ML20141D755
| ML20141D755 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 05/14/1997 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 9705200191 | |
| Download: ML20141D755 (90) | |
Text
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA i NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 1
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Title:
BRIEFING ON STATUS OF ACTIVITIES WITH CNWRA AND HLW - PUBLIC MEETING Location: Rockville, Maryland -
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Date: Wednesday, May 14,1997 Pages: 1 - 63 ~
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DISCLAIMER This is an unofficial transcript of a meeting of i the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission held on j May 14, 1997 in the Commission's office at One White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland. The meeting was !
open to public attendance and observation. This transcript has not been reviewed, corrected or edited, and it may contain inaccuracies.
The transcript is intended solely for general informational purposes. As provided by 10 CFR 9.103, it is not part of the formal or informal record of decision of the matters discussed. Expressions of opinion in this transcript do not necessarily reflect final determination or beliefs. No pleading or other paper may be filed with the l Commission in any proceeding as the result of, or addressed ,
to, any statement or argument contained herein, except as the Commission may authorize. '
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. 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 ***
4 BRIEFING ON STATUS OF ACTIVITIES 5 WITH CNWRA AND HLW 6 ***
7 PUBLIC MEETING 8 ***
9 10 Nuclear Regulatory Commission 11 Commission Hearing Room 12 11555 Rockville Pike 13 Rockville, Maryland 14 15 Wednesday, May 14, 1997 16 17 The Commission met in open session, pursuant to 18 notice, at 1:33 p.m., the Honorable SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, 19 Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
20 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
21 SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission L 22 KENNETH C. ROGERS, Member of the Commission t
23 GRETA J. DICUS, Member of the Commission l 24 EDWARD McGAFFIGAN, JR., Member of the Commission 25 NILS J. DIAZ, Member of the Commission 2
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2 1 STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE:
2 JOHN C. HOYLE, Secretary 3 KAREN D. CYR, General Counsel 4 MARGARET V. FEDERLINE, Deputy Director, Division 5 of Waste Management, NMSS 6 MALCOLM R. KNAPP, Deputy Director, NMSS 7 L. JOSEPH CALLAN, EDO 8 WESLEY PATRICK, President, CNWRA 9 MICHAEL J. BELL, NMSS 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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- l' PROCEEDINGS t
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[1:33 p.m.)
3 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good afternoon, ladies and ,
4 . gentlemen..
5 The purpose of this af ternoon's meeting fus for the 6 NRC staff and the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory 71 Analyses, or we'll refer to:it as the Center, to provide the 8 Commission with a periodic briefing on the status of the NRC 9 high-level' waste program and activities of the Center- .
10 The Commission is pleased to welcome Dr. Wesley
' 11 Patrick, from the Center, who will be providing at least
' 12 part of today's briefing. The last time the Center briefed 13 the Commission was in April of 1996. ,
i 14 Today's.briefingLwill be the first of three 15 briefings cn1 high-level radioactive waste that the.
16 Commission will receive in the next day and'a half.
17 Tomorrow morning the Commission will be. briefed by the U.S.
i 18 Department of Energy.on its high-level waste program. At .
19- that briefing the Commission.also will hear from ,
20 rev eeuentetives from the State of Nevada, local governments, 21' and affected Indian tribes. Tomorrow afternoon the 22 Commission will again be briefed by the NRC staff on the ,
23 progress that'has been made in the area of performance l 24 assessment for high-level waste disposal, as well as for
- 25. low-level waste and for SDMP sites.
4 4 f
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4 1- Mr. Callan,' the Commission looks forward to - '
l 2' -hearing from the NRC staff and the Center today on the.
3 status and accomplishments of the'NRC's high-level waste >
'4 program, and'unless my fellow colleagues here have any opening comments,.please proceed.
5 6 MR. CALLAN: Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon,
.I7 Commissioners. .With me at the table this afternoon are Mal. ;
8 Knapp, the' Deputy Director of'NMSS; Wes Patrick, the i
,SL president of the Center -- I'll use that same phraseology; 10 Margaret Federline, the Deputy Director.of the Division of f 4
11 -Waste Management; and Mike Bell, a branch chief in i 12 Margaret's. division. l 13 Margaret Federline will lead the staff's ;
14' discussion this afternoon. i i
15 Margaret. !
16 MS. FEDERLINE: Thank'you. I 17 We appreciate the opportunity to be with:you this 18 afternoon to discuss our progress and accomplishments in the -
19 NRC high-level waste program. As I'm sure the Commissioners
?O know,' external factors and uncertainty still continue to :
21 influence the high-level waste program, and what I'm going 22 to talk about.today is our program strategy in the face of 23 this uncertainty and how we see it meeting our statutory 24 obligations.
25 Dr. Patrick of the Center is also here with me ANN RILEY:& ASSOCIATES, LTD. .
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1 1 today. Wes and.I will describe some of the major technica'~
2 progress that has been made in the program in spite of the-1 3 constraints that'we're facing. I also want to discuss our 4 progress in meeting program objectives and provide some !
S perspective on how we see the national program and it I
6 progress.
7' May I have the next slide, please?
8 May I have the next slide, please?
9 Because of the uncertainty and external influences L
10 on the high-level waste program, we feel it's really 11 important to regularly review our program assumptions to 12 ensure that we have the ship steered in the richt direction.
13 As you are aware, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of '87 and 14 the Energy Policy Act of '92 are currently the guiding 15 statutes for the high-level waste program. You are of 16 course aware of the legislation that's been introduced in 17- Congress, S. 104, which has passed the Senate, and H.R.
18 1270, which is under consideration by the House. We don't 19 expect the key scientific issues.atEa potential _ Yucca 20 Mountain site to change based on the passage of these key 21 pieces of' legislation. However,-we ci see that adjustments 22 to the regulatory framework would be needed if these pieces 23 of legislation do pass. .;
'24 Another one of our key assumptions is that the EPA i
.25 standard-will-be proposed in 1997 and finalized in 1998.
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6 1 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you have,. you know, some - .
l 2, sense of.what level of confidence you can -- that you have 3 that' EPA would meet that, you know, actually promulgate a
' standard, a draft standard, this year?
4 Su MS. FEDERLINE: I would say we had more confidence l 6 .about two months.ago. They were telling us it was in a 7 couple of weeks, but.now the message that we're getting is
.8 it's uncertain as to when it will be published. !
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.9 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Now how would the-NRC program !
10 or for.that matter the whole high-level waste program be l 11 affected if, you know, assuming we're operating under the
! 12 existing statutory requirements, how would that be affected !
13 if the standard were delayed beyond these projected dates?
14 MS. FEDERLINE: DOE.has told us that they -- the 15 standard could be on the critical path. They've told us l 16_ that July 1999 is important for them to have NRC's standard j 17 in place, and I'm sure they've told EPA a similar thing.
18 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Same thing.
19 MS. FEDERLINE: We believe that DOE will continue 20 to implement its revised program approach. As you know, the 1
21 appropriations language for 1997 directed DOE to focus on 22 .the core scientific issues, and we believe that this is
- l. -23 consistent with NRC's refocused program. And of course
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24' future budget estimates are highly uncertain.
25 I would just touch on the next slide. My reason ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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- 11 :for including it is to illustrate that-both NRC and DOE have 2 experienced significant reductions over the past'two years, 3 although aut you can see from the chart, DOE's budget has ,
4- been'somewhat restored. The Commission requested the staff 5 to continue on a path under DSI 6 to keep pace with the '
6 national program at an appropriate level of funding, and
-7 this.has been difficult,.and will. continue to be difficult 8 if current budget levels persist.
9 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes, please.
t 10 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: A question on budget.
11 If the current legislation, and the Chairman testified on-12 .this a few weeks ago, but if the current legislation were to 13 move forward with either the House or Senate time line in 14 interim storage came into the picture, we have nothing.
15 budgeted for that, and it would have to be budgeted in the q 16 high-level waste area, right? We would face a tradeoff 17 .between money devoted to the repository and money devoted to ;
18 reviewing DOE paperwork related to interim storage. Is that 19 correct? i t
20- MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, I think as the Chairman i 21 . mentioned in her testimony in the hearing, that there is a ?
22 pending collision of the programs in this --
23 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: WeirdLvapors, as --
- 24 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Oh , yeah, running on -- l 25 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Running on fumes. 1 i
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8 1 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Fumes. Yes,-thank you so much. -
2 .Those were.my very.words.
.3l [ Laughter.]
4- COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: My recollection is that 5~
DOE as expected -- and this is not your office, so maybe 6 . Joe - 'as expected did just submit something to us about'a l 7 ' generic interim storage facility, and -- how much resource .
8 goes into reviewing, you know, their generic paper? Do 9 you --
-10 MR. BELL: We have two FTE's budgeted for the 11 spent-fuel project office review, activities under the high- !
-12 level-waste fund, and that would fall into that area, and 13 since we're already half -- more than halfway through the 14 fiscal year,-that should be adequate.
1 15 CHAIRMAN' JACKSON: Okay.
16 .MS. FEDERLINE: May I have the next slide, please? !
-17 We're entering a critical, time in the' repository 18' . program. For those of-us who've worked in the repository l 19 program for a long time, it's a welcome sight to see the 20 critical. decisions approaching. I would note that decisions I
21 in which NRC'will play a key. role, I won't go into detail on j 22 each and every milestone, but I would just note that NRC has l
23 either a statutory responsibility to be involved in these i 24 milestones or.in the case of the viability assessment, we 25 expect the Commission 1to perhaps have views solicited on the l
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9 1 acceptability of the viability assessment. So as you can 2 see, there are many activities coming down the pike for us, 3- and this is the context that we want to present our program 4 strategy.
5 The next set of the slides provides an overview of 6 our refocused program, where we are currently in
- 7. prelicensing concepts and where we see ourself going as we 8 get closer and closer to licensing.
9 On slide 8, considering the approach of these 10 important milestones for the national program, we've really 11 identified three major goals which sort of drive the 12 objectives that you have listed on the slide here.
13 The first is to provide a reasonable and ;
14 implementable regulatory framework. We have been 15 cooperating with EPA in the development of implementable 16 safety standards. The NRC staff with the Center staff has 17 been conducting detailed analyses and have provided these to 18 EPA. I would just emphasize that we've not focused on this 19 acceptability of the repository, but rather on the 20 implementability of the regulations. We are riso planning 21 to come to the Commission with an options paper discussing 22 how such regulations might be implemented in our regulatory i l
23 framework so that we can ensure that any approach we're !
24 considering is consistent with the Commission's wishes.
25 And, you .know, as I emphasized earlier in the briefing, DOE ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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10 1 has indicated that they i7ould like something in place by -
2 July of '99.
3 The other objective that I want to really focus on 4 today is we've attempted to define a program Gtrategy which l 5 focuses on what really makes a difference. You're aware ,
1 6 that it's a very unique engineering and scientific problem, 7 and there are a lot of issues that could be studied and 8 studied and studied. What we're trying to do is using a 9 systems approach through performance assessment get an 10 understanding of what really makes a difference, and make 11 sure that our comments are directed at those areas. And the 12 objectives that I have listed on the slide that coordinate 13 with that goal are to set program priorities based on key
'14 technical issues that are most important to repository 15 performance. One of our key elements of our prelicensing 16 strategy has been to communicate early with DOE. We don't 17 want there to be any surprises when the Commission's asked 18 for its comments on the viability assessment. We want it to 19 be clear what our scientific programs are finding and what 20 potential vulnerabilities we see for the licensing program.
21 We also have initiated a program to resolve key 22 technical issues at the staff level prior to the viability 23 assessment. I would just note that under the NRC/ DOE 24 procedural agreement resolving issues means that NRC staff 25 has no additional questions at this point in time. It l
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- 'l doesn't preclude us from asking questions at a later point 2 if new-information comes up.
3 The other objective that I wanted to focus on was 4 .in review 3r elements of DOE's. viability assessment and
's preparing to answer questions, we have felt-that a focus on
- 6 potential licensing vulnerabilities is the correct approach, 7 and what we're trying to do is for each of the KTI's we 8 would develop acceptance criteria, which would provide.some 1
9 guidance for DOE as well as for the NRC staff on what the 10 NRC staff would find acceptable. 'And were defining these 11 acceptance criteria not only on a discipline basis, that's 12 issue by issue, but on an integrated systems approach, so we 13 make 'ure we consider the significance of'the issue to F 14 performance at the time we develop the acceptance. criteria. j 15 And the third goal that I want to focus on on this 16- slide is we've been working on improving our efficiency and 17 interdisciplinary understanding _of the processes that are
- 18. going on a Yucca Mountain. What we have tried to do through 19 involving greater numbers of staff in our systems analysis 20 is to enhance their understanding of how their relative 21 disciplinary knowledge fits into the big picture and really 22 affects the end point, the compliance point, which is DOE's.
l 23~ Another goal that we've set for ourselves is to 24 never have an interaction that doesn't have a predetermined
- 25 objective. We want to make sure that our interactions are ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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L 12 1 focused and well-defined, that.we just don't get together
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'2 for the purposes of getting together. We want to make sure 3
that-it's clear from DOE's side and clear from our side what 4 we would like to accomplish.
5 -CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you a couple quick I 9 6- questions. Has the cooperation between the NRC Lad EPA 7 . staffs on the EPA high-level standard been favorable?
8 MS. FEDERLINE: I would say generally ~we made some ,
9 good progress. We have not seen a copy of the draft 10 standard recently. The last copy of the standard we saw did .
11 reflect some of the progress that we felt we had made, sort ,
12 of an agreement and consensus on how to implement such a j 13 standard. There are two significant issues that remain, and 1
14 we've discussed those with the Commission.
This is the need 15 for a separate groundw'ater protection standard as well as 16 the level of individual protection that might be necessary 17 at a repository. There are still remaining differences on 18 those issues. '
19 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I was going to ask you about 20 those. When do you actually plan to initiate the 21 development'of a risk-informed performance-based standard t 22 specific to, you know, rule specific to Yucca Mountain? !
i 23 MS, FEDERLINE: Our plan is to come to the 24 Commission in the early fall with an options paper that 25 would outline some options for the Commission in terms of ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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. 1 revising'the regulatory framework. We -- hopefully the 2 Commission would give us early guidance at that point, and
-3 we really believe'that we would like to go ahead and 4 proceed.
-5 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And does your scPA ale for 6 finalization of.the rule track with the DOE schedule to 7 submit a license application in 2002?
'8 MS. FEDERLINE: Well, that's highly dependent on 9' the availability of resources- . If we are to --
10 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So assuming you had the 11 resources,7what you've laid out would track with that is
'12 what you're saying?
13 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. Correct.
14 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay, but.it's very resource- l 15 dependent. ,
16- MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, it is. ,
17 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And the last question is, you 18 mentioned improving program efficiencies, you know, as 19 budget's been squeezed and' squeezed. What'other ideas do 20 you have for improving ---
21 [ Laughter.]
.22 MS. FEDERLINE: One thing we have worked with the 23 organizational development staff in the Office of Personnel, 24- and we are going through team training to help engineers and I 1
25 geoscientists speak to one another. As I'm sure you know, j 1
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14 il they're very different disciplines, and each brings a
- 1 2 special expertise to the program,.and we just want to make 3 sure that we are interfacing as effectively as we possibly 4 can. .Another efficiency'that we've done in the Center has 5 been a great contributor to this. 'We have revised our total 6 system code to be much more user-friendly, and we have !
7 defined it so that more staff members can actually use the 8 code. That. allows us to. conduct more sensitivity analysis 9 -in. parallel, taking advantage of the various staff 10 expertise. Now in the past we were forced to use a Cray 11 computer at Idaho, but putting it on a work station in a 12 work-station environment it allows us to have real-time 13 feedback from the analysis.
14 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan.
15 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Let me ask a couple ;
16 followup questions to the Chairman's.
I 17- You said the-last time'you saw the EPA standard, 18 am I. accurate that that was some many months ago?
19 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, my best memory is, let's see, 20 it's probably been about'.2 months, but I'd have to check.
21 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: And the Academy of' 22- Sciences on the issues that are in disagreement our staff 23 position is much more compatible with the NAS study's 24 recommendations on this issue of groundwater and level of 25 individual protection than the -- what we know of the EPA ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 position at this point?
2 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, the National Academy on the 3 issue of groundwater protection said they made no 4 recommendation for a separate groundwater protection 5 . standard, so that is consistent, and our recommendation in 6 terms of an adequate dose level was within the risk range 7 the National Academy recommended.
8 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Finally, there's this 9 other actor in this area, .and Nuclear Waster, Technical Re'liew 10 Board, and the reason I!m raising the) kuestion now is it 11 says other parties at the bottom here. How do you see the 12 relationship between us -- their role as I understand it, .
13 set up in the 1987 act, is to advise the president and 14 Secretary of Energy on -- as a separate, independent body on 15 technical progress being made, and there seems to be a bit l
- 16 of an overlap there. They've made recommendations that are 17 resource-intensive for DOE with regard to this east-west 18 tunnelling. Did their recommendations ever get in the way 19 of our recommendations as to where DOE should be focusing 20 its resources in order to meet what we need, and how do 21 issues like that get resolved?
22 MS. FEDERLINE: Well, we see the roles 'of the two 23 organizations as somewhat distinct. The Nuclear Waste 24 Technical Review Board in our mind is an independent group 25 that was put in place to advise DOE on the operation of"the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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16 1 program. Ou role is not to tell DOE how to run the ,
2 repository program. Our role is more to serve as an 3 independent regulator, to look at DOE's approaches to '
4 things, and to identify vulnerabilities that we would see 5 for licensing. ,,
6 So we really see the roles quite differently, and 7 the recent -- the recent report that came out 'from the Board 8 I think was a good example of that. You know, they were
- 9 emphasizing the importance of an east-west drift and the 10 operational aspects of looking at enhancements to the waste 11 package design, and also looking at transparencies. I don't 12 think we see inconsistencies, but I would just say in terms 13 of an east-west drift, GAOah'd talked to us about this a a
14 couple of months ago, and we had explained that NRC does not 4
15 see a need to dictate the necessity. We see the value in 16 collecting additional-information. So we don't see 17.1 ourselves in conflict with the Board, but we would not make 18 such a requirement.
19 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And so you've not seen any 20 evidence of competing priorities in terms of what they may 21 be trying to do to work with us vice the recommendations of 22 this Board?
23 MS. FEDERLINE: Let me just ask Mike Bell if he 24 -would like to add anything.
25 MR. BELL: Yes. Actually there have been cases in ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 the past where essentially they help reinforce a staff 2 position. For example, originally DOE was planning to sink
'3 vertical shafts to construct 'the exploratory studies- !
4 facilities. ihe NRC staff first ' suggested they consider 5 ramps, and then.some time later that was also recommended by. ,
5 the' Technical Review Board, arid eventually DOE in f act 7 changed their program.
8 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: That brings up the issue 9 of is there.a way to leverage them, given how -- I mean, we 10 may be already on fumes in some of our core programs here, 11 and they have -- I don't know what their budget is, the 12 Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board budget, but they are 13 independent of DOE, we're independent of DOE, we have a [
14 regulatory function, they have an advisory function. Have -
15 you thought about whether there's any efficiency in trying ,
16 to leverage them more than we have thus far? ;
17 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, we have. We approached the :
t 18 staff of the Technical Review Board with our issue 19 resolution strategy to see if there's a way that we could 20 try and coordinate meetings. Meetings can be a big sink in ;
21 time and resources and, you know, looking at based on DOE's 22 waste isolation strategy if we might have meetings so we i
23 could get our information and they could get their 24 information, and we have a very good working relationship l 25 with the staff at the Review Board.
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18 1 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Please. -
2 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: On the key technical issues, I
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3 is there'an agreement now with DOE as to what they are? At 1
L 4 one point we were in disagreement on a couple of issues, and 5- do we now have a common set that we agree are the key l 1 l- :6 technical issues? I 7 MS. FEDERLINE: I think DOE continues to place 8 less. emphasis on the disruptive processes. We did have a 9 recent technical exchange on igneous activity and we 10 discussed some agreements in that regard, but I think 11 there's a feeling on the part of-the NRC staff that we need
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12' to at least work through-to consequences on disruptive 13 events, because they are the potential for high-consequence 14 events, and as a responsible regulator, we need to make sure I 15 that chings that could result in more serious exposure truly 16 are a lower-risk event. So I think there may be a mismatch.
'17 .I think DOE believes that this issue, you know, does not 18 warrant much more consideration. Although we did agree --
19 in our last technical exchange they agreed that more 20 consequence analysis did need to be done, and they're going 21 .to set about doing that.
22 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: fWe're talking about 23 consequences and igneous activity. You're looking at this 24 probability,-of course.
25 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes.
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19 l' COMMISSIONER _DIAZ: And isn't that probability 2 very' low for that area?
3 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, it is,.and we believe that 4_ we're'at the point where we can agree on what the range of 5 probability is, bat thic is just to keep -in mind their own 6 peer-review panel identified that there are three orders of 7 magnitude of uncertainty in their range'of probability. So, 8 you know, there are significant uncertainties in these d
9 numbers, but I think we have -- we are comfortable.at this 10 point agreeing on the probability. ,
11 Next'I wanted to touch on our current program 12 strategy.
13' May I have slide 9, please?
14- Thanks.
i 15 We believe that the focus on key technical issues 16_ is~still_the right strategy at the current funding levels to 17 ensure that vulnerabilities are identified for the viability '
i 18 assessment. As you are aware, budget = constraints have I 19 forced us-to eliminate the Center support in three key 20 technical issues -- that's-design, source term,_and:
21 radionuclide transport. Now we have great concern about 22 this, because from a technical perspective, I think we 23 .believe that all of the technical ~ issues, key technical 24 issues, are very important, and it was very hard for us to, 25 you know, eliminate any of the issues, but --
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20 1 CHAIRFmR JACKSON: Do you have any contingency * -
l 2 plans for how to bound them or deal with them?
3 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. 'This-is -- currently we are .
4 addressing -- design we deferred because we felt that there I 5- was.more flexibility in the future on design. In the area 6 of source term and.radionuclide transport we are addressing 7 as part'of our performance assessment some of the key 8 sensitivities to really understand how severe the problem 9 could be, which would then go back into our prioritization l 10 process, and we may start those KTI's. But I would just ;
11 emphasize that under the $17 million program that we've 12 requested'we could pursue all ten KTI's. !
13 I'll just touch very quickly. As I said, one of 14 our main goals is prompt feedback to 30E. I've identified '
.15 three ways that we're doing that. '.'11 discuss the annual ,
16 progress report in a little more detail in a future slide.
- 17. We are developing issue-resolution status reports. For each 18 KTI we will be preparing a report which documents our views 19 on DOE's path to resolution and perhaps presents our own 20 path to resolution. Through doing this we will define 21 acceptance criteria which we will use to review the 22~ viability assessment. We actually believe that our 23 interactions have been more fruitful. The focused nature of 24 -the interactions has been beneficial,.and we're.trying to 25 make sure that we actually understand what each other are ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 21 [r l' trying to say before we send letters back and forth and !
! 2 people become more_ entrenched in'their positions. [
[ 3 May 'I have the' next slide,: please? [
l .
L 4 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: . Yeah, just before.
-5 MS. FEDERLINE: Sorry. j l f 6 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Please.
COM111SSIONER ROGERS: Before you leave that, on !
r 8 the question of design, our position as I underst.and it has. ]
9 heen that we really want to see that the entire design is ;
10 conceptually rairly well defined in arriving at our 11' conclusions with respect to the Center. So how are design-12 related issues being daalt with if the Center doesn't have a 13 program in this? ;
14 MS. FEDERLINE: Well, we have concern about that, ;
! 4 L 15 because we only have one staff member who is focusing on i 16 design at this point in time. ;
17 Let me just.ask Mike Bell to add anything that he-18 would like to add.
19 MR. BELL: Well, as Margaret mentioned, although l 20 the Center support and design area has been eliminated this i
21 fiscal year, we are still trying to do what we can with in- l t
22 house staff, and one important aspect of the repository
'23 ~ design that we.have under review is a' topical report DOE 24 submitted on their seismic-hazard design.which the review is ,
25 progressing very.well, and we think we're close to resolving.
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22 i l' that question, and-it's an example of an area that I think - l 2 has worked'quite well. I t
.f 3 DOE came in to us because they wanted to use a 4 probabilistic seismic hazard assessment methodology. We had i 5 some exchanges with them. Eventually I sent them an issue 1
6 resolution status report agreeing with the methodology, and 7 'they're in'the process of conducting a expert elicitation on 8 that topic, which is'following guidelines that we sent out c
9 'and a branch technical position on expert elicitation, and 10 ~so I guess wefthink with the resources we have, we're trying 11- to do all the necessary. things to be responsive to the 12 . things-that are important to the DOE program at this time, 13 but it's going to be hard to keep up if the Department's 14: program keeps growing and we're straight-lined.
15 MS, FEDERLINE: I think this issue just makes the 16' bottom point on my slide, that the $17 million request for i
s 17 '98 is.really critical to'be.able to work on all and key 18 technical issues.
19 . COMMISSIONER DIAZ: It's just a continuation of i
! '20 the same question and the priorities when the priorities are i
2 11 established. Of course I imagine every' year you set the I 22 priorities.
23 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. 1 1
24~ COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And it seems to me like the i
25 design andiscurce term, radionuclide transport are very ;
i
. l 4 <
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1 important priorities. You know, how do they get placed when 2 our, you-know, resource allocation seems-to me a very ] 5 e 3' critical issue. f 4 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. l l
5 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And I don't know whether !
6 they're being revised or you have, you know, the terms in j t
7 that they are now more important. In other words, we might !
8 only have money for seven or eight. g 9 MS. FEDERLINE: Right. j 10 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: But the question is which 11 seven or eight, and I know that at-the beginning there is, -[
12 you know, some exploratory research and some issues that 13 .come, but eventually you have to come to the bottom line. !
14 MS. FEDERLINE: That's right.
l i
15 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Like these issues are kind of i 16 the bottom line, r
17 MS, FEDERLINE: Right. Just to give you just a t 18 quick glimpse into our prioritization process, we've worked i
19 very hard to get to the-point where our system' code can have j 20 enough cubstance to it where, you know, we can really count ;
i 21 on our se:.sitivities and importance analysis. We're l 22 scheduled to complete those analyses late in the summer, and ,
23' in the fall we will have the sensitivity analysis to help us f 24 prioritice. But another sort of measure that we use is 25 tying it to the DOE program. In other words, DOE had told i
i r
i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 ;
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24 1 us that they were not going to rely on sorption. And so -
2 that was one of the reasons why we ascribed a lower priority 3 to radionuclide transport. They're now, I believe, going to 4 depend more, so in our upcoming prioritization I think a 5 reprioritization of the is going to be required.
6 Now because the licensing review will focus on the 7 complete license application, it'll be necessary to examine 8 other issues. These preclosure safety issues wil.1 be 9 important as well as postclosure. So at the end of 10 viability assessment we feel that it's necessary to shift to 11 what we call the comprehensive approach. This will allow us 12 to pursue the other statutory requirements such as the 13 comments on the sufficiency of at-depth characterization and 14 waste form which are to accompany the President's 15 recommendation, as well as to review and adopt DOE's 16 environmental impact statement.
17 Now you may question how is the comprehensive 18 approach different than the current refocused program. We 19 -believe that the comprehensive approach will need to include 20 refined independent performance assessments. This will be 21 our complete review methodology for postclosure issues. We 22 also believe it's necessary to develop a standard review 23 plan for the license application review.
24 As I mentioned, we're developing acceptance 25 criteria for postclosure for use in the viability ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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. 1 assessment, but we need to develop a full review plan for 2 the licensing -- review of the license application. And we 3 also feel:that increased focus on quality assurance l- 4 activities are necessary, and we're currently recruiting .;
5 additional resources in this area'right now.
. 1
- 6. As you'll recall, early;on in the program.we had ;
7 concerns.about DOE's QA program. They did strengthen'their ,
l :
8 program significantly, and we think they're on the right -
9 track, but I think as we've learned in other. regulatory j i
10- ~ experience in this. agency,: lack of attention to'QA is a bad l J
11 plan. So we want to make sure that we have the right focus !
12 .there. !
i 13 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: With the main tunnel at Yucca' '
14 Mountain completed,'is there a basis for this at-depth site l 15 characterization, you know, moving that forward in'any way?
16; MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, the primary data for the at-17 depth site characterization and waste form will be from the 18 exploratory facility. DOE has shifted an additional about q 19 $10 million into the experimental program to collect some 20 information on saturated and unsaturated flow, which is a 21- key issue at'the site, and so we'll also want to have the 1
22 benefit of rhat in our -- i 23 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So that's being moved forward 24 to be done earlier than originally planned? j 25 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. Yes, additional resources.. !
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26 1 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes. .
2 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: The standard review 3 plan, if I were DOE I'd want to have that in good time ,
4 before I submitted license application in 2002. What is the 5 current plan for when the standard review plan would be --
6 would be completed, so that the, you know, I would know how 7 to structure my application?
8 MS. FEDERLINE: Our current plan is to have 9 acceptance criteria for the postclosure done by the time of 10 viability assessment. It will take us and depending upon 11 budget levels -- we have different assessments depending 12 upon the budget level -- it could take up to an additional 13 three years to complete the revis plan. So, you know, .
o 14 this -- depending upon budget uncertainty, this is an area
.. 15 where we could be on the critical path I 16 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Commissioner Diaz.
17 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Yes, I just, really on the
]
18 same questien, I, since this is kind of a unique case, I I 19 wonder if the standard review plan as you're developing has 20 some clear objectives and milestones, because it might be 21 that it's sometimes more important to get the work done 1
22 timely than just a review plan, but I have no idea how it's l 23 actually -- l 24 MS. FEDERLINE: Right. The standard review plan 25 is growing out of our work -- our work on the postclosure ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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27 1 issues. We've not even been able to focus on preclosure 2 safety issues at this point in time. So, you-know, this !
t 3 will depend upon, you know, the budget level that we're
~
4 seeing. And the EDO has-requested us.to look at'some 5 options and, you'know, more information will be available on i i
6 that.
7 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Please proceed.
8, MS. FEDERLINE: I wanted to touch on one subject 9 that you' requested in the SRM on the meeting. When our 10 budget was reduced from $22 million to $11 million in 1996 11 we had to make some severe cuts, and the way_we did that, 12 managers from the Office of Research, from NMSS, and from t
13 the Center sat down and' laid out all the activities that we ;
14- believed would be needed before licensing, and sort of ;
15 worked through a prioritization in terms of what activities 4 16 _needed to be completed and were most important. And in :
17 doing that we found it necessary to reduce some of the 18 research projects, all but the highest priority research 7 19 projects could not be fully funded. ,
20 The group of managers also recommended that to 21 achieve aome efficiencies that the management of the
{
22 technical assistance and research should be consolidated !
23 under one organization, and this was recommended to the EDO, 24 and of course the Commission was advised of this. And in I 25 your SRM you asked us for an appraisal, you know, of how t
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28 l' this was working. '
2' Well, I think all of us would prefer to have a ;
3 fully funded research. program. That's entirely desirable in '
4- a program of this nature. But I think under the research --
5 or under,the budget constraints that we're experiencing at '
6 the current time, this was the only option that was open to '
7 us.
r 8 Now research has initiated a generic environmental !
9 transport research program, which we think will be very !
10 important. It will be broadly applicable to all the waste l
11- management programs. We think that is an advantage, and i
12 John Greeves and I not too long ago met with the management 13 of the Office of Research to review the status of this 14 generic program, and in a way this more closely parallels 15 the traditional role with research performing generic I 16 activities and the licensing office doing site-specific 17 activities.
i 18 Let me turn to --
19 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Is the Center involved with 20 that work?
21 MS. FEDERLINE: The Center is involved in 22 receiving feedback from the work that is going on, but they 123 are not conducting the work for the Office of Research. 1 24 I just wanted to note on this slide just some 25 efforts that we're making to make sure that the independent 1
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29 1- ' expertise that's available in the Office of Research is
- 2 brought to bear on our waste management problems. NMSS, -
3 we're continuing to work together. As'a matter of fact,-
4 there was an Appendix 7 at the University of Arizona to look 5 at some extraction techniques from TUF, and the Office of ,
6 'Research participated. Even though they have a very limited 7 budget, they contributed their expertise to that. !
8- Research does monitor-activities. They attend.the 9 weekly branch chief meetings and the weekly Yucca Mountain 10 team. meetings,.and of course we provide them with copies of 11- products and Center reports. We do participate in their 12 research workshops when possible. As the generic research 13 advances, we. hope to have an annual meeting where~we can' 14 .have a dedicated exchange on the. generic research1that's 15- being conducted.
16 May I have the next slide, please?
17 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Does this generic 18 research activity get funded out of high-level' waste, or is 19 it funded out of the appropriated budget.that we get 20 . separate from --
21 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes, it's funded out of the 22 appropriated budget, not high-level waste.
23- Next'I wanted to turn to what we feel has been 24 significant progress in meeting-the program objectives. On 25 slide 14 I wanted to talk about one'of our new products. In ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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'1 fiscal year '96Lwe produced an annual progress' report, and -
2' this was an attempt to describe in an integrated fashion all 3
of our technical work'and show how it relates to DOE's' waste L 4; isolatior. strategy, and define what we see as the path
.5 forward to resolution of these issues. We've had several 6 meetings with DOE. We introduced the report to DOE, and 3 7 we've recently discussed it in a management-meeting, and our
^
8 feedback that we're getting is that they've found that it 9 was useful and it facilitated a dialogue on the issues. i 10 It's been a. top seller. We're thinking of selling copies to 11 fund the high-level waste program.
12 Now I'd like to turn to Dr. Patrick, who will 13 summarize some of our key areas of progress.
14 DR. PATRICK: Thank you. I appreciate that.
'15 Chairman, Commissioners, the remainder of our 16 briefing'today I'd like to focus on what we feel to be e
17 rather significant progress that we've made, both the Center 18 staff and the NRC-staff over this past year, and some plans 19 that.we have looking out ahead in meeting some of the high-20 level waste program objectives. '
21 I'm going to start with an overview of the 22 progress, touch briefly some comments on our plan for the 23 future, a few general views about the DOE program at this 24- stage, and hopefully in doing that to lay out a framework 25 for the remainder of the discussion, which will be to i
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,. 1 present in four broad program areas some specific examples 2 of progress that we've made.
3 There~are a number of bullets on those charts.
l 4 I'll probably be touching on just a few of those, and would ;
i 5' encourage and be open to your questions on those that I l 6 might not_have put high priority on in addressing here. I'd 7 'certainly be happy to cover those. ,
i 8 Slide 15, please. ,
9- We dedicated our efforts during FY '96 to 10 establishing what we consider to be a sound technical basis !
11 for proceeding with issue resolution. Those considerations 12 and those efforts have continued in early FY '97,.and as ,
13 Margaret has' indicated, we're going to be later this summer 3
-14 initiating a series of detailed sensitivity analyses that we i 15 believe will be instrumental in doing several things which i 16 I'll be touching on a.little more as we move through the-17 discussion.
18 If you look at the second, third, and fourth 19 bullets there, they highlight three broad areas where I feel 20 that we've made significant progress if you look in broad .
21 brush. First, we've improved our understanding of a number 22 of very critical processes, critical-from the standpoint of 23 repository performance, things like igneous activity. This 24 has.been done through review of a variety of sources of .
25 existing data as well as collection of some selected new i
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32 1 data ourselves. .,
2 Second, we've enhanced or completed the models for 3 representing those processes, again, processes that are 4 important to performance. We've developed an ash dispersion 5 model which will be instrumental in understanding the second 6 .part of the risk-equation that you alluded to earlier, ~
7 Commissioner Diaz, to understand not only the probability 8 but to get at the consequences portion of that issue. We've 9 also done development in the container corrosion and we'll 10 speak to that as a specific example a little bit later on in 11 the presentation.
12 The third areas that we will be conducting 13 sensitivity studies on some of the individual repository 14 systems and processes that are believed to be important to 15 performance. We're going to have the results of those i
16 studies appear in two key documents, the annual report, 17 which was just alluded to, for FY '96. We'll be doing 18 another one of those reports this fiscal year as well. And 19 then within these ten key technical issues we'll be 20 publishing issue resolution status reports where we will use 21 these sensitivity analyses to try to understand better what 22 the priorities for future work should be, and also to l 23 determine which ones of those subissues can be closed i
24 because we have determined at this point that there are no 25 further questions, that the sensitivity is such that we
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. 1- . understand that particular subissue well enough to set it 2 _aside until we move forward into the licensing process.
- 3. Again, recognizing that there is the option as new 4 information,-new understandings become'available, as the t
'5 designs are solidified and come forward to us from DOE, that 6 we will once.again eg. amine and be sure.that our initial 7 findings arc appropriate and are substantiated.
8 We feel that the approach we're taking here has.
9 been quite successful. There's been progress in three 10 particularly notable issues closing in on the tectonic 11 models that are applicable for the site, coming to an 12 agreement on the probability of extrusive vulcanism at the 13 site, and the one that Mike Bell alluded to earlier, 14 developing and coming-to agreement on a seismic design .i 15 methodology. We're very close to closure on that issue as l
16- well. )
1
- 17. Slide 16, please, 1
i 18 Just kind of carrying over from 15,' unable'to show 19 both of these at the same time, but one'of the.last items 20 there, which carries over onto slide 16, deals with the 1
21 broad area of total system. performance assessment. This has I
l 22 been an area where significant effort has been devoted by l
l -23 .both of.our staffs. We've been involved in developing a new
-24 version of the code.
25 Several of you will be familiar with the general
<l l
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34 1 approach that we've embarked on a number of years ago. We .
2 use the phrase iterative performance assessment, indicating 3 the evolutionary iterative process that is needed to address
'4 a complex issue like this where information is evolving both 5 about the site and about the design as well as the 6 performance standard against which the eventual performance 7 of the repository will be judged.
8 Those code modifications this year have focused in 9 several areas. We have tried to incorporate in the new code 10 not only some enhanced models with respect to this geology, 11 but we have also made some improvements with regard to 12 including some of DOE's new design considerations. The 13 previous version of the code, for instance, had a vertical 14 emplacement. That was the design that was in vogue at the 15 time. We've since revised that to consider DOE's more 16 recent in-drift emplacement. And of course to be able to 17 make this code more efficient for a broader base of this 18 staff to use it and operate with it, we have moved it onto 19 the p.c. platforms, able to use this on your advanced 20 computer system, and with that we have had to make some 21 improvements in the computational efficiency of that code.
22 The version 3 of the code will be very shortly in 23 this hands of a very broad cross-section of the staff. You 24 have a number of staff who are currently involved in 25 reviewing and evaluating this version of the code that we ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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35
. 1 delivered in mid-March. We hope by early summer to have 2 completed the development and refinement of that code and 3 turned it over for the sensitivity analyses and importance 4 analyses that will be conducted not only by your staff here 5 at White Flint but also by Center staff members.
6 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: Is this code available 7 to the public, if somebody at a university wanted to be 8 looking at the same sorts of issues?
9 MR. PATRICK: The code has not yet reached a point 10 where we have put it under version control and have 11 solidified it as a code which we would be comfortable I 12 think either from a regulatory perspective or technical 13 perspective in releasing it.. The specifics with regard to 14 release I would defer to NRC management on what their plans 15 might be there. We did not release TPA version 2, but 3 I 16 guess we've not discussed.
17 MS, FEDERLINE: That's correct, we've not made a 18 final decision, but our general policy is under our 19 procedural agreement that we would share the code with 20 interested parties.
21 MR. PATRICK: I would note in an allied area there 22 are other codes, detailed system-level codes, which we have 23 completed development on, developed user's guides. NRC has 24 made decisions on a case-by-case basis to release those to 25 the public or to allow the Southwest Research Institute, the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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- 1- Center, to copyright those and make those available. -
l-
- 2. Regardless of which path is followed, there's a provision in 3L the copyright: that allows'any party to the NWPA to gain free
,4 access to that code, as well'as'your staff to have access to 5 it. So that is a part of the puzzle that we h' ave' worked, '
6 but the total system. I 7 Touching cn1 that-first bullet on slide 16, we feel
~
8 that in addition to its purely technical role,-the total 9 system performance assessment code and the analyses that.we 10 do with it fulfill some very important decision-aiding 11 processes. It's a tool box in that sense. It has enabled i
12 us to and continues to enable us to reevaluate the 13 importance of the various technical issues that are under 14- , consideration. It's the only tool we have available that 15 allows us to do that in a quantitative way, to move beyond-16 the qualitative judgments that we feel confident in making .
17- but only reasonably confident until we have made an 18 assessment against risk. It also is providing us with the 19 basis to develop a risk-informed performance base acceptance 20 criteria which appear first in our issue-resolution status 21 reports and which we believe will be instrumental in both 22 . development of the standard review plan and also in 23 assisting in the eventual development of a Yucca Mountain-24' specific regulation.
25 And finally, it's being used as a very important i
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37.
, 1 tool-to help us' develop the methods that'we will use to
- 2. conduct _various reviews, starting with a. viability _
.:t assessment and a site-suitability report and so forth on 4 through the construction authorization process.
5 I've noted-here a couple of vehicles _that are very 6 important in communicating with.the Department of_ Energy and 7 documenting.the progress that we're making as well. .
8 COMMISSIONER ROG2RS: When do'you expect to have
- 9. that completed, that work on risk-informed performance-10_ based, acceptance' criteria?
11 MR. PATRICK: That is an ongoing. process. We 12 anticipate having the first round'of issue resolution status 13 reports completed late this calendar year or early next 14 calendar year-is the current schedule.I believe that i
15 we're --
16 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes.
17 MR. PATRICK: We want to have information in DOE's 18 hands about six months before the viability assessment comes 19 in. And with the current resources and the current schedule 20 we're working to and realizing that this is all being pushed 21 Eby the development of the TPA code as well, that's -- I 22 think we can make-that kind of a schedule.
23- Slide 17, please.
24 Turning now to some general views on the DOE 25 program at this point, and I'll try to focus primarily on l
I
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1 technical issues, but there are always programmatic .
2 implications ~to those. I would say that our most important- l 3 observation'is that there has been a very clear improvement 4' in DOE's overall program management and planning process.
5- An~ example of that was alluded to earlier, where we're 6' seeing a flexibility to reallocate resources. As they'did {
7 some of their performance assessments and began to realize 8 the credit that they would need to take, want to take, for 9 mixing in the saturated zone, they have now directed '
O 10 resources to examine in better detail how the saturated zone ,
11 behaves in the. vicinity of Yucca Mountain, and we're very 12- pleased to see that-sort of responsiveness.
13 Likewise, I think the communication between NRC 14 and the Center. staffs and DOE has improved. That's come 15 about through focusing all of our interactions, having very 16 clear objectives for each of those. I would cite several 17 very important examples. We had an appendix 7 meeting on 18 tectonic processes where DOE, Center, NRC, and State was
- 19. represented. Very important in terms of narrowing down the 20 very broad range of processes we're examining. The seismic 21 design methodology and the igneous activities technical 22 exchange would be similar examples in that area.
23 Certainly the completion of the exploratory 24 studies-facility has been a major milestone for DOE, and it 25 has opened up in both a figurative and literal way access to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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39 1 seeing the geology and allowing DOE to.make measurements, 2 not so much in the tunnel itself but in the various alcoves 3 that have been developed. And we continue through the NRC's
- 4 on-site representatives and through various interactions 5 'with the Department of Energy staff and its contractors to 6 follow very closely the testing that they are doing, the !
? I l 7 designs of those tests, as well as the results that are 8 coming out'of those.
9 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Is DOE conducting surface 10 . tests?
11-MR. PATRICK: Surface-based testing continues.
12 They've one area that they've reached a conclusion in.
l 13- .They've completed their trenching activities and actually 14 have made a decision'to begin;backfilling a number of those 15- trenches.
16 That brings to mind another point of coordination.
i 17 That was coordinated very carefully. NRC staff h'ad an <
l 18 opportunity to_give them feedback as to whether the NRC 19 needed additional information from those trenches before the 20 bulldozers moved in and filled them back in again. So I 21 think it was another area that worked quite well.
22 Yes, certainly the sea well complex of surface-L
! 23 based testing, looking at both reactive and nonreactive.
24- tracer testing at that complex is an important surface-25 based-testing.
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- 1. One of the items that we alluded to earlier, just - '
'2 to touch on that last bullet, we've seen substantial 3 progress in the quality-assurance area. This has been an i
+
4 issue between'the'NRC and DOE staffs from the outset. It's-5 one of the original objections that was-filed when the site 6 characterization plan was submitted. We've seen significant ;
7 progress there.in some very measurable areas. They're 8 . developing what they call a binning process, which will help 9 not just in this quality assurance area of applying a graded 10 quality assurance approach, but it'll help' greatly in this= ;
11 design process. '
12 And I might note that some of the areas that Mike 13 alluded to earlier, the focus of activities there on DOE's t
14 are going to be in the novel areas of design. They, like !
15 us, given the constraints that they have, are not going to !
16 pay great' attention coming into viability assessment.
17 They're not going to pay great attention to things that they 18 believe can be handled in a routine fashion based on 19 existing engineering capabilities within their organization 20 and their. contractor group.
21 Slide 18, please.
1 22 I mentioned moving into a brief discussion on four l J
23- areas where we have made significant progress. The first of 24' those deals with NRC progress and views on this site l 25 characterization program. That's the first of the four ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 ' areas I'd like to touch on.
2 Staff work including some limited field studies, 3 probabilistic volcanic hazard analysis conducted by the 4 Department of Er:ergy and technical exchanges on this !
5- subject, as well as a-follow-on meeting with the Advisory 6 Committee on Nuclear Waste, have moved us to the position }
7 where we are able to reach agreement on the probability of 8 extrusive vulcanism. We're concluding that the probability 9 is low, but not so low that we cannot give attention to the P
10 consequences. So there's an issue, a very visible one, 11 where we believe we're going to be able to close that within 12 just the next few months. The issue resolution status 13 report on that is due out the end of November. It's a i
14 little bit of additional work that'we want to finish up to 15 be confident that we have no further questions at this b
1 16 point.
17 Development of a model for shallow infiltration is j 18 continued through this year, another area that is l
19 potentially quite important to performance. In fact,.it L 20 comes up in the top of the list for almost everyone's
- 21 performance assessment, because shallow infiltration in turn 22 drives the deep percolation through the repository level, I 23 and down to the saturated zone. Interestingly, we're 24 finding. considerably higher estimates than were originally 25 conceived, and that is an important finding from the
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.1 standpoint of our modeling, and we're beginning to see, -
i confirmation from the results of DOE's testing in that 3 particular area.
4 I~ note here and I mention it because of a questien 15- you had: raised earlier,. Chairman, with regard to the r
6- sorption area. We have completed some work in.that area, 7 and have translated or transferred a critical portion of the 8 sorption studies into the performance assessment, area, so ,
9 that what we. learned experimentally-before the research 10 program was consolidated and the activities at the Center 11 under sorption were reduced, we've been able to capture.that i
12 information and. develop a module which will be incorporated e
13 in the total. system performance assessment code. So we will ,
14 be able to consider the kind of phenomena that I mention 15 here, importanc.e of pH variations, for instance.
- 16 f And again, just the last bullet, we've touched on 17 that a couple of times with regard to their flexibility in 18 bringing in additional studies. !
l 19 Now the second bullet on this chart 18, I'd like 20 to address a little bit further with the figure that is
- 21. shown on chart 19. !
22 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Before you go to the next 23 one --
24 MR. PATRICK: Gertainly. 1 25 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: How do the third and fifth I e
i 1
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- .- l' bullets relate toLeach other, the chlorine-36 measurements #
2 'that come from fracture flow presumably and your shallow i
3 ' infiltration models?
4 MR. PATRICK: We have not --
l 5 COMMISSIONER: ROGERS: How do they relate to each 6 other? Are'they totally disconnected? -
7 MR. PATRICK: LNo, they're not disconnected at'all. j l
8 In fact, I would say that from chlorine-36 information gives !
- 9. very keen insights and confirmation of what'the shallow I 10 infiltration studies show, namely that infiltration is not i 11 homogeneous across.the mountain. No one expected it to be 12 purely homogeneous, but we're finding that there'are 13 combinations of surface cover, vegetation, and so'forth {
14 which seem to -- as well as fracturing, of course - which l 15 seem to enhance the infiltration. ;
16 What_the chlorine-36.is sayingl's u not only is i
17 there enhanced infiltration in those areas, but that :
18- . enhancement continues to depth. The moisture is not sucked 19- back into the matrix, at least in some locations where the 20 chlorine-36 information indicates rather short groundwater ,
21 travel times. So they're very, very closely related to one ;
22 lanother, and we're considering:them in that integrated 23 fashion.
24 If we could take aLlook at the figure then on [ ,
j!;
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44 l l'
A and C gives you a picture of a sandbox model, an -
2 inglorious name that is used for a very sophisticated 3 physical analog technique. I believe the Chairman and 4 Commissioner Rogers may have had an opportunity.to see that-5 on their visits at the center in'the past. I don't recall 6 whether it was up and running at the time. !
7 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I saw it.
8 MR. PATRICK: But it was through that type of 9 modeling work as well as what has been learned in the j 10 trenches through DOE and its contractor studies that we were 11- able to sit as a group :ba an Appendix 7 meeting in a very 12 open forum and discuss as professionals the variety of !
13 models, more than a dozen, that were on the table at that j 14 time and talk about an efficiency factor that Margaret 15 Federline was mentioning earlier.
16 We were able to zero in on less than half of those l 17 models, four or five depending on the way you want to count l 18 them, that seemed to be most supportable given the wide l 19 variety of data that is available from the site as well as 20 these contirmatory kinds of studies with the sandbox models, 21 which give us insights into how these processes play out 22 over time.
23 You can see -- there are a variety of little i
24 symbols on there I don't have time to go into in detail, but l
25 you'll note that we find, for instance that there are -- the t
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1 BF stands for -- there are boundary faults which align the 2 edges of the basin and they can be controlling factors in 3 the dominant seismic risk that exists at the site.
4 There are faults which develop at some point in l 5 the development of the basin but become inactive as time 6 goes on. That's very important to know from a design 7 perspective as well as from a performance assessment 8 perspective in the very long term. !
9 This kind of physical modeling has been very, very 10 helpful in leading us closer to issue resolution, and we 11 anticipate publishing an issue resolution status report in 12 this area as well in the next year.
13 Slide 20, please.
14 Moving to the engineering area from site 15 characterization as part of the closecut activities in the 16 area of container life and source term, we have taken the 17 repassivation potential model that was developed under the 18 experimental research program and worked within the
( 19 licensing program a little bit later on, and we've 20 incorporated that into the total system performance 21 assessment code. We're trying to, in these areas where 22 there have been restrictions, to harvest what was able to be 23 learned in those early years, and I think we're being quite l
24 successful in doing so.
25 Another design related area where we encountered a 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
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.1 -little~ bit of a good news / bad news situation is in the third' '
2 bullet there. We did-some benchmarking this year. We '
3 wanted to understand whether there were any areas of 4x disagreement between the:NRC and the DOE staffs regarding
- 5. the kinds;of computer codes they were using.
6~
-The good news part is that we found we had very 7- good agreement as we went.through that benchmarking study.
8 The bad news part is that there has been some laboratory' 9 work and field studies done that indicate that those i 10 squivalent continuum models, as they're called, may not be
-11 adequate for capturing some of the details, details...for y 12 instance, like nearby dripping from single fracture such as l
13 what we see documented in the Chlorine 36 data. !
- 14. So that's an area where we believe some additional 15 work-is going to be needed before we-can close that 16 particular issue.
17 As I've noted before, we're seeing some 18 improvements evident in the DOE design control process, and 19 it appears at this time that their design control process is I 20 adequate. We'll be continuing to monitor that. We in this 21 case will be Mike Bell's staff. The center has no longer 22 any tasking in this particular area. So they will be i
23 monitoring that with in-house engineering staff.
]
l 24 The staff continues to eval'uate DOE's testing l
25 program'as well. The thermohydrology testing area is one 4
h I
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. 1' 'that has caused concerns in the.past. We again have had !
2 .open dialogue in this area, and it's.my understanding that 3 rather shortly, DOE will be replying to a particular set of 4 comments that we sent out with regard to the degree of :
.5 heating, the spacial scales.of their testing and so forth, i 6 which could be'important from the standpoint of '
7 understanding the processes that are taking place. Those I t
8 processes in turn have:to be accurately reflected.in the 9 performance assessment models so that we can be confident of 10 the results of those determinations.
11 I would like to touch on that second bullet on .
12 slide 20 as we look at the figure on slide 21. l 13 DOE'noted in their most recent TSPA a possibility l 14 that galvanic coupling could occur between their complex f r
15 waste packages, waste package configuration where there are-16 different metals and roughly concentric cylinders around one 17' another.
l 1
18 We factored that into our calculations and did a -
l 19 study, the results of which are indicated here, and a key 20 point, if we were just to look ;, for instance, the blue 21 curve there, you'll notice that i a low -- well, that's 22 actually DOE's moderate thermal loading strategy, around 40 23 metric tons-uranium per acre, that you would predict a waste 24 package lifetime on the scale of tens of years for low l J
25 . galvanic efficiencies. But if.this galvanic coupling l
i
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1 48 1 1 efficiency factor has a value something about .08 or so, you -
l 2 get a dramatic increase in the performance of the entire 3 waste package because that outer container acts as a 4 sacrificial anode protecting that inner container.
5 We wanted to be sure that that phenomenon 6 continued at other thermal loads and I've indicated here for 7 an 80 metric ton uranium per acre case, you would see an 8 improvement in waste package performance from on the order 9 of 2,000, 2,500 years again jumping up to something in 10 excess of 10,000 years based on these calculations.
11 Now, the big question is, what is the real 12 galvanic coupling efficiency factor? And some work is going 13 to be needed there, both from our standpoint and also from 14 the Department of Energy's standpoint. We envision that 15 some additional calculations to examine how sensitive 16 performance is to this factor will be taking place as we 17 complete the TPA code and do this --
18 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's material dependent also?
19 MR. PATRICK: Very much so. So the ultimate 20 design in the selection of materials is going to be very 21 important. As I think you're aware, there are many 22 materials in the mix right now, both for the outer overpack 23 and the inner overpack.
24 The other factor that is critical is whether water 25 comes into contact in the interface, because if there is not ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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49
. 1 an electrolyte between those two materials, this factor is 2 zero, and there's r.othing to be gained.
3 Slide 22.
4 A third area I would like to speak briefly to is 5 the total system performance assessment program. One of the 6 early contributions to the program in the total system area 7 was development of timely guidance to the Department of 8 Energy in the area of expert elicitation.
9 Because DOE is relying quite heavily on expert 10 elicitations, we're interacting with them to ensure 11 ourselves that that Branch Technical Position that was 12 issued by the staff is being implemented in a manner that is 13 consistent with NRC's guidance, not only to be confident 14 that the process is working, but also that the product that 15 that process results in is also working well.
16 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: May I ask you a question back 17 on slide 21 for a second? You know, given what you just 18 said about the galvanic coupling, and you need a galvanic 19 coupling efficiency that apparently, you know, is larger and 20- larger as the thermal load increases --
21 MR. PATRICK: Yes.
22 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: -- is there not a question 23 having to do with the likelihood of achieving that thermal 24 coupling as a function of thermal load?
25 MR. PATRICK: There can be. I believe that the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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50 l' answer to the question is found in a combination of when you .
i
'2 need it, if it is hot enough, there is no water there.
3 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's right.
4 MR. PATRICK: So galvanic coupling neither works, 5 nor is needed.
6 CHAIRMAN' JACKSON: Nor is needed. Okay.
7 MR. PATRICK: So for a hot enough repository, this 8 issue will have zero sensitivity. And by the way, you've 9 hit on a very interesting aspect of all of these sensitivity 10 studies, is that you base your determination of sensitivity ,
11 at any given point on a particular understanding. As that 12 understanding changes, it gets wetter in the repository, it !
13 stays hotter and dryer lor.Qar, then you have to revisit 14 those things. That's very important.
15 Anything else on that one?
16 Coming back, then, following on from the Branch 17 Technical Position, moving into the core of the TSPA 18 program, the Department of Energy submitted total system 19 performance assessment '95, TSPA '95. We conducted both 20 audit and detailed reviews of that TSPA and provided timely 21 comments to DOE, and we're involved in a technical exchange 22 with them to sit eyeball-to-eyeball and hear one another out 23 on those issues.
24 We raised what we feel are a number of important 25 concerns in areas such as lack of conservatism and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTE.
Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, J.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
51 I touched..'on that earlier. We're now
~
- z. l' infiltration. '
2 beginning to see' a coming toget aer of our thinking there at ;
3 a higherJinfiltration' level. The role of dilution, waste 4 package failure models and so forth.
'5 We're currently examining DOE's TSPA viability 6 assessment plan, and it appears that a number.of our 7 comments have been'taken.into consideration there. Of ;
8' course,.we're quite pleased to see that, and our view -- '
9 you'll hear from DOE tomorrow, but our view is that that's 10 been a significant positive contribution, both in moving us ;
11 toward issue resolution and also moving the program forward 12 to decision points.
i 13 I have noted previously the modifications to the 14 total system performance assessment code, enhancing the 15 process models, revising it to handle DOE's planned drift
{
16 emplacement and improving the computational efficiency.
~
i
- 17. We've also modified it to. include the anticipated dose and ;
18 risk based performance measures. Those were not present in !
19 .TPA 2, which was, under the old standard, was a release !
I -
1' L 20' based assessment of performance,
'i
. 21- I've noted that a key thing that has been done is 22 this code is now available to a-much broader cross section 23 of staff, both at the center and at the NRC, and I think I
24 that's very important to develop that broad user group from )
i 25 an efficiency point of view and also strictly from the l
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52 '
l' standpoint of the volume of analysis that we're able to ..
2 complete within the. time that's.available.
3 My observations to this point apply predominantly '
-4 with regard to how we have influenced DOE's' program using.
5 thic total r mtem code and the total system approach, but I 6~ -think-equally important are the impacts that we've'seen 7- internally, and we've touched on those, alluded to those a .
EF little bit before. It has helped us greatly to align our 9 key' technical issues to DOE's waste containment and i 10 ' isolation strategy.
{
11- To your earlier question, Commissioner Rogers, ;
12 -they are not exactly.the same,-but we have'an explicit 13 correlation between the two, and as issue resolution status "
14 reports are published, each one of those will explicitly 15 identify which items within DOE's waste containment'and 16 ' isolation strategy are being addressed by that particular i 171 key issue resolution status report.
18 So that. kind.of close coupling I think is very 19 important. It's assisting us and we think it's going to 20 assist DOE as well. It has helped us focus our plans on 21 .these issue resolution and also on the inputs that are 22 needed to the total = system performance assessment code, 23 enabling us-to develop.a consistent set of data for those 24 analyses and, of course, has led to increased integration :
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53
.- .1 in glove with'the staffs working together in'this total ~ ;
2 ' system performance assessment area.
3 The' final, the fourth area I would like to touch 4 on deals with NRC staff interactions with the-EPA:regarding-i 5 .the development of a Yucca Mountain specific standard and
~6 the support'that the center has provided to aid NRC staff in 7 progressing in that area- .
'8 There will be a NUREG document which will be i 9: published shortly that contains the'results.of the '
t 10 supporting calculations that have been done. Three zl1 particular areas here that we have addressed are noted. We .
12- have evaluated the relative radiological hazard of a ;
i 13 repository as time goes on. That has given us insights into !
i 14 what a reasonable period of compliance'might be. .That was ,
i 15 an area that was-questioned. !
16 We have used core body equivalent types of [
17 analyses to examine that. We've also examined how peak dose. ;
18- is location specific, something that the - Acaderay did not
- - 1 specifically address but whichLende up being quite important 19
l t L .20 if one chooses to go to'a peak dose determination or j 21- standard. And then, of course, NRC po'licy and public l l
, 22 comments are going to'need to be: considered'in this process. !
L 23 We calculated followingfthe NAS recommendation a 124 . stylized human intrusion scenario and found that both the :
i 25 consequences and the probability of inadvertent human l
1 1
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1 intrusion were relatively low for a. Yucca Mountain type -
l 2 repository' design. Finally, we've looked at the relative.
3 importance of-disruptive events and, not too surprisingly,
-4 although it seems to surprise some, as the time period of !
- 5. performance gets longer, those take on an ever-increasing 6- role. -
'7 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Repeat what you said about the 8 calculated effects of human intrusion. .
9 MR. PATRICK: Based on our calculations, the 10 probability and the consequences of inadvertent human 11- intrusion are relatively low, _ quite a different conclusion !
i 12 with' regard'to-probability than, for instance, WIPP would 13 decide, and that has a lot to do with the relative area 14 'containing waste with regard to the total target area that a 15 driller could intersect.
16 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I see.
17-
~
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: The next bullet after that, 18_ the' relative importance question, is that just simply that- l I
19- the. longer you wait, the more events you're going to have or '
l 20 --
21 MR. PATRICK: Exactly.
22 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: --
or is there anything more l 23 --
24- MR. PATRICK: No. It's, again, it's intuitively 25 obvious once it's brought to one's attention, I guess.
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,- 1 The interaction:--
2: CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's-what intuitively obvious 3- means, right?
4 [ Laughter.]
5- MR PATRICK: Intuitively obvious, but you have to
'6 prove them often.
7- The interaction between EPA and NRC regarding the
~8 NAS' recommendations --'NRC staff has been'in frequent 9' contact, up until :just a few months ago, with EPA. I think
- 10. the~ general assessment there is that we have general 11 agreement on the approaches that they are suggesting, things 12 like the 10,000 years being a reasonable time period for a 13 standard, using an individual-dose, stylized treatment of 14 human intrusion, definition of the critical group and so
.15- 'forth, but there are a few critical issues, two in 16 particular, and we've mentioned those already and I'm sure 17 those will continue to be points of-discussion.
18 The final item, one that we've touched on just 19 briefly, is we have begun examining options for a risk-20 informed performance-based regulation, and staff will be 21' coming forward'to you with a Commission paper in that 22 particular area,-and we anticipate supporting those 23 activities.
< 24 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: Is that. going to happen this 25 . year or do you know what's the time table for that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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56 i 1 performance-based rule -- you know, when? .
2 'MS. FEDERLINE: We will be getting up to the '
3 Commission in early fall with an' options paper, and assuming s
4 you provide us guidance, we would intenu to begin at that '
5 point.
6 MR. PATRICK: 'If there'are no further questions .,
7 for me,.I'll turn the' floor back over to Margaret Federline.
8 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. I just wanted to emphasize
~
9 three points in summary on slide 24.
10 We feel that feedback and interactions with DOE 11 have resulted in significant progress, even at reduced ,
- 12. budget levels for both agencies. We've demonstrated that ,
13 focused interactions can result in agreements and improved 14 understanding of differences, and we believe that this is 15 going to be key to making reasonable national decisions 16 about a waste repository.
17 I would also like to emphasize that enhancement of 1
18 both the NRC's and the Center's total system performance 19 capability have been fundamental in achieving this progress.
20 The experience that the staff has gained in being able to 21 focus on a system's perspective rather than a disciplinary 22 view-is key to determining when enough is enough in terms of
. 23 data and when bonding ic sufficient.
24 The final - I would also like to emphasize that 25 maintaining the infrastructure is key here. In order to do l
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57 1: the calculations, we.need to maintain the equipment and 2 software that enables us to do those calculations.
~
- 3. Finally,'I just wanted to note that future funding 4- -is uncertain and we believe that keeping pace a national 5 -- program depends upon obtaining funding at higher levels.
'6 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
7 Commissioner. Rogers?
'8 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, just on that last 9 slide, our total system performance assessment' capability, 10 have we slipped in that?
11 MS. FEDERLINE: No. I-think we have made 12 significant improvements in that area. We have -- between 13 -phase 2 and phase 3, we've added some significant additional 14 conceptual models allowing us to look at two conceptual 15- models in the thermohydrology area. So there really are 16 some significant enhancemsnts in terms of being able to look 17 'at repository performance.
18 There are.also significant enhancements in the 19' simplicity of the code and the ability.for multiple people
- 20. to use and benefit from the code.
21 COMMISSIONER-ROGERS: Well, the capability 22 involves not only the codes and the hardware, but also 23 people.
l 24 MS. FEDERLINE: That's correct.
'25 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Have.we been able to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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58 1 maintain our staffing level there? -
.2 MS. FEDERLINE: Well, I think it's fair to say 3 that the staffing level has been reduced, but w'e feel we're 4 , spreading the experience within the staff that we do have.
5 So I. chink there is more of a focus.that performance 6 assessment is a]'. of us, it's not one unique aspect.
7 COMMISSIONER ROGERS: That's all I have. i 8 s CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Dicus? ,
9 COMMISSIONER DICUS: No, no questions. Just thank ;
10- you for your presentations. i i i 11 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner Diaz?
t 12 COMMISSIONER DIAZ: I would just comment on the l 13 idea of funding and the issue of closure. You know, this 14 program'is completely starved for providing closure on a -
15 series of issues, and it might very well be that closing I
16- some of those'as early as possible would be a very, very 17 good impetus to the program. l 18 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Commissioner McGaffigan?
- 19 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: I would like to raise I
- 20. one question tb:t:s slight?v off the subject, but there was .
a separate large computer effert relating to.public 22 involvement when we got to the licensing stage, and I forget i
L
- 23. the -- '
1
- 25 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN
- The LSS, the licensing i
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-. 1 support system. 'Thank you. I 2 My judgment when I first looked at that was that 3L you had already reviewed it, it was'gone, but it was one of.
i 4 these systems which was going to be typical of the federal 5 .information system, was going to be obsolete before arrival.
6 You're now looking at comething different. That's 7 a.different group of people that are doing that? And how'is ;
'8 that budgeted? Is that budgeted within the DOE high' level 9 waste budget and they basically, you know, have to design 10 the system to whatever standard we ultimately give them?-
11 MS, FEDERLINE: DOE is responsible for the 12 operation of the system, but we must budget to -- audit to !
13 ensure that the documents and tx) certify -- I believe in '
14 part 2, there is a certification role for NRC to assure that i 15' the-documents have been properly entered. -
16 COMMISSIONER McGAFFIGAN: And so that's.a future-17 budgetary issue for us. And relatively small or --
18 MS. FEDERLINE: Let me ask John --
19 MR. GREEVES: John Greeves.
20 MS. FEDERLINE: John Greeves is the steering-
'21 committee member. !
22 MR. GREEVES: We participate with IRM on this i 23 . issue and I think if you look at our current budget, you'il 24 see it's running something like 1 FTE and 100K for the next 25 few years.
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60 j t
1- .There's always this debate about when is LSS going
- t i o' 2 to reallyshappen, and what's been going.on in-LSS territory. '
3 is all'the groups have recognized that an Internet-based '
-4. approach'is on top of us now. There is no point in going .
5 .with this old approach that will be'this megasystem that; l
'6 will. cost:a bunch of dollars and is housed ~by DOE solely.
7 So we've talked with all the parties about an Internet-8 based approach and it's been running on what I call a small
!. 9- budget.
t 10 So I think the' crunch on this is going to come and L 11 I believe IRM putl numbers in '99 where it just depends on l 12- what happens to part 2. Are we going to switch to an l 13 Internet-based approach where each party, like NRC, puts all i
l i 14 of our documents up on the computer,-makes them available on l
l 15 the Internet - by the way, we have that capability now; we 16 have a test case that exists -- and whether all the other 17 parties would do the same thing. It would be obviously much-18 more cost effective to do it that way. l i
!- 19 I think the knotty question is what will IRM have 1
- 20. to.do in terms of auditing something like that-and I think '
21 out to about '99, it's not a big budgetary issue, but the.
i
)
l 22 last number I looked at'does'become significant in '99 if f
I 23- IRM has to do this audit process in terms of hiring a bunch
~
I -1 l :24- of people or a contractor to do it.
.25' So;I think it's probably worth your time to talk
' {
i
- . I
- ANN RILEY~& ASSOCIATES, LTD.
- Court Reporters
, 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 4
(202) 842-0034 1
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61
- 4 1 to us separately on that topic, but right now, it's pretty 2 much a level of effort and we're working with OGC on looking.
3 into how this would be accomplished with part 2.
4 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. .Thank you.
5 I have one last question for Dr. Patrick. '
'6 Are there any of.the activities in which you've 7 been engaged.or are currently engaged that have any 8 potential fungibility in terms of being applicable to an i
- 9. -interim storage facility?
10 MR. PATRICK: I believe so, particularly in the 11 engineering area, both in material sciences and also in the '
12 staff that has supported what we call the repository design, .
13 construction and operations group.
- 14 In' fact, interestingly, those who crafted the 15 original request for proposal for establishing the center
-:U5 included monitored retrievable storage under the repository l 17 . area. So skills and civil engineering and structural ,
18- engineering, material sciences, corrosion issues and things !
19 of that nature, as well as' seismic risk and the like, those 20 are areas where I think there's quite good fungibility.
4 21 That is a relatively small percentage of our total staff, 22 but those skills are'available. $
23 CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Thank you. ,
24 Well, the Commission would like to thank you, Dr. ,
25 Patrick, and the NRC staff for a very informative briefing.
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
Court Reporters- ,
1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300. l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
=
_ . _ . . - - . _ . _ . - _ . _ . _ _ - . _ _ - . . . ~ . . _ _ _ _ . _ _ . _ . _ . _ . _ _ _ _
62 1- The'information you presented us provides us with a -
2 perspective on where we are and the challenges the NRC's !
3 program faces and the Commission commends you and commends you and the Center for working through these issues in-very 5- difficult circumstances, yet developing and maintaining a 6 credible program, and needless to say, what you've-presented 7 will be useful in our future considerations. [
8 I just want=to make a comment. If-you flip back 6 h !
9 to your viewgraph 5 and we look at the -- you know,'the DOE 10 budget has been itself buffeted, but if we look at the NRC l 11 and-DOE repository funding levels and if we look at where we-12 were in FY '95 relative to our request, or even where we 13 were in FY '97 where we used 3 million carryover, that the I
! 14 DOE budget had gone below the dip it had earlier by a factor 15 of about 15 percent, and a 15 percent, if we-were assuming '
16 the same kind of a scaling, from our funding level would j
17 have put us at 18.7 million in appropriated funds from the l 18 ' Nuclear Waste Fund.. )
19 The point I'm making is that I think we all know l
20 and it gives me the opportunity for the public record to say -;
i 21 that tne issue of our keeping pace'with the national high j l_ 22 level waste program at a level commensurate with the i
23 responsibilities that we have and with additional
- 24 responsibilities that we may be asked to have is a very, i
25 very serious issue, i.
1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j l Court Reporters ]
1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 1 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 t _ ,
63 L. . 'l lit is one that I, in fact, did speak to at the 2 congressional hearing on the high level waste bill pending 3 in the House. It is one'that you should know that the 1
4 4 Commission has not lost sight of, will not lose sight of !
2 5 and, you know, we intend to fight this issue, because there 6 is no way we can do what we are asked-to do in the law-if we 7- don't have the money to do it. That kind of simplified 8 comparison shows the level of difficulty that we have. !
i 9' So the Commission requests that you keep us 10 informed, you know, of the progress and we'll have to stay 11 on top of it. We-look forward to hearing from both the 12 staff and the Center on this important issue. j 13 We're adjourned.
14 [Whereupon, at 2:59 p.m., the briefing adjourned.)
15 l 16 17 18 19 I
, 20 21
. 22 ,
23 24 25 t
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ;
Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
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e This is to certify that the attached description of a meeting
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of the U.S., Nuclear Regulatory Commission entitled:
7 TITLE OF MEETING: BRIEFING ON STATUS OF ACTIVITIES WITH CNWRA AND HLW PUBLIC MEETING f
PLACE OF MEETING: Rockville', Maryland
.i DATE OF MEETING: Wednesday, May 14, 1997 {
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- was held as herein appears, is a true and accurate record of <
the meeting, and:that this is the original transcript thereof taken stenographically by me, thereafterfreduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company .
Transcriber: m ckO - f/nVi Reporter: Jon Hundley i
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- NRC HIGH-LEVEL WASTE REPOSITORY PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS AND ,
ACCOMPLISHMENTS :
i Presented by ,.
i l
Margaret V. Federline Wesley C. Patrick i May 14,1997 l
OUTLINE OF BRIEFING
- Factors influencing the NRC HLW repository program.
- Overview of refocused program.
- Progress in meeting program objectives.
- Conclusions.
2
FACTORS INFLUENCING THE NRC-HLW REPOSITORY PROGRAM 3
i KEY ASSUMPTIONS FOR FY 1997 PROGRAM e Statutory requirements remain until pending legislation is passed.
- EPA standard will be proposed in 1997 and finalized in 1998.
- DOE will continue to implement its Revised Program.
e Future budgets are highly uncertain. '
4
E NRC AND DOE REPOSITORY .
FUNDING LEVELS NRC HLW PROGRAM DOEYUCCA MT.*
FY 1995 $22M $375M FY 1996 $17M ($11M NEW + $6M CARRYCVER) $250M FY 1997 $14M ($11M NEW + $3M CARRYOVER) $325M i
FY 1998 REQUEST $17M (NO CARRYOVER) $325M DOE briefing to NRC (April 1997) 5 i
1 KEY DOE PROGRAM MILESTONES Fiscal Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 I I I I I e a Proposed '
Final
, l. l l Final Part 960 '
i i 2/98 l l l l l l l l i
Project integrated l ' i l Safety Assessment i
. l
. 8/98 i , i i I , f 4 I t
' 8 I
. . i e l
l ' Site Recommendation Report
. Viability l , to the President l
l Assessment * '
7/01 *
. 9/98 , l l l
Draft Environmental l ,'
l Impact Assessment ,' License Application l l 7/99 l .
to NRC i
i 3/02
' Final Environmental l l l Impact Assessment l l l l 8m0 l l
i I I I E g
6 a 4
1 l
OVERVIEW OF REFOCUSED NRC PROGRAM l
7 i
NEAR-TERM PROGRAM OBJECTIVES Cooperate with EPA in developing a practical and .
implementable safety standard.
Implement HLW standards by developing a risk-informed performance-based rule specific to Yucca Mountain.
Set program priorities on key technical issues that are most important to repository performance.
- i Resolve key technical issues at the staff level prior to viability assessment and provide feedback to DOE.
Review elements of DOE's viability assessment and prepare to answer questions concerning potential licensing vulnerabilities. '
1 Continue to improve program efficiency including focusing interactions with DOE and other parties.
8
i t
PROGRAM STRATEGY .
- Continue present strategy through the viability assessment review in FY 1999.
- In FY 1997, focus on resolving 7 key technical issues prior to viability assessment.
- Monitor DOE's program for 3 issues where CNWRA support was eliminated by the FY 1997 budget reduction.
- Feedback to DOE provided by:
- Annual Progress Reports covering all key technical issues.
- Issue Resolution Status Reports including acceptance criteria.
- NRC-DOE interactions to reach agreements or document differences '-
and action plans for resolution.
- FY 1998 budget request for $ 17 million would support present strategy for all 10 key technical issues.
9
P FUTURE SHIFT IN PROGRAM STRATEGY Recommend shift to a " comprehensive" approach after viability !
assessment review necessary to prepare for the following statutory actions.
- Comments on sufficiency of at depth site characterization and waste form proposal "
- Review and adopt DOE's Environmental Impact Statement
- License application review
- Preparations include independent performance assessments and necessary follow-up on new information regarding key technical issues.
e Preparations include activities deferred by budget reductions such as ,
development of a Standard Review Plan including preclosure and postclosure issues.
- Increased focus on quality assurance activities. !
- A " comprehensive", approach depends on increased funding.
10 m_, _____ -- . __ < . _ _ . .___________._____.m__.____.___ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ ___ _ _ __ _,
CONSOLIDATION OF HLW RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
- In FY96, HLW research was consolidated into NMSS technical assistance principally for the following key technical issues:
- Saturated / unsaturated flow
- Igneous activity
- Near field environment
- Container life and source term
- Radionuclide transport
- RES initiated a generic waste management research program <
focusing on source term, engineered barriers, transport mechanisms, dose pathways, and performance assessment.
i 11 t
CONTINUING INTERACTIONS AND INITIATIVES WITH RES NMSS and RES efforts continuing to ensure exchange of information.
Resource constraints place practical limr iations on extent of interactions.
RES does monitor HLW activities.
l NMSS provides copies of regulatory products and Center reports.
NMSS staff participate in RES workshops and program reviews.
NMSS and RES plan a annual meeting dedicated to the exchange generic technical information. '
Areas of mutual interest include dose pathways, environmental transport, and source term.
12 i
i t
i l
l PROGRESS IN MEETING PROGRAM l OBJECTIVES I
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-.___-_ _ _ - _ _ .-------___.------------__---------_e- - - - - -_ - - - - - - - - - - - _ _ - a- -- _ - -_. -- m -__ _ - -- --
~
ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT FOR FY 1996 (NUREG/CR-6513) i
- Defines NRC key technical issues and links them to DOE Waste Containment and Isolation Strategy.
- Documents the path to resolution and progress for each of the 10 key technical issues.
- Consolidates and integrates feedback to DOE.
- Facilitates dialog with DOE. '
14
1 i
l l
OVERVIEW OF PROGRESS AND PLANS
- Established t ~nd technical basis in FY 1996 for resolution of technical l
j issues in FY 1997.
- Improved understanding of processes critical to reposito y performance through review of existing data and collection of new data.
- Enhanced or completed models representing processes important to repository performance.
l
- Conducting sensitivity analyses of individual repository systems or processes to focus issue resolution.
l l
- Progressed toward resolution of three key technical issues with DOE.
- Updated total system performance assessment code to enhance process
! models, treat revised designs, and improve computational efficiency.
- Updated systems code to conduct integrated sensitivity analyses of total system.
l l 15 i
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~ .. ..... - . - . - . - - . - - . - . - . - - ...- . - . - - . - -.. . - -... - .
t Y
OVERVIEW OF PROGRESS AND PLANS (Continued) t e Use results of total system analyses as decision-aiding tools:
- Reevaluate importance of key technical issues .
- Develop risk-informed, performance-based acceptance criteria
- Prepare methods for review of viability assessment e Develop issue Resolution Status Reports including i acceptance criteria. ,
e Provide staff insights on resolving key technical issues in the FY 1997 Annual Progress Report.
t 16
^ '
GENERALVIEWS ONTHE DOE PROGRAM e Clear improvement in DOE's overall program management and planning processes.
- Communication with NRC has continued to improve with interactions focused on reaching agreements on issues at the staff level. ,
- Focus and integration of program much improved by using total system performance assessments and Waste Containment and Isolation Strategy.
- Completion of main Exploratory Studies Facility tunnel and continuation of associated testing.
- Documentation of safety-related design, operations, ' '
characterization and strategic decisions needs to improve.
- Continued attention to quality assurance implementation necessary.
17 i
HIGHLIGHTS OF NRC PROGRESS AND VIEWS ON '
DOE'S SITE CHARACTERIZATION PROGRAM Reached agreement that the annual probability of volcanism is low; identified factors that will be the focus of consequence analyses.
Focused future geologic investigations by narrowing range of tectonic models and identifying faults most likely to affect performance. ;
Developed model for shallow infiltration and obtained initial bound on deep percolation that checks with DOE data. '
Identified that Np and U sorption is highly sensitive to pH variations; can vary by orders of magnitude.
Evaluated extent of fracture flow usiag DOE Cl-36 measurements.
t View positively DOE giving additional emphasis to hydrologic testing of the saturated zone.
18
{
a i
PHYSICAL MODEL RESULTS SHOWING RELATIONSHIPS AMONG FAULTS NEARYUCCA MOUNTAIN l:
i O N ,. ' . 50 clin /[
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Total displacement approximately 2 cm
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HIGHLIGHTS OF NRC PROGRESS AND VIEWS ON DOE'S '
EXPLORATORY STUDIES FACILITY, REPOSITORY, AND WASTE PACKAGE DESIGN PROGRAM Incorporated methodology to bound localized corrosion rate in total system performance assessment code.
Identified that galvanic coupling can significantly increase waste package life; limited testing and modeling required to determine the effectiveness of coupling.
Determined that equivalent continuum models are inadequate for simulating fracture flow; benchmarking demonstrated that DOE and NRC thermohydrology codes produce similar results.
Concluded DOE design control process is adequate; monitor implementation.
Nearing agreement on DOE seismic design methodology.
Agreed with DOE's phased approach to thermohydrology testing but raised concerns about representativeness of thermalload.
20
EFFECT OF GALVANIC COUPLING ON WASTE PACKAGE FAILURETIME
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2000 - -e-- 80 MTU/ acre, t o,i = 2336 yr -
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O 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 Galvanic Coupling Efficiency,1]
21
HIGHLIGHTS OF NRC PROGRESS AND VIEWS ON DOE'STOTAL SYSTEM PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT PROGRAM e
Provided DOE timely guidance on expert elicitation with Branch Technical Position (NUREG-1563); DOE is implementing.
e Reviewed DOETSPA-95 and provided timely comments on areas of agreement, conservativeness, and documentation requirements.
Included revised DOE designs, anticipated changes to EPA standard, and enhanced process models in total system performance assessment (TPA) code.
Enhanced integration and effectiveness of NRC/CNWRA team.
- Aligned key technical issues with hypotheses of DOE's Waste Containment and Isolation Strategy
- Focused plans on issue resolution and inputs needed forTPA code Developing theTPA code with broad participation from all disciplines '
Evaluating team effectiveness and conducting team training ImplementedTPA code on the SUN Workstation Platforms of the NMSS Advanced Computer System 22 J
s , 3 I
l
- HIGHLIGHTS OF NRC PROGRESS AND INTERACTIONS REGARDINGTHE EPA STANDARD AND NRC RULE
- Completed scoping calculations for interactions with EPA on critical components of the standard (NUREG-1538).
Evaluated relative radiological hazard to assess time frames for compliance
- Calculated effects of human intrusion
- Determined that relative importance of disruptive events increases with compliance period
- General acceptance on appropriate approaches in many areas
- Significant differences remaining for groundwater protection and level of protection ,.
- Developing options for a performance-based rule specific toYucca Mountain.
23
CONCLUSIONS e Feedback and interactions with DOE resulted in significant progress
, toward issue resolution.
Demonstrated that focused interactions can result in agreements and improved understanding of differences and how to resolve them t
- Made progress on difficult issues that are critical to the program including igneous activity, total system performance assessment, and t
thermal hydrological testing e Enhancement of NRC's total system performance assessment capability ;
and integration needed to: 1
- Evaluate what issues are important to repository performance i
Resolve issues (e.g., sufficiency of data and acceptability of bounding assumptions)
- Determine compliance with revised EPA standard t
e Future funding is uncertain; keeping pace with the National program depends on obtaining increased funding at a level commensurate with NRC HLW responsibilities. i 24 3