ML22230A067
| ML22230A067 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 01/11/1978 |
| From: | NRC/OCM |
| To: | |
| References | |
| Tran-M780111 | |
| Download: ML22230A067 (104) | |
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NUCLEAR R l3LATORv' C:c:i"MM1ss1 cfN ORDS IN THE MATTER OF:
PUBLIC SESSION on GENERAL BRIEFING ON INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS AND DISCUSSION OF SECY 77-616 -
EXPORT/
IMPORT REGULATIONS PART 110 Place -
Washington, D. C.
Date -
Wednesday, 11 January 1978 ACE - FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
Official Reporter:J 444 North Capitol Street Washington, D.C. 20001 NATIONWIDE COVERAGE* DAILY Pages 1 -
101 Telephone:
(202 ) 347-3700
DISCLAIMER This is an unofficial transcript of a meeting of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission held on January 11, 1978 in the
- Commission's offices at 1717 H Street, iL t~.,--washington, D. C.
The meeting was open to public attendance and observation.
This transcript has not been reviewed, corrected. or edited, and it may contain inaccuracies.
l The transcript is intended solely for general informational purposes.
- .As provided by 10 CFR 9.103, it is not part of the formal or informal record of decision of the matters discussed.
Expressions of opinion in this transcript do not necessarily reflect final determi nati ans or beliefs.
No pleading or other paper may be filed with the Com1n'ission iri any proceeding as the result of or addressed to any statement or argument contained herein, except as the Commission may authorize.
CR 6018 WHITLOCK All 2
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25 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION PUBLIC SESSION on GENERAL BRIEFING ON INTERNATIONAL PROGRAJ\\'l:S AND DISCUSSION OF SECY 77-616 -
EXPORT/
IMPORT REGULATIONS PART 110 Wednesday, 11 January 1978 Room 1130 1717 H. Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
The meeting was convened at 9:42 a.m., Joseph Hendrie, Chairman, presiding, BEFORE:
CHAIRMAN JOSEPH HENDRIE COMMISSIONER RICHARDT. KENNEDY COMMISSIONER 'VICTOR GILINSKY COMMISSIONER PETER BRADFORD NRC STAFF SPEAKERS:
Carlton Stoiber Mr. Pedersen James Devine James Shera Michael Guhin Joe LaFleur Howard Shapar Tom Dorian Marvin Peterson Clifford Smith Mr. fl.age
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P R O C E E D I N G S (9:42 a.m.)
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
If we could come to order.
I am glad so many or you were able to turn out for what is an uncommonly cold morning for what seems to me seems to be something less than a raging hot sunject, but maybe I misread it.
The Commission will have this morninq a general briefing on International Programs and some background dis-c.ussion on the proposed Export-Import Regulations, Part 110.
The Commission has received the Staff papers on the latter matter relatively recently consideriftg the volume of the materials presented, and I do not *expect the discussion this morning, then, to run beyond background discussion and placing the thing in context.
Of course, if my colleagues have been up all niaht studying these papers and are prepared to go forward, why I guess I could abstain and give way to-their judgment.
But my guess is that we will prefer to look at these thinas in some more detail than the time has allowed.
Now, the first part of the discussion, the gen-eral brief~ng on International Programs, is one of a series of general orientation briefings by the Staff, trying to take a major area of Commission business and to put the various pieces. that lie in -that area into appropriate relations one
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with another.
And that is my principal interest this morninq.
Lee?
MR. GOSSICK:
All right,','Mr. Chairman.
The briefing has been broken down into two parts, as you have indicated.
Mr. Shea will cover the first part, the overall International Programs activities.
And then Mr. Shapar will handle the Export-Import Regulations Part 110.
Jim?
MR. SHEA:
Well, I believe you were all pDovided with a copy of the outline of our briefing, which shows the various elements that we will consider today.
And basically we will be proceeding through that handout step-by-step to cover NRC's International Programs across the board.
We are not just addressing the work done specific-ally and directly by the Office of International Programs in this briefing, but covering work done throughout the Com""'"
mission, to give you an overall view on what is going on internationally within NRC.
This is all coordinated within IP, but a lot of the work is done directly elsewhere.
In general, this is a pretty active and expanding area for the Commission and there is quite a bit to cover.
I hope to get through the overview briefing on international
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activities of the Commission in approximately an hour_--* perhaps a bit more and leave the second half of the time for the discussion of the Export-Import Regulations.
So if I *could walk through the handout, the first page of that simply lists the contents of the briefing which is broken down according to four broad areas, the underlined areas there; export-import licensing, international safeguards and physical security policy, nonproliferation policy and health and safety policy and cooperation.
Page two of the handout is the overall outline of our briefing today, and we have a vugraph which will be left up through the presentation showing that, so that you can see where we are as we walk through each of these in detail.
I plan to cover, after discussing the agencywide objectives in the international area, each of these four broad areas very generally and then come back to each of them and cover them in detai 1, and then the last hour on the Export rule.
Page three of the handout, then, lists, the overall agency objectives which we have in the international area with the second and third of the items listed --
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Hold on a second.
MR. SHEA:
Excuse me.
(Pause.)
MR.... SHEA*:
So that is the overall briefing outline._
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which we will leave up.as a vugraph.
(Slide.)
Page three lists the overall agency objectives that we see in the international area with the second and third items, international safeguards and physical security and nonproliferation policy combined on page three, since they closely interrelate.
And those are the reasons we see for doing what we do, trying to insure both careful and timely review of our export and import applications consisent with. 0 nation s~curity and nonproliferation policy and our statutory re-sponsibili ty, while at the 'same time trying.to clarify and stablize procedures and criteria for export-import licensing.
The international safeguards area, physical security and nonproliferation policy; we see this as part of the overall U.S. effort to strengthen international safeguards, physical security and nonproliferation measures while at the same time we have':to look at the licenses case-by-case to insure the exports will not be inimical to U.S. national security.
The final category, health and safety policy and cooperation; we see that as basically contributing in two broad areas:
Helping*to improve U.S. public health and safety through obtaining information on nuclear reactor experience fro other countries, often on facilities that are very s.1.milar to those in the U.S.
We can sometimes get advanced warning of
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problems which can help U.S. public health and safety.
The other side of the coin is that we assist other countries and become part of -- support the U.S. foreign policy objective by helping nuclear proarams in other coun~.
tries.
I might mention in covering these broad areas that there are a number 0£ offices 0£ NRC that participate in these international activities and IP works closely with offices such as NMSS in particular in all of these areas, especially export-import.licensing and international safeguards and physical*security areas, where the policy and technical as-pects are often closely intertwined and work closely to make sure that both of these are properly reflected for the Commission.
ELD is involved in many of these areas as well, from looking at these problems £rom the le~al side.
I and E comes in, particularly in export-import licensing and safe-guards and physical security aspects.
And then they look at the -- that proper attention is qiven to the protection of export shipments within the U.S. before they leave and in some other areas as well.
Standards helps develop standards, for example, the U.S. IAEA Safeguards Agreements.
Health and safety exchanges find NRR, research, particularly closely involved.
If I. could move to page four of the handout and
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start to go through each of these four areas a bit more de-tailed, still giving you a quick once-over.
We have two basic areas:
licensing procedures and licensing criteria that we deal with.
The new Export-Import Regulations, Part 110 are to be considered in the second hour.
It is a major activity that we now have ongoing.
The rule for this was published for public comment June 30th and we are now ready to receive Commission comments on the redraft of the rule which was for-warded to you approximately a month ago, with the aim of publishing a a final effective rule as soon as possible.
We in the procedures area have made some strides in the past year and have tried to improve 9ur procedures and criteria by obtaining generic approval from the Executive Branch with regard to certain of the minor export cases.
As you know, we sent over to the State Department for Executive Branch review the major and minor applications and send the majors up to the Co:rrrrhission, basically, -and if there are policy implications, some of the minors as well.
But to try to improve the process and reduce the paperwork, we went to the Executive Branchand received their concurrence in certain categories in the licenses being re-viewed only by NRC~
'If they involve certain amounts of source material and larger amounts of plutonium and what-not, why they would still go. to the Executive Branch for review, but
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others would be done just by the Staff.
This is just being implemented, just was begun in November.
So we are really just starting to implementthat.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Could you remind the rule that distinguishes major from minor?
MR. SHEA:
Could you detail that, Mike?
us of MR. GUBIN:
Major from minor cases; the standard rule to date has been that any -- a case which involves one effective kilogram or more of special nuclear material, or 10,000 kilograms of source material for any facility, whether it is a research reactor or power reactor, or any case which has policy implications, would be considered a major case and forwarded for Commission review.
As we get into later, there is a slight suggested modification to this in the proposed rule.
And the generic approval cif the Executive Branch is really focused on the lower levels, lower limits, even in the minor case category.
MR. SHEA:
It looks like about perhaps 30 percent of the minor cases which we used to forward to the State Department will be saved as a result of this change.
It is not by any means 100 percent, a really high percentage.
Then moving on, page four, to the licensing cri-teria efforts, we have four basic activities there.
One is to implement ~~nproliferation legislation upon its passage.
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The Commission then would have to approve a pro-posed rule to incorporate the export criteria whi6h are manf-*
ated by the legislation into the rule, Part 110, and also have to incorporate expanded NRC export responsibilities into that.
Second there is revising the regulations forcer-tain minor exports which would re~uire Commission approval of a proposed rule for public comment.
We hope to have that up to you next month.
We are reassessing certain license exemptions for source material exports which we hope to have the Commission review in February.
And the Defense Department has come to us and asked about exempting certain of their exports of source material used in munitions.
And we are working with them to come up with a proposed rule; it looks like later this month that should be before you.
So that is an overview of the export area.
If I could move on to page five --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let's see~ why would we l:5e licensing Defense Department exports, anyway?
MR. GURIN:
I am glad you asked that.
(Laughter.)
MR. GURIN:
We asked ourselves that question, I think, some time ago, too, in the initial request from De-fense when they had. to send some munitions even to U.S. bases
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25 10 overseas, the antetank munitions with depleted uranium pri-marily.
The question is it is a question of under the law, that under the law there is no exemption at this stage for source materials for special nuclear materials.
So what they are doing is seeking a specific exemption for source mat-erial contained in munitions, either for their own forces overseas, which in the first instance a year ago we said was not an export anyway, because it was always under U.S. control COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
But if we are -- and a nuclear weapon would presumably be exempt.
MR. GURIN:
If it were -- no; technically, it is still source material.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Oh, you mean just the source material.
MR. GURIN:
Right.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Not the --
MR. GURIN:
Special nuclear is exempt and they can send that.
But they cannot -- they can send a nuclear weapon but they cannot send a 155 shell with depleted uranium in it.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
How extraordinary.
MR. GURIN:
It is.
And they MR. GOSSICK: But that is not a nuclear weapon.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
You get a feeling of --
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No; it is not a nuclear weapon.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
of the barn being locked after -- never mind.
(Laughter.)
MR. GURIN:
So this is one of the things that --
11 it has never arisen, in fact, until the development of the use of depleted uranium in shells CO:MMISSI ONER GI LINSKY:
Is this taken into account in all of these studies of reinforcing NATO and all that?
(Laughter.)
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
How often do we get a license request of that sort?
I don't remember having seen one.
MR. GUBIN:
We have only had one* which was about a year ago.
And it wasn't a l~cense request; it was a letter requesting an exemption from. an export license.
And in that instance what they were doing was sending it to a U.S. base overseas where it would remain under control.
So the answer to that which was staff around all the offices, was that does not constitute an export because it never leaves our control.
At the same time, of course, there is discussion with allies and others as to how they would ever get this stuff out of the country; cooperation with our allies.
Arid at that stage, they came in and requested and we have been working with them since on defining a basic exemption which
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25 12 would allow this.
So there has been no license request*.as such; only a request for one specific license exemption and now for a broad exemption.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
So that one could conclude from that that in the last two yea:rr.s, there haven't been any exports of this sort.
MR. GUBIN:
No; there have not, not to our knowledge, at. all.
MR. GOSSICK:
Isn't there a general exemption of some sort for depleted uranium in aircraft uses, aeleron balances and that sort of thing, that we also export in our sales of aircraft.
MR. GUBIN:
That's true.
There is a general licens which allows the export of depleted uranium.
MR. GOSSICK:
Counter weights.
MR. GURIN:
Counter weights, shielding and this kind of thing.
MR. SHEA:
The next area appearing on page five CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
- Just before you go ahead; is it clear that the Commission's basic statutory authority would allow it to cover the matter of these munitions, course mat-erial for these munitions, with an exemption by rule?
Or do we have to go back -- should we go back and think about legislation?
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25 13 MR. SHAPAR:
Up until now there hasn't been a real question on it, about our authority.
MR. STOIBER:
I think my preliminary review would indicate that we can do it by rule, since the statute fairly broadly allows us -- categories.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY: *-I can't hear you.
MR. STOIBER:, The statute gives the Commission,*
very broad authority to regulate classes of materials and quantities of materials that are not sigri+/-ficant for controlle purposes.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Okay.
MR. SHAPAR:
So I think we have authority to do what we want to do --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
All right; fine.
MR. SHAPAR: -- under statutory authority.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Please go ahead.
MR. SHEA:
On the international safeguards and physical security area, just quickly listing the activities there, the Staff is helping the Commission develop approaches on international safeguards aspects of nuclear exports.
This has been ongoing for awhile and we anticipate continuing throuq the spring.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What does that mean?
MR. SHEA:
Well, this is addressirig the question of the international Sctfeguards reviews by the Staff and the
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25 Commission on particular export cases --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
What does that mean?
MR. SHEA:
-- reviewing the COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
That's what I said.
MR. SHEA:
Well, that in general is what it is.
It involves in particular --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I know, but --
MR. SHEA:
-- taking into account the COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
in general, what is wnat?
I don't know what you said~
MR. SHEA:
Well, the international safeguards area involves materials accountinq and control safequards, in particular, as distinct from physical security matters.
That term has a different meaning internationally and dom-estically.
14 In international safeguards reviews, why one takes a look at the international safeguards whether they are pre-sent and in effect within the~- and that is a question that we posed to the Executive Branch and they come back and indicate to us that the safeguards are in place; the Staff then reviews these.
And that is one of the elements that is considered in an export.
Physicial security is also considered separately.
And that is an area. that we have under review at this time.
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25 15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
It is still not clear to me what it is that you are doing.
A:r'e you coming up with criteria for Commission action?
Or are you defining more care fully our responsibility in this area, or what?
MR. SHEA:
Well, it is at a formative stage.
It really involves, I think, some elements of both, taking a look at this across the board in the light of information that has been presented regarding safeguards aspects in general, and some of this involves these problems that might be in-volved with safeguards.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are you talking about clearing up the problem that has developed in NMSS, in that they have taken the view that they can't independently assess the safeguards at this point, or COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Is that the position they have taken?
MR. GOSSICK: With regard to material control and accounting, that generally is the issue -that is involved here.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
When you say generally is the issue, I guess we ought --
MR. GOSSICK:
That is the issue.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
As long as we have raised the issue, we ought to be sure we understand what the issue is clearly, so that everybody knows.
I am not sure that I do, in the way __ th~t it has been phrased so far.
/
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25 16 What is the issue, precisely?
MR. SHEA:
Well, the issue is essentially that th~
technical staff in reviewing exports from the standpoint of safeguards, presence of international safeguards, has found that they do hot.have the informa,tionnon which to make a detailed technical assessment of international safe-guards, as they do, for example, with physical security matters.
And that is --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
What is the nature of the --
MR. SHEA:
the nature of the problem.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
~-detailed information which they had to give them the basis for a detailed technical as-sessment of physical security?
MR.. SHEA:
In the case of physical security,- the Staff has information which is obtained from visits to the nuclear installations in other countries, review of their physical security programs in general. 'Both the NRC Staff and the Executive Branch visit these installations and know in detail what these facilities have in the way of physical security protection and the national programs for protection.
That is reviewed by the Executive Branch and --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Tn every case, or on a spot check sort of basis?
MR. GUHIN:
It is really -- every case in terms of a country, b.ut when coming to a particular country, then
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25 17 it is a review of the national program and then visits to --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY: So it is review of a national program?
MR. GUBIN:
Right, representative. facilities, that's right, to look at their basic measures, and then how they may be implemented and different kinds of facilities, but not every facility.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
So it may be a*l+/-ttle in-accurate to refer to the detailed information available in a specific case; wouldn't you say that was right?
MR. GUBIN:
Yes; you would be looking at their national program.
COMJIUSSIONER KENNEDY:
Thank you.
MR. GVHIN: That's across the board.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Thank you.
MR. SHEA:
There is a distinction between the physical security which has been traditionally viewed as a bilateral activity between the U.S. and*the other countries, and the international safeguards area where the IAEA has handled that matter for a variety of countries.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
And the IAEA is responsible for this?
MR. SHEA:
That's right.
They have been given that --
COMMISSIDNER KENNEDY:
The U.S. has accepted that
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25 18 responsibility?
MR. SHEA:
-- responsibility.
Yes.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY: _.::. on the part of the IAEA, and fostered it, as I understand it, is that correct?
MR. SHEA:
And pushed very actively for it; yes.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY~
Well, let me understand it.
Is this first bullet in effect dealing with the prol:i-lem we have just been talking about?
MR. SHEA:
Yes; that's right.
That is one of the activities of the Staff, to help develop that area.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
What is it that is being developed?
MR. SHEA:
Well, the Staff is working on how it takes into account the state of development of international safeguards and the problems that have beert indicated there in its review on exports.
And it is hoping to recommend to the Commission how it would handle its responsibility in this regard.
The Commission makes non-inimicality determinations on exports, taking into account all factors that are involved; the safeguards, physical security COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Taking into account all factors";* __
MR.".': SHEA*:
All factors.
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25 19 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
-- one of which is safe-guards?
MR. SHEA:
One of which is safeguards and includes a number of other factors as well.
And it is looking at that factor in particular, and how the Commission factors that as-pect into its overall nonimicality determination; that is the basic questilion here.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Now, that is different from the way I understood the formulation earlier.
I thought that i~ was trying to determine what it was the Staff should do in its own analysis.
Now you are saying it qoes beyond that, but rather to determine how the Commission should factor safeguards into its decision.
Those are two different things.
MR. SHEA:
That's right.
Both --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Which is which?
MR. SHEA:
Well, both would be done.
Both are being looked at, the*Staff's responsibilities and the Com-mission's as well.
They are interrlated.
Maybe Cliff Smith would like to elaborate.
MR. SMITH:
When you are talking about the office of NMSS and the export 1-icenses, let me just go back a bit.
Initially, on export licenses, when I first came, I noticed that our office simply: said that it concurred in the export of this license.
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25 20 And I raised the question as to -- with respect to international safeguards, material control and accounting; what did the term concur mean?
And the Staff's response was the term concurrence meant that that particular country was a signator to the IAEA.
And I said:
Well, what does that mean?
Does it mean do we know whether or not the country has actually implemented the international safeguards in this particular area?
No; it does not.
And that began to bother me.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Now, wait.
Am I not correct that the Executive Branch has informed us in these matters that the country has implemented?
MR. SMITH:
No; only that the country has agreed, but not that they have actually implemented.
And let me just go on --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Do you have a copy* 'Of one of these things handy so that we can get some indication of what fue Executive Branch actually says?
MR. SMITH:
At this point in time, the SSIR report came out COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I am not talking about the SSIR report, I am talking about --
MR. SMITH:
I know; I am just trying to --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY: -~~- what the Executive Branch tells us.
That is the only question I have at the moment.
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- .25 21 We can get to the other one later.
.. MR. SMITH:
The only thing I am trying to tell you is what has evolved and what NMSS was doing, what it is doing now~
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I had a specific q~estion.
I-~~st had a sp~cific quesfion~
I want to hear the rest of What did they tell us?
What do they tell us?
MR. GUHIN:
If I may generalize for a minute, they I
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tell us that -- whether or not a specific IAEA safeguards agree-ment is in ~ffect, and the fa~t of their being enforced is a matter of public knowledge. *one knows whether they are
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enforced or not enforced.
And so *the two things.tha t you do know is:
- one, that they are that the*agreement with the country is in
~ffect, and that the safeguards are enforced, or are in the process of being enforced or implemented.
You know that, for. -example, in Uradoin cases, in
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there, they give the detailed list of sort of the time schedules as to when IAEA is supposed to come in and supplement, and be applied in lar~e parts, a~ w~ll ~~ some of the Uradom safe-guard arra~gement*s and h*ave verification on that.
So those are basically the two things you do know:
is that the --
_COMMIS$IONER KENNEDY: *okay.
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25 22 So in fact we are aware that A, there is an agree-ment for this, and* B; that the agreement has been implemented.
MR. GUBIN:
Yes.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:*
Is that correct?
MR. GUBIN:: Those are the two things; yes.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Okay.
MR. SMITH:
I don't think we would agree that it has been implemented.
We have no information as to the degree of implementation or how:well it has been implemented.
At this time, the SSI came out, which itself raised questions about the adequacy of the implemention of IAEA safeguards in certain countries to whi~h we were exporting material.
And it seems to.*me that we ought to be clear that when NMSS concurred in an export license; what is it that they were concurring on?
Are we in effect saying to the Commission that it is our professional opinion that this material can be adequately safeguarded.
In the area of physical security we do make actual visitations to these countries and loo~, either on~ country-wide basis or on a spot~specific basis, and we get detailed information.
So we -- from the standpoint of physical security, the --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Could I ask
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25 23 MR. SJIUTH:
-- Staff feels now we are --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Could I ask the grounds on which we do that?
We do that on the grounds of bilateral arrangements; do we not?
MR. SMITH:
That's correct.
That's correct.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
The reason we don't do it in respect to safeguards is because there is an international agreement to which we have subscribed.
Is that correct?
MR. SMITH:
That's correct.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Okay.
MR. SMITH:
So the point is that the Staff has felt confident, based on the information that it has in saying that from a physical security st.andpoint, for HEU shipments, of course, that we feel comfortable, based on what we have, that the material could be adquately safeguarded.
The Staff is not presently in that posture with respect to material control and accounting.
And so right at the present time I am writing the Commission a memorandum in effect saying:
What is it that you would like from the Staff"';-
If by concurrence on an export license you mean that you would like our independent assessment that that material can be adequately safeguarded from a material control and accounting, we can't give that because we don't have the information upon which to base that.
Now, we ~lso are not privy, of course, to all of the
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25 24 other pieces that go into the Executive Branch's decision-making that such an action would not be inimical to the common defense and security of the United States.
I have said to the Staff that in my opinion, that is the Commission's judgment to make.
So at the present time that is why you have seen the statement that you have seen and shortly you will be re-ceiving a memorandum asking for your guidance as to what it is you would like the Staff to be looking at.
Physical security, we can say.
In the area of material controls and acco~~ting at the present time, we can-not.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Okay.
I think the Commission understands the point well enough.
I would like to go away from this rather detailed discussion of a specific point to allow the briefing to move forward across the broader area, and hopefully in the time remaining still provide the broader view of these matters that I would like us to have this morning.
MR. SHEA:
The second item on page five in the safeguards area;
- NRC '*s contributions to comprehensive U.S.
action plan for strengthening international safeguards.
That should be down to you shortly this monthly, our comments on that.
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25 25 The third area is implementation of the U.S./IAEA safeguards agreement for licensed facilities.
We are preparing regulations to be reviewed by the Commission and issued for public comment.
We are working closely with the State Depart-ment to insure that their efforts to present this to the Congress will be coordinated with the NRC efforts in _developing the regulations.
The last item is really a part of improving safe-guards in specific areas.
They are listed as IAEA information c~rcular on state systems of accounting and control, and working on a technical support program in safeguards and technical effectives criteria.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Jim, coming back for a min-ute there at US/IAEA safeguards, what specifically does that rule out -- require; just --
MR. SHEA:
Well, we do have a little more detail.
Basically, it includes asking the licensed facility to report on activities within the facility, preparing detailed reports on the nuclear materials which they have.
Some of the facilities will be selected by the IAEA for actual inspections by the IAEA inspectors.
We anti-cipate a limited number, maybe no mor~ than a dozen at any give time.
That is in general what it is; reporting requirements and acceptance of inspections.
Phy~~cal Eecurity, the other half of this, is on
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25
,26 page six, and we have four areas of activity there; assisting the international implications of the U.S. domestic upgrade and alternative courses of action.
That would follow Commissio action on the domestic upgrade issue.
You will be receiving briefings on this shortly from NMSS.
Contributing to the development of an international physical security convention.
That is a bit off in the future.
There is substantial international effort underway to do that.
Reviewing foreign countries'.Physical security prpgrams; we just touched on that.
And that is done in re-viewing particular exports as they come up.
And finally, looking at the physical security as-pects of international transports.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Could I go back to that previous point.
Are we -- do we participate in all the Executive Branch visits?
MR. SHEA:
We do now have an opportunity, and usuall do, I believe, participate in --
MR. PAGE:
Since early '76.
MR. SHEA:
Since early '76.
Page seven, we move to a new area; nonproliferation policy.
What we have there include the nonproliferation legislation, model agreement for cooperation being developed by the Executive Branch.
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25 28 fuel return policy with DOE doing a Draft Environmental Impact Study.
And finally, the ongoing contributions to the international fuel cycle evaluation and the nonproliferation alternative systems assessment program.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let me stop you again.
On this spent fuel policy, we were at one time going to have a seminar, an international seminar, on safety problems associated with spent fuel.
What ever happened to that?
MR. SHEA:
That is being planned for the end of February, February 28th to March 2nd.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I see.
MR. SHEA:
We have a note later as to the details on that.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
You will be talking about later in this?
MR. SHEA:
That's right.
That comes under health and safety, the way we have structured it, so that is mentioned just very briefly.
And finally, we do participate in an int~rag~ncy subgroup specifically devoted to questions of highly enriched uranium exports.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Are you going to say some-thing more specific about the nature of our contribution to the INFCE and NASAP programs?
1---
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25 27 We are trying to enhance our consultative arrange-ments with the Executive Branch on u:.s. nuclear export acti-vities.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:: What are these arrangements at the present time?
Are they informal?
Are they written down?
MR. SHEA:
Well, they are not specifically written.
I believe the legislation would pin them.down more specific-ally.
Is that right, Mike?
And there is an interagency coordinating group which serves as, I think, a very good review_group fir these various matters.
In a later slide, we have this detailed.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Do we s-i t on that?
MR. SHEA:
Pardon?
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY-:
Do we sit on that?
MR. SHEA:
Yes, we do.
We participate in that very actively.
When it comes to NRC exports_why, of course, we stand aside and reserve our right to make recommendations to the Commission and so on.
But we are able to -consult and coordinate on a variety of other areas as*well through that mechanism, such as retransfers and what ever.
And they are listed later; the.various areas, in a later slide, which we will go through a bit more in detail, if I can hold that until later.
The third area is the implementation of spent
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25 29 MR. SHEA:
Well, I hadn't planned to.
I could generally outline that NRC is participating along with a number of the Executive Branch agencies in many of the working groups of INFCE.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
What is the nature of that participation?
MR. SHEA:
Well --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Are they full members, or observers, contributors, or what are we?
We provide technical expertise or what?
MR. SHEA:
We provide our technical expertise.
We are contributors.
We are not heading up any of the working groups.
We are -- we plan to present NRC:'*s technical exper-ience and background for the benefit of the group.
We parti-cipate in meetings in the U.S. and abroad, but under the over-all aegis of the U.S. leaders.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Does the Staff write tech~
nical papers for these people, or MR. SHEA:
At this point is it in a very early stage.
We have not prepared any.
We might be called upon to do that, and certainly to review other papers that are prepared by others~
We might well be --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Who coordinates' the Staff effort in this area?
MR. SHEA:. Well, Lee is the coordinator for this
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25 30 effort.
MR. GOSSICK:
I have kept control of it so far, and I just sent you up another summary status report, I guess:;-
yesterday, that indicates the nature of these activities that are going on, and the roles being played by various Staff members.
We have got, you know, all of the Staff in one way or another, practically, are involved in this.
We have got NRR and NMSS, Standards, I and E -- I guess I and E to a small extent.
MR. SHEA:
Then the NASAP effort is related to that.
That is coordinated by a group within.NRC which is headed by NMSS.
Then there is -- the overall effor.t is really centered in DOE and NRC provides its contributions on that.
That will serve as technical input, U.S. ~- technical input to the INFCE effort.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Has the estimate been made of the volume or quantity or whatever, measurement, of the Staff resources being devoted to these projects?
MR. GOSSICK:
We figure;that right now we have got probably somewhere between 10, maybe as. high as 20 percent of about six people's time involved.
We are not sure just where that is going to go.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
So you are_saying really about one manyear?
MR. GOS SICK:
Well, it is at least. that-1*:now.
I
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25 31 think that from the looks of this thing it is going to grow.
COMMISSIONER GILINKSY:
That's not an awful lot.
MR. GOSSICK:
It is going to grow.
It is going to grow as we move further on this.- It is still sort of in the formative stages.
There have-been a lot of meetings, this sort of thing, getting this effort organized.
And I think we will see that the workload on us, the task that we will be aske to do, will grow to a considerable extent.
MR. SHEA:
Page eight details the next area; the health and safety policy and cooperation, the fourth broad area.
And there we have a number of things going on.
The first is a major Staff study to help the Commission develop its policy on health and safety aspects of reactor exports, and in general, safety assistance to countries initiating nuclear power programs.
These were initiated as two separate efforts.
We see them as closely related and combined -the,. two for purposes of analysis.
This is looking at various aspects which we will detail later, and should be completed within the next couple of weeks.
The next item, IAEA reactor safety standarqs program, is an ongoing activity, on which we don '*t have any immediate action.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
To go back to this for a
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25 33 components that are exported might be in some way reviewed or certified for their safety before they leave, looking at --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
As a matter of assistance to.other countries, not as a matter of requirement of the law affecting U.S. exports; is that correct?
MR. SHEA:
That is the context in which it has been reviewed.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
All right; *'fine.
I wanted to be sure of what the Staff is looking at.
MR. SHEA:
That's right, options for the Commission in this area.
The second area, reactor safety programs ongoing, activities to which NRC makes a substantial contribution, particularly in Bob Vanoke's (phonetic) group.
On the international rea*ch of NEPA, the Commission requested study which has been ongoing for some time, we hope to have at least a status report to you very soon and a tech'"""
nical analysis that continues to be ongoing.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Can I ask how this study relates to the activities which I understand are ongoing in the CEQ in the same area?
MR. SHEA:
Well, perhaps I might ask Carlton to address that.
He recently attended a meeting of CEQ and has been closely involved in those efforts.
MR. STOIBER:
You have a short memorandum from me
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25 second.
I may have missed something.
I am not exactly sure what is involved in safety policy for reactor exports as con-trasted with safety assistance.
What is a safety policy for reactor exports?
MR. SHEA:
The intent there was to look at the --
32 what the Commission might do or should do in connection with its responsibilities in licensing nuclear exports. It now looks at, for example, the national security aspects, certainly, on reactor exports; safeguards, physical security and other aspects, seeing that they are satisfactory.
At this point, the Commission in line with the Burger action decision, has not felt that it was required to take into account the impacts in foreign countries in the health and safety area of its reactor exports.
We are looking at that area.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
That was a statement of the.
interpretation of the law; rWas it MR. SHEA:
Interpretation of the law, as I under-stand it.
We are looking at whether there are some things that the Commission might do in the health and safety area to try to assist other countries with their nuclear power pro-grams, perhaps in an intensified way, because of this -- be-cause we are exporting these U.S. reactor to other countries.
We are al.so looking at elements, such as whether
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25 34 describing the conversations at CEQ last Friday at a major interagency meeting, to discuss the nature of regulations which CEQ inuends to promulgate concerning foreign impacts of environment statements.
COMM:ISSIONER KENNEDY:
Intends to promulgate or proposes to.
There is a slight difference in nuance.
MR. S~OIBER:
That's right.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I am not sure which it is.
That's why I am asking.
MR. STOIBER:
Well, I am not sure, either.
I think the CEQ intends to promulgate them.
I am not sure that some other agencies would agree with that.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
There is some MR. STOIBER:
There is a proposal --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
There is some difference of view as to the legalities of their promulgation; +/-s that correct?
MR. STOIBER:
Yes; there is.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Thank you.
MR. STOIBER:
And these views are now in prepara-tion by the various agencies who will submit them within the next 10 days to two weeks to CEQ.
And then presumably that question, if there is enough difference, will be elevated to the President or other policy makers in the Executive Branch.
MR. SHAPAR:
The legal question applies not only to
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25 the international CEQ proposals, but domestic as well.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
What is the -- could I ask:
What is the date of ERDA-1542.
MR. GURIN:
April 1976.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
So that is a recent --
MR. GURIN:
That's right.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Thank you.
MR. SHEA:
Next element, impacts of R&D export activities where a state is doing a generic analysis.
And NRC is staying close to that.
We will send it to the Com-mission about March.
COMMISSIONER GILINKSY:
State is doing a generic analysis of nuclear R&D exports, or all R&D exports?
MR. SHEA:
Just nuclear R&D.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What is an R&D export?
35 MR. GURIN:
Well, it could be anything from material going to a research reactor or any kind --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are you talking about research activities --
MR. GURIN:
Or development.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Research reactor, related activities.
MR. GURIN:
Yes, precisely, or to a developmental reactor, say, larger than normaT, *. which is still part of an experimental __ program.
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25 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: But these are all U.S.
exports, commercial exports.
activities?
MR. GURIN:
All U.S. nuclear exports, yes.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
That's what I meant.
MR. GURIN:
Yes.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Does it apply to training 36 MR. GURIN:
That, interestingly enough, there has only been one initial meeting on this interagency-wise.
That qu~stion was not brought up, I~think, in defining the basic scope.
But is surely not precluded at this stage.
I don't know.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Does thBt include exchange agreements of all kinds.
MR. GURIN:
In terms of Department of Energy, particularly, exchange agreements and particular reactors, I --
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
But it hangs, doesn't it, Mike, on exports?
MR. GURIN:
Exports.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
If you export something, a material, a component.
I don't know whether the exporting of professional expertise, after you have trained the guy, falls in that category or not.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
It has often in -the technology transfer issue.
That is the reason for my question.
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25 37 MR. GUBIN:
Technology transfer may well be looked at, exchange of technology.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Now, is this to fill the gap in ERDA-1542?
Is that the point of it?
MR. GUBIN:
Well, I am not sure one could give it that precise motivation, but I think it is clear that 1542 covered power activities and that it was so defined and so constricted.
And in the process of looking at the renego-tiation of, not so_ much existing agreements but rather new ag!eements for cooperation in the research area, it became clear to the department that this generic kiDd of statement was in order.
ment that.
So, indeed, it would in effect, at any rate, supple-COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: When was this initiated?
MR. GUBIN:
It was initiated about a month ago.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I see.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Onward.
MR. SHEA:
Onward?
The next one, the next three, really, are three items that have some relationship.
The Staff recently sent to the Commission a security plan for foreign assignees to the NRC Staff,people who come here for anywhere from perhaps four months to two years to learn the nuclear safety business.
And we have one element _of that which I will cover in detail later
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25 38 that we would like to bring back to the Commission and ask for new guidance on.
Transfer of nonmilitary classified information to foreign countries has become of increasing importance.
We have a Staff paper which proposes a way to do that, which will be -- it is just about ready for sigh-out.
in the next week or two.
It should be down The protection of foreign information qiven in confidence is a problem area for the Staff and the Commission.
We receive a good deal of this foreign information that is provided to us in confidence. And the question is how to protect it from disclosure.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I thought we had that situa-tion fairly well under control.
I thought that we had worked out understandings with MR. SHEA:
I might ask Joe LaFleur to describe the situation.
MR. LA FLEUR:
That's why we put it on here, because we did do a lot of work on this in the last couple of years.
We do have a good policy developed, but there are still some loose ends, and there is a possibility also that the Executive Order about classifications will change slightly, which --
MR. SHEA:
There is a statement in there that bears close looking at.
MR. LA FLEUR:
What we tried to do, when we made our
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25 39 decisions a year or so ago, we knew there were some loose ends, but we figured we had to get some statistical data, such as some experience with how many documents are involved and how serious *they are and that kind of stuff.
We now have accumulated some of that and we also have experience with a couple of FOIA cases.
So we will come back to the Commission now in a few months and say:
These are the changes that we think are needed.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
More perfecting than a develop..:.,
ment from scratch.
I think that is fair.
Oftentimes _your outlying bullets cite things that need to be done and you are just getting started.
If you are just getting started, if you have got some things that are well along and are essentially ac-complishments, why; good.
MR. SHEA:
If we could now turn to these four areas once again in a bit more detail, following this overview.
Export licensing is first.
If you look at page 10 there, you will see a chart that is a little bit busy, but shows the situation on the licenses over the past year.
As you know, they are sent from NRC to the Executive Branch for review.
And this shows the breakdown month-by-month through the year 6f those in the State Department, those at the Commission for review, and those within the NRC Staff.
Those in the NRC Staff include ones newly received
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25 40 from the applicant which we are processing, on the way out to State.
Sometimes we find further information is needed and we have to go back to the app1icant.
There is a lot of paper-work involved in logging it in and so on.
Maybe after about two weeks, typically, it goes out to the Executive Branch where it normally resides for some months.
We will get into licensing times a little bit in the next COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Could I ask: Over the three, ye~rs in which we have been engaged in this process now, has that length of time, that is, the length of ~ime that it has resided in the Executive Branch, increased notably?
MR. SHEA:
I beaieve it has.
I-haven't done a de-tailed analysis on this, but in looking at typical cases, why I believe*it h~s.
There are some that have been there, for example, for two and a half years.
Now, there are often are very spec-ial reasons why the State Department needs a lengthy review on those.
But this was a. per+/-chd* 'during which U.S. nuclear policy went through major reassessments, for example, highly enriched uranium exports were given much more close.scrutiny.
They are going to the President now, the larger quantities.
And so in general the times have increased.
COMMISSIO~ER KENNEDY:
Could you make an analysis
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25 41 for me of that?
No great rush, but I would like to see such an analysis:
What has the record been over that three.years, and then any kind of an assessment that you might make as to the reasons for changes that you* see, and also, any implica-tions that you see in that analysis for the Commission.
I had in mind, for example, the oft-repeated charge that the Commission sits on licenses.
And I have the impres-sion that that might not be quite accurate, at least not as accurate as some would believe.
And I would like to get some idea what that means.
If, indeed, the cure for this, as.some suggest, is a limitation on the Commission's period of time for action, they may be looking at the wrong problem.
And so I am just -- it would be helpful if you could do that.
MR. SHEA:
We muld certainty-undertake
- to do that.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Jim, the slide as presented is the number of licenses pending by month;-true?
MR. SHEA:
That's correct, for a total pendinq.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Okay.
MR. SHEA:
These are at the end of the month.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And I am pleased to note that the number hanging in the Commission offices is almost uni-formly smaller than the number hanging in other places.
So that is at least~a minor satisfaction.
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25 42 (Laughter.)
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
I note that the application received numbers --
COIYIMISSIOW:E!R KENNEDY: - It is the difference between quantity and quality there.
(Laugher.)
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Thank you.
Well, the numbers run up and down, but are in the range, probably mid-range, 20 to 30.
This is per month?
MR. SHEA:
Per month, the numbers that came in ih that particular month to NRC, new applications.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Now the general level of total things pending seems to hang around 160 to. 170.
The fact that it is pretty constant across the year, why, you have got 20 or 30 a month coming in one end, suggests to me that there must in fact be 20 or 30 a month going out the other end.
MR. SHEA:
Out the door.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And I ask for your affirmation.
MR. SHEA:
That's correct.
-That is basically it.
And you are right; the numbers do tend to stay; they sometimes increase, but they are pretty constant.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Well --
MR. SHEA:
Yes.
We do issue CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
It is not an'* inconsequential
\\
rate of processing, even with all of the difficulties in the
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25 43 system.
MR. SHEA:
I would note in the context of your suggestion that the number in the Staff aren't too high.
I should call your attention to the increase from October to December.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Well, it is only 100 percent.
MR. SHEA:
It is only 100 percent.
This wasn't because of Christmas leave.
It is mostly due to the institu-tion of the generic review process and we just don't send them to State in as great a number -- we had to keep them for a certain interval of public notice, and so on.
So that is the reason for that.
We will probably have to start afresh in '78.
The next chart, page 11 is -- you can follow it there.
It shows the number of cases in the dark curve, the cases pending in the NRC Staff; that is, before going to.the Commission for review, more than three weeks after Executive Branch review.
I have personally taken this as a figure of merit for the Staff.
In the-future we might be able to reduce it even further, but it is a target that I have set for getting the papers out of the Staff and up to the Corrfilission.
And it has been a little tough to meet, as you can see there, in the early part of the year.
We had a pretty high number that had been there more than three weeks.
This is partly due to the
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25 44 number of the cases that come back from the State Department.
They don't come back five a month or 10 a month. They go in spurts as you can see by the dashed curve.
And there is at least-some correlation, as you would expect, between surges in the group from State and the backlog in the Staff.
Working with a limited Staff dealing with a lot of high priority issues, this does tend to back up.
Another factor is that some of these are pretty com-plex cases and require extra Staff review time, ones with in~erventions which are coming in in increasing numbers~
Par-ticularly in that May to August period, we had a number of thos come through.
So we got down in May.
It started to creep up and we beat it back down.
Now we are at zero, but we have some toughies that are just coming in and more in prospect, so that will be a constant struggle to keep it down.
The Export-Import Regulations on page 12, just -- I think we have already covered that pretty well, the rules here.
We hope to get it implemented by April, subject to your review.
It will be covered in the second hour.
Page 13 is going back again :to 0 -.the minor exports that L-mentioned earlier, and it gives you an idea of our schedule for that.
Hopefully we will get our analysis down to you this month and have it published as a final, effective rule in April, and the substance of the revisions are listed
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J 25 45 there at the bottom of page 13.
Unless you have.* some questions, I propose to pass over that and in the interest of time, move on to the next chart, page 14, which goes into these exemption issues which we talkeq about earlier.
There are two basic categories there.
We are look-ing at the merits of continuing to exempt certain source mat-erials from agreement for cooperation requirement, and the factors that we see there.
Then there is the Department of Defense exports that we mentioned eaFlier, and where that stands.
And these are in the January, February period that we see these papers coming down to you for-review.
The next broad category is the international safe-gards, physical security policy work, and page 16 gives you the idea of the schedule for the new action plan for strengthen ing international safeguards that has been the subject of considerable attention within the State Department and the Executive Branch in recent months and in which NRC has actively participated.
Our paper to you should be down this month.
The interagency steering group on international safeguards is working hard to make sure all the elements of that plan.ar:e1 in place and develop an implementation schedule.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Now, let's see.
What
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 46 your paper cover that you are sending down?
MR. SHEA:
The paper that is coming down has two basic aspects to it.
One is to forward the state action plan draft, which you had earlier, but including in that the com-ments that the Staff has provided to the State Department on the elements of th.e plan, where there was full Staff agree-ment.
We may also be providing to you some issues for resolution by the Commission.
It is not quite clear yet whe-ther we will have any issues, but they will be flagged for you; that is, new matters that we would want the Commission to con-sider.
As far as taking those to the Executive Branch, we didn't feel that --
COMMISSIONER GILINKSY:
Oh, this would be a plan which would then be circulated among the various agencies?
MR. SHEA:
That's right.
It is -- the Commission did receive the initial draft of this action plan, and the Staff has taken in comments.
The revised plan we will circulate to you as well, and keep you posted on where that stands, and we can take any comments at any time that you have, back into the State Department, which is coordinating this effort.
The next one, page 17, is the US/IAEA safeguards Ace-Federal Reporters, Inc.
agreement which points out that it has about a 10-year history 25
r---
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25 47 and is now stepping into high gear, the negotiations with the IAEA, the specifics about the implementation of the agreement are completed.. And the implementation is going to occur here during 1978, the specifics of the COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let me ask you; to go back to that safeguards action plan.
Did we receive a paper on that?
MR. SHEA:
Yes.
There was a Commission paper.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I didn't remember it.
MR... SHEA:
Back i:h December, I believe it was, which gave the State draft.
And there will be opportunities to continue.
State has established a special working group of their interagency 1
steering group to address this subject.
So I am optimistic that there will be a concerted focus on this and a real con::.,.
centration of effort to upgrade safeguards in the future.
The comrhitment has been there, but it has been a little diffused, I think, up until now.
Page 17, the MR. STOIBER:
Jim, before you do that MR. SHEA:
Yes.
MR. STOIBER:
Can I ask one question on the IAEA safeguards implementation agreement.
Do you know when the State Department intends to forward that to the Congress?
MR. SHEA:. Theyi:'.al:'.e not decided yet.
I had a recent
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25 48 conversation with the State people.
They have -..:.let me give you a status report on that -- they have forwarded through the Secretary of State to the President, the papers related to this, including materials that could be used in transmitting this to the Senate. But the timing has not yet been decided upon and I have asked that there be very close coordination with us on that.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I would ask in following that:
Would we propose to issue a proposed rule implementing, be.fore this matter had been submitted to the* Senate?
MR. SHEA:
No; that is what I referred to as having very close coordination with the Executive Branch,6h dlir rule and submi0.ssion.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
So on page 17, the February 1978 ought to be in parentheses or something?
MR. SHEA:
Well, that's right.
That is a good point.
CHAIRMAN'HENDRIE:
Or have a note on it:
condi-tional upon appropriate action with regaird to --
MR. STOIBER:
That was my point.
Before we have a message to the President submitting this, I think our state-ment of consideration might look rather strange, proposed rule.
MR. SHEA:
That's right.
Either way, which ever goes first, it could cause the President some problem.
I think i.t will probably be February before we have
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25 49 the rule down to the Commission for approval.
We pay January here, but I think it is more likely to be February.
This has taken a lot longer than I envisioned, and I think a lot of other people did, because it involves a number of complex factors and a lot of people to review it.
Page 18 gets into the matter of international im-plications of u~*s. domestic physical security upgrade and gives you an idea of what is going on there.
That is really con-tingent on the domestic upgrade review and tying that into international activities.
The next broad area is nonproliferation policy.
And there we have noted that NRC has expanded its consultative relationships in the last year and a half to review eertain of the Department of Commerce applications and some from DOE.
They are noted there:
retransfers and so on.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are these specific cate-gories of applications?
MR. SHEA:
Could you describe.that?
MR. GURIN:
Excuse me?
MR. GOSSICK:
They are on the next page.
MR. GURIN: They are on the next page.
MR. SHEA:
The next page describes the COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
No; but I mean, is it at their discretion, or there is an agreement that specific cat-egories of applicati9ns will be forwarded to us?
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25 51 being consulted would be expanded under the pending legisla-tion into the -- particularly into the technology, nuclear technology export category.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY-:
I notice for some items it says no consultation.
Does that mean we simply do not furnish comments on those categories of exports, or what?
MR. GUHIN:
At this stage, there have not been mech-anisms established,.-for example, in the technology area, it was not an area where we were consulted before.
These kinds of, cases may come-before this group.
And, of-course, if they come before the group, we would have an opportunity to comment.
But there is no formal consultative role recognized, whereas there is in these areas where it says consultation.
Now, on munitions exports, I believe I am correct in saying that--the paper that went before Commission said we shouldn't be consulted on that, that this is an area that doesn't come within this agency's COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What is the nature of our relationship to Eximbank Nuclear Projects?
MR. GUHIN:
Well, I think that has been--,- in the past, that there has been consultation and discussions. between the Eximbank on proposed projects.
That in the early days, as I understand it, was not particularly the responsibility of the Office of International Programs.
Wha~_.there has been to date, perhaps Marvin Peterson
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25 53 out the matter internally.
But they do ask our advice on, you know, the likeli-hood of an export license being granted if current policies are the same.
We don't provide any commitments, but we do explain what our policy on licensing is.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Who do they ask on the Staff?
MR. GUBIN: I have not been consulted.
I would like to take this program a little step further back, though, to some of the developments that have happened, as I understand them, at any rate, in their approach which has more or less mad it coincide in some respects with the licensing process.
As Carlton explained, in the absence of a really statutory basis or what have you for even an interim commit-ment or advisory commitment, somethi11.g**like this, I understand that the Eximbank now on the reactor p~ojects -- at least this has happened in specific instances -- the actual disbursement of funds will await the issuance of a license.
And, of course, what this says, this, among a lot of other things, has resulted in, I think, reactor export licenses, the applications being submitted far-.. in*advance of the time that they used to.
Particula:irly in the old AEC days, these were really the very last stage in the process.
And the issuance of licenses is now movi_ng further* and further towards, at least
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25 could comment on, if he does know.
MR. PETERSON:
There have been very few of these recently, but the nature of events, consultation with the Commission:to. determine if we have any particular interest in this:--
52 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
How is that interest sought?
How do they go about it?
MR. PETERSON:
They have an interagency group --
I can't recall the exact title right now -- but they meet to reyiew the preliminary plan~
MR. STOIBER:
The real difficulty.here involves the potential financing of the Eximbank of reactor exports for which there is no license by the Commission.
And one of the problems that the Eximbank fore"Saw was the possibility ' **
that they would grant a major loan for a facility which failed to receive a Commission license.
And the United States Govern-ment would essentially be left holding the bag, with a large quantity of money loaned to a country that was not actually buying a U.S. reactor.
So there were discussions with us about whether it would be possible for some kind of interim commitment to be given by the Commission for that kind of a situation.
We said that we didn't see any way in which that could be done under our statute.
And generally what they have been able to do is work
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25 54 closer'to some of the first stages of the process.
In fact, we get applicatruons where there may not even be a contract existing at the time, but that there is a viable proposal in the offing or in the hopper, and*at this stage they are coming then; because of the fact that one of the matters being the whole Eximbank financing aspect.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Okay.
Onward.
MR. SHEA:
Onward.
The next page, page 22, would be a description of what is in store in implementing nonproliferation legisla-tion.
We touched on these already, particularly the first one, incorporating the export licensing criteria, such as safeguards, physical security and reprocessing controls and whatever into the 110.
The second area there; increased NRC responsibility, notes'the pending legislation calls for NRC to license signi-ficant components that are now licensed by Commerce, and also for NRC to have an expanded consultation on other Commerce exports.
This might wind up with our getting into, for example, heavy water areas, items that are on the Zanger list and so on.
The Staff is preparing an impact analysis.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Would we or wouldn't we?
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25 55 What category would ~eavy water fall into?
MR. SHEA:
I think that would probably be considered a significant component;* don't you think, :Mike; maybe reactor grade graphite would be another; these sorts of areas would be NRC's responsibilities.
I think mostly the people's in-terpretation.bf this wording is very --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
And right now these go through Commerce?
MR. SHEA: Right.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Would Commerce under normal circumstances inquire of us as to our views on heavy water exports?
MR. GURIN:
That would probably be cons*idered in this interagency group on which we would have an opportunity to provide our views, and in this sense, be consulted.
It would be only -- Commerce -- we do have an op-portunity to look at some of these cases and have had over the last year and a half.
I think pending the establishment COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Commerce is not, however, obligated to take our view.
MR. GURIN:
Well, when you are consulted, no agency is obligated to tak'.e your viewsv yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Under the nonproliferation legislation, t~~ liaensing function for these things would
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25 50 MR. GUBIN:
I think any agency, the way the mech-anism works, I think any case which is significant is brought before the group and any agency can suggest that any of its cases or another agency can suggest that different types of cases be looked at.
So there is no limitation as to what categories would be considered.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
So there are no specific guidelines, in other words?
MR. GUBIN:
Not as far as I am aware, that have been developed in the group at this stage.
MR. SHEA:
With this coordinating group, wpy the matters are brought up b~fore the group; there is an opportunit for NRC to look into just about all important exports.
I believe that mechanism --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
So it isTeally through our participation in this group that we are consulted on these matters?
MR. SHEA: I think that is a fair statement.
MR. GUBIN:
At this stage, yes.
We were consulted before in a different mode, for example, in the Commerce component cases, by visiting Commerce once a week and loo~ing I
~t lists.
And, of course, I think that,option is still qpen.
But it is prinrarily this group, and as noted at the bottom of the chart here, the NRC responsibilities in terms of
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25 56 actuatly move to us, or would there be a compulsory -- would Commerce still issue, but there would be a.compulsory okay from us?
MR. GUBIN:
The way the legislation is written at this stage, as I understand it, is that it would call for us to do a review which is in its early stages in anticipation of legislation, to determine which of the Department of Commerce export categories or what their exporting, would be significant in terms of a proliferation or export control, that we would then license what ever we determined CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Okay.
So it would actually.--
MR. GURIN:
It would actually shift.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
The paper would actually say NRC at the top.
MR. GUBIN:
It would come into us instead of to them.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well,.we would have to make that initial determation that it falls into that category.
MR. GUBIN:
Yes.
MR. STOIBER:
We would have something like three months to promulgate rules identifying the category of exports that we 'iivduld handle.
MR. SHEA:
We have noted impact there of -- it looks like a few extra people would be needed to handle this if it
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25 57 all comes to pass.
Then the next a~ea, the last one, again in detail, health and safety policy in cooperation reviews again the matters we talked about earlier,-the two-part study of health and safety that is described a little more here in the first half of that page.
And then the second half -- well, it covers the second half of the study, really; looking at questions like what should be the size of the NRC effort and what criteria should be applied in deciding whether to provide assistance, and should assistance be bilateral or through the IAEA.
Generally, we have worked through the IAEA except in special cases.
And we are 16oking at the pros and-cons of that and the other criteria as well.
We anticipate that being down earlier, in January rather than in February, as stated at the bottom of 24.
Mike would like to make a comment.
MR. GUBIN:
I dislike stepping b~ckwards, but I would like to clarify one thing on the consultatitve arrange-ments with Commerce, because we did look at it both in terms of the legislation and existing arrangements.
But in terms of actual reactor components that are licensed by the Department of Commerce, that since our ini-tial arrangements with them in April of '76, we call that formal Staff co9rdination because we actually have a veto in
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25 58 that area.
Commerce well recognizes that, that the applica-tion or license will not be issued until we formally say:
- Yes, indeed, we have no problems or no objection.
So that has been the one area under -- recognized*under the Act, that the components have been shifted to them, but they give us a formal veto over issuance of those.
MR. SHEA:
We turn to health and safety on page 25 where we have a description of our current program for safety assistance abroad broken down into various categories.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Let's see if I understand you back on 24.
You did talk about findinq ways to encourage countries to develop their own regulatory system and conduct full reviews and so on, and not to rely merely on these once-over IAEA reviews, which are really intended to kind of facilitate their own activities, rather than to serve as a review as reviews in themselves.
MR. SHEA:
That's right, and the first -- no; second bullet there, particularly notes that; design to encourage self-help rather than reliance on U.S. expertise.
And that was very much in mind in the Staff study.
We had some specific ideas about how to do that that will be de-veloped and will be coming down to you.
There are some IAEA so-called agency projects in which ther.e are some requirements that.the aqency imposes in this area, and they might be extended to all assistance.
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25 So that is a very important consideration and really one of the criteria that we are assuming in this; that it has to be self-help rather than a substitute.
Page 25 describes the program, as I said.
And 59 it ranges from training, people going to various international meetings, bilateral exchanges, to bring students over for training courses, foreign assignees come onto the NRC Staff.
We have had 13 so far.
We have three or four on board most of '78, and then bilateral planning meetings on advice and assistance.
Now, here is where we note the seminar in the footnote that is coming up.
We call it an international train-ing meeting now, I guess, for a few days, which we are doing in cooperation with the IAEA.
And DOE will also participate.
There will be a number of lectures by the NRC Staff and also the possibility of a visit to a facility.
Is that likely to come off?
MR. LA FLEUR: We're trying to find a place to take them where they will see something other than just lectures; ei trier a place where there is hardware: there, or a place where there is a modification of an existing pit going on.
So we have arranged for the outfit that MR. GUBIN:
Ginna.
MR. LA FLEUR:
-- to come down and give a canned talked they have., or *that they have prepared and given several
I,.
60 times before, of the modification of their pits. It should 2
be a very interesting add-on to show a real case.
3 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Do you have any idea how 4
many participants you are going to have?
5 MR. LA FLEUR:
Well, the invitation went out to all 6
the countries that have a program active or getting planned.
7 And we have also added all the people we deal with, with 8
separate notices on it.
And I hope we will get at least 45 9
to 50.
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
But we don't know yet?
MR. LA FLEUR:
No, we don't know yet.
MR. GURIN: We don't have the returns.yet.
MR. LA FLEUR:
The IAEA said they would sponsor a few people, people who need financial help, like a handful, and would consider more if there was request for it.
We will encourage them to help as *many people who need financial help on that.
MR. SHEA:
The next one, I think, has been pretty well covered, the international reach for NEPA review.
So I think we can move to page 27 and I~don't think we have to go into those too much in detail.
We will be seeking Commission guidance on the security plan for foreign assigness, specifically with respect to guidelines for protecting prop-rietary information.
Ace-Federal Reporters, Inc.
And I think the others are pretty well covered.
25
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25 61 Now, turning*to -page 28, next to your slides, it is an attempt to give you an idea of our bilateral exchange program and what kinds of information, on page 28, the Staff is seeking to obtain from its foreign exchanges.
The categories are listed there with some specifics given.
It would be very helpful to have all of these to be able to improve the safety of U.S. facilities; general health environmental protection data, for system safety, quality assurance requirements, construction and operating data and in~ident reports are of particular interest because of the direct safety impact, and of course, physical. security and safety research areas as well.
Now, the next graph at page 29 attempts to give you a quick overview of our bilaterals and how we go about trying to obtain the information that is listed.
We have working relationships with people in 16 arrangement countries, over twice that number of actual ar-rangements.
And we are collecting information th~t~ of course, is used for briefing papers and talking points for.the Commission, but we are also getting many routine reports on safety research criteria and construction and operating information.
We finally have good access on ad hoc problems and questions that we can raise.
And that, of course, depends a lot on your individual relationships with the countries.
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25 62 And frequent meetings we find very helpful, rathe~
than just relying on mail channels.
We have fairly high confidence that we will hear of foreign experience on serious* new LWR 0'problem.
And we are trying to take steps to increase the chances that we will hear about that.
Some recent examples are given there.where we have gotten data from some of the agreement countries; Japan, Germany pa~ticular; France, also, on incidents and safety-r~lated and terrorists activities as well.
We are trying to establish a program of regular meetings at no more than six to nine-month intervals with Germany and Japan where the bul~ of U.S. type LWRs would be found.
And we have had one each of those and we are about due for another one in Germany, which is now being planned.
We are trying to systematize our routine informa-tion process.
We surveyed the Staff for information needs as shown in the previous chart, establishing priorities this spring and*.*then try to implement it over the next few years.
Page 30 outlines problems that we have to face.
This takes Staff to do and that is one reason we haven't --
it hasn't moved faster in the past.
We hope to be able to do more as we have added some people.
Most countries, I should say, do not compile and
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25 63 report data as we do.
They do not have the Gray Book approach.
But we are trying to get the data in as close to Gray Book from as we can.
The problems with info~mation provided in confi-dence, we have to address how to protect that so that we will be assured of conbi:ri.uous flow from the other countries.
Sometimes we have to reassure them.
They are not sure how this FOIA will affect them, for example..
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
You said recent FOIA exper-ie)'.lce.
Does that suggest that you have had an expe:bience re-cently which has caused us difficulties in this regard?
MR. SHEA:
Can you describe that, Joe?
MR. LA FLEUR:
I think it has been more just --
of an assurance of things that we were doing which would hold up --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I see.
MR. LA FLEUR:
Three cases; one where we had our appeal and we gave them information that we thought proper in light of our relations with the countries involved and -
(inaudible).
MR. SHEA:
The translation, of course, was costly, and we have to watch our resources.
Thirty-one gives you a little overview of what might be coming up in the way of additional exchange agreements.
Some are pretty well.advanced; Belgium, Canada and Israel might
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25 64 well have signings in the next few months, and Egypt is less certain.
Page 32 --
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
These are exchange agreements on health and safety matters bf mutual interest --
MR. SHEA:
That's right.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
-- in.the health and safety regulations?
MR. SHEA:
That's right; information.
We provide them with documents we have published.
They tell us about their experiences as well.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Right.
MR. SHEA:
And we have a number of those already.
Thirty-two just lists the papers for your conven-ience, in one place, that are referred to throughout the presentation with their target date.
The regulation on the U.S./IAEA safeguards agree-ment, the fifth item, really should be February.
And you see quite a few bunched up there in January.
We hope to have them down.
~ome might slip over into February, but we are trying hard to keep them on track.
I guess that covers the first portion of the briefing, the overview of international activities.
If there are no further questions, we could move on to the export regulations.
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25 65 (Pause.)
MR. SHEA:
Oh, yes.
I should mention -- Joe reminded me -- we have plans for trying to develop a safety exchange agreement with the Soviet Union that we are not quite sure will come to pass, but the Soviets have invited a U.S.
team, composed primarily of NRC personnel, to come over to the Soviet Union starting about the end of'this month to visit facilities in the Soviet Union and to discuss possible safety exchange with them.
And later they would come back and visit the U.S.
Probably we think it would be February or March.
And we sent a Commission paper down which I tnihk you probably just received.
We have constructed a proposed team for that which I believe will be just going to you this morning, identifying the particular,-individuals that we pro-pose to send.
And we would -- we are facing a tight time on this and would hope to have Commission approval of this, if we could, by tomorrow, in order to be able to tell the Soviets that we do plan to come and these are the people.
They have to know the names at this point in order to have a meeting occur two and a half weeks later; visas and check out and so on.
We hope this will lead to further useful-exchange.
-Well, shall we move on to the regulations?
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Please do.
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25 66 MR. SHEA:
We have a two-part presentation planned in which Mike Guhin will give a little introduction and touch on the more substantive aspects of the rule that he has been closely involved with, and then Torn Dorian -- ELD -- it is Torn Dorian, I think --
MR. SHAPAR:
Torn Dorian.
MR. SHEA:
And Howard is it, are planning to describ the procedural aspects, which really I think are the bulk of the rule.
Before turning it over to Mike, I would just like to thank everyone that worked long and hard on the export study group on this effort. It was a very demanding and challenging amount of work that was involved, long hours and a lot of nights, to put this together; particularly Torn Dorian from ELD and Mike and Carl Stoiber and Trip Rothchild from OGC, people from OPE and NMSS as well, contributing along the way.
So I think that was a very good effort.
So, Mike, why don't you talk a little bit about what is in there on the substantive aspects.
MR. GURIN:
I would like to just give a brief overview.
In effect, I will confine my remarks to the first subpart to the proposed rule going up to stopping before you hit enforcement, and from that point on, Torn will take over in terms of all the procedural aspects and (inaudible) there.
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25 67 I plan only to give an overview and touch on a few points.
There is no need to go through these in detail be-cause in large part; in fact in most part, what we have before us in these initial parts, the substantive regulations here, are really precisely what we have in our existing regulations.
The attempt here is to take the portions which are scattered in Part 40 and Part 70 and Part 50 and Part 36, and pursuant to the Commission's directive, to consolidate these and put them into one comprehensive -- and I would add comprehsible -- set of regulations in this regard so that we can -- it will be much more easily available to people and we hope much more easi.ly understood.
The major effort has been to consolidate and in substance, they remain essentially the same.
There has been an effort, I think, and a very good effort particularly on the part of ELD and one of my staffers, to, however, take this and simplify it as well, so that in part it is not only con-solidated, but it has been simplified.
It has also been updated.
However, we found in the existing regulations (inaudible), for example, in the areas where restrictions were to apply, in some cases no longer existed.
And so in this sense, and really a nonsubstantive sense, they have simply been updated in terms of restrictions or trade restrictions in this kind of area, or the countries to which certa~p materiAls may go only under spec~fic license
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25 69 would like to clarify at the outset that by definition, cases which involve intervention petition or cases which involve nonparties countries whichoce not parties_ to the nonpro-liferation treaty, or cases which involve changed circumstances from the last export, by definition, would not be considered routine by the Staff.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What do you have in mind when you say changed.circumstances?
MR. GUBIN:
Well, I think of. -- let's take an example.
If you had a country and for one reason or another you had information that it was not living up to the parti-cular obligations, or at least that there was some question as to whether certain obligations were being entirely ful-filled; or if you had a country reported to the IAEA Board of Governors as not fulfilling its safeguards agreement.
plosion.
MR. SHAPAR:
Or if.they concluded a peaceful ex-MR. GUBIN:
Right; that would be the most obvious.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
That was in quotes.
MR. GUBIN: I would like to also note that the' regulations do provide, of course, that as you know, we send up -- we try on a monthly basis to send up lists, separate lists, of actual licenses received.
This is separated out from the big basic pending licenses list.
And the regulations would note, of--course, other cases which the Commissioners
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25
~
68 and not under a general license, for example.
With that brief introduction, I would just like to touch on what I consider to be really only the two or three items which the Commission at this stage may wish to note, and then call attention to.
One was discussed earlier or hinted at earlier; was the question of delegating.
The Staff is recommending that the Commission delegate authority to the Staff to issue li-censes on.what it calls routine reloads of low enriched reactor fuel.
And I would like to clarify that a bit.
A large part of this came about from the Staff's review and from the several comments that the licensing process itself be ex-pedited in those areas where people thought that it could be expedited.
One of the comments -- or several comments focused on more exemptions or more general licenses;as we have noted earlier, that will be part of a different ~tudy.
That is a substantive issue involving exempting or having new general licenses and that will be to the Commission shortly.
As I say, this part of this rule does not get into substantive changes from existing regulations.
One of the areas where the Staff considered though, and has come with this recornmend~tion on routine reloads, that the Staff be given authority to act on those cases; I
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25 70 or the Commission's staff -- the Commission may request re-view of any case at any time, and of course, the Commission's staff may forward any case which it believes warrants Cornrnissio review, although' it may not technically fall into a certain category.
The only other point I would like to clarify on this Staff recommendation and suggestion is that it should be kept clearly in mind that we are only talking about subsequent exports to the same reactor.
w*e are not talking about the reactor itself*, nor are we talking about the i.ni tial core.
What we are talking about here is that once the Commission authorizes the reactor and the initial core, which usually happen in two separate licensing actions, in fact, that at that stage in the absence of any changed circumstances or intervention or something very obvious, that these would be considered routine reloads to be acted on by the Staff.
The only other two areas --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
You said unless there was intervention.
MR. GURIN:
Unless there was. an intervention, yes; absolutely.
The only other two areas that I would like to --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Can you visualize a case in which there wouldn't be?
MR. GURIN; In which there wouldn't be?
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25 We have some today.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Mike?
MR. GURIN:
Yes.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Does the rule still con-71 template the possibility that in a situation in which the Commission for some reason had concern with the overall frame-work of exp_ort policy; how easy is: it at that point to suspend a procedure like this for X-period of time?
MR. GURIN:
I think it would, if you are -- in a generic sense --
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Yes.
MR. GURIN:
-- in other words, if there are aues-tions which come across the board, in that.sense I think it could be suspended, although my gut reaction would be there would be some obligation to at least note as a 'policy matter that it has been suspended If we have a rule which says that routin E. things would come before the Staff and not go fur-ther, if generically there were to more :r::outine matters in that category, then I think -- of course, it could be sus~*
pended I would like Carlton or Howard to address that.
MR. SHAPAR:
The Commission could, of course, grant exemptions from any of its own rules as long as it is not prejudidial to the rights of --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Now why is a practice like
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25 72 this p~rt of a rule?
MR. GURIN:
The rule defines, in effect, what~-
it sets forward for the public's knowledge and, of course, for the applicant's knowledge and clarification, the licensing review procedures.
And part of the license review procedure I,
in effect has bee.n what is normally reviewed bv the Commission and what is normally not sent to the Commission for review.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, why does this have the --
MR. GURIN:
Force of rule.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Yes; why is it a rule rather than simply a statement of the way we do our business?
MR. DORIAN:
Well, it is actually both.
The rule is so drafted that the Commission doesn't have to do anything, in terms of how the rule is framed\\.
But we are going out to the public and saying that these are our procedures and we are going to try to adhere to them.
And to that extent, we are on public record that we are going,to extent the Commission sees fit adhere to these policies.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
But I mean, suppose you depart from this ruley would you then have to notice this in the Federal Register and --
MR. SHAPAR:
It depends how substantial the depart-ure is.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
No; suppose you simply.have
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25 73 a Commission review of a license which would not normally re-ceive Commission:review.
MR. GURIN:
No.
This was carefully considered, I might add, by ELD and ourselves,-largely because the issue arose in a study group, in other words, if we :Put in our normal procedures -- and you will notice there are riot only ways of exempting and pr-ovisions calling for whenever a Commissioner or the Commission wishes to see it before it or whenever the. Staff wants to.
But I think it even said normally will be reviewed So its built in, its own flexibility that we _don't have to go through a rule change if there are, you know, some changes in this review process.
However, as Howard had noted, I think if there were substantive and in a sense standing changes going to occur, then one would logically go ahead and change that MR. SHAPAR:
(Inaudible) federal agencies in accord-ance with the Administrative Procedure Act, to publish their delegation of authority in the Federal Register.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
In terms of the situation I asked about before; if you wanted for some reason to susp,end the practice across the board for awhile, would that require notice on that, or could it be done on an expedited basis?
MR. SHAPAR:
I think it could be done on an exped-ited basis, but if y9u are going to be doing that, I think you
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25 74 would want to tell the world.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Sure.
MR. SHAPAR:
But it would --
(Simultaneous discussion.)
MR. SHAPAR:
'--- to say that whereas the Staff has certain functions with respect to an export and the Commission has; if you want to change the internal delegation, which is really what it is, it certainly couldn't be construed generally as prejudicial to the rights of any third party.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
You said federal agencies routinely publish their internal delegations.in the Federal Register?
do.
Part 0.
MR. SHAPAR:
A summary of them; yes, they certainly COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
In regulation form?
MR. DORIAN:
Some yes; some no.
MR. SHAPAR:
Some yes; some no.
Right.
The Commission, of course, has done that in its COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
All its delegations are.
MR. SHAPAR:
Yes.
MR. DORIAN:
The idea here was to highlight for the public an aspect that had been somewhat shrouded to the public before.
They were unclear exactly what the Commission was doing, what the Staf.f was doing and what the interaction was
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25 75 between the Nuclear Regulation Commission and the Executive Branch.
And what we did was just highlight as we could what the procedures wer~
MR. SHAPAR:
So anybody who is interested in ex-ports can look at one part of our regulations and find.out all they would need to know about exports, was the basic thinking behind it.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Is there actual operative legal significance to having it in the regulations versus to pu~lishing it in the Federal Register, not in regulation form?
MR. SHAPAR:
Well, I suppose someqne could make the argument that if you didn't comply with your own regulations, they perhaps could try to except the action, but the usual legal rule there is some sort of prejudice.
I think under ordinary circumstances it would be very difficult to make out prejudice.
MR. STOIBER:
I don't think that would arise in this case, because as the rule is framed,. the Commission can at any time indicate that a certain license or category of licenses has policy significance.
If for some generic reason you felt that all your licenses had policy significance because of some general problem with IAEA safeguards or the like, all you would have to do under this rule was issue a general state-ment to the effect that now the Commission finds for this reason that all its iicenses have policy significance, and
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25 therefore, that would essentially eliminate the delegation procedure.
76 MR. SHAPAR:
Is the question, then, directed both ways; of additional delegation to the Staff, as well, or --
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I hadn't thought of it that way, but i_f there were:,.additional delegations to the Staff, I assume you would want to make them part of the regulations.
MR. SHAPAR:
I would think so, yes.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, let me ask you this, Howard:
Su~pose in approving~ reactor export and a first core, the Commission felt that in this case, subsequent re-loads ought to be examined by the Commission.
Would it be necessary to publish that in the Federal Register?
MR. SHAPAR:
You mean in all cases?
COMMISSirnER GILINSKY:
No; in that case.
MR. SHAPAR:
In that case, I think in accordance with the provision just mentioned that you could feel that special circumstance, for what ever reasons you had, dictated your personal review of that situation.
I would also suggest though~ that if vou felt that the second reload ought to be looked at under all circumstances then I would advise you to change the rule.
MR. GURIN:
Let me go on --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Even if that decision were
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25 77 to be made on an individual, successive basis.
MR. SHAPAR:
Yes.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Onward.
MR. GURIN:
Let me just touch on two -- briefly touch -- on two other points that I think are either somewhat changed from the rule that we proposed in June, which was published for public comment; three brief a~eas:
One, you will notice that in the proposed rule, there is an obligation which we put on ourselves to -- this is 110-40 on page 91 -- to inform the applicants whenever the license review at the NRC takes more than 60 days after we re-ceive the Executive Branch's views..
I think this is a self-explanatory provision~
Under this, as Jim had mentioned earlier, we are making every effort now to keep the Staff's review as short as possible and to get the major cases to the Commission to provide as much time as possible at the earliest possible date.
When we say we will also tell.the applicant, inform the applicant of the reasons for why the application is taking longer than 60 days, here, of course, it is accepted that th~s would not involve any classified information but would gen-erally say where the application stood.
And the only other --
MR. DORIAN:
Let me add there, Michael:
That this as the legislation is now being drafted,
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25 78 at least the version that passed the House -- and correct me if I am wrong, Paul -- is consistent with that legislation.
MR. STOIBER:
I think that needs some development.
The 60-day time period is part of a series of suggested amend-ments to the Senate bill which will probably be revived in this session, and would be consistent with that provision.
It is not in the House bill as I understand it.
MR. GURIN:
Okay.
Briefly, two other things.
In Part 110-50, in reyiewing the proposed rule and the public comments, we reached one of these areas where we were in effect levying -- either levying dual requirements, or it wasn't clear which reguire-ments would be met under our domestic regulations and which would be met under our export.
And so the items on both packaging and physical security have been clarified and I think revised to reflect the realities in terms of exported and,,.imported materials.
In brief, it is that the export licens~e-himself, for example, materials, is under normal circumstances not the packager of the material and that the packager in all cases would be subject to our domestic regulations and would fall under certain requirements there.
When this is the case, the regulations make clear that the export licensee himself does not have the responsibili y to meet that wh.,ich i-s met by someone else, but that he would
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25 79 have responsibility not to accept an export or import when he sees that it does not meet these requirements.
The rules also clarify that the export licensee will have the responsibility for physical security arrangements unless these arrangements have been assumed by someone else within this country, for example, a shipper or packager, and that he notifies the NRC that someone else has this responsi-bili ty.
If he does not do so, then the regulations make clear that it is his responsibility to protect these strategic quantities or significant quantities of spec~al nuclear mat-erial.
The only other change, I think,- from the proposed rule in June, the published rule in June, is that in that rule we had included some specific information requirements and this is not in the rule you have before; it is in the side-by-side, and it was in the old 110-33(f), which was page 14 of the side-by-side.
It requested _some specific information when the application was for formula quantities cif special nuclear material; that is, five kilograms or more of high enriched uranium or two kilograms or more of plutonium and uranium 233.
It was suggested by some commentors that this kind of information would be more appropriately obtained through government channels rather than in the licensing process.
The Staff agreed with that and, in fact, in the Executive
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25 80 Branch's review and the governmental exchanges, as you know, of high enriched uranium and research activities involving high enriched uranium, involves quite an extensive review.
What we would just like to assure here is that there is no question that this information will be made avail-able to the Commission and the Commission staff, indeed, in the review process itself, but it was just*simply a clarification that that information would come through these government channels rather asking the applicant.
I think one that was particularly sensitive in that regc31'.'d, was the way the first requirement was written in the proposed rule published in June, sort of said, you know, how much high enriched uranium do you have in the country and assigned to that reactor.
Well, one could read that both ways.
If you are talking how much is assigned to the reactor which you proposing export at this time, that was a fairly limited and logical question.
However, if one split that and said how much high enriched uranium in the country, that was really a process --
a bit of information which one felt, and I think other, some foreign commentors were on it -- that that would most approp-riately come through government channels, but surely, again, be considered as part of the licensing process, or in the licensing proc~~s.
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25 81 The only last item I would like to add, as it is noted in the cover memorandum, and I believe in the statement of considerations, is that as you know, the effort began, in effect, quite some time ago, in fact, before, maybe at least about the same time there was effort, some pending legislation dealing with this area, and that the export group, of course, has kept this in mind as it has developed its rule and has noted in the paper for the Commission that the proposed rule is consistent with legislation and that the recommendation is that it can go forward on its own merits and need not await legislation.
But also the items in legislation such as substan-tive export criteria covering application of safeguards and these kinds of things as noted could readily be incorporated into this new Part 110 once legislation is enacted.
MR. SHAPAR:
If there is sufficient reason, if you find the regulation satisfactory to promulgate them and not wait for the legislation, because the substantive criteria could be taken from the legislation and can be easily cranked into these regulations now written, in the form of an amend-ment.
MR. GURIN:
That completes my portion.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Could you do me a favor at some convenient time; send me a copy of the, as I understand
~t, 24 letters of comment? Could you send me a copy of those
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25 letters?
82 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Other comments by the CommissiOn?
(No response.)
MR. SHEA: Tom Dorian could proceed to describe the procedural aspects.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Could I ask you something about the general licenses?
There seems to be a list of countries listed on page 83, and there are a bunch of other con4itions and restrictions and constraints listed in the n~arby pages.
And where does all this come from?
MR. GUHIN:
Essentially from our existing regula-tions, except for the fact that the list has been updated and reviewed by the Executive Branch and --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Recently?
MR. GUBIN:
Well, in the process of doing this rule.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
When was that?
MR. GUBIN:
Within the last year, with the export study group actually preparing this rule-and the draft rule, say, in the earlier portions of 1977, that -- we had some restrictions against -- I don't know whether -- Port Arthur and Port Darien in some areas which were really no longer --
you no longer had --
(Laughter.)
-- a way of knowing --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Since 1905.
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25 83 (Laughter.)
MR. GUBIN:
But essentially, this reflects two things:
It reflects existing controls on exports to commun-ist bloc countries, and the way that they were formulated in our existing regulations.
And there has been no substantive change in this regard, other than some--
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
There seem to be different rules for tritium and so forth, and they all seem to have their good countries and bad countries.
And I just wondered whether it all couldn't be simplified.
MR. GUHIN:
Well, let me add in this regard that the proposed -- discussed earlier, the paper which would come up, which would look at some minor -- at some exempting exempting certain minor categories from agreements or cooperation and some more general licenses, one of the things that is noted in there is that it would also include what the Staff and the Executive Branch determine-to be the elimination of unnecessary restrictions and definitions in terms of communist and noncommunist countries.
So I think this paper itself, coming up hopefully later this month, would.indeed clarify these sections sub-stantially and I believe, would it not do away especially with a lot of the exemptions and the details of exemptions, so it would become ve_ry, very much simpler.
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25 84 MR. PETERSON:
The exemption for by-product material would come out entirely, would be (inaudible) under the general licensing (inaudible), one of the minor changes.
MR. GUHIN:
So the answer is yes; *they can be simpler and we hope they will be.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
What is the process in which -- in drawing up schedule A, by which one includes Czechoslovakia and Hungary but doesn't include Rumania and Poland.
MR. GUHIN:
I think that deals with the basic U.S. Governmental trade control pattern which is under the Department of Commerce, for example, or what have you.
I believe in the latter case you have differences because of the most favored nation.
MR. PETERSON:
There is special favortism toward Poland or Rumania as far as export controls, but if* you look at the detailed general license itself, we do have Rumania and Poland included, in addition to the schedule A countries under the particular general licenses.
So it is not* a flat out favortism toward --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I notice you also include Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which I think is a noble senti-ment.
(Laughter. )
MR. PETERSON:
This list, by the way --
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25 85 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Is that the standard?
MR. GUBIN:
Yes, it is included in the other list,_
also, isn't it?
MR. PETERSON:
We draw from the Commerce Department, essentially, for the list. It is identical to.what they use and it is approved by the State Department, since we have not recognized the Soviet take-over countries since 1940, we legally, have to put them in.
MR. DORIAN:
By the way, most favored nation treat-ment only means equal treatment.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Onward.
MR. SHEA:
Tom?
MR. DORIAN:
I would like to cover four matters, or highlight four matters for the Commission.
One is the format of the hearing, the second is punlic notice procedures, the third is access to classified information, the fourth is the substantive criteria, and then end with a footnote on which there has been some Staff disagree ment until now, 'and the Staff has resolved that disagreement.
Beginning with the first point, the format of the hearings, under the Commission's guidelines to the Staff, they asked the Staff to examine what kinds of hearings or what kind of a hearing is required under the Atomic Energy Act and under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Staff-examined that and decided, looking at the
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25 86 Atomic Energy Act, specifically Section 189(a), and looking at the Administrative Procedure Act, Section 5 of that, specific-ally the foreign affairs function exemption under the Admini-strative Procedure Act, looking at the legislative history, and what other agencies do, the general structure of govern-ment, and particularly noting the nature of the issues, noting that sensitive foreign policy and national security information is involved, that what kind of a hearing is required is the kind of hearing that we have tried to give in the rule, and that is a hearing if one is required and that is if there is standing, that the required interest has been shown, or the Commission wants to grant a hearing under its discretionary procedures, the kind of hearing could be of the type that is a legislative model.
That in turn is divided into two parts.
We could, for example, have a hearing consisting of written comments as the procedures are detailed in the rule, or addition or separately from if the Commission sees* fit, we could have a hearing where it was actually called an oral hearing.
We have tried also in light of the public comments received after we published the proposed rule to look at what ways we could expedite the licensing procedure, at the time noting that under the Act, we have to make sure that there is the required public participation when standing has been shown.
What we have done -- and I won't cite the rule; it
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25 87 is Section, by the way, 110-83(f).
In response to th~ public comments, we have said that the rules specify that the Com-mission would not conduct a new hearing on an issue adequately explored in a previous hearing unless there.. are two conditions that were met:
One, unless a hearing request or intervention pet-ition establishes an intect:'est which may be affected, and that is by the way -- if you are looking at the paqe number it is page 100 of the rule that we submitted to you.
So, if a person has standing, that means that we have to give that person some kind of hearinq, and the some kind of hearing is detailed. *Again, we go back to procedures of outlining the rule.
- The other unless is that the Commission can de-termine that changed circumstances or new information warrant a new hearing.
If these two conditions are not met, the Commission does not have to give anyone a hearing, unless it wants to give someone a discretionary hearing of some type.
Turning to the import licensing hearings, we wanted to make sure that a particpant in the import licensing hearing, establishing that his: interest may be affected, may be accorded additional procedural rights under domestic licensing prac-tices with respect resolution of domestic factual issues regarding the p:t:iblic health, safety and environment, and with
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25 88 respect to the protection of the U.S. public, again, domestic theft, diversion and sabotage.
And this, to the extent that such issues are separable from the nondomestic issues associated with license applications.
And we have drafted the rule to give the Commission leeway to look at the kinds of procedures it wants to give to people asking for import licensing hearing, assuming that they have met the standing test.
Also,,in connection with domestic practices, we have said that the domestic-licensing procedures, that is, the adjudicatory hearing procedures, would be applicatle to a proceeding involving the imposition of a*civil penalty on either -- on an import or export license.
And, finally, to make sure that the foreign affairs function exemption allows the Commission adequate room to structure a hearing, we incorporated that provision in rule-making hearings, also, the foreign affairs function exemption simply says where foreign affairs functions are involved, the Commission can tailor its proceedings in light of its foreign affairs responsibilities.
Turning to the second point I mentioned we would be looking at -- it is public notice, and that is we have changed the public notice procedures from what we presently have.
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25 89 At the moment, we notice in the Federal Register an application received on a utilization facility an issuance of a license for a utilization facility.
We would go further -- and this is in light of several comments received -- we would notice in the Federal Register, application received on one effective kilogram or more of special nuclear material and is, by the way, also concurrent with the information that the Staff sends up to the Commission where the Commission itself is going to be looking at the license application.
And the Staff proposes to notice in the Federal Register, also, 10,000 kilos or more of source material where a license application is received, again, it's in the paper that goes to the Commission.
Beyond these, none of the comments asked us to notice any of the minor license applications received.
It seems that there is no interest in looking at issues involved in that, and we propose not to notice that in the Federal Register.
The third point, access to classified information.
We have checked with the State Department.
There was a little bit of a misunderstanding between the Commission and the State Department in connection with the* rule of the State Department vis-a~vis the Commission in regard to the classified information.the State Department sends to the Commission in connection with expo~t license matters.
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25 90 The Executive Branch has agreed that the rule will not limit the flow of essential classified information between the Executive Branch, the State Department particularly and the Commission..
The rule would only apply to classified'information introduced into a hearing.
And the hearing procedures are --
with regard to classified information, are detailed in subpart K.
Essentially, there has to be a notice of intent to intro-duce, or have security clearance procedures and rather de-tailed requirements.
They are very similar to the Commission's domestic practices.
The fourth point, the substantive criteria, those are -- we have not included them in the rule and that is the substantive criteria presently being examined by Congress.
These would give a little bit more meat and bones to the common defense and security judgment that we presently make.
These are being discussed by Congress and the rule has been so drafted that whenever new legislation passes, we can simply incorporate them into the rule.
And as I said in regard to the footnote, where there has been some Staff disagreement, that disagreement has been resolve.
It was in connection with the Staff viewpoint on discretionary hearings that would'be forwarded to the Commission and at the same time made public.
The way we have drafted the rule as we proposed to
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25 91 the Commission -- let me read'.it to you so it is a little bit more specific -- it goes as follows:
"The views of the Commission staff and Executive Branch on whether* a hearing should be held as a matter of discretion will be placed in the public document room upon receipt by the Commissioners, except to the extent that:
- 1) These views are classified, or
- 2) Involve information which the Com-mission staff or the Executive Branch has de-termined would adversely affect the common defense and security or the conduct of U.S.
foreign policy, if released at that time.
The Commission will review any Commission staff decision to withhold its views."
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, let's see:
Why wouldn't that then be classified, if it falls in that cate-gory?
MR. DORIAN:
Foreign policy; there might be sensi-tive discussions with other countries which may not be in some way classified, or haven't yet been classified, which we may in some way receive from the Executive Branch.
MR. GURIN:
Another clarification would be, I think, would be is wha.t you might put into a broad category of hearsay or gossip.
In_9ther.words, I think, the important thing is
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25 92 that we all understand, is that most of our classified.inform-ation and even sensitive information comes from other agencies, and it comes from our dealings and interaction with other agencies and our knowledge of what is going on.
Now, we may say in.unclassified form that if one were to hold or not to hold a hearing, it could have a certain impact, and then one may add; in a certain context of an inter-national activity or country.
And then one could add something sensitive, for exa~ple, with regard to what is going on in another agency with respect to that very issue, although that in itself may not be classified.
Or it may not have even developed to a point in that agency where it is something that -- with the exception of our contacts, that we would be involved in, but that we are aware of it and do know of it.
And I think it would be difficult to automatically say those kinds of things are classified.
In fact, what this has done is built in a flexibility of keeping classification to a minimum and keeping it to only those things which are indeed truly classified, but allowing the communications process for things which may not be.but which are nonetheless sensitive, particularlt?in terms of developments, either internationally or internally.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Mike, what exemption under
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25 93 Freedom of Information Act would that type of thing fall under?
MR. GURIN:
Well --
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
In other words, if it is not classified and you have this* informal classification pro-cess.
MR. GURIN:
Right.
I am not sure, Depending on the case I could probably --
MR. SHAPAR:
If it is not classified, it would have to be to the Commission given*in confidence.
MR. GURIN:
Confidence.
MR. STOIBER:
Or it could possibly be Exemption 9.
MR. GURIN:
Is that the one that deals with the that's the one I am thinking of, but it COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
What is it?
MR. STOIBER:
Frustrate.
MR. GURIN:
Frustrate.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Frustrate what?
MR. STOIBER:
Frustrate the Commission's ability to conduct its activities or prog:itams MR. PAGE:
Exemption 5.
Generally, Staff views on a discretionary hearing, it will be held outside of a proceeding context, it would generally be Exemption 5, as far as recommendations go.
Here what is proposed is that virtually all cases of Staff's views on discretionary hearings, may be contained
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25 94 in a Commission paper, will be placeq in the Commission public document room, unless there is something classified or some-thing sensitive involved, and the Staff thinks it is particu-larly sensitive, but not classified, then the Commission will have to concur on withholding it from the public before it is done.
MR. GURIN:
Let me clarify:
I don't think it is anticipated on ~he part of the Staff at all that -- no office, I think, -- that this would be_ something that wou~d be frequently utilized as such, but that to draw a strict boundary which did not provide for this kind of information to be part of coherent comprehensive pack-age to
- the Commission did not m.ake sense to us, in other words, that there should be that flexibility to put all the informa-tion in one document.
MR. PEDERSEN:
I would just add that as Mike and Jim pointed earlier, we do participate a great deal in these interagency subgroup meetings and so on, -and there we pick up information about motivations and intentions and potential actions that are predecisional in terms. of those agencies, that may nonetheless be extremely useful to you in considering the substance of your decision or perhaps the timing of a decision you may make.
I for one would be extremely reluctant to put that kind of information in a document if I was sure it was going to
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25 be made public, not only because it might jeopardize the de-cisional process in the other agency, but certainly it would jeopardize our ability to interact effectively on these sub-95 groups where we in fact are made*privy to some of this inform-ation.
. I think we have built in a clear safeguard l;.rhere the Commission can overrule the Staff on this and order that it do be made public.
I think it would be unwise if the Commission didn't re~ognize this and provide itself the ability to receive this kind of information, if in fact it was truly useful.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I think I can see the need for it.
I_ just wanted to make sure it was~legal.
(Laughter.)
MR. PEDERSEN:
Well, that's not my area.
(Laughter.)
MR. DORIAN:
Let me add as a "by the way," that once the Staff has used and has forwarded these views to the Commission, these views -- it will notify the petitioners and the applications that it has placed these views in the public document and upon request, it will provide these people with these views.
So we have gone one step further, once we have it.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I am sorry, Tom; it noti-fies them that it has been put in the public document room --
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 California MR. DORIAN: And if -- it notifies them.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Yes.
MR. DORIAN:
And if they say:
Look; I am in COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I see.
MR. DORIAN:
-- send me a copy, please, and then we are going to say:
Okay; fine; sure.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Okay.
96 MR. DORIAN:
So, anyway, we have tried to balance
--.expedite hearing procedures, try to make the rule as crisp and readable and as simple as possible and tried to -- in one part of the regulations, take someone who would like to apply for license or would like to intervene in some proceeding, lead them through from the beginning to the end and make them understand exactly what we are trying to do, so that we *have, I think, negotiated this rather delicate balance to expedite hearing procedures on the one hand and making sure that there is the necessary and appropriate public participation in these hearings and the licensing process.
MR. STOIBER:
If I may, I would like to make one comment on your timing of. approval of. the rule.
I know that 134 pages_ is quite a mouthful.
But I think there are some reasons 23
, you ought to consider for moving as quickly as possible on 24 this.
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25 And I think one of those is the pendency of this
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25 97 court proceeding.
From the President's remarks in Dehli, we understand that another license is perhaps on the way shortly.
(Laughter.. ).:,
And I think the Commission could well be handicapped in its ability to deal with that license if we have not made some progress on the rule by that time.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Why?
MR. STOIBER:
The reason I say that is that I note that the court in July, when it rescinded its order holding up the next earlier follow-on license, noted in footnote 3 of its decision its -- I guess I would have to say pique, or irrita-tion at the fact that the Commission had not put a rule.in' place prior to this time.
In the argument back in December of '76, we noted that the procedures for the rule were underway.
The court in-quired about when the rule would be in place, and they are obviously holding back on their decision until such time as the rule is on the street. And I think it could be troublesome there.
The other factor I would merition is also the legislation that has been talked about here.
The rule has been drafted so that what ever comes out of the legislation can be easily incorporated.
And I think the Congress I have had a number of inquiries, also -- feels that it would be benfitted in its
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I 25 98 consideration of its legislation by having the rule in place, also.
MR. SHAPAR:
Has the Commission given any public statement about the time in which it intended to put out the rule? It seems to me that they --
MR. STOIBER:
Well, in June in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee -- the International Relations Committee of the House, I believe former Chariman Rowden in-dicated that he thought the rule would be in place by this au_tumn, September.
And we are a good deal past that now.
So I would urge that we try to get this in place as soon as possible.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Let me say yes; Peter?
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I do have some questions about the hearing process.
I can pursue them certainly with some of these people on my own.
Do we contemplate another meeting on the document?
Obviously, we will have to do something more in order to approv it, but I wonder --
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Yes.
It.has come up as consent calendar item.
What I would like to do is ask you to take due note of the urgings for action and try to meet with Internation 1 Program to straighten out the points you have.
And after -- I don't know -- after a week or some-thing like tha~~ I will ask the secretary to see what the state
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I 2s I
99 of the concurrent sheets and progress on them is from Y-,ou all, and see whether individual consultations in your offices are better, or whether we need to meet again as a Commission COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:* If there are going to be changes in the regulation, I would assume that they would be run by all of us before --
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Of course.
MR. GUBIN:
If I may clarify --
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
As a matter of procedure and thinking of our own rule.
MR. SHAPAR:
We wouldn't have it any other way.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I know you wouldn't.
That's why I was saying that.
(Laughter.)
MR. GUBIN:
After this very lengthy discourse and all the things that are going to be coming before you, it has dawned on me at the very end of the briefing, there will be one other thing along with the others.
In the process of commenting on the rules, there were three State comments, which I think are worth noting, about the import of waste material for disposal in the United States.
There were two th+/-ngs I would like to clarify; they were onlyitalking about low level waste.
There is no question that high l~vel waste is subject to a specific import
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25 license as such, and so therefore, would have to come under specific review.
The concern by the states was that the way that the impo:t'.i.t.general license is now written, that technically it would be pos,sible for the licensee to import waste for disposal.
100 We worked already to quite some extent in terms of discussing this with NMSS.
There is question as to whether when they got it in, they could actually dispose of it.
So it is an issue, and we are now looking at it, both NMSS and ourselves, in terms of whether it would be best handled in the domestic licensing context rather than touch the import rule, or by a conforming change here or what-.
- ever, But it is an issue which will be taking some weeks or even a few months, to resolve.
And again, I would point out that it is a technical issue, that one need not worry about the*low level waste as such, flowing into this country for disposal at this time, although it is a legitimate concern on the parts of the states, having this clarified.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
I. thought we made some national policy statement to the effect that we thought that might be helpful to spent fuel MR. GUBIN:
That is essentially high level waste.
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25 101 The spent fuel would come under the high level waste, and that is a whole different category which we discussed earlier.
MR. SHAPAR:
Only when it would enhance our non-proliferation objectives.
COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
Right.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
I take it that the Staff pro-posal on 616 includes the recently agreed upon paragraph to Section 110-90, Sub(c), which was circulated as a separate piece of paper,. that that paper said we have got one area where we. are still arguing.
And here is a thin paper that says we have agreed.
And I assume the Staff's proposal includes this, so if I say I concur, for instance, with 616, that you will understand that it includes --
MR. SHAPAR:
That's the one Mr. Dorian read.
MR. GURIN:
That's the one he just covered, right.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Okay.
I want to thank the Staff for *this extended briefing and discussion this morning.
I think it was a good coverage of the International Program area and of the rule.
And I think it is very helpful discussion, very helpful information.
Thank you.
(Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the hearing in the above-entitled matter was adjourned.)