ML20196D399
| ML20196D399 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 11/16/1988 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-WM-3 NUDOCS 8812090083 | |
| Download: ML20196D399 (133) | |
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UNITED STATES O NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION i
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In the Matter oft .) ;
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LOW-LEVEL WASTE DISPOSAL )
REGULATORY MEETING )
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i Pages: 1 through 129 i Place: Rockville, Maryland l l
Date: November 16, 1988
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LOW-LEVEL WASTE DISPOSAL REGULATORY MEETING NOVEMBER 15-16, 1988
(' OAYS INN CONGRESSIONAL PARK, ROCKVILLE, MD CHAIRPERSON, KATHLEEN SCHNEIDER CO-CHAIRPERSON, CARDELIA H. PAUPIN STATE, LOCAL AND INDIAN TRIBE PROGRAMS NOVEM8ER 15, 1988 8:30 Welcome and Introduction Carlton Kanmrer Director, State Local and Indian Tribe Programs (SLITP) 8:45 Objectives of the Meeting Paul Lohaus, Chief Operations Branch Division of Low-level Waste and Decomissioning 9:00 Technical Assistance Carde11a H. Maupin, SLITP to the States 9:15 Pegulatory Issues: License John Cooper. IL Application Review Process Reuben Junkert, CA Larry Anderson, UT Barbara Youngberg, NY James Shaffner, NRC O 10:1s Brea' 10:30 Continuation of License Application Review Process 12:00 Lunch 1:30 Regulatory Issues: C. D. Rao, TX Site Selection / Characterization John Cooper, Il Reuben Junkert, CA Richard M. Fry, NC John Starmer, NRC
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3:15 Break 3:30 Continuation of Discussion on Site Selection / Characterization 4:30 Adjourn n
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November 16, 1988 8:30 Regulatory issues: Richard M. Fry, NC Alternative Technology C. O. Rao TX Barbara Youngberg, NY William Dornsife, PA Mike Tokar, NRC 10:30 Break t 10:45 Policy Statement on Guidelines Kathleer Schneider for Review of an Agreement State Jares Shaffner Program Regulating LLW 11:45 Public Corrents 12:45 Close O
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1 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION O In the Matter of: )
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LOM LEVEL MASTE DISPOSAL )
REGULATORY MEETING )
November 15-16, 1988 Days Inn Congressional Park 1775 Rockville Pike Rockville, Maryland Wednesday, November 16, 1988 8:30 a.m.
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2 APPEARANCES:
KATHY SCHNEIDER, CHAIRPERSON O' State, Local and Indian Tribe Programs Office of Governmental and Public Affairs CARDELIA MAUPIN, CO-CHAIR PERSON State, Local and Indian Tribe Programs Office of Governmental and Public Affairs VANDY MILLER Assistant Director, Agreement State Program State, Local and Indian Tribe Programs Office of Governmental and Public Affairs PAUL LOMAUS Chief, operations Branch Division of Low Level Maste Management and Decommissioning NRC DR. MICHAEL TOKAR, Section Leader, Engineering Section Low-Level Technical Branch NRC JAMES SKAFFNER Division of Low Level Maste Management and O Decommissioning NRC JOHN STARMER Division of Low Level Maste Management and Decommissioning NRC CLAYTON L. PITTIGLIO, JR., P.E.
Division of Low Level Maste Management and Decommissioning NRC MICHAEL TOKAR Engineering Section Low Level Technical Branch NRC Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
3 APPEARANCES (continued) :
RICHARD WOODRUFF Division of Low Level Waste Management and Decommissioning NRC DOUGLAS A. ELDRIDGE, ESQUIRE General Counsel New York State Low Level Radioactive Waste Siting Commission LARRY ANDERSON, Director, Bureau of Radiation Control State Department of Health Salt Lake City, Utah VIRGIL AUTRY, Director, Division of Radioactive Materials Licensing and Compliance Bureau of Radiological Health -
South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control GEORGE W. BRUCHMANN, Chief, O Division of Radiological Health Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Health Department of Public Health Lansing, Michigan JO!!N COOPER, Manager, Office of Environmental Safety Department of Nuclear Safety Springfield, Illinois WILLIAM P. DORH S IF'S, Chief Division of Nuclear Safety Bureau of Radiation Protection Department of Environmental Resources Harrisburg, Pennsylvania lleritago Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
4 APPEARANCES (continued):
rg O RICHARD M. FRY, Deputy Chief, t
' Radiation Protection Section i Division of Facility Services ,
Department of Human Resources (
Raleigh, North Carolina L
MARTIN L. HANRAHAN !
Radiation Control Division l Department of health '
Denver, Colorado ;
t CLARENCE E. INGERSOLL, )
Supervisor, !
Waste Management Unit Office of Radiation Protection ;
Department of Social and Health Services Olympia, Washington REUBEN JUNKERT, P.E.,
Project Director, !
Department of Health Services ,
Low-Level Radioactive Maste Sacramento, California STANLEY MARSHALL, '
() Supervisor, Radiological Health Section i
Department of Human Resources ,
Carson City, Nevada '
DAVID MINNAAR Division of Radiological Health i Bureau of Environmental and Occupational ,
Health {
Department of Public Health !
I Lansing, Michigan i
MR. C. D. RAO i l Bureau of Radiation Control (
l Texas Department of Health l l
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( MS. BARBARA YOUNGBERG '
Bureau of Energy and Radiation Division of Regulatory Affairs ,
State Department of Environmental Conservation i Albany, New York Heritage Reportitg Corporation (202) 628-4888
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l TABLE OF CONTENTS l STATEMENT OF: PAGE NUMBER C MICHAEL TOKAR, SECTION LEADER, ENGINEERING SECTION, LON-LEVEL TECHNICAL BRANCH, 1 NUCLEAR REGULATORY col @(ISSION 8 I BA'ABkRA YOUNGBERG, BUREAU OF ENERGY AND l RADIATION, DIVISION OF REGULATORY AFFAIRS, l STATE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION, l ALBANY, NEW YORK 16 RICHARD M. FRY, DEPUTY CHIEF, RADIATION PROTECTION SECTION, DIVISION OF FACILITY SERVICES, DEPARTMENT i OF HUMAN RESOURCES, RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA 31 C. D. RAO, ADMINISTRATOR, ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT '
BRANCH, DIVISION OF LICENSING, ADMINISTRATION, AND l STANDARDS, BUREAU OF RADIATION CONTROL, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH TEXAS 42 l WILLIAM P. DORNSIFE, CHIEF, DIVISION OF NUCLEAR SAFETY, l BUREAU OF RADIATION PROTECTION, DEPARTMENT OF i ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES, PENNSYLVANIA 51 O ,
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6 1 PROCEEDINGS
( ) 2 (8:30 a.m.)
3 MS. SCHNEIDER: Welcome back for day two. I trust 4 you all had a fun night.
5 I did want to take this opportunity because I 6 didn't say anything yesterday that for those of you who 7 haven't had the opportunity to visit our new facility that 8 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now housed in, we are 9 the next metro stop to the south of Twinbrook, and we'd be 10 glad to give any of you a tour, if you'd like to see where 11 the State Local and Indian Tribe Program new resides, and 12 where the rest of the, a good portion of the Commission now 13 is.
14 I'd like to get this morning's session started, 15 and we're going to be talking about alternative 16 technologies. And we have here from MNSS who will be 17 chairing the session, Mike Tokar. Mike came to the NRC in 18 1973 on a two-year loan and he's still here with us to this 19 day.
20 And he actually worked from '73 to '84 in the NRR, 21 Nuclear Reactor Regulation group on fuel performance.
22 In 1984, we started working with Mike when he came 23 to the Division of Low Level Waste at that time, before the 24 reorganization. In ' 85 he becama a Section Leader of the 25 Design Section.
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7 1 With the reorganization, Mike is now in the 2 Engineering Technical Branch and he's section leader for the 3 Engineering Section.
4 He's got a BS and an MS in metallurgical 5 engineering and a Ph.D in ceramic engineering.
6 So Mike, I'll turn the podium over to you.
7 MR. TOKAR: Thanks, Kathy.
8 It's a pleasure to be have this morning and to see 9 some old friends and acquaintances that I haven't seen for a 10 while, and to hopefully make some new friends during the 11 course of this meeting.
12 I'm probably going to repeat some of the mistakes 13 that were made yesterday by others because I wasn't able to 14 attend the meeting yesterday, so I hope you'll bear with me 15 if I do some things that probably could be done better.
16 One of the things I'm going to do is reverse the 17 order perhaps of what others have done yesterday in the 18 sense that it's my understanding that it was intended that 19 the chair person make some sort of presentation at the end 20 of the other presentations made by other panel members.
21 In my prerogative as a chair person, I'm going to 22 reverse the order and make my brief remarks first.
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i 1 STATEMENT OF MICHAEL TOKAR SECTION LEADER, ENGINEERING i 2 SECTION, LOW-LEVEL TECHNICAL BRANCH, NUCLEAR REGULATORY 3 ColetISSION f 4 Mrs. TOKAR: Primarily for the reason that I think I
I 5 it might, what I want to talk about for the most part is the 6 activity that we've been involved in primarily during the 7 period of 1986-1987 time frame in order to meet the f
8 requirements of the Low Level Maste Policy Amendments Act, j i
9 and just walk you through that. Because I think what we did ;
10 was fairly important in terms of providing guidance to the !
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11 industry, to the public and to others that are interested in !
12 alternative technologies. k 13 Actually, as most of you are probably well aware, l
I 14 NRC's involvement in alternative methods of disposal did not f f
15 begin with the Amendments Act. We had been working in this [
O 16 area since the time of promulgation of Part 61 itself. And i
17 some of the pioneers in that work are present here in the 18 audience today, 1 speak of people like Jim Shaffner and 19 Larry Pittiglio who were project managers in those days. ;
t 20 Some of the things that we did in those days, I' ll 21 get to in a moment. But one of the things -- the things 1 22 that we were required to do by the Policy Amendments Act ars
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23 shown in this viewgraph. !
I 24 The first thing we had to do within 12 months l
25 after passage of the Act was to is.entify alternative methods [
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9 1 of disposal, and to establish the procedures and develop the
() 2 technical capability to process a license application.
And then 12 months after that, or, in other words, 3
4 24 months after the passage of the Act, we had to identify 5 the technical information that a license applicant must 6 provide in order to pursue such methods, along with the 7 technical requirements that are needed for licensing.
8 How, the way we did this is as follows in meeting I
9 the first requirement. Actually, the foundation for meeting 10 the first requirement began somo years ago with the work 11 that was managed by Jim Shaffner and Larry Pittiglio. We 12 had conducted a study in the 1984-85 time frame with the 13 Corps of Engineers which resulted in the publishing of a 14 multi-volume NUREG CR Report No. 3774, which I think is 15 listed in your list of references, and most of you are 16 probably well familiar with it.
17 We in December, 1986, published a final technical 10 position, NUREG 1241, which basically summarized the results 19 of that study, which resulted actually in an identification 20 of five major options that you see listed there. These are 21 not the only alt 6rnative methods of disposal that are 22 possible, of course. One can go through a number of 23 combinations and permutations even amongst these five. But 24 these were the ones that the Corps and the NRC Staff thought 25 were the primary ones from the standpoint of those that l
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10 1 there was t:4e most interest in and the ones that we thought ex 2 were technologically the most viable.
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3 So that was the way that we essentially met the 4 first milestone that we had to meet with respect to the 5 Amendments Act that I showed you earlier.
6 During the calendar year 1986, we had to make some 7 decisions as to what process or what methods and procedures 8 we would use to meet the second milestone, which was to 9 provide guidance with respect to the technological 10 requirements for these te 'ative methods.
11 And we announced the strategy actually in the 12 Denver Heeting of the Low Level Waste DOE meeting in Denver 13 in the summer of 1986. Where we announced that we were not 14 going to try to f oet's on all of the potent! al alternative 15 methods and provide guidance on all of them. There are a 16 number of reasons for that.
17 First of all, wo had limited resources, and 18 couldn't, I think, do a satisfactory job and try to provide 19 comprehensive guidance on every possible alternative method.
20 Secondly, we thought we would try to focus on 21 those that were really the ones that seemed to be 1
22 technologically most promising from a licensing standpoint j 23 as well as a technological standpoint. And we wanted to 1
24 encourage standardization. So we reduced the number from 25 five to two of those that we would actually focus on and do Heritage Reporting Curporation (202) 628-4888 l ()
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11 1 the most effort on in the near term.
2 The two that we selected and that we have provided 3 the most guidance on are the below ground vau: , e d the 4 earth mounded concrete bunker.
5 Now, the way that we have done that is as follows.
6 Larry Fittiglio again was instrumental in being a project 7 manager for the development of the Standard Format and 8 Content Guide and Standard Review Plan that we put out in 9 Janua.'y, 1987. Revision F,oro, as it's called, is the first f
10 version of those documents, addressed primarily challow land 11 burial. It did not focus on the alternative methods uf 12 disposal.
13 But we decided that the way we could best provide 14 the guidance in a usable format was to include in a revision 15 to those two documents the information that we had to 16 provide in order to meee the Amendments Act requirement with 17 respect to the guidance on technical requirements and 18 technical information that a license applicant would have to 19 provide. So with Revision 1, which we issued in January, 20 1988, we have provided this additional information.
21 The way we have done that basically is to provide 22 specific and general design criteria that could be used by 23 any NRC reviewer of a license application for either a below 24 ground vault or earth mounded concrete bunker. And I'd like 25 to show you an example of such a criterion.
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12 1 I've chosen this one in part because, as Kathy w 2 indicated to you, my background is mainly in materials and I d 3 feel most comfortable about materials. Also, I think that 4 the most likely material construction of a below ground 5 vault or earth mounded concrete bunker would be concrete, 6 and we wanted to provide as good guidance as possible with 7 respect to the material of construction, because we are 8 concerned about the quality of a disposal unit. And in 9 particular because you are of course interested in the 10 structural stability of this unit, which if one wants to 11 provide the structural stability to meet Part 61 with the 12 unit would have to be able to perform that function for 300 13 years.
14 As you can see here, the specific acceptence 15 criterion, which is in the Standard Review Plan, talks about 16 the type of cement that should be used, and recommends a 17 specific type, Type V, because Type V is resistant to 18 sulfates. And there are in certain parts of the country, 19 high sulfate content soils and also sulfates in some waste 20 trains. So we thought that one should go forward with a 21 choice of a concrete that would bc most resistant to those l 22 kinds of things, again taking into consideration the need 23 for long term durability of the structure.
24 It also talks about various additives that could 25 be used in the form of silica fume, mineral f31.ers, water i
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13 1 reducing admixtures and the like, and it talks about a
() 2 minimal compressor strength that one should try to achieve, 3 because, normally compressor strength is a parameter that is 4 used widely in the industry in terms of prerv'iding a specific 5 quality of the material.
6 I want to emphasize one thing about this; these 7 are not requirements. They never were intended to be 8 requirements. These are simply recommendations that we 9 think if people follow would in the view of the NRC staff t
10 and the consultants, result in a material that would be used 11 in a structure that would provide the type of performance 12 and durability over time that we are all interested in.
13 If an application were to come to the NRC which 14 deviated from this, they used a different type of cement, 15 they have a different compreosor strength or whatever, we 16 would of course look at that, see what arguments, what data 17 analyces, et cetera were used by the applicant to justify 18 their use of this different approach and make some decision 19 accordingly. 1 20 This is standard procedure in NRC whether we're 21 talking about a review of a nuclear power plant, fuel 22 design, or a waste management disposal unit.
23 One finel word about this. We've had a number of 24 comments from various groups and individuals about these 25 crituria. Thcli Jange over a fairly broad spectrum. On the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
14 1 one hand, we've had them called Tokar's revenge, at least e3 2 that's what I've been told. And on the other hand, we've O 3 had some criticism from other quarters about them not being 4 comprehensive enough.
5 It makes me feel very good, I can tell you.
6 Because as a regulator, it's been my experience that if you 7 come in the middle, you don't satisfy anybody, you're doing 8 the right thing.
9 So basically that's where we're at. And in your 10 handouts, you'll see schematic diagrams of what we think are 11 some of the principal design features for the low ground 12 vault for an earth mounded concrete bunker. And they may be 13 of some use to you to focus the discussion as we go on this 14 morning.
15 That concludes my remarks.
16 Are there any questions before we turn to the 17 other speakers and panel members?
18 (No response.)
19 MR. TOKAR: Okay, with that, we'll turn to the 20 first speaker. I'm going to choose these people in a more 21 or less random order. The first speaker we'll choose is 22 Barbara Youngberg who I understand also was a presenter 23 yesterday, is that correct?
24 She's already been introduced 7 know yesterday, 25 but there may be some people here today that weren't here Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
15 1 yesterday, so I'll just briefly mention some things about
() 2 her background.
3 She's with the New York State Department of
.( s 4 Environmental Conservation in the Bureau of Radiation.
5 She's a project manager for the promulgation of New York 6 States' Low Level Rad Waste Regulations. She has a 7 bachelor's degree in biology and an MS in environmental 8 engineering.
9 Barbara?
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16 1 STATEMENT OF BARBARA YOUNGBERG, BUREAU OF ENERGY AND e
'( m) 2 RADIATION, DIVISION OF REGULATORY AFFAIRS, STATE DEPARTMENT 3 OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION, ALBANY, NEW YORK 4 MS. YOUNGBERG: New York State, the Low Level 5 Waste Management Act directed the Siting Commission to look 6 at two types of alternative technologies; above ground 7 engineered monitored disposal and underground mined 8 repositories.
9 In addition, the Department of Environmental 10 Conservation was directed to promulgate regulations for any 11 other practicable means of disposal except shallow land 12 burial. So the other category of disposal methods the 13 included is below-ground vaults, below ground disposal near 14 surface including earth mounded concrete bunkers, et cetera.
15 The law excludes shallow land burial, so New York 16 Stato is definitely looking at alternative technologies.
17 Underground mine repositories raise a lot of interesting 18 questions for regulators but I know nobody else here is 19 thinking about under ground mine repositories so I'll skip 20 those interesting aspects.
21 In our siting criteria regulations, we have gone 22 beyond Part 61 technical requirements in some areas, and we 23 expect to go beyond them even more in our design and 24 operation regulations that we're developing now.
I 25 Some of those we included in oar siting and our Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
17 1 disposal method criteria are requirements for structural 2 stability in the disposal units, disposal units that contain 3 Class A waste must be structurally stable for 100 years, 300 4 years for class B and 500 for Class C.
5 We included the consideration of the geochemical 6 interaction between the soils and whatever materials the 7 disposal units are made of. We required stable foundations 8 in the units so that they will resist settlement. We've 9 required that the disposal units maintain their stability 10 and their containment under the major natural phenomenon 11 that could occur. This is specifically directed at above-12 ground vaults although we included it as a requirement for 13 intermediate types of units. This includes tornados, 14 hurricanes, et cetera.
15 We also required that they be resistant to other 16 natural processes such as the freeze thaw cycle, et cetera.
17 For the above ground vaults, we added an extra 18 requirement for inadvertent intrusion. We thought that 19 intrusion was a particularly likely event in the above-20 ground vaults or could be, so we added inadvertent intrusion 21 protection for Class A vaults must be resistant for 100 22 years, for Class B, 300 years, and Class C for 500 years.
23 The units must also be able to bear the loads of 24 both the waste they contain and the walls and the roofs. We 25 also required that the units be arranged on sites so that Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
18 1 their arrangement would facilitate remedial action if
~T 2 needed. We wanted to avoid above-ground vaults placed so (G
3 close together that any remedial action would be difficult 4 because you couldn't get equipment in between them, et 5 cetera.
6 So in the regulations we're not developing which 7 deal specifically with design, construction and operation, 8 we're looking at more requirements for the alternativs 9 technologies. We'll be looking at the NRC guidance to see 10 what of those we'd like to pick out and make regulations, 11 looking at perhaps requiring certain codes to be followed 12 and specific design requirements.
13 From a regulatory standpoint, I think reviewing 14 alternative technologies opens up some other areas that 15 wouldn't have to be gone into with a regular shallow land 16 burial. The most obvious one is that it requires us to have 17 civil and structural engineering expertise. The department 18 must be able to review the adequacy of demonstrations 19 relating to these structures. We have to be able to review 20 design proposals for construction materials, schedules and 21 method.
22 This is all outside the expertise of our 23 department and we intend to use contractors to help us 24 review those aspects of the facilities.
25 Probably the trickiest one is if we get an Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
19 1 application for an above ground vault, we'll have to review
() 2 the adequacy of the demonstration that it will maintain its 3 integrity for 500 years.
4 In the area of performance assessment, the Bureau 5 of Energy in DEC at least believes that this does require 6 complex sophisticated computer modeling. I know there was a 7 long discussion about modeling yesterday afternoon. And 8 it's just our position that the simplest models aren't 9 necessarily the best. And we will be requiring complicated 10 modeling #&om our applicants and we'll also be performing 11 our own independent confirmatory modeling studies.
12 When you get into a situation with alterative 13 techi, ologies, you not only have to be concerned with ground 14 water flows and dose pathways, but you also have to start 15 making assumptions about failure of the unit, when does the 16 roof titart to collapse, how long does it take to be 17 completely useless, what's the failure rate of the 18 containers, what's the infiltration rate into the unit 19 through the concrete or whatever, and what's the 20 infiltration rate out of it.
21 Those are all things that have to be addressed in 22 the modeling as well as the aspects that are usually 23 addressed. We have had contractors do modeling studies of 24 conceptual designs for regulations last year. We have some 25 more being done for the regulations that will be issued in Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
20 1 draft naxt spring.
2 Those models will include some sensitivity 3 analyses which I think everyone may find interesting. We've 4 varied some of the parameters in the roof structures and 5 things like that. And just will be interesting to folks 6 looking at modeling.
7 In the construction phase, in our role in 8 regulating construction, we expect to have on-site monitors 9 during construction, and again, we will probably have 10 contractors helping us observe that construction. Our 11 department's very good at beir.g on-site monitors to be sure 12 that the erosion control things are handled properly but 13 we've never cared a great deal about if the building's being 14 built properly but this time we will be. So we'll need 15 contractors to help us with that.
O 16 During operation, we expect to require monitoring 17 not only for the normal environmental releases, but we're 18 also considering monitoring structural integrity. Our 19 contractors have suggested using some of the same monitoring 20 devices that are used in dams to detect whether the vault is 21 settling differentia 11y whether it's likely to buckle or 22 stuff. So we'll be looking at those kind of structural 23 monitoring requirements.
24 Also, in operation, there are some health physics 25 considerations. The first one that comes to mind of course Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
21 1 is shielding required by an above-ground vault, and we'll be 2 looking at that.
(~)N 3 That's our major thoughts on it right now. We're 4 right in the middle of writing these regulations, so next 5 spring, we'll probably have a lot more to say.
6 MR. TOKAR: Thank you.
7 Are there any questions for Barbara before we go 8 on?
9 ('N o response) 10 MR. TOKAR: I have a question or a comment, I 11 guess, to sort of break the ice here.
12 '!ou mentioned that you were going to require 13 different periods for intruder protection for different 14 classos of waste, I .*, y, said, 100, 300 and 500 years.
15 That's a rather compli -
c der to fill and I wondered if O 16 you'd given any thought as tt how someone would demonstrate 17 that you would fulfill that particular requirement? How do 18 you distinguish between 100-year and 300-year for example 19 intruder protection?
20 MS. YOUNGBERG Good question. Well, we start 21 with a 100-year. We did say that the 100-year could be a 22 combination of structures and institutional control which 23 will make it easy. But we wanted to have some added 24 protection for intruder control in the above ground vault 25 and not depend entirely upon institutional control. That's Heritage Reporting Corporation j (202) 628-4888
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22 1 the easiest one.
2 To distinguish between 300 and 500 years will be 3 tricky. We didn't feel justified in slapping 500 years on 4 Class B, but our consultants advised that we needed 5 something greater than 100 so we picked the 300, and you're 6 right to point out the question.
7 HR. TOKAR: Okay. Your consultants are comprised 8 of what groups? I think you had some Canadian help, is that 9 correct? Anyone else?
10 MS. YOUNGBERG: And, well, that's who that came 31 from, it came from that UCL.
12 MR. TOKAR: That's who recommended that?
13 Okay, anybody else on the panel or the audience 14 that has any questions?
- 15 MR. DORNSIFE: I think, just add to that, our 16 requirements are similar. We don't require intruder 17 protection for Class A waste but we do for B and C. And 18 those time frames are minimum time frames. And I think what 19 we've actually gotten in our proposal is the structure, the 20 engineered structure itself is really the intruder barrier 21 that's designed for 500 years in all cases.
22 And, you know, there's no limitation that that 23 can't also bo the intruder barrier. We're talking about, 24 you know, 12 inches, 16 inches of concrete. I think that's 25 a significant intruder barrier.
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23 1 MR. TOKAR: Okay. So that's Dornsife's revenge.
fq g 2 (Laughter) 3 MR. TOKAR: For people in the audience, by the 4 way, if you have any questions or comments, please say your 5 name to begin with so we know who you are and speak up so 6 the people in the back can hear yc>.
7 I think you had a comment or question?
8 MR. COOPER: John Cooper from Illinois.
9 Just a question about different designs. Are you 10 going to have separate vaults for A, B and C, or?
11 MS. YOUNGBERG: We're talking about that. We're 12 talking about whether to require that or not. That's one of 13 the alternate regulations we've just been kicking around, so 14 I guess we'll have to see when the draft regs are finally 15 issued which way we fall on that. We've had some
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16 discussions.
17 And there would be nothing in our regulations to 18 prevent somebody from proposing that but from the regulatory 19 standpoint, we're wondering about requiring it. And we were 20 kicking it around, Monday, as a matter of fact at our 21 contractors, and there seemed to be an even number of 22 arguments on either side.
23 MR. COOPER: But with the different intruder i 24 barrier requirements, you sort of get stuck, unless you go 25 all the way or ujse the Class A as part of the barrier for Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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l the B and C waste.
() 2 MS. YOUNGBERG: But we wrote intruder barrier 3 requirement already in our regs and what it says is, a vault 4 that contains any Class B has to make the 300 and any Class 5 C must make the 500. So at that point, we took care of the 6 possibility of mixing classes in the unit.
7 MR. JUNKERT: Reuben Junkert, California.
8 I'd like to share a little academic information 9 from our study. I believe I heard you say you're going to t
10 stabilize all Class A waste?
11 MS. YOUNGBERG: No.
12 MR. JUNKERT: No? Okay, then I misunderstood.
13 We found that the stability requirements, in other 14 words, to stabilize all of Class A would add $70 a cubic 15 foot to the co t of the project.
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16 MS. YOUNGBERG: I think probably what you 17 misunderstood was, I said, the units --
18 MR. JUNKERT: That the units would have to be 19 stabilized.
20 MS. YOUNGBERG: The actual structures, yes.
21 MR. INGERSOLL: Earl Ingersoll from the State of 22 Washington.
23 I take it then you're relying entirely on the 24 bunker structure to provide stability. You're not concerned 25 with packaging per se?
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25 1 MS. YOUNGBERG: The requirement says specifically
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%s 2 for the units. We will be requiring the usual stability 3 requirements that are in Part 61, the waste stability 4 requirement standards.
5 MR. INGERSOLL: The waste form itself.
6 MS. YOUNGBERG: Yes.
7 MR. DORNSIFE I guess I question your study, 8 Reuben, because our requirements require that the Class A be 9 inside an engineered structure at a minimum. And in the 10 proposals we've gotten, not only is the Class A inside an 11 engineered structure, but in one of the proposals, it's also ;
F 12 inside a concrete canister. And the average cost is only 13 $20 a cubic foot more than what people are currently paying 14 for shallow land burial.
15 MR. JUNKERT: I guess all that shows is it's 16 cheaper to build a structure to isolete the Class A than to 17 stabilize all Class A waste.
18 MR. DORNSIFE: Well, it's also stabilized in a 19 concrete canister in addition.
20 MR. JUNKERT: Sure got a lot of big spread, don't 21 we?
22 MR. TOKAR: John?
23 MR. STARMER: I think they've answered my question 24 or asked my question.
25 MR. TOKAR: You didn't introduce yourself, John.
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26 1 MR. STARMER: You did. I'm John Starmer. I was 2 here, yesterday.
3 As you mentioned $70 a cubic foot, Reuben, to 4 stabilize Class A, I was wondering how much more -- that 5 would be to stabilize it?
6 MR. JUNKERT: Yes.
7 MR. STARMER: How much does the structure add to 8 the cost of disposal for Class A waste?
9 MR. JUNKERT: Well, in our --
10 MR. STARMER: Barbara I think would be the one to 11 answer that. In other words, price is no object in a 12 situation for something that basically will be innocuous in 13 a hundred years?
14 MG. YOUNGBERG: I'm sorry, say that again?
(} 15 16 MR. STARMER: Price is no object. The requ.rement, there's no cost benefit involved in this?
17 MS. YOUNGBERG The requirement for the stability 18 of the Class A vaults, if you talk about the stability, 19 which you don't want the thing falling down in 100 years 20 during institutional control, that's not too difficult to 21 achieve, I don't believe. Inadvertent intrusion protection 22 for the Class A is to be a combination of institutional 23 control and design of the unit. I don't think that has to
- 24 be extraordinarily costly.
25 MR. STARMER: Well, but still, I mean, you haven't
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em HU
1 addressed the question.
(k 2 How much more than if you, what you like to call 3 shallow land burial. does it cost to build this structure 4 using the QA that's required, making sure it doesn't fall 5 down?
6 How much mo:re does it cost for this added, and 7 what's the increment of safety that's added? That was the 8 question.
9 MS. YOUNGBERG: For our regulations, we didn't 10 have to answer that question because we didn't have the ;
11 option of shallow land burial. In New York State, the 12 legislature decided that that cost benefit was what they 13 wanted so we didn't compare that to shallow land burial. We 14 did do cost estimates and I don't have them at the top of my 15 head right now. I think they were in -- I don't remember.
16 MR. TOKAR: Speaking to cost benefit, I noticed 17 that the father of Part 61, Paul Lohaus, is in the audience 18 and we had a discussion some weeks ago, I believe.
19 And I'll let Paul talk to this because he's more 20 knowledgeable than I, but it's my understanding that at the 21 time of promulgation of Part 61, that some consideration was 22 given to requiring stabilization of Class A waste and some I
23 decision on the cost benefit analysis or something was made.
. 24 I see Paul shaking his head in the negative.
25 MR. LORAUS: No , you' re correct.
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28 1 In looking at the alternatives that we considered, thf 2 one of the alternatives was what we called the vault stable 3 alternative, and that would have been to either solidify all 4 the waste, put it in a high-integrity container, such that 5 you had a stable waste form that was going into the 6 facility. That from an incremental standpoint is probably 7 the preferred alternative but looking at the cost and the 8 impact on the small generators and the waste that those 9 generators produced, levels of Class A waste, lower #
10 activity, shorter half life waste, it was not a cost 11 effective aspect so that's where a split began to occur, 12 with higher activity waste Class B and C waste were 13 designated -- so you have a higher level protection for 14 those than the lower activity waste as Class A waste were 15 not put in a stable forn. That is a part of the design 1b operations.
17 There has to be emphasis placed on overall 18 stability of the site including the units that are used for 19 disposal of Class A waste. So the overall site has to have 20 a long term stability in its design operations and placement 21 factor, things like that, we should achieve a level of 22 stability on the nite.
23 MS. YOUNGBERG: I think one thing to keep in mind s
24 about above ground vaults, that's the only barrier you have 25 between the environment and the waste. It doesn't seem x
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29 1 excessive to me to require that an above-ground vault that's
( ,, 2 holding Class A waste stay up for 100 years.
3 MR. TOKAR: Your point is well taken.
4 You are of course aware I'm sure of studies 5 conducted by groups such as Vern Rogers that indicate that 6 the above ground vault is likely to be one of the more if 7 not the most expensive option, and that it also has some 8 limitations, if that's the word to use, in respect to the 9 pathways for offsite release because of the groundwater 10 pathway surface water pathway being perhaps greater than 11 other options.
12 Have these considerations been taken into account 13 in New York State's deliberations on the choices of these 14 things and simply ignored, or thought not to be compelling?
15 Is that the way it is?
16 MS. YOUNGBERG: I'm not from the agency that's 17 doing the deliberations. There's a clear line drawn in New 18 York State between those who are selecting the disposal 19 method and those who are regulating it. And I'm from the 20 group that's regulating it. We were directed to write regs 21 for above ground vaults among other things. It was not a 22 question of we think this is what we should promote. We had 23 to address three types of disposal methods ir our rega.
24 Doug Eldridge was here. I can't see him now.
25 He's from the Siting Commission. They are the ones who are Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
l 30 l 1 weighi'ag the different factors.
2 MR. TOKAR: I see.
/ }'
3 Okay, any other questions or comments?
4 (No response.)
5 MR. TOKAR The next speaker then we'll have is 6 Mel Fry who is the Dep*2ty Chief of the North Carolina 7 Radiation Protection Section.
8 He's a certified health physicist. He's spent 9 almost 30 years in the radiation safety area, and mostly in 10 state regulatory programs.
11 So, Mel?
. 12 ;
13 14 15 O 16 17 18 T,9 20 i 21 22 23 24 ,
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31 1 STATEMENT OF RICHARD M. FRY, DEPUTY CHIEF, RADIATION 2 PROTECTION SECTION, DIVISION OF FACILITY SERVICES, 3 DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES, RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA 4 MR. FRY: I'll start off by taking Barbara's same 5 statement and basically tell you, I'm talking about what the 6 authority is thinking about and working on more so than the 7 regulatory approach in that, unlike New York, we are not 8 writing those kinds of regulations but certainly at some 9 point will have a sign off on the technology selection and 10 certainly the design aspects.
11 We're looking at two proposals, one submitted by 12 Chem-Nuclear as a venture with Long Engineering and I
13 Pneumotech who has a license for the French bunker 14 technology and Morrison Knudsen who are all together in that 15 package.
16 The other packago is Westinghouse with Battelle 17 and S&ME. S&ME's what they're called and I think they're 18 Soils and Material Engineering, something like that.
19 My first glance at both proposals was that they 20 sure did talk a lot to each other and then I pulled down 21 some reference design documsnts and said, they sure did make l 22 good use of the scandardized design.
23 So lo and behold, if you look at pictures in the 24 proposals and I have numerous pieces if you're really 25 interested in how, all the way from artists' conceptions of Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
32 1 what it might look like to various designs, they are much gg 2 along the subjects that were talked initially by Mike that
\' ,)
3 they' re concrete, they' re near the ground, though options 4 talk about being at the ground or in the ground or below the 5 ground.
6 We're not charged, as you are, to look at mine 7 cavities. I think most of our technology is being 8 considered much along the lines of the priorities of vaults 9 or, in the case of the Westinghouse SUREPAK technology, 10 either in a vault or on a pad, and some combination of 11 concrete, earth and geomembrane.
12 I did not bring the volumes that dealt with cost 13 because I didn't think I was going to jump into that. But 14 my memory of all of the discussions they put on, even of 15 their triple barrier proposals, were that total costs were
) 16 two-digit numbers, so that makes them less than a hundred 17 dollaro.
18 So, again, I guess I'm coming back to what Bill is 15 saying that building something or putting a concrete SUREPAK 20 e urd something maybe a more economical venture than trying 21 9 1 and actually alter the waste form itself.
l 22 We were very surprised at the numbers because in
- 23 the discussions during the legislature's efforts at banning 24 shallow land burial and requiring engineered barriers, there 25 were just all kinds of numbers put around by generators as Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
33 1 to what just basic unit cost would be.
() 2 And I think as the legislature struggled with 3 requiring barriers, they did so with the idea that the cost 4 was going to be several hundred dollars and they were going 5 to do it anyway. So they probably will be greatly 6 surprised.
7 On the other hand, we're talking cost numbers. By 8 the time you add on perks and you add on bandit fees and 9 whatever else go into the process, you may be back up 10 looking at four digits or three digits.
11 But anyway, I didn't intend to get into cost 12 discussions at all. It's amusing sometimes to see what gets 13 written into statutes, and you talk of a million years down 14 to the water table. The Great State of North Carolina has a 15 statutory requirement that there must be at least seven feet 16 between the bottom of the facility and the water table.
17 That's a great battleground within the legislature 18 and within the public community over what constitutes the 19 facility. Early on the discussion was to say, if you 20 drilled a well, that was part of the facility and so you 21 could have a well, but it still had to be seven feet above 22 the water *,able.
23 Both of the proposals have concepts of 24 construction that include observation tunncis that if you 25 don't put the structure, and there does seem to be a lot of Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
34 1 public delight with the idea of getting this structure up in e' 2 the air where you can look at it and really check on it and Ng
3 do things to it. And one of che compromises that are built 4 into both of the proposals are the ideas if you don't have 5 it up where you can look at it, you can crawl down or 6 literally walk down in a gallery under it. We're t,truggling 7 about how that enhances the facility.
8 And yet the desirability to do remediation, if 9 changes come along at later times, the statute has words in 10 it, while not requiring that it be designed to be 11 retrievable, there are words in there to the effect of 12 retrievability shall be considered as part of the design 13 alternative efforts.
14 I think we' re looking at a combination of man made 15 and geological features. If it is slightly up, then I think 16 we're going to see a lot of dirt on top of whatever's 17 slightly up, some folks in the eastern part of the State 18 where the water table on occasion gets all the way up to the 19 surface are very concerted that someboJy might pile seven 20 feet of dry dirt on top of the swamp and then say it's seven 21 feet up in the air.
22 I don't think that's likely to come about.
23 I think the technical folks like the greater 24 confinement of below grade or at grade efforts. My guess 25 would be that we're going to look at something that is at Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O .
-....----._--,-g
l 35 1 surface, part of it below surface, part of it above surface, l
2 and that part above surface likely to be looking like an 3 Indian mound when you're done.
4 One of the proposals even has an artist's color 5 rendition. The other proposal has one a little more 6 graphic, and basically it looks like little humps of 7 something.
8
- 9 10 11 12
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19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
36 1 So I think we're very much in favor of sticking
() 2 with the kind of standard design that is being talked about 3 with the NRC guidance and would be very surprised to find 4 that either proposer is going to come up with something 5 that's just unique and different. It will be more likely to 6 be-some kind of combination of the faults or concrete packs, 7 be they SUREPAKs or some other type of packaging. I'll i
8 quit. !
i 9 MR. TOKAR: Okay, thanks Mel. Isny comments, i L
10 questions on what Mel had to say or anything that you might .
t 11 have in mind or you wonder about in terms of North l 12 Carolina's approach to alternatives? I
- 13 I probably shouldn't say this but I'll say it i 14 anyway. I guese fools rush in where angels fear to tread I 15 and I've never been accused of being an angel, but I've
)
16 never understood the psychological need that people seem to ;
17 have to be able to kick the tires or whatever in terms of l 18 these above-ground concepts for disposal, I must say.
19 Because it seems to me to be contradictory to how ;
20 civilization has evolsed, hopefully evolved, in terms of how t 21 we handle waste. In olden times I guess people used to keep !
22 slop buckets in their bedroom and they would throw the 23 remains out the window and hit some unlucky passer-by or !
i 24 whatever and then we evolved and started building outhouses ;
' i 25 and now we have, most of us, indoor plumbing. :
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37 1 I don't know about the rest of you, but I mean
() 2 when I use the toilet in my house, I don't like to keep the 3 remains around so I can look at it over a poriod of time. I 4 try to flush it and get rid of it as soon as possible. So 5 it ptst doesn't seem to me to make much sense to want to 6 have valleries or whatever that you can walk under and look 7 at stuif for hundreds of years perhaps, like the catacombs 8 in Rome or whatever.
9 MR. FRY: As another r s n-angel always willing to 10 wade in, I think it's just that kind of thinking tha the 11 public is saying, but when you pull the water closet chain, 12 the waste doesn't go away. It goes out of your bathroom, 13 but it doesn't go away and the concern is that if you put it 14 in a pit privy, that it doesn't go away. And I think 15 that's -- you say why, I guess it's some of the same 16 mentality. Why kick tires? Slam doors? We like doors that 17 sound solid and we claim that's a good used car. I don't 18 know why.
19 MR. DORNSIFE I have a totally different 20 philosophy, and it's based on actually talking to the public 21 and let me tell you. If you go out and talk to the public 22 and there are real concerned people that have been burned 23 badly by sloppy disposal facilities, in all areas of the 24 country particularly in the human areas.
25 And there's a real concern about putting anything Heritage Reporting "orporshion (202) 628-4888
38 1 in the groundwater in the Eastern human areas, and
/ 2 rightfully so. The public has had a lot of bad experiences, 3 and I guess I agree with John, I agree with John to the 4 extent that you can't justify any of these alternatives fram 5 a cost benefit standpoint. You just can't do it. It's 6 impossible.
7 But those kind of cost benefit studies should have 8 been done four or five years ago before the political 9 procers came about, to actual require thene things in the
?. 0 legislation. It's too late to worry about it now, and I 11 guess the way I justify doing these things -- which when you 12 really get down to it, the amount of additional money it's 13 going to cost, it means either having a facility or not.
14 It's well worth it, and you know -- and also if we do this l 15 process right.
l O 16 If the low-level waste process is one of the few l
17 kinds of waste that you can put a couple of extra dollars on 18 it and do it right, if we can in this process do it right 19 for once, the real problem is there is no confidence in 20 government. It may restore some confidence in trying to 21 dispose of hazardous waste and other kinds of waste.
22 So that's how I justify doing all these things, 23 because one of tha f9w areas we actually can do it.
24 MR. TOKARt Yes. By the way could you speak into 25 the mike, so that people can hear you?
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39 1 MS. SALUS: Back to the philosophical things --
() 2 MR. TOKAR: And could you introduce yourself?
3 MS. SALUS: I'm Betsy Salus from the state of 4 Illinois, and in Illinois we have a hamburger chain whose 5 logo is "in sight, it must be right." If it's above the 6 ground, I would be able to see where the problems are and if 7 I'm not a sophisticated person, I want to make sure that 8 somebody who's out there and is skeptical has access to see, 9 and I think that's where a lot of concern is. .L's not so 10 much a desire that I pertonally want to be able to see, go 11 around and kick the tires, but I don't want you to hide this 12 from me.
13 MR. TOKAR: I can understand that I don't want to 14 beat a dead horse, but one of the things that attracts or is 15 appealing to me about shallow land burial is the fact that 16 it seems to me to be based upon a principle that when you 17 have material that in effect over time becomes more or less 18 innocuous, becauro of the decay process we have in 19 radioactive waste, which by the xay doesn't always exist in 20 too case of hazardous chemical waste, there is an appeal, it 21 seems as me, to having a disposal technology which would 22 allow people to make productive use of the are: ** some 23 future point in time.
24 If you put something underground, conceivably you 25 can grow Christmas trees or something on the ground or graze Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) C28-4888 G
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40 I horses or something that are coming on the area for that
() 2 particular region. And building a pyramid or something just 3 doesn't lend itself to that kind of thing. What you' re 4 going to have not only is the pyramid there that you'ro 5 going to have to do something about in terms of maintenance, 6 but now you've got it exposed to the environment where, as 7 we know, there are various degradation mechanisms going on 8 with respect to acid rain and all kinds of other things, 9 freeze-thaw cycles and so on which are deleterious to the 10 materials of construction, and make it much more difficult.
11 So --
12 MR. DORNSIFE But nobody's talking about it, 13 nobody I haven't seen a proposal yet that has a fully above-14 ground facility. He're talking about above grade facilities 15 that are mounded, and it's no different than taking the O 16 mound and digging the mound. It's essentially an inverted 17 trench ja what it is. If it makes you feel better.
18 MR. TOKAR Okay. Enough said. As usual, B!ll 19 has the last word.
20 Dur next speaker is C.D. Rao from the state of 21 Texas. I presume C.D. doesn't mind being called C.D.,
22 because frankly the pronunciation of your name is such that 23 I wouldn't even attempt it to what I see, written down here.
24 Since November of 1986, C.D. has been the 25 administrator of Environmental Assessment Branch in the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 6?8-4888 O
41 1 Division of Licensing, Registration and Standards in the
() 2 Bureau of Radiation and Control in the Texas Department of 3 Health. I like this recital because it sort of reminds me 4 that there are other people who can be said to be in the i 5 bowels of the bureaucracy. We have these long titles and so ,
6 forth also, you know, around NRC.
7 His background is as a chemical engineer. He has 8 undergraduate and graduate degrees in that field. He is a 9 registered professional engineer in Texas. He has 10 experience in the chemical industry and alternate energies 11 also, and techno)ogy development in uranium mining and 12 recovery and environmental assessment, and he's going to ,
13 coordinate the review on environmental assessment for the 14 Texas Low-Level Rad Maste Repository. So C.D.?
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23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
42 1 STATEMENT OF C. D. RAO, ADMINISTRATOR, ENVIRONMENTAL 2 ASSESSMENT BRANCH, DIVISION OF LICENSING, ADMINISTRATION, s
3 AND STANDARDS, BUREAU OF RADIATION CONTROL, DEPARTMENT OF 4 HEALTH, TEXAS 5 MR. RAO: As a member of the regulatory agency, 1
6 our contact with the technologies of the technologies that 7 have been examined is only cursory and outside the actual 8 mainstream of activity. The actual selection and survey of 9 alternative technologies is being conducted by another state 10 agency which is charged with developing the facility, which 11 is the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Development 12 Authority.
13 What I'm going to talk esuentially is give an 14 overview of the conceptual designs and assessments that was 15 created by the Authority in 1986, which was then compiled in 16 the form of a report in early 1987. The study was performed 17 by Vern Rogers and Associates. It examined about 11 18 different technologies which I'm just going to run through 19 and give the major features of those. [
20 The Texas statute or the law does prohibit the 21 user from shallow land burial or improved shallow land 22 burial. But then it does make certain exceptions which can 23 be mado by the Authority, and chich require shallow land [
24 burial but with engineered barriers of a kind which will be 25 approved by the NRC and which are normally acceptable to Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
43 1 meet all the Part 61 technice.1 criteria.
() 2 The study that was made by Vern Rogers in '86 had ,
3 a study of nine different alternatives, including two more 4 for comparison, which was the shallow land burial and 5 improved stallow land burial, the difference between the two 6 being just that the improved one was further below ground 7 than the shallow, which was closer to the ground.
8 The improved one was required for providing the 9 additional isolation required for B and C wastes, compared 10 to shallow burial which was adequate for Class A waste. I v
11 have here transparencies which I could go through maybe at 12 the end of my talk, instead of doing it right now.
13 What was done was Vern Rogers isolated, or listed, 14 about 12 different -- 11 different factors and issues that 15 are forms of -- subissues which are within these factors, O 16 which will influence the selection of a technology. And s
17 then used a process whereby experts gave scores to the 18 various technologies, and also public, members of the public 19 who were selected in a specific manner, were also given the 20 . opportunity to score these technologies.
21 The members of the public were essentially the !
22 citizens panel, which was created as required by the law, l l
23 which included people who were affected by the facility. f l
24 That means the people living in the surrounding areas and
, 25 the citizens. Roughly, the process used in comparison of i l
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
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y 44 1 the technologies was -- you may not be able to read it.
() 2 (Slide) 3 First, define the issues and the factors, and then 4 persons with wide interest select the issues and the factors 5 that will be made, weighted on each one of those factors 6 which I'll list in a moment.
7 And then a similar weighting will be done by 8 experts who are knowledgeable in the various disciplines 9 which go into the technologies -- like structural engineers 10 and geologists and so on, and then combine the two and 11 develop combinations which will then be used in comparing 12 the various technologies together.
13 (Slide) 14 Here is the actual method was used. Performance 15 ratings for all factors were determined by technical 16 experts, and then over here, the values determined by non-17 technical persons, which give factor important weights and 18 issue important weights, and then these were used to 19 calculate tho issue scores and then a total score for each 20 technology.
21 (Slide) 22 Now this is a typical list of the issues and 23 factors that were listed. All this information was compiled 24 in the form of a five volume report which was published by 25 the Authority and that's available. I have the summary i
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45 1 volume with me. The first issue was radiation safety for
() 2 the general public, which was given those scores, which is a 3 combination of the scores that were determined by the method 4 that was shown previously in the previous slide.
5 Worker safety was another factor, with the 6 subissues in there. The subissue factors totaled to one, 7 except in this case which may be a rounding error. In the 8 average case the total to one. Then the radiation safety, 9 which was apparently as you see, radiation safety for the 10 general public was given a high score of 10, which was 11 considered the highest. Worker safety was given a high 12 score of 10.
13 Radiation safety to intruders, 6.6, and economics 14 and cost, 9.8, remedial action, 6.4, rate of implementation, 15 7.8, and these are the other factors which were used.
O 16 operational flexibility, post-closure stability, impact on 17 local community, site and facility considerations and non-18 radiological environmental impacts, i
19 (011de) 20 Before I show the results that are in summary 1
21 form, these were the results that were obtained. Now these 22 are the various technologies, and these are developed in 4 23 rankings, these scores here, and these are the technologies.
24 This is improved shallow land disposal. This is shallow 25 land disposal, and last, the lowest score came from above i
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l ground vault disposal. !
() 2 Now this covers the entire, the rest of the t
3 technologies cover the entire spectrum. Now these two were !
4 prohibited by the Authority for censideration, and therefore 5 in this particular report, they studied -- this is modular '
6 concrete canister disposal below gro"ad. and below ground 7 vault disposal, and above-ground vault disposal. These 8 three were compared by the report.
9 But after the publication of the report, the 10 Authority did make a decision and selected below-ground 11 vault disposal for Class A waste, and below ground canister, 12 modular canister disposal for B and C waste, which are not 13 considered here specifically. And I will show you another 14 slide hers.
15 (Slide)
O 16 This shows the modular canister disposal below 17 ground and the conceptual design is the modular canister, 18 and this is the below ground vault disposal which will be 19 used for Class A waste below ground. I have not shown the l
20 various transparencies which have the nine alternative 21 disposal methods which were considered. I don't think 22 there's any need for that, but I'll just point out that this 23 just prefers te which one, the items considered.
- 24 Above-ground vaults, below ground vaults, which is 25 here, and above-ground modular concrete canisters, above and I
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47 1 below ground modular concrete canisters, which are part
() 2 above and part below the surface. Below ground modular 3 concrete canisters which is the other one. Earth-mounded 4 concrete bunkers, mined cavities, unlined holes and lined 5 holes. All of these were preferred.
6 The results on the three selected technologies, 7 they estimated the cost and the dose assessments and the 8 cost did come to less than $100. In fact, in '86 dollars 9 they ranged from about 55 to 77 dollars per cubic foot, if 10 the Authority -- if the facility was operated by the public 11 entity. If it was privately operated, the cost would have 12 run into three digits, more than $400.
13 Now this cost includes the covering of all the 14 pre-operational costs and the operating costs and also post-15 operational costs.
O 16 That completes the formal thing I have to say. I 17 notice at least two issues, technical issues that led to the 18 review process, which at least from my background and 19 expertise, I'm a little hazy and I don't know exactly to 20 review that, and I might get some ideas from you.
21 One is you did discuss it from the design life on 22 the performance of concrete walls of the units and the 23 concrete canisters. With what certainly can you decide or 24 predict that the surface life of a concrete bunker or a 25 canistet is going to be 500 years or less? Is it possible Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
48 1 to make any certain predictiot on that?
() 2 The second one is something on which I have no 3 idea at all, and that is what are the chemical interaction 4 effects between ths waste itself and its containment? For 5 example, if it's contained in steel drums, there could be 6 some interaction and there coald be gas generation, hydrogen 7 gas evolution and gas pressure build-up. Would thers be a 8 need for engineered venting of these facilities or what 9 would be the effect of that?
10 That is something that I read more recently, but I 11 don't know that would be included in the design. And 1! it 12 is included, how to review, how to assess the performance?
13 That's all I have to say.
14 MR. TOKAR: Thank you. Are there any questions 15 for C.D.?
16 (No response) 17 I'd like to respond to your last comment or 18 question, C.D., about the need for venting. Gas generation 19 and need for venting was one of the things that we 20 considered in tht- guidance that was provided in the study 21 with the Corps of Engineers and the NURIGs that were 22 generated as a result of that.
23 Incidentally, I neglected to mention what that 24 NUREG CR number was when I spoke earlier. It's number 5041, 25 I think it's in your list of references, at least I hope it Heritarpe Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
49 1 is. There are two volumes there, one for the below-ground
() 2 vault and one for the earth-mounded concrete bunkers, j 3 And I also want to mention one other thing. One 4 of the persons that is not here today, Joe Kane, was the 5 project manager of the work that we were involved in the 6 development of that guidance. He is not here because his 7 wife is having some surgery this morning, and he probably 8 could give you a more quantitative response than I could.
9 But we did look into the need for venting. There 10 were some calculations made on the rate of diffusion of 11 gases, for example, that might ensue depending on the 12 permeability of the structure and so on. And as I recall, 13 one of the thoughts was that if one had a drainage, a ,
i 14 properly designed drainage system, that that, in effect, 15 that can act also as a venting system and it would eliminate 16 the need of having a vent that would go up to the surface of f 17 the facility through which someone could throw a stick of 18 dynamite or something and cause a problem in the future and !
19 whtre you have to be concerned about ingress as well as 20 egress of material.
21 So that's where we stood on that. Any other 22 comments or questions on C.D. or for C.D.'s consideration?
23 (No response) 24 Okay. We have our final speaker now. I guess I 25 trish I could say we were ar.ving the best until last, but I L Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
50 i
1 don't want to say that for a number of reasons, including I
() 2 don't want to insult the other people that spoke.
3 Bill Dornsife, I think, really needs little 4 introduction. He was here yesterday and I'm sure he was 5 introduced then and you've heard him speak earlier also this 6 morning during some of the questions and comments he had.
7 Bill is currently chief of the Division of Nuclear Safety in 8 Pennsylvania's Bureau of Radiation Protection, Department of 9 Environmental Resources.
10 He's been very active in the area of disposal, 11 alternative technologies that is, for disposal of low-level 12 waste for the past several years now, and I'm sure he'll 13 have some interesting comments to make. Bill?
14 15
' () 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
(
51 ,
1 STATEMENT OF WILLIAM P. DORNSIFE, CHIEF, DIVISION OF NUCLEAR l
() 2 SAFETY, BUREAU OF RADIATION PROTECTION, DEPARTMENT OF 3 ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES, PENNSYLVANIA T i
4 MR. DORNSIFE Thank you, Mike. As you can tell, 5 Mike and I have been sparring over this issue fo.r a number 6 of years. I'm not sure who's winning the battles but I 7 guess that's one of the opening remarks I have to make. I l
i 8 guess to some extent Pennsylvania is kind of unique in terms I i
9 of the people around this table, because not only do we 10 don't have an authority like a lot of you have, we have to 11 also -- we're also responsible for some of the development 12 activities which include selecting and entering into a 13 contract with the operator, who then does all the rest of i 14 the activities, kind of like California, i 15 But in addition and even to some extent worse, we (2) 16 are not yet an agreement state. So to some extent we are 17 still at the mercy of NRC, and have to, of course, satisfy 18 that our regulations are compatible with theirs to every 19 extent practicable, before we can go out and do things. And 20 this has created a number of problems, particularly in these l 21 alternative areas because Part 61 really doesn't address f 22 alternatives or even design considerations beyond just the 23 basic things you do in a shallow land burial type of i
24 facility and we've struggled with trying to convince NRC !
25 that some of our concepts do not cause a problem in terms of j Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 :
()
52 l
1 meeting the Part 61 requirements.
() 2 So I guess I also want to mention this is our 3 proposed regulation. I brought some additional copies along l 4 if you're interested. It's essentially a very comprehensive 5 regulation that should be sufficient for totally licensing a i
6 facility. It includes siting requirements, very specific 7 and very stringent design requirements. It includes 8 financial insurance requirements, manifest requirements, all 9 of it is much more stringent than Part 61 and it's been 10 based on a lot of interaction with the public.
11 I guess that's where I'd like to start speaking 12 specifically of alternatives, because I guess to a great 13 extent the kind of alternatives and the kind of design 14 features that you all are stuck with as regulators are 15 probably to a great extent the result of our efforts, O 16 because we started very early in the process to interacting I
[
17 with the public to try to understand what their concerns 18 were, and we developed a design critsria document very 19 early, and it seems a lot of the vendors out there have more 20 or less adopted that philosophy in proposing designs for 21 other people.
22 Let me tell the history of how that criteria 23 document evolved. We, very early back in, I guess it was 24 March of 1985 -- obviously that was long before the 25 Amendments Act was finalized. We decided to put together an Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
53 i 1 advisory committee, and we decided that probably the best O 2 w v to ae tw e w to iae eirv ese v riee 1 eere e ere e-3 in Pennsylvania that were active in this area and expressed 4 an interest in low-level waste issues.
5 So there were 16 interest groups we selected, and 6 that included everything from eloctric utility organizations 7 down to vario'is environmental groups like the Sierra Club 8 and included local elected official organizations -- a whole 9 spectrum of different interests. That committee was 10 basically tasked with several things.
11 They were asked to help us develop siting l l 12 criteria. They were asked to help us develop design 13 criteria and also help us develop a draft implementing 14 legislation to implement our responsibilities of the 15 Appalachian compact. So I'll just address right now the 16 design part.
17 Basically we broke up into a subcommittee, and l
18 there were about eight -- I would say that the committee was ;
19 equally divided. There were eight t1chnical people and l l
20 eight what I would call non-technical people, and I think we t
21 had an equal mix of people on the design subcommittee. We ;
22 interacted with that committee for at least a year in coming 23 up with a draft document, which we then took out to the 24 public back on November and December of 1986. h 25 We took the document out, as a draft document, to t i
i Heritage Reporting Corporation I (202) 628-4888 j O r
54 1 get comments from the public. We went out statewide. We O 2 a 14 1 ved11e eeti e i= v rie= eio or ea e ee, to 3 get the public's input on those criteria. And we got very 4 good input from the public. We went back to the committee i
5 and we told the committee what the public caid. We revised 6 the criteria based on public input.
7 And then before it was finalized as a regulatory 8 document, the committee also had another final chance at it.
9 of course, we've just finished the public comment period on 10 the proposed regulations, so we can even refine it even ;
l' 11 further and I'll talk a little bit about some of the 12 refinements we've just put into those design requirements.
13 It might be helpful if I can discuss each of the 14 design requirements and let you know how they evolved, why 15 they're there, a rationale for having them in there and how 16 we anticipate regulating against those requirements.
17 First of all, we have to recognize that, as I 18 mentioned in the discussion we had about philosophy, that 19 unfortunately some of these alternative studies were done 20 after the fact. When decisions were being made on what the l 21 requirements were, unfortunately that was primarily a ,
22 political process. So we have in our law, our implementing 23 law very stringent requirements on what our design has to 24 look like and what it has to do.
25 Probably -- some of the more stringent ones. l l I b
Heritage Reporting Corporation r (202) 628-4888
55 1 First of all, obviously ab low-land burial is prohibited
() 2 and shallow-land burial ia defined as disposal in subsurface 3 trenchen vithout additional confinement in engineered 4 structures. It's a very simple definition, but in addition 5 to that, we are required to only allow above-grade 6 structures, unless the applicant can demonstrate that below-7 grade structures better protect public health and safety, 8 provide for better recoverability and also improve 9 monitoring.
10 Now I think it's impossible to meet those three.
11 You could probably prove mainly that a below-grade structure 12 might better protect public health and safety but you can't 13 prove all three. So in fact in our proposals we've gotten 14 only above-grade structures. Above grade structures, and s 15 when I say above grade structures, another requirement of
-] 16 our regulations is it has to be covered by an engineered 17 cover. So it's really an inverted trench when you get right 18 down to it. So I see really no different than a, in terms 19 of erformance, than a below-grade structure that's in a 20 mound basically.
21 I think, you know, when you look at some of the 22 considerations in terms of monitoring it and providing long-23 term care for that kind of facility, there are advantages to 24 having something above grade, and I think some of the 25 vendors out there are also seeing advantages, because that's Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 ps
56 1 just the kind of designs that our people are getting.
.( ) 2 Also there's a very stringent requirement in our 3 compact law that we've struggled hard and long with, and 4 that's probably unique in terms of requirements that other 5 people have, and it's a requirement that we, as host state, 6 have to provide long-term care for the facility, for the 7 hazardous life of the waste.
8 Not only was hazardous life not specifically 9 defined to any usable extent in the law, but we didn't know 10 how to implement that. So what we've basically done is 11 we've established a hazardous life standard in our 12 regulations, and the hazardous life standard basically says 13 that the hazardous life is the time it takes for the 14 radionuclides to decay, so that you have the same risk as 15 you had originally from the soil before you carried out 16 disposal.
17 Now I guess that some may argue that's a very 18 difficult standard to meet, but I guess, you know, there's a 19 couple of mitigating circumstances I think go in there. As 20 you recognized, everybody probably gets about 20 millirem 21 from the natural soil, through a combination of ingestion 22 and external exposure. So there is quite a bit of exposure 23 occurring from the soil and if you're replacing that soil 24 with radioactive material, it should be pretty easy to j 25 demonstrate that that radioactive material, after some Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
()
l
57 1 ')eriod of time, gives you no more exposure than the soiJ
() 2 you've originally removed.
3 I think the other thing you have to conrider, I 4 think, with some of the environmental problems we have 5 facing us in the next several centuries. I'd be very 6 surprised if the public is as concerned about 2 or 3 7 millirem of radioactivdty 500 years from now as they are 8 today. So, you know, it may be a lot easier in the future 9 to meet a standard and that standard may not be applicable 10 anymore, because there will be real environmental concerns.
11 But right now, it's the law and we have to meet 12 it, so we have to have regulations that implement it. So 13 how have we gone about implementing that? First of all, our 14 regulations require that the design goal, and this is 15 another very tricky one to meet, the design of the facility k
16 must have a capacity for zero release.
17 How the way we interpret that, and this is again 18 in the law, the way we'd interpret that with the design goal 19 et facility is zero release, and also the operational goal 20 should be zero release. And the way we've actually 21 implemented that design goal is that we've looked at what is 22 the expected hazardous life of the waste, in terms of the 23 different classes. I think clearly it's the numbers you've 24 heard earlier, 100 years for Class A waste, 300 years for 25 Class B waste and 500 years for Class C waste.
4 Ileritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
l 58 j 1 And those time frames are -- I've done some
() 2 calculations myself - you can pretty well show that the 3 waste after those time frames really are not much greater a 4 hazard than the radiotoxicity of soil. So those are the 5 numbers we chose, because we don't know what the real 6 hazardous life is until the facility is closed. Until we [
7 see what the actual radionuclide inventory is in the l
- (
8 facility, we won't be able to actually know what the j 9 hazardous life is.
10 So based -- when you have to design against 11 something, so we picked these numbers as being an expected [
12 hazardous life. So that's basically the numb *rs, what we're 13 stuck with then. The requirement is that the facility has 14 to be designed for structural stability for these time ,
?
15 frames, and if for example, there's no prohibition against 16 putting Class A and B in the same facility, but if you do [
17 the Class A has to meet the same requirements as the Class 18 B. So the structure has to meet the Class B requirements. .
[
19 We do, however, require that the Class C waste be j 20 segregated, and also the mixed waste be segregated, and that f t
21 it be disposed of in modules that are individually [
22 recoverable, and I'll get to recoverability in a second and '
L 23 also individually monitorable and I'll get to that 24 requirement in a second also. There is specifically a 25 requirement that they be segregated.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4R88
59 1 And the reason for that quite simply is that if O 2 rou 1oox at the rate of toxicier of the C1 ass C wa>te it's 3 probably the only, particularly when you consider that about ,
4 80 percent if not more of the Class C waste that's currently 5 generated is from irradiated reactor components.
6 And those things really do, although they're 7 probably in pure beta emitters, they do have some very, very L 8 long life radionuclides that if somebody could somehow get I L
9 into that stainless steel and chop it up and dissolve it, it
(
10 could create a real, some potential hankrd for a long time 11 frame. So maybe you want the capability of being able to j 12 recover that waste some day if you find a better technology !
13 for disposal. I 14 The next major requirement that obviously was very 15 difficult to write the words for and obviously to design 16 against is this recoverability concept. Over and over we 17 heard the public wants some assurance that if'there's a 18 probler. you can go in and take the waste out if you have to. l 19 That's the first way that they want assurance that they can 20 be assured that there will be no continuing release of i 21 radioactivity in the environment.
l 22 That, you know, quite frankly is something the 23 public is demanding, and our regulations basically just say [
24 that the facility design muut facilitate recovery, and what !
25 it really does is tie it to a contingency plan which l l
l Heritage Reporting Corporation i (202) 628-4888 5
r
60 1 specifies the actual operating procedures that will be
() 2 followed. For example, if the internal monitoring system 3 detects some radioactivity, we take some actions.
4 If you start seeing radioactivity in the 5 environment, you take different actions which may include 6 recovery of some of the waste modules. It's also tied to 7 the internal monitoring system and I guess I'm getting ahead 8 of myself. Let me talk about the internal monitoring system 9 requirements. We also have in our regulations a requirement 10 that in addition to both on-site and off-site environmental 11 monitoring, the facility must include an internal continuous 12 monitoring program. That's how it's worded.
13 And I guess I interpret that in terms of design 14 and the way it will be implemented from a regulatory 15 standpoint, is that you don't necessarily have to monitor 16 for radionuclides continuously. What you could do is 17 monitor for leakage, for water in a collection system, and 18 once you've got an alarm that indicates there's water in 19 there you go down and sample. And if it shows no 20 radioactivity, you're home free.
21 If it shows radioactivity then you need to do 22 something, and that should be covered in your contingency 23 plan. So obviously the contingency plan also has to be 24 included in this -- or the monit) ring plan also has to be 25 included in the contingency plan.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
61 1 Also in terms of monitoring, our regulations
() 2 require and again they require some monitoring of the 3 structural integrity of the facility, ongoing monitoring of 4 the structural integrity of the facility. The reason for 5 having that requirement in there is that when you talk to an 6 engineer and I'm an engineer, not a civil engineer, but you 7 talk to engineers and they're very leery about certifying 8 anything for 500 years. You know, they're leery about 9 certifying something for 50 years, much less 500 years.
10 So obviously the design of these facilities are 11 going to be based on a lot of assumptions, and the 12 assumption will be modeled to show that indeed, these 13 facilities can survive with wide time frames. You don't 14 have any demonstration. So in order to give a better, and 15 I'll use Reuben's word, a better warm feeling in terms of
}
16 the public and in terms of the licensing hearing, you have i
17 ongoing monitoring to verify that indeed the parameters 18 you've used in those models are performing as you 19 anticipated, and that's a good way of certifying that that 20 model is indeed accurate.
21 As you've learned, in fact I guess in our 22 proposals people have actually proposed a prototype cell 23 that they would actually heavily instrument and monitor as 24 the first disposal unit, to provide experimentation of 25 indeed, you know, what can be expected on the other cells.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
l l
62 1 We've also required intruder protection for Class
() 2 B and C waste, and in addition to that, wo felt and I don't 3 know -- nost of you that have talked to the public also feel 4 the same stay -- when you mention ALARA, as low as reasonably 5 achievabit to the public, they go what the hell is that?
6 How do you implement that?
7 And we pretty well, in talking to the public, we 8 pretty well had to make a commitment that wherever possible 9 we will af,ecify numerical goals for ALARA, just like NRC did 10 for reactors. And in this particular case we felt that the 11 25 millirem standard for intruder protection ALARA goal, is 12 in fact achievable, and that is actually in our regulations.
13 And again, Class B and C waste have to have 14 additional intruder protection. We've actually eliminated 15 from our definition and we may be faced with an argument 16 about that later today, that the five meters of soil as 17 being an acceptable intruder barrier. It's really an 18 engineering structure that's intended in our regulstions to 19 provide intruder protection.
20 I guess the last item is the cover system. We 21 require -- the law doesn't specify a cover system. It just 22 says above grade facility. We specify in the regulations 23 that to provide an additional layer of water intrusion 24 protection, the facility must be covered by an engineered 25 cover, and you know, that is basically our regulations.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
63 1 Again, it's undergone a whole lot of public 2 scrutiny, public input. We tried to satisfy wherever 3 possible public concerns. I guess I just want to maybe 4 mention a couple of things that we've included in the last 5 recent comment period.
6 As you might imagine, based on the conversation I 7 had with John Cooper yesterday, we had a lot of problems 8 because we were going through the public comment period when 9 Illinois came out erith their one millirem release limit on a 10 facility and everybody asked ts well, why can't you do that, 1
11 and we ar,d well, NRC won't let us because it's a 12 performance objective, and they say that's a compatibility 13 one item.
i 14 In fact, we wound up writing a letter to NRC 15 asking them specifically whether we could change the item
! 16 and if we can't why did you let Illinois. Now I think i 17 that's -- to some extent that's unique to our situation,
$ 18 because they have a larger hammer over us than they do over 19 Illinois. They can potentially not allow us to become, 20 initially become an agreement state, where it's going to be 21 much more difficult to pull Illinois' agreement, since their 22 limit, or on the surface anyway, does protect public health 23 and safety better. It's ore stringent.
24 However, how we've overcome that and it's probably 25 a more practical way of doing it. We've established an Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
L t
64 !
1 ALARA goal which includes not only design but also like I l 2 mentioned, operational requirements. We are going to change ;
O 3 our regulations to'specify that if a licensee, and this ,
4 includes the custodial agency, the state custodial agency 5 after the facility is closed, if the licensee identifies or f 6 measures, has any measurements of radioactivity in the off- f 7 site environment that are greater than the natural 1
i 8 background, they have to reasonably take action to identify 9- and abate that source. r i
10 Those of you in the real world, in recognizing the 11 relationship with the host municipality in these facilities, f 12 that's going to occur anyway. But I think having that in l 13 the regulations gives a lot of people a warm feeling that 14 you're not going to allow releases up to 25 millirem, which I i 15 is what we were accused of, that, you know, if the '
{ 16 regulations say 25 millirens, that's what we're going to 17 allow. +
l 18 ** We've also, I think, had to tighten vp our 19 recoverability departments. Originally, our recoverability f
20 requirements were tied specifically just to meeting the f
- 21 performance objectives. We've got some comments that in 22 addition to that we ought to consider how recoverability 23 affects the stability of the facility. So we've also [
l 4
[
24 included now in our regulations that in addition to ;
h 25 recoverability, having to meet the perforsance objectives or !
i l
Beritage Reporting Corporation 3
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65 1 making sure the facility is still meeting performance
(^'s 2 objectives, it also has to meet the stability requirements
\)
m 3 after the recoverability has been carried out.
4 I think in terms of issues that I think we need 5 some help on, first of all and again this is recognizing 6 that at least in three cases I know of, people have received 7 proposals for above-grade covered vaults. I guess my 8 initial questien and immediate question, does the NRC 9 guidance on the below-grade vaults apply absolutely to 10 above grade vaults or to some modifications or some 11 modification feature, because it looks like that is in many 12 cases the technology of choice, and there really is no 13 guidance for an above-grade covered vault, specifically.
14 The other area of concern that I have and it's 15 probably a bigger concern at this point because again, based b
x' 16 on talking to the public and what I expect in terms of 17 intervenors in our licensing proceeding, there will be a lot 18 more focus placed on the performance of the engineered 19 structure than there will be on the site, the performance of 20 the site. The public will view that as the more important 21 barrier, and a lot more of the hearing cententions will be 22 devoted to whether that engineered structure is meeting the 23 requirements.
24 As of right now, in case you aren't aware, we have 25 no public domain cover in this country that modela
!!eritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
66 1 engineered structures, and that means that we have no cover
() 2 that's validated, or no cover that's even available to us.
3 And that's a real critical, critical need. A real s tical 4 need, and the technology coordinating committee in fact 5 hopefully next week are going to be discussing that in great 6 detail.
7 Are there any specific questions for me?
8 MR. BRUCHMAN: George Bruchman from Michigan.
l 9 Do your regulations specify how the licensee or 10 the custodial agencies determine what releases are in excess 11 of background because of the diurnal and seasonal variat. ions 12 in onckground, how do they determine that something is 1
13 excess of background?
14 15
() 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
67 1 HR. DORNSIFEt Well, we anticipate, and it will be (3
(,/ 2 an ongoing process, that you will be refining backaround for 3 a 7,ong porlod of time. You know, you will have what is 4 called natural background radiation that you will have 5 established, which includes the variations for the various 6 kinds.
7 If you are looking at water, for example, you may 8 have an uncertainty in your measurements of tritium in the 9 water, or you may have an uncertainty in your TLD readings.
10 All of those will have to be taken into consideration and 11 refined reer time, and recogniza that all that it means is 12 if one measurement happens to exceed it and the licensee can 13 justify that it is a glitch. For example, the way that they 14 justify that is that if they see 5 millirem offsite and 15 nothing on their internal monitoring system, you know, 16 obviously it is not from the facility.
17 MR. BRUCHMANN: So the regulations do not actually 18 specify?
19 HR. DOTNSIFF No, it is vague at this point, but 20 we intend that that would be a moviag target. If you start i 21 doing background monitoring during site characterization, 22 that wvuld continue on forever basically. Hopefully, chat 23 would be all that you would ever see is background. And you 24 may have measurements thirty years from now that are me.ch 25 better, techniques that are much better, and that could be a Heritage Reportirg Curporation (202) 628-4888
68 1 more narrow bound.
13)
(_ 2 MR. Bh0CHMANN: I have got a follow-up question 3 too.
4 MR. Du 4 I guesp just a further answer. We 5 intend, end I guess we are going to need help from 6 somebcdy on this, ws .ptend to try to develop standard 7 review plans for a lot of these additional features that we 8 are looking at. So that the Jicensee does have better 9 guidance, and we have better guidance frankly on how is a 10 regulatory agency to handle it in the licenuing process.
11 And I think thit is really the beauty of standard review 12 plans.
13 Not only do you give the licensee what you vrant, 14 but then you as a regulatory agency have already said, well, 15 this is what we are going to base our determination on, and
)
36 it is right there in black and white. So those of you who 17 are not planning on us!.ng standard review plans Petter 18 rethink it, because that is a real critical feature in a 19 regulatory process I think.
20 MR. TOKAR: Hear, hear.
21 MR. DORNSIFE: Do we agree on something, Mike?
22 MR. TOFAR: As Bill indicated earlier -- I am 23 going to ask yo a question now.
24 MR. BT.UCILMANN : Well, Mike, could I ask my 25 follow-up question first?
Heritage Reporting Corporatica '
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69 1 MR. TOKAR: Sure, go ahead.
C\
(,) 2 MR. BRUCRMANN: Thanks. We have heard an awful 3 lot this morning and yesterday about Class A, B, and C waste 4 and even some mixed waste. No one is talking about NARM.
5 Do any of the facilities that the states here 6 represent envision developing, regulating, or prohibiting 7 NARH from disposal of their facilities? ,
8 MR. DORNSIFE: Our law specifically includes NARM 9 as part of the definition of low level waste.
. 10 MR. FRY: Ours does, too.
11 MR. DORNSITE: And we in fact have revised the 12 classification system. And another change that I did not 13 mention, because it does not speak to design, but we 14 originally in cur proposed regulatione .ncluded a Class C 15 limit for radium, which is 100 nanocu les per gram. And we 16 recently based on comments revised that to include other 17 NARM isotopes except uranium that would also have to meet a 18 100 nanocuries per gram standard.
19 And that does not really mean anything, because if 20 you look at specific activity. Thorium which is the sourcs 21 material that may be of concern, you cannot physically ever 22 get beyond the specific activity. You carnot physically go 23 beyond 100 nanocuries per gram, sven !f it is in a pure 24 state.
25 And a lot of these regulat written, they Heritage Reportii.g Corporation (202) 628-4888
r 70 1 are very practical things, but thay are written so that the 4
() 2 public understands in black and white and gets that warm and 3 fuzzy feeling that these things are covered, and that is a 4 very important part of selling the process. I think that 5 80 percent of the battle is the public having confidence in 6 you as a regulator.
7 That includes, for example, municipality 8 inspectors who would have the ability to shut down a 9 facility. Imagine what kind of fix that gives the NRC, what 10 kind of arrangement we have with the host municipality 11 inspectors, so that we still retain ultimate regulatory 12 control.
13 We are going to adopt basically EPA's minimum. We 14 are not going to put it in the regulations, but we will 15 probably have a license condition that says anything below 16 2 nanocuries per gram will not be acceptable. And I think 17 that pretty well defines a very narrow band of what will be 18 coming to the facility, because most of the sealed sources 19 will be ahnve the Claes C limit.
20 2:d we intend to implement the sealed sourcing 21 like South Carolina just did. You cannot average the source 22 over the entire waste package. If you are dealing with 23 sealed sources, you look at the source, because that is 24 really what the public in the year 600 can get to, a sealed 25 source. It is not going to be averaged over the whole Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
71 1 package.
(l 2 MR. BRUCHMANN. Does that more or less create a sj 3 waste problem then?
4 MR. DORNSIPE: Well, hopefully, it will not. We 5 have been beating very heavily on DOE to agree to accept 6 greater than Class C waste. And if you literally interpret 7 what is already at least in proposed regulations, they 8 probably have an ob. ligation. Because you have on one hand 9 EPA's regulations coming out and saying that anything above 10 100 nanocuries per gram in terms of radium, and other 11 non-source material, NARM isotopes, are greater than 12 Class C and not suitable for shallow land burial.
13 And they say that those materials have to be 14 disposed in a facility that is authorized under the Atomic 15 Energy Act. And to me that implies a burden on them to make O 16 a specific determination that indeed those sources greater 17 than Class C waste are not suitable for shallow land burial.
18 And they also propose a regulation that says that those 19 materials that are greater than Class C ought to be going 20 into a geological repository.
21 And hopefully, there will hopefully be one, at i
22 least for the near-term, one geological repository. So 23 hopefully the regulation will be in place that those greater 24 than Class C will be going to the geological repository.
25 T,w DOE has not accepted that officially, because Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
72 1 the regulations are not in place yet. And we are working 2 throuJh the forum and other groups to try to get that kind 3 of agreement in place.
4 MR. TOKAR: If there are no other questions for 5 the moment, Bill, why do you not take a load off and sit 6 down, and we will have a round table discussion with 7 audience participation if possible.
8 I do have one question. It goes back to the 9 statement that Bill made earlier about us being friendly 10 rivals, the emphasis more on friendly than rivalry except in 11 one sense. Bill is an ex-Navy man. And I have two sons who 12 are Army officers, one a West Point grad.
13 So my question to Bill is would you care to make a 14 wager on this year' n Army-Navy game?
15 MR. DORNSIFE: No way, Jose.
16 MR. TOKAP.: For those of you who do not follow 17 that very well, Army has a pretty powerful looking team this 18 year, as contrasted with their rival.
19 MR. FRY: Mike, we have not talked at all about 20 he reg process, or we have done it in different places.
21 But I would give the same emphasis that Bill is giving that 22 our agency right now is enjoying a high wave of public 23 acceptability, because of the extra mile kinds of things 24 that we have done of involving special interest groups as 25 resource persons to the Commission's various committees, Ileritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
73 1 holding public meetings in addition to the required public
( 2 hearing, to get more of that kind of 11vement.
3 And right now, our regt enjoying a 4 great deal of public support fa: : we added in 5 beyond the Part 60. And anything added in response 6 to that, it was more the doing of it and the spirit of doing 7 it than it was the substance.
8 I saw people who had great philosophical 9 differences sit down every other Monday afternoon over a six 10 month period to where they would finally say, yes, the 11 Sierra Club will back that kind of craziness. Ard when you 12 get an industrial representative from the Sierra Club to 13 agree on something, you are going a long way.
14 MR. DORNSIFE: Yes. We have had the same
{} 15 16 experience, you know.
with Judy Johnsrud.
Those of you who have been dealing She has been exported to probably every 17 state in the union. And Jeff Schmidt saying in public 18 meetings that our regs are great, that they are almost 19 perfect. Of course, they still comment on them to try bo 20 get them tighter, and there are a lot of things that they 21 cannot live with, but they try to understand that.
22 It really means something to the public. The 23 public is saying to us at meetings that DOE is finally doing 24 something right, you know, that you have very good 25 regulations, and they recognize that our department Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
74 1 regulates everything from coal mines to restaurants.
2 Recently, we also regulate migrant workers. You know, you 3 cannot satisfy everybody. But when you have the public tell 4 you that this is a good process, it is really meaningful.
5 And again it restores confidence in government 6 which gets me back to the philosophical point that I made.
7 That if nothing else, maybe we through this process can 8 restore some faith in the government in terms of dealing 9 with waste. I mean it is a national crisis.
10 MR. TOKAR: Bill, you asked a couple of questions, 11 one of which had to do with whether or not the 12 below ground vault guidance applies to above ground type 13 designs or above grade designs. I guess that the answer 14 that I would provide is yes, to a point. The guidance that 15 we have provided in the NUREGs that were generated for us by
[ ;') 16 the Corps of Engineers of course focuses on the 17 below-ground design approach. There will be some 18 differences, as you are well aware, in the sense of the 19 cover system. And the filter and drainage systems perhaps 20 will be somewhat different.
21 I do not mean to beat on a dead horse as I 22 indicated earlier, and get into this discussion of 23 controversy about whether above grade or below grade is 24 preferable. But I do think that there are certain problems 25 with the above grade approach, or the problems are 11eritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
75 1 aggravated let's say or are greater with an above grade
('/
(_
l 2 approach in a couple of areas, one of which has not been I 3 think discussed yet today, and that has to do with intruder 4 protection.
5 The whole intruder scenario or intruder protection 6 area is in my opinion kind of a can of worms, because you 7 can go through all kinds of hypothetical things that might 8 occur. And again it gets into an area of kind of philosophy 9 perhaps more than technology, I do not know, which is always 10 a dangerous thing.
11 By the way, I am going to tell you a story about 12 philosophy as an aside. I took a course years ago wher. I 13 was an undergraduate in physics, and we had a great physics 14 instructor. I do not remember very much about him, except 15 that he had a story to tell which I remember to this day.
16 He said that there is a hierarchy in academia. And at the 17 bottom of this hierarchy are the chemists. You can 18 understand that this comes from a physicist.
19 And he said, the chemists, they look up at the 1
20 engineers, and the engineers look at the physicists, and the 21 phyoicists look up at the mathematicians, and the 22 mathematicians look up to the philosophers, and the 33 philosophers look out on the level and they see God.
24 MR. DORNSIFEt Then there are the politicians.
25 MR. TOKAR: So in the spirit of being a Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
76 1 philosopher then. With respect to intruder protection,
_) 2 mounded disposal sites such as Indian burial mounds are as I 3 understand it attractive to intruders. They see something 4 that is mounded and they figure that there is something in 5 there to get to. And it is not quite as bad perhaps, but it 6 is kind of like waving the red flag from somebody.
7 The whole issue of whether an intruder is an 8 inadvertent intruder or not an inadvertent intruder is kind 9 of hard to define and separate I think. But I would 10 envision that in an above-grade facility whether it is 11 covered with earth or it is not covered with earth that it 12 could be one that would entice a determined intruder, 13 someone who would deliberately want to intrude. And I would 14 say that a determined intruder ultimately is going to be
( 15 successful no matter what you do, if in fact he wants to get 16 into sotaething. So that is one point.
17 With respect to the guidance specifically that is 18 in the review plans and the NUREG CR, as I mentioned 19 earlier, there will be some differences I think in terms of 20 cover. You have to be concerned about slopes and things 21 lihe that, about whether you are going to use geomembranes 22 and other things that would be able to withstand the passage 23 of time over periods of hundreds of years.
24 I think that as indicated by the Rogers study that 25 there was some greater problems with above-grade structures Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
77 1 in the sense of surface water contamination concerns. And 2 there is some difficulty I think perhaps somewhat of an 3 inconsistency in my view in terms of how that design 4 approach would be one that would be most conducive to your 5 design goal of zero release or capacity for zero release.
6 Basically also I think it is consistent or 7 inconsistent with I should say, or maybe it is consistent 8 depending on how you look at it, from the standpoint of the 9 need or desire on the part of your group and the problem 10~ that I think engineers would have in certifying that 11 something would last for some period of time like five 12 hundred years. Again I think that it is more difficult for 13 a facility that is closer to the ground to do that with.
14 I am an engineer, by the way, as I mentioned
( 15 earlier, a material engineer. And I feel comfortable with 16 engineering structures. I have no problem philosophically 17 getting into the philosophy issue again with your comment or 18 question on the public focusing more on the performance of 19 engineered barriers perhaps than the site.
20 I have no problem with that, because I feel 21 comfortable with the fact that engineered barriers or 22 engineered structures can be built and can be dosigned to 23 last for long periods of time, and can be modeled even if 24 necessary to show that, perhaps more easily than one can do 25 with a natural environment situation. You know, how can one Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
78 1 predict what will happen over hundreds of years when yeu
( 2 cannot even predict what the climate will be hardly next 3 week versus hundreds of years in the future.
4 MR. DORNSIFE: If we had a code.
5 MR. TOKAR: There may be others in the 6 "ology" areas who would disagree with that point of view I 7 am sure, but that is my own personal opinion.
8 Are there any other comments of panel members?
9 MR. DORNSIFE: I guess, Mike, I could argue with j 10 your points, but as usual I am not going to do it.
11 I guess a question that I have, when you mentioned 12 to ensure where the below-grade guidance is applicable or 13 not, could we make a formal technical assistance request to s 14 NRC to tell us where that guidance is or is not applicable, 15 and if it is not?
16 MR. TOYAR: I can give you specifics right now off 17 the top of my head in a sense. Let me just give you an 18 example. '3 provided criteria both of a general and 19 specific nature on things like how one should calculate 20 loads and load combinations. That would not be any 21 different. '
i 22 We would say the same thing for materials of i 1
23 construction. You know, durability of materials, that is i 24 the same. There may be some differences in the area of 25 monitoring, or monitoring for performance that is, rather Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 ;
l d - - - - - --- -
79 1 than radiological monitoring, which is what I am concerned
['T
\s' 2 about here. Or filters, and cover systems, and drain 3 systems and things like that. There would be some 4 differences in that area.
5 But the guidance or management directive that we 6 have received so far has been such that I would not envision 7 a major effort if you are leading into that in terms of 8 developing additional guidance on above-grade or 9 above ground structures. Because we have made the decision 10 that we want to standardize on these two approaches that we 11 have, and we think technologically that they are among the 12 most attractive. I see that Dr. Starmer has got to get his 13 oar in.
14 MR. STARMER: Well, as you remember yesterday, 15 from the goals of the meeting.
O 16 MR. TOKAR: I was not here yesterday.
17 MR. STARMER: You see, I looked at the goals of 18 the meeting before I came. But on a serious level, it was 19 to exchange information and provide contacts and things. As 20 some of you know or if you do not know, I am responsible for 21 performance assessment. And I am in a quandary. We do not 22 require engineered barriers per se, walls or whatever, all 23 of these engineered enhancements.
24 MR.'DORNSIFE He is a geologist.
25 MR. STARMER: As far as I am concerned, concrete Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
80 1 is a medium, but that is my approach to the subject, in fact
'T 2 about 10 the minus 5th. But I am sure that some of my (G
3 geotechnical engineering friends, and I do talk to the 4 engineering profession, claim that they can produce 5 compacted clay materials that will perform at 6 10 to the minus 7th, which is considerably better than I 7 have ever heard claimed for normal concrete. That is an 8 aside.
9 My question is, Bill, you are taking a great deal 10 of credit for structural stabi.1.ity. And you seem to equate 11 it to containment, and equate it as a very good approach to
. 12 achieving zero release. If I were faced with an applicant's 13 performance assessment, I would have trouble analyzing or 14 understanding exactly how he would go about analyzing the 15 performance of an engineered barrier.
16 I would be interested in what work you in 17 Pennsylvania or in any of the other states that are using 18 engineered barriors as an inuegral part of your design are 19 going to do for that, because we do not really have any work 20 going on in that area. And we fully expect that it is an 21 area where the states can provide some feedback to us.
l 22 MR. DORNSIFE: I think quite frankly, John, I
l 23 probably like in the PLAP, you assume that if ;ou build by 24 the code that if the structure survives for five hundred l
! 25 years, and you do not assume any relaases until five hundred i
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
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81 1 years.
2 MR. STARMER: Well, the question that I have is
's) 3 what work are you doing in terms of developing your own 4 codes, and performance assessment approaches to analyzing 5 this.
6 MR. DORNSIFE: I am beating on you guys at DOE to 7 halp me.
8 MR. STARMER: Well, as I explained, we do not 9 require that. Therefore, we would not really would not 10 analyze it.
11 MR. DORNSIFE: What if you were to get an 12 application that had that in there, and they said there is 13 no release, that we are not assuming any release for five >
14 hundred years, how would you handle that?
15 MR. STARMER: I would send it back to them, and 16 say I need an analysis and some substantiating basis for
(
17 that analysis. For example, the code and the assumptions of 18 the code. And as far as I know, there are no such codes 19 that are available, is that not correct?
20 MR. DORNSIFE What?
21 MR. STARMER: Codes for analyzing the performance 22 of these engineered carriers that are readily available.
23 MR. DORNSIFE No, they are not available. There 24 are two that I know of. The Canadians have one and EPRI has 25 one.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
82 1 MR. STARMER: And both of them are, 2 as I understand it --
3 MR. DORNSIFE: Both of them are proprietary codes, 4 and that is my concern.
5 MR. STARMER: Well, I was just wondering how you 6 were going to handle it. We need some help from you.
7 MR. DORNSIFE: We have actually gone so far P.s to 8 try to use our utilities in Pennsylvania to get access to 9 the EPRI code and learn more about it, if EPRI will not 10 provide it directly.
11 MR. TOKAR: Before you speak, Virgil, just let me 12 get my two cents in for a moment if I may. As John 13 indicated, he is responsible for the area of performance 14 assessment,. and would be in charge of the technical review 15 of an application if we were to receive one at some point (s~h / 16 that would address the performance of the overall facility.
17 If it were a facility that had an engineered 18 structure in it, I would like to make a clear distinction 19 between what I think that we have been talking about in 20 terms of structural stability of the structure as apart of 21 the ability of the structure to impede, or limit, or i 22 restrict the release of radionuclides from the facility into 23 the external environment.
24 We have provided guidance in the NUREGs and in the 25 standard review plan from the standpoint of criteria and Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
()
83 1 recommendations for approaches that would we think provide 2 reasonable assurance for a structure having three bundred 3 years of structural stability that did not address 4 specifically the ability of the structure to limit 5 radionuclide release except in one sense.
6 We took into consideration the fact that concrete 7 will in all likelihood degrade over time, that it does not 8 have some initial permeability, that it will presumably go 9 into some mode of crack formation, initiation and 10 propagation of cracks. That is the kind of thing as I 11 understand it is addressed in the barrier code, the EPRI 12 code.
13 And we recommended that to account for that or to 14 address that particular type of phenomenon. That people 15 considered the use of things like bentonite panels that 16 could be placed on the outsido of the structure.
17 So that if cracks did initiate, hopefully the clay 18 would infiltrate into the cracks and expand on contact with 19 water and seal the cracks in a process very similar to what 20 is being considered for high level repositories in Europe 21 where they are talking about granite repositories and things 22 like that. And they have done quite a bit of work on the 23 use of bentonite seals. So that is one thing that might be 24 considered.
25 John is correct though in the sense that if we Heritage Reporting Corporation
- (202) 628-4888
84 1 were to receive an application, we would take the position I
{} 2 3
believe that it would be incumbent upon the applicant to show by virtue of his analysis, his data, eccetera, and his 4 cogent argument that if he wants to take the argument that 5 the structure would in fact impede radionuclide release to 6 show how, and to what extent, and to what degree and 7 magnitude he is claiming would be accomplished.
8 And we would examine his presentation and reach 9 some decision based upon our ab'111ty at the time to do that 10 kind of performance assessment. If we use his specific 11 model or code, or hand calculations or whatever, that is the 12 approach that we generally use in regulation, regulatory 13 matters. Okay, Virgil.
14 MR. AUTRY: Virgil Autry from South Carolina. I 15 was listening this morning to the alternatives. Of course,
- 16 the State of South Carolina has shallow land disposal, and 17 we will continue to have that until the close of the site.
18 My comment is that I understand what the other 19 states are going through. It would be very difficult if 20 South Carolina had to do it all over again to defend shallow 21 land disposal. But we just want to ensure that the policies 22 are on track. And if it takes these alternatives, you know, 23 we are willing to forfeit. I just do not want these other 24 states to forget when they go to the public to discount the 25 shallow land disposal. It is adequate under Part 61 for Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 ;
O
85 l
1 . these type wacte waters.
) 2 We have trouble now continuing to defend shallow l
3 land disposal. And <e are continuing to receive your waste !
4 and the mistakes of some of your generators. And I just do 5 not want you to forget that in your deliberation with the 6 public, you know, the development that all of these disposal 7 technologies have. Thank you.
8 HR. TOKAR: Thanks, Virgil.
9 HR. DORNSIFE: I have just one clarification on 10 what you said, and this was very carefully thought out. :
11 Recognizing that stability is one thing but demonstrating 12 containment is another. Our regulations specifically say 13 the way that you meet that goal, that design goal of zero 14 release for those time frames, is just by providing 15 demonstration of structural stability for those time frames.
16 There is a separate requirement to demonstrate leak 17 resistance for only a hundred years, which I think is more 16 reasonable.
19 MR. TOKAR: 1 understand.
20 MR. DORNSIFE That was very carefully considered.
21 MR. TOKAR: Kathy is waving her arms. But if you 22 do not mind, I would like to take Reuben's last question 23 here.
24 MS. SCIINEIDER: Let's have one more.
25 MR. JUNKERT: As you may have already recognized, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
(
m r
86 1 I still suffer from the same problem as when I heard my
() 2 father apologize to the preacher. Because as a young kid I 3 had trouble sitting quietly in the front church pew, and my 4 father was very aggravated. And here I am at my age having 5 trouble sitting quietly.
6 Mike touched on a little philosophy. I just have 7 to relate that I as an engineer also feel a little 8 uncomfortable with engineered barriers and the problem that 9 I know exists, and that is the constant maintenance that has 10 to be required with engineered barriers. And I am of tne 11 opinion that you are never going to walk away from an 12 engineered barrier even though Part 61 says do not count on 13 active maintenance after a hundred years. I do not see how 14 you could ever possib'.y walk away from them.
'5
. I also recognize Bill's problem that the rega are O' if in place and the law exists, so that he has got to live with 17 it. All I can say is good luck, Bill.
18 IR. DORNSIFE: Well again, on philosophy, you 19 know, I think that anybody particularly on a human site 20 whother they have to provide long-term care beyond a hundred 21 years or not, if they are still around, they are going to
- 22 provide itng-term care. It is not something that is going i'
23 to stop at a hundred years. You are going to have somebody 24 around the site doing something for as long as there is a 25 government around, unless something radical changes in our Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 629-4888
()
87 1 society.
( 2 MS. SCHNEIDER: Okay. I want to thank Mike and 3 his panel. I wish that we could have a little bit more 4 time, but I have a few people who have already told me that 5 they are leaving because of their flights, and I understand 6 that. Because I know when I travel that my husband gets 7 real perturbed if I miss flights because I am at an 8 interesting meeting. He seems to think that I should be 9 watching the kids when I am at home.
10 I do want to point out that as a result of your il discussions yesterday with John, that he has brought over 12 two handouts. The performance assessment strategy for 13 low-level waste disposal sites that was presented at the 14 low-level waste conference this year, and the statement of 15 work for performance assessment and methodology development 16 in the time frame. And t2.ey are in the back, so you can 17 pick them up, if you have not already seen them. Let's 18 reconvene in fifteen minutes.
19 (Whereupon, a recess was taken.)
l l
20 MS. SCHNEIDER: If you would all sit down now.
21 Our next session is one that will be of much interest to l 22 those of you who are presently agreement states. And for i
23 those of you soon to be, we are interested in your reactica 24 too.
25 I have heard one or two people comment on why Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
88 1 certain people cre here and why certain people are not. We
() 2 targeted this meeting for those states who do have the 3 regulatory authority presently. And we did ask the past 4 states, and Kentucky was not able to make it, who have past 5 experience at facilities, and then those who will anticipate 6 becoming e regulator and host of the site. And that 7 included the two states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. We 8 did invite Massachusetts, but they did have a conflict. And 9 if we have future meetings, we will be including all of 10 those that are impacted by the regulatory issues.
11 One of the things that we have been working on and a
12 it has been actually years is taking a look at our guidance 13 for evaluating agreement state programs. Back in 1981, we 14 published criteria for evaluating the agreement state
- 15 programs. And someone in the audience can correct me if I O 16 have the date wrong, but I believe that it was in 1981 which 17 included some criteria for mill tailings, because we had 18 additional requirements that we needed to look at agreement 19 state programs who are regulating uranium mill programs.
20 And we have made two minor changes since them. And again in 21 1987, we published revisions to the general policy.
l 22 But we really never took a close hard look at what 23 our criteria was for those states which were regulating 24 low-level waste sites. It we3 one of the projects that I 25 was working on when I had time, which was on my list of to Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
89 1 do with fifty other projects that I never get around to.
() 2 We were very fortunate though this summer to have 3 Jim Shaffner do a three month rotation with our office. And 4 the project that he was assigned was to take a look at our 5 guidelines. And even those of us who are health physicists 6 agree that occasionally it is worthwhile talking to a civil 5 engineer.
8 MR. FRY: With an interpreter?
9 MS. SCHNEIDER: With an interpreter, I agree with 10 you. I have to get that in. There were more than those two 11 comments that were made yesterday on HP. Jim har. worked on j 12 this, and I do believe that it is a multi-discipline 13 approach. Because I think that low-level war.te application 14 is a complex licensing action that takes several different 15 disciplines to make it go smoothly in order to get a 16 document and a license that we can all work with.
17 Jim is going tc go through the revisions. For 18 those of you who were not in the agreement r, tate meeting 19 that we had in October, this was first pre sented there, and 20 he gave aa overview for about twelve minutes. This is going 21 to be in much greater detail. I 22 And for those of you who do not have drafts 23 stamped on your package that you picked up at the back, we 24 would appreciate you stopping by and stamping it draft, 25 because this is a draft. It is going out this week to the l
t Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
()
r 90 1 rest of the states. It has not at this point. Those of you
() 2 at this meeting are the first ones to receive the actual 3 document. <
4 We plan on getting the comments from the states 5 and any comments that 3>u have here. And we will then be 6 revising it and then sending it forth to the Commission for 7 publication of formal comments, as we have done with other 8 revisions to our criteria. And with that, I will turn it 9 over to Jim.
10 MR. SRAFFNER: Thanks, Kathy. For those of you 11 who were at the agreement states meetings, some of the early 12 background material that I will give will be somewhat 13 repetitious. Where I would like to diverge significantly 14 though is in the latter portion when we discussed the 15 specific changes that are recommended in the guidelines 16 which you have in front of you. Because I would like that 17 to be more of an interactive type session, because these are 18 things that are going to affect you.
19 And certainly, there is a formal process for you 20 to provide comments, but we feel that this is a good 21 opportunity for you to get some of your observations and 22 concerns in an early stage. So I think that the most 23 benefit will be if this is primarily an interactive session.
24 25 I would like to touch briefly on why we considered Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4880 L
91 1 that supplemental guidelines were needed to way that we
() 2 evaluate agreement state programs. First, of course, with 3 the legislation in 1980 and 1985, there is an increased 4 emphasis on low-level waste disposal. And of course, you do 5 not need to be told that tnere is an increased emphasis on 6 state participation in low-level waste disposal.
7 We also considered, as Kathy alluded to, that 8 there might be a slightly different focus between the 9 radiation control program and what we have labeled the 10 radioactive waste control program. In many cases, one is a 11 subset of the othcr. The radioactive waste control program 12 is a subset of the radietion control program.
13 But in some states, it is feasible that it may not 14 be, and we wanted to allow for this distinction. Also, we 15 wanted to allow for the fact that in some states that there O 16 may be a division of regulatory responsibility. That the 17 low-level waste license is a large and complex operation, 18 and there may be one or more state agencies that are 19 responsible for regulating those activities.
20 Another concept that we wanted to get across and 21 one that I know is somewhat controversial is the concept of 22 the clear distinction between the regulatory and the 23 promotional responsibilities. At the early stages of site 24 development, it is very feasible that there is only going to 25 be one state agency that is involved. And oftentimes, it is Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
92 1 not that easy to distinguish between the regulatory and 2 promotional responsibilities.
3 Of course, the history of the NRC is one of having 4 to recognize this distinction and something that caused the 5 Energy Reorganization Act in 1974. So it is something that 6 we are very aware of.
7 And finally, we considered that we had to 8 recognize the hybrid nature of the low-level waste disposal 9 program. You know, certainly the major aspect is radiation 10 control, but it also has aspects of the urtnjum mill 11 tailings program. And to some extent, and I think that a 12 lot of this came out this morning, talking about structural 13 containment and in some cases waste, the reactor program.
14 So we wanted to try to consider all these aspects in the NRC 15 guidelines.
() 16 So we went about to develop revised guidelines.
17 And the primary application of the revise, guidelines is to 18 the states that are represented here, the states that will 19 be involved in regulating the disposal of low-level waste.
20 So primarily, the material that you see emphasized and 21 highlighted in the proposed changes to your guidelines i
22 applies to these states that will be regulating disposal.
23 But it applies to all agreement states in the 24 sense that other states whether they are hosting a site or 25 not have a responsibility to assure that the waste l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
()
1
93 i 1 management activities that come under their purview are done 2 correctly and in accordance with Part 61. Because this is 3 something that you will want to insist on.
4 And in fact, it was a subject of discussion 5 yesterday, that you were going to be particularly concerned 6 that the waste that is coming into your site has been i 1
7 proparly classified, packaged and labeled. And that it is 8 appropriate for whatever type Part 61 disposal that you 9 might select.
10 So therefore, there are aspects of the guidelines 11 that pertain more universally to all states that have some 12 regulat ry authority over waste management.
13 I do cant to emphasize again that the states will 14 have, as Kathy mentioned, due process to formally review 15 those proposed guidelines. And before I get into the nuts
(} 16 17 and bolts of the proposed changer, I would also like to mention briefly the internal procedures which the NRC will 18 use to implement these guidelines.
19 These procedures are a document that was prepared 20 in concert with thn proposed guidelines. The internal 21 procedures are just that procedures that will be used by our 22 RSARs as they review state programs. And these were 23 reviewed by the NRC staff. They contain questions that will 24 be asi.ed of the states, and the states will see them in due 25 course if and when the guidelines are used to review their j Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
94 1 low-level waste program. But the internal procedures will O 2
- c=oe e =r th vroeo a 9 18 11= *i 9 tor <or 1 3 public review. ,
4 How I would like to get into some of the changes 5 that were proposed, and give you a chance to understand [
i 6 them, and also take some questions and comments that you l 7 might have on them.
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1 I've characterized these as Category 1 and r
2 Category 2 as categories that are consistent uith the i
) guidelines that are in effect now. But I uou!d, I guess I'd 3
4 like to have Kathy maybe in just a second explain the 5 distinction between the two categories bucause I think she 6 can do it better than I can and I'd just like to have that 7 emphasized.
8 MS. SCHNEIDER: That's why both our names are 9 down. I'm just a technical assistant to this one. We still 10 need a civil engineering and a health physicist together to 11 make this work.
12 These of you that don't know, we do take a lesk at 13 vario'is aspects of the program. Category 1 ir.dicators are 14 those that we feel are essential for maintaining public 15 health and safety. Category 2 are those that are supported
() 16 in Category 1 and we ise this when wc're doing the reviews 17 to indicate how well the program is doing.
18 There is further detail in the paper if you have 19 any additional questions.
20 MR. SHAFFNER: Thanks, Kathy.
21 The first one that falls under Category 1 is one 22 that suggests that there needs to be a clear legal authority 23 for the State to regulate the disposal of low-level waste.
24 now, this seems like a fairly basic concept and in most 25 cases, it would probably involve nothing mere than looking Heritage Reporting Corporation j (202) 628-4888 (
() i
96 1 at legislation that enables your radiation control program.
() 2 But there are some unique aspects of low level waste 3 disposal, and we just want to make sure that everybody, you f
4 know, that is, you know, that your legal counsel is I
5 comfoxtable with the fact that whatever legislation you have 6 in place is adoquate to regulate all the aspects of low-7 level waste disposal.
8 And one of the areas that again we're homing in on 9 is the concept that I mentioned earlier of the distinction ,
10 between the regulatory and promotional aspects of low level 11 waste management. Certainly, both functions are appropriate 12 within the State Government. But we consider that those 13 functions should be separate. ,
14 By the way, this is the point where I welcome any, 15 you know, you know, any commento. The reason i say that is 16 I know that in this particular one, there probably are 17 different points of view. And I just want to emphasize as I 18 go through these, that I welcome any comments you might have 19 to stimulate some discussion. l i
20 Yes, sir?
21 MR. INGERSOLL: This is Earl Ingersoll, State of 22 Washingtca. -
23 When you develop this promotional bit, what do you ,
24 mean? l 25 MR. SRAFFNEh When I say, promotional, I'm f Heritage Reporting Corporation '
(202)/628-4888 O
97 1 talking -- that sounds like somebody putting on a plaid suit
() 2 and going out with a burner and saying, buy this car or.
3 something.
4 What I meant is the legitimate concerns that a 5 State has to, you know, to make a major decision if they are 6 going to have a low level waste site that, you know, to go 7 through the steps that are necessary. The analogy I would 8 nae is for instanoe the Texas Low Level Waste Authority is a 9 promotional organization as opposed to a regulatory 10 organization. They have a vested interest in making sure 11 that a site gets, you know, gets sited in the State of 12 Texas.
13 Reuben?
14 MR. JUNKERT: Well, I bring up an issue and you 15 are all aware of it, we have in California, we wear several 16 hats and my hand prints and foot prints were all over our 17 project as quote we want to use the word "promotional," and 18 someday I'm going to wear the other hat as a regulator.
19 And I'm wondering if you see this as a real 20 problem for us, how, what might we do to avert any clash 21 down the road?
22 MR. SHAFFNER: I don't, and I'm going to give 23 Kathy an opportunity to address this, too. I don't think 24 it's something we would consider a real problem. It's just 25 something that, as we look at your program, and we want to Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
98 1 make you aware of it if you're not already, some of the 2 specifics where the dichotomy between the two functions may
(~}
w/
3 como into play and may be questioned in your process, either 4 by the public or somewhere in your, you know, in the steps 5 that you have to go through.
6 Kathy, do you want to edd anything to that?
7 MR. DORNSIFE I just want to add something to 8 that.
9 It's a category 1 item but you can't tell us 10 what's not acceptable?
11 MS. SCHNEIDER: Well, I think that's the one tning 12 you have to keep in mind about the agreement states. Most 13 of these things that Jim was talking about are based on 14 experience that the original people and the headquarters 15 people have had over the years in reviewing programs.
(D 16 Can everyone hear me?
17 What we're looking at, and I'm going to use some 18 specific examples, certainly the ideal situation is Texas 19 where it's truly two separate agenciec, one licensing the 20 other. The one where it's closest that we have some 21 concerns and we did during the negotiation of the agreement, 22 was Illinois, where he has the responsibility for developing 23 a site and for regulating it.
24 And it was one of the areas where there was 25 considerable discussion with the State of Illinois during IIeritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
99 1 the negotiation of the agreement, how they would separate f- 2 that and take care of concerns about conflict of interest.
D 3 Now, during our reviews, because one of the pluses 4 in the agreement state program is the': there is more than 5 one way to do something, that we wil be looking at that and 6 seeing how well things are working. .nd is there any 7 problem or there might be some comp: mise or even an ,
8 appearance of conflict of interest.
9 So we can't tell you right off what's right and 10 what's wrong because each State I've personally looked at i
11 has been a little different.
12 MR. DORNSIFEt Can you give us an example of what 13 you would find not acceptable? o i
14 MS. SCHNEIDER: Somebody who is making licensing 15 decisions -- let me back up. If somebody has been involved ,
() 16 in picking the site without any due process, like, and I 17 hate to pick on Illinois, you know, but if you don't mind, 18 those of you from Illinois because I looked very closely at [
19 your situation, where they' re goir.g to pick the site. t 20 However, they have different groups working at it and have 21 got the public involved in it, very similar to what yaa've !
22 done in Pennsylvania, where they've got oversight advisory 23 committeen, it's been a public process. ;
24 And the group that's been involved in the 25 developing is a little separate from the group that will be v l Heritage Reporting Corporatdon j (202) 628-4885 ,
O
100 1 involve in the actual licensing. Have I mischaracterized 2 things? And there is that separation within it.
(~s
\~ 3 It all comes down in an agreement state anyway 4 that the Governor has the responsibility. Now, how you 5 divest that responsibility for both developing a site and 6 regulating a site, if he's got to do something for the 7 agreement. We think it's a legitimate area for us to take a 8 look at and have concerns about.
9 Now, if there wasn't that separation in Illinois, 10 we would have been still discussing their agreement. But, 11 you know, it was an area of concern, they did separate it.
12 He do feel that there won't be a problem of conflict of 13 interest.
14 MS. SALUS: When you do review that, since I 15 wasn't -- I don't know exactly how you go about it, do you
(} 16 look more at the substance how does the agency actually in 17 handling issues that -- over the past year or --
18 MS. SCHNEIDERt I think I look, Betsy, --
19 MR. SHAFFHER: Yes, we're still on the --
20 MS. SCHNEIDER: We're taking a look at the 21 legislation, how you're set up. We're certainly, have not 22 ever had in the past, an indicator to say that it should be 23 two separate agencies, that's what we prefer.
24 We' re now going to go back and at this point, 25 we're going to see how things are working for those states Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
101 1 that have an agency.
(-)
(_ 2 MR. DORNSIFE I might assume that since you 3 didn't identify -- for us, you're not concerned about the 4 way we're set up.
5 MS. SCHNEIDER: I don't know what state you're in 6 ao far as your draft package. I think that's not been an 7 issue because you've had some separation and public 8 involvement. I wasn't involved at this point, Bill. I'd 9 have to talk to those that have.
10 MR. SRAFFNER: I might point out that as we were, 11 the problem that we had when we were going through those, of 12 courso, was that we rea ize that there's 29 states that 13 we' re dealing with out t here, and that you all do things 14 somewhat differently in your internal structure. And that
("3 15 we need to be responsive to that. And that's why we can't
(_)
16 give a specific answer to Bill's question. Because we're 17 just virtually dealing with 29 different entities that do 18 things a little differently. Virtually impossible to write 19 something that's universally applicable.
20 Kathy said we're going to have to look at things 21 on a case by case basis.
22 MR. DORNSIFE Well, I guess what my concern is, I 23 mean, we provided all the documentation to you early to get 24 your comment before we came in for a compatibility review.
75 I would assume that this is not something at the last minute Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
(_)s
102 1 you'd tell us? <
2 MS. SCHNEIDER; No, I don't think so.
3 MR. DORNSIFE Okay.
4 MS. SCHNEIDER: But we can, we'll take a look at 5 that after. Remember, these are proposed, too. This is 6 first draft. As I'm saying, if that's an area of concern, 7 we can go and look at that but I want to emphasize that's, 8 you know, that's what wo're trying to get is some feedback 9 on the area.
10 For your specific case, you know, we'll take a ,
11 look at that but I don't think that was an area from a 12 legislative standpoint that you would have had any problems.
13 MR. DORNSIFEt But you should also recognize these 14 are typically mandated by law.
15 MS. SCHNEIDER: But we work with the, you know,
{} 16 17 like I said --
MR. DORNSIFE: And we' re stuck with it.
18 MS. SCHNEIDER: We'll talk about that later.
19 MR. SHAFFNER: I gussa I should add, as you go 20 through the proposed regulations too, you will notice that 21 the extant verb is "should" rather than "must." These are 22 guidelines, they're not regulations, even for Category 1.
23 The second one we've highlighted is a separate 24 low-level waste emergency response plan. And this is in 25 consideration of the fact that a low level waste site is a Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
103 1 large complex industrial operation that in some cases will 2 differ significantly from other entitles in your radiation 3 control program, and we just want to make sure that the 4 States have adequately thought out, you know, aspects of the 1
5 emergency response plan that may be applicable to their low I 6 level waste program.
7 It may be, you know, contained in the, you know, 8 Jn the overall state radiation emergency response plan or in 9 the overall emergency response plan, just to insure that 10 there's been some thought givan to the uniqueness of 11 possible emergencies and contingencies associated with a 12 low-level waste site.
13 And the third item is implementation of low level 14 waste licensing guidelines. Now, you might scratch your 15 head there and say that implementation of low-level waste
{} 16 17 licensing guidelines is a category 1 and yet as you will see later, development of low level waste licensing guidelines 18 is a category 2. And the point that we're trying to make 19 there is that the development of the guidelines and what la 20 contained in the guidelines is primarily the states' call.
21 Certainly, they'll use NRC resources to help them develop 22 them.
23 But the major concerns as far as health and safety 24 is concerned is that they are adequately implementing those 25 guidelines. That they have them, that they've developed on Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
104 1 their own and that they are implementing those guidelines.
m 2 The fourth area is systematic documentation of 3 vendor approval. It's clear from the discussion this i t
4 morning that there's major concerns, that states are l 5 properly concerned about the product that is going into the 6 waste site and the product that the waste is fixed in, l 7 cement, Dow medir,, whatever. And we are concerned that 8 there's a process by which they document the approval of 9 whatever media they use.
10 An example would be the certificates of compliance !
11 that are being used by the states now as far as high 12 integrity containers to see that the utility is carrying 13 this one step further and, you know, having some kind of a 14 process by which they document the approval of 4
{} 15 16 solidification media and other media that are being used and that are formally called out in their license as adequate to [
17 go into their site.
18 Also consider inspection of waste generation ;
19 activities, category 1. And this of course, this is one !
i 20 that applies to all the agreement states, one that I ,
21 emphasized earlier. The importance of making sure that .on- [
22 host states that are sending waste to waste sites are [
?
23 properly regulating the classification packaging and waste [
24 forms and labeling that are going to be exported to low [
s 25 level waste sites. l l
1 l
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105 1 Of course compliance is another area that we want
) 2 to emphasize and we want to make sure that the inspections 3 of the program is consistent with a program phase. And what 4 I mean by that is that whenever, whatever activity is going 5 on, be it construction, or operations or closure, that the 6 inspections that are being perfotmed to provide the quality 7 assurance, if you will, of that phase are consistent. In 8 other words, during construction, you might want to 9 emphasize the engineering aspects and the soil mechanics 10 aspects, or if you're relying on structures, the structural 11 aspects of inspection.
12 During the operations, of ceursa, the emphasis 13 would shift to radiation protection. And of course this 14 would dictate the types of individuals that would be 15 involved in the inspection.
16 And that gets to the last goal which is the use of 17 multi-discipline area inspections. And this is something we 18 consider very important in most of the aspects of regulation 19 of site development. The use of people with varying 20 backgrounds and disciplines, particularly radiation 21 protection engineering and earth sciences in the inspection 22 program to give a comprehensive overview of the status of 23 compliance.
24 Before I go on to Category 2, I'd like to ask if 25 there's any comments and --
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106 1 Yes, Earl?
(} 2 3
MR. INGERSOLle :
activities?
Inspection of waste generation If you're talking about a compact, that may be 4 a little easier, although I'm not sure you'll have no 5 troubles there, but in our case what we're getting right 6 now, stuff from all over the country, I don't even t'. ink 7 about inspecting the generator's activities.
8 HR. SHAFFNER: No. I know what your concern is.
9 And assentially in your case, I guess, you're going to --
10 I'm sorry, go ahead.
11 MS. SCHNEIDER: Just let me jump ir.. It wouldn't 12 be under your group, Earl. We would expect the people who 13 are regulating the other licensees, the other generators, as 14 part of their inspection modular or, you know, the 15 procedures, they should have and they should take a look at, 16 you know, when they do the inspection of the hospital, the 17 university, at how the waste is being characterized and 18 classified.
19 MR. INGERSOLL: Within the state. ,
20 MS. SCHNEIDER: Within the state. 10 that's what 21 that's driving, not you as the regulator of the disposal 22 facility but those people who are regulating the generators.
23 MR. INGERSOLL: Well, what I was concerned with 24 was not that particular bit, but the breadth of who is going 25 to look at the other 47 states.
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107 j 1 MS. SCHNEIDER: No, no, no. Well, if the other,
() 2 the other 28 states, we're putting more emphasis on the 3 agreement states, now, and NRC is I believe also looking too j 4 at their compliance program is, you know, what are the 5 generators doing, are they meeting Part 61. That's the 6 whole idea behind 61 was that it was a systems approach, and j 7 we're just putting more emphasis on -- and I see Virgil 8 coming up.
9 HR. AUTRY: I want to ask a question about that, a
10 also.
s 11 If a State got a memorandum agreement to inspect a l 12 utility, would that automatically discontinue NRC's I
, 13 inspection of those same activities?
14 MS. SCHNEIDER: No, it does not.
15 MR. SRAFFNER: We understand that this can be 16 looked at from two ways. As Kathy mentioned, you know, in 17 our review, we will be looking at the, you know, reviewing 18 non-agreement host states and what they are doing as far as
, 19 the generators, but there's of course, there's states that 20 are host states that have a vested interest in making sure l
21 these activities are carried out correctly.
22 MR. DORNSIFE Jim?
23 MR. SRAFFNER: Yes?
24 MR. DORNSIFE Does NRC consider permitting 25 systems, like permits to use the original facility, in their Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 a
108 1 purview?
r^g 2 MS. SCHNEIDER: Not usually.
~
3 MR. DORNSIFE What do you mean, not usually?
4 MS. SCHNEIDER: Depends on how the legislation is 5 set up on the permitting.
6 MR. DORUSIFE That requires going in and 7 inspecting reactors and other licensees?
8 MS. SCHNEIDER: I'd have to get the lawyers 9 involved on that.
10 But the present three commercial burial sites use 11 permits as part of thcir landlord authority. And, you know, 12 use that as their stick for allowing access and, you know, 13 and denying access. So, you know, we've taken a look at all 14 the legislation and the regulations for all three of the 15 existing sites, and the way it's set up, it's not under us.
( 16 It's going to depend on how you set it up in your 17 state. If you're acquiring reactors, that's something we're 18 going to have to get our lawyers involved in. But you have 19 the MOU, too.
20 MR. DORNSIFE We're going to be inspecting on the 21 MOU as part of the pu.imit.
22 MS. SCHNEIDER: That's something we'll have to 23 work, you know, and sit down and talk about, Bill. I just, 24 I can't give you any information on that. I don't know how 25 that will work out.
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109 1 MR. DORNSIFE Okay. !
A
() 2 MR. FRYt The regs that North Carolina doesn't 3 have are the alte access permitting rega, but it would be in 4 that intent that we would do that for the generators in our 5 own state. But there are some North Carolina law specific 6 things, the moet specific of which is the certification that 7 the generator is I think the nords are "using the best 8 available volume reduction technology," and that has to be 9 certified by somebody, not us or by us, using what I would 10 anticipate would be the regulator of that facility's -- but 11 we will in fact have to have some kind of an agreement 12 beyond just the fact that you're an agreement state or 13 you're not an agreement state or you're the NRC.
14 MS. SCHNEIDER: Right. It's my understanding and 15 correct me, that a South Carolina law they presently require 16 certification that the packages have been packaged according 17 to all applicable requirements.
18 MR. FRY: We're talking abcut the regulatory 19 agency certifyir g or getting information to us to allow us 20 to certify this bit about not just self-certification.
21 MR. SHAFFNER: Paul, did you want to make a point?
22 MR. LORAUS: Yes. Our inspections are --
23 MS. SCENEIDER: You want to use the mike so the 24 Court Reporter can pick it up?
25 HR. LORAUS: Paul Lohaus.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 bs
110 1 Our inspections at the reactor facility would be 2 directed at compliance with the waste form, waste f )
As 3 classification of waste manifest requirements. However, 4 there are also additional requirements that are termed the 5 Transfer verification Requirements, which means that a 6 licensee who's transferring waste to another licensee, in 7 this case, from the reactor to a disposal facility for 8 disposal, must make sure that that licensee is authorized tc 9 receive the type, form, quantity of the waste that's being 10 shipped.
11 So if there are, let's say, different requirements 12 or special requirements above and beyond Part 61 that would 13 be set out say in the disposal facility license governing 14 the operation of that facility, that will be semething that 15 could be picked up as a part of those Transfer Verification p}
( 16 amendments.
17 But in terms of other agreements and things like 18 that, I don't think we really get into looking at those as a 19 part of our inspection program.
20 MR. DORNSIFE In other words, you're saying, 21 Paul, I think you're saying that is we would indeed be 22 inspecting the facility to make sure they met the license 23 conditions for the site. If the license conditions for the 24 eite were acceptable to you, that's all you'd look at. You 25 wouldn't care what would go into the spec.
l Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
r 111 g 1 MR. LORAUS: I'm not sure I understand you.
(} 2 3 conditions.
MR. DORNSIFEt About inspecting its license I
4 MR. LORAUS: In other words, you're saying that ,
5 under the MOU and sub-agreement that you would be --
6 HR. DORNSIFEt No, no. I'm not talking about the 7 HO!' I'm talking about under the permit.
8 HR. LORAUS Okay. I think that would be 9 something that would be handled by the state and the l 10 gener:cor under whatever contractual arrangements are set 11 out between the site operator and the generator generatirag 12 that wasto. Those are contractual obligations. We would i
13 not cover that as a part of our inspection. We deal with !
i 14 Part 61, 20.311, and to make sure that the licensee 15 receiving the waste is authorized'to accept the form, the O 16 type, the quantity, of that waste. ind that's done under f i
17 what's called the transfer verification provisions of our 18 regulations.
19 MR. DORNSIFE You don't understand my question, I 20 don't think. What I'm saying is, let's say we have a 21 license condition that specifically requires them to do 22 something about classification, for example, and you approve 23 it that it's acceptable it's compatible. And we go in and !
24 inspect something that's normally under the programmatic l
25 area, the PCP for example, and make sure they're meeting the l l
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112 1 license conditions. But it's under a permit, it's not under 3 2 an MOU or anything. It's part of the permit which is really
) 3 a contractual agreement, too, between us and the generator.
4 You're saying that that's probably acceptable?
5 MR. SHAPTHER: I don't think we would get involved 6 with that particular aspect. That's something for you, for 7 your site operator, the contractual obligation is something 8 that they would work out. I don't think we would get !
9 involved in that. If there's a rule that the state has, and !
10 in your case, which you do, I don't think we would cover i
11 that as a part of our inspection. That's something that's 12 up to the operator and the State. ,
13 MS. SCHNEIDER: I'm gcing to use my discretion as 14 a chair person, and what we're talking about here, Bill, is .
I 15 what wa're going to do, what we in the State Agreements [
() 16 Program, regional people, are going te be looking at the l 17 sites, there's a lot of other gray areas that we're still 18 working out. The MOU is a mechanism to allow the states to 19 have a role in verifying the waste thet was being sent to 20 the compound, and that's outside or this.
I 21 So, I'd like, we are on short time, I'd like to i 22 call it back so Jim has an opportunity and there will be 23 plenty of opportunities after this, if you want to stick [
24 around, where we could get together, or maybe for a further 25 meeting we can talk about some of those. Or after these get -
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
113 1 published, as some of these areas of issues are raised, we 2 could address them in more detail, if that's all right.
3 Decause we only have about a half hour.
4 HR. SHAFFNER' Thanks, Kathy.
5 And I'll try -- in Category 2 areas, I'll go 6 through the list and then invite any comments in those or we 7 can go back and revisit the Category 1 areas.
8 In Category 2, we included budgetary flexibility 9 and that's in o der to get the States to recognize --
10 budgetary flexibility, we're trying to make everyone aware 11 of the fact that low level waste, that the development, 12 operation and closure of the site is cyclic in nature in 13 that in certain aspects of it, it's very resource intensive 14 and thus very budget intensive. And in other areas, it's 15 not.
16 Certainly in the, you know, during the frenetic 17 days of the licensing process, you know, there's gcing to be 18 a lot of resources that have to be expended, whereas 19 possibly during the post-closure phase, it's not going to be 20 as resource intensive. And we want to nake sure that the 21 state's budget structure and the way that they finance the 22 regulatory process recognizes this budgetary flexibility and that the appropriate funds are available at the appropriate (23 24 time.
25 The second area is the availability of nor-Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 m
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t 7
114 i a
1 redlological lab services, radiation control programs are l t
l 2 well aware of the need for, you know, radiological lab
, 3 services in the administration of their program. But of t L
i 4 r,cu rs e, as we are aware, in the low level waste program, 1
5 there's a need for a lot of confirmatory analyses with 6 regard to materials other than radiological materials; 4
7 testing of soils, testing of engineering materia 2s, testing ;
)
8 of waste forms, that would be part of your program. And you 9 have to have, or should have the readily available lab t
[
10 services to perform these tasks. !
I j 11 We also consider the utility of a licensing ,
t 12 project manager. And this is, I guess you might say, a l i
13 personal prejudice of mine, but I think I've heard it !
l 14 reiterated here among a number of people, the need to have j 15 somebody who's basically going to live, breathe, and sleep i i
() 16 this project to see that the licensing activities come to I
l 17 successful fruition. That doesn't necessarily mean issuing [
L
)
18 a license but it does mean making a decision in a timely l f
3 19 fashion and consider that they're needs to be a person who ;
l 20 is the focus of these activities. And it just can't be !
t l
21 something that somebody does incidentally, you know, over 22 coffee in the morning.
I I 23 Another area that we consider useful is
{
24 implementing a license document management system. As you I
25 are probably aware, there will be a tremendous volume and i r
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_ _ - - - _ - , - - - - - - , - - _,..-# ,,__..,____...--._,,t__. . . , , _ . . _ _ . . . _ _ . . , _,_.,__.,___,._.-,__w. .____-.._,._v..
115
,- 1 diversity of materials that are representative of various h 2 phases of the lie;ense application / letters, databases, 3 reports, studies, charts, kind of thing.
4 Tnis information is going to be in public domain 5 for the most part and it's -- I won't say imperative -- but 6 very utile to have the information managed in a system that, 7 you know, that is understandable and usable, and also can 8 certainly facilitate various aspects of both your licensing 9 and later on your compliance program.
10 Another area to consider use is public 11 involvement. Now, of course, public involvement is l 12 practically a given in the promotional side of site low 13 level waste management. Maybe it's not so clear sometimes 14 how public involvement comes into play in the licensing 15 process. But we consider the public does have a stake in 16 the licensing activities and thus a stake in the decision-17 making process as far as licensing a site, and to a lesser 18 extent in some of the other activities, in compliance.
i
, 19 An area I guess that I thought was going to be 20 fairly controversial but now I'm not so sure because I think i
j 21 in most cases, states are planning to go beyond the 22 guidelines that we've set. And that's the area of minimum 23 staffing requirements, both with regard to technical 24 qualifications, level and training. As Kathy alluded to
! 25 earlier, we consider a low level waste endeavor one that is Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4885 O
t 116 ;
l 1 multidisciplinary in nature. And certainly there needs to
( 2 be a cadre of staff that's well-versed in engineering, earth 3 sciences, environmental sciences and. health physics.
4 And I'm sure, Kathy, you'd have given that in !
5 leverse order, but --
6 MS. SCHNEIDER: Yes, j
'7 MR. SKAFFNER: And probably, and I'm not going to, [
- 8 you know, say which one is more important. I consider them j 9 all important and, you know, it's a balanced healthy i
10 dialogue such as that's going on in this room these last two j 11 days that, you know, that comes into play in, you know,
- 12. doing a good job. As far as staffing level is concerned, 13 we've suggested somewhere around three and a half to four 14 staff years dedicated to low-level waste projects, p?.us -- I ;
15 forgot to bring this up, you know, this is a no no - plus a f 16 resident on-site inspector. That's one that we wrestled 17 around with and it is included, the recommendation that [
i 18 there be a resident low level waste site inspector in l t
19 addition to the three to four staff years invo) Sd in the 20 licensing and compliance functions.
21 Yes, sir?
22 MR. AUTRY: I don't knov that anybody's ever going f 1
23 to ha a this ,roblem again, but you say a resident ,
t 24 inspector There n've been times in the past certainly when (
i 25 a single inspector was ns. adequate. And even now, a single i
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117 1 inspector cannot see 100 percent of the things that he 2 should be seeing.
3 MR. SHAFFNER: Well, we're not going to go out and 4 get you if you've got two.
5 MS. SCHNEIDER: That may be a comment you want to 6 make, though, in reviewing the guidelines, in view of your 7 experience. Maybe we're underestimating the effort.
8 !R. SHAFFNER: Yes, C.D.?
9 MR. RAO: Are you anticipating that the resident 10 inspector during the licensing phase or only during the 11 operation?
12 MR. SHAFFNER: During the operations phase.
13 MR. RAO: I meant in the construction phase?
14 MR. SHAFFNER: Yes. I guess certainly there's 15 going to be a need for inspection activities but this 16 requiremen'. is aimed mainly toward when the site is actively l
17 receiving and disposing of waste. Certainly, there's going 18 to be a need for adequate training for the staff in the 19 diversity of activities that they're going to be involved in i 20 and we've made some suggestions in that regard. f 21 And finully, something I allucod to in the 22 Category 1 area is the development of low level waste ,
23 licensing procedures. Certainly, it's incumbent on the ,
24 State that is going te regulate disposal of low level waste ,
25 that they have in their pocket the procedures by which i
I Heritage Reporting Corporation '
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118 1 they' re going to do it. Bill Dornsife had, I guess, alluded 2 to this earlier when he made his pitch for using standard
{v^] 3 review plans.
4 That's certainly, you know, certainly one way to 5 go and obviously one that the NRC heartily endorses. There 6 may be other approaches that the states want to consider.
7 And I don't know that we're going to get too involved in the 8 nuts and bolts of whatever procedures that you come up with.
9 We are g9ing to be interested in knowing that you do have (
10 those procedures and you've considered that adequately.
11 Before I turn the floor over, I would like to 12 emphasize that these, for those of you who have radioactive !
13 waste control programs that are separate from your radiation 14 control program, that these are incremental requirements.
15 They are not, these in no way relieve you from the rest of 16 the guidance that's already in place, you know, ss far as 1
17 the overall radiation control program. Because these areas [
18 of course emphasize things that diverge somewhat from the 19 radiation control program as far as low level waste is [
l I
20 concerned. But those aspects are, you know, as important if i
21 not more more important and need to be considered, too. j 22 So if the waste control program 10 part of the 23 radiation control program, that's a given, but for those of 24 you where they reside separately, you want to keep that in 25 mind.
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119 1 With that, I've got about five or so minutes left.
2 I'll open up the floor to any additional comisonta people 3 might have. I see my compadre, Larry Pittiglio, coming to 4 the microphone.
5 MR. PITTIGLIO: I'm Larry Pittiglio. You had made 6 a statement that you believed or you and Kathy have 7 estimated three and a half to four man years effort to 8 process a license application.
9 MR. SKAFFNER: No. That's not -- I'll let you 10 finish your question, but that wasn't what I was saying.
11 MR. PITTIGLIO: Okay. I'd like to clarify that 12 because NUREG 1274, which is NRC's document, and which you 23 were actually a major centributor to, estimated at about 14 eight man year's worth of effort, and I would not want to 15 leave, I'd like to get a little clarification on this thing.
16 MR. SKAFFNER: Thank you for bringing that up.
! 17 Well, what the three to four refers to is permanent full i
i 18 time staff. That is not to imply that the effort is only 19 going to imply, this is for the whole program. No, 20 certainly, as Larry points out, that during the licensing 21 phase, it's going to be a lot more resource intensive than l
22 that and NRC has suggested about an eight or so man year l
23 effort in order to complete that. And of course, that can l
24 be carried out in a number of different ways, you kn ow, 25 either by full time staff or contractual agreement or some i
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120 1 other arrangement that you might have. But that is a good i 2 point we want to clarify.
3 Yes, Barbara? 3 4 MS. YOUNGBERG Barbara Youngberg.
5 I notice on page 14 of the draft, you recommend a 6 technical advisory committee. A lot of us have advisory 7 committees already existing with citizens and interest 8 groups and things. Is this something different? Can you 9 say something about the make up of this committee you' re 10 recommending?
c,.,,,f' 11 MS. SCHNE1 DER: Well, I think the thing to 12 remember is these are guidelines and we will be using them
'- 13 to take a look at your programs. Some, you know, some sort 14 of advisory committee, such as your citis. ens advisory 15 committee, could fall into that, that you have some sort of 16 mechanism available. And again, it's a Categvry 2, it's not 17 a Category 1. So it's those things we feel are not v 18 essential for protecting public hea.'.th but they certainly 19 back up your system process.
20 So, you know, as a reviewer, I would not havs a
. , . . . 21 problem with a state that has a sort of dif.'erent situation.
e,et. -
22 We've done that in others. I'll give you an example.
f , [l , .
- >. i 23 You' re just not as familiar with it. In the usual case,
)-
$ p'? 'V 24 it's appropriate to have medical advisory committore but
,4. .
25 some of the very small states where they only have 100
- t. -
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121 1 licenses, or 90 licenses, they don't have medical advisory
. r-3 2 committees but they have other options available that get
/
3 the same job done. And that's how we look at it.
4 Any other questions?
5 HR. WOODRUFFt Mitchell Woodruff of the NRC of --
6 I just wanted to emphasize a caveat one thing 7 it's very important that each of you go back and review 8 these guidelines thoroughly and comment on them. Because we 9 as NRC Agreement State people and you as agreement states 10 are going to have to live with this document. And we're 11 always trying to improve the document, make it clear, 12 precise, and directly to the point.
13 Which brings up the second part of my comment. And 14 really, I appreciate the problems that we get into in 15 developing this thing, but on page 16, the first underlined 16 statement says, "States should have budgetary flexibility 17 with regard C .e cyclic nature of the program."
18 No1 , I don't know whether that's a lead in 19 statement or whether it has hidden meaning, and I would like 20 to hear any Staff comments related to that, if it's needed 21 or not, or clarification.
1 22 MR. S HAFF'IER I addressed that in my remarks but 23 apparently I didn't address it well enough. I don't 24 consider that it has any hidden meaning. The idea, again, 25 was to account for the fact that in the overall process, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
122 1 there's about seven major steps where the regulators are 2 concerned. Some of those are going to be very resource e' T
( 3 intensive, such as licensing. Some of them are not going to 4 be resource intensive and just want to make sure that in out 5 year budget planning that people, you know, we know that at 6 the state level, there's a tremendous competition for 7 dollars.
8 And, you know, when you're going up against the 9 education program or something like that, you know, you're 10 going to lose and we recognize uhe reality of that. But we 11 want to make sure that somewhere built into the system at 12 least there's a recognition that you only need two people 13 and that, you know, the money to pay for them this year.
14 But two years down the road, you're going to acsi five 15 people and the program is going to be more tesource 16 intensive. And that's just the point that we're trying 17 there.
18 MR. WOODRUFF: Okay, thank you.
19 MR. SRAFFNER: And any suggestions that you have 20 to clarify that will be helpful.
21 Dr. Marshall?
22 DR. MARSilALL : Stan Marshall from Nevada.
23 I'd like to ramble for just a minute and to answer 24 the question. I think a good analogy of developing a waste 25 site and proceeding with a burial program is the man pushing fleritago Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
123 1 a rock to the top of the hill. Once it goes over the edge, 2 it can get away from you. I agree that the licensing 3 project manager concept is a good one. You need an in-house 4 license expert. Once the facility is operat'ional, does that 5 license expert also become the inspection enforcement l
6 manager?
7 MR. SKAFFNER: I don't know that we were that )
8 forward thinking, Stan. Certainly we are looking for 9 renaissance people in this program. We don't think that 10 you're going to go out and have a a guy do a good year in 11 licensing for two years and then fire him, because he 12 doesn't fit in with your --
13 DR. MARSHALL: Is there aa intent to include at 14 the scaffing level item, someone who deals with the .
1 15 enforcement program? They' re not really the same. 1 16 MS. SCHNEIDER:
( In many cases, the best program, 17 and I'm going to go from experience, is somebody that has 18 both licensing and inspection background. And in like our 19 regional program right now in Region 1, the people who 20 license also go out and do inspections. So, you know, I 21 would, my initial reaction was I would expect that the 22 person whose involved in licensing would also be involved in 23 the compliance. And that's not, you know, that's not 24 unforeseen.
25 Certainly, that's the way it's been in I believe Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 6
124 1 South Carolina.
2 Did Virgil leave already?
3 A lot of these things you're seeing reflected in 4 this document are the experience we've gained in reviewing 5 present sites and ones that are closed. And trying to pick 6 out what we see are the best things, the most effective 7 programs. But we, like Jim said, we didn't get into that 8 level of detail.
9 MR. SHAFFNER: We tried not to be intrusive in 10 your program and at least leave in the guidelines for you 11 collectively to make that call, how that's going to be 12 handled and, you know, how you would use those individuals.
13 Yes, sir?
14 MR. DORNSIFE Bill Dornsife.
35 Page 26, under confirmatory monitoring, I guess I q
lo don't understand that, because yesterdey, you said that you 17 don't expect us to go out and do soil sampling and other 18 things on a confirmatory basis.
19 MR. SHAFFNER: Well, I think -- is John Starmer 20 still here because I don't want to put words in his mouth.
21 I think he was referrino specifically to QA check on the 22 site characterization.
23 What we're referring to more here, I guess, is 24 confirmatory measurements with regard to operational 25 aspects. And, in other words, things that you mig..t want to Heritage Reporting Corporation
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125 1 do in developing, you know, you might have a requirement in 2 your license that a waste form had a certain, you know, 3 minimum structural capability, whatever it may be, and have 4 a process in place whereby you would confirm that.
5 MS. SCHNEIDER: I think an example is Nashington 6 has gone through testing some of the solidification 7 processes.
8 MR. DORNSIFE Some of the what?
9 MS. SCHNEIDER: Solidification mediums or that, 10 you know, they have that process and they've looked at that 11 from a regulatory standpoint in house. That's what they --
12 MR. HARMON: Bill, in response to that, there may 13 well be, too, that type of inspections or whatever the state 14 programs do. We're assuming that a state will have an 15 active quality assurance program in place.
)
s 16 MR. DORNSIFE This says confirmatory 17 capabilities.
18 MR. HARMON: Capability.
, 19 MR. DORNSIFE And that implies you have to have 20 the instrumentation.
I 21 MS. SCENEIDER: Capabilities F.ay be some of that 22 stuff you're contracting out though, and some of the states 23 do now with some of their environmental monitoring samples, 24 they have contracts available for testing, certainly --
25 MR. DORNSIFEt Haybe you want to rewrite that Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
126 1 because our WCP instrumentation, talk about meters and all g 2 things that are available beforehand. That would mean or 3 imply you have to have on your staff that capability.
4 MR. SRAFFNER: Well, okay. The other thing of 5 course is that was in the back of our mind here when we 6 wrote that was mixed waste and confirming the hazardous 7 constituents.
8 MR. DORNSIFE I've no problem with the non-9 meteorological aspects. I have probleme with availability 10 for soils and materials testing. That's the part I have a 11 concern with that maybe a lot of -- I don't think we have 12 that capability currently in house to do that.
13 MR. SHAFFNER: Again, it wouldn't have to be 14 necessarily in house, just that you've got an agreement 15 somewhere that you could get it. Certainly, the resources 16 are available.
17 MR. DORNSIFE: Why isn't an tdequate quality 18 assurance program, like Larty said --
19 HS. SCHNEIDER: That may be a point you want to 20 bring out in your comments on it.
21 MR. DORNSIFE. The way it's written implies a lot 22 more than that.
25 MS. SCHNEIDER: Well, like I said --
24 MR. SRAFFNER: Okay, we'll accept that comment.
25 Anything else before we --
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
127 1 Well, Kathy, we're running behind. Sorry.
2 MS. SCHNEIDER: That's all right. Actually, Dick 3 stole some of my time. How did you know what I was going to 4 say.
5 My plea is, please take these home, look at them.
6 They are going out to the rest of the states. We welcome 7 your comments, even though we'll try not to have any cry of 8 -- what is it -- birds or whatever, because these are what 9 you're going to have to live by.
10 The next step is that we'll present it to our 11 commission and it will be published for public comment.
12 Many of you have --
13 MR. DORNSIFE: Do you have any idea what the time 14 frame is?
15 MS. SCHNEIDER: We'll probably give the States a 16 month. That's what I have in my letter at this point. And g
17 from that point when we get the comments back from the 18 States, we'll push it forth to our commission and then 19 whatever the time frame it is to get them to look at it and 20 give us a vote and then to publish it.
21 FR. DORNSIFE So you want initial comments back 22 in a monta?
23 MS. SCHNEIDER: Right, from the States. It's only 24 going out to the States as a preliminary draft document.
25 We'll take -- if you have problems, you know, Maritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
128 1 finding time to write, call either myself or -- since Jim, fP 2 we couldn't convince Waste Management to let us have Jim 3 forever, he is back with his old group. Call me or Cardella 4 and I'm sure Paul will let Jim anawer some questions if 5 neither one of us are available, he'll take any of your 6 comments, too, 7 For those of you who have begun to see the impact 8 of these, we are going out as we are doing the reviews and 9 the visits and seeing how well you would stack up against 10 our proposed guidelines. And so, although we' re not putting 11 them in place when using the present guidelines, we are 12 asking you questions about your program that are consistent 13 with these new guidelines to see if we are being practical 14 in what we're proposing or not. So we are trying, you know, 15 to tie it to real life experience.
16 Any other questions?
17 And what I'd like to do, and the schedule calls 18 that we open it up to public comment, is if there's any 19 comments from the public or any additional state, at this 20 time, we'd like to take those. Or have we worn you all out?
21 (No response) 22 MS. SCHNEIDER: Okay, with that note, I'd like to 23 thank you for attending. We've got a considerable amount of 24 things to think about. One last, Cardelia's holding one up, 25 is please turn in your evaluation forms.
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129 1 FR. DORNSIFE Are there any plans for any 2 subsequent meetings?
3 MS. SCHNEIDER: Based on the evaluation and I 4 think some of the things I've heard here, It's going to be 5 my recommendation to my management that we'll be talking 6 about it. I think that we've gotten a good dialogue going 7 and a lot of things that have been addressed here. And I'd 8 like to see a continuation of this meeting. We will be 9 looking at it, and then based on that, make a decision.
10 MR. DORNSIFE: All right. I would support that 11 but I think we have to be more specific topic oriented, not 12 so general.
13 MS. SCHNEIDER: Sounds good. We'll be looking for 14 more euggestione.
15 Anything elce?
f 16 All right, thank you for coming, and safe trip to 17 those of you who have to fly. And egain, anyone who wants to 18 go and visit the new NRC facility, we'll be more than 19 welcome to give you the tour.
20 (Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the meeting was 21 concluded.)
22 23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
1 CERTIFICATE ,
(_
3 This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the 4 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter 5 of:
6 , Name: Low-Level Waste Disposal Regulatory Meeting 7
8 Docket Number:
9 Place: Rockville, Maryland 10 Date: November 16, 1988 11 were held aJ 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 the 15 direction of the evwrt reporting company, and that the W 16 transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing 17 proceedings.
18 In/ Qv - -
4 N" f I
19 (Signature typed) : Mark D. Handy
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20 official Reporter j 21 Heritage Reporting Corporation 22 23 24 25 l
i 5eritage IWporting Corporation A (202) 628-4888
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