ML20154G965
| ML20154G965 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 09/14/1988 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0004, NUDOCS 8809210135 | |
| Download: ML20154G965 (207) | |
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UNITED STATES O NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION i
Uti1TED STATES tiUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
< AINISCRY CCt-MITTEE Ct1 tRX2 EAR HPSIE In tho Matter of: )
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- 4th ACliW Meeting )
{ Day Two )
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LOCATIO!1: Bethesda, Maryland gRfCSE5P~' q le'if l
l DATE: Septemb9r 14, 1988 .i
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1 PUBLIC NOTICE BY THE
() 2 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S 3 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
5 6
1 7 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the 8 proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 9 Commission's .1visory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS),
10 as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions 11 recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
12 No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at 13 this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or 14 inaccuracles of statement or data contained in this transcript.
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3 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE 3
In the Matter of: )
4 )
)
5 4th ACNW Meeting )
Day Two )
6 7 Wednesday, September 14, 1988 8
Room P-114 9 7920 Norfolk Avenue Bethesda, Maryland 10 The meeting convened, pursuant to notice, at 8:30 11 a.m.
12 BEFORE: DR. DADE W. MOELLER 13 Chairman, ACNN Professor of Engineering 14 in Environmental Health Associate Dean for Continuing Education 15 School of Public Health
() 16 Harvard University Boston, Massachusetts 17 ACNW MEMBERS PRESENT:
18 DR. MARTIN J. STEINDLER Director, Chemical Technology Division 19 Argonne National Laboratory Argonne, Illinois 20 DR. CLIFFORD V. SMITH 21 CONSULTANTS:
22 DR. MELVIN CARTER 23 DONALD ORTH 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
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DESIGNATED FEDERAL EMPLOYEES: ,
DR. SIDNEY PARRY 3 OWEN MERRILL j 4 NRC STAFF PRESENTERS:
i 5 T.C. JOHNSON i DR. MALCOLM R. KNAPP i 6 JOHN GREEVES .
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r~T 2 DR. MOELLER: The meeting will now come to order.
O 3 This is the second day of the fourth meeting of the Advisory 4 Committee on Nuclear Maste.
5 I am Dave Moeller, the Chairman of the Advisory 6 Committee. The other members here today are Martin 7 Steindler and Clifford Smith. And we are supported by two 8 consultants to the Committee, Melvin Carter and Donald Orth. !
9 Owen Merrill and Sidney Parry will act as 10 Designated Federal Employees for specific sessions being 11 covered durir.g the day.
12 The meeting is being conducted in accordance with 13 the provision of the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the 14 Government in the Sunshine Act.
15 A transcript is being kept and it is requested 16 that each speaker identify himself or herself by name and 17 business affiliation and that you use one of th- auaillary i
18 microphones and speak with sufficient clarity and volume so 19 that you can be heard and your words made a part of the 20 record of the meeting.
l 21 We have received no written statements from 22 members of the public and we have received no requests for 23 people to make oral statements during today's session.
24 The subjects to be covered during the day are 25 rather straightforward. The initial item is the American i
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f 266 1 Society of Mechanical Engineers letter on regulatory r~% 2 respor...ibility for mixed waste.
U 3 This group had established a committee which has 4 reviewed this subject. And we'll hear a report on their 5 findings.
6 We will then take a break, and at 10:15 cover low-7 level waste, the program sf the Division of Low-Level Waste 8 and Decommissioning. That will be presented by Dr. Knapp.
9 Then we will have a break or have an Executive 10 Session while we're working on various reports that the 11 Committee will issue as a result of this meeting. And then 12 we'll wrap it up after lunch with a discussion of the 13 decommissioning rule, which the staff has underway, and then 14 once again close out the day with a final Exocutive Session 15 in which we'll try hopefully to finish up the various 16 reports that we will be writing as a result of this meeting.
17 We have two reports that we're drafting as a 18 follow-up of yesterday's meeting. One is on below 19 regulatory concern and the other is on the high-integrity 20 containers. And today I am not sure how many letters will 21 come out of the meeting. But we'll see as the day moves 22 along.
23 Before we call upon our first speaker to cover the 24 first subject, let me ask if any of the members of the 25 Comm,ttee or its consultants have any comments.
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267 [
1 If not, then we'll proceed with the first topic on 2 the agenda, the ASME letter on regulatory responsibility
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3 for mixed waste. And we have a handout on that which I 4 gather has been distributed. And our speaker is Tim Johnson !
5 from the NRC staff.
6 Welcome. ,
r 7 MR. JOHNSON: Thank you very much.
8 What I'd like to do today, first of all, is to 9 provide you with some background of the mixed waste issue, 10 go into a short status report of what we've done, what we 11 have engoing and then discuss the ASME position paper that 12 was prepared and presented to us.
. 13 DR. MOELLER: Thank you. And we might mention l
14 that there have been distributed, I gather, an article on 15 the subject, the mixed waste program, which was in, I O 16 understand, today's Washington Post. I'm not positive on l
17 that. And then we are also distributing a letter on the 1
18 same subject from the Utility Nuclear Haste Management i
19 Group, a letter dated July 29, 1988, 20 Okay. Go ahead.
21 MR. JOHNSON: In 1985, I think you are aware that 22 Congress considered the mixed waste jurisdiction issue in f 23 their coverage under the Low Level Waste Policy Amendments i 24 Act. And at that time, the NRC and the EPA both testified i
25 in this area. r l
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268 1 The thrust of our testimony was that we -
2 recommended that a single agency be given jurisdiction over 3 this issue.
4 However, Congress did not resolve the issue in the 5 Act, and left it open. Their preference was for both 1
6 agencies the NRC and the EPA, to work out an administrative 7 solution to the problem. And in response to that direction, )
8 NRC and EPA began to produce a series of joint guidance 9 documents that would resolve seme of the major issues that 10 were at the forefront at the time.
11 The result of that was the preparation of three 12 guidance documents in 1987. The first one had to do with 13 the definition of mixed waste and how a waste generatos 14 would go about identifying whether or not he had a mixed 15 waste.
16 The definition was basically mixed waste is a low 17 level waste that also has a hazardous component either of 18 listed materials under the EPA RCRA regulations or waste 19 that would meet the hazardous waste characteristics that 20 were defined specifically under the RCRA regulations.
21 The second guidance document was a document on 22 siting guidelines. At the time we saw a disconnect in 23 schedules, you prciably know that under the Low Level Waste 24 Amendments Act a siting plan was required by states and 25 compacts to be prepared by January 1, 1988.
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269 1 However, the RCRA siting cri.oria was not
(} 2 3
scheduled to be prepared by EPA until September, 1980.
obviously was a disconnect in the time frames and what we This 4 wanted was that this issue not become an obstacle or a 2
5 stumbling block to states subaitting their siting plans in 6 accordance with the schedules defined by the Amendments Act. [
l 7 So the agencies got together and we put together a i
8 basic guidance document, took the siting z gquirements l' 9 Part 61 cnd added to them specific siting requirements that 10 applied to RCRA or that EPA expected to be in their 11 criteria.
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12 That document was prepared in March of 1987. !
l 13 The third joint guidance document that we prepared t i !
14 was one dealing with a conceptual design of a mixed waste l
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i j 15 disposal facility.
16 There were some apparent inconsistencies in our j
! 17 requirements under Part 61 for a site design and under the i
18 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Regulation, which ,
l 19 prescribed a double leachate collection system. Our i i
20 regulations were designed to eliminate a bathtub.
21 What we did in response to this was to come up l 22 with a design that would meet both sets of requirements, a 23 design which had the double leachate collection system in it [
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24 but was configured in such a manner that a bathtub would not i 25 occur in the disposal facility, Heritage Reporting Corporation [
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270 1 That document was released in August, 1987.
The current situation --
}2 3 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me. Now, back on the first 4 one, the definition of mixed waste. To h?lp me, we had 5 heard reports on this before, and I was never clear as to 6 whether there was a lower limit on how much organic material 7 or whatnot could be in the waste and it not be classified.
8 J.ad why I'm asking this, I guess I'm jumping 9 ahaad, but in the ASHE report that we were provided and have 10 read, it stated that radioactive materials could decay, of 11 course, ultimately, to stable nuclides and that what might 12 not be a mixed wacte then theoretically, and they were 13 careful to say theoretically, could become a mixed waste.
14 Now, here they are talking about atoms, they are r~s 15 not talking about even grams. And if that were true, that b 16 the few atoms of lead that were formed due to the decay of 17 radium or something like that, whatever you want, if that 18 makes it a mixed waste, then we'ra in a heap of trouble.
19 MR. JOHNSON: There are two sets of conditions 20 under which waste could be classified as hazardous.
21 One is if the materials of specific waste are 22 specifically listed in Part 261 of the EPA regulations. And 23 for those listed wastes, these are primarily organic and 24 solvents, specific wastes that relate to organics. For 25 those wastes, there is no lower limit.
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271 1 There is no lower limit for the listed wastes. In other words, if you have an organic material that is listed,
}2 there is no lower limit to what would define it as hazardous 3
4 or non-hazardous.
5 The other way hazardous waste could be defined is 6 through the characteristics test. And I think what you are 7 primarily concerned about is the heavy metal content.
8 The heavy metal content test is the EP toxicity 9 test. And in that test, they subject a known quantity of 10 the material to an acetic acid solution and they measure the 11 concentrations of heavy metals in a leachate.
12 And if the metals exceed a certain value that is 13 specified in the regulation, then it is hazardous. If there 14 is a lower amount than the concentrations listed, it would 15 not be hazardous.
16 So in effect, for the heavy metals, there is in a 17 sense a lower limit which is defined through this EP 18 toxicity leach test.
19 DR. HOELLER: But net for the organics?
20 MR. JOHNSON: But now for the listed wastes, 21 that's correct.
22 DR. STEINDLER: I guess I have a problem 23 understand what you mean. Are you saying that if I have a 24 fairly lousy method of analysis that I happen to be 25 employing, if I have a poor method of ar.alysis that I happen Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
272 1 to be employing for benzene or whatever and I don't see any benzene in a sample, it therefore is not a hazardous waste
{}2 3 because I couldn't find it?
4 MR. JOHNSON: Well, the way you would determine 5 whether or not there is benzene in it wouldn't always 6 necessarily be by an analymie. It would be the known 7 materials that you have to work with. It could be defined 8 by knowledge of your process.
9 And that is generally going to be how most people 10 will define whether or not they have one of these listed 11 organics is by understanding the process that they're 12 dealing with and the wastes that they're generating.
13 MR. ORTH: But there's been a very real problem, 14 because if there is a possibility that the material could 15 have been exposed to it, you have to go on the presumption 16 that it might be there.
17 And so if you use benzene, for example, anywhere 18 in a process, basically you have to assume that everything 19 that's connected with that process has got benzene, the way 20 it has been interpreted specifically in various 21 applications.
22 It is not logical, which is what your question 23 really asked.
24 DR. STEINDLER: And how long has this been in 45 ellect?
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273 1 MR. JOHNSON: I believe the initial RCRA-EPA
(^T 2 regulations were first promulgated around 1980. Early in
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3 the 1980s.
4 DR. STEINDLER: I'm just surprised that somebody i
5 hasn't challenged it.
l l 6 MR. JOHNSON: These are issues that all waste 1
7 generators have questioned. And they have apparently at
! 8 least to an implementation level, have resolved what it is l
l 9 they have to do with EPA as to whether or not they have a 10 hazardous waste or not.
11 DR. MOELLER: I'm not sure this is a proper 12 question, but does EPA in its interpretation of this IS particular portion of the rule, do they take a reasonable l
14 approach?
15 MR. JOHNSON: They are taking a reasonable 16 approach. I don't believe anybody is being harassed for atom 17 or molecule level concentrations of materials in waste.
18 DR. MOELLER: But you are also showinc us that 19 there is more than a jurisdictional problem, there are very 20 fundamental problems in terms of the definitions.
l 21 MR. JOHNSON: In terms of the RCRA definitions, l
22 there have always been people who don't have necessary a 23 clear understanding and interpretation of what constitutes a 24 hazardous waste.
l 25 Are there any other questions?
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274 3
1 DR. HOELLER: Go ahead.
(} 2 3
MR. JOHNSON: In terms of mixed waste disposal, there are three operating commercial disposal sites. None 4 of those disposal sites are permitted to receive hasardous 5 waste. Consequently, any mixed waste that is generated is 6 held at the licensee's facility for storage.
7 U.S. Ecology, late last year, was considering the t
8 construction of a mixed waste disposal facility at their 9 Hanford, Washington site. However, I believe that that is 10 still under consideration primarily because U.S. Ecology is 11 evaluating whether or not there really is a market for such 12 e facility.
13 Their major question is what is a source of wsste 14 and is there enough money in the marketplace to make this a real viable situation.
{ } 15 16 So that is still under consideration by U.S.
17 Ecology.
18 DR. HOELLER: Is there a limited number of mixed 19 waste disposal facilities in the nation?
20 MR. JOHNSON: There are no mixed waste disposal 21 facilities in the nation that are licensed to receive 22 radioactive material and permittad to receive hazardous 23 natorial.
24 DR. HOELLER: All right. So there are no 25 racilities licensed for mixed waste, although U.S. Ecology Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
275 1 is thinking about it. And in terms of hazardous waste, can you ballpark us how many facilities?
{}2 3 MR. JOHNSON: I don't have a number. There are a 4 number of facilities that have been accepting mixed waste 5 under current permits by EPA or the states.
6 DR. MOELLER: No. How many -- well, let me see.
7 You are saying that although there are no facilities 8 licensed to accept mixed waste, there are facilities that 9 are accepting --
10 MR. JOHNSON: Hazardous waste.
11 DR. MOELLER: Hazardous. And how massy hazardous 12 waste facilities are there?
13 MR. JOHNSON: I don't know the number. I would 14 assume there are quite a few of them.
15 DR. MOELLER: You know, what I keep hearing is, 16 there's the one major facility in Alabama. But I didn't 17 know whether there were 1,000 or 10 or 100, 18 Cliff, do you know a ballpark?
19 DR. SMITH: I don't think there are 100. But 20 there are some in California that are licensed.
71 MR. JOHNSON: There are also many firms that 22 produce their own wastes and dispose of them onsite under an 23 EPA or authorized state permit, also.
24 DR. MOELLER: For hazardous waste?
- 25 MR. JOHNSON: Right. for hazardous waste.
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276 i 1 DR. SMITH: I should know this, but I don't. At l l
the current time, what are we doing with sinnilation vials?
{}2 3 MR. JOHNSON: Sinnilation fluids are generally 4 considered to be below regulatory concern wastes, at least 5 for the tritiur snd carbon-14. They are being sent to a 6 Quadrer facility, primarily a Quadrex facility in Florida ,
7 where they are incinerated. l 8 DR. SMITH: And do they have a permit to dispose 9 of hazardous waste?
10 MR. JOHNSON: They have a permit --
11 DR. SMITH: I mean, do you consider those 12 hazardous wastes?
13 MR. JORMSON: Right. The tilene and zilene is 14 usually the sinnilation fluid. Those are listed organics. j 15 So they are, they do have a hazardous component. The 16 Quadrex facility is permitted as a storage facility. They ,
17 do not need an incineration permit from EPA because they are i 18 using this waste as fuel and if they use the waste as fuel 19 they are exempted from the RCRA requirement.
20 uot because they do store waste, they do have a 21 permit issued by the State of Florida for storage. .
22 DR. SMITH: I see.
23 DR. STEINDLER: You say that there are no mixed j 24 waste disposal sites licensed at the moment.
25 Is there enough information in these guidance I
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1 documents to indicate to somebody who would be interested in ,
that process on how to go about getting a license?
{}2 3 MR. JOHNSON: The procedures that are followed 4 ore, they would have to take two tracks. They would have to 5 go through the NRC or agreement state process for receiving :
t 6 a license for the radioactive portion and they would have to 7 go through EPA or one of their authorized states for the t
8 RCRA portion. ,
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9 We did look at the possibility of developing a ;
10 joint guidance document on licensing. However, when we I 11 looked through the siting plans that were provided last 12 January in accordance with the Low Level Maste Amendments 13 Act, we found that there was only one compact that was 14 proposing a mixed waste facility that would ultimately be c
15 licensed by NRC and be permitted by EPA.
16 There were three other facilities that were !
t 17 proposed but they would be in agreement states or in f 18 authorized EPA states. .
19 Because the licensing procedures might be f i
20 different for those particular entities, we didn't feel it l 21 was reasonable to spend a lot of our resources developing a I 22 joint guidance document that would only apply to one A
23 facility so we felt that we could best work on a case by 24 case with that entity, j 25 DR. SMITH: I'm a little unclear. What's r I
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l 278 1 happening to mixed waste now?
(} 2 3 shipped for disposal.
MR. JOHNSON: It's being stored. It's not being 4 DR. SMITH: It's being stored at the site?
5 MR. JOHNSON: Right.
6 DR. MOELLER: I guess, Cliff, I had the same 7 question. We're hearing, you know, this big problem of 8 mixed waste, big problem of the jurisdiction not being clear 9 or it's a joint jurisdiction and so forth. Then we hear
) 10 that U.S. Ecology is thinking about licensing or seeking the
! 11 license for a facility for the disposal of mixed waste but 4
12 they're not sure it would even be profitable.
13 And so is there a problem or is there not?
14 There apparently is mixed waste to be disposed of I
15 but it is being stored.
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i 16 DR. STEINDLER: Is the Department of Energy not 17 treating its mixed waste in some fashion?
I 18 MR. JOHNSON: The Department of Energy has a very
, 19 large mixed waste source tern, much greater than what the 20 commercini side has. In other words, NRC-licensed 21 facilities. And EPA has a major program underway with the 22 different states that have jurisdiction and with EPA in f
i 23 trying to resolve some of their issues.
24 But they are doing a number of different things.
25 I'm not totally familiar with a31 of the nuances of the DOE
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279 1 program but there is a major effort underway to deal with f)
xs 2 that question at DOE.
3 MR. ORTH: You noted that people were storing 4 mixed waste because there wasn't anyplace to send it. How 5 does this fall in conflict with the regulations, namely, 6 that thou shalt not store it unless it's in a permitted 7 facility?
8 MR. JOHNSON: Well, that's the next thing I wanted 9 to talk about was how RCRA permitting was being handled.
10 And this deals somewhat with the article that was passed out 11 from the Washinoton Post.
12 There are three categories of EPA-regulated 13 states.
14 The first category, I believe there are eight states that EPA regulates the hazardous waste generation and
( } 15 16 disposal and storage.
17 The next category are states that have been 18 authorized by EPA to regulate mixed waste and hazardous 19 waste. And there are four states that have the mixed waste 20 authorization. They are Colorado, South Carolina, Tennessee 21 and the State of Washington.
22 The last category are states that have received 23 hazardous waste authorization but have not been authorized 24 to regulate mixed waste. And that would be the bulk of the 25 remaining states.
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280 1 So what you have here is a situation where there may be three categories of compliance.
{}2 3 You have people in EPA states that are required 4 right now to at least have a license for storage of material 5 if storage is what they are doing.
6 For the authorized states, again, the deadlines 7 for submitting Part A applications have passed in those four 8 states. In the states of South Carolina and Washington, the j 9 reactor facilities have submitted the necessary paperwork 10 and do have Part A interim permits for storage.
11 In the other states, there are really no 12 requirements for submitting documentation for treatment, 13 storage or disposal, because they have not been authorized 14 to regulate mixed waste.
So the waste generators in those facilities are in
)15 16 kind of a limbo until those states get authorized to 17 regulate mixed waste.
18 And in the article, it talked about the WIPP 19 facility in New Mexico. New Mexico is in one of those 20 states that are not yet authorised to regulate mixed waste 21 and therefore there in effect is no requirement at this
! 22 point that is applicable for waste generators in that state.
23 DR. SMITH: But they are authorized to regulate 24 hazardous waste?
i 25 MR. JOHNSON: Right. Right.
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281 Tcpe 2 1 DR. CARTER: Let me ask a specific question. How do they treat at the moment contaminated lead bricks or
{}2 3 shielding material?
4 MR. JOHNSON: Right now they are being stored. I 5 think most facilities are trying to --
6 DR. CARTER: They very specifically are mixed 7 waste though?
8 MR. JOHNSON: They would be mixed waste. I think 9 what they're doing is they are trying to re-use the lead 10 bricks, They' re decontaminating them so that they do not 11 become a waste.
12 In the area of activities that we're doing now 13 with EPA, we have a number of things going on.
14 The first one is in response to the definition of 15 mixed waste, that joint guidance document, we received a 16 number of public comments which we're resolving, and we're 17 going to reissue the draft document, the joint guidance 18 document that incorporates some of the comments from a 19 number of organizations that we received.
20 Our goal is to publish this in tho Federal 21 Register early in October.
22 The other things that we planned with EPA over the 23 next six to nine months --
24 DR. STEINDLER: I'm sorry. Let me interrupt.
25 What's the force of this guidance document? I mean, is it Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
282 1 just that? ,
2 MR. JOHNSON: It's a guidance document.
It's udvice, saying here's what l 3 DR. Si'EINDLER:
4 you might want to do?
5 MR. JOHNSON: Yes.
6 DR. STEINDLER: Even where we don't know how to do 7 it?
8 MR. JOHNSON: I think we know how to do it. This ;
9 is just a guidance document to explain to our licensees what j 10 it is that's expected so everybody is working from the same l 11 piece of information.
12 DR. STEINDLER: You think the process of obtaining 13 either permits or licenses or whatever you want to call them l 14 is a clear path that's chartable and definable for an :
15 applicant?
16 MR. JOHNSON: I think the process of obtaining a 17 license from the NRC in an agreement state is a fairly c'. ear 18 path.
19 With respect to tb RCRA permits, that may be very 20 difficult, because those requirements are in a state of 21 evolution. They are changing all the time and they will 22 continue to change.
23 The other problem with that is that the states, 24 the concept that was embodied in the Resource Conservation 25 Recovery Act was to have the states take the responsibility Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
283 1 for regulating hazardous wastes. And the way the Act is 2 chartered is it allows the states a great deal of (v")
3 flexibility for being more restrictive than what's currently 4 embodied in the EPA regulations.
5 So it could very well be that ".te could see 50 6 different sets of hazardous waste regulations. And for an 7 organization that is working in a number of different 8 states, it could be difficult in order to set a company 9 policy when there are soveral different sets of requirements 10 that the organization may need to meet.
11 DR. STEINDLER: I'm even willing to buy the notion 12 that there may be difficulties for somebody who wants to do 13 this. I'm trying to find out whether it's possible.
14 MR. JOHNSON: Yes. People are applying for 15 licenses and interim permits right now.
16 DR. STEINDLER: Because one of the things that one 17 keeps hearing is if you want to try and set up an 18 incinerator, for example, you better count on a five-year 19 program, because people don't get permits from the EPA to 20 run an incinerator for enormous lengths of time. It's 21 beginning to look like a reactor lic'nse.
e 22 HR. JOHNSON: What EPA did was I think they 23 recognized that and they established a situation where you 24 would apply for an interim permit initially and the 25 requirements for an interim permit would be primarily Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
284 1 administrative in nature. The requirements are more of a >
() 2 management area.
3 And then later on you would provide a Part B i
4 permit which would include the detailed technical aspects of 5 your facility. f 6 DR. STEINDLER: Can you operate under a Part A 7 permit? l 8 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, they can. (
9 DR. SMITH: Low level radioactive waste is shipped ,
10 around the country and goes to one of the three sites that 11 are currently operating. And hazardous waste of course is ;
12 being transported too.
- P 13 There are I think you said four ststes that 14 license mixed waste facilities.
MR. JOHNSON: That are authorized to regulate
( } 15 16 hazardous waste and mixed waste. [
17 DR. SMITH: But are we saying that in those four t
18 states there are no facilities to accept mixed waste? Is 19 that it? !
i 20 HR. JOHNSON: Right. l L
21 DR. SMITH: Okay. !
22 DR. CARTER: Let me ask you sort of a fundamental 23 question. I guess one of the first things you do in an area 24 like this is identify the source term and the generators and '
25 the quantities and this. What's being done there since we i
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285 1 don't have clear-cut jurisdiction as far as even determining
(} 2 3
that simple thing?
HR. JOHNSON: What we did in 1985, we contracted !
4 with Brookhaven to identify what the source term was. And b back in 1985 they sent around a survey, they compiled the 6 information and their bottom line was that probably about 3 7 percent of the low level waste did have a potential for 8 being a mixed waste. ;
9 The bulk of that, over half of that 3 percent was [
f e 10 sinnilation fluids which as I mentioned earlier are being 1 11 taken care of primarily in an incineration facility in the l
! 12 State of Florida. i 13 The rest of the material is made up of lead, ,
, t 14 contaminated lead bricks. It could also include wastes from processes. Service water systems generally use a
[ } 15 16 corrosion inhibitor made up of a chromate. That is i 1 l 17 potentially a source of mixed waste. ;
I i 18 Those were the primary sources -- organic fluids, l 6 i 19 lead and chromate corrosion inhibitors were determined back j .
i 20 in 1985 to be the primary sources of mixed waste. i
[
21 There is, however, a good deal of uncertainty in t
, I j 22 those figures. My feeling is that when the surveys went [
. 1 23 out, a lot of people I'm not sure really understood the <
l j 24 questions that were being asked and those numbers may in 25 fact be quite a bit lower than what was perceived by [
2 i
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286 1 Brookhaven.
(} 2 There is a more comprehensive study that is now 3 being performed by NUMARC, and they expect their report to 4 be issued by the end of this year.
5 But hopefully that will be a much more I 6 comprehensive study and identification of what the actual 7 mixed waste source term really is. But from my discussions 8 with a number of people I think the consensus le they feel 9 that the Brookhaven 3 percent number was high. .
10 The joint guidance documents that we are planning ,
t 11 over the next year, we' re planning three of them. One is in !
12 the area of sampling and testing.
13 Obviously, there can be some problems with ,
14 occupational exposure in sampling and testing hazardous of [
mixed waste. The hazardous waste regulations were not
{ } 15 16 written in the consideration that there may be a radioactive 17 hazard in some of the samples that may be taken. l 18 Consequently, an example is that the EPA toxicity 19 test requires a 100 gram sample to be tested and leached. ;
20 100 grams of high sctivity ion exchange resin would probably 21 be on the order of 10 to 100 R per hour on the surface. It j l
22 would obviously be very difficult to handle by a laboratory ;
23 technician in doing an assay. l 24 The samples that are currently taken for l 25 radiochemical analysis of a high activity resin are probably I i j Heritage Reporting Corporation l
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287 1 more in the range of 100 milligrams in order to meet specific license conditions that, these radiochemical
(}2 3 analytic service companies have.
4 So what we are going to attempt to do here is 5 provide a general guidance document that would specify some j 6 relief and consideration for occupational exposure hazards.
7 The next guidance document is one on storage. And 8 we are planning to have this finished by December, 1988. i 9 The previous document on sampling we also are -
10 planning on completing by December, 1988.
11 The storage obviously is a question because there 12 is no disposal capacity for mixed waste at this time. And 13 what our plans are is to 6.ake the generic letter on storage 14 guidance which was pr%v Jed by NRC in 1981 and modifying that with specific EPA provisions that may also be needed f
( } 15 16 for storage, j r
17 The third guidance document -- !
L 18 DR. STEIN 0LER. I'm sorry. I i
19 MR. JOHNSON: Yes.
20 DR. STEINDLER: In attackitag the storage problem, 21 do you have a reasonable idea what the inventory is out 22 there?
I 23 MR. JOHNSON: I think it's very small. We visited 24 Duke's McGuire station. The only source of hazardous waste 25 that they generated was from a dry cleaning system that uses 1
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288 1 freon, and they generate a freon sludge on filter 2 cartridges. And they may generate maybe a drum or two of O 3 filter cartridges a year.
l 4 These are primarily from the cleaning of 5 I decontamination clothing, so the activities are fairly low 6 and storage does not represent a major problem, both in 7 quantity or in radioactive hazard. l
{
8 DR. STEINDLER: I 70ess I'm trying to get a !
[
9 picture of the size of the pr'blem in the commercial sector. l
! 10 I have a vague notion of the size of the Problem in the DOE j 11 sector.
i 12 But the impression I'm getting -- that's I guess l l
1 13 what I need some clarification on -- is that the size of the 14 problem in the commercial sector is trivial.
15 MR. JOHNSON: Well, I don't think it's trivial in !
] 16 . hat if a waste generator is forced t3 store this, i f he i l
- 17 cannot dispose of it, that creates a problem for him. So in [
18 terms of the waste generator, I don't believe they consider 19 the problem trivial.
20 However, in terms of the overall volume that they I 21 have to deal with, I think that it is relatively small.
] l I
- 22 DR. S 7',INDLER t I was specific, and I said the t 23 4
tize of the problem.
24 I recognize that you don't want to have stuff l i I
- 25 standing around that you can't ever get rid of. So !
l I
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289 1 somewhere down the line you certainly would be interested in
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having some provisions or arguments settled among the various Government agencies to settle the issue.
l 1
4 But we' re not staring at half a million cubic feet 5 --
6 MR. JOHNSON: That's correct.
7 DR. STEINDLER: -- of stuff that we are choking 8 on.
9 ttR. JOHNSON: That's correct. Right 10 DR. SMITH: Then probably the other thing that 11 arises is, anyone looking at this from a commercial venture, 12 the r. mounts are so darned emnll that to make it go you'd 13 have to charge an extremely high price.
14 MR. JOHNSON: That's right. This is one of the considerations.
{ } 15 16 DR. SMITH: So the producer then may look at it 17 and say well, you know, I'm only generating a drum and a 18 half. I'm going to just sit on this stuff for a while.
19 HR. JOHNSON: That may very well be the case.
20 DR. SMITH: It's almnat a Catch-22.
21 MR. JORNSON: That was one of the things that U.S.
22 Ecology was trying to consider in making a decision at to 23 whether or not they want to build this facility.
24 DR. SMITH: The only decision, it's really wnether 25 or not the customer is willing to pay the cost. Because Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
290 1 they can do it. It's just the cost.
~
2 MR. JOHNSON: That's correct.
3 DR. MOELLER: On the volumo and so forth, we've 4 covered that.
5 And we've heard that commercially it may not be 6 viable. And so I guess I go back to my earlier question 7 about just exactly how big a problem is it.
8 MR. JORNSON: Well, in terms of the volume, I 9 don't think it's a large problem. However, in terms of the 10 administrative requirements that a waste generator would 11 have to comply with in order to satisfy all of the 12 permitting and licensing requirements, that can present a l' burden to waste generators.
14 DR. MOELLER: How, one other thing that we are 15 going to be covering at this meeting is decommissioning and 16 the rulemaking on that.
17 And one of the items ehtt the material, one of the 18 pieces of information or documents that we were provided 19 included estimates on the volume of low level waste that 20 would result from decommissioning. And if we read that or 21 if I read it properly, it could make a very significant 22 impact on the total volume of icw level waste that currently 23 has to be disposed of.
24 HR. JOHNSON: It could be a significant fraction.
25 In the development of Part 61 we did include a Heritage Reporting Corporation (192) 628-4833
291 1 decommissioning source term in our analysis. That decommissioning source term was primarily developed from the
{}2 3 Pacific Northwest Laboratory reports that were done eight to 4 ten years ago. !
$ DR. MOELLER: Let's say that the volume is 6 significant. Then the next question is, in decommissioning 7 you do a lot of decontamination. And does that involve 8 organics or might it involve chemicals which then would 9 result in the decommissioning waktes, some of them being 10 mixed wastes? i 11 MR. JOHNSON: It could very well generate, result 12 in a mixed waste generation. But I think that the industry 13 is aware enough about this problem.that they're going to do l
14 whatever they can to try to minimize that volume and try to, 15 through either administrative or engineering decisions, not 16 generate the waste, if they can help it.
1 17 In fact, we see that taking place now for example 18 with the lead bricks that nr. Carter referred to. The 19 emphasis on lead bricks at power plants now in facilities is 20 to decontaminate them for re-use rather than to dispose of ;
i 21 them.
22 FR. ORTH: Unfortunately, doesn't that generate 23 another mixed waste? Meaning the solutions that you 24 decontaminate with.
i 25 MR. JOHNSON: I think it depends on what you would l
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
I 292 1 use to decontr.minate it with.
2 I think the objective is to use a decontamination
{
3 solution that would not result in a mixed waste product.
4 MR. ORTH: Unfortunately, practically all of them 5 operate by dissolving a thin layer of lead off the surface.
6 So they have radioactivity, which is what you are 7 decontaminating plus & little bit of lead.
8 MR. JOHNSON: Well, if you were to take that 9 solution and solidify it, to me it's probably going to be 10 likely that if you were to do an EP toxicity test on it, you ,
11 probably would get it to pass.
12 However, if you did the EP toxicity test on the 13 lead brick, it would probably not pass.
14 So the processing and the waste generation, the kind of wastes that you generate can also affect whether or
{ } 15 16 not the final product is a mixed waste or not.
17 FR. ORTH: Okay. Another question. Is there any 18 reasonable amount or unreasonable amount of material coming 19 out from either hospitals or research institutes that are 20 using a lot of radiochemical techniques?
21 MR. JOHNSON: The largest cource I'm aware of are 22 the sinnilation fluids. And those fluids are being taken 23 care of through incineration.
24 The last guidance document that we're planning on 25 doing over the next nine months is one or, a joint inspectivn Heritage ReportLng Corporation (202) 620-4888
293 1 and enforcement document which we plan to prepare by June of 1989. And this document would address some of the issues
{}2 3 raised as to interaction with authorized states, EPA 4 regions, and EPA and NRC regions. And it would address 5 issues as to whether or not inspection should be jointly 6 performed, who has authority in which area, and that type of 7 area.
8 DR. SMITH: I was just thinking about that. You 9 have a situation in which at least from the nuclear 10 standpoint the enforcement is by the Federal Government, 11 also from the standpoint of radioactive waste.
12 But in that state, it may be a state that's been 13 delegated the hazardous waste responsibility from EPA. So l 14 you'll have Federal and state people.
In another situation, it could be Teo. and Fed.
{ } 15 16 Right? And in another situation, it could be state agency 17 and state agency.
18 HR. JOHH30N: That's right. You may have a 19 situation like South Carolina where both sisas are regulated 20 from the same department. That is not true for say the 21 State of Washington.
22 And in some cases, FPA has authority over the 23 aspects of a particular state and you may have EPA, that 24 region dealing directly with an NRC agreement state or with 25 NRC.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
l 294 l
(. 1 DR. SMITH: Getting back to the question that 2 someone raised, and I know it's not in our purview, but take l 3 a chip manufacturer or someone who is in a really hot, 4 competitive market, it becomes extremely important in what 5 state you are located.
1
! 6 MR. JOHNSOM: That's right.
7 DR. SMITH: And where your competitor is in terms 8 of what the price is going to be on your product.
l 9 HR. JOHNSON: Right. Well, an example of that is l
l 10 some states, I believe South Carolina and Massachusetts are 11 examples, they have defined used oils as a hasardous waste, 12 which is different from what EPA has promulgated under 40 13 CFR 261.
14 So that introduces a whole new set of problems for 15 a particular waste generator.
16 But congress gave the states the authority to make 17 those decisions if they so chose.
18 I mentioned a little bit earlier that there is a 19 cc3prehensive mixed waste study that is being performed by 20 NUMARC. These is an interim report that's due cut in 21 October and the schedule is for the final report to be 22 issued in December.
23 One of the key things we're interested in in this 24 study is the source term evaluation that they're looking at.
25 So that, in summary, is the kinds of things we've meritage Reporting corporation (202) 628-4888
295 1 been working on and are planning on doing in the future.
2 What I'd lik.e to do now is to discuss a little bit
(~')
v 3 of the ASME position paper that was prepared.
4 DR. MOELLER: Now you mentioned NUMARC. And what 5 about this Utility Nuclear Waste Management Group. Have you 6 been interacting with them?
7 MR. JOHNSON: Yes. They have a committee that is 8 composed of the Nuclear Rad Waste Group as well as a 9 Hazardous Group that is formed within the Edison Electric 10 Institute. And they had sponsored a study specifically to 11 look at tank regulations. Thsy were concerned about storage 12 of waste.
13 RCRA has some very specific requirements regarding 14 tankage. And what they wanted to do was to evaluate whether or not these RCRA requirements differed significantly from
}35 16 what was required under NRC provisions. And the ccnclusion 17 of that report was that in general by a utility meeting the 18 NRC requirements, they would meet almost all of the RCRA 19 requirements with the exception of some administrativo 20 things like visually inspecting the tanks on a day to day 21 basis. And they were concerned about that primarily because 22 RCRA did call for a visual inspection which meant direct 23 contact between an inspector and the waste that could 24 obviously produce a radiation hazard, if the source term was 25 stricken.
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l 296 1 DR. MOELLER: We have, as I mentioned earlier, the letter to Hugh Thompson of July 29. And you are correct,
{}2 3 they list the three points -- the two you've just mentioned 4 plus the overlap in the regulations.
5 Okay. That's helpful. Well, then, lit's go to 6 the ASME study.
7 HR. JOHNSON: These issues that I've just talked 8 about in response to some of your questions is a concern to 9 waste generators and it's because of this that the ASME 10 decided to take on a major lobbying effort with Congress in 11 order to get some of the legislation changed that would 12 affect primarily the jurisdiction role between EPA and NRC.
13 DR. MOELLER: Not to question ASME, but I was 14 curious. Why do they have such high interest in rad vaste, 15 the Mechanical Engineering Society?
16 HR. JOHNSON: I guess there are two reasons for 17 that. One is there is a very active Rad Waste Committee 18 that acts under ASME auspices. ,They are involved in a 19 number of different things. That's one reason.
20 The other reason is because of some of the 21 individuals involved. I think they are more the pro-active 22 type of people and when they see a problem I think they try 23 to get it resolved.
24 DR. HOELLER: Thank you.
25 HR. JOHNSON: I believe my reading of the position seritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
297 1 paper is that the major point that they're trying to make is that the dual regulation of mixed waste is burdensome and
(}2 3 costly to waste generators and their basic goal is to 4 recommend legislation which would allow a single agency to 5 have jurisdiction over mixed waste. They recommend the NRC 6 to be that agency, and they recommend that the regulation be 7 done under a set of performance-based requirements rather l
8 than the very prescriptive RCRA requirements that are 9 imposed on EPA.
10 When we talked about this in the meeting that we 11 had with ASHE, they came and gave a presentation to us. We i
12 indicated that we had also testified back in 1985 that we l
13 would prefer a single agency to have jurisdiction also. But 14 at this time, Congress has given their direction or l preference for a dual jurisdiction syst7m and at the present f
[ } 15 16 time we think that it's working about as well as it can 17 work.
18 There are some burdens that the waste generators 19 will face in the dual regulatory system. But we don't feel, 1
20 we haven't identified any major problem that would prevent a f i
21 waste generator from meeting both sets of requirements.
22 DR. STEINDLER: You say Congress has specified a 23 dual system?
l 24 HR. JOHNSON: Well, by not addressing the issue of 25 Low Level Waste Amendments Act and through discussions that !
t Heritage Reporting Corporation I (202) 628-4888 l
298 1 we've had with Congressional steff, their preference was for 2 both agencics to sit down and work out administrative 3 solutions to the issues.
4 DR. STEINDLER: I would characterize that as 5 approval by default. Is thst in your mind a legitimate 6 description?
7 MR. JOHNSON: I'm not sure I would categorize that 6 as approval by default. I think the reason that Congress i 9 didn't address it was because they wanted jurisdiction by 2
r 10 both agencies. They did not want to give a single agency l 11 jurisdiction.
L 12 DR. STEINDLER: Have you been able to uncover why ,
i 13 someone might want to do that?
14 HR. JOHNSON: I think it's because there are a i
15 number of different opinions within Congress as to how i 16 environmental matters should be regulated and they differ l 17 broadly, and that resolution of that issue was not possible 18 under the time frame of constructing the Amendments Act. !
19 DR. SMITH: And sowe of the discussion was to the 20 effect that by keeping it a joint responsibility you would [
21 really get the best in the sense that EPA would be extremely [
22 concerned about the hazardous waste, the environraental [
23 component, the NRC. If you put it in one, there was concern i i
24 that one aspect of this thing might be slighted.
I 25 MR. JOHNSON: That's right. That was one of the ;
I I
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293 1 points that we brought up in our meeting with ASME is that NRC really does not have expertise in the hazardous waste
(}2 3 management area and that expertise resides within EPA. And 4 that would be a major resource burden for us to accumulate 5 that body of expertise in order to regulate the area of 6 mixed wasto.
't DR. SMITM It's interesting, because EPA also has 3 some capability in the radioactive waste area.
9 HR. JOHNSON: In ;he Office of Radiation Programs, 10 that's correct, they do. But it's of an expertise that's 11 oriented toward developing --
12 DR. SMITM Standards.
13 MR. JOHNSON: -
generally applicable standards as 14 opposed to the details of actually writing requirements for a waste generator to respond to in a licensing mode.
[ } 15 Tcpe 316 The result of this is that while we agreed that it 17 would be useful for a single agency to have responsibility, 18 at this time we believe that it is not, the system is not 19 broken and that the resources that would be required in 20 order to implement such a legislative mandate would be 21 fairly onerous on us, potentially rulemaking, developing a 22 completely new set of regulations that apply to mixed waste, 23 potentially having to implement the RCRA requirements as 24 written. That would be a fairly onerous burden on us and 25 our belief was that the problem isn't broken to the extent 1
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300 1 that we want to go back to Congress and recommend changing the jurisdiction.
(}2 3 There were also some other recommendations that 4 ASME made. 'they recommended that Congress exclude-high 5 level and tranauranic wastes from RCRA requirements.
6 Their reason was that they felt that a geologic 7 repository provided substantially more protection than the 8 disposal requirements set out in RCRA and therefore it made l 9 sense to exempt high-level and transuranic wastes from the 10 RCRA rcquirements.
11 In that regard, NRC really hasn't taken a position l 12 with respect to that.
13 DR. SMITH: Right now, with respect to the high-14 level waste repository, would DOE have to get a permit from i
15 EPA? I mean, has a determination been made that as wo
[
16 envision how the wastes would be stored in a repository that i 17 they are hazardous?
18 MR. JOHMSON: If there is a hazardous component, 19 if it is determined that the wastes have a hazardous 20 component, then under the existing regulations they would 21 have to get a RCRA permit.
22 DR. SMITH: I see. And that determination has not (:
23 been made? j 24 MR. JOHNSON: DOE has done an evaluation, a fairly ,
25 general evaluation of what they thought high-level waste, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
l 301 1 vitrified high-level wastes and spent fuel would be. And !
l 2 the evaluation was that it was close enough that they would ;
3 probably have to do testing to determine whether or not it l
4 did have a hazardous component or it didn't. It wasn't [
5 clearly that it wasn't a problem or it wasn't clearly that !
6 there war a problem.
! 7 DR. SMITH: * * - '
. So right now it's conceivable f 8 that one might har % through EPA permitting 9 requiren.snts as s : --
l 1 10 HR. JOHNSON: It's conceivable. And with the f
.L 11 transuranic question of course, there are a lot of other !
Il j 12 materials in transuranic wastas, potentially organic 13 solvents as was discussed in the Nashincrton Post article, j 14 And it may very well be that a lot of the transuranic wastes
{
15 do qualify as having a hazardous component associated with l 16 it.
17 HR. ORTH: They do. ,
18 DR. H0ELLER: Okay. And here, when you say high- (
19 level wastes and TRUs, you are including Wpent fuel under
- 20 high-level waste?
I 21 HR. J0MHSON: Right. l 22 DR. MOELLER: Well, that is interesting. And so i
23 ASHE simply said emiude these types of wastes from RCRA? l 24 HR. JOHNSON: Right. And the reason they gave is
. 25 that they feel that the re;'ository vill provide a grSater j
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302 1 deal of protection than disposal under the RCRA
(~) 2 requirements.
(_/
3 DR. SMITH: But WIPP then, assuming that 'ehe TRU 4 does have organics, it is hazardous, why wouldn't New 5 Mexico, why wouldn't they have to get a permit from New i 6 Hexico? Is it because we're saying it's mixed?
7 HR. JOHNSON: They would. But as I mentioned, New 8 Mexico is in that limbo category where they have not been 9 authorized to regulate mixed waste yet. They have been 10 authorised to regulate hazardous waste but they have not 11 bben authorized for mixed waste. L I
12 DR. SMITH: Then my question is who gives the 13 delegation to authorize mixed waste?
14 HR. JOHNSON: EPA. i 15 DR. SMITH: Ch. Okay, i 16 HR. JOHNSON: And the EPA has not authorized the l
17 State of New Mexico to regulate mixed waste as yet.
1 1 18 DR. SMITH: So EPA says to the state that you cta '
19 regulate wastes containing both nuclear material and 20 hazardous waste? !
21 HR. JORMSON: What they have to do is the state f f
22 has to submit their program for regulating hazardous wasta 23 and if they want to regulate mixed waste they have to submit ,
l 24 a document explaining what their program is for that 25 regulation. And that would have to be approved by EPA Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888
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303 1 before they could take over the responsibility of that
(~^ 2 permitting role.
L 3 DR. HOELLER: And until that day arrives, then EPA 4 will make the decision for WIPP?
5 HR. JOHNSON: I believe it's in a limbo. I l 6 believe the policy within EPA is to wait for the mixed waste 7 authorizations to be complete.
8 I'm not really familiar with all the nuances, the 9 l- , -i nuances of the EPA authorization requirements. But i 10 that his my understanding of the situation. l 11 DR. HOELLER: In essence, you ata telling us that l 12 both the Yucca Mountal say the high-level waste and the 1
13 WIPP site may have majs- rdles ahead in this realm?
14 MR. JOHNSON: If it is determined that there are 15 hazardous components in the waste, then they may have major 16 hurdles ahead.
17 DR. CARTER: Do you expect this will impact the 18 opening of the WIPP site? I presume that is scheduled to 19 start fairly a7on.
20 DR. HOELLER: Next month. <
l 21 HR. JOHNSON: I really don't know the answer to 22 that. f 23 DR. STEINDLER: Can I go back for a minute and 24 review the EPA criteria? You indicate that if a batch of l 25 waste contains, potentially contains something on that list i
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i I
304 1 in Part, whatever, 261, it then is a hazardous waste unless
{} 2 3
it passes a leach test?
MR. JOHNSON: No. If it's a listed material, it's 4 hazardous. The leach test applies only to the heavy metals 5 and several organics that turn out to be pesticides, I 6 believe.
7 But there is a defined list of materials on which 8 the determination is made for heavy metals and certain 9 pesticides.
10 DR. STEINDLER: So the list of materials is waste 11 contents regardless of form?
12 MR. JOHNSON: The listed materials are the waste 13 content, right. There is no credit given for whether it's 14 in the most leach resistent form or otherwise.
r DR. MOELLER: For the heavy metals then, it's not C} 15 16 just that they' re there. It's whether they are leachable?
17 MR. JOHNSON: Right.
18 DR. MOELLER: According to a specific test.
19 MR. JOHNSON: Under the specific test that's 20 defined.
21 DR. SMITH: So when you think of how many things 22 are made or used with organics, the amount of hazardous 23 waste is startling.
24 DR. STEINDLER: What about the current practice of 25 taking hospital wastes in ordinary licensed burial grounds, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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c 305 1 radioactive burial grounds?
2 MR. JOHNSON: If it doesn't have a hazardous
(')
b 3 component as defined by the EPA regulations, it's 4 acceptable, and it meets all of the other conditions of 5 disposal.
6 DR. STEINDLER: You can't walk through a hospital 7 without becoming a part of a hazardous waste.
8 MR. JOHNSON: The EPA's definition of hazardous 9 waste is fairly specific. In other words, either it has the 10 listed components or it passes or doesn't pass the 11 characteristics test.
12 If materials are other than that, they are not 13 defined as hazardous by the RCRA standards.
14 DR. STEINDLER: That I understand. But that list 15 is now what, 125 compour.ds long.
16 MR. JOHNSON: I think it's more than that.
17 DR. STEINLLER: I would be startled if a research 18 cadaver, or whatever --
19 MR. JOHNSON: In terms of if you're talking about 20 a biologically pathenoghic or infectious type of material, 21 our regulations require that they be treated prior to 22 disposal so that they do not present a pathogonic or 23 infectious hazard to disposal site operators. That's part 24 of Part 61.
25 DR. STEINDLER: But that's not & mixed waste Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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306 1 issue.
/^' 2 MR. JOHNSON: That is not a mixed waste issue.
(.)s 3 That's correct.
4 DR. SMITH: Okay. There was something in all of 5 the news about medical wastes being dumped on the beaches 6 and EPA was saying that they had to go back to Congress to 7 get authority for something. What was that? Do you know?
8 MR. JOHNSON: I don't know the nuances of that.
9 DR. SMITH: Maybe it was the tracking system or 10 something. But it appeared they had some problems with 11 regulating this.
12 MR. JOHNSON: I don't know the details of that 13 particular problem.
14 DR. SMITH: Okay.
15 DR. MOELLER: What Marty is saying as I hear him 16 in relation to hospitals is that there are all types of 17 volatile organics and so forth used routinely in a hospital 18 and so I agree with what he is saying if I interpret it 19 properly. And that is how could any waste from a hospital 20 not contain something that's on EPA's list?
21 MR. JOHNSON: I think EPA is evaluating other 22 chemicals right now and over the future we may see the list, 23 I'm sure we're going to see the list expanded to handle 24 other chemicals.
25 But there is a procedure for, a rulemaking Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
307 1 procedure for introducing other materials to those hazardous
/~T 2 waste lists. And I think in the future it will grow.
U 3 DR. STEINDLER: I guess my problem is that from a 4 technical standpoint the combination of the Delaney 5 Amendment and what appear to be the zero-based rules of the 6 EPA, I think are technically undefensible.
7 MR. JOHNSON: I think those kind of comments have 8 been made many times to EPA.
9 DR. STEINDLER: I'm sure they hase.
10 DR. CARTER: They could delist chemicals. It 11 could go either way.
12 MR. JOHNSON: That's right. And that was one of 13 the recommendations that I wanted to talk about here that 14 ASME made. I guess I can talk about that now if you'd like.
15 DR. MOELLER: When you go to delisting, they have 16 delisting and relisting.
17 MR. JOHNSON: Let me explain what that is.
18 There are specific criteria in the RCRA 1
19 regulations on which a particular chemical could be taken l
20 off, removed from the hazardous lists. And this involves a 21 delisting procedure in which the industry or a particular 22 generator would provide specific information on why that 23 particular waste that he has is not a danger to public 24 health and the environment.
25 And after an evaluation by EPA, it could be 4
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-48R8
308 1 removed or he could be exempted from meeting that particular 2 requirement for that waste.
3 The problem is that it is taking two to three 4 years or more in order for an individual to get a particular 5 waste delisted. And that is one of the concerns of ASME and 6 that was why they had recommended some additional criteria 7 and a streamlining of the administrative process.
8 The relisting involves an action by EPA to set 9 concentration, lower concentration limits for some organics.
10 And they are, they had requested that EPA expand this list 11 in their relisting rulemaking activities.
12 DR. SMITH: What does EPA have to do to include 13 new chemicals on their list?
14 MR. JOHNSON: They wculd have to demonstrate with 15 laboratory data that it is a hazard to certain animals or to 16 humans and go through a rulemaking process.
17 DR. SMITH: I see.
18 DR. MOELLER: How, you say relisting is to set a 19 lower concentration limit for some organ:cs, meaning if they 20 are below that you don't count them. Then delisting --
21 MR. JOHNSON: Ie to remove a listed material 22 completely for a particular application.
23 So in other words, if you are a chemic.a1 company 24 and you make, you produce a certain waste that has a listed 25 chemical, however you do it in a certain way er your waste Heritage Reporting Corporation
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309 1 has such properties that it is not likely to cause a health 2 hazard or to affect the environment, then you could petition 3 the EPA to have that removed. You'd be exempted from 4 meeting that particular requirement.
5 DR. MOELLER: Thank you.
6 DR. STEINDLER: Is that a process that currently 7 exists?
8 MR. JOHNSON: Yes.
9 DR. STEINDLER: Does that allow somebody to 10 include a, say, waste package, as a method of protection of 11 whatever they use, health and safety of the public, and 12 thereby get something delisted?
13 MR. JOHNSON: I'm not familiar with all the 14 details of what EPA does, but I would assume that you could 15 make that case because you have a certain waste package and 16 the form is in such a form, you may be able to take credit 17 for that.
18 FR. ORTH: Is the delisting specific only to the 19 one person that applies or is it generic?
20 MR. JOHNSON: It would not be generic. It would 21 be applicable to the application that is prepared.
22 MR. ORTH: Which might be just one business?
23 MR. JOHNSON: One business or maybe an industry.
24 Another one of ASME's recommendations had to do 25 with revision of our definition of byproduct material.
Heritage Reporting Corpotation (202) 628-4888
F 310 1 Our definition of byproduct material comes directly from the Atomic Energy Act and in it it only
{}2 3 addresses the radioactive isotopes that are produced. And 4 ASME's problem was it doesn't also address the non-5 radioactive materials that might be produced in say, 6 fission, or be the result of decay.
7 And they felt that this was left in uncertainty in 8 the minds of many state regulators and it left an opening 9 for states to be more restrictive in definition. And what 10 they wanted to do was to close that uncertainty by expanding 11 NRC's definition in the area of byproduct material.
12 This is an area that we disagreed with. We felt 13 that our jurisdiction is set out by the Atomic Energy Act.
14 It would not be a simple matter of changing the definition.
15 And even if it was changed, we're not certain how you would 16 distinguish between a stable isotope that came from say a 17 fission process and a stable isotope that came from a 18 process that didn't involve fission.
19 Another recommendation by the ASME --
20 DR. STEINDLER: I'm sorry. I missed that point.
21 Why would you want to distinguish between the sources of the 22 two isotopes?
23 MR. JOHNSON: Well, if you have a criteria that 24 certain stable isotopes are exempted, but only from those 25 that came as a result of say fission, but the rest of the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
311 1 material was not exempted, how would you distinguish which 2 stable isotope came from the radioactive formation, the 3 byproduct formation, or from say .4.ntroduction as part of a 4 chemical process or something?
5 An example is say you produced in fissioning a 6 stable vanadium isotope, yet the process included a
7 introduction say in a corrosion inhibitor or something else 8 of another vanadium material.
9 How would you distinguish which was which? I 10 DR. STEINDLER: I guess my question is, why would 11 you want to bother?
12 MR. JOMMSON: Well, I think that l' you are 13 required to meet RCRA requirements, but the RCRA 14 requirements only exempt the part that applies di:'actly to 15 the byproduct material definition, but would not apply to 16 other processes, how would you distinguish which was which? <
! 17 If you did an EP toxicity test, how could you tell 18 which of those vanadium atoms were from the byproduct 19 material exemption as opposed to others? !
20 DR. STEINDLER: You obviously can't. This is the
]
21 same kind of issue you always have when you try and specify
- 22 a waste according to its source rather than according to l
23 what the contents are and the offect of the contents on
! 24 whoever or whatever you' re trying to protect.
25 HR. JOHNSON: The other thing is that I'm not l
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
7-312 1 really sure that at least for a low level waste whether
( 2 that's a real problem.
3 I'm not sure that there's enough stable isotopes 4 formed that are in low level wastes that would even be a 5 problem in meeting the toxicity test. So what we'd like to 6 see is a clearer definition of what is the problem. For us 7 to go and make a major recommendation to Congress to change 8 our byproduct material definition I think we would have to i 9 demonstrate that there really is a problem and a potential 10 benefit in the change. And the ASME position paper does not 11 treat that in detail.
12 Some other recommendations that were made apply 13 directly to , EPA. One involved modify the inspection 14 requirements primarily for consideration of occupational 15 exposure hazards. And as I mentioned earlier, that's one of 16 the things that we have on the table right now is to address 17 that problem.
18 I talked about delisting and relisting. The last 19 recommendation that ASME made had to do with the hazard 20 ranking system.
21 They have a hazard ranking system that is used to 22 set priorities for action on SuperFund sites. And what ASME 23 recommended, that this ranking system also include radiation 24 risk.
25 That concludes the presentation that I had I
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313 1 prepared. Basically I talked about today some backgrounc 2 material on mixed waste, the activities that are underway 3 within our agency and with EPA and also the recommendations 4 made by the ASME in their presentation.
5 If you have any questions, I'll be happy to try to 6 answer them.
7 DR. MOELLER: One other item, maybe you hit it, 8 but I missed it. Their last recommendation was to replace 9 design criteria by performance criteria. You did mention 10 it? Okay.
11 MR. JOHNSON: The design criteria that EPA has in 12 their RCRA provisions are very prescriptive. In other 13 words, it says that what you do is you put in a double 14 leachate collection system and what ASME recommended was 15 instead of being very prescriptive you design a regulation 16 that's based on performance, similar to Part 61. Part 61 is 17 a performance based regulation that says all right, these 18 are the releases that we want to meet, these are some 19 technical requirements to help you do that, but they are not 20 of the prescriptive nature that details exactly what the 21 design has to be to meet the performance objectives.
22 And their position la that the detailed 23 prescriptive requirements in RCRA can be overly burdensome 24 and may not necessarily always reflect the other conditions 25 at the site that may also inhibit migration of materials.
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314 1 DR. MOELLER: What would you like from us, or is 2 there anything that you need from this committee?
3 MR. JOHNSON: Well, if you have any 4 recommendations on the kinds of things EPA and NRC Phould be 5 working on, we'd like to see them put in that area.
6 DR. CARTER: I'd like to ask at least one other 7 question.
8 That is, I presume from what you said that there 9 could be an impact in the mixed waste as far as WIPP is 10 concerned and as far as the high-level repository.
11 MR. JOHNSON: I guess I didn't quite say that. I 12 said I really didn't know whether there would be an impact.
13 I'm not familiar enough with WIPP or the waste source term 14 that they have to really say whether it is.
15 DR. CARTER: Well, maybe the other question might 16 not should be asked, but I guess the question is what 17 position would the NRC take if this became an issue as far 18 as whether or not we had a mixed waste?
19 MR. JOHNSON: NRC has no jurisdiction at all over 20 WIPP.
21 DR. CARTER: I understand that. But they might, I 22 presume they might be asked for their advice or counsel in 23 the matter, au a possibility at least.
24 MR. JOHNSON: I don't believe we considered 25 whether or not we would even respond in that case.
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315 1 DR. MOELLEP: Well, I agree with what Dr. Carter S 2 is saying. If the c.atreversy or the not so much (J
3 controversy as just simpl?,r the fact that NRC and EP.h S: ave 4 dual jurisdiction ever . nixed waste, if that simply is slowly 5 but surely moving along and if it's not harming or hampering 6 anyone, in terms of the normal disposal of mixed waste, and 7 we gather most people are storing them rather than sending 8 them anywhere, then that's ora thing.
9 But if it reaches a point where it's going to 10 seriously impede the planned schedule for WIPP and for the 11 Yucca Mountain or wherever it haopens to be, high-level 12 repository, then it's another thing.
13 MR. ORTH: T.ight. And what that really means is 14 that if your committee is going to make any recommendation, 15 it really ought to hear from some of the DOE people that are 16 concerned with these affairs.
17 DR. MOELLER: That's a good point.
18 DR. CARTER: The question was, obviously, ASME has 19 already made a decision. They are recommending that it be 20 exempted, for example, high-level waste from mixed waste 21 considerations. And that was really my question, whether 22 the NRC would make at y recommendation along thost lince or 23 not.
24 MR. JOHNSON: As I mentioned before, we really 25 haven't established a position with respect to exempting Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 -
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3 1
316' 1 high-level or true wastes from geologic repository, frota the l 2 RCRA requirements.
f 3 DR. MOELLER: Marty, I think Don Orth's suggestion 4 makes sense to me.
i 6 DR. STEINDLER: It seems pretty obvious that by 7 the stroke of a pen that large inventory of DOE's could l 8 suddenly become a problem for the combination of NRC and 9 EPA, and you guys would be totally unprepared.
10 DR. CARTER: I think that's really the problem and 11 the impact.
12 DR. STEINDLER: Yes. I don't mean that 13 disparagingly. But I think you would suddenly be faced with 14 a fairly intense demand for some kind of coherence in the regulatory process. And I must confess, a short rnview has
{ } 15 16 not left me with a warm feeling that there is such 17 coherence. Technical. I won't even touch the 18 administrative.
19 MR. JOHNSON: Does your comment apply to the EPA t
20 provisions or to NRC provisions?
21 DR. STEINDLER: If I understand the EPA 22 provinions, I think I've heard a good review of yours on the J
23 EPA. Yes. I understand the NRC provision. A've heard a 24 good review on the EPA provisions. If what I've heard on ;
25 EPA is in fact accurate, and I see no reason why it i Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 w ,w-, , , - - , - , - - , , , - - - - - - , - , , , , - - - - - - , - , , - - - - - - - -
317 1 shouldn't be, my comments apply largely to the EPA problem.
2 I don't happen to personally believe that proscription by a 7-3 regulatory agency is the way to do business. I think the 4 definition of what it is you want to accomplish, letting the 5 ingenuity of the technical community get there is the way to 6 go.
7 MR. JOHNSON: I think EPA has a very different 8 problem to address than what we do. We know who all our 9 waste generators are because they must have licenses. EPA 10 doesn't know necessarily know who everybody is that may have 11 hazardous material that they work with.
12 Their problem has an enormous volume. Ours, you 13 know our low level waste problem goes to three disposal ,
] 14 sites and the volumes are getting smaller and smaller with 15 increasing disposal charges.
16 EPA's has a great, tremendous volume. They have 17 very different capabilities in the people that operate 18 disposal facilities. They have a lot, a great deal of 19 potential permittees.
. 20 And I believe that their regulations were
- 21 structured so that knowing that they did not have the i 22 resources to do a case by case evaluation of every disposal 23 site permit, and therefore their approach was to make the 1
24 designs consistent from one to the other in order so that it 25 would not be a resource t.urden to them in the review.
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
318 1 We have a great deal of resources that we wou3d 2 put to the review of a disposal site application and we 3 would be able, because we have those resources, we are able 4 to do a more detailed case by case kind of evaluation on a 5 specific design.
6 EPA, however, does not have the resources to do 7 that kind of review of their permittees.
8 DR. STZINDLER: This is probably not the place to L
9 continue that discussion, but have you compared the 10 SuperFund budget with the budget of your office?
11 MR. JOHNSON: I'm sure the SuperFund budget is a l
12 great deal more. However, the problem that EPA has is a 13 great deal different from the magnitude of our low level 14 waste problem, too.
DR. STEINDLER: To answer the question, Dade it is O.15 16 obviously worthwhile to hear from the folks at DOE. It 17 isn't quite obvious to me offhand the most convenient way to 18 focus on DOE. But certainly the defense programs under Tom 19 Hyman who we talked to last meeting, meeting before this one l 20 down at Savannah River, I would guess his office would be a 21 good contact.
I 22 DR. MOELLER: I understand that in terms of the 23 action items and so forth from this meeting, 39t's then do 24 include the fact that we discussed the mixed waste issue and 25 the Committee requested that arrangements be made to follow
)
!!eritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
319 1 up on this subject at a subsequent meeting with particular input from DOE and EPA with regard not only to the problem
}2 3 in general but with regard to WIPP and the high-level waste 4 repository.
5 MR. ORTH: And the sites.
6 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
7 MR. ORTH: That presently are storing material.
8 Savannah River, Hanford, Idaho.
9 DR. MOELLER: Oh, the DOE sites. That's fine.
10 Does that do it, Stan?
11 Any other comment, then? Don, you had something?
12 If you have clarification, please insert it.
13 MR. ORTH: Of course since I am at the present ,
14 time working for DuPont at the Savannah River Plant, I feel 4 15 constrained not to put too many of my personal opinions in 16 at this point.
17 DR. MOELLER: Well, you help us, though, in terms 18 of clarifying the issue.
19 MR. ORTH: To clarify, I think that if you get the 20 sites and the people from WIPP and the people from the high-21 lovel program all here that that's what you need to clarify.
22 DR. MOELLER: That's very helpful. Any other
.13 comments on this subject? i 24 (flo response)
. 25 DR. MOELLER: If there are none, then we are at l l
r >
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320 1 the point of taking a break. And we shall so do.
/^ 2 (Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)
'v)
T pe 4 3 DR. MOELLER: The meeting will resume. And we are 4 going to take up the next topic on our agenda, which is a 5 presentation of the program, FY 1989 Program for the 6 Division of Low-Level Wastes and Decommissioning. And we 7 have with us to lead that discussion the Division Director, 8 Dr. Malcolm Knapp. Mal, 4t's a pleasure to welcome you 9 back.
10 DR. KNAPPt Thank you. I'm actually pleased to be 11 here to do this because it has forced me to document some of 12 the decisions that we have been making over the last few 13 months as to exactly what we will be doing in Fiscal '89.
14 The briefing this morning is intended to overviek the activities that the Division will be involved in in
}15 16 fiscal '89 as well as the resources that we're presently 17 planning to expend on those activities.
18 In addition, I hope to show for most of the 19 activities one or two of the products that we anticipate 20 that we will produce during that fiscal year. l 21 If you look at the first page of your handout, ;
22 actually the page after the cover sheet, you will see the 23 resource estimates for the Low-Level Division for fiscal 24 '89. You will see that we have 57 FTE and approximately l 25 31,600,000 in contract money.
Heritage Reporting Corpordtion (202) 628-4888
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l 321 1 With respect to the FTE I would like to note that 2 those numbers include management and overhead and they also
(^)T 3 include our regional resources.
4 In fact, at Headquarters we have about 40 FTE in ,
5 the division. About 17 are working in the regions, most of 6 those in our Uranium Recovery Field Office in Denver, 7 Colorado.
8 This morning's presentation will include a bit of 9 an overview of what the Uranium Recovery Field Office is 10 doing as part of the division presentation.
11 DR. STEINDLER: Could I ask? I have some problems 12 with the numbers. Are you telling me that an FTE in the NRC 13 is 40K, for example, for decommissicaing? If so, that would 14 be a bargain.
15 DR. KNAPP What page are we on?
16 DR. STEINDLER: The same page that I thought you 17 were on.
18 DR. KHAPP Perhaps I'm on a different page.
19 Okay. I'm sorry. An FTE is 40K. No. Let me try 20 that again.
21 FTE -- full time staff equivalent -- that's the 22 shorthand for the actual bodies that we have on board. What 23 I mean to say with respect to decommissioning is that 24 including overhead and regional activities, there are five 25 individuals employed by the NRC working on the program. We Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
322 1 have also budgeted $200,000 in contract money.
2 You could if you like say that the contract 3 dollars are equivalent to about $150,000 staff equivalent so 4 you might say that we have approximately 10 or 11 additional 5 equivalents that we are paying in contracts.
6 That is to say $1,600,000 divided by $150,000. .
7 DR. SMITH: All of those dollars are contract ,
t 8 dollars? ,
9 DR. KNAPP All the dollars are contract dollars.
10 DR. SMITH: And the 57 is the actual number that 11 you are authorized for fiscal year 1939?
12 DR. KNAPP That is correct.
l 13 DR. SMITH: Is that what you requested? ;
i 14 DR. KNAPP: In going through the budgeting
. 15 process, the Division Directors give the Office Director a
(
16 request for what we think we would like to have to get the 17 job done. There is then a certain amount of negotiation and I L
3 18 then the Office Director makes a cut which goes to the EDO.
- 19 To be candid, this is somewhat less than we i
j 20 originally proposed to the Office Director.
l 21 DR. SMITH: Is there a problem with just giving us '
) i 22 some indication of what you felt initially were the number l 23 of resources that you needed in order to do the job in a !
24 timely fashion au contrasted with what happens with it does ,
25 through the Division Director and then through the EDO and ;
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4658 O
323 1 then through the Commission and then through the Congress?
2 DR. KNAPP: One of the problems that I have -- I'm 3 about to trap my Deputy on this -- one of the problems I 4 have is that when some of these negotiations took place I in l 5 fact was in Texas and I'm not sure I can give you an 6 ace'trste number.
, 7 I think what I'm probably going to come up with is 8 about (3 to 20 FTE more than we were given and about 9 $500,000 more than we were given. But because I wasn't that 10 active in the prccess, those numbers may be inaccurat,e. And i
11 I'd like to ask John or perhaps Mike Bell if you can improve 12 on the accuracy of those numbers.
13 DR. MOELLER: Could you all move to the table, 14 maybe? Why don't you sit over there if you would.
15 DR. SMITH: This is something we're very l 16 interested in and in fact the Commissioners have asked us at 17 some point in time to have e. discussion with them in terms l
18 of resources.
19 DR. KNAPP I'm happy to provide you with the 20 information. I just want to make sure that I'm reasonably 21 accurate.
I 22 DR. MOELLER: John, would you repeat what you 23 said?
l 24 MR. GREEVES: I was just reall/ confirming that I
25 Mal was in the right range of resources 1. to 20. I would i
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324 1 point out that it varied by program area. For example, the
{} 2 3
activities on licensing low level waste facilities is one of the ones where we had some problems and also the uranium 4 rocovery area is one of the ones where we had some problems.
5 Some of these other areas in are in line with what we 6 expected to have to do.
7 DR. SMITH: But overall you felt that at least 8 when you started out that an additional 15 to 20 FTE plus 9 $500,000 in contractual authority was what you needed to do 10 this job in a timely fashion?
11 DR. KNAPP That's correct. And I can give you a 12 more specific example, particularly with respect to the 13 uranium recovery area and our review of DOE Title I sites.
14 Now I'm going to take the liberty of switching from etaff including overhead to direct staff for the
[ } 15 16 example I'm about to give you.
17 But in that case, we had requested 15.2 FTE and 18 $600,000 in technical assistance contracts.
19 What we finally settled on was 10.6 r7E and 20 $200,000 in technical assistance contracts.
21 It was our view we needed the higher rumber to 22 keep up with the DOE program and to review their submittals 23 at the rate that we would be receiving them.
24 With the lower number, we could not do that. And 25 I'm not here to tell you that we're going to fall on our Heritage Reporting Corporatica (202) 628-4888
325 1 face. What I'll be telling you later on in this
(} 2 presentation is that we are now in a project where we're working with DOE to streamline the review process so that in 3
4 fact we can use fewer resources and still accomplish the 5 same end.
6 In a number of areas, that's what we're doing. In 7 other words, deciding how we might streamline or essentially [
l 8 work more efficiently.
9 I think in a number of cases, we <lil work more 10 efficiently. There may be one or two where we are simply 11 going to have to set.aside things that we would like to do i
12 and can't do.
I 13 DR. MOELLER: In terms of your comments, and if i
14 you're going to cover it later I'll certainly wait. But in
- something we read or that I read in preparing for this
( } 15 16 meeting, there was coverage of NRR's capacity, how many FTEs [
i 17 do they have to inspect nuclear power plant waste generators 18 and make auro that everything is being done properly there.
- t i 19 Do you have input into that?
20 DR. KNAPP We have input into it. Again, there l i 21 is a negotiated process. For example, it's my understanding 22 at this time that inspection of rad waste associated work [
t 23 are essentially the sorts of things where we'd want to 24 decide whether a PCP for making cement is working properly.
25 It's my understanding at this point that por Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
326 1 reactor we are budgeting four hours a year for that review.
2 DR. MOELLER: Well, I remember, it scicks in my O- 3 head, four full time equivalents nationwide or something, 4 and you divided that by 120 or something. .
5 DR. KNAPP I can't right off tell you what the 6 equivalents are.
7 DR. MOELLER: But it's four hours a year. .
8 DR. KNAPPt That's my current understanding. I 9 might have to give you a correction. When I was in the ,
t 10 region that's one of the things we looked at and that's what 11 we had planned on just the rad waste program, that portion 12 of the rad waste program. ,
13 DR. MOELLER: And have you commented on this to 14 someone higher up, and what did they say?
15 DR. KNAPP You may find this interesting. At the O 16 time, from the regional perspective, which was how I was
- 17 looking at it, we thought that in light of the problems that 18 we were seeing, that four hours would be enough.
19 I believe we're talking there about inspector
) 20 time, that is to say, when a regional inspector would go out 21 and visit a reactor that's the portion of his time that l 22 would be devoted. Obviously, the onsite inspectors would 23 have an opportunity to be more familiar with the process and l
l 24 I don't think we quantified the fraction of their time that j 25 it would be there.
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327 1 I am beginning to work in areas where I'm kind of
() 2 weak on the numbers. So if you are interested in that 3 inspection thing, what I'd like to do would be to perhaps 4 respond to you in the future and be more confident of what 5 my numbers are.
6 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
7 DR. STEINDLER: I don't want to particularly bog 8 you down with this, but I think this is a fairly critical 9 issue. You had a reduction of something like 15 out of 57 10 or 15 out of oo60, 72, something like that, which represents 11 a significant percentage cut in the FTEs 12 Some of those are made up by increase in 1
13 efficiency, which is a laudable way to go.
14 What level of reduction in output have you had to budget for on the basis of your 57 FTEs and 1620 K for
( ) 15 16 contracts in relation to what you had thought you would have f
j 17 to do?
18 DR. KNAPP: The way to characterize the reduction 19 in output I think would be to say that there are simply
- 20 program areas that at this time we are not budgeted to deal
- 21 with.
1 22 For example, at this time, and again there may be i
23 other people in the audience who can be more accurate than I i 24 with respect to our C-3 budget, we had budgeted in our i
25 original request I think probably about two people full time 1
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r v 328 1 to deal with on-site disposals, waste disposed of under 2 20.302.
3 At this time, we elected that we will simply not 4 be working in that area. If we get that kind of a disposal 5 request, that would have to go to research and they would 6 have to handle it. We do not have the resources to support 7 research.
8 That immediately gets us into a bit of a problem. ;
9 for example, there is a company in Pennsylvania that I don't 10 think I'm in a position to identify in a public meeting that r
11 is having some problems with contamination of the soil in 12 the vicinity of where they're working. Our analysis of that 13 contamination problem and the cleanup of it is not budgeted ,
14 for fiscal '89, yet it's going to have to be done. i 15 What that means is that I'm going to have to j.
O 16 identify areas that you are seeing here today that we will 17 have to simply defer so that we can do that. I would expect 18 that that particular case, because it's hydro geology, we 19 might be deferring some, either deferring some hydrologic 20 aspects of performance assessment or perhaps delaying a 21 portion of our reviews of uranium recovery Title I sites.
22 But that's what will happen.
F 23 In other words we have, I think, significant l
24 programs which we simply are going to have to rely on other 25 parts of the agency to conduct. [
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329 1 I did not I am sorry to say come prepared to identify what those programs are.
(}2 3 DR. STEINDLER: I don't think it is necessary for 4 my purposes at least to identify specifically. But let me 5 focus in on something that we talked about yesterday. That 6 is the review of the technical reports on low level-waste 1,
7 containers.
8 The backlog is significant. And it's being woLked 9 down-at what looks like an interestingly accelerated rate.
10 Can you give me an estimate of how many people you 11 actually have working on it and how many people you had 12 budgeted initially to be working on it?
13 DR. KNAPPt I don't recall how many people we had 14 budgeted initially. We expect in '89 that we will have, depending on how you want to use the numbers, three,
{ } 15 16 including overhead or two actual full time direct staff, 17 about two or 2.1 and we will be spending $390,000 in 18 technical assistance money on that.
19 That does not represent I believe a significant 20 decrease at all from what we had originally sought for this 21 projsw.
22 Somebody - again, let me just ask John to look 23 over my shoulder -- it may have been a decrease that I was 24 not aware of.
25 HR. GREEVES: No. In fact, this is one of the Meritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
330 1 areas where we've been probably what I call the people that 2 are really doing the reviews, we've been hitting about two f 3 FTE for the last few years. 1 4 And in fact in this area we had some increase in 5 our budget in terms of a few more dollars and maybe a 6 fraction of FTE.
7 So this one was not in fact cut, it was increased 8 slightly in the process.
9 One of the things we have suffered in this area 10 though is we have lost some good people, experiencewise, as 11 all organizations do. j 12 DR. KNAPP I did have a chance while John was 4
l u
13 talking to look over our prelivinary budget.
i 14 One of the changes we have made in fiscal ' 89 from 15 what we had originally anticipated is that we are shifting i
O 16 work in-house. Our eat ier budgets we were going to do more i-17 of this work unaer centract to DOE labs and have fewer in-18 house staff working on it. As part of the budget process, ;
j 19 we increased the people in-house, decreased the contract l 20 assistance. !
I i 21 But 'is John has said, the level is approximately [
22 the same, perhaps increased. !
23 DR. SMITH: That'a right. I forgo *. In terms of l
24 technical assistance low-level you can still go to the DOE !
l l
25 labs.
1 !
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331 1 DR. KNAPP: That is correct.
2 DR. SMITH: It's the high-level --
3 DR. KNAPP: That's correct. And let me take this 4 time to point out, what I'm talking about here is what we 5 call, in the contract money, it's what we call technical i
6 assistance as opposed to research. I'm not speaking of the 7 research budget, that's a separate budgot. So this is what l 8 this division actually does to help it with regulation and ;
i 9 licensing.
10 Okay. Let's see. 'At that rate I'm trying to !
11 figure out how long it'll take us to get through 11 pages, ;
12 DR. SMITH: You'll make it, Mal.
13 DR. KNAPP Let's see. A coupla of things while 14 we are still on this first page. I 15 I have rounded off the FTE to the nearest whole 16 number. That means in some cases where we have less than 17 .5 Ancluding overhead, you will see a blank as we get to the 18 individual activities. That doesn't mean we're not doing r
13 anything. It simply means that it's rounded off to zero as j t
20 opposed to 1.
21 Before I begin to get into the specific {
22 activities, I'd like to note that I'll actually be touching
[
23 on a total of 31 activities in the next hour or so. i l
24 Under the circumstances, it can get kind of hard j 25 to see tho woods for the trees. To that end, I have a I
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f f
332 1 viewgraph which you can see on the screen and because of the 2 distance I've provided dndividual handouts for you. And I'd 3 like to refer to it for just a minute because you may find 4 it helpful as you go through, review the activities.
5 As you can see, we have work within the division 6 in three major subject -- low level waste, uranium recovery 7 and decommissioning. And then under those subjects, the 8 specific activities can be grouped into various areas.
9 For example, in low level waste, we have 10 regulations and guidance, licensing and reviews, inspections 11 and assistance to states.
12 In like manner, we have regulations and guidance 13 and licensing reviews 'tnder the other two subjects, 14 inspections under uranium recovery and then remedial action 15 reviews under uranium recovery.
(~)T 16 Now, one could argue that's part of licensing and 17 reviews but that program is large enough that I wanted to 18 pull it out and talk about it separately.
19 The reason for the figure is just to give you an 20 opportunity from time to time to come up for air and ses 21 where the individual activities lie as a part of our ovocall 22 program.
23 With that in mind, I would like to turn to Page 2 24 of your handout and begin to discuss low level wasto.
25 As you can see, in the summation of that page, we Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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333 1 have 22 staff and $1,120,000 associated with the subject
(~) 2 area. We have five staff on regulations and guidance and 11
\_./
3 on licensing and reviews.
4 And if you look at what the division has done over 5 the last few years, and I guess I'd better be careful about 6 that, the division has been in existence less than 18 7 months. But if you look at the low-level program area over 8 the last few years, what you would find is that our work 9 in regulations and guidance has gone down substantially and 10 our work on licensing and reviews has gone up.
11 And this is simply an expected maturing of the 12 agency's response to the Low Level Waste Amendments Act.
13 A couple of years ago we put all our energy into 14 regulations and guidance to produce things that the Act wanted, such as ' CRC policy and guidance on alternatives to
{ } 15 16 shallow land burial.
17 Those products are almost completely done now and 18 we are r.vw turning to reviews of things that DOE and the 19 states are beginning to produce as they respond to the work 20 that they have to do under the Act.
21 So that's the only real shift that you would see 22 here had you looked at this program sometime back. More 23 work on licensing and reviews, more work on assistance to 24 states.
25 With that quick overview of the low-level program Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 334 1 I'd like to now begin to discuss activities specifically on ,
1 2 the next page.
l 3 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me. I gather, then, the ,
4 inspections are staying about steady?
5 DR. KNAPP I believe they are staying about t 6 steady. One of the -- inspection is an activity that we 7 picked up with the creation of the division. Part of the ;
8 organization gave us responsibility. As you'll recall, the i 9 office of Inspection Enforcement was dissolved and the l
10 activities went to various division as appropriate. -
11 My best understanding is our inspection activity l l
12 is constant from what they had when they had the program. j
)i . 13 That's the best I can tell you.
i 14 Frankly, that is, inspection, as I'll get to in a 15 moment, is in a bit of flux and we are still in the process 2
16 of working on inspections and providing guidance to NRC and j 17 state inspectors, r C
i 18 DR. MOELLER: And this is inspections of low level l 19 disposa) facilities?
20 DR. KNAPP It is both. It is inspections of low-21 level facilities, it is also inspections of reactors, of l
! 22 fuel facilities, materials licensees, to give us confidence l l
j 23 that they are properly classifying, packaging and shipping 24 their low level wastes. And basically it's procedures that [
L 25 inspectors should use and in part some work on enforcement i
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335 1 should they find the procedures are being violated.
2 I'll hopefully be able to say a little bit more 3 about that in a couple of pages when I get to the specific 4 bullets.
5 Talking about regulations and guidance, the first 6 activity of substance is our work on greater-than-Class-C-7 wastes. And in fiscal ' 89 we're expecting to be pretty 8 active in two areas.
9 We will continue to support research into what ,
10 some folks call the greater-thr.n-Class-C-rulemaking, others 11 call the high-level wasts definition. This is the proposed 12 rule that we put out I think in February this year. The 13 public comment period has opened and cloned. We are 14 expecting a final rule as you see there in April of '89.
15 This is where we did not come up with a rish-based O 16 definition of high-level waste. Rather, we came up with a 17 regulation that would direct that greater-than-Claos-C-18 wastes go to a high-level repository unless DOE comes to the 19 Commission with an alternative that the Commission approves.
20 The second area that we'd be working in in 21 greater-than-Class-C-wastes is to work with DOE to try to 22 develop a scheme where DOE can routinely receive commercial 23 greater-than-Class-C-wastes at this time.
24 As you may recall, the Federal Government is 25 responsible for disposal of greater-than-Class-C-wastes Heritage Reporting Corpor.ation (202) 628-4888
336 1 under the Amendments Act and DOE has accepted the 2 responsibility for that effort.
3 But we don't have a disposal facility right now.
4 That means that at this point there is no place where 5 someone with greater-than-Class-C-wastes can routinely turn 6 it over to DOE either for storage, disposal or management.
7 This is a matter of some concern to the staff 8 because we feel that under these circumstances, there may be
, 9 matwrials licensees who have greater-than-Class-C-wastes, no
!, 10 place to put it, it could wind up in long-term storage, and 11 we're concerned it could possibly be mismanaged.
12 So we would like to encourage DOE to develop a 13 method for routine acceptance of these wastes. And to the 14 extent that the NRC can through its offices resolve concerns y' 15 that DOE may have, we're going to do that.
16 The next item is the emergency access rulemaking.
i 17 Again, from the Amendments Act, some states as a l
18 result of penalties associated with the Act, may be denied 19 access to disposal facilities.
1 20 If they are, and this results in an emergency, the 21 Act foresaw that possibility and gave the NRC the authority 22 to be able to provide emergent / access to an existing 23 disposal facility, principally to avert a quote "serious and
' 24 immediate threat to public health and safety or common
! 25 defense and security." Unquote.
i Haritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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l 337 1 DR. SMITH: What does that man, Mal, that NRC 2 would have the authority to provide access?
3 DR. KNAPPt Let's say that State A does not have a 4 facility and has failed to comply with its provisions of the 5 Act.
6 DR. SMITH: Right.
7 DR. KNAPPt States B, C and D all have operating 8 disposal facilities and deny access, as they are empowered 9 to do under the Act, because of State A's failure to meet 10 its provisions.
11 We now look at State A and they have a hospital 12 that is Heaven knows where, that is to say away from other 13 hospitals -- that'll become important in a second. It ,
14 exceeds its capacity to store low level waste. It can't for i
15 somb reason obtain additional storage capacity and is forced
)16 to choose between shutting down and perhaps because it's a 17 single hospital without others near it, seriously impacting i 1
18 public health and safety, or having a disposal problem they ;
19 can't resolve.
i 20 At that point, either the hospital and here of' ,
i 21 course read any number of other low level waste generators, [
22 or the state could seek relief which the NRC would make a l
23 decision on, j i
24 And our decision would be whether or not they {
25 should get emergency access to one of the host states which l l
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338 1 has an operating facility.
(} 2 There are a lot of things we have to consider when ;
3 we do that and it was Congress' intent and followed by our 4 rule that it would be extremely difficult to get this 5 access.
6 One of the things we have to consider is shutting 7 down the facility that produces the waste.
8 DR. SMITH: Because if you don't, then we're right 9 back in the same situation we've been in all this time.
10 DR. KNAPPt Exactly. And that's why Congress took 11 a hard line and that's why we're taking a hard line. Thio 12 is nowhere near any sort of an escape valve or loophole.
13 But Congress envisioned, I think wisely, that there might be 14 an emergency of some kind that they did not foresee and they wanted to be able to cope with that emergency. That's all
( } 15 16 this is. And it'e intended to be very strict.
17 One of the reasons we made a rule or we're 18 producing a rule on this is we anticipate that if somebody 19 does submit a petition there's going to be a fair amount of 20 controversy from a lot of sides as to whether it should be 21 granted. We wanted that controversy to center on the 22 technical and safety merits of the petition, not on the NRC 23 procedures for dealing with it. That's why we have this 24 rule to establish our procedures and criteria.
25 The next item also is a product of the Low Level Herltage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
339 1 Amendments Act. This is the Governor's cwrtification.
2 On January 1, 1990, either states and compacta 3 will have to have a license application submitted to NRC or 4 whatever licensing agency they may be dealing with, or their 5 Governors must certify that they will be in a position to 6 manage, dispose of or store whatever wastes might be 7 generated within their state beginning in 1993.
8 This Governor's certification is, one could say 9 it's a bit of an escape valve for those states that are not 10 going to be able simply because of logistics to get their
- 11 applications in, but it's intended to make sure that the 12 Governor realizes he has a responsibility and to recognize 13 that after January 1, 1993, the three existing disposal 14 sites no longer need to provide access within the provisions 15 of the law.
16 NRC's job is to accept these things, send the 17 certifications to Congress and publish them in the Federal
{ 18 Register.
19 one question that comes up is should we do more 20 than that. And at this time the staff anticipate that we 21 will. Our current anticipation is that in addition to 22 sending the certifications to Congress, we will also take an 23 overview of the certificatier s. see if we see any flaws and 24 then respond to the Governor of the state submitting the 25 certification essentially to make sure that he has not Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
340 1 inadvertently planned something which we feel might be unworkable.
(}2 3 We don't expect any certifications to come in in 4 this fiscal year. As you can see from the note, we expect 5 at this time 29 states will be in that position in fiscal 6 '90. The work this year is to provide guidance to the 7 states early in calendar '89 so they will have about a year 8 to prepare whatever certifications and accompanying 9 documents they feel they need.
Tcpe 510 Our next
- tem on the list is low level waste data 11 base. You are probably aware that we presently receive 12 manifest data from all three sites on microfiche. Me will be 13 continuing to do that, so we have a complete record of what 14 manifesta say are being shipped to the sites.
And in fiscal '89 we hope to make more progress on
( } 15 16 the rulemaking that we have had underway within the division 17 for some months now to seek electronic transmittal of the
] 18 data to the NRC.
19 We'd like to do all this in electronic format to a
20 be able to enjoy the advantages of being able to manipulate 21 the data in ways that computer codes like D-Eass 3 would i
22 allow us to use.
23 And we also hope aa a part of this to move in the 24 direction of having a uniform national manifest for these 25 wastes.
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We do have EDO approval. We have in the last few I 1
- 2 months completed the package that we need to submit to the 3 EDO to seek his approval. Presuming that's forthcoming we .
4 will hope to put a proposed rule on the street in the Fall 5 of 1989. .
l 6 The next area we are working in is performance 7 assessment.
8 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me.
t
? DR. KNAPPt Surely.
I 10 DR. MOELLER: What is the reason for the rule?
7.1 This sounded to me like a system you were setting up. l 12 DR. KNAPP Okay. Let me go back and restate it. i 13 The present system is one where we obtain data i
- 14 from the disposal site operators by buying it. The $50,000 ;
15 you see associated with this project is -- that, by the way, [
l (:)16 is a round number -- but that is money which we were going ;
17 to be using to deal with both of the site operators to buy I t
18 under contract what data they now produce. j i
19 The question has come up, why is it that the NPC 20 is spending its money to buy something which we could just 21 as easily require by regulation? That is a portion of the f 22 answer as to why we're moving to regulation. I L
i 23 Another reason is that there has been a lot of i 24 concern nationally over how this should be done. Various 25 states have information requirements to support their work (
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342 1 under the Amendments Act. The site operators have certain interests. And everybody felt that it would be a good idea
(}2 3 for NRC to make the thing uniform and essentially bring sort 4 of a national management to the situation. That's what we 5 will do by rulemaking.
6 The next subject area is performance assessment.
7 The performance assessment work within low-level 8 is principally directed at answering the question, will the 9 performance objective in the low level waste regulation that 10 the members of the oublic will get no more than 25-75-25 11 millirem be met.
12 So this involves modeling the anticipated 13 performance of the site, hydrogeologic modeling, obviously i 14 radionuclide transport, scenario selection and that sort of thing.
{ } 15 16 A good share of this work, as you can see, is 17 being done outside the agency under contract principally to 18 Sandia Laboratory and the P&L Laboratory of Bethol.
19 In Fiscal '89 re're going to be getting quite a 20 few products in. Two of the ones that are of most interest 21 to me that will be coming in early I think in fiscal '89 22 will be an identification of the kinds of data that the 23 codes are going to need. And we want to get a hard look at 24 this and as soon as we can get it out to the states so that 25 in their site characterization thay don't inadvertently Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l I
343 1 neglect some data that might be very necessary for
~') 2 performance assessment code, but perhaps not '6aving occurred (G
3 to them as necessary for the site characterization they want 4 to do to apply for a license.
5 The other report that we will be getting and staff 6 will be reviewing, I hope endorsing, will be an 7 identification of the significant pathways and scenarios 8 that need to be considered in doing this analysis of the low 9 level site.
10 This is a program where very frankly we are a bit 11 behind the curve I would like to be on. If I could have 12 waved a magic wand, we would have been where we are now 13 about a year ago. Wo're going to have to work pretty hard 14 to be able to give tne states and compacts the information and the computer codes they are going to need to get their
( } 15 16 jobs done in a manner consistent with the timing of the Act.
17 DR. SMITH: Let me ask you a question about this 18 whole area.
19 Under the Amendnents to the Low-Level Waste Act, 20 you mentioned that in 1993 if the ne's sites are not in 21 operation then the three existing sites could deny access.
22 DR. KNAPP That's correct.
23 DR. SMITH: I guess I have a question. Maybe you 24 could sum it up very quickly. I'm not sure how many new 25 sites potentially we might have. In other words, how many I
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1 states are going to potentially apply, t
2 But then the vther question that pops up is 3 whether or not the private is going to want to build a site 4 in all these places simply from the economics of the 5 situation.
6 And then the third thing that comes to my mind is f 7 whether or not you've got the staff to conduct the licensing e 8 in a reasonable period of time. ,
9 DR. KNAPP Okay. In response to your questions, 10 first, right now, we foresee the construction and licensing 11 of 13 new sites, if the various states and compacts that l 12 havo made commitments fulfill those, i 13 DR. SMITP.: 13 new sites.
14 DR. KNAPP: 13.
3 15 DR. SMITH: Okay.
16 DR. KNAPP Fer those of you that may have 15 in 17 your note books, 13 comes about, because one of the 15 is 18 an existing 'nte -- Hanford -- which will remain in 19 operattan.
20 DR. SMITH: Right.
21 DR. KNAPP I subtract another because of what I 22 anticipate is an imminent Congressional ratification of the 23 compact between California and Arizona which would result in 24 Arizona not bringing in a site as I believe had been planned 25 in the original number.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
345 1 Of the 13 -- and now you will have to give me just 2 a moment's indulgence -- in fact, we -- excuse me. Let me O 3 get to your second questioni Is there an economic incentive 4 there that a private developer would develop. l 5 DR. SMITH: I just sort of raise that 6 rhetorically.
7 DR. KNAPP Well, I think I can give an answer.
8 DR. FMITH: Yes.
9 DR. KNAPP It seems to be working reasonably l l
10 well. U.S. Ecology is working for California. That seems 11 to be going pretty smoothly.
- 12 Developers have been interested in, and they are i 13 also, by the way, working for the State of Nebraska and the '
14 Central compact. !
15 Developers, I believe, have demonstrated interest O 16 in the North Carolina and Illinois sites. The Pennsylvania 17 site has gotten some concerns not because there's a lack of 18 economic interest, but because there have been some i.
l.
19 liability provisions in the Pennsylvania law that have i i
20 caused develtpers not to be sure they want to be involved. [
21 But I think I could give you a qualified answer i 22 that yes, there are developers out there who are prepared to 23 build these things, to make the investment, f 24 In many cases, it is not that they expect to run a f I
25 risk because the nature of their contracts will protect
[
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346 1 them.
DR. SMITH: Sure. And I was just thinking as you
(}2 3 were mentioning that, if you have to have a site in 4 California and Arizona, then the price will be, to take the 5 waste, whatever it has to be, in order for the company to 6- make a reasonable profit.
7 DR. KNAPP Exactly, 8 DR. SMITH: We'll see the prices then for disposal 9 of low level waste go up.
10 DR. KNAPP Maybe or maybe not. I'll digress a l 11 second and tel.1. you one of the things that really concerns
! 12 me.
I l 13 If we have 13, 14, 15 operating sites and if the l 14 informal estimates we have that somewhere more than about four or five operating sites is going to leave a bunch of
{ } 15 16 them uneconomic -- how you define what that means is not 17 entirely clear but essentially charging more for waste 18 disposal than is reasonable to seek from generators -- then 19 a number of states are going to be faced with a difficult 20 choice.
21 They are either going to have to jack up the price 22 per cubic foot or per curie for disposal, to the point where 23 the NRC may begin to become concerned about Midnight 24 dumping, or they are going to have to subsidize the 25 operation of these sites.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
347 1 And I think that states may be forced into some 2 difficult decisions in the future as to whether in fact they 3 would like to consolidate and perhaps take the waste from 4 other states of compacts or whether they are willin, to pay 5 the price in order to achieve the exclusivity.
6 My hope is that we're going to see a consolidation 7 and that in fact as we get down in the years we will not see 8 15 sites but we will see fewer. Optimally, I would like to 9 see something like four or five or six. I think certainly 10 six would be more than enough. Four or five would probably 11 be plenty.
12 But that is a difficulty associated with the 13 states getting that responsibility and the way they want to 14 execute it.
15 Your last question was, would we have the 16 resources to cope with 15 applications?
17 In fact, we probably will not need to. Again, if 18 I believe what we are now hearing from the statee, we would 19 in fact have to address something in the neighborhood of 20 four or five applications.
21 The other applications will be licensed by the 22 state under an agreement state program.
23 DR. SMITH: I see.
24 DR. KNAPP A question arises as to whether in 25 fact it is four or five. I say there are four or five Heritago Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
348 1 because we have four states that expect to bring us applications, a fifth that was going to do it under an
{}2 3 agreement state program but is now concerned that they may l 4 not get the agreement state program up and running in time 5 to process that application, and so the number is kind of ;
i 6 fuzzy. I can't tell you off the top of my head how we're j 7 budgeted. I am pretty sure we are now budgeted to cope with 8 three applications along the schedule of those states that
- 9 we think are most likely to bring them in.
10 And that is simply my best guess that in fact not 11 all these states will come through with applications.
12 If it turns out that they will, then we will 13 probably change the budget.
14 And I would note that the Commission gave the l l
Division additional resources in the years that we are
{"}15 16 expecting these applications to come in so that we would be j i
) 17 able to cope with them. That was ont changs in the budget l 18 that's happened rather recently. f i
19 DR. SMITH: Thank you, Ha1.
1 20 DR. KNAPPt Okay. I think I am almost to the ;
e i
21 bottom of that page and I get to the work we're doing on f I
22 national progre.m management. l i
23 This is work that, and you will see by the way a 24 somewhat parallel activity in a moment in uranium recovery, f 25 this is work we are doing to ensure that the NRC program and ,
I Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 7 O i L
349 1 the agreement state program are reasonably under control and 2 in alignment with Headquarters policy.
3 We visit the regions and ask how they are 4 implementing the low level waste regulation. This would be 5 where we would review. Zarlier I mentioned inspection 6 enforcement. We would be reviewing their programs to see 7 are they in fact inspecting against the things that we think 8 are important and against our written guidance.
9 We will also be reviewing agreement states. We 10 will be supporting the reviews that are done by our office, 11 by GPA, our state programs people within GPA.
12 Our supplemont, our help to them is going to be 13 focused this year on three agreement states that are 14 developing new low level disposal facilities.
15 He sre particularly concerned about those to make 16 sure their agreement state programs as you mentioned a 17 moment ago, can we handle the licensing burdens, we are also 18 concerned wh&ther the agreement states can handle them. And 19 this part of our program review is intended to give us 20 confidence that their programs can handle their license 21 applications when they get them.
22 I'd like to move on to the next page. And I would 23 note that the other pages are generally a little bit 24 shorter. So hopefully it will go a little bit more rapidly.
45 The next area that we are working on is licensing Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
350 1 and reviews in low-level,
\ ,
15 terms of considerations they have in their license so that j O 16 we don' t get into a dual regulation pattern.
r 17 It also makes things more efficient. In fact this ;
r i 18 is another area where we hope to work more efficiently and [
l
- 19 we' re able to get along with fewer resources than we might J 1 t 20 otherwise need. !
- 21 We are also going to be providing some pre-t 22 licensing guidance to the states where we do believe they j 23 will be bringing applications to the NRC so that we have 24 some confidence that when the applications come in they will !
]
25 be as close as possible to being applications that will pass ,
I 1
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i 1 an acceptance review. l 2 Our topical report reviews, you heard a great deal
( 3 about that yesterday. I would note a couple of things here. j i
4 As you can see, including overhead, we have three j 5 full time staff. If you talk about direct, we have I think j 6 about 2.1 budgeted and $390,000 in contract money. !
7 I think again as you heard yesterday it is my 8 anticipation that we are shortly going to resolve our l t
9 decision on high density polyethylene containers. I would 10 like to think our submitted concerns will be resolved I
11 somewhat after that. [
l 12 I would hope submitted concerns will be resolved l t
13 in calendar ' 88. And I would like to think that our 14 backlog, in light of the fact that much of the backlog that l 15 remains involves high-density poly containers in coment
( ) 16 waste forms. )
17 We have 4 hose concerns resolved. I think a lot of f i
18 our backlog is going to go away and we're going to be down j 19 to the point where our reviews in hand will be those f 20 received within the last six or eight months. ,
21 Those are our goals. I'm not sure I want to make 22 those as promises.
23 The next aret of interest is below regulatory 24 concern petitions. We expect to deal with two petitions in ,
t 25- fiscal '89, one which we already have received frou the l
Neritage Reporting Corporation j (202) 628-4888 [
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352 1 Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, petitioning that the entire 2 Commonwealth be declared BRC.
{'}
l 3 We are in the process of --
4 DR. SMITH: Do you want to repeat that? r 5 DR. KNAPP: Certainly. I wondered whether I would 6 get a question on that.
7 The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has petitioned the 8 HRC asking that all nuclear waste within that Commonwealth 9 be declared below regulatory concern. ,
10 We are in the process of reviewing that petition 11 and deciding whethet in fact we are going to go to research 12 and recommend a rulemaking on it or whether we will find 13 that the petition does not have enough merit to proceed with 14 the rulemaking.
DR. HOELLER: I guess the basis is that they, if
( } 15 16 they have no nuclear power plants, which they don't, and the '
17 only radioactive material they have is what they import, I 18 presume.
19 DR. KNAPP That could be. I read their ir.itial 20 documentation and all I really read was four or five pages 21 of cover material, which was not defensible. The technical :
22 support for it is under review by the Staff and we have not t l
23 completed that review.
24 My intuition causes me to be a bit skeptical I
25 because I don't understand how if there are hospitals in the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
353 l 1 lommonwealth that practice nuclear medicine seriously, how 2 they could argue that all of those wastes would be below J 3 regulatory concern.
4 But I'm not familiar with what their hospital 5 situation is like and perhaps the petition has some merit.
6 I don't immediately find that it appears to be too 7 plausible.
6 The other petition that we expec.t to receive will 9 be a single petition from EEI/EPRI working together where 10 they will petition we understand that a total of about eight 11 waste etreams -- four associated with BWRs and four 12 associated with PWRs -- be declared below regulatory 13 concern.
14 We've met with them a couple of times on the 15 subject and we anticipate that petition will come in, we 16 anticipate pretty much in conformance with the Commission 17 policy and staff implementation plan that we put out two 18 years ago.
19 Whether or not we'll find it acceptable, I don't 20 know. But at least we have confidence they understand what 21 we are seeking when they prepare the petition.
22 The last item on that page is the work we will be 23 doing to review alternatives to shallow land burial.
24 As a part of whether you want to call it our 25 reviews, our assistance to states, we in DOE have agreed Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
4 l
354 l 1 that they are going to bring us prototype applications, one for each of the two alternatives to shallow land burial,
{}2 3 that we wish to emphasizes below-ground vaults, earth-l 4 mounted concrete bunkers.
5 We will conduct an initial review of these 6 applications and then we will make their application and our 7 comment and review available to states. We expect this 8 should be of some significant, help to both the developer and l
l 9 the licenser to get a sense of what kind of information 10 would be appropriate and how the NRC feels about it.
11 If you turn to Page 5, I will talk briefly about 12 inspections. I've spoken about that a little bit.
13 In program development we are going to continue to 14 develop inspection procedures. We are also going to work on enforcement procedures.
[ } 15 16 If you look at the present enforcement table and 17 the regulation, it does not really speak to how one night 18 make decisions on whether you would have a Level 3, 4 or 5 19 violation with respect to low level waste.
20 And so we hope to provide some additional guidance 21 beyond this in the table. The inspection procedures I've 22 mentioned a little bit earlier as to how we would expect 23 regional and site inspectors to look at rad waste systems at 24 reactors as well as at materials licensees.
25 Casework, that work will be principally done Beritage Reporting Corporation (202) $28-4888
355 1 regionally. We will both look at reactors, fuel facilities 2 and materials licinsees, as I mentioned earlier, to look at
~)
'~
3 classifying, treating wastes and how they're packaging them.
4 With that, I would like to turn to the next page 5 which is our assistance to states.
6 An area that we have been doing increasing work on 7 over the last year or two has been providing assistance to 8 states through again, through GPA and the agreement state 9 program. In general, states will contact GPA and as 10 assistance is needed, GPA turns to us if it's technical and 11 we provide it.
12 We've done a host of things in the past. I expect 13 we're going to do a lot more.
14 There will be legislative items where they ask for 15 our comment as to whether it's sound legislation or sound O 16 regulation from agencies. Site characterization plans, site 17 selection plans. A number of things that we review.
18 We have limited resources compared to what they 19 seek from us and so we are pretty much restricting ourselves 20 to helping the regulatory as opposed to the development end 21 of the business.
22 One of the things that we do hope to do is to have 23 a meeting of state regulators in November of this year. We 24 have already been in contact, excuse me, GPA has been in 25 contact with them. They have responded very favorably to Hiritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
356 1 the idea, and we hope to both give them some of our ideas on 2 regulation and learn what some of their concerns are and l 3 perhaps some of the things we might want to produce.
l 4 A subject that came up I think at a previous 5 meeting a couple of times with you has been our work on t 6 providing guidance for environmental monitoring.
7 And at this time, the environmental monitoring 8 guidance that we would be providing in fiscal ' 89 would come 9 under this general assistance at this point in part because 10 we've had requests from a number of states for guidance in 11 the area.
12 The next item is mixed waste guidance and I 13 probably am not going to add anything to what Tim Johnson l 14 told you earlier today.
1 15 We plan on providing draft guidance on mixed waste 16 sampling and testing in fiscal '89 and we plan on providing 17 specific assistance to states that request it.
18 DR. SMITH: Hal, you have in here, I mean, it's 19 asavead that if these procedures are going to be developed l 20 jointly with EPA, obviously EPA has to commit some l
21 resources.
22 DR. KilAPP Right.
l 23 DR. SMITH: But you put in here in parentheses, 24 EPA resources are necessary to completion.
23 DR. KIIAPP : That's right.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
357 1 DR. SHITH: Is there some concern on your part s 2 that EPA is not going to do this?
t 3 DR. KNAPP This one is a ..ttle -- in the past, 4 the guidance we've done, frankly I believe we've done the 5 bulk of the work. We've provided drafts and the drafts have 6 gone to EPA and then they've gone through an approval l 7 process.
8 In this case, for the sampling and testing, they 9 will be doing the bulk of the work. I'm not clear exactly 10 on what their budget is for '89 and I guesa earlier I could 11 have promised that we would get enough work done that if EPA 12 could simply review it we could deliver.
13 This time we don't have the resources programmed i
14 for this and should EPA not be able to provide the resources it won't happen. I can't tell you the likelihood that they
{ } 15 16 will or will not have the resources.
17 Last bullet on that page is quality assurance 18 guidance to the states. We provided some early direction on 19 quality assurance. We will be finalizing it in a document 20 that we hope to bring out before the end of the calendar [
l i 21 year.
l 22 We will also be conducting workshops with states l 23 on quality assurance, j 24 In fact, the four workshops that we will be i 25 conducting will be in response to requests from specific j Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
l 1
i
l 358 1 states -- New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania, North Carolina.
l l
So there is interest, I am pleased to see, on '
L
{}2 3 their parts, in ensuring they do have a good QA program.
4 And as you have heard or will hear, in the high-level waste 5 work that's going on, quality assurance has obviously been a 6 real source of difficulty.
7 So it would appear to be at least at the moment 8 one that people recognise in the low level waste program, 9 and I'm kind of pleased about that.
10 I'm not ready to be satisfied with it, but at 11 least it's recognized.
12 I'd like to now turn to our uranium recovery l
13 program. And looking at your chart in front of you, or the 14 viewgraph that's being projected, just note that we have switched into the uranium recovery area or subject.
{ } 15 16 Again, I'll talk about four major areas as I did I 17 in low-levels regulations and guidance, licensing, l
l 18 inspections and then finally, a little bit different one, 1
19 the remedial action program.
20 As you will note from Page 7, we have about 30 FTE 21 and about $300,000, contract dollars associated with the 22 program, that on the face of it would suggest that something l
23 more than 50 percent of the Division resources are 24 associated with uranium recovery.
25 And while that's true when we include regione, I l Ileritage Reporting Corporation 1
(202) 52e-4ses
- 359 l ,
l 1 would note that most of the work and the licensing and !
i 2 reviews with 11 FTE and the inspections are done through our 3 Uranium Recovery Field office as well as about one or two '
4 FTE on remedial action revievs. I l I 5 So about half of this program, perhaps a shade !
6 more than il t, is in fact conducted through our Denver
[
l 7 office.
8 DR. HOELLER: How, this is an area where in the f i
9 past as I recall you have talhed to the Committee about, you l
I 10 know, and thared with us some of your thoughts on it, and we 11 really hate not responded. Not that we disagree with you, 12 but we simply haven't gotten to it.
[
j 13 And you might share those thoughts with us again f l 14 or remind us of them.
15 DR. KNAPP All right. I might overview a couple l 16 of things about where this program is, i 1 1 17 I think one of the things the you see right away !
18 is that there is virtually no work going on here in (
r
! 19 regulations. In guidance, it's all licensing reviews, l l
i l 20 inspection reviews, remedial action reviews. So this is a L 21 much more mature program, if you like, f
a 22 In fact, one could argue that it is mature because t Y
1 l
23 the uranium industry hez matured to the point where it is f r
24 dead. I 25 And that is in fact a factor. There is very l
l l Neritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888
t 360 1 limited development in tha uranium industry. In a moment i (m., 2 will speak about the solution mining which is about the only V
3 cource of new interest in uranium recovery. But in general, 4 the program is proceeding without the need for a great deal 5 of redirection or guidance at this point, unlike low-level.
6 There are some areas that we need to work on and 7 under regulations and guidance on the next page, I'm going 8 to highlight a few of them.
9 One of the concerns that we have that we're 10 working on internally -- and by the way, although you see 11 very few FTEs associated with this, from a management 12 pr.spective, these are major issues.
13 One concern is our interpretation of the EPA 14 standards, IL va, NRC regulations on uranium recovery.
15 A question that we've begun to ask ourselves 16 internally has been are our interpretations of these lawa 17 and so forth too strict? 11 ave we in fact allowed 18 appropriate fleribility for such things as maintenance in 19 futiire years? To what extent should any maintenance be 20 permitted or should none bo permitted?
21 If we design or re; quire DOE or industry to design
( 22 a tailings pile that will last 1,000 years, do we want 23 something that will last 1,000 years with absolute assurance 24 and take on all comers or should we design for something 25 that's closer to reasonable assurance and perhaps give some i
Heritage Reporting Corporation gs (202) 628-4888 0
361 1 credit for maintenance.
2 This is one where we sort of have to thread
}
3 through not only the law and regulation but statements of 4 consideration and logal history.
5 And we're re-examining that to see exactly how 6 much reliance we can place on maintenance, what reasonable 7 assurance might be. It's our basic question, is it possible 8 that we and industry together are asking more of these 9 remedial actions than la really appropriate?
10 I don't know how that will come out. This is 11 something currently under consideration by the staff.
12 Depending on how our thinking goes we may very well -- we 13 might want to mention this to you if you'd be interested and 14 we might very well do a Commission paper on it.
It basically depends on whether we think present
{ } 15 16 practice is departing enough from what is legally required 17 that it deserves some significant attention.
j 18 Go rhead.
l 22 DR. KNAPP: UMPTEAP generally, or Title I progtsm.'
23 DR. SMITH: No.
24 DR. KNAPP UMTRCA?
25 DR. SMITH: FUSRAP. FUSRAP.
I Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
- _ - _ _ _ _ _ b 1
362 1 DR. KNAPP: Okay. Formally utilized sites.
DR. SMITH: Right. Right. The FUSRAP program. I
[}2 3 presume that those are being completed if you will according I 4 t'o NRC requirements?
5 DR. KNAPP: I don't believe thsy are.
6 DR. SMITH: I see. ;
l 7 DR. KNAPP We are not reviewing their FUSRAP work 8 per se. I beli- _t a lot of their FUSRAP has to do with 9 radium, which is norm, which does not fall within our ambit.
10 DR. SMITU.: Okay.
11 DR. KNAPP If there is somebody that cen speak ,
12 more accurately than I -- but we are not reviewing stuff 13 like their work at Montclair, New Jersey and places like 14 that. We're aware of some of it, but we don't review it.
For the benefit of our stenographer, this is
{ } 15 16 George Lear.
17 MR. LEAR: I'm George Lear. And about a year and 18 a half ago, at the direction of the Director of NSS, we 19 initiated some followup on the earlier studies that had 20 t'2kan place over a number of years by Oak Ridge and the 21 staff and the regional offices on the formerly licensed 22 sites, and have that resolved.
23 Thero were some 13 sitos identified as potentially 24 contaminated. And with this contract, and the Oak Ridge 25 associated universities and a former NRC employee, a report Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
363 1 was prepared and is available now in final form in our office.
{}2 3 At the moment, a decision has to be made as to 4 what to do with that report. But basically, the report 5 concluded that those 13 sites, which was the residue of the 6 whole review program of some thousands, were in a state that 7 were acceptable at this time.
8 There were those that were DOE sites and those 9 that were under the old licensing program as well.
10 So things seem to be in hand at the moment in that 11 program.
12 DR. SMITH: Thank you.
13 DR. KNAPP: Moving to the subject of alternate 14 concentration limits, this is something that we've been working with EPA to try to resolve for I think more than
[ } 15 16 four years now.
17 EPA regulations and policy would have them concur 18 specifically. They want site specific concurrence, in some 19 of the alternste concentration limits we vould set for 20 contaminated ground water.
21 The NBC, as a matter of policy, does not want EP.T 22 to get site specific concurrence.
23 In order to resolve this, without coming to blows, 24 what we have attempted to do is to develop a methodology to c 25 determine what these alternate limits might be.
Heritage P.eporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 s_/ ;
e 364 1 EPA would then endorse this methodology and both agencies would feel that the problem was resolved.
'}2 3 We are continuing to work on that. We have a 4 draft methodology which, in fact, we published for comment 5 in June and we're still working with EPA to try to ensure 6 that they are comfortable with that methodology. The issue 7 is not fully resolved.
8 If we can resolve the.t in the next few months, 9 early in the fiscal year, I will reall be delignted. That 10 will help us out a great deal.
11 12 13 14
() 5 16 17 18 19 20 i
21 22 4
23 1
24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
i
365 i 1 DR. MOELLER: Now once again, this is groundwater i 2 contamination due to uranium.
3 DR. KNAPP: Uranium at this point. This would be 4 uranium mill tailings piles which have contaminated 5 groundwater which should moet certain very rigorous 6 standards to comply with EPA.
7 Under cer t ain circumstances, basically no serious 8 and immediate or axcuse me, no serious threat to pui,1.ic 9 health and safety plus an expensive piece of work in order ,
10 to remove the contamination it may be that alternate 11 concentration limits are in order.
12 In order to do that in a way that both NRC and EPA 13 are happy with we need to either -- we need to resolve 14 whether or not EPA concurs and whether or not our 15 methodology to establish those limits is one that satisfies 16 EPA.
17 The noxt area that I'm vorking on is called a
18 streamif.ning. This is something I alluded to earlier in 19 terms of the fewer resourced that we have to deal with the I 20 DOE Title I program. (
, 21 At present DOE produces 10 or 11 documents for 22 each one of the 22 sites where they re conducting remedial 23 actions. We have been in the business of reviewing all of 24 them.
25 What we are going to do and we met with DOE on l
I i
} Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888
()
. - , . - - - - - - - - _ , _ - - - - , - - . . - . - - . , - .- e .-,~,--3
o 366 1 this and we pretty much have, at least some initial
~) 2 agreement as to how we will streamline, is to change the way (G
3 they construct one of their documents a bit so that we can 4 simply review one document and use other documents for 5 reference.
6 We also plan to take advantage of some of their 7 inspections that they have to do to satisfy their 8 contracting officers rather than to do some of our 9 inspections.
10 , Well, both of these steps to be workable. Our 11 legal people are comfortable with them. We don't think that 12 it would have an adverse effect on health and safety but we 13 hope to free up several FTE. In fact, enough so that we may 14 not only free up those that we lost, that I mentioned earlier, but in f act we'll have some resources to devote to
{ } 15 16 some of the other areas we have within the division where we 17 like to put time.
18 That's an ongoing project and will probably take a 19 number of meetings to address a number of subjects. But at 20 this point we're hopeful that it will make our job much more 21 efficient. It will also accomplish something DOE is keenly 22 interested in and that is tnat we don't becomo a bottleneck 23 as they proceed with the remedial actions.
24 The last piece of work in this area is national 25 program management. It parallels what you saw under the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
- O
367 1 low-level program, simply to ensure we have consistency 2 between the way that headquarters and the regions, 3 principally ERFO get their jobs done that we don't hold 4 licensees to different standards, depending on who does the 5 review.
6 DR. STEINDLER: Let me ask, you indicated that 7 there is just a few FTEs in this program, which is obviously 8 correct, but you also said that management considers these 9 topics to be important.
10 DR. KNAPP Right.
11 DR, STEINDLER: I've always been able to identify 12 in the past, at least, the importance attached by management 13 to a particular topic on the basis of the amount of effort 14 that they're prepared to exert on it. It doesn't match 15 here; why not?
16 DR. KNAPP Well, I think probably because most of 17 that one FTE is me, John Greeves, and a couple of branch 18 chiefs. What I'm really saying is that management -- it's 19 important in that, we don't neod a lot of people to do these 20 things. I mean, we have meetings. Essentially it's policy 21 determinations, and so we don't have a lot of staff -~ largs 22 numbers of staff involved to make these things happen. But 23 that means they are no less important. That's why the 24 apparent dichotomy here.
25 DR. STEINDLER: All right.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
~
n-360 1 DR. KNAPP: It might turn out that if we were to 2 meet this time next year and I were to tell you what we put 3 into this you might find that we had more than one FTE in 4 here if you looked at the real budget.
5 DR. SMITH: And, Msl, this had nothing to do with 6 the fact that it's one or less in terms of the streamlining 7 aspect, your resources.
8 DR. KNAPP: I'm sorry about that.
9 DR. SMITH: The fact that you have devoted less 10 than one FTE to this particular topic streamlining, that's 11 in no way connected with the fact that you have been working 12 on this for four years to bring it to closure.
13 DR. KNAPP: Well, with respect to alternate 14 concentration limits, if you were to look at what we put 15 into that over the last three or four years, I would, you O 16 know, the cumulative sum, I'd say we probably got two or 17 three FTE in that.
18 We should be just about at closure. In fact if we
, 19 waro -- on alternate concentration limits, if you looked at 20 our program a year ago I don't know what you would have 21 seen,,but you should have seen one FTE at least budget --
22 I'd say about one FTE budgeted to tF-t subject alone.
23 Last year we prepared a draft of it, we went j 24 through it with EPA, two cycles, prepared the Federal 25 Register Motice, all that's done. If we had that yet to do, Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888 i (2)
I
369 1 then we would have to put more resources on.
7s 2 DR. SMITH: What I was getting at, I wasn't really L] 3 trying to be that facetious was whether or not the time 4 that's been involved to come to closure was one -- was due 5 to a lack of resources or really a philosophical difference 6 here that had to be reconciled.
7 DR. KNAPP: From our part it's simply been a 8 philosophical difference. As the ball has dropped into the 9 NRC's court, because of our interest in this we put in 10 whatever resources we need.
11 DR. SMITH: Because EPA's groundwater standards 12 are what, the same as their drinking water standards?
13 DR. KNAPP I believe so, yes.
14 DR. SMITH: What you're saying if it's a situation 15 where the groundwater is not being used for public water j 16 supply, it doesn't appear that there's any way it would be, 17 it doesn't represent a danger, then you would want those 18 concentrations increased in order to make the existing 19 situation okay and not get you into treating it, is that 20 what we're saying?
21 DR. KNAE P Not antirely. We wouldn't necessarily 22 want them increased just to make the existing situation 23 okay. We might have them increased so that we could -- we I
24 would still have to treat, still have to decontaminate, but 25 perhaps not to as much of a level -- as to a low a level as Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
370 1 EPA might require.
2 I'll be honest with you, if you want to get into O_ 3 this I really ought tc bring in the person that's most 4 responsible for it.
5 DR. SMITH: No, that's all right.
6 DR. KNAPP: But the bottom line is, what we would 7 like is, if this is where we are and this is where EPA would
' lB like us to be, then an alternate concentration limit might 9 leave us where we are; more likely it would get us at some 10 middle ground. In other words, we would balance, again, the 11 economic factors as well as public health and safety.
12 Obviously, we would not do anything negative about public 13 health and safety.
14 DR. STEINDLER: But you did make the comment that 15 you didn't want the EPA in a site-specific case by case O 16 domain, right?
17 DR. KNAPP: That's right.
18 DR. STEINDLER: Aren't you going to have a 19 difficult time keeping the EPA in a gener1c mode?
20 DR. KNAPP: I'm going to rely on former 21 Administrator Ruckleshouse and former Chairman Paladeno.
22 They .7 truck a deal in 1984 to resolve this issue. And 23 again, the issue was EPA wanted site-specific concurrence, 24 the Commission did not want to provide it.
25 The deal that they struck was that we would Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
371 1 develop an alternate concentration limit methodology. That 2 EPA would bless the methodology and thereby no longer need
(')T
\_
3 to have site-specific concurrence. Therefore EPA would be 4 comfortable that we were in fact properly protecting health 5 and safety; we would be comfortable that we did not have 6 site-specific concurrence and that would resolve the issue.
7 If this methodology is in fact acceptable to EPA 8 and we're happy with it, then we've got a winner. If it's 9 not, then we could be going back to 1984 and having 10 additional problems, 11 DR. STEINDLER: I see.
12 DR. KNAPP: I just notice we have a formar EPA 13 representative with us, I didn't know whether he would care 14 to comment on my remarks or not.
MR. MYERS: No, you're right on target.
( } 15 16 DR. MOELLER: Shelly Myers.
17 DR. KNAPP: I would like now to turn to page nine 18 where we talk about licensing, and actually I've combined 19 licensing inspections on this page under the uranium 20 recovery program.
21 All of the FTE associated with this program are 22 working from our uranium recosery field office in Denver.
23 The work can be stated rather simply, some of their work 24 involves licensing new facilities. There aren't very many 25 new facilities in the uranium recovery area, but actually Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
372 1 they do anticipate three applications in Fiscal '89.
2 They're all in situ and two are from existing R&D in situ 3 facilities that will be converting to commercial operations.
4 DR. SMITH: In what states are those?
5 DR. KNAPP: If you give me just a second I have 6 the information, I believe.
7 Let me ask your indulgence rather than make the 8 folks wait. I have it here it will take me a moment.
9 DR. SMITH: That's all right, I was just curious.
10 There were a couple that I was keeping up with at one time 11 and I was just wondering whether it was one of those R&D 12 facilities.
13 DR. KNAPP If I have it correct, both of them are 14 associated with Stid in Mexico, but I would like to double 15 check that with a little more time.
16 The next area that the uranium recovery office 17 works on is amendments. They have both major and minor 18 amendments. Minor amendments are such things as address 19 changes, changes in personnel requirements. Major 20 amendments are more in the order of things that you see 21 thero such as those that address decommissioning activities 22 or surety for recismation.
23 The next area of review that they're involved is 24 monitoring reports. A great number of monitoring reports 25 are required of uranium recovery licensees such things as, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
373 1 for example, land use status. One of the reports that we 2 require that they file annually is, what's going on in the 3 land of the vicinity of the uranium licensee? Is it still l 4 being treated as it was or has there been new use of water 1
5 wells, perhaps cattle grazing had not been there before, 6 development of a residential area, things like this are l 7 tracked as well as, obviously, simply monitoring releases to 8 offsite areas.
l 9 When you add up the number of licensees, the 10 number of reports that we require, for example, offsite 11 releases we require two reports a year from each licensee, 12 you end up with a total of 140 reports that they will be 13 reviewing.
14 DR. STEINDLER: Are these land use reports purely 15 informational or do you have a trigger point beyond which i
O 16 you react to them in some fashion?
l 17 DR. KNAPP There is a trigger point and I 18 think -- and I can't speak clearly to it, but at some point 19 if there is sufficient increased use of the land then we 20 would have to reexamine the EA or EIS associated with the 21 site and see uhether it was in fact still valid. I don't 32 know what the trigger point is, but we would take actions, 23 not purely information.
24 The other area that the field office is involved 25 in here is inspections. They anticipate about 35 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
V rr p.
374 1 inspections of various uranium facilities in Fiscal ' 89 and 2 that is essentially an annual inspection of each of the C_)T 3 facilities.
4 Just for your information that includes 19 of what 5 we might call conventional facilities that are either in an 6 operating, shutdown, or decommissioning mode for in situ 7 commercial facilities; nine R&D in situ facilities; and two 8 others. And the reason that doesn't add up to 35 is that 9 last week one of them terminated its license and so we're 10 actually going to have 34 inspections next year.
11 DR. SMITH: Mal, do you know offhand how many 12 mills are still operating?
13 DR. KNAPP I don't know what exactly you would 14 mean by operating. Officially the Homestack Company in Grants, New Mexico, Homestack's mine in Grants and
( } 15 16 Pathfinder mine in Shirley Basin are the only two operating I 17 mills. But operating does not necessarily mean they are
! 18 working eight hours a day and making a profit. And I don't 19 know whether either one of them is actually in what we would j 20 ' call a com:nercially profitable' operation. Those are the 21 only two official operating that we have.
l 22 DR. CARTER: What I think it means is that they 23 are running through a few hundred or a few thousand pounds 24 of uranium just to keep the mill in operating condition.
25 DR. KNAPP I think you're correct and my memory i
Meritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
375 1 doesn't serve real well. I believe one of them is just literally up a day or so a month. The other one I think is
{}2 3 more active and I don't know which is which.
4 With that page covered I would like to move to 5 page 10 and get to the last item in our uranium recovery 6 area which are remedial action reviews. This is an area 7 where, if you look at the bottom of the page you will see 8 that we have about 15 FTE including overhead which 9 translates to the 10.6 FTE direct, which I mentioned earlier 10 in terms of tihst our real budget is.
11 We have a lot of documents that we can review and 12 have been in the past, EAs or EISs as appropriate. The 13 remedial action plans that DOE puts together. And then on 14 the basis of the remedial action plan our own documentation of why we've arrived at whatever comments or decisions we've
( } 15 16 made, our technical evaluation reporta. And than our actual 17 review and concurrence on the remedial actions which include a
18 at looking at inspection plans or other items.
19 It's our hope, that as a result of the 20 streamlining process we can eliminate the review of a great 21 many of these documents and that we would probably be down 22 to the review of a remedial action plan which would include 4
23 an inspection plan as a part of it. That would be cur 24 principal review effort.
25 But again, the way that we do this is going to l
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1
t l
L
376 1 depend on completion of the agreements we are reaching with DOE. At this point, frankly both of us are delighted that
{}2 3 we are reviewing fewer documents and DOE is prepared to 4 alter their remedial action plan or at least they're 5 investigating whether they can alter it in such a way that ;
6 we wouldn't have to look at other documents.
7 DR. STEINDLER: Are all these coming from DOE?
8 DR. KNAPP: Yes. When I say DOE, I mean DOE and 9 its contractors.
10 DR. STEINDLER: Right.
11 DR. KNAPP That's correct.
12 What has happened in the past is that there has 13 been a certain amount of DOE preparing documento for a L i
14 variety of use, they don't just prepare these for the NRC.
They provide them to give their contractor -- they have a
[ } 15 16 technical assintant contractor who essentially evaluates l 17 some of the work that needs to be done; and then a remedial 18 action contractor that does the work. To document the 19 communications between them, between DOE and the states, and f i
20 municipalities and other areas to satisfy EPA requirements 21 they have to produce a lot of documents. {
22 Previously we have reviewed all of these and (
r 23 extracted from them the things that we needed in order to f 24 make our own assessments. What we're hoping we can do now ;
25 is to review one document formally in which DOE will, in .
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4883
377 1 that document, reference the other documents in terms of the 2 areas we need to make our own assessment. It will make us
( 3 much more efficient and it will speed up the review process.
4 That's the goal of this portion of streamlining.
5 I would like to be able to -- if I were to have 6 another briefing for you on this subject in six months I 7 would like to come back and show you that we have reduced 8 the resources that we had to put into this. We'll see how 9 it goes.
10 With that I'd like to turn to the last page which I 11 is decommissioning, and here this is the, at least for this 12 division, the newest of the programs that we have. And to a 13 degree you can see that reflected in the chart that we're 14 working on regulations and guidance. And our licensing 15 review work at this point is rather limited, although it's
( ) 16 going to begin to pick up this year and will become more 17 hectic in the future.
18 Regulations and guidance consist of providing 19 direction both for our staff and principally for regional 20 staff in reviewing the decommissioning funding plans and we 21 expect to receive beginning in the future.
22 You are probably aware the decommissioning rule 23 was promulgated in final form I think the latter part of 24 July, July 27th or something like that, and that requires 25 that a number of materials licensees have to come in with Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
)
378 1 decommissioning plans within two years.
The principal interest in this work is to ensure
{}2 3 that when a licensee moves to decommission that they will 4 have the funds in place, they vill have the funds set aside 5 to be able to do that.
6 So our review of the plans basically consists of 7 our getting confidence that they properly estimated the 8 amount of money that they are going to need, and that they ,
9 have come up with an appropriate instrument, I mean, a 10 financial instrument such as a bond or an escrow account or 11 something like that to ensure that the money that they have 12 set aside will in fact be there when it's needed.
13 Most of these are going to be very straightforward 14 operations. Decommissioning in many cases, for example, for licensees that have sealed sources is going to be almost
[ } 15 16 trivial.
17 In some cases where we have a licensee such as a 18 laboratory that has a great deal of material in a number of 19 areas, it could be a rather large operation.
20 What we're doing here is providing guidance to the 21 regions who for all of the routine decommissioning funding 22 plans that come in will be able to handle and review them 23 without help. !
24 We anticipate there are going to be some that come 25 in that will, because of their complexity require NHSS {
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O ,
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l 379 l 1 assistance. Right now our estimate is that we will be 2 dealing with about 15 of those a year. And that, as a i
[VD 3 matter of fact, gets te the -- I have spoken there in part l 4 to our licensing review work with respect to decommissioning 5 plans.
6 One other area we're going to be involved in 7 decommissioning this year is going to be a review of the 8 nuclear reactor at the Pathfinder Generating Station in 9 South Dakota. Northern States Power is going to be bringing 10 in a decommissioning or perhaps you might call it a 11 dismantlement plan. If you're familiar with that reactor I 12 think that you're aware that it shut down, I believe, in 13 1971. It has been -- I don't want to use the word 14 decommissioned, largely dismantled. The fuel has been 15 removed. The thing is relatively cisan. And they want, at 16 this time they nave two bui"dings that they want to clean 17 upp one building they will destroy; the other they hope to ,
10 clean to the point where it's completely available for 19 public uso.
20 There is no great amount of radioactivity 21 associated with it. In fact, they do not have a part 50 22 licenset they have a part 30 license for it. But anyway we l 23 will be reviewing their proposal to decommission or 1
24 dismantle that reactor.
25 DR. SMITH: I read some place the other day that Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888 1 O l
380 1 Humboldt Bay was going to decommission that one -- that
(} 2 3
reactor was going to be decommissioned.
DR. KNAPPt That's my understanding, but I don't 4 know anymore about it then you've just said. We don't have, 5 I don't have in hand an official --
6 DR. SMITH: You haven't received anything on it.
7 DR. KNAPPt I don't have anything within the 8 division. Now one of the things that's going on with 9 several of these reactors, one of the things we resolved 10 last year in this program is who in fact within the NRC is 11 responsible for decommissioning reactors and under what 12 circumstances. And we have come up with an agreed upon 13 procedure whereby NRR does some initial work on 14 deccatmissioning and in an appropriate point turns the responsibility for decommissioning over to NMSS.
{ } 15 16 Let me see if you can get some more information 17 from Tim Johnson who is my section leader principally 18 responsible for decommissioning.
19 MR. JOHNSON For Humboldt Bay, Humboldt Bay has 20 submitted documentation to decommission the facility and put 21 it into a safstor mode. They still have fuel on site so the 22 ultimate dismantlement would come much later.
23 DR. SMITH: I see. And they have submitted that 24 to -- it goes first to NRR, is that it?
25 MR. JOHNSON: Right. MRR has done the review of Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
381 !
r 1 that. There's been an EIS that's been prepared and I ,
2 believe there's just some minor legal things that need to be !
3 resolved before they are given the approval. In fact, they J
- 4. may already have given the approval. ;
l 5 This Pete Erickson from NRR who is a project 6 manager for Humboldt Bay. I I !
j 7 MR. ERICKSON: We have issued the approval of I 8 their decommissioning plan and amendment to their license to 9 extend it to 2015 in the possession only status. They will !
l 10 remain in that safestor status until after the fuel has been [
t !
{ 11 shipped to a repository. !
12 We will transfer at some point this licensing I f
13 action to NMSS. But we have approved their decommissioning l f 14 plan at this stage.
j 15 DR. MOELLER: And you can go into safestor with 16 the fuel still on site?
{ 17 MR. ERICKSON: 'thac's correct.
18 DR. SMITH: Thenh you, f 19 DR. KNAPF: The last item, I've put this under l i !
l 20 deconaissioning, the last item under decowuissioning and in [
l r l
21 the presentation is our work on West Valley; and these are }
I 22 disposal activities that the division is worrying about at l s
23 West Valley, f i
24 There are two principal areas of concern to us. j j 25 As a part of their cleanup of West Valley DOE is generating i
L t
Meritage Reporting Corporation '
(202) 62s-4sse O :
i
382 1 some low-level wastes that they are processing and turning into cement waste form.
(}2 3 We have been working with them and consulting with 4 them on the cement waste form, dealing with the same sorts 5 of problems that you've heard about on cements. In fact, I 6 wasn't here for yesterday's presentation, it may very well 7 be that West valley cement waste forms came up and were 8 discussed. But we're addressing the same sorts of technical 9 concerns.
10 A second area that DOE has been concerned about as 3
11 a result of a lawsuit by some citizens groups in the West I 12 Valley area has been whether or not it's proper for them to 13 dispose of 10 -- of 100 namocurie per gram waste, namocurie 14 per gram of TRU or in fact they should be limited 10 3 namocuries por griam.
{ } 15 16 And their decioiou on that will require sventual
]
). 17 NRC approval to help them arrive at a decision or an t
18 application, if you like, for NRC to approve. We have been p l
i 19 providing them with consulting on our decisions, on 10 )
I i
! 20 versus 100 namocuries per gram which we made as a part of I
21 our promulgation of 10 CFR 61. So we are continuing to work i
22 with them on that issue, l
j 23 I can talk about that in some length at some time, 4 24 if you would want to hear it.
1 l 25 our final effort on West Valley, although it l l I Neritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
/ 383 ,
1 doesn't require a great deal of manpower is one where we are 2 encouraging them to work with New York State and to develop O 3 an EIS for the entire West Valley site.
l 4 One of the things that we think is very important 5 is that the evaluation of that site look at all waste, it's 6 not just the waste from the present cleanup but all waste 7 that had ever been buried at West Valley and look at them 8 together. !
9 When I think DOE is in agreement with us on that, 10 but there still need to be some work between DOE and New 11 York State to decide how the burdens of this EIS will be 12 carried.
13 That project, by the way, will be neveral years in 14 production.
15 That completes the program that we have in score O 16 for us for Fincal '89. Based on our experience with a
, l aimilar document that we produced a year ago I would tell 18 you that I expect about -- we will accomplish about 75 to 80 19 percent of what I have shown you. Candidly, I think we will 20 produce those things on time.
21 The other 20 to 25 percent we will not accomplish 22 because we will be redirected for things that right now 23 we're unable to foresee.
24 DR. MOELLER: Hel?
25 DR. CARTER: Malcolm, I had one question, when do Meritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
384 1 you anticipate EPA's criteria being available as far as 2 release levels to the public, residual contamination?
3 DR. KNAPP: The EPA standard which contains those 4 levels is presently at OMB for review. I don't know how 5 long OMB will take to review it. My understanding is that 6 EPA is satisfied with it and should OMB endorse it, it will 3
7 como right out.
4 8 If I were skeptic I would suggest that it's
- . 9 unlikely to como out before the election. But I would say pi;}[* 10 that's probably the timetable, some time this calendar year.
11 DR. MOELLER: Do you have -- is it releasable in a
./ 12 public meeting what roughly they are proposing?
13 DR. KUAPPI In terms of the BRC I'm expected it 14 is, but very honestly I'm not that active in BRC and I don't ,
15 know what EPA is proposing. There may be somebody that (
16 could speak to that, but I just don't know.
17 We jus'c. got a revision to their dccument last week 18 and I haven't read that portion of the revision yet.
19 MR. MYERS: It was 4 MR por year, t 20 DR. MOELLER: Other questions or comments?
21 Woll, what we as a commit;eo need to do is to look 22 back on what Mal has told us and if there are obvious voids 23 in this program we should comment on them. If there are 24 things they are doing that they really don't need to be 25 doing, we should mention that. If we have any criticism, lloritage Reporting Corporation (202) 620-4000 0
385 1 recommendations, suggestions, or comments.
2 I find my own reaction is, you know, they appear 3 to be well organized. And he certainly, as he always does, 4 he has laid it out pretty clearly for us.
l 5 Jack?
6 DR. PARM There was one branch technical 7 position en development of monitoring of low-level sites 8 that apparently was being discontinued. I wasn't sure from 9 Mal's presentation whether that in fact was being -- work on t
10 that was ceasing.
) 11 DR. KNAPP At present I have a work plan in my I
12 hands for review where we would put about two-tens of an FT
]
I 13 into finalizing the position that we produced late last
- 14 year.
i 15 We have, and I should have brought it to the table ,
16 and didn't, a contractor report that so would use in support [
17 of that that we received within about the last tronth. And 18 I'll be note than happy to make copies of the repor.t 19 available to you. In fact, it has already been dicected I 20 that the ACHW will receive 10 copies. We ran out of print t
21 real fast; a lot of people were interested, so you will have l l
22 10 copies of the next printing.
23 And at the moment, in light of the fact that there l 24 appear to be interest from the states on getting this 25 document and that we believe we can complete it with about h i
Meritage Meporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
386 1 .2 or thereabouts FTE, I expect that we will go ahead and
(~4 2 finish it up.
U 3 DR. MOELLER: So that looks like it is being 4 handled.
5 I guess the other thing, too, that we're charged 6 by the Commissioners to do is to say, are they short on 7 money or FTEs and so forth. And I think that you, you know, 8 you can always and any of us can always use more people.
9 But it certainly sounds like, again, Dr. Knapp is taking 10 what he has and very efficiently and effectively organizing 11 it to do the job. I'm sure he conid use more people; any of 12 us could. But the question is, how crucial are his needs in 13 comparison to other needs.
, 14 MR. ORTH: Thare's one area that just might be left out, that area of mixed waste guidance where EPA
]
[ } 15
, 16 resources were needed. Exactly what is the probability j 17 you're going to get all the EPA resources you think neod to 18 be devoted to that?
19 DR. Kt1 APP t Right now I would hnve to flip a coin.
20 I think your point might well be taken.
21 One of the things that I felt about mixed waste is 22 that, some months ago we sort of reached a knee in the 23 cu rve, that is where we had produced the mixed waste 24 guidance we could produce with reasonable resources and the 25 next pieces would require a lot of resources.
Meritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
387 1 That's one of the reasons that I haven't really 2 pua'.ad that as a big part of my program because I just 3 didn't think the cost benefit would necessarily pay off.
4 It's nice to say that we need guidance. And I'm not saying 5 we don't in this area uf sampling and testing, people do ;
6 want it. But in a point where we have no mixed waste 7 facilities or no facilities in existence that presently 8 accept mixed waste the sampling and testing program does not 9 have what I foresee as an immediate need. ;
19 And I guess in part my lack of resources in that 11 area results from my sense that there's not an awful lot I 12 that's constructive that we can do in the immediate future.
13 If we had, say the Hanford site, for example, to 14 come forward ind say they wanted to get a mixed waste 15 permit, and that this sampling and testing procedure was j 16 cnucial to it, in fact I would believo it ic, then I would 17 shift resources cr I would certainly try to seek resources 18 to develop it.
19 Lut you're right, that's a weak -- I would say
[
l 20 that's a weakness in the program. If we really wanted to be 21 doing active contributions in mixed waste we would need I
I 22 resourcos, j.
l t 23 When we were really working this problem, say, two I t
24 years ago today and producing the guidance that I think l; i
I 25 you've seen on thinga like siting and design critoria, I had I
, Meritage Reporting Corporation {
(202) 628-4888 ;
O
388 f 1 four, five people full time on it.
t/7 2 DR. SMITH: Dade, getting back to your question, 3 when I look up there on the board the one that interests me ,
4 the most or concerns me the most, I should say, in whether 5 or not NRC will complete its work in a timely fashion is 6 low-level waste.
i 7 And so I guess my feeling is, we would rely on you 8 to tell us whether or not from the standpoint of the 9 resources that you currently have that NRC is not going to 10 be, if you will, the critical path here in making sure that 11 the.e sites come on line in a timely fashion.
4 L
12 DR. KNAPP: At the moment, I don't think we will ,
t 13 be. To be very candid, if I had some more resources, just l 6
14 as I scan what's in front of me, I wouldn't mind putting i 15 some more energy into performance assessment. Although I f
j
~
16 think we might be faced with the usual T..oblem in i f
l 17 performance assessment, can a couple produce -- can nine r 18 couples produce a baby in one month. It may very well be ;
19 that additional resources will not accelerate the pace at i 20 which we can provide this guidance to the states.
21 By the way, we're doing that, obviously not just 22 to provide guidance to the states but to incrmase out own j i
23 internal licensing capability. !
i 24 That's probably the area right away where I might t
25 be most concerned that we might be a bottleneck, but I do i
b I i Heritage Reporting Corporation f (202) 628-4888 f C:)
h - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
I 389 1 have Sandia Laboratories in whom I have e great deal of
, 2 confidence based on their past work, working on this program 3 'd we're working closely with them.
i
]
4 I have a couple of very competent people within my 5 division involved in it. So I think we're doing the best 6 that we can under the circumstances. And I don't have the 7 sense that we're going to be a day late and a dollar short 8 at this point.
, 9 But this is one area that we're going to have to 10 watch carefully and make sure that doesn't happen.
11 DR. STEINDLER: I guess my view is that if we are 12 to, with some precision, address the issue that the 13 Commissioners have asked about in terms of resources, I 14 would not ask, because that doesn't give them an indepandent 15 view. I don't mean that as a disparaging comment.
16 I guess what I would, however, suggest to you that 17 in order to do what I think is a good analytical job, wo 18 would have to then look at the explicit milestones and 13 output identifiers, particularly accompanied by thos.
- 20 comments that give us some indication of what's driving both 21 the milestone and the particular topic in question.
22 And trying to get a rense of urgency on the 23 various things that they' re doing, to see whether or not l
24 that is likely to fly.
25 Superimposed on that, however, is this 1
1 Heritage Reporting Corporation
- (202) 628-4888
-- -- - - - - . , - ~ ~ - - - --
390 1 revolutionary approach that Mal is fixing to be engaged in
(^]
R 2 which is totally counter-bureaucratic, namely, streamlining 3 the process of reviewing documents. You realize if that 4 catches hold the government is likely to find itself in a 5 terrible state, having to lay off all these folks.
6 And that's, you know, we can laugh about it, but 7 that turns out to be an important issue because if you are 8 very successful in that, and I hope you are, that should 9 allow you to do exactly what you expected to do is free up 10 some resources, which then woold impinge on the analysis 11 that we might do saying, does he have enough or doesn't he.
12 My inclination is to recommend that we visit the 13 subject again to the extent that we can impose on Mal and 14 find out a little bit more in each of the topics that seem important in terms o2 assigned level of effort on what is
( } 15 16 the thing that's driving the schedule at the moment which in 17 turn would impinge on resources. What is the level of 18 output that might be required.
19 And then get from that an assessment of whether 20 the drivers are being adequately taken care of it. ,
21 Superimpose on that any considerations of missing issues 22 that we might identify on our own. Then sum that to see 23 whether or not we are roughly -- coming down roughly where 24 Mal is in terms of resources, taking into account I think 25 the necessary requirement that his outfit goes through fire l
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
t i
391 !
1 drills every so often and that a 75-80 percent !
2 accomplishment is a pretty good target. I think that's a !
( 3 good target considering how many possibilities you have of
, 4 somebody ringing your bell saying, you absolutely drop ;
5 whatever you're doing and you have te do this, f i
6 I would suggest over a few meetings we should be !
t 7 able to try and get that and bring that issue to closure and [
8 then begin this on an ongoing basis, j i
l- 9 HR. GREEVES: Let me add a point, I'm watching i 4 10 what you' re doing and trying to decide how you' re going to ;
11 accomplish this mission. And I think you may need to talk I
12 to the consumers of NRC's efforts and ask them, you know, [
1 4
13 how they view this because there's various entities out !
14 there that put out a request and say, and of course as you (
[
16 might imagine they have got what I call a wish list. j
( ) 16 So you may want to visit some of the various wish fi j 17 lists that the consumers of NRC's time are putting together. i i 18 DR. STEINDLER: I was rather hoping that we could !
i
) filter that wish list t,
- 19 something realistic by getting, you !
(
) 20 know, some kind of input on what's driving your schedule, t I
21 DR. SMITH: Well, that's why I said initially, !
i 22 from my vantage point, you know, sure we can get an f t
I 23 independent assessment, but we've got to be able to get from i
24 the division director what he's doing. What the demands are l
! 25 on his time? No one is in a better position than you, no 1
l r i
j Beritage Reporting Corporation t
! (202) 628-4888 l
(:) !
1 5 I 1
hl -
392 1 one is closer to the overall thing than you. <
(} 2 3 later time.
And so I'm perfectly willing to review it at a The only thing that bothers me a little bit is, 4 you show 22 people in low-level waste, I don't know what you j 5 initially requested, but you've given such a bang up 6 presentation here about what you're doing it makes me 7 wonder, did you really need these additional people you 8 asked for?
9 DR. KNAPP I'll put in a commercial. I think 10 I've got some outstanding staff, I really do. And I don't !
11 mean to insult the rest of the agency, but I think I've got 12 one of the best staffs and if I didn't we could not meet the 13 products that you see here. ;
14 DR. SMITH: Suro.
DR. KNAPP: That's the honest truth.
( } 15 ,
16 DR. MOELLER: One item, Mal, that's been raised 17 is, DOE of course has a certain rehedule, they're meeting on 18 the cleanup programs and so forth. I recall they've been in 19 here and told us such and such a dates, you know, milestones 20 and so forth. Now can you keep up with their schedule? !
l 21 DR. KNAPP: If we don't streamline we cannot. I 22 DR. SMITH: But you are in the process of 23 streamlining? ;
24 DR. KNAPP We' re in the process of streamlining. [
25 We hope that, as a result of that, we will keep up with the
.! f Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 623-4888
393 1 schedule and hopefully free up more people. But if we don't 2 streamline, as I mentioned earlier, our estimate of what we 3 need to keep up with their stated schedule, and I note that 4 sometimes they slip a little behind their stated schedulo.
5 But we have about two-thirds of the resources necessary to r 6 keep up with the stated schedule, absent the streamlining i
7 activity.
8 DR. MOELLER: Well, what again do you see us l 9 doing? We're meeting with the commissioners next month and 10 orally we could give them a report. I hesitate -- well, we ;
11 could write a very short letter, but I think it's better ;
12 just te orally report to them.
13 DR. PARRY: You will be receiving a similar 14 report --
15 DR. HOELLER: High-level, yes.
16 DR. PARGY: -- in November, 17 DR. STEINDLER: Ti ) issue I think is the October 18 meeting.
19 DR. PARRY: What I was saying is, you may with to 20 wait to make any statements until you compare --
21 DR. SMITH: You mean on the waste program in 22 general until we yet the high-level, too.
23 DR. STEINDLER: These are really quite separable.
24 DR. HOELLER: Yv s, we could report what we've 25 heard.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
394 1 DR. SMITH: I think an oral report is perfectly --
DR. STEINDLER: A very brief oral report.
(}2 3 DR. MOELLER: We're going 6> need to be developing 4 a list of items that is suggest the Commission consider for 5 that meeting. So let's put this on that list.
6 DR. KNATP: I might note one or two things. We do 7 have some input, for example, the group AFT and Associates 8 which conducts the low-level waste form; and also a group 9 called the -- is it the Technical Coordinating Committee, I r 10 believe, that is working under DOE auspices, have identified 11 certain needs that to a degree constitute input from states 12 to the things they would like NRC to produce. It may be of 13 interest to you to see those documents, i l
14 I also consider in your interest in looking more closely at the program, I'm happy to provide you with all
( } 15 16 the information that I have. I just note that it took us '
17 about two hourn in what is, I think we would agree, a very 18 sketchy overview to begin to get down into the detail of 19 this would require a fair amount of your time. I'm happy to r
20 provide that. That's one thought. ,
i 21 And in that level of detail you might want to l 22 consider whether some of this information should be convoyed 23 in an executive session, because when we get down into some L
24 of the detail as to, perhaps, contractual obligations that f
25 we're thinking about getting involved in or resource l
I Heritage Reporting Corporation ,
A (202) 628-4888 l V !
l l :
t 395 1 commitments, I think an exe:utive session might be more 2 appropriate. But I'll just leave that for your
)3 consideration.
4 DR. PARRY: By executive session you mean closed 5 session. ,
6 DR. KNAPP I used a poor choice of words. Closed 7 session. Basically I would be in a better position to talk f 8 about our contracting process with respect to what I believe f
9 the Office of Contracts would require of me.
10 DR. MOELLER: 1 think in view of the comments by 11 the committee yesterday about wanting to meet every other -
12 month and hitting only the crest of the waves and so forth, l 13 I really believe we almost should wrap this up on the basis 1 14 of what we've heard today.
15 Obviously if down the road we find that some, you l
( ) 16 know, bruuh fire develops and Hal comes in, we may have to 17 go to the Commissioners and say, he needs some more support [
r 18 to handle this particular thing.
19 But other than that I think we've done about as !
r
, 20 much depth as we can do without becoming immersed.
l 21 DR. STEINDLER: How much time do we have? j 22 DR. HOELLER: We have two more minutes.
23 DR STEINDLER: Two more minutes, let me ask a one (
l 24 minute question. You have allocated 30 FTEs for uranium l 25 recovery and 22 for low-level waste. There are some who i
t l
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
() t
[
L L
1
e 396 1 would view that as an upside down priority in terms of the importance in the near term to gotting the low-level waste
{}2 3 compacts off the ground, et cettra, et cetera, et cetera.
4 In that a legitimate criticism?
5 DR. KNAPP It's certainly a legitimate issue to 6 be raised. I guess it becomes -- I'm less concerned about 7 it, when I recognize that of those 30 FTE in uranium 8 recovery 15 of them are in Denver.
9 If you look at the actual corps operation within 10 my division what you would find is that we have, ignoring 11 regions for a moment, the 40 people within my division 12 within White Flint we have 21 working on low-level waste; 15 13 on uranium recovery; and four on decommissioning.
14 So if you like, within the -- if you like the regulatory development policy aspect of this thing it has
/
}15 16 that topsy-turvy -- it's in the direction you would like.
17 However, if you're going to say that from the best 18 of all possible worlds we might reduce the resources in the 19 Denver office and bring some of those into headquarters to 20 focus more on low-level waste, that's not an unreasonable 21 concern. And perhaps as we proceed with this streamlining 22 we may find thst's an appropriate thing to do.
23 DR. STEINDLER: I can't distinguish between the 24 folks in Denver and the folks any place else. I assume they 25 have different skills and so on and so forth. But from the Heritage Reporting ':orporation (202) 628-4888
397 1 agency, the Maste Management Division, I can't make that f, 2 distinction.
3 I guess I'm saying, is it not legitimate to point 4 out that in the near term the low-level waste issues are 5 going to arise more rapidly nationwide, and perhaps then t
6 should be given a higher degree of attention than uranium r
7 recovery, which r.s you pointed out, is not only a mature l 8 situation but is moribund.
L 9 If that's a legitimate alignment of things that :
10 are driving your program, then I draw my conclusion that, l 11 gee, I wonder whether the FTE resource allotment per se 12 isn't out of whack with that. !
13 Let me cachet it in one other way, and I realize I
) 14 have exceeded my two minutes. If you had an additional 10 15 people, would I be correct in assuming that they might end ['
16 up more likely in low-level waste then they would say in i
17 uranium recovery or even decommission?
- 18 DR. KNAPP I'd say if I had an additional 10, 19 probably something in the neighborhood of eight would wind i'
20 up in low-level waste, two in decommissioning, and none in .
21 uranium recovery. That would be my guesstimate.
DR. STEINDLER:
22 Thank you. ;
23 DR. HOELLER: Other comments on this subject?
l 24 (No response.) t
(
) 25 DR. HOELLER: Well, I'm sure I speak for the l i
i Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888 t a
,e__ _s- . . _ _ _ . .-
398 1 committee and you've already heard them say it individually, 2 Mal, how pleased we were to hear your report; it's always
(~}
3 clear and concise and easily understandable and it's very 4 helpful for us.
5 DR. KNAPP Thank you.
6 DR. MOELLER: With that we bring to a conclusion 7 the formal sessions for the morning. The schedule shows us 8 going on for another 45 minutes in executive session to look 9 at the draft letters. I think what we might do is take a 10 few minutes and go over the couple letters and then we can 11 have them be typed over lunch and be ready to look at them 12 after lunch.
13 So we'll cease recording then and go into 1
14 executive session.
- (Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m. the meeting was
[ } 15 16 adjourned to reconvene at 1:45 p.m., this same day, 17 Wednesday, September 14, 1988.)
ct/7 18 19 20 3
21 22 23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
399 1 AFTERHOON SESSION 7s 2 (1:45 p.m.)
6
\
3 DR. MOELLER: The meeting will now come to order.
4 We're going to move on with the final formal 5 discussion of the day and that is on the decommissioning 6 rule. We've allocated a half-hour for that. If it 7 stretches over a little bit, I'm sure we can accommodate it.
8 And when that finishes, we'll go into a break and then go 9 inco our final executive session for this fourth meeting, 10 and that will be to cover several items.
1 11 Why don't I go ahead and mention them now? He'll l
12 go over the letters that -- or reports, that the committee 13 is issuing as a result of this meeting; there could be a 14 letter on the decommissioning item, but we'll see.
15 And then we need to confirm the agenda items for C3
16 our November meeting; we need to confirm the itens that we 17 propose to the Commissioners for discussion at our meeting 18 with them on October 27, and that we also will hopefully 19 will have some time for discussion of the topics that we'll 20 discuss with the technical assistance to the Ccmmissioners 21 when we meet with them tomorrow morning.
22 We'll move on, then, with the subject with the 23 review of the decommissioning rule; and we have with us Dan 24 Martin, who is project manager for the regulatory branch of 25 the Division of Low-Level Waste Management. Welcome, Dan.
Heritage Reporting Corporation
, (202) 628-4888 L)
400 1 MR. MARTIN: Thank you. What I want to do is go 2 over the decommissioning program in general / give you some 3 highlights of what is contained in the rule and how it 4 operates and then see what there is to tell you after that.
5 The handouts that I've got, the first page is more 6 or less sort of a table of contents. I'm going to try and 7 get as much covered as I can.
8 The lead item that I want to discuss is the 9 transfer of responsibility for the regulation of I
10 decommissioning from NRR to NHSS, just to make sure that's 11 something that you're aware oft and know core about what it 12 is that NMSS has in its new responsibilities in that area.
i 13 Then we'll cover the rule. What are the basic 14 requirements in the rule for reactors, and also for 15 materials licensees? And then try to give you some flavor i 16 of how much casework you would expect to see in this new 17 area in the next year or two.
] 18 LR. MOELLER: Now, the main purpose of the rule --
19 maybe you're getting ready to tell us that, but it's to 20 assure that plans are in place and that funding is available 21 to handle the job, is that the main goal?
22 MR. MARTIN: That is the main goal of the rule.
23 Right.
24 With regard to the transfer of responsibility from 25 NRR to NMSS, first of all, the transfer har been approved; 1 Heritage Reporting Corporation
. (202) 628-4888 O
3
401 1 it is in place; it does not cover research and test reactorat only power reactors. Research and test reactors
(}2 3 remain the sole responsibility of NRR for regulation for the 4 agency.
5 DR. MOELLER: Why was that?
6 HR. MARTIN: It was, I understand, basically a 7 matter of administrative convenience. It's easier for NRR 8 to continue to do that. There's not a lot of work involved.
9 It's easier for them to just continue with those facilities 10 than it is to try to pick that work up and do it at NHSS.
11 DR. SMITH: Each one of those is sort of an 12 individual situation because you're talking about 13 university?
14 HR. MARTIN: Yes. The NRR, yes.
DR. SMITH: And so NRR having that long
( } 15 16 background, so that kind of makes some sense, didn't it?
17 DR. MOELLER: Now, the nuclear facilities, of 18 course, that NHSS covers, they cover like uranium 19 facilities, but they are separate from this rule.
3 20 DR. SMITH: Say that again, David?
21 DR. MOELLER: My understanding was that the rule 22 does not cover uranium mill tailing sides.
23 MR. MARTIN: No, the rule does not cover uranium 24 mill tailors, but I'll take that --
25 DR. SMITH: Yes, that comes under a special law, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
402 1 doesn't it?
2 MR. MARTIN: Yes, I cover what facilities are 3 covered by the rule in the next sheet.
4 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
5 HR. MARTIN: Anyway, for power reactors, what NMSS 6 has is its ne responsibilities includes the review of 7 decommissioning plans and the preparation of supporting 8 safety evaluation and environmental assessments. It 9 includes the project management for licensing activities for 10 the reactor after a decommissioning plan is approved, and 11 possession-only license is issued.
12 In other words, at that time, the licensee wants 13 to submit a report to the NRC they'd send it to NHSS for 14 review, not NRR, on say annual effluent monitoring.
15 NHSS would also be responsible for overseeing the 16 decommissioning work itself or working with the regions or 17 oversight of the regions as far as inspection activities, 18 and also eventual termination of the license when that time 19 comes.
20 As far as the rule itself, the decommissioning 21 rule, the facilities that are covered by the rule include 22 power reactors, research and test reactors, and also 23 materials licensees.
24 They do not -- the facilities that are not i 25 covered, basically include all sites where waste would be Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
I
403 1 left permanently on-site. Waste disposal sites / low-level sitesi high level sites and mill-tailing sites.
~
2
(~j}
u 3 The areas covered by the rule include pinnning for 4 decommissioning, providing of financial assurance for 5 decommissioning so when you go do the work there is money 6 available for it; the keeping of records that are needed to 7 support decommissioning work during the course of operation 8 of the facility. Records of spills, contamination events 9 and so forth.
10 The rule also covers license termination 11 procedures, and provides some specifics that are basically 12 procedures that have to be followed from here on in.
13 Notably one area that's not covered by the rule 14 includes requirements for decontamination to permit unrestricted use. That was planned at one time but later it
{ } 15 16 was dropped out of the rulemaking effort. A separate effort 17 is underway at research to fill the gap.
18 DR. MOELLER: Now, you say -- go ahead?
19 DR. STEINDLER: Who covers that last one?
20 MR. MARTIN: I'm sorry?
21 DR. STEINDLER: Who covers that last point?
22 MR. MARTIN: The Office of Research is working to 23 develop unrestricted use criteria.
24 DR. MOELLER: And do they know what NMSS is doing 25 on BRC?
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
404 1 MR. MARTIN: Yes.
2 DR. HOELLER: And we would hope the two would be 3 closely tied.
4 MR. MARTIN: Yes, I agree.
5 DR. HOELLER: And of course the residual limits 6 for a uranium mill tailing site, that's a whole other story, 7 and that's probably one of the reasons its separated out.
8 As Hel points out, it's federal law.
9 MR. MARTIN: It's separated out. And the 10 standards for release of mill tailing sites were not 11 developed by NRC but by EPA.
12 DR. HOELLER: Okay.
13 DR. STEINDLER: How about the other facilities not 14 covered? You know, are they all low-level waste and high-15 level waste disposal sites -- decommissioning requirements.
16 Who covers those?
17 MR. MARTIN: There is a standard in place now for 18 low-level in Part 61. I think someone else would be better 19 abic to speak to high level than myself. So I'm not going 20 to try and answer the question for high-level.
21 DR. HOELLER: But so, NRC through Title X has 22 covered low-level?
23 MR. HARTIN: Yes.
24 DR. STEINDLER: Who within the agency handles Part 25 61 affairs on decommissioning?
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
D 405 1 MR. MARTIN: The implementation in Part 61 is the 2 responsibility of my division, the Division of Low-Level 3 Waste Management. Decommissioning.
4 on page 4 I've tried to list the basic 5 requirements that are in the rule for power reactors, and 6 the first four items are sort of phases that a reactor must 7 go through, and they represent the basic requirements for 8 your standard situation, which is a reactor operating today, 9 planning to operate for many years into the future; then at 10 some later time, decommission.
11 For that kind of reactor, in two years from the 12 effective date of the rule, they must provide a 13 certification of financial assurance in a prescribed amount 14 of money, and by an approved method, which is specified in 15 the rule. One of the methods specified in the rule 16 The rule also specifies that they must update that i
17 financial assurance certification annually.
18 They are not allowed to provide less than the 19 amounts specified in the rule, but they are at their l
20 discretion allowed to assure more money, if they deem that 21 appropriate.
22 At a time approximately five years before planned 23 shutdown, the rule requires that the reactor facility submit l 24 a preliminary decom.missioning plan with an associated cost l 25 estimate. And at that time they would have to provide l
l l Heritage Reporting Corporation
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406 r 1 financial assurance consistent with that site-specific cost 2 estimate.
O 3 Sa when they do submit this preliminary plan, they 4 are no longer have to be consistent with the prescribed 5 amounts in the rule.
6 DR. STEINDLER: Can I go back to that first point?
7 when does the clock start counting for that two-year period?
8 MR. MARTIN: From the effective date of the rule, 9 which is July 27, this year.
10 DR. STEINDLER: Excuse me, Dan --
11 MR. MARTIN: That's all right.
12 DR. STEINDLER: -- so within two years of July 27, 13 you're going to be getting these in from all of these 14 facilities around the country?
15 MR. MARTIN: That's right.
O 16 DR. STEINDLER: So I guess you're looking ahead to 17 what your manpower resources are going to have to be in 18 order to --
19 MR. MARTIN: In order to cope with that.
20 DR. STEINDLER: In order to cope with the work 21 load and complete it.
22 MR. MkRTIN: As it happens, the review of those 23 financial assurance notifications will be done by NRR at the 24 time, because it's not an actual decommissioning plan as 25 such. It's not something that is subject to the transfer Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
l l
l 407 l 1 that I mentioned before. !
2 The preliminary plan that is submitted for 3 decommissioning at a time five years in advance of shutdown i
4 would be sent to NHSS for review.
l 5 The second column on that sheet in short is an [
6 indicator of what NHSSs responsibility is with regard to 7 these steps.
8 DR. HOELLER: On this second bullet, on [
L 9 preliminary decommissioning plans with cost estimates, five l
10 years in advance of shutdown -- I thought I read in some of l f
11 this documentation that you anticipated 15 such submissions l f
12 in the next five years or something? What sort of a i
13 schedule would these come in on? How many plants are five l
14 years' close to shutdown?
15 HR. MARTIN: There are several plants that are 16 already shut down now. There are one or two which may shut f 1
17 down or decide to go into decommissioning some time in the i 18 near future.
19 other than that, basically licenses extend out j 20 into the future at least as far as 1997, which is the next, 21 I think, expiration date that's scheduled -- and that's for 22 the Yankee Row facility, f f
23 DR. HOELLER So there's some time?
24 HR. MARTIN: Yes. Right now there are a handful 25 of reactors. And there's a list also in here of those l
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1 408 1 facilities that are already shut down or are in 2 decommissioning or being reviewed now for dccommissioning.
{
l 3 Other than that, it looks like there's going to be a sort of 4 perhaps a 10-year time gap between decommissioning.
5 HR. HOELLER: Okay.
1 j 6 MR. MARTIN: Between the time of ono year before a l
7 license expiration ar.d two years of shutdown, a licensee 8 must submit also a detailed decontamination and 9 decommissioning plan with another cost estimate.
10 In other words, there is a preliminary plan five 11 years in advance of shutdown, and then at about the time of 12 shutdown, another plan is submitted that updates the 13 preliminary plan -- updates the cost estimates -- and again, 14 the licensee must revise his financial arrangements to be l
l consistent with the detailed plan.
}15 16 NHSS would be the lead for the review of that
! 17 document.
l 18 If the licensee goes into what is called 19 "Safstore," there is an arrangement where the facility is in i
20 essence taken out of operation; fuel is taken out of the 1
21 reactor and either stored onsite or shipped off-site. And l
22 there's a large time delay between shutdown and eventual j 23 dismantlement.
l 24 At the time of dismantlement, the licensee would 25 again submit another plan and that would be subject to NMSS Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
t i 409 I review and approval at that time as well.
2 Now, for facilities that are already shut down,
)
3 those facilities must comply with the financial assurance l 4 requirements of the rule, and they must submit a financial 5 assurance plan within two years.
6 And again, this plan may just be one that is l
l 7 consistent with costs that they've already estimated as part
! 8 of an already-approved decommissioning plan. There is no 9 requirement for a new plan, as such.
10 A couple of other notes: you may have heard the 11 words, "dismantle, entomb, and safestore" as the modes of l 12 decommissioning that are available as options. Those words 13 are not contained in the rule itself. The rule does not 14 specify or use those words.
15 It talks about delay in decommissioning / delay in
{
16 dismantlement, but it doesn't safestore.
17 DR. MOELLER: Well, then is it the policy 18 statement or let me see what the title is here -- well, I'm l
19 reading the final rule in the general requirements for i 20 decommissioning and I could have sworn it talked about --
l 21 MR. MARTIN: In the preamble of the supporting l 22 documentation, it will, but --
l 23 DR. STEINDLER: You're talking about the actual l 24 text?
25 MR. MARTIN: Not in the rule itself. Not in the l
l l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
7-410 1 text.
2 DR. HOELLER: Not in the rule itself.
3 MR. MARTIN: It won't appear in 10 C.F.R. Part 50.
4 DR. HOELLER: And even your news release of June 5 28, 1988, very carefully lists decon, safestore, and ontomb 6 -- but you say they're not in the rule?
7 HR. MARTIN: Not in the text of the rule, so no.
8 DR. MOELLER: Okay now, what's the reason for 9 that?
10 MR. MARTIN: I think just to keep everything in 11 normal English language.
12 DR. HOELLER: Okay.
13 MR. MARTIN: And not to use abbreviations and 14 acronyms.
15 DR. HOELLER: Or maybe to keep it more generic, 16 although those were certainly generic.
17 MR. MARTIN: One other note. There is a 18 requirement that decommissioning be finished -- be 19 completed, within six years. So there is a limit on how 20 long a facility can go into safestore.
21 DR. MOELLER: I was surprised this morning in one 22 of our discussions with NRC staff to hear that a plant could 23 be put in safestore with the fuel there. I just assumed the 24 fuel at that point had been removed?
25 MR. MARTIN: Yes. The normal procedure would be Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
i 411 I 1 to at least remove the fuel from the reactor itself/ put it I
(
2 in storage on-site.
3 DR. HOELLER: Okay, so it would be in the spent -- [
4 MR. HARTIN: It would probably be in the spent l 5 fuel pool.
(
6 DR. HOELLER: All right. [
7 MR. MARTIN: And that is the case now at one or [
t 8 more facilities. l 9 DR. HOELLER Excuse me, on page 4, and maybe you 10 mention it in the first bullet -- it says "Annual updates."
11 You mean every year you' re going to have to update the ;
i 12 financial assurance certification?
i 13 MR. MARTIN: Yes. The rule prescribes that the 14 financial amount be updated on an annual basis, and it [
15 provides a formula for accounting for inflationary factors, 16 like increased labor ratest increased costs for waste [
17 disposal, et cetera. j l
18 DR. HOELLER All right. I I
19 MR. MARTIN: The rule is basically the same for t 1
20 research and test reactors, but there are a few exceptions i 21 that I have noted on page 5. Annual updating for research !
, 22 and test reactors is not required. The rule does specify I 23 "periodic" updates, so that's something that would be (
24 decided on a case-by-case basis. i 25 The rule does not specify any standard amounts of f
Meritage Reporting Corporation :
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412 1 money for default amounts of money for decommissioning of 2 research and test reactors. Each research and test reactor 3 must provide its own cost estimate for decommissioning and 4 then provide financial assistance consistent with that cost 5 estimate.
6 Unlike power reactors, research and test reactors 7 are required to put the full amount of money for 8 decommissioning; assure that amount of money from the start.
9 Power reactors are allowed to build up a reserve 10 or a fund for decommissioning as they operate.
11 Safestcre is not available routinely as an option 12 for research and test reactors. Research and test reactors 13 are expected to decommission promptly after shutdown.
14 DR. SMITH: Did you get many comments from the g 15 university community on the decommissioning rules on the 16 research reactors?
17 HR. MARTIN: There are folks here from the office 18 of research which developed the rule. They would know that 19 better than I would, but --
20 DR. SMITH: I was just curious. I mean, obvious 1 21 this is necessary, but I was out at Oregon State. If you 22 look up and down the West Coast, one university after 23 another is just shutting down its reactor because of all of 24 the NRC regulations. You know, with respect to fuel, witn 25 respect to safeguards, so pretty soon you're not going to IIeritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
413 1 have any facilities out there to train futute nuclear 2 engineers, and I was just curious on this particular aspect 3 of it, the extent to which the university community might 4 have found these requirements onerous?
i HR. MARTIN: I don't know specifically. The
- 6 analysis of comments has been a three-inch thick document 7 itself, but that covers all of it.
8 DR. HOELLER: Yes, go to a microphone there and 9 give us a response. Give us your name, please?
l 10 HR. CARDELL: Frank Cardell with the Office of j
11 Research. And I worked on the preparation of the final rule 12 and analyzed a number of the comments -- we did get several 1
13 comments from the university community, but one of the 14 things that makes this particular aspect less onerous for 15 the university reactors, is that one of the funding methods 16 that they're allowed to use is that if they're a state i 17 organization, which for example, Oregon State is, it's i
1 16 satisfactory for the NRC for them 6.o just basically indicate 1
19 how much money they think it would cost to decommission; and 20 then just basically certify that they're a state agency, and 21 they know how much it will cost to decommission. In other 22 words, to accept the responsibility for that.
I 23 So a university like Oregon State wouldn't have to 24 start putting money away today.
25 DR. SMITH: So you really didn't get a big outcry i
Neritage Reporting Corporation (202) 62s-4sse O
414 1 from the university community?
2 HR. CARDELL Not by and large, because it's a 7 ,l 3 fairly non-onerous responsibility in the area of funding.
4 DR. SMITH: Yes, thank you.
5 Harty said, "by that time, all of the university 6 reactors will be shuc down anyhow."
7 DR. HOELLER: Thank you.
8 HR. MARTIN: We have spoken to the requirements 9 for power, research and test reactors. Those are a good 10 deal simpler than the requirements now in place now for 11 materials licensees and hopefully I'm going to try and cover
's 2 that in a way that is understandable.
13 On page 6, I've got three items listed which are 14 requirements or facets of the rule for materials licensees.
15 Basically, the way the rule affects current licensees is O 16 that depending on possession limits, they will fall into one I
17 of three categories, which I have invented for the purpose 18 of ease of reference, really.
19 The highest category being category A, and if 20 they're in that category, then in two years they must submit 21 a certification of financial assurance in a prescribed ,
22 amount; and then at the next time of renewal following that ,
I 23 two year period, they must submit a decommissioning funding j 24 plan which includes a decommissioning plan and an associated ;
25 cost estimate. And at that time, they must provide for I
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
41b 1 financial assurances consistent with that cost estimate.
2 If there are slightly lower possession limit, they 3 would fall into category B and they would be required in two 4 years to submit a financial assurance certification in a 5 prescribed amounti but theiy would not be required at a later 6 date to submit a full decommissioning funding plan.
7 At their option they could do so if they thought 8 it was to their advantage, which it might be if they could 9 get to a lower amount of money for financial assurance 10 purposas.
11 If they're smill lower in possession limit, they 12 would fall into the last category, category C, and they 13 would have no requirement to provide financial assurance for 34 decommissioning.
15 Another aspect of the rule is that new applicants O 16 have to provide either a decommissioning funding plan, or a 17 certification of financial assutance, depending on 18 possession limit at the time of application. Now, there's 19 no two year grace period for new applicants.
20 All of these materials licensees rogardless of 21 possession limit have to keep supporting records for 22 decommissioning later in the future, records that would be 23 necessary to know where excessive contamination is likely to 24 be found and that sort of thing.
25 DR. STEItTDLER: tiew applicants for what?
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416 1 MR. MARTIN: New applicants for materials licenses o
2 under Parts 30, 40, and 70.
9 3 DR. STEINDLER: That doesn't have anything to do 4 with operating licenses, for example?
-( 5 MR. MARTIN: I'm sorry?
6 DR. STEINDLER: It doesn't have anything to do 7 with operating licenses or a construction permit?
8 MR. MARTIN: No. It doesn't have anything to do 9 with reactors. This is just bi product, source, and special 10 nuclear material licensees.
4 11 At the time of license termination, routinely a 12 licensee will provide a final radiation survey and a 13 completed NMC form 314 which certifies disposition of 14 radioactive material.
15 If there are unusual radiological conditions where O 16 either releases or doses to workers would be higher than 17 those encountered during operation, the rule requires the 18 licensee to provide a decommissioning plan for review and l 19 approval ahead of time.
20 So part of the casework we expect to see in the
. 21 future as a result of this rule, will be decommissioning 22 plans sabmitted by licensees because they expect those kinds 23 of conditions.
24 Now, you probably were wondering but didn't ask --
( 25 thank you -- what categories A, B, and C were. The next i
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L
O' 417 1 page gives you the detail en that, and also the prescribed 2 amounts of money that are spent by them.
p
(-) 3 There specified is multiples of Part 20 appendix C 4 limits. And to give you an example, category A bi-product 5 material in an unsealed form. If the licensee has more than 6 10(5) times the appendix C limit, for his nuclides, then he 7 falls into category A.
8 If he's between 10(4) and 10(5] times that number, 9 in appendix C, then he falls into a different category, 10 category B.
11 DR. STEINDLER: That doesn't hulp him a bit, does 12 it?
13 MR. MARTIN: Well, it doesn't help him as far as 14 money, but it avoids the requirement for decommissioning 15 funding plan . ate. on. And what we've seen by and large is
( 16 that for facilities that fall in category A, the numbers 17 that are specified here as dollar amounts do not cover the 18 cost of decommissioning.
19 DR. STEINDLER: What's in appendix C7 20 MR. MARTIN: Appendix C is a list that's been in 21 place for a long time and it's used basically to be a source 22 of numbers to be referred to by other parts of the rule. I 23 tnink -- Kit -- yes, there are limits for placarding and for 24 designation of restricted areas and that sort of thing.
25 But they're fairly low numbers.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 D) q-
418 1 DR. SMITH: Let's see, we're looking at 9,000 of
_2 these things, yes?
- 3 MR. MARTIN: Yes, we have a total number of NRC 4 materials licensees of around 9,000 round numbers, and about 5 1,500, or about one out of six, is going to have to orovide 6 a funding plan or a financial assurance certification.
7 The rest aren't affected, basically.
8 DR. MOELLER: What about those licensed by the 9 agreement states? There's an equal number, is there not?
10 MR. MARTIN: The agreement state licensees 11 outnumber to by about two to one.
12 LR. MOELLER: Twice as many. So they're going to 13 have to do the same thing?
14 MR. MARTIN: This rule will be a matter of 15 compatibility with the agreements, and over a matter of O 16 time, as the state will promulgate regulations that are 17 compatible, their licensees will also have to follow these 18 requirements.
19 DR. SMITH: So of that category A, for example, 20 830 licensees, and they have to in two years submit the 21 financial certification, and a detail decommission and 22 funding plan.
23 How many will NRC itself have to handle in 24 contrast to the str.c ts, do you have any idea?
25 MR. MART 1H: The number 830 is only NRC licensees, i Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 ,
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419 1 DR. MOELLER: Oh, okay. So you've got to deal with 2 830?
/~'s
(_) 3 MR. MARTIN: That's right. We, NRC.
4 DR. MOELLER: And in two years, they' re going to 5 start rolling in? There will be 2500 total to be reviewed.
6 DR. SMITH: How many people are in your section?
7 MR. MARTIN: Nct too many.
8 DR. MOELLER: How many pages long is one of these 9 submissions?
10 MR. MARTIN: A funding plan? We would expect it 11 to be, I guess, in the 10s of pages. Not hundreds of pages, 12 and not less than 10, but basically it depends on the 13 facility. Basically it needs to be a document which has at 14 least a conceptual decommission plan, and an associated cost 15 estimate. The cost estimate has to be precise enough --
( 16 detailed enough, for us to have some confidence that there's 17 enough money there.
10 DR. SMITH: So maybe around 40 pages? Somewhere 19 in there?
20 MR. MARTIN: For a typical largescale facility, 21 yes.
22 DR. MOELLER: The funding plan is likely to be a 23 legal document -- a legal / fiscal document, however, I've 24 never seen one that's less than 50 pages. I don't think 25 those guys can write that small.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4088 O '
Q.)
420 1 We're beginning to talk in units of $5 billion f 2 fiscal enterprises. By the time you' re all done with the
(?-) 3 guarantees and however the structure is run, for the NRC 1
4 license alone, if you multiply that by three you're in the l 5 $15 billion bracket divided into something like 9x3=
6 27,000 pieces -- t'd paperwork along could be interesting.
7 The financial community surely must have had some 8 comments on this whole thing, did they not?
9 MR. MARTIN: Yt s , they did. The regulatory 10 analysis that was prepared in support of the rule contained 11 an estimate of an average of six man-days, for a review of a 12 decommissioning funding plan.
13 One of our jobs as the program office'to implement 14 this regulation, is to provide the clearest, most explicit, 15 most easy to use guidance we can for our people in the O 16 regions, so that they can handle these reviews as 17 effielently as possible, because they are going to come in
~
18 la'.ge numbers. Not now, but in the future.
19 DR. MOELLER: Maybe you told this to us earlier, 20 and I simply missed it, but presumably under this system, 21 could a hospital or a university be a class -- category A?
22 MR. MARTIN: Yes sir.
23 DR. MOELLER: I mean, if they used the right 24 amount?
t 25 MR. MARTIN: Depending upon possession.
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421 1 DR. MOELLER: Now, for them to decommission, you )
2 certainly don't expect them to be all contaminated, you 3 know? You don't have extensive facilities that are 4 extensively contaminated, do you?
5 MR. MARTIN: No, you wouldn't.
6 DR. MOELLER: So you would think, to decommission, 7 they would simply, you know, pour this stuff in a drum and 8 ship it away or something, okay?
9 MR. MARTIN: And their decommissioning plan would 10 reflect that, and the cost estiaate associated with that 11 plan would also reflect that.
12 DR. MOELLER: Well then, I guess --
13 MR. MARTIN: They could convince us in an 14 appropriate plan and a sufficiently conservative cost 15 estimate, we would have no problem.
O 16 DR. MOELLER: Are these prescribed amounts minimum 17 or maximum?
18 MR. MARTIN: These amounts are not minimums or 19 maximums, as such. They are, in essence, they' re default 20 amounts. If a cost estimate and, you know, if a 21 decommissioning plant and an associated cost estimate is not 22 provided.
23 In other words, even if a licensee is in, say, 24 category A, they could cone in with a funding plan that ;
25 shows their decommissioning cost was going to be 2/3rds Heritage Peporting Corporation (202) 622-4888
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V 422 1 default amount; and then if we could agree with that, that's 2 all they would have to provide as far as assurance.
f%
(.) 3 DR. SMITH: What if it's considerably more?
4 MR. MARTIN: Then we would require that that 5 amount be assured.
6 DR. SMITH: Under those conditions, it's to their 7 advantage not to give you a plan?
8 HR. MAPTIN: Yes sir.
9 DR. SMITH: Well, I guess I'm confused on why the 10 figure?
11 DR. MOELLER: Yes, I thought it was a minimum.
12 DR. SMITH: I mean, I thought it a certain figure.
13 You say if it's less than that, you'll go along with it; if 14 it's more than that, tnat's what they're going to have to 15 provide.
16 MR. MARTIN: This amount has to be provided as 17 assurance in two years by category A licensees, and then at 18 their next renewal, they have to provide a site-specific 19 estimate, and assure money consistent with their own site-20 specific case.
21 So that might be as far as seven years from now.
22 DR. MOELLER: Well, I guess I'm quite confused now 23 that I've heard what's been said up to this point. As I 24 hear this, and if I understood it correctly, a hospital or a 25 university could be in category A and could have to submit a Heritage Reporting Corporation i (202) 628-4888 O
i
(t 423 1 decommissioning plan. And have to assure that they have
() 2 money to clean up when they cease operation.
Now, a hospital or a university, the small school 3
4 that I'm associated with has been there for 300 years, and I i
5 de"'h think it's going to shut down in the next 40. So it 6 doesn't have a, you know, a deadline.
7 So I don't see them ever decommissioning unless 8 there's some whole new technology discovered and we don't 9 need radioactive materials any more.
10 So what I'm beginning to want to ask is the 11 followings about three years ago the NRC staff came in to 12 this group when we were a subcommittee of the ACRS, and they 13 had a proposal where every small radionuclide user was going 14 to have to develop and submit to the NRC an emergency plan, and so we asked a lot of questions, and as a result of our
( ) 15 16 asking those questions, they ended up that instead of 10,000 17 small nuclide users having to submit emergency plans, we 18 ended up I think it was 30 of all of those we found, that 19 there were only 30 that really fell into a category where it 20 was worthwhile to develop any sort of emergency plant and 21 even that was a rather modest piece of paper.
22 As I listen here, I'm beginning to wonder why are 23 we requiring decommissioning plans for -- or even 24 considering them, for all of these 20, 30 thousand 25 radionuclide and materials users? I realize you've already Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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l 424 1 shrunk it down to perhaps -- well, I guess both categories A 2 and B will need to submit something. So we're talking 1500?
( 3 Wo're talking close to 5000 licensees that are going to have 4 to be submitting the plan.
5 So again, I ask why? Is it really necessary? If 6 they don't have induced radioactive materials in the walls 7 of the university; they haven't scattered -- or if they 8 have, they should have cleaned it up a long time ago -- you 9 know, they haven't contaminated extensive facilities.
10 What am I missing?
11 MR. MARTIN: Well, the thrust of the rule is to 12 have those people with large possession limits, possession 13 limits where substantial contamination problems could create 14 very expensive decommissioning efforts, to have those 15 licensees assure first of all that there is going to be a
( 16 decommissioning plan in place, and that there is going to be 17 money there to support that decommissioning effort in the 18 future.
19 one thing I probably should have mentioned, but 20 left out to save some time, was the fact that these limits 21 for byproduct material only apply to nuclides with half-1 22 lives longer than 120 days. Hospitals and universities do I
23 use a lot of short half-life material, which would not act 1
24 to help qualify them for category A status.
But the kind of operation you're talking about -- I 25 l
i l Heritage Reporting Corporation l l (202) 628-4888 1
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425 1 where there isn't largescale contamination; there isn't
, 2 going to be at the time when it eventually happens, a
/s\
3 largescale decommissioning effort; then only the foreseen 4 cost of decommissioning would have to be assured.
5 And the plan that is aubmitted for review of 6 decommissioning would only have to document what efforts are 7 envisioned in the future. And if they are small, and the 8 amount of money is small, that would be acceptable. That's 9 sufficient.
10 DR. MOELLER: Give me an example of a facility 11 that is using sealed sources or loose -- you know, 12 dispersible, radionuclides, that's one of these 830, so that 13 I can really understand and be proven to me that it's 14 necessary to have this plan?
15 DR. CARTER: I think you could be in an O 16 irradiator, for example. A cancer irradiator -- cobalt or 17 something of that sort. You can have large amounts and I 18 presume that would qualify as a single source.
19 DR. MOELLER: Okay, and you're saying when they 20 finish with that, they must be prepared to ship it back, or 21 you know -- well, that's understandable.
22 Well, is that a decommissioning plan? Just the 23 fact that you have to turn it in?
24 DR. CARTER: Under this it is, yes.
25 HR. MARTIN: The decommissioning plan would be to Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
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426 1 remove the source and send it back to the manufacturer or 2' transfer it to a disposal site.
{}
3 DR. CARTER: Then some, I would think, commercial 4 irradiators, you know, radiographers, would fall upon them.
5 DR. MOELLER: Well would you call that a 6 decommissioning plan, or just part of the disposal of the 7 spent unit? Or the no-longer needed unit?
8 DR. CARTER: Well, I'm like you. I didn't know 9 that you would call it that, but apparently they do.
10 Because I would think those two would follow. I would think 11 that most hospitals would not come under this A and B 12 category.
13 MR. MARTIN: That may be. There are five out of 14 six materials licensees don't have to do anything responsive
()15 to this.
16 DR. MOELLER: Well, we had the Mexican incident, 17 and the Brazil, you know, cesium, I guess -- and was it 18 cobalt in Mexico -- whatever it was. Those were due to, I 19 gather, in errors in the disposal of spin, or of a no-20 longer-needed unit.
21 I just figure that's part of the procedure of when 22 you finish with something, properly dispose of it.
23 I mean, why do we have a decommissioning rule for 24 smoke detectors in the home? Because when you finish with 25 them, mine is from Sears and it says "This unit must be Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
/
I 427 1 returned to Sears-Roebuck."
l
- 2. DR. SMITH: Nobody does return it to Sears- !
3 Roebuck. Sears wouldn't know what to do with it.
4 DR. MOELLER: I'ta sorry. See, I'm having ,
5 problems.
6 MR. CARDELL: May I give a very quick historical 7 perspective, that we had Batelle P&L, Pacific-Northwest 8 Laboratorias, they did a number of decommissioning studies 9 for us, for the office of research, over the past six or 10 eight years, and they analyzed a number of facilities 11 including power reactors and research reactors, and in 12 addition to that, they analyzed materials facilities.
13 And what they looked at very simply was six 14 laboratories, and I, for example, a laboratory that used 15 americium, or a laboratory that used carbon 14/ tritium 16 laboratory; and I think three others. I can't recall at 17 this t: s.. e .
18 And they also looked at fuel cycle facilities, 19 what it cost to decommission those facilities. Each of i
l 20 those were separate reports, t
21 At any rate, in the report on the materials 22 facilities, the laboratory type facility, they basically 23 broke it down into what it would cost to, when you were done 24 using your laboratory and you wanted to terminate the 25 license, what would it cost to clean up the laboratory
)
j Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l ()
428 1 bench; clean up the fur.te hood; clean up the glove boxes; 2 clean up the component parts that are used in the typical (v"')
3 laboratory.
4 And the kind of cost that Batelle P&L came up with 5 for those types of facilities are in this range of $150,000 6 to clean up a fairly typical, fairly substantial laboratory 7 that uses unsealed sources of this type. And that would 8 include the cost for labor to come in there and do it; the 9 cost of disposal of whatever waste might be left on the 10 site.
11 So in trying to come up with this rule that would 12 do two things -- one is to on the one hand give NRC some 13 assurance as to when some of these people who had l
l 14 laboratories walked away, they would not leave a mess behind, because there has been some history that NRC
( } 15 16 licensed laboratories have left messes behind with no money i
17 to pay for decommissioning.
18 So that on the one had would give the NBC the 19 information on that they would have funds for 20 decommissioning. And on the other hand not be too onerous 21 or cause too much administrative effort, we hit upon this 22 effort to say "Okay, if these types of laboratories set 23 aside X amount of dollars, then the NRC will have some 24 assurance -- what we call "reasonable assurance," that there 25 will be funds available five or ten or 15 years from now Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
428 1 bench; clean up the fume hood; clean up the glove boxest clean up the component parts that are used in the typical
(}2 3 laboratory.
4 And the kind of cost that Batelle P&L came up with 5 for those types of facilities are in this range of $150,000 6 to clean up a fairly typical, fairly substantial laboratory 7 that uses unsealed sources of this type. And that would 8 include the cost for labor to come in there and do it; the 9 cost of disposal of whatever waste might be left on the 10 site.
11 So in trying to come up with this rule that would 12 do two things -- one is to on the one hand give NRC some 13 assurance as to when some of these people who had 14 laboratories walked away, they would not leave a mess behind, because there has been some history that NRC
( ) 15 16 licensed laboratories have left messes behind with no money 17 to pay for decommissioning.
18 So that on the one had would give the NRC the 19 information on that they would have funds for 20 decommissioning. And on the other hand not be too onerous 21 or cause too much administrative effort, we hit upon this 22 effort to say "Okay, if these types of laboratories set 23 aside X amount of dollars, then the NRC will have some 24 assurance -- what we call "reasonable assurance," that there 25 will be funds available five or ten or 15 years from now Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
429 1 when they do shut down that facility.
2 DR. CARTER: Did they look for example
() 3 specifically at hospitals that might be using teletherapy.
4 units as well as having. nuclear medicine departments and so 1 5 forth? I mean, other than the industrial radiographers?
6 These groups in general don't tend to contaminate 7 things like a lab would. It's you know, manufacturing 8 sources or womething like that.
l 9 DR. MOELLER: You know, I see it exactly as what 1
10 you'r saying, Mel. A sealed source radiography unit is not i
- 11 going to contaminate anything. Now a loose source, and I'm
! 12 reacting a little bit facetiously, but what I hear in this 13 decommissioning rule is the state inspector or the NRC 3 14 inspector comes in to radionuclide laboratory -- industry, l 15 university, hospital, and the whole building -- you know,
( ) 16 they've been very sloppy and they've contaminated the hood i
17 and the exhaust stack, and everything's contaminated, and he 18 or she says, Oh, that's okay, because they've allocated l
! 19 funding here, and when the decommission this facility i
j 20 they're going to clean all this up.
21 Well, that's not the way it would work. The l 22 inspector, would shut them down right then. He'd say, l
23 "You're closed down. You're crapped up or contaminated this 1
l 24 facility."
j 25 MR. CARDELL: But the Bate 11e facilities were not 1
1
- Meritage Reportino Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
F E i i
430 1 based on an extremely contaminated laboratory. They were 2 based on a laboratory that would run in a normal fashion, s_) 3 not a -- the other thing is -- this is all unsealed sources, 4 so sealed source users are not covered by this.
5 DR. MOELLER: Well, it says "unsealed, 6 dispersible." Yes. So it's totally unsealed.
7 MR. CARDELL: Except for the one case -- let's say 8 $75,000 for -- but what that is aimed at is very large --
9 that came about -- I'm saying that people have very large 10 sealed sources; it's only the cost that was estimated to 11 dispose of those very large sealed sources.
12 And you can see that that's over 10(10) times 13 appendix C limits.
14 DR. CARTER: But there are sealed sources covered 15 here.
16 DR. SMITH: Under item, what, B?
17 DR. CARTER: B, yes.
18 MR. CARDELL: But only the one case. Only the 19 greater than 10(10) appendix C limits -- or $75,000, and 20 again, that was only the cost to dispose of that.
21 DR. MOELLER: What is 10(10) of the C limits. Just 22 aow many curies? Just ballpark?
23 (Continued on the next page.)
24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
431 1 MR. CARDELLA: I am not an expert in that area, 2 but my understanding is that it is the cobalt irradiators,
(~h
's,/ 3 that type of thing.
4 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Well, am I the only one with 5 any problems here?
6 DR. STEINDLER: No. I am still trying to find out 7 what prescribed amount is. Is it the minimum fiscal 8 assurance that has to be provided two years after whatever?
9 MR. CARDELLA: It is an amount that we feel 10 provides reasonable assurance that decommissioning could be 11 carried out, and it is an attempt to cut down on 1500 12 licensees sending in a wide variety of cost estimates.
13 DR. STEINDLER: So some little radiographer, 14 although he might fall into the $75,000, but let me take the 15 $75,000.
( ) 16 Some little radiographer running a radiography 17 operation has a source which he has to respond to in this 18 fashion. Do I understand it, then, that this chap has to 19 turn in some kind of a long-term guarantee that he gets from 20 some bonding company or someplace else, for $75,000 to you 21 guys?
22 DR. MOELLER: Well, one way to do this, instead of 23 submitting a decommissioning plan is just to make that part 24 of the original license. That they have to, you know, prove 25 assurance that they are financially responsible.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
432 1 DR. STEINDLER: Let me again go back to
(} 2 university. That, for example, they may be dealing with unsealed materials.
3 4 DR. MOELLER: Yes.
5 DR STEINDLER: Running a chemistry laboratory that 6 is running with americium and plutonium.
7 I don't know what these limits are, and I don't 8 know whether that is a realistic chemistry level limit.
9 But I can see somebody handing a bill for $750,000 10 insurance to the Chairman of the Chemistry Department of 11 some modest size university and he would go right straight 12 through the ceiling.
13 MR. CARDELLA: Well, two things. One, as I was 14 saying earlier, that in the case of the state university, they would not have to set aside $750,000. They could
( ) 15 16 indicate to us that they are a state government and they 17 know how much the cost --
l 18 DR. STEINDLER: Let me take it away from you.
i 19 Yes.
l 20 MR. CARDELLA: Well, then, if this rule would say 21 to the private university that you have to be prepared to l 22 put aside X amount of dollars.
23 But the intent of this rule is, you are going to 24 decommission at some point, at some time, anyway.
25 MR. SMITH: So what you would be satisfied with Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4868
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433 1 from a university would be, say, The University of Chicago 2 saying, "Okay. If the time comes, we will have the
_) 3 $750,000."
4 Is that what we are saying?
5 MR. CARDELLA: The University of Chicago, that is 6 not a state supported university.
7 MR. SMITH: That is not a state supported 8 university?
9 MR. CARDELLA: No. That is a private school.
10 And depending on what level of materials they had, they 11 would have to set aside in some fashion -- and there is way 12 that they can do it. They don't have to take the $750,000 13 today. They can use some type of surety bond or letter of 14 credit to guarantee that that amount of money would be 15 available at any time.
s_) 16 MR. SMITH: All right. So then in other words, 17 they could get a letter of credit from the bank.
18 MR. CARDELLA: Right.
19 MR. SMITH: That says in effect that they have 20 $750,000 worth of credit with them. True? That is what you 21 are saying.
22 MR. CARDELLA: Right.
23 DR. CARTER: Let me ask you about the limits.
24 How, if you take unsealed byproduct material for exaraple, if 25 you are slightly under a thousand times 20 applicable C Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
434 1 limits, does that mean you don't have to put up anything?
2 In other words, is this a minimum? The 10 to the
()
(~ .
3 third, 10 to the fourth? Or, 150K?
4 And in the same way, what about if you had greater 5 than 10 to the fifth? Say, you had 10 to the sixth, for 6 example?
7 In other words, if you go either below or above 8 these limits, you still have a proration system, as far as 9 you know?
10 MR. MERRILL: No, there is no proration system.
11 If you fall below Category B, there is no requirement for 12 financial assurance.
13 And if you go above the number specified there for 14 Category A, then you are in Category A, and it doesn't j 15 matter how much higher.
( 16 DR. CARTER: It doesn't matter how far in 17 Category A you are.
18 DR. MOELLER: Well, I guess another question. You 19 mentioned a 120-day half life.
20 ,
Now to me, in 1200 days, whatever that is, four 21 years or so, it is all gone. So I don't see a problem with 22 120-day half life msterial.
23 Now, I do see a problem if a group is using 24 long-lived material such as, say, cesium or strontium of 25 30-year, or plutonium, 25,000, or whatever it is here.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
435 1 There you he.ve real problems.
(} 2 3
Now, of these roughly 2,400, 2,500 licensees in Category A, how many of them are really using long-lived 4 materials? Meaning, let's say, a half life of'five years or 5 longer, cobalt on up.
6 I mean, I am trying to really see what the degree 7 of the problem is.
8 MR. MERRILL: The estimate of 830 licensees, 9 current NRC licensees that belong in Category A is based on 10 a survey of actual possession limits.
11 DR. MOELLER: But how many of those people are 12 really using long-lived materials, meaning five year half 13 life or more?
14 MR. MERRILL: That, I am afraid, will be no higher than 830, probably somewhat less.
( } 15 16 But I would not imagine much, much less. I don't 17 think there is a lot of use of materials between 120 days 18 and five year half lives.
19 DR. MOELLER: Right.
20 MR. MERRILL: Either using cobalt-60 and 21 long-lived material or --
22 DR. MOELLER: If they are using cobalt and cesium, 23 it is in a sealed source. I mean, I don't know of them 24 using it loose. Maybe they are.
25 DR. CARTER: They could be using strontium-90.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
436 1 Not hospitals, though. R&D, 2 DR. STEINDLER: Unsealed?
3 DR. MOELLER: Yes. Unsealed. Why don't they use 4 89, or comething shorter?
5 .
DR. CARTER: I am just saying there may be some 6 need for strontium-90. Most of them will use 89.
7 DR. MOELLER: I guess I am saying maybe with a 8 little judicious screening or a different screening 9 criteria, you might cut this down to the 30, 40, 50 that 10 really need a decommissioning plan.
11 To ask for 5,000 people in Category A and B to 12 come through with a plan, I just don't think is justified if 13 I understand the situation.
14 DR. SMITH: Well but, Dade, aren't we saying we don't really -- well, no.
{ ) 15 16 I was getting ready to say we don't really know 17 how many of those 5,000 would fall under this, but I 18 guess --
19 DR. MOELLER: Well, he says that 830 times three, 20 say 2,500, are in Category A. You see, these 830 NRC 21 licenses; 1,600 state agreement states.
22 DR. SMITH: So that 830 is your estimate of how 23 many will have to submit.
24 DR. MOELLER: For Category A.
25 DR. SMITH: For Category A.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
437 1 DR. MOELLER: And then six hundred and --
2 DR. SMITH: And you have already done preliminary 3 screenirig.
4 DR. MOELLER: Yes, yes.
5 And I think maybe they are imposing some 6 unnecessary paperwork here on people. You know, I don't 7 have all the facts but that is my initial reaction.
8 And I guess the rule is finished.
9 MR. MERRILL: The rule is final, yes. There is a 10 supporting analysis which would contain, I guess, 11 information that might help show you the rationale for 12 imposing this requirement.
13 DR. MOELLER: Did the Conference of State 14 Radiation Control Program Directors comment on the rule when 15 it was out for public comment?
j 16 MR. CARDELLA: No, it did not. We got very few, 17 for whatever reason, very few comments from material 18 licensees.
19 We did get comments from the AIF Committee on 20 Radiopharmaceuticals.
! 21 DR. MOELLER: Yes.
22 MR. CARDELLA: Their comments weren't --
t 23 DR. SMITH: Is this something that came before the 24 ACRS before the ACNW7 25 DR. MOELLER: This came, but I do not believe --
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438 1 you know, my memory could be faulty -- but I do not believe 2 we were asked to review it as an ACRS subcommittee, and I do 3 not believe we reviewed it.
4 MR. CARDELLAs- Well, the proposed rule came before 5 the ACRS and the ACRS wrote back to us and indicated that 6 they did not care to review it, they did not choose to 7 review it.
8 DR. MOELLER: Okay, then, as I recall when it was 9 presented to us, it was presented as a rule that was going 10 to. assure financial -- you know, that you had the financial 11 resources for decommissioning.
12 As explained to us at the time, it was primarily 13 nuclear power plants and we thought, well, fine. You know, 14 they ought to be financially qualified.
15 And we never knew what was getting through here.
16 DR. SMITH: It is gone.
17 DR. MOELLER: Well, I think --
18 MR. CARDELLA: Part of the problem has not been 19 just large licensees. The problem that we have seen has l
l 20 been, whether it is large or small licensees, there were i
i 21 cases where the small licensees are the ones that are the l 22 most concerned because they are the most shaky financially, l 23 and that is part of the rational for this.
! 24 There are cases that we have hdd where smaller i
j 25 licensees have gone out of business and left behind i
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439 1 contamination.
2 DR. SMITH: You have actually had a significant 3 number of cases like that? I mean, where small laboratories l 4 or byproduct users have gone belly-up, if you will, and have 5 left a mess?
6 MR. CARDELLA: Yes.
7 DR. CARTER: Yes, but the thing is, this covers a 8 lot of hospitals and clinics and this sort of thing who 9 normally are --
10 MR. CARDELLA: Only if they have unsealed sources 11 and if they are over these amounts.
12 DR. CARTER: Yes, I understand, if they qualify.
13 But certainly, a number of them probably would. And they 14 tend to, you know, do their businesa correctly and 15 conscientiously and so forth.
16 In the same way, normally if they have got 17 problems, they show up rather early in terms of the 18 operational side of it. Not when they are getting out of 19 the business.
20 MR. CARDELLA Again, it wasn't the -- in the 21 Dattelle studies that I looked at, the normal cost of 22 decommissioning a facility which handled radioactive 23 material didn't try to look at worse case scenarios. They 24 looked at average case scenarios.
25 DR. HOELLER: Well, what do the Committee and the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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440 1
1 consultants think we should do?
2 DR. SMITH: Is there anything we can do since the O 3 rule is final?
4 DR. CARTER: Can do on a practical basis?
5 MR. CARDELLA: I don't know.
6 DR. MOELLER: Well, it doesn't bother me that it 7 is a final rule. You know, maybe it should. But I still 8 think if we have comments to make, we could make them..
9 I agree, though --
10 DR. STEINDLER: I am looking at Appendix C.
11 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Give us some of these scale 12 ups.
13 DR. STEINDLER: I will give you some of the basic 14 numbers that somebody kindly provided for me.
15 DR. MOELLER: Yes.
O 16 DR. STEINDLER: I think -- and I haven't been able 17 to find the appropriate reference, because I can't find it 18 in the text, but let me give you an exansple. Cesium-137, 19 Appendix C value is 10 microcuries. Strontium-90 is one 20 microcurie, 21 Since we are talking about unsealed materials, 22 tritium is 1,00 microcuries. Carbon-14 is 100 microcuries.
23 Give me a long-lived useful isotope.
24 DR. MOELLER: Well, carbon-14 is 5,000 years.
25 That is about as good as you can get.
Meritage Raporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
i 441 1 DR. CARTER: These are all microcuries?
2 DR. STEINDLER: Microcuries. I think these are 3 exempt quantities.
4 DR. MOELLER: Yes. Yes. And then you multiply by 5 these numbers.
t 1 6 DR. STEINDLER: Then you multiply that number. ,
7 The exception of this thing called dispersible source, 100 j 8 -- I assume that is millicuries.
9 DR. MOELLER: Is it milli- or megacuries?
10 MR. MERRILL: It is meant to be millicuries.
11 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Millicuries.
l 12 Well, see, these others then we are talking about 13 10 to the fourth times microcuries, you are talking a few I i 14 millicuries. It is really not much. ,
I 15 DR. STEINDLER: Sulfa-35 is a hundred.
l 16 DR. MOELLER: So it is going to cover a lot of !
j 17 people.
18 MR. MGRRILL: One thing we do anticipate is that a l I
19 lot of licensees are going to reevaluate the advisability of i 20 carrying possession limits that they don't need just to have f 21 flexibility. i i
22 And we think some people will come in with license f l
23 amendments to reduce their possession limits. i 24 DR. STEINDLER: You believe that is an advantage?
25 Is that what you are saying? l l
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m 442 1 1 MR. MERRILL: It is just something that we expect 2 to happen. That some licensees have possession limits that 3 are larger than they actually need and that they will 4 probably want to not be subjected to Category A 5 requirements, if they don't really deserve that, and will 6 bring their possession limits back more in keeping with 7 their actual use.
8 DR. STEINDLER: One of the impacts of this rule 9 will be to reduce the flexioility of the user who in the 10 past has had a larger inventory in order to maintain his 11 flexibility of operation.
12 It is now by fiscal fiat, in effect, going to 13 reduce his flexibility.
14 Whether that represents an advantage, not 15 advantage, I think is not obvic-. to me.
16 DR. MOELLER: Or to me, eithor. For example, that 17 is not going to change the way he operates in any way, 18 shape, or form.
19 You know, the workers are going to handle it. The 20 hood is going to work the same as ever. l 21 Well, it is an interesting --
22 MR. MERRILL: I did want to give you an 23 introduction to the rule. I didn't mean to get into a 24 debate on the merits of it.
25 DR. MOELLER: It has proven worthwhile to acquaint Meritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
443 1 us with it.
2 DR. SMITH: How we know what is going on. We O 3 didn't really know that before hand.
4 DR. MOELLER: Do we have additional comments?
S DR. STEINDLTR You say you got a lot of comments 6 when you turned it out for the initial publication? Did you 7 get a lot of comments back?
8 MR. CARDELLA: There were 143 public comment 9 letters, primarily revolving around power reactors and 10 primarily revolving arovr" Phs area of funding for power 11 reactors.
12 DR. SMITH: But it makes you -- you know, you are 13 really not sure sometimes how many people took the time to 14 really plow through that and see whether or not it impacted 15 them and to what extenk and thus get a letter in.
O 16 DR. MOELLER: Yes.
i 17 MR. CARDELLA: Well, we did send it to all 8,000 18 materials licensees.
19 DR. SMITH: Oh, you did?
20 MR. CARDELLA: For their comments.
21 DR. MOELLER: Well, let us thank our speakers for 22 telling us what it is all about.
23 It did slip by the ACRS. It probably slipped by 24 many a licensee.
25 If I were a hospital again, or a lab user, I Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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, 1 industrial user of unsealed sources, and I got this thing on !
2 decommissioning, I would have said, well, that certainly 3 doesn't apply to me, you know. And would have gone on from 4 there.
5 I also see that it does not tell them -- it is 6 very careful not to tell them what residual limits, how 7 clean they have to clean out. To what cleanliness they must 8 bring their facility before it can be abandoned or 9 releasable to the public.
10 DR. STEINDLER: That is right. Does that contain j 11 unrestricted use criteria?
12 MR. ORTH: There were a number of comments 13 addressing that issue.
- 14 DR. HOELLER
- Yes.
-15 MR. ORTH: Some of them didn't get answered.
j 16 DR. HOELLER: Come to a microphone and give us 17 your name, please.
18 DR. CARTER: What I would like to see addressed, I j 19 still think the key to this thing -- I am like you, I am 20 very confused. Is this these multiples of the C limits?
I 21 DR. HOELLER: Right.
22 DR. CARTER: You know, Marty may have been reading 23 these things correctly, but that sounds like very, very 24 small amounts of material.
25 Now, if indeed these limits are much higher, than seritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-48F8
1 445 1 this might make some sense.
2 DR. MOELLER: But we are talking, as we see it,
- 3 millicuries.
4 DR. CARTER: Yes.
5 DR. MOELLLRt Okay.
4 6 MR. STEYER: I am Keith Steyer. I work with NRC, 7 with these people. I helped work on the rule.
8 Historically, EPA was given authority to set these 9 limits, and the people in research -- not my group, but 10 others -- have worked with the EPA trying to get these rules 11 out. Not too much progress has been made.
l 12 More or less recently, the Commission has. decided j 13 that they would come out with some policy statement on that, 14 and that is what they are working on now.
DR. SMITH: You mean on the unrestricted?
[}15
- 16 MR. STEYERt On what the unrestrict9d limit should i
17 be, yes.
18 DR. SMITH: Yes.
i
! 19 MR. STEYER: But before we went out for comment in 20 '85, we had -- I believe it was '64 -- we met with Mr. Derks 21 and others, and at that time, they decided that they would 22 split the rule apart and have a separate section, a separate
, 23 group, work on the unrestricted limits and our group 24 continued working on the plaaning and the financial i
! 25 assurance side of it.
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446 1 DR. MOELLER: Okay, thank you, Keith.
2 Ray, you are here. Could you help guide the 3 Committee on what you do in a situation like this? Where 4 the rule is final and we are being briefed about it, and 5 although we were invited as a subcommittee of the ACRS to 6 review it when it was out for public comment, we responded 7 that we didn' t see a need to review it. And we therefore 8 did not review it.
9 And at the time, I recall that we were told -- you 10 know, we looked at it and we were told, well, it deals 11 primarily with financial assurance for decommissioning. And 12 we saw little need or interest in that.
13 Now that we look at it, we find we have a number 14 of reasons for concern. Even though it is a final rule, 15 would it be appropriate for us to send in a short letter?
16 MR. FRALEY: I think if you gentlemen have 17 problems with it, that it would be appropriate, yes.
10 The fact that it is a final rule shouldn't 19 preclude your commenting if you feel it has deficiencies.
20 DR. STEINDLER: You mean, there is not such a 21 thing as "forever hold your peace"? Or, words to that 22 effect?
23 km. FRALEY: Rules can be changed.
24 DR. STEINDLER: Okay.
25 MR. FRALEY: Rules can be changed. The ACRS has Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
447 1 recommended that rules be changed.
~2 DR. HOELLERt Okay. Any other comments or 3 suggestions on this?
4 DR. STEINDLERt Well, in order to bring closure, 5 at least in my mind to what we have just heard, I think we 6 ought to have a little more careful review of what the 7 implications are.
8 There are questions of financial surety related to l 9 the problem at hand. The definition of the problem at hand, 10 and then, you know, how many people are covered by all this 11 kind of thing.
l 12 DR. SMITH: Secause we really don't know, when you 13 think of all of the sources that out there -- this 5,000 and 14 some that Dave was talking about. [
DR. STEINDLER: Yes.
[ } 15 16 DR. SMITH: And applying these limits, what are wo 17 really talking about? j r
18 So, until I know that, I don't know whether I can f
19 say, well, it is a bad rule, even if it is out. Or, it is a l I
20 good rule. That is the problem that I have.
21 MR. ORTH: I think you are going to have to wait 22 until you have, in the projected time limits here, some !
23 number of things come on in. And then maybe ask some users' l
24 associations or something what they think about having had l i
25 to comply with it. It may be an after-the-fact kind of !
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448 1 exposure that is all you can do, say, right now.
2 At some future date, you want to know what has
) 3 been happening.
4 DR. STEINDLER: One of the things that I would 5 suggest that might be useful is, if in fact P&L has written 6 ralatively recently some analyses on Category A and B.
7 These are all Part 70 licenses, right?
8 If P&L has a set of reports on the basis of which 9 you folks put these things together, it might be worth 10 getting some references and we can look at those and see 11 what it is that actually was done.
12 DR. CARTER: If we had copies of the background 13 material that lead up to this.
14 DR. MOELLER: I fully concur. We are not in a 15 position to, we haven't heard enough of the story to be that
( ) 16 critical.
17 One thing that we might do, though, is when we 18 meet with the Commissioners, just say on the basis, would it 19 be proper in an oral report? Just to say on the basis of 20 what we have heard, we have reason to want to explore it 21 further?
22 You know, I think we ought to do that.
23 DR. STEINDLER: Our reasons may not be very good, 24 but they are certainly a reason.
25 DR. MOELLER: Right. Okay. So, we will have to Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
449 1 remember, Jack and Owen, that that goes as one of the itens
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2 we will report orally.
3 Well thank you, then, for your presentation.
4 Oh, we still have a question?
5 ,DR. SMITH: You have sheets 8 and 9. I guess, 6 were you going to mention those at all?
7 DR. MOELLERt Okay.
8 MR. MERRILLt I can go over those quickly, if we 9 have time.
10 DR. MOELLER: All right.
11 MR. MERRILL Page 8 is basically a list of 12 reactors where ve foresee some casework falling into NHSS as 13 a result or the rule. Or, at least in the case of Fort St.
14 Vrain, a potential for casework.
Basically, these are reactors with the exception
{}15 16 of Fort St. Vrain which are already shut down, and 17 permanently shut down. And they either will become for us, 18 you know, an NHSS licensee, or will be a case where we are 19 going to have to review the decommissioning plan and approve 20 it later on.
21 As you can see, there is a fair number of reactors 22 on the list, but we don't expect the 3.ist to grow very much 23 in the future over the next eight or ten years.
24 DR. SMITH: And these are -- I was trying to think 25 of how many, how old is Dresden 17 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
450 1 DR. STEINDLER: Dresden 17 2 DR. SMITH: Yes. i 3 DR. STEINDLER: That is the second reactor put up.
4 DR. SMITH: I know. -
5 DR. STEINDLER: 1956.
6 DR. SMITH: 1956. About 30 years.
7 MR. MERRILL: About 260 megawatts electric.
8 DR. CARTER: What about the ones here that are In 9 Safstor? Do you know the fu.1 at the reactor site in each 10 case, or do you know that?
11 MR. MERRILL: The fuel is on-site at Humboldt Bay.
12 Their decommissioning plan was just recently approved by 13 NRR.
14 The fuel is gone at Fermi 1 and Peach Bottom 1, 15 and it is gone at Pathfinder. I am not real sure about the 16 other ones right off the top of my head.
17 DR. SMITH: What did you say about Peach Bottom?
18 MR. MERRILL: Peach Bottom 1, the fuel is gone.
19 DR. SMITH: The fuel is gone. l 20 MR. MERRILL: The fuel is off the site.
21 DR. CARTER: What about Vallecitos? !
I 22 MR. MERRILL: I am not sure. I think the fuel in 23 gone at Vallecitos, also.
24 DR. SMITH: So that in terms of Safstor, then, the ;
25 only one that still haa the fuel is Humboldt Bay? l
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451 1 DR. STEINDLER: That is not in the reactor, is it?
2 MR. MERRILL: Yes.
3 DR. STEINDLERt Isn't that in the pool?
4 MR. MERRILLt I'm sorry?
5 DR. STEINDLER: Isn't it in the pool?
6 MR. HERRILL: I am not sure.
7 DR. STEINDLER: Yes. I think the reactor vessel 8 is empty.
9 MR. HERRILLt Yes. The fuel, if it is still 10 there, is in storage. Not in the reactor.
11 DR. SMITH: But the others, the fuel is off site?
12 DR. MOELLER: Except for Fort St. Vrain.
13 MR. HERRILL I am not sure about Indian Point 1.
14 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
15 MR. HERRILLt In any case, that is the inventory 16 of reactors for which NHSS may become in a short while the 17 licensing agent, the agency.
18 For materials licensees, the last page attempts to 19 portray the projection of what casework we are going to see 20 as a result of the rule.
21 For financial assurance certifications, the first 22 kind of review we are attempting to project casework for, we 23 do have a requirement for some 1500 submittals within two 24 years. And at that time, we are going to see a lot of 25 certifications coming in the door, probably punched in the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
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452 l 1 last month or two before the expiration of that deadline. l t
2 As far as new applicants, we think that new ;
O 3 applications for materials licensees are running about 600'
)
4 per year and about one out of six is going to be sending us
- 5 something in the nature of a certification or a 6 decommissioning funding plan as a result of this rule.
7 About 60 of those hundred will probably qualify 8 for requiring a decommissioning funding plan, and the other l 9 40 per year will require probably just a certification.
10 As far as updates for finan7ial certifications, t
{' 11 right now we envision that updates will be required only !
l 12 overy five years at time of renewal and so if we have kn ;
! i 13 inventory of 1500, that would mean about 300 updates per j 14 year, i 15 For the funding plans, which have short or O 16 conceptual decommissioning plans plus cost estimates, we are i
- 17 going to see 830 over a period of five years beginning two l l
l 18 years from now, approximately. l 2 8 19 So about 160 or 170 a year over five years, 20 beginning two years from now.
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21 And that will continue, that level of case work ;
22 will continue as they are revisited at renewals. [
t 23 As far as new funding plans for new applicants, {
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24 about 60 a year is what we think we are going to see spread
- 25 over five regions.
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453 1 License terminations. We are not sure how many 2 are going to qualify for requiring a decommissioning plan 3 because of unusual radiological conditions.
4 If that runs about 10 per cent, then we would 5 expect about 60 cases a year like that. But we are not sure 6 whether it should be 10 per cent or five per cent, or 20, or 7 what.
8 But there will be about 600 license terminations 9 per year, about the same as new applications and they will 10 either have to have only the final radiation survey entered 11 on NRC Form 314 or that plus an approved decommissioning 12 plan in advance.
13 That is what our casework looks like as far as 14 materials licensees.
But it is a new area of responsibility for my k'_N) 15 16 Division, and it is a new responsibility under the rule for 17 NMSS.
18 DR. SMITH: This will all be done in -- let's see.
19 We have low-level waste. Remedial. To be done in the 20 decommissioning side of the Division, right?
21 MR. MERRILL: Right now we plan for the casework to 22 be primarily handled by the people who do the licensing work 23 now for materials licensees.
24 DR. SMITH: Oh, those who are out -- okay.
25 MR. MERRILL: The people in the regions who do the Heritage Reporting Corporation
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454 1 materials licensing or in the case of licenses held by 2 Headquarters, administered by Headquarters personnel, done O 3 by those people in NMSS.
4 For reactors, casework primarily would come into 5 the Division of Low-Level Maste Management and 6 Decommissioning.
7 And where we needed help from outside that 8 Division, we would ask for it and attempt to arrange for it.
9 DR. SMITH: Thank you.
10 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Any other questions or 11 comments?
12 MR. CARDELLAt May I make one quick comment? One 13 of the interesting things in the development of this rule 14 was that originally the Headquarters people were going, well 15 -- as you are today -- do we really need these types of 16 requirements?
17 And it was in conversations between Research and 18 NHSS and the regional people who were dealing kind of on a 19 first-hand basis with a variety of different materials 20 licensees that the regional people convinced the 21 Headquarters people that, yes, we do need to have these 22 types of requirements. And they have always been very --
23 their comments on the rule have been endorsements in the 24 sense that they say, "This is the type of thing that we need 25 because there is a lot of licensees out there that are shaky Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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455 1 and have gone belly-up."
2 So that was the outgrowth of this rule.
O 3 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Does that wrap it up?
4 (No verbal response) 5 DR. MOELLER: Okay. I think with that, then, we 6 will bring our meeting to a close, and thank our people for ,
7 their appearance this afternoon.
8 We will take a short break and then go into i c
9 Executive Session.
10 (Whsreupon, at 3:10 p.m., the Open Session of the 1
, 11 Advisory Committee on Nuclear Maste was concluded.) {
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1 CERTIFICATE 2
CE) 3 This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the 4 United Settes Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter 5 of:
6 , Name 4th ACNW Meeting Day Two 7
8 Docket Number:
9 Place: Bethesda, Maryland 10 Date: September 14, 1988 ;
11 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 12 transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear 13 Regulatory Commission taken stenographically by me and, 14 thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under che
{} 15 16 direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing 17 proceedings.
18 /s/
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19 (Signature typed) : JOAN ROSE 20 Official Reporter j 21 Meritage Reporting Corporation 22 f
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seritage Reporting Corporation
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. hg-NRC STAFF PRESENTATION TO THE O ACNW
SUBJECT:
DEc0MMISSIONING DATE: SEPTEMBER 14, 1988 PRESENTER: DAN E. MARTIN l
O PRESENTER'S TITLE / BRANCH DIV.: '
PROJECT MANAGER, REGULATORY BRANCH DIVISION OF LOW-LEVEL WASTE MANAGEMENT AND DECOMMISSIONING 1
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PRESENTER'S NRC TEL No.: 492-0557 SUBCOMMITTEE:
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IEVIEW 0F DECGEISS10NING PLANS E PREPARATICE OF SUPPORTING SER's E EA's PROJECT MANAGEMNT AFTER DECGMISS10NihG PJW APPKNED E POSSESS 10lMM.Y LI&MSE ISSED DVERSEEING DECGMISSIONING PLAN IWLEENTAT!CN EVENTUAL LIENSE TEIMINATION 2
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