ML20247K769
| ML20247K769 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 09/15/1989 |
| From: | NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NACNUCLE-T-0014, NACNUCLE-T-14, NUDOCS 8909220014 | |
| Download: ML20247K769 (149) | |
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UNITED STATES j NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ;
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,.--u----------==-------- ------------------ ....---------,1 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE ]
1 In the Matter of: )
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13th ACNW Meeting )
Day Three )
O Pages: 515 through 635 Place: Bethesda, Maryland Date: September 15, 1989 ACNW OFFICE COPY - RETAIN FO THE LIFE OF THE COM.Mn TEE O HERITAGE REPORTING CORPORATION opidalReportars 122e I. Street, N.W., Sde m WasMagton, D.C. 20MS
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-2 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S l 3 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE 1
0 4 September 15, 1989 5
6 e 7 The contents of this stenographic transcript of 8 the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory l-9 Commission's Advisory Committee on Naclear Waste (ACNW) , as
- 10. reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions 11- recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
12 No member of the ACNW staff and no participant at 1
13 this meeting-accepts any responsibility for errors or 14 -inaccuracies of statement or data contained in this 15- transcript.
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\_) UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR. WASTE In.the Matter of: , -)
)
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13th ACNN Meeting )
Dr.y Three ) :
i Frids.y, September 15, 1989 Room P-110 7920 Norfolk Avenue Bethesda, Maryland The meeting convened, pursuant to notice, at 8:32 a.m.
BEFORE: DADE W. MOELLER Chairman, ACNW Professor of Engineering in Environmental Health
,( Associate Dean.for Continuing Education School of Public Health Harvard University Boston, Massachusetts ACH!LEtniEES_IBEHHI:
MARTIN J. STEINDLER CLIFFORD SMITH WILLIAM HINZE ACNW CONSULTANTS PRESEN.I:
EUGENE VOILAND DAVID OKRENT DESIGNATED FEDERAL EMPLOYEE:
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1 EBQCEER1HGE 2 DR. MOELLER: The meeting will now come to order.
3 This is the third day of the thirteenth meeting of the 4 Advisory Committee on Nu' clear Waste. We have the following h 5 members here: I mm Dade Moeller, the Chairman. We have l
6 with us Martin Steindler, Clifford Smith and William Hinze.
7 We also have two consultants with us, Eugene Voiland and 8 David Okrent.
9 During today's meeting, the Committee will hear 10 and discuss the following topics: One is the Center for 11 Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses, and then our second topic 12 will be to wrap up any further administrative matters and 13 complete any additional letters that the Committee desires
/'3
(_) 14 to prepare during this meeting.
15 Before I go on and introduce our first presenter 16 this morning, I do want to mention that we are in receipt of 17 a letter from Chairman Carr directed to all NRC employees, 18 calling to our attention the fact that Robert Erowning, who 19 is the Director of the Division of High Level Waste 20 Manegement, is a recipient of the 1989 Presidential Rank 21 Award, and certainly we join in extending our 22 congratulations to Bob.
23 This meeting is being conducted in accordance with 24 the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the 25 Government in the Sunshine Act. Dr. Sidney J. S. Parry, l
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1 seated on my right, is the designated federal official for ,
1 2 the initial portion of the mee'ing.
t We have received no 3 written statements.or requests from members of the public or 4 other parties to make or'al statements during today's ,
l 5 session. j 6 A transcript is being kept and it is requested l 1
7 that each speaker use a microphone and speak loudly enough I
8 so that he or she might be heard, 9 Are there any comments from any of the members of 10 the Committee before we raove ahead?
11 (No response.)
12 DR. MOELLER: I see none, so we'll move ahead, 13 then, and the first presentation will be on the Center for
) 14 Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses, and that will be 15 presented by Jesse Funches, who is the Director for Program ,
i 16 Management, Policy Development and Analysis within NMSS.
17 I understand, Jesse, that you are the principal 18 NRC spokesman and liaison and coordinator in terms of the 19 NRC's work with the Center, roughly.
20 MR. FUNCHES: That's correct.
21 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Welcome. It's a pleasure to 22 have you with us.
23 MR. FUNCHES: Thank you.
24 What we'd like to do today is first provide the 25 Committee an overview of the Center for Nuclear Waste in
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^ ?1 - prop'aration for your visit to the Center in November.
2 The.way.we would like to.make the presentation,-I 3- :will present a general overview of the Center and NRC's l: ^
4 management of the Center.
'5- Mr.oBrowning will present a synopsis of the work 6 in the High-Level Maste Division at the' Center.
7 And.hr. Silberberg will discuss the.research work-m.
8 at the Center.
9 (Slides being shown.)
f) 10 MR. FUNCHES:' First, I would like to just start by B.
)p 11 'beginning with the. general purpose for establishing the 12 Center-for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analy6es in San Antonio, b "q 13 One of the primary reasons was to provide long 14 term continuity.in both tech assistance and research, l-15 recognizing.the long period of time that we will be involved.
16 in licensing a high-level waste repository.
17 In establishing long-term continuity, we were also 18 mindful of avoiding conflict of interest situatior.s.
19 The other purpose for establishing the Center was 20 to provide a central capability for performing and assisting 21 in the. integration of both high-level waste tech assistance E 22 and research. And this is related to all aspects of the 1
23 high-level waste program as required under the Nuclear Waste 24 Policy Act, as amended.
25 We do expect some synergistic effect by being able Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 o .
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l 1 to.have a central capability for performing high- level 2 -waste tech assistance and research.
3 This chart provides an' overview of how we,.within 4 ~NRC, is organized to oversee the operation of the Center.
5 And what I'd like to focus on are two things:
6 one, is the overall contract management of the Center 7 operation, and the technical direction to the. Center. And 8 basically, the technical direction is the responsibility of 9 the line divisions and offices. Overall Center operations 10 are performed by myself, as the Center Program Manager, and 11 Mary Mace, as the Contracting Officer for the contract. All 12 contractor activity is the responsibility of Mary.
13 We basically have three sponsors: Mr. Burnett, 14 for transportation; Mr. Browning, for High Level Waste Tech 15 Assistance; and Mr. Larry Shao, the Division of Research.
.16 In helping them. perform their management roles are element 17 managers and sub-element managers.
18 DR. MOELLER: Although we've been told this 19 before, this chart brings to my mind the fact then that, at 20 least for the initial portion, the Center will only deal in
-21 high-level waste?
22 MR. FUNCHES: The Center initially will only cloal 23 with those things that are covered under the Nuclear Waste 24 Policy Act.
25 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
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- 1 MR. FUNCHES: It would include high-level waste.
2 If there was a monetary retrieval or storage, they could be 3 involved in that. But initially, there is no other work
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4 outside of the NWPA.
5 DR. MOELLER: Thank you.
6 Now, are there not similar conflicts and problems 7 with low level waste? Or is it you want to walk before you 8 run, more like that?
9 MR. FUNCHES: I don't think -- we are not -- the 10 conflicts are not.as great with low-level waste in the sense 11 that there are some -- in that there are not -- we are not 12- licensing any DOE activity there.
13 DR. MOELLER: Right.
14 MR. FUNCHES: One of the primary concerns was with 1
15' the size of the DOE activity r.s it relates to the high-level 16 waste and the number of contractors involved, and DOE 17 ultimately becoming a licensee or applicant of NRC.
18 In the low-level waste, I don't believe we have 19 that same situation, primarily you would be getting 20 independent, I guess,. contractors or states would be 21 licensed at the sites.
22 DR. STEINDLER: How often do Mr. Burnett, Browning 23 and Shao meet to discuss technical programs?
24 MR. FUNCHES: Well, we meet periodically to 25 discuss the work at the Center from the operation of the O
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,,7 521 L) 1 Center. But I think in their day-to-day activity there are j 2 frequent meetings between Mr. Burnett and Mr. Shao. I know 3 there is a monthly meeting, a research and tech assistant 4 interface. Mr. Browning' might to expand on that.
5 MR. BROWNING: This is Browning.
6 Mr. Shao and I meet at least every two months and 7 usually every month with our staffs to compare notes on how 8 the totality of the program is going and any areas we want.
9 Minutes of those are kept. If you're interested, you could 10 look at some of those minutes. But the interface with Mr.
11 Burnett is not as formal and as active right now because 12 that's a relatively small piece of the effort at the Center, 13 and our involvement in that is kind of peripheral at this m
b 14 stage.
15 DR. STEINDLER: You two, then, Bob, convey to Mr.
16 Funches the things that you think you need to have done 17 either in the form of a statement of work or a requirement 18 cf some sort and then he passes that on to the Center; is 19 that the mechanism?
20 MR. FUNCHES: Yes, sir.
21 Maybe we'll move on to the next chart and talk a 22 little bit about the --
23 DR. MOELLER: I'm sorry, go ahead.
24 MR. FUNCHES: -- the sponsors and my role.
25 My responsibility as the Center Program Manager O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L_ _ _- -_ _ _- __- ___--
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, 'l basically is to oversee the' Center's operation; basically p
-2 assess the overall performance of the Center with input from 3 the technical sponsor and the program element managers; form 4- the administrative appro' val of costs; and work at 5 establishing an effective and efficient administrative 6 policy and procedure so that we can operate as efficiently 7 as possible.
8 For example, trying to institute a time and 9 planning process. One that actually that we have underway 10 now in that area is to try to streamline the monthly report 11 so that it.provides us with the minimum information 12 'necessary to oversee the Center. We'll probably have that 13- in place within a month.
) 14 So basically, I am there to try to make'sure 15 things are integrated; we operate in a consistent way; 16 problems with the smooth operation of the Center are 17 resolved timely. But not to direct the technical program or 18 to determine the research or tech assistance program.
19 DR. MOELLER: What is the basis of a monthly 20 report? I mean, did you -- I guess you considered 21 bimonthly, quarterly, et cetera?
22 MR. FUNCHES: Yes. Initially, basically -- the 23 purpose of the monthly report is two things: one, to 24 provide a status of the activities at the Center, 25 identifying the problems that we need to deal with. But O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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523 j 1 also-provide somewhat of a basis for the program element 2 managers to review the monthly cost' report.
3 Initially, we thought as the Center was coming up I
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4 to speed it was good to have a monthly report. In the long-5 term, we might.go to bimonthly or quarterly. But I think I 6 currently, as the Center comes up and as we try to make sure 7 any problems or status issues are resolved as soon as 8 possible, we'd like to stay with a monthly report.
9 I think with the monthly report it's probably a 10 little bit more information than we need and we're trying to 11 streamline that down to focus on status and problems.
12 DR. MOELLER: Well, now, the monthly report that 13 we've seen thus far seems to me to deal heavily with 14 effective and efficient administrative policies and I
15 procedures and those aspects.
16 Are they -- if they had technical data, if they 17 had done some technical work, should that also be in the 18 monthly report?
19 MR. FUNCHES: It shouldn't be detailed in the i
20 report. It should, for example, sag, "We completed a phase 21 of the research project this past month".
22 DR. MOELLER: The essence of it.
23 MR. FUNCHES: 3ut it shouldn't say what the 24 results were, unless there was a problem. Or it should say, 25 "We have completed the final report on regulatory analysis Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
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524 l 1- : of' uncertainties." But not the results of that analysis.
I 2 Now what we do get also are draft technical 3 reports that come to the program element managers and the 4 sponsors for their revie'w, even in.a draft. And we also get 5 the fina1Lreport, obviously, which becomes a contract 6 deliverable.
7 DR. MOELLER: So when we read the monthly reports 8 that we're seeing at the moment, we should not expect to see 9 summaries of technical data, merely an announcement that the 10 report is available or.in draft.
11 MR. FUNCHES: Yes, that it was completed.
12 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
13 MR. FUNCHES:- Or it might say it's under review at 14- NRC.
15 DR. MOELLER: Cliff?
16 MR. FUNCHES: The actual analysis, data, research 17 findings are provided in separate reports.
18 DR. SMITH: I was kind of struck, Mr. Funches, 19 about the length of the report and the magnitude of the 20 detail for a program that is just getting started. And so 21 I'm glad to hear you say that maybe you're -- that at least 22 you're thinking about bimonthly or quarterly, because when 23 the program is really up to full speed, if they have to 24 spend that much time grinding out all of this paper, it 25 leads me to wonder, you don't get that kind of report from O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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. x) 1 Sandia right now.
2 MR. FUNCHES: We do get a monthly report but 3 you're correct, it is not.as voluminous.
4 -We are, as a m'atter of fact, hopefully by the 5 beginning of.the Fiscal Year or shortly thereafter, we'll 6 have a more streamlined monthly report.
7 I agree with you; it has a little bit more 8 information than probably is necessary or necessarily 9 sufficient. So we will be doing that, and probably in the 10 next' year or two we will examine whether we want to go on a 11 longer time frame on each report.
12 DR. SMITH: I just have one other question, and 13 perhaps you're going to get to it later, and if you are,
) 14' I'll be glad to wait.
15 But I was curious as to the type of contract, the 16 duration of the contract, and what the agreement is with the 17 level of expenditure.
l l 18 MR. FUNCHES: The duration of the contract is a 19 five year contract. We are. currently in, basically in the 20 third year of the contract starting next month.
21 The contractual amount, I believe, it was a 22 graduated amount over a total --
23 DR. MOELLER: Come to a microphone.
24 MR. FUNCHES: This is Mary Mace, the contracting 25 officer.
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1 DR. MOELLER: You can come up to the main table, 4
- 2 if it's easier. Just sit at one of those microphones.
3 MS. MACE: Mary Hace, Division of Contracts and 4 Property Management.-
5 We wrote a five year contract and it'had a ceiling 6 of $42,500,000.
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!-'- 7 DR. SMITH: Over the five years?
8 MR. FUNCHES: Over the five years,
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9 MS. MACE: Five years.
10 DR. MOELLER: And that would be on starting low 11 and increasing?
12 .MS. MACE: I think the first year was $3 million 13 and then'it escalates to $11.
14 MR. FUNCHES: About $10 million, between $11
' 15 million a year.
16 MS. MACE: Yes.
17 DR. SMITH: And we're currently -- let's see, 18 we're still in Fiscal Year '89 --
19 MS. MACE: '89.
20 DR. SMITH: Getting ready to go into ' 90.
- 21 MS. MACE: Yes, we' re getting ready.
22 DR. SMITH: So when we go into ' 90, will that be 23 the fourth year of the contract?
24 MS. MACE: It will be the third.
25 DR. SMITH: It will be third. Okay.
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1 Thank you.
2 DR. MOELLER: And some of the purpose of my 3 questions, or one of the purposes, was to clarify these 4 monthly reports, because'I was opening those reports up and 5 looking for technical data and information, so I shouldn't 6 expect it to be there and so forth.
7 MR. FUNCHES: One of the things Research has 8 requested and we're implementing now is a quarterly report 9 that provides a summary of the research for that quarter.
10 DR. MOELLER: Good.
11 MR. FUNCHES: Which will be a quarterly, I guess, 12 report on the results.
13 DR. STEINDLER: Is that for Research only? Not q
(_/ 14 for Technical Assistance?
15 MR. FUNCHES: We have not decided to do that for 16 Tech Assistance at this point.
17 DR. STEINDLER: Is there some reason why you would 18 not automatically call for that across the board?
19 MR. FUNCHES: Well, we really haven't, I guess, 20 discussed it, but one of the things, in Tech Assistance you 21 have considerably more individual projects and you could end 22 up with -- because they don't - you know, they go and they 23 start and stop, you could end up having the final report by 24 the time you get a quarterly status report. But that's 25 something we definitely can consider.
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MR.' BROWNING:- .This is Browning.
2 We're basically more interested in the final-b 13? products than status reports. We' re trying to put our 4
'4 offort on product.
F 5- .The research thing spreads out over a longer 6- period of time. I think.they need some calibration as to-7- Lwhether the long-term product is on track. I think that's
,. 8 the basic reason.
9- MR. FUNCHES: This chart-here basically outlines 10 the responsibilities of the research sponsors and I guess 11 what I'd like to emphasize is a couple of things.
12 One is that.they are responsible for the work in
' 13 ' their respective areas. Basically, they identify the work, 14 'the priority work, and recommend might be a little bit --
15' not strong.enough -- they basically tell me what work they 16 vant placed at the Center. And unless there is a conflict 17- that needs to be resolved, the work is placed there. I 18- don't question whether this is the right work or not. It's 19 their responsibility as the line managers of those programs.
20 They also monitor the contractor progress through 21 different means: periodic meetings, monthly reports and as 22 we mentioned earlier, Mel will be getting.a quarterly report 23 on the results of the research. They will then help 24 interpret the scope of the work, perform the technical 25 evaluation and the acceptance of the work from the Center O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 and assist in the resolution of any technical problems that 2 the Center might be encountering in performing the work 3 And again, they're a part of the performance
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4 evaluation board to help assess the performance of the 5 Center.
6 DR. MOELLER: And I guess, again, maybe we've been 7 told, but I presume within NMSS and Research there is a l
8 committee or a group that periodically -- of course, we've 9 already asked about joint meetings and so forth, but who is 10 it then that oversees the technical side of the work of the 11 Center and makes sure everything is moving along well?
12 MR. FUNCHES: Basically, that's tha sponsers with 13 sitpport drom their program element managers. And in terms 14 of performance, evaluating the performance. There's a 15 Performance Evaluation Board which includes Mr. Silberberg, 16 Mr. Browning, Mr. Mcdonald from Transportation, the Division 17 of Contractors is represented with advice from the Office cf 18 the General Counsel. I don't think I missed anybody.
19 The other key group that's involved with the 20 oversight of the Center are the program element managers.
21 And their responsibilities are essentially the same as the 22 technical monitors, but on a smaller scale.
23 They are responsible for each of the program 24 elements and basically they are the agents of the technical 25 sponsor.
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530 V) 1 We currently have nine program element managers in 2 NMSS and Research. If you look, their responsibility 3 basically follows those that we talked about for the
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sponsors. But it is confined to individual elements. An 5 individuhl element would be like geological setting, 6 repository design and construction.
7 And there is one program element manager for the 8 overall operation of the Center, which includes the 9 administration and the management of the Center.
10 DR. STEINDLER: Is there an NRC employee stationed 11 in San Antonio?
12 MR. FUNCHES: No, there is not.
13 DR. MOELLER: What have been your major problems O'
( -) 14 thus far, you know, the major problems you've encountered?
15 MR. FUNCHES: I would probably say similar to any 16 start-up, you know, getting a system in place so that things 17 flow smoothly; resolving just the minor problems that come 18 up with start-up; creating an atmosphere of effective 19 interaction between the technical monitors and the Center; 20 trying to -- just a system of resolving a variety of small 21 management-type problems. And I think we're going a long 22 way towards that. A few still left, but I think we're 23 basically there.
24 DR. MOELLER: Okay. Now, in answer to I guess Dr.
25 Steindler's question, you pointed out there is not a full-O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 time NRC person in San Antonio. How frequently do you go 7 .2 down and how frequently do program element managers go down 3 there or their people come up here?
4 MR. FUNCHES: I would say -- and I would say these 5- are not phone calls -- I typically try to meet anywhere from 15 once per two months.
7 . Typically, we are there probably every month, 8 either they are here'or we are there.
9 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
10' MR. FUNCHES: Sometimes we have those' meetings and 11 we'll. go a day and a half to two days; sometimes they're l . .
( 12 half' day meetings. For example, the Center management might 13 be here for another purpose and we'll meet for a half day.
14 But I try to meet at least every two months.
15 The program element managers, between trips up 16 here and trips down there, I would probably say at least 17 once every three months, but probably closer to once every 18 month, with their counterparts.
19 I know Mr. Silberberg probably meets at least with 20 che Washington representative probably weekly. The same 21 thing with Mr. Browning, with the Washington representative.
22 DR. MOELLER: That is reminding us, then, that the 23 Center does have a full-time representative here.
24' MR. FUNCHES: Yes. That's correct.
25 DR. MOELLER: That's right.
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1 MR. FUNCHES: Mr. Bob Adler is the Washington 2 representative.
3 DR. SMITH: Let me just ask you a couple more 4 questions to complete my list on the contract, which I'm 5 curious.
6 It's for five years, so when that five year period 7 is up, in effect, unless there's something wrong you're 8 going to renew the contract with them? I mean, you're not 9 going out on the street, if you will.
10 MR. FUNCHES: We have the option to renew at the 11 end of five years and probably a year and a half or so 12 before that we have to go back to the Commission with a 13 recommendation to renew.
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(M) 14 DR. SMITH: I see.
15 MR. FUNCHES: So we do not have to go back out for 16 another bid.
17 DR. SMITH: All right.
18 And then is there a limitation on the amount of 19 work that the Center can subcontract out?
20 MR. FUNCHES: There is a limitation. That is, the 21 contract basically requires that work which is the core work 22 of the Center requires sufficient, you know, people to hire 23 full-time people for them at the Center.
24 DR. SMITH: But I mean, they can contract out.
25 MR. FUNCHES: They can contract out.
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- But they have to clear that through 2 you.
- 3. MR. FUNCHES:. They do not have to request our 4 approval of a subcontractor. They do inform us of the 5 subcontractor they have and the consultant they have, and 6 they also, on the conflict of interest, keep us informed of 7 all the conflict of interest issues.
8 DR. SMITH: Thank you.
9 DR. HINZE: If I may, a couple of related 10 questions, Mr. Funches.
11 What percentage of the activities of the Institute 12 are included in the Center? Is the Center a major 13 proportion of the Institute?
/ 14 MR. FUNCHES: Could I answer your question when we 15 get to a subsequent chart?
16 DR. HINZE: Sure can.
17 MR. FUNCHES: I would like to that at that time.
18 DR. HINZE: Fine. I'll follow-up then at that 19 time.
20 MR. FUNCHES: The next chart here basically gives y 21 you an overview of the Center operation. Basically, we have l
L 22 a president, typical support, administrative support. We 1
23 mentioned Mr. Adler here in the Washington office.
24 We also have a quality assurance organization that 25 is responsible for internal QA of the work of the Center.
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h 1 And then we have a technical' director and Mr.
2 Whitting for integration work.
3 And here, the primary technical program elements,
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4 we have Waste System Engineering and Integration, Geological 5 Setting, Engineered Barriers, Transportation and Special 6 Projects, Repository Design and Construction, and 7 Performance Assessment.
8 When you're out there in November, we'11 give a 9 more detailed discussion of different roles and 10 responsibilities of those areas and the particular work that 11 is going on there.
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535 1 DR. MOELLER: I note that several of the titles 2 are Acting, have thry been fairly successful in recruiting 3 top level people?
4 MR. FUNCHES: ' Fairly successful, yes. The 5 performance assessment' element, basically, we just created 6 this year, we're in a transition roll there. Primarily they 7 have been very successful in recruiting, the management or 8 the' team leaders.
9 DR. MOELLER: Then where they have gotten them? I 10 mean, internally from the Institute or outside?
11 MR. FUNCHES: The staff basically comes from both 12 Institute and outside, universities, industry. I believe 13 there was some from DOE and some from inside the Institute.
14 The last chart here basically gives you a snapshot 15 of somewhere of where we are. The Center currently has 25 16 people on-board and is expected to go to 50 people in FY ' 90 17 and basically level off at that level. These are 18 professional staff. In addition, there's about eight 19 administrative staff, secretaries, primarily.
20 The funding currently we have a total of $7.6 21 million at the Center going to 11.6 next year and stay in 22 about that range.
23 In response to your question, we're currently i
24 running about 20 to 25 percent subcontractor including the 25 Institute support. Based on the draft program element plan, O Heritage Reporting Corporation ,
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- ("% - 536 u \_I 1 operation plan we're projecting about 20 to 25 -- about 20 2 percent in FY ' 90 and ' 91, also, So about 80 percent of the 3 work is being performed by the Center staff.
4 DR. HINZE: Of'the total research effort in this 5 area?
6 MR. FUNCHES: The total research is going to be 7 less of a percentage. But this is the total Center, both 8 technical assistance and research, about 80 percent will be 9 performed with Center staff and the remaining 20 percent as 10 a combination of consultant and subcontractors and 11 Institute.
12 DR. HINZE: This estimated 50 in Fiscal Year ' 90, 13 50 professionals, what proportion of the total Institute is
( 14 that; is that 20 percent of the Institute?
15 MR. BROWNING: The Center has about 2300 people.
16 I'm sorry, the Institute has 2300 people.
17 DR. HINZE: And these people that are being 18 staffed in the Center, will they be totally dedicated to the 19 Center or will they also be involved in other activities at 20 the Institute? j i
21 MR. FUNCHES: They are dedicated to the Center.
22 DR. HINZE: Are there similar types of programs 23 within the Institute to those that are being carried out in 24 the Center? In other words, in terms of engineering 25 geology, groundwater, gechydrology, et cetera; is there O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
537 1 interaction between the Center.and other activities that are 2 going on in the Center?
3 HR. FUNCHES: The Center has a material program, 4 yes. There's geology -- maybe Bob -- let me have Mr. Adler 5 answer that. There are materials there in the Institute. I 6 know there's a major materials program.
7 HR. ADLER: Yes, I'm Bob Adler and I'm the 8 Director of the Washington Office of the Center. The 9 Institute has, as Mr. Funches says, very extensive materials 10 program. The Center is setting up a program which will 11 consist of a core staff in the Center and materials can be 12 searched.
13 And then using on a case basis those particular 14 individuals in the Institute in their field of material 15 research.
16 n other areas in geosciences the Institute has 17 basically no capability and all of the capability in the 18 geosciences area will be resident in the Center. Now, those 19 are two examples of the technology.
l 20 ,
DR. STEINDLER: Is any of the work being done at 1
21' the Institute, for example, in materials; is any of that p 22 related to DOE or its contractors?
23 MR. FUNCHES: Yes.
24 MR. ADLER: The Institute when it signed the 25 contract also put itself under the evnflict of interesting O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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V 538 1 ruling and the Institute cannot accept any contract from DOE l
2 or any other potential conflict of interest without approval 3 from the NRC. So we have to submit all proposals that we 4 consider -- the NRC considers as conflicts for approval to 5 the NRC.
6 The Institute has taken to cover itself under the 7 conflict of interest.
8 DR. STEINDLER: Fine, I understand that. But let 9 me get back to the specifics. Are there right now in place 10 DOE contracts and, for example, the materials area in the 11 Inctitute?
12 MR. ADLER: No. (
13 DR. STEINDLER: Thdnk you.
14 MR. FUNCHES: Unless there's additional questions, 15 that's an overview of where we are and where we're trying to 16 go. And Mr. Browning will provide you an overview of the 17 technical assistance program.
18 DR. SMITH: Before you go I just have one 19 question. I notice that in some of the writeups that, at 20 least the research group was going to continue to fund for 21 at least the next year and possibly later the folks at the 22 University of Arizona, because of the specialized expertise 23 there.
24 But is the plan to -- I mean, is Research going to 25 have to eventually move that work out of the University of Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
L 539 4']
1 . Arizona over to the Center or will they be able to maintain 2 it with the University of Arizona?-
3 MR. FUNCHES: The current contract, and Mel can 4 give you specifics, but'I believe the contract with Arizona 5 was extended for five years, Mel?
{
6 MR. SILBERBERG: Three years with an option for 7 four.
8 MR. FUNCHES: But the intent was to continue that 9 work for three years recognizing the unique facility, et 10 cetera. At the same time we are ensuring that the, you 11 know, that the Center have access to that and that we don't 12 duplicate anything.
13 MR. SILBERBERG: Well, let me just say -- and this 14 might get into, what I might be talking about -- basically, 15 if you take three to four years as foreseeable future then 16 that would be the right characterization.
17 And the hydrology work at -- right now, today, we 18' see the University of Arizona as what we would call center 19 of excellence and the University of Arizona, program there, 20 is a program that, in fact, a center -- as they built up the 21 geohydrology capability can build cn what's at the 22 University of Arizona. So it helps -- it moves in the
. 23 direction of strengthen the Center that way.
24 But at this juncture we have to go -- from a 25 programmatic standpoint we have to continue with the work at O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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- ., 1- Arizona for the foreseeable future.
2 DR. SMITH: Thank you.
3 DR. MOELLER: In terms of the Southwest Research
- 4 Institute and the Center' itself, are the employees employees L of a university or, you know, is the Southwest Research 5
6 Institute part of the university of something or other?
7 MR. SILBERBERG: No.
8' DR. MOELLER: It's not. So they don't hold 9 faculty appointments at some local or it's not part of some 10 major university?
'11 MR. .FUNCHES: No , it is not.
12 DR. MOELLER: It's totally separate.
13 MR. FUNCHES: It's separated.
14 DR. MOELLER: Thank you.
15 DR. VOILAND: Mr. Chairman.
16 DR. MOELLER: Yes, Gene.
17 DR. VOILAND: You indicate for Fiscal Year ' 89 a 18 current staffing of 25, what is the authorized level?
19 MR. FUNCHES: The authorized level basically --
20 the level that we are planning for is based on the work we 21 foresee now is 50; 50 professional and eight to nine 22 administrators.
23 DR. VOILAND: So you have to --
24 MR. FUNCHES: So basically in '90 we are hoping to 25 basically get an appropriate level, recognizing that if O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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L 541 1 things change'we need to increase that or if there's more 2 . work to be done that level can be increased. There is no 3 limit'on the number of people at the Center. But the number 4 is determined: (1) by the amount of funding: and, (2) 5 where it is -- the most effective thing to do is to hire at 6 the Center as opposed to a small piece of work which is not 7 long-term for a skill that is not long-term.
8 DR. VOILAND: Are the Center people housed in one 9 area or are they scattered throughout the Institute?
- 10. MR. FUNCHES: They're housed in one building 11 except for the Washington office. From time-to-time they'll 12 be working directly out of the lab on research projects.
13 But their primary office is in one building.
A
\_) 14 DR. VOILAND: Is my understanding correct that 15 they're involved more in calculation, computational type of 16 thing rather than physical experimentation?
17 MR. FUNCHES: Mel.
18 MR. SILBERBERG: I'm sorry, I may have missed the 19 question.
20 DR. VOILAND: I was just curious to know how it 21 broke out in terms of physical experimentation, you know, 22 laboratory type work as compared to computational?
23 MR. SILBERBERG: Actually, Dr. Voiland, I can't 24 break it down on a funding basis. But each of our programs, 25 at least the ones that you're going to hear about, the ones O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 that are going now, each of them have a strong experimental !
2- component-to them, as you might expect, because that's where J l
l 3 information is missing in the-experimental area. But there 4 are other components of'the program -- there are other 5 projects in the program that are solely analytical.
6 In fact, some of the programs even go outside the ,
f 7' laboratory into a field type environment.
8 So we're hoping there is a good mix between ,
1 9 analytical and experimental.
10 DR. VOILAND: For that experimental part of it 11 have you had.to acquire equipment for that or was the 12 equipment --
13 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes. I'll get into that. I can 14 give you the background on that.
15 DR. VOILAND: Okay.
16 (Slides being shown.)
17 MR. BROWNING: I asked Jesse to leave this 18 particular chart on the screen so I could just make one 19 point before I get into my presentation.
20 What this chart dotan't show is the ramping down 21 of the other contracts that both Research and NMSS have. As 22 you know, from earlier briefings we had projected the 23 ramping up of the Center and the ramping down of our 24 technical assistances and research contractors.
25 Unfortunately, I don't have the chart that shows l \ Beritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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'l 1that,'so I may be wetting your appetite for something'I 2 can't give you specifics on.
3- one way I've been measuring my success in 4 implementing this progra'mmatic change is the rate at which I 5 move my work, technical assistance work from the technical 6 assistance contractors to the Center. And if I recall 7 correctly, we had on the order of, say, 15 to 20 outside 8 contractors before we started this thing in my particular 9 programmatic area.
10 And just for your information this particular 11 year, Fiscal Year '89 which is just ending, we basically had 12 two -- if I'm recalling correctly -- one is the Sandia 13 National Laboratory which was the contractor that we were 14 using for our performance assessment piece, which I talked 15 to you on Wednesday on; and the other was the Bureau of 16 Mines. I'm sorry, and the National' Institute of Standards, 17 the old Bureau of Standards.
18 Those three contractors were the ones that I had 19 left as of this Fiscal Year. And Sandia will be closing 20 out; we don't have any funding for Fiscal Year ' 90 for 21 Sandia. As I mentioned in the earlier briefing, that's a 22 matter of wrapping up their work and reports and 23 transferring that to my staff and to the Center.
24 We've extended -- as I recall, we've extended the 25 Bureau of Mines work, to some extent, to continue to help us O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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I 1 in the area of natural resources because the Center has not 2 been able to pick up that piece at the rate I would have 3 liked, but that's not a particular problem.
4 And the National Institute of Standards will be 3 J
5 phasing that work out as appropriate.
6 But the message I'm trying to give you is that we 1 7 had laid out a plan for an orderly phaue-out and phase-in; 8 it's working pretty much on schedule in my area. In the ;
I 9 area of research it's a lot more difficult kind of thing to 10 do because of the longer term nature of their programs. And 11 Mr. Silberberg will talk about that.
12 I just would like to offer one other thing. The 13 other way I've been measuring the effectiveness of this is f k-) 14 the degree to which my staff, when I polled them, are they i
15 getting what they need to help them do their job. And it 16 was an interesting exercise. I think Research had the same 17 phenomena. Everybody was happy with what they were getting 18 with their original contract. This whole exercise was not a 19 reflection of unhappiness with what we were getting from our 20 other contractors, as you're well aware from past briefings.
21 So there was a natural reluctance and resistance, 22 if you will, on the part of individual people who were 23 perfectly happy with what they had to hang on as long as 24 possible to what they had.
25 So from a management standpoint I felt I was being D'
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1 kind of ruthless sometimes and I was kind of nervous about i 1
2' it and aggressively forcing the phase-out of these contracts 3 and the phase-in of the other.. Sometimes in briefings with 4 Commissioners' assistant's and,the Commissioners is a general 5 that burned all his bridges when he crossed the channel to 6' make sure the troops wanted to make the new thing a success.
7 And:you're always kind of nervous about that, so you like to 8 hang on to a little bit.
9 So I've managed to hang on to three and the staff i 10 has convinced me that I need to hang on some more to the 11 Bureau of Mines because of the unique expertise and the 12 information they have in the natural resources. And the 13 eame thing was true of Research. So it's just human nature; 14 there's no problem with it.
15 But it hasn't really been an easy job of 16 transition as you guys are well aware, and I know you're 17 concerned with how it's working.
18 If I could give you an example of one area that 19 I'm going to personally use as an example of, is it working 20 or not. And in a way I've stacked the deck because I happen 21 to think it is an area that's working effectively, but you 22 might want to either use this approach or pick another piece 23 to kind of probe yourself to get a feel for whether it's 24 working or not.
25 We had a lot of work being done in the area of
. t Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
546 1 geochemical investigations at Oak Ridge, and they were doing 2 very good work for us, no question about that. This is the 1
L 3 last report and I was just skimming it on my way here on the metro this morning so I'm kind of at risk because I' haven't-4 5 even had a chance to talk to my own staff on it. I don't W 6 think it has even reached your staff. But I advise'it to 7- your attention because when you go down to the Center one of l
8 the things you're going to hear about is the work they're 9 doing on geochemistry and you kind of probe -- because I'm 10 going to be doing it anyway, but you might also want to do 11 it -- to probe to see how well that transition appears to be 12 working.
13 This is done, this report covers everything up to
} 14 June 1989. They're not doing anymore. The Center is going 15_ to be picking it up. So it's a good -- I think it should be 16 a good test to see whether that transition is working well 17 and if it's not I'll be in a position to keep making it work 18 well. In that case I have burnt my ship behind me; I've got 19 to make it work.
20 DR. STEINDLER: Is part of your technical 21 assistance assignments at the Conter the kind of thing that 22 Oak Ridge and Brookhaven before that was doing in analyzing 23 the output of DOE for, in a sense, technical competence?
24 MR. BROWNING: Yes.
25 DR. STEINDLER: Is that a chore that you're going O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
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R 1 to turn over to the Center?
2 MR. BROWNING: That's a chore that my staff and my 3 piece of the Center would be doing as opposed to the 4 Research piece which wou'ld be doing confirmatory work. For 5 example, this is primarily independently confirming some of 6 the work that DOE was doing by actually doing some work in a 7 laboratory running geochemical absorption test.
8 The impression you get from reading and it really 9 is focusing in on the things that are important, which the 10 whole point of our work: are we really focusing in on the 11 importa.mt things, not trying to cover the whole range of 12 everything DOE is working on, but what's significant from a 13 regulatory standpoint.
/%
N 14 And one byproduct of this whole massive transfer 15 of effort in addition to all the other reasons for it is --
16 and I think it's really going to pay off in spades in the 17 long run -- is a very good connection between a regulatory 18 requirement, a regulatory concern, the laboratory work we' re 19 doing to confirm or deny something, and the very quick 20 transition of that to a licensing office use.
21 So the user need and that approach that we have 22 between ourselves and the office of Research is going to be 23 aided immeasurably if this thing works the way I anticipate 24 and the way I think the geochemistry piece is working, but I 25 want to probe thitt togetber with Mr. Silberberg to see if T'
(_)s Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
548 g 1 that really is working as well as we think it is and if not 2 figure out something to do to make'it work effectively 3 enough.
4 DR. MOELLER: 'Well, to take another example, Bob,
,p
. p. . 5 which-we have been talking about at this meeting and let me 6 just offer a couple of comments. One major area that I 7 would think it would be extremely difficult for the Center 8 to pick up would be the Sandia modeling and perforr ance 9 assessment work.
10 Now, I gather -- and I hope this is not 11 rationalization -- but I gather that the reason you can feel 12 sort of comfortable with that is that Sandia was at a point !
13 of writing the reports on the work they had completed. In 14 other words, they were fortunately at a point where it was a 15 natural time to shift.
16 And if the Center has to pick up or undoubtedly 17 they will have to pick up and continue that work, but at 18 least they have a period of grace in which to get ready.
19 MR. BROWNING: Yes, they do. And I think it's 20 particularly important to make the distinction between my 21 piece of the work at Sandia and Research's piece of the work 22 at Sandia. !
23 Research is not letting go of Sandia as fast as I 24 am. So I'm finishing up my piece, getting reports written.
25 He's still got them working on making sure we in the Center Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 have a good point to start off on and run with,~with regard U 2 to the tough unsaturated site work. That piece is still 3 geing on.
L 4 And if we need to we can continue to extend it, 15 but the only problem.there is if the Sandia people move out 6 completely, you know, as a result of their knowing we're 7 phasing out or their good people are going to be moving out
~
8 faster than we can take good advantage of. I'm not saying 9 that right. If their good people move cut faster, so if we 10 spend more research money there we're basically bringing 11 their people, their new people up to speed rather than our 12- people or the Center. .That's something Research is going to 13 have to watch very, very carefully.
ss 14 So that kind of gives you a reason why I .eas kind 15 of burning my bridges behind me when I felt reasonably 16 comfortable. Sometime my staff wasn't as comfortable as I 17 was. As a calculated risk -- and I took a greater risk in 18 those areas where I had great confidence in our own in-house 19 staff, probably more than they had at that point in time, if 20 truth be told. That's why I feel very comfortable about 21 phasing the Sandia work out because I think between the 22 Office of Research and my people, I have people that can do 23 exactly the same things theyre doing that I've been funding 24 them to do there. So I've got no qualms about it at all, at 25 least my particular piece.
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1 The Sandia piece and the piece of the University {
)
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2 of Arize' where they're doing field experiments that kind 3 of feed into the understanding and the ability to develop 4 models and make calculat' ions in the tough unsaturated site.
5 That's the piece that you want to hang on to the longest 6 until you're sure you can pick it up.
7 In fact, because the University of Arizona has a 8 unique test facility, a field site where they ca.n drill 9 holes, run experiments, perturb it, you know, add water and 10 you're not worried ebout compromising the real Nevada tough 11 site. They're going to be hard to convince me that we're 12 going to let go of that until -- that's one bridge I would 13 not recommend Research burn behind them until we're really
(
()) 14 confident that we either don't need it anymore, we've got 15 enough or we have an alternative in place and up and 16 running.
17 DR. MOELLER: Then under the procedures that have 18 been established for the transfer of the research to the 19 Center you will have on problem in hanging on to those key 20 elements that you believe it's necessary to --
21 MR. BROWNING: I'll let Silberberg answer that i 22 question. I hope not, but it's a budget funding hind of l
23 question, too, which Research has to struggle with. I 24 certainly would support it .
l' l 25 DR. MOELLER: I'll wait until --
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 u____________
'~ x 551 l) 1 MR. SILBERBERG: I think we can get into that.
2 DR. MOELLER: Fine, Okay.
3 MR. BROWNING: As a user of the product I I
4 certainly would be suppo'rting them if they want to hang on 5 te that piece long enough to make sure we really got a 6 viable backup in form of the Center where we need it.
7 What I thought, it might be useful to do is jus 8 focus on some of the examples of what we've been using the 9 Center for in this transition period and focus in on some of 10 the products.
11 The first bullet talks about an analysis and 12 evaluation of the regulatory uncertainties in our 13 regulation, and particularly the subparts B and E of our l 14 regulation.
15 And the second one, analysis of regulatory 16 uncertainties related to our regulatory requirements with 17 respect to DOE site characterization plan, exploratory 18 shaft.
19 Both of these exercises resulted in these two 20 products which I presume you have access to. They're kind 21 of thick documents. It basically represents an attempt to 22 get the Center management focusing in on: (1) what the 23 regulation is; and what it's going to take on our side to be 24 ready to say, DOE has done a good enough job to satisfy that 25 particular regulatory requirement.
I)~
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L 552 1 So in a way it's a training exercise-for them. In
- 2. addition, it was an independent check for us to make sure 3 that that strategy document-that I-talked about earlier.and 4 we briefed you earlier,"that.was issue SECY-285 wliich lays 5 'out my whole programmatic strategy for reactive work, 6 proe.ctive work. It was an attempt to make sure that we're
'7 really on track with regard to where we ought to be putting-8 ~ our effort to try to close regulatory uncertainties. Those 9 uncertainties that the agency is uniquely and only 10 responsible for trying to close.
11 And these are the products. We're factoring those'
'12' into our strategy. =It turns out that it pretty much 13 confirms what we thought we needed to do. There wasn't any
( 14 major new surprises and that is good. You could argue, I've 15 wasted some money and time doing it, but I think from a 16 training standpoint, getting their management and their 17 . technical team focusing on that kind of question was a very
.18 worthwhile exercise to make sure that they're really 19 focusing on the things that this agency is responsible for 20 and not trying to go over and answer all the interesting 21 questions that the DOE program needs to be answered.
22 There are two examples that we have prior to going 23 down to the Center to see firsthand what's going on.
24 The third bullet, they have been assisting us in 25 selected rulemakings, technical positions, and the format L Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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f 553 1 'and content guide. These are pieces and products of our 2 proactive work that's laid out in-our overall programmatic 3 strategy. And as part of that they did issue comments and 4 help us.on review of the DOE site characterization plan.
5 That should have been included in that bullet and 6 for some reason it's not.
'7 Originally in our original plan and we tried to 8 keep them immune and separated.from the day-to-day holly-9 bolly of the reactive part of my work. I was going to pick 10 that piece up with my staff and run with that while they 11' were getting up to speed in this transition period.
12 We concluded, and they concluded independently 13 that that was a mistake. If we had continued on with that 14 assumption and process it really would have been a mistake 15 because they need to get involved in the real world problems 16 of the Nevada site as early as possible.
17 So we did vector off some of their resources in my 18 particuisr area of their program and have them review the 19 site charactetizaties plan and provide comments and 20 questions to us which we factored into the final product 21 which we've issuad in the form of our site characterization 22 analysis.
23 DR. MOELLER: Did they come up with some real key 24 issues?
25 MR. BROWNING: Yes. I polled the staff and they O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
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1 all felt it was well worthwhile. It was the same kind and ,
2 type of help we would have gotten if we had gone to 3 individual contractors the way we normally would have done
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4 it. Now that is a little bit misleading in some areas 5 because when the Center came on the line they recognized 6 that they were deficient in some of the earth science areas, 7 the general category of earth sciences.
8 So to their credit they kind of polled around and 9 found out who some of our really good people were and lined 10 them up, I guess, as part of their proposal team to help us 11 in those areas. So in a way that comment might be a little 12 misleading because some of the comments were coming from the 13 long-term technical support base we had developed under
/^\
k- 14 individual technical contractors, but not all.
15 So on the whole it was a very useful exercise. It 16 forced their management to pay attention to what was going 17 on in the DOE program and the Yucca Mountain site and I 18 think it will pay off for them and it certainly paid off for 19 us. We got more than our money's worth on that particular 20 exercise.
21 DR. MOELLER: Well, let me repeat that back to be 22 sure I fully understand, and it certainly would represent a 23 way to get them up to speed rapidly and plus to represent 24 continuity. And that is, you're saying that the Center has 25 been able to call upon and indeed is lining up some of the
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1 same people that have-been advising the NRC. staff and 2 they' re going to noy help the Center on certain key issues.
3 MR. BROWNING: Right. If you look at their
^
4 subcontractor base, the 20 to 25 percent that Mr. Funches 5 talked about, one of the contractors had previously been 6 involved in our program in the hydrogeology area, so we've 7 had come continuity there, it has been very helpful.
8 Another was in the mining engineering area and 9 that's been helpful. So as they hire their own core staff R10 in those areas, of course, that will go away except maybe a 11 subcontract basis on a narrow piece that you only need for a 12 short period of time. A case base is a long-term core base 13 that we need, the Center has to hire on-board.
/~h
(/ 14 You will recall in some of our earlier briefings 15 we emphasized to you folks and to our own Commission that 16 one of the key areas they needed to hire were 17 hydrogeologists. They've now hired good hydrogeologist and 18 you can probe that when you go down there.
19 And the last but certainly not least is the 20 assistance the NMSS staff has been getting from the Center 21 in terms of its quality assurance program. This is a case 22 where the Center subcontracts to a technical support base 23 within that 2300 person population that's sitting at the 24 same site. They have some 20 odd people who are well 25 versed, well trained, well experienced in running all the L O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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(/ l 1 assurance audits for our regulatory requirements.
2 And that source of expertise has been immensely 3 valuable in allowing me to keep a lean and mean staff and
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4 still go around and chec'k these multitude of contractors l 5 that DOE has working on their program as part of their l 6 effort to try to get their QA program baselined and up to 7 speed.
8 It is also immensely helpful because we have put 9 the same QA requirements on the Center for both my work and 10 Research work that we are requiring of DOE. And these 11 people look at the Center or will be looking at the Center 12 as they run audits throughout this program the same way we 13 go look at a DOE program. And I hope to dispel this myth f\
'V 14 that these earth scientists and mining engineers and 15 geochemists and everything can't do a work program that 16 meets NRC's quality assurance requirements.
17 If there's a problem I should hear about it 18 because the Center people are going to start screaming, too, 19 and then we'll be able to address it.
20 I think the whole issue about QA is a smoke screen 21 and a bunch of you-know-what. And I hope to put that to bed 22 by insisting my own piece is held to the same standards. We
! 23 have a OA plan. I have the same people review their QA plan l
l 24 that I've got reviewing DOE's stuff.
25 That's something you guys would like to probe, 1
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1 too, I'm sure. I'm opening the door, hey, probe that and 2 see if that's right.
3 DR. MOEI.LER: That certainly res) de to our 4 criticisms. We have said that you should impose the same 5 requirements on yourself as you do on others, and it sounds 6 like you're doing it.
7 MR. BROWNING: And the fact that the same people 8 that were drawn on to help us go look at DOE will be the 9 ones that the Southwest Research uses to independently check 10 wb'a 1.he Center does. I think it has a high likelihood of 11 making sure we're looking at it on an apples and apples 12 basis and we're not treating ourselves, you know, our main 13 contract , ; 'any different than we're treating -- we're 14 insisting that DOE treat their people.
15 DR. STEINDLER: I would urge Mel Silberberg to 16 discuss that point regarding his Research program at the 17 same time -- on the OA.
18 MR. SILBERBERG: That has come up before. But I 19 think basically we're trying to fc11ow along those lines.
20 MR. BROWNING: If there's a problem we'll face up 21 to it, because if our renearch program and our people can't 12 do it, then we ought not be doing it on the DOE piece for 23 similar kind of work. It could go either way. We may have 24 learned something firsthand that says, my God, now that I'm 25 doing it myself it doesn't make sense and DOE you ought not O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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- 1. 'be doing it that way either.
2 Now, in terms of'what we're going to do: the staff' i
3 and the Center are currently in a process for the Center, {
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we've laid out what we want them to do in'the next couple of I 4
5 Fiscal Years. They've responded back and the staff.is 6 looking at that. So the program is focusing in on what we 7 want them to do in Fiscal Year '90. It will be primarily in ,
i 8 helping us in the proactive area where they'll help us 9 working on the rulemaking and techr.ical positions that we l 10 currently think are appropriate and worthwhile.
11 The second bullet --
12 DR. MOELLER: This is in writing the technical -- l l
13 drafting the technical positions and so forth?
( 14 MR. BROWNING:- Yes, and providing the technical l 15 support behind them.
16 DR. MOELLER: Okay.
17 MR. BROWNING: For example, in the rulemaking 18 areas one of the subjects that we have tentatively concluded 19 we need to become more focused on is the area of 20 substantially -- what does substantially complete 21 containment mean't And how do you translate that back into l 1
22 requirements that a designer of a waste package or an 23 engineer trying to do this work can relate to and all the 24 way back up to saying, yes, if you do it all that.way it's 25 going to meet our requirement.
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559 b'N 1 It's kind of a test case to see whether the 2 program architecture approach and looking ahead, what is it 3 going to take to satisfy us that you complied that 4 requirement. Going through that disciplined exercise 5 ourselves in parallel with DOE and iterating with DOE, 6 seeing if we can come up with something that's going to 7 satisfy both areas.
8 It may or may not ultimately end up in a s rulemaking, but we decided that's the umbrella under which 10 we carry it, because that's the best or practically the only 11 way you can close out a methodology or approach issue from 12 becoming an issue in a licensing hearing itself. That's 13 just one example.
O
(_/ 14 And since they're strong in materials area and 15 relatively speaking that's the area we at the NRC staff are 16 the weaknesses in right now, both on the research side and 17 technical assistance side. We are highly dependent on the ,
18 Center to help us out in that area. They, of course, 19 depending -- we also have the NIST people still on track and 20 Research has some help in some of the other testing areas in 21 the materials program.
22 DR. MOELLER: Can you name some technical 23 positions that they will be working on?
24 MR. BROWNING: Yes. The sits acceptance criteria 25 engineered barrier system, the environment, how do you pin O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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L 1- down the environment in which the engineered barrier system 2 is going to perform. Technical positions on radionuclides 3- transport; geologic mapping; seismicity; vulcanic hazards.
4 I might pick t' hat one, for example, that's an area 5 that's got a lot of interest right now, the tectonic aspects 6 of the site folds into one of the categories that you folks 7 -- are pushing, namely, focus in on site related issues that 8 seem to be fundamentally important to the acceptability of 9 the Nevada site.
10 Right now it does not look like to me, anyway, or 11 to the Center that */ ou would need to have a core staff 1:2 volcanologist on hand. I mean, that's going to be an issue 13 that kind of peaks and hopefully gets resolved und you may
() 14 need an expert from time-to-time but you wouldn't want to 15 run out and hire a world class volcanologist because he'll 16 get bored working on just this one particular thing. But 17 it's the kind of thing where you go out and contract on an 18- as-needed basis for an expert in a particular area where you 19 think is really important. And that's the approach that 20 they're going to take.
21 Is that enough of an example? I can give you -- I 22 mean, basically, you can look at our strategy document and 23 see the whole list of technice.1 positions and rulemakings 24 that we're working on. And you can look at the guidance we 25 gave the Center in terms of what it is we thought should O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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/~} 561 h %J l- 1 have priority and preference at this particular stage of our j i
2 program and the need DOE has for near-term guidance in those I 3 areas. And then eventually the program plans. So by the 3 4 time you get down to the Center I think the program plans 5 will have been approved and in' place and that might be a 6 good place for.you to take a look at where you want to poke 7 and probe while you're down there.
8 DR. HINZE: If I may, Bob, when would you expect 9 the Center to hire a consultant on volcanology or when would 10 you or your staff?
11 MR. BROWNING: I think they either have one on-12 board or making active arrangements to have one. No, two.
13 They already have two lined up. I don't happen to know 14 their names, we can give you that detail later.
15 But they were -- for example, when we h&d our 16 tectonic interchange with DOE that particular meeting was 17 not a meeting where we thought we needed those people, 18 particularly other than maybe as background information plus 19 I think they were off somewhere in the world watching a 20 ' volcano erupt or something, whatever volcanologists do.
21 DR. HINZE: Whatever they do.
22 MR. BROWNING: To keep their art up to speed. But 23 we will be bringing them on-board when we need them, if we 24 need them to match wits with the experts DOE brings.
25 DR. HINZE: Will you also be hiring people as O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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'~T 562 Li i consultants for your staff?
2- MR. BROWNING: We always have that option, but I 3 kind of think not.
4 DR. HINZE: We'll, I'm wondering about the Center 5 being an additional filter which might prohibit certain 6 interesting concepts from getting through to your staff as 7 they prepare.
8 MR. BROWNING: Oh, no, I don't think that would be 9 a problem. The consultants I hire would have intimate 10 access with our staff. I mean, the Center has to stand 11 behind what they're saying ultimately, but there wouldn't be 12 any particular filter.
13 DR. HINZE: So the consultants that they would be (m
(_) 14 hiring would also be interacting directly with your staff?
15 MR. BROWNING: Oh, yes.
16 DR. HINZE: Thank you.
17 MR. BROWNING: One advantage of an FFRDC is the 18 dividing line, I think, between the staff and the Center is 19 not as strong as it would necessarily be in some other 20 technical case. For example, I think if we figure out a way 21 to take ultimate advantage of it, the idea that our research 22 people are sitting off here doing nothing but reading 23 reports and, you know, visiting their contractors, I hope 24 will evolve and our people can under certain circumstances 25 actually take an active part in the research. I think O
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1 that's going to have an immense help on attracting the kind 2 of people and keaping the kind of people we need here at NRC 3 to make sure we're really in control and running this whole 4 thing and not turning it over to the Center and just passing 5 messages from the Center to DOE. That's not going t0 be our 6 role.
7 As you can tell, I am very enthusiastic about the 8 concept of the Center. I'm firmly committed to making it 9 work. We're not there yet. We're going to have growing 10 pains and erolution pains. But I think it's an extremely 11 powerful tool for the agency and our staff.
12 DR. MOELLER: Now, you could assign an NRC person 13 down to the Center for a year or two?
(')
(_- 14 MR. BROWNING: Yes, there are areas where you can 15 exchange people. I fully expect to send people down there 16 for as long as we can.
17 MR. FUNCHES: Dr. Moeller, we are putting in an 18 exchange program where we can exchange --
19 DR. MOELLER: Great.
20 MR. FUNCHES: -- staff here with bhe Center and 21 the Center can send staff here to work.
22 DR. MOELLER: Very good. I'm glad to hear that.
23 DR. STEINDLER: Bob, the Center in this material 24 that we have before us is identified 29 separate areas where 25 explicit staffing seems to be required. One of those is r')
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(g 1 ' administration, andLwe can set those aside, there's five
- 2 people;in administration;apparently. That= leaves you with. )
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!. 20 about 28. areas and I. assume those 50 staff that were ,
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4 ' indicated in that'first I viewgraph you had.are now going to-5 be' covering 28 areas representing less than'two. people on
- 6. the average. If you look down on the plan staffing they run l 7 from one to three. j 8 Does it concern you -- and if not, why not -- that 9 a single individual working in a single field that may be I
10~ quite broad may, in fact,'not represent a critical mass of 11 any sort?
12 .MR.. BROWNING: Yes, it does. In fact -- j 13 ' DR . STEINDLER: How do you solve that issue? 1 11 4 MR. BROWNING: We, Research and the Center have 15 been talking about that very subject: what is the right 16 depth and breadth and mix? Is it good to have a whole suite 17 of a whole bunch of people and then not have enough depth .)
18 and breadth or'would it be better to focus in on particular 19 areas. ;
l 20 I think Research can talk a little bit -- I'm not !
l I
21 sure -- is he talking about the current proposal that the 22 Center has?
23 MR. SILBERBERG: He has, in fact, the current 24 proposal. Because you may be looking at a piece of paper 2S that raised the very same question in our minds and in our O Beritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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. J 1 = dealings withLthe Center.
2 .DR. STEINDLER: The report for the period ending 3 ' June, July, whatever it is, that-was just included in our r .
4 ' plan.
- 5. MR. FUNCHES: Yes, that's the report.
6 DR. STEINDLER: Right.
L .7 MR. FUNCHES: And you're right --
.8 DR.LSTEINDLER: July 7th.
- 9. MR. FUNCHES: -- that is one of the things that we 10 ^ met and discussed. In the current Center proposed operation 11 plan there is a~different mix of those skills which covers 12 -- I think Dr. Silberberg is going-to talk about the skill
.13 areas for Research which also translates for high-level
) .
14 waste technical assistance. When he makes his presentation 15 he has one chart on the-skill area that we are currently 16- considering.
17 DR. STEINDLER: Do you have -- does the Center 18 have an option of introducing the concept of, let's say, 19 post-does into its structure, which is the traditional 20 approach that. universities on occasion have used or 21 students, and I use post-docs in students in that sense 22 interchangeably, where the productivity in the experimental 23 area at least, which is what I'm more familiar with, can be s 24- increased significantly. A temporary increase in, quote, 25 " critical mass" especially if you get someone on a post-doc O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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~3 It doesn't allow you to maintain that post-doc as
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4 a permanent cadre of people, but it does allow that person 5 or those people.who have been assigned in a particular area 6 and are permanent to have a wider interchange with people 7 and increase their productivity.
8 Is that an option that the Center could exercise?
s9 MR. FUNCHES: The Center has an intern program 10 where they do bring in graduate students and allow them to 11 work. I'm not sure --
12 DR. STEINDLER: That's allowed under their 13 contract, okay.
( 14 MR. BROWNING: You know, when you're down there it 15 mightLbe useful to exchange some idea, you know, things that 16 have been affected. For example, in the case of Argonne 17 National Lab, how do you work to attract and bring in really 18 good minds in the experimental area.
19 DR. STEINDLER: Well, that's basically what we do 20 and it works reasonably well.
21 MR. BROWNING: I'm sure they've been thinking 22 about that, and I know when I've been down there, 23 particularly during the summertime, they've had people 24 working there that are still in graduate school and the 25 hopes that they will eventually attract and then hire them.
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567 1 I think they're'doing the same kinds of things to attract c;1 2 and get good people.
3 DR. MOELLER: Well, that was one of the reasons 4 for my earlier question'about what ties did they have, you
.5 know, with a major university. You might even consider 6 within-the NRC what existed with the ACRS or exist with the 7 ACRS and ACNW where we have fellows some of whom are post-8 docs. You could consider establishing five post-doc
.9 fellowship research positions down there and go forward.
10 . MR . BROWNING: I think through the facility they 11 have the' Southwest Research Institute itself they obviously 12 have a pool of people they can bring in on draw for whatever 13 programs they have for attracting and keeping good talent.
( 14 The one thing I wanted to emphasize on this chart 15 rather than go all in detail is the importance of the second 16 onet.that's the one I'm going to be monitoring and working 17 on very carefully to make sure we're getting the right kinds 18 of people for the long term job that we've got on doing the 19 performance assessment piece.
20 In that regard, just as an aside, yesterday 21 afternoon I was down briefing the Technical Review Board 22 subcommittee headed by Dr. Carter on the performance 23 assessment subject. They had a speaker from EPA; they had a 24 speaker from DOE; and I went down to talk about what we were 25 doing. I think I would recommend highly that the committee O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4880 t
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1 and the consultants that you have working on the. ares of EPA 2 . standard and the performance get the transcript of that and
.3 'look at the briefing charts and kind of figure out if you 4 can have some' kind of in'terface with what they're doing on
.l 5 that area. Because my impression was, they're going to pay 6 a lot of attention to how the EPA involves and proposes and 7 finalizes their standard from the standpoint of imminent !
8 Technical Review. Board that reports directly to Congress on
-9 how this whole effort is going. So I think that would be of
.p 10 interest, for example, Dr. Okrent,.he's got a particular 11 interest in that area and ask him to look at this. So I 12 would recommend that very highly.
13 In the area of connections to universities and the 14 excellence of the technical work that the Center is going to 15 do, one of the things they'll be telling you when you go 16 down there is that they have lined up a -- I think what they 17 call their Advisory Board, where they've attempted to get 18 something -- I guess it's something on akin to the board 19 that comes and looks at NIST periodically, just to take a 20 look at see, hey, is this thing really a high caliber j 21 technically oriented thing completely independent of our 22 direction in telling them what to do.
23 And just for information, you may recognize some 24 of these names, they've lined up: Peter Flond who is 25 President emeritus of the University of Texas whose area is
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I l 1 O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1
569 v-1 geology; Guy T. McBride who is President emeritus of the 2 Colorado School of Mines in the area of chemical and 3 petroleum engineering, that's his area of expertise.
4 I think you ca'n see they' re trying to bring in 5 people that have broad areas of expertise in the areas that 6 they are initially the weakest in from the standpoint 7 Southwest Research does not have or did not have a strong 8 base to draw on for the Center in those areas.
9 It appears to be a good move. In fact, when 10 you're down there they may have some of these folks down 11 there that you could interfcce with them and compare notes 12 with them.
13 There's Andrew Rolands who is a retired Major (D General from the United States Army Corps of Engineers in L/ 14 15 the area of civil engineer. And Francis Cotter who was a 16 senior Vice President of Westinghouse whose area is nuclear 17 engineering and law.
18 So it might be of interest to you, if you're down 19 there and they have some of these people you may want to 20 particularly compare notes and talk with those guys.
21 I know we've all been concerned about the starting 22 off position where the Center needed to build up expertise l
23 in the area of the earth sciences, so that's one area we're 24 watching very closely. It's the one area the group that i
25 periodically assesses the Center's performance; has focused )
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1 its attention on and keeps encouraging the management down 2 there to keep their attention on. And I'm sure you folks 3 aJso would be watching that very closely..
4 One question t' hat got asked of me in the first 5 session, and if I recall correctly, I think it was Dr.
6 Steindler, could the Center hire NRC staff. Was that your 7 question, do you recall?
8 DR. STEINDLER: I know the question came up.
9 MR. BROWNING: At any rate, I'm told that there's 10 a general guidance or requirement out from the EDO that says 11 none of the NRC staff could go to work for contractors that 12 worked for NRC for a period of two years after completion of 13 their employment here.
14 Can somebody --
15 MR. FUNCHES: I think there's a new conflict of 16 interest regulation, government in ethnics, et cetera, 17 basically says, if you were involved in a procurement 18 process for a contract you're prohibited from working for 19 two years. You're prohibited from working on that project 20 that will appear before the NRC, et cetera. I think that's 21 what you're recalling.
22 MR. BROWNING: All right. So it wouldn't preclude 23 a technical person from moving from one side and doing 24 technical work?
25 MR. FUNCHES: Right, if they weren't involved in
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2 MR. BROWNING: All right.
3 Just on the aside, I don't know how many of you (
4 have seen a copy of the' court decision on the DOE 1
5 integrating contract. If there's an analogy on the Center 6 business on the DOE side the closest thing that comes to 7 ' mind is their attempt to get an integrating contractor for 8 their work. That court decision is very interesting because 9 the thing hinges on conflict of interest.
10 I don't know whether the staff has a copy. If not 11 we can get a copy to you; I think it would be well worth 12 your pursuing.
13 DR. STEINDLER: As I understand that exercise, 14 however, I don't think that integrating contractor was going 15 to actually do the work. They were going to farm out -- I
-16 think the folks that are in there.
17 MR. BROWNING: In some cases they were going to do 18 and eventually some of the contractors be -- I think you' re 19 right, the analogy -- l 20 DR. STE'NDLER: No --
21 MR. BROWNING: -- you got all these contractors 22 doing the work, you need somebody trying to make sure all 23 the pieces fit.
24 DR. STEINDLER: It's more administrative.
25 MR. BROWNING: That is more the concept of it; O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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, f. 1 l' you're'right. f 2 Are there any.other questions before Mr.
3 Silberberg --
l 4 DR. VOILAND: . Bob, we talked a little bit earlier 5 about the monthly report and that monthly report of which we 6 have one of the copies seemed like it was more of an 7 administrative sort of a thing.
8 MR. BROWNING: It's a management.
9 DR. VOILAND: That's right.
10 Now, do you get a technical report, say, a 11 highlight report that tells about some kind of breakthrough 12 or a problem area or what have you that comes in on some 13' periodic basis?
( ). 14 MR. BROWNING: I think most of our turnaround 15 times are short enough that the individual project managera 16 are focusing in on the product itself. So I think the 17 answer -- right now the answer is, no, I don't. If there 18 are any major problem it should get highlighted in that 19 report. That's the report I look at right now.
20 DR. VOILAND: One advantage from a highlight 21 report or.something like that is that on a routine basis it f 22 makes people think about program, program objectives, how 23 they're proceeding towards solutions and so on.
24 I've often thought that those kinds of --
25 MR. BROWNING: It's a balance between status I
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ll : reports versus the product, and I've been pushing the 2 . product rather than status reports.
3 But the Center has a lot of capability for giving 4- 4 -you about any kind of in' formation you want because it's 5 highly computerized.
6 DR, VOILAND: These don't have to be very 7 . complicated.
8 MR. BROWNING:
No, I understand your point. If 9 something significant technically is happening we ought to 10 know. But-the data they contact between my people and their 11 people ought to be such that I hear about it orally. I 12 don't want people burdening the system with paper. I mean,
~
13 we already have'a system where we want an LESS to have all 14 his paper. And my push is to keep the amount of paper down 15- to what really is significant. I'm trying to resist more 16 and more damn status reports. !
1 17 DR. VOILAND: I've often thought those kind of 18 reports, I mean, serve their best purpose, once they're 19 written you can then throw them in the wastebasket because 20 they have made people think about things.
21 MR. BROWNING: Unfortunately, our system doesn't 22 allow you to throw anything away.
} 23 (Laughter) 24 MR. BROWNING: It gets immortalized into some 25 computer system.
i O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
,.,3 574 L) 1 DR. STEINDLER: Well, you know, the current 2 monthly -- if this is a good example of what has been in the 3 past and I have not kept i up with it -- is,.in fact, a 4 mixture of this highlight report that you're talking about, 5 Gene, and management and the ratio of managerial text pages 6 versus technical text pages is about 1,000 to 1, which for 7 some of us is in the wrong ratio.
8 MR. BROWNING: We'll go back and take a look at 9 that. I think by the time you get down to the Center we'll 10 have a better answer for you on that.
11 DR. STEINDLER: Do you anticipate that the 12 product, the paper product of the Center will be primarily 13 topical reports that are issued either under the NUREG label
!}
(/ 14 or under their own label? Is that the mechanism that you 15 envision as ths way to communicate both raw and interpreted 16 data to you and the public at large?
17 MR. BROWNING: Well, I tnink if you're talking 18 about raw data you really ought to talk to Mr. Silberberg.
19 I don't have a whole lot of raw data. But this is the kind 20 of product that we would be getting out of the Center, these 21 two reports on my particular side.
l 22 DR. STEINDLER: Okay. In this monthly there's no I 23 obvious distinction that I could unravel without asking 24 people what all these acronyms mean. Between the source of 25 a problem coming from your shop and the source of the r~s b Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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1 -. problem coming from Mel's shop, I assume that's done with
-2 malice of forethought. But that also makes it difficult to 4
3 determine what kind of answer to expect and what kind of, if 4 there is a technical comment, what kind of technical. comment 5 to expect.
6 It may well be useful, at least for us, to 7 reparate what I would call the purely managerial fiscal B personnel, even maybe QA issues, from technical highlights, y 9f which is what: basically Gene said.
f.
hlI 10_ MR. FUNCHES: Dr. Steindler, that is exactly what 11 we are doing in the new reports.
12 DR. STEINDLER: In the upcoming reports.
13 MR. FUNCHES: We have an outlined developed; we're
{
14 going through the final stages of that. There will be a 15 section.that talk about staff and finance, et cetera.
16 DR. STEINDLER: Fine.
17 MR. FUNCHES: And it will be smaller and the rest 18 of it will talk about the technical program.
L 19 DR. STEINDLER: One last point: is the Advisory 20 Committee on the distribution list for those topicals? For 21 example, the one sample of which you've shown?
22 MR. FUNCHES: Yes. At your request we are 23 providing you a copy of all the final reports that are 24 coming in.
25 OR. MOELLER: And there have been, you've O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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576 J1- mentioned, two. .'Have there been about three? The total 2 number of reports to'date? )
'. '3' MR. BROWNING: I don't happen to have that off the i i
top of my head, but we'l'1 make sure you get a complete list.
4-5 DR.' PARRY: I believe about five over a year and a
- 6. half or so have been issued and I believe that we have --
7 DR. MOELLER: Well, I think again --
8 DR. STEINDLER: Are these technical reports?
9 DR. MOELLER: For those of us going down -- well, i 10 for all of the committee members, I know I got one or two of 11 the first ones about looking at the regulations and, you 12 know,'what you just mentioned, what research do you need to 13 support the enforcement of the regulations.
14 But I think we ought to -- Jack, you should 15 package up a complete set and fire them out to all of us.
16- DR. PARRY: Yes.
17- DR. MOELLER: Any further questions or comments?
18 (No response) 19 DR. MOELLER: If there are none, then it's a good 20 time, Mel, to take a break. So we'll take a break and then 21 resume with Mel Silberberg.
22 (Whereupon, at 10:05 a.m. a break was taken.)
23 DR. MOELLER: The meeting will come to order.
24 We'll pick up where we left off at our break and 25 that will be to hear from Mel Silberberg on the research O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 operations, and Mel is chief of the Waste Management Branch 2 of the Division of Engineering within the Office of Nuclear 3- Regulatory Research.
4 (Slides being'shown.)
5 MR. SILBERBERG: Thank you, Dr. Moeller, and
- 6 members of the committee.
7 What I'd like to do briefly this morning is cover 8 three areas in an overview sense. I'd like to tell yon 9 about the status of the effort of the Office of Research and 10 the Center in the continuing effort to develop a viable 11 productive and quality research organization and program at 12 the Center. We think this, in fact, sort of a collegial 13 shared responsibility.
( 14 I also will provide a very brief summary of the 15 research program, the NRC research program at the Center 16 that is.now evolving. That has been evolving through the 17 past -- almost past two years -- and talk about the status 18 of projects, both those ongoing and those that are planned 19 for next Fiscal Year.
20 I hope finally that my presentation and the 21 discussion that follows will provide a good basis for your 22 visit to the Center at the end cf November to give you, I 23 think, sufficient perspective; and that's what I'd like to 24 accomplish.
25 First let me talk a little bit about building the O H9ritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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s l2 I think that NRC and the Center have really 3' undertaken a major challenge in this venture. The Center is
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ud - ltrying to build a research organization to meet what: we and
'S RES and Research would see in terms of the characteristics G of a research organization. And this largely' evolves.from 7- 'the. kinds of insights and thoughts that are, in fact,
~8' ' embodied in the research philosophy of the Office of 9 Research which Mr. Beckjord discussed on Wednesday, which 10 is, in fact, part of our five year plan.
L il- What the Center and NRC and the Office of Research 12 have come down to after looking at both the scope of.the 13- work th'at is planned, that's cngoing as well as that vhich 14' is planned, and looking at - going over, of course, with 15 NMSS -- looking at the scope and the type of disciplines 16 . involved in their work. And together try to narrow down 17 into specific but broad areas the large list that Dr.
18 Steindler referred to which listed a lot of individuals. In
- L 9 ~ effect, not only has that list been compressed somewhat but 20 it, in fact, been brought together in the following context 21 looking at the three major characteristics. That we're 22 looking at depth and breadth.
23 In the area of, let me just say breadth, rather 24 than looking at narrow individuals in a particular one of 25 these areas, what one would hope for looking towards the
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1 ,long-term would be a number of people, core people, within 2 eachlof these excellence areas, expertise areas that, in 13 - fact, together would cover a broad range, so that, for 4 example,.given the size'-- given the physical size and 5 limitations of the Center itself.
6 -And that, I might say, is not a.very easy job to 7- do and it takes a lot of work on the Center's part, working 8 with us to try to get that. To make sure they underetand 9 the direction.
10 Because as the program comes up to speed and 11 people come aboard if one changes -- drastically changes the 12 discipline, the scope of the -- the discipline scope of the 13 work.that's going on at the Center, which we don't believe
( 14 will happen, then we, in fact, could have a poor mix of 15 -disciplines.
16 So once you go in and bring people in and build up 17 the flexibility is very limited compared to, let's say, a 18 very large research organization such as a national lab. So 19 the constraints are, in fact, very difficult.
20 Let me just note -- I'm just not going to read 21 these, we're going to get over to the next slide and you'll L 22- see the kind of numbers we're talking about roughly.
23 Let's talk about depth. Given a critical mass in 24 each area, and again, we have a concept of critical mass and 25 we think it's workable. Critical mass would involve a depth Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
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1 of experience that would go from what we would call entry 2 level scientific and technical to the experienced level, 3 mid-range all the way to what we would call senior staff. !
4 And senior sta'ff where possible, where this can be 5 done, would, in fact, represent -- would be individuals that 6 have -- would provide scientific leadership in a research 7 program and, in fact, would be recognized at the senior 8 level as scientific -- as leaders in their area of science.
9 So that's how we see the big picture; and that's 10 what we're working towards.
11 DR. OKRENT: Excuse me.
12 Before you take that away could I understand, at 13 the Center there should be centers of excellence in the six 14 areas shown; is this correct?
15 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes. There's some other areas.
16 DR. OKRENT: Plus other areas. But certainly in 17 these six.
18 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes.
19 DR. OERENT: And then you went on and mentioned 20 the importance of having people who had some breadth that 21 couldn't be too narrow or you run into a problem.
22 How then do you deal with two kinds of problems:
23 the first is that when you're doing performance assessment, 24 in particular you have a need to have in-depth insight in a 25 very large number of areas and perhaps pro and con and so Beritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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- (3 forth and so on, which, in fact, usually.is hard to get from 1
2 people who have breadth over the same region.
3 For example, suppose to take ocochemistry, you may 4 have somebody who has some good knowledge of the topic, but 5 not really deep insight into what may affect, let's say, l-6 retardation,-and what are the phenomena importantly, and how 7 could they be altered and so forth and so on.
L .8 And then, secondly, again, when you're looking for 9 this depth, if I think of our own experience on the ACRS in 10 seeking for depth of insight on seismic matters we found it 11 relative to have of the order of six people, all of them 12 having in-depth insight because that way we got a spread of 13 the in-depth knowledge.
(f 14 In other words, there was a. wide spectrum of 15 opinion from these people who are all relatively deep 16 experts. And I have to assume, at least in some of these 17 areas, certainly that will be the same; and then the area of 18 climatology there will be in-depth guessers.
19 What are you going to do, you know, to deal with 20 that?
21 MR. SILBERBERG: I'll put on the next slide, I 22 think it will get into a little bit more towards answering 23 the question or actually a point which I think is an 24 excellent one because you've identified the problem, 25 certainly which I was trying to communicate.
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c 582 h' 1 What we're looking at here, and you have to 2 understand this and then we'll go further into the next 3 slide, if you look at the core staff profile at the Center 4 and in those disciplines'that include the research course 5 there as well as where they're in the same discipline areas 6 where Mr. Browning's needs are for NMSS you have a number 7 like 31. And as we.go over to the next s3ide you will see 8 that some of these people are, in fact, shared in a fairly 9 logical way. So that the research maintains continuity 10 while the full expertise is available from here, from both 11 people who are dedicated more, let's say, to Mr. Browning's 12 work and those people who aro dedicated more to ours.
13 And then you would almost look at this and say 1
14 that the people might be on the average as much as like 50 15 percent on the average. In other words, a person is working 16 -- might be working.in each area half time in each area.
l 17 But that's -- I don't want to really dwell on that.
1 18 For example, in the case of geochemistry we're 19 showing a number like six. We would hope that within the l
20 broad category of geochemistry which, by the way, includes l
l l 21 more than just geochemistry, but it gets involved in the 22 work we have in natural analogues, people looking at the 23 transport of radionuclides contaminates. But what we hope is 24 within that core of six, if I have -- we have the right 25 depth, okay, and breadth of those six individuals that, in Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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\5 1 fact, that's a workable critical mass, okay, for 2 geochemistry.' And if the six people can, in fact, in a
- 3 synergistic way work across and, you know, collegially work
- -. '4 as one would expect in a' large group work across those j 5 lines.
6 I will note -- I will note that the challenge that 7 the Center has and the challenge that NRC has is that, 8 whereas, if:the program were much larger by, let's say, an 9 order of magnitude in resource, it's not, and I start to i
10 approach, if you will, national laboratory type of size; 11 then I'm dealing with a different -- then I'm dealing --
12 then my ability -- want the ability to be flexibility is a 13 lot better.
,e (J 14 But we think that these, with the right mix, the 15 right depth and breadth mix, that these, in fact, are 16 reesonable sizes, critical masses, in the areas where work 17 is needed. We're projecting our needs, both the research 18 side as well as the technical assistance side.
19 I have to agree with your point and that's 20 basically the challenge that we have.
21 DR. STEINDLER: It sounds like kind of a numbers 22 game. When is a geochemist not a geochemist? In the table 23 that we've got in the July 7th report from the Center 24 identifies two geochemistry folks.
25 NR. SILBERBERG: Right.
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1 DR. STEINDLER: So you've pulled in four people
'2 out.of the rest of.the area and you have ILbeled them j 3 geochemistry.
4 Now, just beca'use we have collapsed into six 5 ' categories, what used to be 29 categories, which 29 u 6 categories'are, I thought, quite ressonable in their.
7 breakdown; that doesn't allow you to redefine the fact that 8 you've got geochemistry at a critical mass.
9- MR. SILBERBERG: Agreed. No, I don't disagree.
10 I think what's happened is, I think there's been 11 -- over the last three months a much more, in effect, a 12 weaning down of all of those specialties into a reality of 13 the characteristics of what those six geochemists might
'( ) 14 encompass.to.try to pull in some of those areas.
15 But for the Center to be able to go out and hire 16 an individual in each one of those areas is just not 17 practical. If a person, let's say, if the Center needs an
- 18. expert, for example, on Mr. Browning's program for, let's 19 say, might only be a month or two of work, then that's a 20 case where they would have to go out and get subcontract 21 expertise.
22 DR. STEINDLER: I'm not sure I understand the role 23 of that kind of example in what I think we're talking about 24 here. Clearly, geochemistry, material science, rock 25 mechanics are likely to be ongoing programs that extend far O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l-
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3 DR. HINZE: Are these staff, Mel, or are these 4 positions? In other wor'ds, a geostatistician, for example, 5 could be half of his time in geochemistry and half in 6 geology; is that the case or are these actual positions?
7 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes. In other words, these 8 are --
9 DR. HINZE: I went through, for example, before I 10 saw that you were doing this, I went through and tried to 11 put labels on these 28, 29 different areas of expertise and 12 I didn't come up with your numbers at all. In fact, I had a 13 hard time making half of your numbers. So I agree with Dr.
rm
() 14 Steindler.
15 MR. SILBERBERG: What actually happened, when I 16 said we were -- in the last three months we were weaning 17 down. In our July management meeting at the Center my staff 18 actually took a very hard look at the disciplines that we 19 needed for the work that was not only ongoing and projected, 20 okay, took a very hard look at that and in concert with the 21 NMSS people at my level and the Center, came to in effect 22 was driven by -- this list now was driven by, as we saw the 23 needs and the type of disciplines that are represented in 24 each of these areas.
25 Now, there is a more -- when we provided in the Heritage Reporting Corporation '
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/' s 586 L) 1 research area a list of what we call, what type of a staff 2 profile do we see for the work that we have in mind, the 3 ongoing work as well as the project work and the starts, we 4 indicated some of the characteristics of these geochemists.
5 We just didn't say geochemists; we said geochemists but or 6 in some case we would mix the geochemists with the part that 7 would be -- if wo were fortunate enough to have experience 8 in natural analogues.
9 DR. HINZE: Are you telling us that this hiring 10 profile then is no longer valid, is invalid or are you --
11 MR. SILBERBERG: The profile of 29 which came in 12 one of the monthly reports has been refined. It has been 13 refined based on strong input from us, NMSS, and a 14 realization of all the groups that, in fact, in practice 15 that's how one would have to hire these people.
16 MR. FUNCHES: Mr. Hinze, the profile you're 17 looking at in the July report --
18 MR. SILBERBERG: I think it's the ones from a 19 previous report.
20 MR. FUNCHES: Right.
21 DR. HINZE: It's in our briefing book on page 6.
22 MR. SILBERBERG: I'm not sure what month that is.
23 DR. STEINDLER: July 7 is the last date.
24 MR. SILBERBERG: Okay. That was before --
25 MR. FUNCHES: July monthly report reflected the
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- 587 l' planning information basically early-on. In the last three 2 months or so we have, you know, gone through the NRC's plan 3 and process and come up where we were going in terms of work 18 load. And the numbers t' hat you're seeing there reflect.that 5 new work load and are based on more up to date information 6 on what the research project will be; what the technical 7 assistance project will be for the coming five years. So 8 that's a projection of the staffing need based on different p-9 information than that which is in that last monthly report.
10 DR. STEINDLER: I guess I continue to be confused.
11 For example, you've left out totally quality 12 assurance. Quality assurance is listed at three people 13 here.
14 MR. SILBERBERG: That is listed. And another --
15 quality assurance --- see, we' re only showing 31 staff.
16 There are systems engineering; quality assurance; there are 17 other areas that will be -- that are coverod, that kind of 18 cover the entire Center operation.
.19 MR. FUNCHES: Those are the areas there that 20 'primarily relates to the research effort and tech 21 assistance.
22 MR. SILBERBERG: We have research and tech 23 assistance are sharing disciplines. Sharing people with 24 this.
25 DR. MOELLER: And this 31 is not 31 full-time >
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L 1. equivalence, is it, it's a much less number in terms of real 2 people?
3 MR. SILBERBERG: No, these are 31 real people.
4 DR. MOELLER: 'I thought you said, though, under 5 geochemistry.the six people, some were only half-time?
6' MR. SILBERBERG: No, no, I meant -- well, some of 7 the six nominally 75 percent of their time would be on the 8 research program,and 25 percent of their time would be on 9 the TA.
10 DR. MOELLER: But they are then assigned only as 11' geochemists; they're not split off and also covering 12 something else?
13 MR. SILBERBERG: No, that's correct.
). 14 DR. MOELLER: All right, I misunderstood that.
15 DR. HINP5: Will we be receiving an up-to-date 16 hiring profile as part of the next monthly report?
17 MR. FUNCHES: What I would like'to do is recommend 18 we provide it to you after we finish our ongoing review 19 which will probably be in about three or four weeks.
20 DR. MOELLER: And this table on the screen, those 21 are what they would like to have or they are what they have 22 on-board? -
23 MR. SILBERBERG: That's what they would like to 24 have when they' re up to full staff. I'm sorry if that 25 wasn't clear.
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- o- . 1 Just to give you an example, it's not a numbers 2 game and, you know, everything is fairly -- it's really 3 straightforward.
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4 Take material sciences, okay, one is looking for 5- people involved in corrosion -- with corrosion background.
6 There will, in fact, be people referred to as material-l 7 scientist and metallurgists, but one of the individuals is 8- an electrochemist.which is vital to corrosion work, to the 9 corrosion work.
10 So we put the electrochemist on the material 11 sciences, because.we understand that that's where -- rather 12 than just list electrochemistry by itself as a discipline.
13 This is a practical pragmatic way in order to manage the
-( ) 14 program of actually, you know, keeping track of where we 15 are.
16 And,-in fact, when you look at it it's very 17 workable within the scope of the programs. That's really --
- 18. there isn't much more I can say about this. I have a 19 suspicion this might be confusing.
20 Bill.
21 MR. OTT: I'm Bill Ott, the Research Program 22 Ele; ment Manager for the Center.
23 I wanted to clear up one thing that Mel said a 24 little bit earlier. He implied that the breadth requirement 25 was something we were putting on individuals, that's not the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 case. The breadth requirement is something we want for 2 those areas of expertise. We want, you know, in 3 geochemistry to represent the broad range of geochemistry 4 that we're going to see'in the natural environment out 5 there. If we need specialists in hydrothermal systems, then v 6 we'll have a geochemist that specializes in, say, economic 7 geology cr hydrothermal systems and that will complement 8 other expertise.
9 We expect these people to have depth, to be 10 scientific, you know, to know their fielde extremely well.
11 And from there we go to the other requirement, wanting some 12 younger new people in the field, some with experience and 13 some with a lot of experience in the field and perhaps i~.
- k. 14 national reputations.
15 This whole -- we have come to grips over the last 16 three months with the need to define what we really need in 17 the center of excellence; whereas, prior to that, perhaps, 18 we in the Center have not spent enough attention to what you 19 needed to get, some kind of a synergistic effect and there 20 was too much reliance on getting a whole list of people with 21 very broad backgrounds to cover 75 different fields of 22 expertise.
23 We realized if we did that we wouldn't have a 24 research organization that could give us the quality 25 research product. And we've had to sacrifice, also, in O
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591 l terms of Center staff numbers in order to allow a little bit 2 more flexibility with subcontracting to bring in the areas 6-3 that we don't need as much effort in.
4 DR. STEINDLER: Are we currently in the fourth 5 quarter of the third. year of the operation?
6 KR. SILBERBERG: We're in the fourth quarter of 7 the second year.
8 DR. STEINDLER: Second year.
9 MR. SILBERBERG: Second year.
10 DR. STEINDLER: That doesn't make any sense.
11 MR. SILBERBERG: Most of what's on the next slide 12 we have actually covered in the prior discussion. And we 13 would add to this about roughly six more FTEs for 14 consultants and subcontractors, you could add to that.
15 And if you look at the bottom line for the 16 research program it's about roughly 18 FTEs.
17 DR. OKRENT: Can I raise a question which I think 18 maybe Dr. Moeller was alluding to.
19 Sometimes it's difficult for people to maintain 20 themselves at what I'll call the frontier of a field when 21 they're not in an environment which forces it, I'll put it 22 just that way.
23 If you're at a major university, if you want to 24 continue to be recognized as being at the frontier of the 25 field there's a certain pressure that exists, in fact, which O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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2 I think there are very good people who will be 3 working, for example, at -- I'll just pick another field --
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4 aerospace companies who really may become the experts in 5 whatever it is they're doing, but they become somewhat, 6 perhaps, detached from things elsewhere but related and in a 7 sense are not, perhaps, as generally at the frontiers as 8 their counterpart, the university.
9 It seems to me that one can look around the 10 country at research institutions and sometimes you will 11 find, in fact, the people there are at the frontiers because 12 that's where the frontier work is done. But all too often 13 that doesn't occur.
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(/ 14 You don't -- you're not associated with a major 15 university, I don't see a program which would somehow have 16 the impact that might occur if one were very closely -- in 17 other words, if you had in effect principal investigators 18 who were partly with the Center and also professors which, 19 in fact, some laboratories consciously try to do in an 20 effort to not get stale or whatever you want to say.
21 Do you have any concerns in this direction?
22 MR. SILBERBERG: You raise a very good point.
23 And, in fact, we can point to one area in the geohydrology 24 area where, in fact, we're maintaining the University of 25 Arizona work. Because, in fact, that does provide, in fact, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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593 L) that kind of interchange, that type of connection.
I 2 That's where our geohydrology expertise has been 3 based, at that university. So there I think that need I 4 believe will be fulfille'd.
5 Now, in the other areas, in fact, the expertise is 6 not at the university but, in fact, at some of the national 7 labs. In geochemistry and in the case of the geoscience 8 work some of it's at NIST which I think I can put in sort of 9 that category, the category that you have in mind, Dr.
10 Okrent. That type of organization I think I would be 11 correct in doing that.
12 And then it happens to be a very good 11. dependent 13 contractor and we would court those people.
/G So there we're trying to get that type of
(_) 14 15 interchange, you know, leaders in the field of, you know, in 16 the applied field of material science, particularly 17 corrosion as related to waste package corrosion most 9
18 specifically materials; we're affecting it that way.
19 Now, if you want to go through other areas in 20 terms of the earth sciences -- I mean, at least in geology 21 and some of the other things we have in seismic, rock 22 mechanics, we're appropriate and I think that we'll be --
23 for example, the Center will maintain contact with some 24 people who, if you will, are at the cutting edge outside, 25 either through universities or some of the consulting I (')
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!I 594 l' operations.1 I'm thinking of rock mechanics area which is 2 being done now.
3 So I would say, we' re partially satisfied and 4 we're partially concerne'd. And-I think we have to keep 5 working on it.
6' Excuse me, go ahead.
7 MR. FUNCHES: I'd.like to add one thing to what 8 Mel said. As part of the funding for the Center there's up 9 to an eight percent fee that is provided to the Center. Of 10 that-fee 30 to 35 percent of it is required to be spent on 11 independent research-in the high-level waste area. So there 12 is-a provision within the contract to at least on part of 13 the concern to allow people to do independent cesearch to
- [ ) 14 keep up th'eir skill level.
15 And_the way the process works is, they solicit 16 ideas from Center and Southwest Research Institute staff to 17 propose a research project that they go out and work on for 18 a period of time until they complete it. And there's a 19 board that reviews the projects and then select the projects 20 with the amount of money available.
21 So there is some provision to allow people to, you 22 know, keep their expert skill levels up, in addition to the 23 work that they will be accomplishing for us that will be 24 assigned to them.
25 MR. BROWNING: I might also add that any lack of I
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i f'i 595 1 incentive to keeping.up with the state-of-the-art, I think 2 'if'we keep in mind that we and the contractor are 3 interfacing with the DOE program that's funded at.the order 4 of $450 million a. year a'nd has every expert and every DOE 5 laboratory in the country, some of the best minds in the 6 world working on all, all the international efforts; if that 7 isn't enough of an incentive for us to keep up with the
-8 state-of-the-art, I don't know what is.
9 MR. SILBERBERG: That's a good point.
10 MR. BROWNING: When you guys are down at the 11 Center, though, I think it would be useful to probe what 12 kinds of techniques and approaches are they using to keep f:
13 their people attuned. I think the competition' of just ex k_) "14 keeping up and being able to challenge the DOE program is a 15 big enough challenge.
16 MR. SILBERBERG: That's a good point, yes.
17 MR. BROWNING: And we in the Center are 18 encouraging all our technical staff to keep up with the 19 international community on these efforts. So there's no 20 lack of challenge.
21 The one thing I'm afraid of, I don't want to take 22 over DOE's job. And we got to keep in mind, we've got a 23 very narrow and -- it's almost like applied research, not 24 while pie in the sky research and we've got to make sure we 25 keep that under control.
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2 percent of the research money is essentially free money in a 3 way?
I 4 MR. FUNCHES: 'N o . We give -- there's a fee of 5 eight percent of the total -- up to eight percent of the 6 total contract. Of that eight percent 30 to 35 percent can 7 be for research. So if you've got a $10 million program a 8 fee could be, say, 800 K per year and 30 percent of the 800 9 K would be for -- in the research.
10 MR. SILBERBERG: Let me move on now to just 11 rapidly go through a little bit of the character of the work 12 that's ongoing now and the work that's under development and 13 plan. Right now there are four projects that are active at 14 the Center, having been initiated in fiscal 1988.
15 And through fiscal '89 there are four projects 16 under development. And in fiscal ' 90 we have four new 17 starts of the plan that will in effect match the profile and 18 be used as a basis for bringing up the core staff of the 19 Center.
20 I'm going to go through these quickly. It's 21 really not appropriate or possible for me to cover all the 22 details, but I'll just give you a flavor of what's in the 23 program.
24 In the area of geochemistry --
25 DR. MOELLER: Now, is this one of the four Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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2 MR. SILBERBERG: I'm sorry, this is one of the --
3 the first -- the next four projects are, in fact, the active
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4 ones.
5 DR. MOELLER: Okay, thank you.
t 6 MR. SILBERBERG: One project going on in the area 7 of geochemistry that's really looking at the data base and 8 modeling that relates to the interaction of gas and water 9 and rock and waste package, radionuclides, and dealing 10 primarily with the thermodynamics of the geochemistry using 11 existing computer codes, modifying them to deal with 12 kinetics and tailoring them to deal with the geochemistry 13 that's appropriate to the top setting at Yucca Mountain.
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\) 14 And this will also include in addition to the 15 analytical work, modeling work, laboratory work in working 16 with some of the areas where the thermodynamic data base is 17 either missing or is in need of confirmation. And it's 18 mostly the former.
19 I want to go back to the laboratory. We just 20 mentioned experiment, I just want to tell you a little bit 21 about the laboratory. I think that's part of, certainly, 22 the bigger picture as had been pointed out by a number of 23 people, members this mornitAg.
24 The Center has two types of laboratory capability 25 available to it. What I call the general supporting Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 scientific laboratories and then their own dedicated 2 laboratory that you'll see when you get down there in 3 November that will, in fact, be dealing with the various 4 experimental components of the number of the projects that 5 we will be mentioning today.
6 Their own dedicated laboratory that will allow 7 them to deal with -- to conduct a high quality experimental 8 program.
9 In the supporting sense the Southwest Research 10 Institute has state-of-the-art analytical chemistry and 11 metallurgical analysis, equipment of the full state-of-the-12 art that, in fact, supports the Center on an as-needed 13 basis. And you'll have an opportunity to see those two.
ex k_) 14 So this has now taken some time to build up, but j 15 the laboratory is now ready and a tive.
16 DR. STEINDLER: Allow me to pursue this for just a 17 minute. EQ-36 requires not only thermodynamic data but also 18 kinetic data.
19 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes.
20 DR. STEINDLER: And that's a very complicated set 21 of phenomena that you have to look at.
22 There is nothing in, I admit, the old hiring chart 23 that indicates that the Center has access to a 24 thermodynamist will not have for another year the way that 25 admittedly old schedule sets. This is not the kind of s /
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N,s 599 1 thermodynamics from what I'm aware of, that you care readily 2 entrust to a non-specialist and expect to get a decent j 3 output out of the EQ-36 code.
4 MR. SILBERBERG': Let me address that, Dr.
5 Steindler.
6 DR. STEINDLER: If that's correct --
7 MR. SILBERBERG: No, let me just offer that, it's j 8 not. Because, again, I think that chart that you have is, 9 to some extent, unfortunately not helping the discussion. I 10 almost wish you didn't have that.
11 DR. STEINDLER: Let me turn the question around in 12 that event: do you believe that there is sufficient 13 capability and where did it come from?
Ii ss 14 MR. SILBERBERG: Yes.
15 DR. STEINDLER: And in both geochemistry as well 16 as thermodynamics currently residing in the Center, so that 17 defensible work in thermodynamics can be done.
18 MR. SILBERBERG: Good point.
19 Let me note that there are two staff geochemists 20 on-board now at the Center. One, Dr. Murphy, is, in fact, 21 the thermo -- in other words, the thermodynamist, the 22 specialist in geochemical thermodynamics, and kinetics by 23 virtue not only of his graduate work but the work he has 24 spent, I believe, at LBL. So he, in fact, is the lead 25 behind this work.
O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
-- r's 600 i: -() 1. There is also a person who will be, in effect, 2 doing the laboratory work in support of -- another 3 geochemist -- a more recent graduate doing -- starting up 4 some of the laboratory w'ork in conjunction with Dr. Murphy 5 who is, in effect, more senior.
6 So we're satisfied that Dr. Murphy meets the need 7 in that area of expertise for good solid thermodynamics.
8 I agree with your point. And I think in this area 9 we' re quite fortunate that we believe we' re okay.
10 DR. STEINDLER: How did you decide that the 11 initiation of laboratory studies on zeolite thermodynamics 12 was a critical issue in the EQ-367 13 MR. SILBERBERG: I would like you to ask them that 14 question. As I understand it, there was some assumptions l
15 that DOE, as we understand from the DOE literature, DOE had 16 been making about how zeolite might behave at Yucca Mountain 17 and it was sufficiently -- I mean, in fact, -- I believe Dr.
18 Murphy, and I think you need to talk to him directly, Dr.
19 Murphy challenged the concept that DOE had in mind and in
- 20. effect said, this is an area that needs either confirmation 21 of -- either confirmation or reputation of what they're I
22 claiming. That's how that came about.
23 DR. STEINDLER: So that programmatic initiative 24 came out of the Center rather than out of the staff; is that 25 what you're telling me?
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11 MR'. SILBERBERG: Yeo. In other words, the detail
. 2 on zeolite -- I!think.the thrust of the work came from the 1;
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c 3 staff, from the geochemist on our staff, Dr. Barchard. I T 4 think the focusing incon' zeolite came'about collegially
- 5. between Dr. Murphy and Dr. Barchard, and that_ brings me to g 6' .another point about:-- I think someone mentioned about the
- 7. Center and the staff.
8- We see the strong need for our' staff and.the' 9 Center staff to have a very strong scientific c)11egial
-10 relationship. In fact, it's really within -- again, 11 embodied within our research philosophy that wherever 12 possible it's important that we match scientific skill and
< 13 expertise and knowledge with -- like people at --
14 contractors.
15 So let me say that the geochemistry program starts 16 from scope and'so forth from here. But collegially we 17 . expect the two staffs to come up with and make the proper 18 1 program adjustments. And that's the way we've done -- in 19' the past we've done our other research work'in the Office of 20 Research, I mean traditionally and with varying degrees of 21 success.
22 But the concept, the model is -- we picked a very 23 good model right here in geochemistry because that one is 24 where we feel pretty good about.
25 So anymore depth than that I think -- that's a e
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'i 602 l' good question for November, and maybe I -- hopefully I won't 2 be too far off the mark.
3 Let me go on to seismic rock mechanics which again 4 is aimed at doing really'two things. It's aimed at looking 5 at seismic effects on the -- particularly on the underground 6 repository structure.
7 And also, the seismic effects on the fracture and 8 the fault structure from a hydrological standpoint. How 9 might seismic interactions affect flow paths through 10 fractures and faults.
11 And that will be both analytical and experimental.
12' And right now the experimental planning and preparation is 13 underway. There is a draft report soon to be published
() 14 final of a critical ' terature survey and assessment of the 15 state-of-the-art that was done by the Center which is 16 providing a basis for starting point and a basis for moving 17 on into and in focusing on the key items of this area of 18 work. And that's all I'm really going to say about that.
19 In the area of integrated waste package 20 experiments which we otherwise categorize in the materials 21 science area, here is again a question of looking at the 22 issue of dealing with being able to provide a good technical 23 basis for the staff, NRC staff to evaluate in the context of 24 substantially complete containment and things like that, the 25 cred3bility, reliability of predictions that will be made in Beritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L
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1 dealing with the ability of the waste package to withstand 2 the 300 to 1,000 year requirement in the rule.
3 And this is an experimental program that is 4 getting underway that wi11 be, in effect, looking at --
5 initially starting with six -- with the six materials that 6 DOE has listed as candidates and we nope before too long DOE 7 will narrow it down to fewer candidates to make, again, to 8 allow us to narrow down on our scope.
9 And I might say that we're right now in the 10 process of taking the work or working with the people at 11 NIST and our other contractor, CORTEST and, in fact, 12 coordinating the work such that the work being done at 13 CORTEST and NIST can, in fact, make the Center work even 14 more valuable by picking up things, by doing things in terms 15 of looking at longer term tests in a more applied sense.
I 16 Actually dealing with the engineering aspects of looking at 17 integrated waste package system.
18 And the laboratory -- one of the laboratory -- the 19 laboratory I mentioned, in fact, also has experiments that 20 -- autoclave experiments that will be used in this program.
21 DR. PARRY: Mel, excuse me, could you back up, 22 please. You noted the Peer Review meeting --
23 MR, SILBERBERG: Yes, I'm sorry about that. Thank 24 you.
25 DR. PARRY: -- that Dr. Shewmon attended.
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7 1 -MR. SILBERBERG: Yes.
2 DR. PARRY: The further meeting mentioned on the 3 26th that's --
4 MR. SILBERBERC4: Coming up.
5 DR. FARRY: Yes. Where is that' planned?
6- MR. SILBERBERG: At the Center. Thank you for
-7 observing that.
8 DR. PARRY: I'm sorry.
9 MR. SILBERBERG: No, thank you. We need to get 10 back to you. That's at the Center and that's on Tuesday the 11 26th. And if Dr. Shewmon is available that will be very 12 useful. We're just setting it up. We're just finishing and 13 just completing the setup.
14 DR. PARRY: Would you kindly provide me the 15 detailed information on it.
16 MR. SILBERBERG: Sure. Fine.
17 Yes, I will say, thank you, Jack. I will say that 18 we just had --the Center just conducted an independent pecr 19 review of that program. As we say, we're in the formative 20 stages and moving on in a concept that we felt that this was 21 a' good point for them to bring in a number of experts in 22 this areas. And, in fact, we did have a peer review and Dr.
23 Shewmon was at the peer review and I haven't had the 24 opportunity to talk to Dr. Shewmon about his impressions.
25 But the reports will come in and the Center will
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l' 'give their evaluation of what they believe these individual 2 assessments mean, okay, and make some recommendations to us.
3 I was, myself, was fairly impressed with.the type 4 of review that they did.' That, in fact, the Center went out I
5 to get. And the Center now has set up a procedure that E
6- we've now endorsed on how they would go about conducting 7 their independent peer reviews, that they would conduct as a 8 contractor themselves; and that's one type of review. There 9 are others, of course, that we've used traditionally in 10 research. But this is certainly -- I thought that went 11 quite well.
12 DR. MOELLER: Dr. Okrent has a question.
13 DR. OKRENT: Question. I'm just sort of curious.
14 At the peer review meeting that was held were there people 15 present whose responsibility is performance assessment?
16 MR. SILBERBERG: Not directly. Well, from the 17 staff --
.8 DR. OKRENT: I mean from the Center?
19 MR. SILBERBERG: You mean specifically in the 20 Center.
21 DR. OKRENT: Or were there, in fact, peer 22 reviewers whose line of expertise is performance assessment?
23 MR. SILBERBERG: No, it was not -- in that context 24 it was not interdisciplinary in that sense. And I sense 25 your question, it was intended to be a narrower meeting.
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' ~' 1 I think the type of review and interaction you're 2 referring to is, in fact, appropriate and, in fact, will 3 need to be done in the program, important points, to get 4 that perspective in. Th'ere's no question about this, it's 5 right on target.
6 DR. OKRENT: I'll broaden the question just 7 slightly. Were there people present who tried to develop a 8 complete set of scenarios?
9 MR. SILBERBERG: No.
10 What we did have -- we did have -- we went as far 11 as to have the interaction with the geochemists so that the 12 environmental perspective -- the chemical environmental 13 perspective of the work, that was taken into account.
() 14 So there's already, in fact, a very strong 15 interchange at the Center in that context. But one needs to 1
16 go the next step.
17 Now, the Center has been looking at, from a 18 performance -- one element component of performance 19 assessment which will -- I admit just only one piece of it 20 -- looking at the probabilistic aspects of how one might 21 deal with waste package corrosion in the context of -- as an 22 input to methodology that might be input to an overall total 23 system performance assessment, in the context of what we j 24 call the CONVO code, you may have heard about.
25 That is a vehicle for bringing -- that would be s
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(~T) 1 one vehicle for bringing waste package data and information 2 and uncertainties and scenarios into a total system
' 3 performance assessment.
4 So in that context the CONVO code which, in fact, 5 that. work is sponsored by Mr. Browning's staff is the piece.
6 But in the broader context I have to cay that that needs to 7 be done.
8 DR. OKRENT: It seems to me that this would be 9 conceivable, this meeting or some other meeting, conditions 10 might be identified by people who were thinking about 11 scenarios which would be suggestive of environments not 12 currently in the scope of evaluation, and that's why I raise 13 the question.
( 14 MR. SILBERBERG: That's a good point 15 Let me suggest that that aspect of scenarios, in 16 . fact, are being considered. Again, perhaps not in the 17 broadest extent of getting more people involved in the 18 context of your point, but the geochemists and the material 19 sciences people are, in fact, looking -- as well as the 20 hydrologist -- are.looking at what kind of environmental 21 scenarios might you have to determine the bounds of the 22 conditions and what we would call the factor space. Factors 23 that influence corrosion. That the factor space, in fact, 24 takes into account environmental conditions that span a 25 sufficiently broad range of scenarios.
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t-608 m) 1 So that thinking is taking place at the program 2 level. I think certainly it has to be opened up to a 3 broader, you know, to a broader audience to be in context; I
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4 certainly' don't differ with that.
5 In fact, just the discussion that we had yesterday 6 at CORTEST, we got into -- necessarily into a scenario 7 discussion of'what this range might look. But it certainly
'8 needs an interplay of other disciplines on a continuing 9 basis.
10 The answer is basically, yes, and we need to do 11' more-in that araa.
12 The fourth of the ongoing projects is studies of 13 thermal hydrologic phenomena; and then this, again, is 14 looking at really the thermal hydraulics of heat generating 15 bodies in the context of varying degrees of moisture in the 16 unsaturated zone all the.way up to, perhaps, something that 17 approaches saturated where the thermal loads from the 18- repository can, in fact, locally affect not only the thermal 19 hydraulic patterns at the -- what we call the waste package 20 scale itself, but even looking at the total repository. How 21 the total repository would interact thermally and 22 hydraulically with its environment.
23 And this program is just getting underway in terms 24 of developing the program, looking into scoping experiments 25 first and then moving on. And the classical techniques of O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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(~ v 1 what we would call natural circulation thermal hydraulic 2- dimensionalist analysis will play a big role in this. 3 And this is a continuation of work or moving on 4 into this area of work that we had at the University of, 5 excuse me, at Colorado State University by Dr. Kalocki who 6 was working in the saturated zone. 7 DR. MOELLER: Under task 2 you state that the designs were approved by the NRC on July the 13th of ' 89 and 8 9 experiments will begin in October. Now, to what degree is 10 the depth that you interact here the same or different from 11 what you were doing then with Colorado State? Is it very 12 much similar or different? I think 13 MR. SILBERBERG: I think it's similar. 14 design ~-- approval of design is probably more -- sounds much 15 more than it is. Not from a design from an experimental 16 design. And again, in the context of collegially our staff 17 working with Center staffing saying, this seems okay. But 18 not in a context of, you know, we're approving the design 19 and we put a stamp on it and that type of design. Not a 20 design review context, but more of a collegial review of the 21 concept and the approach in terms of how it's going to get 22 the information. 23 But in terms of nuts and bolts and how many screws 24 might be in the apparatus nowhere near that. My sinff 25 doesn't have time to get into that. For that kind of detail O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
610 ( 1 we should really want them to do that. So that's the level. 2 DR. MOELLER: Okay. 3 MR. SILBERBERG: Let me speed along here into what 4 we now have programs tha't are under development because we 5 provided statements of work on these tasks to the Center in 6 fiscal '89. The whole question of dealing with stochastic 7 analysis of unsaturated flow and transport in the setting of . 8 fracture rock, on a large scale, hydrogeological system. 9 And this is an area that we started -- we have 10 work going underway, in fact, at MIT -- that brings me to 11 another point -- at MIT, working -- trying to apply 12 stochastic techniques to low-level waste disposal sites. 13 I will say that here is a case where we're dealing
-( ) 14 with, you know, cutting edge of geohydrology by all means.
15 And we have the ongoing work at MIT. And we also have again 16 the availability of that expertise or, if you will, the 17 ability to have the type of interactions that Dr. Okrent 18 referred to. 19 And, in fact, the student from Gelhardt at MIT, in 20 fact, was hired by the Center and that will be one of the 21 things that he will be working on. So there's a case where 22 we have, I think again, albeit in geohydrology have another, 23 what we call, a tie to get the type of interaction and 24 challenge that Dr. Okrent referred to. So I think we're 25 fortianate there. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 _ . ~ . . , _ _ _ _ . _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , _ _ _ , . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
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1 And I don't want to get into this area because I 2 know very little abcut it. But it's again going to be 3 needed to deal with -- dealing with the magnitude of the 4 scale and the problem of' the Yucca Mountain. And, in fact, 5 we understand from lectures we've heard and presentations 6 here that, in fact, the DOE people will from some extent be 7 using stochastic approaches. It will be coupled with 8 deterministic approaches, but they will be at least dealing 9 with stochastic analysis of some of the parameters that they 10 have to deal with at Yucca Mountain. So we think this is 11 going to be quite important and we' re satisfied that we have 12 a -- the Center has the staff to start on this. 13 We have another undertaking that the Center io fs (_) 14 starting to look at now and develop a plan for, it has to do 15 with the geochemical analog that would allow one to deal 16 with transport in unsaturated rock. And the program will 17 involve, again, collegially between our staff and the Center 18 staff, looking for the right geochemical analog from a tough 19 volcanic -- previously volcanic type setting that they can 20 use for this. 21 In conjunction with that we're also going to have 22 the Center -- the Center will be sponsoring a workshop where 23 we can bring together largely people here, on the DOE in 24 this country, e.nd perhaps, maybe internationally. A 25 workshop to look at the concept again of the geochemical O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
612 i V. . 1 analogues and how they fit into the strategy of validating H
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'2' models and methodology that's used to predict transport at a 3 site like Yucca Mountain.
4 So that's just' developing. I mean, it's something , 5 that we can't say very much about. But we looked to that as 1 6 being a very important program.
.7 Another new area that has just -- of the four ]
8 areas under development the -- what we call, long-term j 9 climatological effects on groundwater rocharge, which is a 10 big issue that's going to have to be dealt with. And given 11 the current situation at Yucca Mountain and how might one 12 project this out to 10,000 years. And this is just -- the 13 statement of work has just been sent to the Center. In () 14' fact, this is an area where they will -- it's noted on the 15 other chart -- we'll try to hire an individual that has this 16 kind of background. 17 DR. OKRENT: Is this an anticipated event or 18 process? 19- MR. SILBERBERG: Do you mean which one is it; is 20 it an AP or a UP? I'm not the appropriate person to address 21 that. Maybe Dr. Ctt -vu'd, but I would speculate a little. 22 I'm not sure. It's an interesting question and I'm sorry, I 23 don't have the answer. 24 Bill, how do we look at the climatological 25 changes? Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l 1 _ .__ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ._J
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% ' 11 MR.~OTT: I don't know how they're doing it in the 2 APs and UPs operation right now. We view it as something e 3 that has to be addressed because we're looking at a 10,000 s
4 year time period. And w'e have had a program going on'for 5- the.last four or five years which is essentially monitoring g, 6 a national program. We call it climate HOLCY and it's a f 7 buy-in an NSFF program.
.8 We know there have been climatological change over 9 certain periods'in the past; we're trying to look at that 10 Land look at what possible impact in terms of addressing 11 scenarios.
12 So I think what you're going to be faced with 13 eventually is that come of the scenarios that will have to ( ). 14 be addressed in performance assessment are. going to have to 15 take into account climatic change in these projects and any 16 others we undertake are going to have to try and bound the 17 possible scenarios for us. 18 And that's part of the best answer I can give you 19 right now. 20 MR. SILBERBERG: Well, in short, now that I've s 21 heard. Bill start out it's a lot easier for me. But 22 climatological change clearly is an anticipated process. 23 The bounds on that, you know, what might you anticipate, 24 that will then become the sucject, is that unanticipated or 25 should we put it in the context of that vernacular.
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'l- -DR. OKRENT: Let me pursue the subject just a bit w
21 further. If'there is some fairly significant probability b 3 that groundwater recharge may' occur from long-term 4 climatological effects in 10,000' years, might that-then 5 become the' tail that. wags the dog with regard to several of 6 the things that you're now analyzing in detail and lead to to
- 7. really.a rather conside.able modification of the areas for
, 8 evaluation and research and so forth.
9 MR.'OTT: I'll see if I can tread a narrow line on 10 this. 'I think there's always going to be a question of 11 ;whether you'have to address the saturation of the Yucca 12 . Mountain site as currently unsaturated. Somebody is going 13 to want to know'if-it has been saturated in the past and
- t. 14' whether it can saturate in the future.
'15 If the probabilistic scenarios indicate that it's 16' an anticipated event.as opposed to an unanticipated event, 17 then it probably will have a drastic effect on the range of scenarios that you have to address.
19 I think I'm going to stop there again. 20 MR. SILBERBERG: Let me just say, I'll won't stop 21 and I'll go even further then at the risk of being told l 22 later that I was wrong. 23 I the limit -- I think in the limit that question 24 is at the heart of, say, that's an unsaturated site, but in 25 the limit how close to a saturation do you get because of O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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.V 1 some tremendously overpowering climatological effect that 2 may not be a fair -- I mean, a reasonable assumption. I'm 3 really going to stop right there.
4 DR. MOELLER: 'And even here, though, I think that 5 or I thought, too, that's what Dr. Okrent was thinking 6 about. The past history of climatological or the behavior 7 of the climate,.whatever you want to call it, the past 8 history is not necessarily going to be much good anymore for 9 the future. 10 MR. SILBERBERG: Right. 11 MR. OTT: It will be as it affects the validation 12 and verification of models of climatic change. 13 MR. SILBERBERG: Let me say that here's a case ('O _/ 14 where we are, and I should mention then tie-ins with other I 15 organizations, Dr. Okrent, that brings really to two points 16 and one that I had forgotten. Here is a case where we are 17 leveraged into a very large data base program by, I think 18 Bill may have mentioned, the National Science Foundation 19 that's supporting a tremendous data base dealing with 20 current climatological effects. 21 So that gives us an, again, in touch with -- we're 22 able to keep in touch scientifically with experts in that 23 area. 24 I wanted to note that in the geochemical analog 25 area there, again, because of one of the programs we're l O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l l l l
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1 maintaining of the ones that Mr. Browning mentioned right-2 now is a. tie-in to the Alligator Rivers program in Australia 3 which is a form of geochemical analog. And that brings.us 4 into contact with, again', worldwide experts in geochemical 5 analogues. 6 And ultimately our work on -- that, by the way, is
- 7. sponsored through the.OECD -- but our work on -- our own 8 work that we'll ultimately get into we would hope would 9 benefit from cross-fertilization from people like that in 10 the international community.
11 DR. OKRENT: Well, if I can continue just for a 12 moment, Mr. Chairman. 13 If groundwater recharge to a sufficient level
) 14 becomes an anticipated event or at least it's hard to tell 15 whether it's an anticipated event or unanticipated, could 16 that strongly influence the current estimates or methods of 17 estimating groundwater flow time to the edge of the site or 18 whatever is the proper terminology for the thing.
19 And might one violate one of the Part 60 NRC 20 criteria that way, aside from other things that might occur. 21 MR. BROWNING: Well, it could certainly change the 22 groundwater travel time, but the regulatory requirement on 23 groundwater travel time is related to, not to the long-term 24 projection, it's a pre-waste emplacement groundwater travel 25 time. It's a measure of what's going on right now. O- Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1 L_____-________-_
617' 4 b 1 DR. OKRENT: Only. 2' MR. BROWNING: Only. 13 DR. OKRENT: And so if an anticipated event 4 changed that -- 5 MR. BROWNING: Really, it has a bearing on trying 6 to find a site that looks good today. It doesn't directly-7- relate to what the site might look like 100,000 years from 8 now. But it's a regulatory distinction, so you would not 9 .have to deal with that aspect in dealing with the pre-10 emplacement groundwater travel time. 11 DR. OKRENT: It would still be an undisturbed -- 12 what you call an undisturbed -- if it's anticipated it would 13 be what you call an undisturbed site. () 14 MR. BROWNING: It's what's going on today, not 15 what's going on tomorrow. 16 DR. OKRENT: Is that cleerly so stated? 17 MR. BROWNING: Yes. The regulation is very clear 18 on.that. There's no regulatory ambiguity at all. 19 DR. OKRENT: All right, that was just a side 20 question. But the main question I wanted to get at and the 21 reason I raise this topic is: it is not clear to me that 22 your choice of research projects reflects the issues of 23 greatest potential significance to the viability of the 24 site. 25 I would certainly consider this is one that O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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2 to go at your research program beginning with a prologue 3 whereas you ask yourself what are the issues that have the 4 greatest potential signi'ficance on the viability.of this 5 site, and is-there research or knowledge or something that 6 NRC either needs to gain or to be expert in or whatever is 7' the appropriate approach. ; 8 And this issue I think is important, in a sense, 9 it's deja vu because not too many years ago Mr. Silberberg 10 remembers these questions were raised with regard to the NRC 11 program on severe core damage accidents and lightwater N, 12 ' reactors. And if you go back some years further it was 13 raised with regard to why are you doing the experiments
'(O
_) 14 you're doing in LOFT and so forth and so on. 15 And it.soems that rarely are research programs 16 initiated with thi" first overall attempt to see -- well, i 17 what's important, in fact, and can we learn something that 18 will contribute in these areas, because sometimes things are 19 important. But you can spend all the money you want and 20 you' re not going to clarify it much. l 21 MR. SILBERBERG: I won't address that fully other ) 22 than to observe that I think your point is well taken. But l l i 23 I will note an important departure as long as you've looked 24 at the past I'll continue just a little bit along those 25 lines. O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l r 1
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1 The big difference that we have that I'm 2 encouraced by is that the user office this is working very 3 close'.y with the research office. And I'm not just making 4 that statement. S DR. OKRENT: That was the case during the severe 6 accident program. 7 MR. SILBERBERG: Well, not the program I was on. 8 It was not as -- and I noted this at my -- in June 30th, 9 that in the program that I have been responsible for I have 10 not found this type of interaction. And, in fact, it 11 doesn't mean that we have to - you know, I think we have to 12 continue to look at priorities and, you know, are we doing 13 the right work. 14 But I think it started back from initial 15 interactions, you know, as Yucca Mountain came on the scene 16 there was an initial input from working with Mr. Browning's 17 staff on user needs. 18 In February of this year Mr. Browning issued a -- 19 from Mr. Bonero, Mr. Beckjord used a letter which updated 20 the situation of four years ago and said, these are tho 21 areas where we need help and we'll get back to you with more 22 detail which is now being developed. 23 And our program plan that we are working on -- and 24 it's an iterative process, I agree -- is, in fact, trying to 25 address it. And the projects, I believe that the programs
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L o. 620 ge) (t . . l' that have been laid out here, have been given at least that 2 kind of consideration. 3 Now, I will say and I noted this continually to my 4 ' staff and to Mr. Brownin'g's staff, that as we go deeper into 5 performance assessment -- the performance assessment work we 6 may get the insights and the importance level of the work 7 ,may, in fact, change or adjust and we're going to have to 8 find that out. 9 But my understanding of the problem, in the top 10 areas and not all, there's several missing right now, 11 certainly, but in top areas that are driving -- the 12 technical positions driving parts of Part 60 I think we're 13 ' working in those areas. And if we' re way off then I'm
)--14' worried and Mr. Browning is worried and I think we have to 15 ~ keep looking for those situations.
16 DR. OKRENT: See, if I understand correctly there 17 has not been a preliminary performance assessment done by 18 the staff, one which tried to identify not only the probable 19 important contributors but the uncertainties and, in fact, 12 0 the gaps in knowledge which made it impossible for you to 21 evaluate some scenarios you would like to evaluate. 22 And absent that you're in the usual situation for 23 how the NRC handles a research program. You get a lot of 24 things going with a lot of momentum which is hard to change. 25 And the insights as to what is most important to do and why Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
n 621 N-] 1 and what will that work answer if we do it comes rather late 4 l 2 in the program. At least that's been the situation in the 1 l 3 past. 4 I'm not saying that I know what you're doing is 5 not important; I'm just saying I haven't seen an examination 6 to identify the killers as it were, either killers from the 7 point of view of'an absence of knowledge or whatever. 8 MR. SILBERBERG: Well, sensitivity to meeting, 9 let's say, to any one of the standards or something else 10 about the site. 11 But I think that -- in all fairness, I think that 12 -- I personally coming into the program and trying to make 13 that observation, I think as the December 1987 Amendments 14 Act came out and then people started scrambling at the same 15 time the Center was being built up and we're going through 16 this dynamics of both the program change and contractor 17 change, my staff based on their experience previously in the 18 tough area did give conscious thought to the right mix. 19 I will say, right now as a result of some of the 20 discussions that I personally have been having with the 21 performance assessment people as that activity is now coming 22 up to speed came upon an area that was discussed and Dr. 23 Steindler brought it up in June is that, after 1,000 years 24 the, if you will, the release rate of radionuclides from 25 assumed failed waste packages has a very high impact -- can k Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 'have a very high impact on the outcome of performance.
'2 assessment. That was done without a calculation. But it 3 was made clear to me and I said, wow, then we're missing 4 something.
5 And we're now looking to see how quickly can we 6 get that work in place; maybe we'll have to change something 7 else. But that's an area, in fact, that we're on notice 8 with the Center that we're going to have to do something 9 about. And the question is, what's the best way to get that 10 release from spent fuel which is somewhat of an area that, i 11 as you know, I spent a few months on in my career. 12 DR. STEINDLER: Let me ask a question. 13 I notice that you're interested in contaminate () 14 transport in unsaturated systems. And then you made the 15 comment that that's going to be addressed in conjunction 16 with some work that's going on at the Alligator River
- 17. project.
18 MR. SILBERBERG: It's an example -- 19 DR. STEINDLER: The Alligator River project, I 20 believe, had nothing to do with unsaturated systems. 21 11either has Kabam nor any other deposit that one can think 22 of offhand in the geologic domain. Most of those have 23 operated on the saturated system. 24 So it isn't quite clear to me what that natural 25 analog study is going to do for you. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I i
?~T 623 N- A,). l 1~ MR. OTT: .The natural analog in Alligator Rivers
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L 2' has both unsaturated and saturated zones. 3= DR. STEINDLER: At present.
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4 MR. OTT: At present, and well in the past. It's 5 a weather scheme on there that has an extremely wet season 6 -and gets pulsed. You see a lot of the -- the current 7 climatic regime sees a lot of pulses in it. But there is an 8 unweathered zone. h 9 We see movement -- we can see a lot of different 10 effects at the Alligator Rivers which is one of the reasons 11' it makes it so attractive. The other thing is that they're 12 being able to find certain species in there that are in the 13 decay change that they aren't able to find at other bodies 14 because they're not as rich. 15 So there's a lot of things that we're. seeing there 16 and there's a wide range of conditions from both reducing to
.17 oxidizing conditions. So there are real and specific 18 reasons for looking at various parts of that particular 19 program.
20 And internationally it has -- it's attractive 21 because it does have both the saturated and the unsaturated 22 conditions; that's why some of the European countries are 23 participating in the program with us. It has five different 24 sponsors right now. 25 DR. STEINDLER: What is the size of the effort Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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% ,1 1- that you're planning on in that area?
2 MR. SILBERBERG: On that -- 4 3 DR. STEINDLER: In this geochemical analog that-
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4 you're planning to start up at the Center? 5 MR. SILBERBERG: Well, it's about -- well,. 6 initially, about $350,000. 7 DR. STEINDLER: Two FTEs or three FTEs?
- 8. MR. SILBERBERG: Somewhere in that neighborhood, 9 350,to 400 K. And it's, again, probably a case where one 10 tries to leverage or be involved in some other ongoing, so 11 we don't~have to go around and, you know, do the site.
12 MR. OTT: The total program in geochemistry at the 13 Center is right now aimed at about $1.1 million per year; 14 about $400,000 is going into the unsaturated mass transport 15 which is the ongoing program; about 300 into this; and 16 another 300 into the absorption process project, so there 17 are three phases to it. 18 DR. STEINDLER: Let me ask one other question. 19 In this, as you put it, unfortunate monthly report , -20 that we have with the unfortunate table of staffing there's 21 also a comment that late -- during the period they're 22 talking about which is late in the June time frame, the NRC 23 advised -- rather your group advised the Center of what's 24 coming up in the '90, ' 91 time frame for the Center and this 25 caused at least a noted potential problem of trying to shift O
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2 The implication of that is that you folks weren't L 3 talking to rapidly and efficiently with the guys at the 4 Center,lparticularly sin'ce hiring of the kind of people 5 .we're talking about here: one, has been a concern; and two, 6- is a relativelyl slow process. 7 If that's correct my question is: what sort of
.8 procedures are-you planning to put into place that are more 9 efficient in pointing out to the Center well in advance 10 what's coming; and therefore, what sort of people they 11 should be hiring.
12 MR. FUNCHES: A couple of things we're doing. We 13 decided we ought to establish semi-annual meetings with the f% (,)' 14 Center and research management to go over issues that we see 15 coming down the road at the Center. 16 We have also -- 17 DR. MOELLER: You're not carrying through. 16 MR. FUNCHES: We also tied the Center into our 19 planning process so that they will have information early-on 20 of what our plans are in the five year plan that the 21 Conmission or the Congress would be as adamant for approval. 22 But I think the key thing is that we are open in 23 line of communication between the Center and Research. I 24 think the core of meetings that you might be having, the 25 meeting with the staff that he will be having and the semi-Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 - = - - - _ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _
N 'l ]) 626 1- annual' review overall research program in addition to l '2 providing them. information of what we see coming down the
- 3. pike will eliminate that problem that occurred in the past.
4 DR. STEINDLER: Well, let me make the comment that
- 5. that requires Research and Bob Browning's people to plan far 6 enough ahead a4hich in turn means that they have to try and
- i. 7 guess as to the output from DOE against which some of their 8 activity planning is done, which in turn also requires that 9 if there are going to be projects that guide research such 10 as the performance assessment that Dr. Okrent has been 11 talking about, those things need to be reasonably well in 12 hand far enough in advance.
13 The load then on the NRC is considerable and () 14 probably deviates from current practice by a bit. 15 MR. SILBERBERG: I think that's an interesting 16 observation. In other words, you'd like to do it at step 17 changes, but it's unfortunately much more iterative than one 18 might desire in the ideal. But I think in the last three 19 months I think the convergence is a lot faster than it had 20 been in the prior year, okay. That's about all I can say. 21 MR. FUNCHES: I think we've gone a long way. The 22 lines of communications are open and trying to share 23 information with the Center that affects their planning. 24 We're also trying to get input from them so that we can 25 factor into our plan and a plan for the Commission. o Heritage Reporting (202) 628-4888 Corporation
_ _ . _ - = _ _ . _ _ - _ - - . - ._ - _. _ .v _ l fm 627 e]1 1 DR. MOELLER: Mel, not to delay, but you said ; l 2- .there.were four ongoing' projects, four? ! 3 MR. SILBERBERG: Four, and there are four new. L4l starts in ' 90 that I'm about to put on the slide, j 5 DR. MOELLER: You did three? 'j MR. SILBERBERG: Ei1 Pardon me. 1 7 DR. MOELLER: You did three.
-8 MR. SILBERBERG: The fourth one as Bill Ott ,
t 9 reminded me this morning; the analog workshop we sort of i 10 call that_a fourth enterprise. That's special -- sort of a 11' special undertaking so we call that four, it just as well j l 12- had been three. j i T 13 MR. OTT: I want to make one other reaction, too. l 14 We. list four projects ongoing at the beginning. When you 15 talk to the Center they usually list five. There's a thing 16 they call the overall research project which generally is 17 what we fund the development of project plans under. It's 18 also what we fund the workshops under and things like that. 19 So we don't list it as a separate project, but quite often i 20 the Center does. 1 21- MR. SILDERBERG: There are two new -- I'm now 22 going to very quickly just mention that there are -- what 23 the four potential new starts are in fiscal ' 90. 24 The first one being identified now is the other 25 aspect of geochemistry dealing with the modeling absorption O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I 1 I j
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1 at the site so that one can use it in performance assessment 2 modeling. That is, dealing with that absorption ion 3 exchange and how will radionuclides behave from an 4 Mbsorption standpoint, continue as the follow-on from the 5 work we had been doing at Oak Ridge. So this is another 6 component of the geochemistry work which directly feeds into 7 performance assessment. 8 The other one is the issue of waste containment 9 sealing and this one right now is somewhat programmatical 10 because from a timing standpoint in that there's a question 11 of given -- okay, we're looking at waste package material, 12 canister material from a -- what about the vulnerability of 13 joints and seals, welded or otherwise, and how does one deal
/^'; \_/ 14 with that.
15 Well, one really can't -- we've been advised by 16 Mr. Browning and his people that we really can't move into 17 that that quick 3y until DOE firms up its material selection 18 and even know more about its design. So we're having to 19 look at that one a little more carefully and maybe we'll 20 have to change our strategy in that regard for fiscal '90 on 21 that project and perhaps maybe shift emphasis of the 22 resources there somewhere else. Perhaps maybe in an area 23 that might be -- may be more important now. l 24 MR. BROWNING: Mel, I think that might be an l 25 example of what Dr. Okrent was talking about where we do try (m
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-N 1- to look-at the relevancy of thane things with regard to the
- 2. near-term things that DOE has to do. And you can almost 3 argue it's irrelevant to. worry too much about site-specific
,4 engineered stuff.until we decide whether the site is any 5 good or-not.
6 So that's the kind of thinking that went into this 7 thing, we ought-to put that one kind of lower on the 8 priority pile.
- 9 MR. SILBERBERG: How, the last two new starts in 10 90 are two different types of programs. One, performance 4
11 assessment, namely, and if you look at the words do a number 12 of things. But first, it's to provide the type of support
~
13- -- ultimately, the type of support that Sandia was providing () 14' as the contractor working closely with the staff, with the 15 staff effort to support the staff effort as needed for the 16 staff to get its job done. 17 It also is an opportunity at the Center since, in 18 effect, they're now an integrating device, also is to able n 19 to say, okay, I've got all of this work going on now, in the 20 future, and how do I take it on a real-time basis and get it 21 'into the performance assessment methodology or into the 22 insights that one needs for performance assessment. 23 So we see this as an opportunity to have -- the 24 working with the staff to have performance assessment 25 methodology, in effect, be the tail that wags the dog. And 1 Heritage Reporting Corporation . (202) 628-4888 5
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,1 then there are a lot of other things.
2 But right now that's a major challenge to get 3 . people -- to get that up. And at '90 we're concentrating on 4' the transfer of informat' ion, technology, and so.forth by 5 many. vehicles of the work of the -- the work and information 6 from Sandia to the staff as well as to the Center. 7 So that's a key -- it's going to be'very key and 8 it's going to be I think a tough -- it's going to be a tough 9 challenge. 10 The last project deals with somewhat related to 11 tlus discussion along the lines that Dr. Okrent was 12 proceeding, namely, I've got the repository, I've got 13 climatic changes, but how do I get the water down into the
) 14 repository and I'll dealing with steep gradience on one 15 hand, and potential -- what we call perched water systems 16 where perhaps locally water stores up at locations because 17 of the site as well the climatology and how do I deal with 18' that at Yucca Mountain. How do I deal with steep gradience.
19 Again, rather sort of on the cutting edge of 20 hydrogeology, and that's one that we will be starting at the 21 Center. 22 I wanted to get back to another -- to the general 23 point that you made, Dr. Okrent, about -- and in general, 24 .you know, have you got the right people. Are you working on 25 the right projects. What we're trying to do -- the analogy O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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permit me to use it --'the analogy I think -- and maybe 2 I'll be sorry after I said it -- the analogy is a 3 professional. football team'I need fundamental skills on the L4 team that can' cover the"various positions, the various 5 things they need to do for -- to go out and win any game. 6 Of course, each -- I can't build my team entirely on all the .
' l
-7 differences that might accrue in each of the teams I have to 8 face during the season.
9 If.you think that's a lousy analogy I'll accept 10 it. But it's sort of a rather simple way of looking at it. 11 And I'm not using it in any way to take anything away from 12 the importance of your comment. I just kind of look at it 13 that way. We still need fundamental things going on. () 14 MR. OTT: I'm glad that Hel came back to this 15 because I wanted to make an observation,.too. With regard 16 to the way the research program is developed and the 17 research plan that you were given last time we have been 18 very strongly driven by the performance requirements in Part 19 60 in terms of the fact that NMSS has to make specific 20 licensing determinations on those matters. 21 And we're trying to develop a research team that 22 will support the ability to do that. And if you've looked 23 in the past at the way our need for expertise has evolved 24 that has centered quite often on hydrogeology, geochemistry 25 materials because those directly relate to performance O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
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l' objectives. 2 If you now look at the six aree.s that are on that-3 slide that Mel put up earlier you will.see that climatology 4 which.wasn't originally' broken out separately is now 5 specifically addressed by us because we find a potential
>p 6 problem in this particular site.
7 You'll see now that tectonics and volcanology are' 8 of a great interest to us whereas they weren't previously 9 because we're trying to respond to the fact that the site 10 does have specific needs. 11 So we're driven by certain overall requirements to 12 support NMSS' capability to make licensing determinations. 13 But we are also trying to be responsive to the issues that O- 14 we see as becoming important. 15 DR. STEINDLER: Is there anybody at the Center or 16 are there any programs at the Center that are specifically 17 tailored to analyzing the output of DOE's research programs 18 or R&D programs? 19 MR. SILBERBERG: Good point. Every one of the 20 research programs at the Center -- and also - - but certainly 21 the research programs are to be intimately familiar with 22 what's going on at the DOE -- on the DOE equivalent areas, 23 you know, discipline areas. 24 And the reason why we say that -- and we have to 25 work at it and we're going to have to work on it. It's O Heritage Reporting Corporation < (202) 626-4888 I
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1 quite a challenge for myself and Mr. Browning's staff. 2 I'm pushing that very hard. I mentioned that in June 3 because the data base and another whole source of expertise 4 is, in fact, there in th'at national program. And'I think 15 from a leveraging standpoint, as a minimum, without us being !- i 6 familiar with what's going on and understand what they've 7 done and the kind of results they're getting, outside of the 8 licensing areaa, just on a scientific basis we are charging 9 the Center with doing that. 10 And meanwhile, we' re also working on our l 11 procedures that allow them to carry that out. In fact, they 12 have come to us and said, unless they have good scientific 13 access to that work, in fact, their mission will be very ; 14 difficult to accomplish. l 15 DR. STEINDLER: I was addressing two things, Mel. 16 One is access, and that goes without saying. But the other 17 one is to determine whether or not at that leverage that 18 you're ta3 king about is being done with a broken pole. 19 One of the serious concerns that have been well 20 addressed in some of the NRC contractor reports that have i 21 come through in the past from a number of your contractors { l 22 is an in-depth and detailed scientific analysis of how good 23 the stuff is that DOE people have turned up. That strikes 24 me as, my personal view, as a very useful, if not, 25 absolutely necessary activity. Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) G28-4888 i
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. fq : 634 1 20 1- And my. question I guess is: is that explicitly 2 charged to the Center'as part of its explicit program, and 3 if so, is it going to come out the same way it has been in 4 the past where I think t'here used to be quarterly reports 5 that got turned out about the evaluation of, say, materials 6 data that have been turned out or is this' going to be turned 7 out in some other fashion.
8 MR. BROWNING: No, I think the answer to your 9 question is, yes, the intent is to do exactly the same kind 10 of thing and try to follow-up better to make sure it really 11 is having an impact. 12 DR. MOELLER: Other questions or comments for Mel 13 Silberberg? ( 14 (No response) 15 DR. MOELLER: Well, I believe with that then we're 16 bringing to a close the 13th meeting of the Advisory
'17 Committee on Nuclear Waste.
18 Let me thank Mel and Jesse and Bill and Bob 19 Browning for being here and meeting with us for a very 20 informative review of the work of the Center that we've done 21 this morning. 22 Let me thank our reporter for her time and 23 patience with us. 24 I believe that the committee has completed all of 25 our administrative work that we had -- work pertaining to l O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L-_-___-____-__ -
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R}, I believe we've
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1 .the administration of the committee. 2' completed our two letters.that we prepared at this meeting 3 and voted both of them final. L L 4 So with that then we bring the'13th meeting of the 5 'ACNN to a close. 6 Thank you. 7 (whereupon, at 12:10 p.m. the meeting was 8 adjourned.) 9 10 11' l 12 13
) 14 115 16 17 18 19 20 21' 22 23 L-L 24 25 L Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 L ,
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[. k_ 1 CERTIFICATE 3 This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the 4- United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter 5 of: ADVISORY' COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE 6 Name: 13th ACNW Meeting 7 8 Docket Number: 9 Place: Bethesda, Maryland 10 Date: September 15, 1989 11 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 12 transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear 13 Regulatory Commission taken stenographically by se and,
'( ) 14 thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the 15 direction of the court reporting company, and that the 16 transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing 17 proceedings. c' M
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18 /s/ Oh 19 (Signature typed) : JOAN ROSE 20 Official Reporter 21 Heritage Reporting Corporation 22 23 24 25 O Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
Aue - 1 O XRC STAFF PRESENTATION TO THE ACXY
SUBJECT:
The Center for Nuclear Yaste Regulatory Analyses DATE: September 15, 1989 O PRESENTERS: Jesse L. Funches, Director Program Management, Policy Development and Analysis Staff, NMSS Phone 492-3324 Robert E. Browning, Director Division of High-Level , Yaste Management, NMSS L Phone 492-3404 1
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