ML22293B779
| ML22293B779 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 10/05/2022 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| Burkhart, L., ACRS | |
| References | |
| NRC-2113 | |
| Download: ML22293B779 (113) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Docket Number:
(n/a)
Location:
teleconference Date:
Wednesday, October 5, 2002 Work Order No.:
NRC-2113 Pages 1-100 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1
1 2
3 DISCLAIMER 4
5 6
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONS 7
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 8
9 10 The contents of this transcript of the 11 proceeding of the United States Nuclear Regulatory 12 Commission Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, 13 as reported herein, is a record of the discussions 14 recorded at the meeting.
15 16 This transcript has not been reviewed, 17 corrected, and edited, and it may contain 18 inaccuracies.
19 20 21 22 23
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 1
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
+ + + + +
3 699TH MEETING 4
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 5
(ACRS) 6
+ + + + +
7 WEDNESDAY 8
OCTOBER 5, 2022 9
+ + + + +
10 The Advisory Committee met via hybrid In-Person 11 and Video-Teleconference, at 8:30 a.m. EDT, Joy L.
12 Rempe, Chairman, presiding.
13 COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
14 JOY L. REMPE, Chairman 15 WALTER L. KIRCHNER, Vice Chairman 16 DAVID A. PETTI, Member-at-Large 17 VICKI M. BIER, Member 18 VESNA B. DIMITRIJEVIC, Member 19 GREGORY H. HALNON, Member 20 JOSE MARCH-LEUBA, Member 21 MATTHEW W. SUNSERI, Member 22 ACRS CONSULTANT:
23 DENNIS BLEY 24 25
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 STEPHEN SCHULTZ 1
2 DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL:
6 ALSO PRESENT:
7 ELIJAH DICKSON, NRR 8
JEREMIAH DOYLE, NuScale 9
TYLER ELLIS, Public Participant 10 SID FOWLER, Public Participant 11 STEVE LYNCH, NRR 12 ANDREW PROFFITT, NRR 13 WILLIAM RECKLEY, NRR 14 DIEGO SAENZ, Department of Homeland Security 15 MOHAMED SHAMS, NRR 16 JOSEPH STAUDENMEIER, RES 17 DUNCAN WHITE, NMSS 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
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 CONTENTS 1
2 Opening Remarks 4
3 Joy Rempe, ACRS Chairman 4
5 SECY Paper on Fusion Energy Systems 6
6 Regulatory Framework 7
9 NuScale Topical Report Methodology 91 10 for Establishing the Technical Basis 11 for Plume Exposure Emergency Planning 12 Zones Revision 2 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
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 P R O C E E D I N G S 1
(8:30 a.m.)
2 CHAIR REMPE: Good morning. The meeting 3
will now come to order. This is the first day of the 4
699th Meeting of the Advisory Committee on reactor 5
safeguards. I'm Joy Rempe, Chairman of the ACRS.
6 Other members in attendance are Vicki Bier, 7
Vesna Dimitrijevic, Greg Halnon, Walt Kirchner, Jose 8
March-Leuba, Dave Petti and Matthew Sunseri. I note 9
we do have a quorum.
10 Today the Committee is meeting in person 11 and virtually. The ACRS was established by the Atomic 12 Energy Act and is governed by the Federal Advisory 13 Committee Act.
14 The ACRS section of the U.S. NRC public 15 website provides information about the history of this 16 committee and documents, such as our charter, bylaws, 17 federal register notices for meetings, letter reports 18 and transcripts of all full and subcommittee meetings, 19 including all slides presented at the meeting.
20 The committee provides its advice on safety 21 matters to the Commission through its publicly 22 available letter reports. The federal register 23 notice, announcing this meeting was published on 24 September 19, 2022.
25
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 This announcement provided a meeting 1
agenda as well as instructions for interested parties 2
to submit written documents or request opportunities 3
to address the Committee.
4 The designated Federal Officer of todays 5
meeting is Mr. Derek Widmayer. A communications 6
channel has been opened to allow members of the public 7
to monitor the open portions of the meeting.
8 The ACRS is now inviting members of the 9
public to use the MS Teams link to view slides and 10 other discussion materials during these open sessions.
11 The MS Teams link information was placed 12 in the Federal Register notice and agenda on the ACRS 13 public website. We have received one request to make 14 an oral statement from a member of the public regarding 15 the topics that will be discussed during todays 16 session.
17 And periodically, the meeting will be 18 opened to accommodate this request and to accept 19 comments from other participants listening to our 20 meetings.
21 Written comments may still be forwarded 22 to Mr. Derek Widmayer, todays Designated Federal 23 Officer. During todays meeting, the Committee will 24 consider the following topics: SECY Paper on Fusion 25
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 Energy System Regulatory Framework and the NuScale 1
Topical Report, Methodology for Establishing the 2
Technical Basis for Plume Exposure Emergency Planning 3
Zones, Rev. 2.
4 A transcript of the open portions of the 5
meeting is being kept, and it is requested that speakers 6
identify themselves and speak with sufficient clarity 7
and volume so they can be readily heard.
8 Additionally, participants should mute 9
themselves when not speaking. At this time I'd like 10 to ask other members if they have any opening remarks?
11 Hearing none, then Id like to ask Dave 12 Petti to lead us in our first topic for todays meeting.
13 SECY PAPER ON FUSION ENERGY SYSTEMS REGISTRY FRAMEWORK 14 MEMBER PETTI: Okay. So this is a 15 follow-on to our subcommittee meeting of a couple of 16 weeks ago on the draft SECY White Paper. And Steve 17 is here, so Im assuming he wants to lead us off. Go 18 ahead, Steve.
19 MR. LYNCH: Thank you. Appreciate the 20 members welcoming us back on a quick turnaround. We 21 appreciate the incites that were shared on our initial 22 presentation on September 23rd for the NRC staffs 23 considerations of establishing a regulatory framework 24 for fusion technologies.
25
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 In particular, the staff presented on the 1
options that were contained within a draft white paper, 2
titled Licensing and Regulating Fusion Energy Systems.
3 This white paper forms the basis of the 4
staffs forthcoming SECY Options paper that will be 5
presented to the Commission by the end of this month.
6 This paper will contain options for 7
establishing a fusion regulatory framework, as well 8
as include a recommendation from the staff to the 9
Commission on how on what we believe to be the best 10 path forward on this matter.
11 Establishing a fusion regulatory framework 12 is important to meet the needs of developers that expect 13 to have commercial fusion energy systems under 14 development now and in the next decade.
15 Also establishing this fusion regulatory 16 framework is consistent with the requirements of the 17 Nuclear Energy, Innovation and Modernization Act, which 18 requires the NRC to establish a regulatory framework 19 for advanced reactors to include fusion technologies 20 by the end of 2027.
21 We look forward to productive feedback 22 today on our updated presentation material. Todays 23 presentation seeks to address some of the open items 24 from the subcommittee meeting a couple of weeks ago.
25
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 The staff will be providing additional 1
details and considerations of its recommended approach, 2
including the ability of Part 30 to scale with the 3
material acknowledging potential hazards of proposed 4
fusion systems.
5 We will also identify specific revisions 6
of 10CFR Part 30 that would need to be augmented should 7
that approach to be followed to efficiently regulate 8
fusion energy systems.
9 We are also going to discuss our next steps 10 in what implementation of a bi-product material 11 framework may look like for fusion energy systems.
12 With me at the table today is Andrew 13 Proffitt, Senior Project Manager in the office of 14 Nuclear Reactor Regulation and Duncan White, Senior 15 Health Physicist in the office of Nuclear Materials 16 Safety and Safeguards.
17 So with this, I will turn the presentation 18 over to Andrew to begin our remarks for today. Thank 19 you.
20 MR. PROFFITT: All right, thank you Steve.
21 And Ill also point out that we have, you know, other 22 members of our fusion working group on the line.
23 A couple of members to note, Bill Reckley 24 as you heard him contribute during the subcommittee.
25
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 Joe Staudenmeier, in our Office of Research, one of 1
our fusion experts here at the agency.
2 And another one to note as we mentioned 3
at the subcommittee our partnership with the agreement 4
states who have been to date regulating and overseeing 5
the fusion devises that are out there now.
6 Hes joining us on the lines for his 7
perspective, if need be, so. You know, as Steve said 8
we really dont want to rehash what we talked about 9
at the subcommittee meeting.
10 I think we have that direction to cover 11 new ground and provide some more information related 12 to some of the discussion and open items that we heard, 13 so. Well do a quick review of the options and then 14 well spend the bulk of the time talking about our 15 recommendation and what that could look like.
16 Some of the context into that 17 recommendation, the scalability of the provisions and 18 requirements that are there in Part 30. Some of the 19 augmentation we see, were going to get into specifics.
20 Duncan will walk us through that.
21 And then what implementation could look 22 like. And look like were directed down that path by 23 the commission. And then finally talk about some of 24 the enhancements to the paper.
25
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 The paper is actually maybe close to double 1
the size as it was to when we released it to you all 2
as the white paper. So there is a lot more information 3
in there and we'll cover that and how the discussion 4
of the subcommittee helped us bolster that. And then 5
a path forward.
6 So our options for commission 7
consideration so quickly, we have three options with 8
one with a sub-option.
9 The first option would be to treat fusion 10 energy systems, all fusion energy systems as 11 utilization facilities as defined in the Atomic Energy 12 Act which we covered last meeting. And we, the staffs 13 approach there would be to supplement Part 53.
14 So Part 53 right now is being developed 15 for advanced fission reactors largely. It could 16 address fusion. Its not specifically addressing 17 fusion now, but that would be a potential path forward.
18 Legally and technically it could be applied to fusion 19 energy systems.
20 A couple other things there that draw 21 concerns for the staff is there are some requirements 22 in the Atomic Energy Act that we have discussed, you 23 know, related to financial assurance, the licensing 24 process in hearings, and a few other items that are 25
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 really geared toward fission reactors.
1 And given the differences with fusion and 2
the hazards that are
- posed, the fundamental 3
differences, you know. Sometimes in the subcommittee 4
meeting we may have said lower risk or lower hazards.
5 I think were pivoting a little bit to separate the 6
hazards. They're different hazards.
7 MEMBER PETTI: So I would challenge you.
8 Yes, it doesnt have a clinical chain reaction. But 9
theres lots of other hazards that fission systems have 10 that are shared by fusion systems.
11 They have inventories of radioactive 12 material, particularly tritium and activated dust.
13 They have energy sources, decay heat chemical 14 reactions, slow damaging sources.
15 So theres a, you know fundamentally 16 different. Its the word fundamentally that I think 17 is, yes, there are some differences, but theyre not 18 fundamental.
19 Whats actually more fundamentally 20 different is the distribution of the hazards. You 21 know, fission by and large, take the spent fuel pool 22 out, its all about the core.
23 In fusion, its a distributed hazard.
24 Which makes the safety analysis even more complicated, 25
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 and the design more complicated. Youve got 1
inventories in places, important inventories, all over 2
the place.
3 And so thats a difference. But again, 4
these are in details. I just worry about words, adverbs 5
that are very strong, when in almost all these things 6
its shades of grey.
7 MR. PROFFITT: Yes --
8 MR. LYNCH: Sure. Yeah, no. Appreciate 9
that, Member Petti. You know, I think one of the signs 10 we have specifically tailored, is acknowledging that 11 there are a fundamental set of programs that regardless 12 of the option that is chosen, that need to be addressed.
13 Youre looking a physical security, 14 emergency planning, radiation protection, and were 15 going to go into that as best addressed in our proposal 16 program.
17 MEMBER PETTI: My just concern is, you 18 know, as the commissioners read it, theyre not as 19 necessarily technically savvy as, you know, the working 20 level engineer.
21 And words to them can have, imply meanings 22 that maybe, you know, we would say yes, we take that 23 away differently than they do. Thats the concern.
24 MR. LYNCH: Understand. And we can be 25
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 sensitive to that language as we continue to revise 1
and update our SECY paper.
2 MEMBER HALNON: Yeah, and this Greg.
3 Further on that, when you use the term, you know, its 4
legally able to be covered under Part 53, or legally 5
able to be covered under Part 30, or hybrid too, I 6
mention this at subcommittee.
7 If the statements are considerations 8
doesnt intend fusion or doesnt mention fusion, to 9
shoehorn it in, it doesnt seem like legally it would 10 be a good -- because when I was in the industry, if 11 I tried to apply a regulation to something outside the 12 statements of considerations, I was stumped.
13 So weve got to be careful there also.
14 Now I understand technology inclusive could be pretty 15 broad, so you could interpret that as well.
16 But I know that Dave, I guess I wouldnt, 17 if youve gotten the preamble, is that part of Part 18 53 as fusion is part of, isnt --
19 MEMBER PETTI: Im only halfway through 20 the preamble so anything -- I didn't say anything about 21 fusion.
22 MR. LYNCH: Yeah, I can provide some 23 clarity there.
24 MEMBER HALNON: I dont think its 25
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 explicit but that doesnt mean it doesnt -- I just 1
want to be careful there also.
2 MR. LYNCH: So, yes, to provide some 3
clarity on that, Part 53, as it is currently written, 4
does not include fusion energy systems. What were 5
looking at here as we put these options on the table 6
is that one potential approach is to treat fusion energy 7
systems as a utilization facility.
8 We put Part 53 out there as a starting point 9
where, similar to Part 30, in order to include fusion 10 energy systems, we would need to make deliberate updates 11 to accommodate the technologies, the structure systems 12 and components, hazards and different types of 13 analysis.
14 MEMBER HALNON: Okay. So, so this does 15 not preclude rule making --
16 MR. LYNCH: Correct.
17 MEMBER HALNON: -- to put it in there.
18 MR. LYNCH: Correct.
19 UNKNOWN MALE: Requirement.
20 MEMBER HALNON: To make it that legally.
21 MR. LYNCH: Correct. Correct.
22 MEMBER HALNON: Okay. Good. Thank you.
23 MR. PROFFITT: Yes. So moving to the 24 second option being regulating fusion energy systems 25
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 under our bi-product material framework that would be 1
to enhance Part 30 and one of the, you know, we sort 2
of use Part 30 almost in slang a little bit, but that 3
entails Part 20, the rest of the chapters in the 30s, 4
you know.
5 The framework is in Part 30, but it builds 6
on several other regulations that it references and 7
that help it perform its job, so.
8 Thats whats currently used for research 9
and development in limited commercial fusion activities 10 that are going on in the states right now.
11 And we believe that Part 30 provides a solid 12 foundation to scale with the, with the technologies 13 in the industry as it grows.
14 So its currently addressing those 15 systems, and we can foresee, and we will get into a 16 lot more detail with this about how we could grow as 17 the industry grows to address larger hazards, larger 18 risks, and just more complicated facilities in general.
19 CHAIR REMPE: I have a question, and I 20 havent looked at the slides.
21 MR. PROFFITT: Yes, sure.
22 CHAIR REMPE: I have a question and I'll 23 look at your slides, so maybe its covered later. But 24 when I thought about this a bit more, and I kind of 25
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 refer this at this subcommittee meeting, I dont see 1
a lot of difference between Option 2 and Option 3A.
2 If you would explain, very carefully, what 3
are the decision criteria on when you need to do 4
something else and scale the requirements.
5 And are you planning to have a, define some 6
criteria in your Option 2 of when you need like above 7
a certain power level, or tritium amount on site you 8
need to do something more?
9 MR. PROFFITT: So a lot of that is in 10 Duncans, our Part 30 expert, and we will get into that 11 into specifics about there are items in Part 30 where, 12 you know, if you go over this amount of material, you 13 then need to address, you know, things like emergency 14 plan, or things like that.
15 So there is scalability in the current 16 regulations in Part 30. I mean, they currently 17 regulate things from like a portable gauge up to a 18 panoramic irradiator with millions of theories of 19 cobalt 60.
20 So there is some of that in Part 30. We 21 would need to bolster that. We definitely see that 22 we would need to do that and augment. We would have 23
-- I mean it would be significant work, any of these.
24 CHAIR REMPE: Yes. Wait, whats the real 25
17 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 difference then if theres some cut off criteria in 1
Part 30 between Option 2 and Option 3A, other than youre 2
going to put it in 53. Because again, Option 2 seems 3
very fuzzy. If I want regulatory certainty, Id like 4
to know where those cut offs are.
5 And then, I understand the staff isnt 6
quite sure what youre going to do, because weve not 7
had that happen yet, and in both cases I think something 8
else is going to come down the pike.
9 So whats the real difference?
10 MR. PROFFITT: Sure. So, right now, so, 11 we do not have firm decision criteria of what that would 12 look like. But what the decision criteria would be 13 based on is looking at the Atomic Energy Act and what 14 are those definitions of what constitutes a utilization 15 facility.
16 And while there are specific provisions 17 for fission facilities, theres also a more general 18 provision for facilities that would present a 19 significant enough hazard to the common defense and 20 security such that we would need to provide those 21 additional provisions contained within the Atomic 22 Energy Act for a utilization facility.
23 So this would mean we need to look at 24 additional sighting considerations. For example, Part 25
18 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 100 would be more stringent than what would be under 1
a materials framework.
2 You may also need to look at additional 3
security requirements beyond whats in Part 37, 4
emergency planning that could be more similar to whats 5
at a nuclear power reactor than what may be looked at 6
for a materials facility.
7 As of
- today, weve done extensive 8
stakeholder outreach to understand the technologies 9
that are proposed.
10 And the technologies that have been 11 presented to the NRC staff by developers from a 12 technical perspective do not seem to exceed material 13 quantities or expected hazards to workers or members 14 of the public that would necessitate treatment outside 15 of the existing frameworks in Part 30.
16 So thats where we're at. Right now the 17 bounding facility that were aware of for treatment 18 of hazards and material contents would be the ITER 19 facility.
20 And even looking at ITER, we believe if 21 a facility similar to that were licensed in the United 22 States, that our existing materials framework could 23 accommodate that with some specific enhancements that 24 well get into, that would better define definitions 25
19 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 of facilities.
1 And this gets back to your point, Member, 2
that yes, we have imperfect definitions in Part 30 as 3
it is for particle accelerators, that while the 4
framework for Part 30 may be generally acceptable, we 5
need to have a clear entry pathway for that.
6 And thats what we need, were proposing 7
that we work on. So I will pause --
8 CHAIR REMPE: I guess I -- Im not hearing 9
again. Whats the real difference between Option 2 10 and Option 3A? Why are you guys saying oh Option 2s 11 better because youre saying, what Im hearing is yes, 12 we need some cut off criteria too to figure out when 13 you need to start scaling and what changes to be made.
14 Why is it youre focusing on 2 versus 3A?
15 MR. PROFFITT: Sure. So I guess to 16 clarify a little bit, what it comes down to is how we 17 best focus our resources and efforts at this time.
18 Were not aware of any facilities that 19 would necessitate a medium ad approach to go into a 20 utilization facility approach at this time. Our 21 approach is to meet developers where theyre at and 22 the plans for facilities to be developed in the next 23 several decades.
24 Right now, we're not hearing of designs 25
20 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 would necessitate that additional higher option 1
of regularization of --
2 CHAIR REMPE: Okay. So if I said Id like 3
Option 3A, but lets defer it, have some cut off 4
criteria, but lets defer what is needed next.
5 Whether its Part 53 or doing something 6
else under Option 2, are we saying theyre the same 7
thing?
8 MR. PROFFITT: Thats certainly an 9
approach we could take.
10 CHAIR REMPE: Okay. Thats what I kind 11 of thought and thats what I was kind of getting to.
12 When Dave asked the question about why you had more 13 flexibility with Option 3, and I kind of said, before 14 you answer that if you put cut off limits on Option 15
- 2. You're in Part 1 of Option 3A in my opinion. And 16 I think that I got the answer to my question.
17 MEMBER PETTI: You know, the other thing, 18 as I said in subcommittee, nobody knows, truly, what 19 their next steps are going to look like. Okay? There 20 are uncertainties that are so different than anybody 21 here who has spent their careers in fission reactor 22 safety understand.
23 These are so fundamental. Okay? Having 24 spent a decade running the Fusion Safety Program in 25
21 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 the United States, we ran into these issues all the 1
time.
2 How do you craft a strategy when the 3
uncertainties are in fact, you know, we dont think 4
we can convince anybody, because the physicists 5
themselves, you know.
6 You get five physicists together; you get 7
about eight answers. And I dont say that, you know, 8
facetiously. Its that complex to understand the 9
response of the plasma, particularly when you get close 10 to, at and above ignition. Theyre just not there.
11 And making sure that youve -- the problem 12 is that youre making a decision thats going to affect 13 things very long term. And I just, you know, youll 14 see in the draft letter, this is not the National and 15 International consensus of the approach developed in 16 the 1990s. Okay?
17 And the letter cautions you to look at that, 18 all that evidence that was not in the white paper.
19 Lots of very serious people looked at this stuff, 20 including John Holdren. You all probably know the 21 name, right? Former OSTP under President Obama.
22 This has been studied extensively. Okay?
23 And Im just cautioning that theres a lot of factual 24 inaccuracies that were in the paper that were trying 25
22 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 to set the right context for the commissioners.
1 Thats the concern that I have. That if 2
-- it makes it look like its a slam dunk to go over 3
here. It is nowhere near that. It's very, very fuzzy.
4 And flexibility to me is really critical at this point.
5 CHAIR REMPE: I understand your reasoning, 6
but I think I wanted to understand versus --
7 MEMBER PETTI: Yes, yes. Moe has a 8
question.
9 CHAIR REMPE: Yes, Moe does, but just to 10 make sure everyone understands. I see a hand up 11 externally. Unless the staff needs that person, were 12 not calling on external people. Theres time for 13 public comment later.
14 MR. PROFFITT: Diego is part of our working 15 group from the State of Wisconsin.
16 CHAIR REMPE: Oh, thats up to you guys 17 to call on them. I will not be doing so. Go ahead, 18 Moe.
19 MR. SHAMS: Thank you, I appreciate it.
20 Moe Shams with the NRC, with the staff.
21 I just couldnt be more grateful for the 22 comment that you all are providing us about how we 23 strengthen the paper and, you know, we build it right 24 to make sure that we have the right words for the 25
23 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 Commission.
1 But I also wanted to share with you where 2
the staff is coming from. I think were exactly where 3
you want us to be, perhaps except were just seeing 4
things in a slightly different way.
5 Were seeing that the Part 30 approach 6
gives the flexibility to the Commission and the staff 7
to grow with this framework as the industry matures.
8 Were looking at the landscape currently.
9 Were seeing what technologys being presented to us, 10 the size of the technologies that are being presented 11 to us. And we feel that Part 30 can give us the time 12 to understand the hazards better, to build the tools 13 that we need better.
14 We do have tools at our disposable -- to 15 add to Part 30, licensing condition, orders, rules of 16 particular, these are all instruments for us to add 17 as we see the hazards moving perhaps beyond where we 18 feel comfortable to just leave 30 as it is.
19 So we do have these tools and we think 20 theyre the right tools to use now as opposed to forcing 21 perhaps a more defined box than an Option 3 would 22 require.
23 Or one that say go, no go, heres a line 24 that if you cross over -- we think thats a level 25
24 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 precision that perhaps is not, is not advisable for 1
us to go after now.
2 Rather the Part 30 is the right foundation 3
with the right augmentation in addition to the all the 4
instruments that we have. So were coming to the 5
problem perhaps with just a slightly different thinking 6
as, you know.
7 But I think were trying to reach the same 8
point. Make sure that the hazards are covered, make 9
sure that we have the right instruments in place, and 10 make sure that we have the right flexibility to allow 11 the framework to mature with the industry and with the 12 technology.
13 CHAIR REMPE: Is there someplace where 14 youre going to get to such a large hazard that you 15 think Part 30 would not be appropriate with your 16 approach? I mean thats why Daves --
17 MR. SHAMS: Potentially --
18 CHAIR REMPE: And how will you back track 19 after you say Option 2 and were going to stick with 20 Part 30 no matter what. How will you get out of your 21 decision?
22 MR. SHAMS: I wouldnt need to get out of 23 the decision. I mean, we still have the ability and 24 the tools to add requirements as appropriate as I shared 25
25 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 with you that the idea is we have instruments.
1 We can issue additional requirements. We 2
do that in other areas that currently are not covered, 3
you know, under Part 50 or 52 for utilization 4
facilities.
5 We do know how to apply additional 6
requirements.
7 CHAIR REMPE: A Part 30 facility will have 8
emergency planning and all the stuff that youve got 9
to deal with for the activated materials. It'll be 10 like as cumbersome as with a rove reactor.
11 MR. SHAMS: We believe that its not going 12 to start out this way. But if a facility grows to a 13 place where these hazards and these considerations 14 needed to be considered, we have the instruments and 15 the tools to address them.
16 Just the Part 30 option gives us that 17 elasticity to be able to grow as opposed to draw a solid 18 line that we have to go another way. Thats our 19 thinking. Thank you.
20 MEMBER HALNON: So these instruments and 21 tools that you have that may supplement Part 30, would 22 just inform future rule making for specific, that 23 specific line that Joy is looking at.
24 MR. PROFFITT: Certainly. I mean I think 25
26 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 if we look 30 years in the future, 40 years in the future, 1
and theres a viable fusion energy industry in this 2
country, right, I mean I think we would have a part 3
in the regulations, like Part 50, that addresses fusion 4
energy systems.
5 MEMBER HALNON: Yeah, thats what I --
6 MR. PROFFITT: But to make a decision, I 7
mean I think thats also one of the staffs concerns.
8 A decision now to either go utilization facility route 9
or have a bifurcated approach, theres a lot of work 10 to be done under the utilization facility approach to 11 tailor it to the systems we see now.
12 Certainly, there could be systems in the 13 future or as we learn more about the systems that are 14 being, you know, deployed in the country, that may 15 necessitate that. But to build it now starting from 16 a top, down approach and having to really tailor it 17 to what were seeing it today, would maybe not be the 18 best use of resources.
19 Where if we could start with Part 30, whats 20 currently regulated in the facilities, we've --
21 Duncans done a lot of work looking at what specifically 22 needs to be augmented, how we can make tailored changes 23 to the regulations, and more significantly in guidance 24 to fully address the systems that are out there and 25
27 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 grow as the industry grows.
1 You know, one of the things I think about 2
a little bit, right, I mean, we didnt have Part 50 3
the way it is today when we licensed the current fleet.
4 You have a third of the current fleet 5
operating that didnt have the GVCs when they were 6
licensed, right? So, and we continue to have rule 7
makings on Part 50 today.
8 We have Part 52 in the late 80s, were 9
working on Part 53 now. So, and thats what certainly 10 would be great to have perfect framework that would 11 deal with all these systems for 30 years to come and 12 be certain that these were the appropriate requirements 13 that we needed and the framework that was necessary.
14 But to try to do that now we may well develop 15 something that isnt useful at all. I guess, I mean, 16 Im seeing a lot of great colleagues that could do a 17 lot of great work, but we see that as probably not the 18 best approach and stuff.
19 CHAIR REMPE: So I will call on our 20 consultant, Dennis Bley. Go ahead Dennis.
21 MR. BLEY: Yes, thanks. Where you just 22 got to is where I guess some of us have been a little 23 uncomfortable.
24 We started with Part 50, and we patched 25
28 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 it together to cover new situations until we had a real 1
patchwork regulation and that led us to wind some new 2
ones.
3 It almost seems to me the way you're going 4
is one ought to call this a regulation rule making for 5
test and proof of concept facilities that will get 6
patched up later, when things get more difficult.
7 I, having the alternative structure, even 8
if you only developed one part of it at this time and 9
leave the others as blanks to be filled in later, but 10 making it clear that we really might need a different 11 framework when we get to much larger machines, should 12 we ever get there, is what makes some folks 13 uncomfortable with starting out the way were starting 14 out.
15 It almost sounds as if were convinced 16 there are never going to be machines that have a 17 substantial hazard associated with them. Anyway, 18 thats enough from me.
19 Mr. Proffitt: Yes, I appreciate that.
20 And I think well cover some of that hopefully as we 21 go through the presentation. So let me just lets move 22 us forward a little bit and well get a little bit more 23 into the details here as we go, so.
24 Back to an overview of our recommendation 25
29 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 here. So were recommending the bi-product material 1
approach, strengthened by a targeted rule making and 2
development of supporting guidance.
3 So what that would look like is as Steve 4
mentioned, you know, definitions in Part 30 to 5
explicitly include fusion energy systems, using 6
devices, fusion facilities, something to that regard.
7 And then also update the regulation in Part 30 to 8
include a content application requirement for these 9
types of designs.
10 So the current Part 30 is, you know, 11 addresses radiation protection ways to fission security 12 on materials and hazards possessed by these fusion 13 technologies.
14 The byproduct material framework right 15 now, as we mentioned, is used to cover R&D, and then 16 the content application requirement, if it's a specific 17 thing we feel it would do is it would help scale Part 18 30 the way it currently is to ensure technology 19 inclusivity and for potentially larger hazards.
20 So we believe that this rule making and 21 guidance developed would cover the foreseeable 22 technologies that weve heard from industry planning 23 to deploy.
24 And then the guidance along with the rule 25
30 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 would obviously be prepared in parallel and ahead of 1
expected licensing submittals.
2 MEMBER PETTI: Andrew, one augmentation 3
to clarify. As we talk about this concept of scaling 4
Part 30, this looks at existing scaling that is within 5
Part 30 for decisions currently are certain facilities 6
may not need emergency planning considerations for 7
example.
8 But we want to make sure that should hazards 9
be presented to workers, members of the public, that 10 we have that clear criteria for commercial fusion 11 facilities that, indeed, emergency planning would be 12 required.
13 Now thats on a very based supple of scaling 14 for just an in or out. But we also have the ability, 15 as part of this rule making, to the Members comments, 16 to continue to look forward of what our different 17 options, for example, emergency cleaning that may be 18 needed in the future.
19 And the staff is not precluded from 20 borrowing concepts from Part 50, or Part 53, or even 21 the new emergency planning rule making that has been 22 developed to incorporate into something like this to 23 provide full spectrum of scaling.
24 Even though we are suggesting that a 25
31 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 starting point based on the focus on byproduct material 1
at these facilities as being Part 30. So I wanted to 2
include that, that we are precluded from incorporating 3
other concepts from throughout the regulations into 4
our rule making, even starting on a foundation of Part 5
- 30.
6 MEMBER HALNON: So it, thats just taking 7
emergency planning as an example. If youre going to 8
pick maybe attributes of Part 50, you have to go back 9
and look at ACRS comments relative to that emergency 10 planning as it would still apply.
11 For instance, with --
12 MEMBER PETTI: Absolutely.
13 MR. PROFFITT: -- the off-site planning 14 comments that we made.
15 MEMBER PETTI: Absolutely.
16 MR. PROFFITT: So a little context into, 17 you know, what we had in our mind when we were selecting 18 the recommendations. So again, I know Member Petti, 19 you dont like this word, but different hazard profile 20 of fusion technology.
21 So we see, the way we currently see fusion 22 technologies is its different than fission in that 23 when you have an upset or potential accident, you dont 24 continue to progress necessarily.
25
32 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 The fission, the fusion reactions are 1
obviously very difficult to achieve at this time, right?
2 I mean thats, weve talked about, you know, we 3
currently havent had a breakeven or above fusion 4
reaction.
5 Now there have been significant 6
advancements in recent years to enable that and the 7
private developers foresee that in the next couple of 8
years.
9 But its obviously a very, at this time, 10 its very difficult to achieve those conditions that 11 are required to have continued fusion reactions.
12 So we see the machine as having an upset 13 or accident progression, it would stop that reaction.
14 You wouldnt continue to have energy being produced 15 other radionuclides produced.
16 You would have an upset and the state of 17 the facility would be, the state of the facility in 18 regard to radioactivity, and radionuclides, and 19 radioactive material would be, thats what you have.
20 Youre not continuing to produce more or produce more 21 energy than is physically --
22 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: I was going to say.
23 How, how confident are you in that? Once is extremely 24 difficult to achieve ignition. But once you have 25
33 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 ignition, what prevents you from blowing up?
1 MR. PROFFITT: At this time, the way we 2
see it and the requirements for the reactions the 3
developers have and the designs that they have --
4 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: You have negative 5
activity perhaps, but lets hope theyre right.
6 MR. PROFFITT: Well certainly, and thats 7
part of why we acknowledge, we have other tools that, 8
as Moe mentioned, we believe this brainwork could scale 9
as appropriate. You know, different hazards, 10 different --
11 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Obviously, the 12 machine we have now don't achieve ignition.
13 MR. PROFFITT: Yes.
14 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: So, theyre going to 15 be different than what we have now and once you reach 16 criticality, Im using fusion, youre there. I mean 17 if you go with a positive feedback --
18 MEMBER PETTI: So a good designer, though, 19 understands the physics as best they understand the 20 day. You design the system for better confinement than 21 the model tells you -- more heat generated because you 22 dont know.
23 And so theres, youve got to have that 24 margin in there because until you get there, you dont 25
34 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 know.
1 And so they dont even know exactly where 2
the heat will go -- the blanket, the converter, these 3
different paths. So you over design it because you 4
dont know until you get there.
5 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: Yes. My point is the 6
only fusion machines that work today are called H-bombs.
7 Okay? So this is --
8 MEMBER HALNON: Yes, but thats, thats 9
inertial fusion. Thats a very, very different system.
10 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: But a blanket 11 statement, that nothing can possibly go wrong, its 12 a little naive. This has to be considered.
13 MR. PROFFITT: Certainly, certainly. And 14 I see Diego raised his hand again. Diego, go ahead, 15 if you can come off mute.
16 MR. SAENZ: Yes. So I think one of the 17 important things to contextualize and I think maybe 18 going back even to the Part 30 decision point. I think 19 one of the things to address head on, I know Steve and 20 Moe touched on this, but we really just dont see a 21 criteria where you would have to step outside of Part 22
- 30.
23 Specifically, commercial versus R&D does 24 not seem appropriate. Right now, were licensing a 25
35 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 tritium handling system for SHINE. I mean, youre 1
familiar with the SHINE facility, but theyre doing 2
the R&D side under the state licensing and that includes 3
their prototype of their tritium handling system.
4 When you look at that tritium handling 5
system versus some of these other proposed full scale 6
commercial R&D power facilities, those tritium handling 7
systems can look pretty similar.
8 So you look at a Helion versus what were 9
licensing right now under SHINE, and those look very 10 similar. So, I think thats another important context 11 here is we dont want to end up in a framework where 12 just because of the commercial that would drive it.
13 The other complicating
- factors, we 14 currently do license commercial uses of fusion, and 15 they have significant activation products and we --
16 significant enough to require financial assurance.
17 The other side of that is even the 18 accelerator
- side, so non-fusion, were seeing 19 accelerators with much higher power levels, such that 20 those activation products are requiring significant 21 financial assurance.
22 So these could have much higher activation 23 products than some of these fusion facilities and 24 without any fusion. And to add to that, thats 25
36 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 currently a problem that this definition for byproduct 1
material would fix.
2 So this same facility that is having such 3
high amounts of activation products using accelerators 4
not using fusion currently would not meet the definition 5
for bi-product material under the NRC, because those 6
activation products would not, you know, be for 7
commercial research or whatever uses.
8 So right now, that would also benefit from 9
an update to that definition. So thats some other 10 context, its not specific to fusion, but I think its 11 really important to understand the decision that weve 12 chosen.
13 I think the other thing to note, like 14 specifically when were talking about having some kind 15 of specific decision point from stepping outside of 16 Part 30, would be the hazards do not scale with thermal 17 power unlike fission.
18 Its very dependent on the specific 19 reactions, the specific fusion reactions, so when we 20 talk about aneutronic versus neutronic systems, thats 21 really important.
22 So I think that thats some other important 23 context that I wanted to highlight here. And the other 24 part is, were not saying the hazards are not 25
37 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 significant.
1 Right now the states have what I would 2
consider very significant hazards under their 3
jurisdiction. When you look at some of these panoramic 4
irradiators, we have millions of curies of cobalt and 5
other isotopes.
6 Thats a very significant hazard that we 7
have to consider and there are facilities that have 8
emergency plans under the states jurisdiction.
9 So I think that thats some important 10 context. I know the ACRS isn't as familiar with that, 11 so would be happy to provide more context. But I did 12 want to provide that context as well here. So I hope 13 that helps.
14 MR. SHAMS: Can I make a -- please dont 15 use the chat to -- somebody send me a message in the 16 chat about my comment. Dont use the chat to do 17 technical comment, because thats not recorded. And 18 with respect to my previous remark, very rapidly it 19 moves into classified material. So dont use the chat.
20 MR. PROFFITT: Okay. Thank you, Diego.
21 I think that provides some additional good context.
22 Moving through some of the other considerations here.
23 So we believe we are proposing an approach 24 that best accommodates the specific hazards and 25
38 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 security considerations associated with the use of the 1
material at these sites.
2 Again, were anticipating, consistent with 3
DOE and the White Houses bold decadel vision, potential 4
commercial deployment in the early to mid-2030s, and 5
we believe our framework aligns with that and can meet 6
and support developers schedules.
7 And Diego mentioned this too, but the 8
current array is very broad and it isnt just one hazard, 9
all these different designs. And I think if you look 10 at the Fusion Industry Associations report, you know, 11 there are over two dozen different philosophies of 12 fusion that are being addressed.
13 And, you know, some of the considerations 14 would be lower no neutron technologies versus very high 15 neutron technologies that produce a lot of activation 16 products versus some that produce very little, or none.
17 And then there are some that produce a lot 18 of tritium or use a lot of tritium. And there are some 19 that dont use tritium or produce very little tritium.
20 So there is a broad array and certainly 21 technology and inclusivity is very important as we 22 develop this framework.
23 CHAIR REMPE: How do you provide 24 regulatory certainty when you have such a broad array 25
39 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 of designs being approved, by agreement, state 1
regulators.
2 I mean, unless you have some firm cut offs 3
in Part 30 to make sure that folks dont get away with 4
something in Wisconsin versus Massachusetts.
5 MR. WHITE: I can take that question. The 6
current agreement states program theres a requirement 7
there for the states to maintain whats called an 8
adequate and compatible program.
9 Thats words from the actual act. And 10 compatible means compatible with NRC requirements.
11 That includes rule making and guidance. And again, 12 although the system does have some flexibility built 13 into it, there is, states have to follow the general 14 objectives of that guidance.
15 They have to have stuff, guidance thats 16 in place thats deeply protective or in some, if its 17 allowed to be more protective. And that, again, thats 18 done at, the compatibilitys done during rule making 19 for guidance. It goes, its evaluated internally and 20 to decide what that is.
21 But again, the comment about consistency 22 relates, really relates back to that. If we, the 23 agreement, current agreement states structure right 24 now, with rule making or with guidance states have to 25
40 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 have, they have to be in line with what the NRC has 1
to have in place.
2 So it kind of addresses your question.
3 They cant, someone cant go off, you know, like in 4
Wisconsin, go off, you know, go off and do something 5
very extreme or anything like that. Thats, that deal, 6
we all have to be in the same ballpark to do that.
7 Yes, go ahead.
8 CHAIR REMPE: So what if they have a new 9
widget and they say yes, I have 20 million tons of 10 tritium, but I have a new widget that keeps that tritium 11 highly absorbed; it'll never get out.
12 Do they come back and say okay, theyre 13 exceeding your limit, but its being held in by my new 14 widget that has some sort of data. Does that come back 15 to NRC to evaluate? Or do they get to make that 16 decision?
17 MR. WHITE: They, the way the agreement 18 program was set up was they, theyre the ultimate, they 19 get to license it, but often they will come back to 20 us and talk to us about --
21 CHAIR REMPE: They dont have to, its just 22 if they feel like it?
23 MR. WHITE : Oh they will come back, they, 24 they end up coming back to talk to us, because again, 25
41 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 there is the, you can see this in area -- medical area, 1
you know, there's a lot of sharing of information that 2
goes back and forth in the medical --
3 CHAIR REMPE: But its their decision.
4 Its not a requirement.
5 MR. WHITE: Its their decision because 6
they sign the license. And we also review their --
7 we also periodically review their programs.
8 And part of that review we would look at 9
specific licensing cases, just making sure that they 10 are -- that they stay within the balance of where they 11
-- with the program, a compatible program.
12 MR. LYNCH: Yes. And we do have another 13 tool as well that which each agreement state we have 14 a specific agreement in place with them that authorizes 15 specific activities they can carry out, including, in 16 some cases, quantities of material or certain 17 facilities that they may or may not have jurisdiction 18 over.
19 And some, a tool that we have at our 20 disposal is, as we look forward, if we think there are 21 certain checks that need to be in place, we can revisit 22 those agreements.
23 Is that correct Duncan? It's another way 24 we can look at it?
25
42 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 MR. WHITE: Yes, that, thats what the 1
audit program is designed to do is to look at those 2
particular, be sure that they maintain an adequate 3
program and make sure that they, we -- thats a statutory 4
requirement. Thats in the Act that we require to do 5
that.
6 CHAIR REMPE: All right.
7 MR. PROFFITT: Yes, and another thing, you 8
know, we see with the, with the recommendation that 9
we have is building off the framework that were using 10 for R&D, allowing that the scale as weve talked about.
11 But it also provides certainty for an 12 industry thats moving forward. And a couple of items 13 with the decisions criteria.
14 One, you know, as weve mentioned, theres 15 not necessarily a clear delineation that we see today 16 of a facility that would utilize that decision criteria, 17 that would be above that criteria.
18 And a lot of the paper and, as Steve 19 mentioned, we benchmarked the ITER a little bit more 20 in the paper now and describe these facilities.
21 And everything weve heard from the 22 industry today is that everything will be significantly 23 smaller than the scale of ITER, whether it be a tritium 24 inventory or some of the complex systems that we have, 25
43 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 so.
1 And Ive gone to the organizations 2
sometimes, is this a
true statement?
Your 3
significantly lower tritium inventories and potential 4
hazards than ITER? And they continue to tell us that 5
that is true, so.
6 It, valid cruncher, and they, and other 7
consideration with the criteria is, it would be tied 8
to the Atomic Energy Act, as Steve mentioned, but many 9
of the ways of developing the criteria would likely 10 lead to an NRC review to determine whether or not you 11 met that criterion.
12 So it would provide a lot of uncertainty 13 when youre coming in for an application about what 14 box you may end up in. And you may not know until 15 significantly into a review to where that would happen.
16 And were going to get a lot more into this 17 with Duncans presentation as I think Moe mentioned 18 to you, theres no clear end point to Part 30, as we 19 see it today.
20 Obviously, it needs augmentation through 21 rule making, needs augmentation through significant 22 guidance development to address these systems, and we 23 feel like we can build as the industry matures and 24 evolves.
25
44 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 And I think I touched on the last item here 1
with the scale of ITER consideration. So Ill hand 2
it over to Duncan.
3 MEMBER PETTI: And I dont want to belabor 4
the point on tritium. But all of this uncertainty you 5
talked about, all effects what you think the tritium 6
is, your best estimate of how much tritium you think 7
youre going to have on site is uncertain.
8 So fine, youre not, youre not at the scale 9
of ITER. Your near kilograms scale for power of 10 challenge any of them.
11 Just because the number on the record, 12 youll see it in the letter, its a little less than 13 56 kilograms per gigawatt year is what needs to be burned 14 per gigawatt year. You can then calculate from that.
15 Thats how much is being burned. But you 16 need more than that and, you know, to say that Im only 17 going to have a couple hundred grams is not credible.
18 Now, you know, near kilogram at a minimum.
19 MR. SHAMS: It's not that. Youre just 20 moving the proton to a storage facility.
21 MEMBER PETTI: Yes, well, I mean, thats, 22 yes, thats where the inventory's at. Yes. And, you 23 know, it has to do with things like holdup and just 24 all this, all these other uncertainties that make that 25
45 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 very difficult.
1 MR. PROFFITT: Joe, I see you have your 2
hand up here. Hes a member of our working group.
3 MR. STAUDERMEIER: Yes, I mean, youre 4
going to be, you need to produce that much tritium a 5
year, but youre not going to have this whole stock 6
of that much tritium to start out with.
7 Youre going to be producing it as youre 8
operating it and you, yes, the amount of inventory in 9
your system does depend on things that we wont know 10 until they develop full scale systems.
11 But the upper estimates that weve seen 12 from the potential plant developers are more in the 13 hundred-gram range and not in the kilogram range, and 14 15 MEMBER PETTI: The challenge -- that's 16 just a --
17 MR. STAUDERMEIER: -- they're attempting 18 to get it much lower than that and its, it all depends 19 on the efficiency of their tritium processing system 20 is what it comes down to.
21 And theyre developing new systems for 22 that, and well have to wait, its a thing well have 23 to wait and see on. Its something thats known like 24 right now. As you said, theres uncertainties.
25
46 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 MR. PROFFITT: Thanks, Joe. Well turn 1
it over to Duncan now and I think well get into a lot 2
more specifics here about Part 30, and I think this 3
is really the meat, meat of the presentation here.
4 So Duncan, take it over.
5 MR. WHITE: Thanks. On this slide, we 6
talked a lot about whats in Part 30. Again the Part 7
30 has high, a lot of high-level licensing requirements 8
that the applicants required to address.
9 We talked a lot about emergency planning.
10 Again, in Part 30, if you have more than 20,000 curies 11 of tritium or about 2 grams, youll have to evaluate 12 if you need an emergency plan or not.
13 If you have an off-site dose of one REM, 14 you have to have an emergency plan and submit that 15 emergency plan and it has to be part of your license 16 to be, you know, be approved.
17 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: Duncan, sorry to 18 interrupt here. Would you just repeat what you said 19 again for the record?
20 MR. WHITE: Current requirements in Part 21 30 right now do, you know, do cover emergency planning 22 for tritium.
23 And in Part 30 right now its about, it 24 says 20,000 curies and assumes a release fraction of 25
47 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 about 50 percent, and thats the threshold, thats 1
whats in the regulations.
2 But if you -- from a licensing standpoint, 3
if you have more than 20,000 curies, or about two grams, 4
you have to do an emergency planning evaluation.
5 You have to demonstrate why the facility 6
is going to be less, have an off-site dose of less than 7
one gram.
8 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: The point I, thank 9
you, because you already said something that addresses 10 one of Daves points.
11 Two grams, two grams is the threshold 12 effectively when rated to curies for tritium release.
13 Were talking about a lot more than two grams to run 14 any of these facilities. Beyond research, you know.
15 I guess one of the problems this connects 16
-- I guess Im having is that were, like I said at 17 the subcommittee
- meeting, thinking forward 18 successfully that this is a viable future mechanism 19 for producing energy and electricity, its just, as 20 Dave said, just work the numbers.
21 How much tritium, you know, I know there 22 are non-tritium concepts, but they are more difficult 23 to achieve. So, if we just stick with the tritium-based 24 system, youre dealing with a lot more than two grams.
25
48 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 I just want that to be in the record.
1 MR. WHITE: Absolute agreement. Theres 2
a proposed, theyre building a facility right now.
3 Its a research facility. Theyre using five grams.
4 I mean, and there are designs out there that go even 5
much higher than that.
6 I absolutely agree. So thats, we talked 7
about financial assurance and decommissioning I already 8
mentioned. And anything over 120-day half-life, you 9
have to evaluate what you have on site.
10 Yes, you have activation products. Over 11 120-day half-life and yes, youre going to have to take 12 that into account from a licensing standpoint.
13 And again, these facilities will most 14 likely have to submit what you call decommissioning 15 funding plans under Part 30 and under -- it would have 16 to fund those plans.
17 And
- yes, it could be, you
- know, 18 decommission funding plans can get very expensive, but 19 they have to, again, it has to be put into place before 20 we would issue the license.
21 And again it would be, obviously, tritium 22 would fall under that, any activation products would 23 fall under that. And again, this is operational and, 24 you know, and obviously whats stored in waste, waste 25
49 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 management.
1 A little bit about fissile security.
2 Obviously, tritium's covered by that. Radiation 3
safety is covered under Part 30. Again, my reference 4
is to Part 20 there.
5 Facility design requirement, again, the 6
very high-level facility design requirements, but again 7
specific, again, we use, Part 30 we use the regulations 8
in concert with guidance.
9 And again, thats, the applicant to submit 10 specific information for their facility with specific 11 information on, you know, on how theyre going to be 12 protected for health and safety.
13 And
- then, again, environmental 14 protection's another area where, again, in the NRC space 15 for Part 30, Part 51 again, there might be a requirement 16 there to do an environmental assessment.
17 MEMBER PETTI: So, these are really broad 18 areas. Things like conduct of operations, technical 19 specifications, do they fit in one of those?
20 MR. WHITE: Yes.
21 MEMBER PETTI: Okay.
22 MR. WHITE: Yes, they would. Again, 23 because this is just, again, we just want to use samples 24 from starting points here, but again guidance would 25
50 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 provide, ask for very specific information about the 1
design versus how they're going to do, operate their 2
facility.
3 And Ill give you an example about 4
emergency planning. One of the things, obviously, 5
theyre going to have to look at, you know, radiological 6
hazards and non-radiological hazards that would drive 7
off-site, potential off-site, you know, public 8
scenarios are most likely.
9 And again, and thats the type of thing 10 you would be looking for in the application. What, 11 you know, what do they have on site, what would drive 12 potential off-site, you know, credible or they may just 13 decide to battle it if they, you know, they have very 14 conservative case.
15 Depends on what they choose to do. But 16 thats what youre looking for there. So they, so its 17 a lot, it says its a lot of high-level, but again, 18 add the guidance to it and, again, and theres 19 additional, some of these have additional requirements 20 listed under ITER and you have to look at a lot of 21 different things here to, again, to issue a license 22 and approve the license to do that.
23 And again, regulations will go, will work 24 with, in concert with guidance to, again, specific 25
51 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 purpose fusion facilities which, again, would have to 1
be put into place with the rule makings.
2 MEMBER HALNON: So on part of this, the 3
numbers may show, you know, whatever grams or curies, 4
but theres a couple of other aspects that just like 5
emergency planning, its not just what can get off-site, 6
its what can get in on site.
7 Because you may be relying on ambulance 8
or law enforcement and other things that -- the other 9
part of this is the public perception. Fusion nuclear 10 plant.
11 Just the word nuclear fusion in itself 12 could require beyond just when you say doesnt require 13 emergency planning if its below a certain point, 14 theres always emergency planning.
15 And these are always dealing with hazards, 16 and security as well. You're always going to rely on 17 certain amount of off-site law enforcement. So a lot 18 of these things you can go by the numbers, but you have 19 to look at what you're doing, what you're talking about 20 21 MR. WHITE: Yes. I absolutely agree with 22 that.
23 MR. LYNCH: And to augment slightly, I do 24 want to make sure its clear that listing these topics 25
52 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 on the slide here are not implying that the current 1
regulatory requirements or guidance associated with 2
this are necessarily fully adequate for future fusion 3
facilities.
4 We highlight these as a starting point 5
where we would then scale, add additional requirements 6
to the point that was made about tritium quantities 7
and how that maybe play into emergency planning.
8 That could be an area as, and I think Duncan 9
will give some examples on the following slides, where 10 augmentations to the regulations would be necessary 11 and updates to guidance to appropriately handle the 12 commercial fusion facilities.
13 MR. WHITE: Yes. I was just going to say, 14 we have a couple of slides, take some of these examples 15 and, you know, dive in, and say this is why we need 16 more development in these area as to best fusion 17 facilities.
18 Last bullet, and we mentioned before, 19 again, we have the ability to oppose whatever official 20 safety security requirements as in stressors and 21 specific hazards of the designs.
22 Again, we can do this, you know, through 23 the licensing process and if necessary, you know, of 24 other tools like orders. Next slide.
25
53 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 Yes, the, again, the, we talked about the 1
recommended option would include limited rule making 2
and augment Part 30. And this would be I think the 3
most part, looking at adding one thing definitions, 4
you know, to kind of fusion clearly, you know, squarely 5
in the relative framework.
6 The other more important thing has a 7
section to regulations talks about whats the contents 8
of the application for a fusion facility. What type 9
of things would it cover?
10 Again, it wouldnt be super specific, but 11 it would be, cover the high-level things that we would 12 expect to see. And again, this would be augmented by, 13 augmented by guidance.
14 Currently, and we talked about this, fusion 15 R&D is going to be licensed either by NRC or states, 16 you know, with compatible programs, again, and whoever, 17 what state this is located in.
18 Again the guidance would, the initial 19 guidance that we would do would probably be geared 20 towards early movers, but again, the advantage of doing 21 guidance is that you can update and revise guidance 22 as you learn and go along.
23 And, again, this gets back to the last point 24 too is, again, is you see what applications, what 25
54 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 technologies, and moving forward you can, then you can 1
fill your guidance and learn from that and update your 2
guidance as you move forward to ensure that there is, 3
that theres been NRC and for the agreement states that 4
the guidance is covering the advancements of the 5
technologies as it goes forward.
6 The hazards that may, again, we talked 7
about what happens if you do go over ignition, you know, 8
what does, whats that going to look like. Maybe well 9
see that, and we can learn from that, and the guidance 10 can be updated to reflect that.
11 And again, the other thing Id like to point 12 out too is with regard to the evolution of regulations 13 and guidance, we use the example of NRC did with 14 panoramic irradiators. We had, for years we licensed 15 them on a case-by-case basis. We had minimal 16 regulations, and we used mainly some of Part 20 and 17 Part 30 to regulate them.
18 And as, once the industry matured and some 19 standardizations of designs, we actually did, at that 20 point, decide to implement a separate part for that.
21 22 So again, it was a conscious decision as 23 we moved forward. We decided that we hadnt, that the 24 industry, we put actually a new part in place that 25
55 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 specifically addressed, found what we believe, what 1
we knew about panoramic irradiators.
2 Again, it was years down the road when we 3
started doing that. But again, its what, weve gone 4
down this path. Weve done this path before.
5 And regulating on these on a case-by-case, 6
really on a case-by-case basis, this is how weve 7
approached, you know, new technologies in the past.
8 Next slide.
9 And heres, again, I'll talk a little bit 10 about, a little bit more about what we need augmentation 11 for Part 30, you know. As I said, Part 30 is not 12 complete right now for fusions. Its not, its just 13 not.
14 So were going to have to -- we do have 15 requirements in place, but again, we may not have the 16 current applicable guidance that we have sitting on 17 the shelf today.
18 We may have to pull that in from other 19 sources. We may have to develop it ourselves. And 20 we need to prepare that for, again, looking in the, 21 for the early movers, what we would need to do.
22 In this particular case, Diego mentioned 23 tritium handling. Then theres nothing specific in 24 Part 30 about tritium handling. We dont have, we 25
56 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 really dont have anything in place right now for, you 1
know, large, larger scale fusion, you know, tritium 2
handling systems.
3 So we would have to have appropriate 4
guidance in place, use, you know, so we can reference 5
other guidance we could use. To do that, we could pull 6
from part, other parts of the regulations to do that.
7 Chilling and designs is another area thats 8
going to be needed. Again, thats something that would 9
be design specific and there are certain requirements 10 already to handle the operational radiation to do that.
11 Some of the design features will be, you 12 know, very site specific. We may have to, you know, 13 from other sources to do that. And, again, if the 14 Commission does choose this option to move forward, 15 we would have to do guidance and rulemaking again, and 16 we would have to weigh in together.
17 I think I talked about emergency planning 18 quite a bit there. Again, I think theres not much 19 more to say about that. Again, its, the guidance was 20 developed not specific to tritium or fusion facilities.
21 So -- and the new guidance would have to 22 provide more specific information, how to look at this, 23 and how to handle that, again, revise the framework 24 to move forward.
25
57 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, and as a general requirement to what 1
you have to consider in the scenarios, but again, you 2
would want in the current, in the new guidance exactly 3
what you want to look at and how you want. Next slide.
4 Mr. Petti talked about the inventory and 5
how inventory is spread over the facility. Absolutely 6
right, how are you going to track that and account for 7
that? Absolutely correct.
8 Active products. What type of materials 9
are you going to use? What type of activation products 10 are you going to do? Its going to be challenging to, 11 its going to be a challenge to, you know, whats the 12 inventory for that?
13 And obviously, it doesnt, it goes without 14 saying, you have to know where things are, how much 15 you have, do some of these other analyses. No question 16 about that.
17 Physical security, again, we do have 18 physical security requirements under Part 30 and 19 they're in Part 37. Tritium is not listed there. That 20 will have to be addressed.
21 But, again, if we look at fusion 22 facilities, I think its up to about -- what weve seen 23 proposed now for fusion facilities by industry which 24 fall under what we call category. It would be IA 25
58 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 Category 2 quantities.
1 Again, these categories are based on the 2
deterministic effects from certain quantities of those, 3
stuff that was used on (audio interference) only. And, 4
again, what weve seen for inventories -- that again, 5
but we also may go into Category 1.
6 And, again, we have regulatory -- we 7
regulate that under Part 30 now. We have about 130 8
facilities across the country that are classified as 9
Category 1, the highest category in terms of physical 10 security.
11 So I think, but were going to have to 12 augment Part 30 to look at tritium particularly and 13 to have the facility and how you do that. And, again, 14 you know, a tritium facility is very different. Where 15 tritium is going to be at a fusion facility, it looks 16 very different than its going to be panoramic 17 irradiator and how you deal with and how you address 18 that. Theres no question about that. So thats one 19 of the reasons you have to update guidance, to make 20 sure how youre going to address that and meet those 21 requirements.
22 Non-radiological hazard, and I touched on 23 that a little bit with the emergency planning. But, 24 again, you have to, you know, those could be very 25
59 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 important in look at potential off-site scenarios and 1
for operational considerations, once again, because 2
of, again, those different designs have different --
3 youre talking about magnetic hazards, youre talking 4
about biogenic hazards, youre talking about the 5
hazards that could, you know, that could control --
6 its just that theres a lot, its just that these are 7
complex machines, and a lot of things can go wrong.
8 Again, we need to, we need to be able look 9
at those and evaluate those. Again, Part 30 does 10 provide a -- provides the requirement that you need 11 look at these things. Again, it would have to be design 12 specific.
13 Andrew talked about aneutronic devises.
14 They have very -- they look very differently than a 15 Tokamak. So were going to have to think about and 16 look at those.
17 What are the hazards associated with that 18 design versus, lets say, a Tokamak design? And, 19 again, have that evaluation. It has to be part of that.
20 And Part 30 does provide, does require you 21 to do that because, again, it recognizes the facilities 22 are going to look different.
23 Is this your slide or my slide?
24 MR. PROFFITT: Yes. I think that was the 25
60 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 last slide on Part 30, but I think the message that 1
were trying to send is, you know, the foundation thats 2
in the framework in Part 30, being augmented as weve 3
mentioned with the guidance and specific regulatory 4
requirements that we see that need to be updated right 5
now, can help us.
6 Can address what we have today and be a 7
bridge to the future, adequately addressing the systems 8
as the come, the devises and concepts as theyre 9
deployed, and move us to a place where we fully expect 10 to have, you know, a Part 38 or Part something like 11 that in the future if there was a full fusion industry 12 in this country.
13 So I think, I hope we did that and if there 14 are any more questions that relate to Part 30, Ill 15 call on Diego here. I see his hand up and he has a 16 lot of good insight from a state perspective of 17 implementing Part 30. So Diego, go ahead and then well 18 entertain any more discussion on specifics of Part 30.
19 MR. SAENZ: Yes. Another context that I 20 would add these slides is that a lot of this would also 21 apply under a Part 50 framework as well, right. As 22 you know, there is no specific guidance for tritium 23 handling even under Part 50.
24 Inventory tracking for tritium would be 25
61 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 something that we would need to develop those techniques 1
and guidance under a Part 50 framework as well.
2 So I do want to contextualize that as well, 3
that this isnt a, only if we go under Part 50. A lot 4
of these things would need to be done regardless of 5
the approach, but we just wanted to illustrate some 6
of those things that we recognize readily need to be 7
enhanced in the framework.
8 MEMBER PETTI: Im just, Im sure youre 9
aware of the safety documents, the hazard 10 categorization the DOE uses. The DOE faces a really 11 broad range of facilities.
12 So theres a whole document that was 13 developed on guidance for fusion facilities that pulled 14 all the tritium handling guidance that was available 15 at the time, this is 1990, in one place.
16 And so, you know, theyve done the 17 categorization and they have three levels, and, you 18 know, done the dose calculations. So there is a 19 structure there thats worth, I think, looking at.
20 MR. WHITE: I just want to reemphasize --
21 MR. PROFFITT: We have -- Oh, Im sorry.
22 MR. WHITE: I just want to re-emphasize 23 Diegos point. I think we recognized early on that 24 the requirements either be under Part 53 or Part 30.
25
62 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 going to access the same information before you 1
go in terms of regulating these.
2 MR. PROFFITT: I mean I would just say that 3
technology inclusiveness for out fusion, this makes 4
Part 53s technology inclusiveness a piece of cake.
5 I mean, this is so much broader, you know.
6 And Moes laughing. He gets it. I mean, this is a 7
much, much broader than landscape to have to navigate.
8 Thats for sure.
9 MR. SAENZ: I did want to quickly respond 10 to that point about the DOEs guidance. So, as weve 11 been licensing fusion systems, that DOE guidance has 12 been critical to us right now to license fusion 13 facilities.
14 So Im glad youre highlighting that 15 because that has been of great use to us. So, weve 16 been using that to date, and its been extremely 17 helpful.
18 MR. PROFFITT: Thanks, Diego. Any other 19 specifics on Part 30 before we move on?
20 All right, so obviously great discussion 21 at the subcommittee meeting. I mean, it really 22 challenged us to look at our paper and think about what 23 we had and make sure we were fully informing the 24 commission to make their decision.
25
63 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 So a couple of the aspects that we have 1
here, and again, the paper is probably nearly double 2
the size that it was that was provided in the white 3
paper format.
4 But Ive got greater detail on the scope 5
and magnitude of the designs under consideration, 6
benchmarking some to ITER and sort of using that as 7
a limiting box of what we expect.
8 Additional information related to 9
potential hazards from fusion energy systems to 10 bolstering that section. Member Petti, you brought 11 up the dust explosion and thats, that consideration 12 is in the paper now, along with others.
13 Specifics, as Duncan went through, some 14 of the examples weve talked about today and the 15 augmentations that would be needed to Part 30 and 16 certainly not trying to give the impression that Part 17 30, as is, is appropriate, but would require significant 18 work.
19 And then also, assessment of common defense 20 and security considerations related to fusion energy 21 systems. So weve talked about this line in decision 22 criteria, and that is a line that would require that 23 they be considered utilization facilities based on the 24 Atomic Energy Act. If they were determined to be of 25
64 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 significance to common defense and security, that is 1
a line to be drawn.
2 So, Chairman Rempe, I think you mentioned 3
one, you know, a very large facility maybe million of 4
tons or something. So I think something of that nature 5
would likely trip a common defense and security finding 6
and would be categorized at a utilization facility and 7
would need to be treated that way.
8 But, again, the understanding that we have 9
of the landscape thats out there and its sort of 10 benchmarking that to ITER, dont feel it would 11 necessitate following a utilization facility.
12 So we appreciate the discussion at the last 13 meeting. We think the papers in a lot better position 14 now.
15 So moving forward, I mean I think this top 16 bullet is the same from the last presentation but is 17 really the key and well continue to fulfill our mission 18 through licensing on the other side of fusion energies.
19 If we get down the road at some point and 20 we realize the path were on is inadequate, we have 21 tools to address that and we do that today with the 22 systems.
23 We expect that future designs and hazards 24 as they evolve, will continue to inform the requirements 25
65 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 are needed, the guidance that we have, the 1
requirements that we set to receive a license, and 2
lastly, we'll continue to involve that framework as 3
the industry matures as consistent with how weve 4
regulated new industries in the past.
5 So moving forward here, well finalize the 6
SECY paper that the Commission will direct us to 7
implement the framework as they see fit and we will 8
produce, if there's any rulemaking required based on 9
the framework, and certainly there be significant 10 guidance development. Well seek to have that in place 11 by 2027 based on the NEMA deadline that Steve discussed.
12 So our final steps here are delivering the 13 paper, hopefully on track for later this month. Id 14 say we still have significant work to do, but we believe 15 were on track to deliver that paper ahead of the 16 Commissions set meeting in early November on the topic.
17 And thats our presentation for today.
18 Welcome any more discussion.
19 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: One observation I 20 would make is, again, and I dont want to repeat comments 21 from the subcommittee meeting, but this being success 22 oriented, that this may work, and it may contribute 23 significantly to clean energy in the future.
24 If you -- and I understand the advocacy 25
66 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 those people who are advocating fusion want to make 1
this distinction from fission and so on, but it is a 2
form of atomic energy.
3 So I think sooner or later you have to cross 4
that line. Its a utilization facility. Im not 5
saying therefore use Part 50, because I dont think 6
that would very well.
7 So, the big thing in the fission business 8
that I think will happen and also in fusion unless 9
theres some direct conversion, is youre going to 10 couple it through some kind of power conversion Carnot 11 cycle.
12 And thats where things get complicated.
13 Thats where things get complicated for fission, and 14 thats where I expect things will get complicated for 15 fusion.
16 Because then youre building a more complex 17 system. The nominal goal is 24/7 electricity, high 18 capacity factor, and so on. And thats what will take 19 fusion from R&D accelerators to something thats a lot 20 more complicated.
21 And, you know, and first, thermodynamics, 22 the first rule is to push up the temperature. And as 23 soon as you push up the temperature of a systems light 24 fission, you get a lot of complexity.
25
67 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 And the same thing, I believe, is going 1
to happen with those fusion systems that, at least right 2
now, that look credible as contenders for purposes of 3
making electricity.
4 And that, Im just planting a seed, that 5
that changes the game. It changes the hazards. It 6
changes -- it makes, as Dave was saying earlier, youve 7
got a system with if its a neutron driven power 8
conversion system, neutrons all over the place.
9 Youve got tritium, if youre breeding 10 tritium for fueling your system, thats another 11 complication because tritium at high temperatures is 12 really hard to manage, and so on.
13 So, and just, I just put this observation 14 of caution out there, that once you cross over to making 15 useful power, the design and complexity of the systems 16 goes up and it pushes you.
17 And it will, unless there are some 18 techniques that Im not aware of in the fusion area, 19 it will, you want useful power, youre going to push 20 up the temperatures and youre going to be dealing with 21 a lot of neutrons and a lot of complexity.
22 And thats where things get a lot more 23 complicated, and thats where things like hazard 24 analysis and such gets more complicated, because youre 25
68 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 running at higher temperatures, and yes, theres not 1
decay heat like you had with fission, but youve got 2
a pretty hot machine, with a lot of a high energy.
3 And youve got radiation, youve got 4
materials that have been activated, and youve got 5
tritium. And so when that system then shuts itself 6
down for whatever reason, in part for whatever, then 7
the complexity goes up much more than you have to worry 8
about when youre running a particle accelerator at 9
a laboratory.
10 And so, I think Dave, its not quite the 11 same way you said it, but thats my concern that you, 12 that when you build this framework that youre really 13 building a framework that can realistically address 14 hazards that are going to be there which are, are going 15 to be, I wont make the fission/fusion comparison, but 16 just, itll have its own set of challenges and hazards 17 when its scaled up to something thats useful for 18 making energy.
19 MR. PROFFITT: Yes, go ahead, Moe.
20 MR. SHAMS: All right. I couldnt agree 21 more with the point being made, and I heard it a couple 22 of times about that uncertainty in the physics yet and 23 the uncertainty around the hazards that you have.
24 And were totally mindful of that. Just 25
69 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 even the structure of us looking at things, you are 1
looking at it as well, provides the assurances that 2
this will be looked at.
3 We come from the reactor side of things 4
where also, safety features, novel safety have to be 5
addressed, have to be fully vetted, have to be looked 6
at.
7 So were definitely not abandoning that 8
thinking. And if we look at the moment in time in fusion 9
that were in, its in Research and Development. Its 10 in proving of concepts.
11 So were definitely on that journey looking 12 and learning and understanding before we license 13 anything thats quite different than what were already 14 seeing or being proved so far.
15 So I just dont want us to come across as 16 were not recognizing or dismissive of the concept, 17 that theres a long journey for the technology to go 18 and prove itself.
19 And were on this side. Weve got to be 20 the ones that are ensuring the best outright. So at 21 the end of we have to make sure its done, you know, 22 safely. So your reminder to us is incredibly important 23 and thank you for that.
24 MEMBER PETTI: Other members? Comments?
25
70 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, lets turn to public comment then.
1 CHAIR REMPE: I believe there was a member 2
of the public who is here in the room, and I believe 3
the best thing to do is still, to come to the mic?
4 MEMBER PETTI: The mics dont work.
5 CHAIR REMPE: The mics dont work? Oh, 6
so youre going to have to use the microphone there 7
and turn it on and make your comments.
8 MR. ELLIS: Can you hear me?
9 MEMBER PETTI: Speak a little closer to 10 the microphone.
11 MR. ELLIS: All right. Well thank you 12 very much, Chairman Rempe and other members of the 13 Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. Thank you 14 for the opportunity today to make public comment as 15 you and your members are reviewing the NRCs staffs 16 work on evaluating regulatory framework for fusion 17 energy systems.
18 My name is Tyler Ellis and Im with 19 Commonwealth Fusion Systems or CFS, and by way of 20 background, I completed my bachelors, masters, and 21 doctrine degrees in nuclear science engineering at MIT, 22 as well as an MBA at Harvard Business School.
23 Ive built out TerraPower from its founding 24 by both leading the engineering design effort as well 25
71 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 as looking at the licensing frameworks, in a variety 1
of international markets.
2 With CFS I focus on several areas including 3
regulatory affairs. And to start out, I'd like to say 4
that I support the NRCs staffs proposal to regulate 5
fusion energy system under Part 30 approach.
6 At the last ACRS meeting there were several 7
questions raised as to both what was in Part 30, and 8
I think the NRC staff covered a lot more detail of that 9
as well in this meeting, as well as the current status 10 of the private fusion industry, which Id like to 11 provide some perspective on.
12 So weve submitted a letter for the record, 13 which covers a lot of the points that Ill kind of 14 briefly mention here. And if youd like even more 15 detail, Id encourage you to read the longer letter 16 that weve submitted to Chairman Hanson, summarizing 17 the two-plus years worth of public meetings discussing 18 all of this material as well as the Fusion Industry 19 Associations white paper on Igniting the Fusion 20 Revolution in America.
21 So over just the past five years, the 22 private fusion industry has really rapidly progressed, 23 raising over $5 billion of capital spread out over 24 30-plus companies around the world with the view to 25
72 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 put the first fusion megawatts on the grid by the early 1
2030s in order to address climate change.
2 This is in line with a decade old vision 3
that was announced by the White House to construct a 4
commercial fusion power plant within the next ten years.
5 And most of the private fusion companies were not in 6
existence ten years ago.
7 So a lot of the work that was performed 8
then would probably focus more on ITER and DEMO scale 9
type of facilities as opposed to the current concept 10 that have been developed rapidly over the last couple 11 of years.
12 So CFS specifically is currently building 13 a fusion energy demonstration facility called SPARC 14 in collaboration with MIT. Were both designing and 15 conducting a global citing search for a first commercial 16 fusion power plant called ARC which will put fusion 17 electricity on the grid in the early 2030s.
18 We have kind of raised enough money through 19 the fund raiser this past October, as well as the 20 demonstration of the magnet breakthrough last 21 September, where we demonstrated a 20 Tesla sized coil 22 at fully representative size for fusion energy 23 facility.
24 And that will fully fund the completion 25
73 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 of SPARC as well as the design activity for ARC.
1 Right now we are building SPARC in Devens 2
with the goal of achieving net energy, so Q greater 3
than 1 by 2025, and Q greater than 10 shortly thereafter.
4 With a -- which is basically about a decade more before 5
ITER.
6 The scientific basis for the plans have 7
been peer reviewed in the special edition of the Journal 8
of Plasma Physics, so if any of you are interested in 9
that, I encourage you to read.
10 And if you actually would like to come out 11 to see the Devens site and see the progress we are 12 making, we extend the invitation for all of you to come 13 out and we would be more than happy to host.
14 Id just like to cover a couple of brief 15 points that address some of the questions that were 16 raised in the previous ACRS meeting in five major areas.
17 So first is risk profile, second is tritium 18 volumes, third is the activated waste stream, fourth 19 is regulatory flexibility, and then the final one is 20 kind of the tide lines.
21 So some of the questions were raised on 22 the anticipated risk profile for future fusion energy 23 systems. We think that the future fusion energy 24 systems present risks that are much more similar to 25
74 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 particle accelerators than fission systems.
1 There are no special nuclear material on 2
site. There are no criticality concerns. They do not 3
create high level waste.
4 A lot of the hypothetical accident 5
scenarios that have been discussed and presented in 6
previous NRC public meetings were showing that 7
estimated off-site doses were well below the NRC Part 8
30 evaluation criteria of 1,000 millirem for the 9
coordination of off-site emergency evacuation 10 response.
11 Dust generation was also another topic that 12 was raised at a previous meeting and several of the 13 publications from the jet facility, which actually 14 utilizes the new ITER like wall, which is more like 15 a tungsten wall as opposed to a carbon wall that a lot 16 of the previous research has been based upon, shows 17 that it produces about 100 times less dust than a carbon 18 wall, and then that dust actually holds on to tritium 19 about 100 times less effectively than a carbon wall.
20 So, this is a significant difference from 21 the research that was conducted many decades ago on 22 a lot of the carbon-based walls. The tungsten-based 23 walls will be, create much less dust and it will also 24 retain much less tritium.
25
75 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 On the kind of a related point of metrics.
1 So we just wanted to kind of reemphasize the point 2
that I think the NRC staff mentioned before, that power 3
level and electricity production are probably not good 4
metrics to look at evaluating this just because it 5
doesnt correlate to the off-site risk.
6 We think the post appropriate metric is 7
expected dose to the off-site public, which is kind 8
of contained within the, within Part 30.
9 And then one of the other comments today 10 kind of discussed distributed sources, and in fusion 11 facilities much of the tritium is immobilized on solid 12 metal beds and thus not releasable in accident 13 scenarios.
14 So I just wanted to kind of bring up that 15 important distinction where, you know, we talk about 16 total tritium inventories for the site, doesnt 17 necessarily correlate to what is actually is released 18 in an accident scenario.
19 And then kind of similar to some of the 20 aneutronic approaches, you know, which also generate 21 neutron fluxes from secondary reactions and 22 preactivated materials, just like a tritium system 23 does, but just at a lower level comparatively.
24 And we think that the metric of off-site 25
76 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 dose to the public is a pretty effective metric because 1
that can ramp up or ramp down based upon the hazard 2
that the actual facility presents.
3 On the tritium area, one of the questions 4
was about the amount of tritium that is required.
5 Private fusion energy facilities will have far smaller 6
tritium inventories than ITER or DEMO. The magnet 7
demonstration that CFS just demoed last September, 8
shows that you can build a Tokamak that is 40 times 9
smaller than ITER. Forty times smaller.
10 Its a
significant size in volume 11 reduction. Other private companies are looking at 12 similarly sized facilities. Nobody is looking at ITER 13 or DEMO sized facilities for deploying of these 14 systems.
15 And I think thats just a practicality up 16 here. Talking about a 30-to-50-billion-dollar sized 17 facilities, private companies cant afford to do 18 something like that.
19 You have to have most of the governments 20 of the world come together in order to fund that, so.
21 For a private endeavor to try to take that on is not 22 necessarily realistic.
23 Now looking at SPARCs tritium inventory, 24 SPARCs tritium inventory is estimated to be 10 grams.
25
77 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 This compares to ITERs 5,000 grams. They are both 1
kind of accomplishing a similar mission to demonstrate 2
Q greater than 1.
3 But that is the difference in scale between 4
these 40 times smaller sized machines. Just try to 5
put the tritium amount in context.
6 ARC itself is expected to be slightly 7
larger than SPARC but will also have significant smaller 8
tritium inventories than either ITER or DEMO, which 9
is currently estimated up at about 15,000 grams.
10 When youre looking at tritium consumption 11 to operate an ARC sized power plant, about 250 megawatts 12 electric, youre looking at a consumption rate of about 13 81 grams per day.
14 So if youre actually kind of going back 15 and doing the math in a lot of these different 16 facilities, the reason that its different is because 17 unlike experimental machines like ITER and DEMO, which 18 have large inventories of tritium on site in order to 19 run repeated experiments and then change the parameters 20 quickly and go up and down quickly, commercial fusion 21 energy machines utilizing a DT reaction have a 22 completely different operational philosophy.
23 It is focused on consistent operations that 24 use, generate, and recirculate that tritium very 25
78 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 rapidly, as opposed to kind of storing a large amount 1
on site in order to draw from to run experiments.
2 So there are a lot of significant 3
differences between the tritium systems that are 4
designed for an ITER and DEMO size system, and what 5
is currently being developed for private systems.
6 Just a quick note on the activated waste 7
stream. So, a lot of the preliminary calculations that 8
we have for SPARC is that the total amount of low-level 9
waste thats generated is going to be to orders of 10 magnitude smaller than what they expect for ITER.
11 So again, significantly smaller amounts 12 of low-level waste. Lions share of that will be Class 13 A. And likewise, ARC is expected to general a pretty 14 small fraction of low-level waste associated with what 15 they expect for either an ITER or DEMO sized system.
16 We expect that all the activated materials 17 are going to comply with NRC standards under Part 61.
18 And for SPARC, a majority of this is going to be Class 19 A, low-level waste.
20 For ARC, we are designing this facility 21 such that the waste will be Class C and below, not 22 greater than Class C.
23 So on the regulatory flexibility point, 24 we think actually that the Part 30 regulations are 25
79 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 flexible enough to be able to ramp up and ramp down 1
based on the hazard that the specific facility presents.
2 And this has been the approach that the 3
NRC has taken with well loggers and irradiators as has 4
been mentioned earlier in this meeting, so.
5 We think that experience from multiple 6
cycles of development, operations, and maintenance for 7
several cycles is pretty critical before any additional 8
guidance is necessary to be developed because thats 9
been kind of the historical precedent thats been 10 followed so far.
11 Finally, on the timeline, just wanted to 12 clarify some points around the pace of the commercial 13 fusion energy and kind of the need for regulatory 14 certainty.
15 One of the areas where there was some 16 questions was the need and the time for developing a 17 regulatory pathway for fusion and is it needed for a 18 while.
19 So most private companies are developing 20 fusion energy systems and they are targeting the early 21 2030s for deployment in order to be able to deliver 22 something on the timeline and for the decadal vision 23 from the White House.
24 Assuming a five-year construction schedule 25
80 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 and a three-year design period, fusion companies would 1
need regulatory certainty by like about 2023 in order 2
to support this timeline and keep the United States 3
as a viable location for the initial ARC and other types 4
of private power plants.
5 So, just trying to give some time 6
perspective of why its actually important to be able 7
to develop an appropriate framework in the near term.
8 9
So thanks very much for the opportunity 10 to offer public comment.
11 CHAIR REMPE: Thank you. We do have the 12 letter you submitted, and it will be part of the 13 transcript. Most of what, we dont do question and 14 answers, and most of what you said I could hear, but 15 you mentioned I think 250 megawatts electric.
16 And was that correct? Because that number 17 did not appear in what your paper was, and so I could 18 not quite hear that. Could you repeat that number?
19 MR. ELLIS: Yes, article, you know, can 20 be approximately around there. Its not set, because 21 the design is still being formulated, but thats --
22 CHAIR REMPE: Thats different than what 23 I saw in an earlier paper, I guess. But it's 250 24 megawatts electric is what youre going to demonstrate.
25
81 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 Thank you. Are there any other --
1 MR. ELLIS: No, Im sorry. For ARC, for 2
SPARC?
3 CHAIR REMPE: Which one is it though?
4 MR. ELLIS: Well SPARC is what we are 5
building now.
6 CHAIR REMPE: And it is?
7 MR. ELLIS: So the power level equivalent 8
is not isolated because its a pulse machine, so it 9
doesnt necessarily, it doesnt produce electricity 10 for the grid and --
11 CHAIR REMPE: And then the smaller one will 12 be 250 megawatts?
13 MR. ELLIS: Yes. The commercial unit ARC 14 would be 200-megawatt electric class machine.
15 CHAIR ELLIS: Electric, okay. Are there 16 any other public comments?
17 Okay Dennis, did you have a closing remark 18 you wanted? Im sorry, what?
19 MR. BLEY: Yes, I do.
20 CHAIR REMPE: Oh hold on Dennis, there is 21 another public comment. I thought we only had one 22 person who wanted to make public comments. Theres 23 two in the room?
24 MR. FOWLER: Yes. Thank you very much.
25
82 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 So my name is Sid Fowler, here on behalf as counsel 1
for the Fusion Industry Association.
2 I just want to make a couple of very quick 3
comments to sort of add some clarity to what the staff 4
said which I know you had asked about the Option --
5 CHAIR REMPE: If you could bring the mic 6
real close to you.
7 MR. FOWLER: Oh, sorry. I know you'd 8
asked about the Option 3, which is the cut-off criteria.
9 I just wanted to emphasize that in the 10 Atomic Energy Act the commission always has the 11 authority to declare anything, a utilization facility, 12 by rule making at any time.
13 And so the staff, the proposal, the Part 14 30 proposal in no way locks the Commission in to never 15 declaring any fusion technology in the future to be 16 a utilization facility.
17 The Atomic Energy Act always gives the 18 commission that discretion. Okay, so I just wanted 19 to clarify that.
20 The other thing is that you know the 21 discussion of tritium facilities and large amounts of 22 tritium is that under Part 30, large tritium facilities, 23 they would already be licensed under Part 30, and 24 theyve never been considered utilization facilities, 25
83 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 even when they have very large quantities of tritium 1
on site.
2 And those are the two comments we wanted 3
to clarify. And then I believe the Fusion Industry 4
Association might like to submit a short letter 5
addressing some of the technical issues for the record.
6 Thank you for the opportunity to -- and 7
thank you very much.
8 CHAIR REMPE: Okay, and then I think were 9
back to Dennis.
10 MR. SAENZ: And Joy, I did want to make 11 a comment, I dont know --
12 CHAIR REMPE: Are you a public, member of 13 the public here now, at this point?
14 MR. SAENZ: Im in a hybrid role so, but 15 yes, maybe Ill make comment as a member of the public.
16 CHAIR REMPE: Go for it.
17 MR. SAENZ: Okay. I think one piece of 18 context that I think would really be helpful here is 19 the working group was mostly composed of NRR folks with 20 a familiarity of Part 50, and 52, 53.
21 So I think theres few people, like me, 22 which some of you may remember from the operate 23 subcommittee presented on Mello Plus and EFW in the 24 past, that I have kind of worked both sides.
25
84 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 So kind of the default of the group really 1
was how do we fit this into a Part 50 framework? A 2
Part 50 framework? A utilization facility framework?
3 That really was the starting point. And 4
even if you look at the SECY paper that created the 5
working group, its made some comment along the lines 6
of it didnt really see a role in this for the agreement 7
states.
8 To the great credit of the working group, 9
which Im lucky to be a part of, those members kept 10 an open mind and as we went through this process and 11 learned more about the current technologies, got 12 presentations from future facilities that are being 13 proposed and companies are working on, we eventually 14 started to work to the hybrid approach.
15 Okay, it looks like some of these 16 facilities could fit under a Part 30 approach and then 17 as we came to a close of this process, weve come to 18 the conclusion where we are now, which is we havent 19 seen a line where something that is foreseeable would 20 require that Part 50 approach.
21 Now, of course, as Dennis highlighted and 22 as weve seen with the SHINE Part 50 license, we have 23 that capability of putting something that doesnt right 24 now fit under Part 50, in a, you know, needed timeline 25
85 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 to fit it into Part 50 as a utilization facility.
1 That tool always exists.
2 I think it really was something that we 3
needed to address from the last meeting of, hey why 4
dont we -- why are we boxing ourselves now to one 5
decision, why dont we have some, you know, go that 6
hybrid approach, and leave that door open?
7 And thats because we really arent seeing 8
that line. So I guess I want to provide that context 9
and I also know a lot of the folks here at the ACRS 10 are more familiar with that Part 50 approach.
11 So I understand your concerns, you know, 12 as somebody who lived in the Part 50 world prior to 13 coming to the Part 30 world. I wasnt aware that a 14 lot of these mechanisms existed.
15 So, you know, I think that thats all of 16 your comments have resonated very well with, you know, 17 my own experience going through this process. So I 18 wanted to very much recognize that as well. So I hope 19 thats helpful. Thanks.
20 CHAIR REMPE: Any more public comments 21 before I allow Dennis to speak? Okay Dennis, youre 22 up now.
23 MR. BLEY: Okay, thanks Joy. Two, two 24 things. One I was beginning to feel kind of guilty 25
86 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 like I missed the boat when several members of the staff 1
talked about a revised white paper thats twice as big 2
as it was very much expanded.
3 Ive nosed around, and apparently, I didnt 4
miss the boat, they have a new draft that the Committee 5
hasnt seen and if its revised as extensively as they 6
say, it seems, I wonder if its wasted time for you 7
folks on the Committee to be writing a letter on what 8
we saw a few weeks ago.
9 Then I had a question for you and Dave.
10 My copy that I read of the original white paper has 11 an Option 2A and 2B, but it doesnt have an Option 3A 12 and 3B. Im guessing you mean the two different paths 13 under Option 3.
14 One for the bi-product material model and 15 one for the utilization facility. Is that right?
16 MR. PROFFITT: Yes. I think so. And 17 actually, to make things more confusing, in the slides 18 today it was Option 3, Option 1, 1 and 2, which are 19 sub-options under that.
20 And I thought they were A and B at the 21 subcommittee. So, I was a little confused as well.
22 MR. BLEY: Okay, so you were taking it from 23 your memory of the subcommittee meeting. I just 24 wondered because I didnt have an A and B, but I figured 25
87 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 I must know what you were talking about. And I did.
1 CHAIR REMPE: With respect to, is it 2
wasting our time? And we can clearly say, the white 3
paper and the slides and make sure everyone understands 4
what we were talking about.
5 My concern is, and Dave and other members 6
may have different opinions, is that the SECY, the 7
revised paper that we werent given an opportunity to 8
see, is going on up to the commission in October and 9
theres a public meeting.
10 So I think they havent changed what they 11 told us they were going to at the subcommittee meeting 12 and so if ACRS wants to comment, I think the time is 13 now. Other members may have a different opinion.
14 MR. PROFFITT: Well I just think when they 15 see if everything survives in the draft letter, there 16 may be some more useful information in the letter to 17 incorporate into the white paper as well.
18 CHAIR REMPE: Yes, Moe has his hand up.
19 MR. SHAMS: Thank you. Yes, I just wanted 20 to take on the point of the revision to the paper.
21 The SECY is built --
22 MR. BLEY: Moe, can you stay on the 23 microphone. Its hard to hear you.
24 MR. SHAMS: Oh, Im sorry Dennis. Ill 25
88 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 get closer. The SECY is built directly off the white 1
paper and the technical discussions in the white paper.
2 Weve expanded some of the legal areas a 3
bit to get through some definition of utilization 4
facilities versus material framework and what have you.
5 But that ultimately had no bearing 6
ultimately on the recommendation weve made, which we 7
presented to you today. And the technical positions 8
that weve laid out in the paper with respect to risks 9
and whats missing in Part 30.
10 So, in my view what you have is the thrust 11 of the paper. The rest is really augmentation to 12 support the commission decision.
13 MEMBER PETTI: Okay. Well with that, then 14 I want to thank the staff. Good discussion, good 15 presentations. And I turn it back over to you, Joy.
16 CHAIR REMPE: Sure. Were actually ahead 17 of schedule which is amazing with all the discussion 18 for less than 12 slot, because its only really 11.
19 But anyway, I would like to suggest we take a 15-minute 20 break and come back and let you read through your letter 21 at 10:25, which is five minutes sooner.
22 Id also like to tell the court report that 23 were going to go off the record at this time and ask 24 him to return at, or someone else, whoevers covering 25
89 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 this afternoon, at 1:00 p.m.
1 Okay, and that said, do you have a comment?
2 No. Okay, well see you at 10:25. Okay.
3 MEMBER PETTI: Yes, thank you.
4 (Whereupon the above-entitled matter went 5
off the record at 10:11 a.m. and resumed at 1:00 p.m.)
6 CHAIR REMPE: Good afternoon, everyone.
7 Its 1:00 p.m. I thought my microphone -- oh that one.
8 9
Good afternoon, everyone, its 1:00 p.m.
10 and we are resuming the full committee meeting, but 11 there has been an issue with admitting some members 12 of the staff, and Im waiting to get a go ahead from 13 the staff.
14 Is it acceptable to go ahead and start?
15 MR. SNODDERLY: No, if I could please, this 16 is Mike Snodderly, Ill be the DFO for this portion 17 of the meeting, and theres some members of the staff 18 that had the wrong invite and we believe we have the 19 right invite for them now. So I just want to make sure 20 theyre here before we get started.
21 CHAIR REMPE: So well wait until we get 22 a go ahead from you.
23 MR. SNODDERLY: Yes. Thank you.
24 (Whereupon the above-entitled matter went 25
90 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 off the record at 1:01 p.m. and resumed at 1:05 p.m.)
1 CHAIR REMPE: Okay, Ive been told by our 2
Designated Federal Officer for this session that weve 3
resolved enough of the issue that we can begin.
4 So at this time, Id like to ask Member 5
Kirchner to lead us to the topic regarding the 6
methodology for establishing the technical basis for 7
the plume exposure emergency planning zones.
8 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: Thank you Chairman.
9 I think to start, first Ill just observe that I believe 10 all the members of the Committee were at our 11 subcommittee meeting in September when this material 12 was presented by the applicant and the staff.
13 So we did not ask for that to be repeated 14 today, but I wanted to open the floor to any members 15 who might have questions based on what was presented 16 in September.
17 We have staff and new scale available.
18 Ill start with the Chairman.
19 CHAIR KEMPE: Well if no one else has, this 20 is a minor question. This is a minor question and I 21 apologize for not asking earlier, but I was just curious 22 when on Page 11 when youre talking about the codes 23 that can be used for this methodology and the applicant 24 mentioned MELCOR, RELAP, and MACCS, you brought up some 25
91 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 other codes, such as TRAC.
1 And I just was curious, usually in NCR, 2
they ask for something and you say yes, you can do this, 3
and what was the motivation for that?
4 MR. DICKSON: This is Elijah Dickson with 5
the staff. TRAC is an updated version of RELAP, 6
effectively at --
7 CHAIR REMPE: It actually has some 8
additional capabilities like the couple draft --
9 MR. DICKSON: Thats right additional 10 capabilities. I myself am not an expert user in that.
11 I would reach out to our office of research. They 12 are developing all those codes. And they said in 13 general the agency is moving away from that older 14 software and moving on to these new ones.
15 CHAIR REMPE: And of course the applicant 16 has a methodology that theyre using and I frankly --
17 the agencys codes arent really, well this is a 18 different story, but.
19 They were going to do a different type of 20 submittal, or something and they have their approved 21 code and RELAP is approved for their applications.
22 Im not sure that, although TRAC has some 23 additional, wonderful capabilities, Im not sure that 24 the staff would accept it for some types of responses.
25
92 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 I mean, frankly, it would be nice to see 1
the applicant do it for some things because of the 2
coupled reactor physics from a hydraulic feedbag, but 3
I just was surprised basically that you dont really 4
have a stronger reason for it other than --
5 MR. DICKSON: No, other than researching 6
and reaching out to the folks using the code and 7
developing the code that said in general, they are 8
moving on to these other codes, though internally.
9 CHAIR REMPE: Oh, absolutely. The staff 10 has I agree with that, but they can use, the applicant 11 can use.
12 MR. DICKSON: Yes. Thats it.
13 CHAIR REMPE: Youre basically giving this 14 applicant to use an NRC code for corporate regulatory 15 application, which is kind of interesting, but its 16 not the traditional.
17 MR. DICKSON: Yes. I understand.
18 CHAIR REMPE: Anyway, I dug that point out.
19 Thank you.
20 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: Thank you. Other 21 members? Also, I believe we have our consultants 22 Dennis Bley and Steven Schultz on the line. Dennis 23 or Steve, have you any questions of the staff or the 24 applicant?
25
93 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 MR. BLEY: No, nothing from me beyond what 1
weve talked at subcommittee.
2 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Walt, I have a 3
general question.
4 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: Go ahead, Vesna.
5 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: All right, so my 6
very general question is we call this the risk inform 7
application, right? And so my question is, what is 8
the risk here we are considering? Which risk are we 9
talking about?
10 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: Are you asking the 11 question of me?
12 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: No, no, no. Im 13 asking question of the NuScale when they said it is 14 risk inform, what is their understanding? What 15 risk we addressing here? I just want to know that 16 because we often, they make up the numbers and sequences 17 we call this risk inform application. But I always, 18 you know, my, one of my specific things when it comes 19 to that is can, we discuss what is the risk we are talking 20 about.
21 Because like 1174 is very clear. We are 22 talking coal frequency or lab release frequency. So 23 what is the risk we are discussing here? You understand 24 what you mean. What is the risk we are talking about 25
94 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 when we say this a risk inform application?
1 Are you talking about exposure? What is 2
the risk, those, what are risk we are addressing here?
3 In your opinion, how you see it when you say thats 4
a risk inform application.
5 MR. DOYLE: This is Jeremiah with NuScale.
6 Can you hear me?
7 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: Yes, Jeremiah.
8 MR. DOYLE: Okay. Yes, the risk that we 9
are discussing here is the risk of release and the 10 off-site dose risk to the public.
11 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: So we are discussing 12 off-site risk to the public is what is our risk measures 13 here?
14 MR. DOYLE: That is correct. Those three 15 dose criteria. Were looking at the off-site dose risk 16 to the public.
17 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Okay, but we dont 18 have an established expectations for that risk measure, 19 right? I mean, we dont have a really, let me try to 20 say that we dont have a really acceptable level of 21 risk defined here, right?
22 MR. DOYLE: Well, we have a, we have three 23 kinds of acceptable limits for, for protective action 24 planning. You know, we do set those three, those three 25
95 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 dose criteria and I would say those are our risk limits 1
here.
2 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC:
- Sorry, my 3
microphone was off. So what you are saying meeting 4
those criteria is what gives you risk inform thing.
5 Im sorry to be like this, but this is 6
something from my point that important that we often 7
as soon as we see number, you know five minus five or 8
1.5, we say oh this is this inform application.
9 But I truly, this inform application is 10 something which shows, represents low risk to something 11 or we have a reduction in risk to something.
12 And so my question to you by meeting those 13 criteria you are saying that this is that should be 14 fine risk inform.
15 MR. DOYLE: Okay, thank you for that 16 explanation. Yes. I would say theres two, theres 17 really two pieces of the risk inform to this.
18 One is the, were informing the spectrum 19 of accident sequences to be evaluated. And thats 20 based on risk incites from the PRA and deterministic 21 inputs from, you know, Chapter 15.
22 So theres that balance of the 23 quantitative, the quantified probabilistic risk and 24 the deterministic risk. And that combination there 25
96 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 is part of the risk informed process.
1 And then the other piece of the risk 2
informed process is for that defined spectrum of 3
accident sequences. You know, what is the distance 4
at which we meet the dose criteria.
5 And so were really then ultimately risk 6
informing that that location where we were having the 7
commensurate level of risk to the public at and beyond 8
the EPZ boundary as the currently established 10-mile 9
EPZ.
10 MEMBER DIMITRIJEVIC: Okay. All right.
11 I just wanted to hear your opinion about such. Okay.
12 Thanks.
13 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: Thank you, Vesna.
14 If there are no other questions or comments, what Im 15 going to proceed to do is read that document and that 16 is the version that the staff prepared --
17 MR. SNODDERLY: Excuse me Walt.
18 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: -- the evaluation 19 against -- yes?
20 MR. SNODDERLY: Yes. I think that now 21 that were at the end of the question-and-answer period, 22 I dont believe we need the court reporter any longer, 23 so.
24 CHAIR REMPE: Furthermore, Im wondering, 25
97 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 do we do about public comments? Maybe we should 1
ask if we should have public comments before.
2 VICE CHAIR KIRCHNER: We would take any 3
public comments on this particular topic. I think if 4
youre on-line you have to press *6 to unmute yourself.
5 If youre on Teams, go ahead and activate your 6
microphone.
7 MR. SNODDERLY: Ms. Sarah Fields is on --
8 CHAIR REMPE: Do you hear previously that 9
she did want to make --
10 MR SNODDERLY: No, I just saw that she was 11 one of the ones --
12 CHAIR REMPE: Oh, there were several that 13 I recognized that -- and we'll give them another few 14 minutes. Not hearing any comments then I think we are 15 done with this public comment portion, and we will ask 16 court report and ask him to return tomorrow at 8:30 17 a.m. Thanks. 8:30 tomorrow morning is good.
18 MR. NGUYEN: Excuse me, Chairman. I think 19 it's P&P tomorrow so did you want him to --
20 CHAIR REMPE: That's true. And we've got 21 a lot of people with echoes. But we will have a session 22 tomorrow at 1:00. And I sent you and Larry a note and 23 Quynh. Can someone -- everyone turn off their mics?
24 25
98 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 Quynh, Larry? Okay, so I ask us to -- okay, 1
I asked before, with my opening remarks. I sent you 2
and Larry a note, and Quynh. And you coming back and 3
said, yeah, what you have is fine.
4 But I thought we do need to have an opening 5
remark at 8:30 to make sure that we cover what's going 6
to happen at one o'clock. And we definitely want a 7
court reporter.
8 But I mentioned it several times. And we 9
were just going to have this guy on the line for about 10 ten minutes. Now is that true?
11 MR. NGUYEN: That's understood.
12 CHAIR REMPE: Is that true? Because I did 13 sent you a note, you and Quynh, a note back. Okay, 14 and Quynh, is that true?
15 I mean, this is a weird situation but 16 because of what we are starting off and then starting 17 at 1:00, in the middle of a session, if you don't have 18 an opening remark, to me seems strange.
19 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: My agenda says 1:30.
20 CHAIR REMPE: Okay, 1:30, but is it 1:30 21 when we are to resume?
22 MEMBER MARCH-LEUBA: That's what it is.
23 CHAIR REMPE: Okay, so anyway, please come 24 back at 8:30 tomorrow morning, court reporter, okay?
25
99 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 And then we'll get right to -- yes, until probably 1
1:30.
2 Jose's probably right because I was just 3
doing it from memory. Okay, so at 1:30, then, we'll 4
have a longer time. Thank you for correcting me.
5 MR. NGUYEN: Thank you, Chairman.
6 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 7
off the record at 1:18 p.m.)
8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Full Committee Licensing and Regulating Fusion Energy Systems October 5, 2022
2 Agenda o Review of Options
- Treatment as utilization facility
- Adaptation of byproduct material framework
- Hybrid approach o Staff Recommendation of 10 CFR Part 30 Approach
- Context for recommendation
- Scalability of requirements
- Potential augmentation of requirements
- Expected implementation o Enhancements to SECY Paper o Path Forward
3 Options for Commission Consideration o Option 1: Treatment as Utilization Facility - Supplement Part 53 Would impose requirements in Atomic Energy Act (AEA) currently applied to nuclear fission reactors Would present challenges because hazards associated with fusion devices are fundamentally different than fission-based systems o Option 2: Regulate under Byproduct Material Framework - Enhance Part 30 Part 30 framework addresses the most significant hazards associated with fusion energy systems Currently used to safely license and regulate fusion research and development (R&D) facilities Would scale requirements to address expected hazard levels o Option 3: Hybrid Approach - Scale Between Options 1 and 2 Bifurcated approach with decision criteria to regulate as utilization facility or byproduct material
4 Staff Recommendation - Part 30 o Staff recommends a byproduct material framework approach to fusion regulation; strengthened by a targeted rulemaking and development of supporting guidance
- Part 30 and associated regulations addressing areas such as radiation protection, waste, and physical security provide relevant foundation to address material and hazards posed by fusion technologies
- Byproduct material framework is currently used to safely license and regulate fusion R&D facilities
- Limited rulemaking would scale existing requirements to ensure technology inclusivity and provide content of application requirements
- Guidance would be prepared in parallel with rulemaking to support expected licensing submittals
5 Context for Staff Recommendation o Fusion technologies have fundamentally different hazard profile than fission reactors o Staff proposing an approach that best accommodates specific hazards and security considerations associated with possession and use of byproduct material o Anticipate first commercial systems, consistent with the Department of Energys Bold Decadal Vision in the early-to-mid 2030s Staff proposing a rulemaking approach that is timely and supports developers' schedules o Fusion energy systems under development vary greatly in technological approach and potential hazards; necessitates a scalable, technology-inclusive approach Different technologies: low/no neutron technologies vs. high neutron technologies Different hazard considerations: large vs. low/no tritium inventory Building upon the materials framework used for R&D facilities, would support a technically consistent and predictable regulatory infrastructure, while ensuring adequate protection of public health and safety o No facility of the scale and tritium inventory of ITER is being considered in the U.S.
Additional safety and security considerations under a utilization facility framework unnecessary
6 Part 30 Framework and Scalability o Part 30 includes high-level licensing requirements that address design, safety, and security considerations relevant to fusion facility materials and technologies, including:
- Emergency planning
- Financial assurance and decommissioning
- Physical security
- Operator training
- Radiation safety
- Facility design requirements
- Environmental protection o NRC will scale or impose additional safety or security requirements as needed to address specific hazards for the applicant's design
7 Expected Implementation of Byproduct Material Framework o Staff would initiate a limited rulemaking to augment Part 30 with technology inclusive definitions as well as updated, scaled content of application requirements o Fusion R&D, not within DOE jurisdiction, would continue to be licensed by the NRC or Agreement States with compatible programs o As needed, guidance would be developed to support early movers o As fusion energy systems are deployed and industry evolves, staff will evaluate the need for further rulemakings and/or guidance updates Incorporate licensing and operating experience Further tailor and scale requirements to designs and associated hazards Consistent with evolutionary nature of regulation
8 Augmentation of Part 30 for Fusion Energy Systems o Facility design requirements and radiation safety for tritium handling systems Current requirement: 10 CFR 30.34(a)(2); no current applicable implementing guidance Specific guidance to be developed on:
material properties and composition in very high neutron fields tritium handling systems shielding and design o Emergency planning Current requirements and guidance: 10 CFR 30.32(i) and Regulatory Guide (RG) 3.67, Standard Format and Content for Emergency Plans for Fuel Cycle and Materials Facilities Current guidance is not specific to tritium or fusion facilities. New guidance will need to provide specific information on how to evaluate the release of tritium based on design specific accident scenarios such as loss of coolant, loss of vacuum, fires, or explosions to determine if the potential offsite doses exceed 1 rem effective dose equivalent.
9 Augmentation of Part 30 for Fusion Energy Systems o Radioactive material inventory Current requirements: 10 CFR 20.2006, 20.2201, 30.3, 30.33(a), and 30.35 Accurately tracking large quantities of tritium: Licensing guidance will address demonstration of process for accounting of the tritium inventory.
Accounting for activation products from neutron activated components: Licensing guidance will address means of tracking inventory for meeting waste management and financial assurance requirements.
o Physical security Current requirements and guidance: 10 CFR Part 37 and NUREG-2155, Implementation Guidance for 10 CFR Part 37, Physical Protection of Category 1 and Category 2 Quantities of Radioactive Material Fusion facilities may use quantities of tritium in excess of IAEA Category 2 quantities. Part 37 and associated guidance do not currently include tritium as one the radioactive material requiring physical protection.
o Non-radiological hazards Current requirements: 10 CFR 30.32(i) and 30.34(e)
Current guidance is not specific to fusion energy systems. Licensing guidance will need to provide specific information to integrate non-radiological hazards into evaluation of operational and incident scenarios. Some non-radiological hazards that could initiate scenarios that would release radioactive material include fire, loss of vacuum, or loss of plasma control.
10 Enhancements to SECY Paper o Based on discussion at the September ACRS subcommittee meeting, staff have enhanced the draft SECY paper to better inform the Commission of its consideration of options to regulate fusion energy systems, including the following modifications:
- Greater detail on the scope and magnitude of fusion energy system designs under consideration
- Additional information related to potential hazards from fusion energy systems
- Specifics on augmentations to Part 30 framework
- Assessment of common defense and security considerations related to fusion energy system
11 Path Forward o NRC will continue to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and safety through the licensing and oversight of fusion energy systems Designs and hazards of anticipated fusion energy systems, inform the development of requirements As appropriate, staff will continue to evolve regulatory framework for fusion energy systems as the industry matures, including consideration of new designs, hazards, and operating experience o Commission will direct the staff to implement the appropriate regulatory framework Staff will continue stakeholder engagement to inform its development of selected framework Rulemaking and/or guidance will be completed by the end of 2027 (NEIMA deadline) o Next steps Staff to deliver options SECY to Commission later this month (October 2022)
Commission meeting on fusion energy systems scheduled for Tuesday, November 8, 2022
12 Discussion