ML20237B592
| ML20237B592 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 08/14/1998 |
| From: | Anthony Huffert NRC OFFICE OF NUCLEAR MATERIAL SAFETY & SAFEGUARDS (NMSS) |
| To: | Bastian R, Kopsick D, Setlow L ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9808190089 | |
| Download: ML20237B592 (12) | |
Text
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. August 14, 1998
Dear Members of the ISCORS Sewage Subcommittee:
Ypu arq invited to attend the next meeting of the ISCORS Sewage Subcommittee to be held on August 25, 1998, from 9:00 a.m. to noon. The meeting will be held at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland in room 0-1F5. If you plan to participate by telephone conference call, the bridge number for this subcommittee meeting will be the same as the one used previously, which is (334) 270-3461.
l The purpose of this subcommittee meeting is to discuss progress on the sewage l sludge / ash survey and the guidance document for POTW op3rators. An agenda and l the summary of the last subcommittee meeting are enclosed.
I look forward to meeting with you on August 25. If you have any questions regarding the meeting agenda, please call me at (301) 415-6416 or Bob Bastian at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at (202) 260-7378.
I Sincerely,
[ original signed by:]
Anthony M. Huffert. Senior Health Physicist Low-Level Waste and Decommissioning Projects Branch Division of Waste Management Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards
Enclosures:
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION WASHINGTON, D.C. 20066 0001 e
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August 14, 1998 l
Dear Members of the ISCORS Sewage Subcommittee:
l l You are invited to attend the next meeting of the ISCORS Sewage Subcommittee l to be held on August 25, 1998. from 9:00 a.m. to noon. The meeting will be held at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 11555 Rockville Pike.
Rockville. Maryland in room 0-1F5. If you plan to participate by telephone conference call the bridge number for this subcommittee meeting will be the same as the one used previously, which is (334) 270-3461.
The purpose of this subcommittee meeting is to discuss progress on the sewage sludge / ash survey and the guidance document for POTW operators. An agenda and the summary of the last subcommittee meeting are enclosed.
I look forward to meeting with you on August 25. If you have any questions regarding the meeting agenda, please call me at (301) 415-6416 or Bob Bastian at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at (202) 260-7378.
Sincerely.
lCbgg%$us l/ )
Anthony M. luffert. Mjbr Health Phys'icist Low-Level aste and Wtommissioning Projects Branch Division of Waste Management Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards I
Enclosures:
As stated
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I DISTRIBUTE TD: Dated 08/14/98 Robert Bastian I Office of Wastewater Management (4204) 401 M Street. S.W.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency i Washington, DC 20460 1 Loren Setlow Office of Radiation and Indoor Air (6602J)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 401 M Street. S.W.
Washington, DC 20460 Deborah Kopsick Office of Radiation and Indoor Air (6602J)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 401 M Street. S.W.
Washington. DC 20460 Mark Doehnert Office of Radiation and Indoor Air (6602J)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 401 M Street. S.W.
Washington. DC 20460 l
Roy Lovett Directorate for Safety and Engineering ATTN: MCH0-SHE Building 1500. Ft. Detrick Frederick MD 21702 James Bachmaier U.S. Department of Energy i Mail Stop EH-412 l 1000 Independence Avenue SW Washington, DC 20585 i
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ISCORS SEWAGE SUBCOMMITTEE AGENDA FOR August 25. 1998 MEETING SEWAGE SURVEY (9:00 am to 10:15 am)
Summary of ORISE and NAREL work on 9 test site report (Huffert. Abramson, Condra, Saunders)
Reference Radionuclides Document (Setlow)
BREAK (10:15 am to 10:30 am)
Letters to States (10:40 am to 11:15 am)
COMMENTS ON POTW GUIDANCE DOCUMENT (11:15 am to 11:50 am)
FUTURE ACTIONS (11:50 to noon)
Summary of-action items Schedule next subcommittee meeting ENCLOSURE 1
7 s DISCLAIMER These ISCORS subcommittee meeting summaries result from interagency discussions. The Sewage Subcommittee is composed of representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Department of Defense. Department of Energy, the State of New Jersey, and two Publicly Owned Treatment Works. The subcommittee meeting summaries have not been approved by the respective agencies and organizations and do not represent the official position of any participating agency or organization at this time.
ISCORS SEWAGE SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING
SUMMARY
Date: August 4. 1998 Time: 9:00 am to noon Location: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Rockville. Maryland Attendees: NRC: Lee Abramson, Tony Huffert. Tin Mo. Bob Neel . Bob Nelson EPA: Bob Bastian, Mark Doehnert. Loren Setlow. Behram Shroff ORISE: Dale Condra NAREL: David Saunders. Scott Telofski. Mary Wisdom DOE: Jim Bachmaier D00: Roy Lovett OTHER: Tom Lenhart/NE Ohio Regional Sewer Dist. Cleveland. OH Jill Lipoti. State of New Jersey l l
Agenda: Sewage survey l Guidance document !
Summary:
The meeting began with a discussion of the draft laboratory report on the nine POTW test sites. Meeting participants agreed to work toward completing the draft report in August and possibly issuing a final version of the report in l September. Scott Telofski summarized the results of the statistical analysis of ORISE and NAREL data that he performed in July. Overall, both laboratories were considered to be in good agreement on the gamma spectrometry results.
ENCLOSURE 2
However, analysis of the gamma spectrometry results indicated that certain radionuclides may not be in good agreement, such as radium-226 and its daughters, lead-214. and bismuth-214. There differences in radium-226 values may be attributable to interference in the 186 kev peak from U-235 and the method for determining concentration. The radium-226 daughters (lead-214 and bismuth-214) may not be in agreement due to radon-222 leakage from containers or not having the radon-222 and daughters in equilibrium with radium-226 at the time of counting.
Comparisons of the alpha spectrometry results shows that the exchange sartples ,
were in agreement in each case except for two failures on one sample (M018. {
with U-234 and U-238 failing). The large difference in passing rates between the exchange samples and split samples indicates that there is potential for statistically significant differences in samples taken at different times. It appears that the laboratories are in good agreement when the same sample is analyzed, thus there is little that could be done at either laboratory to provide better passing rates since the differences are attributed to sampling rather than analysis.
Gross alpha and gross beta analyses were not in good agreement. It was decided that ORISE should send NAREL an electronic copy of the revised ORISE data set, which in turn, will be analyzed by NAREL. It should be noted, however, that gross alpha and beta analyses are typically used to evaluate the general magnitude of the results, rather than to attempt to perform detailed comparisons.
NAREL plans to investigate other uncertainties that were not included in the counting uncertainty. Evaluations of other NAREL data, such as long-term trends of laboratory replicates and field duplicates are being performed.
This should allow for more complete comparisons of results between the laboratories.
Dave Saunders summarized his review of data concerning ash samples from the pilot study as a quality assurance measure. This task entails checking the dry and wet ash sample results for gross alpha and gross beta measurements.
NAREL ashed all sewage samples prior to analysis and then converted results to the " wet" concentration. In the beginning of the study. ORISE did not ash all sewage samples prior to analysis, but subsequently modified its sample preparation procedures to incorporate ashing of wet sewage samples for this survey.
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Mary Wisdom informed the subcommittee of her review of performance evaluation' (PE) programs for quality assurance during the survey. The U.S.
L DOE / Environmental Measurements Laboratory's (EML) Quality Assurance Program (OAP) issues two sets of PE samples per year for soil, vegetation, filter paper and water matrices. NAREL and ORISE participate in additional PE programs, which, in aggregate, provides an overall quality assurance program for each laboratory. Both laboratories will continue to participate in the PE programs during the survey.
NAREL and ORISE staff will work on developing text for the draft laboratory report on the nine POTW test sites that summarizes the following items: (a) the overall quality assurance programs at both laboratories: (b) the matrices analyzed in the PE programs and how they are applicable to the analysis of samples in sewage matrix: and (c) the radionuclides included in the PE programs and how they are applicable to the radionuclides that will be analyzed in the sewage survey. It was agreed that NAREL and ORISE staff should work on this task during the week of August 10th and participate in a telephone conference call with NRC and EPA staff on August 18th to review the proposed text. The telephone conference call will begin at 10:00 and the call-in number is 301-415-7605/passcode 8967513.
Regarding the list of reference radionuclides concentrations that is being developed by NRC and EPA..Loren Setlow updated the subcommittee on his efforts to analyze ash and sludge data independently. He requested that Dale Condra send the ORISE data to him in an electronic format that would interface with a Lotus spreadsheet. The ORISE data should also be separated into two categories: sludge samples and ash samples. This information is needed to complete the reference radionuclides document, which should be available for the full ISCORS committee meeting in September.
Mary Wisdom and Loren Setlow agreed to work on finishing the Quality Assurance Project Plan (OAPP) for the survey, but information on the sources of uncertainty in the sample results and new sample handling procedures is still needed to complete this task.
Regarding the NRC letter for Agreement State (AS) participation in the sewage survey, Tony Huffert provided the subcommittee a draft letter for review and comment. This letter had been emailed to Bob Bastian on August 3rd. Meeting participants discussed the procedural approach for issuing this letter and similar NRC and EPA letters to non-Agreement States and directors of water quality programs. It was agreed that three' letters should be issued. One letter would be the NRC letter to AS, which should be issued only by the NRC (EPA does not need to cosign it). A second letter would be a joint NRC/ EPA
letter to the directors of radiation and water quality programs in non-AS. A third letter would be an EPA-only letter to directors of water quality programs in AS. Jill Lipoti (New Jersey) agreed with this approach and asked the subcommittee to consider sending a copy of the letters to ECOS, which is a commission of environmental program directors at EPA authorized states.
The subcommittee offered preliminary comments on the draft NRC letter that will be sent to AS. In general, it was well received and the following minor comments were suggested: (a) under the " Supplementary Information" paragraph, add a statement that informs the reader that a purpose of the letter is to ,
request information and identify potential POTWs as part of a national sewage l survey: and (b) the last paragraph of the letter does not contain a requested j response date to the letter. A response within 60 days from the date of the letter is desired so that this project continues progress. ,
The subcommittee decided that the three letters should be issued at the same time. Two new letters will be prepared by EPA using the draft AS letter as a template. EPA staff thought it would take a couple of weeks to prepare the '
those letters.
The dose modeling working group did not meet in July due to schedule conflicts. The working group plans to meet during the afternoon of September 8th at DOE offices in Washington, DC.
Behram Shroff lead the discussion on the final topic of the meeting, which was the POTW guidance document. In July. EPA sent copies of its contractor's comments on the document to NRC. DOE. and D0D representatives. Behram requested comments on the first three contractor comments from each agency by mid-August in order to meet the EPA's review schedule. Meetir; participants agreed to send comments to EPA before the next subcommittee meeting.
In the interest of completing the draft laboratory report on the nine POTW test sites by early September, the subcommittee agreed to meet on August 25th at NRC offices in Rockville, Maryland. At this meeting, the subcommittee will focus on the draft report on the test sites, the status of the table of reference radionuclides values, and the letters to States.
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. Action Items:
- 1. NRC is to send NAREL a list of the email distribution list for the subcommittee (Huffert).
- 2. ORISE.is to send NAREL an. electronic copy of the revised ORISE data set.
(Condra)
- 3. NAREL will analyze the revised ORISE data set and incorporate the results into the statistical analysis performed by Scott Telofski in o July. (Telofski and Saunders).
- 4. NAREL is to continue its investigation of other uncertainties that were not included in the counting uncertainty. such as evaluation of long-term trends of laboratory replicates and field duplicates for a more complete comparisons of results between the laboratories. (Telofski)
- 5. During the week of August 10th, NAREL and ORISE staff will work on developing text for the draft laboratory report on the nine POTW test sites that summarizes the following items:
(a) the overall quality assura'nce programs at both laboratories:
(b) the matrices analyzed in the PE programs and how they are applicable .
to the analysis of samples in sewage matrix: and (c) the radionuclides included in the PE programs and how they are applicable to the radionuclides that will be analyzed in the sewage j survey.
6 NAREL and ORISE staff will participate in a telephone conference call with NRC and EPA staff on August 18th to review progress-on item 5. The
. telephone conference . call will begin at 10:00 and the call-in number is 301-415-7605/passcode 8967513.
- 7. ORISE will send to EPA the ORISE data set in an electronic format that would interface with a Lotus spreadsheet, if possible. The ORISE data ~
should be separated into two categories: sludge samples and ash samples.
(Condra)
L 8. EPA staff will work on finishing the OAPP for the survey and will include additional 1.nformation on the sources of uncertainty in the sample results and new sample handling procedures (Mary Wisdom and Loren Setlow).
- 9. -EPA staff will prepare two new letters to States using the draft AS letter as a template (Bastian and Shroff).
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- 10. NRC staff will incorporate subcommittee comments on the draft letter to AS (Huffert).
- 11. Meeting participants will review the EPA contractor comments on the POTW guidance document and send comments to EPA before the next subcommittee meeting (All). -
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5 ATTENDANCE LIST ISCORS Sewage Subcommittee Meeting August 4, 1998 . .
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