa happen.
That's the key here.
12 So the policy body and the science body have their support a
\\ '
13 then to do the portions of their program, the portions of 14 the reports that are necessary.
15 They come back together.
They're merged.
16 They're sent out to all of the agencies for critical 17 '
review.
So every agency looks at the science issue.
Every 1
18 agency looks at the policy issues.
We come together, talk 19 about the concensus actions as necessary.
We come to our 20 concensus.
We prepare the final report.
21 The final report then, with a proposed cover 22 letter, goes to the Director of the Office of Science and 23 Technology Policy.
The Director then transmits an Executive 24 Office Position on an issue back to the requesting agency.
25 So, in the case of the radioopidemiologic tables, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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after we came through the report process, Dr. Keyworth 2
transmitted that document, that review document, back to 3
Secretary Heckler with recommendations.
4 5
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DR. CARTER:
How long does this process take from 2
your final action block there to the review process by the 3
agency?
4 DR. YOUNG:
We set up our panels never to exist 5
for more than one year.
Some issues we have been able to 6
handle in four or five or six months.
Other issues take 7
longer.
8 DR. CARTER:
There will be a report or a 9
resolution?
10 DR. YOUNG:
Yes.
When we charter that little 11 subpanel, we say what is the goal?
Is it a report?
Is it a 12 presentation?
What is the goal?
sm.
(_)
13 We plan what the goal is that we expect to have, 14 the product.
15 DR. MOELLER:
Within the Advisory Committee on 16 Reactor Safeguards, we also attempt to reach a consensus, 17 but if we cannot or if we have one or two members who have 18 minority opinions, they can attach additional remarks.
19 Are your members given the privilege of putting 20 dissenting opinions on your reports?
21 DR. YOUNG:
We have never had the situation occur i
22 yet.
23 DR. MOELLER:
Would you permit it?
24 DR. YOUNG:
Certainly.
O 25 DR. MOELLER:
But it is always good if you can ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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obtain consensus?
2 DR. YOUNG:
We have been very fortunate on the 3
first four reports that have gone out.
We have had 4
consensus.
5 Even on metrification yesterday, I was tickled 6
around the table.
They kept going until they came up with 7
what they thought could be a consensus statement.
8 DR. MARK:
Do I read in that that you are about 9
to issue something which is everybody ought to be using SI?
10 DR. YOUNG:
I can't disclose that at this point 11 because it has yet to meet the panels.
It has to go through 12 the Science Panel for concurrence and critical assessment.
\\_)
13, Then it goes to the policy body.
i 14 In the case of the SI units, it is going to have 15, to be a tremendously important policy issue.
16' DR. SHEWMON:
The answer is yes, but in their own 17 way perhaps.
18 (Laughter.)
i 19 DR. MARK:
I have a question, which is a bit 20 perhaps off the track you have been following.
One of your 21 hard copy things, which I don' t believe you showed, 22 identifies an issue, levels below regulatory concern.
I 23 believe that to be a real issue of tremendous importance, 24I but it is not the responsibility of any agency.
(
)
'~'
l 25 Each agency will perhaps develop its own idea ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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of what it would be comfortable to us, but it needs to be a 2
federal, across-the-board, legally binding decree sometime 3
from somewhere.
4 Is your committee the place we should look to for 5
that to come?
6 DR. YOUNG:
One might expect our committee to 7
take action with a proposed policy position, but does that 8
become binding for the federal agency?
9 The answer is no, it does not.
10 DR. MARK:
If it went through OSTP and then to 11 the Executive, it could be binding, but it has got to be 12l upon that kind of basis for it to have the meaning one
/~.
l
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13 {
thinks it needs.
1 14 DR. YOUNG:
We could, in fact, have some proposed I
15 j guidelines, but we have no authority in which to implement i
16 that.
What we could do, for example, is in fact if we see i
17 something that needs to have a basis in legislative action, 18' we could go back through one of the agencies -- for example, 19 EPA -- to propose that, or, because OMB sits on the 20 committee, we in fact could go directly to the Office of 21 Management and Budget with a proposal for legislative 22 action.
23 DR. MARK:
Why could you not go to the Office of 24 Science and Technology with a proposal that they get the I
i
'~'
25 White House --
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DR. YOUNG:
We are the Office of Science and 2
Technology Policy.
That is exactly where we are.
3 DR. MARK:
But it could send it upstairs instead 4
of merely downstairs.
5 DR. YOUNG:
Well, as the Science Adviser's 6
Office, he doesn't have the authority.
He can propose 7
legislation, but the route would be through other parts of 8
the Executive Office.
9 DR. ORTH:
Let me follow up on what Carson is 10 saying.
11j We do a lot of things -- I happen to work for a 12 DOD contractor.
We do a lot of things on the basis of an r"x 1
ks 13l Executive letter.
It is that simple.
Out comes the I
14 '
directive.
You will conform to a certain policy.
That is 15 the way a large amount of the agencies would have to conform 16 if an Executive directive were issued.
17 DR. YOUNG:
If in fact an Executive Order was 16 selected as the option to go, we could provide that, yes.
19 DR. MARK:
You could encourage it?
You could not 20 decide it, but you could encourage it?
21 DR. YOUNG:
We could recommend to the President 22 deciding on an Executive Order.
23 DR. CASWELL:
It would seem to me another option 24 would be, if we struggle through the procedures, say, with a
,( )
25 panel today, and all the scientific and policy people do ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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agree on a certain guidance, say de minimis or levels below 2
regulatory concern, then the agencies, all having agreed to 3
go back and implement them in their own regulations, you 4
wouldn' t need to formulate.
5 DR. MARK:
It seems to me this thing really needs 6
more behind it than the agencies' internal rules because it 7
is going to affect, for example, the lawsuits from the 8
Atomic Veterans and all kinds of things.
9 DR. MOELLER:
' Shelly Meyers is here from EPA, the 10 Office of Radiation Programs.
11 Go to the microphone over there if you would, 12 please.
7)
(_
13 DR. YOUNG:
Shelly does serve on our committee, 14 by the way.
15 MR. MEYERS:
I just want to say a couple of i
things.
16 17 One, you will hear later this morning discussion 18 '
on our low level waste regulation, a portion of which is 19 addressing below regulatory concerns.
20 But the proper channel to do what you are 21 suggesting, Dr. Mark, is through the authority EPA has on 22 federal radiation guidance.
23 One of the reasons that you haven't seen 24 something called below regulatory concern until now, except 25 for isolated pieces, is that it is not so much a technical ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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concern as a policy call.
2 EPA could, through its federal radiation 3
guidance, get all the agencies together and work something 4
out, I think.
After the proposal on low level waste goes 5
out, with that as a component in it, I think we will be in a 6
better position to sound out, depending upon the comments 7
that come back at the proposal stage --
8 DR. MARK:
All 5000 of them?
9 MR. MEYERS:
Whatever.
10
-- to see whether or not a further generalized 11 step would be useful for below regulatory concern.
12 Obviously, if it were easy to do, it would be
()
13 done by now because people keep talking about it, and now we 14 are trying to get around the fact that any radiation level 15 people will say is harmful to somebody someplace.
16 What we are trying to say is that while that may 17 be true, if you do a cost-benefit-risk analysis there is a 18 '
level b61ow which we just don't want to regulate it.
19 As you know, NRC has taken that step with 20 scintillation counters and laboratory animals, et cetera.
21 DR. MOELLER:
Thank you.
22 DR. YOUNG:
I just wanted to point out to you 23 that one of our issues, the radioepidemiologic tables 24 developed by a federal agency, the National Institutes of O
25 Health -- was directed by a public law to develop the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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radioepidemiologic tables.
l 2
When that project was complete, our Science Panel 3
took a hard look at that, and we still have other aspects of 4
that that the Science Panel is continuing to look at.
We 5
have formed a policy body because if we are to implement 6
those tables, compensation is a key issue.
7 If they are to be implemented, what are the 8
policy considerations?
How will it affect the entire arena 9
of the medical community?
How will it af fect the programs 10 of the various agencies?
11 So we are in fact looking very seriously at the 12 impact as well as how the tables could be implemented.
()
13 So that is a policy issue, a series of policy 14 issues being addressed by this committee.
We expect a 15 report.
What it will say I don't know.
But it is going to 16 be a very difficult issue for the federal agencies to 17 address eventually.
18 So we are hoping this would be a helpful program 19 here.
Now, it may require an Executive Order.
Who knows?
20 I don' t know.
21 DR. MARK:
That can't be one of your 22 three-or-four-month exercises?
23 DR. YOUNG:
Well, in fact we have assigned a 24 one-year life to this committee, and they are meeting of ten O
25 because they are concerned about trying to get it done.
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1 DR. STEINDLER:
Is there a standing policy panel?
)
2 You only show the Science Panel on there?
3 DR. YOUNG:
In fact, the main CIRRPC body is a 4
standing policy body.
The main representatives of the 5
agencies are in fact the policy personnel.
Assigned then is 6
a Science Panel to that.
7 DR. STEINDLER:
One gets the impression that you 8
are more broad focused and that Science, with a capital S, 9
is a secondary issue.
10 Is that an overstatement?
11 DR. YOUNG:
Ycs.
Science is a very important 12 h component of our program.
(
13 Now, let me explain.
One of the problems that we 14 saw from the previous committees was that you had the body 15 of NIH meeting and talking science.
You had a body over at 16 EPA and OSTP talking policy, and they didn't merge.
They 17 were on different issues all the time.
They didn't merge.
18 So when the science body finished making their 19 recommendations, they of ten didn' t go anywhere, and the 20 policy folks were of ten talking without having a science 21 component.
22 So this is an attempt to bring together those two 23 things.
But science is an important base for us, and as 24 you remember from the process I showed you, every time an O
25 issue comes in we try to take a look at what are the science ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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issues and what are the policy issues.
2 DR. STEINDLER:
Let me ask one other question.
3 You are probably aware that the administrative counsel has 4
been from time to time dealing with issues that are broadly 5
called science courts.
6 Is that an iss6e which would reasonably be 7
expected to come under your purview?
8 DR. YOUNG:
Science courts?
9 Well, in our discussions with polidy personnel 10 over some of the activities that are happening in the 11
. Department of Justice we have talked about this.
We have 12 made no attempt to handle that.
13 l Dr. Caswell, would you continue on talking about 14 what the science issues are that we are addressing right 15 now?
16 DR. CASWELL:
Thank you.
It is very nice to be 17 here.
I see some of my old friends, like Dick Foster, Dade 18 Moeller, and Mel Carter.
19 I didn't actually have a handout -- I have one 20 copy if you want to later xerox it -- because the annual 21 report is available, and I think most of the information 22 that will be in my talk is also in the annual report, maybe 23 in clearer form.
But if you want to keep those --
24 DR. MOELLER:
Thank you.
O 25 DR. CASWELL:
I might just make one comment that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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doesn't really have anything to do with my role as the 2
Science Panel Chairman.
3 On the CIRRPC committee, we made a report 4
recommending a gradual transition on this SI issue, but it 5
is an extremely difficult issue.
There are some agencies in 6
the federal government who feel that it would create great 7
costs to make such a change.
8 There are many people who are emotionally opposed 9
to it.
My feeling is that it is an issue that needs to be 10 handled with great care.
11 I haven't heard what came out of the meeting of 12 the Policy Panel, this policy subpanel.
But I do think that
() -
13 at least we are trying to face up to the issue in an 2
14 interagency way.
15 MR. KATHREN:
Randy, we signed a treaty, did we 16 not, to agree to use these units?
17i DR. CASWELL:
No.
We have signed the Treaty of 18 the Meter in 1875.
19 (Laughter.)
20 DR. CASWELL:
That established -- the metric 21 system is a legal system in the United States, and so is the 22 English system a legal system in the United States.
So 23 legally you can use either one at this point.
No question 24 about it.
It is of guidance.
25 But we do support the International Bureau of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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[ \\
W' ights and Measures outside Paris that has been the keeper 1
e 2
of the artifact standards.
3 We are down to one artifact standard now, which 4
is the kilogram.
All the others are defined in terms of 5
some atomic process or some other way.
So that lab now 6
plays a role of trying to make comparisons.
7 MR. KATHREN:
I think what you are saying is that 8
we have made no commitment or statement internationally that 9
we would use the SI.
10 DR. CASWELL:
That is correct.
11 I have to say the position of my agency, the 12 Bureau of Standards, is to generally encourage the use of
)
13 SI, but the agency does not tell anyone that you have to do 14 it.
15 In the first place, we are not a regulatory 16 agency.
17 MR. KATHREN:
That isn' t my question.
My 18 question is:
19 On an international level where scientific 20 committees like the IUPAP, for example, sits and meets, have 21 we, the United States, made any commitment or agreement to 22 move to the SI?
23 DR. CASWELL:
Not that I am aware of.
24 MR. KATHREN:
Thank you.
That is the question.
25 Because there is some statement to the effect i
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that we have in fact made such a commitment, and it is part 2
of the general confusion with regard to the use of these 3
units.
4 DR. ROSENSTEIN:
I think this is correct, that 5
there is no authority in the United States that can make 6
that statement.
The National Bureau of Standards can 7
encourage it, and each agency of its own rulemaking can 8
decide how it wants to go.
9 But there is no single place where the decision 10 can be made, which is one of the reasons why we needed to 11 undertake that because we can only do it by consensus at 12 this time.
13 DR. MOELLER:
Thank,you.
14 DR. CASWELL:
So much for that issue.
15 I might comment that it is clearly a policy issue 16 rather than a scientific issue, in my view.
You can do 17 science in any system of units that you want as long as it 18 is consistent.
19 But I think it is an important policy issue.
20 Shall we do it this way for the advantages of communication, 21 or shall we not do it because of the cost of having to 22 change?
23 DR. SHEWMON:
It is interesting to me that as a 24 matter of scientific policy most of the societies that put 25 out archival journals have changed over to SI units sometime ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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back.
2 So in that regard, the people who were trained in 3
school get these more than they did in my generation.
The 4
people who write in archival journals are required to use 5
them.
6 So at least in that particular small percentage 7
of the population it already has come in, certainly with the 8
Bureau of Standards' encouragement.
9 10 11 12 0
la; 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(Slide.)
2 DR. CASWELL:
Now to the Science Panel.
3 As Al mentioned, there are less agencies on the 4
Science Panel.
There are 14 rather than 18, because there 5
are some agencies like OMB and the Department of Justice, 6
which don' t have large scientific components, and therefore, 7
are not on the Panel.
8 We are set up.
I'm the chairman.
Marvin 9
Rosenstein here from Health and Human Services, is vice 10 chairman.
Harry Hobson, who I do not think is here, is the 11 Executive Secretary.
These three people, plus three similar 12 people from the main committee, constitute sort of the
()
13 executive group, and we meet monthly to try to keep 14 coordination and scientific issues.
15 We have, at the moment, five subpanels, working 16 on different issues, chaired -- if you will notice, each one 17 has a chairman from a different agency.
I will be saying 18 something about what these groups are looking at and kind of 19 just a nutshell of what their assignment is.
20 (Slide.)
21 our charter is to look at the scientific side of 22 issues, so that the science can be fed to the policy people 23 as a basis of policy.
24 We also have in our charter to review the federal 25 research agenda, and we are doing that in two ways, one of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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which is a specific way where an agency request came into to 2
review a certain research area, and we also have a more 3
general ongoing review, which has been assigned to our Oak 4
Ridge Associated Universities Secretariat to work on.
5 We have a large talent pool which we're in the 6
process of trying to learn how to use effectively.
It's a 7
high level resource.
8 DR. CARTER:
What are the dimensions of your 9
research review on federal effort?
Do you look at what the 10 plan to do, what they are doing?
Do you look at what they 11 have done?
12 What are the dimensions of the review?
13 D R.' CASWELL:
Let me say a little bit more about 14 it, and if you still have the question at the end, ask me 15 again.
I'm going to try to address that as to where we are 16 now on it.
17 (Slide.)
18 These are some of the things that have happened.
19 We reviewed the radioepidemiological tables that were being 20 produced by an NIH working group.
21 There was also a National Academy of Sciences 22 Committee that was set up to review them.
23 l
The first review was when it was in the draft 24 stage.
We have since reviewed the final report.
When we r^s
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25 initially told Ed Rall we'd like some copies of the report ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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to review -- he's the Deputy Director of NIH and was s
2 Chairman of the Working Group, his feeling was sort of, 3
well, gee, just another group to review, but when it was all 4
over, he has been most gracious about what did come out, and 5
that it did affect their report and that helped in a way.
6 We pointed out some things that were, in fact, 7
wrong in their early revision.
The report was also greatly 8
helped by the NAS review.
9 The Veterans Administration, on the second point, l
10 asked us to review a proposal to an epidemiological study of 11 veterans who had been at the sites of ground weapons tests 12 or into Hiroshima and Nagaski after the fact, whether an
()
13 epidemiological study should be done, and came out with a 14 report that basically said, no.
The general thinking was 15 that the doses were so low that we were talking about, we 16 had an easy consensus.
Even if you saw some effects, you 17I wouldn' t know whether it was radiation or not.
18' So we took a position on that.' We also held a 19 meeting on people who have been doing retrospective 20 dosimetry to talk to each other.
~
21 This is people who were particularly trying to 22 work on problems like what was the dose at Hiroshima or 23 Nagaski?
What was the dose in various cases where 24 epidemiological studies were being done?
O 25 The dosimetry.at the time wasn't enough to tell ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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you?
How could you admit it after the fact to try to 2
improve dosimetry?
3 We also have five panels currently working on 4
issues.
5 (Slide.)
6 I can' t give you more than just a flavor.
Or:a is 7
the panel on the epidemiological tables.
It is now 8
responding to a request from the Veterans Adminstration to 9
give them advice on how the might use it in their process on 10 compensations to veterans.
11 (Slide.)
This view indicates the original 12 request from HHS's review of the document, the current
(.)
13 request the request from the VA to give them some guidance.
14 This expected data is wrong.
We are slipping, but the 15 committee has done a lot of work, and they're trying to 16 think about how the VA can make effective use of the 17 tables.
18 (Slide.)
19 Here are a couple of thoughts.
Nothing has been 2 f' decided.
tl One is that we probably will not use the tables 22 as a legal defining thing all by itself, but under the VA 23 rules, if the probability is that the veteran's illness is 24 caused in this case by radiation, that probability about 50 25 percent.
If it's near 50 percent, he should be given the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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benefit of the doubt.
2 In some cases, when it's sort of automatically, 3
you should compensate the veteran.
At lower doses, it can 4
be used as a screening tool.
Namely, if the dose is so low 5
that there's no reasonable possibility, thenit's probably 6
not worth taking up the case.
7 On the other hand, you have to make that level 8
such that every legitimate case is included, so you can 9
maybe screen some cases and say these automatically will be 10 compensated.
Others are so low that clearly any reasonable 11 person wcald think that compensation is not appropriate.
12 In the middle, things may have to be handled on a
(
13 case by case basis.
14 DR. ORTH:
Did you people arrive at a number for 15 how low was so low, you're beyond a reasonable doubt?
16 DR. CASWELL:
That point's been discussed.
We 17 don' t really have a number that's been approved.
18 As I understand how we' re supposed to operate, we 19 are supposed to keep this kind of discussion as a federal 20 committee within the government until we have an answer.
21 When we have an answer a report comes out.
I don't even 22 know what the number is, but we're certainly trying to fix 23 that number.
24 We have statistical consultants in looking at the O
25 validity of the data.
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DR. SHEWMON:
When you put out a number, then you 2
also put out a report that provides your rationale for that 3
number?
4 DR. CASWELL:
Yes.
5 (Slide.)
4 6
This is a second subpanel on the Scientific Basis 7
of Radiation Protection Standards.
~
8 When we've done our general issues study, one of 9
the issues that always keeps coming up is the basis of 10 radiation protection standards and the uniformity of 11 radiation protection standards.
The policy panel is 12 struggling a little bit with the second question, but this
! ()
13 subpanel is trying to look at the scientific basis and in 14 particular --
15 (Slide.)
^
16
-- to look'at how we do should be related to 17 recommendations that have been made by ICRP.
18 I might say that the origin of this one was when 19 the Science Panel itself said this is an important issue, I
20 and then we went to.the main committee and asked, did they 21 i agree that this was an appropriate thing for us to do.
22 They did, and now we're studying.
And some of 23 the tasks are to review the basis used in the standards by 24 agencies and also particularly the thing'that's being 25 focused on by this group is to look at the ICRP dose
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limitation system, how it should affect U.S. standards.
2 DR. MOELLER:
How does that affect NCRP?
3 I presume like Committee 1 has looked at the same 4
thing, has it not?
5 DR. CASWELL:
Yes.
I think the focus has been on 6
ICRP, but certainly NCRP recommendations are something we 7
should look at as well.
We haven't yet focused on that.
8 Also the NCRP committee new recommendations are still in the 9
formative stage.
10 (Slide.)
11 This is sort of how the committee is organized in 12 its work and some of the problems that they're looking at
()
13l within the consideration of ICRP 26.
14 (Slide.)
15 This is the Subpanel on Radon Protection and
.16 Health Ef fects, a wide agency representation, and we've had 17 a consultant sitting in from the Conference on Radiation 18 Control Program Directors.
19 To answer one of the questions earlier on how we 20 relate to the states, we also had a briefing from the 21 Science Panel of the Conference of Radiation Control Program 22 Directors and what they would like to see us do with this 23 program.
24 (Slide.)
O 25 The Radon Panel has a draft report, looking at ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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some of the issues.
2 We're not looking at the mining situation.
We're 3
looking at the buildings and homes situation.
4 This report, in fact, came to the last meeting of 5
the Science Panel and was followed by quite a vigorous 6
discussion.
7 (Slide.)
8 Some of the issues that are being looked at are 9
the justification of the national survey.
If we're trying 10 to determine how big the problem is and where it is, and is 11 there any kind of guidance that can be given out now to 12 states which would like federal guidance on what might be
()
13 action levels in this kind of question.
Also models on 14 predicting radon health hazards and what can'you do about 15 control and mitigation.
16 DR. CARTER:
Do you deal with ancillary issues?
17 For example, on the. issue of radon guidance, would you 18 address, for example, whether a standard would be desirable 19 for radon employees which can affect the home environment, 20 for example?
It's not, obviously, a major component.
21 DR. CASWELL:
There's no reason we couldn't 22 recommend that there be a standard for tht.
23 DR. CARTER:
I picked a case where there's not a 24 standard.
(
25 DR. FOSTER:
There's one in the works.
The i
l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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drinking water staff has one practically ready to go.
Where 2
you say " radon and progeny in nonmining environments," does 3
nonmining include or exclude phosphate?
4 DR. CASWELL:
I think we've been concerned with 5
the phosphate problem.
What we really meant was not the 6
occup'ational miner problem in the uranium mines, for 7
instance.
8 I think the phosphate problem relates to how do 9
you built a house on top bf phosphate, so it's not full of 10 radon?
I think that's within the purview.
11 DR. MARK:
I have the impression that in this 12 country a short time ago, if not still, the business of a
/7
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13 survey was very poorly covered, as covered, let's say, to
~
14 Germany, for the radon.
15i Is there a national survey in existence, or is 16 there one in progress that is going to give the kind of 17 coverage that we need?
18 DR. CASWELL:
Let me let Shelly answer that 19 question.
20 MR. MEYER:
The short answer to your question 21 is, yes, there's one in the works.
22 Let me describe more fully to you the fact that 23 the Administrator of the EPA has approved what we call a 24 radon action program, a major component of which is what we t
25 call a national assessment.
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We've just let a contract to design it.
2 We'll be designing it over almost a year.
So we 3
feel it's important to have a good statistically sound 4
survey, and it'll probably take a couple of years to carry 5
it out.
6 There will be earlier information coming in.
We 7
will want to get seasonal variation, for example.
We have 8
several kinds of detectors.
Charcoal detectors are fairly 9
good for three days, for example.
10 We can use those detectors over a three-day 11 period and get very quick results.
The track etch devices 12 take three months, and if you want seasonable variation,
(.K/
13 then you've got to run them for a year, and some people, 14 even two.
So it isn't clear at this point in time until the 15 survey is designed, how long it will take to get a national 16 assessment, but we have approval to do it.
17 other parts of the program, to develop measurable 18 protocols, other part are to develop demonstrations for 19 remedial action in various homes.
Other parts are to have 20 an index.
21 So you can determine in advance if a piece of 22 property does have contamination, how should you design the 23 house?
24 These are the kinds of things that actually
)
~'
25 happen in Sweden.
One of my staff just came back from ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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Sweden last week on a trip with Senator Lautenberg and a 2
number of people from New Jersey, home builders, state 3
representatives, to see what they have done in Sweden.
And 4
Sweden is, indeed, moving.
They have set action levels.
5 We are also in the process of developing action 6
levels.
So it's something that the Administrator has asked 7
us to do, but there are varying differences of opinion 8
within the agency as to how it should be done.
9 one group says merely list the concentrations and 10 the associated risks with it and let people decide.
Another 11 gorup says people won't know what to do.
You have to tell 12 them that if there's a certain working level, you've got to
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13,
do something.
14 So we're homing in on varying kinds of ways to i
15,
address it and have held a number of what we call focus 16l groups up in the Pennsylvania to present different 17 !
alternatives to people and see how they react to it.
I 18j one alternative is the one I mentioned.
One is 1
19j with no action levels per se, but some narrative which gives indication as to the degree of severity.
Another 20 some 21 version actually has a range of action levels that says if 22 you're between X and Y, you ought to do something in thenext 23 couple of years between A and D, do something in the next 24 couple of months between L and U, do something in the next o
25 couple of days.
If you're above a certain level, get out ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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of your house.
2 Those kind of things will be presented to the 3
Administrator for a decision in the next month or so on 4
action levels, particularly.
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7 8
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DR. MARK:
About a year and a half ago, there was 2
a small pilot survey done by someone at Los Alamos in the 3
general region of Sanca Fe.
They ran out of money for 4
getting their detectors read.
They only had about a dozen 5
placed in homes here and there.
6 There's an ef fort on the part of the people 7
involved to get state support to broaden this and make a 8
more meaningful covprage.
i 9
Would that kind of thing tie in with an EPA 10 ultimate countrywide effort?
11 MR. MEYER:
It's not clear at this time how one 12 would tie that together.
For example, a better example is
()
13 what's going on up in Pennsylvania.
The state has, several 14l months ago, if you want to be tested, send us a postcard, 15 we'll send you a measuring device.
I think they sent out 16 20,000 of them.
17 Then, the state, when they get levels above a 18 certain number, will come back and do a more intensive 19 survey of the house and then tell the individual what they 20 should be doing to fix it.
l 21 The state has set up a low interest loan 22 program.
If your income is above 30k, it will be up to the 23 individual citizen.
It's not clear to us now how we would 24 factor in these various things.
On the West Coast, for 25 instance, the Bonneville Power Administration has done a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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l l
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good deal of work on radon in homes related to their efforts 2
on weatherization.
3 So a number of these things are going on around 4
the country.
We are aware of them and we' re trying to 5
factor them into the national assessment.
But we want to 6
make certain that there is a well-designed *, statistically-7 meaningful national assessment laid out in advance, and what 8
the various states are doing to fit in.
9 DR. MARC:
Is my understanding correct, that it 10 costs something in the neighborhood of S50 to get the 11 three-month reading and get the counter read?
12I MR. MEYER:
It is sort of depending upon what the
()
13 market will bear.
Fifty bucks is a number.
I've heard a 14 hundred.
The Terradyne Corporation, which is maybe one of I
15' the two suppliers of these, they're the 'only supplier of 16 what they call the track etched device.
There are other l
17 1 people who are starting to get in the business of providing i
18 that particular kind of device for reading.
19 And one of the things we are doing in our 20 facilities is trying to see -- right now, af ter that track 21 etched device sits there for-three months, it comes back to 22 a facility and someone with a microscope actually counts 23 tracks.
24 Now we're looking at ways to see' if one can f}~
l 25 automate that.
One of the things that we like about the i
i ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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cannister, in addition to being relatively accurate and 2
quick, is that you can set up a line and automate it with a 3
reader.
4 DR. MARK:
That will bring that cost down because 5
the Pennsylvania thing, it's perhaps a $2 million 6
undertaking, which is commendable and serious.
i 7
DR. CASWELL:
Maybe we should go on.
8 DR. MOELLER:
Yes.
Let's go on.
We have until 9
10:30 as a target.
10 DR. CASWELL:
We'll probably make that.
11 DR. MOELLER:
You go ahead, Bill.
We are 12 interrupting.
13 l (Slide.)
{
14 DR. CASWELL:
Another subpanel is on high LET 15 radiation.
16 DR. MOELLER:
Excuse me.
Thank you, Shelley.
I 17 didn't mean to imply...that was a very useful contribution.
18 We appreciate it.
Go ahead.
19 DR. CASWELL:
Several of the agencies represented 20 on the panel are the same with High LET radiation.
The 21 Defense Department particularly.
NASA, because some of the 22 radiation is out in space.
And, of course, the radon 23 problem is also a high LET problen.
24 Initially, this subpanel was set up to sort of
' O 25 monitor what was going on in the high LET research.
There ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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is a re-analysis of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data, which 2
effect is probably to throw out some of the information we 3
thought we had on neutrons.
4 There have also been proposals frora the ICRP to 5
increase the quality factor for neutrons.
And we wanted to 6
be up to speed on all of this.
But, what has happened...
7 (Slide.)
8
...in the meantime is that the Department of 9
Energy requested us to review a proposed five-year plan 10 which they would like to have soma interagency support for 11 to study the relative biological effectiveness of neutrons.
12 And this has come in, I guess, through Keyworth, the request 13 from the Department of Energy.
I 14 We have now assigned review of this research 15 program to this subpanel on High LET to take a look at it.
16 They are just getting going on it.
They plan to have a 17 meeting perhaps in March, where everyone will get together 18 and discuss the plan'for a couple of days.
The subpanel 19 will prepare a report for review by the science panel.
My 20 reports, by the way, are then later reviewed by the main 21 1,
committee, which La sometimes called the policy panel or the 22 policy representatives.
23 (Slide.)
24 Another subpanel is on the research agenda for OO 25 Radio Frequency Health Effects.
This was a review requested ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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by EPA, although a number of other people have come to me 2
and said to me that we're very concerned that this is an 3
important problem and there's too little research being done 4
on it.
5 Some of the research that had been done in the 6
past is considered sort of questionable.
And people don't 7
know what the answer is.
The question is really:
8 Are there not thermal ef fects in RF radiation?
9 I have a couple of views on what might be in that 10 report, but the report, I might tell you, is now in its 11 second draft by the committee and will come for discussion 12 in the next panel meeting in early February.
I guess I
()
13 g don't want to say much more about what might be on it.
14 (Slide.)
15' This was a subpanel no longer in existence, 16 chaired by Marvin Rosenstein on how to address our science 17 panel responsibilities related to the research agenda.
What 18 has come out of that is the committee looked at the overall 19 radiation research program for 1981.
That was the old 20 interagency Radiation Research Committee sponsored by NIH.
21 Billy Mills, who is now on the CIRRPC staff, was chairman of 22 that committee.
He was with NRC, I believe.
l 23 Some of the concerns that went into this was a 24 lot of reports had been written about the radiation research 25 agenda.
I could make a pile that high of reports that had ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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been written on the radiation research agenda.
And everyone 2
kind of had the feeling, well, gee, not really much came out 3
of it.
You know, it didn't really affect the research 4
agenda all that much.
5 So what we have asked...
6 (Slide.)
7
...what came out of the subpanel is this.
We 8
tried to start out by making an updated summary of the 9
federal radiation research agenda that we use the same 10 research categories that were in the report of the committee 11 chaired by Billy Mills.
And we looked at FY-85 data on the 12 research.
And also looked more broadly into other
()
13 categories that we might be interested in that were not 14 covered in the earlier reports.
15 And on the basis of this, we would try to say 16 where do we think...what are the trends in the research 17 agenda, and what do we think ought to be done to improve it?
18 Now this is, at the moment, in the 19 data-collecting stage.
We have tasked the Secretariat that 20 is operated by Cak Ridge Associated Universities to help us 21 assemble the data.
So that's one of the benefits that we 22 are getting from this Secretariat.
23 DR. MOELLER:
Of course, one of the duties in 24 fact assigned to us by the Congress to the Advisory 25 Committee on Reactor Safeguard is to annually review and to ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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report to the Congress our thoughts and coraments on the 2
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safety research program, 3
including rad protection and health effects.
We're in the 4
midst of doing that right now, with our report due to be 5
completed in February.
6 DR. CASWELL:
We'd be very much interested to see 7
your report.
In the formative stages, it would also be 8
helpful.
9 DR. MARK:
I think you're optimistic on that a
10 point.
Myself, I wouldn't want to see'the report if I 11 didn't have to.
12 (Laughter.)
()
13l DR. MOELLER:
One of the items specifically to i
14 l some of the things we said earlier today, one of the items 15; included in that, in the NRC's proposed action, is because 16 of budgetary restrictions, to reduce drastically or 17 eliminate the support they provide to bodies such as the 18 National Academy of Sciences, peer committee-to the NCRP and 19 the ICRP.
We see that as a very unfavorable step.
20 (Slide.)
21 DR. CASWELL:
There's one other activity not 22 being handled by a subpanel.
In discussion, we felt the 23 need to give a report which says:
How is the radiation 24 dose?
What dose does the public get in a given year?
25 In other words, to get an idea of where are the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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large radiations that we should be concerned about.
v 2
This has been done in an earlier year, I believe, 3
by EPA and the model we saw was a British report, where they 4
have done a very fine analysis of what is the population 5
really getting.
6I I think, to some extent, we can reassure the 7
population, to some extent.
You know, where are your issues 8
that you should be working on?
Where are the ones that 9
really aren't that important?
We have tasked that job to 10 NCRP through a contract that is I guess arranged by Oak 11 Ridge associated universities.
And some of this work is 12[
going on in various places.
()
13 But, as I understand it, they are now 14 coordinating the work and Bart Sinclair himself is going to 15 be chairman of the NCRP committee, whose responsibility will 16 be to produce this report.
And the arrangement is to have a 17 draft report by the end of FY-86.
18 So I would say that if you take the work of our 19 five subpanels, plus this NCRP work, plus the work on Oak 20 Ridge on the radiation research agenda, we have about seven 21 activities going on that will probably produce wh'at we feel 22 will be useful work.
23 So I think the normal output from our subpanels 24 should be a report.
Al mentioned the question of we would
(~%
\\_/
25 like to get all the reports out after the period of a year.
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We've had I think some good luck maybe in the beginning in 2
that we got some out in a few months.
But I must honestly 3
say that many of the reports are more controversial or, in 4
part, the new reports are in the nature of producing a 5
report from the word go rather than reviewing somebody 6
else's report.
7 And those are harder.
We're struggling with 8
them.
I still say we can make it in one year.
9 DR. MOELLER:
Mel.
10 DR. CARTER:
The comment I had, Randy, I guess 11 there are several more pieces to this thing.
One is, I 12 guess, an update of consumer products.
Then a looksee at 13 the environmental or natural background component.
And I 14 guess there are a few th'ings that might slip through the 15 cracks.
And 64 is probably taking care of those.
16 DR. CASWELL:
On this one, I haven't seen the 17 NCRP side of it.
I've worked with NCRP ccommittees at 18 various times in the past and I do know it's hard for an 19 NCRP committee to respond in, say, less than two years.
20 Some of them have gone as long as 10 years.
21 DR. CARTER:
You're being unduly optimistic.
22 (Laughter.)
23 DR. CASWELL:
Some people are coming to us and i
24 saying, my golly, you're not getting things out.
It's three O'
25 months.
What's wrong with you?
There hasn't been much.
l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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Maybe this is an internal criticism, but I think 2
if something has to have a lot of discussion, I think we're 3
still going to try to make it in a year.
We don't want to 4
get into the mode of not responding.
5 DR. STEINDLER:
I notice in your annual report, 6
you indicate that you have three reports turned out in the 7
first year.
Are your reports public documents?
8 DR. CASWELL:
Yes.
They're available from NTIS.
9 DR. STEINDLER:
Obtainable by anybody through the 10 normal NTIS channels?
11 DR. CASWELL:
Yes.
12 DR. YOUNG:
They've all been submitted to NTIS
()
13 including the annual report.
14, DR. CASWELL:
That's about all I have.
i 15 DR. MOELLER:
Okay.
We have time for additional 16 questions now.
Yes, Carson, and then Den.
17c DR. MARK:
I'm not in this field but I'm 18 interested in the national survey of the natural background 19 in the United States.
There is of course the area of 20 Denver, which gets most attention because it's got 225 or 50 21 millirems per year more than the national average, for a 22 rather small population group -- less than two million.
23 It occurred to me that there might even be a 24 basis for an epidemiological study in Mexico City, where O
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25 you've got close to 20 million people higher than 6,000 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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)
1 feet.
They must be getting 50 millirem a year more than any 2
other population group.
I was wondering to myself would 3
that not be a marvelous thing to dig up?
You can't expect 4
the Mexican government to do what we want.
And maybe they 5
wouldn' t want us to do what they might want.
6 But there is almost a statistical base there for 7
seeing if there is any ef fect at 25-50 millirem.
8 DR. CASWELL:
I do know that Denver is a widely 9
quoted case.
I think the overall health of the population 10 is at least as good as anywhere else.
11 DR. MARK:
Probably better.
12 MR. MEYER:
Mexico City would be an absolutely
)
13 bad example.
If there is an excess of 25 MR, it would be 14 completely masked by bhe air pollution of that city, which 1
15 is abominable.
I don't see how you would get a cohort study 16 going where you have no control sample.
17' DR. MARK:
There's also Johannesburg.
Tha t' s 18 about 7,000 feet.
19 MR. MEYER:
But, definitely not Mexico City.
20 21 22 23 24 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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DR. YOUNG:
There are some wonderful scientific 2
studies that could be done epidemiologically on radiation.
3 DR. MARK:
They are expensive.
4 DR. YOUNG:
Oh, yes.
Just to do a study of the 5
veteran populations, we are talking huge numbers of 6
dollars on those kinds of studies.
Terribly costly 7
prog rame.
8 DR. MOELLER:
Dr. Orth.
9 DR. ORTH:
I had two kind of questions.
Perhaps 10 the easy one first.
11 To what extent have you peciple been interacting 12 with such things like DOE for the background survey on
/~';
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13 radar and other such things?
14 DOE did make a very intensive study a few years 15, ago at the crux of the energy crisis on the so-called 16 national uranium resource evaluation and mapped essentially 17 all the levels of any kind of radioactive ore in all the 18 states.
That seemed to be a pretty good resource from the 19 starting point of the survey.
20 DR. YOUNG:
In terms of the committee 21 responsibility, certainly on our R' don Committee the DOE a
22 folks have sat and they interact very closely with us.
23 When Shelly gets here in a little while on some 24 of the other issues he is going to be talking about, I am
( ')
25 sure he can fill you in.
They have been working very ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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closely with EPA.
2 One of the things that we attempt to do in CIRRPC 3
is to encourage the agencies to work closely together on 4
issues that are one or two -agency issues.
We try to provide 5
a forum where necessary, but more importantly we try to get 6l them to work together on issues.
7 One of the things that has been very successful 8
for us is to try to bring radiation programs within the 9
large agencies to a focal point.
10 For example, we have encouraged the Department of 11 De f en se, Health and Human Services, and Energy all to form 12 within their own agency miniature CIRRPCs.
Indeed, they
(^T 13l have.
From those then come issues to us.
That is working l
14l very well.
l 15' And we are trying, then, to get agencies to talk 16 to each other.
One of the best things you can see of our 17j program is to go to one of our meetings and see around the 18 l table people from agencies that haven't talked to each other 19 for a while beginning to talk.
That is important.
20 DR. ORTH:
The second point is a political 21 issue.
The Science Panel may properly have recommended that 22 the so-called atomic veteran isn't worth looking at because 23 there is not enough radiation there.
That, of course, leads 24 to all kinds of charges in the newspapers and by
~
25 politicians, which makes it a political issue.
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Here you are dumping on the poor old veteran 2
again.
3 So it almost looks like it is worthwhile making 4
the study just on the basis of being able to prove 5
unambiguously on a political basis that you guys really 6
don't have anything.
There really wasn't enough radiation.
7 It is worthwhile getting out all kinds of detailed reports.
8 So what I am wondering is what kind of discussion 9
does the Scientific Panel's recommendation reach in your 10 Political Committee when you get to that kind of an issue.
11 l I give that as an example.
12 DR. YOUNG:
In the case of this one, the r"3
(. J 13 scientific review clearly showed to us that there was simply 14l insufficient exposure data available.
With that, then, the 15l policy body was able to turn and say, okay, there are some l
16,
studies underway by the National Academy of Science.
i 17 But in fact what the Science Panel has been 18 telling us is -- the policy now -- that there is 19 insufficient data.
What we did is agree at that time with 20 15 agencies that we would not recommend undertaking it.
21 We gave our recommendation to th'. Veterans 22 Administration Administrator.
He can take that 23 recommendation or he can ignore it.
24 We only have the responsibility of providing it
(,)
'~'
25 back to the requesting agency.
How that agency uses it, ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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they have to think politically what is the best way.
2 DR. CASWELL:
I would also just like to comment 3
that in the transmittal letter of our Science Panel report 4
to the main committee we pointed out these issues like we 5
are talking about.
We said that perhaps we will want to do 6
it for policy considerations but not for scientific 7
considerations.
8 DR. MOELLER:
Before we have additional 9
questions, is that all of your presentation, or do you 10 want Shelly to speak again?
11 That completes it?
Okay, go ahead with 12 questions.
13 Mel, and then Ron.
14 DR. CARTER:
Not a question.
I just wanted to 15 make a comment.
16 It is related, of course, perhaps to the panel on 17 radon and the radon donors, but it also is supported by what 18 Shelly Meyer said, and that is if you take a look at the 19 radon situation, first off, the measurements that have been 20 made, or at least many of them, are incapable of 21 interpretation.
They represent in many cases very short 22 term measurements of a concentration.
23 Usually, the emphases have been on the higher 24 levels, obviously.
This has what has gotten all the O
25 attention.
So they are not necessarily indicative or ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC, 202 347 3700 Nauanwida Cov===
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reflective of exposure over some long period of time.
As 2
Shelly mentioned, you have got to look at seasonal 3
variations and i number of others.
4 Sc I completely support the fact that we need, in 5
the case of trying to interpret, in essence, what this means 6
in terms of the facts perhaps, remedial programs, and so 7
forth, a comprehensive program over a period of time with 8
sufficient data presented so that you are capable of 9
intelligent interpretation of the results.
10 DR. YOUNG:
One of the advantages of having 11 consensus within the federal agencies on such issues is that 12 then you can turn and say, okay, we as an interagency body
(>
13 recommend that such a survey be undertaken.
That can be 14 used by the individual agencies that have that 15 responsibility to help seek the resources to get such an 16 operation taken care of.
When a single agency has no other 17 agency to turn to and say, do you think it is a good idea, 18 then there are some problems.
19 What we try to do is we try, in the case of I
20 -
radon, to reinforce the EPA or the Department of Energy.
21 DR. CARTER:
I think that is a very important 22 function.
23 DR. YOUNG:
Absolutely.
24 So even without an Executive mandate, or
)
25 whatever, just as a coordinating body, we can play a very ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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important role, and that is what we are attempting to do 2
now.
3 DR. MARK:
That is the significance of your 4
having OMB on here?
5 DR. YOUNG:
Indeed.
You recognize that.
6 DR. MOELLER:
Ron?
7 MR. KATHREN:
I must have missed -- I think you 8
answered this question.
But when, datewise, would you 9
expect something to come out of that metric unit, SI Metric 10i Units Policy Subpanel, and how does one get on the mailing 11 list, if you will, for your publications?
12 DR. YOUNG:
The Metrication Subpanel now has (n!
13; completed their task in terms of drafting the report.
That i
14l has got to be reviewed.
Then it will go to the policy body 15!
for the final consideration and then to Dr. McTague probably 16 for transmittal to a number of agencies as an action item.
17j My sense would be that we are still talking two 18' or three months down the road to get all that finished.
19 Then it will be submitted to the National Technical 20 Information Center.
21 We do have an exhaustive mailing list, quite a 22 large mailing list, and if you would provide your name to 23 us, we will be glad to take care of it.
24 MR. KATHREN:
Thank you.
25 DR. MOELLER:
In terms of the radon situation, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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particularly the aspect of control and mitigation, I am sure 2
Randy is familiar with the NCRP Scientific Committee, 82, 3
which is working on developing a report on this.
4 If that finishes it up, let me thank -- do you 5
have a comment, Randy?
6 DR. CASWELL:
I just wanted to introduce Larry 7
Hobson.
8 Would you stand up, Larry?
9 He is the Executive Secretary of the Science 10 Panel.
He wasn't here earlier, and I would like you to meet 11 him.
12 DR. MOELLER:
Well, let me thank all of you for 13 coming and sharing your information with us today.
It has 14 been very helpful to us.
It has been for us really too long 15 in terms of getting with you to learn more in detail what 16l you are doing.
We surely appreciate it.
17 DR. YOUNG:
We certainly appreciate the 18 opportunity to interact with you folks.
We know what your 19 mission is, and we know that you have some very tough issues 20 to address, and as you can see, we, too, have some very 21 tough issues.
22 DR. MOELLER:
Let's take a recess for 15 23 minutes.
24 (Recess.)
25 DR. MOELLER:
The meeting will resume.
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The next and last formal item on our agenda is a 2
presentation on the EPA low level waste standard.
3 In introducing this subject, I want to 4
immediately express appreciation to EPA for coming over and 5
discussing this with us, particularly for doing so before 6
the standard is -- I don't like this word -- but before it 7
is finalized, before it is made final, so we can hear some 8
of their thinking process and the deliberation that is going 9
into the development of the standard.
10 To lead off on the subject, we will call once 11 again upon Shelly Meyer, the Director of the Office of 12 Radiation Programs within the U.S.
EPA.
O 13 Shelly?
u-14j MR. MEYER:
Thank you, Dade.
I 15 I just want to say a few words.
The presentation 16 is going to be given by Floyd Galpin, who is Chief of our 17 Waste Management Branch.
18 We have been working on a low level waste 19 standard for a number of years.
As you all know, NRC has 20 already put out a low level waste standard, and you could 21 ask if this is going to shake up the apple cart.
22 I don't think so.
There might be some conforming 23 necessary once our standard is made final, but NRC is fully 24 aware of what we are doing.
We have worked fairly closely 25 with them.
They know the numbers we have and the kinds of 1
i 1
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things that might be helpful in forming a below regulatory 2
concern number.
3 That is the sort of thing we would like to have.
4 As discussed here earlier, many people would like to have 5
it, but it certainly would not upset the existing NRC 6
regulation.
7 In addition, our standard is going in the 8
direction most of you are aware of.
You have probably heard 9
that many states have various compacts, which incidentally 10 were signed into law the day before yesterday.
The 11 President did sign the low level waste bill, and the 12 compacts were included.
I think there are about seven
()
13 compacts in the bill.
14 Many states are thinking, gee, I don' t want to 15 put anything in the ground again.
So they are looking at 16 various other alternatives, some of which are storage for 17 low level waste disposal.
18 One of the reasons our regulations are taking so 19 long, they thought we ought to do a number of analyses of 20 various alternatives to shallow land burial.
Our concern 21 was the disposal of eventually occurring material.
22 We have in our draft proposal covered those kinds 23 of activities.
In the alternatives to shallow land burial, 24 I think we cover about ten different kinds of methods of b
25 disposal.
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There is one that is a storage option, our 2
review of the storage option, so they can be treated as not 3
radioactive material.
But the other kinds of things are 4
mounds, canisters.
Many of them you have heard of and have 5
been covered in some detail.
6 But what we have done is gone through a 7
cost-benefit analysis of these various techniques, which I 8
think will be helpful to both you and the various states 9
that are considering anything else.
10 I think in this case we have done the efficient 11 thing.
So essentially it can be used by others who may have 12 the need for it.
I'd I
(>
13j Having said that, I will just have Floyd come 14 over and get into the substance of the briefing.
15j DR. MOELLER:
Thank you.
I 16j Let me welcome Floyd.
He is one of our main 17 contacts and educators.
18 MR. GALPIN:
It is an auspicious occasion for me 19 to educate this body.
Every time I have had the privilege 20 of briefing the ACPS, it has always been an impressive thing 21 to me.
22 What we want to do today is really cover two 23 aspects of the program that we are involved in in low level t
24l waste.
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25 Lou Meier is going to go over with you the basis ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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of the technical risk assessment that we have been 2
pe rfo rming.
3 We have completed a draf t risk assessment, which 4
we have sent a number of places for review -- our own 5
Science Advisory Board, the staff of NRC, the staff of the 6
Department of Energy, one of the task forces on the 7
Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors.
8 We got the reviews back f rom those, and Lou is 9
going to be covering that technical aspect with both what 10 the reviews constitute and how we are responding to them.
11 What I would like to do is give some context for 12 that presentation in terms of how this is all shaping up O
13 into some formation or format for a standard.
The part that 14 I will be presenting today I think you all are f amiliar 15 with, the NRC staf f paper to the Commissioners.
16 We have similar types of things in EPA.
We 17 prepare options papers for the administrators and assistant 18 administrators of the agency, and they review these things.
19 So the place we are in the bureaucracy at this 20 time is that we are just preparing those options paper for 21 that review at the senior level, and we are getting reviews 22 at lower staff levels between various of fices at the present 23 time.
24 So what I am going to be presenting to you is O
25 staff positions.
I know you have heard that term f rom the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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NRC staff themselves many times.
2 This is a staff position as it has been 3
fo rmulated.
It is not Floyd Galpin's viewpoint or what we 4
are trying to put fo rwa rd.
Some of this Sheldon has seen, 5
and it has moved beyond his office, and some he has not.
So 6
I am not even going to hold Sheldon responsible for some of 7
what we are presenting here.
8 But I think it is appropriate, as Dade has 9
mentioned, that we can interact with you at this time rathe r 10 than wait until somebody has locked us in, and you can hear 11 some cogitation that has gone on at the staff level and 12 therefore get some gist of where we are going.
13 (Slide.)
14 I ^ think an appropriate place to start out is the 15 authority under which we are going to be promulgating these 16 s tanda rds.
That authority is the Atomic Energy Act and 17 Reorganization Plan 3 of 1970, as authorities were delegated 18 to the Environmental Protection Agency under that act.
19 The standards that are called for in that 20 authority are -- standards mean limits on radiation 21 exposuras or levels or concentrations or quantities of 4
22 radioactive material in the general environment outside the 23 boundaries of locations under the control of persons 24 possessing or using radioactive material.
O 25 That has some very significant pieces to it in ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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terms of what we can do and what we cannot do.
For one, it u-2 says in this standard authority we are really not having any 3
business in terms of setting any limits for what is onsite.
4 We are talking about what is going to be outside the areas 5
of control.
6 This gets a little sticky if you look over long 7
periods of time because boundaries begin to dif fuse.
8 Perhaps we will have some discussion of that as we go 9
along.
10 The other thing, it says it is a general 11 s ta nda rd.
We interpret that as meaning it cannot be method 12 specific.
In other words, we are not in the business of (D'
13 prescribing that thou shalt do anything by this method.
We 14 may have some material that would prescribe and set forth i
15l how we think the background information -- how we think such 16' a standard can be met, but we are not in the business of 171 prescribing how it is met.
That is, indeed, the NRC through l
18j the commercial sector.
19 (Slide.)
20 Now, the EPA standard, by virtue of this 21 authority, will be performance requirements.
It is not 22 going to specify the kind of design.
It is not going to 23 specify the kind of site or the selection criteria for a 24 site.
25 We have set forth already some site selection ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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criteria that we feel are appropriate, and the last time we 2
reviewed the NRC site selection criteria, it may coincide 3
very much.
4 5
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 (D
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DR. MOELLER:
Of course, you worked with them on 2
their 10 CFR 61.
3 MR. GALPIN:
I wouldn' t say we worked with them.
4 I would say we've certainly reviewed that and commented on 5
it.
We' re certainly aware of the technical work that was 6
going on in support of that.
7 Sheldon mentioned what is our standard going to 8
do that the NRC standard does not do.
You'll see as we look 9
at some of the pieces that we anticipate being in it that 10 we' re going to have some dif ferent pieces there.
11 (Slide.)
12 Some other things that are dif ferent is this I) 13l standard would apply to the federal as well as the 14 commercial f acilities.
This is applicable to the Department 15l of Energy f acilities just as much as it would be to the 16 commercial sector which is licensed by NRC.
17 Now...
18 (Slide.)
19
...the way we have again at the staff level 20 structured what is going to be in this standard, we would 21 perceive the standard as sort of being in two parts, the 22 first one a part A, which is the management and operations 23 part of the standard that would have standards for the g-24 management and operations period.
We'll look at that in
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25 more detail for each one of these and would have a below ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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regulatory concern part.
2 Then we would have three parts to a standard that 3
deal with af ter disposal.
By af ter disposal, we mean when 4
they quit receiving material and they do not necessarily 5
stop monitoring or stop maintaining the site, but they' re no 6
longer receiving material.
They have locked up the material 7
or however that particular method lends itself to handling 8
the waste at that point.
9 And that party would have disposal performance 10 objectives, groundwater protection requirements, and I'll 11 talk last about the NARM coverage.
12 (Slide.)
l (E) 12 {.
The management and operations kinds of things 14 that we perceive the standard as applying to are storage 15 f acilities, processing facilities and the period of actual 16 disposal operations at the disposal site.
Since the time 17 that we originally started work on something called the low 18 level waste standard, a number o'f things have changed in the 19 real world, and we are seeing much more consideration of 20 centralized processing facilities, centralized storage 21 facilities that were not really apparent on the books at the 22 time we started out to do this.
23 We feel this is a desirable addition to the J
24 s ta nda rd.
We're talking here in terms of values that are
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25 typical, I think, of radiation protection, values such as ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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we've set for other releases -- 10, 20, 25 is probably what 2
we would recommend in millirem per year.
3 (Slide.)
j
{
4 Below regulatory concern is our twisting of de 1
5 minimis.
The difference is that we don't want to leave the l
6 connotation that this is something we don't care about, or 7
that it's a risk that is considered just negligible on the 8
face of the risk itself.
But we have gone through the 9
process of making us a calculation on what it's going to i
10 save us in terms of bucks if we allow a certain risk to 4
11 exist and, therefore, certain wastes to be released, say, to 12 a municipal system.
And we project setting the criteria for l
()
]
13 such release is that it would be applied in the licensing l
14 process and the generic rulemaking perhaps by the NRC, and 15 in decision-making and rulemaking by the Department of
.i l
16 Ene rgy.
I 17 DR. STEINDLER:
Is the only consideration in this i
18 area a cost issue?
l 19 MR. GALPIN:
No, the risk issue is every bit as 20 much.
We' re looking at both what we'd be allowing and how 21 much money would one be saving.
At the same time, as in all i
j 22 standards, making a judgment on what seems like a reasonable i
l 23 balance between those and what could be accomplished by 1
l 24 setting forth such a value.
l l
25 DR. STEINDLER:
In the area of risk, is that i
l 1
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approached f rom the standpoint of dollars per rem?
2 MR. GALPIN:
We don't have any magic evaluation 3
of a magic dollar per rom, or dollar even per manrem that 4
serves as the pure basis for a cutof f.
The kinds of numbers 5
and range of numbers we've looked at here is everything f rom 6
an individual exposure of point one on up to 10 millirem per 7
year as a possible range of values for setting such a low 8
regulatory concern criteria.
9 DR. STEINDLER:
Do you have some clearly defined, 10 or even vaguely defined set of operating principles which 11 allow you to identify the particular level of risk that is 12 acceptable?
O 13 MR. GALPIN:
No, not that would be universal to 14 all applications.
This would not be a value of de minimis 15 risk that would be applicable to other kinds of settings.
16 It might not at all be applicable, for instance, to a 17 cleanup operation.
The costs and the impact in a cleanup 18 operation might be quite dif ferent.
19 It's purely based on starting out f rom a disposal 20 p remise.
So we' re not attempting here to set a universal 21 below regulatory concern, but one applicable to the criteria 22 that could be applied as to what wastes might be released.
23 DR. STEINDLER:
I guess I don't understand the 24 comment that you made in which you said cost is not the 25 issue.
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MR. GALPIN:
I said it's not the only issue.
l 2
Certainly, the cost savings...for instance, we find in 3
something like a 1 millirem per year, depending upon how l
4 that would be implemented by the NRC and the DOE, you can 5
save somewhere between 10 to 40 percent of the volume that
~
6 is presently going to license the low level waste facility, 7
So cost is certainly a factor.
Another aspect of 8
BRC is that it would constitute, if you will, for low level l
9 waste disposal, a floow to the ALARA.
In other words, we'd 10 be saying that when you get down to this level, we really i
11 don't believe it's worthwhile, having done this generic 1
12 evaluation, that you do have to have an ALARA below that.
- O j
13 (Slide.)
{
14 Some of the kinds of things that we' re looking at l
15 in this BRC pathway and scenarios, Mr. Meier will get into 16 these in more detail in talking about the wastes that are 17 being looked at as examples of potential wastes.
We're not 18 in the business of deciding which wastes.
19 We'll give you some examples just for analysis.
l
~
20 We' re looking at the same possible exposure pathways we have 21 for a regulated low level radioactive waster looking at what 22 happens if you have a municipal incinerator.
We' re looking 23 at what happers if you put it into a municipal dump and you 24 have a fire in the trench, if you have flooding of that municipal disposal facility.
What happens to the landfill 25 ace FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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worker or the incinerater worker?
And what happens to a 2
scavenger that might encroach himself on that municipal 3
facility, since it would not be regulated for control of 4
access, like a radiological waste site.
5 Those are the kinds of people we're talking I
6 about.
Question?
7 MR. KATHREN:
Are you going to look at nonhuman 8
biota as well?
9 MR. GALPIN:
We've looked in general in the 10 office at nonhuman biota, vegetation, various kinds of 11 animal life, and we haven't found any that we perceive would l
12 be controlling.
This ecological system and the protection I ()
l 13 of it would be the controlling factor.
14 (Slide.)
15 The disposal performance objective.
We commented 16 on the environmental impact statement of the Nuclear 17 Regulatory Commission when they put out their Part 61.
We 18 said at that time that their performance objective, which 19 they suggested, is a surrogate for an EPA standard which was 20 not available of 25.
j 21 We said it appeared to be in the proper range.
22 We have not changed our mind about that in terms of what the 23 staff is feeling.
We' re looking at it in terms of what can 24 be done af ter a site closure in considering all the 25 pathways.
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We still think some reading of that value is 2
appropriate for a perfonnance objective for low level waste 3
disposal, and a little forward in something in that area.
4 (Slide.)
5 Groundwater protection is something that EPA is 6
very much wrapped up in these days.
We now have a 7
groundwate r protection of fice.
They swing a lot of weight.
8 A groundwater protection strategy has been issued by EPA.
9 The agency is in the process of promulgating guidance on a 10 set of classifications of groundwater.
11 This was very much a player as we were preparing 12 the standards for high level waste and it will be very much 13l a player as we prepare the standards for these low level 14 wastes.
15 We've had some meetings with the Groundwater 16 office staff.
What we project at the present time is a 17 graded level of protection for groundwater for three 18 dif ferent kinds of groundwater.
Class 1 groundwater, as the 19 agency is formulating it, are those groundwaters which are 20 presently serving populations of 2,500 people or more.
21 They' re irreplaceable.
They' re perhaps even associated with 22 delicate eco systems in one type of criteria.
23 These are named by the agency.
They' re not in 24 the hands of the state, but named by EPA itself.
The way 7sO 25 the scheme is proposed, that would be the class of ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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groundwaters that would receive the greatest protection.
2 Class 2 groundwaters as is defined in the draf t 3
agency classification, is ve ry broad.
It's everything that 4
isn't in Class 1.
And everything down to 150 gallons per 5
day, even with 10,000 parts per million of salts, which I 6
don't see many people drinking that.
7 The agency policy is that we don't need to 8
protect all of that Class 2 groundwater as the same.
9 Certainly, our proposal is that we only identify a segment 10 of that Class 2 and the present projection is that we would 11 use some of the same approach that we did in the high level 12 waste standard and take the definition that we had there of
/~T I
13I a significant source of groundwater, which is basically a 14 groundwater which can serve a community water supply, and 15 apply the next level of protection to that significant 16, source of groundwater as a subclass of class 2.
17 Then, the third is all the groundwater that's 18 left.
And our projected approach on that is to just include l
19j those groundwaters to whatever extent they are consumed, 20 usually, irrigation, or for whatever purpose, just within 21 the fold of the general performance objective we were 22 previously talking about, which just says that one has to 23 also look at how that groundwater is used and what it 24 contributes.
So it doesn't exceed the overall performance
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25 objective.
It's not really so much the overall performance ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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objective f rom all pathways should be exceeded.
2 (Slide.)
3 When we first met with the states and laid out 4
what some of our proposals were as to how we were going to 5
go about setting this low level waste standard, they arose 6
almost as one and said, Hey, you, EPA, are the only agency 7
at the federal level that can say anything about natural and 8
accelerator-produced radioactive materials.
9 And if you don't somehow pull that into this 10 picture which you are developing, this standard that you' re 11 working on, you've really missed out on something unique 12 that you ought to be contributing.
(
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13 The concerns were that every state was handling 14 these materials somewhat dif ferently.
Some states weren' t 15 really getting af ter them at all.
States were concerned 16 about how this was going to af fect waste that crosses their 17 boundaries and that they would be getting waste disposal 18 facilities that didn't have proper care and packaging.
19 They felt the need for some kind of federal 20 overlay on this, which we did have the authority to do in 21 EPA with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
22 Now, the trick is being able to take that 23 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act that already has a 24 passle of regulations associated with it and fold into the 7-C 25 same kind of criteria these natural and accelerator-produced ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC,.
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radioactive materials, without running into conflicts 2
between what is done at a low level waste disposal site 3
under the Atomic Energy Act and NRC rules versus what's done 4
under RCRA; because there are some dif ferences between the 5
present set of regulations in both those two cases.
6 What our desire is is to be able to assign these 7
materials to go to either NRC or state licensed low level 8
waste disposal sites in such a way that it will not disrupt 9
any of the regulations that pertain to both sites.
10 Some of the ways that we' re going at this is, 11 first, we ' re just looking at high concentrations, or high 12 specific activities perhaps is a better way to put it, of (3
\\
13l these NARM materials, the classic one being radium needles 14 that may still be coming out of hospitals.
15 We haven't decided just where that cutoff is, but 16 they go all the way up to some of these ion exchange resins 17 l that are coming out of water facilities in very high radium 18 a reas.
We want to avoid and we want the cutoff to be sure 19 to keep out of consideration here those large volume dif fuse 20 NARM wastes, such as result f rom various extraction 21 industries and mining operations.
22 We do not want to get those folded into this 23 pic tu re.
We want this particular standard to only apply to 24 those things that are most like what the Atomic Energy Act
,-,s I._)
s 25 is putting into the low level waste facilities.
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DR. CARTER:
Is it safe to say that this is the 2
first time that the Federal Government ever addressed 3
radiation standards for NARM materials?
4 MR. GALPIN:
With the exception of whatever you 5
want to call mill tailings certainly for the class of 6
materials we're talking about, we would see that those high 7
volume materials do need some consideration and everything 3
f rom the gympsum piles, mining overburden.
We definitely 9
see that it could well fit into the purview that the agency 10 is pursuing relative to mining and extraction wastes.
11 We want the small volume of material disposed of 12 in the Atomic Energy Act waste manner and in concert with 13 it.
14 (Slide.)
15 Some of the kinds of things f rom RCRA that we 16 would like to borrow, in order to do that, we'd like to use 17!
the manifest system, which is very compatible with that, 18 that the NRC has.
We would like to set forth some state 19 program criteria for a state taking over this 20 responsibility, as they can under RCRA, just as the 21 agreement states can with the NRC.
We would perceive this 22 as being a combination, indeed, of what the NRC has 23 developed for state assumption criteria or agreement state 24 assumption, as well as what the Conference of Radiation 7-U 25 Control Programs has developed, in terms of criteria for ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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each state having an adequato program for control of our 2
materials.
And we would also perceive that we would have 3
some consideration of the storage requirements, although 4
modified.
5 DR. MOELLER:
Now we' re told that under RCRA, I 6
presume under that, or at least under EPA's regulations 7
implementing RCRA, that you, meaning the agency, has stated 8
that for a toxic chemical waste disposal site, there must be 9
zero releases.
10 MR. GALPIN:
I don't think there's anything that 11 says zero releases.
There are liners which over a period of 12 30 years, which is the monitoring period which they've O
13 called for, if you have releases during that time, and they 14 call for remedial action to be made or for pumping and 15 recycling to be done, I know nothing that says a regulation 16 of zero releases.
17 DR. MOELLER:
It had been said to me, and I 18 appreciate your clarification.
The other thing, and I 19 realize this is not a low-level radiation question, but you 20,
just mentioned 30 years for the life of the liner, what do 21 they assume happens af ter 30 years?
The toxic chemicals 22 will not have " decayed."
What is the basis for 30 years?
23 MR. GALPIN:
We need to have a Jack Maitland or a 24 Ken Schuster over here sometime, if you want to get into O
25 that, because we argued the issue back and forth with them ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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on a technical issue basis, as to how one looks at the liner 2
and what is the period of the liner, the purity they depend 3
on and the role of the liner versus the role of the cap.
4 And I'm sure Mel Knapp and others will be interacting with 5
the EPA on those kinds of things.
6 We had hoped, all of us, that at least the mixed 7
waste issue is going to get handled by Congress, and I think 8
the agencies were very largely in concert as to what they 9
were asking the staffs of the Congress to put together in 10 the amendments to the low-level radioactive waste bill that 11 was just signed.
12 DR. MOELLER:
I gather they did not do it.
O 13; MR. GALPIN:
They did not.
We had a couple of 14 committees sold, but when it came down to the bottom, the re 15 were still dif ferences, and they had to get that thing out 16 by first of the year, so they just dropped out all of the 17 mixed waste aspects in the final passage and made a promise 18 that early on in '86, we' re going to have further hearings 19 and further considerations.
20 We had also wanted to get into that same context, i
21 the NARM bit, so that whatever authority EPA could delegate 22 to NRC for the mixed wastes, they could do the same for the 23 NARM.
24 MR. EBERSOLE:
Could I ask you about the deadily 25 chemical waste in this context, as I think I heard you say, 1
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your perpetual philosophy, apparently, is to have what in 2
the radiation business we would call a monitored retrievable 3
s to rage.
You can measure if it leaks, and you can fix it, 4
if it doesn't work.
5 MR. GALPIN:
That's not my philosophy.
That's 6
part of the philosophy of the Office of Solid Waste, in how 7
they' re implementing RCRA.
8 MR. EBERSOLE:
Is that what's going to happen?
9 You will have waste storage on which you will monitor any 10 leakage, and then if it's too much, you'll fix it?
11 MR. GALPIN:
That's a large part of the way that 12 they' re operating with the hazardous toxic wastes.
C) 13 MR. EBERSOLE:
That's what I mean.
14 MR. GALPIN:
As I say, I'm not in a position to 15 either justify that or speak to it, since that's another 16 group that handles that.
17 MR. EBERSOLE:
I guess behind that is the notion 18 that the chemical character of it will never change.
It 19 will always be what it is, unlike the radiation problem.
20 MR. GALPIN:
I'm always held up to them the 21 matter that, indeed, we do have some advantage in our 22 business, that it will decay away in some length of 23 time.
Certainly, we can show for the low level waste mixes 24 that we' re anticipating that within 1000 years, you've had
)
25 your maximum exposure from any route.
I'm not sure they can ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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can show that for toxic wastes.
2 You should be aware that this issue of how to 3
meld the matter and how to handle mixed wastes is, indeed, a 4
matter that's in the process of discussion between the 5
agencies, at least at the office director level, and even 6
coming up again within the next month, especially since 7
Congress walked out and lef t things rather flapping as to 8
whether or not the agency has got to go back to Congress.
9 Here's the way we'd really like to see it.
10 Those kind of things are in a special state.
11 That I hope indicates some of the ways we see ourselves l
12 formulating and structuring the standard, some of the
,o
\\'~)
13 pieces that will be there, considerations that will be doing 14 into those pieces. ~
Probably one of the most strigent 15l pieces, in terms of environmental protection, will be the i
16 groundwater piece, and I anticipate that it's probably going 17 to take the most work, in terms of what it means, and in 18 terms of the impact of how it works out.
19 DR. MOELLER:
That would seem -- now that you've 20 pointed it out, that would seem to be the key ingredient on 21I what it potentially can do to the groundwater.
22 Back to your last slide, if you don't show it 23 again, but would you repeat -- you had NARM-RCRA.
24 What ara you saying, that the NARM wastes will 73V 25 come under RCRA?
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MR. GALPIN:
The only authority we have for 2
controlling those NARM wastes is RCRA.
3 DR. MOELLER:
How does RCRA permit you to control 4
them?
RCRA doesn' t have a radiation flag in it, does it?
5 MR. GALPIN:
It can have.
The only two things 6
that are excluded f rom RCRA are source, special, nuclear and 7
by-product materials.
8 DR. MOELLER:
And if it's a hazardous material?
9 MR. GALPIN:
You have it; it's there.
So there 10 is, you can either list something under RCRA, either in 11 terms of a criteria, be it flammability, toxicity or 12 whatever, or you can list a specific material as being a
(
13 haza rdous material.
14 DR. MOELLER:
Are there other questions for Floyd 15 before we go on?
16 Yes, Richard.
17 DR. FOSTER:
How are you thinking at this point 18 about classification of the waste?
By its source or by 19 radiation characteristics or by physical characteristics?
20 MR. GALPIN:
We pretty much bought what NRC has 21 done.
Lou will get into a little talking about the 22 interactions that we've had with the NRC and the Staf f on 23 waste classification.
24 Looking at this standard as a radiologically V
25 based standard and not getting into anything beyond wehat ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'dRC had done, in terms of classification, the source terms and the revisions of the source terms, and they' re using 3
them pretty much as NRC has, but basically, it's the same.
4 DR. MOELLER:
Okay.
Then we'll go with Lou 5
Meier.
He will address the risk thinking.
6 MR. GALPIN:
Risk assessment.
7 DR. MOELLER:
This may help Martin Steindler on 8
your earlier question.
To me, I guess, you know, you can 9
set a below regulatory concern level, which would make sense 10 to you.
I guess the curious thing would be to do what 11 Martin was hinting, and that is, okay, you save this much 12 money in being able to dispose of these wastes, and on a l
13 sanitary landfill instead of a low-level radwaste facility.
14 Then if you took the 1 millirem per year or the tenth of a 15 millirem, whatevor it was and figure out how many people 16 received it, you would get some estimate of the risk you 17 incurred by saving this much money.
18 It would just be interesting to see how that 19 works.
20 MR. GALPIN:
That's basically what we've done.
21 DR. MOELLER:
Let's go ahead then.
22 MR. MEIER:
Good morning, gentlemen.
I'm Lou 23 Meier, a Project Director for the Low Level Waste Standard.
gS I'd like to explain to you our approach to 24
't) 25 developing the standards.
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(Slide.)
2 We've taken a systems approach.
We've taken a 3
systems approach, the standards we feel will be 4
forward-looking and the costs and benefits are important to 5
us in arriving at the standards.
~
6 (Slide.)
i 7
By using the systems approach, our feeling is j
8 that a low-level waste disposal facility is a system made up 9
of the wastes, the site characteristics and the dfsposal 2
10 mechod itself, and each of these impinge on the potential 11 release f rom a facility, the wastes themselves, the total 12 activity, the half-life, their physical form, chemical f. rm, o
13 packaging, what retention you get f rom that and their
{
14 environmental mobility once radioactivity is leached f rom i
15 the waste.
l 16 By site characteristics, the geology, hydrology, 1
17 climate and demography.
All are part of the equation on 18 what is released, how fast does it move, where does it go in 19 the environment.
20 Disposal method, where we' re talking about the 21 type of placement, the engineering one does at a site, the 22 protective barriers one builds in, and any special 23 additional features.
j l
24 I think those of you who are familiar with 10 CFR O
25 61, can see that our approach is parallel and very much in ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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accord with the approach that was taken by NMSS in 10 CFR 2
61.
3 (Slide.)
4 When I say the standards are forward-looking, 5
we' re assuming that our standards are primarily going to 6
apply to new facilities and that when people develop these 7
new facilities, they will have to abide by 10 CFR 61 or in 8
the case of DOE, that DOE will use, and the states or 9
whoever develops the facility will use good site selection 10 practices, and we' re assuming that the wastes will be 11 conditioned in a form suitable for the disposal method 12 that's being used, a case we' re of ten asked, well, how about 13 the existing facilities?
14 These we feel will have to be dealt with on a 15 case-by-case basis.
16 For instance, existing operating license 17 facilities.
We would assume that our standards would be 18 looked at whenever they come up for relicensing.
19 DR. CARTER:
Lou, I don' t quite understand.
20 Those facilities are obviously, as far as we know, going to 21 be in use for a long, long time.
22 Certainly, there's been no movement, no very 23 positive movement in support of those facilities for a 24 number of years.
There may have been efforts on these, but O
25 a lot of these have never gotten beyond a straw vote in a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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state and this sort of thing.
2 So when you say they'd be looked at, and yet your 3
first bullet says they really won' t apply to new facilities, 4
I don' t understand.
5 MR. MEIER:
Let's look at it this way, Mel.
6 They' re in three operating facilities at the present time.
7 And the governors of those states are very unhappy that 8
they' re still operating.
9 As I understand, the Low Level Waste Act of 1980 10 was supposed to assure that there would be an operational 11 disposal facility in each compact by 1986, January 1.
We 12 anticipate -- looking at the wastes that will be produced O
13 between now, we' re using a reference source term, f rom 1985 14 through 2004, a 20-year source term, we anticipate possibly 15 8 to 12, possibly more disposal facilities, depending upon 16 how compacts fall out, but that's versus three that are 17 currently operating.
18 This is what I mean, though, when I say they' re 19 f o rwa rd-looking.
You can't really do anything about the 20 f acilities that are already there, except to make sure, if 21 the continue to operate, that they meet the standard.
22 But for new facilities, they should select them 23 and plan them in a manner that would meet the standard.
24 DR. CARTER:
My point would be, though, that i
C:)
25 they' re going to be in operation for quite a while, in l
l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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spite of the governors' thoughts in the process, I suspect.
2 They've been unhappy for a long time, yet they' re the only 3
team in town, essentially, and my guess would be -- I don' t 4
know whether they'll all operate for the period you' re 5
talking about, but I suspect that some of them may be in 6
operation in that period, but it's certainly going to be 7
appreciable.
8 MR. MEIER:
The way we finally approached the 9
existing facility, we have not quantified that, but we 10 anticipate possibly whenever they come up for relicensing, 11 that will be a time to say look at them and see whether they 12 meet the standard or if anything additional should be done O
13 to help them meet the standard.
O,n the ones that are 14 ope rating, I wouldn't anticipate that we'd have any 15 p roblem.
16 DR. FOSTER:
Another question.
17' You indicated, I think, on the previous slide, 18 that these would be applicable to federal f acilities, and 19 coupling that with the treatment of old f acilities on a 20 case-by-case basis, are you thinking here about some of the 21 DOE facilities that exist in some of the old sites?-
22 23 24 O
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MR. MEIER:
We anticipate they will come up for
~
1 l
2 evaluation at some point in time.
How this is done, since 3
they do not have relicensing, periodically, will have to be 4
worked out and will be spelled out.in the standard.
5 DR. MOELLER:
That's a good question, Dick, 2
6 because the number, they say there are three existing l
i j
7 commercial sites.
But there are dozens -- 50, maybe 100, I 8
don't know -- old DOE sites.
Probably, well over 100.
9 What Floyd said to us was that your new 10 regulations would apply to those DOE sites.
4 11 MR. GALPIN:
Because they don't have a licensing 12 situation there, we anticipate that some time would be given 13 in the standard and you'd say that any new site that DOE 14 opens up to use and operate af ter this period of time will 1
15 have to comply.
t
]
16 It would not be retroactively applicable to sites 17 that have been already allowed.
Most of the sites that 18 you' re talking about will be closed up.
They' re no longer 19 receiving wastes any more.
I think there are 12, or 20 something like that.
21 DR. CARTER:
This will definitely apply to new i
}
22, DOE low level wastes?
23 MR. GALPIN:
Yes.
s l
24 DR. SHEWMON:
One of the things that might make
! ()
25 the governors slightly less pained about having these sites f
i}
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is the money goes into the general cof fers f rom this.
I 2
understand that's part of the recent11y-agreed to plan.
3 Will you get to that in your talk at all?
Or, where can I 4
find out more about that?
5 MR. MEIER:
I think the best place would be the 6
amendment of 1985 to the Low Level Waste Act of 1980.
That 7
is spelled out in there.
I do not plan to cover that 8
particular thing.
That's more of an administrative, 9
financial thing.
I was going to try to go into what we' re 10 doing technically, 11 DR. SHEWMON:
Okay.
12 (Slide.)
s 13 MR. MEIER:
When I said costs and benefits are 14 important, we' re subject to all the rules of the various 15 things that the Executive Branch is subject to.
And cost 16 benefit analyses are very important in our decision-making 17 p roce ss.
18 We also have to present what we've done to OMB 19 and try to get their blessing, or at least get their 20 acquiescence if not blessing on it.
So, although our 21 standard at the present time does not bureaucratically 22 require a regulatory impact analysis, we' re preparing all 23 the information and all the cost-benefit analyses that would 24 be required to have a regulatory impact analysis.
If they O
25 then ask us to have one, we can change the cover and say ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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this is a regulatory impact analysis.
2 But they' re very important to us.
Looking at the 3
costs and benefits af ter one agrees on what is a safe or 4
acceptable level of risk, it is also recommended by ICRP and 5
NEPA, because we' re looking at a number of dif ferent types 6
of waste and a number of different types of disposal 7
methods.
8 The cost and the benefits.
And, here, benefits 9
we are talking about, reduction of risk, are very important 10 to help us make a decision on where to set various levels 11 for the PRC, the disposal standard, and so forth.
12 DR. MARK:
In your risk term, do you include 13 occupational exposure?
14 MR. MEIER:
No, we do not.
We feel, the people 15 that are working there, they are covered by other 16 regulations.
17l DR. MARK:
Yes, but some of your disposal methods i
18 which give you a decrease in risk on your arithmetic might 19 involve increase in occupational exposure.
20 MR. MEIER:
I think whoever designs the site, I 21 think they would have to take that into account to begin 22 ope ra tions.
They would certainly have to stay within 23 occupational exposure.
I don't know how you would equate 24 that.
J O
25 DR. MOELLER:
A question on your first item.
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It's important to EPA decision-making.
One item i
2 that came up in our discussion on the high level waste 3
standards of EPA was the question of whether your risk 4
assessment branch or division, whatever program within the 5
EPA, had been involved in setting the risk, doing the risk
~
6 assessment for the high level waste repository, high level 7
waste regulations.
8 was your risk group involved in or will they be 9
with these low level waste risk assessments?
10 MR. GALPIN:
Dade, there's a lot of confusion 11 the re.
There is no radiation function in that Office of 12 Research and Development risk assessment group.
And they' re
( ),
v 13 not charged to do that.
We have our own risk assessment 14, group in ORP because of the dif ferences, and also that we 15 contract with the National Academy of Sciences, from which 16 most of our risk factors come.
17 MR. MEIER:
They will be involved to the same 18 extent that they were with the high level was'te.
19 DR. MOELLER:
To me, it would help your public 20 image if you could say yes, you know, we have liaison with 21 them or something and they've looked at it and said it was 22 fine.
23 MR. GALPIN:
All our offices, just as in the case 24 of the high level, are involved at both the work group O
25 level, when it gets up to what we call the steering ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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committee level, and when it gets to the red border level.
2 The boss of that group had to sign off on the 3
high level and he'll have to sign off on this.
4 MR. MEIER:
I was going to bring that up.
We t ry 5
to keep them involved in the developmental stages, and if 6
they choose not to be involved or the depth at which they 7
want to be involved is up to them, just as long as they 8
don't come and shoot us in the back af ter we put out 9
something, you know.
i 10 DR. MOELLER:
Well, in a sense, that occurred on 11 the high level waste standards.
When we inquired 12 informally, you know, the degree to which they had been 13 involved, they said, oh, no, we weren' t involved at all.
14 And that didn't sound good to us, you know, as an outside 15 g roup.
16 MR. GALPIN:
Perhaps at that branch level, they 17 had not.
18 MR. MEIER:
I think that's a good point, Dade.
19 I'd make a note of that.
20 DR. MOELLER:
It's almost like with the NRC in 21 terms of its regulatory guides.
It doesn't mean a whole lot 22 but most every regulatory guide that the NRC publishes will 23 have a little paragraph which says:
This has been discussed 24 with a review by the ACRS.
O 25 And it has their concurrence.
Or, if we didn't ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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concur, their comments have been taken into consideration.
2 It's just a little protection.
3 MR. MEIER:
Possibly, as I get to discussing our 4
Science Advisory Board, well, now we have had an indepth 5
review of our risk assessment methodology by our science 6
advisory board.
And they're a broad-ranging --
7 DR. MOELLER:
Ce rtainly.
They are 8
well-qualified.
9 DR. FOSTER:
On your fourth line item, aid for 10 choosing between many possible disposal methods, who is the 1
11 party doing the choosing?
Is this EPA, or is this the 12 applicant?
Who are you aiding?
13 MR. MEIER:
EPA staff.
Our contractors and our 14 staff.
Our staff reviews how much reduction you get for a 15 certain type of disposal method.
A certain type disposal 16 method costs so much per cubic noter of waste.
17 DR. FOSTER:
Are you saving that EPA is going to 18 choose the method?
19 MR. MEIER:
No.
We' re trying to say, you know, 20 if our standard is reasonable or it's realistic, and can it 21 be applied throughout the United States.
22 So we have to look at the dif ferent types of 23 disposal methods that might be used.
We don' t know what 24 kind of disposal methods will be used.
, O 25 MR. GALPIN:
That's up to the state primarily, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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's,
1 Dick, the way the system is set up.
2 DR. FOSTER.
This would be an aid to the state in 3
choosing.
4 MR. GALPIN:
This is just for our analysis, we' re 5
talking about here.
Bringing out the cost benefit analysis, 6
which shows what happens as one picks different methods.
7 How you vary the risk, how you vary the cost.
It's not 8
anticipated that EPA would even be involved in a particular 9
site selection or method selection, although they might be a 10 participant, say, in an environmental impact statement or 11 review.
12 DR. FOSTER:
That answers my question.
13 l MR. MEIER:
We are trying to look at what is the 14 risk if you use such and such a method under certain 15 hydrologic, geologic and climatic conditions.
And we need i
16 that in f o rma tion.
There's a cost associated with it.
17 MR. EBERSOLE:
May I ask a question just to kind 18 of fix my own ignorance?
I can't help but be continually 19 impressed by the statistics which say this waste is of a 20 nature that the volumetric dimensions of it can be 21 drastically reduced by incineration, by whatever method you 22 choose.
l 23 If that were done, how much stays at home and how 24 much goes into the atmosphere?
And what reduction factors
()
I 25 are possible to diminish the problem?
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MR. MEIER:
I can' t give you the numbers here.
2 But, for instance, in looking both at the general population 3
risk and the risk to the individual, we are looking at a 4
particular waste stream, one that could be incinerated.
5 We' re disposing of it as is.
We' re disposing of it in a 6
compacted, solidified form, and in incinerated form.
7 And we' re looking to see what change in risk 8
occu rs.
9 MR. EBERSOLE:
You haven't done that yet then?
10 MR. MEIER:
We've made a lot of calculations, but 11 we haven't made our final calculations.
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
How does it look at this point in p/
k-13 time?
14 MR. MEIER:
Incineration is expensive.
15l MR. EBERSOLE:
I'm just talking about at central 16 facilities.
17 MR. GALPIN:
It reduces the volume but costs a 18' lot of money.
19 MR. KATHREN:
Could some of that expense be 20 offset by perhaps using the heat generated in the 21 incineration process?
22 MR. GALPIN:
It could be.
23 MR. KATHREN:
Has that been explored at all?
24 MR. MEIER:
I don't know.
That would be up to 5
)
~'
25 the facility.
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DR. SHEWMON:
Around power plants you've got a 2
lot of waste heat already.
3 MR. EBERSOLE:
You've got a lot of other waste, 4
like ashes, too.
So that's a muddy picture yet.
5 MR. MEIER:
Well, we' re evaluating f rom the risk 6
point of view and the cost point of view.
And we are not 7
looking at specific places where it might be used.
8 MR. EBERSOLE:
Is the cost in perspective to 9
other operational costs?
Because we do have to put it in 10 pe rspec tive.
11 MR. MEIER:
We are putting it into perspective 12 with other costs.
13 DR. STEINDLER:
What sort of risk difference do 14 you find between waste that's been treated by incineratin 15 and waste that has not been treated by incineration?
16 MR. MEIER:
It depends on which pathway would 17 have been involved at the site to begin with, whether it was 18 a groundwater pathwrf or a surf ace water pathway.
19 Primarily, the incineration and the atmospheric releases 20 generally have lower impact than the groundwater pathways.
21 And incineration would put the waste into the atmospheric 22 pathway.
23 The other thing is we' re only assuming that the 24 NRC Class A type wastes will have very low activity.
It O
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candidates.
2 So, to begin with, your source term, the activity 3
of any waste that would be incinerated, would be a low, 4
specific activity.
So that mitigates any releases.
5 When I say conventional shallow disposal is our 6
base case', the Congress likes to have something to compare 7
against.
Conventional shallow disposal, as we talk about 8
it, is the way it was done between 1963 and 1980, before the 9
advent of 10 CFR 61.
10 You dig a trench.
You don't have to do anything 11 to the waste necessarily.
You can put in the trench as is, 12 cover it and, in most cases, the trench covers leak easily 13 or water infiltrates easily and the wastes could be 14 reached.
15 The improved shallow disposal, as we' re talking 16 about it, is disposal of low level wastes in compliance with 17 NRC's 10 CFR 61.
And we' re trying to model this to the best 18 of our ability.
19 So that's what I mean by improved.
20 DR. STEINDLER:
If you' re looking forward, why is 21 it that you use the base case method as you've described it?
22 Why is not the base case the current approach?
23 MR. GALPIN That's just in the commercial 24 sector.
DOE, for instance, has not switched over to Part O
25 61.
I 1
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DR. STEINDLER:
I guess I don' t understand the 2
logic.
3 MR. GALPIN:
We needed one that covered both 4
sectors, just as an economic base case.
So we used that.
5 As we said, it had been used prior to Part 61 and was still 6
being used in many cases in DOE facilities.
7 DR. STEINDLER:
Isn' t your primary focus the risk 8
issue?
9 MR. GALPIN:
The incremental risk between 10 methods.
11 DR. STEINDLER:
So the economic aspect is not the i
12 primary driving force, is it?
13 MR. GALPIN:
It is certainly a persuasive one to 14 many people and we have to show both.
15 MR. MEIER:
We have to show what conditions were 16 like before improvements and what reduction you get for 17 whatever improvements you make.
And we feel that 10 CFR 61 18 is a significant improvement over the way low level waste 19 was disposed.
20 DR. ORTH:
To your knowledge, is DOE monitoring 21 your activities with hundreds of DOE sites that are liable 22 to be caught here?
23 MR. MEIER:
I didn't understand exactly the last 24 thing you said, but DOE...we're in close communication with O
25 DOE and with NRC.
And we involve them in developing our ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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risk assessment models.
We've also asked them to review our 2
first preliminary task group.
3 (Slide.)
4 The basic components of our risk and cost 5
analyses are our risk assessment models, something to do the 6
calculations; the source terms, the disposal methods and the 7
site characteristics.
8 In the disposal methods, we have also obtained 9
engineering costs -- general engineering costs for each type 10 of disposal.
And also for each type of waste treatment --
11 incine ration, solidification, high integrity containment and i
12 this sort of thing.
b')
13 14 15 16 17' 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 ps, O
25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(Slide.)
2 The waste that we will cover under this standard, 3
Floyd has already discussed, all low level wastes 4
below regulatory concern wastes, which are really a subset 5
of existing low level waste.
6 DR. MOELLER:
When you say you'll cover the below 7
regulatory concern, you mean simply to state that they are 8
below regulatory concern.
9 MR. MEIER:
Yes, that's right.
10 And then selected NARM wastes.
We ' re talking 11 about concentrated NARM wastes, similar in character and 12 form and volume to existing low lovel wastos.
We ' re not 13 talking about,these phosphate tailings, large volumes.
14 DR. STEINDLER:
Are you excluding those on the 15 basis of low risk?
16 MR. MEIER:
Not necessarily, but they' re not 17 appropriate for low level waste disposal, handling them in 18 the method where they would go into a low level waste 19 disposal site, just wouldn't be appropriate.
We feel low 20 level waste disposal site as licensed under 10 CFR 1061 is 21 more appropriate for higher activity zones, such as 22 radium, beryllium sources, some of the ion exchange resins 23 used to clean the radium out of drinking water, that sort of 24 thing.
l
}
25 (Slide.)
l l
l ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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What I'm not going to talk about this time is who 2
produces low level waste.
I'm sure you all know that.
The 3
types of low level waste and the problems in the past with 4
low level waste disposal.
5 (Slide.)
6 I want to talk now about the disposal methods we 7
chose to analyze.
when we looked at the low level waste 8
source term, we looked at it in general and at what NRC 9
looked at.
They had identified 37 different waste streams 10 in the commercial waste package in 1980-81.
They've since 11 expanded that to well over 100 waste streams, including some 12 noncommercial type wastes.
The wastes themselves range f rom 13 gas to liquids to solvents.
They are inert, highly 14 reactive.
They have traces to very high activity, thousands 15 of curies per cubic foot, and they have a wide range in i
16' radioactive half-lives.
17 So we felt that one disposal, say, such as 18 shallow land disposal would not be suitable or economic for 19 all types of low level wastes.
20 DR. MOELLER:
When you say they can have high 21 activity concentrations, how can they do that and still be 22 low level wastes?
23 MR. MEIER:
That's because the administrative 24 class -- radiactive wastes are classified administratively, i
(
l 25 as I understand it, not by characteristics, not by their i
l ACE-CDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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radioactivity characteristics.
2 For instance, the clean-up resins coming out of 3
Three Mile Island allow very high activity.
4 DR. MOELLER:
But they' re called low level.
5 DR. STEINDLER:
Help me out on that one.
6 Are you, in a sense, ignoring the Class C i
7 category upper limit designation?
8 MR. MEIER:
Okay.
Let me take a minute to 9
explain at this point how we got our source term.
We felt 10 that we needed to be -- the source term we used, had to be 11 something that was familiar to other people in the business, 12 such as NRC and DOE.
We reviewed what was out there.
And
!O
\\>
13 NRC was developing 10 CFR 61, and they developed 37 14 dif ferent waste streams for the low level waste.
We in 15 1980, '81 and '82, essentially used their so'urce term for 16 our source te rm, between 1981 and 1984.
All our 17 calculations are based on t'aat.
18 During the meantime in the past five years things 19 have been changing.
They' re doing a lot dif ferent waste 20 management and the NRC's knowledge of low level waste has 21 improved.
They now have, I think it's somewhere around 150 22 different waste streams identified among all types of waste 23 that they consider as low level waste.
We have taken those 24 waste streams and collapsed them into 24 waste streams.
We I)
~
25 havesn't thrown any out, but we are using primarily the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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commercial waste streams, not decommissioning waste, at this 2
time.
And to help us in modeling, we have collapsed some of 3
the wastes, like some of the trash.
We've collapsed them 4
down to 24 waste streams, and the names with the 5
abbreviations IX resins, and this sort of thing that the NRC 6
uses, you'll be very f amiliar with.
7 We've done several additional things.
We've 8
looked at new reactors coming on line, at the new waste 9
management processes, and we have revised the volumes to 10 what we think are realistic 1985 volume projections.
11 And additional thing we've done, we've done a 12 study of NARM waste streams, because there weren' t many 13 existing when we started.
14 The third thing we did, we reevaluated the 15 special data collection study on carbon 14, because that wsn 16 a real serious problem when there were initial draf t risk 17 assessments.
18 So our waste streams, we feel are wholly 19 compatible with NRC and with DOE low level wastes.
20 MR. EBERSOLE:
I guess I've lost the connotation l
21 between "high" and " low" completely, af ter what you've said i
22 in the last five minutes.
i 23 My interpretation of high level waste was high 24 concentrtions of reactivity over certain times, in short, O
25 potentially much more dangerous than low level.
I'm getting l
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a dif ferent picture.
Am I wrong?
2 MR. MEIER:
You were wrong.
I think you're 3
coming into the right f rame of reference at this time.
4 MR. GALPIN:
By law, high level waste is defined 5
as those wastes, in essence, those that are going to go to 6
high level waste repositories.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
That's not a very good 8
definition.
9 MR. GALPIN:
That's the way they' re defined by 10 law.
That's the way -- it's those wastes that are high 11 level waste standards spoke to, as well as transuranic 12 waste.
13 MR. EBERSOLE:
I think the potential at large 14 would be it refers to the potential level of biologic 15 haza rds.
16 MR. GALPIN:
We have to work with what the law 17 says.
What we're considering here is those wastes that are 18j not within the context of what is high level waste by law.
19 MR. MEIER:
I didn' t spell it out here, but in 20 the write up we have for our management and our definition 21 of low level waste, it's all radioactive wastes that aren' t 22 high level wastes, spent fuel, not mill tailings.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
But there's no scientific l
l 24 dif ferentiation then in the context of which is more
)
25 lethal.
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MR. MEIER:
Absolutely not.
There are ~some 2
wastes that would probably qualify for high level waste that 3
would be lower specific activity.
4 MR. EBERSOLE:
I bet you that's not the 5
impression of the public at large.
So the public again is 6
being confused, as it always is.
7 MR. MEIER:
Low level wastes are not something 4
8 that should be taken lightly.
9 MR. EBERSOLE:
The connotation, of course, is 10 that that is the case.
11 MR. GALPIN:
Low level wastes are defined by law 12 in 1980.
The way that one can be moved from one category to
' ()
13l the other is, NRC has the authority to add other wastes
~
l 14 within the context of high level waste.
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
I can begin to understand now my 16 reaction when I asked somebody yesterday or the day before, 17 stick a probe down into a low level waste package and what 18 would it read?
They said 10 to 100 r.
That woke me up.
I 19 didn't realize.
Now I begin to understand.
20 DR. CARTER:
Jesse, you could have used control 21 rods that are lower than this.
22 MR. EBERSOLE:
I'm getting a much dif ferent 23 perspective on the significance of what I thought was low 24 level waste.
I 25 MR. MEIER:
It's been helpful then.
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exactly why I said that we felt that one disposal method, 2
shallow disposal, might not be suitable for low level 3
wastes.
4 MR. EBERSOLE:
Now I'm having real dif ficulty 5
understanding why we treat disposal of low level waste by 6
casual methods, but why we've got to go bury other stuf f in 7
rock.
You say it has to be protected for 10,000 years.
8 The irrationality of this whole process is just 9
shocking to me.
10 DR. STEINDLER:
Let me ask one other question.
I 11 assume then that your definition includes wastes which by 12 L 10 CFR 61 would be well beyond Class C; is that correct?
13 MR. MEIER:
Okay.
Yes, it would.
We've looked 14 at the source term, and in each of the waste streams, we've 15 identified them as using the NRC classification, A, B, C or 16 greater than C.
17 DR. STEINDLER:
That's not my point.
My point 18 is, in fact, your low level waste scope exceeds Class C and, 19 hence, would not represent a waste suitable for shallow land 20 burial by current NRC standards.
21 Why is it that you elected to use that criterion, 22 when you dumped out, for example, phospate tailings?
23 MR. MEIER:
As I understand it, the specific 24 activity of phosphate tailings would not exceed Class C.
O 25 DR. STEINDLER:
But you excluded it from your ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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consideration on the basis that it was not suitable for low 2
level waste disposal.
3 MR. MEIER:
They are not suitable for a f acility 4
licensed under 10 CFR 61.
5 DR. STEINDLER:
So it is a considerable f raction 6
of the wastes you are considering, because they' re past 7
Class C.
8 MR. MEIER:
We are modeling them in other methods 9
of disposal, in addition to 10 CFR 61.
10 MR. GALPIN:
That is other than shallow land 11 burial.
The other consideration is that these extraction 12 wastes and mining wastes which are within the purview of the O
13 Environmental Protection Agency, we are prohtbited at the 14 moment for setting standards for, until we go back to 15 Congress to report and have hearings on the wastes f rom the 16 mining and extraction industries, which are to be handled, 17 considering all their hazards, not only radiological, but 18 other toxic hazards, as a set of items within the context of 19 standard setting.
20 DR. STEINDLER:
You are now prohibited f rom 21 getting involved in mining and extraction industry wastes?
22 MR. MEIER:
Yes, we a re.
23 DR. MOELLER:
With the passage of the Low Level 24 Waste Amendment Act, you'll have to go back and do something 25 else for above Class C or at least you will not longer put ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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them into your low level waste category.
2 MR. GALPIN:
They'll still be within the low 3
level waste category.
The only thing that hasn't been said 4
was that those will fall into the prerogative.
5 DR. MOELLER:
Oh, you're still going to call them 6
low level wastes, they' re not high level.
I thought maybe 7
they'd be.
8 We don't have a legal definition of 9
inte rmediate.
10 MR. MEIER:
The Europeans use low, inte rmediate 11 and high, but in the United States, it's more 12 sou rce-rela ted.
High means it came f rom reprocessing.
O 13 MR. GALPIN:
NRC does have the prerogative to 14 name other wastes as high level.
15 (Slide.)
16 MR. MEIER:
In chosing disposal methods, we had 17 some criteria.
It must be in use, suitable for one or more 18 types of waste.
It must be practical.
Cost information 19 must be available and could be implemented without further 20 delay or research.
21 I think we only violated this criterion in one 22 case.
23 (Slide.)
24 These are the methods for evaluating.
I don't 25 know if you can read them f rom back there.
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(
1 Engineered surf ace storage.
2 We' re thinking about temporary storage in a 3
wa rehouse, in a basement or someplace away f rom traf fic for 4
short-lived waste.
In a way it's a treatment.
You treat 5
the waste, the radioactivity of the waste, by delay and 6
decay.
7 Sanitary landfill I'll discuss in a little more 8
detail, but this is your common municipal sanitary landfill 9
type disposal.
10 Conventional shallow land disposal.
I described 11 that in more detail earlier.
And as I want to emphasize, 12 improved shallow land disposal is disposing of something O
13l using 10 CFR 61 regulations.
I 14 Intermediate depth disposal means that the waste 15 itself would be physically waste greater than 10 meters 16 below the land surface.
And this is generally accepted.
17 Deep well injection has been used for hazardous 18 and radioactive waste disposal.
19 Hydrof racture has been used by the Department of 20 Energy at Oak Ridge and deep geologic disposal, of course, 21 we' re all f amiliar with that.
22 I have three new ones here:
23 The concrete canister method is analogous to the 24 method.
In fact, I'll show you a slide of that.
25 Earth-mounted concrete bunker.
That was l
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developed by the French.
And people are talking about 2
engineering surf ace storage.
3 We've for a long time talked about engineered 4
surface disposal.
We have not at this time recognized 5
engineered surface disposal as a proposal.
At this time, 6
until directed otherwise, we would consider this as -- if 7
it's in an engineering structure, as storage.
8 So I just wanted to bring that point out.
9 (Slide.)
l i
10 By sanitary landfill, I mean the standard 11 land-filling techniques that you would be f amiliar with that 12 municipalities use, where they use good practice.
Standa rd O
13 lif ts, several meters thick, covered daily.
And we are 14 modeling them in two aspects, one for regulated disposal, 15 say a landfill at a low level waste disposal f acility, where 16 you would have fences around and adequate protection of the 17 public f rom wandering in and this sort of thing.
18 And the second is the municipal landfills, where 19 below regulatory concern waste might be installed.
20 21 22 23
()
25 l
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(Slide.)
2 This doesn't show up too well, but this is the 3
earth-mounted concrete bunker method that the French have 4
developed.
They take the higher activity, say, your B, C 5
and greater.
I don't know what they do with greater than C 6
plus, solidify it in drums and put it in an underground 7
vault.
Af ter they get a layer of drums on there, they pour 8
a layer of cement in, put in another layer of drums, until 9
they build up and have a large cement monolith of everything 10 grouted together.
Then they take the lower specific 11 activity wastes, say, some A wastes, Class A wastes, put it 12 in large concrete canisters and put part of them in drums (3
13l and compact it.
All of it's compacted.
Then it's covered 14 with an earth mound.
15 This is a cutaway drawing.
16 MR. EBERSOLE:
Underneath all of that complex, 17 are there systems to trace any of the leakage?
18 MR. MEIER:
The French have built in an extensive 19 monitoring system.
20i MR. EBERSOLE:
So they have monitored fixable 21 system.
It sounds like the French.
22 MR. MEIER:
It's expensive.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
But it's done right.
24 MR. MEIER:
You ' re co rrec t, sir.
It gives good e)
V 25 protection, some protection.
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MR. EBERSOLE:
They built a little bit better i
2 reactors than we do too.
3 MR. MEIER:
I can't say about that.
4 MR. EBERSOLE:
I can.
5 (Slide.)
6 MR. MEIER:
This is the concrete canister 7
method.
Basically, these concrete canisters are large, 8
several meters high, a couple of meters broad, octagonal
- 9 shaped, in this particular design.
This design was 10 presented to the State of California by Westinghouse for the 11 California disposal facility.
12 Wastes are brought into the facility, run through n'
13 a waste processing f acility, where they' re supercompacted 14 into these big canisters', and then because they' re 15 hexagonal, they can be stacked with no void space.
16 The objective is to use the waste form, the 17 supercompacted solidified waste to support the earth cover 18 and reduced infiltration.
19 So these are the methods we've looked at in our 20 analyses.
21 (Slide.)
22 Now we used three dif ferent hydrogeologic 23 climatic settings.
The reason we did this was', we found 24 through experience and field studies at various low level 25 waste disposal sites that the hydrogeology and the climate ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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really control the pathways.
2 I'll show you in a little more detail in just a 3
minute.
4 Also the nuinber of people that live there.
If 5
there's nobody living there, there's no exposure.
This sort 6
of thing.
If there's lots of people, there's more 7
exposure.
8 Also we' re bound that our standards should be 9
applicable anyplace in the United States.
So we felt we 10 should a test that is representative and that could 11 represent most places in the United States.
And we felt 12 that good site selection criteria should be used.
I stated O
13l that earlier.
Okay.
We have our site selection criteria.
14 Not that anybody intends to meet them, but we feel their 15 basic criteria, that if one is going to dispose of wastes, 16 you know, in the ground, they would be wise to use those, 17 unless they wanted to make engineering fixes.
18 It so happens our criteria -- and I have the 19 NRC's -- they' re almost identical.
We agree on this.
And 20 we felt to do a good job in the risk analysis, we had to 21 have realistic data.
So those were important criteria.
22 DR. STEINDLER:
Before you leave that slide, you 23 indicate that your standards are to be applicable anywhere.
24 Can I assume that to mean independent of 25 population density?
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MR. MEIER:
That's not our decision.
That would 2
be the licensing authority to make a decision on that.
3 DR. STEINDLER:
That's not the point I'm making.
~
4 The low level standards as indicated by your second bullet, 5
I assume you' re talking about the EPA standards.
6 MR. MEIER:
That is correct.
7 DR. STEINDLER:
They then will presumably be 8
applicable, as you say, anywhere in the U.S.
to any 9
population density?
10 MR. MEIER:
Our standards are used by the 11 licensing authority in setting up their site.
The NRC, if 12 it were the licensing authority, or the state that wa: part
('s 13 of a compact or the Department of Energy.
They would have 14 to certainly take that into consideration.
15 DR. SHERMON:
Sir, you are weaseling, whether you 16 mean to or not.
17 What criteria do you use then?
18 MR. MEIER:
Let me put it this way.
Anybody --
19 distance f rom a facility is one of the best defenses you 20 have.
We' re assuming anyone that goes looking for land for 21 a disposal site will choose a site with a relatively low 22 population density, otherwise, you know, it's not 23 reasonable.
24 So we tried to rule out -- you know, we didn't 7sb 25 oven fool with something we considered as unreasonable, ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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putting a disposal site in downtown New York would not be 2
reasonable.
Putting it in rural North Carolina, South 3
Carolina, Georgia, would be reasonable.
4 Does this get to what you were asking, sir?
5 DR. STEINDLER:
Up to a point.
I guess because 6
you apparently are considering wastes that have very long i
7 half-lives and demography in this country, the airports are 8
classical examples, have a tendency to shift -- I'm trying 9
to understand what you mean by anywhere in the United 10 States.
11 MR. GALPIN:
.e have not specified --
W 12 MR. MEIER:
We cannot second-guess where they'll
(
I
'/
13 put a disposal site.
14 MR. GALPIN:
Our best analysis includes a variety 15 of populations, pathways and critical population groups that 16 we would consider for individual exposures.
That's been a 17 few tens of meters of the site control area for individuals.
18 MR. MEIER:
When we do the analysis, we look at 19 the exposure to general populations, and we've selected 20 several dif ferent types of general populations, but we' re 21 also looking at the critical population group or the 22 individual that could living right next to the site.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:
Are these sites contiguous to s
24 rivers and subject to flood?
(
)
t-25 MR. MEIER:
Would it qualify for the NRC site ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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selection criteria?
No.
For municipal sanitary landfill, 2
we have BRC type flooding, because these selection criteria, 3
we feel there could be much less stringent.
4 DR. MARK:
Would your standard possibly be taking 5
the form that the exposure or the risk -- well, not risk, 6
but doso, at 10 meters must not be more than X, and at 100 7
meters must not be more than X over 10, or whatever, and 8
things like that.
9 MR. GALPIN:
Just the first.
But the exposure to 10 any individual must not exceed X.
11 DR. MARK:
But this individual is held back f rom 12 the site by some distance outside the fence.
(' )
13' MR. GALPIN:
Then that's not our prerogative to 14 say what that is.
15I DR. MOELLER:
That's the criteria which NRC or 16I who else will specify.
17 DR. MARK:
In licensing the site, that the re a re 18 people exposed or not.
19 DR. MOELLERs Or they'll, forbid people to be 20 closer.
21 DR. ORTH:
Does that mean there is no population 22 dose f actor going into the criteria?
23 MR. GALPIN:
We haven't as yet, because the em 24 analysis shows that we can't see where that would be
(
25 controlling in any scenario we've been able to dream up.
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MR. MEIER:
The general population just isn't 2
impacted like the critical population or the individual is.
3 The health effects have been very low, by and 4
la rge, from low level waste disposal.
5 DR. CARTER:
But once you' re siting in a densely 6
populated area, which I think is bothering Marty --
7 MR. MEIER:
I'd say my personal assessment is 8
that you really don't stand much chance of being able to 9
site a low level waste disposal site in a highly populated 10 a rea.
Now --
11 DR. CARTER:
But your criteria wouldn' t preclude 12 this, if you' re only going to address the individual dose.
n 13 MR. MEIER:
That's right.
That's up to someone 14 else.
15 DR. FOSTER:
What has been your thinking relative 16 to long-range control of the areas for land use?
You 17 obviously have two extremes.
One would be some sort of 1
18' perpetual markings equivalent to those of a high level wate 19 repository on the one hand, and on the other hand, is the 20 municipal landfill.
You've got several kinds of f acilities 21 in between there, possibly.
22 What are you thinking about, perpetual or 23 contemporary control?
24 MR. MEIER:
We' re using the same thinking that 3
(#
25 the NRC used.
Well, possibly used, in developing 10 CFR 61.
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We feel it is not prudent to rely on institutional controls i
2 beyond 100 years.
3 We' re assuming that the authorities that license 4
the site will insist that there be monitoring, this, that 5
and the other, and can do that for 100 years, but that this 6
may collapse.
We see the possibility that there would be 7
certain covenants on land use that might go beyond 100 l
8 years.
We' re primarily looking at institutional control up 9
to 100 ' yea rs.
Thereaf ter, it's quite often fair game.
10 MR. GALPIN:
Federal law requires that a low 11 level waste site that's closed, and after the active 12 instititutional period, goes to some government, be held 13 the reaf ter.
In the case of commercial facilities, it 14 provides that it can be turned over to the Federal 15 Government, with DOE being the holder there of the site, 16 although state government could still hold it.
17 If it refers to DOE sites, why it's supposed to i
18 remain within the federal sector, as far as ownership is 19 concerned, and we are considering that there will be 20 ba rrie rs, if you will, intruder barriers, such as NRC has 21 prescribed.
22 DR. FOSTER:
Does your whole landfill concept 23 fall within that?
24 MR. GALPIN:
The regulated landfill?
O 25 DR. FOSTER:
Yes.
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1 MR. MEIER:
It would.
It would be within the I
2 boundaries of a licensed low level waste disposal facility 3
and would be set aside and be monitored for 100 years and 4
would be passed over to an appropriate authority.
5 DR. STEINDLER:
Is that a description of the 6
cu rrent regulations on regulated landfill?
7 MR. GALPIN:
This is regulated landfill for 8
radiactive disposal.
9 DR. STEINDLER:
I'm talking about regulated 10 landfill for nonradioactive disposal.
11 MR. GALPIN:
The only place we' re considering 12 those is in the context of below regulatory concern waste.
13 DR. STEINDLER:
What does the current regulation 14 say about hazardous chemical waste sites landfill control?
15 MR. MEIER:
Landfilling is used.
In some 16 respects, I think it's more landfilling.
And mixing of the 17 waste with direct and soil, that is used for a method of 18 disposal for some hazardous wastes, but that is a special 19 application.
.20 We' re thinking more of trash, where the specific 21 activity would be handled much like municipal.
22 DR. STEINDLER:
With short half-lives.
23 DR. MOELLER:
We' re intorrupting you a lot, Lou.
24 MR. MEIER:
No problem.
I'm here to answer your O
25 questions.
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DR. MOELLER:
Well, we'll move along.
2 (Slide.)
3 MR. MEIER:
This more or less illustrates what I 4
meant by your hydrogeology and climate af fect your pathway.
5 If you have a humid climate and a permeable disposal medium, 6
any rain f ailling on the trench, some of it may infiltrate, 7
and if it does infiltrate, percolate through the waste, 8'
you'll get some activity from the waste and move on down 9
through the disposal media to the nearest aquifer and be 10 available and be transported by groundwater.
11 And we have found this to occur in existing 12 site.
bI 13 li (Slide.)
i l
14l On the other hand, if you have a low permeability 15l disocsal medium, suf ficiently low that any water entering 16 the trench cannot drain out the bottom faster than it comes 17 !
in, it will fill like a bathtub and flow over the land 18 surf ace to the nearest stream, and you have contamination 19 here of the streams, but very little groundwater 20 contamination, or if there is, it would be very little and 21 at a much greater period.
22 (Slide.)
23 In the Southwest, where it's dry, we found that i
24 some rain, even when you have less than 5 inches por year, 25 some water does infiltrate and our projections and the ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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U.S.G.S. projections are that some will eventually get to 2
the groundwater.
When it does get to the groundwater, it 3
will be transported at the rate of groundwater movement, but 4
it's slowed down f rom here to here.
And then the movement 5
goes on at a normal rate.
6 (Slide.)
7 This may be hard for you to read.
8 In modeling the risk, we found that we needed 9
five models.
Three of our models deal with modeling general 10 population risk and two models deal with looking at the 11 critical population or individuals exposures.
12 PRESTO-EPA-POP looks at all shallow exposures.
It's used i
13 for low level waste and NARM, and it does the risk for the 14 general population.
15 DEEP looks at all deep disposal methods, and it 16 does risks to populations.
17 Our CPG looks at shallow and deep methods, and it 18 does the dose to the critical population group.
19 PRESTO-EPA-BRC looks at municipal sanitary 20 landfills and has many more pathways, which Floyd showed you 21 that one might encounter, that are waste being disposed of l
22 in a municipal landfill.
Fires, people coming on-site, 23 garbago collectors, hauling the waste to it.
But that does 24 the general populations.
()
25 And JATHRAE looks at the exposure to the critical l
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population group for individuals.
2 (Slide.)
3 You can't see all this, but this will show you 4
our models look at all the different pathways that we can 5
think of that are generally modeled in the transport model.
~
6 Graundwater, surf ace water, atmospheric, l
7 ingestion of all kinds of foodstuf fs in water.
1 8
1 9
10 11 12 13 j
14 i
15 1
16 gy i
18 l
19 i
20 21 22 23 l
24 O
25 i
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(Slide.)
2
.This shows our atmospheric pathways.
The 3
standard is EPA's air dose.
t 4
(Slide.)
5 This shows you -- it gives you an aspect of how 6
we -- the dif ference between our critical population group 7
modeling and our general population group modeling.
j This is the site boundary, and the critical 8
7 9
population group modeling takes in the area immediately i
10 outside the site boundary, and the model calculates a 11 maximum annual body dose and the year of occurrence.
12l Actually, we have got it plotted so that we can 13 tell f rom year 1 to the year 10,000 what the maximum dose 14 was and also what the critical impact was.
15 It also gives the atmospheric dose 16 The general population group models look at a 17 local population, a normal, say, f arm community or a small' 18 town downstream which might use water or receive wind-blown 19 debris.
20 For example, we have used a farm community a 21 thousand meters away, a small town of about 200 people 22 drinking f rom the stream about three kilometers away, and we 23 have used a small rural population liviro in the desert 24 about 30 kilometers away in our scenarios.
25 So that is the general, and we run the ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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calculations f rom 1 to 10,000 years.
2 Primarily, the assessments we use for the local 3
cutof f at 1000 years unless we have reason to think we 4
should carry it any further, and then any devices that are i
5 not consumed by the local population we assume are 6
transformed out to the regional basin and stream and then 7
consumed by the basin population.
8 The basin population is generally, we consider, 9
much larger than the local population.
I 10 DR. ORTH:
To what extent have components of your 11 models been validated?
l 12 MR. MEIER:
I will get right to that.
(
13 DR. CARTER:
Lou, let me ask you something a 14 little bit more fundamental.
15 If you are only going to set for this -- I 16 presume in a radiological sense -- an individual dose, how 17 do you f actor in all the population modeling, and so forth, 18 in that number?
19 MR. MEIER:
We have not tried to tackle that 20 because we couldn't get anybody to give us any good advice.
21 We assume the population stays the same for the duration of 22 the modeling period.
There in too much controversy on that, 23 and we didn't know how that would happen, so we would assume 24 the population stayed about the same.
()
i i
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
I presume, of course, you use the ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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old cal factors and other things or other means for 2
concentrating radionuclidos?
3 MR. MEIER:
Oh, yes, it is various 4
sophisticated.
It is probably one of the more sophisticated 5
parts of the model.
6 DR. SHEWMON:
What f raction of the released 7
radioactivity goes out in the ocean and what fraction gets 8
consumed?
9 MR. MEIER:
Okay.
I can' t answer everything that 10 is not consumed by the basin, by the local and the basin 11 population, but I don't know the particular f raction.
12 MR. EBERSOLE:
Whatever they don' t consumo
()
U 13 eventually gpos to the ocean.
14 MR. MEIER:
I can toll you --
15 DR. SHEWMON:
I guess I am looking for 90 porcent 16 !
ends up in the ocean or 90 percent of it ends up in the 17; population.
I 18i MR. GALPIN:
It depends on the setting.
19 MR. MEIUR:
In our local population we have dono 20 some studios on that because we were asked about that.
21 Should wo do something about that?
So we calculated how 22 much the local population would have, and that was 51 23 percent of the total nuclidos.
So I didn't carry it past 24 the region.
7,( )
25 DR. SHEWMON:
Your wording earlier suggestod that ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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wasn't the way you had done it.
2 (Slide.)
3 MR. MEIER:
What have we done to validate our 4
models?
l 5
Okay, there is a new model built for us, to our 6
design, because we need to take into account our risk 7
assessment methodology.
l 8
Also, we felt that the existing models at the l
l 9
time did not have something we felt were important.
Eve ry 10 model underwent a quality assurance audit by an outside team 11 to make sure that as best as possible they could calculate 12 it directly.
13 Then we had a peer review of national and l
14 international experts, people f rom the national labs, the 15 agencies, Canada, France, and they made some recommendations 16 which were very good and really helped us improve our 17 models.
They made at least 10 major r%ommendations which 18 we incorporated into our model.
Sa we improve that.
l l
19 Extensive testing and usage.
We have literally 20 run thousands of models, and when you run that many runs, 21 you find out when there is something funny going on.
So we 22 found it looks that way.
23 sensitivity testing and review, I will discuss 24 that in just a minute.
25 And we have just -- thank God -- finished the ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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Science Advisory Board review and have made some changes 2
based on their recommendations, and I will discuss what they 3
said in that review.
4 We are also doing intercomparison.
Argonne, I 5
think, is responsible for testing some low level waste 6
transport models.
They sent a guy down to our place for 7
three days to learn how to run our code.
We gave him the i
8 tape, put it on the machine.
It ran the first time, and he i
j 9
got the test results.
10 We have had the USGS review our groundwater 11 pathway, which in almost every case we have found is the 12 critical pathway, except for surf ace water, and surface 131 water was not generally as important as the groundwater.
14 And we have had review and use by others, a 15 number of groups.
Canada, the universities, and industry 1
16 have asked us for copies.
We have let them have it.
l 17 And a doctoral student at Penn State the other
.l 18 day just called us up and said, hey, there is something 19 funny looking. here, something I hadn' t used before, and he i
20 found a glitch.
I j
21 So we are fixing it, but we don' t have all the i
22 bugs out and probably won't for another few years.
But we 23 think it is reasonably reliable.
24 Does that answer your question?
O
, 25 DR. ORTH:
Well, close.
You are finding that i
1 ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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people can put inputs and calculate in various methods and 2
get consistent and reasonable answers, but the real question 3
is experimental validation.
Do any of the answers relate to 4
the real world?
5 The reason I ask that question is that on 6
reviewing a series of models there were many, many 7
statements that people had validated it by showing that the 8
same calculation came out as you got by a hand calculation
~
9 of the same data, showing that the computer really did 10 calculate the same thing as you would calculate by hand, but 11 neither of these of course relating at all to what really 12 happened in the environment.
}
13 MR. MEIER:
In partial response to that, 14 Dr. Hahn, who developed several of the submodels --
15 everything was checked by hand calculation before we did the 16 printing.
They are analytical one-dimensional models.
17 I think Dr. Auxler f rom Health Physics Society i
18 wrote us a letter asking us -- or one of the things he was 19 suggesting that they should validate are codes, and we have 20 just sent him a response saying thank you, could you give us 21 some suggestions of how best to do that?
22 As soon as we get a response, we will run it by 23 him.
24 MR. GALPIN:
The problem is our models show that O
25 you don't get the releases and the exposure to people until ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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you are in the hundreds of years.
We don't know of any data 2
that exists that has wastes that has been anywhere for 3
hundreds of years that you can weigh against it.
4 DR. ORTH:
That is not quite right, in the sense 5
that there are a lot of places where you have wastes that 6
have been there for 30 years, and it is simple enough, if 7
you are trying to validate something in cooperation with 8
other agencies, to drill a hole down to the spot where it 9
says it will be in 30 years as opposed to several hundred 10 years.
So you can track.
11 MR. MEIER:
I can respond to you f rom that point 12 of view.
I was thinking about the overall model validation
<mU 13 for, for instance, infiltration, movement through the 14 trench, infiltration to the water table, and transport by 15 the groundwater.
16 We do have some known measurements there.
At 17 least we know where the waste contamination has gotten to 18 within 30-some odd year's.
19 Now, our calculations agree with some field data 20 at the site, but that is only for 30 years.
So, you know --
21 DR. ORTH:
That is why my original question was:
22 have components of it been tested?
23 Thank you.
24 (Slide.)
(s)
\\_/
25 MR. MEIER:
Our sensitivity tests primarily were ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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done to test code logic, reliability, identify sensitive 2
pa rame te rs, test the effects of parameters with wide ranges 3
of values or large degrees of uncertainty, understand what 4
happens under different disposal conditions, what is going 5
on, and to evaluate controversial parameter values.
6 One group disagreed with some of the parameters 7
we were using and were vitally interested.
So what we did, 8
we ran our standard parameter; aquifer parameter values for 9
that setting, and we ran the ones they recommended, and 10 really looking at it over even a couple of hundred years, 11 there was a significant dif ference.
12 (Slide.)
13 Our sensitivity testing -- we are in the final-14 stages of testing our general population and CPG models.
We 15 made the calculation but are awaiting interpretation of our 16 DEEP, and we just haven't gotten to the others yet.
17 I would say this, though.
This group all are 18 sort of variations on a theme, and we expect if this is 19 reliable, most of this will be reliable.
Only the sections 20 that have been changed would not be reliable.
21 (Slide.)
22 You can't see this too well, but we have made 40 23 and 60-some odd test runs with the POP and CPG.
The 24 parameters tested -- we have tested 19 and 20-some odd for O
25 POP and CPG, rCSpectively.
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1 In both models we have never found a case where 2
the parameter was always sensitive, but we found almost 3
universally the parameters we tested were sensitive 4
sometimes and they were important someti*%s, and we only 5
found one that may be never sensitive.
6 You have to take into account we didn't test all 7
parameters just blindly.
We selected the ones we thought 8
would be the most sensitive and most important and worked on 9
them first.
10 (Slide.)
11 This summarizes some of the major comments by our 12 Science Advisory Board.
They looked at was our modeling in
(
13 enough detail.
We are trying to compare alternatives, but 14 do it in a realistic manner.
15; They felt that considering the goodness of the 16 data we have got to model with and the details that we have 17 got and since we are trying to compare alternatives, the 1-D 18 analytical model is appropriate.
19 The pathways covered they felt were adequate.
20 The scenarios covered they felt were adequate.
21 The disposal options covered they felt were 22 adequate if we went ahead and considered several that we had 23 not completed testing but had said we would.
24 So we are going to go forward with testing the O
25 concrete canister.
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They recommended we cut back to one significant 2
digit on our risk assessments.
We are thinking about that.
3 That is an editorial point.
4 They recommend that we limit our risk assessment 5
to hundreds of years.
We originally considered for the
~
6 period of analysis a thousand years.
That was back two or 7
three years ago.
8 Then an earlier Science Advisory Board 9
recommended that the high level standard go out to 10,000 10 years.
We felt we had better do it, too.
So we increased 11 our period of analysis to go to 10,000.
12 This recent board said that uncertainty beyond a
/~';
()
13 few hundred years is so great that we don't think it merits 14' much further than a few hundred yeare.
So what we have done 15i as a matter of compromise is we are going to show the risk l
16 or dose at one, five, and ten hundred years, or a thousand 17 ye a rs.
18 We are calculating to 10,000 in some cases.
We 19 think it is advisable, particularly in an arid climate, 20 where things move much more slowly.
21 One important thing you would probably be 22 interested in would be how do we calculate risk?
We we re 23 using an average risk, and they recommend very strongly that 24 we go to a relative risk calculation except where we are i
25 already doing absolutes.
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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We have not made our proposed standard sche.fple 2
by making only internal changes to the code.because there is 3
a lot of data to fix up there.
4 So for the proposed standard we will use a fudge 5
factor, one that approximates what it is within a few 6
pe rcen t, and for tne final standard we have been promised to 7
have the code.
8 And we were asked to correct the carbon-14 source 9
term, which we have done.
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
' O 25 l
l l
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DR. STEINDLER:
What do you mean by relative 2
risk?
Relative to what?
)
3 MR. MEIER:
You asked me something I don' t know 4
much about.
Go ahead, Floyd.
5 MR. GALPIN:
This is a matter of relative risk 6
talking about risk as a percentage of increase as compared 7
to the methodology of an absolute risk, which is talking 8
about an absolute number of increased per units of 9
exposure.
10 The way that the risk had been calculated in our 11 first runs that they reviewed, as well as that we've done on 12 other standards, nobody else came down with a decision as to
(
13 one being better than the other.
14 We had used an average between absolute risk and 15 relative risk.
And what we had done, that the Science 16 Advisory Board was telling us in the last review, 17 particularly, I think, based on some of the work that the 18 National Institutes of Health had done looking at their 19 causation, was that they felt that for most of the organ 20 risks, we should use a relative risk f actor rather than this 21 averaging technique that we had applied up to that time.
22 DR. MARK:
Does that mean that this is relative 23 risk in the same sense that it appears in your committee?
24 MR. GALPIN:
Co rrec t.
O 25 DR. CARTER:
What kind of averaging do you use?
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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I remember, in the cast of TMI, the task group that looked 2
at the averaging used the geometric average relative to 3
risk.
4 MR. GALPIN:
The way we had it was more 5
arithmetic than the previous risks.
It was weighted some.
6 MR. MEIER:
Really, the last point that I wanted 7
to cover on my presentation was that C-14, it was a minor 8
point in detail, but it was a big point in our risk 9
assessm'ent.
In our original source term, we used the NRC 10 source term f rom their final EIS and our loading of carbon 11 14 in our standard at a 250,000 cubic meter type facility.
12 We' re using an average facility size of 250,000
(\\
U 13 cubic meters.
And that was 90,000 curies of garbon 14.
14 Carbon 14 is a bad actor because our basic assumption is 15 that when water hits it, it's dissolved and it moves into 16 tl.e groundwate r.
And it's got a long half-life.
17 So with 90,000 curies, that was the worst nuclide 18 we had in there.
Okay, we organized an interagency data 19 collection program -- DOE, USGS and the NRC all 20 participated.
We got new data gathered.
21 Now it looks like it's approximately 5,000 curies 22 when applied to a site.
That makes it a lot better.
23 So that's all I have, Dade.
24 DR. SHEWMON:
What's the main thing that changed 25 this?
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MR. MEIER:
End sources.
End source is a type of 2
low level waste.
And the FEIS document that listed this as 3
an activity had much more activity in there than really we 4
found to be the case.
5 DR. SHEWMON:
So you don' t assume a different, 6
more stable chemical form?
That's just that the estimate of 7
what was there was wrong?
8 MR. GALPIN:
What happened apparently, a 9
contractor for NRC data said that we had picked up 10 originally, had realized there was some carbon in the 11 sealed sources or end sources, whatever the category is 12 called.
}
13 And they snicked a small percentage because of 14 the high curie value of those end sources.
But it still 15 came out to be a very high number of curies that was being 16 projected.
17 DR. SHEWMON:
Is an end source a neutron source?
18 MR. GALPIN:
It's a sealed source.
That type of 19 a waste stream.
20 (Slide.)
21 MR. MEIER:
High specific activity doesn't 22 necessarily mean a large dose or a large number of health 23 effects.
This is what we tried to look at with this i
24 interagency effort.
The sources of carbon 14, total carbon 25 14 in the low level waste source.
We called companies to l
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see.
The chemical form is very important, the mechanism, 2
the rate of release of carbon 14 from the trenches, and 3
where does carbon 14 go af ter disposal.
4 You see, there are two alternatives.
We know 5
that methane and CO2 are generated af ter disposal, just by 6
the decomposition.
Both contain carbon.
And we've got 7
measurements showing that carbon 14 is in the methane in the 8
CO2, but which does it prefer?
9 We were hoping this would give us the answer.
10 What we got was two different answers.
11 DR. CARTER:
Let me ask you a question about 12 carbon 14 now.
According to current 10 CFR 20 at least, 13 medical facilities are allowed to be exempt f rom discharging 14 into the environmental essentially 5 curies per yeir, as I 15 remember that.
16 The question is how many of those are there and 17 how much can be discharged to the environment just on a 18 routine basis?
I suspect it's thousands of curies.
I don't 19 know if they're making that much.
20 MR. MEIER:
I'm sure the NRC staff would be able 21 to tell you right away.
22
( Laughte r. )
23 MR. GALPIN:
But there are a combination of 24 incinerators in hospitals -- excreta, things such as that.
O 25 There's a lot of carbon 14 that is going out.
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DR. CARTER:
My point is you' re talking about a 2
source term of about 5,000 curies or so.
I suspect a lot 3
more than that is exempt at the moment.
That's the only 4
point I make on a relative basis.
You've already exempted 5
larger amounts.
6 MR. MEIER:
That may be true.
The NRC, when they 7
put out the material justifying the exemption, I'm sure they 8
did an estimate.
9 MR. GALPIN:
It seems what they did on the 10 scintillation files, you'd certainly have to add on a lot of 11 other sources to get up to the kind of volumes you' re 12 talking about.
(-
13 I DR. CARTER:
The point is that's the legal limit 14 curies per facility per year.
15 MR. GALPIN:
It would be nice to have a carbon 16 14, the man-produced carbon 14 balance done, because there 17 are real unknowns f rom all that is produced for commercial 18 use.
Where does it all go?
19 DR. MOELLER:
Ca rson?
20 DR. MARK:
In treating your carbon 14, do you 21 have in your arithmetic the amount of carbon 12 that would 22 be associated with that, too?
23 MR. GALPIN:
We have specific activity-type doses 24 as for the carbon 14.
('i
\\-
25 MR. MEIER:
What we have found, if the geologic ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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disposal medium is carbon-poor, there's not much exchange 2
for the carbon 12 and the carbon 14.
If it's in a 3
carbon-rich environment, there may be some geologic exchange 4
of the medium.
5 DR. MARK:
The waste itself is capable of having 6
tremendous amounts of carbon in it.
7 MR. MEIER:
Ce rtainly.
We've got information on 8
the chemistry of the carbon 14 and the form it's in.
- And, 9
as I say, one group said part of it goes off as gas and 10 there would be much less impact.
And another group said it 11 would go with the groundwater, which would be greater 12 impact.
(~)
(/
13i So, because of the conflicting information, we l
14l chose to let it go to the groundwater, to be prudent.
15 MR. GALPIN:
But, at the dose calculation point 16 in the calculation, we used classifical specific activity I
17l type calculations for carbon.
I 18 DR. MARK:
Total carbon?
19 MR. GALPIN:
Right.
20 DR. MOELLER:
I gather that you gave your SAB 21 obviously a written preliminary draf t of some sort?
22 MR. GALPIN:
Right.
23 DR. MOELLER:
Then they gave you a written 24 report.
When did this take place?
Six months ago?
25 MR. GALPIN:
We just sent our response to that ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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report January 13th, 15th, something like that, by the 2
administrator.
Their report came out, I believe, in 3
November or December.
4 MR. MEIER:
October.
5 DR. MOELLER:
Do you think it would be of any use 6
to us to read that report?
7 MR. GALPIN:
I think what might be useful to you 8
is to get the document that the Administrator signed to the 9
Science Advisory Board.
It has the summary of their 10 comments and our responses.
11 DR. MOELLER:
Okay.
Could you maybe provide that 12 to us?
13 MR. MEIER:
We'd be glad to.
14 DR. MOELLER:
Are there other questions or 15 comments?
i 16 Carson.
17 DR. MARK:
I just wanted to express mild 18 disappointment that you weren't putting in the occupational 19 exposure with the radiological risk.
It seems to me it 20 matters just as much whether a guy gets so many rem if he 21 works there as the fellow whose down the street.
22 MR. MEIER:
That's on the site and we don't go 23 inside the fence.
24 DR. MARK:
You look at that site in such detail l
that you must have had that data within easy reach.
25 l
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MR. MEIER:
We have looked at occupational 2
exposure for unregulated disposal.
We've certainly looked 3
at that in detail.
4 MR. GALPIN:
This standard can't apply to that 5
route of exposure.
6 DR. MARK:
I am thinking that the total number of 7
manrems, a significant number, it's in this society.
It 8
spreads around.
9 MR. GALPIN:
The agency's working with NRC, DOE 10 and other agencies to come forward with federal guidance on 11 occupational exposure as such.
We could see no way to 12 integrate it into this.
\\-
13 DR. MARK:
I didn't really want to sound like I 14 was complaining; it was only wishing.
15 MR. GALPIN:
The other thing I'd mention in 16 response, I think it's to some interesting points that Mel 17 has brought up here, we are not locked in.
We did not 18 consider a manrem value or a population risk value as a part 19 of the standard.
That's not the question.
20 We certainly haven't seen a way to get at it as 21 yet.
We certainly never found situations in a scenario to 22 be set up where the population risk would be a limiting 23 controlling relevant factor.
24 DR. CARTER:
But you' re almost precluded.
s 25 MR. MEIER:
I don' t see a blackboard here but, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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gene rally, if you can follow my hands, the curve f rom high 2
level waste, if we look at, say, with a low level waste for 3
a typical facility, we believe it will be something like one 4
million curies going out.
Our best estimate.
5 And you really get a curve like this for low 6
level waste.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:
What would the high level waste 8
curve look like?
9 MR. MEIER:
That's what I was going to do.
10 That's why we don't feel the general population is at risk.
11 It's going to be something like this.
That's not to scale 12 or anything, but in principle.
You' re not even seeing
('/)
x_
13' anything until, say, around 10,000 years.
14 And then you' re getting an increase.
15 DR. SHEWMON:
What is CI that you' re plotting i
i 16' he re?
17 1 MR. MEIER:
Curies.
18 DR. SHEWMON:
Curies.
Where?
19 i MR. MEIER:
Okay.
Actually, you've helped me in 1
20 a logic error here.
21 DR. CARTER:
Are these curies in the accessible 22 environment?
23 MR. MEIER:
This is total activity.
So the l
24 actual release will be something down in here.
(
)
25 MR. EBERSOLE:
Your red line is on the hypothesis ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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that you' re going to treat high level waste like you intend 2
to treat it.
Suppose we treat high level waste just like 3
we' re treating low level waste?
Then what's the reposito ry 4l look like?
5 MR. MEIER:
I'm not sure what the original 6
loading was.
You'd be decades above as far as total 7
activity in tha original.
I don' t know how many curies goes 8
into high' level.
It's about a million going into low level 9
waste.
10 MR. EBERSOLE:
It would be a lot more curies but 11 somewhat more easy to define.
12 MR. MEIER:
And also, for instance, for
(/
s-13 g roundwater transport, we never saw any transuranics or any 14l of the heavy metals, because they just weren' t transpo rted.
15 MR. EBERSOLE:
You say there'd be a great many 16 more curies but it would be in a much more, manageable state.
17 MR. MEIER:
It would be hemogenous because, with 18I the low level waste, you' re dealing with heterogenous.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:
The transportability is the 20 p roblem, isn't it?
21 MR. MEIER:
It sure is.
22 MR. EBERSOLE:
So the high level waste would be 23 fixed and solid.
24 DR. CARTER:
I guess I'm still a little troubled (3
\\'J 25 by your figures.
It would appear to me if you' re plotting ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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now here curies in the accessible environment with the low 2
level, you' re still going to be quite low initially and 3
you' re going to build up to some peak in a ralatively short 4
period of time.
And then, by a thousand years, you'll 5
essentially have nothing or very close to it.
6 MR. MEIER:
The total amount in the site without 7
the heat transport at a thousand years, it's down to I think 8
approximately 700 curies.
And much of that would not have 9
even been transferred.
At 10,0 0 0 yea rs, it's down to 400.
10 DR. CARTER:
Essentially, insignificant.
11 MR. MEIER:
We carried our risk calculations out 12 and only in one case to 10,000 years, just to test it.
And ps
\\
13 only in one case do you get any increase in activity af ter a 14 thousand years.
And at 10,000, you' re still going up.
15 But it was still.3 something millirem in 10,000 16 years, which is ve ry, ve ry low.
17 DR. MARK:
A different way of harping on the 18 point that I've been harping on.
When that has been 19 transported and in place, the whole million curies are there 20 and the guy's only a meter away f rom it.
21 22 23 24 7s i
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25 l
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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DR. FOSTER:
Also your curve there doesn' t really 2
get to the bottom line of health ef fects, because your total 3
quantity of curies represents curies with dif ferent kinds of 4
radionuclides.
So this is changing.
The health effects 5
associated with these are going to change drastically.
6 MR. GALPIh:
Actually, they do change with the 7
nuclides, but anomalous or for gratuitous reasons, not 8
drastically, f rom that kind of a shaped curve.
9 MR. MEIER:
I guess, if I migdt make a 10 semiclosing statement, in finishing my address to you, we've 11 tried to take into account what the NRC has done in 10 CFR 12 61.
We've kept them informed of what we' re doing.
Our
-( m,
'sJ 13 source term that we' re using, we feel is extremely 14 compatible with theirs.
I don't think there's a significant 15 dif ference there.
We feel that the setting that the 16 facility should be put into, if it meets our criteria, it'll 17 meet thei> criteria or vice versa, and we' re trying to 18 model.
19 Now one thing you may not understand about 10 CPR 20 61, or you probably do, but I'd like to explain it f rom my 21 point of view.
22 Class A waste gets one kind of treatment.
It 23 doesn't have to be stabilized.
It goes into a trench with a 24 couple of meters of fill over it.
'~
25 Class B waste can go into the same type trench ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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( v~'NDAVbw I
with a couple of meters of fill over it, but.t has to be 2
stabilized.
3 And Class C waste, as I understand it, goes into 4
a trench, but has at least five meters and it has to be 5
stabilized.
It has at least five meters of fill over it.
6 We' re taking that into account when we do our 7
modeling, when we evaluate 10 CFR 61.
8 DR. MOELLER:
Okay.
9 One more?
10 DR. STEINDLER:
Yes.
What is the form of the 11 standard that you folks are going to come up with?
Is it 12 going to look like the high level waste standard, where you
(}[])
13 have a total release of X years f rom the human waste?
14 MR. GALPIN:
As presently anticipated, that was 15 really an outline of the way we anticipated the standard 16 looking, as we originally went over it, and it would 17 primarily be expressed in terms of millrem per year for 18 performance objective and millirem per year in criteria for 19 below regulatory concern, a concentration for the drinking 20 water, for the groundwater.
21 DR. STEINDLER:
The millirem per year will be 22 based on your scenarios of a typical disposal site?
23 MR. GALPIN:
What we' re doing, we ' re not 24 forcing our models on anybody.
The reason we've gone
?O
( y./
25 through all this analysis is to be able to lay out for ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202 347 3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336 6646
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our management the public and the background informatikon 2
document, and whoever is going to evaluate this, several 3
forms of proof.
4 Number one, the kind of standard that we' re 5
setting is obtainable, reasonable and what the cost impact 6
and health impact of it might be on a generic nationwide 7
basis.
8 DR. STEINDLER:
All right.
Let me ask one other 9
question.
10 Do you intend to have a close relationship 11 between the risk standard that you issued for high level 12 waste, which can be translated into the same kind of
()
13 exposure doses as you've indicated in the low level waste?
14 MR. GALPIN:
We don' t see a precedent having been 15 set in terms of 1000 or 10,000 years, that kind of thing?
16 DR. STEINDLER:
The 1000 deaths in 10,000 years.
17 MR. GALPIN:
We don't see that setting a 18 precedent for us here; no.
19 DR. STEINDLER:
Would you expect a low level 20 waste standard to be significantly greater, in terms of 21 acceptable risk than the high level waste center?
22 MR. GALPIN:
The calculation that we' re making, 23 the population risks are going to be lower.
24 DR. STEINDLER:
So I can back calculate and 25 assume that the population is going to represent less than l
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC,
)
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1000 deaths in 10,000 years equivalent?
2 MR. GALPIN:
It depends on what basis you use.
3 That was per so many tons of metric milling.
4 DR. STEINDLER:
Fine.
I can back calculate to 5
the waste content.
6 MR. GALPIN:
I'm not sure I'm following you.
7 DR. STEINDLER:
You' re high level waste standard 8
was for 1000 metric tons of heavy metal equivalent.
I can 9
calculate or estimate the number of curies that are in there 10 and relate that to a total curie content of low level 11 waste.
12 I'm trying to see whether or not the re 's some (lll 13 relationship.
14 MR. MEIER:
We ' re looking at it several dif ferent 15 ways, plus the average waste for the United States.
16 DR. STEINDLER:
That's not my point.
My point 17 is, I'm trying to find out, is there some relationship I
18 between your high level waste population risk criterion and 19 your low level waste population risk criterion.
And since 20 you' re setting the standards for acceptable risks for the 21 country, you've already done so in one case, is there going 22 to be some relationship between that and what you expect for 23 the high level?
24 MR. GALPIN:
We don't anticipate setting a
(
25 population risk criterion.
This is the kind of question ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800 336-6646
5800 14 05 750 ijDAVbw 1
Mel was brinking up.
Should we, and I say it's not out of 2
the question, but at the present time, we haven't 3
anticipated doing that.
We' re saying that individual risk 4
criteria, which is most properly weighed against the 5
individual risk criterion that's in the high level waste I
6 standa rd, right now we' re looking at using the same number, 7
25 millirem per year.
8 MR. MEIER:
For a typical site, our calculations 9
show maybe a couple of deaths per 10,000 years, you know.
10 Health effects per 10,000 years under most conditions.
So I 11 don't know.
The impact on the individual, if it's not 12 disposed of properly, can be significant.
('-)
13 DR. MOELLER:
Mel, and then Ron.
14 DR. CARTER:
Th roughout, of course, the high 15l level standard essentially is tied rather closely to 40 CFR 16 190.
I guess the question is, is there expectation that 17 this might also?
18 MR. GALPIN:
Some parts of it.
Certainly, the 19 operational part.
We' re talking about basically the same 20' kind of technology.
Also we realize that NRC's got Part 61 21 in place with a performance objective of 25.
It would be 22 hard to justify 22, 20 or 27, when you've got that in 23 place.
24 We see no basis, if it's in that ballpark -- no 25 basin to change.
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DR. CARTER:
So they might reasonably expect that 2
they'd be somewhat parallel.
3 DR. MOELLER:
Ron?
4 MR. KATHREN:
I had the same question.
5 DR. MOELLER:
Okay.
6 Any other questions or comments?
7 (No response. )
8 DR. MOELLER:
With that, let me thank Lou Meier 9
and Floyd Galpin and Shelly Meyer for coming f rom EPA today 10 to brief us on this.
11 It's no simple task.
You readily see how complex 12, it is, but we hear what you' re doing.
/~
13' I think with that then, we will conclude this 14 three-day joint meeting of our subcomittees and talk our 15 recorder once again for sticking with us today, as well as 16 the members of the public who were interested enough to come 17 and listen and share thoughts with us.
18 With those comments, I declare the meeting 19 adjourned.
20 (Whereupon at 1:05 p.m., the Joint Subcommittee 21 meeting was adjourned.)
22 23 24 O
25 ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
c 202-347-3700 Nationwideh J M3366646
CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the matter of:
NAME OF PROCEEDING:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS SUBCOMMITTEE ON WASTE MANAGEMENT and SUBCOMMITTEE ON REACTOR RADIOLOGICAL EFFECTS l
f DOCKET NO.:
I I
PLACE:
WASHINGTON, D.
C.
DATE:
FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 1986 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
1 (sigt)
(TYPED) h DAVID L.
HOFFMAN Official Reporter ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS INC.
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. SCIENCE SUBPANEL ON RESEARCH I
AGENDA FOR RADIOFREQUENCY HEALTH EFFECTS
=
MEMBERS R. ADEY, CHAIRMAN (VA)
D. JANES (EPA)
M. SHORE (HHS)
E. POSTOW (DOD) l
~
O O
O SCIENCE SUBPANEL ON i
RESEARCH AGENDA FOR RADIOFREQUENCY HEALTH EFFECTS
~
SOME POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATIONS e SUBSTANTIVE BODY OF EXPER! MENTAL DATA INDICATES PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS FROll1 E.M. FIELDS AT LEVELS BELOW TISSUE HEATING e UNDERLYING MECHANISMS NOT BASED ON EQUILIBRIUM THE.RMODY5AMICS. RESEARCH NEEDED TO ESTABLISH l
NATUR$ OF MECHANISMS e INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAMS NEEDED FOR RESEARCH -
PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENTISTS f
u
-O O
O SCIENCE SUBPANEL ON RESEARCH AGENDA FOR RADIOFREQUENCY HEALTH EFFECTS SOME POSSIBL8 RECOMMENDATIONS (cont'd) e SPECIFIC RESEARCH GOALS:
- EFFECTS IN EMBRYONIC AND FETAL SYSTEMS
- IMMUNE SYSTEM RESPONSES
- EMPHASIS WHERE MIGHT LEAD TO MALIGNANT DISEASE
- BRAIN AND CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM RESPONSES
- BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS
- STRESS RESPONSES
- PHYSICAL MECHANISMS
- EPIDEMIO.L.OGl. CAL STUDIES OF POTENTIAL INDUSTRIAL AND DOMESTIC HEALTH HAZARDS e RESEARCH NEEDS LONG-TERM FUNDING FOR QUALITY
i
-O O
o
(
1 l
ADDRESS THE RADIATION RESEARCH AGENDA MEMBEP9 L
)
M. ROSENSTEIN, CHAIRMAN (HHS)
G.BEEBE (HHS)
C. EISENHAUER (DOC) l C. STROUD (DOD)
\\
l R. THOMAS (DOE)
-o o
o SCIENCE PANEL RECOMMENDATION #3 l
PREPARE AN UPDATED
SUMMARY
OF FEDERAL RADIATION RESEARCH e USE RESEARCH CATEGORIES IN PREVIOUS IRRC l
EFFORTS
- COMPARE FY '81 AND FY '85 DATA
- EXPLORE OTHER CATEGORIES OF CIRRPC INTEREST CIRRPC SECRETARIAT / FEDERAL LIAISONSISCIENCE PANEL
NCRP REVIEW AND ASSESSMENT OF U.S. POPULATION RADIATION EXPOSURE l
- ORAU SUPPORT PROVIDED l
- FIRST QUARTERLY REPORT OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURES MEDICAL EXPOSURES EXPOSURES FROM NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE e FINAL REPORT ASSIGNED TO SCIENTIFIC 1
COMMITTEE 48, ASSESSMENT OF EXPOSURES CONTRIBUTED BY VARIOUS j
SOURCES j
eDRAFT REPORT AVAILABLE END FY '86 l
t l
l
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