ML20246C804
| ML20246C804 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 06/30/1989 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0013, NACNUCLE-T-13, NUDOCS 8907110149 | |
| Download: ML20246C804 (171) | |
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O UNITED STATES ; NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l JR 3NA_ 1 f
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Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste In the Matter of: Twelfth General Meeting O j Pages: 458 through 581 Place: Bethesda, Maryland l Date: June 30, 1989 p., D/tFDFFl0E Cop ' N F0
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.n. w HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION OpledalReporters O 1229 L Street, N.W., Suke 600 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 628-4888 f((230149 T-OOly s9063o Nr 81Ui_~ L E FDL i
_ _ ~ . - _ _ - - - _ _ _ PUBLIC NOTICE BY.THE UNITED' STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S i ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE June 30, 1989 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the proceedings . of the United States Nuclear ' Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste (ACNW), as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions l recorded at the meeting held on the above date. No member of the ACNW staff and no participant at
'this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this transcript.
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Heritage Reporting Corporation i (202) 628-4888 L L U
I 458 , ['j 11 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ke : 2 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE l 3 ) In the Matter of: ) 1 4 ) I j 5 TWELFTH GENERAL MEETING ) I i 6 ) 7 Friday, June 30, 1989 8 Room'P-110 9 7920 Norfolk Avenue Bethesda, Maryland
~10 The above-entitled matter came on for hearing, 11 pursuant to notice, at 8:30 a.m.
12 f-) _ BEFORE: DR. DADE W. MOELLER (_/ 13 Chairman Professor of Engineering in Environmental 14 Health and Associate Dean for Continuing Education, School cf Public Health 15 Harvard University Boston, Massachusetts 16 ACNW MEMBERS PRESENT: 17 DR. MARTIN J. STEINDLER 18 Director, Chemical Technology Division Argonne National Laboratory
- 19. Argonne, Illinois 20 DR. CLIFFORD V. SMITH 21 DR. WILLIAM J. HINZE 22 ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT:
23 DR. PAUL G. SHEWMON Professor, Metallurgical Engineering Department () 24 Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 25 _ _ - ______ ____- -- _ . - - _ _ _ _ - _ . .- _ _~ ._ -
459 1 CONSULTANTS:
. [']
2 D. Orth-D. Okrent 3 E. Voiland J. Moody 4 ACNW COGNIZANT STAFF MEMBER: 5 S.J.S. Parry 6 NRC STAFF PRESENTERS: 7 M. Silberberg l 8 J. Philip J. Lambert l 9 E. O'Donnell 10 11 l 12 13-l 14 , 15 16
.17 l 18 19 20 21 22 23
() 24 25
i 460 1
-(<~) 1 PROCEED 1NGS 2 CHAIRMAN HOELLER: Good morning. The meeting will 3 now come to order.
4 This is the third day of the 12th meeting of the l 5 Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. During today's meeting, ; l 6 the Committee will hear and discuss the fooling topics--one, 7 research related to nuclear waste management, both high level i 8 and low level, presented by the Office of Nuclear Regulatory j 9 Research, and then No. 2, anticipated and proposed Committee j l 10 activity, future meeting agenda, and organizational matters, 11 and three, completion of ACNW reports to the Commission. ) 12 Those reports are in draft, and there are two of l
, I k 13 them. The one is the one we ba"e been reading the last couple i 1
14 days on the SCPSCA, and then we have a second letter we are I 15 preparing on mechanism for reporting mishaps associated with 16 the management and disposal of low-level waste. 17 The meeting is being conducted in accordance with 18 the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the 19 Government in the Sunshine Act. 1 l 20 Dr. S.J.S. Parry is the designated federal official 21 for the initial portion of the meeting. We have received no ; 22 written statements or requests to make oral statements from 23 members of the public regarding today's session. A transcript of portions of the meeting will be j l 24 l l 25 kept, and it is requested that each speaker identify himself l _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - - - - _ - --~-~~ ---- n nnn s onn onnn
461 ( .1 or herself, use one of the microphones, step up to one of the 2 microphones, and speak.with sufficient clarity and volume so 1 3 that he or she can be readily heard. 4 Before we proceed with the formal technical portions. 5 of the meeting, Mr. Raymond Fraley, the Executive Director for 6 the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, has a formal ! l 7 proceeding to accomplish. 8 MR. FRALEY: Well, gentlemen, at the last month's 9 meeting, we awarded.Dr. Hinze his Certificate of Appointment, j 1 10 and because of other delays, we didn't have yours, but we have i 11 them now. It took a while to get the purple color to match ;
)
12 the Chernyenko radiation! But anyway, but here you are, and a ( 13 if you will return those to us, we will get them framed and .j 14 send them you to. Maybe you can read the nature of your 15 appointment! l 16 (A discussion was held off the record.) 17 CHAIRMAN MOFLLER: Well, thank you, Mr. Fraley. The 18 next item is--we will proceed with the meeting agenda, and to 19 repeat, the first thing, the first topic is a discussion of l 20 research related to nuclear waste management, and the leader j 21 of that discussion will be Mel Silberberg. Hel? 22 MR. SILBERBERG: Good morning. Thank you, Mr. i 23 Chairman, members of the Committee, and consultants. ,
) 24 My name is Mel Silberberg, and I'm Chief of the 25 Waste Management Research Branch in the Office of Research.
N l li 462 [~% 1 We are pleased to be here today to-- wl 2 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Excuse me a second. Is it 3 possible to turn the volume down a spec? Okay. Go ahead, 4 Mel, and we will do it while you speak. 5 MR. SILBERBERG: I am pleased to be here today to 6 discuss with you the waste management research program. As 7 requested by the Committee, we will focus first on the 8 organizational management aspects of the waste management 9 research program. 10 Then we will discuss the program plans that are now 11 under development for high-level waste research and low-level 12 waste research. 13 You now have draft copies of the, of each one of the 14 plans, and I wanted to just note that as you know, these are 15 still pre-decisional, and they are in fact undergoing internal 16 management review at this point, and I will say more about 17 those later. 18 Finally, you will hear about the status of the 19 current activities at the Center for Nuclear Regulatory Waste 20 Analysis and our near-term plans. 21 (Slide) 22 MR. SILBERBERG: Just very briefly, just showing the 23 structure within the Office of Research for the waste () 24 management research activities, and the work is carried out 25 under Mr. Beckjord in the Division of Engineering, we have a
I l E 463 l l () 1 new division director, Larry Shao, who will'be coming over 2 from NMSS. This just took place within the past two weeks. J 3 Mr. Carlotto, who was previously there, has moved over to 4' become the deputy director of the NMSS, and Mr. Vern Bernero. 5 The deputy director of the division is Bob Bosnak, four i 1 6 branches and the waste management branch shown there. I 7 (Slide) I i 8 MR. SILBERBERG: Within the Division of Engineering, 9 just briefly showing that the, my branch is split up into two i 10 sections, one section leader being Dr. John Randall, and the 11 other section leader Dr. William Ott. These two sections have ; i 12 staff that in fact not only carry out the program managing l (s 13 responsibilities for the individual research projects, but 14 also staff that are involved, as you see later, in the, in 15 regulatory products rulemaking and regulatory guides in 16 support of the NMSS regulatory activities. 17 I think very simply, in fact I just noted that the 18 responsibilities within the branch are to develop and manage 19 research programs both in the, both in the high . level waste 20 area and the low-level waste area. That includes the 21 development and management of the programs at the Center, and 22 as noted just before, we also manage the development and 23 issuance of regulatory products. () 24 (Slide) 25 MR. SILBERBERG: Now I would now like to say a few
464 1 wordsLabout.how we interface with the user office, NMSS, and (f 2 basically the key. division director level people at NHSS are 3 the, are in the low-level waste division, the high-level waste-4 division, and the program manager of the Center--I think you i 5 know all these people. Basically low-level waste, it is j a 6 currently Dr. John Greeves, and there is a new director, a Mr. l 7 Bankort, who will be joining the organization very shortly, 8 and then Mr. Browning for high-level waste, and Jesse Funches 9 for the Center program. 10 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Now is the Center then-- 11 MR. SILBERBERG: I'll get to that. I'll get to 12 that. Now in the case of-- 13 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Excuse me. Another question-- 14 DR. SMITH: Would you just refresh my memory and 15 tell me the difference, where do you draw the line between 16 what is research and what is technical assistance? 17 MR. SILBERBERG: Okay. The, my definition and the 18' definition that I've grown up with in the Office of Research 19 for the past 16 years is that those activities which require 20 long-term experimental data gathering, long-term development 21 of methodologies, tools, and analysis procedures, in support 22 of the, you know, user need regulatory functions in NMSS are 23 done by the Office of Research, what we call traditional 24 research and development, something that has more than a few 25 months or six months or a year focus.
l: h 465 c. () 1 On technical assistance, _it would be those items, 2 -they would include, could include analyses and could include 3 certainly working with these methodologies. May be special 4 methodologies that are developed or that are available within ! 5 the office of NMSS, but those are again specifically related l 6 to, to the particular regulatory purpose that they have in 7 mind and generally have a shorter term nature. That's sort of 8 my overview. 9 If people in NMSS want to add--I think that's--but 10 let me just say, and I will get, again get to this later, that 11 division, that line has not, is not at all a problem in our 12 program. We have no problem in the, in dealing--the offices, 13 they do not have a problem. You will see later that the 14 relationships are in fact so close that the turf issue is not 15 at all an issue in this program. 16 Now I interface with a number of branch chiefs in 17 NMSS. One, Ron Ballard in Geoscience's System Performance 18 Branch, will be joining us shortly. In high-level waste, the 19 Regulatory Licensing and Project Branch, John Lenihan, 20 high-level waste. In low-level waste, the Technical Branch, 21 Dr. John Surmeier, and he is with us this morning. And the 22 Regulatory Branch in Icw-level waste, Dr. Mike Bell. 23 There are some formal interfaces within waste () 24 management research that are taken care of by the Waste 25 Management Review Group, and I will explain that in a few l
466 I l
) 1 slides.
2 (Slide) i 3 MR. SILBERBERG: We have a regular, about monthly, 4 roughly monthly, meeting of what we call Waste Management ) I 5 Coordinating Committee. That was put together by the
)
6 management of both offices. It is a, it is a collegial group 7 that meets, normally the division directors and the branch 8 chiefs, people noted on the, noted on the previous slide, meet j i 9 to discuss any day-to-day problems that might be developing, 10 special changes that may be coming up in priorities, concerns 11 that might be developing, schedule issues, management 12 questions, pretty much things across the Board, run k- 13 informally, and they are very useful. We have found that to 14 be quite good. 15 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Are the commissioners, Technical 16 Assistance involved in all of this? 17 MR. SILBERBERG: No, not in that. 18 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Are they involved in any ways? I 19 MR. SILBERBERG: I think they are involved in, on 20 special cases both let's say in our office on NMSS, where 21 there is a, you know, special need for, on special subjects, 22 where the staff would like to bring the Commission staff up to l 23 date or either at their request or at our request, depending l 24 on the, on the issue or the work, and they, and these such I 25 meetings are arranged on an ad hoc basis. 1 l- . _ _ _ _ _ __ ______ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ________ _ _ _
p 1 I 467 ] j ); 1 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Go ahead, Paul. l I L 2 DR. SHEWMON: There is one item down there, 1 I 3 development of staff. capability on high-level performance l l 4 assessment. l 5- MR. SILBERBERG: Let me address that. 6 DR. SHEWMON: Pardon? 7 MR.'SILBERBERG: I would like to address that. 8 DR. SHEWMON: Fine. 9 MR. SILBERBERG: I want to note that the' branch 10 chiefs and section leaders again meet normally on a weekly 11 basis in the, in the low-level waste area, and in the 12 high-level waste. These are in set times that are established 13 for the staff meetings of the branch chiefs over at NMSS or a 14 special time allotted for the discussions that we have. 15 I mention again there is coordination in the area of 16 the rulemakings and regulatory guide development. Now on 17 staff capability of high-level waste, performance assessment, 18 as you heard about yesterday, from Ron Ballard, this work is, 19 is now underway, and I want to say a few remarks about it, and 20 members of the Committee and consultants discussed it 21 yesterday, too. 22 First of all, this is obviously going to be a very 23 tough job. There is no question about that, but my
) 24 observation being on the program for the past year, is that if 25 one takes, you know, the staff at NMSS, and the Office of
468 i e I ,, e 1 Research highly skilled staff in many disciplines of earth l (u )$ 2 sciences, I believe that the core staff, core staff to do this 3 work is'in fact, is in fact on board. Of course we will need l 4 support externally from, as we are now, from our contractors, l 5 but the work is being given a high priority. In fact, the-6 priority will continue to increase, and I believe that Mr.. I 7 Ballard and I would, I think are in a good position and are 1 8 prepared in fact to, to try to bring this activity to a 9 successful, to reach a successful, our goal successfully, but 10 as I say, during the past year, I have been impressed with, 11 with the capabilities and skills of the staff at NMSS, and in 12 fact my own staff, too. And I-- 13 DR. OKRENT: How many people are you speaking about 14 in total that are in your opinion both knowledgeable, highly 15 knowledgeable, and also available? 16 MR. SILBERBERG: The question is coupled and I think 17 it probably is itself--I think that number is somewhere 18 between I think maybe six to eight, combining both offices. 19 .That would be a conservative number. 20 DR. OKRENT: And what fraction of their time would 21 you guess these people can devote to this specific subject as 22 distinct from things related to it but not specifically this? 23 MR. SILBERBERG: My own feeling, and Mr. Ballard and f ( 24 I have had recent discussion on this in order to continue to 25 bolster, accelerate this activity, I believe it has got to be
469 1 'very close to a hundred percent. I think anything less than (
'2 75 percent would be a problem.
3 In other words, if at all possible, we would like to 4 make it close to a hundred percent. It may vary. Some of the 5 people that I have are, in fact do have some program 6 management responsibilities, but we are prepared to shift 7 responsibilities over the next two years to in, the interest 8 of that work, Bob? 9 MR. BROWNING: In regard to my staff, my staff, it 10 depends ou_what particular point in time you look at. Over 11 the last period of time, my staff has been primarily consumed 12 with preparing comments on the SCP, so their time to do this 13 was approaching zero. 14 What we have tried to do is work closely with the 15 Research folks and try to keep the Research folks whose eye 16 ought to be on the longer range things a hundred percent, and 17 I have got to do better on making some of my staff available 18 on a hundred percent basis, but I think if you looked a week 19 ago, it would be zero. This week, it should be a hundred 20 percent. 21 DR. OKRENT: Well, if I can give a personal opinion, 22 which I always am since I am only a consultant, even if you 23 had six or eight people full-time, you wouldn't be able to () 24 cover all of the, all of the discrete sciences in-depth 25 because there are so many involved here.
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470 ( ,) 1 MR. BROWNING: We don't plan to.
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2 DR. OKRENT: I'm not saying you should, but--and in 3 my experience, over a variety.of years and issues, I have 4 found it's generally useful to have more than one person 5 knowledgeable in discrete areas so sometimes you get different 6 shades of opinion. 7 What I am getting at is even if you make a valiant 8 effort, you really are-- 9 MR. SILBERBERG: Okay. 30 DR. OKRENT: Skinny.
'11 MR. SILBERBERG: No. I think your point is well 12 taken, but let me just note that in that six to eight people, e~
13 we are looking at in most cases, at least two in each 14 discipline; for example, in geochemistry, at least two people. 15 hydrogeology, at least two people. Then there is the 16 integrating, performance assessment overall integrating 17 capability--again, at least two people. And then there will 18 be a number of people just going in and grinding away on a 19 daily basis, so that I think, I think within the staff. 20 Now it is very clear that we intend to bring 21 selected specialists from, from our contractors in on the job i l 22 particularly certainly during this next phase, during the i 23 phase whereby right up through fiscal '90 we will have, of 24 course, close contact and you know, what we call technology 1 25 transfer with Sandia, but all of our, in other words, all of l l _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .___________ .m -m . _mm mmmm I
471
.1 our other contractors, be that the Center or elsewhere, during O[~)
2- this contract period, particularly, for example, in 3 hydrogeology, those people are in fact working on programs 4 that can be, you know, that expertise and the results, ongoing 5 results from that program can be plugged in on a quick 6 turnaround basis into the concepts or into the insights or 7 into the needs of performance assessment, depending on the 8- area. 9 DR. OKRENT: If I can asa one more question? 10 ' CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Go ahead. 11 DR. OKRENT: Do you have any analyses that help.you 12 in deciding what will be the more difficult issues for Yucca [ 13 Mountain in the performance assessment, and also then a basis 14 for judging which of these would be assisted by research and 15 what research? 16 If you don't have such analyses, how do you make 17 that judgment? 18 MR. SILBERBERG: Let me start, and then Ron Ballard 1 19' or others might supplement my comments. I 20 First, the ongoing review that has in fact just been 21 completed on the SCP--in fact, the SCA has been over the last, ; i 22 in fact, six months, Ron Ballard's staff has been using that 23 as a focal point, perhaps qualitatively, but as a focal point () 24 for looking at the tough issues of the Yucca Mountain, and in 25 effect, and in effect as we move on, those, we would expect
t
',1. 5 a! ,' 472
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(f( 1 those to receive-the highest priority'and to some extent drive
'2 the. program.
3 As we converted our program over from three geologic 4 sites to'one over a year-ago, the, staff, both staffs were in 5 fact making that judgment on-the basis of, for' example, n 6 unsaturated fracture flow, an.important issue to. Yucca 7- Mountain, so we knew that we had to be strong in that area, 8 for example, certainly waste package issues, and so on', 9 but--and so we came with'that prior knowledge and prior 10 experience from.the previous work. 11 ~ Now as we continue to'get deeper into.the
- 12. performance assessment, and start to get.more quantitative ~ ,
13 then we.would expect that would allow us to sharpen our focus 14 on which areas are the ones that might be driving the outcome 15 of the performance assessment, and if necessary, we will have. 16 to'shif t and put more emphasis in those areas . 17 Now that's, that's, you know, broad, you know, my 18 current perspective on how this would be done. It is similar 19 to what we tried.to do, as you know, in risk assessment for 20 reactors. Where are the items, in other words, where are the 21 big items that are driving consequences? And you try to get 22 at those if you can, and that's again a broad, a broad look. 23 Now that may be oversimplified, but in, in my view, . () 24 that's sort of the logic that I try to use. I don't know if 25 Ron would like to add something to that.
s. 473 MR. BALLARD: Well, I'll add a little bit. We do us) ( l' 2 not yet have data from Yucca Mountain even to really try to 3 implement the performance assessment program. 4 As we mentioned briefly yesterday, the staff of our 5 office in conjunction with Research is starting a performance l 6 assessment model, more hypothetical one, to get it functioning 7 by the end of the year, and we would follow up as DOE 8 generates data and as Sandia keeps their model and. transfers 9 this technology into the staff, our plan is to indeed start 10 exercising that, but in fact, we have relied to date on the 11 DOE's work. 12 They feel--if you will recall, in the SCP, there is
%- 13 a substantial kind of input on performance allocation. They 14- are essentially what they call their base case, and that's 15 where the staff is, of course, reviewing that, and a program 16 is built to, built to feed information back to their 17 performance allocation and thereby refine it, and that's where 18 the primary staff will be reviewing that process.
19 DR. OKRENT: Well, again, giving a personal opinion, 20 that's certainly one way of proceeding with it and probably, 21 in probably the usual way. I'm not sure it is necessarily the 22 best way. It would be helpful if you had some basie opinions 23 on what are the probable sticking points if there are any and () 24 then an assessment of what are the questions vital to these 25 sticking points, and then a question is there research that
474 j-(f 1 will help? 2 And in my opinion, it is possible to make a try at 3 that, and you will all have backgrounds from your, the other 4 analyses that help you, and if you can join with, for example,- 5 the Sandia people, we are still working with you, and in a 6 relatively concentrated and not too extensive an effort, I 7 think have a go at that, if you so chose, and find out whether 8 that perspective coincides with your current priorities, 9 and--well, let me leave it at that. 10 MR. SILBERBERG: Okay. 11 MR. BALLARD: Let me just follow up one second on-12 that.
.(-
13 We have in the more traditional way identified we 14 think most of the major concerns, and certainly that would be 15 reflected in Mel Silberberg's research progrem, matrix versus 16 fracture flow and these types of things. He will fill in on 17 that. 18 MR. SILBERBERG: Let me, let me-- 19 DR. ORTH: Did you say that Sandia was going to be 4 l 20 working with you through this? l 21 MR. SILBERBERG: Through fiscal '90; in fact, the . l . l 22 presentation, yesterday's presentation by John Random, that )
)
23 schedules as you recall had come out. () 24 DR. ORTH: I'm sorry. I was not in the room at that 25 time. l l _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____
-)
475 4 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Of course we discussed
.( ) 'l i
2 yesterday--you might refresh me if it has already been- l 3 covered, the Committee was interested in.how the phaseout of q 4 Sandia and the phasein of the Center would c-ake place. 1 5 You know, we were talking yesterday about modeling i 6 ' capabilities, and some of the Committee members expressed 7' concern about losing the Sandia resource if you don't have !
)
8 something to replace it. ! 9 You are giving a lot of attention to this phaseout 10 and phasein? 11 MR. SILBERBERG: Very definitely, Dr. Moeller. It . l 11 2 is an area that is of considerable concern to us to, to have i O 13 this as a smooth transition ideally, and I think in reality, 14 it is probably something less than, something less than 15 smooth, and we are having to, to work with the Center to work 16 'with them on the staffing, on their development of staffing, 17 and a continuing to build that capability so that together, we 18 all hope we have the right mix of people covering t'..e i 19 disciplines in the areas that we are addressing, and in both l 20 the research program, and the technical assistance program, 21 but on the research program, the Center has made a start along 22 those lines, but we believe that they have a ways to go. l l 23 DR. SHEWMON: This is a new area for the Center? l (). 24 MR. SILBERBERG: Some of the, many of the 25 disciplines are new areas. i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____
476 () 1 DR. SHEWMON: I wasn't thinking the discipline so 2 much as the PA or PRA, the assessment, probability assessment, 3 performance assessment in the thing. 4 MR. SILBERBERG: To some extent; I think they have 5 done PRA perhaps in a, maybe in a sense of maybe overall 6 systems and things like that, but in terms of PRA per se for 7 either reactors or PRA for waste management repository, that's 8 a relatively new area for them. 9 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: And among the new people that.the 10 Center has hired, have they picked up any people that were 11 formerly involved with you, with your contractors and so 12 forth? 13 MR. SILBERBERG: I'm trying to recall. One, one 14 person in geochemistry had been working at Lawrence Livermore 15 I believe. 16 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: So there is some? 17 MR. SILBERBERG: One, right, and the, I think the 18 mix that we are looking for is a mix that includes a core 19 working level capability, which the Center is trying to build 20 up, plus a, what I would call a scientific leadership level of 21 staff, too, combined, as we might have in any one of our i 22 other, in other contractors, and for example, in the ' 23 hydrogeology area, hydrogeologists appear to be in great () 24 demand. I 25 DR. MOODY: They certainly are. _ - - - - - - - _ - - - - _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ________ ____ l
477
') 1 MR. SILBERBERG: Excuse me?
2 DR. HOODY: I said they certainly are. 3 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes, because of all of the Super 4 Fund, EPA, problems, and you know, and all those that we all 5 read about in the newspaper apparer. -ly using hydrogeologists, 6 you know, by the ton, so there is competition, and that makes 7 it difficult. 8 However, in the, at least in the r in the near to 9 intermediate term, in the hydrogeology area, we are relying 10 heavily on the University of Arizona team, both the 11 experimental team as well as the theoretical team, and 12 hopefully we will get, you know, a synergistic effect from ~ 13 that, 14 DR. STEINDLER: One more question in that regard-- 15 what is the size of the Sandia group? 16 MR. SILBERBERG: Under the project that was 17 described yesterday? 4 I 18 DR. STEINDLER: Yes. 19 MR. SILBERBERG: That's about, about five, about 20 four people. 21 DR. STEINDLER: And what is the size of the folks, i 22 the number of folks at Sandia, the whole general area? 23 MR. SILBERBERG: Oh, I don't, I don't know. () 24 DR. STEINDLER: Twenty-five? 25 MR. SILBERBERG: I suspect so. If you take the work
478 I
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1 on low-level waste performance assessment for Dr Surmeier, (J') 2 they are doing some other work for Mr. Ballard, and then of 3 course, the ones with energy, I would suspect it is in the 25, 4 in the range of 25. I 5 DR. STEINDLER: So they have in effect developed a { 6 small department equivalence? 7 MR. SILBERBERG: Oh, I suspect. 8 DR. STEINDLER: Do you expect the Center to staff to ! 9 that level of expertise in terms of numbers? 10 MR. SILBERBERG: Given the total job that, that 11 Sandia has to do, and we are looking at a number like 25, ! 12 given the job, ideally if the' Center could staff to have, to (~
\ 13 have that equivalent expertise, given the scale of our work, 14 level of effort and so forth, I think we are looking at a 15 smaller number. It would have to be special people, the right, 16 people, but I think we would see that number perhaps maybe 17 approaching, you know, four to six, and not 25.
18 DR. STEINDLER: Is there a new judgment on the 19 critical mass to the size of the group that is required to do 20 a decent job in this area? 21 MR. SILBERBERG: Right now, today you mean? 22 DR. STEINDLER: Is there a minimum size of co'_legial 23 group working in this area? \ () 24 MR. SILBERBERG: I'm not sure what that number is f ; 25 for my own experience, but just, just looking and observing,
479 ()
,. ~.
1 and getting, trying to develop some insights on this, I think 2 the number--now do you mean all of the areas related to waste i 3 management research, or do you mean just performance 4 assessment? 5 DR. STEINDLER: Just performance assessment related 6 to your immediate needs. 7 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes. I would say that number is 8 probably, a critical mass might be approaching like four, 9' three or four. 10 MR. BROWNING: Point of clarification here-~our 11 strategy in this whole area of performance assessment was to 12 build the capability within the NRC staff to understand and pi
\J 13 manage it.
14 We were early on too dependent on Sandia. The staff 15 was not in a position to really do it themselves, and our 16 strategy is to get a critical mass, which I think the answer, 17 we do need a critical mass. I don't within my staff have 18 enough of a population, the kinds and types and disciplines to 19 make that critical mass work, but in combination with the 20 people that are in the Office of Research, and my staff, and 21 what we ultimately will be hiring and building up at the 22 Center, we will have a critical mass to do it. 23 I think there is some debate just exactly what that 24 is, but it will depend a great degree on what it is, we think 25 we need to do independent of DOE. The key burden obviously
1 480' ; () 1 has to be on DOE, and they have got megabucks to spend, and 2 . tremendous resources in order to'do the job right. , l
.3 The key here is what is our strategy for making sure 4 we have got confidence for doing it right. I would like to 5 volunteer--we are kind of getting off the subject of-this 6 briefing and on the subject we really want to talk about. -I 7 would encourage you to, to have your consultants come talk 8 with us, you know, in conjunction with the Committee so that 9 you get a feel for what we are doing and can provide us some 10 help and to come to grips with what the strategy ought to be, 11 We are not going to solve it here obviously, but I 12 think if you ge'c some feel for the kinds of people we have on 13 our staff, collectively between NMSS and Research, we have a 14 nucleus there, and if they could put their full attention to 15 it, we have the nucleus to be able to do a first-class job 16 within the Agency supplemented as necessary by help from the 17 Center, but we do intend to have a self-sufficient critical 18 mass at the Center which we will become dependent on that is 19 going to be run from the Agency if our strategy is successful.
l 20 I do not want to become dependent on a contractor of any kind, 21: even the FFRDC, to be doing that for us where we are captive 22 to that. We have got to be in charge of it. 23 MR. SILBERBERG: Thank you for that clarification, () 24 Dob. Let me just-- 25 DR. MOODY: Can I make a comment? Having been I
1 l 481 j l
-( ll- heavily involved for over eight years with a certain input to 2 the performance assessment and modeling area, I would say that i
3 what you are proposing, you know, I understand very well, but j di i 4 I do know also that it is very difficult out there. When you 5 look at the complexity of the modeling that it is going to be 6 necessary to do, you knua, there are only a certain number of 7 what I would call key people who really can know what j 8 verification, validation of a model is, knows how to implement 9 and use a complex model, so I, you know, I understand'what it 10 is you are trying to do, but I would say one of the most 11 difficult things you are going to have is getting some key 12 people that would be able to facilitate the work that you are f 13 proposing to do because it is not just that easy and there are. 14 just not that many people that have the technical background 15 to implement the work. 16 MR. SILBERBERG: The gentleman that just walked in 17 is Mr. Bob Bosnak, Deputy Director of the Division of 18 Engineering Research. 19 Let me continue on and just finish this. We have, 20 in this coordination effort, we have conducted technology 21 transfer workshops, that is, when a, a methodology or a code 22 or model'is available from, from our, from our laboratory, one l-L 23 of our contractors, low-level waste, high-level waste, the, 1
) 24 the contractor will come in and put on a workshop, sometimes 25 one day, sometimes three days, giving the staff an opportunity L
482 to understand the basis for the methodologies, and also to (m) 1 2 work hands-on right with in fact the PCs to exercise the 3 methodology. 4 We have also conducted special workshops as needed 5 on special problems. Most recently, the NMSS Division of 6 Low-Level Waste and particularly Dr. Surmeier's branch, had a 7 need for a special workshop on cement waste form issues, and 8 between like March and early June, both the staff, the staffs 9 from both branches cooperated, organized, developed a program 10 and had, in fact had a very successful reeting completed all 11 in that short short span of time which I believe will be a
-12 very useful outcome, and these were workshops where the people i
13 from all over the country were invited in' addition to 14 specialists, in particular mostly specialists in particular 15 areas. So as necessary, we are flexible enough to, to provide 16 that kind of support. 17 There is also the last item, mutual assistance. For 18 example, we, the staff in Research, in my branch, spend 19 considerable time in providing some review support to NMSS, to 1!0 Mr. Browning's division, for the SEP, and we also will review l 21 branch technical positions and will discuss them and provide 22 inputs. I i 23 Let me just say that, in summarizing this whole area ( 24 that, and having been now working in this area for the past , l 25 year, I'm impressed with the level and spirit of coordination 1 j i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___________ ________ _-__ )
i 483 1 that in fact is taking place on this program. (')' 1 I have, as you l , 2 know,' I have been in the Office of Research from its l 3 inception, and in all of my experience, I think the 4 coordination that now exists between the two groups is by far 5 the best that I have experienced or have worked with in all of l 6 that time, and I think I find that not only encouraging, but, { l- 7 but it gives me a lot of confidence that we can get the 8 problem solved by working together, and I think the key, the 9 key behind this idea at the management level and at the staff 10 level particularly, there is a mutual appreciation of and 11 respect for the, for the professional capabilities in each 12 organization, so I, I would say in fact one of the highlights ym k- 13 of any, of this past year for me has been in the involvement 14 in that interaction at the technical level. 15 (Slide) 16 MR. SILBERBERG: I don't want to get too deeply into 17 the Waste Management Review Group. If the Committee wants 18 background and material on, which is sort of summarized on 19 this chart, we can send that, send that you to you. 20 Basically the Waste Management Review Group was 21 formed a number of years ago. I don't know whether it was 22 seven or eight or whatever, by the EDO so that the two offices 23 would in fact be able to coordinate programs, could be, be () 24 sure that the TA programs and the research, new starts in TA 25 and in research programs were in fact the right programs to be
I l' 484 l .t(~)j 1 running, to be started, that in fact they were, they avoided 2 unnecessary duplication, and all of the things like that, 3 and-- 4 DR. SMITH: You mean under that bullet that--let me 5 clarify. You mean avoid? 6 MR. SILBERBERG: Excuse me. What did I say. 7 DR. SMITH: Said assure. 8 MR. SILBERBERG: Thank you-for pointing that out. 9 That's the first time I have noticed that. Strike that from 10 the record! Thank you for pointing that out. Computers are 11 fine, but you have got to give them the right words. 12 They advise both the Director of NMSS and the 13 Director of Research. There is a particular membership. The 14 group meets as needed, but at least twice a year. The group 15 also has a subgroup which is responsible for oversights to, 16 for an oversight of the Center, of the Center, and that's 17 referred to as the Center Review Group. 18 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: How does this interact with your 19 monthly meeting that you do, you went through previously? 20 MR. SILBERBERG: They are different. The monthly 21 meetings do not have this, the formal, this formal structure 22 in the monthly meeting, but things might come up at the 23 monthly meetings that then the management might say I think we 1 () 24 better refer this to WMRG. It is an important policy matter i 25 or what have you, so in that sense, it is sort of a, a lead
485 ( 1 and a precursor to, could be, to the other, to this meeting. 2 (Slide) 3 MR. SILBERBERG: -I-want to briefly describe, show 4 you the management organization for, for the Center, how it j
"- 5 will work if the Center is managed from NRC, and just very 6 simply that the manager of the program, manager of the Center 7 is Jesse Funches who reports to Mr. Berneraro.
8 There are what we call three,-three areas of 9 programs at the center. The first two on the left involve 10 technical assistance work from the sponsor, or from the 11 division director sponsor in NMSS, 6nd for example, Mr.
'12 Browning has the largest, is the largest sponsor of the work 13 for the high-level we.ste repository technical assistance, and 14 shown, even shown in red is the research program element which 15 in effect works through the division director in the Office of 16 Research, and the program element manager is'on my staff, and 17 for the, for the Center work it is Dr. Ott. Then you will 18 hear from him later, and basically all, all new work is, 19 before it goes through the Center, is reviewed by the Center i I
20 program manager, and then the, since this is a commercial 21 contract basically, it is ther handled through the Divisions 22 of Contracts who is the, the fiscal interface if you will 23 with, the contractual interface with the Center, but the, this j () 24 is our, our structure, and that's how we get it worked on. 25 DR. SMITH: Mr. Funches, does he work for NRC or--
t '3 6 [ 1 MR. SILBERBERG: Excuse me. Mr. Funches is an NRC 2 NMSS staff manager. 3 DR. SMITH: Who is the lead person for the Center 4 and who do they report into for NRC? l 5 MR. SILBERBERG: Okay. The lead person for the 6 Center is, is Mr. John Latts from the Center, from, you know, 7 and he, he reports into Mr. Funches. 8 DR. SMITH: Okay. 9 MR. SILBERBERG: Then they have a structure below 10 that. 11 DR. SMITH: Thank you. 12 (Slide) 13 MR. SILBERBERG: I just again want to briefly note 14 that a component, a recent component of our research oversight 15 management is something that has bee'n referred to as the 16 Nuclear Safety Research Review Committee. If you all recall, l 17 in late 1986, the National Academy of Science panel provided a 18 report to, to and recommendations to the Agency on the j l 19 management and operation of the Office of Research,
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20 One of the recommendations in that report noted 21 that, and recommended that the Office of Research should have 22 an oversight, an advisory committee of its own, reporting to l 23 the Director of Research and through the Director of Research, 24 of course, to the Commission, to in fact advise on, as noted, 25 all matters of overall management importance to the Director _ _ _ _ - _ - _ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ ~ .---- - -
487 () 1 of the Nuclear Safety Research Program. 2 The Committee was formed in basically 1988, and it 3 has several subcommittees that deal with the various program 4 areas in the Office of Research program. There is a 5 subcommittee for, for waste management research. The 6 subcommittee has met with the staff in October, and has 7 reviewed the program and made some comments, and the program, 8 the charter or the scope of work of their review is shown on 9 there, and again, we can provide additional information to the 10 Committee should they so wish us to do that. 11 We would, if it is appropriate, it is possible to, 12 that perhaps they, they may, there may be meetings that we 13 1ight have in the future with the Committee on the program 14 t..st we might invite them tc, to, special members to, if 15 interested, to hear those. 16 DR. HINZE: What types of people are on that l-17 Committee? l 18 DR. MOODY: Who serves on the Committee? i 19 MR. SILBERBERG: The Committee is now chaired by Dr. 20 Todrias from MIT. It has people at the level of-- l 21 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: It is outside the NRC? l 6 22 MR. SILBERBERG: Outside--I'm sorry. It is 23 constituted as a federal advisory committee and operating () 24 under the--okay. I mean--and for example, Neal Todrias from 25 MIT chairs it. They have people like Jim Hendrick on it. i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ________ ____
488 1 ()
- 1 1 They have people who in fact have either managed large, very 2 large programs or been involved at both the national labs as j
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3 well as the-- 1 4 DR. SHEWMON: Benz Bush was on it in the materials i 5 area. I j l- i 6 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes, and in fact a new member, ; 7 former ACRS member, Herb Ishben, is now on the Committee, so 8 it is, it's--I think quite a, quite a lot of the Committee, ; 9 and I am going to very briefly just lead into what is coming 10 for the rest of the program, namely, on the, just talking 11 about the research program planning, although we have, we have 12 touched upon many of these, many subjects. I don't want to (d'T 13 spend too much time on it, but just indicate to you what I 14 think, we think should, are the main ingredients of having. 15 good research program planning, and what we have been 16 attempting to do is establish both in the high-level waste 17 area and the low-level waste area baseline documents that we 18 can work from. 19 We don't expect they are going to be perfect, but we 20 want something that is structured, in fact that has an 21 integrated program. It is structured to be timely and 22 responsive to, to the regulatory needs, to have an indication 23 of strategy that is related to the issue, the issues involved, () 24 the level of effort and resource that we project, you know, in l 25 our five-yeer plans, and also to reflect the pace of the ________ _________ ___________ _ _ _ _ __mm
489 (m) 1 program, which is obviously related to, to the work, the--not 2 only the work we are doing, but the resource available. 3 We, what we want to do is establish a stable 4 program, but one th*t is flexible to change according to 5 evaluations, insights that we get as the work proceeds, for 6 example, as results coming forth from assessment. We want it 7 to be a baseline document such that with just modest changes, 8 we can update it annually, and that's why we are, it is a 9 living document, but it is something that we refer to every 10 spring when we get ready to do our, go into the budget process 11 for the coming fiscal years, we have an organized basis to 12 work from, and then the staff, both staffs from both 13 organizations would, as thingt develop during the year, come 14 back in let's say very early spring and say we think we need 15 to make some changes or I think we need to start projecting, 16 making other projections as we move out in time, and we, as I 17 said, we will be revisiting this annually, so that's our 18 objective of why we are now establishing these, these 19 documents. 20 We want to work with them, but we must be able to 21 spend only, you know, a fixed, limited amount of time doing 22 this. We can, we can continue to make it better, but it 23 obviously must take up a reasonable fraction of our time and
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(~)\ (_ 24 it, I must say that we have over the last number of months l l 25 given it considerable, considerable emphasis and considerable ! _ - - _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .--~.--- --
490 1 staff time, and I, I think I want to personally compliment my f( }) 2 staff for, for putting in a lot of, a lot of time in getting 3 these documents together, and it has been a, somewhat of a l [ 4 grinding process., and then I must say that there are pecple in 5 NHSS, who within the limits of their resources, have been 6 helpful and cooperative in, in helping us to organize and l 7 develop the document, and of course, we expect that they will 8 be working with it not just now but on a continuing basis, and 9 working on a what we call staff-to-staff level basis for each 10 of the, each of the things, so--for each of the program 11 element areas. 12 Let me just note that we see integrated research 13 planning for waste management as a process. We, we need to be 14 in touch and in tune with the regulatory framework and the 15 environment that we are working in, user is working in. We 16 try to be responsive to user needs and I think we, we do that 17 quite well. I think in most cases, if there are differences, 18 they are not very large, and again, it is important that the 19 user, to the extent that the user can, participate actively in 20 the process. 21 We have a review process which is undergoing now, 22 which is underway now, and the, the ACNW is part of that 23 process, and we have provided this to you, and we will value () 24 any comments that you wish to make on this, and we will 25 consider them, and the, and factor your comments into, into
L i 491 1 the final development of this plan. (f
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2 Let me just say our schedule is to have these done, 3 issued, as NUREGs towards the end of this fourth quarter, so 'I 4 that we in fact can go into, into fiscal '90 with a baseline 5 plan. 6 Now in each of the documents, we have briefly 7 discussed priority, and priority, of course, was discussed 8 here, and I think the discussion of priority needs to be 9 continued. It needs to be, we need to continue to, to 10 certainly be mindful of the priority, and be satisfied that we 11 in fact are doing the highest priority work, but we do have 12 bases for change. Some of those we will discuss during, V N 13 during the, my response to some of the questions, and 14 particularly Dr. Okrent's commer,t, and we will look for the 15 opportunities and the need to make those changes. 16 Now we also think it is essential and almost 17 mandatory that in order for our program to succeed, given the 18 fact that it is a very small program, both high-level wac'e 19 and low-level waste program, and by my previou- standards on 20 programs that I have been on, let me tell you these are small 21 programs, and the--I was going to say in resources, but not, 22 certainly not in stature. 23 The research of others is very important, whether it () 24 is in the national, national scene or the international scene. 25 We need to be aware of what others are doing because there is
4 492 '] a () 1 a lot of expertise out there at the--nationally, 2 internationally, and the problems we are dealing with demand 1 3 that type of interchange, and we need to use the work because 4 if we use the work of others to the extent that we can, I 5 think this provides us with an important measure of leverage 6 being able to take just the small amount of resources that we 7 have and be able to use, be able to factor other work, other 8 work in. 9 Now I want to, I want to close here by talking about 10 our interactions with other organizations and our plans to, to 11 continue this effort, and in fact to I think put more emphasis 12 on it. In the future, in the area of national programs, many O
\/ 13 of our staf f are involved in coordinating commit. tees 'and 14 working groups and so forth with other agencies that are 15 involved in ground water, ground water resource problems, and 16 such as the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survej.
- here them 17 shown here also working with the, through the i;0AA group and 18 the whole question of climatological arers, end of course, the j 19 states, but I think foremost is, are the programs of the 20 Department of Energy, namely, in the high-level waste area, 21 certainly particularly and foremost, it is essential that at 22 the lowest specialist expert working level, that we can find, 23 it is essential that people working on common scientific l
() 24 problems that challenge the issues of high-level waste, of the 25 high-level waste repository, it is essential that they
1 l l 493 ! l ( )) 1 communicate on a, on a regular basis, informal but certainly 2 could be on a regular basis, and this in effect serves as at ! 3 least a start of something akin to a peer review process. l 4 I am working with Mr. Browning and Mr. Lenihan, his i 5 branch chief, that was noted who is responsible for the Yucca 6 Mountain project to now develop in conjunction with DOE a 7 program for getting into these working level interchanges in 8 the areas, strictly in the areas, for example, that are, that 9 are important to performance assessment. 10 Now yesterday Ron Ballard I believe and John Trapp 11 mentioned that there were visits to the site first in 12 volcanism, scheduled to the site I believe in the next we?k or grS
' 13 two dealing with the hydrolog:t nspacts. I think those are 14 fine. Thore are essential I think for carrying out the 15 programs, particularly certainly in NMSS, but I think the, 16 what I would call the research and scientific component of 17 this work needs to have an exchange of, of the people at the 18 scientific level doing this work.
19 Now in the international program-- 20 DR. HINZE: Is that on any formal basis, or is it an 21 ad hoc situation? 22 MR. SILBERBERG: Well, there are formal procedures 1 23 for, for having, for contacts, et cetera, et cetera, within s (_) 24 the context of the program. Right now, it is more ad hoc I 25 believe. l l ___ __ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ .___ __~ ----
, 494 l () 1 We would like to put it on a more regular basis,.but 2 consistent with our resources and you know, you can just have 3 so many meetings, so right now I am not concerned that we are 4 having too many meetings. I think we need more, but I think 5 there will have to be an optimum, too, the number of the--but 6 right now I think we must work a lot harder to bring that 7 level of exchange up from where it is now. 8 DR. HINZE: At the working scientist level? At the 9 working scientist level? You are talking about more 10 coordination at the working scientist level? 11 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes. And you know, certainly these 12 people talk to each other at, at technical meetings, you know., 13 at national meetings, society meetings and things like that 14 or, you know, in ad hoc, informal ways I think what we need 15 to do--this in a, in somewhat, I mean still informal but 16 structured way. 17 Now I have observed that in the international 18 programs, and I just want to note that we are actively 19 pursuing, continue to pursue, to strengthen and pursue 20 bilateral exchanges with, with a number of countries, some 21 agreements that have existed and others where we are trying to 22 develop new agreements, for example, one with the Swedish 23 regulatory group, the SKI, Swedish Inspectorate for Nuclear l () 24 Power. They are working, they have a performance and
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25 assessment group called Project 90, and Dr. Randall and I were j
495 ) l l) 1 fortunate to visit with them and attend one of their working q l b 2 session, one of their semi-annual working, working sessions, j l 3' working group meetings, and we were impressed that the, that i 4 the fact that they are, that the people on the regulatory side 5 and the people if you will on the development side, the l 6 industry side, separately, but--and appropriately do have 7 continuing exchanges, open exchanges on what they, on the , 8 progress they are making in analyses so that they can 9 understand each other's methodologies or even if they may be 10 the same, but may be differences in results that might be 11 coming out of these analyses which are themselves by no means 12 standardized, and they, at least by the time they are ready to 13 go to, to make a licensing decision, they at least understand 14 each other's calculations and hopefully would be able to 15 resolve the differences ahead of time, you know, in a, in a 16 scientific way on some of the key issues. 17 At least there will be an awareness of why different 18 results are obtained, and perhaps then people would come 19 together, so that's just one observation that we made, and we 20 believe that we can learn from, we can certainly learn from 21 experiences that those people are having, and we are going to 22 actively pursue some type of exchange in that area. 23 We won't go further, much further into it now.
) 24 Maybe a little bit about it later, but we do have the 25 international effort on Intraval which is an international
496 ( )' 1 validation effort which I think is a great start in the L 2 validation aree, but it is only'a start. I think we have to 3 do a lot more work, as I mentioned yesterday, in the area of j l 4 . validation strategy. I see that as a big thing. We have, 5 there is a multinational program that is being managed 6 by Australia called alligator rivers which is a national 7 analog, and I'm not going to say too much about that. We are 8 a participant in that program. It is a part of our research j l 9 program, and it is discussed in our program, in our program 10 plan. 11 With that, Mr. Chairman, my remarks are done. 12 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Any other questions or comments t' 13 for Mel Silberberg? I hear none. 14 MR. VIOLAND: I have a question. I am just curious 15 about the planning methodology. I think there are some 16 objectives listed and some other things, but do you have any 17 sort of formal planning approach strategy you manage by l 18 objectives where you lay out your specific objectives and then 19 subsidiary goals and activities to achieve those, or do you 20 develop event trees or do you use decision-making process such 21 as some of the others? 22 MR. SILBERBERG: Excuse me. It is not quite that , 1 23 formal. We may in fact be doing that in a, somewhat ad hoc () 24 pseudo fashion, but certainly not down to that, you know, the 25 work breakdown starts--I'm familiar with the method. j i i
. _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ . - - - . _ _ _ .___ i
l' l 497 ( - 1 .We would certainly like to, like to maybe come a 2 little closer to that. I 3 MR. VOILAND: It doesn't have to have a lot of fine l 4 structure, but it does need to avoid overlooking something. 5 MR. SILBERBERG: I think the concept of working with 6 the regulatory objectives as Part 60 and 61, you will hear 7 some of that today, and the user needs together sort of form 8 that, that framework for us, and our program then sort of 9 evolves from that, so the answer to your question is I think 10 we are partways on that track. We can do a little more, but 11 at this point, I would be happy to get through this phase and 12 then we can a' ways determine as needed, as needed and as 13 useful to the user to get into, into-- 14 MR. VOILAND: I agree it can certainly be overdone 15 where you get pre-occupied with that kind of plainning. You 16 kind of'miss-- 17 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes. We just don't have that kind 18 of staff level. 19 MR. VOILAND: it is a good guide. 20 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes. 21 DR. STEINDLER: Now what is your interaction with 22 the USGS? Do you have a, do you have a research contract with 23 those folks? () 24 MR. SILBERBERG: We do not have research contracts 25 with USGS. We do have interaction. For example, the first
498 () 1 interaction that comes to mind, and then perhaps Tom Nicholson 2 from my staff, staff hydrologist, may choose to add to this if 3 he wishes--is the, in the Intraval program, the USGS is 4 assigned to one of the problems, one of the test problems. 5 Okay. In fact it is for the, for the G tunnel I believe out 6 in Nevada, and that's the first level of interaction. 7 Now I--Tom, if you want to add anything to that, you 8 can. 9 MR. NICHOLSON: My name is Tom Nicholson. To answer-10 your question, sir, we are members of two formal federal
'11 advisory committees. One of them is under the Office of Water 12 Data Coordination, implements circular or Executive Order 867.
13 The Office of Water Data Coordination has within it a ground 14 water working group. Also there is a hydrology group. This 15 hydrology group goes way back to the days of the Water 16 Resource Council. That was eliminated. It was brought under 17 the Office of Water Data coordination under the federal 18 advisory Committee on water data, so through the hydrology 19 committee and the ground water subcommittee working group, we 20 do have ongoing interactions, and they meet, the ground water 21 subcommittee meets on a bimonthly basis. The hydrology 22 Committee also works on a bimonthly basis. We have 23 representatives on that from the NRC. () 24 DR. STEINDLER: Is there a charter for that? 25 MR. NICHOLSON: No.
499 , I i r% 1 DR. STEINDLER: Are the committeer directly related () i 2 to.high-level waste? I 3 MR. NICHOLSON: No. ! 4 DR. STEINDLER: It is just a general group of folks . I 5 who have water as part of their interest?
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6 HR. NICHOLSON: That is correct. We also have-- 7 DR. STEINDLER: Let me stop you. Let me go back to j 8 Mel. 9 Do you have any explicit interactions--thank you. 10 Do you have any explicit interactions with USGS that deals i
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11 with topics directly related to low-level or high-level waste? 12 MR. SILBERBERG: I don't believe so. Mr. Browning?
- 13 MR. BOSNAK: The only other way--another one of our 14 branches within the division has interaction with USGS on 15 reactor site seismic hazard aspects of it, and if the, if 16 there was a need, we could probably extend that to cover some 17 of the high-level and low-level aspects of the USGS expertise.
18 DR. STEINDLER: I wouldn't want you to infer from my 19 question that I'm pushing you in one direction or another. I 20 was simply trying to find out what the relationship is. 21 MR. BROWNING: In regards to the high-level waste 22 program, USGS is one of the DOE contractors, and that's the 23 context in which we deal with them in the high-level waste () 24 program. The." were one of about eight major contractors 25 supporting the Department of Energy in investigating the
L l p l 500 g) ( 1 Nevada sites. 2 DR. MOODY: That raises a question that keeps coming 3 up time and time again with respect to the GS, and that is, 4 you know, is there a conflict of interest because of they are 5 so heavily involved in DOE work? 6 I mean can they really, what can they really do with 7 NRC if they are going to continue to do their heavy 8 involvement with DOE? 9 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Okay. Paul, do you have a 10 question? 11 Well, the next topic then is the discussion 12 specifically now of the high-level waste program. 13 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes, Dr. Moeller, and for that I 14 would like to introduce Mr. Jacob Philip, who will make our 15 presentation on that. 16 I just want to, by way of introduction, note that 3 17 this, that the, it will be by its very nature, an overview to 18 indicate to you the structure of the plan, how it is
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t ' 19 organized, some of, some of the bases and the framework for 20 it, and then some specific examples of the, of the elements in 21 the program, but we obviously are not going to be able to go 22 into the program in the depth that certainly it deserves; just 23 I think perhaps assist you in your review of the, of this
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( 24 report of the plans. ; l 25 Thank you. i 1 _ _ _ - - _ - - _ - - - - - _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ - - _ .---.--~ ----
( l' L 501 ( ) 1 MR. PHILIP: Good morning. My name is Jacob Philip. L 2 I am a geotechnical engineer with the Office of, in the Office l-l 3 of Research and the Waste Management Branch, and I am going to 4 make this presentation on the high-level waste plan which our 5 group put together the last few months. I'm going to talk l 6 about the high-level waste program then. 7 (Slide) 8 MR. PHILIP: This is just a figure of the high-level 9 waste problem as we see it at the Yucca Mountain. You see the 10 different facets of the high-level waste issue. We have the 11 climatic changes west of ground water recharge. We have the 12 fracture flow. Then we have the matrix flow. We talk about 13 the near field geochemistry. We talk about the phaft and bore 14 hole seals, the stability of underground openings, and we talk 15 about things like the radionuclides option, for instance, which 16 is an important aspect of the high-level waste repository at 17 Yucca Mountain. 18 (Slide) 19 MR. PHILIP: The way we have put together a 20 high-level waste research plan structure, we have four-- 21 DR. MOODY; Jackob, excuse me a minute. Back to 22 that figure that you just presented to us, do you think that 23 that figure summarizes all the, all the key issues that you () 24 would like to address yourself? 25 MR. PHILIP: I think so, yes.
502 I) 1 DR. MOODY: These are all the things? 2 MR. PHILIP: We will be looking at some of the stuff 3 that our research is going to cover. It is all based on 4 regulatory basis. .That is going to come in the next slide. , 5 DR. MOODY: Thank you. 6 MR. PHILIP: Sure. 7 (Slide) 8 MR. PHILIP: We have divided the high, high-level 9 waste research plan in this structure. We have a regulatory 10 base like what is regulstory base, why are we doing this? 11 What are the regulations? What do the regulations say on 12 this? How are we going to--what is our strategy? How are we
/~T
/ 13 going to achieve that? How are we going to prioritize that?
14 And then finally, how are we going to implement it? I am 15 coming to the details in later slides. 16 (Slide) 17 MR. PHILIP: Now the high-level waste research plan, 18 what is our basis? The basis is 10 CFR Part 60; 10 CFR Part 19 60, specifically the part we are looking at is the performance 20 objectives for the long term. 21 For instance, we have controlled release. That 22 means fracture release of radionuclides after a thousand 23 years, and we have the 300,000 year substantially complete () 24 containment, so those, that's the basis, and I will come to i 1 25 that later on in our research. !
b i 503
'( ) 1 We incorporate the user need. We get a user need l 2 letter from the office of NMSS which tells us that the types 3 of research that they would like us to have do based on their 4 reviews of the DOE documents'that they have seen those things '
1 I' 5 and some of performance assessments that they have been 6 running in-house. 1 1 7 We also support documents, coordinating, and helps
)
8 the office of NMSS in rulemaking. There are several issues in i 9 rulemaking, for instance, substantially complete containment, 10 we have got to quantify what that really means. We talk about 11 anticipated and unanticipated events, exactly what that means, 12 and we also get involved in the documents or the technical i
\ 13 positions, I
14 (Slide) 15 MR. PHILIP: The way we have structured a high-level 16 waste, our high-level waste research plan is, like I said 17 before, based on the regulation. Start with the whole 18 performance assessment. That's the whole system, the 19 performance of the whole system, we can divide that into the 20 engineered system and the geologic system, and in the 21 engineered system, we have the controlled release objective 22 which says that certain releases of ten to the minus 5. 1 23 We have the containment performance objective which () 24 talks about the substantially complete containment from 300 to 25 1,000 years, and we have the geologic system, and one of the I
504 [u- l 1 important ones, the ground water travel time which we talk 2 about the pre-placement ground water travel time to be at 3 least a thousand years. 4 (Slide) 5 MR. PHILIP: So research scope, strategy structure, 6- what, why are we doing research? Why are we doing research to 7 assist the office of NMSS? So that we have enough 8 understanding so that when we get the DOE documents, we can 9 review it. We have then the understanding to do that. 10 We also would help in, in getting our technical 11 positions and rulemaking activity, all in that area. The 12 research basis, the basis, we have to ha.a, for instance, 13 controlled release or substantially complete containment 300-14 to 1,000 years. There is no really scientific or engineering 15 methods right now to really give us the confidence that is 16 possible so we are trying to do those research investigations 17 to enable us to have a better understanding of those process 18 so that we can do the reviews of DOE documents. 19 In that we also have international investigations 20 where we pool resource with experts in different countries. 21 For instance, in the Intraval project, in hydrogeology, where 22 we look at the computer programs and models developed by 23 foreign countries, we study one problem. For instance, we use () 24 our methods, use their methods. We compare it, see how good 25 they are, so that gives you a little confidence on the things
a 505 () I that are being used in different countries. 1 2 It also gives us some confidence in that it gives us 3 okay that other people who are in the European pr ogram, for 4 instance, where they have quite some experience, a little more 5 than us, give us interaction with those agencies. We also 6 save lot of money doing that because we don't want to repeat 7 work that is already being done in other countries. 8 We also look at DOE investigation. DOE does a lot 9 of research. We do not have the monies to do a lot of 10 research, but we have to look at some of their research 11 reports and we get information what they are doing from 12 workshops. It could be from peer review meetings. It could A
\~/ 13 be from discussions of them. It could be reviews of their 14 SCPs, et cetera.
15 (Slide) 16 MR. PHILIP: I think the most important part of 17 high-level waste research is, to reduce is performance 18 assessment uncertainties. It is a very broad area because 19 there are several areas. We have stability of underground
- 20. openings. We have releases of radionuclides. We have the 21 waste package, all that, and our priority is to reduce the 22 uncertainties.
23 We find out the uncertainties, highest research () 24 uncertainties coming up from performance assessments, from 25 looking at DOE documents, and then we know what our highest
?;
, 506 13
( ). 1 research needs are based on that. 2 Of course, an important part is the model validation )! 3 because we really want to know how good the models are that do i 4 these performance assessments. Are they conservative enough? l 5 If not conservative, are they accurate? Are they not--I mean 6 we have to have those judgments and we have to make ; 7 engineering judgments to know exactly how good those models ! 8 are. 9 One of the important parts of the high-level waste 10 concept are the multiple barriers. We talked about multiple ' 11 barriers. We have the geological barrier. We have.the waste 12 packages and so on and so forth, and each one of those I
\~ 13 barriers have to work properly. For instance, substantially 14 complete containment, we talk about 300 to 1,000 years 15 containment, and that is just containment within the waste 16 packages.
17 So we have that one barrier. Then we have the 18 controlled release ten to the minus 5 per year, so we have 19 those multiple barriers put into our regulatory, into our 20 regulations to make the system safe. 21 (Slide) 22 MR. PHILIP: The way we have implemented our 23 structure is to look at these different concepts. We are 24 looking at controlled release, how good are the waste 25 packages? How much--I mean the waste forms, release from the
1; 507 1 waste forms from leaching and other activities. Containment, (f 2 how. good the waste packages are, and we assure 300 to 1,000 3 years substantially complete containment. 4 We look at engineered system performance. We look 5 at underground openings. We look at the backfill. We look at 6 seals for the shafts and the bore holes. We look at the 7 geologic system, look at unsaturated and saturated flow, flow ] l 8 to the fractures, so forth, and finally, of course, 9 performance assessment, which is the heart of the whole 10 program. 11 (Slide) 12 MR. PHILIP: Go give you a little perspective of how 13 we put'this together, little structure, you can see high-level 14 waste research program structure. We have high-level waste 15 research, the whole system performance assessment, engineered 16 system, geologic system. We look at stability of openings. 17 We have a contract with the Center on the effects of seismic 18 motion on underground openings. We look at the backfill. 19 Some reports have said there is not going to be a backfill, 20 but other reports do say they are going to have a backfill of 21 bentonite and crushed TUFF. 22 We look at the bore hole shafts and seals. We look 23 at controlled releases, which is basically from our O (,/ 24 performance objectives for the whole system. We look at 25 containment of waste packages, the thermal hydraulic, >
l 508 o mechanical, chemical effects due to the effect of heat and the
-( ) 1 2 heat-driven chemical effects. Many of these have analogue 3 comparison, and that is the best way to assure us if we have a 4 proper model at least. That's from a modeling concern, there l 5 are some analogues that in fact have the stability of 6 openings, some analogue comparison there because we know of 7 performance of mines that--
8 DR. SHEWMON: Would you--I am a little lost. Tell 9 me who is doing this to whom? I mean you are laying out this , 10 wonderful system, and you are talking about we and I'm not l 11 sure whether anybody is doing anything or who is doing what. 12 MR. PHILIP: These are areas we are going to do I ;
's 13 .research.
l 14 DR. SHEWMON: Who is we? l 15 MR. PHILIP: The Office of Research. l 16 DR. SHEWMON: This means you are going to have the l 17 San Antonio people set up a contract, or you are going to do j i 18 it in-house, or what? i 19 MR. PHILIP: Part of the contract is going to be j 20 done by San Antonio. l i l 21 MR. SILBERBERG: That's a good point, Dr. Shewmon. 22 These represent, and by the parentheses, elements in our, 23 elements in our program, listed on one of the previous l
~
() 24 vugraphs, and we already may have work in effect going on l l 25 today in most of these areas. Okay. And there are some areas l \ - - - - _ _ _ _ __ _ __- __ - -_-_ -~~ _------ .--- --- ----
509 L ' i' () 1 we don't have anything started, but we would project work as 2 we move over to the next several years within a five-year 3 plan, so in effect, our work that we are doing today and in j 4 the future fits this framework, and then as one goes to each 5 of the chapters, each of the subsections, we would describe, 6 and I guess Jake is going to get to that, but what is the 7 background, what are the issues? What is, what work has been 8 done? You know, what sort of state of the art, what are we 9 doing now? What are we going to do in the future? 10 DR. SHEWMON: This will all be in your research 11 plan? 12 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes, sir. A 13 MR. PHILIP: Yes. 14 DR. SHEWMON: Thank you. 15 DR. SMITH: In that plan I take it that's where you 16 lay out the specific projects? 17 MR. PHILIP: Yes, exactly, yes. 18 DR. SMITH: That San Antonio is doing and you are 19 doing. 20 MR. PHILIP: We have not gone down to that details 21 as to who, what San Antonio is going to do or the Center is 22 going to do and what the other contractors are going to do. 23 MR, SILBERBERG: Excuse me. Let me just say, Dr. () 24 Smith, right now we have talked about the work and the need 25 that as presently constituted in its current state it doesn't
510 1 () 1 gets down in detail, you go to the lab yet, but that's another 2 step. 3 DR. SMITH: Thank you. 4 MR. VOILAND: Just a question, please--we talk about 5 research here. We are talking--am I understanding this 6 correctly when if I understand it, is developing the 7 information that you need to be able to evaluate the DOE 8 licensing and to support the licensing activity? 9 MR. PHILIP: Exactly right. 10 MR. VOILAND: This is not very much physical 11 research? Th?s is essentially analysis and development of 12 models and so on? ( 13 Well, a lot of physical research, too. MR. PHILIP: 14 MR. VOILAND: Are you doing the physical research, 15 or relying on others for the physical research? 16 MR. PHILIP: All the physical research is being done 17 outside. I mean you are talking about expertss, lab experts. 18 That's all being done outside, outside contractors. l 19 MR. VOILAND: You are simply taking that analysis? ) 20 MR. PHILIP: Exactly. 21 MR. VOILAND: Okay. 22 DR. HINZE: Before you remove that overhead, it is l I 23 obvious that you have limited resources, as we all do, and () 24 have to focus on those areas that you think you can do the 25 best and are most important to you.
l^ 1 l l 511 1 ( -1 I think, however, in the high-level waste area, that ! 2 there is critical concern that we are getting the right l 3 information regarding geology, tectonics, various derivatives 1 4 thereof. 5 I notice that section 4.4.3 is missing in our 6 document, and it seems to be in smaller letters. That leads 7 me to a considerable amount of concern because I'm, I am 8 concerned that some of the other agencies that are involved in 9 the high-level waste program are really giving the proper 10 attention to the research that needs to be done right now to 11 answer what many people consider to be the critical questions, 12 and I'm wondering what the high-level waste research group is (D ss'- 13 doing in NRC to focus in on those problems. 14 DR. MOODY: That gets back to a point that I was 15 going to make. 16 If you have not yet reached the level where you are 17 going to choose, for example, what you are going to research 18 in geology and tectonics, that is the most key and most 19 important thing, just simply because you do have a limited 20 number of people and you can't possibly work on all the 21 different specific research problems that you could address, 22 so your choice of what you are going to work on is very 23 critical in terms of expenditure of time, money, and what not.
/~T Well, first of all, I certainly want to
(,) 24 MR. PHILIP: 1 25 assure you that we have no ulterior motive in mind by having
512 () 1 this in small letters. Actually the way the computer program 2 runs, these one line, these are on two lines. It has to' sort-3 of adjust to fit into that box because the boxes go on first, 4 so I certainly agree with you, Dr. Moody, that geology and 5 tectonics is certainly an extremely important part of this--in 6 fact, probably the most important. 7 We did put out a seismo-tectonic plan in the past, a 8 couple of years ago, maybe three years ago, two years ago, and 9 it is NUREG 1245, and it talks about the kinds of, types of 10 research. At the time we were talking in terms of three 11 sites. We didn't have one site and so we talked specifically 12 each site as to what is the types of, what are the types of 13 research we should be doing in geology and tectonics for each 14 of three types. 15 DR. MOODY: Hydrology, geochemistry are -important, 16 too, so you mean you in this document then for the Yucca 17 Mountain sites, you have already defined what you think are 18 key issues in geology, hydrolics, geochemistry, geophysics, et 19 cetera? 20 MR. PHILIP: We have, we have described in all of 21 these areas except for geology and tectonics. That is what I ] 1 22 was talking about. This seismotectonics plan we developed 23 about two years ago, which is now in NUREG, which is NUREG () 24 document form 1245 in which we talked about the types of l 25 research we think needs to be done in the area of geology and ! i I 4
51 - , l-513:
. 1 tectonics.
L 2 We realize, in being in the reactor program, we 1 i 3 realize _ it is very expensive tx> do those: types' of ' 4 investigation, and in fact, we -did not make a' difference in 5 that document 1245 as to what we would be doing and what, DOE l 6~ should be doing. We didn't make that distinction, but it is 7 my understanding that DOE is doing some work in that area, but 8 not--exactly'what'they are doing, I am not really sure about. 9 DR. MOODY: Have you then done another 10 documentation? You know, the engineering system is just as 11 important as the geologic system because it is a near: field. 12 'We are> talking geologically about the far field, but-do you 13 -have another document in which you define what you think are 14 the key issues for the engineering system? 15 MR. PHILIP: Yes. In fact, I will come to the next 16 slide which-- 17 DR. MOODY: Okay. Fine. 18 DR. HINZE: Before you do that, I would like to 19 observe that perhaps the most important part of research, at 20 least in my experience, is to be able to define the problem 21 that you are really trying to solve. 22 DR.' MOODY: That's right. 23 DR. HINZE: And it is not clear to me that what is () 24 going on here is really a clear definition of the problems 25 rather than just doing things.
{' 514
.r) 1 j, 1 MR. PHILIP: Your answer is on the next slide 2 actually.
3 DR. HINZE: Good show. 4 DR. STEINDLER: Let me not let you off quite that 5 easily. I have got several questions on.that diagram and the 6 underlying document, only pieces of which we have in front of 7 us. 8 First off, I think you expanded the definition of 9 high-level waste to include irradiated reactor components in 10 your document. 11 Is there some reason for that expansion? 12 MR. PHILIP: Yes. That comes under the controlled 13 release part. Mel? 14 MR. SILBERBERG: In high-- 15 DR STEINDLER: In high-level waste? Since when 16 are reactor components high-level waste? 17 MR. SILBERBERG: I think, I think that there may be 18 a misnomer there, Dr. Steindler. We are talking about spent 19 fuel, and to the extent that the spent fuel brings with it 20 cladding and components--but I don't think there is an intent i 21 of reactor components per se, j 22 DR. STEINDLER: I'm sorry. I don't want to nitpick. 23 I suggest you look at page 19 of your draft where it () 24 explicitly called out difference for spent fuel since this is 25 a major argument that continues to rage at least under the
515 () 1 surface about what the definition of high-level waste ought to 2 be. I recommend you be a little more careful. 3 MR. SILBERBERG: We will.
~
l 4 DR. STEINDLER: Secondly, you indicate in one of l 5 these sections that you plan to do work or sta.rt work on 6 uranium and transuranium melons as they are admitted from 7 leaching from spent fuel, and that process is to start in d fiscal '91. 9 What things are you doing to coordinate the start 10 and expected completion of your research with the need by Mr. 11 Browning's folks to have data in hand in order to be able to 12 interface with the corresponding information of DOE's in a m
- 13 fashion with which sometimes DOE in theory at least has found?
14 MR. PHILIP: Not being a technologist and being a 15 geotechnical engineer, I defer that comment to Mel. 16 MR. SILBERBERG: I think in the area of--in fact as 17 we were starting to develop this plan and look over our 18 program seven months ago, Dr. Steindler--in fact their person 19 is not here today, Dr. Bouchard noted that that area was a 20 fact they were deficient in. 21 In other words, we had done some work in the past, 22 previously related to, to some of the other sites, other 23 concepts. As I understand it--perhaps Bill may want to add to () 24 this--but that work was, in effect was completed, and then 25 they hadn't done any further work. It is now. We recognize
516 I l -i ) 1 that area of release from fuel'as a, right now as a gap in the 2 pror, ram. 3 DR. STEINDLER: That's not the only place where I 4 thi,k schedules appear to be late if you believe the schedule 5 to which DOE is operating. ; i 6 I guess the general question I continue to have is j i
'7 what are you doing to try and ensure that the data will be 8 available to Browning's people in time to effectively interact 9 with DOE, on DOE's schedule? Obviously there is a' schedule i
10 problem. 1 11 MR. PHILIP: I think in til of these research ) J 12 projects that we have talked about here, that is very much on 13 our mind that, that the research results be available to the 14 office of NMSS before, well, at least by the time 1993, for 15 instance. That's just after completion of the testing for ; i 16 the-- 17 DR. STEINDLER: Let me suggest to you when you 18 revise this draft, which I assume you will, that somewhere in 19 that draft you should have a more explicit set of comments 20 that relates to the mechanism you use to set your schedules 21 and how that setting relates to the need of Mr. Browning and 22 the scheduled-driven operations that he is running. It is not i 23 obvious from the section that you have here now. () 24 MR. PHILIP: I agree with that, and part of the 25 problem is that many of the projects haven't started yet and i
- _ _ _ - - _ - - _ - - _ - _ _ _ _ - - - - __~__~ _-_ .---.--- ----
517 T() 1. so a lot of those parts in scheduling section of,each area is 2 just our best guesses on what we hope to achieve. 3 MR. SILBERBERG: Dr. Steindler, in the particular 4 section as I recall when I last read it, the concept of 5 providing information and data to NMSS in this '92, '93 6 timeframe is clearly our goal, but I think, 1 agree I think we 7 need to go back and look to see to what extent'in that 8 framework that you described do we think we are close or we 9 are, you know, we can do it, in one case do it, and the '91, 10 observation about '91, the waste form in fact may be an area 31 that may be a problem. 12 DR. STEINDLER: This requires some estimate of how 13 long you think it takes for each of these projects to get 14 suitable data. I think you are being enormously optimistic in 15 some of these cases at least I can see here. 16 MR. PHILIP: Your point is well taken. 17 DR. HINZE: A case in point is that, certainly is 18 the ggeology area, the, the entire area of volcanicity, 19 seismicity, fault movement, et cetera. We don't even have the 20 section here 4.4.3 to review, and yet in many people's mind, 21 this is one of the first things that we should get on to, and 22 that it is clear that there needs to be some critical research 23 to get the right data in these areas, so the whole timing and () 24 scheduling problem here is, that there are problems with that 25 are well illustrated at this geology-tectonics area. P
.-- _-_-- --_---- - - - _ - - _ _ - - _ _ _ .---.--- ---- l
l 518 l 1 Dr. Hinze, your observation is (-) 1 HR. SILBERBERG: ] 2- quite valid. In fact, that section, we had not finished the 3 section. We are just into it and we had to get it down here ; 4 in order to put it into your notebook, so we recognize that we 5 had a hole there and.we are not surprised that the question 6 has come up. but in fact we do need to think seriously now 7 about what we are going to do in that area. 8 In fact, we have had internal discussions. After 9 hearing some of the previ-ous presentation by John Trapp on 10 volcanism, I myself have been completely impressed that, that 11 we seem, that there is a gap, there is a big gap there, and 12 I'm not exactly sure how to attack it, but I think we are 13 going to have to work out a, going to have to work out a plan, 14 and I think we ought to re-examine that resource again. 15 DR. SMITH: That was the question I was going to 16 raise. It seems to me that as you proceed down the line to do 17 this work, so that Bob Browning's people get it in time in 18 order not to hold the whole thing up, you have really got to 19 look at your resource to make sure that you have got them. If 20 you don't, then it is something I think that we would like to 21 know because otherwise the whole, everything will be held 22 back. 23 DR. MOODY: There is another point to that, too, in () 24 the sense that if you do think you are getting your technical 25 act together and there are a series of research problems that
519 O (_). 1 you would like to do that in fact have longer time periods 2 than DOE, you come to this question that we are all aware of 3 that, those of us who have done research, and that is are you 4 going to not do a problem because you don't even have the~ time 5 to get it done in order to be able to use it, or should you 6 move forward and work on a specific problem because it is so 7 important, and not let the time schedule stop you from 8 working? 9 And that's the reason that you know, everything in 10 this area is, the work that you are going to do on research 11 problems, you have to take time and energy and money into 12 consideration, but there are some things that are so important ()
' 13 to the program that they should be done regardless of what 14 DOE's schedule is.
15 MR. SILBERBERG: Dr. Moody, that's an excellent ; 16 point, and in fact, again, in our section that deals with 17 schedule and pace, we do note that we will, we will get a 18 major portion of the work done we need in support of the 1 19 review for the repository done in the '92, '92 timeframe. In 4 20 fact, I think we actually, we state that certainly a lot by l l 21 '92, but certainly before the application comes in in '95, but i 22 I do agree with you, and in fact I think that is our intent 23 that all research work--I mean there is so much research that () 24 it just may take longer, but we need to get started on it to i 25 at least get, you know, start to get some insights and be able l i _ _ - - _ - - - - - - - - - _ - _ - _ - - - - - - - _ _ _ _ .--- --- -~~~
j 1 520 () 1 to understand'that aspect, aspect of it for review. 2 but in fact, a fraction of this research will not, a 3 good fraction would not necessarily be done by '95 as we note 4 in the plan, particularly those of the longer range what I 5 would call confirmatory and the validation efforts, validation i i
- 6. efforts may come late in time given again some, some level, 1
7 what is the level of uncertainty you want to deal with, so I l 8 think.we are responsive to, one wants to be responsive to the 9 comments that I think we have heard. 10 MR. PHILIP: And like I also would like to mention 11 again about that we did think about the geology and tectonics 12 program in the past. We have NUREG document on that 1245 13 which we are going to revisit when we work further on our 14 program. 15 DR. HINZE: I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. Are you 16 saying you have a document? 17 MR. PHILIP: We did work on the seismotectonics plan 18 two years ago, and it is an appendix in the high-leve. waste 19 research, long-range research plan, NUREG document 1245 in 20 which we made up the types of research we think should be done ; 21 for geology and tectonics and seismicity and other reporitory. 22 We will be revisiting that document when we update our ) 23 program. r 24 DR. MOODY: That rer*nds me you said yo1 also had a 25 document on hydrology, the rest > the--
l 521 1 MR. PHILIP: For the rest of it, no, we don't, and {) 2 we will come to that right now in the next slide. 3 DR. MOODY: All right. 4 MR. PHILIP: For each of the areas that I showed you l 5 in the previous slide, the way we have set up our program, l 6 research program, is to first talk about the background, okay. 7 What is the problem? What are the, what are the things that 8 concern us in that particular area? 9 Then we Jist the critical issues. What are the 10 critical issues that we know, that we want to know or we feel 11 are going to affect the repository. 12 We then talk about the research to date. I mean (O(J this is more or less--it is not very detailed, but it gives a 13 14 general idea of where we are, where we are now, how we are 15 going to resolve those problems, what is the ongoing research 16 and the planned research, what do we plan to do, how are we 17 going to answer the question? And that is the structure of 18 our research plan on ead' of the areas that, that are shown in 19 the previous alide. 20 (Sliie) 21 MR. PHILIP: I also have here with me a general 22 approach +o research. Tirst of all, we tried to find out what 23 are the highest uncertainties, and that comes from performance () 24 assessments. It comes from review of QA document for SEP, 25 ccmes from workshops and other professional meetings hat we
522
]
em (,) 1
'l attend. We find out what are those highest research j l
2 uncertainties, and we do lab studies to understand the process l J 3 and mechanisms for those process, for instance,-for j 4 unsaturated flow or flow in fractures, et cetera. I 5 We do some field studies based on our lab studies. 1 6 We can then design our field studies, doing some sort of 7' validation integration and scaling of studies. I 8 We also do look at some national analogues. Some of' i l l 9 them, for instance, hydrology or we have the alliJator rivers ] J 10 project, you are looking at controlled releases or - 11 radionuclides transport and in a natural environr:nt, so we can 12 do these and then check it with the natural :snnlogues that we 13 have. That's the way that we can get a better handle on the 14 more validated models for some of the things that we are 15 looking at. For give you feet an example-- 16 DR. OKRENT: Excuse me. Before you remove that 17 vugraph, have you done performance assessments? 18 MR. PHILIP: Yes. Performance assessments, for 19 instance, are going on in the hydrology area. 20 DR. OKRENT: No. I mean have you done, is there an 21 existing system of performance assessment that the NRC staff 22 has done or had done for it that you think is adequate for 23 this function? Which is certainly a very reasonable way in () 24 theory; I'm trying to see are you doing the performance 25 assessment first, or is it going to come really late in the 1 --_---_- ______ -_ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ .---.--- - - -
l !~ j 523 q i () 1 program? 2 MR. SILBERBERG: Certainly more specifically for the I 3 TUFF side and for the Yucca Mountain, but John Randall i 4 mentioned yesterday that Sandia had completed a, a performance 5 assessment study for basalt, for basalt site which did have 6 considerable generic value. One could get insights for this, 7 and so that's our experience or that's our starting point for i 8 what might be some of the important things in performance, in 9 performance assessment, albeit for the basalt, but I think in 10 this case, as we move on through that logic, it will certainly i 11 be more iterative than it is in this, ideally starting with 12 the performance assessment of TUFF. 13 DR. OKRENT: Well, I must say, if this is the 14 approach that is being, that we are following, one can'hardly 15 count on the assessment of the basalt site which is really a 16 different site with different key problems for identifying, if 17 you will the places where you have the largest limitation, the 18 largest uncertainties, the knowledge, and the potential most 19 difficult issues, and I haven't heard it said yesterday or 20 today that we are going to try to get such a performance 21 assessment for the Yucca Mountain si.te early, early enough to 22 guide what we should place the most emphasis on. If it has 23 been said, I missed it. If it has been written, I guess I () 24 don't know on what page. 25 MR. BALLARD: If I didn't mention that yesterday, I
1 1 524 ' i s
) 1 neglected to, that the staff does indeed have a plan to i 2 proceed. This is this joint Research/NHSS effort that I 3 mentioned yesterday to, to as data are developed by DOE, to, 4 to factor this into the Sandia performance assessment 5 methodology, but the other point that I think is reflected in !
l 6 our, in the SCA is that DOE has not yet really started ) 7 gathering the data really needed to insert into the 8 performance assessment. 9 We have raised the point, and I believe the DOE is 10 supporting the point. We do need this early on, performance 11 assessment very early on, even using the assumptions that DOE 12 has, has established for the base case, which are preliminary. 13 We just really need to ast en with the site characterization 14 program and get the data before you can really start forging 15 on. 16 MR. SILBERBERG: Dave, let me just note one point 17 DR. MOODY: Don't forget that the EA exists. Are 18 you trying to say that in setting up a preliminary performance 19 assessment, that you dcn't between EA and the SCP have enough 20 inforination at least to do a preliminary performance 21 assessment? Is that what you are telling me' 22 MR. BALLARD; No. I believe DOE in their EA did 23 provide a performance assessment. I would leave this to i ) 24' Research, but I believe that their efforts have been more 25 generic and th'.t they were, I believe there was even sort of
t 525 f rn V () .1 guidance not to be doing site specific performance 2 assessments. I would defer to Mel on that. 3 MR. SILBERBERG: The point I wanted to make, Dr. 4 Okrent, was that this is the approach that we would use in any 5 one of the main discipline areas or the key issue area or key 6 element area. 7 Let's take hydrology waste which is going to be the 8 next example. We know that matrix flow versus fracture flow 9 at '!ucca Mountain is one of the critical issues. Okay. We 10 know it is going to be highly scientifically controversial, 11 and it is sort of in the forefront of hydrogeology. We-12 already are in fact following that general approach for the 13 program for the hydrogeology as you will see on the next 14 slides that in fact allows that whenever--we know the 15 uncertainty. We know where the uncertainties are. We are 16 doing some lab studies. We are doing field studies. We are 17 now trying to deal with the national analogues that are 18 already out there, so that we know we have got to do the, we 19 can follow this logic for individual areas that make up, or f 20 individual, an important area that is critical to the 21 performance assessment of a sub-system. 22 The same thing in this, let's say the engineered 23 systems, so now it is how you--the point that I think you are ( 24- making is that as one now convolutes all of these into 25 performance assessments and comes out with some quantitative
L- 526 () I numbers, you do start to get more information on sensitivity i 2 and where things might be further, so I understand your i 3 concern. ) 4 I have a similar concern, but I know that we can 5 attack pieces of the problem today and continue to, continue 6 to look for making, make these adjustments as necessary, and 7 as Ron pointed out, and getting on to performance assessment 8 as an integrated performance assessment as soon as possible. 9 Go ahead.
'10 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Is this a place for a break?
11 MR. SILBERBERG: He has got one more slide. 12 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Okay. We will finish up. 13 MR. PHILIP: The next slide is generally the way 14 that Mel described. We have just given an example of the 15 -hydrology research, performance assessment, technical 16- investigations, looking at DOE documents, et cetera. We are 17 into uncertainties for flow and transport of unsaturated 18 media. Now that's, uncertainties are--we perform lab 19 experiments. For example, we have a block test. At Arizona, 20 we have some core samples also to understand the process and 21 mechanisms of flow and, fracture flow and transport and 22 fractured and unsaturated media, looking at flow, for 23 instance. () 24 After understanding some of the mechanisms there., we l 25 can design our field experiments where we do trace experiments
527 1 and unsaturated TUFF. The work that is going on at the
])
2 University of Arizona, that enables us to calibrate our 3 instruments and characterize the hydrologic parameters and 4 collect data for model modeling. We can then model our lab 5 and field experiments using available analytical codes. 6 Many codes are available for doing these types of 7 work. It gives us an idea of how good the codes are and how 8 they compare with the field data that we selected. We can 9 then use those calibrated codes to redesign the lab and field 10 experiments, make modifications where necessary, and once we 11 have'those validated models, this is in the late--we haven't 12 done anything so far, but this is generally the logic of what 13 we are trying to accomplish in validated codes for performance 1 14 assessment, so we have to know how good your codes are. Do 15 they work as stated? Do they really represent field behavior 16 and stuff? This is basically what Mel talked about 17 previously. This is, and '.his is , tPis sort of logic we are 18 following for all the areas that i showed you in our structure 19 of our program. 20 DR. MOODY: Are you using calibration for 21 verification? 22 MR. PHILIP: I believe so, yes. l 23 MR. NICHOLSON: If I may correct--tha* isn't () 24 c o r r e c t-. What we are trying to do in the area or hydrology is 25 in the previous HYDROCOIN project, there was three phases to
I 528
-( ) l' it, and Intraval was.following up on-the third phase which 2 deals with the validation issue, but the verification is 3- different than calibration.
4 DR. HOODY: That's what.I thought. But you know, in 5 terms of, getting back to the point I made yesterday, in terms 6 of QA, before you move into validation, the code better be 7 verified. 8 MR. NICHOLSON: Exactly, and that's why we have at 9 the University of Arizona, Dr. Schloman and other associates, 10 Dr. Jim Yea working on that. We have Sandia National 11 Laboratory looking at the mathematical aspects in determining 12 whether yes, in fact the code adequately represents what you 13 .are trying to solve looking for the numerical aspect of it, so 14 we are trling to verify the codes, which is quite different 15 than the calibration aspect. 16 DR. MOODY: That's what I thought. Thank you. 17 DR. ORTH: In one of the past meetings, in 18 discussing QA, it seemed to me that at the time there might i 19 have been some deficiencies in the programs at the University ] I 20 of Arizona specifically with respect to QA. 1 21 Of course, this is a vital component if you are
]
l 22 going to be utilizing this information that you are getting 23 here for verification, calibration, validation, et cetera. () 24 May have been not at this minute, but sooner or 25 later somebody ought to address that question.
l 529 l i () 1 MR. NICHOLSON: I will try to answer that question, l 2 Dr. Orth. We have a quality assurance program plan that it is j 3 required of all of our contractors. This is available on a 4 yearly basis. It is reviewed, and they have to resubmit it to i I 5 us. We have had to ask them through the university--not ' 1 6 outside the university, but within the university, to have 7 people who are not working on the program to Tome in and audit 8 the program. 9 Jim McCray's Nuclear Engineering Department, he has 10 audited the program. That is not the'same, of course, as an 11 outside audit. This is a very important issue. We are very 12 much aware of it because as we develop data bases that are
,e s 13 being used to let's say the Intraval program, that data has to 14 stand up to certain scrutiny, so if there are deficiencies, I 15 would certainly appreciate finding out what those deficiencies 16 are, and we are trying to carry on a quality assurance program 17 with regard to that program.
18 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Gene? Or Don, are you through? 19 Gene? 20 MR. VOILAND: When you say you're developing a 21 quality assurance plan or program, now is that the Yucca 22 Mountain organization, or the laboratory itself? 23 MR. NICHOLSON: No. The University of Arizona, all () 24 of the Statements of Work that we provide to all of our 25 contractors require them to deselop a quality assurance
530 1 program for that specific research project, so the quality f) 2 assurance plan I am talking about is unique to that specific l 3 research project. That has nothing to do with Yucca Mountain. 4 It is an internal quality assurance program. 5 MR. VOILAND: How does that integrate with the 6 overall quality plan, though, for the entire repository 7 project, or does it? 8 MR. NICHOLSON: I can't address that question. What 9 I can address is there has been some discussions. The 10 American Society of Mechanical Engineering has, and other 11 groups have tried to.put together these quality assurance 12 plans and have'been very much in a controversial stage, and we 13 have been following that. Our staff has reviewed it and 14 provided comments back. 15 That's about all I should really comment on. 16 MR. VOILAND: Controversy comes about in terms of 17 the applying quality assurance to research type of activities? 18 MR. NICHOLSON: Exactly. 19 MR. PHILIP: Yes. 20 DR. SMITH: I have a question on Arizona. From 21 listening to you, they are doing a considerable amount of 22 research. People that are doing the research for NRC, I take !
.1 23 it they are not doing research for DOE?
I () 24 MR. NICHOLSON: That is correct, sir. 25 DR. SMITH: Because I know there is some DOE work
531 1 u 1 going on there. 2 DR. MOODY: .Yes, there is. 3, DR. SMITH: So that's not much different really than 4 in a way the national lab I guess does research for DOE and 5 NRC and the university is doing both, too. j 6 MR. NICHOLSON: Both are doing research for us, the 7 University of Arizona and the Department of Hydrology and 8 Water Resources. They have never worked to my knowledge on l 9 the Department of Energy work related to Yucca Mountain ~. They i 10 have been independent over at least an eight-year period. l I 11 That's how long I have been on this individual project. I ; 12 have two of them now. They have been able to develop a 13 program, that Jake's first point there, he says that from- i 14 performance assessment test and investigation we have actually 15 used some of the technical investigations to determine levels 16 of uncertainty, and we have had joint meetings with the 17 Department of Energy. As a matter of fact, the last workshop 18 was in December, in which we had a workshop where all the 19 people working both for the NRC and DOE were involved on a 20 very detailed technological basis to discuss the variety of I 21 processes involved. J
)
22 DR. SMITH: Thank you. ) i 23 DR. STEINDLER: One more point--Don Orth reminds us I 24 of the past polyemics we have had on the issue of QA. There 25 is nothing in the high-level waste plan that I have seen that
r -- - -- - -___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 532 ( I Y) v 1 even talks about QA, the issues that we have raised from time l 2 to time at both the ACRS subcommittee level and'perhaps even 3 after that, was if the Commission requires a QA Level 1 4 activity from the department to the generation of data used in j 5 licensing, it seems reasonable to us that the staff require an 6 equivalent or equal level of QA for all of the research that 7 is being done, that we have by whatever Agency, and the visit 8 that we paid to Arizona indicated that was not the case. 9 Have you identified the policy that you intend to 10 use in the implementation of some QA level for the Center 11 when it finally gets around to doing experimental work? Is it 12 going to be at QA Level 1 as normally required of DOE? 13 MR. SILBERBERG: Okay. A good point, Dr. Steindler; 14 in fact, one of my notes when I read through one of the early 15 drafts of the, internally of the plan, I made a note that said 16 we are going to, we have to deal with quality assurance, and 17 we just haven't--we need to address it in a, in the plan, and 18 we will. 19 Now the Center is, as I recall, developing or 20 developing a draft quality assurance plan for our research 21 program, and I understand we will, they will be sending that 22 to us so that together we can discuss the issue of level and 23 what they have, and so that's, that's the comment, but they () 24 were, in fact are in fact putting together a plan that would 25 cover their programs, and we will--what I would like to do is 1
- - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ ___ ____ i
i 533 rh 1 get back to you on that, but we do need to deal with the () 2 policy level on quality assurance. ) 3 Now-- 4 DR. STEINDLER: I'm not sure I understand what 5 you're telling me. What is the-- 6 MR. BROWNING: The policy level is quite clear--for 7 equal work, equal QA. 8 DR. STEINDLER: Thank you. 9 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Any other questions or comments? 10 Okay. 11 Well, thank you, and we.will now then take a. break. 12 (A brief recess was taken.) 13 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: The meeting will~ resume, and we 14 will call on Mel Silberberg. 15 MR. SILBERBERG: Mr. Chairman, I just want to 16 introduce the next two speakers. l l 17 On the low-level waste research plan, we have an 18 introductory presentation by Ms. Janet Lambert on the 19 structure and the regulatory framework for the plan, and then 20 Dr. Edward O'Donnell will then go further into the plan. We 21 will try to, you know, be as brief as we can, as appropriate. 22 We understand you do have a deadline. We will try to work 23 with you on that, j
.( ) 24 Thank you.
25 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Okay, and of course, the delays I l 1
I ): 534 I (jg 1 thus far have been primarily, maybe totally due to / 2 interruptions by the Committee, but our goal is to, or we must
)
3 terminate at twelve o' clock. j l 4 MS. LAMBERT: We must terminate. I'll try not to be l l 5 up here at that time! L 6 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: You don't want to be speaking at 7 twelve! 8 MS. LAMBERT: Well, it's still morning--good 9 morning. 10 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: It was goodt 11 MS. LAMBERT: I'm going to be'giving you some words 12 on a low-level waste research plan. Basically what I am going i
?
t
' 13 to focus on is the regulatory environment, the regulatory 14 framework, and then go over just a little bit of the structure 15 of the plan, just in case you are going to do some additional 16 review, just facilitate that review.
17 The first thing I want to discuss is the regulatory 18 environment. 19 (Slide) 20 MS. LAMBERT: In making the decisions in considering 1 21 the development of this plan, there were several things that 22 we had to take into account in the regulatory environment for 23 low-level waste research. (~)T (_ 24 One of things is that we have to work within the 25 regulatory framework of Part 61 obviously, and the
l l 535
]
t% 1 requirements that are established there. () , i l 2 Also one thing we have to consider that is very l l i
- 3 important, something that you'can discuss in the high-level !
l 4 program, is the need to meet the schedules that the regulatory 5 staff have to meet, and of course the Low-Level Policy Act ; 6 amendment schedule in which case there are supposed to be 7 licensing actions sites established by the compacts by 1993. 8 One of the things we have to take into account is 9 what kinds of facilities the states and compacts are 10 considering in the development of the new capacity. It is 11 varying, tends to be including, at least at this time it 12 appears to be including engineered enhancements, which is
/')
ks 13 something else we have to take into account in our research 14 program. 15 Also another thing that we have to take into account 16 is that NRC has to, also provides technical support to the
.17 agreement states that also are developing low-level waste 18 disposal regulatory program.
19 (Slide) 20 MS. LAMBERT: Given this regulatory environment, we 21 had several objectives in developing the plan. 22 The first, of course, is to provide the regulatory 23 support that was requested of us by our user office NMSS in () 24 the user need letter issued on May, in June of 1988. 25 One of the other objectives was to provide a
536 p
- v)- .1 long-term strategy for conducting the investigative and 2 confirmatory research that is necessary for developing the 3 analytical, the technical bases and the analytical tools that 4 the regulatory staff need.
5 And also then, of course, to establish schedules and 6 milestones that are consistent with the regulatory need, and 7 again, this is driven by the milestones in the Low-Level Waste 8 Policy Act. 9 Finally, our objective was to provide a planning 10 framework for integrated, stable, comprehensive low-level 11 waste research program, something that is flexible enough to 12 make changes as the low-level waste licensing plan program (~ k 13 changes. 14 In our minds, the research program that would 15 accommodate this best would both meet our needs to further 16 refine the regulatory information that we are using that 17 applies to the kinds of low-level waste sites that are 18 currently operating, and also that would accommodate our needs 19 for prospective research given the new kinds of facilities 20 that the states are considering. 21 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: I presume that the whole state 22 compact operation is a major driving force in terms of your j I 23 planning? I () 24 MS. LAMBERT: Oh, definitely. I mean--and we 25 will--of course, we are trying to accommodate the goals that
o 537~ ifN._, w) 1 are set out in the Act, as the states are trying to meet the 2 milestones as well. Some of the research may end up, 3 especially the research like on concrete, may come in a little-4 later than we would have wanted it to, but nevertheless, it 5 still has applicability in the long term as other facilities 6 will be reviewed. 7 (Slide) 8 MS. LAMBERT: The research that we proposed in the 9 plan was derived from analysis of 10 CFR Part 61, and also 10 this user need letter that I referred to before for NMSS, and 11 for a moment I just want to hit, just discuss a little bit of 12 Part 61 that was a concern here. 13 If you remember, Part 61 sets out the terms and 14 conditions for licensing shallow land disposal with low-level 15 waste. It establishes performance objectives which will be 16 used, must be mapped by any facility that will be licensed to 17 dispose of low-level waste, and it also set up technical 18 requirements to assure that the performance objectives are 19 met. 20 The overall performance objective is that shallow 21 land disposal must ensure that, that the siting, that the 22 design, the operation, the closure, and the control after 23 closure are all conducted in a manner that do not endunger the () 24 general population or workers at the site or the inadvertent 25 intrusure after enclosure. i
538
) l' The' technical requirements for site suitability, L , -
p 2 site' design, operation and. closure, environmental monitoring, h 3 waste classification and waste characteristics, all support 4' the performance objectives. 5 When we analyzed Part 61 and the user need letter, jg 6 Waste Management, the Waste Management Branch in'the Research-
~
7 came up with five major categories'where we felt that it would 8 be useful to have further information in' order to carry out 9 the performance assessments that we are going to have.that we 10 will be doing during the regulation phases. 11 DR.. MOODY: Janet, this is just a simple question 12 perhaps. 13 How do you integrate the-federal regulations with 14 state regulations for low-level. waste replacement? 15 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Mel Silberberg has his hand up. 116 MR. SURMEIER: Ron Surmeier--basically under the 17 Atomic Energy Act, Section 274, the agreement state program 18 must be compatible with NRC's-regulations in this area'so that 19 the regulations that the states have must be compatible with 20 what NRC has. 21 DR. MOODY: Are they? 22 MR. SURMEIER: The Office of State Programs has a
'23 review of--when the states go forward with proposed
(() 24 regulations, they review the regulations to see that they are 25 compatible with our regulations.
-----_-__ _________ ___________ mmm mmm ,mmm ,
539
-() 1 DR. MOODY: With the technical ones, okay.
2 MR. VOILAND: In Illinois, they are essentially the 3 same. 4 DR. MOODY: Thank you. 5 DR. PARRY': And I could comment, each year roughly 6 the NRC reviews in detail the programs for the agreement 7 states and looks at the staffing and the qualifications of the 8 personnel. If it is a rather thorough review. 9 DR. MOODY: Okay. Thank you. 10 DR. PARRY: In some cases, the state regulations may 11 exceed those. 12 DR. MOODY: That's what I had read about. Okay. 13 Thanks. 14 Sorry to interupt you. 15 MS. LAMBERT: No problem; I'm not so sure that this 16 carries too far to the back. This was the last-minute slide 17 yesterday, but I just wanted to point out that, that there are 18 five major categories in the plan where we feel further 19 research is necessity, either confirmatory or investigative, 20 and if you can see, this actually goes to the linkage, the l 21 connection between those categories and 561. 22 To save time, I won't go through them, but they are 23 listed on the right, and you will find another--there is a () 24 table in your package that shows this a little more clearly. 25 (Slide)
j 540 [/l 1 MS. LAMBERT: In the user need letter that we 2 received from NMSS, they also identified five categories for r' 3 requiring further research. Our five categories don't exactly i 4 match'theirs, but they are fairly close. l l 5 They have included--just a minute--low-level waste ! 6 management and treatment, failure mechanisms and radionuclides -l 7 releases, site characterization and monitoring, performance i 8 assessment and decommissioning. 1 9 This next slide is actually also in your package, 10 and I'm using it only to establish the connection to establish 11 the linkage. I am not going to get into the detail. Ed 12 O'Donnell who follows me may, but this is just to show you, 13 this is the NMSS user need level and this is how we have 14 addressed virtually every item in our estimation that was in 15 the user need letter in the program branch. 16 To help you understand this a little bit better, one 17 of the things that we did, we have a very detailed discussion 18 in the plan that sets out projects for each of these 19 strategies, and that's in Appendix B. We have summarized that 20 appendix in Chapter 4, and so that's what these, these--when 21 you refer to B, that's to the appendix nnd where it is 22 located, and Chapter 4, that shows where it is in Chapter 4, i 23 so you can see the linkages. () 24 DR. SMITH: Just a point of clarification--the chart 25 before this one you were talking about the linkage between 10 1 1 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ________ ____
m ,- g
,.)
541 i
,1 CER- Part' 61. and the Division of Research's program?
(f 2 MS.' LAMBERT.: The plan that you are reviewing, yes. ;
-l 3' DR. SMITH:' Okay. Well, I-guess my question is NMSS' 4 is the one'that has the licenseLto these facilities, s'o why I 5 wouldn't your research program dovetail what their needs are?
6 MS. LAMBERT: Well, hopefully we have done both of l
.7 those things.
i 8 DR. SMITH: Okay.
.i 9 .MS. LAMBERT: We were just trying to show you--- /
~ 10 actually-if I go back to that, I mean we have a very, the--
11 DR. SMITH: I just wasn't'sure why you went at it' 12 .two different ways because-- O. .13 MS. LAMBERT: We were trying to- - 14 DR.' SMITH: You're licensing against 10 CFR 61. 15 MR. RANDALL: The user need letter-- 16 DR.. PARRY: .Let's identify yourself and use-a mike. 17 MR. RANDALL: John Randall from Research--the user 18 need letter that NMSS puts out I think represents what their 19 interpretation of Part 61 is and what they think is important 20 in Part 61, so we have to go along with that, too. l 21- DR. SMITH: I understand that, but you also are l-1 i 22 saying you are doing what it is you think is important plus 23 you are doing some other things? Is that it? () 24 MR. SILBERBERG: Not quite; I think, Dr. Smith, what 25' we have really done is just shown a crosscut, first the user
l l 542 ( )~ 1 needs, and then obviously as you point out, there must be 2 laid, just showing that in fact we had these elements of our 3 program actually tied back directly to the regulations. It is 4 not meant to be any more profound than that. 5 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: I have found it intriguing 6 though, too, Cliff, that each of them had five areas, but they 7 gave them different names. 8 MS. LAMBERT: They aren't completely different. 9 Many of them are the same. Three of them are the same, as a 10 matter of fact. It was just that in, in conducting the 11 analysis, that we did a user need letter in view of the 12 research programs that we felt were appropriate. That was the rm 13 more, we felt that was a better arrangement for the research. 14 DR. STEINDLER: Are you planning to throw that last 15 slide back up, that vugraph, the linkage between the need 16 letter and your plan? 17 M3. LAMBERT: I can throw it up. I was, I wasn't l 18 going to discuss it in too much more detail than I already 19 have. Again, it is in your package. 20 DR. STEINDLER: Let me ask a question. Item A3 of I 21 the user needs letter talks about a hazard analysis for ! l 22 low-level waste. 23 Your items B 1.2, 2.1 and 1.1 don't address that () 24 issue at all. 25 Do you intend not to touch it? What, what--where is
543
.() 1 in fact the fairly close correlation between the need letter 2 and what you folks plan to do?
3 MS. LAMBERT: I might ask for some help from Ed. 4 MR. O'DONNELL: I really don't have a good answer 5 for--I think it was like a B level priority, and that was 6 probably the reason why it got-- 7 DR. STEINDLER: Whose part? 8- MR. O'DCNNELL: In originally the newsletter, it was 9 second level priority. 10 DR. STEINDLER: We really can't then use that 11 listing without some additional information to determine 12 whether or not you are being adequately responsive to the need 13 letter? Is that what you are telling me? 14 MR. RANDALL: I think you could use those charts to 15 show actually--we did this after we had done the plan. That 16 was the last step. We double-checked. We found gee, we 17 addressed about 80 to 90 percent of the things asked for, and 18 we thought that was quite a remarkable thing, match. 19 MS. LAMBERT: Any more questions? Okay. What I 20 would like to do is move on really quickly to the organization 21 in the plans just again to facilitate any further review that 22 you might be making of it. 23 I sort of addressed the introduction. The very, the () 24 most important chapters are Chapter 3, which sets out the 25 technical uncertainties that the Office of Research sees with 1 _ _ _ _ - _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ._______ ____
544 () 1 regard to the upcoming licensing action, and Chapter.4, which 2 sets out the program strategy that we have laid out for 3 addressing and for resolving those technical and scientific 4 uncertainties. 5 And again, as you look at the plan, we have Chapter 6 4 with the summary, and Appendix B with detailed, much more 7 technical detail on our strategy. 8 Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 were addressed by Mel, and' 9 of course the Appendix A is the NMSS user need letter. 10 DR. SMITH: Does NHSS get an opportunity--I presume 11 they do--to comment on your plan and just-- 12 MR. SILBERBERG: Very definitely, yes. In fact, 13 they have reviewed-the first-- 14 MR. SURMEIER: Dr. Smith, we have reviewed the first 15 draft. We interacted with them. The chart that Dr. Steindler 16 asked about I have.not seen, but as far as interacting with 17 them on the document, we have interacted with them, and in 18 principal, we are very supportive of what they have in there. l 19 DR. STEINDLER: Thank you. I don't want to beat a 20 dead horse particularly, but let me point out not all priority 21 Bs are ignored in that previous vugraph, but some are, and the 1 22 mechanism for adjudicating what it is that they are going to l 23 do and not going to do certainly wasn't clear from my very () 24 cursory research of what is there. 25 MR. SURMEIER: Your point is very well taken, and
i 545 ! i (s-') 1 I'm sure in the next revision of the draft plan, it will be i 2 incorporated because it is a very, very good point. ; 3 MS. LAMBERT: In an earlier draft? ) d 4 DR. STEINDLER: Well, all I can tell you is what you 5 have in front of you. 6 MS -. LAMBERT: No. What I am saying--where were you 7 when we were doing the earlier drafts? 8 DR. STEINDLER: Blissfully ignorant of what you were 9 doing?. 10- MS. LAMBERT: Thank you very much! Okay. 11 DR. MOODY: What is Chapter 2 in your organization? 12 MS. LAMBERT: Chapter 2 is missing. That's the 13 organization of the plan as it were. Ed O'Donnell going to 14 speak to you in detail about Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, so-he is 15 next. 16 Any other questions? 17 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Well, thank you. Ed, well, when 18 you get a microphone, the part you are going to talk about is 19 specifically Chapters 3 and 4? 20 MR. O'DONNELL: Primarily Chapters 3 and 4, Dr. 21 Moeller. 22 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Thank you. 23 MR. O'DONNELL: I will also try and pick up some of () 24 the things which we might have forgotten, omitted somewhere 25 along the way. ) s
, - - - _ - - - - - -= 546 ( -1 Chapter 2 indeed was a very, very short chapter, 2 only like two pages or so, and that's probably the reason why 3 it was omitted from that particular vugraph., 4 I might mention I have got the plan in my hand. You 5 have got it in the looseleaf binder. It is a very formidible 6 document. It is about 120 pages long. It is written'for'two 7 different audiences. The~first perhaps 20 to 30 pages is 8 really written for the managers at NRC, say division directors 9 and above, so this is very short chapters, particularly 10 Chapters 3 and 4. The tail end of the report is written more 11 for staff members, NMSS and other research staff members. 12 That's primarily Appendix B.
-s
- 13 Appendix A happens to be the user needs letter, so 14 if you get this document in front of you, I would say it is 15 formidible looking. If you are interested in a quick picture, 16 Chapters 3 and 4, Chapter 3 is the chapter that deals with 17 uncertainties, and initially we laid out a very elaborate list 18 of uncertainties, went on for 11 pages, and it has been since l
19 shortened. q 20 The uncertainties in terms of structuring a research 21 program would be--excuse me. The way we structured the 22 research program which really was the magnitude of the 23 uncertainties, and also threat to public health and safety, it () 24 was a great big uncertainty, very little threat to public 25 health and safety, we had to give it lesser emphasis. I _ _ - - _ - _ - - - - _ - - _ - -- _ - - _ _ _ - .-_-._ _ ____
l-547 l () 1 I should also mention that our program obviously 2' isn't an ideal one. We try to be semi, somewhat realistic in 3 terms of dollars and projections of time in the future, but it 4 isoptimistic. If we get a lot of money, we can do a lot of 5 things. 6 Now we also, in terms of developing a research 7 program, we try to anticipate what the newer disposal L 8 facilities might look like, and also the waste forms, and what 9 we have been able to determine is that concrete will be used 10 to a great deal, develop some research looking to concrete. 11 We can anticipate some of the waste forms coming in. For 12 example, for Class B and C waste, integrity container will be L O 13 used to a great degree and venders make assertions about these 14 things. The Office of research would like to take existing
-15 requirements and test some of these packages against them.
16 The plan is structured that way. 17 (Slide) 18 MR. O'DONNELL: This diagram I.believe confirms one 19 that you actually come to in your package, and this pretty 20 well summarizes what is said in a lot of words other places. 21 In the overall program we look at everything from long-term l 22 climatic changes. We put a very small amount of money into a l l 23 program sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and L 1 () 24 these are just low-level waste disposal sites, some that are 25 expected to last, be there for quite a long period of time. ! l i l
L b 548 l l [) V 1 We expect their climates'to be changing in the not too far 2 distant future. tie are getting money into this kind of work. 3 We are also looking, anticipating, and we are 4 funding research post-closure ecologic changes, that once yo'n 5 take your hands off, something is going to happen. Maybe yo_ 6 can enhance things by putting a certain kind of vegetation 7 there first. 8 For example, as an intrudt r barrier, people proposed 9 putting' poison ivy and bamboo on siter.. The criticism of that 10 one is that if deep poison ivy and ba.e. boo were :to great in the 11 eastern U.S., all the eastern U.S. wouis b- creret' by it. 12 There must be something wrong with that particular O>. ( 13 combination, but indeed we do. have loohed into those kind of 14 things. We will be looking into them. 15 Another example is okay, we, in the past we put a 16 lot more emphasis on uptake into vegetation. For funding i 17 reasons, we are not doing it right now, but we recognize that 18 it is an area that you need to look into, particularly woody 19 vegetation. l 20 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Why woody? I gather the woody i l 21 vegetation is the NRC terminology for trees? 22 MR. O'DONNELL: Trees--I've got a red face because I 23 been the most critical of these kind of terms, and that one
.() 24 slid right by me. We have used that for years.
25 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: What about the cultural crops?
-_.-.m - _ _ _ _ _ a -_-a_ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ m a A M A mn A a m A h
m l R' 549 1 They wouldn't be growing on top of the waste? Is that-- J' 2 MR. O'DONNELL: The reason why is that actually in l 3 the past that's why most of the research was done back in the 4 '50s and '60s. Everybody looked at uptake and barley, .but 5 nobody, hardly anybody looks at uptake,. oak, hickory, the
)
6 reason being.that it takes a long time to get up into it and 7 there are very few burial grounds we have got sittirg with oak 8 and hickory trees, mature trees sitting on top of some of l 4 9- the--c ne happens to be the Chalk River and the Canadians, we l 10 we k cooperatively with the Caneedians at Chalk River. l 11 Going back to this little story, we have funded some 12 of the research and we are actually, we were looking at the. o
\l role of soils, and we discovered that if you put-woody 13 !
l 14 vegetation on certain soils, that what we call rhizosphere I 15 process actually mobilizes the radionuclides. What it means ! 1 16 is organic ligates produce in the root zone. We 3re not sure i 17 by the tree or by the microbial action, mobilize more. 18 Interestingly enough, it is related co the species of the 19 tree, that a hickory, for example, will mobilize cobalt 60 to , i 20 a far greater der e than a red maple or an oak or something 21 else. 22 The implications of something like that are Maxi 3 23 Flats is surrounded by an car. ar.d hickory forest, and you i I) 24 think goe whiz, go in for plancing some oak and h3ckory. At 25 Maxi you have got cobalt 60 to contend with. We might want to
L 1 550 ~l l l elect a different tree other than the hickory for a place like (( ) . 1 2 Maxi Flats, s- 3' Continuing with this story, some of the things which I 4 might be in a research plan we have addressed or would like to . 5 address, if you keep water away from waste, you are obviously l 6 a lot better off. We have funded some work on covers and 7 disposal sites. A lot of other people have funded. it. 8 Basically I can say that.all covers leak. All 9 covers that exist in commercial defense sites leak. There are 10 a variety of designs people are considering. We do have an 11 ' experimental site at Beltsville, Maryland, a half hour's drive 12 from where we are standing right now, and we would like to 13 extend an invitation to anybody in the room would like to go 14 out and see this. 15 At least one of the cover designs worked extremely 16 well in actually dewatering trenches. We started with a 17 trench with this much water in it, and using a combination of 18 vegetation and engineered cover, we have been able to dewater 19 that thing. It is down to zero right now. With the heavy 20 rains we have had in the area in the last month, six weeks, 21 the water levels have not come up, so it is a rather 22 interesting and remarkable type of design. 23 We are looking at not only that type of cover, but () 24 several other covers. 25 Continuing on down with the story, we are putting a
L 551 i( ) 1 lot of' attention into the performance of waste packages. Dr. 2 Phil Reed, who is sitting in the room over here against the l 3 wall, Phil is tho .>roject manager looking at the performance 4 of a variety of packages, and what we are coming with up is 5 surprises with--tnat this work is being done both in the. 6 laboratory, and is being done also'out in the field, and 7 partly at Argonne National Laboratories, partly at Oe's Ridge. 8 We also plug into the DOE program. The DOE program is doing 9 work at Savanneh River. Pacific Northwest Labs, we do talk 10 with our colleagues at other laboratories that we share 11 information, 12 A lot of these newer designs show concrete--as a 5-13 matter of fact, all of the different ways, the concrete 14 generally is meant for structural stability to support the 15 cover to keep that from collapsing, so I might mention that 16 this, the concrete is generally a permeable material. Water 17 may pass through it. People have proposed putting in barrier i 18 materials in the concrete to keep water from passing through 19 it, and our rasearch is looking at long-term durability of the 20 concrete. This work is being done by the Nati0nal Institutes 21 of Standards and Technology, and Jake Philip, who gave a 22 presentation earlier, is the prcject manager for that kind of 23 work. ( 24 So one of ths things we might be looking at is the 25 durability of concrete, partly structural material, and also
552 () 1 maybe as a material, as a containment type of material. 2 Okay. Suppose the waste packages don't perform as 3 well or ultimately they break down? Well, we would be 4 interested in a source term, and this, of course, is tne 5 greatest uncertainty of all when it comes to performance 4 6 assessment. 7 We funded a modeling project on the Chalk River to 8 see how well you could model this sort of thing, and it 9 happened at a very well characterized site. All of a sudden, 10 uncertainty in the source term was the big question mark even 11 with the well characterized site, fairly well.known waste 12 form, We still were uncertain. 13 To address that, Brookhaven National Laboratory has 14 been looking into thisfor us. It's a fairly simple matter. 15 Brookhaven in the past has done this analysis of leachate from 16 a number of the burial sites, including Barnwell, West Valley, 17 and to a great degree, the Maxi Flats. 18 The resutis of the Maxi Flats work indicated that it 19 varied with the source term, varied from one end of tha trench 20 to the other end of the treneb. It was junt that dramatically l 21 different. 1 22 Anyhow, they are trying to develop a model for us to 23 nccount for it. This sort of stuff might also mean newer l () 24 we.ste forms. We expect the volume of leachates coming out to 25 be significantly less, and probably a little bit of a
l 553 .) 1 ()' 1 different story than what happened with Maxi Flats. 2 Composition of s6urce term is one area we are 1 3 'looking into, and we will continue to. Then migrction through i 4- soil and the role of soil composition, on that we have to . 5 t>oint out--I am going to come right back to it--it is not only l 6 the minerology of the soil, but alsv we have got the naturally i 7 pro 0uced organic ligens, and we have done enough research to 8 recognize that Mother Nature does produce things which will 4 9 mobilize radionuclides. 10 These things are not ye t p' lugged into these 11 geochemical transport codes. .It takes a lot. of money, time, 12 and.a lot of work to get this done. We are not only 'Looking [
~
13 at small portions of it, but also the National Institutes of
?. 4 Health are doing, and several other outfits, movement of heavy 15 metals, organics, and we keep in contact with our colleagues l
16 in DOE who are working in these areas. These are colleagues 17 not in the normal nuclear engineering section, but'over in the 18 Office of Health and Environmental Research, so we do keep in 19 rontact across the various agencies. 20 This diagram says s little bit of--let's see. What 21 might be shown on--I have shown diagrammatically what might be 22 the projects. As Janet mentioned., there are five areas. It 23 is interesting the whole meeting we have three, five or seven. () 24 I think there-- 25 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: You pointed out this plan and
d 554 I ) 1 that one had all five items. 2 MR. O'DONNELL: Well, we show this thing kind of 3 feeding into the performance assessment. This is what people 4 are most interested in is the bottom line, so this term over 5 here, waste form and other material concerns, this title came, 6 it was suggested by Dr. Michael Tokar of the Licensing Office, 7 and in dis:ussion about the user need letter, I said why don't 8 you lump several different items and call it waste form and' , 9 other material concerning failurc mechanisms and radionuclides 10 releases?
~11 This is a term from the user need letter. Site 12 characterization and monitoring user needs letter, this is one 13 that we had come up with that seemed to fit several letters, 14 several of the items. I will jump right to these diagrams, 15 and I have to caution you that this is the tail end of your 16 package. _These are cartoons. They are a highly simplified 17 version of what is in Chapters 3 and 4, and I had simplify .
18 greatly for the. graphical purposes, so you might start saying 19 gee whiz, maybe this doesn't quite exactly match or something 20 is omitted. It was mainly for graphical purposes. It is not 21 the most co nplete list. It is more of a talking diagram, so i 22 at the top w6 can see the title waste form and other material 23 concerns. () 24 The program elements that you would actually find in ) 1 I 25 Chapter 3, 4, and Appendix B, you will find in the section of ) i _ - _ - - _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ ~ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - - _ - _ _ _ . - - - . - . - ----
l 555 l ('m) 1 waste characteristics. This column represents the 1
'2 uncertainties, well, with waste characterization. It is the. 1 3 range of characteristics of'what essentially boiling down to k
4 heterogeneous high quality material, and this is what it boils j 5 down to,'and what, you would like to look for a strategy, like q 6 to characterize various low-level waste streams, solidified 7 waste, so you could at least put a nail on the material that B you are' dealing with, and people are doing a pretty good job j i 9: at actually burial grounds now with keeping records of what'
]!
10 goes into the different containers, and this is getting to be 11 a pretty sophisticated field, but in terms of uncertainties, 12 you know, we are still--you would like to know what happens in n\ / '13 every conceivable waste stream. You can plug into your models 14 for performance assessment. 15 The NMSS user needs letter had a bunch of requests ; 16 relating to testing methods, and it goes a little bit beyond 17 just reliability of existing methods, but this is what the 16 staff would like us to look at, and also the way the strategy 19 for resolving it might be would be confirmatory at the time of 20 literature review, and waste forms, and Philliip Reed, Dr. 21 Phillip Reed's programs on waste form is doing a lot of this 22 stuff. 23 Decommissioning, this work is being done by another
'( ) 24 branch primarily. It is Keith Stewer at another branch.
25 Office of Research is doing work. The uncertainty with the i
i
,Ll:
L 556 l (); 1 decommissioning would be distribution of concentration of 2 radionuclides and also maybe the safety associated with it and ( L l 3 the cost. 1 4 The strategy resolving that would be analysis of the '+ a J 5 actual decommissioning of nuclear facilities that is being i 6 done with shippingports I believe it is going to be done 7 with Humboldt Bay very shortly. The contractors who are. 8 working on it are Westinghouse and also Pacific Northwest 9 Labs, so resolve this uncertainty, get actual power plants, 10 and'there should be also other nuclear facilities as they come 11 up, become available. . 1 12 The next diagram is, this is a title from the user 13 need letter--waste failure mechanisms and radionuclides 14 release. 15 (Slide) i 16 MR. O'DONNELL: Program elements start looking at-17 performance of the waste form, radionuclides releases, and 18 well, waste form performance. You would like to know the 19 long-term performance of the condition at the actual disposal 20 site, the effect of chelating on these things, chelating i 21 action, but other chemicals might be actually inside the waste i
)
22 form. This is a concern certainly that Dr. Tokar of the 23 Licensing Office expressed a number of times to us, and when
) 24 he speaks, we listen, so--strategy for resolving it I have l
25 just mentioned. We are conducting these large-scale lysimeter
L 557 a ( -1 tests at Oak Ridge and also Argonne National Lab. What a t~ 2 lysimeter consists of, it is a device for gathering l 3 percolation data. 4 These particular lysimeters are about this f ar 5 across, about 10 foot high or so, and inside, actual 6 solidified waste soil is used in it, exposed tx) the 7 atmosphere. Rain water percolates through. At the bottom you 8 have a means of collecting whatever comes through. This will 9 give you both this leaching data, and also some transport data 10 which can be used for performance assessment. This kind of i 11 information can be plugged into performance assessment. 12 Radionuclides releases, well, uncertainty some of the (
's / 13 mechanisms, relative importance mechanisms, and what you would
\
14 like to try to identify are the chemical and physical 15 mechanisms that lead toward releases, and ultimately validate 16' models releases from high roll heterogeneous trash; also the 17 . activation products from decommissioned reactors and other 18 nuclear facilities. 19 (Slide) 20 MR. O'DONNELL: The engineered barrier performance, 21 and this thing will have three program elements--long-term, 22 high integrity container performance, long-term concrete 23 performance. In the following vugraph it is going to cover ('( ) 24 performance. In these high integrity containers, uncertainty 25 would be the long-term structural containment capability. The _ _ _ _ - - _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ - _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ .-~-.--- ----
558 ,m . effect of irradiation, the effect of, by degradation, (v) 1 2 microbial activity--these would be some of the uncertainties. 3 We are well aware that microbial activity will 4 affect metals, the corrosion of metals, these kinds of things. 5 Some of the things the.t you might do to resolve 6 uncertainties--evaluate the degradation failure mechanisms, do 7 actually qualification testing of materials. Ideally you 8 would perform full-scale structural evaluations of large-scale 9 things outside the laboratory. 10 The corcrete performance, well, the uncertainty is 11 the service life. How long will that concrete last? For 12 these Class B and C things, people are talking of somewhere in 13 excess of 300 years, ideally up to 500 years. We do know some 14 of the ancient concretes do exist from Roman times, but they 15 represent slightly different formulations from the modern-day 16 Portland cement which was invented about 150 years ago. 17 And in any event, looking at concrete, as I have 18 mentioned, Dr. Jacob Philip is the project manager for a 19 project up at the National Institutes of Science and 20 Technology on long-term performance of concrete. 21 What I mentioned about the performance of barrier 22 materials in concrete, the effect of gamma irre.diation of 23 concrete, we do have a project on mathematical modeling of () 24 transport through concrete, the idea being here is the 25 modelers of the performance assessment, who would love to know
559 l 8 I P's 'l j 1 what would happen if I got a few cracks, got a lot of cracks. j l 2 What would happen if I don't have some cracking, but the. i 3 concrete, I.just did permeabilities. How do I account for ) 4 that? When would the cracks appear? And this is an j i i 5 investigation that is being carried out for us by Idaho' i 6 National Engineering Lab. The strategy would be to develop j 7 validated mathematical models to describe that. 8 And partly degree of chemical retardation provided 9 by concrete, Pacific Northwest Labs has done some of that work 10 in the decommissioning program, was done for another branch. 11 (Slide) q 12 MR. O'DONNELL: The next diagram will continue with 13 the engineered barriers and that will be the long-term cover 14 performance and keeping water away from waste obviously is of
'15 tremendous importance.
16 The user need letter wanted, cited erosion 17 protection criteria as being an area uncertainty. In terms of-18 long-term erosion of things, we are going to have something 19 sitting on the ground surface. In a large are, how can we 20 keep the thing from being eroded out? 21 There are tradeoffs. The licensing Office's mind at 22 the time was gee, we don't want to put a lot of trees on it 23 right at first. What should we cover it with, and what can we () 24 do about that? 25 They have also asked us to do a look into
560 () 1 infiltration evaluation of methodologies. This is is an area 2 of uncertainty to them. People with the assertions that so 3 much water will get through the cover, how do we know this? 4 What is the methodologies. 5 . Tom Nicholson, our hydrologist, is managing a 6 project on this which is being conducted for us by Deana Day 7 at Pacific Northwest Laboratory. 8 Let's see. This covers local implication, response-9 of components. What is meant by that is that if--probably you 10 have seen designs calling for these things called tumulous. A 11 bunch of tumuli very often is put on a concrete pad. There is 12 some speculation differential subsidence on these kind of pads (} k 13 will have implications for the cover, cover performance. If
.14 you have a cover that can tolerate very little subsidence, 15 problems might crop up, so some of our Civil Engineering 16 wanted more information-on that.
17 This appeared, this long-term performance intruder 18 barriers, Part 61, intruder barriers are required for Class B 19 and C waste. Basically all that is required is 15 foot of 20 soil. However, some of the designs we see coming in show 21 concrete, other materials that are proposed as intruder i 22 barriers in lieu of the 15 foot of soil, and if you are going 1 23 to put something else in, certainly you would be uncertain as () 24 to how long this would last, and most of them involve l 25 concrete, what are the methods you would look at in terms of l l i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - . - - - --m _
l-561 1 l~) V 1 concrete durability you should apply to that. 2 (Slide) 3 MR. O'DONNELL: The site characterization and 4 monitoring, really the objective, what you really love to i 5 know, you would like to know the information needed for j 6 protection of contaminant transport. What you would like to 7 do is establish methods providing early warning of contaminant 8 movement. I have shortened this tremendously over what.is l 9 actually in Chapter 3. In the site characterization, most of l 10 the items keep coming back to water. That's probably one of 11 the major pathways, and with surface water, there are 12 uncertainties there. The 500 hundred year flood, if your
.C \
13 period of record is not very long, how do you know what the 14 500 year flood will be, the ground water, a variety of things. 15 Let's see. Jumping ahead with the diagram, the way 16 I have got it set up here, I talk in terms of unsaturated 17 zone, saturated zone. Most of our attention is put towards 18 the unsaturated zone because it looks like all the designs we 19 see coming into, in the U.S. will be in the unsaturated zone. 20 How do you assure that the water table or what it is right ; i 21 now, will stay where it is? This is a uncertainty in the ! 22 human area. If you are only three to ten foot above it, will 23 it always stay in that position? Will it come up a little () 24 bit? This is an area of uncertainty. 25 The saturated zone I mentioned, the uncertainty is
562 l ([ 1 with low permeability such as clays, clayton tills, tills 2 glacial material. The U.S. conceivably could be faced with 3 this problem. I haven't heard of any state yet that's--Maine 4 had considered disposing of that clay, Marine clay. I don't
~i 5 think they will do it, but they had talked.about it. !
6 The Canadians have actually advocated disposal of j i 7 low permeability media clayton tills. Southern Ontario, John 8 Cherry, University of Waterloo, is one of the advocates of 9 this. They do make a very good case because it looks like 10 diffusion will be the dominant transport process, and the 11 design envisions auger holes going down as deep maybe as 120 12 foot, putting anywhere from 10 to 50 foot of material to (\ 13 compact the cover, and it is a very attractive design. 14 We are not proposing any research in this area, 15 although we recognize others are doing it. I mention this E16 just to show you we do link in with others. 17 DR. ORTH: Question--Isn't West Valley soil in the 18 till? 19 MR. O'DONNELL: Clayton till, fairly impermeable; a 20 person in your state which would be looking for a site 21 conceivably if they wanted to look at similar clayton tills, 22 primarily I think the New York State law is to exclude West 23 Valley-- () 24 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Excuse me. I'm not sure I 25 understand. Low permeability media, you are putting the waste I 4
if; 563
- 1 T
('~j ~ 1 in a zone where you purposely hope that the radionuclides will' l 2 migrates. j 3 MR. O'DONNELL: Will not migrate; it is clay, we are i 4 using clay as an example. Water will move through clay. 5 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Low permeability. 6 MR. O'DONNELL: I'm sorry. With the unsaturated 7 zone, I think it is going to be the other way around. I think I 8 they'are going to want to get water through very quickly. 9 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Get rid of it--I'm sorry--in the i 10 saturated zone you want to, in a medium that or media, medium 11 that does not permit radionuclides. 12 MR. O'DONNELL: Two people are going to clarify it. 13 MR. SURMEIER: One of the reasons for Part 61 in 14 which we basically assume an unsaturated zone type of an 15 arrangement was so that we would not get the bath tubbing 16 effects that we had had at Maxi Flats, at West Valley, and.the 17 like, because what we would like to make sure that in their 18 water that there is almost very little contact with the waste 19 material as it flows through, and that's one reason why as far l 20 as the clay type of material, we in writing Part 61 emphasized {
)
21 the site characterization is very important in that area. ] I 22 MR. O'DONNELL: Yes. 23 DR. ORTH: One of the reasons I ask the question is I
. () 24 of course there is a very low permeability till at West 25 Valley, and the question is is it always unsaturated? And the j l
l _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___ l
564 1 answer is probably not. 2 Around the world: various people have proposed to 3 put the materials in clays that in many cases are. saturated. 4 The point being is that they are so low permeability that the 5 water plane doesn't move. You have got hundreds of years to 6 go meter or something like that, and almost all of these 7 materials had extremely high absorption coefficients for 8 almost everything, so the material doesn't migrate. If it 9 did, it would be held. That would be if it could, it would be 10 held anyway. 11 DR. HINZE: There is a problem there as I understand 12 it, however, and that is that some of these clays apparently n}~ 13 are fractured. This is some now information that is coming 14 along. Talk to my colleagues. 15 DR. ORTH: They aren't really fractured in the 16 saturated media usually. That is part of the reason why 17 people did that. 18 DR. EINZE: I'm not certain about that. 19 MR. NICHOLSON: If I may interject, we don't have 20 funding with the United States Geological Survey at West 21 Valley. We have done quite a bit of work there. We no longer 22 do that work. Obviously DOE is doing most of the work there 23 now. () 24 You are correct. In saturated clays that are 25 unweathered, unfractured, the diffusion mechanism is, the
565 A-(). 1- principal one, the advection is virtually nil, you have 2 incredibly low percolating numbers.
-3" With-regard to your comment, you are correct in that 4 the problem at West Valley was that a lot of burials were very 5 shallow where it was fractured, and Dr. Perry at Penn State-6 was a consultant to us and we examined some of the burials and 7 some of the till up there.
8 What happened is that the burials, if they would 9 have been sufficiently deep beneath the weathered and 10 fractured horizon, it would have been probably an excellent 11 disposal technology. The trouble was that they used trenches 12 or open holes and they put the waste too far up. 13 The other difficulty was, and which probably was 14 alluding to some of the people at the University of Western 15 Ontario, other people have been looking at the effect of 16 organic solvents that have enhanced these fractures, so you 17 have to be very careful. 18 First of all, is there fractures? And then if you 19 put in liquid rad waste or you put in some--at West Valley the 20 problem there was the migration was associated with a i l 21 tributophosphate kerosene problem in the stainless steel tanks l l 22 and this increased the permeability dramatically, so what 23 appeared to be an excellent site was obviously compromised by () 24 putting radioactive waste in liquid form that was organic form 25 because of putting burials far too shallow and using a trench ! l t ! I _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___________ .m--._-- mmmm I
i 566 I i () 1 methodology that obviously actively leaked. Soon they'had to l 2 come and keep redoing it, and that'sLwhy Ed and the people l 3 have originally looked at cover design. 4 Now as Dr. Surmeier says, we are pretty much looking 5 at unsaturated medium, but that option is still I think a very 6 viable option. Looking at clays, it is just a matter of 7 understanding the nature of the clay structure and make sure 8 that your burial technology is adequate: 9 DR. HINZE: It does it to me. There is a need for 10 additional research In that area. That's why I brought it up. 11 MR, O'DONNELL: The story of clays and shales, it is 12 a complicated one. For example, there was a site considered 13 in South Dakota, mango coast shale. It is the western part, 14 of southwestern corner of South Dakota. Anybody who has ever 15 been there knows it is so doggone dry, you almost have an 16 outstanding site.just by-its nature. Unfortunately, the mango 17 shale was fractured and it leads to problem for a modeler. l 18 It's a dry site, very little water moving. We have a l 19 difficult time quantifying what is going to move through the 1 l 20 fractures. 21 What I was talking about, the clayton tills, I want i 22 to come back and emphasize one point. The people in the 1 23 University of Waterloo, they were advocating deaugered hole, () 24 and the advantage of that is that you don't have a large span 25 you are going to have to put a cover across, and if you start t -_ __. _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .--- -- ----
567 ,s ( ) 1 excavating trenches, Tom puts the idea in my head, you start ss 2 putting long trenches in' big spans, try to put a cover on that 3 clay, you're likely to have failure. In these very 4 impermeable clays, that cover would have to be about 99.9 5 percent perfect, and that's very difficult to achieve. 6 If you are going to be making an impermeable media, 7 you have got to be very careful about the cover. 8 DR. SMITH: Those trenches in Canada, how deep were 9 they, augered holes? 10 MR. O'DONNELL: They did a test hole 120 foot. 11 That's about the order of magnitude. Just--in fact, it wasn't 12 too far north of Wisconsin. It was western Ontario.
/ \~
13 Would we ever do this in the U.S.? I-don't know. 14 The State of Maine, some of the states in the northeastern 15 U.S. which have high water tables, this could be a way to go, 16 but it is such a dramatically different way to go, nobody 17 wants to be a leader in doing something of this sort. 18 DR. STEINDLER: Does somebody, have any of you folks 19 worried about the economics of that? 20 MR. O'DONNELL: The economics, we did a real_ quick 21 dirty back of the envelope sort of a thing. It looks real 22 cheap. Moving the dirt is the cheap part. It is, the 23 expensive part is the regulatory thing and regulatory () 24 framework, and the structure there 25 There are, there is existing equipment used for
568 m these augering things, and equipment to be' purchased in the tJ 1 l 2 . order of 750,000 to 2 million dollars, depending how fancy the 3 equipment you want, and how wide. We were looking in terms of j 4 about 8 to 10 foot. That equipment is fairly inexpensive. 5 The other advantage is that you can keep the cover 6 off. It's easy. Put the corar over, put waste in, put a 7 temporary cover over, open it up, close it so if you get a ! i 8 rain day, cover it. That techno".ogy was used on a large scale 9 in the Nevada test site behind area 5. It is generally not 10 too well known. 11' I think finally I will just jump real quickly to the 12 last one, which is the performance assessment one, and as we ( 4]N- 13 have indicated earlier, everything fee's d into the performance 14 assessment, although it is not suggested by this diagram. 15 The program elements, we are reading a little bit 16 about pathway model evaluation, source term, which is a 17 tremendously important subject, and the radionuclides 18 transport, and this kind of overlaps the earlier diagram which 19 was failure mechanisms and radionuclides transport. They both ! 20 overlap each other. 21 In terms of uncertainty, with the pathway model, we 22 have the contribution of various pathways. Lots of work has 23 been done on that, but you can still always go a little () 24 further. I 25 Role of engineered barriers, what they are going to,
569 f) 1 role they are going to play--this is an important one, the v 2 effect of field scale heterogeneity, and I forget to mention 3 that_we are doing work in this area of actual field type of _; i 1 4 work. This was being done by our hydrogeologist Tom Nicholson 5 who is the project manager. ) 1 l 6 Initially we start with theoretical work at MIT. 7 MIT worked hand in hand with a field validation project in New 8 Mexico, and the field validation project was conducted by Dr. 9 Peter Warrinka, who was at that time et Mexico State 10 University, basically involved an alluvial fan out in New 11 Mexico. Heavily instrumented water was applied and you watch 12 what would happen. In order to see what was happening, they (' 13 had to open up a trench so you get a three-dimensional 14 picture. Apply water here. You look at two dimensions _. 15 Seepage is happening with the wedding fronts. They just don't 16 follow the normal pattern you might have seen in a book of 10
, 17 or 20 years ago.
18 They do come down, spread out a little bit, so this 19 work, we are looking into this, the effect of failure scaling 20 heterogeneity. 21 Source term, I have mentioned that earlier--bit of 22 uncertainty of release models for heterogeneous trash and we 23 used modeling laboratory data and were able to quantify what (\ j () 24 is happening. 25 Radionuclides release, finally with the radionuclides
P 570 y~s
- I transport, looking at the uncertainties for mechanisms, the x_-)
2 old problem of lab or measurements versus field measurements, 3 when you try to make statements of retardation role of soil 4 composition, role of non-radiologic components, we recognize 5 that they play a role; the biotic processes, organic 6 complexant which might originally have been in the waste or 7 generated naturally, and finally, transport behavior of carbon 8 14 and tridium, and the ways to do this would be assert the 9 role made by soil composition, organic complexant, validate 10 models against field and laboratory data, so in summary then, 11 that is essentially what the program looked like. 12 All those words I think are summarized pretty much. ( 13 'in this diagram, and some of the work we are doing,.some work 14 we would like to do, and address some of the understandings, 15 and we have worked very closely with our licensing colleagues 16 particularly in developing this plan. 17 DR. HINZE: Isn't it true, though, that the soils, 18 the earth materials on there are not included in your diagram 19 in that part, at the part of the discussion area? Isn't that 20 also-- 21 MR. O'DONNELL: To an extent it is true. The soils 22 are not. 23 DR. HINZE: I don't see where in this diagram you () 24 bring in the soils? 25 MR. O'DONNELL: Rolling of soil, yes--
1 l 571 j i 1 DR. HINZE: The glacial material or alluvial? [~'/k s- ; 2 MR. O'DONNELL: Yes, I did not put that in there. j I 3 DR. MOODY: That ties into a comment I was going to 1 4 make, and just ask you both in terms of the waste form of rock 5 and soil itself, there is a tremendous heterogeneity in both 6 the waste form and the soil, and how do you possibly try to l 7 bottle that heterogeneity? 1 1 8 MR. O'DONNELL: That's a real rough one. What, j 9 ideally what we would like to do is to look what happens with , 10 the range of soils. 11 We initially started out to do this with the Pacific 12 Northwest Laboratory with Dr. Raymond Wildon. This is kind of 13 his specialty, but it turns out that such an ambitious program 14 got tremendous amounts--you think about the US. Think about 15 the range of soils that you have got across the country. 16 DR. MOODY: That's right--difference in the rocks, 17 you know. 18 MR. O'DONNELL: And soils change the underlying 19 rock. 20 DR. MOODY: That's right. 21 MR. O'DONNELL: To give you an example, soils--I 22 live in Montgomery County, and we have got geologic, the 23 Piedmont, with shifts, neisses, those things of things. You () 24 find very clay soils, acidic. I went out sampling the pH 25 stream locally, particularly a lot of rotting vegetation, got
1; l l l 572'
~
(v ') l' a pH-in the order of 8, which is geologically not what'it is i 2 supposed to be, and.it turns out there are penide bodies which j L 3 throw you off. , 4 DR. STEINDLER: I have got several questions. First 1 1 1 1 1 5 off, the list of things that you folks appear to be interested .) 6 in is impressive. l i 7 Can you identify what type of studies you are not : l 8 interested'in? '! 9 The other thing I.can see that is not part of your i 1 10 plan is waste processing. I'm perfectly serious because my t i i 11 next question is going to be where the dickens do you think 12 you are going to get to cover what appears to be the universe? 13 MR. O'DONNELL: Yes. We recognize it is the 14 universe,.and that's one of the parts which we probably don't j 15 make clear enough is yes, we can't do it, but we are plugged 1 16 into a lot of people who are doing these things, these kinds 17 of things, so we can't, we don't pretend we are going to solve 18 all the world's problems, but by working with others, we can 19 get close to it. 20 Mel, you wanted to say something? 21 MR. SILBERBERG: Certainly it is a valid l 22 observation, Dr. Steindler. Let me say that today in fiscal 23 '89 and fiscal '90, the program is certainly, we are currently (f 24 active only covering a portion of these. 25 An important portion, a lot of work that, that Ed is 1 i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - . _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ . _ . _ _ _ _ _._._._m _ _ _ ~ ~ _ _ _ ,mmm a ,,.mm n a mA
573 We, it one wants to project lll 1 describing in fact is ongoing. 2 into our five-year plan, past '90 in the budget process, the 3 budget cycle is just '91 and we try to project to '94. We are 4 showing at least in the budget cycle today--that's all I will l 5 say is today--that again substantial increase in the low-level 6 waste area, which will get us a lot further into the plan, but 7 I think as we move on and evaluate, I think we are ultimately ; 8 going to come up short, but we asked each of the, I had asked 9 each of the staff members that were instrumental in putting 10 together this plan, contributing to it, to make, given the 11- things that we talked about that were going to be done in the 12 strategy, make some preliminary estimates of what this might 13 cost, and they did, and we weren't hopelessly, in other words, 14 in the outyears, outyear budgets, we weren't hopelessly 15 mismatched. There were clearly mismatch in resources, but we 16 were certainly a lot better in the outyears than we are now, 17 but I think we still have to go back per your comment and, and 18 sharpen that up and see how realistic that is. 19 DR. STEINDLER: I really don't see you aware of the 20 limits of your interest. You cover everything from biology to 21 geosciences, but let me ask another question. 22 As you identify in your words, the uncertainties in 23 the business of taking care of low-level wastes, one might llh 24 easily get the impression that the whole world is up for grabs 25 and that you guys are really so dumb that you don't know HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION -- (202)628-4888
574 That clearly can't (-) 1 anything about the. processes that go on. 2 be the case. 3 MR. O'DONNELL: That's quite correct. 4 DR. STEINDLER: And somewhere along the line it 5 would be useful if in those plans there was a reasonable 6 delineation of where the borders of real uncertainties that 7 are important to the licensing process, the regulatory 8 process, really are. 9 Having gotten concerned about the universe you are 10 in, let me ask the other side of the coin.
-11 I see nothing listed here in your plan or for that 12 matter in the user's need letter that indicates that O
k- 13 remediation in case of incidence is of interest to you. 14 If you in fact find that you are moving nuclides 15 into the aquifer, you have already contaminated the aquifer, 16 now what--it is an issue which the EPA folks have focused on 17 very sharply in their concerns. 18 Why are you excluding it from your consideration? 19 MR. O'DONNELL: Tom? 20 MR. NICHOLSON: The point you raised is a very good 21 one. Let me quiucily answer this question to try to answer l l 22 some of the other ones that have been asked. 23 First of all, we did res" arch, Pacific Northwest () 24 Laboratory, on mitigative action, with the Lardo accident. We 25 have Class 9 accidents. l _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _______- ____
575 p () 1 DR. STEINDLER: Low-level waste facility? 2 MR. NICHOLSON: No--of reactors. During the process 3 of doing that work, we did not worry about close into, but 4 simply the question of what happens'if you get a 1 5 contamination, a plume that develops? What kind of mitigative 5 activities are possible, both active and passive, with regard 7 to walls, dewatering, freezing the ground? 8 We went through the whole tachnology. We went to 9 the National Water Wall Association, a program of aquifer 10 restoration remedial action. We have talked to EPA. I 11 visited Rocky Mountain ArrLnal. We did a lot of work on that 12 in the past. For whatever reasons I won ' t comlaent , that work 13 has been turned off because we no longer, I am not involved in 14 reactors, but that work is there, and it exists. All right. 15 And we are aware of that work, and we are invited 16 constantly, and you asked earlier how we interact with the 17 U.S. Geological Survey and EPA. These committees I' mentioned 18 earlier plus one, another one, Federal Research Committee, we 19 are constantly being invited. There was a meeting down at the 20 Dupont Plaza Hotel about two months ago on EPA heat treat work 21 with regard to mitigation correction, and the question about 22 special heat at river sites, so we krow we can'* do it all. 23 We have looked at this question of remediation with () 24 regard to a reactor. A reactor is not the same as low-level 25 waste sites granted, but we have some understanding now. Our l
L 576 L 1 contractor is familiar with a variety of techniques possible l
)
2 to identify the extent of the contamination plume, what action 3 can be done to delay the movement of those r. radionuclides and 4 how can you most importantly model and predict that work, so l 5 we would like to do work obviously, but as you point out, you 6 can't do it all now. 7 In the area of hydrology, most of the emphasis is on 8 the unsaturated zone because Part 61 saye sites should be 9 capable being modeled. It is extremely important to find out 10 what the greatest uncertainties are with regard to modeling. 11 Because of our exposure to universal loop of people--we read 12 the trends in hydrology, all the committees, ASTM committees. 13 We are somewhat familiar with what the science is, so we try 14 to do research in those areas that either no one is doing it L 15 at all or people are doing very little in the sense that we 16 see the greatest needs. We could go out and do a reemendous l 17 amount of research on aquifer studies. There is a tremendous 18 number of people who are doing that, and we are familiar with 19 that work. 20 Thank you. 21 DR. STEINDLER: That's helpful. Let me ask one last 22 question. i 23 The structure of the low-level waste plan, the () 24 outline of it, the way it is put together and what it 25 contains, aside from the specific topics, it is fundamentally
i l 1 577 ] 1 different than the high-level waste plan. It is not a t( ) 2 question for you. ! 3 Why is there such a discrepancy or difference
. 4 between the way these plans are put together and the kind of l S information that in contained?
l 6 MR. SILBERBERG: They were started separately. We j 7 have the high-level waste or the low-level waste plan started 8 first. There was considerable effort spent in that. The 9 high-level waste plan has actually followed that, and at the 10 time we thought that that, the approach that we were using 11 because we were focusing very specifically on Yucca Mountain, 12 <nat in dealing with the issues there, that that, the format 13 we had for the high-level waste served us well there. 14 I think we may be looking, may want to go back and 15 look at how we can now look at both plans, and use the best of 16 both to maybe make them Fore uniform. I'm not sure, but I 17 have been, I have observed the same, you know, we have 18 observed the same thing ourselves, and I, I am not surprised 19 at the question. 20 DR. STEINDLER: John? 21 MR. SURMEIER: I just wanted to say that although in 22 principal we agree with the low-level waste plan totally, the 23 area of, having to do with uncertainty was an area that () 24 bothered me. In earlier drafts my staff has worked with high 25 level, or pardon me, with research in this area, but I think
r I 578 (f 1 .your comment about the use of the words uncertainty covering 2 everything is one in which we are going to have to go back and 3 take another look, and I appreciate that comment. 4 DR. STEINpLER: What is the relative size of the 5 'research budget comparing high-level waste research and 6 low-level waste research? 7 MR. SILBERBERG: The high-level waste researchLin 8 fiscal '88 is a factor of two larger than the low-level waste. 9 DR. STEINDLER: That's not the impression that I 10 would have gathered by reading, you know, running through 11 these plans. The high-level waste plan seems a lot less 12 definite, to get a feel for what is going on.
-- 13 MR. SILBERBERG: I think we should work on that 14 aspect. 'I think we need to sharpen that aspect up.
15 MR. BOSNAK: I would like to add one other thing 16 with respect to the budget process. Particularly in FY '90, 17 we take a severe cut in research. As it might come along, l l 18 high-level waste research is not expected to be cut at all, j 19 It is not to be touched, whereas low-level waste could be. 20 MR. SILBERBERG: Let me also add that as I mentioned I 21 earlier, Dr. Steindler, as we move out to '91, '92, the ratio-i 22 does change. In other words, the low-level waste program j i 23 comes up closer--not as close, but that they, the gap does () 24 narrow somewhat. 25 DR. STEINDLER: But not before it is threatened in l 1
. 579
() 1 fiscal '90 you said is the message I'm getting. If that's the t 2 case, I-think we have got to know. I would assume that we 3 would try and learn as early as we can what the problem area 4 is. I'm not sure that I would share--not that it makes any 5 difference what I share--but I'm not sure that I would share 6 the view that the low-level waste program is, you know, 7 violateable whereas the high-level waste research program is 8 not. 9 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Ed, does that-- 1 10 MR. O'DONNELL: Yes. 1
.11 DR. ORTH: You did note that the DOE programs were 12 being followed.
(l' v 13 Has there been a concerted effort in order to 14 conserve resources to consciously avoid duplicating any of the 15 DOE programs? 16 MR. O'DONNELL: We try to, and I think we have been 17 pretty successful--actually let me even tell you how close we 18 followed them. 19 DOE actually in one instance has asked us to take 20 over their program of waste forms testing that is being done 21 at West Pacific Northwest Labs, so when I mentioned the DOE 22 example, I actually, I gave an offbeat example. I used the 23 Office of Health, Environmental Research Office that you () 24 wouldn't think of us normally interfacing with. We normally 2 '5 deal with people in nuclear energy.
)
580. ., l ) 1 Those who are not familiar with the low-level waste i 2 program, the big meeting to attend in August will be the l 3 annual DOE low-level waste meeting. That will be August I 1 4 think 23rd, 24th, 25th in Pittoburgh. This will be the big 5 meeting, and then the waste management '90 meeting in Tucson, i 6 which encompass high and low level, but the low-level one is i 7 in August, in Pittsburgh. J l 8 In addition, there is something called Host States 9 Technical Coordinating Committee, and they meet four times a ; 10 year, usually meet in conjunction with waste management, in 11 conjunction with Waste Management '90, in conjunction with 12 this meeting in Pittsburgh, two other times, and tnis 13 technical coordinating committee which is the states that are 14 interfacing with disposal, we participate in those things as a 15 resource, sit in the room and listen, go through those things. 16 We kind of pretty much keep in touch with what DOE is doing, 17 the states are doing, and find out what is going on. 18 DR. STEINDLER: Are you dcing any work that is 19 applicable to that mixed waste? 20 MR. O'DONNELL: John? 21 MR. SURMEIER: I thought someone would ask that 22 question. 23 From our vantage point, Dr. Steindler, the mixed () 24 waste issue is basically a jurisdictional problem, from a l 25 legal point of view, as opposed to technical issue. It may _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _mm.
1 581 ; I .() 1 turn out to be a technical issue, but basically it is the
'2 overlapping jurisdiction of EPA and the doubleliners versus
- 3. our own regulation.
1 4 DR. STEINDLER: You don't see any unusual R&D needs 5 that-- 6 MR. SURMEIER: At this time-- 7 DR. STEINDLER: That the licensing group would ever, 8 would have to get? 9 CHAIRMAN MOELLER: Gther questions or comments? 10 Okay Mel, I think we would like to wrap up at this point and 11 let me thank all of the NRC staff for the presentations this 11 2 morning. They have been very helpful, and we look forward to 13 following through now as these two plans are, as progress is 14 made in this area. They are near completion. 15 With that, I believe we are finishing or have 16 completed the formal portion of our program, and the recorded 17 portion of the meeting. 18 (Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the recorded portion of 19 the meeting was adjourned.) i 20 21 22 23 () 24 25
F, <
/~j l' CERTIFICATE L) 2 I
i 3 This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the 4 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: l 5 1:ame: Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste--Twelfth General >1eeting , 6 i 7 Docket Number: 8 Place: Bethesda, Maryland 9 Date: June 30, 1989 10 . were' held as herein appears, and that this is:the original 11 transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear
'12 Regulatory Commission taken stenographically by me and,
- 13. thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction 14 of the court reporting company, and-that the transcript is a
' ' 15 true and accurate' record of the foregoing proceedings.
16 /S/ k N K .J - v Y,.,w -- 17 (Signature typed): Catherine S. Boyd 18 Official Reporter i i 19 HSritage Reporting Corporation 20 21 22 ) i' 23 24 ; i 25 i C. Heritage Reporting Corporation I (202) 628-4888 l 1
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IP4SS USER NEED LETTER . Appendix B and Chapter 4 of I l LLW Program Plan j A. LOU-LEVEL MANAGEMENT AND TREATMENT l
- 1. Process control paramentes B.l.2 Testing methods to. ensure I and test' methods for qualifying regulatory compliance (4.1) i solidified wastes B.2.1 Waste form performance (4. 2)
- 2. Waste receipt inspection test jB.1.2 Testing methods to ensure methods regulatory compliance (4 .1) j
- 3. liazard anal'ysis for LLW
- 4. Waste characterization and B.1.1 Waste characterization (4 1) assessment
- 5. Alternative techniques for em LLW treatment -
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D. FAILURE MECHANISMS AND RADIONUCLIDES RELEASES
- 1. Radionuclides release models B.2.1 Waste form performance (4.2) for LLW B.2.2 Radionuclides releases (4.2)
- 2. Effects of chelating agents B.l.1 Waste characterization (4.1) and other constituents on decontamination waste releases B.2.1 Waste form performance (4.2)
B.2.2 .Radionuclidezrbleases (4.2)
- 3. Screening tests for LLW form B.3.1 Long-term performance of HI'C and container stability (4.3)
- 4. . Infiltration evaluation B.3.3 Long-term cover performance methodology for LLW disposal (4.3) facilities
- 5. Archival trench program
, 6. Long-term performance of B.3.2 Long-term concrete perform-f (s}:oncretestructures ance (4,3)
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D. ~~.,, PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT 1. Performance assessment scenario B.5.1. Performance assessment
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B.S.3. Transport of radionuclides co.ntaminants at LLW disposal sites and chemicals at LLW disposa). sites (4.5) E. DECOMMISSIONING
- 1. Assessment of technology, safety, and costs of decommission- B.l.3 Decommissioning of nuclear ing power reactors facilities (4.1)
- 2. Assessment of technology, safety, and costs of decommission- B.l.3 Decommissioning of nuclear ing non-reactor nuclear facilities facilities (4.1)
- 3. Capabilities of on-site reactor radwaste systems to process i decommissioning wastes . *
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(O ; NRC STAFF PRESEN"A"IOX "O THE ACNW , SU BJECT: LLW RESEARCH PROGRAM PLAN DATE: June 30, :.989 O PRESENTER: Dr. Ec: ward O'Donnell PRESENTER'S TITLE / BRANCH DIV: Geologis': Waste Management Branc:a ! Division of Engineering, :ES PRESENTER'S NRC TEL. NO: O 492-3859 !
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QADIONUCLIDE MIGRATION C ,i IN UNSATURATED 20NE ' - - - (ROLE OF Solu OVERALL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT TECHNICAL UNCERTAINTIES AND RESEARCH NEEDS ASSOCIATED WITH LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL. The uncertainties begin with the radionuclides and chemical content of the waste and its' long-term performance. Engineered barriers may be used to provide structural stability to the disposal facility, to contain waste, and to keep water from entering disposal units. Performance assessment entails evaluating everything from waste pa-kage degradation to water entry, performance of engineered barriers, role of the geologic environment in containing waste, radionuclides migration, and biologic uptake into the food chain to humans. These l uncertainties are outlined in Chapter 3 and a strategy for addressing them will be found in Chapter 4. O l
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