ML20248J283

Transcript of ACNW Second Working Group Meeting on 891010 in Bethesda,Md.Pp 1-138.Supporting Documentation Encl

ML20248J283
Person / Time
Issue date:	10/10/1989
From:	NRC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR WASTE (ACNW)
To:
References
NACNUCLE-T-0015, NACNUCLE-T-15, NUDOCS 8910160243
Download: ML20248J283 (154)

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N UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION p ._________________________________________________________.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON NUCLEAR. WASTE In the Matter of: )

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Second Working Group Meeting )

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O Pages: 1 through 138 Place: Bethesda, Maryland 1

Date: October 10, 1989

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-ADVISORY. COMMITTEE _ON-NUCLEAR WASTE.

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Second-Working Group Meeting ')

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. Tuesday, October 10, 1989-Room 422 7920 Norfolk Avenue Bethesda, Maryland-The. meeting convened, pursuant to not. ice, at -

1:00 p.m.

'BEFORE: DR. DADE W. MOELLER Chairman, ACNW

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Professor of Engineering in Environmental Health-Associate Dean for Continuing Education-School of Public Health Harvard University i Boston,. Massachusetts ACNW MEMBERS PRESENT:

DR. WILLIAM HINZE ACNW CONSULTANTS PRESENT:

DR. P. POMEROY

-DR. B. MARSH DESIGNATED FEDERAL EMPLOYEE:

DR. SIDNEY J.S. PARRY Heritage Reporting Corporation O-- (202) 628-4888 1

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G 2 1 .EB2QRER1EGE 2 DR. MOELLER: Good afternoon. I am Dade Moeller, 3

3 the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Wasts.

4 This is a working group meeting, and a word of explanation 5 is probably due to describe the function and purpose of the 6 meeting which is in support of the Advisory Committee on 7 Nuclear Waste general activities.

8 This is the second of these meetings that have-9 been held. To allow the maximal use of our time, we have 10 chosen to have these information gathering sessions with our 11 consultants, staff and NRC staff and or others.

12 These sessions may include only one or as in 13 today's meeting two members of the ACNW. The purpose is to

() 14 allow the detailed examination and discussion of a narrow 15 range of topics or even a single topic.

16 The designated federal employee for this meeting 17 is Sidney Parry seated at my far right. And also with us 18 today is Charlotte Abrams, and we certainly would like to 19 welcome her as the newest member of the ACNW supporting

( 20 staff.

21 A transcript is being taken. While no l

22 applications for making presentations have been received 23 from the public, constructive pertinent statements will be 24 welcomed. Simply raise your hand or let us know, so that 25 you can be recognized and we can grant you permission to Heritage Reporting Corporation O' (202) 628-4888 i

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1 speak.

2 Since this room is not equipped with a loud 3- speaker system, speakers in the audience are requested.to L 4l stand when they speak and to clearly identify themselves and 5 their affiliation prior to speaking.

6 At this time, I will call upon Dr. William Hinze, 7 who is the Chairman of this working group which pertains to 8 tectonics. And'he will elsborate more on-the meeting today 9 -and to introduce our first speaker.

10 DR. HINZE: Thank you, Dr. Moeller. I would like ,

11 to join with you in welcoming-Chsrlotte Abrams to our first 12 meeting as a member of the ACNW team.- We appreciate you

- 13 being here, and we look forward to a long and fruitful

( 14 association with you on these many problems that face the 15 committee.

16 Our principal topic is the NRC's staff draft 17 technical position on technical models. That is where we 18 started this working group. I also would anticipate and 19 would look forward to discussions considering other 20 technical positions and rule makings that the staff has 21 under development, and in particular those dealing with 22 seismic hazards. And also the broader question of the 23 usefulness of technical positions in general and where they 24 are in the scheme of evaluation of the possible high level 25 waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

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0: l' With us today, we will be joined by Dr. Pomeroy 2 who is on his way from the airport, who has been involved in 3- the discussions on the technical position on tectonic 4 models. Also we have with us Dr. Bruce Marsh, professor of 5 geology 14t Johns Hopkins University.

6 our goal here today is to reconsider and to try 7 to further the staff's presentation to the ACNW on

.8 September 14th. Also the DOE /NRC staff-interchange of 9 September 26th that Dr. Parry, Dr. Pomeroy,' and I attended.

10 And I'am also looking forward to formulating some type of 11 position _that we can pass on to the full ACNW committee-for 12 their consideration.

13 So there really are three specific topics and'one

() 14 generic topic. The topic dealing with vulcanism which we L 15 understand will be the subject of another technical 16 position, the tectonic model's technical position on seismic 17 hazards if we have time, and the whole generic position 18 regarding those.

19 What we will do in view of consideration of 20 Dr. Marsh's time is we will start off with him. And I think 21 that it_is important that we do consider the vulcanism issue 22 further at this time, because there is a great deal of 23 discussion in DOE, and NRC, and also the ACNW on this topic.

24 But probably even more so there is a great deal of 25 discussion of this topic in the public news media.

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9 1 .And the ACNW looks. forward to receiving the best 2 possible information on recommendations that we can make to 3 the Commission on how to proceed with the vulcanism issue.

4 Because certainly this is a provocative topic and it is also 5 'a good candidate for a fatal flaw. If there is indeed-a 6 fatal flaw of the Yucca Mountain, certainly vulcanism is a 7 good candidate for that.

8 Bruce, I would like to call upon you then. And I 9 sent you a letter with a whole list of questions, and I am 10 not going to sit here and check off the questions. But I 11 think that there are three principal elements here. First 12 of all, I would appreciate it for the record if you would 13 please give us a little information on who you are and where

() 14 you have come from in a professional way, so that the full 15 committee will understand your areas of interest and 16 expertise.

17 Secondly, if you could give us your view of the 18 state of the art of our knowledge of volcanic processes and 19- our ability to take our knowledge and to put it into a l 20 prediction mode. And I know that you are well equipped to l

21 do this, because you are one of the few people in our 22 community that deals with vulcanism on a systems basic. And

i. 23 not simply a chemical, or physical, or counting the number l

24 of volcanoes, but you look at this in a much more systems 25 oriented approach.

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.p 1 -And then thirdly if you could as much as 2- possible, we would like to have your thoughts on how you 3 believe we can best. investigate the vulcanism issue. And I

4- specifically at Yucca Mountain, we will focus in on that,-

5 and not look at the-generic issue of high level waste in I l

6 general.

1 7 DR. PARRY: Excuse me just a moment. We do have- '

8 a viewgraph overhead now. If,we could perhaps interrupt for 9 a minute.

10 DR. HINZE: Fine. I have stalled because I saw 11 it. I heard you off here on the side, so I was spinning 12 here.

13 Bruce, while they are doing that though, we are

} 14 really interested very much in your thoughts on whether we 15 can ever come to a closure on the vulcanism issue.

16 And if we can, how do you see the best ways of 17 approaching the problem?

18 DR. MOELLER: While he is setting that up and as 19 Dr. Marsh goes forward, I looked up or it happened to come 20 across my desk the technical positions that have been done 21' and the ones that are underway for high level waste. And I 22 think that I did a quick count, and there were 23. And 23 there are three that have already been issued I guess in' 24 draft. No, one is in final and two in draft that have 25 already been issued in 1989, and there are four more with Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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7 1 dates to be determined. So there is a lot of activity.

2 DR. MARSH: Good afternoon everyone. I am 3 Bruce Marsh, and I am from Johns Hopkins University, and I 4 am a professor and chairman of the Department of Earth and 5 Planetary Sciences where I have been for the last fifteen 6 years, my sixteenth year at Johns Hopkins.

7 My professional education in undergraduate work 8 was at Michigan State in geology and geophysics; and the 9 University of Arizona in geophysics, in petrology, in 10 mathematics, and in empirical physics somewhat. And the 11 University of California at Berkeley in chemistry, 12 exploration geophysics and petrology.

13 And since 1974 when I graduated I have been at

() 14 Hopkins all of the time. I have been working in the field 15 of magma genesis and the physics and chemistry of the 16 generation for eighteen years.

17 And I also maintain a separate interest 18 overlapping in the use of potential fields to understand 19 convection in the earth's mantle, which as you will see 20 later on actually there are a lot of similarities of 21 understanding the magma chambers in general. And I have 22 been involved with the remote sensing of the geode fields in 23 the tectonics in the Pacific Ocean and things like that.

24 What I would do today is that I have gone over 25 the papers that people have supplied me on what has been Heritage Reporting Corporation i (202) 628-4888 l

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1 done on the. estimation of volcanic probabilities. And I

'2 have'been going over these one by one and going through 3 them. In other words, trying to walk through other people's I

4 steps and figure out what they did, and say what I would do 5 differently or encourage it. f i

6 (Slides shown.)

7 DR. MARSH: I thought that I would give an 8 overall feeling or overall presentation to build a structure 9 for you of the magmatic process within the context, and 10 enlarge upon the various aspects that I have.seen in these 11 . papers and show you why I think that there is room for work, 12 et cetera.

13 ~ I would say at the beginning that I think that

'( ) 14 the work has been done, and it seems by and large of 15 excellent quality and sufficient really to learn a lot. I 16 have also the feeling that the speed of the science is such 17 that it is now possible through current techniques and what 18 we know about the processes of magmatic events to pull 19 together a lot of things that have not been pulled together 20 before. And I will try to weave this together as we go 21 along.

22 I would like to start out talking a little bit 23 about the general process here that you seen on the screbn 24 of magmatic life cycle. And in general magmas are generated 25 as far as we know in the upper 100 or 150 kilometers of the Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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<- 9 C earth's surface.

1 The biggest magma of the earth of course 2 is the outer core of the earth. It has a higher melt, but 3 we know that it is very stable from where it is and it never 4 reaches the surface of the earth.

5 So the outer core is our biggest magma, the magma 6 ocean. It is much like the planet itself. It probably went 7 through some time in its early genesis. But here is a 8 picture of the magmatic cycle. We know that we have partial 9 melting somewhere in the earth, in various parts of the 10 earth, usually in the upper 100 kilometers of the earth or 11 the 150 kilometers. And it is due to convection through a 12 phase boundary.

13 In other words, it is an unstable assembly of

() 14 solids that pass through a phase boundary, either pushed 15 down through the phase boundary by convection in the mantle 16 of the earth, for example convection of melt through the 17 earth's crust which partially melts its conduit, its wall 18 pathways.

19 We have magma produced in the deep and we have it 20 produced at a high level, and we will talk about that. So 21 this is one overall process. And in the early part of my 22 career and still going on, we considered this whole part 23 generating magmas and where they come from.

24 And then we moved into how to actually move it, a 25 process by which where it is extracted let's say from the Heritage Reporting Corporation g)

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I 1 partially molten semblance of salt and liquid. It moves up j 2 through the earth as a system of propagating cracks or dikes 3 and moves up into a bubble. And this a hot globe of 4 material softening with wall rock around it moving upward, 5 or by a mining technique like a worm moves around, adjusting 6 stuff in the front and passing it out the back.

7 The high level processes are something that we 8 call the magma chambers where by and large we see 9 post mortems of volcanoes, and we have some subterranean 10 environments, and we have big plutons and sheet-like bodies, 11 sills and plutons where we have had magma held in deep 12 volcanoes and various geometries. And we have just gone 13 through various kinds of evolutionary processes physical and

() 14 chemical leading to a series of eruptive products on the 15 earth's surface.

16 Then the overall eruption or in other words the 17 transport of magma from this chamber up to the earth's 18 surface, and there are many manifestations of that. We 19 could have just a single fissure eruption pouring material 20 out, and we could have a concentrated flux of magma for tens 21 of millions of years in one area, episodic and periodic flux 22 going on the surface, but nevertheless through a central 23 area, or we could have a big block dropping down from the 24 earth's surface into this chamber spewing out some things 25 around the edges.

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11 1 So these are all various manifestations of it.

.2 What-I can do is just lead you through a little bit.of these 3 things and what kind of things to be worried about 4 quantitatively in these processes.

5 DR. MOELLER: In terms of location, do these 6 processes' occur beneath the ocean as similarly to beneath 7 the~ North and South Pole as well as beneath major land.

8 masses?

9 DR. MARSH: Yes and no. Vulcanism occurs in'very 10 definitely places on the earth's surface, almost predictable 11 places in terms of broadly predictable places. And we can 12 separate that in'let's say various styles. And I will get 13 into that as we go halfway through. I will talk about it

() 14 and I will give you some examples, geographic examples of 15 how the mechanics actually work in various areas and 16 actually changes.

17 And on the sea floor, we have really in some ways 18 a different style of vulcanism that we see on continents for 19 example. .That is due to the tectonics of the' earth's 20 composition and the nature of the earth's crust. It is a 21 little bit of a different world.

22 I will walk you through a little bit here and 23 what kinds of things that we worry about. I will not show 24 you an equation, but I will show you a little bit about what 25 we worry about here. This is diapirism and stopping, two Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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1 ' mechanisms. And one of the mechanics that we worry about is 2 that this problem here which I liken to a bubble moving up 3 through a viscous fluid in the earth is a little bit 4 different process.

5 In other words, the well known problem posed 6 here is different. It is a uniquely geologic problem in 7 that the body itself is hot and the earth's material or the 8 earth's mantle around it has a viscosity that is extremely 9 sensitive to temperature, That is one of the physical 10 properties that is almost incomprehensible to the average 11 scientist,-that the viscosity of a rock changes by a factor 12 of ten to the twenty more or less over a temperature 13 interval of maybe 150 degrees.

() 14 This is an immense variation in viscosity, and 15 this is through a melting interval, through a phase change.

16 It is in the 150 degree range. But nevertheless the problem 17 that we would have to solve is a problem of a hot sphere 18 moving through a viscous material whose viscosity is 19 extremely sensitive to temperature. So we call this the hot 20 stokes problem.

21 We worked on this for some time. You can show 22 very well that there is a thin region about it, a thin 23 viscous region. And then a wider thermal region, a thermal 24 halo which you can think of as a metamorphic aureole. But 25 it is a thermal halo, a thermal boundary there, that moves n Heritage Reporting Corporation

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1 with the body. The body is hot, it heats up the wall. rock.

2 And it is very near it, and this is the temperature field.

3 And this temperature field is a reflection of how fast it is 4 going.

5 If it goes very fast, these boundaries move in 6 and get very narrow. If it goes slow, the boundaries move 7 out. So it is to the advantage of the body. If it moves 8 very rapid 3y, it does not lose much heat. Because what the 9 body has in it of course is only enough heat for its 10 crystallization interval, and through the crystallization 11 interval it does not get any more. So whatever it gets at 12 birth is what it has for the whole process.

13 Some of you people may be familiar with the 7

() 14 reverse of this property, to put a negative sign on it 15 perhaps of a reactor is more critical down that way than 16 this way. I have often thought of that as an analogue.

17 The flow field, there is a net flux of material 18 up here of course and a return flow along the sides. So the 19 deformation is extreme along the sides of the body when it 20 is in this motion, and you have a flux up here in the middle 21 and return flows down here, in other words material. Part 22 of it has to be behind it. So there is a dipolar pressure 23 driving this thing. The pressure field is dipolar and it is 24 high in front and low in the back, and it drives it around.

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1- at it,-it locks like a dipolar pressure. The viscosity.is 2 really a major factor in this in controlling that. Here it 3 is here. The viscosity is normalized'to a far field value 4' here. So-it goes up and it. drastically goes down in the 5 body, and this is what allows the body-to move-in.. It.is 6 like a lubrication.

7 It is same thing if-you take a hot knife and put.

8 it in butter, the hot knife goes right through the butter.

'9 And basically the drag only depends on the value of 10 viscosity right at the edge of the body-which is very 11 interesting. 'In other words, it is a secondary factor of 12 how thick the channel is, that enters into it. But 13 basically'it is the value of the drag nearest the body which

() 14 is interesting which is within a factor of ten.

15 On the other side here for example is a stopping, 16 it is a' problem of stopping. This is a body that winds its 17 way upward, thermal stresses. The thermal stresses are very 18 large in this case because of the heating of the rock. The 19 rock expands and you have pressure near the body. There is 20 an extension outside of the body and the rock fails through 21 fractures like this. There are big sheets of this material 22 of the rock put on the bottom of the body.

23 And the temperature feels very much the same in 24 many ways. The velocity field of course is just upward in 25 here because there is a mean flux going upward. The thermal Heritage Reporting Corporation

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1 stresses as I said before, here they are in the negative 2 which means impression as we define them here. Here is the 3 body and you get the tension outside becetes that inner halo  :

4 is expanding and pulls the outside rocks and fractures it  !

5 open.

6 And this kind of process, a very good example of I 7 this would be near the earth's surface where we have cold 8 air formation, where we have a giant block falling through.

9 And Daly who originally put this forth or did not put the 10 idea forth himself exactly but he developed it to our 11 present state of appreciation, he likened this to something 12 happening very near the earth's surface, the crust of the 13 earth. Things like this are seen. It is nothing that

(, ~) 14 happens very deep.

15 Because of the fact if you take a bunch of blocks 1 16 in the roof and put them down below here that the velocity 17 of the packing is still about 50 percent. So really a body 18 like this.is only mined about one more volume than itself 19 before these blocks fill the whole thing up and totally then 20 congest the body, and the body will then have to go into 21 some other mode of transport of the fluid. In that process, 22 it takes so long to actually pack them in tightly that the 23 body is cooled off. But the life of the body is heat in' 24 terms of these processes and that is what is making it move.

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L .' -16 1- that I had on the' earlier figure is elastic crack e

~2 propagation. In elastic crack propagation, there is'nothing 1

3 really difficult to understand. Essentially the cracking, t

4 and crack velocity and crack propagation is well known. j l

5 They travel about at the speed of a few 6 kilometers per second perhaps. There is a lot of 7 information that we do not know about the tip of a crack, 8 the corrosiveness, and what the magmatic gases or.the magma 9 actually does. Right at the tip of the propagating crack is 10 really what is important to understand in'the transport of -

u 11 magma through a crack.

12 DR. HINZE: Are all of these processes involved 13 in the vulcanism in the southern range?

14 DR. MARSH: I will show you. As we go on here, 15 we will talk about which one of these things show up in 16 various areas. And as we go on more and more, I will break 17 this down. We have cinder cone vulcanism, we have shield 18 vulcanism and the like. Maybe it is appropriate now to l 19 mention that for an area like Hawaii let's say that everyone -1 20 knows about very well, that is a typical area where we have 21 elastic crack propagation.

22 The earthquakes are coming up through the 23 lithosphere, and we know that we have a related inflation of 24 the surface, and we know the rapid transport of magma at 25 various times. And we know that the style of eruptions

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1 basically is always tied to some sort of fissure and some 2 sort of elastic cracks. And in deeply-eroded' terrains, we 3 see' dikes. We do not see plutons at all in that kind of a

4 world.

5 If we go to the world around the Pacific for-6 example, and I will talk more about that as we go-on, we L 7- have. central volcanic centers and we have no earthquakes at 8 all even with near source arrays ever going down through the 9 lithosphere. We never see any until we get very near the-10 earth's surface. And we liken that to a kind of stoking 11 mechanism or where at least the channel is open, a hot 12 channel. It sits there for millions of years, and some of 13 these arcs have volcanic centers that have existed off and

() 14 on for fifty or sixty million years, a very long period of 15 time.

16 If we get into an area like the basin range, we 17 have' cinder cones cropping up. Predominantly those things 18 :are a mixture of two things. One is the cracks, the fissure 19 ' type things in the earth's crust, and you can see that very 20 clearly not only through the alignment of some of these 21 cones themselves, but also in these. Also we have areas 22 where we have good evidence that these things have. formed a 23 cylinder of conduits through the earth's crust.

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24 The Sierra Nevadas for example, there is on the

25. order of twenty or thirty conduits that are of the order of l

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18 1 nine, ten, twelve or several million years'old that have 2= ~ come through the entire Sierra Nevada, like fifty kilometers 3 and are tiny little things. Jmd they have had a lot of ' flux 4- with them. In places all through the Sierras,.we have a lot

.5 of these things.

6 So the style changes, but the style is basically 7 identifiable. Now I will also mention in the context of the 8 interest that you people have that in these kinds of 9 scenarios here that we have talked about a homogenous 10 continuum around the body. In other words, you say to 11 yourself what happens when it starts cracking.

12 As you get to the upper part of the earth, lower 13 down deep in the earth, this is a viscous world, a viscous 14

'( ) world and maybe an elastic world here in terms of thermal 15 stresses. Rocks have this capability in fact and liquids 16 and solids.

17 As we get to the upper part of the crust however 18 and.the globe gets down much lower than it is here, we can 19 have actual flaws in the continuum or actual-breaks. And 20 what does it do to this. Magma will get up anyway it 21 possibly can. Cracks in the upper part of the surface do 22 not let magma otit of the earth. The earth is not filled 23 with magma and it leaks out every chance it gets. Magma'is 24 at a generated depth and it comes up however it can. It-is 25 almost impossible to keep it from coming up once it starts.

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19 1 So what happens when you get this near the e 2 ' surface is that fractures, faulting, and ancient weakness, 3 and scars in the earth's crust, this stuff will take 4 advantage of it any chance it can. It just helps the whole 5 process a great amount. So the magma by whatever.means it 6 will in the upper most crust then.  !

7 We have to take into account' things like stress 8 field, the regional stress field, and the local stress 9 field, the' local structure, heterogeneities in the earth's 10 crust in terms of the local fracturing, and the local y 11 structure in terms of whether it is horizontal or it is 12 . vertical. These are all major factors that have to be taken 13 into account.

14- So you can imagine this as being some sort of a

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15 flux coming up through the earth. A lot of the magma does 1

16 not get to the earth's surface. A lot of magma probably, 17 not probably but certainly a lot of magma as we go down in 18 the earth increases exponentially in terms of the bodies, 19 lots of failed bodies.

20 And you cnn understand that if we look at the i 21 thermal problem. The difficulty in modeling some of these 22 processes is the fact that we are talking about heat. This 23 is a big diagram on a small screen. But what you see here 24 is temperature. You have to worry about-the units from,zero 25 to one on the bottom and depth on the vertical scale. So we Heritage Reporting Corporation

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20 1 are looking at magma coming up from the earth and deep in 2 the earth. It could be coming up from the crust. It could 3 be coming up ten kilometers. They are non-dimensional 4 curves.

5 I have chosen here to show you just a sphere. We 6 have done these for elastic cracks, and we have-done these 7 for stopping, and we have done these for diapirs internally 8 circulating. So this is the diagram. I want to show you 9 the overall frame of the curve. They are all the same for 10 every body, except that they have a different dynamic 11 meaning in terms of the velocity.

12 The primary axiom that you are worried ubout in 13 magma transport is that you do not even have to worry about

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14 the dynamics. The thing that you want to use to give you an 15 -estimate of how long magma resides in the earth and its 16 source and surface is the fact that the magma must get to 17 the earth's surface without being frozen. It must still be 18 eruptable.- And I will return to what we mean by eruptable 19 magma, because it comes into some of the work that has been 20 done, and what it means in terms of where are they in the 21 eruptable cycle.

22 Take a look at a cinder cone for example in Yucca 23 Mountain, where it is in its eruptable history. In other 24- words, once it is started where is the' magma chamber going.

25 Can you tell something about the size of the system.

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V l 21 1 So what we see here is a magma starting out, and 2 it moves very'quickly. The liquid drops away from it and it 3 is a different slope. In other words, this is the. point at 4 which the magma gets crystallized, and this is the point-5 where it is totally solid. j 6 And then I will drop down to the bottom of the 7 diagram'just to talk about it there to give you an idea. A 8 magma comes up something like this. It comes up and there 9 are no crystals-in it. As soon as it is extracted, it moves 10 up very rapidly. When it gets to the earth's surface, it 11, will be super' heated and it will have no crystals in it.

12 And it will be near &he earth's surface and you will see 13 this super heating.

-() 14 Now we never see magmas super heated at the 15 earth's surface. We always see magmas that have the least 16 trace of crystals. They always seem to be down here. So 17 there are curves. So one of the things that we can say is 18 that you have to have a curve that is somewhere here and has 19 to meet on the earth's surface somewhere.

20 Now these are for constant velocity descent. .The 21 magma does not have to come up that way. It can come up and 22 cool in here for awhile and cool back here-and come up like 23 that. There are all kinds of paths through here. But this 24 gives you a general idea. These are various things like 25 velocities of a sieve, because that is almost a kilometer

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1 sized body. These are meters per second, ten to the minus 2 five, ten to minus four, ten to the minus six meters per 3 second. 3 4 This is the geotherm. So if the magma travels 5 too fast or too slowly, it will travel the geotherm and it 6 will freeze down here. There are some at faster velocity.

7 What you see is essentially a convolution of the magma 8 thermal history of this geotherm. This is the wall rock 9 temperature far away from the body.

10 So this gives you an overall. You can get an 11 overall feeling for how fast the body has to go before it 12 goes somewhere in the earth. So what is important in this 13 diagram, what is important is this phase. This changes for

() 14 various kinds of magmas.

15 This happens to be a magma with about one percent 16 water in it. If it is a dry magma, for example the basalts 17 that you see coming up in the basin range. And basalts are 18 not notoriously known to have a lot of water in them. rhey 19 do not have a lot of water in them, although their 20 temperature pressure range in the overall field is similar 21 to what this is. So you want to know that.

22 The other thing that is interesting to show here 23 is that this happens to be the melting point of the mantle, 24 or we can put on here the melting point of the crust, 25 Actually there is not that far of a difference really under Heritage Reporting Corporation

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1 dry conditions. These magmas can actually melt part of the 2 crust or the mantle, and we will come to back to that. It.

3 is a very important thing, because magmas are getting to the 4 upper crust and they are melting the crust.

5 It depends how long they are in contact with the 6 crust, and it depends on what is the crust. In other words, 7 it is coming up against something that is really hard to 8 melt, and these magmas may then seal themselves. If you 9 came upon this body for example deep in the earth, they are 10 actually sealed. j 11 They form a partially melt zone around them and 12 it quenches rather rapidly and makes a glass envelope like a l 13 thermos bottle around it. So it seals itself off. It is n

(s) 14 very difficult to exchange in and out, for example water.

15 We know that a lot of systems have no exchange at all until 16 we get right down to the solidus before they give up any 17 inner fluid up to the wall rock.

18 Now the near surface environment if we go to look 19 at a magma chamber, what kinds of things can we worry about 20 in the magma chamber. I mean what can we actually use in 21 the products that are coming out of the earth to tell us 22 what the state of the magmatic chamber in the life cycle of 23 the magma.

24 What you see here are some simplo calculations 25 involving a conducting magma. These are the stream lines of Heritage Reporting Corporation

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(/ 1 the fluid in the chamber. This is a' magma chamber, an 2 idealized magma chamber,.in actual symmetry. And it is 3 convecting upward here and down here. And it is driven by a 4 strong flow down the walls.

5~ -They are cold walls and the~ chamber is sitting 6 here. The flow is driven by being cool on this-side and-7 falling down, and you have a gentle return flow all the:way 8 up in the middle of this baci and forth. So this flow is on 9 both sides of the system.

10 What you see on this side is the region where 11 'there is the distribution of crystals in the magma. If we 12 put crystals uniformly through this body while the body is 13 convecting or we have a convecting body with crystals going

'() 14 into the whole body, it says where are the crystals after 15 some time.

16 Well, crystals that are going to the roof for 17 example that begin to settle and are heavier than the magma, 18 they take a trajectory like this. Whereas any crystal in 19 the shaded region here is retained in he re and is trapped, 20 and it just. circulates around and around. So this region 21 really goes over like this. But for clarity we just show 22 this on this side. These are particles stream line fed,-and 23 these are fluid stream line. 1 24 Now the size of this region. Here we have 25 57 percent retention, and here we have 20 percent retention,

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c' 25' 1 and why is there a differenca. The difference is because of 2 the relative measure and magnitude of the convecting 3 velocity relative to the settling blocks in the crystal. So 4 the crystal is very heavy and very big, and it has a real 5 small retention zone and it may not be retained at all.

6 In other words, if we had a magma that we threw 7 in bricks of gold for example and they dissolved, or let's-8- say bricks of platinum, it would go right through. We have 9 no retention zone at all. But as we get small, tiny little 10 .small crystals, the retention zone gets larger, larger, and 11 larger.

12 So what I mean to say here is that the size of 13 the crystal, the nature of the crystal, and the abundance

() 14 tells us something about this overall dynamics in the 15 system. In other words, looking at the eruptive cycle tells  !

16 us what happens when we have one lava flow stacked on top of i

17 another. It tells us something about where the system is in 18 this kind of context.

19 What tells us even more about it is something  !

20 else. And this figure you have probably seen before. It is 21 in your reports. I was quite flattered to see it in there.

22 It is not the whole figure, there is only part of it here. j 23 But I will show you a little bit what happened.

24 Imagine this is a magma chamber for example. And 25 you are given the job of every day monitoring what the i

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(-) 1 crystal is and what the state is of the magma chamber in 2 terms of there is a group up above that wants to erupt every 3 once in awhile, and they say is everything ready down there 4 to erupt, where can we get out of the system.

5 Well, what happens is this is the crystal of the 6 magma, a crystal fraction. It goes from liquid, pure 7 liquid, to pure solid. This is a non-dimensional 8 temperature. It goes from being a solid up here to one 9 where it is liquid. Crystals build in some sort of a 10 non-linear fashion. If you think back to a simple fluid, a 11 one component system, like ice for example, ice and water.

12 You have no crystals until you get to some point, melting 13 point, and then all of a sudden we have all of the crystals

() 14 right there at that point.

15 If we have a mixture of 100 and something-odd 16 elements, we probably would have more or less a straight 17 line. What we have in the earth are rocks that are slightly 18 refined materials. And we have something like this, and we 19 may have a little more for some materials, maybe up like 20 this. It just depends. We have a general curve though.

21 Anyway you are living in this system here, and 22 you are asked to get up every day and take a picture of the 23 system to show the crystals and put these in piles on the 24 desk.

25 The overall system is losing heat and it is l Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888 1

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(, A i 1 cooling. And the heat that comes from that magmatic system 2 comes from two sources. It comes from just temperature

( i

! 3 changes and it comes from crystallization, latent heat 4 build-up.

5 So out here where the crystals are building up l

l 6 very slowly, most of the energy that comes out of the magma 7 comes from temperature changes and loses heat. As crystals 8 begin to build up more rapidly however, what happens is that 9 more and more of that heat comes from latent heat i 10 ' crystallization. And the overall progress of the magma .j 11 losing temperature and cools, it goes more slowly and more 12 slowly as it moves. It moves slowly through this region, 13 very slowly until you get up in here, p

() 14 You can show quantitatively that the probability 15 of catching the magma at any one state of crystal or at any 16 temperature in this region is proportional to one over its 17 rate of temperature change through that region. In other 18 words, if you got every day and took a picture and you put 19 these stacks of pictures in piles of crystal piles, you j 20 would find that you would have a big hump here in the 21 middle, because the magma spends most of its time right here 22 in the midtle of these crystal states, because most of the 23 crystals are being born and growing here, and so it le 24 giving out most of its latent heat. So it sluggishly goes 25 through here.

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1 On the other hand, if you had a glass of water 2 with an ice cube in it and it was at equilibrium, you could 3 say with some precision exactly what temperature it was at, 4 and you would have a very high probability of predicting 5 exactly the state of that magma, because you would say that 6 it is right at its melting point, because you have liquids 7 and solids there and so the system is buffered.

8 So we can show that it is really the derivative 9 of this curve that gives us this thing. And this is what I 10 call the thermal probabilities, the probability of finding j 11 the magma in any one state of temperature or crystallinity.

12 So in this case, the maximum probability is right 13 in the middle where everything is building up, and we have

() 14 two standard deviations. I show one and two standard 15 deviations. So if you ask the person who is living in the 16 magma chamber exactly what is the most probable state, they 17 say something right here in the middle. That is the most 18 probable state if you lived in the chamber.

19 Now we do not live in the chamber. We have 20 another sampling function that goes on for us and that is 21 the earth. So we have a filter on this. The magma comes up 22 on the earth's surface, and that whole process now is a 23 transfer function you might say between the magma chamber 24 and the surface of the earth.

25 There are some dynamics that are involved in Heritage Reporting Corporation 73

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l 1 there. If you actually look at the surface of the earth, 2 what happens is we never find magmas on the earth's surface 3 that have more than about 50 percent crystals. In other 4 words, if we look on the earth's surface, we have a 5 distribution of' magmas like this. We have very few magmas 6 that have no crystals in them at all.

7 Most of the magmas we have, and this varies 8 somewhat with the tectonic area, most of the. magmas that we 9 see on an arch for example show up and they have about 35 to 10 50 percent crystals. As we get beyond 55 percent crystals, 11 50 or 55 percent crystals, we never see magmas on the 12 earth's surface. They do not come out of the earth. And 13 that is because the magma for the assemble of solids that (n_) 14 make up the silicate is at maximum packing. The system then 15 becomes a dilatent material. If you try to sheer it 16 expands.

17 Just like when you step on the beach on sand, you 18 notice right around your foot it always gets all dried 19 around your foot, and that is because the solids are 20 rolling, the little grains are rolling past each other.

21 There is not enough liquid to fill in between the grains, so 22 it looks all dry. If you take your foot back away from it, 23 the water comes back all soupy when it comes back in.

24 So this in coming up against the packing. It is 25 a dilatent material. This cutoff here is a dilatent g3 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i

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1- material on this side. If you try to sheer that, the body i

2- actually tries to expand so it congests the pipe, and it 3 just will not come out of the pipe and it expands.

4 This is what you see on the earth's surface. Now 5 what is the transfer between'this and this thing. .The big

6. determinant factor is just like I said here. It is this 7 radiological factor, it is.this-radiological' barrier that 8 the magma gets up against. If it passed beyond this 9 55 percent crystals or so, it is impossible for it to erupt.

10 And in the viscosity, you can see this. This is a measure 11 of the viscosity'of the material at its liquidness. It is 12 the viscosity of the material at any one time.

13 The viscosity of the liquid is divided by the

!( ) 14- viscosity at a later time. What happens is that this is 15- about'one at the liquid. As you get out to 55 percent 16 crystal essentially, the viscosity grows very, very large, 17 and the denominator drives this thing very down low.

i 18 So we essentially have here then a window. It is 19 a transfer function. .And if you multiply this times this, 20 you get'this. So this thermal probability of eruption in 21 the chamber. This is the radiological probability of letting 22 that stuff out of the chamber. The product of these two 23 things give rise to what I call' the eruption probability' 24 here. And this is the window then of the magma existing.

25 This window has to be calibrated and it has to be Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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31 J 1' -looked at'for each1 type of mantle, cThis.happens to be for 1

2 -basalts which are not totally liko the basalts in the basin. i i

3 range area.. But the basalts are often of lower

'4 crystallinities.

5 'They are silicious things like ash or even: lower.-

6 And the more silicious the matrix gets, the further this 7 cut-off moves up here. So these for example have a very 8 small vindow, and~ basalts have a much broader window. .You 9 have water in it and other things and it' changes'the window 10 a little bit, but'we sti]l have this fast. interval here that 11 it cannot penetrate.through.

12 So these kind of things then tell us about the 13 state ef the system. These are formal things, and you see I 14 put the probabilities up here. I just' normalized them all 15 'to'one. Because if you really want to get down to systems 16 that you want to put some actual numbers on, you have to 17 take into account very carefully the phased system and how 18 exactly these things and especially the curve up here how it 19 varies.

20 But you can see then if we had a stack of lavas 21 that are coming from one system, one chamber for example, 22 that we can track it especially on this. If you have a lava 23 that is here for example, and the next-one is here, and the 24 next one is here. The times tell you, it is very 25 interesting. If you are moving up one curve and you say Heritage Reporting Corporation O- (202) 628-4888

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11 okay,.I have one batch of magma.

2. If you have one here, and you have.another one 3 here, and you have another one there,'and you have another 4 one here, we have several bat'ches of magma. They are coming 5 back'in'and the thing is being' replenished. Look at the f.

,, 6 stratigraphic sequence that is going on.

a 7 The othet? thing that you can say'is that if we 8 have one here, and one here, and one here for example, and 9 .it looks like one batch, we have some idea.of'the time 10 involved, and because of the heat' transfer involved from the ,

11 system we can tell by the size of the system how close it 12 is, how fast is it going up on this curve here.

13

'( [ 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation

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(2) 1 DR. MARSH: When is it going to get past 55 2 percent, you're going to get across this thing. This is the 3 forbidden region. I want to pass on the other side of this, 4 it's off limits for eruption.

5 So in other words there are reports in there.

6 People have done good reports on looking at the major 7 elements. We know the characterization of the lava isn't 8 going to come up very well. We therefore could know 9 something about where you need to melt the rock and we have 10 something about the pratology -- how much crystals are in 11 there and what they are like. It hasn't been done in the 12 fashion that we need.

13 But the basic ground work is there for telling us i

(~'1 A- 14 what kind of compositions we think we' re dealing with.

15 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me. Your comment raised in 16 my mind a question, how difficult is it to get a 17 representative sample? You said more crystals are different 18 percent crystals, and I know I'm dealing with several mixes.

19 Does the magma pretty much --

20 DR. MARSH: By and large it's not very difficult 21 to get above a lava flow any samples, it's pretty l 22 representative of the system. Pretty much. It depends on 23 what you're looking at, the size of the crystals, et cetera.

24 But by and large it's not really too critical.

25 It would be very interesting, though, it would be (q) Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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'l -very' indicative if we found a different crystals at one end 2 of the flow -- that would tell unt really details. .And those l

? , 3 kind of things should be looked at', also, in terms of going 4 up the lava flow and seeing if.this thing is sitting there.

5 It should tell us, that looks.like'a very small system.

6 A big system you get like 100 basalts. You get 7 tremendous volumes coming out and they look absolutely 8 uniform for 100s of miles. If they all have very low 9 cryntals we should know that the batch of system was sitting 10 there and it was not cooling hardly at all, especially when

'll .it spans several r..illion years and there is no change. So 12 we know that the major system mixes them.

13 So you can calibrate them fairly well. And small

() 14 systems then you can get an idea how long they're going to 15 live.

16 In the more direct way -- here I'll show you 17 something interesting here. These are a set of convection 18 experiments of cooling of a sort of a material, analog, very 19 much like magma. It's a paraffin, this is a special kind of 20 paraffin that melts around room temperature. It has a --

21 it's a solid solution' series, it doesn't have a real define 22 technique, it's more like a silicate. It will crystallize 23 continuous essentially. There's two components in then.

24 And what you see is a tank here that's 27 25 centimeters square and we turn it upside down and make at Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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1 all uniform, temperature. We even get to the plate at the 2 top here. Then we turn the tank over and we start cooling 3 it strongly from the top. Well, magma cools from the sides, 4 from the sides and from the roof, by and large. They can 5 cool from the floor, too, but the floor -- they cool less on 6 from the floor because they've penetrated from those rocks 7 and those rocks are already hot.

8 The wall problem is no different than the one 9 here. What happens is, you see this white thing, this is a 10 crust, this is a solidified paraffin going downward here.

11 These little things -- the little white things in this 12 happen to be a tiny smidgen actually of aluminum flakes that 13 are thrown in. This one has a sheet of light, a laser A

(-) 14 coming through it from the sides. We photograph it, so 15 there's a slit here, a beam of light going through it.

16 What you see here is the convection is very --

17 these magmas are super heated to begin with, these liquids 18 are. There's a cross going downward. There's a cross going 19 more and a cross going more. These bolts going down in here 20 are about two and a half centimeters or so.

21 But the fascinating thing here, you see this is a 22 very, very vigorous convection. This is hard to see, these 23 are plums coming from the upper part here. There is an 24 analogy to the ocean that grows and moves away from the 25 ridges and it has a small scale convection associated with-( Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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v 36 1 it.

2 As we get to longer time, however, the magma has 3 pumped out of the super heat, all the convertible heat, and 4 the system'is essentially stagnate. Very, very slow motions 5 we have involved in this. And it's liquidus. I'll show you 6 the temperature -- history in a second.

7 The only flows we have are very slow cooling on 8 the walls which we have tried to insulate, of course, to 9 keep it out of the problem, but we still have very slow heat 10 loss on the walls. And there is a very slow flow. But 11 basically you see the major difference between here and 12 here.

13 Now, the interesting thing about this is that, q( /

. 14 .this is the temperature history in various parts of the tank 15 and the temperature. And these are various depths in the 16 tank. This is about two centimeters down, 5.35 centimeters 17 down. This is about nine centimeters down. In the center 18 of the tank, these are thermocouple placed in the center of 19 the tank integrated by computer.

20 So you see we start out super heating. This is 21 the liquidus in the system. We start out super heating and 22 then the magma rapidly drops down to its liquidus. What we 23 have here, this reflects the major effect of very, very 24 rigorous hard scale convection, high number convection. And 25 it pumps out that heat very, very effectively.

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1 .Once it drops down to the liquidus, however, the 2 temperature in the middle of the tank, for example, stays 3 right at the liquidus for a very long period of time -- this 4- is non-dimensional time here.

5 -And you can see the temperature drops off at 6 various other points higher up in the tank only when the 7 solidification gets there. So in'other words, it's a very, 8- very critical to not only ask ourselves about the magma 9 chamber, about it's -- you want to ask where does the magma 10 come from in the system. We have solidification fronts 11 moving in on all points around that system. And you want to 12 ask yourself where is that liquid contained? How thick are 13 those crusts around it? And is it subject to, for. example,

} 14 tectonic stress, tectonic pulp, a big auture going through 15 this thing and letting the magma get out, for example, if 16 it's under that kind of pressure.

17 So if you actually look at these things and say, 18 do they compare to reality, we can actually put cooling

-19 curves on Hawaii.

20 Heretofore, earlier we used to use a formulation 21 where we assumed a vigorous convection at all times. A 22 vigorous convection will take us on a cooling down like 23 this. If we use that, for example, in understanding the' 24 longevity of this system we have grossly underestimated its 25 lifetime.

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38 1- So in other words, this has.to be'taken very 2' seriouslyEin terms of putting a-time on how long this thing-3 can stay alive. Once it gets to its liquidus it's basically 4 'the- onductive state and essentially down'to acting like a 5 conducting ~ solid. It has boundary layers moving to the 6 edges --~ solidification problems moving around the edges.

7 So'this is very important to take into account.

8 I would say that an analogy - good analogy model with some 9 people involved in some of these reports.

10 .And the other issue that I didn't really talk 3 11 about, the fundamental physical issue here, which bears on

12. rocks. It's all the way through this thing is the fact that 13 magma silicates in the earth are very special in that --

( 14 there's roof rock or a wall rock. Here's a mag mode here, 15' ~1et's say it crystal free, it has a low mag -- very. low 16 -viscosity, probably 10 times out.of -- 50 times, 100 times 17 that.

18 The basalt that you see in the basin range, for 19 example, might have a viscosity 10 times -- 10 times -- 50 20 to 100 times cal, surp., as it comes down in here and get 21 through the liquidus crystals start to build up and we know 22 at the critical crystal -- 50 percent solidus -- 55 percent 23 solidus and whips off and gets extremely large. It-gets' 24 very, very large.

25 So we have various regimes here, radiological Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

- rT - 39 Q) 1 regimes. We have an area that is totally solidified area, a 2 solidus here. Solidus temperatures propagating through.

I 3 Here's liquidus propagating through. We have this 50 4 percent solids. In other words, anything inward of this 5 it's almost impossible to erupt it. Anything in here is 6 mushy, it's still getting -- since the solidus are starting 7 to touch here and there, it's more like a mush or a slush or 8 something. In here it's more like a suspension, crystals 9 are there but they're all separated apart and they still can 10 move around without touching each other very much. So we 11 have these various regimes.

12 If we ask ourselves now, if we have this around 13 the whole body we ask ourselves, what part of the body comes O

(/ 14 out when we give it a pressure pulse, let's say, or we 15 fracture. What will come out? If you look at it actually 16 the flow field involved in this you have essentially a 17 sampling kernel in the inner goal and everything goes as one 18 over the viscosity. So the viscosity is very high. It's a 19 very low probability. We were sampling that, just like we 20 saw in the erupted probability.

21 So what comes out is this stuff in the middle 22 here, this low crystal. And we start with very low 23 viscosity, easy to move. It has the highest probability'of 24 coming out there.

25 This stuff also then tells us about the inner "T Heritage Reporting Corporation (V- (202) 628-4888

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o l' state of'the magma, so'it's very fortunate for us though 2 we're'not getting stuff in here. For example, if we got 3 stuff from up here or at least -- we could get a little bit 4 of this stuff and be very careful, we'would want to,;make i

L 5 sure that we were getting just a little bit of-this stuff 6 because this tells us what high crystal is released. If we 7 mistaken said, well, that relates to down.in here we would 8 say the body is very advanced in its life and it's near 9 death.

'10 Instead, we really want to make sure that we know 11 what's going on down here when I talk about success in lava 12 flows, then we want to make sure that we're talking about 13 the body involved, we're not just talking about something

(} 14 that's either an involved flow. In other words, if we talk 15 about things like this, like the wall. You have a dike, 16 things are on each side like this, we're not just looking at 17 some of this stuff pushing out on the side, big shear coming 18 up on the wall; we want to be very careful of that.

19 I hope that gives you a little idea just of the 20 details of the magnetic cycle.

21 I would like to now just say a few words about 22 gross variations in vulcanism on the earth surface and 23 styles, a little bit of it, and how the tectonics is a major 24 factor involved in this. How it fits in duck tail back and 1

25 forth very carefully. j

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1 I'll give you an example -- for example, this is 2 one of the areas I'm most familiar with. And we can show 3 the dramatic fashion, the tectonic controls on the 4 vulcanism.

5 This is the arc coming off of Anchorage, Alaska G going across. What you see in the upper part here is the j 7 eastern part of the arc, one going down the Alaska peninsula i 8 almost halfway down. And the other part, down here at the 9 bottom, is the remaining, western part of the arc.

10 What you see here are the active volcanic 11 centers, historically active volcanic centers. These little 12 dots on this map. You will see that we can draw a straight 13 line between a lot of these things. And some of the

'T 14 segments only have two points, but a lot of them -- for (J

\,

15 example, here, here.

16 Now, these are very, very delicate things, 17 because you can stand en the summit on some of these 18 volcanoes. You can actually see them lined up for 2 or 300 19 kilometers. You can look at them, just stand right on the 20 summit. If you get off the summit a 100 yards you will see 21 that they don't line up.

22 You can, for example, stand right here on this 23 little break here, you can stand on this volcano and look 24 over and you can see all this line and you turn around and l

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42 0 1 way. In other words, you're not on that volcano. If you 2-

~

went across two or three miles over here and got on top of 3 it you would see it the other way. j i

4' The fascinating aspect of this is'that this.

]

5 segment of volcanic front or piece-wise continuous. curve 6 here, you would say first, well, it's probably-controlled by 7- the near-surface faulting or something like that. But, in 8 fact,.it isn't at all. This is almost a perfect 125 9 kl.Lometer contour above this plate. But why doesn't it move 10 all over. Well, these are various fractures here in the 11 down going plate. This is the Emily fracture zone, this is 12 the Adack fracture zone -- this is the Emily fracture zone 13' here, which is a large fracture in the Pacific plate, the.

(} 14 Lone that's going down inside the earth. That plate, 15 evidently, the plate that's going down is a different 16 curvature than the curvature of the earth. So when it goes 17 down it sways and moves back and forth like this.

18 And you can see the' seismically -- Bob Ingrol 19 have done very nice studies. And you can show that the 20 plate has changes its configuration up here -- others have 21 shown this bend, the seismicity because of the uncertainties 22 in the hyper-centers is a little more rounded than this.

23 But this shows a real kink in this thing.

24 In this area this is the Adack fracture -- it 25 happens right into the island, right on the Adack. There's Heritage Reporting Corporation

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- '? 1 two volcanos on Adack, they're actually_on different 1

2 segments, right on'one island.  ;

' 2F So on the surface'you would say, well, these.

'f

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4 things.look likeithey're probably -- we look for surface 15

~

5 -fault when, in fact, it's a deep structure, but.it-is faults 6 that' are jockeying the' source'of the' magma system around the 7 source rock around'and' making them"line up;on'these volcanic 8 fronto.

9' Now, you willisee that.we have -- this is a 10' strong ' volcanic front and you had to worry about the

'11 probability of eruption you would-say the probability drops 12 out expediently and wait for this volcanic front.

13 But occasionally we get a little volcano behind 14 the front. These usually go up later - years or so later,.

O.

15 and they happen here and there around the world.

16 Now, another' type of vulcanism associated with 17 this'is the kind of vulcanism you'see in the basin range,.by 18 and large. Every area we've had conduction on has scattered 19 like the St. Lawrence, all through here, has scattered the 20 basalt volcanism. A very similar character in what we see

,21 'in the base. We have it in China which is behind the Sea of 22 Japan. We have it behind the Andes and Argentina and 23' things, scattered basalts,which-we:always used to call 24 monogenic cones. Although there is some discussion whether 25 they're actually monogenic or not.

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1 So this is -- it's not -- what I say to you is, 2 vulcanism in and of itself, we don't consider it as being s

3 totally separate. In other words, the alpine vulcanism, 4 scattered vulcanism up in here is not totally a separate.

5 They have two different styles of how they exist. These are 6 central volcanic structures, central cones,'where volcanoes 7 come and go every hundred thousand years, for example. We 8 have one that comes up -- one batch it seems and then dies 9 -- eaten away by glaciers and another one comes up in the 10 same area. So these things live on these same islands for 11 50 or 69 years. They may have big hiatus in vulcanism, et 12 cetera.

13 But because of the overall flow field in the fs

(-) 14 mantle, in other words, the pipe going down in the vulcanism 15 or the magnetism associated with this thing, we get a 16 secondary kind of vulcanism back here, this outline of 17 basalts. And there you can think of a linear combination.

18 We get all of this and we start conduction. But this is 19 kind of -- it has one type of mechanism -- this is another 20 one back here. We actually can say something about that in 21 terms of the overall -- the large scale the tectonic 22 evolution, we can say something broad about it and you can 23 say something more detailed if you know the more detailed 24 tectonics of a region.

25 It's not the tectonic from the surface that

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45 1 really bring the magma out of'the earth, it's-like putting a  :

2 salve on that extracts it out. It's allow magma -- having 3 it down'there and having a reason for it to be formed and-4 then allowing it, when it gets near the surface, an' easy 5 passage way out of the earth.

6 Now, it's always very difficult and.it's very 7 difficult in these reports. As you see the estimated

~8 probabilities to get a feeling for, is vulcanism on the 9 increased or is on the decreased or is it steady or what is:

10 going on?

11- I show you this because we run into this problem 12 where we're running and trying to put numbers on things, but l 13 we run into this problem every time we go_look at the job --

14 the history of an area. f 15 This is going back in years again. And these are 16 various measures of geological history. These are actual 17 dates. These are ash horizons in the sea floor. And ash- ]

18 has been erupted into the sea floor. These are-various i

19 events, et cetera.

20 We know the arc -- I'll just show you. The arc 21- begins somewhere down here 70 million years or so. And you 1

22 will see that as we get near the present the amount of l l

l 23 information we have gets larger and larger and larger in' 1 I

24 terms of the volume. If I had to go through the volumes,

'25 the amount of volume I would have would expediently going l

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2 It is primarily1due to recovery of materials. In 3 other words, the sampling of the flows to the volumes,is not 4- accurate beyond a short time in the past because we have-5 'such rapid erosion rates. In areas like this where we would 6 'think erosion rates aren't even very' rapid we have small 7 sequences that may only be 100 meters tall, part of a 8 volcano where we know a volcano is 6 or 7,000 feet tall, we 9 only have a little piece of it left and it is only on the 10 order of a half million years old.

11 Now, that in the illusion this weathering is far 12 more rapid than it-is anywhere in Nevada. When you go to 33 Chili, for examples, like this you're going to have volcanos 14 that look very, very new that are 6 or 7 million years old.

15 DR. HINZE: The sampling could certainly be a 16 covering problem as well.

17 DR. MARSH: Yes.

18 DR. HINZE: It can be the reverse --

19 DR. MARSH: Absolutely. It could be bearing or 20 it could be eroding up and putting somewhere else, that's 21 right.

22 In the area like arc it's hard because stuff goes

23 off and goes into the ocean and we can never find it again.

24 But there's ways around it, For example, in deep sea 25 drilling that was done, the STP, in front of the arc and Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O

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1 behind the arc you can find areas of ash arisings in the 2 pelagic filled up. In other words, you can find out where 3 the volcano is rea]1y strong. We have to worry back in here 4 in terms of these dates and things, the lava flows, et 5 cetera, whether we have inherited an argon, whether the 6 cooling dates are correct on the pluton, whether the stuff 7 has been heated up again. We have a lot of problems in 8 this.

9 But in the ash arisen these are things that are 10 thrown out and we can see then the great buildup of ash to 11 sea floor. In the illusions, for example, we have something 12 about every two and a half million years -- the last 10 or 13 12 million years of pulsing to this thing that builds up

() 14 every two and a half million years, a large amount of 15 vulcanism. It isn't a string -- in fact, looking at these 16 dates you get a different feeling when you're looking at 17 these things here. We spread these things out back and 18 forth.

19 So, in fact, if you look at it they seem to be 20 somewhat in coordination of this, somewhat synchronous in 21 that the Cascades, for example. We see the big volcanos 22 that are there now. Most of them are only 10,000 years old 23 -- 50,000 years old. And they're at their period and they 24 go through a high flux like this and then they go down and 25 then they'll have another one going up. So the vulcanism in Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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-( ' '

1 that case is always locally centered.

2 .In terms of going back to an area that is 3 estimating what has happened in the past and whether we're 4 on the. uprise, the tendency -- the strongest tendency to all 5 cases to say that vulcanism is on the increase. And I would 6 say that.almost every-study that a person would do,-.it's 7 very hard not to get to'the inclusion that says it's on the 8 increase just because our myopic facts of looking at 9 ourselves around this place in the fog where we can see 10 very, very clearly the stuff around us -- around our dating q 11 techniques that are ways of measuring these things. And the '

12 further we go the harder and harder it is to seek.

13 For example, in the basin range area where we

() 14 have these strong fillings and oval fans and ash flows in 15 the basins, what you really want to see is what is done in 16 burying that. We want to look carefully in terms of area of 17 mags and you want to look at a good survey to make sure that 18 you didn't have areas of older volcanic flows and volumes 19 filling up various parts of the basin, in that would very ,q 20 much change your impression of whether we're on the wax or 21 the wing of a volcanic cycle. You have to be, I think, 22 careful and keeping this in mind.

23 24 l

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49 1 DR. MARSH: Let'me just'say a couple of things 2 about the overall process.

3 In the arcs, for example, we have developed

, 4 something about an overall process.- This pipe goes down 5 inside the earth. We have a ribbon of magma produced i 6. somewhere,Ethe' gravitation of. stability produces-magma to 7 near surface. The total details of how it gets to near 8 surface in predicting when the lava will arrive, et cetera, 9 is difficult. We can say probably that if we can identify 10 one of the cycles we can say, every two and a half million 11 years we're going to have a pulp. And if we're in it we're 12 going to have to go look at a local geology report.

13 So in other words, the overall process -- we have 14 to have some feeling for the overall process. As we look at 15 more and more history -- in other words, as the process goes 16 we must keep in mind all the time that we don't want to be l

17 looking at a system that is just-starting up. Here-is a  !

18 startup of a system. And then the systems evolves until it 19 gets like this, let's say, after 3 or 4 million years the-I i l

20 ribbon has widened in depth and we have secondary f l 21 instabilities coming out behind the arc. And these guys are l 22 old now. They have other volcanos that are coming to l 23 advantage to various times and we have several generations 24 then, whereas these are new. So we have to know where we 25 are in this whole cycle for a very important reason. And

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1 that is, that we can gauge that as a factor of like this, 2 for example.

3 The model we talked about is pretty much at the 4 top, but imagine this: we have a magma state want to move up 5 in the same place they were before because of either-some 6 facility of motion to structure or facility of motion in --

7 in other words, leaving a thermal trace behind it. In other 8 words, if you have a system that is very old, let's say, 15 9 million years is a small system to begin with and went into 10 the crust that makes a structural member in the crust very 11 rigid and very tough. In other words, the rock goes through 12 the earth and makes it a tough member there and providing it 13 isn't fractured up or anything, magma probably won't travel

() 14 up again right through that thing. It will probably go away 15 from it because it has a stress field around it that won't 16 penetrate through the dike.

17 If an area is at all warm, however, the thermal 18 properties are such that the viscosity might be low, the 19 magma might be brought right into that. In fact, the 20 experiments that we have done with slightly different 21 materials -- in other words, containing water, for example, 22 we can see experiments that>the magma will feel around until 23 it finds a very easy time - theologically go up very 24 quickly.

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51 1 about the size of the_ body, what kind of thermal trace that i 2 has been left. 'Is there any trace left of the system. In l 3- other words, is'there any. hint left that the system is still 4 alive and the body is-total -- the new body coming up will 5 also be focused to be there.

6- DR. . HINZE: How do you study this?

7 DR. MARSH: We_ study it in a fashion like this.

8- Is that if we talk-about a new body coming up, for example, 9 through this thing the new body has to force a trail through 10 the crust. It has the maximum chance of contamination. In 11 other words, it has to plow all the - push materials 12 falling through, et cetera. Whatever mechanism it goes 13 through, even by cracks or anything else.

() 14 On new magma -- we' re coming up through new 15 material has the maximum probability of getting 16 contaminated. Getting some sign that's involved with the 17 process.

18 As this thing goes on, however, as we get to the 19 succeeding bodies passing up is, what happens is, we have a 20 contact where the body has reacted with the wall rock and 21 -providing -- a new one comes up somewhere in the area and 22 you can take advantage of that.

23 The next body is insulated chemically and 24 thermally from the wall rock more and more. So we get less 25 and less signs of the wall rock and more and more signs of l

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' 1 the source. In other words, we get a more and more clean 2 signal. You can think of it just like the pipes in your 3 house after a street has been worked on, you turn on the 4 pipes and you get all this junk out and that tells you 5 something about the stuff. It doesn't tell you about your 6 reservoir source, it tells you about what's in the pipe on 7 the way. And it's the same thing here.

8 So contamination, for example, detail looks at 9 the isotopes, any kind of foreign materials in it. We have 10 an oscillation here, until the material gets down to a very i 11 1cw value, background value you can say of contamination, 12 and its signature then as you're questioning a source that's 13 down.

{} 14 And it's similar, let's say, to other trains 15 where we don't prepare the basalt, let's say, in an oceanic 16 region where we don't have continental crust back and forth.

17 And some of this -- there is data right in here that would 18 bear on this issue.

19 So it's these kind of things, but as you can see 20 this all fits together with dealing with the tectonics in 21 the area and knowing where we are in the cycle of the magma.

22 DR. MOELLER: Excuse me, in the center section 23 there what is the volume we're talking about?

24 DR. MARSH: Well, this is an area -- this is a 25 little different. Now, the mass of material we think coming Heritage Reporting Corporation

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i 53 II upuis_not~1arge. It may'not be a.few cubic kilometers of-i 2 material in a batch.

3 And we actually think that volcanos-are not.large 4 and they.put out material -- if you go to-alvolcano and 5 study them very carefully that.you can see.that this batch 6 of material 1is slightly different than'a volcanofthategrew

7. up nearby,.sometime later or sometime earlier; they're.

8 slightly different. It.gives us a sign that these are 9 -somehow batches that have their own identity. In other 10 words, they haven't really.just mixed things back and.forth, 11 so you have some distinction.

12 Now, if you go to areas that -- it's a good 13 question, Dade, because of the fact that -- one of the l r 14 things that mobilizes all these sort of things is the size 15 of the body in terms of its cooling history. Because you 16 'have a tiny bit of magma it has to do its whole thing a lot 17 faster than a big batch. A big' batch can lay around for 18 millions of years and erupt whatever.it chooses, more or 19 less,in the right conditions. But small batches-in cinder 20 cones like in the basin range are small batches. They're 21 small batches of magma. But just how small is small. You 22 either get down to looking at the lifetimes of these things 23 and you've got to worry about the geometry and how 24 distributed is the crust.

25 We know in many areas like the-breaking of the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O

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'54 l' continentsihere,.for example, we'have -- we have big

-2 beautifullsheet like bodies. Now, many of them are little 3 seals'. ~But there's a seal up by Three Mile Island, for

'4 example, the York Haven seal that is 45 kilometers longs'and 5 12 and 15 kilometers wide; it's a major body of magma.

6 That's a little different in that it was a -- it was as ocean 7 ridge there, but still we have to normalize the system 8 somehow to its volume.

9 DR. HINZE: But variabilities,.certainly, by 10 differential -- by differentiation within these-large ones.

11 DR. MARSH: That's right.

12 DR. HINZE: So you have both sources of 14 DR. MARSH: That's right.

15 It's curious, however, that some of these big 16 systems' don't seem to undergo much differentiation. That's

-17 something we're working -- we don't totally understand yet.

18 But because of that solidification. business I was talking 19 about before, the inner part of the body has very few -- may.

20 have very few crystals and new crystals. And so the inner 21 part of the body may not differentiate much. It may only 22 differentiate if it has crystals to begin with. When it's 23 injected in there it has a lot of crystals and those 24 crystals fall off very easily -- inside the body and makes a 25 big jump forward.

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1. Juid that's something else to look for. Let's say 2 you go toLan area and it puts out lava that has 30 or 40 3 percent crystals or 20 percent crystals.- All of a sudden

'4 then you get -- not only do you.get lava-that comes out a 5- short time later which allows you to -- that has.very;few 6 ' crystals in it, but it also has a change in chemistry. It-7 looks like'it's related to the first just by dropping all 8 the solids, then you know you have established a system and 9 the magma is holding. It's holding there and it.has made'a

~

10 leap forward in terms of its chemistry by dropping those 11 crystals out.

12 And then it sits there. As.long as there is no 13 more coming'into it, no more sign of it, you can pretty much I) 14 predict that the inner part of it is being treated as a 15 crystal free solid -- crystal free liquid with the 16 interfaces moving in on it.

17 And it may not show differentiation. The fact 18 that it doesn't show any differentiation is not a sign then 19 in that case that it is a huge reservoir that is not 20 cooling. It's a sign that it lost all its stuff and it's 21 sitting there and nothing is happening to it. It's just 22 sitting there. So these things have to be kept in mind at.

23 the same time.

24 Now, once we get into the crust, for example, 25 like the base and range I mentioned about the fact of Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

f~s 56 U 1 contamination. Here is something that will pipe up through 2 the -- some sort of a sheet or a dike, this continuous 3 series of dikes or whatever. But the key is that if it's 4 used for any period of time you will get a melting around 5 it.

6 Some beautiful. example of this was worked on by 7 someone in -- Linda Kovach who worked for the NRC, in 8 Sierra, Nevada. And she looked at a region -- a tiny little 9 pipe no bigger than this room but it has a melting around 10 it, in fact, 100 years or so. It has melted the wall rock 11 out, it melted out about 30 or 40 meters and it has effects 12 of 100 meters out. Geologists have taken people on field 13 trips there many times. I first saw it when I was on a trip

() 14 and they said, this is just an injection of this stuff and 15 it just cooled off and did all this. Well, there is no way, 16 if you take a magma and throw it up against the wall rock, 17 what happen is the wall rock gets to pretty much the average 18 temperature of the two materials and you put latent heat in 19 and it gets about 65 percent, which is commonly never enough 20 to melt upper level crust.

21 What you need is, you need to let that stuff 22 flow. And by looking in the contact and seeing what goes on 23 in the wall rock in terms of melting, in terms of 24 deformation in the wall rock, one can actually work 25 backwards and get an idea of how long the system was alive.

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1 And'that should be done for systems like in the basin range.

2 You want to know how long they live. You want to 3 look at what you can with dating. But you also want to look 4 in the wall rock -- look in the wall-rock and see what's in 5 the wall rock in all these things. And with someone who is i

6 experienced enough to be able to know what they're looking 7 for.

8 Now, the one at Huntington Lake that Kovach 9 worked on, she found that the contact was that of a 50 10 percent crystallization. It's interesting. In other words, 11 50 percent solids -- when it was melted to 50 percent and 12 tha material broke down and went into the pipe, the pipes 13 filled with debris that came off the walls and is in the 14

()

es 15 pipe.

Amounts of melting that are less than 50 percent 16 it stayed intact, even though it was a very, very melted 17 mushy wall rock it stayed intact and acted more like a 18 solid, just like we see in the cutoff in the magma chambers.

19 So in other words, the system -- the principles 20 that you learn from looking at eruptive prebabi3icies and 21 crystals in the wall rock -- in the magma chambers also 22 applies to what you're doing to the wall rock and you can 23 use those in reverse to tell you about the longevity in the l 24 system.

25 This shows a little thing, also, that if those i

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E 58 b 1 magnetics could rise off the wall you could even get 2 granitic magnets of these things. You could have part of

'3 the wall rise up and come out. And one could confuse this 4 with a norma 1' volcanic progression'and say, well, I have 5 basalts. There's a nice sequence that came from the magma 6 chamber.

7 If you didn't look very carefully at the isotopes 8 and look at the detail of what was going on, it actually 9 could have been a melt from the crust to the walls and say 10 that that. pipe has been open a long time and used at depth,

11. something that has come off the walls and come up here.

12 It's injected into this.

13 Sierra, Nevada have many big plutons that are --

- 14 these plutons that were the ideal examples of crystal 15 differentiation ar.d of the whole system. We know now 16 isotope ought to be a -- and that is essentially a stack 17 like this that's telescoped up to the whole -- right up into 18 it and we're just looking at a cutoff in the artery, 19 essentially.

20 In other words, it wasn't a co-magnetic sequence 21 at all. It's essentially a representative telescoping 22 section to the crust.

23 In summing up I would just say the fact that we 24 know a lot of about magnetic processes. We know a lot more 25 than we ever did before. We know a lot of things that are Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O

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59 0 1 coming to bear in terms of putting numbers on ages of 2 bodies. We know how to 1cok at the features and to use l 3 those to tell about the problem if a body existed in depth.

4 What kind of nature it's in. What kind of habit is it in 5 for c'uptions and things like this.

6 And coupled very carefully with the field 7 geology. In other words, the local tectonics and the 8 history in the crust, I think a person can come very close 9 to saying at least saying some very definitive things about 10 the magnetism in a specific area.

11 Now, there's two major things I would like to 12 leave you with and that is the fact that, what I would like 13 to see looked at in this -- I must say that I -- when Bill ggg 14 asked me to look at this, initially I wasn't that enthused 15 but Bill is a very persuasive man. I know him from way 16 back.

17 So the things that, actually as I looked into 18 this I was very impressed by the quality of work that has 19 been done and the things that I -- I find it very 20 intriguing. It's a very intriguing problem. And I keep 21 thinking what Frank Cress says about science to mankind and 22 I think that it's a unique opportunity to test a lot of what 23 we have developed over the last 40 years and see if we can 24 come down to something that's very definitive.

25 The two areas that I would really look at Heritage Reporting Corporation glg (202) 628-4888

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1 carefully is that the -- one is the whole method -- I.

2' 'wouldn't say-the whole method, but the specific technique of-3' estimated probabilities. I haven't gone through it in l 4 ' detail. But it looks to me, we start out-with more or less 15 a standard way of using a distribution of certainty.in~the 6' sea' floor and estimated probabilities.

7 What it appears-to me --'I say this in all candid 8 and I don't'really know the-issuance -- but it appears to me 9 that that calculation establishes kind of a base level from 10 which all later, sort of other factors or other extenuating lli circumstances essentially increase the probabilities.

12 In other words, if we worked our way through all.

13 this sort.of thing and all the things I talked about, there 14 are probabilities in the plus and the minus columns. In

])'

15 other words, there are checks and balances. Magnetic 16 systems regulate themselves.

17 -The concern, I see a little bit is that I don't 18 see checks and balances in the magnetic process of 19 estimating probabilities. They seem to be -- there seem to 20 be unit-directional. They seem to get larger as we put more 21 cases, by and large, there are some reports that don't.

22 But what I would like to see is in the-model of 23 how we actually have things that-are on the plus side and.

24' the negative side and how these enter into the model, based 25 on the actual physics of the process, the physics in the Heritage Reporting Corporation

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V. chemistry of what we see in the process.

2 So I'm intrigued by how to melt together the 3 probabilities that I'm talking about with the probabilities 4 of estimate from just looking at what we see on the surface.

5 The second thing is that, the many factors that

-6 have been brought up, especially by Dr. Trap, I think are 7 exactly the~ kind of factors, by and large, we're talking 8 about today. We're talking about all the detailed. things 9 that have to be put into it. It's not just looking at the 10 end process that can tell you about the entire history of 4 11 the events and what's going to happen in the future.

12 There's a lot that depends on the locality of the 13 area, et cetera.- At the same time there is this problem of 14 feeding back into the probabilities by just simply scaling.

15 For example, if you double the size of the area -- concerned 16 target area, do the probabilities double. That has been 17 alluded to.

18 But if you simply take one of the probabilities 19 and increase thw size to 300 kilometers on the side and the 20 probability is one or greater than we have eruption there in 21 a very short period of time, then this concerns me because 22 of the fact that in the history of North America all the way 23 down to Central America, as far as I know there's only two 24 cinder cone eruptions that have been known in the history of 25 mankind, approximately 500 years in North American Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O.

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62 1 continent.

2 That was one that was in the time of Cortez, more 3 or less, and one in Parpatine, for example, when we saw a 4 cinder cone actually developed; and they're both in Central 5 America. But that's the kind of -- I think very strongly 6 that we need boundary conditions to make our probabilities 7 fit. They have to fit on the one end and they have to fit 8 back in what we see in the deep earth. On the other hand 9 they have to fit our short time span that we've had, let's 10 say, 500 years which is a significant period of time in some 11 ways at least.

12 And they have to fit with our filter -- what we 13 see in terms of the geology history of the earth.

14 So it's my feeling that -- the other thing I 15 might mention that there are some other interesting things 16 that come up. For example, mitigating factors. Let's say 17 the probability was fairly high of concern that something 18 was going to go through the repository area, what could a 19 person do to lower them in terms of dealing with the magma.

20 Let's say, you have to have an invader in your house, what 21 are you going to do with them. Well, one of the things is, 22 for example, and it hasn't been done at all and it should be 23 done is the fact, what do you do to modulate the stress 24 field. The local stress field -- just do your method.of 25 mining, blasting and setting up, knowing the rocks in j ( -

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h. 1 detail. The properties of the rocks, the fractures: and the 2 detailed area. Then you're opening up your drifts in your 3 repository.

4 What are you doing -- can you do that in a way-5 that such'a stress field can actually steer dike around it.

6 In other words,-a. dike comes up and the stress field.is such

~

7 that you modulate it and go around it. Is that possible?

8 It may be' fairly crazy, but it may be something'that-we 9 should at least think about.

10 The other thing is, what happens if you have 11 areas;where you'have materials left behind in the mining 12' process that the actual magma can get into it. Can it 13 invade it? Can it get into it? Can you sop up enough of 14 this material.

-( }

15 Now, as you have seen before in the stopping 16 thing, it's very easy to congest a magma. In other words, 17 if ycu can increase the surface area of materials that are 18 in contact with, not only does it dissolve a lot of 19 material, but it also takes a lot of heat out of the 20 material. And that's what the magma lives on, it's heat.

21 And its fact that it can keep its viscosity low.

22 So by having materials that got into that would 23 force the materials -- for example, blocks that were left 24 behind that were reacted with, not only-would-you change the 25 silicate content, .you might take a lot of-its heat away.

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(_/ 1 And, of course, we have to worry about the whole 2 rates and all this.

3 So I think in large a lot of the pieces -- the 4 fundamental pieces and the background information that you 5 want you have in hand. There's a lot of good information.

6 The papers in here are good. The paper written by -- for.

7 example, McBurney on volcanology is a very nice -- I think a 8 very, very good overall view on the volcanology.

9 The thing that's missing, I think, is that you've 10 constructed a little bit of an animal by committee -- in 11 other words, it has pieces that are well done here and there 12 but they're not knitted together. And this is, I think, 13 they're not heavily knitted together; and that's what Trap 14 is trying to do, I think, is just pull this together and 15 say, okay, how do these things affect this answer -- all 16 these loose ends and all these other things going on.

17 The key to doing this, I think, is an approach 18 that you can't do this with a symposium. You can't do this 19 with a big meeting. You have to have a small group of 20 people who really know the problem and can sit down together 21 and flush out the structure and what they need to answer and 22 talk to the various people involved and on their terms and 23 scientific basis. And get so -- they have a continuous 24 conversation -- continuous structure, quantitative structure 25 which to evaluate the problem.

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l' I think it can be done. There are, you know, l l

2 there ars key people around. The NRC -- Linda Kovach, for 3 example, is an excellent person to be able to look at.the --

4 she got her Ph.D. with me and I don't mean that because. 1 5 -- she's good because of that, but because she is. a good 6 magma physicist and she has an overall feeling for the whole  ;

)

7 thing. On top if it she has a feeling for how the whole 8 structure here works within the-NRC and the Advisory-9 Committees and DOE, et cetera, and I think that's essential.

10 I can -- I'm very intrigued by this and I can see 11 where I can do several things to look at this and make sure 1:2 that.she's knitting together things. I can't stop and drop 13 all.my present research with nine graduates students and 14 delve into this, I could, but it may not be the best thing.

15 I wculdn't mind actually directing some of the 16 ideas and some of the work to be done. The thing that 17 struck me about sorting this out would be is the approach 18 that Dick Fineman took when he tried to look into the 19 shuttle, into the Challenger disaster in terms of his kind 20 of shuttle diplomacy, going around talking to people and 21 working up the basic physics and chemistry, getting to the 22 nuts and bolts and sitting down with people and actually 23 doing the problem and seeing what you can see in the end'.

24 I-wouldn't mind being involved-with something 25 like that. I think, though, you have to have a small group p

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O 1 ~ of people.- And my-first thought was that if you gave me ,

1 2- someone like Linda Kovach and let her come to Hopkins for a -

3 period of time and let her do a lot of.the stuff and we i 4' could talk' daily or every other day and she could interface 5 and I could be brought into it with the other actors 6 involved in it, we might be able, after a relatively short-7 period of time, half a year to a year or something, say some 8 very definitive things or at least what things really need 9 to be done. If you need drill holes for some of these 10 dikes, some of these fissures that we see that are 11 estimated. If you need some measurements of insight to 12 stress. If you need a. quantitative -- if you want a good 13 physical structure imaging of this area. I mean, these kind

( )' 14 of things.

15 I think, you know, we have a donut right now. We 16 have a lot of excellent work around the edges and I think 17 Trap has tried to pull the strings across the middle to.make 18 a drum skin. But it isn't there yet. So that's essentially 19 my feelings in a nut shell.

20 I will also tell you, I haven't had a chance, of 21 course, to go through everything in detail. I've looked 22 through all the papers that have been earmarked for mezand 23 read some of it in great detail, some of it twice. But it's 24- -- that's the flavor of what I find difficult.

25 DR. MOELLER: Thank you, Dr. March.

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1 Bill.

2 DR. HINZE: I think it might be worthwhile to see 3 if there are any questions, to make certain that we don't 4 have problems with what you've said. So I would like to 5 open it up for questions, this is extremely important.

6 MR. JUSTUS: I've got some comments. Let me say 7 that this was a very enlightening approach, refreshing 8 approach to evaluating volcanic hazard in general in setting 9 the stage for evaluating the hazard in a particular place 10 such as southern Nevada.

11 And what was particularly refreshing about it was 12 the systematic approach -- let's say, I think as Dr. Marsh 13 said himself the volcanic systems approach is one that he

) 14 favors using to evaluate a volcanic edifical process.

15 Skipping through now the technical point of the 16 presentation, going right to the recommendations, applying 17 the systems approach, as he recommended, to evaluate the 18 hazard of volcanic eruption in and near Yucca Mountain is 19 certainly something that any of the parties to the 20 repository siting program should endorse.

21 However, the one aspect of Dr. Marsh's 22 recommendation that really caught my fancy is actually the 23 mechanism to affect a focus on resolving the problem of 24 establishing the volcanic hazard by developing a working 25 group of experts in the field.

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(_) 1 We expected -- at NRC -- we expected that it 2 would be a group of experts or it would be expert judgments 3 in this hazard analysis as well as other hazard analyses to 4 be made such as in seismic hazard and faulting hazard, 5 geomorphic hazards. The use of expert judgment for it, 6 extrapolating what we know now about the given system to the 7 future. It's certainly a viable method to be utilized.

8 Further, however, I think Dr. Marsh was proposing 9 something that DOE should be doing rather than NRC. Now, 10 let me clarify that: the NRC would like to see something 11 like that done if it would indeed shed light on the hazard 12 of -- evaluation that DOE must make. And NRC's role in the 13 licensing process is to indeed evaluate DOE's assessment of

, 14 the volcanic hazard and its design to mitigate it.

15 And we must be in a position -- NRC inc3uding the 16 Advisory Group to the Commissioners, must be in a position 17 to independently review DOE's evaluation and design.

18 If Dr. Marsh's suggestion is toward that end, no 19 problem. But he did get into the realm of directing work to 20 be done or at least suggesting work that might need to be 21 done to prove or disprove particular hypotheses or to gather 22 information to develop theories and so forth; that's clearly 23 DOE's job in the program.

24 I think in further discussion of the 25 recommendation should try to sort out that which DOE must do Heritage Reporting Corporation f (202) 628-4888 b-

JO 69 l 1 and that which NRC must do and sometimes that a very 2 difficult line to establish.

3 In developing technical positions at times it 4 seems that DOE feels that we have got over the line and are 5 trying to direct DOE's program and we don't want to do that..

6' .It behooves us to try to define-the line as well as DOE to 7 help us define the line; who should do what.

8 DR. HINZE: I think those comments are very 9 -useful, Phil. You used the term " expert opinion," and when

'10 I hear'you people talk about expert opinion and similar 11- types of things, what Dr. Marsh has suggested goes far 12 beyond that. In other words,. it is not just taking an 13' opinion but it is taking the opinions and integrating them, 14 synthesizing them and coming up with one plus one or two 15 plus two equaling 10 type of thing. And I don't think the 16 experts sitting down even in a room could come up with this 17 kind of a thing in an afternoon of a check list.

18 I do think that we -- and you are quite right in 19 terms of our independent review, but as part of our 20 independent review I think it is important that we know what 21 is possible to be achieved or what can be achieved. And I 22 think if I understand you correctly, Bruce, what-you're.

23 saying is that we have now the techniques, the methodology 24 which if properly integrated could go beyond that which we 25 are seeing in the reports that we are subject today. And Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888 l

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(_) 1 that one whereby we might be able to really constrict those l

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i 3 And not simply that, but also give us a little j 4 ' bit of confidence that -- and I think public perception and j i

5 the scientific perception is a very important element of 6 this whole process.

7 And if I'm -- I don't want to put words in your 8 mouth, but that's what I hear you say.

9 DR. MARSH: I think we have looked at one 10 dimension of the problem and there are a couple more -- at 11 least two more dimensions to be looked at.

12 DR. HINZE: You mentioned some of the work -- I 13 think you mentioned Frank Perry as one of the people that's

- 14 working with Crowe and he, for example, and some of this 15 colleagues at Los Alamos have done some very interesting 16 work in studying the convection system within the Rio Grande 17 riff, with the neodenim isotopes in particular. And it 18 strikes me that that is very informative in terms of the 19 process that's going on and where you are in that process 20 and how that process may be moving laterally which they have 21 really clarified very well with that piece of work.

22 And yet, we got the same people involved. For 23 example, Perry who I think is just great on the basis of'his 24 work. That type of work is not being done in relationship 25 to these -- to the grater flats volcanic zone and the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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1 -volcanics in the general area. And I imagine that is'one of 2 the things that you were really talking about.in terms of, 3- let's define what we might be able to achieve with-that type 4

of study and so forth.

5 DR. MARSH:

Yes, you really have to, you know, 6' let's get in there and look at.that thing and see -- in 7 fact, all the things I mentioned. What-do we see'in terms 8 of.crystallinity. What do we see in terms of the history.

9 What does it look like. - What the volume is involved in the

'10 ' system. Is the system behaving. Does it involve.the a 11 structural.--'some of this has been alluded to.

12 But bringing the expertise to bear on just the 13 issue at hand, not talking like I have, a little bit around 14 the edges of it, but actually taking the stuff and putting 15 it right on the thing and seeing what comes out of that.

16 MR. JUSTUS: Could I?

17 DR. HINZE: Please.

18 MR. JUSTUS: Make another observation. Dr. Marsh 19 emphasized studying process here, the volcanic process or 20 processes involved in the particular system under 21 consideration. That's music to our ears with regard to our 22 review of DOE's site characterization plan.

23 We found that DOE is choosing to emphasize 24 studying events or features and do not seem to be putting, 1

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(_) 1 tectonics -- not seem to be emphasizing the overall 2 processes that occur with regard to, say, faulting or 3 vulcanism.

4 In the case of vulcanism there was the emphasis 5 on cone counts. In other words, evaluating events or --

6 that is one example. And the tectonic models technical 7 position that we will be discussing later seeks to emphasize 8 the need to afford DOE to develop process models, so that 9 the events that they are studying and need to be studied 10 have a framework in which to be evaluated.

11 DR. HINZE: Jack.

12 DR. PARRY: I agree, Phil, with what you said, 13 it's obvious that DOE has not really looked or attempted to

() 14 look into mechanisms and, as you say, the processes.

15 But I wonder if Dr. Marsh's proposal, if you 16 will, or suggested mode might not be the basis for a 17 cooperative workshop between the interested parties, 18 including Nevada, the State of Nevada, and perhaps with Dr.

19 Marsh or other experts leading the workshop as a discussion 20 forum or giving an attempt to project possible avenues of 21 investigation rather than taking on the work ourself or 22 himself or anything like that. Using that as a vehicle for 23 discussion in meeting with DOE.

24 DR. HINZE: Giving some exposure to the 25 advantages and eventual capabilities of a systems approach Heritage Reporting Corporation

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1 type of thing.

2 DR. PARRY: What have we got in the way of study 3 plans on vulcanism, anything?

4 MR. JUSTUS: Nothing.

5 That's a detail that we should discuss further.

6 But picking up on your idea, this is the idea of a, let's 7 say, a symposium if you will on a-particular subject; is 8 that what you --

9 DR. PARRY: Yes.

10 MR. JUSTUS: -- the kind of thing you were 11 talking about. This is not without precedent in our 12 program.

13 DR. PARRY: Right.

() 14 MR. JUSTUS: Generally this has been done by our 15 research organization through the mechanism of research 16 roundups, annual roundups. Most prominently in hydrology in 17 the last few years. There's been symposium held on the 18 matter of modeling unsaturated fracture flow. They're done 19 at the contracting organizations, in particular, the 20 University of Arizona, the case of hydrology.

21 We now have the capability -- NRC -- of hosting l

22 and organizing symposia through our center for Nuclear Waste 23 Regulatory Analyses. So let me echo the possibility and'the 24 precedent is there for conducting such a symposia, workshop  !

l 25 or what have you.

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1 I might add --

2 DR. PARRY: Mr. Browning mentioned that the 3 center was obtaining the services of --

4 MR. JUSTUS: The center has hired two volcanology 5 now, one is Dr. William Leman of Rice University, lately of l 6 National Science Foundation. And the name of the other 7 escapes me. i 8 DR. HINZE: Jim Luhr.

9 MR. JUSTUS: Jim Luhr, L-U-H-R. I haven't met 10 him yet, so his name slipped my mind here.

11 The Technical Review Board has retained the 12 services of Bill Milson of the Smithsonian. And the ACNW I 13 presume now has Dr. Marsh as a consultant in volcanology or 14 at least for today. And, of course, the DOE has several, if 15 not many, if the U.S. Geological Survey consultants are 16 advisors to DOE are also included.

17 So certainly the experts - there are experts 18 working on the problem and will continue to work and can be 19 brought together from time to time in some organized way.

20 That's a fine suggestion. I think doable.

21 DR. PARRY: I want to take a little exception of 22 the one comment that you made: I don't think that.that's 23 necessarily up to DOE to start. And I would suggest, why 24 couldn't the staff, whether it be research or NMSS take the 25 lead.

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1 It doesn't demand an answer it's just a question.

2 MR. JUSTUS: They could.

3 DR. HINZE: I would like to make one -- I'll try 4 to make a brief remark and see if I'm on the right track and 5 then I'd like to ask you a question.

6 First a remark, and that is that one of the 7 things that was apparent to me from your presentation is 8 something, Dade, that we emphasized in our consideration of 9 the SEA and that is, the need not only for the detailed work 10 -- that is the thermal trace, if you will, from detailed to 11 physical work, but also the need for much regional work.

12 And that's really -- am I correct that that is - you can't 13 operate without both -- without all the scales involved.

14 DR. MARSH: For example, it would change your 15 perspective on things if you could show definitively that 16 there was no volcano -- no cinder cone developed in the 17 basin range anywhere in the last 1,000 years. That would 18 really change -- or at least it would place a perspective on I

19 things.

20 So regional studies in terms of just aerial 21 extent averaging in, flux density, cone density, we're very 22 open on what we do. We're up against things that may become 23 very large and things die away expedientially away from you.

24 25 We really need to know, you know, have a big Heritage Reporting Corporation

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r~' 76 iv 1 sampling on this. And those things -- those questions 2 really haven't been asked. There may be areas that this 3 happened. But if then you ask yourself, okay, we're going 4 to have one cinder cone buildup or five cinder cones in 5 every 1,000 years, how likely will that be exactly here.

6 It's these kinds of questions. I don't know the 7 answers to them, but just to bring them into focus changes 8 people's way of looking at things.

9 In terms of a symposium -- symposiums are 10 dangerous in that there's a lot of posturing and there's a 11 lot of papers and things giving out tangential subjects. I 12 think what really needs to be done, if you would like to 13 move that way, is to take six months or a year and have some (O _/ 14 people really look at the subject and see what's there and 15 what we really know right now; and then we say, we're going 16 to have it and we're going to talk about this -- these 17 aspects of it. In other words, we' re going to say, what do 18 we know isotopic characters of these rocks and are they 19 contaminant or not?

20 What do we know about the variation in age 21 between each lava flows and the volume of what the nearest 22 centers around -- the nearest areas around?

23 In other words, those are just examples. But'we 24 need to go in and really ask some concrete questions to 25 focus the symposium. You just can't have it on the general r~s Heritage Reporting Corporation

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(_,k 1 subject because we all like to tell everybody about what l 2 we' re doing and that may not be necessarily on target to 3 what we're trying to solve.

4- In other words, the idea is to get people to go 5 into the area, exactly the problem of concern and talk about l

6 that rather than let us extract from their experts or their 7 testimony, how that is applicable to the problem. We really 8 want them mucky right into the problem to see what they can 9 say about that.

10 And so I would suggest something like that. I 11 mean, symposium --

12 MR. JUSTUS: I might add there is precedence for 13 that. It's an ongoing kind of interchange that you're 14 talking about; we call them technical exchanges where folks 15 from DOE, the state, and NRC and their representative 16 consultants and advisors talk about specific technical 17 problems or programs or what have you.

18 DR. MARSH: You could still have a symposium, it 19 would be fine, just on very specific issues.

20 DR. HINZE: Question: what's the cause of the 21 vulcanism in the basin range? You talked about secondary 22 processes, what is that secondary process?

23 DR. MARSH: The process that's involved in the 24 cinder cone development is that when you have e plate going 25 down you have a return flow - you have a flow in the mantle Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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.h 1 and the plate.'goes down and pulls the mantle with it and 2 there's a return flow up underneath that.

3 What happens to that flow is that it pulls-4 material up'from deeper in the mantle and brings it up into 5 the-wedge region and goes back down.

6 But what it does is, it takes material in the.

7 mantle,-let's say, the low velocity, it's incipient, melting, 8 for example, and brings it up to a lower pressure-regime and 9 brings 't i out in the region where - -out in this phase 10 diagram a little bit where.it may be a viable magma. So you 11 get sporadic output of' magma production.

12 It's not really predictable like the arc is, in 13 these big arcs with changes, but you can have some overall

.14 feeling from where it is based on the degree, for example, 15 of extension on the surface.

16 DR. HINZE: Stress patterns.

17 DR. MARSH: Yes, stress patterns; where the 18 extension area. In the Urington area, for example, we know 19 it's 100 percent or something like this.

20 So those are questions you really want to ask in 21 detail. At the same time, of course, the' basin range has a 22 very interesting lithospheric structure. You talking about 23 Cook's idea of crust on mantle mix, I think it's a viable 24 idea. You have a seat almost near the base of the crust 25 there.

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O" 1 So you have a lot of opportunity. Now,Lyou 2 really want to know;then -- and there's

good stuff being 3- turned out from Bob Smith and other people, you want to know 4 the seismic structure. In-other;words, you want'to know the

.5 upper most mantle piece of end. velocity in the basin. range 6 all over to see-if that-enters into it, to see where the 7 mantle is the hottest and nearest to the surface.

8 On top of that you also want to put in.a big ash 9 flow regions like east central Nevada where there'is 10 tremendous outpourings. And you want to put those in, .

11' because where.is the heat -- has the heat been dissipated.

12' You want to put that stuff into it.

13 Are there areas that have had just a pouring out

( 14 of these ash flows that have buried a lot of the cinder cone 15 . development that was there that'we don't see.

16 So there are studies on all scales and you have 17 to get right down and look at the lavas.

18 DR. MOELLER: Paul, did you have any questions or 19 comments?

20 DR. POMEROY: No. I wanted to hear you expand a 21 little more though on those questions, if you could. I l

I 22 still got a little lost in the explanation as to just 23 exactly what you were saying about the origin and the 24 activity.

25 DR. MARSH: The whole area behind --

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80 rs 5- 1 DR. POMEROY: Behind what?

2 DR. MARSH: Behind the other arcs. I mean, the 3 Sierra, Nevada was not an arc and the whole tectonic 4 structure of the western United States has had to do with, 5 even through thrust faulting. If you look at what 6 Birchfield is doing has a lot to do with the whole 7 development of the structure. That with seduction cut off 8 then the western United States not only had this hot sphere 9 behind there -- in other words, it bolted up in the 10 isostatic and it was higher. But it also, then, as soon as 11 the seduction ceased we went into this -- our south motion 12 the area relaxed and we get a lot of this basin range 13 structure.

(~3 14 It is, of course, not a uniform deformation. We

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15 have a plateau that still has upper -- that look like 8 16 kilometers, 50 kilometers across, whereas perfectly intact.

17 In some areas, for example, southern Arizona we may only 18 have eight or nine kilometers. So that overall thing.

19 But the fact that we have this asthenosphere that 20 is being elevated up, really what it does, it takes the 21 entire region -- moves it out to higher melt percentages.

22 So where you can get further stuff, you have the 23 best possibility of really producing melt -- producing 24 magmas, bigger bodies of that or getting through.

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81 1 possible flux and then we say, okay, that uniform flux is 2 modulated'by the fact that in some areas, for example, they 3 come around the plateau, but still magma comes through there 4 butfit's more difficult for them to get through.

l-5 We put one screen over it and it cuts a lot.of 6 areas that we worry about the extension of the detail area.

l' 7 And then we. worry'about, also, the local structures -- the 8 local tectonic structure in terms of the upper crustal 9- faults and the nature of the crust itself, whether or not.

10 we've had a lot of ash flows coming out, where we had big 11 solidus ~ magma chambers. Just solidus magma chambers sitting 12 across actually act as filters.

13 We know that basalt systems get into them 14 occasionally because we see this stuff, but do they actually 15 absorb it and actually get right in this, being such a big 16 reservoir.

17 All those things I look at as kind of filters 18 that modulate what we started out with. So it is upper 19 mantle material we are melting. It's very clear we are 20 getting stuff.on the upper mantles, not the down going plate 21 or anything like that. And we have nodules and the whole 22 assortment of things that tell us that.

23 So we do know the background noise level, I would 24 say, in terms of what the isotope character is that Paul.is 25 mapping'now, and the farmers are mapping, and to the extent Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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101 1 of isotopes and all the contraries. We really can, I think, 4

2 say something about -- in Sierra, Nevada, we have known that 3 for.a long time. You can look at the details of_the al chemistry and isotopic chemistry and.the stuff nearest the 5 Yucca Mountain area and see what it tells us.

6 The thing is, there's a lot of boxes:I think-that 7 haven't been' opened yet to find out what's-in there.

8 MR.'JUSTUS: 'Can I pick up on'these boxes that 9 have to be opened?

10 DR. HINZE: You just have two hours.

11 (Laughter) 12 MR. JUSTUS: Hopefully, they're not Pandora's 13 Box.

( 14 Would you say that, based on what you've read --

15 ' gee, this sounds like a hearing already -- that if DOE were 16 to pursue lines of evidence that you would suggest that have 17 not been fully developed yet, that the information and 18 methods for addressing these new concerns or existing 19 concerns that need to be more fully pursued already exist.

20 And so that in a reasonable amount of time something -- and 21 what might that time period be, would you guess, that the 22 answers or results of the investigations would be 23 forthcoming?

24 DR.-MARSH: I think-everything exists, the people l- 25 exist who do it. The real danger I see in something like Heritage Reporting Corporation O' . ' (202) 626-4888 l

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1 this, you're being asked a real definite question about an 2 area. It's like going to the library and not being able to 3 search through the stacks and you ask for a book and they I 4 - get it for you and bring it back, and here it is.

5 But there may be actually something in the stacks I 6 that only a trained observer, person who wants it, can see.

7 So they're allowed to go into the stacks and look.themselves 8 and there it is right there.

9 So what you really need is, you need people.

10 Okay, you say, we want strontium dodium. While we're doing 11 the strontium dodium we're running across something that to 12 a trained person is very important or doing chart for the 13 lava. For example, it's not just looking at them in a (Oj 14 section,'it's having someone who really knows that these

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15 crystals look different than these. And if you' re used to 16 looking at imaging analysis systems or whatever, like we do, 17 you get a totally different feeling for the rock based on 18 its crystal size, distribution, spectrum than you do from 19 just looking at modes and stuff.

20 So in other nords, you can see something that 21 will lead you often into something that's significant. That 22 is different than saying, I'm giving you $10 give me the 23 modes of this rock and report the modes back.

24 So what I'm saying is that there are people 25 around who can supply things that we ask for -- a person

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.Q 1 asks for. But the key is, I think, is to have people that 2 are cognizant enough of the overall process such that they 3 can look through everything and see if everything is all 4 basin covered and if the rocks themselves have been read 5 properly. In other words, it's different than just crushing 6 the rock up and giving you a number. It's really looking at 7 the overall history of the rock in terms of its 8 crystallization and its field geology and its regional 9 tectonic placement. All these things together give you a 10 savvy, you know, a real feeling for what is going on. And 11 then you are ready to make it quantitatively.

12 It would be almost impossible, I think, for 13 someone to take, for example, all the stuff I have done,

} 14 read it, and apply it by themselves. You have to have it in 15 your veins to be able to do that. And there are various 16 nuances of it that are important to see.

17 So, yes and no, there are people, you know, that 18 supply all the information.

19 DR. POMEROY: Bruce, obviously, you published a 20 lot of the work that you've done and other people who have 21 read it, I think we would probably - you won't find anybody 22 that will disagree that we should certainly look at 23 processes and we certainly should look at them from a 24 systems approach as somebody said here.

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1 people out there doing this kind of work. Are you saying 2 there is something unique about your group that some of 3 these other groups like the USGS people that presumably are 4 going to be looking from the perspective of DOE might not be 5 looking at? Could you just expand on that a little bit.

6 DR. MARSH: What I'm saying is that there are 7 certain aspects of this problem that are best treated by 8 certain people in this country. We certainly can't look at 9 all aspects of it and they're not expert in all parts of it.

10 For example, you want to have people doing i

11 isotopes and who really know what they're looking for. Know 12 how to solve the problem. You want to have people looking 13 at the chemistry of the lavas who really understand this.

(s l')

14 So what I'm saying is that once a person has an

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15 overview of this problem -- a serious problem like this, you 16 then say, what we really need to know. Then you say, this 17 group of people are the best possible group of people, 18 whether we know anything or we can say anything about it at 19 all.

20 What I'm worried about is that we say that, here 21 is an area that needs to be investigated and here is some 22 people who know about this subject. We put chem on it and 23 we get answers on it, but we never -- well, we don't know 24 how good those answers are going to be. And they may do 25 their absolute best and all the numbers being fairly well.

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(_m ) . 1 But it's just that it's - you know, we're at the edge.

2 This is something we could never even thought about 10 years 3 ago I would say, to the precision that we're talking about 4 now.

-5 And so it's not something like we have ever done 6 before in the science. But I think it's something that we 7 might be able to try.

8 MR. JUSTUS: I submit that this is precisely the 9 kind of thing that DOE is best qualified to do and that is 10 direct its'own program such that it establishes --

11 certainly, DOE would do such things with NRC's concurrence, 12 let's say, or at least with our feedback as proposals of 13 investigations to be done such as they've done in site 14 characterization planning.

15 For NRC and its affiliates to engage in that kind 16 of direction is not the role that NRC is accustomed to 17 dealing with applicants in.

18 DR. HINZE: I think -- Jeff, is there anything 19 you would like to comment on?

20 MR. KIMBALL: Just for the reporter, I'm Jeff 21 Kimball from DOE, Branch Chief of the Geosciences Branch.

22 I guess in terms of the latter conversation, 23 particularly with Dr. Pomeroy, I guess at face value we'll 24 look at everything that has been said. But off the top of 25 my head I'm not sure that we are lacking specific expertise Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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1 in the area, although as I say, we'll look at things 2 discussed today. But we do have the Lanel people and USGS 3 team trying to address the issue.

4 So as I say, we'll take one more look at it. We 5 are preparing study plans that deal with the number of the 6 trpics that were discussed today -- two, in fact. And the 7 latter stages of the review process to get to the NRC, 8 hopefully, this calendar year. Those two relate to the 9 characterization of volcanic features. And the other one is 10 the study plan to the probability estimates.

11 A lot of the comments that were made and 12 discussion is extremely useful. From my perspective, you 13 know, we have had this discussion many times about

() 14 emphasizing process versus specifics. I think there is a 15 balance that has to be struck in that; and I think that's 16 our only main concern here. We are well aware that if you 17 don't get the right balance you won't get the right 18 information that you need.

19 But we're also aware that we have, you know, we 1 20 have to come up with an answer -- a quantitative answer, 21 quote often, to the safety of the facility. So you have to 22 mix those two.

23 But we clearly are maybe paranoid that we don't 24 overemphasize the process where .:e know that you may not be 25 able to solve the process, part of the equation in some Heritage Reporting Corporation O. (202) 628-4888

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1. instances.

2 I think the technical exchange is coming up. .For 3 example, we have one coming up in three weeks or so. It 4 might.be a useful opportunity to bring up some of the issues 5 that were discussed here if, you know,.there are concerns 6- that want to be expressed to the specific principal 7 investigations like Dr. Crowe.- He will be' making, at least 8 based on the draft agenda, he will be making a presentation 9 at that technical exchange.

10 DR. HINZE: Very good. Thank you, Jeff.

11 We need to take a 10 minute break for all of us 12 and the reporter.

13 DR. MOELLER: And will you be leaving, Dr. Marsh?

() 14 DR. HINZE: You're welcome to stay, I told him 15 that.

16 DR. MOELLER: Yes. You are certainly welcome to 17 stay.

18 DR. MARSH: If you don't need me I'll leeve.

19 DR. MOELLER: On behalf of the committee thank 20 you for coming down.

21 DR. MARSH: You're very welcome.

22 DR. MOELLER: Others present join with me in your 23 gratitude.

24 MR. McCONNELL: Can I ask you one question?

25 DR. MOELLER: Sure.

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... 89 1 MR.'McCONNELL: In your view, how important is it I -2 in' understanding vulcanism-to develop some understanding of L <

(3- the tectonic framework of the region that you're working in?

4 DR. MARSH: Well, it is certainly a major part --

5 it's a major piece in the puzzle. Tectonics at all scales, 6 in this large scale in terms.of the overall distortion of; 7 .the basin range, and in terms - of' that is art overall. feed .

8 link to.the' vulcanism in terms of it'being reflected. Not 9 actually -- there's -- some people view, I think before the 10 crust or the earth gets a break and magma leaks out. I 11 ' don' t . look at that at all . Magma is just a background --

'12- generating of a background flux and it's steered by -- that 13 is encouraged by regional tectonics. In other words, 14 there's no indication of it, they all go hand-in-hand, 15 tectonics, magnetism, et cetera.

16 And then down to the smaller scales. And there 17 are some areas that are very, very -- have been very active 18 tectonically in terms of the extension and they all chopped 19 up in terms of slices, normal faulting in the basin range 20 and things. You need to know that, too, in terms of how 21 1 magma is going to behave when it gets into that stuff. If 22 you know that you can predict it.

L 23 It's very interesting, Iceland where we have been 24 doing work in this area of Craplon which is a major volcanic 25 area in northern Iceland, they built a big geothe rmal plant Heritage Reporting Corporation i

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1 there; And there are fissures ~, it's right in the caldera.

'2: You can'see'it in the -- the calderas are very distinct but 3 it's in the area of it. When there were eruptions in the

'4 area,-these< fissures, then plants about 3 or 4 kilometers,is 5- Lwhat we figured the event was.

6 The fissures put' magma -- they got right into the 7 ' pipes and there' were big spigots outside the magma and 'it 8 ran out through the spigots, you.know, you could see.then, 9 they were out there frozen -- the pipes are down in the 10 ground.

11 So here, you're in an area where you've had stuff 12 all over and you have learned a lot by looking at that, too.

13 Whet'happens when you -- these people have pipes'in the

) 14 ground standing there all over and they're sucking hot water 15 out, what happens when you send.a swarm of fissuree through 16 there? What'does it do to it?- They know what happens when 17 that has' happened. And much to their disappointment -- I 18 mean, the system still works, but here is something that

19. really - you know, here is --

20 DR. HINZE: You really need some draino for that.

21 (Laughter) 12 2 DR. MOELLER: We'll take our break.

23 (Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m. a 10 minute break was.

24 taken.)

25 DR. MOELLER: The nieeting will resume.

Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4886

/^') 91 NJ 1 And, Bill, what do you want to cover next?

2 DR. HINZE: Well, we unfortunately have taken up 3 a good-deal of our afternoon with vulcanism, but I do want 4 to get to what was specified as the major element of this 5 afternoon's meeting and that's the technical positions, and 6 particularly the technical position on tectonic models.

7 When this working group was first developed there 8 was a concern about tims because we had the impression that 9 we would have to respond in a very short period of time.

10 Subsequent to that the system has been delayed or 11 the process has been delayed. The net recult is that we are 12 approaching this review of the technical position on 13 tectonic models without the staff having had an opportunity 14 to react to the DOE, the State of Nevada, as well as 15 ourselves.

16 But I do think we can serve some useful purposes 17 here this afternoon. And perhaps, one of the things that 18 will help the committee is to look at this in a more generic 19 way as stated in this preamble.

20 I do want to, if at all possible, have a chance 21 for Dr. Pomeroy to react to the seismic hazard technical 22 position, because it bears upon the generic problem.

23 Also, we do have an obligation to provide what 24 guidance we can to the staff as early as possible. And I' m 25 sure that Phil and others can take this back to the staff.

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E.

I 7 () 1 With that I would like to ask Charlotte, if she

-2 would please, if she would briefly review for us -- if you 3 feel comfortable doing this, Charlotte, -- review for us 4 what'is the objective of the technical position, briefly.

5 MS. ABRAMS: It's going to be really brief.

6 DR. HINZE: Okay. And I'm hoping to call on Phil 7 immediately thereafter. I also think that ann -- at least 8 I'm in the dark in terms of how the subjects for these 9 technical positions are being selected and being segregated.

10' And something about the scheduling of them.

11 And I'm also curious, and I think it's helpful, 12 if we have some idea of how these are developed within the 13 NRC staff, how much use is there of consultants? How much 14 use of the center is involved? And what kind of internal 15 review process is used for them? And what kinds of review 16 that develops? Briefly.

17 MS. ABRAMS: Well, mine is perhaps a different-18 perception than Phil. I was a member of his staff at one 19 time. And technical positions were not intended to be or to 20 have the status of, say, a rulemaking. They're not the same 21 as a NUREG, but they were to provide some guidance in many 22 cases to contribute to standard format and content.

23 The choice of topics was predominately by section

-24 leaders in consultation with others. They do get some 25 review by the peers -- the staff members peers within the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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1 different sections. But that is limited based on time 2 limitations.

3 And some of the original TPs that were slated 4 when the list was brought up are now considered rulemaking, 5 the APs and UPs is one -- in the case of one, something that 6 started out as a TP can being worked on as rulemaking.

7 DR. MOELLER: Let me ask, though, and this is a 8 little bit maybe beyond what you have been working on, but 9 we were given to review and comment on at this meeting, 10 which begins tomorrow, the low-level waste performance 11 assessment ~ methodology. It's a staff report on low-level 12 performance -- quote: " Performance Assessment Strategy for 13 Low-Level Waste Disposal Sites." Now, I realize it's low-14 level and not high-level.

15 And it's not a technical position. It's not a 16 regulatory guide. It's not a NUREG. I can't figure out 17 what it is. I realize, again, it's low-level waste, but it 18 would have holped me to have known --

19 DR. HINZE: Where it falls in the category.

20 DR. MOELLER: Yes.

21 MR. JUSTUS: I think I can contribute a little to 22 this question, hopefully, for clarity rather than continue l

23 to confuse the issue or to have it confused.

24 Let me address, though, just the high-level waste l

l 25 technical position. Only rarely are we coordinated with the

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'94 l' low-level waste' technical positions.

2 .And I need to' preface this brief discussion that r

3 I'll give now by saying that the whole generic topic that 4 you have asked me'to address of interacting with DOE-through 5 the mechanism called technical positions is a process that L- 6 .is' managed in our~ project management directorate.

7 .The technical sections contribute-their technical i

8 expertise and manage experts and consultants.to develop j 9 technical positions or rulemakings that have technical 10 attributes. ,

( 11 And many'of our technical positions in 12 rulemakings are multidisciplinary and benefit from good 13 strong project management coordinating the various technical fg 14 entities that are contributing to it.

kJ 15 And tomorrow, if you were to ask this question a 16 representative from the John Monahan's project management m 17 directorate will be present to address the answer from the 18 project management point of view.

19 So let me than confine -- my hopefully brief' 20 remarks to -- it was a broad question -- to the technical 21 approach and the technical umbrella that's cast over the so-22 called technical positions.

23 Several years ago our division was asked to 24 formally propose anticipated rulemakings and technical 25 positions to the Commission by way of laying out its high-Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O

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f 95 1 ' level waste program in response to DOE's program.

2- DR. PARRY: -By.whom? Who asked the staff.to do-3 that?

4 MR. JUSTUS: .It's my impression that we're 5 talking about office division to' division director, lay out 6 your program. The culmination ---I think the answer' lies in 7 the culmination of this effort was;a Commission-paper 8 developed by the division known as SECY paper 88-285' . And 9 it was about a year ago that this paper presented.the high-10 level waste technical program.- In particular, the program 11 with interacting with DOE. Both proactive and reactive, but 12 it concentrated on what we have now pigeonholed as proactive 13 program; matters that we develop ourselves.to assist DOE in

( ). 14 fulfilling its role in the national program. Those are 15 proactive-matters. They are not related to any of DOE's 16 scheduled activities in contrast to reactive matters that we 17 pursue with DOE.

18 For example, when the site characterization plan 19 was published we -- in the particular time frame -- we in 20 turn had a -- we went into a reactive mode based on the 21 timetable related to DOE's issue. That document or SEP or 22 any other document.

23 Rulemakings and technical positions are proactive 24 matters. Items that are created within our division.

25 Now, the proposed rulemakings and technical Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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96 1' positions evolved.over several years of dealing with, DOE in-2 the national program and matured to the point where we 3 identified particular points of. controversy or particularly 4 difficult technical issues that were-significant in the 5 program. And-these were identified'several years ago as.

'6 matters'that we should clarify'for DOE either>as rulemakings 7- or technical positions.or in some other way. .And the other 8 ways include regulatory guides, format and content guides,

.9 for review plans, or simply letters of clarification points.

10 About two dozen topics were proposed in SECY 11 285 that were identified as potential technical position 12 topics. As Ms. Abrams pointed out, at least one of those.

13 and there are several, further evolve from technical 14 positions to proposed rulemakings. And I can suggest at 15 least one other technical position that was, let's say, 16 downgraded from a technical position to a guidance letter 17 that we will be writing. That one in particular is 18 underground mapping. We had originally -- for various 19 reasons -- this list is evolving. This list of TPs, 20- technical positions.

21 Now, as originally conceived the technical 1 22 positions covered a wide range and scales of potential 23 guidance areas that we wanted to-clarify with DOE on a, more 24 or less, accelerated or high priority basis. And technical 25 position is not necessarily the best way to -- or the best Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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guidance.

3 And I think in part this apparently is the case 4 in-low-level-waste as well where some technical guidance is-5 built as a-technical position and it's really not a position i

6 on a technical matter per se. And so the- praise, technical 7- position doesn't 'seem ' appropriate and leads to confusion.-

8 'But I think this is the case or has been the case in some 9 areas in high-level waste.

10 So let me --- so what is this technical position 1 11 item'that we're dealing with? It's one way of writing 12 guidance to DOE that is sufficiently formal; that it 13 receives scrutiny beyond a small group of authors or

() 14 interested parties within NRC itself.

15 A technical position is designed to convey 16 guidance that receives'public scrutiny. So is a rulemaking.

17 However, to distinguish it from a rulemaking, rulemaking 18 when completed is a modification or change to the regulation 19- that upon completion has the force of any established 20 regulation and it becomes a requirement for DOE that is not 21 subject to litigation.

22 However, a technical position or guidance within 23 a technical position is simply guidance. DOE may choose'not 24 to follow it. And indeed, we state in our technical 25 positions that DOE is not compelled, obviously, it's not a Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

1 rulemaking.and:they're not compelled-to follow it. And1we 21 usually.say, and I believe always say, that other methods or 3 approaches'that. DOE chooses to use that fulfills the goals 14 offa particular piece of guidance will be acceptable or.

5 likely to be. acceptable to NRC.

6 Now'let me,-if.I'may,' point 1out~a third type of 7- written: guidance'that we give.

8 DR. MOELLER: Let me.ask:,does the Commission 9 formally vote.on a technical position, the Commissioners?

10 MR. JUSTUS: I don't believe so, y 11' 'DR. PARRY: If I remind the. committee, Mr.

12 Browning gave a fairly lengthy exposition, I think actually 13 perhaps at the subcommittee that preceded the committee, on

'( ) 14 the use of TPs as opposed to reg guides or rulemakings. And 15 his presentation suggested that the technical position 16 receive the same level of technical examination internally 17 within the NRC as a reg guide or rulemaking.

18 It did not receive the force of the Commissioners 19 input nor was it subject to public scrutiny, only being 20 published perhaps once for comment.

21 MR. JUSTUS: Yes.

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,_ 99 j 1 DR. MOELLER: You were saying there's a' third 2 kind.

3 MR. JUSTUS: Yes. This is shall we say simply d 4 the letter, a guidance letter-where from time to time a 5 matter comes up in dealing with DOE or reviewing its words 6 or documents that enumerate or bring to light a particular-7 point of controversy that can be clarified with a simple 8 letter or statement. And, yet, it still constitutes series 9 and significance guidance and, generally, in matters of 10 fairly narrow definition. Simply write a letter saying, 11 "This what you seem to have thought we meant, but this is 12 what we meant." And we need to go through rule makings or 13 public scrutiny to do such things.

() 14 DR. POMEROY: Doesn't that have the same impact 15 as a technical position?

16 MR. JUSTUS: We hope that it would.

17 DR. PARRY: Which is legally not.

18 MR. JUSTUS: That's correct. Only the rule 19 makings have legal standing. The others are simply 20 guidelines that DOE may choose to follow and DOE may choose 21 to take more seriously a rule making that letter, but we t

22 hope on matters of significance they take everything of i

23 appropriate importance.

i 24 DR. PARRY: I' d like to remind you that Ed f

25 Ringey, DOE, last year I think made at least one or two l

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. r"- \.)y l' almost' impassioned presentations on what has now developed 2 -into APs'and UPs indicating that they-were going to-request

.3' a' rule' making. Apparently the-staff has taken the position 4 to go ahead-and:do that without a formal request.

5- MR. JUSTUS: The-staff'has that right-and has 6 chosen'to do'so in several cases.

7 DR. MOELLER: Well, remember.in another meeting 8 <we had with them, with DOE,.they specifically offered the 9 suggestion.that:a Reg Guide was much to be preferred over a' 10 technical position. Their argument being, of course, that-11 Research-looks at Reg Guides.

12 MR '. JUSTUS: May-I make a correction. I think 13 it's a correction. Research looks at technical positions as-

) 14 well. So does the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.

15 And in'that sense, in the sense that Mr. Browning mentioned 16 that you reiterated, technical positions gainLroughly the

~

17 same amount of internal scrutiny as a. rule making. . That '. s .

18 correct.

19 These documents are read and reviewed by the 20 various offices in the NRC as well as by our appropriate 21 consultants at the center. Furthermore, the technical 22 positions in rule makings are reviewed by DOE,.the. State.of 23 Nevada-and other interested parties. Generally, if they'are 24 geologic in nature, the U.S. Geological Survey and as you 1 25 will see from the public record of responses to the tectonic 1 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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1 model position for individuals and other interested folks t

2 and parties. So, it gets a fair amount of scrutiny, these l

3 TPs do.

l 4 DR. POMEROY: I just wanted to expand a little 5 Lit on that because it's going to become more important in .

J 6 the seismic issues I believe as well. You said that, for 7 example, in our comment on proposed TPs, I know their f 8 comments are rather pithy with regard to some of the seismic 9 issues and what's happening. And I wonder how much -- what 10 happens to that? You have some of the very best people, for 11 example, with years of experience sitting over in NRR and 12 their feelings contrast perhaps with feelings within your 13 own group.

O( / 14 You take those comments into consideration, I 15 guess, but the final decision is still up to you. Is that 16 correct?

17 MR. JUSTUS: Yes, it is.

18 DR. POMEROY: But you do consider those comments 19 very carefully.

20 MR. JUSTUS: Rest assured. The expertise of our 21 colleagues in NRR and Research.

22 I believe the pithy comments that we received 23 from NRR and other organizations are taken seriously. They 24 serve to improve the thrust of what it is we felt or feel

} 25 needs to be developed in writing as guidance. Sometimes l

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.f Ns 1 we're turned around by such comments and sometimes we're 2 not. Any particular subject area?

3 DR. PARRY: Often or frequently?

4 MR. JUSTUS: I would say rarely.

5 DR. PARRY: Rarely turned around.

6 MR. JUSTUS: Rarely turned back from pursuing the 7 course that we wanted. But certainly certain statements, 8 comments or approaches we make are either improved or even 9 turned around by comments not just from our own colleagues, 10 the DOE, the USGS and others and the ANCW.

11 DR. HINZE: You mentioned consultants, have you 12 been using the center in developing any of the TPs that we 13 are looking at today or that we will be looking at in the O 14 near future? And if so, how?

(/

15 MR. JUSTUS: Yes. All of the TPs will be 16 reviewed by the center. And the earlier ones, the ones that 17 are coming up now have received less scrutiny from the 18 center than the ones that are forthcoming.

19 DR. HINZE: Clark Birchfield or George Thompson 20 or any of the people that I consider the experts on the 21 tectonics of the Seven Basin Range, are these people 22 involved in any way in developing, for example, the TP on 23 technical models?

24 MR. JUSTUS: To my knowledge, Clark Birchfield 25 and George Thompson are not involved in the development of

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1' the tectonic models TP -

2: DR. HINZE: Can you give us the names of some 3 people that are as consultants?

4 Well, let me.ask this question. What kinds of

5. materials would you pass on-to a consultant on this? Jud-

-6 what " I'm ' getting at is I think ' there. is a sense -among -some 7 of the' people that are'looking at the TPs'that -- and this.

8 is overstating the point, that, for example, the TP on 9 technical models may be a knee-jerk reaction to'the SEP.

10 And the amount of detail in the SEP or what it said.in the 11 SEP, the maturity of the SEP. I'm just wondering if that --

12 I'm hearing that these topics were developed, well, 13 certainly before you had the SEP if I understand correctly.

14 Do I understand that these are -- that you wouldn't provide 15 to the consultants the SEP as a need to develop a technical 16 position?

17 MR. JUSTUS: Let me take this -- let me answer 18 this a little bit more broadly than the last question. Some 19 things you're saying are making me feel defensive.

20 DR. HINZE: I apologize for that.

21 MR. JUSTUS: We utilized consultants initially 22 basically in areas for which we lack or feel that we lack 23 in-house expertise or in which-the need arises for peer 24 review that we can't get within our usual chain of command 25 or through the public comment process.

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- 1 Also, it is our policy, it's been our policy that 2 NRC staff write technical positions and guidance to DOE that  !

3 we do not subcontract out that responsibility nor the 4 authority to do it.

5 It's the NRC' staff who have to administer the 6 guidance and evaluate DOE's response to it. " Rarely does a 7 contractor do that except when called upon to support the 8 staff position. And that's the way we start. The NRC staff 9 initiates the, generally, initiates the need for technical 10 positions, rule makings or other forms of guidance and 11 assesses or let's say outlines the need, defends it, 12 establishes or gains authority to pursue it. And our 13 process is fairly elaborate.

/~T 14 In fact, I would advise that you review our Waste LJ 15 Management No. 46 which develops in detail the stages and 16 procedures through which the staff go to fully develop a 17 technical position. That includes the review, the internal 18 review and external review process and schedules for these 19 things.

20 Now, the staff is fully aware, we believe, of its 21 limitations. And we have always sought consultation when 22 recommended by others that we get it.

23 In the area of tectonic models, specifically,'we 24 have pursued this almost wholely internally because the 25 position is not addressing the matter of developing specific Heritage Reporting Corporation

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1 tectonic models for a specific place where experts like- )

2 Dr. Thompson and Dr. Dirchfield and others are needed to 3 explore and address the tectonics of an area. This is a 4 position that is trying to convey to DOE the need to 5 constrain regulatory uncertainty as opposed to technical 6 uncertainty dealing with the use of tectonic models.

7 And I will let Keith elaborate on the details as 8 needed, although we -- Keith has already outlined the 9 tectonics models position before the full committee.

10 DR. POMEROY: Does it do that, Phil? What you 11 just said. Do you think this technical position paper -- I 12 forget your exact words -- but clears up the confusion 13 between regulatory uncertainty and technical uncertainty?

r3

!) 14 MR. JUSTUS: After reviewing the comments that we 15 have received so far and in talking over these comments 16 internally, we concede that this position can be clarified 17 and it will be. And so the answer to your question is it 18 does not do the job that we want it to do.

19 Now, that's too broad. That's to undermine I 20 think what we feel about this position. In reviewing the 21 comment -- and I don't want to do that -- in reviewing the 22 comments, we have rejuvenated our thinking about the need 23 for this technical position on tectonic models. And we find 24 by having reviewed the comments that there is a strong need 25 for us to bring home the points that we wish to make. We r' Heritage Reporting Corporation

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1 haven't done so clearly enough because the comments indicate 2 that there continues to be confusion about what we intended i

3 to say. j 4 I hope that does two things: I hope it does 5 justice to the existing draft, but also points out that we 6 recognize it can be improved and greatly so in certain 7 areas.

8 DR. POMEROY: Without reviewing all of the 9 comments, I believe one of the State of Nevada's comments 10 was that there is no need for it at all. And I would like 11 you to just expand briefly on that.

12 MR. JUSTUS: I think that we can make that case 13 by using DOE's words and point out -- and if I may just

() 14 delegate the answer to that to Keith later when he addresses 15 specific points, I think it would be more appropriate. If I 16 could just confine my brief comments to the more generic 17 points right now. I'm straying.

18 DR. MOELLER: What you are also saying, Phil, and 19 I doubt that I can even say it properly, but I hear you 20 saying that perhaps you would even agree with the comment 21 such as that from the State of Nevada that the technical 22 position is not needed, but in so agreeing, you would be 23 doing this with the thought in mind-that the original 24 technical position missed the mark.

25 However, you believe that if you rewrite it or

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-(~/ 1 ' edit it or whatever is necessary to get it to hit the mark, 2 achieve the goal that you're seeking, then you are quite 3 comfortable in your own mind that there is no question but 4 what it is needed.

5 MR. JUSTUD: That's correct.

6 DR. HINZE: I guess one of the concerns is 7 whether the technical position really attacks a symptom 8 rather than the illness and whether the occurrence of the 9 need for.this clarification of in terms of the regulations 10 and the licensing doesn't really get at the point that we 11 should beLlooking at Appendix A and CFR 60 and revising 12 those and get those in the proper place, but the technical 13 position would not be needed. Now, I don't know whether

/*

T 14 that's a fair question to ask you or not. I don't want to 15 put you on the defensive, but I do want to enter into a 16 dialogue.

17 MR. JUSTUS: Well, I would read into what you'ro 18 saying -- if Part 60 was perfectly clear, there would be no 19 need for technical positions or further rulings.

20 Now, we think that Part 60 is or should be 21 sufficiently clear as stated. But it turns out in reviewing 22 DOE's works and words that it is not sufficiently clear.

23 And, so, we attempt from time to time on particularly what 24 we think are particularly important or significant or highly 25 controversial matters to clarify points.

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,^ 108 As ? 1 Now, some of those points of clarification, as I 2 said, are best done as rule makings,. we believe. And others 3 are through the mechanism of a technical position or 4- letters. And there are other ways. Reg Guides, simple 5 document reviews, critiques particularly of the: documents..

6 Technical positions can include a variety of 7 subjects and they can be broad or narrow in scope.. We 8 .believe -- we intended that this one was to be fairly narrow 9 in scope and I believe it is being read as one that should 10 have been broad in scope and, therefore, has been 11 disappointing people.

12 DR. HINZE: I think you are very right and I 13 think one of the reasons for that is -- and I've been

() 14 concerned about this from about Day 1, tectonism was to 15 broad -- was too broadly based in terms of this 16 organization. In other words, vulcanism has been included 17 in that and other things as well. And it makes for a very 18 broad topic. For example, one of the -- in the August 30th, 19 31st meeting, one of the critical items of discussion that

'20 everyone agreed that we need a clarification on was 21 potentially significant quaternary fault. And I think that 22 we do need clarification on that. And it is part of really 23 the regulatory process.

24 And it would seem to me that maybe that isn't 25 part of a tectonic model, but it is an element of a tectonic Heritage Reporting Corporation

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'/ 1 model. Maybe it is a derivative of a tectonic model, but 2 that kind of thing needs definition and clarification.

l 3 Where is that going to pinned down? Why are we not pinning 4 that down rather than these rather global fuzzy 5 philosophical terms that are in the technical position that 6 we're seeing now.

7 MR. JUSTUS: Dr. Hinze, we have highlighted that 8 very phrase that you mentioned in what we consider to be our 9 most important product of FY '89, our site characterization 10 analysis published as NUREG 1347. That is a harsh criticism 11 of the DOE Site Characterization Plan.

12 You have mentioned one criticism that we've made 13 in that SCA. It is now up to DOE to answer your question.

14 What will be done to clarify that ambiguity or wanting

-[O'T 15 phrase "significant quaternary fault." We have made the 16 case that you want made. And we have brought this to DOE 17 when we met with them. I believe you attended the meeting 18 where we enumerated our specific concerns to DOE and 19 tectonics. I think that was August 30th. We were satisfied 20 generally by DOE's responses. They seemed to acknowledge 21 and agree that they understood what our concerns were in 22 tectonics and indicated that they would be responding in 23 appropriate ways at appropriate times.

24 And one of-those ways and times is the forum of a 25 meeting or a technical exchange. And we have had one of Heritage Reporting Corporation

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1 each so far in tectonics and we are having a third one that 2 you mentioned earlier coming up on October 31st, November I

3 let and 2nd, tentatively. These dates are likely to be 1 4 confirmed tomorrow.

5 So, DOE will be starting or has already started 6 to answer that question. And--at this-meeting coming up on 7 October 31st, we expect that they will be forthcoming with 8 adcitional responses to our SCA criticisms.

9 And then in the fourth meeting scheduled for the 10 end of November, a technical exchange at the end of 11 November, the agenda is yet to be developed for that. It 12 could very well be a technical change on vulcanism or some 13 other tectonic subject which we will be interacting with DOE

'( ) 14 to get at these critical matters, one of which you just 15 mentioned.

16 Now, the tectonic models position addresses, 17 indeed, certain things in the SCA that bear on site 18 characterization plans where we've tied our techonic models 19 position -- and maybe " position" is a misnomer, let's call 20 it the guidance document. Maybe that would clarify our 21 intent better than the phrase " technical position" does.

22 The tectonic models guidance document addresses 23 what appear to be insufficiently clear terminology and 24 intentions expressed in Part 60 that bear on the use of 25 predictive models and tectonic models are predictive models Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

111 iN-1 in our view for purposes of performance assessment.

2 DR. HINZE: I think I'm on 7.ecord as agreeing 3 very much with you on that, on that item.

4 What does it take to move a TP down to a guidance 5 letter and what are the implications thereof?

6 MR. JUSTUS: All right. I can only speak now 7 based on my one experience with this. And I don't know how 8 generic this example is. We intended to develop a technical 9 position on the use of stereographic mapping method for 10 mapping shafts and drifts that the Bureau of Reclamation was 11 developing on behalf of DOE for use in the repository 12 mapping program.

13 We learned about this new method through I

() 14 believe it was the CD SEP. It might have been some 15 background documents we had heard about several years ago.

16 And it was intriguing. It was a promising method.

17 However, it's a new method. It hasn't been 18 proven in the situation in which DOE apparently aimed to use 19 it. And we felt that we needed to remind DOE through a 20 guidance document that while it is okay to use new methods, 21 DOE is at risk in the licensing arena to rely on new or 22 unproven methods should conventional -- let's say more 23 conventional or proven time tested methods be also 24 available.

25 And we felt that we may wish to develop a TP on Heritage Reporting Corporation

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112 E '1' -this: subject because it was a generic matter, using a new.

-2~ method. Here's an' example of the new method.

3 But.after reading the CD SEP and the SEP, it-4 seems that= DOE is.not going to rely on too many new and 5 unproven methods at least'that we're currently aware of.

6 And it wasn't prudent at this time.

7 The need-for a generic TP which requires a lot of 8 effort because of the all of tlus coordination and the .

9 concurrence and the scrutiny that it gets, that may-.not be 10 needed. The need to give guidance to DOE on this matter was 2 11' not.as big a deal as we earlier thought it would be.-

12 Certainly not relative to other topics that we want to put 13 our resources into.

14. nevertheless, we do have something to say on

-( ) .So, 15 the matter. We have - .we went to the point of even 16 developing an internal draft technical position on the 17 subject. And all of our reviewers said, "This is a specific 18 ' matter. Why don't you just handle it in a specific way such E19 as.through a guidance letter?"

20 And we took this advice and we proposed in turn 21 to our management that we downgrade this matter from a 22 technical position to a guidance letter and it was agreed at 23 the Division level to do so.

24 DR. HINZE: That's helpful. - I f ,- for example, you 25 gave guidance on Yucca Mountain as a high level waste Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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\ 1 l repository, would that be specific and then be.a guidance l

l 2 letter rather than_a more generic item?

3 MR. JUSTUS: I think that would depend on the 4 topic. There are some points that are specific to the site l 5 that obviously if we wish to take a position, we could.

l l 6 Then there are some matters that are generic for which Yucca l

7 Mountain is but one possible application. We may wish to 8 make it more generic sounding than just specify " Yucca."

9 DR. HINZE: So, your use of the term " specific" 10 in dealing with the guidance letter is not a good criterion 11 for me to use in differentiation.

12 MR. JUSTUS: As I say, this example may not be 13 universal.

14 DR. HINZE: Paul, do you have a question?

(])

15 DR. POMEROY: Yes. I just wanted to get at this 16 a little bit because you mentioned the SCA a few times. And 17 by and large, it is my recollection and perhaps I'm wrong 18 about this, the SCA in general contained very detailed 19 remarks about the actual technical position as stated here, 20 anyway, which is all stated on page 6 in its entirety, as I l 21 understand it. And the technical position is stated in one 22 page here.

23 I wondered whether you could just clarify for'me 24 a little. It seems to me most of these words I read but 25 there are few words that are different. Most of these items Heritage Reporting Corporation

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N/ 1 were issues of one sort or another or comments at least that i 2 you provided to DOE. And I wondered how this is going to be 3 helpful in contrast to the SCA which I believe was also a l 4 helpful document, too.

5 And I guess I am also concerned barsuse in 6 attending the technical interchange meeting, which I 7 strongly endorse the concept of those continuing, by the 8 way, a number of the concerns were raised over the specific 9 words, perhaps, in here.

10 And you are now - you are first defining a 11 position and then in the process of that, the next step is 12 to try to define the words that you used in establishing 13 position.

~v f') 14 And I wonder. It worries me a little bit that 15 you're sort of creating things here that perhaps don't --

16 that have been fully stated and don't need to be stated 17 again. And I wish you and Keith both would comment on what 18 you see as the basic difference between this material 19 contained on page 6 and what you're saying, what you have 20 said, I thought, with some clarity in the SCA.

21 MR. JUSTUS: Let me start out by saying that this 22 technical position may not have been in need of continuing 23 to completion. If the guidance we gave to DOE on these 24 matters through the CD SEP comment process were reflected in 25 the SCP. So, with that as background, Keith --

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. 115 11 -DR. HINZE: -I think this'is the' time to turn to

'2 our -- excuse me. Jack?'

3 'DR. PARRY: Yes. I have a couple of generic-p 4 questions.- It is my understanding-that'in. general, the 5' Office of Research prepares rule makings. Am I correct?

6 'MR. JUSTUS: Always.- That is their. role. One of.

7 their roles.

8 DR. PARRY: Did they actually prepare Part 60?

9 .- ' MR . . JUS'2US : It is my understanding.that there-10 was at.the time of inception of Part 60, a separate office  ?

11' that generated rule makings -- I've-forgotten what it was 12 called.now -- Office of Regulations, regulatory development.

13 And that developed Part 60 among others.

14 'And in a reorganization that occurred I believe 15 about in and around 1980-1981, that function of developing 16 rule makings was rolled up into the current Office of 17- Research in its mission. And, so, there is a little 18- confusion now on whether.Research may have always developed 19 rule makings. I believe they didn't.always develop rule -

20 makings, but the do now, or have since that reorganization 21 occurred.

22 DR. PARRY: My understanding, though, is that 23 Part 60 was principally authored in what is now the High' 24: Level' Waste Division. Is that correct?

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116 1 was -- it was led by the Office of Rule Makings or whatever 2 -the' official title was by Pat Camolla who I believe was 3 developing it at the time or running that part of the NRC 4 program at the time in close coordination with Jack Martin's 5 Division task force which was a multi-disciplinary, 6 multi-faceted group involved many branches, I believe all of 7 the branches within his Division of Waste Management at the 8 time which included both high and low level waste 9 management.

10 DR. PARRY: I know that you're not in the 11 directorate so it may be out of your ken, but is any serious 12 thought being given to a major revisiting of Part 60 in toto 13 as opposed to clarifying one item here and another there and

() 14 another there and so forth?

15 MR. JUSTUS: Well, the answer is yes. The answer 16 is that our directorate -- in fact our division, it does 17 review the need to revise Part 60 in part or in total and we 18 have a plan for the revision of Part 60 that will be made 19 public shortly.

20 DR. MOELLER: In fact, you know, we have been 21 told several times, for example, that the EPA standard will 22 be incorporated into Part 60 and so forth.

23 MR. JUSTUS: Yes, that's part of the plan as I 24 currently understand it. And I think I had best leave the 25 elaboration of that to the directorate who are guiding us on Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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\ ') ~ 1 this topic.

2 DR. MOELLER: Well, just to offer a comment as 3 almost a bystander on it, I have found it remarkable that 4 the staff can write something like 10 CFR 60 at the time you 5 wrote it and do such a good job of predicting of what needed 6 to be covered and so forth. And I am-surprised if there is 7 anyone who believed it could be so perfect that it would 8 never need touching up.

9 I think you did a remarkable job and I'd be proud 10 of it whoever guided it through.

11 MR. JUSTUS: I will reflect your comment to those 12 who renamed from the original framers of Part 60 that I know 13 of.

() 14 DR. PARRY: Great. Wherever they are.

15 DR. POMEROY: Could I just ask for a 16 clarification? When you said that the EPA standard would be 17 incorporated --

18 DR. MOELLER: Is that verbatim as an appendix or 19 something.

20 DR. POMEROY: So that ceased the complementary 21 cumulative distribution function?

22 DR. MOELLER: Yes.

23 DR. POMEROY: Would be incorporated as it is 24 currently.

25 DR. MOELLER: However the remanded or revised fs Heritage Reporting Corporation

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% 1 standard comes out.

2 MR. JUSTUS: May I suggest that you query the  !

l 3 directorate on this generic matter of rule makings and I 4 technical positions and other forms of guidance that the 5 Division is or will develop for DOE. They are happy -- I am 6 sure they will be only too happy to bring you up to date on 7 the current plans.

8 DR. HINZE: Phil, I appreciate this dialogue 9 because it has clarified things for me and, hopefully, will 10 be reflected as we move on through some kind of remarks from 11 the committee.

12 MR. JUSTUS: There is one other point I feel I 13 need to make and close our my response, my short response to

{} 14 your generic question.

15 Now that the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory 16 Analysis is up and running and is qualifying a large stable 17 of consultants in a variety of areas in which we know they 18 will be needed.

19 In fact, we have proposed individuals to be 20 signed on as consultants. And, of course, the Center has 21 the final say in who they hire, of course, as I have 22 mentioned before. But the Center is systematically 23 reviewing for us Part 60 requirements. This is now known as 24 the program architecture. And the Center already has shaken 25 out of its top down review suggestions for technical Heritage Ref.rting Corporation l O (202) 628-4888 l

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1 positions or rule makings in various letters to us,' reports

2 to us.

.3- This process, systematic review process by the 4 Center is not. complete. We. expect further recommendations 5 from the Center as to what TPs or proposed rule makings.

6 would be fruitful for us to~ consider. I might add that 7- those that they have shaken out from their top-down approach 8 coincide with those that we have developed and proposed in 9 SECY 88-285.from the bottom up approach that we've been 10 using over the years. -+

11 DR. POMEROY: Is there any possibility of asking.

12 the final user what guidance he thinks he might need, i.e.,

13 DOE?

14 MR. JUSTUS: Yes. And DOE, in fact, we are

[}

15 developing the AP UP rule making, the anticipated processes 16 and events and unanticipated processes and events rule 17 making in part in response to DOE's request for i

18 clarification of those terms. And we will continue to 19 respond to DOE's request for clarification. That is

! 20 precisely the intent of Congress when it established the l

21 pre-licensing consultation mandate in NWPA to facilitate the 22 licensing process.

l 23 DR. PARRY: Has the Center developed any topics 24 that you had not anticipated?

25 MR. JUSTUS: There may have been one or two in Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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is 1 one of their reports. I don't believe it was in the area of I 2 tectonics. And I have forgotten what it was at this point, l 3 if indeed there were some.

4 DR. MOELLER: We had had some discussion, of 1 1

5 course, is this technical position needed. And I guess I 6 had a question along this same line and that is you're doing

]

7 the rule making cn1 the unanticipated and anticipated 8 processes and events and you are revising or developing 9 other technical positions and I guess one of my questions 10 was: Is now the time and do you have all the answers so you 11 can move ahead with this?

12 Aren't you having to anticipate what some of the 13 other technical positions will be and anticipate how the

(}

~

14 rule making on the APs and UPs or whatever they are comes 15 out?

16 You know, as a for instance, here you say on page 17 3 in Section 2.2.1, the last sentence, you say, "The use of 18 thoroughly supported tectonic models is a mechanism for 19 bounding the tectonic events that are, quote: reasonably 20 likely to occur, quote, in the preclosure period."

21 Of cource, that's preclosure so it is a little 22 different. But, as I recall in the anticipated and 23 unanticipated events, one of the things you did was delete 24 the phrasing, " reasonably likely to occur." Or reword to 25 get around it. And as I read this, I realize that one is Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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k' 1 postclosure and the other is pre.

2 To me, who integrates all of these positions? )

O MR. JUSTUS: NRC Staff has the role of 4 integrating the technical positions, pointing out where 1

5 there are gaps in technical positions for making sure that )

, I l 6 the logic of them are known.

7 DR. MOELLER: Coincides. Okay. ]

8 MR. McCONNELL: One of the reasons we were 9 criticized or one of the things that brought criticisms was 10 the citing of the draft technical position on anticipated ,

11 and unanticipated processes and events. That citing of that 12 document, draft document, was an effort to show that we were 13 trying to be consistent in RTPs and subsequent rule makings.

(} 14 DR. MOELLER: To cross-reference them.

15 MR. McCONNELL: Right.

16 MR. JUSTUS: That one is a particular problem for 17 us because we are abandoning a technical position on AP and 18 UP and we're going right to a rule making and we are not 19 really at liberty to quote any particular rule making 20 document at this point in time.

21 And, yet, we are fully aware of the concepts.

22 And there is a relationship to tectonic model development 23 and use and the need to identify anticipated and 24 unanticipated processes and events.

25 So, that's an administrative bind. And we don't 3 Heritage Reporting Corporation

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D b 1~ ~ think of that as a technical problem right now. It's an 2 administrative problem and we'll try to figure out how'to 3 overcome it.

4 Basically, I think.our approach will.be to try to 5 Lmake the-technical position a stand-alone~ document when we  ;

6 can. .]

7 DR. HINZE: Well, thank you very much. This 8- generic discussion has been useful on'a generic issue.

9 DR. MOELLER: Let me ask one more. Like on page 10 2,,it says under 1.4: "The technical positions are issued n 11 .to describe and make'available to the public criteria,

12 methods," et cetera. Is that it? To make it available to 13 the public? I would assume to potential licensees or 14 applicants or someone like that.

(])

15 MR. JUSTUS: Well, certainly, the word "public" 16 -wasn't meant to exclude licensees and other interested 17 parties who are not public.

18 That point is certainly well taken and, again, I 19 would consider that a point of clarification that we can 20 readily make. We don't mean to preclude other interested 21 parties from the public.

22 DR. PARRY: I interpreted that, Dr. Moeller, as 23 being a point of keeping the public informed of intra or' 24 inter-agency agreements on positions as opposed to having 25 practiced individual letters.

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- 1 DR. PARRY: I also interpreted it to really keep 2 Nevada informed and the counties and so forth. I kind of 3 like the breadth that that gave to them.

4 MR. JUSTUS: In fact, even letters which I 5 mentioned are downgrades from technical positions, I didn't 6 mean downgrades with regard to their significance or 7 distribution. In fact, letters of any sort are a matter of 8 public record. And in that sense are available to the 9 public. And they may not make available as stated here, l 10 criteria and methods acceptable.

11 Technical positions were geared more towarde that 12 goal of including criteria and methods acceptable to the 13 Staff. But in practice, technical positions may be

(}

f 14 clarifications of Part 60 or clarification of points that 15 DOE has made that we feel need to be further developed.

16 And so, you are correct. This phraseology as you 17 see here may need to be amended to reflect the specific 18 technical position goals.

19 That is perhaps a boiler plate phrase that should {

20 be modified according to the particular TP.

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\.7 -1 MR. JUSTUS: . I would like to give Keith the 2- opportunity to answer your several questions as to why we 3 think-this position-is needed as a minimum.

4 DR. HINZE: Are there any more questions on the 5- generic aspects of this?

.6 (No response.)

7 DR.'HINZE: I-have real concern that we do not 8 beat on this too heavily, because it hasc already been beat t 9 on if you will. And it is not the prudent thing to do to 10 ask Keith to do anything but to say how he is responding and ,

11- how the NRC staff is responding to these.

12 And Keith, were going to get to you about 2:00 13 today, and that.seems to have slipped as they sometimes do.

(} 14- As I understand it, you are going to be here tomorrow 15 morning and will be addressing the whole committee on some 16 of the concepts that are being changed and so forth. And.I 17 think that we are going to leave the details of that to that 18 time.

19 1 would like to ask you as Phil has suggested to 20 react to why this stateraent is needed and perhaps is needed 21 as a TP. I have a list of alternatives here, and one of 22 them is of course it can be moved to something other than a 23 TP. And so I would like to have you respond to that, and we 24 might also bring that up tomorrow.

25 And it might also be helpful to us as we think Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888

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t A- 1 about this over the evening if you could generalize the 2 categories in which you see the modifications or the 3 revisions of the TP taking.

4 DR. POMEROY: I just wanted to add, if you can 5 think about my question in t'rms e of given the statement of 6 the TP on page 6 here and what you said in the SCA, how you 7 see the differences and' contrast the differences and 8 similarities.

9 MR. MCCONNELL: Let me start by giving you a 10 little background of how this was developed. It grew out of 11 our review of the consultative draft SEP in which there was 12 an objection that listed problems in DOE's approach to using 13 alternative conceptual models generically. And at that time (J'T 14 we also had some concerns with respect to tectonic models 15 and how they were being implemented.

16 And these were discussed to a certain degree at i

17 the ACM meeting, the alternative conceptual models meeting, 18 back in April of 1988. So because we had some concerns with 19 tha approach, we started a development of what at the time 20 was a review guide or a review plan which subsequently 21 turned into a technical position.

22 This occurred at the interim between the 23 consultative draft SEP and the SEP review. And so when we 24 got the 36P and went through it and started reviewing it, we 25 felt that the response to the objection on the consultative Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

126 L1 draft SEP was not complete enough'in our view to address our 2 concern with respect to using tectonic models.

3 So therefore we made an evaluation.at that time 4

that the need for the technical position was still there.

5- Because there.seemed to be this divergence in approach to

.6 . using tectonic models from the DOE perspective and.from the 7 NRC staff perspective.

8 There is=no doubt that the technical position i

9 leans very. heavily on the comments that we made in the SEP 10 or on the SEP and the SCA. And there is a reflection of.the s 11 SCA in the technical position.

12 The difference I think is we felt that what was

' 13 ' not clear to the DOE was our outlook at how tectonic models 14 related to Part 60. And specifically the requirements in.

-( }

15 Part 60 such as those that relate to the support of 16 predictive models.

17 And so what we tried to do in the technical 18 position was to outline the regulatory requirements that 19 relate to tectonic models, and then give some examples to 20 .show how those requirements could be implemented. Whereas ]

l 21 in the SCA that we were just picking out specific areas 1 22 where we felt that tectonic models had not been implemented 23 correctly.

24 So one deals with the regulatory-requirements in l 25 the generic sense hopefully, although the SCA provided Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888 1 i L l W_-_______-__-___________ - - - _ _ J

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1- support'for the position itself, whereas the SCA tried to

2. deal more with specific examples.

3 To get to the question of the need for the~TP at.

L 4- .this' stage,-I think that it basically relates to again the L 5 breadth of the position that-the ACNW has and so does DOE.

6 I.think that they were all probably unsatisfied with the 7 extent of the TP.

'8 But again and something that Phil did not mention 9' today but he has mentioned before is that the technical 10 position is basically the first step in developing a review -

11 ' guide ~that the NRC staff will then use when we get the 12 license application to review the implementation-of-tectonic 13 models overall. So we see it as just a first step that' i 14 tries to-outline the regulatory requirements and how the NRC

~()

15 staff would see those requirements being implemented.

16 When we start reading the DOE's comments, written 17 comments and also their oral comments that we got in the 18 meeting a couple of weeks ago, we still see what appears to 19 be a divergence in the approach to the use of tectonic 20 models specifically relating to performance allocation and 21 also considering them predictive models that can be used to 22 help drive your testing program, and also'how they can be-23 used in preliminary performance assessment.

24 Now these are points that we perhaps were not as 25 explicit as we could have been in this draft of the l

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128 1 technical position. And I-think that our approach.will be.

2 when'we'rev.iae it is to try to be much more explicit in 3 pointing out'where the DOE and we diverge in our approach 4 and how it can be resolved.

5 ,IMR. POMEROY : I think that would be pretty 6 helpful to have in there.

L 7 MR. MCCONNELL: Is that clear en I guess the >

I- 8 relationship to the SCA and also the need?

9 DR. HINZE: I would like to go back to what you 10 said'about the breadth of the position. s 11 Could you elaborate on that a bit, what are you 12 getting at there?

13 MR. MCCONNELL: Well, the state criticized us for

() 14 not outlining specifics on where models would come into the.

15 process and such like that.

16 DR. HINZE: At Yucca Mountain?

17 MR. MCCONNELL: At Yucca Mountain. I think that 18 the basic framework for developing that technical position 19 is that it be generic. And we tried to make it generic 20 although we probably were not completely successful, because 21 we did rely on examples from Yucca Mountain, and also our 22 experience in the reviews of the CDSEP and the SEP. So in 23 that sense it is not completely generic. We had to rely'on 24 our experience.

25 DR. MOELLER: I think that your comment about how Heritage Reporting Corporation

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k- 1 this technical position as well as any of them will serve as 2 a basis for the development of your review process is a very 3 good argument, plus I am sure that it is a very helpful 4 mental exercise for you as a staff to go through and do 5 something like this. If you never did it, I could see chaos 6 when you actually get down to doing your review.

i 7 You know, I am sure that it helps you through the 8 entire process that is ahead of you. And in so doing if it 9 is properly done, then it helps the potential licensee to 10 know what to expect.

11 MR. JUSTUS: Additionally and hopefully these 12 positions capture points of controversy or points of 13 disagreement, and brings them to a closure or at least

() 14 facilitates their closure. So that they become milestones, 15 or a base line, or are documented so that we can build upon 16 them and not have to revisit old points of controversy time 17 and again because of failure to come to closure or to 18 document closure or approaches to be taken.

l 19 DR. HINZE: There is a real problem there if I 20 understand it correctly in terms of a deterministic whatever l

21 that is and the probabilistic. And I think that one of the 22 criticisms that DOE has voiced is that you really leave 23- minimal room or no room for the probabilistic approach ih 24 the alternative tectonic model.

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../'s I s) 1 :with that problem, and are you'doing so in the revised 2 technical position?

3 MR. JUSTUS: DOE is off-based on their criticism I 4' of.the use of probabilities and determinism, deterministic 5 approaches.

6 MR. MCCONNELL: We are going to address that. I 7 think that they read more-into the position. As Jerry King 8 pointed out, he was reading between the lines of the j 9 position and also the title of the position, to suggest that 10 we were implying that they use tectonic-models and a 11' deterministic approach as the sole basis for calculating 12- performance. And that is what we were trying to get across.

13 DR. HINZE: That was not your intent.

() 14 MR. MCCONNELL: And it also gets back to the 15 anticipated process of events rule making and what we see as 16 a two step-process in defining anticipated events. One is 17 to actually identify them using primarily deterministic 18 methods, and then taking it a step further in looking at the 19 likelihood of those anticipated processes in calculating 20 design bases.

21 So we see it as two steps. In the second step, 22 we have no problem using a probabilistic-approach, a i 23 combination of methods of whatever. But what we are 24 suggesting is that in that initial step that you use  !

25 primarily a deterministic approach in identifying the Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888 l

131 E 1 anticipated.

2 DR. HINZE: Well, I do'not know that I have got 3 the words down exactly right. . When you read this, 4 deterministic comes through and the probabilictic does not 5 come through. And I assume that'that is something that-is 6- going-to-be rectified in this. If you can briefly give us 7 the approach that you are going to use.

8 I know that you are going to in detail tomorrow, 9' 'but what is the approach you.are going to use in terms'of 10 revising this, is the whole thing going to be rewrittenLor- en 11' are you going to go through and be more specific about some 12^ 'of the definitions, is this an editorial or a substantive 13 revision?

14 MR. MCCONNELL: I think this is going to be r

-( }

15 substantive based on the ACNW comments, the DOE comments, 16 and the state's comments, and the other parties. It is 17 fairly obvious that we were not explicit enough in defining 18 some'of the terms, and also how we felt that the regulations 19 should be implemented, and what the extent of the l 20 implementation that we were requesting was.

21 I think that the DOE went way overboard in.

22 assuming the intent or our intent in-the use of tectonic 23- models in the final performance assessments.

24 DR. HINZE: And I presume that the ACNW will have 25 a chance.to react in a formal way to this revised document.

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132-1p d l' MR. JUSTUS: So do we. We would expect that your

-i 2 comments, Land criticisms, and recommendations will be 3 forthcoming in time for us to proceed along our current 4 schedule.for. issuing a final position if we continue with 5 the position. mode by December 31st.

6 DR. PARRY: I do not think; that that was 7 Dr. Hinze's question. I thought that the question was 8 whether or not the' committee would have an opportunity toi 9 address'a revised or modified technical position.

10 MR. JUSTUS: Oh, I see. In consultation with our 4 11 directorate, the answer to that question is no. We expect 12 that this technical position will be developed similarly to 13 previous technical positions. Insofar as ACNW comments are

() 14 -concerned and given to the staff, they will be considered by 15 the staff and factored in simultaneously with other 16 commenters' concerns. And then the position will be 17 finalized.

18 DR. PARRY: How can you then say that these 19 technical positions receive the same amount of attention 20 'when you'do not permit your advisory committee or other 21 people to address the final version before it is published?

22 DR. MOELLER: Well, in this case too I would want 23 to comment. If you had come to us and you had a draft 24 technical position that we were 90 percent happy with and 25 there were just a few things to clean up, we would say fine, Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

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\/ 1 go ahead with it, and probably give you a letter and say we 2 have no objection, or we concur, or whatever we need to do.

3 But where you have just told us five minutes ago 4 that the revisions will be substantial and that you may 5 totally rewrite from page one the entire document. And I 6 - can see you rewriting it and I can see you having the staff 7 consider everybody's comments as you rewrite.

8 But I think that you are assuming a lot that this 9 next rewrite will just simply solve all of the problems. I 10 would not have that much confidence. I do not mean that 11 much in you, but I would not have that much confidence in 12 myself.

13 DR. PARRY: Is there a schedule that you are

(~') 14 required to meet?

v 15 MR. JUSTUS: There is a schedule that we are 16 working towards. The matter of production which you are 17 referring to now is best asked of the directorate, the 18 project management group.

19 DR. MOELLER: Now what do you need from us at 20 this meeting in the way of written?

21 MR. JUSTUS: What we need and actually what we 22 expected from this meeting was your questions and feedback 23 based on your preliminary review or your review of this 24 draft. Presumably and hopefully we had expected to address 25 all of your concerns this afternoon, so that the meeting

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A> 1 tomorrow would be basically a reiteration by Dr. Hinze and 2 yourself of progress made at the working group.

3 And if there were residual concerns or questions 4 and we would need to do some homework tonight in preparation 5 for follow-up tomorrow, we would do so and address some 6 specific points tomorrow.

7 We had already indicated prior to this work 3 8 secsion that we were not expected to make a presentation 9 tomorrow. And in reviewing our production of this technical 10 position with the directorate, it was decided that we would 11 proceed with the development of the technical position as I 12 described. That we need your input to this draft, and we 13 will factor it into the revision. And we expect the next

() 14 draft however to be the final draft.

15 DR. PARRY: It is conceivable of course that the 16 committee may choose to request that the final draft be 17 presented to them for further review.

18 DR. POMEROY: It is also conceivable that you 19 might listen to arguments that this might be better as a i 20 guidance letter.

21 MR. JUSTUS: Of course. We are at the stage in 22 the development of the position where we do feel the need to 23 give guidance in these areas that are enumerated. And we 24 have not heard yet any reason for us to do otherwise. At 25 this point now, we are looking for a critique to enable our g- Heritage Reporting Corporation f (,) (202) 628-4888 i

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[is 1 guidance to be received clearly and in a framework that is 2 also logically clear.

3 And the criticism that we are receiving we think 4 will enable us to turn around a better product that will 5 meet those enhancements. And we would expect your criticism 6 to similarly be constructive to enable us to do a better 7 job.

8 MR. MCCONNELL: One of the things that we 9 considered for a revision is an explicit statement of why 10 the NRC staff thinks this position is needed, much more j 11 explicit than we have developed in the current edition.

12 DR. HINZE: You did that in the presentation to 13 us, but it can be expanded on even more from there.

() 14 MR. MCCONNELL: Yes.

15 DR. POMEROY: And again that would be very 16 helpful I think.

17 MR. JUSTUS: We have the wherewithal now to be 18 more explicit, because we have gotten specific comments 19 back. We now are better aware of where confusion is or 20 where non-clarities are in the use of tectonic models, and 21 in our response we can address those specific points.

22 DR. HINZE: Dade, I think that we should go back t

23 to our independent corners and leave some room for some 24 conversations this evening. And I would thank Phil and 25 Keith for coming in and helping us with this, w, Heritage Reporting Corporation

_) (202) 628-4888 l

l

136 )

(~).

k/ 1 DR. MOELLER: Right. I would agree that is what 2 we need to do. Tomorrow we have heard Phil say that there l

3 will not be a formal presentation. But what we can do is 4 get the entire committee and consultants involved in a round 5 table discussion, and then call upon Keith for clarification  !

l 6 or amplification and so forth. j l

7 DR. HINZE: I just think that it is very 8 important that we hear how they are going to respond to the 9 comments that have already been made. We made comments.

10 They have not been in a written form, but we have had 1 11' comments. And we also have the comments of the other two 12 groups.

13 DR. MOELLER: Will you prepare a document on this 14 similar to what is done in an environmental assessment where f')T u

15 you will take Nevada's letter and enumerate the six 16 challenges that they make and then tell how you handle each 17 one?

18 MR. JUSTUS: We call those comment response 19 packages. While such is not required for technical 20 positions, we expect to do it for this one.

21 DR. MOELLER: And that is quite an undertaking.

22 MR. JUSTUS: It need not be done prior however to 23 the promulgation of the final draft.

24 DR. PARRY: A final draft or a final?

25 MR. JUSTUS: Final draft at this point, and let Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

]

]

. 137

.\ 1 :me explain that a little bit. There are ties that the 2 -tectonic model's position has to ongoing guidance such as 3 the AP rule making.. The conformance of 41-91 as it may 4 subsequently be issued with our own rule making. And if

'5 there are changes to-these related documents that are under 6 development that may affect our technical position,.we would

7. have to obviously revise our technical position, if indeed 8 it were a technical position that we would be into.

9 I'auspect then that we would be issuing a final 10 draft technical position, if we wind up incorporating work .

11 that is'not complete.

12 DR. PARRY: Going back'a bit to the question on 13 the revision ~to Part 60, might it not be better to get the j{]) 14 APs and UPs rule making out of the way and then build on 15 -that for things such as the tectonic model,. seismic hazards, 16 probabilistic seismic hazards, and other possibly related 17 topics?

18 MR. JUSTUS: While that is a possibility, we are 19 viewing the AP/UP rule making as an umbrella.for developing 20 other tectonic positions. The AP/UP rule making is fairly 21 specific in looking to show how processes and events can be 22 categorized into anticipated and unanticipated processes and 23 events.

24 Other technical positions may address methods.

25 They may address points of clarification of Part 60 as this Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888 L_____ _____ _ _ . _ _

138 p..

I s 1 one does or other specific matters not dependent upon the 2 AP/UP rule making.

3 In addition the AP/UP rule making as any rule 4 making an extended process. And we are talking about.a year 5 or so to completion when it is on an accelerated rule making 6 scheme. And we find that-we have guidance to give that we 7 feel that we can give without waiting for certain other 8 actions to be taken. And we do not want to delay in 9 interacting with DOE on these various matters of controversy 10 or importance, especially as we have already identified them 11 'as'being of such importance.

12 DR. MOELLER: If that wraps it up then. Let me 13 thank the NRC staff people for spending quite a lengthy f} 14 15 afternoon with us.

very beneficial.

But I know that for us that it has been And this is the type of dialogue that 16 really helps us understand the situation and get a better 17 idea of where you are coming from and how you' view it. And 18 sharing that knowledge helps us do our job better, and in 19 fact do it in a manner in which it is more constructive.

.20 So with that then, I will declare this working 21 group meeting adjourned.

22 (Whereupon, at 5:20 p.m., the hearing was 23 adjourned.)

24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation O (202) 628-4888

L/

' L); '

l- 1 CERTIFICATE 2

3: This :is to certify that the attached. proceedings before the 4 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter

~.5 of:

6 , Name: ACNW Working Group Meeting I

7 8 Docket Number:

9 P1 ace: hthes&, Maryland 10 Date: Octcber 10, 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 me and,

,0 14 thereafter reduced to evee riti=9 ar e or ==d r en-15 direction of the court reporting company, and that the 16 transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing 17 proceedings.

18 /8/

19 (Signature typed) : Joan Rose 20 Official Reporter 21 Heritage Reporting Corporation 22 23 24 25 O Corporation Heritage Reporting (202) 62s-4888 t

. _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ - ~ _ _ _

I' 1

PARRY:0PENING OPENING STATEMENT SECOND ACNW WORKING GROUP MEETING OCTOBER 10, 1989 Good morning. I am Dr. William Hinze, Member of the ACNW and Chairper-son'of this Working Group session. A word of explanation is due to describe the function and purpose of working group meetings in support of the ACNW's general activities. This is the second of these meetings that have been held. 'To allow the maximal use of our time, we have chosen to have these information gathering sessions with our consultants, staff and'the NRC staff and or others. These sessions-may include only one, or as in today's meeting, two members. The purpose'is to allow the detailed examination and discussion of narrow range, or even a single topic.

Joining me today is Dr. Moeller, Chairman of the ACNW and as consultants Dr. P. Pomeroy and Dr. B. Marsh. Our principal topic is the NRC staff's draft technical position on tectonic models. I also expect that we will include in our discussions consideration of other technical positions and rulemakings that the staff has under development and the question of the usefulness of technical positions in general. Dr. Marsh has gra-l ciously offered to provide assistance on occasion on the question of volcanism at the Yucca Mountain Site. Consequently, I expect that we may touch on that topic also.

O

n.

v OPENDiGSTATEMENT 2 c OI Our' goal is to reconsider the staff's presentation of September 14th, ]

\

.I

the DOE /NRC staff interchange of September 26th and formulate a position and/or recommendation for the Full Committee to consider tomorrow morning.

The designated Federal employee is Dr. Sidney J. S'.' Parry, to my right.

A transcript is being taken. While no applications for making presen-tations have been received from the public, constructive pertinent statements are welcome, upon recognition and permission by.the_ Chairman.

Since this room is not equipped with a loudspeaker system, speakers in the audience are requested to stand when they speak and to clearly identify themselves and their affiliation prior to speaking.  !

O Are there any comments, Dr. Moeller, Dr. Pomeroy, Dr. Marsh, Dr. Parry?

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