ML20210N279
| ML20210N279 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/16/1999 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20210N255 | List: |
| References | |
| FRN-64FR8640, RULE-PR-19, RULE-PR-2, RULE-PR-20, RULE-PR-30, RULE-PR-40, RULE-PR-51, RULE-PR-60, RULE-PR-61, RULE-PR-63 NUDOCS 9908110062 | |
| Download: ML20210N279 (116) | |
Text
E 1
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
^
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
- 3 ***
4 PUBLIC MEETING ON PROPOSED
- 5 l
REGULATIONS (10 PART 63) FOR A i 6 l HIGH-LEVEL WASTE REPOSITORY j 7 AT YUCCA MOUNTAIN, NEVADA 8
l 9
University of Nevada, Las Vegas 10 Tam Alumni Center 11 4505 Maryland Parkway 12 Las Vegas, Nevada 13 14 Wednesday, June 16, 1999 15 The above-entitled meeting commenced, pursuant to
- 16 notice, at 7
- 10 p.m.
17 18 PARTICIPANTS:
19 CHIP CAMERON, Facilitator 20 BILL REAMER l
21 JANET KOTRA 22 TIM McCARTIN j 23 ABY MOHSENI l 24 KEITH McCONNELL 25 ROB LEWIS ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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, 2 64FR8640 PDR ,
L. J
I 1 PROCEEDINGS 1
2 [7:10 p.m.)
3 MR. CAMERON: Good evening, everybody, and welcome I l
4 to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's public meeting on the 5 NRC's regulatory responsibilities for a high level waste j 1
6 repository. l l
7 We'd like to thank the University of Nevada-Las 8 Vegas for providing us with this facility for our meeting 9 tonight.
10 My name is Chip Cameron and I'm the Special 11 Counsel for Public Liaison at the NRC, and I'm pleased to 12 serve as a facilitator for tonight's meeting. And in that 13 role, my job is to try to help all of you have a more 14 effective meeting.
15 Part of having a more effective meeting is to make 16 sure that everybody in the back can hear me, end I guess --
17 can everybody hear this? Is this microphone working?
18 MR. REAMER: It cuts in and out. You have to talk 19 right on the top of it.
20 MR. CAMERON: Okay. My objective in terms of 21 having an effective meeting is to make sure that NRC staff 22 clearly txplain the responsibilities in this area; to make 23 sure that the NRC understands the comments that you have 24 tonight.
25 Secondly, we want to make sure that everybody here I
l l
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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3 1 who wants to talk has an opportunity to talk.
2 A third goal is to try to keep things relevant and 3 focused and you will see when we go through the agenda in a 4 few minutes that we do have some specific topics to cover.
5 We realize that there are other concerns in the high level 6 waste area, in addition to NRC's responsibilities, and if we 7 can assist you in providing some information on that, fine, 8 but I would like to keep us focused on NRC responsibilities 9 tonight.
10 Lastly, I would hope that all of us will be 11 courteous, one person talking at a time, and not 12 interrupting each other.
13 The ground rules tonight are simple. When we go 14 to the audience for discussion, and we're going to do that a 15 lot, we're going to keep the presentations short tonight, to 16 give ycu a basis for a discussion, but when we do go to you 17 for questions or comments, I'll call on you and if you could 18 state your name and your affiliation, if appropriece, and 19 either go to one of these mics or I'll give you this 20 worthless mic that I'm using here.
21 We are keeping a transcript and we want to make 22 sure that when we go back to Washington, we know what was 23 said, so that we can consider that in the decision-making 1
24 process that we're involved in.
25 I would ask you, after the meeting, to please talk l
l JJRJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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4 1 to our stenographer, Cary, over here, with some name 2 spellings. He may ask you what the correct spelling of your 3 name is.
4 I would just ask you to try to be concise in your 5 comments, so that we can give everybody a chance to talk 6 tonight.
7 Now, in terms of the agenda, and there was a copy 8 -- or there were copies of the agenda out there for you, the 9 first presentation that we're going to do is a presentation 10 by Bill Reamer. Bill is up here at the table and he is the 11 person who has the lead management responsibility for NRC's 12 work on the high level waste repository. He is going to 13 talk to you about NRC's roles and responsibilities and also 14 about opportunities for the public to be involved in the NRC 15 decision-making on the process.
16 Then we'll go to all of you for a discussion.
17 The next items, we're going to bring Jan Kotra up 18 and also Tim McCartin from the NRC to talk about the 19 proposed rule that the NRC has out for comment now on the l 20 licensing standards that DOE would have to meet before any 21 license would be issued for a repository at Yucca Mountain.
l l 22 One of the things that we heard the last time we l 23 were out here is that people need more time to evaluate this 24 proposed rule and to comment on it, and why doesn't NRC l 25 extend the comment period.
l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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F 5
1 The NRC has done so. The comment period closes at 2 the end of this month. Janet Kotra is going to be'providing 3 you with more information on that. But besides giving you 4 an overview of NRC responsibilities, one specific purpose
! 5 here tonight is to get your comments on the proposed rule l
l 6 and those comments will be evaluated in the NRC l
7 decision-making process.
l 8 You can also file a written comment on the 9 proposed rule. Those of you who don't have a copy of it, we 10 do have copies of the proposed rule out in front. Judy 11 Goodwin has them, if anybody needs them.
12 So after those two presentations by Janet and Tim, l 13 we will go to the audience for discussion of the proposed 14 rule.
l l 15 The next block is going to address two specific j 16 issues of concern that we also heard when we were last out 17 here in March. One concerns how will the NRC rule protect 18 infants and children, and Aby Mohseni from the NRC staff is
)
l 19 going to talk about that.
t
- 20 The other special topic that we heard about was l 21 the concept of multiple protective barriers in the 22 repository and how the NRC rule addresses those multiple 23 barriers. Keith McConnell from the NRC staff will talk to
! 24 that.
25 Then we're going to go out to you for discussion ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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! 6 1 of those topics, i
'2 The last topic, specific topic, at any rate, is, 1
3 again, an area of concern that was expressed when the NRC I 4 was out here last time. We wanted to come back and provide l
5 more information about that. That's the whole issue of high 6 level waste packaging and transportation, and we have 7 someone from our spent fuel project office, Rob Lewis, here l
8 tonight, who is going to talk about the NRC regulations.
9 At the end of that presentation, Bill Reamer is 10 going to say a couple words about a recent proposed rule 11 that the NRC had asked for comments on that dealt with the 12 subject of license renewal. This is the renewal of licenses 13 for nuclear power plants.
14 That rule had some implications for high level 15 waste transport in Nevada, and Bill is going to try to 16 clarify what the implications of that rule are for further 17 work on the repository.
18 Our wrap-up will be for questions or comments that 19 we did not cover tonight.
20 I think we'll get started. We want to hear all of 21 you tonight and I think we have time to do that.
22 So, Bill, would you like to start off?
23 MR. REAMER: Thank you, Jeff. Welcome to 24 everyone. Thank you very much for coming. Our audio system 25 obviously leaves something to be desired tonight. Maybe we ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
7 1 should just give it up. It's cutting in and out. In any l 2 event, we'll go ahead despite it. "
3 In any event, thanks very much for coming tonight.
4 MR. CAMERON: You can't have the two mics !
5 adjacent.
l 6 MR. REAMER: There are more problems than I've got ;
7 solutions. How's that? I 8 Tonight we want to continue the dialogue that we 9 started in March, in the March meeting. We know that you're 10 very interested and concerned about our rules, the rules 11 that the Department of Energy has to meet if they are to 12 have -- if they are to be allowed to have a repository at i
13 Yucca Mountain, and we know that these are rules that must l
14 be protective of all Nevadans, and it's going to be our i 15 responsibility really to convince you, I think, that we 16 believe that and why we believe that, and 'ee are very 17 interested in hearing your comments on what we say.
18 Another goal tonight is to try to work to 19 establish a relationship with Nevadans so that they can i
20 understand who NRC is, that we are independent of the 21 Department of Energy, that we are here for the long term, 22 and that we understand i t's our job to protect the public 23 health and safety and that that's what we must do and will 24 do.
25 Now, in the March 23rd meeting that Chip ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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8 1 mentioned, I think one of the issues, one of the concerns 2 that we heard was who is NRC. So I'd like to addrbss that.
3 We are independent. We're an independent i
4 regulatory agency.
We're not part of the Department of 5 Energy. Our job is to protect the public health and safety.
6 We have a great deal of experience in regulating atomic 7 energy activities. We regulate nuclear power plants. We 8 regulate medical uses of radioactive material. We regulate 9 nuclear waste disposal and storage, and we regulate 10 transportation and other activities and, by law, it's our 11 job to regulate the Department of Energy and assure safe 12 disposal of high level waste.
13 Now, before going on and saying more about the 14 NRC, I think I'd like to set the table by talking just a 15 minute about what DOE will be doing. DOE will be and is 16 evaluating the Yucca Mountain site and its suitability for a 17 high level waste repository. It's working in preparing an 18 environmental impact statement, a statement that we 19 understand will be published in draft form for comment at I 20 the end of July of this year.
21 It's working to make a decision on whether to 22 recommend Yucca Mountain as a site for a high level waste 23 repository. If it makes that recommendation and if that 24 recommendation is approved by the President and approved by l l
25 the Congress, then it will submit a license application to I
1 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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9 1 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that's us.
2 If the NRC issues a license, then the Department i
3 of Energy will construct and operate a repository, and it's 4 also responsible for providing long-term oversight for that 5 facility.
6 In that context, with that background, what is 7 NRC's role? As I've said, by law, it's to regulate, as an 8 independent agency, the Department of Energy and to assure 9 that any disposal of waste, wherever it is, if it's at Yucca 10 Mountain, is safe.
11 We are not --
we, the NRC, are not a proponent or 12 opponent of a repository at Yucca Mountain. We use health 13 and safety in our decisions as a basis for our decisions.
14 It's our responsibility to set the rules that DOE must meet l' and these rules must be protective of the public health and 16 safety of Nevadans.
17 Tonight's meeting is about the rules that we have 18 proposed for the DOE and I want to, again, restate that it's 19 our objective to adopt rules that are protective of all 20 Nevadans.
21 We also have the responsibility to comment on the 22 Department of Energy's draft environmental impact statement, 23 and I'd like to say, with respect to that item, that we do 24 have preliminary plans to come back to Las Vegas for a 25 meeting to hear your comments on the Department of Energy's l
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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m 10 1 draft'EIS, because we understand-that in order for us to
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2 prepare our comments, and I talked earlier about wanting to 3 have that long-term relationship with Nevadans, we need to 4 know'what's on your mind, as well.
5 Then if a site is approved and a license 6 application is1 filed, then it will be our responsibility to 7 decide whether to permit construction and whether later to 8 license' operation of a repository.
.9 To get a. license, I want to, again, reemphasize 10 that for DOE to obtain a license from the NRC, it has to 11 demonstrate to NRC's satisfaction that the repository can be 12~ safely operated and if we do issue a license to the 13 Department of Energy for a repository, then it's our 14 responsibility to assure that the Department of Energy obeys 15 those rules.
16 And as I said, we' re here for the lo;.9 term and 17 that is part of our responsibility over the long term, to be 18 sure that the rules that we adopt are obeyed by the DOE.
19 How will we carry out our responsibility? By 20 fairly and objectively reviewing all the information. I'm 21 talking about an impartial and rigorous evaluation of the 22 Department of Energy's information, and to make decisions 23 that are open and that are justified by the facts, and I'm 24 saying that any licensing decision that we make will be 25 based on the facts and not on politics.
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11 1 Now, we will use a step-wise process, if a license 2 application is filed, that takes advantage of new 3 information along the way. It's an incremental process.
4 There is no waste at Yucca Mountain right now and there 5 won't be any waste disposed at Yucca Mountain until the 6 Department of Energy clears each of these steps.
7 First, it is to demonstrate, based on the 8 information, that they should be permitted to construct, {
9 that DOE should be permitted to build the repository. Then i
10 a later step that they must, based on the information, j 11 demonstrate that they should be permitted to possess waste 12 at a site. Then after waste is and if waste is placed in a 13 repository, to then demonstrate yet again that the 14 repository can be closed, can be safely closed, and, 15 finally, to demonstrate that any license that has been 16 issued can be terminated safely, protecting all Nevadanc.
17 Of course, our commitment to you is that the 18 public will be involved throughout the process, not just 19 tonight, but throughout each of those steps as they occur.
20 We need your support to do our job and we hope to 21 earn that support by involving you. That's why we 22 understand that public involvement is important.
23 Tonight, the dialogue is informal dialogue. We t
l 24 want to strengthen your belief that we are reaching out to 25 the public. We hope to do that. We hope, as I said, to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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12 1 work at building a relationship with the people in Nevada.
2 Tonight, we want to continue to hear your comments'on our 3 proposed rules.
4 We know that we need to listen to what you have to 5 say and to provide responses te each of those concerns.
6 More formal participation would occur if there is 7 a license application. We understand that public 8 involvement is a two-way street. You provide views, we 9 listen, we follow up in a way that you can see, and we make 10 sure that you have the information that you need.
11 Tonight, we will try to respond further to 12 concerns that we heard in March, why we are issuing our 13 rules now and how those rules, we believe, will be 14 protective of Nevadans, why we think that the proposal that 15 we made is protective enough, does the proposal assure 16 protection through multiple lines of defense, and how are 17 people protected from the risks of transportation.
18 We want to use the extended comment period that's 19 been provided in a constructive way to continue the dialogue 20 and we've restructured the format tonight so that we have 1
21 more time, so that there is more time to hear from you and 22 less time where we're doing the talking, j 23 So again, thank you very much. I think at that 24 point I'll stop.
25 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Bill. Are i
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13 1 there comments or questions on Bill's presentation in 2 reference to the goals of the NRd or opportunities"for 3 public involvement throughout the NRC process? Yes, sir.
4 MR. NIELSEN: 'Is there a local NRC office?
5 MR. CAMERON: Could you just state your name and 6 use a microphone, please?
7 MR. NIELSEN: Rick Nielsen.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Rich Nielsen wanted to know 9 if there is a locally staffed NRC office here and how we 10 contact them.
11 Yes, there is a locally staffed office. There are 12 two individuals who are here. They've been here --
13 basically, the two of them have been here five years. They 14 know what's going on at the site. William Belke and Chad 15 Glenn. We hope that if you do need any further information i
16 about how to contact them, we would certainly be happy to
> 17 give you that.
i 18 I might add that if there is a license application '
19 that is filed, we see the need for that office to expand and 20 we will do that. In addition, as I said, we understand that
- 21. we need, from Washington, to come out and be here as well 22 and we will do that.
23 MR. CAMERON: What I think we'd like to get 24 comment on, also, are there any suggestions that anybody has 25 in the audience on how the NRC could more effectively ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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14 1 provide information and more invc1ve people in the 2 decision-making process. We're going to go over t$ -- do 3 you have any luck with that, Bill?
4 Yes, sir. .
5 MR. McCANN: My name is Don McCann. I'd like to 6 hear more about the people here and how to contact them.
7 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, sir. We will 8 .have that information for you. We will post it up here.
9 Okay.
10 Yes, sir. Dr. Chase.
11 DR. CHASE: I hope that the -- what the scientists 12 know about this thing. I want to know --
13 MR. CAMERON: He can't hear at all. Why don't you 14 use this mic?
15 DR. CHASE: I want to know what NRC -- if you use 16 the material as a measure or do you use -- material being 17 benign. Just what will you be using? J 18 NR. CAMERON: I think that that question about the 1
19 number that we will be using will be addressed in a i 20 presentation that is coming up in a few minutes. So we'll 21 hold the answer to that until we get to that presentation.
22 Go ahead.
23 DR. CHASE: What is NRC's past experience with 24 deep geological spent fuel repositories? In addition, will i 25 your licensing procedures include geological and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 hydrological hazards, as well? Say, if the repository was 2 to be in existence for 5,000 years.
3 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Dr. Chase. Bill, do you 4 want to talk about past experience?
5 MR. REAMER: In addition to the experience that we 6 have in regulation Atomic Energy Act activities, we have a 7
program to oversee what the Department of Energy is doing 8 prior to filing of the license application and we've been 9 observing, watching, providing questions to the Department 10 of Energy for some time in connection with their site 11 characterization activities.
12 MR. CAMERON: Yes, ma'am. Could you please come 13 up to th! mic? Yes, we're there. Try this microphone. j 14 MS. ZOLKOVER: In the book Atomic Scientists, 15 Christen Schrader said, in his article, High Level Waste -
16 Low Level Lodging, says that th? DOE has c:' led in many 17 experts on this question, what do you like about Yucca 18 Mountain, and when they have something bad to say, that l 19 wasn't what the DOE asked them and they don't include 20 negative comments in their evaluations. I i
21 They may turn over to you all kinds of statements !
22 about good things at Yucca Mountain, but they are 23 selectively eliminating dangers.
24 Who are your scientists? How many of you are 25 scientists and do you call on groups of scientists from the i
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1 16 1 National Academy of Science?
2 MR. CAMERON: That's a good question and'you'll 3 get a little bit of a flavor for the qualifications when we I 4 introduce the presenters tonight, but it, I think, deserves 5 a broader answer to that. Bill?
6 MR. REAMER: We have technical people within the 7 agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and specifically 8 within our branch, the high level waste branch. In 9 addition, we have a dedicated group of scientists in San 10 Antonio at the Center for Nuclear Regulatory Waste Analyses 11 that assist us, and that's their sole function, to assist 12 us.
13 We are aware, very aware of what the issues are, 14 what the technical issues are, and we will ask questions 15 that DOE cannot answer, they will have to answer our 16 questions.
17 MR. CAMERON: And could I just ask you, the woman 18 that asked that question, if you would just identify 19 yourself for the stenographer.
20 MS. ZOLKOVER: I'm Adrian Zolkover, a resident of 21 Nevada, Emerson.
I 22 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much.
23 MS. JOHNSON: My name is Abbie Johnson, and I'm 24 here representing Eureka County Doubt. I have a couple ;
25 questions concerning your comments about the EIS. Actually, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 17 l 1 first of all, a statement that all ten effected units of f 2 local government and the State of Nevada asked the' 3 Department of Energy to extend the comment period on the
! 4 upcoming EIS to 180 days from the currently proposed 90 5 days, and they have turned us down.
6 I want to say to you, as the NRC, that it is going 7 to be very difficult for the counties and the state to 8 review the document fully in the 90-day comment period.
9 I would assume it might be hard for the NRC to do 10 that, too. And I would comment that any agency that has the 11 same troubles that we do with the 90-day comment period
, 12 should speak up.
13 And that leads to my second thing, which is a 14 question. You said that the NRC is planning to come to Las 15 Vegas to hear what Nevadans think about the environmental 16 impact statement. Is that going to be during the 90-day 17 review period or is that going to be coming to the Las Vegas 18 hearing and listening to what will be said at the Las Vegas 19 hearing?
20 MR. CAMERON: Bill, I think that is a question for 21 you. One was a statement and one was sort of --
22 MS. JOHNSON: One was a statement and one was a 23 question.
24 MR. REAMER: One was a statement, and, yes, we're l 25 aware of the 90-day comment period and I agree that it's a ANN'RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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18 1 very tight comment period and we are aware that requests 2 have been made to the Department to extend it, and we're j
3 also aware that the Department has made a decision not to 4 extend it.
5 So we are -- our schedule, our plans are to try to 6 provide our comments in the timeframe that we have been 7 given. That's with respect to your first point.
8 The second point is that our hope would be that we 9 would be able to hold a separate meeting and not -- in 10 addition to observing the meeting that we know the 11 Department of Energy is going to hold.
12 If you have any reaction to that, if you think 13 that's a good idea, or anyone else in the audience, if you 14 think that is a good idea or a bad idea, we would be very 15 interested in hearing that.
16 MR. CAMERON: Since we are trying to keep track of 17 the action items that come out of this meeting, Abbie, 18 aren't you -- are you requesting that the NRC, as the 19 regulatory licensing agency, request that the Department of 20 Energy extend the comment period on the' Draft Environmental 21 Impact Similar?
22 MS. JOHNSON: Yes.
23 DR. CASE: All right.
24 MS. JOHNSON: I just have one -- another, a
! 25 different topic. This conversation about NRC has an office i
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19 1 here, my understanding of that office is that this is very 2 ' technically based and it is the office for the two folks who 3 go out and look at the work that is being done at the Yucca 4 Mountain site.
5 It one of your publications, " Citizens Guide to 6 the NRC," there was some information, it says that the )
i 7 Office of Public Affairs has four locations, the farthest 8 one west is in Arlington, Texas. And I would suggest that 9 if you truly want public involvement in the matte'r that you 10 need to have an office that is skilled in public involvement
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11 and communication with the public.
12 And I also want to say, since I made those j l
13 comments, to date I have gotten all these phone calls. I am i
14 very impressed.
15 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Abbie. We will 16 note that request.
17 Bill, do you have any comment on that at this 18 point?
19 MR. REAMER: Well, I do appreciate your views, 20 particular the views about the local representation. I 21 personally don't see how we can have a relationship, how we ;
22 can hope to have a relationship with Nevadans if we are not 23 present.
24 My plan, my hope is that the people in Washington 25 -- me -- will be here regularly, that you will know who I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 20 1 am, that you will know my phone number, that you can see me 2 and ask me questions when I am here, and you can call me if 3 something occurs to you that you need information when I am 4 not here. That is, I think, realistically, the way we can l 5 do it. But I appreciate your views that perhaps there is 6 another way to do it, and we will give those consideration.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Bill.
8 Dr. Chase, do you have another --
9 DR. CHASE: Juct one. I would like to comment f 10 on --
11 MR. CAMERON: Dr. Chase, let me give you a set --
12 everybody. I l
l 13 DR. CHASE: First of all, my contact with the 4
14 office -- people are very helpful.
15 MR. CAMERON: I can't hear.
16 DR. CHASE: I read the DOE reports. Beautifully 17 written, -- bound very nice, the pages don't fall out. But 18 there is one thing I find that is very -- I find that some ,
19 of the reports are very technical, written in language that, !
l 20 frankly, the average person doesn't understand. So I don't I 21 know what -- and not have a committee set up to simplify the 22 language. I don't say change the thoughts or change the 23 opinions, but put in a language that somebody can 24 understand.
25- I am a geologist, and I have seen some reports ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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21 1 come through on geology written in such a way that I didn't 2 understand what it was saying. What good is such a report?
3 I would respectfully ask that NRC, when it issues a report, 4 which they know is going to be printed, hopefully, it will 5 be read by the public, write it in language that the public 6 can understand. Thank you.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, that is 8 a good point for the NRC to remember.
9 Bill, do you have any --
10 MR. REAMER: Well, only, I don't see how we can 11 promise to have a dialogue if we don't speak in terms that 12 have this kind of understanding. So in that sense I agree 13 with what you are saying.
14 MR. CAMERON: All right. Any other questions on 15 this segment? Judy.
16 MS. SHAFER: My question is, you are talking about 17 the reviewing the information. My question is, what is your 18 quality assurance program, who do you verify that the 19 information DOE is putting is correct?
20 MR. REAMER: Well, the quality assurance 21 requirements that we would impose on the Department of 22 Energy if they are ever an applicant for a license are the 23 quality assurance requirements that we impose on all the 24 nuclear power plants, and all the activities that we 25 regulate, and we would not make any exception with respect ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 to the Department of Energy. We would insist that they 2 abide by those rules. '
3 Is there a follow-up question? Did I not -- if ;
4 there is a follow-up question, I would be happy to try and 5 respond to it.
6 MR. CAMERON: Judy, did that answer your question?
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7 MS. SHAFER: Not really. i 8 MR. CAMERON: I got some instructions that if you I
9 hold the microphone like an ice cream cone, I am not sure 10 that, you know, this is the way to hold an ice cream cone, 11 but you get the point. All right. So hold it so it is on 12 like this. Go ahead, Judy.
13 MS. SHAFER: Okay. You were saying an obje' ve 14 review of all information. So what I was saying is, f you 15 assure their information is cur'7ct? l l
16 MR. REAMER: Well, from a quality assurance '
i 17 standpoint, that information has to have a pedigree, an '
18 authenticity to it. Data that are used have to be tied back 19 to the source of those data. Models computer analyses that 20 are used, all have to be quality checked. Information is 21 not accepted just on the surface. We can't regulate in that 22 way, we don't regulate in that way. That is what I meant by 23 generally saying the requirements that we would apply to the 24 Department are the same ones that we apply to all of them, 25 and they deal with system quality of the information.
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23 1 MR. CAMERON: Susan. Susan, say your name.
2 MS. ZIMMERMAN: Susan Zimmerman from the State of 1 3 Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. Regarding the quality 4 assurance question that has been asked, is the NRC going to 5 put every bit of data that DOE provides and do a pedigree 6 check on each data, given that, you know, DOE is going to 7 gather the whole -- their data is huge and it is going to 8 take quite a bit of time and effort to track all this data 9 back to its original source to make sure all the assumptions 10 were correct and everything like that. And given the three 11 year time frame for the reviewing the license application, i
12 are you sure you are going to do that?
l 13 MR. REAMER: Well, again, we will look at their 14 program and the way that they implement their program, it is 15 not just their program on paper, but are they living by 16 their program. Are they implementing their program? It is 17 their responsibility to assure the quality of their 18 information. We will look at their program. We will -- and 19 as we do with all licensees, we will sample the specific way 20 that they implement that program to be confident that the i
21 quality that the program is intended to ensure is there and 22 a license won't be issued until that is done. The three 23 year timeframe is not going to result in a license that is 24 issued but doesn't meet our requirements. Our requirements 25 have to be met, that is understood by everyone.
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24 1 MS, ZIMMERMAN: Given your statements about --
2 regarding quality assurance program are accurate, why didn't 3 you ask them -- I think when you issued 10 CFR 63, and one 4 of your requests for comments was, should NRC keep requiring 5 quality assurance programs for DOE high level waste 6 programs?
7 MR. REAMER: I am not specifically sure what you 8 are referring to, but our proposal is that the requirements 9 that apply, for example, to nuclear power plants be 10 satisfied by the Department of Energy in this -- for this 11 project as well.
12 MR. CAMERON: Janet, do you have something to add 13 on that?
14 DR. KOTRA: Yeah, my name is Janet Kotra, I am 15 with the NRC staff. The request for comment i .1 the proposed I 16 Dart 63 regulation specifically asked if requiring a program 17 comparable to what is required for other licensees is 18 appropriate. I don't -- I can say with confidence that 19 .there was no intent to imply that we wouldn't want quality 20 assurance. The question that we are asking -- is the 21 comparable program that we are proposing the right one, or 22 are there special considerations or concerns that we need to 23 be aware of to make sure that the quality assurance program 24 required of the Department is appropriate for a repository 25 at Yucca Mountain?
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p 25 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you, Janet. Sir?
2 SCOTT: Speaking of quality assurance, I"have to 3 mention that I have read articles with regards to the --
I j
4 regulatory -- downsizing -- to the Yucca Mountain project. )
{
5 MR. REAMER: The Department of Energy -- the 6 Environmental Protection Agency, under the law, is to issue 7 a standard for the Yucca Mountain project and that standard 8 has not yet been issued. Later in the program we will 9 answer the question of why. We are proposing our rules at 10 this time. If that is not responsive to the question at the 11 time, I would suggest perhaps you might restate it at that 12 point.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's take one more question 14 on this subject and then Janet and Tim, do you want to come 15 up to the table and we will get all of you right here. )
16 MS. ZOLKOVER: The DOE -- this Adrian Zolkover 17 again. The DOE might get an A-plus, say, for the design of 18 Yucca Mountain, the tunnels, all the things they have done, 3 l
19 but DOE doesn't control earthquakes, they don't control the 20 weather. They don't control all kinds of things. Are you 21 holding them responsible or are you getting your own experts 22 to advise you about possibilities, probabilities, the time 23 they.should wait to construct the rest of the tunnels? If 24 not, what kind of things they should store there? Is 25 plutonium very different than steel rods? I think it is. j l
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p 26 1 And there is like eleven tons of plutonium and half of ton t
1 2 you want to store a year. Things like that.
3 MR. REAMER: Are we holding DOE responsible or are i 4 we getting our own experts? And the answer is both.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. The next segment. Bill, do 6 you --
7 BILL That mike is not working. That mike may 8 work. This one, unless I am on -- this mike is working, 9 right?
10 MR. CAMERON: I think -- unfortunately, it is not 11 on. We will try -- we apologize for the microphone problems 12 we are having and I think Bill has a good suggestion. This 13 one seems to be working over here, so that if you could try 14 and make your way over to that mike, we will try to use l .
15 that, and I guess we will have our speakers use this one up 16 here.
17 Janet, you are going to be the first one to try 18 that, basically. But the next two presentations are on the 19 NRC's proposed rule, and Janet Kotra from the NRC staff is 20 going to be talking about why these standards are being 21 proposed now at this time, and why do they differ from the 22 standards used by the Environmental Protection Agency at the 23 Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
l l
24 And by way of introduction, Janet has a Ph.D. in l 25 environmental and nuclear chemistry. She is one of the l l
l l
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27 1 principal authors of the NRC proposed rule and she works for 2 Bill Reamer in the High Level Waste Branch. Dr. Kotra 3 DR. KOTRA: Thank you, Chairman. Good evening, it 4 is good to be back in Las Vegas. As Chip indicated, we came 5
out in March and we heard a number of concerns and we tried 6 to address those concerns and we have focused our program 7 this evening to address specific issues that were raised in 1
8 those meetings. The first one being, why is that the NRC 9 appears to be stepping out in front of the Environmental 10 Protection Agency in proposing, implementing regulations for 11 Yucca Mountain.
12 First and foremost, we believe it is necessary at 13 this time to proceed to meet a very aggressive schedule in 14 order to fulfill properly our mission to protect the public 15 health and safety. In addition, we have an obligation to 16 comply 'rith the Congressional mandate that was issued in 17 1992, and I will talk a little bit more about that.
18 But before that, the framework for licensing 19 geological disposal in this country was laid out by the 20 Congress in the Nuclear Policy Act of 1982, fully ten years 21 before. In that initial legislation, the NRC was directed 22 to develop technical criteria for the licensing of a 23 repository. The Congress directed the NRC to develop 24 criteria that provided for the use of a system of multiple 25 barriers. They directed the NRC to specify a time during L
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28 1 which waste can be retrieved.
2 I think this may get a little bit to the question, 3 and we will talk more as the evening progresses about the 4 various stages of the repository and how those correspond to 5 licensing actions that the NRC will take and when we 6 consider an operation of a repository operational; when we 7 believe that waste emplacement has been completed, but we 8 retain retrievability; when consideration is given to 9 actually closing up the repository, backfilling it, if that 10 is part of the design that the Department of Energy put 11 forward; and even after that period of time, how long is it 12 appropriate to continue monitoring use of active oversight 13 controls, et cetera.
14 Lastly, the 1982 legislation directed the NRC to 15 conform to, at that time, generic EPA standards, which were 16 also mandated by the legislation.
17 In 1992, as many of you that I recognize in this 18 room are aware, new legislation was issued that directed the 19 Environmental Protection Agency to develop new standards 20 specifically for Yucca Mountain. Now, unlike the previous 21 ge14eric standards that EPA had developed which focused on 22 specifying particular release rates, which came from a study 23 of what was known at the time of what was thouglt 3 to be the 24 capability of a hypothetical repository, or a hypothetical 25 set of repositories, if I recall correctly, the new ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 29 1 legislation directed the Environmental Protection Agency to 2 issue health-based standards that explicitly provide 3 protection for an individual in the vicinity of a l 4 repository, and that could would be the fundamental decision 5 criteria that would be issued by the Environmental 6 Protection Agency and which would be implemented by the 7 Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
'8 The 1992 legislation did not stop there. It asked 9 the EPA to contract with the National Academy of Sciences to 10 provide guidance on what the technical basis for these 11 standards should be. That report was issued in 1995. And 12 if any of you are not familiar with that report and would 13 like to be, I can tell you how to obtain it. It has been 14 publicly available now for almost four years.
15 And, lastly, the legislation specified that these 16 new standards that EPA would issue would be the only 17 standards that would apply for radiological releases from 18 Yucca Mountain.
19 Germane to answering the question, why NRC felt it i
20 was imperative that we move forward with proposing a fairly 21 complicated and very important set of implementing 22 regulations now is that we were directed to conform to the 23 new standards that EPA will issue, based on and consistent 24 with the National Acaden,y of Sciences report within a single 25 year.
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30 i
1 And as Bill has said tonight, we feel very !
2 strongly that our process for this -- for issuing 3 regulations for a first of a kind facility such as this 4 needs to involve an extra measure of public involvement. We 5 need to go above and beyond the routine notice and comment 6 process that we have used in the past and we want to 7 initiate and maintain a dialogue with the people, but 8 particularly with people in Nevada, on whether the decision 9 criteria that we are developing here are the right ones. We 10 feel that it is necessary to start that process as soon Ts 11 possible so that we can include timely and the most 12 meaningful public involvement in the process.
13 Lastly, I might add that, and this in answering 14 the second question, at the same the Energy Policy Act was 15 passed in 1992, the Congress also issued the WIP-WIN 16 Withdrawal Act that addressed primarily the criteria that 17 would be used and -- excuse me -- the procedure for 18 withdrawing rad for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New 19 Mexico. However, it also included language that stated 20 categorically that the older EPA standards, which I alluded 21 to earlier, would not apply to Yucca Mountain, or for any 22 other site characterized under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 23 should Yucca Mountain be -- the study of Yucca Mountain be 24 discontinued for development as a repository and some other 25 site be pursued for characterization and possible licensing.
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31
,. 1 So, why now? As I said, the-law requires us to L
e 2 -conform very quickly. The EPA standards are in preparation 3 and those of us on:the technical staff of the Nuclear 1 ?
L 4 f' Regulatory Commission have been working with the staff of
! 5 the Environmental Protection Agency. We know they are in 6 preparation, we know -- we understand that they are close to L i 7 issuing a proposal, that the National Academy of Sciences' 8 recommendation upon which th'ose standards are to be based 9 have been available since August 1st of 1995.
10 So we are fairly confident that we know the type 11 of standard that EPA is going to be issuing, and that we 12 know that there.are certain changes that we need to make to 13 our regulations, for a number of reasons -- to update them, 14 to reflect that we have learned a great deal in the last 15 15 to 20 years in estimating and reviewing and evaluating an 16 application for a repository. That the Cc gress has given 17 us different instructions in terms of what is the most 18 important decision criteria, and we need to have 19 implementing. regulations in place that reflect that.
20 And, lastly, again, to allow for an expanded 21 public involvement. That takes time. It takes more than a 22 year. And that is why \e are here tonight,-and that is why 23 we hope to be back again, in order to be able to allow for
'24 this dialogue to unfold and to evolve.
- 25. With regard to the second question on the agenda l
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32 1 -- well, why are you going to have different standards for 2 Yucca Mountain for WIP? Because EPA has not yet come 3 forward with its proposal for Yucca Mountain, it is 4 understandable that people, not knowing that, will look at 5 what we have proposed in the interim, an overall performance 6 objective for. protecting public health and safety in the 7 vicinity of Yucca Mountain, and say, well, this doesn't look 8 like whac EPA used to certify the Waste Isolation Pilot 9 Plant in New Mexico. That's true.
10 The reason why, as I said earlier, the law 11 requires a different safety strategy. The law has done 12 nothing of relieving either agency of their responsibilities 13 to protect public health and safety, but we have to use a 14 different. strategy to accomplish that under the law. The 15 National Academy of Sciences made a number of very specific 16 racommendations that support this different strategy, and
.17 perhaps one of the most salient being that it is the overall 18 performance of the facility, -- performance defined as l
l 19 protecting individuals to a certain standard -- that counts.
20 And that, therefore, implementing regulations -- and the l 21 National Academy of Sciences did provide additional l 22 recommendations specifically directed at the Nuclear #
l l 23 Regulatory Commission, in addition to advising EPA, that it 24 wr.3 1portant that those implementing regulations support, 25 be d.rectly tied to, and have a clear link to implementing i
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33 1 that overall safety strategy.
- 2. We believe that we have put forwardintbis 3 proposal an approach that protects the individual from all 4 sources of exposure, that no single pathway or path of 5 exposure, including groundwater, can result in an 6 unacceptable risk that is out of kilter or inconsistent with 7 the level of protection that we require for all the other 8 facilities that we license, and that it is consistent with 9 our over-arching obligation to protect the public health and 10 safety of the people living near a repository. That is the 11 objective of our High Level Waste Program, that is why we 12 are here.
13 What have we done to develop the proposal that we 14' are here to talk about tonight? As I said earlier, we have 15 interacted to the extent that we have been able. We have 16 offered the assistance of our technical contracter in San 17 Antonio, the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analysis, 18 to provide the results of 15 years of performance assessment 19 experience.
20 Now, Tim will describe for you in a little more 21 detail in his presentation what we mean by the term 22 " performance assessment." But in short form, it is the use 23 of technical models, of integrating the science of all the 24 different factors that go into determining whether the 1 25 safety standards are met.
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34 1
And we have learned a lot in the last 15 years.
2 We have offered our experience. The question was asked 3 earlier, and it was a very good one, -- are we just going to 4 rely on DOE's assertion that, oh, yeah, the repository meets 5 the standard? The answer to that is clearly no. Are we 6 going to be able to duplicate everything they do? No, we 7 don't have the resources for that.
8 So how do we address that? We have hired a 9 contractor, an independent contractor that has -- that 10 supplements a fairly substantial body of technical expertise 11 that we have on the NRC staff to provide our own performance 12 assessment capability, to have our own computer models with 13 which we can build and probe the assertions that DOE makes, 14 and say, are these assertions sound? Are they supported by 15 the technical literature? Are there peer review 16 publications out there that suggest that other models must 17 be considered? Has DOE done a credible job of doing that?
18 All of that is part and parcel of our program.
19 And we offered to share that with the Environmental 20 Protection Agency and the results of experience that we have 21 had in that area to encourage the development of practical 22 and scientifically supportable standards that are protective 23 of public health and safety, 24- We have proposed regulations that we believe focus 25 on what is most important to assuring that the repository ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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35 1 meets the safety criteria. We have proposed an overall 2 safety objective for now, in the absence of an EPA ?final 3 standard, that we believe is protective, that is generally 4 consistent with the recommendations of the National Academy 5 of Sciences and we believe is scientifically demonstrable.
6 Now, let me just say here, that something that is 7 scientifically demonstrable does not necessarily that it 8 will be demonstrable in the affirmative, but that science is 9 capable of supporting a demonstration does not mean that we 10 would agree that that is protective of public health and 11 safety. I just want to make that distinction here, that 12 just because the standard can be implemented does not mean 13 that they can be passed. We are here to ensure that it is a 14 scientifically sound standard, that is asking for 15 information that science can deliver to support our 16 judgment. That does mean we are looking for a standard that 17 DOE can pass under any circumstances.
18 So to draw my presentation to a close, I want to 19 say that we are here tonight to seek your comments.
20 Anything that you say tonight will be made part of the 21 record, but, also, please feel free after you leave this 22 evening, if you have additional thoughts or concerns, to 23 send us a letter, to send us written comments. Do these 24 proposed regulations provide a sound basis for NRC to judge 25 the safety of the repository? We want your input and we ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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36 1 welcome questions.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay. We are going to Tim McCartin 3 and then we are going to come back for questions to both of 4 them. And Tim is going to give us an overview of the 5 proposed regulations. We also works in the High Level Waste 6 Branch for Bill Reamer. He has a master's degree in physics 7 and he has 20 years experience with the process of
.8 performance assessment-for high level waste repositories.
9 Tim, we are going to turn it over to you, and I am 10 going to be putting a portable microphone system up on the 11 table for the audience. And I would just like to thank 12 April and Gil for helping us out.with that.
13 Go ahead, Tim.
14 MR. McCARTIN: Okay. Good evening. Tonight I 15 would like to describe the approach in the NRC regulation 16 for protecting the public and groundwater, and I will focus 17 on three main topics. The requirements in the regulation 18 that DOE evaluate safety, have plans and procedures for 19 safety and have measures for continued oversight.
20 Generally, the safety evaluation involves an 21 estimation of dose to individuals. Therefore, it has tended i
22 to receive more attention than other requirements. But I 23 would like to emphasize that the other two requirements are
! 24 just as important. There are plans and procedures that must 25 he implemented by the Department of Energy to ensure that IJUJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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37 1
the repository, if a license is granted, is opernted safely.
2 And the continued oversight is also important.
3 For long-term performance, this continued oversight will 4 ensure that future generations are protected, al so .
5 I would like to go through those three particular 6 points in a little more detail. In terms of the evaluation 7
of the repository, as I mentioned, this is typically a dose 8 calculation. In doing the dose calculation, what needs to 9
be done is DOE will have to identify all the different ways 10 that individuals could be exposed to radiation, commonly 11 referred to as exposure pathways.
12 When we look at Yucca Mountain, the most likely 13 path for radionuclides to be released is through the ground 14 water. So we're interested in ways people could be exposed 15 through ground water.
16 In our regulation, we have identified a farming 17 community. The reason for that is a farming lifestyle 1 18 involves a large use of ground water. Ground water could be l
19 used for drinking, irrigation of crops, watering of 20 livestock.
t 21 So it would have multiple exposure pathways, from 22 drinking contaminated water, in contaminated crops, and 23 ingestion of animal products, milk, for example.
24 Now, the question is, you have to make a lot of 25 assumptions in doing this estimate of dose. These ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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3 38 1 calculations are carried out for a performance period of 2 10,000 years. Thousands of years from now, it's quite 3 speculative as to what people are doing, where they will be.
4 We've selected this farming lifestyle because it 5 captures a broad net of diff.erent exposure pathways. Where 6 will this farming lifestyle be? We've identified a location 7 approximately 12 miles from the site. Currently, most of 8 the farming in the area is in the 25-mile range. We've 9 selected a closer location because the soil conditions are 10 also appropriate for farming, and the depth to water is such 11 that it's not unreasonable that farming could exist there at 12 some future time.
13 Obviously, just doing the calculation, it's done 14 in the context of a performance assessment, a safety 15 assessment. In the safety assessment, we expect the DOE and 16 require them to not just look at what can be expected, but 17 what might go wrong during the operation of the facility.
18 We have them look at po; tal accidents that could occur 19 during the emplacement m waste.
20 In the long-term performance, the NRC has a term, 21 disruptive events, that's to capture things like seismic j 22 events, fault movement, potential for volcanoes. These are 23 things that could disrupt the repository at a later date.
24 These types of conditions need to be evaluated and 25 determine what their impact is on the individual dose.
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39 1
Obviously, these analyses, these safety i
2 assessments are very dependent on the assumptions made.
3 They're only on the assumptions made. There is a limited 4 amount of data at this time. The regulations recognize that 5 information is still being collected and will be learned as 6 time goes on.
7 If a construction authorization is granted to DOE, 8 there will be information that's learned as they construct 9 the repository. If they get a license to implace waste, as 10 waste is implaced, we'll learn additional things, also.
11 There is a requirement to update these analyses as 12 information comes in during this process. The analyses must 13 be updated to ensure that these assumptions that have been 14 made are still true.
15 That being said, there also is another measure.
16 DOE is required to monitor the repository, especially ground 17 water, to look, as things proceed, are the conditions at the 18 site, is the behavior of the waste containers that have been '
19 implaced, are they behaving the way we have assumed in our 20 analysis. If they're not, once again, these analyses will )
21 be updated.
22 However, as I pointed out initially, that's the 23 safety assessment. There are other measures that need to be 24 done by the DOE to ensure safety. We want DOE to be 25 prepared. First and foremost, if they're granted l
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40 1
l construction authorization and a license to implace waste, t
2 we require that the personnel be trained, certifieh. and i
3 requalified to make sure that safety is a top priority for 4 all workers at the Yucca Mountain site.
l 5 Additionally, DOE needs to be prepared for the 6 unexpected. We don't anticipate to have accidents, but 7 accidents sometimes happen. Emergency plans are required in 8 the event that there is a radiological release.
9 And, finally, once again, we have the option, as I 10 Jan mentioned, for waste retrieval for a time period as a 11 repository is being -- as waste is being put into the {
12 repository and for approximately, as we have in the rule l
13 now, 50 years afterwards, you have the option for waste 14 retrieval. If anything happens that suggests that waste 15 can't be safely stored in Yucca Mountain during this time 16 period, the waste would be removed. That's for the 17 operations.
18 Now we get into the long-term behavior of the 1
19 repository and DOE is required to provide continued 20 oversight of the repository. This can take a number of 21 measures. DOE is required to c'ontrol the land in the area 22 around Yucca Mountain to ensure that the public is 23 protected. Permanent markers are required. The 24 preservation of records is also required to make sure that 25 future generations know what is stored or disposed of at ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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41 1 Yucca Mountain.
1 2 Also, once again, repository must be monitored, 3 especially the ground water pathway. We want to make sure 4 any releases are within the limits and the public is still 5 protected over the long term of the repository.
6 Finally, there is what the NRC calls license 7 ccrAitions. Once again, as with the safety assessment, 8 we'll be learning more and more about the repository, the 9 way it behaves over time.
10 The NRC has the ability to add additional 11 requirements on the DOE, what we call license conditions, as I
12 information progresses. If there'are things we learn over 13 the construction, waste emplacement, et cetera, that we feel I
14 needs to be done in addition to whatever requirements are i 15 currently in the regulation, we will apply these additional 16 license conditions.
17 So as I said, there's three main areas for 18 requirements. The safety evaluation, the plans and 1 l
19 procedures during the operational phase of the repository, l l
20 and the long-term oversight of the repository. j 21 What will the NRC do? NRC has three main 22 functions. We will review what DOE does, we will inspect 23 what they do, and we will enforce the terms of the license.
24 When we review DOE's license application, a lot 25 has been said about the performance assessment, the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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42 ]
1 calculations that DOE will do, there's two ways we'll do 2 this. We won't just look at what DOE has done, buh we have 3 built up a fairly strong performance assessment capability 4
at the NRC and the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory 5 Analyses.
6 We will do our own independent calculations to 7 verify, in our mind, that these analyses are correct, that 8 these analyses protect public health and safety.
9 Additionally, we will review DOE's plans and 10 procedures for the operations of the repository. But that's 11 not good enough either. We will inspect, we will go out 12 there and assure that these procedures are being implemented 13 and we will enforce these regulations as needed.
14 How can the public help? We're here tonight to 15 listen to your comments and suggestions. We believe what we 16 put in pi..ce in Part 63 of what we've proposed is protective 17 of public health and safety. Have we thought of everything?
j 18 Have we written it in the clearest way so it's quite evident 19 what DOE is required to do and the public is protected?
20 That's where we're seeking comments and suggestions from you 21 people.
22 Are there additional measures we can provide? Are 23 there different ways to say things? And obviously, as Bill 24 suggested, we are going to be here at other meetings. The 25 way to help us is to continue your participation and yout l
l l l 1 I
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43 l 1 suggestions.
i 2 Thank you.
3 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Bill Pilascony has a question 4 to start us off, and I think that probably is good right 5 there. All right. Bill?
6 MR. PILASCONY: First of all, I'd like to get my 7 understandings down from what's been said tonight. DOE's 8 site characterization, viability assessment, EIS, go on to 9 licensing, and they're looked after by the Nuclear Waste j 10 Technical Review Board that was created by Congress and 11 their purpose is to evaluate the technical and scientific 12 validity of activities undertaken by the DOE in its program 13' for managing the disposal of the nation'r. commercial spent 14 fuel and Defense high level waste.
15 NRC is setting the regulations, health-based, a 16 safety objective repository, and then EPA sets the standards 17 for the public health and safety, and both are based upon 18 and consistent with the National Academy of Sciences' 19 findings and recommendations. l l 20 Now, do I got that all in the right direction?
21 Thank you.
22 My question is this, and you left it open for me.
23 I'm glad you gave me this agenda to write on. Measures for 24 continued oversight, safety, one of the NRC's technical 1 25 criterias is time during which waste can be retrieved, i
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I 44 1 Now, you know, I talk to a lot of folks around i
2 Nevada and some of them are ranchers, some are miners, some 3
are business people, but ore of the biggest things that 4
l i
stands in the way of successfully constructing and opereting 5 Yucca Mountain is the fact that we're looking at a 6
timeframe, even though it's tentative, for a 50-year span.
7 Now, you can talk to Lake Barrett and Russ Darr 1 8 and you can ask them what would be wrong with 300 years 9 retrievability. See, I'm one that gives my school system a 10 little more credit. EPA, Nuclear Regulation Commission, and 11 the DOE are constructing a nuclear waste repository with 12 today's knowledge, with today's technological advances.
13 In 300 years, I believe our educational system may l 14 provide us with a lot better answers. What's wrong with l 15 knowing how much water is in a repository, what the f l
16 temperature is? What's wrong with monitoring it to the 17 point where, if there's a problem, you have retrievability?
18 And one more item I'd like to add to that is, you 19 know, this old boy ain't convinced that coal is going to 20 last forever, that oil is going to last forever. In the 21 early '60s, they said we're going to go to 2060 and start 22 running out of some of this. Yucca Mountain, maybe we 23 should use the word stewardship, because one of these days, 24 Yucca Mountain may become a very important part of our 25 economy for energy.
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45 1
And I'm tired of hearing about the 10,000 years 2 and cows and eating grass out there. Ten thousand years?
3 If you study ice ages, we're going to have some ice ages and 4
everybody is going to be moving down that way anyhow.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you very much, Bill.
6 ,
Whoever wants to address that, and I take it that Tim is 7 going to talk about the retrievability issue, correct?
8 MR. McCARTIN: Sure. A couple things. One, the 9
50 years, in our regulation, is put -- we thought that was a 10 reasonable minimum time and we certainly are open to comment 11 on whether that's a reasonable minimum time. Nothing 12 precludes DOE from going for -- for putting in a license 13 application for a longer time period for retrievability, but 14 that 50 years was a minimum and if people have comments, 15 we're welcome to hear on that.
l 16 I don't know if that is sufficient. In terms of 17 the 10,000 years and the farming community that we have, 18 there is no question that there is a lot of speculation.
19 What's going to be there 100 years from now is hard to say.
20 We needed to select something that would be 21 protective and when we looked at what's going on currently 22 in this area, there is farming going on. Farming uses a lot i
23 of ground water. Farming uses a lot of what is called l
24 exposure pathways. We felt that would be protective, and i
j 25 that's the primary reason.
l I
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1 We aren't suggesting that we have a crystal ball 2 and we know 10,000 years from now there would be a dairy 3 farm 12 miles from Yucca Mountain. But it is a measure that 4 we believe is protective, that if it meets that particular 5 requirement for that particular group, it would protect all 6 others.
7 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's go over to this side, 8 MS. ZOLKOVER: Adrian again. I'm a worrier and I 9 wrote a paper about this subject and I would like to quote 10 Luther J. Carter and Thomas H. Pickford, Professor of 11 Nuclear Engineering, in their article, "Getting Yucca 12 Mountain Right," from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 13 March-April, 1998. )
i 14 They say, this is a direct quote, "Pending 15 Congressional legislation reaffirms the inflexible, 16 counter-productive commitment to a fixed licensing schedule.
17 The House bill would direct the Energy Department to have, 18 build and '.icense a repository that would begin operations 19 by January 17, 2010. Building a repository is much more 20 than a matter of building tunnels and waste emplacement 21 drifts and installing the necessary waste handling 22 equipment.
23 Rather, the problem is to design and create, 24 through iterative changes that could take decades, a system l 25 of containment capable of meeting rigorous standards of ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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47 1 safety over many tens of thousands of years.
2 In this article, they go on to say, "Why'do we 3 have to do it now? We have a design. Wait. See what 4 happens." The earthquakes, I was on my computer today, in 5 Mexico, there are thousands of aftershocks. They show the 6 fault, the Pacific plate is shaking, and the other plate 7 that's not the floating plate is shaking. If the San 8 Andreas had an 8.3 that many experts say is overdue, I think 9 there would be hundreds of thousands of aftershocks; that 10 the water table is now approximately the length of a 11 football stadium away from where the tunnels are. With 12 hundreds of thousands of shaking, how do they know that 13 water table could not heighten to where the hot waste is?
14 Hot, I mean hot.
15 Someone told me that steam takes up 600 times the ,
16 l amount of the water. If you have water heating up, you have )
17 explosions, and not only that, the thermal -- the weather ,
18 patterns are changing and they don't necessarily call it 19 global warming. It can be patterns over billions of years.
20 I have a picture of two inches of snow in my yard 21 I had for a few days this last winter. I moved here after 22 the earthquake; in LA in '94 and it seems to me it has 23 rained as much here as in LA and I don't -- the experts say 24 the weather patterns may be significantly changing.
25 You could have earthquakes, you could have snow on i i
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48 1 Yucca Mountain, and you could have that water table get to .
2 that hot, hot stuff.
3 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Adrian. Tim, do you want 4 to just talk about want you called the disruptive events and -
5 how NRC is going to look at the types of things that Adrian 1 6 is talking about?
7 MR. McCARTIN: Certainly. The safety assessment 3 1
8 needs to include the things that could happen, that could go )
9 wrong. Some things -- we expect the climate to get cooler 10 and wetter in Nevada over the next 10,000 years. The 11 Department of Energy has also included analyses that include 12 a cooler, wetter Yucca Mountain and its effect on the 13 repository's performance.
14 Also, other -- seismicity obviously occurs at the 15 site. That has to be analyzed. There are things that could 16 cause rock fall, a seismic event would do some rock fall, 17 the damages to the waste container, these kinds of things ,
i 18 need to be analyzed.
19 We would expect a comprehensive analysis that 20 looks at many things.
21 MS. ZOLKOVER: So your answer could say or you 22 could say you've done fine, now we're going to stop and 23 wait. That is an option you have to do, correct?
24 MR. McCARTIN: I'm not sure what you mean by stop 25 and wait.
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49 ,
1 MS. ZOLKOVER: Well, just wait and see.
2 MR. CAMERON: Could you try to rephrase Edrian's 3 question or statement in your answer?
4 MR. REAMER: I think the date that you reference 5 from the article, the 2010 date, that date does not prevent 6 any issue from being addressed and resolved. That date is 7 subordinate. It's beneath -- it's not as important as 8 protecting the public and analyzing the issues.
9 If the issues have not been analyzed and resolved 10 by that date, then waste will not be brought to the site.
11 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thank you. Dr. Chase had a 12 question that we asked him to defer until now.
13 DR. CHASE: Thank you. Again, now, with respect 14 to that young lady who just read what she did, there is a 15 question that seems to hang in the air that no one likes to 16 address it.
17 For example, why bury the waste? Why not use it?
18 I have two books here I picked up today on your counter out 19 front. It has to do with the applications of transmutations 20 of products from the waste. I don't like to call it waste 21 either. How can you call it waste? It's a very valuable 1
22 natural resource. I l
23 Every atomic weapon in the United States arsenal 24 is fired by a -- let me call it a -- let me just call it by 25 a product that comes from spent nuclear fuel.
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1 Why do you call it waste? That's the first thing.
2 Secondly, as she pointed out, if you could somehow 3 track science, 30 years ago, it was a darn good idea. DOE 4 made the right decision. Let's bury it and forget it, you 5 know, out of sight, out of mind. But since that time, we l 6 have found that that's not true. It doesn't work that way.
{
7 We hear this young man talking about all kinds of safety 8 regulations. He's worried about the health and safety of l
9 people.
l 10 If that's the case, let's take a look at that.
11 How can we avoid the threat to the health and safety of 12 people? Why bury the waste? Why not use it?
13 It's page after page here of industrial 14 applications, medical applications, everyday applications.
15 There are gym -- one I know of that I always use, there is a 16 gymnasium resin that, when irradiated, makes a beautiful 17 surface for a gym floor.
18 Who would ever think of such a thing? But it can l
19 be used. It can be. We don' t have to bury that.
20 So why don't we, in addition, launch a parallel 21 study? NRC would be perfect for it, I know NRC pretty well.
l 22 A parallel study on whether or not it's feasible, not l
l 23 economically feasible, because we all understand that this 24 is going to cost money, but the feasibility sense I would 25 like to see is will this make the -- will this -- doing ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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51 1 this, will this protect the health and safety of the public, 2 period.
3 If the answer is, if we don't bury it, the chances 4 of protecting the health and safety of the public is great.
5 Well, let's do something about it.
6 If it turns out that the two accelerators that the 7 Secretary of -- the good Secretary, Mr. Richardson, is now 8 going to build two and over here at Los Alamos, they're 9 going to be doing, I understand, the basic research. It 10 seems incredible to me that here, where the health and 11 safety of the public, its water and its air and everything 12 else, is at risk and it's going to be at a greater risk, I 13 understand, because the original 70,000 tons has now grown l 14 to 150,000 tons, and really, have you considered that, too, 15 in your calculations.
16 I mean, what I'm really trjing to say to you is, 17 has science advanced to the point where we can forget about 18 the old hazards and look at applying science to don't bury 19 this stuff, use it? That's all I'm asking.
20 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. And I guess that sort of 21 is in the same vein of the statement that Bill Pilascony l
22 made earlier. Any comment on that?
l 23 MR. REAMER: And we recognize that these are 24 statements that others have made, that the material can-be 25 used and it's useful, but the fact remains that the Congress ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1 has passed a law that directs, first, the Department of I
2 Energy to characterize a site and to make a recommhndation 3 on whether that site can be used to dispose of spent fuel 4 and it's directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ;
5 review and objectively evaluate an application for a 6 license. ,
l 7 So the law certainly could be changed, but the law 8 that exists right now directs the policy of the United 9 States to dispose of spent fuel.
10 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bill. We're going to go 11 this gentleman here and then we're going to go to Mary 1
12 Manning, and then to John Wells. State your name and l 13 affiliation.
14 MR. AVERY: Russell Avery, Las Vegas, Nevada, j I
15 Tonight, we've learned a lot in the last ten or 15 years and 16 ir. a period of time, the 55 years, have been working with 17 atomic Energy since 1945, we have found that this is a short 18 period of time,'in 10,000 years, when we compare that.
19 The accuracy of some of the assumptions, we're not 20 sure what the accuracy of some of the assumptions are.
21 They're accurate within one 10,000th of a percent, that we i 22 could predict within one percent of 10,000 years, we would 23 have some kind of accuracy there.
24 But this is something that's going to be 25 constantly changing in a 55-year period of time.
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f 53 1 So have we really explored what type of energy i
L l
2 that we could use rather than fissional energy that' we've 3 been using in the process in the last 55 years? That we now 4 have to have depositories throughout the country. This is l 5 the problem we're facing here today.
6 Now, isn't there better sources of energy to use 1
7 than the fissional method? We should investigate this and 8 we're only a short period of time of study.
9 I could go on and ask other questions, but I know 10 we have to expedite our time here tonight. But these are 11 some of the real questions, I think, that's coming out to be 12 considered.
13 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Mr. Avery, for 14 those comments. Let's go to Mary, and then we're going to 15 go to John Wells, and we have a couple other questions, and 16 then I think we're going to move on eventually.
17 MS. MANNING: I'm Mary Manning. I'm a reporter 18 with the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, and I don't usually ask 19 questions, but I've heard a lot about resolution of 20 problems. Let's assume that Yucca Mountain is licensed.
21 Let's assume Yucca Mountain accepts wastes.
22 What will the NRC do if something happens? In 23 other words, are you going to set criteria to close the 24 repository if something goes wrong and what are those
- 25 criteria going to be and what are they going to be based on?
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54 1 MR. CAMERON: All right. That's a good question.
2 Who would like to handle that? And keep in mind that there 1
3 were a couple of big assumptions stated there; that the 4 repository would be. licensed, that something would go wrong, 5 what happens in terms of the NRC taking action, Tim?
6 MR. McCARTIN: Well, during the retrieval period, 7 if something goes wrong that shows that waste cannot be 8 disposed of safely at Yucca Mountain, the waste will be 9 removed. Where will it go? At this time, I can't give you
\
10 that answer.
11 It won't go to Yucca Mountain. It will be '
12 removed. DOE will have to find an alternative place.
13 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Let's not have a -- let's let 14 him finish his statement. Go ahead. Tim, finish your 15 statement. Or are you done?
16 MR. McCARTIN: That was it.
17 MR. CAMERON: Janet, are you --
18 DR. KOTRA: I just wanted to expand upon that in 19 that we have in place and would attempt, with the new 20 regulations, to continue a step-wise process, where, ,
1 21 throughout this process, as new information becomes i
22 available, we are continually testing the validity of the 23 assumptions the Department has put forward and examining 24 that to make sure that the health and safety criteria are 1 25 met.
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1 If at any time during that process we are 1
2 persuaded that a step should not go forward because those l I
l 3 criteria are not complied with, we would not accede to 4 moving forward to the next step.
5 You have asked, the repository has been 6 constructed, it is receiving waste, and is implacing waste, 7 and in the course of that something has gone wrong. We have 8 the capability and, more importantly, the obligation to 4
9 condition the license to stop whatever is going wrong, if 10 that's possible, and if that's not possible, then to take 11 steps, as Tim indicated, to remove the waste to a temporary
(
12 storage solution, which is where we are right now, and i 13 ensure the safety, in the near term, while we examine the 14 options.
15 And, of course, given that this is, as Bill 16 indicated, a reflection of national policy to pursue 17 disposal, that information would have to go back to the l
18 Congress ultimately, if another solution is necessary to be '
19 pursued.
20 I don't think that the NRC necessarily has to be 21 an advocate of any particular source of energy or any 22 particular disposal option. Our obligation is under our 23 authority to ensure that what the national policy is is 24 carried out safely, consistent with protection of public f 25 health and safety, which is our mission.
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1 56 1 MR. CAMERON: Thanks for that clarification, 2 Janet. We're going to 90 to John Wells and take a" couple of 3 other people, and then I think we'll have tr move on. John?
4 MR. WELLS: Thank you, Chip. My name is John 5 Wells. I'm the Southern Representative to the Western 6 Shoshone National Council.
7 I am here, again, to address the legitimacy of the 8 United States to site and regulate high level nuclear waste 9 at Yucca Mountain, within the borders of the Western 10 Shoshone Nation.
11 The United States recognized the Western Shoshone 12 Nation as a sovereign state through the treaty of Ruby
{
13 Valley in 1863, a treaty that US Courts have acknowledged to 14 be in full force and effect.
15 This treaty grants specific privileges to the 16 United States in exchange for safe passage of US citizens ;
i 17 through our territory and monetary compensation to the l l
18 Western Shoshone for the inconvenience of the loss of game 19 along travel routes.
20 These treaty privileges include the establishment 21 of military posts and station houses, the right of passage 22 for a telegraph, stage lines, and the construction of a 23 transcontinental railroad, to mine precious metals and other 24 minerals, and the establishment of agricultural settlements 25 and ranches.
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I 57 1 The right to test weapons of mass destruction or 2 to store high level nuclear waste is not mentioned'and,
)
3 therefore, not allowed.
4 In violation of this treaty, the United States and 5 'the United Kingdom have transported weapons into our 6 territory and exploded them without our consent. )
l 7 The legitimate authority to regulate all 8 activities at Yucca Mountain rests with the Western Shoshone 9 Government and it is the position of the Western Shoshone l I
10 National Council that all activities conducted by the United 11 States and its allies not within the specific privileges
)
12 granted by the Treaty of Ruby Valley constitute trespass and 13 a violation of Western Shoshone sovereignty. )
14 We are troubled by what we feel is the creation or 15 transformation of our culture from one of protecting the 16 environment to being one of stewards of US commercial high 17 level nuclear waste. The benefits go to the waste 18 generators and we get the waste and the risks.
19 Why should we accnot or be forced to accept the 20 risks?
21 Thank you.
22 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, John. We're 23 going to go over to Susan.
24 MS. ZIMMERMAN. I want to sort of make a couple of 25 points on the talk by~ Janet on why you developed 10 CFR 63 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l 1 at this time. One question I have,.to start out, is, was f- 2 there any legislation that was enacted that mandated the NRC j 3 to formulate 10 CFR 63 or was it demands by certain people 4 in Congress to do that?
5 DR. KOTRA: I guess the short answer is neither.
6 The law requires us to conform our criteria, period, to a
'7 health-based standard that EPA would issue, as I indicated.
8 It is entirely up to NRC how it could best 9 accomplish that and the decision was taken as a policy 10 decision by the Commission that it would develop 11 site-specific regulations to implement a site-specific 12 standard that differed from its safety strategy than what 13 had existed either in EPA standards or in NRC regulations 14 prior to that.
15 That was a policy call taken by the Commission, )
16 but no, the legislation did not specifically address that.
17 It just required that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's 18 criteria be consistent with an overall health and safety 19 standard for Yucca Mountain that was based on and consistent 20 with the National Academy of Sciences' recommendation.
21 MS. ZIMMERMAN: Okay. My second question is --
22 and I'm just -- I'm trying to remember if I heard you 23 correctly in your talk, that part of the criteria that you 24 use to determine when you developed 10 CFR 63 was that DOE 25 had given out their schedule and you saw how rigorous it was ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I l 59 l 1 and aggressive and that played a role in NRC deciding to go 2 ahead and develop 10 CFR 63. '
.3 Did I hear that correctly?
4 DR. KOTRA: Yes. The statement -- then 5 observation was made in the policy papers that were 6 developed to support the Commission's decision on this 7 matter that recognized that the department was pursuing an 8 aggressive schedule.
9 I think its important to put that in the context 10 of the program is moving forward without, at that time, 11 without -- without either health and safety standards or an 12 implementing, regulation in place, or, for that matter, even
_13 some indication of what the principal regulators think about 14 as important.
15 And we felt, at the staff level and the Commission 16 agreed, that it was impurtant to get our thinking on how to 1
17 pursue this different safety strategy that the Congress had 18 given us into the public domain early so that the criteria 19 would be out there at least in a proposed form that we would ;
20 use and we could improve those and put out the best possible 21 standards in a timely manner, and that that regulatory 22 structure would inform our pre-licensing interactions with 23 the department and would also make it possible for the 24 public to say, well, how are you going to meet these 25 criteria that the Commission are considering and get -- to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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60 1 be able to formulate more specific questions in light of 2 what the regulatory criteria would be. "
3 So, yes, there is an aggressive schedule that is 4 recognized in the department's repository site 5 characterization, but the intent was not just to satisfy 6 that schedule, but to provide a basis for a broader audience 7 to know what the regulatory requirements would be. I 8 MS. ZIMMERMAN: Okay. So I guess my reaction to 9 that would be given that there is no actual law mandating 10 that you do -- that you issue 10 CFR 63 or even start 11 promulgating it because there is no -- you know, EPA has not l
12 done their job.
13 And given that DOE's aggressive schedule played a 14 role in this, the perception is that the NRC is reacting to 15 DOE's aggressive schedule and you're basically throwing this 16 out there so they have something to aim at and you're giving 17 a standard, a dose standard that, in all probability, will 18 have to be changed. i 19 At a minimum, there is no reason for the NRC to 20 issue any type of dose standard. You could have left that 21 out totally and, say, waiting for EPA.
22 It's just the public perception is that you're 23 basically becoming an advocate for DOE as opposed to a 24 regulator.
25- MR. REAMER: Well, I'd like to say that we are not ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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61 1 an advocate for DOE and if we leave that impression tonight, [
2 then we're not doing our job. We are not advocates for DOE. f>
3 MR. CAMERON: I guess the implication was that the 4 actions sometimes give the perception of that. Is that 5 correct, what you were saying?
6 MS. ZIMMERMAN: Yes.
7 MR. CAMERON: All right. We're going to go to 8 Rick Nielsen here for last questions on this segment, and 9 then we're going to bring up Keith and Aby to begin. So, 10 Rick, go ahead.
11 MR. NIELSEN: We've been talking a lot about the I
12 EPA standards. I had some questions, one of them being -- l 13 this is, of course, more an observation than a question, 14 that there was a bill that passed the Senate, the National 15 Resources Committee, that would allow -- would cancel out 1 16 the question of a storage bill in exchange for NRC setting a l 17 new radiation standard instead of the EPA.
18 So this whole discussion about the EPA standard 19 could potentially be moot. I know it's a long ways for the 20 committee in the Senate to be law, but how would that -- how 21 would the NRC feel being put in that position of having to 22 develop a separate standard?
23 DR. KOTRA: I'm going to let Bill answer some of 24 that, but before I turn it over to him, let me just add 25 additional response to the previous question, which also is i I
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62 1 related to the sense I get of your question. j 2 That is, first of all, it is our intent,' continues 3 to be our intent to implement final EPA standards, as the 4 law requires. We believe we've proposed a regulatory 5 framework in Part 63 that would allow for that. And 6 irrespective of what the safety level is for the overall 7 objective, there has been a lot of implementing requirements 8 that are the same, regardless of where that standard 9 ultimately comes out.
1 10 So if it's necessary, we will go back and modify I I
11 our requirements after the fact. That's doable in the 12 context of this proposal. We are committed to do that.
13 With regard to the proposed legislation, which, as 14 you've correctly acknowledged, is a long way away from being 15 law, we have proposed what we believe is protective of 16 public health and safety, consistent with our broad 17 responsibilities in that regard in this proposal.
la Clearly, if we were given that responsibility, we 19 would carry it out as we have indicated in our proposal, ;
20 subject to changes and improvements that we will make 21 subject to comments we receive.
J 22 MR. CAMERON: Rick, you have another question?
23 MR. NIELSEN: Just a couple of follow-up here.
24 Seeing this same issue, you've said you've been 25 communicating on a close basis with EPA. I'd like to know ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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63 1- if you could explain to me and to the audience why there is i
l 2 a difference.
l 3 I've heard, you may not, but I have heard that --
4 and in include broader standards. I'm wondering what is the 5 difference in the thinking between the 25 milligram standard 6 and EPA with their 15 standard.
l
- 7 DR. KOTRA
- I think I'd like to give Tim an i
8 opportunity to address that after I'm done. What I'll say 1
9 shortly is we have interacted. I would not say closely, but 10 we have provided opportunities for the EPA to take advantage 11 of our technical expertise. We have recommended in the 12 proposal and used as a placeholder in our own regulation j 13 , that which we believe is a safe, a protective level.
14 Aby is going to speak to the basis, the technical 15 basis for that judgment, and EPA has reached a different 16 conclusion or is considering a different conclusion. They 17 have not proposed anything at this point.
18 And I think I'll turn that over to Tim to expand.
I 19 MR. McCARTIN: As we've mentioned before, we 20 believe the 25 milligram standard, which is all pathway 21 standard, and especially for Yucca Mountain, where the 22 ground water pathway is anticipated to be the most likely 23 pathway for release of radionuclides, the all pathways 1
24 standard protects ground water.
25 Now, you're right, in terms of other applications, 1
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64 1 EPA has required a separate ground water protection 2 standard. The Commission has opposed that in other areas 3 that NRC regulates, such as low level waste and {
(
4 decommissioning standards.
I 5 In terms of what is available for the nigh level 6 waste standard, it is not available. So I can't comment on j 7 something that's not there.
8 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Could we wrap this up?
9 MR. NIELSEN: Just a couple more points here. I 10 was partaking in a hearing yesterday regarding property 11 rights application, additional appropriation for Yucca 12 Mountain, and one of the issues that is being dealt with, 13 whether or not it's going to be an issue in the case, is the 14 contamination of ground water.
15 The statements were made that DOE has more or less 16 openly admitted and alluded to the fact that in their waste i
17 management strategy, the aquifer is one of their methods of 18 waste management strategy. Essentially, they did not allow I L
19 that to be considered in the case. He felt the reason that l l
20 he ruled that way is because it was not his jurisdiction and !
21 if it was not in conformance, whether that should be made an 22 issue.
23 So I just wanted to point out and let you know 24 that if, in fact, the responsibility of setting a standard l 25 is -- somehow falls on the NRC, falls in the NRC's lap, then l
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l 65 1 I would like to let you know that -- that it's very 2 important that you consider a standard for contamihation of j 3 the aquifer and not just do an all pathways standard.
4 So I'd like to point that out.
5 Then I had one last thing to let you know. How do 6 you define the difference of what is an acceptable risk 7 versus not an acceptable risk? In your slide, you said one 8 single pathway of exposure would be ground water, and that's 9 not an acceptable risk.
10 How do you define that risk separately?
11 MR. CAMERON: You saved the easy one for last, 12 right?
13 DR. KOTRA: I'll give you the short answer. I 14 think in the next panel, we'll have a little bit more j
15 expanded discussion on that. The short answer is on the 16 same basis that we make that judgment in the context of 17 everything else that NRC is responsible for licensing, based j 18 upon consistency with international bodies, advisory bodies 19 on radiation health and safety protection, consistent with 20 what we believe is protective and is a prudent allocation, 21 if you will, of the overall public health and safety limit >
22 for various practices.
l 23 We believe that this proposal meets that test, 24 that's why we've proposed it. But it is not out of the 25 blue. It is in the context of a regulatory philosophy, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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66 1 . strategy,and history that is consistent with our 2 responsibilities for regulating civilian uses of rhdioactive 3 material.
4' MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Janet. And I apologize that 5 we need to move to our next panel, but the NRC will -- staff 6 .will be here for questions later and we will have a wrap-up 7- segment.
8 Could we have Aby and Keith come up to the table 9 to make their presentations?
10 And as several speakers noted, one of the issues 11 .that came up the last time we were out here was how do the 12 NRC. regulations protect infants and children. And we have 13 Aby Mohseni'with us from the NRC staff. He works directly 14 for the Director of the Office of Nuclear Materials Safety 15 and Safeguards.
16 Aby has a Master's degree in Nuclear Engineering 17 and he's also worked as a health physicist for the State of l 18 Washington and he's going to talk about infants and l 19 children.
20 Aby? g 21 MR. MOHSENI: Thank you very'much. I appreciate 22 the. opportunity to be here today and listen more carefully 23 to the specific concerns raised on this item.
1~
l 24 I might add the reason I am here is because of the l 25 issue that was raised last time in the public meetings and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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67 1 this came along with other NRC experts discussed the issues 2 extensively. And we would like to give you a little bit L
3 more background on the basis of the NRC regulations in that 4 regard and receive from you, hopefully, more refined 5 concerns so that we can actually go back and address it as 6 best as we can.
7 The issue that was raised last time was whether or 8 not infants and children are adequately protected with the 9
language that is in the proposed rule, Part 63, specifically 10 speaking.
11 First, let me tell you that my slide, I have one 12 slide and in your package, you have two slides, but I have 1
13 condensed that information into one.
14 So most of the information on my slide does appear 15 in your package.
16 The answer to the question, will NRC regulations 17 protect infants and children, as well as adults, is yes.
18 There is no question about that. We would not be doing our 19 job if we were unable to protect a segment of the 20 population, the most dear to all of us, children and 21 infants. So the answer is yes.
l 22 The question is whether or not we can convince the
{
23 public that indeed the proposed regulations do that.
1 24 The NRC regulations or standards, if you will, 25 were not generated for Part 63. Historically, international I
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( 68 li bodies and national. bodies, non-government bodies of experts 2 have historically developed recommendations on stabdards in 3 radiation protection for the public.
1 4 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has its own 5 expertise and has reviewed those standards and has adopted 6 those standards. Those standards are subject to peer review 7 nationally and internationally, and we did not invent the 8 standards for Part 63. They were there before Part 63 was 9 born.
10 Regulating radioactive material, the question was 11 valid for all activities related to radioactive material, 12 not just_the waste disposal.
13 So yes, indeed, the NRC regulations do protect 14 infants and children.
15 The standards historically have been developed on 16 a lifetime exposure to radioactive material, not on a single 17 exposure of short duration type of exposure, but a lifetime, 18 continuous exposure to low level -- to low levels of 19 radiation. And those standards or recommendations that have 20 come out of the international bodies were adopted.
21 And in Part 63, the proposed number is a fraction 22 of that. So, therefore, all the benefits and all the 23 history and all the background and all the foundation that 24 har gone into the standards are inherently included in the 25 fraction of that number.
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69 1
And I want to emphasize that this is a proposed 2 standard to assess performance and you have to have a number 3 or a standard out there so that you can evaluate the 4 adequacy of a system. This does not mean that once a system 5 has demonstrated that under all the conditions that my 6 colleagues explained, disturbed conditions and variations 7 and all the speculations and the assumptions that have gone 8 into it, if a system meets the standard, it does not mean 9 that an individual who~ lives at the boundary of the system 10 will receive 25 millirem or whatever that standard is every ,
11 year for the rest of his or her life. That's not the way it 12 has been shown in the past when we have applied standards in 13 Jicensing.
14 Usually, the standards that have been implemented, 15 when all was said and done, the actual exposure that he 16 public has received was a very small fraction of those 17 standards.
18 The expectations are, a colleague of mine gave me l 19 a good analogy and I want to offer it to you, it's like we 20 were trying to estimate the number of chairs in this room.
21 We had to include an acceptable number of chairs above and 22 beyond the need, so that we have adequate margin, just in 23 case more people showed up.
24 It does not mean that every single presentation we 11 25 have was short on chairs and we don't do anything about it ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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70 1 and that we're always on the last number. Are we going to 2 have enough people or enough chairs for all the people that 3 will show up? That was an analogy to show that the standard 4 is always higher than what the actual exposure levels are to 5 the members of the public.
6 In this particular scenario, it's even more 7 certain that you are not going to get anything close to the 8 standard for decades, maybe more, maybe much more, and there 9 are intervention levels, as my colleagues explained, of 10 being able to intervene. Should there be exposure levels 11 that are getting awfully close to the standard that would 12 make anybody, especially the regulators, hervous about the 13 kind of conditions that exist?
14 Just for yc;r information, I'm sure most of you 15 have, especially the individuals who have raised this 16 concern, are familiar that tha background radiation levels 17 are 12 times higher than the standard. Again, the standard 18 is not an indication of what the dose will be to the members 19 of the public. And yet the natural background is a reality.
20 The average member of the population is getting 21 that kind of exposure. And the standard is 1/12th of that 22 and only a fraction of it, at least in the areas that we 23 have been licensing, is all that has been incurred by the 24 members of the public. Hardly ever anything significantly 25 close to the standard has been observed on a continuous 7031 RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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71 1 basis, and we're talking continuous basis here.
2 And how do you measure compliance? This is where 3 I was discussing with Abigail, who had raised the question 4 earlier, in our earlier discussions, that the proposed 5 method of measuring compliance is put forth so that the 6 public reacts to it, so that you all look at how we intend 7 to use the best science available to measure compliance.
8 Again, remember, measuring compliance is doing 9 what my colleagues explained, all those scenarios, what if 10 there is a disturbance, all those assumptions have to be put 11 and then the critical group that was discussed earlier that 12 would be -- would likely get the highest exposures are going 13 to be used in our assumptions to see if they are adequately 14 protected, then, by definition, everybody else should be.
15 The proposal that has been put forth is consistant 16 with everything else we've done. So we did not have to 17 reinvent science, if you will, at least in the radiation 18 side. Maybe in other aspects, because of the period of 19 which the system has to remain a viable system, those are 20 aspects that are different and are being looked at very 21 carefully.
22 But in the radiation field, radiation science, 23 there is nothing new here that should make anybody nervous.
24 Right now, if you go to the doctor, the X-ray machines used 25 in the states are shielded to the doses that I discussed and ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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72 1 that's the way it is right now, and they are licensed to 2
operate at those levels everywhere in this country $ pretty 3 much at that level.
4 So there is nothing new. There is nothing 5 distressing in terms of nuances that we should be careful 6 not to exceed.
7 And I want to really ask members, including 8 Abigail, to take the context that I offer and provide us 9 with more, if you will, more questions, more precise 10 questions, so that we can go back and look at and see if we 11 can add more value to what we have offered.
12 We're very open for that and that's why we're here 13 tonight.
14 Thank you.
15 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Aby. We're 16 going to go to Keith McConnell for his presentation, and 17 then open it up for questions.
18 Keith has a Ph.D. in Geology. He is the section 19 leader in the high level waste branch that deals with 20 performance assessment and he is going to talk about the 21 multiple barrier concept. Keith?
22 MR. McCONNELL: Thanks, Chip. As Chip indicated, 23 I'm going to talk about our requirements for multiple 24 barriers in the proposed rule. As others have indicated, 25 these requirements were the focus of a number of comments ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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73 1 and questions from our meetings here last March.
I' 2 Basically, what I'd like to do is try to'better l
3 explain and clarify what the requirements mean and the way 4 I'm going to approach it is to respond to three questions.
5 First, what is meant by multiple barriers when we
- 6 use it here at the NRC? Second, why is it important in the i 7 Yucca Mountain program and DOE's efforts to develop a 8 repository at Yucca Mountain? And, third, how are these 9 requirements going to help ensure that the public health and 10 safety of the citizens of Nevada are protected?
11 What I'd like to do is move to the next slide, and 12 it's not in your package, but what it is is a simple diagram 13 to help illustrate what we mean by multiple barriers, and 14 what this is is a Russian doll, and hopefully you're 15 familiar with the Russian dolls. This is actually a 16 cross-section through one. But Russian dolls, if you're not 17 familiar, are wooden dolls that, when you open them up, 18 there is a smaller doll inside, and you continue on and it 19 gets smaller and smaller and so forth.
20 But basically, what this does is if you can 21 conceptualize this as a repository, with the spent nuclear 22 fuel on the inside, indicated by the radiation symbol, and 23 then the borders of each individual dolls as representing 24 individual barriers within a repository.
25 Basically, the first one, right next to the spent ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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74 1 nuclear fuel, could be considered the waste package, and 2 then the succeeding ones on the outside can be considered l i
3 the geology of the site or the rock layers that exist out 4 there.
5 Basically, again, showing that there are multiple 6 lines of defense or multiple barriers here to the release of I I
7 radionuclides from this repository and, in essence, through l 8 this, you gain what we call at NRC defense-in-depth through 9 multiple barriers.
10 And in succeeding viewgraphs, I will be talking 11 about defense-in-depth, but it's this concept of 12 defense-in-depth through multiple barriers that we are 13 addressing in our requirements in the proposed rule.
14 So moving on. What is defense-in-depth and 15 multiple barriers, as NRC uses it? Well, it's a fundamental 16 part of oltr regulatory philosophy and our safety philosophy.
17 It's applied to all of our licensees, including nuclear 18 power plants. Those of you who are familiar with nuclear 19 power plants know that each of them contains a dome 20 structure over the reactor. That dome structure is part of 21 the defense-in-depth or multiple barrier concept that is j 22 applied to civilian nuclear reactors.
23 Multiple barriers are, by design, used to l
24 compensate for malfunctions or accidents or under-performing 25 parts of the system or barriers. If you remember back to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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75 1~ the Russian doll, if one barrier doesn't perform as expected 2 or as proposed by the Department, then there are o'ther 3 barriers out there that would compensate for this 4 under-performing barrier.
5 Likewise, if there are earthquakes, as Adrian 6 pointed out, and it affects the rocks down at the site, 7 there are other barriers, as we understand it, that would 8 compensate for this effect on the rock at the site.
9 The bottom line in our regulations is that public 10 health and safety is not going to rely on a single barrier, 11 but it's going to rely on the composite system, composed of .
12 both engineered barriers, such as the waste package, and the 13 geology of the site, the rocks and other aspects of the 14 geology out there.
15 Moving on to what DOE has to provide prior to j 16 receiving a license. They have to, under cur regulations, ;
17 identify the barriers, provide the demonstration of the 18 capability of those barriers to isolate waste, and provide 19 the data and engineering background that supports those 20 judgments. So the whole package has to be in a license 21 application to define defense-in-depth for a repository 22 system.
23 With that in mind, they have to rigorously 24 demonstrate that the facility is safe and that the facility 25 is safe through the use of multiple barriers, and they have ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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76 1 to show, again, that safety is relied on both engineering 2 and geology of the site.
- 3 Well, how will that information be evaluated?
i 4 There will be a thorough evaluation by the NRC staff and its 5 cuntractors at the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory 6 Analyses and, as other speakers have indicated, we have a 7 broad range of technical disciplines at the NRC and at the 8 Center and we're very capable, I think, of focusing our 9 review and making sure that the demonstration is complete l 10 and accurate.
11 Also, as Bill has indicated, there will be a 12 number of opportunities -- on this topic, as well as any 13 other topic, with respect to the license application.
14 The bottom line on this is that based on the 15 demonstration that DOE makes of multiple barriers and our 16 review and evaluation of that, we can either grant or deny a 17 license application.
18 Now, basically, at the end of my presentation, I !
l 19 want to address, I think, the main issue that was raised in 20 our prior meetings, and that is why we are changing our 21 approach to defense-in-depth and multiple barriers from that 22 which was developed 15 years ago.
i 23 There are a number of reasons why and perhaps the 24 foremost is that there have been new scientific 25 recommendations made, both by the National Academy of i
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F 77 1 Sciences and our own Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, 2 which told us that our approach that we developed 15 years 3
ago was not an effective approach for demonstrating multiple 4 barriers. They advised us to develop a new approach.
5 Also, over those 15 years, as anybody who has 6 bought a computer in the last ten years knows, there's been 7 quite a significant advancement in computational apability 8 and the ability to model various features of the site, and 9
these advancements have to be factored into how we evaluate 10 the performance of a repository.
11 Finally, in our approach that we developed 15 12 years ago, it didn't adequately address the issue of the 13 interactions between barriers and the analogy I would use is 14 that of a car engine and a radiator. If you're interested 15 in how the radiator works, it's probably most important to 16 have the engine running, and you want to know how the water 17 circulates and what the effect of heat is.
18 In a repotitory system, if you want to know what 19 the effect of the repository would be on the water and 20 rocks, you'd want to have the waste in there and consider 21 that as part of the equation.
22 In our requirements 15 years ago, we didn't 23 consider that context. And so in the new regulations or new 24 requirements that we've developed, we do consider the 25 interaction between barriers and we require DOE to evaluate ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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78 1
those~ interactions and we'll review what DOE proposes.
~
2 So I guess in summary, what I'd like to hay is we 3
think our regulations or requirements for multiple barriers 4:
in Part.63 are more-effective and better than what we 5 proposed 15 years ago, but nothing is perfect and we're 6 here, as with other aspects of the review, to hear comments 7- on how we can improve the requirements for multiple 8 barriers.
9' Thank you.
10 MR. CAMERON: Thanks a lot, Keith and Aby. Let's 11 go on to the audience. Questions for Aby on the infants and 12 children or multiple barriers? Yes, sir.
13 MR. CLOQUET: Don Cloquet. As a former employee 14 of the nuclear industry, I kind of disagree with the fellow 15 sitting here on my right there in regards to dose rates.
16 You cannot have a person who -- a worker who is 17 down inside of a nuclear reactor working full suit-up, not i
18 only that, extremities, in centimeters, prior to him doing 19 his work:in~the nuclear reactcr, would tell me that a person 20 who is not involved in the nuclear work in a nuclear reactor 21 will have the same dose rate.
22 Thank you. Any reaction?
23 MR. MOHSENI: I wasn't able to actually hear very 24 well, because.of the -- can you rephrase the question maybe 25 or the comment? Maybe it was just a comment.
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I 79 I 1 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Will you talk to him? All
' l 2 right. Do we have other questions out here on this'?
I 3 Adrian? Adrian, hold on a second. If you use the l 4 microphone, you may able to get on the transcript. Could 5 you hold on one second?
i 6 Are you going to ask a question to Aby on infants 7 and children or are you going to talk about multiple '
8 barriers?
9 MS. ZOLKOVER: Multiple barriers.
10 MR. CAMERON: All right, i
11 MS. ZOLKOVER: Glen Zorapet, in Scientific 12 America, May 1996, from Hanford's nuclear wasteland, says 13 that plutonium is extremely dangerous, a mere 27 micrograms !
14 in the J ung can bring about cancer, This is my own words.
15 A microgram is like a millionth of a 20th of a gram.
16 And in my own words, they want to take 11 tons of 17 plutonium and put it here. They also state, I'm quoting 18 them verbatim here, "From those early days of military and 19 technological glory, this was during World War II, the 1,450 20 square kilometer Hanford site has slowly devolved into a 21 nightmarish agglomeration of the contaminaced facilities 22 that each consume tens of millions of dollars a year just to 23 be kept safe and stable."
24 And they -- I'm afraid ' : they want to dump more !
l 25 here and that also the government should classify it. So ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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80 1 you might have it designed for a certain thing and once the 2 gates open, they come in and they say, well, this is 3 plutonium that has to be classified.
4 .There is so much plutonium all over the world for 5 somebody that wants to do the wrong things with it, they 6 don't have to come here for it.
7 A minute amount for our weapons has to be 8 . classified, but how can you guarantee that the government 9 won't take advantage and do things that you don't have in 10 mind and that we don't want? And I don't think people 11 realize the potential danger and hazard. There is more of 12 this stuff all over the world-. They can't get rid of it.
13 It's a nightmare. We don't want it here. Nobody wants it 14 and there are other alternatives to putting them, like, at 15 Hanford, putting it with concrete, diluting it, and you j i
16 couldn't get near it, but it would be stable.
17 It would just leave it in blocks there in .
18 concrete. There are other alternatives to doing things with '
l 19 these things rather than just all of a sudden dumping it all 20 here. I 21 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Adrian. It seems that 22 there is a question in there about how will we know the 23 exact composition of the waste that's going to be disposed 24 of.
25 MR. McCONNELL: Yes. DOE is required to define ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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n 81 1 what they intend to put in the repository and put that in 2 their license application, and they then have to dhmonstrate 3 that it's safe, and we would evaluate that demonstration 4 knowing what's there, whether it's plutonium or spent 5 nuclear fuel or other defense waste.
l 6 And all of that, under these regulations, would be 7 open, would be open, as Bill indicated, for evaluation in 8 the licensing process.
9 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Keith. Let's got to Abbie.
10 Yes, go ahead, Bill. '
11 MR. REAMER: Just the additional point that 12 information cannot be classified by the Department of Energy 13 in a way that would prevent the Nuclear Regulatory 14 ' ommission f rom being able to review that information or in 15 a way that would prevent an individual with a need to know 1
1 16 for the information to see and understand the information.
17 MR. CAME*0N: Thank you. Abbie? '
18 MS. JOHNSON: I didn't have any choice. I had to 19 stand up and say something, didn't I? I have two comments 20 related to the infants and children discussion and maybe 21 they're going to turn into questions, I'm not sure.
22 Basically, the explanation that we've heard is 23 that children are included in the average population and I 24 think my comment is that that is one way of looking at it 25 and that another way of looking at it is bhat you look at ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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82 1 the most vulnerable people in the population and you set the 2 standard to them.
3 My second comment, actually, Keith said things 4 have changed from 15 years ago and so the old approach is no 5 longer effective, so we want to do the defense-in-depth 6 changes because the old approach is no longer effective.
7 I would take that philosophy and apply it to this 8 discussion of standards for children, that maybe the way 9 we've been looking at things is an old way of thinking and 10 that with the increasing vulnerabilities that we're seeing 11 in our environment, in all areas, increase in asthma, for 12 example, in children is becoming more pronounced, that we 13_ need to have a change in our thinking and that it would be 14 appropriate, from a common sense citizen's point of view, to 15 start looking at protecting children and not just averaging 16 them in with the rest of the population, because children 17 are more vulnerable, and they are the future. And I would 18 like to hear that in these.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay. And one thing that we will 20 put up on the board. I think the suggestion was is that the 21 proposed rule should fix it or alternative approaches to 22 protecting --
23 MS. ZIMMERMAN: Susan Zimmerman, State of Nevada's 24 Agency for Nuclear Projects. This is directed to Keith on 25 defense-in-depth.
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83 1 The original definition of defense-in-depth from 2 DOE's 1980 final EIS dealt more with the concept that the 3 geologic barriers were supposed to supply the main barrier 4 to transport of radioactive waste once the repository
- 5 started leaking, and the waste package or the engineered 6 barriers were sort of a secondary barrier to prolong that 7 event from happening even further out.
8 Currently, from our understanding, DOE is relying 9 primarily on the waste package and their miracle alloy of 10 C-22 to have very long life spans and, therefore, keep the 11 waste from even getting out into the geologic media for a 12 100,000 years, 200,000 years. They've even hypothesized 13 750,000 years.
14 And their own data is indicating that once the 15 waste starts being transported by water out of the 16 repository, that there are indications of some very fast 17 pathways that could transport the radionuclides much less --
18 in much less time than the original thousand years that is 19 in 10 CFR 60.
20 Does that play a role at all in your definition of 21' defense-in-depth? Does DOE's concept, current concept of 22 depending mainly on the waste package, do you still consider 23 that defense-in-depth?
24 MR. McCONNELL: Depending on the waste package is 25 one part of defense-in-depth. I think as we indicated in ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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n 84 1 the viewgraph, the NRC will consider that they also have to 2 demonstrate that the natural system of geology, thh rocks, 3 the water, also provide some contribution to the isolation 4 of waste, and there are factors like retardation and l 5 dilution that do that.
6 And DOE has yet to finalize on where it's going to I 7 place the emphasis, but what they have to do under these l
8 requirements is identify those areas where there is going to 9 be emphasis, define what the capabilities are, and 10 thoroughly support that definition. That includes both the 11 C-22, the material of the waste package, as well as the 12 capability of the rock, the geology of the site.
13 So I guess to answer your question more directly, 14 it does play a factor into it, but there is flexibility for 15 DOE to decide which barriers it's going to rely on. They do 16 have to demonstrate that both the natural system and the l
17 engineered system contribute to the waste isolation.
18 'MS. ZIMMERMAN: Are you going to try to -- are you l 19 going,to have any quantitative criteria of how much the 1
20 waste package should supply and how much the geology should 21 supply or is it -- I mean, if it comes out -- I've seen some 22 data that 90 percent of the waste package and ten percent 23 the geology, would that be acceptable?
! 24 MR. McCONNELL: Well, what I can tell you is both l
25 the National Academy of Sciences and the Advisory Committee ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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85 1
on Nuclear Waste recommended that we not assign specific 2 numerical goals to specific barriers. What we are'looking 3 at is a holistic approach that they do have to define the !
4 capabilities of each individual barrier, but not place 5 restrictions on a particular barrier on some numerical goal l 6
that they have to meet, because, as the Academy put it, you 7 could end up, by requiring DOE to optimize one barrier, to 8 sub-optimize the entire repository system.
9 Again, it's the interaction between the barriers 10 that's key to understanding the system.
11 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Let's move on to the 12 transportation issue and then if we need to come back to 13 some of these other issues, we will.
14 So, Rob, could you come up to the table, please?
15 Okay. We're going to switch gears a little bit and go from 16 implacing waste to transport of waste.
17 We have Rob Lewis with us. He is from the Spent 18 Fuel Projects Office at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
19 He has a Master's degree in Nuclear Engineering. I'll turn 20 it over to you, Rob.
21 MR. LEWIS: Thank you, Chip. Good evening, 22 everyone. As Chip said, I work in the Spent Fuel Projects 23 Office and we're the group -- we're a separate group from 24 the people that are developing the disposal rule inside of 25 NRC. We're the group that works on the safety of the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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86 1 transporting all radioactive materials. 1 2 l We also work on the storage of spent fuel, when 3 that storage occurs outside of the nuclear reactor.
4 I'll try not to use any acronyms, but I will say 5 DOT is Department of Transportation.
6 Tonight's meeting is about the new disposal 7 regulation that all the previous speakers have spoken to, 8 but at the last series of. meetings in March, we recognized 9- that a lot of concerns existed regarding the transportation 10 question. So we have come tonight to help respond to some 11 of those.
12 But I'm also here for another reason. We are 13 doing some new things in transportation at NRC. There will 14 be some opportunities in the near future, particularly this 15 fall, for you to be heard, both in the form of a meeting 16 just like this one, and also in the form of written j 17 l comments, and I'll speak of what exactly I mean by that i I'
18 towards of the end of this.
19 Tonight, I had a chance to meet some of you to 20 discuss some of the issues that you might want to focus 21 closer on in the fall. First, what I'm showing here 22 explains the DOT's role. I will also speak about NRC's 23 role.
24 The Department of Transportation is the primary 25 government agency for setting safety rules for l
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F 87 1 transportation of all hazardous materials. Radioactive 2 materials are transported as a subset of hazardous' materials 3 by DOT.
4 Generally, for spent fuel, DOT sets the rules that 5 apply to normal transport, such as the radiation and 6 contamination limits that are acceptable for packages, or 7 around vehicles that contain spent fuel.
{
8 DOT also sets limits for communications, such as 9 how to placard vehicles and mark packages so emergency l
10 responders know what the material is being shipped is, if 11 there is an accident.
12 DOT also sets the rules for how to select routes 13 for shipping spent fuel.
14 Regarding the lact bullet, it's an important one, 15 the rules for shipping spent fuel that we have in the United 16 States are based on the rules internationally and they're 17 at by this group called the International Atomic Energy 18 Agency, who sets standar_ for shipments of all radioactive 19 materials. DOT and NRC both participate with the rest of 20 the countries in the world to make sure that all the 21 standards are consistent, and every ten years, we update 22 those standards.
23 NRC's role in transport of spent fuel is we 24 certify the casks that are used to ship the spent fuel is 25 accident-resistant and we go out and inspect the people that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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88 1
actually make the casks and make sure that they're applying 2 the appropriate quality standards to the casks. '
3 We also set the rules that apply to protect 4 against theft and sabotage of spent fuel and we inspect and 5 enforce both NRC's and DOT's regulations on the licensees 6 that will be doing the shipping.
7 I want to make it clear, though, that NRC and DOT, 8 neither one of us actually ship the spent fuel. That would 9 be the shipping is done by the DOE in this case, who would 10 be NRC's licensee, or it also might be done by the nuclear 11 utility.
12 There's three aspects of transportation that we 13 look at from a safety perspective. Routine tra. port of all 14 radioactive material presents a hazard because there is a 15 small amount of radiation that emanates through the walls of 16 the packages and can briefly expose people along the 17 transport route and it can also expose the driver of the 18 vehicle or state inspectors who may be performing an 19 inspection of the truck shipping through their state. I 20 The rules that apply to routine transport were 21 looked at in the 1977 study that we d44 That study is 22 called NUREG-0170. Now, it did look at all transportation 23 of all radioactive materials. It summed up estimates of the 24 exposures that could occur to the general population and set 25 safety levels that exist in the rule today to ensure that if ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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89 1 you -- that there is an adequate protection, level of 2 protection in the public domain from transportation of 3 radioactive material.
4 I want to skip accidents for a second and talk 5 about theft and sabotage. Another objective we have in 6 spent. fuel transport is to minimize the probability of 7 sabotage or theft and to aid in the location and recovery of 8 spent fuel if it is stolen.
9 Now, how would we do that? Before each shipment, 10 we go out and we try to detect threats along the route. We 11 actually drive along the routes. We review each route that 12 will be used for spent fuel shipment and during shipments, 13 we focus on things such as communication, providing armed 14 escorts through urban areas, and providing disabling devices 15 in the vehicles.
16 And we do have a study that estimates the 17 consequences of attempted sabotage and that forms the basis 18 for the approach we have in our rule.
19 As far as accidents, I'm going to show a picture ;
l 20 while I talk about accidents. This is -- this shows what a 21 spent fuel cask looks like. This is a cask that weighs 70 22 tons, I think. It's being welded onto a rail car in this 23 picture.
24 How do we protect against accidents? We rely on 25 the ruggedness of these casks. Any large quantity of ANN R1 LEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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90 1 radioactive material must be shipped in casks that are i
e 2 approved by NRC. Now, to get approval by NRC to use a cask, 3 each cask design has to pass four tests.
4 There is a 30-foot drop, a puncturing drop, 5 immersion in fire and immersion in a pool of water.
6 Now, every cask that is used must not only survive 7 these tests, but contain the spent fuel afterwards. That's 8 not to say that we test each cask physically. We do use 9 computer analysis to show that they can comply with these 10 tests. These tests we call hypothetical tests that we set 11 up in the regulation.
12 Now, the natural question is, how do those 13 hypothetical tests that we have in the regulation relate to 14 the forces that you can see in real world accidents on the 15 highways and railways and we have a study that was done in 16 1987 and that's this blue book that we have in the back, a 17 summary of the results of that study.
18 Now, that study is called the Mobile study. It's 19 something I'm going to come back to a minute. But it 20 answered the question of how the hypothetical tests in our 21 rule compare to the severity of accidents that could be 22 exerted by a cask in the real world.
23 And we found that -- our conclusion was that about 24 99.4 percent of the accidents that could occur in 25 transporting spent fuel would be bounded by the tests in the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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91 l
1 rule.
2 The next slide, I just wanted to quickly discuss 3 some of the favorable history we have and put the shipment 4 of radioactive materials in a little context.
5 Now, it's hard to get a good idea, an estimate of 6 the number of hazardous materials shipments that occur every 7 day. This one I have says that about 770,000 shipments 8 around the roads at any given time.
9 Now, everybody has seen the red diamond-shaped 10 placards that are placed all over gasoline trucks, tank 11 trucks full of gasoline, that's an example of a hazardous 12 material shipment. Radioactive materials are shipped the 13 same way, a placard for radioactive materials is half yellow 14 and half white.
15 Now, the transportation of hazardous materials has 16 a very good safety record and with this many shipments, they 17 have a lot of data to show that they have that very good 18 safety record.
19 The transportation of radioactive materials has an 20 even better safety record. Every day, as I show, about 21 10,000 radioactive shipments are made.
22 Now, it's my guess, but maybe about one in a 23 hundred of those shipments or about a hundred shipments a 24 day would be made in a large enough quantity to be in an 25 accident-resistant cask. That could say something about the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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r-92 1 number of accident-resistant cask shipments that are made 2 everyday.
3 As far as spent fuel itself, there has been about 4 1,300 shipments of spent fuel in the last 20 years that have 5 been made in NRC-approved casks and as I note, there have 6 been some accidents that involved a vehicle carrying a spent 7 fuel cask, but no spent fuel cask has ever failed in an 8 ' accident. So that's a very good, perfect safety record with 9 respect to shipping spent fuel.
10 I should note, I don't say it here, but there is a 11 lot of shipments of spent fuel made outside of the United 12 States. Of course, there wouldn't be NRC casks, 13 NRC-certified casks, but they would be made with casks that 14 meet the same basic standards, because of what I spoke about 15 earlier, that we follow the international standards.
16 Now, earlier, I mentioned that there are scrie 17 upcoming chances to talk more about transportation. That's 18 because we're doing two things at NRC right now. We're 19 sponsoring reassessments of the two studies I mentioned, the 20 1977 study that forms the basis of our rules, and also the 21 1987 study that looked at the consequences of severe 22 accidents.
23 Now, for the 1987 study, the severe accident 24- study, we are going to -- we hope our approach for that is J 25 going to be to come out, have some workshops similar to this ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. )
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r 93 1 workshop, to identify the issues. We know that there has i
2 been some challenges to these studies sponsored by the State 3 of Nevada, sponsored by other people, and we're going to 4 look at those, we're going to identify all the issues that l
l 5 the stakeholders may have and the public may have. We're 6 going to come up with a plan to resolve those issues and if 7 we need to, we'll even eventually get involved in some 8 testing of some full-size or scale-size casks, actual 9 physical testing to confirm that the computer models we have 10 are doing what we believe that they're doing.
11 Why are opening, reopening these? Well, aside 12 from the fact that they're ten years old, it might be a good 13 enough reason in and of itself. We know that there's a lot 14 of changes happening in both directions.
15 Compared to the assumptions made in these studies, 16 the shipments that would be made would be probably of a 17 longer distance and they will probably use bigger casks.
18 On the other hand, it's a lot older than was 19 assumed for these studies. So there is less radioactivity 20- involved. Also, as Keith mentioned, we now have -- when we 21 did these studies, we had computers, but we had to use the 22 super computers at a national lab. Now we can do 23 calculations with an even more sophisticated model on our 24 desktop.
25 And we do recognize the criticisms that people 5dRJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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T 94 1 have made against these studies, but we do stand behind 2 these studies. We feel that the record demonstrates the t
l 3 safety that we have in shipping radioactive materials. The l 4 safety comes from these studies and is demonstrated for the 5 record.
6 I guess I'll wrap it up and I'd like to leave you 1
7 with a thought that we are looking at the concerns that you 8 may have in this area. We will be back to talk about these 9 issues. It's not something that we have closed the book on.
10 We are continuing looking at our regulations to 11 look for ways to improve them and we're looking forward to 12 seeing you again in the fall.
13 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Rob. Before we go out for 14 questions for Rob, Bill Reamer is going to give us a little 15 bit of explanation about a recent rule that may have 16 implications for the transportation of high level waste in 17 Nevada, and this was a proposed rule associated with the 18 license renewal process. Bill?
19 MR. REAMER: Yes, Chip. The meeting tonight is on 20 our proposed regulations for the repository. It's not on 21 the license renewal rule, proposed rule, and the 22 transportation impacts.
23 However, if we receive comments tonight in this 24 meeting related to that license renewal rule, comments that 25 contain new information, we will give those comments l
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95 1 consideration and we have a transcript of tonight, so I can 2 tell you that we will make that transcript available and we 3 will look and consider those comments.
! 4 The second point I want to make is that we are 5 interested in your comments on transportation We're 6 interested tonight in whatever you have to say. We expect 7 that the Department of Energy's draft environmental impact 8 statement will also consider transportation impacts and, 9 therefore, that in our comments, the NRC comments on that 10 draft statement will be addressing the transportation 11 impacts. ,
l 12 And that meeting that I talked about earlier that 13 we'd like to have in September before we prepare our 14 comments, we would be inter;;ted in hearing from you, as 15 well, on the transportation impacts at that time.
16 And, of course, as Rob mentioned, we have 17 workshops that we'd like to hold that would also address 18 transportation impacts'.
19 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Bill. Do we have some 20 questions or comments on transportation? Let's go back here 21 to Michael. Michael, if you could just stage your name and 22 affiliation for everybody.
23 MR. CARROLL: I'm Mike Carroll, from the Nuclear 24 Waste Technical Review Board. Just one question. What were 25 you saying about the full-scale testing versus I
l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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96 j f 1 scale-testing? Are you going to actually do some full-scale 2
testing or look at it?
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3 MR. LEWIS: Of course, we're in the preliminary i 4 stages of defining this task that we have to do.
5 Is that better now?
I 6 I was saying we're in the preliminary stages of l!
7 defining what we need to do with respect to looking at the 8 -- relooking at the response to casks in an accident.
9 We're going to sit down in the fall here, a l 10 one-week workshop in Las Vegas and two other workshops, we i 1
11 haven't decided where yet, we're going to identify the 12 issues. We're going to have the contractor, who is I j
11 3 experienced with testing of packages, of spent fuel 1
14 packages, and we're going to come up with a plan to resolve i
15 the issues.
16 That plan may involve scale testing, testing of 17 components. It may involve full-scale testing. Of course, 18 full-scale testing is very expensive to do.
19 MR. CARROLL: Is this contractor Sandia?
20 MR. LEWIS: We have not issued a contract yet, but l
21 it will a - probably will be a national lab like Sandia or l 22 like the Lawrence Livermore lab, who has such great 23 experience in testing packages, spent fuel packages. I 24 MR. CAMERON: All right. I think we have a couple 25 of questions up here. Dr. Chase, did you have a question?
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97 1 DR. CHASE: Have you looked at the safety 2 conditions or safety issues that you might see in the 3 transportation of the waste in any kind of container?
4 Derailings, for example, are pretty common in this country.
5 Perhaps a package could get lost. It might be a -- I'm not 6 trying to be funny, but there are -- this country is envied 7 by almost every other country in the world. They might slip 8 a terrorist over here and all they need is one uranium 9
bazooka shell fired from half-a-mile off the railroad to 10 knock a nice big hole through that package. They do destroy 11 tanks, you know, with those thinks.
12 All I'm trying to say is if you're going to 13 consider testing, are you going to consider testing as a --
14 are you going to consider functicn, the function of 15 transportation as an element in the testing of the package?
16 MR. CAMERON: Rob?
17 MR. LEWIS: I think there's two questions there.
l 18 One is do we look at the consequences of accidents that l 1
19 packages may be involved in. The answer to that is yes.
20 That's what these studies do. This one is specific to spent -
21 fuel. The NUREG-0170 that I mentioned and that we are also 22 going to be looking at looks not only at spent fuel, but all 23 other radioactive materials and it very explicitly looks at I 24 accidents.
25 And the second part of your question involved ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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98 1 threats such as sabotage. Now, we have looked at Sabotage, 2
as I mentioned, and you are correct that the casks obviously 3 will not withstand the most sophisticated of missiles that 4 somebody might shoot at it.
5 What we have done in the past, in the '80s, we 6 sponsored a study that was done to look at what could happen 7 in a sabotage, and it looked at shooting a projectile at a 8 cask and the cask was penetrated, resulted in a small 9 release.
10 The bigger threat we thought would be in a 11 situation where -- because there was a small release, the 12 bigger threat we thought would be in a situation where the 13 cask was actually stolen and taken into an urban area and 14 then tried to -- attempts were made to damage the cash and 15 release the material.
16 So what our rules do is we focus on stopping theft l 17 of the material. We also have rules, such as requiring 18 armed escorts in urban areas, to try to minimize the threats 19 associated with theft and sabotage.
20 Now, the State of Nevada has performed a study 21 since that study that suggests that we have under-estimated 22 the consequences of a sabotage attack; that there would 23 actually be a larger release from the cask. And I'm not 24 involved with that, but I know the NRC is looking at that 25 issue, some of my colleagues back in Washington, and trying ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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F-l 99 4 1
1 to figure out what can be done to assess the logic in i
2 Nevada's report and maybe update our reports to reflect the !
3 newer information. i 4 MR. CAMERON: Thanks, Rob. Thank you. We'll go 5 to this gentleman here.
6 MR. CLOQUET: Rob, just for a point of 7 information, there was already one nuclear incident that i i
8 occurred in Kingman, Arizona, last year, are you aware of 9 that?
10 MR. LEWIS: No. I'm not familiar with an incident 11 in Kingman, Arizona. Did it involve spent fuel?
12 MR. CLOQUET: It was low level nuclear waste 13 leaked from the truck onto the ground.
14 MR. LEWIS: Yes, I am familiar with that.
15 MR. CLOQUET: Is NRC aware of this?
16 MR. LEWIS: Yes, absolutely. We were involved 17 with investigating that incident. I wasn't aware that it j 18 was in Kingman, Arizona, but I do remember it was a low 19 level waste shipment. .What I was speaking about here --
20 there had been incidents involving low level waste 21 shipments.
22 Spent fuel shipments have much higher levels of 23 radiation. Of course, that's why we require much more 24 rigorous casks for spent fuel or for high level nuclear 25 waste.
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F 100 1 MR. CLOQUET: Can I ask one more question?
2 MR. LEWIS: Sure.
3 MR. CAMERON: Why don't you --
4' MR. CLOQUET: One more question I was wcndering 5 about. Does the NRC regulate the transfer or transportation 6 of nuclear weapons in the United States?
7 MR. CAMERON: No.
8 MR. LEWIS: No. We do not regulate the transport 9 of nuclear weapons.
10 MR. CAMERON: All right. Do we need to add any 11 more clarification on that? All right.
12 MS. JOHNSON: Abbie Johnson, Eureka County. Rob, 13 you said that you wanted to reopen these studies, which I 14 think that's a really good idea because I think they're a 15 little old, and develop a plan.
16 Is that plan then going to result in regulatory 17 changes? We're going to do this back and forth, maybe.
18 MR. LEWIS: We believe that the regulations we 19 have are safe and we believe the record demonstrates that 20 safety. However, if we reopen NUREG-0710, we believe that 21 with the newer models we have, if we -- we're going to take 22 a good hard look at the issues and the risks that we 23 estimate will actually be lower than the risks that were 24 estimated in the past. But that's kind of pre-judging, but l 25 that's just a general feeling.
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101 1 We're going into it with an open mind. If we can 2 find deficiencies, it will be our responsibility to act to 3 correct those deficiencies. That may involve changing our 4 rules. It may involve other things besides changing the 5 rules, but that's one eventuality that could occur.
6 MS. JOHNSON: So if, in that eventuality, the ruie 7 is changed, my question is, how does that relate to what DOE 8 has to do to fabricate casks and the whole DOE Yucca 9 Mountain schedule?
10 It seems like there is a possibility that these 11 two activities could be going along in parallel universes 12 and never connecting. So the DOE says, well, they didn't 13 change the rule at that time, and so it actually wouldn't 14 make any difference because it wouldn't affect DOE, because 15 they would have started here and didn't get it done until j 16 here.
17 Is that a possibility?
18 MR. LEWIS: Well, I would respond by saying --
19 noting that spent fuel shipments are occurring now and they 20 have been safe to date. They can continue to occur if we 21 were to change our regulations. Of course, new cask designs 22 would be required, but that's not to say that the current
! 23 regulations -- I don't think we're going to find -- what I'm l 24 trying to say is I don't think we're going to find a fatal 1
\
l 25 flaw in the current regulations that we're going to say all l l
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102 1 transportation in the United States needs to stop 2 immediately. ,
3 That's just -- based on the safety that we have, I 4 don't see that happening. There might be fine-tuning, but 5 it's not going to be a major difference.
6 '
MS. JOHNSON: I just have two more things. One 7 is, I think that -- this is a comment -- that the shipping 8 -- using the shipping history of 1,300 shipments over 20 9 years is not a lot of experience and I don't think that's 10 really a strong point of the safety record. That's just a 11 comment.
12 MR. LEWIS: I agree with your comment. That's why 13 we're reopening these issues.
14 MS. JOHNSON: Now, I've heard about a lot of 15 workshops tonight, new workshops, and I heard the words the 16 fall. And given the 90-day comment period on the DOE EIS, I 17 made this same sort of comment today, too, those of us that 18 want to fully participate in the process need a little 19 leverage here or cut us a break.
l 20 It's great to have these workshops. We really 21 want to participate, but it may overwhelm us if you have l 22 these workshops at the same time that we're trying to cover 23 EIS hearings, read the document, and write our comments.
l' 24 MR. LEWIS: What I could commit to you to do is 25 coordinate with Bill, who is charge of reviewing the EIS, to ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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103 1 make sure that that type of consideration gets made.
2 MR. CAMERON: It, sounds like another action item 3 to consider, for the NRC to consider, is the coordination of 4 all of the different events that are going on.
5 Bill?
6 MR. VASCONY: Bill Vascony, Las Vegas, Nevada.
7 I've been a resident here for 36 years. First of all, I'd 8 like to thank those representatives of the NRC that have 9 been here repeatedly in the past and are here again and have 10 made promises of future meetings.
11 I personally think you were well prepared tonight.
12 I've enjoyed your responses and I'd like to thank you for 13 the table information that was available out front.
14 NRC, in my point .! view, has come a long way in 15 the last three or four years as far as public participation 16 and hearing our questions and comments.
17 Now, just a comment, and we'll almost have this 18 wrapped up, I guess. We're talking about transportation of 19 nuclear waste.
20 Well, information shows us that we're in our 21 second year of a ten-year span with the Nevada test site 22 where we see 55,000 shipments of waste, low level waste 23 that's going on right now.
24 Another example I would give you is environmentalists, et 25 cetera, have plotted the last Minuteman missile that left ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
104 1 Dakota. They weren't disassembled at the silos. They were 2 shipped across our country on trucks, railroads. $nd Texas 3 holds some 18,000 plutonium pits from our nuclear arsenal.
4 As we sit here in Las Vegas, right now, and this 5 was written by our Sun reporter, there's 1,450 nuclear 6 devices at Ellis Air Force Base.
7 Why would a saboteur take a missile shot at a 8 truckload of waste when all he's got to do is aim it at 9 north Las Vegas and hit one of 1,450 nuclear weapons that 10 are prepared? By the way, they were shipped here, too, by 11 truck, by airplane, from antiquated B-52 bombers and 12 fighters.
13 Thank you very much.
14 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Bill, for putting that 15 into perspective and also for the nice words that you said 16 about the NRC.
17 Do we have some other questions on transportation?
18 Ian, I don't know if you want to address transportation or 19 something else, but go ahead.
20 MR. ZABARTE: My name is Ian Zsbarte. I just have i 21 a couple points on transportation. You're not concerned 22 with the initial points or the terminal points of 23 transportation, just the methods and the casks that will be 24 used and how this is accomplished. Is that accurate?
l 25 MR. LEWIS: I'm not rure what you mean by not ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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105 1 concerned, but --
'2 MR. ZABART": Everything in between is what you're 3 concerned with, how it gets from one place to another.
4 MR. LEWIS: Right. In this case, there would be a 5 licensee shipping at the beginning, which a different part 6 of NRC would be regulating. There would be a repository at 7 the end, where the Division of Waste Management people would 8 be regulating. And in between, it would be the Spent Fuel 9 Project Office that would look at the transportation part.
10 Yes.
11 MR. ZABARTE: I'm really just trying to look at 12 the responsible parties.
13 Your presentation gave me the impression or I was 14 persuaded to believe that there are many shipments that are 15 taking place that you're involved in regulating and that 16 it's business as usual with high level waste, but I didn't 17 get the feeling that there was a difference in the shipping 18 containers.
19 You showed a container in your slide. Is that the 20 container -- is that an actual container which will be used?
21 Who manufactures that? Where is the container? You alluded 22 to opening up tests and you also mentioned that modeling --
23 that with modeling tools you now have, you can do different 24 assessments of the cask viability.
25 I was just still wondering -- there was one other l
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106 i 1 thing you said about the waste being not as radioactive now.
2 Is that in the past ten years, past 20 years? If so, it i 3 sounds to me like in another ten or 20 years, we're not 4 going to have to worry about the radioactivity.
5 And I just -- what I'm getting to is that I just 6
don't get the impression that we're dealing with something 7 that's radioactive for 10,000 years or 250,000 years, 8 whatever the case may be, and I just wanted to point to the 9 language that we're ---or the language that we're using and 10 how we communicate to each other, that I'm not getting an 11 accurate understanding of what we're dealing with here.
12 So I just wanted to make that point.
13 MR. LEWIS: I understand. I understand what 14 you're telling us and I don't want to leave you the 15 impression that shipment of spent fuel is business as usual 16 today.
17 This spent fuel does have a higher hazard than 18 most, if not all other radioactive material that's shipped, 19 and because of that higher hazard, you have to do special 20 things when you ship spent fuel.
21 This picture is of a cask that is used and has 22 been used in those 1,300 shipments in the past 20 years, 23 it's not one cask that's been used, but this is a picture of 24 the design.
25 And it is, like I said, it's a 70-ton cask, it's j l
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107 1 five feet across. This one is used for rail shipments. j 2 It's called the IF-300. I believe it only contain"s either 3 one or four assemblies, I'm not sure, I think it might be 4 four, but in any event, this cask would be smaller than the 5 casks that are envisioned, the larger dual purpose, where 6 you store it in the cask and then ship it in the cask at 7 some point.
8 Those are bigger than these and we are in the process of 9 reviewing and approving several designs for those bigger 10 casks. Because of those bigger casks is one of the reasons 11 we felt we needed to reopen these studies we did in the 12 .past.
13 Now, the spent fuel is hazardous. I did say the 14 radioactive -- excuse me -- the radioactivity declines and 15 it has declined since the assumptions we had in these 16 original studies.
17 The reason is in the original studies, we were 18 assuming an economy where we recycle the material instead of 19 an economy where we sent the material off for disposal.
! 20 So they were shipping newer fuel that was freshly 21 out of a reactor and it had higher radioactivity. The 22 radioactivity -- the activity, radioactivity of spent 23 nuclear fuel decreases rapidly for about the first ten 24 years. Then it starts to level off and it levels off and l 25 remains hazardous for a very long time.
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r-108 1
So there's a certain point where it is decreasing, 2 the radiation emitted is decreasing rapidly, but ahter a 1
-3 certain point of waiting, it starts to decrease less and 4 less rapidly and waiting additional time doesn't gain you as 5 much as it would have if you -- as opposed to waiting 6 additional time from the time it is initially out of the reactor, but it is a very long -- I can talk to you more 8 about it. Sorry.
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Thanks, Rob. I want to make 1
10 sure that some people that wanted to speak get the 11 opportunity who haven't talked yet tonight. Dr. Kaz, David 12 Kaz?
13 [No response.]
14 M R ., CAMERON: Andrew Gillespie?
15 [No response.)
16 MR. CAMERON: Earl Ditson?
17 [:No response.]
18 MR. CAMERON: All right. Okay. I think we're 19 getting ready to wrap up, but let me see if there are some 20 final questions here. Pardon me, sir? Okay. And Adrian 21 has something to say. Adrian, can you just -- I'm sorry.
22 I'm taking a survey sort of. Susan, did you have something 23 else? Okay. Adrian, you have a quick question? Or a 24 question, anyway, i
25 MS. ZOLKOVER: I get the impression that those ANN LILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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109 1
casks could be in the Grand Canyon on a train and somebody 2 could sabotage the rail so that the train would fall down 3 the Grand Canyon, and that thing still would really probably 4 get hurt or.what's.in it, it wouldn't do very much damage.
5 In.other words, there wouldn't be that much point 6 to do much about that, right? Am I right?
7 MR. CAMERON: Looking for some. reassurance. Rob?
8 MR. LEWIS: I wouldn't make the claim that it 9 couldn't roll down the Grand Canyon, but I think the casks 10 are rigorous and like I said, this report estimates that
'll they will withstand about 99.4 percent of all the accidents 12 that could ever occur. That's if an accident occurs.
13 And the routes that are picked would avoid danger, 14 such as a canyon so large that it would put the cask in a i 15 possible condition in which it could experience much greater l 16 forces as it would if it fell all the way down the canyon.
17 MS. ZOLKOVER: Well, could you just run a test l 18 car, say, a block in front of it and not let anything else 19 in between, so if something happened to the track, it would l 20 stop in advance? They have like a rolling target or
?? something.
22 MR. CAMERON: Rob, maybe you could talk to Adrian i 23 about that after we break up tonight.
l 24 Why don't you give us your comment, sir?
25 MR. CLOQUET: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
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110 1 I'm Don Cloquet. I'm a friendly Indian visitor from a 2 neighboring tribe, I'm from the Pacific Northwest, and I'm 3 very familiar with the Hanford Reservation.
4 First, I want to thank the NRC for being here 5 tonight and allowing me the pleasure of stating what I have 6 to say. Las Vegas is now 1.5 million people, the County of 7 Las Vegas. We have over 15,000 Native American Indians 8 living in this region.
9 MR. CAMERON: Let's bring you over to this 10 microphone here.
11 MR. CLOQUET: Can everybody hear me now? As I 12 said, the Las Vegas region contains 1,500,000 individuals.
13 We are the fastest-growing city in the United States. We 14 have over 15,000 Native Americans residing in this region.
15 We have many traditional cultures and religious 16 beliefs. The tribes have signed over 250 treaties with the 17 United States Federal Government and they all have been 18 broken in one way or another.
19 As a Native American, I would respectfully request 20 a copy of your Native American Policy as mandated by 21 President Bill Clinton. All the public agencies must have 22 this policy, 23 "Mtive American believe that human remains -- in 24 25 USC .3001, that would be affected by the effects of 25 radioactive nuclear waste due to the packages.
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111 1 Native American tribes are a sovereign nation. We 2' are not public people. We are a sovereign nation.' Many 3 treaties have been signed with the United States Federal 4 Government. Native American tribes believe that there has 5 been total disregard by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on 6 having a mandated dialogue with them as mandated by 7 President Bill Clinton as part of the government 8 relationship with them.
9 Native Americans have documented that radiation is 10 perceived as -- if anyone would like to hear more about 11 this.
12 Las Vegas County is 1.5 million people. On 13 December 24, 1998, there was a train wreck. High level 14 nuclear waste, as well, and the rail cars tipped over and 15 spilled the material in the creek four miles east.
16 Twelve Native American tribes would suggest that, 17 as soon as possible, that -- the Tribal Council is one of 18 the most important tribal ordinances. The failure to obey 19 the tribal ordinances would be a violation of Federal and 20 Tribal law.
21 This would affect the safety and cultural 1
i 22 concerns, the environmental justice, cultural survival and 23 access to the holy lands. I can assure you that there would 24 be a large-scale class action suit.
25 I'd like to speak for the National Congress of i
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112 1 American Indians, our meeting in San Diego, where we are 2 meeting today, tomorrow and on Friday. The purpose of the 3 meeting is to discuss the impact by Tribal representatives 4 and Department of Transportation on high level --
5 Thank you. )
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6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you, Don.
7 We're going to close off with -- we have a couple 8 of administrative announcements, but we're going to close 9 out with Susan Zimmerman from the State of Nevada.
10 MS. ZIMMERMAN: One question I have is where did 11 Janet go? Is she no longer available?
12 MS, CAMERON: I think she'll be back. We're going 13 to get her.
14 MS. ZIMMERMAN: Then I'll start with Rob. You had 15 the viewgraph of the favorable history and I know many times 16 in the past, the NRC has been dinged about using all these 17 analogies as this means that transporting spent nuclear fuel 18 for the repository pro ram is, therefore, going to be safe.
19 And in the state's perspective, you're trying to 20 compare apples and oranges, because never before has a 21 shipping campaign of this magnitude been undertaken with 22 spent nuclear fuel.
23 As Abbie Johnson said, 1,300 spent fuel shipments 24 in 20 years is miniscule compared to what is going to be 25 transported. You have 10,000 radioactive shipments daily.
b ANN RIL8Y & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 m
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113 l
I 1 You don't specify the size of those shipments, what they actually'are, how far they're transported or anything l
2 3 So it's -- a data point like that is basically 4 meaningless. If you're going to use this type of )
1 5 information and present it to the public, then you need to l
6 be more specific of exactly what you're talking about, ;
7 instead of just trying to, in our opinion, obscure or l
8 obfuscate the facts that these may not necessarily correlate 9 directly with spent nuclear fuel shipments.
10 My question to Janet is, I originally asked you 11 earlier about if there was any Congressional action, 12 Congressional law that gave you impetus to issue 10 CFR 63 13 at this time, and you said no, there wasn't. Although in 14 your viewgraphs, you said that ycu were complying with 15 Congressional direction.
1 16 So I'm a little at a loss on which way it is. j I
17 DR. KOTRA: We have Congressional direction that 18 we have to comply with. We believe in order to best comply I
19 with that direction, it is prudent to move forward with a i 1
20 proposal at this time. The proposal is to be able to 21 conform to new health-based environment and public ;
22 protection standards.
23 Because of the complexity of the implementation of 24 regulations for a first-of-a-kind facility, even our simpler 25 rules, the process we go through usually consumes more than l
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114 1 a single year.
2 In addition to the fact that this is a more 3 complex set of regulations, we also are committed to a broad 4 public participation process.
5 For all of those reasons, to comply with the l I
'6 Congressional direction, we felt the best way to do that --
7 I realize because of the shorthand of the slides, that you l
l 8 -- I understand that you could get that misimpression, j 9 We're not saying that the law said thou shalt issue a 10 regulation called Part 63. All the law said was thou shalt 11 comply and be consistent with these newly created standards 12 within one calendar year.
13 We can't do that starting from ground zero and 12 14 months later produce a final rule that reflects the 15 necessary technical input and public comment that we believe 16 is necessary.
l 17 Does that answer your question?
18 MS. ZIMMERMAN: Yes, it does. But you might want 19 to clarify that on the viewgraph if you intend to use it 20 again.
21 DR. KOTRA: Thank you. I'll find a better way to 22 say this. Thanks.
23 MR. CAMERON: Okay. Great. Well, I'd like to f 24 thank all of you for attending tonight and for your patience 25 with a not really well functioning audio system here ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 E
115 1 tonight.
2 I wanted to thank Judy Goodwin of the NRb staff 3 and also Vivian Veerhoff, who is in the back, Vivian works 4
with the -- she's one of the staff of the NRC on-site 5 representatives office. She's back there, And we do have 6 the number, telephone number and fax number for you.
7 Judy Goodwin said that she needs more address 8 information from two people who wanted to be mailed a 9 meeting transcript. One was John Fisher and another was 10 John McGee. If they're still here, give her the 11 information.
12 And the comment sheets that you got when you came 13 in, you can either give the to Judy or Vivian or drop them l
14 in the-box out there or mail them back.
l 15 I guess I would just thank all of you. So we're 16 adjourned.
l 17 (Applause.]
l 18 [Whereupon, at 10:30 a.m., the meeting was 19 concluded.)
, 20 l
21 22 23 24 25 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
NAME OF PROCEEDING: PUBLIC MEETING ON PROPOSED REGULATIONS (10 PART 63) FOR A HIGH-LEVEL WASTE REPOSITORY AT YUCCA MOUNTAIN, NEVADA DOCKET NUMBER:
ASLBP No.
PLACE OF PROCEEDING: Las Vegas, Nevada were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the 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 reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
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Carey Leffler Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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