ML20209D078
| ML20209D078 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/28/1999 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0131, NACNUCLE-T-131, NUDOCS 9907130028 | |
| Download: ML20209D078 (264) | |
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.O-. OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE
Title:
MEETING: 110TII ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) /
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9907130028 990628 PDR ADVCM NACNUCLE T-0131 PDR LOCATION: San Antonio,TX DATE: Monday, June 28,1999 PAGES: 1 - 261 l
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9 DISCLAIMER UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY. COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE JUNE 28, 1999 The contents of this transcript of the proceeding of.the UnitedEStates Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory
() . Committee on Nuclear Waste, taken on June 28, 1999, as reported herein, is a. record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
This transcript had not been reviewed, corrected and edited'and it may;contain inaccuracies.
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1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION L 3 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON. NUCLEAR WASTE 4 ***
5 MEETING: 110TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON 6
NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) 7 ***
8 9 Southwest Research Center 10 Building 189 11 6220 Culebra Road 12 San Antonio, Texas 13 Monday, June 28, 1999 14
() 15 The Committee met, pursuant to not. at 8:30 16 a.m.
17 !
1 18 MEMBERS PRESENT:
19 B. JOHN GARRICK, ACNW Chairman
' 1 20 GEORGE HORNBERGER, ACNW Vice Chairman 1 l
21 RAYMOND WYMER, ACNW Member l
22 CHARLES FAIRHURST, ACNW Member l '23i L 24 25 l
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2 1 PROCEEDINGS
(~'j 2
[8:30 a.m.]
l L/
3 MR. GARRICK: Good morning. The meeting will now 4 come to order.
5 This is the first day of the 110th meeting of the 6 Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. My name is John 7 Garrick, Chairman of the ACNW. Other members of the 8 committee include George Hornberger, Ray Wymer, and Charles 9 Fairhurst.
10 The entire meeting will be open to the public.
11 During today's meeting, the committee will review activities 1
12 underway at the center. Included in that review will be the 13 ten high level waste key technical issues. Four of these '
14 KTIs will receive some special attention and emphasis. We p
'V) 15 will discuss with the staff the evaluation and contributions 16 to risk. Included will be presentations on sensitivity 17 studies, event tree post-processing, and importance 18 analysis.
19 We will review with the staff their evaluation of 20 the risk contribution of potential igneous activity at the 21 Yucca Mountain site, and discuss committee activities and 22 future agenda items.
23 Howard Larson is the Designated Federal Official i 24 for today's session, and this meeting is being conducted in 25 accordance with the provisions of the Federal Advisory
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~1 Committee Act. '
! [N -,}- 2 We have' received no requests to make -- I guess we I 3 received one minor request or one -- Andy, do you want to l 4 fill us in on that?
5 MR. CAMPBELL: We've received one request for a 6 speaker, Sarah Lee Salar. However, she has not contacted us 7 again. So that may be on Wednesday. l
\
8 MR. GARRICK: Okay. We have received a written 9 comment for inclusion in the record from Dr. Donald L.
10 Baker, Aquarius Engineering, Fayetteville, Arkansas. His 11 comments have been provided in advance to the members and 12 will be included with the meeting transcript.
13 Should anyone wish to address the committee, 14' please make your wishes known to one of the committee staff.
(-
!(g) 15 It'is requested that each speaker use one of the 16 microphones, identify himself or herself, and speak with 17 clarify and volume so that they can be heard.
18 Before proceeding with the first agenda item, I 19 would like to cover some brief items of current interest.
20 As most of us know, Commissioner Greta Dicus will become 21 Chairman of the NRC when Chairman Shirley Jackson's term 22 expires June 30. Chairman Jackson made the announcement at 23 one of the periodic all-hands meetings with NRC staff on
! 24 June 15.
l 25 The White House confirmed the appointment in a i
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4 l' press release at about that-same time.
/ 2 We welcome Ms. Cheryl Hawkins, a 1999 graduate in
-C}
3 ct mical engineering from the University of Maryland, 4 Baltimore Campus, to the ACNW staff as a summer intern. .!
5 We also would like to recognize a member of the j 6 administrative staff, Michele Kelton, who received the NRC l
7 Meritorious Service Award for Support Staff Excellence.
8 We're very pleased about that', Michele.
i 9 South Carolina regulators have recently determined '
10 that.the potential remaining disposal capacity at the low l
11 level radioactive waste disposal facility in Barnwell, South l 12 Carolina is only 3.2 million cubic feet, approximately half 13 of previous estimates, according to Virgil Autrey of the i 14 South Carolina Department of Health and Environment Control.
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() 15 Assuming an annual disposal rate of about 300,000 16 cubic feet, this capacity will be sufficient for 17 approximately ten years.
18 California has decided not to appeal a court 19 decision against transferring. Ward Valley land for a low 20 level : rad waste disposal site. Instead, Governor Greg Davis 21' has asked the University of California President Richard f
22 Atkinson to chair an advisory group to come up with 23 alternatives for low level waste disposal.
24 The group will include academic, scientific, 25 environmental and biotechnical technology experts and 1
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r-5 1 representatives from utilities and state agencies.
2 In March, a Federal Judge refused to order the 3 Department of Interior to transfer Ward Valley land to 4 California.
5 US Ecology's rad waste operations at Oak Ridge I 6 received an award for meeting and exceeding Federal water
-7 . quality standards. The Kentucky-Tennessee Water Environment 8 . Association, a group of water quality experts, award 34 its
-9 pre-treatment excellence award to the American Ecology 10 subsidiary, which operates low level waste processing.and 11 recycling centers at the Tennessee site.
12 Chi June 10, South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges
'13 announced the creation of a task force, quote, "to examine 1 14 the final disposition of South Carolina's low level nuclear A,
Q.
' 15. waste facilities."
.16 He made a number of comments, including "My stated 17 goal," he said, "would be to get South Carolina out of the 18 business of taking nuclear waste from around the country."
19 He believes that this is a policy strongly supported across 20 the State of South Carolina, and discussed a number of 21, . options that might be considered.
22' The DOE has spent about 16 years and perhaps half )
23 a billion dollars on a separations technology, before 24 deciding the process produced too much benzene to be used 25 safely, according to the General Accounting Office. The ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1L' -in-take. precipitation process was designed to separate
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NJ 2 ' high-level nuclear. waste from 34 million gallons of liquid 3 stored'in tanks at the Savannah River site in South 4 Carolina.
i 5 Initially, the facility was to have begun i
6 operating in 1988. The General Accounting Office indicated '
7 that DOE now estimates an alternative process will not be 8 available until perhaps 2007 and would cost 2.3 to 3.5 9~ billion over its lifetime.
10 . Unless there are other issues -- there is one, I 11 . guess, that we should mention.
L12 On May 29, the Texas State Legislature adopted a 13- conference report containing a provision abolishing the 14 Texas-low level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority as a
'15' ' separate entity, but transferring its. staff, funding and 16 ' functions to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation 17 Commission.
18 The provision was added to the conference report 19- just before the legislature adjourned, when it became
! 20L apparent that other legislation relating to the authority's
- 21. functions would not be passed. The Governor is likely to 22 approve the legislation, since it affects many other vital 23' state agencies.
24 : I don't know, perhaps it's been approved by now.
25 Unless there are other points of interest from i
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P L 1 -either the committee or staff, we'll proceed to the agenda.
,} '2 Our.first_ agenda item is Program Overview on Progress toward
~3 KTI Resolution, and I guess'Budhi Sagar is going lead that 4 discussion.
l 5 MR. SAGAR: Good morning. My name is Budhi Sagar, 6 and I'm Technical Director at the center. Before I start my
'7_ presentation, I would like to welcome the members of the
- 8 ACNW'and the staff to the center. We always welcome your p 9 comments,.your-criticism, and we try to act, to the extent 10 we are competent to act on your suggestions.
11 We would try to focus this whole meeting. We 12 asked the presenters to look at your self-evaluation that 13 -you have recently submitted to the Commission, and there 14 were some issues brought up there which we you have the
- 0) 15 intention to follow-up. So we asked the speakers, including 16 myself, to try to react to the status of those issues, j 17 As requested by you, I will try to take only about 18 '40 minutes cn1 my prepared comments, and the rest of the time 19 is for you to ask questions or get into discussion, as you
.20 .wish.
21 What I would like to do in this presentation is to 22 provide you an idea'of the key high level waste program I 23 milestones that are coming up. I will use two viewgraphs 24 for those.
25 In this fiscal year, the big activity that we had O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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8 I l' conducted.is the review of viability' assessment. I would
[~' 2 take'a few minutes to summarize what we did on that.
3 The status of issue resolution, I.have a rather
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4 busy table that's included in the presentation here that you l
'5 have a:hard copy of, and those would be hard to project 6, .because they are small fonts. 'Also, I would like to take
- 7. only a-few minutes to go over only a few things. Those are 8 for you to take a look at and if you have questions, please 9 : feel' free to ask.
10 .As Dr. Garrick said in the beginning, only four 11 KTIs would get some special treatment here in this meeting.
12 The other six are in that ta.le that I presented to you, but 13 there are the KTI leads present in the audience. So if you
.14 have questions, we certainly will try to answer those 15 questions on those KTIs.
16 There is a big effort that we-have started now, 17 which is the development of the Yucca Mountain review plan.
18 We expect to have Revision 2 of this review plan prepared 19 before the license application comes in to NRC. So I'll <
20 spend a few minutes describing that.
21 The. review tools, which is basically in two parts; 22 the review of models and the review of data, and some of the 23 models that we would use to review DOE's analysis, I would 24 try to touch on.them.
25 The total system performance assessment code, TPA, l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 is a measure part of.that, but then we have some auxiliary 2 ' codes that we would spend some time on. 3 I'm going to give you a few seconds on the future 1 4 outlobk that we see. 5 The key high level program milestones are on this 6 chart here. There are two charts, actually, one listing in 7 text what the milestones are and one providing you a j 8 schedule along with the milestones here. 9 I'd like to touch on a few things here. -The 10 site-specific rule for Yucca Mountain is a major activity. 11 The final rule, even though the EPA standard is not out in 12 the public yet, is still on schedule, as far as the NRC o 13 staff is concerned. I think by December we intend to submit 14 the final rule to the Commission. () 15 The pre-license resolution of KTIs is obviously 16 very important, has been going on for the last four or five 17 years. If you see on that line in the chart the issue 18 resolution status report, the IRSRs, are the main documents 19 in which we document the resolution. But as you will see, 20 at the end of fiscal 2000 or beginning of fiscal 2001, the 21 final revision of IRSR, which is in Revision 3, would be 22 issued. After that, we interd not to revise the issue
'23 resolution status reports.
24 But instead, we would move on to the next item, 25 which is the development of the YMRP, or the Yucca Mountain (~ - (_j ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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10 1- Review Plan. The Rev. O is supposed to be out here in about 2' November this year and then the Rev. 1 would be at the end 3 of fiscal 2000 and Rev. 2 by the end of fiscal 2001. 4 What:we have planned to do, and I will state that 5 later again perhaps, is that the acceptance criteria and the 6 review methods which are presently contained in the issue 7 resolution status reports would be taken out of there and 8 put into the Yucca Mountain Review Plan, but the technical I 9 basis, official resolution would stay in the IRSR. So the j 10- two have to go in parallel and be consistent. 11 Then I would like to point out the review of the I 12 draft EIS, which is the third line from the bottom in this 13 chart. We expect to get the draft EIS in August sometime. 14 It was supposed to be.the end of July. I heard now that it () 15 would be somewhat late. We we..ld get about five to six 16 weeks to turn around the review. 17 This is one of the activities in which we had not 18 really participated in the sense of attending workshops or 19 meetings at DOE, With a short turnaround time, I assumed 20' there would be an intense set of activities to accomplish 21 this. 22 The review of the license application, of course, 23 that's where everything is converging to, all the documents 24 'we are producing, all the tools we are developing will 25 eventual 2y lead us to having the capability to provide a C/) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 L
t,' ?' 11 ) 1 competent review of the LA. t () 2; 3 The bottom-most line you see has no milestones because there is still some thought being given to that. 4' DOE is supposed to be prepare, in their license application, ! 5 what they would do'regarding performance information. It's 6 required.in Part 63, but it's still, I guess, somewhat of a j 7 fuzzy. topic at this_ point, in most people's minds. 8 The overall approach to achieving milestones'then l 9 is to try to integrate all the activities. This is a 10 multi-disciplinary work, and to resolve an issue, we do have l l 11 to make an active. effort to make sure things get integrated. l 12 The focus is always on issue-resolution and most
~13 of the work is prioritized, and both Bill Reamer and Wes 14' Patrick will speak about'this aspect of it,. how the risk j
( 15_ contributions are factored into focusing work. 1 16 And one of the main activities to make sure that 17 we remain consistent among at least three major documents, i 18 the Yucca Mountain-specific regulation, the review plan and
-19 the IRSRs.
20 Of course, there is the underlying foundation for 21 all of them, which is the risk-informed performance-based
- -22 regulation. That's Part 63. Then the acceptance criteria l
23 and review methods, we have to make sure that those come 24 across as an integrated set of acceptance criteria and i L 1
-25 review methods; not necessarily entirely discipline-based.
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p i 12 l i 1 We eventually have to produce a safety evaluation (~] (_/ 2 report once the license application is reviewed. We assume l 3 that the technical basis that would be documented in the 4 issue resolution status reports would provide a foundation 5 for developing that report. 6 So the idea is to keep these major documents 7 together and consistent. 8 The total system performance assessment, which is 9 essentially what the risk-informed regulation requires, 10 would make these -- would be the central focus of most of 11 the reviews. 12 The strategy for resolvina key technical issues 13 is to focus and integrate the CNWRA independent work. We do 14 consider not only what work CNWRA and NRC staff does, but ()
- i $ obviously what is subaitted by DOE, including the plans for i
16 their work in the future and all other literature that we 17 can lay our hands on. So we try to put all that together to 18 come to a conclusion, if we can declare, at the staff level 19 anyway, that the issue is resolved or what needs to get done l l 20 before we would say that the issue is resolved. 21 And the strategy is to interact frequently with a 22 DOE. As I said, one of these things that we have not done 23 is in terms of the DEIS, which are trying to find what j g 24 exactly is contained in that. That we have not really 25 interacted with. So it will be interesting to see how we
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13 1 turn around the review in five to six. weeks on that, and I 2 expect it to be a-pretty [large document. We'll see how that 13 works out.
'4 And we do document the issue resolution, as we see 5- it, provide it-to DOE for their comments, and'it's out in 6 the public. So we want to benefit from other technical 7 people taking a look at it and providing criticism and-8 comments. So when we do the next update, the revision, we 9 can include those suggestions in the update.
10 Of course, the ultimate resolution would be 11 achieved when we review the license application and the 12; Yucca Mountain review plan would provide guidance to both 13 -NRC staff and to DOE staff what we expect to do in that 1 14 review. (; 15 The issue resolution status reports, as I said, 16 are being somewhat' restructured in the sense we will take 17- out the acceptance criteria and the review matters out of 18 -that document and put it into the review plan. But, again, 19 it's probably worthwhile to repeat what we mean by 20 resolution at this point, at the staff level. 21 It simply means that all the data that's available 22 to us, all the information that's available to us, incitu -g 23 the: future work plans of DOE, the staff has no questions in 24- this time, in the sense we believe that the data and the 25- -models and the uncertainties are bounded to a point where we
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. 14 i y l' ,believe we have enough to review.
u 2 2
'Of course, that thing can be opened up by the
. board once the license application comes in.
~4-The contents are provided here, I won't repeat, I 5 won't read'them, but the only thing you have to note is that 61 the acceptance: criteria land review matters have"been taken ,
7 outJof.the IRSRs. 8 Here is the schedule for Revision 2. As you can 9 see,-by the.end of this fiscal year, except for radionuclide 10 transport KTI, which is one revision behind, all the KTIs, 11'
'because of.the fact that no work was done on this KTI for.a i l
i 12 couple of years duri.ng the budget crunch starting in '96. l'
.13- .All other KTIs would be updated this fiscal year to Revision E '14 2 ~.
( ) 15 Nobody can read this, I think, from the screen, 16 but you have hard copies of this table. This is the' table I 17, was referring to in the beginning, which is a handy way of l l 18 Lproviding you the status of the various KTIs. The first 19J column names the KTI, the second column are the sub-issues 20 'that you would see in the IRSR, for example. The third 21- column provides you an estimated time, date, year, when that 22 sub-issue is supposed to be resolved. And the fourth column lt 23. gives you a little bit of description of where we are at l 24 this time. 1' 25 As you would see, there are some sub-issues where I jy ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
\j Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite'1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202)- 842-0034 m
F I 15 1 we say the resolution has been achieved. Those are, in 2
/~')'
(_/ fact, a minority. The majority of the sub-issues we say 3_ ' partially resolved, because we are either waiting for some 4 data or some models that we have discussed with DOE that 5 would eventually come, provided to us. 6 But if you look at the dates column, we do indeed 7 . expect.the resolution of most of these sub-issues before the 8 license application comes in. We do, of course, need to 9 continue working and developing technical basis. That will
-10 eventually -- as I said, that will eventually be -- that 11 would be documented in the safety evaluation report.
12 So I would quickly pass over these and let you 13 read that at your leisure. If you have any questions on any 14 _of those KTIs, which will not be discussed in detail, we do () 15 have staff present here in the meeting to answer those 11 6 questions. 17 There are some difficulties we have faced, which I 18 have identified on chart 15, in issue resolution. Quality 19 assurance problems, both in terms of data and models, at DOE 20 have been ongoing for some time. NRC set up the QA working 21 group. They have visited DOE several times, I think at 22 least'twice, in Las Vegas. 23 We believe and we understand that DOE has 24 consolidated the number of procedures that apply and is
- 25- . implementing those procedures pretty well. The thinking is ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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16 l 1- that the QA would be doing well pretty soon. 2 There are uncertainties in DOE's schedule. Of 1- course, we have to'be flexible and be able to react to DOE's 4 schedule when-things delayed. We'do have to do the 5 planning,' assuming the schedule would stay,-but if they 6 change, we have to go back, do the replanning, et cetera, l 7 but that causes uncertainty in when and how things will get 8 done. 9 The. repository design, even though we believe DOE
'10 should have the flexibility to revise its design, to react
-11 to whatever it sees when it goes underground, et cetera, et 12 cetera, but certain main items we believe ought to be fixed, 13 because if we'have to develop review tools and DOE has to 14 develop models and they have to develop data, you need some 15 time to develop all the data and models for any new design 16 that they-come up with. And if they change the design, a 17- few months before the LA, we're not sure if they can -- if 18 they would be able to provide evidence that that design is 19 okay or not.
20 It's a question of time. It's not that they 21' shouldn't revise the design, but would they be able to 22 generate enough technical evidence about the safety of that 23 design. That's the third point here. 24 You will hear about this, the volcanism KTI. 25 There is still some contention. Again, we believe that
/G- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 17 1 based on the risk-informed regulation, that if we do j\_]/ 2 consider the low probability, but the high consequence and 3 multiply the two, the net result, the so-called expected 4 risk, is indeed not negligible and, therefore, both the DOE 5 has to do some credible work to satisfy the NRC, as well as 6 we have to continue doing some work to make sure we are able 7 to review whatever DOE provides. { 8 One of the items that NRC takes credit for in 9 their pas, and you will hear some if it later on, is the 10 alluvium part of the saturated flow path from the repository 11 to the critical, the postulated. critical group, about 20 i 12 kilometers from the repository. l 13 And since this is new, you know, it used to be 14 that you had to meet the regulation at about five
/~s (s j) 15 kilometers, extending that flow path to 20 kilometers, there 16 is not much data on the transport properties, 17 The DOE, on the other hand, did not take much 18 credit for alluvium. They took credit for cladding, for 19 example, and that met the standards, rather than alluvium.
20 But the absorption properties of the alluvium, we believe, 21 are important. NICOL is collecting some data, but we don't 22 really see any plans in the DOE program to collect that 23 data. That may be something that -- that has been intimated 24 to DOE through a letter and they may come up with some plans 25 to collect that data, l
/~N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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4 18 1 There is,. of course, delay in the promulgation of 7} V 2 EPA standard, which means Part 63.would have to be revised 3- to be consistent with the EPA' standard, whenever that 4 becomes' final. I 5 And we have noticed'some -- and this may be of 6 special interest'to you because of your. interest in copper 7 processes -- the drift scale heater test was supposed to-8 provide some definitive data about coupling, but because of 9 some problems in the' conduct of the test in the sense of 10 .unmonitored release of energy through the bulkhead, how to 11 interpret that, that may'become an issue. So that, again, I 12 think, in one of the KTIs, that may be brought back, that 13 issue. 14 One thing we have noticed in your commentary on 15' the staff's work'is that the staff doesn't really understand (} 16 what you mean by systems engineering approach. We would 17 . definitely like to understand what you mean by. systems 18 engineering approach. 19 I was told that some presentation would be done in 20 this meeting by Andy or one of you, I'm not sure. But 21 that's something we need to talk about, what we think you 22' .mean, and this may be entirely wrong, is to take a total 23' systems approach. What I've put in my title here is 24 . hierarchical decomposition of the repository system, the 25 . system as'a whole, and then how the things flow downwards, .-Q - (,,/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
p-,. 19 li how do we break it up into smaller and smaller portions so
; /'T - '2. you'can build up a so-called total system code.
'd 3
So we do identify subsystems and their key
- 4. elements, as you will see in'the next chart, which is, 5 ;again, ve2ar difficult to read, but you have hard copies.
L6- LThen we-have to provide a framework for implementing 7 risk-informed performance based systems approach. 8 We think that the hierarchical decomposition that
- 9. we have come up with will give us a foundation, will give us 10 a framework for implementing risk-informed performance based 11 systems approach.
12. It forms a basis for. developing the total system 13 performance assessment code and provides us a basis for 14 doing integrated reviews rather that discipline-based p(j . 15 reviews, 11 6 If you go to the next chart in your notebook, the 17 top level, of course, is the total system, which is the 18 repository performance and Part 63 specifies a performance , 19 criteria in terms of expected dose, which you may call risk, 20 at the total system level. 21 It has at least three identifiable subsystems, the 22- engineered barriers, the geosphere and the biosphere, which 23 has then some main components. Again, this is based on 24 staff's knowledge at thir point. I mean, there is no 25- , uniqueness to these components, for example. Those could
- O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 20 ' 1 definitely be different if one wanted to. So that's the
'"Y (d \
2 organization one selects in trying to manage the program. 3 Then the bottom-most part, which are termed here 4 key elements of subsystem abstractions, and we have coined a 5 new term for that now, which are called integrated 6 sub-issues; rather than the sub-issues you saw in the 7 previous table, which were by KTI, many sub-issues feed into j 8 these integrated sub-issues. 9 There are 14 of them, if you count them. So to l 10 us , this does implement the system engineering approach, 11 but, again, I think any suggestions you can come up with to 12 make it more efficient or more eff.ective would certainly be 13 appreciated and helpful. 14 Okay. There goes the electronics system. Anyway, () 15 if you turn to your next page, the next two viewgraphs 16 provide you a quick review of viability assessment, which 17 was a major activity this past fiscal year. We focused on 18 only post-closure and not pre-closure in this review. If 19 you look at the previous chart, I said there are 14 I 20 integrated sub-issues or key elements of subsystem 21 abstraction, that's how the review of VA was organized. 22 That is, that was organized based on those 14 integrated 23 subissues and the comments were generated based on those 14 24 integrated subissues. 25 We had a very short turn-around time for actual ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (~] (_s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
~
s 7 21 1 review, even though we had been participating for a long
N' time in DOE's workshops and meetings.
(b 2 So we knew a lot 3 before we got the document, which helped us. We believe we 4 will do a similar strategy, we will follow a similar 5 strategy in the LA review, in the sense of keeping in touch 6 with DOE, to the extent possible, so that when LA comes, we 7 know most of what would be in the LA. 8 The next couple of viewgraphs are on one other 9 major activity that we have started to undertake now. That 10 is the development of the Yucca Mountain review plan. 11 This would be a guidance to the NRC staff and DOE 12 -on what.the focus of the review would be in the license 13 application. All review methods, and, again, as I will show 14 you in the next chart, we intend to organize this review
/"N i
) 15 plan on the 14 integrated subissues basis, at least for 16 post-closure performance review.
17 So the review methods, acceptance criteria, and 18 what the evaluation findings may look like, examples of that 19 will be documented in this review plan. 20 We do assume that by 2001, Revision 3 would be in 21 final form, ready for use in the review of LA. 22 The next chart shows you briefly the outline, as 23- nas been prepared. This may have already been presented to 24 you in other meetings. No? Okay. But as you see, if you 25 go to the third level here, the review is essentially
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(_) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
22 1 pre-closure safety, post-closure safety, administrative and 2 (~']N programmatic subparts. Then I have broken up the L. 3 pre-closure safety, post-closure safety and administrative 4 subparts into the fourth level, into the details. 5 If you go to the post-closure safety, the very ; 6 top, you see the four main components of post-closure, the 7 l performance assessment requirement. This is based on "7vt 8 63, of course. Performance confirmation, multiple barriers, 9 and human intrusion. 10 The performance assessment then is the 14 11 integrated subissues. So each one would have the acceptance 12 criteria and review method developed. Again, this, to me, 13 is an example of how the systems approach would apply to the 14 review. 15 We assume something similar to happen to the [%.)T 16 integrated safety analysis in the pre-closure safety part of 17 the review plan; that is, that would be further subdivided 18 into some cohesive integrated subissues for pre-closure, for 19 which the review method would be developed. 20 The last leg of review is the status of TPA and 21 auxiliary codes. These are, of course, important and 22 time-consuming to develop, requires a lot of effort to 23 develop them, test them, verify them, document them. Some 24 of these have been provided to DOE. We expect similar 25 reciprocal action on the part of DOE in the sense we (~] i ,/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 u
(- i 1 23 1 hopefully would get their codes, so we can review them. 2: .The TPA, of course, up at the top line, is
).
3' probably.the most important. We are going through, I think 4 in July, mid-July, we have set up a peer review or external
.5- review, as it's called now, of this TPA code. There are 6 eight experts, a wide conflict of interest, the majority of 7 those experts are from outside the US because most of the US 8 experts have been snagged by DOE already.
9 So we would have a two-day meeting here -- 10 three-day meeting here. We.would provide them documents, of 11 course, before they come here. The latest version of this 12 code that we are using now is Version 3.2, but once the 13 review occurs and we already have some suggestions from I 14 staff, the users of the code, what should be changed, () 15' combine that with whatever comments we get from the peer 16 reviewers, we would update the code to 4.0, which we believe 17 would be the code we will use for LA review, assuming, of 18 course, the schedule holds. I 19 The asterisk on three of these codes means they're l-2 CF internally developed here. The-others are acquired, but 21 tested and under configuration management procedures.
- 22. On the second column here, I've listed what the i
23 codes would be used for. The main work horse for us for j 24 studying the coupled processes is MULTIFLOW, which does 25 : couple three of the four important process groups. It [ . ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. A : Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 1 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
o 1 I l 24
-couples the flow,~ the heat transfer,. and chemistry. Yet,
'l we 12- are modifying this code to make sure it can accommodate-
;3' .fract'ures and ' faults'and dual: porosity, so . cn1 and so forth.
4< The only process missing out'of here is, of 5 course, the mechanical' stresses, although we have~a code l / 6 'that-couples stresses to thermal. So there is a two-process 7 model:and a three-process model. 8 Of course, one of'the objectives of-what we do 9' here is to see what coupling needs to be really considered, 10 what you might be able to decouple and still bound your
'11 results.
i 12 So you study-at the lower level, at the detailed 13 process level, how the couplings. work and by the time you 14 move..up to the performance-assessment level, you try to see j
+ 15 what can-be decoupled.without affecting the safety 16 assessment, as we are doing.
17' As I said, on chart 22, I have a summary of what 18 we_ thought you were saying in your self-assessment. If you 19 . notice, the first one, the use of performance' assessment to 20 reprioritize key technical issues, and the third one here in 21 this table, the. transparent processes, Bill Reamer would
- 22. address that in the next presentation.
23 The-use of risk-informed performance based, I have
- 24 touched on that here in my presentation, and Wes will touch 25 (M1 it again. But the fourth item, involve outside senior
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1 1 25 1 . experts, will also be addressed by Wes Patrick. j).
%J L The application of system engineering approach, as 1
l 3 I said,.we need to' clarify what exactly do you mean by that. 4 We.think'we are following, to some extent, that approach. I 5 put under that, in more detail, some of the things you have i i 6- mentioned in your table in self-assessment. 7 I think most of them, we are doing something. 8 It's a question of how far we need to go on each one of 9 them. And some of them would be presented to you during 10- this meeting. 11 My last viewgraph is on future, the most important 12 one that is coming soon is the review of the draft 13- environmental impact statement, which, as I said, we expect 14 tofget somewhere in August and then turn it around in about f) v 15 six: weeks. i
~
16 I have already described that there would be focus 17- 'on updating the TPA code to Version 4.0, after we go through 18 the peer review, external review, and that's the code we 19 expect to use both in reviewing the site recommendation and 20 developing the Commission's sufficiency comments and the 21 license application. - 22 The integrated safety review we had not applied to 23 a repository system before, so that is somewhat new. We 24 expect, just like the TPA code, we expect-some tool, some 25 measure tool to be either required or developed for
-Q. %_/
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
I 26 1 completing the ISA, or integrated safety analysis.
)
2 That would have to be done at a fast pace, because 3 to meet the LA review deadline. We had had time for the 4 post-closure TPA code development, but this has much less 5 time. So we have to do it fast. But there is a lot more 6 knowledge about it than we had about the TPA. So it would 7 hopefully work. 8 The fourth item is kind of new, where we interact 9 with DOE and other stakeholders, especially public meetings 10 that NRC has been conducting recently. They have conducted 11 two meetings on the Part 63 in Nevada, but that would 12 continue at probably an accalerated pace. 13 And the performance confirmation is something we ' 14 have started to think about, what would NRC, for example, () 15 require both in the pre-closure and post-closure part on 16 performance confirmation. We, in fact, would like to look 17 at what DOE would propose in that area. After all, there is 18 a significant period of time for this activity, performance 19 confirmation, and maybe we can learn a lot more of these 20 activities are planned properly. 21 Those were my prepared comments. Did I finish in 22 _ time? I hope so. But the rest of the time is open for 23 discussion, questions. 24 MR. GARRICK: Thank you, Budhi. Any questions? 25 MR. HORnBERGER: Yes. Do you want me to start? ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 ?
i. 27 1 MR. GARRICK: Sure.
/ 2' MR. HORNBERGER: Budhi, it's been my understanding
-3 all'along that the IRSRs were really going to provide the bulk of the template for the Yucca Mountain review plan. I
~5 assume that that's correct, but that's not -- my question
;6 is, why did you take the acceptance criteria out of the 7 IRSRs?
8 MR. SAGAR: The only reason we took it out is that 9 the Yucca Mountain review plan would be a_ document separate 10 from the IRSR and to keep them in two places, we thought,
'11 because their dates are different for production, that they 12 may get out of data. We may issue a YMRP which has an 13 acceptance criteria which is not the same in the Yucca 14 Mountain review plan, whatever rev is going on at that time, (m) 15 would confuse people.
16 That was the only reason we said keep it in one 17 . document so that there is always -- at any given time, there 18 is only one set of' acceptance criteria and not two. 19 Otherwise, the question is, is this the latest one 20 or is that the latest one. 21' MR. HORNBERGER: I guess the timeline, then, 22- overlaps so that the Rev. O f"- *he YMRP would be out 23 essentially at-the same tim lightly ahead of the Rev. 3 24 of the IRSR. 25L MR. SAGAR: Right. Rev. O would be out in l ANN RILEY-& ASSOCIATES, LTD. _(p) . Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
28 1 October-November of this year. Is that right, Keith?
'2 MR. McCONNELL: Of '99. The annotated outline
-3 would be. November of-this year,'which is '99.
4 MR. HORNBERGER: March.'99 has already passed. 5 MR. McCONNELL: -Rev. O would be March of 2000. L6 .MR. HORNBERGER: On the YMRP, one of the things
.7- that I noticed that your, whatever level it was, the fourth 8 level, I think, you had the performance assessment and 9 multiple barriers as separate boxes. I'm curious as to your 10 thinking on that.
11 MR. SAGAR: This is based on-Part 63 in the sense 12' that the multiple barriers is mentioned separately. l 13 MR. HORNBERGER: Yes. 14 ~ MR. SAGAR: So there would be some finding on I 15. . multiple barriers. We-would have to say, yes, DOE has used 16 multiple barriers. It may be based on just the performance 17 assessment that is done, but -- 18 MR. HORNBERGER: -You don't necessarily see a 19- totally separate analysis.'for multiple barriers. Tile l 20 information may come from the PA. 21 MR. SAGAR: The information would come from the 22 -PA? No. There is that discussion going on whether it does 23 indeed-require something more than meeting the 25 millirem 24- ~ per year, for example, the expected peak dose. Is there 25- something more' required in saying, yes, they have used I. 'Q, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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p I 29 1 multiple barriers or not? Can-the PA itself be designed to 2 provide information to conclude? Yes, it can be, but what {sN / ,
-3 exactly that would be has to be decided yet.
]
4 MR. HORNBERGER: Similarly, with the human 1 5 intrusion, there'is a. separate box that you would see it as 6- a somewhat stylized analysis using the PA approach. 7 MR. SAGAR: Yes. That's the plan and I think . I 8 that's what-the YMRP people were'saying, that they would 9 have a stylized analysis. In fact, some of the factors of 10 that stylized analysis are defined in Part 63. So the
- 31. . applicant would'know what to assume and what to do.
.12 MR. HORNBERGER: You mentioned that you have a 13 review of the TPA coming up. Is the list of your external 14 reviewers available?
( )., 15 MR. SAGAR: Certainly. 16 MR. HORNBERGER: I think we'd be interested in 17 looking at-that list. 18 MR. SAGAR: We can provide the list. 19 .MR. HORNBERGER: Thanks. The draft EIS -- my last 20 question,-and then-I'll pass. 2 11 MR. GARRICK: You've got plenty of time, it's all
'22 right.
23: MR. HORNBERGER: Okay. The draft EIS review, this 24 is -- it's a -- you'have a short timeframe to do this,
- 25. right?
i l i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [(") s/ Court Reporters 1025: Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036
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b-30 0 1 MR. SAGAR: Very short. () 2 3 MR. HORNBERGER: that review will entail? Do you have any sense of what I mean, this is likely to be a 4 very long document. Are you going to review every aspect of i j 5 it? L 6 MR; SAGAR: Well, Bill Reamer may be able to j 7 answer this question better than I. What I, in discussion 8 with NRC staff, have learned is thatr we will. definitely ; 9 review the radiological part of the EIS in detail. -Then 10 there is the biological, ecological part, which we may 11 review in some cursory fashion. l 12 There is the socioeconomic part, which probably l 13 would be the least -- of least interest to NRC. The OGC, I 14 understand, has written a Commission paper to describe what
.(~~s t
) 15 the scope of the DEIS and then EIS review would be for NRC.
16 I haven't seen that paper yet, but they would define what 17 the scope is. 18 Given the short turnaround time, my guess would be l' 19 our stress would be mostly on the radiological part, and we 20 do expect that a lot of what they had done in the VA perhaps 21 would be in the EIS, but that's not for sure, because there 22 is a different DOE contractor doing the EIS than the people 23 who were doing VA. So whether those two are parallel and 24 consistent, I'm not sure. 25 MR. REAMER: I think we have a presentation on [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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Lu
31 1 Wednesday on the EIS and the EIS review plan. So that may
/]
V 2 be the point where we will be more specific in responding to 3 .your' questions. but at this point, we're not looking to 4 limit the EIS review just to radiological issues. We're s 5 anticipating a review plan that recognizes that an adequate
'6 EIS, an adequate DOE EIS is an important foundation document 7 for licensing.
8 So the scope of our review is trying to take that 9 into account in a broad sense. But clearly, once we get the 10 ' document, the document that we have not seen at this point, 11 we are going to have focus and prioritize, given the time 12 restrictions, the 90-day comment p'eriod that we've been 13 provided. 14 MR. WYMER: Just a follow-up, and maybe you will
) 15 cover.this later on when you talk about the EIS. But 16 typically, in an EIS, you have three, four or five 17 alternative cases. Will you be able to say or will you try 18 to say anything about the reJevant merita of the various i
19~ cases with respect to licensability, as they apply to 20 licensability? 21 MR. SAGAR: Again, I guess I'm not totally 22 knowledgeable about this, but my understanding was that NAPA 23 restricts what alternatives ~ DOE would have to investigate. I 24 For example, no disposal is not an alternative. 25 'MR. WYMERi Right. That's always a rebutted case. l l
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32
-l ,But then they'll[have intermediate --
2; MR. SAGAR: 'In fact, it's not required for this 3/ particular one, I'm told. I' :4 MR. WYMER: -Was'it on this one? Okay. V 5 MR. SAGAR: .There are some special provisions in
'6- NAPA for this particular EIS. Again, somebody else from NRC 7 staff may'be able,to-give a bett'er answer to this one.
8 .MR. REAMER: -Two thoughts. One, very shortly 9 after the document comes out,'I think we are hopeful of 10 being able to interact with-you at'least on a one-on-one 711 basis early:.in~our? review,.so that we can get that input, 12 before we undertake our review and prepare our comments.
~ 13 - The second point.is that to me, an EIS document is 14 1more,a disclosure document, completeness of disclosure, 1 j .15 consideration of impacts. I'm not sure whether 16 ~
licensability really belongs in~that' calculus. 17 But in-any-event, we might need to have the
' document Jin front of, us - before we can really interact on
~
18L 19 .that kind of question, .so we could be a little bit more 120 focused. 21 MR. WYMER: It seems to me that you could get in 12 2 ' kind of;a box if you-have:to address several cases with 23- respect to it, or-you'd have to consider them at least. 12 4 MR.~ REAMER: Yes. And we're very concerned about 25 -the prejudgmentsissue, as well. We don't even have a O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
33
)
L1 license application. We don't have documents that -- ('^ ' 2 licensing documents to review. You know, we have technical I 3 -basis'ocuments d and inputs, but we don't have an 4 application. We don't know whether there will be a license 5 application. 6' MR. WYMER: Right. I had some technical 7 questions, but I think they'd be better addressed later on. 8 I see some spots in the agenda where they can be addressed. 9 One other point I have is in your last viewgraph, 10 you talked about develop concepts on performance 11 confirmation. I suppose that's sort of the lead-in step to 12 coming up with acceptance. criteria. That's how you've 13 decided to break it down into a step-wise process. 24 MR. SAGAR: Right. The performance information, () 15 the monitoring, which would be, I suppose, the dominant 16 thing that DOE would have to do, either of mechanical 17
-stresses or corrosion of flow of water or whatever we can
'18 think about.
19 MR. WYMER: Chemistry. i20 MR. SAGAR: Chem] Itry. 21 MR. HORNBERGER: Tb-*'s a no, never mind. 22 MR. SAGARc What n. toring would be done for a 23 significantly long period of. time. It could be as long as 24 300 years or as short as 50 years. It's not entirely clear 25 what instrumentation is really appropriate and available and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES,'LTD. s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 e-..__..
I 34 1- what to expect. ! ~s Of course, once you get some monitored data, what 2 , l ((_ J l 3 do you do with it? How do you analyze it to make judgments, 4 et cetera? We haven't really focused on it. We were all 5 focused on post-closure performance assessment and 6 developing the tools and so on and so forth and now on 7 pre-closure, the ISA. But this is one that would soon 8 become quite important, I believe. 9 So we need to pay some attention to that is all 10 I'm suggesting here. I 11 MR. WYMER: I think I'll defer my other questions 12 until we get into more technical discussion. 13 MR. GARRICK: Okay. Charles? 14 MR. FAIRHURST: A number of questions I had have n () 15 been addressed already. But I'm interested whether the sort 16 of process you've been going through with the issue i 17 resolution status reports and you've got a point here of 18 interact with DOE and other stakeholders. 19 At some point, is there some point at which you 20 will say you have to finish dialogue with DOE on an informal 21 basis because of, the regular phrase, separation? You see 22 what I mean? At some point, I imagine you keep going with 23 the public forever, because that's not a conflict, but 24 you're regulating an operation and at some point they will 25 -- is there some time at which you have to say we now, just (~N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 35 1 for credibility' sake, just for public credibility, we have
~'
2 to --
- {s ))
3 MR. SAGAR: Again, it's the policy issue that I 4 leave to Bill. My guess is that once we have finalized the 1.5 YMRP through interaction with DOE, in the sense we do 6 consider their comments, that'that would be the time we 7 would say the YMRP, you present to us the LA, the critical 8 comments, but I don't know. I think during'the license l 9 review, staff requests for information, based on what we see 10 in the LA, that would be that sort of an interaction. 11 So there would be interactions going on. Whether 12 we would essentially modify the YMRP in response to them, I 13 think at some point we would stop and say this is the review 14 plan. () 15 MR. REAMER: I really don't have anything more to 16 add. Maybe if you have a little more specific situation in 17 mind, that-might help.
-18 MR. FAIRHURST: No. But I think of one hearing,
'19 one of the Commissioners or somebody said that at_some 20 _ point, that'one has'to, like, draw the line and say we're 21 waiting for you to submit an application, and then we will 22 review that. We're not going to have a continuous 23 interaction and dialogue, so that when it comes, we know 24 everything that's in it and we have already made a 25 prejudgment, which I don't think is necessarily bad.
l
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1 I 36 l 1 But from a public credibility point of view --
- 2. MR. REAMER: Well, nothing in pre-licensing -- of 3 ' course, the way we've divided it up is everything' prior to 4 the license application we call pre-licensing consultation.
5 MR. FAIRHURST: Okay. 6 MR. REAMER: None of that is binding on really
-7 anyone. It's not binding on a staff, it's surely not 8 binding on the Commission or any board.
9 It's all our meetings, our in-public, we try to 10 conduct them as we would conduct a meeting if there were a 11 license application pending in terms of those. 12 MR. FAIRHURST: Okay. Good. So essentially you 13 can go right up -- which makes sense. Okay 14 MR. GARRICK: Budhi, since you're so.. of program p) ( 15 manager here and we look at your program schedule, would you 16 care to comment on what you believe to be the areas or items 17 of greatest concern in terms of being in a position to carry l 18 out your assignmtent? 19- Of course, you did identify difficulties in issue 20 resolution, but I'm just wondering if there's some i 21 ' milestones or issues that you are especially concerned ) 22 about, either with respect to resources that are going to be 23 required over a short period of time or with respect to ! 24- technical capability or what have you. i 25 Would you comment on that a little bit? ! O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (s,/
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r 37 1 MR. SAGAR: I think the two or three issues that
/N 2 we believe would dominate the issue resolution, QA is one
\--)
.3 because it affects.both the data and the models that we 4 think DOE would provide us, and if those don't have the 5- pedigree'that we expect them to have, it would be quite l 6 difficult to say, okay, this is acceptable.
7 The second, in my mind, is the time issue, where 8 if the design does change, if they change the method, for ! 9- ' example, they use for waste package, even.though it may be 10 pretty good, even though they may make it safer, the time 11 won't be there for them to collect data. Certainly it won't 12 be there for us to collect confirmatory data before we can 13 come to a conclusion that indeed the standards or these 14 regulations are met. I . 15- Those, I think, are the two main blocks I see as 16 stumbling. Then, of course, you asked for the resource one, 17 and I think in the budget planning which I have been privy 18 to that NRC has done, I think given those resources that we 19 believed we have designed to go up to the review of the 20 license application, I think we would have sufficient i 21 resources. ' 22 As-Wes will speak to you in his presentation, we 23 .did have -- we have had difficulty in hiring, quote-unquote, 24' performance assessment staff in that element and that is i 25 primarily because, as we have said several times before, L- O . ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 1 38 1 performance assessment is not a discipline. It's not
}
2' something that is taught anywhere. Most people with
;3 experience are people who work at DOE and we can't hire them 4
because of the conflict of interest clause we have. 5 So what we have to do is then to try to find 6 people who'have the capability, but no. experience, and try 7 to train them here. Once we train them, there is market for 8 them elsewhere and to retain-them is not quite trivial for 9 us. 10 So that's the only resource that's strained. I 11 think we 9 fully staffed in geochemistry and hydrology, 12 rock mechanics and design area, and material sciences. 13 MR. REAMER: And systems engineering. ' 14 MR. SAGAR: Well, every -- it's like PA. j ( ) 15 Everybody is a. system engineer, if they know what they are 1 16 doing. i 17 So that's the resource constraint that I see. l 18 MR. GARRICK: But something like QA, that's not a 19 new issue.
-20 MR. SAGAR: No.
21 MR. GARRICK: That's been around a long time. It 22 would seem that there ought to be some evidence surfacing by 23 now that either that's under control or getting under 24- control or not going to be,a major problem downstream. Is 25 that.something that is addressed in the context of technical p) \_ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 8d2-0034
39 1 . exchanges or what kind of-interaction takes place there and I' U' 2 is there any evidence,'from your perspective, where that 3 situation is changing? 4 MR. SAGAR: Well, there are quarterly exchanges on 5, that topic with DOE and the latest that'we have seen does 6-say that there :Ls control, that the DOE has come to grips 7 with that issue and that they are trying to manage. 8 They-have a procedure for qualifying data, for 9 example. They can't go back in time and collect all that 10 data again under a QA program. How that application of that
.11 procedure would come out through peer review or whatever 12 -other methods are mentioned in that procedure, we have to
'13 see the results of that and hopefully those would work.
14 But as you can imagine, in-this kind of a program, D i s~_/ 6 15 it's the long-term data'that plays a major role. Models is 16 one thing, but what goes into'models is even more important, . l 17 as a matter of fact. You can make-the models come out with 18 almost any result. But what they are based on is extremely 19 important and for us to review that part of the DOE program,
, 20 _I believe, is critical that we-figure out how they 21- calculated the parameters and what is it based on, what the 22 ' technical basis is.
23 And if that's not based on a QA, quality-assured 24 data,-they may be able to qualify most of the long-term data 25 .they collected in the past, but that'has to be seen. i
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V 1 L 40 1 But they do have procedures now, they have staff,
} }- 2 and the last time they were here, they told us they now 3 accept the nuclear culture, they are changing their culture 4 so that they understand that there would be a license 5 application, that they're a licensee and, therefore, have to 6 follow certain. requirements in terms of QA.
7 So I think it's under control, but -- Bill? 8 MR. REAMER: I don't think we want to be too rosy 9 here. The. problem has been -- the problem is in the I 10 implementation. It's not enough to have the planL, it's not 11 enough to tell us that they adopt the nuclear culture, it's 12 not enough to train people. 13 It is kind of proof in the pudding of 14 implementation and the evidence on implementation I think is () 15 still uneven and we're adding staff in the area and it is j
.16 rapidly becoming one of the principal issues, if it hasn't 17 already been, that we're faced with and it's a very 18- difficult issue.
19- MR. WYMER: In some areas, you rely very heavily 1 20 on literature results and how you QA that is a very 21 difficult question. How do you know that the data are l 22- bound? How do you know that they apply to these 23 circumstances? So I think you're right, you've got a real ! 24 problem there. It's not rosy. l 25 What you do'yourself you do QA. i
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41 1 MR. SAGAR: We do follow a strict QA program at 2' the center, which gets audited once a year through ARDI, of (} 3- ' course. So the data we produce we save and it's reflected 4 in the QA program, but that's a very small piece of data, a 5- small fraction that we can bring forward. 6 DOE is the main depository of data. So they have 7 to come out with that part. 8 MR. GARRICK: Your PA comment and discussion of 9 resources, there are four that are of great interest to us. 10 I was also going to raise the question that George did about 11 the distinction that seems to be made of multiple barriers 12 and human intrusion being something outside rather than 13 inside the PA process. 14 We wonder if the PA notion is losing some of its w 15 momentum because of the problems that exist in maintaining a 16 competent and full set of disciplines that are necessary to 17 do that work. 18- We , as a committee, have, of course, been pushing 19 that what we want to -- we'd like to see here is that if 20l there.is some technical aspect that is not getting adequate 21 treatment in the PA' process, that the emphasis ought to be 22 on changing _the PA or hiring people or extending the scope 23 of the. analysis or doing whatever you have to to make the
-24 performance assessment do the' job it's intended to do.
25 When you see things like multiple barriers as a ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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[
; 42
-1. separate item, it begins to look like that's a residue of l
l ['N . 2 Part 60.and the subsystem requirements; that we're still 3 hanging onto this notion of something is being handled l 4 outside the logic engine that has been devised to deal with 5 .these issues. 6 As a manager, I guess, I would ask, is there -- 7 did you see anything -- any problems in this regard? 8 MR. SAGAR: Let.me clarify why the box is sitting i 9 separate from PA. I mean,.PA could be everything. Anything 10 you do could be called PA. 11- MR. GARRICK: Right. 12 MR. SAGAR: There is nothing we do that's not PA. 13 Right? 14 MR. CARRICK: Right. ( ) 15 MR. SAGAR: So anything we do for multiple 16 barriers is PA. But if you read Part 63, it requires you to 17 do PA -- in one of the slides later on, this would come out, 18 which would say, well,. consider all the credible scenarios 19 and the probability, calculate the consequences and it E 20 should be less than X, 25 millirem per year. 21 Then,you say, gee, you have to do a human 22 intrusion stylized scenario, which is not part of this 25 23 millirem. It's separate. But the analysis you would do for l 24 human intrusion is PA. Same thing with multiple barriers. 25 You shall show that there is no single barrier you depend ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. h)'
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1 p 43 1 .upon in achieving the 25 millirem, that you would show that L ('~h - '2' there are more than one barrier, hopefully, at least one 'V 3 from each.one of the major classes of barriers, the natural 4 and the-engineered. l 5 .How would you'show that? Do-a PA. But are all 6' the~ pas the-same? Can it be done in one run'of a code? l 7 Probably not. You would probably use the same TPA. code, but 8 take separate different runs, assuming different values of ; 9 parameters and boundary conditions and so on and so forth to 1 10 make your point, make your finding.
~ 11 That's all that set of boxes is saying. I don't l
12 think it is diluting the-focus on PA; my personal view,. as a 13 manager. But it's part of PA; yet,'you have to do two or 14 three definition types of runs of PA codes to arrive at () 15 those conclusions. I have no problem doing that. 16 MR. HORNBERGER: I guess a follow-up question is 17 -- a clarification. So you-don't feel any pressure to do ; 18 something other than the kind of analysis that's being done. i 19 The reason I ask the question is John Bradehoff, a 20 good friend of yours and mine, gave the Langbine lecture at 21 the AGU and John.comes out publicly'and says, oh, well, 22 performance assessment for waste repositories is just 23 bonkers, it's'a terrible thing to do and that's not what we 24 should'be doing. And'when I talk to John, he doesn't tell
-25 me what we should be doing, by the way.
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l 44 1 But I sense that there is some pressure to dismiss (J~'T. 2 3 the apparatus, what John likes to call the logic engine for doing these analyses. 4 So you don't feel any of that pressure? 5 MR. SAGAR: Well, we feel the pressure. There is
- 6. another common friend, Shlomo Neuman, who says the same 7 thing.
8 MR. HORNBERGER: Yes, Shlomo does the same thing. 9 MR. SAGAR: And'I'm sure'there are other people, 10 if we ask them. I mean, there are people who would like to 11 do very detailed analysis of every process involved in the 12 repository safety. I simply say that, well, we do some of 13 that detailed analysis at the lower level, at the process 14 level, to try to understand what really contributes to the () 15 ultimate risk, and that as practical project people, we do 16 have to concentrate and focus on those items that do 17 contribute to risk and understand those more. 18 I mean, there are all sorts of scientific issues 19 and questions that we could try to answer in this program, 20 but, no,,even if it is a $7 billion program, can answer all 21 those questions. We-have every discipline involved in here. 22' We have hydrology, geochemistry, rock mechanics, you name 23 it, we-have it. 24 So if I'm going to write a book on all of the 25 separately, well, that's almost impossible. ['} ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (,e Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
.q 45 1 I've heard the same comments. I think the l'
[~T s_; 2 comments stem from the fact that-you simply fight too much; l 3 that by the time you get to the system level code, you have 4 developed tables, you have developed simple regression 5 equations, you have. developed simple input / output relations, and those are not real world relations that explain the
~
6 7 process. 8 Well, they're right, it doesn't. But can it 9 bound, can it estimate, can it calculate the risk? I 10L believe they can. I used to be the same way, by the way, 11' . John. I would have said that ten or 15 years ago myself. 12 But I think John and Shlomo ought to do some pas 13 before they make those kind of comments. I know what they 14 are doing and they are contributing to science, I'm not () 15 making fun of them, but unless you have this 16 multi-disciplinary project and you are forced to say give me ] 17 your decision, is this okay or not, you can't be entirely 18 ' dependent upon any one of those disciplines. 19 So, yes, we do feel pressure because we get 20 criticism from all over the place, but that's -- I don't see 21 a way out, as you don't see a way out. 22 MR. McCARTIN: Budhi, could we add something from 23 . Washington? 24 MR. SAGAR: Sure. 25 MR. McCARTIN: One thing. One of the reasons the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
46 1 multiple barriers aspect is in there, we're looking at it as 2 really a compliment to the performance assessment. While -[v~)
- 3. there is a requirement for multiple barriers.in the rule, 4 we're looking for DOE to, up front, explain the multiple 5 ' barriers they have in their system before we go into the 6 review ot the performance assessment, because we expect 7 that's what will be embodied in their PA, and obviously we 8 can't review.everything at'the same level of rigor in their 9 PA.
10 So what they say they're relying on for barriers 11 is what we will hone in on, in part, in our review. So I 12 think the multiple barriers compliments the performance 13 assessment and it isn't looked at as a separate piece, if 14 you will. I) 15 MR. GARRICK: I think, except for me, the 16 committee is not zealous of PA. I think what we're really 17 saying is that the committee is continuously looking for 18 connection between what we're doing and the issue of i 19 performance and the issue of what we ultimately have to I 20 calculate and have as a basis for either accepting the site 21 or rejecting it. 22 So there has to be an integration process. There
'23 has to be a' mechanism of keeping things in perspective, and l
24 that's the. thing that we try very hard to be sensitive to, ! 25 is to avoid getting into a situation where these issues ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
o l-47
- 41. become isolated orfdecoupled_or' separated from this
, ' 2' - integrated issue of. dealing with what we like to sometimes 3- call ~the "so what" question.
- 4. So whenever we see anything that looks like 15 -. something is'being separated, not just because of PA, but
_6_- ;because of the' fact that PA has been assigned the L 7 responsibility'of providing.that integration and providing
' 8, the logic: structure for. leading us to an assessment of.
SL performance,Lwe keep. pounding on.that. And I think, also, 10- we get: a little s concerned if we get caught up in issues of 11 probability and. consequences and trying to analyze those 12 Lissues separate for the same reasons.
'13- The beauty of the CCDF is that it has removad the 14 issue of making' decisions between low probability and high
() 15 consequence and low consegrence and high probability. So in 16 the senee,:the standard has gotten us around.that problem. 17 So we are going to be very sensitive to analysis 18 and activities that-we can't somehow put in this picture and 19 say, well, okay,.this seems to be relevant to understanding 20 _the'overall performance and. relevant to meeting.the 21- standard. 22: This-is partly where we're coming from with
;23 . respect to the igneous activity problem, as well. So it
-j 24 isn't1our' intent here to advocate or become obsessed with 25- one method of analysis?over another, but it is our intent to
~
f ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I
- _ _ - 1
FTe D ' l:; 48
- 1 try our'best to keep things'in perspective and until r
l [" ' ' ., \, 2' something better comes along, the perspective machine is the 3 performance; assessment. 4 MR. SAGAR: And we agree with your statement and I
.5 guess,I-can'only repeat what I'said before, that performance 6 assessment would indeed be used to satisfy any one of those 7~ .four boxes that you'see there. the question of do you 8 do a slight different calculation s not, can a single 9 calculation give.you conclusions for all four.
10- You know, like the human intrusion, the 11 -~ probability has been taken out in Part 63. So we cannot the 12 . risk in human intrusion as stated today in Part 63.
- 13. Similarly,~for multiple barriers, it's the requirement where 14- you're not supposed to assess probability and consequence
(; 15 for each one of them. Part 63 doesn't require that. 16 So~you have slightly different -- it's performance i l 17 assessment, but because the requirement is stated slightly ( 18 differently, you do' performance' assessment, but in a 1 19 different framework. But we agree with you. It does give 20~ you the main thing. 1 21 MR.'GARRICK: Well, I think my opinion of one of 1 L22 the most challenging issues associated with this project is L23 the issue of how to recain a certain flexibility in design 24' as we'refprogressing.towards a' license application, because 25 many of the experts in the engineering design of complex l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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49 1 systems will indicate that one.of the real secrets to being /~' (h / 2 successful on something that's never been built before is to 3 maintain a certain amount of flexibility and not, while your 4 ignorance level is pretty high, be forced to freeze the 5 design in all its detail. 6 I think that puts the regulators in a very 7 difficult: position, but probably in a position where they 8 have to exercise more creativity than maybe most 9 applications. 10 And I know this committee has advocated that we be 11 a little bit more flexible in dealing with design issues 12 than we might in a typical project, where we have a
- 13. precedence and the license is replicated and what have you.
14 So I would guess that will be one of our major g 3-
- 3) challengca, and I know Charles has. talked dbout this quite a
~
15-16 bit. 17 MR. SAGAR: I would say, yes, flexibility is 18 important; in fact, probably a necessity for the success of 19 .the project. It's only can we collect enough data in the 20 small time that they would have between the changes of 21 designs to say something about-that changed design and for 22 us to be able to say something about that changed design, is 23 there enough time. 24 I understand that NRC has the option of putting ; 25 license conditions in the construction authorization that O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \m l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
t 50 1: would'say if X is verified, then we can go ahead; if it's l( 2 not. Then there are -- and Bill can comment more on that -- 3: .that would allow you to build that kind of flexibility.
.4 MR '. GARRICK: This also seemed to be one'of the 5 undercurrent issues in the National Academy's report on 6 rethinking high level waste management.
7 MR. HORNBERGER: It wasn'.t an undercurrent. It's 8 pretty _ prominent. 9- ,MR. SAGAR: Sridhar, come to the mic, please. i 10 MR. NARASI: I don't know whether it's appropriate 11 for me'to make a comment or not. I'm Sridhar Narasi, I work 12 in the waste package area.
.13- But the difference between why we talk about too 14 much flexibility affecting the program and normal 15' engineering practice is that in the high level waste 16 .. program, we have an engineering system that is interfacing
;17- with a natural system, whereas in most engineering practice, !
'18 'the engineering system is interfacing with a process that is 19 relatively well defined. I 20- For example, if you have a chemical plant, you 21 have the process well defined. Now you design the
-22 engineering system to best contain whatever process fluid 23 youchave.
24: But as in this case, when you alter the 25 . engineering system, when you retain flexibility, the natural Q/ ANN-RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ,1 (202) 842-0034
51
~1 -system also changes because it is responding to the
('"\ 2' -engineering. system.
.d '3 So I think there are challenges in the repository-
.4 program that are not the same as the engineering' challenges "5 one meets in a normal conventional engineering practice, and 6_ that's.why we feel that while we do need to have 7 flexibility, we do need to be able to change the material, 8 for example, if some new invented material comes along in 20 9 : years, we have to understand that when new material comes 10 in, we have'to think about the rest of the process, too.
'll So that puts a certain burden'in freezing some 12 parts of the system. That's one of the reasons behind our 13 comment that the design keeps changing, making our job 14 difficult in terms of assessing the overall system 15 performance.
16 MR '. FAIRHURST: Your design is related, I think, 17 more to the waste package, isn't it? What you were just 18= talking about. l19 MR. NARASI:- Right, yes. I'm not talking-about
-,20 L the other --
21 MR. FAIRHURST: That's what_I'm saying, that in'
-22: some ways, I don't see it at quite that sensitivity.
-23J MR. NARASI: Well, there is some sensitivity !
there,:too. l L24L For example, if you take'the concrete liner out i 25~ and you want to put all steel liners, it is going to change I I i("') . '1 ORT RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ' ( f. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
52 1 the performance of many of the systems. 2 MR. FAIRHURST: [~^) Or put no liners in. bl 3 MR. NARASI: Yes. 4 MR. GARRICK: Well, it's certainly true that this 5 one is much more dependent upon natural systems and most 6 engineering projects are not, but it's not without some 7 precedence. The Panama Canal, for example, was an example ' 8 of an engineering project that was very sensitive to natural 9 phenomena and natural environments. 10 Okay. Any other questions? Staff, any comments? 11 MR. FAIRHURST: If John Bradehoff were here, I'd i 12 ask him some. 13 MR. CAMPBELL: I have a question. 14 MR. GARRICK: Yes. f^x I ( ) 15 MR. CAMPBELL: Budhi, in the recent tech exchange ' %J 16 with DOE, DOE gave a presentation in which they were talking 17 about how the 19 principal factors that were a prominent 18 part of the REA and the repository safety strategy are going 19 to change with the new design and they were talking about 20 maybe 30 or even more principal factors that may come out of 21 this with the new design. 22 As it now stands, in the VA, there was, if you 23 will, a kind of a one-to-one correspondence between what we 24 used to call pieces, but which are now subissues, and the 19 25 principal factors. /'"; ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. is ,) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washingten, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
II ) L 53 i 1 How are.you guys going to respond to a 1 2- proliferation of principal factors in this new repository ! - (V'T 3 safety strategy? Are you going to kind of keep what you've 4 - got right now and say those are sufficient to define and L 5 address key issues and then we'll fit their 19 factors in it ) 1 6 or are you going to have to revise your subissues to reflect 7 their.new principal factors? f { 8 MR. SAGAR: Again, other people can respond, but 9' my response would be that we are not rig j' in those 14
-10 . integrated subissues. If we need to ret.' by changing 11 .those, adding to those, subtracting frot . hose, we would do
'12 so. Once we look at 30 or so whatever principal factors are l
13 in their strategy, DOE's safety strategy comes out with, the { 14 first inclination would be see if they can all fit into the () 15 14'we have. 16 Well 7f they don't, that doesn't mean we won't 4
'17 start some other work under a different subissue to respond 18 to DOE's strategy.
19_ So I don't think we are rigid in one way or the 20 other for-that. That's the flexibility we would maintain. 1 21 MR. GARRICK: Any other comments or questions? 22- [:No response.] 23 MR. GARRICK: Well, that's remarkable. We're 24_ 'within three minutes of our schedule. Thank you very much. 25 MR._SAGAR: Thank you very much. 1 (~'N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
f 1 54 1 MR. GARRICK: An. excellent presentation. I think () 2 3-we'll proceed to take our break. (Recess.]
-4 MR.. GARRICK: All right. We'll resume. We're now 5 going to hear from Bill Reamer on risk-informing the 6 planning and prioritizing process. Bill?
7 MR. REAMER: .Thank you. I'm Bill Reamer, Branch 8 Chief for the High Level Waste and Performance Assessment 9 Branch. This is my first occasion in that capacity as a 10 member of the staff to brief before the committee. I was 11 'here a couple of. times before when I was in the Office of 12 General Counsel. I'm really looking forward, in my new 13 position, to interacting more with the committee. 14 I'm going to be. talking about risk-informing the () 15 planing and prioritizing' process. In the interest of full 16 disclosure, I need to say this is not a process that I have 171 actually-experienced-firsthand. 18- 'But I will and I'll describe it the way I 19 understand it. I think what that means for you is that if
.20 there'is a lack of clarity, it may well be because of the 21 presenter rather than the process.
22 In any event, we'll get answers to your questions. 23' Please don't hold your fire by virtue of the fact that
-24 you're dealing with someone who is maybe not as
- 25. knowledgeable as they ought to be.
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E 55 1 But my message today basically is that the
.( ) 2 prioritizing process does exist. It's risk-informed, but it
;3 also is based on many other factors that I will go through.
4 It's responsive to new understandings about. performance, but 5 like anything, it's a process that can be improved and we l 6 look forward to working with the committee to improve it. 7 Which brings me to the recommendation, slide 8 three, performance assessment should be used in 9 .prioritizing. I think it is. The technical assistance 10 program should adopt'a. risk-informed performance based 11 approach. I think it does. And a formal and transparent 12 process should be developed for identifying the most
'13 important areas for technical assistance.
14 We do provide the committee, I think, a good deal
.qO-/ 15 of information in this area, but perhaps there is more that 16 we could provide. There is something that you're not saying 17 that we should do a. better job at in helping you understand.
18 Let me just mention a couple of factors kind of 19 'right at the beginning, which I think don't change our 20 motivation and commitment to be risk-informed, but perhaps H21 they may complicate our task a little. 22 The-first is the relative lack of information, 23' ' risk information that we face. The second is the added 24 dimension of the site being not just a passive host, but 25 really part of the system, what is its contribution to [~} x._ / ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l' 56 1 11 . performance. And the third is the extrapolating of (y -2 short-term data to the long timeframes involved, the
\_/
3 problems that that presents to us. t 1 4 Let me describe first, kind of in general, the 5 prioritizing process. It's basically the budget and 6 operating plan process. This slide captures, in really 7 rough fashion, the budget formulation part of the process. 8 It starts with, it's based on, it's premised on, it proceeds 9 with the.information on risk that's available to us. Of 10 course, this year, we also had the Arthur Andersen process 11 that was directing us through the budget formulation, as 12 well, and I think in July you will get a presentation on 1 13 that process. ' 14- We received certain kind of assumptions, budgeting (y)
-~
15 assumptions that we have to deal with. There are statutory 16 activities that we are required to prepare for. It's things 17 like the draft environmental impact' statement that we have 18 to review, the commitment from Arthur Andersen to do more in { 19 the area of public outreach. But these are kind of givens l 20 that we enter into the process with that we have to deal i 21- with. 22 Against that background, then, we're, preparing 23 our, in a very general sense, our budget. We're identifying 24 our program goals. We are. describing our planned 25 accomplishments. We are identifying activities to carry 1
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fl 57 1 those accomplishments'out. l f"] v. ' 2 All of that is happening to. formulate the budget 3 and that input, that work at the staff level then goes 4 through the High Level Waste Board, which now will involve
.51 -the Deputy Director of the division, myself, and th'e three 6 section leaders from the High Level Waste Branch, and Budhi 7 and Wes from the center.
8 But that review process exists. The interaction 9 goes on. The question about, well, what does the repository 10 performance and risk information tell us where we should be j i
- 11. spending, in general, where we should be budgeting our J
12 resources.
. 13 The' budget formulation decision, of course, is
.14 made by the -- at least.from the staff level, is made at the
-r% \
i
). '15 division and office director level.
16 Once we have our budget input, then we move to
-17 budget execution, budget implementation. This is where l 18- operating plans get developed. Operating plans at an office 19 and a division level, but really operating plans even more 20' detailed at the key technical issue level, where KTI teams 21 identify the activities that they intend to undertake to --
22 which, when accomplished, will meet the operating plan for 23 the division and the' office.
-24 KTI dables and the center operating plans, I think 25- these are documents that we do give'to you, at least that's 1.
lf% ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. !(_g) Court Reporters
- l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034'
58 1 my understanding. But this is kind of a second cut where () 2 3 the risk judgments that inform the budget formulation process get looked at again in terms of actually identifying 4 the activities that we are going to undertake in a 5 .particular year and what money we're going to spend on 6 those. 7 Then there is always the ability to correct, to 8 reprogram along the way if new information justifies that
'9 change.
10 The prioritizing process is -- I'm going to 11 describe it in four steps that kind of proceed from the 12 broad to the more specific. We work against the background 13 of key technical issues that were identified in a 14 prioritizing process chemselves, based on an analysis of () 15 Part 60 and identifying those technical areas critical to 16 making a compliance determination that needed our attention. 17 Against that background, the results of j 18 performance, of DOE and NRC performance assessments are 19 there to -- the information to identify the aspects of the i 1 20~ program having the most significant risk components. ! 21 We, in theory, could drop KTIs or add KTIs, but 22 the reality has-been really more in terms of adding 23 subissues to certain KTIs. The repository design KTI is an l 24 example where we have added the pre-closure subissues and ' 25 the ISA based on this process I am describing. f)' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. A/ s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
59 1 1 Criticality is now a subissue in three KTIs, the ! 2 container license source term, the near field, and the Q(~N 3 radionuclide transport KTIs all have new subissues dealing 4 with the citicality issue. S' In any event, at a KTI level, that's step one. 6 Then within the KTIs, each year, we bin each ' KTI in terms of 7 high,-medium, low. That is a judgment that is certainly 8 informed by risk information, what is the contribution in 9 the base case to risk for a particular KTI, and what's the 10 sensitivity, how does the contribution vary. 11 But there -- I guess it's important for you to 12 know that there are other factors, as well, that come into 13 the decision of whether.a particular KTI is given a high,
~
14 medium or low ranking and these include could it be an issue () 15 in a l'icensing proceeding. We need to keep our eye on that
-16 ball, as well.
17 There'are certain area where we simply have to 18 move forward, have to act. We need to have a Part 63, a 19 regulatory framework. We need to be ready to respond to 20 comments, with comments on the EPA standard. Each KTI needs 21 a certain minimum investment so that we can be in a position 22- to prepare a-review plan. 23 There also is the potential for new information; 24 in this case, it may well be, for e:, ample, design 25 information to come into the calculus of prioritizing a KTI; r ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ( ) Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
, 60 1 what is the likelihood that a particular KTI raises issues ['T Q.l 2 that are -- that pose little or no potential to engineering 3 mitigation, the volcanism consequences KTI; where is DOE 4 with respect to a particular issue in their own repository 5 safety strategy, that's an element we need to have an eye 6 on , and what work do we need to get done in order to make l 1 7 our decisions and how long is it going to take to do that l 8 work. 1 l 9 Then within each KTI, we ask the KTI teams to 10 develop a -- to identify the activities that they will l l
- 11. undertake and to prioritize those activities and to take 12 into account the significance to performance and issue 13 resolution when we do that, and we have the example, for 1 14 example, in container license source term, where we have -- !
() 15 we pulled back on activities involving carbon steel and 16 we've moved forward on activities with respect to C-22. 17 We're also asking KTIs to be aware of what is 18 DOE's need with respect to guidance in areas and we expect 19 the KTI teams will also consider factors like efficiency in 20 getting their work done and whether certain issues might 21 present a higher likelihood of success and be given priority 22 for that reason. 1 23 The fourth layer is actually funding the 24 activities and it's not just a matter of drawing a line and . 25 funding the activities above the line, but it is there are (~N' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (_- Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I L
P 61 1 ~other' considerations. We may want to get an issue closed 2 and'have the -- or a subissue closed and have the ability to L3 do that with relatively little expenditure of money.
- 4. There are programmatic considerations apart from 5 'this.
I mentioned the EPA standard and the need to allocate J 6 resources in that area, notwithstanding the lack of a
.7 standard, a proposed standard that we can comment on. 1 1
8 Funding decisions also will reflect the status of 9 the technology. Long lead time items may get priority just 10 because of that fact alone. 11 We need to consider available budget, lab work may ' 12 be cheaper-and get funded over field work which is more 13 expensive. We have our own, of course, need to maintain our 14 competence in all areas to be ready for the licensing n 15 ( ). proceeding and in some cases we may want to devote more 16 resources to bolstering our case or to eliminating 17 unnecessary conservatism from a particular analysis, and l 18 then, finally, of course, there may be a logic to actually " 19 sequencing activities where-low items need to get done 20 before high priority items can go forward. ! 21 Now, I mentioned earlier the process of 22 prioritizing each KTI into high, medium or ~ ,w, and your 23 slide 12 is information on that. I won't spend any 24 particular time on that, but if there are questions, we can 25 certainly get to those. [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut-Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
62 1 Then I believe we were asked to provide an example 2 and the repository design'KTI is the example we chose. The ! 3 first slide, slide 13, the timeframe here is FY-96 to '98, 4 where'the information is saying that' repository design is a 5 low contributor to post-closure performance. 6' We also think that pre-closure activities, which 7 are similar to. activities we license elsewhere, can be 8 deferred. We're facing reduced budgets, we see DOE as 9 reducing.its own funding in the area, and in that timeframe, 10 we assign a low priority to the repository design KTI. 11 How does that get implement.ed? It got implemented 12 through
- rmination of our research program. Center support 13 was terminated, core staff reduced in this area. Our own 14 oversight of DOE design, the design program was cut back,
[ 15 and what minimal effort did continue was carried'on in 16 another KTI. 17 More recently, in the timeframe of FY-99 and 2000, 18 now we see the information telling us that there are issues 19 under this KTI that are relevant to performance. We see 20 DOE's own activities in design accelerating and the design 21 alternatives coming. Our budget is increased in these years 22 and the combination leads to a higher priority being given 23 to the repository design KTI. 24 How does that get translated into actions? Well, 25 .we see it in our own work, initiating work on the ISA for r G ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Q Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Aventle, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i i
63 1 pre-closure, in the--post-closure area, in doing analyses (~ \ 2 with respect to repeated seismic loading and thermal G 3 mechanical effects, stability. Our increased efforts in the 4 area of overseeing DOE design and QA, which we've talked about a little bit earlier, and in updating work in terms of 6 updating modeling to include effects on waste package 7 corrosion, and participate in the international code 8 validation project, specifically:with respect to DOE's 9 involvement in that project for the Yucca Mountain drift 10 scale heater test. 11 So the conclusions are that we have a prioritizing 12 process. There are a lot-of factors that are involved. It 13 is risk-informed, but there are other factors -::at are in 14 there playing, as well. It's a process which is responsive ( 15 to change to new information. 1 16 What's our path forward? As I said, we can always 17 improve in this area and we're looking forward to the 18 committee's help in helping us to improve. The other thing 19 that's pushing us is the implementation of the Arthur 20- Andersen recommendations, which pretty clearly focused on 21 finalizing Part 63, the risk-informed regulation, completing 22 the Yucca Mountain review plan, and getting ready to 23 implement it, and maintaining and using the PA tools to 24 focus our program. 25 So that completes my presentation. We can start
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r. l 64 1 on the questions. 2 MR. GARRICK: We'll maybe work at the other end.
)
3 Charles? 4- MR. FAIRHURST: I was interested, right in the 5 beginning, you said the geosphere was an integral component 6 of the system and not simply a passive host. 7 Do you want to expand a little bit on that, as to 8 what you mean by that? 9 NR. REAMER: Well, I guess what we're just 10 suggesting there.is the added dimension in a repository 11 system based on multiple barriers, where part of the i 12 contribution to performance is going to be from the site, 13 that that's perhaps distinguishable from storage of spent 14 fuel, _ where you don't really look to the site to provide (Aj 15 that contribucion. 16- Anyone else, Wes or anyone from the staff who
- 17. wants to jump in, please. I want to be sure that you get 18 your questions as completely answered as possible.
19 MR. FAIRHURST: This is not a reference to 20 seinmicity or anything like that or volcanism. 21 MR. REAMER: No. No. I was not intending to 22 refer specifically to that. 23 MR. FAIRHURST: I don't quite follow it, but it's 24 not that crucial. 25 MR. McCONNELL: Keith McConnell. Maybe I can ! l (~' (, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. { Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue,HNW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 , (202)~ 842-0034 I J
F 65 1 help. I think it's more of a focus on the interaction
~
2 between the near field' environment and the waste package. 3 You can't view the waste package in isolation from the 4 geology. I j l 5 'MR. FAIRHURST: Okay. Chemistry. L i 6 MR. McCONNELL: Chemistry, yes. Chemistry. 7 MR. FAIRHURST: That's not the natural system, is 8 it? I mean, for example, putting in concrete liners and j 9 changing the chemistry that way, but it's the waste package 10 that is the thing that's chusing it. 11 What you're saying is it's the combination of what 12 you put -- the disturbance is still an engineered 13 manufactured thing. It's not the natural system. I think 14 it's just semantics. (h 15 MR. McCONNELL: Right, right. One may be 16 I dependent on the other, but still you have to view it in l 17 terms of the system. 18 4 MR. FAIRHURST: You're saying that there are 19 interactions. 20 MR. McCONNELL: Right. 21 MR. FAIRHURST: I understand. Thanks. And the 22 other one, the ranking on potential licensing vulnerability, 23 that's another one. 24 MR. REAMER: I think that's just saying is this an 25 issue that could come up in the proceeding, notwithstanding l [N s) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025-Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202) 842-0034
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66 li
-that we think, based on our own work or DOE's work or all 4(}
A.I 2 the information that we think can kind of be put to bed, but 3 we think that there is a high likelihood that we're going to
-4 be engaged on this by others in the process, and we want to
,5 be aware of that and take that into account.
6 MR. FAIRHURST: You mean other than DOE. 7 MR. REAMER: Anyone that's involved in the 8 process. 9 MR. FAIRHURST: I'm trying to think of what that
- 10. l means. Do you have an example of something where you may
]
11 say you may be vulnerable? 'l 12 MR. REAMER: I'm not sure vulnerable is the right 13 term. What I see is more -- it's asking the question, do 14 you have any information, do you have an opinion on the i l[ ) 15 likelihood that this is going to really be an issue in the 16 proceeding by perhaps someone else and do you feel 17 comfortable in where you are in being able to respond to-18 that. 19 MR. McCONNELL: Perhaps I could provide an example 20 for this, too, and that may be faulting, the actual faulting 21' I at the site. While in risk terms faulting itself may not be 22 a significant contributor to risk, we know that there -- as 23 people have told us and as the center has identified, there 24 are at least 32 active faults out there. 25 So the information on faulting needs to be fairly
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67 1 comprehensive, because others in the process have identified i p 2 that as a concern. I think we need to have some focus on 3 that. -It might not be a significant contributor to risk, 4 but we have to be perceptive enough to realize it could come
.5 up as.a significant factor in the process, the licensing 6 process.
7 MR. FAIRHURST: But you know where those faults 8 are now. 9 MR. McCONNELL: Right. 10 MR. FAIRHURST: And you know that they're active. 11- MR. McCONNELL: Right. 12 MR. FAIRHURST: So you know, from an engineering 13 point of view, what you can do as far as placing the 14 repository with respect to that, right? () 15-16 MR. McCONNELL: Right. MR. FAIRHURST: So are you saying it's because an 17 intervenor or somebody may ask you to pay particular 18' detailed justification of why you took a particular position 119 or not? 20 MR. McCONNELL: Yes, in essence. There are other
.21 factors other.than interaction with engineering. There's 22 also the issues.that' Jerry Zamansky has raised about seismic 23 -pumping and the effect of flow and tectonic, the combination 24 of flow and tectonic.
25 So while they might not be significant l () ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ! _ ' _) 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 68 l, 1- contributions to' risk, per se, as we've identified it in our h {} 2' ranking of various.subissues, .it could come up in the
'3 licensing hearing and it's something that we need to be 4 prepared for during that process.
5 MR. FAIRHURST: Because in the IRSR process, you 6- presumably have come to some agreement with DOE on what are 7 the key issues. 8 MR. McCONNELL: Yes.
'9 MR. FAIRHURST: If you have not come to an 10 agreement, you have at least identified --
11 MR. McCONNELL: Right, and we've compared them. 12 MR. FAIRHURST: Identified that these have fallen
- 13. by the wayside.
14 MR. McCONNELL: Yes. 15 MR. FAIRHURST: You're saying that you're sort of 16 preparing for someone not in that dialogue to bring it up. 17 MR. McCONNELL: Right. 18 MR. FAIRHURST: Okay. 19 MR. GARRICK: Ray. 20 MR. WYMER: In one of your earlier viewgraphs, you 21 identified the particular engineering challenges;- 22 ' exceptionally long feriods of performance, exceptionally 23 large spatial extent, and high uncertainty in features, 24 events and proce sses. 25E I couldn't agree more that those are severe
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i 69 1 engineering challenges. What I don't have a clear
/^ 2 1
understanding of is how you deal with it. It's almost a k.)) 3 philosophical question, of course, and the philosophy of the 4 approach, because you're never going to really narrow these 5 down to where you'u like to have them. 6 So could you say a little bit more about your 7 general approach to these challenges? 8 MR. REAMER: I think.that may be attributing more 9 than I intended in the slide. What I'm just saying in the { 10 slide is that there are complications, aspects of the tasks 11 that we face that's maybe different from, for example, the 12' storage task. ' 13 MR. WYMER: Well, that's true, but you do have to
-14 deal with them.
() 15 MR. REAMER: We do have to deal with them. 16 MR. WYMER: And if you could say something about ! 17 the philosophical stance you are taking.in dealing with
~
18 those, it would be helpful. l 19 MR. REAMER: Could you be a little more specific? 20 MR. WYMER: Well, exceptionally long periods of 21 performance; for example, there you have the outstanding 22 example is probably corrosion, and that requires, as 23 'somebody ment'.oned earlier, I think Budhi did, the 24 extrapolation, the long-term extrapolation into the future 25 based on short-term experimental results and extraordinary [~\ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporten 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014
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70 1 complexity of the environment, with all kinds of subtleties ()
%J 2 that will affect corrosion, evaporation, concentration, 3 bacterial action, if any.
4 You're never going to really resolve that. That's 5 a specific example of the long-term period of performance. 6 So what position do you take? 7 MR. REAMER: I think the first thing we want to 8 see is how is it going to be handled by the applicant or the 9 potential applicant, because we need to have something to 10 respond to. 11 MR. WYMER: Yes, but you have to have something in 12 the back of your mind that you think is rational to start 13 .with. Okay. 14 MR. McCARTIN: Bill, could I offer a thought? ((~) v 15 MR. REAMER: Yes. 16 MR. McCARTIN: In terms of our TPA code and the 17 approachec that you'll hear about later on in the day and 18 tomorrow, I think where we have -- where there appears to be 19 a lot of uncertainty, we certainly have an approach that we 20 think is conservative because of that uncertainty. 21 And there are a lot of areas, you're right, of -- 22 and some of that is differences in our approaches between 23 ourselves and the DOE and as Keith indicated, we're ready to i 24 analyze several things, like faulting. We have analyzed 25 undetected' faults in the PA and it doesn't affect (~'s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIAT3S, LTD. ( -) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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p 71 1 performance a lot. So that gives us some confidence that i !{} s_- 2 ' faulting -- if we haven't picked up all the faults, it 3 doesn't appear to be a serious problem. 4 Also, we've looked at juvenile failures. We tend 5 to have a much higher number of juvenile failures than the 6 DOE. Maybe we're more conservative. 7 So there are a lot of areas that I think that as L 8 the uncertainty gets higher, I think we need to look at some 9 of the what ifs, and that's what our code, as you will see 10 in the next couple days, we have a lot of different ways to 11 look at the problem, so that we don't have to necessarily -- 12 we only have;to resolve areas where there is a big impact on 13- performance. 14 ! MR. WYMER: It seems to me you're sort of in a box (A) 45 between' uncertainty,.on the one hand, and excessive l 16 conservatism on the other hand. 17 MR. PATRICK: If I could follow up on that. Wes
'18 Patrick. I think that is a dichotomy, but I don't think 19 it's a dilemma.
20 MR. WYMER: I see. Okay. L 21 MR. PATRICK: And make = fine distinction there. 22 I think the comments that you made earlier, Dr. Tlymer, are l 23 correct from a scientific point of view. We won't probably { [ i- 24' ever have the uncertainties narrowed down to a level of 25 comfort from a scientific or perhaps even an engineering 1-p
- ()
(~T ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 I L Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 e i
L 2 7 72 1 point'of view. 22 But we can get there and I think that's really the 3 thread that we're trying to weave through this, is that on 4 the one hand,.we try to have as much as possible of the work 5 be' risk-informed, as Bill has pointed out, but on the other, 6 we know that not every member of the public, not every 7 member of the scientific and engineering community buys the
$'] 8; risk paradigm, for'a number of reasons, one of which is that 9 they don't have any say and there is a whole body of 10 literature dealing with that.
11 So what do we do in the face of that? We try, 12 first, to. bound as much as we can and if, with a 13 ' conservative, perhaps even an unreasonably conservative 14 bounding solution to a problem, we still see, as from a ( ) 15 regulatory point of view, that the repository will function 16 within the requirements of the regulation, from the 17 .- regulator's point of view, we're done. 18 Now, the Department of Energy may want to come in, 19 because they have to pay for this thing, the utility owners 20 have to pay for this thing, this repository, they may want 21 to move that boundary a'little closer to reality. 22 We may want to move that boundary a little closer 23 'to reality so that we can get a better understanding of 24 those_ levels of performance that we would truly anticipate. 25 It may be'that our bounds are so broad that we're not I l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, ; (~)'i ( Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 j Washington, D.C. 20036 j (202) 842-0034
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..' 73
' l' comfortable with them. In those cases, we take a more O- 2 mechanistic approach.
L) 3 And in each of the'KTIs that you're going to hear 4 from as the next couple of days play out, they're going to 5 be giving you.some examples of where that happens. It will 6 be-risk-informed. In fact, I think as Budhi pointed out ! 7 - this morning, we're very close to being risk-based, although 8 the Commission has'a position not to make that final step to ! i 9 a truly risk-based situation. ! i 10 But, again, just the short story is we start by ( 11 bounding and then if that looks to be a very expensive j 12 solution, if that looks to be something that we feel the 13' Commission would not ultimately be able to say we have, 14 ' quote, reasonable assurance, unquote, then we begin to pare () 15' away by taking a more mech'anistic approach to whatever j 16 features, events and processes might be involved, keeping 17 always in our mind, as-Bill has pointed out a couple of 18 times here, 'that there is a-large body of stakeholders out 19 there and they may want additional proof. That's what he 20 calls a licensing vulnerability. 21 In those cases, we would go beyond what a risk l L 22 calculation or a visceral determination, as a scientist or 23 an engineer might suggest is necessary. 24 I don't know if that helps at all, but you were l 25 a'sking for a philosophical underpinning. ; 4 i (9 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I' \s l Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
1 74 1 .MR. WYMER: I just wondered if you had taken a -- ( 2 I wondered if you had adopted a philosophical stance. 3 MR. PATRICK: Well, t?4 ,'s it. Start with the l 4 bounding. . Tim may want to chime in and clarify that, but we 5 start with bounding, because we are resource limited,_and 6 then come in with a more mechanistic approach as we feel is 7 appropriate. 8 MR. WYMER: Okay. Well, I'll wait till I hear the 9 discussion on KTIs. 10 MR. McCARTIN: May I make a comment from this end? 11 One of the points of the whole question, which I think has 12 been kind of ignored, is the fact that on this project, we l 13 really have used a tremendous reliance on natural analogs to
.,4 get some of the data. This goes back to some of the l
() 15 original concerns on the exceptionally long timeframes, 16 spatial concerns and that. 17 It's the whole aspect of the natural analog that i 18 has played a tremendous role in this program. 19 MR. WYMER: Okay. Fine. That's all I have. t 20 MR. GARRICK: George? 21 MR. HORNBERGER: Bill, you started, what you 22 pointed out in one of your early slides was some of the l 23 recommendations that we made, and, to paraphrase, you had 24 said that PA is used in prioritizing, that risk does inform 1 l D 25 the TA program. And the third one I wasn't quite as clear i
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75 1 on, but I think that what'you basically meant to say is that j 3 2 [')T you do have a formal and transparent process and, of course, l i 3 this.is the difficulty that we perhaps have been having, and ; 4 that is the transparency of the process. !
~
5 And I recognize it's difficult and I don't know 6 even know if this is a fair question, but I'm going to ask 7 it anyway. Bureaucracy, and I'm not using that in a 8 judgmental way, organizations tend to be self-sustaining. I 9 That's just the nature of organizations. 10 If you look at universities, they are the worst 11 example of bureaucracies. To get rid of a department at a 12 university.is just unthinkable. It doesn't matter what the 13 subject matter is. The experts are there and they will 14 claim that it's important. iN
-(ur ) 15- So you don't have the luxury of being able to 16 continue a department of classic studies long beyond its 17 useful life.
18 On the other hand, you do have the management 19 difficulties of saying, look, we have a very good group of 20 people here and we know we're going to need them in the l 21 . future and just because this year the priority is low in 22 terms of risk, we certainly can't just disband the 23 organization. 24 So I see this as creating some kind of tension for I 25 you and-it's under your resource allocation, parenthesis,
/"')
(m,/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 76 1 apart _from risk bullet. The difficulty that I guess that I
}
2 have is how you work to make that transparent in your 3 decision-making process, so that people know why you're
'4 making these decisions, how you're making them, what your 5 long-term view is.
6 I think that this is perhaps what we haven't been 7 able to_come to grips with on the transparency issue. 8 Do you have any thoughts on how you could help us? l 9 MR. REAMER: When I' looked at the third 10 ' recommendation, that's where I felt kind of like, gee, I l l 11 think I need more from the committee kind of telling me what l 12 is it that we're not doing that you'd like to see. To some l 13 extent, the discussion may have to take place in the context 14 .of specific KTIs, where you see the priority that we've i r~ ( )j 15 given it, you see the money that's being spent, you see the 1 16 activities. We are providing you that information and then 17 perhaps a give-and-take can help elicit, well, what really 18 is behind this funding decision, what really is behind that 19 priority, why are you spending money in this area given what 20 we understand to be the effect on performance. 21 So I don't know, in a sense, I'm sharing -- I'm 22 agreeing with you that I think as to the third 23 recommendation, we're not as confident that I know that we 24 are responsive to that recommendation, as I feel like, as to
- 25. the'first.two,-I think we may not be doing well, but are ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 77 l' trying,to do it. L(Y 2 So I kind of -- a' favored lawyer technique, turned
\s ,/~
3 ~ the question back to you. 4 MR. HORNBERGER: And I understand that trick. I 5 use it all the time myself. 6 MR." REAMER: -Is that a trick? 7- MR. GARRICK: It's a ploy. 8 MR. HORNBERGER: That's all I have. l 9' MR GARRICK: All right. Just a couple things. 10 On:viewgraph four, you talked about the factors influencing 11 scope and priority and the first bullet was lack of 12 available~ failure-risk statistics. 13 I guess I just have more of a comment here than a 14 question,.in that it is true that at the total system. level, (("')s 15 i there isLa tremendous lack of information --' excuse me -- ! 16' there is a tremendous lack of information of the type that l
.17 'would' allow us to do specific subsystem analyses. j l
18 On the other' hand, one of the things that the 19 field of reliability engineering has taught us is that using 20' that argument is sometimes over-used and sometimes even a 21' copout-on the basis that.most systems, once you take a --
-22: even if they're one-of-a-kind or first-of-a-kind, once 23 you've decomposed them into their component parts, you see 4 l
l 24 all kinds of opportunity-for data collection and data 25 analysis that you don't see at the total system level, iT : ANN RILEY &-ASSOCIATES, LTD. k/ Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 ' Washington, D.C. 20036-(202) 842-0034 l l . l ,
l 78 I 1 So my comment is, really, I hope that somebody has O)^ 2 looked at this system phase by phase or component by w ! 3: component or in groupings that make sense, from an
-4 information and data standpoint, to really get a handle on 5 . where the data is missing and what -- how that is influenced i 6 .. in the.' uncertainty as a function of the component of the 1 7 " total-system.
8 Again, I'm reminded of about 30 years ago being 9 asked to do a reliability analysis of an 800-megawatt ) 10 ~ turbine generator, for which there was'none in the world, 11 and, on decomposing the system into its 26 subsyatems, found 12 an enormous amount of relevant information 5 13 So I hope there is a lot of that going on. I hope i 14 that people are looking at the environment, for example, or 15 t'he waste package on the basis of what we do know, which is 16 probably a great deal, and trying to pinpoint the data 17 information rather than being too casual about that as a 18 major obstacle. 19 The point of the whole comment is that data is
-20 often used as the principal reason for not doing something 21 and seldom is the real reason for not being able to do 22 something.
23 Let's see. The other thing I wanted to ask is, on < 24 viewgraph seven, step one, still, you talk about analysis of 25 -Part 60.63 uncertainties as a factor in evaluating issues ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. b Court Reporters
'1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
I 79 1- most.important to repository-performance. 7"'T 2- Can you elaborate'on that a little bit? I think I
'd
- 3 :you have partly.
4- MR. REAMER: Yes. I was really-intending more a 5 -historical-comment here, let's remember where the KTIs came 6 from initially. They came from an analysis of Part 60. ,3, 7: They tried to~ identify from Part 60 kind of. key issues 8 affecting compliance, affecting a-determination of 9 ' compliance, key technical issues. So there was already a 10 prioritizing process that went.on in. developing the list of
'll the ten KTIs.
12 So.what we're dealing with today is more based on l 13 performance assessment _information, how do we make ! 14- adjustments there. In theory, we could add or subtract ( ), f15 ' KTIs. ~In reality, what we're talking about are adding or 16- ' subtracting subissues in certain KTIs. 17 MR. GARRICK: Is that why that's on tho list on 18 viewgraph 12? Is it now a KTI in and of itself, Part 63?
.19 MR. REAMER: Part 63 is a KTI, yes.
20 MR. GARRICK: Any other comments, questions? Yes, 21- Charles. 22 MR. FAIRHURST: One that relates to what you were 23 talking ~about here, the 800-megawatt reactor. I'm trying to 24 see_how to phrase this. Somewhere in these, there is the 25 problem of maintaining competence of people, keeping people (7
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Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
80 1 . actively involved and the priority of their particular- [ 2 interest may go from high'to low to medium and you're 3 talking about having cut back at one point and realizing 4' later you'needed to give'added. emphasis. It's not so easy
-J 5 to get back up to speed. !
6 Then'another -- what is NRC's role in this? On i i l' 7 the one' hand, you want to! bring people in who are competent i 8 .and bright and you want.to give them things to do, so that 9 their mental abilities don't go to sleep. 1 10' At the same time, NRC'has a role as reacting to l
'11 what DOE proposes. Where did you find ---maybe it's not a
'12 question to ask you. Where do you find the balance between
- 13. actually-coming up with your own ideas of how things should .I 14 'beidone in-Yucca Mountain and, on the other hand, letting l
() :15 DOE make all the calls? 16- You see it's'different in different areas. In L 17- some places, you see very active contributions coming from L 18 the NRC staff. 19 MR. REAMER: I guess, conceptually, I don't see 20 how we-can be an impartial reviewer of a license 1 21 application, where we have been a sponsor of a particular 22 approach in the proposal. So I would see our role very l limited in the pre-licensing phase in terms of suggesting
~
l 23 i I L 24 and much more defined in terms of preparing ourselves to i
'25 review a proposal and responding to what we see as a l
[. ! e s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ! (s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 , Washington,'D.C. 20036 l (202)L842-0034 l
81 1 proposal or a potential proposal or whatever comments we (}. 2 have that would be helpful to the potential applicant. l 3 MR. FAIRHURST: It's difficult. 4 MR..GARRICK: Any other questions? Staff?
.5 [No response.]
6' MR. GARRICK: Thanks, Bill. Welcome aboard. 7 You need no introduction, but will you introduce 8 yourself anyhow? 9 MR. PATRICK: I will indeed. I'm Wes Patrick, 10 President of the Center, and have the task of explaining to 11 you a little bit-more about the development of capabilities 12 here at the center. That's going to be our predominant 13 focus. My understanding is you have ample access to 14 information about the staff of the NRC, so as Bill and I () 15 have discussed this in preparing, we're going to focus 16 primarily today on the development of the capabilities here 17 at the center. 18 Having said that, though, I would point out that 19 we have a number of features of the way we operate that I 20 think are very beneficial to the program overall and a 21 number of NRC staff have taken advantage of. Most 22 specifically, we have a very active staff exchange program, 23 where our staff go up and spend two to six weeks at NRC and 24 they likewise come down here. 25 It's important for both of our staffs to be able
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k's,/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
82 1 to do that. We benefit most from learning more about how [~ 2 NRC operates as an organization and learn some of the more O} 3 programn.atic things that we need to know to be able to serve 4 them effectively. 5 They, on the other hand, have opportunity, and it 6-speaks to a point that was made just a few minutes ago, they 7 have the opportunity to come down here to engage in work in 8 our laboratory areas, to accompany our staff members out for 9 selective field work for confirmatory studies and the like, 10 which I think has been very, very helpful and very 11 beneficial. 12 The presentation outline I'd like to follow today 13 is going to focus predominantly on organization and 14 staffing. We're going to look a little bit at our approach
,m v)
( 15 to problem-solving, as well. Let's see here if we can find 16 a bullet here. The approach to problem-solving throughout 17 the NRC program. 18 We're going to be looking at capabilities here at 19 the center within that overall problem-solving approach. 20 It's a four-step process that we follow there. 21 The overview of the programs that we support at 22 NRC is going to be given predominantly to give you a little 23 bit of background of the breadth of the activities that we 24 do and you might ask why is that important within the 25 context of ACNW's review. It's important, as I hope I'll be O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (,) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 1
83 1 able to explain to you, because it exposes our staff to a
\ 2 (d broader range of programs at the NRC and enables us to staff 3 up in some areas where fractional full-time equivalents 4 would be otherwise available.
5 The first two presentations that you heard today 6 focused predominantly on what we do and why we do it; 7 priorities of the work and so forth. We're going to focus 8 now on the people, the process we use, some of the aspects 9 of facilities, hardware and software and so forth that are 10 made available to be able to execute the program of wor.
- 11. that has been ranked according to the prioritization system 12 that Bill Reamer just described.
13 In covering these topics, I'm going to attempt to 14 address some of those issues that are noted in your () 15 self-evaluation and in some of the letters that you have 16 provided to the Commission and to the staff over the last 17 year or so. 18 There are several of these topics that have been 19 recurring themes.and I'm hopeful that as our discussion 20 plays out here, if the questions aren't answered, at least 21 ;- we'll be getting closer to answers in some of those areas. 22 It's important to understand, I think, a couple of 23 things as we start out. One, the organizational role of the 24 center. This is not particularly new material that's shown 25 here on this slide, but I think.it's important for us to go s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [^) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
84 1 'back over it once again. A number of committee members have (( 2 changed since we've last had an opportunity to brief you on
- 3. the subject, and I just want to hit on them quickly.
4 The first is that we focus explicitly on NRC's 5 mission. These, by the way, these first bullets are things 6 that are in the charter, in the~ official statement of how 7 the center is permitted, on one hand, and constrained, on 8 the other, in its operations. 9 That explicit focus on NRC mission is 10 extraordinarily.important, both for selection of center 11 staff and maintenance of center staff, and also in the 12 selection of experts, consultants, subcontractors and the i 13 like, and we'll talk about that a little bit as things go 14 on. () 15 Second, we're charged with assuring that there is 16 a long-term maintenance of technical assistance and research i 17 capability provided to NRC. In all of the program areas 18 that need to be supported, the charge of a Federally-funded 19 research and development center is to be essentially 20 'self-sufficient and self-sustaining as we play out over I 21 time. 22 That is a process that is regularly reviewed, 23 audited by a variety of organizations, and is a requirement 24 under the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. So we take 25 it very seriously. It is a foundational aspect of our work, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 2 84 - b3
85 1 both legalistically and to make us programmatically
/"'i 2 responsive to what NRC has charged us to do.
O 3 The fourth bullet there, we are also charged with 4 providing a very contralized capt.bility. We found in the 5 early days of the program, and for those who aren't 6 familiar, we were originally set up in October of '87, so 7 we're about to celebrate our 12th birthday as an 8 organization. From those very early days, we saw that 9 bringing the full scope, the full breadth of capabilities 10 within one organization had a very powerful effect on 11 integrating. 12 People talk about integration a lot, but we find 13 that as programs get bigger, as they become more 14 geographically dispersed, they become intrinsically () 15 16 difficult to organize, to integrate, and to operate. Now, my friends at Rockwell who were involved in 17 developing the space shuttle, of course, always challenged 18 that such a simple little program like the repository 19 program would present such great challenges to us, but I 20 think for those of us who have watched how the regulatory 21 part of the program has operated over the years and 22 certainly -- and, again, no criticism intended here -- I 23 think it's really a fact of life with regard to the source 24 of people who work on this kind of a program. 25 When we look at the Department of Energy side, we O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
f 86 1 see the tremendous challenges that they have had in 2
' integrating across their organizations as time has played 3 out. So that fourth bullet is one that we do not take 4 lightly. It takes an extraordinary amount of work on NRC 5
staff's time'and managing us and cooperating and working 6 with us and also on our time. 7 Key aspects, and I'll be talking about those a 8 little bit later, the state-of-the-art laboratories and the 9 unique field and analog test sites, we think, are a very 10 important aspect of those capabilities.
- 11. Much of our discussion so far this morning is 12 focused on performance assessment and people usually push 13 the fast-forward button there and get to the point of doing 14 the actual numerical calculations.
() 15. Well, there is a lot of data, as Dr. Garrick 16 pointed out in his recent remarks, there's an awful lot of 17 data that has to underlie the development of those models, 18 the populating of the databases that are going to be used l 19 for running the ultimate calculations. 20- Then, of course, as was discussed a little bit 21 earlier on in Budhi's presentation this morning, there are 22 ' the more mechanistic process level modeling activities that l l 23 also require a good deal of data. { 24 It's equally important to understand what the 25 limits on our role are as well. We evaluate, we probe, we i
., ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. !
Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 87 1 challenge, we, where possible, confirm what the Department (~') 2 of Energy is doing with regard to site characterization. We v 3 don't do site characterization. We probe, we challenge, we, 4 where possible, confirm what the Department of Energy is 5 doing with regard to design. We don't do design. 6 Our senior management on the NRC side continually 7 poses the question to us, are you carrying the Department of 8 Energy's water. It's an extremely sensitive area. They're l 9 concerned. Another statement we often here is are you 10 getting out in front of the license applicant, are you ahead 11 of the Department of Energy in this regard. 12 1 think Dr. Fairhurst hit on it in his remark just 13 within the last ten or 15 minutes here, that is a challenge, 14 that's a balance point that we have to strike. () 15 16 Why do I mention it here in the context of capabilities? It affects, in a very direct way, the kinds 17 of people we are able to attract, the kinds of people we 18 need to attract, and that we need to maintain within the 19 center to be able to support the NRC. 20 Hot design people want to continue to be in hot 21 design positions. We don't do design. NRC doesn't do 22 design. Consequently, our tendency has been to move more in 23 the direction of design analysts rather than people who have 24 fundamental backgrounds in design. l 25 There are some things that we have been able to do
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(,,) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
88 1 and are on the verge of doing that try to strike a () Q) 2 compromise there, try to bring in more of the direct design 3 expertise to be able to, within the context of this 4 organizational role, try to be able to go a little bit 5 further in the direction of design, and I'll be touching on 6 those a little bit later on and I'm expecting at least a few 7 questions and comments during the question and answer part. 8 There are a variety of areas also where 9 controversy is expected and in those areas, we do probe th'e l 10 limits. We not only look to what is often called 11 confirmatory work, but we move into more of an area that one 12 might call exploratory work. These would be areas where we 13 feel, based on our calculations, based on perhaps some l 14 limited evaluations of the literature, that there may be a (7- ) 15 significant risk in an area. 16 We don't have the data to run the risk 17 calculations. Perhaps we do some bounding calculations that j 18 give us some further insights that this may be an area worth 19 exploring. l 20 In cases like that, where we're not able to carry 21 the day with the Department of Energy, we're not able to 22 convince them that this is an area where work is needed, 23 we'll move a little bit further. We'll move a little 24 further into the design analysis area. We'll perhaps do 25 some laboratory testing on a phenomenon that people have not [~N ANN RILEY &-ASSOCIATES, LTD. V Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
89 1~ evaluated as thoroughly as we would think appropriate.
/ 2 We may mcve to the field and do some studies V) 3 there. This is what we would call exploratory type of work.
4 Both of those are recognized by NRC as being appropriate, as 5 being necessary.. Interestingly, they are two items that are 6 in concert with what NRC has done in the reactor program; 7 primarily, to focus on confirmatory, checking out, seeing 8 whether.what the applicant says is so, but, second, in those 9 areas of potential safety vulnerability, to probe, to 10 ' explore some new areas and.to determine whether those are, 11 indeed, risk significant before closing the door on them or 12 going to the Department of Energy, making the case that this 13 is an area that needs some additional study. 14 So this is also an area where we risk-inform the () 15 process and we use those risk. insights to somewhat modify 16 the organizational role that the center normally fulfills 17 with. respect to the NRC. 18' The second chart, probably unreadable on the 19 screen, of this resolution, shows our basic organization 20 here at the center. You will note that there are five what 21 would be called' traditional staff level sorts of positions. 22 These are director type positions that are staff functions. 23 Unlike most organizations, however, those staff 24 individuals, with the exception of quality assurance and the 25 administrative area, those staff level positions are
/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
[ f
\
90 j i 1 directly involved in managing projects. ! 2 The lower tier shows the five elements, as we call V(~'). 3
'them here, that are involved and responsible for conducting 4 the preponderance of the. work that's undertaken here at the 5' center in support of NRC.
6 In the next several slides, I want to talk about ! 7 the sources of expertise that we do bring to bear on the 8 overall NRC program. I will do this kind of in layers. 9 First, to talk very broadly about the three sources of labor I 10 that we use'in undertaking our studies, and then I'll peel 11 away a little bit and look first at the center expertise, l 12 and then I'll group the consultants, subcontractors, and ! 13 ~ SwRI, Southwest Research Institute, our parent organization. 14 You will notice that almost one quarter of the (Nj 15 labor that we bring to bear on supporting NRC in the high 16 level waste program comes from outside the core center 17 staff. 18' We have listened to your comments in this area, we 19: have tried to be responsive.to them and bringing support i 20 staff in in a variety of areas, and I will speak to that ir 21 more detail later. ! 22' This is about double our historical utilization of 23 consultants, subcontractors and institute staff. By the 24 way, I will just call those three consultants from here on 25 out. Those are distinctions that we made for purposes of
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Court Reporters. 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
s 91 1 how we bring people under contract, but otherwise they
N 2 should be transparent to you.
}N 3 Let's take a look at the center expertise in a
-4 little bit greater detail. Hopefully, your color rendition 5 there on the chart is adequate for you to follow along here.
- 6. I just want to make a few points here. First, ;
\
7 that none of these areas of concentration, these eight areas ' i8 of concentration, as we call them, are remarkably low. That 9 reflects our basic philosophy of trying to have a critical 10 mass, for lack of a better term, in each of those areas. 11 Because of budgetary limitations, we almost never have quite 12 as many as we'd like to have in most of the areas, but we l
- 13. have tried to achieve a minimum critical mass in each of 14 those areas.
A () 15- When we say that, what we' strive to do is to have 16 at least one quite senior individual in each area, then 17 intermediate and more junior level people to balance that 18 out. That gives us a. good mix in terms of seniority of i 19 staff and, also, looking at a program of this duration, it 20 gives us the potential to bring people along, to nurture 21 them, to help them grow both programmatically and 22 technically, so.that they are there as other members of the 23 staff may move on to other positions, be promoted out of 24 this particular organization, or retire or whatever might be 25 the case. /'^ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite-1014 Washington, L.C. 20036 (202)'842-0034
92 1 Second, I would point out that there is an
, 2 emphasis on those areas that we judge to be of greatest 3 need. Now, you can't walk, cross-walk these eight areas of 4- concentration directly into the key technical issues, but I 5 think you can see the general sense of things there. The 6- largest number of staff, the largest percentage of the total 7 staff, and I got this right, by the way, Dr. Wymer, 8 geochemistry is right on,the top.there. And it would 9 maintain its alphabetical position, I might note.
10 Hydrology, material sciences, performance 11 assessment, and the general area of geology. I've listed 121 structural, tectonics, volcanism there, but being a 13 geological repository, as one of my NRC colleagues likes to 14 say, we do have a strong emphasis in geology. () 15 Some of_the smaller groups, the mix of chemical, ; 16 . mechanical and nuclear engineering, there has not been a 17 long-term.large demand for those skills on this particular i 18 -program. So that's a smaller percentage, about ~s ix percent, 19 less than -- well, about-a' third of the PA' number. 20 Rock mechanics, mining and geological engineering 21 has been a smaller area of demand over the last three years 22 and we're just now beefing up in that area, as has been 23 mentioned before. 24 The systems engineering administration also 25 ine'"ded in that group is quality assurance and also our ~/~) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. k/ m Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
93 1 computer sciences information management skills. So that's N [d 2 3 why that one may look a little bit bigger than you might perhaps'otherwise anticipate. 4 A key point.I'd like'to make, though, is that this ) 5 mix has indeed changed as programmatic needs have changed j 6 and it has changed as technical needs across the program 7 have taken place. 8 By'that, I mean, if we back up two or three years, I i 9 a combination of programmatic demands and budget changes ' 10 came into play in fiscal year 1996 and as a result of that, 11 we took that opportunity, very negative opportunity, to 12 adjust. We selectively dealt with trimming our staff during 13 that period of time to match the priority rankings that you 14 saw Bill Reamer present just a few minutes ago. 15 Likewise, then,- as the budgets began to be 16 restored in '99 and 2000, we were able to tailor the i 17 restaffing of the center to match what we now believe to be- I 18 the most critical issues and we're doing that in a
- 1. 9 forward-looking manner.
20 MR. GARRICK: How do you distinguish performance l 21 assessment? Asking it another way, how much of the 1 22- performance assessment would be earth science, for example? f 23 MR. PATRICK: Earth sciences in what sense? i 24' Having an initial degree in that area as opposed to some i 25 engineering area?
.[~}
v. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
94 s 1 MR. GARRICK: I'm assuming that earth scientists
. 2-model things ~as other scientists and engineers do. So I
~
- 3 would assume that the performance assessment team has a 4 considerable number of those kinds of people that model 5 ground water travel time and what'have you.
6:
-I'm just trying.to really understand -- I'm trying 7- 'to turn up the microscope on this. It looks like about 8
'maybe 70 percent.of this is earth science and 30 percent is 9 everything else. Is that right?.
10 MR. PATRICK: In. fact, I would encourage you, with 11 that analogy, to turn down the microscope and back off the 12 -- 13 MR. GARRICK: Well, I'm not saying that's bad, 14 because we're trying to design a repository or license a 15 repository. 16 MR. PATRICK: But you're raising a very important 17 point'and it's one that is often answered with a rather 18 -superficial response that we're all performance assessment. 19 But-that is truly part of the answer. 'We're all performance 20- ' assessment. We all are looking at -- if you turn the 21 microscope up, you flip to the last chart in this sequence, 22 chart 22, which I am not going to project, but it's there, 23 in your packet, this details out a little over two dozen 24 ' specific areas of expertise that are on the staff, and in
-25 each of those areas, there are from one to seven or eight ..\,,
p) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Conn 6:cticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202)' 842-0034 1
95 1 people on staff. /~T 2 Neither this chart nor the pie chart with eight O 3 areas of concentration is breaking people -- breaking the 4 mix of staff down according to the KTI they're working on, 5 and that's the important point that I'd like to make here. ! 6 That's why I said back the microscope out a little bit { 7 further, because in performance assessment, there is heavy 8 contribution, day in and day out, charging those accounts, 9 if you will, helping build those models, abstracting 10 geochemical, material sciences, hydrological processes into i 11 the TPA code. I 12 There is very heavy contribution from those 13 individuals. So these are more a disciplined or a 14 technology-based grouping of these areas of. expertise. They () 15 _are not cross-walked into the KTIs, per se, in the sense of 16 a total resource lcading. i 17 Stated another way, if you look at that slide 22, 18 there are very few of the individuals listed in that chart 19 who, in any given month, wouldn't_be doing some work on 20 performance assessment. 21 MR. GARRICK: So having said that, having accepted 22 _that philosophy, how many people in the PA 17 percent have a 23 terminal degree in the earth sciences? 24 MR. PATRICK: Gordon? 25 MR.-WITTMEYER: Two. Two people, i N / ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
- j. 96 1 MR. GARRICK: And how many are in the group?
2 MR. WITTMEYER: Seven, currently. 3 MR. PATRICK: A group of seven. Nuclear 4 engineers, health physicists, there is one with a couple of 5 degrees in environmental-sciences that's in there, that's
- 6. done transport and dose' calculations, risk assessments, 7' including prior life risk assessments related to.the Hanford 8 reservation and the disposal or non-disposal of waste at 9 that. location. Quite a mix of individuals.
10 Because performance assessment draws so heavily 11 :upon systems thinking and systems knowledge, you will also 12 find people with backgrounds in petroleum and chemical 13 engineering.or mechanical engineering with an emphasis on 14 fluida that will~also be in that group. () 15 16 And our staffing profile reflects that, as well. The positions-that remain _open, Gordon, as I recall, are 17 health physics, dose risk assessment, and -- 18 MR. WITTMEYER: Two more performance assessment 19 engineers, modelers. 4 20- MR. PATRICK: Right. And those two PA engineer 21 modeler positions are advertised very broadly to be in
.22 essentially any" field of engineering. We're looking for
.23 numerical skills, risk assessment skills, to the extent that 24 they may have them, and process thinking, systems thinking.
25 MR. GARRICK: Not to push this too far, because
)
'(s.
\ ,/
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington,.D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l 97 lL' we've probably pushed it further than we should, of the
)
2 seven, who would be classified as the expert or what 3 expertise is there on the waste package design itself? 4 MR. PATRICK: One individual actually in the I 5 seven, plus there is the larger group of material scientists 6 who are heavily involved in developing the process models, 7 getting sufficient confirmatory data to evaluate whether l 8 those models are adequate or not.
~9 MR. GARRICK: Thank you.
10 MR. PATRICK: .Any other questions on that? I know 11 this is an area of continuing -- 12 MR. GARRICK: The important po. int here is that 13 these are not mutually exclusive. 14 MR. PATRICK: That's correct. That's correct, and
/~N (V 3 15 that's why I say de-focus that microscope.
16 MR. GARRICK: And systems engineering, we could 17 have the same kind of questions. I don't know why you had 18 lumped systems engineering with administration, but that's 19 another question. 20 MR. PATRICK: The individual with the degrees in 21 that count, he's maybe wondering that, as well. 22 I will be making, I think, a couple of comments 23 later on-that may come back to that. 'We may want to explore 24 that a little bit further, as well. And by the way, I 25 realize'the first couple presentations, we did the CN ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. " -() Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
98 1 presentation'and then broke in with the questions. I'm i I 7 2 comfortable doing it either way. In. fact, I'm probably more
- [Q .
3 comfortable.getting' questions as they go along, because, if- I ( 4 nothing else, then you. share the responsibility for running 5 over the schedule. t
- 6. But let's go.to the-next slide here. For each of l
-7 Lthese - .for both~of these' areas now, since I'm going to 1 8 break-them into consultants and center core staff, now I I 9 want to give you a little bit additional background t
10 With respect to our core staff, those eight q 11 technical areas that I. mentioned, a little over two-thirds 12 are Ph.D.s, terminal degrees, about~21 percent with master's 13' degrees. So-you see there's.relatively little residual 14 .there with bachelor's degrees. We average about 19 years 15_ experience.in bachelor's, which is one of the ways that we
'16 -- orie of the statistics that we count here at the
- 17. institute.
18 The core center staff's involvement is very broad 19' .and very deep. I'm personally:very proud of the staff that 20: we've been:able to assemble here and maintain largely over 21- the 12 years that the center has been in existence.
- 22. Notwithstanding the rigors of changes in program and budget l
23 1and what have you. 24 A, number of our staff are themselves called upon 25 to function in peer review capacities. They're members of l p ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES., LTD. d Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 : Washington,.D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
99 1 national and international communities and peer reviews and 'IV ) 2 I think that speaks for itself with regard to the regard 3 that the international waste management community has for 4 these individuals. 5 I mention international waste management 6 community, other international groups have called upon our 7 staff also to be involved; for instance, with regard to 8 reactor activities, with regard to siting of critical
- 9 facilities broadly and the earth sciences hazards, seismic, 10 volcanological and so forth.that'are presented to those. So 11 those are aspects I think that are objective measures of the 12 staff expertise.
13 Staff is widely published in peer-reviewed 14 literature. We haven't provided you with listings of those p) (, 15- in some time, but if you're interested in some more paper on 16' that, we can certainly do'that. And, of course, patenting 17 and copyrighting is just kind of a normal aspect of the 18 activities we do. 19 I think most of you are aware that our earth 20 scientist team, our structural geologists won an RD-100 21 award last year. Those of you who are familiar with that 22 proceas, it's a-rather rigorous evaluation where'the top 100 1 23 or the 100 most technologically significant developments ! 24 brought to the marketplace in any given year are granted I 25 this award. i l (' (- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
100 1 Some large DOE laboratories, with thousands of I .m ( ), .2 employees, might knock.down two to five of these in a year, 3 .just to kind of put the thing in context,.where we're 41 sitting here with 50 or so people. 5' 'So I'm not promising you we'll have one next year 6 .or the year after, but it's, again, a reflection of the
.7 . quality.of work and how the marketplace, as well as our
'8 peers, use the work.
9 MR. HORNBERGER: Wes, since you invite it, let me 10 break in here. There is widely published and peer-reviewed 11 literature, I think, .that we are probably on record I J 12 somewhere as saying we think that this is an important l 13- aspect. Do you have a list broken out of just 14' peer-reviewed, and not abstracts and not presentations? r~i (_,) 15 Because I don't need a volume this thick, but if you have a 16 -- that's good. I would appreciate getting it. 17 MR. PATRICK: Yes. 18 MR. HORNBERGER: And the o;her question that I 19' have.along this line is in the technical assistance program 20 that we're here talking about, it's not clear that NRC would l 21: necessarily view publications in peer-reviewed literature as 22 being as important perhaps as the ACNW would see them. { 23 I'm just. curious, do you have difficulty in 24' satisfying the customer here, NRC, on one hand, and still j 25 doing work that leads -- that is reviewed -- the important f's ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \s / Court Reporters 1025' Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
p. 101 1 part islhaving it reviewed _by people outside.
-;O 2 MR. PATRICK: Right. Well, I --
again, Bill can
.J 3 chime in and correct my. thinking here or my perceptions. I 4 have been very, very pleased with NRC's openness in this 5 regard and, again, I look for objective measures of these 6 things and I.try to provide you with objective measures so 7 that you know it's not just Wes Patrick talking, but it's 8 'something you can go back and touch base on.
l 9 'NRC, about three years ago, decided that this was 10 important enough that in our operations plans, which is one 11 of the steps in the prioritization process and in the l 12 assignment of activities, in those operations plans that we 13 prepare annually and update usually once or twice during the 14 year, specifically call.out as milestones peer-reviewed (f 15 publications and that's -- to me, that's really putting 16 management attention that these things are important enough 17 that.they deserve to go into the count; that, among other 18 things, not only gets it out into the literature, but we 19 function under a very rigorous evaluation process by the NRC 20 and they factor those into our award determinations. 21 So they have really put teeth into showing that 22 these are very important aspects to the program. We're very i 23 pleased to see that, particularly after -- when the research { l 24 program was there, the research philosophy is a little 25 different than the licensing philosophy, and that was an ' I~N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I' I 102 1 important thing for us as a center to see maintained in the (~")
\_/
2 new program and eventually seen it strengthen. . 3 MR. HORNBERGER: Good. I 4 MR. PATRICK: Anything else before we go forward? 5 The next couple of charts give you a little bit of a 6 timeline with respect to center professional staff profiles. 7 The top curve there is the staffing, the bottom one is the l 8 anti-staffing, the attrition part of the equation. You will 9 note that we came near a peak just about the time the budget 10 was cut. There is something about that process. 11 We were within -- we actually had two more people i 12 on staff and the authorized NRC funding level at that time. 13 We had taken a little risk and were rewarded accordingly by 14 Congress in the fiscal '96 budget. g.s () 35 It should not go without noting that that 16 reduction in staff was substantial and not without 17 considerable pain and upset. Those kinds of reductions 18 cannot be sustained very many times in an organization like 19 ours, and we won't be able to attract and maintain staff 20 over the long haul. 21 We are aware of that, NRC is aware of that. We 22 kind of wish some folks in Congress were a little more aware 23 of that, so that those sorts of upsets don't occur. 24 The good news here is that you will see we're 25 coming back up to those authorized levels rather quickly, as 1 (} (_/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 i
103
-1 I will show in the slides a little bit later on. We've been /Y A./ -
2 able to do that not because the entire budget has been 3 restored, but because NRC has found other areas where we 4 have been able to use that expertise across other programs 5 and we have, at the center, also been able to do some 6 business development outside of NRC, at NRC's authorization. 7' That has enabled us to have a larger staff and one l 8 that can be supported by the repository program, so we're
.9 able to have a broader mix and greater depth of expertise 10 than what we would be able to have otherwise.
11 MR. WYMER: This tells us about your professional ! 12 staff. How much support staff do you have? 13 MR. PATRICK: There are about -- across all areas 14 of support, including computer technicians and lab techs and
.() 15 things of that nature, there are about another 15-16 people 16 that are involved. That brings up another point, though, 17 that I should also make. We have found it very productive 18 to have students from local universities involved throughout 19 the year and from distant universities to be involved in the ;
20 summer session when they are out of school to support our 21_ program. 22 If you look at that list of publications that we 23 .give you, you will find that it comes in blocks of 24 . publication. We will typically get a lot of field and 25 laboratory work and design analysis done during the summer
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i. 104 1 - months and then fidish that up as publications in the
'2 c.
October-November-December'timeframe. So that's been very 3' productive for us,.very productive for the students, as l I 4- well, f 5 .We're just kind of breaking it up by quarters. { 6 $ You can -- not to go into it in any detail. You will just j 7 see that'it's a' continual readjustment process that we go $ I
'8 through, both;in setting the goal for staffing and trying to 9 achieve that goal. As we stand here today, we're at about 10 .53 people on staff. We have a couple of offers out right 11 now that'we hope will come to fruition, as well as a number i
12 of interviews taking place. In fact, I think there are i 13 three out right now officially. l 14 MR. FAIRHURST: When you have a number like that, 15- the plan and the actual,'in the plan,'are they all 16 authorized?' You have money for them if you can find them. 17 MR. PATRICK: No. Actually, I have authorization 18 from my boss at the institute to exceed what we currently 19 anticipate NRC will'be able to fund in the high level waste 20 program. 21 Our anticipated funding for the high level waste 22 program is 46, possibly as high as 48, depending on how the 23 numbers come_through, and we have other NRC programs that 24 are possibly available to support some of these other 25 ? individuals, and commercial that I alluded to earlier. O _D-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue,-IM, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
I i 105 , i 1 So there is -- we take some risk in hiring and the
) 2- attempt to be able to account for accommodating for 3 attrition.and also to get the breadth of staff that we need 4 to have available.
5 Anything else on that? 6 Let's turn now from the center staff to look at
~
7 the external experts and the role that we call upon them to
- 8. play'.
9 You~can break these sets of diamonds down into
- 10. several categories. The first one is where we use more 11' external labor than in any of the other areas. I'll define 12 three areas here for you. Those skills, augmenting our core 13 staff, those are basically the same kinds of skills, the 14 same. level of expertise, with some exceptions, as what we
() 15 have within the core staff. That's where we bring in 16 people, outside expertise, because they either have a
;17 special area of competence that we don't have on staff or we 18 are just short of labor in that area.
We may need -- we may 19 have' lots of geochemistry.and chemistry to do, so we may 20 bring in some external labor in that area to augment that. 21 So those are, I guess, what I would call like kind 22- sorts.of people' coming in. Maybe a hydrologist, we have 23 ' lots.of hydrologists, but this person's expertise may be in 24' a particular aspect of hydrology that we need, we need for a 25 short period of time, for something less than a full-time ( i
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1 106 I equivalent, and we'll gain access to their expertise l l
/~~'i 2- accordingly. l k s/
m I 3 The next three bullets, those are typically either l 4 greater depth of competence or experience in the area or -- 5 and/or different skill areas would be brought to bear, and I 6 will be giving an example here in just a few minutes in that l 7 regard. 8 And the final one, we have a variety of 9 organizations that give advice and oversight. Some of them, 10' like yourselves, that are functions of the NRC. Others 11 which we bring in to provide us with independent oversight i 12 and advice. l 13 In the case of the center review group, these are 14 people who have great longevity in a variety of programs,
/ \
15 (v) come from industry and academia. They do look at our 16 technical programs, but they're there not primarily for 17- their technical expertise, but because of their 18 organizational development and managerial expertise and we 19 do have an oversight board for the center that fulfills that 20 role. 21 Before turning to a specific example or actually 22 two parallel examples I'd like to give you, I think it's 23 important to spend a little bit of time on some of the 24 constraints that the center operates on with regard to 25 accessing external experts. ($ (,_,/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
107 1 I guess the ones that I would highlight among I\ 2 these are the first, the fourth and the last. Conflict of V 3 interest considerations is a major topic here at the center. 4 We have procedures in place, very rigorously applied, that 5 constrain who we can gain access to. 6 A second thing, under the fourth tick there, is 7 that people may have great technical expertise in an area, 8 but we find that we need to calibrate that technical 9 expertise to make it directly applicable to things that are 10 meeting ~the regulatory needs of the NRC. 11 So there is a time, a role involved in training 12 and adapting both our core labor and the external labor to 13 the regulatory culture that's involved. We're going to be 14 very interested to.see what kind of feedback we get when we (v ' 15 go through this total system performance assessment code 16 review for just that reason. 17 We have conducted reviews like this a number of 18 times in the past. We have reviewed our rocks mechanic 19 -- program, our waste package program, geochemistry program, 20 and perhaps a couple others that aren't coming to mind just 21- now,*and invariably, when we bring in the outside experts, 22 we get lots of good ideas', we get very good critique of the i 23 program, and those are the positive factors.
' 24 - But along with that, we get some things that, from 25 a regulatory point of view, are a bit off the mark; in fact, t
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108 1 sometimes very much off the mark, recommendations to pursue ( 2 an academically very interesting avenue, but back to the
)
3 discussion we had earlier, Dr. Wymer, may not really be 4 within the regulatory context. It may be far too decailed 5 in terms of seeking a mechanistic answer that is appropriate 6 for making or supporting our regulatory decision. So that 7 comes into play. 8 The last one, and this is one that speaks to a 9 particular comment that the ACNW has made in one or more of 10 its letters, and that deals with a concern that you have 11 that we would have these experts available to decrease our I I 12 vulnerability during licensing. l 13 That coin has two sides. The thing that we see, 14 and we have experienced over and over again, is those (f 15 outside experts are extraordinarily difficult to keep tabs J 16 on. In fact, our preponderant result here has been that 17 we'll bring in a team of experts, they'll do an 18 extraordinary job. The peer review report will be published 19 and usually within a year, most of all of those peer 20 reviewers have been seen for their value by the Department 21 of Energy, picked up by the Department of Energy, and from 22 that point on, cannot work for us in any capacity. That has 23 been repeated over and over again. 24 I think they got four out of five that did the 25 volcanism peer review. I think they got three out of five ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (~')') K. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 109! from the materials and waste package peer review 2 So it's
-- we look at ,
that in two ways; one, those in-depth, 3 detailed, 4 far more e.':perienced experts will undoubtedly be 5 needed in the licensing process, but our capacity to keep them available is almost zero. 6 It's hard enough to keep core staff for long periods of time. We think we've got a 7 good handle on that. That's been going very well. But 8 outside experts, 9 maintaining that access is just not there. We just haven't seen it. 10 MR. GARRICK: Wes, 11 I guess I can really appreciate 12 your arguments for why one and the last one are especially important. 13 I'm struggling a little bit with the fourth bullet, as to why that's so important, given that the 14 regulatory implications are something that somebody else can 15 manage. The technical expert doesn't necessarily. 16 If you put the focus on I want the best technical 17 expert possible, and I don't want 18 to burden that technical expert with trying to understand the regulations or the 19 regulatory culture, I would think you would want a lot of 20 those kind of people. 21 MR. PATRICK: 22 We do, and, in fact, the regulatory culture does not come into play in the - really in the 23 selection. So perhaps from the standpoint of access to the 24 external experts, it's not that big of a play. l 25 But what do you do with their results? I You know, their individual i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
I 110 i l 1 comments become part of a very public document and now we .{ l i 2 and the NRC have to deal with those comments. i 3 Fxpert A said that you need to do 15 years of i 4 study on sinatever. There may be no risk significance to it. 5 It,may be a technically very stimulating, very perplexing 6 problem. Within the regulatory context and the regulatory l 7 culture, we end up needing to' deal with that, just as a fact 8 of life. 9 MR. GARRICK: I understand that, but I guess I'm 10 suggesting that that ought to be something you can manage, 11 that.you can put in context. We see that debate going on 12 all the time of adequate science versus best science. We're ! 13 not in the science business. We're in the business of 14 regulating, DOE is in the business of building and 15 operating, and the whole idea of the risk-informed approach ; 16 is to give us a template within which to address the - 17 question of how important is it. 18 So I would think that's something you could manage 19 in such a way that it doesn't become as difficult as at 20 least my impression is you're suggesting. 21 MR. WYMER: I can rele.te to that one very well 22 personally. I'll give you a little bit different l 23 perspective on the approach you've been talking about 24 I've had a hard time changing my approach. For 25 about 40 years, I was in the problem-solving business; how l I f. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters g 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 i
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111 1- do you go about-solving. I want to design the darned 2 repository. ( I don't want to -- 3 MR. PATRICK: Comment on it. 4 MR. WYMER: And it is a culture thing and it's 5 very difficult and I'm sure you run into that. 6 MR. GARRICK: Well, this whole committee has had 7 that problem. Thank god we have a staff that tries to keep 8 us on a regulatory. perspective. But I don't think that 9 takes away from=the effectiveness of the committee is my 10 point. I think that.it's probably to our advantage to not 11- be encumbered with the process of licensing unduly. That's 12 not what really what we're necessarily involved in here,
- 13. being experts on regulations.
14 We're here to answer and deal with fundamental O). g 15 questions about science and engineering and what have you. 16 MR. PATRICK: But the more focused the commentary 17 is within a regulatory context, the more helpful it is to us 18 and to the NRC staff. 1 19 MR .. GARRICK: And that's exactly why I'm such a 20 great believer in the risk assessment thought process, 21 because that's the great focuser. If we do it right, that i 22 provides us with the template that deals with the question 23 of how much is enough, how safe is safe and so on.
.24 And we haven't quite arrived at that stage of 25 application, but we're moving in that direction. So that's f~\
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)
- l. l 112 1 -- my only point is that I think you could scare away some l l
2 extremely competent people by putting too much emphasis on 3 you need to understand the regulatory culture because that 4 -- the same kind of people that can reach very deep for you l 5~ into the world of abstract science and what have you are 6 often turned off by that kind of suggestion or constraint.
~7 That's my only point. And you made the point
- 8. yourself that you want to get the best people possible and 9 you're a technical organization and you need those kind of l 10 people that'.can bridge the gap between theoretical l 11- abstractions and-useful applications.
12 MR. PATRICK: Just to clarify, as we go to the 13 next slide there and start looking at a particular example, 14 the -- when we select external experts for the review O g 15 process, their familiarity with regulations does not come 16 into play. In fact, the second tick here -- and by the way, l 17 let me start, before I go to that. 18- These are -- I selected these two examples because 19 they are parallel in many regards. They're both dealing 20- with total system performance assessment code, but with two 21 -quite different aspects of that code.
. 22 The first, the development of the code, where we
~
23 are short of horsepower, short of expertise in particular l 24 specific areas, and we have brought in staff that are junior 25- or'on par with our own staff. And the other case, where we j l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O() Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
113 1 .want to bring'in top-flight technical people in about eight 2 different areas, to come in and review what we've been ([ 3 doing. 4 And you can just walk through those comparisons 5 and contrasts that we have here. The key point with regard 6 to the earlier comment is that'this -- reviewers are 7 selected or self-selected by a process that we follow. We 8 set out a very broad polling and we define the areas where 9 expertise is going to be needed for this particular peer 10 review and then we ask those individuals who are polled to 11 give us their top one or three or five, however many they 12 want, candidates in that area. 13 Then we take that-collection of votes, if you 14- will, plot it up. _It's amazing how neatly it breaks out. () 15 Then we do an evaluation then of conflict of interest, to 16 make sure that they can work for us, and we begin the 17 . selection process or the contracting process based on 18 self-selected peers. 19 We do that for a variety of reasons; to try to get 20 the very best, people who are recognized by their peers as 21 being the best, and also to take ourselves out of the 22 process and thereby to-avoid any unintentional biasing that 23 might cona.in, contacting our favorite professor or our 24 ' favorite industry expert. 25 And you will see that the results, again, they 1001 RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. f')N N_ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
IV , m 1 I ! i 114 l 1 tend to be much more senior, they tend to be more than the (). (_/ 2 30 years or so level of, experience instead of 20 or so. l 3 We can point out that those who aid us in-4 co-development at the level that we're talking about, we 5 don't anticipate that those folks will be involved in the 6 regulatory process in terms of licensing, they operate under 7 our direct supervision and probably would not be key figures 8 I in any hearing that might be held. ' 9 That's probably not the case for the peer 10 reviewers and, consequently, we don't have joint products 1 1 11 developed out of our peer review processes. Each peer j i 12 provides his or her own unique comments and that was built 13 into the process at the direction of the Office of General 14 Counsel, because one cannot query, one cannot probe a joint ( ) 15 findine One wants to be able to go in and find out what 16 did this expert say, why did they say it, what was his or 17 her basis for doing it. 18 But that's just a little example of how we bring 19 external experts into play. In neither case is selection 20 driven by familiarity with the regulation, but to the extent 21 necessary, those who are involved in development would 22 obtain necessary training, so that their work is focused as 23 appropriate. 24 I want to just make a couple of brief remarks
-25 about this overall approach, because it is central to the l I /'"\ - ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ;
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l 115
'l capability'that we are developing here at the center. We
() 2_ use this process in all of our-work, not only the high level 3 waste program, but the other NRC areas that we support. 4 We've also carried it over into the commercial work that we 5 do. 6 The starting point, not too surprisingly, is 7 trying to define the problem and not just a simple statement 8 of the problem, but really to draw on and to draw out all of 9 the information that's available. 10 We find that that is always important, but it's
-11 particularly true.in the NRC licensing arena, because the
.12 applicant, not us, is required to make the safety case.
13 Having done that, we start with a systems 14 analysis. .Our notion, our concept of what systems
- (O j 15 engineering is. And then to implement a solution, we draw 16 upon a combination of the lab experiments, numerical 17 analyses, and field investigations and inspections to 18 provide the information that's necessary, 19 I'd like to spend just a little bit of time on 20 this systems analysis question. The first two blocks, we're 1
21 looking at physical systems, trying to understand, to l 22 . decompose the elements of the physical system that we're ! 23 dealing with. 24 We have done formal functional analyses of a 25 variety of those components. The most rigorous analysis l [~ - ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I \s- , Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0334 I
L. 116 1 that:we did and published in those two first steps was done
- j. .
2 under Part 60. l ( Part 63, as currently proposed, jus quite a 3 different-regulation. ;The' third step is to tie physical
'4 systems to the regulatory context; how do the functions of I
'5 _these systems and components-affect or potentially affect
! 15 : health'and safety, and that's'where we"begin linking the 7 physical system into the regulatory context. 1 8 Retrospectively, our analyses of the regulations 9 were done in' greatest detail on Part 60. As we' began te 10' approach drafting:Part 63, we took a prospective approach l 12 there~instead of writing the reg and then trying to sort out
.12 how many: regulatory, institutional, and technical 1
13 uncertainties.it had. :We had'that framework in the backs of 14 ' our mind asithe regulation was being draf ted. ( - 15: Historically, Dr. Garrick, we drew upon aerospace 16_ and: military' systems,: systems engineering techniques, and 17 that's part of'the answer to your question of how did the 18 . systems engineering folk end up over there with 19: administration and information management systems and the l 201 like. l-L 21 / We had a number of people from aerospace and from l l 22 ' Naval systems that were on staff up through fiscal '95. ) 23 .They.were heavily involved in conducting what we called 241 systematic regulatory analyses, developed the original suite 25- of, I don't know, 100 to 150 key technical uncertainties, i i h-
.N_/. .
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117 l l 1 which were. subsequently consolidated into these ten key 2 technical issues that we're currently working with, the 14 3- integrated subissues that Budhi presented er.rlier today. 4 When the budget-cutting process took place, a 5 management decision was made jointly here and at the NRC 6 that that' mode of regulatory analysis had been sufficiently L 7 completed, that those staff largely would no longer be 8 needed within the program. 9 What was needed_instead was to bring in more of
'10, the reactor line of thinking, the PRA kinds of thinking, and i
11 that that would be accomplished by maintaining a high level i 12 of staffing in the area that we labeled performance
.13 assessment, back on'that pie chart. i 14 So it was through that transition process that l i 15 w) most of the systems engineering expertise, again, derived 16 from aerospace and Naval systems, was phased out of this '
l 17 effort. The one individual who remains in this area is
-18 heavily involved in related regulatory development 19 activities and licensing activities supporting other parts l 20 of the NRC program; for instance, development and analysis 21 of regulations for uranium recovery facilities and the like.
22 But that's historically what happened there and 23 why that perhaps is a confusing artifact in terms of systems i L 24 engineering versus performance assessment that exists to l 25 this day. I don't know if that helps.
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118 i 1: MR. GARRICK: Well, I have a philosophy about '
- 2. systems engineering'and it may surprise.you. My experience (v~].
3 has been that the best systems engineers are what one 4 professor'once called the T-shaped engineer, and that's an 5 engineer that was an expert, a specialist at one time and 6 had all of the advantage of the kind of discipline you have 7 to go through to be a genuine expert and to really be an 8 authority on some engineering discipline or some specific 9 application of an engineering discipline. 10 Then the T comes from having done that and having 11 felt they've done that long enough, began to broaden out. 12 I found those systems engineers to be far more 13 ef fective,1 f ar more knot +1edgeable about the complex systems 14 than the so-called universities that issue a bachelor's (). 15 degree in systems engineering, most of which I found to be 16 pretty useless. 17 And I think that's what the committee is 18 struggling with. We're sort of of the opinion that what
.19 we're looking for here is a great honorable profession here i i
20 of systems engineering that comes from having made your mark 21 somewhere, but beginning to broaden your perspective of 22 problems and context of those problems. l 23 The aerospace is a reasonably robust resource for 24 systems engineering, but you'll find that most of the really 25 top-notch aerospace systems engineers also are T-shaped 1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. , \ Court T- rters 1025 Connecticut Atenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
119 1 engineers rather than the engineers that have come out of 2 undergraduate school with a label of systems engineer. 3 So I think that there is probably -- I don't know 4 of'many-really good young sys'tems engineers. This is 5 something that comes from reputation, from time, from 6 experience and then broadening of your interests and your 7 activities, more than just being able to l'abel and train
~
l 8 somebody_to-be that. 9 MR. PATRICK: I think you'll find no bachelor 10 level systems engineers at the center.
'll MR. GARRICK: Right.
12 .MR. PATRICK: That gives you some modest -- 13 MR. GARRICK: In fact, I think the nuclear 14 industry is probably a better resource for systems engineers 15' of the. type we're talking about than the aerospace l 16 engineers, because the nuclear industry is very 17 interdisciplinary. It's not nearly as requirements-oriented 18 as the aerospace industry is. If it isn't a requirement, 19 they tend to not do it. That was not the way the nuclear 20 industry evolved. 21 It evolved as an extremely interdisciplinary 22 industry and some of the most distinguished systems 23 engineers on our planet have ~ ;aie out of the nuclear 24 ' industry as a' result of that. I don't know of anybody that 25 was a better system engineer-than Eugene Vigner, for ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O\ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I
E ) 120 1 example, and he understood the whole concept of ()
\s ,/
2 interrelationship of complex systems and hardware and what i 3- -have you. 4 1k) .that's where we're coming from, I think. 5 MR. PATRICK: Well, you got off path, Na,al 6 nuclear. 7 MR. GARRICK: Well, that's a classic example. 8- Another honorable discipline, in my opinion, is what you 9 called earlier design analysis. The best design analysis
- 10. analysts that I've had in my employ were people like Nuclear 11 Navy people who had a flare for analysis when they got out 12 of the Nuclear Navy, were not satisfied, and decided to go 13 to graduate school and either get a master's or a Ph.D., and 14 those people were extremely effective design analysts,
( )- 15 Lbecause, first, they understood the design and then, second, l 16 they understood how to model it. 17 MR. PATRICK: Let's move forward to slide 19. The 18 ones I'm skipping are ones P. hat you're going to have an j 19 opportunity to see tomorrow afternoon during your lab and 1 20 other facility discussions. i 21 I'd like to just come back to these slides 19 and i 22 0
- 2',.to emphasize the point that I had made lightly before.
23 This indicates the breadth of areas where we're supporting l 24 -NRC, a range of programs that the staff is involved in. 25 Why do I mention these? I guess a couple of
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121 1: reasons. One, it has an awful lot to do with the continuity ff~}
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2 of support that we're able to provide to the NRC and, 3 second, tied in directly to that, it gives us an opportunity i 4- for our engineers and scientists to be involved in a broad 5 range of problems, broader than if they were limited only to 6 the repository program. 7 We find that to be stimulating, to work in these 8 different areas, stimulating from a couple of perspectives, 9 an important one of which is that most of these other areas 10 are items where licensing activities, licensing actions are 11 taking a vent shcrt timeframe. So people are able to do 12 something, bring it to closure, see the results of their 13' work,.and that's a good thing to include within the overall 14 mix, from our perspective, and that's really the only points r ( 15' that I wanted to make there.
\_
16 JustLto wrap it up, we feel we have developed a 17 rather substantial independent capability and that that 18 capability is an. essential part of an effective regulatory 19 program. 20 The technical capabilities that we have developed 21 ~here are complimentary of those of the NRC staff and f 22 together I believe we have a very strong Jility for 23- independent evaluation. Through peer-reviewed publication, 24 we are substantiating that we're in a position that I think i' 25 our staff can stand toe-to-toe with those that we are l
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p 1 L 122 L, 1 . commenting on, that we are critiquing in some cases. \ ['
%.)j- 2 LImportant to that is the truly exceptional lab l 3 'here and numerical modeling facilities that we have, that 4 you'll have an opportunity to hear about both in 5- presentations and as you. visit the facilities over the next y 6 day or so.
7' That completes my remarks, at least this first 8- phase of interactions. 9 MR. GARRICK: It's very interesting. We 10 ' appreciate it a great deal. Are there any final comments or
~11 questions from the committee? Go ahead.
12 MR. HORNBERGER: I've tried to learn subtly in
'13 ' making points in front of Eric. At any rate, Wes, in that 14- spirit, it strikes me that the stringency of the conflict of O)
( 15 interest rules that you operate under are stupid. 16 MR. PATRICK: -Could you be a little clearer? 17 MR..HORNBERGER: I mean, it's just absurd to me to 18 think that you could have an expert on volcanology or 19 anything and that person would go off and do a program ; 1 20 review for DOE and forever be unavailable to you. It just 21' doesn't make sense to me. 22- So can you defend this to me? 23 MR. PATRICK: That's quite a spot to find oneself 24 in. .But I find the only way that I rationalize -- and I ! 25' don't use rationalize in a pejorative sense. The only way l l-
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c 123 1 that I rationalize this is we should'all anticipate a 21 particularly contentious process playing out in the (']J
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3 licensing arena and because that's true, I take that as a 4 given', because that's true, the knights can't have.any j 5 chinks in their armor, not.even little bitty ones. 6 I think time will tell, but NRC has taken, I 7 think, a very conservative position here, but it's not a 8 position that they would ever be able to back off from 9 having moved a little bit into the conflict of interest i 10 arena. 11 That's how I've satisfied my mind. That doesn't 12 mean that I don't chafe at it from time to time. 'It doesn't 13 mean that -- by the way,.one thing that the. committee shculd i 14 be aware of, there is a provision, I'm not sure quite how to () 15 make it work, but there is a provision for e::ceptions to be 16 made. We have petitioned one time for a core staff member 17 and received permission. 18 We have petitioned a couple of times for external 19 experts and have been denied. One of those denials was 20 based on a person having a graduate student once irvolved in 21 work in the Yucca Mountain vicinity, about 12 to 15 years 22 before. 23 So it's a very strongly reinforced or enforced 24 proscription. But I've satisfied my own mind that it's one ; 25 that has to be in this context. ! l 1 (~'s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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124 1 MR. GARRICK: Any others?
/~ 2 I'just endorse George's opinion, (h MR. FAIRHURST:
i 1-3 and I recognize it's difficult. 4 MR. WYMER: I just have one observation. It's not 5 a question. It's another example of the kind of difficult 6 positions you get into. 7 On the one hand, you're not supposed to get out 8- too far ahead of DOE; on the other hand, you want to do 9 exploratory work. It seems to me that, once again, you're l l 10 walking a very fine line. ) 11 MR. PATRICK: It is'a fine line and I think the 12 process that Bill Reamer outlined, that four-step , i
- 13 prioritization process, there is a lot embedded in that. If 14 .you spend some time looking it over, the management check
() 15 points in there really play a vitally important role, ! 16 because the staff can come in, given their perspectives, not 17 just. risk perspectives, but concerns about vulnerabilities, l 18 they can come in and propose any activities, basically, but 19 they have to make the case with.the High Level Waste Board 20 and then having made that case, assuming they do, then they 21 have to make the case with the office director. 22 And if those folks are convinced that this is an 23 area where exploration is important, it's permitted, and 24 there are several cases that we could point out where that 25 has been allowed.
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125 1 I think it's a good check and balance. I'~D 2 MR. GARRICK: One thing I want to learn more about LJ 3 while I'm here, but we don't need to take time to do it now, 4 is to get a little better appreciation for the difference 5 between technical assistance and research and whether that's 6 just a budget classification or a labor classification, 7; because we struggle with that every year when we're trying 8 to prepare our annual research report. 9 We think that the waste field is doing a lot more 10 research than is coming out in the record because of that 11 distinction. So we'll want to maybe try to better ! 12 understand that, the rational for that. 13 MR. PATRICK: Well, quick answer and then we can 14 perhaps either talk about it at lunchtime what our f g l (f-wf 15 understanding of it is. Almost every organization has its 16 own set of definitions. I've just answered a National 17 Science Foundation poll regarding reEearch that may be of i 18 use to the Department of Energy in managing waste at its 19 various facilities. 20 They have a completely different set of 21 definitions and under that definition, a' lot of the 22 technical assistance would fit. But within NRC, if it's 23 site-specific and relatively short-term, and that's often 24 .one to three or so years, if it meets those criteria, then 25 it's a licensing office function. If it's generic -- in
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I l 126 i L I 1 other words, not site-specific, and/or has a very long-term ) i
/ 2' duration, then historically the agency has funded it out of D) i I
-3 the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
4 MR. GARRICK: It seems pretty ridiculous, though, 5- when you're talking about a project that's 30 to $50 billion 6 in size to make that kind of distinction. It just doesn't 7 have much logic associated with it. 8 But as I say, we can talk about that. 9 MR. PATRICK: For the record, if somebody knows L 10' about 30 to 50 billion that's running around on this side of l l 11 the fence, I'd like to know about it. It's a much more l l ) ! 12 modest program, it.is a much more focused program. 13 MR. GARRICK: Thank you. Yes. Very good. ) 1 14 MR. PATRICK: Thank you. () -15 16 MR. GARRICK: I guess now we can adjourn for lunch. According to the agenda, we're due back here at 17 1:30. So we will now adjourn for lunch. Thank you. 18 [Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the meeting was 19 recessed, to reconvene at 1:30 p.m., this same day.] 20 21 22 1 23-24
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127 1 AFTERNOON SESSION 2 ( (1:30 p.m.] 3 MR. GARRICK: The meeting will come to order. 4 Budhi Sagar wants to introduce our next topic. So I'll
.5 trust you to do that.
6 MR. SAGAR: Thank you. The next topic is actually 7 the main theme of the meeting, which is evaluating and 8 explaining contribution to risk. ' 9 All I want to do is take a few minutes to l 10 introduce the next three speakers which fall under this main i 11 title. Even though we have requested all the other 12 presenters, following presenters, to touch on this subject, l 13 to explain the elements of their work and why certain work l 14 is being done based on the evaluation of risk. D() ~15 One of the major methods that we employ to learn 16 about risk and explaining how that contributes to the total 17 ' system performance is through general category of methods
'18 called sensitivity analysis. I have included even the 19 analysis of uncertainty in parameters and so on under that 20 main title.
21 The main performance measure that we are 22 interested in the sensitivity of comes from Part 63, which 23 is the' peak expected annual dose over the compliance period, ( '24 which is 10,000 years, and longer periods, because we are L 25 interestod in how the system behaves in longer periods, too, l l
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128
'l but definitely in the 10,000 year period, considering all /"'i 2 credible disruptive scenarios and their associated $s l-3 . probabilities.
4 So the risk triplet is embedded in this definition 5 here with the scenarios, what can go wrong, and their 6_ probabilities and consequences, all three are required to be 7 evaluated, and we are interested in the sensitivity of this 8 measure to any changes of different kinds, as I will explain 9 later. 10 Part 63 explicitly states that parameter 11 uncertainty has to be factored into this calculation or this 12 estimation'of risk. The uncertainty models or conceptual 13 models are not explicitly stated as part of the performance 14 requirement, but we-know that that would also be evaluated () 15 and you will hear about that in some of the presentations 16 that will be made to you. 17 The contribution to risk or ranking of, and people 18 may be interested in different things, and, in fact, we are 19 interested in all of them, could be the parameters of the 20 models, could be the events, the disruptive events, could be 21 processes, retardation and so on, or could be components of 22 subsystems. All of them, as I said, are of interest. 23 So che sensitivity analysis essentially ask this L 24 question; what is the change in the expected dose in case -- j l 25 referring back to the performance requirement in Part 63, or ! I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. A) (_, - Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 L : i
129 1
. risk, or sometimes in the absence of uncertainties being 2 ) considered -- that is, being avoided -- the change itself, 3 in deterministic studies, as any one of the above list that 4
I have mentioned changes in some way; what are the parameter 5 changes, what if a_ process didn't happen or happened, and 6 components of subsystems that make up the system; what does 7 or how does it affect, what is the contribution of these 8 things to the expected dose is of main interest to us. 9 The basic tool we employ are two; one at the top 10 level is the integrated flexible system model. It has to be 11 flexible to be able to do the various kind of sensitivities 12 that I just mentioned to you. Right now, the latest version 13 is TPA' Version 3.2, as explained to you. We do intend to 14 upgrade it to Version 4.0 after the-peer review is t V O 15- , completed. 16 It has the capability of sampling parameters to 17 take care of the uncertainty in parameters, both correlated 18 and uncorrelated parameters. It has modules for the 19 undisturbed system, to calculate the consequences, and it 20 has modules to calculate for the disturbed system under 21 disruptive events, et cetera. And we have especially designed the code to 23 provide intermediate outputs, not just the end result of 24 expected dose, but the travel time, the release values, and 25 all those other things that we are interested in, moro ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014
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1 130 1 trying to understand how the model behaves, as well as we 1 2 try to understand the uncertainties and sensitivity of even 3 the intermediate outputs to changes in parameters and so on. 4 The detailed process level model is the detailed 5- level that we do sensitivities on and this is the process 6 level sensitivity analysis, which provide us not the 7 sensitivity in terms of the dose, but the sensitivity in 8 terms of some intermediate output, but at a much more 9 detailed level than TPA code would consider; again, to try 10 to understand at a more detailed level how things change. 11 Also, we use the detailed process level models to 12 provide technical basis for some of the simplification and 13 . abstractions that are coded into the TPA code. I i 14 The sensitivity analysis then are carried out and : 15 we have just completed a report which is undergoing review
- 16. at this time at the center, will be submitted to NRC. It is 17 a joint report between the staffs of NRC and the center.
l 18 Some of those results will be presented by Dick Codell 19 today.
- 20. At the system level, most of the sensitivity, but 21 not all, most of the sensitivities are obtained through 22' post-processing of Monte Carlo runs, even though some of the l
23 methods, as we will see in Dick's presentation, do require 24 that we modify the execution of the code in some way in the 25 sense of prior selection of groups of parameters. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 L
1 131 l l' At the process level, most of the sensitivity
/-'h . 2 analysis are deterministic in nature; that is, we don't have i
G! 3 a probabilistic wrap around those process level codes and l 4' they are basically done through variation of parameters one 1 5 at a time, generally speaking. 6 We have learned through our previous years work on 7 this area that a single method of sensitivity analysis or a 8 single set of_ sensitivity coefficients is not sufficient to 9 .make you understand or give you insights about your model 10 -and how the behavior occurs. So we have tried different 11 methods. Dick will talk about'several of those methods that 12_ have been employed. I
- 13. Some provide one kind of information, another 14 method provides another kind of information and so on. But !
('N q) 15 the one thing you might notice is that in general, you can i 16 group these methods into either those that give you local l 17 sensitivities, that is, specific value of a parameter, so on 1 ! 18 and so forth, or in a narrow range, and the other you can 19 classify into the global sensitivity methods, which kind of
)
20 look at:the entire range, entire variation of a certain 21 ' entity and see what'the sensitivity is.
-22 And whatever advantage and disadvantage, you can 23 say.one_is better than the other, you have to seek the i
24 information that you are looking for. l l '25 Given that you employ so many different methods, 1. f~ /~'N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. , (m / Court Reporters ! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 )
132
'l the synthesis or final conclusions out of the sensitivity 2 analysis becomes an issue. So you have to kind of figure
/"')i L - 3 out,.okay, now what are all these things telling me, what's 4 really'important here, what's the.one or two or five or ten I
'5 things:that contribute most to risk, because that's where 6 the emphasis will be in further studies.
- 7. The future outlook is that we would develop TPA
- 8. Version 4.0, We do intend to continue refining -- and I'm 9 saying refining-because some of the methods that we have 10 used, as you will hear in the following presentations, need 11 refining in the' sense that we are not entirely satisfied 12 that the results.they are giving us are okay at this point.
13 And keep applying'the various methods, not just 14 stick to one method,.to try to gain insights into the () 15 behavior, model behavior. i 16 And we're interested in developing. innovative ^ 17 approaches, and this is, again, the desire that we should be 18 able to present.the results of the complicated model which 19 is being run in a Monte Carlo mode. We have a mass of data 20 'that it produces, but be able to show to whoever is 21 reviewing it or looking at the results what really is 22 causing'the result that we are producing, the net result, 23 thefexpected dose, which one of the realizations of the 24 Monte Carlo really contribute. 25 So the post-processing and transparent, hopefully, (~% ~ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \s,) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
p 133 g 1 and it is not really possible to be-completely transparent
'['T 2 in this complex model, but'to the extent possible, present d
- 3 it in a clear and transparent manner, make it obvious to 4' people what really is contributing.
5 So we. intend to do that. Then the next three 6 speakers, Dick Codell, who will take the majority of the 7 time allocated to this presentation, will talk about the 8 results that we obtained and that's been documented in the 9 report I. referred to earlier, ranking of parameters or l 10 sensitivity to parameters and integrated subissues. Those i 11 are the 14 subissues I had identified in one of my charts in 12 the morning. 13 The second speaker will be Gordon Wittmeyer. This 14 ,is the ranking of parameter sets, not just one parameter at im () 15 a' time, but:two, three, four.or five parameters, they're 16 sets'in a correlated fashion.
.17 This is something that ACNW gave some of their 18 . dollars to us to look at as a post-processor. Gordon will 19 take about ten to 12,-15 minutes to present that.
- 20. And lastly, Norm Eisenberg kindly agreed to 21 present his sensitivity analysis in a much more simpler 22 fashion than we ever did before. So he would be the last 23 speaker for this.
24 .Thank you. Are there any questions?
~ 25 MR. GARRICK: Any questions? Thanks, Budhi, i
l < l i
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134 1 MR. SAGAR: Dick is next. 2 MR. CODELL: Good afternoon. { Budhi summarized my 3 talk rather thoroughly, and I may have to skip over some of 4 the things -- can you hear me? 5' MR. GARRICK: Yes. 6 MR. CAMPBELL: You need to focus the document 7 camera, please. 8 Not an easy task. Much better. 9 MR. CODELL: Okay. Why do we need sensitivity 10' analysis? The TPA code is complex, with many interactions 11 among modules that you can't understand necessarily 12 ' piecemeal. 13 ' We want to show sensitivity of the performance
- 14. measures to the' parameters and alternative conceptual models
() 15 and scenarios. The sensitivity analysis focuses our review
-16 of DOE's analyses on the most significant factors. It 17 continues.to improve the staff's review capability for 18 upcoming license application.
19 Also, last point, it helps to direct the technical ' 20 areas and attaches importance to them. 21' Most of these analyses were conducted on the base 22- case. -The next slide talks about what the base case is. It 23 probably has changed somewhat, according to the latest DOE 24 : revelations about their design. But since we're always a 25 few months behind DOE's. design. But this describes the list O ANN RILEY.& ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
135 1- of what we consider to be the base case.
/~' 2 In addition to the base case, though, we looked at D) 3 the volcanism scenario and a faulting scenario, which I will 4- discuss briefly. But most of the discussion will be on the 5 base case.
6 Now, we made quite a bit of improvement over the 7 last year, from the last time I addressed the ACNW on 8 sensitivity analysis. We were able to extract a lot more 9 information with traditional techniques and tried a suite of i 10 new techniques, which we weren't very familiar with, and, in : 11 some. cases, gave better results, more interesting results. 12 We used statistical analyses, classical regression
.13 analysis. The FAST method actually belongs in the 14 non-statistical category -- my mistake. The parameter tree (G/ 15 method, which Gordon Wittmeyer will talk about, and then one 16 test on the means of input parameters for two 17 classifications of doses that I will get into a little 18 later.
19 For non-statistical sensitivity analyses, we had a 20 differential analysis and a variant of the differential 21 analysis called the Morris method, and the FAST method, 22 which'is foray amplitude sensitivity technique. 23 We looked mainly at the 10,000-year compliance 24- period, but also' evaluated 50,000 years in order to follow 25 what DOE was doing looking at longer time scales and to
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. I 136 1" -address issues which are likely.to be raised about climate
[} h
- 2 change ~and the long-term viability of casks.
3 The first,' set of results here are simply the !
, '4" evaluation of the radionuclides that turned out to be !
-5 important.for.10,000 years. The bar on the left is the 6
stotal and then the other bars are for each radionuclide.
~7 These are now the mean values. This is based on
.8- . the: peak of the mean. dose, ' which is the method by which 9 . we're evaluating,the Monte Carlo run. We take the mean at
- 10. .any point ~in time over all runs and then we determine the 11 peak of'that mean.
'12 So iodine and technetium being mostly unretarded !
13 radionuclides, with long half-lives, so ought.to be most ! i 14 important in 10,000 years, as you might expect. Neptunium ( 15: .is~the next one, the next most important. However, while ) 116- not shown on this figure, neptunium usually accounts for the 17- biggest-doses for the few cases where there are big doses, 18 'even at 10,000. years.
-19 If you;go to the next figure, it shows the
,20 50,000-year results. In this case, neptunium overwhelms the 21- 'other radionuclides, being a large contributor and having a 22 long half-life, having a large inventory, but being somewhat 23 ' retarded', doesn't show up influencing the.results for quite
'24 '- a.while.
I 25- .The next figure, the next slide talks about Q. V. '~ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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c' i <[ f: 137 (1 _ regression analysis and how we're able to squeeze the most 2 information out'of. regression. I'd like to just cover same Q[~'\ 3 .of the techniques. 4 I think regression is really an-art form rather
.5' than a strict discipline,. as you try a number of things to 6 find some things that-work. In this case, we looked at 246
.7 input variables and a thousand vectors. So we had a large 8 enough' statistical database to start getting some 9 significant:results out of regression analysis.
10 The first thing we did was we screened the input 111 variables _using a variety of. statistical tests, some of 12 which were regular regression, others were non-parametric, 13 as listed-here. 14 Any one of these tests that showed a variable as l ) .15 being possible significant was kept in. The others were 16 discarded. So we were able to winnow down the list of 246
- 17 variables to a more manageable' size.
18 Then-we used some other more sophisticated 19 regression techniques to extract the information from the l 20- smaller list. 21 In order to treat the regression, we did variable 22- transformations. Some of.these transformations were rank 23 transformations, where we reduced the variable to its rank
-24 .in a sorted list; the normalization, which is simply 25 ' dividing;by the mean; log transformation of the variables,
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1 138 l 1 the independent variable and the dependent variable dose; (~'y 2 and then a variation of a log transformation, which is a ) U 3 scaled power transformation, where we chose a power law 4 transform that took the original distribution and made it 5 the closest to being normal, normally distributed. 6 The next figure shows an example, this being dose 7 for 10,000 years. The figure on'the left side shows a very
}
8 skewed distribution, but when you apply a range of i 9 transformations, you will pick one out of the many that 10 gives you a straight line and the one that's the normal 11 distribution coordinates. 12 So what this and other transformation does is it 13 reduces the influence of the extremes of distribution. 14 That's a good thing and maybe a bad thing, as I will talk () (V 15 about next. 16 One of the things that I think evaded me and other 17 people who were doing regression analyses early on was that 18 we're always looking for the best fit. It was somewhat 19 reassuring to get your data lined up in a row and making a 20 nice plot on the graph. But this isn't always what you 21 want. 22 For example, if you took just the raw data or 23 maybe the normalized data, where you divide by the mean, 24 you'd get a poor fit in those cases. That is, a small 25 R-squared. This result weights all of the doses equally, /~'s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (_,) Court . Sporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
139 1 but doesn't give you:a good-fit. So you're apt to try (} 2 something else; for example, a lot-transformed sensitivity, v 3- where you're now taking the log of everything, before you do 4 your regression, and you'll get a much better fit, a higher 5 _R-squared. 6 .The problem is that when you do this, it weights 7 the small doses disproportionately. So you're giving the 8 tiny doses as much weight as -- a bigger weight 9 proportionately than they deserve. This tends to give you a 10 better fit for the very reason that in this kind of total 11- system model, the processes, the sub-processes multiply each 12 other, so you get -- taking a log actually makes the most 13 ~ sense in terms of getting a good model. l 14- The next slide talks about the sensitivities. 15 When you scale sensitivities by the means -- that is, you j 16 normalize them by dividing by the mean -- you're showing a 17 fractional change in. dose to a fractional change in the 18 input variable. Another approach is what we call 19 standardization is dividing or scaling by the ranges of the 20 input distribution,.which includes the notion of uncertainty ! 21 in the input variable. 22 This is important to do P cause this will change 23 your order of the most important variables. 24 The third bullet, I talk about the method of 25 sensitivity analysis that emphasizes the largest dose. You
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140 1 may be interested in doing this, for example, to attach f) G' 2 importance to integrated subissues. So maybe you're 3 interested in the biggest doses because those are the ones 4 that are causing the most problems. 5 The' parameter tree method and the t-test on means 6 method, which will be discussed a little later, emphasize 7 the largest doses. 8 The last bullet talks about something Budhi 9 mentioned briefly, that the proposed regulation deals with 10 the peak of the mean dose. In order to use this measure of 11 compliance, the most representative sensitivity is the 12 non-transformed variable. In other words, you don't want to 13 emphasize the small doses or necessarily get the biggest 14 R-squared in your regression analysis. You want to weight A ( ,) 15 the dries f airly, so you'll see what is really -- what 16 really conforms to the compliance measure. 17 We tried a few other sensitivity methods, some of 18 which are entirely new. Differential analysis we used last 19 time, but now we have seven local points in the parameter 20 space instead of only three in the last one, trying to get a 21 better coverage of parameter space, which is always a 22 problem in differential analysis, which are completely 23 local. 24 The Morris method, as I understand it, is a l 25 economical way to conduct differential analysis. It gives [N_/ } ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 h l
141 1 you good coverage of the parameter space and a promise of /~' 2- about a factor of two-improvement in efficiency, although V) 3 I'm'not entirely sure that's true. 4 The' FAST method is a non-statistical method that 5 is useful for non-linear computation, allowing the 6 exposition of multiple interactions among the independent i 7 variables. ! 8 However, this method is limited to a very small 9 number of independent variables. So you have to do some ) 10 pre-screening first. Otherwise, the computation costs would 11 be excessive. 12 The T-test on the means, which I described before, ; 13 we segregated a thousand vector run, this is a statistical ' 14 technique. We segregated it into doses less than ten () 15 -millirem and doses greater than ten millirem for 50,000 ; 16 years only and then looked.at the mean of the independent 17 variables to'see whether they are statistically different, ; 18 'and, of course, they.were. So this was one.of our 19 sensitivity measures-that went into the mix. 20 Now, how to take the sensitivity results and make 21 sense out of it. As we said, there is no one best measure. 22 This may not be the best way, but this is a way that we j 23 decided to try to deal with the great amount of information 24 we had on. sensitivity. We looked at the list here, in the 25 first bullet, of the seven methods we consider for O. \_ / ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington,'D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
142 1 sensitivity. ( ) '2 Recognize that.each method provides different 3 information about.the result. Then no single method-is a 4 unique identification of what is an influential parameter. 5- .What we did was we looked at each' variable and saw 6 h'ow many times it appeared in this list of seven. Actually, 7- only six were used at a time,'six for 10,000 and six for 8 50,000. 'Sk) the ranking really was done on how many times 9 the. variables appeared. 10 You can argue with.this, I'm not sure it's the 11 best way, but it's a way. 12, What we discovered was that from doing it this 13 way, that five of the variables appeared in both the 10,000
- 14. year and 50,000 year time periods of interest. Those five
() 15 are-listed here; fraction of repository wetted, well pumping 16 rate at 20. kilometer location; the average mean infiltration 17 at the start of the computational period to determine how 18 much water infiltrates ultimately; the alluvium matrix 19- retardation coefficient for technetium and iodine. 20 And several parameters appeared only -- 21 significant only.in the 10,000 year time period of interest. 22 Those were the flow focusing factor for wetted waste 23 packages, the fraction of initially defective waste 24 packages, and fraction of water diverted from the waste 25 packages and not getting inside the waste packages. /) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (,/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
E 143 1 There were two parameters that were important only 2' for 50,000 years, and those were the alluvium matrix 3 retardation for neptunium and uranium. So those are -- 4 MR. HORNBERGER: Dick, could I ask you a quick 5 question?
'6' -
MR. CODELL: Yes. 7' MR. HORNBERGER: How did you determine whether a 8 single parameter was influential or not? Is it the top ten 9 or how did you do that? ; 10 MR. CODELL: Yes, actually it's right. You 11 guessed-exactly right, it was the top ten. 12 MR. HORNBERGER: Okay. 13 MR. CODELL: There were -- in some cases, there 14 L were -- like the parameter tree method, there were only five ( )- 15 ' parameters, so it was'the top five. But others, there were 16 12 to 20 parameters and we just took the top ten. 17 Next, I'd like to talk about the alternative 18- conceptual models,. moving away from the strict definition of 19 -statistical sensitivity that we just heard about. 20 Here we are defining alternative models of 21 performance of waste package, waste form, and geosphere,
.22 both alternative.models and alternative understanding of the 23 models.
24' We compare the alternatives to the base case and 25: we look at 10,000 and 50,000 years. T' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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i 144 1 We chose nine new alternative models. There's (~} 2 nine and the base case. So the nine alternative models were 'V 3 no retardation, NoRet, which is no retardation for 4 plutonium, americium, and thorium. The intent of this one 5 was a gross -- what I consider a gross simplification of the 6 model to consider the possible effect of alloy transport not 7 being retarded. 8 The next one is Model 1, which is the alternative 9 dissolution model, which is much faster dissolution of the l 10 UO2 waste form than what we're using. That is based on
, 11 carbonate water only.
12 The third one is matrix diffusion in the legs of 13 the fracture flow model. We don't normally consider matrix 14 diffusion. i [) Q,i 15 The Flowthru model looks at a different i 16 representation than the Bathtub model for the wetting and 17- dissolution of the waste form and the waste package. 18 Focflow is focusing flow. That is four times the 19 flow to one-fourth the number of wetted waste packages. So 20 to look at possible short-circuit in the pathway. 21 The next one is cladding credit. This is to get 22 at the credit that DOE has taken for many of their 23 performance assessments. Here we looked at 99.5 percent 24 coverage of the fuel by cladding. Also combined in this 25 model is the faster fuel dissolution rate, because this is (~'N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \'~' ) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
)
1 l 145 1 l' the modelEthat DOE intends to use or used in their TSPA/VA. /N3 2' The next one is natural analog, where we tied the U 3 ' release rates from the Pena Blanca natural analog site. 4 The next one is a new model that's in our latest
- 5 TPA code. It's called the Schoepite model that Bill Murphy 6 and.I worked on. This ties the release rate to the 7 dissolution of the secondary mineral, schoepite. That is,
.8 we're~ assuming that all of the radionuclides released from 9 the primary waste form end up in schoepite and then ;
10 dissolves at a much slower rate than schoepite dissolves.
'll The final one is Grain size model, rather than 12 particle size model, with a faster dissolution rate. This 13 is about the worst dissolution rate we can have in our I 14 model.
((x) 15 The next two figures show the results for the 16 : comparison of the alternative models. We have the -- these 17 are ranked _in order of 10,000 year results. Remember, now, 18 the only -- that the entire dose for 10,000 years comes only 19T from the premature failure of the waste packages. So this 20 is just a handful of waste packages. 21 So you won't see any corrosion parameters in 22 these. The waste packages don't corrode until much later. 23 Except for seismicity failure. But there weren't any. 24 The no retardation model is the biggest dose. The 25 Flowthru model is second and the reason for that is that the /^\ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \s-) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l
, 146 1
1 waste package doesn't have to -- you don't have to wait for
~'h
[d /2 3
'the waste package to fill up before you get release. So this gives it a little jump on the Flowthru, the base case l
4 model, which requires the-waste package to fill up for 5 sometimes thousands of years before you have any release.
.6. .The base case is in the middle. Focused flow is 7' an interesting one. You see a larger release, somewhat 8 larger release for focused flow at 10,000 years. You will l
9 see virtually the same -- you'll see virtually no difference ' 10 from the base case for the 50,000 year result. 11 Then the clad model and the two natural analog -- 12 the natural analog model and the schoepite model are very 13 .small releases relative to the base case. 14 For 50,000 years, we have the same order now as l ( f 15 the 10,000, and you see there is quite a difference in the 16 result if you kept the same order. 17 The natural analog and schoepite model are once 18 again the very smallest doses. 19 The matrix diffusion result turns out to be the 20 same or slightly smaller than the 10,000 year ranking. So
- 21. matrix diffusion may make a difference at 10,000 years, but 22 eventually doesn't make much difference. This is because it 23 eventually -- it's just that it retards the release, but it 24 . eventually will show up at a later time.
25; Moving on. Now, we tried to use the results to O
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r- . 147 1 evaluate the integrated subissues. We looked at the
\
2- influential ~ parameters and the alternative conceptual models
//.
(_, 3 and did a crosswalk to the integrated subissues, to try to 4 -make some -- try to place some ranking on the importance. 5 .But we have to remember the context of the 6' comparison and view it very-carefully. It's based on highly I 7 abstracted models-and no credit for matrix retardation 8 abstraction. A sampling of the dose factors, they're always l 9 held constant. A single. receptor group at 20,000 meters 10 from the site, there is no geographic variation, no 11 closer-in sites. 12 And we have to note there are important 13 differences between-the two time periods of interest,
.14 although we're trying to base most of our -- most of the
() 15 16 influence on the 10,000 year time period. For 10,000 yeare, we found that the TSP results 17- were most sensitive to - listed here are the subissues that 18 "are most sensitive. Waste package degradation. For 10,000 . l 19 years, there was no real degradation other than initial-20 failures. 21 The quantity and chemistry of water contacting the
- 22. site, particularly flow focusing and a number of waste 23- packages that were wetted. Those were the key factors.
'24 The spatial and temporal distribution of the flow 25 and retardation in the alluvium and the production and where l
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l 148 1
- 1. the water is being produced, and-the alluvium.
(T 2 When you included disruptive and volcanism, (. %!. 3- disruption.of the waste ^ packages and airborne transport of
.4 . radionuclides and the volcanic, are~most important.
5' For.50,000 years, once'again, we show the quantity j 6 and chemistry of water contacting: waste' packages,
~
(
.7 .particularly flow focusing the number of waste packages 8 wetted. Radionuclide release rate from solubility limits, I
9 ' spatial.and tempo'ral distribution of flow, retardation in 10 water production zones and alluvium, particularly
.. 1
- 11' retardation in the. alluvium, and we did not consider 12 volcanism for.50,000 years. We only looked at it for a
13 -10,000. ; 14, So we don't-have any volcanism'results there. 15 MR. WYMER: Dick, are these in order of L ([ 16 'importance?- 17 MR. CODELL: In addition to the formal sensitivity 18 . analyses, we wanted to do a little -- a few ad hoc i
. i
- 19. ' sensitivity' studies. These were pretty much using the 20- existing code or, in some cases, just back-of-the-envelope 21 analyses 1using a hand calculator, but nevertheless are 22- interesting.
.23 The two studies we're talking about are on the' 24 gl'ss a waste form and colloids. They're not directly tied to 25' ' evaluation of the subissues. There is a scoping analysis, a
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I 149 i l 1 very simple one. However, models of the two phenomenon are (~') 2 slated for TPA Version 4.0 that Budhi spoke of.
</
3 The first one is the effect of the glass waste 4 form, and DOE's TSPA-VA, they proposed some model for 5 release from the glass waste form. 6 What I did was I took results of these models and 7- tried to adjust the parameters in our TPA 3.2 code to 8 emulate the glass waste form only, looking at the many 9 considerations of glass, like the waste packages are 10 somewhat different and temperatures may be different. 11 What I discovered was that for a 10,000 year time 12 period of interest, where doses were very small indeed, you 13 got up to a 15 percent increase in dose. For a 50,000 year 14 time period of interest, you got a smaller change, but the
,- m
( 15
) doses were larger, but it constituted only five percent.
16 There are many uncertainties in the modeling that 17 we did. So these will be followed up on thoroughly later 18 on. 19 The second study was the effect of colloids. This 20 was a back-of-the-envelope. This looked at taking actual 21 lab data on plutonium colloids from Argonne and from the 22 Pacific Northwest Lab experiments, where they actually 23 immersed or dripped on the spent fuel waste form, took the I 24 concentrations they discovered in those exreriments. 25 I took as representative of a wide range of a L l [\, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (./ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
p 150 l' l' 1 ' experiments.300 picocuries per milliliter plutonium, [ T 2 assuming them to be 100 percent colloid, assumed no V. 13 retardation in the geosphere, and then the total colloid 4 release was mixed into the average water intake by the 20 5 kilometer well. I calculated, with a very simple, 6 '- extraordinarily simple calculation, 1.25 millirem for the 7l 1 plutonium 4in drinking water. 8- It would have somewhat less than a factor of a ten l 9 increase in this dose if you looked.at all pathways and all l 10 radionuclides. 11 So that my point being that even though these may 12
~
be bigger than the doses we're showing from the other 13; models, we're still safely below the 25 millirem in the 14 standard. This gives me somewhat of a warm feeling that f~ ( 15 we're on the right track and that colloids may not be ! 16 terribly important. 17 Also, the preponderance of literature that says 18 that colloids don't seem_to move very far, at least not in
- 19 ' the ranges of sizes'that'we're considering to be most 20 'important'at Yucca Mountain, could probably be filtered out 21 in short order.
22 So in summary, we looked at a number of
- 23 sensitivity analyses. The analyses, in general, emphasize 24'_ Lthe'importance of factors like water and water infiltration, 25 _ fuel cladding, especially at 10,000 years, but the important t-
' k/,
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l
151 1 radionuclides for the compliance period were iodine, technetium, and neptunium, recognizing that these are ( 2 3 retarded very slightly. l 4 At 50,000 yeart, neptunium was the overwhelming 5- dose contributor. 6' In' terms of the alternative conceptual model, the 7- largest doses came from an assumption of no retardation, 8 which is both to emulate the colloid model, but, as I 9 suspect, the colloid model is not very realistic, assuming 10 it won't get filtered out. 11 None of the alternative models that we considered 12 exceeded the 25 millirem proposed standard. The assumptions
'13 about waste form dissolution, cladding protection and 14 wetting of the waste packages and fuel were demonstrated to
.m
'15 be very important.
16 The doses were very small for what we consider 17 reasonable alternative models for release from the waste 18 form-based on natural analog and dissolution of secondary 19 waste forms. 20 We use the results to indicate the direction for 21 future'model and code improvement. The two ad hoc studies 22 indicated that probably colloids and glass are not -- won't 23 be big. factors in our assessment.
' 24' Now, we'use the results to try to rank the 25 integrated subissues, but the conclusion here states that we /~')
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rc 152 l 1 have to be careful. There were nine of 14 subissues were j
- [} .V 2 found to have at least one influential parameter.
3 But most of the impore. ant issues from the 4- ' crosswalk of the sensitivity analysis and the alternative 5 conceptual models and the integrated subissues related 6 really to factors that were implicit in the model. We put 7 them there; for example' many of the -- the waste packages 8 don't fail from corrosion before 10,000 years. This is an 9 . outcome of the model, but there is a very significant part I 10 of the model. We don't have any-failure for 10,000 years ' 11 from corrosion; then whatever is left is contributing to the I 12 result. ! i 13 If we're completely wrong about this model, then 14 we might reach utterly different conclusions.
.() 15 The thermal reflux delays the onset of flow into 16 the repository. .That's what our models tend to say, but 177 it's really not a completely.well founded conclusion or
'18 assumption.
19- The Bathtub model~says-that the significant delay 120 of radionuclide, because of the long' fill-up time, but DOE 21 doesn't use this model and this model has been criticized by 22- people saying that you wouldn't have water filling up the 23 waste package. 24 The sorption in the alluvium between the site and 25 the 20 kilometer location significantly delays the arrival
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153 f1' time of the radionuclide. .However, if this alluvium is not
~
2 there or is not effective for some reason, we would be
)
3 likely~to have quite"different conclusions. 4 That' concludes my talk. Thanks. 5 MR. .GARRICK: Thanks, Dick. Questions? 6 MR '. FAIRHURST: Rich,.your last four points about
.7 no failure of the waste package before 10,000 years, are you 8 really summarizing the differences between what'you see and 9 what the DOE VA a'nalysis shows? Are they-the main 10 differences?
11 MR. CODELL: Are you talking about-the waste 12- package failure within 10,000 years? l 13 MR. FAIRHURST: All.four of them, because the 14 DOE's analysis shows significantly greater releases, I ( I- 15- think, in total, right, towards 50,000 years? Are you with
- 16. me or not?
17 MR. CODELL: These last four bullets talk only -- 18 well, there are differences. I think our doses turned out to
^
E19 be remarkably the same, but probably not for the same 20 reasons. -I know that the DOE has waste package failures by 21- corrosion within 10,000 years. 22 MR. FAIRHURST: Is it one package or one percent? 23 It's one package that fails, right, in 10,000 years?
'24 MR. CODELL: Yes. That's'the initial failure.
25 They're assuming only one waste package is initially 1 1 i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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154 1 defective. We have up to 30, is that right, Tim? On
.2 average, 30, as_high as 62. That's a major difference.
([ 3~ They~did consider this last tick, sorption in the 4' _ alluvium. I think I was told that_ ten percent of their 5 Monte Carlo. runs, they assumed there was no -- 6 MR. FAIRHURST: No alluvium. 7 MR. CODELL: -- alluvium. So in other words, that 8 would short-circuit,-and that was a significant difference. l 9. They don't use the Bathtub model. There is a big 10 difference in the pumping dilution, too. 11- MR. FAIRHURST: All right. Thanks. 12 MR. GARRICK: Dick, since juvenile failures
'13 dominate the performance for the 10,000 years, what is being 14' done to provide confidence in what that number should be?
() 15 MR. CODELL: I'm not really the person to ask. I 16 think you probably, at the center there, you would find a 17 volunteer. Maybe they're not here today. They may show up 18 for one of.the later briefings. I'm not really too keen on
-19 how they came up_with that number, the initial failures.
20 MR. WITTMEYER: This is Gordon Wittmeyer. Dick, I 21 think the numbers we're using right now come from a report 22 that was done at the center in about 1995, as I recall, the 23 survey, literature survey was done looking at defects'in 24 manufactured materials, as I recall. 25 I don't recall the numbers, off the top of my ANN RILEY'& ASSOCIATES,'LTD. G(m,/ _ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
E l l l 155 1, head,' but'I think initial defects on the order of
.[JI '
2i
'3-ten-to-the-minus-five, ten-to-the-minus-three range, but I'm sorry, I cannot address-what we are doing now or in the 4 future'to further refine those estimates.
l 5 Perhaps with Sridhar comes back into the room, we 1 6 can;get him to address that.
.7 MR. GARRICK: Were the numbers based entirely on 8 . manufacturing defects or did' transportation and handling :
I 9 enter into'the analysis?- i 110 MR. WITTMEYER: .I believe -- and Sridhar is here 11- ---I believe those were primarily manufacturing defects and
'did not include mistakes in handling, banging things into
~
12 13 walls and whatnot, but I'll defer to Sridhar. We're talking l y 14- about initial defectives and'the-basis for the numbers we 1 15 _). have 'now and what we!will be doing in the ft;ture to further L16 refine those estimates. l l 17 MR. NARASI: I think the initial defects that we 18: assumed subsumed a lot of uncertainties in many things. So ! i 19- we.cannot-characterize them as only arising from ) 20' . manufacturing defects. ) l J21 They may include some manufacturing defects, they 22 'may. include other defects that become undetected, go l 23- undetected'until closure period,1till post-closure period.
-7 E24 .So at.this point, we don't have a good way of 25 ' characterizing what are the_ origins or sources of the i L-I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES,..LTD.
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E 156 1
-1 initial' defects. J (9 '2 MR. GARRICK: But how did you come up with the V
3 number that you used? 4- MR.'NARASI: The number is sort of an-upper limit
>5 conservative number based on some literature curvey we
)
'6' . conducted. We looked at -- this is a 1994 report that we
. 7 -' published. We-looked at the reactor experience, mainly with 8 respect to cladding defects.
9
, Again, in the case of cladding defects, people are 10 not' completely sure about where those defects came from, 11 because this was post-reactor defect detections. So it l
12- could have come from during the reactor life or could have 113 come from prior manufacturing. 14 We also looked at some other industries, notably f n 15 aerospace industry and some construction industry, but there ig 1 16 the statistics are not that easily available. I 17 One of the problems with this initial defect is 18 that there are not good statistics on categories of sources 19 of initial defects. 20 MR. GARRICK: But the analysis so far has been
~21 pretty much a generic analysis of manufacturing defects.
22 This is not waste package design specific or -- 23 MR. NARASI: Right. 24 MR. GARRICK: -- transportation and handling 1 25 specific or what have you, and it's not so important as long O' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters ) 1025 Connecticut. Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
L 157 1 l. as-the doses are very low. But if the doses increase, then l 2 it seems that there might be merit in taking a harder look 3- at -- l 4 MR. NARASI: As a matter of fact, we are taking a 5 harder look at it right now, because with the new materials, 6 like C-22, which give a very long lifetime, the initial 7 defect population plays a bigger role than if there are much 8 l more corrosive or much less resistant to corrosion. 9 Gustavo will talk about it tomorrow in his l 10- presentation, but what we are saying is that we want to take 11 a better look at what gives rise to these initial defects 12 and how we can better circumscribe the numbers. 13 MR. GARRICK: Dick, was the dose increasing in l 14 each case at the 10,000 and 50,000 year time period? 15 MR. CODELL: You lost me for a minute there. , l 16 MR. GARRICK: Is the peak dose for the 10,000 year j 17 period at 10,000 years, and the peak dose for the 50,000 18- year period at 50,000 years? l
- 19 MR. CODELL
- The 10,000 year dose is at 10,000 20 years, but the 50,000 year dose isn't always. Sometimes 21- it's. sooner.
! 22 Remember, these are -- it's the peak of the mean. l 23 MR. GARRICK: Yes. 24 3. CODELL: So it can vary for individual runs. 25 For less than 50,000 years, there are some; there are some
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{ i 158 i
' 1. peak doses.where'it occurs before the 50,000 years.
2 For 10,000 years, it's almost always at 10,000
)
3 years.
- 4. MR. GARRICK: But I; guess the. total for the TSPA, 5 where the'were; averaging all the. realizations, the dose was
'6 still monotonically increasing past the 50,000-year period. ;
7 '
'MR.;CODELL: Yes, that's generally true. I think 8 for the alternative conceptual models, some of those would 9, peakLearlier than 50,000 years. I don't have those in-front ,
10 of me. But particularly where you have situations where you 11 have a.very fast dissolution rate, you're using up your 12 inventory before 50,000 years. So those will tend to peak 13 sooner. 14 We're only interested in the peak of the mean-for ( . 15 -- that's what those bar charts showed, the peak of the
.16 .mean. i 17 MR. GARRICK: But in all your runs, Dick, when is !
18 . typically the. time to peak dose? Is it in 50,000 to 500,000 19 year range? Does it go as high as 500,000 years? 20 MR. CODELL: We don't carry it any further than a 21- 100,000 years. Most of the runs were done for 50,000 or-22 100,000 years. In many cases, as I recall, it's still 23 . increasing at 100,000 years, in most cases. I'd have to 24 .look -- we're going to be looking at that. ; 25 It-has to'do mostly with the climate cycle, 'l l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I O- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
o 159 1 whether~the infiltration is still increasing or not. Where 2 that peak is, I don't recall.
)
3- MR. GARRICK: How many of your Monte Carlo runs 4 did the dose exceed -- did the calculated dose exceed 25
- 5. millirem within 10,000 years?
6 MR. CODELL: For 10,000 years, I don't think any 7 of them dids Not for the base case. i 8 MR. GARRICK: For the base case. How many of them 9 exceeded ten millirem per year? Because you did an analysis 10 on that one. 11 MR. CODELL: I can look at it up. I don't have it 12 in front.of me. 13 MR. GARRICK: I mean, your gut level feeling, was 14 it -- f\ () 15 MR. CODELL: Very few. Except for the volcanism 16 case, they were always quite small for 10,000 years. 17 MR. GARRICK: The analysis you performed, Dick, is 18 principally to look at parameter sensitivity and you've done 19 some translation for us of what that means in some physical 20 terms. But are you generally satisfied that you're moving 21 in.a direction where you can -- 22 MR. CODELL: We've lost you. We've lost you
- 23. again.
24 MR. GARRICK: I was going to ask a question about 25 the. translation of parameter sensitivity into physical O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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160 1 system sensitivity. Did you hear that?
N
[J[ 2 3 MS. WASHINGTON:
'Could you repeat it, please?
No, we didn't hear the question. 4 MR. GARRICK: 'You've done a' considerable amount of 5- work now'in parameter sensitivity and you've currently 6 ~ interpreted'that for us in terms of what's important and 7 what's not; 8 But are you-satisfied ~that this analysis indeed 9 can give you a strong basis for looking.at the importance of
'10 specific physical systems, specific barriers?
11 MS. WASHINGTON: Excuse me.. We're sorry, we've
-12 cut out again. We did not hear you.
- 13 MR. GARRICK: All right. Well, we'll-give up.
14 All right. I. guess.we will move to the next speaker. () 15 ~ .MR. CAMPBELL: John, maybe you can try the
- 16. microphone.
- 17 MR. LEE: There~is a mic right in front of him. J 18 -The only-thing I can figure is we're having some sort of 19 !
network l problem on the phone line. 20 MS. WASHINGTON: It went.out again. 21 MR.; LEE: It's a network hit over the phone lines. 22 There's not really'anything -- not really anything that can 23 -be'done, I don't think. 24 MS.~ WASHINGTON: Okay. We'll just keep letting 25 .you go when you cut out. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (ss/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 c L.
l 161 1 MR. CODELL: I have a figure here. I have a 2 figure here. i [' ')i l 3 MR. GARRICK: Go ahead. 4 MR. CODELL: I have a figure here from the report 5- we're putting out. The top one, it's hard to see, I will 6 'just point out that this shows the dose versus time for 7 10,000 years, the expected dose. This is 8 ten-to-the-minus-two millirem, where I have the pencil 9 point. That's about the highest curve, that's about the 10 highest any of the individual curves, which are hard to see, 11 but there is one -- the very worst one.goes up here about 12 like that and is under ten-to-the-minus-two millirem. This 13 is'for 10,000 years.
- 14. So that.gives me an idea of the spread and the i
v) 15 result. They're still very small for 10,000 years. It's 16 millirem per year, ten-to-the-minus-two. Maybe 17 ten-to-the-minus-one at the very peak. 18 MR. FAIRHURST: Ten-to-the-minus-one millirem, 19 right? 20 MR. CODELL: On the base case. Millirem, yes. So 21 these are very small doses, as you might expect, because 22 there are very few waste packages. If you look at the scale 23 on'the 10,000 year doses, it's in the microrem range for the 24 effective dose. 25 MR GARRICK: All right. Any other questions or
^
l ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
162 1 commentsLthat they can't hear? Et .2- MR. McCONNELL: Dr. Garrick? 3 MR. GARRICK: Yes. 4 MR.-McCONNELL: Could I -- 5 MR. CODELL: We can hear-you fine, if you want'to 6- i try again.
'7 . MR. McCONNELL: I just wanted'to point one thing
'out, and that's in relation to a question Dr. Hornberger
^
8-9 raised when Bill. Reamer was' talking about how we use our
- 10. risk insights in making our process more transparent.
.11 It's these results that will eventually be 12 published =in the sensitivity studies report that will be 413 given to the board in the KTIs'to use in their planning 14 process for the next fiscal year.
() - 15 So this is part of.the effort to make it 16 ' transparent, the process of how we're doing risk-informed
- 17. . planning.
18 MR. HORNBERGER: Actually, my question had to do 19 with how you use information that is non-risk-based. 20 MR. McCONNELL: Oh, never mind. 21 .MR. HORNBERGER: But thank you anyway. Dick, now 22' I'm confused, because I made a note that when you talked 23 z about your T-test on means, you said you put it into less
-24 than ten millirem and greater than ten-millirem classes, and 25 . nowlyou're telling me that there wasn't anything above 20 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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163 1 microrem. f\ 2 MR. CODELL: No. That was only done for 50,000 V 3 years. For 50,000-years, there are bigger doses. There l l 4 were doses up'into the -- up to approximately 100 millirem l. 5 for 50,000 years. I 6 MR. GARRICK: Okay. Gordon, you're next. i 7 MR. WITTMEYER: I think actually before I start on 8 my presentation, I think it would be good for us to answer l 9 the question you had about whether or not we had looked at l 10 -subsystems that were important to performance from the 11 sensitivity analysis, and maybe between Dick and I, we can 12 address that, because I think it's good that we try and 13 address that. 14 I think one of th things that Dick did do was the l ( -) . -15
-alternative conceptual model So at least we can look at a 16 fairly large subsystem there and get an idea of what's 17 important. We can see that how we treat spent fuel 18 dissolution is very important, as well.
19 I think, also, in trying to tie the collection of
-20 parameters that have proved to be important to these 21 integrated subissues, we're also.able to speak to which 22 subsystems are important, and I think towards the back of 23 Dicks presentation, I think on page 21, he has talked about 24 which key integrated subissues-at 10,000 years would prove l
l 25 to be important. i l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. k/ Court Reporters
'1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 L
164 p 1 Again, that came from the sensitivity analysis and 2 we. looked at a collection of parameters that were -- that
-(J'}'
3 came out of this particular integrated subissue. So you can
.4' see that.even by doing parameter at a time analysis, we are 5 able to point back to subsystems.
6 I.think that's what Dick had intended to say. 7 Now,-at this point, I'm going to try and go into that in a 8 little more detail, talking about one approach that has been 9 brought forward here recently, the parameter tree approach. 10 We discussed this informally back in January, and Budhi 11 presented:it to you, Dr. Garrick. We've done some more work 12 since then. 13 I'm going to try and update you on that work. If 14 we look on the second slide, on the objectives that we had, () 15
-16 the two first bullets here are really things that we're trying.to do to address some of the questions that you've 17 brought forward. One is to try and make it more transparent 18 as to which -- what factors ara the ones that contribute 19 most to total system performance, and we're going to try and 20 do this by post-processing what we already have from the TPA 21 code, not developing a new code, l'
22 Likewise, this is an easy way to look at sets of i 23 parameters, to look at the joint sensitivity, if you will, L 24' of performance to collections of parameters. ! ~25 Another important thing in this third bullet is we L t ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 r. I l
I l 165 1~ get a lot of output from this code. Here is an example. We 1 l 'l 2. get 4,000 model realizations. ~ Well, we get 4,000 model
\-) .
'3 realizations if we run'4,000 realizations. But sometimes we i
14 don't want to do that. We have a lot of parameters to look 5 -at that we vary, 246'of those. So it's really kind of a
~6' daunting-task.
7 So we.need something that can go through all this 8 data, do data mining, and I don't mean in a pejorative 9 sense, but I mean really find information in-there and make 10 it clear to the analysts. 11 Now, one method that's been -- the method that we 12 have looked at here is the tree approach. -This next slide, I
)
13 which probably doesn't show up too well on the overhead, but l 14 I think you can see clearly in your handouts, is looking at 1 p). ( 15: a single parameter. ' 16 I'm going to step through-this kind of slowly and : 17 ftry and explain.each part of what we see here. Let's assume 10 we do have a collection of 4,000 realizations from the TPA 19- code. We make=a. division of these realizations, depending 20- on whether or not a single. parameter is greater than or less 21 than its median value. So we get.two bins, each one 22 ' consisting of 2,000 realizations. Now we look at what 23- difference-did it make when we looked at the high values 2
.4- versus the low values, what effect did it have on the-25 performance' measure.
T ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. r s- / Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202)-842-0034
l l 1 166 1 If we choose as our performance measure the peak [k T,_./ . 2 dose -- and I'm talking about something different than we 3 talked about before. When we're talking about the-peak of
._4 the mean dose, I'm talking about comparing it to the mean
'5 peak dose, and I don't mean to be confusing, but this is --
! 6 reflects work that was done before we had a change in Part' l 7- 63, where we're looking at a different performance measure. 8 We compare-what the actual peak dose is of each 9 realization to what the mean peak dose is for all 4,000 10 realizations, and you can see that for the case where this 11~ : parameter, whatever it is, is greater than the median value 12 of the parameter, there are 1,700 of those 2,000 13 realizations whose peak dose is greater than the mean peak 14 dose. () 15- Likewise, we look at those where the parameter 16 value is less than the median value and there's only 200 17 realizations there, where the peak dose is greater than the 18 mean peak dose. 19 We can construct these ratios that we call 20 P-one-plus, P-one-minus, which essentially tell you the-
~21 fraction 1of the realizations where the peak dose exceeds the 22 mean peak dose.
23 In the one case where the parameter is high, we 24 had 85 percent of those exceeding the mean peak dose. Where 25 it's low, the fraction is .10. C
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, 167 1 Now, one possible measure of sensitivity of the
} 2 performance measure to that parameter is what I show on the 3 next slide, the very first bullet. If we look at the 4' absolute value and the difference between those two ratios.
5- In this case, it's .85 minus .10, so the performance measure 6 is .75 or the sensitivity measure is .75. 7 Note that had the parameter not distinguished -- 8 if it had made no difference to performance, we would expect
- 9. this measure here to be essentially zero. The greater the 10 difference in this value, the greater the difference in 11 these two values or the larger this value of S-1, the 12 greater the effect a single parameter has on the estimated 13 performance.
14 Now, what we do, we apply this single branch _( n) 15 parameter -- actually, it's a two branch, I guess, but it's 16 only one branch deep, parameter tree method to each of the 17 '246 sampled parameters and once we have determined which of 18 all those parameters is most important, we follow a very 19 similar procedure to look at. the joint importance for a pair 20' of parameters. 21 So we compare -- we use that first parameter with 22 the remaining 245 parameters, and this is done until we have
'23 .gone four or five or six parameters deep into the tree to 24 get an idea of what collection of parameters is important.
25 On slide five, this is just an example where we go ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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168 1 two parameters deep. I'm not going to talk through all the ! ~ [)/ x_ 2 3 detail, because it's exactly the same as what I discussed two slides ago, but you see here we have different measures 4 now, P-one-plus-two-plus, compare that value to 5 P-one-minus-two-minus. If you took the difference between 6 those two, that tells you what the effect is of having both 7 of those parameters high versus having both of those 8 parameters with a low value. 9 Now, we don't always expect that a parameter in 10 the high range will necessarily imply high performance. It 11 could be something where there is a negative correlation, 12 such as pumping and bore hold dilution; the greater the 13 pumping at a well, the greater the dilution, so you would 14 expect to have a lower peak dose from that realization.
,3
) 15 The next slide, slide six, is an example of where j 16 we have applied this approach to results from the TPA code 17 with 4,000 actual realizat'ans and this parameter tree goes l I
18 five deep on branches, I guess -- I don't know if there is a l i 19 term for it, but I'll just say it's five deep into the 20 parameter space here. 21 If we look along the top, there's five different 22 parameter names, and I'll explain what each one of those is. 23 We have Io, which is the initial infiltration rate, which 24 was determined with one parameter tree to be the most ! Then Fow, which is a factor that defines the -- 25 important. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (O / Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 L
l l-169 1 'cnr describes the focusing of flow, of seepage. WPdef is the
/'^ -2 N j) ' fraction of juvenile failures, initial defectives, that is.
3 I% ult is the fraction of water that is not diverted from the I 4 waste packages and SAwf is the sub-area wet fraction; that's 5 the fraction of waste packages that will get wet in a ; 6 sub-area. 7 Now, let's look at the two columns that are on the 8 right-hand side of this. Under the column with the heading l .9 P-one-plus or minus, et cetera, that ratio -- for example, 10 in the first row, 128/129, 128 are.the number of i 1 11 realizations that had a peak dose that exceeded the mean ! 12 peak dose. There are a total of 129 realizations on this 13- particular bin. The bin where each of those parameters was l 14 greater than or equal to its median value. () 15 Likewise, similar statistics for everything in ' 16' that row or in that column. 17 In the second column, the one that says fraction 18 of mean peak dose, we simply assigned the fraction of the 19 mean peak dose that can be attributed to that vollection of 20' realizations. So if we look at, again, the top row, of the 21 129 realizations in that bin, those realizations contribute 22 21 percent of.the total mean peak dose. 23 I won't go-through all the numbers in here, but
, 24 you'll see a few other large fractions that don't 25 necessarily have to d.o with all of the parameters being ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ](_/ . Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
i 170
, high. If you look at the third row, where we actually have
[~ ; 2 the lower value for the Fmult, but we still explain roughly
~\/
3 13 percent of the mean peak dose. 4- MR. FAIRHURST: I'm sorry. What was Fow? 5 MR. WITTMEYER: That's the flow focusing factor
'6 ' and.I can -- maybe I should have an expert in the TPA code ;
I 7= explain those in more detail. We can have that done at a ' 8' later time. 9 MR. FAIRHURST: Yes. 10 MR. WITTMEYER: Now, what we can look at here'is 11 we have'a collection of things then that are collectively 12 important to performance; that is, high values of these five 13 parameters. In a way, we.can look at this as being a 14 scenario. () 15 If you have this collection of parameters, all 16 'high, then you tend-to have a huge effect on performance. 17 Some of these things are related types of parameters. Fow, 18 Fmult, sub-area wet fraction, Io, all have to do with the 19 seepage, and then waste package defective is a slightly
'20 _different parameter.
21 Now, we'can apply this not only to parameter 22 values, but also to subsystem outputs or intermediate 23 outputs. On'page seven, I've given a very preliminary 24 example of what we could do with some of the intermediate l 125 outputs we get from the TPA code. TCR, at the top, is the
~ \
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1 171 1 total cumulative release, and that's for all radionuclides. 1 [) 2 .The subscripts, ebs, uz, sz, are from the engineered barrier
.V' 3 system,-unsaturated zone, the saturated zone.
4 So, again, we've taken a number of realizations -- 5~ in this case, 1,440 realizations. We've divided them 6 depending on whether or not the total cumulative release 7 from that subsystem'is greater than or less than median 8 value. 9 On the first branch, you see a little equation 10- there, probability of TCRebs is equal to .5. That says that 11 the probability is .5 that half-year realizations will be ) i 12 greater than the median or less than the median. i 13 Now, it's a little more interesting when we look j 14 at the next level, when we look at the unsaturated zone, and
.<-~)
( 15 this is'in the natural' progression of how radionuclides move
- 16 in the' base case scenario, from the ebs into the unsaturated i
17 zone. ' 18 This canditional probability here simply tells you 19 that if the release ~from the engineered barrier system is 20 greater than the median value, that the probability that the 21 release from the uz will be greater than the median value is 22 .9. So that really the effect of the uz on changing the 23 . release coming out of the ebs is fairly minimal. 24 If'we look even a'little deeper, we can see that 25- if we look at the probability of the releases exceeding the
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172 1 mean release coming out of the sat zone, given both the uz q 2- and the ebs have high releases, that's actually a little bit 3 smaller. The saturated. zone tends to have a little more 4 effect on either delaying, retarding the movement of the 5 radionuclides. 6 Again, the two columns on the right-hand side tell 7 you the.same information, although now we're looking at 8 these subsystems or these collections-of subsystems, rather 9 than parameter values. 10 In the first column, the first row, that if all of 11 the releases-are high, just as you might expect, that if 12 those are all high, then you're likely to have a total 13 release that is -- actually, excuse me, a total -- a peak 14 dose that exceeds the mean peak dose, and that's, again, (g) 15 shown here in the second column, where fully 96 percent of 16 the mean peak dose depends on or comes about when the 17 releases from these three engineered or these three i 18 subsystems are greater than their median values. 19 That's pretty much an expected result. I don't 20 think that comes as really any surprise. 21 Now, we're working on implementing this in a 22 computer code, to allow you to take any collection of 23 parameters for any of the many different intermediate i 24 outputs that we have from the TPA code, and do this analysis 25 and display it in this form to see if'it, again, gives us 1 1-l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (j~T
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l I 173 l l 1 any additional insights into what collection of parameters i (~'( 2: or collection of subsystem outputs dominate or are the most )
~\_)
{ 3 important factors in total system performance. ' 4 In the summary and conclusions, three bullets 5 here, I think I've probably stated them already, but I'll go 6 over them very quickly; that this is one method that we can - l
- 7. use to clearly identify sets'of parameters or subsystems 8 'that have a-large influence on the risk.
9- It is relatively straightforward to imp.7.ement and, ; i' 10 I think,fstraightforward to interpret, as well. Hopefully, 11 you have understood it in a straightforward manner. I'll 12 find out shortly, I think. , 13 'And I think the last thing about it is that we l 14 don't impose any constraints on the analyst with the TPA , r~% (( ) 15: code before he runs it. He can take whatever runs have been 16 done and then post-process them and interpret them with this 17 method. 18 I'd be happy to take any' questions. 119 MR. GARRICK: Questions? 20 MR. FAIRHURST: I'll ask you a-question which is 21 somewhat peripherally, I think, related to what you said. 22 But the focusing factor, did you just use the same spread as 1 23 DOE?-
- 24 MR. WITTMEYER: No. It's a different parameter.
25 I don't think it maps directly to any DOE parameter that I (~^g ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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( 174 1 know of. () V 2 MR. FAIRHURST: But what you mean by flow 3- focusing, you take the infiltration rate and you multiply it 4 'by a certain amount to represent some sort of focusing into 5 the drift. l 6 'MR. WITTMEYER: Maybe I could ask Dick or someone 7 else who is a little more intimately familiar with the j l 8 details to explain that. i l I 9 MR. CODELL: I can address that. Not all the 10 waste packages are wetted all the time. So of the packages 11 that are wetted, it's a factor less than one, but each 12 wetted waste package can get a fraction that can be greater 13 than or less than one of the average amount of infiltrating 14 water. () 15 So that factor, Fow, stresses the latter. The 16 amount of water that the wetted waste packages get that is 17 above or below the average infiltration rate. l 18 MR. FAIRHURST: I see. So that's sort of 19 variation along the drifts, in essence, right? 20 MR. CODELL: _Well, the abstraction in the TPA code 21 is.much simpler than that. 22 MR. FAIRHURST: I understand. 23 MR. CODELL: We really only have one 1 24' representative waste package per sub-area. So it applies to 1 25 all the waste packages. It's an ensemble idea and it comes ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l
m 175 F 1 about from an ensemble calculation of. statistical
.D 2' parameters.
N) 3 'MR.'FAIRHURST: I understand. It's along the
- 4 drift.
5 MR. HORNBERGER: Gordon, I think I did follow your l 6 presentation. It was quite nice and quite clear. Both the 7- . presentation that Dick gave and your presentation. 8 I guess my question is a bit more generic, and 9 that is if -- I'm not quite sure why I want to know a lot l 10 'about sensitivity if my doses are in t he microrem range. 11 That is, do I.rcally care that the flow focusing factor is { 12~ really important if the calculated doses are absolutely no 13 where close to any standard? l l 14 MR. WITTMEYER: That's a nice big question, isn't (f- 15 it? It's one we hear-frequently. But I think we 16 nonetheless, everything else being equal, you need to focus 17 your program on what is most important; in this case, what 18 I've described here in the base case analysis or our base 19 ' case scenario. 120 Your interpretation is more -- 21' MR. CODELL: Gordon, could I add something? 22 MR. WITTMEYER: I think you will. Yes, go ahead. I 23 MR. CODELL: The emphasis is once again on work 24 creating a review tool and a lot of the parameters, a lot of 25l the assumptions have to be developed by the DOE and some of l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Q(s/ . . Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
176 1 the numbers we have, we're not saying that that is the l) V 2 correct approach. 3 DOE is going to have to come in and defend a lot 4 of those numbers and the doses could change. There's a lot 5 of assumptions in there. -The critical group assumption, the 6 pumping rate, the dilution. factors. So I think we still-7 want to look at what's driving our model, trying to 8 understand the system. 9 Yes, there's.a dose there at the end that people 10 want L to focus on, but I don't_think we're ready to say that 11 the doses aren't going to be higher than a microrem at Yucca 12 Mountain at this point, with our numbers.
-13 DOE has to come in and defend a lot of those 14 . parameter values. Yes.
O( j, - 15 MR. WITTMEYER: One of the things also, it's a 16 way.of testing our code, just kind of verifying to ourselves 17 that it makes sense; that when these parameters or this 18 collection of parameters are all high, does it make sense 19 that the realizations suggest high doses. We hope that 20 we're getting the physics however we capture it through 21 tables of values or simple abstractions, hopefully getting 22 that right. 23 This is a very straightforward way to test what we
'24 haveLin the code, frankly; to give us a good warm feeling 25 about what we have.
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7 L ' Y 177 1 MR. HORNBERGER: Did you carry your tree analysis
'I'l- 2 out'to doses of 50,000 years like Dick did or is yours . U-3 strictly for 10,000?.
4 MR. WITTMEYER: I think it's just been done for 5 10,000 years. 6 MR. HORNBERGER: I think it would be quite -- I 7 understand Tim's point and your point, and I certainly. 8 accept that". I was - .of course, I posed the question as 9 argumentative a way as I could think. But I understand that 10 you want to do the analyses
'11 I do think that it would be interesting to carry 12' the parameter tree approach out to 50,000 years because 13 there Dick's analysis suggests that it might not be the same 14 realizations that are leading to doses of concern, doses of (T
/'
j 15 true concern at 50,000 years, than your analysis at 10,000 16 ' years. 17 So you might want to exercise your model to learn 18 about it at the 50,000 years, as well. 19 MR. WITTMEYER: I agree. I think that's probably 20 in the works or will be done as soon as we have this tool, 21 computer tool that makes it easier to do this. , 1
- 22 MR. GARRICK: How do you know which parameters you
- 23. wish to evaluate? Is that strictly based on the
'24 sensitivity?.'
25 MR. WITTMEYER: No , it's not. You don't -- you ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. A)- (_ Court Reporters t! 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washingtoni D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 L !
i' 178 1 have 246 parameters and you don't know which one you're 2 going to evaluate to begin with, which collection. So you
~
3 start.out one at a time. You figure out which of the 246 by 4 itself describes ~most of the high doses. 5 MR. GARRICK: 'I understand that process. 6 MR. FAIRHURST: It's the fraction of waste 7 packages that have failed. 8 MR.LGARRICK: That's where it starts, yes. 9 MR. FAIRHURST: That's what is going to be the big 10 one.' 11 MR. HORNBERGER: But it isn't, because the tree
'12 that Gordon showed us, it was the amount of infiltrating 13 water that was the most important.
14' MR. FAIRHURST: No, I'm talking about 50,000 15 years, because he had no failures. 16 MR. HORNBERGER: We-don't know, right. 17 MR. GARRICK: Yes. 18 MR. HORNBERGER: But, you see, I would have a 19 question just on the general approach and I understand your j 20 approach, but suppose you forced it'by having the fraction 21- of juvenile failures be number one and look five deep. 22 Would you'or would you not come up with a slightly different
;23. conclusion?
24 I understand the logic, but I don't know that you 25 could prove'to me mathematically that that would give you
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179 1 the five parameter set that is absolutely most important. 2 MR. WITTMEYER: I could say that you could -- 3 you're right. Someone could come and tell me that this is 4 the most important thing. What you do with the tree after 5 that is up to you. You follow your method, and we might get 6 a different result. 7 But I think we have done the exercises, and maybe 8 Budhi could comment on that, and I think we do get slightly 9 different results. 10 But what I'm showing here is just trying to 11 consistently apply one way-of divvying up everything that we 12 have, and you're right, it's not unique, but it's consistent 13 within this framework. 14 MR. GARRICK: Any other questions? () 15 16 MR. WYMER: I wouldn't want my silence to indicate I completely understand what you said, however. 17 MR. WITTMEYER: Well, this changes everything. 18 Where can I help? 19 MR. FAIRHURST: Touch 6, touch 6. Wonderful. 20 MR. WITTMEYER: Now I don't feel comfortable. 21 MR. GARRICK: Obviously, this could get pretty 22 computationally complex if you extended this to a long 23 string of parameters. Also, if you, for some reason or
- 24 another, wanted to consider more than two states.
25 MR. WITTMEYER: You're right. It does become more ("N \% ,) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 l 180 l 1. complex, but'I.think-it's doable. I think -- and I see
.2 Budhi itching to answer this.
3 MR. SAGAR: I was going to say that it's not that 4 the method would get computationally more complex. We have 5 found that as you go deeper with more and more, you need 6 more and more~ realizations for your results to make any 7 statistical sense.
- 8. Actually, the calculation is repetitive 9 calculation.
10 MR. GARRICK: All you need is memory. 11 MR. SAGAR: Well, not even memory. We already 12 have that. We are handling that many parameters already, 13 and it's pretty; quick in computation. It doesn't take time. i 14 What it does require is a lot of realization if
) 15 you add another parameter. You don't want to draw your ;
l 16 results from ten realizations attached to the limb of the 17 tree. You want many more. 18 I think that's what is limits it, much more than 19 anything else. 20 MR. HORNBERGER: Just like anything else, when you 21 look at correlations, they tend not to be stable 22 statistically as the means or median. Have you played with 2
.3 this to know how many realizations you need even to go five
- 24. deep?
I 25 .MR. SAGAR: No, we haven't played, but we can take
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)
i l l' 181 1 1 a look~at the tables that Gordon presented and you would see ir 1 2 that come of the branches of the tree are only associated 4
\_ /' l 3 with ten realizations. It's not enough. At tha; point, 4 it's.not enough for that branch.
5 But I'm assuming that most of the important 6 results,.in the sense of 21 percent.and 12 percent 7 contribution to mean, are associated with branches which do 8 have a~significant number of realizations. 9 MR. HORNBERGER: Even there, my point is that I 10 would be more convinced if you showed me five different 11 '4',000-realization comparisons and that that 21 percent was 12 stable. 13 MR. SAGAR: Oh, yes. Because on this issue that 14 you are talking about, yes. 15 MR. HORNBERGER: Right. 16 MR. SAGAR: Yes. If we had another set of 4,000 17 realizations, that would tell me something. We haven't done 18 that. 19 MR. WITTMEYER: That's a more typical test. 20- Actually, I think the mean is the more difficult one, 21 because it tends to be less stable, particularly when you're 22- .getting very large variation in your doses, and it reflects 23 your large doses. The higher you go, the more you need,
'24 square cube, et cetera.
25 MR. GARRICK: All right. b- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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F" , n l; 182 L1 MR ~. SAGAR: Norm is.next. 2: MR..EISENBERG: Are you guys ready? 7(
'3 MR.'GARRICK: We're ready for you.
L4 MR. EISENBERG: Okay. I'm going to talk about SL importance-analysis, as the next slide show. I'll talk 6 about'some offthe concepts of importance analysis and give 7' an example for a repository. 8 The purpose of the importance analysis is to
' estimate the impact of system components on the net risk.
~
'9
- 10 .Previously today you've. heard other types of. sensitivity 11; . analyses, looking at the effects of parameters, looking at
? 12 .the effects of alternative conceptual models, looking at the 13 effects of various radionuclides, and specific issues; for 14 example, colloids.
) 15 So this'is now we're talking about the effects of
'16 components. As we've worked on this, we've come to believe, i7 l I guess, that this is just another type of sensitivity 18 analysis.
19 ..It's a pretty simple concept. You start out, you 20 look at.your system performance, and estimate the risk 21 assuming that the component performs its modeled function 22 the way you think, and-then you, for the selected component, 23 do the calculation again assuming the component does not 24 perform it's modeled function, but all the other components 25 ' perform normally. l l l >[ .\/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 I (202) 842-0034 l f 1 I
183 1
~
And so you have basically two results, the risk with the component not performing its modeled functions and
'(nv) 12 3 the risk with all the components performing their modeled 4 functions, and you take the difference and then the ratio is 5 'shown in the equation. It gives you a normalized importance 6 measure and, of course, the bigger this measure is, the more 7- _important the component is in affecting the risk.
8 If, by chance, you happen to get a negative value, 9 it means that by assuming the component didn't perform its 10 function as modeled, that means that the risks decrease, 11 which means that it really -- that particular component has 12 negative effects on system performance. 13 MR. GARRICK: Not a good design. Sorry, Norm, go 14 ' ahead. ifh 4,
)- 15 MR. EISENBERG: We do a calculation like this.
16 Did you guys hear what I'said before? 17 MR. GARRICK: No. You're cutting out. 18- MR. EISENBERG: Oh, there you guys are. A lot of 19 designs are done on a deterministic basis, so you may 20 understand, in a deterministic fashion, the effect of the
'21 particular component on performance, but you may not 22 understand fully what the risk implications are.
23 Then, of course, we have a natural system. So 24 some of the components in the system are there whether we i 25 want them or not. So this is a way of taking a look at [(>-
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I 184 1 everything on sort of an even playing field. s (
%/
) 2 Now, I will move on to the example. We used an 3 earlier version of the TPA code that had the old design, 4 with the waste package that was not as long-lived as the 5 current design.
6 This graph shows the results from this kind of 7 analysis and you see that about four things stand out as 8 having large importance. Now, in order to claim this, I 9 should say that strictly speaking, this variable eye or the 10 importance measure should be treated as the random variable, 11 so you can use different statistics associated with the 12 random variable to determine what the importance is. 13 This looks at four different statistics, 14 essentially, which simply all give about -- or get similar
.f%
(,) 15 results, but I don't know that 7 need to get into those 16 details. 17 But what this shows is that the pumping well, the 18 alluvium in the saturated zone provides or has a big effect 19 on the risk according to this measure and that, also, the 20 Topopah Springs, below the~ repository, has a significant 21 effect. 22 Everything else has a small effect and you can 23 kind of see that the layers above the repository, in some 24 cases, seem to have a negative effect. 25 Another way of displaying the results is to look (h
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ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 2001~ (202) 842-0034
185 1 at the CCDF of dose with these -- assuming either that all
] 2 the functions are performed as models at the base case and
-3 then assuming that' groups of components, in this case, the 4 natural system'and key elements of the engineered system, 5 are assumed not to perform their modeled functions, and, as 6 you can see, for this -- remember, this is the old model of 7: the code and the old waste package, but that the natural 8- components have a much larger effect than the engineered 9 components.
10 Now, there are some_ potential conceptual 11 difficulties in using this kind of an approach. One is how 12 do you go about assuring a systematic implementation when a
. 13 component is_ assumed not to perform its modeled function 14 because it really gets into sort of exclusive I
15 representations in the model and implicit representations in 16 the model, and it's not always easy to have a unique 17 solution as to what we mean by having the component not 18 perform its modeled function. 19- There is difficulty in conceptualizing that the 20 natural system doesn't perform its modeled function. Of 21 course, as with a lot of these methods, there is a potential 22 problem lwith interpreting the results. 23- So in conclusion, this is a simple method to rate 24 the system' components based on their impact on the risk from 25 the system. It's the type of sensitivity analysis, it hd ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
}
186 1 compliments information obtained by other sensitivity ) [) V 2 methods, zand that property, I think, shares with a lot of ~ 3' the other sensitivity methods. 4 Currently, it's not post-processor; that is, it 5 requires the' modification of the code. However, as I { 6 understand it,'they're planning to have much more in later 7 editions of the code that have much more of a capability to 8 look at intermediate outputs, and that may facilitate doing 9 importance analysis as a post-processor, to get the right 10 kinds of intermediate output. 11 And that's all.
'12 MR. GARRICK: In your model, when you take a
~ 13 component and put it in the no function mode, does that no 14 function mode reflect all downstream activities from -- it j (Oj 15 seems as though, we were talking earlier, in an earlier 16 meeting, about that there were some geochemical issues that 17 still assumed that that --
18 MS. WASHINGTON: Excuse me. We lost you again. 19 MR. GARRICK: I think it's me. 20 MR. LEE: What we're taking is network hits, and 21 that's something that we're just having to deal with through 22 the phone lines, where we're getting connected up. The way 23' that it's affecting all.three of us, I'd say it's at the 24 bridge at the NRC, there is something going on there. 25 MS. WASHINGTON.: I hate to tell you that you just [] ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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187 1 cut out again. Give me your explanation, Pat.
\
[G; 2 MR. LEE: .About'the only thing I know to do is try 3 to-call in again. It's happening to all three sites at 4 once, which means it's happening through the bridge. I ! 5 don't know if there's network hits getting taken there or ! 6 what. l 7' MS. WASHINGTON: It appears to be only your site, 8 because we drop back to Yucca Mountain. We're still on. 9 MR. LEE: Is that right? Well, I can try dialing 10 .into a different port that you have on your bridge and see 11 if that doesn't clear it up. .You want me to try to do that 12 real quick? It will take about two minutes. 13 MR. GARRICK: Why don't we -- we're very close to I i 14 a break. Maybe what we ought to do is take that break and /~% l '( ) 15 let you see if we can get some of these bugs worked out, 16 come back and finish this topic. Would that make sense? 17- Okay. Then why don't we take -- can you hang 18 around, Norm? 19 MR. EISENBERG: Sure. 20' MR. GARRICK: Okay. Why don't we take a 15-minute 21 break. 22 [ Recess.] 23 MR. GARRICK: All right. We were asking Norm to 24 wait over for some additional questions. The question I had 25 we had an adequate answer to during the break from Budhi, so b) \-. ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
188 1 I don't have anymore questions. [ T 2 . Charles, you got any more questions about the
\v/ .
3 importance ranking? 4 MR. EISENBERG: But how do I know that it was a i 5 good answer? 6 MR. SAGAR: He doesn't trust me. 7 MR. FAIRHURST: Norm, on I think it's page eight 8 of the handout, you have on the importance analysis, the one 9 showing natural barriers not performing their functions, the 10 base case,-and the other one. 11 MR. EISENBERG: Yes. 12 MR. FAIRHURST: Now, there was a presentation by 13 DOE in which, at one time, they -- it wasn't exactly an 1 14 importance analysis, but it was one where they took out (O,/; 15 components and they showed something there with a 99 percent 16 . dependence on the engineered barrier -- excuse me -- on the 1 17 waste package. Yours is very different here, right? 18 MR. EISENBERG: Right. But remember, I said that
- 19. we're using an earlier version of the TPA code and it's 20 assuming the waste package, not the current material, but i
21 the old material, C-25, which is not as long-lived. 22 Therefore, you see the natural barrier taking a
.23 much larger in this model than you do in the DOE analysis.
24 But we -- Tim has looked at what they did and we 25 have some questions about exactly how they implemented it, h
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189 1 So we're not sure that what they say represents the effects
'(q.j 2 of the waste package and the natural system really does 3: represent.
4 MR. FAIRHURST: I agree. They themselves had that 5 caveat because they said that they took some extremely 6 conservative positions with regard to the natural barriers 7 and over-emphasized the waste package. But I was just 8 interested that -- okay. All right. Thank you. 9' MR. GARRICK: Ray, got any questions? 10 MR. WYMER: No , I don't. 11 MR. GARRICK: George? 12 MR. HORNBERGER: Just one question, Norm. You had 13 indicated that one of the problems or -- I can't find it. 14 Not necessarily a problem, but one of the issues was just ;
) 15 philosophically what it means to remove the functioning of a 16 -given barrier. Did you have any -- I mean, is that just 17 something you live with with this kind of analysis or do you 18 have any thoughts about ways to satisfy critics who would 19 point to this as some disadvantage?
20 MR. EISENBERG: Well, you know, we've don't a lot 21 of thinking about this particular issue. First of all, I 22- think you have to think about why you would be interested in 23 doing this kind of analysis for a component and it's not 24 necessarily because you think either that'the component 25 would absolutely stop functioning as you think or fly away. [ l'k
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l 190 11 That's not what is intended at all. j ( 2 But it's a way of getting at, for a particular 3 component, if it turns out to be highly relevant in ) 4 determining what the overall risk is, then it's that l 5 component that you have to have a great deal of l 6 substantiation for in terms of the modeling and the data 7 that we're_using to support the models and the parameters I i 8 .that you're plugging into the models. l 9 So_it's a way of getting at something that I'm not 10 sure some of the other methods of analysis enable us to get 11 to. 12 So that's one way to answer it. Another way to 13 answer it' from the point of view of somebody who has got a 14 background in physics, is that this is, pardon the rh (_) 15 expression, but this is the Gadonkin experiment. This 16 doesn't mean that this could actually ever happen. It's a 17 thought experiment and we're trying to see something about 18 the behavior of the model, because after all, that's what 19 all the sensitivity methods so. They're looking at the 20 models. They're not looking at the real system necessarily. 21 So it's telling us something about the model and 22' where the performance is coming from in terms of the model 23 that was chosen. That's why we're very; careful to say, and 24 the approach we adopted, was that we're saying that the 25 modeled function ceases to occur, not that something else [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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- _i
1 191 1 happens or that the function just disappears. ( 2 Let me say.one other thing, however. Many years 3 ago, I took a course in ground water pollution up at 4 . Princeton, the famous course, and one of the examples they 5 discussed there'was the two potential polluters of a 1 6- municipal:well and the argument was about which one was
.7 actually polluting the well, and one'of the litigants said, 8 well, we can't be polluting the well because there is an 9 -aquifer that's separating where our pollution is going from 10 .the municipal well and we're innocent.
11 And I believe it-was later determined that, yes, 12 there was.an aquifer, but it was a leaky aquifer. So that's 13 an example of a natural system where you model a function 14 and although the function might not disappear completely, it (m. ( j) 15 would greatly diminish, to the extent that it turned the 16 tide in :this particular law case. 17 So once again, I'm trying to underline the idea 18 that this is a way to explore, in a kind of aggregate 19 fashion, the impact of both the data that we think we
.20 understand describing the particular component and the model 21 that we believe is most apt for the particular component.
22 And if you assume that that function doesn't occur 23 anymore, it gives you an idea ~of what the impact is on the 24 Ltotal system performance. 25 The bigger that is, the more sure you need to be ANN RILEY &-ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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p -- 192 p; 1 -of those'two elements. l[ think that provides some useful 2 insight. l- L3 MR. GARRICK: Norm, .are there any constraints on 4 how finally you define a component?
- 5, MR'. EISENBERG: Well, I'm of the old school of 6 system ~ analysis. I think a system;or a subsystem is any 17- piece of1the universe that you can draw a material boundary 8 around, so that.everything on the inside is the system or 9 subsystem,;and everything on the outside is not.
101 And other than that constraint, I don't believe
~11" there is.
12 MR.-GARRICK: For example, what -- 13 MR. EISENBERG: I mean, obviously -- I'm sorry. 14 MR. GARRICK: For example -- O(f 115. MR.'EISENBERG: What I was going to say is you 16 -don't want.to dispertize your. system too finely, because it j lL 7 - :just makes it much more, difficult to do any kind of sensible 18 analysis. I'm sorry, go ahead, Dr. Garrick. 19- MR. GARRICK: What about the cladding issue, with 20 and without? Norm, can you hear me now? 121 MR, SAGAR: Yes, but he doesn't want to answer. 22 MR. GARRICK: He's lost us again. Norm, can you 23' hear us? 24 MR. SAGAR: Certain responses it refuses to
- 25. transmit.
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F 1 193 1- MR.'GARRICK: He's frozen. I b 2 MR, SAGAR: .If.I might try tc answer this, Dr.
\.,):
3 Garrick. 'We didiindeed consider cladding to be a 4 compliment, even though in the base. case model that we 5 worked-with when we'did this example, cladding was not L 6 included.at all in the model. So we did not include it. ; 1 7 ;But conceptually we said,-yes, that's one 8 compliment and we could turn off its function in the sense 9 :that the time' period, the lifetime of cladding would be 11 0 turned off basically in one case, and consider it in the 11 normal' case. But that's very similar to Dick's analysis, 12 really.
'13 . MR. GARRICK: Right. Okay. Any other questions 14' from the committee for Norm? I'm not going to ask any. .(,
D) ' 15 Staff? 16' All right. I guess we're ready to hear about i
;17 investigating'the risk contribution of igneous activity.
18 MR. HILL: .If somebody could just give me a holler 19 if we lose the NRC. I'm Brittain Hill, and I will be 20 talking thisLafternoon on-igneous activity. I'd like to 21 focus on four main points this afternoon. '
-22 First,fsort of put the bottom line in front of the 23 , presentation and talk about risk' insights from performance 24 assessment. We' haven't had a chance to talk since Part 63
- 25 'has been drafted. And how we calculate an expected annual Ib ANN RILEY &' ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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e 194 {
'l dose from volcanism is a little bit different than how we
() 2 ' calculate the expected annual dose for other issues. l 3 I'd like to review the technical basis and 4 uncertainties in probability. That was a specific request l 5 from the committee. And then talk about some of the 6 .conservatisms and:non-conservatisms in the volcanism risk j 7 calculations that we're presenting this afternoon. 8 Finally, I'd like to talk about the post-VA i 9 interactions that we've had'with DOE and some pretty l 10' significant progress forward, after viability assessment. 11 First,-just to put us in the overall integrated 12 systems context, igneous activity has two key subissues, 13 volcanic disruption of the waste package and airborne 14 transport of radionuclides. We also contribute 15 significantly to biosphere issue of dilution of j 16 radionuclides in the soil.-. 17 And'since this is all sort of a new paradigm on 18 integrated subissues, I'd just like to take a moment and ! 19 show where the old KTI subissues of probability and 20 consequence fit in. i 21 Before I do that, I just want to make sure 22 everybody remembers that we have two kinds of igneous events 23 that we talk about during performance assessment. The most 24 important of these is a volcanic event, where a volcano 25~ actually penetrates the-repository and directly transports i b
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195 1 high level waste into the accessible environment. ' I'~h = 2- But also we have these things-called intrusive V, 3' events, where' magma intersects the repository, but it 4 doesn't vent,to the surface. So all that happens is we 5- would have a waste. package that's failed, but high level 6, waste and radionuclides are mobilized by ground water flow 7 'and transport. 8 In terms of the risk contribution, it's dominated 9 by volcanic events. We have done very little to evaluate 10 intrusive events, except some scoping calculations. 11 We've divided, in the.past, the igneous activity 12 .KTI into two subissues, the probability of the event and the 13 consequences of the event. That doesn't translate very 14- straightforward.to the integrated subissues, but we've p)- s_, 15 broken them out this way, Probability is focused on the 16 igneous disruption of the waste package subissue. There is 17 also a component of consequence onto that disruption I
'18 subissue. I 19 Then the other two subissues of airborne transport I 20 and dilution in the soil were previously covered under j
'70 consequences. The whole goal here and the real challenge is 22 how are we, going to compare low probability, high j 23 . consequence events, such as igneous activity, and associated 24 with the other associated subissues of real high 25 probability,.but potentially low consequence events.
O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. '%sl. . ' Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1C14 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
o 19F 1 So how do we calculate risk? Which is the only
-[~'Y 2- way that we can make this comparison. For igneous activity, ' \_J 3 what we first'have to do is look at how the dose can change 4- through time ~following an eruption. Here we make the 5 assumption that-the volcanic event does occur and-penetrates 6 the repository at some specific time following closure of 7 .the repository.
8 Here.we have run~the.TPA code for about 400 9 realizations for.each time, come up with a mean peak 10 conditional dose; that means this is the average dose that 11 you would get if an eruption occurred, say, for example, at 12 5,000 years. 13 The error bars represent a standard error of the 14 mean, just a very simple variant statistics. You can see () 15 that we have a very nice regular function of how peak dose 16 through time would behave for different years of volcanic 17 events and that roughly double cxponential function is 18 controlled by. inventory decay and also how different 19 radionuclides affect dose, depending on which radionuclides 20 are dominant in the inventory. 12 1 So the first thing in calculating the expected 22 annual dose is figuring out for each year what would the 23 dose be if an eruption occurred within that year. That's 24 only part of the story. 25 The second part is that the dose isn't just O A./ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202) 842-0034 ) L
197
- 1. received by the eruption, but the fall' deposits, the
<~
-( g; 2. volcanic fall deposit'from the eruption will remain on the 3 surface for many thousands of years following the eruption.
.4 We don't have any deposits preserved in the Yucca 5 . Mountain region. The youngest volcano out there is 80,000 l l
6: years old. So we've had to make an assumption based on-7 analogs, analog deposits, about how long would a volcanic l' 8 fall deposit last if we had an eruption in the area of Yucca ; 9 Mountain region. We've gone to some other areas and found 10 that they exist for at least thousands of years, but they're
-- 11 probably gone.by about 10,000 years.
12' So here at Yucca Mountain, we assume that the 13 deposit has a 10,000 year lifetime and.follows a roughly 14 exponential decay through time. That decay is controlled by ( 15 radionuclide decay, deposit erosion, and radionuclide 16 leaching. j j 17 You can-see here in this example, we assume the j 18 eruption occurs a thousand years post-closure and allow 19 these roughly exponential functions to behave and you can l
'20 see how the dose decays through' time.
21 So I'll be referring to a' deposit half-life, and 22 that doesn't really have anything to do with radionuclides, 23 but essentially it's an exponential' decay function, an 24 effective half-life for deposit removal and radionuclide 25- leaching that we're seeing to do these dose calculations. b
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198
'l We're also making another critical assumption that
- 2. I will go into some details a little bit later on, that the
~3 dosimetry remains constant. The particle concentration 4 above the deposit remains constant through time. That's a 5 conservative assumption, but it's one that we have some data 6' at-least to;back up.
. 7. So what'we need to do to calculate our expected 8 annual dose is for any given year, calculate the dose from 9; an eruption,;if it would occur in that year, multiplied by 10 the eruption probability within that year, which we believe 11- is ten-to-the-minus-seven, and for every preceding year, we 12 have to calculate what the dose would be from a preexisting 13- fall deposit,.again, weighed by its ten-to-the-minus-seventh 14- . annual probability of occurrence.
() 15 So here for example, in roughly year 1,000, we 16 -have a ten-to-the-minus-seventh probability of an eruption 17 occurring within that year, but we also have a 18 ten-to-the-minus-seventh probability of an eruption 19 occurring in year 999, with a one-year-old fall deposit 20 giving us a dose, and back up to a ten-to-the-minus-seventh J21 probability of an eruption at 100 years post-closure, with a 22 900-year-old deposit giving us a dose, and summing for all 23 prior years.
.24 And when we sum that up and assume that our 125L deposit half-life remains constant at 1,000 years, we get an .'l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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T [- 199 1 expected annual dose curve, that's the upper one shown by ( )- 2 the.invertedtriqngles,'andthatgivesusanexpectedannual 3 dose of around a millirem per year at roughly 1,000 years ! 4 post-closure. 5 We just did a brief scoping calculation to think, ; 6 well,-the radionuclide decay -- or there are many more ; 7 short-lived radionuclides early on post-closure. So if we i i 8 allow our effective half-life to be much shorter early on, 9 say, 100 years rather than 1,000 years, and then allow that 10 '100-year half-life to gradual;'.y increase with time, would it 11 make a difference. l 12 And at the limits of uncertainty in the resolution 13 _thatlwe have here, I'd say no. You can see the curve is 14 slightly lower, but we're still looking at roughly a 15 millirem per year expected -- peak expected annual dose that 16 occurs roughly about 1,000 or 5,000 years post-closure. ] l 17 So the bottom line here is that our best ! 18 understanding is that the peak expected annual dose from 19- : volcanism, and that's the metric that's being used in Part 20 63, is around one millirem per year and the timing of that ! 21 peak dose is around 1,000 years post-closure. 22 MR. GARRICK: But that's purely arbitrary. 23 MR. HILL: What's arbitrary? 24 MR. GARRICK: The 1,000 year post-closure. 25 MR. HILL: It's not arbitrary. It's a result of i
'O,/
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c [z 200 1 4the calculations. () 12 _MR. GARRICK-MR.' HILL: But it's an assumption. 3 Which assumption? 4E MR. GARRICK: Well, on slide eight -- 5' MR. HILL: No. This is just an example at 1,000 6 years. We'd be calculating this for every year, for.100 7 ' years post-closure to 10,000 years post-closure. It just 8 was coincidentally that the timing of around 1,000 years 9 corresponds to this example. But you can do this curve for 10L every year post-closure from the TPA code. 11 MR. GARRICK: But it's still very conditional. 12 The ten-to-the-minus-seven is a fundamental condition. 13 _' .MR. HILL: Right. It's a fundamentcl probability 14 of the event. I will-address some potential concerns with ( '15 that number in a minute; why we believe that's not just 16 reasonably-conservative, but is realistic as we can make it 17 .for the Yucca Mountain region. 18 MR. GARRICK: _And one millirem is a no-never mind, 19 so why are we fussing.around with it. 20- MR. HILL: Well, it would be, except we haven't 21 addressed the uncertainty associated with that number. On 22 the next slide,.we say that these mean values do not reflect i 23 _our current understanding of uncertainty. There's two . l 24: fundamental processes, that I will go into a bit more detail 25 in a few minutes. But, first, we're assuming that the l
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201 1 number of waste packages entrained corresponds to a volcano () 2 in an undisturbed. geologic setting. 3 We have a. technical basis that's under development 4- that leads us to believe that number is under-estimated 5 significantly in our performance calculation. 6 Conversely, we also have been assuming that our 7 mass-loading parameters through time remain constant. We're 8 assuming that the particle concentration over that fall 9 deposit remains the same for thousands of years into the 10 future. 11 We know that that's over-estimating the dose 12 consequences of the event, but we do not have a technical 13 basis to say how low those concentrations should be through 14 time. That's another area that we're working on. f i 15 So I think the point that we have order of 16 magnitude level uncertainty about that one millirem per year 17- risk number and that the continued level of effort during 18 the next two years can reduce this level of uncertainty 19 quite significantly. And we're concluding, not just from 20 that one millirem per year, but considering that there is 21- significant uncertainty on that number, that could cause one 22 millirem to go up or down, and not just at the third decimal 23 . place, but truly by an order of magnitude sense, that this 24 one millirem per year should be viewed as significant to I 25 1 total system performance assessment. , ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court. Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
s 202 1: So our insights can conclude that volcanism
-f~)
~
- 2. presents a quantifiable level of total system risk. This is v
'3 a doable and defendable calculation.
4l .Second, as with every other issue, our staff 5 analysis shows that the Yucca Mountain site does not exceed 6- .the proposed. total system performance standard. 7 Finally, because this is a significant issu', the 8 DOE license application will need a clear and credible 9- treatment of. igneous activity. 10 MR. HORNBERGER: Can.I ask you a question? < 11 Actually, on the previous slide. Your expected annual dose, 12 as you show it, is the sum of -- it's a convolution of the 13' deposit'and so you basically have two parts. It's the { 14 eruption dose and the convolution of past eruptions. I ~ 15 MR. HILL: Right. 16 MR. HORNBERGER: Which of those is most'important? i l 17 MR. HILL: The past eruptions. ! 18 MR. HORNBERGER. It is. I
- 19 MR. HILL. Dy orders of magnitude. By tne way 20 this is formulated now for Part 63, the eruption dose
, 21 becomes relatively insignificant. You can get a sense of 22 .that importance by looking.at the dose through time, 23 multiplied then by the probability of occurrence. So 12
- 24. rems times ten-to-the-minus-seventh probability of getting 25 that comes up to a very small number.
I i; O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 a
i i 1 201 1 1~ MR. HORNBERGER: That's what I would have guessed. 2' MR. HILL: (f And that's the real challenge of how
.3 we're going to demonstrate compliance -- excuse me -- how j 4 DOE is going to demonstrate and we're going to evaluate
'5 compliance based on a deposit that no longer exists in the i 1
6 Yucca ~ Mountain region,.for which the key parameters have no 7 basis in the literature. 8 MR. HORNBERGER- The other presumption here is, of 9 course, that your ten-to-the-minus-seventh, that's it's an 10 IID, it's independent identically distributed process.
.11 MR. HILL: Yes.
12 MR. HORNBERGER: And is that a reasonable 13 assumption for volcanism or do you -- 14 MR. HILL: I believe it's temporally a good j () 15 homogenous process and that a scale of 10,000 years relative 16- to the recurrence rate, there is no significant difference
'17 between the probability at 100 years post-closure versus 18 10,000 years post-closure, even at a million years, the 19' differences are very insignificant.
-20 MR. GARRICK: So how do you compare the 21 uncertainty in the ten-to-the-minus-seven number with the 22 uncertainty in the parameters having to do with the number 23 of. waste packages entrained and the mass loading parameters?
! 24' MR. HILL: I'm not sure, because there are very 25 different uncertainties. The probability model doesn't
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g. I 204
-1 represent a median or some sort of statistical measure of a 21 population of probability models. For example, it's not the 3 'mean of what weLean glean out of the' literature for 4- probability of disruption at Yucca Mountain.
5 That's-why I was putting down that we have 6 uncertainty really in the consequences. It's a little 7 . easier to quantify in terms of the order of magnitude. 8 . Defer the probability part for just a couple of 2 9- slides, because I can give you_a sense of conservatism on-
- 10. that.
11 MR. GARRICKi 'All right. 12 MR. HILL: Again, we don't have the technical 13 basis to.truly quantify the uncertainties in this first 14 bullet. But I would say that they.are on the order of an
, ) 15 order-of magnitude and they-could.well be offsetting 16 magnitude uncertainties.
17 The committee had specifically asked'to talk about 18 probability model uncertainties. So I'd like to give a very 19: quick overview on some topic that's been presented in great j
.20: . deal both=in the literature and in previous ACNW meetings.
21' The models that we're using for the NRC issue 22; resolution process are based on the clustering and age of l 23 .past igneous events in the Yucca Mountain region. 24 Now, there is no accepted met .lology for how you 25 do a volcanism probability model calculation. We don't O . ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticu9 Avenue, NW, Suite.1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
205 1 know, for example, what the standard is for what constitutes ) l'v ) 2 an event. Is it a single volcano? Is it a group of similar 3 aged volcanoes? Do you include the subsurface structures in l 4 there? Each of those three events has a very different area 5 term, but also a different recurrence rate. So what we've ! 6 done is we've examined different event definitions to see 7 what the significance is on do we call it a single event or 8 a chain of events in terms of the probability of an igneous 9 event. 10 We also have a number of geologic features that 11 could influence where a volcano is going to erupt. Some of i 12 the ones that we're integrating into probability models l 13 include variations in crustal density as measure of past 14 crustal extension that focuses where volcanism would be and l' ( , 15 also how the orientation of existing faults is relative to 16 crustal strain. 17 If it's in an easy to dilate orientation, it's 18 more likely ascending magma can come up along those easily 19 dilated structures relative to forming new dilational 20 structures. So models that we have been developing and are 21 well documented in the IRSR give us a range depending on how 22 you use the event definitions and the radiologic features. 23 They can go from on the order of 24 ten-to-the-minus-eight to ten-to-the-minus-seventh per year 25 at the repository, but also may be ten-to-the-minus-seventh [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \~ 'I Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
206 1 to ten-to-the-minus-sixth per year in Central Crater Flat, (~ ) x,,/ 2 and less than or significantly less than 3 ten-to-the-minus-eight by the time you get east of the 4~ repository in Jackass Flat. 5 Now, I need to emphasize that we really don't have 6 a. technical basis to distinguish these different kinds of 7 models. Is it more correct to say that a volcano is an 8 individual vent or vent alignment? Nobody knows. We don't, 9 DOE doesn't, nobody in the literature can tell us. 10 Does the degree.of past extension or orientation 11 of current structures dominate how magma ascends or do the 12 mathematical models, which kernel do we use, some sort of a 13 gallium' kernel, which kernel best describes the variation in 14 'the Yucca Mountain' region? We don't know. () 15 So we can't really'say that we have a population 16 .with a central tendency about it, but rather these 17 probability models bound and we'd say reasonably 18 conservatively bound at ten-to-the-minus-seventh, a range of 19 probability for this site. 20 - We have to also remember that we have very few 21 igneous events'in the Yucca Mountain region. 22 MR. GARRICK: You use the word reasonably 23 conservative, which suggests to me that you have some 24 ' knowledge about what -- if you were put to the test, what 25 kind of a representation you would put this in in a [] \_/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
p 207 1- probability distribution form. ! rx ( 2 Would you not feel more comfortable if you 3 . characterized that particular probability as some i i 4 distribution rather than a number.about which you say is 5- reasonably conservative? Why not go that one step further 6 and say, okay,'this is what I mean by reasonably
.7- conservative? This is the distribution and I'm choosing a 8 - value here and now I know exactly what you mean by 9 reasonably conservative.
10 MR. HILL:. I think we'd be mixing a lot of l 11 different models together under the class of just this is a 12 probability model. How would we come up, for example, a 13 licensing review position, with the existing literature? l I 14 How would we. factor that in to a probability distribution? () 15 MR. GARRICK: Well, you're ignoring it the way
-16 we're doing it now.
17 MR. HILL: Right, .because -- 18- MR. GARRICK: You're ignoring the uncertainty and 19 that's not very' satisfactory when you're there telling me ) 20 that-this number-represents a number that's reasonably ) 21 conservative. I 22 So you have'some more information at your disposal 23; that you're not giving me and I'd much rather see you give i 24 me that information because I can handle it a distribution 25 curve and now you can relate to that curve exactly what the
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F I i l 208 1- evidence is that~ supports that curve. I 2 MR. HILLS {G 4 Let me show this slide here.that gives
-3 the basis not from the statistics or model approach, but i
4 rather the features of the Yucca Mountain site and why we l 5 wouls say that.this ten-to-the-minus-seventh number is more j 6- than ust an artificial construct of elegant mathematical l 7' models. 8 This is a map showing the distribution of past 9 . volcanic events at the Yucca Mountain region. North is up. 10 There is our repository site. The red represents volcanoes 11 that have erupted within the last million years. Green is 12 in the range of three to six million years, and blue are 13 volcanoes that were active anywhere from eight to 11 million j 14 years ago, i fN. \ ( ,) 15 An important feature here is an interpretative I 16 feature called this Crater Flat structural basin, shown in
- 17. dashed purple lines, that all of the paternary, the volcano 18 . is younger than five million years have erupted within this 19 basin. It's also well expressed in the subsurface
.20 geophysics and we think this serves as the main locus of 21 volcanic activity within the Yucca Mountain region.
22 You have to go quite a distance, 50-60 kilometers ' 23 away from this basin to find volcanoes that are younger than
- 24. two million years. So it's not like there's a bunch of .
l
'25 young volcanoes up here or right out here that we aren't l
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209 1 showing. (7,) 2 Now, within the past million years, we have had v 3 two volcanic events in the Yucca Mountain region, within any 4 conceivable distance of the Yucca Mountain site. Right 5 here, Crater Flat, a million years ago, and down here at 6 Lathrip Wells, about 80,000 years ago. 7 So in a very simple way, in the highest 8 probability point of the Crater Flat basin, which would be 9 right here, and you can just eyeball it and see that's sort 10 of the locus of activity, we have had two events in the past 11 million years. 12 So if you say the annual probability is around 13 one-times-ten-to-the-minus-six, in the next million years, 14 you'd expect to have one volcano. Well, given that the (~N . ( ,). 15 previous million years gave you two volcanic events, one 16 million year or a probability model that says 17 ten-to-the-minus-six per year at the locus of activity seems 18 pretty reasonable based on the past patterns of activity. 19 MR. FAIRHURST: Isn't there some suggestion, at 20 least by DOE, that there is an alignment, that these 21 volcanoes are following a structural trend? 22 MR. HILL: At a very large regional scale, that's 23 correct. That's been recognized for over 20 years. The 24 green water alignment going down from east central 25 California all the way up into central Nevada. ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \~sl Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
210 1 MR. FAIRHURST: But not more. locally? I thought I {} 2 -heard some arguments that the alignment would bypass the 3 repository area.
~4 MR. HILL: That's a whole other issue on source 5 zones, that they would say that based on this distribution 6 of sparse events, and that's how I would characterize it, as 7 a distribution of sparse events, that they would say that 8 the volcanism is localized to the left of the arrow in many 9 of their probability models. But yet that has been nothing ,
10 more than defining a zone based on a sparse pattern of past
-11 activity. There is no geologic feature that's been 12 presented in the DOE models or accompanying literature that 13 suggests that there is any geologic structure or feature in 14 that region that would localize magnetism away from the O
Q 15 repository. ; 16 In fact, the past pattern of events shows that a 17 volcano did form within one kilometer of the repository site 18 about 11 million years ago. i 19 MR. FAIRHURST: Well, the DOE has a value, they've 20 . assumed a value, I think it's 1.25 or something times 21 ten-to-the-minus-eight. 22 MR. HILL: That was a -- 23 MR. FAIRHURST: That was in the VA. 24 MR. HILL: -- fall event probability for igneous 25 activity of 1.5-times-ten-to-the-minus-eight as a mean I~T ANN'RILEY &. ASSOCIATES, LTD. (_) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
211 1 value. Yes. [h 2 MR. FAIRHURST: That's what you're suggesting is 3 ten-to-the-minus-seven. 4 MR. HILL: Yes. I'm not saying it's a mean. 5 We're just saying the best we can do is bound that in order 6 of magnitude. 7 Now, what I want to get to on that kind of a 8 number is we're seeing an annual probability of 9 ten-to-the-minus-six in this locus of activity that seems 10 reasonable from the past pattern of events. 11 Now, let's look at what's happened over the past 12 12 million years. Depending on how you want to define an 13 event, we've had anywhere from 13 to 15 igneous events 14 within this Crater Flat structural basin. Now, one of those (JI
~
15 events, up here at the head walls of Solitario Canyon, came 16 within one kilometer of the proposed repository site. So 17 we're seeing one event out of 13 to 15 that's right there, 18 right next to where the repository is being located. 19 So in order of magnitude sense, we're seeing an 20 order of magnitude decrease from the locus of activity out 21 here in the repository site, in contrast to an equivalent 22 probability or two orders of magnitude decreased activity 23 over the geologic record at Yucca Mountain. 24 So we would see these order of magnitude 25- relationships supports an order of magnitude decrease in I ['T --/ \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025. Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 ! Washington, D.C. 20036' : (202) 842-0034
212 1 probability from the' locus of activity in Crater Flat, which () 2. .is reasonably well~ constrained up through the paternary, out 3; to the' proposed repository site based on a longer record, 4'- but the only available record'we'have to make a 5 determination at this site. 6 That's one of the reasons we believe that a 1 7- ten-to-the-minus-seventh number is the most defendable for 8- this site relative to something that would be 9 ten-to-the-minus-sixth or higher as proposed in some of the
-10 ' peer reviewed geologic literature or below 11- ten-to-the-minus-eight at. Yucca Mountain.
12 We just don't see a two order of magnitude-13 ~ decrease in past activity between here and here. So I know 14 -that's not a statistical determination, but it does ( 15 introduce site data. 16 MR. HORNBERGER: I have a question, though. .This 17 .has always intrigued me. .So Sollow your argument and say 18- it's ten-to-the -- as I would understand your argument, 19: -you're saying that there is a ten-to-the-minus-seventh per 20 annual probability of a volcano somewhere in this region. 21 MR. HILL: No. .That is for the site specific.
- 22 MR. HORNBERGER: How did you make it site 23 specific? That's the part that I miss.
24 MR. HILL: That's the probability. 25' MR.'HORNBERGER: I understand that you have all of I ANN RILEY'& ASSOCIATES,.LTD. 1[ b /) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014
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213 l' .these red -- you say, well, two in the last ten-to-the -- t 2 the last million years, so one-times-ten-to-the-sixth.
)
3 MR. HILL: In the center of activity. In the 4 locus, the cluster, the center of activity, the highest 5- probability is there at-ten-to-the-minus-six per year. 6 34R . HORNBERGER: Right. But if'we care about 7 Yucca Mountain, it's.-- so-it recasts the. argument. I hear 8 the weather forecast on the Weather Channel and they say
.9 there'is a ten percent chance of rain tomorrow and it always 10 -- I always am curious, and I've asked meteorologists, does 11 this -- should I interpret this that it's a ten percent 12 chance of rain somewhere within a 50-mile radius of Saa 13 Antonio or should I interpret it that it is a ten perce ' l 14 chance that it's going to rain everywhere tomorrow. ) 15 So there is a temporal and spatial aspect, and 16 that's what I'm asking you to disentangle here.
17 MR. HILL: Right. And that's what I'm' trying to 18 untangle, given that we're dealing with a clustered event 19 that has some sort of a clustering to it. What is the 20- boundary of that cluster? That's the fundamental question.
.21- We would all agree, DOE and us and everyone else agrees that 22 'right here in' Central Crater Flat is the locus of activity, 23 the most likely spot for the next eruption is right out in )
1 24 here. 25 'But is there a geologic feature that says the I O
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1 214 1 boundary.of this cluster is well defined where? It really [ ) 2 isn't. Even when'you get'up to here, that matter becomes V 3 very diffuse. You lose the-structural basin, the good 4 manifestation of-it,-right about here. So where within this
-5 'is the eastern boundary? Well, it's easy to construct a 6 model that says the edge of the alluvium is the edge of the 7 basin.
8 Now, that's one of the~ bases used to construct a-9 model'. But we're trying to make a little more robust 10 -determination, what is the feature that will affect the 11 process. So that's why I'm bringing in the order of 12 magnitude decrease. It's the best you can do. 13 I'm not saying that 13 to 15 to one is exactly the 14 number. 15' MR. HORNBERGER: I know, but I'm being dense,. 16 'okay?' And it's clear that I'm being obtuse and I'm not
'17 understanding.
18 Let me change it from Yucca Mountain to -- what's
'19' the most recent one there?
20 MR. HILL: Lathrip Wells. 21 MR. HORNBERGER: Lathrip Wells. Okay. Does the 22 probability -- is the annual probability of volcanic 23 eruption right there,-- right at Lathrip Wells, 24- ten-to-the-minus-sixth? L25 MR. HILL: No. Actually, I think the probability 19 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. km/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
F 1 215 1 at Lathrip Wells is below ten-to-the-minus-ninth, because h 2 we've never seen these volcanoes come up in the same place
"(d
-3 again. They always come up in a new location. Something 4 about the pathway.
5 But let me just give -- 6 MR.'HORNBERGER: Okay. Okay. One kilometer -- 7 MR. HILL: Can we get rid of Lathrip Wells for a 8 minute and go back 100,000 years ago. 9 MR. CONNER: Based on the model -- l 10 MR. GARRICK: Fo, the benefit of the court 11 reporter, would you give your name? 12 MR.' CONNER: My-name is Chuck Conner, at the 13 CNWRA. I just wanted to clarify that based on the models 14 that'we're using, the probability of eruptions at Lathrip
/~
( 15 Wells - .by the way, Lathrip Wells is a volcano that is 16 expected one time -- a one-time eruption. 17 Based on all that, it's about 18 ten-to-the-minus-seven per year. It's a little bit higher 19 than the probability of. eruptions at the site itself. In 20' ' fact, if you.do the cluster analysis, you discover that
- 21. Lathrip Wells is, in fact, at the edge of the Crater Flat 22 cluster, much in the same geographic position as the 23 repository itself.
l 24- So based on the model, the probability of bull's 25 eye is in southern Crater Flat. The probability of decay is
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216
-1 away.from Central Crater Flat, based on a waving function 7/ 3 2 that tries to incorporate the geology and the Lathrip Wells
.Q-3 gives you about the same probability as the site itself. 4 MR. HORNBERGER: What confused me was your 5' ' statistical argument for ten-to-the-minus-six versus a model 6' ' generated probability which does take into account this -- 7 MR. CONNER: Yes. Our models take into -- yes, 8 potential recurrence rates,~ spatial weighting factors'and 9 that'whole' thing. Using technical terms. 10 MR. HILL: Anything more on probability? 11 MR. GARRICK: A lot. I had forgotten what the -- 12 was it a NUREG or a DOE document that developed the 13 equivalent of a volcanic hazard curve which was the 14 frequency of occurrence'of volcanoes as a function of (Oj 15 different severity or magnitude or what have you. 16 Is there such a -- are you developing something i 17 .like that? j 18 MR. HILL: No, because we're really dealing with a 19 single type of volcano. Many of the volcanic hazard curves 20 .that you've seen are for very different classes of volcanic
- 21. impacts,>such as debris flows and ash fall, things of that i
22 nature. We're worried really about a new vent forming, not 23 indirect impacts from distant vents. 24 So there is no minimal volcanic event that does 25' not affect the repository performance given the volume and ( - ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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217 l 1 severity of past igneous events in the region. l / '\ 2 MR. GARRICK: ' That's a pretty bold assumption,
's ~
3 isn't it? 4 MR. HILL: I think it's well constrained by 12 5 million years of data. 6 MR. GARRICK: But I'm thinking also about the 7 interaction of'the magma with the repository. 8 MR. HILL: That's why we're using stochastic-9 processes to sample a range of consequences to come up with 10 our consequence calculations. We're not taking a 11 deterministic approach. There is an uncertainty in how 12 magma' interacts, how magma entrains, we're accounting for a 13 great range within a basaltic eruption class of event 14 duration, event power, wind speeds, all these other () 15 parameters or samples stochastically. 16 .MR. GARRICK And how do you deal, again, with the 17 location-specific issue? We're talking about a very 1 18 pinpoint location here and we don't have a problem unless 19 there's some interaction and there, depending on 20 circumstances, we may still not have a problem. 21 For example, with backfill, the problem is much 22- different than without backfill and so forth. l 23 MR. HILL: Conceptually, that's correct. But for ' i 24 .the data that we're -- for the results that we're presenting 25 Lin previous calculations, we've made no assumption on /~N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (_ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I
q 218 1 backfill. We've really only considered that the source term m IsJ ') 2 of the canisters that are directly entrained within the 3 volcanic conduit, if you put a volcano and the hole is 50 4 meters in diameter, and you're erupting material at 100 5 meters a second, we feel that when you put a waste package 6 into that hostile environment, there is a failure and the 7 material 10 entrained. e I will go into some of those critical assumptions, i 9 but we have done scoping calculations on indirect effects, j J 10 how many waste packages would be affected indirectly from an 11 igneous event, but in a risk-informed setting, we just don't 12 have a high priority to those tasks because we're dealing 13 with hydrologic flow and transport issues. 14 You still don't have an escantially instantaneous r'N () 15 transport of waste to the accessible environment. You fail 16 a waste package, it still takes 4,000, 5,000 years to ) 17 mobilize that waste out into 20 kilometers to the critica] 18 group, and then you start weighing that by a
- 19. ten-to-the-minus-seventh annual probability of occurrence to 20 come up with an expected annual dose and you can see 21 relative to a one millirem per year expected annual dose, 22 those indirect effects are many orders of magnitude less.
23 So in prioritizing the work, we focused on 24 volcanism and paid very little technical direction to the 25 indirect effects or the hydrologic, enhanced hydrologic flow ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [~) A- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
219 1- effects.
-[\/} 2 MR. GARRICK: You said earlier that you thought 1
3 some'of these uncertainty effects might be possibly 4 offsetting. l 5 MR. HILL: Yes. 6 MR. GARRICK: 'Given the uncertainty with the 7 ten-to-the-minus-seven and the uncertainty with the 8- -parameters, what is your present sense of how the 9 uncertainty band would exist around the one millirem dose?' 10 MR. HILL: My sense'is it's fair to put an order J 11 .of magnitude on that uncertainty, considering how you want 12 to view that uncertainty, is it solely on our models or does 13 that account other available information. 14 MR. GARRICK: So you think -- unless he's taking (O,) 15 the ten-to-the-minus-seven as something other than an 16 approximate mean or conservative mean or conservative 17 median. i 18 MR.' HILL: There are values in the literature by i 19 recognized experts in the field that say that probability 20 should be ten-to-the-minus-sixth using the same methodology 21 ~ that dominates the DOE position of ten-to-the-minus-eight. 22 There's other -- there's work in the literature i 23 that suggests recurrence rates have been under-estimated 24 ' based,on present patterns of crustal strength. Now, while 25 we do not feel, based on our analysis, that those hypotheses [T
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m 220 1 tell us risk has been under-estimated, they nonetheless [~}'\
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2 exist'in the literature and have not been addressed by the 3 Department of Energy. There is also undetected or 4 -interpreted features in the Yucca Mountain region that the 5 Department of Energy needs to address from their own work 6 that says that there are still a significant number of 7 . undetected igneous events out there. 8 So if we were to say right now what our 9 uncertainty is in a licensing sense on hew w. evaluate all 10 available information, it's very fair to say that there is 11 an order of magnitude uncertainty above and below 1 12 ten-to-the-minus-seventh per year-. 13 MR. GARRICK: And you think that translates
)
1 14 directly to the dose. p) ( 15 MR. HILL: Yes, it does. Any more questions at 16 this point? Because we're going to move to consequences. 17 MR. FAIRHURST: That's what I'm interested in. 1 18 MR. HILL: Okay. So there's really about seven ' 19 main points.I'd like to touch on for consequences and how 20- 'we're evaluating the degree of conservatism or at times the 21 degree of realism.in the one millirem per year that I've 22 been showing. 23 We've got a number of key processes and they don't 24 correspond to integrated issues or even part of the TPA 25 modules, but they're just sort of abstraction of where we [~ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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q 221 El - -believe the' fundamental assumptions are. 3-s ggg 2- The first of these is the volcanic conduits are 3 .theLsame dimension as observed in undisturbed geologic 4- settings. Right now we're assuming the conduit is about one 15 to.50 meters'in diameter and that entrains anywhere from one 6 to ten 1 waste packages. We sample that under uniform 7 distribution. 8 We can constrain that number very well by 9 observations of intrusions, like here in Utah, where we see 10 a shallow sub-volcanic dyke. This is about a kilometer 11 beneath the surface. This conduit is 45 meters in diameter, 12 fed by a little one meter in diameter' dyke here. You can 13 also go to active volcanoes and use'the amount of wall rock, 14 subsurface rock to constrain that diameter very well. 15 But that observation.is only for undisturbed 16 settings. We really haven't accounted for how a two-phase 17 flow, fragmented magma with dissolved gas in it, is going to 18 interact when it encounters a backfilled or non-backfilled 19 drift. 20 The' disturbed stressing also on the surrounding 21 rock has not-been investigated by us or by the DOE.
'22 All we can say.is that the current value appears 23 to be reasonably constrained by analog data. We just have 24 done some scoping calculations that you've heard about that
~25 indicate the magma-repository interactions may be much
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222 1 greater'than we have assumed using strictly analogs data. (y j 2 So.we may be likely under-estimating the number of waste 3 packages entrained'by a volcanic event.
'4 We have ongoing investigations this year to 5- conduct numerical.and_ analog experiments to try to scope out 6 the magnitude of that potential under-estimate.
7 MR. FAIRHURST: Is there field evidence that these 8 eruptions are indeed cylindrical? , 9 MR. HILL: 'Yes. Reasonably so. 10 MR. FAIRHURST: How does that jive with the in 11 situ stress field? 12 MR. HILL: Well, you're ending up coming up with a 13 plainer. feature, a dyke, that eventually localizes flow 14 within this conduit and begins to erode the wall rock l 15 ' outward. 16 So it's just getting into a nice -- it really 17 doesn't have anything to do with the stress field because l 18 the pressure within the dyke and the flowing magma conduit 19 is greater than the lithostatic stress. .So it begins to 20 pluck.out around the conduit and -- 1 21 MR. FAIRHURST: Yes, but it would tend to'have an 22 orientation. 23 MR. HILL: There is a slight elongation to it at 24 times, but at other times, it has nothing to do with stress 25 as deduced by the orientation of the feeder dykes. ; I' \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l
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E i l 223 1 Sometimes the elongation is in a different direction. i 2 ( MR. FAIRHURST: No, I can understand that, as a 3 secondary consequence of the -- 4 MR. HILL: Yes, it's secondary. It's not truly 5 governed as a penny-shaped ellipse, a very long ellipse by 6 crustal stress. These, where we've seen them, tend to be 7 very cylindrical. They're not perfect cylinders. They're 8 geologic. But they do have that nice rounded outline when 9 we view it at one level'at two dimensions. 10 MR. FAIRHURST: And that's the surface. 11 MR. HILL: Yes. 12 MR. FAIRHURST: Have you any indication of what it 13 is as a function of depth? 14 MR. HILL: No. () 15 MR. FAIRHURST: Down to 300 meters or 400 meters? 16 MR. HILL: No. Depth -- those kind of depths are 17 just retched to constrain in geologic settings. Whether l 18 we're here at 500 meters or kilometers, at an eroded system, 19 there is no mineralogical relationships, there's no phase 20 relationships that we can use to say we know what our depth
-21 was within even 100 meters.
22 We're constraining this as about a kilometer, plus 23 'or minus half a kilometer, based on stratographic relations 24 out in the Escalonte Highlands, but even there, somebody can 25 come in and tell me this is 200 meters below the surface and Ih ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. k[ ss Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036-(202) 842-0034
h 224 1 there is now analysis to tell, the paleosurface, excuse me. V.'/" " g
' f
; 2 MR. WYMER: So I guess your assumption then is 3: ltnat all the waste packages'that are affected by this 4 volcanic action are totally disintegrated and the entire 5 contents are the source term.
l l 6 MR. HILL: Yes. i 7 MR. WYMER: Subject to all of the other 8 assumptions in 3.2 that talk about the movement. 9 MR. HILL: Right. Compared to a fall factor, for I l l 10 example. 'And here's our next slide, that we're concluding I 11 that.the waste packages are breached during these events. 12' He look at the physical, thermal and chemical loads that are 13 emplaced upon a waste package when you put it into a l 14 . volcanic conduit. We say that clearly exceeds the design j
/~h !
! ,) 15 basis'for a canister.
]
16 In addition to corrosion and ambient effects and 17 gravity, we've got a. temperature, magnetic temperature of 1 l 18 around 1,100 degrees Centigrade. The chemistry is fairly 19' hostile. They are water, sulfur dioxide,-iron, silica, all 20 that is available to react with the alloy metals. I
- 21. Also, there is a significant physical force. The 22 people come up and say, well, what is the density of magma.
t 23 I:tell them it's anywhere from 1,200 kilograms per cubic 24' meter. fragmented to non-fragmented, 2,600 kilograms per 225 cubic meter. 4 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
225 1 Well, what is that? You take a Volkswagen, new 2 Beetle, and you compress that down into a cubic meter, [V) 3 you've all seen the jaw, the crushers come in, put that into 4 a cubic meter, that's 1,250 kilograms per cubic meter. 5 So that's two Volkswagen new Beetles compressed 6 into a cubic meter, impacting your waste package anywhere 7 from one to 150 meters a second. That's two to 8 300-and-some-odd miles an hour for days to weeks. 9 MR. WYMER: Except it's liquid. 10 MR. HILL: What? 11 MR. WYMER: Except it's liquid. 12- MR. FAIRHURST: It doesn't move, it's pretty 13 viscous. 14 MR. HILL: It's fairly viscous and it's a /^N ( ,) 15 continuum. So what I'm getting at, if somebody would have a 16 detailed analysis examining the stress imposed upon a 17 canister in these conditions at appropriate temper &tures and 18 raass loads, we will review it and modify our assumptions 19 accordingly. 20 But there are no data on how the candidate alloys 21 have behaved at 1,100 degrees Centigrade under extreme {
\
22 dynamic loads. So we feel that while we cannot prove waste 23 packages breach, given these physical conditions, it's a ) 1 24 reasonable conservative assumption that the waste package is 25 breached when it's entrained and in erupting conduit. i [\-')/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 I Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 I l
E 1 L {- 226 1 MR. FAIRHURST: So you assume that anything that's 2 within this 50 meter -- is it 50 meter radius or diameter? l: i 3 MR. HILL: Fifty meter diameter. l 4 MR. FAIRHURST: Fifty meter diameter, everything 5- is. plucked up and thrown out. 6 MR. HILL: Right. 7 MR. FAIRHURST: And the numbers that you -- you 8 said it's from this to this, is that depending on the 9 diameter alone or is it on the repository design or what? 10 ~MR. HILL: It turns out it does depend on design. 11 MR. FAIRHURST: Because the EDA-2 is a much less 12 dense. 13 MR. HILL: Yes, but they've gone to line loading. { 14 So the end result is almost identical. I think it's maybe 15 one waste package difference, whereas before you had a 21 j 16 meter inter-drift spacing. So a 50 meter conduit can impact 17 at least two emplacement drifts. Now you're only impacting 18 one emplacement drift because they've gone to about an 80 l 19 meter inter-drift spacing. 20 MR. FAIRHURST: Right. 21 MR. HILL: But instead of having 15 meters between ' 22 each waste package, we're now down to ten centimeters per 23 line loading. So that 50 meters, given the proposed EDA-2 24 design, still corresponds to ten waste packages and all i 25 they've done is slipped the corrosion allowance and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. C Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Tvenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
h 227 1 corrosion resistance material on the canister and made it a 2 little bit thinner. ! 3 So that hasn't changed our risk understanding in 4 any significant way by-going to the EDA-2. Again, these 5 ' calculations have no -- backfill has no effect on these 6 calculations. 7 MR. HORNBERGER: A completely hypothetical
'8 question. You run into a three-layer repository. Would 9 that treble the risk of volcanic eruptions?
1 10 MR. HILL: I'm not sure, because there is a limit I 11 to how much material you can-transport. I'm not sure it's 12- exactly one to one and whether hitting at ten waste packages
;13 or a hundred waste packages.
14 Your source term and the transport and also the () 15 dosimetry limits, there's a limit to how much people can 16 inhale per year. So I wouldn't want to make that a priority 17 assumption. 18 A critical parameter is how does high level waste-19 behave when you put it into a volcanic eruption. Again, 20 we've seen this high physical thermal loads. 21 We can go to analog, and I apologize for this 22 being a little dark,'but we can go to analog volcanoes, ones 23 that are as identical as we can get to Yucca Mountain 24 volcanoes, and see that there's periods of activity at those i 25 volcanoes where wall' rock has been pulverized to grain sizes i f - ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. S- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 j Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
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i i 228 l 1 less than a micrometer in diameter. ; ()
~2 Here is a scanning electron photo micrograph from 3 the 1975 Tolbachik eruption, showing the white ash that is 4 ten micron scale bar right here and you can see these i 5 particles are significantly less than ten microns, 6 We also know that in situ spent fuel has an ,
1 7 average grain size, again, average grain size on the order 8 of hundreds of microns. There's been a couple of crush 1 9 impact studies where ceiling panels have fallen on high 10 level waste and those yield an average grain size of around j 11 100 microns. j 12 But we know that the physical load and the thermal l 13 load and chemical load from an igneous event exceeds an 14 ambient condition crush impact. So some high level waste l ,O (,,) 15 grain size reduction is also likely during an igneous event. I 16 The best we can do is say the average grain size ; 17 would likely decrease an order of magnitude down to a mean 18 .of ten microns. 19 Again, if there are direct data and analyses or 20 models that could support that more robustly, we will 21 incorporate those into our performance assessment. But 22 we're dealing.with a process that has very little 23 investigation in the engineering sizes and we have to do 24 something. 25 Fourth, the high level waste is incorporated into ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, (s Court Reporters 1025' Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D..C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
229 1 the erupting tephra. This one has some uncertainties, but I [V) 2 feel it's a very easily defended assumption. We can 3 obviously see that rock fragments are commonly incorporated 4 into erupting volcanic ejecta, and here we've got an example 5 from Cerra Negro in Nicaragua. These are about a millimeter 6 in diameter, surrounded by the tephra itself. 7 In the TPA code, we say that in order to entrain a 8 piece of high level waste, the tephra itself has to be three 9 to ten times greater in diameter than the high level waste 10 fragment. So unless that tephra particle is three to ten 11 times greater than the high level waste particle, it will 12 not be entrained. 13 Now, also assuming that the high level waste is 14 entrained uniformly throughout the eruption, it's not some
/
(3) 15 sort of an everything comes in at once right at the end, 16 it's a reasonably defended scenario. 17 We have to also remember the scale of the process 18 that we're dealing with here. The volume of tephra is 19 anywhere from ten-to-the-sixth to ten-to-the-seventh cubic 20 meters and the volume of high level waste that we're 21 erupting is anywhere from two to 20 cubic meters. 22 So you can see there is a great mass of basaltic 23 magma that's available to entrain a very small mass of very 24 dense high level waste. 25 So we believe that the current approach of using (. ( ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. x' Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I.
230 1 these size limitations is constrained by interpretation of 2 limited data from geologic settings and appears reasonable, 3 given the observed entrainment of rock fragments. 4 Getting away from the EBS and back into the realm 5 of geology, what are the eruption characteristics of Yucca 6 Mountain's basaltic volcanoes? You may have heard the term 7 Hawaiian, low energy strombolian, which has the implication 8 that there's really no mass transport processes operating 9 here. 10 We've gone to a number of active basaltic 11 volcanoes and recently active basaltic volcanoes, documented 12 in the literature, and found that these kind of deposits are 13 characteristic of volcanoes that put eruption column j 14 anywhere from two to ten kilometers off into the atmosphere I 15 and transport material tens of kilometers down range. I 16 Now, the deposits that you use to demonstrate that 17 these volcanoes have that kind of dispersivity to their 18 eruptions have all been removed away from Yucca Mountain 19 volcanoes. So we'have nothing but indirect evidence about 20 :how dispersive Yucca Mountain volcanoes are. 21 But we do have some observations that at Yucca 22 Mountain, the tephra on the cone or the particles that make ; 23 up the cone are highly broken up, showing that they were 24 ejected to a high altitude and came down cold and fractured 25 brittly, rather than me.de a big old goober pile on top of (9 (,) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters
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T 231 i
- j. 1 the volcano. l
; L2 The volume of cone is greater than the volume of
)
3 lava. Also, it's characteristic of the active volcanoes. 4 Also, we have an unusual abundance of rock fragments, 1 5 anywhere from a tenth to one volume percent, showing that 6 there ':Us significant subsurf ace disruption. It's also 7 characteristic of these dispersive volcanoes. 1 8 So what we're doing is using the volumes of Yucca 9 Mountain volcanoes and comparing the volumes we have with i 10 the volumes of fall deposits from active volcanoes, the 11 dispersive fall deposits, and saying that the tephra 12 dispersal is controlled by the eruption rate and duration 13 that'we can constrain using volumetric relationships from 14 our analogs. l ( ). 15 Of course, the wind speed and particle size 16 distribution is also going to affect how much of a deposit 17 you have at 20 kilometers. 1 18 So, again, the assumptions that we're using in PA
- 19. about eruption dispersivity is constrained by interpretation 20 of the available data that appears pretty realistic, given 1
211 observed characteristics basaltic volcanoes. 22 We're also saying that the contaminant plume is 23 directed towards the critical group. This gets us around a 24 number of problems. For example, we don't have any data on 25 two to eight kilometer altitude winds for the Yucca Mountain ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l l 232 i i region and you can't use the near surface data because it's
, 2' controlled by topography.
3 We're using two to four kilometer wind speeds from I 4 the Desert Rock Airport, about 50 kilometers to the i 5- east-southeast as the analog for Yucca Mountain wind ! 6 velocities. 7 But more importantly,'if you start to say the 8 plume does not blow toward the critical group location, we ! 9 have to account for how that deposit gets redistributed at I 10 -the surface through time. We've all gone out to the Yucca l 11 Mountain region and seen the sand dunes out in the central 12 Amargosa' Desert, where material has been blown for tens of i 13 kilometers around and collects at different points at 14 different times during the last 10,000 years. 15 We're also saying that the -- by directing the 16 contaminant plume, the airborne contaminant plume towards 17 the critical group, we're making a very parallel approach to 18 how the ground water contaminant plume is directed toward 19 the critical group, where we have the critical group sitting i 20 at the center of.our ground water contaminant plume. 21 So we believe that while you can have different 22 modeling approaches for how the contaminant plume is 23 directed towards the critical group, this current approach 24 is reasonably conservative and is not going to 25 under-estimate risk to the critical group. l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ! % Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
i 233 1: And finally, perhaps the most important one is
/'YT 2- that we're assuming our airborne particle concentrations l 3 remain constant through time. We have to note that up until 4 Part 63, we really didn't pay much attention to the ash i
5 deposit, but now the whole' expected annual dose is dependent 2 i 6 -on how the ash deposit evolves through time. 7 There is no data on how we have airborne particle 8- concentrations on fresh or weathered basaltic tephra fault' l 9 deposits. We're beginning to collect data on some fairly
- 10. young ones, but we need to continue that investigation.
11 By looking at analog deposits, including data from
.12 ' the Yucca Mountain region, we've been using a concentration 13 -of ten-to-the-minus-fourth to ten-to-the-minus-two grams per 14 cubic meter in performance calculations.
( 15 Again, the deposits are eroded from Yucca Mountain 16 volcanoes, but they probably lasted about 10,000 years as 17 opposed to 1,000 years or 100,000 years. But more ; 18 importantly, we believe, as geologists, that these deposits
~19 -change in character through time. It's just that we don't 20 have any technical. basis to say how they've changed through
.21- time.
22 But it is one area, by looking at analog deposits, 23 that we can constrain that uncertainty in future PA I 24 calculations. 25 So we've made a conservative assumption that the g ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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234 1 airborne particle concentrations remain constant in a I
\>) 2 .weathered deposit as they do in an unweathered deposit and 3 use the mass removal processes solely to govern how the dose 4 decays through time. But we recognize that that's probably 5 a conservative and reducible conservatism in our performance i i
~
I 6 calculations. We just need a technical basis in order to 7 reduce that conservatism. 8 MR. HORNBERGER: So there is no evidence from the 9 field that these deposits get armored after -- through time. , 10 MR. HILL: It depends on where you are and look at 1 l i 11 the alluvial setting toward the critical group location, 12 that we're going from and sizing to pretty much generally a 13 grading nick point at about 15-20 kilometers. 14 There is a sense,-if you have an undisturbed A T ) 15 deposit, it would probably end up getting infiltration 16 aclian finds and a little' bit of hardening within about 17 three or 4,000 years, mainly from carbonate cementation. 18- But we are using'a farming scenario for the critical group. 19' So this is another important point for particle 20 concentrations. It's not enough to go out to an undisturbed 21 deposit and say this is what a worker is exposed to. In our 22 40 hour per week exposure scenario in PA, we're assuming the 23 person-is disturbing this ground surface. So when you're 24 churning up the deposit continuously, you have to account 25 for that. f ._ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. [\~/Y.) Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
235 1 Anything on consequences that I haven't addressed? I () 2 3
~
MR. FAIRHURST: Just in your model at the moment, there is no major dose at any one time. i Every process that 4 you've talked about,.it's averaging this one millirem per 5 year, right? 6 MR ~. HILL: The expected annual dose. When I 7 showed that on'a logarithmic scale, that we're really seeing 8~ within about an order _of magnitude variation. 1 9 MR. FAIRHURST: Sure, well, within that amount. l
- 10. But there is not this sudden explosion of a package of waste 11 .that is' derived somewhere and hits the ground.
12 MR. HILL: No, because we are assuming a i 13 ' continuous calculation. 14 MR. FAIRHURST: Sure. That's what I'm saying. r* ( 15 MR. HILL: It's not like some scenarios where you 16' would have failure of a thousand waste. packages because of a 17 corrosive process and all of a sudden you get this big slug 18 coming through the system. 19 MR. FAIRHURST: In essence, the waste package 20 material is intimately mixed at the time it erupts. 21 MR. HILL: Yes. 22 MR. FAIRHURST: All right. Okay. 23 MR. HILL: And it's not a matter that I 24 fundamentally - or we fundamentally believe that that is 25L how it would happen. Probably not everything will be l [/Y s-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l l 236 1 l' . entrained. Probably not everything will fragment. But we [~')- V
.2 come down:to how do.we get a technical ~ basis to say how much 3 is not entrained, and that's the challenge.
4 If somebody would.come forward with a defensible 1 5 -technical basis, we can modify the conservatisms 6 accordingly. But given the priority of other issues, the I 7 limited amount of time that we have, and the bottom line 8 . number that we're showing of a millirem per. year, do you
=
9 need to have a detailed investigation to prove waste package 10 resiliency.if your ultimate understanding turns out to be a 11 millirem per year. 12 MR. FAIRHURST: The thing that I'm -- and I think 13 .I'm beginning to understand it. What I have a problem with 14 is if you had a fairly slowly arriving erupting magma. it O ( 1 15 would probably follow the fracture trend, right? s./ . 16 MR, HILL: Pretty much. 17 MR. FAIRHURST: What you've got is a very 18 explosive arrival, at very high speed. 19 MR. HILL: Not quite. The conceptual model is a 20- gradual ascent, as has been observed at other basaltic 2
.1 . volcanoes, that corresponds to forming a dyke pretty much 22~ coincident with the existing fracture regime, which is in 23 optimal dilation tendency given the current state of stress.
24- It's coming up, but flow mobilizes. Let's just 25 say you've got a repository and you have a five kilometer '
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+
237 1 'long dyke that cuts through the repository. So you've got 2 maybe two kilometers on either end. 3 But alternatively, because you've got these drifts 4 sitting there at 300 meters,'let's just say without hitting 5 the surface elsewhere, it's a flat surface and you've got f 6 300 meters below the surface, non-confined or loosely l 7 backfilled repository drift, and this magma is coming up. 8 Where is the flow going to go? 9 MR. FAIRHURST: But that's different from what 10 you've said so far. 11 MR. HILL: I'm explaining that the flow would 12 localize toward the drifts rather than randomly away from 13- the-drifts. So conceptually -- 14- MR. FAIRHURST: No. All right. Okay. Then I see D) ( 15 a point where I might disagree. But okay. 16 MR. HILL: But the magma that has to propagate 17 upward and the most dispersive part of the eruption is not 18 the first part. Once you've established flow and localized 19 flow within a central conduit, even if that conduit is only l 20- a couple of meters in diameter, that's when the eruption 21 begins to take off. 22 MR. FAIRHURST: That's when you'-- 23 MR. HILL: And the conduit starts to widen. And l 24 the real process isn't that the thing just reams itself out 25 right away, but it begins to have -- O:
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LL.
l1 238 1 MR. FAIRHURST: Erosion. 2 MR. HILL: -- a little bit of erosion, but the 3 erosion-is more related to you've established a conduit and 4 you've stressed the rock because the pressure within the 5 conduit,-the_ fluid pressure is greater than the surrounding 6 rock. You have to have it to_ keep the conduit open. 7 But there are, for whatever reason, some 8 transients in the flow that allow that pressure in the 9 conduitfto drop below the static in a transitory way and 10 that allows the wall rock spallation and it's those -- 11 you've relaxed the conduit pressure, and so the rock can 12' cave in a'little bit. 13 -It's that -- that's the best observation that we 14 can make'from how real eruptions have occurred. So you're 15 gradually widening this thing out in spurts.
~
So you can 16 imagine that your -- 17- MR. FAIRHURST: That's the part where the gas 18 comes in, being released and -- 19 MR. HILL: Part of it is degassing, part of it is 20 two-phase flow effects, where you have degassed -- 21' MR. FAIRHURST: Sure. 22 MR. HILL: -- around the conduit itself and some 23 molten rocks, magma wall-collapse is part of that. 24 It's barely understood for undisturbed geologic 25 settings'and then we're.trying to extrapolat;. for the [D
\w /
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P 239
-1 undisturbed geologic process into the disturbed setting of
( 2' the repository. i- NJ ^ ( .: l 3 So there are uncertainties, but in the l l 4- _ abstraction, we're saying we ultimately end up with a 50 5 meter hole in the ground or a one meter hole in the ground, l 6- in which case we're looking'at one waste package breach; 50 l 7 meters would give us ten waste packages within that conduit 8 space. 9 MR. FAIRHURST: Have you got the details written 10 somewhere? 11 MR. HILL: On some of it, but it's something maybe 12 we could talk about after'this session. 13 MR. FAIRHURST: Sure. It would be very 14 interesting.
) 15- MR. HILL: Because I do want to tell everybody --
16- MR. CODELL: Britt, could I just add one thing? ;
-17 MR. HILL: Sure. I 18 MR. CODELL: I don't know if some things are being 19 confused, but in terms of.the dose calculation, immediately 20 .after the-event, we're assuming there is someone farming 21 there. So there isn't any delay or any -- I don't know if
-22 people were talking about delays of sorts, but we are 23 assuming the dose is incurred immediately after the release 24' .of material, which occurs in a short period of time.
25 MR. HILL: Right. The eruption lasts anywhere il ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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240
'l ifrom days to tens of' days and nince we're really only
(} -2 resolving. dose on a yearly basis, we assume that in the year 3 of.the eruption, there is site occupancy.
.4. There were a number of issues raised'in our review 5 of the viability' assessment and I'm really glad to be able 6 to report that'we've made'a lot of progress toward resolving 7 those' issues with DOE staff based on-informal interactions.
In contrast with perhaps the previous experience
~
8
!9 with the committee' members, the informal collegial 10 communications, post-VA interactions have greatly i
11 facilitated.the issue' resolution process with the DOE. l 12 We had.'a number of concerns'in VA about the source 13 zone models thatlwere' presented that said the probability of 14 volcanic' disruption at the site was thought to be-below () ' 15. . ten-to-the-minus-eight per year, and they were saying the 16 mean. probability was'six-times-ten-to-the-minus-ninth, i 17 leaving the way open to screen that scenario for further 18 consideration. 19 Now, without going into the gory details of the 20 : source zone models, we can just-say we had an Appendix 7 in 21 January and got an agreement informally that the mean 22; probability from their probabilistic volcanic hazards expert , i 23 elicitation,.PVHA, of 1.5-times-ten-to-the-minus-eight for 24 all classes of igneous events is, for performance purposes, 25' the probability of volcanic disruption of the proposed
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[ 241 l 1; . repository site, the mean value. [) V 2 So the DOE does not believe that the mean 3_ probability is below ten-to-the-minus-eight for volcanic 4 disruption. 5 Also, a recognition that that PVHA range has a 6 mean'of; ten-to-the-minus-eight, but the upper bound of that 7- .is ten-to-the-minus-seven. So if they continue to show the 8 range of their elicitation that includes the value that we SF ' feel best resolves the issue, then there is no substantive 10 . disagreement.with the' DOE over probability of volcanic 11 disruption. 12 We believe we have issue resolution prior to VA 13- and it was only the appearance of a new class of models in 14 the viability assessment that raised this issue'again, and
- p 15 it.wasn't just PVHA that is the issue.
(,7 But they constructed 11 6 a new scenario for source zones that got the probability
~17 .below ten-to-the-minus-eight, and that's.why we have to 18 bring this issue up again.
19 -- But I think for the second time, it's resolved. 20 We had a concern that the eruption characteristics 21- under-estimated the dispersive capability of' Yucca Mountain 22 volcanoes.- In a February workshop, the DOE agreed to place
. 23' greater-reliance'on active violent strombolian analogs of 24 ' Yucca Mountain volcanoes, the.ones that have dispersivities 25 of material. tens of kilometers downwind. .h \ssk ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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242 1 'The DOE -- the VA calculations had a critical [) U 2 dependency on waste package resilience during volcanic 3 events and our analysis showed that that resiliency was not 4 supported by models or data with a sufficient technical 5- basis, 6 In both February and April workshops, DOE agreed 7 that additional models~and data needed to be developed to 8 support conclusions of waste package resiliency, including 9 coupled thermal, mechanical and chemical effects for igneous 10 events. 11 Also, the effects of igneous events on high level 12 waste forms are poorly constrained; again, that February 13 workshop says that additional models and data are needed to 14 'give a defensible technical basis for that assumption. (O) 15 Finallyi that the airborne contaminant plume 16 bypass the' critical group for most of their simulations and 17 in the February workshop, they agreed that the parallel 18 approach to contaminant plume modeling, directing it towards 19 the critical group is a conservatism and avoids large 20 uncertainties and remobilization of the deposit. 21 So for the issues that we have or the primary ; 22 concerns with the VA analysis, informally we seem to be 23 making some real progress in bringing the DOE to addressing ' 24 these concerns by developing models and data that will 25 address this specifically. zO s_/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 L u
243 l 1 We'll see if the TSPA site suitability implements () 2 3 these changes in the time allotted. So in conclusion, the staff believes a 4 ten-to-the-minus-seventh annual probability of volcanic ) 5 disruption best explains observed patterns in the Yucca 6 Mountain region and provides us a technically defensible 7 value for using risk assessment. 8 'Our current risk assessments of about a millirem 9 per year from volcanic disruption are supported by direct 10 data, realistic interpretations, and'also conservative 11 evaluations of complex processes. 12 A continued level of effort can reduce the large
- 13. uncertainties on the number of waste packages disrupted and 14 airborne particle concentrations through time. By continued I
() 15 level of effort, I mean a sustained level of effort that i 16 we've received in past investigations. We're not calling i 17 for an increase in budget, but rather a sustained level of 18 support. 19 Our concerns with VA analyses have been addressed 20 informally by DOE staff. We have a solid expectation that 21 future DOE TSPAs.will evaluate these areas of concern 22 further. 23 Finally, the DOE license application will need a 24 clear and credible treatment of igneous activity. 25 MR. FAIRHURST: So this essentially is, as you b
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244 1 say, it's-one millirem per year, with your model. I S 2 MR. HILL: Yes.
\ /.
3 MR. FAIRHURST: And with a 4 ten-to-the-minus-seventh probability. And what -- so why do 5 you need a continued level of effort to reduce large 6 uncertainties? l 7 MR. HILL: As I was explaining, I'm not 8 comfortable in quantifying that level uncertainty except 9 very qualitatively. That qualitative level of uncertainty 10 can be above or below an order of magnitude for that one 11 millirem per year. I i 12 MR. FAIRHURST: So it could be up to ten millirem, ; 13 you think, 14 MR. HILL: Yes. '( ) 15 MR, HORNBERGER: But when you said -- to pursue 16 that just a little bit, though. When you say up to ten 17 . millirem, and granted, it's a gut level feeling, but as you ; 18 went through your presentation, it seemed to me -- 19 qualitatively, now, to me, my gut level feeling was that you 20 introduced a lot more conservatisms than you did areas where 21 you say, well, this might be a little higher. 22 Now, if you multiple conservatisms out, this would
.23 argue that-it's not one millirem plus or minus an order of 2 41 magnitude, but it's --
25 MR. FAIRHURST: One millirem minus an order -- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
245 1 MR. HORNBERGER: Yes. I mean, it's much more () 2 likely to be11ess than -- l 3 MR. HILL: The area of real conservatism is how 4 does the EBS respond. I am willing to listen to all 5 . arguments on that and evaluate models and data. The problem i 6 is there are'no models and data. So what do we advise the 7 NRC to do with a technical basis?. How do you reduce that
)
8 conservatism in a robust and defendable manner? l I 9 I can't appeal to anything. I'm open to 10 suggestions on what we should do about waste package i 11 resilience. I know we can't propose that we do an analysis 1 12 of these under laboratory conditions. We have made the 13 point to the DOE that this is important to do. If they want l l 14 to put their safety case on this resilience, they will need () 15 to support'it'with models and data. { 16 But what are we to do in the interim? I think we . i 17 need to make a distinction between conservatisms and 18 reducible conservatisms. What can we realistically achieve l 19 and what does the DOE need to achieve here? i 20 MR. HORNBERGER: I guess I worry that the kind of 21 things that always worry me is if you say, well, this is ! 22 uncertain, so we'll sort of bound it by-choosing this value, 23 and then we go on and this is uncertain, so we'll bound it 24 by choosing this value. And all of these things tend to get 25 multiplied out and pretty soon that's not a very realistic i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O. Court Reporters
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l' 246 1 analysis, because it's not'just that you have to have a 747 [~') 2 crash'into the Empire State Building, but it has to be on x_- ! 3 full moon and -- 4 MR. HILL: Yes, but we're not talking about a 747
- 5. going 300 meters underground on a full moon.
6 MR. HORNBERGER: I know, I know, I know.
- 7. MR. HILL: We're talking about a volcano, of a 8 class that has existed for 12 million years at the site, 9 that imparts known physical, thermal, chemical, mechanical 10 loads on systems that were designed not with that in mind.
11 So while it does seem at times overly 12 conservative, I'd challenge the audience to come up with how 13 we can reduce that conservatism in a manner that's going to 14 sustain us through the licensing. A ( ,) 15 MR. FAIRHURST: Let me just ask this, a more 16 peripheral question. Some time ago, we saw a paper given to 17 tus from two consultants from Bristol, I think. I 18 MR. HILL: Yes. 19 MR. FAIRHURST: Sparks and -- 20 MR. HILL: Steve Sparks and Andrew Woods. I t 21 MR. FAIRHURST: Right. And that was, as I 1 l 22 understand, looking at a magma running -- going down an 23 empty tunnel, l 24 MR. HILL: That's correct. 25 MR. FAIRHURST: Now, what we've heard so far, what
'( \
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247 1- you've mentioned, that's not involved here. l 1 [O'k 2' MR. HILL: That'has not been. This is the initial 3 stage of-evaluating magma-repository interaction. There-4 have been no dose consequences assigned to that scenario. 5 MR. FAIRHURST: Okay. The question of backfill.or 6 non-backfill was relevant in that context. 7 MR. HILL: Yes. 8 MR. FAIRHURST: And probably not relevant in what .) 9 you are talking about now,'because you're throwing -- you're 10 .taking everything out that's in its path, whether it's full 11 or empty, over that diameter. 12 MR. HILL: But now what we're trying to do is, how 13 is that path going to translate, when we put it into the 14 disturbed geologic setting,.and--- () fs 15
~
MR. FAIRHURST: What do you mean by disturbed E16 ~ geologic. setting? ; i 17 MR. HILL: A drift. So that's what we mean by 18 disturbed. . E19 MR. FAIRHURST: Understand, all right. 20 MR.' HILL: To make sure everybody is clear, right 21 'new, we have not made any assumptions about that. -It's 22 solely here is the hole and this is -- 1 l 23 MR. FAIRHURST: It's one to 50 meters in diameter
- 2-4 and it's going to pick everything up that's inside that.
-25 MR.~ HILL: If it falls in the hole, it's a goner.
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j 248
.1 MR. FAIRHURST: It doesn't have to fall in it.
l' h 2 MR. HILL: Using it loosely. If it's entrained in d f3 :the hole. 4 MR.-FAIRHURST: Right. The hole is coming up, 5- come hell'or high water, you're going to get it. But you 6 - did say that these eruptions do start following essentially 7 .the dykes. So a. vertical magma, a line, length of magma. 8 Now, do you understand the mechanics of how that switches to 1 9 this - you know, what depth below the. surface at which it l I 10 . suddenly literally erupts, accelerates, et cetera? 1 11 MR. HILL: The short answer is no. There is a i 12 ~whole process of fragmentation, where we see this l 13 'segregction to truly two-phase-flow, fragmented melt, is an 14 area of intense controversy among people that care about f); ( ,). 15 fragmented melts, and the depth is within the range of -- 16- some: people.would have it down at about a kilometer, to 17 sometimes less than a couple of hundred meters. , 18 It depends a lot on the vulval contents, water,
.19 carbon dioxide, the gaseous phases. Also, how the melt ;
20 viscosity and the kinetics of how that gas is evolving.
- 21 - So we're dealing here with a melt that we believe 22 has two weight percent water dissolved in it. We have no 23 constraint on CO2 right now. But that is not -- it's very 24 typical for historical-basaltic eruptions.
25 What would be' atypical compared to what you see in i h) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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a a: e 249 l 1 Hawaii that has about, say,. half a weight percent of water, (,-~[; 2 which'is a fairly non-fragmented, low infusion, low l l 3 dispersivity kind of eruption. 4' There are competing factors, of course, but in the j 5 first pass, it's the water content that governs where you 6' get'that fragmentation and transition from a fairly low ; 7 ascent driven velocity to something that's a gas driven
- 8. velocity, on the order ofra 100 meters per second.
I
- 9. MR. FAIRHURST: The depth of that repository is 10 about 300 meters.
11 MR. HILL: Three hundred meters, yes. 12 MR. FAIRHURST: It's in that " iffy" zone, right? 13- MR. HILL: It's 300 to 200, depending on exactly l 14 where you're looking. l
) 15 It's very difficult'to quantify these processes at 16 :100 meter levels.
17 MR. FAIRHURST: Sure, I understand. 18 MR. HILL: We're doing extraordinarily well 19: sometimes at saying it'a shallow than a kilometer. 20 MR. GARRICK: Let me ask a question about the dose 21 pathway, which I gather is a combindtion of airborne and 22 -ground deposition. 23- MR. HILL: It's 90 percent inhalation. 24 MR. GARRICK: It's 90 percent inhalation. 25 'MR. HILL: Yes. l' h - ANN RILEY &= ASSOCIATES, LTD. l k- / Court Reporters
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250 l 1 MR. GARRICK: If I were to ask you for a dose rx
) 2 distribution, an uptake curve, what would that look like as (G
3 La function of time during the course of the event? Over 4 what period of time is there a dose, since 90 percent of it ) I 5 is airborne? 6 MR. HILL: You mean following the eruption or -- 7 MR. GARRICK: Yes. 8 MR. HORNBERGER: Given an eruption occurs today. 9 MR. GARRICK: Given an eruption occurs today -- 10 MR. HORNBERGER: How long would the dose of one -- 11 MR. GARRICK: How is that one MR distributed in 12 time?
'13 MR. HILL: Well, it's not one MR, because that's 14 an expected -- are we talking risk and dose? The example I
() 15- showed in the presentation was the eruption occurs at 1,000 16 years. The dose in that first year of the eruption 17 primarily from inhalation, but there is some sort of a 18- ground shine component to that, was about 12 rem. 19 Now, if you look at that deposit, it would decay 20 down to about 12 millirems over the next 9,000 years, at 21 which we point we stop the simulation at 10,000 years. So 22 that decay, the magnitude of decay depends also on your 23 starting condition, because the decay rate will be much
-24 quicker earlier than 1,000 years, because you have t he 25 shorter-lived radionuclides that are decaying out.
O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. k -) . s Court Reporters 1 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
F 251 1 1 .You can go to that first curve of dose through [\/ ) 2 time and you can see'up to about 1,000 years, the dose j 1 3 through' time curve is very steep and then shallows out when ' 4' we get the short-lived nuclides out of there. 1 5 So the decay rate isn't a constant. We're ) 1 approximate a constant at times, the simple calculations I'm 6 7' showing, but, of course --
)
8 MR. HORNBERGER: But after 500 years, it looks 9 pretty constant, right? 10 MR. HILL: Right. 11 MR. GARRICK: Is the're-suspension driver the
- 12. f armer at the critical group plowing the field bat ; ally and 13 dust being resuspended in that process?
14 MR. HILL: We're assuming that they're using a () 15 40-hour per week exposure scenario, that there is some 16 surface disturbing activity. We're not assuming a plowing 17 concentration. But the particle concentration that would be 18 ' consistent with just walking around. 19 MR. GARRICK: So you've got ground shine and 20 airborne. 21 MR. HILL: For all intents and purposes, it's 22 inhalation. 23 MR. GARRICK: Yes, it's inhalation. 24 MR.-HILL: When we talk about average over 10,000
.25 years scenario exposures. Of course, early on, there is a i
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l 252 1- ground shine component that's more significant than it is (' ) 2 later on and the different radionuclides come in at 3 different times. But it is dominantly governed by the 4 inhalation. 5 MR.' CAMPBELL: And you're assuming that all'the 6 waste is pulverized into ten micron particles. 7 MR. HILL: The average waste grain size is ten 8 microns. It has log-triangular distribution, plus or minus 9 one log unit. 10 MR. HORNBERGER: It's interesting, if we think in 11 . terms of -- if we carried the dose to a health effect, it
.12 would actually be quite different for this than for ground 13 water pathway, because the ground water pathway would have 14 concentrations. essentially constant for very long periods of
() 15 time, whereas this, over 9,000 years decay. The health 16_ effects would actually be different. 17 MR. HILL: Right, because we're not talking about 18 a person's lifetime. It is many people, for thousands of 19 years, can have'this contaminated deposit and the risk of-s 20 individual lifetime in those post years is, of course, j 21 different. 22 MR. GARRICK: Of course, this is more of an l 23- episodic event. So you have a -- ; 224 MR. FAIRHURST: Not the way he's calculating it. I 25 MR. HILL: At ten-to-the-minus-seven, the i O N-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters J 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 - Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i I m_. __.. 1
253 1 probability of two events is vanishingly small. But, again, () 2. we're assuming the event in PA is a single volcanic conduit 3 and the event does.not constitute multiple conduits within a 4 repository, which is a possibility, but one we have not
.5 explored.
.6 MR GARRICK: But anytime you talk about a number 7 like ten-to-the-minus-seven, in theory, you're talking about 8 a recurrence.
9 MR. HORNBERGER: It is. 10 MR. HILL: Right. 11 MR. CAMPBELL: You show a number of buried 12 deposits in the map of Crater Flats and the surrounding 13 areas. How are those characterized in terms of whether or 14 not they are volcanic? And then how are they characterized () 15 in terms of their age, so that you can fit them into what 16 you come up with in terms of probability? 17 You had several that were colored green in there. 18 MR. HILL: These are all constrained by aero 19 magnetic and ground magnetic surveys. They have been 20 modeled, with reasonable assurance, basalt within alluvium, 21' we're very confident they do not represent pieces of 22 bedrock. These large -- let me just say, the largest one in 23 the lower right part has been drilled two times by, I 24 believe it was Felderhoff Federal, for Shell Oil, as 25 exploration. They both encountered 50 meters of basalt in l ANN RILEY'& ASSOCIATES, LTD. [\_)/ Court Reporters l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202) 842-0034' '
1 l 254 1 the drill hole. .( ) 2 That. basalt has been dated at 4.1, plus or minus 3 .1, million years. That is the only one of these buried 4 anomalies that's been drilled directly. 5 By analogy, we're assuming in the probability 6 .models that these other anomalies down here in southeastern 7- Amargosa Desert are contemporaneous with this feature, even 8 though we have some evidence to show that a couple of these 9 have different magnetic orientations. They had to form at a 10 slightly different time than this one. 11 But, of course, the only way to date these 12 directly is by drilling through them. 13 In terms of up here, this, this, and this are all 14' defined on the basis of ground magnetic. anomalies. We would 1 j () 15 interpret -- we would make the assumption that they are 16 volcanic rather than an intrusion that stagnated at shallow 17 levels, just because we have not seen evidence for that in 18 the recent past in this region, and based on the depth to 19 the sedimentation rate out there, these are probably around 20 the Pliocene, give us about five million years or so. 21 They may be contemporaneous with this event, they 22 may be older than that. But, again, there is no way to know 23 for sure unless they were drilled. 24 MR. FAIRHURST: But there were definitely 25 eruptions, b
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Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 <
1 255 1 MR. HILL: We believe they're eruptions. Some of () .2 3 the magnetic signals give us a hint of flow outline rather than a uniform sort of silt. We don't think that they're 4 simple magmas that came up within a couple hundred meters of 5 the surface and stagnated within the alluvium.
-6 We can't eliminate that possibility with 100 7 percent confidence, but I think it's highly, highly unlikely 8 that you would stagnate magmas with these volatile contents
- 9. within a 100 meters or'so of crust -- excuse me -- 100 10 meters of alluvium or so. It's just very difficult to 11 defend, i 1
12 MR. CAMPBELL: Why is your probability of a future 13 volcanic event, including that yellow feature that's at the 14 repository site, in essence, have so much narrower range () 15 than DOE's PVHA? They were somewhere, anywhere from 16 ten-to-the-minus-seven down to ten-to-the-minus-ten. Of 17 course, that's an expert elicitation, but -- and then how do 18 'you extrapolate probabilities from what looks like a trend, 19 . kind of almost to the northwest, with some sort of gradient 20 to the repository? 21 MR. HILL: First, the reason that there is a 22 greater. variance in the DOE data set is because they have 23 many classes of models that are called source zone models 24 cnat say that there is some sort of a step function 25 isolating the location of volcanism in the past from
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256 1 locations of future volcanism at the repository site. () 2 So therefore, this recurrence rate only applies 3 within this zone and the recurrence rate out here is some 4 sort of a landom basin range volcanic recurrence rate on the
'5 order of te a-to-the-minus-ten through 6 ten-to-the-ninus-ninth. It depends on whose model you're 7 talking about.
8 They say that this region is decoupled from this 9 region and that is based solely upon expert opinion. There 10 is no geologic feature out there that can be appealed to, 11 except the past pattern of sparse events. 12 That's why they have a larger range. But within i 13 that range, it's important to note that they did have models ' 14 that came up into the ten-to-the-minus-seventh range as O 15 well. ( ,/ 16 MR. FAIRHURST: From the expert opinions. 17 MR. HILL: Yes. From the elicitation. We've done 18 our own scoping calculation on what would the random 19 occurrence of volcanism be in the basin and range, if we go 20 ahead and say that things aren't clustered, but rather it's 21 sort of a uniform random distribution and the whole western 22 United States is the source zone, if you will, that 23 . probability comes in around ten-to-the-minus-ninth, which 24 makes sense when you look at the probability models for up 25 here. t ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \~s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
257 1 When they have decayed out to Crater -- to Jackass b' ) 2 Flat, we're around ten-to-the-minus-ninth, and there really 3 isn't much chsage in that away from the repository. 4 So I'd say it's very hard to say that the 5 probability here is. ten-to-the-minus-tenth, given your proximity to something that gives you a ten-to-the-minus-six
~
6 7 recurrence rate. But yet that's the nature of expert 8 elicitation. 9 By the same token, you need to recognize that that 10 same methodology can be used by ocher experts to say the 11 probability is ten-to-the-minus-sixth at this site, by also 12 defining a source zone based on expert opinion, and that's 13 been in the peer-reviewed literature. 14 MS. DEERING: Did you say the ten millirem -- you (f 15 said it could go as high as ten millirem, plus or minus-an 16 order of magnitude. Would you call that worst case? 17 MR. HILL: No, not -- ; i 18 MS. DEERING: What would you call worst' case? ' 19 MR. HILL: I would not. 20 MS. DEERING: Could you put a likelihood on the 21 ten millirem, in your best judgment? 22 MR. HILL: No. It would be a guess and I don't 23 ,think a guess is appropriate.in this venue. The reason I've 24 been kind of cagey about this is that we need a technical 25 basis to quantify that. We do not have a technical basis.
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258 1 I'm very uncomfortable with even saying an order of .[\ /T 2 magnitude at this stage without supporting work, because of J j
'3 the se'sitivity7of n that number to proposed standards.
4 MS. DEERING: But the work that you're going to 5 do , you believe you could have a technical basis. 6' MR. HILLi Yes. If we are funded for that work, 7 which would be a level of funding consistent with this 8 year's level of. funding. 9 MR. FAIRHURST: Does the one millirem come from 10 the larger diameter, the 50? 11 MR. HILL: The mean dose for an eruption is a very 12 skewed distribution. The larger events, the worse events 13- are the ones that give you a large count with a short-lived 14 eruption and high wind speed. So you've got a high 15' concentration that blows out fairly far into your critical 16 group. Those_are your worst volcanic events. 17 So the mean.isn't the 50th percentile in these 18 calculations. The mean is governed by these small eruptions 19 with higher wind speed and I believe it's in the upper 80th 20 . percentile. And, of course, the larger the source term, 21 towards more ten above five, it is going to give you a 22 higher dose. 23 MR. TRAPP: Just a comment from this end. I'd j 24 like to really. push something'that was stated earlier today. 25 We're not the ones that are being licensed. What we're hN/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025_ Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
r. 259 L1 trying.to do is point out areas of vulnerability that DOE (n
.V -
) 2 has got to make sure that they:come through and answer on 3- their licensing case.
4 The areas that you talked about with the 5- 'conservatisms are areas where we've shown -- had some 6' . problems with uncertainties that need to be worked at. 7 We also -- 8 MR. HILL: He's gone? Can you hear.us, Jchn?- 9- 'We've lost you. We can' hear you now. Are you still there? 10 MR. TRAPP: I'm still here. 11 MR. HILL: _You dropped off.
- 12 MR. TRAPP: Anyway, the other point that we're trying to make here.is what we're trying to do is recognize i
14 areas that we've got to make sure DOE addresses in the f%
's ,) 15 licensing, but also recognizing areas that intervenors, et 16 . cetera, can come in and really toss in different numbers.
17 We need to constrain those numbers. So, again,
- 18. it's preparing us for reviewing DOE licensing case, not us 19 going into licensing, which some of the comments seemed to
-20 be based on.
21 MR. HILL: To emphasize that, in~the viability 22 assessment, the risk frcm igneous activity during the first
,23- 10,000 years of closure was zero millirems per year. There 24 was no risk. I don't think that would be a difficult 25 position in licensing to support. So to emphasize, we're !
[\ >' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
7 260 l 1 not saying'that-the analyses show that we're above a dose 2 ,. [)Y limit. We clearly have a difference of opinion with the DOE l 3 on what the re ative risk from igneous activity is in this
'4- performance assessmsnt and to come in with an analysis such 5 as presented in the viability assessment, that might be 6 presented, is a great impediment for us reviewing and 7 licensing the site.
8 MR. GARRICK: John Trapp is right. The committee
-9 keeps wanting to design this thing, but they're going to 10 deal with the review and we apologize for that, but 11 sometimes that's the best way for us to get into some of the 12 technical issues and it's appropriate for us to be reminded 13 from time to time that DOE is the one that's trying to get a 14 license here.
( ,f 15 Any other questions? 16 MR. TRAPP: I would like to add one thing. If I 17 could
,'9t~that l'I was right" --
18 [ Laughter.] 19: MR. TRAPP: www.acnw.com.
'20 MR. GARRICK: Any other questions?
21 [:No response.] 22 MR. GARRICK: Thanks a lot. Very good. This 23 concludes the presentation and presentation discussion phase 24 of our today's agenda. The committee will now go into a 25 discussion of primarily administrative matters having to do Os-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
.)
7 261 1 with agendas and future reports and meetings that we've [.) , 2- -attended and what have you. For that phase of our meeting, we do not need the court reporter. 3 I think that what we'll 4 do is take just a very short break, ao that we can make 5- whatever adjustments we need to make. 6' [Whereupon,'at 5:20 p.m., the meeting was 7 ~ recessed,eto reconvene-at 8:30 a.m., Tuesday, June 29, 8 1999.] 9 10 11 12 13 14 ; 1
.,-~
15
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16 17 18 19 20-21' 22-23
-24 25 lT ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \~ I Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l h REPORTER'S-CERTIFICATE h This is to' certify that the attached proceedings L : /~ 4 before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in l5 ' the matter of: i NAME OF PROCEEDING: MEETINGi 110TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON~ NUCLEAR-WASTE (ACNW)
)
CASE NUMBER: 1 PLACE OF[ PROCEEDING: San Antonio, TX ' ( I 'were-held as herein appears, and that this is the original
' %_/' '-
{ transcript thereof forDthe file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory. Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to
-typewriting by me or,under the direction of the court creporting company,-and that.the transcript is a true and
' accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
Y %%) 11wy1 i
- Penny Bynum Official Reporter l l 1 Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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