ML20203G212
| ML20203G212 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/24/1986 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| References | |
| FRN-51FR7806, RULE-PR-61 NUDOCS 8608010030 | |
| Download: ML20203G212 (217) | |
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o UhllED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
LOW LEVEL PADIOACTIVE WASTE POLICY ACT AMENDMENT (LLRWPAA) OF 1985 d
LOCATION: BETHESDA, MARYLAND PAGES: 1 - 212 DATE: TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 1986 i
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LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE POLICY ACT AMENDI1ENT (LLRWPAA)
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v 1 EEE1EE1{ Page 2 Welcome and Introduction - G. Wayne Kerr, Director, Office of ' State Programs 3 3
Low-Level Waste Management Issues and Perspectives 4 - John Davis, Director, Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards 7 5
NRC Roles in Implementing the Low-Level Radioactive 6 Waste Policy Amendments of 1985. (This session will include topics such as approach to dealing with below 7 regulatory concern, emergency Access, greater than Class C waste, State certifications ,etc. ) - Robert 8 Browning, Director, Div. of Waste Management, Kitty Dragonette, WM, Rob MacDougall, WM 20 9
NRC's Technical Assistance Program to States and 10 Compacts (This session will address the letters and FR notice on this subject - FR 3866 Vol 51, No. 20 -
11 John Starmer, Section Leader, Low-Level Waste Section,WM 98 12 Agreement State Issues. This session will address f) < s the following items: Concerns over Regulatory vs.
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'k 13 Management Responsibilities under LLRWPAA for Agreement States. Limited Agreements option.
14 Training and State efforts to establish capability to process license applications. Additional State 15 issues - Donald Nussbaumer, Asst. Dir. for State Agreements Program 112 16 State / Compact Perspective. Critical siting 17 activities and problems. Development of State regulatory capability. Identification of needed 18 NRC support - Discussion - State Representatives 122 19 20 4
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2 MR. NUSSBAUMER: If I could ask that you be seated, 3 we would like to start the meeting off.
4 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is 5 Donald Nussbaumer, and I am serving as Chairman of this 6 meeting. We wish to welcome you to our meeting on the Low 7 Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendment Act of 1985. The 8 purpose of this meeting is to discuss with selected state 9 officials NRC responsibilities under the Act, including the 10 approach being taken and progress being made in fulfilling 11 NRC responsibilities.
12 The NRC staff wishes to obtain state views on 13
( technical and institutional issues associated with NRC and 14 state implementation of the Act and to determine any addi-15 tional areas in which NRC can be of assistance in the develop-16 ment of disposal' facilities. Copies of the meeting agenda are 17 in the packets for the state representatives and are available 18 in the rear of the room for others in attendance.
19 Also, available in the rear of the room are copies 20 of Federal Register notices concerning NRC's Technical
- I 21 Assistancd Programs to the staes and the Branch Technical
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1 22 Position Statement on Licensing of Alternative Methods for
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f23 Disposal of Low Level Radioactive Waste.
g.1 [ 2d This meeting is open to the public. A transcript 25 of the Proceedings is being made and will be available in the f)es l
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NRC Public Document Room in late August or possibly earlier.
2 I ask that you please give your name and affiliation when you 3 Otherwise, your speak and kindly use the microphones.
d statements will not be picked up by the recorder.
3 Also, any written comments on matters taken up at
' this meeting will be placed in the Public Document Room.
7 Following the discussions of the NRC and state representatives 8
on Wednesday, at approximately 11:30 a.m., members of the public will have an opportunity to ask que stions , I ask that to there be no smoking in this room.
" There is a slight change in the agenda this morning.
12 The lunch break will be from 12 to 1:30, instead of 1 o' clock
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(/>((_/~\ as indicated on the agenda. Most restaurants nearby are crowded at lunchtime, and the extra time is needed.
15 The staff of the Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards will be distributing a paper on which 17 they would appreciate your views concerning characteristics 18 of low level waste disposal methods. This paper will be 19 distributed to the attendees shortly, and we would appreciate 20 it if you would fill it out and return it to the table in the e~ 21 i gj back after lunch. This will help us prepare for tomorrow SE 22 morning's panel discussion.
I
! The American College of Nuclear Physicians has
&$2@ 2e{ 23 W extended an invitation to the officials attending this N
r sMB ' 25 { meeting to visit their annual meeting and exhibits being
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()(R.) I held at the J. W. Marriott Hotel in the Washington Convention 2 Center June 23 to 25, 3 Given the relationship of nuclear medicine to low 4 level waste disposal, they felt that the exhibits they had 5 would be of particular interest.
6 To gain entrance, they ask that you report to the 7 press desk at the Convention Center. A copy of their letter
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8 of invitation and their program are on the table at the rear 9 of the room who those who may be interested.
10 At this time I would like to call upon Mr. Wayne 11 Kerr, Director of the Office of State Programs.
12 MR. KERR: Thank you, Don. I want to welcome all
( )( ) 13 of you to this meeting on the Implementation of the Low Level 14 Waste Policy Amendment Act of 1985. We certainly appreciate 15 your interest and hope to achieve a very productive inter-16 change between you and the NRC staff.
17 The passage of the Amendment Act of 1985 clarified 18 a number of issues which had concerned the compacts and 19 individual states. Among these was the clear assignment to 20 the states,the responsibility for Class A, B and C waste, ma 21 while assigning the Federal Government the responsibility EI
, 22 for the greater than Class C waste with a fixed definition.
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-A It, also, gave the states the responsibility for HI 24 low level waste generated by the Federal Government that is H iE 25 not generated or owned by the Department of Energy or as a
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Q b y result of decommissioning of Navy submarines or the result 2 f research and development, testing or production of 3 weapons.
4 Although the concerns over state responsibility 5 have been clarified by the Amendments Act, we felt that a 6 meeting such as this on the portions of the Act that NRC 7 is responsible for and early interaction <.,with the states 8 and compacts would benefit each of us.
9 By design we have invited a mixture of people to 10 represent both technical and institutional viewpoints. The ji Congress of Radiation Control Program Directors Low Level 12 Waste Committee is here representing the states, primarily h 13 on technical issues. We, also, invited a representative from 14 each of the compacts and most unaffiliated states to discuss 15 Primarily institutional issues.
u However, we recognized that the two, technical 17 and institutional are not always easily separable and 18 certainly each impacts upon the other.
19 We are all aware that the commercial low level 20 waste disposal sector of the nuclear industry has changed a 21 drastically since the 1960's; in 1979, when the industry I
_E 22 was reduced to using three commercial sites located in 23 South Carolina, Nevada and Washington with over 80 percent Mk24 w oR of the waste destined for Barnwell, South Carolina. A 8! ' 25 critical situation was developing at that time, due"not to a u:
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O I lack of waste disposal capacity but an imbalance in the 2 distribution of available capacity. Also, in 1979, we saw 3 a number of incidents involving waste shipments, including d truck fire, faulty vehicles and packages with improper 3 paperwork. Governors Riley, Raye and List at that time time 0 used these problems as a catalyst to focus attention on the 7 low level waste situation and to force some federal actions.
8 As you know, in December 1980, the Low Level Waste Policy Act was passed which received broad support from 10 Governors Riley and Raye, NRC, the National Governors II Association, National Conference of State Legislatures and the State Planning Council. The Act clearly stated the r~%
d " federal policy to be that each state was responsible for
" providing capacity for most low level waste generated within 15 their state. They, of course, were encouraged to enter into the regional compacts and would have the exclusionary 17 provision after January 1, 1986. That Act was short and 18 simple with a lot of flexibility, and time has shown it was i 19 too short and'too simple. j 20 puring the five-year period following the passage e~ 21 i gj of the waste policy act, hopes for a solution to the low 55 22 level waste situatica based on straightforward action did
$!lll not materialize. The political balance of the haves versus
>d 5 24 gj @ the have nots prevented any concrete solution. The lack of N' ' 25 p)$$ incentives for the states with teeth in them turned out to j \ ,/ U2
6 1 be a major defect of the 1980 Act. The actions or inactions 2 following the 1980 Act clearly illustrated the need for 3 incentives to assure that commitments for state action are 4 met in a timely manner, with penalties for failure to meet 5 them.
4 Those regional compacts and states that do not 7 meet the milestones as outlined in the 1985 Amendments Act 8 will be severely penalized by the pocketbook.
9 The passage of the Amendments Act of 1985 is the 10 result of direct Congressional involvement, even though the 11 Congress would have preferred that the states solve the 12 problems among themselves.
GO is The resu1e is e come1ex giece of 1eeis1etion, with Id a lot of hoops to jump through. The Act is designed to 15 assure that the currently operating disposal facilities will 16 remain available until January 1, 1993, subject to volume 17 limitations and other raquirements and establishes a system
- 18 of incentives and penalties to promote steady progress 19 toward new facility development.
20 1,think we all expect the end result of these e 21 actions w[11 be a comprehensive and workable national progrc.m h.,* 22 to address this issue. Another likely result ii, a substanti al g.
.( $ 23 increase in low level waste disposal costs.
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The focus of today's meeting is on those items in 25 the Low Level Waste Policy Amer.dments Act which require (aa;-
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1 implementation by NRC and the states and our approach and 2 progress to date. In addition, we hope to interact on the 3 technical and institutional issues associated with the Act' 4 implementation to determine how NRC can address the outstanding 5 issues and be of assistance to the states and compacts who e are the center of attention in the implementation of the Act.
7 Thank you very much.
8 Don?
9 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Thank you, Wayne.
10 Our next speaker this morning will be Mr. John 11 Davis who is Director of the Office of Nuclear Materials 12 Safety and Safeguards, and as many of you may know, that lh 13 office has broad responsibilities for all licensing by the 14 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, except for reactors. This 15 includes both high level and low level waste safeguards ,
16 material licensisg, fuel fabrication plants and other fuel 17 cycle facilities.
18 John?
19 MR.-DAVIS: Thank you, Don.
20 As Don said, I am John Davis. I am from Washington.
21 I am froms'the Federal Government, and I am here to help you.
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22 (Laughter.)
b 23 l MR. DAVIS: Seriously, this meeting has brought 24 together people from Washington and from throughout the m aR
' 25 country, from the Federal Government and other government C)f da i
GO I entities concerned with low level waste activities, and 2
hopefully, we are here to help each other because goodness 3 I am very pleased to be here with you knows, we need help.
d this morning, and I want to say a few words about our 3
meeting from, at least, my perspective and what our roles O are, the Federal Government and the states in this very 7
important national enterprise under the Low Level Radioactive 8
Waste Policy Amendments Act. This meeting is very important to us here at NRC, and we believe you will find it useful 10 to you.
11 Wayne Kerr has made some comments already about the Amendments Act. You know the Act. The Amendments Act I requires both NRC and the states to carry out their 14 respective responsibilities under very tight schedules.
15 As we proceed with our efforts we want to be certain that we work closely with each other, so that each 17 of us can fulfill our considerable responsibilities on time.
18 We see this Act as requiring very close cooperation, very close cowork efforts to make this Act a reality'in fulfilling 20 and solving this national problem.
21 i el~ The NRC does not want to produce regulatory guidance I
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, that the states cannot use nor that has to be extensively E2
!j reworked once we have produced it. We want to know what your N
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$ 24 problems are early, so that' we can move early to solve these N[;ie' 25 f3 4 problems if they are within our jurisdiction. We both
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. h/3 L) 9 I cannot afford delays, and we at the NRC are charged by our 2 health and safety responsibilities to do what we can within 3 our statutory mandate and available resources to smooth this d process so that the state programs can proceed and so we 3 can both bring this national program to conclusion on the 6 timetable Congress requires.
7 I want to underline here that the timetable in the 8
Low Level Waste Amendments Act for state development of new disposal capacity is very tight. If your state is not in a 10 regional disposal compact containing currently operating II disposal sites, the Act's first milestone requires your 12 state to enact legislation to join a compact or certify its
" intent to develop a disposal facility within its borders.
If you state has not already done so, you are no doubt,
" acutely aware that that milestone is one week away.
16 Even if your state is a so-called "non-sited state" I7 that has already enacted compact legislation or plans to 18 develop its own site, time is of the essence. By January 1, 19 1988, your sta'te or the compact your state has joined must 0
develop a piting plan with detailed procedures and a schedule 21 i f for establishing a disposal facilitiy site.
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Among other things the state or compact must by that j2I 23 time have delegated all the statutory aathorities needed to
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the siting plan. For most states there is only g Ml 02 25 one legislative session left between now and 1988. If that
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- 10 1 session begins in January, as it does in most states, your 2 state executive or compact commission has about six months 3 to refine its siting plan sufficiently to identify and prepare 4 legislative proposals for all the necessary additional
, 5 authorities.
6 It is, also, important to keep in mind that non-7 sited states and compact regions will prvbably need to begin.
8 implementing their siting plans before 1988, in order to 9 meet that critical 1990 milestone for submitting a complete 10 license application. The January 1, 1990 milestone is 11 critical because the Amendment Act allows currently operating 12 disposal facilities to stop accepting wastes from generators 13 in non-sited states after December 31, 1992, and we estimate 3d that it will take three years for an applicant to receive an 15 NRC license, construct and begin operating a new low level 16 waste disposal facility.
17 Thus, if the licensing review cannot begin by 18 January 1, 1990, a non-sited state or compact may have to l' assume additional responsibilities and possibly legal 20 liabilities beginning in 1993.
21 , Several things need to be completed before work l 22 can begin on a license application. Since the Amendment Act 11 gj 23 requires the application to be found complete by January 1, 24 1990, the application will have to be submitted sufficiently 5 25 4: in advance to permit NRC or the agreement state agency to make
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'.h g 11 v i that finding. This time will depend in part on site-specific 2 conditions and on the degree of additional engineering in the 3 design of the facility, but for planning purposes we believe 4 that a completeness review will take about three months.
5 This brings us to the beginning of September 1989. Our 6 basic requirement for waste disposal, our NRC's Part 61, y requires a year of environmental monitoring of the supposed 8 site for the disposal facility. This brings us to the 9 beginning of September 1988, as an estimated effective dead-10 line for the selection of a site for licensing, a scant two 11 years, two months from now. You will note that up to this 12 point I have talked as if an application can be prepared h' 13 concurrently with the environmental monitoring. Actually, 14 this monitoring will liave to be completed and thoroughly 15 analyzed in order to properly support the application. Thus, 16 in order to have'a reasonable confidence that its license 17 application can be accepted in time for the 1990 milestone, 18 a non-sited state authority or compact commission may well 19 have to choose a site by mid-1988, and this assumes that 20 thereuwill be no additional delays from lawsuits or other 21 procedurali or technical surprises.
U 22 It should be clear now that at least in our view g l 23 a state or compact will have to be well along in the
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>{I$24 implementation of a completed siting plan considerably before M dE
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di 25 the January 1, 1988, milestone for the development of that
2 Oo 1 plan. In states and compacts now lacking the necessary 2 siting authorities, this makes the upcoming state legislative 3 session that much more critical.
4 NRC is working to develop the guidance needed for 5 states to meet the 1990 milestone. On March 14, we published 6 in the Federal Register a draf t branch technical position 7 on the standard' format and content of new disposal facility 8 license applications. We expect to have a final guide 9 available by the end of 1987.
10 The standard format and content guide will cover, 11 also, disposal methods other than improved shallow land 12 burial which was the base disposal method for meeting our O la ocra rert so ice =eiae ru1e- we ere, e1= , worxias to 14 prepare ourselves and provide guidance to agreement states 15 f or timely review of license applications.
16 By the'end of 1988, we expect to have a standard 17 review plan specifying the technical reviews required for 18 processing an application. We, also, expect to have all the 19 procedures and technical capability in place by then for l 20 timely NRC staff review of applications for alternate 1
21 disposal 5ethods. In addition, as we have said in recent U 22 Federal Register notices, and these will be discussed later
!g!23 in this session, we are preparing to provide free licensing
-6 24 technical assistance on regulatory matters to compact Hl
{E d5 25 commission and state facility tsiting authoritie s whc request l
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I it. We will, also, provide technical assistance to requesting 2 agreement state agencies that will be responsible for 3 regulating new facilities to help them prepare technically sound and timely licensing decisions.
3 These technical assistance efforts will be limited 0 to areas of a regulatory nature, however. We cannot allow 7 ourselves to become involved in the development of a 8
specific facility design that we may someday have to regulate.
Our assistance will, also, be limited according to our 10 available future resources.
' So, the message is the deadlines are real; the time 12 is short; cooperation is essential. In light of the limited
)( I3 time and resources available to NRC and the states, during 14 these very critical upcoming years, let me say just a bit 15 about our approach to alternative disposal methods. This 16 is an area of high interest.
17 As a regulatory baseline, let me emphasize NRC 18 continues to believe that a facility meeting our 10CFR Part 63 19 requirements for improved shallow land burial' will~be 20 sufficient,'to protect public health and safety from 21 i l
8 radiological risk.,
Let me emphasize NRC continues to believe 22 that a facility meeting our 10CFR Part 61 requirements for 3a j improved shallow land burial will be sufficient to protect
&$ *j 24 g E public health and safety from radiological risk. We, also, S $ 'j ~ 25 re cognize , howe ve r , that many states and compacts may
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] i incorporate additional engineering into their disposal 2 facility proposals in order to obtain local acceptance.
3 Some additional engineering may, also, be needed to satisfy 4 regulatory requirements for disposal of mixed waste, depending 3 on the outcome of our ongoing discussions with EPA on how to e resolve the differences in our respective rules and statutory 7 btandate s.
8 As you know, mixed waste or low level radioactive 9 wastes that, also, contain hazardous wastes is subject to 10 the Resource Conservation Recovery Act of EPA, that is 11 RCRA.
12 Although we recognize a need for NRC guidance in h] 13 the area of engineered alternative disposal methods, the 14 tight deadlines in the Amendments Act and our limited 15 resources make it essential for us to set priorities within 16 the NRC for our (juidance, development and pre-application 17 assistance efforts. To assure ourselves that our assistance 18 goes to those who are most serious about using it, for 19 example, we will want to have an authoritative state or 20 compact commitment to pursue development of a specific 21 alternatide disposal method. In our view a state or 22 compact that has taken such a step would rightly have a higher gh23 claim on our efforts than a state or compact still exploring
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. its options. We, also, intend to give priority to developing m R
' 25 licensing guidance or alternative methods incorporating d
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.h mQ I standardized facility or component designs that have been 2 found acceptable by a number of compact commissions and 3 state facility development authorities. We think that d
standardization will assist both NRC and non-sited states and 3 compacts in a number of ways. First, it would permit a O concentration of state and federal resources on the one or I
.two or smal. number of alternatives preferred by most 8
interested states.
This would be more likely to result in better 10 analyses and earlier refinements in facility designs when II adjustments are least costly in terms both of money and of 12 program momentum.
13 Second, standardization would permit time savings I#
through possibly NRC pre-approval of facility or component 15 designs. If a state or compact is committed to providing 16 the additional conservatism of highly engineered disposal 37 it should be able to take advantage of the opportunity to 18 shorten the licensing approval process by obtaining pre-19 I application approval of well-analyzed and high-quality designs i 20 which means, as you believe you have a facility or part of ea 21 /
g"g a facility which is appropriate for review, don't wait for I
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{ the total application to get with us for our opinions but 6 ,3 23 j 2 get with us early.
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24 Third, widespread state acceptance of one or two 25 facility designs will permit resource savings by reducing O =( b
Q,.m 16 0 i state or corapact staffing requirements. A state or regional 2 facility development authority would not need the level of 3 technical staffing or contractoral support required to justify 4 a highly individualized design or approach. This, in turn, 5 would reduce interstate and interregional competition for 6 available engineering and geotechnical expertise.
7 There might be additional savings to state or s regional development programs from a more unified state 9 interest in a standardized disposal method. More of the 10 developmental work might be done in the private sector.
11 Firms interested in marketing a facility or a technique 12 known to be of widespread state interest may be willing to h:] 13 14 do more of the design and development work on their own.
Finally, widespread state acceptance of a particular 15 facility design would obviate the need for a state or compact 16 to justify why it's proposed alternative dif fers from those 17 in other states or regions. This is not to suggest that 18 such justification could not be made, but only that they I
19 might be avoidable with a standardized facility design 20 widely considered to be appropriately conservative.
21 @o a state or compact authority under an already U 22 tight timetable, an already tight deadline for the submittal 1g123 of a complete application, not having to make redundant M 24 comparative analyses of designs or disposal methods can W{ R 3 ' 25 make the difference between meeting the 1990 milestone or O (",
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2 We believe standardization on a single or a few, 3
very few methods of disposal has distinct advantages.
4 Let me turn now to the specific products we in the 5 NRC hope to see from this conference.
O First, it would be most useful to obtain a represen-7 tative view of state and compact officials concerning the most 8
important attributes or characteristics you would like engi-neering alternatives to provide, in addition to those which 10 are already required by Part 61. For example, how important II is it to you to have a facility that provides for early 12 detection of releases, and how early would you want such O
detectica, how imeerteat is the re1etive eeee or remedy, it I#
you detect a potential problem in meeting Part 61 performance I3 objectives? If corrective action can be readily accomplished without removing wastes, how important is retrievability?
II Are there any known trade-offs between providing these or 18 l other additional performance characteristics in meeting the j 19 performance objectives in Part 61?
20 Would there need to be additional waste processing ma 21-g
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or more fu/nding for post-closure maintenance or a longer C 22 period of institutional care? These are some of the issues j2I 23 I hope that we can examine in this meeting.
>:l 24 gj We, also, would like a representative state and e6<'[g$
46 comcact view on the extent to which current 1v identified dE '
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( )V I alternative disposal concepts provide the additional 2 performance characteristics you desire, and when I speak of 3 currently identified concepts, these are those which were d
identified in the NRC-sponsored studies by the Army Corps of 3
Engineers, the aboveground vaults, below ground vaults, 8 earth-mounded concrete bunkers, augered holes and mine 7
cavities.
8 By now you all should have received questionnaires on these issues, and I urge you to fill them out and return 10 them to NRC staff by the close of our business today. Your II response will be tabulated tonight to help focus tomorrow's 12 discussion on alternative disposal methods of most interest I3 h 14 to you.
This discussion will help us meet another of our i 15 objectives, to obtain a representative state and compact 16 view on the feasibility of future cooperation among the 17 states and other interested parties to arrive at a single 18 standardized disposal alternative or at least a reduced number ,
19 a few alternatives identified as best suited to particular 20 climatic o,r other environmental conditions.
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[ 'In addition to our interest in alternative disposal 3 22
, technologies, we hope to obtain state and compact views on I 23 l
!2 a wide range of issues to be addressed in the implementation SI E gj 24 of other NRC tasks under the Amendments Act, and these
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/~N c$ } include such things as emergency access to currently operatinc
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\.> , y sites, NRC review of petitions to declare certain low level 2 wastes as below NRC regulatory concern, state certification 3 for responsibilities after 1992, if the state or compact 4 region in which the state is a member cannot submit a license 5 application that can be found to be complete by the 1990 6 milestone and NRC preparations for the timely processing of y license applications.
3 Although the Amendments Act did not require us to 9 address the question of mixed wastes, we, also, hope to get 10 your views on how best to resolve this regulatory uncertainty.
11 Mixed wastes and the other issues I have listed here will be 12 discussed shortly in this morning's session.
j (-h 13 Please actively participate. As you see, this 14 meeting has a very ambitious agenda, but we felt we could not 15 afford to lower our expectations. There is much work to be 16 done in very little time. We need to be certain that NRC 17 and the states understand each other's concern as we move 18 ahead together and cooperatively on our respective tasks.
19 I appreciate your being here and look forward to a productive 20 meeting and a continuing active interchange.
ea 21 jThe Amendments Act is really a challenge'to us in I 22 government. We see the issue of radioactive waste disposal ,
Ig ! 23 as a particular challenge of the ability of government as an
. A institution to achieve. It is a highly emotional issue. It hl,3 a w R
' 25 24is governed by detailed law. It must be solved, a very real O YE V
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On O 3 challenge as to whether existing institutions can accomplish 1 I
2 it. This requires early and continuing active cooperation. I 3 We in NRC need to know your plans. We need to know your needs , !
4 your reactions to our efforts as early as possible. Don't 5 wait for gatherings such.as these. Let us communicate, and 6 as we say down South, " Time's awasting." So, let us get on y with it, a Thank you.
9 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Thank you, John, for setting the l 10 stage so well for this meeting. Are there any questions for 1 l
11 Mr. Davis?
12 Is not, I would like to call on Robert Browning, h 13 Director of the Division of Waste Management in the Office 14 of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards who will take up 15 NRC roles in implementing the Low Level Radioactive Waste 16 Policy Amendments Act.
17 Bob?
18 MR. BROWNING: Thank you, Don. l 19 ThezLow Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments 20 Act of 1985 af firms the intent of Congress that the states 21 are to assiume responsibility for low level waste disposal.
U 22 Congressional consent to seven interstate compacts has, also,
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g l 23 affirmed a national policy of encouraging regional disposal
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( ' 25 however, the Amendments lay out detailed requirements, dE 1
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I incentives and penalties for the transition period until new 2 disposal sites are established. The Amendments, also, assign 3 the NRC a series of regulatory responsibilities. The Commission d
supported this legislation and believes it properly focuses 5 on the timely establishment of new disposal sites.
6 We, in NRC, are firmly committed to our assigned 7
national regulatory leadership role and intend to carry out 8
our responsibilities within the time frames specified in the Act. We are, also, continuing an active regulatory outreach effort to assist states in meeting their reponsibilities. A Federal Register notice identifying specific areas of NRC 12 assistance was published this January following direct (3D Ud 13 correspondence with appropriate officials in each of the Id states.
II In my talk today, I would like to briefly outline 16 specific NRC responsibilities under the Policy Amendments Act.
17 I will, also, discuss several indirect impacts of the 18 legislation on NRC programs, and finally, I would like to offer several' thoughts on the challenge of meeting the siting milestones,specified in the Act.
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j 21 Many of the schedules I am about to discuss are 1 22 more fully described in a draft NUREG 1213 titled Plans and I 23
$% Schedules for NRC's implementation of the Low Level Waste
&$ 24 mij k Policy Amendments which is available here today. I encourage l
M c:: )' ~ 25 5 each of you to get a copy of that document and take a look at '
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'O 22 vg# 1 it because it is our attempt to lay out for all the actions 2 that we have under the Act significant milestones and dates 3 for our actions so that you people can best determine what 4 you want to get involved in and when would be the most 5 appropriate time in the development of our specific tasks.
6 . I would, also, encourage you to comment actively
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7 on that document. For example, if you find that we are on a 8 timetable and schedule that will not be consistent with your 9 timetable needs, that would be of great importance to us 10 to know.
11 Licensing guidance on alternatives to shallow land 12 burial will continue to be an emphasis for our program. The s
13 Amendments Act requires that NRC identify alternative 14 d sposal methods and issue technical guidance by January 15 1987. NRC is further required by January 1987, to establish 16 procedures'and develop the technical capability to process 17 license applications. By January 1988, NRC is to publish all 18 technical information that must be provided to the NRC in a l'
license application, together with available technical 20 requirements for an alternative disposal method. These 21 actions,aie being undertaken in active consultation with I
22 states and other inte. rested parties, such as this particular I
j 23 session we are having today.
[.g ::g24 These provisions are consistent with the commitment 25 the NRC has had for several years, namely, to develop
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23 i guidance on alternatives and to gear up for expeditious 2 review of applications for such alternatives. We have 3 evaluated five alternative : disposal concepts, as Mr. Davis 4 mentioned based on a report prepared for us by the United 5 States Corps of Engineere.
6 The five volume Corps report covers the range of 7 alternatives at the time we commissioned the study we believed a could foreseeably be considered. The include aboveground l 9 vaults, below-ground vaults, earth-mounded concrete bunkers, 10 augered holes and deep mine cavities.
11 On March 6, 1986, the NRC staff published a Federal j 12 Register notice proposing guidance on general licensing (h,
w 9
13 questions an applicant would have to address to obtain a 14 license using an alternative disposal method. The public !
15 comment period closed on May 5, and I would like to emphasize !
16 that although the public comment period is closed, in the 17 event you don' t meet those dates, we still would be interested 18 in hearing from you even though it is beyond the public 19 comment period.
20 Comments on the alternatives ident_ified by the NRC ma 21 staff were generally favorable. As you know, we will be el 55 22 discussing alternatives in greater length tomorrow. As
!g ! 23 interest among states, compacts and industr-1 become focused d' b524 on WJ R specific disposal concepts, designs and practices, we will f ' 25 develop more specific guidance. Toward the fulfilling the I
l 4
24
. ]p v
C i Act's requirement to establish procedures to process license 2 applications, the NRC published on March 14, 1986, a Federal 3 Register notice of availability and solicited comments on -
4 a draft branch technical position on the standard format and 3 content of license applications for near-surface disposal of 6 radioactive waste. In this case, the public comment period y closed on May 13. No substantive comments were received.
e This bothers me. It makes me wonder whether our method for 9 making these guidance documents available to; the states and 10 interested parties is really working, and we grould appreciate 11 any comments you have later in the s'ession as to whether we 12 can improve our method of making known our draft positions h 13 which is our attempt to try to get public and state involve-14 ment in our thought process as early as possible.
15 Perhaps the way we are doing it just isn't reaching i
16 the right audience if, in fact, we are not getting the kind 17 of reaction back that we are really looking for. Our internal 18 licensing capability will be established thorugh the I 19 development of a standard review plan, an environmental 20 review plan and the acquisition of the skills, methodologies ma 21 An'd ' codes i ecessary to implement those plans. The Policy J
I 22 Amendments Act requires that the NRC review and process g 23 license applications within 15 months and that technical 2
M $ 24 environmental reviews and public hearings be consolidated.
w aR '
25 It should be noted that the 15-month review period m s k,_)a
~ /N 25 VA V I does not apply to public hearings which may be protracted 2
depending on the degree of controversy involved. The NRC 3
intends to consolidate its actions under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedures 3
Act to the extent practicable. '
, Technical guidance for disposal of low level waste 7
in concentrations exceeding the Class C limits in 10CFR, Part 8
61 regulation may, also, be needed. This will depend on the results of the Congressionally-mandated study on greater than 10 Class C waste being conducted by the Department of Energy.
11 The Federal Government has disposal responsibility 12 for this waste under the Policy Amendments Act as you people
() 14 probably are well aware.
Guidance will be provided 10CFR, Part 60 for deep 15 geologic disposal or under Part 61, if some type of near surface disposal option is pursued by the Department of 17 Energy.
18 To provide a remedy for emergencies caused by 19 possible restrictions on access to currently operating 20 disposal sites, the amendments include emergency access e~
j 21 i provisions. Emergency access may be granted by NRC to I
22
, prevent an immediate and serious threat to public health I
! and safety or to the common defense and security of the W e
@ nation.
5 24 23 Provisions for granting temporary access and l
N ' 25 di extensions are included. The law specifies that prior to
./ ( )
6
(]) I granting access the NRC must evaluate alternative practices 2 that could suffice in lieu of emergency access. These 3 include storage, obtaining disposal site access by voluntary agreement, buying unused disposal allocations from another 3 generator or ceasing waste generation.
O This last alternative, added in the closing days 7 of the legislative session underscores the intended stringency 8 The NRC staff anticipates of the emergency access test.
providing guidance on emergency access requests prior to 10 January 1987, which is the first date at which access could II be denied for failure to meet a milestone, and the schedules 12 and milestones, as I indicated before are in the draft I3
(( ) schedule document that will be made available during this 14 meeting.
15 We, also, expect to develop internal procedures for reaching technical determinations and notifying affected 17 parties by 1987. We believe underlying policy in this 18 matter, because of the controversial nature of it will have 19 to be approved at the Commission level.
20 Eod MacDougall will be discussing this subject, as e~
j 21 'i well as mixed waste and state certification issues af ter 5 22 my talk. NRC is assigned a minor role regarding possible I 23
!2 state certifications to provide for the management of low-WI $ 24 Wj @ level waste af ter 1992. Such certifications are an
~
k 25 Mi alternative for states that did not submit a disposal site
..OOR
Q
- w. n 27
(_/ 1 license application by 1990. Under the law, NRC is directed 2 to publish these certifications in the Federal Register and, 3 also, transmit them to Congress. Although the Act does not 4 require the NRC to review the adequacy of the certifications, 5 we recognize that we may be asked to provide our views on 6 this question by Congress, DOE, or other states.
7 A final NRC responsibility under the Act concerns 8 low level waste that is below regulatory concern. By July' 9 1986, the Commission must establish standards and procedures 10 and develop the technical capability for acting upon petitions 11 to exempt specific wastes from NRC regulation.
12 We are meeting this rapidly approaching deadline
'( ) }
13 by preparing a policy statement and a staff implementation 14 plan that will provide guidance on the information and 15 analyses that will have to be provided by a petitioner.
16 We are, also, improving our computer codes used to assess 17 impacts of ~ such actions and plan to issue a user guide. We 18 are, also, developing review procedures which will be made 19 available ta) the public and to potential petitioners.
20 Depending on experience with individual petitions ma 21 for rule riaking following the policy statement, the Commissior.
~
I 22 may decide to undertake a comprehensive rule making, if lg!23 necessary to facilitate review of future petitions. I would H I $ 24 tike to emphasize that the efforts will take place in paralle:
w?R f ' 25 with ongoing work on petitions that are currently at NRC for l a Cf l
s
( 28
(-
O} I review, such as the petition we have in house for contaminated 2 waste oil. Kitty Dragonette of my staff will be discussing 3 ou.r progress in this area after my talk.
4 As I mentioned earlier, the Act will, also, have 3 an indirect impact on NRC programs in several areas. In 0 light of increased disposal costs and limitations on access 7 ~
to the three existing sites, we expect an increase in 8
licensing actions for interim storage,on-site disposal,- in-I cineration and other forms of waste treatment or volume 10 reduction. In March 1986, we issued guidance for on-site II disposal of radioactive waste. This is NUREG 1101.
12 Licensing work for such practices may, also, bx /)('T,
(_,
13 increase if some states fail to meet siting milestones. As I'
a result of our efforts last fall to prepare for a possible 15 closure of existing sites in 1986, which fortunately the Low Level Waste holicy Amendments Act forestalled, we believe 17 suf ficient guidance is in place to allow timely licensing 18 decisions on these other approaches.
19 I might mention here that there is beginning to 20 be indicat, ions of concern that in addition to the responsible ma 21 gj waste mana/gement options that I just mentioned, there is the II 22 specter of midnight dumping or incorrect disposal of certain
$$ $ wastes that is being raised, and that is something I think WI gj $e 24 we are all concerned about, and if anybody knows of any N / ' 25 S possibility or approach such as that, we would like to know f'so:i
\_)
29
I about it so that either we or EPA, as appropriate, could 2 begin focusing on that. It is extremely important that these 3 changes in the environment, such as increased costs, more d difficult access to disposal sites, if it is leading to 5 waste management practices, such as midnight dumping or 4 dumping it down the drain; if that is starting to go on, we 7 need to know about it quickly and nip it in the bud. Longer 8 term impacts will occur in the event that states are not able 9 to provide for disposal by 1993 and beyond. Under the Act, M any such states would be required to take title and possession II of wastes generated within their borders no later than 1996.
12 Any new facilities to handle the wastes until disposal I3 b] Id capacity becomes available would, of course, have to be licensed.
15 I would like now to offer several observations 16 regarding establi'shment of new disposal sites within the I7 time frames expressed in the Act. As I mentioned before, ;
i 18 the NRC has been aware of interest in alternative disposal I methods for some time. The states have not yet identified, 20 as far as we are aware the spi.:ific alternatives they intend 21 to pursue 'for licensing purposes, however.
22 The NRC is sympathetic to the need for careful j 23 study in reaching decisions. It is critical, however, that 24 states and compacts press forward with host state identifica-25 y tion and selection of potential disposal sites at the same j
(')
\~' The NRC i time they are choosing a specific disposal design.
2 staf f has determined that the site suitability requirements 3 in Part 61 will apply to any near surface disposal method.
4 In effect, a good site is needed, irrespective of any manmade 5 features. For this reason states need not and should not 6 delay time-consuming site selection work while they continue 7 to study alternative disposal designs or concepts. There 8 are several approaches that we believe can expedite licensing 9 of new disposal sites, and Mr. Davis mentioned the concept of 10 standardization, and I won't repeat that in this particular 11 talk. We think it is extremely important, and I don' t think 12 we can overemphasize it.
For any disposal method, including shallow land
- ( )( ) 13 14 burial, the NRC staff encourages early interaction between' 15 applicants and regulatory authorities through extensive 16 pre-licensing cossultation. By fostering an early dialogue, 17 major licensing issues can best be identified and addressed -
18 in a timely manner.
19 Potential technical problems can be discussed and 20 means of mitigation can be identified. Early interaction ma 21 can, alsoi help identify any fatal flaws in a potential site Nb _
"- 22 or a particular design. This would save the applicant time I"!23 g
- 8 and resources in the pursuit of an unapprovable application.
H I $ 24 This is particularly important in light of the tight milestone i wJ R j ' 25 schedules in the Act and the stif f penalties that will apply
/~T
- () d a <
l i
l t
(P) 31 va; s
( i if milestones are missed.
2 Early and open interaction is, also, vital to local 3 acceptance. A great deal of time and debate has been focused 4 on the state and federal framework for low level waste disposa l.
3 We believe the states, compacts, industry and involved 6 federal agencies are all committed to successful implementa-7 tion of the Policy Act as amended. However, the critical a measure of success is the establishment of new disposal sites.
9 The success of this national venture will depend 10 in large measure on the ability of both regulators and 11 developers to establish credibility and trust with the 12 communities that are to host new facilities. We must approach this task with openness, technical competence, scrupulous
()U <'s 13 14 concern for quality and firm resolve to attack each licensing 15 issue and resolve it. The milestones in the Act leave little 16 room for delay. -
17 Thank you very much.
18 At this point I would like some of the staff people, 19 and I will start off with Rob MacDougall to talk about some 20 of the specific things that I alluded to in.my talk. Please ma 21 feelfreedoaskquestions. As Mr. Davis indicated, we Nb l "I i 22 would like to have this be a two-way meeting. We don' t just !
Ig h 23 want to talk to you people. We want to hear from you, also.
.A HI w R 24 MR. WOLLE: Bob Wolle, Southeast Compact Commission.
f g ' 25 Robe rt , I would like you to clarify a little bit or amplify Ds_/dE
32 OnV y a little bit your statements just after you talked about 2 NUREG 1101 and your developments in thinking along storage, 3 on-site storage versus on-site disposal? I wasn't exactly 4 sure where you were coming from there and what your activities 5 are directed at. I say this because at the stage we are in 6 the development of Southeast, a lot is being said about 7 reequiring on-site disposal reactor and that sort of thing.
3 MR. BROWNING: Okay, on-site disposal would be 9 basically burying the waste on a licensee's facility with 10 no intent to ever recover it, whereas storage would be to 11 store it in a facility with the ultimate intent to do somethin g 12 else with it, either treating it, moving it to an ultimate h 13 disposal site, and basically the approach used is analyses 14 to show that by the time that that waste would ever run the 13 risk of being -- the public would ever run the risk of being 16 exposed to that waste, either by having uncontrolled access 17 to the site or any possibility of migration from the site, it 18 would not be a hazard anymore, namely, it is very short half-19 lived wastes. Does that clarify your question? l 20 When we use the term " disposal," we mean when you ma 21 put it som place, and you firmly intend to leave it there mi U 22 forever, with no more action required, whereas storage is Ig h 23 a temporary kind of arrangement where you fully intend to and
. A d k 24 will have to do something else with it, and that is what the W 4R N; ' 25 Low Level Waste Disposal Act is all about. It is disposal with 4,
j
a 33 1 ultimately no intent to have to do anything else with it, not 2 to move it somewhere else or do anything else with it.
3 SENATOR KANY: Judy Kany, Maine. We are interested 4 in really long-term storage of 50 years at a nuclear reactor 5 location. Would you recommend that we make certain that that 6 particular long-term storage facility would be licensable 7 permamently? Is that what you would recommend in order for 8 us to comply with your requirements?
9 MR. BROWNING: By definition, storage would not 10 be, you know, forever.
11 SENATOR KANY: But I suppose if we applied 12 successfully for permanent disposal at that location, then l(h 13 we would be all right, even though it would be, might be 14 our intent, our policy as a state to go with the long-term 15 storage? Would you comment on that?
16 MR. BROWNING: I am sorry. I am not sure I under-17 stand the question.
18 SENATOR KANY: We are interested in long-term 19 storage, such as they have in Canada at Point LePro(?)
20 specifically. We are impressed with their aboveground cells.
21 We considgr that appropriate for our location and our U 22 circumstances, and in order to meet your requirements, I HI 23 assume that we would have to apply for permanent disposal 2d license in order 3 fulfill our intended policy. Would you o
{a UE 25 comment on that? l
.Q wA 34 V 1 MR. BROWNING: Yes, you would have to apply for 2 disposal, if that is the particular approach, you know, an 3 engineered structure aboveground, if that is the disposal d mode that you are focusing in on, and that may very well 5 require some modifications in the event it is concluded that e is an acceptable way to dispos,e of waste, but it would have 7 to be a disposal application, if that is what you fully 8 intend to do, to leave it there forever.
9 Any more questions?
10 MR. NELSON: Bob Nelson. What is the definition 11 of below regulatory concern material.
12 MR. BROWNING: Below regulatory concern, and we 13 will get into this more when Kitty Dragonette talks. Itiis 14 basically waste that is radioactive but which does not 15 require going to a low-level waste disposal site. It may 36 require some othdr controlled method of disposal but would 17 not have to go to a low-level waste disposal site.
18 MR. NELSON: I guess what I am getting at is what IE is the point of determination as to whether it has to go 20 to a low-level waste site or not?
II iMR. BROWNING: Okay, Kitty Dragonette will be talking 22 about what is embedded in the policy document which will be XI gj 23 published shortly. She will get into what the criteria 24 actually are.
es U 25 4; MR. TRUBATCH: Sheldon Trubatch from Commonwealth v
35 (3
1 Edison. Could you briefly explain your view on the extent 2 to which Part 61 is a matter of compatibility for agreement 3 states and the extent to which the agreement states can 4 deviate from it?
5 MR. BROWNING: I believe we have made Part 61 a e matter of compatibility. The question is if they want to do 7 something less conservative, then it would be a problem. If 8 they wanted to do something more conservative, I think the 9 usual Commission policy is to allow more conservatism.
10 The rub is whether it really is more conservative 11 or not.
12 MR. TRUBATCH: Looking the other way, as I under-th;] 13 stood compatibility, it was different rom identity. So, if Id a state is doing something different, an agreement state is 15 doing something different, how would the NRC determine that 16 what the state proposes to do is compatible?
17 MR. BROWNING: It would, at least, have to meet 18 10CFR 61 requirements.
19 MR.<TRUBATCH: That sounds more like identity than 20 compatibility.
21 IMR. BROWNING: No, that is the threshold. That is 22 the minimum. If' they want to do something more conservative, j f23 which we understand is the approach; they want to do more engineering, more processing of the waste than what is d f 24 25 required by 10CFR 61, that could still be compatible, s
n a5 Lj
36 Q-(~)
l
1 MR. TRUBATCH: Okay, but you are looking at Part 61 2 then as a floor?
3 MR. BROWNING: Yes.
4 MR. TRUBATCH: Is that consistent with the 5 interpretations of compatibility with regard to other o r,ecJulatory interfaces between the agreement states and the 7 NRC?
8 MR. NUSSBAUMER: I think I might be able to shed some 9 light on that. We have issued a letter sometime ago on the 10 compatibility aspects of Part 61, and we said there that the 11 performance objectives which, as you know are fairly general, 12 are matters of compatibility, and the dose limits that are h 13 stated in the regulation should be identical. Certain Id administrative licencing procedures, we said, are not 15 necessarily a matter of compatibility. They are the procedures 16 we follow, NRC fdllows, but the state has other licensing, 17 processing procedures. They may follow those. As a general 18 rule, the way we view compatibility is that there are certain 19 standards that we require be identical, such as the Part 20 20 dose limits and the concentrations for release of activity g 21 to unrest cted areas. There are other aspects of regulations U 22 which we think the state should provide, the agreement state I23 should provide the safety concept, but the wording does not 524 have to be identical.
25 There is a third category of desirable features
, (~)o a
37 which we recommend but don' t insist on, and there is a fourth 2 category of things the state should not have regulatory 3 Provisions for, such as nuclear power reactors or high-level 4 waste disposal.
5 MR. TRUBATCH: Thank you.
6 MR. BROWNING: Are there any other questions?
7 MR. SILVERMAN: One quick question. Don Silverman, 8 UNWMG. You referred a little earlier to the possibility of 9 a comprehensive rule making under certain circumstances on 10 below-regulatory concern. Could you comment under what 11 circumstances NRC might undertake that, and what the general 12 scope of that type of rule making might be?
hp 13 MR. BROWNING: Yes, as we get experience with it, if V
14 we see that there is a large volume of these, and i it would 15 be more appropriate to embody our policy statement in a rule, 16 that is what we would plan to do.
17 MR. SILVERMAN: A large volume of rule-making 18 petitions?
19 MR. BROWNING: Yes.
20 At this point then I will turn it over to Rob 21 MacDougal} who will get into a little more depth on some of 52 22 the subjects that I alluded to, and then we will have Kitty gI'23
-4 Dragonette talk about what is going on with regard to the M
WJe 24 below-regulatory concern area.
f ' 25 MR. MAC DOUGALL: Thank you, Bob.
I 9as
fh 38 O I If you will indulge me, I would like to make my 2
presentation in the order starting with the state certifica-3 tion, moving on to the question of emergency access and then d
finishing up with our kind of status report on what we have 5
been doing with EPA to resolve our differences on the mixed 0 My strategy here is that by the time I get to waste issue.
7 the more controversial issues, many of you will be asleep.
Actually the state certification issue is deceptive-ly small in its apparent importance, but when you think about 10 it, and you think about its connection to the 1990 milestone II that both Mr. Davis and Mr. Browning have previously discussed ,
12 it begins to assume a much greater importance. That 1990 I3 milestone is when a non-sited state or compact has to submit Id a license application for a disposal facility that can be I
judged to be complete by January 1,1990. This is effectively I'
the last date by'which Congress felt that a licensing 17 procedure process could get started and a non-sited state or 18 compact could have some reasonable assurance of having an 19 operating site by the end of 1992, when the currently operating 20 sites are no longer required to accept wastes from out of l1 region. '
22 So, looked at from that point of view, the state 23
! certification as an alternative to providing a complete d ,* 24 Wj e license application begins to take on some greater significance.
ei l ' g$
M 3 0c The statutory provision for state certification, and I will (V
O
\/ 1 quote the relevant portions here, requires that if a state 2 cannot submit a license, a complete license application, the 3 governor of the state shall provide a written certification 4 to the Commission that the state will be capable of providing 5 for and will provide for the storage, disposal or management 6 of any low-level waste generated within that state and 7 requiring disposal after the end of 1992.
8 The certification 'must, also, include a description 9 of the actions that will be taken to assure that such 10 capacity exists. NRC is to take that certification and 11 transmit it to the Congress and publish it in the Federal 12 Register. This raises a question. What is the Commission's 13 role in this other than providing, being a go between or a 1d sort of mailman, if you will, to the Congress? Was there 15 anything more kind of implicit in this requirement? The NRC 16 staff assumptions on this question are that we probably 17 cannot afford to assume that Congress did not intend us to 18 be a mailman, that basically the Congress, given the I' importance of ;this juncture in the process, wanted some sort 20 of assurance that a certification would be meaningful and g 21 that there would be capacity available by the end of 1992, U 22 for the wastes g'enerated in the non-complying states. So, we i,I j23 figured that the Commission will probably be asked what it g g 2d thinks about this c reification, and we are assuming that k 25 l the Commission will, at least, want to take some opportunity f)*
40 O. O
(_/ i to determine what sort of role it does wish to play in this 2 Process.
3 The three principal things that the staff is 4 considering preparing some guidance on have to do with the 5 Commission's role in the whole process and, for example , what 4 sort of information ought to be included in any state y certification, how the certification would be' processed within For example, would the Commission simply transmit the !
3 NRC.
9 certification immediately to Congress or conduct a review of 10 the certification and analyze it and then send it to Congress?
1: I think our thinking on this question tends toward the former, 12 rather than the latter so that our review doesn't hold up i
() 13 the process, and third, we may wish to think about some 14 criteria for judging the adequacy of any such certification.
15 One of the things that is figuring in our thinking to at this point is,the possibility that there might be a need 17 for rule making, and so we intend to determine the extent of 18 the Commission's actions by the end of this year and hopefully ,
19 identify the procedures for submitting state certification 20 sometime in mid-1988.
21 Mnless there are any questions on the certification I s 5 22 issues, I will mov,e on to emergency access. As you know, 81 23 under Section 6 of the Low Level Waste Policy Amendments Act gg H I k 24 the Commission is empowered to grant, if necessary, emergency m s2
- f. ' 25 access to eliminate an immediate and serious threat to the
.A Oa5
41
- @9
-1 public health and safety of the common defense and security.
2 Such petitions for immediate access may come from either 3 individual generators or the governor of the state on behalf 4 of specified generators, and the request is to contain such 5 information and certifications that the Commission may require .
4 Essentially there are two kinds of findings that 7 the Commission will have to make in judging whether to grant 8 a petition for emergency access. The first clearly has to 9 do with whether there does exist an immediate and serious to threat to public health and safety or common defense and 11 security.
12 The second set of findings which is a good deal h] 13 14 more complicated potentially is whether the threat cannot be mitigated by any alternative consistent with the public 15 health and safety, including storage, either on site or at 16 an independent fdcility, including the option of obtaining 17 access by voluntarj agreement with any one or more of the 18 currently operating commercial low-level waste disposal l' sites. Another possibility would be to purchase disposal 20 capacity that is unused from a reactor's allocation under 21 Section 5(t, and a fourth possibility is ceasing the activities 22 that generate the waste.
j 23 NRC, if it can make these two sets of findings, l [.g=g24
. that is that there is an immediate and serious threat to a 25 health and safety and that it cannot be mitigated by any
~
. as
42 0 1 reasonable measures consistent with health and safety, if 2 we make those findings, we then have to notify the governors l 3 of the states involved, and they have to designate an 4 appropriate disposal facility or facilities to accept the 5 wastes. We will, also, have to specifically describe the 6 waste and its characteristics and, also, the volume and 7 duration of the waste that must be accepted with a limit of 8 180 days on the initial grant of emergency access.
9 There is a provision for NRC to grant temporary 10 emergency access for up to 45 days, if it can find that there 11 is an immediate and serious threat to public health and 1
12 safety, but it needs more time to come to a decision on whethe r h 13 that threat can be mitigated or not. So, the grant of 14 temporary access, emergency access, in effect, gives NRC time 15 to grapple with the questions of how mitigatable, if you will, 16 the threat to health and safety is.
17 NRC can, also, grant one extension under the law 18 of 180 days, if it continues to be necessary, and the l' generator and,the state, and I emphasize this, have acted 20 diligently and unsuccessfully to eliminate the health and 21 safety threat.
The NRC staff at this point is planning to put out fl22
{
- 8 23 in the near future a notice of intent on how it intends to 24 f proceed, and we expec t that by the end of 1986, we will have 25 f
to have procedures in place or proposed procedures and n d5
-y
l
- Q 43 1 criteria in place to deal with emergency access petitions.-
2 January 1, 1993, as most of you probably know is the 3 first date by which a currently operating disposal site could 4 refuse access to waste generated outside of the compact 5 region. So, we intend to have proposed procedures and e criteria in place by the beginning of 1987, the end of 1986, 7 and hopefully a final rule by mid-1988.
8 There are implicit in this whole section a number of 9 questions about how available this emergency access is suppose d 10 to be, and let me begin by assuring you that if the the threat 11 is immediate and serious, and if it cannot be mitigated, the 12 NRC will provide emergency access, but those ifs are very e
g) 13 important ifs, and the test for whether a potential or
- 14 actual emergency can be mitigated are very stringent, and 15 they are in the statute. So, they don't give NRC a whole lot 16 of flexibility f6r interpretation.
17 We think that it will be very difficult for an 18 applicant or a governor to show that a threat cannot be 19 mitigated using any one of the four things laid out in the 20 law or any .other reasonable measure consistent with public g 21 health and safety, that is to say then that we don' t think U 22 that Congress intended the emergency access provision to be
!g I 23 in effect, an escape clause for delinguent states or compacts.
- ft f 24 This is, also, to say that if there can be a showing of an 25 immediate and serious t hreat to public health and safety, it n
V es
(
(~')
i will be very difficult to get much more than a 45-day 2 extension, 45-day grant of emergency access while NRC grapples 3 with the question of whether the emergency can be mitigated.
4 The purpose of the notification of intent is to 5 sort of lay out what we construe the law to be on these 6 questions and sort of present the message I have just given y you to the general public, and we feel that we owe it to the e states and the licensees to make this clear, that they i
9 cannot assume that a grant of emergency access will be 10 automatic or even that it will be easy. So, both the states 11 and licensees, generators, need to start preparing now for 12 the possible less of access. The generators, for example, will have to consider the development of storage capacity
( )( ) 13 14 or the possibility of negotiating access for their wastes, 15 if they think that they are in jeopardy of. losing access to 16 a site.
17 For the states, if:the governor is going to be is submitting a petition to the Commission on behalf of generator s 19 that believe they are facing an emergency access situation, i 20 the state agencies that support the governor will probably a 21 want to assure themelves and the governor that the petition I
I 22 has a good chanc'e of being granted. So, if you are an I23 agreement state agency or even if you are a developmental 8
I
- 24 authority, you may want to make sure .that the generators do W
d{ k take up the slack and are working to be prepared for this and f3 ' 25 s O ",
- - 45 I that they have taken the available measures to mitigate the 2 potential threat.
3 Note, also, that in the law the extension, the 4 180-day extension after the initial grant of access speaks 3 of the state, as well as the license generator making diligent e efforts to mitigate the potential threat. These are obviously 7 very important and consequential issues, and we are going a to need a significant amount'of input from both the currently 9 operating, the states with currently operating sites who will 10 have to help us determine an equitable procedure for 11 designating a currently operating non-federal disposal 12 facility to take any wastes that we think require emergency s
gtT
- a. 13 access and we will, also, need a considerable amount of input
'N 14 from the non-sited states as to the procedures and criteria 15 and the information requirements that will be needed for a 16 successful petition for emergency access.
17 I doubt if I have put to rest or allayed all of 18 your fears on this question, but in the interest of time I 19 probably should move on to mixed wastes, unless there are a 20 few questions.
21 iMR. KRAFT: I will ask a quick question, Steven g
II 22 Kraft, Edison Electric Institute. Is the NRC role in this i
- fgI 23 area limited to granting or denying petitions for emergency
- 8 d
W I 24 access or can the NRC order some third party to accept 2
j j) ' 25 someone else's waste in storage as one of the mitigating l
(~)
m- Y I i
)
i hqV 46 l I circum- -- I am just kind of curious to know whether it 2 goes one way or the other way, thinking about, say, a reactor 3 that might have a licensed storage facility being forced to take other generated wastes in that state or whether the NRC 5 That is just a thought that is not allowed to order that.
' crossed my mind in talking about these mitigation areas.
7 MR. MAC DOUGALL: It is certainly a fair question 8
and not being a lawyer, I can say pretty much what I will on legal questions and pay for it later, but unless there is 10 somebody from our legal staff who thinks otherwise, my
' initial reaction would be to say that the answer is no, that 12 the Commission would look to the applicant to have tried to
" arrange for some other facility to take the waste.
MR. KRAFT: The applicant or state.
MR. MAC DOUGALL: The applicant or state, yes.
The applicant could either be the governor or a particular I#
- generator and that the only ordering NRC would do would be 18 in the nature of a notice that the waste does have to be 19 granted emergency access and to designate the facilities,the o
currently pperating disposal facilities that are to take it.
l 21 I think tdat is a justifiable reading of Section 6, hnd I
22 l!
since I haven' t been corrected yet, I guess I will let that stand.
- 24 On the mixed waste issue, this was an issue that gj l vi / ' 25 M NRC had hoped the Congress would be able to _csolve in the
...Oou
p 47 I course of putting together the Low Level Waste Policy 2 Amendments Act, and we, both the NRC and the Environmental 3
Protection Agency had supported an amendment to effectively d
delegate the permitting authority for disposal of mixed waste 3 from the, delegate the permitting authority for the hazardous O
portion of mixed low level waste from the EPA to the NRC 7 which thence could redelegate it to an agreement state.
- We no longer support that provision, and I guess in retrospect we are somewhat thankful that it didn't go 10 through because it was based on an incomplete NRC under-11 standing of where the Environmental Protection Agency was with respect to implementing the 1984 Amendments to the O
neeource coaeervetioa aecovery Act-14 We, also, I think, we had a misunderstanding between 15 us and NRC on the nature of the delegation where EPA expected
. that they would retain inspection and enforcement authority 17 over NRC licensees , while NRC or its agreement state counter-
~
18 part would merely have permitting authority in;the first instance.
NRC remains concerned about the mixed waste issue f for a num5er of reasons. Certainly the uncertainty could I
22 make it difficult for a non-sited state or compact to meet I23 the milestones set forth in the Low Level Waste Policy
&$ g$2a ed e
~
Amendments Act and in particular the 1988 milestone for the
$ 25 de development of a siting plan that includes all, that delegates 1
? z 48
! ~ q i all of the necessary authorities to all of the state agencies 2 needed to implement that plan. The states, I think, can 3 legitimately argue that it will be difficult to develop such 4 a plan, if they are not certain of what sort of regulatory 5 requirements it sill have to meet, that is to say if it will 6 have to meet not only NRC's but EPA's, and if there are 7 inconsistencies in those ' requirements whereby meeting an NRC l a requirement could enhance the risk of your running afoul of 9 an EPA requirement.
10 If this proves to be the case, and the 1988 mile-11 stone is missed, and people begin losing access, we believe
- 12 that there could be some health and safety consequences that
(){) 13 are not insignificant, and so, our concern about resolving 14 the mixed waste issue is not entirely a matter of inter-15 governmental altruism, but we think that we have a health and to safety basis for'the concern, as well. This could take the 17 form of increased pressure on storage capacity, increased 18 interest in alterantive methods of disposal, such as on-site 19 disposal, which will mean an increased caseload for NRC 20 licensing and, also, the possibility of course, of unauthorizeil g 21 disposalphactices,suchasBobmentioned,themidnight II 22 dumping.
23 The staff. prepared a policy paper for the Commission g
H I k 24 that is publicly available, and if you haven' t got a copy of W 1R f ; ' 25 it, we could make it available to you, if you will see me
.- ([) di
hO 49 1 af ter the presentation.
2 In the policy paper we made several recommendations 3 based on certain assumptions that it would, for example, be d desirable to eliminate dual regulation, if possible and to 5 minimize the potential health and safety threats from the e
regulatory uncertainties involved and remove any obstacles 7 to continued progress on the siting of new facilities.
8 The options that were presented in the staff paper essentially fall into two categories, one having to do with 10 minimizing the volume and toxicity of mixed waste requiring II disposal at a licensed site which we envision would take 12 place through either NRC guidance on existing regulatory I3 Q I' requirements in Part 61 for the treatment of wastes with hazardous components to eliminate the non-radiological 15 hazard to the maximum extent practicable, and if necessary 16 we may have to ask for additional statutory authorities.
17 I
That was one area where we made a recommendation. The second 18 area had to do with resolving the dif ferences between our rules and EPAts rules and statutory requirements, and we came 20 up with two recommendations there. One was to sort of 21 depressurIze the siting process for the non-sited states by 22 putting the development of disposal capacity for mixed waste gj f 23
~
on a separate track from the rest of the waste so that the 24 uncertainties associated with the mixed waste would not hold wi / 25 4; hostage progress on the great majority of the rest of the 0"
50 I waste, the majority by volume, and then the third recommenda-2 tion was for direct NRC administration of the Resource 3 Conservation and Recovery Act, so that we wouldn't be 4 returning to EPA for a by your leave whenever we felt it 3 necessary to take enforcement actions or inspections, that 6 sort of thing or issue licenses, issue permits.
7 We briefed the Commissien on this question, and we 3 got some instruction back from the Commission that we are 9 currently working on to get them answers for by the beginning.
10 of the first week in July.
11 Essentially the Commission asked the staff to 12 provide a legal opinion on our current authorities to require m
.(j) 13 treatment and volume reduction and, also, our current 14 authorities to deal with the possibility of a prohibition on 15 the disposal of mixed waste at present and future commercial 16 disposal sites, licensed disposal sites, until such time as 17 the uncertainties , the differences between NRC and EPA 18 regulations are resolved. i 19 The. technical staff was asked to get with EPA and 20 find out what their reaction to our three recommendations was 21 and hopefylly to find out about the possibility of EPA's 22 issuing its siting criteria early so that the states would hav e
!g I 23
.A greater confidence in proceeding with the development of d 24 siting plants for the 1988 milestone, and finally, to establish hij R f 3 ' 25 a process for resolving the differences between our respective ges
'l D
(J()
/
I 51 agencies, and we were to revise our recommendations, if 2 The process, necessary in. light of our negotiations.
3 essentially is working from the bottom up where the technical d
i staff from both agencies get together and try to resolve
' 3 their differences in something they think makes technical
- sense on the various issues in dispute and then work it up 7
through their management chains, and hopefully, if there is 8
something mutually recognizable at the end of that process to formalize an agreement between the agencies at a higher 10 level of management and at an authoritative level.
' So, where we are now is the NRC's technical staff 12 has been meeting fairly intensively with the EPA staff on
() I3 questions such as the definition of mixed waste, the siting 14 3
crite ria, the facility design requirements and, also, such 15 issues as the burning and blending of hazardous wastes because 16 that is obviously a disposal technique of choice for certain 17 of the wastes, such as scintillation, liquid scintillation 18 waste. It looks at this point like we cannot get any 19 guarantees fro'm EPA that they will have their siting require-20 ments for new hazardous waste disposal facilities in place
~
21 i i
I by the 1988 milestone, but we are hoping we can come up with 22
, some concepts that would permit the states to proceed on a
!Al23 relatively informed and confident basis.
24
&s dj $ The other thing of interest to you probably is that N ' 25 so far in our discussions, we have not identified anything Ojg
i 1
I 4 . . _ , _ . _
t s2 lOcj at this point that will require legislation to resolve. That 2 is not to say that we may not ultimately have to do that, but 3 since legislation would be required to resolve the question 4 of dual regulation, that is to authorize a single agency, be S it.NRC or EPA to regulate mixed waste,.the absence of any e other issues that do require legislation to resolve y additional authorities, either on NRC's or EPA's part makes a it at this point, from the technical staff's judgment, /
9 somewhat unlikely that legislation may be proposed. The to Environmental Protection Agency has been taking some fairly 1
11 strong cues from Congress on this question, that they want 12 the two agencies to try to resolve their differences
()O la eamiaistretive1r ee muca vo==181e beeore we come becx to 14 them with any proposals for legislation, and we accept that 15 as a f air burden of proof, and we are carrying that out.
16 The jury is still out on whether legislation will be 17 needed, but at this point, as I said, we haven't identified 18 anything except for resolving the dual regulation question 19 that would require it.
20 So, with that, it is probably just in time for a 21 break so dhat I can miss questions, but I will be available U 22 after the break to answer any additional questions or come fgl23 up and see me during the break, i
.A i 24 Thank you.
m JR
' 25 MR. NUSSBAUMER: That was good timing, Rob. Le t us Os . .
() 53 I
take a 15-minute break and reconvene about 10:20.
2 (Brief recess.)
3 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Okay, the state attendees should d
all have a copy of the survey form which we would appreciate 5
your filling out and turning in after lunch'or by midafter-noon.
I We recognize that some of the information that we 8
are asking for might be considered policy-type questions, but we would like to have your personal view, if that is the case, and you can caveat it if you want to, and say that this is 11 your view and not necessarily that of the state, but we would 12 like some input. This would help us in getting ready for our O 14 ai c"s i " t mo== * = ="i=s-Our next speaker on the Panel is Kitty Dragonette 15 who will review with you radioactive waste below regulatory 16 .
concern.-
17 Kitty?
18 MS. DRAGONETTE: Hi, I have four vugraphs. They 19 are not really vugraph quality, but they are good talking 20 notes. So, you won't have to write as much, and there are f extra copies in the back of the room. If you will hold up I 22
, your hand, I have been promised that you will get custom
! lg23 i
delivery. The first one just reminds us that Section 10 of dj R
$ 24 the Policy Amendments Act requires NRC to establish standards N U ' 25 ik and procedures and the technical capability to act on
_- (^p ::
'h O 54 I petitions for determining that certain waste streams are I below regulatory concern, that the radioactive content doesn' t 3 require regulation, and we were given six months to do that, d and that six months is up in July.
5 Our earlier speaker mentioned that we might 6 consider a generic rule making as a follow on to things that 7 we are working on right now, and that is on this chart, but 8
I will get a little bit more into the policy statement, but basically we are trying a policy statement to meet the six 10 months mandate because that is doable. We are going to issue
" it if EDO and Commission approve as an effective policy 12 statement but requesting comments and then saying, depending O
n the comments on the policy statement, depending on the I#
types and numbers of petitions, we would then consider 15 whether we needed to go ahead with some sort of generic I'
rule making as opposed to just responding to the individual I7 petitions for rule making.
18 That is all this chart is showing you. One, July 19 is a key date, and two, the option for the generic rule making .
20 The strategy we are following, as I mentioned, is I
l5 a policy dtatement. We considered whether to try to resolve 22 some of the issues up . front in a fairly comprehensive rule l 23 making in which we would establish dose limits and other g
>d
- 24 Wq E decision criteria for processing petitions and then having N' ' 25 each individual rule making on an individual waste strain be a
- O "M b
b 55
-O 1 very minor turn of the crank in response to this fairly 2 comprehensive rule making. We decided that in view of the 3 language in the Act and in view of the six months mandate that 4 it was more practical and prudent to go with the policy 5 statement that we felt we could develop and issue and work e with, and then it was much more amenable. We could do it in 7 six months, and then we could revise it more readily if 8 experience dictated. So, we are going with a policy statement .
' Another key point in the strategy is that the 10 petitioners are going to be asked to generate and provide the II basis for the rule making, and it is going to be a generator 12 or generator trade group or organization initiated rule makinc ,
] 13 Id and the information and analyses and data on the waste and the calculated health effects and all those things would be 15 provided by the petitioner.
P I*
Another part of the stratogy is that it is an I7 exemption from disposal and a Part 61 type license facility I8 but not necessarily unrestricted release. For example, the
" type of rules that we envision being petitioned for would 20 say that waste oil with these nuclide concentrations can be 21 I burned on site or sent to an EPA hazardous waste oil 22 recycling facility or some other method like that. The rules 23 j would identify the specific waste, the specific nuclide 24 content and the specific method of disposal. The receiving A 25 fj facility would not, the hazardous waste facility or the x_.: O O ::
M 56 "O 1 sanitary landfill facility would not be a licensee, At that 2 point it would be below regulatory. concern, but the generator 3 would only have certain options for that waste. He would be d
limited in what he could do with it.
5 Individual licensees can continue, if they have 6 unique waste disposal problems or while they are waiting for 7 rules to be processed can continue to apply for individual 8 licensing actions under Commission rules and in Part 20.302.
9 The types of petitions we a r:,ticipate would be national in 10 scope, you know, a whole category of licensees, power plants, 11 waste oil or compacted trash or whatever, that it would be a 12 category or a national scope. It could be a compact in scope, h 13 but at least not single licensees. For an individual Id licensee it really is more efficient of his time and ours, too ,
15 to handle that on an individual basis. So, that is another lo point in the stra'tegy, and the rule makings that would grant 17 the petition would be a matter of compatibility to give all 18 generators around the nation an equal opportunity for I'
alternatives to the licensed site disposal.
20 The NRC staff response at this point is being done 21 in two parbs. One is to establish the standards and 22 procedures, and we are doing that with a policy statement 11 gj 23 and our ' accompanying staff implementation plan that would be 2
y.g 2qg' published in the Federal Register. Between those two es ,
' 25 4; documents, the outline, it is like a standard format and
-o(%d5
57 lQ
- content guide for a petition, the type of information to 2 submit, and the policy statement licts the decision criteria 3 and the meaning and intent and how the. staff initially plans 4 to interpret those is in the staff implamentation plan, and 3 it includes administrative procedures c 1 how we have tried 6 to streamline the process internally to be able to act on the 7 petitions quickly.
3 The second part to establish the technical 9 capability has involved some people getting up to speed and 10 converting an existing methodology in the published new reg, 11 converting it to a personal computer, PC, getting that so 12 we are comfortable with it, developing a user guide and h 13 generally getting staff knowledgeable in how to process one 14 of these and the type of analyses to do. So, that is 15 essentially the two parts of how we are meeting it, standards 16 and procedures in a Federal Register notice and then you know, 17 confirming and.getting up to speed in house.
18 This one is probably not legible. Now, you can see 19 why I made sure I had hard copies because that is so busy, 20 but I thought that you would be interested in the type of 21 decision ariteria that staff is proposing. If you meet these U 22
~
decision criteria, it is very likely, we believe, that we
!g l 23 could process the petition quickly, expeditiously, as the
>* I 24 Act calls for, and they really fall in four areas, sort of wo $
f ' 25 some general criteria on doses, criteria to do with the waste a yE
58 V 1 itself and criteria on implementing the below regulatory 2 concern disposal.
3 The general ones are the environmental requirements d
under NEPA, that we would expect to issue a negative 5
declaration and that there is a good cost benefit, when you 6
look at both the dose and the dollar and other considerations, 7
qualitative, quantitative, that there is a good cost benefit.
8 On exposures there are decision criteria on-individual dose limits, that the collective doses be small, 10 and we suggest that'the petitioner look at the collective II doses to the sanitary landfill workers or small population 12 groups, as well as the larger populations that might be h 13 exposed through groundwater, and, also, to take a look at the l'
consequences of accidents and make sure that those are 33 reasonable.
16 On the ' waste, several of those, that the waste is 17 compatible with the proposed disposal method, for example, 18 that you don' t send or that the petition doesn't suggest that I'
you send something that quali,fies as a hazardous waste to a 20 sanitary landfill. If it would qualify under EPA rules as a h
55 21 22 hazardous (taste, then if it is going'to be disposed of as
, below regulatory concern, it should go to a permitted I 23
!2 hazardous waste facility. That is what that means, compatible ,
>d 2 g
e6 lj { 4 and it, also, means physically compatible. 'If you propose
' 25 h
c::
incineration, it should be combustible, you know, common
~s
l h_q 59 V 1 sense ones, but from both a technical and a legal point of 2 view, that the waste and the disposal or the rule would be 3 usable on a national scale, that it is produced by a number d
of generators and would be useful, that you understand the 5 waste; you have characterized it, and you can make some ,
e reasonable projection on what this waste will look like over 7 the foreseeable future, but you have actual data on the 8
waste; you have done some measurements. You know what the range of activities and typical concentrations are and lastly 10 that there is neglicjible potential for recycle of the waste.
II We are talking about things that have really no resource 12 value or no reuse as tools or equipment or something like O
d 13 that, and then finally on implementation that compliance I#
programs'are feasible, that one of the suggested submissions I5 is a sample survey program, so that you could demonstrate I'
this as at least 'one way licensees could reasonably establish
'I that their wastes met the nuclide limits that were spelled 18 out in the proposed rule and that there was some continuing I'
way to check, at least for gross compliance and then 20 periodically with more comprehensive surveys, and next, that I
there is nb license needed for the off-site facility that is "I 22 going to receive the waste for either incineration or -
I j 7, 23 treatment or disposal. Whatever you are proposing to do with
>* I g g [ 24 it, the receiving person should not need a license or other-N y 3 ' 25 wise it would not qualify for below-regulatory concern and
.J
60 s
s_) i lastly, that there not be any regulatory obstacles. That is 2 sort of related to the compatibility question; for example, 3 a legal obstacle might be proposing a hazardous waste to a 4 sanitary landfill or it might be that you had to label it as 5 radioactive under DOT rules which would foul up the implementa -
6 tion. So, those are the kind of regulatory obstacles. So, 7 very quickly, those are the decision criteria that staff is a recommending be established through the Commission policy 9 statement, and that statement is with the Executive Director 10 for Operations, and they are reviewing it pretty carefully.
11 It hasn' t made it to the Commission yet. It has 12 EDO and then to the Commission, and so, we are still hopeful
() 13 that we~ may make that July date and publish.
14 I talked very quickly. I am sure you must have some 15 questions. Nancy?
16 MS. KIRNER: Nancy Kirner from the State of 17 Washington. En.vironmental groups in the State of Washington 18 when I have spoken to them about how the NRC is proposing 19 under the Low Level Waste Policy Amend:nents Act to establish 20 criteria for wastes that could be released which is below g
21 regulatory concern, they hhve been very uneasy over the idea II 22 of below regulatory concern waste, over the idea of taking 1 I 23something that used to be radioactive, and now, we are just g
.4 6 24 putting it out into the normal environment. What provisions H lE y( 25 is NRC contemplating to inform the environmental community,
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to educate the people, not only the environmentalists, but, 2
also, the, for instance, trade organizations representing 3
y ur sanitary landfills and, also, EPA and, also, the state 4 EPA liaison? These people appear, at least from what I am 5 gathering in the State of Washington to be very uneasy over 6
the uncontrolled indiscriminate, these. are their words ,
7 release of radioactivity.
g MS. DRAGONETTE: At this point, we haven't really 9 done any education until we get our own act toge'ther in 10 house, you know, that the policy statement approach is 11 acceptable to the Commission, that the decision criteria 37 make sense to the Commission. We did hsk EPA to review an j3 early draft. So, you know, on an informal basis we have 34 coordinated with them, but it reminds me of one point I 15 failed to make. This policy statement is merely guidance 16 for petitioners. There will be, in response to those 17 petitions, assuming that they are reasonable and well 18 supported, a proposed rule that would be issued for comment.
19 So, all of these groups then.would be able to respond to the 20 proposed rule and the waste that was described and the ma 21 disposal 9 tions that were described in there in the analysis, b
55 22 So, I would think, you know, maybe I hadn't really given
~
N f-AI 23 g much thought to any generic educational efforts, but there ql h 24 is that important opportunity for input on each waste strain W. i k.,
4
'R25 because each one involves the formal rule-making process, a
../
M 62 1 proposed rulej comments and then final. That is as best I 2 can answer right now. The decision criteria do cover 3 individual doses, collective doses to worker. The computer d codes that we are planning to use evaluate the potential 5 exposures to workers from, you know, transport workers, the 6 sanitary landfill workers, all those people. So, their 7 potential exposures are looked at individually and collectively 8 in the analysis that we would plan to do and that we are 9 asking petitioners to look at, so that they would have all 10 of that information'on that specific waste in order to react II to it.
12 Anyone else?
13 MR. TRUBATCH: Sheldon Trubatch, from Commonwealth Id Edison, again. Could you comment on the choice of procedures, I5 the de:ision to go to rule making rather than something more 16 '
informal?
I7 MS. DRAGONETTE: One of the reasons these are 18 stamped " draft" is that the agency as an agency still hasn't l'
decided that a standard format and content-type policy 20 statement that would solicit petitions for rule making is h
II 21 22 necessariIy the appropriate course of action. There may be some others that the EDO is considering, but that is from I 23 NRC's perspective. Are you asking from the generator's l2 24 perspective; what is in his best interests, whether he should e6 / 25 fj ask for, apply individually?
-- j U2
.. ~.
63 1 MR. TRUBATCH: No, I am asking from the NRC 2 perspective and not so much the format of this policy 3 statement but the decision to implement Section 10 of the 4 Waste Amendments Act through just formalizing or specifying 5 rule-making procedures in this particular case rather than 6 using an alternative procedural mechanism, such as exemptions 7 which the NRR staff rcutinely grants.
8 MS. DRAGONETTE: Now, as I understand the exemptions 9 ti.at NRR grants, it is in response to a specific individual 10 licensee, and it would involve a specific, that one licensee 11 and his specific waste. It would be that limited in scope.
12 Now, that opportunity is still there. What I am
(}) 13 talking about is doing it generically for the waste strains, 14 so that all reactor licensees could use it without having to 15 file individually. So, it seems to staff, at least, that 16 rule makin.g makes sense only if it is a waste that is 17 generated by a number of licensees. It, also, emphasizes 18 that what we are doing is an alternative. It is equivalent 19 to a generic 20.302, since all people could use it, but it 20 is being open and up front about it. It is establishing it g
21 through ruke making. It doesn't have the connotation of an II 22 exemption becaus'e what we are really doing is generically l 1
23 responding to, I have this alternative way to get rid of : I g
d 2d waste, either approve it on an individual basis or let us w?R
' 25 approve it on a national scale.
- d5 -
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64 i MR. TRUBATCH: Okay, but does that mean that if a 2 utility has a bag of waste that it wants to dispose of in the 3 back forty, that there is still a third procedure, neither 4 20.302 and not this generic rule but to come in for an 3 exemption, and if so, by what criteria would that be judged?
6 MS. DRAGONETTE: An exemption to what?
7 MR. TRUBATCH: To any regulation, that this bag of a material be treated as if it were not radioactive because its 9 radioactive content is so low as to be below regulatory 10 concern.
11 MS. DRAGONETTE: I don't consider that that would 12 be an exemption; 20.302 says, "A licensee can propose any Lh 13 alternative handling of the waste that is not otherwise 14 provided in the regulations." There is an opportunity for 15 any type of alternative, and I don't know why that would be 16 considered -- in my mind that is not really a true exemption.
17 It is taking an opportunity for a built-in alternative 18 proposal. So, to me, they would be the same thing.
19 MR. ,TRUBATCH: So, this proposed draft policy 20 statement would be the only implementation of Section 10 of 21 the Waste Amendments Act as far as the NRC staff currently
$5 22 conceives of it?
g 23 MS. DRAONETTE: Yes, well, it is gearing up to A
fl 24 respond to the petitions. The petitions that would be filed W 4 'R
( 25 are the true test of it, but yes, the only thing we plan to sQ"
f dbD 65
() I do is to issue this guidance on a petition and then respond 2 to the petitions.
3 MR. TRUBATCH: Okay, thank you.
- The other people are working on MS. DRAGONETTE:
3 20.302 guidelines, and some of have been issued for non-power 0 plants, and I understand there is a draft pretty close to 7
completion for power plants for 20.302 disposals, you know, 8
where there are individual proposals.
We read Section 10 in saying, " Respond to petitions' 10 l
to mean petitions for rule making.
MR. TRUBATCH: I was just curious, as a final 12 question, why you read it that way, as opposed to, it says,
" Petitions under existing," to use existing authority to
('/)
14 grant petitions to exempt regulation, and I could conceive 15 of that simply meaning someone comes with a piece of paper 16 that says , " Petition. I have a bag of waste which I don' t 17 want you to regulate because I don't think it is radioactive 18 enough to warrant any regulation. Please grant that -
19 petition." '
20 MS. DRAGONETTE: I think we attach more significance
~ 21 l to the us5 of the teim " petition" as opposed to application 5 22 or proposal, and if it is going to make sense, you need to I 23
$$ look at it on a national basis anyway. So, this gave us an WI $ 24 opportunity to look at this in a comprehensive manner, rather i
ng e N3 4 ' 25 than having hundreds or thousands of 20.302 disposals, that d;::
1 1
l l
l I
i
.h p 66 V I we would have data and information on the waste and the 2
projections and could look at the. thing from a national 3 scale, and we feel that that is part of the picture, too.
d MR. TRUBATCH: Okay, thank you.
3 MR. RECKNAGEL: John Recknagel from Public Service O I am a little puzzled by your criterion Electric and Gas.
7 No. 7, usable on a national scale. Could you help me )
8 understand first, what is meant by that and what the reason for it is?
10 MS. DRAGONETTE: What is meant by it is that II hopefully the waste strain that is'being petitioned for 12 would be one that is generated by the majority of the h%
13 category of licensees. For example, it would be compacted la trtsh from all PWR's or it might be wastes with half lives 15 less than 100 da'ys, you know, from hospitals or universities.
16 I
It would be a ge$eric waste strain that both NRC and 17 agreement state licensees, you know, wastes that they were T8 all generating and could take advantage of, rather than an 19 individual lic'ensee with his unique waste. You know, he has 20 a pipe leak.. He has the soil. You know, that can more 1 l
I efficient y be handled on an individual basis, I believe 22 l
, because it would be unique circumstances. It is meant to be I 23
! something that is routine and predictable enough and common
&$ j n j $e 24 enough that people all over the country could take advantage k' ~ 25 Sh of it in order to warrant the petitioner's effort to put j
- _ -- . o
h, 67 1 together the information we have asked for and forthe 2 Commission to bother to go through the rule making. It should 3 be something that is useful to many people. That is all it 4 me ans .
5 MR. RECKNAGEL: Thank you.
6 MS. CONNOR: Lynn Connor, Dock Search Associates.
7 Have you talked with NRR at all on how you are really 8 dividing this up, that they understand what part you are 9 taking over what part that still falls under them for a 10 license application?
11 MS. DRAGONETTE: NRR has concurred in the policy 12 statement and the decision criteria. The resource G
- (g 13 arguments and who is going to be the lead office is still 14 under negotiation :
15 Any other questions?
16 MR. NELSON: I am Bob Nelson. I would just like 17 to clarify this 20.302 will have good hard figures for 18 determination of below regulatory concern material or is it 19 going to be kind of generic still, and determined on a 20 case-by-case basis from that?
21 IMS. DRAGONETTE: The policy statement and these 22 decision criteria are solely for the purpose of preparing j 23 petitions for rule making that would be on an expedited, 24 handled on an expedited basis. The decision criteria are 25 f not applicable to individual proposals under 20.302. As I
.jO YE V
I e - - -
68
.h0 understood, that was one question, you know, would these 1
2 apply to the individual proposals, and the answer is no.
3 The second part, do we have numbers, the policy statement 4 has language on like the individual exposures, you know, 5 that the individual exposures or whole body exposures are e no more than a few millirem per year using ICRP 26 and 30, 7 you know, cumulative. internal and external. Then the staff 8 implementation plan says, " Hey, it is a lot easier to 9 justiify if the maximum indivudal exposure is one, but it is 10 in the implementation plan." So, the implementation plan 11 has some more numberical guidance that we feel will help 12 grease the skids for these things or more easily justify it 13 on the petitioner's part and through the rule-making process.
]
14 There is, on the, for accidents, for example, it recommends 15 using the ICRP 100 millirem per year as an upper limit for 16 any accident sce'ario n so that you are below the action 17 level, you know for a member of the public in any accident 18 that you could reasonably postulate in handling transport 19 and disposal this way. So, the guidance and the staff 20 implementation plan does have some more numbers, but they 21 are recomfnendations that we think will make it more easily U 22 justified and more readily processed. Nothing in this
.El g 23 policy statement or implementation has the force of rule.
24 I-t is going to be published probably in Part 2, but it would w a h ' 25 informational. It is guidance and policy which is flexible.
..)
69
- c . ,-
\/ 1 MR. NELSON: So, if we had some material that we 2 were not sure of we would apply to the state program or the 3 NRC or whoever for the determination?
4 MS. DRAGONETTE: You could still apply individually.
5 MR. NELSON: To whom?
6 MS. DRAGONETTE: To whoever licenses you to 7 possess the material either NRC or the agreement states.
8 When this gets to be a matter of compatibility is 9 in granting a petition.for some kind of waste from a 10 hospital. If the rule making was for hospital waste, then 11 that is one that both NRC and agreement states would license.
12 It would be a matter of compatibility then for the states h) 13 to follow suit. The biomedical rule wasn't made a matter 14 of compatibility. Most states did follow it, but this time 15 we think in view of the mandates and the restrictions under 16 the Act it makes even more sense, and it is more equitable 17 to be upfront, .be a matter of compatibility, and it would 18 be like everyone has to adopt the biomedical rule.
19 MR. . NELSON: Thank you.
20 MR. KRAFT: Steve Kraft, EEI, again. I think there ma 21 is some confusion that is reflecting itself in the 5 22 The questions here, Kitty, and I just have a suggestion.
gI'23
. A problem is, I think, of these 14 criteria, some of them HI 24 tell you whether or not you meet the threshold of a rule M lE y,; 25 making versus an individual action, be it an exemption or J
r%d5
i
- 70 0_ I whatever, and some of them define whether the petition for 2 granting BRC under the rule making gets granted or not.
3 MS. DRAGONETTE: They are all designed as decision d criteria to use in judging the petition.
5 MR. KRAFT: So, the petition could be denied on 0 the basis that it doesn't meet the criteria to be a 7 petition.
8 MS. DRAGONETTE: I should have made that clear. ,
9 These decision criteria are for petitions that we would 10 handle expeditiously. Now, if it doesn't meet these decision Il criteria, you have got a couple of options. One is, if it is 12 a unique situation you can come in as an individual O
11ce==ee for 11cem 1=9 ectio#- secoma17, it ce= suet so o#
Id a routine track for rule making. If it requires NRC research 15 support, it is going to go on a slower track, or contractual 16 and probably be a lower priority than those that are fully 17 supported. This policy statement is asking for a great 18 deal of information from the petitioner, and in response, I'
we are trying to promise we will process it quickly. So, 20 that means we would assign it a higher priority, but it doesn't ndcessarily mean it would be denied, only that we h
M 21 22 could not process it quickly.
j%I 23 MR. KRAFT: Let us, for example, pick out one that j I think is pretty obvious for this business of whether it si4 25
- 42 ought to be a petition or not, No. 7. Let us say that you l j(
i
71
-()0 1 met all the rest, all the other 13, and even on your own you 2 could tell that you really have a waste strain that is unique 3 to your facility, whatever your facility is, and it is not 4 something that a whole lot of people are dealing with. Does 5 that mean automatically that you are suggesting " Don't even 6 bother to submit the petition and go a different route"?
7 MS. DRAGONETTE: I would recommend it as the most ,
8 efficient use of your resources and ours. You could use 9 these decision criteria and say, " Hey, you know, if this
~
10 was produced on a national scale, it would be a suitable 11 candidate," and it could be part of your arguments in your 12 licensing application or request, you know. You could use 13
(]" them as guidelines or something, but it vould be voluntary.
Id It is not intended to have any direct application to the 15 individual proposals, but it is, you know, obviously if it to would qualify, th'at would have a bearing on the suitability 17 of the individual proposal.
18 MR. KRAFT: I just had the feeling that a lot of the l'
questions were being asked on the basis of people who had 20 individual streams from their own facilities specifically a 21 in mind or' maybe even individual disposal actions in mind 22 and that becoming confused with whether it met the threshold 23 j criteria of being even a petition or not, not that it would be 24 denied BRC status but it would be denied BRC status as a 25 nationwide kind of rule as compared to an individual waste, s > 3 d5 f
a
l l
l hO 72 I I mean I heard several questions and answers along that 2
line. I just thought that I saw three or four things in here 3
that could be kind of, look, forget the technical stuff. If you don't meet the procedural stuff, don't even bother. Let 5 If you meet the procedural us go talk about it somewhere else.
0 stuff, then come in and let us talk about the technical stuff.
7 I Just saw a natural way to clear up some of that confusion, 8
but, okay. That second thing I wanted to ask you about was if something is from the NRC standpoint below regulatory 10 concern, it obviously may not be so from EPA, and in fact,
" one of the criteria here implies, and you made in your 12 discussion a point that part of the decision is knowing what
(] 13 14 the disposal methodology would be, and if it is RCRA-controlle 1 waste, even though you may not be concerned about it, you 15 would like to know that it is going to go to a RCRA-licensed 16 site. Is this going to open up another opportunity for 17 swords to cross between NRC and EPA?
18 MS. DRAGONETTE: As I envision the rules that would 19 be issued in response, it would say that a licensee can 20 transfer this waste , you know, if it is going to go to a 21 '
f~l hazardous ' site, presumabl.y then the non-radiological propertie s 51 1,22 would mean it would qual. As a hazardous waste, because I
$ they don' t want to fill their facilities up with staff that WI{23 Wj $
- 24 isn't hazardous.
N ' 25
$b It would say that you could transfer this to that v
ce
( )(~T j type of facility, and presumably it wouldn't have to be 2 labeled as radioactive, but it would still have to be 3 labeled as hazardous. That is another point I should have 4 made, that NRC's finding will be based on a radiological 5 finding, and below regulatory concern is only for the 6 radiological content. It would still be subject to any of the y requirements that would apply to '.ne physical-chemical 8 nature of the waste. If it had to be manifested as hazardous 9 or whatever, it would still have to be.
10 MR. KRAFT: Absolutely, I agree with what you said, 11 but just following up on the first question that was asked 12 in the series, the NRC is kind of taking it upon itself to
~
I )({} 13 decide whether a given waste stream is RCRA versus radioactive 14 disposed. I am kind of stating it poorly but whether or 15 not --
16 MS. DRAGONETTE: That we are going to unilaterally 17 say, "You can send this stuff to their site."
18 MR. KRAFT: That is it.
19 MS.,DRAGONETTE: They are going to say, "No way, 20 Jose."
ea 21 IMR. KRAFT: Thank you. That is exactly the way to Eb "I 22 say it, sure. dtherwise it would qualify as mixed waste ilgh23
.4 a nd fall into the mixed waste quagmire frame.
d I g 24 MS . DRAGONETTE: If it qualifies as a hazardous m.! R 5$ ~ 25 waste -- \
..- (1) dE I 1
l i
1 1
.,----.--l
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U 1 MR. KRAFT: And you declare it to be below 2 regulatory concern from a radioactive standpoint, is EPA or 3 a hazardous waste operator going to say, " Wait a minute. I 4 disagree with that"?
5 MS. DRAGONETTE: There is a potential for that.
6 They might respond in the comment period on a proposed rule, 7 b'.t the purpose of our review and finding would be that you 8 don' t need to worry about the radioactive content, and if it 9 is going to be implementable, then it shouldn't be labeled 10 as radioactive, but they may still express generic concerns.
11 MR. KRAFT: But we know that the technology is 12 available to monitor. In fact, one of the beauties of O]
- if 13 radioactive materials is that you can monitor extraordinarily 14 low levels very accurately that may fall below regulatory 15 concern. I don't know. I could just see a whole raft of 16 difficulties and' counter. regulations being developed by a 17 lot of other facilities and operators that need to be thrashed 18 out during this process. I am not suggesting these are show-19 ~ stoppers, just that they need to be thrashed out and thought 20 through extremely carefully in the process, and it not only 21 applies t5 the rule-making situation when you have got kind 22 of a generic waste stream, it applies'to your specific 1
j 23 decisions, also, in individual materials.
2d MS. DRAGONETTE:
- w. ! R I know I have had calls from 25 people saying, "Do I need to install some sort of detector in Y5
h(] I
~
response to the biomedical rule?"
7 c; I said, "No," the gamma 2 detectors wouldn' t detect the carbon and tritium, but that is 3 one of the problems that I think will surface in the d individual rule makings. Until we get some petitions and 5 see what disposal methods people are requesting, you know, e it is sort of an academic question, but depending on diether 7 it is proposed for incineration or if it is proposed for 8 sanitary landfill or whatever, but there is nothing in the work thus far to do any coordination with those groups.
10 MR. KRAFT: A last question along the same lines.
II In the work that you would be doing to analyze whether 12 materials fall under BRC, and then you, of course, follow I3 the, in order to do that you will, follow the disposal Id pathway right, because it is a dose-based analysis, would 15 you be using some sort of comparative -- I hate to use a word I'
and not quite know whether I am using it correctly, but spme I7 kind of comparative hazard index whereby you would compare 18 it to the materials already allowed to be disposed of non-
" radioactive ma'terials already allowed to be disposed of in 20 that sanitary landfill or in that hazardous waste site as a 21 i ye way to allay the fears that were expressed?
M 22 MS. DRAGONETTE: That is included in the recommended 5 23 j2 information that they be submitted and describing the waste G$g~24 g3 and being compatible with the disposal methos. One of the Mj Wi d ' 25 decision criteria says that the non-radiological properties
._) OM
(he~)
C' y are no different from wastes that are ordinarily sent to 2 that facility. It is one of the things we are asking the 3 petitioner to demonstrate, that you know, if you are going to 4 a sanitary landfill, that diere is nothing unique about 5 that waste, that if it was not radioactive it would go --
6 I am getting tongue-tied.
7 MR. DRAFT: It would be an interesting exercise 8 to have a sanitary landfill to go out and monitor for 9 radiation. It is the waste streams that it is receiving, 10 materials, as we all know, are radioactive by their nature.
11 MS. DRAGONETTE: The thinking and the strategy is 12 that the sanitary landfill operator would not know he was
()() 13 getting it,would not be required to do any monitoring of 14 the incoming packages or groundwater for radiation. The only 15 controls and reporting would be on the generator. We 16 anticipate requir'ing the generators to do, say, annual 17 reports on, "I have sent so many tons to sanitary landfill 18 X," and for him to keep records of what his disposal is and 19 to document that he knows it went where it was supposed to 20 go. So, all of the controls -- there will be controls on ma 21 the generator until the transfer to that sanitary landfill, E!
55 22 but the sanitary landfill operator, we anticipated no .
Ig!23 monitoring of personnel or environmental or anything. That
-4 f l k 24 was why that decision criteria is in there. If you have to W 12 NL 25 go to that, then it is essentially another licensed site. It suI db
?
'I k h '")
Y' I wouldn't be below regulatory concern. At leart from NRC'n 2 view they shouldn't need a license. You are saying from 3 their view they --
4 MR. KRAFT: I am just --
5 MS. DRAGONETTE: They may want to take precautionary 6 measures.
7 MR. KRAFT: I just think that there is a question 8 'that was raised earlier that may be a concern and we need to 9 look at which is, "Okay , that is what NRC says , but you 10 know EPA isn't going to defer, nor will state agencies 11 necessarily defer to the NRC in regulating sites under their 12 control." That is the only question I am raising.
( )( ) 13 MS. DRAGONETTE: I think that will be an issue in 14 each individual rule making, depending on the specific 15 method of disposal involved. I don't know how to avoid that.
16 We only have the' authority to say, " Don' t worry about the 17 radioactive content," but it is still trash. It still has 18 other properties.
19 MR./ KRAFT: I understand.
20 F}S. DRAGONETTE: So, that is as far as we can go.
ga 21 iMR. DORNSIFE: , Bill Dornsife, from Pennsylvania.
58 '
45 Kitty, I would hope you learned your lesson from the biomed 1-l22rule when you are talking with DOT on this through your MOU g
.4 23 HI wJ 24 that the biomed rule didn't really work until DOT didn' t d'R25 require these things to be marked as radioactive material.
a
.G c's o:
I 18 (3 l v That is why there is a decision 1 MS. DRAGONETTE:
2 criteria on no regulatory obstacles that includes, " Hey, if 3 you are going to send it to a hazardous waste site, there d had better be a hazardous waste site, and it had better not 5 need to have a DOT label. "
6 MR. DORNSIFE: The point is it has to be exempt 7 from DOT regulations or people aren't going to accept it.
8 MS. DRAGONETTE: Right, and the other people are
' commenting that even if it is anonymous, they still may not.
10 So, we are trying to sneak it in, but it may not --
II MR. DUNKLEBERGER: Jay Dunkleberger from New York.
I2 One question. I am not sure whether I heard you right or I3 not. The biomed rule is not a matter of compatibility right Id now. I thought I heard you say that that would be made a 15 matter of compatibility. I just wanted to clarify how and 16 whether that is t. rue or not.
37 MS. DRAGONETTE: I wasn't talking about going back 18 and doing anything with the biomedical rule. I was trying to I'
use it as an example that it was not made a matter of 20 compatibility. New rule makings pursuant to this policy h
41 21 22 statement'would be made a matter of compatibility, future ones , not going back' and picking that one up.
j MR. DUNKLEBERGER: So, if somebody, for instance in a facility in an agreement state that was not agreeing si " 25 4; with the biomed rule wanted to come to the NRC with a
.bdE m
n . -- - w w
h 79 1 petition on that same rule to put it under this, is that a 2 feasible option that somebody might take?
3 MS. DRAGONETTE: You are saying that if the generator 4 runs into regulatory opposition in the state, and the 5 generator gets his trade group or sponsors a petition to e NRC as an end run around state objection. Well, I guess that 7 is conceivable.
8 MR. DUNKLEBERGER: That is what I am questioning.
9 MS. DRAGONETTE: Don, do you want to take over here?
10 MR. NUSSBAUMER: I think the number of jurisdictions 11 that have not adopted that is quite small, but we may have 12 to re-evaluate that position.
m 13 4" g MR. DUNKLEBERGER: I think they are quite small, but Id some of the generators in there are very vocal and are very 15 liable to do just that.
16 MR. BRdWN: I am Holmes Brown. I worked with the 17 states during the development of low level waste legislation, 18 and some issues were brought up in the discussion of the BRC 19 rule, one of which was even if NRC were to declare certain 20 materials BRC, it wouldn't necessarily comport with state 21 law. I bel'ieve that Colorado currently has state regulations 22 that don't permit the disposal of materials that are 11 gj 23 radioactive or at least they are very mildly radioactive, 24 p:cobably much below any of the standards that you might come g 25 up with, and it creates a problem. If you declare something s .O di
Opd 8
BRC, there may,be no place in Colorado that that material 1
2 can go other than to the regional low level waste site or
- 3 if this is af ter a new site is developed in the Rocky 4 Moun tain region to that licensed facility, and the intent I
3 of the BRC rule was to eliminate some of the burdens on the 6 precious disposal capacity, but you may run into state y regulations that simply say that this stuff cannot go anyplace a but the licensed low-level waste facility. That was an 9 issue we discussed. We didn't come up with any resolution ;
to on it.
11 MR. NUSSBAUMER: We may never get 100 implementation 12 on this, but you know, hopefully the industry would work h,] 13 together to identify waste streams that they generate in 14 common which are susceptible to this kind of treatment and 15 generally satisfy the criteria that Kitty outlined, and it 16 may be possible that the case is convincing that some of the 17 states that have these kinds of stringent requirements might 18 see fit to relax in this area for that purpose, especially3 19 since they are no[g responsible for providing the disposal 20 capacity, and if it is clear that a certain kind of waste 21 which hasla fairly high volume does not warrant disposal in og I 22 a commercial disposal facility, then it may be to their Ig k 23 best interest to take some action so that it can be disposed
- ft HI $ 24 of in the manner that generically is permitted throughout the m aR
, 25 rest of the country.
s O o as
< 81
, c:
MS. DRAGONETTE: One other point I might make is i
2 that this -- I would see the rule makings as providing an 3 opportunity for generators, not a mandate that you must send 4 it to a sanitary landfill. The rule would say that this is 3 an acceptable way to do it. So, the generators would still 6 have an option. I cannot imagine why they would want to pay 7 for the other.way, but the thing that would be a matter of a compatibility then would be providing generators the 9 opportunity, the choice.
10 Thank you for the insights. I appreciate it.
11 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Were there any questions for 12 Rob MacDougall? We kind of were into the break pretty fast
- (]){ } 13 after his presentation. Does anybody have anything they want 14 to ask Rob before we move on?
15 MR. BROWNING: I would like to specifically focus 16 on the fact that he talked about mixed wastes. Aren' t there 17 any questions about mixed wastes?
18 (No response.)
19 MR., BROWNING: I think one of the key things in my 20 mind and one of the key things we are working on with the ma 21 EPA folksfi s how do you define mixed waste. In testimony in I 22 the last round o~f hearings on mixed wastes, we referred to a I
g 23 study we had commissioned from Brookhaven National Lab to
. e dl w R try to identify what is the population of low level wastes l f]l k 24
. < ,as 25 that would, also, be categorized as mixed waste if you define
' L/
1 l
Og 82 1 mixed waste in its broadest terms, namely wastes that 2 contain both radioactive materials under the Atomic Energy 3 Act and have a component that would, also, classify it as -
4 hazardous under the RCRA legislation and rules. That study 5 came up with the conclusion that the volume would be 4 relatively small on the order of 3 percent of the volume.
7 Some questions were raised and challenges made of the 8 validity of those studies by among other people some of the 9 disposal site operators on the basis that the survey probably
~
10 could be inaccurate from the standpoint that the people 11 answering the questions didn't really know uhat the right 12 answer was, and really that goes at the heart of how do you 13 define mixed waste, and the kind of example we have used to h:VO 14 try to describe the problem that the disposal site operator 15 and the generator faces in this area when we briefed our 16 Commission on thesubject was a situation where if someone 17 is cleaning up a radioactive spill, presuming for a minute 18 the radioactive spill is just radioactive and has no other 19 component associated with it and to facilitate cleaning up 20 they dampen the cloth with an industrial solvent that has a 21 waste classified as a hazardous waste under RCRA, cleans up 22 the radioactive spill, puts that rag in with other rags in j 23 a drum, is that a mixed waste? Now, basically what we are 2d trying to ask is, is there some concept of de minimis or 25 below regulatory concern on the hazardous waste side similar ,
m O d5 l 5-e- -9+ - e v
q 83 h' NJ 1 to what we have and is recognized internationally on the 2 radioactive waste side, and that is the heart of trying to 3 come up with this definition of mixed waste in my mind, and d the answer, I guess at this stage we are working on it.
5 From the standpoint of a disposal site operator, it would be 6 extremely difficult to know, particularly if you don't know 7 and haven't b'een able to sample what is in that drum but yet 8
when you monitor your groundwater you start picking up that particular kind of industrial solvent.
10 Actually under the legislation that EPA has to II operate under, if there is any sign of that substance coming 12 off a disposal unit, the facility is subject to being
/ 13 potentially closed down until remedial action is taken. So, it is not coming out of the disposal unit. So, that is one 15 of the fundamental questions we are trying to resolve with 16 this technical staf f interchange with the EPA folks , and if 17 that is not resolvable, I am not sure it makes too much 18 sense to talk about mixed wastes because everybody has a different thin'g in mind. We may be talking about 3 percent 20 of the volume. We may really be talking about 100 percent a 21 g of the vo ume. So, it is an extremely important question.
I 22 If anybody who deals with this on the state level has any I 23
!2 insights that they can bring to bear on that, we would be
>d 24 uij $ more than willing to listen and are actively interested in 8!y' M ' 25 getting your ideas. The other thing which would be of great
. - (f
84 O
V 1 importance to me, ana maybe we don't have the right kinds 2 of state people here, but if the states don't think that 3 dual jurisdiction is a problem, I, for one, would recommend 4 that we stop beating that issue. We thought it would be a 5 lot easier from a regulatory standpoint to deal with the 6 situation with one regulatory agency dealing with a 7 particular site, but during the recent hearings, there 8 obviously are other views to that question, and one of the 9 questions that was raised is all sorts of facilities have 10 to get dual permits. What is the big deal about dual 11 permits? So, we have been running some checks, for example, 12 to find out how many of the reactor plant operators actually, hpLJ 13 also, have EPA permits. If they do, what is the big deal 14 about dual jurisdiction? I think that is one reason why 15 Congress is reluctant to get into this question until the 16 two agencies have really given a rock bottom honest college 17 attempt to try to make sure that dual permitting will not, 18 in fact, work.
19 Any , questions or comments or perceptions that you 20 people have would be appreciated. I know there is a percep-21 tion out [here that the two agencies are playing games, and U 22 we have been diddling around with this issue for God knows Ig h 23 how long. I am as frustrated as anybody on this matter. I
-e M
mj R 24 feel like I keep shooting against a moving target, and we f 3 ' 25 have, in fact, been trying to make an honest attempt to try as
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bg-)f 85 G I to identify what the issues are and get them resolved, and I 2 think the documentation of the interchanges between the two 3 staffs, you know, as that starts getting developed and becomin 7 d available will demonstrate to you people that we have, in 5 fact, been trying to resolve the discrepancies in a 0 technically meaningful way. If not, I would like to hear 7 about it. ,
8 Bill Dornsife, Pennsylvania. You MR. DORNSIFE:
' know, Bob, I am obviously not that familiar with the RCRA 10 rules, but on other issues that we have talked about some U problems with radioactive material and RCRA rules, I think 12 you might want to look, if you haven't already about the O
eme11 eemeretor ru1e- rnet cou1a e11 1=ete e 1ot or ene generators from requiring permits but not necessarily the treatment facilities.
MR. BR WNING: The problem there is if you take 17 advantage of that rule, and it is there, but Congress has 18 asked EPA to, I think re-open that whole question as to 19 whether it makes sense from their standpoint; if you have 20 all the generators taking advantage of that, it all goes to a
l 21 the dispodal site, and it is perfectly legal. The disposal I 22 site monitors the groundwater, picks that stuff up. The I 23
!j disposal site now is in jeopardy.
b
- 24 gj j $ MR. DORNSIFE: That is what I am saying. I am not N ' 25 53 sure how it applies to the treatment facility.
I+ ~ f"%
1 MR. BROWNING: And if EPA's regulations apply, 2 not only the disposal site is in jeopardy but the generators 3 that sent the waste there are in jeopardy, I think, under 4 CRCLA. So, it is a whole new ballgame when you have got 3 dual jurisdiction and you learn about mixed wastes, and if 6 you, in fact, are not experts in RCRA, you had better start 7 becoming experts in RCRA, because if you as a generator, and 3 I am talking to the generators that might be here now, if you 9 as a generator are sending stuff to the radiological:: site and to are not identifying the hazardous component properly, you are 11 in real trouble. You have got to identify it. It is not 12 somebody having to catch you doing it. The burden is on the generators to be identifying that material, and I think if
)(]) 13 14 there is a perception abroad that you have been. meeting 15 NRC's requirements; so, you are home free, you had better 16 think again.
17 MR. DORNSIl .;: The other comment I would like to 18 make is that obviously the problem with RCRA is how specific 19 the RCRA disposal regulations are, and I am wondering how --
20 MR. BROWNING: It isn:',t the regulations; it is the ma 21 law. i Nb II 22 MR. DORNSIFE: I am wondering how NRC is pursuing I
g 23 th'e possibility of showing that some of these technologies
-4 H I k 24 we are pursuing are compatible. They provide the same wJ R
' 25 protection as RCRA. Are we looking at that as an option? Is (2)jda
~
q- -. w e er *p, w. +---.
I that feasible?
2 MR. BROWNING: As a matter of fact, maybe Dr. Knapp 3 could explain in more detail the specific issues we are d addressing, but we have broken it to pieces. One is the 5- definition of mixed waste. One is the siting requirements.
8 One is the de sign requirements which basically gets down to 7 the question of the double liner with the leachate monitoring 8 and collection system, I guess in between the two liners.
Any others that I have missed? The processing IO treatment of the waste prior to being able to even dispose II of it in land, and therein lies an interesting thing.
12 Every time I look into this thing, the finger keeps pointing O
to the enswer to this erob1em is incineretion. f, in fece, Id the waste is amenable to being combusted, probably that is 15 what really ought to be done, if you really are serious about 16 meeting the RCRA regulations and meeting our requirements to reduce the hazardous component to the maximum extent 18 practicable. ,
19 That'is what the regulations are pointing to, and 20 then if the regulatory obstacles that are being put in place 21 will not dllow incineration, then you have really got an h"I 22 impossible situation to deal with from the standpoint of a 3 23
!2 waste generator, and the disposal site operators aren't going d { 24 uj to get any waste. Nothing will come. It will all back up or !
$ { ~ 25 4 the facilities will shut down. hey will have to stop i 0d~ )
I i
f 88 1
generating the stuff unless you can come to some conclusion 2 about how to treat the waste. To.the best of my knowledge in 3 discussing this with the EPA people that we have been d
interfacing with, they certainly have nothing against 3 incineration, as near as I can tell. In fact, they' seem to O be agreeing that incineration is . the way to be dealing with 7
some of these wastes.
O MR. TEDFORD: Are you still accommodating questions here?
10 MR. BROWNING: Sure.
MR. TEDFORD: Chuck Tedford, Arizona. You asked for suggestions with regard to the mixed wastes. In our 13
- On(_)
'/~N ' area the majority of mixed wastes is in the form of 14 scintillation v.t Ts. Do you have any feeling with regard to 15 the overall mixed waste, what percentage of it is scintilla-
. tion vials?
17 MR. BROWNING: I don' t happen to remember the number offhand.
19 DR. /KNAPP: It is about 2.4 percent, I believe, on 20 a volume basis, about.
ma 21 gj /
MR. TEDFORD: Two point four out of the three?
Si 22 DR. KNAPP: No, 2.4 percent of all low-level waste
$ 4l 23 measured on a volume basis, I believe is scintillation waste.
&$ 24 dj $ MR. TEDFORD: And there is a total of 3 perce*
.' N U ' 25 42 overall that he quoted. So, this is about 98-some odd
( du
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6)p a 89 1 percent of the total?
2 DR. KNAPP: Eighty percent or so. The rest of it 3 is principally lead and chromate.
d MR. TEDFORD: Okay, and as I understand it, this 5 is currently being incinerated. At least our scintillation 4 vials are being incinerated by a contractor, and I would 7 suggest that you consider taking that other 6/10 that you 8 have left there and maybe treating it in the form of greater
' than Class C wastes and handling it and spending some of the 10 money that you have'been back here debating with taking II care of it in that area.
12 MR. BROWNING: I think your point is well taken.
13 The liquid scintillation vial material, I think the largest Id volume of it was declared below regulatory concern in the 15 rule making that we went through which did open up the doors I' for other options' for dealing with it. The only reason the 37 other portion of that waste did not get addressed is because 18 the industry did not do what Kitty Dragonette was describing, I'
laying out what the cases for the nation in that particular 20 category so that we could deal with the situation.
' I The fuel cycle division under Dick Cunningham is,
. i "I 22 in fact, working with the medical community to try to get the j 23 data necessary in order to decide whether that additional d
g 24 piece is below regulatory concern. The problem is that si/g{
' 25 people would not give up the data because it is proprietary fi x _,/ \ * '
90
/-
V) 1 and has apparently some kind of business significance to 2 them. They are trying to get over that hurdle.
3 One of the options we looked at was just banning d it from the radioactive waste sites. The problem there is 5 what is it you are banning. I mean how do you tell the 6 . generators what is a mixed waste, and it goes back to --
I we cannot answer that question by ourselves. We have to get 8 EPA involved,-and we are in the process of doing that, trying
' to get that question resolved. I am not sure we are going te-10 be successful because they have restrictions and limitations II placed on them by the law that they have to operate under.
12 They don't have the regulatory flexibility we have because O
their 1ews ere so prescr1 9tive.
I' MS. KIRNER: Nancy Kirner from the State of M
Washington. I think you have answered your own question, and I'
that is to go back to the drawing board with staff, argue I7 between the two and figure out just what the law is really 18 trying to say on both sides. That is basically what we are
" doing in the State of Washington. As you know, the site 0
operator, US Ecology, has chosen to submit a Part B, Closure, ma 21 Post-Closu/re Application. So, there is no acceptance of
" 22 mixed waste, supposed to be no acceptance of mixed waste in I
{23 the State of Washington, at least not that anyone is S
- 24 -
O admitting to anyway.
eil['23 4; There is a process going on in the State of
.w dc
91
(]
\. s 1 Washington to deal with the issue of mixed waste. Basically 2 we are trying to shuffle the two regulations, the state 3 dangerous waste regulations and 10CFR61 and license require-4 ments.
5 After those two regulations are to be shuffled, e them the real work gets done, and then you stand back and 7 say, "Does it make sense?" We may have just made a horse 8 by committee and have it turn out to be a camel. The next 9 option or the next step is to propose options for management 10 to decide, and along with those options we have to decide 11 can this be done; is this option able to be implemented by 12 a variance procedure to the RCRA regulations or 10CFR61 or i
O
aoes it texe 1este1etive me aete2 oat 11 enet erocese 1e Id complete, and that is going to take a long time, I think 15 that we are just going to be batting our heads against the 16 wall without complete information.
37 Thank you.
18 MR. BROWNING: I might add here after the NRC and I'
EPA staffs have reached whatever agreement we can on the 20 specific issues, I think it would be hic hly .important for 21 us to get i together with the state people who have to deal 22 with exactly the same question and make sure before we end j 23 up locking anything in concrete, if you will or bitumen or 2'
whatever you lock things in these days to make sure that from ei J 25 da a state perspective that what we are coming up with is, in
._. )UE
92 h
1 fact going to be able to work, be implemented.
2 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: Fred Feizollahi, Bechtel National, 3 San Francisco. I guess you were referring that you are now d leaning toward a double agency permitting process, and I
$ guess if you recall during the conference in Charleston this e issue was discussed, and all generators, as well 'as the site 7 operators said that they have no objection to double agency 8 permitting. In fact, they may have five or 10 permits on 9 their sites right now. The principal problem which I guess 10 we forgot to mention here is that there are inconsistencies 11 with the NRC and the RCRA regulations for disposal. So, 12 being that as the problem, how do you envision that these O '2 dieferencee between the two reeu1etione cen be worked out Id in a way that there is no conflict?
15 As you know, the siting requirement may be different; 16 the migration fr'om the site, the requirement of RCRA is 17 zero migration, and under 10CFR Part 61, we allow certain 18 amounts of migration out of the site. So, there are some l' fundamental differences that have to be worked out before 20 this double permitting can be approached. So, what is your 21 answer td that?
22 MR. BIOWNING: : I thought we had just despribed El gj 23 the process we were going under to identify what those
[ dif ferences are and see -if they can be resolved at the
!!l2d 25 technica: staft level,but maybe we didn't make that clear 1
v ms ,
93 t h(m
() I enough. I would like to have Dr. Knapp who has the task of 2 trying to resolve those discrepancies without the. need for 3
legislation tell you specifically what is going on, but I d
would encourage you-,not to put our requirements in the 3 context of we allow leakage to occur. We sat through too O many hearings where Congressional people say, " Gee, why should 7 we allow NRC to license the site; they allow leaks? EPA 8 What we do is we recognize and doesn't allow leaks."
acknowledge that over time, over the long periods of time that these sites are in existence there will be some migration ,
11 and as long as it is kept under an acceptable amount, the 12 site would be acceptable, but we don't start going into these O
sites de11berete1y deeiening emd e11ewine 1eekeee, end I 14 encourage anybody who deals in this subject at whatever 15 level that you try to make that distinction clear, that EPA sites, no;. matter what they do, all my technical experts 17 tell me eventually they will have migration, also. So, let 18 us try to make sure that that misperception is clarified in 19 whatever arena anybody has an opportunity to participate 20 ,
in. ,
s 21 /
g DR. KNAPP: With respect to some of the things.we I
22 are working on right now with EPA, maybe this concept of
! lg23 zero release or no migration deserves just a moment. As we b
d
& 24 best understand it from EPA, their position is that no .
l ei /j g
' 25
- g j migration or zero release deals with untreated waste, and v ()
'Q 94 i I believe their reading of the law is for as long as the 2 waste shall remain hazardous which for a number of chemical 3 wastes would appear to be forever, as near as we can tell.
4 The effect of this, I believe, may be that there is going 5 to be essentially no reasonable way to dispose of untreated 6 wastes, with respect to chemically hazardous wastes. It 7 will probably be necessary to do something like incineration a of organics, with respect to such things as leads and 9 chromates and it may be necessary to stabilize them into 10 compounds which are basically insoluble and then perhaps 11 beyond that even mixed with something like concrete. I don't 12 know that that is necessarily the position that EPA will take OO is o= aezera "= westee, 8"e 1=eorme11v we see the 1 mere ==1oa 14 that they are leaning in that direction.
15 Now, if that is the way the things come out, then 16 the question of z'ero release may tend to resolve itself.
17 Now, that does not resolve such things as dual liners, 18 monitoring and a number of other things.
19 What we are doing in those areas is meeting with 20 EPA and right now, although I cannot recount the entire lot, we hdve about 11 different subject areas. We are having
~
21 5 22 staff-to-staff meetings, such as the definition of hazardous 23 and therefore mixed wastes, site selection criteria, design i d,m*24 criteria, criteria for monitoring, criteria for remediation. l w qR
- . 25 The intent of these meetings is to go through the regulations i C)d i
h 95 I very carefully and find out exactly what differences are 2 tolerable and what differences amount to inconsistencies that 3 would simply provide an insurmountable burden, if somebody d wanted to get dual permitting.
i 5 Hopefully we can resolve these differences as we 6 go and then get endorsement at the agency level that they 7 have been resolved.
8 I think as Rob'said earlier, so far in our meetings
' and discussion, we have not found any irreconcilable 10 differences, and that is the best that I can say right now.
II I can tell you we are moving at fairly fast speed, and we 12 are supposed to report to the Commission in about two weeks I3 on our progress.
I# Anything else on mixed waste?
MR. NUSSBAUMER:
II If not, we will move into the next topic on the 30 agenda which concerns the NRC's Technical Assistance I7 Program, and before I introduce our next speaker, Dr. John 18 Starmer on this topic, I would just like to say a few words 19 about the Technical Assistance Program as we see it from our 0
Of fice of State Programs with the agreement -states.
As I am sure you know, there are 28 agreement
' 1 22 states now which regulate something on the order of 60 percent j%8 23 of the 20,000 material licensees, and this includes by-product d
g3 material, source material, less than critical quantities of wi/ [ 24 (e ' 25 special nuclear material, uranium railling and mill tailings vvO dE
i and low-level waste disposal.
2 Now, the agreement state progratt.; consists of several 3 basic elements. We negotiate new agreements as the states 4 express interest. We review on a periodic basis currently 5 12 to 18 months, each agreement state radiation control 4 program for its adequacy to protect public health and safety 7 and compatibility with NRC's program.
8 We exchange information on incidence, licenses, 9 enforcement actions, regulations, guides and so on, and 10 finally, we provide training and technical assistance to the 11 states to help them maintain their high-quality programs.
12 The state agreements professional staff are all h 13
~
health physicists with backgrounds in engineering, life 14 sciences and experience in licensing and inspection 15 activities, so that most of the day-to-day assistance we 16 provide to the acfreement states is provided directly by the .
17 state agreement staff which includes our regional 18 representatives as well, but where technical disciplines 19 are required which are beyond the Office of State Programs 20 Capabilities, such as in geochemistry or structural 21 enginee rin'g , then the assistance is obtained from other I 22 NRC staff offices or contractors or anywhere else where we
!g I 23 can get the appropriate input. Now, in the case of low -level M k 24 radioactive waste matters, we request the assistance.mainly w?R f ' 25 f rom the Division of Waste Management because of the evolving 1- n v da i
97 (a)i^;
I nature of the program and the technical expertise available 2
in the engineering and earth sciences in that group.
3 Typically the state requests come to the Office of a
State Programs and are responded to by us with' input from -
S the other offices as needed. On January 22, 1986, we wrote to all the states to highlight the availability of NRC 7 technical assistance which is regulatory in nature, and we, 8
also, wrote to representatives of the compacts and unsited 9
states to explain the availability and limitation of our assistance to them.
11 We outlined the technical assistance in several 12 areas which included guidance in assessing staff technical
() 14 capability needs and overall staffing requirements for running the regulatory program for low-level waste, assistance 15 in evaluating contractor capabilities and their proposals, 16 assistance in evaluating disposal site license applications 17 and environmental assessments and the assessment of 18 performance of unique wastes in the disposal environment.
19 This assistance would be provided to the a'greement state 20 regulatory, agency.'
21 i
5 i
Now, we do not, however, plan to provide technical 22 assistance for developing regional waste management plans I 23
!E or designation of states to host new level waste disposal G$ 5 2a pj g f acilities or other activities which are beyond the safety 9' 25 l ih reculation. I just wanted to make that brief introduction, ooc v
1
(")
I and now, I will ask Dr. John Starmer to cover some of the 2 types of technical assistance we havs given and what we can 3 offer.
4 John?
5 DR. STARMER: Since the time seems to have gotten 6 away from me, I think my strategy which I would say is just 7 the opposite of Rob MacDougall's is probably the best one to 8 take. I would like to make a few important points and then 9 get into some, if you will, boring detail 1, at which point 10 you can go to lunch ~early or something.
11 One point I would like to make is the concept that 12 Don alluded to that we provide technical assistance for 00 la 14 resu1etory-re1eted concerne, end mv 1eet goint ~111 he thet we can actually work with promoters, even to the level of 15 talking to vendors. There may seem to be a little bit of a 16 contradiction, bht I think when.I.get through I may be able 17 to explain how.that comes out.
18 We have basically in the Division of Waste 19 Management, and it is run through several branches. So, I 20 won't take,all the credit for it, but we have two general 21 sorts of things that we have been doing, one that we have U 22 called an outreach program, and I think in the group from I
j 23 the states many of you have been touched by that. That has M k 24 been, if you will, one of explaining what we cando for you.
m ae f ' 25 What I am doing right now might be an example of that, coming w 0a5
c
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\- out and telling particularly states or compacts, explaining i
2 what our role can be, and we have had a lot of cooperation 3 from state programs and particularly the regional people in 4 that area.
3 Another area I would like to typify is being 6 consultants to states. This is in two areas. One is the 7 area where we have special technical expertise. Being a 3 geochemist; Bob Browning likes to refer to me as a former 9 geochemist, now that I am a manager, I know that that is an 10 area where states probably cannot staff up and each staff have 11 a geochemist on their staff. In addition, the work done by 12 a geochemist in low-level waste may not be a great deal of 13 work.
(])(v')
14 Now, there are a couple of approaches. You can go 15 outside to a consultant, but very often a regulatory agency to has regulatory questions. They would like, if you will, the 17 parent agency, the NRC, to just help them. You know, is this 18 going to be a problem? Is this the way that the geochemistry 19 would work, the way this licensee has proposed or whatever, 20 and we can answer those sorts of questions.
21 8'In the Federal Register notice there were further II 22 examples, not really examples of sorts of things that we 81 23 could do.
gg One of the things would be, you come in and say, I "Do we need a geochemist on our staff?" And we would puzzle.
Hl w t k 24 3 ' 25 and say, "We have one, but being a national organization, O as,
i
/
I i(E? O 3 maybe that is appropriate and maybe we could share.
~
i 1
I f However, you should really have a geotechnical engineer and 3
a geologist and this and that and the other thing, and help l you make sure that your staff would be ready to work in processing a license or offering help to your developmental agency or pr'ivate concern that is doing development, to
.know that they are going to be able to meet the regulation.
i Another area that we work in is in offering explanations, is the best way, or education about our l regulations. This is a little bit different than the i
11 training that Don talked about. Training would be how to 12
. process a license application. Our education program is .
O 13 V more, what is meant by 10CFR Part 61, paragraph 52. If you 14 have a question, we can. offer that. In fact, Kitty 15 Dragonette has a standard sort of training session that we le have given and will give to states. Last December, as an
- 17 example, I went and talked to the technical advisory group
)I is j for the state of Illinois, just to explain the regulation, l 19 /
i to go through the concept of performance objectives, how 20 the technical criteria support the performance objectives, en 21 i
! R$ the sorts of things that would have to be done to license a
$5 22 I
. site.
I 23 3 I have to point out that we have to do this within
! MI $ 24 j Qj g resource constraints. If we get to the point where we are
' #; 25 j'-
jg-overloaded and we are probably close to the breaking point l
4
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's_J now, with all the requirements of the Low Level Radioactive 2
Waste Policy Amendments Act. we might have to say no. We 3
often can get someone from state programs or from the 4
regional group to come an listen to the concerns, listen to 5
a meeting. We cannot always do that. So far, I believe 6
there is only one case, and I think it is tomorrow, that we 7
have not been able to respond to requests fro state a
programs or through the liaison people in the regions, to 9
provide staff from headquarters for this sort of thing. So 10 we are pretty good, but I would just say this is not a 11 promise and we might have to say, sorry, could you put it 12
, off or could we make other arrangements.
-l .C'; 13 ks Another important thing to point out is that we 14 are trying to target the states that are making progress.
15 We feel that if a state is just sort of thinking about 16 maybe possibly someday opening a disposal site, they have 17 some problems, as you heard from Mr. Davis this morning, in 18 going to meet the deadlines, and we have other states that 19 are really trying to meet the deadlines to develop the 20 disposal capacity mandated by Congress. We really owe our m~ 21 '.
support to those states. We will encourage other states, f
22 but what we will encourage them to do is get to work.
Na d Excuse me, where is Texas? We also support H bn* 24 H g go-it-alone states because they certainly are very 9ja 25 r
s e3jE'i serious. Now to this idea of what can we do in terms of 5,_-
p 102
- O I development? The concept that was developed or originated 2 in the high level waste program, which was given a very 3 flowery term, early and ongoing consultation, that may be a d little bit too much, but I do like the concept. If we can 5 get out and inform a state, say, siting authority or e developmental authority, which means that they might be 7 doing both siting and facility development, talk to them, e make sure that they understand our regulations, and that 9 everybody, the states, usually two state agencies, the 10 developer and NRC, understand what is going on, we can 11 possibly head off at the pass at least the technical sorts 12 of faux pas that could possibly happen. Somebody wants to OO l' bui1d e dispose 1 feci11tv on si1ts in the wississingi River Id flood plain -- we got a slight technical problem there. I 15 think you might have a perception problem. Of course those 16 can cause problems as Texas also well knows, for there is 17 politics involved. We don't get too much into the state 18 politics, but we certainly realize they are there.
I' Also at this point, I would say for the regulatory 20 agencies in the states, you should be talking to your m- 21 developmebtalpeopleandinthecasesthatIamfamiliar l! 22 with, this is taking place. So it is no great problem.
I j 23 Just to sort of recap what was in the Federal 24 Register notice, for agreement states we can talk about -
i si 41, f ' 25 staffing, and I explained the sorts of things we could do Qd5
103 Q
O] v(3 3
there. We can do evaluation of contractor proposals and we 2 We can give have done that for the state of California.
3 assistance in licensee reviews or license reviews or d
environmental reviews. At least from my point of view, 3 this does not mean that we will review the license for you, 6 but we will help you review the license. So I would defer 7 to Don on that, but I think it is a good point. If you 8
want to be an agreement state, you have to be able to evaluate your own license and run the site and regulate the 30 site. We'll help. When I get into some specifics, you l'
will see that we have been doing that for some states for 12 some time.
j3 h* (e) x Another thing that we probably have expertise in I#
that we could not ask you -- sometimes you have a specific 15 waste problem. The low regulatory concern might be one.
16 Certainly above Class C, which we did not discuss, but has 37 caused some problems in the past. These are areas where 18 they are a relatively small part of the problem, but we have expertise. We have experience, we have people who 20 really kno,w a lot. So if a problem like that arises, we es a 21
% can help / review, and at least for the active states, states with disposal capacity, we do help them review specific, if
$$ f you will, problem wastes. -
d 2 24 eg @ Now I would like to ge through just a few N$
< ' 25 examples:
U
lh 104 1
My staff put together for me a notebook of about, I would 2 pess, about 40 pages of examples,. approximately 20 states 3 and things that we have done for contracts. Out of that, I d decided that rather than to put you to sleep right before 5 lunch, I am going to concentrate on a few. I, also, am going 4 to talk in terms of development, what we can do in helping 7 with development, just a little bit about operation because 8
if you are all successful, you are going to be in the position of having to operate a site, and then in closure which seems 10 like it is way down the line but is very current for at least
'I a couple of agreement states.
I think I will start with Texas. It is one that I have been f amiliar with for quite a while. It is, also, a
" case where we have worked with the developmental agency and 15 with the regulatory agency. At least three years ago Texas 30 came in and said, "We are going to go it alone, and we are I7 going to site. Could you give us some information on your 18 siting requirements?"
So,'we talked at some length, explaining the 20 criteria of Part 61 for siting and just helping them under-h
$1 22 stand. They went off and developed siting criteria of their own, and we looked at them and said, "Those are pretty good."
! I23 They added a few things. Those were acceptable, no problem.
>$ g*
a] j [ 24 They went out and found a site, and I think Tom is going to
~
$ 25 N talk about that or may talk about some of the problems that
- . , O u
- :
105 Q.'O 1 you can get into, even though you have an NRC-approved 2 technically sound site, but in that case it is an example of 3 having worked with the low level waste authority and the 4 regulatory group to make sure that everything was going 5 according to regulatory plan, and I think it has been very 6 effective. As I understand it, they are going back, and we 7 have had people go down. They have looked at their new 8 site. They are doing site cuaracterization. So, we are 9 still actively participating.
10 Again, when we get a request, either directly or 11 through state programs, we try to respond and give information .
12 At one time they came in with some specific design questions, lh 13 What sorts of things can we or cannot we do,and what would 14 be compatible or not really compatible; what would be 15 technically appropriate?
16 California gives a different example of what we 17 could do. Here is an example of where California, again ,
18 went out and moved ahead and let out -- they put out an RFP 19 and got bids to develop a site in California. They looked 20 at these very large documents and said, " Gee, I am not sure 21 that we cdn really handle that sort of information," and O '
so they said, "NRC, could you help us, first of all look at I-l22 the contractor's qualifications, and then look, don' t do a g 23 d' b*g 24 detailed review, but look at if what they are proposing would 0
y( E 25 meet Part 61 requirements?" I wasn't active in that effort, t
106
' %;u b) m 1 but I remember that it took several months of concerted 2 work review, looking at it and an answer was sent back to 3 California.
d .
Illinois is a state which is now developing; they 3 have done their siting; they are iNto ,the process of developing e a facility.. They haven't selec'ted a site, but they have 7 done some-siting studies, and we are in the early, in terms 8 of working with them as an agreement state and developing
' a new site, we are in early' stages of interaction with them.
I 10 As I mentioned, Bob Browning and a fellow who is 11 not with us anymore 'went out and talked to their compact and 12 their development agency. I came' out and talked more 13 specifically about Part 61 and about licensing alternatives, Id trying to explain, again, possibly in an education mode, you 15 know, what sorts of thin'gs they were going to have to deal 16 with in licensing, in developing and that sort of thing.
17 Pennsylvania is a dif ferent case, a different 18 approach, and it is not one that I would say we could follow I' for all states, but we would certainly try to approach that 20 sort of participation. Pennsylvania has been in the process 21 of developing siting criteria and design criteria and doing 22 a lot of other things, for example, passing enabling j 23 legislation to allow them to develop and license a site.
24 We were requested just about a year ago or a little over a d' 25 4 year ago by the region to participate in their public c::
t
sO 107 b O' I coordinating committee as resource people, and again, it 2 became an education and clarification role and offering some 3 of NRC's experience. This is what we have seen happen. If 4 you write it that way did you think about all these things 5 that would happen, and at the same time saying, "Have you e covered all the requirements of Part 61?" So, it was to some 7 extent technical, and there were people available to talk 8 about how do you set up screening criteria on a technical 9 basis, regulatory; have you covered all the points of Part 61 10 So, have you met that minimum? You know, have you gone way 11 overboard? We cannot say that, but we can offer some 12 suggestions. If you do that, you are not going to find a 13 site in the State of Pennsylvania. It was a back and forth 14 and for our si,aff, as well as for the Pennsylvania staff, 15 I think it was a very useful experience.
le We have done some other work. We have participated 17 in explaining some siting criteria with the State of Maine 18 'and others, but I think that I will leave it at that point 19 and talk veryj briefly about the operating sites and some of 20 the sorts of things that af ter you have got, a site going, 21 maybe this will encourage you. You won't have to be so U 22 afraid. We will still be there. Again, we have to have an El g 23 expression of need, and based on that expression we will 24 try to fulfill that need.
wae f ' 25 For the State of Washington, we have helped them 9as
108
! p- f)
V i over the past almost one year now since we went out. We have 2 been putting quite a bit of ef fort in hel ing them bring i
3 their regulation and not their regulation so much as their 4 license up to speed with Part 61, I would say. It is 3 implementing Part 61 in the State of Washington license. It 6 is not such a complicated thing, but it is time consuming.
7 Some of the things we had noted earlier were not up to speed,
! e and here was a chance to try to implement Part 61 at the 9 Hanford site. The Barnwell site on the other hand, is pretty to much self-sufficient. We do offer some help in reviewing 11 specific, some of the special waste things. We do talk to 12 them and certainly are available.
<Q 13 In the past we went as far as helping them produce 14 an environmental assessment at the request of state 15 programs.
16 So, it depends on what stage a site is at, and we 17 are there.
18 The Bady (?) site hasn't been too active, although 19 we have had some input into their closure plan and into their 20 monitoring plan, and I expect as the site becomes more 21 active due to the Policy Amendments Act, we will be having
$5 22 more interaction'with them. s I 23 Finally, a kind of a touchie point is there are a g
M w? R 24 couple of sites that still are not operating, but they are f ' 25 not technically closed, and in two agreement states, Kentucky 9a5
) 109 i[ - O I and New York we have offered and provided technical assistance 2 in reviewing closure plans and monitoring plans and things 3 Again, that activity varies. One of my staff of that sort.
d and I got stuck at the Newark Airport last winter trying to 3 attend the New York State's last meeting on their closure 8 plan, and we, sort of with' our tails between our legs, the 7 weather had stopped us, not like the mailmen, came back, but l
8 again, we have tried to participate in the meetings, have our technical staff review the plans and offer those review 10 comments as a help so the states.
MR. NUSSBAUMER: Are there any questions on this aspect for Dr. Starmer?
() "
I#
MR. BROWNING: One of the advantages to us on the interface we have with the state people, and this came very 15 close to home when the Texas people first started an active 16 dialogue with us 'on their experience, and this is a two-way 17 s tree t. In addition to any help which the federal agency 18 can or cannot give to the states, we can benefit enormously
~ by the state's experiences in trying to implement our 20 regulation,, and one of the points we made with the Texas ll
$1 22 folks, thd 10CFR 61 regulation is a new regulation. It hasn't
., been tested with experience and time. It was developed I23 based on all the experience coming out of all the operating
&$ g* 24 nj E sites, including the DOE operating sites. So, we think we
$' ~ 25 1b learned all the lessons of the past and have incorporated
.s Oon 9
.___ e
110
.Q v
1 provisions for making sure the problems at the existing and 2 closed sites won' t reoccur, but it is very important to have 3 a dialectic between ourselves and the states so that we can 4 benefit from their experience in actually implementing the 5 regulation.
6 I will have to say that I have been very pleased 7 with the candor and the helpfulness with which the Texas a people take the time to come to tell us what problems they 9 are having in implementing our regulation because as any 10 regulation as you are probably aware, there should be a living 11 document. As you get more experience you may have to modify 12 it and supplement it. That is, also, the reason why it is 13 extremely important for us to be aware of what the operating 14 sites are finding as they monitor the continued performance 15 of that states.
16 So, I don't know wheth2r the state perspective is 17 that our interf ace has been helpful to you or not, but I 18 can tell you from my perspective, the interface is extremely 19 helpful to us ,in terms of making sure that we are in a positio a 20 to provide some kind of national focus to this particular 21 problem. f SS 22 So, I encourage all of you to keep the open Igh23 dielectic, even if you may not think it is a help to you.
.A I 2d We certainly think it is a help to us.
W d) k j3 ' 25 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Thank you, Bob. With that, we will
~O"
h 111 I break for lunch and reconvene at one-thirty.
2 (Thereupon, at 12:03 p.m. , a recess was taken until
]
3 1:30 p.m., the same day.) f 4
5 6
7 i
3 9
10 11
- 12
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14 15 16 17 18 19 ,,
20 a'
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22 1 u
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h 112 1 AFTERNOON SESSION 1:30 P.M.
2 MR. NUSSBAUMER: We thought it would be appropriate 3 during this meeting to take the opportunity to discuss d several agreement state issues that have been raised. The 5 ones we hear about most often are regulatory versus management e responsibilities, the limited agreement option and training 7 and state efforts to establish a capability to process 8
applications for low level waste disposal.
The original Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980, 10 we felt left many questions unanswered and created a period II of uncertainty for the states in attempting to meet their 12 responsibility. One area of uncertainty was the emphasis 00
Id of the co gects on meneeement reseensibi1ities. As the states began to form compacts in the early 1980's the 13 compacts contained language that appeared to grant broad I'
regulatory responsibility for aspects of low-level waste 37 generation, such as treatment technology, volume reduction 18 and some required inspections of each generator by the I'
party state.
20 The Amendments Act of 1985, however, removed many h
"I 21 22 of the unc'ertainties f acing the states and the compacts.
The Act placed specific limitations on compact authority so j2I 23 that it was clear in certain areas no new authority had been 8.:$
g 5 ' 25
[ 24 conferred upon any compact commission or state. The states y or compact commissions do not have the authority to regulate v O 0::
113
' hr3v 1 the packaging or transportation of low-level radioactive 2 waste in a manner inconsistent with regulations of the NRC 3 or DOT, to regulate health, safety or environmental hazards d from by-product source and special nuclear materials, to 5 inspect facilities of a licensee of the NRC, to inspect 6 security areas or operations at the site of generation of 7 any low-level radioactive waste by the Federal Government or s to require indemnification beyond the provisions of the 9 Price-Anderson Act.
10 Although the Policy Amendments Act did not grant II any additional regulatory authority, an agreement state does 12 have regulatory authority over many of the areas that are of
'a
- 00 concern to those in the stete or comgect commission reeeensid1e I4 for implementing the Act.
15 As I mentioned earlier, Section 274 of the Act was 16 added to provide'a state role in regulating nuclear material, 17 and the statutory basis under which the Nuclear Regulatory 18 Commission could discontinue, and the state could assume, l' through agreement, certain of the NRC's regulatory authority.
20 The agency within a state with regulatory safety responsibilities under an agreement must be separate from 21 22 the agency whose responsibilities are for development and j 23 management of a low-level waste disposal facility. This is Id essential to avoid a real or. appearance of a conflict of si / 25 di in te re s t. We recognize that the agreement state may have idE vv 4
114 (5) m m
i both proprietary responsibilities for the selection, 2 ownership and operation or contracting for operation of the 3 disposal facility and reoulatory responsibilities for a establishment of standards, licensing, inspection and enforce-5 ment of regulatory requirements.
6 In order to avoid the possibility of conflict of 7 interest between these proprietary and regulatory functions, s s it is important that the two different types of re~ponsibilities 9 not be assigned to the same state agency.
10 Another area that we are concerned about with 11 respect to the agreement states is that the tight deadlines 12 and the pressures to develop new disposal capacity do not
({)(} 13 drive the regulatory review process to less than a complete 14 in-depth review of the license application. The agreement 15 state regulatory agency has the responsibility to assure 16 that the disposal facility meets the applicable regulatory
, 17 requirements and that the public health and safety and 18 environment will be protected.
19 Also, since the Policy Act Amendments set up an 20 allocation system with surcharges, there could be an og 21 economic fncertive for storage, volume reduction and other I 22 treatment techno" logy to reduce the amount of waste disposed Ig h 23 of at commercial sites, m 4 H I h 2d Although volume reduction and storage may be Wj R
$ ' 25 mandated by the compact or state, the actual regulation v
d5
115 y with regard to health and safety rests with the state 2 regulatory agency or the NRC as the case may be.
3 Some states have alraady investigated storage 4 options at utilities or centralized locations. Again, it is 5 critical that the regulatory agencies maintain their 6 independence from the agencies responsible for developing the 7 disposal capacity so that their objectivity is not compromised .
g The next area I wanted to cover was the limited 9 agreement option. Under the criteria we have developed for 10 guidance of the states and the NRC in entering into an li agreement, we provide for separate categories covering 12 by-product material, source material, special nuclear
[h 13 material in quantities not sufficient to form a critical 14 mass, mill tailings and low-level waste disposal. A state 15 may, if it desires, seek authority for regulating only 16 low-level wasto disposal, without seeking authority for the 17 other radioactive materials which are customarily included 18 in agreements.
19 We r,efer to an agreement for transfer of regulatory 20 authority only for such waste disposal as a limited agreement.
^
ma 21 Presently jthere are 28 agreement states of which 26 have the .
Eb l 55 22 authority to reg'ulate low-level waste disposal. Utah and '
\
f~I23 g Iowa's agreement did not include such authority, and these H I'D were the latest two agreement states. The others were wg e$ 24 I N1
- 4. ' 25 grandfathered in.
d
116 Q
i The basic elements of a limited agreement program 2 are quite similar to a full agreement. A state must 3 establish authority to conduct a radiation control program 4 for low-level waste disposal through legislation and be able 5 to implement it through state regulations compatible with 6 those of NRC. The state regulations will provide the 7 standards and rules for licensing and regulating a low-level 8 waste disposal facility. For example, radiation protection 9 standards will be needed, such as Part 20 to cover operational 10 aspects and maintain worker exposures, ALARA. Procedural 11 rules will be needed related to hearing enforcement, 12 environmental assessments,'etc., and the location of the h 13 state radiation control program within the overall state 14 organization should be such that it can effectively compete 15 with other health and safety programs for budget and staff.
16 I would like to discuss some of the qualifications 17 of the regulatory and inspection personnel for a limited 18 agreement program. In addition to persons qualified by 19 training and experience to regulate the radiation protection 20 aspects of the handling and use of the radioactive materials, 21 the regul5 tion of radioactive waste disposal requires 45 22 g capability in the fields of geology, hydrology, ecology, 6E j j 23 climatology, engineering and so on to evaluate the natural 24 characteristics of the proposed disposal facility and the 25 f effectiveness of design and operational features to isolate
\d5 V.
1 1
117 1 and contain the waste. As a minimum, a state radiation l
2~ control program should have on its staff or through 3 consultants the capability to make independent technical 4 analyses to Cztermine that the established performance 5 objectives will be met and to prepare environmental impact 6 analyses of the proposed activity, and as we discussed before 7 lunch in certain aspects of this, the NRC is able to provide 8 technical assistance.
9 W hen an agreeraent state plans to use consultants 10 from other state agencies, universities or other sources, it 11 is necessary that these persons be available when and to the 12 extent needed. This availability should be assured by
- h 13 appropriate memoranda of understanding, consultant contracts 14 and budgeted funds.
15 In using consultants, it is important to consider 16 possible problems if the same person consults with both the 17 agreement state radiation control program and the state agency 18 having the responsibility for selection and operation of 19 the disposal site.
20 NRC has recognized this problem and has recently 21 issued a otice of intent for the establishment and sponsorship U 22 of a federally-funded research and development center for 1
j3 2 waste management. As far as the staff effort needed, NRC 24 estimates that the professional staff time required for W R
' 25 issuance of a license for a low-level waste disposal facility a
_s 118 a (~s i is about four staff years, for renewal of a license about 2 two staff years and for a major amendment about one staff 3 year.
4 The post-licensing activities related to existing 5 waste burial facilities which includes resident inspectors 6 at the operating sites in environmental monitoring are 7 estimated at about one to five staff years per site per year.
s Since no disposal sites have yet been licensed under Part 61 9 and not knowing the particular technology that might be used, 10 these estimates should be considered somewhat speculative.
11 The states should, also, have procedures to require that an 12 adequate bond, surety or other financial arrangement be 13 provided by the licensee to assure the completion of all
([')(r_/3 14 requirements for decontamination, closure, decommissioning 15 and reclamation of the site.
16 Also, sufficient funds need to be available to 17 cover the costs of monitoring and long-term care of the 18 facility by the state or Federal Government after operational 19 and closure ac,tivities by the licensee are terminated. The 20 state should, also, provide for public participation and i ga 21 hearings in the licensing process and should prepare a written 58 "3 22 environmental impact analysis and make it available to the I
g 23 public before commencement of any hearing on the impact of
.e HI w aR 24 the disposal facility on the environment.
f ' 25 We are ready to assist any state interested in r-)se
\- a 1
1
119
( )( ) I pursuing the limited agreement option or a full agreement I for that matter. I believe it is important to emphasize 3 that a limited agreement would be limited to authority over d the low-level waste disposal f acility. A state with 5 limited authority would have no regulatory authority over o the generators of low level waste within the state. A full 7 agreement would be necessary if the state wishes regulatory 8 authority over waste generators, brokers or various waste processing technologies.
10 Additional information on the role of an agreement II state versus a non-agreement state in regulating low-level 12 waste can be found in the report we issued a short time ago, 13
, NUREG 0962, entitled the role of the states in the regulation
" of low-level radioactive waste.
' The final area I wish to touch on is the training and state efforts to establish a capacity to process 17 license applica~tions. As you know, Section 9 of the Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendment Act requires the 19 -
regulatory agencies, either NRC or as appropriate the agree-20 i ment states to establish procedures and develop the technical
\
u 21 i g capability for processing license applications by January 15, 1 22 1987. These procedures must, to the extent practicable h23
! provide for the completion of all processing and reviews,
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d j l 24 except for the licensing hearing within 15 months after N ' 25 Sh receipt of the application. Prudence dictates that a OU2
~ . - _ -
y -
i hq 120 V
1 regional host state or non-compact state, if an agreement 2 state, hhve the capability in place well ahead of that date, 3 when applications are due. This is necessary so that pre-4 application guidance can be given to tl'e applicant, such as 5 site acceptability. We suggest that those agreement states 6 who anticipate becoming host states promptly begin to 7 establish the necessary procedures and technical capability.
8 During our periodic reviews of agreement state programs, we [
9 plan to examine those agreement states who are host states 10 or anticipate becoming a host state for the adequacy of their 11 regulations, procedures, staffing and technical capability.
12 Several states have asked for assistance in 13 training their steffs to enable them to develop a license
)
Id review capability. As we discussed in the morning session, 15 we are able to provide training and technical assistance 16 to the states within budgetary restrictions to help them 37 maintain their programs.
18 We presently offer courses in health physics, 19 radiation engineering, licensing, inspection procedures, 20 transportation, radiography and medical applications. At 21 present wd have no specific course for low-level waste I 22 disposal although certain aspects of the above courses have I 23 applicability to this area. However, we are at this time j
24 developing a project management course for processing a 25 waste disposal application, and we hope to present this course
i
- 121 i in FY 1987. This course would cover the elements of 2 Processing and manageing a low-level waste disposal license 3 application which involves a multidiscipline review and 4 careful timing. We are always pleased to provide information 5 or answer questions about the agreement state program.
6 Therefore, if there are any questions at this point, 7 I would be happy to have them.
3 Okay, if not -- apparently there'is one.
9 MR. TRUBATCH: Yes, there is. Hi, Don. You emphasize d 10 that the regulatory agency needs to be separate from the
. l 11 developing agency in an agreement state. What happens in a 12 situation where you have a state which is on the verge of
({)(]) 13 becoming an agreement state whichis engaging before it becomes 14 an agreement state in both functions? We have one agency 15 engaging in both functions. Is that state going to have to 16 split the agency 'somehow in order to obtain agreement state 17 status with respect to low-level waste?
18 MR. NUSSBAUMER: That particular state we have 19 already spoken' to on this issue and have asked them to 20 address that point in their proposal for an. agreement. So, 21 it is a m5tter that we will have to take up..with'.them. I IIeI 22 MR. TRUBATCH: Okay.
l I 23 g MR. TEDFORD: Chuck Tedford, Arizona. Does NRC
.4 H I k 24 have hydrologist, climatologists , geologists, etc. , who can wJe 25 help evaluate particular applications?
s- a~n uj
'h 122 1
MR. NUSSBAUMER: I believe we have most of those 2 disciplines,and if we don' t have them on our staff, we know 3 where to find them.
d Okay, the next session this afternoon will get into 5 state and compact perspectives on things like siting 0 activities, developing state regulatory capabilities and 7 identification of needed NRC support, and we have a 8 discussion panel consisting of to my left Tom Blackburn
' who is Director of Special Programs for the Texas Low-Level 10 Waste Authority, Jay Dunkleberger who is Director of II Technology Development Programs, New York State Energy 12 Office and Bob Hallisey, Director of Radiation Control I3 Program, Department of Health, State of Massachusetts.
" MR. BLACKBURN: .TLanks a lot. Somebody once 15 said that there are not such thingsuas problems. There are ,
16 opportunities. kn low-level waste, don't believe him. It is I7 problems. We have had our share of them. I have a series 18 of slides that I would like to show you that talk about tne l'
siting effort'that we have had in Texas, shows you what we 20 consider a7very excellent site in the western part of Texas, lj a 21 i and several other things. The only problem with it is it is I 22 sitting in Austin, Texas,' right now. So, we will have to I 23
!% forego that.
>:I 24 Just a little bit of history. We are a separate uj $
~
- 5 25
< state agency, separate from our health department. Our sole vv
l i
I e
123
() I function in life is to develop a low-level radioactive waste 2 disposal facility. We will license our facility through our 3 health department in the Bureau of Radiation Control. So, d we have the development and the regulatory agencies completely 5 separate. We are governed by a six-member board of directors
'4 who are appointed by the governor. Unfortunately, as in most 7 of these type things, those are political appointments, and 8 they can be brought to bear, some of the favors, if you will.
9 Our funding is essentially 100 percent from our 10 general revenue fund within the state. We operate a little 11 dif ferently than most state agencies, in that we have to pay 12 back whatever funds we expend in the 10 years that we foresee hfD w) 13 us getting a site in operation, we have 20 years in which to 14 pay that back. So, basically what we have is an interest-15 free loan from the legislature. We do go back to the 16 legislature ever two years and ask for more money. Our 17 last budget covering this last two-year period was $3.1 million.
18 We anticipate spending somewhere close to $20 million to get l'
a site operating within the State of Texas. Again, we are a 20 separate agency. We have a staff of 11 people. We have 21 three engineers. Our general manager is, also, an engineer.
22 So, we have four engineers, an attorney, myself, which is 23
! hard to classify, and then we have several support people.
24 We have about 11 people on our staff, and this has been ei , g5 Q pretty well constant for the last almost four years now.
._ O c ::
124
] 1 When I say, "Almost four years,"we have been in 2 operation four years this September. We started in September 3 1982, with the first employee hired. We first started our d siting prccess in February 1983. So, we have been siting 5 a low-level waste facility for three and one-half years now, 6 and we foresee at least another year to go on our siting 7 program.
8 In February 1983, we hired the engineering firm 9 of Dames and Moore to survey all 254 counties within the 10 State of Texas and come back to us with two or more potential 13 low-level radioactive waste disposal sites, and it sounded so 12 easy back in 1983. We have a tremendously large state. Again, 13 we have 254 counties. We have got areas of the state where Id the population in the county is as low as 91 people. So, 15 there are some pretty isolated areas of the state, but again, 16 three and one-half years later, the siting process is by I7 no means easy.
18 We did start looking at all property within the I'
state. We don't have any eminent domain powers. We cannot 20 condemn land. We have to purchase it as would a private 21 individua . Another thing that has hampered our progress SE 22 in Texas, and it could very well lap over into all other gj 23 states is our statute requires us to hold not only the WI 24 g g surface rights to the property but all of the mineral rights N ' 25 fj to the property. There are quite a few areas of the State of
_, O 0:
/
(~T 125 V
I Texas where that just doesn't' occur, and it is mostly because 2 of the oil and gas in the area. So, those are probably our 3 two biggest stumbling blocks, but we started again, February d
1982, looking at all counties in the state.
5 To make a long, story short, in February 1985, we 0 had narrowed our search to two potential sites in South 7 In January 1985, the Texas Legislature came into Texas.
8 session. Our legislature meets every two years for 140 days.
Every year there is a little bit of talk about trying to 10 change it where they meet every 140 years for only two days.
I (Laughter.)
' MR. BLACKBURN: So far there is a lot of public 13
~ h1(-'/')
support for,that, but not too much legislative support. So, 14 here we are in February 1985, with two sites, both of them 15 located in South Texas, one of them 80 miles due south of 16 San Antonio, one of them 110 miles southeast of San Antonio.
17 They both sit on top of clay, very solid clay about 2000 18 feet deep. The aquifer in areas of both of the sites was 19 in excess of 2000 feet. Surface water considerations, both 20 of them we,re close to a river, and by close I mean 12 miles, e 21 g They were/, also, close to surface water reservoirs, and by l5 22 close I mean 15 miles.
I 23
!j The legislature came into town and changed our WI
- 24 ng E~ enabling statute. Our statute lays cut certain siting
$$ 25 criteria. There are about 10 criteria that are laid out in J '( ) U"4;
126 1 our statute,. and to give you an example of how they list them, 2 it will say that the authority will take into consideration 3 A, geology. That is pretty simple. B, hydrology; C, meteor-4 ology, demographics , a nd it goes down with these one-word 5 siting requirements.
4 Again, in February 1985, the legislature came to 7 town, and they imposed another s,iting requirement on us in 8 which we could not be located closer than 20 miles upstream 9 of a surface water reservoir that supplies drinking water 10 to any municipality within the State of Texas is basically 11 what it says. So, here we had all these very, very general 12 siting criteria that let us take the technical requirements
' I3 ahead of us and apply them equally across the state, and 14 then we came in with a politically imposed siting requirement.
15 Lot and behold our two potential sites were 15 miles from 16 a surface water reservoir. So, those were automatically 17 excluded.
18 At the same t ime, the State of Texas owns about l' 3 million acres of land, and it is controlled by the University 20 of Texas system or by the ? General Land Office. The 21 legislatibn that changed in 1985, told us to give preference 22 to state-owned land and instructed the two agencies that l}
g 23 CCntrol that land to cooperate with us in our efforts to 24 look at that land.
si, 25 s 4; They had cooperated in the past to some extent, but
, di V% ,
h 127 I not with open arms, if you will. So, basically spring 1985, 2 we started looking at state-owned lands. The way we stand 3
today, we have identified seven potential sites, at least seven potential sites on state-owned land and have gone onto 3 those sites and done quite a bit of sitenspecific work.
6 We have narrowed it down to right now one potential site, 7 and our statute requires us to have.two. The lands that we were given access to, most of it was not suitable. So, we have had to go back to some of these state agencies and say, 10 Now, let "Look, we need to look at some more of your land.
" us be realistic about it. We need the land not to be faulted, not to have active sinkholes, not to have water in the area that you can drill a well with a shovel." So, I'
we really did go back and lay it on the line to them, and 15 this time we are getting a little bit more cooperation with them.
17 There is a county in Far West Texas. The name of 18 the county is Hudspeth County. It lies about 60 miles east 19 of El Paso. The county from east to west is 65 miles wide 20 and from north to south it is about 75 miles. It has got ma 21 i about 4550 square miles in it. It has got about 2300 people
- 22 in it. There are three small communities, the largest of i
!g$23 which is about 495 people. It is predominantly an area of b
- 24 cattle ranching, and when I say, " Cattle ranching in West migR N 3 ' 25 l 5: Texas," you have to bear in mind that means one unit or one UE v
, 128
'Cu 3
cow on about 400 acres of land, to give you an idea of the 2 Production of the land. It is just almost non-existent. So, 3 when you look at the type of land that we are working with, 4 that land there, also, has some fairly good clays. There is 5 one man and his wife who live 3-1/2 miles to the west. There 6 is one small community of 200 people that are 10 miles to the y southwest. Those are the only people in the area, and we 8 have about 400 feet of good clay. We did find water at 9 500 feet, but the water is essentially useless. All the 10 PeoP l e in the area bring their water in in bottled water.
11 It is state-owned land, and it has no agricultural use. It 12 has no mineral production. It has none of this. So, when OO 'a vou x e er Per Peotive, e=a ene= vou 1oox et ene 1e=ae 14 that you are going to have to look at in your states, I 15 think you realize that it is going to be an uphill battle.
16 It has been an iriteresting battle, but nevertheless, it is 17 uphill. What we foresee in the future is our legislature 18 again comes into town in January 1987. So, in December 19 1987, we will /announce two potential sites. Basically the 20 timing for this allows the legislature to have one more ga 21 chance at 'us, one more shot at us , if you will. When they
~
i 5:l l C 22 leave, the next legislative session, assuming there are no l 1
g h 23 drastic changes to our statute, we will select a prime site
.A h
W.L k 24 or the site that we propose to license around June or July
()j d5
' 25 of next year. From that point on we go to our one-year site
129
)
I characterization, into our licensing process, and this type of 2 thing, and we anticipate a site operating in the first part 3
of 1992. So, it is a very long process as was mentioned ,
this morning.
In spite of the fact that we have got deadlines of, O
you know, 1988, 1990 and 1992, those are really pretty close deadlines. There is not a whole lot of time in between I
8 those. A couple of things that we have done in the past, 9
we have had a real good working relationship, not only with NRC but, also, with our licensing agency within the state.
11 We have met on several occasions with NRC. They have been 12 formal meetings, but they have been very informal. We would 13 Of.\_/
I'\ go in, sit down and say, "Look, what do you mean by this?"
1s They would tell us, and they would ask questions about what 15 we are doing, this type of thing. So, we did get an awful 16 lot of good information out of it, and it seemed that the 17 informal nature of the meetings, you know, it seemed to 18 help a lot.
19 -
We are going to look to NRC, along with our 20 Bureau of Radiation Control for a lot of help in the future.
e 21 i ;
We are getting ready to come out with a design basis for our lI3 22 '
site performance characteristics, and we are going to go to l I
$ NRC, EPA, a couple of state agencies and a lot of other
&${23 W e
&24 interested parties and say, " Basically here is our document.
Y ~ 25 g 3 jf
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Here is what we want our site to do. Now, do you think it is
hm
-o 130 I going to work this way? Is there anything that we can do to 2 change that?" That is one thing we are going to look to 3 NRC and a couple of other people for. Another thing we would 4 like to see out of NRC is, again, the statute that changed 5 our direction, if you will, back in 1975, also, made another e pretty drastic change. It told us that we could not dispose 7 of low-level radioactive waste below the natural grade of the 8 ground unless two things were done; one, statutorily it was 9 made so we couldn' t do it; and two, we could prove that a 10 below-ground structure, if you will, is much better than 11 aboveground structure. It looks to us that a lot of 12 guidance is g6ing to have to come out of the federal establist -
h) 13 ment on forms of disposal other than standard shallow-land 14 burial. We recently went through a process, and this is 15 really kind of interesting. Aboveground disposal has been 16 talked about extdnsively in the State of Texas. People have 17 a lot of faith in concrete. They have a lot of faith in 18 engineered structures when they sit down and they talk one-to-19 one on it. They say that an aboveground structure is the 20 way to go. Here you have got this massive concrete building.
21 It is easjr to monitor. If you have got a leak, you can stop 22 it fast and all this type of thing. We brought together a I 23 panel of eight engineers, about half from our staff and g
24 half from Rogers and Associates, and a couple of other w R 25 engineers who were citizens in the state, and we, also,
. O *:
J
h 131 brought together a 12-member citizen panel from Hudspeth 2
County or from the siting area, and we sat down with these 3
folks, and we said, "Okay, let us list all of the issues that are important to you," and the top issue was obviously 3
the health of the general public. Second was the health of 0
the worker. Then there were other things like inadvertent i'ntrusion many years down the road and scavengers coming on the site at night, transportation, this type of thing.
9 We came up with 11 issues that were decided upon 10 by mostly the citizen group. Inside those 11 issues, each 11 4 one of them had factors that contributed to the issue. So, l it ended up we had 11 issues and about 36 factors. Then we O 14 had 11 different disposal technologies that are available, and we went to the citizen's group and the engineering 15 group and said, nr'.;ay, radiation protection to the worker, 16 how does shallow' land burial meet that? :Iow does improved 17 shallow land burial meet that?" We went down the list and 18 did all the factors and all the issues, compared to all of 19 the disposal technologies, put all the numbers together, 20 and lo and behold, the first two technologies that stood l
1 out upon dhe top were improved shallow land burial and 22
, shallow land burial, head and shoulders above any other
$ gl 23 technology that was rated.
b I 24 mi Now, this was just completely opposite to what the si,j e
' 25 M
people had told us when they said -- we would go to them and j
i l
~
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f% 132 I say, "How do you think we should get rid of the waste?" and l 2 they said, " Anyplace but above the ground," but when they l i 3 looked at it in segments of the importance of how different d things fell out to them, what they were really telling us 5 is they wanted a safe and economic way to do it, and shalow 6 land burial came out to do it.
7 Agai- to make a long story short, we have discarded 1
8 shallow land burial. We have discarded improved shallow
' land burial, in spite of what this has shown us. We have 10 selected three technologies that we are going to proceed M with. We are going to develop design documents on them and 12 then a very detailed design document on one technology.
( (-) 13 The three that we have chosen are below-ground vaults, Id aboveground vaults which incidentally rank No. 11 of all 18 the technologies and a combination, if you will, of modular l'
concrete canisters. Our understanding is that officially 17 the use of modular concrete canisters is~still shallow land 18 disposal. You are just modifying the package. So, we have 19 /
got modular concrete canisters used above and below ground, 20 below-ground vaults and aboveground vaults.
ma 21 gg I don',t know the exact other happenings with this 55 22 process that we just went through, but apparently this has I 23 been done three or four times in the past throughout the
!2 24 gj j country with basically the same results. When you look at
$ ~ 25 it in detail, shallow land burial meets the requirements,but O MB Un
hfD 117
\-) 1 1
when you look at it in reality, it is going to have to be 2 something other than shallow lan'd burial. So, like I said, i
3 that is basically what we have gone to. One other problem 4
that we have run into that other areas may run into if their 5 f acility is operated as a state function as ours is, we 6 have very few avenues to go into a community and offer that 7 community anything. We can go in and say, "Look, folks, 8 you know, we need to do this. " Most people will agree to that. They always say, "Yes, we understand you have to do 10 it, just do it over there." We are Just trying to find U
"over there" right now. So, there iE not a whole lot we 12 vg can offer. We can go in and say, "Here are 21 jobs we can
\-) 13 give to the community." Even in these sparasely populated Id areas where there really are not jobs to keep people around, 15 those 21 jobs d,on't mean anything. We have no ability to I'
make payment in lieu of taxes, unfortunately. What we are I7 trying to do right now is we have a meeting coming up with 18 the generators of low-level waste in Texas on Monday with 19 members of Hudspeth County, with the administration from 20 Hudspeth, County. We are going to try to set up some type of I
e~ 21 gg incentive package that is basically going to be funded by l "1 22 l
, the reactors. We have four nuclear power plants under j2I 23 construction, and they will provide almost 90 percent of g3 y 24 our waste stream, and basically it is just going to be laid d l ' 25 1 s_.- O fy oc on the line. Hudspeth County is 500 miles from the closest 1
1 1
134
]
1 nuclear power plant, and yet the wastes from those power 2 plants are going to go to that in a state-operated facility 3 on state-owned land, and the people want something out of 4 it. So, on Tuesday we hope to have some type of at least 5 a basic incentive package worked out with the people.
6 The other thing we are trying to work out with 7 folks in the area _as far as incentives, and it is not a 8 direct incentive, and that is just get them involved in 9 just everything we can think of. We did it on the technology.
10 We have done it in the past on a few other things. We have 11 an organization in El Paso called the West Texas Council 12 of Governments. We recently entered into a contract with O.hO'd 13 them. They are sort of a clearinghouse for all the local 14 governmental bodies out in the area, and we are setting up 15 an oversight committee with them, and they are going to 16 establish nine subcommittees to monitor our every activity, 17 everything from engineering to the geological characteristics 18 and hydrological characteristics, transportation, accident l' response and all this type of thing, and the main reason 20 for this'is because there has been a lot of concern of the 21 local citizenry on the issues. They want to have a say in_
22 the matter. So, we are trying our best to get: some type 23 of community involvement, an actual community involvement, h
ei, '
24 g5 not just a good informational program, but we are trying to
, y get them, again, involved in what we are actually doing.
v vu l
h 135 i I think I have covered everything. The only thing, 2 again, it is a very long, tedious process, and it has got a 3 lot of peaks and valleys. It has got a lot of valleys, I 4 don't know about how many peaks. So, just good luck.
MR. DUNKLEBERGER: When I was asked to speak here, 5
6 a question was asked, "Where is New York?" It is a quescion 7 I have been asked oh, at least six, eight, 10 times within 8 the last week. About the easiest thing to say is it is 9 located north of Pennsylvania, is a buffer between 10 Pennsylvania and New England. The other thing that it 11 reminds me of is a statement that a grandmother in our 12 church told me a couple of years ago. Her granddaughter o r^1
- ; (_) 13 came up to her and said, "What is a Dunkleberger?" I guess 14 both of those questions, I don't have a very good answer 15 for either one of them. Right now spe& king to where New York 16 is relative to low-level waste, we are about the same place
~
17 we were about one year ago. We have not satisfied the 18 criteria for the July first date. At least we had not as of 19 the time I Ief I t the office yesterday, and ' that is on a day-to-20 day basis for the next week, and we will have to see what
~
i ma 21 happens. Governor Cuomo submitted proposed legislation that Ub
$5 22 had been picked up by the state assembly, and for those of I!23 g
you who don't know, Governor Cuomo is a Democrat, and the QI 24 Assembly is.run by the Democrats, and the Senate by the f-Wh
$; E25 Republicans. So, that has a little bearing on what is
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l I
hO O 136 j
1 1 happening.
2 The Assembly introduced the bill. It has gotten quite 3 a bit of discussion, has gone through a couple of committees.
4 There are two other bills that are tagging along with it, 5 one of which would ban shallow land burial or disposal in the e ground. The other'one is a bill requiring a permit for 7 transportation of low-level waste. So, those are following 8 through in the Assembly. The Senate, after a lot of 9 discussion and changes has amended the governor's bill.,
10 has introduced its own version about a week and one-half or 11 two weeks ago. It is basically the same bill. There are 12 20 or 30 different changes. One of the most significant has L 13 to do with interim funding, how the state would get money, Id what kind of fees it can charge during the time, say from 15 now until the facility operates. The Assembly bill or the 16 Governor's Program bill would allow fees to be assessed to 37 generators. The Senate bill says, "No fee s. " You bond the 18 whole thing or get it out of the state coffers and pay it all back within less than 20 years after it starts operating.
20 So, it is'a significant difference in concept of funding it.
i h 21 How significant that will be in the negotiation between the two houses I don't know.
f .I 22 j 7, 23 One of the most significant issues is the issue on 24 the transportation bill where it appears that the Assembly e6 l 25
( y is insisting that it gets passed basically as a package with
., Un -
~
] 137 1 the low-level waste bill and the Senate is saying, "No way.
2 We will treat that as a separate issue. Let us discuss it 3 as a separate issue but not now. Let us take the low-le vel 4 waste bill because that is the one we have to deal with 5 right now."
6 It is at a situation that, as I say is day to day.
7 Whether anything will get passed, I don't know. If it does, 8 probably it will be Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that kind of a 9 time frame, and we will be panicking on Monday trying to 10 get everything out to the host states and let them know that II we think we have met the date; we have met the milestone.
12 You run into some problems there when you start looking at
.00 13 it. You know how long it took to get the Low Level Waste
- Id Policy Amendments Act or Act Amendments, whichever way you 15 want to call it, once it got passed to get it signed. You 16 know how long it takes your own legislatures to do things 17 and the governor to sign them.
18 In New York the legislature has 30 days to get a l'
bill to the governor, and the governor has 45 days to sign it, 20 and the Policy Amendments Act requires the legislation be i
21 enacted which means signed. So, even if the bill passes, 22 today or yesterday, there is still a difficult process of j 23 tr y ing to get it out of the legislature to the governor,'
. g lli 24 g get it reviewed and get it signed by Monday. So, we have 25 our work cut out for us.
., O a5
1 138 l
(-)() 1 I will give you a quick rundown. Some of you may ~
- 1 2 have heard this before as to what the bill does and what l 3 the plans would be, and what I will be telling you are thinga 4 that are pretty much consistent between the two versions, 5 and I would not expect drastic changes in this.
6 The bill would be for New York State to develop a 7 facility for itself. Whether there is eventually a compact 8 with any other states is a question to be handled later.
9 Nobody wants to jeopardize getting this bill and getting 10 something going, getting some siting efforts going for the 11 state because we recognize that New York will have to have 12 a facility. We cannot anticipate that we would get a
( () 13 compact with another state, and they would take our waste 14 because we probably would smother them with it although a
15 there are a lot of states that generate more than us, and 16 we will still have to have a site ourselves.
17 We would establish a siting commission. This would 18 be a new commission. It does not exist at the present time.
~
19 For that matter there is, in effect, no effort other than 20 by myself on low-level waste at the present time in the 21 state. Nobody is funded to do any work on low-level waste,
- 22 and nobody has any- directive to do anything on low-level g$,23 g
waste.
j fl 24 The siting commission would be established, appointed m aR 25 by the governor, five people, and it would have its own 7, !
- (_/ 0: !
139 v
- Q(]' executive director and staff. They would be responsible for I
coming up with a disposal site and technology selection.
They would go through hearings and recommend those to the Department of Environmental Conservat' ion which is, as an agreement state, the licensing agency in New York.
The Department of Environmental Conservation would certify that decision on technology and on the site or sites.
7 From there once that certification comes into existence, the siting commission would go out of existence, and the energy research and development authority which is an existing 10 j,
state agency would take over the responsibility for taking 12 that site and that technology through a license application O is
""i " " " * ^9"i" 9 '"" "S" 9"" i he^ri"9" ^"a deter =i"^-
j, tion by the Department of Environmental Conservation for 15 issuance of a license,- and then the energy research and g development autihority would actually operate the f acility, 17 construct it themselves or have it constructed and operated 18 as a state-run facility. Those are the basic previsions.
3, As I say, the funding for it differs. Some of it is state 20 funds. Some of it may or may not be fees to the generators e 21 while iti is being constructed, depending on which bill or I
5 22 which provisions go through. Some of it would be provisions
{i? 23 to use the surcharge rebates, if we meet the deadlines, and there would be some bonding, particularly of the facilities d
m R
{ 24 '
vi ' 25 themselves, and those would have to be repaid within a U
h 140 ,
i period of 20 years. Technology has not been selected. All 2 I can say at this time is that there is an extreme amount of 3 opposition to shallow land burial. The bill itself calls 4 for specifically addressing aboveground and deep mine 5 disposal.
6 That brings us into a little problem because we really ,
y don't have a lot of the requirements for the deep mine a disposal, and that is going to be an issue that is going 9 to have to be looked at and going to have to be looked at 10 within the next year or year and one-half, and I am not sure 11 just where we are going to go with that one, but the 12 legislature is requiring it.
O is a19 at mo- xmo or et eest two broxere, e#a enere 14 may be more who have already started collecting the surcharge 15 penalties because anything that they ship would be shipped 16 and received a ter July 1, and they are picking it up now.
17 So, they are already charging those which they will have to 18 give back if we do end up meeting it. So, there is a lot of 19 interest in .'what we are doing, and if anybody can tell me 20 more about where New York is than me, I would like to hear a 21 it. I c'annot even find out from the legislature what they -
N '
C 22 are doing or where it is, and I have been talking to them e
23 almost every day, and they don't know. I heard one assessment, d k 24 saying that the Senate has about 100 percent chance of passing u dR k ' 25 a bill and of getting the same bill, any bill through both
.. d5 l
l
'( 141 r~)S
\~ 1 i houses is about 30 percent. That fellow tends to be a little l 2 bit of a pessimist, but I would say at this point in time 3 whether we get a bill through before July 1, is a major 4 question. If we don't ggt it through before July 1, in an 3 election year, it could be very difficult getting it thrcs:.gh 6 by January 1, and then the next question is, assuming we do 7 get it by July 1, trying to meet the July 1, milestone is 8 going to be another difficult task, and that is not to speak 9 of trying to meet all the other milestones.
10 Thank you.
11 MR. HALLISEY: I would like Jay to know that there 12 are many people in Massachusetts who wonder where New York is, 13 also.
14 In Massachusetts back in 1981, we had the distinct 15 honor of being the second largest generator of low-level waste 16 in the country.' In 1985, we moved down to step 5. I guess 17 we didn't try harder. Back in 1981 and 1981, the 18 Massachusetts Department of Public Health which I represent, <
l 19 the Radiatio'n Control Program, through a grant from the 20 Department of Diergy through EG&G, attempted a consensus og 21 develop ng process in low-level waste management. It was E
- 22 approximately a two-year process involving industry, statc l.
g ! 23 agencies , environmentalist groups to look at the whole low-
-A N.I 2d level waste management area and find out where Massachusetts Mh y E25
~
is and what they should be doing about that particular aspect.
_: () es
142 G
L/
1 In late 1981, the legislature passed an act creating 2 the Low Ievel Waste Legislative Commission, and they took over 3 the issue, gratefully from my point of view, of addressing the 4 entire low-level waste management activities for the 5 Commonwealth, and today I would like to talk mostly about 4 the Low Level Waste Commission, what it is and happily talk 7 about our low level waste siting bill which is before the 8 legislature and hopefully will be passed this session, talk 9 a little bit about a question that appeared on our latest 10 state ballot which is called Chapter 503 of the Act which 11 requires a voter certification for the siting of any nuclear 12 power plant and, also, for any low-level waste disposal o
iwO is fec111er end, e1 o, te1k e 11tt1e hit ehout where we ere riehe
]
14 now in terms of agreement state status with the Nuclear 15 Regulatory Commission.
16 There are three principal agencies already in place 17 in the state that have some involvement in low-level waste.
18 These are and certainly not in any order of importance, the 19 Secretariat'of the Office of Environmental Affairs which has 20 the oversight of all environmental aspects for the 21 Commonwdalth,and,also, the Under Secretary of Environmental U 22 Affairs, Lenny Jchnson is the key person for the governor
!.4
( ! 23 in terms of negotiating with other states in the northeast kjI 24 crea for compacts.
H lE yg 25 We still are actively pursuing a role in this area d5 9.
- hp 143 U 1 in terms of compacting in the Northeast. The second agency 2 is the Department of Public Health which I represent. The 3 Radiation Control Agency or Radiation Control Program in 4 that department is the principal regulator for all sources 5 of radiation from the public health and safety within the 6 Commonwealth. Our primary trust, of course, is x-rays and 7 the healing arts, but we have a very deep interest in the 8 low-level waste management area. A third state agency is the 9 Department of Environmental Quality Engineering which is 10 sort of our state EPA, so that we have discussions with 11 environmental quality engineering in terms of mixed waste, 12 much as NRC and EPA have discussed this issue.
13 In terms of environmental aspects of disposal of any 14 type of material, the Department of Environmental Quality 15 Engineering is involved. The Massachusetts Special 16 Legislative Colbmission on Low-Level Radioactive Waste was 17 created by Clapter 738 of the Act in late 1981, to recommend 18 the course of action that we should take in response to the 19 Federal Low 'Levet Waste Act.
20 The Special Commission was charged with four major ,
a 21 respons[bilities.First, to make a recommendation on the k
5 establishment of a compact fo r the regional management of I-l22 low-level waste; second, to prepare a statewide assessment g
.A 23 24 report on low-level waste generation and management in the w R N 25 state; the third, to determine whether the Commonwealth should ,
j.
0 U$
(~ ln^
t assume licensing and regulatory authority for radioactive 2
materials by entering into an agreement with the NRC and the 3
fourth to develop a comprehensive process for siting a 4
facility for Massachusetts.
5 The Commission has addressed all four of these 6
agenda items. In September 1984, af ter a year of concentrated 7
effort, the Commission submitted the draft Massachusetts 8
compact to the governor for his use in negotiating with 9
other states in the northeast area in an effort to establish to a regional disposal facility.
11 In March 1985, the Commission submitted to the 12 legislature a statewide assessment report, approximately 600 pages on low-level radioactive waste management within 14 the state.
15 The Commission, also, filed legislation for the 16 .
1985 session to enable the governor to enter into an 17 agreement with NRC to regulate at a minimum a low-level waste 18 disposal facility should one be established in Massachusetts.
19 Since the spring of 1984, the Commission has worked to 20 -
develop,/a comprehensive legislative framework for the ma 21 f
22 management of -low-level radioactive waste generated in the state.
f!23 g
The legislative proposal which is called the Low-Level h
d $ 24 N d@ Waste Radioactive Management Act recommends a strong active ML 25
:I
- 24
, nl j [ up to each state individually to determine that using some '
si l
- 25 l O. $ basic guidelines provided either by us or the NRC.
U u:h:
i
170 1 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Any questions for Virgil?
2 Okay, our next speaker is Richard Ratliff who is 3 the Director of Compliance in the Texas Radiation Control 4 Program.
5 MR. RATLIFF: I am glad to be here this afternoon.
4 It is kind of interesting that Virgil.is talking about the 7 staff that he has. I counted four or five people devoted to 8 waste and at one of the sites that takes most of the wastes 9 in the United States, and in Texas we don' t have a site yet, 10 but we have probabl.y 15 or 20 people indirectly associated j 11 with the waste program, and it is primarily political and j 12 primarily out of need. The whole Low-Level Waste Policy Act O >> reminde me of e etery thee e gerson from EPA to1d recene1r 14 at this conference meeting about the politician, the 15 bureaucrat who were in the hills near Washington out hiking, to- and they all of a sudden started looking across this ravine 17 and saw the t'rees just rumbling over there, and so, they !
18 looked a little closer through their binoculars, and the l' politician daid, "That is a grizzly bear." He said, "It is 20 even worse news. That grizzly bear is coming towards us."
. I 21 So, the bureau,crat takes the binoculars, and he starts looking ,
8 22 and he says, "Sure enough; what are we going to do?" He I
j 23 looks down, and the politician has already taken his knapsack 24 off his back and has one foot in one tennis shoe and is 25 putting his other foot in the other tennis shoe. The bureaucrat
._- O da e
h ~
171
- being a technical-type person tells the politician, "You 2 cannot outrun a grizzly bear." He says, "I don't have to.
3 All I have got to do is outrun you."
4 (Laughter.)
l 3 MR. RATLIFF: I think that is the situation we
.; 6 kind of get trapped in a lot of times. A lot of these laws 7 are passed, and then they are dumped on us to come upawith a the solutions.
1 9 As Virgil mentioned, the Conference Task Force on 10 Low-Level Waste did develop a NUREG document for the Nuclear 11 Regulatory Commission. It is NUREG/CR-4352. I have about j 12 10 copies of it here, and in this document wra went through im p 13 what we felt were the necessary requirements for a state r
14 program to regulate a low-level waste site. We went through 15 the various stages of pre-operational, operational and then le the long-term care and maintenance, and since I was the new 17 person on the' Committee at that time, I was given this t
18 responsibility, and so, it tracks pretty much what the Texas l
19 program has.'
20 , ,In Texas in 1979, the state found that we ended up 21 g with most of the liquid scintillation waste in the United 22 States, af ter South Carolina stopped accepting liquid
]
h23 scintillation waste. We had a waste broker on Galveston Islanc.
t 24 who one year had 1000 drums of waste, and the next year on its
~o d
a 25 inspection had over 16,000 drums. So, immediately it became a
h 172 i real political hot potato, Galveston Island being located 2 right in a hurricane area, in a 100-year flood plain. It 3 did not meet very many of the requirements you see in Part 6J 4 right now, and the governor told us as the hurricane season 3 approached that if a hurricane hit Galveston Island and caused i 6 any problems that there would be a new radiation control y pro' gram in the State of Texas. Luckily that year the
- a hurricanes went to corpus Christi and Mexico, and so, we were 9 spared.
10 By the time the next hurricane season came most of 11 the waste was shipped out. It is ironic though of those 12 16,000 drums that were stored at Todd, most of them would now
- !A G 13 fall into the Biomedical Waste Act and could be disposed of 14 as other than radioactive at a hazardous waste site, but I l 15 think it is a lot of perspective.
16 In Texas that is what happened. There was a lot of 17 political and pressure 5 rom the environmental groups about 18 radioactive materials and radioactive waste in the late b , .
- 19 seventies. 'So, when the Texas Legislature met in 1980, they 20 came to the program and asked us what do we need to regulate 1
21 radiation in Texas, not just radioactive wastes, and they were 1 22 also, being pressured from tho standpcrint that Lho uranium 1
gl23 industry in Texas which at that point was the second-largest
- ft 24 uranium-producing state in the United States, the uranium 25 companies had a lot of lobbying going on, too, because they D Uc
I
) wanted Texas to, also, continue with an agreement to regulate 2 uranium, and so the large companies, Exxon, Connoco, Chevron, 3 Mobil, and you can almost name all the gas stations, and they 4 have uranium facilities, also, also lobbied in our legislature ,
3 and so we did sit down, and we looked at what the workload was 4 to license the radioactive materials licensecs. We have over 7 2000 licensees in Texas and 20,000 x-ray facilities, and based e on that our program went from a program of 30 people to about 9 130 people.
10 Most of the people were in areas where we thought 11 we had been deficient over the years. With the 20,000 x-ray 12 machines I had five x-ray inspectors, and if we got to each
[P WV 13 facility every 10 years, we were lucky, and we went back to 14 a facility, if it was still there, it was always something 15 had changed. Either the doctor had passed away or he had 16 bought a new machine or changed, and so, we felt that we 1 17 really needed the people, but since we did have a uranium
, 18 program, it worked out real well. We needed the expertise in 19 hydrology, g'eology, the ecologists, public information and 20 attorneys to run the uranium program, and so it has worked j
i 21 out real well. We have this expertise in house. Our program 8 22 is basically divided into three divisions, an Environmental 1
gI23 Programs Division which contains the geologists, the 24 hydrologists, the mechanical engineers who actually review
[ 25 licensee applications, and I think what will make it nice for I
f
- -n- ,
h 174 t a waste site is that they reviewed numerous uranium 2 applications, both conventional uranium mills with large j 3 tallings facilities and in situ facilities where we have 4 had to concentrate extreme efforts into the groundwater s protection, and so, they have written these environmental e assessments. So, that group there, I think has been trained.
7 We have a second group. Our second division is s our Divirion of Licensing and Standards, and this group issue; 9 the licenses. They have a waste section in etis group that to does only waste, and they do have experience, too, because 11 we have three large waste brokers in Texas that are different 12 than most waste brokers, in that they just don't take waste
- O la from a faci 1ity end enen erane-shie it- raev actue11v 14 process the waste. They do shredding of vials, compaction.
15 A lot of the liquid scintillation waste is then surveyed and le either cent to a hazardous site for incineration or Texas 17 being one of the unique states, we have many deep injection 18 wells where a lot of the hazardous chemicals from the 19 petrochemica'l industry go, and so the liquid scintillation 20 media, the toluene and the xylene are considered candy g 21 compared to the other chemicals that go in those deep injectic a I
l 22 Wells. So, it has been a real easy way to get rid of those
!g 23 types of wastes.
24 The third program is the compliance and inspeccion 25
- f program which I am in charge of, and up until this point we
- .. O d
h 175 1 have had very little dealings with the radioactive waste 2 authority group directly. It is mainly that they deal with 1
3 our licensing group now. We do deal with our brokers a lot, 4 usually through inspections and sometimes through court 5 actions. It just happens that way.
- e We, also, found out though besides these groups 7 that we really did, when we expanded our program need more 8 public education, and so we have had a lot of ef fort with i 9 our waste authority and with other members of the community, 10 especially environmental groups and the health physics 11 societies to come up with educational and training materials, i
- 12 and we feel this has been very beneficial. I don't know that i qq DV 13 it will help at all when you try to site a waste site, but Id I think at least the people will have some knowledge in the i
15 area.
, 16 We have, also, found that in regulating uranium 17 and the waste. area the technical knowledge is needed,but, also ,
a 18 you need the legal assistance, a lot more clerical assistance l
l' and one area that almost everybody forgets, accounting, 20 because it really gets difficult when you ask for a 10K i
21 report from Exxon or Chevron for the uranium facility and you l8 22 receive a document that big (indicating about 4 inches) and f as a health physicist you have no idea what most of these
! 3 l [f23 g 2d 25 things mean. So, you do need other expertise to regulate
{ a low-level waste site.
i Od I
.~_. ~- , _ . - . _ _ . . _ _ . . - - _ . _ _ . . _ , _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ , _ , , _ _ . _ _ . . _ _ _ _ .~. . . . _ _ _ _
e 1
176 1 1 The personnel that we have had, I think we have the 2 same type of- problem that Virgil has with turnover. We get 3 people trained, and then it appears in most cases the people d can go to industry and make a lot more money, and so, we have 8 a good turnaround. I think what happens a lot of times though e is that the people just get dissatisfied with state government .
j 7 There seem to be a lot of pressures from both ends, the i 8 licensees pushing from one side and then the environmental
! groups from the other side lots of times feel like they are 10 caught in the middle, but I think overall the program has M
been very successful. i 12
- , Some of the things in Texas that have caused unique 13 problems, too, our legislature when they created the low-level 3d
- waste authority, also, put some restrictions in our law that 33 make it a little more difficult.
I think as everybody knows, IO our law does not allow any waste to come from out of state.
'I It does, however, allow radioactive materials that were 18 manufactured in Texas and then shipped to another state to
" be returned to Texas for disposal, and so our companies that 20 manufacture industrial gauges or diagnostic test kits, J /
21 l americium sources for well logging, those materials can come bad Lu Texa8 for disposal, and when it gets to the actual j
point of doing disposal, that may be an interesting situation I
h.g[. on separating out what is Texas waste versus what is other d ' 25 waste, cad what happens to things that have been commingled i J
0 177 1 after they have lef t the magic plain or the state borders. ;
2 So, we will see what happens there. Another thing in our 3 log requires us to inspect every generator once a waste d site is in operation in Texas at the generator site before 5 'the shipment and then at the waste site, and if the waste e site takes Texas waste only and the waste authority's 7 estimates are correct, we think the site would probably be e open maybe once every two months or once a quarter. There is
' just not that much waste. So, from that regard, we will have 10 to do a lot of coordination with utilities, the other Il licensees, the waste authority and ourselves to basically 12 have a whole group of people doubling the population of 33 those counties when there is going to be a waste shipment.
3d We, also, require that all the waste manifested in 15 Texas -- I mean ever bit of waste has to be manifested, I'
whether it goes to a waste site or to a broker, and the 17 This is one difference copies of those manifests come to us.
18 that is dif ferent f rom the Part 61 regulations. I think it I'
has been beneficial because we have been able to look at all 20 the other streams and see where the waste is building up and i
21 l if, in fact, our brokers are keeping adequate records. We lj,2223 have got a comparison there from the generator records to the broker records.
a Current problems that I see in Texas that we have f24 25 Oy on right now, I think everybody knows that Texas is primarily l
h 178 I an oil revenue state, and so with the price of oil dropping 2 down, even though I like the 70 cents a gallon that is in ,
t 3 Texas, I liked it a lot better when it was $1.14 a gallon j d and our revenue was not in question. We do have a lot of 5 problems with revenue at this point, and so, we are under a
' hiring freeze, and as you would expect, like in most states, 7 we haven't had our engineers and our health physicists, the 8
high-level positions leave. It has been our x-ray people who have left for jobs in other locations, and so we cannot 10 rehire, and in reality, I think that causes a greater public
' health threat because the low-level waste is usually isolated 12 from the public, whereas we all go and get our x-rays every
..D '3
- U year and feel more comfortable if the x-ray machine has been I'
inspected and calibrated. Also, in Texas we were lucky or 33 unlucky, whichever you want to consider it to be considered
" by Department of Energy for high-level waste site, and initial ly they had over three locations in Texas. They were looking at two up in the Panhandle and then one in the Salt Dome area 19 in Central Texas, and they did pick one of the counties in 20 the Nor h Panhandle as one of the final three sites for the 21 l
I high-level waste. So, there are a lot of problems, I think, 22 in that area, people confusing the high-level waste versus
!l23 low-level waste, and the opposition really to both of them.
>$ g
- alj l 24 Fortunately for our group, I think the waste d 25 h authority has more problems dealing with that than we do.
1 l
179
- p V The final thing I have that I wanted to bring up 3
2 is the waste streams that we have are so different than most of the states, without reactor waste, I don't think we would 3
, even need a waste site, and we have recently been petitioned 5
by a group who has worked with the Texas Waste Authority to
, allow any radioactive material with half life less than 7
300 days at certain concentrations to be disposed of at a
, Class 1 sanitary landfill. So, we will be looking at this
, petition and then I assume that we will have to, since it 10 will be a change to our equivalent Part 20 regulation, notify
- j NRC and have them rule on it.
12 So, I think there may be more of a de minimis 00 >>
34 oomins aown the tubes enan eeovte rea11v rea11ze-be willing to entertain any questions, also.
wi11 15 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Thank you, Richard. Our next i
g speaker will be Dr. John Starmer.
j7 DR..STARMER: I was asked to tell you a little bit i 13 about our licensing capability development program. In the 19 process of thinking about it I, also, noticed that there is a i 20 topic here called identification of needed NRC support which 21 I wouldisort of like to emphasize as really for the Division l 1 .
I 22 of Waste Management one of the more important reasons for 1
1I g h 23
-i pl *t being here. Tom said, "We would like some more guidance."
I am going to get around to asking him specifically what al . i l 24
- #i ' 25 guidance he wants, but not right yet because I want to explain
.O &
l
/' 180 Q -
1 just a little bit about what we are doing. I notice that 2 we have got until 4:30, and that would give me about 2 minutes 3 to talk, and then we can try;to get some discussion going.
4 I will probably take more than 2 minutes.
5 The Policy Amendments Acts placed two requirements e on the NRC specifically, well, call it two and one-half which 7 required us to do some work in the area of what we call 8 licensing capability. One of those requirements, and I don't 9 memorize parts of acts, I just know I have got to get it done, 10 one of them was that we have to be able to determine what is 11 a complete application, and the other one is that we have to 12 have broadly-stated review capability. The one-half on that U 13 is that we have to be abic to process a license, in other Id words, all the review part, within 15 months.
I3 '
Please don't ask me if that transfers to a host le state or someone else. I assume it does because most of the 37 requirements of the Act do. I will take the out that we heard 18 from Rob. I am not a lawyer. I don't see any lawyers..So, I l'
will be free to interpret the law until somebody tells me I am 20 wrong. .
21 Our interpretation is, however, that we have to have 22 something that defines what a complete application is. As you j f 23 know, the contents of an application are broadly defined in 24 Part 61. However, for any applicant to successfully apply si< 25 I'
.d for a license, there has to be a lot more defined. An ongoing
..O d:f:
l
i l
l hm u>
181 i project which seemed like it was interminable but I think we 2 broke it loose, at least, temporarily was to develop what is 3 called a standard format and content guide for a license 4 application. There has been one available as Reg Guide 4.18 3 for environmental reviews, but there had not -- we l ad never 6 finalized or brought out as a regulatory guide a standard 7 format and content guide for an application. So, as a first a step we in March published a standard format and content 9 guide for comment.
< 10 I will come back to that in a moment, but that is 11 one aspect. Another aspect is that in order to, I guess in f
12 order to demonstrate review capability, we could just say,
( ) 13 "We are ready. Send us an application," and that might well i 14 have satisfied the law. However, for our own confidence, we 15 felt that we had to write down or put down in writing what we 16 would review, how we would review it and what we would 17 review against. In other words, we would have to come up 18 with standard review plans to review an application. Now, 19 tomorrow we 'will talk a little bit'more about that when we 20 talk about alternatives, but available to you is an outline i
g 21 for standard review plans back there. We did not understand 5 22 that there were going to be so many public participanto.
I1g I 23 WI k 2d There are sign-up sheets to get mailed copies of this.
might be of some interest.
It d 1R
.(E) ft o!
25 Now, standard review plans are internal documents.
g 182 They are generally, in fact, some of them are difficult for the public to get hold of, but they are very important because 2
what they do, they lay out how a review will be conducted, 3
, what analyses, what considerations will be given to various types of things and, also, in general you will have a set of 3
, design criteria and acceptance criteria. What is acceptable?
We are at the moment, and this is not an expanded outline --
7 8
well, maybe it is. Each one of these lines on this document
, is a standard review plan. We estimate that, and each one 10 f these is assigned to one person. One person may have, say,
! up to eight or 10 of these things to write. It is not a small 3i 12 task.
13 The schedule is to have these in draft form
- 3, available by next January which is the mandated date for that
.i 15 thing. We are planning on a first internal draft which won't g be made available outside the agency, about the end of July, 37 a second draft, and there will be an available draft sometime jg in January.
19 Up to this point we have managed to stay quite well 20 on schedule, and I am very happy with the progress there.
21 i Now, this is not entirely a selfish procedure. Both 1
I 1 22 the standard format and content guide development and the 1I hi g
gj E 24 23 guidance on how to review documents can be, I think, will be invaluable guidance and direction to states who are developing vi:j '$25 their own review program. I think that this will be extremely C
- . . O
. d5
183
- O() I helpful. It will get away a little bit from this turnover 2
problem and in fact, that is one of the reasons we have it.
3 It documents in black and white how the review is to be conducted and the criteria against which judgments will be 5
made, so that it helps in that manner.
Now, there was some discussion about, and I am 7
aware of the conference document on what it takes to license 8
and run a site. There may be some discussion there, but what 9
we did, and I am just going to run through this rapidly is 10 look at the people that we have asked to write the review
, plans. We are asking them to write the review plans because 12 of their expertise, and it comes down to a senior licensing
())N s-13 project manager.
, 14 t
Now, that might be, that person could have any 15 technical background but generally it would be someone who has to some licens'ing experience or inspection experience, probably 17 -
somebody from your radiation control program who has been in 18 it for a while and can look over that, an environmental 19 /
scientist of some sort, a geographer with environmental 20 ,
background, environmental engineer or something, a geologist,
~ 21 l surface water hydrologist, groundwater hydrologist, geo-1 22
. technical engineer, materials engineer, health physicist, I23 chemist, geochemist and not surprisingly there is an WI $ 24 Qj g accountant business management type because there are
- ' 25 requirements for financial assurances that can get rather i
- 184
'# I complicated.
2 Now, as I say, this is not an entirely selfish i
3 operation. We hope, also, thatitwillprovidesomeguidance.l It will be available and will help you do your reviews.
So, we are developing a standard format and content 6 We got two, and guide. It has been published for comment.
I think. we might have liked to have had more, but I am not 8
'sure we expected too many more on that document. I would 9
like to say that its condition right now is temporary.. It 10 eventually, it does not at this time, it eventually will have 11 the same outline as the standard review outline that we have 12
- here. It does not have that, and you will find that if you
- () 14 do a one-to-one correspondence which we have already done; we have reformatted it; we know where we are going to have 15 to add information requirements, you will find there are 16 actually some blank spaces, the reason for that being that 17 that document started before the or somewhat concurrent with 18 the development of Part 61, has grown like Topsy, has shrunk 19 e and is now being, we are going to have it correspond directly.
20
. ' Another part of our strategy, if you will, is that l au 21 i gg we are at this time developing all our guidance and our j 58 22
_ review plans based on an assumption of impoved near curface, l23 below-ground disposal. You see, I didn't say, " Shallow land
&$ g* 24 dj k burial." The reason for that is that that is our base case, 1 m ' 25 j and what we plan on doing is up to, and I will talk more O
1 1
. . .....,m_.. . , , , .. ,-
O 185 1
about this tomorrow under alternatives, up to about January, 2 we are going to concentrate on defining any alternatives that 3
anybody might want, and once we have done that, then we can define any additional review plans that might be necessary 5
and certainly any other information that we would want from an applicant at that point.
However, the bulk of the information that would be required and particularly for siting is defined in the 9
Federal Register notice standard format and content guide.
10 Our standard review plans follow the same sort of 11 strategy. Right now we are working basically on the below-12 surface disposal, near-surface disposal type of information 13
()(]} 14 and reviews. We will add reviews of concrete walls or whatever may be necessary based on the information that we 15 get from the states, hopefully, in this meeting and in further 16 discussions that we have and one-on-ones that we hope to hold.
17 There are a couple of other things. NRC is requirec 18 to produce an EIS, if we license a low-level waste facility 19 for that facility, an Environmental Impact Statement so that 20 the appl,icant at the time they submit a license application et 21 /
5 has to submit an environmental report which we are required 8
1f,22 g l 23 to review and turn into first a DEIS and then an FEIS for that action, for that licensing action.
&$*$2 Qj k e We are working on environmental review plans. We oc g$ \
ik u:
are somewhat behind, not behind schedule, but they are a step l
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V I back slightly from the other because many of the people who 2 a re doing the licensing review plans are, also, the people 3 that are doing the environmental review plans on similar d
subjects. So, we have to step them slightly.
5 Part of what my staff is doing is, also, coming up 8 with a document which will define the review process. This 7 is, for us, not necessarily a simple process. There are 8
certain steps that have to be taken. They have to be taken in certain orders, at certain times. There are times that IO are mandated between certain steps.in that process, and just II laying that out is not an inpossible task, but it is a fairly
! lengthy task. So, we are working on it. We have gotten to the point where we have a flow chart. We are now modifying the flow chart. Then we will have a descriptive document.
15 This,will not necessarily apply to the states.
16 Obviously you will have your own review <., process. However, if 17 you haven't developed one, it may help you look at the sorts of things. Certainly we have heard that Massachusetts has
. 19 a very prescriptive, by law, review process, and there might 20 be some jossibility of structuring it after our review process .
l I
Finally, something that is going on in parallel 22 l!l23
, but since we have had that sort of capability for some time is just to make sure that we have the right tools to do any
> $ 'g 24 mij $ analyses, for example, hydrology modeling. Whether it be N ' 25 h computer modeling or modeling with a hand calculator, we want u tO 0::
h 187 i to make sure that we have both the people which we have !
2 several hydrologists and modelers and that we have the 3 correct tools.
4 This is because we have a lot of that in house, 1 5 we have a lot of that capability, a lot of people with 6 experience in that, we are giving that somewhat less effort.
7 Now, I don' t know exactly how we might do this, but 8 I would like to hear something from the states on what they 9 would like to hear from us. I don't know whether we could 10 start and go down the table or we could get some volunteers, 11 but I will either let Don chair this or I would stand up here 12 for a while.
13 I hope someone takes some notes. I see there are 14 not too many volunteers. Ah, there is one, an icebreaker.
15 Thank you, Bill.
16 MR. dORNSIFE: Something you mentioned earlier 17 kind of caught my interest, and that is assistance you might 18 provide in helping to review the requests for proposals for 19 site operators. What specifically have you done for 20 California, and what kind of help do you think you could ea 21 provide 'in that area?
d 22 DR. STARMER: Okay, I am sorry on that one, Bill.
23 I can get back to you on it, the reason being, that was done da 5 24 before I took over this job. Actually is Ken Jackson here? l H uE g 25 Ken, could you speak to that? It was done under s_. dE L+w w *vr- * ,a.,we e m_,. %.e A.resmp m quergruegg- r *eww**qu @ n*,.*44- _m* - ---
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1 your -- he is interested in what, he is interested in our 2 reviewing contractor proposals for site development, I guess, l 3 or design and operation, and I think specifically he is l
4 interested in what sorts of things we did for California and 5 how that might work. .
6 MR. JACKSON: ' We did volunteer.
7 DR. STARMER: Let me explain. Ken Jackson is my 8 predecessor as Section Leader for Low-Level Waste.
9 MR. JACKSON: Thanks. We did volunteer to do that on 10 the request of California. It was a special case, and it was 11 a hurry-up case, and they were interested in getting some 12 information very quickly for the purpose of considering some
( 13 people for potential operators for their site, and what we 14 actually did was to just really go through the part of Part 61 15 that referred to the needs,for the site itself, and Derek, 16 do your remembe'r precisely what section we addressed, 63, 17 mostly, wasn't it? It was mostly just the qualifications.
18 That was the question that was asked, and we did address that.
19 I think we would still be prepared to do that, John. We, also ,
20 did something else for the State of Maine. We looked at a 21 documend that they.came forth with for a potential licensing
. } 22 site for something in the Northeast. We, also, did a review
\
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gI23 for that. So, I think we do have the ability to do that on
't f $ 24 request, assuming it doesn't get too burdenseme.
WJ R 23 DR. STARMER: As you probabl'y realize, we have been
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O 189 oJ i been interacting with Pennsylvania in the area of siting 2 and facility design in a general way.
3 MR. DORNSIFE: I guess maybe to be more specific, 4 like, for example, let us say we are reviewing, comparing 5 technologies as part of this RFP review process, could you go 6 so far as to use some of your models to help us compare the 7 Performance of those technologies? Is that a possibility?
8 DR. STARMER: I would say that it would be a 9 Possibility. I think we would have to deal with it on a case-10 by-case basis. As I mentioned, you know, we are here to help 11 you as John Davis said. You know, we are here from Washington 12 to help you. Actually we are here from Silver Spring, but we O "" """" * ""' " '""' "" """" ""*"*" "**" ""*"*'*' """
O 14 you kind of have to get in line. My first impression is that 15 it might be a very good exercise, and by the way just on those 16 lines in terms'of comparing capabilitim , I have a question 17 for Tom Blackburn on that, but that seems to be something that 18 really needs to be done, and r,fybe it is something that that 19 Coordinating Committee that has : sort of sprung up could address, 20 but, Tom,,could I ask you a question, please? I think that sa 21 there aEe probably a lot of people who would be interested in N
II 22 this comparison that you did. Is that going to be made Ig ! 23 available publicly? Is that something that could be released?
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24 MR. BLACKBURN: You are talking about this thing p 25 that we did with the citizens group and the engineering group?
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n 190 U 1 DR. STARMER: Right.
2 MR. BLACKBURN: We are in the process right now of 3 getting together a final document on that. We have draft 4 documents, but a lot of it is still in pretty preliminary 5 stages, but once that information is completed, we will be e more than happy to share it with whomever would like to see 7 it. Again, it shows all the rankings. The rankings were done 8 in several different ways, also. There was an overall ranking .
9 There was another ranking that was done where the only things 10 that we considered were safety issues where we got rid of II costs. We got rid of perception. We got rid of whatever it 12 might be and just looked at the safety issues and did a O
reaxias ta e wer, eaa thea we ata re r c mbiaeti a e U
all of it trying to weight them as we felt that people were 15 really interested, but as soon as that document is available, l'
you know, we will announce it through normal channels.
17 Usually the Radioactive Exchange picks it up and Nuclear 18 Waste News, and we would be more than happy to share it with
~
whomever war $ts it.
0
/ DR. STARMER: I just thought I would bring that up h
$5 22 because it was interesting to me. I thought it might be interesting to some other people.
j2I 23 It seems like there is a possibility that further d
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da ' 25 Again, that would be a case-by-case review. It would come to
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" l 1 Don's group or come through your state representative and 2 make a request, and we will try.to honor it, I guess.
3 We will get more into this tomorrow. I am 4 particularly interested in any sort of guidance that you think 5 you might need, and I guess I don't want to pick on you, but 6 one of the problems we have, we are sort of supposed to get 7 out guidance on alternatives, and our feeling is that is great ,
8 b ut what? What do you need guidance on? I invite anybody, 9 particularly from the states. What sort of guidance do you 10 feel would be most useful? Help us prioritize it, remembering 11 that we aren't going to develop alternatives for you.
12 MR. TEDFORD: Chuck Tedford, Arizona. I don't 13 know what you are going to discuss tomorrow, but I, in 14 particular, would like to know the costs per cubic foot, 15 approximate costs per cubic foot of alternate disposal 16 techniques, that is aboveground vault storage, below-ground 17 vault storage, mine storage, the comparative advantages and 18 disadvantages of each, and I guess you are going to get into 19 this tomorrdw, but that is something I think we would be 20 interestpd in in the West.
21 DR. STARMER: That is, I think, just the sort of
=
22 guidance we probably wouldn't be able to produce because we
.g $ 23 have basically stated that we know what is cost effective 24 and fully believe based on many, many analyses that it 25 protects the public health and safety, that is Part 61, near-05 m
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- 192 i surface disposal. Now, I realize that there are a lot of 2
people who don' t believe that,but again, I am not sure, I am 3 It must be a fascinating position to be in not a developer. ;
4 from what I have heard here.
5 Tom?
6 MR. BLACKBURN: I think some of the things we are 7
looking for are the finalization of these two documents 8
which you are obviously working on, but then from a technical 9
standpoint I know Rubin has talked to you before, we are 10 interested in like, aboveground structures, what seismic 11 classification is it going to have to be built to, you know, 12 some real technical things, wind loadings; what are we going 13
( h( ) 14 to have to guild an aboveground structure to, if we have to go to one? Basically are we going to be held to the same 15 requirements that we see South Texas and Commanche Peak 16 having to conform to or is it going to be relaxed to some 17 extent?
18 I think that is the type of thing we would like to 19 ,<
see.
20
.' DR. STARMER: Yes. I believe we answered that in e~ 21
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k 25 jg If it doesn't matter if it blows down, then you could build it.
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matters, then you had better go to brick or 10-feet thick 3
reinforced concrete. Just a personal feeling is that if you
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source term that is contained'in a reactor containment and 0
do some sort of, you know, think about it a little bit. I suspect that the criteria are not as stringent, just because 8
of the source term involved.
MR. DORNSIFE: Bill Dornsife , Pennsylvania. John, 10 I said this before, and I say it again. We desperately need 11 some guidance, and if possible even a policy statement by 12
, NRC of what is long-term storage versus disposal? If you
( 13 cannot give us a policy statement, at least give us some
{]) 14 guidance on what kind of criteria you would use to evaluate 15 either of those concepts, how they would differ? That may 16 to some extent put the aboveground versus below-ground 17 question to bed which is something we are all struggling with.
18 DR. STARMER: I have some notes that I took this 19 morning, and' I would note that that question was answered.
20
/ MR. DORNSIFE:
Not to our satisfaction.
ma 21 i g"j DR. STARMER: If you want a policy statement, we do I 22
, not have a policy statement. That is true. However, I think I 23 that if you look at it this way, if there is nothing -- if you
&b{&24 Wj e put it somewhere, put the waste somewhere,true waste, there .
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9 ,- 194 C 1 go back and get it; you could go back and get it, but you 2 don't have any plans to because-it is waste; there is no 3 reason to go back and get it,it would be disposal. All right, 4 one type of disposal is that you put it in a drum; you kick 5 if off the back of a truck, and you shovel some dirt on top 4 of it. That is one type.- A more sophisticated type is that 7 you put it in a drum, aid you carefully set the drum in; you 8 plan to keep that drum dry. You keep water away from it; 4
9 that is another type. Another type might be that you put it 10 in a highly-engineered container with 10-feet thick concrete 11 walls, but the point would be that what you are doing, you are 12 not doing it so that you can go back in five years, 10 years O
or so veere end teke it end gue it somewhere e1ee beoeuse Id that is in your plan, all right?
15 Now, if you put it somewhere, and you say, "I am 16 putting it here temporarily because I want it to decay or 17 I want to see how the waste form behaves because I don't 18 trust it," or whatever, but you fully intend to go back and I' getitandhosomethingwithit, I think you are dealing 20 with st rage, and there are some policy statements on ma 21 g storage.
55 22 Now, is there a Commission policy on that? No, but I
j ; 23 some commonsense thought probably tells you where we would
>:I 24 come out if we had a Commission policy. Do we need a g/jg vi ' 25
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195 (h)O'x- i that with Bob Browning. I know that we probably need to 6 n
2 formalize the thoughts that I just expressed in a more formal 3 manner. I agree with you there.
4 The format that that formalization would take, I 5 wouldn't want to commit to at this time.
6 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: I guess in that same context --
7 DR. STARMER: Identify yourself?
8 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: Fred Feizollahi, Bechtel National.
9 Do you consider aboveground concrete to be a final disposal, 10 considering that it is potentially in the way of some future 11 highway or some other manmade intrusion that they would need 12 the land or for another reason that you cannot basically leave 13 it and go away from it?
14 DR. STARMER: Do you mean like a vault?
15 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: Aboveground concrete vault, yes.
16 DR. dTARMER: That is a potential disposal.
17 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: Would you consider that as a 18 potential -- i i
19 DR. STARMER: I wouldn't, personally, no, but I
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l 20 see no reason to exclude it at this point. If it turns out g
21 it doesd't work very well apparently, it really would probably II 22 be better to put it below ground, but - -
Ig 23 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: So, you are saying that aboveground
-e if wa e 5 24 vault can be considered as a final disposal according to NRC?
25 DR. STARMER: It might be. I don't know.
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question that was raised. Maybe you should identify what it 3 is that you define as disposal and what is it you define 4 as long-term storage?
5 DR. STARMER: I tried to explain that, and I don't e think I am going to do it again, but if you don't. intend to y go back and get it, and you have met all the other criteria.
g for disposal, I guess it is disposal. I, personally, have an
, impression that there are some of the criteria for disposal to right now that micjht be hard for an aboveground naked structur a ii to meet, but I am not convinced of that, and I think that for 12 any one of these alternatives that is proposed, I think you 13 nave to look at the criteria, and I guess -- are there any 14 criteria, any guidance on that? For example, you kncw, if we 15 got specific, now you have got exposed concrete walls, and 16 you build it in' an area where there is a lot of frost. Do you 17 have any problems?
18 I come from Michigan, and I can show you bridge 19 underpass abutments that are crumbling. Now, it may be'that-20 the concrete wasn't the correct concrete or whatever. Maybe a 21 there id a lot known today, but there are certainly some I
5 22 Problems there. We have some. documentation of what happens Ig k 23 to concrete support structures during a severe fire. I don't
.A f l k 24 think you would like the looks of it. There is not much left H4E My but the rebar(?)
25 I think those are the types of analyses, you
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1 see that we are going to have to consider giving . guidance on 2
for anybody who wants to use concrete structures.
3 Now, in a way we are into discussing alternatives 4
which is fine, but I think that it might be better to wait 5
until tomorrow to get some perspectives that some of the 6
state people and other people might have, including Bill and 7
carry on, but those are the sort of things I think we would 8 .
like to discuss. Where should we be going? Do you have a 9
client who is interested in this sort of thing or you just 10 are interested to see if vyou could - design something? I guess 11 my feeling is you can design something. I have seen a lot of 12 things designed. You can probably build almost anything, given
-)
N_." 13 today's technology. Can society afford it and does the, 14 what you have added, is it worth it in terms of reducing 15 the risk to the public or to an intruder?
16 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: To answer your question, no, we 17 don't have a client per se, but it seems to me that there is, 18 back to obviously we are going to discuss this matter 19 /
tomorrow in greater detail, but the question was what is it 20 that NRC can help at this point, criteria to provide for et 21 E definition of storage and disposal, and I think at this point 3
f.22 g!23 you can do some of those analyses that you just told me and
-h come up and s.y, "We don't think aboveground vaults are going HI $ 24 H & to meet our criteria for disposal." You just mentioned,
% 25 jf- you know, it cracks and all those kinds of thinas. I think s- ;
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198 1 you are telling the people to come up and give you that 2 criteria at this point. I hear.the state people are asking 3 you can you provide that kind of criteria.
4 DR. STARMER: I would point out we have limited 5 resources. I don't have enough people to put on an analysis 6 of this. Now, we are going to do some contractual work. We 7 have the contracts in the first stages o'f contracting in our 8 organization, but even there we may not have enough money 9 to do all the work that would really be necessary to say, 10 "No, you cannot," and the point here is that we have to review 11 what the developer proposes to us. Somebody has to develop 12 something and propose it to us. We can give guidance on the O n.
D 13 sorts of things. Some of it is pretty obvious, and we are U Id going to try to do some of that, probably starting next 15 January, but until then, if we can get a better idea, for 16 example, if nob'ody is going to really seriously consider 17 line augered holes, then maybe we don't want to spend a lot 18 of effort on it. If everybody wants to go to aboveground I'
buildings, then we had better think a lot about that, and I 20 think that is another part of the information we would get.
21 s' MR. FEIZOLLAHI: I don't think there is any 22 compact that has the language for line-augered holes, but there j 23 are several compacts that are requiring aboveground concrete l 2#
storage, including Massachusetts, d' 25 4 DR. STARMER: No, you have put some words in the
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2 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: I think there are some states that 3 require that specifically including Massachusetts. They 4 require aboveground storage.
5 DR. STARMER: That is something for, I think, the 6 agreement state program to work with.
7 MR. DORNSIFE: John, getting back to the thing of 8 possible NRC assistance to states, I know EPA has a program.
9 I think it is called IPA where they actually detail staff 10 people to the states. Does NRC have that kind of program, 11 and is that possible to implement to help us through a 12 critical licensing stage, actual people that you can assign D,n 13
, to our staff to work as part of our staff?
14 DR. STARMER: I don't know of it. I would leave that 15 to Don, but I would temper any offers he makes by the fact 16 that I don't have any staff to detail to you.
4 17 MR. BROWNING: I think there is a program for 18 exchange of people but it would have to be at the governmental 19 level in a state governmental agency and NRC. I am particularly 20 intrigued by the idea. I would like the flow to come the 21 other wdy though. I would like to get some people who have 22 state regulatory experience on my staff, but it is certainly 1 ! 23something g
-e that we could look at. I think we would both 24 mutually benefit from it.
g 25 DR. STARMER: You can send Rich down anytime you want
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to, all right?
2 MR. BROWNING: We vill add that to the list of 3 things we will consider. I would like to pursue the question d of storage versus disposal a little bit more to make sure 5 I understand what really is bothering people. We thought we o had tried to define the dif ference basically in the talk that 7 I gave, and I believe it was, also, in one of the Federal 8
Register notice documents that we put out, but apparently there is still some confusion or uncertainty. If we were to 10 put out a policy statement, what is it more that we need to II say than we have already said? That is what is bothering me.
12 What is the remaining confusion factor? I mean typically O 13 storage in the simplistic sense would be a warehouse on the
" surface that you move the drums into for some period of time, 15 but you know that you are eventually going to have to move 16 them out and quote, dispose of them.
17 MR. DORNSIFE: I guess, Bob, maybe to try to answer 18 that, in your own organization, if I understand it correctly, if it were submitted as a storage facility, it would go to 20 somebody else for review. It would go to the other side of 21 elI the house, not necessarily John's group for review. If it 22 were submitted as a disposal facility, it would go to John, I
! and obviously the two would use totally different criteria
>$ @ to ed j $ 24 23review that.
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MR. BROWNING: It would be under dif ferent regulation s,
./ g 201 V 1 right.
2 MR. DORNSIFE: But there would be totally different 3 criteria, and maybe there ought to be some guidance on how ,
4 you make that determination of who is the cognizant group 5 that does the review. What internal criteria would you use 6 to make that decision?
7 If you got an application and you didn't know, you 8 know, what it was, how would you decide"where to send it?
' MR. BROWNING: The application would have to say 10 that it is for disposal or storage. If it is disposal, it II would come to me. If it is storage it would either go tothe 12 reactor plant folks, if it is reactor plant storage or O
u1timete1r rue 1 cyc1e but ther wou a 1oox et it, eae it ther 14 say, " Hey, really what this person is talking about,"you I5 are talking about what decision process we would go through 16 if the applicant mislabeled his application.
17 MR. DORNSIFE: That is the kind of, policy I think 18 we need. Maybe that is the way to describe it. How would I'
you internal'ly, if you didn't know, from what is on the 20 application, how would you decide whether it was long-term 21 aI storage or disposal?
I ,
22 DR. STARMER: Part of it would be how long you jgI 23 wanted to store it.
MR. DORNSIFE: But supposing they said, "It is d< 25 4* disposal," period.
d5
I 202
- h-0 1 MR. BROWNING: I think I understand what you are 2 saying. We will take a crack at.it, if in fact, that would 3 help resolve a point that is really bothering you at the 4 state level.
5 MR. KRAFT: If there is anything you can learn from e reactor licensing, and I think maybe there is a lesson here, 1
7 ve were just talking in the back row here. Look, if something 8 is a Part 61 application, Bill, you are going to say so in 9 the preamble or in the cover letter, and that is where it is to going to go, but there is an obligation, I think, on the 11 part of the staff to look at the application and say, " Wait 12 a minute. You may say that this is a Part 61 application, but
( 13 we seem to think it is really this kind of application, and.
14 it is subject to negotiation," because in the reactor world 15 there are a lot of analogies where you say, the utility 16 licensee comes'in and says, " Hey, look, this is a Part 5059 17 change. It doesn't reed safety review and all these kinds of 18 considerations." Car staff looks at it and says, " Wait, we l' disagree. We think there is an unresolved safety issue here 20 and go b,ack and do all that other stuff under these other 21 sets of regulations," and that is where the difference comes og I 22 in. I think the state, tlie potential licensee has to initially I
j 23 define under what -- you are asking for a license, whether it is 61 or anything else, and then the agency would say, "We
[ Eg2d 25 think this is legitimate" or not. That is part of what you
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i bu off when you deal with a performance-based regulation as i 2' Opposed to a prescriptive regulation, and we all wanted 3 Performance-based regulations in the first place because it 4 seems to be a better way to regulate.
5 MR. BROWNING: We basically have a dilemma. We 6 wrote a performance-oriented specification with the minimum 7 Prescriptive requirements to ensure that some of the problems 8 of the past would not be revisited on new generation.: sites, 9 and now everybody is facing up to the typical problem of an 10 applicant versus a regulator. They say, "What is the best 11 approach to arrive at that particular performance objective; 12 give me a clue?" I think that is probably what you are facing
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_) 13 up to right now. Is there some other process or mechanism 14 that we could support that would accomplish what we are 15 trying to look for which is hopefully standardization, so 16 we can focus our limited resources on a limited number of 17 approaches versus what we have right now which is, there are 18 basically an infinite number of approaches to arrive at the 19 overall performance approach. I think there is a perception 20 that what is okay for a dry site would not be okay for a g
21 wet sitd. So, it sounds like if you have to ce+er to public
$1 22 perceptions rather than reality perhaps one of the things is
!g ! 23 there ought to be at least two approaches, one for a wet
.4 HI 24 site, one for a dry site. The thing we see happening is j.
W 4R 25 that everybody is being forced, whoever takes the most (2) 05
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hg 204 0 ; conservative approach, everybody else will be drawn along 2 in the process, whether it is necessary or not, evidence the 3 case of the Texas situation. How many feet to groundwater 4 did you say were on the first site?
5 MR. BLACKBURN: Two thousand.
6 MR. BROWNING: Two thousand feet to groundwater on y clay that supposedly is impermeable. I think even our 8 modelers would say that that probably would never get to 9 groundwater, but even when you are faced with a situation 10 like that, and you are forced to go in a direction to, 11 hopefully make it more conservative, the additional 12 conservatism that you are paying for, you know, the risk just O '3 aoe=='t werreme it im e traice1 coet/seaetit xima or eneroeca 14 to the world.
15 We stand ready to try to figure out some mechanism 16 that would accomplish both the states' desires to get something 17 that they feel comfortable supporting at a state level and 18 our desire to try to minimize the expenditure of resources 19 so that we c'an .really focus and make sure the second generation 20 of low-level waste disposal sites is, in fact, a net i
ma 21 improvement. What I feared, and what I have said in the k
I 22 informal gatherings that I have been to at the state level Ig 23 is that one thing we have to make sure is that in the desire 6 24 to go to something better than shallow land burial, and I
%d E 9; 25 think what people have in their mind's eye are the Maxey Flats
. d?:
ho 205 i and the West Valleys, not a 10CFR 61 site, and they refuse 2 to acknowledge the two are. different.
3 There is no 10CFR 61 site today. It probably will 4 never be given a chance to be born. Something else with some 5 additional conservatism would come into play,- but the thing 6 we all have to do as responsible regulators and state 7 officials is to make sure that the next generation of a disposal sites does not come on the line and lead to the 9 same false expectations that apparently the first generation 10 of disposal sites' led to.
11 I have met with people, for example, who live 12 around the Sheffield site in Illinois, and they tell me, "Yes,
] 13 Browning, we hear you saying 10CFR 61 would be okay, but the 14 same kind of message came when we sited the Sheffield thing.
15 People told us not to worry. Nothing will ever harm you,"
16 and then the next thing you know, the monitoring shows 17 some movement off the site. Not to worry, it is not enough 18 to bother you and the next thing you know, whoops, it is 19 moving off the site in a different way. We cannot afford 20 to revisit that kind of scenario with the second generation 21 of sited where we bring something on the line, supposedly I3 22 more conservative and then find what you have walked into is gI23
.4 an entirely different set of problems because we didn't HI h 24 really focus enough time and resources to make sure we really w >R
' 25 knew what we were doing when we went'to the next generation
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1 of disposal. sites, and that is why I think standardization j 2 is in the states' best interests and the nation's best 3 interests, whereas I see what is going on. Apparently 4 everybody is going at it slightly differently, and all our 5 resources are going to get vectored away. Somebody wants 6 to build an aboveground facility. Somebody else wants to do 7 this. Somebody else wants to do that. If we have to devote 8 resources to trying to deal with all those kinds of approacher l 9 it is obvious it will dilute our efforts. How can we set 10 up a process in addition to all the processes that you have 11 to worry about at the state level that would facilitate that 12 kind of an end result?
O an ooans r8: tai =x 3"se o=e more eni=9 thouea t 14 about that would be very helpful for us to have, and I don't 15 think it exists right now is some model to evaluate the le performance of'an advanced technology. You are saying that 17 you are developing hydrogeological models that you can use for 18 licensing. We are going to need a development of a model 19 that we can'use to verify the performance of a technology, too .-
20 DR. STARMER: But which technology.
- g 21 MR. DORNSIFE: Any technology.
22 DR. STARMER: That is precisely the point that Bob HI g 23 was just making, is that one of the problems is if everybody 24 wants a different technology, and we have to develop W 4&
yg 25 performance assessment capability for each one, we are going s_
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] I 207 to be spread very thin.
t 2 MR. DORNSIFE: But, John, as you know, as well as I ,
3 do, the biggest question right now in developing a model d that looks at performance of technologies is how do you model 3 the engineered barrier, for example? How do you model a 6 concrete barrier? There is very little known about that.
7 That is the information that is needed to develop a model.
8 MR. BROWNING: Basically what you are asking is how would the source term that you use in your release rate and IO groundwater release mechanisms, how would that vary for II different technologies and different approaches?
' DR. STARMER: It is not even that simple because o
I3 also, the potential pathways change, particularly if you 14 go aboveground and potential release mechanisms.
15 MR. BROWNING: This is where the questionnaire I'
that we asked you folks to fill out, we are hoping that that 17 will allow us and you to focus on what is it you are really 18 looking for. Are you looking for zero release from the site?
If you are, forget it. There never will be such a thing, 20 no matter how much engineering you throw at the thing. So, ma 21 gj that is going.to be a problem if, in fact, the expectation is Si- 22 zero release. Are you looking for some other concept? You I 23 y know, don't worry about a design in the discussions we have
- 24
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id j tomorrow. Don't worry about getting augered holes or abovegrou nc N ' 25
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vault, but what performance characteristic would you like the
l h, 208 O' i facility to meet so that designers can start focusing on 2 what the characteristic is you are really looking for. I am 3 not sure I am getting my thought across. I think if we don't 4 do that process first, you are going to have a situation that 3 NRC is always accused of where people bring us something, and 6 we say, "We don't like that rock. Bring us another rock,"
7 but we never tell them what shape the rock ought to be or a how big it is. That is basically the exercise we are trying 9 to do with you folks, see if we can define the rock that to everybody is looking for and then see if the engineering 11 companies, the Bechtels, the Chem Nuclear, no matter who, 12 can make their best engineering talents to bear to try to I
{} 13 design a facility that would meet those objectives. You are 14 going to be stuck with the site. The site has to be a good 15 site anyway, and I think what you are looking for and what 16 your need is is some kind of an engineering concept that 17 not only would look good but be good, and what I am afraid of 18 is it may look a lot better and people feel a lot more 19 comfortable, but is it really going to make a difference in 20 terms of the source term for releases off the site over g
21 long term? Any enlightenment you can give, we really are II 22 struggling to try to understand what it is that is required, 1
gI23 and I suspect the designers and everybody else are, also, and HI 24 they have been coming up with approaches like the hexagonal m sR
' 25 concrete thing, you know, without knowing what it is your
(~) es s_-
, /q 209 V 1 i specifications are. It is hard to come up with a design to 2 meet those specifications.
3 MR. SALOMON: I understand that the Department of 4 Energy in the next couple of years will be building three 5 different low-level waste technologies at their Oak Ridge 6 site, earth-mounded concrete bunkers, hillside gallery with 7 canisters and gravel trench. Will the states and compacts 8 somehow be able to take advantage of these ' demonstration 9 technologies that the DOE envisions?
10 MR. BROWNING: Given the timetables in the Act, it 11 is not clear at all that they can afford to wait because 17 basically if you wait until it is actually demonstrated, we 13 are only finding out how these low-level waste site, existing 14 low-level waste sites operated 10, 15 years after the 15 disposal was finished at the site. We are talking a long-16 term performance problem. So, I can sympathize with the 17 state officials' problem of trying to explain to the public 18 how this new site is going to perform over the long run.
19 So, you know, they can lay out those concepts and go do them, 20 but it is not clear that is really going to buy you very 21 much in terms of understanding how it really performs over 22 the long run. They won't know until 10 or 20 years, 30 years, j 23 40 years, the end of the operation, the actual operation, and
>{I 24 by operation, I mean after you dispose of the waste and it m aR f ' 25 sits there, what is it really doing over the long term? That
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1 is when the real operation of the disposal site starts 2
h appening, not when you are emplacing your waste.
3 MR. SALOMON: So, it would only be helpful from an 4
operational point of view but not in terms of long-term S
performance ?
6 MR. BROWNING: I don't personally know what their 7
timetables are or whether they really, in fact, are going 8
to be able to do that. It may be something they are planning 9
to do. I don't know whether somebody from DOE is here or 10 not. They apparently just left.
11 Maybe we can ask that question tomorrow when we 12 talk about the alternatives because clearly if DOE could
( () 13 somehow come forward with a proposed approach that they 1s think meets 10CRF 61, plus additional conservatisms that 15 are necessary to accommodate a wet site, and we could work 16 some arrangement with them, for example, where we could do 17 a licenability review of that approach, since we don't license 18 DOE, we cannot actually license some, but if we could work 19 on some kind of a cooperative arrangement where we could 20 >
review it from a licensability standpoint, and if that would NE help to have that approach sitting on the shelf, that might II 22 i f(l 23 be a worthwhile effort to do or if one of the states would
-d like to try to demonstrate, get up front, demonstrate a (I $ 24 H j& particular design by hiring somebody, having a competition, M- 25
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1
. m/ 211 1 decide which of the competition wins and then having us 2 brought in early to do a regulatory kind of review, we would 3 be more than happy to try to work something like that out, 4 but I don't perceive the way the thing is going that what 5 would necessarily satisfy Maine, for example, would satisfy 6 Nevada or Texas, just like we issued a regulation which now 7 nobody wants. Every time we do something they say, "That 8 isn't good enough. I want something better." What we are 9 trying to find out is what is it you want and need?
10 MR. DUNKLEBERGER: Jay Dunkleberger from New York.
11 To follow on with Bill's and actually the question of Tom 12 Blackburn, too, what we are looking at are various technologie s.
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13 A lot of them are takeoffs, if you will, on shallow-land Id burial or near-surface disposal, with adding various concepts.
15 I would think the one thing that would be very helpful is 16 if we could get some kind of a computer model which we could 17 or you could or somebody could be able to plug in various 18 intermediary stages of concrete or stainless steel or gold I' or whatever'you want to think of as barriers, a piece of 20 plastic here or 6-inch concrete or 10-inch concrete or these i
21 sure pack type, canisters with something else around them or 22 have various stages of protection that one could evaluate j 23 and plug in various concepts and see what it does actually 24 to release rates, to scenarios, thereby you would be able to vi / "5 4 :t have a little better technical handle on what are you really x d5 0-
00 i 212 buying; what is it doing for you or what is it doing to you, i
2 because I can see certain instances where what you are getting 3 is, you may be benefiting yourself in one way, but you are 4 getting into a West Valley situation, and you are creating a 5 bathtub effect which we found out was not the right thing to 6 do, but some of the technologies might end up doing that and 7 hurting us. So, I think if something could be done along a those lines where you can look at the various options, I 9 think it would be helpful.
10 MR. BROWNING: All right. We will take that into 11 consideration.
12 So far we have heard that you would like to hear nr\
(Js/ 13 some guidance on,more definitive guidance on storage versus 14 disposal, some kind of a modeling approach that would allow 15 people to assess what the real benefit is to any additional 16 barriers that might be imposed at the site.
17 Anything else?
18 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Any other questions or comments?
19 Okay, then we will adjourn for today and reconvene 20 at 8:30 tomorrow morning.
i 21 (Thereupon, at 4 : 48 p.m. , a recess was taken until og I 22 8:30 a.m., the following day.)
1 i23 f $n$ 24
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CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER OO This is to certify that the attached proceedings before 1 I
the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the l matter of: I NAME OF PROCEEDING: MEETING ON LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE POLICY AMENDMENT (LLRWPAA) OF 1985 DOCKET NO.:
PLACE: BETHESDA, MARYLAND O
DATE: TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 1986 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
(sigt) ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
{ ,- (TYPED)
Official Reporter Reporter's Affiliation O
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