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