ML20217F298
| ML20217F298 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 04/23/1998 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0122, NACNUCLE-T-122, NUDOCS 9804280122 | |
| Download: ML20217F298 (90) | |
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0R G NA_ kMN OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS NUCLEAR REG'ULATORY COMMISSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE
Title:
100TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON
. NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) MEETING TRO8 ACNW' Docket No.:
RETURN ORIG NE TO BJh"ri:TE w s T-2E2s 415-7: 30 THANKS! Work Order No.: ASB-300-249 LOCATION: Rockiille,hiaryland DATE: Thursday, AprfI 23,1998 PAGES: 361 - 446
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DISCLAIMER UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE APRIL 23, 1998 l l The contents of this transcript of the proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Advisory () Committee on Nuclear Waste, taken on April 23, 1998, as reported herein, is a record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date. i l This transcript had not been reviewed, corrected and edited and.it may contain inaccuracies. l l l I l t
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361 1 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l 2 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE 3 *** 4 100TH 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 11 12 Thursday, April 23, 1998 13 14 The Committee met pursuant to notice at 10:05 a.m. 15 16 MEMBERS PRESENT: 17 B. JOHN GARRICK, Chairman, ACNW I 18 GEORGE HORNBERGER, Member, ACNW 19 CHARLES FAIRHURST, Member, ACNW 20 RAYMOND G. WYMER, Member, ACNW j 21 22 23 24 l 25 l
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l 362 ' 1 STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE: ( 2 LAKE BARRETT 3 ANDREW C. CAMPBELL, Staff ACNW 4 JOHN GREEVES
- 5 CAROL HANLON j 6 HOWARD LARSON, Staff, ACNW 7 RICHARD K. MAJOR, Staff, ACNW 8 MARGARET FEDERLINE l
l 9 ROBERT JOHNSON 10 GIORGIO GNUGNOLI, Staff, ACNW 11 12 13 14
) 15 16 17 l 18 l
l 19 i 20 l l l 21 l i 22 23 l l 24 25
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l 363 1 PROCEEDINGS () 2 3 [10:05 a.m.] CHAIRMAN GARRICK: On the record. To those of you 4 who think this is the reactors fuels meeting -- 5 [ Laughter.] 6 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: -- I suggest ycu go next door. 7 [ Laughter.] 8 DR. HORNBERGER: Or stay here, you'll enjoy it i 9 more. 10 [ Laughter.] 11 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: This is the third day of the -- 12 seems like the 100th -- 13 [ Laughter.] 14 MR. LARSON: Tne 100th day of the third meeting.
) 15 [ Laughter.)
16 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: This is the third day of the 17 100th meeting of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. ! 18 My name is John Garrick, Chairman of ACNW. Other members of ! 19 the committee include George Hornberger, Raymond Wymer, and ! 20 Charles Fairhurst. 21 Today the committee will meet with John Greeves 22 and Margaret Federline to discuss items of current interest I 23 and meet with Lake Barrett director of DOE's Office of 24 Civilian Radioactive Waste Management to discuss DOE's 25 high-level waste activities, and continue our preparation of ) i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 842-0034 I
I l l l 364 l 1 reports on decommissioning guidance, waste-related research, () 2 3 and viability asressment. And Richard Major is the designated federal official for the initial portion of 4 today's meeting. j 5 The meeting is being conducted in accordance with l 6 the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 7 Should anyone wish to address the committee, please make 8 your wishes known to one of the committee staff. It is l 9 requested that each speaker use one of the microphones, i l 10 identify himself or herself, and speak with sufficient 11 clarity and volume so that he or she can be readily heard. 12 Okay. Our first item, unless there are some l 13 announcements, Richard, is our usual meeting with the NRC's 14 director and deputy director; so, John, we'll turn this over 15 to you. l 16 MR. GREEVES: Good. Okay. Well, let me get a few 17 things I wanted to go over, and first let me recognize that 18 I'm playing a little catch up. I don't know whether the 19 committee was aware, but I was able to get off to the 20 Oakridge Health Physics Course over about the last five 21 weeks -- actually, the month of March, and Mal was able to 22 go last year, so I said, well, I think I'm going to take 23 them up on that opportunity. And it was quite a good 24 course. I don't know how much you know about it, but it, I 25 think, is timely from somebody like me in terms of the ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (-s*) Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 t
l l 365 1 risk-informed approach to assessing regulation. It's very () 2 important to understand what those risks are in terms of 3 dose. 4 So I was really -- ( l 5 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: I think we could have used you l 6 yesterday in our working session. 7 MR. GREEVES: I was here. So, anyhow, I just -- l 8 maybe as you talk to other people this is quite a good l 9 program in terms of anybody working this arene. if you're not 10 a health physicist, this is a good way to get a background 11 on what, you know, radiation is about, and health physics 12 gives you a good background on dose modeling, accident l 13 response activities. They've got all the laboratory 14 equipment down there so you can see first-hand what the () 15 measurements are in terms of radioactivity and also the 16 field surveys. So it sort of ties it all together and l 17 somebody like myself with an engineering background it was a 18 very good course and I highly recommend it to others for 19 their consideration. l 20 So, in che meantime, I'm paying for being away 21 that length of time, though, I'm trying to catch up on all 22 the letters. So if I'm not crisp on all of them you'll l 23 understand why in part. 24 First I'd like to comment on your 100th meeting. 25 I think it's been very productive. You've had a lot of l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 ' (202) 842-0034 l l r l
366 1 issues in this meeting that are very near and deer to our () 2 heart in terms of the waste business. I think it's been 3 quite productive. So I want to compliment you on the l 4 agenda. It's gotten to the total performance assessment 5 code that we've been working on. I was able to sit in on a 6 few of the presentations by the staff and I saw a real good 7 give and take process. So I think that is quite healthy. 8 I also was quite impressed with the process of 9 having Marv Fertel come in from NEI. They have a big stake 10 in the process here and have views and are looking at the 11 issues from somewhat of a different angle and I think it's 12 quite important for all of us to understand what those views 13 are and see if there are any mismatches in the process. So 14 I think it was quite useful for you to have the NEI 15 contingent come in and make a presentation. 16 You heard from EDO, Hugh Thompson, was down here 17 earlier in the week and gave a presentation. And Lake 18 Barrett is going to be following this particular session. i 19 So I think this was quit an excellent agenda to help 20 celebrate your 100th meeting. I just congratulate on 21 putting this together. 22 In planning for this week's activities we looked l 23 at about ten things that we thought should be covered one 24 way or another in this meeting. And it turns out that Hugn 25 Thompson covered some of them and actually a number of them l I s ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
i l 367 1 came up yesterday in a session I was sitting in on. So () 2 we're not going to go over ten topics. I think a number of 3 them have been addressed quite well. i 4 Hugh talked about the DOE oversight program and I 5 think that was probably touched on about the level that was 6 needed in that process. If you have some questions on that 7 that you think either Margaret or I could answer, I'd be 8 happy to address them. But I'm not going to go further into 9 the DOE oversight arena that John Austin pretty much briefs 10 you on periodically. I 11 Hugh did talk about the Hanford Tank related 12 issues and as you're aware, we have briefed you on our I 13 efforts with the tank waste issues including West Valley and 14 Savannah River Lab. I just might note that we will be () 15 providing papers to the Commission on West Valley and 16 Savannah Review in the upcoming months. And it sort of i 17 raises this question of the predecisional issue that you did 18 speak about a little bit. 19 Once -- or while we're developing these papers,
- 20 even when they're delivered to the Commission, there 21 sometimes are predecisional policy issues in there, it does 22 make it difficult for us to communicate on those issues. So l 23 if you have any ideas on how to deal with that because l
24 you're in the same process I understand. You do get those 25 papers and frequently there is a policy issue on the table ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
368 1 in there. So it's something we may want to address as we () 2 3 get together in the planning processes, is how can we better address that particular topic. I know there's follow up 4 with the EEO on that. 5 One of the items that was on our agenda and has 6 already been discussed is the viability assessment. 7 However, there were a couple of issues related with 8 high-level waste that we thought we'd just touch on further. 9 And I think Margaret wanted to mention a couple of those to 10 lead off. I will touch on the priority list that you put 1 11 out and the exchange you've had with the Commission on that. 12 And I also want to talk about the decommissioning area as we 13 finish up with those three items this morning. 14 So, with that, Margaret, do you want to --
) 15 MS. FEDERLINE: Yeah, I had three items that I 16 wanted to touch on this morning. We appreciated your 17 letters that we've received and we looked at them very 18 closely, particularly the letter on issue resolution. And 19 you had in there some good suggestions, I think, for more 20 public involvement in the' issue resolution process. And we 21 agree with you, we think that's the strength of the process 22 is to bring as much information to bear early in the process j 23 so that everyone can look at that information and 24 communication can go on. You know, we have tried in that 25 regard making presentations to TRB, of course, coming down !
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F l t 369 l 1 and talking to you whenever we get the chance. I'm giving a 2 presentatien at the high-level waste meeting. 3- We've also initiated a public meeting May 13th in
-4 Las Vegas so we can discuss with the local population the 5 issues resolution process and what we see coming out of it.
6 So we are trying to do that. If you have any other ideas l 7 about how we can -- of course, we put our issue resolution i 8 reports out and invite public comment, b t any of you who ! t 9 have seen those issue resolution reports, they're quite [ 10 daunting to think someone is going to sit down on a Sunday l 11 afternoon and just sort of stroll through them. f 12 But if you have any ideas as to how we can get the l 13 public more involved, we'd be more than open to your 14 suggestions because that's our intention as well. 15 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you. 16 MS. FEDERLINE: The second item that I just wanted I 17 to make sure I understood the committee's perspective. I '18 Yesterday during the discussions with NEI we'had some 19 discussion on preclosure issues. And I think I understood 20 where the industry was coming from. I think they're eager 21 for us to provide as much information as we can early in the l 22 process back to DOE. What our budget provides for in 23 preclosure is to allow us as part of the viability 24 assessment to touch on those preclosure issues which will 25 have a bearing on post-closure. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
370 1 We're really looking at the viability assessment A 2 as a point in time. We're not looking for it to be a () 3 surrogate license application. I think the time is coming ; 4 for that. DOE is committed to provide us with a draft 5 license application and we will be involved in, you know, 6 commenting on the strengths and shortcomings in that. But 7 we view the viability assessment more as a sort of a fatal 8 flaw analysis, providing information to decisionmakers about i 9 whether the repository program should move forward. 10 And so that has been the -- that will be the focus 11 of our efforts is anything that we think could bear on any 12 of these fatal flaws, we will be commenting on in the 13 viability assessment. 14 That's not to say that we're ignoring the
) 15 preclosure aspects. And I see two aspects of preclosure.
16 One is what we are calling our " phased approach" to issue 17 resolution. The first phase of issue resolution is to get j 18 to the point where staff has no additional questions of DOE 19 and we've sort of defined what we believe is an acceptable 20 path forward. 21 Then the second and third steps are sort of to 22 follow up on that. Make sure our acceptance criteria are 23 incorporated in the standard review plan, plus look at the 24 confirmatory databases as we move closer to repository i i 25 licensing just to make sure we haven't missed something to i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
i 1 371 i 1 make sure that any new information that comes out is I (""g l ( j 2 incorporated. And I sort of got a flavor that that might be 1 3 a little bit of what your preclosure concern was that there 4 was going to be important activities going on even after 5 licensing. And that we wanted to make sure to take l 6 advantage of all that information. And we are going to take j i 7 advantage of all that information. ' 8 When we talk about preclosure we think of the Part l 9 20 operational kinds of concerns, the ventilation issues 10 that have to do with any workers that are involved with 11 placing the waste in the repository. What we are doing on l 12 those aspects we are proposing reprogramming some resources l 13 in FY-99 to look at what we consider reclosure issues that l i 14 don't already have a regulatory precedent like 15 retrievability, those kinds of concerns. 16 And we're going to be working through the same 17 logical process. We're going to be defining acceptance l 18 criteria with those, we're going to be working with DOE on l 19 those. But to a large degree the other preclosure work l 20 where there is a regulatory precedent, we're going to be j 21 calling on industry codes and standards and those kinds of 22 things as our acceptance criteria in those areas. And they 23 -- just by virtue of the fact that the budget has been 24 reduced -- have received less emphasis in the program. And, 25 in fact, we won't be complete with that work until we () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
i 372 I 1 receive the licensing application. l ( 2 So I just wanted to make sure that we were on the t 3 same wavelength as you and that there was not something that ] 4 we were missing from your comments yesterday. 5 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yeah, well, there may be a 6 disconnect there and it may be our problem more than 7 anything else. But I guess it's this feeling that maybe 8 we're addressing this issue of preclosure activities that 9 might affect post-closure performance somewhat lightly. I 10 guess I look at this as a real opportunity to get a much 11 better handle on some of the issues that could contribute to I 12 reducing the uncertainty -- l 13 MS. FEDERLINE: Right. 1 14 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: -- of the performance of the
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!(_}j t 15 repository and we mentioned a couple of examples. 16 Preclosure operations are going to determine such things as 17 the thermal loading of the repository. So, operational 18 strategies that would seem to be an opportunity for 19 impacting that -- l 20 MS. FEDERLINE: Right. 21 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: -- and knowing through 22 recordkeeping or measurements or some sort of activity more l 23 precisely what the thermal loading profile is in the , 24 repository. l i 25 The other area that's getting a lot of attention [ ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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f. i 373 t I 1 now is the performance of the engineered barriers and the l l () 2 engineered system including the waste package. 3 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. l l 4 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Again, it looks that the 5 operating activities could have a major impact on our i 6 confidence in the integrity of the waste package and the 7 general performance. So I see these as quite different from 8 Part 20 -- 9 MS. FEDERLINE: Right. ; 10 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: -- from worker safety, 11 ventilation kinds of issues. I 12 MS. FEDERLINE: Right. 13 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: And I guess the committee is l l 14 just asking, are we taking full advantage of that O
- (_j 15 opportunity and is that not maybe something that we'd l L6 sooner, rather than later ought to be hearing a little more l
l 17 about so that we can have some impact on it if the impact i 18 could be favorable. 1 19 MS. FEDERLINE: No, we totally agree with you and 20 that's exactly the piece of preclosure that we're focusing 21 on. And we call that our " Phase III" of issue resolution. 22 First in issue resolution is to get some sort of 23 bounding agreement that, yes, we're on the right path with 24 these issues. 25 Our next task is to look at how we can reduce [D' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (./ Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
! i 374 ) i 1 uncertainty and enhance confidence in the licensing ' l( ) 2 decision. And we're going to use the kind of information 3 that you're talking about to look at how we can reduced j 4 those uncertainties by conducting process- and system-level 5 sensitivity analysis. And we're going to continue those out 6 through the license application. And so you will be hearing l 1 7 more about those. 8 Now what we're trying to do is for those issues 1 l 9 that could pose fatal flaws try to get a path to resolution l 10 in place that we know all the work is going to be done that 11 needs to be done. l l 12 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Good. i 13 MR. GREEVES: I think the points you are making i 14 about the engineered barrier system, the waste package, the
- f3 l( ) 15 thermal loading, those are things that we are expecting --
16 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. 17 MR. GREEVES: As I was sitting yesterday and 18 listening to some of the discussion with NEI, I think the l 19 audience could have had a perception NEI was expecting NRC , 20 to be commenting on preclosure issues like handling storage 21 of spent fuel, things like that. And I just think we need 22 to make it very clear we're not going to do that in a ( 23 three-month period -- liability assessment. Our comments 24 are really focused, as Margaret articulated, on post-closure 25 issues including thermal loading, engineered barrier system, 1
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375 1 waste package issues. We were not in a position to make '/~N 2 comments on handling of fuel at surface facilities. (} 3 DOE has put in the schedule that they would be 4 submitting a draft license application. I think it's within 5 less than a year after that timeframe. 6 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. 7 MR. GREEVES: And at that point in time we could 8 start looking at some of those operational aspects. But I 9 just wanted to make -- Margaret and I wanted to make sure we 10 -- 11 MS. FEDERLINE: Yeah. 12 MR. GREEVES: -- cleared the air that there isn't 13 an expectation that the staff would be providing something 14 in that three-month window. Yes, we'll be looking at it on > sm k,) 15 follow-on, and particularly we will be looking at things 16 like waste package issues, et cetera, which really affect 17 post-closure. 18 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. The last issue that I wanted 19 to raise, I don't know whether you've had an opportunity to 20 see we received an April 14th letter from the State of 21 Nevada expressing concerns about DOE's QA program and 1 22 expressing concerns also about whether headquarters was 23 giving enough attention to concerns with DOE's QA program. 24 If we haven't, we will make copies available to you, you 25 know, sometime today. l l I \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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I 376 1 We -- QA -- how can I say -- is the top priority ! r i 2 with the NRC. We've learned the lessons of Midland and 3 other plants that went before us, and it is a top concern. 4 Perhaps we're not doing as good a job as we should l 5 communicating with the State of Nevada about what the l 6 headquarters aspect is doing on QA issues, but we do have a 7 periodic meeting with DOE. It will be on the management ! 8 meeting that we're trying to set up in June with DOE on this l ! 9 topic. 10 So, you know, I think it's important for us that 11 the public and the state and counties do try and calibrate 12 us when they don't see our work being as effective as it 13 could be. But we feel that we are on top of this issue, the 14 OR has identified all these issues. And, as a matter of iO 15 l (s,/ fact, I had a conference call at the beginning of April 1 16 about what our action plan was going to be to try and j 17 resolve some of these. l 18 But there is an underlying message I think for DOE
- 19 here and we've been trying to work on this is that more 20 effective attention to graded QA would really improve some 21 of these concerns about the QA process. So we're going to 22 continue to talk with DOE about that and continue to talk at l 1
l 23 the management level. So I just wanted to sort of give you 24 a head's up on that item. 1 25 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yes, thank you. ] I l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 ! Washington, D.C. 20005 : (202) 842-0034
377 1 MR. GREEVES: At this point I just wanted to () 2 address, to some extent, the priority list that the 3 committee put out. And first I compliment you on putting 4 out the brochure and, you know, making that available to the j i 5 public. I think that's a good step to honor the process the j 6 Commission is in, in terms of this planning and assessing 7 resources and setting priorities process. So I think that's 8 quite a good step. 9 The Commission did come back to you on March 16th l 10 and comment on that process. And one of the things that j 11 they noted was that it might be useful to revisit what was l 12 characterized as the second tier set of priorities. They 13 noted that you would benefit from including assessments of ! 14 the Trojan Waste Classification Issue for example. Some of
) 15 the issues involving generic-criticality-type activities 16 that have come up in the enviro care context, and then also l 17 some of the other low-level waste siting and standard l
1 18 setting activities including the clearance levels process. 19 So you've obviously responded to that later in 20 March and in that response you noted that the attention of l 21 resources and incoming to do assignments, we're all feeling 22 the same sort of competition of resources. So this is 23 something we probably ought to talk about a little bit, how 24 can we manage working our way through this in a value-added 25 approach as identified in your planning document. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
378 1 In the near term we, as in your planning document, t 2 recommend that the focus be on the Yucca Mountain site 3 priorities. l We really do need your feedback early in this 4 process. The DOE is looking for information in the 5 rulemaking process, they need that by the middle of next i 6 year. So, as you know, we're working on the Part 63 process J 7 and it's very important that that feedback loop continue. 8 We endorse getting together with you at the management 9 level, and as any of you are in town on occasion, Margaret 10 and I have offered to visit with you to go over some of 11 these priority issues because we go through the same 12 process. In fact, our budget recently went through the 13 cycle and we had to set those priorities. 14 As the year goes on we do have to reprioritize 15 from time-to-time. So this is, I think, an ongoing 16 activity. But Carl has made it real clear to Margaret and I 17 his top priority is the viability assessment and the Part 63 18 rulemaking. So that's on our front burner and it's received 19 a lot of attention in this meeting and I think appropriately 20 so. So sort of the question is, well, what do you do about l 21 the other issues? You're being encouraged to look more at 22 the low-level waste program. There are an increasing number 23 of policy issues in that arena and the reality is the staff 24 only has about one FTE in this fiscal year we're in now, and 25 we've probably already spent that when we're riding on fumes O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters
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379 1- now. But the issues don't go away. We do have to find a 2 way to address them. l 3 Fortunately in '99 we do have more resources going 4 into this area. So things like the branch technical f 5 position on performance assessment will come back and we 6 will be able to put resources into that. And that's one 7 that we have had quite a bit of interaction with you on. So 8 I think we need to look forward to that. 9 The generic criticality issues, those are some of 1 10 the ones that I think are ahead of us and we do need to 11 visit with you some on that. And, again, how do we handle 12 the predecisional nature of some of these is something that 13 I think we need to think about collectively. l 14 The other topic that the commission mentioned was 15 the clearance levels. Well, this is another emerging area 16 that deserves attention. So far people seem to be focusing I 17 on metals and rubble material like concrete. Well, there's 18 a whole host of other types of materials out there that 19 deserve attention. And unfortunately on that topic we won't ! 20 have the resources to begin any rulemaking process until the 21 year 2000. That doesn't mean that we -- that we can't be 22 looking at the issues because I think they're going to come l 23 up in various different contexts. 24 So I'd like to see if Margaret and I can't find 25 ways to meet with you periodically and go over these prior [] D ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters , 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 j Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l 380 1 -- not annually, but as the time goes on so that it's a big () 2 of an iterative process. We also expect to get a staff 3 requirements memorandum on paper that we have with the 4 Commission on the set of enviro care issues. And we think 5 there may be a little bit more guidance on how we're to 6 proceed in these low-level waste areas when that comes out. 7 So once we do receive that, I expect we will want to sit 8 down with you and make sure that we can look at this platter 9 of issues and see where the value-added concept can be 10 applied most fruitfully. 11 I'm finished with that and I'm just going to step i 12 into the decommissioning area unless there's something that 13 I mentioned that you find ripe for further discussion 14 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: No, we just agree with you that (_j 15 whenever we can get together and discuss these we ought to. 16 MR. GREEVES: There's just so many of these things 17 laying out there that any one of them can gobble up a lot of 18 time. And we just, I think, need to work smart in terms of 19 which ones can we manage to work off and which ones do we i 20 have to acknowledge you're going to have to wait a little 1 21 bit. So, okay, we'll join you on that. 22 The decommissioning area I -- as much as I enjoyed 23 listening to and participating in some of the high-level 24 waste discussions at this meeting and in future meetings in 25 my view the high-level waste program seems to be running ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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i 381 1 quite. smoothly. The letters you provided recently we were l( 2 communicating. We seem to have the same focus in terms of 3 what the issues are, and it seems to really have a momentum 4 and is moving forward and is on a -- what looks to me like a 5 success path. l 6 I just have to share with you, I'm not as 7 comfortable in the decommissioning area. It just isn't -- 8 it hasn't come along, and it hasn't had the history that the l 9 high-level waste program has in terms of where it is with ' 10 time, i 11 I understand that you're in the process of ) 12 providing a letter to the Commission in June on this topic. 13 I'll be curious to read it. I think you've got a daunting 1 l
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14 task just to write something on this particular program 1 15 area. I know you've had my staff research briefing you on 16 where things are in this area and possibly -- I know you ! 17 have that eight-inch package that just went up to the l 18 Commission that just gives you an idea, you know, of how l 19 much is out there. And when you read it you can clearly see l 20 there are some implementation issues that are in front of l 21 us. So, I think you probably share my concern that this is 22 an area that is going to be a challenge for us collectively , 23 -- all of us, including the industry and the licensees. And l 24 we just need to think about how can we do this efficiently 25 and smartly with the scare resources that are available in ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
382 l 1 this process. 1 p t 2 As you look ac the paper that went up to the 3 Commission you see that we're talking about a period -- a 4 two-year period of using these guidance documents for - 5 comments. I think you're aware that we have held a number 6 of workshops, research has held some, NMSS's staff has held 7 some with licensees on innovative ways to address 8 decommissioning. I find the workshops are quite useful, but 9 I feel like we're sort of at the front end in many ways on 10 this issue. 11 For example, the screening model that you've heard 12 about, the DND model, we need to do a fair amount of more l 13 work with that. When you examine that, if you take that in 14 a screening mode and examine all the potential sites across , () 15 this country and you end up potentially with some very 16 conservative approaches to setting screening levels. In 17 thinking about that we think that you need to address things ; 18 on a more regional, site-specific-type basis to help remove 19 some of those inherent conservatisms in the process to make l 20 the process useful. 21 Well, we're at the beginning of that process. And 22 so I -- Margaret and I have talked and a couple of things we 23 need to do, we're just going to share them with you. We 24 need to address a standard review plan. We've got a f 25 handbook on decommissioning that puts together a story on ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O' Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
383 1 how do you get into decommissioning, how do you get out of
/m 2 decommissioning. It was mostly meant for the regions, put (V) 3 together so the regions would have a tool to utilize in the 4 decommissioning process.
5 We've been out and we've briefed the regions on 6 the use of the handbook. The handbook a little bit has been 7 overcome by events. The handbook was actually written 8 before the rule was in place. So there are things in the 9 handbook that need to be revised. 10 The process we have in mind is to wrap all this 11 together in a standard review plan that speaks for itself in 12 terms of how do you utilize these processes, what codes are 13 applicable at what types of sites. And this is a rather a 14 large process. Fortunately we're building resources into r (h) 15 the operating plan to do this. But, again, this is ahead of 16 us and you've reviewed review plans that we put together in 17 the past. We put together a review plan for the low-level 18 waste program which the committee reviewed in years past. 19 So you know how much work is involved in that process, 20 That's a piece of what we need to do. A second 21 piece is -- I attribute part of the success that we all 1 22 share in with where we are in the high-level waste program l 23 with what we call the " board concept". I think you're 24 familiar with that. We've told you about the high-level l l 25 waste board that the branch chiefs that Margaret and the i
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i 384 1 centers participate in. It's been a very healthy process.
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s 2 They bring issues in, in terms of where are we going with 3 some of our contract dollars. Where are we going with some 4 of our near-term issues, how do we address the viability 5 assessment. My view is, we need to do that in the 6 decommissioning area. 7 There is a lot of things going on in the 8 decommissioning area, research had the responsibility for 9 the rule, various pieces of the guidance document have been 10 developed in research. We've got the licensing focus in 11 front of us in the program office. We managed the site 12 decommissioning management plan. NRR has quite a bit of i l 13 activity going on in decommissioning. And my comfort level 14 just isn't where it needs to be. And I think we need to 15 apply this board concept to the decommissioning areas. ; 1 16 You'll hear more about this. And I think it's a tool that 17 has proven successful in the high-level waste area and I've 18 talked to Carl and made a commitment that I need to 19 incorporate that type of an approach in the decommissioning 1 20 area because it's hard to pull all of these things together. l i 21 There's a lot going on in the decommissioning area. )
- 22 You heard a lot about it from research this past 23 week in terms of their program areas. I think we'll be more
- 24 efficient in that process.
25 So I've kind of gone on a little bit about that, i i
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385 j 1 but those are sort of the things that are on my mind in Ix} 2 terms of the low-level waste issues, the decommissioning l 3 issues, and we've already gone over the high-level waste l 4 topics. I ! 5 \ Margaret, do you -- l 6 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Maybe before Margaret, George ! 7 wants to say something. 8 DR. HORNBERGER: John, I'm just curious, let me l l l 9 see if I can clarify this a little bit. Is your concern on f ! 10 decommissluning mainly on the implementation side or is 1 11 there something more fundamental in terms of philosophy or 12 approach? For example, do you believe that a screening tool 13 is really needed? 14 MR. GREEVES: Well, you asked two questions. Is
- I 15 it -- it's pretty much an implementation issue. I just l
16 don't feel like some of the issues are adequately connected 17 among the various players, so there are some implementation l l l 18 issues. I think we can be much more efficient by writing 19 the standard review plan. That's a very helpful ! 20 implementation tool. By constituting a separate board to 21 make sure that the dialogue that is necessary between the 22 various resources. Research has resources in the l 23 decommissioning program. I think we need to make sure that 24 they're all pulling in the direction that is most efficient. 25 As far as the philosophy on screening approaches, lb ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O Court Reporters 7 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
386 1 I personally think there's a need for a screening level for () 2 a certain segment of the licensees. It's a simple approach. 3 If a licensee knows, hey, what is this screening approach? 4 I only have one nuclide and it's, you know, carbon-14 and if 5 there's a screening level associated with that that I can 6 clean up my facility, wipe down my tables, clean up my 7 floor, if there is a screening level on that, I need to know 8 what that is. So I think there is a role for screening 9 level activities, both for surface activities and for soil 10 concentration like we have with the action plan criteria. 11 There's more to it when you get to the complicate 12 sites though which will involve modeling that is much more 13 sophisticated in terms of attacking some of our more 14 complicated sites which we have some of those also. 15 Am I answering your question? 16 DR. HORNBERGER: Yes. I think you are. I didn't 17 hear you say that you agreed that a dose-screening criterion 18 or a dose-screening methodology would be useful. 19 MR. GREEVES: Well -- 20 DR. HORNBERGER: And I'm curious when you say, "a 21 few sites"; I mean, how few do you think need a screening 22 tool? 23 MR. GREEVES: You've said a couple of things. 24 DR. HORNBERGER: I know. 25 MR. GREEVES: First the dose criteria is built () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
387 1 into the rule. So that's fundamental. That's in the () 2 regulation and one way or another we need to address that. 3 If you can set up some screening tools based on 4 the dose criteria that can tell a segment of the licensing 5 community, if you can get your contamination levels down to ; 6 this number, so many DPM, for example, for surface i l 7 contamination, that is very useful for a large set of 8 licensees, they don't have to worry about the dose-modeling 9 process. 10 So I think a segment of our licensees need that. 11 Many of them use reg guide 18.6 in that type of an approach. 12 There are licensees that are going to have to go further 13 than that that need to account for site-specific activity. 14 Because when you use these screening techniques we all find () 15 that you come up with some very conservative numbers in some 16 cases. For example, uranium and thorium are problem areas i 17 for us. So we need to look closer at what -- you know, is 18 there a useful screening level for uranium and thorium. So 19 I see it as a continuum. But a large segment, in my view, l 20 of the licensing community does need, and can take advantage 21 of some screening level numbers. And I think we need to get 22 there. I'm not sure what it's going to take to get there, i 23 and that's a process I see as in front of us. l 24 Margaret, do you -- 25 MS. FEDERLINE: Yeah, I just wanted to comment, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATEL', LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
388 1 there's one implementation issue, the rule also requires an () 2 ALARA analysis. So in other words, there's a dose screening 3 plus an ALARA. And it's difficult to kind of reconcile the 4 screening approach if you then have to go on and do an ALARA 5 analysis. So that's one of the issues that, you know, we l 6 have to work out. The other issue is that we need to work i out this transition between screening and there are various 7 l 8 levels of complexity of sites.
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9 I mean, obviously we know the SDMP sites, but then 10 there's a mid-ground of sites that are more complex than 11 screening, but less complex than SDMP. And we have to make I 12 sue that our basis for releasing these sites is consistent. 13 You know, and so we have to think out how do you transition 14 from one -- from a screening modeling concept to a more '( ) 15 site-specific modeling concept, which parameters do you 16 allow to be changed, that kind of thing. i 17 So it's a very complex process that we're into. 18 Plus there are a number of codes out there, RESRAD and 19 others that are well benchmarked and verified and whatnot. ; 20 How do you permit the use of those codes and how do you 21 achieve a consistent level of cleanup with that. So, you 22 know, there are a number of complicated issues that we need 23 to look at as part of the implementation. 24 MR. GREEVES: And just let me add that we need to 25 think of it in the larger context too because DOE actually l [)
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r l 1 389 1 does a lot of this type of work also. And we need to keep () 2 them fully informed as to what we're doing in terms of any 3 of these screening activities, the use of the RESRAD code, l i 4 they rely on that heavily. Also the states. The states are i I 5 looking into these issues and they've got implementation 6 problems associated with that, and add on top of that NARM. 7 The states deal with NARM. And all of this somehow should 8 fit into context. It's hard to -- but you can't lose sight i 9 of these things because something that we may do, we want to i 10 make sure that we share that process with the states as it 11 might affect their choices on how they address NARM. 12 So I feel like we're at the front of a process in 13 the decommissioning area that is going to deserve a lot of , 14 management attention and we're spread pretty thin during the ! n (_) 15 high-level waste program so we've got to -- as I say, work 16 smarter in terms of how we do this process. Make sure all 17 the resources available to the Commission are applied in a 18 way that is consistent and has value added. So I think I've 19 gone on a little bit here, but I ask you to think about 20 that, and after time give us some feedback. 21 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: No , I -- John, I think this is 22 an important discussion. I think the committee shares a 23 little bit of anxiety with respect to the decommissioning 24 activity and that we do need to become more focused in 1 25 getting our arms around it. I guess I would ask you, your l
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390 1 and Margaret's opinion as to what are the most important two ( 2 or three things that need to be done from your perspective 3 for us to achieve higher confidence in our direction with 4 respect to decommissioning? 5 MR. GREEVES: There are so many out there it's 6 hard. But I can pick out a couple that are on my mind, and 7 uranium and thorium issues are a key. How can we address 8 those? 9 There's a couple of pieces of that. One, for-10 those sites that don't have anything but contamination, 11 what's the appropriate level in terms of a screening 12 process. That's on one end. On the other end are the sites 13 that have a lot of it. Uranium and thorium, they're there l l 14 forever. And my -- what I see going on around the country () 1 15 is sites are, you know, basically putting together and 16 consclidating uranium and thorium in various locations. And 17 if you've got something that's forever and it's on the I 18 surface like a. uranium tailing pile, how do you manage this i 19 in terms of the institutional control issues. So it's got 20 two ends of the spectrum in uranium and thorium. I 21 The other issue that I -- I'm only going to 22 mention a couple and Margaret can add -- is the modeling 23 piece. You know, what is the staff going to use, what can 24 the industry.use, and how do those feed back and forth. So 25 that's something we need to be working on. I think that's O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 7 Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 I
391 1 in front of us. And to the extent we can, if there's ( 2 existing material codes out there, let's utilize those. 3 It's hard for us to create new code and invent new things 4 with the scarce resources that the Government has. So those 5 are a couple that are in front of us that I care to mention 6 at this time. And there are others. 7 Margaret, do you -- 8 MS. FEDERLINE: Well, just to elaborate, I guess 9 my biggest management concern is how to proceed with license i 10 terminations. You know, we have a rule on the book, we need l 11 to proceed with these cases that we're dealing with and yet 12 make sure that that information is adequately fed into the l 13 process of developing these decision criteria. You know, it 14 feels like it would be nice to sort of wait to do the i 15 terminations until we've got all this straight, but we can't 16 afford to do that. So -- 17 MR. GREEVES: There are cases we are terminating. 18 So we need to keep the case work moving, but these difficult I 19 sites, the one with the long-lived material, volumes, large j 20 volumes and millions of cubic feet, they're the ones that I 21 receive attention and, you know, you frequently get the 22 view, okay, let's dig it up and get it out of here. Well, 23 of course, these long-lived materials we all know, if you
.24 dig it up here, you're going to place it somewhere else. So 25 it's -- it gets a little bit silly at times. And so I think ]
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392 1 these are kind of national issues. What's going to happen i () 2 with this material? l 3 And, you know, there are a number of sites around 4 the country where these types of issues are being addressed 5 only by NRC. You've got -- I was down at Oakridge and Dr. 6 Wymer is probably very familiar with it, but they're looking I 1 l 7 at a cell down there for a lot of the uranium that is l l
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8 contained on site. And I was able to sit in on some of the 9 meetings and they're talking about these issues. What do we . l I 10 do with this long-lived material, what do we, the community, j 11 think about what institutional controls to attach to that? 12 And they're thinking about in-uses. How can we shrink the i 13 footprint of these large volumes of material? Think about
- 14 what would be the appropriate institutional control and
\ (~h 15 i, ,/ financial plan for that. And I really enjoyed my time down 16 there. It was a little bit of a busman's holiday. I got to 17 sit in on meetings that Margaret and I run for our sites 18 that DOE has in front of them down there. 19 So there's a large platter of issues out there and l 20 my guess is we're going to be talking about these more than 21 we have in the past. And I'd invite your help in thinking 22 through where can we add value to this process. 23 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Good. 24 MR. GREEVES: We're open to, you know, other 25 topics, but those were the topics that I specifically wanted ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. On Court Reporters
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393 1 to address. And as I said, this has been a landmark meeting 2 and I think it's been a credit to your efforts for your [Gl 3 100th meeting. 4 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yes. Well, let me turn to the 5 committee and see if they (a) have any comments regarding 6 what we've heard, or (b) any ideas that we might feed back 7 at this point. Charles? 8 DR. FAIRHURST: I was just wondering with this 9 last issue of decommissioning, do you have a reasonably 10 fairly good idea of what you're going to do in this two-year 11 testing period? Because a lot of the issues you're not 12 going to resolve unless you actually sit down with concrete 13 cases and work through it with both sides. 14 MS. FEDERLINE: Yeah, we do and we'll be -- I
) 15 think we're on your schedule -- Robert, I can't remember --
16 to come and talk to you about the standard review plan. But 17 what we're doing is putting together a scoping effort. We 18 need to get in put from outside from folks dealing with real 19 problems. We need to use our current licensing cases as 20 pilots as we move through this activity. And we also need 21 to define the dose modeling tasks and that's exactly what l 22 we're doing now is pulling all this together in a scoping 23 plan and we should be down to you whenever we're scheduled. 24 I think it's June, is it? 25 MR. JOHNSON: Robert Johnson, this is in July. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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394 1 It's scheduled for July. 2 MS. FEDERLINE: ! [ )) 1
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July, I'm sorry, to talk about our 3 scoping plan for how we're going to proceed. 4 DR. FAIRHURST: That would be very helpful. You 5 get mixed signals even from within NRC as to what is worth 6 doing and what's not worth doing. 7 MR. GREEVES: Well, what's not negotiable is we l 8 have the case work. The case work is in front of us and 9 it's a day-to-day issue with Margaret and I and the staff. 10 We're into meetings on these issues. We've got one coming 11 up next month at Parks Township. 12 MS. FEDERLINE: Yes. 13 MR. GREEVES: So, it's -- we're going to have some 14 live examples. Plus we called a workshop with the industry ( 'T (_,/ 15 in terms of are there any innovative ways we can maybe deal 16 with some of the cases that aren't that complicated. And 17 there was a big turnout from the regulated industry. A 18 number of licensees came into that meeting and said, yes, I 1 l 19 want to try working with you on cleaning up this site and ' 20 look for innovative techniques to streamline the process. 21 We owe the Commission a paper on that in terms of 22 status to let them know that it's very receptive by the 23 regulated community to try and have a few pilot projects on 24 that. So we'll give you visibility of that process. So, we 25 -- you're going to see these. And as I say, day-to-day we [\- $ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 2 84 - b3
395 1 are working on these cases. 2 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Good. Ray?- 3 DR. WYMER: Yeah, I'll state the obvious. I think 4 we're on a very fast track to get a letter out on this 5 guidance document. And so we're taking a fairly narrow 6 focus. In the first pass it looks to me like it's based 7 pretty much on the modeling activity. It appears to me like 8 we're going to have to revisit this though to address the 9 larger issues in a taore thoughtful way than we are not 10 prepared to do in this timeframe. So I think we're going to 11 have to come back and take the larger issues at a later 12 date. l l 13 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: This is a big issue that i 14 Margaret poses of how to proceed with licensing terminations > (~ l 15 and so as usual there's the two categories of issues. 16 There's the -- the process issues and the technical issues. 17 And we need to -- we need to make sure we understand.that 18 difference and have the appropriate expertise involved. j i 19 George? Staff, any questions, comments? ' 20 (No response.] 21 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Well, as usual we appreciate ! ! 22 this. exchange and dialogue and let's continue it because it l 23 feeds our hopper for new ideas. We are scheduled in October 24 to revisit our planning process and our priorities. And 25 this is all relative -- relevant to that process so we're O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
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j 396 1 delighted that you spend the time. l3 2 MS. FEDERLINE: We just wanted to thank you. One 3 of your staff members is joining us on a rotational 4 assignment and we know how difficult that is for you 5 because, you know, you are under resourced as well as we 6 are, you know, and what we're trying to do is design 7 assignments that can sort of optimize our interactions and 8 so we hope that works well.
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9 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: What Margaret is talking about 10 is Rich Major is going to go on a three-month rotation ; 11 beginning April 27th. And so we hope that that results 12 eventually in some excellent feedback to help us in our 13 longer-term problems. So we're going to work with you on i 14 that. 15 MS. FEDERLINE: He'll tell you about all our 16 warts. 17 MR. GREEVES: We're looking forward to having a 18 mole inside NSMN. 19 [ Laughter.] 20 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yes. Thank you very much. 21 MS. FEDERLINE: Thank you. l 22 (Pause.] i 23 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: All right. Our next agenda I 24 item is Status of Issues Related to the Yucca Mountain 25 Project and it's time for the Department of Energy to take l g ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. V Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
397 l 1 the podium. And we're very pleased to have Lake Barrett [ ) 2 with us today to start that process off. And we're really
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3 looking forward to hearing from you. 4 MR. BARRETT: My pleasure. It's a pleasure to be 5 before the committee on it's 100th anniversary meeting. 6 [ Laughter . ] 7 MR. BARRETT: Do I need to be wired if I'm going 8 to be over here. 9 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yes. 10 MR. BARRETT: Good morning again. What I thought 11 I would do is try to sort of very quickly go through in 12 about 15 minutes or so some overview of Yucca Mountain. I 13 really would prefer more of a dialogue type of thing, but I 14 know the committee is certainly not shy to stop at a point
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, ( ,) 15 and do that. So I would appreciate if you would like to 16 stop at any point, and I believe that you have sufficient 17 time afterwards to go into any other related issues that are 18 going on to discuss the extent that I can before you here 19 today. And then Carol Hanlon of the Yucca Mountain project 20 I think was going to go ir.to some more detail afterwards for 21 you.
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22 I know the committee has been out to Yucca 23 Mountain last fall. We invite you again because we've made 24 a lot of progress since the fall in some of the testing 25 there. So whatever would please the committee. l l i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
I l 398 l 1 [ Slide shown.] l( ) 2 MR. BARRETT: What I have to run through is sort 3 of our standard briefings in a bit, so I'll go over it 4 quickly, but I'll pause on a few things that might be of 5 interest to the committee. 1 I 6 Can the front lights go down there a bit? j 7 This is sort of our standard opening slide, but 8 there is a few things I would like to mention to the 9 committee. Historically this program was always related to 10 the nuclear utility spent fuel disposition. Clearly that's , 1 11 an important part and probably the central part of our l 12 program. But there are many other aspects of the j 13 significance of this program to other national and 14 international programs as well. Clearly the discipline of (G _) 15 the DOE high-level material which we started making back in 16 1943 at the end of World War II. Now, today, fortunately, 17 with the end of the Cold War we have much surplus weapons 18 materials that need to be disposed of. If we either by 19 using in the case of the weapons grade plutonium either by 20 mock fuel or by direct vitrification and immobilization, 21 either way it would come into a high-level waste repository. 22 We have a substantial nonproliferation policy in 23 this nation and of course worldwide. And part of that is 24 bringing back some of the high enriched foreign research 25 reactor fuel to this country. Again with our h,\ / ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters r 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
399 1 nonproliferation policies on reprocessing much of this fuel () 2 will be directly disposed in appropriate packaging in the 3 repository. 4 And, of course, our national security aspects of 5 the Naval Nuclear Program the spent fuel now that is not 6 being reprocessed in Idaho will be directly disposed of in 7 the repository. As we try to bring out there to other 8 constituencies it is much more than just the commercial 9 nuclear power programs. 10 [ Slide shown.] 11 MR. BARRETT: The overall schedule -- I'll skip 12 the overview. I believe you have copies of this and I'm 13 going to skip a few just for time purposes. 14 Our overall schedule where we're focused on is () 15 we're coming -- I'll go into some more detail inside this 16 box in a bit, but with the viability assessment late this 17 year and you've been following that, I think, fairly closely 18 with the technical work, draft environmental impact 19 statement in '99, final environmental impact statement 2000, 20 site recommendation to the Secretary and the President if it 21 is determined to be scientifically and technically suitable 22 for a repository site. License application in March '02, a 23 three- to four-year licensing process, '05, '06 for 24 construction authorization and a placement underground in 25 2010. That schedule has basically not changed in the last O' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l ' Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
400 1 four years. () 2 [ Slide shown.] 1 3 MR. BARRETT: A little more detail on the j 1 4 viability assessment. At the end of this year there are 5 basically four components to that, the science of 6 performance assessment is a major part as you're well aware, 7 the design and engineering of a repository, the engineered 8 barrier system and its interaction, the licensing, the 9 licensing plan to go to licensing and the cost estimates to 10 go to licensing are all part of the viability assessment. 11 It does not include the environmental impact 12 statement that comes in '99 as that will follow the NEPA i 13 statutes and case law. And it does not require performance i 14 standards, either the DOEs, the EPAs, or the NRC's. I
) 15 should update this to show 60/60 10 CFR 63. We are I 16 basically going to say how well and how poorly a repository 17 works in a Yucca Mountain setting.
18 The NEPA documentation starts to kick in, in the 19 EIS and of course the standards on how good is good enough, 20 how safe is safe enough, what are the appropriate 21 environmental standards, of course, come in at the site 22 recommendation and in spades when it comes to the license 23 application. 24 [ Slide shown.] 25 MR. BARRETT: The viability assessment you -- I've / \ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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401 1 kind of gone through that -- but you all know the statutory ( ) 2 four components of that. Basically it's the design, the 3 performance, and the cost of the LA, and then the cost for 4 the total life cycle costs. As companion documents in the 5 fall we will also have the total life cycle cost estimates 6 published and also the fee adequacy report published also, 7 also in the fall as companion documents to the viability 8 assessment. 9 [ Slide shown.) 10 MR. BARRETT: There has been discussion in many 11 places about what is the difference between the viability 12 assessment and the site recommendation. The short a:wwer to 13 that is, the viability assessment is a statement of how well 14 we see the repository working as the best science and () 15 engineering can predict. It is not a federal decision in 16 any way shape or form in itself. 17 The site recommendation on the other hand is 18 specified in the original statute. It is the central 19 political, technical decision for continuing on to a license 20 application. This was established after many years of 21 debate in the Congress in the late '70s and early '80s as 22 the proper balance path forward. 23 So, in the subtlements that the -- it's a 24 management tool where measure of progress for where we are, 25 pulling together in the nominal $3 billion worth of work we () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite.300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
402 1 will have done on Yucca Mountain to that point. And it will () 2 3 guide us to the LA and will be a point where I think the Congress, the President will assess where we are. 4 The decisions on that will manifest themselves 5 really in the FY-2000 budget. So the cycle will be, the 6 information will be available to the President and Congress 7 in late '98 as the administration is developing its FY-2000 8 budget. And nominally in the end of February of '99 the 9 President will submit his FY-2000 budget. If the President i 10 considers it a worthwhile endeavor to continue, it will be 11 included in his 2000 budget as a proposal to continue on to 12 the site recommendation. And then that will be sent to the j 13 Congress with the other President's proposal and Congress ) l 14 will look at the President's request, will look at the I () 15 viability assessment and they will make their call if this I 16 is a worthwhile endeavor to continue or not or to change 17 direction. 18 The site recommendation, yes, it's basically what 19 is spelled out in the Act. A key thing with the NRC it 20 requires the NRC to state -- which we would include in the 21 site recommendation to the President, the sufficiency of the 22 site characterization program and the sufficiency of that 23 information to continue on to the license application which 24 would, in the schedules appear would be shortly after the 25 site recommendation package. O' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
! I 403 , 1 Then a lot of political matters will happen as the 2 Governor has the right to disapprove the site and then the [V) 3 override and all of that. 4 [ Slide shown.] 5 MR. BARRETT: Now, the viability assessment will l 6 compile all the information we have on Yucca Mountain to the 7 best that we can do. We believe it is going to be a 8 state-of-the-art world class scientific endeavor. We're 9 doing this in open and transparent process. I will add we l 10 are going to making extensive use of the Internet and our { l 11 home pages to be able to disseminate the viability 12 assessment information including the technical bases for it. 13 We are starting now to put some of our scientific documents 14 and management documents on the Internet. 15 We are currently experiencing a little over 3,000 16 visits from outsiders to our home page gathering 17 information, downloading files. And it is our intent to 18 extensively use that. And we believe this experience with 19 that VA and the total VA will be on the Internet and the l 20 home page will be useful information for us if we go into 21 licensing in the -- you know, in the licensing support , 22 system aspects of things. l 23 This will be the first time we've really pulled i 24 this together since the EAs back in the '85 timeframe and 25 we've learned a lot about Yucca Mountain since that time. [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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404 l 1 As we said, it's a management tool to provide a measurably () 2 3 improved information on what Yucca Mountain repository is. We are on schedule to complete a draft of the information to 4 be given to the Secretaries. i
- 5 And the reason I say " Secretaries" in this case l
6 the way Secretary PeSa, although he will be leaving in the 7 end of June, Secretary PeSa, the Deputy Secretary Moller, 8 and Under Secretary Moniz, work as a team where Dr. Moniz is 9 the scientific arm of it. Deputy Secretary Moller is sort 10 of the chief operating officer arm of it in the budgets and l l 11 everything and Mr. PeSa is the CEO and the next Secretary 12 will be -- unless the next Secretary changes it, I would l 13 expect that type of system to go. So I would say it will l l 14 not be submitted only to the Secretary or the Secretaries. ! /~N l (,) 15 We are on schedule. You've seen a lot of the work l 16 there. We have opportunities to excel every day as we go 17 through that and there is much, much work yet to be done. 18 Thus far we have found no technical reason that we would l 19 believe the site would be unsuitable, however, we do not 20 know yet until the societal standards that basically is the
- 21 EPA 40 CFR 197 and the NRC 10 CFR 63 are really resolved, I
22 that would be the societal yardstick that we will have to 23 measure this against. 24 [ Slide shown.) 25 MR. BARRETT: Now, I will very quickly go through
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ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 i (202) 842-0034 '
405 l 1 .the repository because this you know much about. The () 2 repository at Yucca Mountain, you've been there. I was 3 listening to your dialogue this morning about the loading. ! 4 You are correct, we are looking very carefully at preclosure l ! 5 activities that would impact post-closure performance. But i 6 the real focus that we are looking at is the post-closure 7 aspects of the repository. 8 Fuel handling, storage on the surface is something 9 that we have done before and we don't believe that's really ! 10 the major issue for us to be dealing with over the next 11 several years. 12 [ Slide shown.) 13 MR. BARRETT: The waste package I believe you've 14 been briefed on the waste package. Since we were here the () 15 last time the only thing we've changed here maybe is -- I 16 . don't know if you were briefed on the shifted alloy C-22 for L l 17 the corrosion use of material. A lot of integration with 18 the waste package with the criticality safety analyses that 19 will be included in the viability assessment. l 20 There are some inner ties that I will mention l 21 between our storage program and our repository program. We 22 have started several years ago working on burn up credit. 23 And we have submitted a topical safety analysis report to i 24 the NRC staff for their review on burn up credit. We 25 believe burn up credit will be important in the ; O l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ' Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l l 406 l 1 transportation design primarily, but also it will be in the l () 2 waste package design also. And I believe that's important 3 to continue that and the staff is reviewing that in NMSS. l 4 [ Slide shown.] l 5 MR. BARRETT: There's a similar type of waste
- 6 package for the DOE fuel. And I believe you've been briefed I
( 7 on that as well. Just one thing I'll mention is that some 8 of the DOE fuel is high enriched fuel other than the Navy l 9 which will have their own canister will basically be mixed l 10 in -- well, not mixed in, but will be placed in a fuel l 11 canister in an overall package with the boil circuit glass ! 12 from the tanks. 13 [ Slide shown.) l l 14 MR. BARRETT: I will skip over the next few on the 15 performance assessment because you've been briefed in quite f 16 detail en the performance assessment. But I would like to go 17 to this slide a little bit. l 18 This is the modeling in the TSPA. As you well 1 l 19 know, this is a complex interaction and what we have tried l 20 to do is bring the world-class scientists together in an i 21 integrated manner to do this modeling which nas act really 22 been done before. And this is -- these various areas we 23 have color coded that and if you have a color version of 24 this you will see that we tried it on the next is to show 25 what organizations under the TRW/ NMO umbrella are working on O- ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 t
407 1 this. So we have tried to -- you know, we are working very () 2 hard to keep this integrated because it requires an immense 3 integration task to have the engineers working on the waste 4 package, those who are working on the tunnel support of the 5 classic mining aspects of things to be integrated in with 6 the natural science folks on the environment and how the j I 7 environment will change, the climatologists because they all 8 are interrelated in a very fast, fast moving connected 9 manner. And this is a major effort that we all worked 1 l 10 together on to be sure that we have a total output that is l 11 an integrated output. 1 12 [ Slide shown.] ' 13 MR. BARRETT: This is sort of where we are on I i 14 this. I think you've been briefed again in this in some < l ) 15 considerable detail. But we will have a reference design 16 for a repository in the viability assessment and we will 17 look ac options to potentially enhance this performance. 18 such as ceramics, ceramic coatings of the waste package, i 19 backfill, and we will analyze those in some detail as far as 20 their cost and potential performance. As you clearly 21 understand there are uncertainties as to how much credit we 22 could ever take in a licensing case for that. 23 We will also address design alternatives. There's 24 an issue we have ongoing with the Nuclear Waste Technical 25 Review Board as we do the design process. The design is [' s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters t 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
408 1 still a long way to go before we have a constructable () 2 3 design. There are many issues that we're going to work through in a design controlled process that will evaluate 4 various alternatives as the design will be optimized and i 5 will evolve. t - l 6 We will look at things such as the diameter of the 7 emplacement drifts, we will discuss these design - 8 alternatives and the viability assessment in a qualitative 9 manner to the best we can and will in the period between now 10 and the LA will refine that into a license application ( 11 design. A lot of testing is going on in materials as we go 12 along. I think the probably I won't go into them unless the l l 13 committee would like to. 14 [ Slide shown.] i
~\
l((,) 15 MR. BARRETT: TSPA, the committee is very 16 influential in the TSPA. We are continuing that and that is 17 probably the central most complicated part because it brings 18 together the design and the natural sciences and all that 19 together. As we say, it's sort of on the top of the food i 20 chain. 1 21 (Slide shown.) ! 22 MR. BARRETT: As far as the licensing process, I 23 won't go into that because you know that very well. But 24 back in this area here in the prelicensing phase the way we i l 25 see this is that we want to inform and have a fully open ! l l l l I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I k Court Reporters ' 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 842-0034 i
409 1 transparent program for all to see including the NRC. The () 2 NRC has its on-site reps and it stays very much up-to-date 3 on what's going on as we develop the technical aspects of 4 the repository a key thing that we will focus on will be 1 5 what work needs to be done between the viability assessment 6 and the LA. We in our long-range budget plans are looking 7 at about a billion dollars of work that we would do between 8 the viability -- between the end of '98 and a 2002 license 9 application. 10 We need to clearly see what are the regulatory 11 requirements and how can we gather the information necessary 12 to sustain that we can demonstrate that we meet that through 13 a reasonable assurance and judicatory process for a 14 first-time endeavor. We'll have our cost estimates and we
) 15 will have the work identified as to what we plan to do. And 16 there needs to be some societal closure that that is a l I
17 sufficient amount of work or if it's really not, we should 18 know it before we start it. I i 19 [ Slide shown.] 1 20 MR. BARRETT: This is another way of looking at 21 it. We will be defining the testing program we vill do and 22 this updates the process models and is an iterative of 23 action back and forth in the design as well as the design 24 activities impact back on the testing. And I guess the TSPA 25 on the top of the food chain does evaluate, that gives us 1
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410 1 feedback and then we go look, you know, at various years, [\ 2 what the uncertainties are, do the sensitivity studies, then ( ) 3 go back in and look at various design concepts that we do 4 and all this technical work feeds all our activities, the 5 EIS activities, the site recommendation activities, the 10 6 CFR 960 and then the license application. And these are the 7 date for the FEIS, the site recommendation to the President 8 and the license application. j 9 (Slide shown.] 10 MR. BARRETT: We in the cost area are -- this is a 11 very important matter is the -- as the Federal Government 12 wrestles with maintaining a balanced budget situation we j 13 have done a lot of different system studies that look the 14 total costs of this. This is the referenced case where the 15 emplacement would start in 2010 and it starts off basically 16 at the -- you know, 4, 6, 12, 3,000, this is metric tons in 17 place. These are the costs per year. Notice we're starting 18 to get, when we're building a railroad in Nevada, this would 19 be the long billion dollar railroad basically. We get some 20 very high cashflow times of like over a billion dollars a 21 year. This is an issue that we will work out with OMB as 22 far as cashflow in the Federal Government. We are looking
.23 at options such as modular surface construction to try to 24 bring these peak costs down. But those we're doing very 25 little in that area, but nonetheless, enough to be able to
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411 1 sustain where we are in the out-year budgets. I
<s
( ) 2 This is our reference design and we have other 3 cases and scenarios where you can increase lag storage, this 4 is not lag storage because that's not in our referenced 5 case. 6 You will have total life-cycle costs of around $30 7 billion as well. So there is also another thing I will 8 mention that we are having the ability to in the -- once the 9 repository is loaded, okay, to -- instead of to allow the 10 option for future generations to decide when is the 11 appropriate time to put the seals in. So there will be the 12 ability to do that and we'll cost that both ways. l 13 Basically money would be available to put the l 14 seals in promptly at the end, and we'll say within 10 years A (_) 15 of closure of the repository, but also that money interest 16 would be sufficient to do monitoring of the facility and 17 leave it open as we evaluate future technologies such as the 18 transmutation of waste through accelerators and some ideas 19 that people have and we'll see what the situation will be at 20 that time. But the principal should be enough that they can 21 always put the seals in later if they would wish. Try to 22 deal with what some people consider technological arrogance 23 that we're going to throw this in the hole and put the seals 24 in place and walk away. It is not that simple. l l 25 We will not make the decision to close it to, the l (' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
412 1 future generations will make the decision to close it if () 2 that's the appropriate one to do. 3 [ Slide shown.] 4 MR. BARRETT: The scientific work and 5 deliverables, we have very closely managed this to be sure 6 that we will reach the -- you know, four components of the 7 viability assessment at the end of this year. These are 8 things we have completed. We have more, we have a 9 4,000-note schedule on the computer that we follow that very 10 carefully that basically the science, the design, the 11 construction on site, performance assessment, our regulatory 12 planning all come together when they need to come together. 13 [ Slide shown.) 14 MR. BARRETT: A little bit on the open 15 transparency. This is an issue that has been addressed by 16 many committees. We believe it's very important to keep 17 this open and transparent. There is no secrecy in this 18 program at all. We try to keep to an absolute minimum 19 anything that's classified. The only things that we have 20 that.are classified are some of the naval fuels and that is 21 very minimal. 22 We want groups like your committee and others to 23 be fully apprised of what we're doing. We would like people 24 to review it. We have a lot of technical review boards 25 ourself that we've put together a repository waste ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
413 1 consulting board, TSPA peer review group, you've been [ }
%d 2 briefed on these. We believe these have been very helpful.
3 We've gotten good feedbacks from all of these external 4 groups and we believe that will make a stronger package, 5 more accurate and comprehensive package for the policymakers 6 to look at. 7 As I mentioned, we are putting this -- you know, 8 on the Internet. And we're starting doing that. And I see 9 we have nine documents on there now. f 10 [ Slide shown.] 11 MR. BARRETT: The viability assessment package. I 12 think you've seen this. Again, basically it would be in 13 five volumes. This will be approximately 1,000 pages or so. 14 And then that will reference the technical documents which () 15 will probably be tens of thousands of pages and then its 16 references will be close to -- I don't know, numbers of -- 17 I've heard of over a million pages. 18 One I know that your interests are the TSPA VA 19 report. Normally this would be somewhere in the 20 neighborhood of 300 pages, in the actual TSPA report it will 21 be somewhere in several thousand pages just, you know, 22 expanded upon similar to the TSPA '95 document that the 23 committee is aware of. I 24 I think I mentioned a little earlier, but, you l 25 know, what will happen when the VA is done. We will deliver
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414 1 it in September of '98. The Secretary has said -- all three () 2 of them have said they are going to look at this document 3 very carefully with their immediate staff, so they will look 4 at that. That's why I say, I don't know how long that i 5 review is going to take or what they're going to want to do, 6 and so that's why I say late 1998. 7 The Secretary has stated in testimony in public 8 places, December was his view, but he just -- that's what he 9 said, but it's late 1998. 10 If we don't find any showstoppers we intend to 11 continue on with the FY-2000 budget requests. The 12 Department is now in the FY-2000 budget development process 13 and we are, you know, at the table, you know, inside the 14 Department working and fighting out the budget caps with my 15 colleagues. 16 We expect that the President will look at that 17 very carefully. We've already talked to OMB about it in 18 many cases. We know that they are interested and we are 19 quite sure Congress will be interested also. And they will 20 use this VA information as they do their duties under the 21 Constitution. 22 The role for other parties I think also will be 23 important during that timeframe. Our opinion on this is 24 that people should review the supporting documents as they 25 are developed. I know the committee stays close to our O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
415 1 1 activities as the NRC staff, the technical review board, OMB ! () 2 and others, provide feedback at times. I think this has
)
}
3 made a stronger suite of documents for us as we hear 4 feedback from folks. Please express those early so we have 5 some time to incorporate some of those comments. It doesn't 6 do us a lot of good if we've sent the document to the 7 printers and then we get a bunch of comments that said, you 8 know, that we'd like to have as much time as we can to put 9 that in. 10 And I believe that when the debate starts about, 11 should this nation continue this endeavor or is there a 12 better way, and when this document is the thing, I believe 13 .that the parties should be prepared to state their 14 scientific views, other views if called upon regarding this. 15 But I think there will be a national debate about the wisdom 16 of continuing this after the viability assessment is 17 completed. 18 [ Slide shown.) 19 MR. BARRETT: I mentioned a few things we've done 20 at Yucca Mountain -- sorry about that -- a few things at 21 Yucca Mountain. Some of these you know, the main tunnel you 22 know is done. The larger block experiment, you know, we 23 have completed the large block experiment, we have turned 24 the heaters off and we're getting ready to disassemble the 1 25 large block experiment heater tests. The design is ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
416 1 developing as we go toward the VA design. () 2 We will be looking at things such as optimization 3_ of ventilation in the post-VA period. We have the standard 4 reference ventilation system. Laboratory materials testing 5 has been expanded upon as we are gathering more information 6 on materials; what we call the cross-drift which will go 7 over to the west side of the repository. This was the 8 starter tunnel. Actually I've got some better ones later. l 9 But we've but a tunnel -- a small tunnel boring 10
~
l machine in there. It's a refurbished tunnel boring machine i i 11 it was used for the super collider to save costs and we're ' 12 80 some meters boring in the cross-drift now. We have built ( 13 new testing niches for looking at waterflow and fractures in 1 , 14 trying to determine, you know, seep drips into the tunnels.
) 15 We've built the Busted Butte. I'll get to that in a bit.
11 6 The heat -- the large heater test that you l 17 probably saw construction there when you were there in the 18 fall for that. We have now turned that on. So over 3500 19 sensors around that to watch the water flow and the 20 interaction between the heat and the natural conditions. We 21 are over -- I think it's like 230 degree rock surface 22 temperature. And we actually did see condensation fronts 23 move on out from the -- as the heat -- as the heat wave 24 moved out and we actually had condensation and puddles of 25 water outside the thermal barrier as we expected back in the [~') NJ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 417 1 main tunnel. 2 Of course, drilling on the surface continues. 3 We've got some deep bore holes going down in the west side 4 as well as the WT-24 looking at the large hydraulic gradient 5 in the north. 6 [ Slide shown.) l 7 MR. BARRETT: I think Carol is going to cover some 8 of this so I won't go into it in much detail, but here's a 9 picture I mentioned about this is the cross-drift tunnel 10 boring machine. This is the starter tunnel which is a drill 11 and blast off the main tunnel and here is the small 5.5 12 . meter referber super collider tunnel boring machine being 13 brought in. We are trying to keep ahead of schedule and 14 we've been successful on most of the scientific work to be 15 somewhat ahead of schedule. 16 [ Slide shown.] 17 MR. BARRETT: One new facility I mentioned the 18 Busted Butte. This has been done since you were there. We 19 are trying to gather data on the Calico Hills formation l 20 underneath the repository horizon. We do not have the money 21 to tunnel down into the Calico Hills. 22 Now, in the Busted Butte about nine kilometers to l 23 the south it's offset and the Calico Hills formation is up 24 at the surface so we have built a test facility in Busted l 1 25 Butte where we have tunneled for a couple of hundred meters I l l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O~ Court Reporters l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l l l
I 418 1 down into -- () 2 [ Slide shown.] 3 MR. BARRETT: -- put a little weight on there to I i 4 keep that down -- down into the Calico Hill formation where 5 the test facility where we can inject tracer materials. Our ) , 6 plans were not to use any radioactive _ tracers or chemicals 7 so we can inject in the interface point between the -- 8 basically the Topopau Springs and the Calico Hills for water 9 flow and radionuclide transport simulations in there to l 10 gather some field data on the behavior of the Calico Hills. 11 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Did you say you're not using l 12 radioactive tracers? i 13 MR. BARRETT: We do not plan to-use radioactive 14 ' tracers at this time, but we are evaluating -- some of the h 15 folks have said this might be better if we did. We realize ,
-16 the significance in the perception of using radioactive 17 . instruments in Yucca Mountain, so we're looking at that 18 carefully. But right now our plans initially are not to use 19 any radioactive tracers.
20 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: That's based principally on a 21 negative public perception of -- 22 MR. BARRETT: No, the scientists -- you know,
'23 everyone knows that we would rather not unless there was a 24 scientific reason that we need to do that. So they had 25 their plans together not to use any radioactive tracers and O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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419 1 they're starting to run those tests, but some folks are () 2 looking at the option, would they wish to and if there's a 3 benefit to do it, we'll go and work that. But right now 4 they have not. identified, you know, a need to do that. l 5 So that -- 6 DR. FAIRHURST: They're injected from bore hole? 7 MR. BARRETT: Yeah, the horizontal -- the 8 horizontal injection points are here and then the sensors 9 would be down below. So the horizontal -- not vertical bore 10 holes from the surface. 11 DR. EAIRHURST: What size are the bore holes? 12 MR. BARRETT: I don't know. Carol, do you know 13 the size. They're small, they're drilled. They're drilled. 14 I mean, they're -- l ) 15 DR. FAIRHURST: That's all right. 16 MR. BARRETT: -- a couple inches. I mean, they're 17 not -- they're not -- 18 DR. EAIRHURST: That's what I'm -- yeah. 19 MS. HANLON: They're seven and a half meter in 20 length, but I don't the diameter. 21 DR. FAIRHURST: That's okay. 22 MR. BARRETT: Carol, you're going to need to -- 23 why don't you -- if there's anything further, why don't you 24 come here so they can it up on the recording. 25 MS. HANLON: Sorry. They're seven and a half O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
420 1 meters long, but I don't have the diameter. r 2 MR. BARRETT: They're small. l 3 DR. FAIRHURST: Yeah, I understand. 4 MR. BARRETT: There are a lot of other tests we 5 have on the main tunnel. One test we have that I think is 6 very interesting is the -- on one of the near -- I guess l 7 Alcove 2 at the top of the tunnel, on the main tunnel, we 8 'are injecting water of tens of gallons a minute in the 9 surface over to try to ge water to come down to see what is 10 the drips coming in. And we've got, you know, drip 11 collection points trying to force water to drip in a tunnel. 12 So we have been now, for months been pumping many thousands 13 of gallons in the overburden over the tunnel. And I think 14 it was like 10 or 20 meters over and trying to get -- we 15 will keep pumping until we force water into that tunnel at 16 the point in'one of the upper niches. 17 So there are very many interesting experiments 18 that we're doing. 19 There are many other things going on in the legal 20 arenas, in the Congressional arenas, the authorizing 21 committees as well as the appropriation committees, the 22 regulatory arenas. I don't know what would interest the 23 committee, but I thought it might be good that I would 24 appear before the committee. I have not appeared before the 25 ACNW. It was the ACRS the last time I did this. So are O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
421 1 there any particular_ areas that the committee would like to 2 discuss? 3 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: One thing that maybe you can 4 illuminate. This committee -- it's been hinted from 5 time-to-time that sooner or later we're going to have to-6 write a letter'on waste isolation strategy which I gather 7 DOE has given a different name to it now. 8 MR. BARRETT: I believe it's the repository safety 9 strategy. 10 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yeah, the repository -- 11 MR. BARRETT: And that will be included in the 12 viability assessments. 13 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Right. And the DOE literature l 14 seems to indicate that at least at the strategic level it's 15 not changed much. But there does seem to be a lot of change 16 at what I would call the detail level. And the change that 17 we've observed in the last few months in that regard are 18 principally increased dependence upon the nearfield l ! 19 engineering system for demonstrating performance. And, of 20 course, we also know that the State of Nevada has j 21 considerable concern about that that the tradition in 22 geologic disposal has been sort of borne from a point of 23 view that we find a natural setting such that we can 24 essentially walk away from this stuff and not have to worry 25 much about it. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l 1 422 l 1 Well, it seems to me that's all changed. That () 2 just isn't going to happen. I'm very skeptical that we'll 3 ever be able to demonstrate that the natural setting is 1 4 going to provide the necessary containment. So that does j l 5 bring into focus -- and into sharp focus, in my opinion, the 6 capability of the engineering features. 7 How does this all set with DOE at this time in 8 their dealings with the State of Nevada and so forth? It's 9 true that our interest is primarily technical, but technical 10 people have a way of getting encouraged or discouraged 11 depending upon the viability of the project. And you made a 12 very important statement that the Governor of the State of 13 Nevada has to eventually approve this and -- 14 MR. BARRETT: Doesn't have to, but the statute is l (("%,) 15 such that the Governor doesn't have to do anything. The 16 Governor does have the opportunity if Governor so wishes to 17 disapprove the site and then there's the Congressional 18 overrides in the House and the Senate by simple majority and 19 then it's overridden. But that is a decision that a future 20 Governor will make. 21 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Yeah. So, let me see if I can l 22 reel this back into the question. The question really is, 23 it seems that the details of the repository safety strategy 24 have changed considerably in the last couple of years w,ith 25 this increased dependence on engineering system. Has that ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ('~') J Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
423 1 changed anything as far as your dealings with the bodies and 2 the groups and the stakeholders that are going to have a lot' 3 to say about whether or not this thing goes forward? 4 MR. BARRETT: .From my perspective I don't sense 5 that there is a large change overall in the -- in the 6 strategy. Yes, we've learned a lot about yeah, ' it's wetter 7 than we thought several years ago in the interactions. But 8 what we were trying to do and we did this six years ago when 9 we shifted to what I would call a robust waste package which 10 was, we were really trying to use -- I'll use the words 11 here, sort of "best available technology" -- best reasonably I 12 available technology to have to isolate this material as ! 13 best as we can. I'll avoid using the word "ALARA" because i 14 it bring a lot of other things into it. 15 But nonetheless, we really are trying to do that. 16 And we believe it's the right thing to try to do to isolate 17 this material the best we can keeping in. mind, we would like l 18 to have defense in depth and we believe we do have defense l 19 in depth, but to use both the natural systems and the 20 manmade systems as best we can and be very careful about the 21 interaction between the natural systems and the manmade 22 systems to the best we can. And when we shifted to the . 23 robust package meaning the inner-corrosion resistant and the l ( 24- outer-corrosion allowance the technical review board is now 25 recommending that maybe we consider two corrosion-resistant O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l 3 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l l
424 1 materials as well as a corrosion-allowance material and () 2 we've been looking at things like the ceramics and the drip 3 shields and the diffusion barriers and backfill trying to do 4 the best that today's society can reasonably do with the 5 site. 6 Now, the Yucca Mountain site, I believe is a good 7 site. Is it the best site? There is no such thing as a l 8 "best site". Best site according to what? So it's the only 9 site we have due to a political process. There were votes 10 and said that's the site to look at. So we' re trying to 11 make it the best we can at that site within reason. And 12 we're not making these gold-plated packages, for example, 13 but I mean within reasonable economics. We're looking at 14 the $30 billion program, a fairly large program, und trying () 15 to do it the best we can. 16 So, as far as with the State, they have not -- it l 17 has not really changed anything particularly in the safety i 18 strategy with the State, the State has opposed this on a -- l 19 certainly a political basis that they were the only site 20 chosen back in '87, so they still feel very strongly about 21 -- from their point of view -- an injustice was done when 22 the rules were changed by the Congress in '87. They are 23 very concerned about the 10 CFR 960, that's our internal DOE 24 rule for the site recommendation and the changing of the 25 disqualifying conditions as we opposed back a year ago. We ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 842-0034 l l l
425 l 1 have their views under consideration as we evaluate through (e jg 2 that process. There were the multiple criteria they believe 3 should be thcie in groundwater travel time, et cetera. We 4 propose to shift more toward a total integrated, total i 5 performance assessment criteria. We anxiously await the 6 outcome of the various standard setting processes in EPA as 7 well as NRC as to what are the societal criteria and then we ! 8 must look at that, can we demonstrate in a reasonable 9 assurance and adjudicatory process which the committee knows 10 is a very rigorous matter. i j 11 One thing we are concerned with is we go through, l 12 we will produce various TSPA curves that you've seen that 13 are expected-value curves. And I have impressed upon our 14 staff in many meetings as to what is an expected-value curve 15 is probably not one that you can sustain in an adjudicatory, l 16 reasonable-assurance process. 1 17 Now, despite, I think, the best intentions of the i , 18 NBC staff -- and I will say the future hearing boards, to 1 19 try to balance that, it will be a very difficult task for ! 20 all parties. And this committee, I believe, will be a very 21 important player in that as well. i 22 But the fundamental changes with the State I have 23 not seen -- I've received no information from the State that 24 the Repository Safety Strategy Revision 1 versus Rev. O has 25 rubbed them wrong. Okay. l ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 842-0034
f 426 1 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you. George? 2 DR. HORNBERGER: Another thing, in a similar vein, 3 I think, in the past several months DOE, I think Hugh in i 4 particular has initiated a public discussion, if you will, 5 or been publicly open discussion on an open repository. A I 6 repository that would remain open for hundreds of years 7 possibly. This is at least a shift in terms of public 8 discussion and sort of two things, I'm curious as to the -- 9 if you can enlighten us on the high-level discussions that 10 led to this timing? And second of all, if this does tend to 11 be a move toward this becoming a de facto reference design, 12 how is this going to be handled in the VA? 13 MR. BARRETT: It is our intent at this time, 14 although we have not submitted this to the Secretary for any
/~T Q 15 decision, but we don't hide plans and thoughts that we're l
16 doing. So it will be in -- it is our intent to -- unless, l 17 you know, assuming I get the approvals. I intend to 18 recommend that this be in the viability assessment. i 19 It does not change things as much as some people l 20 led us to believe. All right. As far as the plan to design 21 a repository and then the scientific work and the cost 22 estimates to licensing, end the licensing demonstration that 23 we would demonstrate in our license application '02, there's 24 no change whatsoever. The change is in the operational 25 aspects of it in the year, you know, 2065 or something like O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
427 1 that.
- [)
v 2 Now, there are some considerations you must look 3 at up front. Take for example tunnel stability and the 4 liners in the tunnel. All right. We have not changed any 5 of the design of the tunnel, but we asked our engineers what 6 is the -- what do you expect the stability of those tunnels l 7 to be? 8 Now, the requirement has always been in 10 CFR 60 l 9 for basically 50 years' retrievability. And that was good 10 and it was wise. So we always were planning for that and 11 there's always been design margin. So the design criteria 12 that we are using in the tunnel for tunnel drift and 13 placement stability is 100 year engineering requirement. 14 Now, from a practical point of view we believe (k 15 those tunnels would be stable to up to 300 years. Now, 300 16 years is in discussions that we've had internally. It is a 17 number that some folks use and it's the old ten half-lives 18 of the cesium-137 and strontium-90 and no secret, you know, 19 in that. 20 And it was, actually, you know, some of the 21 history, it was Under Secretary, you know, Miniz, when he 22 had discussions about this that, you know, he really liked 23 300 years. He felt that was an important understanding 24 point to many in the science community as sort of, can you 25 keep that retrieval for 300 years. I said, with maintenance ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. C- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l 428 1 we can. Now, we store it after 300 years if we keep the j
~
2 concrete liners, reference design now, and we may change 3 that if we go to smaller tunnels. We may not have to use-4 concrete. Basically those tunnels we have with reasonable 5 maintenance can go out to 300 years. 6 After 300 years, you know, you may need to do what 7 I will call refurbishment of those tunnels. Basically you 8 take the waste packages out and you would probably want to i 9 do some major refurbishment if you want to do that. But you , l 10 could -- with time and money you could indefinitely do this. 11 When we started talking about some of the early I ! 12 discussions on it, one thing that always bothered me as I 13 went to many public meetings was the word of, you know, l 14 you're being technologically arrogant about this. You know, ) ( 15 who are you to say that this is going to be sealed up? And j 16 if you go to a lot of standard things that are standard from l i 17 an engineering point of view, you know, we have the 18 construction phase, we have the operational phase, and 10 19 years after that you would, you know, start to do the 20 closure and, you know, then you seal it up, and you walk 21 away the monuments to put in place, and, you know, people l 22 that would -- I would say that are not necessarily 23 scientists and no one who has an axe to grind said, you 24 know, are you so sure that you're so sure that that's what 25 you're going to do? And the answer was, no, we're really O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD, Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i
429 1 not that sure. I mean, this is the best we can project () 2 today for an ultimate resolution. And they said, you know, 3 so -- with this we said, well, you still want a repository. 4 Now, the danger when we go into this, and we had 5 discussions internally and a lot of major internal 6 discussions that this is not an ultimate disposition 7 facility that requires constant human maintenance. Once you 8 put the seals in, to the best that we can say in today's 9 technology that's the ultimate in engineered storage. It's 10 so passive you don't have to touch it basically forever. As 11 opposed to a surface storage on a pad. You know, to 12 maintain safety as we understand, you know, future safety l -13 criterias, if you have storage casks out on a pad you must l 14 maintain that indefinitely. I mean, every 50 years or 100 15 years the concrete if they're concrete shielded or 16 metallics, you're going to have to constantly do that unless 17 you want to let that material escape. 18 So some folks said that, you know, if we go to 19 this it will sound like this is a perpetual -- requires 20 perpetual care. It does not at all. So there's really not l 21 a difference in the design, it's a difference in the outyear i i 22 operating philosophy and it can be closed, you know, in 10 l 23 or 20 years after the load. And that's what we would have 24 to demonstrate in the licensing case. But we would
)
25 acknowledge the fact, and we will make some, you know, i O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 i
430 1 arrangements for that to be that they could basically () 2 maintain an open condition. And in 100 years, look what l 3 we've done in the last 100 years. And then for the next 100 9 years, what we've done. 5 The only thing we probably know for sure, we won't 6 be the same 100 years from now. Hopefully we will have 7 advanced, but maybe we won't.. We don't know. So we felt 8 that it would be important to try to the deal with this 9 technological arrogance issue by saying that we're not 10 saying that future generations have to put these seals in 11 place. That was never the case anyway. So that's caught up 12 in the evolution of what we're trying to do. And I'm not 13 trying to tout this as a huge shift or anything like that. t-14 I think it's an important thing of the development and the k 15 refinements of where we are because new technologies may 16 come along. 17 I mean, you know, transportation is poscible. You 18 know, I'm not an optimist about it, but, I mean, who knows. 19 You just don't know what the future will bring, 20 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Any other questions? Charles? 21 DR. FAIRHURST: I'd like to pick up a little on 22 what John Garrick has said, but perhaps cast a somewhat 23 different light on it. The initial emphasis on the 24 geological barrier is of course de facto and that's why you 25 call it geological repository. And was, I think, through ' i (~) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
l 431 l l 1 the geosciences have, learned a lot and are learning a lot ( x_/
) 2 because they were asked questions that were never posed 3 before. And it's true in that evolution one has recognized '
4 a great deal of uncertainties about geological material, i 5 But I don't know if that has led in the end particularly I 6 with changes that have been observed such as higher I j l 7 infiltration rates has led to any lack of confidence on the 8 part of the geological environment compared to earlier. J 9 It's a question of defining it. 10 What perhaps has been overlooked was the almost 11 equal potential of engineering systems to add to that. And l 12 as I see it, what I see has been happening is over the last l l 13 decade or more an increasing emphasis, a recognition of that 14 fact and frankly from my point of view I don't think that's gg ( ,) 15 fully matured yet. It's something that's on a fast track, 16 but it's something within a timeframe of 50 to 100 years { 17 which engineers are much more comfortable with whether you 18 extend it to 200 years or not. And was the reference design 19 that you say is there and I wouldn't propose that one goes 20 to extremely radical departures from that, but I think one 21 needs -- and I suspect you are, keep open the fact that even 22 a simple thing as a smaller tunnel, for example, there are 23 some things that need to be looked at still. 24 MR. BARRETT: Yeah, the design, you know, we've l 25 said the TRB. The design that we have today is not going to,
/m I $
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432 1 be the same design of the last waste package in 2040, 2050.
/ 2 I mean, I expect it will change, but we need to change it in 1 3 a controlled manner and we need to do a lot of that work 4 yet. And we'll do that. But there is not a revolutionary 5 change. But there will be this constant interplay. One 6 thing I think we have learned probably the most is the 7 importance of the interaction between the natural sciences 8 and the engineering sciences and the integration of those 9 two together and how essential one is with the other. And 10 it's not a matter of the earth science folks are here and 11 the engineers are over there and never the twain shall 12 discuss. And especially when we start looking at these long 13 time periods and fairly, you know, fairly stringent criteria 14 to, you know, contain this toxic material.
l 15 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Any other questions? Ray? 16 DR. WYMER: No. 17 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: George?
)
l 18 DR. WYMER: No. 19 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Well, we really appreciate your 20 coming and giving us this overview. ( 21 MR. BARRETT: Thank you very much. 22 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: An excellent overview. Thank l 23 you. ! 24 I guess, Carol, we've left you five or six 25 minutes. O V ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters r 12.i0 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l l
I 433 1 [ Laughter.] () 2 MS. HANLON: Five or six minutes is about all I'm l 3 going to need because Lake covered most of my slides and did 4 a wonderful job, so I think in the future that he should 5 always precede me and -- l 6 [ Laughter.] l 7 MS. HANLON: -- I can show you a few pictures. 8 This is a perfect example of technological l l 9 arrogance. Because for the first time I've ever come to you 10 without viewgraphs, I was going to rely on the overhead 11 using pictures. And so now we're waiting for the picture to 12 work. So that's a prime example. 13 I'll just go on and speak a little. When we get 14 our charts out I'll go back a little bit. You have all been () 15 through the tunnel and you've been out to the Yucca Mountain 16 site and I've talked to you before about updates since what 17 you saw last September. So all I just wanted to do was 18 update you a little bit since the last time and keep you 19 current. I know you're thinking forward to what you want to 20 do in September, so this will give you some ideas on what. 21 So if you'll recall the horseshoe diagram of the 22 underground ESF facility, I just wanted to walk you through 23 that and show you a few things. And while we're waiting for 24 technology to happen -- 25 [ Laughter . ] O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 434 1 MS. HANLON: -- I have old technology here that () 2 I'll just send by. 3 Lake had mentioned the fact that we've all talked 4 about interest in precipitation through the tunnel and 5 especially if there was any run off from the El NiBo effect 6 or this particularly wet year. And this has been a really 7 good example for us to look at infiltration, proglation, and 8 any surface run off because it has been a particularly wet 9 year especially in February. And sometimes it was raining 10 back in Las Vegas when it was warm and dry here in Maryland. 11 So it was a pretty good example, 12 And in our first alcove, alcove one, as you 13 recall, it's just some few feet under the surface. We have 14 installed a structure that is just basically a plastic () 15 structure, it's a series of kind of v-shaped -- inverted 16 v-shaped plastic structure that allows any drips to be 17 caught and channeled down and monitored. There's also 27 18 probes that go up through the ceiling of that room and 19 through the surface. So there's two things we got, not only 20 does that capture the infiltration studies that's purposely 21 being done, but also has allowed us to monitor the effects 22 of El NiBo and with the rain gauges and so forth sometimes 23 being under snow, that's been important. 24 But as I pass these on, one thing that I will tell 25 you is when I was out there on March 31st, there had been no O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. k- Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
435 1 detection of drips whatsoever. () 2 Now, that leads to the question of is it diverting 3 around in order to make sure that we know whether it's 4 diverting around, there are bore holes in the walls also so 5 that we're watching that. And as Lake was mentioning, we 6 are putting water on the surface, it's about 600 gallons per 7 day. It was April 1st it was 7,500 gallons, they expected 8 to have about 10,000 gallons by April 1st. And we're 9 permitted to put 123,000 gallons by the State -- 10 DR. HORNBERGER: This is above alcove 1 again? 11 MS. HANLON: Yeah, exactly, above alcove 1. So 12 I'll pass these around, sorry, while our technology is 13 working. l 14 DR. HORNBERGER: What kind of probes are in the
) 15 roof, hygrometers or TDR probes or radiodistivity?
16 MS. HANLON: I'm not exactly sure and I can find 17 that out for you. So the bottom line is started testing in 18 March and no drips yet. 19 Alcove 2 with the Bow Ridge Fault, when you get 20 out there again, what you'll notice is they've made that j 21 into kind of a public exhibit. A demonstration for the 22 public with interactive exhibits there. So that's a nice 23 addition for people who aren't going to go all the way down i 24 through. 25 Then of course the next thing that you're very i j ; ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters ! l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 I Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
436 1 interested in is the cross-drift whose purpose is the -- () 2 3 characterization, the repository block itself to investigate those characteristics more directly. The construction of 4 the launch chamber Lake had showed you and actually, no, you 5 had not seen that because that began in December. 6 So the launch chamber was constructed with drill 7 and blast construction. I wanted to show you also this 8 photo -- sorry, everyone, but as I pass this around, you'll 9 be able to see that that's the tunnel since you've last seen 10 it with a concrete lining. It also has a concrete floor and 11 cat walks. So with the drill and blast construction they 12 completed that launch chamber. It was started December 15th 13 and completed February 5th ahead of schedule and it's a 14 pretty nice looking tunnel. n qj 15 The TBM is the robin's machine. It was last used 16 in the super collider. It's a smaller diameter than we used 17 in the ASF itself at 16 feet 5 inches. So it was 18 refurbished and it was moved to the site, it got there in j 19 early March, it was moved down to the launch chamber and it 20 started tunneling March 31st. Again, it was ahead of 21 schedule. It has been proceeding at about six millimeters a l 22 day. It will be perceived -- excuse me -- meters a day i 23 [ Laughter.] 24 MS. HANLON: Silly little me. I do really better l l 25 in English systems. L b
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437 1 It's proceeding about six meters a day. That's ( 2 seems a little slow, but we need to recall that as it's 3 moving into the rock we're still assembli.cc. the machine. 4 It's not fully assembled, there are a number of cars that 5 will go on afterward. There are filter cars, there are 6 filter cars, there are cars for laying the rail, the muck 1 7 conveyor system is not up yet, electrical power, and finally 8 there will be a mapping gantry. So when it's about 500 feet 9 in or 167 meters, if I have correctly calculated, it will be 10 fully assembled. And then at that point we believe that it 11 will begin -- the tunnel bo :ing machine will begin operating i 12 about 30 millimeters a day. I did that again. Thirty l 13 meters a day. 14 So the scheduled completion for this is early l 15 September. 16 Now I'll go back and use the slides just to do 17 what I was going to do. 18 [ Slide shown. ] l l 19 MS. HANLON: The next time I'll bring j 20 transparencies. 21 [ Laughter.] 22 MS. HANLON: Okay, it's warming up. l 23 As it proceeds across the Solatario Fault, up to 24 the Solatario Fault we're going to be going about 30 meters 25 a day, when it proceeds across the fault we may slow down to i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. O- Court Reporters l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 ' I
I I 438 1 about 20. But at any rate we anticipate stopping in f) N_- 2 September. 3 So I just was going to point out what we have 4 here. What we're looking at. And you have all seen this, 5 of course. This is the North Portal entrance, this is 6 Alcove 1, this is where the cross-drift takes across -- 7 across the repository block. The thermal heater test is 8 here in Alcove 5. So we are right in this region right now. 9 The other two things that I want to point out that I'm going 10 to be talking to just really briefly, it's on here 11 somewhere, if your eyes are focusing better than mine, j 12 there's a SD-6 and you will recall that that's the bore hole l 13 that's being drilled by the OM-300 that I made you look at 14 the last time when you were at Yucca Crest. So that's a
) 15 drilling. It's in a hiatus now. And here off the map up 16 here, about there, is WT-24 which is the other hole that 17 we're drilling. 1 18 Thank you. It's still off the map. So I was just 19 going to take you through this tunnel, through the heater 20 test, out the other side, something about the portal and 21 speak about the bore holes and also talk about Busted Butte 22 really briefly.
23 So Lake had that great chart of the tunnel boring 24 machine in place looking out the other end. So, very l 25 dramatic. So I'll circulate some of these photos, these ; i i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. f)T
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439 i 1 will let you see where we are. j [J) 2 [ Slide shown.) 3 MS. HANLON: Ah, there they are, the El NiSo 4 studies. Thanks Andy. 5 And they're not really El NiSos they are -- it is 6 advantageous that they are in place to take advantage of the 7 fact that we have a particularly wet year and see what's 8 going on there. But they're also for the infiltration study 9 that is going to be of some duration. Okay. Let's go on, 10 Andy. 11 [ Slide shown.) ! 12 MS. HANLON: I think -- yeah, I don't even know if i 13 you want to see these, if we've seen them all we can ' 14 probably go by them, right? ! O t y,/ 15 Andy, why don't you just take us on to the drift j 16 -- the heater test. 17 [ Slide shown.) 18 MS. HANLON: I really like this tunnel boring 19 machine, you can see that because I have about 90 pictures 20 of it. 21 DR. HORNBERGER: Did you get that one on surplus 22 the way you're handling your old one? 23 [ Laughter.) l 24 MS. HANLON: Not exactly. You know, like the 25 Hertz reservation, not exactly. I i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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l i 440 1 So you will recall because you've seen them all I () 2 that we have these three major types of thermal testing at 3 least' going on in the large block test which as Lake 4 mentioned is cooling, the single heater test which is 5 progressing, and the drift scale test, once you've got the 6 drift scale test -- do we have a shot of the -- once the 7 drift scale test is in place, I guess the most interesting 8 thing is to watch it heat up. But -- 9 [ Laughter.] 10 MS. HANLON: -- which it is doing. It's total 11 duration is going to be four years as you will recall 12 heating, and four years cooling. The floor of the 13 observation drift - -I think you can see this, and when you 14 were there, it was not concreted, but it is now concreted. (~~\ \ (s,/ 15 And the other thing that they are looking -- they are doing 16 that drift. That observation drift will have to be fully 17 insulated because as the temperature rises in the drift 18 itself, the observation drift would rise also. 19 And the temperature will rise -- let me see, do I i 20 have this right, I just want to make sure of this. I think l 21 the temperature currently at Canister No. 1 is 230 degrees 22 fahrenheit. 23 DR. FAIRHURST: Centigrade. Centigrade. 1 ( 24 MS. HANLON: That is the first canister outside l 25 the window. That was this one right here. The rock wall () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
441 1 off that canister. And it's about 86 degrees in the () 2 observation drift now. So it's heating very quickly and it 3 has_to be insulated so that you can still maintain access. 4 So -- 5 DR. FAIRHURST: And the water that is flowing in 6 now is flowing right into the observation drift? 7 MS. HANLON: Yeah, it's on the floor in front of 8 -- on the floor -- excuse me, Andy, can you just put that 9 back right one second.
-10 (Slide shown.)
11 MS. HANLON: It's right about here, just outside 12 the wall. 13 DR. FAIRHURST: Is it flowing out of the roof or 14 out of the floor? () 15 MS. HANLON: They're not exactly sure where it's 16 coming from. They think it's reflux. And I don't really -- l . ( 17 Lake, do you have some details on that? 18 MR. BARRETT: Yes. The majority of the water is 19 dripping down the top. There are some rock faults and there j 20 are some fractures you can see about two or three meters off 21 the thermal bulkhead. And so the thermal front, the 1 22 condensing front is back there, it's hit that fracture and l l 23 the water is dripping down and the majority of the water -- 24 I mean, it drips -- drips on your hard hat and there is I 25 puddles on the floor, you can make little waves when you () I ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters l 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 ' Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l
442 1 stomp on it. And it's dripping basically out of the bore () 2 holes -- the rock bolts in the fracture, and some out of the 3 fracture. There's none coming through the floor that I'm 4 aware of. The only ones I'm aware of is dripping. 5 MS. HANLON: Thanks, Lake. So moving on now to 6 the south portal, the next thing that I wanted to -- we had 7 spoken about ventilation and at the south portal, you can go 8 on through that Andy. 9 [ Slide shown.) 10 MS. HANLON: I just wanted to show you this 11 pi c t ".re . We're constructing a dual wall bulkhead with 12 automatic doors opening. And what that does, we also are 13 having a forced air ventilation. So what that does is that 14 creates ventilation through the tunnel back from that
) 15 portal, and it allows us to keep a constant temperature --
16 excuse me, a constant pressure in there with the 17 ventilation. So as trains go in and out as you know they do 18 since you rode on one when it goes in that dual wall 19 bulkhead the pressure is equalized and it passes back and 20 through. So we're working on that. Yeah, it's this. So 21 it's a dual walled system with automatic doors. 22 And moving on, the next tricky one I wanted to 23 show you if we can get it up here -- 24 [ Slide shown.] 25 MS. HANLON: I was putting that together and if O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
443 1 you can zoom in on it, the one thing I wanted to show you
\
[J u 2 was I showed you WT-24 at the top and SD-6 and I wanted to 3 show you that again. If you zoom too far we're going to 4 miss it because WT-24 is over there and SD-6, as you recall, 5 is at the top of Yucca Crest. So -- 6 So our objectives here are to look at the 7 hydraulic gradient and determine the depth to the water 8 table. Previously we had thought that drill hole wash to 9 find the northern extent of the repository boundary and when 10 we penetrated that underground we found that it was almost 11 undetectable, very negligible. 12 In fact, it took some weeks to determine exactly 13 where it was. So it is no longer considered the defining 14 boundary because it's so indistinct underground. Now the 15 boundary really is the depth for the water table and that's 16 part of the reason that we're looking at these to determine 17 exactly what the water table is. So WT-24 is still 18 drilling. You will recall that it's being drilled with a 19 strap master. It's depth is past 2200 feet and it's coring. 20 It perched -- it passed through the perched water zone about 21 1600 feet and we determined that that was perched water by 22 the signature and the characteristics of that water. So 23 that's continuing on down. l
~4 SD-6 being drilled with that OM-300 is a depth of 25 currently 1934 and it's holding at that point. The air l 6
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444 1 permit allocation has been overused, so we're awaiting the () 2 permit extension so it will go on down. 3 Do we have Busted Butte, Andy? 4 [ Slide shown.] 5 MS. HANLON: You've all seen some of these 6 pictures of Busted Butte as it was being constructed. I'll 7 send them around again just if you want to refresh your 8 memory. And the objectives here were to evaluate 9 infiltration flow and transport and the characteristics of 10 the heterogenous Calico Hills as Lake said very well. Thank 11 you. It's an opportunity to look at it whereas it would 12 have been very difficult to look at it under the tunnel. 13 It was constructed through drill and blast. The 14 padded high wall as you will recall were completed in () 15 December '97 and the whole tunnel and adit, alcove and adit 16 were constructed with drill and blast technology. 17 The drilling of all the Phase I and II bore holes 18 has been completed. 19 Andy, do we have another one in there that goes on 20 from there? 21 [ Slide shown.) 22 MS. HANLON: These are some of the bore holes you 23 can see they do go in about two meters and some of them are 24 a little longer than that. They are in the adit that goes 25 off in that direction and both that way, so there is one JJR7 RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
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445 1 wall over here. This wall has -- the bore holes are also () 2 bore holes Leer here, bore holes here, bore holes here and 3 here. So the tracer test of that -- the first phase of the 4 tracer test began on March 20th and is continuing. Phase II 5 will start on July 21st and they are using chemical tracers 6 in that. They are also using some kind of micro pores to 7 detect the movement through the rock. 8 DR FAIRHURST: Carol, do you know any details of 9 how that is injected? Is it pressurized? Is it under any 10 kind of -- 11 MS. HANLON: I'm not sure whether it's pressurized 12 or not, but I can get some details. And also I wanted to 13 mention to you that Jules Wisseau is available. I was 14 thinking that you would want to see this in September and 15 Jules Wisseau will certainly be available. He's the 16 principal investigator responsible for that and will be 17 available to speak with you. 18 [ Slide shown.) 19 MS. HANLON: This is kind of on and it's not 20 showing up as well as I wanted, but, you know, it's really 21 nice red rock underground. It's very -- actually, it's very 22 attractive. I'm a big fan of red rock. 23 And we've grouted with cement in certain areas to 24 differentiate parts of the experiment. 25 Are there any other questions that I can answer l l () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 l Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034 l.
446 1 for you. l 2 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Any questions? 3 [No response.] 4 DR. FAIRHURST: We're still looking at pictures. 5 MS. HANLON: If not Thank you very much. 6 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Thank you. 7 DR. HORNBERGER: Carol, I take it there are still i 8 no plans to drill holes in the alluvium or do any testing in 9 the alluvium? 10 MS, HANLON: We're doing our multi-year planning ! 11 right now, and I'm not sure of those, but I can check on l 12 those for you Dr. Hornberger and let you know. 13 CHAIRMAN GARRICK: Well, if there are no furth'r e l l 14 comments or questions I think we will take a short recess
) 15 and come in and continue our report work. And I don't think 16 we'll need the recording capability for the rest of the 17 meeting; is that correct?
18 So.thank you.
- 19 (Whereupon, at 10:35 a.m., the meeting was
[ 20 concluded.] 21 22 23 24 25 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1250 I Street, N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 842-0034
1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings [LJ l before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: NAME OF PROCEEDING: 100TH ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) MEETING l DOCKET NUMBER: PLACE OF PROCEEDING: Rockville, MD were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court l reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
.OfLf) O )(!L O Gerald Brooks Official Reporter Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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