ML20204E387

Transcript of Low Level Radwaste Policy Act Amend (Llrwpaa) of 1985 860625 Meeting in Bethesda,Md.Pp 213-291

ML20204E387
Person / Time
Issue date:	06/25/1986
From:	NRC
To:
References
FRN-51FR7806, RULE-PR-61 NUDOCS 8608010026
Download: ML20204E387 (82)

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i UlN11ED STATES O

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ORGWAL IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:

LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE POLICY ACT AMENDMENT (LLRWPAA) OF 1985

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BETHESDA, MARYLAND PAGES: 213 - 291 LOCATION:

l DATE:- WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 1986 L

e60601oo26 e60625 PDR 6S"MI i

ace-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.

O Official Reporters 444 North Capitol Street Washington, D.C. 20001 (202) 347-3700 NATIONWIDE COVERACE

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LOW LEVEL RADIOACTIVE NASTE POLICY ACT Af1ENDMENT (LLRWPAA) 9 of 1985 10 11 12 O

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18 June 23, 1985 lioliday Inn 8120 Gisconsin Avenue 20 Sethesda, Maryland El 5 22 23

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n O ESE1EEIE Page 2 Licensing of Alternative Disposal Methods (This session will address 3 the FR notice issued on this subject

-FR 7806, Vol 51, No. 44) 4 John Starmer, WM Larry Pittiglio, WM 213 5

Public Participation 273 7

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GREENWOOD I P_ R_ O C_ E E D_ I N_ G_ S_

2 MR. NUSSBAUMER: This morning we have a panel 3

discussion on the licensing of alternative disposal methods, d

and we hope to have a good interchange this morning. We have 5

some speakers lined up to lead things off.

The first speaker will be John Starmer from the 7

NRC staff whom we heard from yesterday, and then we will have I

Larry Pittiglio from the Division of Waste Management, James Morgan, Deputy Director of Legislative Public Af f airs f rom 10 the Department of Health and Welfare in California, Gail II Nelson, Policy Analyst, Department of Nuclear Safety from 12 Illinois and Bill Dornsife, Chief, Division of Nuclear Safety, C,m '3 Bureau of Radiation Protection in Pennsylvania.

John, do you want to lead off, please?

DR. STARMER: I am going to be very brief this I'

morning. I would just like to make a couple of quick points.

I As background, we were concerned, even when we promulgated II rule 10CFR Part 61 that there were other ways besides the traditional shallow land burial that Part 61 was directed 20 toward which could be viable, and I think that at that time, 21 in fact, if you look in the statement of considerations, one 22 ll1 ,

of the commitments we made was to look into licensing of I 23 other disposal methods.

$$ g* 24 In line with that we had some work done for us by g,j['g$

d, the Corps of Engineers which addressed five, at that time, u

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.pd 1 methodologies that were being practiced that were somewhat 2 or entirely different than trench disposal. That was 3 published about, oh, it hasn't been quite a year ago. It d was last fall in October. The bottom line there was that 5 most of the technologies at that time, aboveground vaults, below-ground vaults, what were called earth mound concrete

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e 7 bunkers to give a generic name to the practice of the French 8 and augered holes and mined cavities could be licened under 9 Part 61, with the exception of mine cavities which give some 10 potentially unique problems.

11 Part 61, many of the, particularly the technical 12 criteria would not be applicable. I would like to point out

13 that our analysis of the situation for mine cavities is that Id the NRC using other regulations that are already Part 20, IS Part 30, Part 70, we co'lld, through a more cumbersome 38 process tnan that -- it would not be as straightforward as 17 licensing, under Part 61, for more, if you will, classical 18 types of disposal, we could license a mine cavity disposal.

I' It would be more cumbersome but not impossible. I think 20 you all should realize that the Sheffield site which is still 21 licensed by NRC was licensed without Part 61, and one of the 8 22

! reasons for developing Part 61 was to streamline the

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, licensing process. Any licensing we did for any of these 24 would be very similar or exactly the same as that envisaged 25 o, ad by Part 61, the process. some of the requirements might be l

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ce s 215 N' different, and it can be done on a case-by-case basis. The I

2 Corps of Engineers then and we agree that Part 61 can be 3 applied to, most things that are conceived of as disposal at 4 this time.

5 In terms of providing some additional guidance, e that is what we are trying to do, wh'a t we want to do. As I 7 mentioned yesterday, we are going to work on guidance for the 8 base case. There are quite a few guidance documents available.

'9 Some of them are on that list back there that is available to 10 you, and what we would do then is to produce additional 11 guidance. We provided some general guidance in the form of 12 a Federal Register Notice, a technical position on licensing y

7.x. 13 of alternatives and as we understand what alternatives you 14 are interested in, and we can understand what components are 15 different from the types of things that we are treating under le Part 61 specifically, thinking in terms of trench disposal, 17 we can add guidance that can explain to you, A, the informa-18 tion that we will require, and B, the analyses we will do.

19 Now, Iuwill let Larry carry on from there and 20 tell you a little bit about our plans for the future for 21 alte rnatives .

I 22 MR. PITTIGLIO: Good morning. What I would like to I 23 do briefly is run through just briefly the Federal Register g

Notice of our position on alternatives and to talk briefly m.il24

' 25 about the responses that we have received to date, just' to give Q ub l

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3 216 1 you an idea and then talk a little bit about what we are 2 doing and where we are going.

3 On March 6, of this year, we published in the 4 Federal Register Notice a draf t technical position on the 5 licensing of alternatives. Basically the position summarized 6 the work that the staff has done for the last three years, 7 including work with the Army Corps of Engineers in a study 8 to evaluate the applicability of Part 61 to licensing of 9 near-surface disposal concepts. In summary, the alternatives 10 listed were the aboveground vaults, below-ground vaults, 11 earth-mounded concrete bunkers, augered holes in mine cavities .

12 The purpose was to identify what we considered to be the 13 alternatives that are currently being considered and then to 14 evaluate them. The results of the study clearly indicated 15 that Part 61 is applicable to near-surface disposal and le specifically addressed Subpart D, Section 6150 which dealt 17 with siting, 6151 which basically dealt with design, 6152, 18 which was the operations enclosure and 6153 which was 19 monitoring.

20 The conclusion was that Part 61 is applicable 21 for the near-surface disposal concepts. Mine cavities, as 5 22 John mentioned, is licensable under Part 61, specifically 23 I 23 on a case-by-case basis, but was significantly dif ferent from g

current near-surface disposal, and by that we meant disposal

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' 25 in the upper 30 meters of the earth. Along with discussing oon

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I the alternatives in the report, the Federal Register Notice 2 discussed the concepts of standardization which we talked 3 about yesterday, as well as prelicensing consultation as a 4 mechanism to expedite the licensing process. At the end of 5 the Federal Register Notice we presented four questions and 4 answers, responses to them.

7 Briefly the four questions dealt with do you know 8 of any other alternatives that are currently being considered 9 but have not been identified. Question No. 2 asked what 10 areas of technical guidance do you feel you need additional 11 direction in. Question No. 3 dealt with the standardization, 12 and Question No. 4 basically talked about prelicensing 13 consultation, and what I thought I would do now, again, is 14 just briefly tell you the type of comments that we have 15 received to date, noting that the 60-day comment period did 16 close May 5, and as Bob Browning mentioned yesterday, we 17 would still be interested in any comments that anybody would 18 like to provide.

19 To date we have received approximately 13 response s 20 to the Federal Register Notice. Generally all the responsen 21 were favorable to the position, as far as the licensing of 5

near-surface disposal. As far as the four questions, I think Il22

, 23 24 that is interesting enough that we will briefly summarize where we came out on those.

25 Question No. 1, generally the response was no, we l

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p 218 V 1 do not know of any other alternatives, other than those 2 mentioned in the report that are currently being considered.

3 Question No. 2 was a varied answer as far as the specific d type of guidance that you are looking for. Some people said 5 that we need more general guidance. Others said, "We need 6 more specific," but didn't say what they wanted. So, we do 7 have a problem in that particular response in the fact that 8 we were not able to get a definitive response to direct our 9 program. Question No. 3 which dealt with standardization 10 was generally well accepted. The responses that were 11 received were standardization is good. It is probably more 12 applicable to look at on a regional basis or maybe by parts 13 of the country or standardization of components. There was 14 some concern that one design for all conditions may not be 15 really amenable to the parties concerned.

le Question No. 4 dealt with the prelicensing 17 consultation, and that was generally well received, felt it 18 was a good mechanism to help expedite the licensing process, l' and we received favorable feedback on that. So, that is 20 where we are today. Again, we have received only 13 responses .

21 I believe there are copies in tihe back. We encourage anybody, g

I 22 if you need a copy, get it and provide us some information.

I,j23 we are looking for feedback to that particular Federal 2 negister Notice.

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25 As far as where we are going today, shortly after

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(.s) 1 issuing the Federal Register Notice, defining our position 2 on alternatives, we noticed in the Federal Register the 3 standard format and content guide for license application.

4 Basically the guide provides a directory of the type of 5 information that the NRC envisions will be necessary in a 6 license application.

7 I think it was mentioned again yesterday that 8 we received only one comment on that. I, personally, found 9 that a little disappointing because in the last two or three 10 months before it was issued, I and a couple of other people 13 went through several modifications to try to improve the 12 document, and I can assure you that I, personally, think (3 13

() that the document is weak in certain areas. It is being 14 revised, but it would be important to get feedback from you, 15 the potential applicant, to see, you know, does it clearly le address to you what we envision we need in that license 17 application? Copies of it are available in the back of the 18 room, and we, again, encourage you to participate in review 19 of that and provide us some direction.

20 At the same time that we were working on a 21 standard format and content guide, and we still are, we began I 22 the development of our standard review plan process.

I j 23 There are outlines that are available for the 24 standard review plans. Again, right now, we are currently ed: 25 working on the base case which is shallow land burial and Ub

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1 will again, modify it to incorporate alternatives once we 2 get through the base case. I believe that a draft will not 3 be available until sometime,in January of this year.

4 Again, the standard review plans are to mechanisms 5 that evaluate the information that is presented in the e standard format and content guide. It is the staf f's approach 7 of how we are going to evaluate a license application. I 8 think that it will be another useful tool for you to see 9 what we envision for the type of information necessary for 10 you to demonstrate adequate protection of the safety of the 11 public.

12 Also, at the same tine, we are currently working 13 on what we call our licensing assessment methodology document (G_)

14 which basically will outline the steps in the licensing 15 process, what NRC needs to do in a 15-month period from the 16 time that the, once the application is docketed, and at that 17 time we will be conducting both our safety reviews and 18 environmental reviews. We will have to go through certain l' iterations and then develop a policy statement at the end 20 of the 15-month period.

21 That will be available later this year, I hope.

g I 22 I I think that pretty much tells you where we are and what we I

j 23 are doing now, and if you have any questions we can address

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l Mf g-25 Please feel free to ask us any questions.

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1 MR. MC KINNEY: Tom McKinney from Dames and Moore.

2 I realize that you have stated that the mine cavity could be 3 licensed kind of in a piece meal way under Part 61 and the 4 other regulatory elements. With respect to site selection, 5 however, all the other alternatives listed would fall under e the Part 61 minimum technical requirements, and siting in 7 that framework could be a Part 61 activity. Have you given 8 any thought to the siting guidelines or components that 9 would differ in a mine cavity situation? We are facing this 10 as a significant potential alternative in the central II interstate.

12 MR. PITTIGLIO: At this time, I do not believe 13 we have -- we have some information available that came

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Id through from the Army Corps reports that we are currently 15 reviewing, but we have devoted our emphasis on studies and to guidance related to the application of near surface disposal 17 concepts, mainly the ones that are applicable to Part 61.

18 I don' t know what our resource commitment is and when and if 19 we will be able to do that.

20 MR. MC KINNEY: All right, thank you.

! 23 MR. PITTIGLIO: What I thought, if there are no l3 22 other questions, I might do is briefly summarize the results I

j 23 of a questionnnaire that we passed out yesterday, just to d Te 24 give you an idea of the type of feedback that came out, if f

25 you are interested. Let me turn on the vugraphs, and I will l

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222 d;n I present some of the results.

2 I thought I would put that slide up just to see 3 if everybody was awake. We got 12 responses which is about 4 40 percent. I, personally, was a little disappointed, but 5 that is the statistics on that.

6 Question No. 1 basically was a question that 7 asked what positions the individuals were that responded to 8 the questionnaire. The 12 responses that we received 9 basically were some type of position generally within a 10 regulatory agency.

11 Question No. 2 basically addressed a question -

12 and answer, a list of several options about what to you are

() 13 14 the most desirable additional attributes that you deem necessary for a disposal concept, and in the order of 15 importance or ranking that we received, these were the three le responses that we received. Early detection was the most 17 important. Ease of remediation was second, and retrievability 18 was the third option.

I' Question 3 basically dealt with the ranking of 20 alternatives that you currently consider to be in the fore-21 front. The earth-mounded concrete bunker was the No. 1 22 selection. Aboveground vaults was No. 2, and belowground 11 23 g vaults was No. 3. Question No. 4 was basically a repeat of v g24 the one that was listed in the Federal Register Notice. Do 25 you know of any alternatives that are currently being

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I considered, other than the ones previously identified in 2 our Federal Register Notice? The response to that was no.

3 Again, Question No. 5 was just about a repeat 4 again of the one in the Federal Register Notice related to 5 standardization of design, and the response was generally 6 the same as we received. Standardization is good. We think 7 it is probably more applicable on a regional basis, and, 8 also, standardization of components may be another way to 9 go, and then Question 6 was the one which was discussed 10 briefly yesterday and dealt with what is your preference 11 as far as dual regulation? The overall response was that 12 they greatly favored single agency regulation rather than

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13 dual response.

14 A second part of Question 6 dealt with who 15 regulates mixed waste, the radiological side. The response 16 to that was either agreement states or NRC, and I believe 17 there was another part to that question which basically 18 dealt with the chemical hazard side of it, and the response 19 was it was regulated by authorized states. So, that 20 basically summarizes the information that we have. Let me 21 just say one thing again in repeating what I know was said U 22 several times yesterday. It is very seldom that you will 11 g 23 have an opportunity to comment on something and for once in

• 24 your life maybe be incorporated. I know you get the feeling m,'$

' 25 that you provide us a lot of direction sometimes and it is oU 4

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1 ignored, but we really do, in all honesty really like your 2 in solicitation of comments on both the format and content 3 guide and on that type of information in the Federal Register 4 Notice.

5 It is a chance to really significantly affect what 6 ,we are going to put out. So, please get copies of it, if 7 you don't and provide us some input. You may never have a 8 chance, again, to influence what we are doing as much as you 9 do today.

10 Thank you.

11 MR. MORGAN: Good morning. My name is Jim Morgan.

12 I am with the California Health and Welfare Agency, and most l'

Q 13 of my remarks have already been covered. So, I will try to 14 keep these short. The State of California appreciates the 15 efforts of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in attempting 16 to provide regulations and guidance in the field of low-level 17 radioactive waste disposal alternatives. Since 1984, l

18 California has been active in the consideration of alternative s 19 in waste processing and container enhancement. As early as 20 1982, the state proposed to the legislature a program of 21 waste stabilization prior to in'terim waste storage. We I 22 recognized the need to stabilize what is now referred to as I 23 Type A trash and mixed waste prior to its being placed in a g

storage facility.

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V 1 enhancement and waste stabilization are numerous, and each 2 solution has specific or key elements. We have concerns in 3 the areas of retrievability and minimum standards for waste 4 form and container enhancement. Any final regulations or 5 technical positions proposed by the NRC would, we expect, e be discussed with the states prior to adoption, and I am 7 getting the distinct impression that that is going to be the 8 case.

9 Since 1983, California has had statutory 10 authority to develop a low-level radioactive waste disposal 11 site. It has a licensed designee, US Ecology and is well on 12 its way to locating a site. As a matter of fact, this week

,Q 13 public hearings are being held in communities that are

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14 potential sites for the largest densely populated area 15 nearest to potential sites.

16 The work plan calls for disposal operations to 17 commence by 1991. There is no specific statutory language 18 requiring enhanced technology. However, it has been I' determined that the Department of Health Services which is 20 California's lead agency for low-level radioactive waste 21 disposal, that the department has the authority to adopt I 22 regulations requiring alternative technology, and the I

, j 23 underlying regulations are now being developed. We have not v g 2. developed specific requirements for alternatives or enhance-25 ments to shallow land burial or as we euphemistically refer C>u-l

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I to it in California, kick and roll. Whether or not 2 alternative technologies are eventually required will depend 3 upon the scientific advantages, the geotechnical profile of 4 the site itself and the cost effectiveness of the system.

5 The state has benefited from the submission of proposals from o potential license designees by havin'g an in-depth view into 7 some of the alternatives, and the alternatives which were 8 available for consideration include below-ground vaults, 9 patented concrete containers of specific design, such as 10 the Westinghouse Sure Pack, concrete boxes with waste grouted 11 in place, such as specific nuclear process and other systems 12 which may be developed, such as those discussed yesterday.

] 13 Contrary to some of the stereotypical images 14 of California, we have no intentions of putting the low-level 15 waste in hot tubs in Malibu.

16 Any alternatives must be judged against criteria 17 which are specific for California's conditions, and these 18 criteria include the volume of waste. California is expected I' .to produce 200,000 cubic feet of waste in 1986.

20 The location. California has extensive desert 21 areas which have an average rainfall of less than 10 inches.

I 22 This situation reduces the likelihood of precipitation 1

j 23 reaching that waste. Evaporation in this climate far exceeds Id those 10 inches of precipitation per year.

25 The stability of the cap over the waste after t

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1 operations. This commences upon acceptance of the site for 2 institutional care by the state following its useful life 3 for disposal and the retrievability of the waste package; the 4 state recognizes the importance of being able to take action 5 at some future date, as new systems develop and become cost e effective. Key there, becoming cost effective. We, also, see 7 the need to evaluate possible alternatives as they relate to 8 waste processing. Waste stabilization is highly desirable.

9 A stable waste form provides a product which will not degrade 10 and result in costly maintenance of the site after its II operations.

12 Methods include compaction, using high-force 13 compactors, incineration, glassification, mixing and encasing 14 the waste in glass cnd acid digestion, and please don't ask 15 me for specifics on those because I have no idea, and there 16 are others.

I7 We encourage the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 18 and other governmental agencies to continue their efforts to l' find solutions to the problems of mixed waste, and we would 20 urge the Federal Government to avoid the morass of dual EPA-21 NRC regulatory authority.

I 22 Ii Thank you.

jg 23 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Any questions for Mr. Morgan?

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,g DR. STARMER: I have a point of clarification.

25 You said that you might require more than shallow-land burial, Oas

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I and then you said that you equate that with kick and roll.

2 What I would like to ask is do you equate kick and roll with 3 Part 61 disposal?

4 MR. MORGAN: Yes.

5 DR. STARMER: If you practiced kick and roll in 6 the classical sense, you would be in' violation of our 7 regulations.

8 MR. MORGAN: Is there a police officer in here?

9 I can go now.

10 DR. STARMER: No, let me explain. I want to use 11 this as an illustration. Part 61 requires a great deal more 12 care in placement of waste, backfilling of Waste, waste form

() 13 and container requirements than was ever required by what 14 we considered classical shallow land burial. Yesterday you 15 may have noticed that I used a very long euphemism for 16 shallow land burial, calling it near surface trench disposal, 17 with some engineering enhancements, and I guess the question 18 I have is, you know, your perception obviously is one that 19 Part 61 allows classical kick and roll like at Sheffield or 20 West Valley or Maxey Flats, in other words, the classical 21 thing. Have you observed, for example, the operation at g

5 Barnwell which is an attempt, if you will, to backfit or to l I1-l22 g

t 23 d I *224 molement Part 61 type of disposal at a currently operating site?

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8' 25 Yes, we have, and let me apologize l MR. MORGAN:

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I 1 for being flip about this. We did -- I was not personally 2 involved, but the State of California did an extensive review 3 of both Barnwell, the Washington site and in Badi(?) and we 4 were extremely impressed by what we saw there, and there is 5 a reason for that. I don't know how many of you are familiar 4 with some of the machinations that have been going on in the 7 State of California with respect both to compacts and to 8 a licensed designee process. If I may take a couple of 9 moments, I will try to backfill some of this information.

10 First of all, we had a process that we let out 11 an BEP for licensed designee, and we had one organization 12 come forward. We had four organizations submit, and as was

() 13 Id indicated yesterday, thanks to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we had all four of those RFP's reviewed, and 15 we came up with a selection of a designee that incorporated 16 the Sure Pack method, the folks from Westinghouse.

17 Westinghouse subsequently withdrew. We then re-opened the 18 entire process. The State of California was then sued by 19 another applicant. The judge in the suit allowed as how, 20 yes, we should have gone to one of the other applicants 21 rather than re-open the whole process because we were going 8 22 for what we called the enhanced technology.

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,j23 The judge referred to 10 CFR 61 as the only g g 24 technology you need to go with or the only parameters you 25 need to go with, and we allowed as how all four applications m

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I were within the guidelines as the NRC had said. All four 2 were within the guidelines of 10CFR 61, so that we then 3 embarked on a re-review of the three remaining applicants, 4 all three of which, as I say, fell within the guidelines, 5 and then our Director of the Department of Health Services 6 went for on-site visits to all three' of the sites, and 7 determined that yes, in fact, the NRC was correct. For a suf ficient protection of the public health, shallow land 9 burial was more than adequate.

10 Does that answer your question? I used that very 11 flippantly, and I apologize. The other euphemistic term we 12 use is box and bury. Do you want to hit me on that one?

13 DR. STARMER: No, not at all.

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14 (Laughter.)

15 MR. MEYER: My name is Lou Meyer. I am with 16 the Environmental Protection Agency. We are developing 17 environmental standards for low-level radioactive waste 18 disposal. We have evaluated 10 different types of disposal 19 methods, alternatives, if you will, and we have used as we 20 have found that 10CFR 61 is different and much better than 21 shallow land disposal, kick and' roll, we do not equate that 3

as the same thing, and we think that anyone who is even --

lg 22 1 23 this is a personal thing. I would say that anyone who is H I

• 24 even being flip about it in such a controversial area, it is m,' $

' 25 something that is inflammatory. I think that is a mistake.

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Ten CFR 61 seems in our preliminary analyses to give quite 2 adequate protection of the public health, and our preliminary 3 analyses, also, indicate that if you go for some of your 4 enhanced methods you may be wasting money. You know, we have 5 to develop our standards under looking at costs and benefits, e and we cannot really justify anything more stringent than 7 10CFR 61, I don't think. That is just a preliminary evalua-8 tion. So, I give this for your guidance.

9 MR. MORGAN: Were you here yesterday, sir?

10 MR. MEYER: Yes.

11 MR. MORGAN: Were you present when a gentleman 12 discussed, I believe, from Texas the survey that Texas went

{} 13 through and was then subjected to the politics of enhanced 14 technology?

15 MR. MEYER: Okay.

16 MR. MORGAN: Regardless of whether or not it is 17 cost effective, regardless of whether or not 10CFR 61 is 18 adequate to protect the public health, I think it would be 19 naive to deal with this whole issue and not take into i

20 consideration politics, and anyone who suggests that is not 21 hitting on all eight cylinders', as far as I am concerned.

5 22 As I say, I used the term flippantly, but I, also,

,! j 23 acknowledge, and the State of California acknowledges that 24 10CFR is more than adequate to protect the public health, dl 25 and I appreciate your guidance.

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1 MR. MEYER: Okay, it is something I wanted to 2 bring up today at an appropriate time. Maybe this is 3 appropriate. People are making decisions not based on 4 rational scientific and engineering judgment. Now, the 5 Texas panel that evaluated the matter, they did it on a e rather scientific commonsense basis, and they came to the 7 conclusion that 10CFR 61 was adequate.

8 Now, people are talking to NRC, you know, we 9 want aboveground vaults, below-ground vaults, earth-mounded 10 concrete bunkers and all this, but why are they doing this?

11 Are they doing it from a position of good engineering, proper 12 expenditure of money or are they doing it because of public

() 13 pressure and political pressure?

14 You know, one can address the problem, solve the 15 problem, and you may have to change what you are doing le because of public perception, but maybe we should try to 17 change the public perception.

18 MR. MORGAN: That is a very good point.

19 MR. MEYER: Has anybody stood up and said, " Damn 20 it, you know, we have evaluated this, and this will do the 21 job"? Or is everybody just caving in, saying, "Well, we g

5 lg 22 have got to do something. So, they may not like that." I 1 23 think this is something that it behooves us as engineers and jI 24 scientists just to stand up and say what the facts are and d3 25 try to educate people.

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n 233 V 1 MR. MORGAN: I couldn't agree with you more, and 2 I don't know who would be more appropriate to explain to the 3 general public than engineers and scientists. The fact of 4 the matter remains, when those same people go into a ballot 5 box, they are going to hear the last empassioned plea from a e politician who is going to say, "I am going to protect you.

7 I am going to demand," and they will create a myth in some-O body's mind about this thing called low-level waste or this 9 thing called toxic waste or whatever. I believe that, and 10 our license designee is in the process, as I indicated 11 earlier, is in the process this very week of going out into 12 the community in an outreach program that is hopefully O) t 13 intended to allay some fears and get some community support Id for the location of a waste disposal facility and the 15 technology that will be used to dispose of low-level waste, le and that will be one test right there. We are in the process.

17 We are in the Petri dish right now on that very subject.

18 I have taken up more time than it deserves.

I' MR. DORNSIFE: I would like to make a comment. I 20 just cannot resist this because this is one of my pet areas.

21 I think the problem has been from my perspective that over the 8 22 last several years many of us in the states have been crying I 23 l for exactly what you are talking about, Lou. We needed that

[.,.24 g information three years ago to fight the battle. Now, the b ' 25 O& war is lost. People are convinced that they want something L

• s 234 1 better than shallow land burial, and you are not going to 2 convince them anyway. The data that you are producing now we 3 shoula have had three years ago to fight the war. The war is d lost.

5 MR. BLACKBURN: I would like to make a comment e on this, also. The decision, unfortunately, isn't in the 7 engineering side. It is on the political side. We have 8 long since taken the stand that shallow land burial is more

' than adequate. Unfortunately, we are not the people who 10 make the final decision. If we want to get a site developed II in Texas, we have to go to something other than shallow land 12 burial because it just will not fly in the public's eye.

13 We have tried various forms of public education, everything 14 from simple-to-read pamphlets to taking legislatures, to 15 taking members of the communities out to active disposal le sites, and again, like I said yesterday, when they are out 17 at the site, it is great, but once they get back into their 18 community, it is not, and they say, "No, we need something I' better. We need something more substantial than good old 20 mother nature to take care of this,"and they just don't seem 21 to have the faith in a stable geological formation that has I 22 been there for 500,000 years. They like concrete for some 1 23 l reason, and again, if the decision was being made by the 24 technical authorities throughout all the states , I think we d 25 would have shallow land burial, but unfortunately, as what har r

t

p 235 i happened over the last couple of years, statutorily a lot of 2 states in a lot of regions cannot go to shallow land burial 3 now or standard practices that we have today. We have to go 4 to some enhanced technology. That enhanced technology, I 3 think, could still be 61, but again, when you talk to the 4 public, they still look at 10CFR, Part 61 as a Barnwell site y or a Badi site or a Hanford site. To them it is all the same.

8 There is no dif ference between Maxey Flats, Kentucky or

, the requirements of 10CFR 61,as far as the public is concerneci ,

to and I don't think we are going to get away with a standard 11 shallow land disposal really anyplace in the country now 12 because of what has happened in the last couple of years.

/ 13 MR. GREEVES: My name is John Greeves. I am 14 Branch Chief of the Engineering Branch with NRC, and 13 Mr. Morgan and maybe some of those others who are participating to today, I would like to make sure that you are all aware that 17 there is a branch technical position on high-integrity 18 containers in a waste form. You mentioned the State of 19 California is looking into how to contain this waste. We 20 have worked with the State of South Carolina and the State 21 of Washington extensively with'this branch technical position.

I 22 It has worked fairly well. I wanted to make sure that you and I 23 others who are going through this process are aware of this g

24 technical document, and if you are not, I can provide these.

WI *1 9

d 3 23 I think it is a good starting place for your process. I wanted O di

n 236 b 1 to make sure that you and others were aware of that 2 particular document, and we can go over the process that 3 we have been going through with the active waste disposal 4 sites on this particular document. The other point is that 5 you mentioned that you were looking into things like, for e example, concrete granite blocks, retrievability concepts 7 and cost effectiveness. In watching this process go on, I 8 think anybody quickly realizes these things compete with 9 each other, and I think we would enjoy conversation with 10 folks like yourself on these to make sure that you have the 11 benefit of our observations about how these competing 12 interests impact each other. You could probably take a look O i3 ee them from voer own goint of view, end 1 think vee wee 1d 14 find it interesting for the staff to provide comments on 15 what we thin! competition between one and the other are, le and I enjoyed hearing that you were looking at the cost 17 ef fective aspects of this thing because I think a lot of 18 people are going to be surprised when they find out what l' these things really cost.

20 Thank you.

21 MR. BROWNING: Bob' Browning, NRC. I would like 5 22 to just add one thing to the point John Greeves made. It 1

is really more than just a branch technical position, namely,

,l23 24 a piece of paper that Mr. Greeves is talking about. The 25 concepe for stable Class B and C wastes was that you could go o "l

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V 1

several approaches. You could do it at the site, through 2

engineering at the site which appears to be the direction 3

that the states and compacts are moving or you could do it 4

back at the generator or some processing facility to produce 3

the stability in either the waste form or the container, 6

but the stable form would have to remain stable for on the 7

order of 300 years, and we have actually approved topical 8

reports submitted by industrial companies that wanted to 9

produce such a container or stable waste form and have 10 actually approved and it is in the marketplace and going into 11 the disposul sites today, containers that from a rigorous 12 technical evaluation a case has been made that they will t'3 kl remain stable for on the order of 300 years, and I think 14 that is a point that not too many people are aware of. I 15 mean you compare a high-integrity container that has been 16 designed and engineered to be stable for 300 years, for exampl e, 17 to the liners that are required at an EPA hazardous waste 18 site, and one of my show and tells is to show a piece of this 19 high-integrity container versus a liner, and I think most to people would intuitively say, "I would rather have the 300-yea r e 21 I container and the waste encapsulated in small individual 22 ll1

$ 123 Wl*24 d.

discrete elements, rather than depend on rather thin large membranes underneath the entire disposal site." I think that is a very important concept because the two agencies have

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aroceeded sort of in carallel and kind of in isolation from

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I each other, in developing approaches for what is basically 2 a common problem, namely, how to avoid contamination of 3 groundwater and have evolved two different routes, and it is 4 very important that people know what those two routes are S before they make a value judgment that one is better than the e other. They have been developed for two entirely dif ferent 7 kinds of problems, but I personally think the high-integrity 8 container or the waste form stabilization concept has been 9 a major step in the right direction, and I think the thing 10 that the states are looking for is a va-iation or an extensior 11 of what has actually been going on under 10CFR 61.

12 MR. DORNSIFE: Just one more quick comment that 13 I would like to make. I think one of the problems the states 14 is facing, at least we are facing is a fault of EPA's and 15 not your particular program, Lou, but RECRA. One of the first le questions you always get when you talk about a technology or 17 how you are treating this waste, you are doing the same 18 thing you are doing for hazardous waste. In fact, a lot of 19 our siting criteria are taken directly from from the state's 20 hazardous waste siting criteria, and they are political 21 considerations. You have to live with them, because that 8 22 has already been established by a public process. The I 23 majority of the public feels that radioactive waste is worse g

24 than hazardous waste, and just now some politicians and k 25 political staf f people are starting to realize that that is Oid

239 O'V not the case, that hazardous waste is the much bigger y

3 problem, but the public has not yet reached that conclusion.

3 So, if you cannot say that you are doing at least as much

, in radioactive waste as you are doing for hazardous waste, you have lost the battle.

3 g MR. FEIZOLLAHI: Fred Feizollahi, Bechtel 7

National. The question is for Jim Morgan. I not. ice you refer s to this magic word "retrievability," and you said that the

,, state was working on some kind of preliminary regulation 10 to require retrievability?

yj MR. MORGAN: I sensed that this question would 12 come up. What may have been confusing in my remarks was

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y so close. What we are working on, we have no specific 15 statutory requirement for enhanced technology at the present gg time, nor do we feel that we need any. However, we have in 37 statute regulatory authority to require technology, not 18 necessarily a minimum standard of technology, but we can i, require -- it is permissive for us to do that, and we are 20 taking that option to require some underlying technology 21 regulations now that will be, I don't know how to describe it I

s 22 any other way than, hopefully, best suited to the eventual 11g 23 gj

• 24 site that is picked, and part of the technology that will evolve or part of the regulatory requirements for technology N

d 25 that will eventually evolve will include the retrievability

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,a 240

& 4 V consideration. Does that make any sense?

MR. FEIZOLLAHI: I guess so, because if you require retrievability, obviously it is going to affect 3

, shallow land disposal because as you know, I don't think 10CFR 61 addresses retrievability at all.

3 MS. MELSON: Good morning. My name is Gail 7

Melson. I am with the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety.

, Unlike Jay Dunkleberger, we don't get the question of where

, is Illinois because I think people know it is out there in 10 the middle somewhere. The question we get, and it may be 3, part of our heritage with politics and elections, but the 12 question we get is what is Illinois up to? So, I am going

( 13 to try to explain to you today what Illinois is up to in i, terms of alternative disposal technologies for low-level 15 waste, and I want to give you some background on this issue,

,, how it evolved in Illinois, and I think that is pertinent g7 based on the discussion we just had about alternative ig technologies and shallow land burial, j, In 1984, the Illinois General Assembly was working 20 on the Central Midwest Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste 21 Compact, and the environmentalists in Illinois were quite i involved with this process. Probably their sensitivity to 22 1 I 1 23 gj e$

24 the issue was raised by their experience with Shef field which is not the world's worst low-level waste site, but it is one ij 25 that has had some problems, and, also, with the experience n

() 241 V

1 with hazardous wastes, putting hazardous wastes in the 2 ground and seeing what happens several years later. So, 3 shallow land burial was kind of a key, very key issue in d passing the compact. The compact refers to shallow land S burial in about three places, exactly three places, I guess.

4 The first is in a discussion of policy statements. The 7 second is definition, and the third is when the compact 8 discusses the regional management plan which is something 9 that the, the alternatives are something that the regional 10 management plan will address.

11 At any rate, let me try to summarize what it is 12 that Illinois means by shallow land burial and what is O is erehisited in I111noie.

14 First of all, in the regional management plan 15 section it prohibits use of underground injection wells.

le so, we will not have underground injection wells for low-17 level waste in the State of Illinois,and I haven't seen 18 anybody else say that that was something they wanted. So, I 19 think we are pretty clear on that.

20 The other thing it says is that we will not have 21 disposal. We will not have shallow land burial which is 8 22 defined as disposal in or within the upper 30 meters of the I 23 earth's surface, and you might recognize that language from g

24 Part 61.

k 25 Let me go on to explain what it is that we are

A 242 V

1 by law supposed to look at. First of all we are supposed to 2 look at aboveground alternatives. We are, also, supposed to 3 look at things that provide greater and safer confinement 4 than shallow land burial. That is yet to be defined, I 5 think, and then if we do want to put something in the upper 4 30 meters of the earth's surface, wh'at we have to do or 7 what we are required to do or what we are allowed to do, 8 and let me read the definition because it doesn't exactly 9 trip lightly off the tongue, but what we are allowed to do 10 in the upper 30 meters is an enclosed, engineered, strongly 11 structurally enforced and solidified bunker that extends 12 below the earth's surface. So, that is what we are going O

g 13 to do, and of course, it remains to be seen exactly what 14 that means. In the debate on the Senate floor on this bill, 15 the question was raised as to whether or not the bunker or le the structure, strongly enforced structure, would be allowed 17 to be covered by soil, and the bill's sponsors said, "Yes, 18 indeed, it could be covered." So, it doesn't have to be a 19 bare structure on the surface. It is possible that it could 20 be covered with soil.

21 Those definitions were incorporated in the 5 22 Illinois Low-Level Waste Management Act. That Act was passed

,I j 23in 1983. re was a companion bill for the Medwest Interstate 24 Compact which didn't happen to make it through the Assembly, 25 but the Management Act did, and it was amended in 1985, to o&

' n 243 L) 1 incorporate the prohibition on our definition of shallow land 2 burial. Let me explain a little bit about the Management Act.

3 Again, I think it is an important thing to 4 understand, just in terms of the Department's role in low-S level waste disposal. The Management Act sets up a comprehen-e sive system for siting low-level waste facilities and for 7 regulation of those facilities. Siting is set out fairly 8 clearly in the Act. The process is described, the 9 environmental characterizations which will be done by the 10 state geological survey and water survey in the Department 11 establish the requirements for environmental impact studies.

12 At least three sites need to be evaluated. Things of that O is sort ere eee oer feir1r c1eer1r ie the Menesemene ace, end 14 then it sets out a series of regulations that the Department IS is required to promulgate. One of those very important le ones is that we are to become an agreement state. We are 17 fairly well along in that process. In fact, just this week 18 we managed to get through our Legislative Committee, the 19 Joint Committee on Administrative Rules fairly well intact.

20 We expect we will have a formal license to the NRC in early 21 August. So, we are expecting to become an agreement state, 8 22 certainly this fall, certainly this year.

23 Once we are an agreement state, of course, we 2d will be the licensing authority. The Department of Nuclear ed 25 3 Safety will be the licensing authority. The other regulatione

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244 I that the law calls for include selection of waste facility 2 contractors, that is the people who will actually come into 3 the state and develop and operate the site; waste treatment 4 standards and waste facility standards which will parallel

! Part 61, but , also, I am sure will be adding some things for e Illinois' situation. There are other regulations that come 7 down the road, like compensation for people who are affected, e and transportation and things of those sorts, but those three 9 are the ones we are focusing on now, contractor selection 10 siting, not siting, treatment, and waste facility standards.

11 Let me move on to explain a little bit about what 12 we are doing with alternative technologies in Illinois.

O la 1 eeese the meim feces ef ette tiem eer1ier this veer was am 14 international symposium which we held in Chicago in late IS February or early March. We brought in people from oh, I le guess I can go through them, Sweden, West Germany, Belgium, 17 France, Great Britain, Switzerland, Japan and Canada to talk 18 about what they are doing, what those particular countries 19 are doing with wastes, what things they are working on.

20 It was really very interesting, I mean aside from 21 having the opportunity to look at slides of mountains in 8 22 Switzerland and pondering the mountains of Illinois, we had I 23 the chance to ask some questions and get some good discussion g

g.,.24 among the various participants. We, also, had some of the U 25 vendors, the domestic vendors talking about what their thought 3 E

l

/7 245 V

I on the subject were and what their plans were. We are 2 working on the proceedings from that conference, and I 3 expect they will be out in the fall. I keep pushing the date d back, but I think it should be certainly this year anyway.

5 Another thing we have done is convened a technical e advisory panel, and we have called on about six or eight, and 7 I cannot remember the exact number, but anyway a group of 8 about that size with varying expertise, but generally 9 technical expertise to help guide us in our thinking about 10 what it is we want from an alternative technology; what are II the crucial questions that Illinois should be asking of its II contractor. We met once and John Starmer referred to that 13 yesterday, the presentations by the NRC, by John and by Id Vern Rogers who, if you haven't met Vern, he is probably 15 the person who seems to be doing all the work on alternative I'

technologies, and you will meet him eventually, if you haven't 17 already.

18 We will be presenting them with a paper describins I'

in more detail the alternatives and the pros and cons, as we 20 see them with the various alternatives that are being 21 presented or that are being talked about.

22 Let me move on now to some general comments about j 23 Illinois' approach and the things that we are considering.

g g 2' The first point I would like to make, and 1 think it is an ei v ys g important one because it needs to be understood. The

246 (p) 1 Department of Nuclear Safety, once we become an agreemen' t 2 state will be the regulatory authority, and that means we 3 are not going to be coming to the NRC with a disposal 4 alternative and say, "Have a look at this," and I think-there S are going to be other states in that position as well.

6 Unlike Texas, we don't have an organization that is out 7 there developing a facility. We are going to be regulating 8 a facility. That means that we are more concerned with 9 questions, and we are more concerned with the broad 10 approach and the various components that need to be looked 11 at, and as a regulatory authority, I think we can, also, make 12 the same argument that the NRC makes about not wanting to be

) 13 in a position of promoting or developing a particular 14 commercial process or application.

15 So, when we are asked, what is it the states le want and what is it that you in Illinois want, I think it is 17 hard for us right now to give you a very specific answer.

18 We are not in a position right now of saying, "What we want 19 is aboveground vaults" or "What we want is below-ground vaults ."

20 We are in the position of looking at the alternatives and 21 trying to find out what would be best in Illinois. Clearly, 8 22 we are not going to have shallow land burial, despite what I 23 everyone thinks maybe is adequate; it will not happen in g

Id Illinois, and that is quite clear in our minds anyway.

k 25 So, I think we are in an important transition m

247 t ,_3 i '

' ~ '

i period, and I think the other states that are following 2 along will be in that same transition period. It is a bit 3 early to asses the specifics of what we want. We are not 4 focusing in on a particular alternative at the moment. We 5 are trying to look at the various ranges of things, and let 6 me, also, raise another point here, 'and that is some of the 7 work that Vern Rogers has done, I think, has been very 3 interesting, with regard to classifying disposal technologies 9 and trying to get away from using terms like aboveground to vaults and below-ground vaults and earth-mounded concrete 11 bunkers and things of that sort, but rather looking at the 12 various characteristics of these technologies. Is it above or

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(_/ 13 below grade? Is it deep? Is it shallow? is there 14 structure or not? Is there fill, things of that sort? I is think it is a good way of looking at the technologies, and 16 it is a good way of getting away from maybe some of the 17 preconceived notions of what is an earth-mounded concrete is b unke r.

19 I think it is, also, very useful when you 20 consider the fact that we are going to have to match a 21 particular site, a particular site with particular 5 22 geological and hydrological characteristics and meteorological lIg 23 SI*24 conditions with a particular technology, and I think that is important to consider. When you are looking at standardiza-Nik 25

1. < tion, that is very useful and very important, but you, also,

(

,- 248

(- I need to consider the fact that Illinois, unlike Texas, does 2 not have groundwater at a depth of 2000 feet. I mean we are 3 not going to have that kind of site. We are going to have 4 a humid site, a wet site, probably clay and things of that 5 sort, but it is not going to be a desert area site, 4 So, what we are looking at are components.

7 Eventually it will be site-specific components that have to 8 be matched with a technology.

9 I think where we can use NRC assistance is in 10 things like modeling, performance modeling, site performance Il modeling and technology modeling. Those are things that 12 would be very useful to have some help with, and other 13 things include evaluation of common aspects of various s ,

14 technologies. Concrete is a subject that comes up fairly 15 of ten. There are other kinds of materials, high-integrity le containers, things of that sort. We would like some help on 17 looking at those things, and it is out there, and we just 18 need to avail ourselves of it, I think.

I' Licensing is a very important consideration.

20 The NRC will be involved in some way in licensing, I would 21 guess several sites if this compact scheme works out. We will 8 22 only license one site. Therefore it would be very useful for I 23 j us to rely on the NRC to some extent with help, either in 2d staf fing or just expert assistance in : the licensing process.

oail 25 Those are kind of general things that come to v

249 U 1 mind with regard to what NRC has done. We appreciate the 2 help they already have given us, and we think it has been 3 very valuable, and we would like to encourage this continued 4 talk at the early stages.

3 I guess I will try to answer any questions you 6 might have.

7 MR. BROWNING: I am Bob Browning from NRC. Gail, e it sounds like you are essentially trying to do the same 9 thing we are trying to get an understanding of which is 10 basically what characteristics are really being looked for 11 in these alternatives. This expert group that you have got, 12 could you elaborate on that a little bit more, the kinds of 13 expertise you have been able to draw on and whether you have 14 been any more successful than we have in our attempts to 15 try to clarify to the point where we can articulate it when 16 we talk with the public about exactly what is it that these 17 alternative sites will produce that the 10CFR 61 site won' t 18 produce? I hope I am not coming across sounding defensive, 19 but 10CFR 61, we are trying not to; it is sometimes hard not 20 to, but if in fact, your grcup has been able to articulate 21 that, maybe we can draw on that experience and then move our 22 guidance ahead, focusing in on the kinds of characteristics g

23 that your expert group is coming up with.

m,ik* 24 MS. MELSON: We have had one meeting so far of k ' 25 that group, and it was raally an introductory meeting, kind

es 250 t i V

I of bringing them up to speed. These are not people who deal 2 They are every day with low-level waste and technologies.

3 people with broader backgrounds than that, and with only one d

meeting under our belts, it is kind of hard to say where we 5

are going to go from there.

O The next meeting should focus in on more of the I

specifics, and they did raise some questions, at the initial 8

meeting with regard to criteria. Cost was one criteria that came up, retrievability; ease of licensing was an issue that 10 came up in their minds, but it is not entirely clear to me.

II I don't have a good answer for you at this point, and as far 12 as your second question I am not exactly sure I remember

/' 13 is,)/ precisely what your second question was.

14 It is more along the lines of?

15 MR. BROWNING: I guess it wasn't so much a le question as a desire to continue to get visibility which we 17 apparently have had, if Dr. Starmer was at the first meeting.

18 If we could continue to get visibility of your effort in this 19 regard, because it sounds like something we could benefit 20 from, also, and draw on, rather than duplicate the effort.

e 21 l MS. MELSON: Sure, no problem.

I 22 ll MR. TRUBATCH: Good morning, Gail. I was 23 interested to hear the approach of looking at alternative SI

• 24 technologies from a slightly different point of view, but g,,l d,

' 25 what I didn't hear was where disposal criteria are going to

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m 251 1 fit into that and when the department is going to address 2 what the criteria are going to be because it seems to me 3 that criteria to a certain extent drives the technology you 4 are going to have to look to.

5 MS. MELSON: Could you maybe elaborate a little e on what you mean by disposal criteria?

7 MR. TRUBATCH: Say the release rates or what 8 kind of physical processing you would need for the waste to 9 make it compatible with sites; do you contemplate processing 10 the waste so that it would be compatible with any site, 11 because the waste itself would be so immobilized or do you 12 contemplate processing different wastes to fit different

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fm 13 sites according to the mobility one could expect? The way Id you answer that determines to a large extent technology.

15 For example, if you look to a complete demobilization upfront IO at the waste site, independent of the repository, then you 17 would be shifting your emphasis in one direction. If you I8 were looking to the repository itself more than to the waste I'

form, you would be shifting your emphasis in a different 20 direction.

21 MS. MELSON: Those are good points. I am glad I 22 you raised them. One point I was trying to make is that

! 23 l we are really at the very beginning stages on this, and those 24 are the kinds of things that I hope the Technical Advisory si, 25 Panel will help us with. I think we are aware that we have O (g

252 d to have a system. It is not just a disposal technology all i

2 by itself. We need to consider waste treatment, waste forms, 3 all those things when we are putting together our waste 4 facility standards which is a regulation that we will be 5 coming up with. So, those are things we will have to --

6 MR. TRUBATCH: Yes, but my real question is can 7 you go forward with the alternative technology search without 8 having the standards first? It is one of these chicken and 9 e99 Problems.

10 MS. MELSON: I think we can, as long as we keep it 11 open, which is what we are trying to do. We are trying to 12 keep in mind all the alternatives without narrowing down too i 13 much in these early, say, the first year or so in the coming 14 year. Then that is why we are trying to keep our options 15 OPen, because we are not sure enough of where we are going 16 to narrow it down.

17 MR. TRUBATCH: What do you see as the tim.etable 18 for standards versus technology choice?

19 MS. MELSON: First of all, I don't think we are 20 going to be choosing a technology per se, and we are not 21 going to choose placement with, I mean that is kind of a 5 22 semantic problem maybe, but time schedule, well, within the 1 23 next year we should be coming up with waste treatment

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• 24 stanards. That is certainly a start. Waste facility mi . .$

k ' 25 standards will be somewhere past that, but within the next Y

253 m

IV) 3 couple of years, we should be fairly well along in that.

2 MR. TRUBATCH: One last question, the Low-Level 3

Waste Management Act in Illinois, also, discusses trying to 4 minimize the number of facilities. Now, that, it seems to me, 5

also, has to be factored into this look at technology and 6

standards, because I could conceive of standards which would 7

be applicable to specific waste streams and give you lots of 8

dif ferent kinds of facilities.

9 MS. MELSON: That is true, and the compact 10 commission, the regional management plan that the compact gi commission will put together will address the issue of how 12 many facilities, number and type of facilities. So, that,

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v 13 also, figures into it. Does that confuse the issue?

14 MR. TRUBATCH: Again, I don't see how one could i3 answer that question without, also, answering the questions 16 of what kind of technology and therefore what kind of 17 standards one needs.

13 MS. MELSON: I will take the point back.

19 MR. TRUBATCH: Okay, thank you.

20 DR. TOKAR: My name is Michael Tokar. I am the 21 leader of the design section in the waste management 1 22 engineering branch that John Gries is the chief of. It is I 23 within our section and branch that I would expect much of g

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• the technical review activity would take place regarding mi . ' l 24

' 25 alternative technologies, and I would like to suggest an n r

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I approach or some strategy that I envision as being a 2 reasonable one to follow in terms of trying to pull together 3 this question of technology versus standards or criteria 4 or what have you.

5 First of all, I would like to say that I have e been with the agency a number of yea'rs, primarily in the 7 reactor regulation side, and I can see where I think there 8 are some parallels there and some experience that we can 9 draw upon from the reactor licensing arena. It seems to 10 me that a way to approach this going back to some of the 11 comments made earlier by other people, such as Bob Browning, 12 the first question that I think needs to be answered or

() 13 addressed is by the states or potential applicants which is 14 what do you really want an alternative technology to do for 15 you that shallow-land burial will not do or won't do enough 16 of? You have to answer that question first because when 17 you do that, then you can start to decide or focus on what 18 are the particular features. I mean it is almost an automatic 19 reflexive step that the mind doesn't have the ability to 20 stop the brain synopses from,the electrical impulses from 21 moving from one cell to another. The next step one goes g

I 22 through is automatic, and that is to ask what are the II d

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23

• 24 particular features necessary in order for a particular alternative technology to have in order to satisfy that l 25 particular need that you have in your mind. When you do that,

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/T 255 V 1 the next step is to, again, have an almost automatic' step 2 which is to ask or decide what functional requirements does 3

that particular engineered feature, what particular 4

functional requirements or principal design criteria, if you 5

are going to use a reactor technology term does that particular 6 feature have to have in order to ensure that you are going 7

to satisfy that general broad objective that you have?

8 In the reactor licensing case, and some of you 9

may be familiar with Appendix 8 of Part 50, there is containeil 10 in that particular portion of the regulation what are called 11 general design criteria, and what I would envision is up 12 to this point where we are talking about functional require-I')

\. -

13 ments or principal design criteria that responsibility for 14 developing those things is primarily yours, that is the 15 applicant's. Once you have determined what it is you want, 16 we would be able to address from a licensing standpoint what 17 the general design criteria need to be, the general design l

criteria being those minimal requirements that would have 19 i to be provided to ensure that the functional requirements l 20 l

are satisfied or the principal design criteria, if you will, 21 are satisfied.

I 22 il It is our intention, at least in my mind it is, 1 23 l  ! to sometime early in calendar year 1987,to have some initial l 24 l $$*$

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draft general design criteria in place. I would see us 25 l g doing that by a combination of in-house activity, as well

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'. r' 256 1 as technical assistance that we would attempt to obtain 2 from a contractor or laboratory.

3 As you know, the next step is or by the end of 4 the calendar year we have to have what are called technical 5 requirements for alternatives which, again, in my view, would 4 be the equivalent of specific acceptance criteria, again, 7 going back to the reactor example. The difference between 8 or the relationship between general design criteria and 9 specific acceptance criteria is as follows: You can take 10 an example of a general design criteria and it is in II Appendix, say, Part 50, within a broad category of 12 criteria that fall into a class called protection via multiplc O fiseien grodect eerriere. Genere1 desien criterion 10 in the1 Id particular group addresses something called core design or 35 reactor design, I should say, and it says something like 16 this, that the core and associated' reactor protection 17 systems must be designed such as to assure that specified 18 acceptable fuel design limits are not exceeded during any I' condition of normal operation, including abnormal operational 20 occurrences.

II It is interesting to me, at least it has been 3 22 for many years, the fact that specified acceptable fuel I

,j23 design limits which is the term that is used in many GDC's 24 in part 50 are never defined anywhere in the regulation.

25

, d Those are limits that the applicant proposes in his applicatic n y

, . fq 257

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I which the staff reviews against the specific acceptance 2 criteria that are in the standard review plan and determines 3 whether or not those particular design limits are acceptable 4 or not.

5 That is the procedure or the way the thread that e I see that things ought to hold together. Those specific 7 acceptance criteria we would have, hopefully, in place by 8 the end of calendar year 1987, as part of our attempt to 9 get the standard review plans developed for alternatives.

10 It is the kinds of things that we are doing nov for shallow 11 land burial standard review planwise. So, that is the way 12 I think the process really ought to go.

() 13 MS. MELSON: Okay, we will follow that because 14 we are going to be in much the same position.

15 Thank you.

16 MR. NUSSBAUMER: If there are no further questions, 17 let us take a break until about 10:15.

18 (Brief recess. )

19 MR. NUSSBAUMER: .If you will take your seats, 20 we will start the meeting.

21 MR. DORNSIFE: My name is Bill Dornsife from the

' 22 Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources , and what I 23

(

I would like to do is report to you on what Pennsylvania p { 2' has been doing to develop specific design / performance 25 criteria standards for an alternate technology. Hopefully, C) o!

c 258

(.

1 it will an.swer some of Bob Browning's concerns about what 2 you guys need. You may not particularly like the answers, but 3 this is our first shot at what we really think we need.

4 You recognize, too, that Pennsylvaniaand probably 5 most of the Northeast, if not all of the Northeast has 6 specific hydrogeological problems, and we would love to have 7 a square mile of desert in Pennsylvania. We probably don't 8 even have the same kind of clay that South Carolina has, 9 you know, talking with hydrogeologists in Pennsylvania, it 10 is, the best we have is probably glacial till which you 11 probably never can characterize adequately. You may never knok 12 how the site is going to perform if you don't have some

( ) 13 sort of an engineered barrier. So, I think in our particular 14 case, we may need; it is not just a public perception 15 problem but from a technical standpoint we may need 16 engineered barriers to show that the site can perform as we 17 expect it will.

18 To give you some background on why we have gone l' this approach of developing performance criteria, let me 20 just give you a brief description of how Pennsylvania is 21 planning on approaching, at least conceptually in our draft 22 implementing legislation approaching the siting process, and 11 23 g) I, again, emphasize this is draft legislation. It will be 24 probably introduced in about one week,and we are hoping it

$ 25 gets passed this year, but obviously we cannot take any db

259

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1 further action beyond developing criteria until the 2 legislation is enacted.

3 Basically that draft legislation involves a d two-tiered siting process. We would first of all select 5 an environmental contractor who would take our screening 6 criteria and go out and screen Pennsylvania to find four 7 potentially suitable areas in Pennsylvania that you could 8 probably find a site in the area that could be licensed.

' With those four suitable areae in hand, we would then 10 select a site operator, a licensee designate who would then,and II as part of the RFP for selecting that licensee designate, 12 we would include technology design criteria, and part of the s

I3 criteria we would use to select that contractor would be Id who proposes the best technology that meets the criteria, and 15 with that criteria, this contractor would be turned loose I'

in these potentially suitable areas, and there are several I7 reasons for going at that approach. First of all, it would 18 give the contractor,the site operator some flexibility in I'

finding an area that might be receptive, and we cannot turn 20 him loose on the whole state. That is just not politically h

$5 21 22 feasible, but it is some probably minimally acceptable process, and it, also, probably gets you to the point where 23 So, 3j you can reasonably identify areas that can be licensed.

a2 this site operator would then select the final site that gg[~

$ 25 p

( u, y$ he thinks he can license, and then the state would approve

f. 260 N~)

I that site in the licensing process, and our agency, DER, 2 and myself would be the licensing authority, and hopefully 3 we won't violate any of NRC's compatibility requirements 4 on conflict of interest.

5 Like I said, we cannot really start that process e until the implementing legislation is passed, but in the 7 meantime, we have been developing criteria and to develop 8 that criteria we have established a public advisory committee.

9 We have established that committee under authority given 10 to us in a previous law to have general advisory committees 11 to the Bureau and the Department.

12 Now, what we have done in establishing this A 13

() committee was to first of all identify those key interest 14 groups in the state that had a critical interest in the 15 low-level waste issue. So, we have looked at the whole 16 spectrum of groups, and at the one extreme we have the 17 Sierra Club, Pennsylvania Environmental Council; at the other 18 extreme we have the generators. All these groups are included 19 in the public advisory committee.

20 In between we have groups like League of Women 21 Voters, Pennsylvania Township Supervisors, County Commissioners 5

lg 22 Association, the Conservation Commission, Pennsylvania I 23 Environmental Council, Pennsylvania Society of Professional g

24 H;

- *I Engineers, Society of Consulting Engineers, Pennsylvania 3 ' 25 Society of Geologists, to give you the flavor, the utility yu

261 V group, to give you a flavor of what that group consists of.

3 I can give you the specific names and the organizations, if 3

you would like , but what we then asked those organizations

, to do'is to designate one person to represent their interests 3

on the public advisory committee, and to date we have been

, really pleased with the cooperation and the consensus we have 7

been able to reach with that committee. It has been a real 8

enlightening experience for me and a lot of other people

, that we could reach the consensus we have with that 10 diversity of opinions, but anyway this public advisory ij committee was charged with the task of developing site 12 suitability criteria or helping us develop site suitability

/~' criteria and, also, developing technology performance 33

(>)

j, criteria, because I think you can all recognize that somewherc j3 n.1^ng the line you are going to have to address the issue, y no matter what your mechanism is for selecting your technology ;

37 you are going to have to address the issue of what the hell 33 the technology does.

19 Here you have a 6-inch concrete barrier. Someone 20 is going to ask you, what does that do? If your answer is 21 to shrug your hands up and say, " Hey, gee, that just provides 1 22 something somebody can kick and touch and feel," it is not I 23 going to fly, g

gl*24 You are going to have to develop some criteria mi k ei ' 25 on what that barrier does for you. So, we have decided to do (g's u.

Ng

,3 262 V 1 that first, develop that criteria up front. As far as the 2 efforts of the public advisory committee to date, they have 3 been working now for about a year. We have been holding 4 meetings about once a month, and they have pretty much helped 5 us develop the site screening criteria. NRC has been been e involved in that process, and we really appreciate the efforte 7 that NRC has given us. They have essentially attended all 8 our meetings, provided technical support where we need it, 9 and it has been, I think, a learning experience for both of 10 us because they are learning what kind of problems we are il facing out there in the real world, and they are, also, 12 providing us with some technical assistance to answer some

()

v 13 of the dif ficult questions that we have encountered, but 14 anyway we have developed the siting criteria, the site 15 screening criteria, and I can make that available to you, 16 anybody who would like to see that. It is a public document.

17 It is not quite finalized yet. Our next meeting in July, 18 the public advisory people will take their last look at it 19 to make any final changes they think are necessary, but 20 over the last two or three months, I guess three months now, g

21 we have been in the process of' developing technology I 22 performance criteria, and the way we have approached that is lIg h.ga 23 to ask for volunteers on a Subcommittee, and I think to the great extent this Subcommittee reflects a pretty good W) gR 24 3 ' 25 cross section of the main committee. There is a preponderance vo on

C ;, 263

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j of generators on this Committee, and there are, also, the 2 two environmental groups on this Committee. So, I think it 3 represents probably the two extremes and most of the vocal 4 members of the public advisory committee. So, hopefull, it 3 will quickly reach a consensus with the full committee, you 6 know, hoping these people will support it when it goes before 7 the full committee next month.

3 Probably two of the biggest problems that we have 9 encountered so far in this subcommittee activity is first 10 of making the criteria general enough to cover the full range 11 of options. You know, it is difficult when you are talking 12 specific performance criteria to make it apply equally to o

aboveground facilities versus below-ground facilities. That

. (_) 13 14 has been a real problem.

13 The second major problem we have had is in 16 getting specific with these criteria. How can you specify 17 how an engineered barrier is going to perform when you have is no idea how concrete is going to perform over time? So, that 19 has, also, been a really big problem and an area we could 20 use some help in.

21 Like I mentioned, the subcommittee has completed I

Ig 22 its deliberations. This criteria is in very draf ty form, but I 23 I think it is important enough to present to you in that I drafty form and recognizing I cannot make it publicly k

H{*24 W

, 3 ' 25 available to you at this point, it should be sent to the

- (_) o!

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V public advisory committee in about a week or so when we have 1

incorporated the last round of comments from the subcommittee, What I would like to do now is present you an outline of what that criteria actually says.

First of all, what we have done is separate, well, there are a couple of different parts to the criteria. The first part is essentially a usage guide and again, remember, 7

it is proposed that this criteria would become part of an RFP 8

that would be used for selecting a site operator, and hopefully we won't need to go through the regulation-setting 3y process because that would certainly impact on our schedule very ritically. We are hoping to be able to sell the 12 g legislature that we can use it as guidance in the RFP with

\s y,

maybe some sort of a public meeting process to get some additional public input on it, but what we have done is 33 g organized the criteria into several dif ferent categories.

p First of all is the usage guidelines, how you use the 18 criteria. Secondly, we have essentially repeated the 3, performance objectives of Part 61, saying that the criteria 20 has to meet those criteria, those performance objectives.

21 Then we have established technical requirements. These are 1

3 22 the requirements that the technology has to meet and then 23 finally we have other considerations which include economic d = 24 considerations which basically say that once you have ed ,

ai, '$

i established all technical requirements, then you look at thesc

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I other considerations as a final step. They are not as 2 important as the technical requirements. The first criteria 3 is excitability and licensability. The technology must be 4 compatibl'e with the screening criteria and with any current 5 regulations, meaning Part 61,that exist.

6 The second criteria is that it must accept all 7 waste streams that are state responsibility. Obviously this 8 implies A, B, and C waste streams and possibly, and, also, 9 don't forget NARM. Don't forget radium. That is, also, a 10 state disposal responsibility, particularly you compact 11 people. I know it is not included under the definition of 12 low-level waste, but it is a waste source that needs disposal.

(m,) 13 The third criteria is that the state of technology 14 must be such that it can be licensed and operable by 1993.

15 Now, there are some more specifics in the language that le talks about things like, oh, using conservative designs, 17 using materials where you have some data available, quality 18 design, using multiple barriers and the monitorability which I'

the committee thought was very important, how you monitor the 20 performance of the technology over time, not environmental 21 monitoring or leakage monitoring but actual material g

5 22 monitoring, how you know it is meeting the design you set out.

,!j23 The next criterion, and this is obviously the

.g.24

.;g most difficult because I forgot to mention that the 25 Appalachian Compact has a clause in it that prohibits shallow l

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't' 7s 266 N 1 land burial by the host state, and shallow land burial is 2 defined as disposal in trenches without engineered confine-3 ment or in containers approved by the host state, and one 4 of the most difficult parts in establishing this criteria is 5 how you define enhanced confinement; what does that mean?

6 You know, it is not a very easily definable concept, and 7 we struggled probably the most with defining engineered 8 confinement because that is obviously the key. That is 9 what you are looking for. That is what you are specifying.

10 What is engineered confinement? What we finally come up with, 13 and again, remember this is draft. It has not been approved 12 by anybody or reviewed ^by anybody but the subcommittee is O 13 that we need a dedicated engineered barrier. Now, what a Id dedicated engineered barrier means, first of all an IS engineered barrier is defined as being leak resistant, and 16 that leak resistance is defined by later criteria, but it 17 is leak resistant for at least the institutional control 18 period, and it must be stable for at least 300 years, and I' the way it is further defined is if any feature of the 20 engineered barrier is required to meet the Part 61 stability 21 requirements, for example , or any other Part 61 requirements, I 22 it does not qualify as the dedicated engineered barrier.

I, 23 vou need an additional engineered barrier, a dedicated v lg2d engineered barrier.

25 In addition what we have, also, established is ooi

I O 267

.C 1 a performance objective for this engineered barrier, and 2 what we are proposing is that in the absence of any hydro-3 geology, take away all the siting characteristics, all the 4 hydrogeology for the institutional control period you have 5 to show, analyze and show that this technology all by itself e 'will meet the Part 61 performance objectives. Then after 7 100 years because you are not too sure of how materials 8 are going to perform after that, then you can take credit

' for the hydrogeological characteristics of the site, but 10 fo r the first 100 years you have to show the technology by II itself will meet the Part 61 criteria.

12 Now, again, that is the key criterion. That is g(~h 13 the one we struggled with the most.

Id The next criterion is you must allow for recovery 15 The technology must allow for recovery of of the waste.

30 the waste for at least the institutional control period.

37 Now, what we mean by recovery here, you know, that is not 18 a very well-defined concept, but it is not retrievability.

I' Retrievability, the way I define it is as part of the l

20 design concept you design into the system the fact that 21 you want to take it out at a certain time. That is 22 retrievability.

I i 3 l 23 aecoverability is making the process easier to 24

! take it out, if you have to. I am not saying that you have i 25 to, but if you have to, it makes it easier to take it out.

O o l

l

I

, 268

("'l y Now, I think we need to probably get some better words there, 2 but that is conceptually what I view as recovery. It is 3 very different from retrievability, and I think it is a 4 better word to describe what we are talking about, because 5 retrievability to me implies storage. If you are going to 4 retrieve something, that is storage by definition. If you 7 are going to recover something, that implies you are 8 including it in the design but not necessarily going to --

9 at some other stage you are going to actually take it out.

10 The next one is providing, and this is essentiall3 jg a repeat of the NRC's criteria, the design must provide for 12 long-term passive isolation and must minimize active h 13 maintenance. That is just a repeat of NRC's criteria but i4 that is very important from a disposal standpoint. That is 15 another thing that distinguishes disposal from storage.

16 The next criteria is water intrustion, and this 17 is one we think we need to work on because it is not very jg specific. What it says at this point is that the technology 19 must inhibit or minimize the probability and the extent of 20 both water getting into the technology or into the waste, and 21 it, also, must impede the water going out of the waste. So, 1 22 it is a two-way process, and in the process of impeding, you 23 could include ion exchange, adsorption,any other characteristi c gl*24 that impedes radioactive release from the facility, but I mi{ k dj ' 25 think, again, we need to maybe put a number or something, Aiug V m

l ' ' /3 269 U

1 some kind of more specific criteria on that, but in the 2 absence of performance data, we really cannot do very much 3 at this point.

d The next criteria, and this is a definite 5 improvement from Part 61, and what we are, also, going to e do is probably identify specifically in this criteria where 7 we have exceeded Part 61 because that is very important from 8 a political standpoint. The intent is to say you are doing

' something better. So, you ought to identify specifically 10 where you have done something better. We are requiring or II considering at this point that both Class B and C waste 12 should have intruder protection because you are talking about 13 intrusion occurring after 100 years; the Class B waste is Id still potentially an intrusion problem. So, both B and C 15 waste needs to have intruder protection, and, also, which is I0 a distinct departure from Part 61, and the subcommittee 17 didn't reach a consensus on this, but we are proposing, at I8 1 east, for the full committee that instead of meeting the

" 500 millirem requirement for intrusion, we are requiring 20 those intruder barriers limit the exposure to intruder to 21 the same thing as the general public, the 25 and 75 millirem.

$1 22 There is no reason why an intruder barrier cannot meet that gj 23 same criteria because all the analyses show it can. So, why a2 qg not do it? It is reasonable. It is achievable.

1. 25 py 3 The next criteria, and you all probably recognize Q un i

i e

!, c 270 s.

j Pennsylvania had a particular problem with Class C waste, 2 this criteria means to address that Class C issue. We are 3 suggesting that the facility accept solidified, stable 4 Class C waste in a separate facility, a separate part of 5 the disposal site, separate from the B and C, and you must be 6 able to selectively monitor the modules and indivudally y recover Class C modules.

3 We are, also, and this is, I guess very ambitious 9 on our part, we are trying to address -- the next criterion 10 tries to address the mixed waste issue. We are essentially 11 treating mixed waste the same way we treat Class C waste, 12 and I think if anybody wants to dispose of Class C waste, o) t 13 then they can pay for it. If this criteria doesn't meet 14 compatibility with RCRA, I don't know what will, and, al'o, s

15 you should recognize that obviously this is a response right 16 now because this is not resolved at the national level. If 17 some criteria comes along later that resolves it at the 18 national level, you might reconsider this criteria.

19 The next criteria talks about maintaining direct 20 and airborne radiation during operations as low as reasonably 21 achievable. That is, again, right out of Part 61. You have 22 to look at during operation maintaining releases as low g

23 as reasonably achievable.

h

• 24 The next criterion talks about minimizing contact Wj k 3 ' 25 with standing water or rainfall, whatever, prior to waste

(> u

q 271 NJ 1 emplacement. The design ought not to allow water contact 2 with waste prior to emplacement.

3 We, also, have included a general criteria that 4 talks about what some of the performance, in terms of time S is that we are looking at here, and we are saying that the 6 disposal cells designed for these specific classes of wastes y have to be stable and confine the waste for 100 years for s Class A, 200 years for Class B and 500 years for Class C and 9 mixed waste.

10 The next criteria is a requirement to protect 11 the technology but requies some analysis that the technology 12 can withstand the maximum credible external event, earthquakes ,

( 13 tornadoes. It needs to be designed to withstand those 14 kinds of external events with unacceptable consequences.

15 The next one, and again, th'is is in addition to 16 Part 61, you have to include a reliable monitoring system as 17 part of the disposal cell. This is in addition to the 18 environmental monitoring system, and that dedicated monitoring 19 system has to work, at least for the institutional control 20 period where it is then made passive, and you don't need to 21 consider it anymore.

I 22 Also, as a general criteria the design should I 23 incorporate features that will facilitate remedial action, g

d

• 24 W<; k if it is necessary. We, also, have a criteria that I didn't 25 include on here, but requiring that the design protects O on 9

l' -

272 J

i people against non-radiological hazards. If you handle 2 mixed wastes at the facility, you ought to take those into 3 consideration, non-radiological hazards, also, 4 Finally, as a last technical requirement, the 5 design should be capable of being analyzed, modeled and 6 characterized because you need to de'monstrate what the 7 performance of this technology is going to be. You are going 3 to have to to satisfy the enhanced confinement criteria.

9 Those are the technical requirements that we 10 have established in draft form. The other requirements, 11 again, that you only consider af ter you have met all the 12 technical requirements are first of all, minimized land use o

ey 13 and surface area that is removed from alternate uses, and 14 finally you look at cost.

15 Now, a couple of caveats. I want to stress to you 16 this is a very draft document. It has not received review 17 by our full committee. It is a subcommittee document, and 18 again, I thought it was important enough because a lot of the 19 key discussion I heard today is, " Hey, give us something we 20 can work with. This is something I think we can all start 21 working with.

I 22 Also, I want to stress that this criteria was I 23 developed with both extremes, the generators on one side, g

I the environmentalists on the other, and believe it or not, k

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' 25 we reached a pretty good consensus. Our next step on this, n(y u.j i

,, 273 u] ~

i as we have obviously not completed it, we are going to go 2 to full committee review. If the committee conceptually 3 thinks it is decent, our following committee meeting we are 4 going to invite in the potential site operators, give them 3 a copy of the criteria and ask them, "Can you meet this e criteria, and approximately what is it going to mean in 7 terms of cost; what is going to be the critical problem in a meeting it, if you cannot and what are those things going to 9 cost?" So, we are going to get some input from the potential 10 site developers on how readily they can meet this criteria, 11 and where we need to maybe go back and rethink because some 12 of this may not be achievable, but this represents, I think, r)

(

v 13 at this point the best thinking that we have on a technology 14 that you may be able to sell to the public. Upfront you can 15 say, "This is what we are designing this technology to do."

16 Is this good enough? Thank you very much. I will answer 17 any questions I can. '

18 DR. STARMER: I have a question. Bill, in your 19 deliberations, has your committee considered the doability 20 of your 17 points? In other words, one is that it be 21 technologically feasible by 1993. Have you thought about I

it that every time you come up with one of these requirements, lg 22 I 23 you say, "Well, can I envisage this?" As you know, I haven't g

H I

• 24 been to the meetings.

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/~' MR.DORNSIFE: On that committee we have three

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'g- 274 i engineers who represent consulting engineering companies 2 who looked at that particular problem. They didn't have all 3 the answers. They don' t know how long these materials are 4 going to perform, but in their estimation, they thought it 3 was doable. I am taking their expertise. The final proof 6 is going to be when you ask the operators what problems y they are going to have. I am not sure how candid they are g going to be with us, but that is part of the process.

9 DR. STARMER: I have another question. I don't 10 remember the number of it, but one of them suggests that 11 your disposal units should be designed so that they won' t 12 leak. That was your engineered barrier, and I am a little t 13 bit puzzled. I am always a little bit puzzled about this, in 14 that most radioactive low-level waste is solid waste. If 13 your regularions are compatible, they'are going to require 16 that any liquid waste be solidified and that there be a 17 maximum of 1 percent free-standing water or liquid, and is given the volumes that are involved and then tha volumes 19 that. ever started out being wet in the first place, what is 20 going to leak?

21 MR. DORNSIFE: We mean leak resistant. When you 5 22 have a leaky basement, water is leaking in, not out. We 1 23 are talking about leaking water into the facility.

(W<I

• 24 DR.STARMER: That would suggest to me that you flk l ' 25 have got some hydrologic problems that you might want to look O oi

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j into in terms of siting.

2 MR. DORNSIFE: That is why I said that we are 3 going to put a number on that eventually, and what that 4 number is going to be is going to depend to some extent on 5 what the vendors tell us they can provide us.

4 DR. STARMER: Along the same lines in No. 7, 7 it seemed like you were going to keep any liquid that leaked 3 in, in there.

9 MR. DORNSIFE: Or retard it.

10 DR. STARMER: If it is leak resistant --

11 MR. DORNSIFE: I cannot imagine making a system 12 that resists water coming in that wouldn' t resist water going

) 13 out.

14 DR. STARMER: That is a slight problem, isn't it?

Is We have this thing called the bathtub e'ffect. In other words, 16 if your roof cover, whatever you want to call it, fails, you 17 are in trouble.

13 MR. DORNSIFE: Not necessarily. I mean if you

19 have gone to the trouble of making leak-resistant from that i 20 standpoing, and there are, also, stability requirements 21 and all the other things that are required, and there is 3 22 some other language in there that isn' t part of the criteria f 23 that talks about fill voids and all the other things that I l 6 I think satisfies bathtub requirements, particularly for B and H{*24 W

d 5 ' 25 C wastes.

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p 276 b '

DR. STARMER: All right, I am j us t --

i 2 MR. DORNSIFE: I understand.

3 DR. STARMER: -- intere sted.

4 MR. DORNSIFE: I think maybe you ought to come 5 to the full advisory committee meeting in July and get the 6 flavor of, a better flavor of what we are talking about. It 7 will be well worth your while.

3 DR. STARMER: I will try.

9 MR. FEIZOLLAHI: My name is Fred Feizollahi of 10 Bechtle National, San Francisco. I noticed you now call it 11 recovery, and you brought another term in there, selective 12 recovery. We looked at this problem before, and I wonder 13 if you know what you are getting into, because what I 14 understand by selective, monitoring and selective recovery 15 you are saying that I want to be able t'o detect which part 16 of my disposal site is failing so that I can go in there and 17 retrieve it. To do this, how are you going to define the 18 limits of that selective area? Is it going to be the entire 19 trench; is it going to be a 100 fect by 100 foot area limita-20 tion, and depending how selw .iu j ou get the cost of the 21 overall retrievability, recovery and monitoring could be 5 22 really phenomenal. So, I am just cautioning you.

I 23 MR. DORNSIFE: You recognize we are only asking g

I H,*24 for that for Class C waste. We are talking about monitoring m k 25 the disposal cell which is the larger entity. Now, theretare f

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.' g 277 C) definitions obviously. We are talking about container at the 1

2 first level, a module at the second level and a disposal 3 cell at the third level. So, we are talking about monitoring 4 everything from a disposal cell standpoint but monitoring 5 selectively Class C modules.

6 Now, we have had a real problem in Pennsylvania 7 with Class C. The alternative to treating this as a very O special waste is to not accept it at all. So, we have to take 9 very special precautions because a large segment of the 10 Pennsylvania public and politicians don't want us to accept 11 Class C at all.

12 MR. TEDFORD: Chuck Tedford, Arizona. Bill, I (m 13 would like to compliment you on a very find set of performancc

()

14 criteria. I would like for us to be given the same 15 opportunity to look at those performance criteria in the 16 Western Compact configuration, and I want to compliment you, 17 also, on your compact which is essentially the Western 18 Compact and was refined and orientated, and I think probably 19 came out in a little better format than we started with 20 initially.

21 With that said, I would like to ask you a I 22 question. What do you have in mind with regard to internal I 23 monitoring? Are you going to put a detector in, a line lead g

24 in addition in the containers that are going to be stored, m,ik' 25 in addition to the environmental monitoring? What did you

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I have in mind with regard to detectors?

2 MR. DORNSIFE: I guess I see and again this is up 3 to the designer to satisfy. I see possibly some sort of a 4 collection system. We would collect any liquid and before 5 it would reach the environment, and monitor that liquid for 6 the institutional control period.

7 MR. TEDFORD: Okay. The other comment I would a have, is the committee in general, the conference committee 9 working on a set of Mach 1-MOD 5 recommendations to all the to other states that embody these same principles with regard 11 to performance criteria? What are you working on at the 12 Present time?

13 MR. DORNSIFE: We don't have a charge. Maybe 14 if you are still on the executive board you might want to 15 consider a new charge for us. We have run out of charges.

16 MR. TEDFORD: Another Irishman has taken my 17 place on the executive board, and that is Bob Hallisey, and is so, he can hear that plea.

19 MR. DORNSIFE: We haven't really pursued 20 alternatives very much at all. We have been doing other 21 things besides looking at specific alternatives. Now, one of I 22 the things we are hoping to do, and the conference has asked 1 23 DOE for a grant to do tbia is to have some onging dialogue H I

• 24 m,'I between state technical people. You know, maybe the state k ' 25 technical people get together once a quarter to exchange

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.E (d 1 ideas and talk about what they are doing. I think that is 2 critically needed. We need to learn whether other states are 3 doing it and what problems they are having. These kinds of d forms are invaluable for that kind of --

5 MR. TEDFORD: I think you did a very fine job, and e I think the people on your committee are probably some of the 7 best thinkers in this particular area in the country, and 8 that should be looked at.

' MR. DORNSIFE: By the way, if you would like, and 10 give me your names and addresses, I can send you a copy of II the criteria, both the screening criteria and this criteria 12 once it is made public.

.O

( ,/ I3 MR. TEDFORD: I would like a copy of it.

I# MR. DORNSIFE: If you would, still give me your 30 name; so, I can keep track of it, Ted.

16 DR. AUGUSTINE: I am Bob Augustine, R adiation II Safety Officer for the National Institutes of Health which 18 for some of you out-of-towners wlio may not know, our campus

" starts just two blocks north of here and runs for a little 20 I would like to comment on way along Rockville Pike.

h II 21 22 something you may not think is pertinent to Bill's presentatic n, b ut hopefully by the end you might see it, and that is on the 23 3! impact of the surcharges and penalties on the fairly large volume generator of low-level radioactive waste. NIH uses a si, ' 25 lot of radioactive material. We probably generate more O, 4U$

i 280

("'/ 1 low-level wastes than any other research institution in the 2 world. The surcharges for this year alone, if our volume 3 that we have to ship for burial remains the same as it was 4 last calendar year, we estimate to be $80,000 just in 5 surcharges which is going currently to Nancy Kirner's 6 agency in the State of Washington. By 1992, with all of the 7 various surcharges and with the assumption that the full 8 penalties will be assessed if Bill does not get his program 9 on track, it will cost the NIH close to $1 million in 1992, 10 just in surcharges and penalties. Those are tax dollars. .

11 Those are research dollars. They come right off the top of the 12 appropriations for cancer and everything else and not

() 13 bemoaning the fact that we have to pay these, but this is a Maryland is in the 14 way, hopefully, to encourage Bill.

15 Appalachian Compact. NIH is in the State of Maryland, and 16 our waste, hopefully, and as soon as possible will be going 17 to the State of Pennsylvania. So, we would like to encourage 18 you, Bill, to make as much progress as fast as you can. I 19 of fer you the full moral support of NIH, certainly any 20 technical support and assistance that we might be capable of 21 providing. We are a little light on hydrologists and g

$5 22 geologists.

El 23 (Laughte r . )

gg d 24 DR. AUGUSTINE: You, perhaps, could use a W,ik' 25 proctologist in the process, but we would, also, --

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1 MR. DORNSIFE: Who is particularly adept at 2 removing heads.

3 DR. AUGUSTINE: We would, also, like to offer you 4 any support we can give in the way of public information.

5 We do have experts in health effects, experts in statistics 6 and especially at your time of public hearings, if you think 7 we might be useful in informing the public about the benefits 8 of some of the activities that generate this terrible 9 material that you want to get permission to put in their 10 neighborhood. We would be pleased to work with you and help 11 you in any way we can.

12 MR. DORNSIFE: I recognize the problem in trying f} 13 to get the same message across,to other people who need to a

14 recognize that problem. So, any help you can give us there 15 would be much appreciated.

16 MR. GREEVES: That is a tough act to follow. So, 17 I will stay with the technical aspects. John Greeves, again.

18 We view with interest your criteria and obviously haven't had l' time to give you feedback on all of them, but while many are 20 listening, I would like to caution in this area of leak l

21 resistance or containment. Your criteria start to sound like 5 22 what we are looking at for high-level waste disposal I

,j23 criteria, and one of the ones we have the most difficulty vg2 with is this criteria for containment for high-level waste 25 facilities. Ncw, there has been a tremendous amount of work o]4

282 n 1 put into it and studies, and that is all available. In fact, 2 I would like to, at some point in time get together with 3 you and show you some of that background material so that 4 when folks come to you and tell you that they can meet their 5 criteria, you may have something to compare it with because e it is very difficult to meet with a criteria that is 7 interpreted as containment, and we have got a number of 8 reports that I think would usefully be applied to that 9 particular process.

10 MR. DORNSIFE: Just a comment on that first one.

11 You recognize though that -- and I recognize that problem, 12 but you recognize though that what we are doing here is O

trvi e to 1ve e eo11eice1 er 81em er some tecamice1 meeme, Id if we can, making it as technically sound as we can, but 15 really solving a political problem. The public doesn't to care necessarily how much it costs. That falls on deaf I7 ears. They want the most assurance that they can get that 18 that site is not going to -- you know, once a site shows l'

anything off site, not even off site, out of the cell, the-20 public views that site as failing. I don't care how little 21 it is, that does not matter. Once you see anything out of 22 the cell, that site has failed in the public's mind. There j 23 is going to be a large clamor to shut that site down.

24 MR. GREEVES: I appreciate what you are saying 25 and I think the point I am trying to get across is as these

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283 i bodies set these criteria, you have a real potential for 2 handing this criteria to a licensing board, and they find 3 that whatever is brought forward in their interpretation 4 doesn't meet the criteria, and that is the problem that you 5 may run up against. You need to be very cautious about 6 setting these criteria and hopefully listening to a wide 7 spectrum of technical people's views on whether the criteria e can be met, not just people who want to come in and build it 9 for you, and you pay them to build it.

10 Thank you.

11 MR. DORNSIFE: Thank you. I appreciate that 12 concern.

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13 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Are there any other questions 14 or comments for any of our panelists this morning or any 15 other issues that anyone would like to ' bring up at this 16 point?

17 MR. DUNKLEBERGER: Jay Dunkleberger from New York.

18 To get back to the question of deep mine disposal, it is an 19 issue I recognize that to get regulations on it, to get a 20 clear body of documents it is a little difficult without 21 going through all the various regulations t hat have to be 3 22 applied.

I 23 What I am looking for since New York has to look g

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• 24 m,iI at deep mine disposal is whether or not NRC can put togethe r f ' 25 something for screeningcriteria as "go, no-go," for existing (3

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j mines? What should we look at to rule them out or to say 2 whether they are possibilities and whether we should look 3 further, not something that is in the detail that we would 4 need to actually license a facility but something that says 5 that if there is water anywhere in the mine, forget it or 6 something like that so that we have some way of knowing y whether we should continue down this road or whether we 8 should ignore it, look at what we have got, find out that 9 they don't fit and then go on with something else, but I 10 think we codld really use some kind of screening criteria, 11 guidelines so that we can decide whether to continue on this 12 road or whether we should back off of it with some technical

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xs 13 justification and look at the other technologies.

I 14 DR. STAPMER: I wish we had a nice easy direct 15 answer for you, Jay, but I think that our answer is going to 16 have to be that we are going to have to work on it a little 17 bit. There are a lot of ambiguities. There are a lot of 13 questions.

19 Our staff has been looking at it, up to this l

20 point pretty much as time will permit. We do have the report 21 from the Corps of Engineers which is available. We have

! 3 22 some problems with its, if you will, editorial, the way it I 23 is written and some of your staff has some technical g

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• 24 problems with it,- which is one reason it hasn't been released.

H<; k l m' 25 All I can say is that we cannot answer that today, and we

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285 7N U j are looking at it. We will try to keep in contact with you 2

and see what we can do.

3 MS. TEFFT: I have a question which I am not sure 4

is exactly appropriate for this Panel, but since Bill 5

Dornsife is up there and Don, I will ask it and see what we can do. You know, we have heard a lot about mixed wastes 4

y and wastes below regulatory concern and so forth, but I am 8

ust wondering what is being done about NARM. How does this 9

affect a potential host state which is not a licensing state, 10 and where does this come into play?

jj MR. DORNSIFE: Maybe you might want to, talk about 12 what EPA is doing?

O wJ 13 MR. MEYER: In response to the question on NARM, 34 at the recommendations from the conference and recommendatione 15 from the states at a public meeting we~had in 1984, we 16 recommended to the Administrator that we include NARM under 37 our low-level waste standards. The Assistant Administrator ja of the Office of Solid Waste at that time who was Lee Thomas, 19 now our Administrator, he and our Administrator agreed, yes, 20 we would include NARM under the standard. The proposed 21 vehicle was RCRA. So, we started reviewing RCRA regulations 5 22 and 10CFR 61 regulations,and there was a strong non-compati-I 23 bility under certain elements.

g 24 We tried three or four different ways to include gl mi.i *$

d' ' 25 NARM, but the new amendments to RCRA, also, wiped out a O

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couple of those possibilities.

2 Within the past four months we had a, I would 3 say, a final meeting between RCRA lawyers, our lawyers and 4 we came to the conclusion that there was just no way under S Present circumstances we could include NARM under our 6 RCRA authority and get it disposed of at an NRC licensed 7 site within any reasonable period of time.

s We have found a potential way of including NARM 9 under the low-level waste standards. That would be under our 10 TSCA authority which is much more general, and it provides 11 coverage for radioactive materials and other hazardous 12 materials, and we have had two meetings between the Office (fv ') 13 of Toxic Substances and our office specifically to discuss 14 the inclusion of NARM,and the meetings have been very, very 15 favorable. The one possible drawback would be delegation 16 of authority to the states. We think there are precedents 17 where this would not be a problem, and in talking with is Bill Dornsife yesterday, he suggested, "How about just 19 delegation of authority to NRC7" And I am not sure whether

20 we have looked at this completely, but we are supposed to have 21 another meeting within a couple of weeks.

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! I 22 We are out of the RCRA "do-loop" so to speak.

I 23 In two years we made no progress, and now, the Office of g

l H I 24 Toxic Substance people are apparently helpful and receptive, m, *I i

i l d ' 25 and we expect to make some progress.

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1 MR. DORNSIFE: Just to follow on a little bit, 2 those of you not initiated, NARM is an acronym for naturally 3 occurring and accelerator-produced radioactive material, and 4 really the only isotope that is of concern or the main 5 isotope that is of concern from a disposal standpoint is e radium 226.

7 MR. MEYER: Let me clarify what coverage we are 8 requesting. We are being very, very specific, only two 9 waste streams that we have really identified. They are both --

10 one of them is a high-activity NARM like radium needles.

11 The other one is ion-exchange resins used to clean up drinking 12 water supply. We are being very specific that we do not want O3 V

13 to include dif fuse wastes such as tailings and FUSREP (?)

Id wastes and this sort of thing. This is not the intent. We 15 do not believe disposal in a secure sanitary, I mean a secure le low-level waste disposal facility is an appropriate disposal 17 for large volumes of waste. So, lest anybody be worried 18 that they would get a lot of mill tailings or construction l'

material, we are limiting our objectives on including NARM 20 at this time. Some of the other wastes need taking care of, 21 but we are trying to take care of the high activity stuff.

I 22 MR. BROWN: Don, I had a comment about the 1

j 23 legislation. I am Holmes Brown. I worked for the National 24 Governors Association while this legislation was proceeding 25 through Congress. NARM received attention in the amendments

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(? q 288 U y only during the last couple of months. There were some 2 presumptions that it was either in or out, but there wasn't 3 much comment about it.

4 In October and November, it became apparent 5 that there was an awful lot of NARM around, and one of the 4 problems with NARM is as Bill has iridicated, it covers both y diffuse and discrete sources. Diffuse sources are of g enormous quantities. They would have busted the caps that 9 were in the legislation. So, Congress decided in the waning 10 weeks of consideration to make NARM an orphan category. I it think when you read through the legislation and the state 12 and federal responsibilities, the fact is NARM, whether

/'N 13 diffuse or discrete is an orphan category. There is no G'

14 institutional responsibility fo r it at this point. Some of 15 the operating disposal sites may decide to take NARM on a 16 case-by-case basis, but it is not a state obligation at this 17 point, and my guess is if EPA should make a determination 18 that NARM must go into NRC licensed sites that it is still 19 going to be an orphan category. The states don't have to 20 take it, and some of them may not. Some of the new sites 21 that are being built may be designed to take NARM wastes.

I 22 I believe the Rocky Mountain region has indicated they would I 23 probably do so.

g 24 It is optional for them, but it isn't necessary, (I

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m. i and you may end up requiring NARM to go to NRC sites and U'O I

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! 289 g)

'V 1 possibly the Federal Government would have to step in because 2 one other provision of the bill said that the above Class C 3 waste now has to go to an NRC-licensed facility, but that 4 issue, like mixed wastes was left unresolved because it was S going to break the caps that had been established months e before.

7 MR. DORNSIFE: Just to follow on a little bit, it 8 is true that NARM is not regulated by the NRC, covered under 9 the Atomic Energy Act, but most states do regulate NARM. It 10 is regulated in the:: states for the most part. Some states 1I have no licensing or regulatory program for NARM, but most 12 states do regulate it. So, it is a concern at the state 13 level, a big concern, probably one of the biggest concerns Id we have is waste disposal, but let me, also, point out that I3 the Conference of Radiation Control Program Directors, and probably some of you don't know what that is; that is an 17 affiliation of all the state radiation control program 18 directors and their staff, has just adopted at the last I'

annual meeting a resolution that first of all calls for 20 NRC to develop a suggested Class C limit for radium, and 21 with that limit we are suggesting that DOE, by policy, would l

22 accept all radium above that Class C limit into their site j 23 that they are going to license for other Class C wastes.

24 We are, also, suggesting this might be a good way of ei? 25 l n satisfying part of that requirement. We are suggesting that (J

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~.j 1 all the radiation control program directors get the word 2 to their compact officials that NARM radium is a potential 3 state responsibility under the Class C limit. Less than the d Class C limit, that is a potential state disposal responsi-5 bility. You ought to consider it. ,

4 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Are there any other questions or 7 comments?

8 Bob Browning, would you like to make any

' remarks at this point? We are getting close to adjournment, 10 I think.

II MR. BROWNING: I would just like to thank 12 everybody who came. I think that from our standpoint it has G

Q 13 been very helpful to have the insight from a state perspectivc Id of the kinds of problems you have to deal with, both 38 technical and political, and hopefully we will benefit from 18 it, and I hope you people benefited from getting together.

I7 If there are any other ideas that you have after l

I8 the fact or you have any questions or problems, please feel I'

free to call, pick up the telephone and talk to me directly 20 or any of my staff, Dr. Knapp, Dr. Starmer or any of the 21 l8 individuals who are dealing with the specific technical area.

22 We try to make ourselves available , and for those of you who j are on the West Coast who don't always gibe with our a -[ 2.

4, schedules, if necessary, I would be glad to give you my home Y ~ 25 number, if that would help make sure we get prompt contact t

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1 back. So, I appreciate your attending and hope we can 2 continue a continuing effective dialogue, even though the 3 time is late.

d Hopefully, by frequent and productive interchange 3 between us and you folks, you will be able to meet the tight 0 milestones in the Act.

7 MR. NUSSBAUMER: Thank you, Bob, and with that 8 we will adjourn the meeting.

(Thereupon, at 11:22 a.m., the meeting was 10 concluded.)

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T CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER v

This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the matter of:

NAME OF PROCEEDING: MEETING ON LOW LEVEL READIOACTIVE WASTE POLICY ACT AMENDMENT (LLRWPAA) OF 1985 DOCKET NO.:

PLACE: BETHESDA, MARYLAND t DATE: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 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

.