ML22258A314
| ML22258A314 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | SHINE Medical Technologies |
| Issue date: | 07/27/2022 |
| From: | NRC/NMSS/DREFS/ELRB |
| To: | |
| Rakovan L | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML22258A318 | List: |
| References | |
| NRC-2055 | |
| Download: ML22258A314 (17) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
SHINE Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement Public Environmental Scoping Meeting Docket Number: 05000608 - SHINE Medical Technologies, Inc.
Location:
teleconference Date:
Wednesday, July 27, 2022 Work Order No.:
NRC-2055 Pages 1-16 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433
1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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SHINE DRAFT SUPPLEMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT PUBLIC ENVIRONMENTAL SCOPING MEETING
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2022
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The Public Meeting met via Videoconference, at 7:05 p.m. EDT, Lance Rakovan, Environmental PM, presiding.
PRESENT:
LANCE RAKOVAN, Environmental Project Manager, NRC MIKE BALAZIK, Safety Project Manager, NRC JOHN MOSES, Deputy Director, Division of Rulemaking, Environmental, and Financial Support, NRC MIKE O'NEILL, Public Commenter
2 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com P R O C E E D I N G S (4:05 p.m.)
MR. RAKOVAN: My name is Lance Rakovan, I am the Project Manager for the SHINE isotope production facility, and I will be giving the presentation tonight.
Just a few things before we get started.
I want to go through kind of what to expect tonight in terms of the presentation. And then of course we would like to get to the point where we can open the floor to receiving public comments, which is the real reason for being here tonight.
Again, we're looking for comments on NUREG 2183 Supplement 1 by the NRC's numbering. That would be the draft Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, related to the operating license for the SHINE medical isotope production facility. I wanted to go ahead and read that because it is quite a mouthful.
So our agenda for tonight, really I'll be going over a presentation, then I'll provide a bit on the NRC's regulatory role, some background on SHINE, go through some details on our environmental review including our preliminary findings, talk about our path forward in terms of environmental review milestones, and then of course, as I said, open up the floor to
3 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com public comments.
At this point, everyone is more or less muted, and so once we get to that point where it's time to take public comments, we'll go ahead and ask folks to raise your hand or do something to get our attention, and we'll allow folks to unmute at that time.
I would like to point out the fact that we do have John Moses on the line tonight. John is the Deputy Director of the NMSS Division of Rulemaking Environmental and Financial Support. That is the part of the NRC that has the lead for the environmental review for the SHINE facility. So we appreciate John joining us tonight.
We also have several other NRC staff that are with us that can -- that are here to listen to comments that have been involved in the environmental review. And if there's any clarifying comments or if there's confusion on my presentation, then they can pitch in and help me with that as well.
So let's go ahead get started with the presentation. Just a little bit on NRC's regulatory rule. Our governing statutes come from the Atomic Energy Act and the Energy Reorganization Act. What helps direct how we conducted this environmental review comes from the National Environmental Policy Act, or
4 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com NEPA, as you'll hear it mentioned tonight.
Our mission is to protect public health and safety, promote the common defense and security, and of course, as we'll be speaking of tonight, to protect the environment.
A little bit of background on SHINE. In 2015, the NRC and the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, issued NUREG 2183. Again, that's NRC numbering, which was the Environmental Impact Statement for the construction permit for the SHINE medical radioisotope production facility.
Now, this discusses the environmental impacts of construction, operating and decommissioning of a medical radioisotope production facility that could help meet the need for a domestic source for molybdenum-99. At the conclusion of the safety environmental reviews, the NRC issued a construction permit for SHINE on February 29, 2016.
In July of
- 2019, SHINE Medical Technologies LLC submitted an application for an operating license for the SHINE facility and commenced NRC-authorized construction. And then in October 2019, SHINE commenced -- oh, I'm sorry. In 20 -- in October
- 2019, they commenced NRC-authorized
5 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com construction of the SHINE facility.
So in construction -- in connection with SHINE's operating license application, the NRC has referred -- there are supplements to NUREG 2183, which I'll also refer to as the final Environmental Impact Statement, or F-E-I-S, or FEIS.
The purpose of the supplement is to evaluate the environmental impact of the SHINE facility with respect to any changes in the facility design, the radioisotope production process, or the environment since the publication of the -- of the Final Environmental Impact Statement.
I know that terminology is a bit confusing, given that is a -- that was a final Environmental Impact Statement, and we are now supplementing it. But thats the terms that we use, I apologize if that's confusing.
The supplement updates information and only covers matters that differ from the initial Final Environmental Impact Statement, or that reflect significant new information. So that was the focus of our review, when it came to the production of this supplement document.
So the way that the impacts are defined for the most part would be small, moderate, and large. And again, you know, we're looking to kind of characterize
6 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com what we see as the impacts of the operation of this facility in terms of either being not detectable, or they're so minor that they'll neither stabilize nor noticeably alter any important attribute of a particular resource being small.
Sufficient to alter noticeably but not destabilize in terms of moderate. And clearly noticeable and sufficiently to destabilize a core attribute of a
particular resource would be characterized as large.
A few special ones to focus on would be involving the Endangered Species Act. So these would be federally listed species and critical habitats. So these would be characterized as no effect, may affect but is not likely to adversely affect, or may affect and is likely to adversely affect or adversely modify.
Again, it's similar to the previous, but it's just a little bit different.
We also have environmental justice. And in terms of that the label would be that it would disproportionately hide adverse human health and environmental effects. So that's, again, just a special label that we'll be discussing.
So in terms of the preliminary results, it is really where we came out on all the applicable
7 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com categories that you can see here are all small. So again, we would expect to see little to no impact to these particular environmental aspects as part of the changes or the updates from what we saw from the original Environmental Impact Statement, given the new information that was provided to us.
So about the positive, there was one change. There was initial, or there was a change in terms of I believe transportation that came down to small, again, due to a change between the initial NUREG document and this supplement. So again, when it comes to all these categories, we're looking at a small impact.
Now, for a couple of the other cases for the federally listed species and critical habitat, there's no effect expect. None of the four evaluated, threatened, and endangered species are present in the action area. So again, we don't expect an impact there.
In terms of environmental
- justice, minority and low income populations are not expected to experience any disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects. So again, that's a positive.
And cumulative impacts, which I will
8 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com discuss. Cumulative impacts are the impacts on the environment that result from incremental impacts of an action. So when you're adding these to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions, regardless of which agency, federal, non-federal, or person would do such an action.
So it's an attempt to make sure that when you add the construction and operation of this facility onto whatever else is going on in the area, that it doesn't create some sort of, you know, unforeseen impact if we were just narrowly focusing on the facility itself.
And again, these are -- these are unchanged from the -- from the original NUREG 2183 from the Final Environmental Impact Statement. So there's no change from that, which, again, was originally positive.
So here's our preliminary recommendation.
After weighing the environmental, economic, technical, and other benefits against environmental and other costs, the NRC staff's preliminary recommendation, unless, safety issues mandate otherwise, is that the operating license be issued as proposed.
So we're basing our recommendation on the application, including SHINE's supplemental impact --
environmental report; consultation with federal;
9 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com state; tribal; and local agencies; staff independent review, which is documented in the supplement; and consideration of public comments that were received in production of that document.
So again, unless there is some safety issue that comes up, from an environmental standpoint we recommend that the operating license be issued as it was -- as proposed.
In terms of moving forward, the SEIS, the supplement to the Environmental Impact Statement, was issued in June. The public comment period started on July 8 and will end on August 22, for which this meeting of course is part of that commenting period. And we're looking to issue the final supplement by the end of the year.
So in terms of availability, there is a hard copy of the draft supplement to the Environmental Impact Statement at the Hedberg Public Library. You can also find it on the SHINE website, or you can find it in ADAMS, which is our Agency-wide Documents Access and Management System.
I believe that there was an error in the slides that were originally posted for this meeting.
That 9 that I have there in red was omitted. But I believe the correction has been made, so the file that
10 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com you find in ADAMS with these slides should have the correct number and correct link in it.
But again, just in case you saw a previous version of the slide, this was an error, and so I wanted to make sure that I brought attention to that.
So in terms of how to submit comments, there is numerous ways that you can do so. We're looking at the docket ID NRC 2022-0135. So if you send us comments, that will help us kind of trace it back to this action. You can go to the regulations.gov website, which is a great way to do it, and again, search for that docket number, which is NRC-2022-0135.
If you wish to provide your comments in hard copy, you can mail them to our Office of Administration, and that is at Washington, DC 20555.
We have set up an email account to provide comments to, so that's SHINEEnvironmental. So just smashing SHINE and Environmental together @NRC.gov.
And again, if you came in late, my name is Lance Rakovan, I'm the environmental PM for this project. So you can reach me at (301)415-2589 if you have any questions. Or you can send me an email at lance.rakovan, that's R-A-K-O-V as in Victor, A-N as in Nancy, @NRC.gov. Again, if you have any questions, or you can send me your comments as well.
11 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Again, the public commenting period is open until August 22. Any comments that we receive after that time we will attempt to address, but we cannot guarantee that we'll be able to do so.
All right, so before we open things to comments, actually, I'd like to pause for a moment to see if anyone has any questions, any clarifying questions about my presentation. I know I covered a lot of information at a very high level. And if you look at the draft supplement document, we go into a lot more detail, as you'll quickly see.
So if you have a question about anything that I covered, if you are on the Teams, if you could use your -- the raise-your-hand feature, I can notice that you would like to get some attention and I can allow you to unmute your mic. I cannot directly unmute your mic because that could be awkward if you weren't prepared for me to unmute your mic at the time that I did so, all I can do is allow your mic, and then you will have to unmute yourself.
If you are on the phone line, you can raise your hand by hitting star-5, that's star-5. And then when I have allowed your microphone, you can hit star-6 to unmute yourself.
So I'll just pause for a moment. If,
12 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com again, if anyone has any clarifying questions about my presentation. All right, I do have a hand.
All right, Mr. O'Neill, I allowed your microphone, if you would like to unmute yourself.
MR. O'NEILL: Thanks a lot for this presentation. I really appreciate the information.
My question is one about process.
In your preliminary recommendation, you note that the -- the staff's preliminary conclusion is subject to safety considerations. I'm wondering where in the process is there a determination on safety considerations. Kind of where does that fit in to the, you know, vis-a-vis the NEPA analysis here? Thanks a lot.
MR. RAKOVAN: Sure, of course. We do have the Safety Project Manager on the line tonight. If he is willing to speak up. Mike?
MR. BALAZIK: Hi, yeah. Hi, my name's Mike Balazik, I'm the NRC project manager for the SHINE review. Right now we are actively reviewing the application from a safety standpoint. We're engaged right now with the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, where they review the SHINE application and the staff's review.
So it's actively -- the safety review is
13 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com actively going on right now, if that answers your question.
MR. RAKOVAN: Great, thank you very much.
Sorry about that. Any other clarifying questions about the presentation at this time?
Okay, seeing no hands, let's go ahead and open it up to any comments that you may have on the draft Environmental Impact Statement supplement.
Again, if you are on Teams, you can use the raise-your-hand
- feature, which would be under Reactions. And then I will allow your microphone so you can unmute yourself. If you are on the phone, hit star-5, and that will essentially be the same for me as seeing your hand raised. And once I allow your microphone, you can unmute yourself and provide a comment.
So we'll go ahead and pause now to see if anyone has any comments they'd like to share.
All right, so while we're waiting, I will go ahead and go back. Just in case you don't feel like providing your comments through this forum, which is fine, I'll go back and go through how to submit your comments through other means.
Again, we have the federal rulemaking website, regulations.gov, which is a great way to
14 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com submit your comments. You can search a docket ID, NRC-2022-0135. If you wish to provide your comments through snail mail, you can send them to our Office of Administration at the NRC, Washington, DC 20555.
The email account that we have set up to receive comments is SHINEEnvironmental. So it's one word, SHINE and Environmental shoved together,
@NRC.gov. And again, if you have any questions about any of this, you can reach out to me, Lance Rakovan, at (301)415-2589, or by
- email, lance.rakovan, R-A-K-O-V-A-N @NRC.gov.
So just to let folks know, I'm going to be online for -- until eight o'clock Central Time just in case folks pop up. So I'm going to be here. If anyone has a comment that they would like to make during this time, by all means. Again, I'll be monitoring the line, so you can raise your hand, get my attention. And I'll go ahead and allow your microphone.
I don't know if all of the NRC staff who are currently on the line are going to stick on or not, that's up to them.
But I do note that there a few external attendees, so I will ask one more time before we do kind of a soft closure of the meeting, I don't know, before we go into an extended time, if anyone has any comments
15 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com that they would like to make. And if not, we'll go ahead and kind of go into hibernation mode, if you will, but I intend to stay on the line.
All right, I'm not seeing any hands. All right, so I'm going to go into what I'm kind of calling the extended meeting commenting period. Again, kind of doing a soft closure to the meeting at this point.
I'm probably going to drop off video. But I intend to stay on board.
You are welcome to stay on board with me if you are on this line until nine o'clock. If anybody
-- I'll probably come on every, you know, ten minutes or so just to check to make sure that nobody has a comment if folks are on the line. But at this point, I'm going to go off camera.
And again, if you wish to make a comment, I will be here. But we're going to kind of, you know, more or less wrap up the meeting at this point. So if you have a comment, or you know, wish to raise your hand, happy to unmute your mic -- or allow your microphone.
But at this point, I think we've covered everything and no one seems to have any comments. So if you wish to drop off, thank you for your time tonight.
If you wish to stay on board, you're certainly welcome to. I will be here until eight o'clock Central.
16 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Okay, thank you, everyone. Again, you're welcome to stay on the line.
(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at 7:28 p.m.)