ML20212C260
| ML20212C260 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 10/22/1997 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0117, NACNUCLE-T-117, NUDOCS 9710290136 | |
| Download: ML20212C260 (111) | |
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OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE
Title:
95TII ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) MEETING o
Docket No.:
ggA NR NR TO BJWHITE, ACRS T-2E26 415-7130
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Work Order No.:
ASB-300-11 THANKS!
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LOCATION:
Rockville, Maryland
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DATE:
Wednesday, October 22,1997 PAGES: 1 - 81 ju j868A 7d!2l[7 3$
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\\s I-DISCLAIMER UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE OCTOBER 22, 1997 The contents of this transcript of the proceeding of the-United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory
)
Committee on Nuclear Waste, taken on October 22, 1997, as reported herein,.is a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
This transcript had not been reviewed, corrected and edited and it may contain inaccuracies.
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_____._._.-.._._-...__._...___._..._..___.__.._.~._.._._.m.,__._
1 1
UNITED STATES. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
- 2' ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE 3
4 95TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE.ON 5.
NUCLEAR WASTE ~ (ACNW) MEETING 6
7-U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 8-Two White Flint North, Room 2B-3 9-11545 Rockville Pike
'10 Rockville, Maryland. 20852-2738 t
11 12
' Wednesday,- October 22, 1997 13 14 The Committee met pursuant to notice at 8:30 a.m.
[
15 16 MEMBERS PRESENT:
17-B. JOHN GARRICK, Chairman, ACNW 18 GEORGE HORNBERGER. Vice Chairman, ACNW I
19 RAYMOND G. WYNER, Memt*Jr, ACNW 20
~ HAROLD LARSON, Member, ACNW 21-JOHN T. LARKINS_, Executive 7irector, ACRS/ACNW 22 23 P
24-
'25 4
i O
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STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE:
(
2 RICHARD K MAJOR, STAFF 5-
-GIORGIO GNUGNOLI, ACNW STAFF 4
ANDREW C. CAMPBELL, ACN STAFF 5
LYNN DEERING, ACN STAFF 6
SHER BAHADUR, RES 7
BILL OTT, RES 8
NICK CASTANZI, RES 9
MIKE BELL, NMSS 10 JOHN HICKEY, NMSS 11 ROBERT JOHNSON, NMSS 12 RICHARD P.
SAVIO, DEP EXEC DRE 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
(
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1 P R O C-E E D I N G S
()
- 2-
[8:30 a.m.)
3'
- CRAIRMAN GARRICK:
The' meeting will come to order, t
-4 This is the second day of the 95th Meeting of the 5
~ Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste.
t F
F My name is John Garrick, Chairman of the ACNW.
i
_Other members of the Committee, George Hornberger, Ray i
h 8_
Wymer, and Charles Fairhurst who is absent today.
9 The entire meeting will be open to the public.
i l
10 During today's meeting the committee will review NRC's t-j 11 nuclear waste-related research and technical systems, 12
' prepare ACNW reports on, first a recommended approach to I
13 implement the defense in-depth. concept and the revised 10 14-CFR 60; second, the application of probablistic risk 15 assessment methods to performance assessment, the NRC 16 high-level waste program; third, ACNW priorities and 1
17 strategic plan; and fourth, ACNW inputs on nuclear 18
-waste-related research'and technical. assistance-to.the ACRS l'
19 research report to Congress.
And we'll discuss committee 20 activities and future agenda items.
21 Richard Major is a designated federal official for 4
22~
today's initial-session.
This meeting is being conducted in i-j
- 23 accordance'with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Act,
]
24 We have received no written statements or_ requests to make l
_25-oral statements from members of the public regarding today's
!l-1
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session.
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2 Should anyone wish to address the committee please 3
make your wishes known to one of the committee staff.
4 It 1s requested that each speaker use one of the 5
microphones, identify himself or herself, and speak with 6
sufficient clarity and volume so that he or she can be 7
readily heard, 8
Before proceeding with the first a; - la item, I 9
would like to cover some brief items of current interest.
10 First, the executive committee of the EPA's Science Review 11 Board endorsed the Multi-Agency Radiation Survey and Site 12 Investigation Manual -- horrible acronism, MARSSIM -- which 13 was a joint effort by the EPA, NRC, DOD, and DOE to provide 14 guidance for planning in conducting radiation surveys for 15 decommissioning contaminated sites.
16 Second, Congressional committees are negotiating 17 further cuts to the budget on DOE's nuclear waste 18 activities.
This affects defense and non-defense waste; for 19 example, Environmental Restoration.
Moreover, there is a 20 proposal to shift Formerly-Utilized Site Remedial Action 21 Program clean-ups from DOE to the Army Corps of Engineers.
22 Third, the House of Representatives Commerce 23 Committee overwhelmingly approved a bill to designate that a 24 test site as an interim storage facility for spent nuclear 25 fuel.
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Fourth, Mohamed Elbaradei was sworn in as Director
()
2 General of the IAEA beginning in December 1, 1997.
He 3
replaces Hans Blix, who headed that Agency for the last 16 4
years.
5 Fifth, the European Committee has contracted with l
6 a consortium of French, Belgian and Russian interests to 7
develop a conceptual design for an underground repository in 8
northwestern Russia to dispose of mostly Russian defense 9
program wastes of alt types.
10 Sixth, the Department of Interior has been 11 requested to probe the land transfer process at the proposed 12 Ward Valley, California Low-Level Radioactive Waste disposal 13 site.
Questions of objectivity on the part of the 14 contractor, who was a participant of the National Academy of O)
(m, 15 Science panel reviewing the site design, were raised.
16 Furthermore, the Federal Claims Court denied the Department 17 of Justice motions to dismiss U.S.
Ecology and California 18 Department of Health Services lawsuits seeking damages 19 resulting from Department of Interior delays of the land 20 transfer.
The beat goes on.
21 Seventh, the DOE is planning to seek proposals 22 from private industry to dispose of low-level waste from all 23 of its sites.
This is a move to create a more competitive 24 environment for disposal of its low-level wastes.
25 Currently, Envirocare of Utah, Inc., is the only licensed p) t ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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-- _ -- 1 facility to acceptLthese wastes.
[(I 2?
' Finally, eighth, in the September.26, 1997 report 3
fon the 1998: energy:andLwater appropriates bill.,
4 congressional conferees indicated strong support for the use-5 of commercial nuclear reactors for the disposition of 6
surplus weapons grade plutonium.
It went to indicate.that 7-incorporating this plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel was the i
g 8-preferred method for disposing of large quantities of.this' 9-weapons grade plutonium.
l l
110 So, with that I think we will move to our first 11 item on our agenda which is to review NRC waste-relt i
12 research and technical assistance, and the committee member 13 that will preside over this agenda item is George 14 Hornberger, George.
1
()
15 MR.;HORNBERGER:
Thank you,_ John.
16 The. reason that we are having_a look at research 17 of'this kind, I guess, probably_as everyone knows there was
- 18 an SRM that directed ACRS that because ACNW knew us, the 19 waste section at the ACNW-as well, they will, "take an 1
20'
-active role in reviewing ongoing research program 21
. initiatives"'section closed-discussed in SECI 97.075 and 22
-165.. Review the research programs in terms of need, scope 23 and balance.
Examine how RES anticipates research needs, 24
~ examine how RES is positioned for the changing environment,
'=
25 and lastly, recommend whether the NSRRC function is still Gi ANN RILEY.& ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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needed.
)
2 We are on track to do two things.
First we have 3
to contribute to the ACRS letter report that will go to 4
Congress.
And I think our deadline on that is December; is 5
that right, Harold?
6 MR. LARSON:
Yes.
7 MR. HORNBERGER:
And we then also have to offer a l
8 fuller report to the Commission by next May.
9 So, with that preamble, just to set the stage, we 10 have presentation to give you an idea why it is we're 11 looking at this and at what the level of our --
12 Giorgio, I think has a few handouts and overheads, 13 or whatever, and a few words to kick us off and then we're 14 going to go and we'll hear from Sher Bahadur of Research.
O l (,/
15 MR. GNUGNOLI:
Until technology catches up with us 16 17
[ Laughter.]
18 MR. GNUGNOLI:
-- they will have their overheads 19 on the handouts.
20 CHAIRMNN GARRICK:
Is this the one you're going to 4
21 work from?
22 MR. GNUGNOLI:
Yes.
23 I am basically going to discuss the environment of 24 why this is being done, this Safety Research Program Review 25 and the report to Congress.
[
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If you go to the first page after_the cover page
( f_
2
-- everybody have a copy of this?
The background is simply 3
that the Atomic Energy Act as amended requires that the i
4 ACRS, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards report 5
annually to the Congress on the status of the safety 6
research program at NRC.
7 This is the first year that the Advisory Committee 8
on Nuclear Waste has been involved in contributing to this 9
report.
'10 Go to the second page after that.
11 In the past what would happen is a collection of 12 the committee's reports that had anything to do or had a 13 good deal to do with the status of the research program at 14 NRC would be collected, and a short memo or letter should be
)
15 put on top of it and it was submitted to the head of each of 16 the houses of parliament over here.
17 MR. LARKINS:
Actually it goes to the House and 18 the Senate, in addition it goes over to the oversight 19 this report to Congress goes to all of the oversight 20 committees that have responsibility to the NRC to come.
21 I was just sort of expanding on what Giorgio had 22 here that this report to Congress goes to all of the 23 oversight committees that have responsibility for the NRC in 24 addition to the Vice President and the head of House.
25 MR. GNUGNOLI:
It does go to the Commission prior O
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9 L11 to going to Congress, though, also? MR. LARKINS:
Yes.
3 MR, GNUGNOLI:
I'll get a little bit more into
-4~
that in a second.
5:
This year the report to Congress will reflect 6-again-for the_first time a contribution from the ACNW on the 7
status of the waste-related research at NRC.
I think it l
8 needs a little bit of an explanation here on why part of the 9:
program on technical assistance ~is being included-in that.
11-0 Traditionally the difference between technical i-
-11 assistance and research was a little bit more clear.
With 12 time what's happened is a.nudaer of projects in technical 13.
assistance have assumed sort of as a short-term research 14 angle.
And in fact the review and the comments on the part 15_
of the committee to Congress would-have-to reflect some 16
-aspect of the report on the technical assistance program.
17 There are other things in technical assistance.
Forlinstance, assistance from the National Laboratory in 18 19 preparing and environmental impact statement which wouldn't 20 necessarily really be within the scope 1of this view.
So 2 11
.some of the TA is in here, but not all of it.
22-MR. HORNBERGER:
Giorgio, how was that decision
?23 made?
24~
MR. GNUGNOLI: 'Well, in the report I was sort of 25
.doing that in looking_at-the' technical assistance activity.
[
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For; instance,: the staff made some'very, very good comments
()
- 2 Labout the report in its draft status that, for instance, the 3l issue: resolution strategy wasn't addressed.
But I thought
'4
.that that would be more of the, I think, previous 5
- understanding of what technical assistance was.
It really 6
didn't deal with investigation efforts or lab studies, or 7-anything of that nature.
It really had to deal with the 8
status of what the knowledge was, sort of like-literature 9-review kind of thing.
10 So that wasn't specifically included.
-11 MR. LARKINS:
Can I add.something?
22 MR. GNUGNOLI:
- Sue, 13 MR. LARKINS:
I think there are two other reasons 14 for looking at technical assistance.
Recently the Committee
()
15.
-asked the Office of Research to transfer back any rulemaking 16 activities that it has in the programs offices in our MSS 17 and others.
And at the same time any technical assistance 18 which appeared to be more research-ish should be transferred 19 back to-the Office of Research.
20 And traditionally the ACRS has looked at technical 21 assistance--in NRR to see how:it-related to ongoing research 22 activities in-the Office of Research.
- 23-
.MR. GNUGNOLI:
The problem was in this draft of 24;
-the-report.
That distinction wasn't sufficiently explained.
25; And that's caused, I think. a little bit of
- ()
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11:
le misunderstanding.
(
-2 Some of-the deadlines were mentioned earlier.
The 3
-first one after we read it may be a little bit confusing.
~
4 But this is an internal deadline that the idea is to --
5 before this report is sent to the Congress, it's hoped that 6
by the end of the calendar year that a report or some 1
7 information goes to the Commission so they know ahead of 8
time what's being sent forward, if nothing else, for 9
courtesy in a political wisdom.
10 Then the actual real date that the report is due
- 11 to Congress is the end of February.
Which, again, is going 12 to include the ACNW contribution which it's expected to be 13 relatively minor in terms of size.
Hopefully it will be 14 major in terms of quality.
15 The final report to the Commission will be by 16 mid-year, basically, 1998.
Maybe May.
I thought it was the-17 end of May?
--18 MR. LARKINS:
Prior to the first.
19 MR GNUGNOLI:
Prior to the first of June, let's 20 put it that way.
21 (Slide.]
22L MR. GNUGNOLI:
I would like to now get into a
- 23
- little bit in-the-strategy of this backup scoping document.
- -24 1The idea here is to
- give a feeling for research.
At this 25_
point -- this version of it was trying to give a feeling for
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12 1
the research program.
And when I use "research" please
()
2 understand I'm saying "research" and the TA work that sort 3
of looks like research as well, At least give sort of a 4
little bit of an introduction of where it was coming from, 5
mostly, kind of in the '90s timeframe to where it is today 6
and a little bit in terms of what is expected to happen.
7 The pieces that go in here so far involve the 8
NRC's activities in waste management obviously.
There was 9
an attempt to reflect the Department of Energy's activity in 10 waste management, 11 The other approach -- and part of this is the 12 rationale here is to say, well, there could be work being 13 done by industry and other parties that could supplement on 14 the investigations that would normally have been done by NRC r(
15 to do confirmatory research to help it in it's eventual 16 licensing decisions.
So, in effect, the hope here was to 17 try to reflect these other contributors to waste management 18 research even though they're not doing it because we asked 19 them to, 4
20 The internationals have a pretty strong 21 involvement and activity in research and that a taste of 22 that was also provided in the paper, albeit a little 23
-incomplete.
24
[ Slide.]
25 MR. GNUGNOLI:
The idea is that in this process we Oij ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W.,
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!first doEthe. scoping document and this information can
()
2 hopefully feed into the_ Committee's eventual contribution to lh
-the report to Congress.-
But for the long term why are we 4
doing this scoping document, why is the committee reviewing 5
research?
It's to see whether the right kind of things are
-6 being done to enable the Commission to make licensing 7
decisions on the waste management proposal,
" Enable" seems 8
to be a very key word these days.
.9 (Laughter.)
10 MR. GNUGNOLI:
If the feeling is no it isn't 11 enough or it's insufficient, or what, then what should ACNW 12 say to Congress?
That's the difficult one.
13 (Slide.)
14 MR. GNUGNOLI:
Again, the report is unfinished.
O
\\,s/
15 And the idea here is that it really is never going to be l
16-finished.
The hope is that this kind of document is a
'17-living document and as the research program evolves over 18 =
time the ACNW.and-the ACRS would keep this kind of 19 accounting or description of research as sort of a 20 continuing process.
It would certainly make the. Committee's 21L work a lot easier when they do-decide to look at the status 22 of the NRC's research program.
23 The other thing is-that the report to Congress, as 24 I said, is going to be small in volume, but the report to 25 the Commission will have more detail.
I'm not sure exactly ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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sent forward necessarily as part of that report, or refer to 3
it as an annex, something that perhaps is not as detailed as 4
the scoping document, but still much more detailed than what 5
is being sent to Congress.
6 I mentioned before it was unfinished.
So, so far 7
what's missing in here?
8 (Slide.]
9 MR. GNUGNOLI:
I think some reference to the NRC's 10 issue of the resolution status reports should be reflected.
11 I think this is an effort to try to categorize and give a 12 current measure or accounting of what's been done in key 13 technical areas of research or technical assistance.
And 14 that really isn't reflected in the report at the time.
15 EPRI and other organizations in the private sector 16 have done a great deal in waste management.
17 MR. HORNBERGER:
Can I go back to the first 18 bullet?
19 MR. GNUGNOLI:
Sure.
20 MR. HORNBERGER:
The issue resolution repcrts, 21 you're saying " reports" because they actually do summarize 22 reports to the --
23 MR. GNUGNOLI:
Exactly.
They do summarize the 24 status of what's been done in research and technical 25 assistance.
As far as I know, the one that's gone the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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furthest along is-on climatology.
And there are other areas
()
2 that are being looked at Jike seiamotechnonics and 3
thermohydrology.
These are still-in the process, and 4
ultimately,_ I guess they would provide the fuel for the 5
-judgment that we'.ve done enough in this area to make a 6-decision on-a licensing review.
-7 So,_in effect, it's sort Of a status report on how 8
nach progress has been done by the NRC in trying to resolve 9
concerns and issues that were germane to the licensing 10 decision.
11_
The EPA also has some R&D activity's that they've l
12 done and that really isn't reflected in the report yet.
The 13 other internationals, France, Japan, Germany, Canada and the 14
-European Union and many_other groups have made great strides O
\\_,1 15 in, for instance, repository. design and construction and 16 such.
And that really isn't fully reflected.
17 I have a varying level of_ detail from a very short 18 paragraph on Sweden to a moderately-sized quarter --
19 three-quarters of a-page on Switzerland and about three or 20
_four pages on Belgium.
And that's not to say that those are 21 the three-most important.
It's just to give a feeling to
-22 the Committee about what level of detail should be in the 23 report-aboutithe other participants or other people dcing 24' the_ waste management research.
25 So the last question is really directed to the O-Al ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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16 1E
- committee.-
Should we add'more stuff in there?
Should.we
{f 2
cut things back, what level of-detail should be aimed at for 3_
-- not just' simply for this exercise for the report to the 4
Congress and eventually to the Commission,_but as this
-5
-living' document that continues to reflect what's going on in 6-NRC research.
-7 (Slide.]-
8 MR, GNUGNOLI; One of the poines I brought up, and 9
again, possiblyfone of the main items fueling the
're for 10 the. enhanced report to Congress as opposed to the cover note 11 is the demise of the NSRRC.
I called it a board on the 12 title, but it's a committee, 13 The. relative roles of the Advisory Committee and 141 the NSRRC are somewhat different, but many of the activities
)
15 were the same.
They would sort of'go through the same 16 process the committee nere does in' reviewing the' program.
17 The NSRRC could go over into the reactor side as 18 well-as the waste side, whereas that part of the review in 19 the cdvisory committee is split between the two committees 20
- here, And the advisory committees were seen sort of as 21
-natural _ replacements.
It seemed like they were reviewing 22 the research anyway, so why not give them more work to do.
23 But there-were some-differences.
There was a report to the 24
-head:of research here from the board, and there was a-table 25 which is illegible here, but it'c--in the handout where they-O-
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looked at ACRS and NSRRC and forgot to replace reactor by
()
2 nuclear waste on the left column for the ACNW.
I did catch 3
a typo, it's six items down under the ACRS, the third l!ne 4
here says, " safety rdated items" and it's " safety related" 5
items.
You can make that correction.
6 But it almost seems that what was a main 7
difference is, what was the point of doing the reviews of 8
research rather than the actual process for the review.
9 (Slide.)
10 MR. GNUGNOLI:
Well, getting away from the scoping 11 document, what kind of things would the committee say?
And 12 this is not an attempt.to put words in the committee's 13 mouth, but ask the committee some questions to fuel the 14 thought process in generating the page or so contribution 15 from the ACNW.
16 Again, the bottom line impression is really, is 17 the research and TA program evolving along this 18 risk-informed, performance-based philosophy?
And the 19 committee could make a statement in that regard that this is 20 being done, or it could be done better, or it's fine.
21 One of the other issues that encouraged both the 22 ACRS and the ACNW was the concern about the core 23-capabilities, in cutting research back, has something been 24 cut out that was vital?
Has the cutting been fatal to the 25 support tawards the eventual licensing and decisionmaking of f(h ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W.,
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agency.
/~( T' j
This is especially true with a contractor that it 2
3 took a long time to get the FFRDC on line.
it was a very 4
long and excruciating process.
It's not something that can 5
be done overnight.
If we tr!m the capabilities of that 6
particular entity and given the conflict of interest 7
situation with consultants and contractors working for DOE 8
and NRC in the high-level waste program that this could be a 9
fairly crucial decision in cutting that has to be done very E
10 carefully or it could really certainly hurt the existence of 3
11 the group.
12 And the third point is in a way a pet peeve in 13 that some of the Commission papers and DSI papers the 14 discussion was made about whether to enhance X or keep X
)
15 going the same way as it has been going or to reduce X.
If 16 you put X is equal to international R&D activities and the 17 NRC involvement there and what I read so far indicates that 18 the Commission wants to keep it sort of at the same level of 19 cooperation.
Yet, in the research and other DSIs they are 20 starting to say that the NRC has to put a greater reliance 21 on other institutions, the international groups and such.
22 So there is a little disconnect there that if 23 perhaps to enhance the NRC's involvement with the 24 international's might imply a little bit of an elevated 25 activity in the international exchange.
So that could be i [
D ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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- 1_-
. something that the. committee-could reflect on as well,
(
2 (Slide.]
3 MR.-GNUGNOLI - And mercifully the last slide here.
4 One-of-the concerns expressed by DOE-is the--reductions-that 5
appear to_have happened.towards.the radionuclide transport 6
effort, especially the key technical issue or the KTI for 7
the high-level waste program.
The NRC sort of did a l
8 consolidation where in effect it exists sort of as a line 9
item in 1999 under decommissioning, but the hope is enough-10 is learned from doing this that it could apply to low-level, 11 high-level, and whatever.
But DOE has expressed a little 12-bit of a concern that this may have been cut back a little 13 too much and that might affect the review of the liability g;
14 assessment.
(
15 The last.one I suggest here'is whether the NRC's 16' research programs are addressed towards some of the 17 recommendations that the National Academy of Science has-18 done, Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards.
And 19 this is not_to say that it doesn't, but a statement could be 20 made or-an evaluation could be made about the degree of 21 reflection of the concerns raised by'the-NAS here.
22 Again, that's-just a few of the things that the
-23 Committee certainly is going to make its' mind up on, but 24-that's what:I'm providing the sort of fuel with the thought 12 5-process.
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As I mentioned before, there were some comments
()
2 from the staff that there were shortcomings in the report.
3 They felt that the issue resolution strategy should have --
4 should have been reflected in the report, They also felt 5
that not.enough of a technical summary was provided on the 6
activities and I think mostly that was directed toaards 7
high-level waste research.
8 Part of the problem, I think, in preparing this 9
report was the difficulty in trying to separate what's 10 technical assistance, what's research, is Research the right l
11 people doing it, or the NMSS people doing it and are they 12 the right people doing it.
So a little bit or my, I guess, 13 lack of clarity was reflected in the text of the report.
14 There were some outright errors.
For instance, f x,,/
15 the statement is made in the report that the radionuclide 16 transport, the repository design, and the waste package 17 containment effort the ATIs have been dropped from the 18 research program.
Well, they've been terminated at the 19 center, but that effort is going on in house I guess in 20 other areas with the overall TA and research program that's 21 planned.
So, in effect, I need to make some corrections 22 along those lines.
And I'll have to go through and revise 23 the report to that effect.
-24 I believe that's basically all I have to offer as 25 the -- I guess -- environment to begin the discussion.
Any
~
(- )
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Lquestions?
()
-2 MR. HORNBERGER:
Thanks, Giorgio.
Any questions 3
- f rom committee members?
-4' CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
I only had one.
On the matter I
i
-5 of what's missing from the scoping document.
6 MR GNUGNOLI:
Uh-huh.
7 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: 'I'm a litt19 curious about what 8
steps or process or resources are being considered to 9
address the industry initiatives which I think is a very 10 important part of this?
11 MR. GNUGNOLI:
The planning at this point ic
-12 simply I need to get back into the cubicle and start looking 13 at what people have on the Internet and looking at what 14 people have published and such and just include it.
I have O
l; Q 15-some of the material, it was just the timing constraint 16 really didn't allow me to do the full job.
So, in effect, 17 it's not that the industry research was not impcrtant, it 18
. was just one of the things that fell victim to the 119 timeframe.
Butlthe report should have-that in there.
It
--- 2 0 should elaborate what-EPRI has done and others have done in
-21 there as well.
22 You know, it's also under -- I think it under 23l
' represents the~ activities ~in-the USGS as well.
But there
.- 2 4 are statements in there about-DOE.doing this or that and 25
-it's really the USGS really doing the work though.
That
(
L c'
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()
2 MR. HORNBERGER:
I think that obviously is a 3
creation of such a scoping document.
It's a monumental job 4
and I thank-you-for taking a bit for us and I'm sure that it-5 would really be wise appropriately in the future Giorgio.
I 6
think that while we need to get all of this other 7
information both industry, and other agenc3.as and 8
international, for me, my prime focus would be understanding 9
the NRC context.
Obviously we have to understand the 10 context.
I really need to know.
11 MR. GNUGNOLI:
The only concern was that, you 12 know, it might be that a cut in the research program at NRC 13 might be balanced by something someone else is doing.
14 MR. HORNBERGER:
Ct.
)
15 MR. GNUGNOLI:
And that was the attempt to try to 16 get the other thoughts in.
17 MR. HORNBERGER:
No, and I think that's right.
18 And I think that the first question that always does have to 19 be asked is whether the NRC has to do it at all.
20 And our next speaker --
21 (Laughter.]
22 MR. HORNBERGER:
Sher.
-23 (Laughter.]
24 (Slide.]
25 MR. BAHADUR:
Thank you, Andy.
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My name is Sher Bahadur.
I am chief of the Waste
()
2 Management Branch.
And actually Waste Management Branch is 3
a misnomer for this branch because as you would see we are 4
doing work which is really not waste management.
And also 5
in this branch I have two teams, one which is working on the 6
research projects, a different kind, which I'm goint o
7 present to you today.
But then there is the other team 8
which is dedicated only to spent fuel, rulemakings, and 9
studies.
10 As John Larkins wac mentioning earlier the 11 Commission has DSI-22, Direction Setting Issue 22, which 12 requires somewhat of a reorganization between Research and a
13 Program Offices.
Some of the rulemakings which Research is 14 doing right now would get transferred 'co NRR NMSS and the
, < ~
(s,)
15 work that might look like research in those offices may get 16 transferred to research.
And if that happens it is 17 anticipated that we would have an internal rearrangement 18 within the Office of Research.
19 I was thinking at that time it will be an 20 appropriate moment to change the name of this branch to 21 reflect what exactly we are doing.
And if you have any 22 auggestions for the name of the branch there is a reward for 23 a good name afterwards.
24 But right now, just to give you a hats up cn this, 25 waste management is not the main work done in this
, ~\\
(
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particular branch. :This-is one of'the three branches in'the 2
division of-regulatory. applications.
We have Dr, 3:
Nicholstands is sitting here who is the Deputy Director _for-I 4
that: division.-
I-also have Bill Ott with me.: He is the
-5 team. leader for the radionuclide-transpoto program and he 6-will1be_ sharing with me the presentation.
Bill is sitting 7
against-the wall there, 8
What I would like to do is to tell you what the 9
goal of this program-is'and give you some backgrm nd and 10-then tell you a little about the areas where we seem to be 11 finding a need to do further work and-then what's my current 12 strategy to carry-out that work.
And if after that the f
13-Committee feels that we need more information, then Bill Ott-14 is here with detailed information on each project that-we-
' g,/ :
15:
-are either barely completing or just recently completed, 16
.and/or are going on right now.
17 (Slide.]- MR. BAHADUR:
In it's present' form the 19-radionuclide transport program which to me is-a generic 20 research program has a-goal,to provide a performance 21 assessment capability to the Agency which can realistically 12 2 assess the radionuclide concentrations in the environment 123~
and then-theLconsequent dosa to public,
--24:
The= reason I say " realistic assessment" is because-25 _
we do have.a current existing methodology by which we can ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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complete this task.
But that methodology is based on a
( )
2 number of simplifying assumptions.
It leads you in a 3
direction wherein you start selecting different parameters 4
to run your program.
You are always steered towards picking 5
up a conservative parameter.
6 What happens is that the dose that you are 7
calculating or estimating is really not a vary realistic 8
dose.
It works in the simple situations where the source 9
terms are small, where the environment is simple, and then 20 the doses are really lesser than the prescribed requirements 11 for the licensee.
But when you have a larger inventory you 12 have complex source terms.
You have environment which 13 consists of complex hydrogeological situations, conditions, 14 chemical characteristics being very complex, then you find
.O
(,,)
15 that the doses that you are getting are not realistic.
16 So the program goal would be to come up with a 17 methodology, set some models and associated data which would 18 give you more realistic dose estimates.
19 Before I go into areas where we are going to do 20 the work, let me run through some background.
21 (Slide.)
22 MR. EAHADUR:
Research has conducted very focused 23 activities depending upon where the NMS's emphasis was on a 12 4 particular program.
For example, when the high-level waste 4
25 program required research support and the Office of Research
,-~
(/
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.did very focused research in the high-level waste.
In the
()
2
'80s when the low-level watee became a program which 3
required support from ;;esearch then our research essentially i
4 became focused towards the low-level waste.
5 At one time I remember my ranch used to have a 6
. budget of about maybe $13 million.
I think the break was $7 million towards high-level waste and maybe three or four 7
8 million worth for low-level waste.
Two years back when I 9
came to this Committee and presented my program I remember time where high-level waste was gradually 10 there wa, a 11 tapering down, low-level waste was almost zerced out and I 12 mentioned to you at that time that my budget was changing 13 from 11 mi' lion to 1.5 million.
That required a lot cf belt 14 tightening.
Actually, that required changing the wardrone 15 completely.
16
[ Laughter.?
17 MR. BAllADUR:
What happened over these several 18 f.3nths is a situation where we looked back and saw wnat we 19 have done in the last six, seven years spending $11 million 20 every -- or $12 million every year.
And where we were in 21 terms of the existing results and what we can do furth>r 22 this $1.E million which is what I'm going to present to you 23 today.
24 One of the things that we found was that in order 25 for us to be useful in the mission of tF agency the program ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES,
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had to shift away from a focused research tow rds the
()
2 program.
You couldn't afford to spend $1.5 million 3
depending upon what program was important today versus what 4
program was important tomorrow.
You had to come up with a 5
ntrategy, with an approach which was conListent, constant, 6
and looked towards what are the issues on the generic level.
7 And that's how this program has been evolved.
8 Research has also been active on the internativnal 9
scene which is what I have tried to describe on the second 10 bullet.
They have always been very active in finding out 11 what the other countries have been doing in the areas of 12 waste management and radionuclide transport.
And we made a 13 lot of useful contacts as a result.
14 We coupled with a number of countries to have the I
15 cooperative research.
And as I go through the background 16 I'll give you some 2xamples.
And then, of course, we 17 participated in a number of focused research projects.
18 As I was mentioning, that third bullet is--so over 19 the last two years we have phased out high-level waste and 20 low-level waste completely, and right now we are in a-21 generic program which is geared more towards a range of 22 regulatory decisions that the Agency has to ma.'.e, not only 23 in the waste management but in the decommissioning of waste 24 sites and the reclamation of mill sites and, of course, the 25 spent fuel storage and the disposal.
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]
1 (Slide.)
()
2 MR. BAllADUR:
What I would 3,ike to do is to take 3
this opportunity to list out some specific accomplishments 4
that we can summarize which have happened over the last six 5
to eight years while we were active in the high-level and j
6 the low-level waste.
1 7
We made substantial progress in understanding the
[
8 unsaturated and saturated flows.
We did that by means of f
j 9
developing models, analytical conceptual models, and by also l
10 running through field data.
The MIT was very active with us 11 in the earlier stages.
University of Arizona has been very j
12 active which, of course, has continued until recently.
And 13 c.s a result we published a monograph with the American q
14 Geophysical Union, the Monograph 42, which summarizes our
()
15 werk in this particular field.
And currently we are 16 considering revising that monograph to include recent l
17 research results.
18 Second, the detection and resolution of cement 19 waste from degradation problem.
We worked with the INEL, 20 NIST was involved in that work and we actually had a 21 wor., shop in collaboration with NIST.
And then as a result 22 of that a branch technical position was published on waLte 23 forms.
24 We did work. on the Apache Leap site in Arizona, 25 And the result of that was a clear demonstration, the 4
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importance of fractured flow when you're talking about the
()
2 movement of water through a soil / rock m7dia.
This was also 3
done in collaboration with the University of Arizona.
4 Resolution of the plutonium issue in the NAS Ward 5
Valley.
Our sole-stem database which we developed in 6
collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey was used in 7
making the issue of the plutonium more decisively as to what 8
the amount of waste stream there is.
9
[ Slide.)
10 MR. BAHADUR:
Mr. Garrick, as I was mentioning 11 before we started I just second-guessed the intent of this 12 talk.
I wasn't sure how much detail would you want me to go 13 to.
So if you *hink that my pace is slower and I need to 14 gloss over this background, I'm willing to do that and get (Os,)
15 to the current estate, but if you think this is important to 16 you, then I can just go through this.
I have about two 17 pages of this that I can -- would that be okay?
18 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
Yes.
19 MR. BAHADUR:
The developed data on establishment 20 of the retardation process both with Los Alamos and also 21 with the U.S. Geological Survey.
22 We developed the source term on the low-level 23 waste and developed a code, the BLT code, which is now used 24 in the performance assessment.
And, of course, we generated 25 data and codes to implement the performance assessment O-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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analysis.
This was also done by the Brookhaven 11ational
()
2 Lab.
3 Sandia has been very active in helping us 4
developing the performance assessment methodology.
First 5
they helped us in the high-level waste when we were looking 6
at the basalt and the tuff sites.
Later when our shift 7
became stronger in the low-level waste, then we took that PA 8
methodology and then promulgated that into the low-level 9
waste.
10 Recently when the shift was on the decommissioning 11 Sandia is now helping us out on applying the low-level waste 12 methodology into the decommissioning sort of issues.
And 13 later on as Bill Ott will tell you, one of our current 14 projects is with the Department of Energy and the EPA, And
()
15 we are all pulling resources to come up with a comprehensive 16 performance assessment methodology which will be able to 17 help us on a number of decision -- a number of issues in 18 which we need to make regulatory decisions.
19 We worked with NIST on the long-term degradation 20 of concrete and developed a code we call 4 SIGHT.
It's a 21 mathematical conceptual model.
We haven't done any lab 22 testing.
We haven't done any field work to make sure 23 whether this model works or not.
However, our current 24 program is geared towards that direction.
Bill will talk 25 about that as well.
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/;;WTi 31 ys l We have been presenting 4 SIGHT to whoever is 1
()
2 interested in this.
About two months back we went to 3
University of -- state of Pennsylvania because they showed 4
the desire to understand 4 SIGHT so that they could apply 5
this to their problems.
About a month back I had gone to 6
Europe to open dialogue with NMRP countries on collaboration 7
of research.
And I was presenting this program te people in G
Paris, they indicated that they are working on the low-level 9
-- the long-term degradation effect on concrete because of 10 their low-level waste sites.
And they would be interested 11 in seeing how the 4 SIGHT model will test against in that 12 they are connected.
We haven't made any progress in that so 13 far.
But we plan to.
14 (Slide.]
()
15 MR. BAHADUR:
Engineered covers was another area 16 in which we were very active until about two years back.
17 And we collected very useful data on these covers at the 18 University of California at Berkley and the University of 19 Maryland.
Actually we still have the existing covers out in 20 the field that we are monitoring on the long-term basis.
21 It's located in Beltsville, Maryland and Bill will give more 22 information on that as well.
23 With the Pacific Northwest labs we developed the 24 infiltration evaluation methodology.
And we eetimated the 25 downward migration of water through covers, soils and O
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fractured rock.
()
2 And lastly we did a lot of work on the natural 3
analogs.
We did work with Sandia, USGS, Australia, with the 4
New Mexico State University of Arizona, and of course with 5
the center-down in Texas.
All this work on the natural 6
analog decisively indicated and shown that if you take the 7
natural analogs and apply that to the process that you have 8
in all these base facilities it gives you results which are j
9 more tending towards being realistic.
l 10
[ Slide.)
11 MR BARADUR:
So with this as a background we 12 looked at the issues that need further work and we 13 compartmentalized them into four major groups.
The first
{
14 group is the source term.
The source term is the origin of
)
15 our problem.
There is no source term, then there is no 16 contamination and we don't need any work.
17 Unfortunately, it's not only the source of our 18 problem, it is riso very difficult to attack source term and 19 come up with a generic approach because the variety is so 20 different.
It depends upon first of all whether you're 21 talking about the high-level waste or the low-level waste or 22 decommissioning of waste sites.
And witnin decommissioning 23 of waste sites it depends upon what was the process for that 24 particular site which has created this waste or this slag 25 that you are trying to be worried about.
So we believe that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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we need to understand that a little more.
We need to go
()
2 into details about the physical and chemical forms.
We need 3
to see the release mechanism of courca term.
4 Our second focus is on the engineered barriers.
5 At one time engineered barriers were looked more as covers 6
for the low-level waste facility.
But we are no lodger in l
7 that business.
So the question is, why do we need to see 8
engineered barriers.
And the answer is that we have these 9
sites where we are worrying about decommissioning of those 10 sites, and in some cases it is quite likely that the 11 remedial measures may require you to put a oteady wall or 12 other form of containment.
And the moment you start talking 13 about the containing of any entity, you're talking about the 14 engineered barriers.
For the long-range, long-term O
s_/
15 performance of an engineered barrier is of significance to T
16 us.
17 (Slide.)
18 MR. BAHADUR:
Transport processes which includes 19 both the flow as well as the chemical retardation.
These 20 have always been the sources of large uncertainty.
21 Continued understanding of what the flow process is, how 22 should we monitor that in the long-range to make sure that 23 what we want to do has already been achieved, and to 24 understand as to what the soil and rock masses are providing 25 in terms of retardation to the transport mechanism.
These
()
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are some of the areas that need further work or further
[)
2 refinement in the present state of knowledge.
3 And lastly, the integrated performance assessment.
4 That is, the ultimate goal is to take these 5
discipline-oriented bottles and data, whether it's a source 6
term or the transport process or the engineered barrier and 7
put them all together, string them together and then come up 8
with a method by which you can have a realistic radionuclide 9
concentration and consequent dose to public, 10 So these are the four areas in which our present 11 activities are concentrated.
And Bill will giv6 you more 12 detail of that.
13 Let me put my last slAde here.
14
[ Slide.)
/~'N
(,)
15 MR. BAHADUR:
And that's a slide which will tell 16 you how I changed my entire wardrobe when I was forced from 17 11 million to 1.5, of course, to be fair, it's not actually 18 1.5.
I think it's 2.2 million, but, you know, who is 19 counting.
20 The first thing I did was to start involving staff 21 into doing the in-house research work.
Change the culture 22 of the branch which was previously was entirely project 23 management because we are managing this $11 million worth of 24 projects for the center and the private contractors into a 25 culture where the staff member thinks that he or she is the O
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person who is actually doing the work.
()
2 When we say we need to go out and review the 3
literature, not to put an RFP so that a contractor can come 4
and do it for us.
We go in the lab and we go in the library 5
and see what's available and see where the gaps are and see 6
where we need to do more work.
That's not very easy.
It 7
was very easy in my case because every staff member in their 8
heart wanted to be a research worker.
Project management 9
was not in their forte.
They didn't want to do it.
They 10 had to do it because this was in their job description.
So l
11 the moment they knew that they don't have to be project 12 managers, it was like, bring the bottle, where is the party.
13 So this was very easy for me to do it because the staff 14 members were already half way into that.
()
15 As a matter of fact, some of the contractors used 16 to complain to me that my staff member is not project 17 managers, they are technical directors when they were 18 telling the contractors to do exactly what they wanted done.
19 Anyway, I mean, that's old things.
20 So what we did was we started a cooperative 21 agreement with the Johns Hopkins University.
We did that 22 because they have lab facilities which we don't at NRC.
23 They have electron microscopes, electron probes where we 24 could put some slag samples and see what their mineral 25 contents are, what their physical structure is all about,
()
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how the radionu' elide interact with some of those physical O
2 structures.
V 3
Linda Kovach who has come in front of the 4
Committee several times in the past is right now working at 5
Johns Hopkins exactly on that problem.
She is taking the 6
slag samples and running that in the electron microscopes at 7
Johns Hopkins University.
8 We opened dialogue with the USGS and entered an 9
MOU with them.
USGS has a lot of work out in the field on a 10 number of issues that we are interested in.
And there are a 11' couple of sites that we want to test against some of our 12 models where the natural transport of radionuclide could be 13 observed.
14 We also offered agreement with the Agriculture
,(~
15 Research Center or Research Services, maybe, ARS?
16 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
Agriculture Research Service.
17 MR. BAHADUR:
Service, Agriculture Research l
18 Services.
Here the intent of their problem is very 19 different than ours.
However, the experiment is the same.
20 de are measuring the rain fall and then we are seeing how 21 much of it is going down into the soil so that we can 22 understand the infiltration process.
23 We are doing it because we want to know what's 24 happening to the radionuclide transport.
They want to know 25 it because they want to see how does this help them grow t
(( )
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tomatoes.
I mean, you know, it's a different intention, but
()
2 nevertheless the mechanism remains the same.
3 And, of course, we are working very closely with 4
NIST.
Remember I was talking about the 4 SIGHT model.
Now 5
the time has come to do some lab work and that's where the 6
NIST is going to be helping us.
7 We increased the bilateral movement -- the 8
bilateral exchange agreement with other countries.
I opened 9
dialogue with the Swiss because of their underground labs in 4
10 which a lot of experimentation are being done on retardation 11 and sorption.
They are very high on these field studies and i
12 field data, and we are very strong on conceptual models.
I 13 And I think it's a very good fit.
And the same thing would j
14 be true with Sweden which they are working right now on
()
15 their underground labs on similar problems of generating l
16 similar data and we can test our models against that as 17 well.
i 18 I was mentioning to you earlier about the French, 19 they are interested in the long-term concrete degradation 20 and other 4 SIGHT models would be tested against some of 21 their field data.
22 Now, the third bullet is that we are seeking 23 opportunities for jointly-funded projects.
We have 24 Alligator River which is still going on since we don't have 25 much money to spend, so we compensate that in terms of O
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3B orovidiu9 expertice.
we gend OU#
there in the terenceG' here theY eed our BUPP urn we 9e 311 the 1
question but I'm q
2 is, asking for in the interest not a 3
insight without n time I hope youcomplicated answer of 39 4
That curious ecessat-ily can give evolve yourabout how you
- th giving me lots me 5
some of detail.
strategic plan. e process you go th 6
I'm or steps that you go th Do you hav rough 7
to you e
to identify exaa forma. mechanism will undertake rough 8
month, but ov and not just in the ctly what search 9
er five years?
whatev er your planning hoshort-term, next 10 MR. BAHADUR:
rizon is, 11 three or mechanism for The question is 12 me to going to follow fr say one day that what is the formal 13 the formal m om today until this is the prog 14 branch which is giechanisms for that i the year 2000 ram I'm And one 15 which will reflect mission s the program plan ven a of 16 will prepar ery Ev would achiev that mission, th a program plan e
they are to be ie that mission 17 e
then the detailapproach by which and 18 mplemented.
ou s
19 We understand.
are in the as to how ev lving phase o
20 At therefore Sne time right now, as you we were v 21 almost ery focus d resear h 100 per coming from the pro cent responding to can e
22 c
gram and started finding out office.
the We user 1.eed 23 answered although the issues shifted NMSS and if need bcontinuous in 24 the by the to be 25 And we hav on with the 1taff membee done that e at the management level rs in the I had 7'
.s"
~ ~
38 1
providing expertise.
So we send our experts there in the
(
)
2 meetings, in the conferences, where they need our support or l
3 assistance, we provide that.
And in return we get all the 4
information that's been collected at that site.
5 For the USGS, the USGS is going to provide us a 6
site and we'll provide the model and we'll see where the fit 7
is.
ARS, SEDSS.
SEDSS is the program that, again, Bill 8
will talk more in detail.
That's the project in which NRC, 9
DOE, and EPA have gotten together to come up with a decision 10 system of performance assessment.
11 And, of course, last is our continued 12 participation in the international arena.
We have been 13 acting in some of the projects and will continue to do so.
14 And that's my current strategy by which I think a $2 million
- O (m,/
15 budget and the seven-people strong team of the radionuclide 16 transport program can provide the maximum benefits for 17 whatever is available.
18 With that as the prepared remarks, I can be here 19 and answer any questions, or I can ask Bill Ott to come and 20 complete the presentation.
21 MR. HORNBERGER:
Let's take questions now, if we 22 would, before we go-into the detail.
23 MR. BAHADUR:
Okay.
24 MR. HORNBERGER:
Sher, could you perhaps give me I realize that this is probably a very complicated 25
[
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question but I'm asking for not a complicated answer.
That 2
is, in the interest of time I hope you can give me some 3
insight without necessarily giving me lots of detail.
I'm 4
curious about how you -- the process you go through to 5
evolve your strategic plan.
Do you have a formal mechanism 6
or steps that you go through to identify exactly what search 7
you will undertake and not just in the short-tenn, next 8
month, but over whatever your planning horizon is, three or 9
five years?
10 MR. BAHADUR:
The question is, what is the formal 11 mechanism for me to say one day that this is the program I'm 12 going to follow from today until the year 2000.
And one of 13 the formal mechanisms for that is the program plan.
Every 14 branch which is given a mission will prepare a program plan 15 which will reflect that mission, the approach by which you 16 would achieve that mission and then the d9 tails as to how 17 they are to be implemented.
18 We are in the evolving phase right now, as you can 19 understand.
At one time we were very focused research and 20 therefore almost 100 percent responding to the user need 21 coming from the program office.
We shifted from that and 22 started finding out the issues which still remain to be 23 answered although the money has gene.
And we have done that 24 by the continuous interaction with the staff members in the 25 NMSS and if need be at the management level.
I had O
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presented this program to John Grieves about six months back
()
2 and I have an IOU to him to do that again in Ncvember.
3 This is not a user-need based: program, but at the 4
same time this program goes out to the public.
You do not l
5 want NMSS to stand up and say, I don't want to use it 6
because ultimately they are the ones who need to use that in l
7 their regulatory decisions.
So it's necessary for us to 8
make sure that John Grieves and his management sees the 9
usefulness of that.
11 0 So we'have done that.
And before I went to John 11 Grieves I presented this program to my management all the 12 way to the Office-Director.
At that time the Office 13 Director was Dale Morrison.
And we are now in the process 14 where we can finalize that into a formalized research
()
15 program-plan.
And when that happens then we come'in front 16 of the committee.
We present that to the committee and 17 eventually we'll go to the Commission if there interest at 18 the Commission level.
And that's my understanding of the 19
- formal process and I do know, Nick, if-there is anything I 20 have left and you would like to add.
21 MR. CASTANZI:
Nick Castanzi, Research.
I think 22 Sher said it=quite aptly.
The only thing really that I 23
- could add here is to say that when we realize that because 24 of budgetary constraints that it made sense to consolidate 25 the high-level waste program in NMSS and previously the' O
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Commission made a decision that icw-level waste research as
()
2 an identifiable program was no longer -- can no longer be 3
supported again for budgetary reasons.
It still remained 4
pretty obvious that there were some unanswered questions 5
that the Agency would have to deal with which involved the 6
behavior of radionuclides in the enuironment.
7 Ultimately a-radionuclide doesn't care whether it 8
came from high-level waste low-level waste, a mill tailing 9
slag pile, or whatever kind of contamination event on a 10 licensee.
So Sher began looking at the program from that 11 aspect.
Well, what do we know about the way radionuclides 12 behave in the environment under the various conditions that 13 a radionuclide could find itself and develop the program 14 from there,-looking at what we knew and what we didn't know.
)
15 That's what Bill will be talking about.
16 That's how we started the thinking and the 17 mechanism by which the various possibilities were brought 18 forth and discussed with NMSS and with Research management 19 Sher had described.
20 MR. HORNBERGER:
Thank you, 21 Sher, one other fairly complicated question and 22 for which I ask a simple answer.
That was-just right what 23 you did before.
And that is, the other kind of thing that 24 whenever I'm involved in any look at research a question 25 that always comes up is how you do peer review.
How do you s
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accomplish peer review of either your program plan that's
()
2 evolving or -- both that and the research resulta?
3 MR. BAHADUR:
The simple answer is yes.
We do 4
have a mechanism for peer review for our different research 5
projects.
It depends from project to project, and the work 6
which is either completed by a contractor in the past or is 7
now waiting to be completed by the staff members and go 8
through a peer review depending upon what that particular 9
problem is.
10 The program plan, as I said before, goes through 11 the research management, will go through the review by the 12 program offices, in this particular case my presentation to 13 Jchn Grieves about six months back and then I gave the 7
14 schedule for next month.
I don't think the exact date is
()
15 scheduled here.
And then when we come to the committee that 1
16 gives us an opportunity for the program to go out in the 17 public.
And I think that's the only thing I can think of 18 right now.
19 Nick has been associated with this program a lot 20 longer than I have been, and I think he would like to add a 21 couple of things too.
22 MR. CASTANZI:
I just want to add that it is the 23 policy of the Office of Research that all resesrch programs 24 or research individual projects in fact at some point have a 25 peer review.
The reason I say "at some point" is because D
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sometimes a peer review is gotten together in order to 2
review what is going to be done and tne way it is going to 3
be done to make sure that they're asking the right questions 4
and taking the right approach.
A peer review may be 5
conducted during the course of the work to make sure that 6
it's on track and then useful and hasn't strayed.
And 7
typically a peer review is done at the end as a check on the 8
quality.
9 And that is really a policy of the office that 10 unless there are some special' circumstances or it just 11 doean't make any sence that every research project indeed 12 does have peer review at some point.
And the waste 13 management branch's projects whether they're 1.eing conducted 14 by the individual staff who is doing the research.or there 15 is contractors involves, it makes no difference.
There is 16 still peer review, 17 MR. HORNBERGER:
Further questions?
18 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
You indicate as your program 19 goal to provide a performarce assessment capability.
I 20 realize that this is primarily a generic type research 21 program, but I'm curious, given that that is your goal, how 22 much have the results of the performance assessment work 23 influenced the scoping of the research program?
24 MR. BAHADUR:
Let's assume that you are conducting 35 the performance assessment and you have come to a certain ANN R2 LEY & ASSOCT.ATES, LTD.
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value of dose.
The question is whether this value of dose
()
2 is going to make any difference in my research program.
3 Let's just cake an example of a program which is used very 4
vitally, the DND Program, the DND code for decommissioning.
5 It aska you certa;n very simple questions about your source 6
term, 2nd then when you run the program it gives you an 7
e s t'i m a's u d d c E 9 If that dose is below your prescribed 8
limits, you dotUt worry.
The problem comob when the l
9 question that-you -- the answ'er that you got is much above 10 the 25 million M that day the regulations require you to i
'11 have.
I
.12 And the.1 what you do is then you ask -- you the 13 licensee ask yourself a question, where I can get more 14 information in my process, whether in the source. term, the
()
15 characterization of the site so that I can now take t '
16 advantage of some of the transpott mechanisms which is 17 giving m retardation or whatever.
And then see whether I 18 can put all those parameters and then find out whether I 19 have to meet the regulations or not, 20 Now, to have that opportunity available to you, 21 you need a program to be responsive to your need.
And this A
22 perfermance assessment capability which is a comprehensive, 23 flexible, user-friendly progtam would give you that 24 approximate.
And I may be stealing the large-standard, but 25 the SEDDS that we have that would be thu Sandia Environment
/
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Decision System.
The name is very terrible, but the reason
()
2 Sandia is doing it, they have to put their name to it and 3
call it SEDDS.
4 But what it does is, it's a driver which loops all 5
the existing models available for a particular discipline, 6
cource terms, hydrology, chemis'.:ry, all the chemical 7
chare teristics of the media, and the flow.
And when you 8
run that program it will eventually be capable to tap only 9
those models which are applicable to the situation for that 10 particular case for which this program is being run.
11 So you put the details of your source term, and 12 you put the details of your geohydrology characteristics, 13 your chemical environment, your flow characteristics and see 14 what dose estimates you got.
And if you meet the
)
15 regulations, fine.
If you do not meet the regulations, as a 16 licensee you will have one of the two choicesi r.ther you 8
17 can go back and have the remedial measures for the 18 containment something or haul this thing away, or see more 19 studies to make sure that the dose you're getting is a 20 realistic dose.
And that's where I think it is more based 21 on the cost, 22 The research that comes in the picture to make 23 sure-that those models in the data cells that you are using 24 are the realistic data, the realistic model, models that 25 have minimized the uncertainty associated with these firms.
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CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
I think George asked a
()
2 complicated question and you give a simple answer.
I ask a 3
simple question and --
4
[ Laughter.)
5 CRAIRMAN GARRICK:
-- I'm not sure I got a simple 6
answer, but I understand what you're saying.
7 I wanted to make one more observation and ask it 8
in the form of a question.
l 9
MR. BAHADUR:
Is it a simple question?
10 (Laughter.)
11 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
It sounded like one of the 12 things you were saying was that in order to accommodate the 13 budget reductions, a lot of the phenomological research, if 14 I may use that term, is sort of being substituted for what I
)
15 might call methods research.
Is that a reasonable 16 characterization?
It sounds like when the center becomes 17 less involved and the laboratories become less involved that 18 what's happening is that it becomes more -- or moves more in 19 the direction of paper -- what some people might call paper 20 research or methods development research as opposed to 21 research that is seeking answers at the phenomena --
22 phenomological level.
23 MR. BARADUR:
I think that's a good observation.
24 As a 30-second sound byte, what I can say a little 25 differently is previously we were trying to solve a ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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particular problem or an issue which was identified by the 2
program office, vulcanism, okay.
So let's go and see what's 3
happening in the vulcanism.
Unsaturated flow, well, let's 4
see what's happening there.
Let's study that.
Let's see 5
What's going on.
And it's very focused in those areas.
Now 6
what we are doing is we are doing work to plug the holes 7
where we have identified the holes, you know, to come to 8
this comprehensive performance assessment capability for the 9
estimation dose.
10 It is difficult for me to say that this work is 11 all nothing but paper generation, but I think this is more 12 geared towards the ultimate goal of coming up with that 13 performance assessment.
So I think it's more focused than 14 that.
I
'15 MR. WYMER:
I have a couple of comments, but not a 16 specific question, so I'll wait until af t sr the next 17 speaker.
18 MR. HORNBERGER:
Okay.
19 MR. BAHADUR:
If it's okay then, shall I request 20 Bill Ott to show up?
21 MR. HORNBERGER:
That will be fine.
~
22 Bill, I have a question before you start and that 23 is, roughly how much time do ycu need, just a rough 24 estimate?
25 MR OTT:
I'm into my time management phase now.
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[ Laughter.1
()
2 MR. OTT:
As little Sr as much as you want.
3 MR. HORNBERGER:
Okay.
If you esuld give us a 4
presentation that would be maybe 15 minutes so that we would 5
have time to interact with you with questions and answers.
l 6
That may mean that you have to restrict yourself to one or l
7 two examples rather than six or seven, I don't know, i
8 MR. OTT:
All right.
I'll do my best.
i
-9 I'm Bill Ott, by the way, 10 I want to -- before we get into that package, I 11 want to.make some observations about some of the other 12 questions.
The format here-today without the side table 13 with the extra microphone makes it difficult to jump in.
- 14 I'm not quite sure where to start.
In terms of
)
15 budget, there are published budgets out thero available.
16 The official budget for like last year was probably 1.5 17-million, but we got supplements that brought it up to 2.2.
18 If you talk to people around the Office of Research you'll 19 find out that our branch is regardedlas being rather
,20 inquisitive.
If there's empty -- if there's available money 21 lying around we sniff it out and we go jump on it.
22
[ Laughter.)
23 MR. OTT:
So we have a-tendency to generally spend 12 4
.more money than is actually budgeted because we have far.
25 greater needs if you're going to look at a budget that's O
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1 gone from 11 to 1.5 million.
And even at 11 million we were
()
2 still looking for extra dollars to get things accomplished.
3 On the question.of peer review, we interact quite 4
actively with the National Academy.
We support a couple of 5
subcommittees.
We go to them for what_you would call 6
informal reviews.
So we actually take our programs there 7
and ask them.
You'll also find out that our staff are not 8
bashful. ~ They will sit down-and talk with anybody, any 9
time, take any opportunity to make a presentation to a 10 meeting and get feedback.
We're also fairly active at j
11 putting together things like workshops to try and get other 12 people to come in and talk about it.
I'll speak about one 1
13 specific example a little farther on.
t 14-In prior years the office used to put together a
, ()
15 list of peer reviewed products which they would send up from l
16 the office director up to EDO as, you know, this is what my 17 office did this year.
In past years when we had an $11 18 million budrat which was still maybe 10 percent of the j-19 office's budget, usually about 30 to 35 percent of that was l
20
' office list of products, very good products came out of our L
l 21 branch.
We're a very small branch, but we're responsible 22 for a-large portion of the Office's activities.
23 MR. OTT:
That's all I'm going to do on that right l
24 now.
There are a-lot of other things I was going to l
25-mention, but I'll move on.
l i
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1
[ Slide.)
i ()
2 MR. OTT:
Structure and planning.
You asked the 3
question about program plans and things like that.
We --
4 when we were in high-level waste -- had a very extensive 5
program plan which you've asked for copies of, NUREG 1406 6
the draft.
I've got them upstairs, I forgot to bring them 7
down.
There are two versions the '92 version and '94 8
version.
Those are very thick documents.
They were 9
designed around the regulation and around user needs from 10 the office.
We had very specific requests from them which 11 are also very thick and extensivn.
12 We had to put those into context and we put them 13 into the context of the regulations and what the Agency had 14 to do to make regulatory decisions.
Recent acts of Congress
()
15 are changing what we're going to do.
There's a planned 16 revision, Part 60, so any new work that they're doing in 17 going to be organized around a different premise.
So way 18 back then we organized around the regulations.
We did the 19 same thing in low-level waste.
There is a published NUREG 20 out that represents the planning that we used to do on 21 low-level waste.
22 There is an evolution and a standard format for 23 program plans that was developed in the office.
That's been 24 replaced by a new directive and program plans are nov 25-operating plans and thereia a new office prescribed format
()
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for that.
So there are all sorts of administrative things
()
2 that go into our planning process that just complicate the 3
living daylights out of things.
4 What you see before you is a conceptualization of 5
the performance assessment process.
If you're in high-level 6
waste you could look at this and say, hey, that's a diagram 7
of high-level waste.
If you're in low-level waste, you can 8
say that's a diagram of what we do in low-level waste.
If 9
you think about it more closely, source term, everybody's 10 got a source term.
High-level waste has engineered 11 canisters, they have drifts, they have all sorts of things.
12 A low-level _ waste facility has perhaps faults, perhaps 13 concrete monolifts.
When they have slurry walls, when they 14 have covers at disposal sites or decommissioning sites, they
()
15 have covers on the tailings, riprap covers, that kind of 16 thing, and a engineered barrier for any kind of situation 17 where you might have right in the client transport.
You 18 have pathwayn, you have contamination of the ground, you 19 have soils, you have fractured rocks, unfractured rocks.
20 Essentially what we've tried to do is take a look 21 at the overall problem and say, this is conceptually the 22 problem we have to deal with.
And then we've used this to 23 organize our program.
24 The one part of'this program which doesn't obey 25 the' law of being generic is the source term problem.
(O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD,
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Unfortunately source terms aren't generic.
They're very
()
2 highly specific.
Low-level waste is a great big polygon of 3
everything dumped into it.
But it depends on who dumps and 4
what's dumped and what the actual source term is.
And it 5
depends on the design of the facility what that source term 6
looks at the end of the engineered part of it.
7 We're looking at slag samples that come from 8
industrial processing of ore, what you've got is 9
concentrations of radioactive -- small pockets of 10 radioactivity that were in those ores to begin with that 11 have become concentrated in the slags.
It depends on what 12 source the ore was what the content of the slag is.
It also 13 depends on the ore process what the slag is and how it 14 degrades over time.
(O) 15 If we're looking at a uranium recovery facility 16 with a tailings pile, it's a different beast.
So if we're 17 doing source term work, we're going a little bit outside of 18 that bounds of everythine being generic, but we don't see 19 how we can solve the Agency's problem or helo the Agency 20 solve it's problem without doing some source term work.
So 21 we are planning to do some source term work.
22 Anyway, this is the way we're going to organize 23 it.
24
[ Slide.)
25 MR OTT:
Sher gave you a two-pager on this.and O
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I'11'.Ijust go over-it briefly in summary.
We plan to do
()
- 2 field laboratory and' analytical studies.
You asked the
-3 questiontabout whether we're getting paper oriented.
4 Actually we're getting less paper oriented than we used to P
5' be because_with $1.5 million we don't have near as many 4
6 projects.
We're sending people out in the-field.
7 Linda in about 80 percent of her time up at Johns 8
Hopkins, only spends about 20 percent of her time back here.
9 She's also co-manager on another project as well as doing 10 the laboratory work that she's doing.
She's far happier 11 doing that than reviewing the other.
She's also going'to be-12 involved as a geochemistry expert in a field study that's l
)
13 being funded by~the USGS.
14-Tom Nicholson and Ralph Cedi are both working with O)
\\s, 15 ARS at a field-site out in Beltsville looking at monitoring 16 technology, that project that the Sher-discovered that the 17 Agriculture Research Service is actually looking-at 18-instrumentation and monitoring.
These are out-in-the-field' 19
-programs-that-we're talking about'here.
And the one with
-20 the USGS'is also'out in the field.
- 21' In terms of source term we really do need a lot of 22 Linformation on inventories and_on chemical and physical 23 forms.
24-Engineered barriers, as Sher said, we've actually 25 developed a model based-primarily on theory for concrete
()
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performance-- What we don't have is any data that confirms 2-t.
3 If you look at the BTP that was put out in
- 4
' low-level waste, they make assumptions about how long those
-5 barriers will last.
But.they make those assumptions without 6
any data to-support them.-
7-We're going out in this project to try and collect 8-data in the field from in-service concretes both in this 9
country which may have been in place for, you know, up to 10 100 years, and if possible internationally to see how these 11 concretes perform with regard to the predictions of-12 foresight.
Trying to go out and actually collect data.
13 Transport models, I'll go into that in a little 14-bit more detail.
We're just trying to get more realism into
'15 that.
And, of course, it all boils down to whether we can
~
16' put it into an executive model and make the calculation.
We 17-do all-this detail work and don't incorporate it into the PA 18 methodology,.what good is it if they're sitting out there as 19' isolated models.
20-(Slide.]
21-MR. OTT:
Our objective here on the source term is
-22:
'get-more-realism into this project _and into this; process.
-23 We're trying to look at radionuclide species, physical:and 24 chemical-form,a nd the amount for each. type of 25 contamination.
-I've got to remember to do something else ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES,-LTD.
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5:
.1 before I continue.
2-You've got a big package in front of you.
I've 3.
onlylgot viewgraphs on like the first four or-five pages of 4-it.
The rest of it is a detailed list, one page per 5:
project, for everything that is currently active in the 6
branch.
Some of those projects are ending.
They are 7
essentially holdovers from the old low-level waste program.
-8 When our funding was terminated we looked at the F
9 work and we'said, is it in the best interest of the 10=
Commission to terminate this work, or should we carry it to 11 a'reasonab)e point of conclusion.
And we found additional 12 funds elsewhere in the office to complete almost all of the 13 original-scopes for each of those projects.
They were 14 er;sentially forward-funded.
Most of them will have ended by i
15 the end of this year.
There is pages in there on those.
16 So'if you look at them and say, hey, there's 17 low-level waste research going on, that's true.
It's a 18 carry-over from the old program and is ending.
19 Taere's a-page-on the front which is a summary of 20 new procurement, things - that we actv-11y did this year.
In 21 one case Linda-Veblins' work at John Hopkins has like five 4
22 FIN numbers on it.
That's because it involves-a whole lot f
23-of thinga.
We have to pay for time on the TEM, we have to 24:
cpay time for some analyses-she's having done up at Franklin 25
.and Marshall, we have to pay for a graduate student-that's I
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'1:
'actually supporting her, so it's about four or five
~
()
2 fdifferent contract actions, but it's all involved with the 3
slag-work.
4-Now, I'llLgo back to this.
I just-had to explain 5
what was in that package because I don't1 intend to go i
6 through in detail each one of those projects.
1
'7-
[ Slide.]
i 8_
MR. OTT4 We'ra very strongly.looking at the j
'9 leachability of-waste forms..The slag work right now is i^
l 10 l'ooking at how these slags leach.
Linda is trying to 11-characterize the slags both the newer ones and the older j
12-ones to determine how those mineral phases change and how-13 radionuclides are released from those mineral phases as they 14 age so we can get both theoretical and-practical leach ~ rates I
)
15 becavse part of our program at INEL is looking at the actual s
j 16 leaching of the slags in doing actual leaching tests.
17
[ Slide-)-
18' MR.-OTT:
We've already. discussed what's on the 19 engineered barriers here except for -- okay_-- the current 20 project with NIST is specifically looking.at-the-durability 21 of concrete.- Concrete is the only real barrier material.
22 we've looked at.
That's not the only kind of barrier
'23 material that's going to be.used..
There are also things 24
-like1geomembranec, there's a-possibility of: use_ of chemical 25 barriers.
There are other' barrier concepts which go-into O
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engineering the containment of radionuclides which you would
()
2 like to look at the in the longer term.
s_.
3 This goes back again to Dr. Garrick's question 4
about how do we plan?
Well, in this particular case we've 5
looked at tne range of barriers that mignt be applied for 6
containment.
We've done the first step because we were well 7
along the way and there was concrete that was started out in 8
the low-level waste program.
So we'll have some information 9
on -- we've got the model, it's available on the Internet, 10 and we'll have the data within a couple of years to 11 demonstrate how well it does on real samples.
Then v-'
want 12 to move into looking at some of the other barrier materials 13 and barrier concepts in this engineered barrier program.
14 Then one of the things they also want to establish I
15 is protocols and strategies for long-term monitoring of 16 these engineered barriers.
17 (Slide.]
18 MR. OTT:
Transport processes.
We have two major 19 thrusts here.
One is looking at flow modeling.
We just 20 completed a competitive procurement in September for a new 21 project which is looking at conceptual models.
One of the 22 problems you have when you model a hydrogeologic system is, 23 what is the appropriate conceptual model?
If you talk to 24 five different experts and put them all in five different, 25 separate rooms and don't let them talk together, they might ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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- ll each actually;come'up with a different way of describing the 21 system _
3-Which-one is the best way of describing.:the 4
system?
Well, we put out-'an RFP and we've got a contractor, 5:
he's going to look at four different field sites.
And the I6l way-you-would wind up actually doing the conceptual model 7-description and arriving'at what-you in the end want to say, 8
this is my conceptual model of the project -- of the site.
9 We have the work at ARS which is looking at soil 10 monitoring.
We have a couple of other projects, I don't 11 want to try and-recall them right now.
12 In the area of geochemistry, and this is where 13 I'll go back into that workshop concept I talked about.
.14 We've been doing geochemistry work ever since I've been in IL the program, probably since the early '80s.
We had 3 large 16' contract.with Lawrence Berkley Laboratory and' John Apps did 17 extensive work'for us for-about five years.
His work was 18 eventually transferred ~to the center and we did quite a bit 19 of work with the center for Nuclear. Waste Regulatory
-20 Analysis for-a number of years, 21 In parallel.back in the early '80s we got involved 22-with the Australians looking at Alligator Rivers.
It's a 23--
cangara ore body out in the Northern Australia area.
We 24 -
Lworked with them for a number of years primarily funded
'25 ~
through-the high-level waste program and at the end of it, ANN ~RILEY & ASSOCIATES,-LTD.
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George Breshard who is not with us any longer said, there is
()
2 an opportunity here to do something for the low-level waste 3
program because we've got this unsaturated zone at the 4
surface and we can look at the actual uranium migration or 5
uranium moving in the upper layers or the ore zone.
So we 6
started a very focused program to look at uranium sorption.
7 At the end of that -- well, they're actually 8
coming to an end right now -- the project manager says, 9
we've got a good idea of how surface complexation can be 10 applied, mechanistic models to the movement of uranium.
11 We hosted the meeting of the joint technical 12 committee for the international group that's overseeing this 13 Alligator Rivers project, analog studies in the Alligator 14 River region out, at Minlow Park this last January and since
-O
(,/
15 I had all of the international people there that were 16 looking at this uranium migration I said, well, let's have a 17 workshop.
We'll bring together all of our contractors 18 working on mechanistic modeling and have a one-day werkshop 19 and see if we can come up with some conclusions afterward.
20 There was a lot of concern expressed at the 21 workshop.
They said, people have been looking at 22 mechanistic models sorption for years and nobody has done 23 anything with it.
People are going to get tired of this 24-after a while.
And so I challenged the workshop.
I said, 25 look, it's true, we spent money, DOE spent money, a lot of AFN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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people spent money, are-we ever going to be in a position to
()
21 make a demonstration?
Our USGC contractor who is working on 3
this for us said, I_-think it can be done now based on the 4
work that we've done in Alligator River.
I think we know 5-enough about the PH dependence, the INX strength dependents 6
and the sorping substraight dependence, uranium sorption to 7
try and apply surface complexation models to some kind of a 8
PA analysis.
So he said, okay, that sounds interesting.
l 9
We're going to go back and think about whether we want to
}
10 try and do that.
-11 Along about the same time we got involved with the 12 OEC DNA sorption project.
The sorption project is an effort 13 that's going on for abvut a year now.
We got in a little 14 bit late.
Our international concacts had gotten a little 15 fu :y-in the years that.we were transitioning between 16 high-level waste, low-level waste and generic research.
But 17 we got knowledge of it through-the Alligator Rivers meetings 18.
because of the OEC DNA_ representative that comes there, and 19 we became participants in the sorption project.
20
__ e sent-two_ people _over to a meeting in Oxford in W
21 April or May-.
They're looking at the same problem, should 22 we be moving towards mechanistic modeling.
Everybody was 23
_ upset -- upset -- everybody criticizes the KD approach.
We
~
24-have a constant parameter that tries to represent a constant
-25
-- or a highly variable system.
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Our representatives-there raised the thought that 2;
we thought that we-were in a position-'to perhaps do a 3f demonstration.
Uniformly-we got responses back that said, 4
one, they-were impressed with the mechanistic modeling work 5
. we had been doing both at USGS and.at Sandia National 6
Laboratory and other projects that we've been doing, and 1
7 that if a demonstration is possible at this_ time, it sure 4
8 would be a good thing to do.
)
9 So we have,_in fact, placed in September a new l
j 10 contract with the USGS under a new and revised memorandum of 11 understanding with the USGS that we'll be looking at 4
12 applying mechanistic models of uranium transport to a site 13 where uranium is known to be moving, and where the chemical 14
~ conditions are known to be variable,
-s i
g s,/ -
15_
So one of the things they're doing right now.is 16 looking for that site.
They had one in mind out at Fry
.17 Canyon where they're working with EPA on reactive barriers 18-where they know the PH is a function of position, And.they J
19
-know there is fairly high_ ionic strength in the waters.
So 20 they have one: place where they would like to,try.
We said, l
l 21 let's-make sure we've got the right place.
So that's the 22 place that we're trying to do that right now and it's the 23' result of substantial peer review.
24'
_ We brought together all of our experts in 25--
geochemistry and transport modeling.
We had with us the O
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Australian experts, the Japanese experts, the Korean experts
(
)
2 that are working on it and an NEA representative who is 3
familiar with what's going on in Europe.
So there's an 4
example of where we actually used peer revieu in an active 5
mode there and through the sorption project meeting in 6
Cxford to help us determine what to do in our research 7
program on sorption.
8 That's a whole lot more than was on the slide, but 9
I thought it was amplification of what you talked about 10 earlier.
So I went ahead and did it.
11 (Slide.)
12 MR. OTT:
Performance assessment.
Basically the 13 Sandia environmental decision support system is the only 14 pile t re'll pooling ir.tegrated money in right now, money
()
15 for perrormance assessment.
Sandia has been our contractor 16 now since the early days of high-level waste in the 17 performance assessment area, About three or four years ago 18 both DOE and EPA went to Sandia and were looking at 19 performance. assessment for a wide range of hazardous sites.
20 Not just radionuclides.
They were interested in looking at 21 the chemical contaminants as well.
That's why EPA is 22 involved in this.
23 And the model goes beyond just making a 24 performance assessment calculation.
This particular effort 25 is supposed to look at the cost of remediation efforts.
It ANN _RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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wil1[have a capability in the end of~ identifying what it i
~
2'-
will cost to apply a-given remediation measure to a 3
-particular site or a'particular problem.
-4
~ I think you've probably had presentations on it --
4 5
well',-the committee's membership changing, I don't know why 4
l 6
have or not.
Eventually you will problem see SEDSS in all I
of its glory and you'll see that there's a tremendous 7
].
8
' breadth in to go far beyond what we're looking for in terms of just doing radionuclide transport.
The part that we're 10 looking at primarily is radionuclide transport system.
l 11 ^
Your package now immediately goes to the summary J
_12 page.
And that summary page is the list of new procurements 13 for this year.
I don't intend to-go through that.
If you 14 have questions on it, I'll answer-them.
And after that, l'~\\
\\_ /
15 organized by the project manager.
There's a blank sheet l'
16 there with the guy's name on it. -And that guy's name ic the 17 guy that's responsible for all the projects until the next
-18 guy's name appears.'
19-So if you guys have questions about individual 20; projects, feel free to call the-project manager and talk to 21 him.about it.
~
ll 22 Individual sheets, you have a brief statement of 23 the' scope of the work.
They give a status.
The status is
-24 accurate to within six months.
Some of the stuff we've 25 revised just recently and other stuff hasn't been revised ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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for six months or so.
()
2 This doesn't include anything that we might plan 3
to start this next year.
As a matter of internal 4
displeasure amongst the staff, officially at tnia point, 5
unless we can get some more funds, we don't have any money 6
to start anything new this year.
But we have c request in 7
for additional funds already.
And what Sher said yesterday, 8
we actually may have gotten some.
So there may be a couple 9
of more new starts in here in the program in the coming 10 year.
But right now this represents the full scope of what 11 we have authorized in the budget.
There may be a couple of 12 more new initiatives, but -- and we know what those are, but 13 I can't really discuss them at this time.
14 MR. HORNBERGER:
Thank you very much, Bill, p/
(_,
15 Are there questions from the committee for Bill?
16 MR. WYMER:
I have just a small one.
At first I 17 was a little concerned when I heard the discussion about 18 generic search.
I couldn't see how you could do generic 19 research on specific radionuclide transport for example, but 20 it's your comment that you clearly recognized that and you 21 are do some specific research.
22 Along that line, I wonder if you can give us some 23 notion of when you're looking at retardation for chemical 24 environment to what extent havu you considered the variance 25
[
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.1~
Okay.
Anyway,~I wondered to.what extent you were
-()
2_
lookings at the-valent. states.-
One of the reasons I-bring it l
r 3
upLis,,.for example, people.always consider the technician to
- 4 be the-protecnotape.
Now there's some pretty good evidence 1
i-5 out at Danforth, at-least, that it's not the_protecnotape, 3
6=
it doesn't behave like protecnotape.
It behaves like poor b
j-7-
valent technician, so to what extent have you looked at h
l 8
this?
f-91 MR..OTT:
Unfortunately our radiochemist isn't 10 here today.
We have programs right now at PNL and at-INEL
-11 that are looking~-- doing our waste form work.
And they j-12-would be. identifying whatever is released in terms of it's f
-13 chemical form and valent-state.
The uranium work at ASAR 14 has'been looking at uranium'6 plus six -- plus 6 state.
, ()
L15-There_is conscious-knowledge of the. fact that these have 16 multiple valent states and'in their different valent states 4
'17 they have different-sorptions, different solubilities.
(
18 We have another project 1that's looking at i
~
119 radionuclide solubility and__that would be-looking also as a j
20 function of:PH and valent state.
L
=21
. MR. WYMER:
You.said that you're looking at valent 22' states as they are: identified as coming _from the source?
23 MR. OTT:
Right.
24~
MR. WYMER:
.That may not be quite enough because 25-they1made --
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. ~. -. -. - -.... -.. -
(.
4
.I 66-1
}
1 MR. OTT:
I agree -- well,- let me say -- let me 2/
add something to"the description I gave of the sorption j
3 work..We felt 1that we were at a proper point to make a 4
demonstration.
About the only nuclide that we think we had 5-the'information to make the demonstration on is uranium.
6 MR. WYMER:
Yeah.
7 MR. OTT:
If we can prove or show that we can l
8 handle mechanistically uranium in a PA context, that gives 9
us the motivation'to do much more detailed work on other 10 radionuclides and their respective valent states.
If we l
11 can't handle something that we know already fairly well in 12 terms of uranium'--
l' 13 MR. WYMER:
You're in trouble --
14 MR. OTT:
-- there is some question as to --
15 excuse me?
9.
16 MR. WYMER:
You're in trouble, 17.
[ Laughter. ]
j i
- 18 MR. OTT:
There's some question as to whether
~
(
19-mechanistically we can proceed.
T. mean, we-have to get-20 success-out of the-work that the USGS;is doing on mechanistic modeling or we throw up our hands and.say, you' 21 4
22-know, the state-of-the-art is not adequate for us to be able 23 to handle these things in1the PA context mechanistically.
24 MR. WYMER:
Okay. -Well, I'll be interested in J
-- 2 5 following the progress in that-line.
1 b
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One other question, We-talk about looking at j )
2-
-concreted, you know, there are-a lot of different kinds of 3
concrete.
I wondered which one you settled on?
4 MR. OTT:
That would be better handled by Jake who 5
is the individual that works there. -We're looking at 6
concrete not structurally.
We're looking primarily at the 7
concretes that would be the current ones used in P low-level 8
waste facility.
That's what it was originally designed for.
9 In theory -- the theoretical model, and here I 10 have to refer you to the Internet.
I mean, if you can get a 11-copy of 4 SIGHT or call' Jake Phillip who is the project 12 manager, my guess is that the input variables to the model 13 are probablyl capable of handling different concrete.
14 MR. WYMER:
Okay.
()
15-MR. OTT:
Okay..That's as;far as I can go in 16 terms of answering that question bet suse I'm certainly not 17 an expert in that field.
18 MR. WYMER:
One final question following up on 11 9 something that George asked about peer review.
Now, there
-20 is a lot of discussion about peer review going on right now 21 particularly in DOE.
And.I wondered if you have a peer 22 review of your planned research as opposed.to your --
23 MR. OTT.:
Published research?
24 MR. WYMER:' -- finished research?
Yeah,- did they 25-peer review the selection _ process, what you're going to work ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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on?
_[v)
-2 MR. OTT:
Internally only._ And I say that because 3
_the process'is changing right now.
The old NUREG 1406, the L4 draft NUREG that you all got copies rf, the intention there 5-was to send that out and get public comment.
And_ send it 6_
out to everybody in the world, and send it out to technical 7
experts as well and solicit people's views on it.
We also 8
-made-presentations on that-plan to the ACNW, to the NSRRC.
9 As I said earlier,-at the drop of a hat we would do that
-10
.before any technical body.
11 In individual areas such as the concrete work 12
-we've actually-presented that work to the National Academy 13 subcommittees out of National Academy.
But in terms of peer 14 review cf the actual plan and its current context which is
)
15 these operating plans which are administratively designed to 16.
fit a' budget purpose, I'm not certain they actually have 17-enough technical content to warrant peer review.
So, a 18 formal. peer review-of that internal planning process, not at~
R19 the present time there isn't, other than say, - through ACNW L
_210 or through NSRRC which doesn't_ exist _anymore.
Thanks.
22 MR. CASTANZI:
Nick Castanzi.
I'd like to point 23 out that in-the-past we-have, in fact, had certain programs 24 which have been peer reviewed at the initiation of the 25 program.
A case in point, there's a volcanology program i
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-that we had run at.the center a number of years ago and j )
2 before that program was begun, the program plan, what we 3-were going to do, the.way we were going to-approach it, and 41 what issues;we were going to address was presented to a 5
group of peers.
Comments were received, tne plan was 6
modified.
7 Because of budget constraints, you know, we have 8
to be very careful when we do this.
You know, peer reviews 9
cost money.
And what we have been relying on to a large 10 degree are our colleagues in NMSS to using their technical 11._
expertise to help us to ensure that we're taking the right 12 approach.
Again, you know, we do -- it is che Office of 13 Resaarch Policy to have peer reviews of programs when it's 14 appropriate and when we're going to get benefit for it.
A' U 15 MR. HORNBERGER:
Thanks.
l 16 MR. OTT:
I-was going to say, you know, we've been i
j 17-extremely active in.the peer review area in terms of going i-18 to the National Academy and various places like this.
And 19 we use these workshops, you know, liberally whenever we can:
20 to tryland get peer review of tho program.
But as Nick-l-
21-said, with the budget procesc it's hard to do it 22 -
programmatically.
It's much easier to.get peer review on a T23 given subject area like sorpti(n, bringing together a group
+
24-of. experts to talk about it, It's not as easy to say, I want to peer review a program.
That's a much more difficult' 25 s
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thing to do.
(A) 2 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
Bill, can you say a few more 3
words about the interaction of the performance assessment 4
research program with the performance assessment modeling 5
activity?
6 MR. OTT:
The facts of the two?
7 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
Yeah.
8 MR. OTT:
Okay.
Performance assessment 9
methodology development has generally been the purview of 10 the Office of the Research.
Application of performance 11 assessment to individual projects has generally been_the 12 purview of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.
13 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
That's all the more reason for 14 asking the question.
O)
(
15 MR. OTT:
In low-level waste about six years ago 16 we reinstituted a group called PAWG, Performance Assessment 17 Working Group, which in earlier years had been sort of a 18 debating society.
When we reinstituted PAWG we did it on 19 the assumption that we wanted it ta) be a productive group.
20 And so we established some goals for it.
And rightly or 21 wrongly one of the things that wound up being one of the 22 goals is that PTP and performance assessment that was 23 published by-the NMSS earlier this year.
24 At that point when we first started PAWG the 25 Office of NMSS and Research formed a group of subteams I )
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- 1 involving members of both offices to work on each one of
[)
- 2 those submodeling disciplines to work on the geochemistry,
\\_/ -
j j
3 on the hydrology, on the engineered barriers.
So our staff 4
and their staff were working very closely on that.
And the 5
individual that put together the executive model that was 6
used by the staff to do the technical basis calculations for 1
7 the PAWG effort and the BTB was Ralph Cadi who is one of the 8
staff members in the Office of Research.
9 So you would have to say that the BTP is a very 10 incestuous product and essentially has involved both of' 11 them.
And Ralph was also the project manager on the SEDDS 12 project which is our performance assessment methodology 13 development program.
NMSS also has a project with NMSS or 14 with Sandia working on a different aspect of SEDDS.
So (O
_/
15 there's -- I would have to say that even though we're no 16 longer involved in low-level waste or high-level waste 17 there's still a fairly active interface on this methodology 18 development versus methodology application.
19 CHAIRMAN GARRICK; That's something of 20 considerable interest to the committee and we will be
(
21 following it.
22 MR. HORNBERGER:
Thanks very much Bill.
23 MR. OTT:
Good.
(
24 MR. HORNBERGER:
As you volunteered, we will be 25 getting back to either you or some of the project managers
[2
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{
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{
- 1-
-as we develop specific' questions.
Thank you very much for
}
2:
' the. ' presentation.
}
3' MR,.OTT:
Right.
l r
i 14 O
MR.-HORNSERGEF.
We still have a few minutes left 5 '-
before we-are going to take a break. 'And what I want to do.
6 is-have a bit of an interchange;with Mike Bell from NMSS
-7 regarding the role of.NMSS.in research in trying to 8
understand technical assistance and which portion.of the 9
technical assistance'look-like research I think'is how it.-
p i
10 was put.
3 y
a j
11 So, Mike,sif you could;get to a microphone
[
~12 somewhere, i.
.13 MR. BELL:
- Sure, i
r e
i-lJ 14 MR. HORNBERGER: 'We!are fairly constraiaed with 15' time.
We are going;to-get started,- but-I may have to wind i.
16, up having.to ask' John'for a few minutes after the break to i
17-continue.
But let's see how it goes, o
-18 I. guess what:I would urge, Mike, is if again,-as-I y
19 asked Sher to do,.even if we.ask complicated questions, if 20
- you' could try to give us +;he - simple ~ answers we fwould be -
21 appreciative.
22 Could you-just, to. start off, give_us a flavor, i
23 and I'm interestee. in this whole question of wht fraction 24--
of the technical-assistance. projects look like research and s
25 how-you decide on how these get done?
In other-words, how i
{
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one plans these witilin NMSS?
And alFo say something perhaps
.f )
2 about how they get reviewed.
3 MR. BELL:
- Okay, I'm Michael Bell.
Right now
'm 4
the acting chief of the perfcrmance assessment and 5
high-level waste integration branch.
But over the years 6
I've been involved with both the high-level and low-level 7
program at the Agency.
8 I think, you know, especially for the benefit of 9
the new members one of the things you need to appreciate is 10 that in both areas the NRC program has been severely cut in 11 budget.
Three years ago the high-level waste appropriation 12 for the Agency was $22 million.
In Fiscal '96 and '97 it 13 was 11.
As a result of that -- well, back in the 14 22-million-dollar days we had a program where about a third (O
s,)
15 of that went for NRC salaries and benefits and two-thirds 16 went to the contractor at the Center for Nuclear Waste 17 Regulatory Analyses who was doing at that time what we 18 censidered both research and technical assistance.
There is was actually also another small piece of research that was 20 about a half million dollars at the University of Arizona, 21 At the center there was about $3 million of field 22 work, laboratory experiments, and things that we considered 23 research that wan being managed by staff in the Office of 24 Research as well as the Arizona work.
So there as about a 25
$3.5-million effort that was being managed by essentially ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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three full-time equivalent people in the Office of Research.
()
2 What nas happened since the budget cut is the type 3
of work at the center that involved fuel work, laboratory 4
experiments has gone from 3 million down to about 300,000.
5 That work all came in to NMSS, it just didn't make sense to 6
have a separate group in the Office of Research managing 7
that small a prcgram and basically the project managers who 8
were managing the TA in NMSS picked up those little residual 9
pieces of research type work at the center that was done, 10 That was one of the responses of the Agency of the budget 11 cut, to consolidate all the high-level work in NMSS.
12 The kinds of things that NMSS itself funds at the 13 center are essentially review of DOE iocuments that get 14 submitted to us, helping us develop our standard review (D
( s/
15 plan, the review procedures, the right documents that will 16 eventually support any revised high-level waste regulations.
17 They have been taking performance assessment models that, 18 you know, had already been developed and essentially 19 applying them, running them to test.
Well, if the EPA 20 standard comes out where we have to look at what's the dose 21 to a critical group in the Amargosin Dessert, you know, how 22 does that come out and what's the incentive.
It's 23 essentially taking things already developed and now applying 24 them to gain understanding.
25 And I just might point out, the models that we're f
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using in some cases go back to the work Sher mentioned that
( )
2 Research funded years ago.
The high-level waste performance 3
assessment code still has it in the Latin hyper-cube 4
sampling methodology that Sandia developed as part of the 5
Swift code 10 years ago.
It still uses NEFTRAN which is the 6
stream to float model that Sandia developed as part of 7
Swift.
8 Some new things were done that fortunately got 9
started back when we had a research program like development 10-of the volcano module, the ash plume transport module that 11 really is all based on field work and natural analog studies 12 and such that got started in the research program.
And 13 basically we're trying to wrap that work up nor and bring 14 the recommendation to NMSS from this committee is, you know, (3
f s,/
15 terminate all that work and phase it out by the end of this 16 fiscal year.
And, you know, we're currently in the process 17 of winding up what residual work there is.
18 So that's basically an overview of the situation 19 in high-level.
20 In low-level as Bill mentioned, again, three years 21 ago in low-level the NMSS had approximately 20 FTEs in one 22 and a half branches.
I was managing all of the project 23 branch and John Austin had a low-level regulatory and 24 decommissioning, about half of whom supported low-level and 25 the other half were just beginning, you know, the SDMP t
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1, program.
Things.have flip-flopped now. _ Low-level has gone
()
-2
--- itz went-down-from 20 to 5 FTEs in Fiscal
'97.
The_NMSS
{
3 low-level FTE budget for this year is 1.3 FTEs That's not 4-
.even two full people work in that area.
5 And it's the SDMP program that's up in the 20s.
i 6
And_much of what's been done is to try to take the 7
performance assessment methodology that was being built in 8
-the old low-level program now and adapt it to looking_at 9
SDMP sites.
10 In other_words, the work that was being done by a
l 11 the PAWG-that Bill mentioned, they were not only developing 12
-tne performance assessment BTP they also had an actual
- I.
_ running model and they were running a test case to 13 1
-14 demonstrate the methodology and the plan was, publish all of
()
15 this and make it available, 16-When the budgets got cut basically we said, we 4
[
17 don't have the resources to support PAWG anymore, we.can't H18 -
publish the test case, we'll try to get out the BTP for i
19 guidance, but anything.else that we're-going to do with-this l
2 0 --
methodology now we're going to try to start applying it_to 21
'these SDMP sites where there was a performance assessment l-i:
12 2 -
need.
And that bring up, you know, the source term issue.
i 23 The source term at these SDMP sites is much l
24 different from a commercial low-level waste site.
All of a f
25.
sudden we had sites where they had things like slag and, you 4
t '
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know, what's source term from buried slag and the human
(
)
2 environment in contact with soil, you know, what leaches out 3
of it how fast.
4 While it might seem that the work Bill talked 5-about on uranium species is quite narrow and limited it 6
turns out a lot of the SDMP sites have uranium 7
contamination.
It's either, you knew, large volumes of soil 8
contaminated with low concentrations of natural uranium, 9
low-enriched uranium, depleted uranium.
I mean, we've got 10 uranium in all of it's various enrichments, contaminating, 11 you know, artillery ranges, former fluro processing 12 facilities, fuel manufacturing facilities, and so just being 13 able to deal with the uranium transport issue a little bit 14 better would help the SDMP problem a lot.
A.
(,/
15 Now, the SDMP program still has a rather 1rrge PA 16 budget.
But it's all going to review essentially sites.
17 When we have one of these sites on the SDMP program the 18 decision to -- you know, that-the site is adequately cleaned 19 up or what's needed to clean it up usually requires an EIS.
20 So there was a large contract at Oak Ridge just to prepare 21 EISS to look at what are the alternatives for remediating a 22 site and support the NRC's decision on this is the preferred 23 alternative for a site.
24 There is a significant program with ORISE, Oak 25 Ridge Institute of Science and Engineering -- is that what O
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it is?
-s()
2 MR. HORNBERGER:
Yeah.
3 MR. BELL:
-- basically to go out and do remedial f
4
-- or not remedial, confirmatory surveys of cleaned up --
5 supposedly cleaned up sites or from time to time we identify 6
a site that we think may not have been properly cleaned up 7
and essentially we fund them to go out and see if there's 8
still unacceptably high contamination there that has to be 9
dealt with.
But essentially nobody is developing any new 10 methods or anything like that.
11 Let's see, unfortunately John Hickey who is the 12 program manager in that area was here earlier and had to 13 leave.
14 Some of the things we use the TA money for in the O
\\,/
15 decommissioning area is to fund the mobil laboratories that 16 the regions use to go around and do inspection at sites.
17 MR. HORNBERGER:
Mike, could I interrupt you just 18 a second?
19 MR. BELu:
Well, you wanted to get a character --
20 MR. HORNBERGER:
No,'I know, and I am getting the 21 character, but what I'm really interested in is if we put 22 Research in inverted commas, could you give me some examples 23 of how your TA money is going -- clearly mobil laboratories 24 are important and interesting and we could spend an hour 25 talking about_them.
/n
(
)
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MR. BELL:
Well, we don't think we're doing any.
()
j 2
MR. HORNBERGER:
Okay.
That's fine.
3 MR. BELL:
If we were doing those things they 4
should be done in the Office of Research.
5 MR. HORNBERGER:
Okay.
Good.
That's the answer 6
that I was looking for.
7 MR. BELL:
y.
And under this DSI-22 we, you 8
know, recently had to go through and identify for the Office 9
of Research the kinds of things that could possibly be 10 termed research and get transferred to them.
Basically what 1
11 we found was the $309,000 1
worth of work that still hasn't 12 been completely phased out of the center in a high-level 13 program.
We didn't identify anything in either the uranium 14 recovery or the decommissioning.
()
15 MR. HORNBERGER:
We've run over a little bit.
I 16 need to ask the chairman for instructions.
Would you like 17 to take five or ten minutes to finish this or could we come 18 back -- should we come back after break and take five or ten 19 minutes.
20 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
Well, if we can finish it in 21 five or ten minutes, I think we should finish it.
22 MR. HORNBERGER:
Ok Then let's try tc stick to 23 that because you've given the answer that perhaps we don't 24 need to spend a lot more time --
25 MR. BELL:
Well --
0 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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1.
HMR. HORNBERGER:.
-- NMSS is not truly involved in 2!
lwhat we need to consider as research.in terms of our charge 3
4 MR BELL:
I think that would be our view that we 5~
' don't see much that,we're doing that really fits in the l6 scope of this before Congress.
7
-MR. HORNBERGER:
Okay.
Are there questions then 8
from anybody?
-9 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
No.
10 MR. HORNBERGER:
I think we finished in less than 11 five minutes, Mr. Chairman.
12 (Laughter.)
3 13 MR. HORNBERGER:
I will-turn the meeting back to 14; you.
()
15 CHAIRMAN GARRICK:
Okay.
Thanks.
And we want to-16 thank everybody that contributed'this morning.
- 17.
We are going to move after the break into the 18 phase of our-meeting that has to'do with the preparation of 19
. reports. -And-I think under those circumstances we no longer 1
20 need theLrecorder.
And as I look at-the' agenda for 2A tomorrow, it's a-continuation-of the same type of
- 22 activities, so I guess as far as recording is concerned, we're_through.
24 And with that I think we'll recess now for a 25 15-minute break.
Thank you.
'(
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(Whereupon, at 10:40 a.m., the meeting was 2
concluded.)
3 4
5 6
7 8
9-10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
-(
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REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in i:he matter of:
NAME OF PROCEEDING:
95TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) MEETING DOCY.ET NUMBER:
PLACE OF PROCEEDING:
ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of ths 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, hvv$
h\\Ct n n y
a Cindy Thomas Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
O
Generalizec Performance Assessment Process O
i
~; Climate (f(t)]
infiltration (f(t,x]
N estimation of effective values '
' ~.. _.
[,Ja~Meeetediiarriir PirfEraande'If(t,l',x)]~
71
~
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.'.,'.I. NegrM rNe'Ed in"pacEofeIEsslic pr9perties _ [/.
i-
~
~
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Radionuclide Source [f(x)]~
-r
_ distribution heterogeneity __.
j N
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Wasteform Release Mechanisms (f(t))
I solu tion, dissolution
- rates, solubilities & dependencies -
O
~ -
l Engineered Chemical Barriers 4
_.-.l_.._.__,_._._.,_.__.._
.__ _ _._ _.__. _ J Air Release (f(t.i,x)]
i transport properties to land surface Ground Water Release (f(t,i, x))
_cifective trancport properties.
Surface water relene [f(t.i,x)]
weg; effective transport properties s.
Human Exposure (f(t,i,x)]
O r(*) : r c'ie r ii- -
f(i) : function of infiltration f(x): function of location
O O
O'
~
COMPONENTS OF THE PROGRAM Field, laboratory, and analytical studies are being conducted in the following areas:
1.
SOURCE TERM. Data is needed to specify radionuclide content (inventories), physical and chemical form of the waste streams, and the release mechanisms for radionuclides.
2.
ENGINEERED BARRIERS. Field ' confirmation of developed models is needed to support licensing evaluations.
3.
TRANSPORT PROCESSES. Realistic models of transport processes under varying conditions are needed in long term evaluations of a site.
4.
PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT. New methods and data must be incorporated in licensing tools to replace assumptions and reduce uncertainties.
i O
O ol t
SOURCE TERM 4
I i
j OBJECTIVE: Develop realistic source terms for use in performance assessment that reflect the quantities, species, and chemical forms of radionuclides at various sites.
i Characterize inventory - Radionuclide species, physical and l
chemical form, and amount for each type of contamination.
l Relate mechanisms controlling contaminant performance -
e Icachability and solubility within contaminant source i
4 i
environmental parameters.
Evaluate licensee estimates of releases from disposal units.
4 1
i
O O
O ENGINEERED BARRIERS OBJECTIVE: Test and modify (if appropriate) models for the analysis of the performance of engineered barriers such as earthen covers, geosynthetics, concrete structures.
Test long-term material performance by developing laboratory and e
field data.
- Structural durability of concrete vaults / soil covers.
- Hydrologic integrity of covers, vaults, barriers.
- Chemical performance of barriers.
Establish protocols / strategies for long-term monitoring.
e
l TRANSPORT PROCESSES OBJECTIVE: Test techniques for conceptualization, characterir,ation, and mathematical representation of (1) environmental systems and (2) transport processes.
Establish process for testing conceptual models of flow and e
sorption processes and environmental systems. Collect supporting physical and chemical data.
Establish measurement and estimation techniques to collect data e
for hydrologic models and sorption reaction models.
Develop optimization techniques to enhance effectiveness of data e
collection for flow and transport analysis.
Develop monitoring methods and strategies for confirmation of e
models to assess facility performance.
O O
O~~'l PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT l
l OBJECTIVE: Integrate the refined discipline-specific codes into a l
flexible system readily applicable to waste disposal, decommissioning, and clean-up issues.
Maintain code that controls and links subsystem models.
i l
Assure that system models are consistent with regulatory purpose e
i for specific analyses.
4 4
-.m.
o o
o
.i i
XRC's Safety Research Program:
Report to Congress Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste I
'l j
October 22,1997 Giorgio N. Gnugnoli
{
i
O O
O
Background
Atomic Energy Act, as amended, requires the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) to report annually tothe Congress on the XRC's Safety Research Program.
The Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste has not been involved in the past.
Background (cont,)
l Past reports have consisted of a short cover letter to the leaders of each House with a collection of research-related letters.
i This year the report to Congress will reflect j
a contribution from ACXW on the adequacy of the NRC research and technical j
assistance program in waste.
4 I
I i
o o
o Background (cont.)
1 l
Deadlines: Report to Congress by end of 1997 in order to provide courtesy copy to j
j the Commission.
I i
ACRS Report to Congress by February 28, 1
1998, including ACXW contribution.
l Final report to Commission by June 1, 199%.
l
t O
O O
i I
Strategy t
i Prepare scoping documents to lay out the current status of research in the area of waste management (WM):
l
- NRC activities in WM 1
- DOE activities in WM
-Industry activities in WM i
l
-Internationals i
- Others?
i
Strategy (cont.)
From the scoping document and other information, can the ACXW arrive at a judgement that there are enough parties doing the necessary research, which will enable the Commission to make licensing decisions on waste management proposals?
If not, what should ACNW say to Congress?
i O
O O
i l
Strategy (cont.)
j Presently, the scoping document is unfinished; awaiting feedback.
Scoping document should become a living document to track the status of the XRC's research and technical assistance (TK program in J
j waste management.
l j
More of the detail in the scoping document will be presented in the report to the Commission on NRC research.
. - - -- J
O O
O Strategy (cont.)
What's missing from scoping document?
- NRC Issue Resolution Status Reports
-Industry initiatives
- EPA R&D activities
- Other internationals (e.g., France, Japan, Germany, Canada, and EU)
Should these be added? What level of detail?
o o
O l
Nuclear Safety Research Review Board i
Relative roles of the Advisory Committees i
and the XSRRC?
The Advisory Committees were the
" natural" replacements for the NSRRC.
But there were some difference in missions.
)
Ccaparises cf ACRS and NSRRC Committee Activities'
'1 O
ACES.
HSluLC License application focus.
Research focus.
Review safety studies and facility license Review technical content of techniques or applicatioas and submit reports as required methods used to study a given nuclear by NRC regulations, safety concern or technialissue.
Focus is on the safety of operations that Focus on the content and management of may require research results, research programs.
Advise NRC on hazards ofproposed or Advises the NRC on the best technical
- existing reactor facilities and the adequacy capabilities to address scientific basis for ofproposed safety standards, standards.
Perform other duties NRC may request NSRRC primary focus is op safety research (including review of the RES program),
methodologies.
N ACRS may conduct reviews on Kind of safety research to be done in any t
n
- specific generic matters or nuclear facility area of concem (e.g. steam generator tube
\\)
safety rdated items requiring scientific flaws or cracks occurring as a result cf analysis (e.g. steam generator failure overpressurization),
modes).
Example: h NSRRCis more concemed Example:'!he ACRS is concerned with with the tools that research needs to provide whether risk informed, perfonnance based in order to allow the NRC to be e.ble to go regulation (PBR) is a good idea and would in that direction (PBR).
lead the NRC in the direction ofimproving safety with fewer regulations.
The NSRRCis a safety research review committee.
ACRS is a safety reviewcommittee.
Reviews RES programs only, looking at the Reviews the effectiveness of RES priorities, costs and tachnical content of prograrr.: and other NRC offices in safety research programs, connection with the development of rules
- and standards.
%wy it,iss7 NaRRC Lenw to NRC REa,
,w.%
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t Report to Congress -- Contents?
Is the NRC's research and TA program in WM j
evolving to a more risk-informed, performance-based focus?
i Are the core capabilities in the NRC staff and the contractor being compromised?
i i
l Is the NRC's commitment to relying on academic, l
industry and international R&D activities properly reflected the current budget?
i l
j o
o o
1 t
Report to Congress -- Contents?(cont.)
Is the consolidation of the radionuclide transport to a modest generic transport research activity sufficient to maintain a viable NRC decision j
making capability in the future?
4 Are NRC and other research programs adequately focused on the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences' Technical Bases for Yucca l
Mountain Standards?
i
O O
O Radionuclic e Transport Research Program for the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste l
i 9.p S R E G g M
0 (W)9 4 4**V by Sher Bahadur, Chief William ott, Team Leader Waste Management Branch office of Nuclear Regulatory Research Telephone: (301) 415-6227 FAX: (301) 415-5385 E-mail: SXB@NRC. GOV j
i
O O
O PROGRAM GOAL To provide a performance assessment capability that realistically assesses radionuclide concentrations in the environment and consequent doses to public from NRC-licensed activities.
4
l 0
o o
I l
l l
BACKGROUND RES has conducted work in the past to provide technical bases for uranium recovery, LLW, HLW, decommissioning, and reactor licensing programs.
i l
RES has been active internationally: to learn from research in other countries; to leverage resources through l
cooperative multi-national analytical efforts; and to i
i participate in focused field research projects.
Over the last two years HLW and LLW research has been l
l phased out.
A new generic program has been developed to support and i
e l
enhance NRC's performance assessment capability.
1 j
i l
+
e
BACKGROUND (cont'd) l Specific accomplishments have included:
Substantial progress in understanding unsaturated and partially saturated flow. (MIT, UAz, AGU Monograph 42)
Detection and resolution of cement waste form (LLW) degradation problem. (INEL, NIST workshop. BTP)
Demonstration of importance of fractures in flow through e
fractured media. (Apache Leap, U. Az.)
Resolution of Pu issue for NAS Ward Valley study.
e (INEL)
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O BACKGROUND (cont'd) l Developed data to establish variation of retardation l
e processes with chemical environment. (LBL, USGS)
Developed LLW source term model (BLT and its progeny) e and the data and codes to implement in PA analyses.
(BNL)
Developed PA methodologies for HLW (basalt and tuff e
versions) and LLW (basis for BTP support analyses) - the foundation for curent PA capability in both HLW and LLW. (SNL)
Developed model (4 SIGHT) for analysis of Iong term e
performance of concrete barriers. (NIST)
l BACKGROUND (cont'd)
Collected data on the performance of engineered covers e
for LLW disposal units. (U.C., Berkley and U. Md.)
Developed infiltration evaluation methodology for e
estimating downward migration of water through covers, soils, and fractured rock. (PNNL)
Developed data from natural analogs to confirmation e
testing of PA models - Valles Caldera (SNL), Alligator Rivers (USGS, ANSTO), Oklo (NMSU, U. Az.), Pena Blanca and Akrotiri(CNWRA)
LINES OF RESEARCH TO IMPROVE ANALYSES Assumptions and uncertainties can be addressed by l
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focused research.
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- 1. All analyses build on the source term. Improvements I
are possible in understanding radionuclide content (inventories), physical and chemical form of the waste l
streams, and the release mechanisms for radionuclides.
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- 2. Engineered barriers have a wide range of applications l
including disposal unit structures and injected barriers.
Long term performance has been studied theoretically but l
field confirmation is needed.
O O
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LINES OF RESEARCH (cont'd)
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- 3. Transport processes including flow and chemical retardation are large sources of uncertainty. Continued research to understand flow processes, ider.tify monitoring strategies, and understand retardation as a function of l
environmental conditions wBl reduce uncertainties.
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4.
Integrated performance assessment must keep pace l
with new methods and data to replace assumptions and reduce uncertainties.
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CURRENT STRATEGY l
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Involve staff directly in measurement and modeling work.
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e (Establish access to facilities at universities, federal agency or DOE national laboratories; e.g. JHU, USGS, ARS, NIST) e Increase involvement in bi-lateral exchange agreements with other countries doing work in similar areas. (JAERI, IPSN, NEA, NAGRA, SKI, etc.)
Seek opportunities for jointly funded projects to amplify e
resources by cooperation. (ASARR, USGS, ARS, SEDSS, NRC of the NAS)
Continue participation in international programs such as the OECD/NEA sponsored Sorption Project.
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